Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2896: Why 95% of People Regain All Their Weight (And How to Be in the 5% Who Don't)

Episode Date: July 8, 2026

In this episode the guys break down why 95% of people regain all the weight they lose — covering both the method (why cardio and starvation approaches are doomed from the start) and the mentality (the tyrant, the tyrannized, the rebel, and the robot). They also get into Sal's return from vacation and how coming back to Ketone IQ after a week and a half made him realize how well it actually works, feeding grizzly bears at Bear World near Yellowstone, the Toy Story 5 iPad villain and its zero effect on the kids who watched it, kids and freedom versus helicopter parenting, the guy who injected his own semen thinking it would heal his back pain, and a specific mushroom that makes everyone who eats it see the exact same tiny people. Then they coach live callers submitted through mplivecaller.com. MAPS Upper Lower: https://mapsupperlower.com Code: LAUNCH for 40% off. Includes male and female programs, workout videos, exercise demos, coaching videos and live coaching with Cole. Mind Pump Fitness Coaching: https://mindpumpfitnesscoaching.com 1.9 NASM CEUs SPONSORS Ketone IQ:  https://ketone.com/MINDPUMP 30% off subscription orders plus a free gift with your second shipment. Also available at Target stores nationwide. Sal discusses noticing the difference after coming back to it post-vacation. Super Patch:  https://mindpump.superpatch.com No code needed, use URL for $30 off. Sleep patch discussed on air — REM sleep improvement tracked on Oura. Pain patch equivalent to Advil in peer-reviewed studies. Dose for Your Liver:  https://dosedaily.co/MINDPUMP Code: MINDPUMP for 25% off first month subscription. Clinically backed liquid liver supplement, zero sugar, zero calories, tastes like fresh squeezed orange juice. 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 2:54 - Why 95% of people regain all the weight they lose 8:07 - The method — why cardio and starvation create a miserable cycle that always ends in failure 12:44 - The mentality — tyrant, tyrannized, rebel and robot 18:51 - The solution — self-care as the driving force instead of self-punishment 29:22 - Ketone IQ — what Sal noticed after coming back to it post-vacation 30:09 - Feeding grizzly bears at Bear World near Yellowstone 35:36 - Toy Story 5 and the iPad villain — zero effect on kids who watched it 41:09 - Kids and freedom — helicopter parenting, e-bikes and letting go 49:15 - Super Patch sleep and pain patches — Sal explains the science to a skeptic ER doctor 51:07 - Europeans at the FIFA World Cup losing their minds over AC, free refills and BBQ ribs 57:17 - The guy who injected his own semen to cure back pain — and got an abscess 1:00:13 - This specific mushroom makes everyone who eats it see the same tiny people 1:02:22 - Caller: Carolina (New Hampshire) — lost and gained 600 pounds across her life, reverse dieting, mindset shift 1:25:47 - Caller: Michelle (Ontario) — complicated pregnancy, emergency C-section, low cortisol, getting back to training 1:34:06 - Caller: Sandy (Connecticut) — 60 day update, dramatically stronger, building church community, walking group idea 1:52:52 - Caller: Jackson (Florida) — 20 years training, herniated L5, post-mono, wants abs, ice cream maker

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 in the history of podcasting. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, we had callers call in. We got to coach them live on air.

But this was after the intro. Today's intro is 59 minutes long. In the intro, we talk about fitness and fat loss and muscle games. nutrition, current events, family life. It's always fun. By the way, if you want to be on an episode like this, here's what you do. Submit your question to nplifecaller.com.

Now, this episode is brought to you by some sponsors. The first one is ketone IQ. These are exogenous ketones. You take them and you're in ketosis. In other words, you get ketones in your system. You're using them for energy. Crazy mental sharpness. The same kind of mental sharpness

you'd experience on a ketogenic diet, except you can still eat carbs. So I love ketone IQ before I podcast. Makes me mentally sharp. I feel good. And it's easy. It's easy. You just take a shot of it.

Go try it out for yourself. Go to ketone.com. That's ketone. O'N-E dot com forward slash mind pump. That link will get you a huge discount, 30% off your subscription. This episode's also brought to by Super Patch. So these are patches with no medicine or drugs or supplements. You stick them on your skin.

They use something called haptic technology to induce actual results. There's over 16 peer-reviewed studies, controlled studies that show their efficacy. They have patches for sleep, for pain, for athletic performance, and more. The studies are real. It's real science.

They really do work. We talked about their sleep patches today. Give them a try. See for yourself. Go to mindpump. com. That link will get you $30 off. We also have a brand new Maps program.

MAPS upper lower. This is a four-day workout split, upper-lower split. It's bodybuilding style, moderate volume, routine. It comes to workout videos, exercise demos. We got coaching videos in there.

Also, if you sign up during the launch, you get live coaching with one of our trainers, Cole, and because it's a brand new program, it's 40% off right now. So if you like bodybuilding splits, you want something with moderate volume, not crazy volume,

four days a week. You want to shape and sculpt your body. Go to Maps, upper lower. com. Use the code launch. get the 40% off. All right, here comes the show. T-shirt time.

And it's T-shirt time. Aw, shit, Doug. You know it's my favorite time of a week. One winner this week for Facebook. It's Christian Cortez. Christian, send the name I just read to iTunes at Mind Pumpmedia.com. Include 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 up 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 mindpump store.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. All right, we're going to talk about why 95% of people regain the weight that they lose.

And we're also going to talk about how to be in the 5% who don't. Let's get to it. The 95 comes from after year two. this is after I think it's after two it's close to 70% when it gets to five years oh it's five okay because I know I know like the first year a large percentage already gain it back the second year I think that that gains I thought it was with a third year but maybe it's five yeah so so most all put it back well here's how okay this is this is where it gets really dismal the data a small percentage of people actually accomplish what is considered statistically significant weight loss. You guys want to guess what that number is? Five to ten percent of their body weight. Yeah.

So if you're 300 pounds, 15 to 30 pounds would be considered statistically significant. Most people, I don't know about most, but a good chunk of people, and you lose more than that. Okay. The percentage of people that actually accomplish that number is something like 15%. Of the 15% that lose the 5 to 10%, 95% of them gain it back. So if you look at the big total total number, your odds of losing the weight and keeping it off, it's like not going to happen. Yeah, pretty slim.

It's really, really, really slim. So it's an important topic because we focus a lot of time and energy. And I say we, I'm talking about the health and fitness industry and the diet industry. Focuses a lot of energy on how to lose the weight. They focus almost no energy on how to keep it off. I do think they're connected, though. I think how you lose it does contribute to. Oh, for sure.

Wasn't their biggest loser study that was, like, even worse in terms of, like, the statistics? If, no, it falls. Oh, same. Most of them gained the way back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the difference with the biggest loser, though, is that most of them do lose weight. Right. Okay.

Yeah. But they all gain a back. It's just the rebound is substantial. They all get it back. So it's really, really tough. And then if you look at other data, the more often this happens to you, in other words, let's say you are in that small percentage of people that lose the weight, but then you gain it back

and then you do it again and then you gain it back. Each success, you know, successive attempt becomes more difficult. And then what tends to happen is people give up. After they've lost and gained the weight back, you know, two or three times, they're just like, I'm not even going to try.

Well, yeah, because, you know, your point, the method which they go about it is so miserable just to get there and then to a lot of times fall short of your ultimate goal or feel so miserable for so long. And what I mean by that is the method at which they approach this is super low calorie, tons of activity, cardio, yeah, just white knuckling their way to get there.

And you look back and you go, you know, say your goal was to lose 80 pounds, and you got 30 or 50 even off, but you didn't even reach all the way of your goal and you're just like. And you feel miserable. Yeah, you feel miserable. You've sacrificed so much.

You go, man, I'd rather be 50 pounds heavier and do everything that I want, you know, and eat the way I want to eat. And that's kind of what happens. And the unfortunate part is when they do that and they give up and they go back the other way, it swings back even harder. That's right. So not only do they gain it all back really fast, but then even more of it comes back on because now their body's adapted to all that activity and that low of calorie. And so it's just a dangerous recipe. It is. And this is why people, when they stop, kind of to your point, Adam, when people get off the wagon, stop the workout, you know, go back to their old eating habits.

Oftentimes what you'll hear is people will say, well, I just want to live my life. I just want to enjoy my life, which is interesting. I've brought this up before on the podcast. But when this first dawned on me, it was years ago, years ago, I remember the first time I heard that where it actually sank in. because I'd heard that before. We've all heard that. If you've worked in gyms, you hear people say that,

oh, I just stopped because I just want to enjoy my life. Or I can't do the dining more because I just want to enjoy food. And I heard that so many times, but one time it really sank in. And I thought to myself, like, this is very weird because enjoying your life, you should be able to enjoy your life more being healthy. Yeah.

And yet people are saying they're going to allow themselves to be less healthy to enjoy their lives. There's something wrong here. There's something amiss. There's some wires being crossed. because we know that improving your health and fitness improves your quality of life for sure 100%. I think logically people know that and yet people are stopping because they want to just enjoy their life. So the method, we could start by talking about the method and why or how people approach it and why it's so wrong.

I think it's important to start with this point, which is whatever you do to lose weight or get in shape, it has to be something that you feel like you can maintain. Yeah. Okay. So otherwise, when you stop, you're going to go back to where you were before. So whatever the method is, you have to ask yourself, is this something that I will want to continue doing? Part of its discipline. The other part of it is if you do this in a very ineffective way, you're going to do way more work than is necessary.

And you're just going to make it a lot harder on yourself. And this is where people screw up. So what they tend to do is they tend to look at activity as a way to burn calories. So I got to move more and move more and move more. and then they look at totally restricting with their diet and cutting their calories low. So it's like burn a lot of calories, eat a little calories. And this is really not a very successful approach. Yeah, and it's looked at as like a temporary like all-in kind of effort.

Like I have to, you know, sacrifice all this to get to this point where I feel like I'm going to achieve this physique that I'm trying to achieve. And, you know, once you get there, it's like, okay, well, you have to continue to, you know, do the work. You have to continue to exercise. You have to continue to eat correctly. And I think that the misconception is that we're going to get to this place and then it's all going to kind of settle itself at that point. Yeah.

So, so let's talk about like the, like, let's move as much as we can to burn calories. That is a very difficult way to get your body to burn more calories just through movement. Now, movement's good for you. So I want to be clear, like you should move. But if your approach around exercises, burn as much. many calories as possible. It's a lot of effort for very little in return. Okay, so like, just to give you an example,

and every cardio machine out there and every workout program that claims differently is wrong, we have actual data on this. Typical person working out really hard for an hour. Like I mean, like, really hard, intensive, what people would, what we would label as calorie, you know, calorically expensive activity, hit cardio or, you know, running or something very difficult.

you're going to burn maybe five, six hundred calories in an hour. That's it. Five to six hundred calories in an hour of breaking your butt. You can eat that two seconds. You could drink, you can have a couple sodas. Yeah. And you get that. That is a very difficult way to burn five to six hundred calories.

Not to mention the more you do it, the better your body gets at it and the less calories you actually burn while doing it. I know that sounds crazy. But the better you get at a movement or skill, the body learns how to become more efficient with it because it's this wonderful adaptation process that we have. So now you're doing an hour of intense, like really hard, make you feel like you want to puke workouts every day just to create a 500 calorie extra burn. It's not very effective. The other strategy is what kind of exercise gets my body to burn more calories on its own? That is a much better approach. Well, it's also

a behavior that's almost impossible to sustain. Like, how many people have you ever met that went on a mission of running on the treadmill for an hour every day, or even every other day, for that matter, and then kept that up? The only people I know that kept it loved running.

That's not a lot of people. You have to that at that point. You have, exactly. If you're going to choose a modality like running or swimming, it better be something that you love to do regardless of your weight and your aesthetics. It's like it can't be motivated by I need to look a certain way. That's right. It's that I love to run. I'll do it anyway.

Yeah, I love to swim. I don't care if I'm 50 pounds over, underweight doesn't matter. It's like I love to do those things. Great point. Then that makes sense. If it's not one of those things and then you choose to go pick up running, it's just not sustainable. You're far better off either one going the direction that you're about to go right now in the conversation, which is, you know, building muscle and building metabolism or changing behavior, like lifestyle behaviors. I had way more success with clients that I convince to, you know, make walking for 10 or 15 minutes after a meal a habit. Totally.

Or, you know, hey, why don't you make it a tradition that you and your spouse on Saturdays go for an hour hike where you get to connect and stuff? You know, if they can find ways to attach it to other things that add value to their life or build it within their daily habits that doesn't require them to go to the gym, doesn't require them to get all sweaty. Those are far more sustainable. They are. And you're also not doing it for the calorie burn.

Right. A 10, 15 minute walk after breakfast lunch. and there's not going to burn a ton of calories. It's good for you, but it's not going to burn a ton of calories. So my point with it is if you're doing the workout for the calorie burn, that's not a sustainable approach, you're going to fail. If you're doing the workout for adaptations, that can lead to a metabolic rate that burns more calories,

much better approach. For example, you could strength train a couple days a week. For most people, two days a week would accomplish this. Two days a week, strength training, feed your body to build muscle. And you could, you know, and we do this pretty relaxed. with the people that we've worked with that we continue to work. We have clients that work with our trainers now that do this, but I've done this for 20 years. I could reliably get someone's metabolism to go up by 500 calories a day with two days a week of strain training.

Now you're burning 500 more calories a day, but you're not doing an hour of intensive crazy workout. You're just burning more calories. Much, much better approach. And with the diet strategy, I'm not going into the diet thinking I needed to cut so many calories to lose way. I'm thinking, how can I feed this adaptation? How could I build this muscle? So now it looks more like a high protein diet. I'm feeding myself when I'm hungry,

sticking to whole natural foods because I don't want to overeat because processed foods will encourage that. But I'm also not trying to like starve myself. So I'm going to feed my body and try to build into the body. Well, such a more positive way to look at it too for feeding the body and, you know, going to get nutritious food as opposed to like this math you're going to play in that calorie. burn kind of game where it's like, oh, no, I ate this and now I have to go run this. It's like this punishment for like the amount of calories that were off on your diet. And then we have to

equate for that. Also consider this. If we had a person that is listening right now that feels like I really need to get started on my health and fitness journey and I need to lose 30 or 40 pounds, I would make the argument that that person who's thinking that way, if they were to add 10 pounds of muscle, which would make the scale go up and not lose any weight, they would look better than if they lost 10 pounds off the scale. So think about that too. So not only is it advantageous metabolically to your point, but I even think you would look better adding 10 pounds to that same, quote unquote, fat body that you feel so fat or you

don't like the way you look and feel, adding 10 pounds of pure muscle to that body versus just losing 10 pounds on the scale. So not only is it metabolically advantageous. Which will contribute to more fat. Right. And it would be easier to go in that direction for you, discipline-wise, right? Because you're feeding the body what it needs and nourishing it versus taking away from it being catabolic. You'll look better, you'll feel better, and then you'll also speed up the metabolism.

One method requires one hour of exercise, intensive calorie burning exercise every day. So one hour a day versus two 45 minutes to one-hour workouts a week. One of them speeds up your metabolism. The other one requires you to burn them manually. Yeah. One of them you feed your body to build. The other one, you starve your body to lose. Yeah.

Much better, more sustainable approach. But then we need to talk about the mentality, because here's a deal. The mentality drives all of this. Yeah. If you don't get the mentality going into this right, you will end up with poor results, poor sustainability, or in a dysfunctional state. So let's get to that for a second. So this is something that I've talked about before.

And I've organized it into something that I think is catchy that I think people can kind of identify with. That kind of communicates to this mentality that we get into when we're trying to change how we look and feel through diet and exercise. So it kind of looks like this, right? Average person finally decides I'm going to do something about the way I look or the way I feel. And typically it starts with this like, man, I feel gross or overweight or inadequate or I don't like the way I look in that picture or somebody said something to me or I'm tired of, you know, feeling this way type of deal. Then they shift into the mentality of a tyrant.

And a tyrant, they become this tyrant that then tyrannizes this other part of them. So the tyrant says, you're fat, go to the gym. You can't eat that food. How dare you? Go train hard. I can't believe you're so indiscipline. You need to do this. it happen no matter how you feel. And so you tyrannize yourself into producing these behaviors that

you think are beneficial. And so when people offer you food that's off your diet, it's like, no, I can't have that, which is an interesting thing to say, I can't. It's like, what do you mean? You can't. You do or you don't. Can't is like, who's telling you you can't, right? Or you go to the gym and you work out so hard that you can't walk two days after or you feel like you're going to throw up and you leave and even though you feel like garbage, you say to yourself, great workout. That was a great workout. Why? Because this person I'm tyrannizing deserves punishment.

So it feels cathartic. So you get into this mental state of tyrannizing yourself. You're the tyrant. And then there's another side of you that's the tyrannized. And here's what happens eventually. Eventually, you start to identify more with the tyrannized than you do with the tyrant. And what does someone do when they feel like they're being tyrannized for a long period of time? They rebel.

They rebel. They rebel. And this is why when you go off your diet, you don't just go off a little bit. You go way off your diet. It's like you're giving yourself the middle finger. It's like, no, I'm not just going to have one cookie. I'm having the whole damn sleeve of Oreos. No, I'm not skipping one workout.

I'm not going back for months. Like, I'm done. I'm off this, whatever. And so you rebel, and this is why people swing so hard in one direction or the other. By the way, there's another direction that this can also turn into. It's a much smaller percentage of people. Most people end up rebelling. But there's a very small percentage of people that go in another dysfunctional direction.

And most of them work in the fitness industry. And this is not the rebel. This is the robot. This is the person that becomes orthorexic with their diet, whose workouts they never miss, no matter what's going on. Who says things like food is fuel. food is fuel that's all it is I work out no matter what it's all about discipline you know I'll never skip this is my life type of deal and on the outside they look very fit and healthy but on the inside they're quite dysfunctional and unhealthy and again we know a lot of these people and I've

struggled with this myself so the solution to this is to change the mentality which is I'm not a tyrant tyrannizing myself I am somebody who is worthy of being cared for I need to take care of myself why because I deserve to be cared for because I'm a human being. So what's that going to look like? And what that ends up looking like is balance. Workouts are more appropriate. Nutrition is more balanced. There are going to be those occasional times. You go out and enjoy food with your friends and it's okay because right now it's not about eating something healthy. It's about hanging out with my friends. But most of the time I'm probably going to eat healthy. And sometimes my workouts are hard.

Sometimes, man, I'm tired and stress. I think my workout needs to be a little easier or I need to take the day off. And you develop a relationship with diet and exercise where you enjoy it because it's caring for yourself and it's very, very balanced. And that mentality has to be the starting point. And it has to continuously be worked on. Otherwise, you end up in a bad situation. Going back to the rebellious part and you're talking about that being like this,

this mentality, right, of being tyrannized and then you rebel from that, what didn't you say, too, there's also a physiological thing that's happening too. So it's not just the mentality, which I think we agree is a big piece of that. But even the physiological part of this is what happens when you deprive your body of calories for such a long period of time. Your body will have these natural signals of like, we got to eat. I mean, I remember going through this when competing and you'd be in a deficit for a long period of time. I've dreamed about food. And all I thought about after the competition was like, I am.

I'm gonna eat this and I'm gonna eat that. And it's like all of a sudden you start fantasizing about that. But I think part of that too isn't just the mentality of like, I'm telling myself I can't have these things. It's also the physiological side going like, you haven't had it. We like calories. You want calorie dense foods because you're going so low.

You're not eating to nourish your body. You're not eating in a balanced way. You're eating in this crazy deficit. And then you're also. You go too far. Me, yes, many times pushing the body. So the body is screaming at you eat a lot of calories. Eat a lot of calories.

Well, there's two parts of that. One is you can definitely go too far where you're starving yourself and pushing yourself too hard in your workouts where they're excessive. They're not beneficial. And I think that's hard to gauge, Sal, because results come slow. Yeah. And so what ends up happening is a lot of times people start off with this deficit or start off with a little bit of cardio.

And a week goes by and they only see one pound move or no pounds move. And so what do they do? Ramp it up. Throttled out. Well, instead of an hour cardio, a week, I'm going to do two hours of cardio week. Instead of eating a 500 calorie deficit, I'm going to go 1,000 calories.

Your diet and your exercise routine should improve the quality of your life. That's it. So if your quality of life is not being improved, if it's like, this is dreadful, this sucks, I hate this, life sucks, I can't move, I'm too sore. Oh my God, I'm dreaming about food all the time.

It's not benefiting you. You should feel better. Through this process, you should feel better. As an effective trainer and coach, you learn this over the years. Like, wow, the more of my clients enjoy this, the better, the results come. The more consistent they are.

They stick around. Yeah, so you should definitely, it should improve the quality of your life, regardless of what's happening in your life, which this is why your workouts in diet change throughout the whole period. You know, workouts aren't going to look the same all the time. Sometimes they're going to be, you can't train hard. Same thing with diet. There's going to be times you're on vacation and I'm not eating perfect.

This is where the robots, by the way, freak out, right? Put them on vacation. Watch what happens. All of a sudden they're stressed out because they can't count every macro. Right. Or they don't have a gym, you know, that's right next to them. So this mentality aspect is very important. But it's also important to note here, look, you are going to feel some hunger.

Yeah. You are going to have some temptations in directions that want to bring you back to kind of how you lived before. And that's just because you're changing things. Like if you're used to eating lots of heavily processed foods and you switch to Whole Natural Foods, whole natural foods isn't going to excite your brain like the other stuff does. It's going to be a big contrast. If you're in any kind of a calorie deficit, even if it's a minor one, consistently you might get a little hungry.

But it's different. When I'm feeling a little hunger, but I'm doing it because I'm caring for myself, very different than when I feel a little hunger and I'm telling myself, how don't you dare? Don't even think about eating food right now. Like you're fat or whatever. Like, good luck with that.

At some point, you're going to, again, you give yourself the middle finger and you're going to go in the opposite direction. Well, that's the thing. The challenge is to stick with it, like on that end of the spectrum versus the other one is like to double down, to throttle down, to like add more. And it's like, you know, the real discipline is to just trust in the fact that like this is, you know, benefiting my body the most I'm building.

And the building part, you're going to have to wait for that transition really to kick in. Well, speaking more to the mentality piece, I think that this is so important that the self-awareness kicks in here too. Like, because to your point during this process, when these, you'll start to notice when these cravings and patterns and behaviors happen. And if you don't approach it through that lens of like, I'm trying to learn about my own behaviors or peer into that. Because I think, at least in my experience, I don't think I've ever had a client that was, you know, overweight by 30 plus pounds that didn't have a lot of behavioral things

that they didn't see before, that when you start to restrict, they start to reveal themselves. Like, oh, wow, I noticed that. Every time I have a rough day at work, I want to do this thing. You know, I want to have dessert. Or every time my wife and I are kind of getting into it, I kind of want to do this thing. Or, wow, I can't have dinner and not feel like I need to go have a second serving.

Or I can't have dinner and not feel like I have to have a dessert. It's like, or man, every time I walk past that peanut jar, I have to go. Like, you have to peer into all that to start to unpack and unlock all these behavioral things that you have going on and then find ways to work on and change that. Otherwise, you know, it'll all rear its head. it all come back and you know you can you can white knuckle it for you know so long before all that stuff well i just want people to know like this what we're talking about is how we coach people yeah um it took us all i would say probably took each of us a good eight to 10 years decade decade yeah decade for sure decade and then after that i'm just this is 100% you guys my success

strategy and just and adam are the same our success strategy when we figured this out with our coaches went through the roof like 10 years into my career most Most of my clients became consistent and still haven't stopped. The first half of my career, most of my clients were not consistent. Yeah. And we couldn't figure this out. So it's a very successful strategy. This is how we coach our coaches and trainers here at Mind Pump.

This is how they work with people. So it really does work. And I have no, there are no other ways that I've seen that will give you success. Yeah, less turnover, more lifers. That's right. Even my personal journey has changed a lot. through this lens. I think that I think we're all,

we're all on this spectrum, right? Like, maybe I'm not the full tyrant and don't totally tyrannize myself. But I'm certainly guilty of somewhat of that. And I'm certainly guilty. I can connect and relate to that rebellious, you know,

rebellion sitting down and eating a whole thing of ice cream when it's just like, what am I doing? Like, I can have ice cream anytime I want. Like, what is that, right? And so I think, I think we're all. And just because maybe I,

I don't ever let it go as far as maybe some other people that struggle with it. It doesn't mean that I'm immune to it or I don't struggle with it also. I think we're all somewhere on this spectrum. And it's taken me a long time, probably almost into my 40s, to really find that nice balance of not allowing the pendulum to really swing hard anywhere and trying to find that even balance and of both exercise and diet. It just doesn't, neither looks really extreme anymore. It looks like a much healthier balance of eating,

eating when I, like out of balance every once in a while, but then not going out of control. I had a conversation with one of our clients here at Mind Pump. So we have trainers that work with people. And every once in a while I hop on calls. And I love doing it. Just reminds me of why I love training people so much. But anyway, I was on a call with someone.

And we were having this very conversation. And I said, why are you afraid that if you don't tyrannize yourself, that you're just going to run in the opposite direction? And she said, yes. And I said, look, I get it. Like, I know if you're in that position, you're like, look, if I don't hammer down on myself, I know what I'll do.

I'll binge or I'll go in this crazy direction. I said, look, first off, it's not working for you because you're still doing that. Yeah. I said, but you may run a little bit in the other direction, but we have to get to this other place. And so the truth is for somebody feeling this, yeah, you might have to switch gears

and you might find if you don't tyrannize yourself suddenly you feel like you have this like freedom to like go off a little bit and you may go off a little bit but you'll bring yourself back. You'll bring yourself back and it won't be this wild swing and then you'll develop a relationship with us

where you know. That's exactly the way I feel it's gone for me personally. Like less big swings. Exactly. It used to be this dramatic swings in my 20s and then the swings got a little bit smaller and then smaller and then it's very, very subtle now. That's right.

what it looks like is I can come off of a week vacation where I enjoy myself. I may be able to get one or two workouts in and more just like active golf, things like that. You know, we all are eating whatever we want, having nice drinks, but I'm not splurging or overdoing. It's just this nice. And then here I'm back to Monday. Meals are prepped. Ready to go. Yeah.

Back to Insike. And I didn't put on any real weight. I didn't feel like I fell out of shape. Like it's just they look these very real. And it feels so much better. but it's taking me a long, even myself personally, a long time to get that. Speaking of breaks, so because we were gone,

which we'll talk about that, I hadn't used ketone IQ for almost a week and a half, right? Because we were up in Arizona last the week before. Then we were gone for a week. And, you know, when you use something consistently and then you stop and then you use it again. That's how I always know if something works or not. Dude, I came.

I love doing that. So I haven't used it for like a week and a half, right? And typically I use like two a day, especially when I'm here. This morning I took one before I went to get my haircuts. Just lit up a bit. Oh, bro. Yeah. So clear.

That's how I always know. Like so sharp. When a supplement really works to me is like I can never tell like just starting to that's why I'm always hesitant when someone asks. How do you feel? Yeah. It's like it's when I stop it. And then I come back to it again.

And then I feel like, okay, now I can tell the difference. So you notice a huge difference. Oh, dude. Clear like mental energy, sharpness. It's so different from caffeine. And I totally noticed it because I had stopped for a little while. So anyway, I had a great time, by the way. I was out.

We were out in Yellowstone. I saw some of your videos, all the bears and stuff. So you actually went to that spot where you can feed the bears. So you can. That's crazy. Okay, so there's a place called... I didn't know that.

There's a place called Bear World. It's called Bear World. It's like somewhere in, like, Florida where they do like, there's like crocodile. I thought it was a nudist colony. No, no, no, not those kind of bears. No, no. You do that San Francisco.

No, there was, it was near, so we flew into Idaho Falls, so it was kind of like in that area. And you drive your car through, so there's two places. So it's a part with rides. So there's actually kids' rides. But the main part is you drive your car through. Yeah. And there's like, there's grizzly bears just walking around. Grizzlies?

Grizzly bears. And black bears. I mean, they got to be more lazy. They're just walking around. They come up to your car. They're like, keep your windows closed. I'm like, yeah, no, no crap, dude. I can open my window.

Wow. But they'll walk up to your car. They'll walk around. They're scratching their backs on the trees. They're like, you know, moping around. Of course, the kids are like, they're cute. I'm like, don't open the door kids. Yeah, it'll.

So you drive through slowly, and there's just grizzly bears and black bears everywhere. Then there's this part with rides. And then there's a separate thing that you could pay for where they take you on this, I don't know what you would call it. It's like a big tram, like car or whatever. And you go up on these steps, so you're high. And then the bottom part of it is all, like, protected. so the bears can't reach you.

And they give you food. And they pull up and you just, you throw the food over and just feed the bears. Why does this sound like this is like the worst idea? Well, they're not wild. They're all in captain. Yeah, yeah. The grizzly bears and the black bears

cohabitate. They can do that. Oh, they keep them separate. Oh, as I said, I didn't think they could. I'll figure, like, them grizzly bears probably eat them black bears. Oh, wow. But we were feeding them, and, dude, the bears are like hilarious because obviously they get fed all the time.

So they'd walk up to the tram or whatever, and they'd come up on, like, two legs. Like, dog. Yeah, dude, do you throw the cats. Catch on their mouth. What's going on? Wow. A big old claws hanging down.

It was awesome. I've never been to Yel Stone. Yelstone's definitely on my list to go there. So you guys went in through Idaho. So we, yeah, it was a long travel because her brother drove from Vegas. So the last time I went,

we flew into Bozeman, which is closer. We had to go to Idaho Falls, which is a regional airport. We have to take two planes. Then you have to drive an hour and a half to where we stayed in Island Park, which is 30 minutes away from the park.

So it was long travel. Okay. So that's not how you would do it if you were to suggest it. That's not what I did last time. So how would you suggest to do it to go through Bowman? That's the closest to get to Yolson. Yeah, and we stayed there. And that's what we did last time.

But anyway, we went into the West Entrance. And Yellowstone's crazy, dude. Like, we, at one point, we went to the grain parismatic. So those are like those pools of water that are. Oh, that's a cool color. It's really crazy. Yeah. A bison just walked right through everybody.

Like, onto the walkway. Wow. He was like where Doug is. That's how close he was. Like, just chilling with you guys. Just chilling. Now, now everybody's like,

oh, look at the cute, dumb bison. And I've seen videos. Yeah, he's seeing people get launched. And I'm yelling at my kids. Get up, get your husband. My daughter's trying to get close. I'm going to get back here. Trying to keep everybody.

Because I've seen videos of bison launching people in the air. It's not a Disney movie. No, dude. But they look so like, you know, like cute. And like, they're not going to do anything. I'm like, no, dude, that thing's a pile of muscle. Yeah. But he walked right in front of us.

Like a ton? Those things are huge, huge, bro. I pulled up a video of one, like, pushing a car over. Yeah, them and moose are like, they surprise you when you're in person. I didn't see a moose. We want to see. Oh, you didn't see a moose out there, huh? No, a bull moose is pretty hard to see, I think.

I think those are hard to see. Well, I mean, when I was in Jackson Hole, I was from here to Justin from one. A bull moose? Yeah. That'll launch you, too. With the baby, too. But they were, it was. Oh, my God, that's dangerous.

Yeah, yeah, but I mean, I was on the patio. I was walking around the little courtyard where all kinds of people were at. just, I mean, I wasn't going to mess with it for sure. You know what I'm saying? And I had like a little, like this little, it was like a walkway with like a fence, a fence that would not stop him if he wanted to, but at least made me feel like there's something separating us. Well, I guess there's like a big deer, right?

It's in the same family. I mean, giant. Well, yeah, I know. But they're notorious for going in people's yards. I mean, eating. I mean, you go like this, you go deer elk and then moose. Because elk are like giant deer. And then moose are like, moose doesn't even look right.

Like a, like, like, like an, like an, like, like, like, like, like, an elk looks big in person. A moose is just... I've seen a stack. Like a tank. I saw a moose a long time ago, far away, and it looked, it didn't look right.

It looked like a dinosaur. Like, that's the biggest... Yeah, they're... I didn't even though that big. Yeah, they're huge. But yeah, it was great. It was a super great trip. And then my son, my five-year-old caught a fish.

Oh, really? His uncle took him fishing. Stuck. And, you know, he's like, you know, wheeling it in or whatever. It's so important to catch it. If they're doing that, yeah, to get... Oh, there.

Did I do it right there? It goes deer. What's in between there, between the deer and the elk? Let me see if I can get this thing to clear out here. Oh, a caribou? Yeah, the caribou. Yeah, so it goes deer, caribou, elk, moose. Moose.

So big. Yeah, but look how big the moose is compared it. It looks like, dwarfs, the rest of them. Yeah, but he caught a fish, and we cooked it and everything. Now, every day did you, so did you, uh, did you ever, you guys just hang out the house, or did you guys go in every, every time and go. Most of the days we went out and did something. Yeah.

One day we went to the movie because the kids were tired, so we just took them in movies. We watched Toy Story 5. Oh, Max and Katrina went. It was cute. I love the idea of the villain being the iPad. It was one of those movies. Do you guys remember when Wally first came out?

Remember Wally? And how it kind of made you uncomfortable because it was a little too much truth. Yeah, this is kind of hitting home. Yeah, Toy Story 5. Bro, listen to this. Like the kids all on their electronics and not playing with each other.

Okay. That was a little too like, oh. So Katrina took, so we were up in Truckee with all of our family friends, stuff like that. And I've openly talked about this. This is one of the unique things that I think we do with Max. That's different than my friends is he gets no iPad, right? So he hasn't had an iPad for well over a year or two now.

And they all get them. And they all with Toy Story 5 together with all the moms. Right? So they all go watch it. And so Katrina and I were talking about this afterwards. She goes, it was so crazy. We went and watched that. And she goes, it was so great.

She goes, it's everything we talk about with the iPad and this and that. And so the storyline's great. And she goes, literally, we come back to the house and all the kids grab their iPads. And it was like, no effect. Yeah, like no effect. It was like, oh, my gosh, you just watched that. And no effect on the parents enough to be like that, like you said, they hit close up. Now, I didn't see it, but I know the storyline.

And I know that the main villain is the iPad. And the whole idea is that the kids are now all on their iPads in a same room with each other. No one plays with the toys anymore, right? I'm assuming that's which. Right. And so. Like there's one, there's a scene where this little girl, she gets her first, like, it's not an iPad, but it's like a starter type one, like a leap frog type of deal. Yeah.

So she gets it and all the toys are like, what's going on? She's not paying attention to us. And she just glued to it. But then there's a part as really, really makes your heart hurt where she, she's trying to make friends. So she's like kind of needs friends. So she messages through the app, through the thing, her friends. And then they tease her through it. And, you know, like the things that actually happened with like.

messaging and stuff. And she's this little girl. I was like, oh, my heart was breaking for it. When I see stuff like that, when I get emotional. Well, one of my friends has,

they, even though they haven't eliminated it, they have dramatically reduced the amount and they've connected the dots to the difference in his, like my godson's behavior. And so they've noticed a big difference. And they had a hard time this week

because they've been really pushing to do that, but he still has it. And then the other kids have theirs. And so they're like, Like, man, like they're letting their kids get on it right first thing in the morning. And normally we don't let him get on his. But then he's coming to us like, mom, dad, everybody's on their iPad. How can I get mine?

And so they felt they felt terrible. And so they would give in and let him do it. Max came in. It's so funny because Max doesn't have one forever. And he asked just because all the kids were on it. No. Okay. Even the way he asks, he knows.

We save that stuff for like when we're on a plane or a long car ride. like that's where we start to kind of use it and I think it could be valuable because you know especially want to be you just want to talk to your wife but yeah dude that movie was like you you can see it you can see in kids you know oh yeah I had like the opposite experience um so I was like hanging out I spent a good amount of time with ever just me and him so we got to spend some good quality time um but it was the opposite because I was like being stressed a lot more in terms of freedom and allowing him to adventure and do things a little outside in my comfort zone a little bit.

And, you know, so I had him, like, set up on my, my e-bike. And my other friend, his, his kids actually a year younger. And so it was like, I'm like, oh, okay, he's a little bit younger. So, you know, maybe they're not going to be as wild and crazy. And, like, so not the case. But, you know, it started out, well, like, So I at least was like, okay, I'll be comfortable with this if, you know, I go, I went and rented a bike for myself and then he had a bike. And so we all kind of like went on this tour of like, here's the roads and here's the beach access and like here's the kind of the areas that I was like okay with.

And like, you know, traffic wise. Like, and we went all the signals and everything else and all that. And so we're kind of going through all that. And it was fun. We're having a good time and all that. And then it's like, okay. they just want to go out on their own, you know, and I'm like, ugh,

all right, like, you know, keep your phone on you. And like, obviously we could see, like, where they're going and whatnot.

And then, uh, you know, one of the days, they just like, they went so far. They ended up like, in some farm.

And they're like, they found some like, pump track where they're like jumping it and stuff. And like, I had to like fix the bike. We went and picked them up. Oh, you had to go get them.

And pick them up. But it's like, dude, so memorable for them. They were like, just, just, you know, beside themselves because they're having so much fun. And it was like, you know, it was just, it was a struggle a bit for me.

Because, too, you know, like Courtney was with, you know, Ethan at his competition. And so we, we were kind of split with all this. And I know she has more of an issue of like, I'm like, nothing can happen, you know. It's like, not on my watch. Just not on my watch. Yeah. Get hurt. And another time, not this time, you know.

It's my responsibility. This is like when you're an older brother and your sibling gets her. She put it back. Yeah, you'll just rub it out. I'm so curious on how I'm going to handle that phase. I was with my buddy. It's funny you're bringing up the e-bike and letting him go because this is what my buddy, Mike and I were talking about literally yesterday.

We're sitting down and just chopping up with this. His son is 12 or 13, and he's got one of those really fast e-bikes, you know, now, like the motorcycle dirt bike ones or whatever. And they go really fast. They go really fast. They're pretty quick. I know. Real fast.

Yeah, you get pulled. They'll take those bikes now. Yeah. If you don't have, if it's a class above, it's like class three, they'll take them. So he's, so he had, he did this. He's registered it in another state so he could drive it because they're illegal in California. Yeah, you need a license. Yes.

So he's got these, right? And he's like, he grew up over here, right? And he remembers when he was a kid, like, he just had free reign go wherever. Yeah. And he's like, man, I have such a hard time with letting. That was a parent? Yeah, letting my boy do that. So we're like talking it out.

Like, I'm the same way too. My parents, they, they don't have a choice. They couldn't, they couldn't stock us. They couldn't track us. Well, that's the part that's crazy. Like, we have 12 hours of not known. We have, we have, just come back at this time. We have AirPods and phones and watches and so much.

And we know it's safer. Like, so logically you go, it's safer now. You have more trackable things than you have before. Why do I struggle so? much with allowing that freedom. Because it's in our, we're too aware of all the dangers and the fear. But you, but you, we all know that it's not. It's, it's less.

And yet we, we don't want. And so he even really, he was weird talking that out. And I, now I have the kid who's little, I'm not faced with it. So it's real easy for me to say, oh, man, come on. Just let him go. Yeah, he'll be fine. Right, right. But I've seen too many of my buddies that feel that same way.

And then they get that to that age. And then they're like, it's weird, dude. I mean, yeah. So I logically in my. in my head, I hear Justin talking about that. I hear Mike talk about that. I'm like, dude, just let him go. And I'm always new because he's the baby too. You know, it's like, it's not my

oldest. So it's like, I'm a little bit different with the oldest. And then him is like, you kind of want to keep him, you know, like, this little kid. And it's like, you can't. Yeah, Katrina looked at me all crazy this weekend because I was already, so I don't know if you saw, we got Max one of those big wheels, right? Yeah, yeah. And he's like, he's into it.

That's awesome. Oh, beautiful. Finally he's into like a thing like that. He's all about it. And, uh, I'm like, I'm already, and so Hunter and Jojo, so my buddy's kids are eight and nine. And I'm like, hey, let's encourage them to just go, you know, let him ride the whole neighborhood and just, you know, have to give the oldest to walkie-talkie and say, yeah, it's safe in an enclosed place and truckie. Everyone drives their car slow in there. And she's like, you tripping? He just started riding this thing. Like, there's even like, no way. And I'm like, I mean, we got to.

kid that when you were six. Well, your mom was letting you walk to school. Right. Give you the keys. I pulled up my old neighborhood just because, so this topic was all about this. So it's funny you went this way because this was a topic

all week for us. And I'm like, and I'm like, so, yeah, it was, no, it was third and fourth grade. It was third and fourth grade. So how old were you in third and fourth? What is that?

7.8. Yeah, it was third and fourth grade. And it was about a two mile walk and it did have to cross a four lane road to get to get there. And I, and, you know, and,

and, you know, and, like to like those things like, God, that's crazy. And probably the part that I think I worry about more than the danger is just how naive you are as a kid. Because I do remember two times that I got in huge trouble.

Because even though I was told a million times, come straight home from school, do this. I, you know, ran into a friend on the way and like, hey, come over. I just got the new Zelda. You know, and like, okay. And you're just thinking in your head. As a kid, you're thinking, I'm sure if I go,

I made bagel bites. Yeah. And that quick little stop by his house turned to two hours. And my mom waiting for me to be home and, like, freaked out, called the cops at all that stuff. So I think I worry more about just my son being naive like that more than I feel like the danger. You know what I'm saying? It's weird. It's a lot of it's in our head.

But the truth is part of the reason, this people aren't going to like this. But statistically speaking, they're safer. It's safer today. But here's why it's also safer. Kids are out less. So kidnappings are down. Well, yeah, because kids are harder to kidnaps. because they're not outside.

That's an interesting thought. Alone. Because this is what I told. Think about it. Like, think about it. If you go back into the 80s and you're a kidnapper, there's kids everywhere. Yeah. And there's no parents watching them.

It's true. In the 80s when we were out, like, we were an indie store. It's like a dime a dozen. All these kids. Come on. Oh, you need a kid that's like, ooh, let me come in your van. Like, now it's harder because kids are not everywhere and their parents are watching them. They don't like ice cream as much.

So statistically speaking, that's one of the reasons why it's. My buddy got, oh, my God, his wife, right before we went on the trip, this happened. And so she was like, she was like not speaking to him for like a week. She was so angry at him because he had been having him walk home from school and she had no idea. Oh. Because they both work. And sometimes he's with a patient still. And they only live two blocks, two and a half blocks or so from the school.

And so he's been doing it. And then other times when he can't go home, he's got to, his work is across the main road and about four blocks away. And so he'll, sometimes he'll tell his son, like, hey, just start walking towards my work. And then I'll meet you at the main stoplight. But don't cross the main stoplight. So he'd been doing this with this kid for, like, months. And she had no idea. She found out.

And oh, my God, she freaked out on him like that. And he's like, nobody's going to kidnap our son. And she's like, are you kidding me? You let him out there. There's so many cars. So many, somebody can pick him up. Like, have you ever sat in the car with our kid for five minutes? That kidnapper would bring our kid back so fast.

That was his argument back. He's annoying. He has no way. He's annoyed this shit. I had some kidnapper within five minutes. That kidneper dropped that kid right off. That's so funny. Yeah, I used to walk home every day.

I remember one time we actually got chased by a homeless guy. Like, he was throwing bottles at us. Like, it was wild, dude. We would go through, like, horse trails and, like, you know, I almost got bit by a rattlesnake. There's all kinds of stuff. My sister almost got kidnapped. My sister was walking home, and I'm not making this up.

A dude pulled up in a van. Yeah. Open the door and he's like, hey, do you want to come play? I have kittens here. And now my sister, my mom told her if anybody ever said. So my sister ran away and told us about it. And she was like, but literally a dude literally was like, here, come in my van, play with my cats. Yeah.

Oh my God. That actually happened. Oh, my God. So that's funny that you say you saw that because one of the things I speculated with my buddy, Mike, was like, you know, I know it's safer, all the stats, blah, blah, blah. But I, you know, you grew up here 20 plus years ago, 25 plus years ago when this was like most farmland and it was a slow town. I said, now it's not, it's, it's normal to walk outside and see a homeless person or a crazy person talking to themselves. We didn't see, I didn't see that as a kid. Yeah, it's a lot more prevalent. Yeah. I say, so I think, so there's a part of that's in the back of your

head too. Like, it's not weird for me. I mean, I was just driving to work the other day and somebody was like right in the middle of a four lane like main road just walking down the diagonally and yelling at cars, you know what I'm saying? Like, you just, I don't, I don't, I don't remember seeing, At least I don't remember seeing that as a kid. And so now thinking, like, having a kid and going like, oh, man, that would freak me out. My kid crossed. I don't know, man. I think back to when I was younger and I'm like, let's say 12 or 13 and I'd go off with my friends.

We did a lot of stuff that if I, as a parent now, I'd be like, that is dangerous. We did a lot of stuff. Yeah, of course. That was terribly dangerous. They never knew about it either. And we were gone. My mom was like, come back, be back at five for dinner. Okay.

And we're gone. Hours just disappeared. She had no idea where I was. And we were doing things that were like, oh, yeah, no. Not good. Well, maybe that's probably half of what also makes you. You just like, yeah, I do a lot of the stuff that I was doing.

You know, but you know, the other side of it, I was just talking with my niece and my daughter about this the other day is we would do things and nobody could film it and post it. Yeah. Thank God. I know. Because now kids are like super hyper aware that, oh, if I, you know, someone's going to film, you know, take a picture of me, post this, everyone's going to share it.

Like, thank God. Nobody had a camera. when we were out there. I was going to go to that one. So, anyway, I was going to ask you guys, so we've been now using the Super Patch for a little while. Have you guys been using any of them consistently?

Yeah, I haven't been consistent this last week because we just came off a vacation, but I was using the pain one for a while because of my old. And I told you, it brings it down from, like I said, like an eight to a five or four. I was talking to my buddy about this. He's an ER physician.

And of course, you looked at me like, is this like, oh, you told him about it? Foodie? What is this? What is this, bro? And he trusts me. So I'm like, no, listen.

I said, here, I sent him the studies. I said, look at the studies. Like the study on the pain patch. It's, by the way, these are controlled studies. These are published peer reviewed. It's equivalent to Advil. It's equivalent to taking an insid. Yeah.

That's how effective the pain. There's no medicine. It's not transdermal. It's all based off of haptic, what's called haptic technology. The sleep one is wild. Put the sleep one on track your sleep. Watch what happens to your REM. Yeah.

It increases. So I did. I did the sleep when we were testing it, but I haven't been consistent with it. I was, and I did it enough to test it. I use it every night. Yeah, and I tracked it with my aura, and it wasn't improving it. So it's wild. It's like, I still have.

It's a new science. Yeah. It's a new science. It's a new science. It's totally, doesn't it remind you of when we got, when they dropped the red light therapy on us? I felt like the same way. I was like, so get out of here.

You know, get out of here with this BS. But I can't argue with actual data. Like, and these are, there's like 15 or 15 or 16 peer review studies. The one that won me over was the pain one with it being equivalent. How many times are you guys taking an Advil? Yeah. When you have a little bit of... Every day last week.

Yeah. Altitude at any sense. Right. I mean, so it's like if you take Advil and use it for things, especially when it's chronic pain, I had low back stuff the other day. Like, if you have stuff like that going on, it's like, and you would take it in Advil, like, why would you not take a patch if all the studies are showing that it's equivalent to that and you're not having to take something?

Like, way better, way better route for sure. Anyway, I got to tell you guys, like, one of my favorite segments in social media world right now, have you guys seen the videos of Europeans? Yes. Because they're here for the world for FIFA, yeah. And how much they love America. I love it. I know.

I love it. It's so great. It's a good reminder. It's a great reminder. Like there's videos of people in like AC because they have air conditioning. So like it's so hot. I come inside and it's so cool. You don't know what it's like.

And they're talking about how like they don't have air conditioning, you know, where they're at. There's people that refills on their drink. Bro, there's just one of time. Ice in their cup. I haven't seen that. This is a tying dude and he gets a Coke. And he's like, I cannot believe. Like, it's free.

And the guy's like, no, you paid for that way. He's, I didn't pay for five of them. And he's like, I drink as much as I won't. Yeah, it was. No, my fear was this, uh, these two guys were at like a barbecue place and they're eating ribs. Oh. And he was like, about to eat it with his fork and knife.

And then the owner comes over and no, no, no, no. You guys eat it with your hands. They're like, what? And they didn't know what to do. And they're like eating it. Like, I've never had meat that like falls off the bone like this. Like, they're tripping out. Yeah.

Yeah. There was a raving about it. There was a couple. of them went shooting and they were just tripping that you could just like shoot guns. Like this is amazing. It has to be like, yeah, if you're going to visit

America, you have to do that. I didn't even think about that for Europeans coming over here for the gun. Oh yeah, one guy. They're so not allowed to have guns either. There's this one British guy. He's got a mustache. He's got great videos.

And he's like, oh, and they go into Walmart and they freak out. They're like, you can't see the end of the store. He's like, it's as big as a spot. I saw all the target ones. All the chicks that were like so pumped. Oh, yeah, there's ones that girls are like, oh my God, Target. Everyone was all excited about Target.

But it's so good to hear as American because there's so much media is so focused on how making negative stuff. And you even see some of the videos people are saying like, man, our media lies. They said this, that and the other, but I love it here. Yeah. Which is pretty cool to hear as an American to see that. No, no, that's really cool. Hey, did you guys see that? I meant to tell you, too, that I don't know how much you guys were on if you were on a social because I posted a little bit on Max's stuff.

But my buddy, I have to give him some love. dude. He's the teacher of the group and the friends. And he was the one last year that put on the whole talent show for the kids. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So this year was the Truckee Games. Did you see it? I saw it. Oh, yeah. So he's part of it. Yeah, he split all of us. He split what was the names, dude? He had these

I don't know where he came up with these names for all of us, but he he split all the kids and all the adults up. And there was there was three teams. We had we had color bandanas on. There was a whole, he made a whole PowerPoint. video with music for the kids to watch. You get everybody all all hyped up before.

And then the game, I was something my brother would do. Well, and I was, I was really, I was really nervous. I told me because I knew he was doing something. I didn't know what. And I know how my son's not, you know, he's not competitive. And so, like, I was really worried that he was, he was going to, like, not want to do it. And when he got announced, he had this moment. This is where we're at now.

Like, we've gotten to a stage where we don't cry, but I can tell when he wants to cry and he's like regulating his emotions. And so he did the whole video, all the kids are hyped. I'm hyped and I'm looking in the corner of my son and he can see him just like no just watching it. And so everyone kind of finished. And my buddy, I think my buddy sees it, tries to hype up. My son and my son's like not feeling it at all.

And then like he just gets up and he walks over into our, our map, the master bedroom over there and, and, uh, and just goes in there. And Katrina looks at me and I'm like, give him a few minutes. And so a few minutes, I walk in there. And he's like, he's laid down in his bed. It's like middle of the day. I'm like, what are you doing, buddy? He's like, oh, I'm just going to take a nap.

What are you? Take a nap for, dude. He's like, I'm just going to take a nap for a little bit. And so I'm like, you know, I'm not even going to push because if I push into it, it's going to make him more emotional, just see if he gets himself out of it. So I walk back out and I tugged him. I'm like, he's laying down. He's fine.

He's laying down. And she went in a few minutes later and just talked to him. And she, I don't know if I, I remember. you talked a long time ago, we're really consistent with like the affirmations. You're brave. You're a strong. Yeah. You're a leader. And so it was a great opportunity for Katrina. She reiterated that to him. These are the reasons why we say this is we, you know, we believe that you're a leader. We believe those things. And one day you'll believe it too. And so he like totally like got himself together, went out, did it, had a blast, won like two of the events and did really good.

Wow. Yeah, yeah. So it was a really cool moment to watch this. Oh, man. You get me choking. Oh, yeah. It was cool to see. One, it was cool to see him. To go through that challenge. Yeah, to see him, one, not default to crying because that's like a year ago, we would have been crying. And like, just, I don't want to do it and like making a thing like that. It was like, you could tell he didn't want to.

You could tell that he was going to take, you know, take care of his emotions, gather himself, still do it. Katrina kind of had that little talk with him. And then he ends up having a great time. So it was the caffeinated koalas, the feral goldfish and the unstable hamsters. Those are all the names And we did it He came up with this This cup stacking relay thing

So it was just red cups that you had to stack And then one of the And then the kids had to wrap a whole roll toilet paper all the way A mumify a parent was one They did the you know our upstairs balcony Down to the jacuzzi They put a bunch of red cups And you had to drop ping pong balls

Oh that's cool Yeah they were like perfect They were like In other one was like a bean bag toss into the buckets that we have out there. And so, yeah, they were all, like, really good, like, fun that. Achievable for their days. Yes, yeah.

And that's why I was so worried. I was like, man, you make my son do a bunch of stuff where he's going to get his ass whipped and everything like that. Like, it's not going to, he's not going to, it's going to be so hard to convince him doing anything. Totally. So it was like so, so perfect. And it was a cool moment to watch, like, him go through that whole cycle and then

to be able to experience that. And then it's like, oh, man, maybe there's, maybe, you know, you know what I want to hear about? I want to hear about Justin's. note on the guy that injected semen into himself? Because I see this note up there. I like to throw some chaos. And while we're talking,

I just keep seeing this note and I'm like, I can't nod. I'm going to bring this up because Justin might not. Because Justin won't find a transition to that. Yeah. He's like speaking to that. Speaking to kids. My God, definitely not the good transition for that.

The irony is like, I found out about this. You know where they came from? Seamen. So what is this? What is this? So this guy, I think he was from Ireland, but like decided that he had super spunk, if you will. And it was going to heal his back pain. And so just started taking it upon himself to collect it, put it in a syringe and inject it like in his arm. What?

Oh, God. It's like one of the only recorded cases is somebody to do that. But I just was like, I didn't know that. I was like, this isn't real. Like nobody's really done that. Like, who would think to like. Of course. be a guy. It's always dudes that do you.

I have magical... I mean, yeah, how do you even make that leap? Yeah. Like, where do, like, what makes you go like, oh, this could be a healing? This is a whole other level. Because you've heard of people like drinking pee for like some kind of like weird longevity, like, reasons. There's some science, I'm just kidding. Well, I mean, if you were to desert and you had no water,

that'd be one of the ways to hydrate yourself. So I could even see the leap there. Yeah. I cannot see the leap of injecting yourself with your own. He just had this understanding that it was. Was going to like... Did he get infection? Yeah.

Oh, yeah. It looks like that's his arm right there. He did for a long time, too, like until it... Yeah, it's an abscess. Backfired. Oh, God. So gross. Did it work, though?

Yeah. He no longer could feel his back pain. Yeah, yeah. He no longer had backpate anymore because... Hey, I'll tell you who would do that. If there was anything at all that made it anabolic, bodybuilders would be doing a show like that. They probably would.

Well, yeah, other ones that were drinking... He just grows one huge muscle. Yeah, breast milk. because they read somewhere that it was. Again, even that seems less of a leap than this. So what do you do with someone like that? It's just wild, dude. I couldn't believe somebody did that. You drain it?

Well, no, what I'm saying is you help solve the immediate issue, but then you have to refer them to mental health specialists, right? Obviously, what leads you to that decision-making process? You're not all there, dude. Yeah, you would have to kind of. Exactly. That's what I'm more curious to how you make that leap. Like, that's not like a, there's no logic behind that.

So there's something going on with this person. Yeah. And is there, like, somebody online that's like preaching this kind of stuff. He read the forum? Yeah, I was like, because you know how guys check it out. A whole sunning, you know, this like weird stuff people do. Maybe Google that, Doug.

See if there's it. Doug, Google injecting semen for back pain. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Watch AI confirm it. It automatically. Hey,

it populates. There's nothing on that. There's websites that are already. Did you click on those right now? It's going on here, bro. Welcome back. Speaking of, speaking of weird stuff, I have to bring this up. This is really interesting.

It's not a long conversation, but really interesting. So there's this mushroom, the psychedelic mushroom, that produces a specific type of hallucination, which is really weird. Okay. So you would think that hallucinations are individual, but people see the exact same thing. The shared one. On this type of mushroom.

And it's called Lammeleia, esceitica. Asiatica. When they eat it, they see. little people everywhere everywhere yeah they see little tiny people or gnome-like beings that appear and they last for 12 to 24 hours or sometimes stick around for days and they interact with the objects around you so like if I ate that I would see little people walking up on the microphone or climbing this got to be where all this folklore comes from dude you know like all the legends of all these like little sprites but it makes you wonder why they're not seeing the same exact thing

It doesn't make any sense. Are we, like, tapping into, like, another dimension? Are they, like, are they really there? Well, that's, like, that DMT, red laser experiment that everybody is talking about. I'm so curious about that one. You heard about that. See the Matrix? See the Matrix?

You see the numbers. Yeah. It's the same numbers. Everybody sees the same code. Yeah. Like, there's an underlying code to everything is what they're talking about. I know. Yeah.

I don't eat those much. Shrepy. No, thanks. What is dose for your liver? So dose for your liver. is a clinically backed liver health supplement. It's not just another capsule or powder. It's a liquid supplement.

And if you take it daily, two ounces at a time, so two ounce shot. It tastes like fresh squeezed orange juice, by the way. It cleanses the liver of unwanted stressors that are slowing your liver down. So it promotes healthy liver function. There's no sugar, no junk in there, no calories. So what does this do for you?

Well, you get more energy. You get better digestion. By the way, dose liver. their liver product has been shown to affect positively affect liver enzymes in real studies. In other words, it really does work. If you want to avoid midday crashes, you want to feel better, you want to support liver health, go to dosedaily.co slash mind pump. Use the discount code mine pump, get 25% off.

Back to the show. Our first caller is Carolina from New Hampshire. Hi, Carolina. Hi. How are you? Go ahead. I'm going to start off the way that, you know, most people do and say, I really love your podcast. I just kind of started listening a couple months ago and I work, I work three 12-hour shifts Friday through Sunday. So you're basically in my ear for 36 and a half hours a week. So it's good stuff. I will start by just, I'll just read my question. And I'm going to update a couple of things just as we go. So I wrote, I've lost 600 pounds. Yes, you read that right, but not in the way you think. I'm 30 female 5 foot 5. My current weight is 152, starting weight 340. I have lost and gained over 150 pounds four times.

I'm tired of wrecking my body. I've successfully lost the weight again and am the smallest I've ever been. I started lifting in January and I'm loving strength training. I had been eating 50. 1,800 calories a day for over 14 months before I found your podcast. Now I'm slowly reverse dieting, which scares the crap out of me. I am up to 1,800 calories now and my weight is stable. I really, really want to do things differently this time. My question, I guess, is how do I not repeat the pattern I've fallen into so many times? I understand how to do the reverse diet, but I'm a little confused on how it actually works. My metabolism is definitely damaged right now. If my weight is stable at 1,800 calories, do I keep adding every week? And how are people getting up to

2,500 to 2,800 calories? Thank you for being the first thing in 30 years to shift my mindset enough to actually try something different. Carolina, thank you so much. Yeah. And I'm so happy that you're saying your mind shift, your mind is shifting and changing. Do you mind if I ask you a few more questions? Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So you've lost 150. That's a significant amount of weight to lose and gain. And so I can only imagine the mental state or how you feel about yourself and behaviors are radically different at both ends.

Yeah. What are the differences in both of those? Not necessarily the behaviors like, you know, eating and activity, but what's the difference in how you're feeling or what's it like to gain 100 and lose 150? What's the difference between the two? Well, so I grew up obese. You know, I weigh less now than I did in third grade. So you kind of get to a point where you just, you're used to being invisible.

So you don't really, like, what's the point in trying for a lot of things? Or for me, like, overeating was a way to really feel calm for the only way I could feel calm. But with that comes, you know, you're so full, why would you bother exercising? You don't feel like it. And then I had kids. So that, you know, really this time around, I'm down 180, 88 pounds, I think, right now. But I have a four-year-old and then 21-month-old. And I realize that if, like, if I go to the park with them and the baby goes left and my older son goes right, what am I going to do?

You know, it's a safety hazard. So I had to try again this time. I don't know when you're when you're over 300 pounds you just your life just kind of like you don't you don't really try and now you know and it comes slowly but you start to put more effort in in every aspect of your life you start to enjoy exercise because you're eating well enough that you have the energy to kind of want to do it and you don't you don't really hate yourself as much I guess Yeah, I hear that.

Be blind. On the, I hear that. I heard you say eating made you feel calm in the past. Yeah. Yeah. When you're on your way up, when you're gaining weight, does that feel like, do you feel like free in that period of time? And does it feel restrictive when you're trying to go in the other direction? Yeah.

Yeah. It's like I, in the past I've been so strict that, uh, you finally like relinquish, really, relinquish that control that you have and, you know, do whatever you want. But as far as, like, gaining that much weight. And I, when I gain, I gain really quickly, like, within a year. You kind of just, you're kind of going through the motions and just ignoring it. Like, you know, you know what's happening, obviously, but you're just kind of telling yourself you don't care. But you do. Obviously, you do. Yeah. Yeah. No, I totally hear that. What is it about our show that got, got the mind shift for you.

What did you hear us talk about or tell us a little bit about the mind shift that you're experiencing? Yeah. So, well, you know how the media is these days. Finn is in. But after repeated, you know, 10 hours a week of listening and then, oh, I really like this, 20. And then, you know, my whole work week, just having you constantly hammer, fuel your body, build muscle, longevity. over and over and over again, whatever it got it to kind of stick in my head a little bit.

That's great. So is it okay if I challenge how it felt for you to go down and up and maybe the mentality around it? Okay. It's a false, it's a false feeling of freedom when you're going up. It's actually you're in chains. You're in bondage. You're in bondage to, you know, moving your body into direction that, you know, is not healthy emotionally and physically.

But the reason why you feel free is because when you go the way down, the way you get yourself to go down is you treat yourself like somebody that needs to be held down and controlled. Because if you take the control off, I'm going to go the other way. Yeah. Like if I don't tell myself, you can't have that. and how dare you, and you better keep this up, and remember what happened last time, and you better and you beat yourself up, if I don't do that to myself,

I'm going to go in the other direction. Does that resonate? Yeah, absolutely, yeah. No wonder it feels so free to stop doing that to yourself. So there is a solution. It's simple but not easy, okay? So it's simple because it's not true, Carolina. It is not true that for you to maintain a healthy,

body and behaviors that you need to beat yourself up. That's actually false. And we have evidence of that. Do you want to know what the evidence is? Yeah. You escape and you go in the other direction. So it actually doesn't work and it doesn't feel good. And I've never had success with a client who hated exercise and hated eating healthy long.

It just doesn't work. So we have to find a way for you to actually enjoy doing it. And the only way to do that is for you to switch the paradigm a little bit and treat yourself like you would your own child, which is like, hey, I'm going to take care of myself. Yeah. Because otherwise, taking care of yourself feels like stop tyrannizing yourself. So we got to stop that. Now, I'm going to just let you know what this will look like. It's a scary process.

And by the way, at the end of this, I'm going to give you more specific advice and maybe some directions to go. Okay. But initially it's scary because you've learned to lose weight through this process of beating yourself up. So initially when you stop beating yourself up and you start saying, I'm going to take care of myself a little bit, you test it. And so it looks like a little binging, a little moving in this direction. Oh, okay, now I'm going to go back and then I'm going to. And you're going to kind of start to find the balance. It's really important you give yourself grace and don't revert back to beating yourself up because it'll just keep doing what you're doing.

What eventually happens, Carolina, by the way, I'll just let you know. That process eventually people give up and they're like, I'm done beating myself up. I'm done. I'm just going to enjoy my life. That's it. I'm over. I'm done. I'll never try this again.

So that's kind of what it looks like. Now, I can, there is a right way to do this in terms of like the structure and behaviors, but the root of it, the fuel, the thing that drives it has to be from self-care because everything I say after that doesn't work if it doesn't come from a self-care model. Does that make sense? Yeah. Okay. So reverse dieting in a nutshell.

By the way, your metabolism is not broken, hon. I want to let you know, a metabolism works. That's why you gain and lose weight. That means your metabolism is actually doing what it's supposed to. It's not broken. If it was broken, you'd be in the hospital. Let me put it that way. It's just adapting.

Okay. So what we want to do is go through a process of building your strength, improving how you feel about exercise, changing how you feel about exercise, changing how you feel about nutrition and giving you something called metabolic flexibility. So it doesn't feel so restrictive because no matter how you cut it, 1,700 calories, two kids, busy mom, forever,

is going to feel restrictive, even if you're doing it the right way, just not that much. So we want to kind of move you in a direction where you've got more flexibility and you can eat more. Yeah. And it feels like if you go off,

it's not going to turn into something. I do want to say that I don't know if I made it sound like I didn't, but I do love exercise now. I walk every day. Love the gym. However, it's 15 months, and I have not had a single bite of food that was not on my, it was planned out.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think it's the exercise. That's the issue. Yeah. I think it just comes paired with the nutrition, but I don't think exercise is the issue. It's the nutrition. It's the food.

By the way, I'm going to straight up. That's the hardest part for everybody. Yeah. There isn't a single person where the exercise is an easier. than the nutrition because food is connected to everything. It's what you eat every day. It's connected to celebrating.

It's connected to like your feelings. It's also marketed all the time and you're surrounded by really tasty food all over the place. It's super cheap and easy to get. So that's the hard part. It's engineered to be addictive. Yeah, that's the hard part. It's going to be the exercise. It won't be the hard part.

With the exercise part, we're just going to try and get you strong. That's what we're going to try and do. It gets you really like getting strong. What does the training look like right now? What are you doing as far as you're lifting? So I do three to four days a week, and it's kind of just like a chat GPT program, but buys and tries, chest and back, lower body. I'm in there for like an hour and 20 minutes. Oh, we're going to give you a program. That's way better.

Do you want to a gym then? Yeah, which off comment here. I pulled up to the gym on Monday, and there was an eviction notice on the door. Oh, darn. I don't know what I'll be doing, but be doing something. I hope you to do one of those prepaid membership. I hate to do that. So are you, are you, are you in a rural area?

Are you near another gym? I am the, the issue is the child care aspect. Because they have to bring the kids. Got it. But I'll figure, I'll figure something out. Okay, good, good. Are you open? So here's a deal.

So what I said is definitely the path. It's going to be really hard because it's going to feel super uncomfortable for a while. It's going to, you're going to do this kind of like back and forth. And I don't know if I can treat myself like somebody I care about. Now I'm going to beat myself up. How dare I? I can't believe I went off. And I went off big time.

and it's going to be this kind of up, this, up and down, 100%, it's going to be up and down. 100%. You're going to feel like you're running, and then you're going to fall in your face. You're going to want to get back up and keep going. You would do really well with a coach through this process. Like your success rate is going to quadruple

if you work with someone who can check in with you and work through this process with you and give you grace every time you stumble. Is that something that you're open to? It 100% is and I totally agree with you. It's just the I can't really afford it right now. I 100% agree. Okay. But right now it's not feasible.

We have different options. We have one that's called concierge, which is a much, much lower cost. And you would meet with somebody once a month. And you could check it out and just see and have someone call you. In the meantime, I'm going to send you a program that I think is good called MAPS muscle mommy. I think you would love that. You'd be in the gym, I think, three days a week. It's going to be way better in the chat GBT's program.

Thank you. Also, just regardless, whether you work with one of our coaches or not, I'd like to see you in 30 days. So at least we could check in on you. Yeah. Okay. Are you hitting protein targets? Tell me the specifics about what you're doing with your 17-00 calories.

Yeah. So I'm, I've reversed up to 1,800 now. But I'm one of those weird people that I've heard you guys talk about that has no issue getting protein in. I get 160 to 180 grams all from natural food. I don't supplement. Good. Good.

Yeah. No, you're doing great. Now, how structured is your diet? Is it like the same? You meal prep and everything and making it all the same? Yeah. Very, very structured. Yeah.

Okay. If you end up not working with a coach, I want you to ponder this. So if you feel like you can do it, do it. If not, then stay the course until you feel like you can. I would like for you to have a day where you don't eat exactly the same foods. Okay. Okay. And what you're going to do is you're going to kind of dip your toe in the water.

And if you go way off on that day, give yourself grace, get back on and go again. But we've got to kind of play with moving outside of this really rigid structure. Yeah. Otherwise, because it's unsustainable to do this forever. I'd actually like to put her in the Muslim Mommy group with Corinne. she's going to get calls weekly with a coach in there. She has a group of women that are, most of them are reverse dieting,

what she's going to learn in there and support and help. That's not bad idea. Yeah, especially if, obviously having a coach one-on-one every week would be the most ideal thing, but I understand the financial thing, so I'd like to put her in the muscle mommy group. All right.

So if you end up not working with a coach, you get that at least. We'll put you in that group. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate you. Yeah, I just want someone, because like Sal's saying, uh,

the advice is easy that we can give you. It's the week to week. It's inevitable. We're going to have some setbacks and having somebody talk you off that ledge when you do and remind you that this is not that you're okay. This is great. It's fine. No big deal.

It happens. Now we do this. Through that process is just it's, you can't put a price on it. It's so valuable. And it's what it'll take and it'll take a while to get there. But the other side of this is amazing. And the other side of it looks like not tracking calories and having some flexibility to still enjoy some foods that are enjoyable and still be able to maintain a very healthy fit physique

and be strong and have energy and eat a lot more calories than where you're at. And so you're at a good place though. I think you have the right attitude already with exercise and it's really the diet thing and building that confidence. And we'll get there. We will. We're going to help you through it. What I hear from you is you sound like you got some good resolve. Like, you know what? I'm going to do this different this time. Which is really, really positive. Huge. Huge. That's That's positive. Really, really positive to hear that. We're going to get there.

Thank you. And like the way that it's gone before and you guys are totally right. Like I would lose 150 pounds in, I don't know, 10 months. And then I'd have one binge and then completely off the rails. Literally just one. That's all it takes for me. That's, that is common. That is super common.

What I want you to do if that happens again, okay, is when it happens, I want you to write, this sounds silly, please try this, okay? I want you to write a letter to yourself giving yourself grace and then encouraging yourself to continue to get back on track. And it literally like you're writing a letter to your kid. Like that's how I want you to talk to yourself. Yeah. And it sounds silly.

It sounds super dumb. But writing your thoughts out gets it out of that emotional reactive state. It's also a buffer between one binge and the next and the next. And you're going to give yourself grace. You start with that. Hey, I totally understand. this is really hard. I get it, like that type of deal.

And then encourage, don't say you better get back on, but encourage yourself. You can do it tomorrow. I want you to start it again. Just like you talk to your kid. Just like you talk to your kid. It sounds silly, but it is really effective at breaking that cycle. We're going to stay in touch with you. We'll see you in 30 days.

We're going to stay in touch with you. Yeah, that sounds awesome. Thank you guys. All right. You got it. Thanks for calling out. See you in 30 days. You got it.

All right. Bye. That's tough. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That is tough. She's a good spot, though, right now. I just got to say this, like, for people listening. For sure.

100% hiring a good coach. I say good because there's a lot of coaches out there. So worth the investment. 100%. It's among, it's among one of the most expensive investments in fitness you can make. A gym membership doesn't come close. Our programs don't come close. Like hiring a trainer, in competitive.

comparison to all the other things you can do or invest in with fitness is the most expensive thing. Okay. That being said, you get the best odds of long-term success with a good coach. And it doesn't even come close. So for anybody listening who's like, oh, it's a big investment. Yes, it is. But a good coach, let me tell you, if you're over having to deal with this and you're

over having to live your life a particular way, you're like, I just want to, this fixed forever, nothing will get you there. It's a psychological battle. You got somebody in your corner that way for sure. And it's an investment because even after you're done with, say, the three months or the six months or however it long takes to go through this, it forever pays itself back. That's right. And so it's up front. It can be for a lot of people.

But once you get to, and she's already proven that she can lose the weight. She's already proven that she knows that she can white knuckle. But the way she doesn't. Yeah. She can white knuckle herself down 150, 180 pounds. but to build a better relationship with that, it takes help in coaching. Totally.

It's not, it's not as, it's, again, easy advice, not simple to do, right? Our next caller is Michelle from Ontario. Hi, Michelle. How are you, Michelle? Hi, how are you guys? Good. How can we help you?

So I'm currently trying to, like, figure out how to get back on track of, like, working out. So it's been kind of a while that I've been off. I've had a baby. He's 14 months old. So it was kind of a complicated pregnancy and birth. So just trying to get back into, like, getting back to myself and, like, working out. So I've just been, like, kind of wondering how to do that.

I did purchase your PPL, I think, the women's one. So I've been working with that. And I just kind of finished phase one. So I've been wanting to start phase two this week. Okay. Was that the first, like, workout program you did since the pregnancy, since the baby was born? I went back to the gym a couple of times. My husband's a big kind of gym person, so he's kind of helped me there too.

But going to the gym has been a little bit difficult just because of having my son. So I've just been trying to do stuff at home more. I guess like program-wise, this would be like the first big thing that I'd kind of gotten back into. Okay. And then what about history? Any exercise history before you had your... Yeah, I used to go to the gym quite often. And I would say maybe like two, I would say three times, sometimes four times a week.

This was before I had my son. And then just once I got pregnant, I couldn't. I was put on bed rest. And that just kind of, I think. How long are we on bed rest for? I want to say almost three months. Oh, wow. Okay.

And then how was the delivery? The delivery was kind of scary. So he came eight weeks early. So with that, I was put under. So I wasn't even like awake during it. The recovery after, so I did have a C-section. So the recovery after, like, was definitely hard, but, like, not as hard as I thought it would have been. Like, I was up.

I maybe, like, four or five hours after the surgery, walking and moving around. So I knew that that was a big thing that, like, I wanted to make sure that I was up and moving right away. Okay, good, good. And then you said when we opened that you need help getting back on track. What do you mean by that? I guess just trying to, like, manage my time and really focus on, like, what I can be doing working out wise. Like I obviously don't want to spend hours upon hours in the gym because I don't have

that. But I also want to make sure that I'm using the time that I have efficiently and like getting workouts done properly. Yeah. And you also want to train appropriately. Yeah. Okay. So I think PPL is the wrong program for you.

Okay. We want something that's going to, because there's been some changes to things like your pelvic floor, your core muscle. You also had a pretty traumatic process through pregnancy and birth, which also affects things like the central nervous system and whatnot. So we want to start with a program that's appropriate to start with, which may feel to you, I'm going to warn you, like it's too easy. Yeah, easy.

Okay. So you might do it and you be like, this is not enough. But it's going to, it'll get your better results and it'll prevent things like, burnout injury, where the risk is a bit high considering all the things that you told me. You put her on starter first. Yeah. So I have a program called Map Starter, and I'd love you to run that program. We'll send that to you.

Yeah. And I'm also looking through, do you mind if I read through some more of your email that you sent in? Yep. Okay. Maybe you dug, you could scroll a little bit here. It says you had cortisol was low in the more. She had inverted cortisol. This was before pregnancy?

Yes. So I had done a bunch of testing with my family doctor and that's what we found out. So I was doing IV therapy to help with that. Okay. How is energy and everything feel now? Back to like what it was. So like very low and like not there. Okay.

That makes that helps me a lot. Okay. So we also don't want again like I thought with how the CNS is being impacted. We have to be very careful and judicious with how we apply stress, which is what strength. training will do. And so if it's right, you're going to feel good. If it's wrong, you're just going to be doing the workouts and be like, why do I still feel like, cry? You feel like war out. Or why do I feel war out? Okay. So this just confirms Map Starter for me even more. And what I want you to do, I'm going to add a little bit to it, is I want you not just to follow Map Starter, but I want you to do it easy.

Okay. So I want you to feel like you're going through the motions. Okay. And I want you to do that until you start to feel more energy. And then you can increase it, the intensity a little bit. So be very like judicious. Okay, I'll go a little bit harder. I still feel good energy. I'll go a little harder. Oh, I'm crashing.

Okay, I got to back off a little bit. Because we're going to heal your body through that process. Okay. Okay. Talk to me a little bit about nutrition. Probably definitely not the greatest. I feel like I barely eat. When I do eat, I probably eat way too much.

but it's definitely like not enough. Okay. I can give you some pretty simple advice. It sounds like you're having a tough time, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. So I can give you some pretty basic advice to get you started.

And I think hitting, what I'd like you to start with is trying to hit your target body weight. Okay. And grams of protein. Just do that. Okay. And I want you to eat in the morning. Yeah, I think that's the biggest thing. is that, yeah, I don't eat in the mornings.

Yeah. So that'll help you manage your blood sugar and insulin, which may have a positive impact on the cortisol. Okay. Do you have an appetite at all or does it feel like you have no appetite? Depends on the morning, but it's usually like I don't have the appetite. And I probably don't eat until my son's down for his nap because I feel like that's when I have the time to eat. Sometimes something light, like a Greek yogurt with berries or something like that to start when you're not when you're feeling that way. Because that's sometimes the chat like asking you to go eat a, you know, four eggs with meat and something heavy.

If you don't have an appetite. But if I don't know if you're okay with like things like Greek yogurt, if you like that. Some Greek yogurt, blueberries. They make stuff. They make Greek yogurt too. That's already like higher in protein like 15, 20 grams in those little cups. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. I have one or two of those to kick. start the day. It would be really good. Yeah, so it's like, okay, what's my target body weight, and then you eat maybe a little less than that in grams of protein and just try to prioritize that? It's probably going to look like 30 to 40 grams of protein per meal. And so doing that, let's take a step back for a second, though. I want to take a step back with you. Michelle, how does everything we're saying, how does that feel to you? Do you feel like, does it feel like you could do it? Do you feel like it's overwhelming? Not that it's overwhelming.

just, I've tried and like, I will say I've failed at it. So I know what's something like I need to be on top of better. Okay. You got a lot to manage, don't you? Yeah. Yeah. Is it feasible for you to outsource this to have a coach manage this for you? Financially, no.

Okay. All right. Because it's been off of work right now, I have no income. Here's what we're going to do then, Michelle. We're going to have you back on in 30 days so we could check in with you again. Okay. Does that sound helpful? Yep.

Okay. I'm going to encourage you a little bit, okay? It gets a lot better. Yeah, yeah. I promise you it gets a lot better. Okay. It's one little step at a time and the challenges are going to be, are going to look like this, okay? You're going to do a little bit and you're going to listen to what we're saying and then you're going to start to feel better and then you're going to feel like you need to go hard.

Okay. And that's going to set you back. Okay. I want you to be real gentle with yourself. view the workout as something that just while I'm doing it, I feel good and I get a little time to myself. Don't view the workout like, I need to get in shape. I need to build some muscle.

I need to sweat. I need to burn body fat. Don't look at it that way. Just be like, you want to feel good. Just like, okay, here's my 35 minutes of me making myself feel better right now. Get energy from it. Like right now it's going to make me feel better. That's how much.

So it's going to look right now, probably with the energy and stuff you got going on. Like you're kind of going through the motions and you're just kind of like, oh, that feels good. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. Any idea on your activity level throughout the day, like your steps? Do you know how many steps you take a day? I did start trying to track it.

And like at one point, like I was hitting at least 8,000. It's just it all depends on the day. And I know like that has been a goal of mine is to make sure that I am hitting it, $8,000 at least. Now, so even better way to do that if I was coaching you would be to just kind of monitor what a normal week looks like because maybe $8,000 is, double what you do on a normal day that you're not trying. It's too big of a jump.

And it's too big of a jump. And so, and part of this key, and if you're not picking up on it from Sal's like, we want to set very easy goals that we can win and build consistency versus I, doing the most you can do. I'm not trying to do the most you can do every day. I want to know, okay, looks like in a normal week when you're not even trying, you only step three to four thousand steps. Okay. So if that's the case, the goal is six thousand steps a day.

okay, let's just try and get $6,000. And so it looks like going through the workout like Sal saying, where you're taking care of yourself, you're going through the movements. It's more therapeutic than it is push and grind and put in sweat and do that thing. And then it's, hey, make sure I get my walks in today. So I hit my 6,000 steps. That's what it looks like. And it looks like, let's just be consistent with that.

And let's do our best to try and get that protein. And even if you have a day where you have a setback, it's okay. We get right back on the horse tomorrow. We'll make sure we're better about it starting early in the morning and get. that Greek yogurt in and like that's what it looks like and it looks like just building some consistency around that and momentum versus I feel good today so I'm going to go after it as much as I can and then all of a sudden you feel like crap and then it sets you back and then you feel then you beat yourself up like you failed and it's like so we want to avoid that and just build some consistency think of it like

this Michelle think about like this right now you need to be taking care of a little bit so the the workout and the nutrition I want you to think like okay I'm going to take care of myself right now And so the workout, like I said, is going to feel gentle. Because right now that's what you need. What you don't need is to get stressed to feel the stress of the workout. Yeah. And just do that for a little while. And I promise you it's going to get better.

Yeah. I promise you it's going to get better. Okay. Okay. I'm going to send you map starter. And we're going to have you back on in 30 days. Okay. Okay.

And literally between now and then, the just good goal is, like I said, just move the steps up a little bit from what your normal would be and be consistent with that and get consistent with the breakfast with some protein in it. If you come back in 30 days and you've like, hey, I've got my workouts, they're feeling good, I'm making my steps, I'm doing better on protein. That's a huge win in 30 days right there. That's a good and a good goal. Good goal for us to do that and be consistent with it. So let's set that as our first goal between now and seeing you again in 30 days and then we'll stack on that later. Yep. Okay. Sound good? That does. Thank you. Yes. We got this.

Yeah, we're going to do this. You're going to be good. We'll see you in 30, okay? Yeah, see you in 30. Thank you. Bye, thank you. She's having a tough time. Oh, I can feel it. I can feel it too. I can feel it too. Poor girl.

Yeah. Well, so bed rest for three months. It's rough. And then emergency C-section. Oh, that is traumatized. Well, you could, I mean, come on. You could see her holding back the tears just just you asking her about it. I know.

Yeah, yeah, I know. For sure. Very, very traumatic. if it's still affecting her that way. But the workout, first off, workouts are always self-care. So I want people to understand. They're always self-care. Sometimes it looks like I'm pushing my body to adapt because that is what self-care is.

In her case, pushing her body to adapt with exercise is not going to help her. To heal. It's the heel right now. That's it. Yeah, we got to heal. She has to feel good right now. And that's what the exercise should be for her. Yeah. Yeah.

Our next caller is Sandy from Connecticut. Hi, Sammy. Hi, Sandy. How you doing? Hello. Good to see you. Welcome back. Thank you.

Good to be back. Give us the update. You look healthy, by the way. I do? Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. All right, give us some updates.

Okay. So, up and down stuff. It's been a very different 30 days than the first 30. So more stressful situations because I didn't have enough, you know, so continuing the emails and things for the, a lawsuit going on and, you know, having to fill out paperwork and affidavits and all that jazz. So, so that's, that's going on. The, I have made the decision that I am going to go to the sentencing at the court, the end of the summer. So that'll be, I don't know why, just want to

be there. My daughter's been going through some medical stuff, some challenges. health issues and a lot of testing being done to and they haven't got a definitive diagnosis on anything yet. We're still waiting for some some test results. So that's been stressful. But, you know, she is feeling better. And, you know, with just some diet changes and things and some supplements. So I'm feeling hopeful about that. And what else? Well, that's kind of on the stress side of things. However, with that said, I have to say my thinking and attitude about it is different than in the past. Like I said, I'm feeling hopeful. I helped her make few changes with things. And I'm seeing the positive things, you know. Yep, this court stuff is stressful,

but it's coming to an end. So I can move on, you know, and figure out, you know, what life is going to be. So getting past it kind of thing. My sleep is better. And I don't really know why, because I haven't changed anything as far as making myself sleep better. Like I'm not taking any medications or supplements or I'm following the same routines and things. I did start wearing my Fitbit these 30 days while I sleep just to get some real data on it. And it was average. four to five hours. And then I bumped all the way up to six or seven hours. I had three nights in the past 30 days at seven and a half hours, which is a lot.

This week, I dropped back down to an average of five. I don't really know why. But anyway, so it feels better, though. So it is better. So that's good. And what else? community stuff. I met with the pastor at the church one-on-one and just kind of told them how much life has sucked for the past couple of years and why I was there and what I was looking for.

And I officially joined this last Sunday. And it was kind of a presentation at the church. It was kind of cool. It was also another couple joined. So they're just such a welcome. community and things. So there's there's a lot of committees that they have and groups and things that they do. You know, so they were talking to me about that. I did go to the social hour after and things are talking to me about that. Like what do I want to what do I want to do? And a lot of is they're they're kind of a sit-around kind of group of people, which I am not. So I want to contribute something in my wheelhouse, you know, kind of thing. So I'm really noticing, I'll say, you know, like there's 50 to 60 of us at service each week.

And I'll say a third of them are complaining about aches and pains and illnesses and things. And, you know, people with walkers and canes and, you know, their highlight is telling about their pain of the week or their new, new diagnosis or whatever. So I kind of want to introduce maybe some exercise in life, but not use that word because I know it would freak them out. I love that. Can I give you an idea? I love that. Can I give you an idea? I think that's not as scary to those type of people for exercise is a walking group.

Yep. I think that's a great idea. Start a walking group within that community and the church. Yeah. I think that would, I think that's a great idea because, you know, it's the church. is on this cute little street, flat surface and stuff. So we could walk right there. And, you know, instead of, you know, I'm sitting with them in the social hour and they all

have their coffee and their cake. And, you know, it's like, you're telling, you're sitting here talking about all your health issues eating cake. What are you doing? You know, obviously don't say those things. But maybe let's grab a water and go for a walk. Anybody want to come, you know. I love that idea.

I love that idea. That would be so good. It puts you at serve and you're serving. It's a great way to build community. And it's something you're offering that I think is so valuable. Yeah. Yeah. My son, he works for any time fitness.

I don't know if I'd mentioned that before, but he's, he developed the, in, got consulted with somebody. I don't remember the guy's name. But anyway, it did and has developed the ageless program. Oh, wow. Ageless fitness. I know what that is. And he's huge. He's six, six, and, you know, a muscle man.

And all these little old ladies and guys that he works with just feels so safe with him. You know, he works with a guy in his 80s who falls because he had a stroke and, you know, Kyle catches him and things. So I was thinking about asking him maybe to come in to one of the, they have a lot of different groups in the evenings and things and maybe just talking to them about the ageless program. So wonderful. Yes. Yeah. I love that. Because he knows what he's talking about, too.

At the very least, he could offer advice. That's wonderful. Yeah. If I can get him to do it. But just to hopefully spark, he can motivate anybody to, you know, to exercise. And he sent me a video last week of this 90-year, 92-year-old woman walking across the gym, unassisted. Wonderful. And she started in a wheelchair.

So it's that kind of stuff. So anyway, I thought maybe with his motivation to might spark some interest in I could get them to do something. So what else? Oh, I did connect with a women's shelter in town that is a 24-bed facility for recovering addicts. They needed stuff. They needed kitchen items and those kind of things. So I just went through the house and, you know, I had plenty of stuff and brought over a bunch of boxes of stuff and whatever I can do to help them.

So again, looking for things that don't cost money, but you can still do with people to help. So what else have I done? It says you got a lot stronger in your email, Sandy. Yeah, you know, so here's my frustrations and stuff. Yes, I definitely feel stronger. And it just seems like it's happening fast. and I'm almost back to the weight that I was lifting, you know, prior to the train going off the track with the hormone mess up and then the knees and all that jazz. And it's like, wow, this is really, this is really fast.

And then I was thinking, well, maybe it is some of that muscle memory you guys talk about, you know, bouncing back from things. So, yeah, went back to like leg presses and things. I had to stop on the leg press machine when my knees were so bad because it was just so much inflammation and pain. And, you know, I was a little leery of it. Greg was starting light. You know, like I started at, what was the weight? It was 135 pounds just to start.

And I'm up to 225. Yeah. So. Nice. So that's good. In the sled, when I first started doing the sled again, I was again getting a lot of inflammation in my knees, but I'm not anymore. And so we just kept pushing through. And I started at 165 and I'm up to 265.

Wow. So that's great. So that feels good. It's funny because I struggle with. the barbell press, anything that I'm laying on a bench or even deadlifts because I feel a strain in my back when I do those things. So my tendency is to, you know, try and then say, I can't do it because of my back. And, you know, Greg said, no, you can't do it because of your head. Get out of your head and pick the bar. So, you know, so I am, I'm doing it. So any.

If there's anything, that was one of my questions this week, if there's anything you can advise as far as any, maybe some more priming things to strengthen that back for those specific lifts. So, and I think part of it is I'm worried a little bit. I feel a little unsafe. I feel like I might hurt my back and I don't, I cannot be out of the gym again. So anything for that. It sounds like, so you have your coach, so you're doing it with your coach, right? Yeah. Okay, so listen to his prompts.

Brace your core when you're doing the lifts. And if you don't feel safe going heavier or don't. And just say, okay, I just want to stay at this weight and maybe I could slow the reps down. And so and then embrace your core because we can happen sometimes that we can overarch our backs. So we're trying to be straight. But what ends up happens, we overarch. And the way you offset that is you brace your core like you're trying to brace it as if someone's going to poke you in the stomach. Okay.

While you're doing the lift. Yeah. I arch my back a lot. Yeah. So overarching will make it feel like there's some shearing pressure in the low back. Okay. Yeah, I still can't get my arms flat against the wall when I'm doing the priming, you know. That's hard.

That's hard. As long as you're making progress. You got a lot stronger. Your sleep is improving. You're building community. This is like some of the best progression I've seen in 60 days. Where's the downside? Yeah.

You're doing great. Like you're killing it. I can see it in your face, too. You look good. Well, thank you. I got to say, though, the other priming exercises, I'm rocking it. I mean, I never thought I could make my arm go all the way around on the wall. It's the first time I tried it, there was like, no way, this is impossible.

It's like, I think Justin and Doug have rubber bands instead of bones because I can't do this. And I'm doing it. I'm not a problem. That's awesome. and the squats everything, but not the arms on the wall, cannot get them there. That's a tough one.

That's a tough one. That's a tough one for me. It's a tough one for all of us. But if you're seeing improvements everywhere, I mean, I'm, you're, you're chipping away.

This is 60 days. Yeah, yeah. It's only 60 days. Like, this is, you're kicking butt. Yeah. My back is better, much better.

And, but I do stiffen up after my workouts. And, you know, and unfortunately, I'm going from a workout just sitting at a desk. And it's just so stiff and sore. So the downside.

Do you know how to do pelvic tips, tilts? Do you know how to do pelvic tilts? I'm just going to say. Yes, I know how. And when you said that, I can't even tell you the last time I really practiced it or was prompted to do it. So you could practice pelvic tilts while seated. A better way to do is laying on your back with your knees bent.

And you'll have a natural arch in your low back. And you just flatten the low back, squeeze your core. way down and let it arch back up flatten. Okay. Let it arch back up flatten. But stays on the floor the whole time. We squeeze our glutes really tight, especially when you go to bridge and hold it at the top and reinforce that, come back down, adjust. So your back is super flat again.

Then we go back up. Do we have a pelvic tilt video on mind pump TV? That would be a good primer for you to do before anyone. And even afterwards. Yep. Yep. Okay. Yeah.

Okay. Great. Good. I will do that. We'll help kind of reinforce that strength. Okay. The downside is the nutrition. I think just with stuff going on, I got sloppy with tracking and planning and prepping everything. It just kind of. That's fine. And then I got all in my head about that. It's like, oh, my God, I failed. I don't want to go back on the podcast, tell the guys I didn't do what I was supposed to do. Sandy, I don't care. Don't trip about it. You know, can I tell you something real quick? I'm actually happy.

stop tracking. I think it was just too much control, too many things to worry about, which is probably why he stopped. And everything else is doing great. I don't care. I don't care. If you want to get back to tracking, go for it. Just try to make healthy choices for now. I'm not worried about your tracking right now. Well, I know I didn't up my calories much, which, you know, I get so frustrated that I don't see, physically see the progress. In fact, I lost my mind because I had a couple events in this past 30 days that people took pictures and posted on Facebook. And, oh, my God. I'm not going to stop you right there.

I'm not going to let you do this to yourself. When you look at the bar that you're lifting, do you see a difference between when you started and now? Yes. Yeah. So there's a difference. You see something. I do. I do as long as I don't look at my reflection.

I don't want to hear, but you're moving in the right direction and your body's going to follow. What we're seeing right now is change. So let me put you this way. You're shifting right now. The sandy that leg pressed 135 is not the same sandy that leg pressed 220 pounds. You're actually different. It's fundamentally different. Okay.

Now, the changes might not be big enough for you to notice in the mirror. And that might be because there's subtle. It also might be because you might be overly critical. But it's only been 60 days. You are moving in the right direction. I know. And Greg says it's been 60 days. Yes.

know, I know. I want, I want to get to 365. Don't get in your head about that. That'll slow everything down. Just you're doing, you're great. I'm glad you're not tracking. If you want to get back to it, go for it. But it feels like too much don't do it. And you're eating enough. Obviously, you got stronger. A better, a better goal nutritionally than getting back to like tracking everything is like if you know, most people have a thing that they know that I'm bad at skip, I skip breakfast or I know that I should have ate this. time that should have been more protein. Set a nutrition goal like that. Instead of getting more into tracking every single calorie or trying to, like, where, do you skip a meal or where could you make a better choice? And like, just that one thing.

It's like, hey, I'm going to be more consistent with starting my day with this meal or ending my day with this meal or making sure I have this many ounces of meat. Whatever the thing is, instead of like making it a big deal about every single thing that you consume or all day tracking, it's like, I know I can be a little bit better. at this time of the day with my food, I'm going to get a goal to make that choice there or add that protein shake, whatever it is. But make a simple goal nutritionally and just focus on that versus the whole thing. Well, yeah, that would be dinner because, you know, I eat the same thing for breakfast and lunch every single day. Okay, good. So simple. So if I could just,

because sometimes I just find myself, I'm hungry, I go grab something and it tends to be nuts or something and then I like oh my god they're so high in fat and you know I start beating myself up about that because I didn't pay attention to how much and it's like oh so I would say a snacks and dinner if I could get a grip on that I'll feel good there you go so let's just focus on one of those things let's do that just focus on one of those things and be more consistent with it and if the one day happens when you're not perfect it's not a big deal tomorrow will be good about it just focus on that one thing versus tracking every single thing and overthinking it, just focus on that one thing. I'm going to tell you, you helping other people is going to make it so much better for how you

are with yourself. You doing the thing where you went to the women's shelter, maybe starting this walking group, I think that's going to be so awesome. I think be so good. Yeah. Be way less critical about yourself. Yeah, in 30 days, let's check in and see how those went. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, That's really, I guess I started beating myself up because I felt like I failed you guys. You know, it's like, all I had to do was be good for 90 days and I blew it. How the heck could you fail us? You're killing it. Even if you didn't, by the way, I'm going to tell you something, Sandy, even if you didn't get stronger, even if you get on here right now.

We check so many other bosses. And you're like, guys, listen, I couldn't do anything. I couldn't do any of it. I'm really stuck right now. You showed up. Yep. Like, you showed up. You got back on the call with us.

Yeah. I did. I did. You're doing great. Yeah. You're doing good, we'll see you in 30 days, Sandy. All right.

Okay. Great. Thank you. We love you. Yes. Thank you. Bye. She's so sweet.

Yeah. The connecting with her community, helping other people is so good. It's going to be so positive. Because you see how quickly she wanted to switch to like, turns it back in. Yeah, like, I'm terrible. In a negative way.

First off, objectively, you're kicking ass. objectively. Yeah. So it's just inaccurate. I think that's just a tendency. And we've got to stop that. But I think helping other people is such a great, such a great thing to do.

Our next caller is Jackson from Florida. What's up, Jackson? What's up, you, dude? Hey, guys, thanks for having me on. Really appreciate it. You got it, man. How can we help you? I got to say, first off,

the biggest thing I've taken away from you guys is the less is more. So thank you for that. I'm going to jump into, to jump into my question here. And it revolves around bulking and cutting. I've been training for around 20 years. And while I'm definitely stronger than when I was 15 years old, it feels like I'm somewhat treading water. I've always looked stronger than most of my peers, but I've never really uncovered my abs, which I'd say is kind of my biggest, kind of what I'm looking to do.

To get some added context, about three years ago, I herniated my L5 deadlifting. I was doing maps anabolic and unfortunately your program worked way too well. I was getting super strong, doing like 500 pounds for around three reps with a hex bar. I tried everything, but eventually I had to get surgery after about a year and a half of recovery. I'm back in the gym now with mostly no limitations. Biggest thing, I'm hesitant to do squats or deadlift under about seven or eight reps. Closest I've come to feeling ripped, I would say, is when I cut down to about from 187 to 180. I'm about six foot tall. And I was using Lane Norton's carbon app, tracking all my food to kind of get down and figure out where that was. With all that being said, my main question would

be to try and look better with a shirt off, living in Florida, going into summer, do you all recommend cutting down to a lower body weight and then hitting maintenance calories? Do you bulk first? do you, you know, I'm just kind of trying to figure out, like, if I were to try to bulk first, I feel like I'd largely add fat since I've been doing so, since I've been training for so long. And then just a real quick side note for this specific question, I just am getting over Mono. I'm about a week. At this point, it's more like two weeks into training, and I'm probably functioning at about an RPE8 at this point. And I'm just kind of ramping that up slowly.

I lost seven pounds during mono. So I'm right around 180 from where I normally sit at 187. So I'm less weight, but I'm also, I didn't lose it in a good way. I lost it because of the mono. So where do I go from here for both training and nutrition? And in the future, when mono is kind of out of the question, what would sort of your standard advice be? Yeah, good.

So let's back up for a second. What was the surgery that you had? It was a discectomy. Okay. So you have no disc or they replace it? They just shaved out a little bit. Okay, okay. All right.

All right. So you're okay with not squatting or deadlifting below seven reps. And you're totally, with your experience, because you sound, I mean, you're using terms like RPE. You've been strength training for a long time. Split stance exercises are perfectly fine for a guy like you. So because you've probably built up your squat at different moments of your life to pretty good numbers, you could switch to split stance exercises if you want to go heavy and then stick to the higher reps with the squats. You'll be totally fine.

Okay. As far as the deadlift is concerned, you could always treat that just with lots of respect. Once again, because you did get your weight so high. So, like, you mean, you could pull, you pulled a lot of weight. So I wouldn't, you're not a guy that I'd be like, now, let's challenge it. I'd be like, no, no, no, we'll just do the deadlifts and maintain them and get stronger on other lifts. If you feel like it's a big risk. Do you know what you're eating now, what your calories look like now by any chance?

Yeah, I'm right around 3,100, I'd say, for maintenance. 3132. Yeah, dude. And you know what? Active job. What do you do for work? I make ice cream, actually. Oh, really? Yeah. Like literally, like your ice cream truck? What do you do? Well, no, so I'm like the batch planner and like purchaser and stuff for we make like three gallon tubs for scoop shops and stuff here in Florida. Oh, man, you'd be a dangerous friend of mine.

I was just going to say it's pretty great. Yeah, we couldn't hang out, bro. I'll be all by. He's been a drug dealer. He's taking me down a few times. Well, okay, so when you're over the mono, Your calories aren't about, they're good. You could definitely cut from there.

And I don't do your body weight is, you're probably already relatively lean. Would you, do you have a guess for what your body fat sits at when you're doing all right? If I had to guess, I'd say I'm like 14, 15. Oh, yeah. I look a little, even at this like new one, I said 180. I'm more like 182. Probably doesn't matter to you guys. It's, I definitely look a little fluffier, though, than what I would think I should look like at that weight.

Well, you just had mono. So, and you're still in that. So, but under normal circumstances, if you're eating like 31, 3, 3200 calories, 14% body fat, you could go in a deficit, go down to 2,500, 2,400, that'll get you down to 11, 10%. So it wouldn't be hard to do that. Also keep in mind because we, the goal to see abs and be strong, be strong are kind of conflicting. Yeah. Right.

So just, and I heard you say that earlier when you were talking about, like, wanting to get stronger in your lifts and things. and things like that and where you're in the head where you've already been and where you're heading. And then one of you see ads. And they're kind of two different things. Like if I'm going to focus on seeing abs, I'm not really tripping about how heavy of weight I'm lifting because I'm going to be weaker. I'm going to be low calorie. I'm depleted.

Being that low is not ideal. So definitely make sure that's not like in your head of like, oh, man, I'm only doing this now. It's like let that go. If we're going to, if we're going to head that way, if we're going to say, let's see how shredded we could get, just accept that you're not going to be your, your lifts aren't going to be going to be going in the other direction more than likely. Now, if I had to pick one, especially because you're coming out of motto,

I would go into building. Yeah. And I would build for maybe 45, 60 days. And then I'd go on the cut, just because you're coming out of getting sick. So would you keep it like maintenance calories or would you add 100, 200 kind of thing? I think I would add a little bit with some strength training.

Yeah. And you're going to see some strength gains anyways coming out of illness. So I'd get up to like 3,300 calories. At least. I would, how, you tell you you you got 35. I feel like you have a healthy metabolism. You could probably jump up the 3,500 calories being fine. Yeah.

Yeah. I think, honestly, the biggest thing that I find when I'm, like, eating higher calorie amounts is, like, I get to the end of the day. And it's like, well, we got to have a bowl of ice cream kind of things. It's like I'm eating, I think I guess I just got to add more like fatty meats and things like that in order to not do that. Because I think there's something can be said about a calories of calorie, but also there's things that, you know, go way beyond that. No, I mean, that can also be the thing, the one thing that's kind of keeping you that. kind of fluffy feeling that you're feeling right now, too, is that you add calories, but then they come from things like ice cream, so which I could totally relate to what that's

like, and it's a big difference of you. And sometimes, okay, just so you know, so this is a sign that when I'm not eating enough calories. So in an easy way without me getting crazy and tracking for me to kind of lean out, get ripped, build muscle, it's like kind of the Goldilocks zone, is when I'm still at the end of my day, and I know I've had my meals, I've hit my protein, and I'm still hungry and then I go get ice cream or something like that, simply just not having ice cream and making another meal makes a huge difference. Just like just saying, okay, obviously my metabolism is saying I want more calories still. So I'm building muscle.

I'm ramping up. If I could just discipline myself to not go have the 800 calories of, you know, basically sugar and go go have a, you know, 500 calorie high protein meal. Oh, man, that's a. Yeah. So if you feel that, sometimes that's that metabolism ramping up and saying, I'm, I still want more food and I'm too low a calorie. And on the flip side, if you get to 3,100 calories,

you've hit your protein at the end of the day, you're like, I'm full. Yeah. I don't want to eat any more. Then don't. Then shut it down. You hit your protein, you're fine. Yeah. Shut it down.

Yep. Okay. That's cool. So it sounds like you're saying, go ahead and add some calories back in. Like, I'm pretty close to being able to go back into the gym. I feel like 100%. So adding some calories back in, trying to gain. Would you kind of try to stay?

like what sort of training do you guys look at when you're either either in the gaining or kind of the more cutting phase? Like do you let that effect or is it just all strength training is trying to build muscle whether you're in a cut or in a bulk. So it just really depends on. Well, I'll give you, I'll give you a tip for a guy who's advanced like you because do something novel. Yeah. So if you are the person who typically would like follow a maps antibolic type of protocol, then run something like a performance protocol or symmetry or symmetry or strong or. So like a good strategy for guys that have been lifting for a long, have a lot of experience in the gym and you want to build is doing something novel.

Like if you've never done like an old-timey lift, like that type of training, we have a program like that. Like follow a program of ours that you normally wouldn't follow. You know what I'm saying? Instead of falling back into the kind of norm of what you do, go after something that you have and that novel stimulus with the additional calories, that'll put some good muscle on right away. Yeah.

So that's awesome. Yeah. I've actually, I've gotten that. symmetry so maybe I could run that one again because I think that that's the one that does like the split stances that you're talking about right yeah that's perfect that'll be good for you considering your low back injury okay yeah I like that yeah I like that

awesome and then um you had mentioned so after after the uh the symmetry you said either was it performance or aesthetic that you would recommend oh after symmetry you could do performance but you could also do almost any other program PPL would even be good if you want to do more of a bodybuilding split. Okay. Yeah. I'll check them out.

And I really appreciate, you know, you guys and kind of, I wasn't really thinking that I, you guys were going to say like build from here. And so that's kind of, that's some good advice to go build and then from there to kind of cut down. Especially coming from off the motto like that, that'll do well for you. Are you, Jesse, do you track your steps? Do you know what you do like per day? I don't actually get that many steps because of what I do for work.

We have been renovating a house And so like Friday, Saturday, Sunday, I've been getting quite a bit of activity in But that's stopped over the last month And so my guess is my average step count is like 6,000. Okay, so this is, I'm going to take further advice for you. So this is what this path looks like to me. Get up to 3,500 calories, follow symmetry,

follow that through like through basically a full bulk And kind of stay there until you're kind of hovering around the weight. You're not gaining anymore. You're not losing any way. You're getting stronger through the program. then when you go on the cut cut it back down to 3,000 to 31 range and just bump steps by 2,000 steps a day. That's your first like that's your first protocol and then literally kind of keep your calories there and just trying to increase your steps and then and then

go down a little bit on the calories maybe down to 28 and just keep kind of playing that game of trying to slowly increase steps every week over week while just kind of cutting a little bit of calories. And if we do a really good job, you should probably still be able to eat. 25 to 2,700 calories and be pretty shredded. Okay. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, if you get up to 3,500 calories, maintaining your weight, feeling good, put

on a couple pounds of muscle, and then we just kind of slowly, incrementally come down in calories and then slowly incrementally go up in steps. That should be enough to nice, lean you out, really nice. Okay. And the steps are basically just to get you that little extra bump in calories. That's right. That's right. That's right. Yep.

Awesome. Cool. Well, hey, guys, I really appreciate it. Thank you very much. You got it, man. All right, Jason. Thanks for calling in. All right.

Yep. He'll do well. Healthy metabolism. Oh, yeah. Yep. Yeah. He's strong. He's at that way, eating 3,100 calories, and he says he's pretty sedentary, actually.

That's actually really. Yeah, he's in a good place. Yeah. He'll build it. He'll build it. You know, he said to me earlier, that's why I point out, you know, sometimes you have goals that are a bit conflicting. Oh, yeah. I want, I want abs and be strong.

Yeah. It's like, yeah. That's a good point. Yeah. Yeah, it's not going to do you so well trying to cut. And then also, and then that's recipe for injury, right? You're pushing the weight like crazy because you're stuck on. I want to get stronger.

But then you're also low calorie. And it's just like, then you get hurt trying to do that. That's right. Look, if you like the show, come find us on Instagram. It's Mind Pump Media. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at MindPump

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

family. We thank you for your support, and until next time, this is Mind Pump.