Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2906: Should You Bulk or Cut First | The Answer That Actually Leads to Long Term Results

Episode Date: July 22, 2026

  In this episode the guys break down whether you should build or cut first — covering what each actually involves, why cutting first almost always fails long term, how building first boosts your metabolic rate by 700-800 calories a day, and why 95% of people who lose weight gain it all back. They also discuss Sal's prediction that probiotics will be the next major performance supplement, the ditto dating app taking over college campuses by using AI instead of swiping, the new short king shoe brand giving guys a few extra inches of height, 80s and 90s movie reviews that did not hold up, and Sal using Kion amino acids daily since going back to jiu jitsu. Then they coach live callers submitted through mplivecaller.com.   MAPS Upper Lower: https://mapsupperlower.com Code: LAUNCH for 40% off. Four day split, male and female versions, workout videos and live coaching with Cole.   SPONSORS   Kion Aminos: https://getkion.com/mindpump 20% off automatically applied at checkout. 2000mg leucine per serving   Seed Daily Synbiotic: https://seed.com/mindpump Code: 25MINDPUMP for 25% off your first month.    Olipop: https://drinkolipop.com/MINDPUMP Buy any two cans in store (any flavor, any retailer) and they will pay you back for one. Flavors: Classic Root Beer, Vintage Cola, Strawberry Vanilla, Orange Squeeze, Cherry Vanilla, Ginger Lemon, Classic Grape, Cream Soda.   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 2:30 - Should you build or cut first — the full breakdown 8:17 - Why cutting first almost always fails and what your body does every single time 13:54 - Why building first boosts your metabolism by 700-800 calories a day 18:06 - Why the scale not moving during a build is the most common reason people quit too early 26:08 - Probiotics as the next performance supplement — Sal's five-year prediction 29:42 - The ditto dating app taking over college campuses using AI instead of swiping 36:27 - Why we had three TV channels and were not bored as kids 42:37 - The short king shoe brand giving guys extra height in regular-looking sneakers 45:32 - 80s and 90s movie nostalgia — Gremlins, Little Monsters and First Blood reviewed 1:01:39 - Caller: Riley (Mississippi) — exercise science degree, nursing student, wants resources for complex clients 1:14:04 - Caller: Jay (Texas) — lost 100 pounds, 6'4", 29% body fat, 3400 calories, gets MAPS Anabolic 1:35:37 - Caller: Linda (Massachusetts) — Boston marathoner, powerlifter, calf injury, gets MAPS 15 Performance 1:50:42 - Caller: Noah (Montana) — 21 years old, constant aches and pains, likely vitamin D deficiency

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. Almost half a billion downloads. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, we answered live callers questions.

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I'm talking right now, hit pause, head on over to mindpumpstor.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. When it comes to exercise, there's two main goals that people typically have. Either they're trying to build or they're trying to cut. So it makes sense if your goal is to cut,

you cut. If you're trying to build, you go for building. but is this always true? What should you do first regardless of your goal? Does it make sense to do one versus the other first? Build or cut first? We're going to break it down. Let's go.

I love this conversation just because I feel like we've talked about it so many times in the podcast, but I still get tons of DMs and questions around. Because I feel like nobody thinks it should be them. And I know where you're going with this, right? Like everyone's just like, yeah, but I need to lose this. I have a lot of weight to lose them. Yeah. So what do you think about this?

You know, and it's just like, we just talked about that. And this is what everybody should do. I don't care how much weight it is. And so I still think it's not very popular. And I still think that you're getting advice. Like you go to a doctor, right? And you're 50 to 100 pounds overweight and cholesterol's high, blood pressure is high. Doctor says to you right away, you need to lose some weight.

Right now. Right now. Cut your calories. It's an alarmist approach for sure. Yeah. And so, and it's coming in from medical advice, too. So I think we're having to counter that a little bit, which makes it more challenging. So you have that factor.

And I still think it's unpopular. I don't think it's the most popular way to get in shape. It's very unpopular. So let's just kind of explain what each one is first before we get more into it. Right. So building is the attempt to try to gain, usually lean body mass. Rarely do people try to gain body fat. That's sometimes very rarely, sometimes is the case.

But usually it's like, okay, I'm trying to build or gain. it's muscle you're training game. And then cutting, this obviously is the attempt to lose weight or to be a more specific lose body fat. Here's what's involved with both. Sometimes people think building and cutting has to do mostly or all with the exercise.

Oh, you want to build, you lift weights, you want to cut, you do cardio. That's actually not the case. In all cases, strength training or lifting weights has a great effect. So whether you want to build or cut, you want to strength train. We've talked about that in previous episodes.

But there's more that goes into each of these, right? Building isn't just strength training. It's also strength training plus eating in a way that fuels more active tissue being built, right? So I have to feed myself sufficient calories and protein in order to build. Cutting also involves strength training. Again, just real quick, the data show strength training is one of the best forms of exercise for fat loss, mainly because it preserves muscle. but cutting involves the where you cut your calories below what you're burning at the attempt to burn body fat. So that's really the big difference.

And so it sounds obvious, right? Well, if I'm trying to lose a lot of weight, why would I even attempt to build? Like, why would I eat in a way to fuel more tissue when I'm trying to get rid of body fat, which is also a tissue? Why would I do that that makes no sense? And so I'm going to just speak to that just for a second. the most important thing we need to consider with any goal, whether it's building or losing, even though losing or cutting is the more popular goal, the number one thing we need to consider is, is this approach going to last forever?

We have to consider that because that's the biggest thing to consider. A small percentage of people actually accomplish what is considered a significant amount of weight loss when they're trying to lose weight. And the way they identify that is about 5 to 10% of your body weight. A lot of people want to lose more than that. But that's just how they identify that. So there's a small percentage of people that even accomplish that. But of those people that accomplish that, over 90% of them gain the way back.

So what you're looking at is you're going to fail if you do this the way that you've done it before, the way that everybody tries to do this. So the number one thing to consider is how can I do this in a way that sets me up to be able to maintain this forever? So that's the context that we need to start with before we get into the conversation. otherwise it makes no sense. Because if I tell somebody who wants to lose 60 pounds, which we're going to get to, cool, you want to lose 60 pounds, you're of a weight, we're going to focus on building,

you're going to think I'm crazy. Like that's not what I told you. I told me I need to lose weight. Why are you telling me I need to gain? That makes no sense. But when you understand this from the perspective of, we need to figure out how to do this in a way to where that weight stays off,

then it starts to make a lot of sense. Yeah, I think the urgency really pushes you to, like you can take on, you know, a lot more stress and a lot more work in terms of trying to push through and just, you know, white knuckle it. But I don't think a lot of people look at when you get to this place that you want to get to, this desired weight. Once you get there, like, what does your lifestyle look like? What does that, what does that entail? Like, how, you know, how good is your energy going to be? How good is your sleep?

how strong are you going to be? Like, are you, you're just happy because now you're this number on the scale. And that's really like the desired outcome is to get this number on the scale. But how do you live in that? That's right. And that's just like something that I just don't think people think that, that, like, through to that, to that degree. Was this inspired by the response you had to the girl that I think she's like a, it was partially. Okay.

Kimberly, yeah. We'll talk to that later, actually. I actually want to make sure I bring that up. Yeah. Yes, it is. inspired by that. So, and the reason why I ask that, because there's, there's another layer to this, too, that I think it has to be considered is that the context at which most people that are attempting this, you know, cut that they want to go on to because they want to lose weight, rarely ever is

at their first time. And they've done this multiple times. And, you know, maybe what they thought was success because they had temporary success where they lost 30 pounds, you know. So they, it's like, oh, that worked. Yeah, that worked. Because when I, when I just ate the And I ran on the treadmill and I did that thing. I lost 30 pounds before. I went on that diet where I only ate meat or whatever the thing is, right? And they've done that maybe multiple times. And over multiple times of doing that, what has happened is their body is adapted to this.

And so part of the reason why it's such a bad strategy to go right into just cutting calories and increasing activity is a lot of people, where they're metabolic. is at currently is just not a great place to start coming from. Rarely ever did I get somebody who needed to lose over 50 pounds and that had not gained and lost it many times before they had come to me. And why they had finally come to me is because they were just pleading Adam. I don't feel like I eat that much. I only eat this much calories and yet I can't seem to lose any weight. And that's because over time they've done this yo-yo dieting that is just all it's done is continued to lose muscle, slow their metabolism down. And they're at this place now where they still have all this weight on, but they don't

feel like they eat very much. And it's like, this is a terrible place to start a cut from because it's almost guaranteed you're going to fail. Because to Justin's point, considering lifestyle and where you're going to end up energy and strength and, you know, can you. you maintain that diet and that way of eating forever? No. No, you can't take you from 2,800 calories down to, say, you know, 1,300 calories to lose

your 100 pounds and maintain that forever. Even if you have the ability to white knuckle that and get there, the likelihood that you're going to maintain that direction. You're going to feel like shit once you get to get back. Yeah, you're going to feel terrible. You're going to have lost a ton of muscle. You're going to be eating hardly anything. You'll have no flexibility in your diet.

it ever again. And if you've done it like a lot of these people, like you, we're referring to this girl, Kimberly, these workouts where you're just punishing yourself where you're, you know, pushing so hard it's like, that's not sustainable. No, I'll use a money analogy. Let's say you have a job, you get paid X amount of dollars per hour. And so you say to yourself, I want to make twice as much money. So what I'm going to do is work twice as many hours.

Okay. So instead of working 40 hours a week, you're now working 80 hours a week. And sure enough, 80 hours a week makes you twice as much money. But eventually, what will probably happen is you'll be like, this is way too much work. Right. My quality of life isn't great. I'm working twice as many hours. I got to go back to my old schedule.

And then what happens is you start earning half as much as you were because now you're working 40 hours a week. Versus another approach, which is like, hey, I want to make twice as much money. I'm going to figure out how to get my money to make more money for me. Yeah. And so I'm going to figure out how to invest it. and place it in areas where by itself or with very little work for me, it starts to generate more revenue and more income. So then 10 years down the line,

I'm still working 40 hours a week, but I'm making twice as much money. Compounding effect. Far more sustainable. So I'll make a statement. If I could dramatically speed up everybody's metabolism who was listening to this podcast, weight loss would be much easier. I think this is a true statement, right?

If your metabolism could suddenly burn a thousand more calories a day, it would be a lot easier to maintain your body weight. It would be a lot easier to lose body fat because you're just burning more calories. If I can improve insulin sensitivity in your hormone profile, that would make it a lot easier as well. I mean, that's a fact.

I don't think anybody would ever argue or debate that. And so that's the thing we need to understand is how can I set myself up for something that is sustainable? And the way that you do that is you point to and you aim for a better metabolic rate or a, to put it in different terms, maybe too simplified, but a faster metabolism. Let me get a faster metabolism.

So I can just burn more calories all the time. Is that even possible? Can I do that? Yes, reliably you can do that. And the way you do that is all the things that you would do to build muscle in a serious way. Feed the body, build the muscle. And what that does is that sets you up later. Here's why this is difficult.

It's difficult for a couple reasons. One, I'm not telling you to lose weight right now. People, and here's a problem. When you make the decision to lose weight, if you're 60 pounds overweight, first of all, at one point you were 20 pounds overweight. At another point, you were 30 pounds and 40 pounds and 50 pounds. And what you've probably done is you see it. You know what's happening, but you maybe avoid it or you don't think about it or you

just kind of keep going. Every once I'm like, oh my God, I'm getting so much weight. But then you kind of put it in the back of your mind. Then you finally make the decision. Like, I can't handle this anymore. I need to lose weight. the last thing you want to do is wait longer. When you finally made that decision,

the last thing you want to do is be like, I'm going to not lose weight for three more months while I'm working out to try to build. No, I want to lose weight right now. So that's number one reason why that's difficult. Number two reason is because it looks different. If I took somebody who wanted to lose weight and I had them run like crazy every single day

and I cut their calories significantly, they will see fast weight loss on the scale initially. If I take that same person and say, we're going to boost your metabolic rate. I'm going to build muscle on you. I'm going to reverse diet. In other words, I'm going to bump your food intake. We're going to have quality food, high quality food, hit protein targets.

I want you to get strong. We're going to build muscle. You're not going to see weight loss on the scale for a little while. Not for a little while. You'll have some body comp change. You'll get leaner and build some muscle. The scale's probably not going to move much. And it's going to take us a few months or so to get your metabolic rate where I want

before we even attempt the weight loss or the fat loss. And so that takes some patience and trusting. the process. But here's where I'll just encourage people. Did your approach work before? In other words, did it work long term? Did you keep it off? No. Stop trying the old way. This is how you lose weight and you get those results consistently in how it becomes sustainable. We need to prime your body to be able to live in a world where you're surrounded by food. We need to boost your metabolic rate. We got to make you strong. Let's start there. Then start the cut. Let's set you up for some long-term success.

It's also really difficult when you're carrying that much excess body fat on too, and you're going about it the correct way, like you're saying, where we start to reverse diet and build muscle. And even though there's body comp change happening where they might have lost three pounds of fat and added three pounds of muscle, which will show no change on the scale, but that's a significant change in their body, it's not significant enough that person can see it. Yep. You know, they're not going to see it.

And in fact, all it takes is one day of kind of eating out of bounds a little bit and, you know, high sodium or maybe you ate something that inflamed you a little bit or maybe you had some stress or you didn't get very good sleep next day. And also, your body's holding a little extra water. So it really can be mentally challenging for the person who is going about it the right way and just had a poor night of sleep. And they'll wake up and they'll look at themselves in the mirror and get on the scale and might possibly see one. pound go up and I look in the mirror and I look fatter. I don't look like I'm getting better. And it's really, this is why I think personal training and coaching is so paramount to this person who has been challenged with this for so many years who they've tried to do this on their own. And they logically know this is the right approach. But then every time they go about doing it,

everything tells them this is wrong. It's not working for me though. Yes. It's because the success is not recognizable in the beginning. This is what good coaches do a good job. First off, this is one of the reasons why I used to, I would tell people. And while we encourage the clients we're working now to not weigh themselves during this period of time, don't weigh yourself. It's just going to mess you up. You're just going to look at the scale. And even though you feel better and you're stronger and you might even have people commenting that you look like you're getting leaner,

you're going to step on that scale. And God forbid it hasn't moved or went up a couple pounds. It's going to throw us off. So don't weigh yourself because the success isn't evident. in the old ways that you used to pay attention. Number two, a good coach helps highlight the ways that the success is evident during this period of time. Because although the scale isn't changing in the first 90 days, you're way stronger. Oh my God, do you feel better?

Your energy is better. You're sleeping better. You're moving better. Like, and you have to bring, this is so crazy to say this. And people listening might be like, what? This is not. This is true all the time. You have to point this out to people because they don't even pay attention to it.

Yeah. Like, I'll bring this up with clients. Like, well, how do you feel right now? Well, man, I'm having one less coffee a day. I feel actually really good. Now that you say it, I feel really good. You ever hear that? My shoulder isn't even bothered me anymore.

I have no pain. My libido's up. Like, yeah, right, you're right. I feel way better. And it's like, it's like almost surprising to them that these things are happening. They weren't really paying attention. But success is just not evident when what you're paying attention to are the old ways that you measure success. And when you first start by building the foundation, you can't even tell a house

is being built yet. It just looks like a bunch of demo. And so this, that's what makes this so difficult. But again, I'm going to just encourage people. The old way that you've done this before didn't work. Why are you going to do it again? What's different about this time? You think you have suddenly this new sense of discipline? Because I'm going to tell you right now, it's probably not true. And I know this because of the data. You're going to fail if you do it the old way. Why not try it the right way? Let's boost the metabolic rate. Build muscle. Get you strong. Get you to perform better. Then later on, we're going to attempt the cut.

Because here's what happens when you cut first. You walk into a gym and you want to lose 60 pounds. And right out the gates, you go to a cut. So what do you do? You go low calories, lots of activity. Here's what your body does. Every time, every time you approach weight loss in that way. Your body tries to slow down its metabolic rate to meet the new energy intake that it's

receiving. So in other words, if I'm eating 1,500 calories a day, and that's a cut for me, and I'm moving a lot, my body is trying really hard. It is using all of its adaptive abilities to try to learn how to burn 15-hurt calories a day. That's what it's trying to do. Because if it doesn't do that, you're going to die eventually.

If 1,500 calories remains a deficit forever, at some point you'll die because you're not, 1,500 calories is not meeting your energy demands. So your body doesn't do that, right? It doesn't just sit there with 3,000 calorie energy demands and 1,500 calorie intake. it learns how to burn 15 hundred calories. One of the ways it does this is it pairs muscle down.

So what you do when you go into a cut first is you're literally saying this to your body, hey, can you get a slower metabolism? I know you got a slow metabolism right now, but I'd like a slower. Let's make this way harder. Here's how we're, let's make this way harder. And that's, I'm going to lose some weight,

but I'm going to make it impossible to maintain later on because I'd like a metabolism that's so slow that if I eat anything other than salad. They don't use any energy. Yeah, or I take a day off of doing cardio. I end up gaining body fat. So I'd love that frustration. Can you please slow my metabolism down?

That's what you're doing when you go into the gym that way. Versus, I'm going to set this up the right way. I'm going to get my metabolic rate to hum so that later on when I do the cut, oh, I got some room. And I'm going to, again, I'm just to encourage people again. We worked with people for decades. And now here at Mind Pump, we have clients that work with our trainers. Routinely, it's okay.

So I'm not like, this is not pine in the sky. Routinely, we see people boosting their metabolic rates by 7,800. calories a day. Okay. That's routinely. In some cases, it's extreme in the other direction. Some cases it's a little less. But routinely, seven to 800 calories a day through this process.

Do you know how much cardio you have to do to burn 700 to 800 calories? Hour plus every day. You got to go for it for an hour or more. And then your body learns how to burn less calories on that as well. And it stops working. How would you like to have a metabolic rate that allows you to burn 800 more calories without a bunch of extra work. And that's why you go into it and you build first.

100%. The crazy part going back to doing it the right way, right? Reverse dieting, building muscle is the psychological challenge because logically it's so obvious to your point about all the other things that were so unaware of. Like if you blindfold someone or you gave the example of, oh, this person's libido got better, their sleep got better, their strength got better, their energy got better, their skin got better, their hair got better, like,

mood got better. Like all these things, they had to drink less caffeine, like all these things that are like, what you tend to see when somebody starts to fuel their body properly. Okay. Give them the protein they need, the healthy fats,

adequate amount of calories for the exercise that they're doing. You typically see almost all those markers. You see everything get better. All those markers move in the positive direction. None of them go down. Right out the gates. Yes. Like almost right away.

But like, because we're so hyper-focused on the mirror and the scale, if those don't give me back the feedback I want, I just totally disregard or don't even pay attention to that, which is crazy because there's so many other markers that signal to you, you're going about this the right way. Like this is, you're doing good. Yes, the mirror isn't showing what you want yet.

Yes, the scale hasn't shown what you want, but all these other things are pointing that we're moving the right direction. Yet people will course correct. They'll go, but these two aren't, showing me what I want. So I'm going to cut the calories now or this isn't working for me. They ignore it so much that their energy is crap. Their strength is crap. They feel that crap. The scale's going down. So I must be doing the right stuff. Which is wild. You know, again, this is connected because it was inspired by that post. There was an Instagram post with a young

woman named Kimberly, which you had encouraged me to kind of respond to. And I, you know, when I watched it, I thought the same thing you did, which is you're going to get a bunch of fitness. So, So for people listening, this woman gets on. She has a lot of weight to lose. And she talks about how difficult it is and how she's working out. And it's so hard. And it sucks. And she's like, and it's tough.

It's really hard. But I saw this clip and I'm like, oh, I guarantee a bunch of fitness people are going to get on and just communicate the wrong stuff. They're just going to talk to the wrong. You got to have discipline. You got to do this. Yeah. And, you know, you know, just communicating the wrong stuff. to people who are in that position.

I can always tell, by the way, somebody talks, if a fitness person speaks to something like that, I can always tell if they have experience training a lot of people or they don't. Oh, yeah. Yeah, because if you have no experience, it shows right away.

You're going to talk, you're going to talk like you're talking to you. And you can be super knowledgeable in science-based, which is what we have in Instagram world, right? We have a lot of smart people that are fresh out of their degrees or they have multiple national certifications, or they follow the other influencers that are very science-based. And so they understand the science. They understand the math of losing 200 pounds.

And they understand how important discipline is. And so this is what they communicate. And yeah, the difference between that person. And that's, I sent it over because I knew that it was going to attract a lot of that. And I knew that you would communicate it so much better. And I wanted to be ahead of it before. Well, what I saw on that video was, yeah, her workout methods weren't the best. Okay, she was doing kind of like what looked like, maybe like group class type fitness. It's activity, so it's not bad. High intensity. But I'm not going to speak to that right out the gates.

Let's talk about the big thing that was more important, which is this poor woman hates it. Yeah, she hates it. She hates it. That's her perception of working out. So that's the thing I'm going to speak to you because I know this is a trainer. We're not even to talk about what you're doing yet. We need to talk about how much you hate this because I don't. care what you do. I don't care how effective it is, even though her workout was not the best.

If I gave her the most effective workout of all time and she hated it, it's still going to fail. Yeah. It's still punishment at that point. That's right. That's right. And we got to speak to that. And a good coach would, and if Kimberly's listening, you work with a good coach, your success rate and go through the roof. You don't work with a good coach. If you work with like a boot camp instructor or somebody's going to throw exercise at you or just yell motivation at you, it's, you're somebody who is just... It'll be temporary. Or even if you have someone good in your corner

who understands the science and spitting all the most knowledgeable stuff out of you, it's more complicated than that. It's not just that. There's other factors to consider. And number one, being your relationship with that exercise.

Totally. You know, we have to fix that first and build that before we... Which is doable. Before we even attempt the best whatever. You know, the best diet, the best... Fill in the blank.

We had to first... first work on that. And that becomes a priority over what is the best workout or diet for you. And to your point, a good coach understands this. That's what a good coach does. Yeah. Totally. Anyway, I want to talk about probiotics. I've been making this prediction now probably for the last year.

Is this sports performance aging? It's going to be, yeah, good probiotics, like high quality proboscide, like seed. We work with seed. They're easily the world's best, like not even close. They're cutting edge, their technology with how they deliver the probiotic. Like, it's the best, right? I believe probiotics in the next five years are going to be the performance enhancing supplement that's recommended. Like, it's going to be like the way, you know, creatine was talked about for athletic performance.

Like you want to lose fat, take a probiotic. You want to build muscle, take a probiotic. You want to recover faster, take a probiotic. Do you think this has to do more with what we're learning about the guys? gut and the cutting edge science or brain relationship or more to do with how terrible the American diet is and how bad we all are that everybody is going to positively benefit for something like that. Which one do you think is the greater factor here?

So let me read. I think, let me see what you're saying because we get where I'm going. Yeah, I do. Let's use creatine as an example, right? Like do we have benefits from creatine because we should be eating five pounds of meat? Or do we get benefits from creatine because nobody's going to eat five pounds of meat, but supplementing extra seems to provide benefits. In other words, are we getting benefits from the probiotics

because we have low quality food? We're deficient in nutrients. We're deficient of fermented foods. Almost everybody has some sort of an intolerance to something. Or would you, no matter what, benefit from the probiotics? Yeah. That's a good question. I don't know.

I don't know what the answer is to that. But the data is compelling, bro. Like, there's meta-analysis on... Because they've been around for a long time, Sal. I mean, I don't know when probiotics first came in the market, but they've been around for a long time. They have. They've been pretty bad in the past, but they were better than nothing. Yeah.

But it's just wild because I pulled up like, bro, there's a lot of data. Like, it's greater weight loss, reduced waist circumference, decreased visceral fat, benefits to exercise performance like VO2 max. It's people gain less fat and a high calorie diet when they take probiotics. Then you have strength gains. you have more muscle, lose more fat than a placebo from probiotics. Wow.

Yeah, dude. So I think people, I think that the... Everything just works better, it seems like. It's this, I think it's going to be the supplement that athletes talk about the most over the next five years.

It's like, take your probiotic. I mean, you still talk... Not just for gut health, but just for all this thing. You talk to, you still talk to some of our pro-bodybuilder buddies and stuff like that. Do you know if it's made its way into that space where that's become part of the... They're their regiment as hell with supplementing and stuff like that. I wonder if that's become – I'm so disconnected from that, like, all the coaches. So I know pro-bodybuilders take probiotics for digestive health because of the way that they feed themselves.

Right. So I know that's popular. But I don't know if they're taking it for, like, muscle gain and fat loss. Yeah, yeah. You know, so I'm not sure. Yeah, it'll be interesting. In the arsenal of things bodybuilders use, I don't think probiotics really count. I mean, listen, though, it doesn't matter.

You know those guys will, even if it's... They'll take everything. Yeah, I don't care if it moves the needle the smallest amount. They're taking it all, doing it all. So it would be interesting to see. I'll have to make some calls and ask around. It's been so long as I talked to some of those guys. But I think it's going to be the next five years.

They're going to just push it for just for fitness. Yeah, yeah. Forget health. Forget skin health. It's like, no, build muscle, burn body fat, probiotic. Let's go. Well, speaking of like performance, stuff like that, did you guys watch the fights?

Did you get a chance to... So we got to see. gave a Seab was in his fight that was great dude he's gonna be a beast he's a monster he is a monster he is gonna be a beast bro to see a world class wrestler go in and throw hands

and win like that makes you and and him being that big John Jones's corner bro yeah I mean I actually want to see him wrestle somebody it's like like I feel like that's like it was in his bag he had that all if he wanted it was just like but I'm gonna go out there and go throw hands

that one guy that's like a YouTuber that's like he will just wrestle anybody and he's really good at it. He wrestled him recently and Gable like Yeah, yeah, yeah Did one of those, I don't know what you call that Like hip, hip toss or whatever? Basically, yeah, like Pinned him.

Justin sent it over, you didn't see it. No, I don't watch it. Oh yeah, he got him good And it's like, I've seen him on a string of just taking everybody out People don't realize Gabriel got him good. The level of athlete and performance

A world-class wrestler is. Gold medal. I mean, you're talking. talking about like you could you can have three regular dudes go against them in wrestling all three of them he would be yeah it's crazy yeah yeah to teach him out a punch wouldn't be you know wouldn't be that hard i guess i mean we we had we had an opportunity to go to that right we had uh oh is that the fight that yeah that was the fight that we had a ticket for yeah so so ketito and iq is sponsored by and they invited us to go to that and so but i tell you what i would have been so pissed if i was there and and

and the Connor fight went down like that. Oh, man. Because you're waiting all night long. Talk about the biggest. As much as all the other fights are great. They're good fights. But you're waiting for Conner's return. And that has, that had to be one of the biggest,

I'm so excited for it to do. Yeah. I can't remember a main event where I was more like that. Can you imagine that would happen, the White House card? Oh, God. Everybody watching. Yeah.

So I guess they at least had the most epic card with that and then follow up. It's kind of hard to follow up something that was like, I wonder, it's funny you say that. Because there was a lot of, I remember when I was watching Shob do some commentary back, this was like earlier the year about when that first got

released at the White House. And there was a lot of talk of like, you've got to have Connor on that car because he's the main job. And they were mad that they didn't bring him in there. I wonder how much Dana knew that this could happen and didn't want to risk that like that. Because, I mean, there was a lot of controversy.

Five years of him. There was a lot of Yeah, five years since you fought. That's a long time. There's a lot of controversy around the way the White House card was built, that it was going to be whack. And it turned out to be one of the greatest cards ever. How old was Connor and who do you fight? Holloway.

He's like 37 or 38, I think. Are they late 30s? Yeah. Yeah, I was talking to my wife about this. People don't realize, well, it's at that level, right? Hallow is like 32 or something. When you're at that level... He's late 302.

He's 35 and 38. When you're at that level, you've been fighting for a while already. there's a big difference when you get to the late 30s and start to get to 40 big difference. Yeah. And your resilience. And so when they bring back old fighters who were popular, it's almost always disappointing.

I'm trying to think of a time it wasn't. So 37, oh, 34 Holloway. But Holloway's been fighting for so long. So 34 years old. He had to get a five-year break either. Yeah. I mean, that's the other part too. And Connor was admitted.

Party in and living up the life. Plus the damage you get from fighting. Like somebody, Somebody who is playing at that high, like, obviously. Wild fighter. Obviously, MMA is up there with the most elite sports, like physically what you need to be at, right? Football and basketball, fighting, all those are all elite sports. Physically, you need to be out.

To be in your late 30s, the amount of discipline, when you look at the people that have done this, like the Tom Brady's, the LeBron James, the Steph Currys, like the amount of money and dedication and discipline those. athletes have put around recovery and taking care of their bodies consistently all through their 20s and 30s to be able to say I've played into my 40s. Games evolved a bit too. Yeah, yeah. You also are looking at, look, football is a good example.

So Brady was a quarterback. Yeah. Okay. The amount of head blows he got is significantly less than other positions, right? As a quarterback, you're not getting blasted like you are a lineman or lineman. Yeah, unless you're Steve Young, but yeah. Yeah. So my point with that is, as a.

fighter, your time span is, if you're a guy that goes in the ring and just throws punches and gets hit. Yeah. Like, that's, that's really taking away your ability to fight long term. Like, I don't necessarily, do you see fighter, do you see football players that last a long time that are like linemen or you don't, right? Because I think they probably have the shortest. Lyman, yeah, not really. Because it's just the constant. You have to. It's like, it's too much. That's an interesting question. I don't know what, uh, what poor linemen don't get a lot of love as it is. I wonder to. But I beg you there's a wide. disparity. There's also, well, again, it's, it's, it's beneficial for a lineman to carry himself

with 350 pounds. And that, that generally speaking, is not ideal for overall health. Yeah, but I, I bet you if you looked up, okay, so the average career for NFL linemen is three to four years. Doug, can you look up, uh, average career for each NFL position? I bet you, oh, we, I mean, yeah, I bet you, yeah, but I mean, yeah, but I, my, my argument, my argument, oh, yeah, for sure, come My argument for that is that they're already in a not optimal healthy body to last that long already. Where a quarterback, a wide receiver, a running back will keep themselves in a more optimal shape just for their position. So that's kind of not fair to compare to alignment. Well, my point with that is like, okay, we'll use two fighting sports.

Boxing and Olympic wrestling, which both at a super high level, especially like pro boxing and the Olympic wrestling. thing is you will see Olympic wrestlers still compete at what I would call older ages, you're talking about late 30s, you often don't see this in boxing. Well, it's a style thing like Mayweather or like where his whole thing. He doesn't get hit. That's right. Yeah, or like, ah, forget his name that there was one like boxer that was like he had like the longest career ever and it was really because of the amount

of hits he took. What does that say there? Dun. Limited. Yeah, so the longest is long snapper 7.5. punters, 6.4, kickers, 5.5, quarterback's 5.4. I guarantee it's ranked by how often they get hit. So, wide receivers are the lowest, it looks like, at 3.5. Limeon at 3.9. Well, 3.5 versus 3.9 is pretty close. No, no. I mean, when you compare a long snapper to a wide receiver, are you like that?

I think, well, I'm going to speculate. They don't do a lot of middle crossing. I'm going to speculate. You guys help me, because especially you, Justin, you play football. linemen, they connect, they're real close to each other. Still brutal, but they're pretty close. Receivers, when they get blasted, it's typically high speed. You're getting hammered. Yeah, and it's a lot of hands, you know, to break out in their patterns.

But, you know, but again, if they do get the ball and then they're going to get, like, crashed by, you know, those blows definitely. I think it's, I think that that stat, there's way too many factors. I think your body type going into it makes a big difference. I think the way you take care of your body, I think what you're arguing, the hits, I think all those are such

I think those are all such huge factors that it's not like a position No but in practice too They'll be like running my argument to this is When we see these examples Tom Brady's LeBron's Curries You see these athletes All the energy and time they spend is on

Yeah and they and they are unbelievably meticulous of it I mean LeBron James has laid out his million dollar Plus budget that he puts towards recovery And there's a I mean they have it down to a of like he plays a game, then he does this, then he does this, and he does this, and it's like, consistent. Yeah, and like, Steph Curry, same thing.

Like, Tom Brady, same thing. Like, they, they had a regiment. What a wonderful lesson for the average person listening right now. Obviously, none of us here or Tom Brady or whatever, but all of us, if you're listening and you're into fitness, like, I want to be able to do this forever. Like, my goal is to be able to do this forever and to do it well for as long as I can. It makes sense that most of my time and energy or much of it should be spent towards recovering adaptation.

Dude, I've 100% have adopted this philosophy in the last five years of my own training. It's just like I, I, if people spend more time on that than on the beat myself up and the work, everybody would get so much better. Even though I don't even wouldn't even, because I'm the do as little as possible to list the most change guy, like, I've been so focused for my most of my lifting career on building muscle, you know, or getting shredded. It's like it's been, or chasing a PR, like it's like where I've done all that, right? I've hit good enough PRs in all my lips.

I've accomplished the low body fat percentage. I've got, you know what I'm saying? Like I've built a ton of muscle in my frame. Like chasing any of those anymore is actually not a good idea. I end up getting hurt and the juice is not worth to squeeze. And so so much of the way I train now is more longevity, recovery, take care of the body. Like, how do I feel today? Like, oh, I'm going to now switch and do this instead.

I was having this conversation with, uh, with a friend of mine that I've been training because we were talking about this. And I said, you know, even high level athletes, even pro athletes have an in-season and off-season. The average person needs the same thing. And for most people, what this probably looks like is 90% of the time, you're cruising. Literally, 90% of your year, if you live a normal life, you got kids, you got a house, you got responsibilities, right?

You're not like, you know, independently, wealthy, don't have to work. You just live in the gym, right? Most people have lives. 90% of your workouts are probably going to look like cruising. Then you get the 10% where you're sprinting. This is when everything's perfect. Everything's going great. You know, for the next four weeks, I'm going to go after, you know, really.

That's right. But most of the time, and I think if you took that approach and you were consistent with it, obviously doesn't mean you're not working out. You're still consistent. I think you'd have a wonderful, you know, training career. I was talking to somebody in my DM yesterday. because I posted my story of my consistent, boring, same meal that I eat or that I prep with every single week.

And they're asking, like, oh, what's the macro breakdown on that? I'm like, I have no idea. And they're like, what do you mean? You have no idea. I said, I haven't tracked a macro like that in a very long time. And they're asking, so is that because you've, you've, like, figured out your, are you happy with where your body is? I said, well, I probably fluctuate between 12 and 15 percent throughout the whole year.

Now, and I hit the edges occasionally. I may allow myself to push up to 17, 18. That's normally my like, oh, I need to get my shit together. You know what I'm saying? I've been enjoying the whiskey and the ice cream or something too much or missing the gym too many times in a row. Like, that's that edge, right? And then I have the other edge of like you said, like, you know what? I got four or five weeks.

Katrina and I are getting ready for Cabo. I'm going to dial it in. I'm actually going to cut back on some things that I know right away. I'm not counting. I'm just like, I know that ice cream, a big bowl. Ice cream. That doesn't really feed you. Yeah, yeah, 900 extra calories.

I could easily just say, I'm not going to do that for a while. Are you really doing 900 calories? Oh, bro, way more than that. Oh, bro. That sounds like being like conservative right there. I'm not eating any ice cream right now, but when I was, uh, that, I mean, I, I, I'm down 15 pounds in the last, uh, I was, I, in my, yeah, in my opinion, I was on the edge of that.

that I was probably 15 to 17% on the upper edge. So I cut out those things really quick. Yeah. I limit, minimize. Still will have a drink here. in there. I still allow it in there, but it's not as much as it was before, and that'll bring me right right back to that range. But to your point, that's what it kind of looks like, is this ebb and flow. I'm not really focused that hard on it. And getting in the gym at least between two and four, four is a

great week. Two's a slow week of training and kind of hovers in that range. It keeps me there. And I can easily manage that and then have the opportunity to sprint to do that. And what sprinting looks like is just not missing the gym, not having those things. And it pulls me right back down to that like 11% range for a while. That's great. That's great. I'm going to change subject because I saw this. There's this interesting dating app that is exploding in popularity.

And I'd love your guys' opinions on what you think is happening. I thought they were dying like that. Well, so let me tell you about this new one. So this new dating app that's getting really popular. And here's the difference. So typical dating app is, you know, you swathing. swipe right, swipe left, and the person tells you the interested, you decide if you're interested or not, right? There's a new app called Ditto that is now, like, exploding all over college campuses.

Here's how it works. Ditto. Here's how it works. Students complete a survey that allows the platform's AI to determine their matches. New pairings are generated every Wednesday, and it gives match students the chance to choose a time that works for both. Interesting. So here's why I think this is working. I think the dating apps gave people way too many choices.

And I think we just want people that. My wife speculated. She thinks that what's going to get real popular moving forward is what we used to do back in the day, which is friends would try to connect you with people. Oh, I don't agree with that at all. I think that's a really good. So trying to find a TV show, dude. It's impossible.

It's crazy. When we were, I was telling my kids this. Dude, it's frustrating. I was talking with them in the car, and we were watching the World Cup. and commercials come on. First off, my kids love commercials. I'm like, this is weird. Your kids love commercials?

Oh, yay, commercial. It's like a new treat. It's like a new treat. It's so weird. And I'm like, you know what commercials are? It was the original reels. It was like little short, you know, reels or whatever.

So my kids, so I was talking to about, like, why are we watching commercials now? Like, we have to. What do you mean we have to? I'm like, so I was telling him about how TV was when I was a kid. And I was like, you know, when I was a kid. Pop, I didn't pay for the premium. Well, no, World Cup you have to watch.

Back in. Well, I was telling them, I was like, when, wait. If you have YouTube premium, you didn't have to watch commercials. Really? On the World Cup? Is that what happened? I paid for something. What happened?

Those are tears? Yeah, there's tears, dog. My bad. So I was talking to them, and I'm like, when I was really little, before we had satellite TV, because that was the next, or cable, right? That was the next, that was a big thing. I'm like, I had three channels to choose from. And I said, and it's like, well, what would you watch?

I said, cartoons. When would you watch? I said, Saturday morning, I had to wake up. And so I was explaining to them. And they're like, well, were you bored because there was nothing to watch? I'm like, you know what's funny? No. I said the choices were kind of made for me.

Yeah. And if I'm scrolling through the 10 channels that I have and a movie's on halfway through, cool, we're going to watch Predator halfway through. Yeah. And I think that so many choices, it just peril. So it paralyzes us. Do you remember when you guys first started buying video cassettes? I do.

Yeah. Like my buddies and I got into buying our own video cassettes when we were in high school. So we don't have a lot of disposal income. So being able to do a full. to $20 video cassette, which is about what they were back then, was a lot of money, especially the dollar back then, right? That's like $1,000. Yeah, yeah, probably a full days of work.

Yeah, there's a full days of work. Yeah, yeah. So I remember, I mean, over my senior year, I think I collected 13 video cassettes, you know, and I must have watched those same. All the time. All the time. Over and over, I could picture it up. I had it up on this, like, bookshelf thing, all of them.

And it was like, what am I watching tonight? You know, it was just like, it was, I rotated between 13. for like probably four years. Yeah, dude. So I think these dating app is popular because kids are so sick and tired of like having a, you're just, you know what?

You just, I have another theory on that. I think, and you know this because I know we've all watched this show. Blind dates have been like, become like super popular. And there is something about it that I, I mean,

of all the, the bad parts of it, the good part about it is it forces these people to really get to know them, each other, probably more than the average kid gets to know the person they're about to date. Like up until, I don't know, a few years ago,

it's just swipe, look at a picture. Oh, I like. I mean, maybe you look at a little bit of their profile, but it's like you're, it's all visual. Yeah. It's all visual. Or you put in super unrealistic like filters.

Yeah. Like he's got to be over six foot. He's got to make over six figure. You just narrowed it down to like 5% of them. 2% of every guy, you know. It's so funny. Yeah. So I think that allowing, filling out a survey,

which is I'm sure you're answering a bunch of questions about, things you like, things you're into, using AI to match that has probably nothing to do much or very little with the visual side. And it's like these are the things that your core values. And it's giving it to you. Yeah. And it's doing the work for you. Yeah, yeah. So I do think that they're, that's better

than what was out there. Well, when you get challenged, it's real. It's like, we're just so spoon-fed, our own bias for everything. And so that's it. Like, I'll just look and see, oh, you know, I like this because of these traits and all these things. but like you don't the thing is like people don't take a chance anymore to find out what they don't like like they didn't think they'd like that but now they like it oh for sure because it's like nobody's challenging any of their ideas their thoughts like their experiences because it's like you can pretty much pre prescribe everything now so that's why that's why this app will also fail to your point and why we have to just get back to going old school old school and figuring that out because there's so much value in working through that conversation. Oh, you, oh, you... Bro, I just read a...

Oh, you're Republican? I'm Democrat. Oh, like, you know what I'm saying? Like, there's so much value in how that plays out. I got a study that just came out. And I think this is the accurate number. A six-foot man who makes $60,000 a year, a guy who's 5'8 would have to make $174,000 to be as attractive to a woman.

You saw this? Yes. So the, so he would have to, a guy who's 5-8, was either 5-7 or 5-8 would have to make $174,000 to be considered as attractive as a dude that's six-foot who makes $60 grand. Now, here's the thing. I get that on paper. I get that.

Fine, that's fine. Man have their preferences, women have their preference. I get it. But here's a thing. A woman could meet a guy who's 5-8, who's making $60,000. But she meets him, and he's got all the characteristics of somebody that's like, man, he's a go-getter. He's got purpose.

I see his potential. You're not going to know that because you're just swiping because he doesn't. make the amount of money that you think he needs to make route the gates. So you miss out on this potential relationship. Yeah. Because we're not meeting up with each other. You know where people are meeting up, by the way, where the big social area is now is gyms. Oh, yeah.

Have you guys seen that? Yeah, yeah. Bar, like all the- I've seen those stats. It's pretty crazy. All the traditional places that people used to meet up and hang out are declining in attendance. But gyms are going up. That makes me think of this she brand.

This guy was coming over and it's like totally like platform gives you like three inches or something. And it like blends it. Yeah, dude, they try and make it look like athletic shoes. They give you like this much left for these little short dudes. Like push-up bra, dude. Look it out for them short kids. Oh, man, dude. You don't want to get caught in those, you know, you know what I'm saying?

Just like the stuff in the bra, you don't want to get caught with it. He's like, I guess it kind of works. But it's so soft. It's for a one and done, maybe. By then it's too late. Shoes are off. She's like, why are you keeping your shoes on? Yeah, it's like the last thing you take off

Shorts I'm gonna get you suck uh what is it I'm gonna get you suck uh What the movie is that where that like uh the hooker starts taking her like wig off And then her earrings oh what's that what movie is that? The guy's like ooh what I don't remember that I think it's I'm gonna get you suck it's so funny though old movie dude like literally like looks normal like all done up and then takes like all the makeup and everything Oh dude I got it's a Grimland. I've found

somebody I think who recommends movies worse than some of you guys. I feel like I was talking. How do you tell a story and insult us? Yeah, I like that. I got a story shit sandwich. There's somebody who gives worse movie recommendations. Our buddy Jason, dude. The last couple times we've hung out, he's like recommended some

movies and I've been like, no, I haven't seen that one. Now I haven't seen that. And then the last time we were hanging out, he tells me to watch a citizen Oh, vigilante. Citizen of vigilante. Did you see the preview for this? No, I did not.

Okay, yeah. The name alone gives it away. Yeah, yeah. So I'm like, and I'm watching... Is he one of those guys that just likes action? Yes. Oh, that's like my dad. My dad always recommends...

My brother-in-law and him, like... If there's tons of actions... Any Tom Clancy... Yeah, my dad's... And it like, it doesn't have to have any sort of depth or anything... Yeah, that's my dad. Oh, just if it's action-packed, guns, do this thing.

My dad's always recommended movies. Sovato. It's a good movie. It's a lot of action. Okay. Yeah. Cisoo. I haven't, I hadn't taken any of, uh, that was actually at least good.

That was good. I did like, I did like crazy action. I haven't watched the second one. You know, it was good too. Was it? I've been wanting, because you know, Katrina wouldn't watch it because it's a little too graphic, but I like the first one.

I was late to the party. Yeah, yeah. But back to this one. And I'm going to ruin it because it's a terrible movie anyways. What's the rod tomatoes on it, Doug? Oh, let me see. Six percent. Oh, God.

That sucks. Hey, dude. It was. So I'm going to ruin it. I don't care because it's a bad movie. You shouldn't go watch it. And my buddy's telling me how great it is. Like I have to watch it.

And I can tell by the way it's even the opening up and the acting stuff of that. And I'm looking at Katrina. I'm just like, yeah, is this going to get better? What's this going to be like? And where I couldn't finish it. I turned it off is there's a scene.

And it's like building up to it. So it's like building up to the scene. And they're giving you like hints that the scene is coming. And it's literally this, you know, citizen vigilante guy who's like, you know, killing all the bad guys by himself. And, you know, the government is, you know, coming after him. And they send in, like, two tanks to his house, right?

And he's bunkering down in his house. And he's got this- So dangerous that is in tanks. Bro, tanks with, I think, 40 or 50 soldiers, right? For one dude. Yeah, for one dude to his house, right? And he bunkers down in a bedroom that has a bulletproof steel box that he's in with like two AK-47s.

In his house. In his house. And he allows them all to come in. And they all, and by the way, it's like a bedroom, right? And so, like, one soldier doesn't just walk in, like, ten of them all walk in it. And there's just this big box with two guns pointing out of it. And he, and he, before he shoots him, he, you know, is polite. And, hey, you should leave or all of something.

I don't want to kill you. Yes. And he literally kills the first 10 that are in there. And they just keep sitting the soldiers in. And he's just, and it's all graphic. You know, heads are exploding. They would just throw a bomb in there. Bro, it was, or roll.

Because the guns are on these things. Yeah. And so he's only, he's like mowing everybody down from chest up. You know what I'm saying? Like, not one of the, not one of these 40 soldiers thought they could crawl. Like, crawl. Or going through the back or something. Or stop coming in.

You know what I'm saying? Like, oh, it's just smoke bomb him out. I thought, I can't, I haven't talked to Jason yet. I'm like, I can't wait to tell Jason. I'll never take a movie. So. 80s action movies were a lot like that, right? Like one dude is walking.

I have a 80s movie. Where Arnold's walking in. Everybody's missing. But, you know, they're not trying to be serious. You can tell. But there was one movie where one guy took out a lot of people, and it was, in my opinion, somewhat realistic. First Blood.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Rambo got stupid. Let's be honest. Rambo got really crazy. But First Blood was pretty good. That's the very first one, right? The very first one, I mean, it was pretty good, dude. It was a good movie.

It's also, to give the 80s crazy. action, some credit too. It's like, first of all, Sylvester Stallone backed in was just like to see a body that looked like that. And he plays the character

of a ranger. So he's like the ultimate badass. Green Beret. Or Green Beret. Ultimate badass. Yeah, sorry. You gotta get it right. Yeah.

How dare you. Like the ultimate like military badass, right? You know what I'm saying? And so, and then he does take out guys one at a time. He does. If you remember First Blood, he's,

he's a Vietnam vet, PTSD. Horrible stuff happened. He's just trying to live his life, dude. Yeah. And he gets harassed by it. It's a bunch of, it's a bunch of, it's like small town cops. Yeah.

And they go after him in the woods, which he could, he could live in the woods. That's why he had like, like, like, arrows that explode. No, that's Rambo. No, this is the one where he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, in a cave. He's like eating wild boar. Yeah, he's getting him with knives. He's like hiding in the mud and he like, that's right. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And he sets up boobby, like, it's realistic. Yeah. I know, I agree with you. Yeah, no, I ended up watching, like, it was just for nostalgia's sake. I thought, like, oh, maybe this movie holds up, you know, like, never-ending story. Those kind of, like, you're like, oh, I have some childhood memories.

Like, so if you guys ever watch, like, little monsters? Oh, is it bad now? Do you remember that? Oh, dude, it's terrible. Didn't we just talk about that? So, no. No, we talked about a different one. I didn't even put this together, but I realized what it is.

Like, so me and Courtney start watching it. Fred Savage is in it. Oh, yes. You know? And then, so the guy, too, did Bobby's World and he's on, what's that? Like, America's Got Talent. Like, he's one of the main hosts for that. Anyways, he's, he's, like, comes out from under his bed.

He's a monster. Yeah, he's a monster. He comes out from the bed. And the whole premise is basically like, you know, he pulls him in, he traps him, and he's the first guy to trap him. And then, like, ends up going to see this underground world. A monster world. I can barely remember that movie.

But the whole thing, I realize what it was. The whole thing is, like, it was. I'm like, this had to be right after Beetle Juice. Yeah. And I'm like, yes. And I look it up. And of course, they tried to make it just like beetle juice, but like for like kids and more like family kind of oriented. Oh, I totally remember this now.

But dude, he was so obnoxious. Like the most like overacting crazy like like like it wasn't even like funny. And in the whole thing was like ruined dude. I swear. Like it was like he was trying so hard to be beetle juice. I totally remember. I remember. I remember that.

to watch that all the time. Just save yourself. We're all eight, nine years old right here. Yeah. Yeah, no, this is, yeah. It didn't hold up. I was kind of, I thought it was good. I was like, oh, this is a movie.

We watched, Max and I watched him, I introduced him to the original, uh, uh, uh, Willie Wonka. And so that was really good. There's this terrifying scene in there for little kids. Let's see. When they're going through the tunnel. Oh, it's, it's not as terrifying as you think it is. Yeah, yeah.

Well, he's older than. Where it's all the, yeah, it's all the, it's like all psychedelic. Yeah, yeah. It's so. They always had those psychedelic. It's so low budget that it's not that scary. Yeah, yeah. It's designed to be like the scariest part of that.

Did I tell you guys years ago, my older kids, when they were younger, I thought, oh, Gremlins, I remember that being a fun family movie. It is not a fun family movie. That is a violent, scary-ass movie. Oh, no, I remember being a little scared watching that as kids. That is a scary-ass movie. Yeah, yeah. You know, they throw them in the microwave.

Did you watch that with your kids? When they were younger, my older ones. I made a lot of mistakes. I made a lot of mistakes as a young dad. Yeah, I got to ease back. He's like, that's where we're at, we're in Waka. I can't get him to watch. One time I watched a movie with my oldest when he was little.

I thought it would be cool. And a scene comes up and the poor kid frozen looked away. And I knew I traumatized him. I was like, oh, no, I just traumatized my kid. It's a movie that was not. Max is so cute when we were, so we had the fight. We were outside and barbecued and we had the fights and stuff and all the TVs going and stuff. And during one of the ads, there was like an ad for like a movie.

and it was like a scary movie. And he's like so trained to not do that that he's like and he was walking towards the TV and the barbecue and so like that and then he just put his head down and Jason and Daniel were like what's wrong with Max? And Katrina's this like oh he's looking away. He's looking away. I's like yeah and they're like oh my God

she goes like I couldn't figure out what he was doing because also I don't know where he's like he's like walking and doing this at the same time but he's like trained himself if he sees something he knows right away like you guys remember as kids because we watched VHS right so when our parents rented a movie it was on VHS. So if a quote unquote dirty part came up

where you can see boobies, they wouldn't like, okay, guys, leave the room. We just fast forward. You just watch the boobies and fat. Two lines. That's it.

You just watch the boobs in three times speed. Oh, I've tried that move a few times. Yeah, you can't, you can't do that. You're always late. Oh, he's just, oh, oh, every time.

When it gets so mad at me, I'm like, I'm sorry. I forgot about this part. Yeah. Boots. Yeah. I got to tell you, you know what I've been drinking a lot of lately is the Kion essential aminos.

Yeah, yeah. Because of jiu-jitsu, man, it makes a difference. And I eat a lot of protein. Yeah, yeah. Makes a difference. Are you doing while? Do you mix it with the water while you're? So while, but also throughout the day.

Because here's what I'm noticing. And I was speaking to this on the series that I record with Dylan. One thing that I hurt in areas where the muscle attachments are. Yeah. because, you know, I'm strong, but my body is not used to being, to having exert strength in those positions or at that speed. And so what's happening is, it's like my elbows hurt because my forearm flexors are tight at the insertions.

So it hurts. Like, I couldn't even lift the other day because bench pressing hurts so bad because of that. Yeah, you require a lot more force now. It's just my hip, although that feels a little better. And it's not that it's injured. It's just I'm not, my body is not used to being. It's pliable.

Pulled and strain in this way. But the essential aminos. By the way, I have the, check this out. So they put the, here's the thing, guys. You buy essential amino acids, nine out of ten times. It's not going to tell you how much lucene, isolucine. It's not going to tell you the amino acids that are in there. It's just going to say.

Yes, they can save money. We looked at this up one time, how much money they save. It's just going to save three grams of essential amino acids. You want a high amount of lucine in your essential amino acids. That's what does the recovery and build muscle. otherwise it doesn't do very much. The leucine in one packet of their aminos, 2,000 milligrams.

2,000 milligrams. Isolucine, 550, valine, 500. But lucine's at 2,000. And that's what you want. You want really, really high lucing content in your essential amino acids. And they list it. They break it down.

So that's how you know. The best. When you got the best one. Healthy meats delicious. Taste like the soda you grew up sipping. Olipop has the. added benefit, by the way, of gut health support. I really recommend these to all the clients that we have here at Mind Pump.

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This tastes like the cream soda I had as a kid. I have another one over here. classic root beer. It tastes like root beer. This one's 35 calories. If your goal is fitness and health, you want to burn body fat, you like to taste of soda.

You don't want a punch of calories, a bunch of sugar, and you want stuff that's good for your gut because there's gut health compounds in here as well. You got to go with Olipop and check it out. You can get a free can of OliPop. Here's what you do. Go to drinkollipop.com.

Buy any two cans of OliPop in the store, and they'll pay you back for one. It works on any single cans of any flavor at any retailer. So again, it's drinkollipop.com slash mind pump by any two cans of lipop in the store, and they'll pay you back for one of them. Go check it out. Our first caller is Riley from Mississippi. Hi, Riley.

How you doing, Riley? Morning. Great. How are you guys? Good. How can we help you? Well, first of all, thank you guys for so much that you do. I've been listening since I was back in high school, and I started lifting in 2016.

I had no idea I was doing, so you guys have helped a lot. It's really cool to finally talk to you. But a little background for my question, promise I won't take too long. I am a personal trainer. I went and got my degree in exercise science, and I'm currently back in school to do a nursing degree. So I'm really interested in lifestyle medicine, changing the way we look at chronic disease. I've been athletic my whole life, and I recently, in January, ruptured my Achilles playing basketball. going through that rehab made me look at the way I train patients and clients differently. So it made me really want to dive into like evidence-based practice and focus on how I can help people who may have multiple comorbidities or maybe postpartum, maybe going through an injury like me

and returning back to exercise when I've never had an athletic injury like that. It was a big change for me. So my question for you guys is what resources do you rely on? to stay current with evidence-based practices when working with complex clients, maybe those with multiple comorbidities or just a chronic disease such as, you know, C-O-P-D or just anything, assuming they've been cleared with the doctor to train with you. And how do you balance that in your coaching experience? Are you still working in the gym right now?

Right now, because of my lifestyle. So we're military and we move all the time. I just provide training. So I do a lot of virtual training and then a little bit of. in person with more so friends, but I'm currently working just as a barista to paper nursing school. So I do a little bit of everything, but also the training online is my main platform right now. Yeah, so your question, I love your question. It's funny.

I just had this conversation, similar conversation yesterday with a friend of mine who's a psychiatrist. And we were talking about, you know, quote unquote experts on social media and how they communicate and how, you know, when we're listening. to like a, let's say a fitness or health influencer, we can pretty quickly tell if that person has a lot of experience working with people or if they don't. And it's not necessarily because they do or don't have the right information. There's a lot of really good science-based people on media who communicate fitness and communicate the data, but they've never trained anybody or they haven't for a long period of time. And you can hear it in how they communicate. So the example I actually used last night was Brett Contreras. He's known for building glutes. He's also

a science guy. He can quote the data, understand studies, has conducted some himself. But when he communicates, you can tell he's trained a lot of people. Thousands, you can tell. You could tell he's done this for decades. Okay. And so the reason why I'm communicating this to you is there's tons of resources for information. Medical journals, studies. You can even go on in forums, medical forums where you're going to run to a lot of medical students where they're discussing the latest studies and the latest science on how to treat, you know, comorbidities or different chronic conditions. But the best thing that I think, or the best way you could get yourself good, honestly, is to work as an apprentice in some way, shape, or form with somebody who's very

experienced. Because the difference between somebody who does a phenomenal job, and everybody else isn't necessarily that they have better data or better information. It's that they know how to work with people. And they do a better job of that. And so for someone like you, and I'm just making a judgment based off of what you told me, sounds like you like to learn. I don't think learning is an issue for you. I don't think seeking information is an issue for you.

It sounds like something you really enjoy doing. I don't think you're ever going to be short on knowledge. but experience is where you're going to notice where you're going to have some deficits. And so the fastest way to get that besides going out there and doing it is you work for somebody or under somebody who has. And even if you do it for free for a while and consider it the most valuable education you'll ever get that you're not paying for. So you can literally find somebody in a field you're interested in. you can approach them and literally say, I'm a student. I want to get really good.

I want to learn from you and I'll work for free. I just want to be around you to watch how you engage with patients, how you work with patients. And if I can ask the occasional question, that's a plus. And what you'll get out of that, like six months to a year of that, oh my gosh, you'll come out so much better. So that's the absolute best thing you could possibly do in my very strong opinion. Another hack, although I don't think anything's better than what Sal said.

Nothing will trump that. I think that's the best. But since you're online and virtual most of the time and you're not in like a place and that may be difficult to go intern with somebody, you know, 20, 30 hours a week with everything else you have on your plate, the very bare minimum, I would definitely join a community like our school group, like with our trainers, where you have other like-minded professionals that are out there doing the work and coaching people where you're sharing stuff. Like, hey, has anyone trained someone who's diabetic?

Oh, has someone trained anybody who just blew their Achilles? Like, and so you have the other like-minded coaches that you know are under our umbrella. So their philosophy is probably going to be very aligned or learning from a lot of us and what we teach and gone through our certification. And then sharing their knowledge and what they're. And so a lot of our school group is that is trainers. Hey, I've got this new. Build yourself a big network. Yeah, I got a client.

I've never trained someone who's got gout. What do you guys do in the situation? and then you'll see three, four, you know, more experienced trainers chime in and be like, oh, do this. And so definitely be a part of a community like that. I mean, that's something that you can virtually do at home and be learning as you go. I think that that's far better than just going deep on the science-based studies and all. Because although that stuff is important to understand and know, you can have all the answers, but then you can have five clients with the same problem and you're going to approach it five different ways.

Right. Because of the individual. Yeah. And I think, you know, to echo both of them, like, I think what's helped me kind of accelerate my knowledge base is to surround myself with people of other different professions that are, you know, similar and synergistic in a sense. So, like, physical therapists, chiropractors, like, just really solid individuals in the area that I knew I could, you know, send clients to, but also I would meet with and we discuss. and I would get a lot of like really important feedback and application to then kind of work into what I was doing. So just, you know, surrounding yourself with like really good professionals. And Riley, just again, just to kind of hammer this home, because you're getting into the medical field. And medicine does a phenomenal job. Western medicine does a phenomenal job of diving very deep and a very narrow scope.

Okay. But they don't do a good job of connecting the dots with other parts of the body or the mind. And that's just because you only have so much time. Like, we're going to go to school for 50 years, like it's possible to do all of that. But what happens is we treat the mind as if it's separate from the body. And we treat the person as if they're different from their physiology. In other words, there's people with chronic pain and their chronic pain goes away from talk therapy or from an SSRI. Like, what's going on here? You know, or you'll get somebody who, you know, I've had clients where we would do belly breathing and they'd have an emotional release.

So you can't separate all that. And so the reason why I said work with someone who's experienced is because what you figure out after years of working with people is you start to learn how that all works together. A lot of it's human psychologists. And how you work with the individual based off of how they present themselves and the directions that you can go. And so nothing, I'm going to tell you right now, if you could find yourself somebody that is really experienced, that you could just work under for free for a way.

while, that'll that'll trump all the education that you can get from books and from data by far. You'll come out of that and you'll be like, oh my gosh, I learned so much. Yeah, I have definitely felt like it's hard to plug into those types of networks. My college town, I worked at a gym and unfortunately the owner kind of chased off every personal trainer that came. Yeah, I won't go too much into what he was, he was a whole mess. But so we would often, the trainers who had that experience or maybe going to physical therapy school after their degree and would have much more knowledge and experience with these patients that may have special considerations, they would be gone and chased off. And then moving every two to four years doesn't really help either.

So I think definitely plugging into the schoolhouse and just learning that knowledge. And I've learned a little bit more in my clinical rotation, too, of nursing school just to see the way that Western medicine. kind of deals with things versus the way that exercise science teaches us to deal with things. And the gap that I would like to bridge having my knowledge, like going forward, because I hate that everybody's just prescribed a drug. And then we just don't do anything physically or nutritionally to make them better. But yeah, definitely plugging in those sources would help. Yeah. But again, just the attitude around it is like you invest a lot of time and money in education. And so the energy that you put into that when you're ready, you would put into

to apprenticeship. And so you would say, okay, for the next year, this is what my education is going to look like. And then you would search and you would court. You would court them. You would call them. You'd show up at their office. And you would say, I'm here.

I'll do this for free. I just want to learn. And I bet you somebody will bite. And you'll get that experience from working with someone. And again, I can't stress this enough. It will make you better, faster than any other thing you possibly do. Yeah. I love that.

Cool. Oh, Riley. Yeah. Thanks for calling in. Yeah. Hopefully we see you in this school group. Yeah. Yeah.

Thank you. You got it. I was literally just having this conversation with a friend of mine. So she's a psychiatrist and she's very, very smart. She went to Harvard Medical School. Brilliant woman. And we were talking about this and how, you know, they, in psychiatry, it's the mind and they don't consider the body. Yeah.

And she's like, it's crazy. She's like, it's crazy. Now we have data that shows that exercise is such a powerful antidepressant. And she's just like, you know, if you could figure out how to combine the two and work with them. And we had this whole conversation. It's like she can't possibly learn everything that a really good coach would learn because she spent so much time in school or nutrition or whatever. However, could she work with other people? Trade information.

That's right. And develop it and build a network. But nothing will teach. We tell our trainers all the time. Like you want to get really good? Work under a good trainer. That's what happens. Well, I mean, Justin's shared his story many times where when he went to that studio after he left and got to be around 20 other great trainers that had all these, you know, different backgrounds.

It's just an incredible fast track to get good, especially if you're hanging out. It's the most I ever learned by far. Now, granted, this is 15 years ago or more, right, when that was a thing. Like, we do now have cool communities online that's similar to that. And that's why I think in her situation, that makes the most sense as far as easy. Like, that's the bare minimum. Now, I would be still searching because I don't think anything will trump what you said. I think that's the best.

I have no idea what I didn't see what town she's in or if they're, you know, because she could be out in the middle of nowhere. And if she's moving every two years, that could be kind of difficult to do. But she absolutely can join a community where there's other like-minded, you know, successful veteran trainers where they're sharing ideas. And that's a quick way to do that for sure. Our next caller is Jay from Texas. What's up, Jay? How you doing, Jay? What's happening?

Hey, guys. Y'all looking good there. Hey, hey, thanks, man. Thanks, man. How can we help you? It's the filters. Let's try. Well, man, I've been listening to you guys for about a year and a half now, and it's awesome what you guys do, man.

I tune in seriously every single day. And like Monday, I'm kind of fiend in from Sunday and I getting to hear anything. So I listen to you guys when I'm working out, actually, even. So it's pretty cool. Thank you. But I'm reading through my email that I sent you guys, and I wrote a book. So I'm not going to read the email. But I'm going to give you the cliff notes.

Basically, I'm 55 years old. I've had two times in my life where I've lost quite a bit of weight. The first time was my early 30s when I lost 140 pounds. I had gotten to 385. and was, you know, really out of shape, obviously. And then the second time, well, at that time, when I lost the weight, I actually ended up becoming a personal trainer because I really got into the fitness aspect. And so I became a trainer.

I was a trainer for just a few years. And but during that time, I met my wife. So that was a big plus from it. and so she married a guy that was in shape. And then a few years later, I decided I was just kind of done with the whole thing. So I was tired of measuring food. And I had a lot of injuries. My Achilles were pretty jacked up.

So I was dealing with pain all the time. And at that time, I think I had turned about 46, 47 years old. And I was just like, screw it, I'm done. I'm going to be old and fat. And so obviously my wife wasn't super excited about that, but she was pretty good. She kind of rolled with it for a few years. She would encourage me, but she'd never like nag me about it, thank God. She probably figured if she did, I'd never bounce back.

So, but anyways, a couple years ago back in 2024, we had gone to New York City. My wife and I, she's from New York. And I couldn't go up to Statue of Liberty because I was too out of shape. And it really got to me. And so then fast forward to end of July that year, we went on a trip to Mexico. And it was pretty cool. We got to go snorkeling. But when I went to get off the boat, at this time, I was about 360 pounds.

And I wasn't thinking that I typically don't think. just kind of jump. And so that's what I did. I jumped into ocean and I panicked. I got a mouth full of water and it really freaked me out and so much so that I wanted to get back on the catamaran. And my wife was, you know, kind of like, Jake, come on, you know, we're here to see this reef, you know, you can do this. And so she kind of helped me get my wits about me. And I ended up being able to swim out, see the reef, all that kind of good stuff. But that moment it stuck with me and the next day we were back on the beach and I told my wife, I'm like, look, I'm looking like a beach well out here and I'm just sick of it. So I'm tired of holding us back.

So when we get back, I'm going to get in shape. And so I had a doctor's appointment scheduled. I went to the doctor's appointment, got my blood test. It all came back super positively negative. So I was high blood pressure, high cholesterol, fat off the charts. and type 2 diabetes. So I had read a book. A buddy of mine gave me this book about fasting. And I'd fasted before for personal and spiritual reasons, but I never fasted really to lose weight.

And so I read the book and I started doing like 24 hour and 18 hour intermediate fasting combined with keto. So from August to December. I lost about 50 pounds. And December rolled around. I decided, you know what? I want to start working out again. I missed it.

Well, so I started working at home. And I couldn't even do 15 push-ups from my knees without struggling. I mean, it was pathetic. I was in such bad shape. And at January, I joined the rec center and started working out. Anyway, so fast forward. I've kind of done a couple different things over the last year. And I lost, I got down to 265, which was my goal.

That was what was in my mind. So I got down to 265 November of last year, 25. And then I decided, you know what, I want to, I had been listening to you guys and all your talk about the reverse dieting. and at the time, you know, I've been fasting and I'm like, and your guys are talking about how much protein I should be getting. And I'm thinking, good God, man, how am I going to eat all this, you know? And so I thought, you know, the holidays are coming. It's kind of a good time to do a bulk.

So I flipped everything. And I thought, you know what? I'm going to reverse diet. And it was a very dirty, very dirty reverse diet. But it got me up. And then so when January rolled around, I was like, okay. you know, I'm going to get back. So I'd still maintain my workouts five days a week, but my work, my eating totally changed.

So January, it comes around and I said, okay, I'm going to start eating more like whole foods. And not so much focus on trying to trim, lose weight, but just get my calories around 3,400 is what I wanted to be. And this was just based around stuff I keep hearing from you guys, you know. But coming off of intermittent fasting, it's hard to get. from like 1,700 calories to 3,400 calories, you know? So it took time, and thankfully, you know, I had the holidays that helped. But anyway, so for the last several months, that's what I've been doing. And my strength's just been going up, my bench.

Now, I have to use Smith machine because at the rectaltern, that's all they got. But, you know, I've worked up to do an, I work out with 315, you know, three sets of 12. and then I'll do a set of usually like 365, see how many I can get, you know, at the end of that. So going from, you know, 15 pushups on my knees to that, you know, I feel pretty good at 55. But now I really just want to trim down because I was able to get my Dexter scan. And it came back at 29% body fat, which I'm not too excited about. I want to be, I knew I wasn't 15% anywhere close. But I just feel like, man, that's a lot, 30%.

So I'm trying to get down to 15. My question to you guys, a whole reason I emailed you guys is, and I didn't have this information before the Dexter skin. But where should I be calories a day? My resting metabolic rate is 2,200 calories according to the Dexas skin. And, yeah, so there we go. That's why I'm trying to figure out what I need to do to cut. How tall are you, Jay? I'm 6-4.

Okay, I just say, I figured you were tall. You're a big dude. Yeah, you're a big dude. I definitely wouldn't. I think where you're at, what you're doing is right. I think you just need to stay the course. You finally course corrected the right way and you're building strength and you're feeding your body, what you need to. Are you hovering around 3,400 calories right now? Is that about where you're at?

That's where I was at. Actually, two weeks ago, well, actually, a week and a half ago, after July 4th, I thought, you know what, I'm going to cut. because I didn't think I'd be talking against for another like three weeks. So I was like, man, I just can't wait. So anyways, I'm down to like 2,800 calories a day right now. Yeah, I'd prefer you up. I'd prefer you up and just stay in the course that way. And your body your body comp change, you will lean out.

Okay. Your size, the amount of muscle, what's your benching? I know you're a strong dude. So you've probably got some good muscle on you. Eat in less than 3,000 calories. Unless you're really sedentary, do you sit all day? or do you move? What are your steps at? Man, I'm in my truck a lot.

So, I mean, not like a trucker. Like, just a, I go to jobs. So I'm only getting maybe 6,000 steps a day. That's not terrible. That's not terrible. That's better to sell. Jay, you might, you mind if I get a little deeper if I ask you some more questions? Yeah, go for me, man.

So there's a root issue here that I think is important that we address because it can be hard to get out of this cycle that you're kind of in, which looks like this. It looks like you're either all in or you're all out. Yeah. And so, and the challenge with that is, at some point, you're going to be all out again. It's just what's going to happen. So we've got to figure out a way to make this sustainable and consistent. Now, I would surmise that someone like you probably pretty disciplined the rest of your life. And so what you probably do is just try to over, you just try to discipline the hell out of yourself and give yourself a ton of structure when you're on. And then at some point, you're like, this sucks.

So I just want to break. Okay. So we got to do, we got to figure out a way to get you to enjoy the process and not enjoy it because you're doing what you think is right, but rather you love it so much you want to do it and you don't want to stop. Now, what does that look like? It might look like a little less structure. And it might look like a very basic, give yourself some very basic rules. Now, tracking everything, that's a lot to do all the time. There's nothing wrong with it.

But if you have a history of on and off, I don't know if that's necessarily the best approach. You're consistent with your workouts. I think that's great. Five days a week's a lot. I don't think you need to do that much. But if you want to keep going five days a week, go for it. Do what you enjoy. And with the diet, I think if you just stick to whole natural foods and stop worrying about how much you got to eat, how much, I think you're going to be okay.

Where it tends to go off is probably when you go away from. from whole natural foods. Oh, for sure. Yeah. I can, you know, you guys talk about this and it's ridiculous how true it is, but I can pound a bag of chips in five minutes. Everybody's not, you know, and not feel it. Like, it's nothing.

Yeah. It is so much different eating real food. Yeah. Yeah. So what it would look like, Jay, is something like this is when you start to add all these rules, all this structure, it starts to feel a bit tyrannical and a bit controlled. And at some point, especially if you're a guy, that doesn't like to be controlled all the time,

which I can relate. At some point, you want to give it the middle finger and be like, I'm going to do what I want. And so it doesn't look like you go off a little bit. It looks like you just go way off. Like you run in the other direction. I'm stopping my workouts. I'm eating whatever hell I want type of deal.

So what might be easier, Jay, is instead of tracking everything and getting crazy with all that would be to meal prep, because this is going to set you up, okay? Because one of the challenges with eating whole natural food sometimes is if you don't have them around and you're hungry, well, the fastest thing becomes, you know, really hard to resist. So I would just, your structure might just look like this.

Meal prep, eat when I'm hungry, eat whole natural foods. And if I'm hungry, I eat, if I'm not, I don't. And that's it. Only I track is my protein. Like that a thing. A guy your size, if you're eating four meals a day, which you probably should, you probably should have at least four meals a day. You have a nice, a good amount of protein in each one, 55, 60 grams.

You're good, dude. Okay, let me tell you this, because what you just said, I've been lately, and this is just the last like three weeks, I'll have my breakfast and I'm trying to get, you know, 65, 70 grams of protein for my breakfast. I don't, because I'm usually out and kind of on the road, I don't have a lunch because I don't prepare that kind of like a sandwich type of meal and I refuse to eat out. So what I've been doing is I take, it's going to sound ridiculous probably, but I mean, it's literally like my snacks. It's a banana. It's my protein bar. It's protein shake. It's, I make sometimes some protein muffins.

Like, that's what I'm having for lunch. And then I have like a real dinner. So then I'm still getting about 250, 260 grams of protein a day. Is that okay even though it's not? I think that's okay. but it's probably a better approach. Like, can you have dairy? Yeah, yeah, I have tons of yogurt lately.

Well, I was just saying, you could have a cooler with cottage cheese, high-protein yogurts, some nuts, some fruit. That could be lunch. Or you can make a meal, put it in the cooler that you don't mind eating cold, and that's your meal. And I think you should eat two meals

before you get to dinner. So you got a meal, and then you got another meal. And you're going to have to discipline. That's the discipline. The discipline comes, this is how you can apply it. I'm going to eat it this time.

I'm going to eat it this time, and then I'm going to have dinner. And what that's going to do, it's going to prevent those moments when you're without food for a while, you're out and the cravings hit. And you're like, you know what? I'm just going to go for that. Whatever. So it's very basic rules. Whole natural food.

Eat when I'm hungry. But you've got to set yourself up for it by prep. And the reason what Sal's saying I think is really important, especially with you, if you know this about yourself, your on or off, is when you, and the thing I don't like about like the fasting windows like that of not eating for that long is you get really. really hungry. You go from I'm not that hungry to I'm really hungry. And then when you start feeling that way, it makes it even more difficult to make the healthy choice versus I'm not even that crazy hungry, but I know it's about that time. I need to eat another meal. I'm going to eat that meal. And it keeps you always kind of satisfied where if you allow that six, eight hour window sometimes, you're just like ravenous. Oh my God, I'm so hungry. And then you're like, oh, and I got to go eat that

boring ass meal or I could drive through that place and go get that thing. And so it just makes it Yeah, so if you took like a cooler with two meals in it, so you get your breakfast at home, you got two meals you eat at work that are, that you don't mind eating cold and then dinner. And if you're just consistent with that and you're like, oh, I'm still hungry. All right, I'll have another little bit of what I had for dinner. I'm just going to stick to the whole natural. I think if you just followed that and you kept working out, Jay, you're going to get body comp change over time. Yeah.

You're going to get there over time. Yeah. If you do the aggressive cut, the aggressive bulk, the, you're just going to fall into the old pattern of the arm off, You're already pretty, for your size, you're already plenty low enough. Like the hovering around the 3,000, 3,400 for 6.4.250 dude is, that's, that's plenty low enough calorie. And 6,000 steps is not a lot, but it's not low. Okay. So let me ask this. I mean, I'd like to be in my, okay, this sounds, this is just me being, I guess, the ego or whatever. I don't know. I've never seen my apps, right?

I grew up kind of a pudgy kid, played sports, all that, but I never, you know, had apps. So I'd like to see some abs. And I've been lifting them, you know, doing weights with them based on your guys' recommendations. But I think probably 15%, maybe I could see something. You might, but let me tell you two things about this. Okay. The first one is the most important, okay? It's very important that you understand this.

And I trust me, abs are so overrated. seeing your abs is so nothing changes it doesn't change your life in any meaningful way at all it makes that it doesn't you're not be able to live in that it does it doesn't do anything for you you're like what's going to happen nothing nothing happens so but you've seen your abs before right yeah yeah that's how I know like I've never seen my abs yeah so another way to say this too though is uh and you absolutely can't but focusing on that is going to it's going to shift you into the wrong mindset and make bad choices nutritionally. That's right, dude. And right now,

if we're trying to build them so you can see them at high because I know you listen to show, we talk about how you build your abs. You can see them at higher body temperature. You need to feed your body. You're not going to build abs with low calorie. If you're in a huge deficit, you can do all the ab work you want. They're not going to build. So you need to be fueling the body enough nutrients that you can actually build muscle.

Abs are included in that. And so I'll tell you what. Focus on getting them that way. I'll tell you what. If you just ate whole natural foods, ate when you were hungry, meal prepped, kept lifting, and that's it. That's all you did. And you did that for the next year, you would drop, you would be in the teens of body fat percentage. And it wouldn't feel like you were chasing it.

That's just where your body would fall. And it would be, it would be something you would sustain. You would be able to sustain. And I think that's a first good goal is just get down in the teens of body fat percentage through that method before we start talking about looking like washboard ab shit. Okay. That's like, that's the next, that's the next conversation. Yeah.

I mean, and it's not, I don't know. And like I said, it's a silly thought, but it's just... There's nothing wrong. It's just one that's out there, you know? There's nothing wrong with that, but that's the big long-term goal. Right now, it's like, let's get down to the teens, body fat percentage-wise, the right way and healthy. And that's the advice that Sal's giving. I would like to add a little more.

I would want to change your programming. I would like to put you on MAPS Anabolic, and then the other two days that you go to the gym, I want you to walk for an hour. Go get those steps. So I literally want you to follow MAPS and Abaly. the way it's laid out. We'll send that to you. And then I'll, and then still go to the gym five days

because I like the fact that you're in a rhythm and your routine and you like doing that. But the other two days, I want you to walk on a treadmill for an hour or an elliptical. Just low, like steady state cardio.

Not pushing. I don't want you trying to get crazy. Just cruising. Just move. Listen to the podcast. You should be able to talk. You should be able to have a conversation while you're doing the cardio.

So whatever, whatever you, what modality you choose, you should be able to talk. Not like puffing and puffing and puffing while you do. Just cruising for an hour. that on the other two days those follow that with the advice sales given nutritionally and let's

let's talk again in like three four months and see where you're at yep okay yeah man thanks guys that's awesome yes that's awesome you got it dude yeah you one last question and i know and i know i shouldn't focus on a scale number but i am curious because i've never really you know i've been at different weights i've been 245 but i wasn't as muscular as i am now so i just look skinny fat. Is there a scale number that a 6-4 got? It's hard. I don't want to see you lower than probably 250.

Yeah, let's see what happens. 250 is a good weight for a 6-4 dude who could bench press 315. Yeah, let's see where it falls. You're a big guy. So I would, if you were my client, I wouldn't even weigh you. We would just see a year from now being consistent. All right, where's your weight at? I'm like, oh, that's cool.

It seems like this is the way you should be. Honestly, it's stronger. defined in all kinds of places. Honestly, if we do this right, where it's at right now, it should kind of just hover there for a long time. Hover up or down,

five pounds, right around where you're at. You don't want to see major swings north or south right now. If I see big swings north, that means you're probably going over and above the calories, you know, or eating out of bounds too much.

If you go down way too low, you're not feeding yourself enough. We should kind of, if we do what Sal is trying to get you to do, which is this beautiful exchange of, you add five pounds of muscle, you lose five pounds of fat, which means zero movement on the scale.

You had five more pounds of muscle, you lose five more pounds of fat, zero movement on the scale still. But you're going to see the day-to-day fluctuation of like, you know, five pounds north or south. I'm not worried about that, but you should kind of hover around the same. When we're talking two months later from now,

I don't want to see a huge difference in weight on the scale. Shouldn't. Shouldn't see that. Okay. Okay. Cool. All right. You guys are awesome.

All right, Jay. Thank you, man. We'll see you back. Take it easy, brother. Thank you so much. Yeah, it's, I got to say this again. Again, man, abs are so overrated. Everybody aims for them.

I'm going to say this right now. I know. If you're a natural dude and you chase single-digit body fat, you are going to, 100%, you are going to compromise hormone health and athletic performance. Strength. Strength. All that stuff. Now, there are genetic anomalies, and this is what we tend to do. We tend to look at the crazy freaks out there.

But that's not how it works the most times. It's funny. We just watched UFC just happen, right? And you see all these fighters who have crazy fitness and stamina. You take their shirts off. you're like, I think you train. Yeah. You don't got like crazy abs.

You're not all jacked and ripped. No, they need energy. Yeah, dude. It's so overrated across the board. And chasing it oftentimes leads to failure. But if you kind of follow the process, especially a process that you enjoy or learn to enjoy it, your body gets to a place where you look, the result is you look great, but you feel great. You keep getting strong and keep focused on that specifically.

And I swear, your body changes and morphs and you get defined and lines. where you didn't have it before, you have to just keep, you know, trust in the system. Like, it's going to work its way out. Our next caller is Linda from Massachusetts. Hey, how you doing, Linda? Hey, guys. Thanks for having me back. First, I just want to say, your advice is so important, especially for women.

And I am like the living after of everything that you say. So just a quick history, I started lifting weights when I was 17, running when I was 22. And since I've had a balance of both, I'm still exercising to this day. Back then, everything I learned about nutrition was from bodybuilding magazines. And I've, so protein with every meal still do that. And I've kept my muscle mass. I worked out through both my pregnancies in 93 and 96. And as you guys know, as soon as you have a kid, you have less time to work out.

And I've gotten better shape. But I got a little too lean. And I ended up having trouble getting pregnant. When I gained weight, I got pregnant right away. So being too lean does affect your hormones. About 10 years ago, I went through menopause. I knew I wanted to be on HRT, and I was lucky I found a local doctor who would prescribe it. She tested everything, including vitamin D.

And back then they wouldn't even test vitamin D. But it took me about a year to get my body back, and I felt great. But then I started to read after a few years how important having hormones is for your brain, your heart, and your muscle, your joints. So like you guys, I found Karen Martell through a podcast. She got me back on hormones and peptides, and that really helped me with my running. And that was great. About three years ago, I got a Dexas scan. My muscle mass is good.

My fat is good. But the big, big surprise was I have the bones of a 30-year-old. So all the stuff that you say is true. So I'm definitely the living proof of that. But it's been a long time since I was back on. It was in 2023. I just qualified for the Boston Marathon and asked you guys for an off-season program. I ended up doing anabolic, which I liked.

But as I upped my running, I found that 40-plus was all. awesome. I love that program. It was a great compliment to my running. And I just want to make a plug for live coaches. I've had the same running coach for over 20 years. And you can imagine when I went to him and said, I lift weights. He was like, what? But he just went with me. And I said, I only run three days a week. And we had a really successful year because I had a gap year, but until I could do Boston because it was so late in the year that I qualified. But as you kind of pegged me, the first time I was on, I'm type A. My last race was in November, and then Boston training started in December.

I'm in the Boston area, freezing cold winter, running in the dark, getting up at 4 in the morning, driving it to Boston. But great coach and the day was awesome. And I had a great day and actually qualified again for the next Boston Marathon. But the stress was starting to catch up with me. And I didn't, I wasn't recovering like I normally did, took time off, went to Italy, had a great trip, came back. Still, everything, I had a lot of aches and pains when I started running again. So my husband threw a curveball at me and he said, I think you should do a power lifting competition with me in December. And at this point, it was June. And I had done some

bench press competitions and had success. This was 20 years ago, but I was like, I needed something different mentally because the running just wasn't coming back. So he got us a coach because he said, if I tried to coach, he would get a divorce and we didn't want that to happen. He found a great coach, threw me right into the deep bend four days two up or two lower um i had my hips was still bothering me so he was having trouble squatting but he was really really good but then he told me you need to gain weight and i was like i'm a runner like i never heard that before gain weight so i got a nutrition coach and she reversed dieted me and just like all you guys say three weeks i couldn't gain a pound and i just felt better i looked better i performed better um i still had i still had pain but i was

also adding to the stress bucket. I was selling my house. I decided to do my church Christmas musical and my daughter was getting married. But I got through it. I had an injury right before the competition, but got through it. And I have to tell you guys, it was an awesome experience. As you always say, the community was great. It was fantastic. And I really liked it, but I shut everything down after that. I had stopped running in September just to train for the power lifting competition. I opted out of Boston. I knew there's no way I could do it. And the coach put me on a very good off-season program, getting my hip strong, everything's strong. And then right before my daughter's wedding in March, I went back to my nutrition coach to go on a cut for the dress. And I started

adding some running back in. She wanted me to add some cardio, and I felt great, of course, because I was healing. So I went back to my running coach and said, let me sneak in a few five-ks before I do the power lifting competition again in December. And I did a race, and as you guys probably could predict, no running from September. In May, I barely lost any speed. I felt great, placed in May age group, so all those years of running was still in me. But I got an injury on a training run, and I just stopped running. I said, I got to focus on one thing.

I did my one rep max testing to start the program, but my PT kind of re-aggregated this calf injury that I had, and so I decided to just. focus on healing. And everything is always in God's timing. I was supposed to be on your show at least a couple of months ago. And I would have just asked, oh, what should I do after the power lifting competition in December? But I want to tell you the biggest lesson that I learned from this experience. One was the reverse dieting was awesome, right?

And it was very logical for me. I could see the success and the progress. I had no problem with that. But I think you guys have some version of this lesson in every single podcast you do, your body responds to the signals you send it. And my body was not going to get stronger unless I stopped running, unless I fed it better. And now I'm looking for you to help me with a program that will tell my body it's safe to work out again so that I can heal because I still do want to get better at the three lifts. And I still want to be able to throw on a 5K. But bottom line

is I should be retiring at the end of the year, and I want to be strong enough to do anything me and my husband want to do on our adventures. So I listen to you guys all the time, and this is what you're telling you. Less is more. Listen to your body. So now I'm ready to hear the advice. I'm ready to receive it, I think, at this point. Let's go. All right. So you're going to be okay with less? Yes, yes. And I'm already there. So I just want to get better. I mean, I'm just doing PT exercises. I found a new PT, and that's all I'm doing and walking. That's it. Okay, good. Let's go. MAPS 15 performance. I like math. Maths 15 performance. I'll send you that program. I think it'll be perfect for you. It's symmetry. It's athletically minded.

So you'll get that movement. Symmetry would be another good program to follow that up with. You follow that up because then it leads her right into a five by five at the end of the program. That's right. And that would be absolutely perfect for you. And I think what's, Just to kind of recap on what you said about nutrition, there's really three important things when it comes to nutrition and athletic performance. One is, am I eating enough? Two is, am I eating the right things? And three is, when do I eat these foods? And it's kind of in that order.

And a lot of us ignore the first one, especially athletes who are afraid of gaining weight. And so they look at what I'm eating and the timing, but they don't, they ignore or they misunderstand how much. And so what happened? We just increased their calories and there's people blown away. I can't even believe I feel so good. I'm not gaining all this body fat. I had no idea this was the issue

because I was eating the right foods. I was eating at the right times. It just wasn't eating enough. And so I'm so glad you went through that to kind of get that. It's such a, it's a simple button to hit as a coach whenever I work with someone like you. It's almost like clockwork.

I'll work with someone like you and I look at their food. I'm like, just increase your calories. Yeah, watch what happens. Yeah, and I think, you know, you keep hitting home about, there was somebody that just was on a gentleman that said he had these injuries, he thought it was going to be out, and he followed in symmetry, and he's like a brand new person. And because I started to feel that way, like, is this it? You know, like everybody always said to me, you're getting old, you know, this is going to happen. And I said, you know, if you do the right thing, I don't think that's the case.

And I really have, you know, this whole retirement. I'm in my 60s. And I want to be able to hike or do whatever, you know, kayak and all the things that I haven't really had time for. And I, and being in pain, like, it affected my sleep. And as you, you know, we all know, that that was an issue. And I think there was different sleep issues, which I'm working on. I actually just got my eight sleep. It just got to live it before.

So that's awesome. I actually even have the Oslo's sleep buds. Those are great. but I just know fundamentally, and I am working with, I don't know if you had Dr. Eurth on your show, but she is very forward thinking about peptides and all that. So I always find a group that I can have a communication with and say, here are my issues. So they've been really good. And again, the hormones are making all the difference in the world, but everything is with testing.

And I think part of what I'm a little nervous about is in my notes, I'm living in an RV right now. and we are in, we're in Maine and we're going to South Carolina and Florida and we already know what gyms that have power lifting equipment you know, so we already check that. But, and I'm still going back and forth

about doing a competition, but we might just pick a date and say, okay, let's stop, maybe stop the maps, power lift and say, okay, let's just do the one rep max on this day. And plus if I join a powerlifting gym, they may have like many things that they do themselves or just,

even somebody, and I do want to work with a coach because I really had a lot of trouble with my squats, because my adductors were a mess and my hips were a mess. And I almost was afraid I wouldn't get low enough. So when I got my first white light, I was like, good, you know. I'm just concerned that when I don't have access to equipment, am I going to get weaker? I mean, that's definitely a little bit concerned for me. But you keep stressing that how little volume. And then even hearing someone like Adam who did bodybuilding,

in competitions going, I don't work out like that right now. And, you know, so it almost gives me permission to say, I'm not going to turn into this weak violet if I don't have anything. No, you won't. No, you're not going to. You're, when we train someone like you, you're more likely to push and do too much and hurt yourself and set yourself back than you are to do too little that you're going to lose something.

That's right. So I would never worry about that with someone like you. I'd be constantly probably pulling you back going like, all right, Linda, that's enough. We're good. That's plenty. and so just be thinking like that. But those programs, I think, are perfect. Follow that the way that's laid out,

and that's going to set you up really nice. Yeah, it's been quite the journey. And I know that after I hung up last time, Sal was like, you know, what was it like being in the gyms back then? And definitely seeing the progression of women lifting weights. And the gym that I belong to here in Maine, it's fierce. I mean, these people are,

I don't know where they grow these butts. They're unbelievable, you know? I got my little. Skinner running, running, but it's very, very inspiring because my contemporaries, it's hard to get guys my age to lift weights. My husband just did power lifting competition, and he, like, he squatted 400. Wow. Oh, he's really strong. Wow. And so that's the, he did very well in his, and he got his trophy. He's in his 60s also? He is 59, yeah, we're three years in a time. And he, you know, what he said is, I've always, we met in the gym.

gym, 40 years ago, crazy. We met in the gym. So that's why we've continued to do it. And like, we still eat. We bring our food everywhere we go. And it really makes the difference, especially living in an RV, a little bit different lifestyle. You know, people are, I'm like, okay, got to eat the food. It's all good. It's all good. But being around other people who do this, obviously being married as you have wonderful spouses, it makes a huge difference to to continue on because, like I said, a lot of my friends, even we have a lot of my husband's also done Iron Man's, and I've done triathlons, so I've done everything. But because they didn't do the weight training, they're all crippled. They all, a lot of them can't run anymore. They, you know,

they've had knee replacements. So I don't want to go there. And that's why it was so, like, shocking that it finally was my turn. But I mean, when I, you know, all the stress that I had in my life, it was cumulative. And it was a big life change, especially selling a house, getting a daughter married. It was all that. And I'm not about doing too much. I want to do this forever. So again, you guys, listening to you always continue to talk about listening to your body, don't do too much.

And, you know, Sal, I'm an engineer. So I always love that. The study show. I mean, not that I need it, but I do like Dr. Stacey Sims and Dr. Gabrielle Lyon. I've been listening to them. A lot of people, Bill Campbell, they're all doing a lot of research and post-revems. men, a

mental palsy, so the research is there, and it's always about not too much cardio, do hit, heavy lifting, but recovery is huge.

And I rather do other things, too. It's not like, I don't, I don't have to run. I don't have to be in the gym all the time.

I want to be outside now that I have the time, and I just want to be healthy enough to do it. So you guys, I listen to you

all the time. It's such an inspiration. I always think, okay, I'm not going to listen to this because I've heard it before,

and you put a spin on something and I'm like, okay, and it sticks on my head, so I really, really appreciate that. Well, thank you, Linda. You're the inspiration. Yeah, we appreciate you and follow the programs. You're going to have a good time.

Have a fun trip. If you make it down to the Tampa area, make sure you swim by Ben Pekolsky's gym. So I don't know if you'll be in, if you guys will make it to Tampa, Florida, but if you make it to Tampa, Florida, you got to go see Ben Pekolsky's gym. One of the best gyms out there, yeah.

We're going to be in the Vero Beach area. That's what, I mean, but obviously we're pulling our house all the way down. We have a fifth wheel, which is really cool. Yeah, and it is, it's fun. That's the other thing about when you go to different places you meet other fun people. Powerlifting competition was very inspiring. Met a lot of women there too. So yes, keep doing what you're doing.

You guys are amazing. Send anybody my way. Any woman who doesn't believe what you say, I'll tell them it's all true. We appreciate you, Linda. All right, thank you guys. Be good. It's funny. She said we're inspiring.

Nothing inspires me more than somebody who's been doing this for a long time. I know. And you just see their energy. It's just so incredible. And she is the classic example of a client that you don't have to worry about her not doing enough. It's the other way around. It's pulling her back a little bit. 100%.

She looks great, though. Incredible. Our next caller is Noah from Montana. What's up, Noah? How you doing, Noah? What's up, buddy. Hey, guys. How are we doing?

Good. How can we help you? Good. Excited to be back on. I was on about three years ago and super happy to be chosen again. My question for you guys today is just all about feeling old. when I should be feeling young. I'm 21.

I'm an electrician. And over the last, I'd say probably three months, I've just been on kind of not a downward spouse. It's a big term to use, but just a lot of little aches and pains everywhere. It started when I was working on doing some heavier deadlift, and I was going to try and work by way towards a one-rap max. And I think I might have strained my hamstring or something,

just like a minor strain or something, lower down behind the knee, and just kind of took it easy. But then from there on, it was a low back pain when, like, squatting really high wraps. And then at work as an electrician, just low back pain when, like, sitting cross-legged and doing stuff. And then just, like, from here on, I was just been, you know, just kind of almost feeling just fragile and weak, like making little jumps down, like a little 16-inch jump. I'm having to be extra cautious. I'm getting pains just moving boxes and stuff in my back. Just a lot of little weird stuff.

And I've tried to fix some of it, watching YouTube videos and different things, but eventually it's just been constant little things. I'm like, I need to call into the experts. Yeah, no. From a training perspective, I've been running your guys' programs for about three years now. Last six months did Map Symmetry,

currently in Maps performance. But life's been really busy, so only getting to the gym about two times a week for shorter periods, probably an average of like 45 minutes during those two times. I don't get to the gym to do those mobility sessions, so you might just kick me in the pants and be like, get on the mobility work.

But I prime before every workout, cool down everything afterwards, been trying to work on the low back pain and whatnot during priming. And, yeah, just trying to figure out where to go from here training-wise and what to do about all these kind of nagging little issues. Yeah. So first place that would look, and I have a suspicion, but first place, is your sleep really crappy? It depends. It's a little off and on. I tried to get about eight hours of sleep. The last week it's probably been a little closer to seven. But it's something that I tried to be consistently getting, you know, eight hours of sleep. That's not too bad. Do you drink? You party?

Yes. How often? Oh, no. No, sorry. I drink a ton of water. That's for my month going. He's like, yes, big drinker. Yeah, a big drinker. I got a big gallon drug I take to work and I try to get through a lot of that. I'm taking the LM and tea every day. So I'm trying to stay hydrated.

No, it sounds like you have a nutrient deficiency and that's why you're always hurting. Okay. Yeah, so you can go get tested for vitamin D deficiency would be the first place I would look and I'd look at your hormones. But it sounds like you have a nutrient deficiency. And you live in Montana. Yes. So you're probably not getting much sun.

Not in the winter. In the summer we get more sun. I'm outside more. I am taking vitamin D and a whole bunch of other vitamins. How much vitamin D do you take? I think about 2,000 units. So I would go get tested. Go get your nutrients tested.

Zinc, magnesium, vitamin D would be the first places I would look. 2000 I use of vitamin D is low. Often doesn't do the trick. Doesn't move needle. What about calories? I'm curious just where you are nutritionally. You look pretty lean. I haven't been tracking.

I'm, I would, like, this is poor guesstimate, but probably, probably around 2,500 on average. So maybe on the odd day pushing up a little bit, but often just in the throes of work and everything, I, I'm sorry, guys, I don't do the best job again to getting the big breakfast that I'm probably, you know, pushing around 2,500, I would guess. Well, it's all connected. That's why it's, I mean, you're trying to get to the bottom of why all this is happening. it's probably because of what Sal's saying. And if you're eating in a calorie deficit or barely at maintenance most of the time and you're not hitting your protein intake consistently and then you're pushing the weights,

all of this is a recipe for aches, pains, injuries happening. So that could easily be our problem here. And the solve is probably putting you in a calorie surplus, making sure you hit your protein intake, going and getting all your stuff checked to see what vitamins you may be lacking and then getting on top of that. And so this could be the solve. Normally when someone, as young as you are,

and then you're getting decent sleep, the sleep isn't amazing, but it's not horrible. That would have been where I thought it was, you know, the problem was. It's most likely nutrient deficient. You got to do an easy test. You can go to a blood test from your doctor, have them test your nutrients,

your nutrient levels, and just see where you're at. But it feels like that to me. Have you tried to run a bulk? Have you run a bulk? I have run a bulk. before. I haven't done anything super purposely. Like as guys like we always see, we're always on the bulk. And so I'm always like thinking about it. But that doesn't mean it's actually always

happening. Yeah, I'd be curious to see just how you felt from that, from intentionally eating in a surplus consistently and hitting your protein intake while lifting to see how much better you feel just from that alone. Would there be some like a small like hack or two that would make it kind of easy way to get the extra protein in. I know you guys harp on having like, you know, full breakfast take the leftovers from the night before type of thing. Would there be other little things? That'd be easy ways to get, you know, extra 15 grams here, 20 grams there.

I mean, a better way to answer that would be to kind of ask you, where do you fall short? What's the most difficult for you? Are you missing breakfast? Is that where you miss all time? Do you miss? Oh, yeah. Okay, well, there you go. Eat breakfast.

So that's, I mean, instead of like trying to think of all these little hacks, or be telling you go buy this, you know, 20 gram protein thing that you can insert them. It's like make an effort to really cautiously have that breakfast. Have it ready to go the night before to where all you do is you have to microwave it in the morning and go. And start your and be consistent with that. Instead of trying to think of the whole day and all these other things, like if you know that's your area where you, that's why we talk about that so much because it's common. Yeah. Common and young men to just skip that, grab your energy drink, go start your day.

and then you don't eat until your first meal is lunchtime. And then it's like a sandwich or something that's low protein. But I got to say, no, when I see a young man who's exercising pretty appropriately, we're going out twice a week. Twice a week. You should be a recovery. Your sleep's okay. And you're like, man, I hurt if I jump down, you know, 16 inches or I'm constantly feeling kind of aches and pains everywhere. That sounds like a nutrient deficiency.

It sounds like a vitamin D deficiency, but it could also be a zinc deficiency or magnesium. Which is going to be exacerbated if you're in a calorie deficit. Yeah. And so you just go, you just get it tested, dude, and see where you're at. And if it's vitamin D, if I'm right, first of all, it's an easy test. It's also an easy fix. It's not hard. You know, they put you on 10,000. I use a vitamin D or something like that. And within a week, you'd notice a big difference. We'll put you on Map Senior real soon. Stop. Stop. Justin. Okay. Yeah, no, I'll go get those tests. Like, I do supplement with magnesium and zinc, but without knowing, you know, the correct

amounts of all that stuff. Again, you just, it's, uh, better than nothing, but it's, you know, it's a shot in the dark, really. I've had many clients who took, uh, you know, 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 I use of vitamin D daily, who were also came back and it was too low. Okay. I think Adam, your levels were low. You took 2,000.

I use. No, I was thinking 5,000 I use it barely moved. And I still. and I still tested low. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Oh, interesting. Yeah, yeah.

I was taking 5,000 IUs a day, tested and came back still low, taking that. That's right. Yeah. So that's why I do 10. Yeah. Would there be anything on the trainings, uh, from a training standpoint that I should make sure to be doing there? If you're following maps and you've got symmetry and performance and you're doing it two days

a week, that's not our problem. I don't think that's back to South, Sal's point. Like, this is probably nutrient deficiency. And if you're not eating enough protein and calories, that's going to examine. exacerbate that. Yeah. Yeah. That's where I'm...

I don't think it's a lack of mobility. I don't think it's an over-training. I mean, it's not going to hurt, but yeah, that's not the issue. It probably not. Okay. Well, we will do that and, yeah, we'll go from there. Follow up with us. I'd like to hear.

So make sure we get to the bottom of this. Okay, I'll make sure. Send you guys an email. Let you know what we figure out. You got it. All right, no. Thanks, dude. Awesome.

Appreciate it. Love listening to you guys. I know every listener talks about it, but hearing you guys talk about everything from fatherhood to faith to just your family life and whatnot. It's super interesting. I love having, you know, really four guys including Doug here to have as great role models and whatnot. And, yeah, keep up the good work and, you know, standing up for what you believe. I love that.

No one can buy you guys off. I can trust whoever you guys, send sponsor-wise. I've never had any of your guys' sponsors go wrong. And, yeah, it's just awesome to have great role models. Thanks, man. I appreciate it. Thank you, dude. Thank you, buddy.

Awesome. Thanks, guys. God bless. You got us. We had him on when he was how old? How old was the first? He was three years ago, he said. And he's 12. Yeah. I kind of remember him.

I kind of do too. And so, okay, that's why I went to calorie wise. Because I think he under eight, bro. Yeah. Is that what it was back then? Yeah. I think he under something with that. Yes.

And I can't, I can't, I can't, we'd have to dig through and see if we can find it or not. But which is in line with what you're saying. Because if he's got a nutrient deficiency and then you're also under eating calories. There's a significant percentage of people who are suboptimal vitamin D. It's a significant percentage. And deficient, it's still significant. And the darker your skin is, the higher the likelihood. And then where you live, right?

Montana's not, yeah, in the summer, but in the winter, not getting much at all. And if he's indoors, he's not getting much sun. And you need more sun than you think to get that up. And so it's an easy test. I recommend people. And by the way, some people have a lot of pain. from vitamin D deficiency. Other people get anxiety and depression.

And, you know, it's kind of hard to pinpoint, but a simple test will show it. 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,

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