Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2953: 7 Easy Food Swaps That Lower Your Calories Without Changing How Much You Eat

Episode Date: September 25, 2026

MAPS Abs and Butt: https://mapsabsandbutt.com Code: LAUNCH for 40% off. Includes Butt Building Diet Guide, Women's Supplement Guide, at-home dumbbell version and a free second program at checkout (Muscle Mommy or Muscle Mommy 15). In this episode the guys break down seven easy food swaps that lower calories, bump protein and still taste great — protein snacks over carb snacks (Crisp Power honey mustard), high-protein Greek yogurt desserts with cocoa whip and berries, shelled nuts instead of pre-shelled roasted ones, grass-fed beef over grain-fed (200-calorie difference in a 12oz ribeye), two lettuce-wrapped burgers instead of a burger and fries, crustless pizza in an iron skillet, and spaghetti squash instead of pasta. They also do a deep dive into Gen Z male depression and anxiety data — why this is the first generation doing worse than midlife adults in mental health metrics, and what the data says actually helps: lifting weights (50% reduction in depression and anxiety symptoms), going to church (33% lower odds of developing depression), and getting a job (95% higher mental health risk when unemployed). They also cover the new FDA-approved myostatin inhibiting drug, bone broth protein for people with high-protein digestion issues, and the anti-protein influencer backlash. Then they answer questions from Instagram. SPONSORS Crisp Power (honey mustard protein pretzels): https://www.crisppower.com/mindpump Code: MINDPUMP for 10% off. Honey mustard flavor discussed on air — 25-28g protein per bag, high fiber, zero added sugar. Paleo Valley (bone broth protein): https://paleovalley.com/mindpump 15% off automatically applied at checkout. Bone broth protein discussed on air — easiest to digest protein the guys have used, chocolate flavor tastes like a chocolate donut. Fatty15 (C15 essential fatty acid): https://fatty15.com/MINDPUMP Code: MINDPUMP for additional 15% off 90-day Starter Kit. First new essential fatty acid discovered in over 90 years. 3x more cellular benefits than omega-3. LINKS Mind Pump Store: https://mindpumpstore.com Maps Fitness Products: https://mapsfitnessproducts.com Instagram: @mindpumpmedia 0:00 - 7 food swaps for better results — eat this not that 0:00 - Swap 1: Carb snacks for protein snacks — why Crisp Power honey mustard kills cravings 5:35 - Swap 2: Desserts — Greek yogurt whipped cream, cocoa whip rice cakes and protein balls 9:16 - Swap 3: Shelled nuts instead of pre-shelled roasted ones 11:15 - Swap 4: Grass-fed for grain-fed beef — 200 fewer calories in a 12oz ribeye 13:20 - Swap 5: Two lettuce-wrapped burgers instead of a burger and fries 16:01 - Swap 6: Crustless pizza in an iron skillet 17:17 - Swap 7: Spaghetti squash instead of pasta 21:05 - Gen Z male depression data — first generation doing worse than midlife adults 22:55 - Lifting weights reduces depression symptoms by 50% 30:17 - Church attendance reduces depression odds 33% 31:35 - Getting a job — 95% higher mental health risk when unemployed 36:15 - Music and pain tolerance — eye of the tiger experiment and the metal festival study 44:07 - Bone broth protein for people who struggle with high protein digestion 47:26 - Myostatin inhibiting drug just got FDA approval 55:21 - Q&A: How to figure out your average calorie burn for muscle building 58:33 - Q&A: How long should I be in maintenance before cutting after a reverse diet 59:53 - Q&A: Steroids vs. peptides — what is the difference? 1:03:48 - Q&A: How to avoid the yo-yo of progressive overload injuries and crippling soreness  

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 health fitness and entertainment podcast in the history of the universe approaching over half a billion downloads. Yep, this is Mind Pump. Today's episode, we answered listeners questions.

So people went to Instagram Mind Pump Media. They wrote in some questions. We picked four and we answered them. but that was after the intro. Today's intro was 54 minutes long. Now, in the intro, we talk about nutrition and fitness and fat loss. We talk about depression and anxiety and what the studies show. We have always a good time.

This episode is brought to you by some sponsors. The first one is Crisp Power. These are high protein pretzels, 25 to 28 grams of protein per bag of delicious pretzels. The honey mustard ones are amazing. By the way, they're also high fiber. So if you want a snack, that also helps you hit your protein target. that also produces great satiety. Go to crisppower.com slash mind pump.

Use the code mind pump, get 10% off. This episode is also brought to by Paleo Valley. Today we talked about their Paleo Valley bone broth protein. It's the easiest to digest protein we've ever had. It's also the best tasting. I'm not making this up. Their chocolate tastes like chocolate donuts. Go try it out.

If you like to bump your protein but also want good digestion, go to paleovalley.com slash mind pump. That link will get you 15%. We also have a new program released right now, and it's 40% off. Maps, Abs, and But, so it's a program for your whole body. But the focus is on abs and butt. It's 40% off. Plus, we're going to throw in a free Maps program, Muscle Mommy 15 or Muscle Mommy, and two free guides.

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hit pause, head on over to mindpustor.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. All right, we're going to talk about food swaps. Eat this instead of that. These are easy ways

to lower your calories, bump your protein, and get better results and still taste something that tastes really good. These are great tricks. Check it out. I like this.

This is top of mind for me right now. I've got three weeks till Cabo And then this is one of the ways, though I like this because this is like one of the ways that I will, without like really tracking, just tighten the diet. Little things. Right.

Like it's like this versus that. And just knowing that exchanging some of these foods that I would normally eat for other options, I know I automatically just lower calories. And so if I can just discipline myself to make those options for the next few weeks, it's enough to drop a couple of them. You know who's king of doing these things are physique and bodybuilder competitors.

They're like, They're like the best at this kind of stuff because of that's where I got all mine from. That's right. Because of the crazy pre-contest diet, the restrictions. It is. And it's like, you know, and the food cravings, you know, when you're a competitor and you drop calories, you know, you're trying to get down to, you know, 2% body fat, which I don't recommend anybody try.

It's not healthy. But the food cravings get so insane. I've only ever gotten down, I've gotten down to about 4% body fat, so never down to 2. But I remember dreaming about food. Only time of my life. Only time of my life ever dreamt about food. Yeah, it was really weird. I got as far as changing my lattes to black coffee.

It was a big step for me. That's a big step for me, guys. Put that on the list. Good job, Justin. I love it. No problem. So, all right, so at the top, this is kind of an easy one. And this does make a big difference, which is, you know, people like to snack.

Now, generally speaking, I advise against snacking. I think Adam is the one that says there are no such thing as snacks. There are complete meals and incomplete meals. And I like that because snacking really does get away from you. It also takes away from the complete meals, the ones that are put together, the ones that are focused that have kind of what you need. That being said, it's a reality. It's a reality that people like to snack, especially when they're at the movies or when they're driving or when they're at work. And so is there a swapout?

Is there a way to snack that reduces, naturally reduces caloric intake and also helps you with some of the more important macros? And that's a yes. And so here's an easy swap out. Most snacks are carb-based snacks. There's nothing inherently wrong with carbohydrates, but carb-based snacks, carbohydrates in general, are the lowest on the totem pole of satiety-producing macronutrients. In other words, when you look at fats, proteins, and carbohydrates, carbohydrates produce the least satiety. You can eat those the most and go beyond, above and beyond what you should be eating,

the easiest with carbohydrate-based snacks. Above that is fat and the protein. Well, in the restaurant industry, they prime you with that. That's right. So, yeah, you start with the bread, the chips to get you your appetite, really to start roaring. Isn't that interesting? This was me last night, last night, got up. So obviously, I'm heading in three weeks.

So I'm heading out. And so I know, like, part of running in a calorie deficit is there's going to be times where you're hungry. It's just a fact. You're not going to avoid that. And I was really hungry last night and got up and had beef jerky. You know, just, you know, 9 o'clock at night. It's a weird thing to have. But it's high protein, moderate calories.

I think it was 230, 250 calories for the whole bag. And produces incredible satiety. Yeah. And it's 30 grams of protein towards my goal. That's right. you know, in the pursuit of either building muscle or holding onto muscle, it's crucial. And I can always afford to have some more protein. It's hard for me to hit 200 plus grams of protein every single day.

And so I think at that point, I was probably hovering around 170, 180 anyways. And so plenty of room to have more protein. And then also satiates me. So I eat that and it felt fine. Yeah. So beef jerky is my favorite for a protein snack. The other one is like deli meat. This was back in the day.

You know, I'd go in the fridge, grab some turkey slices, and I'd eat those. And it's really hard to overeat that. You know, it's like I could eat a bag of chips or, you know, pretzels or whatever, and I'm going to throw it down. But jerky or deli meat, it tends to hit that satiety very quickly and I get that high protein. What's interesting, too, one of our partners, Chris Power, made a high protein pretzel snack. And what's interesting about this, which is fascinating. So this is how powerful protein is in terms of producing. Sotidhi.

And satiety is complicated, right? Because you also have hyper palatibility, which plays a role and all that stuff, right? When our staff here eats a bag of crisp power, which is like 28 grams of protein for like a bag. So, like, think of your typical bag of potato chips. That's the size of crisp power. And they taste and kind of act like your typical carb snack. They're crunchy. They've got that same kind of feel.

Everybody here has a bag. Everybody here has a bag. But it fills you up. Nobody goes to have two or three bags. It's wild. You know? Because you get that. Plus it's got fiber.

So that's the other macronutrient. Fiber is right under protein for satiety. So if you could swap out your carb snack for a protein snack, especially one with fiber, you typically do a lot better. And they have that new flavor, by the way, the honey mustard. Have you guys tried that? Yeah. I think it's wild how you, I've tried to.

I've tried to have more than one bag just to see if I want it. And I can't finish the second bag. I have no desire. Protein does that. You gave me a bag of Doritos or name your favorite chip. Oh, you're going hard. Yeah, no problem. And the bag you're talking about, it's a small bag.

It's not like a big bag of chips. It's a very small bag. You know, it's interesting. After you had a bag of those, I bet if I gave you a bag of chips, you'd be able to keep eating. Oh, that would be an interesting. Isn't that, isn't that wild? Yeah, you're probably right. That's how it's a tidy word.

I'm sure. I'm sure I would. All right. So here's another one. This one of my favorite categories. I love, Adam has the best swapouts for desserts. And I'll just set the stage for you, Adam. He loves dessert.

He says he's got a sweet tooth. He definitely does. He also at one point became a professional physique competitor. So he's like, I have to figure out this problem while I'm dieting. Your dessert swapouts are, I've had some of them. And they're really good. So why don't you share some? Well, I've got a bunch.

So I'll tell you one that's a cool one is if you take Greek yogurt, you strain it over a cheese cloth overnight and gets like all the kind of like the fluid out of it. So what did you just let us sit on there? Yeah, yeah. You put it over cheese cloth, like over a bowl. so it like kind of strains over and there and you throw out all the liquid. And then you take that leftover the next morning and you whip it up and you can whip up like stevia inside it.

And then it tastes like spot on to whipped cream. But now you have this whipped cream high protein flavor. Low calorie. Dip strawberries in it. Wow. Now I get like some, so I get berries, which we always talk about berries is fruit being like your better, your better fruits, high fiber, antioxidants, lower calorie.

And so some sliced strawberries in that. And you get even, more creative and you can spread that over a rice cake and then the strawberries over the top of it and it's like this amazing it's got protein I get that crunch I get the sweet flavor I don't know why you're picturing that I mean and what you're describing it that that one that takes a little effort to like make it like I I pre-make the whipped it yeah I prep that they've if I'm in a pinch even just a rice cake with some like you know strawberry jam that's like sugar-free or something.

So it's like low calorie. You can get no calorie jams too that you spread over like a rice cake is really easy to do. Cocoa whip is a great substitution for like if you like cold ice cream flavors. So I learned that from you. So you can buy it's literally, it's just called Cocoa Whip. It has almost no calories. This is weird.

Yeah, it's tasty. It is like 30 calories for like. Yeah, it's really low. It's really crazy. And so what I got from you was a rice cake with Cocoa whip and a little bit of jelly. Yeah. And that's like a staple at my house. I'll even mix it. I do this for Max. Max is like 100 calories. This is his favorite dessert is, you know, we do like a Greek yogurt and granola and berries or whatever. And I can add just a little bit of cocoa whipped in there. And then it makes the, it makes it more ice cream like just by putting a little bit of cocoa whip in there. So it, and you got this high protein taste, it's cold, tastes like ice cream a little bit and a little bit of berries on it. If you have the, you can afford the extra calories, you can put a little sprinkle little granola on there. And they now have those high protein.

Greek yogurt where they add a little additional protein. So you get a cup and it's like 20 or 25 grams of protein, some are smaller at 15. And even if you don't have that, so that I like buying the ones, the brands that already have, it's really easy to put. What do you do? Just add protein butter? Add way protein. If you can handle dairy, obviously I'm sure you can for having that, right?

So you add, you just add that. Sometimes I actually like it that way because like the vanilla way protein added in just like plain Greek yogurt gives it a nice texture. and flavor. And so that'll shoot it up to 20 plus grams by doing it that one. Yeah, we still, what was it? Is it the protein balls of peanut butter?

Yeah, that was another recipe of yours. Yeah, that's oatmeal, peanut butter, and honey all like with protein powder. Yeah, with protein powder. And then you roll them up and make them in these. You don't freeze them. You just put them in the refrigerator. They'll harden in the refrigerator.

And then make those little balls like that. All right. Here's another one. First off, nuts. They are technically a whole food, but it's one of the few whole foods that acts more like a processed food, especially if the nuts are already shelled and roasted. Like you will hit calories very quickly with nuts. Like really, really quickly. And so one of the things you could do to reduce, whatever, the damage, I guess, for lack of a better term, that nuts can do is rather than buying nuts that are shelled already, like a bag of peanuts or a bag of, you know, peacons or whatever, is to buy them in the shell.

That process of you having to break them open. I'm going to tell you right now, you sit down for 20 minutes and you eat peanuts where you have to crush the shell and eat them. You'll eat a third or a fourth of the amount of peanuts you would eat if they were already shell. There's still that reward from it. That's right. And in fact, this is what I used to do with my clients who love nuts. And I say, oh, go ahead and eat them. Get them with the shell and break them open.

And they end up eating way left. Well, you get two things working for you right there. You've got the shell obviously slows down that process. And then they're also raw. or not they're not roasted or salted or and so that's a slightly less powder that would be my advice even with like almonds because if you do like the roasted and the flavor type almonds I could I could crush those you know six dollars risabi ones and bar I mean those ones I could eat those all day long but give me some raw ones and like after a handful of those I'm pretty good yeah so it's a good

makes a big difference so I used to do this so I would have I would have a bag in the bag and the bag always had my studio and they were in the shell and so I'd have to go back there and break them open and in between clients I'd have like five or six now you give me a bag of nuts and it's a handful which is way different you know calorie wise yeah I I used to actually take like seeds so like I could go through phases of like chewing like uh sesame sesame sesame where they uh sunflower sunflower sunflowers yeah yeah and you just just because it's like something to do uh keep the mouth you know occupied uh but yeah that was always a strategy i know i use sunflower seeds and gum those were the two, like during competing days.

In the shell. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Because like you said, you take a small handful and suck on them for a long time and just keeping your mouth. Not a lot of calories. That's a bodybuilder favorite. Yeah, yeah. All right. Here's another one. This one's really cool, everybody. So you like your cut of meat. I don't care what it is. Rib eye, tritip, whatever. You don't even have to change the amount of meat that you eat. If you switch from grain fed to grass fed, your calories substantially drop because grass-fed meat is naturally leaner and higher-in-protein.

In other words, six ounces or eight ounces of a typical ribi versus, you know, six-eight ounces of a grass-fed ribi is going to cut your calories and bump your protein. What was that? Doug looked that up. We talked about this like months ago. I remember you looked at it. I was surprised by how, what a difference it was. Yeah.

It was a pretty significant. It was a, it was a couple hundred calories. You do like an eight-ounce cut rib-bris grass-fed versus grain fed? Actually, the information I had was for ground beef. Ground beef is different. Yeah. Yeah, because ground beef is automatically controlled for fat. Oh, for fat content.

Yeah, so if you go grain fed, grass fed, ground beef, it's 20%, you know, or 80%, it's 80%. It's the cuts of meat where you see the difference. So you could go like a eight ounce ribbi. Yeah, the ground beef will tell you 93, 7. Yeah, so they control for that. Yeah. So you're going to get the same. Yeah.

But if you go, you know, 10 ounce ribi grain fed versus a 10 ounce ribeye grass fed, it's a, you know, it's a significant difference in calories. It's less fat and more protein. More protein. What you got over there, guy. Yeah, I'm looking it up right now. He'll get that number for us. Camel there, so it's helpful. It's a picture of the back.

It's not helpful, Doug, at all. Speaking of way, you know, people eat camel meat in other places? No, they do. Yes, they do. Camel meat, a kangaroo meat, that's another meat you can eat. Those sound terrible. Don't sign me up for that. Yeah, I know.

I think kangaroo meats like, I think that's relatively common in Australia. Or I'm making this up. Yeah, I feel like I'm making this up, maybe. I feel like you are too. Somebody's eating it, shaking your fist at them. No, we don't. Yeah. Guaranteed.

That sounds gaming. It does, right? Right? Yeah, it does. It's chewy. They look really muscular, right? I don't think that would be good at all. Remember the video that one that fought that dude?

Yeah. Some of them get like, I don't know, seven feet tall or whatever when they're standing up right like that. It looks like old-timey boxer. Yeah. By the way they stand. All right. Here's another one. If you like burgers, you're better off eating two lettuce-wrap burgers than you are the burger and fries.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. This is a big one. This is like a really easy, big one. Super filling. So I did this the entire time that I was competing, this was a part of the diet. Was we still ate out at five guys. It was like, you know, my way of still connecting with my wife since I had to eat all this boring food all the time.

Was Friday. Fridays. I'd take you out to dinner, babe. Well, no, Fridays we'd order five guys. And I'd have two lettuce wraps. I just throw it all in a bowl and then I cut it up with a knife. I turn into like a salad. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. So it's like, I mean, you can eat it like this. That's the way. But I think there's plenty of lettuce on like just one of those suckers. So I literally would just, I would actually take one off and then just throw the extra meat in there. And then I'd cut it all up, dice it all up and make it into this big salad. They haven't figured out how to not get all that grease on your hands. Like the lettuce?

Yeah. Which is why I like turn it into like a boy. That makes sense. When I go to, so, you know, in and out, obviously a California, you know, chain or whatever. But when I go with my family, if I get. the burger and fries. I eat way fries, way more. Oh, yeah. It's just way more. You crush 700 plus calories and fries and I just can keep going. If I eat two lettuce wrap burgers, I'm good. Which aren't even, by the way, like one double is not even a 700 calories. But you got there, Doug, for the grass fed versus

grain fed. What is that? Oh, let's see here. So yeah, this is for 100 grams, 120 calories for the grass fed, 196 for the grain fed. For only 120, yeah. So 80 calories less, two, grams of protein higher and way less fat and way less fat and way less fat and that's for a small piece what is that 100 grams i'm not sure exactly what that is so what you would typically do Doug when you would uh google this is you would say 10 ounce grain fed rib eye versus here's a challenge i'm having with this sal is that nothing's coming up exactly as you say so i don't even know if this is a rib eye okay the Googler's not working we don't even know what kind of meat that is not working very well today.

Sometimes you have some very specific requests that are... I feel like the internet's good at that, though. We all have our strengths, too. We all have our strengths. That's fine. Okay. Yeah. I think we should just give Sal a little laptop.

I feel like that too. I think he's pretty good. He's pretty fast at it. All right. There is no doubt. He's the best Googler out of her here for sure. He sits here. Which, by the way, that's a whole skill, man, with AI, which we'll talk about a little

little bit later. All right. So pizza, traditional pizza versus crust-free pizza. Adam, this is another one that you do. Yeah, no, you can actually put this in an iron skillet, all those stuff that you like. So I like to make it heavy on the meat. So if you do like sausage or beef or chicken or something like that and then the cheese and... So what do you do?

You put the cheese first? You put, yeah, you put the cheese. The cheese ends up being like a crust. So if you lay the cheese like it's a cross and then you layer all the other things. And then I do a lot of meat. So like a layer of a lot of meat. So saw, everything. Yeah.

And then, yeah. And then you can do sauce, all the things like that. And then you just like to bake it in the oven. And then it'll... How do you take it? You just, you literally take it off of the spatula. Yeah, because it'll, yeah, it'll end up like the, the crusted. Yeah, the cheese will, like, hardening crust, like on an iron skillet, put it in there like that.

And then, yeah, then you got like this, because that's the, the worst part of the pizza a lot is the gluten loaded bread that you get, that you get on there. It's the highest part, the highest calories disrupts most people's guts. And so, so long as you can handle cheese. So just, just side note. So I can't do dairy. You're making it. I'm the weird guy that orders a pizza without cheese. You should always, you guys got to see the little bread.

It's literally bread, sauce, and like, can you call it? It's not cheese? What do you want bread? You want soft bread? Holding your marinera sauce. That's it. That's basically your reservoir.

All right, here's another one. I've done this before. It's actually pretty good. It's swapping out your spaghetti for spaghetti squabody. Oh, yeah. We live off of this. Do you really? Yeah.

You guys do this a lot? Oh, yeah. You can make your meat sauce with it and spaghetti squash is like no calories. It's super good. I think it's a go-to thing that we did for, a really long time. It's been a while. Didn't you just grow some squash too?

I did. How did that turn out? Not spaghetti squash. Zucchini. You can actually do it with zucchini as well. What do you do? Do you get one of those tools that? You just use a fork.

Yeah. I'm kind of lazy. I just go buy it at Trader Joe's. It's already done. Oh, yeah. That's the way to do it? Yeah. Yeah, good.

What kind of sauce do you guys? You guys go meat sauce? Yeah, yeah. I wish I had somebody who was Italian that canned sauce. I know, right? I would probably use that. An authentic. Yeah, probably.

We just 13 years of working with this guy and haven't got a can of sauce yet. I got to remember to do that. I've never brought you guys sauce. Not one can, dog. Not one kid. It's got a little salty about it. It's in a jar. All right. I'll bring it. I'll bring you some haggis. All right. Anyways, those are good, there's all good swaps. And I mean, literally, again, it's like, you know, it's one of those things you're living your life. And there's definitely eating healthy. And I think that's most important. But there's also an enjoyment factor, which we can't deny. And these swapouts allow you to kind of joy. I'm super curious about, like, watching my, my son grow up as he gets older.

Like, so this is all stuff that he's, like, eight. He's grown up with. He grew up with it, right? And so I know that I battle with the sweet tooth because I did not grow up this way. And so I've learned to, like, train myself. But he actually prefers this. So it'll be interesting if that changes over time. I mean, we're at seven right now.

And it's been really consistent that, like, he would choose this over the alternative on, on foods. and so I'm wondering if like his palate will be formed like that for good and so that he'll always do it. I remember I did this girl that was like that where her family was really, really strict about processed foods her whole life. She competed also. And I remember like even after post-comp where I was like I wanted ice cream and pizza and like every dessert bad thing that I hadn't had for so long, she was just like, man, I just want a steak and a baked potato sounds, you know, just something that I don't have to count the calories and I'll just eat a big old. I was like, man, that's so crazy to me that you don't crave any of these other things.

But she didn't grow up on that. So I'm curious to see if I'll notice a difference with a... You will. The data shows that. Data shows that your palate. Really? Pallet gets formed as early as in utero. But as your brain develops, it develops around, you know, some of these experiences,

including experiences around entertainment and stuff like that. Does that, does that... It's the molding of the brain, isn't it? I know. And I believe it, isn't it? Isn't it ages three to seven is when the most of that is getting done? Around that. I'm not sure.

From a neurological from the brain. Like I don't know. Possibly. I don't know what the ages are. But I'll tell you, I'll give you an example. If you, like different cultures,

we all grew up here in America. So if you have, if you smell a fishy smell in a market, you automatically are like, ew, that's not, that's gross. But in other countries that is not perceived that way

because they grew up around those types of smells and it meant, you know, fresh fish and food. So it's just an example. And there's foods that people will eat from other cultures that we could not, you know,

we would look at me like, that's not really good. Cranulas. Yeah, that's the extreme one, but sure. Yeah. I think Doug ate a tarantula. No, I did not. Oh, you didn't do it.

I saw a guy do it, but I didn't do it. Oh, I thought you tried it. No, I have limits. Yeah. So, hey, by the way, we got it, we got the number up. 12-ounce rib-eye, grass-fed versus grain fret. The difference is about 200 calories. Wow.

200. 200 calories. That's a big difference, everybody. And you're eating 12, you're eating a big old steak either way. Right. Isn't that cool? Yeah, it is. And higher protein, yeah?

Totally. Yeah. All right. So, I want to. to bring something up. So today, this morning, I was in a text thread with my cousins and we were, you know, talking about a few different things. My brother brought up a study

showing the benefits of video games. And there's still... What? Yeah. So there's studies that show that video games can improve things like hand-eye coordination. And there's some things that can measure around video games. And I'm like, right off the gates, you know, I'm like, this is so dumb. And so we're having this conversation back and forth. And so what it did is prompted me to look up the actual data on the impacts of certain things on people, but especially young men.

Because that got me thinking about young men. When you think about video games, you typically think, guys, guys get affected more by playing video games. And so I was looking up some data. And, you know, AI is many things. But among all those things, it's incredible at synthesizing data. So rather than having to go find data, compile it, combine it, you know, stuff that I would have to do in the past, which would take me hours, I can just ask questions, cite the resources,

and where it got the studies, and put it together for me. It's like, how much of an impact do these things actually make? And then I remembered, I had recently had Mike Malaghees on the called to his kingdom series, and he's this young, Gen Z Christian influencer. Okay. And so one of the questions I asked him was, you know, in regards to young men, you know, Gen Z, like, what are some of the piece of advice you have for young men. And one thing he said to me blew me away. He said, don't be bored. I was like, huh?

And he goes, do things because when you're sitting around bored, you have access to your phone. Idle hands. And that's when all this kind of crazy stuff pops up. I'm like, that is fascinating. That actually makes a lot of sense. So I looked up some data and here's what's interesting. Number one, which is, I think we've talked about this before, young Gen Z. For the first time in history, this generation, this younger generation, is doing worse than people in midlife.

So typically, when you look at the data, depression and anxiety peak at midlife. Is that how we're measuring doing better? Yeah. So typically midlife crisis, you know, this is like why? Well, this is when you have young kids. This is when you have a mortgage. Divorce happens at this time. Throughout all the time we've measured depression and anxiety, this is the highest time for depression and anxiety.

Youth has always been low. Like, that's not when you're supposed to be the most anxious and depressed. For the first time ever, we've seen the younger generation do worse in loneliness, anxiety, and depression than people in midlife. So it's not good. It's looking really bad. And then I was thinking to myself, like, what is going on? We've measured this as far back as the great depression.

And our kids today are worse with depression and anxiety and mental health than people who grew up in the great depression. in the world wars. Like, what the hell is going on? And so I compiled some data and I'm looking at it. And it's pretty wild. Loneliness is high. 25% of U.S. men, age 15 to 34, said they felt lonely a lot. This is way higher than in the past.

So I'm like, what is what's going on and what can we do to like fix this? So rather than like point out like, we're sad, we're anxious, what I did is I said, hey, here's what I want from you. What are the things that these young men can do that have the greatest impact on their depression, anxiety, and loneliness? Like, give me some things that the data shows has the greatest impact.

What are the greatest things that they can do? Because here's the thing with young men, I know this about young men. They don't respond as well to talking as young women do. They respond much better to doing. Right. Challenge, purpose.

Yeah, so instead of being like, hey, let's talk about your feelings. This is why they're drawing to video games. is because they're accomplishing levels and beating bosses and leveling up and becoming, you know, whatever. And what you find in the data is, you know, with young women, you can sit down and process things out.

And there's some benefit too with young men. But young men tend to do better when instead of that, you go, okay, we're going to go do this. Yeah. And then you go accomplish this thing. They tend to do a lot better with that. So I'm like, what can they, what can they do? And immediately I thought to myself,

like, what are two things that young men struggle with today that we didn't necessarily and that previous generations didn't necessarily struggle with. And the two that came to mind were pornography and video games. And I think both of those neuter young men in the sense that, you know, like when we were kids in that age group, you have a strong desire to be with girls. But in order to be with girls, you had to go out in the real world.

You had to clean yourself up. You had to figure out how to be funny, present yourself. You had to get, you know. Rejected. Rejected and you got to figure it out. You got to do the scary thing. pornography will zap that right off the gates. If I was a 15-year-old boy,

working up the courage, go talk to a girl, like, you know, give me 30 minutes on porn hub, and I'm like, cool, I think I'll stay home, you know, type of deal. So there's that. And then video games, you hit the nail on the head at them, that desire that young man that they have inherently to, like, do the hard thing, struggle, accomplish something, which we did by going out with our friends, you know,

climbing the hill, jumping the thing. They just play, you know, and beat level 30. You know, type of deal. So I'm like, okay, what can we do rather than telling them, don't do this, don't do that? What are the things they can do that have the biggest impact on anxiety and depression? I don't even think that's number one and number two. It isn't.

I think social media is number one, dude. I think social media. It's so interesting you bring this up right now. I literally just had somebody DM me. Did you see the post I did yesterday? I shared that guy did a post on what percentage of people actually net or no, excuse me, gross, not even net, a million dollars a year in a business and income. Did you see that?

It was a really good post. And he just talked about it's like the percentage is extremely low. And the idea of why he was sharing that was like social media will have you believe that everybody out there that's, you know, a millionaire at 17 or 25 years old. They're driving around these lambos and they're flaunting this and showing that. And I actually had two different DMs from young men that reach out. to me after I had post that saying like, you know, I've, and I know I've talked to them before in DM. I don't know them personally, but I've talked to them in DMs before and know what they do for work. They make good money. Like they were like good money trying to, they're built, one of them's

building their family, like just started their family and stuff like that. And he goes, man, this really, uh, he thanked me for posting it. And he goes, because I really was feeling like, uh, like such a loser. Like I'm not doing anything with my life because I'm so far beyond everything that I'm looking at on social media. It's like makes me feel like everybody else is way ahead. And here I am, you know, entering my 30s and I'm still not that rich or making that much. And so I think that and I think a lot of guys don't openly share that, but you can't help but think that they are competitive at spirit, comparing themselves to other end. We talk a lot about how women do this on social media and they're comparing their bodies and stuff like that. I think a lot of men do that

with success and pre-en-old to provide. And you see all these young kids that are flaunting their cars and their things. And you think that shit, everybody's a millionaire. I'm only getting by and making $80 or $100,000 a year. I must be a loser. So I looked up the data on that. And social media has a much greater negative impact on young girls than it does on young men. It has a negative impact on both.

Yeah. But has a greater... And do you think that's because that's reported more? In comparison to previous generation, women have always reported more. They've always come forth and said, I feel this way, I feel that way. When they try to control for that and say, okay, are people just report,

it still doesn't cover. Because I feel like some dudes, like, I was actually really surprised that two guys felt, and they would say that. I'm still a stranger to them, right? We're not like tight friends and they're not like confiding it. Like, but they were willing to share that.

Man, I feel like I'm a loser because I'm not doing these things. So it's like, I have this feeling that, that skewed, that data skewed a little bit because there's probably a lot of men that aren't going to admit that they feel that way. So it's always been that way. It'll manifest in other ways. It's like suicide and depression. So I looked it up and I tried to control for that and they said it does not cover the growth. It's like it's not, that is not covering the growth of what we're saying that it's more reported. So they try to control for that. They're like, it's still grow, it has grown so much

and it's anxiety and depression and loneliness that are through the roof. And so what I did, look, we know as coaches, it's much more effective to tell a client to do something rather than to tell them to not do something. Yeah, but don't you think those two things are exacerbated by that? Yes. So let me get to what, let me get to what this did. So what I did is. I literally said, what are the things that they can do that have the greatest impact? Yeah. That the data shows. Do we have data. What does it show? What has a greatest impact? Number one. Learned skill, do a trade. Number one, working out. Yeah. Number one is working out. And you know what? There's a joke on social media about, hey, dude, you're depressed, go lift weights.

there's some truth to it. Here's what the data shows. 50% lower depression and anxiety symptoms. Just go lift weights, dude. Yeah. Like if you're listening right now and you're like, crapped out and you feel like what's the point, go work out.

Get on a schedule, go lift weights. That's number one. 50% decrease in those feelings. Number one, you're doing something hard. You're getting up and getting out of the house. Then you're also building muscle. You got the struggle. You got the challenge.

I say lifting weights, it's actually exercise in general, but I think lifting weights, obviously I'm partial to it, but I think for young men in particular, the feeling of strength, the feeling of power. Self improvement.

Self improvement. 50% reduction. You want to know what the second one was? Attend church regularly. By the way, I'm not telling it what to tell me. I'm saying, show me.

33% lower odds of developing depression. So if you're a young guy listening right now and you're struggling, go lift weights, go to church. Start right there. Probably the easiest organic way to build community for a young man, right?

And it's bigger than you. Men are really challenged with this as it is, right? Going on and building relationships, we tend to, like, isolate ourselves or have our core friend group. That's it. And say that we don't need anybody or have no friends at all.

And so going to a built-in community like that, I think, is probably... Where everybody's pointing to something bigger, you know? Here's the next one. Getting a job. Do you know how unemployed Gen Z is compared to previous generations? I believe it. It's wild. It makes a big difference.

You take a 17-year-old kid who's at home, again, this is what Mike was telling me. He's like, what are you doing? Like, if you're at work, you're lifting weights, you're going to church, you got way less time to be on your phone, scrolling all this crap or on social media, or playing video games. Why do you're not working? Like, real busy. They're not working because it's, the culture has changed. I don't think parents are making their kids work. I think it's a different, like, I see a huge difference to my kid when she got a job. And my niece, when she got, all she did is get a job. And it's like, totally changed. She suddenly started making friends.

she's out. I mean, I'm sure what falls in that category, too, is that, because what's the number one job now by kids, where they say they want to be a YouTuber or an influencer, which is, like, also another way of saying unemployed. Yeah. So, I mean, I think, like, you know, a lot of them are aspiring YouTubers or influencers. Look at this. 95% higher risk of mental health problems when you're unemployed.

Young men out of work, 56% higher frequent mental distress. Dude, go get a job. I don't care what job you get. Go do it. Be proud of your job. Do a good job. I don't care if you flip burgers. I don't care if you're shoveling crap.

Do something hard. Go get a job and watch what that does for how you feel. First of all, you can't think about being sad when you're working. You're doing something. Then you're accomplishing something. You're getting a paycheck. You got to deal with people. You got to deal with difficult people.

So you think like the pornography and the video games, what's more detrimental about it is less about the pornography and the video games, it's more so. that it's replacing all those things. Dude, let me put it this way. Mike made this as a point. Think about, you got your typical 16-year-old or 17-year-old or 18-year-old kid. All they do is go to school and then they come home and they're probably like playing video games. Maybe they hang out with their friends a little bit, but that's their life, right?

Homework, school, that's it. Now imagine that same kids like, I'm going to the gym four days a week to lift weights. I'm going to church once a week and I'm going to go work three days a week. How much less time he's going to have to consume those things. It's no different than how we coach somebody on how to diet. 100%. What do we do? We look at somebody's diet.

100%. They're eating fast food, candy, ice cream, sodas, alcohol, all the things. Totally. And what we don't do is go, get rid of that, get rid of this, stop doing that. We go, hey,

bump your protein, bump your fiber. I want you to add this meal to every day. I want you to add. And what inevitably happens is that pushes out all those other things. And the psychology of telling them they can't do those things. And so it's the same coaching.

It's like, instead of telling the kids stop playing videos for this, it's like, okay, I want you to go do these things. Let me ask you guys, Put yourself in your shoes of when you were a teenage boy. Imagine if you didn't play sports or I didn't work out, none of us had jobs, and we had access to video games,

social media, pornography, what are the odds that we would have been sad and anxious? You know? I think pretty down high. So it's like, and by the way, again,

this is effective for young. Well, it's got to be, you know, it's going to be difficult, just having a little bit of empathy for all the parents out there. It's like,

I never heard. felt like my parents had to tell me that. I just wanted to do that. Where it does feel like parents are having to tell their kids that. It's like kids just automatically did that. Like did your parents ever have to tell you? You have to go outside and play?

No, but you know why? Do you have to go do that? You know why? It's suck to be at home. Yeah. I don't have a million and one options of entertainment. Yeah. Like, what did you guys do at home? Yeah. There was nothing to do. Watch the wall. I hang out of my parents all day long. Like, let's go. Give me out of there. So that's the problem. Well, again, I think that just, I think that highlights just

how detrimental tech has been to kids. Just the access. And a more testament to, if you have a young kid that you're raising right now, is how long can you delay the tech? Digital anything has been detrimental, in my opinion. Dude, again, let me put it to you this way. 16-year-old kid, he wants to go meet a girl. He's got porn in his pocket or he's going to go out and talk to some girl.

He doesn't know and probably get rejected. Nine out of ten times or ten out of ten times. He's staying in his room, getting rid of that feeling. And he's going to just stay in there. Yeah. Nine out of ten times at least. So my point is, and again, young man respond well to direction. Do this.

So if there's a guy listening right now and you're like, man, I feel crappy, here's what you do. Go lift weights. Go to church. Get a job. That's it. Just do those things. The rest starts to take care of itself. Based on the data, when you combine those things, 50% reduction here, 30% reduction there.

You got a 95% reduction. I bet you a majority of kids listening right now, if they do, did that after 60 days, be like, cured. Yeah. I feel amazing. Well, at least one, right? Because maybe it's a lot to ask something to do all of it, right of it. But you check one of those boxes consistently and watch what happens.

That's right. That's right. I mean, again, it's no different than how we would do that with a client. You would just, you would choose one thing and you just add it until they get consistent with that. Then we add another thing. That's right. If you want to up your pain tolerance, this is the metal.

Tell me about that dude. There was like a study. Is that what Jackie sent over? I saw that. Yes. More confirmation. Well, actually, it wasn't because it was like, they controlled. And it was like, you know, it was pre-concert.

So they had like a group that was like going to go to this festival. There was another group that, you know, wasn't. And they were all like kind of tested out as like their pain tolerance. And it didn't really happen until the actual event. So the event, when they're there, like there's a spike in oxytocin. And like they all like had this shared experience where it's like, They didn't notice, like, you know, the bumps and the bruises and all that, like, quite as substantially. But I think it, what is pointing to is, like, when you're working out and you're listening to heavy metal, you know, it really kind of masks a lot of that.

Like, it's how you interpret pain is a lot different. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. It's always done that for me. Listen, bro, if I listen to anything from Rocky while working out, I'm probably going to hurt myself. Like, Rocky Ford, the montage, there were times when I was training hard and I was, I was training hard. I'd turn that on, and it was like a new year appeared. And I could just keep on.

I mean, through all of my competing, I had very like. What's your song? If you're like- No, it's not, it wasn't songs as much as it was. Whatever phase of training I am or what I was doing changed the type of show. Yeah, but do you have a song. Let's say you're stuck under a car. We can't help you.

And all we can do is put on a song to help you get out from another car. What song? Metallica, House of Jackbilt. Okay. Yeah. And that'll make you. Yeah. Or inner Sandman.

Yeah, those two are like, yeah, or probably. Yeah. What's yours, Justin? Oh, man. It would have to be like... Or some rage. Yeah, I have to think about it. Because it's... My PR song, a lot of times, it's Norma Jean. Oh.

And it's... Did you listen to that when you did your 315 split press or whatever? I tried, but like when I was at Jordan's gym, like, we could only get, like, the radio playing. And so they had, like, a metal channel. And I had, I think it had like... Well, you weren't head phoned out or anything when he did that. No. No.

Is that because you were listening to cues from him? Is that why? What's that? Was that because you were listening to cues from him? Would you normally live with headphones, don't you? I normally live with headphones, but I think because I was, yeah, I was in that setting and he was kind of giving me coaching a cues and also, like, just I was trying to really focus. I think it was different.

When I was doing something as a little more technical like that, I needed to, like, have a little more. Coaching cues. Coaching cues. You want to hear feedback. Like, oh, that was too fast. By myself. That was too fast. You rush this or.

Triffids. Yeah. Triffids is my, my jammy. You guys never heard of it. It's, it's, it's from Norma Jean. We're not quite, but it's very, it's very aggressive. Just know that. Yeah. I told you guys this story, I've told this story before, but I still love doing this.

Back in the day, so in the late 90s, we, the music was controlled by the general manager's office. And we had satellite stations, but you could also put a CD in there to play. I didn't remember we had the CD. So this was, this was like 98, I think it was. Like you could actually put, yeah. So I had, so I would be in the GM's office. So I was a, I'd be a fitness manager at this point. And I also did this as a GM.

And you had one way, it was like glass tinted, was it mirror tinted windows. So you couldn't see in the office, but I could see out. And I'd have fun with this. And so it'd be getting close to prime time. And you'd see all these people on treadmills and ellipticals. And I could see the cardio from my office. So I'd call my staff in to my office.

So like six people, get over, come here, watch this. I said watch everybody on the treadmills. And I'd put Eye of the Tiger on. And it would take about 25 to 30 seconds. Watch everybody speed go higher. Everybody's hitting the button. Of course. Everybody is hitting the button. Yeah.

It's speeding up. You know, they have, I think Spotify. I'm pretty sure iTunes does this too, where there's music that's designed. It tells you how many beats per second. Yeah. And so, like, if you want, like, that's, to me, that's what I was always, like, if I was doing something like intense cardio, then I would have something that was, like, how. or something crazy like that.

If I was doing something that was like steady state, then I'd be listening like classical or easy, something easy listening for it. Two-step metal for you. Yeah, if I'm like PR chasing, then I'm going to do something like angry, you know, rage or something in that direction. My music has changed so much.

Yes, I know. Hey, you couldn't, you can't even come up with a more radical change. I used to work out to angry, angry metal. And I was pissed. I'd be working out. Nobody want to talk to me when working out because I look like I'm angry. Now I listen to worship music

And it's like popular It's not even like rap or metal Christian metal It's like the stuff that will play at church And I'm smiling I'm trying my work out I don't know how you do Totally dude

It's the weirdest thing ever dude You and Justin couldn't be more extreme Because I feel like I'm not like I listen to more like Typically right So on a normal lift day is like Deaf leopard or ACDC So it's like it's rock

But it's not like You don't go and it's definitely not like, they're not as talented. Justin listens that music to relax. I know. It's so weird. I don't remember where we were going.

We were going somewhere one time, and it was early, man. It was back in the day when we were... And Justin's driving. I know I normally drive, so I would definitely... You can't even understand the lyrics. And it's like first thing in the morning. They're still like due outside.

Sun's coming up and Justin is starting. I'm like, bro, bro, bro, bro, I'm like, bro, I cannot. let my coffee hit first. I'm not like anti that music, but I'm like, I need to like be up a little bit. You guys got to understand it's like, I play it too. So it's like,

yeah, I get that. Yeah, there's a little difference there. I get a lot of inspiration from, but it's, I know, it's weird because it like,

it escalated to that in college. Like I was like very punk in like, I was very ska and like, you know, reggae and like all like, because, you know, I grew up in like a surf town. And so that's like,

oh, I would listen to a lot of, sublime and I still do. That's like pretty much what I listen to more than anything else. But like there was just something, I don't know, when I was in the cold and like Chicago was like, I didn't have any friends and it was just like that was like my, my blanket. You're the, Courtney and I have the same music taste. Her, she does. Her, her, her playlist is exactly like mine. Oh yeah, yeah. Anytime we like, we get around each other, like, who made this? Like Adams playlist. I'm like, oh, she totally listens exactly same. Like exactly the same. Dude, if we were,

If we were stuck in the wilderness, Justin would be the first one to go feral. You know, you know how they take, like, if you take, like, if you take, like, a farm pig and you put in the woods and it becomes like. I'm going to grow with feralds. Yeah, like you would for sure. Right away. If everything hit the fan, true. Within a week, Justin would be like blood on his face. Well, he's also the one that would survive the longest for sure.

For 100%. I would just, I'd find Justin and cling to him. Hey, man, can you, can I be your friend? Yeah. I'll just go to kill mode. All right, I'm going to change subject. We, so, we got to make a. message. We've had a couple callers say this. And this doesn't happen often. It's enough to where I think

we should address this, where, you know, we talk a lot about hitting optimal protein. And the data shows it's much higher than what the RDA will recommend. So RDA recommends essential protein, meaning don't eat below that and you're okay. But the data shows much higher than that will typically give you better performance results, muscle gain, fat loss, satiety, all that stuff. So it's a lot higher. And we typically tell people one gram of protein per pound of target body weight, which is hard to do. Yeah.

And occasionally we'll get the message. And it's usually a female that says this. It goes, it gives me digestion issues. Yeah. Like I try to eat that much protein and it doesn't feel good. It feels like a brick in my stomach or I feel constipated or whatever. Gassie, yeah. And typically what we'll do is try to narrow down the protein sources and maybe change it.

Because many times that makes a big difference. It does. But sometimes just the fact that. It's a lot of protein. Okay, so what do I do? And usually what I would say is like, well, then you eat less. It doesn't work with you. But lately, what I've been doing is pointing people towards Paleo Valley's bone broth protein.

Oh, yeah. Because it's so easy to digest. You can really ramp it up. You could ramp, bro, I've had 80 gram protein shakes from bone broth. Yeah. And it sits just fine. No, it's like I drank water. Yeah.

So I've been pushing that to people who are messaging us and they're coming back and be like, no problem. Yeah. And by the way, bone broth. is often recommended for gut health issues. So that the protein itself is high in certain amino acids that seem to help with gut health. So if you're listening and you're like, man, I tried the high protein route.

I've even bumped my fiber. I've tried to isolate, you know, which protein it is. It still bothers me. Yeah. Like you can slam grams of protein from their bone broth protein. I mean, who doesn't have gut problems? I know.

Let's be honest. If you're in denial, I feel like. That makes you feel better, just it. I just say that because we all do right I'm suffering we all do everybody you guys all peel to paint off the walls right yeah I saw I saw that video you did

there's a there's a girl that has an Instagram page like dedicated to like being anti-protein that's crazy by the way it's you didn't see it yeah you guys remember what I said yeah you said it does everybody remember what I said 10 years ago we would demonize protein so this is what the fitness industry does

swinging back they go through cycles of demonizing a macronutrient or whatever and it was fat and it was carbs and I'm like at some point it's going to be protein and sure enough you've got influencers now. Which it makes total sense because we've gone so ridiculous the other way too. It's like even as as much as we promote and push people that most people need to increase their protein. But now you can get, you know, protein Doritos.

Yeah. You know, you can get protein Oreo cookies. You can get protein everything now. And so everything's becoming infused with protein. And so of course you're going to have some sort of a backlash or push back. But then, I mean, when you have people like that, I'm just not a fan of because. No, what she said, because I know what you're talking about. I think I did a reaction video.

You did. It just went up on our Instagram today. Yeah, I just saw it. I didn't see it until me. Bro, it literally sounded like a 1992 RDA, like a representative from the RDA. Like what she was saying. Yeah. Because the carbs are the ones that we need.

Our bodies run on carbs. I'm like, okay, I'm not saying carbs. Back to the old pyramid. Yeah, I'm like, I'm not saying carbs are bad. They're not. They're great for performance. I'm not an anti-carb person. But they're actually not essential.

So what she's saying is, actually, of the macronutrients, that's the one you could never eat. eat and be okay. Yeah. And the essential protein is only like 0.3, which is like so minimal. That is not for somebody doing any sort of athletic endeavors. That's not for anybody who's lifting weights. That's definitely nowhere near optimal.

And then all the other benefits that you get from a higher protein diet. So I think it's a terrible message just because. Yeah. So I'm just telling like if that's you, Paleo Valley's bone broth protein, you're like, try it out. It's like literally like drinking water. You'll be, you'll probably digest it very, very well. So do you guys know that a myostatin inhibiting,

drug just passed? No. Yeah, it's not just FDA approved. Maybe Doug can look it up. They approved it? Yeah, I think it just passed. Let me double check here. FDA, I think it just passed phase three trials.

So it will be available here. Will be considered like a peptide? Yeah. Say what? Will it be considered a peptide? No, it's a drug. It is a drug. So what would it, what, where would it?

Like somebody who has like severe muscle loss, like some sort of like a, so the name of. Gary's disease or something like that. So there it is right there. Side effects. I don't even know how to say that. What's it? How do you say that?

A pedagromad? A pedagromab? I think it is. It just got FDA approval. And so it blocks myostatin activation. So it's great for people with like muscular atrophy. Yeah. So that's where you would use it.

Yeah, like muscle wasting disease. That's the only way that they would do that, right? That's what is. Doesn't Lou Gehrig's phone on that or no? Was they off on that? I think you're right. Yeah, I think you're right. Here's what I think they're going to do.

I think they're going to just combine it with GLPs. I think this is the stack. Oh, my God. That they're going to find a way. Never have to work out again. That's right. And they did a study on with this myostatin inhibiting drug with a gLP, and they just dropped their calories.

They weren't lifting weights or anything like that. And they lost half as much muscle. So actually, it's quite effective at what it does. I mean, they thought that about Reda, too, when they first started doing trials with Reda. No, no, no. This is because they combined it with this. Then the next thing we'll talk about is muscle quality at that point.

Bro. With everybody. You know who's going to get their hands on this and get wild with it? Bodybuilders. Of course. I am curious to see, because bodybills don't care. The pharma nots. They don't care.

I mean, even Israel said he would. Of course. He'll do anything science. Bro, if they combine this with their crazy genetics, with their start, like, what's going to happen? Are they going to grow, like, muscle out of their ears? Like, what's going to happen? And they'll be the first ones to show us how dangerous it is, because, you know,

they're going to not take what you're supposed to. Take it to the limits. Yeah, exactly. They're going to keep pushing it. to see. This is going to be weird, dude. What's interesting about this is, from what I've read and from talking to people in the field,

it doesn't produce performance benefits necessarily. So you might just like mass. Yes, but I don't know if that's true if the person trains. Most people would care about anyways. I would think, yeah, yeah, if you're training and this would complement that. But like, if you're somebody that's, yeah, not even interested in that, You're just going to have a better looking physique that's like not functional. Well, you could get big muscles and be more like an obese person.

I think it's pretty obvious where we'll go with it. I mean, we put silicone in our bodies to enhance things. Yeah. That's, that's more, when you really think about it, that's more absurd. This is going to be. Then taking a drug that, like, just shuts off something that allows you to fill more awesome or something. Yeah.

We do, we do way crazy or stuff. This is for sure going to be the stack, for sure. I don't know how they're going to get there, but at some point, it's going to be like, here's your GLP and here's your myostatin inhibitor and we got to take these both. Wow, that's wild. Mm-hmm. It just got, it just passed. Yeah, we can't do that though, Sal, because then the big, the big thing, the big thing about,

the, the, the natural limiter or regulator of the GLP one with muscle loss is that, or is that, okay, if I eat too low calorie, too low a protein, you lose muscle. I lose muscle. If I take a drug that counters that, then I'm still. still going to, I would think you're still going to lose. Here's what the study showed. How's this going to affect the organs? Here's what the study showed. They did still lose muscle, half as much. They did nothing else, but take this with the GLP.

Yeah, but what about, what about bone? What about other things that? Because now you're, now you're, extending how well, yeah, like, how long is this study? Three months, six months long? Like, what happens when somebody is not hitting their essential, essential macronutrients and for, probably nothing good? Of course not. I mean, so you keep your muscle, but your hair, you lose your hair and your nail start falling. out. You look, you look white as a ghost. And like, yeah, and your liver and kidneys start shutting down and you get all these other

things that going on. But hey, you got, you got, you kept half of your muscle this time. Like that. I have no idea. You look great. I feel like right now, even though it's not a good, even though it's not a good thing, it's the wake up call that the GLP1 users need, right? It's like, you take this.

And then if you did a dexia before and you go, oh, wow, I lost 50 pounds, but 25 of that was muscle, then most, any, any doctors with half a brain are going, hey, we need to slow down this, this dosage, or we need to go on a focus on building muscle, reverse diet, whatever the things are. Where if now, if you just take that out, then we just extend the period of like being malnutrition. I don't know. I don't know, dude. Can't be. I don't know, man. And then the next thing is, will they even, because it's not, because it's a drug and not a peptide, will they allow it to be prescribed for a lot of, like, I would think that. For now, highly regulated to just those types of diseases.

Yeah, I think that's how it's, I think it got approved for specific reasons. I haven't looked into it, but I'm pretty sure. But I'm very interested in seeing what the black market does. Because you know for a fact, here's what's going to happen. Somebody will. Here's what's going to happen. The drug gets approved. It's controlled here in the U.S.

Some other country is going to make it. And then you can buy it from them or China or whatever. And you're going to have the- Or somebody will make it in their house. And the two categories of people that are going to play with this are celebrities. But for sure bodybuilders, for sure bodybuilders. Like we're five years away from bodybuilders going ham with this, combining it with all the other stuff that they take.

And so we'll know, by the way, we'll know. Because you can see, it's funny. And just for people who aren't into bodybuilding, you don't need to be into bodybuilding. But what's interesting is when you look at the decades of bodybuilding, you can see these massive jumps, these sudden jumps and physiques. And you're like, well, what happened? And it was the drugs.

Yeah. It was the dose. And it was what they combine. Yeah. So, like, you go from the 70s to the 80s, there was a massive jump. 80s to 90s was a massive jump. Yeah. And since the late 90s, we haven't really had a huge jump because that's when they figured out super high doses of everything.

So. I don't know. There's a few guys you've seen that are crazy looking. Like, what's his name? Yeah, but they don't like, they're not like bigger than like Coleman or, you know, Cutler. Who? Yes, they are. What's, what's his, uh, big Rami?

Yeah. Look, pull up big Rami right now. Yeah. His last, one of his life. Yeah, but I mean, I could show you bodybuilders from the 90s that didn't win, but were just as big. Really? Yeah, for sure. As big, Rami?

They're not doing anything different than, uh, than the bodybuilders of the 90s. No, I know. He looks crazy. Yeah, for sure. Whoa. For sure. But like, put up, yeah, look, like I said, put up the- I don't think.

That's a crazy picture of him. He's seen quite crazier pictures. But, dude, here's what I think. Pretty crazy. I think in five to ten years, there's going to be another jump. I don't even know what the hell going to look like after that. What are you going to look like? After that, dude.

Like a horse. I know. It's wild. Let's see what happens. All right. So I'm excited to share with you something really cool. Fatty 15. Now, it uses this fatty acid called C-15.

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Go check it out, get 15% off. Go to fatty15.com slash mind pump. The code mind pump gets you that massive discount. Back to the show. First question is from hook, line, and senior. How do you figure out your average calorie burn a day when trying to decide on calorie intake for muscle building? I feel like that's like Doug's dating website right there. Calling me out. Gotcha.

Hookline and senior. Doug's Handle. Chris, his farmer only page. Sorry, Doug. All right, I had to say that. All right. So the best. So here's a deal.

You can, there's a really expensive way to figure out your calorie burn, but it'll just tell you that day. Yeah, but how will we do it? This is the best, the best way that I've been able to do this is you literally track for a week or two. And if you don't lose weight and gain weight, that's your maintenance. The key to this is you have to understand, like, what a normal week looks like for you. That's the only coaching I have to do to this. Like if someone, like someone hired me, I have to remind them like, hey, this isn't like, let's go and, pressure coach the next two weeks and go be doing all kinds of extra steps and cardio and workouts. It's like, I need an average of a week or two of what like your normal life looks like. If you normally drove to work and then you came home and then you watched TV and you did the thing, like just do the thing for a week or two. A lot of times I can get it in a week. A week is if you're consistent with like you can tell me like that was a normal week of my life

for the last year, both eating behaviors, which is including like, hey, if you would skip that meal and then you'd have that one snack or you order that type. I want my client to do all the normal things so I can see how their body kind of maintains, which most people will probably maintain in that week. And then I have an idea of like, okay, that's caloric maintenance. And then before we actually even start to cut, I actually want to change what they're probably doing. So we talked about this earlier in the episode. It's like, so let's just say you track like that. Let's say your goal is fat loss. you want to lose weight. And we track and we see your averaging 2,800 calories.

But when I look at the foods you're eating, I see when the most things that are most egregious are low protein, higher on sugars, higher on saturated fats, not enough fiber. And so there's like four levers right away. I can decide to move. And so before I start going, oh, cut your calories from, you know, 2,800 or 2,500 down to 2,000, I'm going to actually make adjustments to like,

hey, let's add this meal, a high fibrous meal every single day and actually stay at maintenance and just start to tweak the macros and or put them in a reverse diet before cutting. No, 100%. And by the way, you can get a general idea at maps macro.com,

but it will not give you nearly as specific as what Adam said. So that's really the only way to get that real good number. But if you need a general idea, you can go to Maps Macro. It's free. You can enter in some information

It'll give you kind of a general idea of where you're probably your maintenance is. Next question is from darn two. How long should I be in maintenance before I cut? This is the first time I've figured out my maintenance. I went from 1,900 calories to 2,600 calories. So that seems like a good place to cut, especially if you're a female. Typically, when I reverse diet, someone, I'll stabilize them for about three weeks before I do a cut. So if I jump to you, I'll keep you there for maybe three weeks, and then we'll decide to do a cut.

So it's, I mean, and you can jump and then cut right out the gates, but then you don't really give your body a chance to kind of work with that new maintenance. Right. So I'd say probably three weeks. No, I'd 100% agree. The only thing I would probably add to that is if I had somebody at this and they were telling me they're still hungry, I'd still lean in. So let's, so if you're still getting stronger and you still have an appetite and we've reversed this far, then I would say let's go to 2,800. Let's go to 2,800. So the further we go, the more runway we're going to have.

if you still feel like you have time. My goal always with my clients that I reverse diet was to get to a place where they're like, man, I'm eating so much food, almost to where it starts to become inconvenient to eat that much food because then it becomes really convenient for me to go, all right, I just want you to eliminate that meal or cut back on this. And then it's easy for them because they were already working so hard to hit that many calories that now coming back down, say three to 400 calories becomes really comfortable for them to be at. And now we're in a caloric deficit. So that's kind of the two ways I look at it.

You are high enough now. I'd stabilize like Sal saying before I start to reduce. Or if you're like, I'm still hungry, I'm still getting stronger. Like, keep going. That's a good say. If it's whole natural foods and you're hungry, keep going. Next question is from Mick Daniel 95. Steroids versus peptides, what's the difference?

Please break it down for me like I'm a five-year-year-old. Okay, so huge difference. Yeah. Generally speaking, steroids are exogenous hormones. Peptides are chains of amino acids that tell the body. to make something or release a hormone itself. Now here's where it gets a little tricky is human growth hormone

is a peptide hormone. So a human growth hormone is considered a peptide, but it's also a hormone. HCH is considered a peptide? It is. It's a peptide. But it's a peptide hormone. Really? Yeah. So by the way it's made,

HGH is considered a peptide. Yeah, so it's a long chain of amino acids. I didn't know that. Yeah, so. I know semi, I mean, I know that Tessamorlin and all those are peptide. that are supposed to signal growth hormone, but I didn't know actual HGH is considered a peptide.

Yeah, see, Doug, pull it up. It's a large single-chain polypeptide comprised of 191 amino acids. Is that the only example of a hormone? Is insulin? Let me double check. Yeah, insulin is peptide. Is it a peptide?

And it's another hormone. So you're right, so that's two right there. Yeah. And they're both kind of lumped in, right? Especially growth hormone because they would say it's a performance-enhancing. Yeah, see, it's another peptide. Both, by the way, could be,

very dangerous if you took too much. Growth hormone, not as much. Yeah, what? Yeah, no, you can take a big old dose of growth hormone. You just feel like crap. Insulin will kill you for sure. Yeah, for sure. But even HCH, I mean, over time,

but like if I gave you like a giant shot just one time right now, yeah. You would, you might get low blood sugar. It would take a lot. You might hold a lot of water. But if I give you a big ass shot of insulin, I could kill you.

Yeah. For sure. testosterone, I give you a big ass shot of testosterone. You're fine. Yeah, you're totally fine. But steroids are hormones. They're either the hormones you make or they are based off of the hormones you make. So anabolic steroids take typically testosterone or Dht.

And what they'll do is they'll tweak it a little bit to make it have different, you know, a little bit more anabolic or longer acting in the body. But it's based off of the androgen. Now let's push HGH and insulin aside because I feel like they're the only ones that are rare that. All other peptides. there's no side effects of taking it for a certain period of time and shutting anything off in your body where you could do that with exogenous hormones.

So that's another tricky one, right? So typically when you take a hormone, you get a negative feedback loop. So if I take testosterone, my body will stop its own production of testosterone. Growth hormone will do it in the moment. Peptides, maybe, and what they might do is downregulate receptors. So taking like high doses of peptides, make the body less sensitive to the peptides.

So I know there's some peptides I recommend that you cycle. So it's not like a straightforward. I'm like, tell me like I'm five years old. I don't know if I can. Like you're five years old. But, you know, basically it's a hormone versus something that tells your body to make something. I feel like somebody that would ask a question and frame it this way is I don't want to take.

I'm super anti-steroids. I wouldn't want to take that. That sounds dangerous, bad, or a drug. I'm curious about peptides. because I've heard all these great benefits of it. And so is it like that? Am I taking something that's dangerous like that? Even though growth hormone is a peptide hormone.

Let's just call it a hormone, right? I could take growth hormone or I could take a peptide that tells my body to make more growth hormone. Right. And so that would be kind of the difference, right? I could take testosterone. Zodgous. Would you consider that endogenous or if it's like working with your body's systems or?

No, it's still from outside of body. It's still exogenous because it's coming in. Yeah. Yeah. So I could either take testosterone or maybe I could use a peptide that makes my body make more testosterone. So that would be kind of, but I don't think it's very clear cut. Like, you know. Next question is from Finish Flash. For me, progressive overload is difficult.

I get stronger, go up and wait, and then injure myself and go back to square one. How do I avoid the yo-yo of trying to get stronger? Another thing is that if I don't injure myself, I get so sore that it does. takes me days to get better, and by then I never have progressed. So at some point, no matter what, when you get super strong, and I don't know if this is your case, you need to reinforce, that, you know, there comes a point when the risk versus reward just isn't worth it. I'll use myself as an example. So the high, and this for me is very heavy. I know those guys that lift way more than this, but for me, I'll use the deadlift because that's my favorite exercise to brag about. The most I've

deadlift was it's 605 pounds. Now could I at this point try to chase a, let's say, 650 pound deadlift and could I potentially get there? Maybe I think I could. Is it worth it? No. Because at that point, it's just the risk versus, I'm not going to get lots, anything from going up to 650 except for a dramatic increase of risk of injury.

Now, here's where, now that's for some people, but usually it's not that. Usually it's this. It's you need to do different exercises. You need to move in different planes of motion. You're thinking too linearly. Yes. which I think is, you know, it works in the setting of like, this is my goal, this is my one lift.

I'm really trying to, you know, maximize. And so the specificity of that matters. However, if you're getting into this same kind of like conundrum, I get to this point, you know, my body's, you know, fighting back. I end up, like, facing injury, you know, but maybe I'm not incorporating rotation. Maybe I'm not incorporating these other types of movements that would reinforce the joints.

So it creates more of that joint, integrity and strength and stability. So now I could produce more force, which is going to give me over that plateau hump that I keep experiencing doing the same progressive, repetitive playbook. So I think that, like, you need to start thinking outside of that, how we can, like, come around, reinforce the joints,

more, you know, change your training up, come back, and then go through that same progress. You know, we don't talk about this very much because we used to hammer it, you know, 10, 13 years ago when we first started all this. But, you know, we wrote maps, anabolic, maps performance, and maps aesthetic in that order for a reason. And it's for exactly this.

Like, if you've never ran through those three programs in that order in a year, you really should, especially if this is one of the things that you're being challenged with is because we wrote them considering, trying to consider like all types of clients, like somebody who would want to build muscle, people that wanted to lose body fat, people that want to develop certain muscle groups, and then people that don't want to get injured and pursue training for longevity for a long time. And if you cycle through all those programs,

you kind of check all those boxes. And so, you know, and the other thing that we talk about, we do talk about more recently is at the bare minimum, whatever your goal is, no matter what it is, every year you should cycle through either one round of performance or one round of symmetry.

That's what I'll tell this person. Whoever wrote this in, like go and do a cycle or two of symmetry, performance and then come back and see how you feel. Make a big difference. And I bet it'll make a huge difference. I'll bet you'll hit PRs and not hurt yourself because this is typically the result of doing the same kind of movements, pushing the same kind of movements.

That's right. Not bolstering the ability to stabilize, not bolstering your ability to support yourself with these weights. And so you just, once you get past a certain way of, one of my favorite examples of this was Justin and his 405 pound bench press he did years ago. And what did you do? You actually, I remember you said you would get up to a certain number. Yeah.

You would always get hurt. And then what did you do to finally get hurt? I finally, like, I started, that's what introduced me to Indian clubs. And I started to, uh, started to go through those, those external rotational patterns and which is something that's like alien, you know, I just thought like stretching or like, you know, that was just for warm up and dynamic warmups. But then you start loading it and there's a progressive way to actually load, uh, those types of movements.

And so I started to kind of go progressive. from like one pound to, you know, three pounds to five pounds, the 10 pounds. And like, you know, just start working my way through that. Then there's like mace bells. And so that's another way to kind of, you know, add a little bit more weight to that. The strength stability that created was like substantial. So now when I go to bench, now I'm locked in and I didn't have that same fail point. Like it just went right through.

What was the number you got stuck at before you were able to finally hit 405? When would you start hurting? It was like about 350. So it would always happen. Always happened. And then boom, you went up 50 pounds just from stabilizing your shoulder joints. Yeah. Yep.

That's the one right there. Look, if you like the show, come find us on Instagram. It's Mind Pump Media. We'll see you there. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance,

check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at Mind Pumpmedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes Maps Anabolic, Maths performance and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price.

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