The Downbeat - Hana Devore - Fitness Pro

Episode Date: July 9, 2021

My guest this week is Hana Devore, fitness competitor, coach, and keen biohacker. I caught up with her to discuss everything from fitness and biohacking to relationships and strong ass weed. It was a great time!

Hello. How is everyone on the internet? And if you're not on the internet and you're simply just letting the internet carry my voice to you, I hope you're enjoying the gym or painting a lovely picture, whatever people do when they listen to podcasts. I don't actually listen to that many podcasts, funnily enough. This is where most people would put some sort of like pretentious reason why. I find it kind of dilutes my own content. You know when people like musicians unfollow all other musicians

I find it kind of dilutes my own art Get fucked, your pretentious fucking prick Hello, I've got some things I need you to do immediately Number one, I'm up for a heavy music award For the best podcast, and there's a bunch of really good podcasts on there. I'd really like to win. Will Putney's got a heavy award. It's actually heavy.

It just looks really good. It's just a really good award. I'd really like to win. It'd be nice to win. I've made it really easy for you. If you go to vote for Craig, C-R-E-G, because I think I'm funny.com, that will send you to the heavy music awards voting thing.

Slingers a vote. A bunch of good podcasts on there. Daniel P. Carter's Swim. And I'm not going to tell you all of them because you're going to get ideas. Oh, I'll vote for that one instead. No. I asked you for that one instead.

first please do it secondly blah blah patreon dot com slash the downbeat blah blah blah merch www www the downb the down b e dot a t so it's about the downbeat blah blah blah my guest this week is hana i should have asked her devore i hope it's not devore i'm fucked if it's devore what an exotic name though if it is hana devorea unreal can't believe that i'm going to find out of it's devorea unreal i can't believe that I'm going to find out right now. I'm literally going to leave this in as well. Okay, stay where you are. Hello, how do I pronounce both of your names?

Because you're American and these things are hard. Please reply ASAP. Okay, so I'll continue talking and then hopefully she'll reply and she can actually say her own name via technology. Anyway, she is a pro-fif. fitness competitor slash coach. Oh, I don't want to use the word influencer, but influencer. She's a biohacker.

She used to be a, I mean, she still is technically a professional bikini model, but she's got a massive, massive social media presence. Big in the world of biohacking, health and fitness. Just really interesting shit. shit that I'm interested in, not even from like a fitness point of view, a lot of brain shit. We talked about brain shit, hormones,

getting your shit in check, meditation, wellness, I want to say without sounding like a grifter. Anyway, give me money in the Patreon and I'll tell you how to be well. Don't want to come across like one of those people, but wellness.

Well, a wellness person. Yeah. I wasn't going to mention it, but I realized that we start the episode talking about someone called Andy who is her boyfriend who is Andy Williams also a ex

Downbeat guest and you know what? I didn't want to say that because she's not just Andy Williams's girlfriend because I knew her before then. Not like that but I've realised there's quite a lot of it we reference Andy and at no point do we actually talk about which Andy we're talking about so if you're a Downbeat fan

you actually know this Andy already but don't think don't You dare come for me saying, oh, he's reduced her to someone's girlfriend by introducing her as that and then doing a lengthy bit on the intro to the podcast. Trying to get himself out of that, you fucking idiots. Anyway, what's happened is she's read that message now because I can see it's disappeared. It was a voice thing. So hopefully she's going to send a voice note back.

and then what we're going to do, we'll just, come on, come on. I've got a different message, it's not for a band. Are you still there? Don't go anywhere. It's a long episode, but it's going to be real nice, nice quality, delightful quality. Are you looking forward to it? Are you excited? I'm excited.

Maybe you're listening to it on the Patreon in higher quality. No, it's not high quality, is it? I'm a fucking idiot. Anyway, a little bit of side news. I'm trying to make everything video from now on. So you've actually got one more episode after this and then I'm actually stopping submissions for audio podcasts in the hope that it makes everyone want to do the video one.

If not, I'll probably turncoat on that situation and go back to doing the audio. The audio one will still exist, don't you dare worry, but I'm hoping to provide you with a high-quality video one as well. Okay, she just replied. Good morning. My name is pronounced Hana

divorce. I was right. On the Downbeat podcast. How are you? Hi. Good. How are you? I'm right. Are you fucking stoned?

No. I had like a little, I had like a, you know, but I have my coffee. I have like shit, you know, I have coffee that you don't approve of.

And. I approve. What is it? Starbucks. I need you to do one thing. Yeah. When Andy, did a test for me. Yeah. He would have been facing into the microphone, wouldn't he? I think he had,

so the mic is right here. It is, it is on a stand, by the way. He had me, I think if I just sit right here and I talk like kind of loud, this was how I was doing the test. And he said that it was, it was working. That's fine. That's absolutely fine. I might just have to, like, yell at you a little bit. You can yell. That's fine. I love your studio. Thanks. It's beautiful. I just like everything pink and purple. Yeah, and like you're matching, your shirt, I love it. Branding. This is, this is, this is, this is better than Joe Rogan. Thank you very much. That's what I'm going for. Better than, better than Joe. Honestly, I bought all of the, because obviously that's, that's the standard for podcasts. Yeah. And, but his video, you would expect to be like Christopher

Nolan looking and it's not. So when the world opens up, I'm planning, doing video, but I'm going to make it look like a movie. It's going to look really good. Okay, cool. So that's why I bought all of this stuff. And then the world closed and now I'm just sat on my fucking own doing nothing. So then you'll like, you'll have people come to your studio and sit with you. I've already asked Andy. Andy's actually the first person that I asked. Well, he has a UK tour. So that's what, yeah. The minute I saw it, I was like, you're coming. They're playing like 12 minutes away from here. Oh, I love that. That's cool. Yeah.

That's awesome. I'm going to steal him. Yeah. Yeah. So where are you? Buffalo? Where or why? Well, where?

But also, I mean, I know why. I know. Why are you in Buffalo? We're just south of the city. We're like, we're kind of, we're in the suburbs, which is really, it's funny to see Andy, like, turn into, like, a suburb dad guy. And he's like, but he loves it because you know how he is, you know, that he just likes to start shit. So he's like, he's like,

He's trying to, like, kind of be like those guys. He'll, like, go outside with, like, the snowblower and try to, like... I was just about to say. Yeah. I was just about to say, like, in my head. Well, well, Dan down the street is doing it this way. Did you see how he did his lawn? Like, maybe we should do this.

I was just going to say lawns. That was the first thing I was going to say. All I can see is Andy. I'm sure there's a fucking, there's an E-T DVD anyway where Andy's doing a fucking lawn. I'm sure I've seen it, like, an old one. Yeah. The imagery just immediately in my head. just like, oh, he's got big dad energy.

He has, in a good way. He does, but he's also just so, like, not that guy. Like, all of the guys in this neighborhood, they all drive these ridiculously big trucks for no reason, like exactly what you, like, it's probably like an American, like, stereotype. I don't know if you guys have, like, just big-ass trucks for no fucking reason over there. No, you guys. We love to drive a truck for no reason, not hauling anything. There's nothing in the back ever.

and that's just like, and that's like the neighborhood that we live in is just dads with trucks. Dads are trucks with stickers on the back. Yeah, and the stickers like, I don't know. It's something about a gun, something about guns, basically.

But yeah, so he's like, I don't know. God damn it. I lost my. I lost my microphone. Hold on. Okay, I think we're good. So he's like, maybe I should get a truck. I don't know. Maybe I need like a big truck. But he didn't do it. He got a tiny SUV.

So he's just like big man in a small SUV. I mean, it's still an SUV though. America's got that shit on log. Right. I'm going to get on slightly onto topic because I need to think of this anyway. What do I put like next to your name on the podcasting thing? Yeah. I will have to put what you do.

Yeah. But so like initially I think I started following on Instagram because you were a, does it count as bodybuilding? Like bikini? Yeah, it does. It's different, but it's the same. It's like, it's, it's, technically, I'm a professional bodybuilder. Or you can say professional, like, fitness competitor.

That kind of, I feel like that's easier for people to kind of wrap their heads around. Or you can just say, like, fitness pro. Fitness pro, yeah, that'll be the one. People listening to this will be like, I can already see what it is. So fucking get past this bit. Fitness pro is the one. want. Yeah. So if like, and if I was like every other, uh, fitness pro, I would put that in my IG handle so that everyone would know, but I just do my name. So, uh, but yeah. So like,

so technically I'm a professional bodybuilder. I'm in the IFEB, the International Federation of Bodybuilding, but I do bikini and I kind of just do it when I feel like doing it. Like I'm, I don't know. Sometimes I don't really, it's hard to like identify with, it's hard to say like, oh, I'm a bikini pro because I kind of compete like every now and then and sometimes like one time I just took three years off and I'm like do I still call myself a bikini pro like technically I guess so I don't know how it works when you get the so you get the pro card how does it work because I've had like a power lifters on here and they've told me how that works but I don't know how the IFBB is like the that's the top cream of the crop yeah yeah so like that's like you know when you watch the

Olympia, that's the IFBBB. So that would be, if I wanted to really push this, that would be my next goal would be to go to the Olympia, like to qualify for it. But how it starts is, so you start competing in the NPC, which is amateurs, you're definitely not getting paid for anything. You're paying a lot. It's probably like a thousand bucks a show if you add everything up. So you compete the NPC, if you, you have to win a show and qualify for nationals, go to nationals, and then win that, and then you, you turn pro. And then from there, yeah, yeah. Is there money? I mean, not much. Not much. It's not like, it's not a career. It's, it's interesting. And, like, you know, when Andy and I talk about wrestling, like, even when you're just starting out,

like you're getting like an appearance fee. So it's just interesting that like in bodybuilding, you barely get paid. You're basically out of pocket for a lot of it. So it's definitely, it's not a job really. Like most people have to have, you know,

a full-time job. If you are winning pro shows, like in bikini, the purse isn't very much, but maybe like a few thousand dollars. And then of course, you win more if you're like. Sponsors.

Yeah, yeah. Again, not a lot. So you really, like, you have to have a career of some sort, which, you know, a lot of people, they'll do coaching if they don't have, you know, something else like a day job. I have a day job in marketing. And then I do a little bit of coaching on the side. I keep my roster like really short because it's just, it's just too much. But yeah, yeah, competing is expensive. It is. So it's like, it's basically like fucking music. Everyone thinks that you're rich as fuck and you're not. Yeah, I think that, yeah, there's that assumption, right? It looks kind of, it looks glamorous. And then, you know, when you actually like get into it and you realize, yeah, it's a little, a little different. When I realized that bodybuilding might not make that much money was when I saw Ronnie Coleman selling that cream. The fucking, you know, do you know the cream?

No, what cream? What? Oh, my God. So Ronnie Coleman, like a weight loss, like cream. It looks like a Tim and Eric thing. A weight loss cream. Oh, my God. It's called like fucking shrink cream or something.

Oh, like sweet sweat or something. It's probably sweet sweat. No, it's not even that. It's just a fucking cream that burns fat, apparently. Yeah, and like, and you have to think about that the bigger you are. So if you're, you know, there's like these levels of divisions. And, you know, at the top, our guys. like that. And the bigger you are, the more drugs there are involved. And that is really expensive.

Like, the good drugs are incredibly expensive. So I know that the male competitors have... Good shit is always expensive. Yeah. I know that they have a harder time. I've heard a lot of stories, a lot of kind of dark stories, because they just have such a hard time. And if they don't have another job and they're trying to afford these drugs and competing and traveling, like, you have to travel to these shows. You've got to fly and get a hotel room. So I've heard that it's it's really tough for them. So my shit's easy. My shit's real easy.

I had a friend Luke Sandow who was going to Olympia last year, last year. And he died. And he, like, he was at the Arnold Classic and he was doing Olympia and then lockdown happened. And then I was, this is fucking dark. I was going to do a podcast with him on the Wednesday. And I spoke to him on the Sunday. And he was like, yeah, yeah, like we're just chatting about how shit lockdown was. Doing the podcast on the Wednesday, died on the Tuesday.

And his best friend came out and said that he'd killed himself and they saw, they found him. But the family came out and said that it was some sort of heart failure. Yeah, and we hear about a lot of heart failure in bodybuilding. But it's like a weird, like, his best mate said. Yeah, so that's weird. Said they found, and like posted, you know, checking on your friend stuff, like, which would suggest suicide. And Luke had talked about like mad shit like that before.

Like me and him used to talk quite openly about feeling fucking mental. So he was kind of, he did have some stuff going on in his. The family said heart failure or something like that. Yeah. The weirdest shit. I don't know. And it's probably hard for, um, actually my, my stepbrother killed himself. And I think it's like for the family to talk about it, there's almost like a weird kind of shame or I don't know.

I don't know. I think it's maybe they just don't really want to put that out there. Yeah. This got fucking dark really quick. Let's start. Let's talk about it. Anyway. So.

the you don't get paid but you have a full full time job in marketing the reason you're here is to tell me about biohacking but i don't want to go fucking straight in there yeah because you got like quite an interesting like yeah we have like a lot of parallels too like i was excited to talk to you because we there's like there's just some parallels there's like coffee like i worked in specialty coffee for a while there's music like I I was raised in the music industry um so I feel like there's there's some kind of some parallels and then like in the last like year and a half I know that you've been focusing on some stuff with like the mental aspect of biohacking and like that's that's been really interesting like getting into the breathing shit and you know

all that stuff that people don't really want to do but that actually works I have gone real deep and that's why I don't want to like fucking I don't want to blow blow our podcast load immediately right now. You've got to make people wait. Exactly. We've got to fucking do a little bit of just, there's a little bit of podcast chat before the podcast fucking real shit.

Yeah, a little witty, witty banter. So, why don't you work in coffee anymore? Coffee's the fucking best. I know. I had so much fun. And I was just thinking recently, I was like, oh, because,

so the biggest coffee convention in the U.S. is SEA. And I had to go to it a couple of times. It was in Seattle. It's huge. It's just, it's so much fun. And there was like one of those like Facebook or Instagram memories things. And it said that, you know, four years ago I was at that thing. And it was just, it's such a fun industry. I left because I had a really cool opportunity in L.A. I had been consulting for this small frozen food company, we were making, you probably heard of it, that real good foods. It's like that low-carb pizza. Yeah. So I had been their marketing consultant. They were like a tiny team, like four people. I was consulting for them on the side and then they offered me a full-time

gig as their vice president marketing. So I just, I just kind of had to take it. Um, it was just too good of a gig and like I just, I wanted to be close to my dad and I kind of wanted to be back in L.A. I was living in Northern California at the time. So I just, I took that job, but coffee's the shit. It's so much fun. I just, I love like, because before that, I worked in wine. So I did wine marketing for 10 years in Napa Valley. And- And all while competing bodybuilding. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I started competing when I was working in wine. Yeah. Because I remember, like, bringing my little, like, lunch. When I was like, when I was first starting out, I was so proud, I'd bring my little lunchbox into the winery. And everyone would just be, like, trash. And I'd be, like, eating my broccoli. And yeah. So. So I worked in wine for a while, and it was very fun, but the generation that dominates the wine industry is older, very traditional. Fuck off. I'm done with old people.

I'm seriously done them. You're just done with them? I'm just done with them. Well, that's good because COVID's just taking them out. It's how that works. Honestly, I really, I feel, I'm sorry if anyone's had an old person taken out by COVID, but for the majority of old people, just fuck off. Just, I'm done with you. You're voting for the wrong shit.

You're doing the wrong shit. It's our time now. Just stay indoors. You might die from COVID, so everyone stay indoors and we'll just fucking do whatever we fucking want. Yeah, except you're going to meet my dad at some point. Like, if you play a show in L.A. or something, and he's the coolest old person. He's almost 80.

And he's just still just like doing shit in music and just like going for hikes and like smoking weed. And he's just like the coolest hippie. And you'll be like, what the fuck? You're 80? He can stay. Like how? My parents can stay and then everyone else can go away.

Okay, okay. This is what I want to say about your dad. Huh. Because I've seen a number of times he or you or someone has a Fleetwood Mac gold disc. I've got it probably. So, yeah, it's right here. So what did your dad do? What's his deal?

And then this is his REO one. So my dad's a record producer. and he worked throughout like the 70s, 80s, and then did a little bit of stuff in the 90s and then kind of like, essentially like as soon as everything switched from analog to digital, like as soon as ProTool showed up, my dad was like, I'm out. So, but he was also like, he was at retirement age. And I think he was just so far along with it that as soon as that happened and I remember, like I remember talking with him about it. Like as soon as you could basically record an album in your own house. Yeah. I think that maybe he felt, I don't know, maybe he felt like he wasn't needed or he felt like,

fuck, I'm going to have to completely relearn everything. I remember him being like, I'm going to have to fucking learn pro tools. And I'm like, you know, and he was in like his 60s. Like, so, yeah. So, yeah, the Flewad Mac one is over there. He, um, I think he engineered that one. Um, Ario, Ario's Pue Wagon, he worked with for a long time. So those guys are all like, the lead singer is my godfather. Um, they're like our family. So like I grew up really with those guys. Um, he did most of Ario. He did a lot of foreigner. Um, he did a lot of Fleetwood Mac because I, because I believe he did rumors too. Um, and then like, he did some cool shit up in Northern California, um, where the record plant is in Sausalito. He, he, He worked with Santana and Grateful Dead.

So there's like really cool stories about that. Like, I feel like there needs to be like a documentary or I need to like write a book or something. Because my dad is just, his whole journey is really cool. And he's a sweetheart. So he kind of like, he was, I think kind of naive and kind of, um, uh, he gave people to benefit of the doubt a lot. So he got, you know, there were times when he might get kind of like walked on. No, no. But he's...

Now, I feel bad for the stuff I said about old people. I was joking anyone. No, but he's just like... My dad, I mean, my dad and Andy are really similar. Like, just fucking sweethearts. Of course they are. That's Freud right there. That's, that's you've picked him for that reason.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's how it works. Yeah. Music, you know, sweetheart. Yeah. My mom is Scottish. I now live in Scotland with a woman who's... who's from Scotland.

All right. It's just what fucking that's what happens in your brain. Yeah. As long as you do it in a healthy way, right? Don't have to fuck my mom or anything crazy. No, yeah, but, you know. You gravitate, you gravitate to whatever. What's comfortable.

Yeah, yeah. And, but the hope is that you do that in a healthy way, right? Because, like, my dad is awesome. My mom is not cool. So my mom's like, she's got problems. I haven't seen her since I was 15. So I think what I, what I did first when I was, dating was I dated her a couple times you know I found someone like her and then I went oh shit

okay I see what I'm doing I felt like people like that kept being kind of like given to me and it was like a hey you need to learn your lesson and move on yeah um and then I feel like I finally did and then you know I went and found my dad my daddy my daddy the fucking best though it's like I know when you two got together I was just like, that's some fucking Branjolina shit. Jacked, Jacked Brangelina. Jacked Brangelina? Yeah.

Yeah. Do you like work out together? Yeah, yeah, we do. Yeah, yeah. We don't do the same thing, though, and I will never do that with anyone. I won't do that with my girlfriends. Like, that thing where you're working out with someone and they're doing the same exercises, I can't do that with anybody.

That's just... Why not? I don't know. I just, I'm so used to... Come on. Give me the pro. The pros. I'm so used to doing it on my own.

Like, I like... I like. to have headphones in. I don't like to talk to anyone. I really like to get into like a zone. Um, it's very meditative for me because, and that's like, like lifting really, if you think about it, it really is meditation because you're focusing on, hold on I got to adjust my, my phone here. Um, you're focusing on your breathing. Um, you're not thinking about other things. Um, it's just, you know, you're just doing something by yourself, you're kind of in your own head. And that's essentially meditation.

You know, you're breathing and you're kind of blocking out the rest of the world. So when I started lifting, I started doing it alone. I didn't start with anyone. I didn't have a trainer or anything. So I think that I'm just used to doing it that way and just kind of, you know, being on my own. I think I'm like, I'm in two minds about it because I've, Since lockdown, I've got my own little place to work out now. And I do love having my own music on.

Yeah. And just there is something about just when you've got, when you've got a song that you really like and like a breakdown hits or something real heavy hits, you can work harder. It's like proven that you can do it. But if I don't hang out with people at the gym, I don't ever hang out with people.

Yeah. I mean, there's that. I'm so, like, bad at keeping up with friends or whatever. So when I lived in Reading, I used to hang out with my mates at the gym. And that was like your social thing. Yeah. That's like you're going to a bar. Exactly.

So when I moved to Nottingham, that was literally all I had because I had no friends. So that was, I loved training with other people. And now I kind of miss it. Yeah. Do you work out? Is it, how do I pronounce her name? Is it Laca, Lika? Lika.

Lika. Do you guys work out together? I've started getting her to come. Yeah. Because she like, she has the biggest booty in the world, like genetically. Yeah, she's already got that. Yeah. Hasn't squatted.

So then she was like, yeah. Yeah, she wanted to like tone up or whatever and just, I had to obviously have the conversation of all you need to do is exercise. Yeah. Yeah. You don't need to do the specific. Yeah. You don't have to do sit-ups to get rid of anything around your belly or whatever.

It's amazing. I can only imagine how infuriating this is to you. But even like friends on tour that express like interest of wanting to work out. And then you're like, yeah, just do this. Count your calories. Do this. Yeah. And they go.

I feel like I should be doing more sit-ups because I wanted to go from there and then you're just like, I just fucking face palm. But could you please explain why that doesn't work? So we all have abs. Even someone with a shit body has abs, right? Everyone has abs. They're such an un-PC way of saying it. They're under there. Just a shit body.

Not like, you know, someone has maybe let themselves go. Someone has a shit body. Like, we've all got them. They're under there. They're just under fat. So that's why you can see, like, there's a difference between someone who's jacked and someone who's skinny. And I think that sometimes people misconstrue those.

And we see this in wrestling sometimes. And I'm always, because I'm always looking at people's bodies in wrestling, because I'm just fascinated by the different shapes and looks and characters. And just in general, there's people who you might, someone would see them and go, oh, they're, they're shredded. And it's like, no, they're just skinny. There's a big difference between someone who's jacked because they lift. Yeah.

But yeah, so everyone's got abs. And it's just how much fat is on top of them. And it's just fat. And doing anything localized doesn't take it away from that area. Yeah. Core strength is great. And that's how people need to think about it. It's core strength because your core is, it's stabilizing everything, right?

So work your abs and work your core because you don't want a back injury. Like that's the only reason I work my abs is because I don't want to hurt my back. I would need my abs to activate. No, no. I'm not going to give you a six pack without getting rid of the fat, which is just through exercise, not through anything stomach related, like more stomach exercise. It's not like, yeah, it's not like they're going to pop through your fat. Like you have to get rid of your fat burgers.

That's what people think. I know. And it's crazy. Yeah, when I see like, overweight people doing ab stuff, I'm like, this is such a waste of time. And I feel bad and I obviously can't say anything, but I feel bad that they're wasting so much time. Because they could do bodyweight squats and they would fucking burn a lot of calories. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. And really, that's what they have to do is they just have to burn calories. So I could, yeah, I could do no ab exercises and just diet. down and I would have abs. But, of course, as you get older and you start, like, hurting yourself as a bodybuilder, you're like, fuck, I have to train my core simply because I don't want my back to go out because, like, that in the past few years just, like started happening. It's like, I hit my 30s and then my back was just like, it just started to go. Wait. How old are you? I'm about to turn 35. One month from today, I turned. Yeah, yeah, yeah, one month from today,

I turned 35. Really? Oh, that's cool. That's great. Respect. You were like, you're a little. You were like, Andy. Yeah, I'm not going to. What's easy to do it? No, I didn't think like real young. Andy and I love, we love talking about our age discrepancy because, so he'll be, he'll tell me a story of something that he did when he was 15. Like he'll be telling me something cool about when he was 15.

And I'll just say, yeah, I was, I was six years old. Like it says, or like, When I, so I started going to every time my dad shows when I was 14 and he was 23. Yeah, but for the record, you didn't know each other then. We didn't know each other. No. Thank God. You need to clear that up right now.

Yeah, you know, I met Andy. When I was 14, we fell in love. How did Andy get canceled? Oh, his girlfriend did a podcast. And revealed. Fucking hell. Right, yeah. Okay.

So for the record, no. They've only met in the last. few years. Yes. The, right, I'm still on this fitness thing because you're,

you're a wealth of knowledge. Okay, so I've got, I, like getting older, how much does getting older actually play a, play a part?

Because I was, about three years ago, I was fucking jacked. Like, in fact, no, probably just a bit skinny and a bit jacked.

But it was the best fucking shape that I've ever been in. And I worked out pretty fucking hard, but, yeah. It was like relatively easy to have and to maintain. And then lockdown happened last year.

I hit the bottle real hard. And then like just got a little bit fatter and I can't get rid of it. I think, are you tracking your calories? Yes. Have you tried dropping them down? Have you tried taking some food away? Yeah. But no, so this is what I'm getting at.

So I was, I was like cutting on 2,900 calories last time. And now I'm on 2,300 and nothing's happening. Yeah. So it could be due to lockdown, just the fact that maybe you're not getting outside and just getting that non-exercise activity as much. Oh, steps and stuff. That's everything for me. There's no steps happening.

Yeah. And there is really something to be said for getting outside and getting sunshine. I think that there's like, there's a whole lot of studies on that. And, um, and I believe that basically sitting inside and not getting natural light has an impact on your metabolism. Um, I, I just saw a study the other day that I'll send to you. But yeah, it's, it's activity. It's just, it's movement. And that's like, it's funny. I can go on vacation and not work out and just kind of eat whatever I want. But if, If it's one of those vacations where I'm walking a lot, I'm walking like miles a day, I'll just, I'll come home and I'll just have dropped pounds, even though I, like, flew, ate a bunch of garbage. It's movement for me. I have to get steps. You just completely nailed that immediately because I've been racking my brains, but... Yeah, I think, you know...

I didn't even think of non-exercise movement, and I'm doing none. Like, when that was happening, I was walking... my old, big old dog for like probably a mile every morning and then doing shit for your daily activity. Yeah, just think about, yeah, just think about like getting in your car going here, you park, you walk in, you walk around a store, whatever, just things, just the way that we used to live. There was just naturally more activity and the tiniest things add up.

And there's a pie chart that I'll have to send to you that shows. your daily caloric expenditure and where it comes from. So you burn calories when you work out, you burn calories when you eat food and you know, you burn calories when you do just regular activity. They call it neat, N-E-A-T, non-exercise activity, I think it's thermogenesis. One of those big words. But that, that non-exercise activity makes up like a huge part of the pie chart of your daily caloric expenditure. And it's just the shit that people, don't think about, even like fidgeting, like people who sit and like fidget a little bit, they actually burn a lot more calories than someone who doesn't.

Sick. Because all that, yeah, they start shaking. Are you a fidgetter? I'm a pretty big fucking, I'm a fidgetter anyway. That's great. That's great. Everyone should be, I'm not. I should just be fucking doing more shit.

But that really annoys me because I love, I love to eat. Yeah, jump on it. I mean, like, just try jumping on this up. I swear for one week, you know, give yourself a step goal. Mine's 10K. But every now and then, if I had a weekend with Andy and we were traveling and we kind of ate some garbage, I might give myself like a 15K or 20K goal for just like a few days. I just know what my body likes.

And I also know that when my body is moving, like low intensity, low impact movement, that's when my body feels the best as well. So for me, movement is really healing. I need to stay fluid. I need to, I have to keep my body moving for the sake of like my back and my hips and all that shit. I just feel better. And also like I said,

like as I get older and now I've been doing this bodybuilding shit for 10 years, I'm kind of rethinking my workouts and realizing that bodybuilding workouts, just traditional bodybuilding workouts, like five days a week, are going to hurt me. And I have to move away from that and, like, find more balance and do maybe two lifts a week, like two heavy lifts a week. And then maybe another day I'm doing yoga or maybe I'll, you know, go rock climbing or go hiking or like, do I need more balance. I need to do more things that humans naturally do, which picking up something really heavy. and contracting the shit out of your muscles is just not great for us.

We need to be like lengthened. Like we need to do yoga and Tai Chi and like just walk, you know, because we need to stay long because a body that's like this that's just contracted, that's where injuries happen. And that's when, you know, after a few years of bodybuilding, that was how the injuries started. And my doctor, I'm working with this really great spine guy right now. And he's like, it's just wear and tear. It just is what it is. But, you know, it's going to happen anyone who's been doing this for a while.

But now I'm doing more like stabilizing stuff. Like I'll do a workout where I'm just doing like single leg holds or like a lunge or a squat. And I'm just trying to hold it as long as I can. And I'm shaking. And that's good because all of the tiny little muscles around my big muscles are actually firing. And they're showing my body how to stay stable and not get hurt. with bodybuilding, I'm not recruiting any of the little muscles. I'm only using big muscles, which means there's no stabilization involved, which means

my back can just go out at any time. And that can happen to anybody. Like, you know, I'm sure that you had a lower back thing happen from doing dead lifts. Like, my lower back is completely fucked. Yeah. And a lot of that, I think, is that we don't, we're not, we're not activating all of the tiny, tiny little muscles in our body. My, it's really like coincidental that you said that because my instinct, when I wasn't losing weight, when I'm not losing weight right now, I'm fucking trying, but was to do more days a week because what had happened is I was doing obviously less movement, which I hadn't even thought about.

But I was doing less workouts a week. I was going one day on, one day off, one day off, which what I used to do was like five days on, two days off. but so when this weight loss stalled I was like oh I'll just do more and I went back to go in five days a week and I injured myself immediately and that was your body saying like no that's not it and I found out I played drums the period where I was working out less which kind of relates to what you what you were saying I played the drums so much better because I'm not in that constantly contracted state I'm like yeah there's there's more, there's less like,

your body can just move around more freely. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like if I did a really heavy lift and then the next day I tried to do anything, like play any sort of instrument, they're guaranteed I'm not going to be 100%. I might be more kind of 70% because I'm trying to recover from this other thing

and my muscles are kind of like, no. So that totally makes sense. And the bad thing is that on the day, if I train on the day that I play the drums, I'm really good, I'm really limber, but it is always that recovery day. I'm fucking dog shit.

And that's, well, I mean, that's really good for you to know because then you can kind of plan everything around that. Like, that's how, what Andy does with wrestling too.

Like he never, for him, he doesn't like to work out the day of. So he does not like to work out in the morning before he wrestles. He likes to kind of, he likes to work out a couple days before a wrestling match. and then come into it just kind of,

he just likes to come into it fresh. So, like, you just kind of have to be able to listen to your body and balance all the things that you do. There's also when you said that you went in and you were, like, lifting five days a week, I think that, like, with your weight loss stalling, there is a point at which you're stressing out your body too much with the lifting,

and then you end up with inflammation, basically, and you end up with a body that's pushing back on you, and that's when, like, we see that in bodybuilding all the time, and that's when we'll do something like back-to-back rest days. Like, if I had a client that I coach and she was just going really, really hard, that's why you see D-load weeks. That's why you see people who are like, okay, I'm going to take a couple of days off. Like, it's just too much. Like, I can't do it. And I think that that was why I ended up with some problems, like the hormonal problems and, like the cortisol problems, about five years into bodybuilding. I think that that was why I ended up with some problems, I think,

I think it's that for the first few years, I just went really hard. And I felt like I could. You know, I was like, I think I started when I was 24. And I felt great, you know, and I just didn't know that all of that, that like six days a week and then probably doing cardio on the seventh day, eventually was going to just like drive me into the ground. And what happened then? If you were, if you don't mind going into it. Well, so I didn't get injured, but everything showed up like in my hormones. So I started bodybuilding.

I started competing a year later. The next year I got my pro card. And then right after that, because when you turn pro, you want to jump into a pro show immediately. You just kind of want to establish yourself, kind of just say hi to the judges. Hey, I'm here. Don't forget about me.

Check it out. Look at me in the lineup of pros and tell me what the feedback is. So you kind of just want to jump right in. So after I got my pro card, I went to jump into pro shows, and I had already been competing for like a solid two years. And my body just like got really like puffy. It was very strange. I wasn't losing weight.

I stalled. My coach had to put me on keto to pull any sort of water off. And my body still was like, no, I hate this. My body hates keto. And so I jumped into those two shows kind of looking like shit. But good, still like good to jump in and just. feel out a pro show because it's very different. The posing is different. Um, so after, like, right after that, my coach looked at me and she's like, you have to get your hormones tested because I was

just puffy. Like, if you're holding on to water, um, in a strange way, and it's just, there's just a different kind of a watery, puffy look. Like, there's a good chance that there's hormones involved. So she was like, go get a test immediately. I got tested and everything was off. Like estrogen, DHA, cortisol, everything was fucked. And I think it was just from diet. What my levels are of those things? Yeah. So I want to know, I want to know what, were they high, low?

So my estrogen was extremely low. However, at the same time, I was still estrogen dominant because my progesterone was like in the gutter. So I somehow had low estrogen, but also estrogen dominance at the same time. My cortisol was low and my doctor said that. I had basically had a cortisol dump where like my cortisol had been so high that I just like, it just dumped after that and I had like nothing else. Yeah. DHEA was very low and that was apparently one of my biggest problems. So I jumped on DHA. Um, I, for the most part, I went about

all of it very naturally. So thank God. I have a coach who is so cool that she's like, she doesn't care if I compete. She's like, I just want you healthy. So what we did, really, I had to just practice patients for like a good six months. Really for like three months. I had to go pretty hard on this. My first steps were I took a month off of caffeine and I took a month off of the gym. I couldn't do it. Well, it's funny because at first she had me do two weeks off of coffee and then I just started feeling so good that I was like, I know, I know, I know. I know. But I also, I had been feeling like shit for a long time. So I think I just needed, just anything at that point was going to feel good. So I took a month off of that and I took a month off of training too. I just did

like yoga and walking because I just, I needed to get the mental stress down and I needed to get the physical stress down as well. Because I don't think, people don't think about lifting weights as stress and it is. It's like a lot of really intense stress on your body. And your body doesn't really know the difference between stress, between the different types of stress, it just feels like it's just under, you know, some... Oh, what, like mental stress and physical strength? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. They'll both fuck you up. Yeah. So I just was like, I'm just going to sleep and take baths and do yoga. And that was, I had kind of gotten into the biohacking stuff a little bit before. I was really into like, there's some cool, I'm really into weed. I am very much. I've been into weed for a long time. I know.

I had really gotten into the sauna because there's very cool research about how the sauna boosts cardio endurance. And I had learned about that from Dr. Rhonda Patrick. She's put out some really cool studies on that. So I was getting into the sauna as a means of making my cardio easier while I was prepping for shows. So that was like kind of one of my very first little like biohacking things that I got into. But then when my hormones got fucked, I was like, well, what else am I going to do? I'm not working out or anything. And I'm going to solve this naturally. Like I, like I just, I didn't want to go to a doctor. I didn't want a prescription. I just, I knew that I could figure it out naturally, either with food or habits or little tactics, you know.

So that was kind of when I started researching a ton. And I was also just coming off of keto. And I wasn't sure how I felt about it. So I went kind of hard on trying to learn about just what exactly keto does to your body and what the benefits are. And should I do it or not? And then I started really like trying different diet things and kind of fucking around to like find that exact thing that works for me. Because I just, I wasn't convinced with keto. I didn't feel very good.

I've tried it and I, I, like, I don't know what it does with my blood sugar or something, but I could kill someone. Like, I could, like the, my temper. Yeah. My everything is like off the charts if I do keto. Yeah. It's crazy. That kind of makes sense.

Like 3,000 calories of. Yeah, fat. Which, whatever, avocado. That doesn't even feel good. I felt like I had sludge in my stomach. I felt like, I felt greasy, like from the inside. I just felt gross. So, and then now after, so I did keto, I've tried carnivore

just because people were talking about it for a while. And I was like, fuck it, I'll try it. I like steak. Tried that. It was kind of fun for a few weeks. And then I was like, Did it have the miracle with fucking effects that everyone says it does? I don't think so.

Not that I know of. I don't think any of these. But I also like, I don't know, the people who are really big proponents of it, I think they talk about like how it can help autoimmune disorders and like some real serious health shit that I just don't have. It was fine. It was whatever. It's not really sustainable. I just like I'm looking for a diet that's sustainable because that's the one that you're going to stick to.

Right. So that's why I just don't believe in keto because I don't think first of all, I don't think the people do it right because they're not tracking their food. And if I'm going to do keto, I'm going to do it like to the number and make sure that I'm actually gutting. the most out of it. Yeah, carnivore, no. I just,

I'm, I thrive on high carbs and lower-ish fat. And I, but I had to learn through trial and error. For people that don't know, because this is primarily a music podcast, I guess,

keto is when you have no carbohydrates whatsoever, whatsoever, and there's some science involved. Yeah. Whatever, that can't be bothered to talk about it. So the,

what, you fixed for the most part your hormone problems with biohacking? Yeah, yeah, with a lot of rest, um, prioritizing my sleep and finding little ways that I could do that and then I could sleep better. Um, and just,

yeah, just de-stressing and finding different, whether it was like supplements or a specific strain of weed that works really well for me or a breathing exercise. Um, and, And really all of this is biohacking. And that's, I think, where people get a little bit tripped up because I think the biohacking

is some special thing that's, like, out of reach, that's, like, difficult. Biohacking is literally just recognizing what you currently have going on and just finding cool, interesting ways to fix it. Like, if I'm like, oh, I'm not sleeping great, okay, let me look into some interesting breathing exercises from Dr. James Nestor, who's like the breathing expert. let me like listen to his podcast and see what I can do about my sleep. Okay, and then you try it and you're like, well, shit, that worked. It's just like taking yourself to the next level and doing what the average person just doesn't want to do.

Breathing, the Wimhoff breathing stuff, literally, I would say changed my life. And if I want to be really fucking dramatic, quite possibly saves my life. That's so cool. That shit is amazing. That's really cool. the, even, I'm sure it's not indicative just to the Wim Hof stuff, but just, I had never taken deep breaths in my fucking life. How funny is that?

I reckon the first time that I did it, I took more deep breaths during that, like the 40 deep breaths that I took then, I probably hadn't taken that year. Crazy. And that's most people. And so, you know, I mentioned James Nestor. I kind of just got into him. He is the author of the book called, I think it's just called Breathe, and he has a cool podcast. And he literally, like, this is just, this is his topic.

He's just breathing. And I heard him on a podcast one time say, if you did anything 25,000 times a day, wouldn't you want to do it at least kind of well? Like, wouldn't you want to do it pretty well? And I was like, oh, shit. So he's like, you don't want to do something, 25,000 times a day. day and do it really bad. Like, don't do that. Like, so then I was like, okay, so maybe if I improved even 30% of those breaths, I could see a positive impact. And it was like, yeah, I did. And then, you know, obviously, we're not going to do deep breathing 100% of the day. But it's like,

if you can do 20, 30 and then, I don't know, maybe even 40%. I don't know. But if you can just do like any portion of that really, really well, it's going to benefit you. And the science is it's out there. Like for anyone who doesn't believe. The Wim Hof science is absolutely fucking mental. That's some crazy shit. He's like curing like things go. He's like curing

inflammation in his body, right? Yeah, they injected him with E. coli, which has a 99.99.999 success rate in infecting you. He did his breathing exercise after they put it in him. And then they watched his body

fight it off. And then they went, okay then so you're just an outlier like you have some sort of gene yeah and then he went okay give me 15 people and then he they gave him 15 people and it took like two weeks and i think like 14 out of the 15 beat the test which had a previous 99.9% fucking yeah that's wild just through breathing and cold exposure the cold exposure i was going to ask you if you're if you're doing that part as well I'll be honest with you The last sort of month This is what I am the worst human being

I am the guy You know whatever that's saying is like half an ounce of Weed bro No Half an ounce of Half an ounce of prevention Is worth an ounce of cure Whatever the fuck the thing is right

I am the guy that's like Oh fuck I cut my arm off I guess give me a plaster Like I will I fixed my mental health and then I stopped doing the stuff that fixed it. So for the last like two months, maybe a month, six weeks.

That's like, that's anybody. I've been there with like injuries and shit. Yeah. Where it's like I know I'm supposed to continue. Yeah. Yeah. I can feel it just creeping up now. And you know what?

After this, I'm going to have a bath. I'm going to do my breathing exercise in the bath, which they tell you not to do. But I fully trip out when I do. doing the baths. I know. You told me that you told me that you got like high off of breathing in the bath. The breathing shit and then the breath hold specifically. I have like full trips sometimes. And it's like there's been some weird like I've done a lot of fucking drugs. I know what a trip is. I know the sort of stuff that I see. The sort of stuff. And it like is different to all of that.

It's not like a mushroom trip or anything like that. I've had like, I had like a weird. weird, permanent, like, so for anyone that doesn't know, the Wimhoff thing, you do like 40 big breaths. I'm going to completely summarize it. You do like 40 huge breaths, a big exhale, and then you hold your breath, not like just until you feel like you need to take a deep breath in. And then when you take a deep breath in, you hold that for 15 seconds. And during those 15 seconds, I would say out of my four rounds, maybe two of them, I have like, two of them every single time I have a transcendal

experience and in the I got a real good there's a bootleg one but it's a Brian Eno like just soundscapes oh yeah we'll listen to that in the sauna and do breathing exercises

so yeah someone's superimposed the Wimhoff breathing on top of this Eno stuff yeah and he counts you down from the 15 seconds and there's been times where I've left this realm, had some crazy dream, like, where I felt like I've been there, and then come back, felt like I've been gone for ages, like a fucking, literally like a DMT trip.

Yeah. Come back and he's still got seven seconds left to count. So I've been out for a second. I wonder if, because you know how, you know the connection with DMT and your pineal gland. I wonder if this breathing is activating your pineal gland in some way. That's what he says it does. He says it does. Okay, that makes sense.

The decalcification. Yeah, yeah. And mine was definitely like a fucking old dishwasher. The white shit around it. I need some fucking cow gone just literally inject it into me. But there's been times where I've had like one of them that sticks in my head because I truly think it was some weird like. like not a premonition, but like a weird lapse of time. Like yeah, there was a dream and it was just a real normal dream,

but it's me and my girlfriend at the Empire State Building. And she's never been to New York, right? But obviously one of the first things that will happen when the world opens up is I'll have to go to New York for Stray. Yeah, take her and show her the- Yeah, she'll definitely come with me. So, and we'll definitely go to the Empire State Building. Yeah.

And I'm like, in my head, head. I'm like, am I going to get there and be like, and if I go there and I've had, if I get deja vu, like, that's really, I will have unlocked something. Like, it would be the weirdest thing ever. It could just be like I had a fucking, I passed out a bit and had a little dream, but it was so vivid and weird. Yeah. And I just, in part of me really wants to go there and be like, just like, how does it feel? Like deja vu feeling. Yeah. Yeah. And then be like, I know exactly where the deja vu's from. Mm-hmm.

You created it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's really cool. Yeah, I think that that's what's, like, what happens with Kundalini Yoga as well. I know that Jordan from Every Time I Die has actually gotten really into Kundalini Yoga and, like, breathing and yoga shit. And he's having, like, he's mentioned some kind of similar experiences. We're just through this, like, just this breath work, he's having, like, amazing experiences. It's really cool.

It's so cool. And it's something people aren't, people just aren't willing to take even like 10 minutes and do this shit. You know. But even I'm like... Yeah, we're all bad at it. I'm horrible at it too. I mean, I'm doing it after this.

And now I'm going to tell you if I have a fucking crazy dream about the Empire's Day Building. But anyway, this is great because you know what we did? We did the little fucking, I don't know you. And I don't know you. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Conversation.

Now we're in some fucking deep shit, right? Well, I want to get back on the hormone biohacking thing because I'm fucking bored all the time. And what I, what I do is like I'll change a supplement or do something and I'll get my blood tested all the time. Disclaimer, I get my blood tested because the minute my testosterone is at TRT levels, I'm going to fucking get it. Yeah. And have you not yet? You haven't had to yet? Oh no, my, my, my, that's great.

My testosterone levels are ridiculously high for someone that doesn't have a beard. It's fucking insane. Wait, how old are you? 30. Why, how old are I? 34. You're like, you're just on the cusp. You're right at like, it's TRT time is coming.

It's coming. It's coming to real. Typically, I think 35 is the average age where a lot of guys start to kind of get into it. Yeah. In the last four years, my testosterone has gone up. We'll see though. Hey, write it out. Yeah. And do you know what?

There's a few things that have like, so I went for a stage of just like being bored, being at home, just not really doing anything. So I would just get a hormone panel and then I try and improve things from it. See, that's so cool. I love that. The first time I did it was. maybe like 2018 and it came back and my testosterone was like

my free testosterone was pretty low because my sex binding my sex hormone binding globulin my favorite was fucking was like sky high and that was like throttling my free testosterone

or whatever and you'll hate this long story short I found out that it was weed that was making that super super high and I stopped the weed. Yeah. And that went back to normal. That's really interesting.

And I just had like, I'm going to look into that. I just had like normal testosterone levels. Hmm. And then here's a good one. I split up with my ex. Mm-hmm. Who I hated. May she burn in hell.

Thank you. May she burn in hell. And, uh, my. testosterone since then has been fucking through the roof. So she was, so she was like a, you know how people talk about energy vampires? She was like a testosterone vampire. And then you got with this hot ass chick and then your test just like shot through the,

I mean, if I was dating like, I think my test would probably go through the roof too. I think anyone's would. I wonder if I can fucking pull it up. Like, because there's like, there's a thing in the UK where it just saves all your stuff and you can check it and you get like doctor's notes or whatever. But I was always checking it because the initial one was I was on the cusp of like TRT. And I was like, fuck it. If I need it, I need it.

Yeah. And you went about it more like naturally, which is cool. Yeah. And I managed to sort it out. The other one that was fucking huge was, because I saw you started taking it the other day, was P5P, vitamin B6, vitamin, sorry. Yeah. B6, the methylated form of it.

Methylated, yeah. I just got into methylated. I didn't even know about it. It's crazy. So my prolactin was super high as well. Okay. Which would mean that I have like that most people with high prolactin

would have had like, like fucking gyno mastia or stuff like I don't. I've got tiny little fucking raisin. Okay. Raisin nipples. And, uh, Then I started taking, a doctor was like, oh, you want to take K-B-Go line or whatever, it's K-B-W-W-W-E-W-E-B-A.

And then I, like, Googled the side effects and they were fucking crazy. And then I read a study where it was like, oh, vitamin B-6, the methylated one, does the same thing, but obviously naturally. Yeah, yeah. Started taking that. Number one, prolactin went down, and as a result, estrogen went down, testosterone went up Love it

Number two The male refractory period Which is After you Orgasm The amount of time it takes you to be able to orgasm again Is regulated by prolactin So if you

Lower that Infinite Nuts Infinite Nuts I mean it's not infinite but I've tested it Infinite Nuts Is it's a good name for like like a scoband or something, infinite nuts or like infinite.

Infinite nuts would be on like fat records. The fact, infinite nuts and just like checkerboard, infinite nuts and then like maybe like a monkey. That's the fucking, like a monkey with that top hat on. But that was like a side effect of it that I realized and then I googled it and was like, oh, it's that shit I'm taking. But that was natural. Yeah, that's really cool.

Because I just want that, I just want that fucking legal juice, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going to get you hooked up. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think that, like, the reason that I go about shit exactly the same way as you do is, again, because of my dad. Because, so I grew up with this hippie that was like, we can get everything we need from the earth. And he's, he's from Hawaii. And he just, like, he just kind of, like, worships, like, the earth and, like, what it gives us.

So my dad has, I don't even know. he's ever been to a doctor. He's never been on a medication. He's, he's 79. Um, he's so healthy. And every time he's ever had an issue, instead of running to a doctor for a pill, he just would try to figure it out himself. And he would try to figure out like with food, like he eats great. Um, or, you know, something he was doing with his training because he liked working out a lot too. Um, so I just, I saw a lot of that growing up. And I saw, that he was able to kind of avoid just being one of those people that's just on a ton of pills. And so I think that that's why my natural instinct, when I have an issue, is to do something

naturally. And going on a prescription will forever be my last, like, that is like my last step when everything else has failed. And I truly need it. That's when I'll do it. But like I got off of, I got off of birth control. I was on birth control for 10 years and I didn't know. Of course, fucking now all the research comes out about how fucking awful it is for you. It's so bad for women in so many ways. And there was none of this research. And I didn't have like Instagram back then to like follow cool hormonal doctors like I do now. But I was on for 10 years. Felt like garbage for a solid 10 years. And then finally like I got off of that. And otherwise like I just, everything natural as much as possible, you know.

It's crazy that birth control is allowed to exist. Yeah, and so normal. It benefits men, so that's why it is. That's why it's, yeah, you can still carry on taking that. We'll do the fucking tests. Yeah, it's fine. Go on, girls. And it's just, fucking rubbering up.

It brings in so much money. It's just, everyone's on it, you know? And it's just like, it's just what you do. Like, as a girl, like, I turned, I first did it from, my skin when I was 16. I had really bad skin. And, um, but as a girl when you are in your late teens or early 20s, he's like, okay, I was going birth and 12 now. And like, that's just the norm. And now it's all coming out, just how awful it is for you. And that the effects are very long lasting, even when, you know, when you get off. So I, I got off of it and I, I got like a non-hormonal

IUD. Um, but yeah, I just, I just don't, I just don't. I just don't. I just don't. I, you know, I don't want to fuck around with, like, synthetic hormones. Like, my hormones are already complicated enough. I'm a chick. I don't then want to introduce something fake and try to fuck with them. I don't want to fuck with nature too much. I found that when you try to fuck with it. That's wild.

They put like a 16-year-old kid on that shit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And could that have contributed to my shit when I was in my late 20s? Like, maybe. Maybe the combination of that plus then the bodybuilding stuff, you know, I don't know if that could have played a part. But it's nasty.

Yeah. And for anyone, you know, listening that's either a girl that's on birth control or a guy who has a check-on birth control, like, there's a lot of good research out now that just wasn't available to us before. And you can very easily find, you know, what the problems are with it. But there's other things you can do. those other methods Nice Nice And if you got infinite nuts

though You gotta be careful If you got infinite nuts Oh You would certainly Don't want to mix P5P with no birth control All right

Let's talk Are you in the mushroom club Are you the Yeah Yeah Are you a shroomer Like not a magic kind I mean like

Oh not a magic Okay What kind I mean I like I like them all I like all of them I have had some of the worst times of my life on magic mushrooms.

So they're like, they're in my bad books. They are really. Do you think that it was, because typically the, where you run into problems are either, of course, the dose is too high or in my experience,

it's all about environment. And that if you don't set, I am so fucking prescriptive about my environment when I'm doing psychedelics, that it's probably, annoying to people who I'm with. But it has to be perfect. And I learned that the hard way. So I started out for some reason, my first psychedelics that I got into was acid and I shouldn't have. I was young and it's just, that's way too gnarly. And I had one last really bad trip and now I

don't do acid anymore. I microdosed at one time and that was pretty fun. But I had a really bad trip, but it was just the wrong environment. And then I've only had one bad experience with mushroom. Not even really that bad. It could have been if I stayed there longer. But again, wrong environment, loud music, bright lights, not natural. And so for me, now I know exactly where I need to be, when, what I need to eat or not eat. Like, it's so much about an environment. Do you think that, like, with your bad experiences, that that was the issue? Or what do you think that one? Let me tell you what, let me tell you what they were. They were at house parties.

Yeah. And they were picked fresh that day. And I thought, yeah, it's a fucking mushroom. I eat mushrooms all the time. And I ate so many. Like, and fresh ones are very different than dried ones. Oh, very different. And insane amount of, like, I am talking like of, like, of Liberty Caps, the old classic.

I am talking like two handfuls of fresh ones. My brain, oh, how old was I? I think I was fucking 15. Okay, I was going to say that. Yeah. Yeah. This wasn't last year. A house party.

Oh, it's never happened again. I did that twice, the same fucking thing. And I was just like, never again. But do you know what? Everything was okay. And I was just in another fucking world. And then I smoked an eighth on the bong to myself. Uh-huh.

And the world. Wow, you used to love drugs. Oh. You really love drugs. Now I don't, but, yeah. No. Yeah, no, I just, I did it all the way far, far too young. It's just environment.

Like, um, I never want to be around too many people. I only want to be around like one to, really one to two people. Um, and I need to be in nature. you know, outside, preferably, near trees. I've had a couple of great ones and varying doses from, you know, kind of on the small side to on the bigger side. And, like, if you just go somewhere quiet and land under the stars, it's the best. And do the right dose and put on the right music, you know, it's great.

I don't think my anxiety about it would ever let me now, though. I don't think. And I personally wouldn't want to retry it because I'm at a stage where I've managed to fix my brain. Yeah. Which back to what you say about your birth control, potentially affecting how, you know, your hormones were later on. There is no doubt in my mind that the reason my mental health had the most insane period is because I fucked up my shit when I was far too young. Yeah, when your brain was still developing and you fucked with those pathways that were growing, right, that we're developing. Yeah.

Now they're fucked and I'm fixing them with biohacking. I mean, the microdosing thing appeals to me. It's cool. Have you tried it yet? No. Yeah, it's interesting. I've had both good and bad and lately I haven't been loving. And I'm kind of in like a weird, I have a weird relationship with.

mushrooms right now. And I got invited to actually go do a mushroom yoga class tomorrow. It's like this three-hour thing in Buffalo where they want people to like eat mushrooms. And then there's like a sound bath and yoga and all this really cool stuff. And I've been on the fence about it. Is it legal? Uh, you know, you know, they're advertising on Instagram. I don't know. Um, they're not giving it out. That's a choice, you know. But I, even with microdosing lately, I don't know, um, you have to again be so specific with your dose and you're getting into tiny amounts.

So then it's really annoying because now you're, you're measuring between like teeny tiny, like 0.001 gram or 0.002 grams. Like there's like you're, you know, it's very specific. And I found that it can, it's very. energizing for me, microdosing. And it can be too energizing and I can feel like I drink like five red bowls and it can kind of make me like this and then it can actually induce a little bit of anxiety for me.

But I think that that is just a matter of dose, environment. You know, what have I eaten that day? Have I had any caffeine? I definitely steer clear of caffeine with microdosing because it is so energizing. But I think I might even need to taper it back way far because you're not really supposed to feel it like that. You're supposed to be able to go about your day, do everything normally, and then at the end of the day you go, wow, that was a really great day. And that, wow, that tree,

like, you know, I see that tree every day. But today it just looks a little bit more beautiful. Like, that's it. You shouldn't be feeling like, wow, I feel like I took something. Mushroom, yeah. I mean, I do fully feel like at small doses it is, there's a lot of they're doing a lot of research about using it as an antidepressant, aren't they? And I feel like, because I remember, fuck me, I was such a fucking lunatic when I was a kid. I would do stuff like, I'd be walking home from school, like where I used to live, there's like magic mushrooms everywhere. And I'd see one and I'd just go, don't.

And just fucking like eat one freshie on the way home. And then I'd just be like slightly high for the rest of the evening. I used to be so stupid like that too. That was fine. Yeah. So I can see how it would work as antidepressants, and there was never any, like, I'm not suggesting anyone goes out and just randomly grabs mushrooms off the floor. But I will say this, the shroom tech stuff,

the stuff that I asked you about. Yeah, from on it. Did you try it yet? The on it stuff. Yeah. I tried it yesterday, and all day, I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. I had uncontrollable rage. And I googled.

The cordyceps. Yeah. And it's like a testosterone boost. Yeah. You do the full dose? I was fucking... I don't know if it was just I was having a bad day, but I was on tilt. I've had that happen.

Yeah, I've had that happen. And that was why, like, when you first told me that you were taking shrimp tech, I think I said something like, okay, like, make sure you go work out or something. Yeah. Because I only take, like, some people might take maybe a low, you know, you know, like, some people might take maybe a load. dose of shroom tech just to kind of get throughout their day. I only take it when I'm going to work out. Like I feel like I have to burn shroom tech off. So I'll take it like 45 minutes before a run. Cardio wise, you're fucking flying. So shroom tech. So I tried shroom tech like a long time. You know, I first heard about it from Joe Rogan, of course, as we all did. So I first heard about

on it like when I first started bodybuilding and I heard about shroom tech. And then he has, had someone on who was explaining why shrimp tech works so well, and it's, you know, it's because of these cortisps mushrooms. There were studies, there's some area of the world where cordyceps mushrooms grow wildly, and they're just everywhere. And it's an area where these people, they eat these mushrooms, and they have insane cardio endurance, and they run really far. And I wish I could remember where this is.

But they have this wild endurance. So they started doing studies with corticeps. and it like increases your VO2 max. Like you can run longer and faster. And so I got really interested in corticeps. Around the same time, I was interested in the sauna stuff because I was like,

I have to do so much cardio as a bodybuilder that I might as well make it really awesome. Yeah. But I have to like burn it off. I couldn't believe. I don't know, maybe I was just in a fucking bad mood anyway, but I was like.

No, I've had it happen. Yeah. I've had that happen with psilocybin mushrooms too. I've had like a bad, like, microdose day. My microdose and then I was like, I think that everything's supposed to be really wonderful and beautiful and I just want to like fucking like kill somebody. Yeah. It's fucking crazy how powerful they are.

Yeah. Even the ones that are supposed to be non-psychoactive. I think I googled it yesterday and it was like cordyceps has been proven to like increase your testosterone as well. So like my testosterone is already naturally quite high now. Maybe you were just... And then I'm just pumping it. And I think I took it... I think I took it too close to working out

because towards the end of the workout was really fucking good. And then I was just raging towards the day. Yeah, it kicks in like 45 minutes later for me. I did try... Like, I know this shit is like... Overplayed, but... What, Alphorraine? Yeah.

But I like... I like, I don't know what's a placebo and what's not. I took Alphrain before I went to do drums yesterday. And I fucking, like, I was just, I had a great day. Like, creatively, everything. Totally could have been that, yeah. Yeah, and that's why, like, all of this shit is trial and error. And people have to be willing to put in the time and try things and sometimes fail.

Like, whoops, took too much drum tech, didn't do the right kind of workout, whatever. Okay, fucked up. Let me fix it and try it again. It's all, all the biohacking shit is just identifying an area where you need some sort of a boost or an improvement. And then trying shit, failing a little bit, but trying, trying, trying, until you find what works for you. And like, I didn't respond super well to alpha brain.

I didn't have any problems, but I, I think if I remember correctly, I did it years ago, but it would actually, it was kind of like a downer for me. And it wasn't sparking creativity. Like, I was kind of hoping for it to do. Because I know that it's supposed to be great if you're someone who, like, you know, makes music or writes. I didn't really love Alpha Brain. And Neutropics in general just don't do too much for me. But that's like everyone's different, you know?

I had like a great day yesterday. That's awesome. I can't wait to try it again tomorrow. And I'm going to try the Shroom Tech thing again. and I'm just going to try half as much beforehand. Because if anything, that's just fucking proof that it probably does work. But maybe I just did it wrong. What else did you get from On It?

You got some other shit from Onet that I really like. I'm trying to remember. I just finished drinking a new mood right now. I've been drinking that. Wait, is there a new mood drink? Oh, you got the little packets? Yeah, check this out. Wait, you're going to do.

So wait, what time is it there? It's later there, right? I mean, it's not really that late. why am I going to snooze? It's like 5.20? So new mood for me, just, again, trial and error, just monitor it. But new mood for me, I take it right before bed and it knocks me the fuck out. You might be taking a nap.

It was tested, like drug tested at the border. They had to fucking, they'd opened it and they put a little thing in it. So this is why it took like two months to get to you. Yeah, they took my way. They just took your protein. Yeah, because some bro, some bro just wanted it. Some bro in a uniform. I think it was because it said grass fed on it.

So they thought it was like a big bag of meat or something. Oh my God, guys. I got like a letter. That's really like valuable shit. It's like I'm importing fucking. The letter was like you're not allowed to import livestock. Because I think that there's like a cow on the label. So that might have been the problem.

100% yeah. Yeah. It was a bag of cow like a fucking cow embryo. Fuck. New mood, I really like, though. New mood, I'll take, I'll take new mood every day. I like to take it at night. I sleep really well. And then, you know, it's got, it does have some sort of boosting shit in it as you ya. Let me have a look. Yeah. I'm fucking really tired. I've been slowly drinking it over this. I think it's supposed to like boost like dopamine and serotonin. But essentially I think you're supposed to like wake up the next day feeling a little bit better. Um, it's got more more P5b in it. So I'm fucking great. Just raging.

I'm infinite later. Um, if you got 5HGP. L tryptophan 5Hteph. See, this is what triptophan. That's what's what's in Thanksgiving turkey. That's where people fall asleep. What? Are you serious?

Yeah. You're gonna, just take a nap after this. Just take a little nap. Valerian route. That's like the nature's valium. Yeah. Cam, Camel, Camamile, that's a bedtime tea. That's a T, it puts you to fucking sleep.

Lemon balm. Yep, puts you to sleep, yeah. Well, I've got about five hours until I have to go to sleep. I mean, my sleep's quite good now since I started doing breathing shit. The breathing stuff, that's awesome. I had a period of literally six days where I didn't sleep, and I do not want to talk about it because it fucks me up. It's a horrible, horrible time.

But my sleep, I have full on sleep. anxiety. But the breathing shit just fucking change my fucking life. I love that. I've been trying to kind of work with Andy on this because he's, you know, he didn't sleep very much for like 23 years so far. So like I am like his first, um, experience in like being domesticated, I guess, and like having a normal life. So, I mean, he still does his shit, you know, but he was like just not sleeping or sleeping in a van for like 23 years. So now, even when he tries to sleep, his sleep is still kind of fucked up. I think just because his circadian rhythm is just kind of set to like tour life. So we've been, we've been trying to work on that. And like with wrestling,

you know, he wrestles really late. And then he'll wake up in the morning and then he's got to fly home. And so his day is kind of fucked. And so it's been like a topic for both of us is just really like optimizing sleep and trying to like be good to our circadian rhythms. basically. He didn't believe me that that was a word at first. He thought that I was making circadian rhythm up. Like it's some sort of fucking salsa. I had to like, I had to Google it for it. Here's one for you.

Mrs. Biohacker and sleeping. Okay. So I, when I initially couldn't sleep, I obviously like everyone took melatonin, right? And I found it it just didn't fucking work. And it actually had half of the opposite effect for me where I would just be bold to wake at like 3 a.m. And I read some studies recently where you take like a microscopic amount of melatonin, like point for, not microscopic, but like point two of a milligram.

And your sleep is far better than if you took five milligrams. That's interesting. I take when I feel like I might need to, I take a tiny amount. because, and I do that, not because of this, which is interesting that you say that, because when I take a full dose of melatonin, I typically the next day I'm pretty groggy. So I was like, well, let me just try scaling it back. So we have these gummies that are three milligrams, which is really not that much. I eat like a quarter to a half of one, which is a very small dose.

And I do really like that. So that kind of, that kind of makes sense. The study is like, I think the study was on old. people though but and fuck them but but the it's like point fucking like I'm really small under a milligram and the amount of sleep that they were getting better was so much so much more and it's because your brain only produces this tiny tiny fucking amount anyway so when you like flood it yeah you get you either get it as like a hangover effect yeah left in your brain but you've got nothing to do of it or your brain goes what the fuck do we do

all this. He tries to get rid of it. Yeah. Gets rid of it and then you just fucking wake up. I've also, um, I've seen some studies. There's an issue. I don't know a ton about this, but there's an issue with melatonin and depression. So that's something to keep in mind too is that I think that it's like prolonged use without breaks or something can fuck up your like serotonin levels. So I've heard of, I've heard of, I've heard of that. If you're someone who's doing like three three to five like every single night. I think that after like a couple of weeks,

you'll notice some issues. But I think that you're on to something just like a tiny dose. And then of course all of the other things, you know, that you can do with the breathing. I've taken a tiny bit every single night for about a year now. Yeah.

And I'm the least depressed I've ever been. No, that's great. Yeah. But that's because you're also sleeping. Yeah. That's what it is. Yeah. You sound like you've got some gems of other things that help people sleep.

What have you got for me? I mean, I think you nailed it with the breathing. I think breathing is number one. I think creating the right environment. You know, obviously getting off of the light shit, getting off of your phone, for sure. Definitely getting... You know what? It didn't work for me, and it does work for you.

Huh. CBD. Oh, yeah. So CBD does zero for me. But I wonder if you just got... shitty CBD because there's just so much, really? The marketing gets me every time. I know, I know. I know, though, that there's, like, weed broke. There's so much. I know. There's like, there are a lot of brands that I've tried that didn't work very well. I started using CBD social recently. This is like

the small company out of South Carolina. I like it. At the same time, I have to take a really high dose. So it might just be, I think that a lot of people don't take enough. I, I have to take a lot. Like, I'm like 50 milligrams plus, um, sometimes, sometimes pushing to a hundred, which is a lot compared to when they're like, just take 10 milligrams. 10 milligrams doesn't do shit for me. No. You just reminded me, the only time it's ever done something for me was number one, it was an American company. So I get the feeling that over here, maybe we, we are literally just getting fucking snake oil. It was an American company, piece CBD they were called. And I was like just taking a little bit here and then.

I got a whole fucking bottle of, ah, fuck, is that illegal? Yeah. I'll edit this out maybe. I got a whole bottle of fucking THC CBD lean taken off me at an airport that I accidentally had in my fucking bag trying to fly on an international flight with like fucking lean. But at the same time, I had this CBD. And I, it was like there was some, there was an amount left before I got on a flight. And I was like, I don't really want to fly with it. You took all of it.

So I just drank it all. And you're like, oh, that should work. Yeah, it works. That really fucking worked. But it wasn't like financially, that wasn't. That's also the problem. Yeah, is that CBD is really expensive. Yeah.

So I. Yeah, it was probably like, I probably just drank $50. Yeah, there's a good chance. This shit is so expensive. I found it works on my dogs pretty well, so I like that. I take pretty high doses, but, like, of course, I get it for free. So if this was something that I had to pay for, I might, I might not be buying it. I don't know.

The one reason why I always keep CBD around is one of its really incredible benefits is the way that it can mitigate too much THC. So if you eat an edible and, you know, you have a little bit too much. much and you're like, shit, I think I'm getting too high. You can load up on CBD and it brings you back down. So they kind of counterbalance each other nicely. I went to a to like a cannabis dinner in Northern California where, you know, it was cooked by this amazing chef and everything was infused. And on the tables, they had little droppers of CBD and they're like, please, like use this, you know, if you feel like you need to. So that was when I kind of learned more about that. So now I

keep it around and I haven't had to use it for that but I just, I'll always keep it around just in case because I just don't like, I mean, I'm very prescriptive even with like how much weed I use. But yeah, I don't, I don't like to just fruck around and like get way too high and have a bad time. Like that's never like why I want to use it. So I fully, I fully realized like I don't smoke weed because I get fucking, anxiety and I know it's the strains.

I tried all the fucking strains. That's okay. Some people just doesn't, yeah. It's just, I used to still smoke it and then the combination of my SHBG being high from it plus five out of ten times

having a fucking panic attack. I was like, okay, I'm just fucking out. But I had a friend who had cancer and this is like this is the kind of shit that I would hear before and I would think this is fucking baloney and then i saw it firsthand i had a friend who had cancer and they had big fucking tumors and i had seen the tumors like you could see them poking out of his skin and he went on the rick's rs oh yeah the rso oil rs oh yeah which is the rick

Rick Simpson. Simpson? Simpson. Something like that. R&S.O is wild. Yeah. That's amazing stuff. Super, super, super concentrated. Yeah.

Full spectrum shit. Yeah. The, like, it's so boiled down. The first time you're supposed to take a grain of rice amount. It's like the pin. It's like a pin. Yeah. The first amount, the first time we tried it, he like fully fucking tripped out.

Anyway, he like, I saw him one day and like I went to go see him when it was like, it was pretty bad. He was bedridden. He was out of his fucking mind. He was just, you know, like you would expect someone with cancer. And then he started doing this Rick Simpson. Oh, he'd already started it then. And then the next time I saw him, we met in. a coffee shop outside.

He was like fucking... He was fine. Fine. I mean, not fine, but... But better. Yeah. He showed me the tumors in his leg. And the fucking...

I don't know if he was on, like, chemo as well. But I'm pretty sure I remember he'd stopped the chemo. But the tumors in his leg, which I had previously seen, had shrunk... That's amazing. Just through this... And that, that oil, like, people use it to cure the fucking cancer in their dog's shit. Yeah. But seeing it first...

firsthand like shrinking tumors. Unfortunately, he did die. But like, I was like, wow, that is fucking crazy. And if I ever get any of that shit or any of my family get that shit, I'm fucking breaking bad in some RSO oil. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

Yeah. I think that that was what, I think that that's the story behind RSO is that Rick Simpson had cancer or someone very close to him did. I just, I haven't like read that. story in a long time. But yeah, he claims that it's essentially a cure. Yeah.

So, I mean... It's fucking cure. I, you know, and maybe there's something preventative to it. I don't know. They, they, they, it kills cancer cells in a petri dish.

I know that much. Okay. Um, that's interesting. But also there's like, a lot of people say that it's half of, you know, half of cancer is in the fucking mind. like half of the battle is the positivity and whatever and I guess if you're just fucking high all the time I believe it I mean placebo effect like the placebo effect is real so if you can get real results real physical results from a placebo effect which is something that is happening in your mind then we know and that's again back to like the Wim Hof stuff is that what you do with

your mind can actually affect, you know, what's going on on the inside. That scares the absolute fuck out of me. Placebo scares the fuck out of me. Because, like, I hate my brain. And then, like, just being told that the amount of power your brain has over you, you're like, scared the fuck out of me. My brain's going to kill me. Yeah.

I am not friends with my brain. Yeah. And then just knowing, like, actually, everything's in your mind. Oh, good. Oh, good. This guy is control. That's where everything's shitty is. Yeah.

Yeah. I have to work on that a lot too. I have to continually work on that because I have always been kind of a high stress person that would go to the negative. And that's just coming from childhood shit. Like I said, like my mom really just kind of fucked me up in that sense to where I kind of felt like the world like wasn't really a safe place.

So I would go to the negative. So if my friend said, you know, oh, we're going to go to a party, do you want to come? I would think like worst case scenario. And I would just like not go or I was always the D.D. I never like just like let go as someone in my like 20s or like late teens. Just because I was just kind of a stress case. And then when I realized, when I started to realize how much our brain affects. affects, really everything about our lives and our health as well. I was like, fuck, I, like,

I have to fix this. I have to loosen up. And I'm, I'm still working on that. That's still kind of a, that's still kind of a battle. I like to think of myself as being realistic, but I think sometimes to others it can come off as as negative, even when I'm not trying to be. I don't know. I think I'm just kind of like, and that's like something I have to work on with Andy too, because my delivery, I can just be very straightforward, which can come off kind of negative, you know, like when you just kind of say like, this is it, like this is a fact. Like, that's, that's me in emails. Sometimes. My email at K is fucking horrible.

Like you sound like an asshole in it? It's insane. I had my, my, one of my fucking sponsors, my guy from fucking Tama drums, tell me you have the most aggressive email tone out of anyone I've ever dealt with. Wow. And it's, but I'm not. like it's just I don't know what it is you're just being straightforward you're just like doing doing business you think you're just getting business done yeah exactly this is what we do blah blah blah like it annoys me the the small talk shit strange times I hope you're okay in these strange times oh you know it's

the same day yeah I don't really do that either send me the fucking email tell me what you want from me I'll tell you what I want that's yeah exactly like that's how I am too and like that's like the yin and yang of me and Andy is that he'll sit with a stranger anywhere that happens every day and just talk and just do small talk with them. He just loves it. He'll just small talk with anybody. And he's just like so friendly. And I'm just to the point. I'm like, what are we talking about? Okay, I got it. Thank you. Bye. Like I'm just like business, business, business. But I think that that's just also from trying to be like a corporate career chick since I was like 18 too. So what was mine from then? That's definitely me as well. being a dick in general.

Just like, honestly, I like fall out with fucking friends all the time. But they don't tell me. They're just like, oh, I thought you were in a bad movie. I was like, why? Oh, because of this exchange from fucking six months ago. And you're just like, I hadn't even thought about that. I have no idea. Yeah.

Yeah. You're just straight. There's like no fluff. But yeah, I think what you, I think I have with Lyca, what you have with Andy, I think there's the two personality type. that you need. Yeah. Me and you have the

fuck you, I'm getting it done. This is blah, blah, blah, blah. And what I do now is I just run my emails past her and my text. I'm like, I want to say this. Is this fine? And then she goes, no.

No, it's not. See, and that's, yeah, that's the cool thing about. A sentence. Yeah, that's the cool thing about having a good partner, you know, is that you have that. Like, he's like,

that's what they say. Like, my better half. Like, he's my better half. And I run shit by him. and then he runs shit by me. And we are constantly doing like brainstorming sessions for both of our careers or for anything where it's just like he'll run like wrestling shit by me. And I'm like, you know, I give him like an outsider's perspective or like I'll talk about,

you know, my job is not as creative. It's a lot of like data and spreadsheets. And, you know, I do like a lot of like food advertising stuff. and I'll be telling him something about work and he'll give me the balance of like his, you know, creative mind and he'll kind of tell me a story about something similar that happened in like music or wrestling that'll open me up to another perspective, right?

So that's like, and that's what you hope to find in a partner is it someone who can kind of do that to you who can give you that, that yin and yang thing. And sometimes it can take fucking 34 years and a previous marriage to find that fucking person. 34 years, one marriage, one horse tattoo. One marriage, one fucking decapitated horse tattoo. But like, it's mad when you actually find it, though, isn't it?

Because I feel like I have done more with my business in the last year and been more successful with it. Probably quite a lot of it. I mean, she is modeling it and she looks good. But quite a lot of it also to do with me going. here's an idea. Having someone else to bounce ideas off. Yeah, having someone with a good brain too with like an interesting brain. Like that's why you want to be with someone interesting and kind of, you know, weird and intelligent.

And yeah, I get a lot out of Andy's brain for sure. And he balances me out. Anyone listening who doesn't have this, dump whoever you're with. Yeah. It's a fucking, it's a waste of time. Just do it. We all do it. We all waste time.

Just fucking go. Yeah. It's a waste of time. You could, you can, if you think you could do better, or even that. Yeah. Not even just doing better. If you're not completely two halves of the same hole, then fuck it right off. It's just, because it does exist.

Life is, like, it's cliche, but like life is short. And I just don't know that you want to spend, like, my dad spent 30 years in, like, a miserable marriage. I'm just like, how the fuck to do. you do that? Like, I just, yeah, I don't want to spend one year in a, I mean, I, I have done it before. But yeah, I mean, I think that this, like, that, you know, what we have found is what you should demand, you know? Did you find that once you, like, when you met Andy, did you like, I mean, this is what I did, I did. I, I knew from previous stuff, like, where I, I, like, where I, you met Andy, did you, like, I mean, this is what I did.

kept elements of my personality away from the start or like even like fucking what I was into sexually and shit like that. Not anything fucking weird. I mean but not like illegal weird but like

but you were trying to like cater to someone maybe. Yeah and then you you end up like that I mean sex is a bad example because now I sound like a fucking creep But I mean like, just anything. No, I think that's a good example.

I think that that is a good example. Like, if you, if you, if you aren't open from the beginning, like, this is what I'm into, this is this, this is that. Even, even in just like fucking, to a lesser extent, someone says, oh, do you like or food or whatever? Yeah. Do you like fucking seafood? And then you're like, yeah, I love it.

But really, you fucking hate it. And then you have to spend two years of eating fucking oysters every day. No, you set yourself up. Yeah. Yeah. You're going to, yeah. Yeah. The same way, like, after the last one, I was like, there's no way I'm ever not telling anyone exactly what is on my mind at all times, exactly how I feel.

Yeah. No fucking games. What I want. Perfect, perfect, perfect. Right. Okay. People won't know this because it'll be seamless, but we had a fucking accident. And I was going to smash everything in this room up.

This is the second time. My brand new MacBook, M1. has crashed during a podcast. And it was while it was recording. And obviously we didn't stop the podcast because we were on a roll. And I thought the file was missing forever. So, I put it on my Instagram.

Like, someone please help me. So many little fucking, oh, I know everything. Like, I'm afraid there's lost forever, dude. Men ain't it? Just take the owl, all this shit. All these little fucking wankers. And then one guy, James Realstone, who's from my Discord, turned around and said,

If you press, if you go into the project audio, I'm just saying this here in case it happens to anyone else, and you press command, shift, and period. It shows what you were recording when you... That's literally it? That's it? Command shift, period. And then I dragged that in, and here we are.

And I checked. We were basically just talking about having a significant other that is absolutely fucking perfect. And if you don't have that, And then dump, dump what you've got. Get out. But I'm low-key glad it happened now because since we last spoke yesterday, I have meditated, done my breath work.

You did it. I did it straight after because I needed to fucking chill out. Yeah. You were so pissed. You were really pissed. It's because the second time it's happened. The last time I actually lost the full thing. So I done my breath work.

Yeah. Right. I didn't have a full fucking transcendal experience right, but there's one thing that has happened that it's only from having this much time away from it that it's made me realize, I'm pretty fucking chill today because of it. Yeah.

And I was chill after I did it. Good. But after the breath hold, I had this like weird smell in my head. Okay. And it was, right. It was the strangest, like, like a weird coming home feeling.

Mm-hmm. Like, you know, we've been talking about mushrooms. Like the second time you do mushrooms. You know that weird like I've been here before? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And we were talking about deja vu yesterday too. We were talking about the Empire State Building stuff.

I had like this weird like smell in my head and it's just there now. That's interesting. I've never heard that happen. It's not like a, a, a, It's not an unpleasant smell or anything. Yeah. It's just like a weird. Is it nostalgic though?

Is it like something that you recognize? But it's like it's a constant smell. It's like I'm smelling the entire world differently. How weird is that? Is it in a good way? It's just a different way. Yeah. But it's like it activated after my last breath hold.

I went, oh. I've been here before. Like a weird nostalgic smell thing. Yeah. How weird. And it's still, I can still spell it now. How did you sleep on the new mood? I slept like a fucking log last night.

I was so diet after the podcast. And then meditating, I was just dead. Completely done. Yeah, yeah. And then actually today I worked out and I took two caps of the Shroom tech. Okay. And I had a great workout. Yeah.

And I didn't get very angry. Go ahead. Genuine, was it the breath work or was it the shroom tech? Maybe both, yeah. And you probably just have to fuck around with your dose a little bit and just find that right dose for you. You know, like some people are going to thrive on four pills of it. And like, I like one or two because I just don't need to go, I don't need to take it all the way. You know, so I like to be kind of cautious with my doses on anything.

Like I've been playing around with, you know, you know, him being for cardio, for fasted cardio. And it's tough because you're supposed to take it on an empty stomach. You're supposed to take it early in the day and then do your cardio. But it can be kind of harsh on your stomach, but you can't eat food with it. You know, so it's one of those things where you're, you know, it's just, it's like a, some people consider it to be a fat burner. You might see it in some fat burning supplements. It's also a libido.

Yeah, yeah, you probably would have. And it's a libido booster as well. So it's used in a different way, probably with, you know, maybe with some different ingredients in like some libido boosting supplements. So you'll see it both ways. Like a herb. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

But it's supposed to be a great little kind of fat burning boost to your cardio. But it's really like a morning thing. But I have to be careful because it's like I'll take one capsule and I'm good. if I push it a little bit too far, it can really fuck up your stomach. So you got to be careful. I like, because I'm desperate to burn fat at the moment, but I'm not desperate enough to do more cardio. But I'm desperate for basically for cheating.

Everything that I've come across, like fat burners, all of them, the legal ones, the illegal ones, all of them, it's like, don't take with caffeine. And I'm like, I just can't give it up. I just can't give up caffeine. Yeah, yeah. So try your hymn bean actually because you are supposed to pair it with a little bit of caffeine, probably not like a full coffee drink, but maybe like a half or a little bit less. But it is supposed to pair really well with caffeine.

But I mean, at the bottom of like, it's just these fat burners are just, I work in marketing. I can confirm that most of this is marketing, like 99.9% of it. Like I just wish that people would get back to the base. and just deal with the food first. That's 100% what it is. And it's so basic and it's so easy. And you know this after tracking. Yeah, yeah, they do.

And they want to spend, apparently they want to spend a lot of money on shortcuts. It's wild to me. I, you know, we're always going to, we're always going to want the path of least resistance, right? Like that's just human nature in anything. Yeah.

I want cheap. code's for everything. Yeah. Like now I'm doing Twitch. I upload the Twitch video to YouTube and then that's two revenue streams for one thing. Oh. And now that's how I just want to live my life. I want to get two things out of everything.

Out of one action. So like weight lifting, just pump me full of whatever is going to make that lose weight. Pump me up. I don't care anymore. I just want to be a mutant. I don't even want to be a mutant. And I want to be back where I was, body fat-wise, and then just be a little bit smarter. Okay, okay.

Yeah, but you're going to fuck around with the movement stuff that we talked about, right? You're going to move, walk a little bit more. I swear, give it even just a week, it's going to make a huge difference. Literally just walk. I might have to get another dog, like one that wants to be walked. You could also just walk yourself. Yeah, a dog walk this tree. That's what, that's for fucking pidos.

just creeps walking alone. Like just going on a walk on your own. Yeah, exactly. That's what I get from that. I feel like there's a limit to the self-walk. It's kind of, it's like the person who goes to a restaurant and sits alone at a table and just like reads a book. I feel bad for those, though. That's the same as walking alone.

No, walking alone is more like kidnapy. Like restaurant is like, I'm hungry. It's been a couple of times. Like I do on tour all the time. Yeah. If everyone wants to eat at certain. time, but that would fuck up my drumming. I go and sit on my own. Stephen Glansberg, some fucking food. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wait, so, and it would fuck up your, like, are you saying that, like,

you don't want to eat right before you play? Exactly like training. If I eat, I need to eat three, I need to eat a big, good meal three hours before stage time. Yeah, and then time to digest. Yeah. Yeah. So you feel pretty light by the time. Yeah, you're playing. Yeah. If, if, if, if, if, It's such a strange thing that I can't, I can't figure out what's right. Because sometimes I'll eat three hours before. It'll be a relatively good meal. But I'll still feel sluggish. And the problem is that if I play fasted, I feel the like carbs, the glycogen 30 minutes in is gone.

And then I can't, there's some stuff I can't do because my mother's. aren't firing. Yeah. Hmm. I wonder if you could do fuck around with like trying, playing fasted

with like a Gatorade or some sort of a like an electrolyte and carb source. That's what I have usually. You do that anyways? That's what I have.

I mean, we shotgun a red ball before we play every single, every single gig. And sometimes that fucks me up as well because I get the crash

from the sugar about 30 minutes in. Yeah. So I need to get rid. I'm just running on sugar. Shit, yeah. Have you ever, like, worn a watch or anything and measured how many calories you burn during a show? I stopped wearing one.

I used to wear one for a while. And then when I went through my whole sleeping shit, I became obsessed with the sleep tracking to the point where it was like neurotic and it was bad for me. Yeah. I've had to tell people to take their watches off before.

There's like a real thing where people get addicted to them. Because like it's obviously it's a good indicator of changing variables and stuff changing. But like trusting a watch over how you feel for like rested sleep is not good. That's what I was doing. It was saying you've had zero. You stop listening to your body. Yeah. You've had zero percent restful sleep.

and I felt fine. In the minute I read that, boom, I'm tired. You feel like shit. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I fucking stopped. But it's funny you should say that when I was wearing the watch was the time I was the most ripped. And it was, including drumming.

Like, obviously drumming isn't steps, but 25K steps. It was fucking. It's still movement. It's still movement. Yeah. It's still non-exercise movement. So it should be taken into account for sure. yeah, the watches are like, they're cool, like I'm wearing one right now, they're cool

because they can be maybe motivating. I think if you, if you look at what it's giving you kind of objectively, like, it just pushes me to, you know, I'm just, I'm a little bit more mindful of how much I'm moving. Um, if I'm like, oh, shit, I've, I've only gotten 7,000 steps today and it's, it's 5 p.m. I'm like, okay, I should probably go for a walk. But at the same time, like you said, like I don't, I don't think that they're extremely accurate, but I know that at least, I know when I'm on the low end and I know when it's like if I've, when I've moved a lot, you know, and I can see, okay, 15K felt like this. And then I can take the watch off for a few days because I kind of, I know what my baseline is. And it's the same thing with tracking food I found that.

Yeah, I do that. You know, like you can, you, once you get the feel for it, you can probably take a couple days off of tracking, depending on what your goal is. And then you can jump back on when you need to kind of like recalibrate your brain. Like, oh, what does what does 20 grams of peanut butter look like again, you know? And you can only, yeah, you're pretty good at that. I'm pretty good at it too. Yeah. Wow. Please take the fucking mantle. Take the fucking mantle. Because people loved it. I just don't, I don't have the calories for it. And it's, such a calerific food people don't realize.

Yeah. I don't really play with it too much. Peanut butter? Yeah, it doesn't, I don't, I like it, I don't love it. And also, yeah. Because you spend your calorie dollars very wisely. It is also, I'm sure it's also because I just, exactly, I just don't, if I have $500 total in my life,

I'm not going to go spend it on one designer. a purse. I need, I need to make that money, you know, spread out a little bit. Yeah. Right. So some stuff, this is quite good that I've, uh, that we've had a little break because usually I do a podcast and then I think, fuck, I should have asked them this or we should have talked about that. So there's two things that I want to talk about. And then in my head, it's like, I consider the podcast. It's, we've achieved podcast enlightenment. So number one that you just touched on. In fact, I will go back to that. So you work in marketing and you are technically, you probably hate the word, an influencer, right? Yeah, I don't know, I don't know where the

threshold is for that, but yeah, I think it's if you have a K next to your name on Instagram, I think that's the rules. Okay, perfect. But, but yeah, I think because what happened in the UK, there was some court case and they ruled that if you have 30,000 followers, then or above, then it counts as like a position of power. So you cannot advertise things or whatever. It was like a court case thing. They're not doing paid posts in the UK?

Like I couldn't. I mean, they are. But I mean, you couldn't, you're not allowed to pretend that you like something that someone's given you for free. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like that's the legality of it. Okay.

But you also hate misinformation quite a lot and you post about it loads. So working in marketing, which you must have to sell people things. Yeah. But at the same time, you dislike that. Is that like an issue in your brain? I try to just only work for companies that I really respect. and work for, you know, work for people who have a product that they really believe in and who have a cool story. And then I try to do my own work, my, you know, my day job work in, you know, the most authentic way that I can.

And I've had moments in my marketing career. I had one when I was working in wine where I actually told. a vice president of marketing. Like I actually said no. And I was, I think I was only like 25 or something. And I was, and it was scary. But I had because, it was this, exactly. It was, it was just a bullshit marketing campaign that I just, you know, I had no, like,

respect for. And I was just like, I'm not putting this out there. And we ended up not doing it. But otherwise, I, yeah, I try to just, I work with products and people that I believe in. Um, and luckily I've had some experience in. a bunch of different industry so I can kind of, you know, if right now I was like, you know what, I want to go back to working in wine or coffee, like I could. Or if I want to, you know, stick with

fitness, I can do that. I just, I see a lot of bullshit in fitness, you know, more than anything. And I get a little bit bothered because maybe I'm just jaded because I've been doing this for a while now, but I remember being like a 24 year old girl new to bodybuilding and just trying to soak up information. And I was just seeking out information anywhere I could get it. And looking back now, a lot of, a lot of it was bullshit. And it was hard. I had to kind of like sift through a lot of bullshit to get to the good stuff. And so now it's like if I can help a girl who, like a young girl, skip past some of the shit that I had to do and just get to the point and just get to like the truth of what she should be doing or what this industry is really like,

then maybe I can savor some time or some some anguish, you know. So I just feel like now that I've been through it, like you mentioned like responsibility. I don't know if I feel a responsibility, but I do feel like now that I've been through it, why wouldn't I share that with someone who hasn't been through it yet? You know, I'm sure that you help, you probably help kids who are getting into music all the time, even if it's just, you know, they're just reaching out with like, question or something. But you're like, I kind of do what you do, which is just call the bullshit out.

And which honestly, enough people aren't doing. So there's, there's parallels between the two. And I think both things that are incredibly bad for people's mental health. I'm like a double edge sword with the whole thing, but more on this side that is bad for people's mental health and body image. and stuff like that, the airbrushing is so much, the drugs are so much,

like in fitness. People, people, like, the allegiances people pledge to people who are obviously on gear. Mm-hmm. And, but they say that then,

like, natural, not on steroids or whatever. The blind allegiance from people to that is, like, not good. And the unobtainable, like,

Yeah, I think that's like, 90% of me is like, yeah, 90% of me is like, yeah, this is the worst thing on fucking earth. And then there's like 10% which is like, well, it is going to push people fucking hard. But the same thing happens in drums. So there's people faking and guitar. They fake drum playthroughs. They fake guitar play through. Oh, okay. Like they're using, are they using tracks?

Is that what you said? Yeah. But they'll do a drum playthrough for Instagram. Yeah. They'll take all of the. audio, they'll put it into a, you know, like a bit of software, completely tidy everything up, basically Photoshop for music. Yeah, yeah.

Pro tools, they'll, oh, you know what? Holy shit. We talk about this. Pro tools it, then put it back onto the video and then put it onto Instagram. I have no idea. Because the way humans see and hear at different rates, you cannot tell the difference. It's too hard. Yeah.

There's too much going on. But there's so many of them. And these dramas and guitarists or whatever get fucking huge because everyone thinks they're the best person on the planet. That's amazing. It's exactly the same. Yeah. It's fitness. Like audio Photoshop.

It's literally exactly. Next time you see this, can you please send this to me? Because I need to see an example of this shit. I see it on the fucking daily. Wow. My YouTube channel is mostly just calling these people out. Oh, is it really? Okay.

Yeah. Okay. I got a check on the top. You know the fucking, you know, what's his name? I don't know how much, because I watch a lot of fitness YouTube, which I'm sure you fucking hate. But do you know the, no plates, no dates? No plates, more plates, more dates guy. I've heard, I've heard of that, but I don't, I don't know.

He does a YouTube channel. I mean, it's a terrible name. I can't stand some of the fitness YouTube shit. I just can't stand. But what he does is he just basically gets whoever's big right now and he does a thing called Natty or not. And he just dissects the person's physique, what they're doing on social media, and then he literally just is absolute bullshit or he, like, questions it or whatever. But he's, I think he's a doctor.

Oh, okay. I mean, it's probably a TRT doctor. But I'm fairly sure he, like, he knows what he's fucking talking about. So I just, I kind of just took that concept and put it to drum videos. Like I put the drum video on and I go for it. I'm like, well, you can see here that it is fucking, this is happening. And the amount of people, the hate that I get were people just saying, you're just jealous. And it's like, no, I'm not.

Like, I make a career out of music. I am very happy with my career. Like, I'm not jealous that I can't play this fast. I just learned something huge. Like, I had no idea until today that this was happening. So you're just making people aware of it. But this is the thing. You probably think and know and are 100% sure that that that's happening.

in fitness, but the average person doesn't know that. Right. The average person thinks, wow, that guy just fucking, that guy just trains really hard. Yeah. Oh, the rock, he just trains really fucking hard. Yeah. Yeah. All of these guys in Hollywood, every single male celebrity.

That transformation from fucking, what did he do? The machinist, the Batman? Oh, absolutely fucking. That's normal. Very natural. I just, I... think that if the average person tries to follow what some of these people say rather than what they do, it can be really harmful because someone could end up with an eating disorder

over this because they could think... They definitely have. And they definitely end up with like body dysmorphia, of course, because there's a girl, you know, a young girl who's like, what, or any age girl who's like, why, why don't I look like this? I'm trying, I'm doing everything that she's saying she's doing. And, you know, And so this girl's body image and her self-worth is just like, it's just dropping because she feels like, you know, why can't I achieve this? So I just think it's bullshit. And it, but also, like, why, if you're running some stuff, like, just say it.

It's not that big of deal. I'll just say, like, here's my diet. Here's the gear that I'm on. Here's the cardio that I do. Whatever. But when they outright say, oh, all you got to do is work really hard. and eat this asparagus and chicken or whatever. That's like the bullshit that I just really don't respect.

Fair enough if you're an actor because it's not your job is just doing the fucking acting. Like whatever. But if your job is selling fitness plans and your main fitness plan is 1.5 grams of fucking steroids a week. Like, you need to be disclosed. Yeah. And it doesn't have to be promoted. Like you don't have to say, hey, I think everyone should. should use Anavar, but I think that, like, when I just say, I think everyone, or did you say I don't

think? No, I, like, like, they shouldn't, you know, you don't have to promote it, because obviously there's, that's a, that's a weird world there. But, like, when I, if I post a picture of myself and I'm particular, and I'm looking particularly good, and for the past month, I've been running a little bit of whatever, I feel like I should probably disclose that. Um, it's, I don't know. It's just being straight with people. I don't see what's so difficult about it. And I know the bodybuilders think that they'll be perceived as cheaters.

But to me, after being in bodybuilding for about 10 years now, it's not cheating. It's just the way that everyone does it. It's just the norm. So when I hear that someone's running something, it's never like a shock. It's like, yeah, we all are. Everyone is. Like, and if you have to ever ask if someone, someone's natty or not, they're probably not. If you have to ask, like, we know what a natural

body looks like and what a non-natural body looks like. It's the fucking shoulders. You can just call it immediately. If they're tight, if they pop and they're tight, there's like this, there's this fullness paired with tightness that is just not how people walk around. That is just gorgeous. And it's beautiful. But. Despite everything we just said, and it's fucking wonderful. But it's just the norm in this industry that I'm in So I it doesn't I don't know I don't look at it as like something crazy

It's just like yeah okay everyone's doing it Just tell us what you're doing you know and Yeah I used to train at a gym Where with an The guy that owned it's an IFBBB guy And The two guys that worked there So there was him

I'm not going to fucking name any names It was him and there was another guy That competed naturally And they train together all the time. And I train with both of them. And it was just around the gym with them. And the amount the Natty guy had to do harder in every element was crazy. His diet was fucking horrible.

Like when he was cutting, he was just miserable constantly. And then on the flip side, the guy with a little bit of help was relatively just fucking cruising through. Yeah. And at what line, it's like we talk like that's essentially what it is. It's a little bit of help. Okay, well, pre-workout is a little bit of help before your workout or even drinking, you know, taking some trim tech before you do cardio is a little bit of help. So like where do we draw the line between what's like cheating and what's not cheating?

You know, so to me, I don't really care anymore. I cared right when I got into bodybuilding and I was natural and then I realized that everyone else was not. I got a little bit bitter and I was like, I'm going to do this naturally. I got my pro card naturally. And then as soon as I got pros, I was like, okay, no. But really, and I haven't run much at all. Like I played around with SARMs more kind of in like a biohacking way. And then steroid wise, I've tried a little bit of Anavar. I've given it a shot a few times. I hate it. My body hates it. It's just it is how it's fine. And I just don't want to mess with it anymore. I keep giving it chances because people are like, no, no, no, just try it one

more time. You're going to love it. I'm like, ah. So I hate it, but, um, but I'm open to others using whatever they need to use in a healthy way. That's the problem, though, is that it gets unhealthy. So if you can do it in a healthy way, great, a little bit of extra help. It's fine. We all, we all use different methods of extra help, you know, that can be anything. It's, I mean, it is, To me, it's fascinating. Like, just nothing like that exists for drumming, I guess. There's no, like, I don't accept maybe doing it. I don't know.

But there's a guy that I know. What's a, is a metronome cheating? You know? You know? Because I use it all the time. But you know what I mean? Like. Don't juice up.

But, you know, things that help you either, like, say, on time or whatever, like. Yeah, I guess trigger. and stuff like that. There is a whole world of that stuff. But I know a guy that's just started a trend cycle, like four weeks ago. And I mean, I can tell his mental health is absolutely fucking out the fucking window because of it. But also the mutant transformation in four weeks cannot be good for you. Exactly.

Yeah. I like sustainable. I like slow and steady a little bit more. I've heard really bad things about trend. And guys suddenly treating their girls really badly. That's the kind of shit that's like, it's just not worth it. Exactly. If anyone doesn't know what we're talking about because you probably don't because it's a music podcast.

It's an anabolic steroid which is designed to make cattle grow twice as much muscle. There you go. And people started using it themselves. Yeah. But it has like a whole host of fucking, that's the one way someone will try and kill their wife. Yeah, it's horrible. And there's the building stuff and then there's the cutting stuff too.

Have you ever played with Glenn at all? No, because of the caffeine thing. Yeah, I had to try it. I had to use a small dose for a prep one time. Maybe it worked a little bit, but man, it makes you. really crazy. And I just, I just, I just, I just, like crazy in the brain. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, I think that Andy, so I think that Andy was touring and I was prepping for a show and I was taking Clem, like a small dose and I looked on my window and there was a car. I lived in a condo complex at the

time and there was a car parked in the parking lot, which, as you know, in a condo complex, there's like multiple spots. Yeah. I think that they were, and it was running and I think that they were like, they were waiting for a friend or something, or it was like an Uber or something. And I got convinced in my head that they were like casing my house and that they were watching me. And I was like, okay. That's not good. All right. So clearly there's like something going on here. And I think I think I immediately stopped Glenn. But yeah, it was that kind of like anxiety. Like I nothing, no look, no amount of like shreddedness is ever going to be worth to be like, like that. Yeah, I think that's the appeal in biohacking, isn't it? Like, you want to get

this, the results naturally, just a little bit of help, but from fucking, like, herbs. Yeah, and your food, yeah. Like, I changed my food around quite a bit over the last year. I started eating a lot more fiber. I got really, really into fiber. And I have been able to eat the same amount of calories, if not more, and actually get a lot tighter. And within a few weeks, I got really tied to the point where people were like, what are you doing? Like, did you cut your calories? Like, are you cutting for a show? I'm like, no, I literally just swapped out some of my carbs that didn't have a lot of fiber for ones that did. And it's just, and I just tightened up. And there's, there's a bunch of science behind that. But, but yeah, fiber is the shit. And so,

So like little hacks like that, I would rather use to get tight than some supplement. Yeah. Which is just like a band-aid on top of your bullshit, you know. For sure. Oh, I wish I wasn't so bloaty. So bloated. I think it's, the problem is, I think it, what's happening is, I think it is working because my strength is plateaued. So I know that I'm in a calorie deficit.

Okay. Because that always fucking happens to me. Okay. But I'm at the stage when it's like, I feel deflated because I'm in a calorie deficit. And so my muscles feel, unless I've just done a workout, they feel flat. And then it's a weird stage. It's like when you're a bit fat and you're strong and you're full of carbs, you're like, I can handle this because I just look like a fucking legend.

And there's the middle ground where you're like weak and feel fluffy. That's where I am right now. But then once you lose that last bit, everyone thinks that you're fucking huge, but you're actually so much smaller. You're smaller, but it's all just popping. Yeah. Yeah. Well, maybe you can just play around with your macros.

And just play around with like taking your, maybe taking your fats down a little bit and your carbs up a little bit, something like that. My fats are so low. So low. Okay. Okay. Yeah. That's scary. Because I love carbs. Yeah, I would rather have high carbs than low fat too.

I have a bit of salmon for dinner. That's my fats. Okay. And I guess oats have some. Oh, like two grams or something. Yeah. Yeah. But like, yeah, this one bit of salmon is where all the fat in my day comes from. Do you fuck around with like pre and post workout nutrition? like your carbs and yeah you're already doing that okay yeah but what i might do i'm trying i'm trying to i think i might move my post workout carbs half of them pre-workout because i felt like i needed

the energy today yeah yeah see this is the shit this is like the micromanagement that people have to be willing to do which is like it's a lot of work it's like a full shit do i need to take my fat stone okay i'm going to try that and okay that didn't work okay this works and it's just it's a lot of that that I think that's just what people don't want to do. They're like, let me just skip forward and just skip all this shit. But I have fun with this stuff though. I love to like shift some carbs and go, oh,

cool, that just made me feel awesome. Or I look a little bit better. Okay, let's keep going with that. I think that that's really fun. I think it's a, if you're going to have a hobby, that's a pretty cool hobby. Yeah, it's fun if results happen though. Like, give me the fucking, give me the fucking shortcut. Give me the fucking results.

No, I, I'm basically, I've gone back to the same foods that I was eating when I was at my most ripped. But I think you nailed it that I'm just doing less. And the thing is, what I was doing back then was I would go to the gym and play drums every single day. That's so much.

And walk a dog. Yeah, that's a lot. But I also fucking, I burnt out. But I looked sick. That's a tradeoff. But yeah, that's like, I always want to match my intake to my intake to my output. So as soon as the pandemic hit and I was like a weekend and I went, okay, like when we

were really, really shut down and I kind of wasn't doing shit. I was like really stuck at home. I called my coach and I was like, hey, I've just kind of assessed what my activity level was for the past week. It's not good. Take calories away because I always want, I always want to match it. And it's okay. Like, because I, I'm eating to fuel myself. So it's okay to drop. calories down if I'm not, if I just don't need them. So we dropped them way down and we dropped them down low enough that the average person might have been like, oh, your calories are too low. It's like, okay, I'm also just stuck in my house. There is no reason for me. I think I, I think I dropped into the 1300s, which for, you know, for the majority of my life, that's, that's going to be

too low. But at the time, it was perfect. And it kept me from, blowing up. And I just didn't really need the fuel. I was doing little at-home band workouts. We hadn't built the gym yet. And I wasn't really moving that much. And then as I started to get more movement, we started to buy more exercise equipment. As I started to be able to go back into a gym, I would call my coach and say, okay, now I'm doing this much. So let's add in a little bit more. And then we kept kind of playing with it. But yeah, if your activity level is, you either have to increase activity again or drop calories, you know. You mentioned a home gym.

Yeah. What have you got in there? How are you going back to like public gyms as well? Or what's your vibe? Like once in a while. So you have to wear the masks here in the public gyms. And, well, at least, you know, if you go to one of the big chain ones, but some of the smaller like family owned ones.

I don't really care. But I have like, I have an LA fitness membership. You have to wear it. And it's just, it's just not ideal for working out. It's really not good for you. So I, you know,

we try to avoid that. So we built up this, we bought a house last year. And we started to build up the garage gym. So we have a squat rack. We've got two benches. We've got a ton of kettlebells. Just a few dumbbells.

We've got like a set of 25s, a set of 10s and a set. set of 15s. We need to buy a few more heavy sets for Andy. Like, I'm good with 25s. But, um, and then some cool cardio stuff. Like we, I bought, uh, battle ropes. Um, we got the, like the sandbag thing with the handles because that's great for Andy with wrestling because he needs to be able to train to like pick someone up and throw them. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, he got the sandbag. Otherwise, he just uses me. Um, nice. So that's, yeah, and then I bought, I bought a sauna, which that was like my pandemic gift to myself.

Wow. And then a treadmill. And the treadmill's been awesome. Because living a box is this fucking house. Well, so I'm in the basement right now. The cool thing about Buffalo that I wasn't used to because I'm from L.A. Is that every house here just has a basement, like a fully like operational basement that people use. So sick.

Yeah. So that was new to me. I'm like, really everyone has this? So now down here, we have. Andy's music stuff so he can play. We've got a TV and like a rug so that we can do basement workouts. Because here you have to plan for the winter. That's like, that's why I bought the treadmill.

I would love to get outside every day. And that's what you should be doing. But, um, but I had to get the treadmill. And I used the treadmill actually not just for like cardio cardio, but just in the winter, just like shit, I need to get steps. I need to move. Because otherwise I was getting like 3,000 steps a day. And so, yeah.

You miss LA. Um, not really. And we went back, we went back recently. No, no. I'm not, I'm not a hot weather per. It's really weird. I want, I want like UK weather. I want clouds and rain every fucking day. It's weird. I know. I live in Seattle. I loved it. It was rainy for like a year. Um, yeah. So we went back to LA recently. It's really depressing right now. It's just, it bums me out. It looks like a bomb one off. Like, it's just very, very, post-apocalyptic and a lot of, you know, really sad

stuff. So, um, we're actually, we're going to go back there in three-ish weeks. Um, so I'm going to go see my family for my birthday and thought of me nice. But yeah, LA's kind of brutal right now. I love Buffalo. Actually, I... I can't believe you want

shit weather. I don't know. I will fucking, I will end up. Ah, now your health care fucking stinks. I don't know where I'm going to end up. Fucking. I just want to somewhere hot eventually. You like to be hot. Yeah.

Like desert? Like at the very least. But the thing is, in the UK, sometimes you can have a whole summer that sucks. And then you get one entire year of shit weather. Yeah. I don't know. I feel like I would like it.

I thrive. I thrive in the rain. And then, like, I just, I don't like to be hot. I don't like to sweat. And then I've got Andy, of course, who's just like a constant heater. And that poor guy cannot be in the heat. So.

So he loves the buffalo, just fucking rolling around in the snow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah. Um, I think that's us. Okay. Cool. It's probably a real fucking long one because we technically did two. I did two podcasts and one.

Yeah. Well, hopefully, like, hopefully it all makes sense put together. I'm sure you'll edit. It's, no, I'm not editing anything. I'll edit the fucking little stop. That's it. I don't bother. I just can't bother.

Okay. Okay. And like, people prefer a long form, just conversation. you get to know someone a little bit better and stuff. Yeah. Next time, will you get into care, will you wear your makeup for all, I'll wear makeup? I can't, here's the thing.

I can't do it myself. I was going to ask what you're doing there. Like, have you learned how to do it, like doing tutorials? No. She does everything for me. Okay. So I absolutely fucking love RuPaul's Drag Race. Yeah.

And isn't it fascinating? The makeup is, like fascinating. Yeah. So I was like, do me up. And then she did me up and I was like, I kind of look kind of hot. And then I was like, fuck it. I'm going to do this on Twitch.

And then now it's just become a thing. Do people like it? I do it every month. Yeah. So people, it's like my subscription goal for the month is to do something as an at the end. So this month, we just hit it the other day. So this month I'm doing like, you know, like a advice column. So I have like an anonymous thing set up for people to message it and people have messaged some real juicy shit.

We got some we got some secretly bisexual people that haven't told their partner like serious like agony on shit. And I'm going to answer it all as I am. That's really cool. I like it. And it's sick. The next step. Yeah, that's cool. The next up is now you have to like watch the videos and actually learn how to do it yourself.

Well, I Here is the thing I haven't told many people So before the fucking pandemic I was going to do Stand-up I was going to go and do some stand-up comedy Cool And then now I'm like

I'm a huge fan of stand-up Did you see that the comedy store And I don't know if people in the UK care But the comedy store in LA just opened For the first time since the pandemic started They opened either yesterday or the day before And that's like The signal to me that like comedy is like

comedy's going to be okay. It's coming back. Yeah, I did, I had, there's a big UK comedian called Ed Gamble who, he's like on TV all the time in the UK, but he's come on the pod before. And he said he did some, like, he did some live stream, uh, comedy shows and they were fucking horrible because you couldn't feed off the audience. No, that's, that's not good. He did drive-in one and he didn't realize that people would use their horns instead of laughing. Yeah. And apparently it was just the fucking worst.

thing ever. But I was planning, I've got a thing written out. I got a whole thing written out, obviously, to go off on tangents. But then now I'm like, do I just double down and just do it as an and just fucking double down on the whole thing? I mean, if you want to like, I don't know, I feel like maybe it would get more press. I don't know. I get fucking shit loads. I live, I live for the algorithm right now. That's why I'm fucking doing it. Give me the fucking extra, give me the extra press. And then, like, it's not like I'm deceptful. Like, I fucking love doing it.

It's like, I'm not being, oh, he's just doing it for money. It's like, no, I fucking love doing it, but also pay me. Also, I want some articles written about me. Yes, I would like to be paid for what I'm doing. You want that story that's like, this drummer is also a stand-up comedian and does it all in women's whatever. Like, you want that buzz stream. A drag queen.

Yeah. And then I want the fucking... So why are you doing this? Like everyone's so quick to give it a fucking label. So do-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Let me tell you this. I put a fucking dress on and it was fucking sick. And now I want to be paid for it.

Good-bye. I think it can be that straightforward. And I think a lot of people, just like the, you know, the outrage culture people, they'll find a way to be real offended by it, even though it's really just you just having fun. I don't know. I've, it's always got to be something with these people. I, I don't know where the line of those people is now because, I don't know, it changes every day.

Exactly. I feel like I would be, I could shut down either side. There would be outrage on, I reckon, either side. It's always going to be something. I could shut them, but I could shut them both down. Yeah. Excuse me, I'm just, I'm just doing whatever the fuck I want. And you should be okay with that.

Yeah. And everyone. Exactly. And all you can do is. just not care, really, and yeah, and just kind of stay in your lane. Well, I got like, I got, before I honestly, before I did it on Twitch, I got, I got clearance from friends of mine that would have the right to be offended. I was like, yeah, is this going to be offensive?

Yeah. And all of them said no. Yeah, because, of course, you're not out to hurt people, right? You have good intentions. Like the only people that we should. ever, you know, get anchored by are the ones who have bad intentions. Like, for me, it's all about intent. Politicians.

Yeah. Yeah, sure. Yeah, absolutely. Like, to me, it's very black and white. You either have very, you have good intentions, and maybe you like to make a dark joke or you like to do some weird shit in comedy, but your intentions are still good. I'll never be offended. Or there's just truly bad people.

And I think that those are the people that we should be going after, but they kind of seem to just skate. buy sometimes and then people are going after the ones who actually are just sweethearts and they're just having fun with something and I think that that's bullshit it's ridiculous everyone is uh I'm like I don't know um I enjoy the more people are mobilizing to express genuine uh like not offense but stuff that they genuinely believe in by the same time, I think the pandemic has made a lot of people who, if the world was open, wouldn't be at protests or wouldn't be at this, wouldn't be at that, feel like sitting at home and

fucking writing a couple of tweets is the same as being on the streets. Do you know what I mean? Like a lot of that happens. Yeah. I think that this, that the pandemic has kind of, um, I've actually, I've, I've, I've said this to someone that the, this whole, situation reminds me of a mushroom trip because the pandemic basically took all of our shit, whatever our own personal shit was. And it just blew it up and put it in all of our faces. And it was like, hey, here's this thing that you have to work on. And that's what, that's what mushrooms, when you do them in a very therapeutic way, that's what they do. It's like spring cleaning for your brain. It'll, it'll pull something out and go, hey, here's this interesting

thing. You probably need to work on it. And you go, oh, yeah, I didn't. I didn't even know, okay, I'm going to work on that. And that's what the pandemic has done for a lot of people. So it's been like one big mushroom trip where like your shit gets exposed. That's like a real clever way of thinking about it because I was saying that the other day. Like not that, not how you just summed it up, but the pandemic forced me into realizing a lot of tendencies I have. A lot of cruxes that I have. A lot of worries that I have that I've now realized mean nothing.

A lot of the way that I am with friends or whatever all just came out at this fucking time. Yeah. And then it was kind of like a... Now, yeah. I feel like if I go, like going back to touring, I said at the other day, I was like, I wonder if my friends will like notice that I'm different. Because I've definitely had a spring cleaning. Yeah. brain. They will. They will. And it exposed good things too. But did you notice over the past year that

your friends who were in relationships that probably were a little bit shitty, a lot of those relationships just imploded because now you're forced to be with someone, right? Yeah. So, and that's a good thing. It showed you, you know, hey, this just isn't the person, so it's time to move on. And maybe that relationship would have drug on for like three more years without being stuck with the person. or the flip side, like what you've experienced, what I've experienced, is that the pandemic actually showed us something really cool, which was that, hey, you're stuck with someone and you guys, if anything, like, you love each other more after this,

you're not sick of each other? Like, I'm not, I have never gotten sick of Andy. And we've had times when we have been stuck together for like long periods of time. And it's very cool to see, okay, cool, we're strong enough to, you know, we're in a good spot. But I've also had friends who was like, a few months in and it just crashed and burned. I have so many of them.

Yeah. But I'm honestly like, I tell you what the one thing, the main one, the main sort of spring cleaning thing, it all ties into the same thing, is I have always had for the last fucking, I have nearly been touring for 20 years now.

So, my first tour on I was 16. So I've been touring for like 18 years. I have forever, worried. What is the retirement plan? What if I injure myself and I can't play the drums?

Like, what will I fucking do? How will I cope being at home? I fucking hate being at home. How will I, what will I do for work or whatever? And having done the pandemic now and come out with essentially a new career, I'm like, that worry that's been in the back of my head for years is gone.

And I'm like, okay, I'll be fine. Yeah, that's really cool. See, that's a really cool lesson. Yeah. And it's only now that it's ending that I'm starting to see like, oh shit. Like, I know that when I go back to touring as well, I'm just going to have fun.

There's stuff that I wouldn't do because, oh, what if this happens? What if that happens? Like, I am just, is, I've been gifted a, you know, a dream life for some people. And sometimes I'm... An old friend will ask me if I want to go for a beer before the show.

And then in my head I think, I better not have a beer because it might slow me down later, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm fucking going for that beer now. I'm just doing... Yeah. Whatever. Yeah. And bands are probably going to start to tour a bit differently

and a bit more kind of, like, work smarter, not harder. Like... Okay. I am. You've definitely had some chats with Andy because every musician I know is just like, you know this thing that we used to do? Yeah, no, not doing it. Yep.

It's great, though. That's a great lesson, especially after you've been doing it for, like you said, you've been doing it for 20 years. He's been doing it for 22, 23 years. And it's like, okay. He's been doing it harder than me. Now's, but like now's the time to be like, okay, how can we do this a little bit more, you know, in a smarter way, still make some money.

The notorious van. band. Yeah. Notorious van band. Yeah. I mean, that's never going to end. That's never going to end. They love their fans. Oh, I thought that's what you were getting at. But fucking hell. But there's loads of it. But they, but people will just go, sorry, carry on. But no, but, but maybe they won't, I don't know, but maybe they won't do it for three months on end, you know? Like, they love their van. The van's not going anywhere. But they all, I think, also, they're all, they've all learned how to be at home. Like Andy wasn't used to that. He hated it. Like you said, hated being home. Just wanted to get back on there. And now he's

kind of like, I like this. I'm doing some projects on the house and walking the dogs. Like, he's hanging out with me. And so, you know, I think he is thinking about it a little bit differently. I don't know that he's going to want to be gone for, I don't know. It's every time I die. We'll see. Yeah, they'll be, they'll be touring. But I'm the same. A lot of my friends are the same. Like, we think we used to do insane shit. I like, we did a six-week sprinter tour, sleeping up right in the van. Sometimes we would wake up, we would drive for five hours to play a festival at 11 a.m. And then drive for eight hours to play another festival that night.

Like, flat out, that will get proposed. And I will say, now I'll go, nope. I go, what are you going to do then? I will fucking go home. Turn my little fucking light on and talk to some people on the internet. Yeah. And I think it's going to be great for bands. I think it might be a little bit shit for tour bookers.

They've already got it pretty fucking bad, but people just aren't, they're not going to take it. It might be even good for smaller bands who are willing to fucking do everything because they haven't tasted pain yet. Right. Because they'll have more opportunities.

Yeah. It's cool, though, that this forced everyone to work on some sort of other income. So now they have more of a backup plan. which, you know, a lot of musicians or other types of artists, whatever, might not have had a backup plan. But now, over the past year, year and a half, they've probably come up with something. They've probably been working on something. So now they have a little bit more balance in their lives.

And now, like you said, you'll be like, okay, I'll play this show and then I'll go home and I'll do some Twitch stuff. And, you know, you have, you're more well-rounded now. It's like when they talk about like investing your money, how you need to diversify. Like, you wouldn't just put all your money into one. basket, you know, you would try to diversify it so that if one thing goes down, something else might kind of supplement it and balance it out. Well, now you have like, you have options, basically. You want to be in Bitcoin as well as fucking doge. I've, I don't know shit about any of that. I haven't gotten into it. I have gone nuts on it.

It's my, I spend my whole day checking shit, trading shit. Yeah. Blipping shit. See, that's, that's me and my hormones. Honestly, and it feels, because I invested like a small amount early on, then what that turned into feels like fake money. So I just feel like I'm playing a game on my phone. Yeah. Actually. Yeah. Actually, it's not a fucking game.

It's not. It's your money. Okay. I need, I didn't warn you about this. I'm sorry. I need your, let's make it topical. I need your top five, either songs or records for the gym. what do you put on on a workout um so uh mushaga for sure um masherga is like always that's like

just always like i think everyone who lifts weights is probably going to say masherga um it's funny i would say gojira but annie and i had a conversation about gogeri yesterday we were listening to the new album and i'm having like pride i see how you're looking at me i'm i'm torn with them i love them but I'm a little bit torn and um I don't I don't hate the new album but I don't super super love it um I love it yeah I don't I don't know I'm a little bit um I get a little bit tired sometimes um with them I feel like that band for me is a band that I just want the only place I really ever want to listen to them is like at like a festival in Europe like I was saying that to Andy this I was like this is a Europe

festival, like huge audience festival band. Like, and I don't always... First time I ever saw him. Yeah, I think it's just kind of that, yeah. Okay, so yeah, I'm a sugar for sure. Every time I die, I have like different playlists. I've ever had different songs for different types of workouts. So I have my cardio songs, which are like some of the older stuff like in rehab and like

champing at the bit. Where it's just like really, really fast, like great for sprints. How did you meet each other? We, so we were like Instagram friends because we, we kind of knew some of the similar people because he does some stuff in fitness with power lifting and stuff. And we were just like friends and we would talk back and forth every now and then. And we had a couple of mutual friends. And then I was in New York City. I was there to see Joe Rogan with.

the girlfriend. I flew there from L.A. And I flew in a day early. And I just, like, mentioned to him. I was like, oh, yeah, I'm in New York. And he was like, oh, you want to get dinner? I'm like, okay. Yeah. You fucking, yeah, you smooth dog. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then we had dinner.

And then we did long distance for a year and a half, which I think is like exactly a year and a half, which I think made us really strong. I think that that was really good for us. and I only could have done that in my 30s, like, with the kind of, you know, I have more emotional maturity now. Like, this relationship would never would have happened if I was in my 20s. I wouldn't have been able to handle it. Like, a year and a half of long distance with him touring for that, like, entire year and

a half. And then adding, you know, wrestling into it. but that made us it was hard but that made us really strong yeah yeah cute right give me two more two more bands that you listen to at the gym um who else do I listen to

um so between the bear and me will always be such that I have such a soft spot for them because when I got my pro card I listened to it was right when Parallax 2 came out and I believe it was sometime around them because that was my album And I listened to that album every single day during my prep leading up to getting my pro card. And then I got my pro card. And it was a really hard prep.

And I just, I love that album. I love them. I love them since I was 16, I think. I went to a Kill Switch show and they opened. And when I walked in, they were playing the bicycle song. And I'm, I love Queen. And I was like, what is this? You know?

I just I love them a lot Otherwise I like acacia strain You know stuff like Mushugah and Acacia Strain is great for like big lifts Like when I need to be kind of like Yeah tough you know Otherwise

I'll just do something that's kind of like fun You know You like a lot of instrumental shit Because I used to always see back in the day When I just followed you on Instagram for fucking no Yeah I like some of the Praguegy Instrumental stuff like Plenty.

And I'll use that kind of stuff to kind of get into more of like a zone. I'll listen to plenty, you know, in the sauna. Plenty with weed is really great. I listen to Pliny while painting my house. I listen. That's all I listen to. Really? Yeah.

It's just great painting music. I fucking love instrumental music. I have two. Honestly, I only. like heavy shit with vocals when I'm at the gym. I like probably hip hop when I'm just listening to music. And then when I'm doing something or traveling instrumental music, I really, I either like all the words, shout the words or no words. I hate that middle like, here's a fucking chorus.

I guess I might be kind of similar in that sense. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I'll have to look back. I've been working on putting some playlist together just because sometimes someone will ask. And I'm trying to create some different playlist for different things or different moods, different strains of weed that I might use for different lifts because I'm kind of scientific with some of that stuff. Yeah.

So I'm working on some of that. like 2021 playlist. I'll have to send you more. Do a heavy workout playlist and I'll put it on the downbeat thing. When we had Bryce, the power lifter, Bryce Crouchick, Calgary Barbell guy on the pod, he made like a powerlifting program, like a PDF and people fucking loved it. That's awesome. Make me a workout playlist.

Yeah, I will. I will. Downbeat one. That's a good idea. Okay. This has been probably fucking three hours by this point. Probably we did. I appreciate you.

I appreciate you. Thank you. Thanks for having me. It was a pleasure. Send my love to Andy and send me your files, please. Okay, I will. Cool. All right.

Thanks. Bye. Bye.