The Iced Coffee Hour - More Plates More Dates on Exposing Fitness Scams, Getting Women, and Living Forever

Episode Date: December 29, 2023

SHOPIFY: Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at https://shopify.com/ich STREAMYARD: Start creating high-quality content easily with https://clickurl.ca/ICH-StreamYard NEW: Join us at http://www.icedcoffeehour.club for premium content - Enjoy! Subscribe To @MorePlatesMoreDates - Thanks to Derek for coming on! Add us on Instagram:   / jlsselby    / gpstephan   Derek's Channel:    / @moreplatesmoredates  0:00 - Intro 1:16 - Can you over optimize for your health? (Bryan Johnson) 8:32 - 5 BEST ways to optimize your health 18:26 - The hidden benefits of 6-pack abs 26:13 - The START of Derek’s fitness journey 31:44 - Derek talks about social media & steroids 37:23 - A deep dive into Derek’s $100,000,000+ Businesses 45:10 - Are supplements a SCAM?! 55:00 - How to handle Hair Loss 1:10:46 - The effects of Low Testosterone 1:19:29 - Why is Graham not losing weight? 1:27:21 - MPMD’s thoughts on Adderall & Focus 1:38:48 - How to ACTUALLY increase discipline 1:45:02 - Derek’s Problem w/ PRIME Hydration & Logan Paul 1:59:52 - The WILD use cases for Peptides 2:05:24 - MPMD’s on LIVER KING 2:13:21 - What is an ideal diet? 2:27:17 - Derek reacts to Justin Waller’s workout advice 2:31:18 - MPMD’s closing questions for Graham & Jack Official Clips Channel:    / @theicedcoffeehourclips   For sponsorships or business inquiries reach out to: [e-mail] Lamborghini b-roll:    • Super Trofeo [4K]   For Podcast Inquiries, please DM @icedcoffeehour on Instagram! *Some of the links and other products that appear on this video are from companies which Graham Stephan will earn an affiliate commission or referral bonus. Graham Stephan is part of an affiliate network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites. The content in this video is accurate as of the posting date. Some of the offers mentioned may no longer be available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Download it now. Cumulatively across everything I am associated with, we're in nine figures, 100 million plus. I'm sure you guys are very familiar with successful people that hate their lives, too. It doesn't always overlap where the more jack you are or the more successful you are equals happy. You could live a very mediocre life and have a company that is nine figures. If you pull this up, you will find some wild. So Derek from More Plates More Dates, Thank you so much for coming on. The iced coffee hour podcast means a lot.

I don't appreciate it coming all the way from Canada, too. You're honored. You were just in Austin shooting your third ever podcast with Joe Rogan. How nervous are you before going on Joe's podcast? The first time when you have no idea what to expect, it's pretty nerve-wracking because you don't know how elaborate the setup is. If there's some sort of scripted questions that they have teed up for you, like, wow, what's going to go?

And it's very, very chill, nonchalant kind of just bros talking. And in the studio, it's literally kind of like this. It's just him and Jamie and nobody else. There's no one else. That's so cool. I think that, you know, the more. I don't know, low-key you can do it the better. With Joe, it's like, obviously he's super easy to speak with.

And I don't know, like we get along well. So I would, anytime he wants to have me on, like I'd love to be on. That's amazing. Okay, so I have a question just on over-optimizing. Because I see a lot of people and they always suggest things in like a very dogmatic way. Like you need to optimize your testosterone regulation, your sleep, your nutrition, your diet, your meditation, supplements, hydration, no fap. You have this guy Brian Johnson

that made an entire career out of optimizing basically every single thing that you can imagine for longevity's sake. He says he's gonna live until he's like 150 or whatever his number. Does he's concretely stay?

He says he's like decreased aging by like 20 years. Or he's able to slow it down considerably. Now when I look at him, obviously I wonder the validity of that statement but who am I to say? I'm not this one. Why do I wonder?

Like what is it about it that makes you skeptical? Like when I think of just a healthy person, I would say that is not the profile that I generally imagine. He just looks really, really pale. I was like, you can't say that, Jack. It's like the first thing that comes to mind. And here's the, we're all thinking it. Anyways, is there a point in optimizing too much?

Yeah, I think a lot of the, the thing, though, is a lot of the low-hanging fruit stuff when you dump it into lifestyle diet training sleep you could easily subcategorize it into just a few things but then within that you can get so hyper granular where it's like infinite amount of optimization possible so i could say that yeah there are five things that do 90 plus percent and within that that was just defining what is the actual thing that defines a good training regimen or a good sleep regimen or whatever and he definitely takes it to the you know absolute extreme that is to the point where you wouldn't even be able to discern if what he is doing in some capacities is more harmful than helpful in my opinion because some of the stuff he does is like

counterintuitive like he diet so aggressively that it shuts down his testosterone to some extent so now he has exogenous testosterone he applies to make up for the lost hormones that he's not producing because he's in literal malnutrition state so like that's kind of paradoxical and not really like is that optimization at that point or are you just biohacking your to be jacked while also depriving the shit of yourself of nutrients. You know, when you add in three experimental drugs and then you're already on 72 other things and then you're also trying something new with this, like trying to determine what was the thing that changed and how it influenced its cross interactions with the other stuff you're

already on. It's kind of hard to know for certain. Like just the other day, he was talking about how he's adding oral monoxidil into his regimen, which is like a really outdated anti-hypertensive medication, which is no longer used, almost ever and has a black box warning, meaning it's like the most prone to potentially lethal side effects. And it was repurposed as a topical for hair loss when they found out that when people were taking it, they were growing hair everywhere. So these people were using this blood pressure medication and just growing body hair and hair on their head. And they were like, oh, if we repurpose this for

And you put it on your head, can you get the same effect? It turns out you can with less side effects and you keep it somewhat localized. So some people, though, to take it to the extreme to get the maximum effect, they will take the old, like really outdated oral medication, which is more effective, but also proportionally more side effect ridden. So is that just to keep the hair on his head? Yeah, because a lot of this. A lot of the stuff that he does to is not just about objective, like health metrics.

It's also about vanity. I was wondering about like being so low body fat. Is that healthy to be in that state all the time? He looks great, but is like, is that optimal to living to 150? Yeah. So that's the thing too is what is the goal and are you optimizing for that goal anyway? Because a lot of what he does is not necessarily in the extreme of longevity. It's also very intertwined with.

I want to look good and be healthy simultaneously, which is fine. but it's like again some of these some of these treatments are not necessarily like pro longevity like try to argue that oral monoxide will help you live to 150 it's probably not so you know what maybe he's able to get more attention looking the way he does yeah and then that six pack abs like look how healthy i am and then indirectly it's like if you look good and you look younger do you behave younger and have some sort of like health benefit that's a good point like i'm sure i think there is a literature on that that that does show that that is the case if you look better you will actually be healthier.

How much of that do you think is just genetics in terms of how long you're going to live? Because it seems like there are these communities in like Europe and Japan where the people live into their early hundreds. And it seems pretty common. And maybe that could be diet or, you know, being stress-free or socializing more. But how much of that do you think is genetic? A lot of it. So like there are people you could find who have all of the red flags of what you shouldn't do

and will still outlive you even if you tried everything Brian Johnson does. With that said, you can obviously have your best shot at extending whatever it is that you're working with. You have a certain hand of cards. You're dealt. And what you do with that is dependent on all of the factors that you impose upon yourself, lifestyle diet, et cetera. And yeah, I think a lot of stuff could extend lifespan fairly significantly. Like when it comes to cardiovascular disease, it's like the number one killer of people in the states right now, like even more so than cancer. and that is super preventable if you know what to look for in blood work and know how to get

if you have a high quality doctor overseeing your care some of the stuff under that though like cancer and whatnot like some of the stuff is so nebulous to know if you're actually going to be fine when you're going to get it how you're going to get it how to avoid it all you can do is optimize what you can and you know hope it's impactful on a number of years but in general the thing that should be more focused on I think is the quality of life over quantity because there are certain things you could do to extend lifespan that aren't necessarily like making life fun or worth living because you could diet yourself into like a state of metabolic nothingness almost and be like like for example a tiny old woman might outlive a really jacked you know big dude because she's you know like doesn't really require that much to sustain herself and has very little risk factors from different aspects um I I don't know, doesn't have a lot to impose on her body demands-wise or organs don't need to support like way more calories or what have you. But is that like a life you want to live where you're depriving yourself of food constantly doing these like three-day fasts?

I'm not saying they don't have validity. It's just like, you know, it's very speculative what this stuff does at the end of the day and how much it extends lifespan. All you can really do is things that we know work and are worth doing. Like having a good diet, exercise, sleep. and I would say assessing your hormones, biomarkers, et cetera, to make sure stuff is at least as optimal as it could be. And then if you want to address it further

and go some degree in the biohacking kind of optimization realm by manually intervening, then that's a judgment to make once you've kind of like assess things from an educated angle. So actionable things for the viewer, let's just say on average,

it's an 18 to 35 year old man. What five or so things would you recommend that do 90% of the, you get, get 90% of the results of all optimization. Sleeping eight hours a night and obviously you could get granular around that and how you would optimize that. But let's just put the bucket of like sleep.

Make it simple. Yeah, yeah. Assuming it's good. And then we have resistance training is like very overlooked in terms of its importance in my opinion. Like having muscle and bone integrity, especially as you get into older age is like of critical importance. I would say just basic moving your body.

So getting 10,000 steps a day, I think it's a pretty like concrete good cookie cutter recommendation for most people. And I like the idea of having like a goal that you can actually know you've reached and feel good about you achieve something rather than some nebulous just like move around a lot. Because that's often what you hear is move, you know, move your body. It's like, okay, well, you know, some people need a step track or whatever to see that they're actually hitting a number that gives them that feedback. I did good today. And I know that I kind of hit my basis for what I need to be doing. So I would say the resistance training steps, sleep, from a diet perspective, not overeating. The only way you would really dictate if that's actually happening if you're totally unaware of how to go about tracking your macronutrients is looking at the scale.

If you're eating and it is going up on a regular basis, you're eating too much and you need to lower your portions and or look at the quality of your food and kind of determine is there, you know, am I eating ultra processed like calorie dense, hyper palatable foods? and maybe I should reel back and assess what I'm eating. Why is it that I'm overweight right now? And often, like you can't out train a bad diet or if you do, it's very difficult to and most won't. Very rare circumstances do I find people who are training so much that they could eat whatever. It exists, but they're outliers. In general, people need to just look at what they're eating.

And probably at least for a month or two meticulously track like every calorie that enters your mouth. And if you're not gaining weight on average on a weekly basis, then you know you're either at maintenance calories or if you're losing weight, you're in a deficit. And as long as you are at a healthy body composition, you're not gaining weight unless your goal is to gain muscle, then I think calorie energy balance in general is kind of like the fourth bucket. I would say fifth is like getting diagnostics to actually assess that what you're doing is moving you in the right direction too. Because there are certain genetic predispositions that no matter what you do, lifestyle diet, etc. you might be overlooking some significant problem that exists within your ancestral,

you know, like your parents, grandparents, whatever that has passed on to you that goes overlooked and that you might want to, you know, get diagnostic oversight in order to make sure not only that the things you're doing on a regular basis are providing actionable feedback that your, you know, levels on all metrics are getting better and looking optimal for sustaining health and quality of life, but also that you don't have some weird outlying genetic predisposition that you're totally unaware of that would have killed you in 15 years. Well, I guess since we're on the topic of longevity, did you know that 50% of businesses

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Shopify.com slash ICH, all lowercase for a $1 a month trial period. Thank you so much Shopify and back to the episode. Does it matter what you eat as long as the calories add up to a certain amount? like eating 1,500 calories worth of Oreos versus, you know, 1,500 calories of steak. Does it matter if the calories are the same? For sure. Yeah, like the quality of food. At the end of the day, if you're in a deficit and eating less than you are expending from a

kilowark standpoint, you will lose weight. But the proportion of weight lost will be suboptimal if you're eating just Oreos to achieve that. So even if you're training perfectly, you're doing your cardio, you're eating 1,500 calories of just McDonald's versus high quality. red meat, complex carbs, like whatever, the difference in your body composition at the end of it will be pretty significant in that you will have more muscle, you will have better health markers, you'll feel better. There's a clear difference in terms of the outcome, although you could still

by like scientifically you will lose weight. It's just impossible to not if you're in a deficit of energy. But a lot of systems in your body will be performing worse if you are eating the, you know. Got it. And how do you optimize your sleep? I've seen some people say that you're supposed to do everything completely blacked out or you just to have a light next to you that slowly wakes you up. I found that for myself, I do best with natural sunlight in the morning. Like, despite what everyone says, I like seeing the sun come up, and I find that I sleep better waking up somewhat naturally.

What time do you wake up, though? I would say about eight, maybe seven the earliest. And the sun is up at what time here? I would say 536, give or take. So I guess it depends on how. your sleep tracks with the sun because it's like let's just say you're trying to wake up four hours after it comes up having that light entering your room and disrupting your sleep might not be ideal versus if you're actually waking up with it i would say that's pretty optimal if you could go to

sleep as it's you know when it's dark and then waking up with it you're pretty much replicating what is an ideal circadian rhythm a lot of people don't have the luxury of that they work shift work like whatever it is in which case you have to get a little bit more uh i don't know granular on what you're doing and yeah I think blackout blinds are great depending on the person because it's also pretty hard to get up when it's blacked out in the room too and that's where like the natural light can be helpful yeah I like I would love and it's obviously unreasonable to ever suggest this to anyone but having a device that would blackout blinds that open slowly at like a certain time of day like based on when the sun is coming up or you know when you actually want to wake up because even right now

a lot of people, if you have a blacked out room, me included, I have to still have certain tactics sometimes to make sure I don't just lie there. Because when you wake up, if you don't have that natural light queuing you to be getting up. Is that not exist something that just opens the shades? Yeah, you could get an automatic electronic something where you just push a button. That's highly expensive. You wanted to adjust every day, though, based on the sun.

A lot of people would argue just go to bed on time. But it's like, it's not realistic for everyone, obviously. Right. It's insane that I'm saying this because it sounds so lazy, but I'll just be honest. I was thinking about buying some wood or a super long extendable stick because my blinds are probably nine feet away from my bed. Or as soon as I wake up, I just, you know, and I just like open it up a little bit. Because getting out of the bed when it is pitch black in your room, even if it's 9 a.m., it's just harder. Yeah, that's the opposite of lazy.

That's like intuitive shit right there. But yeah. Getting to bed. I think the timing of it is very important. So your body adapts to cues, especially when you're eating or exposure to sunlight. So if you go to bed at 10 every day, trying to go to bed at the same time every day and trying to wake up around the same time every day and ingraining this rhythm in your brain is like one of the most important things. I would say avoiding eating as close to bed as possible. Ideally would be worthwhile as well.

So some people, they will eat, you know, midnight, you know, a late night. snack or whatever or have a lot of their calories right before sleeping. And your metabolism will be trying to essentially use up that food when you were in bed and trying to fall asleep. And when you're trying to fall asleep, to get into sleep, you need to lower your body temperature a certain amount. And if you are ingesting a bunch of calories and requiring your body to then like fire up metabolic processes to actually use it up, that's a heat generating process. So you're actually impeding your ability to fall asleep when you're eating. Then why is late night eating so popular?

Willpower is diminished to nothingness, and it's like access. It does feel really good to eat a big meal and then just go to bed afterwards. It's hard for me to sleep when I eat before bed. Yeah, I actually cut off my eating. I just noticed it as a pattern in my life. It's extremely hard to fall asleep. Like there's definitely a individual component to it because, like, for example, I wouldn't suggest going to bed super hungry either because then maybe you're too hungry to get,

you know, stay asleep. Some people are different. And that's where you kind of have to play around with it. I'm not suggesting that everyone should do this. But in general, if you're eating the majority of your calories too close to bed, it will be harder to get into deep sleep and stay asleep. So I would just be mindful of that. A lot of people I know try to stop eating like at least two to three hours out. I want to get onto the story and how you acquired all of this knowledge and then how you leverage this knowledge to build a $100 million plus business, which you've talked about on other podcasts as well. Before we get into that, there's one other random question that I have to ask, which is Andrew Tate says, if you're depressed, you get a six-pack and then come back to me and tell me if you're still depressed.

We've talked about optimizing all these different facets of your life. What are the actual results of optimizing these things aside from just vanity? Does it actually make a significant impact on your quality of life and internal metrics? Yeah. Being lean is unquestionably good for health. Obviously, that can be taken to the extreme with guys like Brian Johnson who calorie deprive themselves so aggressively that they then need to use exogenous hormones to maintain decent function. And a lot of bodybuilders do that too. Self-admittedly, they'll get shredded and use exogenous steroids in order to maintain like high quality life, you know, strength in the gym, muscle tissue to not have a deteriorate

as they diet down and they'll be at, you know, like single digit body fat percentage and be shredded walking around and still functioning well because they're literally shooting the hormones into themselves. So when you're doing it naturally, though, like there is a Goldilocks zone whereby if you're too fat, like it's not conducive to optimal health. And if you're too lean, it's also not conducive to optimal health. And having a good happy medium is like unquestionably good in all metrics of health, essentially. And mental health as well. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And especially like the impact has on brain fog too, eating the diet that is conducive to like a lean body composition and you being metabolically flexible and using energy efficiently for actual recovery of tissue that is metabolically

active rather than just like having your blood sugar stay elevated and then you're sitting in your chair and not actually using it up for anything. You know, you get into these roller coasters of brain fog and a lot of people who are more metabolically fit don't experience that. How did you learn all of this? How do you get into this? Probably the same way anyone in their niche gets really deep. So like in your niche, it just, you know, you get enthralled in it because it interests you to no end. So you just will sit there and in just assimilate information all day. Even if you weren't making content about it, you probably were interested in it to begin with.

And that's kind of like I think where the best content creators come from are people who would have done it anyways. I'm not suggesting that you need to do that necessarily. but like for me, you know, from being a teenager, I've been ingesting information from wherever I can to try and get as knowledgeable as I can about anything that interests me. And I'm just the type of person that will sit there on the computer and just bury myself in papers and asking people anything I need to to learn what I can. And just always information seeking. I just really, I don't know, mentally get rewarded from learning stuff I care about. Do you know why you're so interested in this specific field? I think because it affects like broad spectrum performance. It's not just performance in the gym or in sports. It's also mentally. And it's super overlapping with entrepreneurial endeavors as well.

So having a mentally dialed cognitive state is obviously incredibly conducive to high quality work, business acumen, performance in your businesses, et cetera. like it all is overlapping and not just about health but also about performance trying to optimize all angles of that in order to not only stave off disease maximize my performance but also be able to impart that information to friends and family who otherwise are like blindly going through the medical system something that is what I'm passionate about and kind of led me down the telemedicine around because in Canada especially you're kind of just told to go home if you ask for anything and you're not like literally dying in front of them. So what I find really interesting is I have a lot

of friends that like have gone through medical school. I have met quite a few different doctors and stuff like that. And I like to ask what they teach them in medical school. And a lot of the times it's not natural and organic things that will fix these issues that I feel like intuitively could be fixed. Like a lot of mental illnesses is fixed by fixed by giving like administering pills and medication and stuff like that where I feel like if we tried some more like organic routes first, you'd probably yield better or at least more like foundational results. Perhaps a lot of, I think depression is the one that's brought up a lot. Perhaps for some people, it's an underlying condition of, you know, in the brain, but for others it could be their environmental conditions or their situation that's

really contributing to that. So fixing whatever that issue is could solve their, you know, depression versus medication. Oh, for sure. I know some of the most successful people, I'm sure you guys are very familiar with successful people that hate their lives too. It doesn't always overlap where, you know, the more Jack you are or the more successful you are equals happy. And oftentimes there's like a hedonic treadmill where these people get happy and then they realized that wasn't what made them happy. And then they have this internal crisis about what actually is the meaning of life. And then they get to send down this rabbit hole and they're less happy than somebody who's, you know, just living a average life objectively.

So, um, yeah, like a lot of this stuff can be fixed naturally. If they are a general practitioner, they may only get a certain amount of time with exposure to knowledge about hormones or to what have you. Um, and that could be to the detriment of being the person you want to defer to when you're trying to learn about a specific subsystem of the body. So if I want to learn about how hormones work or, um, you know, like, uh, reproductive health or testosterone like I don't necessarily want to talk to my family doc I might want to talk to an endocrinologist and that's why there's specialties where they lean into things heavier

but even then oftentimes you are subject to whatever the current curriculum slash literature says which might be outdated for all we know so and oftentimes you'll see um yeah people going to multiple specialists and getting told things that even as a just person who can assumes YouTube on a regular basis, you might be like, that sounds wrong. I've heard, you know, totally contradictory advice from multiple people now. I'm not saying use YouTube for your advice over an endocrinologist, obviously, but there's certainly some element of, uh, not every doctor knows everything. And there are amazing doctors that do great things, but just because your credential that doesn't equal, you know, the most knowledgeable always. So, and yeah, a lot of stuff can be

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Thank you so much, Stream Yard. And back to the episode. When did you start working out? Probably when I was 17-ish. I was the last person in my friend group to start. And I played basketball. I was like a skinny runt who didn't really care about working out at all. What was the point?

It didn't really help me shoot three-pointers. So I didn't really care. And then my friends just got really into it and peer pressured me into it essentially because it kind of got stupid being there and hanging out with them and they're bench pressing and whatever. And I'm just standing there doing nothing. So I might as well join. Then I made some progress relatively quickly. And then I was like, damn, like this is cool. I'm actually seeing visual changes happening. And then kind of it's called getting the iron bug. You get bit by it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I kind of got bit by the iron bug. And then it definitely superseded my. I don't know, interest in basketball to where I just kind of lean into that and then continued thereafter. Was there a correlation with gaining muscle and attention from women? Or was it your confidence that was affected by that that actually caused better or more attention from women?

The confidence component is definitely a huge variable that most people overlook. And actually, I would say that for the first few years, it was probably worse because I did a lot of like dirty bulking. I'm sure you guys have heard of dirty bulking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so you just eat anything because you think that gaining weight equals good, even at the expense of literally becoming fat. So I gain like 60 pounds, I think. 60 pounds?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think my first three months I gained 40 to 50. That's a lot. How does it even possible? It's possible. You were eating like eight, nine thousand hours ago. Yeah, well, no, I was just, the thing is, is a lot of people don't actually count.

And when you start counting to the calorie, you know, a lot of times you realize you weren't ingesting as much as you thought. or the opposite for certain obese people that overestimate or whatever. So, or underestimate. So for me, I was counting meticulously and also slamming like weight gainer shakes and eating really garbage food. Like anything I could do. Even to the extent that if I threw up, I would be like, oh, fuck, I'm going to go eat again to make up for that. Yeah. Got intense.

So that wasn't normal. Yeah. So how did you dial back after that? Well, eventually enough people tell you that are close to you and care about you that you're getting fat and you should probably tone the back of it. and the response at the time it's like you don't understand dirty bulking this is how you do it So they're just telling you your fat?

It came probably after the first year-ish I just did like a little bit of a diet down I think I bulked up again thereafter and then I dieted again. It took probably like two or three cycles of bulking and cutting with the next bulks not being as aggressive as the first before I kind of actually got to a body composition that looked like, okay, you're actually a guy who goes to the gym

And then works out. So after that point, though, I had enough muscle where even when I bulked up a bit, I was a lot more cognizant about how far I would take it. And also, you have enough muscle tissue underneath that you don't look as fat because you actually have the muscle in conjunction with the fat that you've gained to kind of like, there are a lot of people with six packs that are bodybuilders that are still holding quite a bit of body fat, but they have so much muscle that are kind of like, they still look vascular. So at what point, though, did that help you with women?

um a few years in uh i probably didn't even talk to women for the first two years i was in the gym too so i don't even know if you could count it as a fair comparison but after i got lean actually lean for the first time i started to kind of go out of my comfort zone more and had the confidence to go up to chicks and talk to them and strike up conversations in my university walking around and i could have there was definitely times though where i had as good or more success when i was objectively, like perhaps a bit overweight too. So a lot of it is just how you're speaking, how confident you are, how your interaction goes, if there's chemistry, stuff like that. So some people definitely over optimized to the degree that they will not even talk to the

opposite section unless they're like cutting. So I don't suggest that. I've heard about that. Yeah. It's like they, they don't take off their shirt until they're like lean. Yeah. And post cut. Is that just motivation to well, you definitely get body dysmorphia once you get into this. fitness industry, especially where you think that if you don't have a six-pack equals, I'm very fat. Is that just because you're around people and everyone has a six-pack? So if you don't have one, then you feel like- It's not even that you're around them physically, is that you're looking at them on social media. And this is the norm of expectation in fitness. Like right now, I'm actually relatively untrained. I kind of like changed my priorities a bit in the past couple of years to where I am in the gym far less,

far less than I want to be and I think is optimal, but it was just at the expense of a lot of business stuff that was taking off that I just, at least at the time, unjustifiably justified it was worth not going to the gym as much, which I'm trying to change this next year. But like in that domain, it's kind of like when you get into the fitness industry, you kind of get this assumption that everyone, I don't know,

has, you have this perception of what is considered good and it is like very, very skewed to where me now, compared to a few years ago, people would be like, you have a dad bod, or you look out of shape. It looks like you don't train anymore. It's like to a layman, objectively, that's an insane statement. But to like a fitness industry guy, that actually might be a reasonable answer. It's like, Derek, you look like you don't even fucking train anymore. Well, that's the thing. It's like if I go on YouTube shorts or Instagram Reels or TikTok and stuff like that, the only stuff that gets views and does well are people that

are just absolutely shredded. So then you disagree. Yeah, like I don't even take my shirt off really for videos. I don't even do training footage anymore. I used to back in the day, but lately I'm just like a talking head in videos in front of a wall. But what I'm saying, like, maybe it's just my algorithm, but like if the video genre is fitness, it's usually someone with an insane shredded body. Yeah, but you also, some of the most respected and successful people in the industry are

individuals that don't fit the norm of the genetic phenom. Because you'd be surprised, like some people like Sam Seulik, for example, he's an outlier. And obviously he's like sauce to hell. But it's not every guy who's that. There are plenty of people way more jack than him that don't get any attention. And they post videos regularly. Like there's just a certain element that some people are very likable and post content that a lot of people relate to and or just like the person.

to some significantly greater extent. But there are plenty of bodybuilders that are the most hyper extreme example of jack, shredded, whatever, who have objectively low followings and then some that are on the other extreme. Like Chris Bumstead is like the most popular fitness person ever probably, at least by proportional metrics.

Obviously, like Arnold back in the day was huge. But I mean, like sheer engagement wise now, he beats like A-less celebrities. So, and like, Obviously, you could argue, okay, well, he's the best physique. And it reinforces what I said. But it's like there are guys that will have, don't even post their physique that are in the industry that still do very, very well too. How was Sam so big?

He looks like a cloud. He's big. Oh, like big. Oh, I thought you were asking like popularity. Yeah, yeah. No, no. I was like, what do you? Cloud and his YouTube channel.

Like, how's it? Okay. No, but he's a massive guy. Uh, yeah. Genetics, steroids adhering to his diet. meticulously and hitting his calorie and protein goals. The guy's life is essentially revolved around going to the gym and eating his meals and his content is entirely essentially dictated by following him do those things.

So when it's your job to adhere to it, like I would say it's a bit more likely that you will. And then in addition to that, he's also a genetic phenom in that he hyper responds to what he's doing in terms of hormones. Is he open about his steroid? I don't think he's ever said anything about it. I don't think so. But you say, but based on your knowledge, you think. One million percent.

I would bet like my net worth on it. How could you tell? Well, you just said. He looks like a cloud. I know. But like, but you objectively, you have this vision that you could say, this person is on steroids. Yeah.

What do you see that a normal person wouldn't? I don't know how his brother trans, but like first of all, there's a pretty clear distinction between him and somebody who has very similar genetics and they both train and one looks like a amateur level or almost, I don't know, some people would argue that he's like borderline low level pro bodybuilder within a couple years and his brother looks like a normal guy still. Maybe his brother just started and this is an unfair comparison. But at the end of the day, the progression he's made from what looked like a decent natural physique was so rapid that it would be

unexplainable to gain that much tissue naturally. It's just physically impossible. So having gone to the gym for a certain amount of time and then to explode and gain 50 pounds of muscle thereafter, it's just not a physiologic thing that could occur.

That's probably the best explanation. Obviously, you could look at them and objectively say this physique is not natural because it is X amount of pounds higher than what most naturals can achieve who are at the highest level of, you know, tested sport or whatever.

Like, there's a lot of metrics you could look to, but also it's just easy to see. His progress is unnatural. Do you think Sam has a responsibility to be open about his steroid usage with his platform? Not really. I don't know. Like the guy, I think just by existing,

will encourage hormone use, unfortunately. And then some people will criticize him for that. Probably unfairly so, because he's just a guy who makes content and wants to do what he does. And maybe he competes one day. Maybe he doesn't. But it's like, I don't think just because

you're influential, and look great and take shit equals you need to like tell everyone everything. I think you have a duty to not lie to their faces about it probably, but or to monetize in a way that is leveraging your like fake natural status in order to get rich off of products that are, you know, promising things that are just untrue. But above and beyond that, like I don't necessarily think he has to sit down and make a video and say, yep, as you guys probably guessed, I'm unnatural and like, here's why you shouldn't do it

and blah, blah, blah. So it's like people got to kind of make their own decisions and take some responsibility. And I'm sure he did the same thing. When he sat down, there was one day where Sam Sulich sat down as a natural and looked at probably YouTube videos, dug into some whatever research may be, ask some friends. Like, is it worth it if I do this? Like, what am I trying to get out of it? He had that assessment too. And he was probably inspired by someone else.

And should that guy have not been on social media being jacked and sick looking? I don't know. You know, did that guy have a responsibility to tell Sam he would have died if he took gear or something? I don't know. That's kind of a, you know, speculative thing. So let's talk a little bit about your businesses. You have your clinic and you have your supplement business. I think it's the supplement business does like $100 million or so a year. At least the my first million.

My first million, they guessed. You didn't disagree. Six to eight million a month. And you agreed. Cumulatively across everything I am associated with, we're in, what is nine figures is 100 million plus, right? So that's territory. But I'm not going to get like hyper specific on which business is.

What do you decide to turn this into a business? Which one? Like my channel even? Or what do you mean? I guess everything. Even the supplements, your channel. Like how do you decide to monetize your interest in fitness? By the way, the thing I should preface, which I see a lot of people don't do, is when you say 100 million, no one talks about net numbers.

Yeah, that's right. And like, let's not like a lot of things I see maybe business owners who are incentivized to actually show how well they're doing because they're part. of some entrepreneurial upsell thing. Like these numbers are not necessarily like the owner equals like this. You don't keep this money. Like a lot of it's reinvested to build the businesses. You said 50 to 100 employees as well. Per company.

Yeah. Like I'm trying to, I just want to add a preface because a lot of people see these big numbers, especially as headlines. And they will very much take and run with that some unrealistic expectation of how business works. And even if this is a goal you are considering pursuing, like understand that just these numbers don't mean your take home is some like like you could

live a very mediocre life and have like a company that is nine figures depending on what your goal is with it so just putting that out there um but anyways the way transitioning into this was um a lot about my content and what i would promote or give education about to begin with so when i started making content about uh nutrition supplementation pharmacology hormone optimisation optimization. It was very, very centric around these things to begin with and oftentimes reviewing other companies that are, you know, at the cutting edge or doing things that I think are bad or good and giving my opinions. Oftentimes I would have affiliate relationships too where I would have, you know, use my affiliate code to get, you know, kickback a commission

and support the channel and using this product that I think is the best of this specific industry. And after a while, once you build up enough funds, I'm sure similar to you, you made some YouTube you've made some affiliate commissions, you've had some sponsorships and it's like, okay, well, do I want to build equity for this other company now or do I want to go like pivot into my own thing? And as the bandwidth allocation of time worthwhile to actually lean into it, or am I just taking away from my bread and butter and making that kind of calculation for me at least on my three main businesses, which is guerrilla mind, Merrick Telemedic and Intelligence Shop, those three things in particular. I feel like I have enough of a expertise in and care enough about person.

to lean into as worth my time allocation. So like in particular, the guerrilla mind company is dietary supplements typically oriented around sports performance and energy drinks more recently, Neutropics cognitive enhancement. That's kind of like the main products we offer. And then Merrick Health is the telemedicine, diagnostic side of things.

Not a traditional TRT clinic. A lot of people title these clinics as TRT clinics, and justifiably so for many of them, but we pride ourselves in being like diagnostic oversight and optimizing health before looking at any of these other things. So that's worth mentioning because I think it's often these companies get lumped into this kind of like narrow, kind of like bit more sketchy territory, but it is a preventative medicine platform. And then third is intelligent shop, which is like men's hair loss prevention in particular

and the pharmacology around that is something I made tons of content on. And it's something I found very, very interesting. So making products that actually work centered around that. And then also something a lot of people don't know is I used to make fragrance reviews. I am just like a fragrance connoisseur. So I would get girls to rate fragrances, go to university campuses. You get girls to rate fragrances. Yeah.

If you look at some of my old videos, I would walk around university campuses and be like, what do you think of this one compared to this one? Rate it out of ten. Which one's more sexy, et cetera, et cetera. Do you put like one on one armpit and the other one on the other? No, I spray test strips. Oh, okay. What are you doing?

I'm just scared. How do you get like a girl to A, B, test it, you know? Yeah, yeah. Test strips. Yeah. So it would be like a blind. test because they don't see the bottle and it's just on a strip and they would give their opinion. And then these like fragrance battles get endless views.

Like there's no time where as somebody who's into fragrances, you will not get views by getting attractive women to rates, even fragrances that have existed for decades. I don't know why. It's just like, even me. I already want to watch it. I already want to go back and watch. I'm weird. I like the smell of gasoline and cigarettes.

I don't know why. So you would love Fahrenheit by Dior. It is a very polarizing fragrance that. that only somebody who actually likes what you just said. It's so random. Sharpies as well. Sharpies. I love Sharpies.

Worth the smell when you start up a car. I think that weird sort of like, I don't know, it's an engine smell. Like I like that. Sure, sure. Yeah, dude. Especially if you're like, if you can pull it off. Because again, there's a certain scent that needs to be congruent with like you as a person to really not just come across is why do you smell like a diesel engine or something?

But like if you can pull it off, it's a pretty sick scent. But anyway, so you should check that out. But for me, I made all these reviews. And I always thought, you know, it'd be sick if one day I had my own fragrances. So this intelligent shop company is kind of like a miscellaneous self-care company. But it's hair loss and hair loss prevention-oriented products. It also has skincare and then fragrances that I develop. And I think we're launching our seventh fragrance this month.

So what are some of the crown winners of the fragrance A-B test that you did on college campuses? Ooh. from existing brands, things that I could recommend. Spice Bomb is a really good one by Victor and Rolf for winter and fall. That one consistently won. Well, why just for winter and fall? Certain fragrances have certain notes that are more conducive to be appealing and warmer or colder weather. And some actually stink almost when you're having it in the wrong setting.

Or might be overwhelming. For example, if you had like a really boozy, sexy smelling fragrance in a dance. date setting would be nice, but in the office would be quite off-putting. So having something oriented for what you're doing, or if you're in the gym, you wouldn't wear like diesel engine fragrance, you know? People like, what the hell is this guy doing? So like there, you would want to smell like you just came out of the shower at most, if anything. So like stuff like that and having contextual situations that are conducive to like,

okay, this one's for this, this one's for this. That's kind of like what we did. And, yeah, some of the best ones off the top of my head. A really good cost effective one, I would say. If people are looking for a summer fragrance, that's pretty guaranteed to be a hit with women is Nautica Voyage. I think it's the best selling fragrance on Amazon. It's like $17 for 100 milliliters.

And it's quite good. A lot of people have it. So it's common, but it's reliable on a budget for sure. I got Dior Savage. Savage. Savage. I feel like I've heard, you know, Jeremy Fragrance. Dude, that guy is a character.

That's like, I think that's like his favorite. By the way, he's probably the first one. He's not, maybe he's not the first, but he's one of the first people that inspired like the whole fragrance battle thing. Some of his old videos are not as much as newer videos, but his older ones are like really entertaining, well done. I wish he would go back to that style,

but he's been consumed by the TikTok dopamine circuitry, unfortunately. But for that one, Savage is like one of the most widely appreciated fragrances, but to the detriment that it's not unique whatsoever. So you will almost certainly smell like some chick-sex boyfriend if you wear it. I want to talk about supplements because we had Dr. Mike on the podcast and he said the supplement industry is ripe with scams, basically.

Like a lot of supplements are not regulated and you could kind of just like package anything into anything and then sell it as anything. Yeah, I think a lot of the claims could not be tested. And because there are supplements or they're all natural, there's very little regulation with that. So people are trying to peddle anything because there's such high margins on supplements. What supplements do you think are actually valid and like multivitamins, for example? I feel like everyone takes multivitamins.

Is that something that people should be incorporating into their diet? And what supplements should people be wary of? It very much depends on your individual situation, but I want to try and be as general as possible, because I could say for a multi, your diet could cover your bases for all I know. A lot of people don't need it, but it's good insurance kind of. It's almost like an insurance policy type supplement, which I think is worthwhile for a lot of people,

but you don't necessarily need it. for optimal health. Fortunately, a lot of the vitamins in it won't actually kind of like accumulate. You'll just urinate out the excess and you kind of know at least you're topping up what you needed. And then the rest would kind of not stick around and cause harm as much. But a lot of people are deficient vitamin D. It's like pretty damn common nowadays. So I think that's a pretty impactful one. How do you know if you're deficient vitamin D?

Okay. So you would check your vitamin D in a blood test and it would show you are either. It's shocking how. Are there symptoms to that though? Or would you just not know? Low testosterone is one of them. mood, emotional stability, even ability to build muscle in some capacity. A lot of stuff is impacted by vitamin D.

It's actually a hormone technically. I think it's a steroid hormone, even though it's called a vitamin. So it's pretty impactful on hormone systems in the body and being deficient. It's like one of the few things that, not one of the few things, but one of the most impactful things is if you're deficient, it will markedly decrease your testosterone levels and also your response to that testosterone as well. So people do notice a big difference. We had Ty Lopez on the podcast. and he has a vitamin D tracker based on the sun

and like where he is on the world. So he could go outside and say, here I only need 10 minutes, but over there I need an hour in the sun to get that vitamin D. That sounds super fishy. Like almost more fishy than the age clock thing. So I, yeah, I don't know who's...

It doesn't matter if you're getting vitamin D from the sun or like a supplement or is vitamin D vitamin D? Like I would say in general things you can get naturally are better and they go through an actual regulating. framework when you're taking stuff naturally. Like, for example, in foods, it'll have like cofactors and different things that support absorption or what have you that may be in a supplement getting like a mega dose in one shot might not be the optimal way to do it.

When it comes to vitamin D, it kind of, it's tough because oftentimes the way you ended up deficient to begin with is because your environment is not conducive to a good vitamin D level unless you are intentionally depriving yourself of sunlight, at which point it's kind of like just get outside more. And then if you're still deficient, like, I don't know. Like, it's also an efficiency thing, too. Do I want to sit outside for how long versus, you know, like for me, I think a lot of people would benefit from a supplement.

But I also think if you can get it naturally, like it's probably superior. Although I couldn't point to any literature that shows like an AB test of it. So yeah, that's a super impactful one. Some other things, magnesium. A lot of people are super deficient magnesium. And that's super impactful in testosterone. levels too, among other things, zinc impactful on testosterone. A lot of people are deficient, especially people who are avoiding red meat purposefully. I think beef liver is actually great as like

ironic that the liver king is like gets a lot of scrutiny. One of the things he did say that is worthwhile, I think is liver on a regular basis. It's like one of the most coline dense, vitamin A dense nutrient-wrench foods in general. It's like nature's multivitamins, what they call it. And I think that product, despite tasting horrendous, if you can stomach it, you only need an ounce every couple days even to hit a lot of your micronutrient needs. And if you think it tastes bad, you could actually take a desiccated like beef liver supplement that could be potentially impactful. So I think that's, you know, interesting to look at for sure.

In general, I would say magnesium, vitamin D or two that I see very prominently problematic. That will actually notably impact perceived quality of life, sleep, hormone production, among a myriad of other things. So we could go down the rabbit hole as much as you want, but that's like off the top of my head a couple things. How much liver do you eat? An ounce a day unless I'm traveling, or I just don't want to eat it,

which is relatively frequent. So sometimes I'll use a supplement myself sometimes. Local news is in decline across Canada, and this is bad news for all of us. With less local news, noise, rumors, and misinformation fill the void, and it gets harder to separate truth from fiction. That's why CBC News is putting more journal, in more places across Canada, reporting on the ground from where you live,

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You're here for like a week and a half you said. Yep. Are you getting liver while you're here? Yeah, I take six capsules today. Oh, you take capsules? Yeah, yeah. Okay, got it. Okay, so I don't love the taste of it,

but I try to eat it when I can. And what about vegetarian? One of my very close friends is a vegetarian. He has been for like probably five years at this point. Would you say that that's a diet that you have to be extremely cautious if you're subscribing to? To like making sure that you're getting every available nutrient. Do you think that objectively you're probably healthier if you're eating animal product? I think that you will undoubtedly need to supplement with a few more things than the normal person to hit your nutrient needs for sure. bioavailable B vitamins, having high quality protein,

because even if you get a gram of protein on a nutrition label for certain like vegetarian based products is not necessarily the same equivalent impact on protein synthesis rates as like meat derived, red meat derived. So you need to be a bit more knowledgeable, I would say. I don't think it's impossible to thrive on a vegetarian diet. I just think you need to be a bit more mindful of intake of certain things. Like where are you getting your creatine from? where you're getting your carnitine from,

or are you getting your bioavailable B vitamins? And sometimes supplementation is warranted to actually be able to adhere to the diet and still get the upside of these vitamins and minerals and whatnot. Like Brian Johnson, good luck getting all your stuff without supplements. Are there any ingredients that people should outright avoid? Like, ultra-process stuff in general is typically going to be stripped of nutrients

and or not that as helpful as the caloric equivalent could be of something that is like, I don't know, natural quote unquote. So oftentimes I try to get my, you know, micronutrients from food when I can, like actually eating liver versus taking it in a supplement. But it kind of depends on your workload too, like exercise wise. I could say, you know, don't eat as much sugar because you're sedentary, for example.

I don't know how much sugar you need to actually support your demands. So it's like if you are somebody who's hardly going to the gym or your workouts are very, very minimally intensive and don't require that much carbohydrate to support them, Maybe you can get away with less and you're just unnecessarily pounding sugar versus some other guy might literally need to have like shakes around their workout that are filled with, you know, sugar to help support it. And that's like the hyper extreme bodybuilder. But it depends on the person. I'm sure there are a lot of things that I am just not thinking of though that are really obvious low hanging for things to avoid. Sure.

What are your thoughts on fasting? I think that it is helpful for sustainability of caloric adherence for a lot of people, even for me personally. Like I will wake up and try to not eat for as close to six to eight hours as possible, typically, depending on what I'm doing. If I'm going to the gym that day, maybe it differs. But in general, that approach for me has resulted in an ability to eat the majority of my food later in the day, not so close to bed that it impacts my sleep because, again, you're backlogging.

your calories. That could be problematic too if you wait until right before bed. But for me, I am most mentally clear when I'm not eating. So if I could just work through hunger and use like minor tactics to kind of push my way through, whether that's coffee, you know, chewing gum sometimes, you know, energy drink here and there. I find the same thing in the morning. If I don't eat and I just have coffee, I find myself being a lot sharper. I can think quicker. As soon as I eat for whatever reason. Even if it's a small something, I slow down even if 10% but still that adds up over the course of a year. Yeah. So I've always just done that. I think the validity of it is it's certainly there for entrepreneurs who want to maintain as sharp of a window of work as possible.

When it comes to actual diet outcomes, some people really benefit from it because when they try and split their meals out equally over, oh, I'm going to try the traditional four or five. or even six meals a day of equal split everything, they aren't able to feel satisfied off small portions. But then some people, like when you look to literature, you'll often find that it doesn't play out for the population that they're assessing relative to what another guy might find his best for them.

So you almost need to experiment a bit. And fortunately, with diet, it's not like you're experimenting with a drug necessarily that might screw you up. Like if you try fasting, intermittent fasting for a couple of weeks and you don't like it. you know like you tried it and it wasn't a big deal and now you can go back to trying something else or going back to what worked for you the best before so I think it's worth everyone kind of experimenting but I've definitely seen some super impactful um situations where people went from a traditional

I need to eat right when I wake up to stretching their eating windows and then getting more work done being more productive also being able to eat less overall per day because they feel like a big meal is harder to overeat on than like little small tiny portions. So it depends on the person though, for sure. And it's not necessarily the most ideal for building muscle having all your protein like shoved into one or two meals. Got it. What's your recommendation for hair loss?

It depends what stage you're at and how aggressive you want to be because at the end of the day, unfortunately, there is not really anything that exists. That's super impactful. that isn't manipulating hormone systems. So when it comes to hair loss prevention, the best thing you can do is get in front of it before it's like cosmetically perceivable. So for me,

it was not just accelerated by anabolic steroids when I was younger, but in addition to that, once you actually visually see it in the mirror, you have 100,000 plus, minus, whatever, depending on ethnicity or whatever, hair follicles on your head. And visually, if you pull one out,

you don't notice any difference. in the mirror obviously but over time the miniaturization of these follicles will create a visual perception that becomes cosomatically significant after years of it happening to where all of a sudden one day you know in downlighting or a picture or whatever you start to notice when oh i can see my scalp and i couldn't see it before oh my i didn't even notice this was happening and usually it's like a pretty startling moment when people realize like oh shit i actually am prone to hair loss and it's happening but by then you've already lost like 20 30 plus percent of your hair And oftentimes people will give you bad feedback.

Do you think I'm losing hair? No, it looks fine. It's like, no, dude, you are not fine. It's been happening insidiously this whole time. So a reality check sometimes is that, you know, recession isn't just indicative of, oh, it's what happens to adults and it's supposed to. Like there are people like Ronald Reagan who end up at 89, whatever he lived to and that's perfect airline. Now, I'm not saying he used drugs to do it.

He's obviously a genetic freak. But at the end of the day, if you intervene early in. enough, you could prevent you getting to that point in the time frame that you would have otherwise, if not staved it off entirely. So getting in front of it is so much better than trying to make background because trying to recover dead zones on your scalp, especially, is like very difficult, even with drugs. So how do you get in front of it? What's your recommendation to someone who's probably in the 20s, maybe starting to notice is what we do? Okay, let's use me for an example here. I brought this up to Graham. He's like, no, no, no, you're totally.

fine. He did what you just said. Obviously, I'll show off my hair, right? So see how, like, at the corners, see how it's coming up a little bit right here. Sure. Coming up a little bit right here. I'm mostly fine. Like, I feel like so confident with my hair, but I'm very worried that I will eventually lose it. That for me is like horrifying. And when I did start to notice like in the corners right here, like it coming up a little bit, it was like startling. Like you said, it was shocking. With you too, if you want to know if you're prone rather than getting on drugs that you might be worried about. You could take good pictures and track over time. And at the first sign of further recession, that could be your sign. Okay, now I start taking it. Because you could still like barely have

any more loss and get in front of it before it's so bad that it's obvious. This is for you. Like, you're pretty good right now. So if it were me and I was like actually averse to taking drugs, I would take a picture and find some landmark on your scalp that you could use as a reference point of recession and then use that as a gauge for as you. you get older is that you know taking progress pictures once a month or something is that landmark are you getting more recessed in that area relative to whatever thing you use as a landmark often people will find like a freckle or something something you should be able to use to figure it out and at that point if you're further receding at some rate that is you know noticeable at all like you know that you're

on your way there at you know a significant enough pace that it's going to be okay well when i'm 30 plus or however old, you'll be able to see it probably. So do I care enough at that point to get in front of it with drugs knowing that it's happening? Because some people could hypothetically get on drugs and maybe not have needed to. Their likelihood is low because most people will end up with some degree of hair loss. It's just to what significance level will be dictated by genetics. So like Ronald Reagan didn't even need to take anything. Almost certainly, I guarantee, almost guarantee he was not on hair loss prevention drugs.

Alex Formosey. The incredible hairline. It like goes like down. It's like he's like he's got like, Maybe an inch of forehand. He's got a negative parallel. Yeah. And he'll be like, what do you do?

And he'll be like, nothing. Yeah. He'd be like, yeah, he'll be like, what a ridiculous question. What do you mean? Your hair's perfect. You fuck. So, yeah, he doesn't, he doesn't do anything. So that's genetics, for example.

But again, with him, you don't actually know that. I don't know what his dad looks like. Maybe one day all of a sudden, you know, the switch flips. Because there are epigenetics that could, you know, at some point, the rate of aging or his, just the process of aging could trigger. certain things that otherwise were not problematic. So you could end up in a state of accelerated energetic alopecia. I think that's actually a thing where I couldn't point to literature that proves it, but it seems like at some point, some people do experience like acceleration or deceleration of

certain things in the body, depending on environmental conditions, what have you. But it's also, I think genes can turn on and off depending on certain circumstances. And certain switches could flip in a way that all of a sudden now it's like, now it started for him. Is that why they see it stress exaggerates hair loss. Stress is more shedding. So it's called Telogen of Fluvium and there's a difference between shedding and actual hair loss.

Because when you shed from stress, oftentimes you will see it come out in clumps in areas that are localized, not necessarily like symmetrically all the way across your scalp. So endogenic alopecia, you'll see like a pattern of recession that is very indicative of like DHD affecting it

versus if you had just like a bout of horathingia, horrendous stress. Like, for example, I had a friend who, when he was trying to become a firefighter, he was getting hazed like crazy. And he literally had like a patch fall out of the side of his head. And it grew back white and eventually it came back. But like that's an example of alopecia caused by stress. Like it was not a uniform recession pattern that is indicative of androgens. So people have to remember there's a difference between hair loss and androgenic alopecia, which is like androgen induced alopecia, alopecia being hair loss. So to get in front of Androgenic alopecia, which is the thing most guys deal with, that is typically hormonal.

So in your case, I would use tracking to actually decide if you want to take drugs or not, or if it's even necessary. And then at that point, if it's still happening, you're like, okay, I want to get in front of it now. How do I do it? The number one thing that is the most impactful is something called finasteride. I'm sure you guys have heard of it inhibits the production of something called DHD, which is the primary hormone that dictates masculine characteristics. Like in adolescence, the thing that will differentiate in matured,

you as a male is dh t the most like if you don't have any dh t you will end up with a micropenus an array of features that are not representative of like a fully grown male so dhth is like the opposite hormone to estrogen essentially and testosterone's like somewhat not in the middle but it's like on the spectrum of androgen versus estrogen femuron versus mass and you can like you see this all the time in bodybuilding or in transitioning individuals manual manipulation of this that shows that even in adulthood, people who are manually using these hormones can literally like flip-flop genders essentially. Because it's like there's nothing really differentiating somebody other than like anatomically

to some extent, but also in adolescence, if you expose some girl to hyper endogenic state with exogenous hormones, you could literally make her seem like a dude to any objective metric of somebody seeing her. They'd be like, that's 100% a guy, even though she might not be. So like these things can be manipulated to where if you. take fanastride, this hormone dhght really has no impact on muscle growth, strength. The thing it mainly dictates is sebum production, which is like oil in the skin essentially, prostate size. It inhibits estrogen's activities in some tissues. It does, it does things that

are important, but it's more primarily in adolescence where you don't want to be inhibiting it because you will end up in a, you may end up in a state of like hinder developments, essentially, to say the least. But in a, adulthood when you take it, you could prevent the further miniaturization of hair follicles. Key note being the further miniaturization. You're not going to necessarily reverse miniaturization. You might get some regrowth as you inhibit the process of expediting itself. But ultimately, once you implement this blockade of hormone essentially, it becomes far more difficult to miniaturize at all. Because even in studies, we'll see individuals with deficiencies in the enzyme that makes this hormone.

no temporal recession at all, less body hair, like everything about them is slightly less masculine by metrics of like male secondary sexual characteristics, but they never lose their hair. So it's like if you can replicate that to some extent that is non impactful from a side effect context, you can kind of replicate that state to some extent in adulthood after you fully developed. So isn't that just about waiting until you're already fully developed to start finasteride? Yeah. So like ideally you would wait until you're full grown adult.

and then you would get on it if you need it. The problem is that it's not a side effect free drug, and some people end up with pretty significant issues, all but a minority. They're a very outspoken minority and justifiably so because they have some pretty significant issues sometimes. No one should ever say, like, blindly, this is 100% safe, you will be fine.

The likelihood is high you'll have no issues, like objectively by data. It's like very unlikely you have issues, but there is a possibility. So if you have none of the negative side effects, is there anything just bad, about putting in some manufactured thing into your system. Like a synthetic drug?

Sure. Or just like, just Phanastroid in general. Like if the studies are showing, the data is showing that the likelihood of some negative byproduct to take this thing, the negative symptom is so small. And you don't get any of those, then would you say it's fine?

If you want to just take your chances. Yeah, if you have no side effects, for sure. Get on that shit. I'm on Dutastride, which is like the even more aggressive format of Phanastri that inhibits almost all of my DHG. Like my hormone levels on paper look like a girl.

for DHD. And yet I'm sitting here with a masculine voice. My brain's working well, at least to date. Knock on wood. Muscle is fine. Like nothing is perceivably wrong. That would justify me coming off. And a lot of people are similar in that aspect. So I'm not to say that I'm the reference case whatsoever, but just giving like an anecdote of even in the hyper extreme. Some people use due tasteride too, which is like an even more aggressive drug and have no issues. There's like one guy who was a registered IQ that's like second best on the planet. And he's been on due tastery for decades. not to say that's a justification for it, but it's good to see both sides of the coin because you often hear the horror stories. The thing with the internet, the most outspoken people are not the people who take drugs and get results

and just like don't care about it anymore. It's people who tried something and had a horrendous outcome and want to warn the world about it, which is fine and I think they should. But when you take something, like for example, if you took Tylenol and it got rid of your headache,

are you going to go on Reddit and be like, took Tylenol, it was great. You know, got rid of my headache. Of course not. So with hair loss, a lot of guys that are like, oh, I heard I should take Finastra. I saw an ad on Philip DeFranco show for, you know, keeps or something.

I'm going to just jump on it. They get on it, stops their hair loss, and you never hear from them again. And they never post about it because why would they? But then people who take it, you know, whatever percent of people and they have some,

either some minor issue or a significant issue that is like very noticeable. They're on the internet fucking talking about it. How do I fix it? Talking with other people, your experience was this? Oh, this happened to me. And I get it.

But at the same time, I think it's almost like the positive results are underrepresented. Yeah. Anecdotally, I've talked to a lot of people who are on finasteride. And from everyone that I've talked to, only one person said they knew of someone who had negative effects. And that stopped as soon as they stopped taking it. And part of the issue, too, is now with the internet, it's so well known this stuff that a lot of people placebo themselves into side effects. Yeah.

So I'm not to say that the side effects aren't real. I know of people that I don't think are just placebo. Cibot that have pretty significant issues. But a lot of it is. Like, people do you just fine. And a lot of people who do have issues, they're like, I think something's, I think my erection quality is worse than it was.

But I'm not really sure. I'm like, is it really? If you have benchmarks. Yeah. Yeah. Take the photo. They got to do it every month. Take the photo, man.

They got to do the Brian Johnson thing where they like measure their every night. But what about red light therapy? Jack and I were actually at the gym. This was maybe two months ago. And the guy from IRIS store came up to me. And said, I'd love to give you the helmet. It's just try it out.

We're not going to ask anything of you. I just want to give this to you. Let us know what you think. And so I've been trying it, but it's too early to tell. Yeah. For me, what I have noticed is almost nothing. So I have the most expensive custom version of that helmet made by a guy who literally all he does is sit at home and create these with actual. There's like a difference between the lasers that are impactful on actually achieving the outcome you want versus like,

As far as I know, there's LEDs and lasers. And what you want to get is as dense of a concentration of these certain lasers that impact the metrics of hair growth that you're trying to get out of it. And some of it is like the I restore stuff. A lot of it is margin consideration oriented because it's like they have to market the shit of this thing. And they can't afford the best most intensive device possible plus all the marketing that goes into selling it plus maintain the margin. and hair growth is such a slow and kind of like ambiguous process that it's very easy to even get placeboed into thinking it's working because you had a good hair day or whatever. But most people who use it don't sustain therapy. So there's like a cop out even where you probably didn't use it properly.

And then in addition to that, it's not guaranteed to work for everyone is what they'll maybe assert at best. But in general, I have never seen anybody in my life. and I've looked into this shit to no end, have such a significant result that it like completely averted the necessity to use actual therapies that move the needle. So it was typically an adjunct that some people claim might have helped to some extent.

But to put into perspective, like this stuff very, I spent a significant amount of time researching it and spending my own money on things that I wanted to see how well they worked. And I spent, I don't know, like $2,000 on some device that was custom made with the most dense concentration of lasers you could possibly get legally.

And I didn't notice anything. Now, did I use it long enough? Did I do it properly? You know, if I didn't, I don't think I would have seen if I continued. It was just annoying to use too. Like, that's a significant hindrance for me to add anything to my routine that is different now. It's not easy to work when I have this thing on my head, at least I found. See, I put it on before going to bed.

I'm watching some TV or something like that. I put on 12 minutes. I'm going to give it six months. Okay. Let's see what happens. a maybe like a month into it so we'll see yeah the irisor if you don't have like an actual metric to go by to it's very difficult to know that it worked or not because there is like uh hair hair analysis you could do to actually see per square centimeter like how many hairs are there

versus before and after and that's how they'll assess treatment validity and clinically and with this stuff it's like you're just going to go objectively by what your hair looks like in the mirror and the likely outcome is you might be like, I don't know, it might have helped, might not. It's like for something to take up like however many minutes of your life on a day every other day or daily basis, it's like, is that worth 1% of results? Typically, I would say no. And that's even me who cares about this stuff a lot. Sure. That's fair. What do you think the obsession is, it seems in social media with testosterone. Yeah, like I don't know what spurred it for sure. Like ultimately it is the hormone that dictates muscle growth potential relative to your.

response to it. So I could see why people would focus on it. But it's interesting that it gets the hype it does because there are other hormones that are just as impactful in their own unique ways, like estrogen or whatever. And no one really talks about those. But yeah, testosterone is, if you're low, it'll mess with your life pretty significantly. You'll have a harder time building muscle, libidos down, et cetera. Seems like I've had a lot of friends too that have all recently gotten tested. And they're like, oh my gosh, I had no idea my testosterone with this low. It explains so much. So I went and got tested and I thought, oh, man, like maybe if my motivation isn't as good and not putting on as much muscle in the gym, like, maybe I have low testosterone. Then I was also

concerned that I've never been able to grow a beard. And I was saying, oh, crap, like I for sure have low testosterone. It came back like 800 and something, like on the really high end. And so then I was like, well, you know, that doesn't explain, I can't grow a beard. Is that just genetic? Yeah, so genes will dictate often how your predisposition to certain things are, like Asians. you will typically never see with thick body hair. Do they all have low test? No. Some of them,

it's just the way their skin. I could probably find the answer if I dug in and found what is it about them that causes less proliferation of like hair follicle development or whatever. But in general, your hormones are going to enhance whatever your potential is. But like, for example, if you shot yourself with Mr. Olympia level steroid dosages, you would not necessarily look even a semblance like them. You would max out whatever you could get to with your genetics, but ultimately those are your genetics.

Just like Hormozzi shows up with a 120 test and the guy's yoked out of his tree. You know, like that guy, if he gets on testosterone, his 800 that he's manually adjusted to is like the equivalent of another guy with actual above average genetics getting on grams and grams of stuff. So the difference in genetic response is huge. And then also it's your body's regulating feedback in which it determines how much you need to fulfill functions. So just because your testes shoot out 800, first of all, it's a snapshot in time. It fluctuates wildly over the day. So you could have 800 at the time you tested it. But it could dip up and down throughout the day like 300.

It doesn't mean that it's like good or bad necessarily. And there is ways to use those numbers as guidance tools of like generally does this kind of like correspond. to why I feel a certain way. I kind of understand like what's going on. It is useful, but the number doesn't always mean everything. So like I know guys who have 500 total test that are way more jacked than guys who have a thousand. It's just like your response.

And it's not even just muscle. It's also like psychoactive activity. It's your ability to support bone strength. Like there's a ton of processes that are partially determined by testosterone. And your body, the way it produces. things, it's based on what it thinks you need based on the circumstance you've imposed on it. So for you to achieve whatever outcome your body deems as ideal, it's shooting out 800. For another guy, it might be 400.

For another guy, might be 1,200. It depends on the person. So, and that's not good or bad. It can be used as a proxy for assessing in general, does this look low? And maybe that's explaining why I feel a certain way and have symptoms. But if you're symptom free and your testosterone's like 470, for example, I wouldn't tell that guy. look, oh, you're on the lowish end. You should probably take testosterone.

I certainly would not do that. So what are symptoms? Morning wood being gone is a pretty common one. A rectal dysfunction. Lack of drive motivation, general feelings of being tired all the time, unexplainably. Emotional volatility, lack of ability to build muscle. All of a sudden, you're losing strength in the gym,

or it's harder to put on muscle or keep off fat. There's a lot of metrics that are kind of vague, Like how am I going to look in the gym? It's kind of arbitrary. Yeah. So that's kind of where the blood work helps correspond with the symptoms. So if you generally feel not great, it's worth checking. And especially one of the easiest ways to tell, in my opinion, is like erectile quality and libido and drive.

That's kind of like one of the main things I use as a tool for like, like no guy should be waking up or trying to have sex with his wife or whatever and like being incapable of doing so. They might have a vascular problem, which a lot of guys have. heart disease or on their way there. So that might be causing the erection issues too. But that's where the blood work helps. Because it's like, oh, well, my testosterone levels look normal, as do the other hormones in that subsystem. But my other markers that are like circulatory look mangled.

And then it's like, okay, well, is that the cause of my erection issues? Maybe it's not the testosterone. So blood work ultimately is useful to actually get really granular and figure out what is wrong with me and why or where could I optimize? Should I optimize and getting like a full picture? Do you feel like people are using testosterone now as almost a band-aid to improve their life in some sort of way? Yeah, I think especially in the entrepreneur side of things, these guys are like, and again, it's like, is that bad necessarily? Who am I to say that you shouldn't do that?

It's your body. You can do whatever you want. But yeah, like I think a lot of people are the sexy idea of TRT. Like, oh, you know, that's going to help enhance my mental drive, productivity, muscle growth, etc. certainly good. I'm not to say it's not. Like it actually is impactful, especially as you get 35 plus you will reliably in general.

This isn't everyone though. Your testosterone may go down upwards of like a percent a year in perpetuity. That's just you deteriorating as a human, unfortunately. And at that point, is it unwarranted to supplement back up to what you were when you were 21? I don't know. It's like for some people, they're definitely in that fringe like weird gray area

where it's like, you know, I feel pretty okay, but like, I probably don't need it, but maybe it would help. And it's kind of like, there's no like real way to define at that point should I be doing it or not. All you need to know is what goes into it though and what circumstance you're imposing on yourself and the risk to make that decision. And then you have to make an educated path forward yourself essentially because it's like, okay, do I care about now having to monitor my fertility metrics all the time? Do I want to have a kid? When do I want to have a kid? do I care about having to monitor my blood work to make sure that my injection schedule isn't resulting in too much red blood cell production. I'm going to increase my chance of a heart attack.

There are certain things that you've got to be mindful of. Do I want to be injecting something for the rest of my life? Do I want to have atrophied testicles, which can be, you can do things to make sure that doesn't happen. But there are considerations of all of a sudden your life involves many more things to look at that you didn't even think about before. What about other things that people ingest, like weed or alcohol or microdosing, even microdosing? What are your thoughts on those things? I don't know if you partake in any of those things. In general, for anything that is not enhancing of like productivity and could cloud my mind or, I don't know, some people could assert that they're like creativity enhancing, but that doesn't really help me as much, at least what I've determined.

in my work. So I don't microdose with anything. I don't need psychedelics. I don't smoke weed. I don't want something I messes with my hunger. I don't want something I messes with my sleep quality, which weed will do to some extent. To me, it's never been, those aren't drugs that I even really look at that closely because I, they don't aren't conducive to the state of mind or state of just whole body, anything that I want to be in. So will they be impactful on hormone levels, though, if that's the question, or... Just in general. I also saw, I remember, like, for some reason,

I think about this still to this day, Steve Will Do you know who that is? So he said, I only got to work out high. If I'm working out high, you know I'm going to have a good workout. That's what we said. Thank you. So he, like, feels like,

Jesus, man. Come on, dude. You've got to really break those out right now? Jack's going to have... Jack, ask him the question. You've been curious about this question. First, you've got to do this, though. Oh, you know, we're all doing this.

How often do you look in the mirror and flex? Not as much as I used to. I don't know. Five times a day or? No. You guys just had to Ramosian, so this is not even like a comparable situation. I'm curious, in my situation, I go to the gym pretty much every day. I do 20 minutes of cardio in that workout, which is usually about an hour.

I think I eat pretty healthy. I don't eat dessert most of the time. I try to stay away from sugars. I cannot seem to lose the belly fat that obscures the lower, like, you know, third of the abs. It's been like a year. No, no matter what I do, it seems like it's hopeless. And do you count calories?

No. Dude, that's like... I don't. But, like, objectively, I'm not eating that much. So, like, I kind of think, you know, if I'm on the treadmill for 20 minutes on the highest incline, I know I burned 200 calories on that thing. I'm working out.

I'm not eating that much. You know, the coffee, I barely put any creamer on the coffee. Like, I'm just thinking, I should be seeing some results here. How many grams of protein do you eat per day and how many calories do you eat? Can you answer either of those? No. I would guess within a range, but I wouldn't answer precisely. Well, there you go.

So like oftentimes what people find is at the end of the day, if I'm, let's just say my maintenance calories, which is the calories I need to maintain my body weight. Let's just say it's like $2,800, for example, with my exercise and everything I'm doing. A lot of times what people will end up is in a situation where they are very close to their goal and then wreck it with like minor little things that they're not accounting for,

not counting very basic condiments, stuff they're putting in shit, little things that all add up. And that compounded over time, similarly to investing, equates to an outcome that is not optimal. However, if you're even in like a 200 calorie deficit, which is not that hard to dollar cost average in your diet, over time, the compounded outcome is you being losing multiple pounds over the span of a year to where your body composition at the end is you, you know, having satisfactory results versus you having no results. So it's like in the micro, the little choices that you're not counting, like the fact that you've even told me you're not able to, you don't know what the calories are exactly.

but you're pretty sure you're in a range of, but you're not able to lose the weight that you want to lose or you're not able to gain the muscle you want and your hormones look good on paper. Again, obviously there's a response to the hormones can differ. But ultimately, if you have not counted meticulously, like if you are counting with extreme scrutiny, it's literally a physical impossibility to not lose weight.

Do you think there's anything, any merit to, let's say, not eating enough and your body's kind of like holding on to what it has because it's like you're eating at random times or I'm not eating for the first half of the day. Like you're either expending more than you're taking in or you're not. Like there's a very like it's, you know, one or the other. What about not drinking water? Because I realized all day today, except for a little bit this morning,

I'm not had any water just besides. Yeah, it's not great. That's what I tell him. That is like one of my main gripes. I don't think you're going to like not lose weight because of inadequate hydration though. But what I would do, that's a really good hack is get a water bottle. that is like big enough that you only need to refill it once a day or something. I did that. I did that. I went on Amazon. I got the one where it's like a gallon or it's like a gallon or it's like a gallon or a half or whatever it was. And there are different markers that say like by this time drink this much by this month. And I did it for a few days. But I was just peeing like five times, you know, before noon. It was, it got too distracting. Because like every 30 minutes I just have to get up and go pee.

Stagger it out more maybe, I don't know Like ultimately there's a certain amount of hydration you need And then if you're pissing it all out Like I would wonder You know like what are you eating? But you know what? Maybe for me I'm smaller So I don't need the full gallon of a while Yeah like there's general rules to follow

I could pull up the calculation I forget what it is That's like a good general range of like a target each day But yeah man like ultimately If you're counting meticulously like you can pretty reliably Determine even how fast you will lose So I don't know if you track the scale closely, but you should be weighing yourself once when you wake up after you take your morning piss. That's your metric that you're using.

And over the week, you will have an average of numbers that you either gained or lost. And yeah, the number will fluctuate up and down based on water retention, food that's in your stomach versus not at some points. And that's why some days you might actually gain weight even though you ate in a deficit. But over the average of the week, you will lose weight if you're in a deficit in general. I think the only way I could be screwing this up, honestly, is just all you could eat sushi. I would at the one time. I would also say that if you're not tracking your protein, similar to what you asked earlier about, if I'm eating in a deficit, doesn't matter if it's Oreos or whatever.

It will affect your body composition. So even if you lose a weight, you don't want to end up skinny fat, which is a situation a lot of people end up in where they're like inadequately muscled, but they've lost weight. But a lot of it was lean muscle that they relied on that was expending calories at risk. rest because muscle is metabolically active tissue that while you're sitting here is burning up more calories than your fat. So like being as muscle bound as possible is like pretty key too for more sustainably staying lean and it's just healthier than having fat on your body to be on it. So that protein calorie counting, but also I don't know what your training's like, but I think a lot of people overlook the importance of like tracking the weight.

So keeping a logbook, even if it seems cumbersome and annoying, if you're not like actually holding yourself to a standard of progressively overloading, you're not giving your body a reason to adapt. So you could go in the gym and actually work pretty hard. But if it's not something that is over the threshold of necessary to stimulate further growth, you will kind of be not making progress regardless of everything else look to it. Like you could lose weight and like, you know, achieve certain metrics, but you'll never optimize if you're not trying to gain muscle, progressively overloading,

tracking numbers. Yeah. And yeah, some people can intuitively do that. Some people need to write it down. And I don't think that's a problem. Like if you're in the gym and last week you did, you know, 50 pounds on the dumbbell press for 12 reps per set, like next time try, you know, 55 on set one and then do like, you know, 50, 50 or whatever. And like try to, you just have to impose constant levels of adaptation similar to what you do in anything in life. You're not going to adapt if you don't push yourself into uncomfortable state to some extent. So got it. I think Graham also needs to do legs. You never. legs. And wouldn't legs be good for weight loss? Because like you said, if you have muscles, they metabolize faster than fat. So if he had muscles on his legs, then it would be good for weight loss. Yeah, assuming that's a pretty big muscle group that says, skip. So, why are you going to call me out like that, Jack? You've got to edit that out. I'm trying to provide constructive criticism, but would working out legs, that's good for weight loss, right? Oh, 100%. Yeah. But you could also work out legs on the incline on the treadmill, right? At 15,

incline. So like the top incline. That does something though, right? That's pretty good. It's better than sitting. Yeah. For sure. So technically. Yeah, you could do. I don't like this. It didn't work out for me and I'd never use it. But it's a desk that you can move to standing and then putting like a small treadmill in or something. So whenever you're doing, I can't focus when I do this, but some people do great when you're doing like tedious meetings that you don't necessarily need to have like perfect sound quality or potentially if you're just like reading through emails or reading reports. that you could focus on that don't require like the most intensive attention.

Getting steps in while you are working could be done too. It's just like I don't know. That's how I prepare for podcasts. It's always on the treadmill and I just download videos and I watch them on. Okay. There you go. Yeah. But yeah, man, like download like My Fitness Pal or something like a free app and you just

track the calories and it'll make a difference. Yeah. What do you think about Adderall? Negative side effects. Do some people need it? Do some people not need it? Is it overprescribed? How do you know when you need it?

How consistently should you take it if you're taking it? All right. Let me try. I have a lot of questions. I've spoke about this actually a brand deal that we had with better help. But I said that so I was diagnosed with the ADHD and I got prescribed to Adderall. I took it for about two years straight every single day. That way.

I was probably 19 to 21 or maybe maybe 20 to 22. What was your dose? I initially started out. I think at 10. And then I got up to 20 XR and I was taking 20 XR every day. Yeah. So there's a few things I could say. I think it is overprescribed, first of all.

I think a lot of people think that they have ADHD when they might just have like bad sleep patterns or poor lifestyle. Because like at the end of the day, the thing that's the most impactful on your cognitive state is going to be diet, exercise, sleep, like you could take any amount of drugs it will not make up for those things as like boring as that might sound. Even when you look to literature, you can offset deficits and performance when you're sleep deprived through these drugs often like medaphanal and whatnot, but you will not really

enhance your state above baseline, at least by studies, if you are well slept and like in a good state for working. But, you know, I think it is overprescribed. I think a lot of people are using it unnecessarily. I think a lot of people think that they tie good outcomes to it because they used it and then something good happened while they were on it or they felt like they were more productive while they were on it. So then they need it and they tie that to that activity to like, I need it in order to work now. It's almost like the crutches like Hormozzi talks about.

Like you don't want to be the guy who needs Adderall to like do good business, you know, that guy's going to get decimated by a guy like Alex who can be underslept and doesn't need anything. So with that, it's like, yeah, there are negative side. It will reliably increase your heart rate, blood pressure, while in general, that could be relatively benign in the short term and like the studies they look at. In the long term, that compounded with everything else is just another risk factor that you're adding into the equation.

And with XR in particular, it's called half life. It's like how long it takes for half the drug to work its way out of your system. That half life is so long that it's almost certainly impacting your sleep quality to where it's like a vicious circle effect where you take it in order to be as cognitively dialed as you can it's still in your system when you go to bed, you get poor sleep, and then you need Adderall to fix your state because you feel like you're not sharp enough.

And then you just keep, it keeps going. So I see a lot of people end up on really high dosages and yet their state of mind at that point they got to is often worse than them at baseline, like before they even started it. So I'm not to say it doesn't have utility at all. I think in certain circumstances, like if you are sleep deprived to hell

and you like need to attenuate the deficit in performance because you're about to do something. something that is, you know, you can't not perform, like, you know, could be worthwhile. And it definitely shows in the literature that is like caffeine, medaphynal. All these things can make up for deficits and sleep in the short term. But at the end of the day, it could be at the expense of tomorrow's sleep and then in perpetuity thereafter if you continue to push it down that road. So, um, and also stimulating like synthetic release of dopamine and like stress hormones or

kind of like fight or flight hormones. neurotransmitters that are like stress inducing aren't necessarily always conducive to high quality work. Sometimes you might feel like you're revved up and you're mentally driven, but you're kind of like, some people just end up more all over the place.

In addition, at least for me, Adderall makes my libido go through the roof. So for me, I actually get almost preoccupied with sex when I take it to the point that it's like, whatever increase in performance I might get is offset entirely by me wanting to bang my girlfriend like three times. And that's not good for work. You know, it's hard to focus when that's happening.

So, like, I know some guys who literally say when they take it, they just end up jerking off all day instead of working. That's an actual outcome that happens. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. Because it's like when you're flooding your brain with, like, feel good dopaminergic activity. Yeah.

It's not necessarily always going to translate into, like, I'm going to make good YouTube videos or I'm going to write a good paper for school. Is that just discipline or is that how the mind is. wired. It depends on the person. Okay. Yeah. Because like some people take it and don't get an effect on appetite too. But a lot of people, me included, if I take it, I have no appetite. I could not eat pretty much all day. And that's another way people abuse it, especially in the fitness industry, is they take, they either smoke or they take a lot of nicotine or a lot of caffeine or adderol, it will crush their appetite in order to not eat. They take steroids to offset the loss

and lean muscle. And they will basically get, be like shredded all the time. And obviously, to any like deterioration and performance, at least they try to through like stimulants, steroids, et cetera. So, you know, that's all to say that if you have ADHD and you need it, like I'm sure there is an actual utility where it is needed because there are certain people with certain genetic predispositions neurologically that I couldn't speak to like, you were lying about your situation. Like they probably need it. But I think a lot of times it is too general of a classification that doesn't take into account like all of the variables because when you go in for an Adderall, like assessment, if you are somebody with ADHD for Ritalin or V Vance or any of

this stuff, they're not going to ask you, like, have you tried optimizing your sleep yet? Like, what's your diet? They don't know. Yeah, it'd be like, write this checklist. And it's like, do you feel, I don't know, unproductive or do you feel like you get distracted more than X times per day or whatever? And it's like, I kind of, I get it. But at the same time, it's like, I think a lot of people are getting on it that don't need it. And I think a lot of people are using it for the purposes at which, I don't know, in the short term for certain like circumstances, it could be helpful, but like it's certainly not an everyday med that you would want to do. So I think my concern with Adderall and everybody thinking they have ADHD, because if you talk

to people that are my age, I'm sure a lot of the commenters can attest to this, everybody thinks that they have ADHD. But I think that it's more just a cause of spending so much time on like TikTok, Instagram, with commercials, distractions, all of these things that give you instant gravification kind of turn you into a proxy ADHD person. But then it was actually when I started going to therapy as actually better help, they pointed out some things where before I had TikTok and all these distractions and I couldn't watch TV until a certain time of day. It's like, did you experience this when you were a kid? And it's like actual things that are indicative of it. And I relate it to when I was a kid. That for me was like the most mind blowing. But I feel like

everybody thinks nowadays that they suffer from ADHD or just have it. I shouldn't say suffer. Yeah. Like a lot of people I know now have burner phones. intentionally. So the only thing their phone does is like emergency functions. And then the phone that has social media and stuff on it for work is not around unless they're posting and then they get rid of it immediately. Like Joe Rogan, for example, he has a burner phone and has like nothing on it. That's genius. That makes a great product. It's just a like a really nice ladybug thing. Yeah, it's like an optimized phone without any apps or anything where it's just a phone and texting. That doesn't let you download the stuff you mean. Like it's just like.

It's just phone and text. I saw it. It's a commercial. It's like also in black and white. Yeah, one of the hacks too that I got from Alex is you go into your color, uh, settings in your phone. Yeah.

Turn it on gray scale and like cuts the dopamine kind of spike from social media a decent amount. Yeah, you just want to spend less time on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like far less interesting to scroll mindlessly when you have like no vivid colors blasting in your face. Yeah. So like there's stuff you can do. It's just like obviously takes discipline too to even avoid.

Like, don't go get the actual phone. Like, leave it. Isn't it better, though, just to practice discipline at the end of the day of just setting boundaries for yourself and sticking with it? What I will say, though, dude, is as much as I would love to say that everyone just needs to, like, you know, get their shit together and be as disciplined as possible, some of the most respected people, some of the people I respect the most in health, fitness, whatever, they also just like employ practices of not having it in the house to not have to deal with it.

Like their strategy is ultimately don't have it around. As much as I want to say like, do you guys just have like the insane mental fortitude and you haven't like ate shitty for so long that you just don't care about it anymore? They're like, no, I actually like don't have it in the house because if I do, I will eat it. I'm like damn, even like the most respected qualified guys. Yeah, that's kind of like me with desserts or sweets. It's the sweets that you can't stop with just one, like having M&Ms or Oreos and things like this. I really try not to keep them in the house

because it's so easy to eat one. Yeah. And then one more and one more. And one's not bad, but it's just rarely ever stops at one. And like you only have so much mental fortitude that gets chopped away at over the day that, you know,

and this is why people often snack at nighttime or do whatever and like make, you know, uh, I don't know, like, they will basically cave at the end of the day on themselves and like completely fuck up their diets for, an array of different things, but the less things you have to impose on your environment

that make you have to dig into that mental fortitude, the easier it is to just like smoothly cruise through life and not cheat on the diet, for example. So yeah, like Peter Rattia,

for example, super respected guy. He has multiple kids who do sometimes eat good snacks. And now what they do is they take the kids out for ice cream whenever they want ice cream, not have ice cream in the house.

Like he will drive them to an ice cream place and get them ice cream, but he won't have drumsticks in the freezer because he will decimate them. Self admittedly, which I think is cool because a lot of guys could act like and very much would like I'm this hard guy and like I have the insane mental fortitude

and just don't be a pussy. Don't eat junk. How could you, you know, just don't do it. Easier seven done for a lot of people. So, yeah. Like for me, I try to, I try my best to not have stuff in the house. It's like my hack, if you can call it that. Peter also brushes his teeth right after dinner.

Like he does this whole like brush routine right after he finishes eating. because if you're around for hours before you go to bed, you're more likely to skip. Yeah. So it's like trying to impose on yourself having that. You feel like a double idiot if you brushed and flossed and did everything and then you have to do it again because you wanted to eat like an almond or something. I feel like David Goggins is the only person out there with real discipline. Imagine it turned out that he actually was like he's like totally snacking. Yeah. Yeah, but that guy is like it's wild too because I've I asked Joe like I don't

know David myself, but I was like, is there any like pivotal event that kind of, like he was self-admittedly accused to be fat out of shape and something triggered in him that made him adopt this hyper-disciplined like approach to life. And, you know, perhaps it's in his book and I should just read the book. But it's like, it's interesting how some people are, you know, not the representation of health and discipline. And they even pivot thereafter despite having decades of like bad habits. So obviously it's something you can change. But I certainly wouldn't use David as like, the reference of like, she does this. That's a benchmark.

So I should be able to keep junk in my house, do this, do that, and just avoid everything bad. I don't think that's the reasonable goal for most people. How do you think you can increase discipline for people? Because I know so many people and I think discipline is just plummeting. Yeah. I think it's like, I mean, it's like bad how quickly it's just falling off of a cliff. How can people hopefully grab onto the discipline like bring it back up there? I do think that maybe as redundant as it is, imposing less situations where you have to dig into

situations that require your mental bandwidth allocation to be disciplined equals a greater amount of like a resource to allocate to actual things that are worthwhile rather than like literally thinking in my mind how to avoid a drumstick in my freezer, like just don't have it in the house. Like that's something that I think is reasonable. I think also setting like micro achievable goals that you can. get that feedback from is worthwhile. So like if you don't go to the gym at all, rather than expecting yourself to be in this perfect, you know, routine immediately, just like, let's just show up, you know, show up and like get on a treadmill or something.

Like just getting to the gym is like a, you know, a task in itself for some people, as absurd as that sounds. And just setting like progressively overloading your goals as dumb and workout bro as that sounds, it's totally applicable, you know, even when you're setting your goals for the year, if I want to hit this many subscribers or I want to get this or I want to do that. Like a lot of things are more daunting in the macro, but when you get granular on the micro,

like they're far more achievable and a lot more easy to wrap your head around how you could actually get to the macro goal when you look at, look at all these micro increments that if I just hit these at the end of the day have compounded to this like finality and conclusive outcome that is huge. So like, you know, for me,

I even try to get granular about like how much, you know, how many, if I was posting regularly, how many views do I think is reasonable to get like per day or like what's a subscriber per day metric that is I think good to achieve good growth of the brand or revenue per day that is going to be sustainable to achieve this end outcome at the end of the year that I think is a good year. I don't look at I don't really look as much at the end year number as I do on the micro. What do I need to do like this week to actually equate to the habits that would result in that final outcome? And I I think it's a lot easier for people to actually get out of a funk or discipline themselves to start, because otherwise it's too daunting to even do anything seemingly. So those are two things that I think are pretty actionable. But also it's like the lifestyle things we talked about. Like if you're low on sleep, like good luck, you know, it's going to be far more difficult to make rational decisions.

You're going to be more emotionally volatile. It'll be you almost can't even trust your mindset when you are in a suboptimal state of health. So I think just getting as healthy as you can and dialing in things that are really low-hanging fruit. Like everyone's bed is in their house. Everyone is capable of getting in it and getting eight hours. It's just like most don't. So, you know, that kind of stuff makes a big difference too on your decision-making process. And am I going to sit here and play video games because I'm kind of like feeling down.

I kind of want that dopamine hit of whatever versus am I going to go work. So hopefully that's helpful for some people. It sounds like the main thing here is sleep. Like that's the thing that you consistently bring up over. and over and over again. And also in my own life, I've tried so many different hacks to try to improve

like the way that I feel when I wake up in the morning or just like maybe my overall mental well-being. And the three things I've noticed actually have an impact because usually I don't see any results with all the things I've tried

is sleep, diet, and resistance training. There you go. Those are the three things. And sleep is so crucial. It is, but sometimes you could sleep too much and I feel just as bad sleeping too much as I do under sleeping. That's also probably a bit psychological too

because you know you just wasted part of your valuable day. So I'm not necessarily saying you should oversleep by any means. You should go by like metrics of like you can tell when you've had a good sleep. And sometimes it's not always reflected by the number. So like if you get up at seven hours and you feel great, it doesn't necessarily mean you have to force yourself to stay in bed for eight. And if you feel underslept at eight, maybe you need nine that day. I don't think people need to get too hyper-specific about this.

But it's worth like whatever you need getting it. I think is like at least worth seeing on a regular basis. What's my month look like with actually trying to hit at least eight hours or whatever makes me feel good and not making myself get out of bed when the alarm goes off that I set for five and a half hours because I thought I'd get more work done. Because at least pretty reliably, you will find that your quality of work is so much worse proportionally that it does not make up for the hours that you lost by getting up early. So or not getting up early.

Yeah. Do you ever meditate or journal? No. And I think that some of that stuff is often over hyped as to its impact. But I also think that it's like free. And I think a lot of people do benefit from it. So I think if you're somebody who finds benefit and needs to like reflect on things or needs to calm down and that helps you calm down by all means. I don't think it's not helpful. I just don't feel it's, I don't like I wouldn't want to do it. And I don't do it. Some people notice big benefit from it though, you know. I notice a good benefit from journaling. Because a lot of the times, if I'm struggling through some sort of an issue, I start just writing. And it just kind of tracks what my mind is thinking at a given moment. And then it always starts out really negative. But by the end of the journaling session, it turns out very positive.

And I don't know what it is, but like I feel like you automatically want to spin things in a positive way. And it is only how you let it affect yourself. So if you let it affect yourself in a positive way, it becomes. is a positive thing. So that's where I found the benefit in journaling. It's just that. Yeah, I think if anything is actually impacting your ability to perceive situations and like emotionally respond in a more favorable way. And it only took you like sitting down and writing about it for 15 minutes or something. Like do that do that. For sure. Some people like think about stuff in the shower. Some people think about it while they're walking. Some

people talk to their significant other. Like people have their own ways of working through stuff. And just because somebody doesn't do it who you respect, it doesn't mean it's not valuable. So I'm sure there's lots of people that do and don't just. journal who are like successful or whatever. Let's switch. Let's talk about prime hydration. Logan Paul called you a virgin. So you responded with a three hour video.

What situations do you think that prime would be good? Yeah, I think that if you are somebody who wants something that is artificially sweetened and tastes very good to enhance your fluid intake because some people just don't drink enough water, at that point. I would say the whatever potential negatives come from artificial sweeteners, which are very speculative and not really founded by literature in humans, if you're literally not going to drink water to a degree that it's impactful on your health in a negative way, but you will drink that much fluid with the stuff that's like super sweet, whatever, especially if you have a kid and he's just

refusing to hydrate properly, then yeah, that could be helpful. Because a lot of those, like, it's kind of wild to me because despite them getting older, like Logan and KSI are like almost 30 or 30. Their band base seems to stay around the same demographic almost. Like it just- Matthew McConaughey. You get older, but they stay the same age.

Yeah, literally. I do think that some of those children may, like I've heard of insane examples where kids will literally, if they don't want to eat what their parents have for them that they deemed as healthy, they'll just like not eat or they'll do things that are, I don't know, like they will avoid drinking enough water.

because they just don't like to taste the water. It doesn't taste good. So if the only way it's going to get them to hydrate is by drinking this stuff, like could be worthwhile. Other than that, though, it's like, or if they're potassium deficient, which is some people are in their diets,

could be helpful too. A lot of people have sodium-rich diets that aren't exercising regularly and aren't sweating a lot and don't need more sodium in a hydration drink. So those individuals, if you're going to like pound an electrolyte formula, which you probably didn't even need to begin with,

like that's where a potassium rich one might be a better choice than one with a bunch of sodium in it because you're already like fully topped out on sodium you don't need anymore but a lot of people are not hitting their potassium needs so potassium and magnesium are the two minerals that most people if you're going to like concentrate on which ones most people are not getting enough of it's those too however when you're marketing it to like adult athletes who are sweating and like cutting weight and doing intensive competition as like the right rehydration formula of professional sports and like football clubs and UFC fighters,

that's where it's like such a misalignment of utility. Because it's like... I guess I see it more so as like a sweet water replacement. Like when I see Prime, I don't think of, you know, endurance athletes. I'm just thinking, oh, there's someone who's going to pick this up because they like the taste of it. I think that's what they love people to think, though,

is that they get the upside of like aligning with top athletes in sports that they want to be respected in, but also get the sales velocity from like the actual children who buy the stuff. So it's like this weird paradoxical marketing misalignment where it's like all of their sponsored people are like adults at performing at a high level in sport that would never drink this. But then all of their customers are like little kids. It's really weird.

Do you know the breakdown of their customers if it's actually kids or if it's more adults that are buying this? I'd be very curious to see it. Yeah, I think the demo is mostly. kids and that's with data that I've been given from like retail stores to being somebody who like sell retail stuff and how do they differentiate between an adult buying it for their child versus someone under the age of 18 buying it that's a good question um as far as like actually getting hyper specific on how they would calculate these things or like gender or anything in that

nature i don't know how they do it i just know that like when i see their audience as well given the anecdotes have been given in the retail space, given the audiences I see show up to their events when they do the events for prime, given like all the circumstantial evidence that is provided, it looks to be dominated by young children. All of the anecdotes about, you know, like super thrilled customers. Even the thing he used as proof that his product's great when he called me a virgin, it's like some little kid. So it's like there's not a lot of people emailing in like I'm, you know, an athlete in sport. And this was the thing that game was game changing for me. Not that it needs to be, but it's just like, I think proportionally more kids are buying it. I think adults drink it

because it tastes good too. Why don't you create something that would be a competition to that? I have electrolyte formula, but it's not like geared to their demographic. So yeah. And I just am like not that pushy about it. So I actually talked about it at the end of the three hour video, but it was very brief. Got it. Yeah. But in general, again, it's like two use cases. Are you trying to have something that tastes good and is widely adopted and people slam all day? That might make sense if you're trying to just like drink something that tastes good. It's like, yeah, like you said, it could be like a meo or like a water replacement sort of thing. That said, it has potassium.

So you could actually give a misleading representation of it like this has electrolytes because it does. It's not inaccurate to say. It's just not the thing that you're primarily sweating out when you're exercising. And yet you're marketing it through guys who are literally weight cutting for the UFC. Yeah. It could be a good soda alternative or if you're going to have like a phanta. Maybe. I think it's low calorie as well.

It is. I think it's like 10 or 20 something calories, 15 calories. The way they market, like if they represented it in a fair way, I would be far less skirtingness of it. It's like the problem I have to is like I've made videos reviewing company stuff. And like that's part of the content I made back in the day was like supplement reviews and stuff like that. And like there's a way to do it that is like a more fair representation of what you're seeing versus when him and KSI will compare. their product to others, even the other day,

they posted their energy drink beside a Red Bull, and they were like, Prime Energy has 10 calories, Red Bull has 160, you would need to drink a prime energy this big to get the same amount of calories as a Red Bull in case, it's like, what? And it's this giant drink. And it's like they completely intentionally overlook saying that Red Bull sugar free is,

I think less calories per can than theirs, as the exact same makeup otherwise, other than being artificially sweetened and zero calorie. Like to basically assert that this is their representation of product, they have a variant that is what would be competitive with yours. So why are you completely overlooking it entirely? Are there any illegalities of putting your product next to somebody else's and saying,

ours is better without giving a full fair comparison in that case? I'm sure if they haven't been sued yet, I would assume no, because they've been doing it a lot. It just seems like even Mr. Beast is very careful about how he positions Mr. Beast bars against Hershey's. Yeah, like for you never said, he never, rarely ever says anything directly. It's usually, which one do you like better?

Mr. Beast wins over hers, you know. Yeah. Yeah, that's the thing that's really odd, man, because it's like Gatorade. They have how many different types of Gatorade, like six or seven different variants, and they all have different use cases. One of them is Gatorade Zero, which has almost no calories and just tastes good and is like a reasonable electrolyte formula. And yet, Logan will pick the one that has a ton of sugar in it and is meant to be used

in like very specific use cases in sport and then compare it to prime, which is meant to be drank like in children who aren't even exercising essentially. You're like, ours has 10 calories. Theirs has, look at this much sugar. This is how much sugar it is. You like pour it out in front of you.

It's like, dude. Like, I don't know. It just screams on ethical marketing to me. It's just not, there's ways you could highlight the utility of your product that don't involve like misrepresenting your competition so blatantly. And it's like the people that buy into it,

it must be kids because it's like you're literally marketing to the lowest common denominator of like understanding of what you're putting in front of their face. It's like more sugar, bad, less sugar. In first, I think most people are like that. Not just kids. Maybe, but it's like adults would see sugar and no sugar and just automatically. But an adult going to the grocery store, would they, I guess maybe they wouldn't look for like they wouldn't even know the Gatorade product exists because they heard Logan Paul say that Gatorade equals bad at which point it's questionable as to like, are you basically just misrepresenting this other brand's offering? Because you're making it seem like their entire catalog revolves around this sugar-dense,

like, unhealthy thing. And yours is so dramatically better and completely like steering people away from the products that they would actually buy from that company should they know the truth. Yeah. I know for me, it's so silly. But when I was a kid and maybe I was like 12, 11 years old, I went to the doctor's office and I had this thing on the wall that showed like a chocolate bar,

a can of soda, like all these things. And above it was the amount of sugar it had in it, in sugar cubes. And when I saw the can of soda and the amount of sugar that was in it, in cube form, that turned me off from drinking soda as a kid. So I could see if you have this drink here

and you pour out the sugar. It's alarming to see how much sugar is put in foods and drinks today. That's true. I think the thing they lean on though heavily is the fact that these companies, companies are so much bigger. It's similar to like a YouTuber doing a take down video on you and you're trying to decide should I respond to this or should I not. Is it worth like giving them a platform? Is what they said even valid? You know, you consider all these things. I'm sure Gatorade and these other companies have considered like this is complete nonsense. Like do we do anything? I guess we can't. Because it's like this company. If they respond, then they're bringing a lot of attention. They can't respond. Exactly. So like I think they know this and they lean into it because when you don't hear any pushback. a lot of people will blindly believe it.

Yeah. And then who's actually watching the adults on YouTube who are dismantling the videos and whatnot, probably not little kids. Like my demographic, I can almost guarantee is older than Logans. Yeah. I don't know.

It's wild, dude. And yeah, it's like, I've never seen somebody so committed to making as much money as possible, even to the detriment of long-term brand credibility. Like the guy often is synonymous with scammer now and he doesn't even seem to care. I've seen some wild stuff that he's put out there to monetize off his audience,

even to the extent of putting like, I wasn't even aware he did another like NFT thing behind a paywall for his members of his membership site. So imagine. Was that 99 original? No, he's done multiple apparently. So he's done like 99 originals, crypto zoo. And then there was like a bunch of others.

I wasn't even aware he did. But there was this one. And I think it's pretty egregious that you would do this to your most diehard people. Is you paid for a paywall. wall to get exclusive content because you're such a fan of this guy, and he doesn't even really post there apparently. And then once you're behind there,

you get pitched an NFT that you only have access to because you're like one of the most committed fans and you get rug pulled on that. Like, holy shit, dude. Talk about slapping your audience in the face. What's interesting is I remember when he was doing the Pokemon box breaks. The second one he did,

he included an NFT or he sold NFTs of the hollows he pulled. And at the peak, those NFTs, they all sold out. the first day, but a lot of them were selling for over $40,000. $40,000 for an NFT of him pulling a Charzard card. I'm so curious what those would sell for today. Nothing. I've seen the values.

Like nothing. They've actually crashed to nothingness. There's been assessments of this that check the before and afters and what happened to those projects and they're all worthless. And he will never talk about it. Think doink coin or whatever, all that shit. I always assume that was a joke though. I never. You did, but a lot of other people.

I don't think anybody is taking that serious. I could be wrong, but like, I don't think anyone look at dink and... Well, people know that it's a nonsense thing that's not meant to be a real business in general, but it's the fact that he's like, I'm putting my money into this and it's stupid, but it'll probably gain value because shit coins are blowing up right now, and I think it's, like, has good potential. Like, you've endorsed it to your audience. There's no way you thought all those crypto projects were going to go to the moon and, like,

it's all going to be fine and then not be apologetic afterwards for how they've, all crashed into nothingness, sweep it all under the rug, try and, like, threaten coffee zilla to sue him. And then when he actually doesn't back down, all of a sudden, now you're like, you care about everyone. Yeah, man, like, it's wild because it's like, it almost reinforces just doing whatever you need to get ahead. Like, it's wild.

Like, it's not a good story necessarily for takeaways of motivation, in my opinion. Like, every time you can monetize off your audience, milk the shit of them. It's like what he's done. And it's worked quite well. at least from a monetary perspective. So I don't know. I feel like at some point it's like there's going to be such an overwhelmingly negative perspective

of what he's doing that maybe it muddles out the rest, but he's also done an exceptional job of being viral in moments that also mute out those situations seemingly. They replace the audience with kids who don't know about it and just keep recycling it. There's going to be some random YouTube channel with like 30,000 subscribers that makes like a six-hour expose video on. I think that's the one I just saw one the other day.

and literally made a chronological timeline of every scam he's done. Oh, actually. Yeah, I don't know how viral is right now. Oh, I think I've seen that. I think it was the, I think it was a channel King of Nothing. Yeah. Oh, King of Nothing, right? I've seen him before.

I think that was the, it was a long video. Yeah, he had a lot of stuff that I didn't even know existed. Yeah. And it was like, oh man, this guy has done like, like, I don't know. I'd probably be misquoting, but it was like five plus rug pulls or something. Or like crypto. hype situations that you knew were nonsense. Like things that weren't valid businesses that you had no idea what was going on.

All you cared about was hyping it up so you could make something off of it, hopefully. So yeah, dude, it's, uh, it's like, I don't know, like there's examples of people doing it the right way and there's people doing it the wrong way. And I think he's an example of the wrong way personally. Like I don't think it's, you know, admirable that he has this. Oh, a billion dollar prime. Like, yeah, man.

Congrats. But like at the expense of what? Do you think he's on gear? Maybe. Certainly possible. I think that his great genetics for sure. So I think it's plausible. He could be natural.

But, you know, the drug testing parameters of the last fight were pretty suspect. I think it's like testing at competition only, for example. And yeah, like with the type of training he's doing, boxing, and he's still, like, gaining size seemingly. I don't know. Like, it's a toss-up for sure. I would say I could go either way. I wouldn't definitively say, I know for sure. How are peptides different?

Basically, steroids bind to a certain receptor called the androgen receptor. It was the thing I talked about where how you respond to hormones could dictate, you know, how much you respond regardless of how much is present. With peptides, they are typically more rehabilitation oriented and more like pro-recovery. They do a lot of different things because you could find examples of peptides that literally, I don't know if you guys have heard of melanotan too before. Dude, if you pull this up, you will find some wild people are about to be like mind blown

if you never heard of it. You can literally inject this stuff, stimulate the production of melanin in somebody who literally cannot tan at all, even an albino person, and make them black if you want to. What? Yeah.

So there's some people who change the race manually with this peptide. So you could do it for like six months. Yeah. And then change back. Yeah. There was some woman I made a video on who not only made,

She stayed herself black, but then went on like national news and was asserting she is like actually African American and head like was always like that or something. She was actually asserting her like that was her background too. And yeah, a lot of people use it to stay tan year round and it's pretty good at it. Is there any negative side effects? I'm really pale. That's, I would love to get a little bit more color on my skin. It was never FDA approved. So you have to buy it on the underground essentially.

and it will, one of the negatives is it like flushes your skin for like an hour. So you get like a really red face, which is kind of unsightly. It also raise your heart like a little bit seemingly. But you could also get moles and freckles in areas that maybe you didn't want them. Permanently? It seems to kind of go away when your tan goes away too. One of the side effects, interestingly enough, is spontaneous erections. So people get it.

They actually, the developers of the drug realize it was doing that. And they like pulled out the. like, I don't know, aphrodisiac slash like sexual enhancing characteristics of it and made a female libido drug out of it. And it's actually FDA approved for female, like lack of female libido. Oh, wow.

Yeah. So that this drug exists. It's called a Vylici, I believe. And you can get it prescribed as a woman for low drive. And yeah, it doesn't tan you as much, but it just makes you or near. Some other ones.

There's a lot of other ones that all do varying things, like ones that enhance. like tissue repair, for example, and or like pro, like blood vessel formation could help get like actual circulation to areas and injuries that otherwise would have been like pretty difficult to get blood flow to. There's a array of different ones. It's amazing they have the technology to do something like that. Yeah. There's like, it seems like magic. There's this one called GHRP6 and it stimulates the receptor that makes you hungry.

so you could use it and literally like crush an eating competition. What about physical limitations like your stomach size? Even if you're not hungry, it will make you hungry. Like it override signals. I do that before all you can eat sushi. That's what we got to do. That seems horrible. I don't wait like $300 such a sushi.

What situations would you want to just be perpetually hungry? Well, that's the thing. It's not perpetual. You can like, it's in and out of your system relatively quickly. So you could. I know, but to overeat like that, you would think that your stomach might eventually burst or like there's not. risks to that. At some point, like, you get full, but it enhances your capacity to like override

satiation mechanism essentially. So awful to me with bodybuilders though, a lot of times at the bottleneck of gaining size is food intake. So for them, it's worthwhile potentially. For you, not so much. For you, maybe. I don't know. Sounds like it might be. But like back in the day too, people were doing, I almost did this. I'm glad I didn't, but 10,000 calorie eating challenges were really big in fitness YouTube back in the day. I was like, everyone's getting. This is before I had a big channel. I was like, everyone's getting viral videos off 10,000 calorie of 10,000 calorie in one meal challenge, like in less than an hour.

And I was going to do it. I decided not to, but that was what I would have used if I wanted to do it. So this sounds stupid, okay? 3,500 calories is one pound of fat. If you eat 10,000 calories, does that, and your baseline, let's just say, is 2,000. Does that automatically mean that you're going to gain almost three pounds? or sorry, two pounds? I would be...

Like, is there a limit to how many calories your body could absorb in a day? Probably. I would think there'd be some level of like malabsorption happening. I don't know to what degree. That's a really interesting question. Maybe that's a hack. It's like you have to eat 15,000 calories in a day

and this last 10,000 calories just don't count. And then like, don't eat the rest of the week. Yeah, basically. That's, yeah, that's wildly enough. And this shows how bad the eating habits are in the fitness industry is One of the ways that I used to eat and a lot of people still eat is you have perfect discipline from Monday to Saturday or whatever days you decide. And then on the seventh day, you just go ham and you just eat whatever.

If you're actually really lean and dieted down, it's pretty easy to crush like 10,000 calories of just anything. And after that, you've kind of like made yourself sick to the point that food isn't that appealing in the next three days or so. You kind of get back to what you were at and then you start making progress again. and it's kind of this cycle of, you know, binging and then depriving yourself and binging it, and it's not sustainable. So that's where I wouldn't recommend that.

Gosh. What about the Liver King diet? The one that he doesn't even follow himself because he has a different one. How do you get access to all this information? He tried to hire me as a coach before he was online. So, like, he sent me some, like, pretty, like, damning information from his official company email. and I didn't realize it at the time. And then he like went on to basically abuse hormones and compounds to build up bigger than life like social media presence.

And obviously he got big very fast. And then previous to that, anyone who knew what he was actually doing and lying about had that information. And he just didn't think it was risky enough. Why did you decide to make that information public? And what was going through your mind at the time? Yeah. So with him, it was kind of interesting because I didn't even know I had it for a while. I was just kind of like, I made speculative videos on it because he's basically telling people

who's natural. I'm like, there's no fucking way this guy's natural. So I'd made a couple of videos just objectively looking at what I could tell and giving my opinion. And I just saw him going on a rampage of lying on podcast to people's faces. And I even got to the extent where he was telling people that you're like subprimal, if you're on hormones, like you're like a lesser man essentially, which there's a of people that literally need them to thrive or function. He was saying things like you're pathetic

if you think I am that just shows how bad of work ethic you have. How could you not think this is achievable? If I actually took steroids, then you'd see what it would look like. Maybe I will just to shut you idiots up. Just like wild stuff. I was like, dude. And then the monetary upside was kind of hard to ignore that he was asserting that what he was doing was so conducive to his progress and whatnot that it's not like he attributed that you could get his physique to his diet or his supplements, but it was like, that was the takeaway a lot of people were getting is like, you're ancestrally consistent. He was like telling Hassan on a H3 podcast, like you shouldn't take TRT, just do the ancestral disciplines and then you will be able to double your testosterone levels

like I have. You know, like a lot of his message is noble in practice and overall the takeaways are good, but it was getting to the extent where he was actually very clearly biased in order to promote it in such a way that he was doing everything ancestrally consistent and it equals the outcome he has when in reality he was lying and taking hormones to receive it. And, you know, like there's a myriad of ethical complications that come into your own judgment if it's like fair or not. So for me, it was kind of like sick of seeing this guy just like going on a rampage on social media. I was like, you know what?

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And enjoy. Via rail. Love the way. Would there be a situation where you would reach out to him first and say, hey, I had this information? Well, the thing is, he knew I had it. Because he sent it to me. Maybe he forgot.

I mean. dude, he knew. I guess he just like... But wouldn't you go to him first and say, hey, I got this information. You know I have it. I want to make this video because you're making these claims. I'll give you the opportunity to say it first from your channel. And if you don't, then I will make my video. But I'd like you to have the opportunity.

Did that ever cross your mind or was that ever an option? Yeah, like I suppose that that is something I could have been done. But I felt like he had more than enough opportunity. He'd been presented with the question of a zillion times. and basically spit in people's faces when he asked it. And there was a point when he was also like not responding to me on social media. And I was like, I don't really care to engage with the guy necessarily. So, you know, I just didn't see it worthwhile at the time too.

So the guy's going to continue to lie. Like to my friend's faces too. Like he'd go on podcasts with people I'm, I respect and I'm friends with and just be like, you know, dodgy, lying, saying complete misrepresentations of what he's doing. and I don't know especially like the you know saying you don't need blood work too and like you're subprimal if you think you you know I should have blood work and cholesterol levels or like he was saying a lot of nonsense and it was like over the top to where I don't know like I felt like he had two years to come clean or whatever it was and he just wasn't going to do it and he

was getting leaning harder and harder into it and I was like yeah man like you know I have this too like you sent it to me so obviously you either think I'm like too scared to come out with it or like, don't care if I do or, or I don't think I'm going to, I don't know. Did you get any backlash from that video? Yeah, a little bit. And what was the criticism you got on that? Well, similar to the, you know, ethical conundrum you just presented. It's like, how do you like, you know, make sense of making that versus opposite other options.

And, yeah, it's certainly an interesting question. But, yeah, it was, I think ultimately people were just happy to see the truth come out and then him finally admit it. and then see how he responded to it and the way he would say. Because all of a sudden, after that point, he's like, I think that hormones have a viable, you know, are viable for people who need them. And I'm going to, you know, try and go natural. And then he ends up going back on hormones again.

He's self-admittedly on hormones again now. So what happened when he went off of steroids? Who knows if he did, dude? He said he did. I didn't see any blood work proof. I don't know. Maybe he tried. And I'm sure that the biggest thing he probably had a hurdle

getting over is the fact that even if you, you come off, if you've like subjected yourself to this level of exposure for however long, there's no guarantee you're going to like get back to high functioning status naturally, necessarily, even if everything's perfect. So it almost begs the question like how impactful is this ancestral living that is supposedly so optimal for everything and correcting hormones when you yourself with every like avenue and means and resources of an ancestrally consistent person can't even restore your hormones after coming off. like it doesn't look too good.

So I'm sure there was like a lot of different, you know, thoughts that went into like how we should handle it. What should he do? What should I say I'm doing? Should I say I'm coming off when I'm probably planning on just staying on? Like, what am I going to do about it? So I don't know. And like ultimately he's the only one who knows for sure what he did.

But to me and objectively, everyone else kind of watching doesn't look like he really changed a whole lot in recent. I'm sure he like isn't abusing the hell out of some of the growth hormone dosages he was now. but some of it is, uh, yeah, man, I don't know. Like, he was definitely lying to everyone and now the truth's out. He's, uh, handled as well as he could, I guess. Yeah.

Is there anything left that you haven't said to him that you want to say? Not really, dude. No? No. He, like, asked me to be in some documentary thing. I don't really see the point personally. Like, I think we've kind of, like, beat this horse to death. And people know, and, like, you've said that, I don't, I don't necessarily think he's coming from the best place of, you know, I don't trust him necessarily.

So I'm very hesitant to like you know you have the best intentions with whatever you're doing at this point forward So I should just associate with you like certainly not my thought process. So Yeah, it's it's interesting to see what he's doing though because again like I think his overall message is noble You know some of the stuff that he's seen with his kids getting better from autoimmune issues like that's real stuff That is worth taking note of and it sucks that it overshadows it may be overshadowed by this thing But like it was kind of his brought it upon himself to kind of like commingle the two. You could have easily been like, yeah, like I'm on hormone replacement therapy.

But like these are the lifestyle practices I utilize and I think even people who are natural should utilize to optimize health. And here's why. And like Paul Saladino, he is huge now. And he does not, you know, have to lean into some fake natural physique and like lie to his fans or anything about it. So I'm not saying he's like perfect either because it definitely makes some pretty like, you know, aggressive claims sometimes about like vegetables and whatnot. But like, he's certainly not lying about me on like $20,000 a year to his audience and then selling the products. So yeah. Yeah.

It's really interesting because I look at Paul Saladino's diet and it seems so counterintuitive and so anti-food pyramid, which I know is kind of a people will say it's a scam. Everything's a scam. Everything's a scam. The food pyramid's a scam. But I tried Paul Saladino's diet. Which diet though? Because he's changed his stance. I would say it's the more recent one. So I went out. I bought raw honey. I bought non-pasture. like milk, cheese. I just did 80, 20 ground beef. I bought beef tallow.

Oh, sorry, grass fed, grass finished ground beef, which is key. I bought beef tallow. I did the whole nine yards. And I would eat like two meat patties with the non-pastorized dairy and put a glob of raw honey on it.

Yeah. And maybe an organic banana on the side. Sure, and it was really good. But as I'm eating it, I'm thinking to myself, there's no way that this is healthy. You know what I mean?

Like he says he's an MD, right? And he says it's super healthy. And I had that meal day after day after day after day. And there's just no way. If I'm looking at that plate, that it's healthy. Yeah, dude. It's interesting for sure because I think, again, similar to what we talked about,

about how if you're in a deficit, doesn't matter what you're eating. Like you can lose weight, eating garbage. Not that I'm saying, what he's doing is garbage, but you can lose weight, essentially eating anything. It's just how you lose the weight and what it results in from like a signaling aspect, a muscle retention standpoint, cognitive health. Like some of these things will vary, but you will reliably lose weight,

regardless of what you're eating. If it's McDonald's, if it's burgers, whatever on it, etc. So with him, a lot of the upside, I would say, is ultimately that his energy balance is good regardless. So as long as you're in like a sustainable model where you're not overeating, like that's the majority of your benefit from the low hanging fruit stuff. So like he is surfing daily. He's exercising regularly. He's metabolically fit and he's doing things to sustain it. It's not just like he's eating what would be considered perfectly. He's also not overeating it. So to actually say, oh, is this, you know, the sugar and stuff good with the meat? Like it very much depends on what you're doing activity wise. Like if you're just sedentary, I'm sure he would not be

telling you like slam a bunch of you know honey and sugar and this and that too like it very much depends on what you are exposing yourself to um but again i'm not like a nutrition expert i don't claim to be i certainly don't like that field either there's a lot of like dogma and like controversial takes in it and um i think that he does uh potentially downplay the importance of certain lipid parameters that are like pretty reliably shown to be atherosclerosis concerning for sure. And his assertion is that if you're metabolically healthy, it doesn't really matter what your LDL cholesterol is or these numbers. And it's like resulted in endless debates between him and like Lane Norton who responds to his stuff and just like dunks on him

constantly. And then people who are on his side and who say how great they feel too, which is a real thing. That's not to say that's not real. But to say what's optimal versus not like depends on your genetics, depends on your blood work, depends on how you respond to the food itself. And yeah, like a lot of the stuff he eats, it's on the basis of it being nutrient rich and bioavailable and unlikely to cause autoimmune issues. And like it's hard to argue with that logic when you just stop there. When you get above and beyond that, like, okay, is this much sugar good for what I'm doing? Is it sustainable? How difficult is it to even procure these things?

Because a lot of people are like, I'm sure you had like a pretty arduous process. It's very hard to find beef tallow. And relatively expensive. It was very expensive. Yeah. How much was it? I it probably I mean 80-20 grass-fed grass-finished ground beef is about twice as expensive per pound as just like any other type and and everything else is basically two to two and a half times more expensive and I had to go to sprouts you know you can't go to like Albertsons or Ralphs or something like no I absolutely don't want the takeaway from that to be don't eat good because it's expensive because like I think if anything you should spend good money on I agree I agree I agree however I think a lot of what he says has validity,

but I also think he, uh, leans a little bit to in the scare, like fearmonger side of diet. And he will extrapolate out from like rodent literature stuff that might not actually be super replicable to humans and then say, see like, you know, soy fucked up this rat.

So don't like ever eat this or whatever. Like, and then he kind of like invites scrutiny by trying to like seemingly have like a bit of a, I don't know, myopic view around trying to like, I don't know. it's kind of like it's not it's not liver king at all but like he's definitely lean into the viral angle a bit which i don't think he needs to he's a super intelligent guy who people respect his opinion

he doesn't need to do that kind of stuff so at the end of the day his diet model works for him works great seemingly he gets regular uh imaging to make sure he doesn't have atherosclerosis accumulating at least that's what he says and um you know i don't know like if you're hitting your micronutrients and your macros you're not gaining weight and you like it like i guess part of the hangup is do you even like this food? Because a lot of people are just not going to like that stuff. I tried his like raw milk like honey concoction. You tried that?

Yeah, you made one for me. I fucking hated it. I actually didn't mind it. Raw milk and non-pasteurized honey. But again, that's just like, so is it realistic for me to eat? Like, that's a lot of calories to the raw milk, presumably. Yeah. Plus the honey, which is like a sugar bomb essentially.

Yeah. Is the most satiating thing I could be allocating like 400 or whatever calories to this like drink. probably not dude so I'm not gonna argue with the validity of its micronutrient density and the quality of the food but like perhaps it's not the most conducive thing to like my ideal diet so I don't think everyone should copy what he does I don't think he would assert in like a long form podcast either that everyone should copy him to the money either he said that before he says everybody responds differently yeah and he thinks as a general rule of thumb like broadstrokes that this is a pretty good diet for yeah I think in general if you choose from the food groups that he has asserted as good quality stuff like it's hard to go wrong pending that you're also doing other things right because a lot of people don't exercise. They don't sleep well and they don't do these other things.

So the real argument comes into the propensity to atherosclerosis and if you can avoid it entirely just by being metabolically fit, which is super questionable. But he will tell you pretty aggressively. If you are metabolically healthy, like don't worry about it. If you follow this diet, exercise, et cetera, that's where it gets really finicky because there are people that seemingly end up with clogged arteries regardless of how metabolically fit they are. And then he'll assert that that date is nonsense. And then it's like this endless argument where you're not able to like prove one way or the other. But what I've seen,

I think you should be a bit cautious with. I think there's absolutely a balanced take where don't just blindly assume that you're going to be covered because you're eating a carnivore diet. We should have Paul on the podcast. I'd be down. It would make a really interesting. We could, we could even go to him. He's in Puerto Rico, right? Or something like that. Yeah. He was just, I don't know when he's going to be traveling next because I know he was just in Arizona and then he was just in Austin to meet up with me and then now he's in Puerto Rico

or Costa Rica. Costa Rica is that? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but I'm sure he'd be down, man. Could be a fun trip. I would love to go to Costa Rica. That would be amazing. Yeah. I feel like most people's diets are just so bad. So if you take his diet... Anything is an improvement. Yeah, it's just going to be better

than eating Doritos chips. I think a lot of the thing... Because again, I'm not, again, a nutrition content creator necessarily. So I don't have like extreme bias towards one way or the other. I just want to eat what makes me feel the best, perform the best, and the least chance of dying. Like that is essentially what I care about. So whatever gets me there, like I don't really care what it is as long as I like it to and sustainable. And I'm not going to overeat and get fat on it.

With them though, they get like really granular about like proving each other are insane almost to the point that it's like it's a, it's hard to really like realize that a lot of the intelligent people on both sides of the camps are saying a lot of the same things and they act like it's totally different like just because paul said don't eat oatmeal it doesn't mean this other guy saying don't eat red meat or something like a lot of people assert that it's like vegetarian versus carnivore but oftentimes the people that paul is actually arguing with at least from like the educated side of this equation or people who are like actually eating red meat regularly and have high quality you know steak on a daily basis and are doing the right lifestyle practices and this and that. There's just the one disagreement that I see that has not been fully fleshed out where like everyone's an agreement on is how problematic is it to have elevated atherogenic lipoproteins, which is essentially like your cholesterol profile. Like at a granular level, is there a possibility to end up with heart disease, even if you're eating the perfect animal-based carnivore-based diet with surfing,

with everything. And this is assuming that it's in a regular person too. Because obviously not everyone is Paul with the perfect lifestyle and all the resources to get like insanely high quality food and like whatever. So considerations have to be made. And it was perhaps a super long ramble. But like I think what he says has validity for sure. I think a lot of the food choices he has are, you know,

questionably sustainable for some people and questionably affordable. But also like, you know, there's still high quality. There's no arguing there. I loved the diet. It's like my favorite foods too. eat, believe it or not, like honey, globs of honey on top of raw meat, or not raw meat. Oh, yeah. On top of like 80, 20 ground beef is like, it's incredible.

Yeah, yeah. But it just looks like it's just, I'm just injecting. It looks like I'm injecting my arteries with like cholesterol when I'm doing that. It looks like if you saw a picture at the doctor's office of like what not. Yeah, what not. It's that. But I'm like, I feel good, but it just everyone that would see it would be like, what are you eating? Yeah.

You know. No, totally understandable. Yeah. the way people would think that too. Do you take creatine? Yes. And I would highly recommend it for almost everyone, even women, and there is new literature emerging on how impactful it is on brain health,

fertility metrics, and other things aside from just muscle. Now this makes me want to make another comment. Because I started taking creatine. Now I play pickleball. I play recreationally, but I'm very serious. When I went and I started taking creatine,

I noticed I got a lot heavier. And I just felt heavy on my feet. And I checked it with my other friend who's skateboarding and he's like, yeah, lower. That was like my max only height when I was taking creatine because you just get so heavy so quickly and you feel slower and bogged down

and your arms, yeah, sure they get bigger and you feel stronger and you can push more weight in the gym but it just slows you down. One thing you have to consider too is in sports when you go watch an Olympic event or Olympics in general, there is different categories of even like runners. Check the body types

of guys in the 100 meter, 200, 400, 800. It's like reliably you will see a decrease in muscle mass of like double digit pounds almost. Just because the guy at the 100 meter has more muscle, it doesn't mean he's going to perform as well in an endurance event as the really skinny guy in like the whatever. So to use that as a negative against creatine is certainly not fair.

It's like it's not apples to apples where it's like, okay, for skateboarding, we're being lighter on your feet proportionally is more advantageous potentially than whatever upside you get out of it. Like, okay, in that circumstance, how important is skateboarding to you, relative to whatever benefits you get out of this. Like if allying higher and not getting creatine upside is like, you know,

your determination of more useful, then don't take it. So it is pro health as well as pro muscular performance. But in certain contexts, like, yeah, maybe more, not harmful, but like less helpful for like specific sports. Interesting. Okay. So I was concerned that that was like just overall bad for my health. Because when I feel slower on my feet and I feel like I'm just not as agile,

I'm just like, okay, that's just a metric of like, this is something. something I should start doing. But I suppose if there's like brain function advantages and other things as well, and then obviously pushing more weight in the gym, looking stronger, feeling stronger, those could outweigh it. What are your thoughts on AG1? Yeah, I think that it is of the available Greens formulas, probably the most rigorously, or at least what I'm aware of, like I think I've had like 50 plus iterations. They've sponsored my channel before. And I think in general, greens formulas it's very difficult to get an amount that is even something people would drink into a powder because it would be almost disgusting if you were to get like tons of greens into a powder

format so i think the limitation is more on the taste profile as opposed to like the formulas validity because i think that the people behind it are really good people who actually like go out of their way to do good sourcing ingredients are pretty mindful of like reflecting current literature everyone I know and trust speaks very highly of them like Huberman speaks very highly to them, Mattia, et cetera. Like these are guys that I defer to for my own education. So if I was to say a greens formula that exists, I would be, I would trust them more than most companies.

That said, do I think that it's going to replace greens in your diet? No, I think it's a supplement at best. Also, do I think that you're going to get like a super effective amount of every ingredient that's in the formula? definitely not. There's like, I don't know, dozens of ingredients that are there. Some of them objectively, perhaps to look good on the label, not in the impactful amounts. But I think also this is just sort of the standard for the Greens industry. So you can only put so much before people won't drink it. And there's definitely some, you know, consideration of that as well. So, you know, if I was to look at

greens formulas that exist from what I'm aware of, they're like one of the better ones. We had a guest on our podcast, Justin Waller. And he said that, that when he works out his abs, he only works out the bottom two. What are your thoughts on that? Why? Did he say that? Because you don't see people walking around

with only the bottom two abs. Usually the people have the top two or the top four, and a real six pack of abs needs the bottom two. So if he works out the bottom two, realistically, it's just the top four are going to follow suit. Did you ask him about spot reduction?

Because I would be wondering, like, if I'm trying to develop a balanced core, I am trying to target the whole thing. I don't want to have like a underdeveloped stability in the top four rather than just the bottom two. Like that's how you would end up with injuries typically. I don't even know how you would really work just the bottom. Like there's definitely ways to target that one really viral. Oh, show on the clip.

I don't know if I can. Let me see if I can find it. There's no. I think it's one of our most viewed YouTube clips. There's definitely ways to target proportionally more down there. But like. Okay, right here. 16 million views on Instagram.

There you go. That's crazy. I've had a six-pack since I was 24 years old. When I do abs, I only do the bottom two abs. How many guys have you met? He's like, oh, I got the top two. My fucking grandma's got the top two. It's your ribs, asshole.

I only have the top two. Exactly. Come on. Exactly. But if you do decline, weighted abs, like with a 45 on your chest, and you only focus on the bottom two, and you tilt your head back so you isolate it, nobody in history of the universe has ever had the bottom two in this V-taper. and not have the top two.

You ever do the side plank? Yeah. Okay, cool. Go up and put your hand on. Make sure it burns, and when it finally starts to burn, bounce. Pulse on that. Fuck it up.

Like, you destroy it. I used to do that two minutes of time on each side. You kind of get that 300 look. I'm telling you, you'll have a six-pack faster than you would. I'm going to try that. It's an absolute cheap because it pokes through the skin. Why? Because I just...

He wasn't convincing, you know? You feel? In the history of the universe, Jack. I probably realistically, I probably just forgot it. Okay. So, like, it's, to me, the stuff he says is not, like, inaccurate that that when would you see a guy with the bottom two, not the top? It's like, well, like, yeah, because that's where that accumulates.

So you probably wouldn't have got abs anywhere if you weren't lean enough. So, like, what he says, it's like, that's true. I guess I wouldn't. But, like, it's, I don't know. Like, to me, it's implying there's some sort of, like, localized fat. reduction that you could get out of that exercise or you're going to end up with underdeveloped lower abs relative to the others that is not related to diet whatsoever. So it's like I do think that that's like a viable exercise. I just don't think it has the importance that he implies because at the end

of the day, abs are made in the kitchen. I don't think he would deny that. I think isn't, didn't he say eats like once a day or something. Yeah. So it's like, you know, like it's his diet that is conducive mostly to the abs. So I would be shocked to see the. The. difference in him having body fat versus not is like the thing that's going to make the biggest difference if you're training your abs if you want to hit the lower ones like i know people who don't train abs at all and have better looking abs than anyone i've ever seen and they train it indirectly through course to be stabilizing exercises that are compound movements i don't necessarily think you like need to do them or don't do them it could be useful if you want to have like a good

core that is proportionally strong to the rest of your body but doing the exercise to get the abs, it's like, it's made in the kitchen at the end of the day. So like, I don't think there's any localized fat reduction. I don't think it makes that big of a difference on development of them where it's going to look way different. Like, I think it's kind of exaggerated. It sounds like something you would hear like, I don't know. It's like a, like a brometh sort of thing. Yeah. And not to speak poorly about his advice either. Like, obviously the guy is in good shape and whatever, but it's like, I can almost guarantee like 99% of it comes from his diet. All right. All right. I don't think there's anything else left.

Yeah, is there anything that you wanted to talk about? Anything you want to bring up? I don't know. Like, what do you guys spend the majority of your time on now that you feel is worthwhile and the biggest ROI? For the podcast, it would be travel, us finding the time to go to our guests. Let's just say like in your week though, like what do you have, of all of your trials and tribulations of having multiple channels, reaction videos, doing your like very targeted

main channel videos, podcasts, like, what do you feel like is the most valuable use of your time now? Honestly, it's posting less As weird as that sounds, it's posting less on the main channel. I was posting three times a week, and I did that for six and a half years. And it wasn't until, I think, two months ago, give or take, I started posting once a week.

And the views have gone up since I've posted once a week. Overall. Overall. Okay. Yeah. Doing shorts, it's fantastic. As far as my own time, I think I'm focusing more time on myself,

which I've never done before. Nice, dude. Yeah. Like painting the garage was a big one. I spent three days painting the garage. I love doing that. I got a blank canvas. I want to do some art.

That's so random. But give that a shot. Nice, dude. And home improvement stuff. I'm getting really into that. I did my backyard lights in L.A. Did it myself, and it's super easy to do. You buy all the equipment online.

It's really easy. You don't need, like an electrician. I paid some dude, 600 bucks. I just watched how he did it on the side of the house. I thought, I could do that. And I did. Easy. For a fifth of the cost.

When it comes to stuff like that. Content, like obviously on the surface, you're saying less content, are you proportionally doing more elsewhere that makes you... No. Or are you better at like managing your not going insane while you're not working? No, I'm spending longer on each video, but just because I have more time, not because I'm actually spending more time on the video. It's just...

The work is expanding because I have more time available to me. That's really it. But now in the videos itself, I got that down to a science. I mean, I know the structure. I know what does well. I know which topics I could talk about. It just flows. You didn't uptake your output of podcast frequency or anything, though?

We tried. We tried two a week for a little bit, and we discovered it didn't work. One a week was a sweet spot, I think especially for a three-hour episode. People doing that twice, so it is just too much. So we could throw in like a midweek every now and then, but we found once a week is the perfect amount, and then we could do shorts in between. So as odd as it seems, I think working less is really. to our benefit at this point.

How many people do you have on the team now for like editors, people who clip stuff, whatever? So it's Graham and I as the host, we have a producer that does a lot of the editing, talking to brands, stuff like that, just behind the scene stuff. We just hired him too, so we're kind of training him. We have our short form editor that clips up things

for vertical content, TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube shorts, and that guy is his own agency or just one of his clients. We have an agency that repurposes our content to a Snapchat tile. So we have that. And they also do it for Facebook. So we also, that's the same agency there. And then we have a few different random agencies and agents that we work with to source brand deals.

I appreciate the insight, man. I appreciate you guys having me too. Thank you so much for coming on, man. I really appreciate it. I love this. And we'll link to all of your information down below in the description. So anyone who wants to check you out, description. Thank you.

Appreciate it. Thanks. Awesome. Cool.