Weights and Plates Podcast - #23 - Food & Macros in Times of Scarcity

Episode Date: March 11, 2022

Time are... interesting these days, and food is getting more expensive and scarce every day. We all want to stay strong and healthy, but protein and supplements are becoming budget killers for many. So, how much do we really need to eat to sustain a reasonably high performance training program? Robert and Trent offer some ideas about macros, inexpensive foods, and important tools and cookware that can save you money in the long run.   Items mentioned in this episode: Zojirushi Neuro Fuzzy rice cooker: https://www.zojirushi.com/app/product/nszcc Berkey water filter: https://www.berkeyfilters.com Cast Iron -- Lodge makes decent cast iron pots and pans, but old and unused stuff is even better! Clean it up, season it, and give it new life.   2022 Wichita Falls Strengthlifting Classic https://liftingcast.com/meets/meqotq65gjp0/registration   Weights & Plates: https://weightsandplates.com Robert Santana on Instagram: @the_robert_santana   Trent Jones: @marmalade_cream https://www.marmaladecream.com  

Welcome to the Weights and Plates podcast. My name is Robert Santana. I am your host along with my co-host Trent Jones. Good evening, folks. Because I know you're listening in the evening. this is my evening voice now how's it going everyone what am I one hour behind you two hours you're eastern right yeah I never know what time zone you're in that's just that's why I just say like that's just ridiculous I can't figure it out sometimes you're mountain sometimes you're so this is funny I'm gonna put my wife on blast until like three years ago she thought mountain time meant only when you're actually in the mountains because seriously we we had we had to take a trip to arizona and uh and like the time change or something and it it created a minor issue and she's like wait i thought it was this time like no it's mountain time she's like but we're not in the mountains we we have yeah we have arizona time and uh that basically means we don't

change our clocks ever they stay the same year round which is the way it should be by the way i agree you know like well like daylight savings is bullshit it's so stupid so stupid how about we all just have the time that we have and then we just change our hours accordingly? You know, like if you go to Denmark, they're going to be open at different hours than they will in, you know, Columbus, Ohio. And it's fine. Yeah. It's fine. We are mountain standard time in the winter and in the mid spring. So I think a couple weeks from now, when's the time, when did the time zone changes? Oh dude, I don't know. Don't ask me. I don't even, yeah, it's coming up. Yeah. I don't know. It's coming up. It's coming up. But basically from mid to late spring through summer and early

fall, uh, we are Pacific time, but really we're Arizona time. So we just got, you know, everybody else changes their time and then we end up landing in one or the other, either mountain or Pacific, depending on the time of year. So when I drive to California right now, I'm time traveling. I'm going back in time. And then in the summer, I'm at the same time as California. It's kind of weird, you know? It's funny. Yeah, yeah.

So basically what you're saying is that when it all hits the fan, California, Nevada, New Mexico are all screwed, but Arizona is going to be just fine. Commerce will go on. Yeah, we're in the desert. Desert people. Different breed. Yeah, you got to learn how to survive. Oh, man.

Well, speaking of that. We figured out how to get air conditioning in here. That's true, yeah. Phoenix is a marvel. How the hell do people live here 100 years ago? Oh, I was about to say, like, Phoenix is kind of like Dubai, you know, minus all the flashiness. Yeah. Like, it's swimming pools and in the middle of the desert.

I don't know, man. Then they complain about water use, but then there's swimming pools in the middle of the desert. There's grass in the middle of the desert. Everyone has a swimming pool. Yeah, everyone has a swimming pool, by the way. I noticed that flying into Phoenix. Oh, yeah. They're cheaper to build here, too.

It's crazy. They're all in ground. They don't do above ground pools here. Right, yeah. Which I kind of get it. It's probably nice when it's 126 outside. When it cools off a little bit at night, you just dip in there. Like you probably just walk around for like five minutes afterwards and you're dry.

No, that's exactly what you do. Yeah. Okay. That's exactly what you do. So I get it, but still, it's kind of funny that in the desert you've got thousands of pools. The pools aren't even what kills me. It's the grass. I'm like, really?

Right. You're complaining that we might run out of water someday they're showing all these you know graphics of lake mead and how it's getting lower and all this bullshit and uh i'm like and then i look at fucking grass and you know golf courses and uh i yeah i hate grass i hate grass that's yeah i you know so do i have natural desert landscape which you know like give me give me some yucca, you know, some succulent, you know, in a pot by the front door. I mean, I got a saguaro cactus next door. They're lovely.

How do you, can't beat that. I'm jealous. I mean, I got a tree, so my neighbor's like, well, you got a tree. I'm like, well, you got a freaking saguaro, dude. You know how much it costs to buy a full-size Saguaro? It's probably like 20 grand, I think. Because, of course, they regulated this because it's an endangered species, you know. And get ready for this.

It's an endangered species because they're pretty much only in Arizona. That's the only reason. Yeah. Yeah. Because if you go in Arizona, like, so if you drive to Tucson, because I've done this, and you go up to, is it Mount Lemmon that's there? I think so, yeah. If you just drive up to Mount Lemmon, it's a beautiful scenic drive. Good go up to, uh, is it mountain lemon that's there? I think so. Yeah. If you just drive up to mountain limits, beautiful scenic drive, good hiking up there too. You will see thousands and thousands of saguaro cactuses cacti. Yeah. But, um, yeah, I like the cacti. You know, I grew up in Texas. So, uh, you get out to West Texas, especially out to, um, you know,

Guadalupe mountains. That's high, that's high desert. That's the Chihuahuan Desert that extends from Mexico up into Texas and New Mexico. And same kind of stuff. We don't have the giant cacti, but yeah, I love that. If I open my front door and I saw that stuff, that'd be just fine.

But it's pretty sweet because we have a well in our backyard, though. So I'll take that. There's pros and cons, but we have to that's cool. I don't have that. There's pros and cons, but we have to deal with grass. I need a... I have to mow the lawn. Fuck grass.

We don't have that shit here. Well, I think this is all appropriate. We're not just rambling. No, we're segwaying into something. Segwaying into something. We did it on purpose. That's right. That's right.

This is planned. We were talking about offline. I have, okay, so this, this happened on a chat. So I'm, I'm part of a chat group and, um, it's secret. So you can't, you don't know where it is, but people still chat. Yeah. People still chat online. Uh, but anyway, so I was part of this chat group and one of the guys on there is a lot of people that train and a lot of people that are new word to training. And so, you know, every once in a while, I just field some questions about, uh, training, nutrition, whatever. And somebody was like, Hey, I just found some creatine monohydrate on myprotein.com with the sale code that they

normally do. It's $45 a pound. Is that a good price? And I spit out my coffee. and I spit out my coffee. It choked for a second. And then I got on. I was like, you're kidding me. There's no way. And I went and checked. $45 a pound. $45 a pound. Now, I poked around. I was like, oh my God, this got to be something crazy. The website's messed up. So I went and looked on Amazon. Can't find any creatine anywhere, or it's crazy expensive. I'm like, okay, well, Amazon's weird sometimes about supplements. So I went to a few different supplement sites. I found the cheapest I found was on bulk supplements.com. Creatine mono was like $36 a pound. Insane. Now I've got a stockpile here,

so I'll be fine for a while. But I checked cause I was like, man, what's this is crazy. It was like, fine for a while but i checked because i was like man what's this is crazy it was like i there's no way i spent this much money on it so i went and looked in december of 2020 i bought a tub of creatine mono eight dollars a pound okay yeah so this guy was like well you know is this a good price i'm like hell no like don't do it it's like it's not worth it it's not i told him it's not worth it at that price just forget forget about it. It's like a fivefold increase. Yeah. It's insane. And the same thing has happened with a lot of food stuff lately. So if you try to get some whey protein isolate, I just bought some the other day for $18 a pound, you know, and I'm buying, I'm buying in six pound bags or five and a half pound bags.

So it's buying in bulk. That's the best price I could find for whey isolate. You can get whey concentrate a little bit cheaper, but that stuff tears my stomach up. So I don't buy it. But at that price, that's making me think like, well, I'm not making as many protein shakes as I used to. It's not worth it to me. And the same thing has happened with meat and a lot of goods. And we're in a position without commenting on geopolitics, even though I know people get enough, people get enough of that. We don't, that's right. We don't need to go there. I know you're dying for my take, my hot takes, but I'm going to skip that. So without commenting on that, it doesn't look as if that situation is going to resolve anytime soon. So what we thought we'd talk about today is what do you do when food becomes expensive and scarce? And we're going to talk about

this generally because so much of this fluctuates from week to week. It fluctuates from area to area. Some people can't find chicken on the shelves in their parts of the country. Some people can. Some people, you know, you want to buy some salmon or whatever, and it's like $25 a pound. So we wanted to talk about like, what do you really, really need bare bones to sustain a health and fitness program? Yeah, I think that's pretty much summed up what we're going to talk about. I like that. I think that's pretty much summed up what we're going to talk about. I like that.

Yeah, so, you know, as Trent said, these items will fluctuate in price depending on market conditions and, you know, where you are, et cetera. There's a lot of factors there. So I may mention something that, you know, might be cheap today, affordable today, and very expensive by the time this airs. So just prepare yourself for that, and that's why we're going to try and go over several options. So I just kind of want to start by going over this, starting with each major food group. And I typically do this by macros because it's kind of how a lot of you listeners probably think about this. People in the weight room, they're thinking about protein, carbs, fat, calories, et cetera. And the first thing I'm going to say is you probably want to – food's getting expensive. The last thing you want to do is probably eat out a lot because that's – then you have to add labor costs in there too, additional labor costs.

I mean there's labor costs in food manufacturing and production, but you know, somebody to cook it and serve it to you. So that's what I would call low-hanging fruit. You know, if you're on a budget and things are getting more expensive and you're trying to find a way to stay on plan, first thing you can do is cut back on eating out. You know, I recently got a coffee at Dunkin' Donuts, and I used to do that daily. I don't do that anymore. It's just for different reasons. I've just been making my own, but sometimes I go into town, I'm dragging, I'm on my way to the gym, and I really need to get, like, a coffee maker in there. I've been, like, one of my members. Get you an AeroPress. An intern. A little hand grinder and AeroPress. Yeah. You know, my member slash friend slash intern,

Dan, keeps telling me, if you buy the Nespresso or the Keurig, I'll pay for the pods. And I just haven't done it yet, you know? So I need to do it because I end up stopping at Dunkin' to re-up in the second half of the day. Anyways, you know, I've always drank black coffee. I've never been somebody that goes in there and spends $5 on a dessert, you know, basically a hot milkshake or an ice milkshake. You know, that's what I call it. It's not coffee, you know. To me, coffee is black coffee.

And if you are drinking a good coffee, then, you know, it doesn't make a difference. It doesn't matter that it's black. The reason black coffee tastes like shit is because you are drinking shitty coffee, you know. Exactly. When you start patting it with a bunch of shit, you've turned it into a milkshake. And you're making it in a 14-year-old Mr. Coffee that hasn't been cleaned since the day you bought it.

Precisely. Or you're getting this bullshit Starbucks burnt shit that tastes like fucking burnt coffee. It's not that good. So anyways, I think I paid in the low $2 for years at Dunkin' Donuts, you know, and I moved here, what, 2015 in Los Angeles. They didn't have it when I lived there. They started opening them in 14 and now they're everywhere there. But I lived in Los Angeles before I moved here. And I would visit my friend here and we'd get Dunkin' when we'd visit

Phoenix. Now, when I moved here, I was obviously having it more. And I paid like $2.25 or something like that, $2.50, maybe. I can't remember. It was under $3 because I'd just get a black coffee. I'd typically get a large. Now I need a little bit more because I'm a little bit busier than I was seven years ago, so I tend to go for an extra large. And I go in there and it's like 340 and i'm like for black coffee and it's like yeah man it's like it's one up twice this month and i'm like well shit now i you know i think about that before i go in right you know i'm like do i really want to get this you know um so i try to make enough here at home but the bags are expensive too i think that because i buy their coffee at the store so here's a little little secret. If you like Dunkin' Donuts and you want it to taste good, it's not going to taste like the store.

They have a very intricate water system, and they can get it hotter than your stove can. At least that's what I was told. But I buy the beans there because if you buy the beans at the commercial grocery store, they are buying it in bulk. So it sits. The Dunkin' Donuts shop doesn't buy that much quantity, so it tends to taste better if you buy the whole beans at Dunkin'. So I'm going to... I need to talk to your intern, Dan. Dan, is this thing on? Dan, are you listening? I'm going to say, no, you don't need the Keurig. Now, I get it. I get it

in a gym environment. It's nice for the members. It's easy, right? you don't need the Keurig. Now I get it. I get it in a gym environment is nice for the members. It's easy, right? You don't have to train anyone, but I'm going to say you go AeroPress and you only buy coffee that has a date that tells you when it was roasted. That's my thing. Now I don't buy coffee if they don't have a date stamped on there when it was roasted, because if they don't have it on there, that means it was probably six months ago. Well, I don't know what the hell an AeroPress is but i don't know what an aero press is but i'm sure he does yeah it's this is the hipster hipster coffee but it's super easy super easy i'm gonna look it up later okay well he says i need something so i'll buy the gear he'll supply the he'll supply the coffee i'm fine with that i need to do that but um yeah he's a good guy he's

he's in your line of work, too. He does sound production, music, and all that shit. Now he's lifting. He's like my Arizona Trent man. Right. Yeah, that's good. Anyhow, so cut back on eating out. That's an easy way to cut a significant food expense.

If you're relying on somebody preparing and serving your food for you, that's one way to cut it. somebody preparing and serving your food for you, you know, that's one way to cut it. Yeah, yeah. Then now that we've, you know, gotten that out of the way, the next thing would be things that you are preparing, right? And, you know, protein's typically the most expensive of the macros, and, you know, foods that are high in protein tend to be more expensive than those that are not. And the most common forms are meats, right? Meats, some meats are up right now.

Yeah. And we just bought two bags of salmon from, frozen salmon from Publix. And, you know, granted, we're in East Tennessee, right? Not exactly a hub for salmon. But, and this was, this is, you know, Publix is a nice grocery store, but it's not like a Whole Foods or a Central Market or something. It's not like a boutique, you know, bougie grocery store. But anyway, yeah, so we buy this bag of salmon because we wanted to make something nice. You know, we don't cook salmon very often. It is expensive normally, but we buy this. It's 12 ounces. So you get two fillets in the bag,

frozen, six ounces each. So 12 ounces of salmon, $15.99. Shit. Okay. Now, to be fair, we made like a nice rice bowl with, you know, with this kind of like Asian fusion sort of like salmon rice bowl. That would have probably cost us for two of them at a restaurant, I don't know, $40, maybe $50, you know. Around here, it's a little bit cheaper, you know, $20, I get you an entree, a smaller entree at a lot of restaurants, right? And probably more in other places. But anyway, so, but that the each bowl probably costs, you know, like $15, or $10. I mean, you know, not a cheap meal, but it's illustrates the point, right? Like this meat's expensive, but just by not eating out, we probably saved half on that meal. It was still delicious, but yeah, it's also $20 pound salmon. Yeah. So it's all relative. It's going up everywhere,

I know. But why would you go eat it out and pay more? It's already, you're already paying a lot. Right. So yeah, you know, a lot. So, yeah, meat. So you can't have meat. I don't know what dairy is looking like right now, but that's usually the next one I go down the list. Okay, if I can't have meat, can I get my protein from dairy? Hopefully you can tolerate it. If you can't, you're fucked, and we'll move on to the next thing. But for those who can, whey is up, but is milk up?

Because typically if one goes up, that means they're making more of the other milk, I think has gone up, but it has always been, you know, your, your, your vitamin D enhanced whole milk at the back of the grocery store has traditionally been a loss leader for supermarkets. And so it's, it's, you know, I, I, I don't know the ins and outs of the dairy industry, but I imagine there's probably some subsidies in place there that keep the cost down somewhat. industry, but I imagine there's probably some subsidies in place there that keep the cost down somewhat. So that's still a fairly cheap source of protein is, you know, your whole milk, your milks of various kinds. Yeah, I've been getting hammered with this ultra-filtered shit. It's so expensive, but I only have one cup a day, so I don't mind it because it lasts me a while. But what am I probably paying like 20 bucks a gallon for that shit yeah do you buy them like the court you know containers they still after all these years they

still will not sell in a fucking gallon i don't know why well it's because they don't want you to know how much a gallon costs yeah because you're gonna see you're gonna see the like the the red label dollars well you're gonna see the red label vitamin d whole milk at the bottom you know that's the the store brand for, you know, $3.50 a gallon. And then you're going to see the Fairlife above it for $20. Yeah. $20. Yeah. I think it's like four nights. It's like $25 a gallon probably. Yeah. Fortunately, I drink one cup a day. So, and the stuff holds longer. So, you know, it's not ideal, but I like it. It's high in protein. It tastes better. But, you know, that's what, but look, it's up right now. And as I'm talking on this, I'm starting to ponder, I'm like, well, does it really add that much flavor to my oatmeal?

Right. Yeah, because you get away with it. You know, how about I just go down to the three or $4 gallon of, you know, nonfat or 1%? Yeah, yeah. I could do that. Now I will say, um, you know, so one, one thing we have done here now, we, we like nice high quality food and we pay for it. Um, and we allocate a pretty big chunk of money towards our food budget every month, but we have been buying food as exclusively as we can from local farmers and ranchers. And, um, so, you know, we've got a guy that sells raw milk here. Not everybody has that, but it, it works out to, I don't know, about $8 a gallon

for whole milk. Right. So it's, it's expensive, but it's not, it's not that expensive. Um, especially if you're drinking it in more moderate quantities. Um, we have also been buying beef and pork in bulk. And it's one of those things where you got to put down a chunk of money, but we'll buy 50 pounds of beef at a time, give or take. And our ground beef cost is locked in for several months. Our pork cost is locked in for several months. So again, we pay more because we're buying local. We also know we're buying really high quality beef and pork. It tastes really good.

We like the way that they butcher it and they prepare it. I think we're paying for ground beef, $5.50 a pound. But at least, you know, we know that's going up, right? We talked to the rancher and he's like, hey, you know, next time you buy, it's going to be more expensive. It's more now, but we were at least able to lock in our costs. So that's something you could think about if you have the resources to do it. If you've got extra cash

and you've got a freezer and space, you can buy in bulk. Yeah, absolutely. I think that we have options like that here. They're closer to Christie's house in the East Valley. But it got me thinking about bulk. I shop at Costco for some things and I'm one of those people that, you know,

goes in there and buys what I need to get those people that, you know, goes in there and buys what I need to get and I leave, you know, I don't end up spending a bunch of money. Like I keep hearing about, I don't understand that. You're not going around getting all the samples? No, I go in there primarily for egg whites because you can get, this is for those of you who are doing egg whites, you could get a case of six, I believe it's 16 ounce. Yeah, there's two cups in there, I think. Yeah, two cups. So it's 16 ounce. So those little 16 ounce cartons, if you go to like a commercial grocery store, they're going to cost like three or $4 a pop. If you go to Costco, you can get a six pack for $8. And it's been that price for about eight years I've been buying them.

I discovered them about eight years ago. So maybe eight, nine years ago, I found that. And I still buy those and I buy two at a time. So I buy 12 of them and it's 16 bucks. It's a lot cheaper than paying three bucks a pop plus tax, depending on your state. Okay. Yeah. So let's talk about that. How does the protein break down on a carton of egg whites? If you're just going to do a serving or something. How does the protein break down on a carton of egg whites? You know, if you're just going to do a serving or something. There's 50 grams of protein in the entire carton. And I typically do a cup.

So a cup's 25 grams. So, well, let's math that out. You have six of them for $9 roughly, you know? So it's about, what, 66 cents a carton divided by two. So there's six cartons per $ dollars yeah it's like what 33 cents yeah every 20 for every 25 grams of protein that that's that seems pretty reasonable yeah that's one cheap way to do it you can yeah try to live off them if you're on a tight budget you could probably live off that you know so do you make uh so do you normally cook these or do you make them you put them in shakes and stuff or like banana or something?

You could put them in shakes. I don't put them in shakes, but people put them in shakes. I make omelets every morning and have done this for about almost 20 years, 19 years. Okay. You know, I have a cast iron skillet and I make the egg in the small one. I think it's a six inch. And then I have a large one that's 10 inches. That's where I make the vegetables

because I make extra for my meals later in the day. For those of you who say, I can't eat vegetables every meal because it's a bunch of prep work. No, I just make a bunch of them with my breakfast and then I put the rest of them in a Tupperware and I pick from it the rest of the day. Bam, there you go.

Because cast iron vegetables are delicious. They are, yeah. It adds flavor without having to put a bunch of fat on it. So I'll make the vegetables in the large one, make the egg white in the small one, put pepper on the egg whites. And then when it forms into a big omelet patty, I put a slice of low-fat Jarlsberg cheese on top, or I use this low fat shredded mozzarella, depending on which one's available. They're not always both available. I buy them at Trader Joe's because they're the only place that has these options really. And then I throw the vegetables on top and then I fold it over like a taco. You know, that's how I like to make my omelets.

Some people mix the vegetables into the eggs. You can do it that way too. Put that cheese on top, flip it and call it a day, you know? Yep. But I like to make the vegetables separate because I can taste them more that way. And I want to taste them more. You, you also turned me on to,

uh, cotija cheese, which, which is also like, it's just a hard, crumbly, salty cheese, Mexican cheese.

And that, that stuff's great. And it's also, it's, it's low fat because you don't need very much to get a lot of flavor in it. And that, that stuff is awesome on, awesome on eggs, any sort of egg dish, any sort of Mexican dish. It's good. Yeah, there's this low-fat mozzarella shredded cheese at Trader Joe's.

It's like two grams of fat per serving, and it tastes really good. It's not hard. It's not super salty. Yeah, yeah. Like, I used to get the Safeway fat-free or low-fat just to, I was experimenting with things before. And it's a little bit saltier. It's a little bit harder. I mean, I can eat it.

I have a pretty diverse palate, you know. I'm not picky, but I could see how other people wouldn't like it. But the Trader Joe's one still has a softness to it. The Jarlsberg is real good, the low-fat Jarlsberg. I think it's light, it's called. Jarlsberg light. And you can get the slices. I used to have it at Costco in the big

package, but not anymore, at least not the one that I go to. Yeah, that's, but that's good right there. So like, you've got cheap egg whites, it's pretty cheap source of protein. It's also, it's low fat, you know, that's nice. Instead of eating, you know, three or four eggs, let's see, you'd have to eat four eggs to get the same amount of protein, right? So six grams of protein per egg. There's also six grams of fat per egg if you eat the whole thing, right? Exactly. So, um, you know, 300 calories or so. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, lower calorie, high protein. And that's another thing. You don't have to drown the thing in cheddar cheese, right? Which you don't want to do anyway for the fat reason, but you can, you can pick some flavors that have more punch to them and

you can use less of it, right? You don't need a very large block of cheese if you're going to use something that has more flavor. Um, and that dude, the cast iron, I'm telling y'all, okay. If you have like, if you're, if your mom or dad or your grandparents or something has like an old, super rusty cast iron, whatever in the attic, do not throw that away. No, you can, it's easy. You can just put a little bit of elbow grease into it and look up some guides on how to season, re-season cast iron. It'll take a little bit of time and effort,

but once you do it, it'll be good for another 50 years. So, you know, you can save these things. So if you got one laying around or you know somebody who has one that's not using it, see if you can get it. Because they're expensive. They're expensive to buy new, but... Oh, yeah trust me i know yeah totally worth it you know i i foolishly you know years

ago when my parents were like throwing out stuff they were like do you want this old griddle and i was like two years out of college i'm like no it's like i don't i live in a 450 square foot apartment no i don't want anything uh i should have taken that. That's a $250 griddle nowadays. But yeah, so I think that's good. You can look for substitutions, right? If you're used to eating something that's more expensive per unit of protein, you can find something that's cheaper. I want to know this, since we're talking about protein, how much protein do we really need? Okay. We did a whole episode about this, right? We did. this since we're talking about protein how much protein do we really need okay we talked we did a whole episode about this right but we did we actually were we lying do we actually need that

much protein i mean we overshoot because there's no harm in it but uh you know i have my article my protein article i typically say men can get away with 150 to 250 grams of protein a day you know some people might argue that you might even be able to get away with less, you know, depending on your size, right? Sure. Larger man's going to be on the higher end. Smaller man's going to be on the lower end. A woman, somewhere between 1 and 200, and very, very few women that I've trained have needed 200. Right.

That typically plays out to more like 100 to 150 for most, with some a little bit higher. Yeah, yeah. I usually say 120. Yeah, for women. Yeah, yeah, that typically gets it done. I mean, how much lean mass does a person typically have? You know, I mean, sure, you know, you got some jacked guys out there. But I think when Carl shoot was training with me, he was a pretty big dude. I got him down to 213. And he was 13% body fat. And he's a big, thick guy. And when you do the math on that, it was like 170-something pounds or 180-something pounds of muscle, you know, is what it came out to. It's not like this insane number, you know. Right, right.

Like, let's math that for a second so, you know, it can be a little more precise. But I think he was 213, and he was 13%. Okay. So, he was 91% or no, sorry 87 87 percent lean so 185 pounds yeah so i was right 185 pounds of lean mass so does he need 215 grams of protein he probably doesn't even need 185 that's a gram per pound might be able to get away with a little bit less you know yeah so um you know and something that you've talked about before on other podcasts i remember is that you know? Yeah. So, um, you know, and something that you've talked about before on other podcasts, I remember is that, you know, what kind of level of training advancement you're at can matter as

well. Right. So if you're a novice, you need more protein because there's, you know, there's more, there's tissue being built for the first time. And that takes a lot of input to build new muscle mass. But if you've been lifting for like two, three, four, five years, you're, you're not like nothing you do is going to move the needle that much. And so you probably can get away with a, with a little bit less protein per, you know, per, per pound of body weight than you did when you were novice. Oh yeah. You get more efficient at turning it over. Um, think about it when you're a novice, you're stressing yourself with a new stressor every two days. When you're an intermediate, it's every week. When you're

an advanced lifter, it might be once a year that you stress yourself that much physically. So you can get away with less. I certainly don't have to eat as much as I used to to perform. But once it gets to a certain point, I know I got to ramp it up for a shorter period of time. Whereas with a novice, if you take an underweight novice, for instance, like let's go back to the classic, a gallon of milk a day, you know, that Rip likes to promote. Right. For an underweight novice, there's logic to that, and it kind of plays into this episode, right? A gallon of milk is a lot cheaper.

Let's first go through the nutrients. A gallon of milk has 192 grams of carbohydrate, 128 grams of protein, 192 grams of carbohydrate, 128 grams of protein, and could have zero to 128 grams of fat, depending on which one you choose. If it's whole milk, it's 128. If it's nonfat, it's zero. And you get that for $2 to $4, depending on where you are in the country, where the markets are, et cetera. It's cheap. And if you're 18 and you're six foot 145 pounds, it's a good way to get all those calories. It's anywhere from 1,200 to 2,400 calories, right? So if it's the whole milk, like you're going to tell the 6 foot 145 pound guy to drink, he's getting 2,400 calories for $4. Yeah.

And it's not just, you know, fat calories. He's getting 128 grams of protein and 192 grams of carb, which are the calories that are hard to accumulate when you need a lot. But let's say this guy gets up to 205 because he has to get there and he does it over the course of that year. It's not going to happen in two weeks. We don't want him doing that in two weeks. It can't happen that way. But over the course of the first year, he gained 70 pounds. Let's say it works out and he's a high responder for you science people out there that want to sit there and say oh you can't gain that much muscle mass in that amount of time you know it's if your baseline is so low yes you probably can gain quite a bit of muscle mass how much you don't know any more than i do these instruments don't measure muscle mass they measure lean mass fat free mass which is influenced by an array of bullshit. So let's not go down that rabbit hole. I won't go down that rabbit hole here beyond

saying that we don't have an effective way to measure muscle tissue unless I kill you and do an autopsy and count all of your fibers. That's the gold standard, autopsy. I can't bring you back to life to see if I can change that. So let's stop pretending that a DEXA and an MRI and all these other methods measure muscle mass. They don't. You should start offering a double your money back guarantee on body fat percentages for your nutrition services. Like I will get you to X percent, double your money back guarantee. And then like with the little star next to it and the fine print is like, must be confirmed via autopsy. And then I go to jail. Death row possibly. But yeah, so I mean, you know, this kid, you know, he gained 70 pounds, a lot of that's muscle mass,

right? So now he's a new person at 205 or 215, whatever he is, you know. And, you know, he's put, you know, a couple hundred pounds on a squat and deadlift, maybe more. He's probably put a hundred pounds or more on his bench and, you know, probably 50 to a hundred pounds on his press, depending on where the baseline was, possibly more. You know, you have a vast array of responses. And is he going to keep drinking a gallon of milk a day for the rest of his life? No, no. At some point, you know, you settle into a weight, you don't need as many calories to sustain that weight. You still need a lot. He can't go down to 1500 calories, you know? Right. But he probably doesn't need to keep eating 6,000 because I don't need him to be

225 yet or 250 yet. He's going to have to get there eventually if he keeps training, you know? Right, right. But in the first year, he just needs to fill himself out to get a baseline, right? You know, if he trains for five years, he's going to probably be 250, maybe 275 if he goes into powerlifting. And that just depends on what his priorities are. At some point, fat mass helps with lifting heavy. I've said this before. And if you don't care about that, it's going to help you. You get too fat, it's going to hurt your deadlift. So there's a fine line there. But for the purposes that we're discussing today, there's a point where, you know, the skinny guy who had to drink a gallon of milk a day to not be skinny is not skinny now. So he doesn't need to keep drinking the gallon of whole milk a day. He might go to half gallon of skim. He might have developed a

tolerance for more actual food during that time, you know? So it's the same thing with protein, right? You're a novice. You've never lifted before. Your first squat session beats the hell out of you, but then you got to add weight in two days. So you might need 200 grams of protein, 250 grams of protein, depending on body size, right? Yeah. But then you take someone like me, I've been training for strength consistently for nine years. I've been in the weight room under a barbell at some capacity for 20, 22 years, 23 years, 23 years.

I've been in the weight room at some capacity doing a bar, performing barbell lifts and chin-ups. And, you know, if I eat 150 grams of protein, I'm fine in the gym, you know, but if I'm getting towards a PR, I notice I got to eat a little bit more, you know? Yeah, exactly. It's just for a shorter period of time, whereas, you know, the novice, things are changing constantly. You're constantly stressing, you're constantly recovering, you're constantly adapting. Every couple of days, you're doing a new big lift, and you need to keep fueling the body to

recover from that. When you're me, it probably takes me And you need to keep fueling the body to recover from that. When you're me, it probably takes me a whole year before I tune up for a PR. I mean, that's how it's worked out the last couple years. Exactly. Yeah. So, you know, instead of eating 5000 calories for, you know, an entire year, or six months, or however long it needs to be done for, I might only have to do that for a month. Right, yeah. And we kind of talked about this a little bit in the last episode.

We were talking about peaking. I hang around, and I think you do the same thing. When I'm just day-to-day, I'm usually hanging around 192 to 194 pounds, give or take a pound. But I'm not at the top of my weight class, which is usually I'm a one 98. Sometimes I push it up over 200, right. They go into the next weight class. I've never been a full two 20. The highest I ever got was two 15. And it was like, damn, if I ate a, if I ate a light lunch, I would weigh and it'd be like

two Oh nine next day. It seemed like I just, my body just, it was very hard to hold that weight anyway. But, um, the thing is, yeah. So like, I'm basically looking at gaining roughly five pounds to get to the top of my weight class when I'm ready to compete, which for me is no more than once a year. Like the last two years, I haven't really done an actual competition. Um, you know, so it, it, yeah. So that's, that, that's it, right. You don't need elevated calories all year. And it does take a whole lot more for me to push up to 198 than it does just to maintain 193. The body's pretty good at maintaining what it's got. It's pretty efficient at that. is not training. And I discussed how if you look at weight class competitors, you know, for better or worse, they fluctuate. We're going to exclude the extremes from this discussion. You know, the guy who's 220 competing at 181 is not who we're talking about here. We're talking about

guys with two-hour weigh-ins or weigh-outs. And, you know, they stay within a pretty narrow weight range year-round and train. You know, they fill out beyond their weight class during the off season. And then when it comes time to do a meet, they cut down and they compete and they get stronger over time, you know, until you can't. Obviously, eventually you do stop getting stronger. But, you know, it just goes to, you know, kind of show that you don't need big fluctuations in weight. And that's kind of what I was getting at. Like if you kind of stay within an arrow range that's sustainable, you will not have to worry about losing your strength or having to resort to exercise to hold on to your muscle mass. Yeah. That problem tends to happen when you get become too overweight

or if you're starting out too overweight and you have to drop what's equivalent to multiple weight classes. Then there's a performance loss, there's a change in leverage, there's all these things that start to influence your ability to perform at a high level. So just finding your sweet spot. There is a point where, like you just talked about, gaining additional weight requires an unsustainable effort of eating. And you just eat a light lunch and it goes right down. Most people aren't familiar with that point, most of our listeners. They're more familiar with the point where you can no longer lose any body fat without starving yourself. So there's a range there. For me, I know that once I start hovering around 200, I really have to eat.

I think the heaviest I ever got myself was 205, and I was eating like close to 5,000 calories. That's already a lot of food. And then on the other end of the spectrum, that's a little bit more complicated because I've gained muscle over time. But in the past, first time I tried to diet down, I'd get super lean. Once I'd get below 160, it was a problem. I'd starve. I'd just feel shitty all the time. No energy. Couldn't train. Then I did this for a while, gained weight, got stronger. My first few years of barbell training, primarily for strength, using the techniques we talk about, you know, I cut down and getting below 170 became a problem. And I had to, you know, same thing, but except I looked way better this time. Still not quite where I want

to be, but, you know, I looked way better, you know, in the 160s than I did in the 150s prior to training heavy. Yes. Yeah. So, you know, I'm breaking past 170 was a pain. Now it's, you know, I get to 180 and getting under that, I have to like really put in some effort. And, you know, I can do it. But sustaining that and being able to train hard, that's a whole other story, you know. So, you know, you have a range is what I'm kind of getting at. And you can fuck around and eat more or less and, you know, kind of stay in that range and still train. So, like me getting from 198 down to 180, you know, I kept most of my strength. You know, I had to reset, you know, I was working through an injury at the same time. So there's some confounders there, but for the

most part, I'm, you know, lifting the same amount of weight, but I bet if I lose another five to 10 pounds, I'm going to see some weight come off the bar. Yeah, that's exactly what I noticed, you know. So I had one meet, I competed at 215. And like I said, I always weigh out, you know, lighter than I thought. I think I weighed out at like 211 or 212, 211, I think, um, at that meet. So then, you know, over the next year I cut down to like 200 and, you know, very slowly and pretty much, you know, I, I then came down to 195 and it took me a little bit of time to get back to the numbers I was at for, you know, I, I then came down to 195 and it took me a little bit of time to get back to the numbers I was at for, you know, sets across. And it's really like the volume work that

I wasn't as good at. And my leverages changed a little bit on the squat, but anyway, that's the first thing I noticed. Yeah. So the first thing you notice, right. And it does, you know, that's that noticeably changed from two 15 to one 95, but, uh, it, yeah, it's just in time that came back. And then I was actually stronger on the deadlift because I had a little bit better leverages on the deadlift, um, which we've talked about as well. So, yeah. So, you know, I guess all that's to say is that, you know, if, unless, unless you really have a, a strong desire to push your performance really hard in the short term, maybe you don't need all that extra food, right? You know, maybe it could be the difference between like, Hey, I'm, you know, I'm not gonna,

I'm not gonna go up a weight class for this competition or, you know, I'm not going to do a competition or something like that. Right. I've noticed that over time, like, I mean, we've talked about this, like the maintenance episode like we we have been training for like the last two years at least more or less in a maintenance kind of mode and we still add a little bit of strength over time and then that also comes with yes it's part of the programming and the amount of effort we're willing to put in the weight room but that also means that on the food side of the equation, that where we found a level that's sustainable, that maintains our body weight within that range, that sweet spot, that's also not excessive in one way or the other, right? We're not deprived

of energy. We're not bursting with energy either. Right. Well, it's like a weight range i could i could stay you know between oh 180 to 195 and i'm fine you know yeah i noticed beyond 195 i don't get much benefit lifting under 180 i mean i haven't really done it so but i'm assuming it's gonna decline if i go there you know yeah but uh you know it's a 15 pound spread i have so it's not really maintenance i go up and then i go down yeah right exactly yeah exactly this is actually if I go there, you know? Yeah. But, you know, it's a 15-pound spread I have, so it's not really maintenance. I go up and then I go down. Yeah, right, exactly. I go up and then I go down.

Yeah, exactly. It's actually a pretty wide, you know, range to play in. What quote-unquote maintenance actually looks like is you, you know, gain up to your upper limit, you go down to your lower limit, and you're continuously getting stronger. Yeah, right, yeah. Your upper gets a little bit bigger every time,

and then, you know, yeah, exactly, exactly. It's not really maintenance. So, back, yeah. Yeah, so, yeah, so so there we go you know that that's kind of just maybe what part of this episode is it's not so much like hacks like how do i save money in my grocery bill that's not exactly what we're talking about here which we're just kind of like maybe maybe this is a time to think about what is what are the inputs that you're putting into your training on the food side? And do you really need all that stuff? So along with this, I want to just take a quick detour and say, what about popular supplements?

Because there's a couple supplements that are really popular in the strength world. Probably the most popular one is creatine. It's the one I mentioned earlier at $45 a pound or $36 a pound, or frankly for me at $20 a pound, I don't think I'm very interested, but what do you, what do you think about that? Like,

is that worth, you know, is that worth it? I've went my entire training career, not having taken that. And I think when I was 19, I took the, what was it?

Uh, what was that called? The, is it hydrochloride? No, ethyl ester, the one of the bullshit. Oh, the HMB, I took the, what was it? What was that called? The, is it hydrochloride? No, ethyl ester, one of the bullshit ones. Oh, the HMB? Is that the, yeah. Creatine ethyl ester.

Oh, okay. It was like a new popular one. And it was like, this was back when I was into cutting, you know, and I wanted to be lean. And it's like, oh, you won't gain weight, which is stupid because creatine works by making you gain water weight, you know? So, you know, that's what you know, that was the draw there. And of course, you don't gain weight because the thing doesn't work. But that's the only time I've ever taken it.

I've never taken monohydrate. I support it because I know that it works. It works in practice. It works in the professional research literature. It's always great when they both line up. Sometimes that does happen. And it used to be pretty cheap, but I don't, I'm not good at taking things. So I

just, I don't take it, you know, I've never taken it. I don't take, I barely take whey protein. Right, right. I have egg white protein at night if I'm hungry and I don't want to eat something, I'll just drink that. But I don't really supplement, I eat food, you know? Yeah, yeah. So, you know, you could do without that and train just fine. It's not, you know, it's not steroids, you know, it's not going to dramatically increase your strength, but it does help, you know, it's the primary fuel during lifting type activities or anything explosive or, you know, high force output, you're going to use creatine and, you know, obviously carbs over the duration of the workout. Yeah.

So, yeah, no, I think that you could probably cut that out and be fine. think that you could probably cut that out and be fine. My anecdotal experience with creatine is it's good for like, you know, if you're pushing out an AMRAP, right, maybe you get nine reps instead of eight reps, or maybe you get 12 instead of 10 or 11. Or, you know, or it's like the last set of if you're doing like a five by five volume day, that fifth set moves a little easier. You know, it's not a huge thing, but over time time it adds up, right? All those little extra reps can add up to a meaningful performance boost and at $8 a pound, that's fine. I'm happy to take that. Uh, but yeah, I'm with you, you know, once my stash runs out, like if it, if it hasn't fallen in price, I'm, I'm not interested. Um, yeah. Okay. So, so creatine, we can cross off the list, you know, probably everything. I mean,

there's a lot of shit that has, you know, pre-workout that's, it's just caffeine and creatine. You don't need most of this shit. Yeah. Yeah. You know, this stuff is, it's ridiculous. Um, I think BCAAs have, you know, I don't follow the literature that closely, but I think they have kind of fallen in favor, right?

Um, it's just kind of expensive, expensive protein powder. The protein powder that you're buying has a bunch of BCAAs in it. And if you're eating animal based proteins, you're getting a lot in it. Even the fake plant stuff is fortified with it. I mean, it's just stupid. It's a waste of money. Um, you know, and if you want caffeine, go make some black coffee in your AeroPress with your, with your beans that have been roasted in the last three weeks.

I've been drinking black coffee during workouts for years and it's the job done. Just make sure you put enough beans in there. That's right. Yeah. Bill Starr would always talk about, he had a special coffee pot in his office for athletes that are really dragging ass. And he would send them over to the coffee pot. He's like, you need to drink a cup of this. And he would like triple steep that with, it was just like mud. That's what you do. So there you go. Okay. So yeah, so that covers protein and like basic supplements, right? Anything else worth mentioning on the supplement side that's, you know, I don't think so.

I think if your diet's out of balance, a multivitamin can work. But again, if that gets super expensive, you know, the human body's pretty resilient. We didn't have, you know, these extensive diets for centuries. Right. And we haven't had a deficiency problem in this country for over a century. There's so much fortification now in a lot of foods. But yeah, you're not getting everything all the time. Vitamin D is still cheap.

You know, I still recommend people take vitamin D. I do too, yeah. But that's, luckily, is still cheap right now, you know. In terms of macros, you know, there's carbs. Carbs are the cheapest of the three, typically. So, you know, rice is right. Rice, I believe, is still cheap. Canned beans are still cheap, you know. I eat refried beans i like them get regular too you get bags of beans and cook them yourself you have the time it's you know quite the process i learned my father's recipe when i was like 20 21 and i still know how to make them i haven't made

them from scratch in a while but you know bags of beans are cheap cans of beans are cheap you got cans of corn that's something i buy when i want some quick carbs. I get cans of corn and try to eat that. Cereal should probably still be okay. Oatmeal, I get the big canisters of oatmeal. I get multiple of them. So I do the oatmeal still. Bananas, you know, bananas have historically been a cheap fruit. Apples are usually pretty fairly priced.

I get, but I typically stick to bananas. Yeah. Seasonal, seasonal fruit in general fruit in general usually can be found. So like, you know, we're coming up in a couple months here, we're going to come up on berry season in the summer. So yeah, that's a good time to buy that. Probably shouldn't be buying strawberries in December, you know? Right, yeah. Or grapes, you know?

For $6.99 for a little pint of them, but yeah. $5 a pound grapes. Right. Yeah. No, that's good. Yeah. Carbs are, here's the best thing I've found for saving money on carbs. And again, this involves spending money up front.

The Zojirushi, I hope I'm saying that right. Zojirushi rice maker. Have you seen this thing? I've heard of it. Okay. So it's like, there's a bunch of them that look like this. It's, it's just a pod shaped rice cooker. Nothing special about that, but you want the, here's the thing. You want the one with the neuro fuzzy technology. Neuro, is that what it's called? It's super Japanese, right? It's Zojirushi with neuro

fuzzy. They make a few different models. You want the neuro fuzzy technology. You have to send me this. Yeah. It's, it's about last time I checked, they're about 180 bucks. So they're, it's not cheap. I get that. But it's a really nice rice cooker that will cook any type of rice. It also does oats. If you, you know, you can cook oatmeal if you want to do that. I've never done that.

I just do rice, but it keeps it fresh. It keeps it moist and warm for up to 72, 96 hours sometimes. Get the fuck out of here. But for sure, I've had good success for up to 72 hours. Keeps your rice warm. So you just make a big old pot of that and keep it in the Zojirushi and you've got two, three days of rice for your rice bowls. Well, I got to buy this because the reason I don't have a rice cooker is because it doesn't

hold well in the fridge when you have leftovers. That's right. Yeah. So this thing is good. Now, it depends. One thing is it doesn't hold well in the fridge when you have leftovers. That's right. Yeah. So this thing is good. Now, it depends. One thing is it kind of depends on what kind of rice you're cooking. Some rice dries out fast. Like we just bought some jasmine or basmati, one of those two, and the thinner one, you know.

And that stuff dries out really fast. So if you want to keep that, you're going to have to add a little water. But if you're talking about the fluffier, you know, just kind of long grain rices, those tend to do real well. And for 72 hours, three days, you've got a big old thing of rice. Thing is awesome. So there you go. And what the thing is, like, so we were talking about laziness a couple episodes ago. That's what it is for us. Like if I have to make rice every single time I'm making a rice bowl i'm not interested but with this it's it's pretty low effort you know i just scoop a couple of cups of

dry rice in there i just put some water in there i hit the button and then an hour later i've got rice and then i've got it for the next three days that sounds good to me and that makes that keeps me eating rice rather than going and buying, you know, more expensive goods. But anyway, yeah, so there's a thing where another, it's kind of like a buying in bulk thing. You know, if you just get some nice stuff, it makes life easier. So it's easier to eat the cheaper goods. So, yeah. Yeah, so then what do we have left?

We have fat. Fats, you can accidentally get enough fat, you know. But, you know, like you said, salmon's expensive. So I'm not going to tell people that are on a budget, go get some fish, some fatty fish, but maybe fish oil is cheaper when you're trying to just target the EPA and DHA that you get from actual fish. So you might just want to supplement something like that. I haven't looked at the price of fish oil, but I imagine that it might be a little bit cheaper than trying to eat a lot of salmon. Yeah, so I would start there. You can go for plant-based stuff like peanut butter, you know, nut spreads, things like that, and you can get some ALA that way and extract a little bit of EPA and DHA from that. But fat's a little bit

more straightforward. Where it gets difficult is vegetables. But fresh produce can get real expensive even under normal conditions. So right now it might be up. And that's where multivitamin might be a better option than trying to eat pounds and pounds of vegetables or at least try to get a couple servings a day in if you can. At least get some fiber, right? I used to go lazy and do the frozen bags, but I stopped doing that because, you know, that's more expensive. So now I, you know, I cut up most of my vegetables and it tends to be cheaper that way. But, uh, you know, instead of eating, uh, a vegetable serving, you know, three, four or five times a day, which I know a lot of you are not doing anyways. Right. times a day, which I know a lot of you are not doing anyways, you could instead take

a multivitamin or now they have veggie supplements, as they call them. I've not messed with them. They're pretty loaded up with stuff. But, you know, that's where you compare. You're like, okay, I got to buy produce, which means I got to go to the store more often, which, you know, there's a gas cost there. Your time is worth something too. And everything's more expensive, right? Or you get a supplement and then you can ask yourself, okay, is this cheaper

when I factor all those things in? It probably is. I don't know for sure. Some of these things can be very expensive, but you know, with produce, you can't just buy a bunch of it typically. You know, if you're going fresh, you have to go several times a week. I know this because I do it. That's right. That's right. There's a few things you can do, you know, like you said, frozen, um, you can buy frozen. You don't, if you don't want like the mixed vegetable bag, you can also sometimes buy like frozen peas and stuff. There's some certain things that keep well, I know for the, this is not vegetables, but fruit. If you like a fruit smoothie or you like a fruit in like a, you know, some sort of like parfait thing with like Greek yogurt or something, you can buy frozen fruit too. You know, if you don't have good

access or to fresh fruit, or it's just super expensive, usually you can buy bags of frozen fruit cheaper that way. And those, those go well in oatmeal as well. Like if you just, you know, if you have some frozen fruit that you throw in a piping hot bowl of oatmeal, it cools it down to a reasonable temperature. And also, you know, you get some, get some flavor in there and get some fruit that you throw in a piping hot bowl of oatmeal, it cools it down to a reasonable temperature. And also, you know, you get some, get some flavor in there and get some of that good stuff. I'll throw in an unconventional suggestion, grow some. So when we move to our new place, yeah, you know, if you have the space and you have the right climate. You know, we moved here to East Tennessee in Chattanooga last April. We just like literally threw together a little raised bed with cinder blocks and a little bit of garden soil. And we just threw in some okra plants. We had seeds, okra seeds.

And we didn't know anything about what we're doing. You know, I just knew that okra grew well in this environment. Well, those grew to about nine, 10 feet tall and we had okra until September. Okay. Continuously. And that stuff is great. You know, you get a ton of it. I love okra. It lasts pretty well. Like it keeps in the fridge well.

You cut it up and like we would just dice it and throw it in the cast iron and saute it. And it's, you know, it's great. It goes with everything. You can throw it in your rice bowl, you know, it goes with beef, goes with the chicken, goes with pork. And so anyway, there you go. If you're in a situation where you can take advantage of that, we grew this in like a little five foot by five foot, you know, raised bed. And I think it was like four plants. That stuff just was a gift that kept on giving. You know, on the other hand, like if you, if we were going to try to like grow lettuce, that's a pretty low ROI endeavor, you know, but like this, you're not going to get a whole lot. You're not getting very much out of that. Right. I mean, might as well just, you know,

purify some water, get a pond. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, no, I think that pretty much covers the major food groups there. You know, you should be drinking water. You know, it might be good to get an RO system or something like that in case water gets expensive to get bottled. You know, if you have undrinkable water. And, like, you know, when I lived in L.A., I couldn't drink that local water from the tap. That really depends on where you live. You know, I'm not a water snob by any means. Here, I have some sort of a filter in my fridge and I drink it, but you know, my girlfriend has to get bottled because Arizona has hot, hard water. So, you know, you might want to look into that while it's still, I guess, I don't even know what affordable is anymore, but you know, you might want to have some filtration system. So

you're not buying jugs of water, you know? Yep. Uh, we recently got a Berkey filter, um, which is like the big, you probably, you've probably seen these if you didn't know what they, even if you didn't know what they are, it's like a big stainless steel looking cylinder. And, uh, I forget how big ours is. holds a couple gallons it's not it's not super big we probably should have bought the next size up but anyway it's just this big steel container and it's got a bottom section and a top section the right the top is the filter section so you basically buy filters that you can screw into the they're like long steel or long cylinders that you screw into the top portion of it and And you can buy between one and four.

And the filters are expensive, but they last for five years. They will filtrate continuously for up to five years. And you basically just pour your tap water in the top, let it filter down to the reservoir in the bottom section. You've got a little spigot on there and you can get nice clean water. And it's, you know, I can't remember off the top of my head what all it filters out, but it does a lot. Basically, everything's short of like some protozoa and stuff.

So like you don't want to pour like camp water that the bear peed in or something, you know, down from the stream. Maybe not that, but you know, you'd probably be okay in a lot of circumstances. Again, expensive, but you know, it lasts for five years. Yeah, you got to start thinking about these things, you know, if this is an issue that you might find yourself facing. So, yeah, I think we've covered, you know, all the major food groups, supplements. We've covered water.

You know, I hope you've stocked up on booze over the years. I know i have right yeah i the worst part of becoming a strength coach for me is that you know so there's all these like you know whiskey freaks in the strength world and i've i've tasted all these fantastic whiskeys because other people would be like oh you gotta try this you gotta try this and i'm like oh it's great it's great and i found none of them because i i got into this like you know way too late in the game so i've had pappy never seen a bottle in my life but i had i had a little glass one time i've had weller 12 never seen a bottle except you know at a bar but i've never seen one in the store to buy you haven't seen one you

haven't seen it scott hambrick's house then huh? Well, yeah, I mean, I have. The only Weller I used to get was from him because he would buy cases of Antique 107, and that's where I would get it. But I hardly even saw Antique 107 on the shelf. I think I've only seen Special Reserve on the shelf. That's about it. Hambrick got me a Fat Boy of the 107, the one and a half liter. Then he also got me a liter. And then I had a couple 750s that I found at a liquor store I used to shop at. Same with all my 12s I got at this one liquor store I used to go to. But as with everything, the vultures found it and now it's not possible anymore like it once was.

Yep. Yep. Yes. I actually have a friend who is, um, in the liquor business. He told me that the secret to that is at least in his area, the distribution for nice whiskey is based on how much fireball you've sold. I believe that. And so this guy runs like basically a really nice, like high end wine shop with a little bit of whiskey on the side. So, you know, he, he sells, you know, zero fireball. And so, and they like, they get what he's trying to do. But yeah, he basically, he doesn't get any nice whiskey as a result. The bodega down the street will actually get some Weller 12 or whatever.

Yeah, no. So whiskey, you know, it's fun. But it's something that you're, if you're trying to get into that now, you're a little bit late and it's gotten even more expensive from what I heard. I can probably turn a hefty profit if I didn't love my bottle so much. But you could still get some reasonable booze out there, and that's not an essential nutrient anyways. So if you can— Whoa, now.

Yeah, I mean, for us it is, for a different reason, not because we're drunks, but, you know, we enjoy it. It's delicious and raises your HDL. Oh, yes, of course. Of course, yeah. You just have one, you know. You know, for the record, I don't – usually don't have more than one, to be honest. Sorry about these days. I might have two on a Friday, you know, but typically one.

I don't want people thinking that I'm a hypocritical drunk. Uh, maybe I am, I don't know. No, I'm kidding. Uh, typically just one, you know, I have two on a, on a weekend maybe, but, and I measure a pour as one and a half ounces of, uh, spirits. So, uh, yeah, no, we've covered it all. Uh, I think. Yeah. Well, So, you know, we've covered it all, I think. Yeah. Well, hopefully this has been some food for thought. See what I did there.

Yeah. It's just not, you can't eat that. But yeah, maybe it's just a time of history, time of life to be thinking about your baseline assumptions, right? So, well, I always buy this stuff and I always buy that. And this is the stuff that I get. And if it's getting unsustainable for your budget, or it's getting hard to find, this might be a good time to just retool things in general and think about, think about one or two ways, one or two things you can do to fortify yourself,

you know, against, uh, future price increases. I'll say this too. Um, we didn't, you know, we talked about buying in bulk, but you know, there's other stuff that you can do. That's pretty easy. It's like every time you go to the store, I highly recommend this. Buy some more flour, buy some sugar, buy some cans of stuff, dry goods that you can keep on the shelf. Can't hurt. Get you one of those little bins, the Rubbermaid tubs or whatever, and just fill one up. Put it in your kitchen if you got room. Put it somewhere. Can't hurt in case we ever have some more shortages in the future.

I concur. Yeah. All right. Well, I think that was a good one. So I think we could probably wrap this up and, you know, move to a training episode next time. Yep. So yeah, I'll close out. Thank you for tuning in to the Weights and Plates podcast. You can find me at www.weightsandplates.com or on Instagram at the underscore Robert underscore Santana or weights double underscore and double underscore plates.

Excellent. You can find me at marmalade underscore cream on Instagram. You can also email me, trent at marmaladecream.com. And one last reminder, I think there is still time, if you want to, to sign up for the April meet at Wichita Falls, right? That's right. That's right. I'm the meet director for that. So I would love to see you guys there. It's going to be a fun meet. Any trip to the Wichita Falls Athletic Club is an interesting experience that I recommend having. Absolutely. Even if you don't go to Lyft,

if you're near enough to make the trip down there, you ought to do it. That is April 23rd? April 23rd, that's right. All right. You can find more details there at startingstrength.com. Just go to the right side of the page. There's a little sidebar,

and you can scroll down to meets and you can click on the link there for the Wichita Falls meet on April 23rd. All right, we will see y'all in a couple weeks. Thank you.