How to Build Muscle AND Run Long Distance (Without Ruining Your Body) | Mind Pump 2766

Key Takeaway

Training for both strength and endurance requires strategic programming to avoid compromising either adaptation. The most effective approach: alternate full weeks between strength-focused and endurance-focused training. This produces superior gains in both muscle and cardiovascular fitness compared to mixing them in the same workout or even the same week. Critical success factors include high protein intake (not just for bodybuilders), adequate calories, proper sleep tracking, and mobility work.

Episode Overview

This episode tackles the challenge of simultaneously building muscle/strength and cardiovascular endurance—two competing physiological adaptations. The hosts discuss three programming approaches, with the weekly alternating method showing superior results in studies. They emphasize that this approach works best for general population seeking overall fitness, not athletes who need sport-specific skill practice. Key implementation factors include strategic nutrition timing, adequate sleep for injury prevention, mobility work, and understanding that beginners should focus on building a strength foundation first before adding complex endurance protocols.

Full Transcript

Transcript of How to Build Muscle AND Run Long Distance (Without Ruining Your Body) | Mind Pump 2766 from Mind Pump Show. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

become a bodybuilder and run a marathon. Is it possible? I don't know. Probably not. But you can definitely train to build a physique and get lots of endurance. This is a common question we get asked often. There's a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it. Most people do it the wrong way. We're going to talk about the right way. You want strength, you want muscle, and you want lots of endurance. Here we go. Now, you mentioned Not at all. You mentioned a study uh not that long ago on the podcast.

Was where they toggle back and forth. Now, yes. Was this was this uh new or that been like just an old study you referenced? referenced? referenced? There had been a this was another study, but there's been a couple that um have kind of echoed um those results. And you have some coaches that have been utilizing the strategy and reporting better results. And to be quite honest with you, with our experience, you know, when I went over the the details of the study, the results, I'm sure you like I was, you guys were probably like, "Of course." Yeah, of course.

Of course it works out. works out. works out. I mean, I've heard of coaches using this in their programming before, but like I haven't actually experimented. Oh, you know, so you know people that have this was like so foreign to me. Like I thought it was really interesting. Uh never crossed my path to to program this way, so I can't say I've taken a client through it. I haven't even taken myself through something like this, but it I'm intrigued. Yes. So, let's So, and there's some there's some uh weaknesses to it.

So, we'll get to that. But, so there's there's three main ways that you could or general ways that you could organize your training if you're looking for building muscle and gaining lots of endurance, which are competing um adaptations, right? So, lots of endurance if you're trying to maximize that. The body doesn't want big muscles. It doesn't want muscles that utilize a lot of oxygen. The larger a muscle is, the the the worse the ratio of surface area to size. So, it's harder to get nutrients and oxygen to the muscle.

It's also heavier. Um, and so larger muscles tend to to produce less uh endurance. Um, they're just not as good. Now, larger muscles are great for strength, though. Big muscle fibers contract harder. So, you want more strength, more muscle, but you also want more endurance. Those are competing signals. And so, this is why this can get really touchy. So, because a lot of people are like, "Hey, I want all of it." Yeah. And you got to be very careful with how you train for both of them because you can actually get none of both if you do it wrong.

If you do it right, you'll get a decent amount of both. Now, I'm going to be very clear. You're not going to get the most muscle training for both or the most endurance training for both. But if you do it right, you'll get a decent amount. It's a compromise still. It's still a compromise no matter what. Now, this also clears up what the old theory was that or how we used to communicate uh you know when you ran a lot you ended up like running for a marathon that you would burn the muscle off and [snorts] that's not what's happening here.

So, it's not a matter of because I think some people think well if I just feed like crazy if I eat it. Yeah. If I eat more calories than I burn then I can I can still train like a marathon and keep all my muscle but it's it's not true. It's you keep training endurance or training for a half marathon or a marathon, the body will pair down muscle. It'll get a loud enough signal that hey, this person is trying to get really good at running.

This is not efficient for us to have this regardless of how well you're fed. Yeah, I remember learning that years ago cuz I when I first became a trainer, that's what I thought, right? I thought you burn. I used to communicate that in my 20s. my 20s. my 20s. But that's not happening. In fact, if you look at the physiology of what it would require for your body to eat, muscle up, to get energy, it's actually the last thing it wants to do. Um, but it is an adaptation.

So, you're asking your body to get really good at something. And so, your body's going to try to change the way it looks, [snorts] uh, or the way it functions to get good at that one thing. Um, so it just pairs muscle down, right? It doesn't burn it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, I'm glad you communicated that cuz it's true eating, you know, more calories and higher protein will reduce the muscle pair down, but that's not because you're burning the muscle. It's just you're you're you're giving your body body more energy and being a deficit on top of all that.

Not not a good idea. That'll exacerbate it. So if you're under calories and you're also doing all the running, it's like that's a recipe for for for your two signals are saying get rid of muscle. Right. muscle. Right. muscle. Right. That's right. So there's a few there's three general ways that you can organize. I say general because within what we're saying then that you get the specifics of programming, but there's three general ways you can organize your training. If you're looking for both endurance and let's say strength or muscle gains, option one is you have your workouts and it and you're combining both in the workout.

And generally what it looks like is you do your lifting first and then you do your running at the end. Now you can flip-flop those but generally speaking um most coaches would identify that you'd want to do the strength stuff first and the endurance afterwards because it tends to work out better that way when you're doing them in the same workout. Now, let's talk about um how within that one this one uh way you would even modify that based off how the client says the goal.

For example, um I tell you that I I care more about muscle, building muscle, but I'd like to have some good endurance. Um like the training protocol you recommend me, I would imagine would be different than if I said like, I really care about endurance, but I also want to keep some of this muscle that I worked. the amount of each you would do would change based off that. So they totally So in other words, like the the person who really wants a lot of endurance uh and then just cares a little bit about keeping muscle, it might look like a MAPS 15 protocol with the rest of their hour being really focused on endurance training.

And then maybe somebody who's like, I just want a little bit of endurance, but I care more about muscle. It might look more like a maps anabolic or a full routine with just maybe the last 15, 20 minutes. Hit cardio. Hit cardio. Hit cardio. Yeah. Hit cardio towards Is that how you would structure that? Yeah. Yeah. Generally speaking, but you know uh you also want to consider that endurance requires uh a lot more volume than strength uh and muscle building as well. So generally speaking, what you said though is totally true.

So that's like one way to do it, right? I do my lifting and then I go do some endurance. Some workouts combine all of it all at once. Terrible programming, CrossFit, but generally you separate them in the workout. That's one option. Second option is some days are just lifting and some days are just endurance. Uh this is a better way to train. Okay, you get better results this way. If instead of mixing them all in one workout, you know, Monday I lift, you know, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday I run, Friday I lift or whatever kind of combination you do, but you don't do them all in the same workout.

It's either strength or cardio or or or responds best to specificity. Like it's always the case. Now again, even now in this case, similar situation, right? Like again, the client telling me cuz they want both, both, both, but whichever one they they're going to prioritize, I'm going to put less or more volume into the training. Totally. So, it's like if I'm still toggling those days and I have somebody who's really focused on strength, the strength days would be like a full maps anabolic type of routine and then maybe the the endurance endurance endurance a day or two of endurance, right?

Day or two endurance and then and then the reverse is true. I really want lots of endurance. So maybe it's only 15 minutes of training on the days that they lift, but then you got an hour hour long three four days out of the week or are the cardio 100%. And then there's option three and this one produces the best overall strength and endurance. So it's actually superior for the physical adaptations of strength and endurance. But there is a caveat which I'll get to at the end.

So this is what this looks like and this is interesting because this is a relatively new way of training when you're trying to build both. Um, and they have some studies show this is superior. And what it looks like is one week you just lift, one week you just focus on endurance and you toggle like that. So it's lally week on, week off, week on, week off where I'm only focusing on building muscle and then I'm only focusing on endurance. That seems to produce the best overall gains in both muscle and endurance.

Now, here's the weakness, and this is why athletes don't train this way. Because athletes need to practice their skills all the time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you can't take an athlete uh who needs endurance uh and just have them practice their sport every other week. [snorts] Although they may have more endurance, they're going to lose the skill of their sport, which actually makes them less efficient, which actually produces worse outcomes. In other words, if you're a jiu-jitsu fighter, I don't think you should lift one week, do jiu-jitsu one week, lift one week, do jiu-jitsu.

You're better off doing jiu-jitsu every single week because you need to practice the skill of it. But if you're looking just for strength and endurance, just general, alternate every other week. It's okay. So, because because the studies have shown that that's superior, this makes the most sense for Gen Pop who's just kind of saying they want all of it. That's right. That's right. That's right. If I'm a if I'm competing in jiu-jitsu, I'm competing in basketball, I'm competing in football. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This doesn't this this Well, you got to play the sport, right?

So, that that would trump it because my sport is that important. Totally. Totally. Totally. That that takes priority. But we talked to a lot of people that aren't the highly competitive B. They're more like weekend warrior. I play basketball on the weekends here and there or I I they want the physical attributes, right? 100%. right? 100%. right? 100%. So I and I don't want to lose that. And so that which is so interesting to me because the the previous two I've I've trained clients and and done.

I've never done the other way. But when I really think about think about think about the average person, I rarely got to get an athlete. I loved when I got to get an athlete, but it was rare. Yeah, it's rare that I got the semi-pro or pro alete who wanted to that wanted to hire me and I got to train, you know, for a professional sport or that was really Most of the people I trained were people that just that just that just like to play the sport and be decent at it.

it. it. They wanted fitness, but they wanted to be healthy and fit and so and so I actually never did the superior way. And that's why I was asking you if this was relatively new. Yeah. To think about because you know even in the off season you'll block it out. So you'll just mainly focus on building up that strength and kind of moving them on to endurance as its own specific endeavor like for that like training block, but uh to have maybe another block where it's this hybrid uh you know week on week off might be a cool way to do it.

Of course, your expert athlete programming mind went there because I I think if you're an athlete, there's a there's a great way to organize this. There's a way to benefit. But for someone listening right now is like, I want a lot of endurance and I want a lot of strength. And it's like, well, what sport? I don't It's not a sport. I just want both want both want both physical attributes. This is the way to train train train is you alternate one week, one week, one week, one week.

And you're going to get a lot of both. Today's giveaway is the RGB bundle. If you want to win, you have to leave a comment below this video in the first 24 hours that we drop it. Subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications. If you win, we'll notify you in the comments section. Also, four MAPS programs right now 50% off. All four of them 50% off. Here they are. MAPS starter, maps transform, maps anabolic, and maps performance. Go to mapsfitnessproducts.com. mapsfitnessproducts.com. mapsfitnessproducts.com. Use the code new year50 for that discount.

By the way, you can get them all. Back to the show. [snorts] But, you know, back to what I said about the weakness about practicing the skill. A lot of your lack of stamina. Yes, you need cardiovascular endurance. You need the physiological the physiological the physiological ways that your body expresses endurance or strength, but you'll lose efficiency if your skill is off, which will make you gas out faster. So, a good example, I experienced this firsthand. I'll never forget this. I was training for the US Open in jiu-jitsu.

Man, I was like four or five days a week. You could throw me in there. I could roll with five, six partners one afternoon. I had crazy stamina. Then I had a buddy who was a boxer and he and I like, "Yeah, I'd like to go do some training with you." And I went in the ring and I gassed out two rounds. [clears throat] I couldn't believe like how it was and it's it was different because I I didn't have the skill. So every movement I did was so inefficient that I was just wasting energy because of lack of skill.

So if you're an athlete, this isn't the way to train. But if you want endurance and strength and you're like, I'm hybrid, like try this out. It works. the the data is really interesting. Now, I think generally speaking, this is a great tip, but do you do you guys find that the when you're going after two separate adaptations like this, do you think there's a more of a skill and art to how you apply it? In other words, someone who's just going for general strength or general whatever, um, which I think we you see a lot of mistakes, the way they apply intensity, the way they apply volume.

Does that get overly complex when you now have a two adaptations that you're trying to toggle back and forth for? I would think yes. Yeah. I I think too the big thing to consider is uh a lot of people consider programming with strength training or at least they should. But I think more people know that strength training requires some programming, right? When it comes to endurance, people just like I just going to go till I'm tired. Yeah. It's not just about getting uh fatigued and sweating.

So you would approach it with programming. And if you're a beginner, you know, your lifting needs to be practiced. And then if you do the week of, let's say, running, it also needs to be practiced. be practiced. be practiced. Well, yeah. I mean, are we talking about getting improving speed? Are we just improving your durability and in your mechanics? Like, mechanics? Like, mechanics? Like, yeah, you have to be a lot more specific with your endurance. So, like what I would do, let's say this, let's say I wanted to do this, right?

I got great skill with strength training. No problem. Endurance definitely should work on that. Uh, but I, you know, running, if I were to start running, it would take me six months just to get good biomechanics before I could really push running if I'm being smart, right? Otherwise, I'm going to hurt myself. hurt myself. hurt myself. So, what I would do if I just wanted endurance and didn't want that six months of ramp up of skill is I would use a bike, you know, I'd get on a salt bike and it requires very little skill and I would just test and, you know, strengthen my endurance like that.

I have hard days, easier days, long, you know, longer days or days that are more intense on that week of endurance. That's what I would do to try to build both. both. both. Yeah, it's interesting. So, I played around with this not that long ago and mine looked more like I was walking on the treadmill and then every couple minutes do like a little 15 15 second maybe 30 second like I wouldn't even call it a sprint. It was like a I don't know if I go Yeah, it was like a trot.

Exactly. But what what it really was and seriously like and I mean I think off air I was joking with you guys just because how how long I've been since I've done something like that. Like it was I was actually just thinking about my mechanics. Yeah. I could have ran faster. I know I could have ran faster, right? I could have pushed beyond that, but I knew I hadn't done that. You didn't want to compromise your skill. skill. skill. Yeah. So, it was it was literally walking at like a three and a half speed and then I'd ramp it up to like a five or a six where I'm like I was literally thinking about how my foot was hitting the ground, how I was running, how my chest was, like just trying to practice that 30 seconds and I go back to a walk and I just kept doing that for a good like 30 45 minutes.

Now, there are some consistent with this [snorts] uh consistencies with this in regards to other aspects like diet and lifestyle because this is a performance-based uh kind of you know protocol, right? You're looking for strength, you're looking for endurance, endurance, endurance, high calorie [snorts] diet. Yeah. So, high calorie, high protein. It's high protein, high carb. So, this low carb is not going to work well. Uh you don't get the best strength with low carb. You definitely don't get the best uh endurance with low carb. Gas out.

out. out. So, high protein, high carbohydrates. And I think it's very important to time your eating around your workouts, especially on the endurance days. It's it's very wise to eat an hour before or two with a decent meal and then afterwards to replenish glycogen, maybe help with recovery a little bit. So that's really important. And then for inflammation, uh especially if this is new to you, uh you want to have fish uh three days a week or take uh on a daily basis high EPA fish oil makes a big difference uh for inflammation.

No, I think the the biggest mistake that is made and we kind of we touched on it before, but just want to highlight it since you're going back on the diet again that people make is because a lot of times I'll hear this like I want to build muscle. I want to get strong. Um I want to have some sort of endurance and be healthy, but I also want to lose body fat. fat. fat. And so a lot of people will will do this in a low in a deficit.

And th this is like such a mistake because you No, you're either trying to lose fat or you're trying to maximize performance. Stop trying to do both, right? That's just crazy. just crazy. just crazy. And and and trying to do that in this situation is a recipe for like getting the worst of both things, right? Like you you know in a calorie deficit, you're not going to end up building any muscle from the strength training you're doing. You're going to you're running endurance. You might see get a little bit of stamina while you do it, but you're going to lose a bunch of muscle along the way while you do that.

And so this person ends up maybe losing weight on the scale, but then they lose an equal amount of muscle as they lose body fat. And so they don't put themselves in any healthier position because they're trying to obtain you be fighting fatigue the whole time you're performing, which then too is going to compromise your mechanics and leave you susceptible for potential injury. injury. injury. Yeah. And I'll say I'll go back to diet like the high protein. It's funny. I was just having this conversation uh with my brother-in-law like he does jiu-jitsu pretty regularly.

Um let me think how old is he now? So, he just turned 40. Um, and he's, you know, relatively competitive. And he's always talking about how his body hurts and he's tired. And I've been preaching to him about high protein. Now, he's like, "That's for bodybuilders. I'm just trying to jiu-jitsu." I'm like, "No, dude. It'll help you with your recovery, with your pain, with jiu-jitsu." And he's like, "It's so hard to eat protein. All the excuses." So, so finally he started to do it consistently. So, we're on day seven.

This is one week. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He sends me a text this morning. He's like, "I don't know if it's a placebo or something, but I've got way more energy and I'm way stronger. I think I'm seeing my abs all of a sudden." I'm like, so I sent him this long text afterwards. I'm like, "Well, let's see. All the data plus one of the top fitness podcasters in the world who you're related to has been telling you to do this. I don't think it's placebo, bro." But he's reporting back, you know, really good uh results from this.

And I think a lot of times people who are athletic or endurancebased don't think the high protein benefits them as well. It does. it it it's not just for building muscle. It's good for recovery. Makes a big difference. One of the things he's done that to help. He's taking a shake once a day, but he's also now planning his meals. This is where he would mess up is he wasn't, you know, meal prepping and structuring and, you know, doing his meals. I was talking to him about using Butcher Box because, uh, it makes it so easy.

You you get your meat, you prep once a week. Um, and then the fatty acid profile from the grass-fed meat is especially for inflammation. inflammation. inflammation. I was going to say for for that reason alone, I would think that would be better for him, too, because he's rolling around. He's probably dealing with a lot of inflammation going on, too. too. too. Totally. Totally. And I've experimented with grain-fed for a while and then grass-fed and finished for a while. There's a big difference in how my body feels.

Yeah. feels. Yeah. feels. Yeah. From the from the fatty acid profile. Well, we just had a caller recently that was talking about their cholesterol levels, and that was like one of the first pieces of advice that you gave was to, you know, go fish and then if you eat red meat, go to grass-fed because it makes that big of a difference. Well, you go if you you you also just drop your fat intake, you go 8 ounces of traditional ribeye versus 8 ounces of grass-fed, grass-finish ribeye.

Same size. The grass-fed is higher protein and lower fat. And then the fat that you get in it is a better fatty acid profile uh for inflammation. So, it's like just across the board, it's it's better. And then lifestyle stuff, right? Uh good sleep. Uh this has got to be consistent. Mobility is key when you're doing when you're training for multiple adaptations. Uh because uh if you don't focus on mobility, injury risk uh is high. Yeah. Um so, mobility and then deep stretching can help a lot uh right before bed, it's really really good to kind of get your body into that parasympathetic state.

Well, and then recovering sleep is so important with all this stuff. I mean, that's just like I I can't stress enough what a difference it is. I feel like it's it's so close to home for me right now cuz I've been lacking sleep and I just you can't get away with it. Like the training even my training volume and intensity right now has to stay even though I feel good and I'm feeling stronger, it's I have to continue to hold back because I'm tracking sleep right now and sleep is just not optimal.

And I feel like that's always been a recipe for getting sick for me or just or getting hurt is thinking I feel good in the gym and pushing it. And then also paired with not good sleep is just, you know what's crazy about that? I've talked about this before, but this the studies on sleep are crazy. If you get poor sleep, your risk of injury the next day, there's nothing will increase your risk of injury more than lack of sleep. Like warm-ups, you could like all that stuff's great.

If you just get a crappy night of sleep and then you go work out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The risk of injury skyrockets. It's so wild. It's so hard too because like right now I'm in a good rhythm right now. And so when you get in that, you know, we all know what this is like when you get in that good rhythm and you're feeling good and you feel like you're getting stronger and there's like so much of me wants to like push. I like that feeling when I'm training and stuff like that.

And so but this has been one of my favorite things just about tracking sleep. Like I know Doug is probably out of all of us, I think probably the most consistent. I've been really consistent with really monitoring and paying attention and if if you do that, I mean that is where that injury comes in and or getting sick. I I don't know that those are the two things that I always notice. I always notice I either overdo it, end up getting getting hurt or I end up getting sick when I'm like that.

Destroys your immune system. Yeah. And I'm glad you guys are bringing up sleep and and mobility. It's like it to me like adding two different variables, two different adaptations you're focused on at the same time. It's like there's this added a bit of stimulus. Your body like is naturally trying to protect itself. And so now you're adding in all of a sudden I'm abruptly shifting the way that I'm operating the next week. And it's like to not you know account for that with extra sleep with with more mobility priming ahead of time uh to really like get everything to fire in sequence correctly.

Uh you know you're overloading the system and so like there'll be times where you're going to cramp. you're going to get, you know, a lot of these like muscle aches and soreness and a lot of these things are going to occur uh when you're putting that kind of demand on the body. So, okay. So, you bringing that up and this is how I was thinking the same way too. I want to counter your tip. Yeah. Just the fact that if if you take yourself back to the the the average client that all of us have trained that that asked for something like that, even though you know the studies point to that, I would think that because I at least I would I still would push my client in the direction of let's get really strong right now.

Let's build your metabolism and then let's really focus in that direction and then we'll go after the endurance piece that you want. you want. you want. You build a base. Yeah, of course. Right. And so I just wanna Absolutely. I just want to make that clear that if you're just getting started like Yeah. Yeah. Build build your strength first. first. first. Yeah. Like that like this tip makes sense. Somebody who is Yeah. You're working out already. Yeah. Yeah. Metabolically healthy, eats a good amount of calories, good muscle, and then it's like they're trying to obtain this next level.

But let's be honest, we're mostly talking to people that are on and off the wagon or just getting started or general pop. And with that person, even knowing what the studies say, Yeah. I would still recommend that client is like, "Hey, let's really focus on a reverse diet, building muscle, building your metabolism, laying a good base." base." base." You know what's funny about what you're saying? You take a total beginner, you know how much endurance they gain just from building the beginning. Yeah. Max goes everything.

Lifting weights will already start to do this. Increasing reps. It's already difficult enough for them to hit protein intake on a consistent basis. So, I'm going to even knowing what you just went over, I'm still focused on convincing them that listen, we're going to get both, both, both, but we're going to mainly focus right now on building strength, building your metabolism, and then when we got ourselves ramped up calorie-wise or feeling strong, then we're going to start to include this like endurance training. And this is what it might look like.

like. like. Yeah. If I had a total beginner, barring any major injuries or any of that stuff, it would probably look like 6 months of just strength training, correctional exercise. And then after that, then we start incorporating start incorporating start incorporating stuff like this. Exactly. Okay, cool. I just want to make that cuz I feel like for I mean, we're in January, right? So, we're in the new year right we're in the new year right now. A lot of people are probably coming off either a layoff or this is a New Year's resolution getting started.

They're like, "Yes, that's me. I want to build endurance and and I also want to get strong." And it's like, yeah, but you're still better off following like a very traditional strength training program, increasing your protein intake, building your metabolism, laying a good foundation, and then we play with things like this. 100%. That's speaking of building muscle. I might have brought the study up before, but I read it again and it just blows me away because there's very few biohacking tools that actually make a big difference.

M but red light therapy known as photobio modulation there was a two there's a lot of studies by the way like in fact uh they did a a review of 10 studies like a metaanalysis showing that it definitely builds muscle and increases strength but there's one study in particular that I really like where they took identical twins they trained them the same difference was one twin did the red light therapy post-workout the other twin didn't twin didn't twin didn't was there a difference in muscle gains there was the twin that did the red light therapy built more muscle, measurable muscle.

measurable muscle. measurable muscle. Your ultimate case study, right? This was 12 weeks. Twins. Yeah. Twins. Yeah. Twins. Yeah. This is 12 weeks. So, and what that highlights because what I think when people hear you say that red light therapy is not building them up. It's what's it's recovering faster, right? I mean, that's [clears throat] what what's happening. It's mitochondrial health. So, well, here's where it gets crazy, bro. They've done this with people who don't they don't have them strength train at all. They just test their strength beginning and then they test it at the end.

Red light therapy builds a little bit of strength. Well, that's weird. It's it's it's it seems I mean that's like testosterone. It seems to trigger just cranks your output a bit. Yeah, dude. Those now the gains are more when you add that and but again though that's just because it's just overall mitochondrial health, right? If you improve that for 12 cells. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So they're going to be more efficient. They're going to fire better. So, like if I'm like a if I'm listening to this and I'm some I got time on my hands and I'm like, you know, super into building muscle, I would like I would do it on the body parts I just trained.

I sit back. You know why somebody hasn't invented or figured this? I would I would I want to build a shower. That's why cuz my I'm the hardest part for me for me for me is just taking the time out. And I know that sounds so whatever. And some people are great, okay? But I it's it's it's I struggle with the supplements all the time. I struggle with getting over in front of the red light therapy and sitting there for 15 20. But if my shower lit up, you're already there for Yes.

I'm taking two showers a day every day minimum. Sometimes three. So I'm I'm in in in take three showers. Yes, absolutely. For first thing in the morning, morning, morning, what? That's not a lot. First thing, Doug, were you with me, Doug? No, not that many. Okay, look. Okay, look. Okay, look. Sometimes two, but that's always two. That's first thing in the morning to get up and then before I get in my bed. I cannot get into bed dirty. Bro, you work in the studio all you getting dirty.

getting dirty. getting dirty. Doesn't matter. I feel oily, dirty, you know, this whatever. Like people hugging me, they got cologne on, all that stuff. Just like get off me. That's I cannot get in a bed without get in a I cannot get in a bed without that's minimum. And then if I have my workout in the middle of day, I'm I'm showering after that, too. What do you guys Once every other day or something? No, once a day. Huh? Huh? Huh? Once a day. I don't know if I believe you.

What? Wow. What? Wow. What? Wow. That oily skin over there is probably It's not good bacteria. Once a day is enough, dude. You also soap up your whole body. No, I don't. Yeah. Yeah. No, I don't do that. Listen, I got my I got caldera, too, that I'm using. So, I got the good I got the right stuff, so I'm good on that. that. that. You used to soap. Remember you told once once a day I scrub once a day. So, you do wash everything with soap once a day.

Everything. Yeah. Well, I mean, pretty much everything. Yeah. Arms. Oh my god. You're killing your I shouldn't be with all like the Calera stuff like that. I'm not use I'm not [clears throat] using any of the the the crest or safeguard or whatever crazy chemical. chemical. chemical. You just made up two soaps. No, Safeguard is a brand toothpaste boo. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know. You know Hey, you know what? Soap Justin 100% Irish Irish Spring used to use that cut it with a 40 bar 40 bars for a dollar.

Hey, why was that such a Hey, why was that such a good commercial where they cut the soap with a knife? I don't know. It made sense to me though. It's like it's just like how old men like eat bananas, you know? He's like, "Hell no, I'm not like sucking on this banana." this banana." this banana." Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, chop it up. You'd never You'd never You'd never like, "Oh, sup time you'll eat a banana just like that and then no one's around like otherwise otherwise you got to take a butter knife." Yeah, you better get a knife, dude.

Cut the slices off. But I mean, if if the real ones know if JV created something that like you you could mount like above I don't know if it could get wet. That might be the issue. There's come on. There's ways to work around that. you put some sort of a clear film or something like that to protect that. Can you Mr. Optimize, you know, and and make everything look the way you want it in your house. Why don't you just build? I mean, I trust me, I thought about it.

I thought about actually doing So, when I I didn't of all the places I remodeled, I didn't remodel our our bathroom. And so, I've told Katrina, I said, "When we remodel this Oh, by the way, of another one that I'm doing, you're going to like this cuz I know you're you're shopping right now." So, you know what I got for Christmas? What' you get you get you get that I just Katrina got this? wouldn't even have thought of this, but now I want to build a custom one.

I have like a little portable one right now. A towel warmer warmer warmer and it does the aroma therapy and it heats heats my towel up when I get out of the shower. Buddy, dude. Buddy, dude. Buddy, dude. Huh? Huh? Huh? Justin and I just looked at each other. This guy goes too far. Well, Justin dries paper towels, dude. He's got showers. Super rugged. Super rugged. Or a towel he washes once a year. year. year. Shop shop towels. Yeah, he's got like same stuff he uses for his cut it down like a shamwow is what he probably uses.

I No, I No, it's awesome. You put it in there. It has like a and it heats it up. It's all steamy. It smell, you know, like when you go to like a nice like uh No, you're not I'm not connecting to anything you're saying right now, but Yeah, I know. You do the steam rooms. The steam room's got stuff like that. Warm, you know, smelly man. We listen. You do it one time. And I mean, I guess if you don't really shower hardly ever, it's not that big a deal, right?

If you shower, it was uh it's cool. Where are you getting scented towels? No, no, no, no. You the you can you can put whatever you want. Lavender or whatever. You just drop it on the You have poperri in your bathroom? No. No. No. Okay. Okay. Okay. No, no, no. You used to. Well, we have that uh what's that? The poopour. poopour. poopour. Yes, that's what Yeah. What? What? What? Doug knows what's up. What's it called? It's called poopourri. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Just a spray. That is magical, by the way. Yeah, actually. Yeah, I buy that stuff. You better do. Do we have it at the house of Turkey? Yes, Yes, Yes, I think we do. Yeah, we do. You spray the water. Yes. And it covers the water in like a barrier of scent. It works. It works. It works. It does work. The scent the smell down. It's probably one of the better inventions that I've ever I've ever seen. Yeah. I actually That's a Katrina. She I'd never heard of that or seen that before.

She introduced that to me and I was just like I didn't even know this work cuz all the other like aerosol BS that doesn't just makes it like farts and aerosol together. It's like it's like double farts. Yeah. It's like this doesn't work. But the toilet it does. It has like it like has some has some has some Unless it comes out of the water then you're then you're then you're then sorry. All right. All right. I'll change subjects. I'll change subjects. change subjects. change subjects.

Hey, listen. Towel warmer though. Okay. You'll appreciate that. No, I saw those at Costco actually. Oh, I think that's probably where she got it. And And I'm telling you, I would have never It wasn't even on my list. I didn't think nothing of it. When I when I opened it up, I'm like, "What is this?" And then I'm like, "Okay, I could." could." could." Do you guys have warm tight toilet seats, too? seats, too? seats, too? No. No. No. You don't do that? Yeah. I heard about those.

I heard they're great. They're common in Japan. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, because our bathrooms are very cold. Well, my my downstairs bathroom, the heater vent is right next to it, so that seat's always always warm in the morning. So, it is like a nice little I'm down with that for sure. All right, I got to talk about Do you guys hear about these daycare fraud centers in Somalia? The Somalia thing. Yeah, they're not in Somalia. They're calling them Somalia because they're immigrants in What state is it?

Minnesota. Is it Minnesota? Did you guys hear about this? I did. I saw the clip. I Okay, so I heard I don't know if this is so much money. So, some some YouTuber 350 million or something. some some YouTuber figured it out and then they started digging and they started finding there's bunches of a bunch of them and they're all like a million and a half 2 million $4 million of taxpayer money and there they don't even they're not real. They're They're They're direct to the daycare centers and like asking where the kids are.

There's like nobody in there, bro. They they're doing these investigations. They're finding people. These are Somali immigrants that go in. They set up these fake daycarees. There's no kids in there and they're just collecting money from the state and they would leave with a million dollars of cash in their suitcases and bring it back home. A million dollar in cash. They also found huge scams where the they were apply they were registering their kids as having autism to collect more money from the state. So when you see like the autism rates in Minnesota exploded over like 5 years, they went investigated.

These kids don't have autism, but they're just real easy apparently to collect this this this money. Hundreds of millions of dollars. Fraud everywhere. Fraud everywhere. Fraud everywhere. There's a special place in hell for people like that. This is crazy. That's bad. That's bad. That's bad. That's crazy. And there was a guy that went into some of these daycarees cuz he's like he's like uncovering it. He walks in. walks in. walks in. It's empty. It's empty. It's empty. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's money. There's money. There's money.

That's I I saw I saw that it was like some YouTuber that figured it out and then he brought a bunch of people involved. They pulled all the stuff up and there's they were all over the place. place. place. That's crazy. That's crazy. That's crazy. How I mean, how does that even How does that happen? that happen? that happen? Like how do you get away with that? Uh from the top. Yeah, dude. Yeah, that's how that's how I feel. That's my That's my investigating. That's my point of asking.

It's like that's not like like somebody can't just put together that there's got to be somebody up there that's like pushing that. It's either extreme extreme negligence or there's like more fraud that goes up to the top. So, these are daycarees. You would think there'd be like inspections. Well, that's what I'm saying. That's why there has to be somebody there has to be somebody and for that many to get away with it. It's not like one one was found to hustle or figured out. in California too.

too. too. Tons are happening that has to go through some sort of like regulations or something and somebody has to be just stamping that pushing it through and you know what's going and you're making some sort of a kick. There's no way 100% right. Yeah. And it's crazy because how much and this is this is like hardearned this is people's tax money. So they're spending money on taxes. They're not getting good services. The city's got crime, you know, pothole whatever. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of dollars are just get just getting doled out to people doing people doing people doing these are the stuff I have to walk out because I'm just like it just makes me angry because I'm like, "Okay, so when are the arrests happening?

When were people going to prison for this?" And then you don't see anything happen. You're like, You're like, You're like, which also makes you believe that it's it's higher up, right? It's covered up. It's like I feel like if it was like one evil person doing it, it would be it would be all over the place. It'd make the news and there'd be like this whole big big arrest and it' be a big case. We save millions. Are people going to care, dude? That's what I'm I'm waiting for.

Crazy. Crazy. Hey, there was there was a study that came out on ADHD medications to see really with fMRI um you know, technology to see what's happening in the brain. And so what they're finding with ADHD medication is it's not working the way they thought. So what they thought that they were doing was it was literally helping the focus centers of the brain. So the brain, the centers of the brain that help you focus, they're like, "When we do these fMRI uh studies, we should be able to see those light up and become more active." And that's not what happened.

What they're finding is it's lighting up the pleasure and reward centers of the brain. So what it does is it just makes whatever you're doing more pleasurable. So something that's boring, suddenly you're like, "Ah, it's not as boring." And therefore, you want to do it more. But that has really bad implications cuz you're messing with the reward centers of the brain. So now we're starting to agree that giving kids meth was not a good idea. I like it when you say it like that. Well, I mean I feel like this will be the remember remember when we look back at the old ads was like in the 50s or was it before where it was like you know the for cocaine for your your wife.

You know what I'm saying? It's like all those those those No, that was those were amphetamines. They were empetamines back then. I feel like there we're going to have like we'll look back in 20 30 years about the stuff that we did with that. It's just it's crazy. It is. It is crazy. I didn't know how bad it was. It was it wasn't until I was 30 before I even tried one of those pills before. I knew no idea what that was like. And I know it was the lowest dose that that they prescribe.

And I the the feeling that I had take more. take more. take more. Yes. Like four or five times more. I know. know. know. And I told you this about um my my godson is that they they want like these doctors are so quick to do that. kids. You got a kid who is, you know, rambunctious, loves to play sports, he's like active like that, and they have a hard time with getting him to settle down in school, and it's just like, "Oh, here's here's what we give them." them." them." It's because it get it produces it produces results.

So, what's the result you're looking for? I want my kid to sit still and get better grades. Yeah. And and that'll probably do that. Yeah. Put a turn into a zombie. But are you making him a better kid? Are you you what's actually happening? And then how does the brain model and mold itself? Because as a child, your brain's shaping still. It's still growing. And so when you're hammering the reward centers, it'll mold itself. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh because of this and could you have lasting long-lasting changes and you know what it's like?

It's it's not that different because that could bring up old medical procedures that sound so barbaric barbaric barbaric but they did them because they also produce results. Labbotoy is a good example. You know what labbotomy is? So you would have let's say a schizophrenic patient or just like cut out a part of the brain, right? They would go in, they'd cut out a little piece of the brain, and then this crazy person suddenly became docile and calm and would do what you asked them to do and could come in just to society.

And so it was like this medical breakthrough that that they would promote. There's ads, you can look up the ads, these old ads that are like, you know, hey, you know, and they would show a before and after in some of these pictures. Here's this crazy woman and then right after the labbotomy and she looks all calm and and docile like, oh, this is a miracle. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Crazy. It's crazy. I mean I what I think is as you well it's not as crazy but and been talking about this for a long time.

I've been talking about it since you guys were making fun of me when I was talking about the book Irresistible and I've se I've been I see now clips I'm seeing it all over the internet now people sharing like these kids that are they're taking their iPads away from them them them and just and just and just losing their minds. Losing their minds. Dude, I had this throwing stools and screaming. Can I tell you what happened? I've saw videos of kids like laying there without it and like doing this with their hands.

Dude, can I tell you what happened what happened to my son? Oh my god. So, my niece is staying with us now and she's an adult. She's uh 18 years old and she plays Fortnite sometimes [snorts] and uh we're all together and she like, "Hey, can we put the can we put Fortnite on the big TV out here and and and maybe we could, you know, play a little bit?" It's not a let's let's give it a shot. So, she put it out there and my four-year-old is like, "Hey, can I try?" So, we're like, "Sure, what's the big deal?

We're all watching." So he played Fortnite and he was playing for I don't know 30 minutes, maybe maybe 30 minutes. minutes. minutes. We tried to take him off through a tantrum. Yeah. tantrum. Yeah. tantrum. Yeah. He doesn't do do that. He doesn't do that anymore. Through a freaking tantrum and my wife and I looked at each other. We're like, "This is never again." Yep. Now, uh to contrast that, we were at my cousin's house and my cousin has an old arcade system with old games from the '9s.

'9s. '9s. I've told you about this with Still fun and entertaining and he still likes it. He was up there playing or whatever and I went up there. Hey, five more minutes, buddy, and we'll take you off. No problem. If these They're so engineered. I told you that with with Max with the Nintendo, it's so I mean, I I have that. He hasn't asked me to play that in a year. year. year. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like he's like so I mean he'll if I coers him to come up and play with me, he'll play with me and watch and do it a little bit like that.

But like at any moment in the middle of the game, I could stop him like, "Oh, we got to go down and eat." And like, "Okay." And walk away from it. You let him get in front of one of these iPad cartoons. if you let them get in front of one of these games that they've created on there, like they get sucked into that and you're But what my point of bringing that up though is I'm now seeing more people finally talking about it. I mean, we've been we've been talking about this on the podcast for eight eight years or so now.

And it's it's become more and more apparent to like a lot of these parents what's happening. And so now you're starting to see people come out and counter a lot of it. So, it' be interesting to be interesting to see how we regulate that in the next like couple years if you're going to see less and less schools adopt it, more and more parents to be like, "No, say no to it." Because it's wild, man, to watch like how some of these kids act when you when you pull it away from It's crazy, Doug.

Maybe you could look this up. I thought I saw a study that showed Look up um brain changes from from reals study. I think if I'm not mistaken, they did a study on people who looked at reals. You know, you can scroll through reals real quick. Yeah. and they showed some pretty well some not good results like brain damage kind of results [snorts] uh from people use just scrolling through reels all the time. Maybe find that Doug see if there's a study on that. Look up uh brain changes in reals.

Yeah, I found I found something here. You found it. Let's Yeah, pull up an article and see because I saw some I saw some memes and I you know sometimes they're not accurate. Remember when we had the guy on the show who tried to defend it after remember like uh forget who's like a lobbyist for uh wow look at what studies suggest that heavy consumption of short form videos so reals lead to brain changes like reduced attention impaired focus and weaker cognitive control by training the brain for fast shallow input impacting deeper thinking and rewarding instant gratification via dopamine loops.

Yeah that's Can you copy and paste that and send that to our group's ad for me? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh I've just I've been trying to really convince my my my buddies that are like not not not Well, it's alluring if you're like busy and it keeps your kid, you know, you know. [snorts] know. [snorts] know. [snorts] Yeah. No, I get that. No, I I get that. It's a it's like it's an incredible babysitter cuz it it sucks the kids in. I mean, you you want the kids to be quiet and do that, but it's like I mean to your point, like I mean, do you want to if you just want to give them a drug to also put them out like that?

like you're and I think why we as a society are justifying is because it isn't some pharmaceutical that we're giving there but to think but right but to think that it hasn't been engineered to do similar effects in the brain is is crazy to not think that and and and not understand and then also like man we're still in the beginning phases of this like we're only like I I mean we're now approaching what 20 years the iPhone what are we at right now we coming up on 20 20 20 I think so so we're we're somewhere around there I mean we're on iPhone 15 right now, right?

So, we're I think it's 17, is it? is it? is it? I think so. Yeah, I think it's 17. Oh, is it? Yeah. So, we're coming up on 20 20 years of that, but then and then Instagram was what maybe right behind that or what like that and then Tik Tok right behind that. So, we really haven't seen like a full generation of people that have like completely it's just now Yeah, it's just starting to happen right now. And then what those people look like as 30-year-old adults and stuff, you know?

Yeah. Almost 19 years. 19 years. Almost 19 years. That's crazy. Anyway, I got a um a a supplement that I added to my I add more supplements to my regime, but I saw a study a long study. It was an it was a year-long study on nattokenase. I think I'm saying that right. Am I saying that right, Doug? Maybe it's nattokinise. Nattokynise. Okay. Nattokynise. Okay. Nattokynise. Okay. Possibly Possibly Possibly uh incredible heart health benefits, blood vessel benefits. Where do you find it? Oh, it's a very common supplement.

Where is it find found naturally? I know the Japanese Japanese Japanese nattoto which is a Japanese fermented bean. bean. bean. There it is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, and it's it's good for the blood. It's good for blood vessel health and heart health. Significant changes. They saw in a year improvements in people's heart health um from natto. Now, is this only found in Japanese beans or is this like in regular beans? It It It comes from that. We don't see it in other beans. I don't think so.

I'm not aware of it. See where it comes from, Doug. See if if if there's other places. But I added it to my my regime because of the the heart health benefits on it were just profound and many other studies. So it's really interesting. Which which leads me to I got a bone to pick with you guys. Okay. Okay. Okay. That Yeah. So we all did that that full body MRI. body MRI. body MRI. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Here we go. Yeah. So we all did a full there's a full body MRI we did that looks at everything.

It looks at every organ. It looks at every system, your spine, your spine, your spine, cardiovascular, reproductive system, neuro, neuro, brain, everything, stomach. stomach. stomach. So these guys, so get we got our results, right? So I think it was Doug first. first. first. All of us paranoid as [ __ ] So yeah, I know, dude. How would you feel right before you pulled up your results? I was nervous. I was nervous as [ __ ] dude. You don't say something. I mean, cuz that's they would you say one in 20.

They find something. They find something that they catch something early. something early. something early. Right. Right. So, and and there and and they they tell remind me too like they they could see like cancers like how far even before you'll get stage one. Yeah. And then you go you just do further investigation which is and okay so the good thing about this is uh you know most cancers are very treatable if you catch them really early. Uh the problem with a lot of cancers you don't get symptoms until they're stage four.

Yeah. four. Yeah. four. Yeah. And that's a problem. So anyway it's really and they'll look at your heart, you have heart enlargement, your prostate size. They'll look at you know your spine your discs you know and all that stuff. So, it's really really it's really incredible. So, anyway, Doug sends his first. Hey guys, I'm good. You know, everything's clear. Adam next. Justin says I'm like, "I'm going to have fun with you guys." So, I sent a reply and I said, "Hey, I'll have to talk to you guys at work Monday." And I waited.

I waited for one of you guys to care. Nobody cared. Nobody cared. Nobody cared. We know your method. Nobody called me. Nobody was like, "What did you see?" I wait. I told Jessica, I'm like, "Watch this." I knew that. I knew he was I knew that. I knew he was baiting us. baiting us. baiting us. All of us knew we were getting bait. Dude, you know why? We know you that well we all talk about first. This dude was w refreshing his email first. You're the biggest hyperchondri of all of us.

You you for sure you probably already called the doctor like hey I just want to double check. Is everything okay with I'm like if anything he's obsessing over something that's small. Yeah. You know I'm like I'll just let him work this out over the weekend and we'll talk about Hey literally I told Jessica like watch this. What's waited waited nothing. I was really surprised. So came to work nobody cared. So, what's cool what's cool is they have like uh like levels to it, right? So, they even they even tell you stuff where there's any sort of like minor like minor like minor Yeah, minor like or problem like it's like so and I had I had two uh two things that were my my shoulders which I thought was thought was thought was they said they were weak.

That is not the term they use. It was a little fragile. My AC joint. Yeah, yeah, both my AC joints. And I thought that's I I don't have any uh I what I was hoping or what I thought might pop up is the the my pec minor tear or whatever I thought would would pop up and and they would that's what it was. And so I thought it was related to that one side but then when I looked at it I was like oh they're saying both sides it's a little bit of degenerate and then on my uh low back which I knew this I've talked about this before like one of the things I've connected for a long time and again I have like like and again I have like like lower lordosis you know I have this extreme butt.

Yeah, that's why I say I have I've got Instagram butt model syndrome. syndrome. syndrome. Yeah. Syndrome going on. He's always exposing, right? And so I' I've known that. I mean, even when I'm on planes, I'll I'll like I'll activate my core and and Yeah. So, like I I've always known that. I know when I don't train, even just like walking around, I'll feel kind of my low back will bother me a little bit, but if I'm training, if I'm in when I'm on my training routine, it feels so good.

And so I had a a little bit of uh disc generation there and then I had the two shoulder stuff but it was minor. minor. minor. You know I talked to years ago I trained I used to train a lot of surgeons and I remember one of them said something to me and it would blew me away say he said I was talking about you know you know herniated disc and bulging disc. He goes s he goes if you MRI 100 people right now random people with no pain you will see a significant percentage of them will have some kind of bulging herniated disc and then and they'll have no symptoms.

He goes, "And then you'll see people without any disc issues and have severe have severe have severe Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. back pain. So, you know, just for people if you did a scan like this, because I had a couple, you know, bulging discs here and there. I have my back has never hurt. I It never hurts. It's indestructible, I would say. Uh, but I do have a couple slight bulging and then my cervical spine spine spine somewhere, but yeah. Where did they find yours?" I don't even remember.

Yeah. I think it was like hip and lower back, but I don't even feel that. Yeah. Yeah. It did see that I had shoulder surgery. That's all. It looked like you had this surgery on your left shoulder. My shoulder. My shoulder. My Oh, wow. I knew that. Oh, wow. I was worried about my esophagus and like, you know, stuff that I was going through with my heartburn. But apparently I do have a hyal hernia. So, it's like Yeah, it's like one of those minor things you just got to deal with.

Well, you could treat it, I think. I think so. What's the treatment for? Is it surgery? Yeah, I think it's surgery. Well, look it up, Doug, cuz I I'm almost positive I knew someone who did that. It was a life-changing like it made a big difference. Yeah, difference. Yeah, difference. Yeah, cuz otherwise you're getting that constant. constant. constant. Yeah, but then the scope everything is like shoving things down your throat and it's just been deterring me from I know where this leads. I don't want to do this.

Calm down, guys. Calm down. Get back to your your your uh bulge disc and I've heard the same thing, right? That you you if you do that to a 100 people and you'll get some people with like a 3 mm and they're they're in no pain whatsoever. And then you have somebody that has nut no bulge whatsoever and then the back pain. I would love to see the correlation between that and the training of people because that that just because of my own experience like I like I don't have any back problems or issues so long as I'm training and I obviously it has probably a lot to do with my core being strong and being trained and that is what works as first the your your vacuum.

I used to give this with clients. I'd always give them that analogy. Listen, you have these 28 muscles that wrap around your spine and most people don't train it, don't work it, and so it's weak and so your spine's like this, all kinds of pressure on it. We get that really strong and it sucks up like a vacuum around that and supports it. supports it. supports it. Your discs are meant to cushion movement but not support the movement, right? right? right? That's where That's where That's where and so I would I would love to see that.

Is there a correlation with the people that more to that that are like pain or no pain that are really weak and unstable? I can tell you I've had many clients who have MRIs and they you who come to me with back pain because they're referred to me by some my doctor clients severe back pain hernated disc here I might have to get fusion there then we train the back pain's gone and they get the MRI and the disc is still messed up my experience also and that and it's such a bummer because a lot of people who are [snorts] deconditioned they don't train then they go get that diagnosis then they're like afraid to squat they're afraid to do all these exercises cuz their doctor says they have a bulged disc and they have this chronic low back pain and it's like yeah but watch what happens when we drop about 10 pounds of 10 to 15 pounds of body fat.

I get you strong. We build and develop this core and then but then but a lot of times hesitant and afraid to because they've told doctors said something like don't load don't load your spine. Don't do anything like that. And so they're scared to death to do that. But in in my experience the people that we've been able to train and get strong like that and my own personal experience I noticed that chronic pain. I I got low back pain. I get uncomfortable walking for 30 minutes if I'm deconditioned attorney.

Back surgeries, someone's going to get mad for me saying, but back surgeries don't have a great uh record. They just they don't, you know, when they have a good record when they do them on fit, healthy people who do great therapy afterwards and exercise. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Otherwise, they tend to not have a great It's very dependent on that. Yeah. Yeah. Dude, there's some joints that surgeries have a high success rate. Uh the spine is not one of them. So you go get back surgery, it's like you better absolutely need it and you better be strong going into it and strengthen afterwards.

Otherwise, it's like one back surgery, look at the data on this, one back surgery often listens to it leads to another one and another one. You know, that's typically the experience. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. By now you probably know that probiotics will improve your gut health, right? They help you with your digestion, with bloating. But probiotics do a lot more than that. They also help your skin. They improve endurance. They build strength. They've even been shown to help with fat loss. This is all proven by data.

Now, the question is, which probiotic do you go with? Seed. Seed is the world's best probiotic. This is the one that we promote. Go check them out. Get yourself 20% off. Go to seed.com/mindpump. seed.com/mindpump. seed.com/mindpump. Use the code 20pump to get that 20% off. Back to the show. This segment of the podcast is brought to you by Mindpump Fitness Coaching. This is the number one course that teaches trainers and coaches how to build sustainable sixf figureure plus businesses and careers in fitness. Look, it's round table based.

So you can hear Adam, Justin, and myself teaching you how to build a better business, get more leads, close more deals, close bigger deals, and be more effective trainers. By the way, our course is nationally recognized. In fact, it gives you 1.9 CEUs with or for your NASM certification. Find out more at mindpunfitnesscoaching.com. Our first caller is Naomi from Washington. Washington. Washington. Hi Naomi. Hi Naomi. Hi Naomi. How you doing Naomi? Hi. Hi. Hi. Good. How are you guys? Good. How can we help you? Good.

Um, first of all, thank you guys so much for everything you guys do. Um, I'm grateful for the valuable information you've brought to my life and I pray for you guys and your families as a thank you. Thank you so much. Awesome. How can we help you? help you? help you? So, my question is, um, I want to go into the new year with a plan. Uh, so, what program should I run and what should I do nutrition-wise? I'm 28. I've struggled with my weight my whole life.

My highest was somewhere around 260 and I'm currently at 196. In the past 2 years, I focused on eating protein and being more consistent with it. I ran my first cut at the end of June to the end of September, and it was a success. I went from 216 to 194. Since my cut, I've been eating less strictly, and I need to get back on tracking, but I've checked in with my weight, and it's only fluctuated between 2 to 3 lb. I've stopped cutting in September in hopes of doing things the right way, but then I wasn't intentional about getting back to maintenance.

My cut was 1,800 to 2,000 calories. Program wise, I ran anabolic on repeat for a year and then muscle mommy, then split, then tried aesthetic, but it was too much volume. Um, I'm currently running performance 15, but I have a bit of a back/shoulder injury. I noticed that I have some imbalances like in my hamstrings because I got ACL surgery a long time ago and just never recovered from it. Um, and then just non-dominant and dominant imbalances. So, my thought was symmetry, and ideally I want to cut, but if you guys give me a blueprint, I'll just do it closed eyes, head first.

Yeah. Good. Great job. Symmetry is a good program, good program, good program, by the way. You You are killing it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Great job. Okay. So, and to be able to kind of intuitively intuitively eat and only see like a little bit of a fluctuation is also really a huge win, too. Well, that tells me that you've built some good strength. You've got some good metabolic flexibility going on. Do you know? Yeah, I've always I've always been an athlete, too, so I I don't know if it's kind of like a natural thing, but [clears throat] [clears throat] [clears throat] um I think I'm stronger than usual, I guess.

guess. guess. That's good. Well, I mean, you also I mean, you've been strength training consistently now for a little while. You hit your protein. See what her squad is? No. What is it? 270. 270. 270. Oh god, you're really strong. Yeah, I think symmetry would be good. And I think if you focused uh on eating around maintenance with some little interruptions with little cuts here and there, I think you would get you'd have this nice consistent overtime progress that would happen. Now, you could do more of an aggressive cut, but I would leave that up to you on how that makes you feel uh both uh not just physically, but emotionally and psychologically around food.

Um, but if you want to, I mean, honestly, if you just kind of ate at maintenance and then did like a two or three week cut here and there and then went back to maintenance and kind of fluctuated back and forth, I mean, you're going to just over time your body's going to keep changing. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. And you're going to keep getting stronger and having body composition changes with a nice metabolism. when you weren't really kind of tracking and you were just kind of intuitively eating and you and you stayed in that the kind of the weight range were do you think you were hitting protein or do you think you were light on protein?

I think I was a bit lighter on protein if I'm being honest. So I I think so my strategy with you would be just to mainly focus on that. I think the way you're lifting, how strong you are, switching a program up like that, eating when you're hungry, but focusing on hitting that protein on a consistent basis, I bet you build muscle and kind of naturally, if you stayed away from processed foods, yeah, you stayed away from like processed foods and sweets and eating out out out and just did what Adam said, you're going to get body composition change.

I think you'll just you'll get stronger, you'll lean out, inches will come down and you'll be eating in a satisfied place versus like let's try and reverse aggressively and then cut aggressively. You're in a really good place, especially with your strength training. And then I think if you just consistently hit that protein, you'll feed that muscle building. Yeah. I have one question for you, Naomi. Naomi. Naomi. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How is the process been for you? Is it Have you enjoyed this process? Has it been kind of like a struggle?

Well, since I found your podcast, it's been so much fun. much fun. much fun. Oh, it's been way better. Um, I think I've gotten to a place where I'm realizing like even the parts where I'm struggling, I'm still making progress. That's awesome. That's awesome. That's awesome. You're This is perfect. You're awesome. You're in a great place. If you're enjoying the process, Yeah. Let's not change anything. Do what I said. Totally. said. Totally. said. Totally. And keep going. And you're young. You're going to see like this is going to be great.

great. great. It'll keep going. Yeah. Yeah. You're going to end in a place, Naomi, if you if you do this consistently. consistently. consistently. You're going to end in a place with a really fast revved metabolism and nice body composition. You're going to feel good. Hormones will be balanced. So, if you're if you're training well and you're eating whole foods, don't be afraid to eat when you're hungry. Uh just focus on the protein like you hear us talk about all the time. Like, cuz that that's what will kind of naturally happen is happen is happen is if you're hovering around where you're at, you're strength training, right?

you're really pri prioritizing proh protein, you're going to start building muscle and then the appetite is going to start to increase. And then don't feel like you have to restrict it. Feed it, but feed it with good choices. And as long as you feed it with good choices, high protein meals like that, you watch what happens. You're just going to continue. You you'll naturally reverse diet without like trying to reverse diet. Just diet. Just diet. Just right. right. right. And that and that'll be a much healthier way to do it.

You'll feel good while you while you do it. Before you know it, you'll be eating way more calories and you'll be leaner. Okay, Okay, Okay, cool. cool. cool. Sounds good. I can I ask one more tiny question? question? question? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um I'm my husband's a high school girls basketball coach and right now I'm running um performance 15 with them too. But we get into the gym like one day a week. How would I play that out? What would be the best way to arrange that?

So you mean for the girls or for yourself? yourself? yourself? For the girls. Okay. So they're strength training just once a week. Yeah, once maybe twice a week. And they're doing uh how often are they practicing and all that stuff. What else are they doing? Play five days a week. They practice six days a week or they have games when they don't have Oh, they're doing three lifts. That's it. Yeah. They're going in, they're picking three major lifts. They're doing low reps, not to failure. Yeah.

High school, you're looking at like squat, deadlift, overhead press, uh you know, you know, bench press, row. Yeah. So, like one workout would be a a squat variation to start with. Another workout would be like a deadlift variation. Um, and then do like a couple upper body exercises and that's it, you know. know. know. Okay. So, just scrap performance 15 then and do like a baseline uh big lift. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Do you uh do you have symmetry already? I don't. I don't. I don't. Oh, let us send you We'll send that over to you.

to you. to you. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, you got it. We Do you have symmetry 15 or do you want symmetry? Which one? Which one? Which one? Uh, symmetry. Uh, symmetry. Uh, symmetry. All right. We'll send that to you. We haven't released that yet, but Yeah. Okay. Yeah, my bad. Yeah, spoiler alert. I got a new one coming out. coming out. coming out. I think I think regular symmetries for her is her is her is send that to Yeah, we'll send that over. Thank you guys so much.

I appreciate you all. all. all. Hey, keep it up. You know what just dawned on me? What What What is that? is that? is that? We don't have that program out. No, No, No, no, we do have it out. When this airs, it'll be out. I just We're good. We're good. We're good. I just knew. Actually had no idea. Uh here's uh this dawned on me, right? You guys I know you remember this. Remember in in our space there used to be like these are healthy foods, these are unhealthy foods.

That was the that was what everybody understood. Then it turned into there is no healthy unhealthy food. unhealthy food. unhealthy food. You know, you can overeat healthy food too and that'll make you gain weight. Technically that's true. And I think that that message although technically yeah you could overeat calories and any kind of food and cause fat gain. fat gain. fat gain. I think what a terrible message because it confused the heck out of people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh because uh the quote unquote unhealthy foods make you overeat.

So like what we just told her, we didn't tell her to track anything. We just said, "Hey, eat your protein and stick to whole natural foods. Eat when you're hungry." What naturally happens in combination with strength training with body composition change? I've never had a client who I allow to eat as much as they want so long as it's whole foods and they hit their protein while they're strength training. Put on body fat. We put on muscle. That's right. You put on muscle and that's just a natural limiter.

Yes. Is it possible? Yeah, of course. You could press it. But yeah, good. And and if you, you know, eat 60% whole foods and 40% processed foods. Yeah. But if you truly choose whole foods and high protein meals/nacks, meals/nacks, meals/nacks, it's like it's like it's like you'll be fine. Yep. Yep. You'll be fine. And listen to that appetite. That appetite most times it's an appropriate appetite. Yeah. It'll steer you that, hey, we need to be fed. We need more calories for what we're doing. And then it'll be this nice natural reverse diet.

Our next caller is Jessica from Utah. Hi Jessica. Hi Jessica. Hi Jessica. How you doing Jessica? Hello. Hello. How's it going? Good. Good. Good. Great. How are you? Good. Um so before I kick off with my question, I do have to say go Park City. I'm actually your neighbor. Uh we're in the neighborhood right across the way from you. Yeah. But my question is actually surrounding what long-term maintenance and looks like. Um, to give you some context, the past 3 years have kind of been a roller coaster for me training and fitness-wise.

Uh, in April of 2023, I actually landed in the hospital unexpected unexpectedly for 2 weeks. Um, they had no clue what was wrong with me. And after a lot of drugs, sleepless nights and pain, they actually had to do exploratory surgery uh to find that my appendix had wrapped around my small intestine causing um an intestinal blockage. blockage. blockage. So I left the hospital pretty emaciated and with what felt like very little muscle left. Um for my recovery, I really vowed to get as strong as I could.

Um and actually started listening to the podcast around that time. Um so I started on this journey actually with your split program. Um started lifting was going from very very low weight and then started increasing throughout 2023 and 2024. Um after split I did aesthetic and then kind of fast forward to the summer of 2024 I was pretty much the strongest I've ever been in my lifetime. Um, late fall of 2024, I started a slow cut to prepare for my wedding in the summer of 2020 25.

Um, and got pretty lean while maintaining some pretty good muscle. Um, and then this past October 2025, um, I had another surgery where I couldn't do my regular workouts. Um, gained a little bit of weight back. Um, and then just recently actually started resuming activity. Um, and made sure I had started eating more to really help that healing and recovery. Um, I'm now actually officially cleared to work out again, but I've been easing back into lifting and activity just at a slow pace. Um, so my question for you all is after a long journey of kind of slow building, slow cutting, and then kind of a mix of these surgeries and the whole mix there, um, I'm [clears throat] really at a place now where I'm looking to to to have a good maintenance routine um, to live a healthy life while enjoy like enjoying the things that I like to do.

I like to hike. I like to ski. Um, I like to go wine tasting, eat food, like just a healthful life. Um, what I've found is that I'm not quite sure I really have a good grasp of what long-term maintenance is supposed to look like. Uh, I have a more of a a type personality that's always striving for better performance or a goal in mind. So, I was wondering if there was a good lifting rotation or focus that you would think would be appropriate for this mindset or lifestyle and what that might look like long term.

Good question. Good question. Good question. So, I'll give you generally what this would look like and then I'll get a little bit more specific for maybe what next steps would look like for you. Generally speaking, uh if for you know having this kind of lifelong relationship with exercise and nutrition, which is kind of what you're explaining, like how do I have this lifelong relationship with it where I'm maintaining and and kind of targeting good health. Your workouts and your nutrition are going to change uh all the time.

And I don't mean daily, but they're going to change depending on the context of your life. So, uh there going to be moments and now this requires uh that you you make sure that the target and the focus is health. But this is going to look like sometimes I'm focusing more on mobility. Other times I'm going to be focusing more on strength. Other times recovery, relaxation, relaxation, relaxation, flexibility, flexibility, flexibility, stamina. Your diet is going to look like nourishing yourself. uh I feel like I need to eat more or I feel like I'm overdoing it a little bit right now.

I need to bring it back. Uh maybe I need a little bit more fiber. I feel a little bit inflamed. And so you you want to look at your your diet and your exercise as ways to improve the quality of your life regardless of the context of your life. Okay? So, you know, let's say you have a baby. Well, your workout's totally going to look different. Uh and so is your diet. Let's say you have a period of time where you've got nice good time on your hands.

You're sleeping great, no injuries. You're like, "Yeah, I think I'd like to sprint for a bit and and see what I can do and maybe hit a PR and whatever." Essentially, it's you're enjoying the whole process. Uh, and the journey is what you're enjoying. And that's what it looks like lifelong. Now, to be more specific for someone like you, I I I see up here that you did a recent body scan, uh, and you're kind of estimating what you think your calories are at. Is it okay if I go over that a little bit?

little bit? little bit? Absolutely. Yeah. So, I did a recent body scan. Um, they had me at approximately 15% body fat, 137 lbs, and I'm 5'8. I'm 5'8. I'm 5'8. Um, [clears throat] this was after, like I said, I got pretty lean for the wedding. Um, after the surgery, I wasn't really able to do any activity other than some light walking. Uh, so made sure like I bumped my calories a little bit there. So honestly like the 15 I know it's relatively low right now. Um but that I was probably even a little lower than that prior to the surgery as well.

well. well. So what what most what this will look like for most women is a fluctuation. Body fat will fluctuate throughout your life depending on what's going on. But you're probably going to sit somewhere in the low 20s is what healthy fit hormone balanced like body fat percentage typically looks like in women. Now that's give or take. there's genetic, you know, variances with people, but getting in the teens, especially the mid- teens, uh, that's that's typically too low. So, so someone like you, if you were my client, and, you know, that's most the information I know.

Obviously, things would get more individualized, but I would we'd be we'd be trying to feed you while strength training and I'd want to actually see your body fat go up. Of course, I'd want to see strength go up, but I'd want to see your body fat go up as well. And so what would that typically look like for someone with my numbers currently? Like is that something where I would go on a reverse diet and then follow like a three day a week program or or or probably Yeah.

Yeah. Like a maps anabolic type of a program and you could easily where you're at calorie- wise and because you're so lean right now, we could easily jump to 3 500 calories more a day. a day. a day. Easy. Easy. Easy. Easily. Easily. Easily. And you'll feel you'll feel really good within days within days within days and you're going to build muscle on that way too. And even if you put a percent or two of body fat on why we do that, it'll be okay. So you could someone who was like much higher body fat percentage, we would probably creep them up slower like 150 200 calories, but you're you're plenty lean enough to afford, you know, a three to 500 minimum jump and still be okay.

Especially if you choose good good foods, right? We're targeting high protein, whole foods. You make good choices. Now, have you ever do you know uh like intentionally have you ever gone up the calories that high? I know you mentioned like having wine. Okay. So, Okay. So, Okay. So, yeah. So, I like uh to give a little bit of context, even when I did um like a slow bulk uh after my surgery in 2023. I mean, it was a year-long process where I was probably increasing my calories, I don't know, 100 uh per day, per week, right?

Um, I've never done anything where I'm eating anywhere close to 3,000 calories a day, though. I think even during that process, I think the highest that I got to was about 2500. You could jump to 25 right now. Right now? Yeah. You must jump to Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And you'll feel great. You're going to get strong. You'll feel good. good. good. You're probably You're not going to see much fat gain to be honest with you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You'll just see some Not if you're strength training if you're following like a maxabolic routine with it.

Hitting your protein targets. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. Well, that's always been the that's been the difficult thing for me because like I eat very clean. Um, a very very small percentage of my diet is processed foods or things like alcohol. Um, it's just so it's harder for me to eat a lot, I guess. And I try to have a pretty high fiber diet as well. Um, and after [clears throat] my first surgery, because it was, you know, it involved my intestines, they had me on a low fiber fiber diet to start out with, and then I had to increase over time.

So, I guess I've never done like a true bulk in the sense of increasing [clears throat] to that level of calories. calories. calories. I would I would use things like uh highfat cottage cheese, higher fat cuts of meats, ribe eyes, tri tip, chicken thighs. Stay away from the super lean cuts all the time and that'll add naturally. naturally. naturally. Throw olive oil on your vegetables. Yeah. Here, you know, there's two things, two challenges typically we'll see with someone like you. Uh, when we're bumping up calories, one is you may have developed a relationship with food where you don't feel comfortable eating in a place that's actually satisfying.

It actually kind of feels full. And so, there's a little bit of ignoring that. So, it's like, no, you got to push yourself a little bit. and then you just kind of recalibrate your relationship to food. Um, so that tends to be a thing. And by the way, now the other thing is someone may just have a lower appetite. Now, proper strength training tends to spike that a bit because you're trying to build muscle. But the other side of that is, you know, when I when I'm dealing with someone like that and genuinely they've eaten so low calories for so long, even if we're doing good strength training, they're kind of like, I don't know if I can eat that much.

And I'll push them a little bit. I mean, there are hyper palatable whole food options, you know, like you ground beef, you know, 85% ground beef with rice, throw a little avocado in there, you know, like a like like a taco bowl type deal, that's a high calorie whole food, whole food, whole food, uh, you know, option and and and it's it's more palatable, right? Like if I'm eating like chicken breast Oh, yeah. with broccoli and brown rice or something like that. Yeah. Good luck. Like that's tough.

So, so there are some some more palatable whole food options, but you you'll feel great right out the gates. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, the other question I have for you too, Jessica, is how do you know if you want to kind of break free from the, you know, kind of the grip like wrapping your arms around the whole thing and tracking all the time. Like, this is the direction you want to go. You definitely want to go in this direction. direction. direction. Yeah, that's really what I'm looking for.

Um, it's kind of just been specifically a roller coaster these past few years, but Historically too, it's um you know, [clears throat] traditionally my family didn't have um a very healthy diet. It was something that I had to teach myself from a very young age. age. age. Um and I think a portion of, you know, trying to learn how to do that when I was younger is, you know, listening to all the fads that were out there at the time, time, time, doing the, you know, lean chicken breast and not doing like high fat content proteins and things of that nature.

Um, so it's probably just something I'm not used to as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, the advice for me would for you would be to hit just the only thing I'd have you really track is the protein and go after 140 grams a day and then and then take the advice that Sal and I are giving. Go ahead and put olive oil on your vegetables. Have the ground beef. Eat the put butter in your rice. Yeah. Do stuff like that and it won't feel like you're changing a ton.

You're just kind of switching the the meat profiles that you're having. You're adding butter to rice. You're adding olive oil to the vegetables. And that'll naturally kind of bump the calories and it shouldast should taste good, should feel good. It's not like you have to really focus on it. Um, here's what here's what you'll notice. You're going to have more energy. You'll get stronger. Your skin is going to look really good. You're going to you're going to sleep really good. Your hormones are going to start to feel really balanced.

Uh, so good energy, good libido, no crashes. is that's what it feels like when you start feeding your body uh appropriately. When you start nourishing yourself a little more, you just start to feel more vibrant overall. overall. overall. Yeah. And so the 3,000 calorie mark, let's say adding that in here relatively soon, is that like something that I could have at maintenance consistently or would that be a situation where I need to like taper that back a little bit and add some more in depending on my training cycle?

training cycle? training cycle? It depends. But so someone like you, your height, if you're strength training, you're strong. Uh I've seen many many women fit, healthy, young, strength training where they can maintain very easily in the high 2000s and and they're and they're like 20% body fat. body fat. body fat. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. And that gives a lot of metabolic flexibility for you, too, where like, you know, you can enjoy your weekend sometimes and you're back on it during the week and it's not like a strict diet and you have some of that flexibility, especially if you're active.

Like you're in Park City, so I'm assuming you like to do outdoor stuff. Yeah. So, yeah. I have a desk job yeah. I have a desk job essentially. Um I work from home, so I'm pretty much tied to a computer for the bulk of the day. But like even just walking in my neighborhood, it's a bunch of hills. I'm a skier. I'm a hiker, right? Like I take advantage of being out there. So definitely active pretty consistently. consistently. consistently. And then right now I usually lift like three to four times a week.

Um trying to figure out like what what training program is appropriate for me right like right now. right now. right now. Maps anabolic. Maps anabolic. Maps anabolic. Anabolic. Okay. Anabolic. Okay. Anabolic. Okay. Yeah. I like maps right now. Get you strong. Good volume in there. Yeah. I was looking for something that would be compatible with like skiing and a lot of activity right now. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. I like that. And if Yep. I like that. And if you Jessica, if you want I don't know.

I If you want someone to take you through that, we have coaches that do that. I don't know if you know that or not. So if that's something Yeah. If you're interested in that, we have them call you and they'll take you through the whole reverse diet process every step of the way. the way. the way. Y Y Y that would be amazing. Thank you so much. much. much. You got it. Okay, Jessica, thanks for calling in. Thank you. Have a good one. Appreciate it. it.

it. I really think we need to uh like really hammer that message. I think uh most women, right, the context being you're exercising and all that stuff. So, you're active, you're strength training, all that stuff. Most women would feel their best around 20% body fat. So that means if you're below that, you'd feel better if you were higher. And if you're above that, you feel better if you're a little lower. For men, it's probably around 12, 13. There needs to be TSA out there. I know it's like a lot of women want to be in the teens, right?

I would I would give a little more. I'd say 18 to 22. to 22. to 22. Sure. There's there's up or down cuz I had I had a lot of female cuz I had I had a lot of female trainers that work for me that that that walked around very healthy, ate a lot, 18 19%. 18 19%. 18 19%. So I mean, I think you can be in that and they were active. So that all matters too, right? If your metabolism is up to that, but you know like give or take, right?

Like like I said for 12% for men, some of them feel good at 10 or is it you know what I also think that matters in that context too s is like uh 18% body fat uh in a female who is very active and eats 2,800 plus calories is really good. really good. really good. Uh 18% body fat girl who's eating 1,800 calories, 1,800. Yes, that's a different story. So, I think that that matters even more, too, is like how well you're being fed and and being able to maintain that body fat percentage makes a difference.

All right, real quick. If you love us like we love you, why not show up by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs, or training gear over at mypumpstore.com. I'm talking right now. Hit pause. Head on over to mypumpstore.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. Our next caller is Matthew from Utah. What's up, Matthew? What's up? Hey, good morning. Merry Christmas. Yeah, you got it, dude. How can we help you? you? you? Yeah, so uh I guess first off, thank you guys so much.

Um appreciate your podcast. I found you guys in uh 2021 towards the end of uh diet I was doing and you guys have been awesome ever since. So, thank you. You got it. Um, so to start off, I am 43. Um, I've been following maps anabolic for years. Um, since 2021. I've ran MAPS, hit, OCR, um, Aesthetic. Um, love them all. Um, but yeah, I'll go into that later. Uh, I probably, um, ran the anabolic about five times. It has helped me get stronger. Um, [snorts] I've really do enjoy the workouts and just the full body workout.

I'm still overweight. A lot of it sits in my midsection. Um, my main goal has always been to lose the belly flat, but I do lose motivation because I do love food a lot. And I do struggle to focus on one goal where it's like, you know, I want to lose belly fat, but I want to have longevity, mobility, and I just I'm like a squirrel, you know. Um, so I do list consistently. Um, I do get frustrated at times um when my endurance doesn't uh last or my body com composition doesn't improve and I just feel overwhelmed.

I get just down that negativity hole. I really love mountain biking. It's one of the most uh sports that I just I've attached to. [snorts] Um I do get gassed out going uphill a lot and that sometimes does sometimes does sometimes does get me demotivated to go out. Um but I do enjoy it especially getting with friends and all my friends are getting electric bikes and I'm still poor so I won't think I'll ever get a mountain bike electric bike. So, to help keep me up with them, um, I do want to improve my endurance.

So, my real question is, how can I build a plan or a mindset that helps me stay consistent, keep lifting, which I do love, um, build endurance, and last longer on the bike, and finally lose the stubborn belly fat that's been hanging on me for years. All right, good question. All right, we'll start with diet. I was I think that's everything. Yeah, I think I think the training part and the what he does activity wise is fine. I think we need to dive into the nutrition stuff.

stuff. stuff. So, so I'm sure you've heard this before. It's going to take some discipline. Duh. But the the most effective way to apply discipline is in a very clear black and white follow a few rules is stick to them and that's that. And and and so I'm going to give you the ones that make the biggest impact. In fact, if you just do most achievable ones, the ones I'm going to tell you and you're consistent with them, you will see yourself get leaner uh consistently over time.

So, there's two rules. Okay. Number one, uh first off, let me ask you, what's your target body weight? So, I think I weighed last week. I don't weigh myself a lot. Um but it was 216. Okay. And what's your target body weight? weight? weight? Um to be healthy, I guess. Uh, I'd say 165 for my height. I'm 5'7. Okay. So, eat 170 gram of protein every day day day and only eat whole natural foods. That's it. That's it. You hit 170 and you hit whole natural foods and you eat when you're hungry and that's it.

And keep working out and you will see yourself get leaner and continue to improve in the gym if you just follow those two rules. That's it. somebody who has struggled with diet consistency, okay? And if you're my client, one of the thing and and I and I know that getting my client who who struggled with this for a long time to to go from, you know, maybe all their food choices that they do to all the way to whole foods consistently is really hard. The thing that I always get them to commit first to is that, okay, if you're going to do that thing, you're going to have that snack, you're going to have that glass of wine, you're going to have that thing that you that is really tough for you to say no to or whatever, you go hit your protein first and then you can have it.

And that that's that psychological game of okay, I'm not saying I can't have that thing that I like to enjoy every once in a while. I'm going to say I can have it, but I first have to get that pro hit that protein. And that tends to solve this like 90% of the time. And just the permission that I'm not going to tell you you can't ever have that thing that you like to have. And I don't know what that is for you. Like everybody's got their thing.

It's a chocolate bar. It's a thing of ice cream. It's a what is your all the above. above. above. Okay. So, so then that that's where we got to be careful with this like oh just switch over to Whole Foods. That's it. It's that simple. It's like somebody who allows a lot of those things to to get into creep into their life. A better way or a better strategy for me has always been I'm not going to just rip all those out of your life right now.

What I'm going to say is step one is you go have to you have to hit your protein first and then you can enjoy that thing and then we start to make like modifications for those types of things. Right. So, like if you said, if it's all things and I know that if you hit your protein intake, it takes at least half the day, if not 3/4 of the day, just to get to that protein intake. And so, it's this like nightly snacking thing. It's like, okay, well, here's the thing you reach for normally.

Let me give you an alternative that will kind of make you feel like you're getting something like that, but isn't the same thing, and it's better. But if you at least start with go hit your protein first before you allow that, it tends to solve at least 80% of the the kitchen problem stuff and then we get better at those things. Matthew, one more thing, too. If if you were to if you were to, you know, take your camera and show us your cupboards and your fridge, would any of those foods be in there?

Um, Um, Um, no. no. no. Good. Good. Good. Not right now. Good. Don't go grocery shopping later today. Yeah. Yeah. Don't make it. Well, I think the hard part too is my wife and my kids don't really follow anything and they don't like it. And so it's like sometimes my at night and not saying putting blame on her cuz I should have the discipline of just saying, "Oh, I'm good. I can let you have a snack." But sometimes that's our kind of relaxing period is watch a show.

show. show. Sure. Sure. Sure. Have a have some ice cream. uh I know I've done in the past well so in 2021 I did a work um competition and to lose fat and I actually did it by following keto in a way like I was 17500 to 1900 calories a day I was following a a one of those app programs before I found you guys and then it it was fine I lost I lost weight but of course like you guys have always said like it just doesn't it's not sustainability and so I gain it back.

Matt, I'm going to say something to you. Okay. I hope How old's your kid? I got three. Uh 17, 15, and 11. Okay. So, Okay. So, Okay. So, if you don't do it for yourself, change these behaviors and habits for them. Because what you're going to do right now by making every time we sit down to watch a Netflix show or whatever the things you guys watch that we have a bowl of ice cream, you're setting him up or her up to be in the exact same boat you're struggling with right now.

And I know that firsthand because that I grew up in that childhood also where that was okay. That was normal. Uh and now my whole life I have struggled with a sweet tooth to the point where I just cannot have it in my house because I know myself so well. And so if you if you're not motivated enough to say no to that and discipline yourself for that, you should do it for your kids at the very least because you're setting them up for the same struggle that you're currently going through right now.

And so that's the lens the lens the lens I would look at through this. And doesn't mean they can never have ice cream, okay, ever again. But it means uh that's not a normal thing that we do that every like night or most nights or several nights a week. It becomes a very rare special occasion that we do something like that because dad doesn't do that and you're leading the house. So if if you don't if you have a hard time finding the motivation for yourself, motivate yourself because of what you're you're potentially setting your kids to struggle up with.

But honestly, Matthew, if you don't have a lot of that in the house and if you hate your protein and stick to whole foods and those are the only rules you follow, you're going to crush. The reason why keto worked for you and some people is because it's a very hard and fast rule. no carbs, right? right? right? So, say like, I'll just do that. And so, it automatically drops your calories. What the what the advice we're giving you is far more balanced and sustainable. sustainable.

sustainable. Uh, so just just do that and you'll be totally totally set. And Adam's right. You you the what'll happen and the data shows us uh very consistently. It's not 100%. But, it's very consistent that dad kind of leads the leads the habits in the house. So, you don't even have to force everybody. It's just like, oh, we don't have in the house meeting. And then it just slowly, it's not going to happen overnight. You might get a little him and ha, especially you got teenagers, but then it starts to slowly just kind of be that way.

Yeah, that makes sense. When when, and this might not say a dumb question, but just maybe overthinking it with whole foods, foods, foods, Greek yogurt, things like that, like, you know, there's a process to some of the foods, but no, that's good. So, Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, those are those are great. Those are those are great late night snacks or while you're sitting there. That's right. Yeah. Greek [clears throat] yogurt and pineapple. I mean, yeah, Greek yogurt and pineapple is what I was snacking on myself.

You blend a little whey protein powder and your Greek yogurt and freeze it and put it on a rice cake and Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, it's a dessert. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then kind of directing towards Justin cuz you've also mentioned a lot of heartburn issues you've had. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um and that's one thing I I liked about keto cuz I did notice my heartburn go away. away. away. Um do you think natural food, just doing the natural foods would also help or should I be more less carby?

Yeah, it's an individual thing like have you been able to tease that out with carbs like specifically like in different types because I I kind of have for myself and u but it did take a process of elimination type of diet and so reintroducing it really slowly seeing kind of the effects sometimes there's a delayed effect too so with me is like uh dairy was a delayed more of a delayed effect so like a day or two days later is when I would get a a bad reaction to that but that but that but yeah so I I would definitely take that time to to assess like when you are bringing foods like that in how it's affecting that.

affecting that. affecting that. But cutting it off like I don't know for you but for me like 7:00 even like eating 8:00 the latest possible life life changer for me. I I found for most most my clients the things that they tend to be okay with are the like the sweet potato yams uh quinoa rice type of carbohydrates. It's the starchier carbs, breads, pastas, more grainy stuff. grainy stuff. grainy stuff. Yeah, that stuff is what tends to really. Now, everyone's a little individual, but for the most part, I'd say Yep.

say Yep. say Yep. Uh if you you're pairing your meat with the carbs that I just said, sweet potato, yams, quinoa, rice, you're probably going to be pretty good. And if you take Justin's advice of getting it earlier uh in the night, so you have plenty plenty of time to digest before bed, that'll probably move you uh pretty far. just that in itself. You don't have to totally eliminate carbohydrates. Yeah, that makes sense. I know. I know there's a I mean, like you said, discipline is probably the biggest.

And I the hardest part when I try to do whole foods is just the planning where I try to spend one day a week to like make my lunch, my breakfast so I can just grab it and go. But yeah, life is just Are you Who cooks? You you or your wife who cooks? You cook at night? Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, you've probably heard me say this at Nauseium on the show. I'm such a big fan of like a huge thing of ground beef and rice and you just overcook.

You overcook. So, whatever you're used to, double that amount. So, you have your lunch and breakfast and then in the morning literally could crack two eggs or three eggs over in a skillet and it's ready in 3 minutes or less less less and you got yourself a high protein, good tasting, you know, even sprinkle a little bit of cheese on it. So at that, you know, it doesn't have to be hell of boring and strict, that type of eating uh consistently will will really move the needle.

And another thing that really helps, Matthew, when you when you struggle like I do with sweets and those things is I notice when when I when I stay on top of my protein and I stay fed, those cravings don't pull at me as hard. It's when I go long periods of not eating and then I get hungry and then now all those thing now all those things sound so good where it's like so for me that's why I've always been a big fan of like four to six meals in a day is cuz if I'm always kind of eating something I never allow that pull that craving to really pull at me.

I'm always eating something that and and and make good choices like that. You'll be all right. Yeah. I I just have to really uh f or not focus but just really not let my mood mood mood Yeah. trigger me cuz I know like at work or something like something will really frustrate me, annoy me or just get depressed and it's like oh McDonald's sounds great. sounds great. sounds great. Yeah, that's going to solve everything. Yeah. But if you brought your food with you, it's, you know, especially if you're, you know, looking at your finances like, "Oh man, I'm going to go buy food.

I just brought food." Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I also slow walks, man. the the the psychological game that I had to play that I've had to teach clients in that situation cuz those aren't going to come and and that does sound good and there's a reason why there's you know scientific reason why that is it's that you know what maybe I will have McDonald's but first I'm going to eat this meal this that I brought and then if I still feel like it and it just it tends to solve that like you get it in and then you're like oh I don't have that same craving anymore but it's because I haven't ate that thing happened to me yeah that that greasy that greasy food from McDonald's sounds good so try reframing it like at that you're you're not telling yourself you can't be prepared by having the meals, get the stuff out of your house.

And then like I said, like the way I think from the father perspective is it's less about me. It's a it's more about I don't want my kids to have the same struggle as I do. And so, you know, I want I want to do it for them more than anybody else. Oh, for sure. No, that's good. I like that. that. that. Cool. Cool. Cool. And so, and I probably don't need to really just whatever program I'm working on, just stick to that, but just really more focus on your activity is good, bro.

I think Symmetry would be a good program for you. Yeah, I think that would be a good since you've ran anabolic so many times in a row. Uh, map. Have you followed symmetry yet? Um, no. I'm currently on performance right now. right now. right now. Oh, performance is great. Yeah, you're good, too. Let me send you Symmetry if you don't got it. Oh, I appreciate that. Yeah, you got it, dude. Do you um any any advice on like cuz the high uh what do you call it?

Less weight, more volume or more reps. Um, I get very bored like like I said my ADHD I'm just like I'm at eight and I'm also like wait I'm not done yet and then I'm thinking of something else and then I get bored. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Is there any like hack [clears throat] or anything that you would recommend? I mean you could change things angry. I mean you could change things up I guess. I mean put more weight on the bar cuz it's when it's really [ __ ] heavy.

It's hard to think about. Yeah, it's true. You put some more weight on that bar. It's It's It's Listen to metal. It's You could also train in a way that's uh unconventional, you know, like like old time strength. time strength. time strength. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or strong. Like these are programs that are very different that might uh peak your your your Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. your excitement. Yeah. Maps metabolic is very straightforward. Same exercises. Like Like Like I can see how you get very comfortable and like I enjoy it.

Like I love those and I know there's exercises in there that I can improve. Squat, bench, like but if you know if you're bored and you want to try something different like map strong and map symmetry and maps, they're very different. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, Okay, Okay, cool. cool. cool. Yeah, you got it, dude. Yep. Yep. Yep. All right. All right. All right. Awesome. I really do appreciate you guys uh everything you guys bring to the table. Um table. Um table. Um Adam, your family, and your um your story of getting off ketamine.

That's that's awesome. Congratulations, man. That's so cool. Um Justin, just you and your kids and your story bu building the pond recent I listened to was really awesome. And S, I I really do appreciate you bringing up the uh topic of pornography. Um I really appreciate your story and that's been very helpful to me as well. So thank you all. Keep it up, man. Thanks. Keep it up, Matt. Keep after Thanks. Have Have a good Christmas. You too. That's well just to make sure we uh we're correct.

It's not ketamine you came off of. You weren't using ketamine. You're using creative. You bought it over the counter. What do you be like a big That's right. Adam. right. Adam. right. Adam. I get I get his point. Yeah. It's all good. Corn. Corn. Corn. But there's a difference. There's a difference. difference. difference. Good right now. There's definitely a difference. One of them you can just go pick up an herbal. Well, bro, you were ketamine addicted. You guys are hardcore. You know the thing, too. It's like listen there there always is a discipline component.

discipline component. discipline component. Oh yes. And so this is why I went the kid route bro. Yeah. So when people say you know and look there's easier and harder ways to do this. And so the rules we give have so many downstream effects right and they're very easy rules to follow from a simplicity standpoint right because there's lots of rules I could throw at somebody. But there's also there's always a discipline component which is like yeah like if you go off whole foods and you're snacking on snacks and processed foods and you're eating out you know fast food like it's not going to happen.

Listen I I I appreciate Matthew having the courage to come on and and be vulnerable and share honestly everything that he struggles and challenge with. The reality is that he is actually like most people. most people. most people. Yep. M Yep. M Yep. M not everybody goes and admits that and you know we tend to attract a lot of people that want to talk to us that are already fitness fanatics but the reality is he represents the majority of people which is what a lot of the conversations on this podcast have been inspired by and I know we've taken criticism from our peers in the space over the [ __ ] like that but it's like that's he's who I trained.

I trained. I trained. That's right. That's right. That's right. Like that's the type of client that I train on. And it's uh and it is baby steps and there's it's a there's a lot of layers, you know, it's not it's and it's rarely ever I mean he's doing great programming. He likes to do activity things. So, it's not that it's this struggle around food and food noise and finding ways finding ways finding ways to unlock that and figure that out. Um but as a dad, man, to me, at least when when I became a dad, one of the biggest motivators was looking through the lens of my my kids.

him knowing at 43 years old how much this is a struggle for him, right? right? right? That is there's been no bigger motivator for me than to go my kid right now who's six is watching everything that I do. Totally. Totally. Totally. And so therefore, as bad as I want to go do that thing, I I don't want him to struggle the same way I am. And that to me, I think that's that's the the direction he should really try and focus on. I think that will help the most.

Our next caller is Rachel from Michigan. Hey, welcome back. How you doing? Hi, I'm doing good. I'm really excited to be back here and I'm thrilled that it's right before Christmas. So, I hope you guys have a merry Christmas and everything and thanks again for having me back on. So, you got it. All right, give us the update. What's going on? Um, so I actually just wrote it out and I was just going to read it. Um, helps with the nerves a bit. So, no problem.

no problem. no problem. Uh, hi Mind Pump. Great to be back on the show. Last time I was on because I was overtraining on Maps 15. You assessed my diet and daily life and found that it was because of my very active lifestyle and the amount of food was too low. You said to do MAPS 15 every other day or every two days and eat a protein shake in between meals. The first week I implemented just the protein shakes and they worked super good at first.

I had a lot more energy for my daily life, but was still feeling a little tired and not getting stronger. So, I tried working out every other day or every two days. It was very hard. Um, it turns out I have an exercise addiction. I was very anxious from missing the workouts, but felt better energy levels doing MAPS 15 only two to three days a week. Despite eating more and exercising less, I still did not get stronger, but I finally stopped losing weight. Now, my schedule's a little bit different as I was laid off in November for the winter season.

I'm still fairly active, but I'm struggling with eating enough and not overdoing it. I think I tend to have high cortisol which causes me to have kind of a wired energy and when I miss an or when I um miss workouts I feel very anxious and itchy like I'm not doing enough. My goal is to get stronger and leaner and develop a healthy exercise relationship where I rule the exercise and it does not rule me. I also have a goal of getting rid of the weird itchy anxious feeling I get when I'm feel like I'm not working hard enough.

I feel like I'm still undereating, especially now since my schedule changed. I don't always get the two protein shakes a day. I tracked one day and I'm eating 2,200 calories with 148 gram of protein and 156 g of carbs. Eating more does scare me. I really don't want to gain fat. I just want to gain muscle. Since we talked last, I'm 2 lbs heavier. I feel a little stronger, but my lifts are still pretty similar. I just feel more stable in them, if that makes sense.

I've switched over to Maps Powerlift and I'm halfway through it. I've been enjoying it. Um, I know I have so much potential cuz my lifts are pretty low. I just need some guidance and help breaking like the exercise addiction and the fear of overeating. Um, I really hope you guys can help. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Rachel, if I recall, you were like you're you were a machine in terms of the amount of work you were doing every day. Can you give me This was before.

What were you doing again before? Cuz I vaguely remember you. Was it like a farm you worked on or something like that? Uh yeah, I'm I was a park ranger in the summer. So I was like doing a lot of weed whipping and stuff and taking care of campers and hiking. And then I also have like my animals at home I take care of and my garden I do and everything. And then I like make dinner and everything for the family. So I remember crazy step crazy amount of steps every day, right?

Weren't you like over 18,000 some? Yeah. Yeah, I was. Yeah, probably about that. So, that. So, that. So, I remember. Okay, now I remember. So, here here's the thing, Rachel. This is going to feel uncomfortable. There's no way around this. So, there's no way for us to do this without you feeling uncomfortable because we got to move you out of uh this place that you're in. You're going to have to eat more. And it's going to feel like you're force-feeding yourself. force-feeding yourself. force-feeding yourself. Okay?

Okay? Okay? And it's going to feel like that for a while until you settle into it. There's there's ways though and tips within the foods that we can creep those calories in without making it feel like you're having to have this whole other meal though. Like if you break break like give me the the three meals you probably ate to hit 2200 calories. What what are we looking at? Um I would like I would drink like a protein shake when I got up and then I would eat like my breakfast after um my workout which would be like beef jerky with some butter, milk and yogurt and cottage cheese.

And then I'd have almost the same thing for lunch cuz it's like my favorite thing to eat. And then dinner I'll always eat like meat, fruit, and some sort of vegetable, potatoes, rice or something like that. So, you got to throw another meal in there. Um, maybe like a ground beef, rice, avocado bowl, and just throw that in. A nice 500 calorie meal. Add to what you're currently doing and you'll see yourself your your energy is going to go up and you're going to get stronger.

You're just not eating enough honey and you're really like So, tell me what your activity looks like now because I know you're not working for the winter, but what does it look like now? It's like it's like less. So, like I'm not doing the maps 15 workouts anymore. I switched over to powerlift because I have more time to do it and I'm really liking the powerlift one. But um so now I just like I do maps powerlift and then after that I eat my breakfast and everything and then I go out and I take care of my chickens and stuff and do our wood stove and everything and then I come back in and then it's lunchtime so I eat lunch.

Then normally I read for a while. Then I pick up the house and everything. And then um I I it's winter time so I have a lot of shoveling to do now. Sometimes I shovel for like two hours a day. Just the snow to move it. Um I Yeah, I usually make dinner and everything for everyone. So you're a little machine. But yeah, you add a meal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Add a five or six. You can also throw two tablespoons of peanut butter in that shake in the morning, too.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um, do you think I'm getting enough carbs in? Like, I'm getting 156 gram of carbs a day. Is that enough or No. No. No. No. I think you need to just get more calories. calories. calories. That's why that's why I'm trying to give you little things like peanut butter in your two table two big heaping tablespoons of peanut butter in your shake in the morning will that'll help a little bit. Give you a nice bump right there. But just throw another meal.

Find a time to eat another meal. make like, like I said, a ground like 85% ground beef, rice, some avocado, some salsa, cheese, and eat a bowl. Tastes good. It It's going to feel different to for someone like you because you're like, I don't know if I can eat that much. So, you're going to kind of have feel you're going to have to kind of get past that a little bit. little bit. little bit. But with your activity, I mean, you're eating too little. You're you're maintaining, but if you want to see yourself get stronger and thrive, you're going to need to bump going to you're going to need to bump your calories.

What what what are you going to make dinner for the family tonight? What's what's on the agenda? Um well, tonight I actually I'm going to be working, so it's just leftovers for me. I I packed myself some chicken thighs and um some squash and a little bit of fruit with a little bit of milk. Okay. How many people you taking care of? of? of? Um I have two sisters and then my mom and dad and my dog. So, yeah. Yeah. You got you got to eat more, hun.

You're like you're you're like you're moving a lot. Yeah, [clears throat] you are very active. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, I I just sometimes I I don't really feel active and I I don't know. I I don't know. I just like get like I get itchy sometimes because I feel like I'm not doing enough. doing enough. doing enough. You're doing enough. Yeah, you're doing enough. I'm not going to tell you to move less. I I get it. You sounds like you're very valuable. valuable. valuable. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

To your family. It sounds like you derive a lot of uh like pleasure out of serving people. serving people. serving people. Uh you like to, you know, be productive. You like to contribute. You know, those probably resonate with you. I'm not gonna tell you to do less. I'm not gonna tell you to do less. We're just trying to build you up. But you got to eat more. You got to fuel yourself if you're going to do all that stuff. You're not be more effective at all that stuff.

You'll be more effective at helping and doing all that work if you fuel yourself. Think about it this way. Eat to for performance. Yep. Yep. Yep. Eat for performance. And if you add a 500, 600 calorie meal, you're going to perform better. All the things you do, you're going to do better. Yeah. Yeah. Especially if you start feeling strength from that, you know, you're you're you're humming. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz that was like another thing that I think probably has to do with it. I've I've just like whenever I work out, I never get muscle pumps like ever.

So, I didn't know if is you think I don't eat enough. eat enough. eat enough. You're depleted. That's why glycogen stores are low. Reason. Yeah. Reason. Yeah. Reason. Yeah. That's you you'll when you're when you're filled up, you'll you'll feel that pump. You'll feel that pump when you're Yeah. You're depleted right now. Does Does your whole family like you? Do you guys all just work your butts off? Uh, busy. Uh, busy. Uh, busy. Yeah, kind of. We're all We're always busy non-stop, it feels like. So, yeah.

Yeah. No, no, you got to throw another 500 calorie meal. Eat it every day. Literally, just an additional meal to everything you normally eat. And And And Okay. Yeah. Cuz I I know like when I when you I talked to you guys last time, you had me put in like two two of the protein shakes and I would do that and I think there it was probably only adding an extra about 300 calories a day, I think. But I did notice I I just felt more energy right away from it and then it kind of went away like within like a week week week cuz it's still not enough.

Rachel, make them make them tasty. Make them tasty. Throw a throw a banana in there. Throw two tablespoons of peanut butter in there. Even have some Nutella on top of that. Make a make a really good high protein, high calorie shake. Like don't just have whey protein and and milk. It's too that's too low. Have a good five, six, 700 calorie shake when you do it. that if you have a hard time getting the meal like I'm with S. I'd like to see you get another meal.

I know how hard making a whole another meal can be sometimes. So then when you have the shakes, don't be just having way shakes. You need to put a banana in there, put some peanut butter in there. Like calorie it up and and that that'll serve you. serve you. serve you. Yeah. And just just a tip too, Rachel, for what I said. Uh you know, I do this at home or my wife does this. She just cooks a lot of ground beef and a lot of rice rice rice once or twice a week and then we put it in the fridge and then I always have a meal.

I just always takes mix them together and it's done. Crack eggs on it, put cheese on it, turns into something good. But yeah, but Adam gave great advice, too. If you're already using a blender, just throw a banana, some peanut butter and and and Okay. Okay. Okay. Nutella in there and you've just given yourself some extra calories, some fuel. All right. So, you think probably like 500 extra calories a day should at least for you. I'm not even worried about you. That's why I said, "Yeah, put two heaping spoons throwing a towel on there." If you accidentally went to 700 calories over, we're going to be fine.

Yeah. Rachel, if you were my client, I would probably get you up to close to around 3,000 calories or above is probably where we would end up because how active you are because of your activity. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, like a way So, like I would know like I'm eating enough once I get stronger, right? stronger, right? stronger, right? Yeah. And you'll feel the pumps. Yeah. You you'll start you'll know when you're hitting you're you'll know when you're hitting those calories, right? Is you'll start feeling the pumps for the first time.

You will. Okay. Cuz I really want to get a muscle pump. I've been doing it for so long. I just want to feel one. feel one. feel one. You got you got you got to eat. You deserve one. deserve one. deserve one. I'll tell you, just so you know, when when you're in uh that depleted state and you always like um you know, it reminds me of getting ready for a show. So, getting ready for a show, I'm low calorie, low calorie, low calorie. The last three to four days I I have to load before I actually really feel it.

So, one day of good eating is not going to result in the in the pump. You're going to need to have several good high calorie days then the pump comes. So just keep that in mind. Like don't think like just one you're going to have like one big day and you're like the guys told me I'd feel a pump and I don't feel a pump. I had a big high calorie day. You'll because you've been low for so long. It's going to take a couple days to really load the body up to feel the pump that you're looking for.

Yep. Yep. Yep. Okay. Okay. Okay. But that that'll that'll tell us you're on the right track. Yep. Yep. Yep. All right. So just just keep eating until I get stronger and start getting some pumps basically. That's right. That's right. That's right. right. right. How old are you again, Rachel? Um 22. Um 22. Um 22. Oh, you're dull. Yeah, I love it. This will be fun. Can we have you back on? Let's do this again. Tell us when you get a pump. I know. Okay. Yeah. Next time I come back on, I hope I'm going to be so much stronger cuz I'm doing powerlift right now.

Really want to get my lifts up really low. low. low. Get those calories up. You will. I promise. Absolutely. Strong and optimal here real soon. Okay. I'm I'm really going to go for it this time. Like hardcore. hardcore. hardcore. All right, Rachel. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Let's get it. All right. Bye, guys. Thank you so much. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. You know, when you you you know when you talk to a kid and you just know they were raised were raised were raised like Well, like Well, like Well, what a great kid.

Yeah. But busting her butt. My god. And she just needs to eat more. more. more. We need to protect people like that. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Totally. She's so young. So, this is great. She'll have fun with it. Get stronger. Start feeling the energy. the energy. the energy. Develop that relationship with food that's going to last forever. Where's she at? Michigan. Is that where she at? she at? she at? Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She's like, "Yeah, I you know, now that I'm not working, I'm I'm like I'm not doing as much.

I I wake up, I'm working outside, then I come in for lunch, I'll read I'll read for a while, probably an hour. Yeah. Clean the house. Then I'll do a bunch of shoveling over shovel snow for 2 hours. Bro, if I shovel for 45 minutes, chop some wood, I'd come inside. I'll be dead, you know? So great. Love it. All right, I know you like that episode. If you did, check this one out. Stop doing three sets of 12 to build muscle and do this instead.

You guys want to guess? stop doing the three sets of 12 and do this instead. Uh, with that intro, my guess is you're going to tell people to change the rep range up to Yeah. 5x5 or low rep range. Do you guys remember when you're going? Yeah. So, um, often times we get stuck in like a set count and a rep count or a range