2953: 7 Easy Food Swaps That Lower Your Calories Without Changing How Much You Eat

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MindPump. MindPump. With your hosts, Sal DiStefano, Adam Schafer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded health, fitness, and entertainment podcast in the history of the universe, approaching over half a billion downloads. Yep, this is MindPump. Today's episode, we answered listeners' questions. So people went to Instagram, MindPump Media. They wrote in some questions. We picked four, and we answered them. But that was after the intro. Today's intro was 54 minutes long. Now, in the intro, we talk about nutrition and fitness and fat loss. We talk about depression and anxiety and what the studies show. We have always a good time. Now, this episode is brought to you by some sponsors. The first one is Crisp Power. These are high-protein pretzels, 25 to 28 grams of protein per bag of delicious pretzels. The honey mustard ones are amazing. By the way, they're also high-fiber. 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Use the code LAUNCH for all of it. All right, real quick. If you love us like we love you, why not show up by, by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs, or training gear over at mindpumpstore.com? I'm talking right now. Hit pause. Head on over to mindpumpstore.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. All right, we're going to talk about food swaps. Eat this instead of that. These are easy ways to lower your calories, bump your protein, and get better results and still taste something that tastes really good. These are great tricks. Check it out. I like this. This is top of mind for me right now. I've got three weeks until Cabo, and then this is one of the ways, I like this because this is like one of the ways that I will, without like really tracking, just tighten the diet. Little things. Right. Like it's like this versus that. And just knowing that exchanging some of these foods that I would normally eat for other options, I know I automatically just lower calories. And so if I can just discipline myself to make those options for the next few weeks, it's enough to drop a couple percent. You know who's king of doing these things are physique and bodybuilder competitors. They're like, they're like, they're the best at this kind of stuff because of that. That's where I got all mine from. That's right. Because of the crazy pre-contest diet, the restrictions. Top of mind all the time. It is. And it's like, you know, and the food cravings, you know, when you're a competitor and you drop calories, you know, you're trying to get down to, you know, 2% body fat, which I don't recommend anybody try. It's not healthy, but the food cravings get so insane. I've only ever gotten down, I've gotten down to about 4% body fat. So I'm never down to two, but I remember dreaming about food. Only time in my life. It's the weirdest thing. Only time in my life I ever dreamt about food. Yeah, it was really weird. I got as far as changing my lattes to black coffee. That was a big step for me. That's out of the list. It's a big step for me, you guys. Put that on the list. Good job, Justin. Yeah. I love it. No problem. So, all right. So at the top, this is kind of an easy one. And this does make a big difference, which is, you know, people like to snack. Now, generally speaking, I advise against snacking. I think Adam's the one that says, there are no such thing as snacks. There are complete meals and incomplete meals. And I like that because snacking really does get away from you. It also takes away from the complete meals, the ones that are put together, the ones that are focused, that have kind of what you need. That being said, it's a reality. It's a reality that people like to snack, especially when they're at the movies or when they're driving or when they're at work. And so is there a swap out? Is there a way to snack? There's a way to snack that reduces, naturally reduces caloric intake and also helps you with some of the more important macros. And that's a yes. And so here's an easy swap out. Most snacks are carb-based snacks. There's nothing inherently wrong with carbohydrates, but carb-based snacks, carbohydrates in general, are the lowest on the totem pole of satiety-producing macronutrients. In other words, when you look at fats, proteins, and carbohydrates, carbohydrates produce the least satiety. You can eat those the most and go beyond, above and beyond what you should be eating the easiest with carbohydrate-based snacks. Above that is fat and then protein. - Well, in the restaurant industry, they prime you with that. - That's right. - So yeah, they start you out with the bread, the chips, to get you your appetite really to start roaring. - Isn't that interesting? - This was me last night. Last night, I got up. So obviously I'm heading in three weeks, so I'm heading out. And so I know like part of running in a calorie deficit, is there's gonna be times where you're hungry. It's just a fact. You're not gonna avoid that. And I was really hungry last night and got up and had beef jerky. You know, just, you know, nine o'clock at night. It's a weird thing to have, but it's high protein, moderate calories. I think it was 230, 250 calories for the whole bag. - And produces incredible satiety. - Yeah, and it's 30 grams of protein towards my goal. - That's right. - Which, you know, in the pursuit of either building muscle or holding onto muscle, it's crucial. And I can always afford to have some more protein. It's hard for me to hit 200 plus grams of protein every single day. And so I think at that point, I was probably hovering around 170, 180 anyways. And so plenty of room to have more protein and then it also satiates me. So I eat that and it felt fine. - Yeah, so beef jerky is my favorite for a protein snack. The other one is like deli meat. This was back in the day, you know, I'd go in the fridge, grab some turkey slices and I'd eat those. And it's really hard to overeat that. You know, it's like, I could eat a bag of chips or, you know, pretzels or whatever, and I'm going to throw it down. But jerky or deli meat, it tends to hit that satiety very quickly. And I get that high protein. What's interesting too, one of our partners, Chris Power, made a high protein pretzel snack. And what's interesting about this, which is fascinating. So this is how powerful protein is in terms of producing satiety. And satiety is complicated, right? 'Cause you also have hyper palatability, which plays a role. And all that stuff, right? When our staff here eats a bag of Chris Power, which is like 28 grams of protein for like a bag. So like to think of your typical bag of potato chips, that's the size of Chris Power. And they taste and kind of act like your typical carb snack. They're crunchy. They've got that same kind of feel. Everybody here has a bag. - But it fills you up. - Nobody goes to have two or three bags, you know? Because you get that plus it's got fiber. So that's the other macronutrient fiber. It's right under protein for satiety. So if you could swap out your carb snack for a protein snack, especially one with fiber, you typically do a lot better. And they have that new flavor, by the way, the honey mustard. Have you guys tried that? - Yeah. - Yeah. - It's so good. - I think it's wild how you, I've tried to. I've tried to have more than one bag just to see if I want it. And I can't finish the second bag. I have no desire. - Protein does that. - Which if you gave me a bag of Doritos or name your favorite chip. - Oh, you're going hard. - Yeah, no problem. - And the bag you're talking about, it's a small bag. It's not like a big bag of chips. It's a very small bag. - You know what's interesting? After you had a bag of those, I bet if I gave you a bag of chips, you'd be able to keep eating. - Oh, that would be an interesting. - Isn't that wild? - Yeah, you're probably right. - That's how satiety works. - I'm sure it would. - All right, so here's another one. This one is one of my favorite categories. I love, Adam has the best swap outs for desserts. And I'll just set the stage for you, Adam. He loves desserts. He says he's got a sweet tooth. He definitely does. He also at one point became a professional physique competitor. So he's like, I have to figure out this problem while I'm dieting. Your dessert swap outs are, I've had some of them and they're really good. So why don't you share some? - Well, I've got a bunch like, so I'll tell you one that's a cool one is if you take a Greek yogurt, you strain it over a cheesecloth overnight and gets like all the kind of like the fluid out of it. - So what do you do? You just let it sit on there? - Yeah, you put it over cheesecloth, like over a bowl. So it like kind of strains over and there and you throw out all the liquid and then you take that liquid that's left over the next morning and you whip it up and you can whip up like Stevia inside it. And then it tastes like spot on to whipped cream. But now you have this whipped cream, high protein flavor and then dip strawberries in it. So now I get like some, so I get berries, which we always talk about berries as fruit being like your better fruits, high fiber, antioxidants, lower calorie. And so some sliced strawberries in that, and you can get even more creative and you can spread that over a rice cake and then the strawberries over the top of it, and it's like this amazing, it's got protein, I get that crunch, I get the sweet flavor. - It's like you get that without your pants on. - I don't know. - I don't know why you're picturing that. - Wow. - The way you're describing it. - That one takes a little effort to like make it. Like I pre-make the whipped cream. - You prep it. - Yeah, I prep that. If I'm in a pinch, even just a rice cake with some like, you know, strawberry jam that's like sugar-free or something. So it's like low calorie. You can get no calorie jams too that you spread over like a rice cake is really easy to do. Cocoa whip is a great substitution for like, if you like cold ice cream flavors, So I learned that from you. So you could buy, it's just called Coco Whip. It has almost no calories. This is weird. Yeah, it's tasty. It is like 30 calories. Yeah, it's really low. It's really crazy. And so what I got from you was a rice cake with Coco Whip and a little bit of jelly. Yeah. And that's like a staple at my house. I'll even mix it. I do this for Max. It's like 100 calories. This is his favorite dessert. We do like a Greek yogurt and granola and berries or whatever. And I can add just a little bit of Coco Whip in there. And then it makes it more ice cream-like just by putting a little bit of Coco Whip in there. And you got this high protein, it's cold, tastes like ice cream a little bit and a little bit of berries on it. If you can afford the extra calories, you can sprinkle a little granola on there. And they now have those high protein Greek yogurts where they add a little additional protein. So you get a cup and it's like 20 or 25 grams of protein. Some are smaller at 15. And even if you don't have that, so I like buying the ones, the brand. I already have. It's really easy to put. What do you do? Just add protein? Add whey protein. If you can handle dairy, obviously, I'm sure you can if you're having that, right? So you just add that. Sometimes I actually like it that way because like the vanilla whey protein added in just like plain Greek yogurt gives it a nice texture and flavor. And so that'll shoot it up to 20 plus grams by doing it that way too. Yeah, we still, what was it? It was the protein balls, the peanut butter ones. Yeah, that was another recipe of yours. Yeah, that's oatmeal, peanut butter. And honey, all like- With protein powder. Yeah, with protein powder. And then you roll them up and make them into these- And you freeze them. No, you don't freeze them. You just put them in the refrigerator. They'll harden in the refrigerator. And then make those little balls like that. All right, here's another one. First off, nuts, they are technically a whole food, but it's one of the few whole foods that acts more like a processed food, especially if the nuts are already shelled and roasted. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like you will hit calories very quickly with nuts. Yeah, too quickly. Like really, really quickly. And so one of the things you could do to reduce, whatever, the damage, I guess, for lack of a better term, that nuts can do is rather than buying nuts that are shelled already, like a bag of peanuts or a bag of pecans or whatever, is to buy them in the shell. That process of you having to break them open- Cracking them. I'm going to tell you right now, you sit down for 20 minutes- To speed, yeah. And you eat peanuts where you have to crush the shell and eat them. You'll eat a third or a fourth of the amount of peanuts you would eat. If they were already shelled. There's still that reward from it. That's right. And in fact, this is what I used to do with my clients who love nuts. I say, oh, go ahead and eat them. Get them with the shell and break them open. And they end up eating way less. Well, you get two things working for you right there. You've got the shell obviously slows down that process. And then they're also raw, so they're not roasted or salted. And so that's- Slightly less palatable. That would be my advice, even with like almonds. Because if you do like the roasted and the flavored type almonds, I could crush those. Yeah. You know, with some of those wasabi. The wasabi ones. I mean, those ones, I could eat those all day long. But give me some raw ones. And like after a handful of those, I'm pretty good. Yeah. So it's a good strategy too. Makes a big difference. So I used to do this. So I would have a bag in the- I always had my studio and they were in the shell. And so I'd have to go back there and break them open. And in between clients, I'd have like five or six. Now you give me a bag of nuts and it's a handful, which is way different calorie wise. Yeah. I used to actually take like seeds. So like I could go through phases of like chewing like- Sesame seeds. Not sesame seeds. What are they? Sunflower seeds. Sunflower seeds. Sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you just- Just because it's like something to do, keep the mouth, you know, occupied. But yeah, that was always a strategy. I know. I used sunflower seeds and gum. Those were the two like during competing days. In the shell. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Because like you said, you take a small handful and suck on them for a long time and just keeping your mouth busy. A lot of calories. That's a bodybuilder favorite right there. All right. Here's another one. This one's really cool, everybody. You like your cut of meat. I don't care what it is, ribeye, tri-tip, whatever. You don't even have to change the amount of meat that you eat. If you switch from grain-fed to grass-fed, your calories substantially drop because grass-fed meat is naturally leaner and higher in protein. In other words, six ounces or eight ounces of a typical ribeye versus, you know, six to eight ounces of a grass-fed ribeye is going to cut your calories and bump your protein. What was that? Doug looked that up. We talked about this like. I remember you looked at it. I was surprised by how, what a difference it was. Yeah. It was a pretty significant. It was, it was a hundred. It was, it was like an eight ounce cut, a ribeye grass-fed versus grain-fed. Actually, the information I had was for ground beef. Ground beef is different. Yeah. Yeah. Ground beef, because ground beef is automatically controlled for fat content. Oh, for fat content. Yeah. So if you go grain-fed, grass-fed, ground beef, it's 20%, you know, or 80%, it's 80%. It's the cuts of meat where you see the difference. So you could go like a eight ounce ribeye. Ground beef will tell you 93, seven. Yeah. So they control for that. Yeah. So you're going to get the same. Yeah. But if you go, you know, 10 ounce ribeye grain-fed versus a 10 ounce ribeye grass-fed, it's a, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a significant difference in calories. It's less fat and more protein. More protein. What you got over there, guy? Yeah. I'm looking it up right now. Yeah. You'll get that number for camel there. So it's helpful. It's a picture of the back. It's not helpful, Doug, at all. Speaking of, you know, people eat camel meat in other places? No, they don't. Yes, they do. Camel meat, kangaroo meat, that's another meat you can eat. Those sound terrible. Don't sign me up for that. Yeah, I know. I think kangaroo meat's like, I think that's relatively common in Australia. Or I'm making this up. Yeah, I wonder what that tastes like. I feel like I'm making this up, baby. I feel like you are, too. Somebody in Australia right now. Somebody's eating it, though. Shaking their fist at them. No, we don't. No, we're guaranteed. That sounds gamey. It does, right? Right? Yeah, it does. Chewy. They're pretty muscular. They look really muscular, right? I don't think that would be good at all. Yeah. Remember the video, the one that fought that dude? Yeah. Some of them get, like, I don't know, seven feet tall or whatever when they're standing upright like that. They look like old-timey boxers. Yeah. By the way they stand. If you like burgers, you're better off eating two lettuce-wrapped burgers than you are with a burger and fries. Oh, yeah. Yeah. We do it all the time. This is a big one. This is like a really easy, big one. It's super filling. So I did this the entire time that I was competing. This was a part of the diet, was we still ate out at Five Guys. It was like- I love it. It was like, you know, my way of still connecting with my wife since I had to eat all this boring food all the time was Fridays- I'm going to take you out to dinner, baby. Well, no, Fridays we'd order Five Guys, and I'd have two lettuce wraps. I'd just throw it all in a bowl, and then I'd cut it up with a knife. Oh. I'd turn it into, like, a salad. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So it's like, I mean, you can eat it like this, but I think there's plenty of lettuce on, like, just one of those suckers. So I literally would just, I would actually take one off and then just throw the extra meat in there. And then I'd cut it all up, dice it all up, and make it into this big salad. I haven't figured out how to not get all that grease on your hands. With the lettuce? Yeah. Which is why I like turning it into, like, a bowl. That makes sense. When I go to, so, you know, In-N-Out, obviously a California, you know, chain or whatever. But when I go with my family, if I get the burger and fries, I eat way, fries, way more. Oh, yeah. It's just way more. You crush 700 plus calories in fries. And I just can keep going. Yeah. If I eat two lettuce wrap burgers. I'm good. Which aren't even, by the way, like, one double is not even a 700 calorie. Yeah. What you got there, Doug, for the grass-fed versus grain-fed? What is that? Let's see here. 70 extra calories. So, yeah, this is for 100 grams, 120 calories for the grass-fed, 196 for the grain-fed. For only 120, yeah. So 80 calories less, two grams of protein higher. And way less fat. And way less fat. And way less fat. And that's for a small piece. What is that, 100 grams? What is that? 100 grams. I'm not sure exactly what that is. So what you would typically do, Doug, when you would Google this, is you would say 10-ounce grain-fed ribeye versus 10-ounce. Here's the challenge I'm having with this, Sal, is that nothing's coming up exactly as you say. So I don't even know if this is a ribeye, okay? The Googler's not working. We don't even know what kind of meat that is. The Googler's not working very well today. Sometimes you have some very specific requests that are. I feel like the internet's good at that, though. We all have our strengths. It's fine. Oh, okay. Yeah. I think we should just give Sal a little laptop so he can Google it. I think he's pretty good. He's pretty fast at it. All right, all right. There is no doubt he's the best Googler out of everyone here, for sure. Yeah, he sits here. Which, by the way, that's a whole skill, man, with AI, which we'll talk about a little bit later. All right, so pizza, traditional pizza versus crust-free pizza. Adam, this is another one that you do. Yeah, no, you can actually put this in an iron skillet, all the stuff that you like. So I like to make it heavy on the meat. So if you do, like, sausage or beef or chicken or something like that, and then the cheese and. So what do you do? You put the cheese first? You put, yeah, you put the cheese. The cheese ends up being like a crust. So if you lay the cheese like it's a crust, and then you layer all the other things, and then I do a lot of meat, so like a layer of a lot of meat. So sauce, everything. Yeah, and then you can do sauce, all the other things like that. And then you just, like, bake it in the oven, and then it'll. How do you take it? You just literally take it off of the spatula? Yeah, because it'll, yeah, it'll end up like the. Crusted. Yeah, the cheese will, like, harden in crust, like on an iron skillet, put it in there like that. And then, yeah, then you got, like, this. Because that's the worst part of the pizza a lot is the gluten, the gluten-loaded bread that you get on there. It's the highest calories, disrupts most people's guts. And so, so long as you can handle cheese. So just a side note, so I can't do dairy? You're making me hungry. I'm the weird guy that orders a pizza without cheese. You should always. You guys got to see the looks on people. You mean you have bread? It's literally bread, sauce, and, like. Can you call it pizza without cheese? What do you. You want bread? You want soft bread? This is just holding your marinara sauce. That's it. That's basically it. Your reservoir. I've done this before. It's actually pretty good. Is swapping out your spaghetti for spaghetti squash. Oh, yeah, we live off of this. Do you really? Yeah. You guys do this a lot? Oh, yeah, a lot. I think it's. with it and spaghetti squash is like no calories it's super good i think it's i i think it's a go-to thing that we did for a really long time in fact it's been a while since i didn't you just grow some squash too i did how'd that turn out not spaghetti squash zucchini you can actually do it with you can do it too yeah what do you do do you get one of those tools that use a fork oh yeah i'm kind of lazy i just go buy it at trader joe's it's already done oh yeah that's the way to do it yeah yeah good kind of sauce you guys you guys go meat sauce yeah i wish i had somebody who was italian that canned sauce i would probably use that probably 13 years of working with this guy haven't got a can of sauce i gotta remember to do that i've never brought you guys sauce not one can dog don't get it we're a little salty about it it's in a jar all right i'll bring it i'll bring you some haggis all right anyways those are good those are all good swaps and i mean literally again it's like uh you know it's one of those things you're living your life and there's healthy um and and i think that's most important but there's also an enjoyment factor which we can't deny and these swap outs allow you to kind of enjoy i'm super curious about like watching my my son grow up as he gets older like uh so this is all stuff that he's like eight he's grown up with he's he grew up with it right and so i know that i battle with the sweet tooth because i did not grow up this way so i've learned to like train myself but he actually prefers this so it'll be interesting if that changes over time i mean we're we're at seven right now and it's been really consistent that like he would choose this over the alternative on on foods and so i'm wondering if like his palate will be formed like that for good and so that he'll always do it i remember i dated this girl that was like that her her family was really really strict about processed foods her whole life she competed also and i remember like even after post-comp where i was like i wanted ice cream and pizza and like every dessert bad thing that i hadn't had for so long she was just like man i just want a steak and a baked potato sounds you know just you just something i don't have to count the calories and i'll just eat a big old man i was like man that's so crazy to me that you don't crave any of the things but she didn't grow up on that so i'm curious to see if i'll i'll notice a difference with uh you will the data shows that data shows that your palate palate gets formed uh as early as in utero um but as your brain develops it develops around uh you experiences including experiences around entertainment stuff like that does that does that it's the molding of the brain i know and i i believe it isn't it isn't it ages three to seven is when the when the most of that is getting done around that i'm not sure from a from a neurological from the brain like i don't know possibly i don't know what the ages are but i'll tell you i'll give you an example uh if you like different cultures uh we're we all grew up here in america so if you have if you smell a fishy smell in a market you automatically like ew that's gross but in other is not perceived that way because they grew up around those types of smells and it meant you know fresh fish and food so it's just an example and there's foods that people will eat from other cultures that we could not you know we would look at and be like that's not really tarantulas yeah that's the extreme one but sure yeah i think doug ate a tarantula no i did not oh you didn't do it i saw a guy do it but i didn't oh i thought you tried it no i have limits yeah so hey by the way we got it we got the number up 12 ounce ribeye uh grass-fed versus grain fret the difference is 200 calories wow 200 200 calories that's a big difference everybody and you're eating 12 you're eating a big old steak either way right isn't that cool yeah it is and higher protein yeah totally yeah all right so i wanted to uh bring something up so today um this morning i was in a text thread with my cousins and we were you know talking about a few different things my brother brought up a study showing the benefits of video games and there's still what yeah so there's studies that that video games can improve things like hand-eye coordination and there's some things they can measure yeah yeah i remember around video games and i'm like right out the gates you know i'm like this is so dumb and so we're going having this conversation back and forth and so what it did is it prompted me to look up the actual data uh on uh the impacts of certain things on people but especially young men because that got me thinking about young men when you think about video games you typically think guys guys get affected more by you know by playing video games and so i was AI is many things, but among all those things, it's incredible at synthesizing data. So rather than having to go find data, compile it, combine it, you know, stuff that I would have to do in the past, which would take me hours, I can just ask questions, cite the resources and where it got the studies and put it together for me. It's like, how much of an impact do these things actually make? And, and, and then I remembered I had recently had Mike Malagese on the called to his kingdom series. And he's this young Gen Z Christian influencer. Okay. And so one of the questions I asked him was, you know, in regards to young men, you know, Gen Z, like, what are, what are some of the pieces of advice you have for young men? And one thing he said to me blew me away. He said, don't be bored. I was like, huh? And he goes, do things. Cause when you're sitting around bored, you have access to your phone, idle hands. And that's when all this kind of crazy stuff pops up. And I'm like, that is fascinating. That actually, makes a lot of sense. So I, I looked up some data and, um, here's, what's interesting. Um, number one, which is, I think we've talked about this before, uh, young Gen Z, uh, for the first time in history, this generation, this younger generation is doing worse than people in midlife. So typically when you look at the data, depression and anxiety peak at midlife, that's how we're measuring doing better. Yeah. So typically midlife crisis, you know, like why? This is when you have young kids. This is when you have a mortgage. Divorce happens at this time throughout all the time. We've measured depression and anxiety. This is the highest time for depression. Anxiety youth has always been low. Like that's not when you're supposed to be the most anxious and depressed for the first time ever. We've seen the younger generation do worse, uh, in loneliness, anxiety, and depression than people in midlife. So it's not good. It's looking really bad. And then I was thinking to myself, like, what is going on? We've measured this as far back as the great depression. And our kids today are worse with depression and anxiety and mental health than people who grew up in the great depression and the world wars. Like what the hell, uh, is going on? And so I'm, I compiled some data and I'm looking at it and it's pretty wild. Uh, loneliness is high. 25% of us men age 15 to 34 said they felt lonely a lot. This is way higher, um, than in the past. So I'm looking at this as far back as the great depression. And our kids today are worse with depression. And I'm like, what is, what's going on and what can we do to like fix this? So rather than like point out, like, we're sad, we're anxious. What I did is I said, Hey, here's what I want from you. What are the things that, that these young men can do that have the greatest impact on their depression, anxiety, and loneliness? Like, give me some things that the data shows has the greatest impact. What are the greatest things that they can do? Like, because here's the thing with young men. I know this about young men. They don't respond as well to talking as young women. They don't respond to talking as young women. They respond much better to doing right. So challenge purpose. Yeah. So instead of being like, Hey, let's talk about your feelings. This is why they're drawn to video games. It's because they're accomplishing levels and beating bosses and leveling up and becoming, you know, whatever. And what you find in, in, in, uh, in the data is, you know, with young women, you can sit down and process things out and there's some benefit to with young men, but young men tend to do better when instead of that, you go, okay, we're going to go do this. And then you go accomplish this thing. They tend to do a lot better with that. So I'm like, what, what can they, what can they do? And immediately, they're like, Oh, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. And immediately I thought to myself, like, what are two things that young men struggle with today that we didn't necessarily, and that previous generations didn't necessarily, uh, uh, struggle with. And the two that came to mind were pornography and video games. And I think both of those neuter young men in the sense that, you know, like when we were kids in that age group, you have a strong desire to be with girls, but in order to be with girls, you had to go out in the funny, present yourself. You had to get, you know, rejected, rejected, and you got to figure it out. You got to do the scary thing. Uh, pornography will zap that right off the gates. You know, if I was a 15 year old boy working up the courage to go talk to a girl, like, you know, give me 30 minutes on, on porn hub. And I'm like, cool. I think I'll stay home, you know, type of deal. So there's that. And then video games, you hit the nail on the head, Adam, that desire that young man in hair that they have inherently to like do the hard thing, struggle a accomplish something, which we did by going out with our friends, you know, climbing the hill, jumping the thing. They just play, you know, beat level 37, you know, type of deal. So I'm like, okay, what can we do rather than telling them? Don't do this. Don't do that. What are the things they can do that have the biggest impact on anxiety and depression? I don't even think that's number one and number two. It isn't. I think social media is number one, dude. I think social media, it's so interesting. You bring this up right now. I literally just had somebody DM me. Uh, did you see the post I did yesterday? I shared that guy did a post, what percentage of people actually, uh, um, net or no, excuse me, gross, not even net a million dollars a year in, in a business and income. Did you see that? Uh, it was a, it was a really good post. And he just talked about like, it's like the percentage is extremely low. Um, and the idea of the, why he was sharing that was like social media will have you believe that everybody out there that's, you know, a millionaire at 17 or 25 years old, they're driving around these Lambos and wanting this and showing that. And I actually had two different DMS from young men that reached out to me after I had post that saying like, you know, And I know I've talked to them before in DMs. I don't know them personally, but I've talked to them in DMs before and know what they do for work. They make good money. Like they were like good money trying to, they're built, one of them's building their family, like just started their family and stuff like that. And he goes, man, this really, he thanked me for posting it. And he goes, because I really was feeling like, like such a loser. Like I'm not doing anything with my life because I'm so far beyond everything that I'm looking at on social media. It's like, it makes me feel like everybody else is way ahead. And here I am, you know, entering my thirties and I'm still not that rich or making that much money. And so I think that, and I think a lot of guys don't openly share that, but you can't help but think that they are, I mean, competitive at spirit, comparing themselves to other end. We talk a lot about how women do this on social media and they're comparing their bodies and stuff like that. I think a lot of men do that with success and prenatal to provide. And you see all these young kids that are flaunting their car, and their things, and you think that shit, everybody's a millionaire. I'm only getting by making 80 or a hundred grand a year. I must be a loser. So I looked up the data on that and social media has a much greater negative impact on young girls than it does on young men. It has a negative impact on both. Yeah. But as a greater- And you think that's because that's reported more? In comparison to previous generation, women have always reported more. They've always come forth and said, I feel this way, I feel that way. When they try to control for that and say, okay, are people just reporting? It still doesn't cover- Because I feel like some dudes, like I was actually really surprised that two guys felt, they would say that. I'm still a stranger to them, right? We're not like tight friends and they're not like confiding it. But they were willing to share that. Man, I feel like I'm a loser because I'm not doing these things. So it's like, I have this feeling that that data skewed a little bit because there's probably a lot of men that aren't going to admit that they feel that way. So it's always been that way. Like it'll manifest in others. It's like suicide and depression. So I looked it up and I tried to control for that and they said it does not cover the growth. It's like, that is not covering the growth of what we're seeing, that it's more reported. So they try to control for that. It has grown so much and it's anxiety and depression and loneliness that are through the roof. And so what I did, look, we know as coaches, it's much more effective to tell a client to do something rather than tell them to not do something. Yeah, but don't you think those two things are exacerbated by, by that? Yes. So let me get to what, let me get to what this did. So what I did is I literally said, what are the things that they can do that have the greatest impact? Yeah. That the data shows. Do we have data? What does it show? What has the greatest impact? Number one. Learn a skill, do a trade. Number one, working out. Yeah. Number one is working out. And you know what? There's a joke on social media about, hey dude, you're depressed, go lift weights. There's some truth to it. Here's what the data shows. 50% lower depression and anxiety symptoms. 50, just go lift weights. Dude. Yeah. Like if you're listening right now and you're like crapped out and you feel like, what's the point? Go work out. Get on a schedule, go lift weights. That's number one. 50% decrease in those feelings. Number one, you're doing something hard. You're getting up and getting out of the house. Then you're also building muscle. You got the struggle. You got the challenge. I say lifting weights. It's actually exercise in general, but I think lifting weights, obviously I'm partial to it, but I think for young men in particular, the feeling of strength, the feeling of power. Self-improvement. Self-improvement. 50% reduction. You want to know what the second one was? A 10%. In church regularly. By the way, I'm not telling it what to tell me. I'm saying, show me. 33% lower odds of developing depression. So if you're a young guy listening right now and you're struggling, go lift weights, go to church. Yeah. Start right there. Probably the easiest organic way to build community for a young man, right? And it's bigger than you. Yeah. Men are really challenged with this as it is, right? Going on and building relationships. We tend to like isolate ourselves or have our core friend groups and that's it and say that we don't, we don't need anybody or have no friends at all. That's right. And so going to a built-in community like that, I think is probably- Where everybody's pointing to something bigger. Yeah. You know? Here's the next one. Getting a job. Do you know how unemployed Gen Z is compared to previous generations? I believe it. It's wild. Yeah. It makes a big difference. You take a 17-year-old kid who's at home, and again, this is what Mike was telling me. He's like, what are you doing? Like, if you're at work, you're lifting weights, you're going to church, you got way less time to be on your phone, scrolling all this crap, or on social media. People aren't busy enough. Or playing video games. Why do you think they're not working? Like, real busy. They're not working because it's, the culture has changed. I don't think parents are making their kids work. I think it's a different, like, I see a huge difference in my kid when she got a job and my niece when she got, all she did was get a job and it's like totally changed. She suddenly started making friends. She's out. I mean, I'm sure what falls in that category too is that, because what's the number one job now by kids? They say they want to be a YouTuber or an influencer, which is like also another way of saying unemployed. So, I mean, I think like, you know, a lot of them are aspiring YouTubers or influencers. Look at this. 95% higher risk of mental health problems when you're unemployed. Young men out of work, 50, 60% higher frequent mental distress. Dude, go get a job. I don't care what job you got. Go do it. Be proud of your job. Do a good job. I don't care if you flip burgers. I don't care if you're shoveling crap. Do something hard. Go get a job and watch what that does for how you feel. First of all, you can't think about being sad when you're working, when you're doing something. Then you're accomplishing something. You're getting a paycheck. You got to deal with people. You got to deal with difficult people. So you think like the pornography and the video games, what's more detrimental about it is less about the pornography and the video games. It's more so that it's replacing all those things. Dude, let me put it this way. Mike made this as a point. Think about you got your typical 16-year-old or 17-year-old or 18-year-old kid all they do is go to school and then they come home and they're probably like playing video games. Maybe they hang out with their friends a little bit, but that's their life, right? Homework, school, that's it. Now imagine that same kid's like, I'm going to the gym four days a week to lift weights. I'm going to church once a week and I'm going to go work three days a week. How much less time is he going to have to consume those things? It's no different than how we coach somebody on how to diet. 100%. What do we do? We look at somebody's diet. They're eating fast food, candy, ice cream, sodas, alcohol, all the things. Totally. And what we don't do is go, get rid of that, get rid of this, stop doing that. Bump your protein, bump your fiber. I want you to add this meal to every day. And what inevitably happens is that pushes out all those other things and the psychology of telling them they can't do those things. And so it's the same coaching. It's like, instead of telling the kids, stop playing videos for this, it's like, hey, I want you to go do these things. Let me ask you guys this. Put yourself in your shoes of when you were a teenage boy. Imagine if you didn't play sports or I didn't work out. None of us had jobs. And we had access to video games, social media, pornography. What are the odds that we would have been sad and anxious? You know? I think pretty damn high. So it's like, and by the way, again, this is effective for young. Well, it's gotta be, you know, it's gonna be difficult just having a little bit of empathy for all the parents out there. It's like, I never felt like my parents had to tell me that. I just wanted to do that. Where it does feel like parents are having to tell their kids that. It just automatically did that. Like, did your parents ever have to tell you, you have to go outside and play? No, but you know why? Or do you have to go do that? You know why? It sucked to be at home. I didn't have a million and one options of entertainment. Like, what did you guys do at home when you were at home? There was nothing to do. Watch the walls. Hang out with my parents all day long? Like, let's go. Get me out of there. So that's the problem. Well, again, I think that just, I think that highlights just how detrimental tech has been to kids. Totally. Just the access and a more testament to if you have a young kid, that you're raising right now is how long can you delay the tech? Digital anything has been detrimental in my opinion. Dude, again, let me put it to you this way. 16 year old kid, he wants to go meet a girl. He's got porn in his pocket or he's going to go out and talk to some girl he doesn't know and probably get rejected. Nine out of 10 times or 10 out of 10 times, he's staying in his room, getting rid of that feeling and he's going to just stay in there. Yeah. Nine out of 10 times at least. So my point is, and again, young men respond well to direction and do this. So if there's a guy listening right now and you're like, man, I feel crappy, here's what you do. Go lift weights, go to church, get a job. That's it. Just do those things. The rest starts to take care of itself. Based on the data, when you combine those things, 50% reduction here, 30% reduction there. You got a 95% reduction. I bet you a majority of kids listening right now, if they did that after 60 days, be like, cured. Yeah. I feel amazing. Well, at least one, right? Because maybe it's a lot to ask them to do all of it, right? Maybe check one of those boxes consistently and watch what happens. That's right. That's right. I mean, again, it's no different than how we would do that with a client. You would choose one thing and you just add it until they get consistent with that. Then we add another thing. That's right. If you want to up your pain tolerance, listen to metal. Tell me about that dude. There was like a study. Is that what Jackie sent over? Jackie just sent me. I saw that. Yes. More confirmation. Well, actually it wasn't because it was like they controlled and it was like, you know, it was pre-con. So they had like a group that was like going to go to this festival. There was another group that, you know, wasn't and they were all like kind of tested out as like their, their pain tolerance and didn't really happen until the actual event. So the event when they're there, like there's a spike in oxytocin and like they all like had this shared experience where it was like they didn't notice like, you know, the bumps and the bruises and all that like quite as substantially. But I think it, what it's pointing to is like when you're working out and you're listening to heavy metal, you're like, metal, you know, it really kind amass a lot of that like it's how you you interpret pains a lot different a hundred percent music does that a hundred percent it's always done that for me listen bro if i listen to anything from rocky while i'm working out i'm probably gonna hurt myself like rocky ford the the montage there were times when i was training hard and i'd turn that on and it was like a new year appeared and i could just i mean i through all of my competing i had very like what's your song if you're like i wasn't songs as much as it was whatever phase of training i am or what i was doing changed the type yeah but do you have a song let's say you're stuck under a car we can't help you and all we can do is put on a song to help you get out from under the car what song metallica house that jack built okay yeah yeah or inner sandman those yeah those two are like yeah or probably yeah what's yours oh man it would have to be like give me a song or some rage yeah i have to think about because it's it my my uh pr song a lot of times it's it's norma jean oh um and it's um did you listen to that when you did your your 315 split press or whatever i tried but like when i was at um when i was at jordan's gym like we could only get like the radio playing and so they had like a metal channel and i had i think i had like oh you weren't headphoned out or anything when you did that no no is that why what's that was that because you were listening to cues from him would you normally live like that you normally live with headphones don't you normally do with the headphones but i think because i was yeah i was in that setting and he was kind of giving me coaching and cues and also like just i was trying to really focus i think it it was different when i was doing something a little more technical like that i needed to like have a little more coaching cues coaching yeah you want to hear feedback like oh that was by myself that was too fast you you you rush this or yeah triffids yeah triffids is my my jam you guys never heard of it it's it's it's from norma jean okay um but it's very it's very aggressive just know that yeah i told you guys this story i've told this story before but i still love doing this back in the day so in the late 90s we the music was uh controlled by the general manager's office and we had satellite stations but you could also put a cd in there to play so this was this was like 98 i think it was like you could actually put yeah so i had so i would be in the gm's office so i was uh i'd be a fitness manager at this point i also did this as a gm and you had to be a fitness manager at this point and i also did this as a gm and you had to um one way it was like uh tint glass tinted was it mirror tinted windows so you couldn't see in the office but i could see out yeah and i'd have fun with this and so it'd be getting close to prime time and you see all these people on treadmills and ellipticals and i could see the cardio from my office so i call my staff in to my office so like six people get over come here watch this so watch everybody on the treadmills and i'd put uh um eye of the tiger on and it would take about 25 to 30 seconds watch everybody speed go everybody's hitting the button course everybody is hitting the button yeah speeding up you know they have uh i think spotify i'm pretty sure itunes does this too where there's there's music that's designed like it tells you how many beats per second yeah and so like if you want like that's to me that's what i was always like if i was doing something like intense cardio then i would have something that was like house or something crazy like that if i was doing something that was like steady state then i'd be listening like classical or easy something easy listening for if i'm two pr chasing then i'm gonna do something like angry you know you know rage or something that direction my music has changed so much yes i know hey you couldn't you can't even come up with a more radical change yeah i used to work out to angry angry metal and i was pissed i'd be working out like nobody want to talk to me i'm working out because i look like i'm angry now i listen to worship music and it's like popular it's not even like rap or metal christian metal it's like the stuff that will play at church no i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know and i'm smiling throughout my work i don't know how you do it totally dude it's the weirdest thing ever dude you and justin couldn't be more extreme because i feel like i'm not like i'll i'll listen to more like typically right so on a normal lift day is like deaf leopard or acdc so it's like it's rock but it's not like you don't go you know and it's definitely not like they're not as talented justin listens that music to relax i know it's so weird i don't remember where we were going we were going somewhere one time and it was early man i don't we were i don't it was back in the day and justin's driving um i know i normally drive so i would you can't even understand the lyrics and it's like first thing in the morning they're still like due outside sun's coming up and justin is starting i'm like bro i cannot let my coffee hit first because i'm not like anti that music but i'm like i need to like be up a little bit you guys gotta understand it's like uh it i play it too so it's like yeah i get that yeah it's a little difference there i get a lot of inspiration from but it's i know it's weird because it like it escalated to that in college like i was like very punk in like i was very ska and like you know reggae and like all that because you know i grew up in like a surf town and so that's like all i would listen to a lot of sublime and i still do that's like pretty much what i listened to more than anything else but like there was just something i don't know when i was in the cold and like chicago was like i didn't have any friends and it was just like that was like my my blanket you're the few courtney and i have the same music taste her she does her her playlist is exactly like mine oh yeah yeah anytime we like we get around each other like who made this like adam's yeah i'm like oh she totally listens exactly like exactly the same dude if we were if we were stuck in the wilderness justin would be the first one to go feral you know you know how they take like if you take like what you know if you take like a like a like a farm pig and you put in the woods and it becomes i'm gonna grow tusks yeah like you would for sure right away if everything hit the floor you're gonna be like oh my god i'm gonna be like true within a week justin would be like blood on his face well he's also the one that would survive the longest for sure 100 i would just i'd find justin and cling to him hey man can you can i be your friend yeah i'm gonna change subject uh we so we got a message we've had a couple callers uh say this and this doesn't happen often but it's enough to where i think we should address this where you know we talk a lot about um hitting optimal protein and the data shows it's much higher than what the rda will recommend so rda recommends uh essential protein meaning you don't eat below that and you're okay but the data shows much higher than that will typically give you better performance results muscle gain fat loss satiety all that stuff so it's a lot higher and we typically tell people one gram of protein per pound of target body weight which is hard to do yeah and occasionally we'll get the message and it's usually a female that says this it goes it gives me digestion issues yeah like i try to eat that much protein and uh it doesn't feel good it feels like a brick in my stomach or i feel constipated or whatever and yeah and typically what we'll do is try to narrow down the protein sources and maybe change as many times that makes a big difference it does but sometimes just the fact that it's a lot of protein okay so what do i do and usually what i would say is like well then you eat less it doesn't work with you but lately uh what i've been doing is pointing people towards uh paleo valley's uh bone broth protein oh yeah because it's so easy to digest you know you can eat a lot of protein but you can't eat a lot of protein because it's so you can really ramp it up you could rant bro i've had 80 gram protein shakes from bone broth yeah and it sits just fine no it's like i drank water yeah so i've been uh pushing that to people who are messaging us and they're coming back and be like no problem yeah and by the way bone broth is often recommended for gut health issues so that the protein itself is high in certain amino acids that seem to help uh with gut health so if you're listening and you're like man i tried the high protein route i've even bumped my fiber i've tried to isolate you know which protein it is it still bothers me yeah like you can slam grams of protein from their bone broth i mean who doesn't have gut problems i know let's be honest if you're in denial i feel like it makes you feel better just i'm just saying that because we all do right i'm suffering we all do we all do everybody you guys all feel the paint off the walls right yeah i saw i saw that video you did uh the there's a there's a girl that has an instagram page like dedicated to like being anti-protein that's crazy what by the way you guys remember what i said yeah you said it does everybody remember what i said 10 years ago we would demonize protein so this is what the fitness industry does swinging back they go through cycles of demonizing a macronutrient or whatever and it was fat and it was carbs and i'm like at some point it's gonna be protein and sure enough you've got influencers now which it makes total sense because we've gone so ridiculous the other way too it's like even as much as we promote and push people that most people need to increase their protein but now you can get you know protein you know you can get protein oreo cookies you can protein everything now and so everything's becoming infused with protein and so of course you're going to have some sort of a backlash or pushback but then i mean when you have people like that i'm just not a fan of because no what she said because i know what you're talking about i did i think i did a reaction video you did it just went it went up on our instagram today yeah i just saw it i didn't see it until it literally sounded like uh 1992 uh rda like a representative from the rda like what she was saying yeah because the carbs are the ones that we need our bodies run on carbs i'm like yeah okay i'm not saying back to the old pyramid yeah i'm like i'm not saying carbs are bad they're not uh they're great for performance i'm not an anti-carb person but they're actually not essential so what she's saying is actually of the macronutrients that's the one you could never eat yeah and be okay yeah and then the essential protein is only like 0.3 which is like so minimal that is not like 40 grams not for somebody doing any sort of athletic endeavors that's not for anybody who's lifting weights that's definitely near optimal and then you get from a higher protein diet. And I just think, so I think it's a terrible message just because-- - Yeah, so I'm just telling, that's you paleo valleys bone broth protein you're like try it out it's like literally like drinking water you'll be you'll probably digest it very very well so do you guys know that a myostatin inhibiting drug just passed no yeah it's not just fda approved maybe doug can look it up uh it's they approved it yeah i think it just passed um let me double check here fd i think it just passed phase three uh trials so it will it will be available here will be considered like a peptide you know uh it's say what will be considered a peptide well no it's a drug it is a drug so what would it what what where would it like somebody who has like severe muscle loss like some sort of like a so the name of disease or something like that it's like so there it is right there side effects i don't even know how to say that what's it how do you say that a pedigromed a pedigromab i think it is it's it just got fda approval um and so it blocks myostatin activation so it's great for people with like myostatin activation so it's great for people with like myostatin activation so it's great for people with like myostatin activation so it's great for people with muscular uh atrophy yeah so that's where you would use it that's the only way that they would do that right that's what is it doesn't luke garrick's phone or no was i off on that i think you're right yeah i think you're right here's what i think they're gonna do i think they're gonna just combine it with glps i think this is the stack oh my god that they're gonna they're gonna they're gonna find a way to never have to work out again that's that's right yeah and they did a study on with this myostatin inhibiting drug with a glp and they just you know dropped their calories they weren't lifting weights or anything like that and they lost weight lost half as much muscle so actually it's quite effective wow at what it does i mean they thought that about i thought they thought that about red at two when they first started doing trials with red no no this is because they combined it with this the next thing we'll talk about is muscle quality at that point with everybody you know who's gonna get their hands on this and get wild with it bodybuilders of course i am curious to see because bodybuilders the pharma knots they don't care i mean even um israel said he would of course he'd be all over he'll do anything science if they combine this with their crazy genetics with their like what's going to happen are they going to grow like muscle out of their ears like what's going to happen and and they'll be the first ones to show us how dangerous it is because you know they're going to not take what you're taking to the limits yeah exactly they're going to keep pushing it past the threshold this is going to be weird dude what's what's interesting about this from what i've read and from talking to uh people in the field it doesn't produce uh performance benefits necessarily so you might just like mass now i yes but i don't know if that's true if the person trains which is what most people would care about anyway i would think yeah yeah if you're training in this would complement that but like if you're somebody that's yeah not even interested in that you're just going to have a like a better looking physique that's like not functional well you could get big muscles and be more like an obese person i think it's pretty obvious where we'll go with it i mean we we put silicone in our bodies to enhance things like yeah if that's that's more when you really think about it that's more absurd this is going to be then taking a drug that that like just shuts off something that allows you to feel more awesome or something yeah we do we do we do way crazier stuff this is for sure going to be the stack for sure i don't know how they they're going to get there but at some point it's going to be like here's your glp and here's your myostatin inhibitor and we got to take these both wow that's wild it just got it just passed yeah we can't do that though sal because then the big the big thing the big thing about uh the the natural limiter or muscle loss is that or is that okay if i eat too low calorie too low a protein you lose muscle i lose muscle if i take a drug that counters that then i'm still gonna i would think you're still gonna lose here's what the study's gonna affect the organs here's what the study showed they did still lose muscle half as much they did nothing else but take this with the glp yeah but what about what about bone what about other things that because now you're now you're now you're extending how well yeah like how long is this study three months six months long like what happens when somebody is not able to do that what happens when somebody is not able to do that not hitting their essential essential macronutrients and nutrient probably nothing good of course not i mean so you keep your muscle but your hair you lose your hair and your nails start falling out yeah you look you look white as a ghost and like yeah and your and your liver and kidneys start shutting down and you get all these other things that going on but hey you got you got you kept half of your muscle this time like that i have no idea you look great i feel like right now uh even though it's not healthy even though it's not a good thing it's a call that the glp1 users need right it's like you take this and then if you did a dexa before and you go oh wow i lost 50 pounds but 25 of that was muscle then most any any doctors with half a brain are going hey we need to slow down this this dosage or we need to go on a focus on building muscle reverse diet whatever the things are where if now if you just take that out then we just extend the period of like being malnutrition i don't know i don't know dude can't be i don't know and and then the next thing is will they even because it's not because it's a drug and not a peptide will they allow it to be prescribed for a lot like i would think they're highly regulated to just those types of diseases yeah i think that's how it's it got i think it got approved for specific reasons if i haven't looked into it but i'm pretty sure but i'm very interested in seeing what the black market does because you know for a fact here's what's gonna happen somebody will here's what's gonna happen the drug gets approved it's controlled here in the u.s some other country is gonna make it and then you can buy it from them or china or whatever and you're gonna have or somebody will make it in their house and the two categories of people that are going to play with this are celebrities but for sure bodybuilders for sure bodybuilders like we're we're five years away from bodybuilders going ham with this combining with all the other stuff that they take and so it will know by the way we'll know because you can see it's funny if you and just for people who aren't into bodybuilding uh you don't need to be into bodybuilding but what's interesting is when you look at the decades of bodybuilding you can see these massive jumps yep these sudden jumps and physiques and you're like well what happened and it was the drugs yeah it was the dose and it was what they combined yeah so like you go from the 70s to the 80s there was a massive jump 80s to 90s was a massive jump yeah uh and since the late 90s we haven't really had a huge jump because that's when they figured out super high doses of everything so i don't know there's a few guys you've seen that are crazy looking like what's his name uh yeah but they don't like they're not like bigger than like cole man or you know cutler who yes they are what's what's his uh uh big rami yeah look at pull up big rami right now yeah his last one of his yeah but i i mean i could show you bodybuilders from the 90s that didn't win but were just as big really yeah for sure as big rami they're not doing anything different than uh than the bodybuilders of the 90s no i know he looks crazy yeah for sure whoa for sure but like put up yeah look you know like i said i don't think that's a crazy picture of him he's seen way crazier pictures of him but dude here's what i think pretty crazy i think in five to ten years there's gonna be another jump i don't even know what the hell gonna look like after that what do you look like after that dude like a horse i know it's wild let's let's see what happens yeah all right so i'm excited to share with you something really cool fatty 15 now it uses this fatty acid called c15 it's a fatty acid found in dairy now i know what you're thinking what does dairy have to do with my health well this particular fatty acid there's so much studies right now so much data emerging showing that this fatty acid is phenomenal for inflammation cell membrane health mitochondrial health all right what does that mean well since i started using fatty 15 i feel less inflammation in my joints and better energy it's the next fatty acid that i've added to my supplement regimen so i got my omega-3s that's a staple now i also add c15 from fatty 15 go check it out get 15 off go to fatty 15 dot com slash mind pump the code mind pump gets you that massive discount back to the show first question is from hook line and senior how do you figure out your average calorie burn a day when trying to decide on calorie intake for muscle building i feel like that's like like doug's dating website right there calling me out gotcha hook line and senior doug's handle his farmer only page sorry doug all right i had to say that uh all right so the best so here's the deal you can there's a really expensive way to figure out your calorie burn uh but it'll just tell you that day yeah but how will we do it this is the best the best way that i've only i've been able to do this is you literally track uh for a week or two uh and if you don't lose weight didn't gain weight that's your maintenance the key the key to this is uh you have to understand uh like what a what a normal week looks like for you that that's the only coaching i have to do to this like if someone like say someone who's been doing this for a long time and they're like oh my god i'm gonna lose weight someone hired me i have to remind them like hey this isn't like uh let's go impress your coach the next two weeks and go be doing all kinds of extra steps and cardio and workouts it's like doing i need an average of a week or two of what like your normal life looks like if you normally drove to work and you came home and then you watch tv and you did the thing like just do the thing for a week or two a lot of times i can get it in a week a week is if if you're consistent with like you can tell me like that was a normal week of my life for the last year both eating behaviors which is including like hey if you would skip that meal and then you'd have that one snack or you you order that type i want my client to do all the normal things so i can see how their their body kind of maintains which most people will probably maintain in that week and then i have an idea of like okay that's caloric maintenance and then and then before we actually even start to cut um i actually want to change what they're probably doing so like we talked about this earlier in the episode it's like so let's just say you track like that, let's say your goal is fat loss, you want to lose weight, and we track and we see you're averaging 2,800 calories. But when I look at the foods you're eating, I see, and the most things that are most egregious are low protein, higher on sugars, higher on saturated fats, not enough fiber. And so there's like four levers right away I can decide to move. And so before I start going, oh, cut your calories from 2,800 or 2,500 down to 2,000, I'm going to actually make adjustments to like, hey, let's add this meal, a high fibrous meal every single day and actually stay at maintenance and just start to tweak the macros and or put them in a reverse diet before cutting. No, 100%. And by the way, you can get a general idea at mapsmacro.com, but it will not give you nearly as specific as what Adam said. So that's really the only way to get that real good number. But if you need a general idea, you can go to mapsmacro.com, it's free. You can enter in some information. It'll give you kind of a general idea of where your probably maintenance is. Next question is from Darn2. How long should I be in maintenance before I cut? This is the first time I've figured out my maintenance. I went from 1,900 calories to 2,600 calories. So that seems like a good place to cut, especially if you're a female. Typically when I reverse diet someone, I'll stabilize them for about three weeks before I do a cut. So if I jumped you, I'll keep you there for maybe three weeks and then we'll decide to do a cut. So it's, I mean, and you can jump and then cut right out the gates, but then you don't, you don't really give your body a chance to kind of work with that new maintenance. So I'd say probably three weeks. No, I 100% agree. The only thing I would probably add to that is if I had somebody at this and they were telling me they're still hungry, I'd still lean in. So let's, so if you're still getting stronger and you still have an appetite and we've reversed diet this far, then I would say let's go to 2,800 or let's go to 2,900. So the further we go, the more runway we're going to have. And if you still feel like you have time, my goal always with my clients that I reverse diet was to get to a point where I'm like, get to a place where they're like, man, I'm eating so much food, almost to where it starts to become inconvenient to eat that much food because then it becomes really convenient for me to go, all right, I just want you to eliminate that meal or cut back on this. And then it's easy for them because they were already working so hard to hit that many calories that now coming back down, say three to 400 calories becomes really comfortable for them to be at. And now we're in a caloric deficit. So that's kind of the two ways I'd look at it. You are high enough now. I'd stabilize like Sal saying before I start to reduce or if you're like, I'm still hungry, I'm still getting stronger. Like keep going. That's a good say. If it's whole natural foods and you're hungry, keep going. Next question is from Mick Daniel 95. Steroids versus peptides. What's the difference? Please break it down for me. Like I'm a five-year-old. Okay, so yeah, generally speaking, steroids are exogenous hormones. Peptides are chains of amino acids that tell the body to make something or release a hormone itself. Now here's where it gets a little tricky. Is human growth hormone is a peptide hormone. So a human growth hormone is considered a peptide, but it's also a hormone. HGH is considered a peptide? It is. It's a peptide, but it's a peptide hormone. Really? Yeah. So by the way it's made, it's- HGH is considered a peptide. Yeah, so it's a long chain of amino acids. I didn't know that. Yeah, so- I know that tesamorelin and all those are peptides that are supposed to signal growth hormone, but I didn't know actual HGH, which is considered a peptide. Yeah, see Doug pulled it up. It's a large single chain polypeptide comprised of 191 amino acids. Is that the only example of a hormone? Is insulin, let me double check. Yeah, insulin is too. Is insulin a peptide? Yeah, insulin is a peptide. Is it a peptide? Yeah, and it's another hormone. So you're right, so that's two right there. Yeah, and they're both kind of lumped in, right? Especially growth hormone, because they would say it's a performance enhancing. Yeah, see, it's another peptide. Both, by the way, could be very dangerous if you took too much. Not growth hormone, not as much. Yeah, what? Yeah, no, you could take a big old dose of growth hormone. You just feel like crap. Insulin will kill you, for sure. Yeah, for sure, but even HGH. I mean, over time, but if I gave you a giant shot. Just one time? Right now, you might get low blood sugar. It would take a lot. You might hold a lot of water, but if I give you a big-ass shot of insulin, I could kill you. Yeah. For sure. Testosterone, I could give you a big-ass shot of testosterone and you're- You'd be fine. Yeah, you're totally fine. But steroids are hormones. They're either the hormones you make, or they are based off of the hormones you make. So anabolic steroids take typically testosterone or DHT, and what they'll do is they'll tweak it a little bit to make it have a little bit more anabolic or longer acting in the body, but it's based off of the androgen. Now, let's push HGH and insulin aside, because I feel like they're the only ones that are rare. All other peptides, there's no side effects of taking it for a certain period of time and shutting it off. So that's another tricky one, right? So typically when you take a hormone, you get a negative feedback loop. So if I take testosterone, my body will stop its own production of testosterone. Growth hormone will do it in the moment. Peptides, maybe. And what they might do is down-regulate receptors. So taking high doses of peptides might make the body less sensitive to the peptides. So I know there's some peptides I recommend that you cycle. ability to support yourself uh with these weights and so you just once you get past a certain way one of my favorite examples of this was uh justin and his uh 405 pound bench press he did years ago and what did you do you actually i remember you said you would get up to a certain number yeah you would always get hurt and then what did you do to finally get hurt i finally like i started uh that's what introduced me to indian clubs um and i started to uh started to go through those those external rotational patterns and which is something that's like alien you know i just thought like stretching or like you know that was just for warm-up and dynamic warm-ups but then you start loading it and there's a progressive way to actually load uh those types of movements and so i started to kind of go progressively from like one pound to you know three pounds to five pounds to ten pounds and like you know just start working my way through that then there's like mace bells and so that's another way to kind of you know add a little bit more weight to that uh the strength stability you know that created was like substantial so now when i go to bench now i'm locked in and i didn't have that same uh fail point like it just went right through what was the number you got stuck at before you were able to finally hit to get 405 was uh when would you start hurting it was like about 350 so 350 and it always happened always happened and then boom you went up 50 pounds just from stabilizing your shoulder joints yeah yep that's the one right there look if you like the show come find us on instagram it's mind pump media we'll see you there thank you for listening to mind pump if your goal is to build and shape your body dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance check out our discounted rgb super bundle at mindpumpmedia.com the rgb super bundle includes maps anabolic mass performance and maps aesthetic nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by sal adam and justin to systematically transform the way your body looks feels and performs with detailed workout blueprints and over two months of training the rgb super bundle is like having sal adam and justin as your own personal trainers but at a fraction of the price the rgb super bundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com if you enjoy this show please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on itunes and by introducing mind pump to your friends and family we thank you for your support and we'll see you next time And until next time, this is Mind Pump.