2938: The Right (and Wrong) Reasons to Fast. Most People Are Doing It for the Wrong One

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It's been documented, but relatively recently, maybe over the last 15 years or so, it has taken the fitness and health space by storm. Everybody's doing it for the wrong reasons. We're going to set the stage clear. Here's why fasting works and what it works for and what you should not use fasting for. Let's get to it. For thousands of years, you would categorize that as a dietary strategy? Yes. It still was. Yeah. So it's one of the earliest documented strategies of changing your diet was fasting. They wrote about it to cure, but they didn't know what it was, but epilepsy. So it was a medical intervention that was written about, I don't know, 3,000 years ago, maybe. Really? Yes. I didn't know for the medical purposes it went that far back. I know for the purposes further back for other reasons, but not for that. No, it was used. There's some documentation that they used it for seizures. I don't remember what they would call it. Yeah, we've known that, but I didn't know thousands of years. Yeah. And they noticed that when they would withhold food, that it would alleviate some of these things. So it's been documented. It's like one of the first and only dietary strategies. Are you fact-checking him? Yeah. Yeah, do that. I didn't know that. Yeah. So make sure I'm right. I'm fact-checking. 500 BC. So there's about 2,500 years. Ancient Greece. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. The oldest recorded treatment for epilepsy, it is documented in the Hippocratic collections. That's where it was, where a man with seizures was reportedly cured by completely avoiding food. They didn't think it was demons? Now, do you think what was happening for spiritual purposes first, and then they had to do something else? I don't know. I don't know. You had some sort of correlation, probably? No, the Hippocratic collection was, these were literal medical interventions, you know, before modern, way before modern medicine. So this was like observations on things like lifestyle and diet and how it could help certain things. So that's what I mean, though, is they had, because we did not have the medical tools and science back then to be able to probably prove what was happening. They must have said, man, for some reason, these guys that, during these periods where they fast for spiritual reasons, we noticed their seizures are mild or they don't have them at all, right? Wouldn't that be? Not as many, like, flare-ups? No. So fasting as a spiritual practice was, and we'll get to this, was, I mean, it's recorded in the Bible, both the Old Testament and the New Testament. It's also recorded in other spiritual practices, but I believe, maybe you could look this up, earliest spiritual practice, use of fasting. I would look that up, Doug, and see where that's, what that is. But for spiritual purposes, it's been around for a long time. Fasting was never used to lose weight. Wait, so let's see. 1500 BC. Oh, there you go. Vedic Hindu tradition. A long time ago. Right. So that's what I'm saying. So for a thousand years before we figured this out, and the way we figured it out was not through some sort of medical tool or anything like that. It's that we had somebody who had observed people that were probably fasting for spiritual reasons who also had seizures and they were mild. I don't know what the reason was for. I would assume that's a good guess, I would say. But that's the first time it was documented as a dietary intervention. You know, for anything other than, let's say, spiritual practices, which is kind of interesting. There's definitely two ways fasting can be used incorrectly. And it just so happens to be, these are the ways that people use them today, popular reasons. Number one is for body composition change. Fasting is not a great, effective, awesome way to get leaner or to change your body composition. It has the same effectiveness as any other diet. In other words, it's not effective. People fall off and it doesn't work. It's kind of an extreme method. And in fact, if you compare it head to head with better ways of body composition change, let's say working with a coach and hitting a high protein diet and monitoring macros and stuff, it typically results in more muscle loss is what you see in the data. But aside from that, it's no more effective than going on a keto diet or going on some other diet that you'd read about where you'd dramatically alter your diet to try to lose weight. It's got the same effectiveness. So there's no magic to it. I just think people rediscovered starving themselves and noticed the scale went down and said, this is a great way. It's just calorie restriction at the end of the day. That's it. Well, would you argue too that it's probably one of the worst because it is so restrictive? I think it can be one of the worst for the second reason. Here's the second reason. It is a terrible approach for any reason for people with a history of restricting. And this is why I think people in this industry often tout fasting. What you have in the fitness industry is a bit of a self-selection bias of people with body image issues, dysfunctional eating, and they find this method of restricting that now they can label as this healthy way of restricting. Instead of saying, I skip meals and starve myself, they say, I fast. If you have a history of restricting, whether it's anorexia or bulimia, do not fast for any reason. This is a great way to feel all this awesome control that you get from restricting and relabeling it as something that's not dysfunctional, which can really take you down a horrible path. So anytime I had somebody who questioned me or asked questions about fasting and I knew they had a history of eating disorder, it's like, no. It would be like giving an ex-heroin addict Vicodin. Yeah, like, oh, you injured yourself, here's some Vicodin, knowing that they were addicted to heroin before. What are you doing? Terrible idea. So to me, that's the obvious extreme version, but I think there's an even lesser version of that that more people fall into, which is like, I mean, we talked about this, we've talked about this many times, how when we would assess somebody's diet, almost always, especially my female clients, were under-consuming macronutrients they needed, like protein, for example, healthy fats. You just made it way harder. And a lot of times, these people were like breakfast skippers. Coffee for breakfast, didn't eat their first meal till noon. And so this would be considered a form of fasting. Now, this person didn't necessarily have some sort of an eating disorder or have this terrible relation to food. They just found it convenient that they skipped breakfast and it worked for their lifestyle. And oh, by the way, it's being marketed as a great way to be healthy or fit and here's all these positive benefits. And so I actually think that outside of the obvious thing that you're talking about, like eating disorders and people that really shouldn't be doing this, there's a large percentage of people that shouldn't be doing this who think that they have an okay relationship with food because it is really difficult to take the average amount of calories that they need to eat. And so I think that's a great way to do it. And I think that's a really good way to do it. Yeah, I think that's a really good way to do it. So you don't necessarily need to have this past of binge or bulimia or anorexia to necessarily this be bad for you. I think it's bad for a lot of our clients because they already struggled with hitting the macros in the first place. Yeah, and I think that's going to be the people that have the most pushback because they've figured out that I could eat within this window and I could keep my calories as such. and I could keep my body weight contained. But to your point, really don't feel like they're probably hitting their macros to the degree that they need to, especially protein. It's really hard to cram in that much like good, solid, you know, whole food, uh, animal sourced protein, uh, you know, to, to do that with, you're going to have to eat huge meals. Yeah. To put it differently. These are people that need to add to their diet and not take away. Right. And oftentimes that's what you see with the clients. You look at their diet and go, we got to add fiber. We got to add protein. We got to add healthy fats. And now they're like, okay, can we do this in my seven hour eating windows? Oh, you already miss it. Yeah. And now we're going to make it far more difficult. And what we see more often. And I think that is that it ends up happening to these people that justify these eight hour windows or whatever window they're giving themselves is, you know, low to no calories. And then they moderate to small lunch. They finally eat and then they huge dinner. And a lot of times it's driven by cravings because they've gone so long without any calories or food cravings spike up like crazy. And then the choices that they make are rarely these. Cause if, if they could hit the healthy food choices, then maybe they would be okay or better off than most people. But really what ends up happening is they get used to skipping that breakfast. They're not eating a ton of calories, but when they do eat a lot of calories, they're coming from those ideal sources. Here's what I've seen in many, many people. Cause fasting, uh, in the health and fitness space and I've been popular for at least 10 years, if not 15, uh, here's what I've seen with many people, people who normally, who had, you know, non-dysfunctional eating patterns with fasting turned into restrictive, binge eating patterns, normal guy. Like I got a buddy who tells me this and he fasts every day and he goes, and I'm like, what do you do for dinner then? Oh, I eat a massive dinner. So he's literally gotten himself to a point where it restricts and binges when that wasn't an issue before. So here, now there are reasons why fasting can be beneficial. None of them have to do with body composition though, but there are definitely reasons why fasting can be quite beneficial. The first one we talked about this earlier, spiritual purposes. It's been in spiritual practice for a long time. It's been an almost, I think every major religion has fasting in some way, shape or form as a spiritual practice. I know in the Christian faith, uh, it's used to, uh, what they would say to weaken the flesh. Detachment. Yeah. So you're taking away this, you know, and when you're hungry, it weakens you and it can help you turn to spiritual comfort, um, and to, you know, methods like meditation, uh, much more readily. So for spiritual purposes, there's real value. It's been used for a long time. So if you're trying to enhance or, or strengthen your spiritual health and you're on this journey, uh, fasting has actual benefits. Well, I think too, it gives you that, uh, opportunity to get like more of a bird's eye view. So you're, and we use this sometimes, like when we're like assessing our own business, sometimes you got to get outside of your business to really assess what's going on. And, you know, I feel like it, giving yourself the opportunity to see your patterns and behaviors, uh, outside of, uh, you know, being inside it, I think is very valuable for people. Totally. How, how would you explain the, this to somebody, to a secular person who, uh, how would you unpack the spiritual benefits for someone who let's say doesn't care for the spiritual benefit? In other words, the way I look at it, and you'll probably be able to articulate this better than me, but it's like, uh, fasting from food is the entry level to learning detachment, right? It's like, uh, we all need to eat every single day. So it's this easy, low level, like strict from, and you're, we know that you'd be fine not eating for days and be totally okay, but take discipline and detachment and say to do it. And really what you're learning to do is detach from things like that. And so there's other ways that you can apply that to your life. Like, so how would you explain that? No, a hundred percent. So that's actually the, that's actually kind of the second point, which is to help with food attachment. So you can fast from lots of things, right? You can fast from tech, you can fast from work, you can fast from things that you feel like maybe have a little bit more control over your life than, you'd wish. But with fasting, a lot of us are attached to food. We're attached to lunch or dinner or eating when we're anxious or stressed or like I was like, I couldn't skip a meal because, oh my God, I'm gonna lose muscle. I got to always feed myself because I got to be big all the time. So fasting for me was profoundly beneficial for food attachment. This is before I was a Christian. This is like, I was atheist at this point, but I remember experiencing that food attachment from fasting. It was life changing for me because up until this point, ever since I was 15 years old, it was like, I got to feed myself every three hours. I got to get bigger. And if I miss a meal, it really bothered me. I feel like I'm getting skinnier, like what's going on. And I remember the first time I fasted for 24 hours and I didn't just lose, you know, crazy amounts of muscle off my body. It was very freeing. So that's kind of the experience. Now for other people, it could be, oh my gosh, I get hangry at lunchtime. Really what it is, you expect to eat and you're not. And when you have that, you're like, oh my gosh, I'm so hungry. I'm so hungry. What happens? You skip lunch and you do that. And then you skip dinner. Like, wait a minute, I'm not hangry because I'm expecting not to eat. Or when I'm bored, I like to eat. What do I got to do? Okay. Now I'm bored. I'm not reaching for the food because I'm fasting today. This is actually helping me deal with my boredom in a completely different way. So it's that food attachment that it could definitely help with. Now there's some great medical reasons why fasting can be beneficial. The easiest one off the top of my head is for gut health issues. This is like, you've got bloat, you've got digestive issues, constipation, heartburn, and you're like, essentially, and I hate using this term because it's such a bastardized term, but you want to reset things. Giving it a break at least. Give it a break. Let that inflammation come down and then reintroduce foods one at a time in a very slow fashion to kind of see what's going on. Well, this is, to me, this is the best argument for almost everybody doing a fast once a month or once a quarter. Um, just, I think there's outside of the people that, um, have like restricting issues that we talked about earlier. I would argue that for health longevity, all the benefits that are touted from fasting, you can reap all those in a single 24 hour fast, um, and running a 24 or 48 hour fast once every couple of months, it probably has profound and tremendous value for it. And then also get some of these other values too, of detachment and those other things. And so I think there's a case to be made and obviously for gut health and resetting that, but I think there's a case to be made for everybody to possibly do it for that reason, unless you fall in the category of people that have those. I know for me, uh, even now my gut health is so much better than it used to be. But if I have some gut health issues, skipping a couple meals will fix it. I mean, it really tends to fix it, you know, not put, even if it's healthy food, because sometimes we'll all eat something healthy and it continues the gut inflammation, skipping a couple of meals. And then the next day I'm totally back to normal. And this is documented in functional medicine practitioners. We use fasting in this way for certain gut health issues. So, uh, definitely beneficial. And then autoimmune issues. Now it's not all autoimmune issues, but there's certain ones that have documented benefits like, uh, psoriasis. And I know you have this as an example. I mean, in fact, the data on psoriasis and fasting is pretty, pretty interesting. Oh, I always noticed a huge difference. I mean, that was one of the, the, the best benefits of eating really, really, really low calorie or fasting like that. I mean, one of the ways that I like to do this because it's not something that I do on a regular basis is that I, in my point of every month or every quarter or so there, and I'm sure most people can relate to this. There always is this thing, uh, a wedding travel, something that comes up where like getting to meals is just going to be hectic and the choices are going to be bad. And I just allow those to be, I go, this will be a great day to fast. I haven't fasted in a while. I do the same thing. And it's like, and you might as well, right? Yeah. And a lot of times I like, it's taking like Katrina a while for her to get used to that with me where we will, we'll be talking about some of that. She'll be like, well, what do you want to do? We got to do this and we eat. And I'm like, when was the last time we found it? Let's just, let's just not eat that day. Like just one day. It's been a while since we've done that. Totally fine to just do that. It's a perfect time to do it because it's already going to be difficult. So instead of making some bad airport food choice or whatever, it's like, why don't we just, yeah, why don't we just chalk this up is we're going to, this is going to be a day that we decide to restrict from eating. And I just, and get all these. Benefits. Yes, dude. I was just on I-5. Horrible options. It's just jerky, jerky and nuts. Zero fiber. It's the worst, dude. Yeah. So MS, psoriasis, and rheumatoid arthritis have the most data supporting fasting for symptoms. Lupus, not so good. In fact, there are certain autoimmune issues that can get worse with fasting. In your opinion, because I have, because of my autoimmune, I've played with this quite a bit. And what I haven't been able to tee down, again, this is all Amdell, this is myself personally. So I'm curious to your opinion. The, the research around this, is it because they're, they're, they're like looking at a 20 far window and there's this acute difference. Cause I would argue that I see just as much value, if not more value running four or five days in a row of just really low calories. Yes. Yeah. And I'm glad you said that. So when you look at the date, depending on the situation, but in many cases, restricting calories, uh, it will mimic the effects of fasting. In fact, there's a, and that's the next one. Yeah. So in fact, that's the last one, which is, um, you know, before and during chemotherapy, which is really interesting. Dr. Valter Longo seeing the data, cause here's the data shows like fasting, by the way, this has, you have to be right for this. Cause I've been around people with cancer and in some cases fasting is just not possible. Sure. You're already underway on the type. Yeah. You're underway. You've you've tons of sarcopenia, like fasting will actually be very dangerous. So we can't do that. But in some cases, uh, you can do it. And what they find in much more favorably to the chemo. So you kill more of the cancer. And the healthy cells seem to respond better as well. You kill less of the healthy cells on chemo. And what Dr. Valter Longo did is he discovered that having a restricted calorie diet gave you the same effects. Rather than having people completely fast for 72 hours, he does what's called a fasting mimicking diet, which comes out to like 400 calories. Yeah, he was 400, 500 for five days. So it's a lot like what you said, just restricting calories. Yeah, because I've noticed these same, like I said, again, mine is anecdotal. I've noticed that, okay, I could do this 24, 48 hour fast. I see this acute reduction in inflammation. I see my psoriasis improve like immediately. But I also see that same thing too. If I just say, hey, this week I'm gonna run really low calorie. And it doesn't even have to be actually that extreme, to be honest with you. It just has to be pretty good of a diet. So once I have myself in a pretty solid deficit for days in a row. Then you get the benefit. I get the benefit. And the data's cool on psoriasis, bro. Like I was looking this up and psoriasis has the most, some of the most data supporting it, like really reduction in symptoms. So what you're experiencing is like what people tend to experience. Yeah. Well, I mean, remember, I don't know if you guys, when we tracked the whole GLP-1 process for me, one of the big positives I got. Psoriasis was way down. Oh, yeah. Like it was the best my psoriasis, but I mean, God, I was eating hardly anything. Yeah, I know. Yeah, so I lost a ton of muscle. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. I got an ozempic face and all those things. Oh, my psoriasis was great. So I was like, ah, you know, we'll see. I'm going to be jacked. Yeah. I'd be a little itchy. Yeah. So yeah, so I mean, but to me, I've kind of found that I've learned that balance a little more is that, you know, if I stay, if I try and keep more of my days in a slight deficit than I do in a maintenance or surplus, it tends to keep it at bay. Here's what I noticed from fasting personally, and there's not a lot of data to support this. The data points more towards a ketogenic diet, but fasting will put you in ketosis, so it's probably connected. I can make myself sharper. By fasting. So if I'm doing like a podcast circuit, which sometimes I'll do, you know, the company will fly me down to LA or something, I'll do three or four shows, you know, back to back, and I want to be sharp for each one and do a good job. Not eating tends to give me more energy and keep me sharper in the podcast than if I was eating my normal meals throughout the day. So I just noticed that. There's got to be some benefits of that too, even because, you know, how Alzheimer's, dementia, like as far as like that being like the, the diabetes three or whatever, like, you know, being able to shift into ketosis for everybody, I feel like at least at some point would be beneficial. Yeah, I think, you know, unless you fall into the categories of what we said earlier, I'd say go for it. You know, here's the interesting thing. And again, it's so difficult to parse this out because here's what we tend to do in modern societies. We'll take the side effect of something and make it the main effect. So what's the side effect of not eating? You lose weight. Cool. That's the thing. That's the reason why I'm going to fast. I don't want to focus on that. But I tell you what, if you grew up in a modern society, you grew up in America, the odds are you've probably never really been hungry. Now, yes, there's definitely people that have experienced that, but most people in a modern society, I mean, the odds that you'll die of overeating are far higher than of starvation. So the average person has never really felt. Yeah, they've had cravings, but they haven't really been hungry. Yeah, like when you don't eat for 48 hours, 72 hours, most people never done that. And I think it's a good experience for people. It is because you start to learn the difference between cravings and hunger. Totally. Up until that point. It's very different. Up until that point, I would have defined what was cravings as hunger always. Oh, yeah, I'm hungry. I'm hungry. Oh, it's been six hours since I ate. I'm hungry. So it's like, no, I'm craving. And I'm used to eating every three to four hours. And so that's what's going on. No, here's the difference. When you're hungry, you'll eat anything. Eat anything, yeah. Like, give me anything, I'll eat it. When you have a craving, there's certain things you'll eat and certain things you won't. Especially as you push to 48 and 72 hours. I remember how wild, how wild day two was of the fast. Day two of the fast is like almost easier. Like day one, it's a lot of that mental battle and struggle of like, am I really hungry? Is this cravings? Like, oh, you're kind of white knuckling a little bit to get past. And then all of a sudden it starts to pass. And then you wake up the second day and I'm like, I feel energetic. I don't feel hungry. It's a weird, weird feeling. And then I feel like once I get to day three. That's when I start. Yeah, then I'm certain. Then I'm like counting the hours down. It's like, oh, when do I get to eat that first meal? That's the longest I do. And then like you said, broth sounds good. Dude, broccoli, I don't care what it is. Like I'll eat it. I feel good about it. Yeah, yeah, so true. Interesting. All right, so I got some cool, speaking of food, I got some really good data on comparing grass-fed meat to regular meat. So here's one of the challenges when you're comparing the two, right? Because you'll hear people criticize grass-fed meat. They'll say, okay, yeah, it's got more omega-3s. It's got more of these nutrients. It's got less of this, but it's not that big of a difference, okay? If you're comparing one meal, then yeah, it doesn't make that big of a difference. But if you eat a lot of meat, like I do, it actually starts to add up. So here's what I did. I had AI give me, and I tried to be specific because the cut of meat can be very different, like a ribeye versus, you know, tri-tip versus ground, you know, ground beef's very different. So I said, okay, show me the difference between 90% grass-fed ground beef and 90% grain-fed ground beef, one pound a day over a week. What's the difference in the nutrients? So one pound a day is about what I would average. I eat at least a pound a day of red meat. So for me, this is realistic, okay? And it adds up, right? So this is just a week, but you could add this up over a month and over a year to kind of see the difference. And that's how dietary interventions really make a difference. It's the little changes over time. So I looked it up. So over the course of the week, it's about one and a half grams more omega-3 fatty acids, about one gram more of alpha-linolenic, it's got about a half a gram more of EPA, DPA, and DHA, which is the long-chain omega-3s. It's much lower in omega-6s, so less than half of the omega-6s, which can be inflammatory. CLA, so conjugated linoleic acid, I can't say that right, almost a gram more. Vitamin E, about two to three times higher. And then iron, zinc, and selenium, modestly. Modestly higher, it said. So that's over one week. Yeah, but okay, I was just looking for my omegas because I wanted to break. You just glossed over the amount of grams more you're having. How is that in comparison to if I were to. Oh, you're typically taking one gram to a day of an omega-3 fatty. This is over a course of a week. Okay. But you do that over a month, that's four grams. Do it over the course of two months. It adds up. It starts to add up, especially when you look at the CLA. CLA is one of the big differences, and CLA is a fatty acid that, it has like athletic performance in fat. Remember when we used to sell CLA at 24 fitness? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you do the breakdown? Because the calories are different too. I did 90% one pound, so it's the same. But you're right. If you get a half a pound of a ribeye with grass-fed versus a half a pound of ribeye, it's higher protein, less fat, because it's leaner. So even though they're both the same weight, it's going to be leaner. Yeah, you did like an exact thing where I think you would see an even bigger difference if you would have just went pound for pound. No, you're right, because that's more realistic. Yeah, that's more. I wanted to make it as scientific as possible. It's not like I. So I either eat an eight-ounce steak at the restaurant or I eat an eight-ounce grass-fed from my butcher box. It's like, so I don't. I'm not going like, is that 97? You know, okay, it's like. So nobody does that. So it's like, to me, that's an even better comparison. You're right, it's more realistic. Yeah, which now you're starting to play with the difference of calories in addition to. Oh, you're like another 10 grams of protein. Yeah, higher protein. Less fat, lower calories. Same pound of rib eye or whatever. That's where the big difference is. I've just tried. I mean, I've talked on the show many times about this, and I don't know if you're the same way. Like, when we eat out at a restaurant, I enjoy some grain-fed beef. Yeah, I don't ask for grass-fed beef. And then when I'm home, I'm cooking my butcher box. I live off of butcher box, and that's what we do, and I find that. That's 90% of what I eat is butcher box meat. Yeah, yeah. It's all grass-fed in there. Yeah. And I'm eating like a pound a day. I eat a lot, you know, of red meat. So for me, it makes a difference. And I've done it where I've gone without butcher box for a while, and I can tell with, like, inflammation. Yeah, inflammation's a factor. Yeah, I can tell with, like, my joints a little bit. You can feel that. You can notice it too? Yeah, I could do. Yeah, I definitely. I've messed with both too, you know, just to see the difference. And yeah, you definitely feel a little more achy and inflamed. You know what would be a fun. We should do that. We've been with butcher box for so long. I'd like to just see what the four of our boxes look like. Oh, how different they. I bet they look pretty similar. I don't know, because our base meal's probably the same. It's probably a lot of ground meat. Like, I'm sure you guys build everything off of that. I'm always chicken thighs in there. Same. I'm always ground beef in there. I'm always chicken nuggets in there. Same. And I'm always baby back ribs in there. We don't do ribs. I probably have the most chicken nuggets. God, I do not do the ribs. It's the best thing to do. I don't know how to make them. We just started doing the ribs. Because Everett loves those. I'll show you one time, and then I feel like you'll barely figure it out. I just don't make anything. Steak tips. It's big for us. You know what? I mean, there's days where you're. Especially, I think it's your Thursdays, right? Where you're home all day with the kids. Is that that year? Like, it's such a good thing for that because you just leave it. Six hours. You just set it on a. You leave it where? In the oven? Get a Traeger. Yeah, you need like a nice Traeger. So I don't have one. Yeah, you can afford one. I'm pretty sure. They're not like crazy. It's not like buying a car. I know how much you made. Yeah, yeah. I'm very worried. It's not a big deal for you. You go pick one up, okay? You can pick one up. In fact, you can buy mine so I can upgrade mine. So if you want, I'll give you a hell of a good deal on mine. Bro, my mentality is still stuck in the like. When I make meals, it's literally. I look at the food and this is not the right way. But luckily, my wife, she makes really good food. But when I cook, I look at it as protein, carbs, vegetables. There's a part of me that. I so relate to that. That is why I want to sell you so hard on the other side. I appreciate it. When I eat with you guys and you guys cook, I'm like, man, this is amazing. You guys do a good job. The gourmet boys. But you guys see the meals I bring, it's just like. No, no. And I can connect. Listen, I'm the guy who was eating. I was eating cold chicken and rice for like three years. You were eating cold? Oh, yeah. Did you ever do the tilapia? Oh, no. That was always. No, I used to mock all the tilapia. I did, too. You did that? I did because it's actually really easy to shovel down your face. And if you squirt lemon on it. It's extremely low calorie. Wow. Yeah, no, so I was big on lean ground turkey instead. So that was my way of cutting calories. So I would go, when I was dieting for a show, it was like during prep where I was still at maintenance calories or above, I'm eating ground beef, ribeye, all those things. And then one of the ways, this is why sometimes it's so funny to me how bodybuilders really overcomplicate this with like. Like changing it all weird. I was just like, I would go from like allowing myself to have ribeyes to like having like. You would just change the cut. Yeah, just change the cut. Like in consistency, the meals stay the same. And it's like a perfect way to. Yeah. And so, and it's only a couple. Leaner cuts on the leaner. And then when I get to the very end, it was like, you know, I was eating some chicken breasts and ground turkey for a couple of weeks. Yeah. It wasn't like the whole prep I had to eat that way. I'm like, I'm enjoying healthy cuts. You're different, dude. I saw, yeah, they were just torture themselves all the way to get there. You know why? Because in that world. So much. So much is like passed down. You know. It's also an identity, dude. It's like suffer. It is. It's like a badge of honor. There's like a badge of honor to suffer. Yeah. And then, and there's this like, it's like it worked for so-and-so and he's a, he was the Mr. Olympia. Rodney Coleman did it. And so it's like, yeah, but when you actually just kind of break down the calories and the macros of what he's doing, you know, you could do different stuff and fit like something maybe you like in there. Like, yeah, no, I always thought it was. Dude. But I, but I did have to travel a lot with my six, seven meals. Everywhere I went. And so many times it was just cold. I couldn't get to a microwave. And so like we were talking about being on I-5 and I was like, I'd pull over and just shovel some cold, cold meat and sweet, sweet potato. I think sweet potatoes are probably the best cold. That is. That's the only one I could do. Yeah. Yeah. That was, that was one of the better ones, but I did, I got to almost be okay. Bodybuilders of the nineties were the craziest. Like you can watch videos on straight canned tuna. Oh no. Boiled chicken, boiled chicken breast rice. And. And broccoli. And then it was like tilapia and like a little bit of broccoli. Didn't you used to blend like tuna in your protein shakes? But that was because when I was younger, I was extremely dysfunctional. So I just, my goal, I was trying to get more calories in and logically you could drink more than you can eat. And so I'm like, blend it. Yeah. Okay. What, what bodybuilder or what person? Cause I know I thought about that, but I didn't do that. I did a lot of other, you know, bad things or what like that to try. You did the wake up in the middle of the night. Oh yeah. I woke up in the middle of the night. I shoveled down double peanut butter, jelly sandwiches. I did. Yeah. I mean, I, I remember, I remember times of like. I like Justin judging us right now. I love it. It's fun. You ran full speed. Idiots. You ran full speed at people and blasted them. I just think it's fat, dude. You did crazy stuff too, bro. Of course I did. Yeah, dude. There's a difference. You judge me like, yeah. Dude, I ran into a buddy. I ran into a buddy of ours, of our Shea. Uh, at the gym yesterday. I hadn't worked with him. I haven't seen him in so many years. So 25 years ago, this guy worked for me. Right. And so we just start talking and you see someone from that back then. You did stories start coming out. You start remembering things. And we started talking about, uh, the, uh, speed stacks. Oh yeah. Ephedra drinks that we used to have. Yeah. And I thought it was two a day that I would have. And he's like, no, dude, remember we would have one here, one here. I'm like, oh my God, do we exceeded what would kill people all the time? Yeah. I'm like, I wonder. And then he was telling me he had some health problems. I'm like, I hope that's not why you had to have had an impact. I know. I know. I know. I did that to Justin. Right. So I still feel, I still, I still carry the guilt on that. Yeah. I don't honestly believe that I definitely had a tumor under adrenals. I mean, I mean, just think too, of like working in that, like it was like a, it was like a mandatory thing that I had my staff do. Yeah. I hired you. That's the worst part. Yeah. You would hand them. I did the same thing. You haven't had this. You need to have number one in the company twice. So I don't really have any complaints. It worked. Yeah. It gave me a tumor. We were literally drug pushers. Yeah. Hey, speak. I, so I haven't had a pre-workout in, I would say probably a year, maybe more just energy drinks or coffee. Yeah. I just, right now I just do that. Right. So I've just been doing, I've been normally it's coffee in the morning. Then my energy drinks when I'm here. And so I haven't had a, I haven't had a pre-workout in a really long time. And it was, I think it was just like just recently, it was like on a Saturday or something like that. And, um, I, and I'd only had a cup of coffee and I'm like, oh, I've got this. I've got a lot, a lot more caffeine I can intake before my workout. I'm like, I got time. I'm like, okay. So I'm digging through my stuff. I'm because I haven't, I don't even know. I know I have some like Katrina, where's the, where's the pre-workout? She's like, oh, it's above the shelf of periods. I pull it out. And you know what happens to pre-workout when you haven't had pre-workout for like, yeah, it turns into a brick. Oh yeah. So, and, and I'm, so I'm, so I've got a butter, I got a butter knife in there and I'm like chopping. I'm like, I'm like, I'm forgetting. I'm just to do it. Right. So I took it and it was amazing. It was pre-workout. I'm like, Hey, could you have Jackie, um, make sure she puts, uh, the Legion pre-workout in for me before I, before I leave tomorrow, it was like the next day or whatever. And uh, so I, I get it and then I'm like, what is, this is always so funny for me when I don't even know about our own partners and some of the stuff they're doing, but I don't know if you guys have had Legion's pre-workout recently or not. I hadn't, cause I hadn't been doing pre-workout. So they actually, which I think is brilliant and I don't know why everybody doesn't do this. I don't know why we didn't know this as a talking point. Cause I think it's fire. Each serving is in individual packets. Oh, so it's not as. So it's in a big bag and then there's single individual packets. Oh, that's God. That's perfect. Take it to the gym. Yes. That's perfect. Yes. And I don't know. I mean, I don't know. Fresh longer. Cause I like anybody who's had pre-workout for a long time. And I know you can relate. Cause you definitely are a pre-workout guy. Like, yeah, it gets clumpy after a while. And that's the most annoying thing. But it's also the other part that's annoying is you, and it's okay, it's not a big deal, but it's a right there. Yeah. Look at that. It's also annoying and it's whatever you deal with it, but you have your jug of pre-workout and then that's what you carry with you to the gym. Yes. I'd much rather have a little stick. Literally. Like it. Yeah. Wow. That's great. I, yeah, I had no idea Mike did that and I, no one gave me the heads up and I was like super excited. Doug, go to the ingredients. So pulse is one of the higher caffeine, uh, pre-workouts, right? 300 milligrams. Is that what it's out there? 350 I think. Boy, I just got knocked out. I think it's 350. No, it's 300. No, no, I think it's 350. Is it 350? Did he move it up to 350? No. Isn't that caffeine? No. Uh, yes. Wow. 350, uh, milligrams of caffeine plus theanine. Oh wow. Yeah. So it's one of the higher, so it's a strong pre-workout. Oh yeah. Yeah. That's why. So I, the reason why I knew that too is because. Cause most pre-workouts are 200. So I'll go. So I have about 600 milligrams a day of caffeine and I had my cup of coffee, so I knew I had like 400 to spare. And so I'm like, oh, this will be a time to have a pre-workout. So do you notice a difference between just a regular energy drink that's got caffeine and then the pre-workout? Yeah. It does make a little bit of a difference. I mean, for sure. What I, what I can't tell you and I don't know, well, definitely, cause you're comparing something that's got 200 to 350, so it's got a hundred, it's almost double the caffeine. Then you add in the fact that it's also got, what are all the things, yeah, the shit that makes your face tingle and shit, which I'm not, I'm not the biggest fan of that. I mean, I like it once I'm into the workout, but what I don't like, and so, and you probably have got this down to a science cause you're, you're so consistent with all this stuff, but I want it to hit when I'm into my lift already. Not in the drive. I'm driving over there and I'm like, my face is itching and I'm just like, shit, I took it too early. Yeah. So it's like, there, there definitely is like a timing to it. Like, okay. Ideally, I think it's like finish it just as I'm pulling into the drive up that way. By the time I get my little walk and stretch in and I'm lifting it, then it hits. The other thing too is caffeine oftentimes, uh, helps people poop. So you'll hear people talk about this in the morning that they'll have their coffee. Yeah. That's the timing also. So you gotta do your pre-workout and you gotta make sure you get to the bathroom. Yeah. That's Justin every day when he gets to work. Especially on squat day. That's what I'm saying. Hey, did you get a pre-workout dog? No, no. You know what it is? He drinks coffee or whatever on the way here. Yes. And then as soon as he gets, like, I just like, I get there quick. So you know, that's part of why I, I'm routine with that. We're usually next to each other. I see his shoes. What's up dude? That's actually why a lot of times Monday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, I won't have coffee is because of that because coffee does like, I have to be near bathroom time. It takes you too long to get here. Yes. And I don't want to be like that. It's brutal. I like my, I like my morning drive to be relaxing. Listen to my audio book. Maybe I make you some calls. He's got it down to a science though. Like Justin never misses. He comes. So you must drink it at the right time. Yeah, but he looks stressed. I'm drinking it like on my way here. He looks stressed when he comes in. He looks like, do I look stressed when I come in? I look relaxed. Yeah, my morning drive here is stressed, but like that gets me up. Like I need, I need to- You sound like Doug bro chasing that cortisol high. All the time I'm like Doug. Yeah. I'm just like trying to wind it up. And so I'm like, Hey, I'm going to perform. When I'm going home. Super chill, dude. And I'll do the audio book. I mean, how different are all of our, probably our morning routine. I need to wind it up real tight. I mean you're the 5:00 AM guy. No, I go to the gym. Yeah. You're up, but you're up at like five in the morning, right? Now these days it's six, so I can get up a little later cause my kids wake up a little later now. Thank God. This is like life changing. They tip, my son used to wake up 5:30, that's great bro. Now he's like 6:30 to seven. So I'm okay. So 6:00 AM I'll wake up and then I'll get my wife coffee, do my thing. And lately I've been going to Starbucks, which is down the street, getting her green tea and bringing it back. We're door dashing less, dude. Oh, good for you. Yeah. trigger trigger time one month of pulling back on door dashes a trigger for you dog that's a new car i i mean i i it's been a long time i've really we we cut way back on that i pulled it back isn't that like every financial podcast is like if you just stop drinking that one cup of coffee every day i mean you know it's like you know what's funny for me is uh it it was driven more by principle than anything else i was so angry because it's double that they were getting me on all these fees i was unaware of that it's like out of principle i'm like i am not going to do this it's expensive man what's because they gouge on everything on top of it yeah you know my theory is right i have a theory that if you want you can look at people's income but without looking at income look at door dash usage and you will 100 be able to predict someone's uh income level just by their door dash oh it's such an expensive convenience i bet you're spot on with that that would be a really you cool thing to and i'm sure they i mean who knows where they're at as far as how sophisticated their marketing to you is and everything like that all i know is when i call door dash to answer the phone you know which is weird i've talked to friends they're like what they respond hey speaking of money oh that article did you see that article jackie sent over harvard who did it no there was penn state yes there were penn state someone else there were two large groups of uh oh what does it say there door dash is used by people of all lower income households actually use it more than the wealthy really yeah yes get out you know whether wealthy have the chefs at their house how wealthy are we talking here like what's they pay a servant to go get my theories off yeah wow all right all right whatever anyway uh the article you're talking about adam they're taking different cohorts and studies uh and trying to combine them together first start by why this this is so cool because we've talked on the show multiple times about this yeah there's a famous study done in 2010 that i think that one was originally done by harvard or or one of the other big one of their big schools right and they had done a study and what the basically this study had said that uh happiness uh once you hit to about 75 000 in income this was in 2010 this 2010 yeah right so even even a jump right so at 75 000 that there is no correlation with happier as income goes up right so the peak was 75 after that really it plateaued hard after that right and they did they did like a cross study on this and found and teased out a lot of things so there was other studies that showed that it was closer to 150 200 then there's other studies that show that happiness goes up incrementally as money tends to go up um but then there was other ones that showed it was straight linear with it all the way that's what i mean it kept going up yeah yeah but when you look into the data so here's what's confusing about all of this first off when you look into the data people who get no more happiness from making more money will definitely get no more happiness from making more money in other words you're making a lot of money and you're miserable making more money is not going to make you happier the data shows that pretty clearly money's not going to solve yes your happiness issue if you're already doing well and you're already miserable yeah okay that's not your issue people with well-being that made made more money yeah did correlate with that yes and then it was even higher for people that had that were in the exceptionally positive and happy yes and now here's why we got to look at the data more closely because you could break the data down and here's why money is confusing what first off what is money right money is it could be more time it could be more education it could be more things it could be more uh more freedom uh it could be more charity so just looking at money doesn't tell you a lot what you want to do is go into the data and see what are the happiest people doing with their money how is it making them happier that's what you need to look at because it could mean so many different things i mean right away what what jumped out at me when i read it uh is it and i said this to you off air it reminds me of the old days oh like and hang with me it's gonna enhance who you are exactly so like everybody there's this there's this myth that like steroids make you angry yeah and it's like or make you a dick it's like no if you were a dick and you take steroids you're a bigger dick yeah you know i wish you used a different word yeah yeah whatever right so if you were an asshole before you everyone both of them i hope our editors are putting the graphics whatever you get my drift and so and and and all the research and studies prove that we know that now right it's uh but still there's a lot of people that think that people think if you're if you're unaware of testosterone there's still this this myth around that uh that that that it does like roid rage yeah right now to be clear there are some steroids uh that seem to have that uh problem but not the not the typical ones that yeah generally speaking testosterone and testosterone done especially at therapeutic doses and things like that like which one was it tremble on trend but it just makes you more of who you already are yeah i've always been a big fan of testosterone and i've always been a big fan of testosterone and i've always been a big fan of testosterone and i've always thought the same way about money money just makes you more of what you are so if you are a good person have good well-being which doesn't matter if you're making 35 grand or three million that gets enhanced it could be more charitable exactly you maybe you're the person who only can give give out 20 bucks every now and then when you we're only making 75 000 a year but now you make three million that turns to huge charity a huge return and so so i and and so i love this study because i've always felt this way like oh you know i'm not a big fan of testosterone i'm not a big fan of testosterone i'm not a big fan of testosterone i'm not a big fan of testosterone i'm not a big fan of testosterone yes i i think there's there's there comes this plateau of material things that i no longer like see the same yeah but i definitely have gotten happier well here's i've also learned how to use it in a certain way here's the other thing too is that this is hard to parse out but you can you can look at the data and kind of break this down too people in higher income brackets uh so we're not talking about inheritance and we're not talking about lottery winners okay so it's not all the same but people who earn more tend to tend to but people who earn more tend to tend to have a higher income bracket be more disciplined uh they tend to um what's the word they withhold um uh when you're when someone's offering you something and you can say no let me wait what's that called doug uh when you're you're you're you're you're not gratifying yourself delayed gratification so they tend to be better at delayed gratification they tend to spend more time and energy on self-improvement and to the tune of let's say uh on the job training or education um and they tend to be healthier uh physically uh because they spend more time on things like healthy eating and exercise because it helps uh sometimes to have money to be able to do those things other times it helps you to make more money to become more healthy and fit so it's hard to kind of like parse that all out because you can look at that you really can't look here's the deal like and i know you've told me this adam because you grew up with not so much the spending habits that you had growing up not you but your family had yeah we're like well part of the reason why they were so difficult is their spending habits yes is they didn't have great my family was a came with no education my dad came to this country with literally no education they had no money and they did okay they did reasonably well because they were really disciplined yeah with what they did with what they earned and how they saved and where they spent and how they worked and i think those things contribute to happiness more than the money did yeah it's those strategies and those disciplines and those uh behaviors so it's hard to kind of break that down but there is data on on the ways to spend money and how those affect happiness and it's very clear in the data when you voluntarily give your money to help someone else especially if you can see the result of what you've done that's the longer lasting effect it's the greatest roi by far with happiness well you can and anybody who's uh on doesn't believe that theory you can test this um oh dude and i've talked about this before like uh there's been many material things that i desired or wanted that eventually i got and it was awesome buying it in the time and when i use whatever the thing was but over time that that dissipates and even when i think back oh man i remember that first watch when i really wanted to get like it doesn't give me this like like i remember that i remember there was a major goal and i could tell a story about it but i don't get a feeling from it anymore it's so long gone and i've exceeded so many other things since then uh but let me tell you a story of something i did for somebody like totally charity wise for a family or did something like that and it could be small things could be big things um i could think about that and i can you can feel the same effect you can feel it yep yeah i can i can literally feel it in my body like you can so test this if you don't believe me like go do something like that compare it to something that you really wanted to buy or have for yourself and then and it doesn't even have to be which is wild it's like i mean i'm what i'm comparing right now the stories that i'm thinking of is uh that really expensive watch thing for at least was really expensive for me at the time uh very moderate modest charity thing which didn't cost nearly as much as that thing did but yet the roi on the with happiness the happiness ongoing for years from that exponentially more than that thing so like even the even the the amount doesn't even have to be equal does that make sense what i'm saying 100 i was in fact i was in the car over the weekend because you know you guys know i went with that uh that place with dylan and josh and we were actually talking about this we were talking about happiness and money and john i don't know if you guys remember this but josh it was either last year or the year before he went and built a home for um a family that needed a home to be built he went with a christian organization down to mexico and he's like he goes every time i think about it it gives me the same he goes i want to cry he gives me the same emotion it was one of the greatest experiences of my life and it was the best time i ever spent and money ever spent was flying myself down there and doing that and so that's the takeaway like the takeaway with this is like uh the things you do with money are what make you happy and the behaviors that tend to result in a better lifestyle tend to make you happy the money itself Boy, it can go in a lot of different directions. But don't you feel like that study did a good job of really breaking that down? Because there was three levels of people that didn't have good well-being or that were negative, unhappy, or whatever that. People that had good well-being and then people that were exponentially good well-being. I mean, I would categorize. If you have exponentially good well-being, then you probably have a balance of giving, a balance of all those things. And so give that person more money and their happiness goes up literally with more because they've learned to reinvest in time and get that back with the money. They've learned to travel and do things that will create memories for them. They've learned to give to other people, which they know will give up great. And so, I mean, you know what it reminds me also of? The steroids was a rougher analogy. Maybe a more gentle one would be, we talk about this all the time with obese clients who think that getting in shape will make them happy. How often do we have to talk to people like this, right? Where they're just like, I just want to be happy. I just want to lose the weight. Once I lose 50 pounds, the depression will go away. And it's, no, it won't. If you are a depressed, negative person and you think it's because you're overweight, it is not true. And here's your example of that. If I had a magic pill that just had them lose weight versus the things that they did to lose the weight the right way or what make them happy. That's right. The exercise, the changes in the strategies, changing with food relationship, that results in tremendous happiness. You can't avoid the struggle. You can't. You can't. Absolutely. You don't want to. You don't want to. You learn everything through that. It's the secret to the happiness. Because to your point, if you just did some extreme diet and you white knuckle your way to 50 pounds down or a hundred pounds down in pursuit of I'm going to be happy. It's like winning the lottery. It won't solve that. It won't make you any happier. If you're a miserable person before and you win the lottery, you're not less miserable. The data on lottery winners is remarkable. Yeah. It's a hundred percent. And that's why. Because they didn't learn the disciplines on how to do it. I get that much money. Yeah. One of the things that happens on your way of 75,000 to say hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars is all the disciplines required in order to obtain that getting growing in education, sacrificing, delayed gratification, right? All these things. And it's like, oh shit, that is the, the, the real secret sauce are all those things. And then, oh, by the way, now I got all this windfall of money from it, which gives you better ways to do it. Same thing goes for fitness. Yeah. If you were somebody who learned. If you learned how to lift weights properly, eat correctly, do all the things, and it took you a while to get that a hundred pounds off. Oh, you end up valuing the journey. A hundred percent. All right. I'm going to change subject because this note's been up there and I want to hear about. It's probably a Justin thing. About Arlo. I know that you guys. You talked about him on a recent episode. Yeah. You said you got a lot of crazy DMs. I did want to kind of. Peter call you? Bring it up. Did Peter call you? No, not Peter. Yeah. But yeah, no. Somebody just kind of was. Giving me a little feedback that I was like, I had to like sit and really think about it because it's like, I like to bring things up on the show that are, I think are going to be entertaining and funny. And a lot of times that involves like stupid things that, especially with my dog, like he just like does crazy things every now and then. And it's like, I have to talk about it too. It's a bit of like a cathartic, cathartic, you know, kind of a thing for me because I'm like, I got to like offload this. Cause it's. It's like, this was a story where you were peeing off the deck or something. He ran into it and walked into the piece. Yeah. You walked into the piece shit on my foot. Like he's throwing up on, you know, my carpets. He's gone. Got like sprayed by a skunk and his face like multiple times. It's just like a constant. Adventures all the time. Yeah. It's an event. It's like having a, a two year old, you know, that's always going to be a two year old, you know? Um, but it's like, and I, I might've mentioned, ah, cause it's hard. And it's like, I'm like, uh, you know, I struggle sometimes. Like maybe, maybe. Maybe somebody else would really appreciate him, you know? Like, but it's like, it's not true. He's, he's, he's part of the family. I love him. It's like, I have to like, he's really thought he's like, oh, he's just like one of those dog owners is going to get rid of them. And oh, you know what it was? It was cause Adam said he would drop them off in the woods. Oh, that's what it was. That's what it was. I was trying to think back. I was like, I don't think I said I was like going to get rid of them. I was like, no, you laughed. Like, I think I'll do that. I laughed. Obviously Justin was joking. Everybody's so sensitive. Yeah. So. Justin's not going to drop them. I know. Come on, dude. Stop it. Even if like you're talking about your kids or something and you're like, you know, you're trying to bring up funny stories and it's always like a negative story, you know, it's like, cause there's, I mean, there's a lot of times I have, I have good times. I take them out like to Westcliff. We walk all the time, like into, to, for feedback for people that don't realize like the amount of work I've put into this dog is insane. So this guy, Lance, he, he's like, um, he trains military and police dogs. And this is like. He's like, uh, over, you know, in Watsonville, we, we took him there for like an entire year and he literally like, was like, I don't know what to do with this dog. Bro, when you get a dog trainer or something, that's like a military instructor. Could you imagine us giving like a climb back? Like, Hey, I can't help this person. I'm a higher adult. He's like, this dog's a lot. He's neurotic and blah, blah, blah. You know? And he came back and he was like, you know, underweight and you see his ribs and everything. I'm like, this is not good for him, dude. Like we're, we'll just. Take them. I don't want to keep doing the training. It's not working, you know? And so like, and, and we, and it was, you know, it's his own style. Like it. So I just got frustrated and I'm just like, I'm just going to deal with it, you know? And we're going to kind of just take it day by day. And like, he's really food motivated. And so I've learned to kind of like get them to do better things, like with more positive feedback and like, it's like food out there to, to draw them in and like, he'll go take off, like, uh, down to the school and like. And so, you know, it's just frustrating. It's hard, dude. I even had like a lady like pick them up when he was down at the junior high and he had taken off and like, he's only done this a handful of times, but she's just like, how would you ever let your dog, you know, run loose and like, was going to call like animal control. And I'm like, dude, like the, the ultimate Karen lady was just like, she was hammering me about like, like me and my dog and like, how dare you, like a car could hit him and blah, blah, blah. Anyway. And then through the ringer with this dog, dude, and it's, it's hard, you know, but like I'm, I'm still at it and I'm, we're still working on it. So anyway, I'm, I'm working now on like getting him out a lot. Cause you have to take ownership too. Like if I had taken them out enough, like he's a very high energy dog, got to walk them all the time. Got to run them all the time. Got to throw the ball for him all the time. And uh, and I'm switching up his food. I'm trying to really kind of figure out like, you know, what, maybe, maybe I got to get like a healthier, you know, version of him. Like how, how can we do this? Do you think it's that, or do you, so what I think it is, is it's wrong dog, wrong owner. I don't think he's the right dog for you. Yeah. Just straight up, dude. He's still trying to talk about it. No, listen, we're already there. You got to keep them now. He's your kid. But wait, but no, this is more me challenging your way of thinking on, do you believe that there are right dogs for right owners? And I do. Yeah. I, so w before I bought my dogs. I did a bunch. I like to be fair. Courtney got him. Okay. So I, I did a bunch of research on breeds before I bought my, my English bulldogs. And one of the things that w cause I remember wrestling with, you know, I want a dog. Should I get a dog right now that I wrestled with was I laziest dog. That's a hundred percent. What I did. I, I, I said, what dogs need the least amount of exercise because I knew how many hours I worked, but I still wanted a dog and I wanted that companion and, and, and bulldogs came up. And so I did dig deeper and oh, there are a lot of, you know, maintenance and I'm like, I can handle that stuff. But I like, I know I won't be able to exercise them. Why? My, my buddy who has a Weimaraner that has, that, and I, so I know three close people to me that in only one of them, I feel like has this great relationship with this Weimaraner and he's an ultra marathon runner and that dog runs with him every day. Are they designed? They are, they are bred to run all the time. Bird dogs. And so, yeah, two, if you get them to hunt and like really like work them, they're super chill. So you think a dog treadmill would be good or is that too boring? Uh, I've thought about that. Would he do it? Would he do it? I actually, I don't know if he'd do it. He might, but you know what I have done is I've, I've, I bike and so I'll take him West cliff and I can like jam on the bike and he just sprints and, and he's worn out. And so I've been doing that a lot lately. And I feel like, see, see, and you're, you're not a big cardio guy. So I feel like if you were a big cardio guy, then he would be right. Dog. It'd be right. Dog, right. Or like, I think my buddy, Greg, who's an ultra marathon runner. That is a great dog. Yeah. Oh, totally. Because he could go take it on literally a hundred mile run. I don't disagree at all. But like, you know, I'm in this situation and I'm, and I'm going to finish it. It is what it is now. But you took him to the best trainer, like one of the best trainers around. But you were, you're talking right now about how maybe it could be like, like, would you really buy another Weimaraner after everything you've learned? No, no, no, no. Oh, okay. No, never. No. Yeah. But to be fair too, I had a Weimaraner before this. You did, but I thought you got lucky. Totally. Yes. Cause I think. Totally like got like a dog that was like. Chill for a Weimaraner. Chill. And, and here's the thing, like ahead of time too, it was like more of a pet, like, so they breed these dogs a lot to be show dogs. Right. And they're, they're, you know, in Arlo specifically was his, his dad was actually like a winner, like in his breed and he, he won all kinds of shows, really handsome, like perfect, like bone structure, all this kind of stuff. And so he's like a really handsome dog, but also really dumb. - You know, it's just a lot of inbreeding. I mean, it's just like- - It's like a male model. whole world i swear he's the male model version zoolander you should name him zoolander i swear to god dude give him an orange frappuccino you know and he would love it but yeah it i don't know it's it again like i got i had i got lucky with my first dog he was like the best dog dude like would literally like had the recall he like i could i i trained him and and it was like i'd come home and he was he'd like put his paws up on me and give me a hug and then he'd go lay down and he would chill and i would take him out on a walk and that was it like i like literally was like so easy so yeah it was totally totally like uh threw me off you know and so we got like a little um wiener dog too now which he's great he's so easy i'm like i'm just gonna be all wieners from here listen that's that's to me i know you your lifestyle so that that's the right dog yeah that's i mean i feel like that's what happened you don't look very tough you know like down on west cliff with two little wieners but you know yeah i i can handle i got a good ego yeah yeah yeah you're confident you can be fine with that you know what i'm saying yeah have you ever have you ever considered a dog huh have you ever considered a dog no no no we manage a lot already you run four kids why not i'm not trying to add more stress four kids is already like a lot of a dog here's what happens when i think about a dog in a positive way yeah okay watching tv just petting a dog watching tv you know what i mean they make dogs like that actually they make dogs like that i love that yeah i mean if you can handle the farts bulldogs are like that yeah yeah so are um uh kings uh the the kings no cavalier kings whatever like they're like lap dogs like sit in your lap i think some dogs i love i love dogs when people have dogs i appreciate them but just the just the i believe stress and i can't leave when i want and i gotta have someone watch the dog and then we gotta yeah no i get it and then the dog gonna wake us up in the night i get it i get it i believe though there's a dog i believe there's a dog for every person i think that i think that that like there's there's the right breed for like every like what you're into what you like to do there's certain there's certain breeds i have i have an affinity only because i grew up with them and because my dad loved them i love uh american stafford shires and pitbulls but my dad always had them when i was a kid i just loved the way they look and they're so athletic and so strong yeah and so i remember growing up my dad had one and uh man he could jump and just you know we played tug-of-war with the rope and and he was uh he was very protective of us but that was just my experience with them and i like the way they look because they look like little bodybuilders you know they're cool all stocky yeah but other than that like did you get a bunch of guilty dms i just took a few yeah i think that was justin loves his dog everybody i love my god dude yeah it's like i i post about all the time if you see my social media it's like half of it is like me posting me and my dogs like yeah all i do is he's not gonna hang out with my dogs my kids he's not gonna get rid of his dog he's still a great dad he's still there he's still a great dad speaking of animals i gotta hear about how the cows kicked you you were saying this off air i didn't know you got kicked by a cow for real i told you that before you really got kicked like where all the time uh shoulder chest all the time yeah well so what they remember uh when i when i used to milk them they're at they're this level right so what's that level like their feet oh because they're standing up they're they walk around on something yeah yeah so that way that way i can you know do all the stuff right yeah do my thing but and when you when i come in the morning so it was actually like it was it was designed like this if you can imagine where doug is at over would be the size of this and i'd have four cows in a stall at a time okay and they're all about this level okay and you you let them all four inch and you lock them you lock them all in then you prep all of them now when i would come in in the morning directly ahead of me right over here would be this big whiteboard and every morning there's at least on a good morning like a low number a good a good morning would be low number two or three cow numbers a bad morning could be like eight to nine and what that is is it's warning me like who's off and a lot of times there'd be a special note if there was something i needed to know like for example 397 back right tete like don't touch the back right well what i would know is that it's got an injury or something like it like another another cow stepped on it so it sliced it open so don't do that and so well no you still do it but you better be gentle because if you just go in not knowing and you will get the shit kicked out of you because you grab on an injury on a cow and so they're that's always happening so you're at or one is sick or just off and so there i would just you see numbers and so when i see the tag come in a lot of times you know but sometimes you're the guy who finds out so i come in i know what i'm looking at sometimes you're the dude who found out and a lot of times the number ain't up there and you grab something and then whack you can just kick oh yeah yeah no i've flown across the the room whoa yeah yeah yeah so it's broken nothing no i've actually never had anything broken um i mean i feel like that would hurt like really bad yeah no it does yeah yeah but it's not like i could never broke anything i am in a i'm in these full so i have like clothes like this and then i'm in full coveralls i'm in a full coveralls i'm in a full coveralls like that are like the thick denim jean type coverall so i got a little bit so i'm not gonna get yeah so i'm like a little bit of padding enough to like not be hits you in the face so it normally is not my face because i'm high enough so it would be chest yeah it's normally would be here and my in my head my head's there's a there's a gate here but there's a there's this much gap room did you always start slow just to be sure like let's make sure no because you're you're it's speed is the game right i gotta get through all of them so you move you move pretty but you over time you one you learn you learn all the cows so you give them names and some of that so you learn you learn who's who and there's certain temperamental temperamental cows so there's cows that are prone to being pains in the ass you have a favorite do you remember any oh i don't remember it it's been so you're talking about you're making me go back what is that i'm 15 years old so 30 years you're making me go back yeah no i can't i mean i remember uh rosa and like some some yeah i knew some names but i i couldn't tell you if there was like a sweet yeah yeah yeah that one just popped in my head so there was like uh but i don't i don't remember because like i said a lot of most of the time they were going through something and so therefore they were temperamental but there absolutely were some cows that were all like i i could see they come in their ears would be pinned back and so you know and you could see they're looking at you with yeah and then other cows they just put their head in the grain and they're happy and they're and you're like they're cool so you don't have to worry about it so you you learn the energy of the of the animals your buddy that as they come in yeah oh no if you know if you guys were to come in it was like anytime friends came by and i'd be working and you'd walk around the corner i could shoot you across the room and then with my you you i loved it like somebody trying to if you don't know the technique you just can't do it and so you're like i don't get it why is it not it's not working it's like yeah you're gonna roll it there's a way you gotta do it you know so much about this i would love to see you do this because we gotta put you in your element well you know what's funny about it i think is interesting the it's it's you i mean you guys obviously really know me like it couldn't be more out of character right totally yeah right that's why i want to see you funny i know if i see you milking a cow right now i will die yeah yeah i couldn't be further from the guy like i mean we we joke about how like not not changing a light bulb or being this but i did all that stuff for a long time you know you name it i working on a ranch there's not a lot of things that you didn't have to do or learn to do you figure it out yeah and got yeah very dirty and crazy early mornings and all that stuff and i all by myself and like all all that stuff and so yeah that's part of why i am the way i am today too because i got plenty of experience to know i don't want to do that yeah yeah yeah definitely so seed is the world's 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to seed.com slash mind pump use the code 25 mind pump get 25 off back to the show our first question is from burke himself if i only do pull-ups body weight and weighted am i missing out on anything by not using a lat pull down machine no you know what this is a good question oh you you disagree well no so here's the deal so they're i mean it's the same movement pattern same muscles like you know this is a bodybuilder they do feel different they do but if if someone was asking me this question you know they miss the reverse i would say yes yeah to not be able to pull your own body to pick one or the other oh absolutely yeah for sure and uh unless this person is a competitor the value you're going to get of just so you know for the listener i mean i was doing way to pull up to the day but the three months prior to that i didn't do any pull-ups and i was doing all that pull down so it's not like i don't bounce back and you're it's a cute but you could absolutely never do a lat pull down but always do pull-ups and weighted pull-ups and get you're fine awesome awesome back great strength functional, you're not missing out. There's two advantages that the pull-down machine has. One is you're not strong enough to do a pull-up. So a pull-down allows you to use resistance that kind of matches your strength. And by the way, this could be true for someone who can do pull-ups, but let's say they can't do a wide grip pull-up. So I can do pull-ups, no problem. But when I go really, really wide. Yeah, working on your grip. I got to be careful if I do a pull-up because it can sometimes tweak my shoulder because I'm pulling my 220 pound body up. So when I go on a pull-down machine, sometimes I like to do really wide pull-downs, but the weight is 160 pounds and it's not as heavy. So I can get that, you know, kind of that different angle. Or let's like a behind the neck. Behind the neck pull-up is really hard when your body weight is high. Behind the neck, you know, pull-down with 120 pounds, not a big deal. So those are the two times when I would say a pull-down machine is better. It's like, if you're not strong enough. You're going to add a lot more. Or you want to add a lot of weight. Like weighted pull-ups are awesome, but let's like, you like, there's some pull-down machines that go 300 pounds. Yeah. And if you're a really strong dude and you want to do heavy, you know, weighted pull-ups, sometimes it can be a pain in the butt to get the chain and hook around a weight and do the whole thing. And getting under a pull-down machine can sometimes feel. I mean, I can get behind the argument of you're missing out on some of the scapula mobility benefits if you're going to practice behind the neck. Yeah. Pull-downs. You got to be really strong to do that. Oh yeah. Most people aren't going to be able to do that with a body weight. And to be able to control it to where you actually retract the scapula properly. Stabilizing it. Yeah. So if you went into lat pull-downs with the thought that like, oh, I'm going to go light today and really work on behind the neck, scapula retraction, and that shoulder mobility. I definitely have more fun with grips on a pull-down machine than I do pull-ups. I mean, truth be told, the way I look at it today, even with my ex-bodybuilder background, it's like when I'm feeling lazy, I'm doing lat pull-downs. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. When I'm feeling like, hey, I want to get after it, I'm feeling strong, or I want to see like I'm doing pull-ups and I'm doing weighted pull-ups. So if the average client asked me this, I'd be like, you could never do a lat pull-down again, but get strong pulling your body weight up and you're just fine. Next question is from Preacherman Joe. "Can you take a day or two out of the week to not eat one gram of protein per pound of body weight? I feel I need to give my stomach a break to recover." You did this for a while. I did. So if it's for your stomach, if you're noticing digestive issues and- Nothing wrong with that. You did protein fasting for a while. I did, and it was for my gut. A lot of it was for gut health. You used to go, you used to go, you used to, didn't you do like a vegan, you did like a- Yeah, like Fridays. Yeah, Friday vegans for a while, early on in the podcast, I remember you used to do that for your gut. I did. And a lot of it was for my gut health. And so I was, basically it broke down just way less calories. So if you're like, hey, I need my gut to have a break because here's the deal. High protein's great. And all the data, it's better for pretty much everything. But there are times, and this is not backed up, but this isn't based on data. This is based on my experience. I definitely had clients where we start to push the protein and digestive issues start to become an issue. And these are the clients that I don't have to meet that much protein. And I would have them eat more fiber. We changed the protein sources. That often helped. But there were those clients that no matter what, once we'd get up to a certain amount of protein, they just didn't react well. I do want to say how rare that is though, because you just said what I was going to say, which is many times, and because I can notice this, because you're not, I know you talk about how you can eat red meat until you're blue in the face. If I'm eating all red meat every day, all the time, that's my only source, I start to notice. And giving myself a mixture of leaner cuts, white meat instantly improves digestion for me and or increasing fiber. So many times with a client like this, I will always explore that first because we know the benefits of consistently hitting protein and how hard that is for people. And so that's already a challenge for me to get people. But if I had a client that was complaining about that and they said, man, Adam, when we fast or when I cut it, my protein in half, my digestion was really easy. Then I'd be like, let's try these sources. Then let's try these. So I would rotate through fish and through white meat and through adding fiber and doing all that first. And if they still keep reporting back, ah, man, just still rough. Then I'm like, okay, then yes, then we go that route. 100% what I would do. And even today, my protein intake averages between 200 and let's say 240 grams. Um, I make sure I get fiber with it. If my fiber isn't high enough with that, it can also still cause some kind of backup issues or whatever. So, but that's exactly the strategy I would have with clients. Next question is from Tyler H 6 2 0 1. Can you rehab and heal from an injury in a calorie deficit? Yeah, but it's a lot slower. It's a lot harder, way slower. Yeah. If you're putting your body in a catabolic state, uh, or should I say you're making yourself more catabolic. So if you're going to have an injury after injury tends to be catabolic, tend to lose muscle, tend to lose strength. Um, and you put yourself in lower calories on top of that, um, it can definitely impair injury. Now this doesn't mean you got to go on this crazy surplus of calories. Uh, cause sometimes people do that too. They're like on the couch, they're depressed, they just did a bunch of maintaining kind of what you're already eating. Yeah. Feed yourself a healthy diet. Don't go low on protein. Don't go low on essential, uh, on, on fats, both of which are essential for healing. You need them both to heal your body. Proteins, uh, heal pretty much every tissue in the body and then fats for like nerve health and hormone health. If those are low and you're injured or you need to rehab or you're coming off an illness, sometimes you won't. Like if it's a really extreme, you won't heal from those. Like you break a bone and, or you tear a muscle and your protein intake is below a certain number. It ain't, it ain't going to heal in those extremes. Well, to Justin's point, normally just, you know, you're not going to heal. You're not going to heal. You're not just eating the way you were eating before typically handles it because what ends up happening normally when you get injured activity level decreases. Yeah. And so activity level decreasing, maintaining caloric intake or diet the way it was prior to injury is normally enough of a surplus that it's at. And so long as protein is adequate to, to recover because it, and we've talked about this before to be anabolic, to build muscle would fall in the same category, similar to his recovery or repair here. You don't need a huge calorie surplus to do that. You just need to be in somewhat of a surplus. And so, uh, and a lot of times my clients that have had some sort of an injury, they're no longer working out all your activity already. Yeah. As much cadence or doing the thing they were doing. And so the original studies on amino acids, so old studies on essential amino acids and branch, that would be a great thing for them to do. They were done on burn victims. Oh, right. Yeah. So they would give a burn victim. So that's a major, like me, getting like a large part of your body burn is like a major trauma. And they would give some of these patients, um, higher amounts of protein or essential amino acids and they would heal much faster. So, uh, it definitely makes a difference. Yeah, there you go. That's, that would be a great strategy right there. If you're somebody who's kind of worried about how much calories, but with that, like just add in that essential amino acids. Great idea. Next question is from Wilkinson, Jared. I'm having a hard time activating my rear delts, no matter how low I go on weight or how slow I do the reps. I feel it in my traps. Any idea what's happening? Okay. So a couple of things, obviously I'd have to watch it for him, but I'm going to guess I've done videos on this. I'm going to guess what's happening. So keep your elbows high, keep your shoulders depressed and separate the, the dumbbells or pull things apart. Don't row. The cue for me has always been fly out. Don't fly back. The natural thing that someone does on a rear delt, whether they're on a rear delt machine, whether they're doing a cable road, they're flies, or they're doing bent over dumbbell where rear delt flies is to squeeze the shoulder blades together. And fly back. The cue is to fly out and the flying. And I have a whole down a mind pump TV. I did. I've done several YouTube videos on a rear delts. And I talk about this cue. And I, and I definitely think most people don't do rear delts properly. I think it's. And the reason why it is difficult because it's a small muscle and you have emotion and you're, and you're moving in a way that is similar to what a bunch of big muscles are, are, can, can activate really easy. Turn into a row. Yeah. And so the, the, the natural thing is for the bigger muscles to take over, uh, the movement. So it does take a really good mind muscle connection to do that. So, so in this case, if you're, if you, because there's a few common issues that happen, one is what your Adam's talking about. We're kind of turns into a row. The other one is you get this external rotation. So my elbows aren't high. So I'm pulling back like this. And the other one is this, this shrug. So probably what's going on here. That's right. So elbows high shoulders down. See what I did there. So my elbows are high, shoulders down and I'm separating. Now I'm hitting the rear delts. These were very common cues with my clients when we were trained this area. 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