2959: The Secrets for Training in a Calorie Deficit (Most People Get This Completely Wrong)

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So this trains your whole body, but the best we will throw in a free maps program, muscle mommy 15 or muscle mommy. Just go to maps, abs and butt.com. Use the code launch for the discount and the free programs. All right, real quick. If you love us, like we love you, why not show up by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs, or training gear over at mindpumpstore.com. I'm talking right now. Hit pause, head on over to mindpumpstore.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. You're in a calorie deficit. You're trying to burn body fat. That's the goal. What about your training? Should that change? What's that like? We're going to talk about the secrets for training when you're in a calorie deficit. Look, this will help you out a lot. Here we go. This is obviously top of mind for you and I. It is. It is. And there are things to consider when you're working out in a deficit because it's different. It feels different. There's different things to consider. And I think going into it without any awareness can set you up for some failure. Like, should I be experiencing this? What does this feel like? And also going into it, understanding the possible roadblocks or hurdles or mental struggles, because there's a lot of those. Anytime you change something in your diet or workout. And if you're not aware, and I knew this as a coach, right? As a coach or as a trainer, I would prepare my clients ahead of time and forecast so that when they ran into things, it wasn't this shock and I wasn't having to play catch up or put out fires. They knew it because it's like, oh yeah, he told me I would feel this. Well, we have to consider this. And we talk a lot about the stress bucket, right? And we talk about, you know, personal life stuff. We talk about intensity, volume, like all these different, you know, work stuff that you got going on. All these count in your stress bucket. And when it overspills, it's really difficult for the body to do what you want it to do, whether that be building muscle or burning body fat. And you just have to consider that. And I don't think we talk about, because we talk about, obviously, it's necessary in order to lose body fat to be in a caloric deficit. Right. But a caloric deficit is another stress. That's right. When you're in a caloric, think of that stress bucket. When I am in a deficit, the bucket's smaller. That's right. You shrink the bucket. And that's just because my body, so the nature of a deficit literally means this. I'm not eating enough to sustain myself. So my body is tapping into stored energy, hopefully body fat, to sustain myself. So that bucket is now smaller. So that's a really, really good way to just explain that analogy. Love that. All right. Here's the first one I'll tell you, because, and this I learned a lot. So it's all connected. I remember years ago, first of all, being in a deficit for me, a controlled deficit was never something that I ever really tried to do consistently for a long time. And mainly because I started working out because I thought it was skinny and I want to get bigger. So why would I ever want to get smaller? Like why would I even try that? I've never lost that mentality. That's right. And actually, I'm better at it now, but thanks, Justin, for pointing that out. But I did, eventually I did really try to be in a more dedicated deficit. And there's lots of psychological stuff around that for someone like me. Like, oh, I feel small on my shirt. Like what's going on? And one of them was like, just feeling weaker in the gym. And when you're in a deficit, if you're training a high level, you've been doing it for a while, like you can't expect yourself to get stronger. And you especially, sometimes you can't expect to even maintain some strength, but I'll never forget. I was having these workouts. And at this time I was trying to get really good at pull-ups. And so my pull-ups were getting better. And I was like, dude, I'm getting, and I remember I was telling one of my friends, because I had been doing this for a long time. And I was like, dude, I'm getting, and I was in a deficit at this point for maybe eight weeks, which is like the longest I ever, ever, ever was at that point. And I was getting better at pull-ups and I was telling my friend, like, dude, I'm doing something crazy. I said, I don't understand how I'm getting stronger. And he goes, you're lighter. Yeah. I was like, oh yeah. Pull-ups, dips, pushups. Yeah. I mean, that really is a good strategy to kind of lean into that as you're, uh, reducing, uh, calories and losing weight. Massive weight lifts are great. Massive strategy, because again, we always talk about the psychological component of all this game. Right. And you, I always got weaker. I don't, I don't know. Uh, I mean, maybe other people have had better experiences, but any major cut I went on, um, you can expect to get, yeah, it's just, and obviously my goal is to, uh, to not get a lot or not way weaker, but I was very realistic that I was going to, cause I'm coming off of a bulk and peak intensity, trying and volume, all the things. And so, yeah, going the opposite direction, it's pretty natural, to see a decrease in some weight. Now I don't want to see a massive one. Cause that normally tells me I'm probably stressing the body too much or cutting back too much. Um, but it's pretty normal to see, uh, some of that. And so one of the psychological, and that can be discouraging. I don't care. Even if you understand the science and you know, what's happening, nobody wants to see their weight. It can be discouraging. So I love to do movements either. This is a time when I love to change up movements completely. Like all of a sudden, then you don't have a baseline. That's right. So like, like I haven't done Turkish get ups in a long time. So like, and here I am in a cut, it's a great time for me. Like, you know, I'm going to start reintroducing Turkish kids. Why? Cause I'd have to start back at zero anyways. And I actually might see myself get a little stronger because the skill gets better. Great point. So it's like, didn't that psychological like, Oh, I'm actually getting stronger. I was like, no, you idiot. You haven't done it in a year. And you're just readapting to that movement that you used to be that strong. And right. So, and pull-ups are a great example of that. So I think, uh, body weight stuff, new movements, uh, great strategies, uh, when you're in deficit, um, for the psychological reasons. A hundred percent. So, and now someone is like, well, I got stronger in a deficit. This, this will happen when you're a beginner, maybe the first year of training, but if you've been training for a while and you're hitting numbers and you know, you're like the strongest you've ever been, you can expect the top weight to go down and it lifts like deadlifts and squats and presses. Uh, but body weight exercises, uh, in a deficit tend to get better because you're lighter pull-ups and dips and sit-ups and pistol squats. They take it, they tend to get better. And so what it does, it gives me that psychological fuel I need. Mm-hmm like, oh, here I am. I'm doing this lift. I'm better at this lift, even though I'm in a deficit and that's encouraging. And I'll tell you something like being encouraged when you're going in a particular direction with your diet is very important for consistency. It really is. And so for me, this is a great hack. Uh, here's another one anticipate what it's gonna feel like to train in a deficit or to feel depleted. It feels different. Everybody, when you're well fed, you go into a workout and you're like, I could tackle everything. I just run through the barbell. It's not a problem when I'm in a deficit. Uh, now this is a proper deficit, not like too much, right? Dragging myself. But when I'm in a deficit, it just feels different. It's just, when I'm working out, I don't have the same, er, the same grind, the same, you know, strength, the same intensity. And so I, I know this, I have to prepare myself to go into my workout, to know this is gonna feel different than when I'm at 4,000 calories. My workouts feel very different than when I'm at 2,800 calories. It's gonna feel very different. Yeah. The intention's totally different. I mean. Totally different. I had it this morning. This morning I was working out in my garage with my wife and I'm training and the, the, the, the familiar feeling of training on low calories is coming back and I'm like, I, I remember what this feels like. I'm a little more fatigued. It sucks. I don't have the same. It's just different. It sucks. It's demoralizing. Uh, your, your, your, your glycogen stores are depleted. So your muscle bellies aren't getting full like they used to. You're, you're probably lower on carbohydrates and calories. And so you're weaker, you're tired or you're tired. It's a very, uh, it can be very defeating. Yeah. And discouraging and, uh, probably a big reason why a lot of people, uh, bail. This is also not to hijack this, uh, intro or tip, but this reminds me of why I used to like carb cycling so much. Yeah. Was because every third or fourth day I would load, refeed or push carbs, uh, way up from the previous really low three to four days. And it would remind me of that good workout feeling going like, okay, I'm not really weaker. That's right. So even though, again, I know all that, it can still work. get in your head when you're weeks and weeks of this consistent when you're trying to lose a lot of body fat and you're staying in this deficit for a long time so to have these refeed days again more uh great bodybuilder wisdom that we probably muddied up with the way that we talked about it and explain the science behind it uh i'll just purely go from the psychological part i remember that defeated feeling and feeling depleted flat low energy all the stuff but then i i knew in two more days i get it to load up and then i would load up and then it would feel like the most amazing workout i've had and it would just remind me of like okay and then i'd have to go back down again and go like it's okay i'm gonna feel this way so much of quote-unquote bodybuilding science or bro science is based off of psychology that they tried to explain uh away with science but here's what happens with what you're saying so carbohydrates are an easy macronutrient to lower because they're not essential so you're not risking as much as when you cut fat and definitely protein like you got you cut fat too low your body can't function you cut fat too low your body can't function you could literally eat 10 000 calories a day but if your fat was too low your body would starve okay so so it's essential carbs aren't essential so you could play with them but here's what happens when you cut your carbs you don't get good pumps in the gym your energy goes down and so that refeed is literally just so i can feel good again yep and it look i look forward to it and that's that psychological piece but the other psychological piece is this like knowing i'm gonna feel more depleted in my workouts anticipating it expecting it it really and then getting used to that feeling that feeling and then getting used to that feeling and then getting used to that feeling there's there's head knowledge and then there's heart knowledge right there's knowing up here which is fine but then there's the knowing of the feeling and because i've done this before when i feel depleted like this morning i'm working out and i can tell i'm depleted it's not crushing me so i'm like oh yeah i know what this feeling's like i've been here before it means i'm getting leaner it means i'm in a deficit here's the next one uh now all things being equal low wraps uh tend to work better in a deficit uh and here's why it's lower volume yeah it's not because it's heavy it's not for you know you're not going to be able to do it you're not going to be able to do it you're not this crazy muscle sparing effect fatigue without energy is extra crushing yeah because you're not giving yourself that added bit of energy to really get through sort of more of the higher rep and it's a little closer towards the endurance side of the fence and so you know it could be pretty demoralizing when you're not like full of energy yeah like five sets of four reps uh on a deadlift or a squat or a press don't require nearly as much energy as five sets of 15 reps of those exercises plus the 15 reps can that's a lot of volume people forget that it's not just sets that play a role in volume it's also reps that play a role in volume and weight but reps play more of a role a set of 20 reps of a barbell squat almost a failure will fatigue you and hammer you way more than a set of five reps at a similar intensity it just does and so low reps they stress the body less uh they don't you don't feel like dying as much uh and they tend to be more appropriate all things being great for preserving muscle as well so you know that that's a huge uh you know something to consider uh while you're going through a cut is like the biggest thing on your mind should be like how can i preserve muscle how can i keep stimulating that strength signal uh and to do that without like the high volume and more of the fatigue side is you know the low reps make a lot of sense listen at this point of the training cycle uh if we are in a deficit to get lean uh and lose body fat uh the goal is no longer to build muscle it is to keep the muscle i built in the calorie surplus and we've talked about the studies and what it shows on what you need to do in order to maintain muscle that you already built it is a significantly lower amount of volume than what it took to build that's right so and i know there's like ranges on the different studies but it's it's less than half nobody goes to half i don't know anybody that is in a training rhythm nobody cuts the volume when they're in a deficit period no let alone going down to half exactly and yet you can go less than half i mean so i my rule is get in there touch the weights get out at this point let the diet do the work uh and understand that i'm working with a smaller stress bucket and the longer i stay in there the more repetitions i do the more volume and intensity i push in this deficit the more likely i am to overspill that stress book the number one problem with people's training when they're in a deficit is they burn themselves out that's the number one because here's the thought process right i'm trying to lose body fat so i'm cutting my calories so i kind of burn more calories in my workout i'm going to push it even harder but you're literally setting yourself up for failure the stress bucket's smaller because of the lower calories you're going to go train even harder which is going to make it more difficult to recover from and that's a muscle destroyer that's a fantastic way to lose muscle and again referring to the data adam like the thing that you want to manage the most is stress management and sending a signal to maintain muscle doesn't require much but the problem is is we think well i got to keep muscle i'm going to frantically train the heck out of myself to keep this muscle but they forget that their stress bucket is smaller because they're in a deficit low reps really does a good job as maps anabolic phase one is the most successful phase of any mass program for me personally in a deficit when i put myself in a deficit if i train like that i keep muscle i feel good i don't over train when i start training the volume and my calories drop i i have to bump my calories otherwise i'm going to burn myself out and i can feel my workouts i can see it uh in the way i look so low reps tend to work better uh when you're in a deficit all right here's another one and this is more of a like anticipate this you're going to feel hungry at night you just are people are so afraid of the hunger signal it's okay and i get it right i get uh that we communicate in the space like you know feed yourself if you're hungry and you shouldn't feel hungry you know what i'm saying our diet makes it so that you never have hunger again or here's a supplement that'll make it so you're not hungry oh glp ones that'll control your hunger and they do pretty well a pretty good job of doing that but when you're in a deficit you can expect to feel some hunger and it typically hits at night typically when you're not busy you're at you're you're sitting around you've eaten your meals uh and then it starts to hit and what you typically did in the past is you go reach for more food or a snack or whatever know that when you're in a deficit especially if it's a substantial that at night you're going to start to feel hungry and and kind of make friends with it now i'm not speaking to people who have dysfunctional eating patterns around uh restricting themselves these are people that i'm like no no you're way too comfortable being hungry uh in fact that's your best friend but for the average person you're going to feel some hunger at night and i know this i know when i'm in a deficit at night i'm thinking about food a little bit but what i tell myself is like oh yeah i'm in a deficit this is my body's burning body body's supposed to send that signal yes yeah you're supposed to feel that a little bit this is arguably the one of the hardest things i think of the cut is the is the evenings oh yeah at least personally personally um you know i this is where i wind down uh katrina and i will watch a tv series or something it's so hard not to grab a snack yeah the habits the cravings uh the actual real hunger because you've been in a deficit for the last couple weeks like it all sets in uh the thing that works for me is the the reframing uh there's two things i lean on at this time and i'm this is getting very top of mind right now for me one is i remind myself like that feeling and i know that i've been in multiple days in a row of a deficit like i'm laying on this couch watching a great show with my wife and i am burning body fat like what a cool thing what i'm like i'm getting leaner by the minute right and i think about that the other thing i that it encourages for me which is really good is i have a hard time going to bed really early but when i'm hungry i'm so motivated to go to bed to go to sleep number one hack for me when i'm when i'm in a deficit and i'm starting to feel hunger is to go to bed go to bed the longer you stay up the longer i'm telling katrina like 8 30 i'm like hey let's go let's go which by the way i'm gonna see there's a there's a double there's two sides yeah you get great get a full night's sleep you get eight nine hours of sleep which you need with a smaller stress bucket that's right so it's like i'm avoiding this you know that's right that's and i lean into those two things i lean into hey i'm leaning out while i'm relaxing here and two man i really want to go to bed earlier because i don't want to stay up for another two hours thinking about food and oh guess what that makes me have better sleep better recovery uh increases that stress bucket bigger like this is the way to go yeah there's so i have a lot of sleep i have a lot of sleep i have a lot of sleep i have a lot of sleep i have another hack with that so it's that i totally do that uh and the other one is um uh carbonated water carbonated water sipping on that throughout the evening uh does help make a difference and i've used this with clients as well i've even had clients add a little salt and lime to it well that too if like somebody's kind of cutting out alcohol like it works really well with like mineral water and yeah it's totally a corona yeah i think there's two things that are happening there because i do i kick up like i start drinking my element way more uh i don't there's i also think that if you're doing this really clean and through whole foods you naturally are reducing sodium quite a bit that's the last one and there's a part that like that feels good like that yes that's the last one was the sodium hack so here's what oftentimes and i had this happen with clients a couple times before we really figured this out when you drop your calories when you especially if you're sticking to whole natural foods which you should if you're dropping your calories otherwise you're eating processed foods and trying to eat a deficit good luck with that so that's number two number three if you cut your carbohydrates which you probably did even if you're not low carb carbs are going to come down if calories come down right all of those things suck water out of your body sodium helps keep it in now why do you want more more water in your body well why would because you feel like crap you actually start to feel like crap you start to get dizzy in your workouts and you think is it because my calories are too low sometimes that's the case but sometimes you just need some sodium also uh it helps with hunger if you need more sodium sometimes your body kicks up hunger so this is this is the sodium hack so you're a bodybuilder who's going to go on stage and needs to cut sodium, which which I hope you're not listening to this and that's why you're listening to these tips, bump your sodium up when your calories drop. It makes you feel a lot better. In fact, especially on low-carb diets, you'll hear people talk about the keto flu or low-carb flu where they feel like terrible. It's because they need more sodium. It has nothing to do with the low carbs. You know, I think people underestimate because they go, well, I salt all my food. But if you're eating all whole foods- It's not much. It is wild how much you could salt whole foods compared to one thing packaged for the day. Oh, gosh. The amount of sodium in one piece of anything packaged- Oh, yeah. Or one fast food meal. Oh, yeah. That's like 3,000 milligrams. So, yeah. So if you're eating all whole foods and seasoning it all up, you still end up being, you're way lower than probably, especially if you're coming from, because you have to keep that in mind also, right? What you've, your body is adapted to a processed food diet prior to this. That's a dramatic swing for a lot of people and bumping the sodium, higher than they would think with drinks, like the, like Element, make a huge difference and helps out a lot. Totally. All right. I'm excited to talk about one of our new partners because they have a product that uses a compound that I've been reading about for a long time. So it's Parachuse. So these, which I had all you guys try before we worked with them. It's been a while. Yeah. So tell me what your experience, I mean, we talked off air, but go ahead and tell the audience what your experience was. Well, it's, well, what it reminds me of is all the benefits that you feel from caffeine without the negatives. Without the crash and out, without the affecting sleep later in the evening. I thought it was very interesting. Now, if I recall long before they started working with us, you found this through, how did you, you, so I was really introduced this and I don't know if you took a pill form of it first or how you found. I experimented with it. So when you drink, when you take caffeine, about 80% of the caffeine gets converted to something called paroxanthine. Okay. Paroxanthine is the reason why caffeine gives you energy. It's what gives you that focus. It's, it's what picks you up. It's the paroxanthine. Okay. The other 20%, for some people, it's even more, we have a liver enzyme that'll convert caffeine, by the way, which is why some people caffeine, they're so much more sensitive to caffeine. It has to do with this particular enzyme, but 20% or so of this caffeine will get converted to a couple other compounds, theobromine and theophylline, both of which are what are responsible for the jitters, the edginess, the, the stomach issues. Some people have coffee or caffeine, they'll get diarrhea. Sometimes, yeah. It's the paroxanthine that turns, that gives you that kind of energy, that clean energy. So parachutes are these little, little like gumdrop looking things. You eat them, which by the way, I like that they're like this because drinking lots of energy drinks with lots of fluid, like they're not as convenient. Something like this could pop in your mouth. Yeah. Paroxanthine gives you the, and they've done, they've compared them by the way, caffeine to paroxanthine. Better focus, better memory, recall, way less jitters, way less negative side effects. And also the half-life is a bit less than caffeine. And those two compounds, theobromine and theophylline, have a really long half-life. So when you drink caffeine at like 1 p.m. Yeah. And you're like, oh. That's why I got cut off before noon. Right, right. So you're like that, right? Yeah. So if you have it at one or two. It affects my sleep. It affects your sleep. It's the theobromine and theophylline, which have like an eight hour half-life. I'm gonna have to try. I'm like independent of each other. I've tried both together and it was like a very similar, very similar effect after the caffeine. But like to start the day with the parazanthine first and like run it throughout the day. So here's what I like about the parachutes. So I can't have caffeine past noon like you. If I do, even if it's a little bit, my sleep is affected. So I have to cut it off. Usually I cut mine off early in the morning. I'll have it at like 6.30 or 7 a.m. and then that's it. I can have one of these at 3 p.m. or 2 p.m. and it won't affect my sleep negatively. Oh, wow. Because of the short half-life and because it doesn't have the theobromine or theophylline that then mess you up a little bit. But it does feel, it feels like a smooth caffeine. It feels like, it's not the same wired kind of edgy feel. It's got a different feel. So, you know, for people listening, it's like if you want to try that kind of stimulant effect. Where did you first hear about it? I remember when you brought it up a while back. So what were you doing? So I love, you guys know I love supplements and chemicals and all that stuff, for better or worse. And there was this post, on and I'm always experimenting with this. Oh, you saw a post on it. Yeah. And it's okay. Again, better or worse. I thank God I don't have a podcast where I could use it for good. But I saw this post and there was this scientist discussing this, this alertness chemical with all these studies showing how beneficial it is. And he was quoting these studies and I'd never heard of parazanthine before. So I thought it was some new discovered stimulant, which got me excited. So I'm like, cool, let's try this new, this new over-the-counter drug. Yeah. But I looked at it and then I read about it and I'm like, oh, this is what caffeine converts to like what a lot of it converts to. And so I'm like, well, why would I take this instead of just the caffeine? So I went a little deeper and it was this other stuff that the caffeine turns into that causes these other effects. So I was like, all right, let me try it out. So I went online, I found some random company, tried some capsules and it was, I loved it. It felt good. I didn't get the crash at the end. I didn't get the jittery, you know, jitteries. I'm not as sensitive as Doug is with caffeine, but I'm more sensitive than you guys are. So I played with it. I also, my wife, I'll give it to her 3:00 PM when she crashes. If she has coffee, same thing, she'll have crappy sleep. But if I give her, you know, a pair of chew, yeah, then she's okay by the time we go to bed. So it's just another, it's another stimulant. That's did they reach out to us? Because you had brought that up on the show way back when? I don't know. I just saw the bottle. They must have heard us talk about you. They must've heard you cause you talked about it before. I did. I brought it up on a past episode. Yeah. You brought it back and I don't remember how far back this was. I tried a pill of it, but it didn't have the same effect. This was much more. I tried low doses and scaled my way up. So this is 200 milligrams of Parazanthine in one of the chews, which will feel like you'll get the energy of like a good, strong energy drink, but it feels so much less edgy. You just feel kind of like good. Now what I haven't done, and I'm curious if you have, cause you're Mr. Well, you're gonna combine it with. Yes. Have you done it with ketones yet? Oh, with keep, no, no, I haven't. No, that's a good call. I've tried it pre-workout. I've taken it later in the afternoon. If I crash, I give it to Jessica all the time. Yeah. Be interested to stack it with ketones. Yeah. Cause that tends to be my post like noon type of deal, uh, to keep me kind of going like that. Dude, I'm doing all the things that it's funny. Cause people were like making fun of me. Cause I'm not jumping in on the bandwagon of the let's get lean, you know, in the tiny train with you guys. Uh, he's always reversed. I mean, somebody has got to stay big and, and Jack pronounced. Um, yeah, but you know, at the same time, it's like, dude, my stress, but you're talking about stress. Bucket is like this big. So you got a lot. I'm like, yeah, I'd be stupid cup. Right. Yeah. Like what am I going to do? Like just, yeah. Throw more stuff on your throat. Yeah. All the gasoline on top of it all. Like, nah, that's the last thing I would want you to do. You're right. Yeah. And I haven't had sleep. Sleep's been terrible. And so, yeah, like I am actually looking at all terms cause I still need energy and I need, uh, you know, my cognitive ability to be sharp. And it's, so it's been kind of tough to balance that without taking like a million supplements. Speaking of which, my wife called me out so hard this morning. So hard, dude. And, uh, she's getting better at calling me out because I love, listen, one thing I love about my wife is that she's not afraid to do that. But one thing I also have a challenge with, like I think all men is, you know, I can perceive it as criticism and then, you know, get defensive and the whole deal. Uh, so this morning we're working out together. Um, I'm trying to make, make more time for us to spend together. Cause lately we've been, uh, we're really busy serving at the church. And so we're not really doing our date light date nights like we normally do. So, so this was the second week I did this as, Hey, let's work out in the morning together. So we did and we're working out and she knows, you know, this constant thing I'm working on, right. My relationship to working out and like how I am with exercise and all that stuff. And she's like, you know, I think the thing that you said, I'm going to paraphrase. She, she's like, if the thing you're trying to work on is your flexibility around it, not being so attached to all of it. And I'm like, what are you talking about? Yeah. Immediately. Right. I'm like, I've cut my training volume down. I'm trying to get smaller right now. You know, I'm eating less. Like I'm not just trying to be big. I actually, I'm trying to see if I can get my weight down so that I don't snore as much. And I'm like defending myself. And she's like, no, you're trying to get shredded. Yeah. That's what you're trying to do essentially. And it's like, so I'm like, and so she's getting better at it. Cause she like backed off. Let me sit with it for a little bit. And then, you know, she came and built me up a little bit, a little later, tell me about the great things that I'm doing. So I could like sit with that a little bit because she's like, you know, you can fool yourself, but she's right. I totally can. I can, there's two sides of dysfunction and I can go from here to here and, and miss the middle. And so I'm like, it started by me saying, I'm gonna lower my volume. I'm going to try and get smaller. And now what it's turned into is I'm gonna get shredded, which I kind of knew. Yeah. And so she called me out, dude. So she's like, you need to lose muscle. I'm like, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, my, my two senses, the, I don't want to hear. Yeah. I know you don't like, I'm gonna give it to you. I mean, my two senses, the answer lies in the, the, the eating is letting go of that. Yeah. That's where it lies. Cause that you can control both directions that way. The most there, where if you truly just let that go or I'm like, Oh, we're busy. I'm not going to eat right now. Who cares? And just keep going longer. And I'm trying. Yeah. That to me, that to me is where, where it lies. Otherwise, you know how easily you can tweak things with that to really change. I'm trying dude, but it's literally, it's like bumpers. It's like the bumpers. When you play bowling, it's like bulk cut, shred, big shred, strong shred, PR. You're cranking on the dial a little. Yeah. That's all. I mean, you, I, it's so funny because I didn't know that about you because I met you right around jujitsu time. Yeah. And so like, I didn't like, I remember seeing you when we were, when we were young, we're kids, 24, you were crazy gorilla Jack, right? I remember he was all arms. He's like this, this all puffy and stuff, you know? So I remember you, but Jack for sure. So I remember you looking at that, but then I remember seeing you jujitsu look way different. So I, it never like dawned on me, like this guy probably has vice more because normally somebody who can do that has no form of that. And it was like very comfortable. Like you had a phase where you're Jack, then you had a phase where you're like, it's not body dysmorphia anymore. I know that sounds weird after what I just said, it's feeling capable. This is what's weird now. So it's like, it's not so much about need to look a particular way. And that's cool. And that's second place, but it's really about, I feel, I think I feel more capable when I'm controlling a certain thing. It's more of a control thing. Totally. And it makes me feel like I can handle, you know, things. It's very difficult. Like I'm the hardest person to ask for help. You guys know that I don't want to, you know, so okay. Based off that, I mean, I'm no better deeper on you and stuff like that is, do you notice, um, you, when things in your life that you can't control very much. So, um, does, do you tighten the reins up there? Do you notice, is there a correlation between, you mean when things gets a little haywire? Yeah. Yeah. Do I try to add more control? Yeah, of course you do. Oh yeah. That's when I'll try to numb myself. More with substances or supplements or, you know, I'm trying to bolster myself so that I don't feel so, you know, incapable. Yeah. If you will. So yeah, it's the illusion. Look, I can say this up here, by the way, logically it's here. It's not here though. I don't feel it yet. I can sometimes, but I can logic it. I could talk about it. I could sell it. I could communicate to someone really well about it, but to feel it, it's very difficult. It's very, very hard to feel weak. Yeah. No, thanks. I'd rather not. That's a tough one. I like to avoid. That's a tough one. Anyway, you know, staying on the, you know, you're switching back to what we were originally talking about with diet and stress bucket and all that stuff. You know, it's been the, my part I love about what we're doing right now. So I, this is, this is the nerdy side of me and this is what, and I've, I've actually felt a little conviction through this process of like, I was so resistant of like bodybuilding. I've been a bodybuilder at them for so long because like, I hated that. I felt like identity I had when we started. And I totally don't think I have that anymore, which I don't think so. Yeah. I think back to the people get surprised. Sometimes they see something like, wow, you look like that. Oh, yeah. So I've actually, I prefer that. I prefer that. I'm not that guy. Right. And so I've been so resistant of some of the things I did that I forget some of the, probably the value that I brought to the podcast through that journey too, you know? And so, you threw it all out. Yeah. Cause exactly. I threw it. I don't care, you know, so I throw it all out. But I also know that a big motivator of what we do on, on this thing is to add value and help others. And I know, you know, by you by far are way more knowledgeable when it comes to the research and science and understanding that, communicating that to the audience. What I'm into is, is the tracking and awareness of all those things. And so, and you're hyper, you're like, you're like really, really. Yeah. And I feel, and I'm also noticing that I'm at a, in a different stage of my life, which have different things are, are surfacing with the training, stress, sleep, all those things that are, are fascinating to me. And this last one, what, with the whole, like the amount of time that it took me, I literally just last night, this morning, I got up and finally saw my readiness score in the high seventies. I, yesterday, 47. Wow. I mean, just, terrible terror. Uh, I also didn't get the greatest night's sleep. Plus I wasn't fully recovered. So it just piled on that. Um, and of course, like to our staying on theme of what we're talking about, I'm in this really low calorie deficit right now that I'm, I'm fully aware of. And the combination of that, and I don't have any other stresses going on. Like home life is amazing. Business is great. Like I'm super happy, good place. It's literally just physical stress that I put, I put, I put a lot of demanding physical stress in my body relative to the shape I was in. Somebody else might, you know, laugh at that. That's a good point. Yeah. Like someone else would laugh at it and go like, but what your current fitness was, you know, versus what you started. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's what you have to consider. Exactly. And, and that's hard because, and again, my brain goes like, I do, I've done way more. I've pushed my body way hard. How could this possibly be affecting my readiness so much? How could I be, my sleep be disrupted this much? Um, but again, like, you know, I'm in a different stage of my life. I'm older. Uh, I'm more deconditioned. You know, the other thing that, uh, like light bulb for me that went off with like, just how, how quickly that deconditioning over time, like creeps up on you. Like, uh, and I know I teased you a little bit about when you talked about your speed of walking on the treadmill, but I, I, so I have a, I have a very clear image of like when I would get up every morning and, and walk on that treadmill and speed for incline was like a, like a stroll for me, uh, where I would trip over my feet, uh, at that speed right now. Now I've, and I had to start at like three, three, two and work, work, my way all the way up. And that's like subconsciously it's all walking. So it's not like a different form or modality. Natural speed is changing. Yeah. And, and also again, like my natural conditioning and how I move throughout the whole day and all those things. And so all these things are affected. And that's the value of, of tracking so many things, because if you just thought or just felt, you wouldn't necessarily notice at all. Yeah. Cause I'm doing, I'm doing the same stuff. That's right. Um, but I, I do notice that. And I, and again, because I, in fact, even the speeds and stuff, I remember when I was first getting on and getting back on my kick of walking on the treadmill and started to go up and it was like, and I was trying to multitask reading emails and stuff. I'm like, I can't even do this at three, five. I'm like, this is weird. But I realized that like, wow, like how much I even lost the skill of doing something so basic, uh, as the, and I wouldn't say lost cause I could still do it, but how much it digressed and that, that, that short period of time of just being inconsistent with that. And so, yeah, a lot of awareness around that. A lot of, a lot of awareness right now around, um, the managing the stress level in relation to it. It was really difficult for me the last three days to not train. Like I feel like one of the things I'm sure you felt too, is like when you're dialed and you're feeling good rhythm and you're in a rhythm, it's like, I I'm, I'm at that place right now again too, where when I'm going to bed early and I'm thinking, I'm thinking about my workout. Oh yeah. That's a good place to do. I'm going to do this. And yeah, you, everyone's like, yeah, yeah. Like, like I'm excited to get my work. My bag's already packed for tomorrow and I've already got like, I'm going to hit my element. I'm like this, like I'm like, and so, and I like that feeling. Right. And I'm excited and there's nothing more discouraging than getting up and then, and having a shit night of sleep and then seeing that. And then to tell myself, I'm not going to go do that. Like that. I I'm, I'm having a hard time with that. That was, it was, it was been more difficult than I thought it would. And, uh, and so I told you off air that I've been holding like this extra four or five pounds, even though everything's dialed, uh, uh, three of that came, came off the last night. Just what you said. Yep. Exactly. Yeah. It was all inflammation. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. And literally just, just imagine you overcorrected or if I would have pushed through and done a, you'd be holding on to more, which would make you overcorrect even more, which is what people do. Yeah. I know. Yeah. Isn't that cool? Yeah, no, it's, it's, it's really interesting. And that's what you learned, uh, competing. Yeah. You learned all those things competing. The thing that I loved about it is this part. Yeah. Cause I do, I did really, I've all the thing that did get me involved in health and fitness. I did enjoy, um, learning about myself selfishly. Like, you know, I like helping people. Um, but I, I really geeked out on like myself and my own health and those things. And this is why I like all those metrics. Cause it gives me another thing other than just what I've read or a feeling it's like, Oh, I have measurable things that I I've paid attention to. And it, and then it reminds me of communicating to so many clients, like how easily they, they get discouraged when they see that I get discouraged and I know the science and I know what's going on and I can still be discouraged. So man, how many people out there are, they, they feel like they're there. They know they're like, I know I'm eating good. That's why we say trust the process. Yeah. I know I'm eating good. I know I'm in a deficit. I know I've hit the gym X amount of times this week. Like, why do I still look like this? Why is it still? And it's just like, man, like you're probably not accounting for how much stress on the body. And that extra little bit of inflammation that you're holding on is enough to make you feel fluffy. And make you feel, and even it register on a scale, you're up a pound or two and it's not going down. And man, how many people course correct or bail? A hundred percent. Did you guys, I know you saw this, Justin, did you guys see the whole, the developments on Noah's Ark? Did have you seen this? So guys, I remember when they originally found this spot. Yeah. This is different. Well, nobody's been able to go up there because of the government that's there. This is Mount Ararat, but apparently because of the, the new technology with that ground penetrating radar that they used on like the pyramids and everything else. And they found all these chambers under there to explore. Like, I guess there's motivation now to actually go, um, they're going to get their visuals. Yes. So you can see the top of it. So here's why this is a trip, by the way, this is one of many, one of many things that have been proven correct by archeological finds or historical evidence that the Bible said, that everybody, everybody made fun of this is the dimensions and everything will trip you out. Okay. So first off, are they really that aligned? Listen, it is. So here's, what's cool. When you read the Bible and you read about, how Noah was instructed to build the ark. It's very specific with the size and the length and the kind of wood used. So it's really easy to disprove. Number one, if you never find the ark, you could say, well, that was a fake story. But if you do find something that looks like the ark, you could easily say, well, the Bible said it was this long. The Bible said it was made with this wood. The Bible said it was this many floors and it's not. Well, here's what they're finding. It's the exact same length as described. It is located in the exact same place that's described in the Bible. There are 26 boat anchor stones found in the vicinity, which are also described. They're finding it is matching. Right, so these like big monolithic type, yeah, like rocks and that with a hole. Yeah, so the holes where they would tie off, you know, those were like basically anchors that they'd throw off the boat. Now, and archaeologists and scientists are hating this right now. Why? Because it validates what sounds like, from a scientific perspective, a crazy story. Which, by the way, I looked up a bunch more. I said, are there more of these kind of things that have been proven throughout history? And the answer is, there's a ton. So I'll tell you one of them, right? You guys know the story of Jericho and how the walls fell outward? Yeah. Because they marched around the city, trumpets blaring, walls fell outward. They walked up the walls into the city. First of all, if you sack a town or a city, you knock the walls in, not out. Who knocks them out? That doesn't happen. Well, they found it eventually. They found it and they found, oh yeah, the walls fell out exactly as described in a way to where armies can march up. But there's a lot of stuff that's in the Bible that has been proven. I wish I knew all the details, but like there was a podcast, this guy was describing the Shroud of Turin and like all the different DNA evidence and like wild, wild stuff that totally aligns with it being authentic. It does, but here's the deal. Shroud of Turin wasn't talked about in the Bible. My favorite things are things that are written in the Bible. So another one, Pontus Pilate. Pontus Pilate was the Roman politician or leader who's the one that basically said, okay, crucify Christ. Well, for a long time, they're like, we have no evidence this guy even existed. He's only spoken about in the gospels. Well, in 1961, they found Latin dedications, Pontus Pilate, coins and a ring with his name. So like, oh no, he's a real guy. And he existed right around the time that this would have happened. The pools of Beth, Beth, Beth, East, Esther and Siloam. That's another one. The King, King David. Do you guys know that for a long time, scholars thought that David, they said he was just a literal invention. He didn't really exist. Then in 1993, they discovered inscriptions from the ninth century BC that refers to the King of the house of David. So it's like so many things. My, you know, my favorite thing is, favorite one is, and I learned this one relatively recently. For a long time, scientists said the universe was eternal. It's existed forever. It's always been there. Never had a beginning. And then when they looked out, was it the Hubble? Yeah. And they said, oh, it's expanding. And if you turn back time, that means it all started. It points it all back to a point. And it points to Genesis. And this, by the way, at the time, the scientists did not like it. They didn't like this discovery because they said, well, this just confirms what the Bible says, which is in the beginning. Yeah. And everything was created. So cool. But Noah's Ark is the wildest one because when I was- Is it happening right now? Yeah, dude. So they're all in on it right now. Yeah. And they're digging down. Ark of the Covenant's coming next. So they're actually getting- Ever since Indiana Jones. Yeah, dude. Yeah. So, I mean, if you asked me as an atheist and you said, what's the crazy, like what story is the most made up? I would have said Noah. Well, yeah. Two of every animal. They all, this great flood. But like, there's so many flood myths in like every culture too. And like, it was the Epic of Gilgamesh. And there's like a bunch of like really old texts that have like some kind of flood myth. But like, that specifically had details of like how they built the boat, like, you know, animals involved, that whole thing. So- I think it's so rad. Interesting. And there's stuff you can look up, by the way, like the Dead Sea Scrolls, just one of my favorites. Until that point, we, we had read books. We had copies of books of the Old Testament that were written after the crucifixion of Christ. And so there's books of the Old Testament that predict how he was crucified, how we, how we'd be pierced, how we rode on, you know, a colt, like all these things. And so, you know, biblical scholars were like, look, these books have all these crazy predictions that actually happened. The odds of that, because, you know, it was, were impossible. Everybody's like, yeah, but that book was written after. There's no way. And then we, then we find, we find the Dead Sea Scrolls and we find copies of books that existed before. And so you're like, how could they possibly do that? Anyway, it's really cool stuff. Ark of the Covenants in Ethiopia. Is that what you think? Yeah, I'm going to call it. Oh, when I hear that, I think Indiana Jones. Yeah. Every time. I think the same thing too. How you feeling, Doug? Feeling good. Yeah. This guy, dude, this guy's like, he gets sick. He bounces right back. I don't know. I don't know, dude. For sure, the healthiest one out of all of us. It's just, he's got an immune system that's like a horse. I know. I just don't get this guy. So you had a fever and now you're fine. Yeah, I woke up, well, it was kind of a 24 hour thing. So Rachel had the same thing on Sunday. Oh, really? Yeah. And then I thought I got away with it. Doug's taxi said he got the Kung flu. You don't need to bring that up. Rachel's Chinese, everybody. I can't believe you said that. Doug's allowed to be racist. I know, yes. But yeah, I'd never get a 24 hour, I mean, I think once in my life I had a 24 hour fever. Oh, really? If I have a fever, it's like days. And I definitely at least look like I had one the day before. You don't even look like you were sick yesterday. Yeah, it wiped out though. I woke up in the middle of the night on Monday evening and I had chills and weak and I knew I was screwed. So what did you do yesterday? Just sleep? I slept. Half the day. Oh, good. All right, good. Speaking of Doug, because this guy, he always defies time as well. Caldera's eye serum, Caldera Labs eye serum. I got some clinical data from them on this. So the eye serum. You're the most consistent with that one. Every day, every day. I mean, I have a tendency towards very puffy eyes and it drives me crazy. Yeah. But the eye serum definitely helps. So what it's for, it's for dark circles, it's for eye puffiness, it's for that kind of stuff. So they did a four week clinical user study. 78% saw less visible dark circles, 75% saw less puffiness and 87% said under eyes appeared under eyes. To be smoother. So, and now they have peptides in there that are, that are in there specifically to do those things. And again, it's like this all natural, just like all of Caldera Labs products, very natural, works with the skin, doesn't like strip the body of its microbiome. And it won best eye serum in the manual grooming awards. So what's cool about it is that I actually can see a difference the minute you do it, like right afterwards. It's not one of those things where you needed like, oh, I need to do this for weeks. Really? Oh yeah, yeah. I notice it right away. So I don't know if you do. No, yeah. Every day I wake up, my eyes are puffy. And you put it on and you can tell a difference. Oh yeah, you right away. Yeah, that's so cool. That's what, I mean, anything like that to me is always, I mean, it's, it's an easy sell for me when I can see a difference. When you tell me about a supplement or a thing I have to take for extended period of time, maybe I'll feel this, maybe I won't. And then it's like, it's, I'm so scared, but it's something that like you feel or notice a difference and I use it when I notice that. Like if I wake up and I've got, which is not all the time. Yeah, I'm a little more reactionary for it. So like I haven't got much sleep and I'm stressed and I'm like noticing that and I'm just like, yeah, that's going to motivate me to kind of use it and see if I can help a bit. Oh yeah, you'll notice a difference right away. I like how they pay for studies too. You know, there's a lot of products out there that will make claims, but they, if you go on their website, if you go on Caldera Labs website, they will have clinical studies on their products to show just how much people notice a difference. So have you heard of this school, this high school, Adam? I'd be surprised if you didn't because when I read this, I'm like, dude, Adam would love this. It's called Founders School and it's in New York. Have you heard of this? Yeah, where did I hear it from? Who told me about this? Bro, you want to hear what's crazy? I either just read about it somewhere or I know somebody. It's like a Gary V thing. Dude, so this is a high school. So trip off this. This is a crazy concept. It's not a huge school yet. It's just got 20 students. It's a brand new school. It's 100,000 students. It's $150,000 a year to go there. Sounds like a lot. Yeah, but you're mentored by other founders. Here's what they do. Yeah, that's cool. If a student doesn't build a $1 million profit business by graduation, they get a full refund. Whoa. I didn't know that. That's cool. If you go to this school and you're paying $150,000 a year, by the end of the term, four years later, if you don't have a business that's profiting a million dollars, they'll refund you your whole tuition. Is that true? Yes, dude. In a great school, is it really hard to get in? Do you know what the percentage of businesses that are profitable by a million dollars are in the country? It's crazy. It's like a single digit. Look at that up for me, but I want to say it's 4%. So this is what they do. Students finish traditional academics by 11 a.m. So 11 a.m., they're done with traditional academics. The rest of the day is on building companies. That's so sick. Now, I'm wondering if the school itself gets a piece of the businesses. Yeah, you would think they'd probably. Yeah, I'm wondering, right? If the school's like, yeah, we'll get some of the business as well. It's got to. If that's the only way to make that a profitable way of doing things. That's the only way you could afford to give. Because here's the thing. I mean, $150,000 a year. I'm going to have Doug look right now. And even if the school blasts the country average, which I expect it to, to be a school, right? The country average is like single digits. Yeah, no, here we are. 1% to 2%. Yeah, 1% to 2%. Yeah. So the school's got to be- Yeah, but think about it this way too, Adam. And again, I'm just speaking. I'm just thinking out loud. First off, they probably picked the students. There's 20. So you got to make it. So number one, they're like, okay, who's most likely to do it? Number two, they got four years of a vested interest in coaching them and building them up to build these businesses. I mean, I would be- And it's only 20 students. Now, is it a million dollars profit or is it a million dollar business? It says a million dollar profit business by graduation. Okay. Is what it says. Interesting. Yeah, because that's such a rare thing to build a business that is- Building a million dollar business is enough, is impressive enough. I think that number is also even single digits. For it to be a profitable million dollar business- That's not just gross. You know, that's crazy. Most businesses that profit a million have to be doing close to $10 million. Yeah. So that's an unbelievable feat. Isn't this wild? It is cool. So again, students finish- I didn't know that about that. Yeah, they're finishing- I heard about that. So I'll repeat this. Who started it? Matt Eliason. So it's built by Alpha School, which uses an AI accelerated mastery-based academic system. So listen to this. I'll read more, Adam. Check this out. 11 a.m., you're done with your normal school. The rest of the day is a founder bootcamp with apprenticeships and real businesses. So you're just- You're going to work, dude, for four years. Yeah. You're building businesses and you're an apprentice or you're being apprent- by people who've built businesses. What a cooler idea for school. Wait, dude, are you kidding me? I would have- That would have been- Sign me up for that. I would have loved to have done something like that. Listen, it says here, led by Matt Eliason, the first cohort is 20 freshmen. Matt says, AI is the unlearned. The expertise buildup, the capital requirements, and the time used to take are all collapsing, which is why he thinks a 17-year-old now can build a million-dollar business. Early alpha students have already generated over $30,000 in AI ventures. The first- So we'll see. It says the first refund check would prove the model- $30,000 or $30 million? $30,000. This is alpha school. Now this is a different- I guess it's from them. Okay. And they're going to make this university. Yeah, I would think- That's a wild concept. I would think they would get some sort of a percentage, right? It makes sense that it would be built, like Shark Tank a little bit. Shark Tank, yeah. You know, so you're not only, you already, just like Shark Tank does, they're already filtering out good businesses, as it is, and then they get to meet all the founders, and they get to hear the whole breakdown. So again, thinking out loud, I'm looking- They're investing their time, effort, all that, so they're going to want to see something return. Again, thinking out loud, you're looking at the AI potential revolution. You're like, let's get some young kids in here. Let's find some talented ones. Next generation, yeah. Who are going to dedicate, like, time and energy. We'll teach them. Yeah. And they're motivated to get a refund on their, you know, their tuition. Yeah. I mean, they're going to probably come out with some bangers. Isn't that crazy? No, I think it's awesome. I'm so curious to see how it turns out. No, no, no, me too. It'll be interesting to see. I think they're- We need to start one here on the West Coast. I mean, all they have to do is take a very small percentage of the successful ones, and then they can afford to refund other ones. If they don't take a percentage of that, and they have to purely refund that, then you're playing a crazy math game. Like, the likelihood of, even in a school like that, like, what do you, what do you do? What do you do? What do you do? What do you think? Even if you're handpicking, if the nation's average is 1% to 2%, you think you could handpick 50%? I don't know. That'd be crazy. That'd be crazy. Yeah, I think you'd be lucky to- I think if you did 10%, it would be wild. So do I. That's what I think, too. I mean, that's 10- But maybe what they're thinking is one of those is going to be, you know, 50 million. Well, that's what I mean by that. That's what I mean by they got to be, like, taking a 5% cut or 1% of the business they helped build. That's what I would imagine. Because then it then funds all the losses. All the losses on all the other- It makes up for all the- You know what I'm saying? Like, it makes sense like that. Or maybe it's a way to advertise his AI education, which is what he's really trying to build. I don't know. Yeah. But I think it's crazy. I think what an opportunity. Those 20 kids, what a crazy opportunity to go there and just, for most of the day, for four years, you're learning how to build- Yeah. I mean, I would love something like that. You know, it reminds me- I would put my kid in that all day. I know. I was talking to one of my buddies yesterday, actually, from my group. And, you know, we often share on here any time that we were really wrong about something. And I have to admit how wrong I was about groups like that. I was really resistant to that type of stuff. And I think there- And I don't think that I'm- What do they call them? What are they? Like Mastery or- Yeah, the Mastermind groups. They have those names, right? Even the name makes me- Yeah. And you know what? There's a lot of grifters in it. So I still think that there's a lot of crap. But I would have never- I would have never guessed the relationships I built, the friendships and bonds that I built in that, the knowledge that I gained and how much I learned. I mean, it was incredible- Perspective. Yeah. Yeah. I learned a lot. I learned a lot. I still learn. And now I have this network and circle. One of my friends just exited his. Boom pop. Shout out to Blake. That was a huge success. He just exited his company. He was going through that while we were together. So he just got that news, I think just like two weeks ago. So that was a huge, a huge deal. They are responsible for, they're like the largest or second largest company that puts on events for big companies, like party events and organizes like retreats and stuff like that. So he scaled that and built that. Young entrepreneurs, man. These are all young, which was also fascinating for me to be the old guy. You know, I was the old guy, which felt really weird. I know. I'm the old guy up things now too. I used to always be the kid. I'm still in denial. I'm still in denial of that. Yesterday talking to Michael, right? We had Michael Smoke in here, which was such a great. Yeah, he's a great dude. Yeah. I'm glad you guys got, because I will. His friend will just, just these like smart kids. I say kids. They're very sharp. They're grown men. I would say kids. Yeah, but they're just sharp. Well, they are like to us and I forget that because I feel like I'm a peer. Yeah. I feel like we're all peers. You know what I'm saying? You know, it was very eye-opening how, you know, we are. We're a different generation and cool to watch his journey from afar because, you know, obviously the two of them were big fans of Mind Pump, you know, 10 plus years ago while they were 19. Yeah, 19 years old. It's funny to me to see like a clear example of like that generation growing up with access to podcasts, with access to like education everywhere. Yeah. We didn't have that. Yeah. You know, he's so educated and quotes so many different people, all the time and it's like, well, it's just mind-blowing, you know, to listen to him. It doesn't make you, do you guys think, like I wonder too if like if we were the 19-year-olds at that time, like would we have could consume stuff? Oh, I would have been a podcast fanatic. Yeah. I think so too. I guarantee it. Yeah. I used to read stuff because that's weird. You're right because he's such an example of, and he talks about it when we interviewed him, right? Like that he just was consuming just alone, alone and consuming hours and hours and hours and hours and then you hear him communicate and you just think this guy's got five degrees and he's been through all this crazy life. Yeah, he's so knowledgeable. He's just absorbed so much knowledge like that. It's so cool. Dude, I got to share something with you guys that I learned the other day. First of all, I like to look up what the old like Orthodox and Catholic traditions will label as saints and to learn about their lives. Oh, I heard you talk about this. It's fascinating. They're really fascinating stories of why they are saints, why they're deemed as saints by these old traditions, how they lived, what they did and just there's just so much crazy history there but I learned about this one guy and they turned him into the patron saint of comedians. Oh, I thought you were going to talk about the wrestling one. No, no, not that guy. So this is a different one. So this is the patron saint of comedians. Do you know what happened, dude? So he was, the reason why he got executed was because the church was taking in money and treasure and keeping it and he kept giving it to orphans and widows and defying the church. So eventually the church and the political establishment at that time executed him and the way they executed him was they put him on essentially a barbecue. They had iron gates with fire underneath and they put him on top and they kill you. So hardcore. Yes. Terrible, like terrible death. Do you know what he, the quote that he has? This is why he's the patron saint of comedians. So he's burning on one side. He looks over at his executors and he says, turn me over, I'm done on this side. Oh my God. Dude. Gangster. Yes, dude. And so this is a very, this is a famous, quote from, he's like a well done. And a lot of these saints when they're martyred show this crazy courage while they're being executed where they, you know, it's like, hey, you know, can you imagine? Hey, don't cut my beard when you cut my head off. Like comments like that. And so this guy's literally getting grilled and he's like, hey, I'm done on this side. Turn me over. It's like, wow. Amazing, dude. I love that. So they made him the patron saint of comedians. Oh my God. That's weird. Are you reading like a book that has all these? I have a book and then, and then I'll use AI and I'll start reading up about these different saints and then I look for historical evidence. Is there historical evidence or is this like just a story? And you would be shocked at some of the stuff that like these, these people have done and how they're recorded and it's like, oh my gosh, dude. Like it's, it's crazy. We don't know more about some of the stuff. That's wild. Yeah, I know. That's funny. 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Our first caller is Kevin from Massachusetts. What's up, Kevin? How you doing, Kevin? Hey, guys. Really appreciate you having me on today. You got it, man. How can we help? I'll start by reading my email. All right. I'm trying to decide which MAPS program would be the best fit for me. And I'd really appreciate your recommendation. To give you some background, I'm 37 years old, 5'7", and around 165 pounds. I've been skateboarding for over 25 years, essentially my entire life. I never had much interest in going to the gym because skateboarding was always my passion and the thing I focused on. Once I hit my 30s, the injuries started piling up. Between 30 and 35, I had two foot surgeries and then hip surgery to repair my labrum. I spent a lot of that time rehabbing and trying to get healthy enough to get back on my board. After hip surgery, I was eventually able to skate again, but I started developing smaller nagging injuries. Nothing was necessarily serious, but it was preventing me from skating consistently. That's when I decided to take my physical preparation more seriously and try to get in the best shape possible so I could hopefully continue to skate for many years. That decision led me to the gym, and unexpectedly, I completely fell in love with lifting. When I started, I knew very little about lifting, so I spent a lot of time researching on how to perform the major lifts correctly. I started following a PPL program on the Ladder app, coached by a professional skateboarder who had similar goals of improving longevity to skateboard. I've now been lifting consistently for, one year, nine months, and have followed that same program the entire time. Very rarely do I miss a workout, and I generally train five days a week, if not more. About nine months into lifting, I discovered Mind Pump, and it completely changed the way I think about training, nutrition, recovery, and changing my physique. The information has genuinely been life-changing for me. Nutrition has been a big part of that transformation. For essentially my entire life, I naturally stayed between 150 and 155 pounds, regardless of what I ate or how active I was. I always ate relatively healthy, but I enjoyed the occasional pizza or other savory foods like that a couple times a week. For the first 10 months of lifting, I didn't track macros, and looking back, I was significantly under-eating both protein and calories. After one specific podcast, I started to lose weight, and I started to lose weight again. After one specific podcast about nutrition, I changed my diet the very next day and moved to a roughly 95% whole food diet. I gradually increased my calories and started tracking macros. Over roughly four months, I went from 155 pounds to 170, and eventually reaching around 3,000 calories and 200 grams of protein a day. The exact thing you said would happen ended up happening. Even though I gained weight, I looked much leaner and was more muscular. I've since settled around 165 pounds. I've also made significant strength gains during these less than two years of lifting. I listed out some of my heavy lifts in the email, or at least heavy for me. I know I'm still relatively new to lifting compared to someone who's trained for many years, but I feel I've developed a solid strength base for my training age. At the same time, I want to keep improving my foundational technique and movement quality. I don't want to simply move more weight. I want to become a better lifter and build a strong, durable body that will serve me for the rest of my life. There's another part of my background that I'm wondering if you think is relevant when choosing a program for me. After skating for 25 years, I'm extremely comfortable with pain, discomfort, falling, getting back up. And pushing through physical hardship. That's essentially what skateboarding has been for me my whole life. I think I've developed a high tolerance for discomfort, and I'm getting to wonder whether that may actually work against me in the gym. Over the last year and a half, I've heard you guys talk about overtraining and recovery, and I've struggled to figure out whether I'm actually doing too much. Because I'm less than two years into lifting, I don't have enough experience to know what too much feels like for me. I understand the concepts when you explain them, but I don't always know how to recognize that in myself. I don't leave the gym feeling overly sore. Sometimes after a heavy leg day, I'll feel it for a few days, but that's about it. I'm almost wrapped up here. I try to get around eight hours of sleep every night. If I get less than seven, I'll generally take it easier at the gym, but I found it very difficult not to take most, almost every set of eight hours of sleep. It's a lot of work, but it's a lot of fun. I've heard you guys talk about this constantly. I don't yet have enough experience to intuitively know when I should push and when I should hold back. I genuinely love training hard, and my instinct is to almost always go hard. That's one of the reasons I'm interested in trying a MAPS program. While my current program seems very in line with what you guys talk about on the podcast, I'm hoping a different structured program will be beneficial. And help auto-regulation instead of simply trying to rely on my instinct to just go hard. Although my primary goal is longevity, for the next year or so, I'd like to maximize gains and physique change, and then shift into a more long-term, sustainable lifting routine. Yeah, thanks for calling in. Great job, dude. You're really strong, too. Yeah, it's awesome. So, is skateboarding still a big part of your life? Is that still something you want to keep doing? No, it was. And then, I don't know, after like 10 months of lifting, and I started to see a little progress, I just like lifting now. Wow, that's awesome. No, good. That really does change my answer quite a bit. But I'm going to back up a little bit, just so you kind of understand. And this is good for listeners as well. It's kind of what started happening in your 30s with injuries, all right? Because you skateboarded for a long time. And suddenly, injury after injury, depending on the type of sport, okay, you'll see this happen. And it's not because your body is necessarily old, but rather your tolerance and resilience starts to drop a little bit. So, the amount of skateboarding and intensity you were doing in your 20s then started to become a little too much. And so, this is how injuries start to pop up. And so, people do, this happens with certain, especially very dynamic sports like skateboarding. Skateboarding requires an incredible level of proprioceptive ability and agility. And when you're a little overwhelmed by the amount of stuff that you're doing because your body's resilience goes down, then injury risk goes up. So, you'll fall more and stuff like that happens. All right, now back to your lifting. Your physique looks great. You're real strong. You've got really good genetics. You respond really, really good to strength training. Yeah, you look like somebody who's been lifting for 10 years, bro. Yeah, yeah. That's awesome. I think if you like what you're doing, you're lifting five days a week, you seem to be doing okay with that much training volume. You mentioned MAPS Anabolic or MAPS Anabolic Advanced. I think you'd be fine with MAPS Anabolic Advanced. And I think you'd see some really good strength gains from that program. Now, following that, if you want like a long-term strategy, I would follow that up with symmetry. Then I'd go to something like performance and then something like power lift. And I think that would take you for like, I'll give you like a year almost of workout programming. And then as far as diet is concerned, you've got that dialed in, bro. And I think you're going to keep building some muscle and just getting more of a quality look to your physique. But you've got really good genetics, dude. Your body responds really well to strength training. It's funny. I immediately, I would love to see you do like all-time strength just because you're very resilient to struggle and pain. And it's like one of the most challenging programs we have for that. But like the gains for that is like unreal. So consider that as one of the follow-ups down the road. I would add something for you that I think. If I was coaching you, I'd want you to do just so I could teach you and show you this. You mentioned how, you know, and good self-awareness to know like you have that personality of like, I can just beat myself up, get up and go. And so your gauge for pain intolerance is probably a little skewed than the average person. And you're like, man, how much do I pull back? But I don't want to lose my gains and everything. So you'd be blown away if you ran like three weeks of like easy lifting. I mean, easy. like five reps short of failure, like just going through the movements. I would make like if we were training together, I would like make you do that just so you could see like, oh, shit, I trained that way and didn't lose any gains. And my body feels really good just so you could see like, OK, I could totally pull back way more than where I'm going and not go backwards at all. Now, maybe you won't see huge gains in that those three weeks, but it'll set you up for gain. But what you'll feel is very recovered, just as strong, look just as good. And you're like, oh, wow, I'm I'm half the intensity I was right before that. And so I would do that exercise with yourself. So just challenge yourself for a couple of weeks to like go way easier than you think you should be even close to and just watch what happens. And you'll be surprised how much you still keep your strength, how how good you still look. And what you'll probably notice is you'll be so recovered. And then when you kind of when you ramp the intensity back up, watch, watch the PRs, watch the gains come from that. So I think that would be a good exercise for somebody like you. To do that. Well, I actually just moved, so I took the last 10 days off from lifting for the first time since I started lifting, really. I haven't taken any any weeks off, but I'm all moved in and I'm after work today. I'm going to go to a new gym and. Oh, that'll be exciting. OK, so this will be interesting how strong how you feel this this this first week. And many times we talk about this on the podcast where we've learned. This. Lesson where we'd have a vacation where we take off camping or something for a week and, you know, interrupts your training. Then I go back and many times I'd be stronger when I got back with all those days off. That normally is a sign that, OK, I was kind of pushing the rev limiter too much, too often. And I need to back off because just me taking a whole week off, I come back stronger. That's a sign that I needed that recovery. And so this will be good for you. Yeah, makes sense. I just because you guys talk about. About overtraining like so much. And like at first I just ignored it when I first started like listening to the my gods. And now I'm like they talk about all the time and like I go so hard all the time. Maybe I'm overtraining. I just don't know. Like I have no reference for what it looks like. Well, what people do is they wait until they they get the signs of burnout. Right. So it's like, oh, nagging injury and I'm going backwards and I feel like crap. But they could have they could have stopped that week. Yeah. Because then at that point, you got to take time now to kind of get back to where you were type of deal. So structured deload weeks and stuff like that just prevents that from happening. Well, it's hard to gauge, too, if this is a new thing to really find where those lines are for you personally. But, yeah, the more we can kind of like play around with that and do less and then kind of work our way up, you'll find that sweet spot. Especially when you're strong, dude. So the more weight you lift, the higher the volume on the body. And you're really strong. I mean, I saw some of your lifts. You weigh 165 and you got to it says you're deadlifting 315 for reps and squatting 350. Yeah, bro. That's really strong, dude. Very strong. Yeah. So. No, thanks. You know, actually, like at the end of last year, my I started to have shoulder pain. Yeah. And I got an MRI, had a slight tear in my labrum. So for the first half of this year, I only did like PT for my upper body and I did legs. So. But I went super hard on squats, deadlifts like for like five months and because I couldn't like I couldn't bench, I couldn't really do anything up for body. So I was like going hard with the PT and now I'm good. Like I can do most upper body lifts now. But so that's why the legs. MAPS Anabolic Advanced has week deload weeks in between the phases. Do those scheduled? Yeah, don't don't skip those. Do those and you'll be okay. And then I don't know if you've heard me talk about on the podcast before, but just kind of a general for longevity since we brought that up to we always recommend that somebody runs at least one cycle a year of either symmetry or performance. So if you do a good job of like so if you move in and out of MAPS Advanced Anabolic Advanced, you do the old timey like Justin was saying, as long as you interrupt in a year, a cycle of either performance or symmetry, that'll really make sure you're doing the right thing. So if you do a good job of like so if you move in and out of MAPS Advanced Anabolic Advanced, you do the old timey like Justin was saying, as long as you interrupt in a year, a cycle of either performance or symmetry, that'll really make sure you do you're getting a nice balance of unilateral multiplanar movements, rotational work, that'll really keep you the longevity game going for you. We'll send you Anabolic Advanced and then we'll write down a list of what you kind of want to follow with a discount code if you decide to continue beyond just Anabolic Advanced. Yeah, no, I appreciate it. Thanks a lot, guys. Awesome. Great work, dude. Good work, man. All right. Later. He's got, I mean, if he's natural and he looks like that after lifting just for a year. He's got like, like competitor. He's got like, he looks. Yeah, he can't be natural. Like a physique guy. I mean, even not natural. He's still, that's still impressive. That's what I'm saying. I think he's, I think he, I don't know. Yeah, I should have asked him. Yeah, I don't want to put him on the spot, but it doesn't matter. Even if he was taking testosterone, that's still incredible and impressive for that short a period of time. And I mean, you know, a guy who said he didn't lift ever. Yeah. All he did was skateboard and then all of a sudden touch weights for how long now? But, you know, if you, again, going back to what he said about. Like, oh, I just got in my thirties. I started getting hurt. Your body's tolerance for just lots of stress starts to lower. Yeah. And so what used to be okay becomes a little too much. That's impact trauma. Yeah. And then you're starting to get. Dude, that's those hard to bounce back. And then also agility is one of the first things that kind of go. You know, strength is much, much later. Right. And so things that require a lot of agility can be. It'd be interesting to look into Tony Hawk and how he was able to stay. And dynamic. Yeah, yeah. And dynamic. He's still after it. Yeah. I mean, you're talking about. Uh, the, just the things required, like the ankle mobility. Yeah. Yeah. No, I don't know. One skateboard is in a million injuries. Right. Yeah. Our next caller is Jen from West Virginia. Hi, Jen. Hi, Jen. Hey guys. How are you? Good. How you doing? All right. Doing well. Thank you. Um, I'm going to read my question only because I changed it around just a little bit. Okay. So I'm a 49 year old wife and mom of two adult sons and a former group fitness instructor. I started. I've been listening to your podcast many years ago and took a lot of your advice to heart. I changed my lifestyle, started lifting really heavy, incorporating rest periods, which was really difficult, dialed in my hormones, sleep and protein for a while though. I was doing a ton of volume in the gym and walking a lot and started wondering if I might actually being too much. I thought it might be time to follow a program and challenge myself mentally by doing less. So I chose muscle mommy 15. Honestly, I expected the biggest challenge to be mentally backing off the volume. I didn't expect to get much physically out of it, but I was completely wrong. During the last phase, I was hitting a new PR on almost every lift each week and I was really surprised by it. So now I'm wondering if I want to continue making progress, should I stay with the last phase of muscle mommy 15 for a while and see how far I can take these lifts? Or is there a point where I should move on to something like anabolic? And my second question is how hard should I be continuing to push at 49? How do I know when I've reached the point where I'm pushing enough weight that I'm increasing my risk of injury rather than getting a better training stimulus? I obviously want to continue getting stronger, but I want to be smart about longevity and not hurting myself chasing numbers for context. I'm five, four and about 135 pounds. Yeah. Good question. Yeah. You, uh, you found the sweet spot. And I would continue to work through the entire maps 15 library. That's where you stay. You stay right in there. And what's great is we have ones like performance and symmetry, which will address, you know, unilateral work and any sort of imbalances that you might have. And so that'll be play the longevity game for you. Um, I'm a big fan of continuing to stay strong. And, but at one point you do start hitting numbers where, you know, the risk versus reward, uh, especially if you are happy with your weight. If you are happy with your physique, you are relatively strong. Like, um, you know, I, I think that at some point you just keep maintaining that, uh, and you keep going. So what, what it would look like, uh, cause I could, you know, I could ask you what are your lifts and stuff like it really depends on the person, what we're in the risk versus reward kind of ratio starts to fall out of favor. So what it kind of looks like is this gen is that when you're feeling stronger, there's a lot of ways to make the lift harder without adding weight. And so you can slow the rep down. You could pause at the bottom, you could squeeze a little harder. Um, and those are all ways to make the exercise harder. Now the time to add weight, uh, would be if you want to keep it really safe would be when the weight you're now using that you're trying to make feel hard, just starts to feel like this is way too light. Then you go up a little bit and then you're good. Where we tend to run into problems is when we're chasing the weight. So it's like, Ooh, I think I might be able to do more. Ooh, let me try and do a little bit more. Rather than being like, I think I could go a little slower or let me pause, uh, the squat, you know, halfway up for two seconds, or let me try and see if I can hold it at the bottom for a second and a half, or let me slow down the negative, you know, uh, of the, of this portion of the rep. So that's, you just play with stuff like that. Um, and that keeps things pretty safe and it also makes your technique really good. Another great way to pursue PR still, and seeing strength gains and doing so that is to introduce yourself to a new team. new lifts. that you just don't really do. Like I use examples like the Turkish get up or a circus press or some of these move a windmill, a weighted windmill. Like these are movements that typically people aren't as familiar with, or maybe don't do all the time. And so it's like, you know, maybe you've been doing kind of the same, you know, deadlift squat and basic movements. And you've kind of hit a top tip tipping point or where it's really heavy. And you're wondering, Oh, should I go more? Hey, maybe I start to introduce a new movement that I really focus on trying to get stronger at. And that'll allow a lot of runway of gains and PRS and all the benefits that you reap from that. And just kind of move in and out of new movements like that, which will also benefit longevity and everything else for you too. Now, I do have a question for you, Jen, if that's okay. Yes. Okay. Just because you're ex fitness instructor, you like to work out, uh, you kind of fit in an avatar that sometimes under eats. Do you, what are your calories and protein and all that look like? Um, well, believe it or not, I used to be an overeater. So that's not been a problem. Um, actually I talked to Rob a couple of weeks ago when I was the middle of phase two and he had me track for a week because I can get a little obsessive with numbers and I was between 26 and 3,200. Yeah. Nice. Good job. But my drawback is, is I probably average literally for the past 20 years, 20,000 steps a day. That's all right. It's not a drawback if you're used to it and it's not hurting. Yeah. You're totally, yeah. You're totally fine. Yeah. Uh, but you're getting stronger. So the 15 protocol, we have a whole library of those programs. So I, you know, you just finished muscle mommy 15. You could go, uh, symmetry 15, you go power lift 15, you could go 15 performance. You could do the traditional. I mean, just, just move through those. You just keep rotating through the ones that sound interesting to you. And what's nice is if you do bounce around through those, you'll, you'll organically do what I was talking about, which is introducing some different lifts and movements. And so, you know, that'll allow you to focus on getting stronger there. How are you doing with the long rest periods? Um, it's hard. I actually don't check my emails all day and that's when I delete them all. So I found a little hack for myself. Good for you. Yeah. Just keep working on that. I know how challenging that could be. That's challenging for everybody. Yeah. Especially for somebody who has, you know, background. So I know, I know how tough that is. Let me send you the tradition, the original mass 15. It's actually one of the most balanced programs that we have. Uh, and that'll be your next one. Uh, don't stay in a phase for a really long period of time, uh, because then problems start to pop up. So, cause that was your question. Uh, so I'll send you mass 15 and then we'll send you, uh, what we think the next order of 15 programs would be best for you. So you can, you kind of know where to go. Okay. That'd be great. Thank you guys. I really appreciate your time. You got it. Thanks for calling in. Great. All right. Thanks. I was pleasantly surprised by her caloric intake. Cause you know, X group extractor, all that's like, yeah, usually it's pretty 1600 calories a day. Yeah. No, it's just kicking butt. No, no. And by, listen, for people listening, everybody thinks when they follow the mass 15 programs that, Oh, well, nothing's going to really happen. Yeah. Everybody has less than everybody. No, it's not. I have, we have yet to have a caller call in and say, yeah, I went backwards. Every single person was like, I can't believe probably the best result for most people. Yep. Our next caller is Katie from Texas. Hi, Katie. Hello. Hello. How's it going? Good. How can we help you? Good. Um, so I am back on the show. I had reached out a little over a year ago. Um, I had just wrapped up coaching and, um, was starting to go through some maps programs and wanted to explore some things with a bigger range of motion. Um, I'm pretty flexible and, um, was starting to do the, the aster grass squats and all of that and seeing my quads explode. So you guys had recommended old time strength. Um, I've gone through it now a couple of times, loved it. It is like exactly what I was looking for in terms of range of motion. Um, my shoulders look amazing. My quads look amazing. Everything has been awesome. Lots of like increased proprioception and everything too, as far as just general, um, like flexibility with strength incorporated. So awesome. I've loved that. Um, I have also, I wrote in a while ago with this one. So, um, in, in the, I guess, eight weeks or so since I wrote in, I did start maps performance. Um, just in looking through the program, it was pretty similar in terms of what I was looking for as far as format. So I really loved the three to four days a week with old time strength. So I've, I've enjoyed that with performance as well. Um, and that's a pretty good cadence for me just as far as overall lifestyle, um, trigger sessions in general. So I'm kind of looking for a third program to round out, um, kind of my, my overall like annual plan, if you will. So really open to packing on some more muscle, some more strength and maybe something that's a little bit, um, I know performance obviously has some of the like plyo incorporated. So maybe we're looking at something with, um, kind of like heavier, um, like strength and lower rep for this third program. Yeah, sure. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, that's generally where I'm looking. I will say just as far as like general context, um, I'm 32, uh, five foot eight. I'm super consistently around like 155 pounds. I've been listening to you guys for about six years now. And when I first started listening, I was like in the like one thirties. So I've put on like a ton of muscle since then. I'm like 16, 18% body fat now. Um, so I will say I'm like really open to putting on, more muscle, but I have kind of like, I'm still with these programs I've worked on, I'm still gaining a ton of strength, but I'm seeing myself more recomp rather than like packing on a ton of muscle. Cause I've kind of like reached a point where like, even if I eat a lot more, I still like my body likes 155. Like it's, I'm, I don't really track it that much, but, um, it seems like I've kind of like camped out there. So I'm open to putting on more muscle and certainly open to like eating as much as I can. But I think just that context, as far as I know, that you can do that. So I'm open to putting on more muscle and certainly kind of tend to like recommend the reverse diet, but done that a little bit. And, um, I'm open to it, but, um, I mean, I would love to push you in that direction while running and you like, do you like the four day a week or three day a week, which is, yeah. Yeah. So I usually do like every other day. So that's kind of a good cadence for me. And upper, lower would be upper, lower and a high. Yeah. But power lift is three. It is three. So upper, lower would be perfect and, and run it. And I would really want that when we run that program in particular, I really want to push calories. Let's push calories. Like we've never pushed before. You're in such a good place. You're very, you're very lean. You're getting like, I think your body is just going to eat it up and you'll get strong and pack on. It'll feel great. Yeah. Katie, uh, you're obviously cause you're getting stronger. You feel good. Hormones are probably pretty balanced cause you're lean, but everything feels good. Okay. Yeah. I'm like super, super good. Uh, like, like health wise. Awesome. Do you, do you generally eat kind of the same things every day? Like if I were, if you were to look at your day, does it look kind of similar most days? Yes. So I will say, um, just as far as like meal wise is concerned, I follow pretty consistent to what you guys have recommended. So, um, kind of always hit my protein goal. I, I never am low on that. A lot of ground beef, a lot of good protein in there. Um, and, and pretty good with that. So I usually eat like three big meals, but I will say I snack a lot throughout the day too. Just like I, I eat when I'm hungry. So, um, it's, it's, uh, pretty consistent. So, so if you stay with what you're doing, you're going to be healthy. You're going to still see progress. I feel very comfortable. It's all good. If you want to push it a little bit, um, then because you eat kind of generally similarly throughout the day, uh, then the, an easy way to bulk or reverse diet without tracking is to take what you normally eat and just have larger portions. So it's literally like, this is what I normally would eat. So I'm going to add another two ounces of meat and another, you know, half a cup or half a cup of rice or whatever. And you just do that. That's if you want to push it, you actually don't have to though, Katie. So if you're comfortable and you're happy and you're like, you know what? I don't, I feel good. Everything's great. I don't think you need to do that. But if you're like, you know what? I want to see what I can do in the next three months, then, then definitely push the calories consistently on a daily basis. And that'll be like turbo. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. That's something I've kind of, it's like, I've reached a point where, um, it's like, I only, I only can eat so much in a day. So it's like, I've been trying like more olive oil or like a higher fat salad dressing or something there. So I think that's definitely, it's like a little bit more with like the kind of core building blocks as far as meat and everything like that. I definitely can, can lean in a little more there. Yeah. And it's just a trade off. Cause again, you said like, I feel like I'm eating a lot, like, okay, there's a little bit of a decrease in quality of life when you're pushing a goal. I mean, that's a fact, right? So, so you got to ask yourself, like, is it worth it? Do I want to do it? And if like, you know what, for the next three months, let me see what I can do. You just make the portions bigger each time you eat and then see how that feels. And if you're like, eh, I don't like it, go back to what you were doing before, but you're killing it. You're doing great. Yeah. Yeah. And it's been super fun too. I I've loved, I think both of these programs have been, um, like way, way different than it's like a squad and a bench press. And it's, it's definitely been kind of what I'm looking for and like way more functional too, as far as it's like my golf game has gotten better. It'll be fun to see how you, how you train with this more, like bilateral kind of focus and really see your strength increase because you're so reinforced now and like protected around your joints it'd be i would be surprised if you weren't like hitting numbers you never see upper lower is more of a traditional bodybuilding split yeah so it's going to feel different but what you're going to get are pumps muscle shape sculpt which is fun totally different focus it'll be great it's also fun i mean i love you adding this because when i look at what you've been running already it's like it's like the perfect like if i could get a client to just run those programs every year yeah like you're you're touching it all you know that that's like that'll take you a long ways yeah it's it's been great i definitely it's like when i have brought in some of the again like the traditional back squats and things like that that are in performance it's like wow i feel so much better um having all of the stability and in these kind of unique ranges of motion so awesome awesome we'll send that we'll send upper lower to you uh and i can't wait to hear i want let us know how it goes yeah awesome i appreciate it guys i'm really excited to try it thank you right on that was awesome yeah to hear so here's an example of a young woman uh below 20 percent yeah what she's communicating uh i'm getting stronger i feel good i'm eating a lot hormones are good hormones are good uh cool there's no there's no reason to do anything well this so and she said something that i think is really key too is like even when she says she feels like she pushes the calories her body still hovers around away and that's what a recomp looks like it looks like you push calories she builds a little muscle she also has probably a few days in there that she's a little lower on calories and then she leans out and so it's a it's a very healthy good place to be our next caller is jessica from massachusetts jessica welcome back how are you doing jessica hey guys how are you thanks for having me back yeah um also pre-forewarning i might have multiple children running into the room so just sorry about that no worries we're used to it okay okay perfect yep everybody should be napping but you guys know how that goes i do um thanks for having me back i appreciate it um it's been a good 60 days so that's been really good i think the update that i emailed in was just that after i talked with you guys i actually went and got a dexa scan which was super informational and helpful i think i needed those numbers um and it came back pretty much saying the same thing you guys had said to i need to increase my calories my rmr was wicked low for what it should be for my age and activity level um which was a bummer but also a motivator because i don't want to be 70 years old eating a thousand calories and gaining weight um so i really took what you guys said i've been trying to apply it slowly very slowly i've only made it up to 1900 calories um but we're getting there and i think my big thing was consistency i realized that although my numbers i gave were my goal each day the actuality of me meeting them each day was probably 50 50 um when i got really serious about like really tracking every single bite i was like wow i'm not getting meeting them as i thought i kind of was um so that was super eye-opening um so i've been the the increase of calories has been slow but steady and just trying to kind of keep it consistent if that makes sense yeah totally jessica how um how scary has it been to bump your calories uh i'm not gonna lie super scary yeah intimidating my husband's had to be like a big motivator for me every day just to accountability coach probably is the right word yeah it's tough it's really scary i'm so glad you said that you're honest about it because it's every day scary yeah it's every meal scary uh and so it's not like uh oh i gotta deal with this thing once a week it's like a okay oh here we go breakfast now it's time for now it's time for and so it's this constant battle um yeah are you doing it on your own is going to be very very difficult for you to do that right now very very difficult and what's going to happen is what you've probably experienced which is uh 50 50 um and what often happens in my experience with this 50 50 is it's like i do well and then i make up for it on the other 50 percent of time and so it's like i'm okay but then now i'm gonna do it a little i'm gonna go a little lower than i normally would and so it ends up being the same what you're doing is you're managing it yeah rather or it's managing you should i say rather than you managing it the solution and you mentioned your husband uh and he is your husband how many kids you guys have together we have three god bless you you gotta outsource it to somebody and have them control it for you that's the only way and you have to literally go you tell me i'm just gonna do what you say and that and that's it because as long as you keep your hands on it it's never gonna be it's always gonna be a big challenge for you so you could either be your husband now i will caution you sometimes spouses can be the best and sometimes it can be the worst because if you it's really hard to stop being coach and then be husband yeah and if it starts to cause issues in your marriage uh then it's not worth it and so what ends up happening sometimes is the spouse look this isn't worth it i'm not gonna do this with you anymore we're fighting over it or whatever because then now there's they have their um invested differently because it's like you're my wife and i love you the other thing the other way to do it would be to have an outside coach do it for you um and then just let go uh and it's the letting go piece that's going to solve this for you okay you have to let go long enough to you for you to realize it's okay to let go and that's probably going to take a year it'll probably take a year of you letting go before you're like have you been listening to the journey with corinne and i slowly i have to say i've not been now that school's back in session i'm hoping to kind of get back into listening to everything yeah yeah that typically we were just talking about that before we got on air how much uh our listens uh skyrocket come september-ish because everybody's kids are back in school now everybody can get back on to on listening so it's wild how that follows that pattern so yeah so um you know and i i want to share that with you just because you have a brilliant coach uh she's our i arguably our best one of our best coaches um and she still struggles with this we've been together now for almost a year you and her yeah doing this yeah it's been almost almost a year and uh i'm sure she would openly admit with you it's still really hard and i still um and so what i and what a coach knows to do and what i do with her is i push her uh and i push her as hard and as long as i can and we're constantly talking and i can kind of start to feel when it's really wearing on her and she's struggling with it and then i'll just ask her i said hey do you need a break and sometimes she'll go no no i'm okay let's let's push through and other times she'll say yeah i'm this has been a really rough couple weeks and i'm going through it and can i can i get a little bit of break and then i'll pull her back i'll pull her back and relieve her of some of the the calorie push that we're doing and then and then let her kind of get comfortable again but how you doing i'm doing good i'm doing good feeling good okay good can i start to push you again yeah yeah okay and then i'm going to push her and it's a it's a push and pull there's no i don't have a blueprint of oh for this many weeks we do this and it's like it's a team effort and i'm constantly checking in with her on we're on a break right now like we just i just had to relieve her i'd been pushing her for a while um on the calories we got all the way up to like the high 2600 plus and yeah and that's really high very very high for her and i had her there for a few weeks and she's just like man adam i'm really i'm going through it i'm having a hard time i said okay let's we'll pull back so then i'll pull her back to more like 2100 22 and then we kind of do that and uh and again there's no like a mathematical formula of what it looks like it's a lot of her and i working together through this process and over that time she's gotten more and more comfortable and the thing that always blows my mind when i'm helping someone like this because i haven't been coaching in a long time and so it's reopened my eyes with her just like it is wild to me how many everybody else is constantly telling her how amazing she looks and how good she's doing yet she doesn't see and feel her feel herself that way you know and so i get it i get it i know it's hard but the the value of outsourcing that to somebody um is is massive and if this is something you really want to get through uh that would be my recommendation is is look into uh you know one of our coaches helping you through something like that because i know i know how hard it can be i actually did hop on pretty quickly after i talked with you guys and scheduled a coaching appointment yeah and had a really good chat with robert yeah um super awesome guy and we kind of decided and then my husband and i decided clearly i still have some things to work through in terms of my relationship around food so we kind of decided that my first step is starting therapy again good going back to it good getting back in it clearly needed at this time of life um have you gone have you done it Yes. Oh, wonderful. Yes. good job. Good job. Thank you. Good job. No, no, no. Very good. You're doing good. You're doing good. I appreciate it. I'm not one to talk about my feelings. So, um, this is definitely, uh, another push for me, but I think it's a very healthy one. Um, and then my next step is once I kind of feel like my relationship gets better, I want to invest in the coaching. I love that. I think that's a great, I think it's a wonderful decision because what's great. And you said something so important is that you're not wanting to share your feelings. And that already is work that you're doing probably with a therapist is that you get more comfortable and good with that. You'll be better. You'll be better coached because, because, because that's what's great about a good coach is it's a little bit of that too. Obviously, uh, it's not just the macros numbers and the programming. It's a lot of that. And so the more comfortable you are with sharing with the coach, the better they can be, the better they can coach you. And so wonderful, wonderful step. You are doing great. So two things, now that I know that, so I'm going to give you two things that I've, that I've seen that helps an experience, but also based on the data. Okay. So two things, number one, uh, Shane can play a nasty role, uh, in anything like this because, uh, this journey is going to be littered with step backs. That's just the way it is. There's going to be, nobody's ever gone on a journey, uh, to solve a challenge, uh, without there being setbacks. Everybody has them. The challenge, the real challenge is the shame, especially when it's heated. Like I thought I fixed that. I thought I did that. Like, what did I do? You have to completely give yourself grace. And there's a, there's one way you could do this. Now, if you have a faith, then you can ask for grace from your creator. Good. And he'll give it to you. And so I say, do that. If that's you, then go on that. I don't have to give you the part of it then. Yeah. I'm very faith-based. Good, good. Then you go there because you know, he gives it to you. Okay. And there is no shame in, in, uh, in those of us who follow him. Uh, so that's very, uh, very, very important. Here's the second thing. And this is what the data shows. If we get, we can get, you know, where we talk about our feelings and process things out, but what we need to also do is have a sense of purpose. Okay. That is not necessarily related to this goal. And so sometimes what, uh, what the data shows, what works oftentimes is that somebody says, okay, I have this new thing. I'm going to go after it. And I don't care what it is. It could be painting. It could be, um, you know, riding my bike. It could be volunteer. Work. It could be something, but aim your direct aim towards something that gives you kind of this new sense of purpose a little bit. And what the data shows is it makes therapy way more effective because sometimes what can happen with therapy is we get stuck in this because it takes the focus off yourself. It is. And what can happen is like, uh, I'm trying to outthink, you know, for example, if I go and talk about my depression, I'm trying to talk my way out of depression and think about when there's an act part, uh, that is a big piece of this. And so you just, it could be anything. It could be anything at all. Uh, you're like, oh, you know what? I'm going to start, I'm going to get into this kind of hobby and just kind of focus on that a little bit. It could be volunteer work, uh, which that's one of my favorites. Um, I find when I serve, uh, man, it's like other things start to kind of melt away. So if you combine that with therapy, now you've got the, like, you know, thought thinking, talking, empathizing, and then some kind of action. And it's not related. It's not like I'm going to, oh, this thing with my food or this thing with my fitness. It's, it could be something else. No, in fact, it's supposed to take your thoughts off of that. Because one of the things that can happen with some ruminate exactly is you can over, uh, think the food thing where you're, you're focused on it so much. That's right. Uh, and that could be just as unhealthy. Right. And so this is something that brings you joy and it gives you a little bit of purpose. I think that's a great idea because I think during therapy, you talk so much about food that it does become your constant wheelhouse. Yes. Yes. It's not supposed to be. Um, one of the things we've started doing is I meal prep, um, every single meal. So it takes the thought of food daily out of it. Yeah. Good. But just to give you an illustration. So Arthur Brooks is a really good author. I don't know. Do you know Arthur Brooks is, I feel like either you've said his name or I've heard it before. We've had him on the podcast like three times. Awesome. Yeah. I suggest you follow him cause he's very helpful. He uses this great illustration. He takes a glass. He says, imagine this glass with a little bit of mud at the bottom and it's got water in it and you go to therapy and you stir the glass. And so all in there constantly, he goes, the other, another thing you could do is you could just start adding more clean water. And eventually the dirt starts to come out and you start to get more clean water in the glass than just dirt. So those are both the things. So stirring the glass is the talking. It's like, okay, what do I got to do now? Now? Okay. I'm done talking. Let me have an action that gives me a little bit of joy and a little bit of purpose. And so when you combine those two in the data, it makes the therapy so much more effect. This is one of the reasons why exercise is such a culmination with therapy. Um, it just isn't great for those of us who are fitness fanatics. Yeah. If I go to a therapist and they tell me the exercise, I'm gonna be like, all right, let's go. We probably aren't going to vibe for what I need right now. Yeah. Very good. Yeah. You're doing good. It'll be a journey, but I, I'm, I'm hopeful that we can get through it as I've learned. You think these, you think you can move through it and it's gone forever, but it's not. And it is, it's not. It's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, you got, you got a broken sinful flesh. It's always going to be there. So that's just, that's a story for all of us. So at least you're aware of yours. You're taking great steps already. You're doing a great job. Keep us in the loop. We'll be there for you when you're ready. Thank you so much, guys. I really appreciate it. She said something I think that's so important, because even a great coach, if you're not willing to share, be honest, and open up. I can't coach you. I can't coach you, right? Which, on the flip side, Adam, what I said about doing something, this is why coaching can be so effective. If you're willing to share and be honest, the coach gives you actions. They also empathize and can whatever. They're not therapists, but they'll give you grace and empathize. Our coaches are coached on grace, because that's such an important part of coaching. But then they give you an action. So you've got this wonderful combination of like, okay, this person understands, and they're telling me to do something. And it's very effective. Look, if you like the show, come find us on Instagram. It's mindpumpmedia. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. 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