Dr. Mike Israetel: Everything You Need to Know to Lose Fat & Gain Muscle

Just like four weeks can just completely wipe away all five or six pounds of excess fat keep and build even more muscle and it's a great time dieting seems impossible if you think you have to starve yourself and eat kale forever only after you start eating more and you come out of that deficit are you like oh sh I'm looking better and leaner the more I eat and it's like well it's not magic how long does muscle memory take To kick in you come back to lift and then 2 weeks later you're the most Jack

you've ever been what is this about a world without exercise because of AI going to super oics coming out and we're going to have drugs that can modulate your muscle mass and modulate your health people who like want to do hiking or want to hang out with their families or want to travel around the world they'll still be able to be healthy and fit without having to spend hours and Hours at the [Music] gym I'm excited for this it's been a long time coming just two non-mds talking about health but my doctor of laws does

not stand up to [ __ ] you actually know what you're talking about that's the primary difference here as I drink from my not your lawyer mug that a show fan made for me filled with only the healthiest Diet Coke I I actually I actually am curious is this stuff so bad For you cuz people tell me like you're you drink poison as they shovel nicotine patches into their mouth or whatever yeah actually I was in uh Metropolitan Los Angeles uh about a week ago and I was walking down the street uh I was at

a podcast I finished podcast I was walking down a couple blocks to get my wife at the coffee shop she was working at and this like 16-year-old kid like I walked by and I kind of you know nod at humans on the street when there Are not so many of them and he nod at me he's like hey man could you buy me a uh like a Zen or Zim or whatever pack like nicotine thing and that in that 7-Eleven I was just like I I had to think for a moment like what is being

asked of me and I was like ah I'm good man and I walked off I was like no you [ __ ] little kid you're not supposed to be n you know it's 18 or over for alcohol yeah or for alcohol for uh for tobacco products like do you think I was born Yesterday also you're nobody to me like what are you talking about also like you're creepy and standing in the middle of a corner like I'm not going to turn my back to you at all it was just wild but to your point of

uh you know nicotine's totally fine so here's the thing um it's a really interesting give you a variety of answer to this question I'll keep it pretty brief but um maybe kind of in intellectually a little bit more stimulated than average if you were To come out with a premise of okay like we're teaching uh an AI that has been insanely well educated in all the topics of the world it just has never dealt with uh sodas it doesn't know what those are somehow you took a whole data set from the internet you scrubbed any

mention of diet soda or soda in general and then you gave the AI a prompt you said here's diet soda and here's regular soda here's all their ingredients and he you know you already know all the Statistical data on the various harms of the ingredients like it knows what superos is and all all that they like okay like on first principles is there any reason to suspect that Diet Coke is better than regular Coke or worse than regular Coke for your health the thing is if you treated it like that at the very least the

AI would be confused as to why you suspect Diet Coke is bad so another way of saying that is on first principles there's no reason to Suspect that Diet Coke is bad outside of various fallacies of logic for example what is called the naturalistic fallacy or the argument from nature which is a false argument it's the idea that just because something is artificial that means it's bad for you the coral area is just something is natural because it's natural it's good for youh so you can arsenic famously scorpion um air conditioning and pillows are artificial

and like I haven't seen People deny those too often um and so all of a sudden you're like okay this is not a helpful heuristic it actually we should go Point by point on what's natural artificial and select out like that it's it's tantamount to saying like you know like who who's better men or women like I'm sorry what first of all at what and second of all based on which individual like if you tell me men are better at basketball but I can recruit a 5 foot2 guy who's never played ball or a Literal

like the current best female in the WNBA like who the do you think I'm picking for my team like you have to go deep deep dive to actually learn things and so that heris of oh like our Diet Coke's made of artificial sweeteners that means it's bad is just wrong and there's worse because a lot of the Articles you will uh find on the internet about artificial sweeteners are written by like Express advocacy groups that are naturalistically biased like The marola foundation for example Aggregates a lot of information about the various studies of which found

artificial sweeteners were bad for health now there's a problem with these studies one these almost always the studies that haven't been replicated like one out of 10 studies found that Diet Coke is bad for you and they' just have never never been able to replicate those results and then more and more studies keep coming out and it's totally Fine the other problem replicate for people who don't know means oh you do a study and I'm like oh I want to just make sure that that's correct let me do the same study and then I do

it and I'm like I didn't get that results totally different results right 100% it's like one of the core elements of scientific process because like one study doesn't prove hardly anything but 100 well-conducted studies all approaching a similar problem from slightly different Angles and even the same angle over and over can like really get you like if if someone like um has a friend that's really strong and they beat you in arm wrestling you're oh that's pretty cool like maybe you should try arm wrestling again with them maybe you should try them arm wrestling really

strong people and then after they beat everyone you're like okay your friend's legit versus like you arm wrestle them again and you beat them and you're like your friend's Strong but not that strong cuz I'm not that strong and I just beat him an arm wrestling so you know replication is good the other problem that they do in those research aggregations is they will they will use studies with purposefully or unbeknownst to them have been refuted in a sense of methodologically refuted so for example there are the ramini studies from the ramini foundation in Italy

that came out with these studies about like aspartame And rats there was like a group of like several studies that they did and aspartam was just toxic to rats and aged them faster called all kinds of disease tons of cancer and then somebody made a request for raw data for the ramini studies and they just wouldn't fulfill it out like they not here's the we actually collected which in science is like if you're not willing to release raw data that you've properly deidentified by the way these are Animals so there are no ethical privacy concerns

um you're probably up to no good in the sense of like your raw data does not show what it's supposed to and some elements of the data that they released was like they actually didn't control for age for the rat sample so there may have been like way more older rats in the aspartame sample and of course they're older and then they just get tons of cancer and [ __ ] because they're old and that's it right and so What ends up happening is if you actually look at the um literature from an unbiased perspective

there is no reason either via the direct empirical literature or mechanistically by supposition or population studies to suspect that Diet Coke is bad for your health that is not the same uh as with regular Coke because regular Coke has sugar and sugar in the context of a well-balanced diet in which you control your calories is totally fine as much of It as you like to eat but sugar in addition to a diet of normal calories and like very few people drink Coke or any kind of sprite or anything with sugar in it they're like oh

that really filled me up Jim Wis dinner uh they're usually like it's so easy to get sugars into your diet they're so highly palatable they're so liquid and easily digestable that you can often use sugary beverages as like a buffer to your caloric intake so a lot of people who Drink regular sodas they just have a harder time controlling their calories and then they do get fatter and then they do get all these health malies so uh I would say like in the context of well balanced diet both Diet Coke and regular Coke Etc and

all the diet regular sodas are totally fine but if you if you have to get rid of something from your diet that's really making it tough for you to lose weight or stay at a healthy weight then like regular sodas Are tier one exactly the first thing you get rid of um because unlik fruit juices they don't even have vitamins and minerals now fruit juices are also probably not the greatest thing if you have weight control problems but if you have a fruit juice here and there and your weight's fine hey the vitamins and minerals

are good Sugar's totally fine for you but what diet soda really comes out on top is like man this thing is just like roughly inert outside of a Couple of really really esoteric concerns which just don't add up in the long term diet soda is totally healthy and it's not one of these things are like oh my God like what did we learn new uh how is it like a huge Revelation like I always thought it was bad like no no no there never was any good evidence for it being bad and there was no

theoretical supposition this is just something that like emerges straight from like instinctual human preference To it's it's like people who um are trying to dump stocks during uh like a stock market drive like do not sell when the stocks are falling my God what are you doing this is a terrible best practice everyone will tell you it's terrible you're just doing it because of human instinct because like when that's a hop potato you want to throw it away it just don't do that and so same idea for um the diet soda thing it's one of

those things like it's totally fine to Drink and there is no good reason to think it's bad that that is a well a huge relief personally but I'm glad that we can straighten that out because this is almost like a sacred cow among Wellness influencers that diet soda is terrible for you one of the the new sort of edgy Bros who are I don't even know if they're Wellness influencers they're just dudes who say weird things on the internet but I'm hearing like nicoe is Good for you what is that all about that's going to

be something if you haven't addressed yet people are going to be asking you a thousand times next year yeah I just got into this thing with alcohol in another podcast so last I checked nicotine is not um an Roi positive net balance drug to be taking through uh your lifespan however is with almost anything you take in it has some downsides it has some upsides and nicotine has distinct Upsides nicotine is technically an atropic in the sense that it helps you think clearly um it can calm you down it can give you a sense of

Peace it can allow you to focus and um to that end nicotine has some real big upsides it's an appetite reducing agent and so it can help you Curb Your Cravings so it has all those advantages and some people for whatever reasons genetically or otherwise just don't seem to get tons of the downsides but gets lots of the Advantages so there's going to be people out there in the world that like uh for them nicotine use is better on net balance than not using it those people aren't super common but they do exist and everyone

gets something beneficial out of nicotine though usually the health downsides are worse for most people they're definitely worse if you use the tobacco vehicle of smoking but chewing has its downside risks and all these other things so there are ways to Minimize them that they're doing now with various patches and various gums that don't have tar that up your teeth and gives you oral cancer but still the argument for nicotine being a health benefit on average needs with a substantially more evaluation and the probability that that's correct for most people is low so that's the

the deal with nicotine um and and so the good news I guess is that like I I think like if you're really like dead set on Like Loving nicotine and it's great people love it they get addicted to it uh then you can definitely find ways in which it's beneficial and then you can post about them to your bro friends on the internet and mention it and uh if you really just hate and despise nicotine for whatever reason you can find like a thousand things wrong and bad about it and only talk about those and

never AED to the fact that it has some benefits and upsides the whole world is mixed but What say you know everything Shades of Gray an average for the average person nicotine's probably not a good idea to take if you do take nicotine there are ways to take it that can minimize though not eliminate the downsides potentially if you are a good responder to the the drug I've got some friends that are let's just say they have some City miles on them from living in Hollywood for a long time they have all told me that

nicotine was harder to kick than Cocaine damn yeah that's intense yeah I mean like so lot I think the almost the average so so to say this uh there's lots of data about the addictive proclivity of various drugs and um most people just don't get addicted to cocaine some small fraction will the problem is like when you do get addicted to cocaine it's insanely expensive it messes you up real fast and so it's a real huge downhill slide I think probably proportionally Way more people get addicted to nicotine uh than cocaine on people who try

it or use it recreationally but uh ni does not have the same dellarious very acute downsides to your life and health that cocaine does so like a lot of there's a lot of stuff like that where people are well addicted to it but the thing is it's not a big deal like you could be addicted to watching several hours of Netflix documentaries per night that's actually Really good you know what I mean so nicotine's not nearly as bad as cocaine but yeah to your point like some of these drugs that aren't terrible like you know

it's interesting a lot of people have trouble giving up caffeine like for good can you imagine that like how many people are like wait no coffee ever you're like Yep they're like man that like they just won't do it and if they try it's going to be terrible um and a lot of this um interfaces with Lifestyle so like if you think about it like okay so when do I do cocaine it's at crazy parties when I'm at the industry parties before movie releases okay so if I just do some other drug at that party

and just stop doing cocaine it's not like I'm going to be doing cocaine before my kids you know baseball game on Saturday so I'm out I'm out of the whole game uh whereas like where do you do nicotine like everywhere everywhere and where you do caffeine Like what's actually actively encouraged by Society like you just are expected to be a caffeine addict so when something's integrated into your daily life and everyone around you does it they're like do you want a coffee we're making espresso you're like this is a really hard habit to kick yeah

yeah that's true the most wholesome kind of date or meeting is going out for coffee right you're like if you were like hey you Want to get together and like do a couple lines you'd be like I don't know if I want meet up with this person or or yes of course I do um just to be clear for folks who are listening um coffee Dr Mike loves cocaine oh well I've actually never tried cocaine but I've seen my friends do it and I'm like that there's enough of me to go around already like I

don't need to be talking any faster getting more excitable that's that's it's that's my exact sort of theory on This as well is it's like do I need to talk more and quick more quickly I don't think so not really I'm already on the end that's inconvenient for people but yeah caffeine consumption and uh specifically through coffee um is a health benefit every time it's studied so people who are worried about like oh but I drink too much coffee like unless your sleep is actively hampered which you can test really easily by drinking coffee earlier

In the day stopping earlier drinking less and seeing how your sleep uh folds out unless that's really the the proximate case or like it causes you a lot of anxiety or something like that then it's probably like coffee is really good for your health and is a health benefit as a matter of fact I'm drinking the worst thing in the world to Coffee drinkers you're going to hate me in 3 seconds this is a instant decaf coffee made with hot water from my Sink like faucet and um three packets of Splenda and a just a

spoonful of that [ __ ] that that people dare to call Coffee the reason I take it is cuz I love the taste it's like my one of my Favorite Beverages it's nice and warm in the morning with my protein bars that I eat for breakfast but also it's actually has like tons of antioxidants and all these other health things so there's this thing from the um the uh I know like what you call them like wellness Influence incer space where like they start getting real real gatekeep about anything that you take is bad for

you like any any kind of semblance or hint of a drug or like coffee's got to be bad and we it's funny we've seen this from people's kind of biases and what they've seen from the health space as long as like I've helped run Renaissance periodization RP strength because we had clients back before we even had a company name where you would tell them a Lot of New York City clients big wig people and they would be like okay I'm starting to diet with you like yes they're like okay so I like no coffee no

soda no tea right and we're like who the told you that and they're like I don't know the yoga lady always says and it's kind of like this thing that lives in The Ether and it's just not true it's just not true so drink coffee as long as it's fitting your lifestyle to your heart's content yeah I I think you're Right coffee drinkers are like what are you doing there's so many better ways to do this none of which you care about but it is it is quite interesting how demonized it gets and then usually

though if you trace the wellness influencers it's like no coffee and then it's dot dot dot here's the grift right no coffee caffeine's bad for you but not all caffeine this particular type of tea is good for you however that stuff's really hard to get so I have created a Product that has only the good kind of caffeine and you can buy it from me on a subscription basis for $60 a month and it's like oh okay so caffeine is probably not that bad but I have even better news sir right now you can get

it for cheaper if you buy the year up front there exactly yeah it's dot dot dogri and it's either their product or an affiliate product that they're selling there there's a guy I don't mean to throw shade but I thought this was kind Of propos much shade as you want um I like to keep things positive but every now and again I got his name is like uh c means I believe that's his name and he's like a big Advocate against like drug companies and how profit-driven the pharmaceutical industry is and how toxic that is

and then like he used to work for pharmaceutical industry and now he's like since left to educate all in for he has lots of great points about the accesses of various things for sure but One of the things is like I now have a line of like organic Earth supplements and [ __ ] that's really good for you here's where to buy and I'm like [ __ ] these are just unapproved drugs what are you doing this is the same [ __ ] except just raw profit motive like the most in the least regulated way

which I hate regulations for the most Parts I think it's great but I think the NOA nordex should be able to just sell [ __ ] out of the back of their car like You are doing right now you know it's like how how did we get to this yeah like GL are welcome don't worry about stage three phas phase three whatever trials the reason I'm not worried about stage three is cuz we didn't even do stage one that's right that's right this probably will work some of you will die but you know that's just

that's a price I'm willing to pay people die anyway you know like that's right you're eventually going to die at best best case scenario You have decades left um uh all right hang on for a second I've got something that'll help you nail down the key takeaways from books even if you can't dedicate 10 hours a week to reading that's where short form comes in it's like a cheat code for getting the key ideas from these books that you've been meaning to get to someday but short form isn't just any summary service it's like a

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not here to replace books it's just a smarter more efficient way to keep learning in my opinion for free trial and 20% off an annual subscription head over to short form.com Jordan that's short.com Jordan I found you because I told my brother-in-law this is probably like three or four years ago I'm going to do trt because everybody needs trt over age 40 and then he was like I don't know man and I was like yeah I don't know a lot Of people are recommending it but I'm on the fence and he sent me this video

with this big bald dude who said stuff that made a lot of sense and I was like oh I actually have changed my mind as a result of this YouTube video we're going to link it in the show notes because I was all like I was like about to click by on whatever website you know has the doctor that will just write a prescription without ever seeing you and and I was like I love those sites yeah I Mean look you you hate regulation there it is but it was tella Health but these what they

don't tell you in in sort of the the overview of your your video that really got me was once you pop you can't stop like once you start trt and your balls go oh I don't I'm off we're retired now they don't come back especially maybe when you're 25 they will but like they're not going to come back if you're 45 probably you're just going to be on trt forever oh Conveniently locked in to the guy who's selling you the stuff that made your ball stop working in the first place yeah now so the good

news is like even at 45 there's a very decent probability that within a few months year nuts are going to be back to normal all by themselves really yes but a decent probability is not the same thing as a very high probability and so if I told you like like you're like hey like uh I want to go to vacation in Afghanistan Like yeah like if you go to kabell there's only a 20% chance you're going to get kidnapped and tortured by the Taliban you that's not a big deal 4 to one but like wait

a minute the downside risk is insane the magnitude is wild yeah so uh it like if your nuts no longer work and you've shriveled down to way less muscle and you're clinically depressed after 6 months of coming off of trt and they just won't start again and now you have to realize like oh [ __ ] I have to be on this forever even if you were only one of the you know one out of five people that that happens to know something up front like if I told you hey like on a road trip

from you know New York to to Las Vegas there's like a 20% chance of death on the freeway there's no way you would take it uh and then so if I told you look there's a 20% chance not getting your testicles back uh to a fully functioning order at AG 45 you you you may at the very least Approach the problem differently how bad are my things and one of the other things I think I'm trying to get really really across to people in these trt videos which I may seem to me every six months

and every time I go on podcast I want to make a big deal out of this testosterone replacement therapy is something that is awesome and it's great and it works and anyone who's said it sucks it's just like lying Old Guard like oh everything's bad steroids are Bad drugs are bad that's [ __ ] however it's a something that comes with trade-offs and downsides and you have to like really robustly demonstrate that you have a need for it like I get asked about trt from 18year Olds I'm like mother your nuts work as good as

trt except they're inside your body you don't have to put needles into yourself you're already on trt enjoy your life my friend you know like if I could re-engineer my genetics to have to take Zero supplements and just exist in my supplemental form all the time of course I do it but like that's what most people are so a lot of times people ask about trt and they haven't demonstrated one of two things a low serum testosterone level or to any of the very well documented side effects you would see or effects you would see

of low testosterone you talk to someone you're like how's your muscle mass and training that's great but better than never okay How's your sex traic phenomenal how's your suest for life and your like tendency to be depressive like man I'm crushing it like okay so what did you say again like I want I want to start trt like why why why why it's like it's like um you live in some like Community In America which has like you know functionally no crime that's most of America right like you look around the suburbs there's nothing happening

and you like talk to someone who who does Like up armored cars and you're like can you like up Armour my Escalade so they can take like 762 rounds you're like okay sweet so like are you going somewhere like dangerous you're like well just driving around town like what the is wrong with you do you know that costs $10,000 to do it also doubles your gas expense from here on out and wears the car down like five years sooner cuz it's another 5,000 lbs on your vehicle and well you know never better better Safe than

sorry like safe from what you have assassins coming to get you you have to justify the expense the trt people think is like the thing I'm going to do and it's going to be great the thing is the comes with a lot of stuff you injecting yourself you're taking pills your own nuts shut down you got to watch your health all the time come you know correspond with your doctor you want to go on a trip to a foreign country you got to bring your test your Your replacement pills or your shots and a copy

of your script so that when you get popped by the TSA of that country and they talk to you for three hours and back finally they learn how to read in English and figure out that these are scripted for you and they say hey this is good this time but you can't come to our country again with this kind of [ __ ] you're going to be like why the did I get on to T yeah especially if you go to look if you go to den Mar they might be Like oh yeah okay we've

seen this if you go to Turkey or you're visiting your cousins in Saudi Arabia or whatever you're just going to go to jail unless they've got some kind of connections and they can convince people that that doctor is real and that you're you're allowed to bring needles into another country like it's just it's not worth it so their tella Health doctor will tell you what my tellah health doctor is says which is leave all this stuff at home Don't even just don't even bring it you're going to survive for a few months I'm not on

trt but like other things don't even bring it and look hormones are especially important I think as we age I'm sure you would agree like having a decent amount of testosterone I had my testosterone checked and the doctor the regular doctor was like it's normal and I was like oh good so I told my friend who is in a similar field as you was like oh yeah it's normal he goes hang on No what what is what show me the actual numbers because when doctors say normal they mean are you below the range that an

80-year-old man would have because that's not normal and if it's way higher then you have a tumor that's making testosterone or some weird thing going on that's not normal but everything between like what is it like 200 and 1200 is normal and it does they're like not taking into consideration the fact that you're a 44y old athlete they just Don't care about that they're not taking into consideration multiple things absolutely what you said and they're also not taking into consideration the fact that like um if you're just above the cut off for normal let's say

like typically the now these are all very fungible figures but roughly 300 to 900 nanograms per deiler is like to sort of the reference range if you're like at 305 and you feel like total [ __ ] in every way that indicates you have Functionally lower testosterone than you could benefit from there is a very good argument for trying to raise you up to 450 500 600 and even 900 to see where you get your best combination of like outcomes and blood work because if you have your best blood work and best outcomes at 900

looks like your body was finally attuned for a high reference range and that's where you live your best and so a lot of times people will say oh well you know you're in the Normal range the normal range is a very big big and you can have very very distinct outcomes within the normal range usually not for muscle growth but for like how you feel and how you sleep and um all this other stuff and over the long term definitely for muscle growth if you're one of those kinds of individuals is very sensitive to that

sort of thing so um you're totally right a lot of doctors and very understandably so don't deal with almost any variables From an optimization perspective they deal it from a like functionality perspective like the traditional way the doctor interacts with a patient is are you good to go are you going to die when you leave my office are we like are you in the normal range for everything and if you are hey man it's kind of like someone who you like have like a a a super super um knowledgeable outfit person who knows fashion 10

times better than everyone at your house when you're Dressing up to go out and like they have one of two instructions one is like just don't let him leave in a clown suit or half naked that's the doctor's job by analogy the the optimizer job is to be like can you get this person in an outfit that like is good for the occasion it's for the season it reveals modern Trends but it's also well fitting to their body and all the rest and so like that's two very very very different things and people I think

sometimes go To their doctor thinking like I'm going to get this really in-depth advice to optimize my [ __ ] and doctor's like looks at their [ __ ] he's like you're good like okay and it's kind of weird because you feel like you're not being attended to as a human and that's absolutely correctly true you're not but that's not the doctor's job normally it's not like oh doctors are bad like no they literally think they're doing another job which they're correct about like Their job is to keep you upright and that's why they get

paid the big bucks and if you want an Optimizer you might talk to them about it and they're like oh you want optimization well [ __ ] let's talk or you just go to a different doctor cuz your doctor might be like I'm not into that but there's these other trt guys that have all the questionnaires they have all the detail stuff they'll TI tit trate your dose up and down they'll do all that and they Just uh refer out so it's up to the person if they're interested in optimization not to just take their

doctors you're right as like a cart blanch like that's it like end of discussion you know when Mom says you can't play Playstation anymore like it's the end of the discussion it's not that go see Dad uh he might be like come on honey the kid's been good this week you know yeah that's right he's he's trying to he's trying to get it in it's Interesting because my my doctor at Kaiser Permanente is a smart dude and he he's like you need blood work I was like I'll actually do blood work every 10 weeks because

I take supplements and stuff like that here is the blood work and he's like all right I'll look at it he looks at it and he goes oh uh my previous doctor goes wow this is really good this doctor goes yeah you know I don't really you should you don't really need to have this and this and this and This this High um is this is natural and it wasn't out of the reference range it was like what my DHEA or something was like too high and I was like I got to lower the dose

of this DHEA because when I don't take it it's way low and it's like red alert you don't have any of this and so I had to take like DHE took take some I'm just spouting my medical crap on this podcast but I take some en chopine and HCG to get my testosterone higher I don't take actual testosterone And the doctor's like don't mess with that at all and other doctors are like yeah you can do that just don't get like 2500 nanograms per the leader of testosterone but yeah you you're 44 and you work

out every day probably shouldn't have 250 or 350 or whatever it was when I did my blood work yep yep yeah so doctors have various opinions and often times their opinions are all actually mutually correct they're just coming at it from a different Perspective and the biggest different perspective is kind of assuming your values differently yes um and and listen like usually people don't even articulate their values so the doctor has to like assume you're just a regular person they just give regular person advice like if someone asks me like I'm sitting on the plane

it's my ultimate analogy for conversations with random people sitting on the plane next to someone and they're like hey how much Protein should I be eating and if I just assume they're a regular person I'll tell them one thing but if they're like I'm actually a competitive bodybuilder I'm drug free and I'm in the last three weeks of my contest prep I'm going to give a very different answer in very different context I just didn't know so it's really good to communicate with your doctor and tell them where you're coming from and if you're not

getting traction with your doctor and you don't Feel heard then it's time to find a new doctor and usually most people can do that quite quite easily I think people are confused between trt and what like what testosterone replacement therapy is what steroids are and what steroid abuse is cuz it's kind of they think oh it's like the same thing or steroids are totally different my wife was asking me the other day she's like well but don't you do steroids and I was like uh no not at all And she's like oh okay because I

noticed that I showed I showed her a photo of view she's like you're not going to get like that right like I was like don't don't worry how dare she so beautiful um she doesn't want other women to stop paying but she was she was she was like that's a a little scary like you're not trying to do that like you're a bodybuilder I'm not a body she doesn't know the difference between somebody goes to the Gym in their backyard and somebody who's building muscle so they can show it off or whatever yes or whatever

is the best best or whatever about that um so uh testosterone is a steroid so your own body makes steroids so everyone's on steroids but colloquially that's not what that means so on steroids almost means one of two things one you're taking substantially more testosterone than you can produce naturally or that Anyone can produce naturally double triple 10x the amount or you're using analoges of testosterone molecules based on testosterone derived from it and that are very similar to it but have slightly different effects and slightly different side effects and those are just the anabolic steroids

that are not testosterone as a class so it's like Deca durabolin or whatever yeah exactly Deca EQ primode all these other steroids like those are um things your body does Not make but they work very similarly to testosterone they're they're steroids so is testosterone and then so there's you know regular nuts okay your steroids are being produced for you at normal doses by your own body there's trt where steroids are being shot into you or taken via pill and they're at roughly normal doses um or normal human range anyway and all as well then there

is uh another category I'd like to insert uh there is is uh like um uh understood and Calculated risk steroid use so like athletes and bodybuilders will take like very specific amounts of very exact steroids have very very good blood work they understand all their values they understand the Health and Longevity trade-offs and they're using it as a tool to enhance uh you know their appearance or performance or whatever and then there the last one is steroid abuse where's like uh every time you lower your doses of psychotic amounts of Steroids you feel slightly humanid

again and you can't make them insane gains again and your veins AR always popping out of your forehead and you hate how that old version of you was cuz they got made fun of too much you just ramp back up to super high doses and even though it's destroying your life and making you insane and destroying your health YOLO you don't give a you're flying out on the many many grams of steroids and then that last one another one is like you Know you're 16 and you decide to do steroids that's abuse by definition and

so uh there was all those categories in that other one so I would love to to address this because I think some people are going to go like oh I've heard doctor might talk about how he uses steroids so he's a hypocrite for even saying that it's bad in any way right now curious It's like take a telling a race car driver that they can't tell you about like that speeding is Dangerous yeah that's a that's good I I I I really like that one they're actually the most familiar with why exactly speeding is dangerous

right yeah exactly remember when I crashed at 200 miles hour and I I flew out of the car and it was a miracle that I'm still alive yeah don't speed don't speed kids nothing at the end of that road for you yeah I mean like I can I can address that directly um I think that first of all that argument while I appreciate Where it's coming from is an illustration of What's called the genetic fallacy it has nothing to do with genetics um the genetic fallacy is because an argument is articulated by someone or generated

by someone that actually has um logical Merit on the arguments validity and veracity which is can't possibly be true um so like if the World's Strongest Man said hey do a lift like this people would be like oh yeah it must be right but if he told his son Who's 12 to go tell someone in the gym hey do a lift like this it be like out of here little kid like uh what the do you know and he's like my dad told me Dan's world's strongest F like oh now it must be right but

hold on a sec it's the same exact exercise like what about the actual exercise was the exercise a good idea like on biomechanical grounds on muscle stimulus grounds on injury and all this other grounds that's how you actually determine the validity of an Argument so if somebody's totally drug free lifetime tells you steroids are bad and if I tell you steroids are bad and I have not been drug drug free lifetime how could it possibly be that those two arguments have anything to do with who's saying them like you can write them down on a

piece of paper and drop them off at a bus stop and leave and someone picks up the piece of paper they can examine the validity of the argument without even knowing who was saying it so that Whole thing of Dr Mike's a a hypocrite um again so the part part of that genetic fallacy it's it's all messed up the second part is like I I think there's like a misunderstanding of what hypocrisy is um hypocrisy is like maybe telling someone to do one thing but doing another yourself uh I've never told people not to take

steroids I've said if you take them there will be decided consequences like consequences I'm paying right now and will be forever Is that hypocrisy like imagine like a soldier gets back from war and he's like War's terrible you you went the guy went to fight it like yes that's true you just came from Afghanistan who are you to tell me war right it would be just as nonsensical now I do understand that like once you are labeled as a steroid user or whatever kind of like you know whatever like kind of kind of moral degenerate

you happen to be labeled as people lose an overall some people lose Overall degree of trust for you um it's it's like a mobster trying to tell the police how to like enforce crime better you're like yeah but you're on the production side of crime I will say like a lot of retired Mobsters could often work with a police to be like I know exactly how criminals think so you're going to find them there forant by the way exct they get paid for that exactly so yeah I I understand the emotional veillance those people are

coming from But largely it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense when they say oh like Dr Mike's on steroids so don't listen to him about steroids like I don't think we need to have someone on steroids or off steroids to listen to them the only way is like if you really need the experience uh to say like if someone was like this is how it feels to be on testosterone but they've never been on testosterone yeah something's missing like they they can read a lot about Other people's accounts and admit that they haven't

themselves been on steroids and talk about I'm recounting other accounts and then it's also still valuable so that whole focus on who's saying the thing is usually just just baseless to be completely honest man you might get a kick out of this an old friend of mine she became a man she's trans and she she told me she goes I got to tell you I used to think you guys were just like Obsessed with sex and it was really sort of juvenile and she goes I get it now she's like I get it man this

is purely hormones on the brain she's like once I started injecting testosterone I was like oh now it all makes sense dude The Thirst or the hunger you know the male sex drive it never sleeps it just Waits and the longer you don't attend to it the more insane it gets and the like it's really difficult even difficult it's it's funny to communicate with with Women about like what the sex drive implies and them just have like a category error and trying to understand you just like we have category errors and trying to understand how

women feel about various things and it only by trying do you really fully know so it's really funny when women try steroids or you know start to become males and they're like oh [ __ ] cuz like you know for example like uh there was actually um uh you know Chris Williamson you know Who that is yeah podcaster um a good friend of and he had a a dating expert on his show way early back in the day kzia something or other she was great and she's like I have incredibly good-looking male friends that are

super tall super wealthy super ultra their game is stacked front to back and they like leave a club at the end of the night with just like a dinosaur of a person and you're like why why you could get whatever and the guy the guy is just Like yeah I was just like talking to other people and then it's 2: a.m. and it's time to leave but I'm trying not to like use my own hand tonight so this person will be sufficient and to women that just absolutely can't understand that but to guys when you

felt the hunger SL thirst like anyone who is not hideous and who has functioning hands and a mouth will do 100% fine depending on the circumstance and it's something that's so absurd to say you're like There's no way a lot of men think like that and there are two types of men men that think like that and Men Who lie about it but still think like that I'm kidding for exaggeration but not by much and so that's one of those trippy things like when you do have a male sex drive you realize the rules are

different how you treat the world is different tell me a little bit about the Brain Change that happen with steroid use people know you get big muscles people know that you get Uh maybe a little bit more aggressive or whatever but I'm I'm curious about the brain changes cuz I actually when my testosterone was like 350 or 300 I was one person and when my testosterone was like 1100 or 12200 I it's a different story I I feel it but I I don't but I I'm still within the normal whatever range I guess for an

adult male but I think aren't steroid users typically sort of off the charts off the charts yeah yeah so there's like a bit of a Different thing that happens to sto users when they use a lot a lot versus just like what you're doing um very different conversation I assume you want me to talk about like a lot a lot yeah yeah yeah sure so some of this is kind of hypothetical it has some uh decent amount of research support but nothing I can as a scientifically minded person say this is like almost for sure

a thing you know um but some of the suspicions are that it uh is neurotoxic like it's Harmful to your neurons in your brain some of the other uh indirect uh evidences like it might lower certain types of intelligence in the person who takes them for a long time at very high doses some of that might come back if you stop some of it might not and some of it's acutely dose dependent like when you're on high levels of steroids you're dumber when you're on lower levels you're smarter uh but uh some of that might

be permanent steroids also um Alter your you know at high high doses you're processing about mood and stuff like that they make you more male in every respect mentally and so you become for example less apt to exchange emotional uh information with other people because women are much better at doing that the female brain is the best at doing that the regular male brain's decent but not so good and when you take steroids you become like a hyper male brain and then you begin to have lower Throughput of social interactions lower ability to U have

empathy you become quicker to uh become aggressive or angry or uh things see things as like a fronts because the dominance High Archy becomes like really really front and center in your mind at a subconscious level and you become more likely to be anxious you become more likely um to be closed off and uh your potentially even your ability to form kind of um introspection about your emotions and verbalize them Both might be lowered those are really estrogenic sorts of things uh the opposite of androgenic sorts of things and so those are some of the

uh downsides and if you um tolerate it poorly do is really high you can get uh high levels of anxiety potentially some depression in there thrown in um and pro problems with sleep and so on and so forth um and problems with mood and being kind of a dick uh to people because you're you have that kind of Alpha mentality sort of all the time and it doesn't have a gradiation or switch to it and so those are some of the uh offhand some of the downsides that can occur with steroid use yeah do you

find that happening in yourself like do you do you when you go on higher doses I assume you're not just always just slamming that stuff right you cycle it like normal so right now I'm on trt um and uh I'm just smarter on trt just smarter I can tell it myself my uh Can be very specific about how I'm smarter my verbal fluency improves substantially my ability to keep track of multiple Concepts concurrently and a conversation improves substantially my context window of like how much information am I aware of in my mind's eye at the

same time to be able to come to the right conclusions goes up um and a bunch of other stuff so like it's palpable it's notable um and it's not a huge deal within moderate ranges but at The high Rangers like yeah you're just dumber and uh meaner and more emotional and more reflexive and all the things that do not feel great so right now I've been on uh like trt for a little while now and it's the best I've felt in a very very long time so very very palpable um very worth worthwhile considerations and

changes you know I'd love to talk about muscle dysmorphia in men if that's even is that even the right term or but maybe it's just body Dysmorphia where guys look in the mirror and they're like I'm too small and it's like dude you look like the Hulk went on a diet you're fine yeah well don't say they are on diet Park cuz on Jesus they're going to be like oh my God what kind of diet Hulk call meic yeah yeah exactly well that's the thing is like and I get it I get it I I

see dudes who look like a cartoon like a CGI version of a Marvel guy from a movie and they're like ah but I only have six ABS instead Of eight and there's no veins on them and you're just like oh man this is a never ending thing for you yeah I'm talking about myself probably but whatever let's talk about it for sure so muscle Morp and body dis Morp in males is real it's not as common as the um concomitant phenomenon in females which tend to be more related to body weight and body size in

females like the average female wants to be smaller the average male wants to be more jacked but The average female wants to be smaller more than the average male wants to be more jacked so it would be a disservice if I said this affect males and females the same because it's a more of a female problem and it it actually causes a substantial amount of higher death rate in females because anorexia nervosa is one of the deadliest diseases period it is is maybe the or one of the most deadly psychiatric illnesses you could ever experience

because some substantial Number of people that are diagnos noed with anorexia nervosa are not savable like uh they'll bring them to a hospital when they're in a lower weight they'll force feed them they'll give them anabolic steroids to help them put the weight back on and many of these people when they leave the hospital on their own accord they will just spiral back down and end up being found in their kitchen like Dad from starvation so I was reading online that someone Works in A hospital they deal with anorexia patients and she said something like

and if you do if you fail out three times we won't take you back and all the comments were like why those are the people that need the most help and she was like I know but the problem is we have limited beds for these people and if you fail out three times statistically you're never going to actually survive this and we just have to let you die and people were like oh my God I I myself was like Shocked to to see that to read that yeah let you die is a real harsh way

to say it it's not wrong I would say another way to say it is we we do not have the ROI to help you is now negative in reference to the ROI to help other people like if you have someone on a combat like you know Hospital like bad line some person is like bleeding out of their arm but if you tie it off and sew it they'll be able to keep their arm and not die whereas another person has both Their legs severed and blood is coming out so fast that you're like he's going

to die in about two seconds there's no way to save him who do you attend to it's actually a logical The Logical answer if you care about humans period and you don't even care who you're helping The Logical answer is you help the people you can save that's the the basis of triage and emotionally it's really up to be like once that's once three is gone they're out they think the Way we need to deal with that is like well let's improve Innovation and wealth and technology in our society so much that we'll have like

robots attending to people and uh we'll have infinite number of beds and no one's ever kicked out like that's the only way to solve that because if you're like well why don't we help those people like because literally other anorexics that are helpable are going to die do you want two people to die or do you want one person to die It's really up but there's only one correct answer if you like people so on that it's true I I'd love to focus on I know that I'm going to get some mail about this I'd

love to focus on the muscle dysmorphia specifically in men I and actually you're right it is horrible it's a probably an entire separate podcast but for men nobody really seems to talk about this because we kind of laugh at these guys and and I get it it is kind of weird to see dudes flexing in The mirror and they're like my right delt is like a little bit bigger than my left delt and you're like dude you're just weird let's go get sushi what are you talking about how did you get my body how did

you get my video cam for my your your live live feed exactly but but I I also you know I used to be the guy who to be like oh rolling their eyes at the guys flexing the mirror at the gym and I I still probably do that but I will tell you as soon as I start I took I dieted for like a year and I ended up with a six-pack for the first time in my entire life and I had that six-pack for maybe three weeks before I was like but I want like

the sides to go in more and then I want like this stuff to go away and my my original goal was it would be great if I fit into my pants again and now it's like but I kind of want like these the V thing and it's just ridiculous and you keep moving the goalposts and I know myself well enough To go I'm I could be like I could be built like the cover of men's fitness and i' I'd still be like ah but like my back muscles are like not the same SI it's just

human nature or something like that or am might just do it neurotic there's a huge huge human nature component to it that first first of all a lot of times it's genetic and environmental in a way that you can't predict or you can just describe so some people they get really into how their Muscles look and some people you just can't actually get them to give a [ __ ] um there are multiple Hollywood actors that are known for getting in shape for roles and as soon as principal photography is over they're just like B

I'm not lifting for the next however long it takes the studio to contact me about my next movie I don't give a some people will start lifting and they'll catch the bug for forever and they'll take so many stero to try to get their Appearance to be amazing all at all times that they'll die because of it um so that whole range exists and short of dying there's also like such a perseverative focus on physique that you like really lose touch with a lot of the great other things in your life you like won't go

on vacation or you have to weigh out your food on vacation because you can't have one AB go away on you and all this other stuff there are ways that that genetic and environmental Proclivity can be altered by various other forces a big one is what has been your relationship to your body historically if you had like totally thought your body was totally fine up until you were in your 30s and then you're like I could do better it's less likely that you're going to be really obsessed with your body if you hated your body

for whatever reason coming up as a especially a teen and all the way through your 20s and finally you get Some traction and start to be able to change it you might have such a hole in there where your body confidence is supposed to be that's going to take a long time to fill it up and you might really like go far down the road of optimization before you're like I'm actually jacked and lean enough that I'm like I feel pretty good about my body and I don't give a [ __ ] to go any

further than this so that's a a big deal that can be a really big deciding factor Another one and a huge one is what's your Social Circle and and what do they value and how do they give you criticism how do they give you acceptance and who is valued highest in that Social Circle and if all those are very physique oriented it can get pretty crazy social media is like ideal for doing this and so it's particularly toxic when uh not used intelligently obviously when used intelligently it's the greatest thing ever second to AI but

um with social Media it's like okay everyone I follow is a pro bodybuilder people that follow me know me for bodybuilding all the pictures people put up on social media are the best ever and so I always look like compare to everyone and then when I go and do a couple shows I look like like 220 lb shredded veins everywhere but not quite as good as the competitor so I place middle of the pack and then I hear Forever on the internet about how much I Suck at bodybuilding I'm total [ __ ] and I'll

never be a pro and then like if you're in that world all the time it can be like wow like how I look matters and I need to look better and better and better and everyone else looks great and I'm just falling behind and that's a big deal and then the other one is um also probably a personal Quirk but different people have this to different extents and it's really good to be mindful about it is when I get a certain thing that I Wanted objectively out of my physique how do I settle on that

how do I reflect in it how do I really um accept the fact that I oh I'm in a really good place I should really be grateful for this I should really bask in the Sun so to speak versus how quickly am I apt to be like okay this is the new normal now what's next there's not like a right or wrong answer there it just you have to know which one you want and what comes with it if you're Like no I'm like I can do better it's cool from like a mountaineer who's looking

up at the Everest Peak from base camp perspective looking up and be like man there's more up there to explore I love that that's like an open-minded positive way to see it the negative way to see it is like you look down from Everest you're like I'm never coming down ever again and if I'm not up to the peak of the mountain by whatever next year then I I've really just done Terrible and so there's a big mindset problem there some people once they get to an objective place I think everyone once they get to

an objectively best shape of lives should at the very least feel some gratefulness for it um feel some love from themselves about like dude you did the thing you looking sweet like after my uh you know training sessions I'll often take my shirt off and just like do some posing and a lot of that's for me to just like get vibes Off myself and be like man awesome this is great and my desire to continue to trade off everything in my life to push for higher and higher is at least for the time mitigated because

I'm like at least vibing one of the most terrible things you can do is like you see yourself and you object actively look the best you've ever looked and your first thought and last thought is Man this ain't [ __ ] like I got to do better like if you're not willing to P pat Yourself on the back for what you look like now the road of physique Perfection may never end for you and as nobody's happy in that road specifically you and remember like if you had you asked the question like who had a

better time in life uh a bodybuilder that like mostly did interact with people and uh like died hopeless and alone from steroid abuse or Hugh Hefner who looked like whatever but like trillion people you're like okay Hugh Hefner won that one right Right so like if you don't have the best body of all time you can clearly still live like an amazing life right like right okay so now you have to trade off how far am I willing to take my body [ __ ] away from living the best life that I can so the

optimality isn't because people have this idea they're like I'm going to be ripped shredded to the Bone all the time and I'm going to have amazing life and balance and all this stuff if you can manage that hey [ __ ] dope amazing I can't wait to like drugs and genetic engineering allow us all to be Pro bodybuilders and walk around and do nothing amazing we're just not there yet and so a lot of times you have to be like how important is it for me to look a certain way and is me looking better

over time associated with me feeling better for example for some people who have felt small or weak or fat during their lives when they finally get in shape and start slowly improving Their shape over time it's just like all gravy it's all amazing for them they're like I'm living my dream I can't believe I occupy this body I'm thankful for it every day it's making everything better dope but if you're like the last four years I've been really optimizing for my physique and if I look back at it it's just me missing a lot of

social functions and me hating myself a lot and I've never really been satisfied that's just that the road that's going to great Places it's like someone tells you there's like you know a really great trick-or-treating house down the street but we live on the street for 20 minutes already and the houses are getting incredibly more dilapidated with like ghosts and [ __ ] in them you're like you what's down there that I need so much there's clearly nothing down there let's turn around and I think some people after years of meticulously perfecting their bodies have

received almost no joy From the process it just made them like hate themselves more like you have to be mindful of that and understand how to walk it back whatever I meet retired bodybuilders they're almost always quite a bit happier even though they're not at the peak anymore because they don't they can go and eat like seafood pasta without beating themselves up and being like well can't eat tomorrow except or whatever it is they can and they still look amazing you know you see a woman at The pool with like abs and delts and triceps

and you're like wow are you're are you a fitness model like oh no but like 10 years ago I used to compete and you're just like Blown Away meanwhile she's looks like crap compared to her Peak Fitness right but she's actually super happy about it I'm talked to a lot of people in that in that boat and a lot of it has to do with them finally doing the psychological work as well as the physical work and then they're like oh I Actually don't feel the need to only eat protein and broccoli every single day

for 18 months to work up to and then spray myself tan to a show so a lot of it has to do with patting yourself on the back Pat yourself on your steroid hairy pimply back and enjoy your success animals yeah yeah that's a big deal that's a big deal people a lot of times will do things without questioning um and since suffering is such a big part of the sport because it has to be Because it's just hard a lot of people will be like well like suffering is hard and the harder I work

the more I suffer thus the coral are of the more I suffer the better the results will be should be true and it's not so try to suffer as little as you can try to be as happy as you can but work the necessary amount and be diligent to get the physique that you want and my best advice is every now and again take some time to think to yourself what physique do I really want And what is my track record of various physiques making me happy or not happy because if you can maintain a

certain physique and you just feel like over the moon about living in that physique for like ad in finitum dope amazing it's probably worth it but if every time you get leaner and more jacked the only thing you're left with is like oh man I really don't still like this look and I really need to be more Laden jacked just ask yourself what the downside risks of Those are and what the upsides are and see if you're making like a remotely interesting calculation like I had to step away from competitive bodybuilding for some time I'll

be back to it in a year or two but like cuz you know YouTube and business and all that was really shooting up and I couldn't just take Mondo tons of drugs and compete all the time just taking my abilities and time away from the main thing and like it was painful it's still painful it Still sucks but I had to realize like yeah just can't keep cranking like grams of steroids anymore I'm not willing to pay this tradeoff off and I'm in a better place than I was then is there a better place for

me still that I come back to competition and I do some good stuff and I'm proud of the physique that I can kind of leave competitively with yes I think that's in my future hopefully and I think it'll work out great but I'm always aware of all these Things uh if I just did things on Vibes alone I mean good God who knows what the hell I would be doing now and the problem is with a lot of dysmorphia they're completely subconscious and people don't ever bring them to the four with mindfulness and I'm like

using like Sam Harris's waking up app and stuff to keep my meditation going and everything thing and stuff like that helps a lot because it's like are you really aware of what's going on uh are you really Getting what you need out of this situation and that's something you must must must ask uh it's really really important one thing I know we're not going to get to most of my notes I'll have to have you come back if you're open to it U but one thing that I have noticed is that I've seen and experienced

is actually looking at the diet that I needed to lose weight and this is so obvious now that I say that out loud that looking at the diet I Needed to lose weight is not the same as the diet that I needed to maintain the healthy weight and a lot of people when they're dieting the reason this is important a lot of people when they're dieting they go God this sucks right my wife looked at my diet and she's like you're eating turkey breast every day for dinner you're eating protein shakes for breakfast I ate

whatever I wanted for lunch that's why I did that and and I did it for 10 months straight and then I did it again for like 3 months a year or two later but maintaining after you you make those changes and I got down I lost like 40 or 50 pounds of fat and I gained a bunch of muscle yeah and I wasn't people are like wa but you weren't fat but honestly it was all between my orans I looked at most dangerous kind of fat actually you did yourself a real good service my my

doctor was like you're going to need to start taking blood pressure medication Because you're genetics and I was like let me try this one thing now my blood pressure is completely fine because I don't have literal like lard between my kidneys and everything and um maintaining the diet is has been really easy I still track everything in this app called macro factor that I eat great uh it's a great app I cannot recommend it enough I don't get anything if people sign up but I I recommend it to everyone who willing to do this and

people think Like oh weighing your food it's such a pain in the ass not it's not though and you learn so much about food I'll link to the app in the show notes for people it's just such it's one of the best purchases I've ever made my life but maintaining it you get that 500 or whatever extra calories per day I usually can't even eat all of the calories that I'm allowed in my maintenance diet because I'm just not hungry anymore Sure there's so much to say there I mean it's absolutely a problem that people

have an onoff switch for dieting or not dieting and then like how can you not zigzag when you're on switch is you lose weight and your off switch is you gain a shitload of weight and zigzagging or what's called yo-yo dieting is just very bad for your health very bad for your psychology it never Le leaves you with a stable ground the other thing is um once you use an app like mac refactor for a Long time you actually get so good at eyeballing your average meals that you can just stop for a long time

months at a time um I think the people that publish it are awesome so I would just say they don't even mess with your subscription it's whatever small amount of money just keep it going using the app oh I tried eyeballing it did not I did not get that good at it I I was like I'm going to eyeball this and I was like I'm getting fatter and then I went back To weighing and I was like oh yeah no I'm just [ __ ] at that's just cuz you're not that smart most people will

do better than you most people most people don't lie to themselves when they eyeball the meal most people do but it takes a long time to inculcate that tracking so I think you have just a few more years of tracking out of you I've been tracking for a real long time so for me eyeballing super easy you keep the Core protein in the veggies add some Fruits and Grains and fats to liking and to fullness and to something that can maintain your body weight and also once or twice or whatever times a week have a

cheat meal and go ham and have fun and then you just adjust your diet slowly as it goes and you maintain your weight but you still have those core very healthy high protein High veggie whatever meals that you have your Greek yogurts your protein shakes your chicken breasts your turkeys and that high protein high Nutrition core keeps your calories lower cuz it's filling food and it's very low calorie density and um it's not super tasty you don't want to keep eating it all the time and that in combination with some junk and some [ __

] is like that's just what's going to allow you to maintain your weight roughly for years and years and years whereas if you have the diet mode where you're starving to death and then as soon as you end that you're like okay so like I'm not dieting Anymore that means I just go back to my old habits of just eating Cheetos for every meal and then that tends to cause the problem of it like reverses all of your good benefits and it takes you back up to where you're starting and then you're just on another

diet again I have many people in my life that know very well would only do periods of extreme insane dieting jettison or juxtaposed with periods of like all I'm eating whatever yeah and that is not a good Thing and so by following that what I just said principle of keeping the protein and healthy food core and adding some [ __ ] to it and monitoring your weight over time keeping active that's something that's like very rarely taught very rarely practiced very rarely encourage some people don't even know that it's real and so people get stuck

in that cycle of like I'm either dieting or I'm not dieting and when I'm not dieting I'm not maintaining my results From dieting and supplying my body with nutrition it needs I'm just eating like like a child with much more money to SP yes yes oh God I yeah I can relate I diet it like I said the first time I dieted I went for 10 months and my I had a Coach and he's like you should take a break and I was like do I have to cuz I'm actually fine he's like you're not

hungry so like my superpower was not being hungry on 1400 calories or whatever it was impressive it's Impressive superpower I don't really know why that is I'm not li like people go oh you're lying to like I'm no I'm fine like I I would eat 1300 some days and I was just like I'm full I'm good I don't really understand why incredible yeah I it was pure luck but here here's the problem that I had was then I was like I want to go rocking for 3 hours and then I'm going hit the gym later

and I'm also going to eat 1400 calories and I sort of stopped losing weight yeah and My friends were like who know about this stuff that that are smart like you they were like yeah you're probably screwing with your metabolism and I was like Oh I thought that was like a fake thing that people say when they're really fat that their metabolism slow they're like no no no you're actually you're actually damaging your metabolism most likely ear yeah you earned it how does that work like what how do you what is the metabolism thing about

yeah yeah yeah uh By the way sorry for the typing I actually just wrote down a good YouTube video idea based on what uh probably think eventually like how like bad eating is really just eating like a kid and how we learn not to eat like that we grow up and how you should eat like an adult yeah my that's my dieting coach would tell me to take a break and he goes I go what are the rules to the break he goes just don't like a teenager like don't have pizza three times yes That's

it exactly I was like oh just he's like just have like normal meals that an adult would order in a restaurant yes that's all very straightforward yeah so um the metabolic stuff if you diet for a very long time on very low calories and you have lots and lots of cardio as in the output a couple things happen one is you get in a very high stress State and some people in a high stress state will hold lots of body water so your weight won't be going Down it might even be going up for a

few weeks I was getting W yeah yeah cuz you're you're getting bloated cuz your body's in like fight ORF flight mode crap uh another thing is your body will decrease your overall metabolic uh output to account for almost all of that extra activity and it'll actually get more efficient in processing your food and it'll get you to slightly overestimate uh or underestimate how much food you're eating with all these Little subtle uh changes it can basically make it so that even though you're on the on paper doing more physical activity as far as calories in

calories out and nothing's really changed and your body water's going up because of that increased inflammation and so it actually seems like you're gaining tissue because you're gaining weight now you're almost certainly not gaining tissue but uh you're gaining water weight and more activity and fewer Calories will not solve the problem because you've accumulated a lot of fatigue diet fatigue and you need a time where you're at maintenance maybe regain a little bit of weight stay at maintenance and if weeks and weeks and weeks and probably months of just like enough food for your body

to finally be likeo okay we're not star death anymore then it cranks down the body water situation it makes you feel better it cranks up your energy levels so not only Are you maintaining calories but you have to peel back your physical activity to like sane sustainable levels once you do that your body is really good and then you can go and do some more physical activity and some less food for a number of weeks and months because your body's refreshed you'll get great results you'll get the leanest you've ever been if you'd like but

then you have to back away and do the same thing again the body works like any machine it Needs phasic pushes and then pulling back to recover it you can't just P all the time there is not a kind of factory machine you can do that with there's not a kind of machine humans have ever made there's not a biological system we've ever discovered you could just push the gas pedal all the time and it doesn't matter that's just not a reality and I think some people they are introduced to dieting as like this is

the thing you do now now you don't eat carbs now you Don't eat junk food now you just eat like this and it ends never go and inevitably they'll get into a really bad spot they'll try to reduce calorie even more increase activity even more to get out of it that just makes the diet fatigue even more insane and sometimes that pushes a needle along and sometimes it doesn't and then sometimes they end up like you where they're like gaining weight they're not supposed to be and it's nothing's broken it's just really Really off-kilter and

it takes some time it maintenance calories lots of sleep and a much lower level of physical activity so your body can recover from all those things and get out of its kind of shock mode that it's in so I had uh TMI but I had a vasectomy right so I and I had to stop working out I I couldn't there's it's a terrible idea to work out they're like really don't mess with it two weeks you're if you work out it's going to bleed and you're going to be in A whole H so I was

like okay so I stopped and then I went to Hawaii I ate whatever I wanted I mean like an adult and I was like wow I I thought it was going to like blow up a little bit eat all the sushi and stuff I weighed myself I had lost three lbs and I was absolutely shredded in the mirror and I was like this is so confusing because I haven't worked out at all and I just got done like killing myself in the gym and rocking and all this stuff and eating on This diet and then

I changed that up and and I was like what could what could this be and it's probably what you just said I probably peed out a whole bunch of bloat and ended up looking better than ever and of course other friends were like oh you just lost a bunch of muscle but I've heard you say that you don't lose muscle right away when you stop working out like I I used to think like oh if you don't work out this week everything you did last week you know You're just your body's just catabolizing it immediately

I mean it might be true to say it's catabolizing everything you did last week but you have like 5 years of working out under your belt it just does that a week at a time each time so you're not losing any more than than that and gaining it back is profoundly easy and you don't notice any actual tissue gains in muscle with most of our best measures within like about two weeks is when you really can Start measuring it so like losing two weeks worth of muscle has a few out uh outcomes one outside of

like you're not pumped anymore for being at the gym all the time nobody can tell and two if you come back and lift for like half a week you've regained all the muscle you lost and then you're just gaining new gains after that so it's really not a big deal your specific situation tells me that you were quite overreached quite fatigued and quite far gone because if After two weeks of not training and eating recreationally you look better you dug yourself one hell of a hole I've been in that circumstance before so have many many

bodybuilders and physique athletes and only after you start eating more and you come out of that deficit are you like oh [ __ ] I'm looking better and leaner and Fuller the more I eat and it's like well it's not magic you just have depleted yourself so much thrown off all your hormones so much that your Body is just like in an unhealthy place it it's kind of like if you get someone who's been like on the front lines fighting and getting lots of experience with you know gunfights and stuff but they're like haven't slept

in days they haven't eaten in a long time they're dehydrated how good are they going to be like on the gun range firing maneuvering well like not good they're really tired are pretty good because they've got so much experience but if you take them and You have a week of them like just sleeping a ton eating a ton no gunshots no explosions as soon as they get the weapon back in their hands and they go down the range they're going to be like Savant with the [ __ ] cuz they're now they have all the

skills they built but they don't have any of the fatigue and so that same kind of thing happens with the body all the time and people totally discount I think a lot of people think like whatever I do to my body is like Lasts for like a few hours and then it's like totally reversed like I work out today at least for a day I work out today good if I miss a day bad if I have a good meal good if I have a bad meal bad I'm already like losing ground it just takes

longer it takes weeks to have all those things set in motion and if you've pushed way too hard for weeks easier time for weeks is just going to make you better until you uh get back to Baseline Yeah I I started instead of just going on these long diets which I don't need anymore every two or three months of like going on a diet basically just take two or three months and I'm like I'm just going to stay where I am and now I could stay where I am forever like I look fine um I

don't need to like have the bottom two ABS with veins on them or whatever the hell like the next few steps are I I think it's important dieting seems impossible if you think You have to starve yourself and eat kale forever and it's just it's not true and I always want to beat this into people's heads because if somebody had been able to explain this stuff that we're talking about right now to me 10 or 15 years ago I probably would have started Living a healthier life earlier I just thought it was like I don't

want to start I don't want to end all of the joy that I have from eating now I was like I'll do it later but now I realize I didn't have to End the joy of living life and eating it at all actually yeah just like delay it for a few months and then you get months of it and years of it like back as much as you want in a healthy balance and a very very wise thing to say I think a lot of people with the best intentions that are in the health space

like Health nuts is what we call them in '90s I don't know if that's still term but they're like so psychotic about the [ __ ] in the best possible way that they give Other regular people the a bit of an illusion as to what's involved they'll say [ __ ] like oh you know when you eat healthy and eat salads and stuff you feel so much better some people get that some people don't some people are like I felt better when I ate pizza I just feel hungry and frustrated when eating chicken salads all

the goddamn time and they'll say like you know cuz they're Health nuts and because they're mentally maybe not so well and have body just Morphe up the ass they're kind of like always counting their macros they're always eating quote unquote Clean Diet food and they never cheat or hardly ever and like people look at them and they're like well apparently that's how you're supposed to look your best is you just are a robot and you eat only what's prescribed for your whole life and it's just not true um it's similar to when you know people

will interact with various professional athletes and they Just always assume that they're in their training and diet control phase all the time that like an NFL player like after the Super Bowl when their team won a week later they're like ah training is Pretty Tough huh they're like actually no one at the organization is going to contact me for the next month I don't train at all for a month and they're like why like was my bones got broken into pieces during that last game so I have to heal my bones my tendons my Cartilage

my psychology my everything and I just backing away and people just have this perception that people who do the thing always do the thing in increment of linear Inc increasing difficulty until they reach 90 and die or I don't even know but that is a very very big Mis misperception and it like exactly to your point causes people on the outside looking in to be like what's this is Fitness doing this [ __ ] all the time and never having a break that's not For me and just back off but if if they know that

actually one of the uh things I like is the idea of a cleanup phase where like once you've done most of your body composition change you've gone gained a lot of the muscle you wanted you've lost a lot of the fat and like you are today like you feel great you look great and you're good good to go if you ever find yourself in a position where like you know the holidays a couple work trips couple little various Other things and now you're in a situation where you're like yeah i' got a little bit of

a spare five or six pounds of fat that I gained over whatever amount of time just like four weeks of eating no junk and reducing your carbs and fats and your Meals by half sticking to that protein and veggie core for all the meal and whatever Greek yogurt or some [ __ ] and just like making sure you get 10,000 steps a day and really hitting the gym diligently Can just completely wipe away all five or six pounds of excess fat keep and build even more muscle and then after that you go just back to

your normal because people will think maintenance is like okay maintenance means I never accumulate body weight I never get out of shape as soon as I get out of shape one day the next day has to be a good day like actually you can float for months up in body weight by five or six pounds and it's a great time because First of all you're not food obsessed second of all you're working out yeah you're doing your [ __ ] but also you know you have a couple of junk food items here and there skip

the gym a couple times here and there and then when you the phase of life shifts it's no longer the holidays now it's January now you're like yeah I actually do have four weeks to clean this up and then you buy yourself another like really like multiple months worth of time of living In fundamentally healthy habits but also not psychotically looking over your meals and workouts like a hawk and ruining the rest of your life I think that slow up and down very little cleanup once a you know twice a year you'll do it for

a month and the rest of the time you live your life in an awesome healthy balance that's not psychotic I think that's probably one of the better ways to approach it having that ability to know how to clean up in Your pocket and deploying it when you have a few weeks here and there and even if you have only two or three weeks at a time even one weekend spent diligently dieting and not going out for pizza can be a measurable impact on your physique and so there's always a chance to clean it up I

I love love that approach because it says once you get to a really good place you can really have a lot of freedom and coming back to that good place to restart the clock so to speak Is insanely easy it takes a few weeks of diligence empowering people with that takes them out of the perspective of like well should I really have this ice cream bar I don't know 210 calories my Cap's 200 like bro bro have two of them and then in 3 months when you're like ah I want to look a little leaner

you can spend literally a few weeks getting back exactly all L us that you ever lost yeah this is this is the whole like getting in shape for spring and summer but in a Way that's conscious and not just like oh crap I haven't done anything for 5 years now I want to get in shape now on a sixpack for summer it's like that's not going to happen but if yeah if you have five pounds that you need to get off and and you just haven't worried about your diet other than protein before that then

it's it's so much easier to do and I I again I wish people had told me that like a decade and a half ago the other thing I needed to Learn was that diet will always uh outrun exercise or basically you can't outrun your maybe is a better way to look at that you know you look at the calories in a doughnut it's like 150 or maybe it's 200 I don't know it's like 300 it's like oh God that's brutal and then you go and then you're on the treadmill running a mile and you're like

wait 82 calories I'm tired already what's happening this can't be right yeah so every doughnut should be seen as Like a two to Four Mile Run that's insane and that's brutal but also it's good cuz your body is designed by Evolution to conserve on calories and so it's insanely efficient then means our ancestors could survive like off of the land in Africa hunting various small animals and eating roots and tubers but because now we have modern grocery stores uh it's different game and once you realize like okay actually our bodies are phenomenally efficient to Physical

activity and phenomenally efficient with absorbing and digesting food we're not really going to use one of those processes to counterbalance the other so what we want to do is like get up to a level of physical activity that's healthy and allows us to you know burn it a moderate amount of calories something too low roughly 10,000 steps a day is worth of regular activity with some lifting in there and once we do that the main lever we can pull for Getting a calorie deficit so we can lose fat is going to be diet control and

the good news is you don't even need to pull the lever that hard first of all getting rid of all of your junk food when you're dieting is like just such a huge hack no more regular sodas no more junk and when you do eat food keep it a protein core with uh plenty of veggies and if you know like you need to eat more food to not lose weight too fast or be hungry like crazy some high quality nutritious Carbs whole grains fruits things like that uh or some high quality fats like you know

olive oils and nuts and nut Butters and stuff they can fill in the blanks and then that that's really how you do it you not very hungry but you're losing weight constantly that's probably the the best approach to go for that you meant I know we running out of time but I'm curious about muscle memory you mentioned earlier if you lose this it's really easy to gain it back what what is What is memory how does it work we don't know exactly how it works on every little level but some of the inklings we have

is for example has to do with satellite cells so your muscle cells have a nucleus which controls the cell and then the rest of the cell that does all the cell stuff but the nucleus is like a town center with like a fire department and like um like a mail distribution service and the rest of the cell is like The rest of the city the apartment complexes the gyms the factories and so on and so forth and at some point your muscle cells get big enough that they need more Town centers to be located in

because like one fire department is not enough to cover New York city so because the city's grown so much so once your muscle cells get big enough there's all these little nuclei barely covered up by a cell uh enclosure sitting around close to that in your Muscles and they're they they're microscopic and they have almost no cell around them they're just a nucleus and those satellite cells when when the regular muscle cell gets big enough to where like H too big it's called a myonuclear domain ceiling it hits that uh the satellite cells will donate

their nuclei so the nucleus pops into your old cell and now has two nuclei so it can get like something like twice as big and the thing is once nuclei go in they seem To not come out so if you get a bunch of nuclei which are like the the control processes of the cell that help to direct all the protein manufacturer and the more of them you have like the more protein you can manufacture and the quicker you can bulk up your muscles and sustain them once you have lifted and then you quit for

however long you lose the city amount like people will close down the shopping malls or whatever but the fire station police station Government the new nucleus never closes and so when you want to build in that City again you're like okay we want to build in the city do they even have a fire department yep and it's really close to your house and now you're the only person lives there and you have whole fire department to yourself you're going to be able to build out that City real quick and so once the the nuclei stay

and then you stop lifting and the muscle around them shrinks when you Start lifting again your muscles are like okay we got to get this lifting going hey nuclei you ready to work and there's like all these nucle like yes and you're like oh my God this got a got goddamn Factory over here and so you regain that lost weight or that lost muscle real quick because you're superpower to do it because you have so many nuclei it's it's almost the same thing as giving yourself just better genetics from the get-go um and so uh

That for that reason and a few others muscle regain happens really really rapidly and if you gotten really jacked which is you've already translocated a bunch of nuclei from satellite cells into your core muscle then they never leave and so that's kind of how the memories develop like they're kind of always there and whenever you want to get it started again you're good to go it's kind of like you know um if you used to play Playstation but you haven't Played in a while the system's still at your house and it still turns on and

you're right back you don't have to like go to Best Buy and buy a new one or whatever like you still have the system at your house and it's never leaving that's kind of the analogy there what if this is a curveball that maybe there's no answer to yet but what if what if I build my initial physique on like a crapload of steroids and then I come back in a decade and I work out again But there's no steroids do I still have the fire station and the police station or are they like ah

we left when the steroids left you still have them and so because you don't have as much testosterone in your body like uh the analogies there you still have the fire station police station but the export GDP coming in is lower so like there's not as much business to be done however there you can do way more business with fire stations and police stations Without and so you're not going to unless you take steroids again get back to your steroid size but you'll get back to a way bigger size than you could have had without

have ever done having ever done steroids or it would have take you like five more years of training to get that big the steroids do incorporate satellite cells faster as they grow muscle faster because the number one reason satellite cells are Incorporated is when the cell gets too big to run Itself without more nuclei and so steroids can grow your cell so fast that like you just add satellite cells faster when you're on steroids than not that when you stop steroids you still have them all Incorporated that's one of the reasons why um many sport

scientists have now sort of um uh taken the position that steroid use for especially long period any time in your career is a permanent permanent enhancer a permanent cheat code and so they used to just like Test people right before the competition and if you didn't have any steroids in you were good to go nowadays it's really tough like and there's a lot of very rational voices in the community say if you've ever tested positive for steroids you should never be allowed to compete with drug-free people ever again because you always have an advantage and

there's absolutely lot of Truth to that how long does muscle memory take to kick in is it like I guess I should let me rephrase That question how long does it take for me to need muscle memory is it like taking two months off or two years off or does it just kind of stay there forever and like I come back 20 years later and suddenly I can reactivate these police stations we have no reason to believe that we found any time limit and every examination we take seems to be like years at least probably

decades and maybe forever wow wow that's incredible yeah it's great is it great That means you can like take three weeks off on traveling to Tokyo or whatever and you come back to lift and two weeks later you're the most Jack you've ever been cuz people man they get really up in their head about that they're like oh my God I'm going to quit lifting I'm going to lose it all even if you do lose it all the your comeback road is 10 times easier than the road to get there initially was which is huge

it's especially good news for those of us Like I know you went to high school with a friend of mine uh my college roommate Rob bro and him and I we were lamenting a couple months ago we were like oh remember when we used to go to the gym at ccrb every day at Michigan work out and like we used to be so like jacked and fit oh ever again but now it's like actually those those those police stations the fire stations are still operational they're waiting for us to get off our ass and yeah

talked a lot of That's great huge huge hello to Rob he's he's awesome um I saw him pin someone in wrestling once in 7 Seconds was the fastest pin I've ever seen in my entire life it was awesome it was a big hero moment um a lot of people will say yeah man I used to be a college athlete and I'm like you know a stock Trader whatever It's just tough you know and like to those people obviously I usually say polite things that they like to hear weave in some wisdom but I'd like to

say Is shut the up and go to the gym regularly you [ __ ] you're arguing in a way that seems for you to tell me that like oh it makes sense man must have fallen so far it's tough to get back but the reality is cuz I know you used to be more jacked it's easier for you to get more jacked if you're like yeah man you know in college I never did anything and I was Harry Potter skinny should I lift weights and be like yeah it's going to be an uphill battle you're

going to have To build everything a new it's possible and it's going to be great but you know like it's a big dig like it's like deciding to pull pull out you buy a piece of property with a house on it you decide to pull that house out and put another one in like some shit's going on whereas if you are um you know in the position where you used to be pretty jacked and lifted regularly any point in your life for like months on end at least then coming back to that is just Going

to be way easier it's like having the house and the frame already there you just adding a a new roof or something it's just way way different proposition the electricity is already running in the Plumbing's in there you just got to plug everything in and put the walls in man yeah I I've heard the argument that having more muscle burns more fat are Jack dudes or Jack ladies just sitting there burning more calories yes by a such a small calorie number That's nominal like it just won't be picked up by most equipment and so as

like a as a matter of uh is the statement more or less true than an average of they're the same would bring us I would say the statement is less true than is a on average a good idea so if you operate under the assumption that muscle and fat burn roughly the same amount of calories you're going to like have various things happen to you into your body as a result Of that assumption and if you operate under the assumption that muscle Burns substantially more calories than fat and thus you change your behavior and change

your goals and everything you're going to be much closer to reality and a good time and a good outcome if you just assume they're the same because they're that close that's a good rule of thumb what is what is this about a world without exercise because of AI I've heard you mention this but never like Explain it and I'm just dying to know when I can stop actually working yeah well I can't explain it cuz it's always draing my manic episodes on podcasts and I just don't even remember those um so you know AI is

really powerful and it's powerful in ways that uh most people including myself have just not really wrapped their minds around it's also going to be powerful really soon in a way that's impossible for you to mind around because like how does your dog Understand what why do you go to work there's actually insufficiently intelligent to understand what work even is you know um or even think of like various ideas just by themselves um so um AI is growing exponentially and it's super powerful it's going to do all these great things but one of the things

that is not actually AI doesn't even have to exist for this but because AI exists this is going to come much sooner than later is the idea of looking at the Body and being like okay so like when we're exercising how does exercise make us more muscular and healthier and all these other things and it turns out it just actually just does it in really one way a few others but they're very very small contributors the most direct way is I could actually something about exercise is detected by your cellular machinery and your cellular Machinery

changes how it operates and it produces more proteins of some kind less of Another kind and then it upgrades your body to give you what you want it's like it's not literally true that lifting weights makes your muscles bigger because how the does that have anything to do with the laws of physics where is the stuff coming from to make your muscles bigger it's not you're not eating the weights right so because we know that the end result of exercise the exercise is a stimulus and the the final result is you know some kind of

Molecular alterations in the cell we have to ask the question of like well how can we change those what are the intermediary steps that change those molecules and molecular machines to work in a different way and we're like oh they're like chemical substances like uhhuh okay so you can make a drug that's them uhhuh if you just take that drug they'll just like do the thing that you're trying to do but like get right to the point uh uh-huh okay what's Stopping us from doing that like well we're not so good at designing drugs that

are exactly the thing we want and we're not so great at delivering them into the body system such that survive digestion and like hey AI can you help us with that and's like yeah I can actually scan all the types of protein you could ever make uh be given information about all the different receptor types that can clip that protein clip into and probably design a Protein that's 99% chance of being exactly the thing that you want it to be and you're like oh so if we can really do that then all of a sudden

we can maybe like take a pill that gets us all the muscle that we need and with zero training and you think okay let's [ __ ] test this AI fantasy land is a dope place to live Mike but the rest of us are not mentally unwell like you and you give us some kind of grounding and the reality is there there's actually just One molecule in skeletal muscle called myostatin it's naturally produced myo for muscle Statin for stopper or blocker and it stops you from growing constant huge amounts of skeletal muscle and when you

exercise among various other things myostatin activity turns down and then when you don't exercise for a while it turns back up so muscle loss isn't something that just happens all the time because nature it happens on purpose your body gets rid of muscle on purpose When it stops getting rid of muscle that's actually its default State and then it gets you super jacked how do we know that's a real thing with chemicals uh you know researchers have confirmed that exists and we have animals that are mice we have Greyhounds we have cattle and a few

humans who have the myostatin protein just doesn't work and so they just never stop gaining skeletal muscle uh to a point that's much higher than us and they just look jacked and ripped all The time so we actually know that there's not like this magical set of circumstances we have to unlock for muscle growth to occur it's really just like even one molecule goes like 95% of the way to maximum muscle if we just turn it off we're good to go so now all we're looking for is a way to turn myostatin off in a

graded exposure level with a pillar and injection for humans to one protein Target in one type of cell it's not rocket science they've Done this with other things before and now it's just a matter of getting the candidate molecules developed and getting them researched and it's not happening right now right now because all of the large pharmaceutical corporations are now using AI but they're using it uh it to hit like big hitters like diabetes heart disease like uh chronic obstructive pulmonary like all these things that are Mega Killers but like very shortly they're going to

Realize like actually insufficient muscle mass in older populations is like a real big Killer by itself and so they're going to develop that and then the rest of us who are of normal healthy weight can take however much of that we need to be as jacked as we want functionally it doesn't address like muscle symmetries and imbalances you will get like your head will look more like mine marginally because you'll develop muscles everywhere these are all Skeletal muscles it's why I look kind of ridiculous I I didn't notice that yeah yeah but uh thank you

but uh as as a result of just uh you know just hitting the chemical buttons that's kind of the story we're already doing that with appetite you've noticed the new drugs the oics and stuff like that turn for appetite say that again gp1 is that what they're called gp1 yep and there's tepati as a GP Gap dual Agonist there's ratti which is a triple Agonist which Actually increases your basil anabolic rate in addition to reducing your appetite and a few other things so we're getting to this point where um like we have are known for

Generations that the body is a very complex machine and then if you turn various genes off or if you turn various proteins on and off or turn them up and down you can sort of get whatever you want out of it within the Realms of like biological feasibility but now we're actually having some Traction in this you in the next 5 to 10 years I think just going to get a lot of traction onto it we're going to have super oics coming out um and we're going to have drugs that can modulate your muscle mass

and modulate your health and so like yeah with like two or three pills a day you could have an incredible amount of Health muscularity Etc and if you want to work out just for extra aesthetic appeal and get the muscles all and balance think that's great but then People who like want to do hiking or want to hang out with their families or want to travel around the world they'll still be able to be healthy and fit without having to spend hours and hours at the gym which I personally think is a blessing and an

amazing thing and I think it's also rather inevitable but some people in the fit Community maybe misunderstand my position or maybe they understand appropriately and they just uh they think that's going to be like The worst thing in the world so yeah I mean my personal trainer is probably like H I'll be retired before then hopefully but like you know I I I don't think that there's always going to be a market for people who actually enjoy exercise which somehow I've become one of those people I don't know what the hell happened there but yeah

uh I know we I know we're over time but weird question to end it but what are you most proud of it's a weird question but we Are just two [ __ ] from Michigan who both went to the same college and they did okay for ourselves I'm curious what stands out to you uh man my best answer is I'm not sure I don't like I'm I have trouble experiencing the motion of Pride uh anytime I get proud of anything I try to figure out like why why me and not other people and I realize

like most of the reasons are like my my parents just happen to be pretty smart and I came out Genetically real smart and genetically prone to hard work and um I took some opportunities that came my way through nothing other than luck multiplied by my genetics and uh I I don't really know how to feel proud about any of that like should should it's like imagine asking a basketball player if they're proud about being 610 and they're like well I just kind of grew into it so sure um I don't know man like uh what

do you think your parents are most proud of that you've Done I think my parents have seen me be so not successful they're probably most proud of the fact that I'm just like a decent human being who earns a living but uh I think they're proud of the fact that I'm like uh you know finan Al very well to do it's a big deal for ashkanazi Russian Jews um and the fact that I'm like uh you know like sort of in the fitness space kind of world famous or whatever that seems to be I think

I think they think is nice but I Think they just like that I have a thing that I'm good at and that thing pays well and that I'm like support myself and my wife and I'm not in jail uh you know for various degenerate crimes I think that's for them like a really big deal um Russian Jewish parents tend to see pride as like can you checklist these three or four major things we're good uh and if you haven't you're like a disaster failure uh that's seemingly seemingly how it works uh but yeah for Me

on a personal level I I'm I'm just trying to do my best man and like um I've tried to like really be proud of some stuff but it it just never sinks it and so I'm just kind of like I think it's nice that I have all these things but um I'm just trying to be like a decent human being and do better to help myself and help other people one day at a time without stepping on too many toes it was best I could hope for I can deal with that that is a very

that's that's a Very probably a similar answer that I would give although you're right it's hard to be proud of stuff and I don't know if that's how we were raised or it's just like how normal people think about achievement I I don't know that's a that's something to unpack for next time I'd love to have you back and talk about getting actually getting into shape some more sort of like like the how many reps do I do sure I got all kinds of [ __ ] to say about that concrete And supplements cuz people

are like oh these supplements are are amazing or these are worthless and I'm just kind of like there's got to be the truth Truth where there's like one or two things that make a difference and everything else is just like a grift from somebody on Instagram um OD close to the truth already sir yeah and and also ADHD because we both had it and it was both for crippling for both of us and then we get found other drugs and then we're Like oh this is how normal people function cool so I'm still getting a

grip on how normal people function I'm not sure I don't really get it I don't think this this is how normal people actually function but I I certainly wasn't a normal person until they figured out what was wrong with me and then it was like oh okay actually you're not an idiot wow that's a good realization was that nice wasn't that nice to have happen yeah like oh you're Not going to go to prison okay things look it up yeah awesome and I can't wait to get back on the show again and uh thank you

so much for having me thank you so much for watching if you like this conversation you will love our episode with Professor Dave we talk about the science behind organic products are they really better for you or is it just marketing designed to steal your money you can click the box That's on screen right now to go there and start learning how to make better decisions for your health today