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Ultimate Fat Loss Guide – Gabrielle Lyon – Mike Israetel – Layne Norton – Don Saladino

Episode 167, duration 1 hr 49 mins
Episode 167

Ultimate Fat Loss Guide – Gabrielle Lyon – Mike Israetel – Layne Norton – Don Saladino

In this compilation, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon brings together the top minds in health and fitness to deliver the ultimate guide to fat loss. Featuring the best moments with Dr. Mike Israetel, Dr. Layne Norton, and Don Saladino, this video cuts through the confusion and gives you a no-nonsense, science-backed approach to transforming your body.

You’ll hear from the experts on everything from the flawed science of calories to the truth about muscle, metabolism, and modern weight loss drugs like Ozempic. This is not about fads or quick fixes—it’s a masterclass in building a sustainable, healthy body.

Dr. Mike Israetel: The fundamental principles of diet, the reality of "under-eating," and how to manage diet fatigue.
Dr. Layne Norton: The truth about flexible dieting, why calories still count, and the role of protein in weight loss.
Don Saladino: How to optimize your training for fat loss, the importance of consistency, and building a stronger mindset.

This is the only fat loss guide you'll ever need.

You’ll hear from the experts on everything from the flawed science of calories to the truth about muscle, metabolism, and modern weight loss drugs like Ozempic. This is not about fads or quick fixes—it’s a masterclass in building a sustainable, healthy body.

0:00 – The Protein Debate Begins

1:31 – Debunking the Flawed Science of Protein

15:00 – The Myth of “Wasted” Protein

22:42 – The Truth About the RDA & What “Deficiency” Really Means

50:41 – The Problem with Plant Proteins & Caloric Cost

1:05:22 – The 100-Gram Protein Tipping Point

1:09:10 – Carbs vs. Protein: A Metabolic Showdown

1:13:15 – How to Diagnose a Protein Deficiency

1:18:13 – Final Thoughts: The Path Forward

The Gravitostat:  How Your Bones Might Help Control Your Weight

The Gravitostat: How Your Bones Might Help Control Your Weight

What if your body had a built-in scale deep inside your skeleton that constantly monitors your weight and quietly adjusts your appetite to keep it stable? That’s the radical idea behind the gravitostat theory. Proposed in 2018 by researchers in Sweden, the gravitostat suggests that Read More...

For every 10 people who lose weight, only one will keep it off for good. How you would think about fat loss cuz
0:07
that’s what everybody wants. You don’t have to count your calories. But it’s really good idea to understand
0:12
that calories matter. Most people don’t fail because they’re lazy or lack willpower. They fail
0:18
because they’re following the wrong strategy. So, what’s the right strategy? Listen, we need strength training 3 days
0:24
a week at a bare minimum. The number one most important thing, get your energy intake correct. If you want to lose fat,
0:31
you have to consume less energy than you expend. Dieting is tough. A condition in which your body is not getting sufficient
0:36
calories to maintain its weight almost always acrru some fatigue. And we call that diet fatigue in the industry.
0:42
By mastering these strategies or habits, you can lose weight and keep it off. No gimmicks, no fat diets, just
0:49
sciencebacked proven methods. So, we took care of most of the theory behind how people can lose weight, but there’s
0:56
a missing piece.
1:04
The world is really confused about fat loss, about muscle. Where can we start
1:10
with fat loss? People that are loudly proclaiming things that are one of two categories.
1:16
Wild exaggerations or things that are just categorically untrue. And Give me an example. Yes. Yes. Categorically untrue. Calorie
1:25
balance is a myth. Calories don’t matter. Wild exaggeration. The low carb lifestyle is great for everyone. And you
1:32
hear that enough from those people and they’re iconoclastic enough that you come up on your social media feed. They
1:37
write bestselling books and all this other stuff. And all of a sudden, you know, your idea of the thing like I’ve
1:43
had people tell me like, “Well, so like diet soda is like bad for you.” And I’m like, “No, it’s near consensus that it’s
1:49
totally fine. It’s essentially almost inert and they’re like, “Well, I heard like, well, you’re you’re hearing lies and halftruths and misunderstandings
1:55
from lots of people on social media that just say a lot of stuff, but I wouldn’t really only point the nasty blame finger
2:02
at the producers of this kind of knowledge. I think most of it comes down to a consumption problem. A lot of
2:09
people are not really interested in what maybe they consider dry and boring ideas. They’re interested in sexy ideas.
2:18
They’re interested in quick fixes. Um, kind of a serendipitous fix where
2:23
you like there’s this really complex puzzle and and you click one piece and it goes and it’s all in place versus
2:29
like having to do this and that. You know what this reminds me of? This reminds me of success. And the things in common between fitness
2:36
success and business success are actually quite massive on a principal level. They both have that little sting at the end of like, man, I got to do all
2:43
this [ __ ] principled work for years. The [ __ ] [ __ ] that. Give me one hack,
2:48
just one thing is so I can get successful, so I can lose fat. And here’s the thing, I absolutely at a deep
2:54
level never blame people for looking for shortcuts. Because as we develop as a
3:00
society, we come up with shortcuts to things. If you told someone 150 years ago, yeah, that’s fair. They’re like, “Hey, like, how do I get
3:06
to 90 miles away?” You’re like, “Well, you get in a car and you just do this and it goes.” And if we say this in about three or four years, you’re going
3:11
to be like, “You just actually get in the car and you just do this and it just goes.” Like, I’m not getting what the hell is a car?
3:17
what the hell is a car? And you’re like, right, so this this this thing that drives it’s like it’s like having 150 horses but all in one chariot and the
3:23
horses are invisible. They’re going to like you’re out of your mind and they’re like, yeah, it’s all shortcuts in the future. You want to go get food, you
3:29
don’t farm, you don’t know anything. You just show up to the grocery store, you do some kind of weird swiping, some kind of little weird little card and you just
3:35
take whatever you want and you leave. They’re going to be like, “This is nonsense.” So if people didn’t want shortcuts, if they didn’t want massive
3:41
efficiency improvements of orders of magnitude, they would have never invented amazing things. Like if we were like, “It’s all hard work, brother.”
3:46
Someone’s trying to invent like the industrial revolution, like the farming equipment. You’re like, “Man, this guy’s just a [ __ ] [ __ ] He’s just trying
3:52
to get out of work.” Like, dude, you’re an insane person, right? So, it’s great to look for shortcuts. It’s awesome. But, you got to be able to tell what
3:58
shortcuts are cutting you right into [ __ ] that doesn’t work and which ones are actually effective. And there are some effective little shortcuts or
4:04
hacks, but in the diet realm so far, they’re few and far between. And you can
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exploit them really well if you’re good at the rest of the thing. Give me the hierarchy and I’m going to give you what
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I would consider probably the hierarchy and you tell me where I’m right, where I’m wrong.
4:22
Oh, you’re wrong because you’re not me. I’m the only one that knows the hierarchy. It’s called the Dr. Mike hierarchy.
4:27
Well, I’ll take it of things. The Dr. Mike knows cuz he’s special and important.
4:33
Oh, I’m on a podcast. You are, but you are special and important. That’s what my mom said. Um, calories in, calories out. Well, I
4:39
guess the first thing you would have to consider is what are your goals? Are you looking to lose fat, gain muscle or
4:46
maintain? Then the next thing would be you calculate that number and you determine
4:52
what that number would be. Calorie number. Yes. You determine what that calorie number would be and then you would set
4:58
your dietary protein intake to for me I would set it at one gram per
5:05
pound ideal body weight or one gram per pound. And then depending on my
5:10
activity, I could choose carbohydrates or fats. You’re well on your weight, girl. I don’t even have to I don’t even have to do the podcast. You just keep going.
5:16
I’ll just be like, “Uhuh. Huh.” I’ll be like, “And that was Dr. Mike. Thank you so much. See you later.” Well done. No. Right on. Right on. Yeah.
5:22
Tell me where how how you would think about
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fat loss because that that’s what everybody wants. So, it turns out you don’t have to count your calories. You don’t have to count
5:32
your calories, but it’s really good idea to understand that calories matter. Imagine you’re in a shooter video game
5:39
and you have a certain number of bullets in your gun. You got to reload. It doesn’t matter if you count the bullets one by one, but you have to understand
5:45
the concept that you can run out of bullets. There’s such a thing as too much shooting at an empty screen and then the bad guy comes and oh, and he
5:51
eats you. So, you don’t have to count calorie by calories. Many ways of doing things, but calories as a physics
5:56
concept is not so up for dispute. No, it it can be up for dispute if you want to disprove calorie balance. You do a lot
6:02
of real deep physics equations and deep experiments and bomb calorimeters and you submit to the various journals and
6:08
five or 10 years later they go like it’s [ __ ] Einstein. You’re a revolutionary. But good news, we don’t have to do that cuz it’s pretty well set
6:13
in stone. And all calorie balance says is if you want to become larger, you
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have to eat more than you’re used to or spend a little bit less energy. The energy spending thing I can get into
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considerably, but the short long and short of it is energy expenditure is not a big factor in most people being
6:32
overweight. I know that sounds crazy, but it’s just like um unambiguously true. What is a big factor is people eat
6:38
too goddamn much. And I know that’s crazy. We are in Houston, Texas, where everyone’s so [ __ ] lean. I mean, it’s
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just shredded. It’s all skinny people and shredded people. No, the total opposite. I thought everything
6:50
was bigger in Texas. I mean, like, really? Yeah. No, it’s impressive here. Texas is great.
6:56
Everything is bigger. Literally, everyone. And it looks like people are having a lot of fun with their food. I will say that.
7:02
But, um, the biggest thing about calorie balances, if your calorie level is here and your body weight is here, probably a
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big part of your journey to getting your body weight down is going to be to take your calories and put them down to some
7:15
level. Would that be a controversial statement that people are eating too much? I don’t know where. Well, I mean, I
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think uh the only reason I say that is because you hear a lot of people say that individuals are undereating.
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Yeah, I do hear that. So, there’s a nuanced caveed way that can be true. And there’s a way that many people mean
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it, this is categorically false. So, the nuanced way if we’re really going to steal man that is I think a lot of
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people who get tired of being overweight, which is a lot of people, decide, you know what, I’m not going to
7:44
eat a whole lot. I’m going to lose weight. And they take their calorie level and they bring it down to a level that’s unsustainable. like 800 calories.
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Sure. Energy grounds, hunger, grounds, mental clarity grounds, getting fired from work because you can’t make sense
7:56
of things grounds. Sleep goes to hell, that whole thing. And it is true that in that acute time frame that lasts days
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for most people, weeks for some, months for very few, they are actually
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undereating. So that statement is true in that sense. But uh because they
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undereat way too much, they go back around and go, “Fuck this. Gas me up.”
8:19
They go to Taco Bell late at night. You know how it starts. And it doesn’t stop because your boys in the Taco Bell
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parking lot all day. I just walk in. They already know me. You have a card. They have my Oh, yeah. Frequent flyer card.
8:30
That’s right. They have your order ready. I’m so in line with the Taco Bell Corporation that they actually just eat for free.
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Oh, they just want to see how ridiculously overfat I can get at this point. It’s like a science thing
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and they probably support your YouTube. Oh, they love us. Yeah, Taco Bell, please don’t cancel us. But um at some
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point those people go back into like because if you drag your body weight down rapidly in unsustainable manner,
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especially if you lose skeletal muscle, the profound hunger that results is not something most people can relate to in
9:00
their daily lives. It’s a kind of hunger that if you’re watching a TV show where a family’s discussing some controversial
9:06
topic and you love the show and you’re like, “Oh my god, what’s the juice?” You stop paying attention to what they’re saying and you’re looking at the dinner
9:12
rolls they haven’t touched yet. You’re like, “Why doesn’t somebody [ __ ] eat those? Oh my god, I’m that well. I’m that hungry. And for most people when
9:18
they get that hungry, they just they go and this is a real trip. Unreal unfortunate trip. They go this thing I
9:26
just did this crazy lowc calorie diet. This is what I understand fat loss dieting to be. And it’s clearly just not
9:31
doesn’t work for me. I’m going to go back to doing what I usually do and I’m just going to be fat. [ __ ] it. Because is either suffering or being fat. And
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being fat’s a lot easier in almost all cases than suffering starving for the rest of your life. So they just go back
9:44
and they look back on their diet experience and someone tells them like you weren’t eating enough and you’re like oh that makes sort of sense. So in
9:50
a local scale it can be true. On a global scale if you give me someone over the course of one year and they’ve
9:57
gained 15 pounds. Maybe they got married. Maybe the first year of the marriage was fun but then after he just
10:03
keeps [ __ ] never cleans up after himself. The guy’s a slob and you just hate and hate hate. But the thing that
10:08
makes your hate go away is the cookies. You just keep eating cookies and you gain 15 pounds over the course of a year
10:13
and you tell me I was undereating. False. You were overeating. Um, it would be really dope if we figured out a way
10:20
how to undfeed people and still allow them to maintain or gain weight because we would send that information to the
10:25
war torn regions of the world where they would do famine control and it would be wonderful, but it’s never been seen. Violates several laws of thermodynamics.
10:32
It just doesn’t work. So on a grand scale, if someone’s like, “Yeah, I’ve just gained 40 lbs.” You know, and I’ve
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had this literal conversation where like, “I think I just not I don’t eat enough.” And I’m just like, I cough at
10:42
my food. Like, no, that’s not it. And I think that that’s a really important point because often times you do hear, especially women, say, “Well,
10:49
I’m just not eating enough and I have to increase my calories and I’m underfeeding.” And the reality is you might go through periods of starvation
10:55
and then there’s a a rebound hunger that seems to send people into a tail spin. I wanted to take a moment to let you know
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Let’s keep getting stronger together. If someone were to say, “Okay, calories in,
11:45
calories out. We’ve identified that calories in is is pretty streamlined, right? How many calories are you
11:52
getting?” And whether metabolizable, okay, metabolizable. So if you have more fiber, you know, that sort of thing, that’s that’s going to lower your
11:58
metabolizable energy. So there’s there’s that
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that that kind of theory. That’s kind of the crux of it, right? Your metabolizable energy in and then the
12:08
summation of the calories you expend on a daily basis. Now, we look at the carb
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insulin model of obesity. This has a lot of variations. I feel
12:19
like the goalposts have moved on this a lot, but I’m going to give you my um closest interpretation of of what I
12:24
think uh is has been popularized. Calories in, calories out kind of states that you
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overeat and become obese in response to the overeating because you’re consuming more calories than you expend. The
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carbins insulin model says it’s not so much that when you eat a high when you
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eat high refined carbohydrate you inhibit lipolysis which is the breakdown of fat
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right so you have you increase insulin you inhibit lipolysis that traps fat and
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atapose and since fat is now inaccessible or stored energy is inaccessible to the rest of the body you
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overeat in response and so the the crux is you don’t become fat because you overeat
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you become fat from eating too much refined carbohydrate and you overeat in a response and then become fat. So I
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think there’s a few kind of really basic reasons that that
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is not viable. So the first the first thing I will say is for a hypothesis to
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be robust it needs to show up across a broad category various
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populations. Uh, one of the things that I had said to people who were promoting
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the carb insulin model of obesity because they seem to keep changing it and keep like, well, this study didn’t
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quite do this and so it’s not uh, and I said, well, if your hypothesis requires
13:50
these extremely tight constraints to actually be true, it’s not a very robust
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hypothesis. Or could it be that it is efficacious for a very particular type
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of age, population, uh I don’t know, potential phenotype?
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I I would say the first thing to look at is um there was a a metaanalysis of
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uh studies looking at various levels of carbohydrate intake in the diet, but
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they controlled protein and calories. So there’s about 20 controlled feeding studies. So this is important um because
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the inclusion criteria for this meta analysis was the it either had to be metabolic ward or the food had to be
14:34
provided to participants. So adherence was high because when you provide food to participants you can get adherence above 90%. When you do free living and
14:41
just tell them to do whatever that’s when you get like 50 60% adherence. Oreos are eaten under the counter.
14:47
Yeah. So the food was provided to participants. Protein and calories were equated which
14:54
is important. Obviously, we’ve got to equate calories. There’s a lot of studies out there where they’re like, well, this showed more fat loss than
15:00
this, but then you see, well, they didn’t control calories. Okay, might say something for satiety, but you don’t
15:05
really know if it like mechanistically what it’s showing. So they equated calories, equated protein, important for
15:11
what we talked about because um originally some of the lower carb
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research like out of Volic and Finn’s lab um was showing increased fat loss and better muscle retention, but they
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weren’t equating protein in the studies. I didn’t know that. Listen, we need strength training, right? And I think we need, you know,
15:30
right around three days a week at a at a bare minimum, right? Um would that be enough to change to lose
15:36
body fat? And I think it would be and and I think that depending on your lifestyle, I’m not telling you for the
15:41
other four days to go sit in a desk and not move or not be active. But if you got in and you did three days of
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resistance training and the other four days you were active with steps and you were trying to get outside and you’re
15:52
hydrating and you’re focusing on sleep and you’re focusing on something that we love called protein, right? Never heard of it.
15:57
Never heard of it. And and trying to the food I consume, I want it to be powerful, right? like I’m I’m not going
16:04
to just eat like a chicken breast and some white rice maybe, which is the old school way of doing. It’s the old school way of doing things.
16:09
It’s like yes, we’re going to have broccoli with it or we’re going to mix like you’re the way you eat or when you look in your fridge. Very interesting
16:14
and I love it. But it’s very organized. It’s very organized, but like you had your grass-fed steak, you had, you know,
16:20
some shrimp, you had some chicken, you had your potatoes, you had your rice, you had your vegetables, and you had
16:26
other things up top. Your kraut, maybe your kimchi. That’s right. You noticed. So you were looking in my bra. Yeah. like for fermented foods and um
16:33
you know there was never you were never short of being able to consume something that was powerful. So I think there’s a
16:40
way to to eat that’s delicious. I think it does take a little discipline and a little planning like if you’re going to
16:45
wake up the next day and say, “Oh god, I slept in my meals aren’t ready and when am I going to train?” I never sleep in
16:51
because I have little little children who woke up and were
16:56
like, “Where’s Uncle Donnie?” I miss that. I miss that. But yeah, I I think to answer your question, I think if you got in started with, you know,
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three 20 to 30 minute sessions and the other day that’s not that long. It’s not long, but then the other days
17:09
be active like like walk, take the stairs instead of the elevator, move
17:14
like maybe after your meals, go for a 10-minute walk doing these things that are really going to help you accumulate
17:20
your steps. And um you know, I think good things will happen. And when good things start happening, then those magic
17:26
words come in. It’s like, all right, I’m seeing progress. what’s next? So many people don’t want to keep up with um you
17:33
know with that discipline because they’re not seeing progress. So when you’re doing something every day and there’s nothing in return, it’s really
17:40
difficult to want to continue to do it. So um that’s my thing. If we could show them a little bit of progress, we’re going to get them coming back a lot
17:46
more. And progress begins. You know, there’s the physical progress, but also being able to set a standard for yourself%
17:52
you set a standard, you execute on that standard. M if you were to say if you’re out there listening and you’ve never
17:58
picked up a weight um which I know some people are in that spot or maybe they’ve always been doing cardio because again
18:04
cardio is easy. You jump on a piece of cardio equipment but strength training is a non-negotiable for reducing body
18:10
fat and changing body composition. Don has trained every type of person under
18:17
the sun from famous people to athletes to tier one operators whom we share
18:22
together. If someone starts at 20 to 30 minutes of resistance training three days a week, how should they think about
18:30
it? Should be a Monday, Wednesday, Friday, what kind of it should be, how should they space it? And would these be
18:37
full body exercises? I like full bodies because now we’re repeating with some frequency. And I think someone who’s getting started, the
18:43
big complaint is I don’t want to feel too sore, right? Like I like the sore. Is that is that the big like, oh my god, am I going to get really sore doing
18:49
this? And I’m like, all right. But so if you’re turning around um and you’re training frequently, meaning like a
18:54
Monday, Wednesday, Friday or Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, you’re allowing yourself a rest day, you know, in
18:59
between mentally, we might develop some motivation. Uh which becomes a problem. When most people start training, they
19:06
get so excited and they get overzealous and they jump in there and then next thing you know, they’re there for an hour and a half and then they’re sore
19:11
the next day and then they come back in and they do it again and then three, four days in, they’re like, I’m shot and I can’t keep up with this. And I’m like,
19:17
I don’t have that type of time. And that motivation starts diminishing. So I want them to go in, I want them to hit it.
19:23
I want them to leave there wanting more like like leave there not being completely spent.
19:28
And is that why you say start with 20 to 30 minutes? Because at 30 minutes, you could probably keep going.
19:33
I can create any program for anybody. Like it’s if someone comes to me and they’re like, I for some reason at 20 minutes I lose motivation. I’ll design
19:39
for them the 18-minute workout. It’s just and I can design it in a way where we’re going to check a lot of boxes. um
19:45
we’re going to train the entire body. You’re going to work, you know, you’re going to work all five components of of of fitness, you know, just um strength,
19:53
um mobility, um cardiorespiratory endurance, um musc um
19:59
muscular endurance, muscular muscular endurance, and body composition. So, um you know, all those five components, we’re going to check
20:05
those boxes with if we are um you know, training in a smart way and we’re training in a very, um efficient way.
20:13
But if you’re coming in there and frivolously pulling stuff out of the air, you’re going to have a big problem. And um and there’s not going to be any
20:19
balance to your programming and you’re going to overtrain certain areas of the body or some people don’t like using the
20:24
term overtraining, but you’re going to overload certain areas of the body and that could result in some issues in the
20:30
future. I am a fan of mobility. I I I am I will feels great. It feels great. Um just I call it
20:36
practice. So what I’ll do is I will personally screen someone. I’ll run them through some type of a functional
20:41
movement screening or if there is red flags, I’ve got a team of medicals I work with where they can come in and do an SFMA or take them through their
20:47
process. So once we understand how that person’s moving, then I could design my practice or call what you want, warm up,
20:55
movement prep, prehab, whatever you want to call it, I don’t care, but like then we could design that very simple
21:00
approach based off of what it is that person needs. So if they’re lacking an external rotation in the shoulder, we
21:05
might work on that or thoracic extension or thoracic rotation. So, it’s very purposeful, right? I’m not going to take
21:11
a woman who can twist her spine like Gumby and start working on open books. It’s a useless movement for her. She
21:17
doesn’t need it. She might need to hang from a pull-up bar and work on grip strength. I’m just making this up, right? But I think coming in and taking
21:24
anywhere from three to five movements and just rolling through it to where your heart rate gets picked up, but we
21:29
are practicing things that we want to get better at, that I I think becomes very um very important. And then, you
21:36
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22:40
Supplements. Yes, I that was I’m so glad you brought that up. Yeah, there are some supplements you may
22:46
be interested in taking during a weight loss journey as a little bit of an insurance policy. Magnesium, zinc,
22:53
vitamin D, a multivitamin, multi-mineral, maybe a greens powder, maybe not. Maybe a fruits powder, maybe
22:59
not. maybe some healthy fat supplements, maybe not. And those just make sure everything’s squared away and working
23:04
fine. And it probably is anyway if you’re eating a mostly healthy diet, but these are things that are like super super minor that you can do. At the very
23:10
least, a multivitamin, multi-mineral every day, probably a good thing. As far as supplements that really like have a
23:16
wallup effect after that, they don’t exist. Stimulants are okay, but
23:22
stimulants, what kind? Like a yohimi, Fedra, a fedra. Damn girl, back in the 90s. Is
23:28
that even legal anymore? I don’t think so. I don’t know. So, and guys, we’re not saying to take it. I
23:33
am purely uh picking Dr. Mike’s brain. So, before you guys get excited, please.
23:40
So, I mean, you did say stimulants. Okay. I probably should have went to coffee, but Right.
23:45
Stimulants, I would say, is kind of like a really uh pretty gnarly sword, like a powerful sword, but there’s no handle.
23:52
You just grab the sword and bleed right into it. And it some people have really
23:57
calloused hands. They do just fine. Some people ow that doesn’t work. Tell me what kind of what stimulant type
24:03
of thing are you talking about? Yeah. Yeah. So some people uh stimulants make their brain go really well and
24:10
they’re productive and aware and all they feel great. Some people just get a lot of anxiety from them like way more
24:16
than they get anything else and they’re like I can’t live like this. Some people fall asleep fine. I can I could do a
24:21
natural experiment. You give my wife an espresso. It’s 8:00 p.m. You wait until 8:45 she’ll pass out on the couch.
24:27
Same my husband too. Actually, you give him espresso at 8 and by 8:05 that guy
24:33
is done. So, if you gave me an espresso at 8 at 4 in the morning, I would be like connecting the dots and conspiracy
24:39
theories and checking into a psychiatric world. Well, not that part, but yes. Um, but you talked about caffeine. Are there
24:45
other ones? I mean, yes. Uh, let’s say over-the-counter stimulants. Caffeine is the main driver
24:52
of all of them. Y and other stimulants are interesting. They have some interesting fat loss and health benefits. But but teenytiny and
24:59
actually caffeine is quite teeny tiny. So if you can use caffeine to give you a bit more energy if it uh doesn’t
25:05
interfere with your sleep much and if you can do it to have it’s got a pretty interesting decent hunger
25:10
suppressive effect. What about nicotine? Nicotine um so nicotine is in that same that same
25:15
situation. Nicotine has some health downsides that caffeine does not. Um so it’s just not my first go-to. Uh,
25:22
and nicotine has uh substantial addiction potential. So, it’s just it’s not something you use in a diet and then
25:28
quit because you’re like, I need more nicotine right now. Just go straight to sigies. Not even the filtered ones. I’m
25:34
talking about 1956. Like your fridge probably has in there right now. Oh, yeah. Definitely. Just full of cigarettes.
25:40
And uh shrunken heads. Yes. If you open that, you never know what’s going to people died from smoking cigarettes.
25:46
It’s a lesson. But nicotine because you hear um with the fasting community them
25:51
using nicotine pouches. Yeah, that works great for fasting. But the nicotine is a pretty hard drug. You
25:56
know, it’s a drug drug like capital D drug. So if you want to get addicted to nicotine, dope. Nicotine also doesn’t
26:02
have like great uh uh profiles on your blood pressure. From what I understand, heart dynamics aren’t great.
26:08
Caffeine is a little bit of that, but substantially more muted from from my understanding. Not an expert area of mine.
26:13
So if you were to pick one, it might be caffeine. Yeah. For most people, I probably start at caffeine and work your way up to cocaine as that happens. Um, so just
26:22
joking. Yes. Don’t don’t don’t go taking cocaine unless you’re in the 80s and having a good time. Uh, so basically
26:31
um, stimulants are on paper sometimes really cool and for many people they’re a great kind of adjunct to this process
26:38
of dying. It works pretty well. They have their downsides. Interfere with your sleep. when you’re not on them, you
26:44
get headaches and literally like physiological drug withdrawal. Um, if you’re not on enough of them in your
26:50
phase after you’re done dieting, you’re really hungry and it drives you insane. If you wake up in the evening or in the
26:56
middle of the night or in the morning too early to take stimulants yet and you’re hungry, there’s no way out for
27:02
you because the [ __ ] your anti-hunger thing is also a wakefulness thing. So, I’d say stimulants are um also in study
27:08
after study, caffeine doesn’t by itself have a very good raw thermogenic effect.
27:14
And so, if it can control your appetite for you, that’s okay. But also, your body gets used to it real fast. And so,
27:19
like coffee worked great in week one and week eight, you need like eight monsters and five coffees and the [ __ ] barely
27:24
does anything and it’s all side effects at that point. You’re like, “All right, this is unsustainable.” So, as far as supplements that work
27:30
well, I would say caffeine is a cool thing to use. Stimulants are cool in context, but they’re not this panacea that everyone should have.
27:36
Now, this might be the time to talk about modern anorctic drugs. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, um what does that mean?
27:44
Yeah. Yeah. So, an anoractic is uh means something that reduces drive to eat, food drive.
27:50
And so, anorexic drugs are drugs that reduce appetite. And so, there are a couple of classes,
27:57
there are two classes right now of anorctic drugs that work really well. Um it’s uh the so technically the third
28:05
generation GLP-1 agonists like ompic aka someide and then there’s uh the fourth
28:12
generation uh GLPGIP combined agonist and that’s uh zeppbound tzepatide. They
28:20
work amazingly well. They’re the first kinds of drugs really of their kind and mass market.
28:27
They get at the problem of hunger from a pretty root perspective compared to
28:33
caffeine for example. So their suite of side effects is much more minimal. Their
28:39
suite of side effects that improve health is substantial. Their net health improvers. If you just give them to the
28:44
random person, they’ll just get healthy over time. And it’s fascinating, isn’t it? That’s fascinating. It’s a big deal cuz usually you get drugs like that and
28:51
they’re like, “Yeah, but it’s killing you.” They’re like, “Nope, this is Oh, yeah. Well, the stimulant based drugs
28:56
have suffer from a lot of the same problems.” Here’s another really trippy thing. There are now at least a few studies that are multiple years long that show
29:03
people do not get used to GLP1s. However much hunger it made you lose in the first several weeks is exactly how
29:09
much hunger it’s going to make you lose in week number 92, which is unreal. And how fast and they, you know, um,
29:17
they work pretty fast. People will say, “Oh, well, it takes, I don’t know, what is it 46 or 48 weeks to reach peak?” Or
29:24
there’s multiple um inflection points that an individual could begin to lose weight. But I mean,
29:30
we see it in practice by, you know, four weeks into I mean,
29:35
they’re losing weight whether it’s 24 weeks in, they’ve lost a substantial
29:41
amount of weight. I think it’s very individual um whether it’s 13% or 22%.
29:47
So I can speak to that with some detail. Most people will feel an anorctic effect within several hours of administration
29:53
of the drug. Much of it’s subcutaneous once weekly. So within several hours, like you may have an idea that you’re
30:00
going to eat a lot of food. You put the typical amount of food on your plate. Halfway through you’re like, “Fuck am I doing? I don’t want this anymore.” Yeah.
30:06
Weird. Right. And so it kind of hits right away, more or less. And then um these drugs have
30:12
very long half lives that are measured in a week or longer. And so you take it once a week which means if you run the
30:18
math a lot of for example simaglletide reaches its peak at any given small like
30:24
any given dose you start let’s say 0.5 milligrams per week it reaches its peak
30:29
effect in your blood five weeks later even if you don’t add anything it’s just like once a week you take.5 milligrams
30:36
and the dose in your blood goes up upup upup upup upup upup upup upup upup upup upup upup upup upup upup upup upup upup upup upup upup upup upup upup upup upup upup upup upup upup upup. So, one of the big take-home points from this is if you
30:42
have an amount of sagllet you’re taking and you just started taking it and you’re like, I don’t really feel a lot of the hunger effects, be easy. Just
30:49
stay on it for a few weeks. After a few weeks, you’re going to be like, holy [ __ ] thank god I didn’t have my dose cuz that would have caught up to you big
30:55
time. And then it takes weeks for it to go back down. Be sick and nauseous, throwing up. You could be um the side effects definitely
31:02
if you increase a dose too fast or uh not gnarly. And a lot of times like people will get on social media and blame the
31:09
drug like what didn’t work for me made me throw up. Like how much did you take Betty? And she’s I don’t know like the whole thing like oh my god this unreal
31:15
powerful drug. So for most people they’re not going to need that much. And then it’s really kind of a turn dial
31:20
for hunger. The more drug you take the less your hunger is and then you just like lose as much weight as not you want but
31:27
pretty close more or less. I mean, as long as you can tolerate the side effects and big time, if your diet and
31:33
lifestyle comport well with the drug. One of the things about these drugs is if you give yourself high palatable
31:39
foods that are also high in fat, then you’re able to like outrun the drug at the mouth and brain and eyes level.
31:46
You’re like cookies, and then your stomach’s like two middle fingers and up it goes or you feel
31:52
really sick or you all sorts of both holes situation.
31:57
uh and so it’s really a big mistake to do that. So the best diet you can have for these drugs is a healthy diet,
32:04
relatively low in fat but low in calories and high in healthy food so
32:09
that you never have to run into this problem of tolerating the drug poorly. Uh we have a friend that has been taking
32:15
these drugs and she’s completely transformed her body and she had what we lovingly call the macaroni and cheese
32:21
incident. She’s a few weeks into the drug. She was at like a family gathering and they’re like, “Oh, mac and cheese.” She took the right kind of portion a
32:27
little bit of it and she was like nope bathroom the body’s like nope too much fat and so if you manage your diet
32:33
properly and you take these drugs um the primary way in which they work is they they’re anorexics they reduce food drive
32:41
and they do all kinds of really awesome things for your health including mental uh uh side effects. They actually make you less prone to every kind of
32:47
addictive behavior they’ve studied so far. We see that all the time in practice. Yeah. individuals that are interested in
32:53
alcohol seem to be no longer interested in alcohol, cigarettes, that whole thing, anything. Yeah. Yeah. It’s a fascinating. Yeah.
33:00
And so these drugs are not mandatory. You can lose tons of weight and get super healthy without them. But I would say that in the modern context with the
33:06
evidence that we have, they’re definitely like a tool on the in the toolbox. And if you’ve really been struggling without them, I would say
33:13
going to talk to your primary healthcare provider about them is a real smart idea. Absolutely agree. You know those people
33:18
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33:23
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purchase of AGZ. Which supplements have the best evidence? Give me your top
34:33
three. And I also have a a few uh statements that are I need a yes or no answer which going to be very difficult
34:40
for you. Um try to box me in. Oh yeah. Listen. Okay. So my Mount Rushmore of
34:46
supplements is not going to like thrill anybody because it’s going to be stuff that everybody’s aware of. Uh number one
34:51
is creatine monohydrate. Uh I I give me the dose. Five grams per day. Do you know that 12 for brain health?
34:57
They’re looking. So there was so for muscle five grams per day was saturate. There was a recent study that showed an acute 30 gram dose
35:03
actually improved uh cognitive function. This guy I can never pull. Can you imagine? I would say that um can you
35:12
imagine arguing with you? You know like um just you know I’m so excited
35:17
I can pull up some very excited um to chat with your your current beautiful lady but I would just
35:23
not want to argue with you. It would just be like, “Well, that time uh in 2000 my brain doesn’t work that way at
35:30
5:17 and 30 seconds p.m. Oh, you’re right. This is I already know this. Wait, I am going to call you out. Nobody
35:36
knows this about Lane. He is a freak when it comes to scientific literature and numbers.” An
35:41
like ridiculous if I’m like Lane. Um so, uh I would love
35:47
for you to come to Houston on September 22nd. Um, we’re planning on having dinner with
35:54
everybody this day. In one ear and out the other. Hey, what about that event?
35:59
This guy, you give him a date or something else. Anything with numbers outside of
36:05
Y academics, education, or money, forget it. Yeah. Um, there. Did anyone know that about you?
36:12
Probably not. Uh, my girl never knows. Okay. Well, yes, of course. does cuz she I think it actually gave her like a a
36:18
hard time for a while because she was kind of like like I would I struggle with dates,
36:24
times, uh recalling certain things in conversation. Yes. And she’d be like, “How can you like
36:30
this?” Yes. It’s called manrain. Yeah. Manrain. Yes. Man, so I don’t want to deteriorate, but yes, we have to close
36:35
this out because people do not know this about you. No. So, and and I I never actually realized like that. I just thought
36:43
studywise that that’s how people work. No. And layman uh last year we were all at an event and he goes, “Yeah, I’ve
36:48
never met anybody who could just I just like the bane of my between that and your skin. It’s a bane of my existence.”
36:54
So yeah. Um I I I don’t know why I got that way. I just had a photographic
37:01
memory when it came to studies and you know it just kind of worked out. Creatine.
37:06
So five grams five for muscle, 30 grams acutely for um
37:12
work. So I don’t So I don’t actually know that. Um I forget you got one. You got
37:18
one. Um now the the question I would have is okay would you get the same benefits if
37:24
you just like took that five gram maintenance dose and over time you would get there. Perhaps the 30 gram dose is
37:30
just a saturating effect early on. Would make sense. Who knows? Hopefully that that cognitive
37:35
research is going to expand more. But I honestly have a really people like well do I need creatin?
37:41
No, you don’t need it. But I have a hard time making an argument against taking it to be honest.
37:46
Do you know the you know how much creatine you would get in a um cooked
37:51
steak? Yes. One pound. A pound. A pound. You get about half a gram of bioavailable creatine. You I mean so that would be what? Two
38:00
and a half pounds of Wait, you would have to eat five to get two and a half grams. Yeah. Yeah.
38:05
No thanks. Yeah, it’s it’s a little bit more that I I think I worked out the math because um everybody wants
38:11
there’s a claim from the carnivore community that all you need to do is eat red meat and I’m like, “Oh, well, you
38:16
need to eat about 7 and 12 pounds of red meat.” Well, it does make cooking much easier and menu choices. What is your next What
38:23
is your next supplement? Let me finish with creatine. I’m just trying to keep you on track. You don’t you don’t need to load. If you
38:28
have gastrointestinal side effects from it, split it into two two and a half gram doses. um that will help with the
38:34
gastrointestinal discomfort. Also, any form of creatin other than monohydrate,
38:39
in my opinion, is a waste of money. Um all the studies looking at different forms of creatin. Creatin monohydrate
38:46
performs just as well or better, and it’s the cheapest version. So, get that.
38:51
If you want to go a little bit more bougie, get the micronized version. It’s more soluble, mixes up better. Next one,
38:57
caffeine. The original neutropic, the original cognitive enhancer. I’ll take it. very consistently show
39:03
caffeine uh will uh it actually increases BMR slightly may improve fat
39:10
loss just a little bit. um cognitive uh like task recall stuff people are better
39:16
at performance people get a little bit better at um how much what’s the kind of dose
39:21
uh so if you want like strength and power stuff you got to get like three to
39:28
six milligrams per kilogram so pretty high dose if you’re looking at like anti- fatigue
39:34
cognitive stuff probably around like 100 to 200 milligrams of caffeine
39:40
so basically It’s how crazy do you want to feel? Yeah. So, for me, as a super ADHD
39:48
person, I’m kind of a caffeine junkie. Um, you know, I I I’ll have about 500 milligrams of caffeine before I train,
39:55
but I’m also like, you know, if you’re ADHD, stimulants don’t affect you the same way. I just that doesn’t make me
40:01
like it just makes me very focused. Um, so I like caffeine. Um, obviously
40:08
there’s the, you know, the the impact on sleep. Again, no solutions, only trade-offs. If you are someone who
40:18
trains later in the day, the halflife of caffeine is 6 hours. You’re probably like, let’s say you’re
40:23
going to train at like 5:00 p.m. You’re probably better off having your caffeine dose like maybe like 3 hours
40:30
earlier. And that way, you know, after 6 hours, at least half of it’s out of your
40:35
system. And some people are fast metabolizers and some people are slow. There’s some genetic variance. I think
40:41
it’s COOMT. It’s just a snip. But again, that’s one snip. So some people, you know, caffeine affects them. Other
40:48
people they’re able to metabolize it very fast. Yeah. And again, look, again, when we do studies, we report averages. If you know
40:53
that you’re somebody who gets really jittery of caffeine intake, you know, take in the amount of caffeine that you feel like you can tolerate.
41:00
Um, and then whey protein. So, whey protein just Why whey as opposed to something else?
41:07
Well, one, it’s it tastes good. Um, even like unflavored whey actually has like a
41:14
little bit of sweetness to it. It’s easy to flavor. It mixes up well. The consistency is good. Um, it’s not super
41:21
expensive and it’s very high in lucine. So, lucine, what’s that? So, leucine is the amino acid
41:27
responsible for triggering muscle protein synthesis. Now I would consider whey protein of the
41:34
popular proteins out there the highest quality protein very bioavailable great pedicaus pedicaus is an amino acid score
41:41
corrected for digestibility um that kind of assesses like does it supply all the essential amino acids and
41:48
whey does and it’s very high in the branch chains very high in leucine what about the alphalact albumin and
41:54
lactopherin are those imunogabbulins I mean I know that they’re highly
42:00
available and present in the concentrate the whole way. What about the the whey
42:07
isolate? Does that also have um alphalactylbumin lactopherin which are again immunogloabbulins that are good
42:12
for gastrointestinal health and immunity? So potentially good for immunity and
42:19
gastrointestinal. Yeah. So, what I’ll tell people is whey concentrate has those and it’s less
42:25
expensive usually a little bit higher in carbohydrate, higher in lactose, uh
42:30
higher in fat as a weight concentrate, but you’re getting some of those other things that we’re talking about that are
42:36
are maybe beneficial for like gut health, immunity, those sorts of things. Whey isolate,
42:42
less of those, but also virtually devoid of lactose. Um, very low in
42:48
carbohydrate, very low in fat. So, it really just depends. A lot of people have difficulty tolerating a straightway
42:54
concentrate. Oh, yeah. Um, a lot of the most a lot of people can tolerate like a blend. So, like kind
43:01
of an isolate concentrate blend. And do you like that over a rice pea blend for exactly those reasons? I mean,
43:07
I am biased. I do like whey isolate over that because rice pea blend, I mean,
43:12
yeah, there are probably other bioactive compounds that we just don’t know. But I think whey we have a pretty
43:19
good understanding of what’s in it. I I like whey isolate and that’s what my company Atwork nutrition sells as a
43:26
protein because I wanted something that most people could take in. So a isolate. It’s very low carb, very low fat. It
43:32
still tastes good. I wouldn’t know because you haven’t sent me any. I mean,
43:37
look, he’s looking over his shoulder. All you got to do, ask and you shall receive. Ask and you shall receive. Um,
43:44
so I I like a whey isolate just because I know most people are going to be able to
43:50
tolerate it. There are some people who do have are really sensitive to the lactalumins and
43:56
whey that still don’t tolerate a whey isolate. Very small percentage of the population
44:02
for them. You can do away hydraysate. uh now they they’re increasing in levels of
44:07
cost like concentrate is the cheapest way isolates
44:12
a little more expensive way hydraysate is more expensive hydraysate is enzyatically digested so those those
44:19
polyeptide chains get chopped up with enzymes so that will almost I can’t
44:25
imagine somebody not being able to tolerate away hydraysate the downside is it’s more expensive and it doesn’t taste as good
44:31
but if you want a good high quality whey and you’re somebody who you know you get a lot of the gastrointestinal discomfort
44:36
with whey isolate or whey concentrate hydraulysate would be an option. Oh. Oh, sorry. It’s time to uh record an
44:43
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course their gummies which are incredible. Can someone just lose body fat or do you think um there must be
46:14
some lean mass lost? Is there a way to do it? Under some conditions, you can actually gain lean mass while you lose
46:20
fat, but the the condition has to be you’re pretty new to training um or you’re not new to training, but you’re
46:26
new to significant quantities of anabolic steroids. Um there are a few
46:32
other conditions, but generally speaking, when already lean people lose weight, they you lose some combination
46:38
of fat and muscle. When people who aren’t exercised, who they haven’t really trained and they haven’t lifted
46:44
weights much, and their diet is like just whatever they feel like, when they start getting a healthy diet, higher in
46:50
protein, and they start lifting weights, which we covered on your la my last appearance here on the show, then they
46:56
can actually gain muscle and lose fat at the same time for months and months and months and months and months, if not
47:02
years. But for people that are already pretty lean or people who already lift weights, um yeah, there’s going to be
47:10
some combination of muscle and fat. Now, how would you define pretty lean? So, let’s say someone was um a overweight
47:20
female who is now tracked her calories for two weeks. She has determined what
47:26
her maintenance calorie is. Let’s say it’s 1,800. and she decides to decrease
47:31
her calories by 350 500. So, she’s eating what is that? Um, 1300 calories.
47:39
Okay. Um, do you account for activity or that’s the number?
47:46
The activity question is a little bit of a different question. Okay. Well, then I I shouldn’t go there yet. Sure. Sure. We can we can definitely
47:51
handle it whenever you like. Um, so how do we determine who’s fat or not
47:58
fat, who’s lean? I’d say the easiest test in the real world is like someone’s wearing clothes and you just come up to
48:03
someone else, you’re like, “Is she fat or not?” It’s really straightforward. If you at least look like an up and down shape, you’re good. If there’s stuff
48:10
coming off the sides and the front and the back and the the whole thing, you’re fat. Now, it’s ruthlessly unscientific
48:16
and quite discourteous to say to someone, you would never tell someone something like that. But it’s one of
48:21
those things. You look at documentaries from the 1950s, how many people were fat? None. But how do you know? I mean, they’re
48:27
just clothes, right? I that’s But yeah, that’s what I mean by generally lean. Like no one would no one would look at
48:32
you and be like that’s definitely a fat person, right? So if we like take a little walk, no offense, Houston, Texas, the fatometer is going to be at the
48:39
grocery store like fat fat fat fat. I mean, you sure you don’t think that 600lb lady’s mostly lean body mass? No.
48:45
Yes, I would I would not say that. So people who are of generally like uh close enough within 15 lbs of their
48:52
insurance table adjusted body weight, you can consider them fairly lean and without some rigorous weight training
48:58
and very perfectionist diet, they’re going to typically experience significant amount of muscle loss. People who are significantly more
49:04
overfat may uh lose less muscle, but also a lot of that is because they start
49:10
being more physically active as they lose the weight. So that’s a big deal as well. Um, if both groups of people start
49:16
weight training when they start losing weight, then they just build muscle and lose fat at the same time. And that’s a really, really big deal. As a matter of
49:21
fact, on that note of weight loss, if you don’t lift weights and you start losing weight, you do lose significant
49:28
amounts of muscle. And it doesn’t actually matter where your protein is. We think I mean yes protein
49:34
has a protein sparing effect but without activity without tough without without muscular specific
49:41
training to get more jacked it’s actually protein doesn’t have a terribly protein sparing effect.
49:46
That’s right. Like you can’t like eat 300 gram of protein up to like getting jacked if you don’t lift weights. It actually just
49:51
gets burned and excreted and all that whole thing. So you’re totally correct about that.
49:57
So it it the lifting weights thing does matter. But a little while back, um, one
50:02
of the new anorctic drugs, Ompic got in a little bit of hot water cuz people were like, “Oh, like it’s causing people
50:07
lots of muscle mass loss.” It was true, but it was no more muscle mass loss than you would expect with people who lost
50:12
like 50 [ __ ] pounds in a year. It’s just going to be a lot of muscle loss. It’s not especially a thing that GLP
50:18
ones even do. And there’s actually a new review that came out that was like exactly what we’d expect if you just lost a lot of weight. thing is those
50:23
people never lost that much muscle because they never lost that much weight because they and I’ve got all great sorts of great things to say about the
50:29
anoractic drugs whenever they they do they do have a big role to play in all that. So I want to um finish covering the
50:35
macronutrients, how you would dose dietary protein, how you would think about dosing carbohydrates and how you
50:41
would dose fat and if there is a particular distribution that you would use. Sure. Sure.
50:47
I am coming to you Dr. Mike and I want to lose weight.
50:52
From where? In any case, let’s pretend you’re just enormous. Like not just
50:58
overweight, but like offensively enormous. Are you pretending? Um,
51:03
right now. Oh, yeah. Well, I was looking at Crystal. Stop checking out my wife. I mean, she’s the best. By the way, um,
51:09
she is going to be another podcast guest here. Thank you, Andrew Coats. I now put two and two together. I man.
51:16
So there are two ways to go about it for macros.
51:23
One way is to use the expanded fitness approach which includes macros that are
51:31
not ultra specific because the people who are using this
51:36
they want a diet that they can easily do. It does not require a huge departure
51:41
from normal eating habits. For those people, I would say take your
51:47
body weight in pounds and multiply it by like 6 60%. So if you weigh 200 lb, anything
51:56
at close to at or over 120 gram of protein per day is more than enough to
52:04
provide a great amount of protein for almost every need that you have. So wait, so say that again. So it’s 60%
52:10
of your body weight. So instead of gram per pound, it’s 6 g per pound for someone who’s wanting to lose weight. Correct. And that is more than enough
52:17
protein to meet all of your needs. If you begin to resistance train, it’s more than enough protein for most people’s goals. It’ll largely prevent muscle mass
52:24
loss and actually um get some accretion going. So that’s really good stuff. And is that roughly 1.6 grams per kg? Is
52:32
that how that [ __ ] I don’t know about America. Damn it. We are okay. I thought
52:38
Well, we’re in Texas, so I don’t know. You never know. That belongs to America. Don’t mess with
52:43
Texas, man. So, um 66
52:49
60% of your body weight. Yeah. In pounds, right? Which is not a lot. And so, but that is the
52:57
scientifically honest answer to how much protein we probably really need need with a capital N, especially people that
53:04
aren’t like trying to optimize hardcore. That’s an important point. if you’re not
53:09
necessarily fully trying to optimize, you just want to dip your toe in and get some great results, that’s totally cool
53:14
because a lot of people get that gram per pound thing, which is what I use. It’s the number I’m going to say next. That’s the optimization number. So, if
53:21
you weigh 200 lb, it’s roughly 200 grams of protein a day. But even if they’re trying to lose, if they’re trying to lose weight from 200,
53:27
you would still say meet the 200 or would you say meet their goal body weight?
53:33
Um, there’s a few ways to go about that. One is a protein has a decent
53:39
anti-hunger effect and so if you actually eat 200 even though you don’t need it, it can be pretty decent. Um the
53:45
goal body weight is totally fine. You can scale it to lean body mass which also works just fine. Yes, you
53:52
have to get your body fat measured. Who knows? Yeah. So you’re saying that there are multiple ways to do something, right?
53:57
For sure. But any answer between taking your body weight and multiplying it by pretty close to half6
54:04
all the way up to a gram per pound per day is a lot of really good answers in there. And it’s nothing is if someone was
54:11
sitting next to me on the airplane. First of all, it would be highly inconvenience cuz my arms I mean you just
54:16
I feel bad for that person. You’re just kind of on their seat. You know, I try I really I try to I get the seat belt going and I put my hands
54:22
in it. I really try to stay out of people’s ways. I did not pay for that side of the seat. But um if they told
54:27
me, listen, you know, like I weigh 200 lbs and I’m really trying to get fit. I have like 160 grams of protein a day. Is
54:34
that like too little? Absolutely not. You’re doing great. Now, if you want to step on stage, Mr. Olympia, you might
54:39
have a different goal. If you want to you’re optimized, super physique, you’re already lean and jacked, you might need
54:44
more protein. If you’re significantly older, etc., etc., etc., you might need more. for most people, especially like
54:50
the our hypothetical female audience uh for this podcast, 6 all the way to a gram is totally fine.
54:57
So that’s for protein. Do you care the kind of protein? If you go to get your protein in a
55:03
really wacky way, yes, if you eat mostly lean uh meats, animal products, and lean
55:09
vegan products that are complete protein sources are complimentary, no big deal. But if you’re counting mostly protein
55:16
from bread and just peas by themselves, you’re going to run into some problems. Yeah. So protein quality is a thing
55:21
that’s actually in a later part of the discussion of like where the food comes from. Yeah. Yeah. So macros first then but that was a great question.
55:27
For carbs and fats, there’s a very distinct story for athletic performance and optimization of hypertrophy and all
55:34
this stuff. And that story is kind of like meet your needs for fats and then the rest should probably come more from
55:40
carbohydrates than fat. Those what is the need? What is the needs for fat? So for for males probably and females as
55:47
well, you just generally have two class of need. One is the essential fatty acids of which you need like a total of
55:53
two grams per day. That’s what you need need to like stay alive and well. And then there is a need that comes from
56:00
hormone optimization, testosterone, etc. And that number is significantly higher.
56:06
That number is measured more in the 20 to 30 to 40% of your calories per day.
56:12
Um, many people can do a broad range of that. Some people really prefer one or the other. Another consideration for how
56:18
many fats you eat is, this is kind of the main point of the carbs versus fats, is if you’re just trying to lose some
56:24
goddamn weight and get a little leaner and get a little healthier, maybe a lot leaner and healthier,
56:29
how much carbohydrate versus fat you have, as long as you’re meeting the technically speaking two grams of EPA
56:35
and DHA fats per day, the rest is down to very, very nuanced specifics and it
56:42
just doesn’t matter that much. So, if someone says, you know, I have 20 grams total of fat per day, but I do have
56:48
essential fat supplement. I feel great. Best time of my life. All the veggies and rice I can eat. I love it. I’m
56:54
losing weight. You won’t hear me say a damn thing. But if someone says, “Look, I’m trying the low low fat, high carb,
57:03
Mr. Twinkie. That’s what I call him.” Mhm. Is a reference to my genitals, by the way. Oh, I have no idea.
57:08
He doesn’t work anymore. I go have like totally lost an interest to live. I’m depressed all the time. Like, okay,
57:15
you’re eating too few fats. Your testosterone’s in the gutter. You need to eat more fats. But a big one is
57:20
preference and what works in your daily diet. So, if you’re the kind of person
57:26
that likes salmon and steak, um, whole eggs, which are great healthy foods, you
57:33
should probably eat a little bit fewer carbohydrates and more fats. Same calories. protein is already squared
57:39
away, but more fats, fewer carbs. If you’re the kind of protein, the kind of protein, the kind of person that is
57:46
super cool with higher carb, you’re not really into fats, nothing in your diet really, you don’t crave fats, you can
57:52
dunk the fats pretty low and keep that carbs much higher. But for carbs, the
57:57
low end is considered something like, oh, I don’t know, 10 to 30 grams of carbs per day,
58:04
predominantly from green vegetables because they have a lot of fiber and nutrients in them. Very low.
58:10
That’s low. I wouldn’t recommend that as a first principles thing, but there are a lot of keto people and carnivore people
58:16
eating that and a little less. And at least in the medium term, they get lean,
58:22
they’re very healthy, they love their lifestyle, and all is well. So, there’s a big broad range of carbs
58:28
and fats. As long as the calories are held constant, you got your protein squared away. Plus or minus carbs and
58:34
fats is mostly um try it, see how you feel best. Some people fats give them a
58:40
lot of fullness through the day. Are you are you a higher fat or higher carb person? I haven’t I haven’t eaten to preference
58:46
in a generation. Interesting. What is your just out of curiosity? I’m currently on about uh 25 gram of fat
58:53
per day. Okay. So, you’re a lower fat person. I mean, I’m not because I hate it, but I
58:58
I have to do it for bodybuilding, but I’m not the demographic for this talk. Holy [ __ ]
59:04
But it’s interesting. You You’re right. You might not be the demographic for this talk, but I’m telling you that I’ve
59:10
been doing this for a long time and the knowledge that your demographic has
59:16
Mhm. for body composition is second to none.
59:21
Yeah. I know. Like the bodybuilders kind of figured out how this all works. Hydration isn’t just about drinking Coke
59:28
Zero or other sugar-free sweetened beverages like Red Bull. Now, I’m saying this for a friend. Or it’s not even about drinking more water. It’s about
59:34
keeping the right balance of electrolytes and fluids. During life’s most demanding season, like, I don’t
59:40
know, parenting, maybe pregnancy or postpartum, your body is going through
59:46
massive changes. blood volume, increases hormones shift, breastfeeding demands, you know, all those things. All of these
59:52
life transitions, you probably need more and better hydration, and you need electrolytes like sodium, magnesium, and
59:59
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Gogggins would say, stay hard. In terms of weight loss, there are two things that are required for recmping body. And
1:01:06
I’m not talking about additional anabolic agents and I’m not talking about additional GLP-1 or um GIP
1:01:13
medications. It is resistance training. And this is the work that Don did. You know, some of the earlier studies again
1:01:18
thinking ahead resistance training and maintaining and or increasing dietary
1:01:24
protein from the RDA of8 gram per kg to 1.6 g per kg. So doubling the RDA. Yeah,
1:01:31
that seems to be within the literature just the way to make it happen. If I
1:01:37
were to ask you, how do you suggest someone think about structuring a diet who is a post-menopausal woman? She is,
1:01:45
I don’t know, 55 hitting the gym. You know, we should I want to make sure we talk about exercise. Um, you know, what
1:01:51
does her exercise plan look like? And how is she designing a diet? Again, I do think that you should talk about carbon.
1:01:58
um because you there is a way to make it uh extremely easy. So what are the
1:02:04
macronutrients and how would you think about it and then what are the practical things? Should they use an app? Should
1:02:10
they use something like Lumen? Should they use I just want to throw that in there. Should they use um I don’t know X
1:02:16
Y and Z. How do you think about it? So first off there are many paths to Rome. There’s
1:02:23
obviously people who have and I always tell people if you need to debunk any of this stuff, you just look around people
1:02:29
like for example, well, you can’t lose weight if you’re eating uh refined carbohydrates or high carb diet. Okay,
1:02:34
what about Professor Mark Hobb who lost 27 pounds doing a Twinkie diet. Like he was eating 1,800 calories a day, but he
1:02:42
mostly ate stuff from 7-Eleven in protein powder. Like that’s what he ate, right? Interesting. Yeah. So, so again, we we just have so many
1:02:49
examples of and people, you know, on the plant-based side, you’ll have people say, well, you know, if you’re eating a
1:02:54
lot of fat, it gets stored as fat. You can’t lose fat. Well, how many examples of low carb diets do we have? Like,
1:03:00
it works. Are many passed around. What works is finding something that you can adhere to. Now, when it comes to the
1:03:06
actual nuts and bolts of structuring a diet, the number one most important thing is to get your energy intake
1:03:14
correct. Meaning if you want to lose fat, you have to consume less energy than you expend. Now, let me just do a
1:03:22
couple of quick caveats on that because I know there are people say, “Well, I know I was in a a calorie deficit. I didn’t lose weight.” No, you if you if
1:03:31
you ate the so everything we eat is a carbon backbone structure, right? You
1:03:38
ate those carbons, they have to go somewhere, okay? And if you got if you
1:03:44
gained body fat, your body did not create carbons out of nowhere. They came
1:03:50
from somewhere. Okay? So, and we’re very well accounting for
1:03:56
those. So, we have to get the energy intake right. Now, what is that? Now,
1:04:03
there there are variances and whatnot, but essentially like you’re trying to find somebody’s daily energy
1:04:08
expenditure. This is you brought up carbon. is kind of what the app does when it’s originally like asking you
1:04:14
questions and whatnot and it’s usually an equation out there to kind of determine your BMR and then we’re using
1:04:20
a questionnaire to determine your physical activity and then it’s kind of taking a stab at it you know now you may
1:04:26
get it wrong it may be wrong right like you you might overestimate underestimate for I would say 60 to 70% of people it’s
1:04:33
going to be pretty accurate that’s how you know bell curves work right
1:04:38
but then you adjust based on how you respond. Okay, let me back up real quick.
1:04:45
I Yeah, we want nuts and bolts. I want to know how many how are we doing? Yeah. Are we thinking about protein in a percentage?
1:04:50
And this is exactly how the app works on the back end in the algorithm. And the reason I’m bringing up Carbon is
1:04:56
number one, um I think it’s amazing and I may or may not have just recently accepted a position as director of
1:05:03
women’s health. Very excited about that. Um shout out to Mike who’s in Hawaii
1:05:08
right now. But also, how do we make things easy for people? And also, but
1:05:13
before we talk about carbon, I need you to tell me how many grams of how are we think about protein
1:05:19
as a percentage, which no, we are probably thinking about it in terms of grams. I know where you come from. I
1:05:25
know the school of thought. Are we thinking about a baseline number? So, if the current RDA is 130 grams of
1:05:31
carbohydrates, does everybody get that off the bat or um do they have to earn that increase in
1:05:37
carb? You know, I think about Shane, my husband, who’s running Chicago marathon, right? If we, you know, we have to account for that. And then the fat, where do you
1:05:44
how do someone listening at home who doesn’t have carbon yet. Mhm. What are they going to do? So, again, depending on your goal, if
1:05:52
your goal is fat loss, Yeah. we’ll just call it fat loss. Fat loss while
1:05:58
muscle retain muscle maintenance. So, you get your you get your let’s just say you get your calories right. Okay.
1:06:04
So you have to get the right amount of energy to lose fat. An energy deficit.
1:06:11
The next step when I construct a diet and this is how the app works as well in the back end is okay we have the amount of calories that we think is going to be
1:06:18
reasonable for somebody to lose fat. Then we set what is the deficit do you think um is
1:06:24
it a 10% deficit? How do you begin to think about it? It just depends on like again it just depends on how quickly somebody wants to
1:06:31
try and lose weight or fat. Um and this is somewhat of an experiment. It’s interesting because you are um an
1:06:37
evidence-based scientist and even in evidence-based practices, we still have
1:06:43
to adjust and and kind of go with I mean there is individuality no matter how you
1:06:48
look at it and the randomized control trials are um you know broadly speaking hopefully through populations.
1:06:54
Yeah. I think people um again I think everybody should have to take a basic statistics course because I think people
1:07:01
have a a hard time understanding like the concept of variance and whatnot. So
1:07:07
if we have calories set, the next thing we’re going to set is protein because it’s the most important macronutrient for the reasons we talked
1:07:13
about thermic effect to food, satiety, um, body composition. And so I set that as a gram per kilo or
1:07:22
gram per pound of lean mass. See, you and I are different here. Yeah.
1:07:27
I don’t know my lean mass. Well, so again, this is Matt producer, what’s your lean mass?
1:07:34
Why are you trying to get your something out of your manb bag? So, the reason I the reason I say lean
1:07:39
mass is because if you have somebody who’s very obese, it’s really going to overestimate protein if you’re giving it
1:07:46
based on their their actual body mass. But again, a lot of people don’t know their lean mass like you said, which is
1:07:51
why in in carbon when they’re signing up, there’s questions um if you don’t have like an actual body fat
1:07:57
measurement, then there’s some questions about waist circumference and whatnot. We we make a we make an estimation of
1:08:03
what your your body fat is and from your body fat and your total weight, we can determine your approximate lean mass.
1:08:08
People get so hung up on this. It’s it’s not a big deal if we’re slightly off, right? So, we’re
1:08:15
like ideal body weight. Ideal body weight somebody could do as well. Um, so we’re looking at like
1:08:22
around 2 g per kilo of lean mass up to 3
1:08:27
g per kilo of lean mass is what the app will end up recommending. Uh, and that’s typically what I recommended as well.
1:08:33
Now, 3 g per kilo lean mass might sound like a lot, but when you consider if you if you’re not doing total body mass, it
1:08:41
winds up around probably 2.2 to 2.4 four grams per kilogram of total body mass
1:08:46
for somebody with an average body fat, you know, on average. Um, so that’s on the upper end, but again, I like
1:08:52
protein, but again, in the app, you can adjust within a certain range if you
1:08:58
want to. So, once you’ve got calories set, once you’ve got protein set, again,
1:09:03
I like around 2 g per kilogram of lean mass of lean mass, which is interesting. I’m trying to think about what that would
1:09:08
be. So if someone was So if someone was 52 kilograms and that’s their total body
1:09:15
weight, you think is this someone’s named Gabrielle Lion? No, I’m smaller than that.
1:09:20
Yeah, kind of. But I’m I think I’m actually smaller than 52 kilograms. You know how much if I’mund I don’t know,
1:09:26
maybe buck 10 if I’m lucky. How much how many grams of protein would that be?
1:09:32
Right around 100 to 110, you know. Okay. So I probably eat that. If you’re 110 and you’re pretty darn lean, my
1:09:40
guess is your body fat is somewhere around 12 13% body fat. Um, probably not that high, but should be.
1:09:46
Okay, 10%. Um, just kidding. You know, you’re looking at about 100 pounds of lean mass, that’s about 45
1:09:52
kilos. You double that, 99 about 100 grams of protein, right? Um, so our app would put you anywhere
1:10:00
from like 100 to 150 grams of protein depending on your personal preference, right? Um, and so once you’ve got the
1:10:09
protein number set, we have to deduct those calories out of your total calorie goal. And then you have carbs and fat
1:10:15
left. And so what I did as a coach and what the app does is kind of say, what
1:10:22
do you what kind of dietary preference do you have? Do you prefer a little more fat? Do you prefer a little more carb?
1:10:28
Do you like a balanced diet? Are you plant-based? Are you ketogenic? And you can pick any of those things. and it
1:10:35
will put you and will, you know, distribute the carbohydrates and fats appropriately. Is there a minimum amount of carbohydrates that you seem to like for
1:10:42
an athletic person? I mean, it depends on the athletic
1:10:47
event. If we’re talking about somebody doing like actual anorobic stuff, for a lifter, let’s say for someone who
1:10:53
is lifting, doing resistance training um for hypertrophy three days a week, but they’re just doing it to maintain
1:11:00
skeletal muscle mass. What are you thinking? Do you care? I’ll give you the straight down the line scientific answer
1:11:05
and then I’ll give you the objective. I’m trying to pin him here with true syrup, I guess. Yes. Yes. So, the straight down the line
1:11:11
scientific answer is it doesn’t seem to matter that much. It doesn’t um
1:11:17
carbohydrate to fat. There are some individual studies that showed less lean mass acruel on a ketogenic diet versus a
1:11:24
non- ketogenic diet equated in protein. But there was also a recent meta analysis um showing that there really
1:11:29
wasn’t a difference between high carb, low carb with protein equated. I I think
1:11:35
if you inject me with truth serum, I think a little bit of carbohydrate is probably better just because even though
1:11:42
carbohydrate and insulin is not anabolic in the physiological range, it is anti catabolic. It does inhibit protein
1:11:48
degradation. And there was actually a study from Typton showing that post exercise when they gave carbohydrate
1:11:55
with protein or it might have been with amino acids that the net protein balance was more positive when they gave it with
1:12:01
carbohydrate. You can still make body composition improvements by just being consistent and and again you can change it for if
1:12:09
someone is moderately trained or more advanced. You would increase the either
1:12:14
volume or intensity. Which would you think is more important for body composition changes, specifically
1:12:20
fat loss? Yeah, you know what? I would have to look at training age first. So, if someone is new to training, if I’m
1:12:27
coming in with an intensity approach, in my opinion, most people are not going to be able to stabilize and maintain. I
1:12:34
mean, if I had my wish out of it, I mean, I would balance out between some volume work and dropping down volume and
1:12:41
raising intensity. I think it is it’s been my approach my entire career. I will set my training up into different
1:12:48
blocks blocks of like uh two months right where and is that how any everyone should do
1:12:53
it whether they’re this is just this is just how I this is how I do it. So I’ll set up like January and February will be
1:12:59
the same program but I’ll have progressions every two weeks and the exercises will change in February and
1:13:04
then March will come. You have hockey. Yeah. Yeah. I mean listen I I got to pay attention like during I’m a I’m a hack
1:13:10
hockey player by the way. be like be be clear, but if you’re playing 3 4 days a week, um you know, you want to be careful about how you load the spine.
1:13:16
You want to be careful about specific movements that you’re doing. Like your body is could potentially, you know, uh
1:13:22
it could take a toll on your on your body. So, I think exercise selection is important and I think is intensity is
1:13:28
important when you’re playing that much. And um then when you scale off, I think it’s a time to put your foot on the gas
1:13:34
in certain areas and maybe start focusing on a little more strength and power and you can get a little bit more aggressive with certain things. But all
1:13:39
throughout the year for for me it’s like those workouts start with that practice portion and um that’s what allows me to
1:13:45
feel very um floedst flossed. I I I I like that term. I don’t like it’s just it’s a fun term to use
1:13:51
and it’s not it’s not a scientific term. Let’s be very clear here. But it just feel more feel more flossed and feel
1:13:57
more loose and feel more recovered. The pull for the beginner. What are the best pull movements that again, you
1:14:03
know, you and I talk, we’re really training for longevity even and everybody should, whether they’re a
1:14:09
military operator or an actor. It’s your body is your tool. Resiliency. Yeah. Exactly.
1:14:14
Y what are some of the key pulling exercises that you like? Yeah. I’ll break it down from like a
1:14:20
vertical pull or a horizontal pull. So, it’s no different than the pressing, right? Vertical pull can be your pull-up, chin up, neutral grip pull-up,
1:14:27
lap pull down, right? Like that’s your vertical pulling, right? You’re pulling high down. And then your horizontal pull
1:14:33
could be like your one- arm dumbbell row, your chest supported row, your face pull, right? Some with equipment, some
1:14:39
some with dumbbells, some with machines. It’s it’s, you know, if you have access to that equipment, I’m I’m all for you.
1:14:45
You know, have fun with your training. Also, like if you’re getting in and you’re training at home all the time and you’re bored and you’re just like, “Oh,
1:14:51
you know, Don and Gabrielle wrote me this dumbbell wrote this dumbbell program and I’m just getting bored of it.” Like, go to a gym, get some
1:14:57
variability. Like, have fun with your training. like go in there and you know don’t make it miserable like I want you
1:15:02
to enjoy it. I have a question that I don’t know the answer to and you might not know the answer to this. Probably not.
1:15:10
Uh but this is so fun having you on the podcast. Um where did these exercises come from? I
1:15:17
mean who in I mean just think about it. We create these programs and then we
1:15:22
continue them. A squat makes sense because that’s something that my kid
1:15:27
could do. But where do we where did one determine that a pull is important? I
1:15:35
mean, a pull-up would make sense, but some of these exercises, have you ever thought about who developed them or why?
1:15:40
Yeah. I I mean, and I think we have a few names for a few of the movements out there, right? But I mean, people are
1:15:46
inventing crap today and they’re just like throwing a name on it. And you say to yourself, well, obviously through
1:15:51
social media and through the reach that we have, I think these things are so much more visible and fitness now is so
1:15:57
much more accepted than it was, you know, even back in the 60s and 70s. Like that was f people who are fit. Jack
1:16:04
Lane, I’ll never forget it. Like I was um I trained with him once. You did amazing. Yeah. So he was uh he came into Gold’s
1:16:10
gym. I I want to say it was either his 90th birthday or Gold’s gym’s like 100th or 90th anniversary and they had Jack
1:16:16
Lane kind of walking into the gym and he looked at me. I was in a sleeve of shirt and he’s like, “Let’s get me on camera
1:16:22
with that kid.” So, I ended up working out with him. And, you know, he was 90 years old. He was incline pressing 55 lb
1:16:29
dumbbells. And I got to sit with him and hear his story a bit. And when he passed, I I was invited by his wife,
1:16:35
Elaine. Her name was Elaine Lain, right? And um down we went down to the Tribeca
1:16:42
uh one of the Tribeca theaters and I sat through this this documentary. I got to be honest, I was teareyed most of the
1:16:47
time because this guy people were he was like, you know, back in the day he’s like, you know, I’m mixing all these
1:16:53
fruits and vegetables in this blender and blending them together. People are like, “This guy’s crazy.” And he’s, you
1:16:58
know, pulling a barge. He’s swimming and he’s pulling this humongous barge and he’s doing all these feats. and he is
1:17:04
really one of the people that kind of set the standard and I think kind of he yeah in a way normalized like what it
1:17:11
is we all go do now moving weights and moving and I think it’s such a beautiful thing but when you turn around you look
1:17:17
at these exercises some of these exercises have been around for centuries I mean thousands of years like there have been people doing some of these
1:17:24
movements um and you know once in a while you’ll be able to find a picture
1:17:29
of a physique from a 100 years ago and you’re like oh my god like he’s obviously natty like he looks It’s amazing. Like, but um it’s it’s cool to
1:17:36
see that. It’s cool for me to see it. But nowadays, like yeah, like you look at the RDL, like it’s a hinge. Like
1:17:41
people have been hinging for ever. And suddenly someone’s like, “Oh, we’re going to call this the Romanian
1:17:47
deadlift.” Or, you know, it’s like there are movements that again have been around for a really long time.
1:17:53
Yeah. The pull-up. Like, oh wow, that’s a real scientific name. Like someone’s hanging from a bar like pull yourself up. Like we’re calling that the pull-up.
1:17:59
Like it’s probably how it literally happened. And then we just hung with these things. And then now you see all these sports scientists now um
1:18:06
researching and trying to find out other ways to do things more efficiently. But um I also what’s interesting about a lot
1:18:13
of this research is we we’ve all seen research that um have been published and
1:18:19
you know you’ve seen it then contradicted you know decades later and yes some there’s certain research papers
1:18:25
that we’ll and you even explain yeah that you’ll look at and you’re like oh this is solid but you know I also look
1:18:30
at specific experts in our field that have been doing this stuff for 20 25 30
1:18:35
35 years and they’re some of the best research experts without having things published.
1:18:40
exactly who you’re referencing. Yeah. So, for me, that’s for me that’s impressive. Like, just because a paper
1:18:48
might come out and it might say, well, there’s no evidence that mobility is helpful. Well, this guy’s been doing it
1:18:54
for 30 years and this guy now is 70 years old and he moves beautifully. My evidence is going to push myself in that
1:19:00
direction. Or sometimes it takes time for for evidence to catch up with what we know or
1:19:06
hypothesis. Mhm. The we talked about squat, push, pull
1:19:12
core exercises. Yes. Tell me how important those are for a beginner and what we should be doing
1:19:17
because I remember I went on a a Good Morning America and I called you. I’m like, Don, they want me to do exercises.
1:19:23
I’m like, do you remember this? Yes. And I was like, here’s what I’m thinking for the core exercises. I went, uh, blah
1:19:29
blah blah sit up. And you were like, uh, no. Yeah. We’re not doing a situp. So, explain to
1:19:35
us good core exercises and why. Yeah, I mean, I want to be clear, the sit-ups been around for a long time and
1:19:41
there are plenty of people that can do sit-ups and never have back issues. I’m just when I But maybe it’s not the I mean,
1:19:46
yeah. The reason why I don’t program it is because, you know, statistically, a lot of people have sore backs and a lot
1:19:51
of people are sitting in this position. They’re in this kyphotic position all day and and just adding um I think that
1:19:58
flexion, you know, under strain can be um can be detrimental, right? So, I’m a
1:20:05
I’m a huge fan of uh one arm carries or some type of as a core exercise because always core
1:20:11
exercises, we think that we’re going to be laying on our back doing situps or, you know, Matt over there doing flutter
1:20:18
kicks, but no. Some of the strongest people I’ve worked with, um, they have, you know, we have
1:20:24
assigned, you know, carry variations into their training diet and they’ve had
1:20:29
an incredible level of success with it. I mean, there’s so much benefit, there’s so much bang for their buckum out of
1:20:36
that movement. And you know what, like I’ve seen as a rehab tool. I’ve seen Dr. Charlie Weing, you know, um, postsurgery
1:20:43
bring someone in and it’s a very whether it’s shoulder surgery or whatever it might be. You know, starting them with a
1:20:48
weight down low is is is going to be a lot safer than getting them up in this position here. So, you know, I have seen
1:20:54
this used as a rehab tool from medical professionals, very successful. I’ve seen it used um
1:20:59
and a a core stability. Your number one exercise is a is it would it be called
1:21:05
an offset carry? It’s just a one- arm. Yeah, I mean I mean some form of a carry depending on you know what they’re
1:21:12
capable of doing. But I love one- arm carries. Planks are I I think I think a great introductory movement. I think get
1:21:17
teaching someone to get into a plank position and create tension. These tension techniques getting into position
1:21:23
and say, “Listen, we’re not going to hang out in this extended position. Squeeze your glutes. Squeeze your legs. Squeeze your lats.
1:21:29
You taught me something yesterday about a plank. It was It’s not about the length of time that you can hold a plank
1:21:35
because an individual could like tension. Yeah. But you said that it was about creating
1:21:40
tension and being able to hold the quality of the plank under tension, right?
1:21:45
And that I thought was a really good learning tip. I think it’s a great way to kind of supercharge your plank a bit, right?
1:21:50
Where most people I can hold a plank for eight minutes. Like great. like there’s trust me there’s there’s plenty of um strength carryover from that but when I
1:21:57
see most people holding in those positions they’re in a bad position and they might be loading themselves in a
1:22:03
way that I don’t think is that I believe in my opinion isn’t the safest thing for for them. So I think teaching them how
1:22:08
to do a hard style tension technique plank for 10 to 20 seconds where I’m
1:22:13
literally like telling them envision a tornado is blowing over you right now as you’re in this plank position. What are
1:22:19
you going to do? How are you going to stabilize? They’re like, “Well, I’m going to try and rip the floor apart to stabilize.” I’m like, “Exactly. Are your glutes going to be tight?” They’re like,
1:22:25
“Yeah.” “Is your chin position going to be packed?” “Yeah.” It’s like I’m moving around them trying to like palpate their
1:22:30
body, trying to move them a little bit, and they’re just literally shaking within 10 to 20. An isometric hold.
1:22:37
Exactly. And how many reps would they or how many Yeah. Would it be considered a rep? Yeah.
1:22:42
Yeah. I mean, I I would put them maybe under time like So, I would start someone off with like, “Hey, listen. let’s let’s see if you can hold that
1:22:48
position. Cuz I put people in the positions and they’re like, I can’t hold a plank. And I’m like, okay, we’re going to work up to that. And then there’s
1:22:54
other things like, yeah, like if they can’t hold a plank, which I’ve seen, um, we can hold a light dumbbell with two
1:22:59
hands. How light are we talking? As light as we have to go to where we’re adding external resistance to the equation.
1:23:05
We want people to We want them to get under load. Yes. We want them to get under load. And I I think that that’s probably one of the
1:23:11
biggest misconceptions for people is they’ll say, “Well, um, you know, I can’t lift that. That’s too
1:23:17
heavy.” And it might be a 10 or 15 pound weight, but that’s a problem in my opinion, but I think it’s just a thought process
1:23:23
because you could go lift your child or a suitcase and it’s going to be bag of groceries. That’s right. It’s going to be much
1:23:28
heavier than that. Back of groceries. How about this? I’m traveling this afternoon. We got a suitcase that we’re carrying. That suitcase is going to weigh a lot more
1:23:34
than 2 lbs. Like, you better make sure you’re able to carry this stuff. I I you know, I’ll quote recently I was
1:23:39
listening to a physical therapist talk about the one- arm carry and how he likes loading it so heavy that he’s like
1:23:46
if you can do a shrug with it like it’s too light type of thing, right? So, I thought that was a really good indicator. But I also understand I am
1:23:52
not taking a newbie into the gym on day one when they’re feeling vulnerable or they don’t have that foundation and I’m
1:23:58
turning like, “Hey, Mrs. Smith, like you haven’t trained in 40 years or ever. Like, let’s go over and grab that 24
1:24:04
kilogram kettle bell and go for a walk. Don’t worry if it’s heavy. Like, god forbid something happens. Like, we have to develop that confidence whether she
1:24:12
can do it or not. We have to develop that confidence. I want them to turn to me. And I want people to feel empowered
1:24:17
when they come in to exercise. And when they go and they play with their kids, I want them to feel empowered. We saw a
1:24:24
woman that, you know, the other day in her 60s, she was killing it in the gym, killing it. Killing it. And you know what? Most 20,
1:24:30
25 year old guys, she’s stronger than me. She’s my size. She’s she’s stronger than me. sled pulling, sled pushing, sweating, out of
1:24:37
breath. Walks by me, gives me like a fist. I’m like, “Oh my god, who is this like superwoman over here?” She’s uh she runs ultras.
1:24:43
Yeah. Ultras and and now we just And she moves well. There’s not too many people who run ultras where I’m like, “Wow, they move really well.”
1:24:49
Oh, she moves really well. It’s interesting. I was on a a podcast and they say, “Okay, well, how long does
1:24:55
it take to see these results? Could it be 24 weeks?” And yeah, it could be. It all depends.
1:25:01
That’s a funny question. It is. Yes. It’s like saying, you know, how long is it going to take
1:25:07
me to get to Cleveland, Ohio if I drive from Detroit? We can answer that. But the question of how long am I going to
1:25:13
really like, is my car really going to be going pretty fast? Like, oo, I don’t know, like within 30 seconds of you getting out of your driveway,
1:25:18
bathroom stops, right? 100%. And so when people say like, how long until I see these results, it’s like, well, like every
1:25:24
week you’re going to be losing a pound and a half for as many weeks as you keep cranking until you need a psychological break. That could be 12 weeks easy. It’s
1:25:32
like just keep doing it. And what I would say psychologically a really good advice I think is don’t worry about that
1:25:38
end goal too much. The process, eat your healthy foods, get your 10,000 steps, take your zapbound, just let it cook.
1:25:45
It’ll do its thing. Don’t you worry. And if it’s not, you adjust your food. You go to the doctor, they adjust your
1:25:50
medication dosage, and the cycle repeats itself. I another quick public service announcement because it doesn’t get said
1:25:55
enough. I don’t think a lot of people have all sorts of interesting ideas and opinions uh about OEM and all that whole
1:26:02
craze. And most people, many people come from some place of either um kind of a
1:26:07
reflexive anti-drug ideology, which is nonsense to begin with. You can steal manet, but it’s really tough. And other
1:26:13
people come from kind of an iconoclasm like, well, I’m not into these these drugs is a problem. And it’s mostly just
1:26:20
people’s feelings. It’s not really based in in in ideas, but it’s true that some of these drugs are um can be improved
1:26:26
upon, but it’s not a hypothetical because I can tell you two true things.
1:26:33
One is there are already drugs in latestage clinical trials that blows empic out of the [ __ ] water. If
1:26:41
you’re at home, Google retatrat all one word. triple agonist hits the
1:26:47
GLP go pathway, GIP and glucagon. And I don’t know how the [ __ ] they did it, but the glucagon pathway
1:26:54
non-stimulant increases your resting metabolic rate. You just burn more calories. It doesn’t wig you out. No
1:27:01
psychotropic effects. You just burn more calories and you’re less hungry and whatever the [ __ ] GIP does. I don’t even
1:27:07
know. Triple agonist. Retatride is going to be on the market probably in a year
1:27:12
and ompic is going to be like super discount cheap drug because this ain’t [ __ ] If you look at the studies how much weight people are losing it was
1:27:18
like ompic was a big deal. Trypatite was a bigger deal. Retatrotide is that same step and major pharmaceutical companies
1:27:25
around the world. So retatrite will be generation five in this drug scale. They’re working on six is in early
1:27:32
testing, seven is in development. I have to ask you a question. Um, I
1:27:37
don’t want to go down a conspiracy rabbit hole, but I love those. Okay.
1:27:42
Um, now we have a
1:27:49
highly palatable processed food, massive food industry.
1:27:54
Mhm. I love that industry, by the way. Yes. I will sit here and defend it. Okay. Now we have a drug that is
1:28:02
severely limiting people’s challenges with obesity. I mean people are losing
1:28:08
weight. Food addiction from some of these highly palatable foods are going away. Mhm.
1:28:14
Uh do you think that some of the influx of anti-obesity
1:28:21
narrative drugs, do you think that potentially that is influenced at all by the food industry or where do you think
1:28:29
the um division is going to be if at all?
1:28:35
Mhm. That’s a great question. So you have the situation where the food
1:28:40
industry is just trying to get you to spend as much money as possible. But they’re not such big fans of you dying
1:28:46
because then you don’t spend money anymore. They’re also not big fans of you getting out of shape because then you don’t like your life and you blame
1:28:51
them and that sucks. There’s not like a Hershey’s CEO that when they see morbidly obese people barely getting out
1:28:57
of a car like perfect. They don’t like that at all. They would ideally like to see people eat Hershey’s candy bars in a
1:29:04
state of caloric balance and enjoying their lives. That’s how they were meant to be eaten. That’s how they were eaten in the 50s and 60s, etc., etc. So, the
1:29:11
vast majority of the food industry wants you to have the tasty food you want and have a great time and not die. The
1:29:17
problem is they had no idea how to do those last two things because most people were like, “Buttered popcorn, I’ll take 50.” They blow up. The food
1:29:24
industry is like, “I sure hope we could help these people, but we don’t even how the fuck.” A food executive has no idea
1:29:29
how to lose weight and fat. It’s not his job. His job is just get people to buy tasty food. And it’s not a job he chose
1:29:37
to be like, “This is what we’re going to make Americans do.” There is no conspiracy. The reason the food industry
1:29:42
exists and it’s massive and makes all these foods that kill you is cuz you want it, [ __ ] Not you, but the
1:29:48
royal you. You get me to get stop people from pulling up into Taco Bell every [ __ ] hour of the day. I’ll start to
1:29:54
believe there’s a food conspiracy if they’re still pulling up. Talk to those people. Be like, “Who? Where did you see
1:29:59
this? Where’s the advertising?” They’re like, “I just [ __ ] like Taco Bell. Get out of my face.” Wait, wait. Don’t don’t don’t get out. Hold up. Watch
1:30:04
this. Cord beer crunch. Now go. People want the stuff. So that’s the food industry. Then you
1:30:11
have the anorctic drug industry, very nent, very just getting born. That’s
1:30:16
going to combat a part of that, the excess part. There are two ways for the food industry
1:30:23
to respond to this primarily. One is to change their advertising and go, “Hey,
1:30:28
you’re on these drugs. Amazing. You do you. But you can still have a Snickers bar every now and again. And they’re
1:30:33
completely correct. Healthy balance. I love it. Dope. Because like I don’t know about you, but I’m not interested in living in a society where the
1:30:39
government’s like, “No more no more Babe Ruth bars or whatever. No more [ __ ] KitKats. They’re illegal cuz people are
1:30:45
too fat.” What the [ __ ] I moved from the Soviet Union to get the [ __ ] away from that kind of stuff. So that would
1:30:50
be great. Another idea they could have, there will be a combination of these ideas employed over the next several years is they’re going to try to outrun
1:30:57
the drugs. It’s competition. They’re going to try to make their food even tastier so that it used to be something
1:31:03
you could resist on some amount of simaglletide and you need retatide to resist that now.
1:31:08
And that competition is going to heat up very likely over the course of the late 2020s and 2030s.
1:31:14
I think it’s entirely reasonable to expect this will either age very well or very poorly that in the mid 2030s at
1:31:20
some point most of us maybe all will have at-ome universal robots cooking all of our meals for us and they’ll be able
1:31:27
to source recipes from all over the internet. make it the tastiest [ __ ] you’ve ever seen in your life. So if you want to get fat, the 2030s will be dope
1:31:32
time to get fat. But the degree of drug advancement at that point will also be really gnarly. So what we’re leading to
1:31:38
is a world, and this has been increasingly true for the world, the developed world for as long as we can measure, you can get more of anything
1:31:45
you want. In the United States, which is one of the freest countries in the world, most developed capitalist, one of
1:31:50
the most developed capitalist countries, people observe time and time again, if you want to get fat and lazy, best place
1:31:56
in the world to do it. You want to get lean and fit and shredded? Best place in the world to do it. It’s options. You
1:32:02
can take the anorctic drugs. And here’s a really cool idea to try. This is crazy. I know. When you go to the
1:32:07
grocery store, don’t [ __ ] buy the junk food. The food corporation doesn’t lying to you. It’s not like broccoli’s
1:32:12
really chocolate on the inside and they [ __ ] with you. It’s really broccoli. And I can attest to that. And just listen to the food industry
1:32:19
does not care what they sell you fundamentally as long as you buy it. So if a lot of people are like, “Dude, I want healthy shit.” Oh my god, they
1:32:25
healthy [ __ ] right away. McDonald’s had a thing where they tried like some salads and [ __ ] for a while, a couple of different sandwiches, they were
1:32:30
healthier, and it turns out there just wasn’t enough market demand, so they pulled them off. That’s not a McDonald’s problem. That’s an US problem. And so
1:32:37
there’s going to be tastier and tastier junk food. Guaranteed. You don’t even need an anoractics battle for that. People just want to taste your junk
1:32:42
food. And there’s going to be an anoractic situation. In the end, the anoractics will win because the at some
1:32:50
point, if you just successfully show up to the doctor’s office once a month and he gives you whatever 20 32, you know,
1:32:57
eighth gen drug, you will not look at food and be able to put it in your mouth past a certain point.
1:33:03
It’s fascinating. It’s fascinating where we’re going. And and if anyone wants to understand how that feels in an intuitive level,
1:33:08
they’ve never taken the drugs. Take all of the malaise away. It’s a little tough from a food born illness,
1:33:16
stomach flu, and just remember how hungry you weren’t. Like you’re sitting with someone who has stomach flu and they’re like, “Oh, you’re like, “Hey,
1:33:23
juicy cheeseburgers.” That’s I can’t even think about it. You can get that not hungry on two and a
1:33:29
half migs of ompic for 6 weeks straight. Someone talks about food. Don’t don’t don’t. I’m going to throw up. There’s so
1:33:35
much upside on that. And the drugs are slowly reducing side effects, increasing primary effects. They’re going to win
1:33:41
against the food industry. But those people that don’t take the drugs and just well say it exactly as I mean it,
1:33:48
randomly buy food at the grocery store, they’re going to get real fat because the food’s just [ __ ] delicious and getting cheaper all the time. It’s
1:33:54
getting great. At some point an individual has to say, “I want something out of my body
1:34:01
to go a certain way. If you just show up to the store and eat buck, uh, but many of those people aren’t even
1:34:08
compliant with medications. You’re a practicing doctor. You know how it is. They’re like, “Take your shot every week.” And they show up and they’re
1:34:13
like, “That you got great patients.” They know that’s atypical. Most of the folks that are
1:34:20
severely obese, they’re not your most compliant patients. They forget to take all kinds of drugs cuz they fundamentally just like maybe
1:34:26
give a little bit less of a [ __ ] than most other people, which first of all is kind of dope because you’re like, “Fuck it. YOLO, Taco Bell. It’s great.” I I
1:34:33
watch fat people eat food and I’m like, “Dude, they’re really getting out of that something I don’t I just is amazing.” But on the other hand, it’s
1:34:38
going to lead to some side effects you’re going to have to deal with sooner or later. So the whole conspiracy thing, there is no conspiracy. Uh you can try
1:34:44
to find one. It’ be a great New York Times piece. I I I really like this answer. It’s it’s more of like I think the
1:34:50
world’s a little bit more libertarian than people like to think, which is great because we have so much freedom, but it’s also kind of meh because like,
1:34:56
yeah, freedom means you can make terrible [ __ ] choices and there’s no one conspiring to make you do it. You’re the one that pulled up
1:35:02
to Taco Bell at 2:30 in the morning. So what you’re saying is you can uh tank your health or you can actually be in
1:35:08
incredible health is truly a choice. And we have education and resources like
1:35:15
your RP strength and your the uh app which you should probably sign me
1:35:20
up for free because I’d like to try it. Oh free, huh? Well, I mean how I didn’t become a
1:35:26
trillionaire by giving away things. I know. But um what you’re saying is powerful is that actually there are
1:35:32
choices and we here have the opportunity to leverage those uh whatever those
1:35:39
choices are in an extreme way 100%. What oh do
1:35:45
I wanted to make sure we hit up your the muscle factor. That’s that’s what my next question was because I still cannot get over the fact
1:35:52
that you are dieting and talking to me. So, we took care of most of the theory behind how people can lose weight,
1:36:00
but there’s a missing piece. Weight loss is cool and it’s really healthy in almost all cases, but we can do better.
1:36:07
We can do fat loss. weight loss with conservation of muscle
1:36:14
or an increase in muscle at the same time is a big deal because not only do
1:36:20
you get even healthier, but you take on a shape
1:36:27
that I’ll just say it so much beating around the bush on this [ __ ] but it’s not 2019 anymore. It just makes you look
1:36:34
hotter to most people that shape shape. You’re like, “I want to look like JLo.” And then you show them someone dying of
1:36:40
anorexia and they’re like, “That’s not what I had in mind.” Like, you know, [ __ ] JLo’s got curves. What you think curves made of? Either fat or muscle.
1:36:46
And if you get lean enough and have enough muscle, everyone’s got awesome looking curves. Now, you may not be into muscular
1:36:52
people. I find them grotesque to be completely honest. Just kidding. But I was like, is that a joke?
1:36:57
Is that a Can’t tell. Never can tell. That’s my whole stick. Yeah. Yeah. I can’t even tell if it’s a joke coming out. I have to like hear it again and be
1:37:03
like, “Oh, I guess I was joking.” And then I don’t remember. So, uh, basically
1:37:09
gaining muscle or keeping your muscle while you lose fat has a completely transformative effect on your health in
1:37:15
a in the best possible way. Like, if you just lose 50 lbs and the doctor gets the blood work done, they’re going to be
1:37:21
like, “A lot of stuff is going good. We’re a little bit worried about your muscle mass level, little sarcopenia
1:37:27
here, and blah blah blah, your bone mass.” But if you do the kind of thing we’re talking about where you spare
1:37:32
muscle, your doctor’s going to be like, I don’t know what the [ __ ] you’re doing, but I I want some of it. Do you have like a website? What is your coach? So,
1:37:39
it’s all great stuff. And it makes you physically stronger. So, when you lose weight, a lot of times when people are
1:37:46
pretty overweight, I’m currently technically on paper quite overweight. It’s just a lot of body to carry around.
1:37:52
It’s annoying. It’s just h it just sits there and you got to like get up to go to the fridge like you lean on stuff. If
1:37:58
you lose just lose weight, you feel better and healthier and cleaner. You don’t feel that you can still kind of
1:38:05
feel a little bit frail. If you lose weight while keeping your muscle or increasing it, you just get more or less
1:38:10
superpowers. Um, people talk about how how they felt when they were in their 20s. Generally have almost no idea what
1:38:17
they’re talking about cuz I crush my 20-year-old self like with one hand like Matrix style canaries.
1:38:23
What do you mean you crushed yourself? I can I can crush my 20-year-old self because that he’s a [ __ ] little [ __ ]
1:38:28
compared to what I am now. Mostly because my skeletal muscle mass is much higher, but if it was comparable and my
1:38:34
fat was lower, you see like that [ __ ] like shining golden 55year-old man at
1:38:41
the gym who still has hair somehow and like [ __ ] how? And he’s got that like Florida Texas sort of tan that’s
1:38:48
just gorgeous and he still has like a trim waistline and he’s like pretty lean. You could talk to him. You’re
1:38:54
like, “Hey, like 55, huh? You must be feeling it.” He’s like, “I feel this. I’m in the time of my life.” My dad is
1:39:00
just a person that’s genetically pretty good shape and he’s very physically active and eats really healthy. He’s like, “Uh, damn, near 70 years old.”
1:39:06
He’s like, “Things are great.” That’s how you’re going to feel if you lose weight without losing muscle and gaining
1:39:12
it. You’re just going to be like, “I don’t [ __ ] [ __ ] I can do things.” If you lose a lot of weight and you lose a
1:39:18
lot of muscle, you might be feeling a little bit frail, a little bit tired. Walking up the stairs is tough. Picking up groceries is tough. How do we lose
1:39:26
fat without losing muscle? One of the things is protein intake, but 6 to a
1:39:32
gram per pound makes very little difference for most people in that. The biggest thing is resistance training.
1:39:37
And if you want to know about that, tune in to our last episode. Yeah. Yeah. But resistance training, training with
1:39:42
weights, two to four times a week is enough for most people, whole body, etc. We cover
1:39:48
that in the other podcast. It is a huge stimulus to your body that when you have
1:39:54
a caloric deficit, your body points metaphorically at various things. It
1:40:00
goes organs, brain, and we still need you. Don’t siphon off any of your resources. Body fat, what are you up to?
1:40:06
But if it go, I’m busy. I go, meetings, [ __ ] you. Start losing yourself. Oh crap. Throws parts of itself off, right?
1:40:12
And he goes, muscle, what are you up to? And if you’re not training muscle, like, oh, meetings all day. Shut up. Give up
1:40:17
some of your muscle. start losing it cuz we need you. But if you’re resistance training, that still happens. But then the muscle when
1:40:24
you’re in your off hours recovering from training goes, “Hey, I’m going to take some of those amino acids and carbs and
1:40:30
fats from the blood and I’m going to put them back in me and grow.” And guess where all those nutrients don’t go? Your
1:40:36
fat. So your fat’s doubly starving. Not only is it starving from the deficit, but the fat’s like finally food comes
1:40:41
into the blood and the fat’s like, “Oh, oh, come to me.” And it’s like, “No, muscle takes it.” And then it gets smaller and smaller and smaller. And so
1:40:48
that effect of resistance training is massive and is transformative because um
1:40:53
a great example of that effect recently was uh Dana White, UFC president. I I made a video about
1:40:59
not a big fan of the gentleman he worked with. Uh I said all sorts of mean things about that in that video, but huge huge fan of
1:41:05
Dana White, huge fan of what he’s doing and a big fan of what he did, which is he lost something like I think 35 lbsish
1:41:11
of weight, but he must have gained 10 or 15 pounds of muscle at the same time.
1:41:17
So, the metabolic effect is something you would see in someone who’s lost maybe 60 lbs of fat, but the muscle came
1:41:25
up. He looks amazing. His blood work is amazing. That’s the ticket. And he
1:41:32
trained with weights multiple times a week with Milosarch, who’s one of the best to ever do it. I mean, we can’t all
1:41:37
be trillionaires like Dana and get the best guy ever to do it to be our personal trainer, but everyone can go to the gym more or less. Well, almost
1:41:43
everyone. Planet Fitness is like $10 a month, which is if you can’t afford that, I don’t believe you. I will say
1:41:48
that. Um, everyone has access to it, and the resistance training is that big of a deal. But one thing that really starts
1:41:56
to be important with resistance training, it is important in its own right, is let’s say, like the periodization of it. Because people say,
1:42:04
“Okay, I’ve got all the tools to do fat loss.” The
1:42:09
big thing is dieting is tough. A condition in which your body is not
1:42:14
getting sufficient calories to maintain its weight almost always acrru some fatigue and we call that diet fatigue in
1:42:21
the industry. Diet fatigue expresses itself in a couple of different ways. One is your energy levels decline. Your
1:42:28
sleep quality declines. Your brain power doesn’t do anything good. And you’re like sounds like being a parent.
1:42:35
Don’t get me started. I’m I’m like a what did uh my my my wife did most of
1:42:40
the dog raising at our house. So, at one point she was talking to a friend on the phone. She’s like, “Yeah, I’m a single dog.” Mom like, “Bitch, I’m right here.”
1:42:47
But she’s like, “You don’t do anything.” I’m like, “Okay, what? You were correct.” So, the dog’s hard enough. Kids are a totally different level.
1:42:53
Yes. And you have met mine. So, yes. They’re adorable, by the way. They could just be terrible monsters and you’re like, “Why did I have them?” So,
1:42:59
you’re not in that part. And they’re so cute. See? Yeah. I can even tell there’s a real emotion you’re sharing. They’re wonderful. There was a
1:43:06
They’re complicated. Yeah. Yeah. The I forgot Wanda Sykes. Do you know who that is? She was a comed comedian. She wrote for like uh all the
1:43:13
big guys like Chris Rock and stuff. She had a standup once where she was like, “Yeah, people with kids, man. Anytime
1:43:18
you’re like, “Yeah, like do do you like your kids? Was it worth it?” And they’re like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s worth it.”
1:43:24
Like, “Do you mean that?” So, in any case, diet fatigue, the biggest problem
1:43:30
you run into with it, outside of all the other problems I already listed, which are kind of gnarly, is increased um food
1:43:38
focus. Now, food focus has hunger within it, but it has all kinds of other stuff.
1:43:43
Like that story I told earlier where you’re watching your favorite show and you’re just looking at the dinner rolls and the glass of milk. Why isn’t anyone
1:43:49
going to Are those just props? Are those cold? Was this shot number five? Is no
1:43:54
really hungry. And there’s a thing where you’ve just eaten, you’re no longer hungry, but
1:43:59
you’re still food focused. If you do the diet too long, your diet fatigue gets too crazy. So, at RP, we’ve we’ve
1:44:06
probably diet coached several hundred thousand real humans at this point. Uh,
1:44:12
tens of thousands of them with an intimate personal coaching relationship because we have a team of psychotic PhD coaches that are like, they look like we
1:44:18
made up their certifications, but they’re real. I’m not good enough to work on that team, so I don’t bother. And we have app suite that helps
1:44:26
templates and apps, tons on tons of people. And we what we found is somewhere between 8 weeks of consistent
1:44:33
caloric deficit fat loss dieting and 12 weeks is where most people shine. 8 weeks is like enough to really make a
1:44:40
visual difference. So if you do a diet for 4 weeks, the scale is down maybe 5 lbs. But you order Chinese and then it’s
1:44:46
up a pound because of the salt and you don’t even know what’s going on. You can’t really tell. The one lady from your work said you look better, but she
1:44:52
always says nice things down there and she just assumes she’s a liar. And so and so it’s not you’re not going to get
1:44:58
motivated by the process and you might quit and be like I don’t know what is it there’s an amazing uh one of my friends had a his mom had a sticker on the
1:45:05
fridge a fridge magnet and it’s this like 1950s woman and she’s doing this and it said um I uh I dieted for one
1:45:12
month and lost 30 days. So like that’s how it can feel if you don’t go long enough. You don’t have anything to show
1:45:17
for it. But after about 8 weeks most people with a good deficit they’re going to feel different. They’re going to look different. People are going to say
1:45:23
stuff. their clothes are going to fit differently. They go, “Okay, this is great.” But their diet fatigue isn’t crazy yet in most cases. After about 12
1:45:29
weeks, not all, but many people, they’re getting amazing results, but this [ __ ] is starting to wear on them. It wears on
1:45:36
them in a bunch of different ways. And there’s entire books written about this, but one of them is your type of social interaction that you can have is
1:45:42
limited. It has to be limited. Someone maybe you and your husband go to the movies. Maybe it’s a thing you’ve been
1:45:48
doing for a long time. It’s just a tradition. You’re on a diet for 9 weeks. You go to the movies still, you smell
1:45:54
that goddamn popcorn everywhere. And your husband’s like, “Those zombies were scary.” You’re like, “What? What?
1:46:00
Can I eat some [ __ ] popcorn? It’s It’s awful.” And so if you’re hard as nails, you can
1:46:06
just eat that [ __ ] Like, not literally, just can whatever. No worries. You just get it done. But it
1:46:13
strains you and it strains you and it strains you. And here’s a really cool revelation. If you go back up to roughly
1:46:20
your maintenance calories, you still exercise, you still train with weight, you still eat mostly healthy but a bit
1:46:25
of junk. You can lose a bunch of weight, go to maintenance, chill for, we would
1:46:30
recommend roughly at least twothirds of the time you’re dieting. So if you’ve been dieting, does that come from any kind of
1:46:37
literature, just experience? Plenty of literature, but lots of experience. Got it. And what you end up having is a
1:46:43
you diet for 12 weeks. It’s probably good for at least 8 weeks for you to be at least at maintenance. Maybe even a
1:46:49
little tiny surplus if you want to get a little jack, but at least maintenance. That brings you back to normal. It gives
1:46:54
you breathing room and then you can hit it again if you want to lose more weight. One of the biggest problems in weight loss is people whatever number
1:47:01
they are, let’s say you weigh 231 pounds and you’re like, I want to win 70. And you’re like, okay, great. you get your
1:47:07
zap bound, you get your diet, and you just go. Um, it doesn’t work like that because you’re going to accumulate so
1:47:13
much diet fatigue that by the time you get below 190, you’re going to be like, “I’m going to eat my own eyeballs today. [ __ ] it.”
1:47:18
Um, and if you have to take enough anorctic drug for that to go away, you still, they don’t take away all the food
1:47:23
focus. You still look at cheeseburgers on TV and you’re like, and it seems like you’re missing something. And you are missing something because you you go to
1:47:29
the family reunion, everyone’s eating amazing hot dogs. You’re not eating them. You got your own little [ __ ] That’s not a way to live life. That’s a
1:47:35
way to accomplish a task. It’s not a way to live. So understanding it’s a multi-phase process that is times of
1:47:42
destitution, times of deficit, and then times of getting back to normal. That is
1:47:48
a big deal. And that 8 to 12 week period coupled with another 8 to 12 weeks of chilling, you get your little ratchet
1:47:55
step-like effect. That works wonders. And empowered by anorexics and really good diet advice, people can get a
1:48:01
couple ratchets down that thing nowadays. Completely transform their bodies. It’s going to take a couple years. But again, to to paraphrase one
1:48:09
of my friends, Barack Chavez, um it’s baffling that people think that something that took them years to do,
1:48:15
like gain 80 pounds, they’re just going to get off in weeks. Yeah, it should be like 5 weeks. I should be good. Like,
1:48:20
no, no, it’s going to take years. Luckily, not 15 years, but it might take two or three. And you got to hang in
1:48:26
there and you got to give yourself breaks. So, you talk to successful people. You’re writing all your notes. You’re
1:48:31
scribbling. Say you you just happened to like the CEO of Apple just happened to fly next to you on a plane. He’s like,
1:48:36
“Yeah, my private plane broke down, so could you scoot over?” Okay. And he’s like, “Just sharing ideas about how to
1:48:42
be successful.” At some point, you’re like, “Okay, so work straight up 12 hours a day. No
1:48:47
breaks, right? No vacations, no weekends.” He’d be like, “No, no, you need a lot of that cuz you need the the creative process. It doesn’t happen
1:48:53
unless you do the shit.” Just the same thing is true with dieting. You got to go hard for a little while until your
1:48:58
diet fatigue is like, “Bro, this is tough.” You go to maintenance and then you repeat that process.

 

Evy Poumpouras

Evy Poumpouras is a multi-platform journalist, host, and exclusive contributor to NBC across all their news platforms, covering national security, law enforcement, and crime. Evy’s book, BECOMING BULLETPROOF, was released by Simon & Schuster in 2020 and covers a wide range of topics, including personal protection, behavioral analysis, situational awareness, and how to live life fearlessly. Outside of her role as a journalist, Evy is a TEDx speaker whose expertise is sought worldwide.

 Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson

Susan Peirce Thompson, Ph.D. is a faculty member in brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester, a multiple New York Times bestselling author, and a keynote speaker on how the brain supports human flourishing. In 2014, she founded Bright Line Eating, a worldwide movement dedicated to helping people achieve permanent weight loss maintenance. Over 115,000 people from more than 100 countries have taken her courses and you can find her online at BrightLineEating.com or SusanPeirceThompson.com.

Dr. Mark Hyman

Mark Hyman, MD, has devoted his life to helping others discover optimal health and address the root causes of chronic disease through the power of Functional Medicine. Dr. Hyman is a practicing family physician and an internationally recognized leader, speaker, educator, and advocate in the field of Functional Medicine. He is a co-founder and the Chief Medical Officer of Function Health, founder and Director of The UltraWellness Center, founder of Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine and Board Member for The Institute of Functional Medicine.

He is the founder and chairman of the Food Fix Campaign, dedicated to transforming our food and agriculture system through policy. Dr. Hyman is also the host of one of the leading health podcasts, The Dr. Hyman Show, with 300+ million downloads and a fifteen-time New York Times best-selling author. He is a regular medical contributor to several television shows and networks, including CBS This Morning, Today, Good Morning America, The View, Fox and CNN.


Jeff Cavalier

Jeff Cavalier is a fitness guru, social media star, personal trainer, and former head physical therapist of the New York Mets (professional baseball team). Jeff earned a Bachelor of Science in Physioneurobiology/Premedicine and a Master's degree in Physical Therapy from the University of Connecticut. He is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) by the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA). Jeff served as both the Head Physical Therapist and Assistant Strength Coach for the New York Mets during the National League East Championship 2006, 2007, and 2008 seasons. During this time, he coached some of the game’s most accomplished players, including future Hall of Fame pitchers Tom Glavine and Pedro Martinez, and perennial all-stars Carlos Delgado, Carlos Beltran, David Wright, Jose Reyes, and Billy Wagner, to name just a few. In addition to physiotherapy and training, Jeff is an author and lecturer speaking on topics such as baseball injury prevention, sport-specific conditioning, sports training, and injury rehabilitation and prevention. Jeff founded ATHLEAN-X Training System to share methods and techniques used by some of the greatest athletes to forge explosive and strong physiques. This is a science-based training system allowing anyone to get the same results as professional athletes.

Sal Di Stefano

Sal Di Stefano’s passion for fitness began when he picked up his first barbell at 13 years old. Any other teenager would have done a set of curls, but legend has it, Sal did squats. He was always different like that – and it wasn’t long before everyone would notice.

At age 18, Sal started working as a personal trainer, becoming the youngest general manager at 24 Hour Fitness by 19 years old. Not long after, he opened his own studio. Its reputation and success proved he was more than a personal trainer, but also a gifted businessman. And it was this entrepreneurial spirit that guided Sal to where we see him today.

He is the voice of Mind Pump, a published author, and one of the most trusted and respected faces in the fitness industry. Sal is an indispensable podcast host: the one who summarizes research when Justin and Adam trip over scientific words, the proverbial guinea pig when there’s a new peptide, and the conductor trying his best to keep conversation on track when we all know it’s headed off the rails.

Michelle Shapiro

Michelle Shapiro is an integrative/ functional Registered Dietitian in NYC who has, over the past decade, helped thousands of clients reverse their anxiety, heal long-standing gut and complex immune issues, and approach their weight in a loving way. Michelle has a virtual private practice with seven nutritionists who help clients work one-on-one towards these goals. She is the host of the Quiet the Diet Podcast, where she helps listeners bridge the gap between body positivity and functional nutrition.

Massy Arias

Massy Arias is a certified health and wellness coach, trainer, and entrepreneur. She is the founder of her own fitness and wellness brand, TRU Training and TRU Supplements. Through a transformative approach that unites purposeful movement with tools for mental and emotional strength, Massy inspires people to reclaim their power from the inside out. Her journey of overcoming personal obstacles and taking control of her life has shaped her into a leader whose knowledge, resilience, and authenticity resonate with people of all ages and backgrounds. Born in the Dominican Republic, Massy is bilingual and connects with her international community in both English and Spanish. She is a proud mother to her daughter, Indi, and currently serves as an athlete for the global brand Adidas, continuing to lead by example and inspire millions worldwide.

Jeff Cavalier

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.

Heidi Somers

Heidi Somers is an entrepreneur, creator, and coach who has dedicated the last decade to helping millions of women transform their bodies, their confidence, and their lives.

Originally studying biology to become a doctor, Heidi discovered her real calling after experiencing her own fitness and mindset transformation. What started with sharing simple tips online grew into two globally recognized brands: Buffbunny Collection, a leading women’s activewear company, and Grounds, a fitness app built to give women the tools, education, and community they deserve.

Alan Argon

Alan Aragon is a nutrition researcher and educator with over 30 years of success in the field. He is known as one of the most influential figures in the fitness industry’s movement towards evidence-based information. His notable clients include Stone Cold Steve Austin, Derek Fisher, and Pete Sampras. Alan has collaborated on over 30 peer-reviewed publications, and counting. He co-authored Nutrient Timing Revisited, the most-viewed article in the history of the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition (JISSN). He also is the lead author of the ISSN Position Stand on Diets & Body Composition. Alan is the founder and Editor-In-Chief of Alan Aragon's Research Review (AARR), the original and longest-running research review publication in the fitness industry. Alan founded the Fit Advancement Mentorship (FAM), which is a multi-faceted educational hub for fitness professionals and enthusiasts.

Shade Zahrai

Dr. Shadé Zahrai is a behavioral researcher, award-winning peak performance educator, and leading authority on confidence and self-doubt. A former corporate lawyer with an MBA and background in psychology, she has designed and delivered transformative programs for Fortune 500 giants including Google, Microsoft, LVMH, JP Morgan, and McKinsey. Named one of LinkedIn’s Top Voices for career development, Shadé has taught over 7 million learners on LinkedIn Learning. Her TEDx talks and viral videos have amassed more than 300 million views, and her work has been featured in The New York Times, Adweek, CNBC, and Yahoo Finance.

Jocko Willink

Jocko Willink is a decorated retired U.S. Navy SEAL officer, co-author of the #1 New York Times bestsellers Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win and The Dichotomy of Leadership, and host of the top-rated Jocko Podcast. He is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Echelon Front, a premier leadership consulting firm; the founder of Jocko Fuel, a performance nutrition and lifestyle company committed to clean, uncompromising quality; and the co-founder of Origin USA, a Made in America company producing apparel, boots, and gear. Across his ventures, Jocko serves as an instructor, speaker, executive coach, and strategic advisor.

Jocko spent 20 years in the SEAL Teams, serving in both enlisted and officer roles before rising to command SEAL Team Three’s Task Unit Bruiser during the Battle of Ramadi. There, he led combat operations that supported the U.S. Army’s 1st Armored Division “Ready First” Brigade in bringing stability to one of the most violent regions in Iraq. Task Unit Bruiser became the most highly decorated Special Operations unit of the Iraq War.

Following his combat deployments, Jocko served as Officer-in-Charge of training for all West Coast SEAL Teams, where he spearheaded the development of leadership training and personally mentored the next generation of SEAL leaders. His career awards include the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, and numerous other personal and unit commendations.

Since retiring from the Navy in 2010, Jocko has dedicated himself to sharing the leadership principles forged in combat to help leaders in business, government, education, and non-profits win on their own battlefields. He built Jocko Fuel after discovering harmful levels of heavy metals in a supplement he and his family once used daily, committing to a standard of only what you need—none of what you don’t. Through Origin USA, he champions American manufacturing, producing world-class apparel and gear entirely in the U.S.

Michelle Shapiro

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.

Layne Norton

As a self-proclaimed nerd who lifts heavy things, Layne completed his PhD in Nutritional Sciences with honors from the University of Illinois in 2010. His competitive athletic career highlights include four USA Powerlifting National titles (93kg weight class), most recently winning gold at the 2024 International Powerlifting Federations M1 World Championship (93kg) and setting a new M1 world record deadlift at 328kg. Layne helped popularize flexible dieting and online nutrition coaching using evidence-based methods, coaching over 1700 clients. In recent years, Layne has focused on ways to share his knowledge with people on a wider scale, including building a coaching team, writing books, developing a nutrition coaching app and educational courses, and launching Outwork Nutrition, an evidence-based supplement company. Layne’s passion is helping others achieve their goals through education and hard work.

Arthur Brooks

Arthur Brooks is a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Harvard Business School, where he teaches courses on leadership and happiness. He is also the host of the weekly podcast “Office Hours with Arthur Brooks,” and a columnist at The Atlantic, where he writes the popular weekly “How to Build a Life” column.

Brooks is the author of 15 books, including the #1 New York Times bestsellers, Build the Life You Want, co-authored with Oprah Winfrey, and From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life. His next book, The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness, will be released on March 31, 2026.

Brooks is one of the world’s leading experts on the science of human happiness, appearing in the media and traveling the world to teach people in private companies, universities, public agencies, and faith communities how they can live happier lives and bring greater well-being to others.

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