Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 530 - Healthspan More Important Than Lifespan

Episode Date: May 28, 2021

Today we're talking about what is the ideal body fat percentage (if there is one) for the everyday person and why we believe it is best to focus on living better versus simply living longer. Subscribe to the NEW Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Special perks for our listeners below! ➢Eat Rite Foods: http://eatritefoods.com/ Use ode "POWERPROJECT25" for 25% off your first order, then code "POWERPROJECT" for 10% off every order after! ➢LMNT Electrolytes: http://drinklmnt.com/powerproject ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Sling Shot: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/ Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

What's happening, y'all? What's happening? It seems it's been going in deep on those diet sodas. I shouldn't have said anything about the sun-kissed. We got to talk about this? Okay, guys. So, you know, podcast, we talk a lot about, you know, responsibility. And I have not been responsible with my soda intake of diet soda.

Because, you know, zero sugar, zero calories. Ain't going to do shit to you other than fuck up your stomach i've been pooping black water for two days what's in a zero sugar things like is it sucralose yeah so it's tasty that's what it is it's delicious and i've been drinking them every day so uh like a diet soda will be sweetened with um aspartame and then like the zeros is super aspartame aspartame there it is sorry see i was like i knew that i'm trying to think i'm like i think i think that's a little i knew that was way off but i'm like looking at it on the label and i'm like as a bread like it you know i just like made shit up but and then i like coke zero sweetened with sucralose and that's been my jam that stuff

is so good yeah it looked like jam came out of my ass for two days i don't know what it looks like mixed it with sir it was i again like i said i was being irresponsible with my soda intake i legit probably had a third of the bottle of the diet ginger ale yesterday, along with another third of the diet Sunkist. Okay. You see, like we make mistakes. We're not perfect. Look at this. This, this is an ideal.

So black poop, black poop. It really is. Yeah. So that shit wrecked my gut. Gotta be careful out there, kids. I've been running some experiments in the kitchen and I found out that out of all the different sweeteners, the one that tastes the best by itself is allulose. Allulose tastes fucking delicious. Xylitol is not bad.

Stevia is not bad. And even sucralose has like a little weird aftertaste, but it is extremely, it's extremely fucking potent. It's really, really, really strong. But allulose, I mean, I don't know. To me, it tastes just like sugar. Yeah. Is allulose the one that gets cold? No.

No. Which one's that? That's most of the other sugar alcohols. Malt. Erythritol. Erythritol. There you go. Sorry. Any of the, yeah, there you go, sorry.

Yeah, most of the talls have that cold pop at the end. Menthol. Yeah, they all have that little weird thing at the end. Allulose, though. That's what's in, allulose is in

the Hero Bar. Oh! And do we not digest that one? Is that the one that just we pee straight out? It comes right out of our body. Right out of your butt. Yeah. Sometimes for me, yeah.

Well, it's like a fiber. So you would have to use, you got to be careful how much you use because I think it can hurt your stomach. But having a Hero Bar or two has never really bothered my stomach for me use because I think it can hurt your stomach. Having a Hero Bar or two has never really bothered my stomach, for me personally. I don't know about you guys. If I have two in one day, which has happened, I'm backed up big time. Backed up?

Yeah, having that much fiber, I will cramp up and I can't get anything out. Yeah, it's weird. Is that with a Quest Bar or with the Hero bar? The Hero bar specifically. Yeah, I think it has. I think it does have a good amount of fiber. That shit doesn't get digested. You know what I mean?

It's rough. Yeah, I mean, it's rough on me, but I can have one and it's freaking amazing. You know, but you eat a lot of meat though? Lots. Oh, God. Lots. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. Yesterday.

Some things never change. Yesterday, I ate four of those Hop Dottie Piedmontese burgers. That shit's good. Yeah. I told you. That shit's where it's at. That was really good. Those are good.

My kids were just watching in horror. They were like, what's going on here? Because I ate a package of the Piedmontese hot dogs as well. Yeah, I stuffed them all. The kids are like, ah, sick. We're getting hot patty patties for dinner. And they look around and Mark's just smiling by himself in the corner. Nothing's left.

I had some salmon and some eggs, too. I just ate everything. That's a lot of food. It was impressive. Yeah, it was good I just, yeah, I just ate everything. I ate everything on site. That's a lot of food. It was impressive. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Those hot patty patties are on H and L.

They're incredible. I have some in the fridge. I defrosted. I'm getting so excited to go cook tonight. Yeah. I don't have any more left. Unfortunately. Yeah.

Went too far on them. They're a beef jerky is really good too. And they're, um, towel, uh, built on built on. Yeah. Still haven't had really good too and their Biltong. Still haven't had the Biltong.

I will try it. I need to bring some in for you guys. I might even have some in my office. That might be fun. Let's go. It's delicious. Obviously, we're friends with Piedmontese, but you just have to try it once. Oh, I was speaking to Robert Sykes, Keto Savage, Keto Brick.

He's like, you guys got me hooked. He's like, I was speaking to a Robert Sykes, uh, keto Savage, keto brick. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's like, you guys got me hooked. He's like, I can't like, I know. Right.

Game over. I'm like, dude, okay. Like there's something special about it. You know, like it's, it's undeniable at this point.

Um, and if you have yourself a Chuck roast, throw that bitch in a slow cooker. Yeah. And throw some like vegetables or potatoes in there and it's fucking awesome it's so good don't do it the standing rib roast though because piedmont these people will be mad at you because it's very expensive i didn't know i was like oh this has a lot of fat on it this is gonna be great in here and it was amazing they were like you can't do

that with that steak yeah mark threw like a five-pound ribeye in there. I'm like, I don't know how to. I don't know fancy stuff. I don't know what I'm doing. It tasted good. That's all that matters, man. That's all that matters. Awesome.

So right now they are still, I believe they are still doing it. Maybe it's over. Well, if you're listening and the Memorial Day sale is over, don't worry. We got your back. You're part of the Power Project crew. So head over to Piedmontese.com, P-I-E-D-M-O-N-T-E-S-E.com at checkout. Enter promo code PowerProject for 25% off your order. And if your order is $99 or more, you get free two-day shipping.

So, you know, could have ordered Sunday night. You would have had it by today. Or what's today? Thursday? Wednesday? Thursday? I don't know what today is night. You would have had it by today. Or what's today? Thursday? Wednesday? Thursday? I don't know what today is, but you would have had it already. So you could have been having that for dinner tonight.

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We talk quite a bit on the show about getting lean and getting in good shape and today we're going to shift gears just a little bit and not necessarily just talk about that aspect of it, but also just like what would be like healthy, you know, um, some of the practices that we have, I would say, uh, maybe take it too far sometimes in terms of like your health. Um, you know, there's a risk of injury and a lot of the different things that we do.

But I think in order to have a healthy body, you have to go through some sort of rigorous work. I think the human body is designed for that. I think we need to have rigorous work with our mind and rigorous work with our body frequently, you know, probably nearly every day of some, you know, some sort, uh, maybe it doesn't always have to be that difficult, uh, but something kind of on a weekly basis at the very least, that's fairly difficult to do. And, um, I guess it's, it's kind of hard to figure out exactly like what is like healthy. And I, we got into a text conversation the other day um about like body fat percentages and what would be like a you know decent body fat for someone to live at um to have a healthy life and if they don't have any symptoms of anything and they feel pretty good and they're barely happy

uh they may you know appear to everyone else to be a little thicker or to have a little extra junk in the trunk. Uh, but maybe everything's going good for them and they're, and they're okay with it. Also the other side of things. And one thing that we get away with in powerlifting or just in strength training in general or, or strongman type stuff, or even some of the CrossFitters. When you, uh, when you build muscle, one of the huge advantages of building muscle is that you have the ability to actually walk around with more fat on you, you know, but now we've got to kind of still consider, okay, like, what does that look like? How, you know, is it, would it be healthy to be 270?

You know, like I, I don't know if, I don't know if we know all these answers, but this is what we're going to kind of go through on this day. Yeah. Oh shoot. There. Oh, shoot. There's so much there. One thing that comes to mind, though, is like, for example, I think that, you know, if you see that person that's a little bit thicker, let's say they're like 24, 23% body fat. But, you know, they take some walks every day. They play some golf on the weekends.

They get sun. They get good sleep. And all their health markers are okay. You know, I think since a lot of listeners on this podcast are also kind of engulfed in fitness or they're trying to be engulfed in fitness, you look at that person and be like, oh, they're so unhealthy, but they're really actually not. If they have a lot of these habits in line, they could live a great life and move well, you know, all the way up until 80, 90 years old.

Right. But the fact, the rough thing about, I guess, fitness is that, yeah, we can take things a little bit too far. Let's look at bodybuilding as an example. I think bodybuilding and powerlifting, we'll get to that. But bodybuilding is a great example because you have all these people who are super focused on their nutrition and their health. They know how to manipulate their bodies in the craziest ways. But some individuals, you know, they'll get super lean.

Their hormones will get all messed up, but because they're so attracted to this body and it looks strong and healthy and barely any body fat on it, everything on the inside is actually fucking them up. Like we've talked about the low testosterone during prep and the loss of libido that can last for a long time. If an individual decides to stick with that looking body, that's not healthy. And that's not something that you,

you should do for two for long. You know, you can also be very fragile. You know, you look at some other sports where your body weight is critical. Something like horse racing or something like cycling. Those cyclists, they would rather be, you know, two to three pounds lighter than to be like more advanced in their training. Because like it matters that much.

Your body weight matters that much. They could spend a lot of time on trying to get better. But if they're just simply lighter, kind of like in powerlifting, you're simply just heavier. A lot of times you're able to lift more weight. However, when they fall,

like you ever watched them fall, like in tour de France and stuff like that, you're like, you're like, how come the guy's half dead? He fell going like six miles an hour around a corner. You know, sometimes they fall when they're going really fast,

but they're nearly dead because they, they're very fragile at that point. And then plus they probably already rode their bike, you know, a hundred miles or whatever, whatever the hell it is in the most treacherous of situations, but their body is completely depleted. And we'll see the same thing, uh, when someone steps on stage for bodybuilding, it's like a lot of times bodybuilders are advised not to lift heavy. And even sometimes two weeks in advance, you know, really be cautious with your training sessions, like lift really light, just get a pump, be really cautious.

Don't exert a lot of extra energy doing a lot of extra things. You're either doing cardio or you're lifting. And then in terms of like you being able to perform anything else, like moving a couch or fucking or whatever it might be, those things are just, they can be more difficult because you stressed your body out so much. There are people that are naturally just very, very lean and they can be more okay at those lower uh percentage of body fat but if you chopped your body fat in half you're probably not going to feel so great yeah there's that and then like you know what happened last year with um everything it's like how what's your immune system

like when you are you know shredding everything and everything's depleted something that you know i never really thought about but then like i caught a cold when i was trying to lean out and it's like oh my gosh like i just totally felt like i got run over so many people right now are like every time i go on a diet i get sick i know a lot of people that's happened absolutely that's happened to me in the past when i was you know trying to uh lose weight as soon as i i was like allergic to trying to be healthy i'm like oh my god this is i'm this fat like this is oh no i'm like this is terrible that's a great excuse though oh man every time i try to shift i was like one weekend and i'm like

you know when you're sick you're like the last thing you want to eat is like your stuff that's on your diet plan like i just need to drink some fucking orange juice and have some soup or something, you know? Yeah, that's a really good point though, Andrew. Like, well, first off, when you get super lean, because you're always in a deficit, your body's always trying to work hard to use what it's got. Your immune system's put under stress at working out into the mix. So you're stressing out your body even more. You're going to, yeah, it is a way to weaken your immune system and potentially get really, really sick. I know a lot of bodybuilders who had really bad sicknesses during their prep because they were so fragile.

It puts you in such a fragile state. And that's not a good thing. I wonder, like, you know, sports like powerlifting and bodybuilding. I know we've had this talk where, like, if you want to be elite of elite, yeah, there is some things you got to put yourself through to be the best. There's some, there is no balance, but can we like, can top level powerlifters, can top level bodybuilders figure out a way to marry the idea of still actually being a healthy athlete along with an extremely high performance athlete.

I don't think those two should be mutually exclusive. It's rare that you see it. And sometimes when you do see it, that person's personality is dialed back. They don't get the same recognition as, you know, like back when the lillibridges were just dominating powerlifting especially eric lillibridge uh with the weights that he was doing and um we had a lot of other great athletes kind of kind of following in his footsteps they would lift heavy like every other week and every time they would lift they would go completely bonkers. They'd go crazy, headbutt the bar. I remember actually Eric, every time he squatted, nearly every time he hit a big squat, he would pass out afterwards.

He would take like a step forward, and they would just be there with their arms out like ready to catch him. He would take a half step forward out of the rack. If you remember watching him, he would slam the weight down on the rack, and then he'd go to like walk forward, he would just go, just go lights out. Yeah. Can you get stronger without doing that? Like we know that you can, but usually those people don't get the same recognition. The slow and steady people

maybe somebody like a Bryce Lewis who built up a crazy amount of i mean that guy he's chipping away oh man was he chipping like he chipped away forever like until he deadlifted like 800 pounds and i was like i never saw that coming from him he was very talented very very strong guy dennis cornelius is another example of that yeah if you look at dennis cornelius like his training log over the years he is a very large man um but he does jujitsu he he moves well he's he you can tell he's been in this for a long time and he's super healthy it seems didn't he call you out he called me out i laughed at it i laughed at it haha dennis sure but he's a super healthy individual like he's

a great example of that he's a big boy and And when he does make his lifts, their lifts are done fairly easy lawless, right? Yeah, and I think that you know, there's a lot to be learned from that but I think a lot of people just know What they see on IG and they get hyped up they get excited. They want to be the next Larry wheels Larry wheels has done You know amazing stuff and he's done, uh, he's done really well for himself as well, but he's also like torn a lot of shit.

He's probably like, what is he like 26 or 25? Yeah. It's like 25, 26. He's super young and he's, he, I think he's torn a bunch of stuff and he's like screwed himself up a bunch

and he's still lifting savage ass. Yeah. Yeah. It's still my, yeah, he can, it's still wild, but yeah, he has torn quite a few. Yeah. Yeah. It's still my, yeah, he can, it's still wild, but yeah,

he has torn quite a few muscle groups. Yeah. He's, he's a, but anyway, there's just a sacrifice to being that way. You know, if you want to be that way,

there's, there's kind of a, there's kind of a certain, a certain sacrifice that goes along with having that mindset and wanting to lift that way and wanting to kind of like put it on the line all the time. You hit the nail on the head, though, at the beginning of what you said, because I think you said something about like with, you know, trying to be at the top. There's a lot of athletes who just try to blaze through, like instead of chipping away, because Bryce Lewis, Dennis Cornelius, it's there. They've had long careers. They've been chipping away because bryce lewis dennis cornelius it's there they've had long careers they've been chipping away for years it never seems that their training has been

crazy where it's like they shouldn't have done something and then they hurt themselves or they they sacrifice their health right um but like i i i don't think there's a problem mentioning this because he mentioned it was part of his career. Was it the RPR guy? Kel Beetz? No, not on RPR. The other one. With the Hulk tattoo? Yeah, yeah. JL Holdsworth.

JL Holdsworth said that he went out in a blaze of glory. Because he's an example. He even said he went so hard. And every training session was so crazy. He got to a very high strength level. It seems pretty quick, but because he kept that, he was also out of the game pretty quick too. And if he was able to just chip away, maybe potentially pay more attention to health, went about training, he could have done even crazier things than what you've seen him do.

I think Ed Cohn did it really, really well. He did end up with a hip replacement surgery. You know, I don't know, like it's impossible to know whether he would have one, whether he lifted weights or not, you know,

maybe he, I would imagine that he compounded that by squatting a thousand pounds. But Ed was very healthy throughout his career. And all he ever did was get stronger from the time he was a teenager until he fell. He his knee snapped in a competition mountaineer cup that he was in with a lot of other great lifters. But from that point on, he was a little different. He could still lift heavy stuff and he could still beat everybody because he's a seasoned lifter and he just, he knew what it kind of took. But he had a long, he had a long career where he did what exactly we're talking about, where

he paced himself. That lift that he tried to do in that particular meet, that wasn't necessarily like more weight than he's ever handled before. It wasn't like him, it wasn't him rolling the dice. He wasn't living on the edge. I believe it was like a second attempt. And, you know, maybe at the time, maybe he could look back and say, hey, you know what, at that year I competed too much or, you know, there could have been some contributing factors

to it. But I'd also say, hey, look, if you squat enough, squat often enough, something's probably going to happen at some point. Yeah. We're watching the video on this one. Terrifying. Yeah. This is a bad one,

especially with a friend. It just, it's just so fucking strong. It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense at all. Ah, yeah. And it's, it's just a flat out ACL tear.

You know, it wasn't just, you know, it wasn't particularly anything that didn't look like there's anything wrong with the setup. It just that knee was worn out at that particular point. And so it's interesting because you can be a person that, you know, rolls the dice all the time and you can end up getting hurt or you can be where Ed was, where he would seem to be. Maybe he has a story behind that particular injury. It'd be a good question to ask him, but,

uh, or you can be someone like Ed Cohn, who was always really mindful of every time that you're going to hit a new lift, your body has to be prepared for what you're about to do every single time, but not only be prepared for it, but be prepared for that weight and then some so that you can avoid some of these injuries. Not all injuries are like, yeah, you're right, man. I mean, not all injuries avoidable. A person could be doing all the right things like Ed,

and that still happens. But like you mentioned, he had a long successful career before that happened because he was pacing himself. And that's what I think a lot of people should think about because the pacing oneself is a very difficult thing to do because you want that. You have that goal and you want to get there as fast as possible. So to purposefully slow yourself down from that goal sometimes makes you think that you're not doing enough or makes you think that you're failing. An example I have of this is like, for example, my fat loss, right? Where my body is right now is not very far away. Actually, with the physique I have right now in my last contest prep in 2015, this would have been like I stepped on stage at my current body weight or at my current body composition. And at that time, when I had this body composition, that's the time that I felt like I had a low libido, right? That's the time that my testosterone was super low.

That's when that was like, that was happening. You got there a different way. I had to get like, I, I, I first off prepped for however, 40 something weeks, but I rushed like a prep is rushing yourself towards body fat it's not that you're just naturally getting there you're purposely putting yourself in a caloric deficit over weeks and weeks and weeks right and you're like to get there yeah 40 weeks seems like a long time but i think because the reason why i feel good now is because I have this body right now because of very gradual and non-forced fat loss. Like if you go through my Instagram, I don't want to talk too long about this, but if you go through my Instagram and you look like just through the past years, 2020,

19, 18, 17, right? You'll see that I was like, there were times where I was 250 to 255 with higher body fat. Then I was 250 to 255 and my body fat got lower than I was 240 to 245 to 250, then 245 to 250 and leaner than 240 to 245 leaner. And I don't feel bad because what I am right now literally took me three and a half to four years to do. And I wasn't forcing it. Right. So I think that's a big thing with athletics.

You could either try to get there super fast. Yeah. See, that's when I was 275 and you were three something. Yeah. That's wild. Yeah. That's wild. But you could get to a 500 pound deadlift.

You know, if you do a really hard 20, 24-week training cycle and you really head for it, but if you gave yourself more months or more time to get there, you might get there with less banging yourself up, less overall fatigue, body feeling better. It's like, can we get our minds in that zone? What I see people doing is they're chipping away their calories each day. Right. So let's say, let's say you're kind of being a little innocent about it and you're not doing anything too crazy and you just pulled 200 calories off the top. You're like, I'm going to, you know, getting a little bit of a caloric deficit, pretty normal, but I'm going to exercise a little bit more and I'm going to expend an additional

200 calories. Well, now we're talking about 400 calories. Well, you have some decent results that way and you start to lose a little bit more and I'm going to expend an additional 200 calories. Well, now we're talking about 400 calories. Well, you have some decent results that way and you start to lose a little bit of weight. But if you're in any sort of prep, you're always in a rush. So you're like, man, this does not look right. I don't like where this is going. Let me pull off about 400 calories a day and see what that looks like. And you're not even paying attention that it's per

day. You know, your body doesn't really work that way necessarily per day. It's, it's kind of overall over the weeks, the months of the preparation, it's the total caloric deficit that you would be in for the entire prep would probably represent or be a good representation of your fat loss. So you're pulling more and more calories off. You're like, I need to do a little bit more cardio. So now you're burning more calories doing the cardio. And before you know it, you're pulling off 600 calories off the top. You're expending a little bit more energy doing some other things.

All the while not paying any attention to the fact that you're not getting proper sleep. And the sleep is going to be like, you know, we harp on it here all the time. We talk about it all the time. But you're really at a huge disadvantage because if you're not sleeping well, it's going to create a lot of imbalances that are going to potentially, they're not going to completely work against you. You know, your body's not going to, you know, you hear sometimes people are like, you hold on to more body fat. I don't know if it does that necessarily.

Like, I think if you're in a caloric deficit and you're working your face off, your body will continue to lose weight. However, it might slow it down a bit. However, it might make you feel like shit. It might make the process harder. It's going to make, I mean, there's, I'm not one for much research, but listening to Matthew Walker's stuff where he pulls out all kinds of research, he says there's indications that people even choose different colors of food in accordance to how well they slept and how much they slept. in accordance to how well they slept and how much they slept. So your cravings for weird shit, kind of like a pregnant lady might get here and there, you kind of get out of control with your cravings when you're sleep deprived. You're like, holy fuck, man, I haven't had some Fritos in a long ass time. You know, all of a sudden these things start trickling in.

You're like, man, a Big Mac sounds really fucking good right now and all these things trickle in and a bodybuilder most likely they're not gonna fall for that but are they gonna throw a little extra peanut butter in their oatmeal are they gonna right that's me that's me are they gonna take like little advantages which are disadvantages in the long run you know they take little liberties here and there throughout the day. Of course they are. And you're not going to look nearly as good on stage as you should have. I've even heard of people just having a really poor night of sleep the night before a bodybuilding

show and they come out and their coach is like, what happened? Did you, you know? And they're like, no, I swear I didn't. I swear I didn't do anything. I thought it holds on to more water. Yeah. When you get lax, like that's happened to you,

right? Where you've gotten a really good night of sleep. You wake up, look in the mirror, like, Oh shit, where'd all heck. Yeah.

Where'd this, right? Yeah. You know, no, I know, you know, and I unfortunately know the opposite because before,

you know, the two photo shoots that I've done, I have not got good sleep. Like the last one i like didn't sleep at all and i just remember like oh like come on like no like you'll be fine i woke up and just be like did the peak not work yeah like oh i look horrible you know i i look back and i look great but like in that moment you know i'm like oh what's the point of all this bullshit dieting and cardio

and like yeah it could have been could have been two three days earlier that you were three or four pounds lighter that could make a huge difference yeah i actually lost six pounds i uh was training with o'hearn training super early in the morning and um i sent stan like a text at like nine o'clock at night and stan does the math you know he's like you're not sleeping he's like he's like this is all bullshit he's like he's like you need to get to bed he's like if you're training at four in the morning you know he tells me when i need to go to bed and stuff like that and so i was like yeah yeah i get it you're you're fucking right so i started working on getting to bed uh about two earlier. And when I did, I sent him like a picture the next day.

And I was like, hey, I'm like six pounds lighter just from fucking sleeping longer. I was probably like two, three days later. Yeah. I was like, I'm fucking six pounds lighter. Like that's a huge shift. Yeah. And then I stayed that way just as long as I was getting my sleep, you know, getting my sleep in. But when you're, you're going to get sleep deprived by pulling that many calories away from yourself. So you're better off like maybe in SEMA has been in like, I don't know, maintenance or slight, just a tiny deficit.

Kind of like if you were like stealing sand from the beach, like no one would notice. And you're stealing sand from the beach in like little buckets, right? It's like, no. That's actually an amazing, that's an amazing metaphor for that. Because somebody wouldn't go down to the beach and be like, holy fuck, man, someone's been stealing two buckets of sand every day.

Yeah, exactly. Because that's the thing. It's like over the years, I've gone like, there've been like a few days, a few days I'll be eating lower calories. Two or three days I'll be eating higher calories. Few days I'll be eating lower. And or three days i'll be eating higher calories few days i'll be eating lower and it's that's how it goes because like i i kind of go based on how my weight's looking how my appetite's looking but it was never like okay these next four weeks

i'm in a caloric deficit no that hasn't happened but it was a slow like a slow loss over three to four years yeah and you would know, like if you, if you just ate a little extra eight off plan and I would three days. Right. And I would know if I ate too little because I'd start to actually feel weak. Like I'd start to feel, Ooh, I'm a little fragile.

Like, Ooh, I feel kind of light. You mentioned that before. Yeah. I need to actually eat a little bit more. Like when you start to feel bad, then you have to eat more.

You start to feel better again is it your grandma right my grandma's always trying to fatten me up man she still is she still thinks i'm skinny that's great she thinks you look like shit yeah that's amazing she's like why is he all strung out like don't you see your cousins they're all giant she doesn't think it's healthy for people to see my veins that's great like that's probably not wrong uh but what i was gonna say is like your your slight deficit though probably isn't coming from you know actual like your actual food it's probably just coming from like the volume and how active you are jujitsu yeah that i mean that definitely does help and i bet that's probably better in the long run, right? Cause you still get to eat, you know, what you want.

Yeah. As far as amounts, sorry. As far as cake. Yeah. Yeah. As far as amounts. Yeah. Like being able to have that type of caloric expenditure that I enjoy, like I do need to

eat extra food to be able to maintain my performance. So that's why like, it's really good. Now, if you mean, if you're an athlete that works out in the gym and that's your main thing and you don't do anything really like, yeah, you have to probably manipulate your food a little bit more.

But you can always do just, we've talked about weight training, circuit type exercises with kettlebells and dumbbells. You can get in great cardiovascular expenditure, 20 minutes, you know, and that won't affect your strength. Right. And you could literally do just about anything you could think of in between an exercise. I mean, you can do, do a set of curls and then do a set of, uh, just kind of stationary

lunges, you know, and it doesn't, I think it would be helpful for a lot of people to get their mind out of like it's leg day, you know, it's shoulder day. There's nothing wrong with those training protocols. Those training protocols are fantastic. But I think if you're thinking about weight loss and body transformation, I think it might be more useful to think I'm just going to go in there and like burn it up a bunch. You know, I'm going to still train for hypertrophy. I'm still going to follow a lot of the principles that are associated with that. I'm going to utilize good form and good technique.

I'm not going to lift like I'm in a panic. I'm not going to lift a thousand miles an hour. I'm going to lift the weights under control. But each set, I'm going to go up in weight and find something that challenges me, that challenges your form, that gets your form to be kind of brush up against being borderline. Right. And then in, you know, in a combination with that, throw something in in between the exercise. It doesn't necessarily have to be a leg workout that you're doing in between, but biceps, triceps back and forth. I mean, you're going to get a lot more work done in a shorter,

in a condensed period of time. And I just think it's a way to kind of keep that heart rate elevated. I mean, even just, I was, yesterday I did this separately. I pulled the sled first. It was just more convenient to do it this way. I pulled the sled first for about 12 minutes, 15 minutes, you know, forward, backwards with my brother. And then we moved into a shoulder workout where he went and I went, he went and I went.

And we started super setting some like the rear delt machine that we now have in the gym and some regular like side lateral raises. And it was like it got to be challenging. Like we just kept going back and forth and back and forth, back and forth. Heart rates elevated the whole time. I mean, we're getting multiple benefits going in my opinion, all at the same time. That's the big thing. I think that we, we, no matter if you're just a bodybuilder trying to build some muscle or a power lifter, who's trying to get stronger in their lifts we need to and even if you're competitive there is still space for you to have an element of just cart of the element of conditioning to

your training that's going to allow your your heart to like can allow you to have a better heart to pump better for more endurance which leads to better recovery we talked about this and there's also always an ability to do things within ranges of motion. Um, so that as a power lifter, you're not stuck moving like this all the time. You actually have some mobility. I'm not talking about static stretching or anything, but I'm talking about on maybe some of your accessory movements. And this is why I think this cannot hurt a power lifter or an elite power lifter on some of your accessory movements. If you choose to do, let's say you want to do a leg press, right? So you just choose to do that. Um, but you go full

range of motion with slightly lighter load. You come all the way down here. This is the thing. If you already training your squat to a certain range, every training session, your body knows that range of motion, just because you become more mobile doesn't mean your body is now going to enter that range. Your body just has the ability to enter that range. But you've been training so much within this squatting form with your heavy weight that being more mobile will not make you a worse athlete. It'll just give you better movement in daily life. Yeah. And if you start to try to move in some of those range of motions and something hurts, you know, one, you might need to warm up a little bit more.

But also, that's not great. You know, that's just not a great, that's not a great position to be in. You need to figure out, like, it's a good thing to investigate. I mean, sometimes for some people, I'd also say, choose a different exercise because sometimes it's just not worth it. You know, so if you, if you're thinking, man, the leg press always hurts my back or I do think that people know themselves better than they give themselves credit for. If something does bother you kind of all the time, either there's no law that says you have to do a hack squat.

There's no laws as you have to do a leg extension. So I just really wouldn't sweat it. And I'd find something else that you can do. But I agree a hundred percent is, uh, you know, hit some good ranges of motion, you know, and that could be your goal in between doing like a main workout or a main exercise. You know, the biceps and triceps are going back and forth with your main goal for the day on your, you know, squats that you do in between is to get full range of motion on your squats. And you're just doing body weight squats. You don't even have to have any weight. Maybe on a day when you're training your legs, maybe then you go back and train your squat

differently and you have a barbell on your back and you're training heavier and you're squatting off a box or whatever it might be. But at least you're still attacking all these different angles and you're getting multiple benefits by going back and forth between some of these exercises. Yesterday, um, yesterday I was doing the, the knees over toes, got like a, using the slant board with squats. And my goal with my squats yesterday was to be comfortable with like my hamstrings touching like the back of my, my calves and just kind of sitting there and breathing there. Right. Um, if I were to squat with heavier weight, I'm not going to squat that deep. But having that weighted mobility and being strong in that position can be something that

a powerlifter does with 135 pounds or 95 pounds. See, if you don't like to stretch, which you don't have to like to stretch, you can always use load to push you into that range of motion. And because you're going to be then coming up and resisting that load, you're now going to be strong into that range of motion. And because you're going to be then coming up and resisting that load, you're now going to be strong through that range of motion. It's not just you've stretched a muscle. It's now you have moved it through ranges with resistance, which is really good as an athlete.

That can give you a lot of longevity. People like to say that stretching doesn't really prevent injury. That can be something that actually does help prevent injury i think it's i think it helps a lot and i think uh you know people a lot a lot of times we just get caught up in like thinking about that end result we're just thinking about the weight that we're going to do in the gym and you know when it comes to you know people trying to be um as healthy as possible when it comes to people sometimes talking about longevity and expanding their life.

And you hear Joe Rogan and some people talking about wanting to live to be 100 or these things. But I think, really, I think there is a slight difference between increasing your lifespan and increasing your health span. I think, ultimately, what we're all after is not necessarily living like a long, you know, not the longest life. We want to live the healthiest life. And that way we're still, we still have, you know, fully functioning brain. We don't have Alzheimer's or dementia.

We don't have type two diabetes. We don't have heart disease. We're not suffering with some sort of illness or disease. We built our body up strong enough to where it can potentially, there's no guarantees, but potentially fight some of these things off. And I don't know what that looks like. I don't know what,

what the, usually the people that live like long, the people that live, you know, into their hundreds, when you see them on TV, they're usually very small they're usually very very like little like i i wonder like even just someone

that's like six foot six or six eight like how long like i don't see a lot of guys that are 80 that are six eight i don't see a lot of guys i don't see a lot of guys that are he might be i don't see a lot of guys that are um you know three or four hundred pounds that are in their 80s and i mean it's i guess you don't see that many 80 and 90 year olds anyway but um it's it's kind of it seems to be kind of uh it seems to be kind of rare so i just even wonder like just being a larger person, uh, if that's just more stressful on your body, but if you are a larger person, uh, maybe exercising and nutrition can help you kind of fight off just the fact that you're a little bit bigger. Dude, that's money right there. Think about that because number one, the whole lifting culture really kind of became a thing in the 20s 30s really in like the 50s 60s like jimson stuff

now it makes sense that shorter and smaller people do live longer outside of said lifting culture because of gravity and the stress that it has on like an individual's body the taller you are the more high like larger bones you have when you start to, if you don't lift, right, you don't tone your muscles so they can carry your joints around. Gravity is going to do this to that big ass spine and your knees and your hips, right? And it's going to have more stress on your bigger body than it does for this small, tiny person who's close to the ground. But with the advent of lifting culture and weightlifting, individuals that are big can now train their muscles

to better take advantage and better move their frame. And I truly think, obviously, with like nutritional habits, all the things we know about sleep, all the things we know about better lifestyle and how it can have an effect on your health, I think that we're going to be starting to see more 80, 90 centennials that are big humans because we now know how to take care of that bigger structure and taking care of a smaller structure is just easier.

Yeah. Well, I mean, there's been plenty of, um, we'll say statistics. I don't know exactly about studies, but you know, if you have weak legs, you're a lot easier to, yeah, you're, well, I mean, if you have weak legs you're a lot easier to yeah you're well i mean if you have strong legs you're harder to kill and it's as simple as if you start to fall you have legs that can support you right versus the opposite and then you fall and like i mean that's that's a thing you know like you have instructions when an old person falls like i mean shit that that commercial with the uh the lady that falls i can't get up i

can't get up yeah you know yep yeah that's that's there because they're not strong enough to hit a body weight squat yeah you know a couple reps yeah i guess the idea there is that they fall and they get hurt and then they get hurt they get hospitalized and then they can't recover because they're just as we kind of pointed out earlier with the cyclist or at that point they're or bodybuilder that's on stage you're kind of fragile you know you're open open to uh open to getting hurt i think stress in general is an interesting thing because like if you're trying if you are simply just trying to live the longest and healthiest life, it's really hard to figure out what would be all the right stuff to do, but I think

mostly it would be good not to ever, and this would be really hard, or to really avoid ever agitating somebody or ever having weird vibes with anybody else because all those things, they add, they add, they add stress. Um,

and I, I'm a kind of a believer that these things, uh, will kind of like live inside your body. The other thing that would be interesting to know is like, you know, what about people that are, you know,

quote unquote high performers, people that perform on another level? Uh, I don't imagine that they get to live to be super, you know, to live super long. But maybe, maybe they do. It would be interesting to see, like, how long, you know, Michael Jordan lives or it's going to be interesting to see how long some of these people that have been great in our

lifetime, how long they're going to be able to live i think it's hard because if you look at michael i mean this is unfair but michael jordan as an nba player looks a certain way retired michael jordan looks a different way and you know he's put on some some body fat and stuff so is he still you know you know a high performer in that or is he now just oh yeah yeah no yeah what i meant was the the uh ability to play the game at such a high level for so long got it like what like is that going to kill him like is it is it like smoking cigarettes you know is it going to take away more than it's got to take away something i would imagine but maybe it doesn't let me so i i have but yeah he would have to have healthy practices afterwards as well you're right

yeah likes to smoke and drink right look at dennis rodman look at him he's gonna live forever see i think that okay so there are some people you can't kill the worm there are some people who are built different like dennis rodman like he'd go party come back no sleep come fuck everybody up and run around the court faster than everybody and then go do a game dennis rodman is built different like and and this is the thing this is this is what i'm thinking here it's like you've seen those people too that you see them do a lift a certain way and you're like my back would be shot up in so many different spots if i attempted to squat what you're doing even with the lightest weight but you're doing that with 700 pounds right some people who are built different but i also do think that we can pay attention to like the guy like lebron because yes lebron is a

physical specimen but from what we can see lebron isn't out drinking and partying and stuff he's we don't have 1.5 million dollars to spend on our body but he is spending that type of money on his body and the reason why he's been able to break so many nba records isn't just because he's such a good basketball player but because he's been able to be in the nba for a long enough time to do it you know right like if he got if he doesn't take a pair of himself and he was out by the age of 33 he still would have some records but he wouldn't beat kobe scoring record he wouldn't beat the assist record it's just because of his longevity within the sport and he's still going strong but think about this i don't expect lebron to stop

taking care of himself after i think that's going to be some 95 year old like six eight beast that you're going to see because he's he took the long he's taken the long approach to his game like there were seasons where he purposefully sat out of games because he's like i don't need it i don't need to play right now people got pissed at him but he's like oh i'm good i'm gonna play the long game here right and he's also exponentially so much better that yeah i guess it's kind of a bad example but you guys see what i'm going for here absolutely i'm going for it yeah i wanted to um kind of bring it back around to that text thread that we were that we had going on put myself and my family on blast and this is what like started it all but we had a family gathering and on a scale of one to ten as far as like happy foods like the foods that were available was like

a fucking million you know and i was just looking at it and the reason why i say put myself on blast because i wasn't like kind of hanging out i was more like looking at the food and looking at the people around me and i'm just like man like we're eating this before we actually even eat like the meal can you tell some people what those foods were just think of the best chips and the best candies you can think of yeah and you know kind of just like we're you know just going through them all and i'm just like man like this is like this sucks like you know and and i like i text you guys because i need it to vent because i'm like hey am i like a bad person for like viewing it this way like why can't i just like enjoy this sort of

like you know just time instead of kind of taking a step back and being like Just being judgmental like let's be real. That's what I was doing Obviously nobody, you know, nobody killed over and had a heart attack because of you know, they had a couple of chips, but that's what kind of drove the conversation to like Okay, like what if you know, they either lost a couple pounds here and there, or let's even, you know, take it a step further and be like, what is like an ideal, healthy, balanced body fat percentage that could be obtainable by, you know, basically anybody to where they'd be healthier and they don't have to necessarily, you know, go vegan or go carnivore. Like,

they don't have to be a super restrictive eater, more intuitive, of course, but like, what does that look like? And I think, you know, we could probably share what that, that information is because I think a lot of people, they heard you guys talking about power lifters, Ed Cohn, uh, LeBron, Kobe, Jordan. And it's like, well, I'm not that I'm more closer to 40% body fat than I am 20% or whatever that range is going to be. Therefore, since I'm not that I'm more closer to 40% body fat than I am 20% or whatever that range is going to be. Therefore, since I'm not an athlete, I'm just not going to bother. I'm just going to keep eating and living the way I am. But I think we all came to the conclusion that it's like, well, I mean, if you drop maybe 5%, what does that look like?

And how much more like the health benefits in that are gigantic and they're bigger than what people I think are assuming. You got to keep in mind, you know, the people that live the longest on this planet are women and they have higher body fat percentages. So going by a body fat percentage might be pretty deceiving. Fat is also protective of the body in a lot of ways. And it's a way to say, hey, I'm going to hold on to this for later. You know, we have taken that probably way too far in a lot of cases. I don't really know exactly. I guess, you know, what has happened in the last year or so, I think is a good indication of,

you know, how unhealthy our country is. Because when all this kind of started, when they started mentioning all these other countries and people were really upset with how the U.S. handled this particular problem, people were very upset. But I don't think that we could have handled it any other way. Cause I think that we are too sick. Like we're already sick. You know, people are talking about comorbidities and all these different things. It's like, well, we already have a lot of those because of the food that we consume

and we don't move around as much as we need to. So I don't know if any measures would have assisted or helped unless we just maybe didn't move at all and stayed like literally locked inside our homes, perhaps. But I just think that we were all, many of us were very vulnerable because of the, what you're kind of mentioning, the family outing where everyone just thinks it's pretty

innocent to have some chips. But is it? It's not. It's literally not. Like, I hate to be that person that's like, hey, we can't do this. But you can't do that and get away with it. No one gets away with it. Oh, it's fine for the kids.

No, no, no. It's the worst for the kids. If you want to be an adult and you want to beabetic or it could lead to, um, just them being like, I mean, you know, just don't want your kid to stick out like a sore thumb. You know,

you're kind of hoping that your kid isn't like super skinny. You're kind of hoping your kid's not super fat. You're kind of hoping that your kid's not like one way or the other too much so that they can just be kind of at least a little bit comfortable in their own skin. It's fucking hard being a kid as it is and to be uh you know the fat kid in your class or something like that is it's a horrible thing let me ask you this real quick about the note on um kids right how as a parent um do you like teach your kid because you like, there's the, you know, if you never

let your kid have that, they get out of the house and they're like, I'm gonna eat all the cookies and all like, like they're gonna, they're gonna just go crazy on it. And maybe they'll gain a bunch of weight because they never understood how to just be normal with it. So how do you teach your kid how, because they're going to be around this extremely palatable sugary thing that they want to eat more and more and more of. How do you teach them that? So that when they become an adult, like they don't go crazy with it.

It's just like anything else. It's like they're going to try to discover it. But can they navigate that world in a healthy way? Yeah, I'll go first and then you can crush it, Mark. Because a lot of the stuff that i that i do now is we i've learned from mark but um all we've ever tried to do is just to um you know make an emphasis on protein you know with with jasmine yeah and so she like can she understands like she can look at a plate and she can tell you what's what um she won't be able to

say like the like how much fat steak has but she knows like that's my protein source everything else is my carbs um she's not gonna know macros or anything like that um so that's just always there i'm like hey like like what protein have you had today and she'll know if she's done good or well you know if she's eating something good or bad yeah um and she will you know like okay yeah that makes sense like I'll make a point to if she's has pancakes with eggs that she'll make sure she eats all the eggs and then if she gets through half of the pancake then that's cool it's a win versus the opposite which in my opinion would be a loss for us the other thing is giving her much better options we were just talking about coke zero I know

some people say like artificial sweeteners are going to be bad for your kids because it leads to X, Y, and Z. But, you know, like she will be handed a full sugary drink, which we can all agree is probably not the best thing. And she will say no, because I have Coke Zeros at home. And like, that's a huge win. Same thing with regular traditional ice cream. She will say no because she knows I'm going to make a gigantic, you know, protein ice cream. And again,

same thing. Like it does have some artificial sweeteners and stuff, but at least she knows. And she's very aware of like, okay, like, let's see, we had,

you know, Mac and cheese or whatever. If she was like at a friend's house or cousin's house, I should say. And it of like, okay, like, let's see, we had, you know, mac and cheese or whatever. If she's like at a friend's house or cousin's house, I should say. And it's like, okay, well, what protein? I didn't have protein. Okay. For lunch, it's like, oh, we're going to have whatever donuts. We'll just go way over the top. She will understand that like, ah, like that's probably not the best thing. She might still eat it, but at least she knows, you know, and that's the thing. It's like, she's going to make her decisions regardless,

but she at least is aware like, ah, man, I didn't have any protein today. Like I'm a little bit behind. So that's been good. And like I said, just her being able to say no to things.

That's like me as a kid, I would be like, hell yeah, give me that soda. And now she's like, no, I'm going to go ahead and pass because I have a better option at home. Yeah.

If your kids are already like, you know, a little bit grown up, then options is your best thing. Like present them with good options. I hear parents say all the time, oh, my kid doesn't like to get out of the house. And it's like, we'll just try to give them good options and maybe they'll want to get out of the house. You, you know, pop in their room and say, hey, you want to go see some live music tonight? You know, like, yeah, that know, pop in their room, say, Hey, you want to go see some live music tonight? You know, like, yeah, that takes, that takes a lot of effort. You gotta like, that takes some planning. You gotta figure out like, what kind of place is this? Like, if I'm going to take them out at night, is it like a bar? Like, I can't just take my seven-year-old kid to like a bar,

you know, it's weird. So you gotta like, you have to plan, you have to kind of always keep your eyes open for potential activities and things to do. And when it comes to food, you'll have to find options that taste reasonable for them. And kids don't really like to see that stuff as diet this or diet that. They are very turned off by that for who knows why. Maybe because they're just used to something tasting a certain way. And they're like, whatever that thing is, it doesn't taste like this other thing that I have, uh,

grown to love. So you have to, the diet stuff works. The diet drinks can work pretty well because they at least taste sweet and they at least are like on par enough. Um, I buy a lot of those fair life drinks for my kids. Those little shots of milk that are just extra,

uh, extra protein, but you know, more affordable stuff, uh, could be fruits, vegetables, kid, kids usually love fruit. Most kids, most kids really, really enjoy fruit. Most kids like yogurt. Yogurt can be riddled with quite a bit of sugar. So just maybe, uh, you know, just watching what kind of yogurt that you buy. You don't have to buy plain yogurt.

Your kid will kill you. But just like reasonable amounts and communicating with your children about what's reasonable and communicating to them about what could potentially happen when you eat these foods, just educating them, letting them know and using other family members and saying, hey, you know, uncle so and so like he, you know, he has diabetes and he has to prick his finger every day and he has to take medication and he's he's very sick. You know, you're not trying to make fun of anybody. You're not trying to out anybody, but you're you're simply just pointing out what's around. around. I've done that with my children when it comes to drugs, when it comes to alcohol, when it comes to family members being heavy. My mom died from being obese. So it's like I have stuff around me to where I can say, your grandmother died maybe 20 years earlier than

she should have because she really struggled with her, with her nutrition, struggled with her diet. And so, and that not only did she struggle with her or not only did she, she, did she die young, but she also had like about eight or nine years that were kind of shitty

where she just couldn't get around the same way. And they all saw that. And so it's like, you know, here's an example, but you can point that out. If you don't have a family member like that, you know, when you go to the grocery store, I mean, you're not pointing at anybody, but you're seeing these people that are, you know,

using their walker and they're 50. Like, that's not normal. Like you shouldn't, you should not need that. Like I have compassion for those people because my mom was one of them. But at the same time, uh, you uh you know you people have to take responsibility for themselves and we need to continue to educate people on you know what are some decent options in terms of your food i like your idea of adding you know adding protein like we're gonna we're gonna mainly get protein we're gonna add like we're not taking you don't even mention if you

do take anything away you know it's, oh, there's more vegetables around. Oh, there's more fruit around. Or there's more, there's a lot of options nowadays for healthy snacks. My son takes, like, beef jerky with him to school all the time. He happens to really like that. Like, what do your kids like that are decent options that are healthier options than maybe what they currently do? Yeah. healthier options than maybe what they currently do.

Yeah. And then also like we, you know, like I've lately I've been making a lot of Piedmont teas with, it's just like a bag of frozen stir fry vegetables from Costco. It's really, really good. Yeah. And, you know, sometimes my daughter will put soy sauce on her rice. It's like, that's not hurting literally anything. But it's funny. She,

the other day she just reached for like the coconut aminos instead of soy sauce. Coconut aminos? Yeah. It's just like a different, like alternative. Yeah. Yeah.

There you go. It's an alternative to like traditional soy sauce, which I don't really think there's too much wrong with soy sauce period. Right. But I'm just like, like, do you like that? And she's like, yeah. Like, you know, she didn't right but i'm just like like do you like that and

she's like yeah like what you know she didn't even care and it's like you know i could definitely like like no you shouldn't put that much or you shouldn't do like no like fuck it like just do whatever you want just make sure you are eating that whole steak you know and she that's usually never a problem she actually yeah she crushes piedmontes it's great um but yeah like kind of being okay with uh like you know the ice cream i make her like mine will be plain and i'll be like hey do you want to throw like some fruity pebbles on top like it's no big deal i know mark's talked about like french toast in the past like what's what's the harm in that like there is none uh benjamin bickman talking about making crepes yeah you know he's just like yeah just like, yeah, I'll throw Nutella on there.

But as long as they eat, you know, like for every one they eat, they're getting two eggs or whatever it was. And it's like, yeah, I think. So, like I've said it before, like sneaking more protein in your diet. You can easily do that for your kids, too. You know, just doing simple things like that. Every parent has to investigate nutrition. Yeah. They need to know about nutrition.

It impacts everything. I mean, imagine if you wanted to send your kid to a private school, like I'm going to get them the best education possible. Then the kid eats junk. The kid has interrupted sleep. The kid has behavior problems. The kid has ADHD and everything else under the sun. A lot of these things can be,

I'm not saying they're directly connected to your food, but it's my belief that these things are connected largely to your food and largely to your sleep. Teenagers especially have disrupted sleep, maybe even worse than anybody. And they need to sleep more. They have to sleep like two or three hours more. And they,

they have to get up at, you know,. Uh, and they, they have to get up at, you know, for school at 6am or 7am to be there at seven or eight or whatever the time is. It's just, it's just a goddamn nightmare. But like, imagine being a parent and you're thinking you're doing the best thing for your child by like, Hey, I'm going to send them, send them to the school. And I want my kid to be super smart. Well, if you want your kid to be super smart, you're going to have to feed him proper nutrition. I'm not saying that you can't be smart without it. I'm just saying that a lot of these things can impact your sleep.

Your sleep can impact your learning. You know, it's just parents have to learn. They have to learn about nutrition. I mean, it's they always say that kids don't come with like an instruction manual. Well, an instruction manual, in my opinion, to having a child would be to have a book on nutrition because how to feed your kids, how to nourish them is your fucking job. It's your job to keep your kids safe. Like that's what your job is. You're not going to let them play out in the fucking middle of the street, you know?

So you shouldn't let them have two bowls of ice cream every day. You know, you should be paying attention. These things are like, they're really, they're really important. So learn about nutrition, maybe try to apply the nutrition yourself. Cause if your kids seeing you, they see you doing that. Nutrition is just part of stuff. And you, uh, at the dinner table, you ask the wife, say, Hey, how was swimming today? You know, and you start talking about these things like, hey, how was your walk?

How was lifting? How was, you know, exercise is like incorporated. Eating is, hey, what'd you have for breakfast today? Oh, I had three eggs. I had just, it's very normal. There's nothing abnormal. You know, and in Seema's house, it would be like, dad, how much liver did you have today? How much sheep balls did you eat this afternoon? All right, never ate sheep balls i don't know what you think people are

gonna believe i just got excited i got excited liver was a thing though in the household now i will but the goat heads goat heads yeah we did fuck with go heads and fish heads and shit um but uh this is like i think this is awesome awesome because it does all come down to education. When you have an understanding about something, it's hard, not that you won't, but it's hard to make the wrong decision. Like when you understand, let's talk drugs real quick. When you know what excessive, what like excessive weed can do to you, You then find it harder to want to abuse it, no matter how good it feels to smoke it. You, no matter how,

if you have an education on what excessive food does to you over time and making the choices to eat highly palatable foods and how that can lead you, even though in the moment it might not be bad, but it can lead you to have more actions that lead you to eating more of that food and gaining unnecessary body fat. You then know that, hmm, I'm probably, I might not even eat it right now, but if I eat it right now, I need to be careful for the next few days. And then you can also go and you can teach your kids that. Like, that's the thing. these kids can't go through life thinking that these foods are necessarily like,

like they, they can never eat it or something horrible is going to happen. But if they can have that understanding that I can have a donut right now with the homies, but, uh, I don't need, I like,

I'm not going to eat excessive amounts of this over time and I'm going to be healthy if I do that. If they can have that layered understanding, then they can, like if you're the party or whatever i guarantee that if you're able to educate them on it rather than like maybe demonizing it but telling them what it could do they would they would be more wary about having all that type of stuff at a family gathering yeah you know and the amazing so like just to to wrap up that party um i made a uh like a fruit dip thing but it was uh from so it was like a

manipulation of remington james's uh he has like a it's like an oreo cheesecake bite thing yeah and so i just made like the filling and i used that so it was like i mean the whole thing it was a big old bucket like the whole thing was like a thousand calories but every person had like a little you know like plastic bowl full and i'm like it's like the highest protein thing that's here right now because it's just full of protein because it's like greek yogurt and like protein powder and a couple other things yeah but i was like kind of nervous because i'm like oh shit anything we bring everyone's like oh that's definitely healthy like that's the healthy thing like no no it's just dessert because if i feel like whenever i tell somebody something's like oh that's definitely healthy like that's the healthy thing like no no it's just dessert because if i feel like whenever i tell somebody something's like oh it's good and it's

good for you they're just automatically shut off yeah here's another thing about everyone loved it it was great oh that's awesome yeah i think that's great that you do that yeah i do all the time yeah you're always bringing healthy that's the smartest thing to do i mean i think if you like diet drinks like when you show up at a party bring a bunch bunch of diet drinks. I do that as well. You might be the only one drinking them, but so what? I was the second one. I was one other person. I think that, you know, parents need to also like when your kid is like a child, you know, very young, you're the one that feeds them. So feed them good

stuff. You know, the majority of the time there's, there's really not a lot of reasons to feed a kid that can't talk anything other than stuff that's nutritious for him. Oh yeah. It's like, he can't fucking say anything yet. Like just,

just give him what he needs, you know, don't worry about giving him shit that he, that you might think that he likes or that you might think that he wants. I mean, there's, there's just no, it's just completely unnecessary.

I mean, it can be fun or funny to like, see like, oh, what's he going to do with the, with the cake, you know, and the kid jammed to cake all on his face and stuff like that. You get some pictures, but that's like, you know, birthday thing or something. But, uh, the kids don't need to like, they don't need to be exposed to that at such a young age. I mean, this is a weird analogy, but it's like being exposed to porn at like a really young age mean this is a weird analogy but it's like being exposed to porn at like a really young age it's too much excitement for you your brain your brain can't handle any of that stuff like yeah you just don't need that like at that young of an age so parents

you know in the example that you're laying out with the chips and stuff if the chips just aren't there i'm not saying you can't have them and and I'm not saying to demonize them, because that's awful, too. But if they're just not there, they won't be eaten. Correct. You're cooking a bunch of food. Like, you're at a barbecue, right? Mm-hmm. They're just, it's, put out other stuff.

And I know that, like, vegetables and fruit and shit like that won't be as entertaining, but, like, you know, just put out, oh, we got it. I remember something. Keep going. Oh it and see we broke them again you know just yeah put out some other stuff and like you don't actually need any food because you're cooking the main food yeah it's coming and kids that that want a bitch and complain let them do it like just fight that fight because it's worth it it's totally worth it. Yeah. Just what are they going to do? They're going to complain.

They're going to say, I didn't have any dinner. Just tell them, Hey, go fuck yourself. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Let me tell you all this real quick. All right. Number one, preface, um, within like African culture and honestly, all other foreign cultures,

like, like giving your kid a good spanking is not a problem and i like i have no i was spanked a lot as a kid all right i don't have i don't have any problem with it i don't look back at it like so before i tell this story i need you to understand i am not hurt okay now uh when i was a kid i told you my mom didn't have soda in the house we were not allowed to drink soda that That shit. No, it's not healthy. You don't drink soda. But when I was younger, she had me enrolled in some of these college classes to like play piano and shit. I was like eight or nine at the time.

So there was like a little there was a class party. Right. And they brought chips. They brought they brought all these things and they brought soda. My mom took this class with me, by the way, like we were both learning piano in the class. She took it with me.

So, you know, the teacher has everything and the teacher comes up to me. Cause she sees me sitting there by my mom. She's like, Oh, and Seema, would you like to go up and get some food?

Maybe you want a soda? I was like, look at my mom. And mom was like, do you like a soda? I was like, yes. She's like, go ahead. soda i was like yes she's like go ahead i went i got the soda i got the pepsi came back i was drinking my pepsi i'm so good right eating

food and she's like just sitting there just smiling everything's cool we drive home we get home she's like so you think you're gonna go drink some soda you think you're gonna say yes to drinking a soda in this class I was like mom, but you said like, you know what I meant She spanked me She was like wait til we get home She was like wait til we get home You think

That shit I'm not telling you I spank kids Brutality It's not brutality yo like it was not brutality, but it's just like brutality it's not brutality yo like it was not brutality but it's just like yo like no like i knew i don't fuck with sodas like every time i look at the i'm just like no i'm good man that's so that's funny i mean it's it worked out she told you that it's not healthy like a lot of times a lot of times parents they won't explain anything like oh it's just not for kids and they're like well why the fuck do you drink it all the time she's gonna say yeah if she had one in her

hand she didn't have a soda in her hand she's got water but she like you ate what she ate most of the time probably yeah yeah yeah that's crazy i said that was so funny yeah but what you were talking about earlier you know like the the food was incredible my brother-in-law was uh he's just making some tacos you know it was like already marinated meat so and he has like the whole griddle set up it's just amazing and i'm just i'm thinking the whole time like damn like those those lays are taking flavor away from like this amazing dinner that we're about to have and it's like, you know, that wasn't the time nor the place to stand up on one of the tables and

explain, you know, what's happening to them right now. Yeah. You know, it'd be like, you're taken away from your dinner. You're,

you know, you're spoiling your dinner. I was going to sound like the oldest person there, but it's frustrating, you know? Yeah. And it does all come back to education. Cause like,

I think at the beginning we were talking about like, you know, a person being 25 come back to education because like i think at the beginning we were talking about like you know a person being 25 body fat or whatever 20 25 body fat being healthy right like yeah they can be healthy this can be a person that chooses to go out and maybe have some pizza or whatever at the end of the week they're not super lean they're not really fat fat or anything they're just like they're living a healthy lifestyle maybe working out twice a week playing i don't know some random sports with some friends or whatever but like not super into fitness but living in a healthy fashion that that can be done it's just i think if an individual is going to be able to do that successfully they absolutely need the knowledge of it all so that they don't have any guilt when they have a donut even though they know i don't

really need this right now it's cool and it's not good for me like that's the thing i think that's rough with flexible dieting when people talk about it and they teach flexible dieting and if it fits your macros some people are like yeah this fits your macros it's not unhealthy like it actually is unhealthy and it does fit your macros like let's not try to mix them let's not try to say the pizza is actually healthy or the donuts actually healthy or the massive amounts of sugar and the peanut butter is actually healthy just because it fits your macros it's not healthy plant protein bro right it's not healthy like understand you're intaking something unhealthy um even though it fits your macros but that doesn't make the food good for you mentally maybe there could be some help there but it's not good for you

yeah i think that's where like i will step in and like try to educate on like the lower calorie version of things i did it poorly recently but that was just because i just got frustrated but that's where i will say like like why are are you going to add all this crazy-ass dressing to your healthy salad? Like, that makes no sense. Your salad now, you know, costs more calorically than, like, my whole meal. Yeah. And then it's like, but no, it's a salad. Like, well, yes, but, you know, let's think about the calories.

And that's, you know, obviously we're not talking about kids anymore, but that's where the education, again, just comes back to them just simply not knowing. Yeah. Yeah. I think if you think about all the different options that you have in terms of like eating less, you know, there's so many different diets that you can try. There's a ketogenic style diet, which normally has you reducing your overall calories because you're cutting out macronutrient. You have things like protein leveraging, where you learn to eat more protein because protein is the most satiating. It can help keep you full.

You can eat like protein and vegetables because vegetables don't really cost you a whole lot in terms of their caloric impact. And they help fill you up and they provide bulk and fiber for your stomach um there's just a lot of options you can count calories you can um uh you can just kind of do more what in semen i do where you just weigh yourself look at yourself in the mirror kind of do an assessment say all right well you know this is going good this way or i need to eat more i need to eat less and you can kind of you know, learn how to do it that way. But there's a lot of options. And when we're talking about kind of your health span, one of the healthiest things you can do is to figure out how to go through each and every day without overeating.

That's like one of the, you know, one of the key ingredients. And if you listen to anybody that talks, well, not anybody, but if you listen to most people that talk about nutrition, except for Robert Lustig, they'll kind of point out to a lot of the studies that have been done on humans and animals and even like worms and shit like that. When they live a life where they are mainly just uh, uh, just not over consuming calories. They, uh, live longer lives. So like, that's one of the simplest things. Should you go for a walk? Should you go for a run? Uh, should you lift some weights? If those things interest you?

Yeah, they would be great. And it, it would be great if you had a handful of things that you liked that were healthy for you in terms of maybe being able to increase your metabolic output. And also, you know, gaining muscle mass, I think, is really, really critical. You know, the damage of things like diabetes, you know, it first happens in your muscle cells. Like that's where insulin resistance occurs is in your muscle cells. And so the more muscle cells, like the more muscle cells that you have, uh, the less likely you're going to be to, to suffer from some of those things. So if you have a little bit of muscle on your body, which would take, I don't know, let's

just go total minimum, say two workouts that are 30, 40 minutes, you know, of lifting per week. You can go around at whatever like is reasonable within your, like everyone should know like their fighting weight. Like what's your weight? There may be some individuals that, you know, got behind when they were young and got really heavy when they were young. And so

maybe they don't even know what their fighting weight is, but how tall are you? You know, are you six foot? Are you five, five, three, you know, like there's some references that you can look at. Like you don't necessarily need to like live up to those standards and be those body weights. But, you know, for someone that's five'7", I would say, like, it's reasonable to be, like, you know, if you're 300 pounds, it's very reasonable to be 220 or 200, and that might still look a little bit larger than what's maybe recommended for that height, but I think, I think you'll be totally fine, you know, the thing is, is just, wherever you're at now, fine. You know, the thing is, is just wherever you're at now, the goal should be to take things, uh, you know, one day at a time, one week at a time, one month at a time, but really even

beyond that, it's one, it's like one bite at a time. It's one meal at a time. Don't be upset and depressed and pissed off and confused and whatever else you want to be towards yourself or embarrassed that you're heavy, just think, all right, well, all I got to do is I got to do stuff about this every single day. And it's going to start with however many meals you have every day and try to make sure that they are in line with whatever it is that your goal is. Write the goal down. Have an aim.

And just losing weight. You know, we get caught up in so many different things. The simple act of losing weight, losing body fat, you want to, you know, I think it's wise to make sure they're not losing muscle mass because that's harmful. You want to make sure you're losing body fat. But the simple act of losing body fat is very, can be very healthy. It can also be detrimental, as we were talking about earlier, when you're losing body fat, but the simple act of losing body fat is very, can be very healthy.

It can also be detrimental as we were talking about earlier when you're getting super lean, you know, and so you might be cautious about how kind of carried away you get with that. And we've mentioned many times in the show, you might want to do all this in stages. If you're, if you're 400 pounds and you're trying to come down to something that you think is more reasonable, you know, maybe you go from 400 to 370 and you go trying to come down to something that you think is more reasonable, maybe you go from 400 to 370, and you stay at 370 for a bit, and you go to 350 and so on. As I was coming down from 330, it took me a long time. It took me a long time to get down to where I'm at. I think the whole process really took about six years.

I always tell people it took a decade to uh be able to just sort of prevent myself from having some of the same bad habits i still had a lot of the same bad habits but i was still able uh to lose weight just from like just from like pure like will and just forcing myself to to train enough to you know i guess out outwit my uh cheat meals and things things like that here and there real real quick and see my oh let me see the name uh just shout out kim clark she says mark you're one of her heroes oh thank you kim that's special and she has some hearts go ahead and see me sorry no no you're one of her heroes oh thank you kim that's special and she left some hearts go ahead and see i'm sorry no no you're good bro i was gonna say somehow we got to make like the because as far as like transformations are concerned um like it's like you know the the

eight-week challenge the 12-week challenge and those are great awesome things to get people on the boat or to get people on the wagon but i think when people look at like eight-week challenge and those are great awesome things to get people on the boat or to get people on the wagon but I think when people look at like eight-week challenge 12-week challenge or whatever there's some people who really believe that in the next 12 weeks of hard work or in the next whatever 20 weeks of hard work I'm gonna have that body that I've been wanting there's some people that truly like and some people are able to do that they have a good background and there's some knowledge there but like, and some people are able to do that. They have a good background and there's some knowledge there, but like, you know, how can we make the, the two year challenge or the fucking year challenge?

How can we make that the sexy thing? Because at the end of the day, that's what it's typically going to be for a majority of the population. It's going to be, and, and after they get that body, there's still now all the habits needed to maintain said body and live that life. I think that's what you're in the middle of right now with your jujitsu experience, you know. But you said in the beginning, you were like, I would like to, you know, make a run at like getting to this point in five years, you know. And I don't think you're going to be like, hey, I'm out of here, you know.

At this point, you're so locked into what you're doing. It was just a, it was just a goal. But I think that more long-term goals I think are great, but they, they still need to be, they just can't, you just got to be careful on how, like you were already fit going into it. You're already a capable human being of being able to be good at probably anything that's physical. You know, you can go into probably just about anything that's physical. Someone could teach you it. You can probably do a decent job at it, you know? But so you have to

make sure that you are at least a little bit within striking distance of what it is, like, where someone else can say, yeah, I could, okay. That's going to be more difficult than you might think. But yeah, I can see you doing that. You know, and I think when it comes to the weight loss stuff I love it when I hear someone say, you know what? Yeah, I've been working really hard. And this month I'm, I'm really, I'm hoping that I get down about another two or three pounds when they say something really low. I'm like that guy fucking gets it.

That guy understands it because he knows that if he loses 10 this month and 10 the next month and 10 the next month and 10 the next month, yes, that might accumulate and that might equal 50 pounds. But how many times we've seen those people gain a lot of that weight back, you know, and for some people that are bigger, it may work that way for a bit. And for some people that are bigger, it may work that way for a bit, just kind of naturally. But for the most part, just really taking your time makes a lot of sense. Take us on out of here, Andrew. We've been talking for way too long. Way too long. That's a seamless fall.

It is. The mind bullet kicked in. Are you going to shoot it? Because I set up one camera so that way we can see if it goes in. Shot clock? No, I'm not finished with this one. I'm saving this for the next. Next episode? The rainy day?

Yes. Next episode. That might be happening in a couple minutes. Piedmontese.com. P-I-E-D-M-O-N-T-E-S-E.com. At checkout, enter promo code POWERPROJECT for 25% off your order. Make sure you guys hit them up for the absolute best steaks in the universe. Links will be down in the YouTube description as well as the podcast

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This week, this never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.