Mark Bell's Power Project - Mark Bell Explains The Power Of Habit - Achieve The Physique You've Always Wanted || Saturday School
Episode Date: June 29, 2024Today we have a LIVE Mark Bell's Power Project where Mark Bell teaches us how using the power of habit can help us achieve the physique and bank account we've always wanted, as well as answer your que...stions live. Official Power Project Website: https://powerproject.live Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw Special perks for our listeners below! 🍆 Natural Sexual Performance Booster 🍆 ➢https://usejoymode.com/discount/POWERPROJECT Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your order! 🚨 The Best Red Light Therapy Devices and Blue Blocking Glasses On The Market! 😎 ➢https://emr-tek.com/ Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your order! 👟 BEST LOOKING AND FUNCTIONING BAREFOOT SHOES 🦶 ➢https://vivobarefoot.com/powerproject 🥩 HIGH QUALITY PROTEIN! 🍖 ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save up to 25% off your Build a Box ➢ Piedmontese Beef: https://www.CPBeef.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 🩸 Get your BLOODWORK Done! 🩸 ➢ https://marekhealth.com/PowerProject to receive 10% off our Panel, Check Up Panel or any custom panel, and use code POWERPROJECT for 10% off any lab! Sleep Better and TAPE YOUR MOUTH (Comfortable Mouth Tape) 🤐 ➢ https://hostagetape.com/powerproject to receive a year supply of Hostage Tape and Nose Strips for less than $1 a night! 🥶 The Best Cold Plunge Money Can Buy 🥶 ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!! Self Explanatory 🍆 ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained: ➢ https://withinyoubrand.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off supplements! ➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off all gear and apparel! Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://www.PowerProject.live ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Become a Stronger Human - https://thestrongerhuman.store ➢ UNTAPPED Program - https://shor.by/JoinUNTAPPED ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en Follow Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Podcast Courses and Free Guides: https://pursuepodcasting.com/iamandrewz ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz/ ➢ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast #markbellspowerproject
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What people are amazed at when Joe Rogan does a set,
Michael Jordan hits the game winning shot.
What people are really marveling at
and what they're really shocked and surprised at
is a long journey of that person being consistent
and that person having a lot of reps.
So without that quote end goal in mind,
how have you stayed motivated?
One of the first things you want to understand
when you don't have an end goal
is you need to understand how to pace yourself.
What would you say to someone who newly developed habits that conflict with their family, friends,
social and or cultural norms, but you know it's right for them?
So you can't expect the whole family to all of a sudden be pumped that you're keto.
Do you think there's an issue with like having like some absolutes when it comes to developing
these good habits?
You have to say, I am no longer gonna do this.
I'm on this path.
I think where you need to be careful is,
is how wide is that path that you're walking on?
And we're live.
We are going live here with Saturday School.
We're also live on Instagram.
We're live on our YouTube.
Eric is gonna give you guys the link
if you're following along on Instagram.
Make sure you please follow us over on YouTube
because we're only gonna be here shortly.
But Eric, if you see a question or two pop in
from the live crowd, you can ask anything and everything.
But today we're gonna be talking about the power of habit.
And I wanted to talk about this topic
and talk about how important it is to be connected
to your habits and how important it is to be connected to your habits and how
important it is to develop discipline and how important it is to stay tethered to like
a daily discipline.
For many of you, you may know that I love to run, I love to lift.
There's a lot of other shit that I love to do, but those are things that I love to do
for myself personally, along with walking. And over the last couple of years,
developing some ideas and concepts around how to be calm,
how to have balance, how to have equanimity.
One of the reasons why I relate so well
to somebody like David Weck,
who came into our super training facility
about a year or
two ago and introduced some of these ideas of head over foot.
And he kept talking time and time again about balance and how important balance is for athleticism
and how important athleticism is for all kinds of other things physically.
But balance is critical when it comes to your emotional state.
Balance is critical when it comes to your emotional state, balance is critical when it comes to our mindset.
So the mindset to get better at stuff is amazing,
but the mindset to think that you deserve
or that you belong to be further ahead than you should be
is a fallacy and we gotta be kind of careful with that.
So it's great to develop these disciplines,
it's great to develop these habits, It's great to develop these habits,
but in our quest for personal development,
we need to make sure that we cling to some sort of sanity.
And I wanted to read this quote to you.
I've mentioned this quote seven million times
on the Power Project, but I'm gonna mention it again.
That which dazzles mortal eyes
is oft put perseverance in disguise.
I love that quote because of what it illustrates and what it means to me.
What it means to me is that what people get baffled by, what people are amazed at when
Joe Rogan does a set of comedy, when Dave Chappelle does a set of comedy, when Eminem
lays down a sick rap, when Michael Jordan hits the game winning shot.
What people are really marveling at
and what they're really shocked and surprised at
is a long journey of that person being consistent
and that person having a lot of reps.
So if there's anything unique or crazy or different
about something that someone's doing,
a lot of times it's just that they're practiced up on it. They've done it a lot.
And to me, that is something that's super powerful that you can utilize for yourself
in your own journey and your own mission because you have capabilities and ability right now that you have no idea
that you have and you can go way further than you ever expected before in your life.
When I first met Andrew Zaragoza, when he started shooting stuff for me, he wasn't so
scared and he wasn't such a pussy that he couldn't even ask me for a job.
He did.
He met me face to face.
He came to the gym.
He had the courage step inside super training gym.
And so he was already made of something
because he had a lifting background
and had a little bit of background.
And some of those things probably allowed Andrew
to feel confident enough.
Plus Andrew was very efficient at photography.
So some of those things allowed him to be confident
to communicate with me about shooting something
on that particular day that we had a seminar
at Super Training Gym.
But Andrew, since I've known you,
you've been somebody who has been,
you've been in a lot of pain.
You're somebody that I would say I used to kind of look at
and say like, you kind of walk around cautiously,
genderly because you had a back issue for a long time.
But now you're a person that's fighting.
And I think that's amazing.
I think, so people like, I just,
I hope that people understand some of the things
I'm trying to illustrate to them.
Some of the things that we're trying to share.
I'm not ever trying to say like,
I'm the best or I'm better,
or our team is better,
or Nsema's better, Andrew's better,
or any of these things.
It's really just like, fuck man,
I think there's some good evidence and good proof
that we're doing some pretty cool shit
because look at how far some of us have come.
For some people, when they started following my journey,
kind of depending on when they started following it, you may have started following it. I may have been over 300 pounds and
I may have been in the middle of my powerlifting career. And that was some cool stuff to follow.
And I had definitely some good habits, but I also had some bad habits. So we'll kind of get into the
good, the bad and the ugly of some of those habits. But I think it's important for you to understand
I was not, I was born with certain attributes for sure.
There are certain things that I like to do
from the time I was young
and I don't really exactly know why.
I always enjoyed putting in time into something
and then getting better at it.
I've always liked that.
So I don't, that could be like something that was born
into my DNA or something, somewhere along the lines.
I've always liked to coach people and help people.
And that's no surprise.
My entire family is coaches.
I have uncles and aunts that coach basketball.
My cousin coached basketball.
My other cousin coached football.
It's like the list of coaches in the Bell family,
my uncle John is a legendary coach
at a high school in New York.
And he was there for like 30 years.
So coaching and stuff is a little bit in the blood,
probably where the people's coach stuff came from.
But I don't really think that I had,
I'm gonna say I'm happy with my genetics.
I think they're pretty good.
I'm six feet tall if I'm lucky, as my wife would say.
And I've been over 200 pounds since I was probably like 14.
So like I've been blessed to have a little bit of size
and clearly I was blessed to have
some propensity for strength.
First time I really benched against my friends or with my friends.
I remember lifting way more than them, but I also was already lifting for probably like
eight months and they had like no experience at all.
So genetically I have some gifts, but I'm telling you when I was 12 13 14 17 18 19 22
25 and
Probably around that time is when things start to change. I was a pussy
It was hard for me to figure things out
I didn't I didn't show up anywhere on anyone's radar for anything. I didn't have any haters, because I didn't have any fans.
I didn't have a license.
I didn't have a car.
I didn't have a bank account.
I had pretty much next to nothing.
And it was gonna be hard for me to figure out
how to get anything.
But the one thing I did have is I had some resilience.
I liked working on myself, and I liked figuring out ways of getting better.
And so through that process, I gained more resilience.
Over a period of time, I made myself stronger.
Willpower is a muscle and you need to learn how to flex it.
Remember when you first start lifting and you're trying to like, you know, your brother or your friend is like,
flex your biceps and you're like, oh shit.
You're like, oh yeah, I think, you know.
Like I think I can flex it
and then you can only flex your right,
but you can't figure out how to flex your left.
Or you can flex like a tricep,
but you can't figure out how to flex your bicep.
You can flex like a pec,
but you can't figure out how to flex the other one. Your willpower is the same thing. Like as you work on it, as you work on your opposing
routine of your willpower, you're going to be able to activate a lot more muscle than you ever even
knew that you had in the first place. So it gets worked on and there's so many different ways to
work on it. I'm sure Andrew has a question. So I'll kind of let Andrew ask the question
and we'll dive right into some of this stuff.
Yeah, absolutely.
So first, thank you, Alan Thompson,
hooked us up with the Super Chat.
That was really cool of you.
We have a pretty fun question from Dustin Martin.
He's just asking,
what's the biggest motivator you have all found
with keeping up with good habits, diet, exercise,
without an end goal?
And I think that's the part I like about that question is he kind of emphasized
the end goal, right? Because a lot of people, they'll be motivated for that 30 day challenge
or that challenge at work where it's like, Hey, who can lose the most amount of weight?
And then you get like, you know, some like really obscure gift or prize at the end of it.
So for yourself, I mean, it's a lifetime endeavor. So without that quote end goal in mind, how have you stayed motivated? I think that this is like the biggest question, right?
Staying motivated, I want to address that in a couple different ways. I would say that motivation is an energy
and I would say that motivation costs energy.
Like motivation in my opinion costs you some calories.
So one of the things to consider
when we're talking about motivation
is you have to be careful on how hard you train.
I kind of hate that being the first message
that I'm sharing with people,
but I think
that people need to know this because a lot of times people are pretty new to stuff.
And if you just start wrestling tomorrow, you start going to wrestling practice or you
start doing jujitsu out of nowhere, you start picking up a new sport, you start to lift
out of nowhere, you're most likely going to be really wiped out.
And you're going to be like, well, that wasn't that really wiped out and you're gonna be like,
well, that wasn't that hard of a workout.
I should be able to go tomorrow.
And people get this idea
that they're gonna do stuff every single day.
That can be great because of the habit of
and the practice of doing something every day.
So I really liked that idea.
And I think that's a good place for people to start,
but just understand your frequency is high.
So if your intensity is high and the duration
of how long you're at the gym is high,
your motivation is gonna be kaput's.
It's gonna be way down in the dumps,
it's gonna be way down in the cellar.
So you want the, one of the first things
you wanna understand when you don't have an end goal
is you need to understand how to pace yourself.
If there's no rush,
that doesn't mean we don't show up at all.
But if there's no rush,
what's wrong with doing a set of glute hand raises,
let's say, and you're like, man,
I'm not sure how to do these.
You're like, oh my God, it feels like,
holy shit, man, I, wow,
I might've tore something trying that shit.
What's wrong with discontinuing that?
Being like, I'm not sure if I did that right.
I'm gonna look that up on YouTube.
I'm gonna finish out my workout, maybe work on my quads,
cause that shit felt pretty gnarly on my hamstrings.
Maybe push the sled around a little bit
to get some more leg work in.
Discontinue the workout and live to lift another day.
That is one of the most critical things.
I've actually been thinking about this a lot
and I'm glad that this guy brought in this question
because timing stuff is super interesting.
Timing shit makes you responsible.
And once you sign up for that competition,
I think, Andrew, you signed up
for a competition recently, right?
Yeah, yeah, it's in a couple of weeks.
It's supposed to be top secret, but I always blow up.
I always fuck everything up over here.
I always blow it up my spot.
Yeah, I forgot.
I'm not supposed to use the F word either.
Eh, poop.
But yeah, as soon as you put like a time frame on something,
man, that's where you get kind of claustrophobic.
That's where you get like a little phobia.
You're like, oh man, you got, you tense up,
your butthole tightens up a little bit.
You know, if I said, Andrew, you know, I want you to,
I want you to run 10 40 yard dashes.
If we didn't have much more conversation
after you, after I said 10 40 yard dashes,
you might be like wow that's
10 more than I've done in the last 15 20 you know maybe that's more than I've ever done you know
yeah it's a lot and uh so therefore in your brain you'd be like okay you said to do 10 40 yard
dashes uh I'm gonna do one kind of light, do another one,
maybe go a little faster, and then maybe somewhere
in the middle, pick up like a decent amount of speed
for a few sets, and then trail off,
and like have the last couple sets feel pretty easy,
and then probably be done with it,
because you don't wanna hurt yourself.
You don't wanna get yourself in this compromised position.
But it would be really easy for me to hurt you
by timing you one time.
And I ask you, I say, hey,
I want you to safely run this as fast as you can.
So let's say I time it and you get like 15 seconds.
Now, if I say all 10 need to be under these 15 seconds
for your training for jujitsu for this tournament
coming up.
Boom, that's where our disaster strikes.
And so I think we have to kind of like, we got to take a couple steps back.
Like what are we doing?
You know, like people are making all kinds of crazy comments on when I'm out there running
and doing different things.
And you know, I see the comments.
I do my best not to participate in going back and forth
with people that are probably a bunch of losers.
But the conjecture makes sense.
I mean, the idea that I'm all of a sudden gonna run
and I'm gonna run like a gazelle out of nowhere,
it really doesn't make any sense.
So I don't know what people were expecting
from me in the first place, but I'm consistently
working on it.
And I'm also not trying to, I'm not trying to run a particular speed.
Like if you look at, look at all the posts, look at every post I have other than, other
than a half marathon, I've done two half marathons.
Yeah.
I've done two half marathons, yeah, I've done two half marathons and one full marathon.
Other than that, I very rarely place a time domain on anything and very rarely will confine myself to even distances.
I don't care about any of it. I don't measure any of it.
That's why you see like I don't even about any of it. I don't measure any of it. And that's why you see like, I don't even wear a watch anymore.
Cause I'm like, you know what?
Like I'll look at my watch.
I'll wear a watch sometimes when I'm running,
just to look at the pace and to have a good understanding
of like how fast I'm running.
And I'm, you know, doing a lot of nasal breathing and stuff.
So I'll look at some of those things just to have some
metrics of, some metrics of what it is I'm doing exactly.
But I don't utilize those metrics to confine myself to have to get specific times and specific
distances. I think this is where the wheels fall off for a lot of people. And that's why I'm
bringing this up because this guy is like, how do you do it without any end goals, any end result?
Like how do you do it without any end goals, you know, any end result?
The end result, the end goal is to be a badass,
but it's to be a badass in everything.
It's to be a badass father.
It's to be a badass husband.
It's to be a badass friend, you know?
Like shit, man, how does that guy do it?
Like he, I know he's got kids, I know he's got a business,
but that son of a bitch checks on me quite a bit.
Like that's pretty cool.
How do you do that?
You do that by a lot of what I've been preaching
for a long time and that is to do more and to be more.
The more that you can do, the more that you can handle.
You have to be careful on how you do it though.
Because if you do it at a hundred percent,
you're not going to be good for anybody.
You're not going to be good for yourself.
It's going to be hard to make progress.
It's going to be hard for you to really do the list of things that you need to do.
And it's going to be hard for you to get connected and tethered to those daily disciplines.
Yes.
So real quick, Ellen, probably shut off the IG, unless there's some questions that popped up in there.
But it's okay if there's not, but just tell people where to go.
What's the, it's a YouTube link or whatever.
Yeah, check the IG stories.
Yeah.
Yep. Check out my story and you can click on it right from there.
Oh, fake fasting. Yeah. We'll get into that in a little bit.
Yeah, for sure.
Tell them to check over on the live.
Yes, sir.
So real quick, because I missed it, but Alan Thompson said he's been listening to you since
the powerlifting days and he's down 128 pounds, 23 more pounds to go from I think his like goal weight
and that's freaking incredible. Let's see what else we did have another question. Oh where did it go?
Another end goal question. Okay here we go. Mark what would you say to someone who newly developed
habits that conflict with their family, friends, social,
and or cultural norms, but you know it's right for them?
Yeah, this is a, this is an excellent question. I would say that, um, if you're talking about
it like a life partner, like we're talking about some different things, you know, if
you're talking about your aunt and your uncle or your brother that gives you shit
It's like so what you know, I mean like your brother makes fun of you because you have a
Kettlebell and a stretching device and a couple other things in your living room instead of having you know
As much furniture as you used to have who cares, you know cares about that person, you know throwing some jabs at you or whatever
That's just gonna be something that you're gonna have
to deal with.
And I would advise you to have some conversations
with some people, the people that love you,
the people that care about you.
If they go a little overboard with teasing you
in front of other people and saying like,
oh, sorry, we can't have seed oils,
or like they start throwing some
crappier way.
When you have an opportunity to talk to them and say, Hey, you know what?
I'm just really trying to make some changes, you know, and I'm just trying to do the best
I can.
I'm not trying to do anything to blow up what you're doing in your life.
I'm just trying to make my life a little bit better.
And you know, this is kind of the way that I'm doing it.
And I think sometimes if you explain to people what it is that you're doing, they might be
like, oh, my wife and I are actually working on the same thing.
Like everyone's trying to lose 10 pounds, right?
Almost everyone's trying to like figure out what could be healthier for the kids.
What could be healthier?
What could be a healthier way to share time with people?
How can we have a healthier 4th of July?
How can we have a healthier birthday?
I think a lot of people are thinking about that kind of stuff.
So you can be the Andrew Zaragoza in the family and you can be the person that brings over
the protein fruit dip that's unbelievable
that everyone eats and you go, oh yeah, by the way,
you sons of bitches, that shit was healthy
and all y'all gonna live an extra 10 years
and you're gonna be more jacked.
There you go, yeah.
Yeah, and then it's so funny because like,
I love doing that stuff because it does catch people
off guard, like they're like, whoa, you know,
and then so the next time they're like,
oh yeah, go for his stuff because his stuff's healthy
and we don't have to feel guilty when we eat it.
That's great.
Yeah, another really good question from Cristiano.
What would you say is some of the best strategies that you have used over time
to fit in the habits or things that you want to accomplish throughout your day or week?
So again, I guess
maybe being more disciplined on those habits. I do want to finish off just a little bit more.
We'll talk about like how to stick those accomplishments in a second, but do you want
to finish off because we were just talking about, you know, how to like have family, friends, everyone
be kind of accepting of these things.
Again, I think it's important that you have a conversation
with some of your family members, some of your friends,
maybe it's your brother, and maybe they wanna join you.
You know, maybe you encourage them,
and also be understanding that they may not be ready
to make that jump with you.
When it comes to a spouse or significant other of some sort,
I would just really, again, try to illustrate to them,
this is something that I wanna do.
I really wanna invest more in lifting weights.
I've heard so much about it.
You're gonna hear me rant and rave about it.
And if it's ever like too boring or too much for you, or you're tired of hearing me talk about it, you're going to hear me rant and rave about it. And if it's ever like too more, too boring or too much for you, or you're tired of hearing me talk about it,
nudge me and let me know. But probably when I'm going to come home from the gym, I'm probably
going to be excited about it. I'm probably going to want to tell you about it. Probably
going to want to share it with you. And a lot of times, um, from what I've seen from
being a personal trainer and being people, the people's coach for a long time, I've seen from being a personal trainer and being the people's coach for a long time,
I've seen other people in the household go right along with what everybody else is doing.
Sometimes that's not seamless. Sometimes that takes time. Sometimes that's really hard and
troublesome. But we've done a lot of other podcasts too where we've talked about, you know,
how do you get other kids or how do you get the whole family on board
with some of the things that you're trying to do?
And we had a podcast with Sean,
what the hell's Sean's name?
Stevenson?
Sean Stevenson, sorry Sean.
We had a podcast with Sean Stevenson
where he went over how to incorporate these things
into your family and how much healthier it is to do things communally,
do things as a community, do things as a family.
He talked about there being scientific research behind it.
He even wrote a book about it.
He's got recipes and cookbooks
and all kinds of information on it.
So I think that's a really good book.
But again, if we're talking about your spouse,
you have to communicate to them,
you have to tell them, you could say,
hey, you know what, I know before we met,
I wasn't really that into lifting,
and I know I wasn't really that,
because it's new to them, right?
So for my wife, none of it's new to her.
She knows that I'd rather lift weights
than spend any time with her.
She knows I'd rather eat a steak
than lay in bed with her.
I mean, she knows all these things.
That's what she signed up for.
Yeah, that's what you signed up for.
You're going to get ignored, you know?
And I know she's going to ignore me for the things that she enjoys too.
So it's a two-way street when it comes to that.
No, just again, you just have to illustrate to them.
I mean, I remember, I mean, this was a moment that like kind of gave me goosebumps.
I remember telling my wife,
her and I were in the hot tub.
And I remember telling her, I'm like,
I'm like, I'm not done yet.
I'm like, I need to go back.
I need to, like, it was after I fell with the 1,085.
And when she saw how serious I was,
cause her and I already talked about like, hey,
this is over, right?
We don't have to really worry about this crazy passion that you have, right?
Like we can kind of diffuse some of this and move on, right?
And I told her, I was like, you know, I was like, it's not over because this raw movement
has come in and I got to at least put up some kind of total raw.
I need to kind of, I feel like I don't need to necessarily prove myself to other people,
but I need to prove myself to myself.
And I said, I know what I'm capable of and I want to, I really want to go do it.
She's like, fucking do it.
She just with no hesitation.
She's like, go for it.
Like, you know, yes.
And it wasn't necessarily me asking permission to her,
but it was in a way, because you have to be mindful
that not everyone's gonna be so pumped
about all this stuff that you're doing
that might cause a cascade of like sacrifices.
So you can't expect the whole family
to all of a sudden be pumped that you're keto.
You can't expect the whole family to be excited that you're not going to ever eat sugar again. You know, it's just,
this doesn't work that way. You have to figure out what's going to be realistic just because
you're on a particular plan or because you're, you know, Andrew and I've talked about this
endlessly on the podcast. Wake up before everybody else and go hit your workout up, you know,
or, or when everyone goes to bed at night, you know, hit your workout up. Or when everyone goes to bed at night,
hit your workout up.
And when it comes to your particular diet
and your particular thing, start to cook your own food.
And then you can ask everybody each night,
you could say, want me to cook extra for anybody?
Or anybody want, you know,
anybody want some of the stuff I'm cooking up?
You can kind of, that's what I've done in my household.
My kids, they almost always think that I'm cooking up something can kind of that's what I've done in my household my my kids they almost always think that I'm cooking up
Something really really weird. I think because of the total carnivore steak shake and the products that we have
They think like liver and kidney and all this stuff is like snuck into like every meal
Which it kind of is because if you go over to within you brand calm, you'll see that we have
Steak shakers. We've got a Montreal steak seasoning, an Italian seasoning,
a taco seasoning, and a pink Himalayan sea salt.
I am trying to like, you know.
Sneak it in there.
Sneak stuff in there that makes things healthier.
But normally I'm cooking up kind of normal stuff.
I'm cooking a ground beef, I'm cooking a steak or whatever.
And a lot of times Jake will come home from something and he's
starving like remember being that age remember being like a teenager and it's
like it's a different hunger than you've ever felt before it goes well beyond
just being hungry it just doesn't end either it doesn't end you know and so
he'll come home and he'll be pumped that I like just cooked something he'll
usually dive into it and then we're we'll be pumped that I like just cooked something and he'll usually dive into it.
And then we're, we're both assured that like, he just ate something super healthy.
So it works out great that way.
Yeah.
And then kind of along those lines too.
Um, I don't know, maybe it was just my experience with my family, but, um, it, it goes away
like that whole, like, Oh, like you brought food, like you're not going to enjoy it.
Like it's not going to kill you.
Oh, Andrew's trying to be a bodybuilder.
It's like, your brother's bigger anyway, and he doesn't even lift.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Keep them coming.
That goes away pretty fat. Like I can't remember the last time I received one of those comments.
Well, now you could choke people out.
And then there's that now too.
It's getting serious.
Yeah. But what I'm getting at is like now the like, I don't know, maybe it was new for a lot of
people, but now it's like, oh, what are you eating?
Why are you eating that?
You know?
And then so you start to like have little seminars at every family function and you're
just like, you know, this person, you know, one of my cousins was like, oh yeah, you can't
have white rice.
And I'm like, well, why not?
It's like, oh, cause brown rice is better.
I'm like, is it?
And we had this weird, cool conversation.
I'm like, hey, it's indifferent.
Neither one is good nor bad.
And so it kind of went down that whole thing.
And she was just like, ah.
It was just information that she had never heard.
And how good does that feel?
Amazing.
How good does that feel to be that person for your family?
And like you're pointing out, a lot of times there's other people in the family that are like
mindful of like nutrition and stuff and they might have ideas, they might know certain things,
but it's kind of gonna be tough for them to know more than us because of the people that we rub
elbows with. But it feels great to be that person for your family. And you can be that person that people can ask questions to
anytime someone has a breakout with their skin
or anytime anybody, I mean,
you're almost like the family doctor in a way.
Say, okay, well, you've got a skin rash,
so you can get outside, get some sunlight,
eat some fish or take some fish oil pills
the next couple of weeks,
keep monitoring it, make sure it doesn't, I mean, you can almost be like a little bit of a doctor
for your whole family without going to school for it.
Yeah, the only time I run into trouble is like when they...
So they'll ask, but they don't want to really know.
You know, like they'll kind of just ask and then like,
oh, did you do the thing? No, okay, well...
All right, come back to me when you actually want to make a change and whatnot.
I want to have a serious conversation with you about your balls.
And I'm being serious here.
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because it's important.
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This is true. You can touch them right now, and you know it's pretty thin.
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A lot of popular brands out there have chemicals that are literally touching your balls.
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Links in the description as well as the podcast show notes.
So back to Christian, what is it?
Christiano's question, just basically like,
where do you find the discipline to kind of stick
with your habits throughout the week?
I do the exact same thing that you do.
You mentioned it on the show recently
where you were talking about if you're supposed to do
a particular workout, you just bump it to the next day.
I actually, I never knew this.
I would never recognize this as being like anything special,
but apparently it is.
I have something that, it doesn't allow me,
I don't get upset with myself.
Like if something doesn't happen
or something doesn't go the way that I thought it
Was gonna go I?
Don't know. I don't know where that came from. I don't know what that's from. I don't know maybe that's uh,
You know I squatted a thousand pounds like that was my goal and I did it
You know and there's not a lot of people that did that I wanted to bench 800 pounds. I benched 854
Unfortunately, I never hit the 800 pound deadlift.
I deadlifted 766, but I felt fulfilled
from my lifting career, so maybe there's some of that.
But I guess I'm at ease,
and I just know that there's time to do it.
You know, I think if I'm gifted at anything, I think I'm pretty good at like being in the moment.
And all I can do is what I can do right now.
I can't really do anything else.
I'm not gonna get better at running like today or tomorrow.
Like it's gonna take a long time.
It's gonna be a while before somebody goes to, you know,
check out one of my runs and they're like,
oh, he's running like a runner runner.
Holy shit, man.
That sucker was right.
I didn't know he was gonna,
it's gonna be a while before that happens.
It's gonna take a long time.
How long did it take me to become the power lift
that I was?
It took me probably 15 years behind the scenes
and then there was like five years
where I was like on a scene for something, I guess.
So these things, they take a long time.
And I think that it's an unhealthy,
we're talking about the power of habits.
We're talking about these disciplines,
but it can be super unhealthy
to get connected to unrealistic goals.
Like you shouldn't be better than you are.
You shouldn't be further along than you are.
Bill Parcells said, you are your record.
We're five and five.
We're dead even.
And nowadays you can sort of make the playoffs being shitty,
but for the most part, it's gonna be really tough.
And you're certainly not the upper echelon team
when you're only at 500.
You're where you're at for a reason.
And there's things that it could be yourself holding yourself back.
Even if there's injuries, even if there's stuff like that that happens,
you have to take some responsibility, some ownership of some of the injuries.
Sometimes like weird stuff happens,
but you're doing too much, you're pushing too hard,
you're not recovering enough.
Like there's something's going on,
something's amiss that you're unable to kind of accomplish
what you're trying to accomplish.
So for me, you know, getting certain things done
on a weekly basis, I just,
I don't mind if they don't get done.
I also, I'm fortunate to like work for myself. So I don't have like particular deadlines
where I have to accomplish particular things
by a certain time for anyone else other than really myself.
That is, that lifts up a lot of burdens for me.
So yeah, I don't mind pushing something to the next day or sometimes even the next week.
Yeah. What's the rush, right?
You've said that multiple times and I'm like, yeah, yeah, what is the rush?
We have another cool question.
I'm going to alter it a little bit from Mark Gordon.
He asks, what, what kind of business habits did you develop on your journey
to create and
launch the slingshot? Any recommended readings that have impacted your business mindset or
habits?
And the alteration that I want to make to it is because you've talked about almost like
the snowball effect of having good habits and where that can lead to, right? Like you
were hyper focused on benching over 800 pounds.
You had no idea that tearing your pec
was gonna lead to so much.
But in developing those insane immovable habits
of getting into the gym daily, that led to so much stuff.
So can you talk about, I think you call it like a cascade of,
I forgot how you worded it, but if we can dive into that,
because a lot of people, why do you go to the gym so much? Why do you love the gym so
much? And it's not just, I want to get jacked. I want to look good in the mirror. It's like,
dude, man, when I leave, especially with jujitsu, when I leave that gym, it's like, dude, I
can conquer the world, right? I just, I choked somebody or I got choked and I didn't die.
You know, like there's a lot of really cool stuff that that flows into, but I would love to hear your take on it.
Yeah, you, unfortunately, you know, you can't find the stuff that you get from jujitsu or the stuff
that you can get from a workout. You can't really get it anywhere else. You know, you have to get it
from, um, you have to get it from accomplishing something.
I guess, from a mental side of things,
you could prepare for a test really well
and then do well on the test
and feel really great about yourself that way.
And you have like a euphoria about you.
But most of the time, these things are,
they're kind of physical hurdles
that you get past or get over.
The first time I was able to run 20 minutes straight without having to take a break, it was like, it felt amazing. It felt absolutely incredible.
But there's a cascade of things that fall under certain things. So like,
if I'm to make a statement about, we know, we had a recent podcast where we talked
about muscle mass versus strength and longevity and kind of how all that kind of just untangling
what people mean by it and stuff like that.
But the cascade of disciplines that come from either one of those journeys, like just saying,
Hey, it'd be great if you got stronger.
Hey, it'd be great if you gained some muscle mass.
If anyone listening to this now If anyone listening to this now
or anyone listening to this now has a friend or relative
that all of a sudden wants to gain a little bit more
muscle mass and wants to get a little bit stronger,
there's gonna be a whole cascade of disciplines
that have to happen in order for them to get stronger
in order for them to get more muscle mass.
And some of those things would look like this.
They would most likely have to start to pay attention
to their sleep and their rest.
They now have an endeavor of perhaps driving to the gym,
15 minutes to the gym, 15 minutes on the way back,
30 minutes where you're like,
you're now kind of getting honed in and focused on
doing something for yourself. Not enough people are spending time on themselves
and I think that actually, oddly enough, I think that this is where loneliness is
spawned from. I think it's from not spending enough time, not necessarily by
yourself, but like with yourself. And by with yourself, I mean like going on a walk,
going on a run, going to lift some weights,
going to work out.
But the cascade of disciplines from strength
and from gaining muscle mass is going to be
that you're gonna pay more attention to your sleep.
You're going to probably wanna eat more protein.
You're gonna make some subtle changes to your diet.
A bunch of stuff's going to change.
Your body is going to start to change.
You're going to start to have subtle improvements.
Your whole outlook on everything is going to change.
You're going to notice things differently.
You're going to see things differently.
When you are, when you're out of shape and you have a lot of body fat
and you're not pumped with how you look in the mirror, you're not pumped with how you close fit,
you're not pumped with the way that you look, it can be really disheartening. And just imagine,
we know that just if you're a different gender, how that would change
your perspective of something like, let's just say like going on a walk in the middle
of the night, you know, for a woman in particular areas might not be a great idea.
A guy might not even think twice about him.
Just go outside.
When you're really heavy and you're out of shape,
something as simple as like waking up,
taking a shower and going on a walk is now complicated,
is now much harder.
I've said this before as well,
like if you live in Minnesota and you're trying,
you know, you're a runner,
it's just, you're dealing with different circumstances.
There might be three or four months out of the year
where you're running inside on a treadmill because it's like, there's just so you're dealing with different circumstances. There might be three or four months out of the year where you're running inside on a treadmill.
Cause it's like, there's just so much snow and ice
and so cold, you know.
So there's like these different,
there's kind of these hurdles that kind of happen,
but there is a cascade of disciplines
that sort of get evoked from entertaining,
trying to improve yourself, trying to get bigger, sort of get evoked from entertaining,
trying to improve yourself, trying to get bigger, trying to gain more muscle mass.
In terms of like books and different things to look into
in terms of personal development,
I was actually just listening to something
from Bones Jones the other day,
and he was like, Tony Robbins.
He's like, I listened to a lot of Tony Robbins.
He's like a change in my life.
He's like 19 years old, listening to a lot of Tony Robbins.
And then he talked about how after that,
he started listening to a lot of other people as well.
And I'm the same.
It's not necessarily Tony Robbins, but stuff like that.
Tony Robbins is one of them.
Jim Rohn, who I've mentioned many times,
R-O-H-N, Jim Rohn, not Jim Rohn the, like,
the sports guy, but Jim Rohn,
the legendary public speaker.
He has a lot of great talks where he just is like,
he just makes things like sensible.
For example, he says,
He just makes things like sensible. For example, he says,
show me like, tell me about some of your habits
and tell me some of your disciplines.
What are some of your good habits, some of your disciplines
and I'll tell you what your bank account is.
And he actually did that to Tony Robbins
and that's what made Tony Robbins,
because he was Tony Robbins' mentor.
And Tony Robbins was like, that's weird.
How does he know?
Because he knew that the things that you're doing,
the things that you're trying to do,
they're not lining up with this glorified version
of what it is that you think you should be doing.
You're not really taking the proper steps.
There's like a certain amount of steps,
there's a certain amount of things
that are involved with being good,
and there's a certain amount of things
that are involved with being great.
And it's really easy to kind of,
as an older person especially,
it's easier to talk to a younger person
and ask them like, hey, what are you doing for this?
What are you doing for that?
What are some of your goals? And then right away in your head, you're like, hey, what are you doing for this? What are you doing for that? What are some of your goals?
And then right away in your head, you're like,
oh wow, their goals, they're not really matching up.
Okay, all right, well, we're gonna have to break it
to him somehow.
He said he wanted to be a pro bodybuilder by this time.
You're like, I don't know about that.
Or he said he wanted to be a black belt,
or he said he wanted to be a brown belt by this time,
or he wants to compete at Worlds in powerlifting,
or whatever it is.
And you can kind of quickly see, say, oh, how many times a day,
how many times a week are you working out?
And they'd be like, well, I'm going like twice,
but I kind of injured my arm.
And you're like, well, I'm going like twice, but you know, I kind of injured my arm and,
and you're like, okay. And then they're talking about how they think they should probably lose
some weight and they're like kind of halfway on a diet and you're like, hmm, okay. You know,
it sounds like you have a bunch of really good habits. That's the good news. But it sounds like
there's going to be some things you're going to need to cut away if you're going to try to be that champion. And we've seen
the evolution of in SEMA over the years. Like, um, I don't even really know of any bad habits
that he has or had, but, uh, he keeps, he seemingly is like adding, adding more and
more to his plate where he, I just think he probably would hate me saying this, but I
think in two years or so, it's
going to be game over.
No one's going to be able to stop him.
That brings up a question that I have.
Do you think, so like when somebody is starting to form some of these good habits, you know,
let's say they do jump on a ketogenic diet.
Do you think there's an issue with like having like some absolutes when it comes to developing
these good habits?
And what I'm getting at is like, no, I do keto.
That's all I do.
Don't tempt me with tracking my macros because I don't want to mess with that because these
are the habits that I've started developing and I'm not going to break these for anyone
or anything.
Almost becoming dogmatic with these habits.
They are good habits, so it kind of creates
this weird conundrum of like, well, yeah,
you are doing something that's good for you,
but man, you're kind of still on shaky ground.
You know, like, so do you think it's, I guess,
maybe in the beginning to develop these things
to be pretty stern with these habits?
And there's a lot of ways you can go about doing these things.
But I think that if you're kind of floating around in a gray area
and you're already in a compromised state, I don't think that's great.
So if you're very much overweight and you're trying this diet stuff
and you can't seem to get a handle on it,
I unfortunately think that you have to make things black and white.
I unfortunately think that you have to make things black and white.
I unfortunately think that you have to say cake is bad.
You have to say ice cream is bad, pizza is bad.
In the beginning, and I'm also saying have to, and that's not necessarily true for everybody,
but it's my belief.
I'll kind of say that.
It's my belief that you have to say, I am no longer going to do this.
I'm on this path.
I think where you need to be careful is,
is how wide is that path that you're walking on?
You know, is that path like, if that path is super narrow
and you got to turn sideways, and it's not a fat joke,
but you got to turn sideways and shimmy your way through the path
because there's a lot of branches and a bunch of crap in your way.
turn sideways and shimmy your way through the path, because there's a lot of branches and a bunch of crap in your way, then you might need to reconsider which path you're
going to choose and which path you're going to go down.
If you just box yourself into, this is a great way to know if you're screwing up, you box
yourself into a carnivore diet and you've been doing it for three months and you haven't
really lost more than,
you know, you need to lose 50 pounds.
And in three months, you haven't lost more than like
four or five pounds, you're probably on the wrong plan.
Or something's happening to you where you're on
such a strict plan that you keep going way off the plan,
way off the path that you were trying to choose.
So why not maybe have a path
that is gonna allow for a little bit more play? Like maybe if you just allow yourself to have honey
here and there and have blueberries here and there, maybe that makes everything a little bit easier.
But there's people that are addicted to food. So I think, I guess I know for myself,
I had to go pretty black and white with stuff.
But I did make room for cheats.
I did make room for some Ben and Jerry's here and there.
I made room for going out to dinner with my wife
and eating things that were sort of off menu.
I personally have kind of always liked,
I always liked when it comes to dieting specifically,
I've always liked my cheat to be overeating,
but still pretty much on plan.
Not on point, but on plan.
Like, so it's not like, it's not like if I told somebody that,
you know, if I told Milo Serkev,
who's a bodybuilding coach about the meal that I ate,
he wouldn't be like, oh, you're going to be ready for the stage.
But it still wasn't a disgusting, like,
it wasn't something that is going to throw my metabolism way off,
wasn't something that's really going to cause real damage,
but it might just be hypercaloric
for that meal.
And it's my belief that being like hypercaloric or hypocaloric, having really high calories
or really low calories doesn't really make that big of a difference when you kind of
jostle them around, it all ends up being similar as you get through some weeks and months and
stuff like that.
So that's always worked really well for me,
regardless of the diet that I'm on.
Even if it is a keto diet,
I remember there's many days where I was just like,
you're just on these diets
and you're just sometimes suffering.
And after you lost 30, 40, 50 pounds,
I lost 110 pounds and it's a lot of weight.
So sometimes you're kind of just suffering.
I remember just sitting there like watching TV with my wife.
I'm like, I'm going to make an omelet.
I would just make a killer omelet.
I'd throw all kinds of meat in there.
It could be like, we could have like pepperoni
in the fridge or something.
And I'm throwing all kinds of stuff in there
and cheese and bacon.
Mozzarella.
Mozzarella.
Yeah, it's like a thousand calorie
or 1500 calorie omelet, right?
Which we know can lead to weight gain eating that amount.
But if we're looking at it again without time restriction
and we're just saying, this is the keto diet,
I'm on this diet, I'm on this low carb lifestyle,
which a lot of people don't think is something
you could really maintain,
but I maintained it just fine for a long time. I'm not specifically super keto, lifestyle, which a lot of people don't think is something you can really maintain, but
I maintained it just fine for a long time.
I'm not specifically super keto, but I am very low carb.
I found it to be great.
And by allowing myself to just crush a lot of calories.
So I think that could be really helpful to a lot of people.
Like whatever diet plan you're on, I guess with the exception of like, if you're trying to be on like a macro diet
or you're trying to like count calories,
it can be harder to make room for those things.
But if you're carnivore or keto or even like paleo,
like just spike those calories just through the roof
every once in a while.
Even if it's for like a day or two,
I know it sounds like you're kind of playing with matches for some people, but again, it
has to be food that's still part of the plan.
Yeah, no.
And then I think what people instantly recognize is like, okay, he said a day or two, by the
end of that second day, you're going to be like, I can't do this another day because
you're going to have like that, that gas tank's going to to become like it's going to be overflowing. I tried full of good stuff.
I tried three or three rib eyes three times a day for three days in a row.
I didn't make it.
What's the three rib eyes three times? So like nine a day or three.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Okay. Three. Yeah. Three rib eyes every day for three days.
Yeah. What'd I say? Three rib eyes.
Yeah. So it would have been like nine a day.
I'm like, oh shit.
Okay.
That sounds...
I'm down.
Sounds exciting.
No, yeah, I couldn't, I mean, I got to like day two
and even day two was just like,
I got to like lunch or whatever and I'm like,
wow, this is getting to be,
this is getting to be like work.
This is getting to be pretty hard.
That's amazing.
So you have some firsthand experience with this issue.
And obviously we're talking about like habits,
but I think you had to develop some good habits
to get through this.
But Chad Nelson, any tips for sleeping
when waking up two hours after falling asleep?
So he's going to bed, two hours,
he's waking up right away.
He wakes up and he grabs a snack and that helps him go back to sleep. He's trying to stay asleep bed, two hours, he's waking up right away. He wakes up and he grabs a snack
and that helps him go back to sleep.
He's trying to stay asleep for, you know,
the recommended seven to eight hours.
And I know you used to hide in the cupboards
in the middle of the night snacking on foods
and getting all that stuff.
So what the heck did you do to get over that?
A couple of things you can do is one,
is that a lot of times the food that you're going to eat like in
the middle of the night is going to be like highly processed food and it's probably more than likely
going to be junk food. See if you can change that junk food out with something a little bit better.
So protein shakes are fair game, Quest bars, legendary products, you know legendary foods
has the tasty pastries and the sweet rolls.
So you may want to try out some things like that that are just slight deviations.
You might want to try the total carnivore steak shake, the mocha flavor that we just
came out with, the vanilla malt, unbelievable 150 calories in a scoop.
And there's like seven grams of fat, nearly 20 grams
of protein, very low carbohydrate.
So if you were to shake one of those up before you went to bed and went to bed and like if
you woke up and you drank that out of your fridge, it's like, I don't see any foul play
there.
I don't see any offense.
There's really, you're doing no harm.
I would just say it's just like extra
hydration, extra water, extra protein, extra aminos. It's really not anything to really be
too worried about. So if you can make that switch into healthier foods, that would, and I would
work on, try not to shame yourself about it. Could you shame yourself about it and make a big deal
about it, then it's going to be a bigger deal and it's going to be actually harder to quit.
So just don't make a big deal about it. See if you can do it with the healthier foods.
The other suggestion I have to you, which works great for me, and this is like one of the things that's helped me with my cravings,
is mouth tape.
My mouth tape is shut so I don't drink water
after a certain time. I don't eat anything.
I just make sure I'm well fed
and make sure I'm well hydrated before I go to bed.
And a side note on that,
which I might have one in my pocket right here.
Yeah, here's a life hack for you.
I have the nasal strips.
I wear the nasal strips on my mouth
and I wear them when I run,
but I also wear them at night because sometimes like when I start to get like a little bit of facial hair, it's
not like the mouth tape falls off in the middle of night, it's that I pull it off.
But this guy...
So Mark just put it on his lips, the nose strip on his lips, which happens to be the
perfect shape. That's not moving anywhere.
And I gotta yank it off though.
Smooth tear.
You have to take it off like, you gotta take it off slow.
It'll, it'll...
Yeah.
It might not be recommended by them, but I recommend it.
I think it's great.
So that has helped me a lot because it's like, well,
I got my mouth shut.
And also, I've been a little bit more into,
I've been reading more information on CO2 tolerance
and breathing in and out of the nose
and how effective it can be.
And I'm like, you know what?
I'm getting a lot of health benefits
out of just wearing this thing on my mouth.
So just wear your damn hostage tape and go to sleep
and don't be a baby.
So it might not feel great to lay back down
and not have your food,
but I think something else that might be helpful to you
is you could be assisting in making yourself
like leptin resistant and or insulin resistant.
You could be kind of messing up.
Like there's a lot of foul play by waking up and eating.
Protein shake with some fat and stuff like that.
I don't think that that's that big of a deal.
And that could be satisfying and satiating enough
to get you back to bed.
So I don't think that that's a big problem.
But if you're snacking on stuff that's like jacking up
your glucose and stuff, I just don't think it's a great idea. You know, just knowing what I know and knowing
a lot of information coming out about how sensitive mammals are to like these light
environments and your light diet. Your light diet is really important. So you eating after having exposure to darkness,
it's just probably not a great practice
for a bunch of reasons.
It's not like it's gonna cause anything
like absolutely horrible to you
in the course of you doing that for a while.
But you start to pile up doing something like that
for like 30 years or something. And I don't think it's gonna be a good idea
Yeah, so he did say that he will attempt to reach for you know
Some legendary stuff and then even some macadamia nuts, which damn those are delicious
But he's just needs to get control because he still will want to grab the junk food
So it's just a matter of you know, just making that right decision. And with, in regards to the mouth tape, so with hostage tape, you can get the mouth strip
and the nasal strip for less than a dollar a night, right? So it's like, you know, a couple
cents here and there, but you still pay for it, right? So when you have it on, you're like, shit,
am I willing to throw some money away just because I want to have a little snacky snack?
Let's just, I don't know, walk around and go to bed or something, you know?
So I think that, I mean, if I had that issue,
I know that would work for me personally,
because I'm pretty cheap like that.
So I wouldn't really bother.
I also think, you know, just maybe pay attention
to like the food that you're getting during the day.
You know, because maybe you're not getting all the nutrients.
You know, that's kind of some of the conclusion
that I came to for myself was like,
well, you know, let's see if we can
really hammer the nutrients that we need and then see if there's still a problem. Because there's
not a, wasn't a problem every night. So, and also it was like a learned behavior. Like I kind of did
that. Well, not kind of, I did that when I was powerlifting and it wasn't always that I would
fall asleep, but a lot of times I would like lay in bed
with my wife because I would go to bed later than her.
She would wake up earlier than me.
Our schedules were just a little different.
So I'd like lay down with her for a little while and then I would go and just like eat
a bunch of food.
I kind of needed, I needed more food.
I needed more fuel for what I was doing at the time. But that ended up kind of etching itself into
my existence and into my brain. And then it was hard to break that. You know, once I went,
once I tried to turn away from powerlifting, it had its hooks in me still.
Yeah. So like even though you would be well fed, you were still hungry and then you found
yourself hungry at the same time just because it started to become a habit
Exactly. Right. Yeah, so that's strange how I can we can build habits in both directions
Let's see. Where did it go? I got one more for you. Okay, so our boy Don Dom Sornberger said he went pretty hard
Eating a lot of clean foods, but he did go really hard
So it forced him to do a 24 hour fast after
it. You've been doing a lot of fasting lately. I think you're currently fasted right now.
How has that been going since? I think he started doing a little bit more since we had
the fasting Panda on the show and it's been, you know, you've been really digging it.
Yeah. Kyle Newell, I've been following his work on his Instagram for a little while.
He had a lot of great information about fasting and sometimes you just need a nudge from somebody.
Sometimes you just need someone to say, hey, this is okay to do.
I think we've had guests come in here before that have assured and Seema or myself or you
Andrew about particular things or protocols,
like, yeah, you should do that. And that's great. And you should do a lot of it.
And then we're like, okay, cool. Like, we know about it. We're pretty hyper aware of a lot of
things going on in fitness. But once you get like a little bit more exposure to it or re-exposed to
something, you tend to want to do it even more.
So yeah, I started checking out some of
what Kyle Newell had to say.
And from that point, before he came in,
I started to mess around with more fasting again.
And I was fasting probably about three or four years ago.
I was messing around with it a bunch.
And I was doing a lot of intermittent fasting
and that had a lot of great impacts on me but it was like I don't know I didn't have the same perspective and same view
that I have on nutrition now. Now I know like hey if you're going to fast like this when you eat
it's not so much that needs to be like an onslaught to eat you know tons and tons of food
but you better make sure you get your nutrients
So are you willing to you know, are you willing to eat like a diverse amount of meat diverse?
You know not just muscle meat. So
I'll have fish. I'll have you know, red meat
I'll have all kinds of different meat because I think it's important that we are getting a lot of nutrients from a lot of different
Places. I'll also eat fruit. I'll also eat vegetables. I'll have fermented stuff and things like that because I think it's important that we are getting a lot of nutrients from a lot of different places.
I'll also eat fruit, I'll also eat vegetables, I'll have fermented stuff and things like that.
And so it's my, you know, now it's my belief like, okay, I fasted,
but I still replenish the body with a lot of great nutrients.
So I shouldn't really be losing muscle.
There's no reason for me to be fatigued when I'm running,
which I haven't noticed anything
like that. I think at the moment I'm like 48 hours into this fast or getting close to that, maybe 40
hours. And the other thing I've been doing is I've been doing what I call fake fasting. So I don't
always fast the same way. I might do a real fast and a real fast to me would be,
I might throw a little something in my coffee,
probably under like 50 calories.
I might just use a hydration packet from within you,
blend that into coffee.
I might drink that in the morning.
I may have some ketones, I may have some kratom.
I might have kava later in the day,
but I really try to keep the calories super, super low.
I utilize a lot of drinks to get me through the day,
a lot of, not just water, but hydration packets
and flavored things and stuff like that,
because it just makes the whole process a lot easier.
And so sometimes I'll do that,
but a fake fast includes fermented vegetables,
which you just look in the refrigerated area
in any supermarket and you'll find fermented vegetables,
fermented cucumbers, AKA pickles.
I'm wearing my pickle hat right here.
And to know whether your pickles are fermented or pickled
is actually kind of an interesting thing.
I went down a little rabbit hole to sort of figure some of this out.
But you want to buy, in my opinion, it's better to buy pickles that are in a refrigerated area
of a grocery store because they're actually fermented and they'll be healthier for you
rather than just pickled. I don't know 100% the difference, but I do know the fermented kind is gonna have
more probiotics and stuff like that.
So that's why I choose to eat some of those things.
But I'll eat pretty good amounts of those things.
I'll also have olives.
I get olives that are in a brine rather than in oil
because for some stupid reason,
they take olives and then they put them in like seed oils.
So I'm like, why would they do that?
Like, why wouldn't they just put them in their own yummy juices?
You know what I mean?
Isn't that weird?
That is very weird.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's like, what the hell, man?
You just ruined this amazing thing.
So I'll eat those.
I'll also have bone broth.
Trying to think if there's anything else. I might throw salt in some water again just to stay hydrated, you know, be careful with these things and
You know, don't don't just listen to me and like go and do a 48-hour fast out of nowhere
For a lot of you that won't make sense to do a 48 hour fast out of nowhere
Where I would advise for you to start is to,
you know, after you listen to this podcast,
the next day, eat some breakfast,
maybe eat some lunch and then shut it down.
And just don't eat and go until whatever the next day,
the, your breakfast or your lunch.
If you want to try to make it to that 24 hour mark,
that would be great. If you only make it to it to that 24 hour mark, that would be great.
If you only make it to breakfast and you're super hungry,
then go for it.
But some of what I wanna try to practice coming up
is kind of create almost like this breakfast club thing
where people are mainly eating breakfast slash lunch
and you're just cutting it off from there.
There's a lot of reasons why I think
that that would work really well for people, but the main reason is I think that people
tend to overeat and they consume a lot of calories in the latter half of the day. A
lot of people are skipping breakfast. You hear people are like, Oh, I kind of intermittent
fast anyway. And you're like, yeah, dude, but you're super fat. It ain't, hey, I got news for you.
It ain't working.
So there's a lot of people that can already fast
through part of the day, part of the morning.
And they're like, oh, I eat at two.
And then they eat at two and then they eat again at four
and then they eat again at six and they eat again at eight.
And it's like, my goodness, like,
was that really even a fast?
You just, one of the key factors with fasting
is that you have to pretend that it never happened.
So you want to fast and then eat, fast and then eat,
but you basically wanted,
you still want a caloric reduction to happen
after just kind of thinking about a lot of this stuff
a lot more over the last couple months
and the last few years,
and just looking at the fitness industry and just kind of seeing what I've
seen over the years.
I think that most, I think that most people over consume food and this is most people
in the fitness industry.
I think most people in the fitness industry overeat by probably about 25%.
And it's really just kind of a,
it's just kind of a guess.
I don't think we need the amount of protein that we need.
I heard Dr. Mike Isretel talking about carbohydrates
and he really likes to have 400 grams of carbs,
but Dr. Mike works out really hard.
He also has a ton of muscle mass on him.
And also admittedly, like
myself, he's on PEDs. So those change things for people a little bit. He has a lot more,
he's able to hold a lot more muscle mass. So there's a lot more storage for that glucose.
I mean, he's, he's freaking jacked. He's super jacked. So we have to kind of, it's not bad
advice to, you know, have your carbohydrates really high when
you're trying to bodybuild and you're trying to slap on some mass.
But I don't think, I just don't think, I don't think being anywhere near that number is a
great idea for people that are just kind of wanting to be healthier, want to put on a
little bit of muscle.
I don't think you need to go, I think that's an extreme.
I guess I would say that.
And I'm open to people saying the same about me.
Like, you don't have to go carnivore or keto.
I get it and I agree.
That's why I'm neither one of those either.
I utilize some of those techniques
and some of those methods at particular times.
But I think all the methods can work really well.
But yeah, it's just something I observed.
I really, you know, one gram per pound of body weight in terms of protein, I think it's
a good idea just to make sure that you're not losing muscle.
But I also don't think that you have to reach that exact number.
I actually think that it could probably be as low as half of that number and you'll probably be fine.
If you do half that number and you do that for six months,
maybe that's a little bit too long.
So again, I think what you do on a daily basis
isn't really something to be hyper focused on.
I think it's what you do for the week.
We had Joel Green on the podcast and Joel's like,
people want me to make this simple.
He's like, it ain't simple and it never will be.
He said, as human beings to survive,
we ate very strangely, super odd.
No one could pinpoint exactly the way that we ate
because we had to just eat to survive
and people were eating all kinds of stuff
before we had agriculture and before we had cattle
and all these other things.
So people were like eating roots,
people are eating leaves,
people are eating berries
and just whatever they could come across
or just loading up on these foods.
And I'm not saying that that's optimal.
That was a way to survive, right?
But, you know, somebody like I would recommend
to most people, like if you weigh 200 pounds,
you should probably eat close to two pounds of meat a day.
If you weigh 100 pounds, you should probably eat about 100.
You should, if you weigh 100 pounds,
you should eat about a pound of meat a day.
If you weigh 200 pounds, you should eat
about two pounds of meat a day. And that weigh 200 pounds, you should eat about two pounds of meat a day.
And that equals out.
You can do some of the math.
If the meat is lean enough, then it ends up being 100 grams, ends up being one gram per
pound of body weight for both.
So that is still my belief.
Maybe throw some eggs in there or something like that, or cottage cheese or yogurt.
Not all of it has to come from meat.
That's still my belief,
but I still believe that that's overeating.
I still don't think we need that much.
And I don't think we need that much to be optimal.
And that is how I started to land on these ideas of fasting.
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When you're saying that people are overeating,
you said in the fitness space,
do you think that people are overeating protein outside,
like just general population,
people like going to work, going home, cooking food,
do you think that they're still overeating?
The general population is a complete mess
Yeah, that's just because what I see from my perspective is that people aren't eating protein period
Yeah, the general population is a completely different story and they they
What they would really benefit from most people that have not even explored much dietary intervention.
People are like, oh, milk has carbs.
Like, I didn't know that.
There's a lot of people that just, they just never, they've never looked at it.
It doesn't mean they're dumb.
It just never, they haven't looked into it yet.
And we have a tendency to like these things that we find out.
Then we take these things and we like rub them
in people's face, but people don't need any of that.
I think, you know, Mike Dolce has some really good plans.
You could check out Dolce diet, check out his website,
check out his Instagram.
He's got great information, but like where he starts people
is the way that I've always been into starting people too,
is, you know, take two weeks and eat a lot of food.
Get used to natural foods,
get used to different kinds of meat,
start to read some labels,
make sure the only kind of meat,
making sure that the only kind of meat that you're eating
isn't just like buffalo wings and ribs and stuff like that.
Those things, they have way too many calories in them
for you to really make progress.
But for you to do that in week one and week two
is really not a big deal.
So take two weeks and actually overeat,
but overeat on stuff that's really healthy.
You might be discouraged because you might be like,
why the hell are you telling me to do that?
I gained four pounds.
Well, it's to get used to the flavor of a lot of these foods.
So you eat whole eggs.
I don't know if whole milk would be suggested in there,
but you have whole cottage cheese,
whole fat yogurts and things like that.
And you can make changes as you go along.
Like for me, I have not non-fat, but I have low-fat cottage cheese usually.
I have non-fat yogurt. I get the triple zero yogurt because I want my calories from fat to
come from somewhere else. I already eat enough saturated fat. Most of my saturated fat comes
from like beef and stuff like that. But back to the main question that you had there, Andrew,
the general population has to do a real switch.
They have to augment their food.
They need to flip their food around.
They eat way too much fat, they eat way too many carbohydrates,
and they need to eat a lot more protein.
So when I look at a meal,
I'm like, I want a meal or snack or however you wanna word it.
When I look at anything that I'm about to eat,
I want it to be very, very high in protein.
And if it could also be kind of low or modest in fat,
then I'm like, that's great.
Because I know that I'm gonna get my fats in.
Like they always just happen.
I love eating whole eggs.
I love eating, I love butter, I love cheese, I love bacon.
I love hot dogs.
I love ground beef.
I love all that stuff.
So I know that the fat calories are gonna be in there.
And so, I think again, the general population,
the general public, they really need to augment
their meals.
They need to spike it with a lot more protein, but they need a change in their protein percentage.
Many people have heard me say this.
I'll say it again.
If the standard American diet, if you just took that around 13 or 14% protein that they
normally eat, if you just took that and bumped it up for everybody,
if we can magically wave a wand and jack it up
to 20% protein, everyone would lose weight.
Might take a little while, might take some time,
but everyone would lose weight.
And the reason they would lose weight is because
they would be eating less fat,
less carbohydrates, more protein.
Protein is not a great energy source.
It's an inefficient energy source, in my opinion,
for human beings.
Carbohydrates and fats are amazing energy sources.
And that's what people tend to over-consume.
Those are gonna be the things that when you over-consume
over long periods of time,
those are gonna be things that stick
to your body a lot easier.
It also makes it easier to overeat when you're eating those things in combination.
As Dr. Lane Norton has pointed out many times before, donuts aren't just carbs.
There's more fat calories in a donut than there is carbohydrate calories, but there's
also uniquely hardly any protein at all.
And the same thing when you have ice cream, which is kind of amazing because ice cream
Is dairy but it's still like super shy on pro. There's like hardly any protein in there. So
And it's not like you can't just augment your meal by like taking ice cream and then putting protein powder in it
That doesn't work either because we still have to extract
Some of those other calories in there. You're now you're Now you just ate more calories because you just added protein on top of it.
Yeah.
You just had a thousand calories and you're cool.
You're one scoop of protein.
Like it doesn't quite work that way.
But it was a pretty cool conversation in the live chat.
So Polish Mike is just like surprised that people can't eat, you know, gram per pound
of body weight.
And, you know, my response is like, yeah, just people literally just don't eat protein. And I have a relative, she's super, she's a super young and you couldn't
like ask God to create like a more beautiful kid. Like she's gorgeous, but she will only
eat like pasta, like noodles, like mac and cheese without anything. And I'm just like,
Oh my gosh, like, please like develop some really good habits along the way, like noodles, like mac and cheese without anything. And I'm just like, oh my gosh, like,
please like develop some really good habits along the way.
Like pick it up somewhere because I see that and you know,
I see friends and I'm just like, what did you eat today?
And it's like, oh, you know, I had pasta
or I had spaghetti without meat or anything because,
you know, meat's not good for you.
And I'm like, whoa, like what else did you have?
Top ramen. And I'm like, oh my goodness did you have? Top ramen and I'm like oh
my goodness like we are you're right we are flipped upside down like it's completely backwards it's
wild. I think a really great place for people to start is if they just had one good meal a day.
You know if you had a pretty lean protein source and you had something that was filling I mean if
you ate like I mean I hate to always point to like chicken,
but it's, you know, it's a simple one.
But I also, like personally, I'll still use egg whites
just because I mentioned I love whole eggs
and then I eat them all the time.
If I make eggs, I also use egg whites
because why not just add more protein to it?
I usually have a protein shake with it too.
Because to me, I'm like,
I don't have the meal frequency
that I used to have.
And so because the frequency is not there,
I try to spike the meal with like more protein.
I try to spike the meal with being more like nourishing.
I try to spike the meal with it having more satisfaction
and satiation so that I'm not overly thinking about food all day.
Yeah. One thing that I've been doing too is just I'll have two whole eggs and then Costco sells
the carton of 10 egg whites and I just throw a whole carton in there. So my breakfasts are
usually over 100 grams of protein. So by the end of the day, I'm getting over 250 grams of protein every single
day. I do have a couple of pounds to lose for this competition I got to make weight for. So I'm making
sure that I'm keeping the protein super high. Not really paying too much attention to the carbs and
fat, but the fat has been hanging around 50 to 60 carbs. I couldn't tell you they're just kind of
all over the place, but never over 150 grams. Um, in the middle of the day, and this is something that I just typically don't
track because I don't think grapes are really gonna like cause too much issue.
Um, but Alan, uh, Alan Thompson wanted your thoughts and maybe we can end here
on, uh, consuming fruit while on a carnivore diet, you were going pretty
hard on carnivore for a while, like strict carnivore, loosen up the reins a little bit. So what are your thoughts on fruit in the carnivore diet. You were going pretty hard on carnivore for a while, like strict carnivore,
loosened up the reins a little bit. So what are your thoughts on fruit in the carnivore diet?
Yeah, after doing ketogenic diets for a long time, and after doing carnivore diet for a long time,
I've found that you're better off kind of scraping up against these diets and getting close to them,
and occasionally maybe doing them and being all in on them for like periods of time. But I think
it also makes sense to entertain eating potatoes, eating rice, eating blueberries
and strawberries and blackberries. If you want to be a little bit more on the
keto side and or stick to like carnivore and fruit. That's fine too. That's a great route for
some people to go and it's not a bad thing to entertain. I personally have not noticed
amplified effects of being like super keto. In fact, I would say that I noticed,
I noticed that to be more to my detriment
than it was like a positive.
I would feel flat and fat.
I would feel like, I don't know,
my energy didn't feel great.
There was a bunch of things.
And I knew about electrolytes and all that stuff
while I was doing diets like that. and I still do forms of keto.
Like if you were to prick my finger right now, I'd probably be close to ketosis because I'm fasted.
Again, I don't eat a lot of carbohydrates but I'm not really intentional.
I'm not super intentional about a particular way of dieting.
I'm just kind of going by what feels good to me
and what I feel like doing.
And I try not to have any like judgment around that.
Like if I want to eat blueberries,
I'll just, blueberries are great.
You know, like I'm sure,
I'm sure there's some scientists or somebody somewhere
that can like point to things that blueberries
might have in it that are unhealthy,
that aren't good for you.
But I mean, there's so many other people that are unhealthy, that aren't good for you. But I mean, there's so
many other people that would say, look, they're probably pretty good for you. And as Joel
Green pointed out, things are both good and bad for us. And they're also just like neutral.
Nature is neutral. Nature is not cruel. The way that people think. Man, nature is really, like I had,
we've had some mice in our house lately.
We caught a couple mice and dump them out in the field.
You're like, man, it's like a little tiny mouse, you know?
We have these like little green things that trap them,
but they don't get like stuck to a trap
and they don't get slammed, they don't get like hurt.
And we can just release them.
And you release them and you're like,
oh, that little guy is probably going to die. But at least that guy is part of like the life cycle. You know, he's part, he's part of everything. So, you know, I think, you know, navigating,
you know, all this stuff and trying to have these, you know, particular disciplines and
trying to fast and like trying to, you know, if your question is about like,
hey, is it okay if I eat a bunch of fruit, then it sounds like you're on a really good path. It
sounds like you're, it sounds like you, you have explored a lot of like diet information.
And I just know like for myself, I mean, you could see the videos from the last couple of months.
I mean, I'm getting leaner.
I am losing weight.
So I don't know, maybe I'm losing a little bit of muscle too.
But I feel like I'm holding on to muscle.
I still feel strong.
I still feel really good.
I think that, you know, something I want to finish off with here is just saying like,
I think that the one gram per pound of body weight for protein is a cool,
it's a cool goal.
But I don't think you need to be all like, you don't need to be super caught up in it.
If you're trying to like gain muscle and you're trying to be bigger, well then do your due
diligence and play around with protein amounts to kind of see what feels best for you.
If you're super hungry, then jack that protein way up.
If you're somebody who you kind of think you're a hard gainer
and you have trouble gaining muscle weight,
jack that protein up and kind of see what it does for you.
At the same time, if you're a hard gainer,
you may want to have that protein
be a little bit more neutral
so you can make room to eat more carbohydrates
so you can have a little bit fuller muscles for your workouts and so you can have a little bit fuller muscles
for your workouts and maybe you can have a little bit more energy reserved to you smashing
some really great workouts.
There's a lot of ways to do all this, a lot of ways to play this game, but I would say
that as I mentioned earlier, you know, someone like 200 pounds, they could probably have
anywhere between 100 and 200 grams of protein.
And there's really not a lot of reasons
why they should lose a bunch of muscle.
There's not a lot of reasons why they should lose
a bunch of strength.
I think it maybe has to do more with the amount
of lean muscle tissue that you have.
And so someone that weighs 200,
even if they're like 10% body fat,
having 100 grams of protein a day
probably gets them close-ish enough to that number.
Plus we can't forget that when we train,
you're also activating muscle protein synthesis.
So we're not only getting it from our food,
we're getting it from our training.
And if you make sure that your training is lined up well
with everything else that you
do, and it's not a habit that's gotten out of control to where you're working out four
hours a day and you're overdoing it, it should send, remember we used that word cascade earlier,
it's a cascade of disciplines.
Well, you can have a cascade of hormones that wreak havoc on you.
We had Dr. Sean O'Hara on the podcast who talked about how running long distances can
sometimes send the wrong signals to your body and it could increase your estrogen, it could
increase your cortisol.
We hear all kinds of stuff about that all the time.
We're like, you know, is that a myth?
What is that?
What's the deal with that?
But at least by his observation and other observations, I've heard this from other people as well, saying that when
they do like DEXA scans or they do some of these MRI scans to see who has visceral fat, a lot of
times it's people that run a lot. So I'm not saying not to run. I love running. I really enjoy it a
lot. But maybe just be careful of how much running you're doing.
How we're doing stuff is, I think,
is one of the key factors in what we've shared today
because as I mentioned earlier,
I think it's really helpful to learn to do more is to be more.
But when you do more, you have to be careful on how you're doing it.
You're going to want to make sure that you have good, precise execution.
Otherwise, you're gonna try to do more
and you're gonna not only do less, you're gonna be less.
So you wanna make sure you're on the plus side of that
and in order to do that, you wanna make sure
that you have good habits.
And don't forget that your habits
in this whole pursuit
of personal development, don't forget that your habits
and your daily disciplines, they end up becoming part
of your character.
You are now that guy, you're that person, you're that guy
that people can look to whenever they think of discipline,
whenever they think of someone who can uphold some character, whenever they think of someone that's going to get the job done, someone that's going to have a good
follow through, somebody that they know is not going to be compromising with their habits,
someone that they know is going to be full blast, full bore, 100% in on their diet, and they know
that they're going to be 100 hundred percent committed to their exercise.
It's an amazing feeling when you start to make some changes and make some shifts into being that person where people kind of just like they know that of you, they expect that of you,
and that's a lot different character than probably where you started.
What people thought of you years ago can change so drastically as again, I'd love to point
out Andrew, cause he's like fighting, which is a crazy thing and he better kick the shit
out of whoever he fights coming up.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm working on it.
We're training has been hard.
Training has been going well.
Everything's, everything's, everything's clicking.
So we're looking good.
Amazing.
Strength is never a weakness.
Weakness is never strength.
Catch you guys later.
Bye.