Mark Bell's Power Project - MBPP EP. 617 - You Have To Work Harder Than Last Time ft. Greg Doucette

Episode Date: October 28, 2021

Greg Doucette is a bodybuilder, powerlifter, world record holder, and coach. He studied kinesiology for both his undergrad and graduate degree. He became the WPC champ in the 90kg class in 2011, as we...ll as set the new raw bench record at 529lbs. Greg gained his Pro Bodybuilding card in 2012 and has collectively competed in over 100 bodybuilding and powerlifting competitions. Greg has over a million Subscribers on YouTube, multiple cook books and recently released his HTLT Supplement company. Greg's YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/gregdoucette Greg's IG: https://www.instagram.com/gregdoucetteifbbpro/ Greg's Website for coaching and cook books: https://www.gregdoucette.com/ Special perks for our listeners below! ➢Vuori Performance Apparel: Visit https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order! ➢Magic Spoon Cereal: Visit https://www.magicspoon.com/powerproject to automatically save $5 off a variety pack! ➢8 Sleep: Visit https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro! ➢Marek Health: https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT15 for 15% off ALL LABS! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢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 $150 Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢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 Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢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 on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Guys, it's time to level up the way you look. It's time to level up the way you dress. When I was in elementary school, kids used to call me Dusty. And Seema, you're dusty, because my clothes didn't look good. Well, we've partnered with a brand called Viore. Now, the great thing about Viore
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Starting point is 00:00:36 Viore is 10 steps ahead of any company out there. You can think of the most expensive, the most popular, and they're going to blow them way out of the water. So to save 20% off your first order, head over to viore.com slash powerproject. That's V-U-O-R-I dot com slash powerproject. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Head over there right now. Hey, Power Project, this is Allie, and I'm here to introduce you to our next guest, Greg Doucette. Greg Doucette is a bodybuilder, powerlifter, world record holder, and coach. He studied kinesiology for both his undergrad and graduate degrees. Greg has been involved in weightlifting since he was young. He started training alongside his twin brother and dad in their basement at the time. He competed for the first time in powerlifting at the age of 14 and won his junior competition at the age of 17.
Starting point is 00:01:26 He became the WPC champ in the 90 kilogram class in 2011 as well as set the new raw bench record at 529. Greg gained his pro bodybuilding card in 2012 and has collectively competed in over 100 bodybuilding and powerlifting competitions. He has also made it into the sumo deadlifting category of the Book of Guinness World Records by lifting 182.6 kilograms for 50 reps. Greg started his YouTube channel in 2007 and has gained quite a few followers along the way. Greg also has his own supplement line, HTLT, and recently released his anabolic cookbook 2.0. Please enjoy this episode with Greg Doucette. Rolling, rolling, rolling. Super excited today, man. This is going to be great.
Starting point is 00:02:18 We've got Greg Doucette on the show. Shit, man, the guy hardly needs any introduction but i think sometimes maybe what gets lost a little bit in coach greg's um some of something like the kind of internet battles that he goes through sometimes is the fact that uh in sema's stomachs making all kinds of weird noises over here sorry gentlemen he's just in the bathroom taking his uh poop so he got wave one out i believe wave two happens yeah we'll see what happens but uh what gets lost in the bathroom taking his poop. So he got wave one out, I believe. We'll see what wave two happens. Yeah, we'll see what happens. But what gets lost in the shuffle is Coach Greg is extremely accomplished. And yeah, just keep doing that. I'm sorry.
Starting point is 00:02:53 I'm sorry. I was going to cut the mic off, but I'm like, eh. There's no way. Let's see where this goes. There's no way of not doing it that way. But yeah, Coach Greg is insanely strong. He has bench pressed over 500 pounds raw. He was a longtime power lifter, competed in bodybuilding many, many times,
Starting point is 00:03:13 has a pro card. He's well accomplished. He's well established. He's jacked and he's tan. And he also is entertaining. He's putting out some really entertaining stuff. I think sometimes people might be annoyed with him. His kind of over-the-top character I think is just the way he normally is but just maybe amplified a bit just to make it more entertaining. I think one thing that I saw him talk about is he was like, people don't want to go back to school anymore. He's like, education is so boring. And he used to be a teacher. Oh, so like who better to kind of like,
Starting point is 00:03:49 uh, share great information with you and help educate people on nutrition and, and, uh, diet and training and stuff. Then someone who's got such experience as a teacher, but also a teacher has to figure out a special way to connect with the students and connect with the
Starting point is 00:04:05 audience and i think he's freaking done a great job of that and he's got over a million subscribers on his youtube channel he's just he's crushing it yeah i remember that's right i actually just forgot that he was a teacher but he had a video where he would say like he would try to give kids like a i guess maybe a failing grade or like a, not like a, whatever D minus. And he would get in trouble. Cause they're like, no, you have to bump those up.
Starting point is 00:04:29 You have to bump them up a little bit. And he's like, what do you mean? He's like, we have like, they just had, they had to do it. And he's like,
Starting point is 00:04:34 that's why he was saying like, it was like kind of all bullshit. So I was, yeah. So the kids could feel good about something. I don't remember exactly what it was, but basically like the school can't have failing kids. So it has to look good on paper.
Starting point is 00:04:47 Yeah. If there's anything you can tell, um, is that he's in, he, he, he tells it like it is on his page or like he believes that it's really, well, what I like is how blunt he is. I mean, I'll just put that that way. I like how blunt he is about things. He's not scared to, I guess, ruffle a lot of feathers. Um, and sometimes it makes me wonder, do you have to ruffle those feathers? But the fact that he's doing it, like, you know, he's talked about AthleanX, he's talking about Ryan Humiston and then things that he dislikes from what they're doing. Um, and it is, it's interesting
Starting point is 00:05:22 cause it's like, you know, he talks about certain movements sometimes and why he thinks that they're just bad movements, you know, but, but it makes me wonder, like, I guess, I guess generally for everyone, not everyone should be doing like, for example, the behind the neck press, but somebody bought some bodybuilders like it and some bodybuilders think there's a necessity to it. So it is interesting. I think sometimes it's his way or the wrong way right um but he does put out a lot of really good information so that's not to take away from his information but there's a lot of there's you know there's a lot of different ways to do this thing
Starting point is 00:06:01 one of the videos i was just watching um he was talking about like 10 things not to do when trying to diet. And it appears he's just against like anything extreme. He doesn't like cheat days. He doesn't even necessarily like cheat meals, which you'll find sometimes throughout fitness, people will call it something slightly different, or he just wants you to have a completely different mindset to it. He wants your diet to be really open. But he also understands that there are people that are very heavy that might need to engage in a much stronger discipline for a while where they don't have as many options of food. And then there's also competition bodybuilders and people getting on stage and they're going to eat like five or seven different types of food. I mean, I've mentioned this before. I don't think you hear people talk about it that
Starting point is 00:06:50 often, but it's like, you got like rice, potatoes, maybe a little bit of fruit and he got some meat and he got some protein powder. You got some branch chain amino acids and water. And like, that's, you know, that's kind of the diet that you end up with. But I think that's a huge reason on why he teaches and promotes, hey, let's find some of these low density foods that carry good weight, like popcorn. Let's make, you know, make a big salad, eat your fruits, eat your vegetables, get your fiber in, get your lean sources of protein in so that you're keeping your calories like minimized. You're not, you're not just, you're not overdoing it.
Starting point is 00:07:30 And you find you have foods that are kind of satisfying you. And when you do that, then you might be able to sprinkle in his anabolic French toast, his protein ice cream, and some of the other things that he recommends. And he also has a cookbook. So I think what gets kind of lost sometimes is the fact that he's really trying to teach people how to mitigate and manage their calories. And he does throw, it does so through ways that he has found personally has worked great for him. And along the way, he's coached a lot of people to a lot of success. And so he's saying, look, I don't really, he doesn't talk a lot about the science, which I know he has studied like kinesiology and stuff.
Starting point is 00:08:09 But he doesn't really ever go into any of that. And I appreciate that, too. I think that that's really helpful. So I think he's got a great kind of mission statement. And I do agree with what you were saying. Yeah, he is getting in there and kind of fighting with people. And that's a lot of times what we respond to is the negative. But what I would like to encourage everyone that listens to this show,
Starting point is 00:08:30 all the fans of this show, I would love to encourage you from this moment forward to have this as a takeaway. What's the positive takeaway you can take from somebody? That's it. What's the positive take? I had people, a couple of people more recently messaged me about the liver king.
Starting point is 00:08:46 I don't know if you guys have seen the liver king. I've heard a bit about him. Yeah. Someone messaged me about him too. So some people were like, he's not talking about, you know, whether he takes steroids or whatever. And I'm like, I'm not that aware of his content. I don't really know. He looks great.
Starting point is 00:08:59 He's in amazing shape. And I see him like lifting logs and eating raw liver and like, looks like he's having a, having a good time. But what I usually tell people that say that, or, Hey, what do you think of Greg Doucette? He seems super inflammatory. What's the positive you can take away from the guy? He probably has great information, but you're probably not seeing it because you're probably getting caught up in, maybe he picked on your favorite YouTuber. Yeah, absolutely. And a lot of the stuff that's happened like there's a few situations that happened with him that it wasn't him that started it it was somebody else some
Starting point is 00:09:30 other youtuber that like because there was a time that he was growing really fast and he was passing up all the old fitness youtubers right some of them didn't like that so like like cali muscle made a video like there's a few others that made videos and he was like what what what so he grilled them back which is kind of nice to see but andrew that anabolic french toast is it it's good on the calories yeah it's like it's a dance but it's not like you made it calorically dense yeah no i depending on how you make it like you can have different bread selection like i just get like cheap plain ass bread from like walmart and so like the way i made it for you guys i think it was for the four slices. It was like still under 500 calories, including the syrup and you know, anything else that you would probably add on it, but not it's, it's very filling. Um, initially when I first
Starting point is 00:10:16 started eating it, I just, I liked it so much that I would have like two servings every time I would eat it. But then after a while, I'm like, dude, that's like, it's getting hard to eat that. every time I would eat it. But then after a while, I'm like, dude, that's like, it's getting hard to eat that. So I took it down to a normal serving, like an adult. And then I would mix in some of the other, like, so like, you know, we have Piedmontese. So like I'd have lean meat throughout the day. And then, you know, I'd have, you know, more steak or whatever for dinner. And then at night I would have the anabolic ice cream.
Starting point is 00:10:41 And what's funny is like, I had heard about all these recipes but it wasn't until we had remington on remington james that's when i we kind of kept in touch and then he started following his diet and so that's when i took a second look at it and that's when i was like oh my gosh like this stuff is incredible and then i started learning about you know tracking and then you know actually needing to drop body fat for like a photo shoot and stuff so relying on these really big high volume low calorie foods was like so crucial and yeah um i don't have um greg busett's book but i mean everything that i've seen online it like originated from him and then everyone else kind of took it and ran with it and made you know alterations made all kinds of different other things with it but yeah it's really cool being able to uh quote unquote be on in a deficit while still being very full on some
Starting point is 00:11:31 of these recipes that are like i said they're filling but they taste amazing you know uh his thing is like can i think he says like is it as is it like 80 of the way there like okay cool it's 80 of the way of the same like flavor as whatever the meal is but the calories are going to be significantly less so you can eat that on a regular basis and not really worry about gaining fat or you know going off your plan or having a cheat meal or whatever yeah that's a big deal right there you're not looking for it to taste the same as like french toast like people are like oh it doesn't taste the same it's not supposed to right it tastes something kind of like it that's decent but that's actually good for you yeah so lately i've been making just like regular well it's funny i say regular not because it's regular to me but anabolic french toast so just using egg
Starting point is 00:12:18 whites but i will throw whole eggs on top of it to get some fats in there. And, man, that's a party because that tastes really good. Like not fully, like pretty runny. So that way it just soaks into the bread. Sounds delicious. It's still wishy. Yeah. Yeah, you can go to GregDucette.com and check out some of his stuff. It's D-O-U-C-E-T-T-E.
Starting point is 00:12:42 And then he's got cookbooks. He's got all kinds of stuff on there. I just strongly encourage people just check out some of his stuff. You know, if you haven't seen too much from him before, how great is it to have a skill set to be able to cook? We talked about that a bunch of times on the show. And all three of us have different ways that we cook stuff. And I'm lucky enough to have a wife that can cook pretty good. So she'll pop stuff in the oven. I have April and Andy, my brother and sister-in-law who love
Starting point is 00:13:11 to cook a certain way. And they're cooking up these amazing big meals, but they're usually still pretty healthy. So not everyone has access to being able to cook really well. And why not get a cookbook that's super simple, that's going to keep you on track with some really good food. So I'm just kind of super excited to dive into some of this because he also talks about zero calories and zero harm, which is interesting and very debatable when it comes to the artificial sweeteners and especially some of the more recent findings that people have seen. I think Andrew Huberman was pointing out a study showing that they had to stop a study with kids
Starting point is 00:13:52 where they were giving them diet drinks, but their response to insulin was still so high that they had to discontinue the study. So I got to look more into that. I do admit I'm kind of talking sideways out of my mouth here because I didn't watch the entire video. Was it recent? Yeah, it was recent. It was really recent. But it was, I think, some new findings. Again, just because you produce insulin doesn't mean you're going to turn fat. So we have to always keep these things in consideration. I was walking a couple days ago, and I was doing a walk run, and a woman that was walking fast walked past me. And I was walking, I was running, so I'd pass her, she'd pass me.
Starting point is 00:14:39 In the end, she kind of passed me up. And now she's, keep in mind, this woman is walking really, really fast. But I think this is some of Greg Doucette's entire philosophy is that if you do something steady enough for long enough, you'll fucking win. You'll be able to get ahead. And he talks about you're going to, your hardest leg day, you did squats, you did deadlifts, you did leg press, you did walking lunges. You totally killed yourself with a leg workout. He said, on any day that you go and walk your dog for an hour, you will burn more calories in that walk than you did during that training session. Might be debatable, but you kind of see his point that it's probably at least close,
Starting point is 00:15:23 which you wouldn't think that it would be close. You would think that it wouldn't even be a contest. His point is, is that when you're lifting, you're mainly lifting to build muscle mass. You're lifting to help your metabolism kind of off in the future. Any sort of cardio training that you do is for the moment. It's to help you kind of burn energy for the moment. And so I think once you start to learn more about these things and you can kind of weaponize these things and utilize them where you see the most appropriate. Greg also talks about fasting. He's
Starting point is 00:15:58 not a huge fan of fasting. He'd rather see you eat. Again, because he wants you to eat and not be hungry. He wants you to be satiated. He wants you to eat and not be hungry he wants to be satiated he wants to feel pretty full have kind of a balanced breakfast have maybe a balanced lunch maybe eat four or five times in a day and you end your day maybe 200 calories less than whatever your overall calories should be you do it again the next day you do it again the next day You do it again the next day. You do it again the next day. You do it again the next day. There's enough variety in there. Maybe the weekend you have a little extra calories, but it's still not so much that it messed up all the other days. And in the end, what you end up with is you lose two pounds a month and you do so for the next six months. You lost 12 pounds. month and you do so for the next six months, you lost 12 pounds. Meanwhile, you were also lifting weights. You lost weight in a very modest way. And what we've seen in a lot of research is the
Starting point is 00:16:53 people that lose weight that way, they're able to keep it off and they're able to maintain. And they might come and go a bit. They might gain four or five pounds back a couple of months later or something, but usually you can kind of keep those things off. And so I agree with that message a ton. And I, and I'm excited to kind of dive into his, his beliefs on this show today. And he's not into bulking,
Starting point is 00:17:15 which is great. Right. Yeah. Getting jacked even without having extra calories. There. Can you hear me? Probably not yet. We can hear you. We can hear you. You are. they can't hear me. Absolutely. The phone's good. And? Probably not yet. We can hear you.
Starting point is 00:17:25 We can hear you. Oh, they can hear me. Absolutely. The microphone's good. And then, no, you can't hear them, I don't think. Not yet. Now you should be able to hear them. Can you hear us now?
Starting point is 00:17:34 Yeah. Yeah. I hear voices. Hey. There we go. What's up, Coach Greg? I need a bit louder, though. Can I get them louder?
Starting point is 00:17:41 Yeah. You want to hear us? I'm half deaf. I only really hear in, like, one of my ears. I usually wear this. It's because you're yelling all the time bro yeah probably i can hear them but not like enough like more more yeah more he loves our voices he wants to hear it full blast loud and clear yeah i hear it good full blast that's awesome does greg sound okay to you guys yeah he said i should talk he sounds amazing i'll turn this back
Starting point is 00:18:13 to a foot away from the mic and i'll put it back where we had it just uh tilt the camera down towards those titties a little bit more let's get a little more cleavage not nipples we don't want to get too crazy oh what is this is this? A little more cleavage. Oh, yeah. I just got my new tank. Yeah, there you go. Harder than last time. Pointing straight down. Is it harder all the time? Harder every day? That would be problematic. Can't walk around like that yeah
Starting point is 00:18:47 oh i'd like to record as well if you don't absolutely you can put a put a clip promote your channel and vice versa it would work good like that we'd love we'd love my editors can do that yeah that'd be good oh you don't edit your own stuff i can record the phone if he wasn't here there would be no way i'd be on this oh my god right now we need lots of people to help us i have three editors if not four it's three or four editors i mean i'm posting two videos per day minimum so at least 14 videos a week usually more jesus christ how long ago did you start your youtube channel 2006 but like i just would record me doing like a bench press for reps or squat or something and just upload i didn't even know there was such a thing as a follower back then
Starting point is 00:19:35 and then like maybe five years ago i was like i need more clients for coaching i'm gonna start talking about like how to lose weight and stuff it was way too much work and i gave up and a couple years later, I'm like, wait a minute, that video at Annenberg got like hundreds of thousands of views. So I started talking about PDs more and then people started watching it. And then it just blew up from there.
Starting point is 00:19:54 You got a pretty damn impressive bench press. Can you still put up those kinds of weights? Not even close. I haven't bench pressed in probably three years. When I set the all-time master's world record i hurt my shoulder about 13 days before i got a cortisone shot couldn't train like i was literally i was doing five plates for four paws and then i just heard it and i was like shit and then i was like i was like in tears i was like i've been trained for this event got the cortisone
Starting point is 00:20:22 shot showed up to the event in pain got got the record. And then I haven't benched since. I don't even think I could bench 365. You were benching over 500 pounds at one point. What body weight? Yeah. 529 paused at 198. Jesus Christ. What about some of the other lifts? We need to get the street cred out of the way. Squat, deadlift? Well, I've deadlifted 765 in the gym but i've only ever pulled 700 on the platform i couldn't i can't hold it when i get an alternate grip it pulls out of my hands it just drags up my leg and slips out of my hand so i could never grip the weight enough to do it and squat was always shitty the most ever done is 600 and i had a femoral acetabular impingement cam tight it's like a degenerative disease.
Starting point is 00:21:05 All right. All right. We don't need any more excuses. I just couldn't train. Hurt my hips. So, you know, I wanted to be good at it, but I just never could. I'd train for like three months, get hurt, take three months off, do it for three months, get hurt.
Starting point is 00:21:18 So I just never really got anywhere with the squat. You did 405. Now I just train for fitness. What was the 405 record that you had? Because you did that like or that was a sumo yeah the sumo deadlift record for a timed lift in a minute you had a minute to do it and you just do it as many reps as you can and i did 50 reps in 51 seconds or something like that and that was the guinness record i would love to challenge anyone listening to try to do it with half that weight i mean seriously that is that is unbelievable i like my one rep max isn't that impressive but because i'm such a like cardio kind of guy i can do a lot of things for a minute like when i bike
Starting point is 00:21:56 race i'm good for a minute when i'm lifting bench press i'm better at reps not really one rep max not so good but like put 225 in the bar i can do a lot of reps like that kind of stuff. So, yeah. So I got an interesting question for you. If you had the opportunity to have the choice between moving in with Chris Bumstead into your dream home versus moving into an apartment with your girlfriend, which one would you choose? I got to take the girlfriend. Oh, okay.
Starting point is 00:22:27 I thought it was going to be a little closer than that. Yeah, Chris is cool, but I love my girlfriend. Yeah, you don't know how he's going to act, too, if you end up accidentally using his toothbrush and shit like that. I mean, it might fly off the handle. Who knows, right? Yeah, I've done that with my girlfriend. She's going to watch watch this and i'm gonna
Starting point is 00:22:45 remember babe when i took i grabbed the wrong toothbrush and i put it i'm like wait a minute which one did i use and she hates that she just can't stand like babe we kiss it can't be that bad but she's like do not use my toothbrush i've made the mistake of doing it it seems like she's living the lifestyle too right well she used to be a powerlet like when we met she didn't work out didn't do anything. Saw I was into it and kind of like my enthusiasm for the sport of powerlifting. You know, it led to her liking it and she did it. Her last competition was the same one as mine. We both kind of retired together. So I'm trying to get her back into it, but she doesn't like it the way I do.
Starting point is 00:23:20 She kind of she likes lifting really heavy weights for like one rep, A set of five for her, that's cardio. What do you think the biggest difference is now for you with the way that you used to diet versus the way that you diet now? Because it seems like you landed onto something that maybe has more variety, but you're still maintaining a great physique and still able to be high performance when you're doing cycling and things like that? Well, years ago, I didn't really know what I was doing. I just kind of did what other people did. So I did the bulk and cut. I did the chicken, broccoli and rice. And I was like, this is suffering. Like I was just so hard. I couldn't maintain it. I've done 59 body building shows to this point. I was like, I can't keep doing those diets. So I just found what, how can I keep myself full and satisfied? And so I started eating things like French toast and I'm like, well, I'm still losing weight. So I discovered it doesn't
Starting point is 00:24:11 really matter the kind of macros that you're eating. It's more calories in calories out end of the day. So I eat a lot more filling voluminous foods, the protein ice cream shakes, things like that. I, I just gravitated towards that when I was dieting. And now that I'm actually doing cardio again, because I used to be a triathlete as a kid. So like when I was, you know, 13, four, I was a swimmer and did all that. I got out of it. And so now that I've got the cardio back in, I burned so many calories. I find it relatively easy to keep my body fat in the, in the, like the single digits by doing cardio and then eating more high voluminous foods, like lots of fruit and vegetables, filling foods. When you mentioned cardio also, like, do you, do you like take a
Starting point is 00:24:50 lot of walks outside of just the cycling stuff you do? Like, do you keep yourself moving or are you kind of sedentary during your day? How do you control that? That's a great question. I'm absolutely sedentary. Like I hardly do anything. I literally sit here and work on a computer, Like I hardly do anything. I literally sit here and work on a computer, watching videos, watching things, planning videos and speaking. The most cardio I do is when I'm flailing my hands around screaming in a video, like literally that's it. So aside from actually being in the gym and working out and doing like an actual bike race or something, I am the most sedentary person you can find. So walks and all that stuff, I rarely ever do it. It makes me wonder, what is your caloric intake right now for how much you weigh, how much muscle you're holding? What are you intaking? Do you still track it rigidly?
Starting point is 00:25:32 I don't track exactly, but I'm hyper aware of the calories I'm eating. So I can just look at a plate and I know. And I know that on a very low day, I'm not doing anything. Some days I don't do any cardio. I don't go to the gym. I'll eat 3,000 calories. On a high calorie day, it's'm not doing anything. Some days I don't do any cardio. I don't go to the gym. I'll eat 3000 calories on a high calorie day. It's about 4,000. So on average, probably 3,500 a day is where I'm at. And I'm around 9% body fat. So the calories in calories out thing is an equation. And I would love to do it in your voice, but every time I try to do your voice, I end up talking like Jerry Seinfeld instead of talking like you. But calories in, calories out is a huge part of the equation, but it seems to be not super accurate.
Starting point is 00:26:11 Like it might take a little bit of trial and error to kind of find out what your caloric need is. Why do you think that is? Why do you think there's like a lot of play and kind of wiggle room with kind of discovering whether you should have 2,500 calories a day or 2,000 calories a day. Well, yeah, calories in calories are always going to work. The problem is how do you know how many calories you burn and how do you know how many calories you're ingesting? Because even if you read every single, you know, food label, they're not, they're not always accurate. They can legally lie and be up to 20% wrong. So how do you know? You'll sometimes you'll say, wow, these have zero calories, says on the label, but they have calories.
Starting point is 00:26:47 So that varies. So people have a very hard time tracking how much they're eating. And how do you know how many calories you're burning? When you go for a walk for an hour, how many calories did you burn? You don't know. And it varies. And even for myself, some days 3,000, some days 4,000. It depends on the day.
Starting point is 00:27:03 So if you're actually trying to lose weight and you're tracking your calories, it might be that you burn off fewer calories on one day, or it might be that you ate more than you thought. You don't know. And there's so many little things that go into finding out how many calories you're burning. You can see I burn a thousand calories on this walk, whatever it was, two hours. You can see how many calories you're eating, but how many calories did you burn through neat non-exercise activity thermogenesis you don't know were you fidgeting a lot were you uh more hyper that day were you bopping your head to music or were you in a diet for bodybuilding and sleeping like this because when i go on a bodybuilding diet and i'm getting say six percent body fat
Starting point is 00:27:39 i'm like this i have no like i can't. I'm getting in car accidents for not shoulder checking. I'm like, there's no way I'm looking over there. Too much energy. I'm serious. Literally car accidents. Yeah. I have no energy. I can't get out of the bathtub. Girlfriend, help me get out of the tub. I don't even want to go to the bathroom. I swear if I had a pee jug, I'd probably pee in the pee. No energy. When I get under 6%, I feel miserable. So how many calories am I burning if I'm laying like this all day, half day? I've had people drive me to the gym to go work out i'm like i don't have enough and i don't trust myself on the road so lacking in energy because my body is not made to be four and a half percent body it's just not so when i get close to that level
Starting point is 00:28:18 it's a nightmare you know actually this makes me curious greg because right now you're nine percent in the past when i was competing in bodybuilding and when I got really lean, because of how bad I felt and also because I was eating like 30 to 40 grams of fat a day, I always thought if individuals are walking around at like 8% or 9%, they're probably on something, right? it took a lot of like trial and error and I'm on much higher fats now, but now being single digit, I like, I don't think that there are individuals that can't be single digit body fat that can't perform well. You're at 9% body fat. You're doing everything you're doing.
Starting point is 00:28:54 You're making your videos. You're doing your cycling. Was there ever a point that you thought that people that are single digit body fat that are walking around like that year round are always on something? I think it's on there's a spectrum there's some people that can do it some can't like tristan lee i met him i want i'm like that guy is under five percent body fat and he and he looks to have energy like i'm watching him
Starting point is 00:29:15 training he's training hard has lots of energy i would never have that kind of energy so he can do it i can't do it at five percent but other people can Some people can just naturally function at a lower body fat percent. Think of Jeff Cavalier. He's in his 40s. He's 6%, 7% body fat. He has energy, it seems. He's doing great. For me, I couldn't function at 9% body fat when I was natural, but I can now that I'm on HRT. Is it because of the HRT or is it because that my set point, the weight that my body wants to be at, has it been lowered through certain adaptations is it the fact that I'm doing a lot of cardio I'm going to argue yes if you do a lot of cardio and for a while you can hold your body fat at a lower point your body
Starting point is 00:29:55 naturally gets used to that it becomes a more normal thing for it to to handle it seems like you're really big into the consistency of everything. So if you start to find a correct caloric intake and you're not bringing it down into too low of a deficit, you're not overdoing the amount of cardio, you're not trying to do like HIIT cardio and regular cardio and you're spending hours upon hours in the gym, then over a long period of time, you're going to be able to lose weight in a reasonable, modest way. long period of time, you're going to be able to lose weight in a reasonable, modest way. And that will most likely be able to ensure that you're going to be able to keep some of that weight off as opposed to just going into a large caloric deficit saying, starting on Monday, I'm going to start running five miles and training and all the things that we kind of hear people talk about. I think you just hit the nail on the head. I think that by saying it's a slow, long process, not trying to cut calories too much, not running five miles on day one, it's a slow,
Starting point is 00:30:51 steady progress. I literally just recorded a video like an hour ago talking about slow and sustainable. It has to be over a long period of time. The problem is we all want that huge dopamine rush of seeing the before and after. want to be like my mind's blown i just lost 50 pounds i did it in three months no one wants to say how long did it take you to lose 50 pounds you know five years no one wants that but think of that slow progression towards your ideal physique the slower you get there the easier it is going to be to maintain it the faster you get there the more likely you're going to fall off the wagon have a cheat and just say out of hell with it gain the weight back and then that yo-yo dieting every year is going to
Starting point is 00:31:28 happen. You see it every single year. People have new year's resolutions, trying to lose weight. They get shredded for summer. They gain all the weight back in the winter. And then the cycle continues every single year. Well, how do you get people to also buy into the slow rate of gain? Because I've seen quite a few of your videos, you're against bulking, which is amazing. I don't, we don't like bulking either, just trying to see the scale weight go up really fast. But guys, they're like, I'm one 70. I want to get to 200 pounds. Let's just start fucking eating 5,000 calories a day and see the scale go up. How do you get people to buy in to the slow muscle gain over time? Well, I think that what happens is you need to have a certain amount of videos. I need to say it in 50 different videos. I have to say, you know, the same thing, main gain.
Starting point is 00:32:11 The first time, Greg, you're an idiot. And then a Reddit thread is, Greg is an idiot, main gain doesn't work. Then you have to do it so many times. Then you have other people, for example, could be yourself. You watch a video and you're like, hey, that main gain thing is good. I did the bulk and cut, didn't work. The the more people that do it all of a sudden there's like uh an epiphany that this is the way to do it a change in thoughts a straw that broke the camel's back you need a certain amount of youtubers who actually say the same thing with a certain amount of influence and then all of a sudden it's like that actually works works. Like when you look back in the day, um, empty stomach cardio, that's going to burn more fat. And now it's like, no, who the idiot saying that,
Starting point is 00:32:49 but at the time that was common belief. That's why all these bodybuilders, I did it. I woke up in the morning. I'm like, I have to do empty stomach cardio. That's how you get lean. I didn't know any better. It's 20 plus years ago, but the research comes out. And after you've said it so many times, people start to believe you. So I just need to keep saying it and have other people say, yeah, you know what? I agree. I did that as well. And it works. I think that's how you do it.
Starting point is 00:33:12 I think sometimes when we're trying to have a caloric deficit, we are, you know, robbing ourselves of too much. And then eventually you pay the price. So what are your thoughts? You don't seem to be, it doesn't seem like you're against any dieting principles actually, but you don't seem to personally be a fan of recommending fasting. So what are some of your thoughts on fasting? Well, first of all, I'm against fad diets.
Starting point is 00:33:36 So in general, I approach any diet you can do for the rest of your life is a good diet, whether that's intermittent fasting or keto, any diet. If you can tell me, hey, I'm good with keto. I don't ever need carbs for the rest of my life. That's good. But for me, intermittent fasting, it's not something that's good for me. But if somebody else likes it, there are benefits like benefits in autophagy for people who don't actually do a lot of cardio. It could extend your life. You know, if you're doing 16 hour fast, but for me, I don't need that. I do a lot of hard, intense cardio, which is going to give me benefits of autophagy anyway so why do i not like
Starting point is 00:34:09 fasting well i don't like being hungry and i don't like taking away opportunities for muscle protein synthesis to occur if you're only eating protein once a day that's one opportunity for muscle growth versus spreading it out the research to me is quite clear. As you approach five meals a day with protein, that's the best way to build muscle. Three, pretty good. The law of diminishing turns is four a lot better than five. There's four meals a day, you know, a lot better than three, not much better is five, a lot better than four, not so much, but certainly eating twice a day is better than one. So I'm just not a fan of intermittent fasting. I don't want to go to the gym and train an empty stomach. If you can't put out as much effort, like if I get on my bike and I haven't eaten breakfast and I go for a two hour bike ride, I just don't have the same
Starting point is 00:34:53 power. I can't put out the same Watts. I'm not going to go as hard. If I'm not training harder than last time, am I really going to improve? Probably not. You seem to have tons of energy. I mean, these you're, you're ripping through these videos nonstop. You have over a million subscribers. You mentioned doing like 14 videos a week. Are you doing more now than you were when you were half, when you were half the age, you know, you're, I think you're what mid, mid to late forties, right? 46. Yeah. 46. Are you doing more now than when you were like 23 in terms of like workload and exercise and when you kind of equate for every single thing that you're doing you're doing more
Starting point is 00:35:30 with your waking hours now than you were when you were 23 it's fine i've never even thought of this but i'm just quickly looking back and i'm like as a child i was somebody that was always on the go i was doing every single sport possible and then i'm looking back into school and university i studied more than anyone i put more effort more into everything. And to be an elite athlete, I'm sure, you know, powerlifting, strong, any sport, how are you going to be really good at it if you don't dedicate yourself? So the way I applied myself in sport allowed me to dedicate myself in studies that in work, in relationships, in everything in your life. So just having that work ethic, that drive to be good at something, you have to really want it. So I really want to be good at sports. I really
Starting point is 00:36:08 want to be good at relationships. I want to be good at YouTube, anything, bike racing, weightlifting. So I just put that same effort. I don't think I've slowed down and I'm not going to be, I'm not bullshitting. I'm on HRT. That certainly doesn't hurt me. Being on HRT allows me to have higher level of testosterone than I typically would be at the age of 46. So I'm sure HRT. That certainly doesn't hurt me. Being on HRT allows me to have higher level of testosterone than I typically would be at the age of 46. So I'm sure that allows me to keep going. I feel just as good inside as I do when I was 20, but I have more injuries now. So although I feel as good, my body's certainly more beat up. You know, for you currently, what age, because I know like you did a lot of shows where you were natural and then you hopped on at a certain point.
Starting point is 00:36:47 So for you, when did you hop on? How old are you? And then what spurred that for you to make that decision that you wanted to go into the other realm? Well, I did 42 shows natural. And basically, if you would have asked me when I was like 25 years old, if I would ever do steroids, I would have said, I'll bet the, I'll bet you a million dollars. I'll never do it. I was so against it. As much as I'm, I talk about it openly now is that much against it.
Starting point is 00:37:13 And I said, why do I need it? I was literally improving every single year, getting a little bit better. And so for me, the journey is just the most important thing. I had so much fun getting better. I've always been competitive with myself. I'm a very, very competitive person, but I absolutely have no trouble losing to someone. So if I did my best and they kick my ass, I feel so happy about that. Just like playing beach volleyball, my girlfriend, she loses.
Starting point is 00:37:39 She's upset. And I'm like, why do you care? Like, I did the best I could. I missed a serve. So what? But other people, they kind of need to win. I never had that urge that I have to win at bodybuilding. I just did the best I could.
Starting point is 00:37:51 Somebody beat me if they're on steroids and I was natural. I didn't care because I'm like, I'm doing my best. Soon as I stopped that improvement and was like, I'm no longer improving or getting any better. I was like, well, this isn't as fun because for me, the fun was self-improvement to get better. And so I said, I want to get better and I want to get a pro card. I'd already won the drug tested Canadian nationals, 2006. I'd won many of these overall shows, even against people on steroids. And I said, I want to turn pro. And so I said, how am I going to do that? I'm going to take steroids, got on and competed. Didn't do too bad. Didn't do too great. And then three years after that, I got my didn't do too great and then three years after
Starting point is 00:38:26 that i got my pro card i think it was three years after the next show the next pro show or the next pro qualifier that i did nowadays you're on trt um what does that look like you're getting your blood work done um i was on uh i was on nothing for nine weeks because i had uh what the heck was it called? Tendon. I had some problem with my muscle, my tendons and my tricep. It was injured. The doctor, sports doctor said, get off testosterone. That's what's causing it. And I was like, okay, I'll just listen to them. Did it didn't really help any went to the doctor. My test levels were obviously crashed from getting off HRT.
Starting point is 00:39:01 And then they put me on 120 milligrams a week. Then they upped it to one 20 and they recently it's more, it's at 140. So I'm on 140 milligrams a week. And people talk about nanograms per deciliter. When I did the Merrick health test, I was at 570 or 560, somewhere around there. And that was at 120. And then since then I've upped it to 140. So my test levels are probably, I would say probably in the 700s. I feel really good at this level, at this rate. So, you know, that's basically what I've been doing. I used to abuse PDs. The last cycle I did was when I did the Niagara Falls Pro Show after I competed in Germany in Classic Physique, where my weight class is only 185. So obviously my doses are quite small, but I did do a cycle for that because I want to get that, you know, dry, hard, shredded look.
Starting point is 00:39:44 Pat Project Family, is TRT or HRT something that you've been interested in? Well, if you are, that's why we've partnered with Merrick Health, owned by Derek from More Plates, More Dates. They are the premium telehealth TRT and HRT clinic. And the great thing about Merrick Health that is so unique about them is that versus every other telehealth clinic out there, they give you direct plans for you specifically. Many clinics give you just plans that they give to everybody else. But we are individuals.
Starting point is 00:40:09 We have different hormonal levels. We need unique plans. That's why you need to check out Merrick Health. And Andrew, can you tell the people how to do it? Yes. Over at MerrickHealth.com. M-A-R-R-E-K-Health.com. When it comes time to actually purchasing these labs and paying for them, if you're
Starting point is 00:40:24 talking to somebody on the phone, you can just mention promo code PowerProject15. Or if you are manually checking out on your own, you can enter promo code PowerProject15 to save 15% off all labs. Links to them down in the description, as well as the podcast show notes. Let's get back to the video. Yeah. I'm curious, man, because like there's so much information and so many people making videos about PDs these days, which is good. But one thing that that I find almost a little bit problematic is like, you know, you make nanny or not videos. Derek makes nanny or not videos. And this is good. But sometimes I see some of these videos and some of the individuals.
Starting point is 00:41:01 It's like if I was a young kid cause I started training at 13 years old. And when I started training, if I saw a lot of some of that type of stuff and I'm saying like, Oh, this person isn't natural. This person's on drugs. This person's on drugs. It would almost make me be like the only way for me to get big or to get to a certain level is to be taking something. And since I was naive enough to train in my youth without YouTube,
Starting point is 00:41:26 without social media, I was able to get to a point where like, then when I did start seeing social media videos, I'm like, I've already put in eight, nine years of training and I look like this. I don't need to take anything. But being younger, I feel that I would have probably rushed to try to grip, put my hands on something because I wouldn't have the belief that I would actually be able to achieve X, Y, or Z. Do you ever think about that? Like, does that ever cross your mind when you're making some of this stuff? Absolutely. And it's a great point that you're making because I'm all about knowledge is power. So telling people this is the good and the bad of steroids. This is this, this is that, this is what's going to happen. And at the same time, I know that when you are exposed to this, that's going to increase your likelihood to end up taking
Starting point is 00:42:08 it, even if you know it's good or bad. But I also say it's the same thing. Like when I taught sex education, I was a school teacher. And when I taught about safe sex, if I talk about sex that exists, that it's a thing, people are more likely to have it. But at the same time, I do feel that knowledge is power. And even though it's maybe more likely going to, I guess there's a greater chance they're going to start taking the steroids. I do think it's better to educate people on it in the same way that even though talking about sex is more likely to lead to people having sex, I think that teaching them about safe sex is still the smarter choice. And if they do, in fact, decide to take steroids, I'd rather have somebody know the negative side effects or what could they do safer, not that taking steroids or anything is safe. But I'd rather do it safer than just having no clue, no knowledge whatsoever and to just arbitrarily do it. Yeah. Train, say your prayers and take your vitamins like Hulk Hogan used to say back in the day. Back then, it was very popular to keep it private and not only keep it private, but when asked directly, rather than saying something like no comment, they would say, oh, I've never used them and those kinds of things. So it is interesting because sometimes the perceived notion that somebody might have about steroids or about you owning a gun or just whatever it might be.
Starting point is 00:43:25 Sometimes the, is a misinterpretation or misrepresentation of, of you. I even saw like one guy bashing you because you said you're not in support of abusing animals. And he's like, how dare this guy say this when he's eating and consuming animals, obviously he's paying for it and,
Starting point is 00:43:41 and stuff like that. So people have a real, a lot of times they'll misinterpret a lot of the things that we say or do. So I think some folks are just like, I'm just not going to even share that. Yeah, absolutely. I talk a lot about steroids. And if you watch my videos, I'll be saying, I don't promote this.
Starting point is 00:43:58 Don't break the law. Some countries are this and that, you know, and ask your doctor. And then I'll proceed to talk about steroids and say, you're promoting them. And it's like, I'm not promoting them. I'm explaining it in the same way that I'd argue about if I tell people how to have safe sex, use a condom or what birth control can do. It doesn't mean I'm saying you should all go out and have sex at 14 years of age. Did your years as a teacher, did it really help kind of prime you for being able to be a teacher now with teaching so many people about nutrition?
Starting point is 00:44:24 you for being able to be a teacher now with teaching so many people about nutrition? Absolutely. When I went to school and I was, if I talked in a boring voice, monotone, I could present all the information, but then you have the kids sitting in front of you asleep or screaming and shouting, punching each other in the face. And I'm like, okay, I got to make this stuff interesting. And there's one thing it's, it's, there's a lot of people that know a lot of stuff. There's a lot of people that know a heck of a lot of stuff more about diet, exercise and fitness than me, but they probably can't present it in a way that is understandable that like the average person can can hear, listen, take in and apply it. So when I give this information, I know, okay, I got to speak at a level that's understanding for everyone that they can actually get it. And so when I was a school teacher, a lot of times I could explain the information, but I'd look in the class and eyes are looking at me like they don't get it. And so you learn to really explain things in a couple different ways so that more people can grasp the information and apply it in their own lives. Have your thoughts or opinions on SARMs changed over the years?
Starting point is 00:45:22 Because I know when I did a cycle, I did get some positive benefits and I was like very, no, I don't want to say very pro, but I was like, people would ask me and I would say what I was taking and whatnot.
Starting point is 00:45:34 And then after the fact, now people will still ask and I'm kind of pushing people more away from it. And I know you have some educational videos on it and I wouldn't say that you're pro them either, but you do talk about some of the benefits.
Starting point is 00:45:47 And I'm just curious over the years if you've learned more about them and whether or not you kind of try to get people to stray away from them a little bit more. Or is it still kind of the same for you? I would say that in terms of SARMs, I first started using Austrine probably 10 years-ish ago. And so when it first came out, I'm like, yeah, it's probably like some pro hormone probably doesn't really work that well. And I was actually quite shocked at how well they did work. And you heard all the time that they're really safe. And I think at first, when I got into SARMs, I was like, this is the new thing.
Starting point is 00:46:18 This is like super safe. And the more research I did, and the more I learned about things, the more blood work I saw, the more I saw that SARMs actually have a lot of side effects, more so than I would have expected. And so to this day, I'm personally not on SARMs. And if I thought that SARMs were that safe and that great, I would obviously be taking them because I want to have more muscle. I want to feel better. But I prefer HRT over SARMs. I prefer HRT over SARM.
Starting point is 00:46:45 So I 100% still believe that they're highly effective, but I do know that based on blood work that people get when they take all the different SARMs, that there are some negative side effects. So it's not just the safe magic pill that everyone's been looking for. What kind of side effects did you notice? Side effects in terms of blood work or like physical, like physical, like I got bigger got bigger stronger felt good the negative side effects that you're talking about negative side effects when you go off the starms you start losing the muscle you don't feel as good as when you're on them so to me it's almost
Starting point is 00:47:13 like this you get this dopamine spike of like awesomeness like your take rad 140 and your bench press goes up 30 pounds you get bigger and you look bigger it feels good and then when you get off of it the bench press goes back down you lose the gains and it's like ah this sucks so for me that's the worst it's the mental part of it more like seeing yourself in the mirror and realizing you don't look as good as when you're on them and seeing your strength go down and then as far as blood work cholesterol slightly you know the good cholesterol down uh bad cholesterol up um it can cause your blood pressure to go up uh other things like liver enzyme for me that was probably the worst but liver enzymes would go really high not so high that it was like really a problem but it certainly
Starting point is 00:47:57 was elevated so you look at that and you're like huh is that really worth it like am i willing to trade years off of my life like i want to live to hundred. Do I want to die at 80 instead of a hundred because of the steroids and SARMs that I'm taking? So honestly, that's the only reason I'm not on cycles right now. Like why am I only on 140 milligrams of test a week? I want to be on a thousand, you know, cause I want to get a lot bigger. I want the 20 pounds of muscle that I lost. I remember it. I remember how I felt taking it, but at the same time, I want to be around for a lot longer. That's why I'm not blasting cycles right now.
Starting point is 00:48:29 Yeah. I'm in full agreement with everything you just said, like almost to a T, but the one that I do still kind of like, it's still kind of like tapping me on the shoulder and it's not even a Sarm, but it's a Carterine. Do you have any experience with that? Whether it be positive or negative side effects? Well, there's, there's other than the SARMs that I've talked about, we have MK677, GW5016. I can't even remember the name. Yeah, it's a lot.
Starting point is 00:48:57 GW501516, something like that. I haven't taken that or MK in a long time. And when I did take MK, I found I was a bit sleepier, a lot bigger. And when I take a GW, I find that I did have more endurance, but I'm racing bicycles and I know I could be faster with it, but I'm like, do I really need it? I'm competing against myself. You know what I mean? Like I'm not trying to race some person I'm trying to race myself. So I can take those supplements, but it's not really going to do anything for me to be better than someone else. I just want to be the best version of myself.
Starting point is 00:49:28 So I don't really see any reason for me to take it. What kind of music are you listening to or what kind of things do you listen to when you're on your bike or you just go no headphones and go for it? I love music. Anytime I'm inside, I have to listen to music. Outside, I just do my own thing. But music, it really hypes me up. But I find anything dance music, uh, top 40, um, anything that's like popular music, that's really current, I guess, is what I listened to. Do you study any sort of like motivational type stuff or philosophical type stuff to help you to manage some of these people when you're assisting them
Starting point is 00:50:01 with nutrition and diet? Cause I find the, capacity for these things is almost always the hardest thing, the psychological versus just them sticking to a diet plan. What are some of your thoughts on that? Do you study those things a bit? I would say that I don't have any time specifically to just study anything for the sake of studying it anymore, the amount of hours that I have in a day. So anything I anything i'm studying it's basically am i going to react to this video or not like am i going to watch this video in order to make a response video back so i would say i just learn a lot just from watching other youtubers um or people send me articles or or um like journal
Starting point is 00:50:41 articles and say hey there's this new study on Diet Coke or this or whatever. Read this and can you do a response? And I'll read it. And I might read 10 articles or watch 10 videos before I respond to one. So I'd say that what I am learning is just planning a response. So I'm watching something and like, can I add to this? Or can I respond to this? Like, do I completely disagree with this person? And then I make a video on that. So I don't just go out and just read or research or do any of that. It's all content related information that I do study now. Is it stressful sometimes? Because, you know, you are probably having somebody send you something that would be hard to interpret any other way than negative, because it might be somebody trying to bash you or especially now that you have so many subscribers um do you find it to uh cost you anything like in terms of your
Starting point is 00:51:30 just emotion and and just from a stress standpoint i don't ever get stressed reviewing content and i don't it's rare that somebody actually says something that really bothers me there's been a few videos and you can kind of tell when i'm really personally angry but like people have asked like when you respond to jeff cavill i'm not mad i don't like it's not i'm not it's not personally affect me but if somebody says i'm lying or they say something like making shit up like that kind of really bothers me if they really like say something other than that it doesn't really bother me mostly like if somebody says i'm lying about something that i don't have integrity those are the things that really would bother me but for the most part
Starting point is 00:52:07 comments what's that what has what has bothered you the most like out of all these different videos and stuff like what really irked you where you thought definitely chef rush when he said i was like when he was i guess insinuating that i was racist i was like are you kidding me like that really bothered me because i'm like i'm like like, I'm my whole channel. I keep talking about everyone being a circle and being inclusive and promoting us all as being the same. Like, I'm like, are you kidding me? I'm like, I promote so much of this that to say I would do this like it like just out of spite or that I'm sexist. Like another like there's been so many people that call me this and that. And I'm like, I'm the opposite of that. So when I see that, I'm like, that just pisses me off because I'm like, do you really know what I'm like, I'm the opposite of that. So when I see that, I'm like, that just pisses me off. Cause I'm like, do you really know what I'm like? Like, you know, people see how you rant and rave on a, on a video, but they're not your friends. And so my friends will watch some of
Starting point is 00:52:51 these videos and be like, they are so far off on what you are as a person. Cause they're not your friend. They just see you ranting. And they're like, and my friends are like, we'll watch you in these videos. And it's not like you at all at all because like you just talk like at a normal decibel sound like you're never yelling so it's like they find that so different but like you know i just get really amped up and and when i'm doing videos i also know if i just sit quietly and talk it's not as likely to have somebody listen the whole time it's like i want to wake people up they're on the treadmill so it's like that's why I do those kind of like rants and raves the way I do versus just talking quietly. What would your advice be to somebody who's trying to start doing something right now, as far as constant creation, YouTube, Instagram, all that type of stuff? How would you, what would
Starting point is 00:53:36 you suggest to them? Because like you mentioned, you make two videos every single day or potentially more. I'm not sure. Um, you make two videos every single day and you have a personality that you turn on for the camera because right now we're talking like you're not at that level. But then every time the camera's on, you turn that on. So what would you suggest for somebody to be able to build an audience in the way that you have? Maybe some things that really worked for you through the whole process. I think the key is to talk about something that you know more than other people. So find something that you are very knowledgeable in. I tell people to sound smart. All you need to do is talk about something that you know 5% more than the other person because you're going to be adding things that they don't know. And once you do that, once you find that thing, like for me, it would be talking about PDs or dieting, nutrition training. I'm obviously well versed in that. And then to do that often a lot. So the problem I see, and I keep telling people, why are you posting two or three videos a week when you could be posting two videos a day? Because every single time somebody watches your video, whether
Starting point is 00:54:35 it's a short or a long video, YouTube algorithm is going to say, you watched Greg Doucette's video 30 seconds long. Maybe you'll watch this one. So every time I post a video, they're going to be shown more of my videos. So you inflate the speed of growth. So when I got to a million followers in what was maybe two years, I probably could have done that. But if I had posted at the slow rate, like most people, it would have taken me 10 years. So what people see is this quick rise. It wasn't that quick. It was at the same speed as anyone else. It's just, I did it all in a year by working harder than other people. I would say I post more than 99.99% of people. I would say probably Derek is the only one that posts at the rate that I do that I've seen Nick strength and power, perhaps these are all guys with about a million followers.
Starting point is 00:55:20 So it clearly works. So anyone that's out there that's saying, Oh, I'm just going to post one video a week. I'd say just post way more, much more likely to get more people to see your stuff. If you're putting stuff out all the time. Go ahead. I was going to ask, so what does it feel like you kind of being like the, uh, the motivation for a lot of other YouTubers that are putting out, uh, somewhat similar content. And what I mean is like the recipe videos. I was talking about Remington James earlier and or someone like Nick exercise for cheat meals. They both have great YouTube videos and a huge following now. But it's like, you know, like I said, they got their motivation from you.
Starting point is 00:55:59 So what is it like seeing some of these other channels grow, knowing that you were kind of the the start of the recipe videos for like the anabolic cooking and stuff? Well, I love it. Imitation is the greatest form of flattery. So some people are like, hey, they're doing like your videos, you're copying your ideas. And like, well, that's awesome. Like, I'm not gonna be mad because somebody is like, I think that Greg guy knows what he's doing. I'm going to start doing the same kind of videos as him.
Starting point is 00:56:22 To me, that's like an honor that they're thinking that my videos are good enough that they should do the same style. Remington James had, I think when I discovered him, he had like 400,000 followers. I had like 50,000. So Remington was way up there. And then I just started doing videos and he randomly just, you know, started doing more videos about what I was doing with cooking. And he made a cookbook. So essentially I made a cookbook, he made a cookbook and it's like, oh, he copied our idea. I'm like, yeah, he's smart. He made a cookbook because he saw that mine was successful. He's like, huh, it's working for Greg. I'm going to start doing recipes and talking about weight loss. And, and so he's essentially doing what I did. And people are like, well, that's hurting your
Starting point is 00:57:02 business. I'm like, no, it's not. It's helping my business because it's kind of popularizing anabolic cookbooks is a thing that everyone should do. Like if you're the one nice restaurant in some new town, it's like, yeah, it's just this one nice restaurant. But if you have five of them, it's almost like going to restaurants, fancy dining, that's a cool thing to do. So having Remington with a book and me have a book, it doesn't hurt my sales. It helps it because it's like we're growing together. But people see it as competition, like one channel versus another. Like I get critiqued all the time by Derek's fans. Greg, you're copying Derek and this and back and forth. And I'm like, Derek's success brings up my success and my success
Starting point is 00:57:42 brings up Derek's success, we can rise together because we're both doing the same kind of topics. We both talk about PDs and weight loss and certain things, supplements, perhaps if he gets more popular, I'm going to get more popular. We're both getting more popular. If there's only one of us that did it, maybe none of us would be popular. So, you know, I see it as we can all grow together. So exercise for cheats, the iron musket, all these different guys that have channels with like cooking as themes and talking about stuff that helps us all grow together. It makes us all kind of normalized in society.
Starting point is 00:58:13 It becomes like a cool thing that it becomes mainstream per se. Does Chris Bumstead have a better physique than Arnold, you think? Absolutely. Much better. Do you think that much better? Do you think that Chris Bumstead is like what bodybuilding should kind of be all about at this point? Oh, a hundred percent. I think bodybuilding has gone way too far. I literally just made a video I posted this morning. I said, they should get rid of the 212 class. They should have bodybuilding. They should have
Starting point is 00:58:39 a short, medium and tall class and just bring it down to that. And for classic physique, they should try to make that even more popular by having another weight category within classic physique. So for example, Chris Bumstead, six foot one, he can weigh 242. They should have another division, 10% lighter. So for example, 10% less than 242 would be 218. So Chris Bumstead have alternate universe. Chris Bumstead, rather than being able to be 242, you have a Chris at 218. And in case you haven't seen Chris at 218, he looked ridiculous. Like Chris Bumstead, when he was amateur, first time I saw him as an amateur bodybuilder on stage, I thought he was going to be good. And I'm looking up at this guy with shoulders like this wide and small waist. And I'm like, mind blown, that's your champion.
Starting point is 00:59:21 He got second place. And five weeks later, he won his pro card at the North Americans. place and uh five weeks later he won his pro card at the north americans i'm like he should have won his pro card at nationals had him as a champion and a year later he's on the olympia stage getting second place and he was only 218 pounds at the time so even chris bumstead downsized still a dream physique so you add in another category for classic physique for smaller guys who don't have to push the size game it's going to be way more mainstream because how many people can get to chris bumstead size maybe one in a million type thing but how many people could get 10 less a lot more so become more popular guys could go into mr olympia shows maybe even be natural or on at least lower doses of
Starting point is 01:00:01 stuff make it safer and it would just be that much more popular for the mainstream. Cause a lot of people, even right now to us, Chris is like, yeah, we want to look like that. The average person, they might look at Chris and be like, that's way too big, but take 10% off of that. They're like, Oh my God, that's still my dream physique. That's still like amazing. So I think if you can add a new category with smaller weight restrictions
Starting point is 01:00:23 so that more of the average person can aspire to that, I think it would really grow the sport. Start a new federation where there's this one category where you can only have a thousand milligrams of tests. No growth hormone, no insulin, right? Yeah. I mean, if we could actually do that, I mean, but and they're saying, well, how can we fix the sport? We can add drug testing. That's all you're going to do is force people to take test suspension for 51 weeks of the year, not take it for a week and pass the drug test that way. The people will find a way to cheat no matter what. So I don't think that just adding drug testing is the answer, but I do think
Starting point is 01:00:52 having a different weight restriction automatically would force people to lower those doses. Do you think there are any physiques within history that like compare to Chris Bumstead's currently? Because I've heard you say that he has the best physique ever. compare to Chris Bumstead's currently? Because I've heard you say that he has the best physique ever. Well, Frank Zane had a very, like an amazing, more classic look. Like Arnold Schwarzenegger is like, it's just a different look. But Frank Zane, I'd say would be the,
Starting point is 01:01:18 probably the closest to Chris Bumstead-esque type physique that I've seen. Chris has that incredible vacuum that Frank Zane had. Arnold, just a different kind of a look. He had, Arnold had a much more imposing chest and arms, but he didn't have like a, such a small waist vacuum like Chris does. Yeah. What do you think is like maybe some of the most misunderstood stuff about you? Because, you know, we do see some of the videos where it gets inflammatory between you and somebody else. What do you think is the most misunderstood thing? I think that people think when I meet people and talk to them, they, they, first of all, they say, why aren't you yelling and screaming? Like, I'm just walking in the mall and people
Starting point is 01:01:52 come and it's great. Like, like they're, they're surprised to see you. And they'll be like, why aren't you screaming and shouting? So I think that people think I'm always that guy screaming and shouting. And I think that people, for some reason in their heads, think that I like make fun of people who are overweight. Like I think that in their heads, they think that somehow, because I promote losing weight and all this stuff that I'm somehow like anti obese, like, it's not like I am very encouraging that people are overweight to try to help them lose weight. But I think that people assume that I'm some kind of guy that would be in the gym and pointing at people who are training, who aren't in shape and like making fun of them. But it's not at all the case. I think those are the two biggest things.
Starting point is 01:02:28 It seems that you're the problem that you have is just with the healthy at any size type of movement in general. Like if you can explain that a bit, like what are you trying to mention there? Because I think people may get your message twisted, think you just don't like fat people, but what is it that you're trying to say instead? Yeah, I think that what's happening is they're shooting the messenger rather than realizing that I'm just reporting on the research, the literature. I would love to be able to say you can be healthy at any size. Think of how much it would make me happy to say, even though you're 300 pounds, that's great. All you need to do is
Starting point is 01:02:59 go for a 30 minute walk every single day, do your cardio. And even if you're 300 pounds, that's it. You're healthy. That's great. I would love it. Unfortunately even if you're 300 pounds, that's it. You're healthy. That's great. I would love it. Unfortunately, it's not true. It's just not. So I have to say, even though you're working out every single day, you're doing an hour of cardio, the fact that you're 300 pounds means that you're not healthy. By definition, you're morbidly obese. You are not healthy. It's going to dramatically impact your life, even though you're training, you're trying, and you probably have genetics that are making it hard for you to lose weight. You have more fat cells. Your, uh, ghrelin is, is, is higher. It's trying,
Starting point is 01:03:33 triggering you to want to ease, trying to punch you in the face, eat more. You can't put the fork down. It's just, it's not really your faults, your genetics, but I'm here to tell you that because you're overweight like that, it's not good. And it's like, well, I don't like you. And it's like, well, who likes the person that walks up to them and says, you don't look good in those jeans. No one wants to hear that. So I'm kind of like, I just tell it like it is. I don't really have a filter. Like, I just say things like, you know, that'll be my friends will say that.
Starting point is 01:04:00 They're like, Greg just tells you what he thinks, good or bad. But that's a good thing because you always know kind of where you stand with me. So I think people have a hard time because most people lie. Most people go up to people and say, you look amazing. Even though they're a hundred pounds overweight. Oh, that's great. Like they just tell you what you want to hear. They don't actually speak the truth. You know, and you really, it's, it's weird to say this, this way, but you can't really be as fat as you want to be because at some point it starts to impose on other people. It kind of reminds me a little bit of smoking. You can do your thing, smoke wherever you want, but if you're smoking right in front of me, now maybe I would ask you to move or I would walk away myself.
Starting point is 01:04:46 over-consuming calories for long periods of time and not caring whether they get 40, 60, 80 pounds heavier, you start to run into scenarios where potentially some of these people could maybe not be contributing to society in the same way. Maybe they could be taxing our healthcare system. There's all kinds of different things that can happen. And yes, it is up to you individually to kind of handle your stuff your own way. But there is a point where sometimes these things do kind of impose on other people. And so I think that whilst you got on one side, you got people in the fitness community kind of shouting like, hey, we should all look like this and we should be this percentage body fat. And on their side, you got other people kind of saying, hey, man, like, just leave me alone. I
Starting point is 01:05:24 want to do my own thing, which I agree with. But I would love to see more people moving around. I'd love to see more people walking and engaged in fitness, engaged in exercise, because we just we know what it can do for people. We know what a healthy mind it can create. And it can just I don't know, it can help with just so many different things that it's kind of unbelievable. it can just, I don't know, it can help with just so many different things that it's kind of unbelievable. Yeah. And, and we tend to be like the most people that we hang around with, like there's a saying, maybe it's the, we are like the five people we hang around with most. If the five people you follow on YouTube are me and you and Derek and certain individuals that kind of promote
Starting point is 01:06:00 health and fitness versus people that rub their bodies and say, eat everything and do mukbang videos all the time and force feed and love your body at 400 pounds. What do you think that that person's going to be more likely to do over time? Well, if they're watching me, they're likely going to do 150 minutes of cardio a week and try to put the fork down and try to care about their health. If they watch somebody else eating cheeseburgers all day long, they're probably going to be like, Oh, I can like it's normalized. I can do that. So they're doing a disservice to society by promoting this like binge eating, like nicocado, avocado doing these like that is horrible for society, but it's allowed.
Starting point is 01:06:35 But yet we get shit on for doing videos saying how to lose weight, which is just it's silly. I don't get it, but that's the way society is. Many people do need to just simply put the fork down. I mean, it's silly. I don't get it, but that's the way society is. Many people do need to just simply put the fork down. I mean, it's that simple, right? We're trying to just figure out a way to mitigate your calories every day. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, obviously I'm not saying it's easy to put the fork down. It's very hard, but that is in fact the answer. If you're in a deficit, you're going to lose weight. Have you ever said anything that like really got you in like a lot of heat or maybe even something that you're like, lose weight. Have you ever said anything that like really got you in like a lot
Starting point is 01:07:05 of heat or maybe even something that you're like, Ooh, I probably shouldn't have went so hard on that topic. Or has everything just been, you know, I mean, you're coach Greg. So like you have a lot of authority and you're not going to say to some shit that you don't know about, but I'm just curious, has there like maybe been like the one thing where that like really stood out, stood out for everybody else? I think there's been a few videos that i've made that have certainly been like oh we don't like you for saying that wesley vizzers i said he wasn't like going to make the top 10 in the olympian and win a pro show and he had so many good hardcore diet diehard fans they hated it when i said that um another video that people hated was when i was saying i basically made fun of chef ramsey
Starting point is 01:07:44 because he cooks a lot of like higher fat foods and not stuff to lose weight. And I was like, you know, I have a cookbook, healthy cookbook. And I was trying to make a joke. Like I can cook better than him. Not quite literally, but the weight loss I could, they hated that. I ended up taking the video down. People didn't like that. Uh, one other video, I said the N word as I was singing a five, six song. And I was just wrapping off the thing. And I was like, I was, I said the N-word as I was singing a 5-6 song, and I was just wrapping off the thing. And I was like, I dressed up in the hair and the paint and the whole thing. No.
Starting point is 01:08:11 Did you really do that? And I was singing, doot, doot, yeah. And so I'm like reading the words off the screen, because I don't even know the lyrics. And then my brother, the editor, he forgot to edit out the n-word and it played up and my friend johnny shreve who's black was like greg man what are you doing and so he made his greg racist and the whole thing came up and it was like five minutes of like oh my god so that got me a lot of fun i wasn't very good uh one thing i will mention is um you you made a video uh on our homie
Starting point is 01:08:44 rest well i hope we're gonna get him on the podcast soon but what i what i did appreciate was like you saw how he was drug tested a bunch in the ipf and that dude is a ball of muscle but then you ended up making a video later on where you're like actually saw these drug tests looks like he actually is and that was really dope because some people would just double down on that, but you didn't. So that was pretty sick. Yeah. I, when I do Natty or not videos, I do it based on my, I guess to be honest, like, I don't know. Like I'm not, I'm not, how would I know? I don't, I'm guessing. And I'm like, based on the numbers he's lifted and how good he was and all this stuff, I'm like, I don't think
Starting point is 01:09:18 so. And he had posted a picture and he said he was him at 15 and he was making a joke yeah yeah and i didn't know and i didn't know this guy so i'm like well he's willing to lie about how he looked at 15 and he's willing to lie about being natural so i kind of thought that and then i didn't know that he had been drug tested broke these records and i'm like well i don't think he's on anything now so i i'm not one that like well like if i'm wrong i admit it i. I'm like, dude, I made a mistake. I'll just, I'll just straight out admit it because I'm not always right. I joked that I was like, right. Nine, nine point, whatever percent of the time. But I'm like, clearly I'm wrong sometimes.
Starting point is 01:09:52 And I'm like, if I see that I make a mistake, I'm going to make a video saying, no, I made a mistake. If he were handling it really well, it's just like, if somebody thinks you're not natural, like some people respond back, like, I hate you. Like, and I'm like, why didn't you take that as a compliment? Now, at the same time i make natty or not videos and people when i say they're natural they all get mad why really you didn't think i was like maybe unnatural like that's what the response is now so no matter
Starting point is 01:10:14 what i say in a video some people react to it in a bad way well what's your barometer like what's your measuring stick on whether someone's on stuff or not you have something there you're like how fast they progress at a certain specific period of time so it's like if you put on five pounds of muscle for 10 years straight and all of a sudden look amazing like really good all of a sudden it's like something went on right there you know that is like kind of an obvious sign if you've been bench pressing it's gone up 10 pounds a year for five years and all of a sudden you put on 50 it's like that kind of like that transition in that short period of time or like i look at pictures and i see okay this this shows a linear trend or a sloping law of diminished returns you're going to gain a lot
Starting point is 01:10:54 of newbie gains and it kind of trickles off like if you look if you say i'm going to try to show when greg took steroids you look back and you're like okay this this this and it's like all of a sudden from this photo to this photo look at that in this many months it's obvious so it's easy to like go and say that's when it happens so it's like that's what derrick did he's just like watch this and said well this is this is what happened and so i did videos about that and it to me it's very obvious but what's hard is i can say somebody's natural. They can get away with it by, by basically just taking like HRT the whole time, like just really low doses. And it's like, well, look, I gained five pounds a year for 10 years straight. Have you seen, where's the, where's the, you know, where's the big drop, drop, where's
Starting point is 01:11:36 the big increase? And you don't see it. And it's like, I don't know. Have you seen like a limit? Like can, can people only get so big and so lean? And if so, like what, what do you think that is? There's absolutely, well, there's a limit, but the problem is it's different for everyone. So for example, Ronnie Coleman's limit is higher than me on steroids. So you take Ronnie Coleman, a hundred percent natural at his prime, and he's bigger than me
Starting point is 01:11:58 on steroids. So anyone that would look at Ronnie Coleman natural would make a natty or not video like Phileon. That's what he does. He picks anyone that looks half ass and says they have to be on steroids. That's just what he does. I don't know if you know who he is, but he would do all the natty or not. It's like me and Derek. And it's like anyone that looked pretty good. He's like, there's no way they're natural. But if you take any IFBB pro on the Olympia stage and get all the gear out of them and
Starting point is 01:12:22 show them every single one will look like they're enhanced. They have to be. Chris Bumstead without any steroids is still going to look ridiculous. He's still going to be like, how do you look like that? Ian Valera, all these guys, every single IP pro in the open class, if they were natural, would still look like. Imagine Big Ramy natural. What would he look like? He's only 230?
Starting point is 01:12:45 Ripped? Like, it would still be so much more than most people could achieve natural that you would just assume they're on steroids. So, that's the problem is that there's those outliers, that one in a million that can do it natural. So, the problem is how do we know which ones are and which ones aren't? And we don't. Do you think that you've made a dent in the fake nattiness just thinking about videos that you make Derek and then people like yourself and Mark Bell who like are just are open with what you're taking do you think that you have you know started to like I said kind of minimize the amount of fake
Starting point is 01:13:17 natties out there or even possibly one day you might I don't want to say kill but you know get rid of all of them and more people just either be legit natural or just start taking stuff and then start admitting it because they know that someday Greg is going to come get them. Well, I certainly think that people like myself, Derek, Phileon, anyone that talks about naturopaths, it's exposed to people or education. Like even Isaiah Miranda, who you look at him and you're like, probably natural. But then he goes and does his blood work, 21 nanograms per deciliter. And you're like, dude, that doesn't prove you're natural approve. You got off something. So you expose people like that. And then obviously less people are going to be willing to take that risk because they're like, Oh, I'm going to get exposed. But then somebody like me comes out and says, I'm on HRT. Somebody else does it. And somebody
Starting point is 01:14:01 else does it. The Brandon Hardings, for example example they're kind of open about their things it becomes almost normalized and so for me the goal would be to have no stigma associated with taking hrt so most people in their forward like i know so many people on hrt they don't tell their wives they don't tell anyone because as soon as you say you're on testosterone people like automatically think oh that's why you have that muscle so people just keep it in secret so so many people are on steroids but don't say anything because they don't look like they're on anything. Like most people take steroids, don't even look like they work out. And I know because I used to sell it.
Starting point is 01:14:32 Like, you know, I was 20 months house arrest. I used to sell steroids. Canada, it's not as big of a fine as in other countries, but, but yeah, so I did that whole thing. So I have the experience. I've, I've, I've done it in the past. I seen the people taking these things. I have experience with that.
Starting point is 01:14:45 And I'm telling you, most people taking steroids, they just want to look like they work out. What did it look like when you were lifting in your basement with your dad and your twin brother back in the day? Well, that would have been when I was 10. So it would have just been like a wider set of the plastic dumbbells that would smash when you dropped them on the ground. And then my dad bought some some steel weights some gold weights and we used to just lift three times a week for an hour with the the wider program on the wall said to do each rep your whole body sets of six we had to do that for whatever amount of months and then get into a different where it was a set of uh five and then a set of nine and so i was 10 years old doing sets of six didn't know any better
Starting point is 01:15:24 that was just what we did and didn't know the form. Just we looked at a picture and said, is that a curl? Is that how you squat? Didn't know, you know, didn't know anything. Just maybe felt like a good opportunity to spend time with your dad. Well, I was in like, I just love muscle, like from a young age and anything like Olympic lifting. When I was like seven, we had even a set of weights and I would just go in the basement and just
Starting point is 01:15:45 lift it over my head and just throw it on the ground to like slam it. Cause that's what I saw on TV. I thought that was fun. Uh, in grade primary, I had like the biggest arms in the class. I remember doing one of these trying to show the bicep and just rubbing the fat up. And so I was always infatuated, like having the biggest muscle. So as soon as I got the chance and he got, wait, do you want to lift weights? Yeah. Like being 10 years old, like that was the most fun. Like I'd be out playing my tag with my friends, you know, all the games with your friends, it's time to work out. I'm gone
Starting point is 01:16:12 guys. I want to lift weights. It was so fun compared to like, it's time to play piano for frig sakes. I did that for about a year and quit that, but weightlifting, I just loved it. Your brother does some work with you. Uh, you mentioned earlier. but weightlifting, I just loved it. Your brother does some work with you. You mentioned earlier. Well, my twin was, he doesn't really lift weights a lot right now.
Starting point is 01:16:33 He's a chemistry professor at Dow, but my brother, Steve, editor Steve, they call him. He's five years younger than me. He used to do bike riding. He went to Canada games for cycling and stuff like that. So he was into that whole cardio thing. My twin was always more like the study, like he's the smartest one of the group. And so he's into that kind of research. Um, but Steve does my editing actually quit. He was a biostatistician and, uh, he quit that job to do
Starting point is 01:16:54 editing. And so he controls all that for the, for the company. I was going to ask, I'm really curious. And I hope it's okay that I ask this because I've heard you in, um, some of your videos talking about how you don't want kids. And I'm just thinking, you know, you had this experience with your dad. And I'm just like, I want more people like you around. And so the thought of like you and your girlfriend not wanting to have kids, it kind of bums me out. But I'm just curious why that decision. Well, basically, I was neutral on the thought.
Starting point is 01:17:24 So it wasn't like I was against it. It's not like I don't want it, but it's not like I want it either. I was neutral on the thought. So it wasn't like I was against it. It's not like I don't want it, but it's not like I want it either. I was somewhere in the middle. So if Allie, my girlfriend said, Hey, I really want to have kids. I'd be like, okay, but because she doesn't, then I don't really have any interest in that. So, so that's really why we both are on the same page. We don't really need that in our lives. And I think perhaps because I was a school teacher for 11 years and I was around kids all the time, I felt like I've done that. It's like, you know, I, although I don't have my own kids, it's like, I've already been around kids. Like when I was a
Starting point is 01:17:54 school teacher, all I had no adult interaction. I would go to school all day and I would talk, like I would come home and talk to my friends and be like poopy pants and funny face. And like, I would never swear. Cause you couldn't say it at school. So I had a really different dialogue. Like cursing was so weird because I couldn't say, I said hell once to the class, what the hell? And I was, and then the kids are going to the office and I'm in trouble.
Starting point is 01:18:17 And I'm like, so you learn to like shut down and you can't get angry. So you have to really be calm all the time. So that kind of changed a lot. Like when you get out of the school setting and you have like normal adult conversations, but for a long time, all I did was talk to kids like five-year-olds all day long. I want to know about real quick, cause you, we didn't really go too deep down the cardio rabbit hole, but for as far as like bodybuilders and athletes doing cardio, um, to benefit their
Starting point is 01:18:41 lifting, what benefits can it have for them in the gym? Because a lot of people are scared of taking extra walks or doing some cardio because they're like, I'm going to lose the muscle that I'm trying to build. Yeah. There's a point where doing cardio is too much. Like if you're doing cardio and you're sore from that, then it's certainly hurting your gains. And if you're doing cardio and it's more of like, there's an eccentric load, like running, it's probably the worst form of cardio can do anything where there's that, like, like running down a hill, like every step you're putting so much trauma on the muscle. So that's obviously going to be bad.
Starting point is 01:19:08 But just doing regular cardio like walking, it's going to help you recover from sets. It's going to stimulate your appetite, recover, be able to eat a little bit more. Some people, they're writing me and they're like, I have a hard time getting in the amount of grams of protein per pound of body weight that I need. I'm like, how? I could avoid all meat altogether and still get more than one gram of protein per pound of body weight that I need. I'm like, how I could, I could avoid all meat altogether and still get more than one gram of protein per pound of body weight. Because when you're eating 4,000 calories, it's so easy to get 200 grams of protein, but if you're only eating 1500 calories, it's so much harder. So by adding in more food, because you're burning off more calories, you're actually getting more food, more protein into your diet. So it's in general better.
Starting point is 01:19:43 But I would say that, that recovering between sets, just having more cardiovascular ability, that's going to help a lot because let's face it, if you're doing a set of 12 on squats, you can only do one set because you're out of breath. Well, how much training can you actually get? What made you take exception to what Andrew Huberman ended up saying on our show about calories? Well, if you watch my channel, I'm so much of a calories in calories out. I've said it 50 times. And so here I know this guy, I'm like, okay, this is a guy that's way smarter than me for sure. And there's no way that he doesn't know that it's calories in calories out, but he literally said it like that. It's like, it's,
Starting point is 01:20:22 if you, if you think it's calories in calories out, and the way he said it, there's some fitness YouTubers out there that said, I'm like, that sounds like me so much. And so I'm like, I'm going to pick a fight back with this guy. So I just left the comment and then the post is there. And then it went back and forth. And I'm like, well, I got to keep going. So I watched the video and I'm like, he he's misleading people by saying that because I don't believe he doesn't believe it. I am 100% positive that he believes what I believe. I'm convinced that he thinks and knows that it's calories in calories out. He's just saying, well, you can manipulate your calories out portion based on what you're doing. Like if you take caffeine, well, your appetite's up or you're burning more calories. If you take DNP, you're going to burn more calories, but it doesn't mean that calories
Starting point is 01:21:04 in and calories out doesn't work. So I use use the example if i took sleeping pills all day and was like this i'm gonna burn a lot less calories than if i take uh methamphetamine or sniff cocaine all day and i'm like ramped up freaking out i'm gonna burn a lot of calories through meat so it's still calories in calories out so that was why because i just knew he knows better and so he's saying it in that way i don't know if it's to get views or to get more engagement from the audience or to say So that was why, because I just knew he knows better. And so he's saying it in that way. I don't know if it's to get views or to get more engagement from the audience or to say something controversial, but that's what I said. I'm like, as soon as someone says calories in calories out doesn't work, that that's
Starting point is 01:21:35 not applying to everyone. Then, you know, they're full of shit. And saying calories in calories out does not mean that calories aren't nuanced. Like there's, there's different types of calories, right? There's, we got things that have fiber't nuanced. Like there's different types of calories, right? There's, we got things that have fiber in them. Sometimes they're not going to digest the exact same way as just regular fat calories. And there's certain types of protein
Starting point is 01:21:54 or there's protein that might have, there might be a thermic effect of food. It might bring down the calories. So it doesn't necessarily mean that calories themselves aren't a little bit nuanced, especially once they get in the body and we start to digest them. So, the answer to that is calories in and calories out always work. And different calories that are consumed cause for different caloric expenditures. So, for example, if you eat 100 calories of protein and 100 calories of fat, it takes more work to digest that protein.
Starting point is 01:22:23 Hence, you're burning off more calories. So, I describe it like this. You have a bunch of workers in your stomach and they're going chop, chop, chop, chop. If you eat protein, more workers have to do this and burn off more calories than fat because fat is already like fat. It takes more energy to convert protein into body fat as adipose tissue than it takes to convert fat into fat. It's already very close. So your body burns off more calories when you're eating protein. So calories in calories out works. It's just the amount of calories expended by different foods that you're eating are going to affect how many calories you're actually burning off at the end of the day. But it's
Starting point is 01:22:58 still calories in calories out. It's just, you can affect the calorie out portion differently based on what you're eating. Yeah. And I think when people walk into the calories in, calories out thing, calories in, calories out is true. Like we know that. But there's so many things that are going to affect your decision making when it comes to that. Like for example, if you don't get enough sleep, if you're tracking, right, then you'll still be able to hit your macros, but you're going to feel way more hungry and it's
Starting point is 01:23:25 going to be harder for you to actually be able to stick to those macros because your ghrelin is going to be through the roof. So I think a lot of times when we talk about calories on the show, we try to focus on the habits that are going to allow you to stick to be able to be in a caloric deficit over a long period of time. Because a lot of guys that are lifting, they're getting five hours of sleep. They're taking pre-workout the night before the night of their workout. Their sleep is shit.
Starting point is 01:23:50 They can't stick to their calories. They're like, oh, I'm eating the amount of calories I need to eat, but I'm not, I'm not gaining or I'm not losing. And it's not because calories and calories out doesn't work. It's because you don't have that lifestyle habits to make everything fall in line. And that's what I was actually going to ask you too. Of course, with your cookbook and stuff, you have all the macronutrients
Starting point is 01:24:08 and all this stuff tracked, right? But what would you suggest to be to an individual so that in the future, they don't have to use a scale to be able to maintain their body composition through habits? Well, I've actually just written a book. It's been almost for a year.
Starting point is 01:24:22 It's called The Circle Diet. It's not quite out yet, but it touches on everything you need to do to be able to lose weight and keep it off and the problem is people they're in too big of a deficit and they're hungry and then they gain the weight so calories in always are calories in and out always works but how do you get it so that you can stay lower in the calories in like how do you stay in a deficit well you have to teach people certain foods that you can eat, they're going to allow you to do that. So the diet has to change, you need to eat more
Starting point is 01:24:48 voluminous foods, foods like fruits and vegetables, you have to be full, you have to be satisfied, you can't just cut out all foods that taste good. So the problem is people think, okay, I'm going on a diet, I'm going to be good. And I'm not going to have a chocolate bar, I'm not going to have a candy, I'm not going to ever have ice cream. And that's it's just too much. It becomes an unsustainable diet that you can't stick to. So you have to forget about doing everything and just do the bare minimum that allows you to be in that deficit. If you just snap your finger and go to chicken, broccoli and rice five meals a day from eating McDonald's, you're not going to be able to do it for a long time. Change one meal
Starting point is 01:25:22 out of the five. Just have one. Just go from regular pop to diet pop, make no other change. You're going to lose weight. So very simple changes like that. And then along with the diet changes, you just need to move more. And for me, that's just cardio and research would show like maybe 12,000 steps a day is pretty much optimal. Like I'm not saying you should bike ride two hours a day. Some people can do that, but it becomes too much. You don't need to, but certainly the more steps you do, the more calories you're going to burn and the easier it is to be hours a day. Some people can do that, but it becomes too much. You don't need to, but certainly the more steps you do, the more calories you're going to burn and the easier it is to be in a deficit. What are some low and no calorie things that you consume that help you through a day? Low calorie. I would say that the, the, uh, the drinks is probably the biggest. So I drink probably six to eight cans of diet Coke or diet Mountain Dew, whatever it is, root beer that I can do a day.
Starting point is 01:26:06 As far as syrups, I have a Walden Farms or like Miss Buttersworth, preferably Miss Buttersworth. Walden Farms is okay. It's I, so to speak, but it's okay. Every time I use condiments, it's going to be lowering calories, like Guy's barbecue sauce. I'm going to have like sugar-free ketchup. I use Dijon mustard.
Starting point is 01:26:24 All those things are going to be lowering calories. I don't know. I guess I just substitute something for something else. Like when I bake, like if you look throughout my cookbook, rather than using sugar, I use anything that has less calories. Like I have fibro that has like half the calories of regular sugar, or you can use erythritol. There's so many different things, anything that's of a lower calorie substitute. I'm big on that. So protein shakes, things like that. I drink protein shakes. Like I had protein when I drink a shake, I typically have it as ice cream, like where you can put over your head, like thicker. Cause it takes me longer to eat. It's more filling rather than like drinking, you know, something real quick. I find it's better to have something more filling. My coffee has a fat-free creamer in it, Walden farm syrup and artificial
Starting point is 01:27:10 sweeteners and skim milk, stuff like that. Almond milk. So I'm constantly eating lower calorie alternatives, low calories, like the noodles. Jeez. Like, so I think my entire diet revolves around substituting that regular food for something that's lowering calories. So if you name it, if there's something that's less calories, I'm probably consuming it. And maybe in your view, you're less likely to end up running into disease. I mean, who the hell knows how we get cancer? It's hard to figure out. But some people are listening to that and they're like, cancer, cancer, cancer cancer because you're having these artificial sweeteners but maybe in your opinion uh by keeping your your body healthy you're able to do a lot of
Starting point is 01:27:49 the things that you love to do you're not putting on the excess fat that would uh kind of lead to you sitting on the couch and so therefore maybe for you that leads to a healthier lifestyle well i certainly don't think that you need to be at nine percent i'm not telling anyone that you need to be single digit body fat that's going to help you i think for me i when somebody asked me i'm like 15 body fat if you're if you're at 15 if you're for like you're as healthy as you could ever need to be like there's no reason to to strive to be single digit body fat you're 15 getting to 10 doesn't make you healthier like i don't think i'm healthier because i'm at nine percent than someone who's at 15 but as far as the artificial sweeteners and the research on cancer, there is no evidence
Starting point is 01:28:26 to support that there's actual cancer from artificial sweeteners. We have all the research is in petri dishes and just like basically BS rat studies that don't apply to humans. I literally studied artificial sweeteners in university and I'm so old. That was probably 25 years ago and there was no research even then it's been 25 years since then i still don't see artificial sweeteners as being dangerous i think they said the recommendation was somewhere around 55 cans a pop a day or less for 20 years was safe and i'm like who can you i don't know how you get that much in so there's no one that can have that much artificial sweeteners to worry about
Starting point is 01:29:05 actually causing cancer challenging but being fat can being fat can cause cancer or increase your likelihood of getting cancer what about and if you drink artificial sweeteners the studies will show that you're probably going to lose weight and and be more likely to keep it off what about peanut butter what's going on with peanut butter oh my goodness this is so good like pita who doesn't like peanut butter? Oh, there's actually people I coach people. There's probably one in 50 people that are like, I hate peanut butter, but most people love it.
Starting point is 01:29:31 Peanut butter is just, I've got four, I've got a, a meatless cookbook coming out in like probably two days. That basically it has all these recipes for peanut butter homemade. And it uses like beans avocado um just various ingredients protein powder especially makes it taste amazing it looks like peanut butter tastes like peanut butter arguably better than peanut butter for a quarter of the calories yeah i think um i think it's the cool thing to say that you don't like peanut butter right now because everyone loves it so i think people want to hate on it. But so you eat 4,000
Starting point is 01:30:05 calories and we had people actually on our, another episode on the, the live chat just screaming at me saying that you eat no fat whatsoever. So I'm curious out of those 4,000 calories, how many grams of fat do you normally eat on any given day? It definitely varies. I try to get fatty fish shorts at least three times a week for cardiovascular support. But I mean, I would say it's a very low fat diet in general, but probably 50 grams of fat a day would kind of be like my average. So it's definitely not a lot of fat. I don't eat a lot of nuts. Most of the fat I come, like when I'm eating fish, it's usually salmon or trout. I eat a fair bit of meat.
Starting point is 01:30:45 So there's fat from there, but I don't add, well, you have like fat, like light dressing. So not like the full fat, but the lights, there's fat in there, light mayo. But yeah, I get a little bit of fat, but it's certainly lower than what most people would consume. Greg, I'm curious. I know we kind of mentioned intermittent fasting earlier in the show, and you mentioned why, how you didn't like, or the reasons why you didn't find it as beneficial for muscle gain, especially, but have you talked to many like, I guess, decent level bodybuilders or athletes who
Starting point is 01:31:16 do use intermittent fasting or have the people that you've talked to that do that or that do intermittent fasting, they're not generally impressive individuals. I think that none, frankly, there probably isn't enough research on like what I would consider the top bodybuilders like IBP pros, because I don't think any of them would risk it to dare do it, to say, Hey, I'm going to just eat three meals a day and try this diet. Frankly, when we were dieting back in the day, it was eight meals a day. It was every two hours. And then I started making diet plans for people saying eat four to eight meals a day it was every two hours and then i started making diet plans for people saying eat four to five meals a day and people are like matt laughing at my diets because you got to think i had like i was coaching ian valere who's ip pro in the olympia and so on and i'm getting them eating peanut butter and jam sandwiches and protein
Starting point is 01:31:59 popcorn peanut butter banana sandwiches and french toast and whatnot and it's like four to five meals a day and it's like wait a minute that's not every two hours, eight meals a day with rice. I mean, he had some rice meals and so on, but it was certainly less meals and all my diets. I was like, there's no research to support that you need to eat more than five meals a day. So there was this huge misconception that bodybuilders need to eat eight times a day, sometimes 10. I'd have people hire me and they'd get their, I'd do their plans up and they would get mad. They'd get their plan and be like, there's only five meals a day. What kind of coach are you? I'm like the one that you hired. And they would get mad. I'd be like, you hired me and I'm doing what you need. And so just do it. You know what I mean? Like
Starting point is 01:32:36 they wanted 10 meals a day. I'm like, that's not what I do. So nowadays people are kind of like, have gone from that eight meals a day to five, but to go down to like one or two or three meals a day for a bodybuilder, I just can't see it. I can't see it going that far. The reason why I was asking that is because like I started using, utilizing fasting about three, no, 2017 just for the focus benefits. Cause I get work done during the day. I have a crazy appetite. And I was like, I want to see if this can help me focus. Through the years of using fasting, because nowadays I eat once, two big meals a day. I make sure to get in all my protein, get in all my calories, right?
Starting point is 01:33:16 The benefit that we've been able to find, it's not the autophagy thing that we're seeking. What happened for us is the habit change. Because for me, whenever I'd get hungry, I'd get annoyed. I'd get annoyed. I'd be like, I have to eat something. Give me fucking food. I couldn't control the hunger aspect of things. I would eat voluminous food. I mean, I would track, eat a high fiber diet, et cetera, so that I didn't feel as hungry.
Starting point is 01:33:45 But nowadays, since doing that for a few years, we can generally just go through the day, have our big meals, still perform in the gym, still mark runs. I do jujitsu, I lift, and we've continued to slowly gain muscle over the years. So the reason why I'm mentioning that is because we had Lane Norton and Alan Aragon on, and we talked about it a bit. The muscle protein synthesis piece where like, you know, more, if you have more protein feedings during the day, better muscle protein synthesis, as we talked to them about it, they were even mentioning, okay, the benefit of the like three meals versus four meals versus five meals versus two meals. It's probably not that big compared to the big picture idea of getting all the protein in. So what I'm saying is like for a high level NPC bodybuilder, that's trying to get on stage and gain as much muscle as possible.
Starting point is 01:34:26 Okay, eat five meals a day. But for someone who's just trying to gain muscle through the gym, through years, it might be beneficial for them from a hunger habit perspective because it's totally rewired our habits. That's all that. That's pretty much what I'm saying here. Yeah, that totally makes sense. And I do have people and I say like, like, all my plans are custom made. So I'll say like, how many times are you eating right now? If somebody writes me, like you wrote me and said, I eat two meals a day. And that's what I really believe in. And if I was to do a coaching plan for you, I would have three meals a day. I wouldn't try to up it to five. I'd be like, that's too much. It's working for him. I just try to do that one more. I just try to make the plans a little bit more, a little bit better than they currently are. And so for you, perhaps I would argue it's clearly working. You can see the muscle on you, but would it be at maybe 95% as much as if you ate five meals a day? I would say it's probably 95%. So if you're going to gain nine and a half pounds of muscle, maybe if you ate more meals, it's 10. So it's not really that much of a difference to bother worrying. If it was one meal a day, maybe it's only 80% is good,
Starting point is 01:35:29 but every meal is up, but the law of diminished returns and yeah, you got to get enough protein, which is going to be to me harder at once, but it's clearly working for you. So I definitely would stick with it. Another thing is when you're eating fewer meals or as soon as you eat, like cut out of food, you're vegan, for example. Yes. It takes a lot more education. You need to be a lot smarter with your food to be able to know what to do versus if you just eat five times a day. So, you know, if you're going to fast for 16 hours, you kind of have to know like which are more slow digesting foods.
Starting point is 01:35:59 If you eat something like salmon and steak, it's going to take a lot longer to digest. If you eat a big piece like a 16-ounce steak, six hours later, it's probably still digesting. It's not like gone through you versus if you had a whey protein shake and then four hours later, it's like, where is it? So it takes more education. You need to be smarter to know what you're doing. As soon as you start changing from the norm, you have to just be that much more educated. What's the mindset message behind a harder than yesterday? I was just, I just made a video one day and I'm like, how hard do you need to train? And I'm like thinking, well, progressive overload. And I'm like, how can I say that without sounding like
Starting point is 01:36:34 Jeff Knippert? And I'm like, train harder than last time. Like how hard, harder than last time. I'm just trying to really dumb it. But how hard is that? Because they're all quantifying with IRR and three reps in reserve and 20 pounds from your max and this. I'm like, harder than yesterday. And it's like, well, how hard? Harder than yesterday, literally. Whatever was yesterday, more than that. So if you just keep applying yourself slowly a little bit more, you just, over time, you're going to keep training harder than last time. It's not even a full rep.
Starting point is 01:37:03 You can do a set of 10. The next time, you do a slower eccentric on the 10th rep to keep training harder than last time. It's not even a full rep. You can do a set of 10. The next time you do a slower eccentric on the 10th rep, that's harder than last time. Just as simple as that. And it can't always be harder. Every time I get on that Zwift bike race, I can't go one watt more. If I could, I'd be in the Olympics winning the Tour de France within a year. But over time, you keep trying to push yourself. And if I have a shitty day, an off day, well, guess what?
Starting point is 01:37:24 I'm going to go harder next time. I know you love bodybuilding, but what are some ways that over the years that you've continued to make training exciting for you? Because some people can go through all their years of training doing the same things. Maybe that's you. But how would you suggest people do things to make training enjoyable for them for decades? Because you have to enjoy it for decades to actually get somewhere you want to be i think you need to learn learn to enjoy the journey as
Starting point is 01:37:50 opposed to the destination you actually actually enjoy the feeling of going to the gym and getting a pump and all these years what made it fun for me was the improvement seeing my muscles get bigger so from age 10 to 30 into the years of steroid use and just keep getting better competing getting bigger stronger setting record. That was always fun. Guess what? I'm 46. I'm not breaking any records anymore.
Starting point is 01:38:10 I'm not going to get bigger. I had to learn a different way to enjoy it. So when I go to the gym now, I just enjoy the feeling of working out and pushing myself. I like that feeling. So as opposed to just saying, am I going to bench press more today? I don't bench press. I just do the machines and I just try to keep the burn going. Like, so I'm just in there to get the feeling of it. And I enjoy the endorphins, the dopamine rush of actually going to the gym and pushing myself. And that makes me feel good. What's what gets you up in the morning?
Starting point is 01:38:39 What's your main motivation? That's a great question. I'm not sure. I just wake up. I wake up without an alarm. I used to when I was a school teacher, it was always based on the alarm. Now I get up and I'm doing my own thing. I know that I run my day. I decide how much I work, how little I work. I'm excited to do videos. I think the pursuit of being the best version of myself is what really excites me. Like what do I enjoy the most right now? It's cycling, like racing on a bicycle. I like that more than lifting weights. Why? Probably because I'm actually getting better at it. Like I'm actually faster at bike riding now at 46 than I was at 45. So because it's improvement, I just love competing against myself and I can get better at that. As far as work,
Starting point is 01:39:25 I've already done enough work-wide. Like I already have a million followers, so to speak, like I don't need to do more, but the trying to be the best that I can be, that's the challenge. So now I have like a supplement company. I'm trying to get, you know, better in that sense and just continue on with what I'm doing and just keep spreading the positive word of moving. And so I think that that is what I really like, just being able to just be the best version and just keep spreading the positive word of moving. And so I think that that is what I really like, just being able to just be the best version and just keep pushing myself. I like the challenge. Yeah. On your way out of here today, explain to us about your supplements and how you got it started and what are some of the different things you got? Well, harder than last time. You can see some of those in the back. I basically have everything
Starting point is 01:40:02 and anything coming out. I mean, with, I don't know if you guys experienced with the time of the Cove, it takes so long to get anything done. Now the, the it's everything that I've gotten out now has been purchased so long ago. Like I bought stuff in February and it's only coming out now, but yeah, I got to, you know, the pre-workouts, the protein powders, um, terkesterone, um, sleep aids, liver support, uh, vegan protein powder, uh, pump products on the way, like basically anything and everything that's a supplement, even fibro, uh, everything is, is, is on the way. So can't wait for it all to be here. It's taken longer than expected, but finally, what is terkesterone? Because like, I hear about it everywhere. What the hell is terkesterone? I feel like making this joke. Nobody knows.
Starting point is 01:40:45 I made a short clip where I'm like terkesterone. Nobody knows what it is, but really it's an acti steroid. And it allows the body to build muscle without having negative side effects. So it's kind of like, is it the dream pill? Is it like the magic holy grail? We had Andrew Hooperman who was on the Joe Rogan podcast and he brought it up. Joe Rogan's type right now, what is this stuff? And he's saying, well, it's as effective as D-ball and DECA.
Starting point is 01:41:09 Really? And it's like, no, it's not that good. It's not as good as the SARM. It's, I guess, if you watch Derek's videos, he says it's probably as strong as two and a half to five milligrams of anivaraday. But natural, it's not banned by WADA. So it legally is allowed to be used. You can use it we've had people like lex little different like various people using these things getting really good
Starting point is 01:41:30 results from it without negative blood work so a lot of drugs in particular like anything works testosterone growth hormones terms it all works terkesterone it's something that's natural that works without the negative side effects so it won't lower your testosterone almost every supplement you can take lowers testosterone levels and so what we see with terkestrone is certain people have better results from it from others than others and which is the same for any drug so you know you take a prozac it helps some people some people don't don't work it you don't need it terkone, some people are, I guess, good responders, and some people are low responders. So you take 100 people, they take trichesterone.
Starting point is 01:42:11 Maybe 10 get no gains. 10 gain five pounds of muscle. Then everyone else is somewhere in the middle. So that's basically trichesterone in a nutshell, a natural. Think of it as the newest creatine. So creatine back in the day i don't know if you remember i remember taking creatine for the first time i'm like am i taking steroids i was so excited i was 20 years old and i was like yeah it works and so the research is kind of
Starting point is 01:42:35 showing that yeah it pretty much works to an extent not as much as some people are hyping it up like i don't believe you're going to put on but some of the research that compared it to d ball and they showed the same amount of growth but it's like i don't believe it but to me if it can do anything at all it's going to be the net best the best supplement you could ever take because pretty much all supplements suck you know creatine works beta alanine works caffeine works but what really really works at building muscle? Well, SARMs, but they're not good for you. So here's something that can actually improve muscle in some people, not all, and not a shit ton, but enough to make a difference. And that's what everyone wants.
Starting point is 01:43:15 Thanks so much for your time today. And thanks for repping the slingshot over the years. I remember seeing old videos. We met at the Olympia. Yeah. Many, many years ago, right? Yeah. I still have the cuffs.
Starting point is 01:43:25 I had the slingshot and my shoulder is so beat up now. I can't use it, but man, I've used that thing a thousand times. It was so good. Something that was probably the best product I've ever used from you anyway. Great. Thank you. And congrats on all the success and hopefully it's continued and have a great rest of your day.
Starting point is 01:43:42 Thank you. Awesome. Thanks. Perfect. Thank you. Awesome. Thanks. Awesome. Thanks a lot. Perfect. All right. Okay. Some good stuff there, huh?
Starting point is 01:43:52 Yeah. A lot. The terkester on is interesting. There's so much to get into with someone like him because he has a lot of great information and then he has a lot of videos that, um, that it would be a mistake if we didn't talk about, of the different videos that he's done, like against people and with people and so on. But really, I would like for most people to really just look at his YouTube channel.
Starting point is 01:44:16 I mean, if you want to watch it for the entertainment purposes and get into it for that, that's cool. But there's so much great information on there about weight, weight management and particularly weight loss. He mainly has a weight loss YouTube channel if you're paying attention, but if you're just kind of getting engaged in some of the sometimes click baby type stuff, then you're going to think he's this inflammatory guy who's yelling at people. I think that that was like some of my perspective initially too. Cause like a lot of the videos I would pop up on my shit would be like the natty or not stuff or some things with him versus someone else.
Starting point is 01:44:50 And why is he so confrontational? But I guess, you know, sometimes he is, but it's not a majority. It really is not a majority of the time. He's very reasonable. Yeah, it's funny. It's a it's a it's a made up graph or graphic, but it's actually pretty accurate. But he shows it all the time. Well, he used to show it. It's been a while.
Starting point is 01:45:08 Where it's like a line of watch time of his YouTube channel and how smart you are. And he's like, look, it's got all this real data that we've been tracking. But it actually is pretty true. I know for a couple of months, every time I would leave here, I would just throw on whatever he had on and just let it play. And that's where I learned a lot about, you know, just tracking and just protein, you know, all these things. You know, I learned a lot of it just by kind of just throwing his YouTube channel up on my drives home. And yeah, it's a very, very good channel. So much is extremely entertaining.
Starting point is 01:45:44 Yeah. So much of this information gets so conflated. You know, you say calories in, calories out, and you say that's my message and that's what you stick to. Well, then somebody else will interpret that as that means that everyone has to track their calories if they want to be successful. And that's definitely not true. And that doesn't even necessarily mean that you have to track your calories. not true. And that doesn't even necessarily mean that you have to track your calories. All it means is that everything counts, whether you want to count it or not, whether you are paying attention to counting it or when, or even if some of your food,
Starting point is 01:46:16 you can't count it because you don't know what the hell you ate because you're at a restaurant and you're not sure the different combos of stuff that they, there's no, there's no free lunch. There's no shortcut in any of this that, does cost you something. That does have a caloric impact. And I think what, again, another area that in fitness in general that's missed that we are blessed to have someone like Greg do set around for is to teach people that you can't steal too much from yourself. You can do these things for short periods of time. They kind of work. But staying in the gym for too long when you're trying to manage your weight loss is a huge mistake. You can only burn so many calories from lifting weights. That does not mean that you don't lift weights.
Starting point is 01:46:58 You go in the gym. You get your lifting done. It shouldn't take you an excessive amount of time. You can get some great calorie burn from some type of cardio. Do something that you can manage, something that you can come at multiple times a week. That's not going to make you sore or overtax you. But if you have anything that overtaxes you, if you start running out of nowhere, you are going to be incredibly hungry. you are going to be incredibly hungry during sober October because we took coffee out.
Starting point is 01:47:26 And because I'm running, uh, I have ditched fasting. Cause I'm like, I am just legitimately, I'm just way too hungry. I, or at least I feel way too hungry.
Starting point is 01:47:34 I'm not used to the, I'm not used to this extra expenditure from running. So I'm like, uh, and I noticed on a couple of days where my energy was low and I'm like, that ain't good. That's not normally me. So let me put these calories back in.
Starting point is 01:47:46 Boom, energy went right back up. And so you're going to have to really manage that part of it just as much as you need to manage not trying to overconsume calories. But if you underdo it too much, you're going to feel fatigued. If you overdo your training too much, you're going to feel fatigued. You got to hit that sweet spot. And once you do, then you don't actually need any tricks.
Starting point is 01:48:09 You don't need to do anything fancy because now you found something that you can be consistent with. And man, is it hard to stay in that belief system and to hammer that and to keep going at it. But when you start to lose weight slowly, but surely over time, then you'll know you're doing the right thing. But also don start to lose weight slowly, but surely over time, then you'll
Starting point is 01:48:25 know you're doing the right thing. But also don't let that be a reason, like, cause there, there are going to be many times where you find something that you're able to stick to consistently. All right. Um, stick to that. But if something new comes your way and you want to try it out, give yourself the chance to try it out. Um, and that's why I mentioned like the fasting thing again in the show, because I was already doing something that was allowing me to stay in pretty good shape consistently. And I could have been still doing that until this point. But I don't think I'd be where I am physically now if I didn't start doing some fasting, which was contrary to muscle building belief. Right.
Starting point is 01:48:59 So that's what I'm saying here. Like, give yourself a chance to try new things, to adapt to new things. If it doesn't work, kick it out. Right. But it is a tough line because, for example, for both of us, starting fasting was not easy. There is an adaptation period. It was uncomfortable. But as we stuck with it, as we adapted to it, it did change a lot of our habits for the better.
Starting point is 01:49:19 And if we didn't give that the time to work, then we would still be doing the same potential things that we were doing a few years ago. Yeah. And for me, the second I get an opportunity to go back to it, I'm going to do it again. Yeah. I just, I love what he was saying. You know, he was saying like for you, he might be like, oh, let's do three males. He's like, he's not going to tell you to do five right off, right off the gate if you're only having one to two. And I think just like the minor adjustments that people can try out would go a long way yeah uh pretty awesome show and you want to take us on out of here
Starting point is 01:49:51 absolutely thank you everybody for checking out today's episode please like uh hit that bell notification subscribe if you are not uh subscribed already please follow the podcast at mark vals power project on instagram at mb power project on Instagram at MB Power Project on TikTok and Twitter. My Instagram and Twitter is at I am Andrew Z at the Andrew Z on TikTok. And Seema, where you at? I'm Seema Inyang on Instagram and YouTube. I'm Seema Yin Yang on TikTok and Twitter, Mark. At Mark Smelly Bell.
Starting point is 01:50:15 Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.

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