Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Project EP. 125 - Being labelled the "Fat Guy"

Episode Date: October 12, 2018

Wrapping up another awesome week at Sling Shot HQ. This week we filmed a bunch for Mark and Chris Bell's upcoming nutrition doc so we have diet heavy on the mind. Mark talks about being labelled as yourself as the "fat guy", or the guy who drinks a lot and the struggle you face when you want to get out of that label. Watch this episode's live stream here: https://youtu.be/26ZweGywcBA ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots ➢Subscribe Rate & Review on iTunes at: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-bells-power-project/id1341346059?mt=2 ➢Listen on Stitcher Here: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/mark-bells-power-project?refid=stpr ➢Listen on Google Play here: https://play.google.com/music/m/Izf6a3gudzyn66kf364qx34cctq?t=Mark_Bells_Power_Project ➢Listen on SoundCloud Here: https://soundcloud.com/markbellspowerproject FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell Follow The Power Project Podcast ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MarkBellsPowerProject Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz

Everybody, welcome to Mark Bell's Power Project. And there's a reason why it's called Mark Bell's Power Project and not Andrew Zaragoza's Power Project because... It doesn't roll off the tongue correctly. That's part of it. It's part of it. It also has to do with what I'm holding in my hand right now. Andrew's been working on this

day and night, night and day. I asked him for the script and would you look at what happened? This is all he's got. I didn't know it was due today. Guy's got nothing. That's what I'm trying to say. Look at this. We already established that.

I don't know how to read a calendar. How are we supposed to figure this out? Dude, I'm Mexican. Once the Aztec calendar ran out, that's it. I couldn't keep track of the date anymore. Damn, you got to sync it. You got to sync the Aztec calendar with the American. But it's in the cloud somewhere, and I can't find that shit in the settings.

Anybody know what a cloud is? We've had people comment before, but I still don't really think anybody has any idea. We're trying something different, trying something a little bit new today. I know that we've had you guys dropping in. Hopefully you can hear me. Give me a thumbs up if you can hear me right now on Instagram. We're on Instagram live. Somebody said trash.

Hey. Hey, Hey, at least, at least started out by saying white. Yeah. I'll admit to that. Trash. Somebody said retard.

Hey, yeah, that's true. Ass. Yep. I don't really know. Like it's just all okay. Thumbs up.

Now I'm getting, but a lot of negativity going on today what's wrong with you guys i would say what's wrong with you guys today but i think instagram is like for negativity right yeah look at this power shirt andrew this thing looks amazing now um it would be amazing if people could go to markbellslingshot.com and check it out but is it available? Yeah, I think. I don't know.

Let me double check. I actually genuinely am not sure. Don't you take the pictures? Yeah. Holy shit. You're really digging yourself into a trench nowadays. I didn't get the script done. You don't know about the shirts.

I've taken so many photos today. It's ridiculous. Why are you taking so many pictures? What are you taking pictures of? Ain't I supposed to run this joint? I took a bunch of pictures of a bunch of gear that were... Something huge is coming. You know what? I can't wait for the day that I write a business book because that is going to be the biggest ripoff in the history of the world. And I'm going to charge people a lot of money for it.

And that's going to be part of the business plan. Making a book to sell to people? Yeah. Yeah. That power shirt is available at markbellslingshot.com. Ah, this one? Yeah, that one right there. Now, you won't look as good as me in it.

I apologize for that but there's nothing i can really do for that except for wish you luck in your next 20 years of lifting some heavy ass weight some heavy ass weight andrew and i got some uh trading in this morning we're building those packs and we're signing those checks i mean that's just the way things are going here at super training gym right absolutely andrew's handling more weight all the time he's getting more strongest uh we got to train with my brother which is like it's it's um it's hard to put into words uh we just train together like we ain't got time to like you know sit there and and him and ha about how cool it is but it's amazing it's amazing i mean i've been training

with him uh basically since the day i was born I mean, I've been training with him, uh, basically since the day I was born, uh, been, you know, hitting the gym with him and, and hitting up our garage gym as a kid, uh, with my brother. And, and it's just, uh, it's an amazing thing to be able to get the opportunity to lift with him. The one cool thing that I can kind of, when I think back, you know, to the way we were lifting when when we were teenagers basically versus the way that we lift now there's actually not not a change at all it's all the same like we we lifted heavy then and we lift heavy now yeah so we've talked about this question that pops up a lot people keep keep saying kind of what's next? What are you doing next? What are you doing next? And the answer is, you know, uh, more of the same, however,

want to keep moving forward, you know, want to keep, um, you know, so the bodybuilding thing, like here's kind of how I look at things. I did powerlifting for a long time. I have, I pushed powerlifting as hard as I possibly could for a really long time. I have, I pushed power lifting as hard as I possibly could for a really long time. I got into bodybuilding, um, kind of on a whim from, uh, our boy, honey, Rambad got to give him a shout out for all of his help during that process. Um, but I feel like I gave that everything I got now. Uh, could I, could I devote, you know, a few years to bodybuilding and do better, um, potentially compete at like a national level or some of those things. Like I'm, it's disrespectful for me to say that I could without actually doing it. So I won't necessarily comment on that. Um, but I'll say this, I do not have the desire

to put that amount of time in, uh, to get the result, to get that result for bodybuilding, because I am not a bodybuilder. I'm a power lifter. I'm an inventor. I'm a creator. I'm a dad, but I'm not an actual bodybuilder. I like bodybuilding. I competed in a bodybuilding contest, but I don't. The reason why I say I'm not a bodybuilder is because I don't constantly live the lifestyle. I would say a real bodybuilder is going to live the lifestyle through and through, just like I did with my powerlifting. I lived that life through and through as hard as I could and rode that bitch as hard as I could until the wheels started to fall off. And then I was, well, maybe not smart enough, but, uh, I was lucky, lucky enough to be pushed out of the sport, uh, because

there's a lot of younger people coming into the sport. They're a lot stronger than me. And, uh, I saw the writing on the wall and I ran away. I just got scared. I said, oh, my God, look how strong all these guys are. But, you know, I ran into some injuries and ran into some things and decided, you know, it's not worth it anymore, right? And I think something I'm noticing, we went to talk to Gary Tobbs yesterday, my brother and I, along with Andrew Terrell and Ryan Soper and Smokey. We got our crew.

We rented the Sphincter van, as we always do, from our boys over at Urban BCN. Those guys are always hooking it up and have reliable service. And it's great for us to be able to kind of ride in class as we go to these different locations. Gary Tobbs is considered a material expert. Um, he is somebody that, uh, linked obesity to the obesity epidemic. He linked it back to refined sugar. Now, of course, you know, people are going to be like, well, of course it's refined, you know, uh, but Gary Taubes actually took the time to research, not science necessarily, but research our history. And, um, when, when some of these soda companies started to come into play and when, uh, you know, ice cream and candy and all these things started to come around, those things didn't automatically make us fat. And it took a long time for some of those things to insult our metabolism enough to where we became insulin resistant and then therefore we became fat. There's a lot to talk about on this very

subject, but one of the things that I found really interesting is that, and what I'm learning is, is that, you know, there's that saying, you could lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. You can lead people to a diet that is the most optimal for them in terms of getting them the best results, but you can't make them do it. And it has to fit their lifestyle. do it. And it has to fit their lifestyle. For me, a pure bread bodybuilding diet at the moment is not appealing to me. Cutting out the fat quite a bit, the way most bodybuilders do, incorporating more cardio, not going out to eat at all, not drinking at all, like just really being all in on the diet. When you do you do bodybuilding, you're, you're in a hundred percent.

There's like, there's not really another way to do it. I would say maybe you can get away with being 80%. Like maybe you can eat a little extra, maybe you like, you know, over your caloric intake, maybe, maybe there's a couple of things you can do that a little different, but for the most part, you're like all, you're all the way in and and you're you're in for a long haul and you're in for a real rough ride i think that on the ride back from talking to gary tubbs i had a conversation with smoky we talked about how a lot of people know how to lose weight a lot of people know that there's these, there's a lot of diets

out there. There's a, as George Lockhart has pointed out, there's 7,500 different diets out there. Follow one of them and it will work and you'll lose weight. And I agree with him. I think there's many different ways to skin the cat as we've heard here on the power project before, excuse me, sipping down on some of that Zevia. What do we got going on here? As we've heard here on the power project before. Excuse me. Sipping down on some of that Zevia. What do we got going on here? You want to turn it up or turn it down? Oh, oh, was I up the whole time?

Oh. So anyway. As I open up my Zevia here, as these companies, you know, came in, it didn't automatically make us fat right away. People do know about, you know, there's a lot of diets out there. People kind of have an understanding of how to lose weight. But unless it fits into their plans and what they're doing, it's going to be really hard for them to do it, right? It's going to be really hard for them to incorporate it. Now, some people are weak-minded and they need to pull their head out of their ass and out of everybody else's ass. Pull your head out of the world's ass and start to pay attention.

Pick your head up and look around and see what's going on and understand that you possess the power. You possess the power to be better than you were yesterday. You possess the power to make more money than you did yesterday. You possess the power to become better in every single way, every single day. Each day is not just another day. It's the next day in your life. It's the next moments in your life. And each day is not just another day. It's the next day in your life. It's the next moments in your life. And each day is an opportunity. Whenever we have jobs to do, whenever we have things to do, rather than looking at something being a job, look at it as being another opportunity. Sometimes certain things that we have to do kind of suck. You're like, ah, shit, I don't want to do that. But it's just another opportunity to get ahead of Joe Schmo because Joe Schmo, he's going to mess it up. He's going to put in 60%. He's going to put in 40%. Maybe he'll put in 80%, but you control what percentage you put

into things and you want to try to give it the best effort that you possibly can. When it comes to these, uh, different diets that are out there and when it comes to how, how we incorporate them, there's, there's so many things at play when it comes to fat loss and being social is a huge thing. Um, what if you're known all the time as being the fat guy? What if you're known all the time as being the big guy? You're the big guy that's funny. You're the big guy that no one takes seriously because you got a big old belly and you have a jolly soul and you're fun to be around.

People like to joke with you and you kid with them. And, you know, a lot of give and take on, on a lot of that. And what if you're also known for, you know, you're known for being the big guy. So you're known for eating a lot. And so you go out to chow down with your buddies and it's a Thursday night and you're watching Thursday night football. You're known for slamming down beers. You're known for, you know, eating a lot of food and you learn, you're, you're known for like maybe

beating the crap out of people because you're big, right? Like you got a couple of things that you're known for. That's your identity. That's what you're attached. That's what you're attached to. And now someone comes along and they say, Hey, you know what? Like, uh, what would be, what would change your life? Like somebody could go to you and say, look, you're 350 pounds. This diet plan. I could, I could bring them the war on carbs book. I can take this book right here, the war on carbs. And I could say, if you follow the contents that are in here, I could even give them my phone number.

I've given my phone number out to the entire internet before. And, you know, some people took me up on that and I had to help a lot of people for many days, but I could give that to somebody and I could talk to them for an hour about how it's going to help them. But if it doesn't fit into their psyche and their belief system, if they don't believe in themselves that this diet is going to work for them, it will not work. And guess what? It doesn't matter what diet it is, what diet it is, none of them will work. The person has to believe in themselves and the person has to understand that this is a big process. This is not something that's going to happen in one day.

You can't overthink things. You can't beat yourself up. You need to be kind to yourself. You need to treat yourself well. You need to make a decision that it's time to make a change. and the conversation I had with Smokey on the way back from talking to Gary Tobbs, uh, working on this nutrition movie with my brother, which I'll get into that a little bit later, a little bit more. So, um, you know,

Smokey and I were kind of determining why people won't do a diet. So I like to eat meat for me to go on a carnivore diet is not a stretch. I like to lift heavy weights. So, for me to switch from powerlifting to bodybuilding is not a big stretch. For me to switch from bodybuilding to strongman is not a big stretch. bodybuilding to strongman is not a big stretch for me to switch from some of these things and doing strongman or doing like well you know whatever other you know highland games right i'm not gonna i'm probably not gonna be very good at those things but it all has to do with like throwing shit around and lifting heavy stuff right those are all things that i like they're all things that i enjoy they they have a built-in reward system towards who Mark Bell is as a human being, right? Now, some things might be demoralizing and some people might like, oh my God, I can't believe he sucked that bad at stone loading or whatever it might be.

But it's attached to who I am. It's what I am. It's kind of what I've become in some ways, right? And so that's what you're known for. Now, this person that I mentioned, you know, this guy who may be known for eating a lot now has to tell his buddies like, oh man, I'm not doing it anymore. I'm making some changes. And it's weird.

Or the guy doesn't hang out for a few months or the guy goes out to eat with you and he has like an iced tea and you're like dude what's going on maybe the person's like fearful that they're like becoming an alcoholic even maybe they even like know like the writing's on the wall their dad was an alcoholic their grandpa was an alcoholic and now they're starting to drink you know know, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, every week. And it's become, you know, they're starting to drink more and more. It's becoming a problem.

We end up giving those people shit because it's, it's unfamiliar to us. Like, no dude, you're the big guy that hammers down beer. You're the big guy hammers down. You ate 80 wings last time over here. Are you going to give up your title? Like, dude, nobody's drinking this beer faster than you. Nobody ate 82 wings yet. Why did you, yeah, why did you order a chicken salad?

Like, what are you doing? Are you a chick? What's going on here? And you're going to get a lot of pressure from society to stay the way that you are. And how do you combat that? Like, I don't even know. Like, that's a hard thing to figure out. and how do you combat that?

Like, I don't even know. Like, that's a hard thing to figure out. But if you're listening to this podcast and you are somebody that wants to make a change, I think it's important that you just communicate with people and you talk to people. Now, your friends are always going to make fun of you. Your friends are always going to tease you. They're always going to talk shit.

They're always going to say, you're a fat bastard. You'll always be a fat bastard, right? But if you look them in the eye and you see and you tell them honestly now you know what man i really like i'm being dead serious i i i want to make some changes and if you could help me because we're because we're boys because we're friends like that would even make it that much better who in their right mind is going to shit on your parade right then right somebody at that moment might say something like to try to tease or whatever because and now everyone's getting all serious right um but for the most part like i think people are going to be supportive of your goal uh still behind your back the second that

you walk away they'll be like and Andrew thinks he's going to lose weight. Jesus Christ, he's been trying to lose weight for how long? And he's so fat. He's going to always be so fat. Yeah, good luck, buddy. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, good luck. Of course there's that.

Of course. That's human nature. They say do unto others as you'd like to have done to yourself. And so we've probably done it before to people, right? Yeah, but there's also the fact that maybe they're not actually saying that and you're just thinking that they're saying that and that's actually probably the biggest factor and who cares yeah you know if they're saying something if they're saying something and they're their words are kind of hurtful and things like that and they're saying them behind your back

there's a reason why they're saying them behind your back and not to your face. They really don't want to actually hurt your feelings, but it's just kind of like, I don't know. We just talk shit. Like, yeah,

people love to be, uh, negative. I'm totally guilty of all this, by the way. Like I, I recognize that in myself, I have a tendency to be a shithead sometimes.

And I don't like that side of myself, but at the same time, you know, life's not all lollipops and rainbows and balloons and shit. Right. So we have to, uh, we have to make an effort on being positive. Uh, when smoking, I were talking about these different diets or talking about how to execute them. So I like meat a lot is what I mentioned earlier for me to go on a carnivore diet. It's not a big stretch. However, what if I was to go on a vegan diet? That would be a huge stretch for me.

And you know what I'd say to that team? No, I'm not doing that. But now what if someone came to me and said, you know what? If you don't try this vegan diet, you're going to die. Well, now it's like, okay, where's this information coming from?

And is there any truth to this? And if there is, like, maybe I should, like, look into it and consider it, right? Even with your life on the line, which is the case with many people with heart disease, which is the case of many people with heart disease, which is the case of many people that have diabetes, even with your life on the line or your leg on the line, your leg could be freaking hacked off because you eat too much sugar. Even with all those things at play, you still might not want to do the damn diet.

Now, if you really know, if there is a guarantee, which there never is, and I think that's part of the problem is that there's not really a guarantee that it's going to, well, I'm sorry. There are some guarantees to it. Like I know for a fact, if you, for a lot of people, from what I've seen, from what I've seen with my own two eyes, that trying different diets and giving them a legitimate shot when you're in poor health, it can do nothing but help you. And I don't even really care what diet it is. I mean, unless somebody's got some crazy advice on like drinking rocket fuel or something stupid like that. on like drinking rocket fuel or something stupid like that. You know, for the most part, most diets are going to help you if you just follow a damn thing. Maybe there's some advice out there of people talking about MCT oil or like maybe there's

some things that we're doing that are a little bit harmful or maybe they're more harmful than we recognize and we'll recognize that 20 years from now. But that's not the kind of stuff I'm talking about. Even with your life on the line, you may not make a choice. The end result of what you get in your head has to outweigh everything else. The end result of what you get has to outweigh all the consequences, all the sacrifices that you make. The result that you get has to outweigh the sacrifices. If it doesn't, it doesn't make any sense in your head, but it should because the sacrifices, the things that you're giving up are all negative things that

aren't going to help anyway. And so while you may think that those things are good, you may think that like, oh man, I can't give up my ice cream. Ice cream's not good. It tastes good and it can be fun and there's a time and place for these things. However, that's not, that's not the right thing for you at this time. I made a statement yesterday. What if the guy who's a vegan and what if the guy who is a carnivore, what if they're both correct? What if both people are right? We know scientifically that when we remove carbohydrates and remove sugar, it seems to help people a lot when they are diabetic, right? We know that when people start to eliminate junk from their diet, they tend to lose weight.

What if the carnivore guy is eliminating junk from his diet? And what if the vegan guy is actually not like eating vegan donuts? What if he's eliminating, he's not eating Oreos and stuff. What if he's eliminating junk from his diet? And what if for one guy, for whatever reason, he digests vegetables really well. And what if the guy that eats meat digests meat really well? And what if both people are correct? Now, what about this? There's something scientifically, I forget what it's called, but you can look it up.

In the absence of carbohydrates, we know all these weird things that your body will do. In the absence of carbohydrates, the human body, it seems like from some of these tests, that you need less vitamin C, the less carbohydrates that you eat. that you need less vitamin C, the less carbohydrates that you eat. What if that was the answer across the board for a lot of stuff? What if when you ate meat, there's enough vitamin A and vitamin E and potassium in it to cancel out the fact that you're not eating fiber. Like, I don't think that people really know. People keep talking about the gut microbiome.

And if you really get into the weeds with that, what you're going to learn is that nobody really knows anything about it quite yet. It's kind of like us colonizing Mars. We don't know shit about it yet because we haven't done it yet. We haven't know shit about it yet because we haven't done it yet. We haven't really been there. With the gut microbiome, they do know some stuff, but the word is still out on probiotics, which have been around forever, which are in yogurt. Prebiotics, people don't know. People are not sure one way or the other about fiber and when they're asked when you ask the leading experts in the world they'll say i think or here's my thoughts on that and the reason why they say

that is because they don't nobody really actually knows so what if the freaking vegan guy and the freaking meat guy what if they're both correct What if both things can make you healthy? But what if being vegan could really be super beneficial for somebody that's eating meat right now, that maybe is doing damage to their body and vice versa. My brother mentioned that he's heard of a lot of vegans who went, who eventually went keto and then eventually went carnivore and had great success, but he hasn't really heard about other people going in that other direction. If there is anybody out there that's going in that other direction, we would like to know about it. This is just from things

that we're seeing and things that we're hearing. This is not, you know, scientific literature that we're going to publish. This is just from what we've seen. It appears to me that eating a diet rich in meat seems to be extremely healthy for your body. And it seems to be like the best way to go. Eating even a cholesterol rich diet seems to be the way to go, which is so opposite of what we've heard in the past. Eating dietary cholesterol does not necessarily lead to higher cholesterol in your blood. There's a lot of factors that are in there. I am not an expert on this.

We will bring in experts on this topic. Having trouble remembering the guy's first name, but his last name is Feldman. We will bring him on the show, and he will answer. I think he's a doctor. Not Corey Feldman. Not Corey Feldman. We'll bring Corey Feldman in here we will bring him on the show and he will answer i think he's a doctor not cory feldman not cory feldman we'll bring cory feldman in here to talk about your little ldl or whatever the hell it is

low what is it small small little ldl that's another podcast the d what does that d stand for yeah but uh you know i just i find all this really amazing that me and my brother are talking to leading experts in the world. We're talking to some of the, some of the, some people that have these brilliant minds. I think they were like put here on this earth to help us become more knowledgeable about nutrition, about exercise, about all these different things. But we really just don't know. We talked to Gary Tobbs yesterday for two hours. And at the end of the whole thing, I said, Hey, you're in great shape, man. How often do you work out a lot? He's like, Nope.

Who was that? Gary Tobbs. Okay. I was like, you look great. He had some biceps on him. You know, he's probably, I don't know. He's, I don't know how old he is, but, uh, whatever the case is, he's not 30. And he's probably not 40. He's probably more like 50. Whatever the situation is, he looks good. He looks like he's in good shape. He doesn't exercise that often.

All he said he does is he does the rower. Now, a lot of these guys that talk that way, when do train sometimes they train pretty hard and so i'm sure that even though he's only training like twice a week he's probably getting in there and he's probably drenched with sweat is my what i what i'm kind of envisioning because he is in pretty good shape he also has a boxing background he boxed in like the golden gloves and um i think he has a football background so he has an background. He's definitely moved around a lot his whole life. But we don't even really know all the effects of exercise. Exercise can burn calories, but even when I asked Lane Norton a fairly clean question,

a fairly clear question, the question is so clouded and so dumb actually uh because it's it's a hard question to answer and that's the problem with a lot of these things do we need fiber maybe you know so i asked lane i said how many calories just one pound so in one pound of fat they might might say there's 3,500 calories. I don't even know if my math is correct. I forget how we get to that number. But anyway, there's a number associated with one pound of fat. I think it's 3,500 calories, nine calories per gram times whatever the other number is

to make it that number, right? With muscle mass, now I'm not talking about burning muscle mass but i'm talking about we know that muscle mass is like active muscle mass uh needs fuel muscle mass burns up sugar it burns up calories how many calories just one pound of muscle burn and obviously like there's not a straight answer for that because andrew's muscle versus my muscle versus smoky's muscles like it's all going to be probably a little bit different right how different though and why why would it be so different if muscle is muscle i guess well i guess maybe we get into a deeper conversation and maybe this is for uh dr andy galpin when we have him back on the podcast you know maybe slow twitch muscle fibers eat up more right like maybe that

they're slow and fast like there's some different things going on in the muscle but like shouldn't there be some general answers to some of these things um like you would think that we'd run into somebody that says well you know you don't necessarily need fiber but it's recommended that you get five to ten grams because of x y and z right we haven't even run into anything like that nobody knows anything they're trying to give advice but it's always it's always their own it's like their own spin on things from their own from their own research and each person has been very different yeah it's like their own spin on things from their own from their own research and each person has been very different yeah it's like how could they all be different isn't it what about uh the the

matthew walker eight hours of sleep right that's the recommendation here you go and write that down a sheet of paper eight hours of sleep boom that's your prescription yes you're gonna get better with that well what about can anybody right can anybody tell me how many carbs you need like is there is there some sort of universal way of finding that out and if there's not how did we get this far without knowing that right um forget diet for a second forget the dogma of being like sucked into a religion and being sucked into like a particular style of diet. Um, but what about like, just what about just, you know, people that love to train like us, people that love to lift people that love to get after it. People that love to throw around some weights, people that love to get outside a little bit,

not crazy, crazy amounts of exercise, but we like to train. We like to get after it, right? What's the, what's the carbohydrate recommendation? You know, just, is there, is there a number that's even as obviously your body weight is going to be a big factor. Your age might be a big factor, but how, how different are we? Are we that different? I mean, is everything that different? What about, um, being able to get some tests done? Can we look at your A1C and your resting insulin and your glucose levels and say, you know what, Andrew, you would be kicking some ass if you had 150 grams of carbs a day, You would be kicking some ass if you had 150 grams of carbs a day.

Your fat content needs to be here and this needs to be there. How does, how do I mean, I know, I know that we can have somebody manipulate things and we can look after the fact. So we're going to have Alberto Nunez here on the podcast and he's really well versed when it comes to caloric intake, reverse dieting, how much protein you need, how many carbs, how much fat. Now he can kind of figure it out after he had you on a diet for a little while, which that's amazing. That's really cool. Cause then he could say, look, you know,

and it might take him a while though. That's kind of the sucky part. It might take him a while. He'd say, look, man, you were really kicking ass when we brought you up to 250 carbs. You know, we added 150. Things really kicking ass when we brought you up to 250 carbs you know we added 150 things are going pretty good right up to 50 now you're bigger you're stronger your lifts your lifts are going like everything's going better you can kind of find out afterwards you know you can connect the dots as steve jobs says um you can't connect the dots

moving forward you can only connect them when you look behind you because the the path is already worn it's already it's already clear the direction that you're going and you can say oh yeah that did happen because of that that did happen because of that but how come if that's the case how come these things have not been like researched and how come you can't find good information like that like there's enough people that i've lifted for many many years i know the russians did these rigorous studies to make their olympic champions and yes they used they used uh performance enhancing drugs but it's just amazing it's amazing i i find it i i actually am excited by it i'm not disappointed with it i just think it's awesome i think it's amazing um and my brother and i are going to keep you know over you know flipping

those uh stones over and over and over and over again um until we do start to find answers that make sense yeah um i know there's like a a handful of like macros counters or whatever online that that state like uh okay enter your age your height your width whatever uh height weight width yeah with yeah the girth and they're like okay then what's your goal i want to lose weight okay you should be at this amount of calories per day i want to gain i want to be you should be right here is that kind of like I mean how serious should people take those macros counters yeah you know what well I think Lane Norton obviously knows a lot about this kind of stuff I don't really know I don't really know how they come up with some of those answers but from what i recall um from just even being a personal trainer they just

take your your take your um weight and they multiply it by x amount of number according to how active you are but even that is like you know you're just you're just uh throwing shit up in the air and or throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks because it's up to you to determine how much you exercise so they'll say multiply your weight by like 14 you know and that'll be your caloric intake and then they'll divide it up kind of depending on what style of diet they want you on if you're on more of a like a bodybuilding diet, the calorie breakdown is going to shift. You're going to be eating more protein. Um, well you might eat the, you might eat the same amount of protein and carbohydrates, give or take a little bit either way. And then the fat content is going to be like probably

quarter of that, you know? So you might eat, um, quarter of that's probably a little too low, but you might eat like, um, 200 grams of carbs, 200 grams of protein, and then you might have like about 50, I guess. Oh, I guess. Yeah, you'd have about 50 grams of fat, which is like I said, it's a little it's a little low, but that that would be about where you'd be. And that's, you know, I think that, you know, how serious should people take those things? They're not a bad place to start. I've never been a calorie counter myself. Have you, do you like doing stuff like that? Do you count calories?

I don't know. I haven't lately. I have in the past. Um, I don't know. I haven't lately. I have in the past. Uh, I don't know if anything, it's going to deter me a little bit because then I'm, I'm taking more time to do this, to do that. And then like, oh shit, now I got to read the label. Like, can I have this? Can I not have this? You're already putting a lot of time in, right? Exactly. So it's like, why am I going to add one more thing, one more step into this big-ass staircase? So, like, that's why I just stopped. Right. I think it will keep me in check if I do.

Do you weigh stuff a little bit? I measure stuff out with cup scoopers. That's kind of how I do everything. Like, if I'm going to have a cup of carbs, like, I'll do it that way. So, if you wanted to, like, gain carbs, like I'll do it that way. So if you wanted to like gain weight, you can just have a little extra. I mean, like if you normally do one scoop of rice, you can do a scoop and a quarter. Yeah.

Like a heaping scoop. Yeah. Right. And then same thing with the meat. Yeah. Cause that's how I mentally I get over it because I'm like, it's just one scoop, even though it's just a one fat one big old heaping scoop but that's yeah and i mean i i feel like it's kind of like one of those things where like uh it'll keep me in check but it's only because i'm more organized at that point because i'm

prepping before the meal prep all right you know it's so it's like kind of the whole pre-production thing and it's like if i do all the right pre-production stuff, then I'll definitely be successful at the end of the day. Because I took all this time to make sure my food was way on point. Right. However, like days like yesterday where we're on the road, you know, I get home late. I eat the late dinner. And thankfully, my girlfriend cooked steak for today. Because if that wasn't the case, I would have, I don't know.

Keeled over. Yeah, I would have just, I don't know. don't know i probably would have ran like in and out or something bad today but uh there would have been no way that i could have like measured out macros and counted calories and did all that right yesterday and if i was strict on it or something i would have been like oh like well i gave up because I'm not able to, uh, to measure everything out. So I'm just going to go have pizza. You know, it's, um, you mentioned like pre-prep and I think that this is something that people really need to get on board with is they need to prep themselves for the different situations they're going to be in. Um, and sometimes it takes some pre-preparation into what you're about to get prepared for, you know? So like, uh, for example, um, let's say that, you know, that you're going into an environment

where it might not be all that realistic for you to eat well. Um, what, you got to play all that out in your head. You know, uh, a lot of times we schedule things in advance, right? And we schedule things in advance. We, we schedule stuff on Saturday, uh, on, you know, Wednesday, right? We know, we know what's going to happen. We know we're going to this party or whatever. Now you need to start to play out. What does that look like? Um, what does that look like for you and your girlfriend out what does that look like um what does that look like for you and your girlfriend what does that look like for you and your significant other and and uh play it out in your head like run the scenario through like what kind of party are you going to like is this

like a you know a thing at like a bar and it's kind of like more drinking or, or is it more of a food thing? You know, you go into like your aunt's house or like, like, what does this look like? And then what does it look like for you to be in control of the food? Um, if it's not manageable, then maybe like, if it's not something manageable, maybe Friday night, you don't go out with your friends. Cause you know, Saturday you're like, nah, it's a special thing with my family. I always eat this special dish that my grandma makes or whatever.

And I'm just going to have at it. I don't care. I'm going to have fun. So in that case, you're, you have to kind of like manage and prep for it. Now, if it's not that big of a deal and you can eat beforehand and maybe you don't have to participate in the eating. Cause maybe, maybe people just having fights at their house and they just have pizza. And,

uh, when they say, Hey, you want some pizza? You can say, Oh no, thanks. I,

you know, we ate before we came here and you could have something nutritious. Or if it's like, you know, close friends, you probably whip out food. It's probably not a big deal, but you need to kind of prep yourself for what does that look like? Or what if, what if every time you hang out with certain

friends, you end up hitting up, like you end up going to ice cream, you know, you end up, uh, you know, maybe, maybe every time you drink, you end up eating shitty food. Well, first of all, the best thing to do would be to stay away from alcohol. The second best option would be to have conversations with yourself, telling yourself that you ain't going to do that anymore. Like you might have a couple of drinks cause it's, you know, it's been four weeks or whatever. And you're, you, you feel like you want to celebrate or you just want to have a glass of wine with dinner or whatever, but you need to prep yourself going into that and have the conversation with yourself that you're not going to do that, make that same mistake again. You're not going to eat that crap

after you have a drink or two. Now it gets to be hard because if you drank a lot, then you're going to be in a whole lot of trouble. The real key to all this though, is you have to make some really big lifestyle trouble. The real key to all this though, is you have to make some really big lifestyle changes. What I try to share with people, the unfortunate truth of all this is, is that if you want to be in shape, it is a 24 hour process and there's not really a way around it. A ketogenic diet, a diet that utilizes intermittent fasting is probably the most optimal way to be kind of lazy about it in a sense. Like if you just eat, if you eat meat like once or twice a day, get a nice big old serving of it. Um, I mean, you honestly don't really need to eat

much other food and you'll be good to go. Now your performance in the gym might not be great. And that's where you might have to add in some other things, but, but a keto diet or a very low carb diet is great because you're not so attached to food. Um, even all the stuff we did yesterday, I could have breezed through that entire day.

Now I brought food with me. I ate on the way there and I think I ate on the way back. That's so fat, isn't it? Um, and I ate on the way there and I think I ate on the way back. That's so fat, isn't it? And I ate before we left because like the style of diet I'm on right now is not a low carb diet, but if I was utilizing a higher fat diet and I was not eating carbohydrates, I could utilize intermittent fasting for that entire day and feel totally fine. Like I said, my performance in the gym might be a little different. If I start to lose significant weight, I will lose strength. And, you know, here at the Power

Project, we don't want to ever undersell the importance of performance because you've got to be able to perform in the gym. It's important. It's important for your mental health. It's important because, as I talked about earlier, it starts to become part of your identity. Being strong starts to become part of your identity. And when you become weaker, it's, it really, it really kills you. And that's why you see a lot of guys and a lot of girls going around, um, rationalizing and allowing themselves to overeat and allowing themselves to eat they're justifying it all right they're justifying that snickers bar because like i'm a power lifter right i need need it for the size bro i need it for the size which is understandable because you want to lift

more weight something that you might want to try to do if you want to try to get in better shape is you might want to try to figure out how do I, how do I deliver the most optimal amount of fuel to myself to where I can stay strong and I can stay pretty big, but I can also lose some fat. You know, you can do that. It will be really hard and it might take a really long time. Now, if you're 350 and you're trying to be 250, you're going to lose a lot of strength. But if you're just trying to knock off a couple LBs and currently in your diet, there's some holes because you think eating, you know, you think stuff in your face with enchiladas and

eating an ice cream when you get home, you think that that's going to help make you big. The same diet that helps make you big and jacked is the same diet that helps you be really lean. Always got to go back to Jay Cutler, four time, Mr. Olympia champion. You know, he, he didn't, he didn't eat, his food was not any different the entire, you know, 14 years or whatever he was going after that title. Uh, the food was always the same. The amount was different. The amount of cardio may have changed here and there, but he was, uh, he was just getting after it. You know, he was, he was, he was still, all he would do is just, he would increase, increase the amount of food. Um, he would just eat more rather than, and maybe he would change his foods a little bit.

Maybe he would change over from, uh, maybe he wouldn't eat as much chicken and switch over to steak and there'd be some things like that. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Uh, Matt in the chat room said you inspired him. Uh, he went from three 55 down to two 44. How much? So he went three 55 and he's now down to 244 pounds damn man that's amazing yeah and then uh gavin murphy says what's up what's up gavin i see uh someone said they're cooking some bacon and steak right now that's

right and eggs the i was cracking up because when I was talking about a heaping scoop of rice, they were like, what did he say? Damn it. How about a heaping scoop of being weak? Yeah, something like that, yeah. How about a heaping scoop of not being a pansy or some shit like that? This guy said he lost 80 pounds. I am Jay Sully.

He lost 80 pounds in. Yeah, that's the guy that said, how about a heaping scoop of stop being weak? I thought that was great. 62 pounds in six months. What's up? And there you go. Yeah, we got some people losing some goddamn weight around here. And it's great because this all goes back to what I was saying in the beginning.

this all goes back to what I was saying in the beginning. What if, what if what you're about to do could change, could potentially change your life forever? What about, what about the seminar that you're going to go to, which is in your own hometown is going to potentially change your life forever. What if,

um, you know, what if there's something that's about to happen right now that can change your life forever? What if somebody's recommending a diet to you and you've heard it two or three times, but you're ignoring it? You know, it's an amazing thing. It's called intuition and you know, who has it? Everybody. Everybody. Everybody's got intuition. And it is an amazing, powerful tool that we, it's a strong, powerful flame that we consistently and constantly try to put out. We try to throw dirt on that sucker all the time. And I don't know why.

It's that thing that tells you. It's that thing that drives you. It's that thing that drives you. It's that thing that is. It's always like bugging you about this. You keep telling it to shut the hell up. When you're. From the time you're a kid. Like that is so strong.

That intuition. That pull towards. Towards whatever it might be. That you want to do. Or that gut feeling. That something is the right thing to do. I don't know. Your mom and dad want to you want you to play an instrument and you just know for some damn reason that you want to play the guitar and you like you're sure as shit about it now sometimes you're wrong right like some

the gut feeling is not always uh not always correct but you know the gut feeling is correct when it continues to pull on your strings and pull on your strings and pull on your strings and bother the shit out of you. You know that it's the right thing to do, and that's actually what happens here at Slingshot a lot. I'll mention something to somebody in passing. Oh, you know, it'd be kind of cool, Andrew, if we did this. And Andrew would be like, oh, yeah, that actually would be cool. Andrew would be like, oh, maybe make a note of it, you know? And like three weeks would go by, I'd be like, we got to do that.

Let's try that out tomorrow, you know? And those are the gut feelings that you get, the intuition that you get. Those things are really important for people to follow. Those are the things that can change your life forever. And it's important that you have your eyes open, that you're paying attention because these things are all around us all the time. And I think we have a tendency to buy into a lot of what society tells us is good for us. Whether it be diet, a lot of times it is diet. Oh wait, you're doing carnivore diet? Is that good for you? It's not bad. You know, I heard

a report the other day that that's bad. You know, you have society pulling you away from, no, no, wait a second. Now you're confused. You're like, wait, you get home and you're like, man, everybody really ripped me apart. I mentioned that carnivore diet at that, you know, party. And, uh, everybody took a giant poop on me. Like maybe it is dangerous. And then you Google is the carnivore diet dangerous. And of course, when you type it in that way. then you Google is the carnivore diet dangerous. And of

course, when you type it in that way, you'll find what you're looking for. You're going to find, and you're gonna be like, Oh, you know what? Turns out it is dangerous. Guess I'm going to stay fat. And, uh, these are the kinds of things that happen to us. And we need to have the ability to figure out how to follow our gut feeling. Something that I think is really of interest when it comes to diet. You can kind of think of a diet as like a giant game. And all the minerals and all the different things that you take in. Minerals, macronutrients, micronutri minerals and all the different things that you take in minerals, macronutrients,

micronutrients, all these different things. You can think of it as like a giant game of like Jenga. You know, if you do it correctly, you can build that thing. You want to talk about a vertical diet, right?

You can build that thing up really high and you can make something that looks impressive. But if you pull one thing out from one spot, it makes the whole entire thing crumble, makes the whole thing fall apart. That can happen with your diet. And I think it happens to people every day. They sabotage their own diet because they'll talk that they have the conversation. They talk to themselves. They talk to other people around them.

Say, I'm doing a keto diet. They eat low carb all day. Maybe they go two days. Now it's Tuesday night and they are dying for a snack. And boom, they sabotage themselves. Then they go, fuck, I shouldn't have done it. Wednesday, they go back in. Thursday, they go back in.

Friday, they're craving something again. And boom, they mess up again. This thing continues to cycle like that. Thursday, they go back in. Friday, they're craving something again. Boom, they mess up again. This thing continues to cycle like that. Most people don't even last that long from experience and from my own experience and from also communicating with a lot of other people over the years. Most people don't last very long doing any of these diets. It doesn't matter what diet it is. They have this kind of cycle going on where they're not really following the diet they are

making their own diet fall apart and crumble because they're pulling one thing out of it when they shouldn't be they're messing with it they're tampering with it stan efferding will tell me he'll he'll have people say hey you know i i'm doing the vertical diet it's not working a lot of people email him and then he'll give he'll stand will give people his cell phone number and say text me all the foods that you're eating every day for the next couple days they'll send pictures they show amounts and different different things like that and uh he's like that ain't my diet oh wow you know they're not really truly following his advice and uh you know being able for people to be able to actually follow a diet is is obviously very difficult and that's part of the reason why not everyone's not

skinny but adherence to the diet is is of the utmost importance it's the most important thing so somebody that's cheating on the diet and sabotaging themselves at night now they get to like week two or three especially if you've been heavy your whole life, your identity is drawn back to all that. And I, I go to Andrew and I'm like, yeah, you know, I go, oh man, like, you know, I tried a diet, but it didn't do shit for me, you know? And sometimes you get reinforcement from your buddy because your buddy realizes that's all you kind of want.

And I'm like, yeah, bro, like that diet's dumb. Like I did it too. I had no energy. And then you're done with it. You give up. You quit. And you don't ever think about it again. You sweep it out of the refrigerator because we know that it makes everything magically clean, right?

Do you know if like for your kids and stuff, like if you're on a, like say you're fat, you don't have no kids, you drop a ton of weight and then as you're dropping weight, you make more kids, right? Because now you have energy for all that. Does any of that transfer over into the kids,

like, I don't know, jeans, makeup, whatever you want to call it? wow no so something like that that would definitely be out of my wheelhouse to understand that like um i've actually always wondered that you know like um because i'm just thinking because because right now like in the chat room like this guy robbie was saying you know you don't really hear a lot about the person a year from now who lost a 50 pound, like 50 pounds after the new years. You know, the next year you don't, they're, they're not the, you know, that weight had come back already. Right. So I'm just thinking like, if people like, if they have kids or they don't have kids kind of understand, like you're losing weight for somebody who might not exist yet.

Oh yeah. There's that. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. You know. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean.

Well. Yeah. You want to. You want to live a strong. Prosperous life. And also too. Like. Um.

This is. This is crazy talk. Right. I mean. This is fucking insane. But. If I was 30 pounds heavier. When I met Andy.

I wouldn't have met Andy. Mm-hmm. You change. Change one element of any of that. Like her, her boss told her time and time again, you need to go to the Bay area. This is in Los Angeles, the Bay area in Los Angeles is Hermosa beach, not San Francisco. Um, you need to go to the Bay. You need to go to the Bay.

You need, you know, he kept saying it over and over again. Had he not said that she would not have walked in the Sharkies. I would not have met her. You change any aspect of any of that. If she was 30 pounds heavier, I'm not trying to be, uh, you know, I'm not trying to be like materialistic or whatever you want to call this. Um, but this is the truth. If she was 30 pounds heavier, we wouldn't have met. Um, if, uh, you know, like, I don't know, I was a bouncer. Let's say there was a fight there the night before. Um, if I had some huge cut over my freaking eyebrow, we might not have met.

She might've looked at me and be like, oh, that guy's pretty, like pretty rough or whatever. Like what the hell happened to him? Like maybe he's a drunk or maybe like, I don't know. Maybe he likes to party. Yeah. He probably fucking fell down a flight of stairs hammered. Right. Um, so, but you want to live the strongest life possible.

The only way I know how to do that is you have to develop a belief system and you have to believe in yourself and you have to believe in the things that you're doing. when you have a belief system and you believe in the things that you're doing you live under a code of ethics that allow you to move forward without stepping on people's toes and without being a dick and it will also allow you when you have this belief system it will always allow you to go back to that and refer to that and believe in that and it always allow you to kind of stand tall and to be strong in the things that you are doing. For me at that time, when I met Andy, um, you know, I, I was dieting. I was, I was eating really well. I was in wrestling. Like there's so many factors that happen that could now, if I don't meet Andy, I don't have kids obviously. Right. Like there's so many things.

So, um, that's the whole point of what I'm talking about right now is like, like Andrew said, you could be working on living longer for somebody that's not here yet. There's a crazy concept to think about because if you are, it's, it's not, it's goes beyond that. You are, it's, it's not, it's goes beyond that. You're, you could be changing the trajectory of everything for a bunch of people. Yeah. Andy and I meeting like, you know, impacted all these people. Now you, I'm sure you guys would be off, be doing something else.

Right. But, and so would we, uh, but, uh, it is an interesting, it's a very interesting thing to think about. And it makes the most sense to try to live your life, to try to be about as healthy as you can handle about as healthy as you can handle. Now that's different for everybody. That's, but that's when I go back and I start to think, look, you shouldn't be 50, 60 pounds overweight. Like there has to be how much time is too much time for you to be on your phone?

How much time is too much time for you to be in the gym? How much time is too short of a time? Like, let's be rational. Let's be reasonable. That's what separates us out from animals that's what makes us human beings is we have the ability to rationalize things we have the ability to make a decision um a bird that flies south for the winter doesn't have a decision it flies south for the winter it flies to where it's warmer it's like oh it's cold around here all right man where you

going oh you going that way okay me too and then they do it and then if they don't they die yeah right i mean they don't have they don't have decisions they're not like oh i'm gonna stop at that 7-eleven and pick up a slurpee they can't they can't do shit like that yeah they don't have those decisions to make. It's like, man, whatever happened to Gary? It's like, dude, he didn't fly with us when it got cold. Freaking froze to a goddamn telephone pole. It's a frozen bird.

Frozen son of a bitch. Couldn't think of a clever, like a, when I let my dogs out when it's cold, they turn into pupsicles. Couldn't think of one for a bird. Not that clever. No, it's not as good. A bird-sicle is not as funny. out when it's cold, they turn into pupsicles. Oh. Couldn't think of one for a bird. Not that clever. No, it's not as good. No. A birdsicle's not as funny. No, it's not.

Anyway, if you guys got some questions, we can start to hammer some of these. There you go. I see, you know, some people popping in, asking some questions. You're right. There is a lot of people losing weight. It's fucking awesome.

Yeah. You know, today we're, I appreciate all you guys that are following us on instagram live um we uh you know we've been talking a lot about diet as always um but we got talking about diet because i just got kind of on a thing uh about us uh going to see uh gary tobs yesterday and uh that was a fantastic uh he's a fantastic guy it's great to meet him uh has a beautiful house he's out in oak town out there in oakland and this live feed just stopped so i'm actually gonna pee so andrew you got to make up some shit to talk about here we go tell them about the ipF approval coming in 2019. Can I tell them?

Yeah, you can. Okay. All right. Where's my camera? Anywho. So, yeah, what Mark was just saying, earlier I was taking just a ton of photos because I had to reshoot just everything that's going to be approved in 2019, IPF approved. We're super excited. We're shooting all kinds of high-end commercials and shit.

It's definitely been the coolest thing I've been a part of as far as like high-end stuff. Obviously, I was the audio guy. Chris Griffin was the head director. We had our man Ryan Soper as camera operator. And then Terrell Lloyd, He was kind of grip and that's basically holding the reflector, but he was like second cameraman. Today, thanks to Joey for helping me out because without her, I would still be shooting photos

right now. Shot a bunch of apparel, all new winter apparel. You guys are going to be so stoked at how dope this new stuff coming out is. Today, I kind of got my ass kicked. Mark killed our breasticles. So we handled, I didn't handle that much weight. I ended up handling 195 for a set of three, which, you know, didn't go too well, but ended up hitting it for another set of three which did go very well that was a lot of fun but after training at 7 a.m and then shooting photos non-stop and then rushing to eat and then coming in to do this podcast it's been kind of an ass kicker of a day but uh yeah so i was just telling him that I shot just a shit ton of IPF-approved items.

I can't really say this correctly. In 2019, we'll have a bunch of IPF-approved gear. See, I did it wrong again. I think you got it. I think so, right? Well, our gear in 2019 will be IPF-approved. Bam! It will be.

And that's what we've been working on. We've been working on commercials for it, working on some advertising for it and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah, today's workout was awesome. You know, every workout that we do, we switch things up a little bit. I was doing a little bit of some tempo benching in the beginning of the workout because I just didn't want to handle huge loads. Can I get a hang on? Uh, I just didn't

want to handle like really, really heavy stuff. So I used three 15 plan was to do four sets of six. I got through four sets of six. And then I, uh, I think my last set of six, I didn't, um, I didn't go with the tempo. And then I also proceeded to do one more set and did a set of 10. And everything felt pretty good. Strength on the bench is coming around pretty solidly. I feel really good about it. Andrew got in some good work. My brother got in some good work.

We shifted on over to do some dead presses, which if you haven't done any dead presses before you got to give it a try bench pressing from a dead stop is brutal um you could do this out of a rack i did it out of uh our racks here at super training gym which are rogue fitness racks and they have like a seat belt strap type of thing and the seat belt strap uh is a nicer softer landing than landing on rattling around on some pins. So it also gives you a chance to kind of position the bar a little bit better. But it is a brutal exercise. And for today, we did sets of 10 on that exercise and actually added chains to the last set, which made it even more brutal. But a lot of times when people are doing these pin presses, and a pin press is an excellent way to improve your bench press. Also, adding chains can do a lot for it, too, because you want to try to accommodate that resistance and change up that strength curve a little bit, because as you go to press, a lot of times as you get closer to locking those weights out, as your joints get into uh, to lock things out, such as a deadlift,

such as a squat, more so squat and bench, probably than anything, the weight becomes a little bit easier unless you're fatigued, unless you kind of ran out of steam to be able to lock the weight out. But for the most part, the weights feel a little bit lighter at the top and they tend to feel for most people. In most cases, they feel a little bit lighter at the top, and they tend to feel, for most people in most cases, they feel a little too heavy at the bottom. The bottom of the bench press is normally where it feels the worst for people. That's why I invented the slingshot. The slingshot will stretch the most in the bottom of the bench press, and it will assist and help your joints, your muscles.

It's almost like having an extra layer of muscle. It'll stretch as your muscles stretch, and it will contract as your muscles. It's almost like having an extra layer of muscle. It'll stretch as your muscles stretch and it will contract as your muscles contract. And it will provide you some gentle guidance back into not only the correct position, but also provide you gentle guidance as you go towards your lockout. Now, in the case of this press that we're doing today, the dead press, we were pressing almost off of our chest the weights were down nice and low um we did sets of 10 and we added the chain to it it accommodates the resistance it makes it heavier at the top so as you go to a more favorable position towards

lockout you go from the least advantageous position which is the bottom of the bench press where your shoulder is pinned back your elbows are pinned back behind the midline of your body the chains are deloaded onto the ground as you go to press into them chains are coming off the ground 20 40 60 80 pounds coming off the off the ground and now you have to try to lock that son of a bitch out yeah and that gets to be really difficult it was a lot of fun i really liked uh the fact that i knew i was not gonna die like uh because the straps were gonna stop the weight from killing my face yeah but i mean i know we have spotters and that's fine but like i just felt so secure like i can go to 100 percent

failure and not worry about anything. That was dope. It's a nice comfort level, you know, having those straps right there and knowing that you're not going to eat shit, right? Yeah. Question on Instagram from JPS3223. He wants to know what's more important for losing weight, diet or cardio? Diet, 100%. There you go. No question. I mean, you do not have to do anything to lose weight other than to manage the food that goes into your mouth.

I mean, you don't have to exercise at all. That's not, you know, you know, cardio is an interesting thing. It's been demonized in some sense by some people because they feel like it's like anti-catabolic. Anti-catabolic anti-catabolic excuse me i drank some soda over here which i don't really drink soda that often but i got some zevia and i'm down in some of that and it's making me burp but uh you know people tend to tend to demonize uh they tend to demonize these things and cardio is, is fantastic. I mean, it's great. It, but how much cardio you're going to do, how long you want to do it for. I don't mean how long you want to do it for in a given session, but how long do you want to do it for? Like you're you, if you

burn 200 calories from doing cardio today, the calories that you burn today aren't going to do anything for you five years from now. That makes sense. Like it will, if you continue to do it all the time, but it doesn't roll over into the other days unless you continually do it all the time. So once that's extracted, once you stop doing cardio, once you cease doing cardio, now that 200 calories is dumped back onto your metabolism. So you can, you can paint yourself into a corner by doing too much cardio too often. And the best way to do it is to, you know, either utilize some sprinting or to, you can utilize sprinting, um, three times a week. You can do sets of six to 10, uh, total reps, uh, sprinting for 15 seconds or so, um, at a clip

or 30 seconds. If you want the intensity to be a little bit less and you can rest for about a minute in between each one and you can hit those up and you can work hard and you get your, get your heart rate up. And it's a great way to, uh, blast fat. It's great with burn fat. Um, however, you know, these know these all these tools whether you're doing that style of cardio or whether you're doing regular cardio they're all just little

tools that you're going to drop in here and there and take back out like we're going to drop them into our workouts coming up you know it's going to suck but yeah you also do it just to switch things up it feels damn good to get on a bike and go hard for 15 seconds. It does. Like, it sucks, but it feels good. There's something great about it. Yeah, exactly what the answer probably will be. This guy, Matt, he says his sleep and his diet haven't changed.

They've both been on point, but he's noticing that his strength levels are going down in the gym for the last two weeks. My suggestion would have been to just change it up, right? Like just try something else. Um, yeah, I mean, yeah, when you're, you know, when, when your strength is going down, um, you're going to have to, you're going to have to look into a couple of different things. Uh, number one, how long have you been on the current program that you're on?

Because maybe it is time to switch things up. Number two is maybe you just need a break from trying to be strong. We have a tendency to just shove this shit down our own throats all the time. There's not always a reason to do it. We're working too damn hard sometimes. You can't force strength. You can't outsource strength. I talked today in our team meeting about, you can't outsource relationships.

I can't outsource the fact that I actually care about Andrew. I can't have somebody else come in and be the CEO and pretend to like be his boy. Like it doesn't work that way. We have a different, we have a different thing going on here. And when it comes to strength, you can't outsource strength. You can't force getting stronger. So my recommendation is, first of all, Stronger in 30 Days that we promote through, I think it's still on markbellslingshot.com.

If it's not, I apologize. But anyway, Stronger in 30 days, I'll just basically give you some rundown on it. Basically, we started out with, it's been a while. I haven't looked at it in a while, but I think we started out with four sets of six. We moved into five sets of five. And then from there, we moved into six sets of four. And then from there we moved into six sets of four and eight sets of three and so on. And it's week by week by week. And we did add some weight, but those set and rep protocols are not all that standard. Five sets of five obviously is,

um, but it might be a rep protocol that might help you a lot. What about, you know, throwing in something different? What about throwing in some tempo training for a little while? Um, try going four seconds on the way down on all your lifts, uh, for a little while, five seconds on the way down, whatever it is you're currently doing is no longer working. That seems to be the most clear thing. We already know that you already know that. So now it's time to make a change. And maybe that change is just as simple as switching some exercises.

Like maybe it's time to get off the damn bench, do something else, do some incline, you know, do incline bench, hop on an incline bench for, for three weeks. None of this, whether we're talking about diet or they were talking about strength, none of this is about where you are tomorrow. It's what, what are you going to become in five years, in three years, in four years? I'm hoping five years from now that I'm about, I hope that five years from now, I'm about as lean as I was, uh, maybe about three weeks out from the bodybuilding show. I don't think that I'm going to look like I did on the day of the show,

but I'd like to be that lean all the time. I'd like to be between 220 and 230 and be that lean all the time. I'm in no rush though, because I know if I rush it, my weight's just going to go back up again. I'm 240 now. I was about 230 then. Body composition changed. I don't have the tan.

But there's some give and take that goes on with this process. Not everybody is gifted with this crazy genetics to like, just be able to hold shit all together all the time. Um, we know some people like that, but I, you know, I, I feel like, uh, my genetics are good. Um, but there's other people that just, they're just holding it down just cause they're, you know, just cause they lift some weights here and there. But for most of us, it's going to take a huge effort and getting stronger is a real bitch. It's a real pain in the ass. Remember earlier I said, being in shape is a 24 hour process.

Getting stronger is a 24 hour process as well. It has to consume. I mean, if you really want it, it has to consume a lot of your life. It's got to take up a lot of time. Another thing I would suggest is get into some different environments. Check out some different gyms. Maybe the people that you're training with, maybe they're not even positive. Maybe the people you don't want to use that as a crutch and be like, oh, everyone around here sucks. You can't do that.

That's a mistake, too. But maybe you need to stop training with some of these people. Or maybe you need to have a conversation with them and say, hey, man, I love strength training. I want to get stronger. And let's do it together. A lot of times you're complaining about your wrist or your shoulder or whatever. You know, I don't, I don't want to, you know, I don't think you complained about it during the workout is helping either one of us, you know, stuff like that. Like you have to figure out, you know, how to make a change,

go to a seminar, go to a power thing, meet, um, compete. Competing is something that made me very strong. I, I competed, um, very, very often for a long period of time, for many years. Um, seeing the way that the guys, uh, do things now and in my gym, um, they compete like two or three times a year. I mean, I, I would compete two or three times a month very often. Damn. Yeah. I would hop from one thing to the next i mean i i competed in a um like mike tyson of powerlifting hell yeah i competed in uh uh a multi-ply contest and uh squatted or i'm sorry lifted like 2500 some odd pounds which was the most in the area by anybody um uh and and at the, it was like a nice rivalry going. There was me, there was Jesse Burdick,

there was Scott Cartwright, and there were some other really strong dudes in this area. But it was a huge total at the time. And then the next week, I went and did like the American Cup USPF contest, ended up winning that, and ended up setting an all-time record in the open class and ended up setting an all-time world record total and bench and bench press um so that was i mean those were back to back and i actually didn't lift for like a month because i didn't lift well actually it was longer than that i didn't lift about a week and a

half going into the first meet because multi-ply meets you handle so much weight that you need to take like 10 days off before you compete uh because it's just the way that i tapered from contests like i wouldn't lift at all people always thought that was really crazy. And then, uh, and then, so I had another week where I, where I just took off because I competed. And then when I was done with the contest, I took like another week off. So it was like three and a half weeks where I just, I didn't even lift, you know? And then I think like I had some pretty quick turnaround time, even after that, getting into another contest where I did a bench-only meet. But compete. Compete.

Get into some contests. And bench-only contests are actually great because you only have to be there for a short period of time. And a lot of times that's what's suffering on a lot of people is they kind of have, some people kind of have a crappy bench. But even if you have a good bench, improving your bench will improve your total. So it's not the end of the world if you just do some benching and some deadlifting here. Yeah. This guy has a really cool screen name mountain drew hey i don't know if that was clever mountain drew he wants to focus on his deadlift how often should he be deadlifting per week uh i would just say you know i i really like to prescribe to about a once a week or once every other week uh thing with your deadlift you can make it really simple you can have um you can have one day where you're

um like one week where you're lifting heavy and the next week where you're lifting more for speed and technique you know so you can um let's say on the first week you use like three 15, um, if that's in your wheelhouse, use three 15 for three sets of three. And then the following week you chop the weight down, uh, you know, not in half, but like 70% and do some speed work, go to two, you know, use two plates and do, uh, five to eight sets of two, um, with good speed and good form, stuff like that. But basically deadlifting once a week is a really good idea. Um, you can also, you can also flip flop back and forth between regular deadlifts and things like stiff leg deadlifts, deadlifting too often often those and deadlifting uh deadlifting too often and

deadlifting too heavy uh seem to sometimes be problematic unless you are um unless your body is really prepared for it but most cases you're gonna end up jacking yourself up so once a week for the deadlift throwing this out there brian shaw on joe rogan experience i i wouldn't be disappointed to see that i can say that yeah uh you know i can't get everybody on the show but i'm trying to help get some of our people on the show you know uh my brother and i you know we helped get uh lane lane nordstrom on there. And we are working on Rhino. You know, I mentioned Rhino two or three times. And, you know, we mentioned some of our other good friends. It's like, you know, Joe Rogan's a busy guy.

Right. Our boy Dominic, he asks, what age does someone see a doctor about having testosterone levels checked? Well, checked, you can just get it whenever. But let's say I'm fine with this. My levels are low right now. When should I really even consider maybe trying to get a prescription for testosterone? Hmm. Well, you know, obviously your age is, you know, if you're only like in your,

if you're only like a teenager or something, I don't know what doctors recommend or how that works but if they were to prescribe you testosterone at a really young age the worry would be that you'd have to be on it all the time for the rest of your life. Which isn't the end of the world but very inconvenient. You're going to have to take those shots all the time. Um, if you are just look, if you're, if you're looking to boost like performance and you want to be stronger and you want to do it like legally and go through a doctor, um, then, you know, you get your, you get your blood tested.

And a lot of times these doctors kind of regardless of whether you're very low or not, a lot of times they will prescribe you testosterone. Um, and you can take advantage of that and you can take, you know, a shot of it a week. They don't give you some crazy amount. So it's not going to do anything all that crazy for you, but it will have a large impact on the amount of muscle mass that you have and you will become a little bit stronger. It's it's a weird it's a weird rabbit hole to jump down. Yeah. You know, if the goal is to be bigger and to be in better shape, then, you know, hopping on some testosterone certainly helps. That's why people do it. But if you're you know i i started doing them i was 25 but something to think about is like then you're on and off them the kind of you're basically

once you join in you're kind of on them for a long time you know you're you're in for a long at least i am i mean that's been it's part of it's part of like you know it's part of my thing i guess you know so i i don't even know i don't know where I would go from here other than to keep doing them. Yeah, I guess that's the biggest worry. If I start taking it and then it's like, dude, I feel amazing. Right. And then whether prescription runs out or just something happens and I stop, I know mentally I'll be like uh dude i'm not

i'm not at my fullest potential like this workout's gonna suck and if if i can maybe talk my way out of thinking that way maybe i don't know yeah well for somebody like you i mean personally i think that it would be a good idea to look into it after you've just been lifting a little bit longer. Yeah. You know, like you're doing great. You're making progress. Yeah.

Um, progress will always slow down and like, but you're still, um, they say, they say this about your, like your wardrobe and they say this about like your hair. Like if you, if you, uh, uh, or even just like like could be facial hair could be anything if you stop getting compliments about it it's because nobody's really recognizing it anymore and you're still getting compliments on being jacked so i see that means you're making uh making progress and that's how you know what diet's working too right and and stop and fucking smell the roses when somebody tells you yeah that you're looking good You know, a lot of times we have a tendency to start talking about something else

because sometimes we feel weird because somebody's giving us praise. But take a moment and say, hey, you know what? Thank you, man. I appreciate that. That's awesome. I've been working hard. Just say that because they want to congratulate you.

They want to tell you that you're doing great. What is a good way to find balance between stop being a pussy you can't say that word any other way you gotta say and work harder uh and you're just flat out killing yourself you need to slow down um yeah that's that's an i mean you know know, I feel like you run into that a lot. I think that if you want to be great, you're going to have to ride that fine line here and there, right? A lot of times what makes somebody awesome at something is their ability to kick the crap out of themselves when they know better

you know their ability to turn things on and and to go into another realm and to and to really uh you know quote unquote turn it on when uh everyone else has kind of given up or everyone else has had enough right i think you know the some know, the, some of this is, is the wrong way to look at it. You know, um, like we throw around words like this in the gym, because this is just like our normal locker room talk, but, um, it's hard, hard for me to put into words, but lifting weights and power lifting. And, um, none and powerlifting, none of it has anything to do with being really tough. Although you can be working on your mental toughness. I like to think about it more rather than toughness. I like to think about it more being like willpower

rather than like being tough like if andrew's to miss a rep i don't think he's a pussy and i also don't think it's because of lack of willpower i think that he's in the process of developing more strength and so sometimes he's either prepared for the lift or he's not and that's the same with me if i miss a rep i'm either it's not anything on him it's i'm either prepared for the rep and have the strength to do it or I don't. And then it's the consistent development of that willpower that sometimes will pull you through on a really tough rep that like your body is just kind of falling apart on. But I think both of us are kind of beyond that point where it does help to have someone yell at you. It does help to have some assistance on some of these reps, especially when you're bodybuilding.

But we don't really need, you know, the development of our willpower is good. It's strong. And we don't need to talk. We don't really need to talk to ourselves this way about whether we're being a puss or whether we're you know working hard enough um and also like killing ourselves is definitely out of the question because like i i don't i i've been having a little bit of pain in my elbow lately but on scale of one to three it's like a three um if my elbow is bothering me at like a five or six or seven

and then we're not doing some of the stuff that we've been doing um we're gonna i'm gonna work around that if andrew comes to me and says man like i don't know what's going on but this is really jacked up and we haven't really had these situations quite yet um they'll come they'll come things will come things will go the alley will happen here and there you know um so if you're actually injured then there's no question that you you cease to work hard at the thing that's going to hurt you you discontinue it you don't do it for the day you skip it you skip it you flat out just don't do it or uh you find something else um let's say let's say you really killed some uh lower body stuff and you tweaked your knee well it makes no sense to squatting it makes no sense at all

makes no sense at all to push yourself really hard on squats again now if you're competitive power lifter uh you got you got some different things to worry about, and that makes it a lot more difficult. What did you think of the fights this weekend? The fights were freaking awesome. You know, the thing with McGregor and stuff. You know, I didn't see some of that footage until after, you know, a few days after.

We talked about the fight a little bit here on the Power Project, but didn't get a chance to talk about all that happened because we didn't know exactly all what unfolded. But it was some chaos. And I didn't really realize that McGregor kind of went after one of their guys. I mean, it all makes sense. Khabib flipped out, and i'm sure connor knew right who he's going for those guys have a little bit of a feud going and um things got out

of hand yeah and i think since that time they tried to like suspend uh some of the khabib's people yeah i mean he said you know screw, the, the whole night, uh, Dana White was just saying like, yeah, whoever those other guys were, they're never going to fight in the UFC. Like just period. He just said,

there's no chance. And then, uh, the Nevada state commission withheld Khabib's paycheck, which I thought was pretty fucked up, but you know, whatever, but everything is kind of working.

Everyone's talking about it non-stop and then since White said that Khabib's guys were never going to fight again or their contracts were up Khabib was like well if they're gone so am I so it's like oh shit here we go but again everyone's talking about it and all this doing is bringing more attention onto the sport and i know dana white's just counting counting them checks now yeah you know and i you know what khabib did after the fight we haven't really seen anybody do anything like that you know we haven't seen you know there's a lot of things to think about like does it make sense to have you know so many people with you at ringside you know is that does that make sense still like is that you know should that be a thing i know

like you're supposed to only have a certain amount of people with you in your like quote unquote entourage and as a champion or as a headliner i think you get like one more person yeah you can have like three people with you, not 75. In my experience, because actually I have the, like, damn it. I can corner somebody for the next year. I have the,

whatever the hell the, I don't even know what it's called. Waiver. It's not necessarily a waiver. It's like registered with like the state that i am a corner man because i i wanted to take pictures of nico our boy from forklifter food and uh the only way for me to get like up close to the uh the cage was to just to be his corner man so i had to pay actually he paid but we had to pay uh to get me to be there whatever but yeah you're allowed

basically three uh cornerermen and then the rest that all jumped in the cage i think they were just like cage side like as a uh like just being in the the crowd but so much footage came out dude i was i was deep into watching like everyone's twitter feed to see like oh what can i see what can i see and i mean like i told you earlier both sides were at fault um khabib's uh manager was like he was basically kind of being a dick to connor's coach and then when connor's coach kind of retaliated that's what got khabib to hop the fence and then some other dude on khabib's team hopped the fence to look like maybe he was trying to go get khabib to calm down or maybe he was going to go help

Khabib beat the guy up. We don't know. But he was not prepared to get hit by Connor on that cage because as he's swinging, it looks like he's trying to hit him with a towel. I was like, dude, are you trying to whip him like an old locker room style? And then once he started hitting, once Connor

started hitting that guy, that's when Khabib's crew jumped in the cage to retaliate back. And they kind of all got their ass kicked, which was crazy. Except for the guy that, like, tried to clothesline him from behind and totally missed. Thank goodness he missed. It got to be really crazy. And, like, you just wonder, you know, I mean, somebody could have really got hurt in that whole ordeal. Somebody could potentially die.

I mean, you know, you get this mob mentality and you get, you know, not only these fighters, but these people that love fighting. You get everybody all gathered around. Plus there's a lot of celebrities there and stuff too. Yeah. Um, it's not going to prevent people from going to fight. So it's not like people are, people love people. Like even if somebody did die, people would still go to the fights. Yeah.

People, people love watching people fight, you know? And so, um, I don't think it's going to like tarnish the brand or anything like that. It's just going to be, it's be something that blows over. I mean, we've seen this with UFC so many times, Bones Jones getting into like these car accidents and then he's found with like cocaine and like, I tested positive for this and test positive. Like all these things happen. Like he's never coming, you know,

he's never doing this again. He's never doing that again. He's always comes back. Yeah. Um, you know, the UFC needs to have business and it needs to have good fighters. It needs to be able to put,

um, good shows together. And, you know, nobody puts a better ship on a better show than conor mcgregor with the different antics and the different things that he brings to the table um he just got you know he got destroyed in that fight though i mean he just got absolutely destroyed yeah what do you think about like because there's people kind of bringing up the

the question like hey like dana white are you to try to monitor in some way, some form, about the trash-talking beforehand? They showed Conor throwing that hand truck through the bus, and Khabib and his team were all in there. And that's just going to piss them off. And they're like, dude, they're using that for the promo? I would imagine that fired them up big time. Yeah, and when you look at stuff like that,

you know, they played it over and over again, and then all of Khabib's people are seeing it, and it's very inflammatory, and it's going to be, you know, it's going to piss people off like crazy. And it's going to make your whole team, your whole gym, I mean, this is an entire gym of people

that are close-knit like a family, and here you have this maniac, you know, throwing this thing through the window or whatever. But I mean, maybe there should be some lines drawn, but I don't know what those would be. You know, like throwing a hand cart at a bus is definitely not a great idea. But also, I don't know, maybe making fun of someone's religion and stuff should be, you know. I don't know what you do.

You can't really censor everything. But also that you don't have to use everything as a promotional tool either. Yeah. I think that's definitely on the UFC. Yeah. You know, because he. That part should be on the UFC. Yeah. You know, because he... That part should be on their radar. Right, because let's imagine the rematch,

because Conor already called for the rematch, and Conor gets whatever the fuck he wants. Imagine they show this footage of Khabib jumping out of the cage. Like, is that okay? Right. Because, you know, if he gets arrested or whatever, blah, blah, blah, but Conor got arrested for that last move. Well, so in the NFL, when there's a fight in the stands, they don't show it.

If you run on the field like a maniac, they don't show it. They don't want to promote that. Actually, even when the players fight themselves, a lot of times they cut away. Not all the time, but a lot of times they'll cut away. And I'm in favor of that because there's multiple reasons like not everyone always needs to see everything that happens you know but it also you know it also starts to portray the nfl in a certain light when you see all these guys you know smashing each other other. The UFC and a lot of the UFC fighters for a long time have kind of promoted the fact that we're not a bunch of animals. We're highly skilled athletes.

That's what Dana White has been selling. And Dana White has done it effectively, and so has Joe Rogan, to the point where the crowd will cheer when someone does a reversal on the ground and, like, you know, flips them into an arm bar, you know, because they taught people these guys. Yes, they are kind of savage, right? They are like beating the shit out of each other.

But this is a skill. This is an art. Mark Bell can't come into the UFC and, and even dream of, of hurting or doing any damage to any of the fighters that they have in UFC. Cause I'd get destroyed. Cause it's a skillset that I don't have. You know, these guys acquired these really strong skills over a long period of time. And then you have this happen.

Yeah. And you got these occasions where, you know, you hear somebody punch somebody out, like at a nightclub or whatever. But for the most part, the UFC is pretty clean when it comes to that kind of thing. You don't hear about these things that often. And so I think that's why this one ended up being such a big deal. I love the UFC, by the way. Like I've been to, I've been to UFC events before.

I don't know if Dan White considers me a friend, but I consider him a friend. It's a one-way relationship right now. He got us some tickets to go to some fights in the past and that that was amazing um we've had ufc people on the show many times um but i've watched every single ufc pay-per-view from the jump from the very very beginning and i remember going to different people's houses and like you know driving 45 minutes or whatever just to you know someone's like oh they got the pay-per-view or whatever yeah i'd go to every single one and then i'd rent

them you know i'd rent i'd rent the ufc uh fights and and vhs that were at blockbuster i remember doing that yeah and i i'd watch the shit out of that stuff i love i loved watching the kind of old school fights and uh watching hoist gracie and just i mean i i don't know there was just something about it where it's like this is freaking awesome yeah and i still love it and i i you know i'll always love it i actually don't i don't really find anything all that wrong with anything anybody did that night um of the khabib fight except for you can't go into the crowd you can beat up whoever you want to beat up you know but you can't go into the crowd you can beat up whoever you want to beat up you know but you can't go into the crowd if you want to whoop someone's ass in the locker room or you

know these other like weird things that happen or this kind of bs that happens on the side whatever not a big deal but you can't you can't go out in the crowd i mean those are the people that are those people are your customers you know and you can't it's just really it's just really dumb yeah it's just it's just really like uh i mean you don't like to see people lose their composure that way here's this guy who's so skilled and so concentrated on the fight that he's able to dominate one of the greatest UFC fighters of all time, which Conor McGregor will go down as regardless of whether people want to crown him as that. He's the first guy to ever get two belts in the UFC.

And, um, he's done a lot of other great things, but he got destroyed. Here's this guy. Who's got the skill. Who's got the powers, got the determination to concentrate many, many years on learning this craft but then you know at the end of the fight

he's so mad he's so wound up he wasn't able to turn it off and that's that's not that's that's not a uh that's not anything that people are going to respect. And he talked a lot about respect and he talked a lot about how, you know, the way McGregor acted was disrespectful. Well, you know, losing your cool like that is for chumps. That's not,

you know, that that's not, that's not the sign of a leader. That's not, that's not the sign of anybody that that's not the sign of somebody that people want to follow either losing your cool like that. And also same, you know,

same goes for Conor mcgregor for throwing that damn hand truck at the bus like that's not a i want to see people that are cool under pressure i want to see people that are calm under pressure and uh it would have been great if he just whooped up on him and then talked more shit afterwards and said look you know you try you tried your best we fought you're not getting a rematch you suck i proved that you suck yeah i killed you and if we fought for 10 rounds or 200 rounds i'd still whoop you like you should have just said that go home would have been sick yeah oh well um what you got going on this weekend i got a few other questions that

popped up over here my My bad. Somebody asked about, well, one guy was surprised I have a shirt on. That is weird. And then another guy asked a question about Joe Rogan's podcast. And, you know, Lane Norton was on there recently with Dominic D'Agostino. He wanted to know the thoughts. No, you've always appreciated his opinion was on there recently with Dominic D'Agostino. He wanted to know the thoughts. No, you've always appreciated his opinion, even if it's different than yours. I don't even know how different Lane and I's opinion really is. I think there's so many different things going on when different people are talking from different sides.

And from, you know, I, I do like the ketogenic diet. I'm a person that's going to admit it doesn't appear other than some medical advantages for some people that have, uh, some problems. It doesn't like, for example, diabetes, it's, it doesn't, a low carb diet, um, a ketogenic style diet doesn't seem to have any special thing to it that makes it, that gives it an advantage over other diets. The one thing that it does do, which I felt that it does, and it did this for me and it's done this for many other people. I feel that there's a synergistic effect, that the effect is amplified when you bring together a ketogenic diet and intermittent fasting, or even, I'm sorry, I'm going to

stop saying ketogenic, low carb, low carb. Let's just say just for, to get a number out there, let's say under 50 grams a day. You merge together a low carb lifestyle with intermittent fasting and you end up with a thing of beauty. There is something special about that diet. There's nothing special towards burning extra fat though. There's nothing special towards making a better physique. There's nothing special towards increasing your output, increasing your performance in the gym. And in fact, it may even have your performance in the gym be worse. There might be ways of mitigating that, but I don't really know how you do that, right? Because I've done ketogenic diets for a long time.

I really love them. Now, in my opinion, a big advantage of a ketogenic diet is to, or is the ability to really crush cravings and to really crush hunger, cravings and hunger, cravings and hunger, cravings and hunger. I'll say it over and over again. If we can control those two things, they seem like the same thing, but they're really not. Cravings and hunger are different. They seem like the same thing, but they're really not. Cravings and hunger are different.

A craving is usually towards like a particular food, and hunger is just you constantly participating in the act of overeating. You know, that's your hunger. You're constantly hungry. Now, your hunger, from what I've seen and from what, what I've helped people with, your hunger goes way down. Your hunger doesn't go way down though, just because your hunger doesn't go way down just because you eat more fat. And it's not about it being satiating or anything like that. At least I don't, I, that's not my opinion. That's not my stance on any of this. I think there's a couple

things that happen here. I think number one, palate fatigue may be at play because you are limiting the types of food that you're eating. You're cutting back on some of the foods that you're eating and you have a, you have similar sources of food on a daily basis. And maybe you don't want to overindulge as much. But I also feel that when you start to teach your body to run off of fat, when you teach your body to start to run off of fat, you become fat adapted, which, by the way, can take months and sometimes even up to a year to really fully be fat adapted. Once your body starts to use fat as fuel is when you

start to really see some really big changes. Your body uses the fat as fuel and you no longer become a slave to your food because insulin and carbohydrates are no longer part of your diet. Insulin, when insulin goes up and when you start to, when you start to, I'm sorry, when you start to have so much insulin in your body, there's an abundance of it for long, for many, many years, you can become insulin resistant or pre-diabetic. And in my opinion, the insulin, the raising of insulin, and also your blood sugar going up and down can lead to you be being more hungry i'm not saying that carbs uh don't fill you up because they certainly do rice fills you up fantastic so do potatoes so does oatmeal fills you up amazingly right um but when your blood sugar doesn't really go up and down much at all throughout the

day and you are continuously giving yourself fat and protein, and you're also incorporating some intermittent fasting, when you're fasting, the fasting is not that hard. And you teach your body about being hungry. You show your body, you say, no your body say no no this is hunger when we go 18 hours without food that's what it feels like to be hungry did you feel that yesterday no i'm just saying yeah i felt it yesterday yeah well so that's another that's another topic you know um having a fast and but that's not planned is not a great idea either no but in in this case you know when you when you're when you're talking about like fasting you're showing your body this

is what this feels like your track coach shows you how to get into a stance uh to to run a sprint well they can't just talk about it you can't just read about it. You can't just read about it. You got to actually do it. Here's how it feels. Put all your weight on your hands and you're going to kind of almost lean forward as much as you can. Get your shoulders past the start line as much as possible. Lean into it.

And when the gun goes off, you're going to try to go like hell. And a lot of times when a coach is going over something with you, they'll say, oh, did you see that? Did you feel that? Did you feel that? Did that feel different than the way you did the first time? You're showing somebody how to squat, how to bench press.

You're showing somebody how to swing a baseball bat. We went to Topgolf. Andrew showed me some stuff that I've never played golf before, you know, and I, you know, swing a certain way. And then someone says, no, no, no, it's more like this. You do it, you feel it and you're like oh okay i think i kind of got that well that's the same thing with hunger people have no idea anything about hunger somebody will eat at eight o'clock in the morning and then it's 10 30 they're like i'm starving i'm starving and they go crazy. And you're like, God damn, like, are you really that hungry?

Is that, can that really be a thing? And I think it's, I think they probably do feel hungry. I'm not thinking that they're lying about it, but it's a false sense of hunger. They're not really that hungry. You know, when you're hungry, when you start to work on some fasting and you do a 14-hour fast, an 18-hour fast, and even a 24-hour fast, you start to learn quickly what hunger feels like. And on a ketogenic diet, you also learn quickly what cravings are. Those cravings will hit you day and night, day and night, day and night. And you got to fend them off constantly the cravings will hit you no matter

what diet you do but on a keto diet you're really just you're always thinking about whatever somebody stole away from you you know you're thinking about the thing that someone took from you and that's carbohydrates and you get the i've had dreams before where i'm freaking eating uh freaking cocoa pebbles crushing it crushing a ton and i wake up like oh my god but they were about to taste so good or maybe you were eating them yeah andy was about to eat cocoa pebbles huh what go back to sleep oh that would suck but you you learn yeah i know i know. I know. You learn a lot, you know, and that's what I think, you know, one of the advantages of a keto style diet can be is to kind of learn, you know, how it's supposed to feel. There's not a huge advantage, you know, going from one diet to the next. I've done bodybuilding diets and gotten in shape.

I've done a ketogenic diet and gotten in shape. I've done the carnivore diet before. There's a lot of different diets to choose from. It's a matter of being able to follow it. And those of you that have been following along, please check out on Facebook, go to Operation Get Less Fatterest and check it out. I am running a 12-week program.

It's already started, but just because you didn't join in the beginning doesn't mean you can't join in now. You can join at any time. It's free. I want you guys to post up some pictures, post up some body weight. And all we're trying to do is lose some weight going into the holidays. We're not necessarily, it's not a physique transformation contest.

The reward you get at the end of this is you'll just be less fat. Yeah. you get at the end of this is you'll just be less fat. Yeah. In episode 123, Mark breaks down the entire plan in detail. And then in that episode's show notes and on the YouTube description, there's links that'll take you directly to the Facebook group. And, you know, I do agree with a lot of the things Lane Norton said, and I really liked what he said on on the Joe Rogan show but one thing I think that's

being ignored that shouldn't be is what Dominic D'Agostino is talking about when he talks about the pharmacology of your brain being highly impacted by a ketogenic diet that is something that should not be going on notice because i think that i've been saying this all along the ketogenic diet in my opinion is the only diet well it's only diet does a couple things one it's one of the only diets that you actually know that you're doing the diet through testing your blood you your finger, you're at 0.5. You're like, I'm in ketosis. Right. So like, at least there's a black and white area about whether you're in or you're in the way. Um, the other thing that, uh, the other thing that a ketogenic diet can do and what it's starting to

prove to do is change the pharmacology of your brain. It can change the way that you think it can promote itself on top of itself because the ketogenic diet will make you in a sense by changing some of the way that your brain functions. Hypothetically, it can keep you more focused on the diet. A diet that helps you with focus can help you focus back in on itself more. Um, you know, and maybe there could be euphoria that happens with other styles of diet where you can say, Oh yeah, the same thing happens when you lose 10 pounds on any diet. But the science is starting to point that a ketogenic diet is one of the diets that does this for us. The ketogenic diet can heal you from many, many different ailments and many different diseases.

Where I'm sure that other diets can probably help as well. But a ketogenic diet has been shown to really help quite a bit with some of these things that people are suffering from that are very, very serious. This guy says, I've been keto for 12 to 13 weeks. 24 hours. I feel great. Amazing. Energy. Sleep is fab. But when I break my

fast, they have bad stomach issues, lots of IBS. Any ideas why they're not digesting greens? It's really messing them up and making them feel like they can't keep up, especially at night. Oh, this guy wrote in more somewhere? Yeah, yeah. That's why

I was trying to piece it together. He has trouble digesting what? It looks like having trouble digesting greens. Well, don't eat them. Well, bam. Yeah, don't eat the greens. Fuck it. Oh, well, don't eat them. Well, fam. Yeah, don't eat the greens. Fuck it. Also, too, when you fast, depending on how long

you're fasting for, you might need a small meal to break your fast. Break fast. Brack fast, right? You might need a small meal to break your fast, to get your body

to kind of get the enzymes. So people a long time ago, when they found food, a lot of times they would die. I don't know why that happens, but there's something in our bodies. There's like, we're not ready to take on what we're about to do. And you, you would go, you know, four or five days without eating, you'd find food and you'd ravage it and you'd eat a ton of it. And something happens to us where we fucking die. Uh, I forget what it's called, but it's a real thing.

Now, I haven't died from doing that, but I have fasted before and I fasted for 24 hours, 48 hours. I've messed around with a few different things. Even while doing just a 16 and an 18 hour fast, when I was doing that, I would need to have like a snack before I ate. So almost like a little appetizer, uh, should be something small, should be something easy to digest. Maybe it's just a chunk of what it is you're about to eat. Um, what I would suggest is like, what I would do is I would eat a little bit of food. Um, right when I got home, right before I went in the shower. And then then I'd eat my meal.

So a little something like that, or if you have a little something on your way out the door from work to home, you got about 30 minutes or so, 40 minutes sometimes, depending on, you know, how far away you are from from work. you know, how far away you are from work. But if you can have just something, something small, and it's got to be something that digests pretty easy for you, before you eat, it'll help kind of get your body ready for what it is that you're about to do. Hmm. All right, peeps. Yeah, so I'm going to Alaska.

I'm going out there for an appearance. All right, peeps. Yeah, so I'm going to Alaska. I'm going out there for an appearance. This guy has been bugging me for a long-ass time to come out to Alaska, probably four or five years. He has a bodybuilding show up there, and he's got a little bit of an expo thing up there.

He's had guys like Michael Hearn up there and all these different people up there before, Stan Efferding, Ed Cohn. I don't know who's there this year, but he's been bugging me to go to Alaska. So I will be in Alaska, and I'll be there with my family. We're going to go and shoot some guns and do some stuff locally. Hopefully we have some fun. We've never visited that area. Well, I've been to Alaska before, but I've never visited, uh, that area. Well,

I've been to Alaska before, but my, I've never been there with my family. So it should be pretty cool. By the way, I think I've been to all 50 States. Hmm. I think so.

I definitely have not. I have either like driven through or been to, or something happened where I ended up somewhere. Yeah. Taylor, well, I'm pulling 948 pounds savage absolute beast we got jeremy avila is going to be coming up here in a couple days

check out that deadlift 948 want to do keto but i am lactose intolerant and i know a lot of fat, caloric makeup from dairy. No, not really. You don't need to eat any dairy. Some people eat some cheese, but you don't need to have cheese. You know, so that's not an excuse. Yeah, and let me see if I can figure out who asked it. Somebody was asking.

Oh, there we go. Wow, that's a name. Queen Mona Bulldog asks, what feels better? Being as strong as Superman or looking like Superman? So I'm assuming powerlifting strength versus your bodybuilding

looks. Is there a female out there that thinks I'm A, as strong as superman and b that i look like superman superman's handsome pretty close on both accounts i don't think i you know superman he's really strong yeah but like you around kryptonite you're fine he's not that's true so did he already lift yeah he did lift did lift. Yeah, he smashed it. Amazing. And then he went for like 970 and like he got some weird call.

But yeah, unbelievable. Looking in shape versus lifting some shapes. You know, it boggles people's minds more to be in shape i think than it does to like lift heavy weight um people are uh but because not everyone desires to like lift heavy weight but i think everyone desires to be in a little bit better shape so people might not even want to be like big but they can look at somebody who's really lean even if they're big and lean and they can go oh shit like they kind of get the idea of like man that's got to be tough like that guy really worked and they don't really understand lifting so not not everyone's going to even watch somebody lift um but as funny as it sounds i mean everybody will kind of look at

somebody who doesn't have the shirt shirt on that's jacked. Right. Yeah. Um, in terms of like the lifting. So I've, so for me, I mean, I, I, I personally like to lift heavy. That's, that's what I'm drawn to. Um, but the ability to take your shirt off and feel good about that, it's kind of, it's pretty damn, uh, empowering and pretty damn cool, but I'm'm okay either way like i'm okay having a little

extra fluff i i don't i don't i try not to get too caught up in uh you know being one way or the other because i think it's it's a slippery slope all right i'm gonna take in one more question when we out uh mark do you feel your strength has been going up a lot lately and why um you know uh compared to what you know compared to how strong i used to be a long long time ago no um if you look on my instagram which you're on right now if some of you are on right now, if you check out my Instagram and you look back, you know, a handful of clips there, you'll see a 520 pound bench done for four reps. And it looked like I could have done five or six reps. Um, that's probably the strongest I've ever been. Um, I am getting stronger at the moment, but, uh, you know, no, not in comparison to that. Right. Uh, so I'm getting stronger than I was more recently.

And that feels good. Why am I getting stronger? A little bit more concentration on it. Opening up my body to eat a little bit more food lately. Whereas for the bodybuilding show, I was kind of in a more restricted state. And now I'm starting to smash some food again so i'm not eating like a pig or anything a piggy pig i'm uh you know eating uh i'm eating the foods that i laid out for everybody on the uh on that diet plan that's uh operation get less fatterest which i mentioned earlier you can check it out on facebook it's a like a fan page and

we're answering a lot of questions over there i'm putting out videos about every other day on there trying to give you guys a lot of information we're going to be transitioning into some different diets we're going to move into the vertical diet soon we'll be moving into keto diet we'll be moving into a carnivore diet. Then we'll be finishing off everything with a bodybuilding style diet. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never a strength. And we are out of here.

Catch you guys later.