Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Project EP. 163 - Phone Call with Smelly

Episode Date: January 7, 2019

Welcome to the first ever, "Phone Call with Smelly" segment. Today we're giving Fred "@TeamCupcakesPowerlifting" Zeiba a call. Link to sign up for the ST Classic: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/super-training-classic-2019-tickets-53251741392 ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Find the Podcast on all platforms: ➢Subscribe Rate & Review on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-bells-power-project/id1341346059?mt=2 ➢Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4YQE02jPOboQrltVoAD8bp ➢Listen on Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/mark-bells-power-project?refid=stpr ➢Listen on Google Play: https://play.google.com/music/m/Izf6a3gudzyn66kf364qx34cctq?t=Mark_Bells_Power_Project ➢Listen on SoundCloud: 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

All right. Welcome to Mark Bell's Power Project, everybody. Super fired up to get into some discussions today. We got kind of a couple of things to talk about. But first things first, you know, this is the first time that Andrew and I are doing this. We've had many guests on the show that have said that they're fans. But the guests that we've had on, they've all been people that we're fans of. They've all been people that we've been influenced by or heard a great story from. Maybe they're a material expert.

Guys like Jesse Burdick. Guys like Matt Vincent. Kelly Starrett. All the different people we've had on over the years. They have some sort of specialty going on. Brian Shaw. And they inspire thousands and thousands and thousands of people. And even Brian Shaw is like now in like the millions, right?

But today we have a special guest on. And this is the first time we're doing this. We have an actual fan on. This guy's name is Frank Zebra. And I met him a long time ago at a trade show. He's been following along with a lot of the stuff that we've been doing for quite some time. I guess he'll let us know how long. Man, this guy was fat.

He's going to give us the information about where he was in his life and things like that. I don't know the entire story. and things like that. I don't know the entire story. And the reason I don't know the entire story is because I wanted to uncover a lot of it right here on the show. There's something fascinating to me about people listening to the show and being excited and being inspired and then going out and making some changes. It's hard to understand.

It's hard to wrap your brain around, but that is the reason why we do this. That is what, uh, wakes me up at four in the morning. That is what keeps me fired up. That is part of my motivation, uh, as well as my family. And as well as, you know, making the world a better place to lift by trying to make the world a better place to lift, I need more guys like Frank Zebra, who are going to come through and not only be a fan of our show and a fan of slingshot and a fan of super training, but he's completely fanatical about it to the point where he's wearing the strong sleeves in the gym and he's telling his buddies, he's wearing the slingshot in the gym and he's, he's coaching other people up and he's not just showing them about the slingshot. He's showing them how to lift.

And when you show somebody how to lift and you start getting into diet and you start carving out all these different things that you would like someone to do or practice, what are you really doing? You're really starting to carve things out into their life. You're starting to add, you got addition going on by subtraction. Just because you showed someone how to bench and now their shoulder no longer hurts or you showed them how to bench and they increased their bench by 15 pounds, you might have lit a spark under that person that will last for quite some time. Who knows? Maybe it lasts three months. Maybe it lasts three years.

Or maybe it lasts the rest of Frank, maybe it leads to them. I don't know, kind of following in your footsteps, uh, going through powerlifting and squatting some big weights and then moving on to bodybuilding like he's doing now. He's going to do a bodybuilding show. And I'm sure some of the messages that I've shared here, he's probably like, shit, man, you know, uh, Mark has done a lot of powerlifting and, uh, I've hopped in on some powerlifting and I've, I've done pretty well. And, uh, then Mark switched over to bodybuilding and he's like, shit, you know, Mark was powerlifting and I can, I can powerlift.

And now he's doing that. And I bet you, I bet you, if I applied myself, maybe I could do it too. Cause Mark used to be 330 pounds. He used to be fat. And so, you know, that's, that's what fires up, uh, Andrew and I, that's part of the reason why we do this show. That's, uh, stuff that keeps us, um, excited and fired up. But before we, uh, call Frank, I want to share something with you guys.

Um, I got a, uh, a lot of positive message. I made a post. Um, I was about to go out to my car in the morning and my car just looked just killer it just looked badass so i couldn't help myself but to take a picture of it and i was like you know what this is pretty slick like i've had the biggest piece of shit cars that you could possibly imagine um i've had cars that the transmission would go or they'd overheat or i had the horn going off all the time. Like I've shared some of those stories on here before. And, um, you know, I always had these, uh, you know,

excuses on why I couldn't get somewhere or this or that. And I always blame the car, but the car wasn't really the problem. The problem was me. It was like, I, I wasn't, I wasn't, um, I wasn't pulling my own weight. And if I was pulling my own weight, I could have probably afforded a better car. Now things get complicated sometimes. And sometimes the message I share gets misconstrued or misinterpreted. And I want people to always understand. I'm never trying to hurt anybody. I'm never trying to pick on anybody. All I'm trying to do is share my experiences and I'm hoping that to hurt anybody. I'm never trying to pick on anybody. All I'm trying to do is share my experiences and I'm hoping that it helps some of you and it may or may not. And maybe some of you don't need help. I recognize, I understand that. Um, I understand that maybe a lot

of men and women that listen to me, maybe they don't want to be like me at all. Maybe they don't want a power lift. Maybe they don't want to, uh, maybe they don't care to get a PR in the gym. Maybe they don't care to be thinner. Maybe, you't want to, maybe they don't care to get a PR in the gym. Maybe they don't care to be thinner. Maybe, you know, maybe they just don't care. That's fine. But those are not the people that I'm trying to, those are not the people I'm trying to speak to. I'm trying to speak to the people that were maybe in a place where I was years ago, which

I wasn't in this like deep, dark spot or anything like that. I've never been depressed. I've never been upset with myself. I never, I never hated myself. And luck, you know And I'm lucky for that. I'm very lucky for that. The reason why I say that is there are people that are in that spot. And I don't know what that's like. So I can't relate. I can't say that I can help you out of that spot. I've never been there. But the places I have been, I have been fat and I have been broke. And those are things I have overcome. Uh, I have been placed in special classes going through school. I have not felt so great about myself. I thought I was

dumb. I thought I, because I've, because, because of the way I grew up and, uh, the, the way that school works, I thought that I was dumb. And I therefore thought that I didn't have value in the workplace to make money. I never thought like I was worthless. That's for sure. I always thought pretty good of myself. I was always, you know, pretty good sports. And I always, despite what happened in school, I always thought I had at least some intelligence to be able to learn certain things. But I definitely recognized there was a hole in my game somewhere.

But anyway, all I'm ever trying to do is share my experiences. And I didn't come from a poor, broke family. I didn't come from some of these things that some other people come from, but I'm just explaining where I came from and where I'm at now and where I started might be further along than a lot of you. from and where I'm at now and where I started might be further along than a lot of you. So some of you may have, um, even greater battles to deal with, um, than I have that I have had. But a lot of times, you know, we grew up, uh, upper middle class and, uh, my parents

started out, uh, in a trailer. They worked their way out of a trailer and they worked their way to this big, giant, gorgeous house that had a pool in the backyard and had weights in the garage and had a basketball court out front. And, uh, all that was stripped away from us too. Cause my dad lost his job from IBM and we ended up back in the trailer. So I've seen a lot of ups. I've seen a lot of downs. Um, and then I myself was, uh, struggling to keep my head above water and my parents helped pay for stuff when they could and my and I'm lucky that I met like a lot of fortunate things have happened to me but I try to share all that with you guys because maybe you guys are going through a harder time and I sympathize with that and I can recognize that but anyway I'm sharing this message

and I share this message of my car and how I'm proud of it. And it's, you know, um, you know, I, I no longer have the piece of shit car, my, uh, van that I had, my minivan that I had when my children were really young, both my kids were crying. I couldn't figure out a way to calm either one of them down. And I was super frustrated and I punched the steering wheel of my, uh, of my van. And now I don't really ever react that way. That's like, that's, that's almost like once in a lifetime type of thing. It's really rare for me to lose my cool that way. Um, but I punched the steering wheel a couple of times and this and the horn like busted and the horn was like perpetually on from that day. It would just

come on randomly and um it'd come on when i'd roll through like a drive-through or something and then i'd pretend i'd look behind me and pretend it was the guy behind me i'm like i don't know what's going on with that and i had friends that worked at these coffee shops and stuff that i would roll through the drive the drive-through and they're like dude what's wrong with your car i'm like i don't know man the guy behind me i think he's in a rush i keep cutting people off and they keep just honking at me every time I come here. Yeah. I was like, I don't know, the guy's got a problem behind me or something. And I tried to pass it off on, uh, on somebody else. But anyway, so I made this post yesterday

and I talked about, you know, how I was able to overcome some of this stuff. And, um, I was using it as a motivational tool. And I was saying, look, when I recognized that the problem wasn't anybody else, the problem wasn't society. The problem wasn't who the president was. The problem wasn't, uh, who the mayor was in my town. And the problem wasn't political or it wasn't religious or it wasn't, uh, uh, because, uh, someone's out to get me. It wasn't, um, it wasn't anything.

The problem was me. I was not, I was not efficient. I was not using my time wisely. Um, I didn't have enough. Um, I didn't have enough, uh, like self-motivation to get going in the right direction. And one day I decided that's bullshit and I need to change my mind and they changed my life. So I changed my mind. I changed my goals. I changed a lot of the stuff I did. I started to align my feelings and actions. You can control your feelings. I can talk about that as an entire podcast, but I started to really take that very seriously. I'm going to align all the things that I want to do. I'm going to align those things and I'm going to align those things. Uh, and I'm going to make sure that my actions and the words that

are coming out of my mouth, my thoughts, I'm going to make sure all these things line up so I can get to where I want to be, uh, at some point. And in sharing that message, we got one guy who was, there was a couple of people that were a little sour about it, but this one guy is basically saying, I'll kind of shorten it up and i i am going to respond to this guy's name's uh uh jay herman armstrong and and i don't ever you know when somebody comments to me with the exception of if they made like a bad you know a really horrific comment or something i i very rarely get mad and so all i'm trying to do is find perspective from this guy's point of view,

but he, he basically saying he's on the hustle 65, he works 65 hours a week and he can't afford stuff and he can't just go into his boss and he can't just say, you know, I need to make more money and he can't just say all these things. And one of the comments that I made in the post, as I said, sometimes people will come home from work and they'll tell their spouse and they'll be like, God damn, you know, this job is driving me crazy. I'm over, overworked, underappreciated and underpaid. And, and then the wife might say, yeah, I can't believe that place. I can't believe that's all that they pay you. But you need to kind of like rewind it a little bit for a second. And you need to try to have some perspective on some of this.

First of all, your wife just said, or maybe you've said this out loud yourself. I can't believe that's all that they pay. And your wife said, it's all that they pay you, right? You in giant capital letters with many exclamation points following it. That's all that they pay you. Does the company that you work for, do they pay anyone else in the company? They pay anybody else $1 more a year than you. If they do, then you are lying to yourself about that's all that they pay because that's not true.

That's all that they currently value you at. That's all that you currently provide, perhaps. And so maybe it's a fair relationship and it's something to think about. If this guy's working 65 hours a week and he can't afford stuff, then he's going to have to figure out how can he work on his life? How can he work on his, um, how can he make a paycheck? How can he make a living and also work on making a fortune? And that's what we talk about on this podcast all the time. And I'm, I apologize if this post offended this guy in any way, because that was not the intention and I I'm not devaluing hard work. I'm not devaluing blue collar work, but whatever work it is that you do, if you're working really hard for it and you don't have a lot of time for other things and you're not getting what you want out of it and

you're not finding any happiness or fulfillment out of it, then you're screwed, man. You're in a tough spot. And what do you need to do? You don't need to necessarily just start looking for another job. That's not the right answer because the other job, it's going to have the same feelings for about six months and it's going to run out and it's going to feel like every other job you ever had. It's going to be a job, right? What you need to do is you need to work on yourself. And that's something that people need to understand is you always need to work on yourself. And that's something that people need to understand is you always need to work on yourself harder than you work on your actual job.

Because when you go ahead and you work on yourself and you continue to educate yourself and you learn about yourself, about where you're strong, where you're weak and what you can provide to other people and how you can help other people and how you can help the business that you're working for, then you're gonna be able to communicate all that in an intelligent way that makes a lot of sense.

And you can sit down with your employer and you would never be able to sit down with your employer and say, I need more money. That will not work because your employer might feel the exact opposite way that you feel. This guy, I guarantee who works 65 hours a week. I bet that he said that before. I can't believe this is all that we pay. And what does his boss say? His boss is probably like, man, we pay that asshole way too much. And the boss has a laundry list. Go ask him, Herman, Jay Herman, go ask him, go ask your boss. Say, Hey man, where am I weak?

And he's going to pull out a rap sheet on you. That's probably a mile long. You it's potentially possible that you're a great employee. I don't know any of that. I'm, I'm just speculating. But again, the point is, is, is you're going to have to figure out a way to work on yourself in order to be able to provide more value. And if you feel like you're stuck in your job and you feel like you're stuck in, in this, uh, bubble and you can't get out of it,

um, then you've missed some of the point that I've been trying to express here on this podcast. And I shared, I shared this message with, uh, Frank, who we're going to be calling in a second. And, uh, he had a lot to say about it too. And so, um, we're going to get a lot of, a lot of great stories from him. And we are going to, if you got some comments, Andrew, you can. Yeah, just to piggyback on what you're just talking about, you know, about this guy feeling like he's underpaid and the company's probably thinking that he's overpaid. You know, I'm not too far removed from the traditional workforce, you know, the fighting against seniority, you know, the person that takes all the days off that you want because they've been

here longer. What I see or seen a lot of is the us versus them mentality. I know there's some politics, there's some favoritism involved with, you know, office stuff like that, but your employer is not actually out to get you. You know, if you have a bad relationship with your boss, you know, it's, oh, my boss just hates me. They never liked me. They never gave me a chance. You kind of manifested that, you know, with maybe taking a couple of shortcuts here and there or just whatever it is, it's something that you brought upon yourself. And I think the second you realize that, the second you kind of, you know, you go all in, you know, we have shirts that say we have,

we used to, you know, say it a lot more than we do now, but, you know, either you're in or you're in the way. Right. And if you can apply that to anywhere in life and you can apply that to your current employer right now, you know, if you're just kind of there collecting a paycheck, like, well, they're there just to kind of get you by, you know, they're there to just keep you somewhat happy. Uh, if you're there to go all in, they're going to see that, you know what I mean? Like if you think that your boss doesn't like you be so good that you're undeniably good, you know, be so good that, that, that the boss that hates you, like make them feel like shit that they have to compliment you. Right. You know what I mean?

You have the ability to do that. And another thing too, if, if you went to your your employer right now and you said hey man you know um i gotta put in my two weeks um because uh i feel that there's a lot more opportunity out there for me and i want to explore what that looks like if your boss isn't like whoa whoa whoa whoa what what are you doing andrew where you going no no no no no no no sit back down dude put those fucking papers away sit down relax okay like if your boss isn't kind of doing that then if your boss is like okay peace out it kind of you know it might tell you your spot you know and and with what andrew was doing previously where there was kind of a lot of number crunchers it probably didn't matter that much to them on who was doing who was inputting data into the computer correct and that was kind of a lot of number crunchers. It probably didn't matter that much to them on who was doing,

who was inputting data into the computer. Correct. And that was one of the biggest reasons why I had to move on was, you know, I recognize that I'm like, hey, if I disappeared, nobody would care. Like things would just keep pushing on as they are, which is just a constant circle of the exact same thing every single day. Those jobs kind of rely on that they're

they're kind of like you know they're they're like hoping like they know they know they're like andrew will be here for a year and a half two years like they know when you come through the door they kind of have the understanding almost yeah and then you're on the way out they did say like hey if it doesn't work out you're always welcome to come back and i'm like i left there and i'm like dude i wish they didn't say that. Cause then, you know, it's kind of lingering in the back of my head. Like, Oh, Mark turns out to be kind of a jerk. I can always run back. But no, I mean, I couldn't get out of there quick enough. Yeah. And you know, it's important to point out again, there there's a, there's a message to what we're delivering. There's lessons to be learned in what we're delivering. I sometimes feel like

we're teaching a class and like, I'm a little bit new to all this and this will continue to be refined and will continue to get better but i'm running into people on the street who are coming up to me and it's not just oh dude you're the sickest lifter i'm a huge fan like great job with that bench you know people are coming up and they're saying that i changed their life um people are coming up and saying these different things that are impacted by man i listen to your show every day just the other day a friend of mine and you might have met him he came in yesterday um from dutch bros he he dropped off that that dutch bros cold brew that lit our faces off remember that yeah um and uh he's got some tattoos you know on his neck and his arms and stuff. But I ran into him out by Phil's Coffee in Davis.

And he was flipping out. He's like, man, I've been following your stuff for a long time. And he and I are previously friends. He's one of my friends that he would hear the horn going off when I was rolling through the drive-thru over there at Dutch Brothers in Woodland. But, you know, we've known each other for a long time. He's like, I listen to your shit all the time. He's like, I watch every post. He's like, I take notes on your podcast sometimes because he said that he's got,

he's in charge of 250 people. Wow. And he's like, I was just watching your live feed and that's how I found you here at Phil's. He's like, I was just watching it and I was down the street and I'm like, I'm going to Phil's. He's like, I got to talk to Mark. And I was talking about like leadership stuff. He's like, I was just watching it and I was down the street and I'm like, I'm going to Phil's. He's like, I got to talk to Mark. And I was talking about like leadership stuff. He's like, this is great. And it's messages that he takes from our show and it's messages he takes from the Instagram page and he starts applying it in real life. And that's, that's what the message has been about. That's where these lessons are learned.

I'm trying to teach people the things that you're doing in the gym. Um, you know, don't just meticulously do the same old thing in the gym all the time. Start to apply some of those things into your everyday life. I mean, think about. Think about some of the people that you really look up to online and you should be cautious on who these people are. But like someone like Steph Cohen or Hayden Bowe, some of these guys and girls that are preaching, here's what we got to do in the warm-up, here's what we do for the workout, and here's what we do for the cool-down. Do you think those guys ever miss a warm-up?

Those guys are so meticulous with that. And it's not a coinkydink. These are not lucky people. It's not a coinkydink that they're courtside at the Toronto Raptors basketball game the other night. It's because they earned it. And you're going to notice their place will get bigger. Their gym will get bigger. Their cars will get better.

Everything will fall in line for those two because they made a decision together. And that's really awesome when you're able to do that somebody else, the way that Andrew's doing with his fiance, the way I've done with my wife, that's when you really end up with a real powerful commitment. And that's why a lot of times like Andy's joined in on the carnivore diet with me. I know your, your fiance has done that with you many times in the past. And my sister-in-law April and her husband Bacon, his name's Andy too. So we just call him Bacon. So it doesn't get confusing, but, um, yeah, they joined in on a, like a keto diet as well. And it helps when you start to kind of build that community. So that's all we're ever

trying to do. I'm not ever trying to say, Hey, you know, what you do is so dumb. I can't believe you go to work 65 hours a week. Look, man, I'm overworked and underpaid too. Might sound funny, but I work a lot. Like I, you know, I don't know how to stop myself. I, I never shut it off. You know, I'm always doing probably more than I should. Yeah. Yeah.

And it's, it's, it spreads like wildfire, man. Cause you know, like you're saying I'm helping Stephanie. Well now she's helping like a whole team of people. That's awesome. And it's, yeah. And you know, majority, no, I don't want to say a majority,

but now if I get a majority of it started here when we're, you know, talking on this podcast, you know, she hears something and it's like, oh wow, that's crazy. And then she'll hear someone else's like issue and like,

like, Hey, that kind of sounds like what they were talking about. But she takes the bits and pieces that she remembers and that she, that stood out to remembers and that that stood out to her and that you know would be uh effective in this situation and then it's like dude oh my gosh so-and-so just lost 40 pounds are you kidding me that people don't you know a lot of times not everybody understands like you're coming from a different perspective right so you know with

your fiance uh she might somebody else is going to say, oh, you know, I probably shouldn't do that. I know Mark does that, but like, he's a 240 pound dude. You know, I know Andrew does that, but he's like a 180 pound guy, you know, but like, I'm a chick. I, you know, I'm 140 pounds or I'm a chick and I'm 180 or whatever the body weight is. But they're probably thinking like, cause they're, you know, different than us or because maybe they are engaged in some other form of fitness than us, that they should be doing something totally different. And then Steph can say, Hey, well actually, you know, not really, you should be doing, you know, you should still be, I've heard people say that women shouldn't eat no, should not, uh, they shouldn't, uh, adhere to

like a no carb diet, you know, a super low-carb diet. There's no basis. Maybe if you're pregnant, maybe we can start to make some. I mean, if you're pregnant, you definitely don't want to be in a caloric deficit anyway. But yeah, I mean, there's no information or research that suggests any such thing. It's crazy. But then a girl will hear that and they're like, ah, it's not for me. I shouldn't be doing that.

It's dangerous. Yeah. You know, it's just, you end up with this misinformation. Anyway, let's call up Frank. Ask him how much he benches. That's all that matters, right? How about that bench press today? That was crazy.

Did a lot of chain benches today. We used 120 pounds of chains and we had a great workout. What's up, Big Frank? How much a bench? Hey, how you doing, brother? Ball talk 385. Nice. Yeah.

Well, it's hard to keep that bench strength up when, uh, when you're, uh, when you're dropping weight. So give us a little bit of, uh, give us some background on, you know, kind of how you discovered, uh, the podcast and how you kind of, you know, uh, found out about me and stuff like that. Sure. So, so basically, you know, uh, what happened is going back years probably about five and a half years or so ago now I'd say I I decided that I was way too far to whack a chief and I needed to do something you know to straighten myself out and I started looking into going to some gyms and this guy that I was working for at the time you know he's like six foot

tall 220 you, guy benched 225 for reps. 43 reps, I think it was, combined numbers. I said, I want to be like this guy. So I started YouTubing some videos and I started following his end. That's when I started seeing the different

bench programs, this, that stuff. What really got me fired up was that, that intimate squat, the 1080, you know, um, I remember watching that and, uh, it gave me goosebumps the first time I saw it. And I remember sitting down at my buddy's house and, uh, I look over at him and I say,

someday I'm going to do something like that. And he said, no way in hell. And that was, and that was probably he said, no way in hell. And that was probably the worst thing he's ever said. And I started going to the gym with that guy I was working for. And he was putting me through the ringer. I started training. And after a little while, our schedules didn't work out.

And I was on my own. And following you, following the programs, you know, I, uh, I started hitting it pretty hard. And I remember one day, uh, probably like four months into this and I see this guy in the corner and he's dead lifting and it looked like a million pounds and it was like 405. And I walked up to him, he was one of my best friends from high school. I hadn't seen him in a couple of years, kind of, we kind of lost touch. was one of my best friends from high school. I hadn't seen him in a couple of years.

We kind of lost touch. So we started talking. We exchanged information. Find out that he was a big fan of yours, too. He followed you. And we decided to go check out a local meet. We went and checked this meet out. It was in a holiday inn, USAPL meet.

And at the time, I didn't even know the difference between here and there. I started to jump the page. I thought that was I had no idea. You know what I mean? It was all new to me. So we go check out the meet and watch all these guys and basically we decided we wanted to do one.

And I think this was probably like October at the time. The guys said there was a meet coming up in December. So we signed up for it and literally not having a clue what we were doing, just started doing it. Started training, following some of the training videos guys would put out, stuff like that. And I did my first meet December. stuff like that. And I did my first meet December, I think that was, oh, geez,

December 2015 maybe, somewhere around there, I think. And I was a big fat dude, like 265, 270 pounds at the time. And I think I might have totaled just over 1,200. And I didn't want to do any cardio. I didn't want to do any of that stuff to try to get in shape. I just liked lifting heavy. And I kind of just kept doing that. I liked going to the gym.

You know, I liked doing that stuff. But I didn't want to do cardio. I wasn't pushing myself to kind of go the extra steps. And going through all this at that point when you were really big into the keto my my wife because she also was following you she actually started doing the keto diet oh cool she lost crazy she lost crazy weight my wife lost 120 pounds doing an anabolic diet and i'm'm being hurt to shred these pounds. I'm watching, you know,

and I'm like, fuck, man, I gotta do this too. You know? And I just, I started disciplining myself and I think where I, where I really got a big impact was

I was fortunate enough to go to, remember the seminar I did in Ohio back in 2000, maybe 16, I think it was. Oh, yeah, yeah. I forgot you were there go to, remember the seminar I did in Ohio back in 2016, I think it was? Oh, yeah, yeah. I forgot you were there. Yep, yep. And that was awesome. That was really cool. And that impacted me a lot. You know, some of the things you said that day, stuff like that.

And meeting all those different people at the seminar and meeting all the people at the expo. It was a really cool network. We made a lot of connections. Yeah, I remember that seminar. That was special. That was a really cool environment at that gym, and we had a lot of great people in attendance that day, and it was really cool because, like, everyone just kind of circled around me, and it was just a really good vibe, and sometimes when the energy is good in the room,

sometimes I come up with better shit to say because you get a little bit more pressure on you. But I remember talking about how you just need that little bit of momentum. I think a lot of people are ready. A lot of people are ready for change. They may not fully realize it. They may not know all the steps to get there, but if you can just get a little bit of momentum and get a little bit of success, once you taste a little bit of success, once you walk into the gym, you only need about three weeks of it or so, which is sounds like kind of a lot when you haven't done one week of it, but get about three weeks strung together of some decent, uh, eating and, uh, you know, some, some, some training. And then that's when you get, Hey man, like what's going on, man? You look great.

You're getting in better shape. You lose weight. You look awesome. You know, once you get that, then the success will build upon itself and the success will breed success. You know, and that's exactly right. It's snowballs, you know, and I love that. I love that thing.

I use it all the time. You know, I, uh, you know, I use it at work all the time, stuff like that, you know, with the guys that work for me and stuff like that. And it's true. And that's, that's one of the best things that's happened to me is, is over the past, you know, two, three years as I've transitioned and, you know, been able to, to get in better shape and learn more and network and meet these people and better myself, your confidence goes up. And once you have confidence in yourself, everyone around you has that same confidence in you.

You know, it kind of just comes right off. And, you know, I was listening to you the other day, and you said if you could just make people feel a fifth as good as you do, you know, how much better off everyone would be. And I exactly get what you're saying. I exactly get it. Yeah. Cause you, you know what, you're, um, it's plain and simple. You're locked in. That's, that's what it is. You're, you're locked in. There's no other way to really describe it. You're locked into this whole fitness thing and it's not, you know,

people will see you flexing your bicep and you get a vein coming through and like, they're going to think certain things about that. And, uh, you're not posting it because you have the best bicep in the history of the planet. You're not saying your arm is better than Arnold's, but you're proud of the work that went into it. But I also think that you have a deeper understanding, which I think is important for a lot of people. So much more can happen for you through exercise than just building up some biceps i got some veins in them yep no exactly you know and like i was i was talking about this with somebody at the gym the other day and it's going to sound kind of silly but you know i i told him you know when i

decided recently to to commit to doing a bodybuilding show in april um you know diet's always been my trump i love lifting weightsifting weights isn't a big deal. Going to the gym, I love it. I love smashing weights. It doesn't matter what it is. I like working out. Eating right, I do not like doing. You know?

Right. And it's kind of like scary to me, you know? And the accountability is a big part for me. And I know a lot of people like to keep it a secret. They don't want to tell people that they're going to do something. They don't want to say, I'm going to do the show. In case they don't succeed, that's the complete reason why I want to tell everybody I'm doing it. Because I want everybody to know that I suck if I suck.

And it just gives me that edge that I need. The accountability on social media is huge. For people that are listening to this right now, they should definitely, you know, don't, don't talk about stuff that you're not going to do, but if you're ready, if you feel that you're ready, then start to start to talk about it. The main thing is just that you never give up. I'm sure when you first started dieting, how, you know, it's probably taken you almost about two years to get to where you are right now. And now your mind has a better understanding of what all this looks like. Now your mind It's probably taken you almost about two years to get to where you are right now. And now your mind has a better understanding of what all this looks like.

Now your mind totally gets you working at 100% versus you working at 60%, which is probably where you were mostly in the past because now you're kind of kicking an overdrive. But people don't start out like that. It takes a lot of time. You eat well for a day, you cheat the next day. You eat well for a day, you cheat two days in a row. You eat well for a week, you cheat for a week. You know, like it's going to be screwed up. That's just the way it happens. Yeah. Yeah. And that, that consistency is key. Consistency, being consistent. And in, you know, you got to learn your body. The big struggle with me is, um, um, I in you know you got to learn your body because the big struggle with me is um

i you know i grew up in a great house great family and my mom loved me so much that she kind of would let me have what i would want for the most part right and i was i became a pretty picky eater because of it i mean you know my diet for consistent pizza pizza and a little bit of ice cream and a pizza you know and that was the hard thing for me dieting is, is being open-minded to the food and, you know, dipping my toe in the water slowly, you know, trying to make better choices, you know, doing the simplest, there's so many simple things you can do. You know, I have, you know, I have people ask me all the time now, you know, because they've seen, seen what I do and, you know, you feel bad sometimes because they want to,

you know, they ask you what the secret is looking for like, you know, you feel bad sometimes because they want to, you know, they ask you what the secret is looking for, like, you know, the magic pill or the drink or the workout. And it's, you know, you tell them it's just consistent, consistently eating right and exercising, you know, but they don't want to hear that part of it, you know. Yeah. If somebody is always giving you, you know, what you want as a kid, then it's hard to learn about like earning stuff. Like even if the, even if they're just giving you money, buying your presents, um, you know, I was fortunate enough to grow up like that as well, where it's like, I kind of had every, you know, everything I needed. My dad, you know, he showed us, you know, uh, how to paint and how to like build shit. And like, he showed us stuff like that. I mean, he taught us about that kind

of stuff, but like, we didn't listen because, you know, my dad was, he was doing awesome. He was making, he's making that, that, that paper. And, uh, we were enjoying it. We were enjoying it, but that's, that is a big issue is like, if you're allowed to have whatever you want as a kid, I think the problem is as a child, you don't really know the harm in that. And you don't really, maybe you don't even really know what you want. I do think that most people should have the understanding and they should be very, very,

um, they should, they should be very careful with this is like when you give a kid with what they want, you could be, uh, ultimately, uh,

giving them what they don't want. And you could also be imposing some real danger on their life by allowing them to have all these snacks and all this bullshit. Like what if your kid is a hundred pounds overweight by the time they're 13 or 50 pounds overweight, man, that is so limiting on that person. And I think,

you know, from a parent standpoint, it's mental too, because, you know, you know, whether people want to admit it or not, it's just going to be bullying.

And, you know, they're not going to get treated and looked at the same way that people like you're not. It's the truth, you know? Oh people want to admit it or not, it's just going to be bullying. And, you know, they're not going to get treated and looked at the same. Whether people like it or not, it's the truth, you know? Oh, it's 100%. And I figured that out, you know, as a young kid, like I knew, you know. But, you know, like, you know, we were trying to talk about the other day. That's why I was the funny fat kid.

That was my in, right? You needed a way for people to like you, so that's what you do, you know. But you don't realize how bad it is until you've you've corrected it you know i look at the picture before i go why did they tell me my fucking head was that big you know like i didn't i didn't realize how sad i was you know hey your head was huge but yeah that's what i was going to ask you what's up frank it's andrew by the way uh sorry for sneaking in here how you doing i'm good brother oh by the way it's fred it's Andrew, by the way. Sorry for sneaking in here. How you doing, Andrew? I'm good, brother. Oh, by the way, it's Fred, guys. It's Fred.

Fred. Fred. Oh, all right. Why am I calling you Frank? People do it all the time. No, but you call me whatever you want. It's called worse anyway. Fucking Fred.

All right, we'll fix all of that then. But anyway, what I was going to ask you, because you were just kind of leading into it, but when you were a little fluffier, like, did you always have to put on a front or is that just something that you kind of adapted over time when people started labeling you kind of like the funny fat guy yeah you know what i you know i don't i couldn't really recall you know what i mean you know it's you don't just you know you don't just wake you if you don't just wake up that big kind of slowly. You just got to develop over time. So I never really realized it, but I knew that I didn't fit in the same way as some of the other kids growing up, stuff like that. So to get in the cool crowd, the popular crowd, I needed to do something so it would be funny.

It was at my own expense, so to speak. And it didn't bother me, and I didn't realize that's what it was at the time. You so to speak, right? Yeah. And it didn't bother me. And I didn't realize that's what it was at the time. You know, you don't realize that's what's going on until you grow up and you get older and you look back and then you start to see things, you know. And then even now, you know, I can see now that I've helped people treat me differently that I've transitioned, you know, and I'm, I'm a different person, so to speak, you know, if you can pinpoint this down, if you can pinpoint this down into, into like one word, um, going from, cause like being, being the bigger kid is like a thing, you know, like your friends all go out to eat and then like you scarf down the rest of their French fries, you wolf down somebody's pizza. that's like your identity people think

it's funny that a lot of people will think it's cool they're like that's our boy you know he can freaking uh plow through food and people get excited and uh so how did like what do you think if if you had to boil down like one word what did you apply to your life that allowed you to go from that place to where you're at now? Discipline. Hands down. It's all about discipline. You know, everything, you know, I realize that everything is a choice. It's a decision that we make, you know,

and it's just having enough discipline to want to do it. You know, I was talking to my wife before I decided to do the Bodybuilding Show, and I can actually tell you the night that I decided that I wanted to do it. I've been doing pretty good. I did a policy meet back in October and after the meet prep was over, that month after I kind of just did meet. I lived my best life. Went back to eating

kind of sloppy or whatever. I put a few pounds back on. I bounced up from 209 back to 225. I guess that tightened things up. So I tightened the diet up a little bit. And I remember coming home one night late after work. It was like 10, 30, 11 o'clock at night.

And there was two candy bars on the kitchen counter. Uh-oh. What candy bars were they? They were, I believe, if I recall, they were two Twixes. So four candy bars, technically. Right? So I come I recall, there were two Twixes. So four candy bars, technically, right? So I come home, I give these two Twixes. I know I shouldn't frigging have them, but I wanted them.

So I pick it up, I open one up, and I sit down, and I put down tape, I turn on the TV, and I go, what are you doing? You're not stronger than a Twix bar? And I picked it up, I I went back out I threw it down the counter and I said I'm doing this I said this is up to me I said I am not weaker than a piece of candy and then the very

next day that was it I decided I was in you know and that's everything it's everything that's happened over the past couple years it's just me being more disciplined more disciplined more, and understanding that you have control of all these decisions. You know, you just have to want it. And if you don't want it, you're not going to be able to get it. Yeah. There's a saying that they basically, whether it's, you know,

fitness life, your career, whatever you decide to do, you have to want it. And I don't do anything halfway. Once I decide I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it. It might take me longer than others to get some of these things done, but I'll do it. You know, they say that you can't even see the how, when your why is super strong, you know, like when you understand, you know, why you want something, why you want to lean towards something. And I think, you know, something that's going to be interesting for you will be post bodybuilding show because that inner fat kid is still there. And so my suggestion to you would be, I would allow for what's your body weight at right now.

I weighed in, uh, just under two or three this morning, like two or 2.7. Yeah. So like whatever your stage weight is, I wouldn't, I definitely wouldn't allow it to creep,

uh, 20 pounds higher than your stage weight. Your stage weight will actually probably be a little heavier than you're thinking because they'll re-carb you up and there's a bunch of weird things that happen. But you shouldn't allow more than about 20 pounds. It could be 25 or something like that. And then one month out from the show, it's your job and your obligation to still be within 10 pounds of what you were on stage you're

not going to look the same you won't be all tanned up and you won't be as tight and things like that but you should stay within 10 pounds and i that's something that i stuck to um it wasn't always easy and i and i went above 10 pounds a couple times and i was like oh i need to you know be careful of it so that would be i think that would be a really good goal and it would keep you in check because you're gonna have to really i dude, you can go right to 250 when the show is over in the blink of an eyelash. Oh, and trust me, I know, and I'm good at gaining it, man. Putting it on is not an issue.

If I wanted to go back up to 275, I'm confident I can do it really quickly. But that guy's never coming back. I'd bury him. He's done. That's great. I'm confident I can do it really quickly but that guy's never come back I bury him, he's done if I come back at 275 it's 275, twist the steel no fat on it what does your family think about this what's like mom

probably cooking you pasta when you're a kid your whole life how is the family, what do they think of this they think it's awesome they've always supported me in whatever I wanted to do. You know what I mean? And it's cool because my dad's been a big part of this the past few years. You know, when I decided that I wanted to do something, you know, in the gym,

you know, he took interest in it with me. It was good because my dad worked a lot when we were growing up. So, you know, we didn't really have, you know, we had a good relationship. We didn't, like, hang out a lot, stuff like that. So it's kind of good that we have this common denominator. We get to train together. I have a gym. You work out with your dad?

What's that? You work out with your dad? I do. I do. At least once a week, usually a couple of – Shit, man. I didn't know. That's awesome.

He comes down, and we hit it pretty hard oh that's that's that's fantastic that's huge what do you think was he's drawn too man

he's yeah how old is my dad Dave 50 what he's he's 52 or 53 and you know

he deadlifts in the low 400s he squats right around 400 you know he blew out his shoulder a couple years back. So he's benching just around 200. But he's strong for a 50-something-year-old guy, you know? Do you think when you were heavy, there was a lot of conversation in your head

every time you were about to, like, diet? Or even when you did try to diet, like, no, man, like, you're the big, strong kid. Like, we need to stay true to this. This is what we do. Let's not worry about, you know, eating like a bird. You know, we need to stay true to this this is what we do let's not worry about you know uh eating like a bird you know we need to eat big we need to lift big 100 i used to use that as an excuse all the time that was my go-to when somebody would say like you spend all this time and you know you know what you don't want to try to like lose a little

bit of weight no i don't i don't want to get weaker i don't want to get weaker i don't want to get small i want to be the big that was That was always kind of the way I hit it. I knew deep down inside that I could do it if I really wanted to, but I didn't want to do it. At that time, I wanted to keep it more. It's funny when you say that out loud. It's like you know you're lying to yourself big time because you know that there's plenty of men and women that are very lean,

that are incredibly strong. And so you're like, yeah, okay, my strength will go down when I diet, when I lose some weight, but I can regain it. And I'm sure your strength now, it's probably not the same as when you were just throwing down hot dogs and stuff like that, but it'll come back. And as soon as you put on, you know, a little bit of weight and you're not in a huge caloric restriction most of your strength will come back anyway yeah i mean i mean to be fair i'll tell you what i uh i in 2017 when i competed in june i was probably around like 260 at that point in time and i totaled 1535 um a year later or or a year and a half later, I should say I weighed 209, and I totaled 1530. So five pounds less. So I did it, I did it over the course of, you know, almost two years, and I was able to actually maintain most of my strength. Now that I'm a

little bit leaner, I'm definitely feeling it. But it's not as bad as people think it is. And when, you know, it's all about changing your focus, you know. That's what I've learned is, you know, I've been hurt a couple times. I've had different things happen. You can't focus on the I can't. Focus on the I can't. And with bodybuilding, now that I'm doing that, you know, my goals, my objectives are a little different. So I'm not hung up on, you know, I can bench 15, 20 pounds.

It doesn't bother me. I know that when I want it, it's right back there. I can go back and get it, you know. My focus is different right now. You just have to focus on something that you can accomplish or that's, you know, that's not going to create rats in your head. You know, you were mentioning this word discipline being the game changer. Now, a lot of people might look at um some of the

athletes and some of the people on instagram some of the people in fitness and they might think themselves well i can't ever do that you know like i i don't look at this look at this guy you know he's got a 30 inch waist or look at this girl you know she she looks great and she's doing uh you know these crazy um crossFit workouts and things like that. A lot of times people think that they can't do it. What do you think was inside of you that allowed you to think that you can get it done? You know, I just, it's going to sound corny, but I've always wanted to be like the best at something, you know?

And when I started doing well in the gym, at least as far as I was concerned, you know, I set goals, right. And like you talked about, I set realistic goals for myself. And once I started accomplishing those, I realized that I could probably reach out a lot further than I thought. You know, you just keep setting the bar a little bit higher, a little bit higher, a little bit higher, you know? and before you know it, you know, you get there. I don't know that there was any one thing in particular inside of me except desire to just

fucking be better. You know what I mean? Yeah. I think, I think you said it though, because you basically, you kind of laid down the groundwork. It sounded like, you know, by picking off some of these goals that you had, it boosted the confidence. And I think that that's maybe a forgotten element is that discipline can be built and willpower can be built. You can make it stronger. Some of these people we look up to and admire, I mean, uh, Arnold or the rock or some of these guys, they didn't start out with that work ethic like that. It took a long time. It took them many, many years. And maybe for Arnold, maybe Arnold learned it at a really young age because he's been on fire since he was like 16 years old you know but some people learn a little faster than others but your discipline

can really really be built yeah you can you can absolutely try everything and that's what's cool about the gym and that's what i tell people all the time is is training in the gym. And that's what I tell people all the time is, is training in the gym translates to training life all around. Everything we do, if you practice it and you set goals for yourself, you know, if you, you chase it, you get better. You know, I'm in sales. That's what I do for living. And that's sales 101. You break down an objective into, you know, into small forms, you know, so little accomplishments, you know, I want to, you got to get to A before you get to B before you get to C before you get to D. And if you do that, it's not as overwhelming and it's a lot more realistic. And like you said, you build more confidence that way because now you're getting it done and it snowballs, you know, and before you know it, you're right there at the

finish line. So now that you've slimmed down and you're just looking all ridiculously jacked, So now that you've slimmed down and you're just looking all ridiculously jacked, how's your confidence been? Oh, honestly, it's probably too much. You know, I'm probably a conceited asshole, but I feel great, man. It's awesome. And it's helped me in everything. Like even, you know, even at work and stuff like that with what I do, I deal with a lot of customers. Even, you know, even at work and stuff like that with what I do, you know, I deal with a lot of customers. And, you know, I mean, I just, you know, like I said, it's not right.

And, you know, it's not everybody, but you'll get treated differently, unfortunately. It's the way it is. And, you know, when you're in better shape, people treat you differently. It's not, you know, I don't think it's, I'm not saying it's right, but it's the truth. Yeah. It's interesting. You know, like people, people can't, they can't physically see, uh, that you're an asshole. They can't physically see that you're X religion. They can't, uh, specifically see that you're, uh, you know, racist or you're specifically a, B or C, they can't see that, but people can very clearly see if you're fat,

you know, as you're perpetually in this fat suit and they're gonna have a certain and when you perceive fat with lazy right they probably don't do anything it's probably just and that could be the complete opposite that's the perception people have right this guy doesn't do nothing he sits on the couch all day you know he must be a lazy bum whatever whatever it is right that's the perception people read books by the covers all the time. Well, and, and, and fat and lazy, it's, it's, um, it's, it's a really weird dynamic because people aren't trying to intentionally be lazy. What happens is as your metabolism slows down, it's in our DNA to conserve energy. And when you become a bigger person, you just become more docile. You become more relaxed. You kind of sit down a little bit more. You, when, when you're starting to get uncomfortable and you're going to sweat, when you

go, you know, walk from point A to point B, you're probably just not going to do it, you know? And other people, they might think, man, it would be great if this guy would just take these steps and do this extra stuff. And it's like, well, you don't understand how uncomfortable that is for that person. Maybe their back hurts, the ankle hurts. And, and then you could have you can have a lot of people that aren't compassionate towards that, but that's kind of where that fat and lazy thing comes from. It's because we have it in our system. It's every human being. We don't want to just randomly expend a bunch of calories and then when you're fatter and when you're not eating foods that are good for you, your discipline

and your ambition can be wiped out by the shitty foods that you're eating. Yeah. And that's the other thing, too, is you just feel better. Like people, you know, I never realized I didn't feel good because I had never tried anything else, you know. But when you eat all that processed crap and you have a processed body, you don't have the same kind of energy that you do. How about being able to wipe your ass? You can now wipe your ass for the first time. What's that? I said now you can wipe your ass, right?

I guess. And I'm not with it after I do it. You didn't turn purple. Your hand didn't cramp up. You didn't have to stretch before you did it. I used to get, that's probably the one thing I used to get made fun of for all the time. As a kid and an adult, it was heavy breathing. I mean, I was the wheezy kid, you know. I'd go up a flight of stairs and, you know, you know. And I'm glad I don't get that anymore. You held so much of the fat in your neck.

I think that's probably why. Yeah. I think that's why my head's so big in return. You held so much of the fat in your neck. I think that's probably why. Yeah. I think that's why my head's so big in return. It's just, it was so heavy all these years. You know, that's why I think I get these big traps. I had to hold that.

No, no. What did your, what did your days used to look like versus, uh, the way that your days look now versus like diet or like, just kind of like in, in general, like, you know, like, uh, like, how have the priorities shifted? Like, you know, do you wake up and do like,

let's forget about the bodybuilding for a second. Cause that's kind of specific and there's like cardio involved and shit like that. But like just over the last few months, since you've lost some weight, like, like what's the, you know, do you, do you eat breakfast or do you use intermittent fasting or like what are you doing yeah so so basically what I what I've been doing is I during the when I was prepping for the policy it was a little bit different but so look for the most part you know I wake up and I would I would fast until probably like I used to start my days

get up around 630 a.m. 7 a.m., and start my work day around 8.30, 9. And I usually have a meeting in the morning. And I would typically not eat anything until after my meeting. So I wasn't eating my first meal until probably like 10.30, 11 a.m. every day. So the first $4 or $5 of my day, I would spend fasted. And then from that point, I was eating about five meals a day I would spend fasted and then from that point I was eating about five meals a day and I couldn't tell you what the what the calories were anything like that but what I could tell you is I would eat the same exact stuff every single day and if I wanted to change how I looked how I

felt I would just pull in a couple things to take out a couple things and just like simple basic like the normal stuff you know uh, you know, eight egg whites, a few whole eggs every morning. I love bacon. You know, I would eat stuff like that, chicken and rice, like the basic stuff.

And that was nothing really crazy. I was just eating cleaner foods. You know, I wasn't drinking calories anymore. I wasn't snacking. I mean, I was eating so bad. It really wasn't that hard.

You know, I used to tell people that all the time, but I was so out of whack with what I was eating that it was very, I think it was made easier for me to progress than some other people just because all I had to do was just not eat the junk. And right away, I made a tough progress. And then from that point, I said, okay, let's clean up the food that I'm eating every day. And I started doing that. And, you know, and now I, you know, I eat six meals a day and I eat the same thing every

single day and and it's life is almost simpler now than it was before i don't have to think you know i look at i look at food as kind of fuel and not food and and and that's it you know everything's planned out mapped out i and i i have more time now to focus on other things that are more important you know how amazing is that transition of now it's not necessarily about like breakfast it's not necessarily about like lunch it's just it's just about like what you're going to eat for the day which is a total totally different transition than the way that we're brought up because in the morning you have cereal you have pancakes you have french toast like and uh like that, you do like more like a, you know, now that you're looking at food as fuel, you can eat an omelet at 10 o'clock at night.

If you wanted to, you could have, um, steak for breakfast, you know, like I, or some bodybuilders, they wake up. First thing they have is like halibut and some fricking oatmeal sounds insane. And that might sound gross to some people, but your taste buds are not different in the morning. It's your, uh, it's your psychology that might be changed because of the way that we were brought up. Exactly.

Exactly. You know, and, and I think that's a big thing that people need to do too, is, you know, there's a, there's a hundred ways to skin a cat,

you know, and when somebody asks me about like how I eat something like that, if you just gotta, you just gotta try different things, like don't give up, you know, that's what I like things. Like don't give up. You know, that's what I like to say is don't give up. I mean, it took me years to figure out foods that I liked because I was such a picky eater.

You know, again, because all I ate was crap when I go to whatever I wanted, pizza, whatever. When I was growing up, I got to eat what I wanted. So I wasn't open-minded. I didn't even want to try things. But you got to give it a fair shot. You got to be open-minded. And you can absolutely find

something that that'll work there's there's enough foods out there there's no excuse for you not to be able to find find something that can work for you you know did you um have to do were you kind of one of these gym bros that like uh like almost uh maybe maybe at some point knew too much uh just enough to be dangerous kind of thing where you you would almost talk yourself out of stuff because you knew certain things? Yeah, I think so. Absolutely. I mean, I know I've done that myself. I'm guilty of that myself, where I'm like, I shouldn't do that because A, B, and C,

and I'm worried about all this other bullshit that doesn't matter. I just go in there and work hard and not really worry about it. Yeah, and typically when I get in my head like that it's just it's just me making excuses because i don't want to do something that's hard you know i want to do it easy and and easy doesn't always mean better you know what i mean um a lot of people want to take easy it's just like when you're training right nobody wants to you know whatever the exercises that people hate doing, it's the one they need to do the most, you know, because it's not easy. But easy doesn't mean it's going

to make you better. You know, you have to challenge yourself. And if you challenge yourself, you do it, you accomplish it, you're that much more confident, the next challenge is even easier. And again, it's all about discipline. It's everything. You can relate discipline to everything. Were you a night eater? Did you used to wake up, you know,

in the middle of the night and just crush food or used to eat real late or anything like that? Oh my God. Do you have no idea? That's, that's my, that's still my issue now. And, uh, I have to keep, I have to keep the house empty just to help my, just to help my discipline because I'm guilty of that. I'll wake up and take a leak at 1am and I walk right by the bathroom. I go right to that cupboard and I'm like, I'm like, what. I'll wake up, take a leak at 1 a.m., and I walk right by the bathroom. I go right to that cupboard. And I'm like, what do we got in here?

Smash down a bag of chips, hop back in bed. I was bad for that. I remember when I was big, big, when I was like 285. I remember ordering pizza, falling asleep, waking up five hours later in the middle of the night, not even getting up off the couch, reaching up, grabbing the pizza, eating it, going back to sleep. waking up five hours later in the middle of the night, not even getting off the couch, reaching over, grabbing the pizza, eating it, going back to sleep. That was bad. That was a big issue for me.

Whole things, Oreos, and all that stuff. I used to do similar things. I wouldn't eat a lot of times during the day either. That was the other thing. I don't eat once or twice in a day. Everything I was eating was just all junk at night. I'm guilty of the same thing. I used to do the same thing. I'd go and I don't eat once or twice a day. So everything I was eating was just all junk at night. Yeah.

And I, you know, I'm guilty of the same thing. I used to do the same thing. I'd go and just, you know, ransack my, uh, my cupboard and I would just smash through all those, all that food. But, you know, something I've been trying to share with people lately is, you know, your, your feelings are a big, are a big component of you having ambition, you having discipline. If you don't feel good about yourself and you know that you're a failure in some ways, like just because you ate that at night when

nobody else was around. And because maybe you even ate it in the pantry, it doesn't mean that the calories don't count. They still count and they still hurt you and they still hurt your psyche. You make up the next day and you're not, you're not real pumped about yourself. Like if you were dieting for a few weeks and you went off the rails you'd probably wake up and you probably kind of laugh and you'd be like okay well i i need to give a shit together not a big deal but when you do it uh when you do it frequently you do it several times a week you really feel like shit about yourself and what you said was really powerful is you said the house is empty you know i don't have snacks

because you know that those things are are going to lead you down the path that you don't want to go down and it's going to be too hard for you to have control and it's going to fuck with your feelings as you screw up the way that you feel about yourself ultimately yep exactly you know what why make things harder for yourself you know when they have to be you know why why you know if you can if you can you know it's tough i get from people you live with other people's families they might not be on the same type of diet you know but at the end of the day you know it's still your choice to do it or not do it but you know why not put yourself in the most advantageous position you know if you if you have the ability and you're dieting get

everything out of the house that's exactly right because everything You know, if you, if you have the ability and you're dieting, get everything out of the house. That's exactly right. Because everything's going to be, everything's going to be hard anyway. You know, it's, it's the whole process is going to be difficult. Now that you're doing bodybuilding, you're kind of learning like,

holy shit, this is a real, uh, full court press that they got going on me. Right. I mean, it's bodybuilding is 24 seven, which I can't think of any other sport that's like that.

Nope. Yeah. I, you know, a lot, a lot of lot of respect to the guys who've been doing this for a long time, the guys who do it at the top level. I knew it was going to be a challenge, but like you said, you don't realize how much of a commitment it is. I mean, there's days that I literally don't have enough time to sleep 7, 8 hours, work out for 2, 3 hours with have enough time to sleep, you know, seven, eight hours workout, you know, for two, three hours with the training, the cardio. And then I got to work, you know, 12, 13 hours a day to some days, literally, I just, I have

to sacrifice on some of these ends to make it work, you know, and it sucks, but you know, it's what they got to do. Yeah. And it's like, are you going to, are you going to, um, you know, it doesn't make sense to do cardio over sleeping. You know what I mean? Like it doesn't make sense to go do that half hour, 45 minutes of cardio in replacement of an hour and a half of sleep or something.

It's just dumb. It's to be stupid at a certain point. So that's great that you recognize that there are certain times where you've got to cut some of these things off. Yeah. You know, and it sucks. I mean, I do nothing more. I would love to.

I mean, if I could do this full time, I mean, that that would be a dream but let's be realistic that's just not the case for most people but you know i want it bad enough and i you know i like it too i enjoy it i'm passionate about it so it's easy for me you know obviously somebody that's not into the gym is trying to get in shape it's a different story but they're not going to make that same kind of commitment you know but but you know i enjoy it enough that i make it work and i find it i didn't like it as much as i do there's no way i can do it i commit a lot of time to it you know um but it's it's worth it to me i get a lot out of it like i said it's not just the gym but what i've done in the gym is translating to other things in my life and i know it's making me better all around it's just giving more opportunities you know how has this

impacted your uh your work have you noticed like you know you've been doing better at work over the last several months and stuff like that or or has there been a transition there no that's i absolutely have man as i would say um and that's kind of that was kind of a returning point all kind of happened at the same time you know as i started bettering myself you know um physically you know i started growing mentally and i had an opportunity to better myself in the company i was promoted and you know all of this kind of just happened at the same time and you know so my confidence is going up there my confidence up in the gym and you know just everything you know i've been very fortunate i've had a very good you know couple of few years and everything's kind of been on the up and up. And, and again, it's

because I'm taking these principles that I've learned and I'm applying them to work, you know? And, and I deal, like I told you, I deal with a lot of customers, like interaction, talking to people, stuff like that. And you feel more comfortable, you know, talking to people, you're not self-conscious anymore. And how much more stare to you, right? How much more of your, are you smiling now? Exactly. A ton. Isn't that crazy? And that, and that, and that's something else that, you know, I'm working on too. I just, you know, I, uh, I just ordered the thing. I'm going to fix my teeth, you know, because it's like fix the rest of my body, you know, let's, let's get some braces. You know what I mean? So like, I just, I want to keep bettering myself overall because I, I,

I feel so much better, you know, when you smile better than I used to keep bettering myself overall because I, I, I feel so much better, you know, when you smile better than I used to, when you smile and you're fat, you're kind of like, that doesn't look so great. And so like, I see a lot of the pictures you have on Instagram, you're making like kind of these funny faces and stuff, but I've seen more recently where you're actually smiling and I can, I know from firsthand experience the reason why. Yep. You know?

Yeah, you're absolutely right. You know, it's funny too. Those people tell me all the time, they're like, you're absolutely right you know it's funny too those people tell me all the time they're like they're like you were funnier when you were the fat guy yeah right i get that like all the time so you're like i'm not different i'm the same guy like yeah the face is just not the same i'm like well my head's not as big what do you want me to do about it yeah i don't i don't look as comical sorry yeah exactly i don't look at the ground cart i don't like cartman anymore you know sounds like you got kind of three take-home messages for somebody that's listening to this right now and i i wrote them down and um one simple thing that people can do

is they don't have to necessarily use like real fasting and in my opinion like real fasting is like you know anything over like 16 hours i think like a 10 hour fast is just, it's not, not very long. However, uh, you mentioned that you, you cut out a meal at one point to where, where you went to five meals. So somebody that's listening to this right now, if you're heavy and you want to try to make changes, but you're not really sure where to start, this would be a really good place to start. Just see, you know, uh, baby step your way into it. Just, uh, kind of like, um, kind of like you're sharing, just, uh, you know, baby step your way into it and, and try to have your first meal at maybe 11, have your first meal at maybe noon or maybe even 10, but just maybe

make it further past where you normally would have your first meal. And if you really feel you need to be, make some big changes, maybe you cut out two meals for a little while, or maybe cut out, you know, not eating until two or something like that, but do something that's manageable for you. If you go and dive into some intermittent fasting, uh, that's going to actually have a negative result. So do something easy first and give that a try. So try to cut out a meal. Don't drink your calories. Cause that can be devastating. You got any sort of fruit juices, um, uh, protein shakes, you know, they, they, they kind of have their place a little bit, but I would still be cautious of those just because, uh, that can be overdone too. You can

start throwing in a lot of crap into there. And, uh, a lot of them were made with like artificial sweeteners. And I think that sends the wrong message to us as well. And then, uh, night eating, you know, and it's not the time of day that you're eating. It really doesn't have a ton to do with that. Um, but you can't be waking up in the middle of the night and, and hounding, you know, your, uh, your pantry for food. You're better off, you know, it'll go, it'll go along with the fasting. And when you have the rule not to eat, that's actually a pretty simple rule.

Having a lot of rules and regulations on the types of food that you eat and doing a bodybuilding style diet where you got X amount of carbs, X amount of protein, you can't eat hardly any fat. That is brutal. And most people will never be able to follow it. And that's personally why I think flexible dieting and some of this stuff, I kind of think it's too tough for most people to follow. But if you just take in some of these principles, intermittent fasting is simple. What are you doing for the day? I'm not eating. I'm not eating until 2 o'clock.

It cuts out a lot of meal prep. It saves you a lot of dough, which I know is a huge concern for a lot of people. So these are some things you might want to look into. Was there anything else that you kind of added into the mix that uh that helped you drop some weight did you you know walk or anything like that i do i do man those those 10 minute walks though they absolutely do work there's no there's no doubt with that you know i uh i i two three times a day every single day you know especially if i start to feel a little bit of groggy you, I started walking around my building outside and go walk the lot. And, uh, I, uh, I did that a ton.

You know, I also, you know, stairs, I like doing stairs. I like, um, like kind of like, uh, what do they call it? Like, like shit train, like, like intense bursts, you know what I mean? Stuff like that. So it's, it's, you know, again, something that's easier for me. You don't have to go balls to the walls, you know? And, uh uh one thing i was i thought when you're talking about the food too try to plan your food you know if you if you can i i plan every day the day before what i can eat i know sometimes you're not going to be able

to but if you just wing it you're going to set yourself up for failure you know if you can if you can kind of decide what you're going to eat ahead of time they'll let us like these mistakes a really huge tip too is to um before you go out to eat when you're not sure like if you're going out to eat like for you if you're going out to eat with your wife you guys get to pick the destination and so on you know but if you're going out to some restaurant you've never been to you're not really sure you're supposed to be on your plan you're supposed to be on your diet then you might want to eat before you go out. And then you can still eat in front of everybody.

You can still be social if you want. But then what you have doesn't matter quite as much. And you can still try to pick the best possible choice for you. You don't have to be weird and crazy picky about it. You don't have to make a big old, a big old scene about it. And then also too, you're not starving. And the second they bring out bread and like it just the other thing is too is is share share this stuff with people you know like when you like last night my wife and i went out it'd be harder if we're in a bigger group but we i do this sometimes even

when we're bigger bigger groups right when we sat down at the table the guy went to bring bread and i said no bread and uh so so he was like, okay. And I said, you know what, actually for everything that we order, like we don't want any starches or breads or crackers or nothing with anything. And he was like, okay, got it. And he was super pumped. And then like, he came back and he's showing us the menu and he's showing us all these different ways we can order stuff. And he was super helpful in that most of the time that's going to happen. You know, sometimes somebody might ask, Oh, you know, what kind of diet is this or something? But he was, he was all helpful. And then even when I ordered, cause I had, I kind of had a weird order. I ordered like just all meat. Cause I'm on this

carnivore thing, you know, I got this going and I got three different kinds of meat and they ended up taking off, uh, you know, like 20% off the bill because I didn't get any, any of the side vegetables or any of the side other stuff that comes with it. And I'm like, damn, I got a bunch of awesome meat. That's a real high quality that at a high end place. And I took 20% off my guy. This is a, this is a win win. But you want to think about go, when you go into those situations, you have to have a conversation with yourself. You have to give yourself a pep talk like a football coach would give a team before they go and play a playoff game.

You got to be really serious about this shit. And you have to tell yourself, look, man, no one's invading on what I'm doing. I'm not going to, someone's not going to plop down a beer and I'm not going to be like, Oh dude, I need a beer. Don't be a pussy. Like be stronger than that. You can be stronger than that you can build this discipline but the discipline won't build if you keep cracking all the time so you have to stay on the plan you have to force yourself here and there that's how we get points on the scoreboard

yep no no that's absolutely you're absolutely right you know people expect it to when you when you go out to eat stuff like that diet you know a lot of people diet it's not out of the ordinary people ask that's true you know substitute all the time you know like you said make it easier When you go out to eat and stuff like that, a lot of people diet. It's not out of the ordinary. People ask to have things substituted all the time. Like you said, make it easier for yourself. Don't have that bread come out on the plate. Don't challenge yourself. If you can make it easier, make it easier.

And when you're that guy, don't be embarrassed when you're out with your friends and stuff like that. Because I tell you what, after you go out with them two or three times like that, and they realize how much discipline you have, they're going to be telling you how, how awesome you are for doing it. And you're going to feel that much better about it. You know, you're going to feel that much better about it.

And also that, that they can't, you know, and right. And also to, you know, a lot of these friends, like, I'm sorry to say it,

but shit, man, like when you keep making progress, like if you keep climbing a ladder at work and you keep getting, you keep staying in shape like this, those same friends, a lot of them are going to be around. You know, you might have a couple of homies from back in the day that will always be there. Cause they'll, they'll always just understand that you're the same dude. You just, your goals just keep changing. They keep getting bigger.

Your dreams keep getting bigger. But like, I don't, I don't have one. I don't have one friend. I don't have one friend from high school i barely have friends now just like employees and family pretty much i've wiped everybody out no one can stand me anymore but these are the kind of things that are going to happen but look man you know these those are the sacrifices that that might have to be made you know you want do you want to be like everybody else or you want to try to make a difference in this world and you want to try to make a difference for yourself? You look at a lot of people and they're just kind of doing the same old thing.

They're drinking, you know, they're in their hometown. They're just doing, they're just kind of sputtering. You're like, man, like, I don't know. Some of your friends and some of these people, you care so much about them and you know that they're, you know that they can execute a lot better. And you're like, man, I'd love to see them, you know, I can turn the corner, but they're going to have to learn it for themselves. It's got to come from within. Yep.

No, exactly. You know, you can, you can bring a horse to water. You can't make a drink. You know, you ultimately have to be thirsty enough to go out up there and get it. Uh, so, uh, when is this contest, did you say? April 27th. Yeah, it's the Cutler in Boston. I'm looking forward to it.

It's exciting for me. It's different. And it's cool because I've made a lot of, you know, I love networking in the gym, stuff like that with people. And now I'm getting to meet a whole bunch of different know, I, I love, you know, networking in the gym, stuff like that with people. And now I'm getting, you know, meet a whole bunch of different people that, you know, I never really had talked to before, just, you know, bodybuilders, podlifters, whatever. It's just different. You know what I mean? And, uh, so it's cool. I've been, you know, trained a lot differently and

doing a lot of different things and, and trying a lot of different things. Is your wife pissed at you yet because like bodybuilding is like just another level commitment has she gotten frustrated with yet uh you know what i get it she's an angel man she uh she she puts up with so much crap with me you know and she she cuts all my food for me she does a lot there's no way there's no way i'd be able to do it without her help that's 100 let me know how she's feeling when you're let me know how she's feeling about a week out the last eight weeks percent. Let me know how she's feeling when you're, let me know how she's feeling about the last eight weeks. Yeah. Yeah. Let me know how she's feeling when you're about like a week or two out. She'll probably start being pretty,

pretty mad at you because you won't be able to do shit. Everybody keeps warning me. Yeah. Yeah. It gets to be tough, dude. And I'll tell you what, you know, um, a couple of days before the contest, this is my experience. and a few days after you just are not yourself so don't don't uh don't be scared by that don't don't worry about that like you will not you will most likely will not want to do anything like you won't it sounds sounds awful to say but like you most likely won't give a fuck about anybody else but yourself for a couple days but you'll, but you'll get over it. You might even want to warn your wife.

Say, hey, look, I don't know what this is, but a couple guys warned me. But it's like an out-of-body experience. It doesn't feel good, and it gets you kind of worried. Like, what is going on with me? I'm such a weirdo. But, yeah, it'll go away. It almost feels like, you know, in the movies, like when your body escapes from itself and you're watching yourself.

It's awkward, dude. That's one cool thing I'll say that I'm enjoying about doing this. I love pilots. I'm always going to do that. That's never going to go away. But powerlifting, especially when you're a fat guy, you pick a goal to train for

a 10 12 you know 60 weeks whatever it is you train and you might see a little bit of progression you know through strength and stuff like that um but i've never had the you know the aesthetic changes and now that i'm i'm you know fairly lean or at least leaner than i ever have been i'm seeing stuff on a weekly basis change and it's really awesome. That gets me fired up. When I wake up the next morning, I look different than I did the day before. It's crazy to me. I've never seen it. I'm starting to have abs.

I've never had abs in my life. You know what I mean? It's weird, right? I'm still far out of shape compared to what I was. I'm like the little Lisa. We have a certain friend listening in you know, who he is. You, uh, cut a wrestling promo for him one time. And, uh, you know, he's struggling, you know, he's not, he's not, uh,

quite making, making the turn. We're not going to mention his name. No reason to mention his name. We will keep them. We'll keep anonymous, but he said he's listening and he said, he's getting pumped up and he's getting excited. And he said a lot of the things that you're saying sound the exact reason why he was scared. He couldn't turn the corner. He's kind of embarrassed and so on.

What do you got to say? There's probably a lot of other people listening that feel the same way this guy does. What advice, man, would you give to help these guys turn the corner and to see the light? You know, I mean, it comes down to, you know, I'll give you two metaphors, right? You can't hit a home run if you don't step up to the plate. And if you reach for the moon, even if you miss, you're going to get the stars. You know, have a long-term goal, have the short-term goals, you know, and, and, you know,

allow yourself to be successful and don't be scared. You know, you, you, you learn more from failure than you do from success. And once you figure that out, um, you can use that to make yourself better. You know, don't be, don't be scared to fall down. You know, if you try something and it doesn't work, you're going to have a much better idea on how to make it work the next time. And just stay committed and stay disciplined. Like I said, discipline, discipline. And like you said before, you can learn discipline. I don't, you know, people ask me, you know, and I'm no trainer, I'm no expert,

but they ask me all the time, oh, I want to do what you do. I want to train five, six days a week. I want to eat six meals a day. I said, that's awesome. But first, why don't we do this? Why don't we pick two or three days you can commit to every week? Why don't we try a couple of simple things? Take baby steps, allow yourself to succeed. I'd rather see you commit to training three days a week. And then if you can train a fourth and fifth day, awesome. And you're going to feel so much better about yourself for doing it versus you saying, I'm going to commit to six days a week. And maybe you do it for the first week, second week, maybe even the third week.

But the fourth week works busy and you can't get to the gym half the week. Now you're down the dumps. You end up falling off and just quit because you don't think you can do it anymore. Don't do it that way. Don't be scared to try. Don't be scared to try. Challenge yourself. You'll feel so much better for it afterwards.

Something we've always done here at Super Training gym is we've always trained on the weekends and um you know it's not always easy because like some guys might want to hang out with their girlfriend or their wife or whatever um but i mean it's like look your your girlfriend or whoever you want to hang out with on the weekend they're probably not really doing a whole lot at like 7 a.m you know uh 5 a.m 6 a.m on the weekend and yeah it might be kind of a drag to wake up early on the weekend because you wake up early during the week but a lot of people say look man i ain't got time to train it's like okay well a lot of people work monday through friday i know some people have different schedules but whatever days it is that you don't work why not

try to work out on those days like you said set it up make it a little bit easier for yourself don't make everything so yourself don't make everything so hard don't make everything so complicated there's no reason to even have a discussion about doing an hour of cardio every day because you're just never going to do it it's going to that's way too that's way too tough uh think about you know what i'm going to start doing one 10 minute walk a day and if i can do five or six for the week, that would be a victory. See if you can do that, set that up, get that knocked out of the park and then start moving on to things that are maybe a little bit more challenging. No, exactly. You know, they, they,

they've got a saying that successful people don't sleep in, you know, I, uh, I've been training every Sunday morning with a group of guys and the's changed over the years, but it's been the same for the four of us for the past four years. Every Sunday, just about for the past four years, we've gotten together. No matter whatever happens else during the week, we've gotten together. We train every Sunday morning. You're absolutely right. We all get together between 7 and 8 a.m. just because it's early. It's before the day starts.

No matter what's going on, whether it's a work, a birthday party, most of the time, 8 a.m. just because it's early, it's before the day starts. It's no matter what's going on, whether it's a work, a birthday party, most of the time, everybody can get there. And you have that commitment to not just yourself, but everybody else there too. And that comes down to that accountability thing. You know, you know that if you don't show up, you know, if I don't show up,

you know, my dad's going to be, you know, by himself listening, you know. If he doesn't show up, I'm by myself listening, whatever it is. But we rely on each other. You can't necessarily be successful alone. It's okay to ask for help from people. And that's completely fine, whatever it takes. I think a lot of times we're reaching for stuff,

and we should not really reach for stuff. Stuff should pull on us. And when you have other teammates and you have other people in mind, that's when you get that pull. That's when you like, you're like, oh man, I can't not go at six in the morning because everybody else is there. You know, if it was up to you, if it's just your push towards something, then it'd be harder. Then you're like, I could just show up at eight. It won't matter. And then what happens? Something happens at eight. Your dad calls and is like, Hey man, let's go get breakfast. Or you're someone in your family calls us. Hey man, let's go hit up that diner and smash some food. And there you are eating instead of doing what

you set out to do. And the cycle just keeps going later on the day you're tired and you got another excuse and why you're not. And you know, you know, I, I've lived all these things myself, not necessarily with lifting. Cause I've always been a nut about lifting and I'm really happy for that. But I have, uh, I have had a lot of other things that I've put off in my life. Um, where can people, uh, find you? I'm sure a lot of people are going to want to contact you. Uh, is it okay for people to slide into the DM and ask you some questions on how you become successful with making this change? Yeah, absolutely, man. You know, I'd love to. I'm always happy.

You know, like I said, I'm no expert. I can only tell people what I've done and what I've tried. And, you know, I'm more than happy to give anybody any information I can and try to help them out. At Team Cupcakes, I'll be on Instagram. It's the best way to get me. Slide right into the DM. I'll answer it promptly with any questions, concerns anyone has. But, yeah, feel free.

Oh, I got one more question. What's something you do? Like, I know, like, you're in bodybuilding mode now, which is just a different world. There's not a lot of play. But what's a treat? What would you say is kind of like a borderline healthiest treat or snack or something that you do to kind of keep you on your plan? For me, I love protein shakes. So a lot of times I'll do, um, a shake before bed.

Like when I start to get more serious, I start to even pull that out. But you know, I do things like that. I might even go a few weeks where I allow myself to have like protein bars and stuff, which are not, it's not common for, uh, someone who's trying to get in really good shape to have some of those things around. But I like to use those things rather than having, you know, 47 peanut butter cups. I have like a quest bar, things like that. Yeah. Yeah. You know what?

I actually, um, so I've always got sugar-free jello on tap. That's like a, there's always a big bowl of jello in there. Like, so, you know, worst case scenario. And I'm, I'm, I got the hungry horse. I grab some jello, pop a glass of water, you know, cause most of the time, if you can just get past it, five, ten minutes later, you forget about it. It just depends on how serious the diet is.

But you know what? You said Quest bars. Quest makes those protein chips. They taste like Doritos. Right. It's like crack, man. I love it. You know, if I'm going to have something, you know, I try to, you know,

when you change the way you eat and you eat clean most of the time, you appreciate the little things a lot more. You know, I mean, I'm satisfied with a lot less than I would have been before. You know what I mean? You just got to kind of get over that threshold and get there. But yeah, I try to keep some, you know, sugar-free popsicles, sugar-free jello, stuff like that. Stuff that's, you know, not going to really do me any harm harm and just give me a little bit of flavor, something like that. But I try not to cheat too much now that I'm on this diet

just because it enables me too much. I was telling somebody that yesterday. They were saying, you know, have you had any cheat meals? I've been doing this diet for like five or six weeks now. And I said, no, well, just Christmas, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. That's it. They said, why don't you ask for a cheat meal? And I oh i don't want to and i said why wouldn't you want to i said because if i cheat once i'm gonna want to cheat again i'd rather go as long as i can without

it you know yeah these artificial some people it's the opposite you know these uh artificial sweeteners and things that taste sweet it's a little bit like going to a strip club you know you can look but you can't touch you can't get too involved to a strip club you know you you can look but you can't touch you can't get too involved and you can't you know you can't go overboard which is the whole fun of the whole thing in the first place right you want to dive into a giant fucking bowl of ice cream you want to you want to just kill a you know like like i used to buy like you know i i'm kind of and i've been sharing this with people for the carnivore diet but i've done this with a bunch of different things like i'll look at like a thing of ben and jerry's i'm like you know do i want to get to

tonight though or do i want to get fish food and i'll buy both i'm like why why would i choose you know i don't want to just get both and mix them together why do they even come with lids it's just once it comes off it's not going back on yeah it's done it's it's it's a done deal like those dangerous stuff man that's good stuff. Man, it's incredible. I would tell people just, you know, like you're saying, you got some of these treats, you know, side things. But an interesting thing about what you're saying is, like, you recalibrate your palate. And now when you taste like a strawberry, you're like, holy shit, that's what a strawberry tastes like?

Put a little bit of whipped cream on that thing and you're like, holy crap. Wow, okay, that tastes really good. Throw some walnuts in some oatmeal and you feel like you're having a damn party. It's insane what happens. But I think that last night when I went out to eat and I had those different meats and stuff,

without getting the vegetables, because vegetables are always cooked in some sort of weird oil and butters and all these different, I'm sure some of the meat was too. But when I was going home, I said to my wife, I'm like, I don't have a craving right now. You know, most of the time we go out to eat and I crush some food at a restaurant, then I'm always like, man, I want to go home and have some chocolate. I want to have some candy or ice cream or something. Like I always want to finish the night that way. And because I didn't

have something that was like, I didn't have stuff that was so spectacular. Um, it didn't, it didn't, uh, it didn't cause that same response in my head. And so I think that that's something that people should be aware of. The more that you can abstain, the more abstinence that you can have from some of these really freaking wonderful foods, the better off you're going to be. Yeah. And it comes down to wanting it and needing it too. You know, when you get that urge, when you get that, you know, that craving, just stop, take a second, said, do I need this or do I want this? You know? And if you answer that question truthfully,

you're not going to make the bad choice. You're going to be at the Arnold classic this year. You think I already booked the trip, brother. I'll be there. Oh my God. Thanks for the warning.

Yep. So let everybody know cupcakes coming in hot. Oh dude, you're going to be, you'll be absolutely shredded by, I mean, you're, coming in hot. Oh, dude, you'll be absolutely shredded. I mean, you're going to be not too far away from the contest there. Yeah, we're going to be all diced up. Yeah, that'll be the first week in March.

So, yeah, I'll be like six weeks up. I can't let you show me up. I might have to carnivore my way all the way to the goddamn Arnold Classic. You're a jerk. Yeah. Yeah. You got a man. Let's see what you got.

You know, you were, you were pretty, uh, you were pretty shredded out last year. Maybe, maybe we can, uh,

maybe we can get a training, maybe we can get a training session in. I'd love to do that, man. That'd be fantastic. You know, what's funny is I get, I've got pictures with you from like the past four years four years, and we both have, like, shrunk.

You know? Oh, yeah. I remember the first time I got to shake your hand at the Olympia, like, four or five years ago. We were both pretty big. And then the next year at the Arnold, and then, you know, the next year at the Arnold. And it's like we're both leaning out, you know?

It's just crazy to see the transformation. At that seminar that you were talking about, I walk in the room. The first thing that I say without even seeing you yet, and I don't even know if you were there quite yet. I went around because I was in this circle and I'm talking to people and I'm like, man, I think everybody thinks there's a buffet here. And my brother's got the camera and my brother's filming everything. And, you know, it's kind of like one fat guy, power lifter after another. And my brother puts a camera on you and you're like, I'm just here for the lasagna. It's like, we both had our minds in the same, uh, the same spot, you know?

Yeah. The inner, the inner, the inner smell he was talking to me. The craziest thing is one of the reasons why I was drawn to you and meeting you and stuff is you look like a bell in a lot of ways. So as insulting as that could possibly be, I apologize, but you kind of do look a little bellish. Yeah. Well, I mean, what can I say? You got good genes. You got that. You're off the team face, if you don't mind me saying. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. It's an awful place to be. Anyway, man, it was great having you on the show.

Anything else you want to add before we drop off? No, thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity. It was awesome talking with you guys. You know, whenever you're ready, you know, come on down to Boston. I'll have the garage open for you. At least until you open up Super Train East Coast. Awesome.

All right, my man. Strength is never a weakness, and we'll catch you later, bud. All right, brother. Take care. See you. That was awesome, man. That went really well. Yeah, you know, that was a lot of what I was hoping for.

I mean, the point of bringing someone on isn't like, hey, look at how many fans we got. It's nothing to do with any of that. What it is, it's perspective. Because people can sit here and they can say, oh, Mark, he's made his money and he's done what he wanted to do in powerlifting and so it's easy for him to get in shape.

It's easy for him to do these things. Well, here's a guy, he's got not just a 9-5, it sounds like it's even more than that. He's working really hard and simultaneously he's able to get in the gym. He's able to do powerlifting. He's able to transition into bodybuilding. He's able to drop a bunch of weight. He has a wife, he has goal, he has goals outside the gym. And, uh, you know, I, I just think, but for me, that's like one of the better podcasts, uh, that, that we done, because I think that that's really special and I can't wait to, uh, to do more of that in 2019. I think it's going to be a lot of fun.

Yeah. I'm so fired up right now. I mean, just hearing, I mean, yeah, hearing his story, that that's, that was amazing. But I mean, he just said a couple of things where I'm just like, holy shit. When he's talking about discipline, uh know, he said successful people don't sleep in. Like, I know I've heard that at some point in my life. But for some reason, hearing it coming from him, I was just like, ooh, holy shit, it's on. And probably the reason why it sounds really good coming from him is because he has his eye on the prize right now, but he's probably not in possession of it. You know what I mean?

Like, so he's still, he's still striving for it. Like, you know, um, it's an interesting thing. They've, they've done studies, uh, before showing like your happiness doesn't exponentially, uh, go through the roof with your finances. I mean, they've actually done studies on this. uh, go through the roof with your finances. I mean, they've actually done studies on this. They'll show like, you know, if you go from, if you go from 10,000 to 20,000, there's like this amount of change you go, but there's like these brackets. And if you go from like 20 to 40, it's like, yeah, you'll see a little increase, but that same increase doesn't happen again.

As you keep going up. However, it starts to level off when you start to get about 80, again as you keep going up however it starts to level off when you start to get about 80 90 000 bucks is when people kind of are are like okay like i think when people get to that level i think they start to realize i could work more i'm definitely intelligent enough to make probably quite a bit more money but you know what i don't want to because i i don't want to be working all the time and so it's it's an it's an, it's an interesting thing, but it doesn't, you know, it doesn't, things don't just exponentially, uh, uh, continue to make you happier, but you have to figure out, you know, different things in your life that are going to allow you to make progress in. And when you make progress in those areas, progress is happiness. When you start to make, I just, I was sharing this the other day and sometimes I feel bad

and saying certain things certain ways, but there's no other way to put it. I don't believe that you can be really, truly happy with yourself all around if you're not happy with the way that you look. If you look in the mirror every day and you're like, I'm fucking, and I'm not, I'm not talking about like, um, you know, someone who's born with something, you something. I'm talking about something you have control over. I'm not talking about you're born without a hand or something like that. I'm not talking about that kind of thing. I'm talking about when you are 60, 70, 80 pounds overweight,

I think it's really hard to have the happiness that you're really truly looking for. I'm also not talking about having an extra 10 or 20 pounds i mean all of america has has spots on them that can be like i'm also i'm not talking about that because sometimes you see the message from some especially the fitness women where they're like i'm not afraid to be a bigger woman and you're like you weigh 150 and you're 510 you're not heavy and you never really were. You know, it's like, you know, we, you gotta, you gotta be about 250 for us to accept some of the, some of the words, some of those words that you're,

you're writing. But, you know, it was great hearing from him, hearing from somebody that is, that is doing it. And then especially after the message that I got yesterday, you know, I'm not going to let a message ruffle my feathers from somebody that is doing it. And then especially after the message that I got yesterday, I'm not going to let a message ruffle my feathers or anything, but the reason why I brought that up and the reason why I even read stuff, some people might be like,

why the hell would you even read that? The reason that I read that is because I care. I give a shit. That message is not going to hurt my feelings, but that message makes me think about the message that I share. I'm not going to change my feelings, but that message makes me think about the message that I share. I'm not going to change my message because of one person, but I do want to learn perspective. Like, what is this guy's life like that he feels that frustrated with it, where he wrote

me this, you know, five paragraph thing, right? And then I want to figure out, I'm not going to be able to help everybody. That's an impossible mission. But I would love for everybody to at least understand, you know, because like the next comment was from another guy where he's like, he's a sellout and this is that. And I'm like, I'm sure that these people follow all people in fitness. Right. And it's like, who are you following?

Are you following Dana Lynn Bailey? You're following Rob Bailey. You're following Bradley Martin. Are you following, you know, are you following Larry Wheels? Like Larry Wheels just came out with his own wrist wraps and his own elbow wraps. You know, Bradley Martin has an entire line of clothing. The Bailey's have clothing and supplements. Right. Like everyone is trying to monetize what they're doing i mean it's just it's the way that it is and i don't really i don't think that's uh i don't even really know what selling out would really even uh mean i guess i would sell out to like a bigger company for an easier job and to not have to do the hard work of like creating

everything that we've created here i guess that would have been selling out, but I never did anything like that. I never took a handout from, I mean, I I've, I've had to take, uh, you know,

so I had to have money loaned to me, but like, other than that, other than being fortunate enough to have someone loaned me 5,000 bucks to start super training gym, which was a gym member. And that wasn't even luck. Cause I explained to him what I was doing and he wanted to invest in it. And so there you go. And then also getting some

money loaned to me for the start of the Slingshot. I mean, other than those two things, there's never been a situation where I needed anything from anybody. Those were two situations where I did, I guess. But I think that you're not going to find anybody that has started really anything all that substantial without some sort of help, some sort of handout, some sort of gift from somewhere, from somebody. Yeah. I think if you were to sell out, you would, I don't know, you'd get with another company that you previously were talking shit about or something, you know, and be like, no, no, no, he doesn't understand. Like that was all for show. Like we're actually, right. We've been partners for a while, like go buy all their stuff you know i mean like but nah all our stuff's original and genuine right and and

like i said i'm not gonna let things like that you know uh bug me but i do like to learn about it because i think that the ultimate thing is to you know really put a lot of high value on how to communicate to people, how to, you know, how to, like, I just hope that people can understand, uh, what we're talking about. If they want to flip past it because they don't like it, then that's, that's one thing. That's, that's totally fine. But I don't want people to ever think, you know, because I post a picture of a car, I post a picture. A lot of times I'm fucking around too like like look man like i love like lil wayne like i love all these rappers and i love um i love rick flair like rick flair all you ever talked about is diamond rings and how how uh expensive his alligator uh shoes were and

like and all these women he was around and he's coming out of his limousine. And I love, I love that stuff. I think his stuff's fun. And, um, you know, I, I'm certainly not wearing diamond rings and wearing, you know, a $50,000 watch or anything, but I do like to spend some money on some stuff cause it's fun. It's cool. Anything else to add in on anything? I'm just, I'm fired up, dude. I really needed today's bench session.

We warmed up really good today. I'm kind of upset with you because, you know, you're starting to steal all the strength. You're starting to steal all the thunder. There's only so much weight and so much success that people can have in here in one day, and you're starting to consume a lot of it. It's getting frustrating. Don't forget the stack of happiness. I'm starting to take chips away from your stack of happiness, and you're not going to be as happy now.

No, I was very depressed during today's workout because you stole. I went to look for the happiness. I went to the cupboard, and I was like, somebody must have fucking moved it. And then I went to the other one, and it was gone. Now it's in my cupboard. Why are you doing that? But, I mean, in all seriousness, though, like, I feel like it's definitely, like, the weather, like, the gloominess. But I just, I had a bad day yesterday.

Like, I was not smiling. You know, I trained at home, and I was trying to get Stephanie to do, like, you know how we pull the udders, basically call it, that movement. And, you know, she was using her tricep. And I just remember, like, I started getting frustrated. I was like, okay, why am I so upset? Like, what's going on? And I just didn't have a good day. And then ended up going to a family birthday party.

And that really, you know, that was exactly what I needed. But this morning's training session, we warmed up our shoulders. My shoulder's been bugging me for some reason. what I needed. But this morning's training session, we, we warmed up our shoulders. My shoulder has been bugging me for some reason. Um, we, we did, we just, I took a long time to get it going. Yeah. And then got under the bar. I'm like, this is what it's supposed to feel like. It felt good. And then, uh, you know, you, you had walked away and I'm like, yeah, I want to go up. So like I added, you know, uh, I slowly rampeded up but i ended up putting a 185 on the bar and then we had like 120 in chains and i had a slingshot on but you know i unracked it i'm like oh my gosh this is so much weight like i'm oh what's gonna

happen yeah and i ended up uh not super clean but i got three reps out of it yeah and i got off of that and i'm just like i text stephanie i'm like i don't care we're going to costco i'm getting all of the food we won yeah exactly that's yeah and then uh so like dj was on the live stream he's like hey what's up buddy i'm like dude i'm fasting right now we had a great bend session and this is one of the best conversations we've ever had you know with uh freddie over Like, dude, everything's great right now. I'm fired up, man. That's awesome.

And if you want to join me, tomorrow I'm going pretty deep. I'm going to go, I'm going to try to go for like a 24 hour fast. So I don't know if you want to try to hang with that, but either way you can do whatever, you know, if you, I think, I think let's just say, let's just have you do 18 hours no matter what. And then you can figure out what you want to do from there. All right. Yeah. I think I can do a 24 hour if I plan it and I, I finished eating earlier.

Right. You know, cause like I'm fasting right now. So I think I'm going to end up going pretty hard, you know, I don't know, in like another four hours. Yeah.

And then I'll probably eat again before i go to bed so i don't want to have to wait till bedtime the next day right right so yeah and so like the way i've been doing it um it's been working out pretty good i've been shutting it down early each night i go like seven and then like i forget the math but i'll eat it like five or four something like that so that's it's, it's not, it's, it's weird because I'm actually feeling really strong doing it. And I don't understand why I'm having a hard time understanding, but, um, you know, it's supposed to be protective. It's supposed to keep you from losing muscle mass and whatever the hell's going on. It feels like it's working pretty.

Yeah. Uh, Tyrell was asking me about it and i'm like i i cannot tell you anything about why i'm fasting but i'm currently fasting tell them about the st classic i had a pee of it all right well actually you know who was just saying that uh i can't say this guy's name but we'll just go with rex uh i definitely won't touch three plates at the meet, but, um, what Mark was just saying, the ST Classic, Super Training Classic is going to be here in Sacramento, February 9th and 10th at the, uh, Cal Expo Fairgrounds. It's going to be held at the Total Health and Fit Expo. Um, we have registrations been up for a while.

We really want people to start signing up, especially if you're listening to the podcast, it'd be really cool to have just, uh, the whole Power project army. I don't think that's what we're calling it, but whatever, whatever we are going to call it. Um, it would just be sick to have, uh, people that are here on the live stream. I know BMOC is going to be there. Um, it'd be cool to have Bobby Ray show up out of nowhere. I don't even know if he can leave his hometown in Georgia, wherever he's from, but from. But no, that would be sick, man. And Mark keeps saying that I'm going to do it. I guess I'm committed now. I have no idea what like my opening numbers or like my body weight. I don't know any of that. Mark's trying to

keep it as simple and as easy as possible for me because it will be my first meet. So the less pressure, the better. So, yeah, like I said, I have no idea. And then we were training last week and somebody had asked like, hey, so should he be hitting his openers today? And he's like, ah, no, we're not going to worry about that. He's just going to hit whatever he hits. nah, we're not going to worry about that. He's just going to hit whatever he hits. And on one hand, that freaks me out because I really want to know what I should be aiming for.

But on the other hand, it makes a lot of sense. If I don't know what's on the bar, I just, you know, I kind of go for it. But one thing that we'll definitely get into at some point is, seeing as this is my first meet, I'm noticing things that I never noticed before, which is like, I see somebody cough, and I'm like, I got to go. Like, get away from me. If I get sick right now, I'm going to be in a lot of trouble. to be in a lot of trouble. So, you know, when I see the team, you know, they do multiple meets per year or, you know, even one per year, I'm just like, man, there's a lot more involved than just training and getting strong. There's, you know, it's not as bad as bodybuilding, but there is the sleep aspect. There's, you know, eating enough. There's not getting too far away from where you want to weigh, but at the same time not you know being afraid of gaining to get a little bit stronger right so it's like man dude my my

hands hands down to props to everybody that that competes on a regular basis i had no idea it gives you uh it gives you a lot of anxiety and absolutely part of the good part for you is that you haven't competed before, so there's not the anxiety of doing better than you did before. Yeah. You do want to do better than you did in the gym, but everybody totally understands and actually almost expects that you're going to do a little bit worse than you normally would do in the gym. That's pretty common.

It just depends on how you're lifting. I've been showing you like pauses on benches and we've been going over a lot of stuff and as the meet gets a little closer we'll refine that so you should be totally fine and you should be able to at least replicate what you've done in the gym if not do a little bit more because we'll taper off and things like that but yeah a lot of times um you know people's first meet they do a little bit worse but it's kind of good that you don't have a previous contest yeah where you're like oh man i gotta at least hit you know 225 in the bench or bust you know yeah it's just been really cool man like the feedback and you know i i don't know what i was

expecting but like i had a conversation with uh jp price because he had dm me and he's like dude you're doing so good like you need to do it on the platform now. Like it's officially it's 226 kilos or whatever. Yeah. And I was just telling him like, you know, I, I know no one's going to be negative. No one's ever going to say like, oh yeah, I remember doing that in junior high or, you know, whatever it is, even though like at some point someone's going to say that cause it's, you know, we're friends or whatever. But I was telling him like, dude, everyone's been so supportive.

or whatever. But I was telling him like, dude, everyone's been so supportive. Like I'm blown away by like how positive everyone's been. Um, it just makes you want to do more and it makes you want to help others feel this feeling. Right.

Well, there's going to be like 95% of the people are going to be like really supportive. Yeah. And it'll be a large group of people that are like ultra supportive where they're like, Hey, let me help you like do like,

especially like when you actually compete, there'll be somebody on the on that day that comes out of the woodwork that you're like wow like they just kind of helped me the whole day like what but that's you know that's kind of the magic of of having a team is that we like we make sure and we'll we discuss it a lot of times beforehand we don't all sit down together and talk about it but we'll say okay who's competing and uh there might be somebody in the group that like a lot of people don't pay attention to normally we'll have to say hey you know we got to get extra attention towards this guy because or girl because normally like they lift kind of quiet every once in a while we got some people in here that they don't they don't really care too much about like the music that's that's playing they don't make any noise when they lift and so we kind of quiet every once in a while we got some people in here that they don't they don't really care too much about like the music that's that's playing they don't make any noise when they lift

and so we kind of like they get lost in the shuffle and uh on game day it's important that we're just kind of you know all all over there all over everybody making sure they're getting the lifts that they that they uh that they want to get but today with those chains the way they were set up was really you know brutal the way they all kind of jumped on there yeah at the top even like when i went to bench like 365 it's like i i almost wasn't ready for it to be that heavy at the top when i went to push into it i did push into it and i did okay but i was like whoa like that was that was crazy at the top and then i actually took the chains off because I was like, let me do four. Like, I don't want to just make a big jump and get hurt.

So I did 405 and that flew up easy. And that felt weird because I took the chains off. And then, so I'm like, man, I guess I knew that the 405 was going to be like a roll of dice. I didn't know how it was going to go exactly, but it was nice to be able to hit that big weight with all that chain on there that's like um you know 525 pounds or something like that yeah at the top of the lift you know yeah i loved the way we set up the chains today uh i don't know normally when we have the chains just you know as uh whatever the normal setup yeah i feel like the it's almost like uh bands or like even a bamboo bar like I kind of get a little weird with it. Right.

With today, for some reason, like unracking all the weight on the top with the chains up high, I was able to just dump it and then it flew off my chest. It was great. Well, it was good because you can kind of build up some speed. You can kind of build up some speed going into it.

And then all that chain starts to hit you. And actually, you know, from a, from a perspective of like, uh, the way that we're moving as your body becomes in a better position, which you'd be able to hold the most weight at lockout. Like if someone just handed you the weight, then, then, uh, you can, you could probably hold three 15, but trying to press three 15, it will kill you for now. Right now. Yeah. But you could, but she could hold it. probably hold 315 but trying to press 315 it'll kill you for now right right now yeah but you could but you could hold it and at the bottom what you could hold on your chest without moving it

would probably be like 275 you know probably quite a bit more um what you could lower without the weight you know crashing through your chest would probably be about 275 also um so you can lower a lot more weight you can hold a lot more weight at lockout um and so the bands and the chains and even a slingshot they take advantage of a lot of this because the weights are lighter at the bottom where it would be the hardest and then it would be really hard like we've done those dead presses before right where you just press like almost just off your chest you can't press anything that way it's impossible it's so hard i still jacked up my shoulder yeah it's brute it's brutal it's it's it's insanely i wish there was a way to utilize that movement a little bit i wish there was a way to utilize

that exercise uh without the injury because it does have a big impact. It can help a lot, but it's just very injury prone. We used to set them up in chains. And when they were set up in the chains, you can kind of swing the weight. Then you can kind of get it in the right spot. Then you can bump it up and you can press it. And that actually felt a lot better. But anyway, you know, the point point is is like all these different areas are

they make the lift harder you're you're at a disadvantage at the top is where you have the most advantage and as you're pressing through towards the top you get more and more of an advantage so it makes sense that there's something running alongside of you as you get that advantage that's making the weight heavier making it harder making tougher. You don't have to train that way all the time, but it is, um, it is nice to have stuff like that, that allows you to do that. It also allows you to use less barbell weight. Now, if you can think about it this way, if you have, you know, if you have 200 pounds on a bar and you have a hundred pounds of chains at the bottom, it's, uh, about 200 pounds and that's what your shoulders feel and that's what your elbows feel and that's everything feels now out of the worst position that you press from

your shoulders feel 200 225 and so on until it gets back up to around 300 pounds which what a great idea and concept that is for most of the time your shoulder is going to get injured and beat up when it's in the worst position also for, for a lot of people, they get hurt in the bench press. They don't have good form and technique. They also don't have the ability to keep their shoulders in place and keep them in the right spot. So it's like tenfold. As we get closer to the chest with the barbell, the internal rotation of the shoulder gets to be worse and worse and worse and worse. And we've seen people, they kind of like fall towards the end of the bench press

as they're coming down towards their chest. We see it a lot in a deadlift when someone's doing the eccentric portion of a deadlift going downward with a deadlift. A lot of times they're in good position, backs flat, and then all of a sudden they drop they just dump the weight onto the ground and they round their back to get to the ground we want to always try to have the best mechanics that we possibly can but they're hard to maintain uh with straight weight sometimes so sometimes by just using a band or using a chain or using a slingshot you put you automatically put yourself in a better position and it's way less beating on your shoulders and elbows. The bands are kind of weird because the bands are like, they're harder to adjust and manipulate,

but chains are amazing. It's like you can buy different types of chains. Now, just having them is kind of a pain in the ass, but using them is fantastic, and I think everyone should look into trying to mess around with some chains. Yeah yeah i'm not a fan of the bands but you know they i do appreciate that they lit up off the ground off the bottom and then yeah you know kind of like a slingshot also with the chains man i'm a fan of the chain gang well the chains are great because they completely unload on the ground

whereas the band doesn't the band is still on there so if you have 200 pounds of uh bar weight and you have the bands just on there they might give you 80 pounds at the top but at the bottom it's still probably like 30 or 40 pounds so it's it's just harder it's harder to like it's harder to feel it it's harder to know what the hell it's doing and then it's going to do something different for each person due to like arm length and many other things. But anyway, it was amazing having Fred, Fred Zebra on the on today's podcast. You know, just it was it was awesome. I love hearing his story. And I know there's many other people that feel the same way.

Losing weight isn't easy. Getting that momentum is not easy. But you guys just wait. Losing weight isn't easy. Getting that momentum is not easy. But you guys just wait. When there's going to be a day, listen to what I'm about to say, there's going to be a day where you get locked in, and it's going to be easier to be on your diet than it will to be off your diet. I know that sounds wild, but you will get there.

I'm really, really proud of my sister-in-law. She just started messing around with some, well, she's been exercising and she's been doing different diets for many, you know, for, I don't know, for many years. And just like everybody else, you know, holidays come around and, you know, you tend to just, you celebrate, right? And we have fun and we enjoy our family. But just in a real short period of time she's already dropping some weight and i and i said to her and she goes i know you know it's just kind of like a water thing and i and i said hey you know don't sell yourself short this should be celebrated you should be pumped about this that's exciting you did the work to lose the weight and and she's like i know but like the you know the

rest of the weight it will take longer to get off. And I said, yeah, but imagine if it took, she's lost like six pounds, I think. Imagine if it took double the amount of time or even triple the amount of time to lose another six pounds. Well, shit, now we're starting to talk about you just lost 12 pounds total

and it's in like six weeks i mean that's huge now look if you if you drop 10 pounds and let's say it's over the course of two months you drop 10 pounds and it's in the course of eight weeks right that that's that's first of all that's really good progress you should be really excited about that other people have made better progress than that. Other people have lost more weight faster, right? But it's not a sprint, you know? This is something that you're going to want.

You want to make a permanent change. And a lot of times when a permanent change has to be fought for and when it takes a long time, a lot of times it's going to stay better because you're going to make sure that it does because you worked so damn hard for it. You're not back you heard uh you heard frank say it on the podcast he's like uh or fred you heard him say on the podcast he was like that guy ain't coming back you know that guy was 260 and 280 i buried him he's gone and i feel the same way with my previous self i feel

the same way when you know i was 300 and. I will never weigh that weight again. I'll never even weigh 270 again. I'll never weigh 260 again. 250, I still kind of consistently am like more like 240. And, uh, I will probably weigh 250 again, just because the weight will come up and it will go down. But hopefully as I work my way, my goal is to work my way towards 230. Hopefully as I work my way towards 230, I allow myself 10 pounds up, 10 pounds down, but hopefully stay within that 230 pound range. I'm really not down where I'm not too worried about, but I don't want to be a weenie either. And so those are things as you're starting to lose weight, you might want to think about, like, don't lose five pounds and say, I'll never weigh that again.

Wait till you've lost about 10 pounds or late till you, I'm sorry, late to loss, like more like 20 pounds and say, I'm never going to be up in that next bracket again. I'm never going to weigh 200 again. I'm never going to weigh 300, whatever the weight is. But, you know, this stuff, this stuff is not easy. It can be very difficult. But something that's hard to understand sometimes is that the more that you can abstain from these magnificent flavors and these flavor patterns and all these different things that people are making with, you know, drinks like Zevia and artificial sweeteners, which is not considered an artificial sweetener, but it still is my opinion. Stevia, you know, monk fruit, like all these different things. Um, you still want to be a little bit careful with some of this stuff. There's no re like you don't need crystal light. You don't need it. So just don't drink it. Just drink water. You're going to be fine. What what's going to happen when you still have crystal light and you still have diet sodas and you still have these things in your life

you're going to still want something that tape because you already know you know full well that that's not the real deal you know shit tastes way better than that and your brain's like yo this is bullshit dude like where's the real stuff man get let's get to the real stuff. You are dying for it. Now, as an occasional thing here and there, it's not a big deal. A couple times a week, you have a Quest bar here and there, you have a protein shake here and there, you have something that satisfies you

but doesn't allow you to go off the deep end, that's okay. But I think for most people, the people that are gonna make the change based off of this podcast or a future one, then you really need to really try to work on being as strict as you can, being as strict as you can handle. The harder that you go on this, the better it's going to be. You have to forever change. You have to forever recalibrate your freaking palate. You need to stop, you know,

the, the, uh, the flavor that you're used to from McDonald's, the flavor that you're used to from 7-Eleven food, the flavor that you're used to from these different things. You've forgotten, you have forgotten how good an apple tastes. You have forgotten how good a steak tastes with just some salt on it. Maybe a little bit of butter. You forgot how good a apple tastes. You have forgotten how good a steak tastes with just some salt on it. Maybe a little bit of butter. You forgot how good a burger tastes with maybe one slice of cheese on it. And so the more that you can stay on it, the better off you're going to be. Carnivore diet's been treating me really good. I feel good on it with the fasting. I feel super strong. Everything's coming together. So, so far, so good.

So what I guess that all we got, that's all we got, man. All right. Well, I can't wait to, uh, to see all you guys and girls at the,

uh, ST classic. Um, hopefully many of you come, we still need more people to sign up. I'd love for you guys to sign up because I'm going to be hitting the platform. We've got a lot of other great guests that are hitting the platform. Jake Cutler is going to be there that Sunday.

We have other guests. We don't have everybody like officially locked in yet. So I don't want to like over promise stuff, but it does look like Dana and Rob Bailey might be coming to this thing. I know it doesn't really get any bigger than that. Those two. Well, Rob Bailey's an actual rock star,

but I was going to say that they're kind of like rock stars but they're well he actually is a rock star yeah uh those two people are magnificent and i'm just i'm huge fans i'm happy that that they're uh somebody that's in my phone you know that i can text and give shit to here and there um so they should be there i will announce it more officially uh when it's more officialist um i forget who else i know matt vincent was talking about coming we got burdick we got a lot of people from the gym we got jason kalipa who is prepping for the contest he's getting ready for it um we have colleen fotch another another CrossFitter. She's jacked. She's tan. We have Charity Witt, who recently was just on, uh, the Rock show, Titan Games. And, um, and who knows?

Maybe the Rock will show up. Maybe he'll give me a rock bottom. Maybe Stone Cold will show up. Maybe Vince McMahon will show up. You never know. But we need more people to sign up and, and, uh, Andrew's going to be hitting the platform. It's going to be a lot of fun i can guarantee you that it all it is is bench and deadlift we don't have to worry about the

squat we have to worry about getting a parallel and uh for the um for the bench press you can wear a slingshot or you don't have to wear a slingshot if you don't want to it's gonna be great time last year was freaking crazy last year was so much fun. I just remember the crowd went bananas when Matt Vincent pulled that 600-pound deadlift after all those knee surgeries. That was really spectacular. I believe Kelly Stratt was there last year as well. He did some. And my brother's going to lift in this one. He lifted last year.

And I think my brother lifted like 400 pounds. Now he's probably going to lift closer to 600 pounds. That's crazy. It's going to be a a great time and you guys shouldn't miss it so anybody that can make it uh the st classic will attach a link to this thing i can okay well there you go strength is never weak this week this never strength thank you guys so much for listening catch y'all later