The Impacts of Your Environment | ETP#210

Eat Train Prosper 210 is about your environment. And how your environment is either working for you or against you. This week we get into why willpower is largely a losing strategy and how a well-designed environment removes the need for it. We cover ambition contagion, the real cost of where you live and those around you. And why the gym you choose matters more than most people think. If you're constantly fighting yourself to stay consistent, changing your environment might be the actual variable to change the tide in your favor.

Timestamps:

00:00 Episode Introduction and Personal Updates 

09:58 Impact of Environment on Personal Development

18:31 Optimizing Productivity Through Environment

19:01 The Role of Geography in Life Choices

30:27 The Impact of Environment on Goals

34:08 Household Challenges in Health and Fitness

45:03 Choosing the Right Gym for Success

55:33 Balancing Convenience and Motivation in Training

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0:25

Internet friends, welcome back to Eat, Train, Prosper. This is episode 210. Brian and myself are talking the impacts of your environment. So if you follow me on Instagram, you may have seen that I have been a little bit rather perspective or introspective, reflective, I think is the proper term to use here this past week. And it's had me looking back on this phase of my life and it is coming to a close of sorts. And it has me a little bit, uh like I said, reflective and positively emotional about it. And it had me thinking about how these various phases of my life and as I've kind of upleveled in my personal development has really been driven by me through some strange way of it happening, attaching myself to these incredibly productive and ambitious environments that then drew a much more uh higher standard or the best out of myself that I feel incredibly, incredibly confident in the statement of if I had not been exposed to these environments in certain type of people, my life would have turned out very, very differently. So I pitched Brian this idea of talking about this today. He was happily obliged, as I'm sure he has some very similar experiences. to myself and we're going to talk about it. before we do, always, Brian, kick us off with some updates, Yeah, looking forward to the conversation. The the nostalgia of our of our past coming to coming forward in environment. I like it regarding updates today. I really only have one big one, which is that my blood work finally came back. So I teased that last week. I thought it was going to be back. It's back now. And uh at the six week mark, my testosterone was eleven seventy. and my free testosterone was 29. So that quote low dose TRT that I was doing put me above the reference range for the time being. So uh I guess that means I'm like a pretty decent responder to testosterone or androgens in general. Maybe that explains a little bit about why I gained so much weight over the first seven weeks of this experience. I think I mentioned last week that I had gained 13 pounds in the first seven weeks. I guess now we're at eight weeks almost. um And I finally am back down to 206. So I lost two pounds. I've now only gained 11 pounds in eight weeks. So it seems like things are finally starting to stabilize at call it plus 10 pounds above where I started before TRT, which I still don't really know how I feel about because I've talked about and even in the past episode, how I want to live in like the one eighties. And then last week we were like, well, maybe my new one eighties is one ninety. Like maybe one eighty is now the equivalent of one ninety. And that's where lean Brian would live instead of Brian living at one eighty. Tough to say how this is all going to play out. I don't really want to go on like a big diet at this point. I'm kind of enjoying, I guess, the anabolic effects of of what's happening. Going into the gym every week and being able to increase load and or reps has been great Still rocking the bro split thing, you know one body part a day under 40 minutes a session Motivation is still high uh Which has all been great and then I guess there's the rest of the blood work too. There were certainly aspects of the blood work that kind of surprised me in a bit of a negative way. Like some of the ones that stand out that are just kind of weird for me are that uh despite not changing my fish oil omega-3 protocol, my omega-3 index dropped 3%. So it went from like almost 10 % to almost 7%, which took me from like above or in the middle of the reference range to like well below the reference range. Have you changed your fish oil product at all? No, I've been using the same ones, yeah. What's also kind of interesting, I guess, is that the one I've been taking, because in the past my EPA was low, lower than my DHA, I've been taking an EPA dominant fish oil, and it's now my DHA that's low. So my EPA is still where it's supposed to be, but my DHA has dropped three points. So I now just ordered a DHA heavy product. uh We'll see how that goes over the next like six to 12 weeks and see if I can get that back in zone. That's one of my concerns. uh Another concern is that so last time I got blood work, which was in June, my white blood cell count was slightly below the reference range. I think the reference range starts at like four point one and I was at three point nine. So it was just like a little bit low. And then this time my white blood cell count was two point seven, which is like really, really low. And uh all of the like fills and sites like neutrophils and monocytes and all those things are kind of like all over the board. Like some of them are too low. Some of them are too high. They're just not like meshing properly. And it's, really confusing because I don't feel sick. I wasn't sick at the time that we took the blood draw. Um, and I can't quite ascertain as to why my white blood cell count keeps descending and now has gotten to this like really low point. Um, So that's like semi-concerning, but beyond that, I think most of the other markers were pretty good. Normally the white blood cell counts in like your monocytes and neutrophils and those sorts of things. If your immune system is working harder than baseline. So you may have not gotten sick, but your body may have been fighting some common winter virus or something. I would just go get, it like two weeks and then go get it tested again. Like a CBC is literally like $30 out of pocket or something. It's like maybe, wait, I don't even think so. think it's like 15. It is criminally inexpensive. to go get done, um just for a peace of mind thing. Yeah, okay, cool. Well, I think I probably will do that. And then two other quick updates here on the blood stuff. uh I talked, I think at one point about how I was obsessively pricking my finger 150 times over the last few weeks to get a sense of how my glucose is responding to various things. And it's funny that going into this blood work, one of my biggest concerns was... my glucose, because I got all these readings, you know, in the AM that were higher than I wanted and and blah blah blah. Like anyway, I was a little bit concerned about my glucose and my HbA1c and my insulin and stuff like that. Those numbers were like perfect. Glucose was like 90 HbA1c was five point four and my insulin was one point six, uh which is insanely low. So uh no, no worries on glucose. All good there. And then the only last kind of tangentially related update is uh TRT injections. I've talked about how the injections have caused me kind of issues over the last weeks that it took me a little while to get comfortable with it and blah, blah. uh As a lean individual, I've actually been struggling with finding spots that are fatty enough for me to do the injection. And so I can't actually do it at my belly button. They were the recommendation was alternate between the supriallic or like the love handle. and the belly and then love handle and then belly and obviously alternate sides as well so that you're not hitting the same spot except every two weeks. uh But I can't do the belly because I'm too lean there. So I was just alternating left love handle, right love handle, left love handle, right love handle. And two weeks ago when I was doing that, I realized that it was causing like really gnarly reactions like for a couple days after the injection, it would be like this huge red spot that was really hard. And uh I talked to Chad GPT and realized that it really is important that I alternate these sites a little bit more, less frequently. And so just last week for the first time, I did an injection in my, I guess you'd call it like my upper glute meets my waistline. um And there's like a good amount of fat for me to pinch there. And so I did that the other day and there has been zero reaction, like no redness, no oil under the skin. no negative feelings at all. It literally is like such a relief to have found a spot that I can use that doesn't cause that sort of uh inflammatory reaction for the days that follow. So I was really happy. Yep. That is a, that what you just described is a very similar trajectory of how people eventually start pinning that like upper glute quadrant area. Yep. trying the side of the quad as well, like midway between the hip and the knee and then to the outside to the lateral side of the quad. I think I might be too lean for that one. So I might just stick with the love handle and then the upper glute and love handle and upper glute and go from And that will go into the muscle guaranteed if you do that. Yeah. I there's certain people that love pinning their quads. I really don't. I only do some L car and like very top. There's just so many veins in your quads. The likelihood of you bleeding is disproportionately higher because they're so veiny. So that's the real uncomfortable part of it. Well, that upper glute hip area was like perfect. It felt so good. Okay, so I have a couple updates. The first one being that I, I think I posted about this. I started a diet a few weeks ago, very nonchalant. And the whole reason was my body weight just reached a point I don't want it to be, as you were alluding to. Hey, I'm getting up to, I think you said like 206, 208. I don't want to be that big. My number was 237. I don't want to be this big. Yeah. So I started a very like, Not I started the week I was getting tattooed because it was a week where there's gonna be like high stress anyway. I wasn't gonna have a lot of hunger regardless. So I started that and then I took this approach where I'm gonna try and diet harder and faster to get this job done and test some new things. So what I basically did was I set up about 24, 2300 calories and I'm just gonna run this diet. I got about two weeks into it. I was absolutely starving. I was ravenously hungry and there was a couple of days where normally I don't eat my final meal till 9 p.m. That's a very standard thing for me. I would be finishing at like 630 and then I would be starving before bed. And eventually it hit me. I'm like, Aaron, you are hungrier now than almost the entirety of your prep two weeks into this diet. You know, the final tail end of prep like that final week. It was very, very unpleasant, but that was week 23. You know, I'm two weeks into this and I'm equally as hungry. And then I really sat down in ransom numbers and I had just, because I had, I have spent, you know, effectively since, you know, 2006 ish when, you know, coming of age. at plus or minus 190 to 200 pounds, right? That was where I oscillate. And my maintenance calories would be, you know, when at times where I was less active, maybe like 29, anywhere from like 2900 to like 3100, that ballpark. So I was kind of operating off of that. I because I was running this diet myself and back of the napkin, I wasn't like calculating anything. I said, OK, I'll just start at about, you know, 2400. That should be sufficient. I didn't really take it into the account that now that I am so much bigger, my maintenance calories are really like 3800. So I was starting at like a 1500 1400 calorie deficit per day. And that is why I was like ravenous. So it hit me that I'm like overly miserable for no good reason. Let me just go to a solid 3000 calories per day. I can have a very chill diet where I just lean out and I'm not having to play those mental games with myself for no good reason right now. Let me save the times. need to be a Tony tough nuts for prep, not a random drop a handful of pounds and get back under 230 sort of thing. So that's been much more pleasant. I feel pretty satiated and it feels very, very sustainable, which is great. And body weights right around. I've been in the two thirties for a number of days now, so I'm down seven, seven and a half. to start and I think I will push till about 225 to 227 and see where I feel there. Nice, yeah, that was gonna be my first question was gonna be whether you were still basing your calories on when you were not enhanced. So I'm glad that you figured that one out. And then it seems like given that change, you literally could still continue the diet the exact same way you had it planned, but now just add an extra meal at 9 p.m. like you're used to eating anyways, and you essentially are still in that deficit that you were hoping to be in. That's effectively what I did. Yeah, I just added an extra like oats and whey and berries meal and that provides a very, that extra like 60 grams of carbohydrate, you know, and 50 grams of protein is quite nice there. And then another thing that kind of leads me into the episode is I have settled into a new workflow on Mondays and Tuesdays and Wednesdays are my check-in days. Uh, and when I, a few weeks ago, when I got, I got tattooed all week long. So I had to be really productive with my work hours because I needed to leave home at eight. And I wouldn't, had about an hour commute and I wouldn't get back till seven, seven 30 PM. So was getting up at five AM. you know, brushing my teeth, making a coffee, coming in and starting check-ins. And I was realizing that when there was zero distractions, the world is still kind of not moving yet. I was incredibly productive that week because I had to be. And I realized that I was getting so much done. I had to say, let me let me try and recreate that. So ever since this was this week now is the fourth week of it. On Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, I'm not getting up at five. I get up at five 30, but I get up at five 30. I brush my teeth. do a quick journal. make my coffee and I come right to my computer and get into check-ins. I don't look at my phone. I don't do anything else. It is completely transformed my productivity. And I feel kind of silly that it's taken me this many years of I'm on, I think my eighth year working for myself to figure this out, but it feels like a massive cheat code. And there are certain days. depending on how long a certain check-in might be if I need to modify diets or training or anything. There's been a couple of days where I finished my work day by like 1130 AM. And I'm like, this is fascinating to me. Like I've just put in like a solid six-ish, five and a half, like really productive hours of work and my entire day is now like open. So now my productivity on the back half of it has dramatically improved on the other things that I can get done as well. So. I truly feel like I've unlocked a new cheat code in my productivity, all by modifying my environment a little bit into getting up, getting right into work, as opposed to starting like a more lackadaisical slow day of eating and getting some cardio in and then working. Yeah, no, I think that I, I, I have been thinking something similar and I believe that it's because using your morning mental bandwidth for movement and food and journaling and all of the various things that go into the pot of morning routine, not only delay you getting into your work, but they actually consume your mental capacity in some ways so that when you get to work, you're moving a little bit more lethargically, you're a little bit less focused and whatever. So I find the same thing in that when I wake up, the first thing I do is I spend 10 minutes doing breath work and do my HRV and all that stuff in the morning and kind of find that parasympathetic state. And then my best hour of work all day is from like 6.15 to 7.15 before we wake the kids up and get them ready for school. And if I can just nail that hour and get like an insane amount of work done in an hour, that sets up the rest of my day where I feel almost free from simply like one really focused hour. And if I had had that same hour after dropping kids off at school and coming home and going for a walk and whatever, I feel like that same hour would be a little bit more distracted and less productive. So I totally get it. Yeah, and it's really, really improved. These little perceptive things that don't really matter. for example, some of my West Coast or California clients still submit their check-ins, you know, Sunday afternoon, Sunday evening, their time. But by the time those are coming in, I'm usually caught up already. So they submit a check-in and I have it back to them in like 15 minutes and they're used to waiting. you know, maybe eight hours until the morning or something like that. And they're like, what's going on? Like, how are you getting these around so much quicker now? And I'm like, I optimized my work day. Like now I'm caught up by the time you submit these. So it's so just they're little things, but but it is a nice from a client, you know, when your coach responds really quickly, it is a positive feeling there. Yeah, you should just tell them the AI is now handling it. Yeah. And that's it for my updates. Sweet. All right, jump us in, dude. All right, so effectively what I would like to talk about in a message that we would like to portray is how your environment impacts your habits. I truly believe your success and all the other either positively framed or negatively framed, know, collateral damage of that environment. So the environment is either going to make your productive habits or sorry, productive behaviors easier, or it makes unproductive behaviors easier, right? Excuse me. And one aspect or facet that really surrounds this, especially in the more so in the the nutrition side of things, but people also speak about it in in training is willpower. And I've always felt and I use myself as an example of clients that willpower is strongly overrated or that people try to rely on it as opposed to setting up their environment so you do not need willpower. ah I will always say that I have a very average level of willpower, which I have fallen, ah succumbed to numerous times in my past. As I've gotten older and wiser, I don't put myself in positions where I need to use my willpower. And I will ask for help at times where I am failing. one of the most recent times was we had bought these vitamin C. They're called, uh, I think sweetlets. It's their 500 milligram vitamin C like tablets, but they're, they're, they're sweet. They're sweetened with like sucralose or something like that. And I have, I take in about like three grams of vitamin C per day. But during prep, I found myself kind of like eating way more than I needed to because it was like, the sweet kind of candy and I've been in this deficit for so long. And it got to a point where I had to ask my wife, Jenny, said, please hide these from me. And in the morning, can you put two on my desk? And then in the evening, can you put two on my desk? Because I cannot appropriately regulate my usage of them right now. Can you help me? And of course, she happily obliged. like, that was a very tangible modification of my environment. to save me from myself by asking the people in my environment to help me. And this is what I would like to speak about on some of these things. So I think what can be a little bit beneficial hopefully is a little bit of a backstory before I dive into the first kind of asset. I want to talk about gym. I want to talk about home life. But one I think that I know is to be entirely true and certain of myself. is geography. So, Brian, we were both, you and I met in San Diego, us both being people from the East Coast that relocated. Do you, and I have a question for you, do you think that your life would have turned out in a similar fashion if you had never made the move from where you were on the East Coast to San Diego? No, I mean, it certainly would have been way different, but I do think nothing would have changed with my training habits because training was already instilled as something that was vital and important to my identity by that point. Like I had already been training for nine years by the time that I moved out to San Diego. um So that was hard coded into my, my DNA response at some level. by that point. ah Nutrition, you know, has always been, has always been one of those things that's a little bit less dialed in for me. So it's been interesting reading through your notes in this analysis here, because there have been times that I've been extremely dialed in in nutrition, and I've had to use a lot of these kinds of tools that you're talking about here. But for the most part, my nutrition is kind of, at leisure more all over the place. would say, you know, 85 % of my years have been nutrition, less of a focus, kind of just going with the flow a little bit more. And then training has been one of those things where I've been, you know, setting up my environment optimally, no matter what the situation is to make sure that my training is getting in. You know, I can think of both kids and building the home gym and having the CrossFit gym and all these various things. um So, so no, I actually think the biggest change would probably be that if I had stayed on the East Coast, I probably would have never ended up working professionally in the fitness industry, at least in not in the capacity that I am now where it's like my full time gig since 2010, because it was all predicated by starting the CrossFit gym in 2010 in uh San Diego. And if we hadn't done that, I could see myself, you know, still grinding away working corporate America, making however much money each year working a nine to five and then, know, fitting in my training and nutrition and stuff on the side. uh In some ways, like maybe that would have been, I don't want to, better in quotes, because like, man, when you work in an industry where all you do is the thing that you're passionate about, then you kind of struggle to find a uh side passion. uh And I think that's something that I have been notably struggling with for half a decade at this point is like, man, my whole identity is tied to this fitness thing. How do I, where do I find a second passion? And if, know, fitness was my side passion, I think that would change my relationship to it significantly. So a lot of things going on there, but to answer your question, essentially, no, my life would obviously not be even anywhere near where it is if we hadn't moved to San Diego. Yeah, and that I, I think my, mean, I feel very, very strongly my life would have turned out dramatically different. Yes, similar to you training was. I can't say I think I can't say that I believe at the time training was important to me. It was just something that I did that I enjoyed that I was above average at. So it was, it was a nice, but there was. If I look back, think there was, I remember a summer, I don't think I trained at all because I was just working, had long commutes. And then when I wasn't at work, I wanted to hang out with my friends and we were drinking and stuff. I don't think I trained at all that summer. So that's when I was still in Pennsylvania before moving. I would say, you know, finding myself in an emerging fitness scene in Southern California in 2010. dramatically changed the trajectory of my life because I saw it's just a different world, right? And as you're, you know, young, early twenties, like that is shaping kind of adulthood away from the environments that I had known of my family, of my friends on the East coast. it was a reinventing of myself of finding out things that were important to me with making new friends or alone. when I didn't have the influence from the people I had associated with and it helped me learn more about myself and format some of my own values, which became overwhelmingly dominated by fitness and nutrition. um And one of the things that I feel confidently saying really changed the trajectory of my life was being exposed to people who were really successful. in different capacities than being a lawyer, whatever, like a very kind of uh white collar. You go to school and get this good degree so that you can get this job sort of thing. I saw people doing things differently and having pretty, pretty various uh quality successes in it. And it felt really approachable. They didn't seem like these pie in the sky, unapproachable people, they were certain friends and stuff. And I thought, wow, he's really cool. He's really approachable and he's really successful. Possibly I could do something similar. So it felt like a closing of a gap. And that just started turning wheels in my head a little bit, which really just exposed me to things that I didn't really think possible before, because I had never had any experience or known anyone with it. And then obviously seeing you guys at I remember the moment I'm I didn't it wasn't even meeting you guys. It seeing you guys for the first time. It was at one of those men and L.I. or something like that events. And I remember it was you loading in Anders doing something and someone pointed out that those are the that's the CrossFit PB dudes. And you were significantly more muscle than everyone else at the competition. And I was like, When we move, like that's the gym I'm going to, like those are the guys that I want to associate with. And that was a whole new trajectory of, of, of a change in environment. The people that exposed me to like Kendall and Tito and that group of friends, which then exposed me to responsible use of my money and funds and investing and things like that. So I, it's really just been this, this iterative approach of my life of getting exposed to. people who are ambitious and want to live a productive life. And I think those people tend to corral in similar groups in places that have productive environments like CrossFit PB was, and that has been like a facet of my life that I've just kind of locked into time and time again. And then I'll kind of close up my statement here. Eventually starting, you know, the business and relocating to Bali. And that's another one of those facets where the interesting thing about Bali is that a lot of people think about packing up the house, selling, selling the car, putting things in storage and like making the jump. lot of people think about it. Few people actually sell the car, pack the shit up, put it in storage and buy the ticket. So once you're here, you find yourself with all the people who thought about it. and made the jump, right? So you find a very, very productive group. And don't get me wrong, there's a lot of fuckery and bullshit that goes on here too. But normally those are very, very easy to spot. And now a lot of the people in Undefeated, a lot of our friend group here, they are effectively all self-employed, a lot in the fitness and nutrition space, but a few in others that all have a very, very similar. mindset, ideals, goals. So it's very, very positive and productive and lucrative. And I feel again, very fortunate that I've just kind of been able to rub elbows with people. And then that's helped me, you know, get put along or be presented offers to be a part of projects and stuff that I never would have had the balls to do on my Yeah, I think it's worth noting, too, that you had a meandering course to get to Bali. Like you guys were in Colombia during the pandemic where you couldn't leave your apartment and you were walking laps around like a 500 square foot apartment just to get steps in. And you were in like Salt Lake City and Austin. And like you guys were all over the world before you finally found your way to Bali, which, you know, became your home, so to speak, temporarily. So ah I think there's a large piece of. not settling for your environment, but making sure that you have an inquisitive and curious mind in that you try different places. And if it doesn't work for six months or whatever, that you're willing to be able to pick up, move, and then find an op and an optimal environment for what your goals are. And it's interesting that kind of dichotomy of sorts between what your goals actually are. and em whether you know what your goals are or whether your goals actually become clear because of where you are. And I think that that's a really interesting piece because I would maybe not have known that I even wanted to or had ambitions of opening a gym and making that my life. Being in DC, I couldn't have even thought that far laterally because everybody around me was doing the eight to five corporate America thing wearing a suit and tie every day and doing happy hours. And like, that was just what my exposure was. And so if I had stayed in DC, like I could have, I didn't even know that that like opening a gym was a viable option. But going out to San Diego, where you're in PB, and there's just like, a whole plethora of variety of people working in so many different industries. There's like, you know, TIG who owns a Mexican restaurant in La Jolla, and there's you know, people owning gyms and people being a lifeguard and like, mean, just there's bartenders, there's so many different levels of entrepreneurship and different ways in which you can kind of figure out where you should be that in some ways feels like it's missing in the big city environment. I think you really hit the nail on the head there. And I think as you get exposed to different facets, you start to realize there's things that you enjoy more and there's things that you enjoy less, right? There's definitely here in Bali a very, there's large groups and various groups of, I don't know what you would call it, like a social club. where you go, you get dinner, you meet people, you talk about various things. And there was a time where I was very open to things. like, hey, I'm going to go try these things. I immediately realized this isn't for fucking me. I don't want to go talk to these strangers about God knows whatever. I do not care about this. This is not my thing. But at least you're exposed to different things because as you find some new doors that open, you also find that there's certain doors that, yeah, you really want to close and never open again. So it's just a general exposure. Um, to those sorts of things. And if you are, if you have been thinking about this, right. And some of these things are resonating with you. One of my, one of the best thoughts I think I've ever had in my life was if it doesn't work, I can just go back. Right. When I moved away to college far away, that was a thought. When I moved to Southern California, that was a thought. When we left Southern California to move to Vietnam. That was a thought, right? And in full transparency, as we're planning this move to Salt Lake City, that thought is there. If I hate it, if we're miserable, we can just come back here, right? So nothing, very few things are ever permanent, but I would say even if it doesn't work out, at least you know, because you made the leap and you have evaluated both sides, but the changing of the environment has to be one of the most pivotal thing positive. facets of my life that has ever been. Okay, so we talked about geography, really, really big picture stuff, really, really large kind of perspective shifting. And now we're going to scale down from a more macro level to micro level and talk about household. typically the most challenging aspect of the household that I experienced most with clients is either unsupportive spouses or family members. um and not necessarily traditions, but habits. For example, if you are new, it newer to trying to establish a healthier lifestyle for whatever reason, health scare, resolutions, et cetera, et cetera. One of the things that often hangs people up that I get most exposure with with clients is like snacking. And we had these snacks and I had too many of them. And I am very big on fucking throw them out, clean out the cabinet, clean out the pantry. And sometimes I'll get a little bit of pushback and say like, but I don't want to waste them. You know, we spent a hundred dollars on these snacks, which is a very valid point. as humans have an attachment to wasting money and monetary spending, to which my response is usually, are you telling me that you are willing to not reach these weight loss or fat loss goals? because you don't want to lose the $100 that you spent on snacks. And sometimes when you put something very, very basic, people can really realize how maybe silly some of their reservations are around it. But I would say this is one of the strongest things. When you are entering a calorie deficit, especially if you have struggled in the past, do not rely on your willpower. Hide. Give away, throw away the things that are going to maybe distractions and lures away from what will ultimately be the smoothest operations for you. Yeah, so I think a cousin of throw your junk food away that is a little bit harder to kind of simply get rid of is the the having kids and them not finishing their meal and that sense of, oh, I don't want to waste this food that was prepared for them because it's really good food. Like last night, for example, I made a big thing. had some friends over and I made a big thing of teriyaki chicken and white rice and the rice cooker and a big thing of broccoli and set it out on the table and everybody, you know, grabs their things, fills their plate, whatever. both my kids did not finish their chicken rice and broccoli. And I'm full sitting there at the end of the meal. And I'm like, whoa, we can't waste this. Like this is really good chicken. Of course I'm not gonna waste the chicken and rice, you know? And so there I am sitting there totally full consuming chicken and rice because it's there on a plate. And uh the guy I was with who his son was playing with Bryson, he said the same thing. He's like, yeah, I can't leave food. He's like, hey, hey, hey, like. hand me over that plate, I'll finish your rice for you, know, like don't wanna waste the rice. ah So I think that's a tough one. It's probably not a problem unless you're specifically trying to be in a caloric deficit because it's not like you're eating bad food, you're just eating too much food. And so it's related to that same thing you were mentioning, but not quite exactly the same, but also a major problem for parents all across the world. I have one of my old clients term that the dad tax. ah And I agree. I don't think it's a problem, but if you are in a caloric deficit and when he did coin this, that was, we were in a caloric deficit and we were, things were really sticky and that was it. And we had to put it really simply. And I had to like break down, I had to run the numbers for him and we like estimated things out. And I forget what the numbers were, but I'm like, I put it very plainly. Are you telling me that the $17 and 50 cents, whatever, that your kids waste in food per week is going to prevent you from reaching your body composition goals? And then that was the last time we had to talk about it, when you put something in plain Xs and Os, which sometimes we need to see as humans, because we have different attachments to things. And then uh on family traditions, which I think is also super relevant, this is a really tough one because most families, I wouldn't call them like ubiquitously fitness conscious families. Like most families have the aunt and the grandma and whatever who love to cook with butter. And suddenly like these meals that are being prepared for you are like three times the calories that a healthier version of that meal would be. ah So this is obviously a really tough one. And if the fats are baked into the food, it's not something that's being added at the end. There's almost no way of getting away from it without simply just not eating the food that's presented. ah And so I'll let you kind of talk about how you're gonna handle that, because I'm sure you have a better way than me, because my way of handling it is simply to decide that during Thanksgiving to New Year's period of time, I am just simply planning to be in a caloric surplus. and I am just not gonna make this a stress in my life. I am going to just be part of the family and eat the food, whatever, it is what it is. If I gain five pounds, it's fine, I'll lose it in January. And that's usually the way I approach these, but I'm curious to hear how you advise clients and yourself to do it. It's contextually dependent, right? And I think what you said there is a really good uh example of that because if we were in a calorie deficit, and I've had clients who have strong familial, um not backgrounds, like strong family traditions. Yeah. And every Sunday, you know, the family gets together and grandma makes some I forget the client I'm specifically thinking of, I think was Greek and they would make these like, you know, outlandish dishes and stuff. And every single Sunday, his weight would be up like two kilos, which is four and a half pounds. And it completely eradicated the week's progress like again and again and again. And I had to break it down for him and say, you're whatever, 28 years old or whatever you have. 28 years of eating grandma's food, right? You have however many years left of grandma's life, but in this season, because your inability to regulate your portion sizes, you need to abstain from it, or the goal is not going to be achieved. um But it's always contextually dependent, and depending on your family dynamic and what those things look like, I think is ultimately what drives that. Yeah, the weekly Sunday type thing I think is significantly more complicated than seasonal family traditions. ah Yeah, we don't really so much have the weekly family tradition as much. ah So I do think that's a much more complicated one to handle. And you mentioned something about portion sizes, that if you can't control your portion sizes. And so I feel like my approach in that situation would simply be like, like I'm thinking about my mom who loves to make a brisket and it's a brisket. So there's like lean parts and there's fattier parts and whatever. And then she'll, you know, make some sort of potato that goes along with it. uh Sometimes it's fried, sometimes it's mashed or baked or whatever, different varieties of forms. But if I am thinking back to when I used to live with mom and this would happen, If I was in a caloric deficit and a purposeful control period, I would simply just load up on as much lean brisket as I could and then minimize the portions of the potato ah along the way. And so I think that little tools like that are great. Like if you simply just don't load your plate up with robust servings of everything, just be a little bit more discerning about which. portions of that meal you want to consume more of and which portions of that meal you consume less of, you could probably attenuate or mitigate some of the some of the caloric load. I 1000 % agree. And fortunately, we have data that we can rely upon to kind of either corroborate or completely blow apart the thesis for how you navigate that, which is how your body weight responds over like the next 48 hours post. um And then there's been other times where I've had clients who have really, really unsupportive, like family structures. And I'm talking about adults and adult siblings, ah not harass, but like ridicule them for their lifestyle habits or wanting to lose weight or wanting to to be fit. um in those clients, I've been pretty honest. I'm like, why you're, whatever, however many years old, why do you have to go? Right. Every time you go, you're miserable and it upsets you. Like, just stop fucking going and. I think sometimes people feel a little bit guilty because of whatever sort of pressures are put on them in the family. But one thing I'm always really big on is we're adults here. You choose your environment, right? If that family gathering is unsupportive and every time you go, you feel worse about yourself and people treat you poorly, like I would never fucking step foot in there again. But I think I'm a little bit different because I'm just not a big family person. I never have been. I've always just wanted to be out on my own. And if when I did see my family, they treated me poorly, I would just be like, fuck you guys never coming back. So it's a little bit different for me. oh But I would say it's again, you choose your environment. And if some of those traditional spaces that are supposed to be loving, caring are not. Don't go to them or abstain from them for a really long time until maybe You're in a much better place to auto-regulate like Brian said and stuff, but you're the captain of your own life. Don't let people put unnecessary pressures and miserableness onto you because of sharing a DNA. Is there anything else on family or can we transition to the most fun one? yeah, let's do that. All right. So the next one I want to talk about is simply choosing the choosing a gym that is very, very productive and supports your environment and supports your goals. The one thing that I strongly encourage here, and I've had a lot of success with convincing clients to join better gyms sort of thing is I would strongly encourage you to seek out individually owned bodybuilding slash powerlifting ask. facilities, not that everyone needs to be a competitor or anything, but in these sorts of gyms, you're typically going to get owners that care more. You're going to get a better choice of exercise equipment. You're going to have the average member who's much more invested into their health, into their progress. You typically get better music selection as well. You're not getting the elevator. Top 40 kind of jam thing, is typically very unmotivating rules that make sense as opposed to rules made by a corporation. And you meet really cool people, right? So the one typical downside there is price. Your big box gyms are cheap for a reason. You might end up paying 50, 75%, 100 % more, but I'm always in the camp of those are costs that are well worth it because it is not so well to think of it as a cost but more as an investment in yourself. Yeah, I mean, that could be a thousand times or a thousand percent more. Like if you think about a Planet Fitness being $10 a month and then like a nice bodybuilding gym being $100 a month, you're literally looking at like a 10X, which to me still doesn't sound like a big, like going from $10 to a hundred dollars doesn't sound like a huge loss to me. But for somebody who's pinching pennies and can go to Planet Fitness for $10 a month, I understand the dilemma there. ah And I think this is kind of where intrinsic motivation needs to come in at some level. Like, yes, there, and that's different than willpower, I think is, the distinction here is you can have intrinsic motivation and have a great workout anywhere. Like I can just think about how when we lived in PB, uh, I one day dropped into crunch fitness because I wanted to use some machines as I was preparing for the physique program or something like along those lines that we were running at the time. Um, So intrinsic motivation trumps willpower and it trumps environment, but environment makes intrinsic motivation significantly easier. And so I think there's certainly something to that. Yeah, obviously, if funds are incredibly tight, right. And let's let's use that example. Ten dollars per month, Planet Fitness versus one hundred dollars a month. Right. So let's call it whatever that is. Ninety dollars over twelve months is Brian, good at math. That's what like eleven hundred dollars, ten eighty, something like that on the year. Yeah, I mean, that's. Yeah, that is that is I would not call that an insignificant amount of money spread over a year, but I would also ask yourself if this is important to you, I would look through the lens of where there might be leaks in your finances elsewhere, right? Because I would argue the average person has makes up that.$90 in takeout that would be unproductive to their goals over a month period. And you can usually find sponsor. And some people have never experienced it. Right. Well, like I've had clients who I suggested that and they kind of like pushed back on me and I'm like, OK, you know, it's perfectly fine. And then when they were traveling, like I remember a client was like that and then he traveled to Austin and I was like, I know this great gym in Austin. called Lift ATX. It's a really cool place. You know, do a drop in there. And he was blown away. And he was like, I get it now. I'm going to look for a gym like this when I get home. And sometimes you just have to experience it. And, What I love about this example is this is literally what drove me to CrossFit in the first place. I was training at my university rec center. was, I mean, the years 2005, it's, you know, bright fluorescent lights, white walls, shitty pop music videos up on the giant screen, just like an awful, terribly unmotivating uh environment. And then some Dude that I went to high school with I saw was doing CrossFit and posting videos of it and they were training in a a in a dirty warehouse with like dim lighting and just doing just running and throwing sandbags and squatting with a barbell and stuff. And I was like, that speaks to me. I'm ready to leave this corporate bullshit university gym. I want to go train in this fucking warehouse. And that completely changed the trajectory of my life. You know, Um, so I think the gym environment, if you are a gym person is very, very, very important for that intrinsic motivation. Right. And even someone like myself, like I love training. I love it. It is my absolute favorite thing to do. I had to train at a very stuffy, anytime fitness, maybe like three, four months back. And I was fucking miserable. I could not wait to leave that place. Um, So I think it can really, really be a very underrated aspect of it. Yeah, find music to be a huge piece of this. So when we had CrossFit PB, you you would come in and when we first started, you know, we were bare bones. We would have a Bluetooth speaker just blasting 50 cent and Eminem from like the early 2000s. And the motivation level was super high. Everyone would get super amped up with the music. But it got me thinking about what you mentioned about the big box gyms and the like top 40s hits and stuff like that. Like, how many times are you in one of those gyms and don't have headphones on? Well, in this day and age, very, very few, but in 2006 and 2008, it was not the same. Yeah. I still had, uh I remember even in like 2005, six, seven, uh still, you know, having my, my air pod, no, not air pod, iPod. And, and literally I had a thousand songs on it it was mostly, you know, gangster rap from the early two thousands and, and we, trained at 24 hour fitness post college. That was, that was our gym, 24 hour fitness and golds, basically big box gyms. And that's what I did, man. I just put headphones on and just jam my music. So it was really a non-issue. But I do think the biggest feather in the cap of the like more primal, individually owned gym is that the environment is such, and you used to use that word that, you know, is the definition of our conversation today. But you can find people within that environment that you sort of admire and look up to. and maybe you end up talking to them because it's an intimate environment and you learn from them. Maybe you don't. Maybe you just like admire them from afar and you're like, wow, like that person curling the fifties is the person I want to be or like whatever it is. And I think you just don't get that in the big box gym so much. Like, first of all, people are not as likely or willing to want to talk to you about training, but even so, like there's just fewer people that you could look at from afar and admire what they're doing. uh Whereas in that more intimate environment, you get a lot more people that are dedicated to the craft. And so it just, like you said, kind of fosters that environment in which people train hard and they have goals. And there's a number of different people that you can touch and kind of like get insight from. So I just think there's those kind of really intangible pieces. Maybe it starts as an intangible, but definitely becomes a tangible. There's that quote about putting yourself in the room, right? And there, make no doubt about it. The room in that individually owned private gym, or not necessarily private, individually owned gym is going to have much more akin to the people that are doing the sorts of things that you either aspire to do or want to be like are already in there, certainly. Okay, and I think, the one final thing that the only one that I would touch on that plays a pretty big role in today's day and age is reformatting your algorithms, right? So there's the kind of physical environments, but then there's the digital environment and so many of that, it's either X, what you use on there, Instagram, whatever. And I have found there's been a few times where my algorithm had got in away from things that are positive for me. During prep, I had liked a couple food posts, and then what it starts doing is flooding you with these food posts and recipes. And I would find myself like, I'm a nutrition professional, but I am not a food person by any stretch of the imagination. And I found myself going down these rabbit holes of looking at these different meals and then saving them and stuff. And then all it did was increase a food focus in a time where food focus was already quite high. Fortunately, I was able to spot it after about three weeks and realize I have to reformat my algorithm. So then I went specifically looking for Dragon Ball Z posts and stuff like that. And then I started liking a bunch of those things. And then over a few days, it floods your algorithm with different things. But that is something I think is also very, very important. especially in the very, very toxic climate of things going on in the United States. So it can consume you, but be careful of what you're giving your mental bandwidth to because it can literally consume you. But you can also just reprogram your algorithm by searching things that are productive for you and then liking a bunch of those posts. You do that for a couple of days and then it all will become different. Yeah, yeah, totally. uh Real quick before we finish up, I just want to touch on one more piece of the gym environment, which I think is the balance between convenience versus motivation. ah And what I mean by that is like I have a home gym and the convenience factor is 10 out of 10. Like I literally just walk downstairs and go into the gym and boom, I'm training. It's amazing. Like it decreases the barrier to entry so much. But my motivation to train is not always super high because I'm always in this basement gym by myself in dark light. Nobody there to hang out with and motivate me. Nobody to look up to an admirer. Nobody to talk strategy during workouts or give me that little, uh, get them buddy. Like get that last rep type thing. Uh, none of that's there. So motivation would be significantly higher if I had a really cool individually owned gym, like for example, Alberto Nunez and Brian Miner train an hour north of me in Fort Collins. Would be really cool if I was training with Brian Miner and Alberto Nunez on a daily basis. That would increase motivation super high. But what would decrease motivation would be having to drive an hour to get to that gym every single time I want to train. And so we have that delicate balance between environment and convenience. And uh I don't think it's trivial. I think that you have to figure out in your brain, like which one is going to be more effective for you? Like, is it a hindrance for you to have to jump in the car and go call it 20 minutes? That seems like a reasonable commute to go to a gym. Like if you have to get in your car and go 20 minutes to a gym to work out and drive 20 minutes back, is that a deterrent for you despite the motivation increase you get when you're there versus simply having, you know, some bare bones equipment in your basement that you can go. and train and not have to go anywhere to do. So uh the individual psyche is important here, but I do think that that's an important question to ask yourself when you talk about environment. That's a very good addition and that's something I have with numerous clients I brought up and evaluated options and things like that. And then there's even certain clients like this is a really good part. I have a client who she trains at kind of like a local like a 24 or whatever that's really close to home. But then there's a really cool gym like the exact type that we're talking about that's on her way to work. So then I think like three days per week. on her way home from work, she goes to that gym, but then on like the weekends and stuff, because it's, I don't know, 40 minutes away, something like that, she hits the local gym like right around the corner. So that's another option there to grant that you're paying for two gym memberships as opposed to one. But there's typically some semblance or balance or a blend that can work best for all situations. Cool. So as always guys, thank you for listening. Hopefully Brian and myself were able to offer some insight on a less tangible episode, right? Where there's no reps and sets or specific foods in this one, but one of the intangibles that I think can have an incredibly large impact on a positive trajectory of your life. So any questions on the back end of this one guys, holler at us on Instagram or in the comments on YouTube. As always, thank you for listening. We'll talk to you next week.