May 2026 Instagram Q&A | ETP#216

Eat Train Prosper #216 is our May 2026 Instagram Q&A. We have 15 questions. Notable questions of likely interest are: a framework for peaking a physique for a photoshoot, Zone 2 cardio before resistance training producing better sessions (question mark), and how much of an effect on gains would being vegan/vegetarian have when done right?

A big thank you as always to all of you who provide us great questions for these episodes.

Timestamps:

00:10:04 - For DB Shoulder press, any advantage to the bench with a shorter back rest? 

00:12:29 - What is the general framework to PEAK someone for a photo shoot? 

00:20:18 - Having a hard time finding the literature on appropriate maintenance volume. Lifted 15 years and getting into BJJ at age 36. Want to maintain 3-4 lifts a week with 3 BJJ sessions 

00:25:27 - I work in an office and don’t have time to cook eggs in the AM. What are some good breakfast options for meal 1? 

00:28:33 - Thoughts on purely frontal plane adduction movements when programming for lats?

00:32:25 - What is the hardest part of moving back stateside for Aaron?

00:35:56 - Is Bulking and cutting really necessary? Seeing lots about recomp and no need to bulk… 

00:40:25 - Loved the episode with blood test results! Have you guys looked at AM cortisol? How does stress impact eating and training and physique? How can you improve the impacts of stress?

00:46:20 - I know there is a threshold of hunger regulation around 7k steps per day, but is there another threshold? I often hear about marathoners gaining weight but then often see triathletes or Ironmen racers losing weight despite eating everything. Could it be genetic? 

00:49:21 - I’ve been messing around with 6x/week torso/limbs split with 1 set to failure (6 sets per session). Seems to be making good strength gains, but wonder if 2x/week frequency (vs 3x per area) with higher volume per session would be better for hypertrophy? Thoughts?

00:54:10 - Been starting workouts with 20-30 min of Z2 before lifting and surprisingly feel I perform better, counter to what you always hear to do lifting THEN cardio. Have you ever tried this? 

00:58:00 - Eric Trexler recently spoke on RP pod about how muscle gain on TRT can be underwhelming. Can you perhaps share your own experiences around these statements?

01:06:18 - Do you (Aaron) think you’d ever bring on an assistant coach?

01:08:42 - How much of an effect on gains would being vegan/vegetarian have when done right?

01:11:15 - Full time dad, work 50+ (hours), never done a show. What is the best way to mentally block out hunger noise?

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Transcript

0:25

What's going on guys? Welcome to Eat, Train, Prosper. Today is episode 216. It is Brian and myself, and this is our May, 2026 Instagram Q &A. I am very, very excited for this kind of phase of the podcast. I would say is Brian and I are not only back in the same country, we are on the same time zone. So Brian doesn't have to get up at 5 a.m. to record. I don't have to stay up to 11 p.m. to record. These, get both of us in a very, very prime part of the day. Mental acuity is high. We've had potentially a little bit of food, some coffee, and brain capacity should be at a higher caliber across the board for both of us. So, before we get into today's questions, which we have 15, Brian, what's the latest with you? Yeah, three quick updates. First off, we usually are doing this podcast at 10 a.m. as Aaron noted. Today, we had to push it a little bit earlier or pull it a little earlier, however you say that. um It's eight thirty here. And the reason being because today is the day that a company called Cerebris Systems is having their IPO. And my wife, Kim, has been working with Cerebris for seven years. representing them from the PR side and more recently has also been working with them on some of the investment side, getting us some shares and some involvement in this IPO. And so today at 10 a.m. Mountain or 12 p.m. Eastern, my wife's going to be on the NASDAQ floor. She's going to be there for the ringing of the bell and the dropping of Cerebris as ticker. CBRS if anyone would like to track it. And after we get off this podcast, I get to be a little bit of a day trader for a few hours and just kind of watch the stock as it goes from IPO to hopefully what they call popping, where it increases in value over the first few hours of its existence. And then I get to decide how much of our investment in this company I want to sell at various points throughout the day or not sell and hold on for months and years, because ultimately we believe in this company as a competitor to Nvidia. So uh really excited, seven years in the making, but the last month especially has been extremely consuming, both for my wife as she's helping get this company ready for IPO, but also from my side as I delve into the world of investment and IPO and begin to kind of learn about all these different things. so for me, that's actually been really cool. because very rarely in life am I exposed to such novelty anymore, where I'm just consumed with learning something new. And it's been really rewarding and really cool. And so I just wanted to kind of let you guys know that this is happening and that I feel, you know, quite validated, even though I don't know if it's going to be successful. I personally feel a lot of validation simply from the process of learning. Let's see. super, super cool. I had not realized, or I think maybe when you immediately said it, but as a competitor to Nvidia, there's not many players in the space. the only reason I know about this, I guess if I'll let everyone in on the... I only have really one hobby, as all of my prior hobbies had been overtaken by... um what effectively became professional avenues of my life. My only kind of hobby that I have is home Bitcoin mining. And again, a little bit background, I used to be a software engineer, technology's always been a thing to me. But with the rise of AI and mining and stuff, Nvidia there's only like a few companies in the world that can make these these chips for these things. So it's a very kind of Not really gate kept but but it's a lot to to get the technology rolling and some of these companies are just so far ahead So it is very very interesting and cool kind of unique space for an IPO and you know for you guys as a family to have in uh Not inside but original shares or whatever that way of where I guess private shares and now the company's going public. So very very cool I'm sure it's a very exciting day for you. I'm sure it's probably gonna be a very nerve-racking day too. Because there's, it's a, no matter what you do, it's a varying scale of wins and losses. Like no matter which decisions you make. that, it's an exciting day, but I'm sure there's gonna be like the, what's that called? Hindsight is 2020 at the same time. I'm sure there's gonna be a moment where I'm like, oh, 225, sell. And then it goes to 250 and I'm like, shit, why did I sell? So yeah, I have all that to look forward to. And then it also infected my sleep last night. I was tossing and turning and like mentally angsty the whole night. So yeah, should be fun. I'm looking forward to it all. oh Yeah, okay. So real quick updates from here. Summer vacay for the kids starts in one week. kind of wild that we're already here. I don't even know why they get out of school in the end of May. That's insane to me too. We used to get out in like the middle to end of June. But anyway, they get out next week, uh mostly in camps and stuff for the first five weeks. So it shouldn't change my life a whole ton there. We have some trips and stuff in the latter part of the summer, which may affect our podcasting, but first few weeks, no big deal, normal life, summertime. And then the only real other update I have here is, uh you know, I've been on TRT now for four or five months. And I talked a lot in the first couple months how my, uh my HRV and my heart rate and all of these metrics were just all over the place. Like my body just couldn't seem to regulate itself. My resting heart rate was up, my HRV was down, like parasympathetic sympathetic stuff was kind of all over the place. And uh in the last few weeks, it's really stabilized and even to a point that it's equal to or better than when I was 185 pounds. And this is the part that's really throwing me for a loop is like before TRT, if my body weight approached 200, that would come with an increase in resting heart rate, a decrease in HRV. um It was just not uh a great place for my body to be. And then when I would be 185 pounds or 190, my resting heart rate would drop, HRV would go up, I felt more balanced, et cetera. And so I always talked on the podcast about how I wanna live at 185 because my body just seems to do better there. Well now, I'm 210 pounds on TRT and my resting heart rate and my HRV are as good as they were at 185, maybe even better. Like the last week and a half. My overnight heart rate has been in the high 30s. It's been in the 41, 42 range while doing my morning HRV stuff. And it's wild to me that my body can be essentially 20 to 25 pounds heavier than where it was before. And yet it seems to be functioning in more of a parasympathetic and maybe balanced state. And overall, I just feel great. Again, I wouldn't say that TRT is like this. my God, know, a door opened and I see the world completely differently and like my energy is a thousand times better and all this stuff. Like, no, it's very subtle. But when you have subtle changes across all of these different aspects of life from like mood to energy and focus and sleep and whatever, just, it has a cumulative effect that's so overwhelmingly positive and uh just surprised it how everything feels so balanced and that the The HRV and the resting heart rate seem to be representative of this. Yeah, that's really cool. One of the things that I know of and what's really funny is... Everyone pretty much says this but people like we're as humans were just impatient right in It's you said you're like four or five months into it now, but that's not eight weeks. That's not 12 weeks, right? We're talking 16 weeks 20 weeks and people just aren't patient enough They change things and then it really is especially hormones, right? It's there's detectable blood levels But then there's like the downstream cascades of when hormones and stuff change and those those they're just slow It's not an immediate thing oh that everything's settled in for you and you feel so good and you got some extra gains on top of it. Yeah, exactly. We have a question on the Q &A later about muscle gain and TRT, so that'll be fun to address here in a little bit too. But tell me what is going on in your world. Not much. We got a couch yesterday, so that was exciting. um The downside was the delivery window was one to four. So I was like, OK, I'll just push the gym later and stuff because Jenny had calls and things yesterday for work. Couch shows up at 730 p.m. uh So I like wait. Could have fucking went to the gym, could have done everything. But no, couch is here. I had two really good training sessions Monday and Tuesday. I feel like I am back. It was a lot, the move, just, I think things that... I tell myself it's fine, I'm fine, but I think I just lie to myself a little bit and stress was insanely high. So many decisions to make in those sorts of things. then adapting to, like I said last week, the altitude, the shift in humidity was really brutal. ah But I think I'm finally back to baseline. I had great pumps, good performance, felt like my physique looked decent. ah So um I'm happy to be turned over that coin. Nice, that's great, man. Really glad to hear that. and I think that's it for me. All right, cool. Well, let's jump in to our Q &A. I actually maybe have some thoughts on this, but curious yours. What for dumbbell shoulder press, any advantage to the bench with a shorter backrest? Yeah, so effectively what they're asking is you can use the utility bench, is, you know, the backrest part is out maybe two feet or something like that versus a more traditional, you know, adjustable bench. The advantage is it allows you to lean back and improve your levers. That is the advantage. You can use more weight. You're stronger, but it's really a disadvantage to your shoulders because you're effectively turning it into an inclined dumbbell bench press. So I would say it's actually a disadvantage because it allows you to kind of cheat the movement that you want to do to get better performance, but at a reduced direct stimulus to the muscle that you want to target. Yeah, that was kind of my first thought too, but then I started wondering and questioning whether one could just arch and essentially flare their rib cage in a similar manner, even with the higher bench to the point that maybe it wouldn't even make a difference. And so maybe it just simply comes down to a, which one feels more comfortable for you uh and being just taking accountability for holding your rib cage and torso in a position that is less advantageous to load. Because ultimately, if you keep your rib cage sucked down, almost like kind of that hollow body position we learned in CrossFit back in the day, controlling the midline, you will lift significantly less weight than you would if you allow that to flare and kind of like stick that chest up and arch the back. And you see the same thing with an incline dumbbell bench press. I mean, you can literally emulate the same thing across any pressing movement. um And so I don't know that the backrest is necessarily the issue as much as kind of how you're performing with whatever backrest you use. Yeah, effectively that. would say if I was forced to pick one, would say having the full back rest there gives you at least some haptic feedback with your upper back and your head to not just incrementally lean back. But yeah, you could cheat both of them the same. Yeah, for sure. All right, this next question is certainly for you. What is the general framework to peak someone for a photo shoot? Yeah, this is a lot of fun. So I'll speak obviously really high level. The first and most important facet is you have to be lean enough for peaking to even do anything effectively. And that is the part that people unfortunately just don't want to hear. And what that is is you need to be leaner than you probably think. let's speak in a male context because that is the largest percentage of our listenership and viewership. well under % body fat. Seven, eight, I would say before the peaking really does uh much. So you have to be lean. That's the first part. And then the second kind of thing that we would want to do is kind of leading into that, the final days, right? So let's start maybe, you know, maybe photo shoot is Saturday and we're doing this maybe starting on Monday. You can change your fluid. ah So you're going to kind of hypercompensate fluid intake over those first few days and then you kind of in a tiered fashion reduce it heading into the photo shoot. Let's say like Thursday, Friday and what that does is the body is excreting more fluid than it's then it's intaking and then we're effectively low on fluid low on intracellular or sorry extracellular fluid through that kind of flushing process. That's one aspect uh in acute carbohydrate load. So in the days leading into it. some some lower reduced carbohydrate and then in that 24 48 hour period depending on pretty much how large you are and how good digestion is in acute super compensation of carbohydrate most importantly there you want very very dense carbohydrate because you do not want a high amount of gut volume right that is how you can be really lean but your stomach looks really big and thick because you've put too much vegetable in there too much fruit for example so things like rice cakes, rice, cream of rice, dried fruits, very very dense rapidly digesting carbohydrate that will not sit in the small intestine, sit in the stomach, those sorts of things and then also lower protein intake in those final days because again we want reduced gut contents and things to clear the GI, get into the system as much as possible um and keep sodium in play. Right, so a lot of people like kind of pull Sodium waterfalls sodium so we can pull some of that but nothing crazy don't hyper Load sodium or anything. I just have people keep it constant And that pretty much is your general framework from a high level of peaking someone But the most important thing is you have to be lean enough for it to matter Yeah, great points, man. I don't have a ton to add more, just a personal anecdote and maybe some feedback from you as to what people could do to mitigate it. But, um, you know, from 2020, 21 and 22, I did a photo shoot every spring throughout those years. And the first two, I think I did a really good job peaking. was lean. I didn't have a ton of water retention. Uh, I think it all turned out about as I would hope that it would. And then in the third year, um while I was subjectively probably the most jacked of all of the three years, as I'd hope I would be after three more years of training, but uh I found that during the photo shoot, I seemed to be retaining. a bit of fluid around my midline and kind of low back love handles area. And it wasn't that it was fat. Like I was certainly as lean as I was in prior years. But it definitely was an obvious thing when you look at it in the pictures. And so, you know, there could be a number of factors of why that would be the case. I'm guessing some of it comes down to simply like cortisol and internal stress throughout the final weeks of the process. But maybe if you want to speak to anything around those aspects. Yeah, that is one of the typically when you see in one of the best things for if any of the listeners want to go see is that look at go look at bodybuilders, right? Who have like a really poor not necessarily a poor peak but but but some um unfortunate event that happened in very close proximity when this stomach is usually really watery and stuff that's digestion issues. So either something they something didn't digest well or they're having Loose stools and things like that. Like you're gonna hold water in that midsection So that's why one of the first things I said is like you want very very safe digesting foods like pretty much your rice variations their Acute stress can also do it and that's where the front of the body is typically more digestion related if people are retaining water in the legs lower back that tends the General consensus is that that tends to be more cortisol related um But there's another reason that why we do that kind of water titration down towards it not a complete cutoff until maybe you know the the morning of or something like that but that titration down of water with the acute rise in in carbohydrate intake because like we know for every gram of glycogen stored we're going to store 2.7 grams of water so you're kind of not forcing but but effectively making the body store that carbohydrate it pulls what water you do have into the cell with that kind of being upside down in the fluid intake, the fluid excretion equation, we get a lot more fluid coming out of the body via urination in the carbohydrate taking what we do have intracellular so we get a lot of that extracellular water retention is very very low to help with that look. Yeah, so last thing on this, this might be a bit of a tangent, but just out of curiosity, you mentioned cutting water a bit toward the end. And my first thought on that was, you know, I've always heard that there's a difference in peaking protocol for people that are on exogenous. testosterone hormones, whatever, and then those that are doing it naturally. And my understanding, at least in prior years, was that those that are natural actually tend to increase water as they go into the final stages, whereas people on exogenous hormones might decrease water, as you alluded to. Any thoughts on that? Yeah, so I may have said some, chosen some poor words, not necessarily, like morning of, stop, like let's say your photo shoots at, I don't know, 12 p.m. We're gonna have, you know, maybe a black coffee, espresso or something like that, and maybe 200 milliliters, 300 milliliters of water. That's just day of. What it might be is, let's say that's Saturday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, you might be doing seven, eight liters of water. And then Thursday, let's call it seven. We cut that in half to three and a half liters of water. And then uh Friday, maybe that comes down to... three or two and a half. So we're not cutting water, we are just titrating down from where. But yeah, if you just completely cut it, there's going to be no water for the carbohydrate to pull it in. yeah, it's definitely, I maybe chose some poor words in terms of it's all relative. Would that process be similar across those that are using and those that are not? Okay, cool. Okay, this one I think let's kick to you. Having a hard time finding the literature on appropriate maintenance volume. I've lifted for 15 years and I'm getting into BJJ, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu at 36. I want to maintain three to four lifts a week with three BJJ sessions. Yeah, so I think the kind of premier study that you would want to look at on maintenance volume is going to be Bickel et al from 2011. That's B-I-C-K-E-L. Bickel did this study where they took people and had the, oh, they had an older population and a younger population and they had them train for, I think it was 16 weeks at nine sets per muscle group per week. And then after 16 weeks, they split them into two groups. And one of the groups did one third of the volume. So three sets per week. And then I think the other group did one ninth of the volume, which was one set per week per muscle group. And I'm not entirely sure how long that lasted for, because I think that that's a super relevant point is like, you know, if you can maintain muscle for three weeks. that doesn't really say this worked and you know, can just keep sticking with this for eternity and you'll maintain your muscle. So I think that's an important caveat. You know, read the study, I'm not sure how long they did this second portion, but what they found was that the younger group of 20 to 35 year olds was actually able to maintain their muscle mass on one ninth of the volume. literally taking from nine sets a week down to one set a week, they're able to maintain it. The older group was not able to maintain it. This was 60 to 75 year olds. They needed one third of the volume to maintain. So they were doing then three sets a week instead of nine sets a week. But what that essentially tells us is that based on your age and training history and a number of other variables, somewhere between a third and a ninth of your previous training volume would be sufficient for you to maintain your muscle. Now, again, I think the important point is that we don't know how long that went for. like maybe it went for another 16 weeks. Okay, that's some good information. I would love for this to go for like another year or two years. Like, can you maintain this in perpetuity with these low volumes? And then I also think it's important to separate people out into your training age, because somebody who's been training for one year likely hasn't built enough muscle for it to be a huge detriment to cut their volume. Like they're still probably on the upswing of gaining muscle. So even if they're doing less, they might still be able to maintain and gain simply because of their early training age. Whereas somebody like Aaron and I who has been training for 20 years, my guess would be that we probably cannot cut our volume to one set a week per muscle group and still maintain all the muscle we've built over 20 plus years of training. ah So I think you have to take into account all of those different aspects. ah But given this specific situation of this person wanting to do BJJ and cutting down their volume, et cetera, ah You know, we have a recovery bucket of how much recovery we have available. And so at some point, you know, BJJ is an exhausting activity. There's going to come a point where you have to sacrifice somewhere on the lifting. And uh I think this person noted in the question that they still want to lift four days a week. So, yeah. So to me, man, like if you're lifting four days a week, that means you're probably on an upper lower. You're probably still hitting each muscle group twice a week. So even if you're doing something like one to two sets per muscle group per session, and you're getting say four sets per muscle group per week, my guess would be that that is more than sufficient to maintain the muscle that you've built prior. And I would be hesitant to advise you to do a ton more than that, if your goal is maintenance that is, simply because of the exhaustive nature of BJJ and the fact that you want to have enough recovery resources available to do well at that pursuit. I mean, I think you answer that very, very well. Just, I guess like a small caveat that I might add. This example is different than someone who's like, I'm getting into running or something like that. BJJ is very, very active. I maybe wouldn't call it like a full body workout, but it's probably pretty close. So there's some level of still like muscle activation usage, especially in the upper limbs and stuff. ah I think... I think the odds of this particular individual doing too much for their maintenance is probably higher than them doing too low. So if we consider, let's say you're still doing four lifts per week, three BJJ sessions, that's seven sessions per week, which means you're either training every single day or one day you're going to have to double up to have one day off. So yeah, I would put volume rather low like Brian suggested, certainly. yeah, push on the side more of intensity and a little bit less on the volume side probably. All right, over to you here. I work in an office and I don't have time to cook eggs in the morning. What are some good breakfast options for meal one? Yeah, I love something like this. So overnight oats is something that you can do and then you take it in. You can do a shake or something like that. By shake, mean protein shake alongside it. If your office has a microwave and sometimes people, you know, cook their food in the office. know different offices have different approaches on that. You could just make the oats there, put the protein powder in with that, have some berries on you. That works as well. You could do something with yogurt, right? That you can mix before leaving the home, a low fat yogurt with, um what is that called? Berries or something like that, in that you can add additional protein powder into the yogurt to get you to what would be your total daily protein target divided by the number of meals that you have. per day and then you could do something like a starch coming from sourdough or something like that to get you your protein. Fats can be you whatever they need to be titrated relative to your particular goals. We have a fructose based carbohydrate from the fruit banana something like that and then a glucose based from the uh starch. So those would be my typical options there. There's the things that people do like the egg muffin bites and but in my experience, they're just so, it's so low in food volume, in macros that I just don't ever recommend that for clients. Yeah, I actually don't even think eggs are something like this question comes across as if like, my god, if I can't cook eggs, like what could I possibly do? There's like so many options out there. I just like I don't even eat eggs. uh And granted, I don't eat breakfast either. But, you know, my first reaction here is thinking back to when I did eat breakfast. And my go to was always whey protein shake and a bagel, some fruit, maybe something like that. like Aaron said, you know, very a bunch of options with, balancing the glucose and then yogurt is obviously a great one. Like he said, like my daughter every morning before school, she just has a big bowl of yogurt with crushed up walnuts and raisins in it. So you have like a full balanced meal there as well. Yeah. I think there's a ton of options, like even if you want if you want to go a little lower carb and you don't want the bagel, then you could certainly do like a way shake with a handful of some sort of nut and an apple or something along those lines, too. So there's absolutely no reason you have to cook eggs tons of ways around that. And to be honest, I don't even think eggs are like the most efficient way to get protein in the morning, because to get 32 grams of protein, you need to eat like six eggs or something stupid like that. mean, I remember are super high. Yeah. are high exactly. So it might not even be like the best approach depending on your goals anyways. Yep. This one is definitely for you. Thoughts on purely frontal plane adduction movements when programming for lats. Yeah, so a frontal plane adduction movement would be something like a wide grip pull down where you're in a pronated position, your arms are in front of you and elbows kind of flare out to the side. And then the adduction component means it comes into the body as you pull. So the first thought there is either one of those wide grip pull downs or, um man, I'm blanking out on his name. Who was the, uh the biomechanics guy who died during COVID who was like 60 something years old. oh come on. I thought about him the other day and I can't remember his name right now. I can think of all the stupid little things that I learned from him, but now I can't think of his name. um it was Doug Brighan-Oley. Oh, okay, I was thinking of someone else. Yeah, okay. Yeah. Well, Doug Rignoli has this movement that he popularized before he passed that was a one arm. um Exactly this. was like a frontal plane adduction movement where you basically are reaching out to the side and up and you're pulling in. So your elbow comes into your side. Now, what's interesting about this is there's certainly some lats involved in that action. And I don't even think Casim would argue that there's definitely some lats in there. But what Casim has been able to show through his work at N1 with all the biomechanics modeling that he's done is that that frontal plane adduction type movement is actually going to target the teres a little bit more than the lats, or at least the teres are going to be the primary mover there. And so people often confuse the teres with the lats because they sit right on top of the lat. And you actually, when you look at that V shape that you want, when you talk about getting big lats and stuff, a lot of that actually comes from the development of the teres, which are essentially, they're not the upper lat, but they sit like where the upper lat sits or slightly above it. So people can oftentimes mistake that frontal plane adduction as being like, my lats are getting crushed when really it's like the teres that are sitting there on the lat that you're actually feeling working. Not to say that there's not lats working because there is. So I don't think that that would be my preference for just purely using frontal plane adduction movements for your lats. I really am a believer in using that kind of shoulder width neutral grip for the lats where the elbow can travel in line in the sagittal plane front and backward. I also think that in the opposite, opposing this idea of adduction from the outer to inner on the pole, uh Cass has actually shown that coming across the body. So you know that arm is essentially in front of the chest where your bicep is squeezing into your pec as that arm comes across your body. That is actually the mechanism by which your lat is gonna stretch most effectively. And so not just simply using a neutral grip, but using a neutral grip that allows it to come and stretch across the body might even be a little bit more effective. um But my personal opinion is that that neutral grip shoulder width Is is where I have found the best results for my lats. How about you, Aaron? I agree completely. uh Neutral grip, shoulder width, keeping the elbow in tight. Very, very rarely will I do anything else um outside from if I'm traveling and there's a gym that has one of those scissor pull downs or something like that, I'll do it for some novelty. But any programming for myself is always going to be neutral grip, know, elbow coming in, a pull down or a row. Yeah. All right, what is the hardest part of moving back stateside for Aaron? There's a number. But the two that I would say the hardest part that we kind of realized the other day is kind of analysis paralysis and evaluating every decision. And before we were kind of, we would post some things on Instagram or ask people, we need a couch, you where should we buy a couch? And then you get 10 people send you 10 different places. And now we're evaluating like 40 fucking couches. And if you extrapolate that to couch, screen for your desk, TV, coffee maker, uh air fryer. And you can't evaluate 10 things for every single decision you need to make. So we just kind of had to be like, is it available at Costco? Are the reviews good? I'm buying it. Because at the end of the day, like for a couch, as long as it's a decent height and a decent firmness and the... it's okay, it's gonna be perfectly fine. So that was one of the challenging things is like just making so many decisions and evaluating so many things. That's kind of mostly behind us. I still haven't bought a monitor for the desk because some of the things I just can't, I haven't done all my analysis for that one yet. The second in and honestly the thing that I'm in full transparency, this is gonna sound potentially a little bit offending, ah not that I mean it as such. I'm afraid of being back just around the normal people, right? um One of the beauties of Bali, and there's numerous criticisms of Bali, especially the eccentric people that it typically attracts, is in Bali, especially in the kind of network that we created with Undefeated and stuff, every single person... is the person that took the risk and made the jump. If you think how many people think about quitting their job. Going to do something else, you know, so many people think about it of those so many people how many actually sit down and you know Really evaluate it even less how many people actually quit their job make the jump by the flights and end up there a very small fraction So you're surrounded by those those risk takers the people who have are very very motivated. They're looking for more um Very entrepreneurial right? So so that was my entire network and now being back in just your, you know, gen pop for what it is, I'm very concerned that I'm going to lose parts of my edge, parts of the things that have made me, you know, quite successful in my time there. So, reversion to mean, I think is a statistical term there. So that is something that I'm concerned about. And some of the things that I am particularly doing is I'm being very selective with who I will, I don't want to say associate with, but spend time with, train with those sorts of things because I'm very malleable to my environment. It's a positive, it's also a weakness of my character. So that is one of the things that I'd say I'm most concerned with. Yeah, so if you start hanging out with sedentary people, you might just stop working out and become sedentary. Exactly. Start watching, you know, getting into fantasy football uh games, teams and stuff, leagues and stuff again. Yeah, like it is, it is, it is a concern of mine, honestly. All right. All right. There you go. All right. Next one here is bulking and cutting really necessary. I'm seeing lots of information about recomp and that there's no need to bulk. It all depends on your definition of the word necessary. Is it necessary? No, it is not. Does it work better? Yes, it does. If re-comping worked better, everyone would be re-comping. Re-comping is a thing. It is painstakingly slow relative to bulking and cutting. Simple as that. Yeah, I mean, I agree 100%. I think it depends on the stage of training that you're at as well. um You and I have both talked in the past about how we did these dreamer balks when we were younger. Jeff Nippard put out a video four or five years ago, maybe at this point where he was like, everybody that's big did a dreamer bulk. Not saying you have to do one, but everybody that's big did one. So I do think there's like something to that where like you just have to show your body that Oh, you can get bigger and you can be anabolic even if it's not all pure clean weight. Like this is a place where your body feels comfortable going. I think there's something to that potentially. But then on the other side of the spectrum, we do have a ton of studies now that are basically showing that you can succeed at gaining the maximum amount of muscle by having a very small surplus. And, you know, I think the helm study was the best one that represented this a couple of years ago, where they had people on either a five or a 15%. increase in calories from maintenance, and they were identical in muscle growth. Now, the thing is that neither of those caloric increases are that large. If you're eating 3000 calories a day, a 5 % increase is 150 calories, and a 15 % is 450 calories. So like, when you talk about in the past, the common advice used to be, increase your calories by 500 if you want to gain and decrease them by 500 if you want to lose. That was just a nominal number that was put out there. And it was like, that'll allow you to gain one pound a week or lose one pound a week. Boom, you're set. I do think there's some beauty in that. And the reason being that that number at that 15 % plus or minus is essentially big enough that it ensures that you're not going to be the opposite of what you want. So it ensures that if you're bulking, you're not accidentally going to be in a deficit. And if you're in a deficit, you're not accidentally gonna be in a surplus. So there's something about that 15 % number that I think is pretty solid as a place to be for bulking or cutting. Now that study showed that you could do it at 5%. The problem with 5 % is that you just have so much variance in your caloric expenditure on a day to day basis, that if you nominally say I'm gonna eat 3150 because my maintenance calories is 3000, well, one day you walk a little more or you have a harder workout or it's really hot out and you sweat more and suddenly you're actually in a deficit when you thought you were in a surplus. And so I think that's really just the risk of taking a surplus that is too small. um But yeah, mean, ultimately it seems that the studies do show that if you can ensure that you are in fact in a surplus, you probably don't need a huge surplus. Yeah, I really liked how you answered that. And oh I guess to wrap it up, it really depends on how well you do it, right? When you're gaining, I don't like the term bulking because it's typically used in a... In a poor context, I guess gaining but what is your rate of gain? What is your rate of loss? We know in one of the things you don't need a huge surplus and I think that's something that people really mess up if maintenance calories are like you said 3,000 people go to 4,000 Yeah, you're gonna speed run the rate at which you accumulate body fat. That is a poorly designed gain phase But let's say your phases are intelligently designed. Yes an intelligently designed gain and intelligently designed cut is going to be more effective and the rate at which it's more effective is increasingly better than uh eating at 3,000 and making micro transactions of uh fat gain or sorry fat loss and muscle gain at the same time. Yep, yep. All right, I have thoughts on this next question too, but I'll kick it over to you to give us the first thoughts. Loved the episode with blood test results. Have you guys looked at AM cortisol? How does stress impact eating and training and physique? How can you improve the impacts of stress? This is a very, very loaded question in a number of different facets. So have you guys looked at AM cortisol? Yes, numerous, numerous times for myself on serum lab work for clients. And I've even done the 12 hour saliva. cortisol testing, is going to be much more, give you a better picture of your day than a simple serum snapshot. For example, you could have a dog shit night of sleep and your serum AM cortisol will be significantly elevated. um So have we looked at it? Yes. How does stress impact eating, training, and physique? Well, cortisol in and of itself is a catabolic hormone, right? So it's important to note that out. From a very, very high level perspective, cortisol is catabolic. So I think if anything, it... helps with fat loss, plays a part. uh Muscle breakdown, I guess technically. then impact eating, if we have very, very high acute cortisol, we typically get a reduction in appetite. If you think about... like any the best way that I like to explain this think about any time a relative died if you went through a bad breakup or something like that acutely you're not eating anything right because the appetite just isn't there and that's a physiological mechanism right if we think of that classic example of when anyone and you know modern day explains cortisol you're running from a tiger you're preparing for a fight or something like that what cortisol does is it liberates uh substrate It diverts blood flow away from the digestion to the limbs for fighting, flighting, those sorts of things. So it acutely reduces the desire to eat. Now, how does stress, which we typically speak of in our modern day in age, which is a of a prolonged exposure to stress, you get the stress eaters. That's one classification of people. And you get the people who effectively inadvertently starve themselves from stress. or starves themselves during periods of stress. How do know which one you are? It's pretty typically correlated to your body fat level. If you're a stress eater, you're typically going to be more overweight. If you're someone that doesn't eat anything under periods of stress, you're going to be significantly leaner. It's pretty cut and dry there. How can you improve the impacts of stress? There are certain things like ashwagandha and some of these other adaptogenic compounds that can acutely Temporarily, should say. Improve your resiliency to stress, but over a long enough timeline, high constant exposure to a prolonged stressor is going to have a negative impact on your life. So the most important things, if it's a prolonged thing, is how can you remove it? change it and what that might mean is exiting that shitty relationship, quitting that shitty fucking job, right? Changing your life for the better, for the side of things, but then other aspects are do not compound on top of it. Let's say I uh account in tax season or something like that where you're just getting crushed with workload stress is high. Don't also be dieting at that time, right? Don't uh foster a new dog or something like that at that time. Don't compound acute stressors at a time where stress is already higher. So some of it just comes from making intelligent decisions around how much stress you choose to take on. Yeah, I kind of think the premise of the question might need a little bit of uh clarity here because it specifically asks about AM cortisol. And the thing with cortisol is that it's actually supposed to be high in the morning. If you have low cortisol in the morning, you have a problem. ah That's called a reverse cortisol curve. And so what you often see from these people that have low morning cortisol is that it starts low and then throughout the day it rises and it actually peaks. in the late afternoon or early evening when your body is supposed to be getting ready for sleep. So the way the cortisol curve is actually supposed to work is that it's supposed to be really high in the morning. You're supposed to wake up with your peak cortisol and that is essentially what wakes you up. It's like, shit, tiger run, um or I need food or whatever it is. Like something wakes you up. Your cortisol is as high as it goes for the day. That's what causes alertness and sympathetic readiness and all of these things. And then throughout the course of the day, the cortisol should gradually decrease to a point where it's essentially at its lowest right before bed, which signals your body that stress is low, sympathetic system can relax, parasympathetic system can advance, and now we go to sleep. uh So yes, AM cortisol, I've looked at it and it should be high. uh Personally, mine is high, but probably not as high as it could be. I'm usually in the middle of the range of morning cortisol where it probably could be a little bit higher. I have not actually done one of those kind of spit tests that you can do where every hour or two throughout the day you spit and get a cortisol reading. So you can actually see what your cortisol is doing throughout the day. And I think that that's really the insight that would be the most important for you in determining whether your cortisol is working properly or not. So that's really the only thing I wanted to add there. That's good. This one we can kick over to you. I know there is a threshold of hunger regulation around 7,000 steps per day, but is there another threshold? I often hear about marathoners fainting weight. Fainting? Fainting? Oh, maybe gaining weight. but then often see triathletes or Ironman racers, Ironmen, sorry, racers losing weight despite eating everything. Could it be genetic? Yeah, it definitely can be genetic. I also think there's probably variance in what people are actually eating versus their exercise expenditure. But I think even to the premise of the question, the beginning, the question is, I know there's a threshold of hunger around seven K. Is there another threshold? I would think of it less as thresholds and more as just a gradient that is giving you less energy expenditure per unit of effort as you step more. So seven K steps being a basis, I think it's likely that unless you're in a steep deficit calorically, you're probably going to get the expected caloric burn from those Kevin's seven K steps that you would expect to get as you step more. So as you go to 10 K steps, you're probably going to get a smaller percentage of the total caloric burn that you would expect. So if it's seven K steps, you're getting call it 700 calories of burn, uh, cause you burn about probably a hundred calories. No, no, it's the other, it's not, that's not correct. But let's just for easy math, say you're doing seven K steps, you're burning 700 calories. That's not true. We're just going to say that when you get to 10 K steps, you're not going to be burning a thousand calories. It might be more like 850 or 900. Then when you get to 15 K steps, you're not going to be burning 1500 calories. It's going to be more like a thousand or 1100. And so as you step more and more and more, your body goes into essentially energy conservation mode and you stop getting as much caloric burn per step count. uh And so that's the thing that I would put as the accountability for this more than anything else. uh Somebody who's a marathoner or a triathlete or Ironman that is gaining weight or losing weight, it likely has less to do with the fact that they're just doing this insane amount of stepping and more to do with simply the fact that they're eating an amount of food that is either accounting for the increased step or it's not. And uh if you're misinterpreting that and thinking that just because I'm doing 40,000 steps a day in this training that I'm somehow getting the equal caloric burn for those 40,000 steps that I would be getting for 7,000 steps, that's just not accurate. I agree with everything you said there. I don't think there's anything else that I would have to add on the back of that one. This is an interesting question. I've been messing around with six times a week torso limbs split with one set to failure, six sets per session. So that means that he's doing one set per muscle group, but six total sets per session and then doing that six times a week seems to be making good strength gains. But I wonder if a two times a week frequency instead of three times per area with a higher volume per session would be better for hypertrophy. So essentially they're asking instead of doing one set three times a week for a muscle group, would it be better if I did two sets twice a week? So what do you think? What I think with this one, the way that I like to answer this is recovery based. I think with the three times per week frequency, the most, the thing that's probably going to rear its ugly head first is going to be joint related things relative to how old you are, right? So if we're starting to get some, you know, elbow discomfort, inflammation, knee, something like that, that's obviously going to limit the productivity of those sessions. um And then what is the stimulus like, right? And the stimulus is something that you can feel. And some of that comes down to your execution and performance and setup of an exercise, but. I would recommend testing both. Let's say you're young and your joints are super, super fresh. I think the three times per week can work really, really well. If you're a smaller person and therefore exposure to absolute loads or absolute weights, I have to stop saying loads because people on the internet make fun of me, are less. then the risk for the joints in the integrity there is lower. But if the stimulus you get from reducing frequency to two times and then adding a little bit of extra volume per session is improved, I think it could be better. you have to just test both and see in full transparency. Yeah, I think your point around the joints is a really good one. And it makes me think of my recent experience where I went on the bro split from uh December through March, where I was literally training just one muscle group a day. And similarly to the way this torso limbs split is set up, you know, if you're training your torso, that's your chest and back. And if you're training limbs, that's arms and legs. So you're essentially doing something with your elbow joint, your shoulder joint. your wrist every single session. And what I found toward the end of my bro split is that my left elbow actually got quite sensitive. It would get to the point where it would start hurting me even when I wasn't training and I would have to warm it up pretty thoroughly just to get it kind of good again. And this was really intense for maybe the last month of that bro split. And as soon as I switched back to what I'm doing now, which is, you know, either a upper lower or full body, whatever. basically hitting each muscle group twice a week for the most part. uh The elbow pain is completely gone. Like it literally just dissipated over a matter of a week. And I think that with this torso-limb split, you potentially could encounter the same issue over time. So for that reason, I do kind of gravitate a little bit more to the two times a week frequency. But when you're simply talking about better for hypertrophy, and you're not taking into account the joint fatigue and things like that. I think they're probably pretty equal. I mean, some people would say that training that muscle group more often is probably better to you, to the person's point, asking the question. They said they've been getting great strength gains. I do think strength gains are likely more impacted with higher frequency simply due to the skill and neural development piece. Whereas hypertrophy isn't going to fall victim to that same frequency need. that strength will. And so for the long term durability and sustainability of your training, I would probably go with the two times a week frequency with a little bit more. Yeah, I mean if I had to pick for myself and clients that yeah, that's what I would choose in most contexts. Yes. Yeah, I mean, I think if they were telling me that they were doing an upper lower split and wanted to do it six times a week with one set per muscle group per session, I think I'd be more likely to say, yeah, that's fine. Like if you can recover from six sessions a week, like go for it, that's fine. But when you're hitting, you're using the elbow joint specifically every single session, I think you're gonna have some problems down the road. Yeah. Okay, this one, I have been starting workouts with 20 to 30 minutes of zone two before lifting and surprisingly feel I perform better. Counter to what you always hear is to do your lifting then cardio. Have you ever tried this? yeah, for sure. There was actually a number of times when I, a couple of years ago, when I first started getting into biking and cardio, I was on this path where I thought that I could do it all, where I could bike five days a week and lift five days a week, which meant that I was doing a bunch of double sessions. And so sometimes I, it would be beautiful out and I knew it would be 95 degrees later in the day. So I would go bike in the morning and come back and then I would do my lifting. And I never really noticed any detriment from that. So I think a lot of that has been a bit overblown. Now, of course, if you're talking about like trying to optimize the last 1 % of gains, I probably would not advise you to use your glycogen and your stored carbohydrate and things like that in the Z2 because you want to maintain as much of that as you can to have available for your lifting session. uh And similarly, like if you're really trying to pack on muscle, your boy, Kyle Baxter, who's been on our podcast before, he recently put out a post that got me thinking. And he was like, if you're trying to optimize and maximize the amount of muscle that you want to gain, he's like, stop walking after meals. And I was like, wow, that's crazy. I never really thought of this. But his argument was that you're taking this food that's supposed to be absorbed and dispersed into like nutrient partitioning for your muscles and things like that. And by walking, you're disseminating that into other aspects of the body, burning some of it, not allowing it all to kind of absorb in and be used for muscle growth. And so I think the same kind of applies here in reverse, which like, it doesn't matter if you're doing your Z2 before or after, either way, you're going to be taking what's optimal and dispersing it into places that aren't optimal. So if your goal is to optimize 100 % I probably just would avoid doing cardio around your workouts at all. um If you just are trying to be an athlete that's in shape and you want to look good and feel good and whatever, then it really doesn't matter when you do your cardio. uh I still walk after every meal because it makes me feel good. And I don't really care about 1 % more muscle gain. ah And similarly, if doing 20 to 30 minutes of Z2 before you're lifting warms you up and allows you to subjectively perform a better lifting workout, then that also seems great to me as well. Yeah, the thing that I was going to say here is yeah, it on paper if you were to ask, you know, a black and white question, you do your cardio after your training. But in this context, I think what what it's happened is like you're getting really warmed up your pro you're very primed to perform heart rate is up blood pressure is appropriately elevated. And that's going to carry carry itself very well into you know, performance. So it's working for you. And you know, you're not noticing any any gentlemen's whatsoever. Like Brian said, yeah, perform it first. Yeah, I also would add that I think there are two things working in your favor here. One is that you're only doing 20 to 30 minutes of zone two, which in a sense, like you're not even really getting warm until like the 10 or 15 minute mark. So it's almost just simply like a warm up. If you were doing that for an hour, I would probably say, oh, I don't know if that's necessarily the right approach. And then I also think that if you were doing like hard intervals or something like that beforehand, I would also say that that's not a great approach. But I think 20 to 30 minutes of zone two is probably a non-issue. All right, I'll start this one to you. I love this question. We alluded to it earlier. Eric Trexler recently spoke on RP pod about how muscle gain on TRT can be underwhelming. Can you perhaps share your own experiences around these statements? Yes. ah If we, Brian and I were to share our own experiences, right? If I, if we were to answer the question verbatim, Brian and I's experiences with TRT would be completely contradictory to Eric Trexler's statements, right? Brian's up what 15 ish pounds 20, something like that. I'd say 15 pounds with confidently the majority of it being muscle and other tissue, but likely a little bit of fat in there as well. Okay, and Brian, please remind us, what is your weekly milligram of testosterone? uh 50 milligrams twice a week, so 100 milligrams. Yeah, yeah. 100 milligrams. My experience was I started at 150, right, which I'll get into as I go, and within 12 weeks, I went from 190 pounds to 17. So it's like, exactly, right. So if Brian and I were to share our own experiences, they would be in complete direct opposition to what Eric is saying. Not that I'm not saying that Eric's wrong. I highly, highly respect Eric. I think what's challenging is especially in this, this, this world TRT and things are very, very subjective. Uh, and it's important to define things, right? TRT testosterone replacement therapy. that that term is very commonly used, but what exactly does it mean? Right? If I, my testosterone levels as a natural were around the mid-500s, mid-high 500s nanograms per deciliter, if I were to replace that with an exogenous dose, it would probably have been maybe 75 milligrams per week or something like that, a true replacement. The challenge is in what the ranges actually range from, right? If we were to speak, make a very blanketed statement, which I do feel confidently saying, as the decades go by, our Western civilization testosterone ranges decrease because the range on lab work comes, it's some certain standard deviation of all the public information that comes in for that lab. So if we were to go back 20, 30 years, or let's call it in the time of our grandfathers, There were men who were producing in the low... that be like thousands, 1200, not thousands, into the low hundreds of the thousand, 1200, 1300, 1400. There were some people that were producing these testosterone ranges naturally, which is why the threshold was whatever to 1500. Now that our population as a whole testosterone is decreasing, that range and standard deviations are getting smaller and smaller or pretty much lower effectively. So what's the challenges then in the common clinics for prescribing testosterone? Pretty much 200 is the high end and 100 is typically the low end. That 100, even for someone like myself, would probably be a little bit over-superphysiologic. it depends on how exactly we are defining it. And then also, more importantly, what is your method of testosterone replacement therapy? Because in this day and age, there's numerous methods. There's now a pill, Kaisertrex. It's undecanoate, if I remember correctly. That will produce typically around the mid 500s. We have in clomophene, which is also commonly used, which is a CIRM that will crank your blood work. I've had four clients that I can think of immediately off the top of my head who have used or were using in clomophene when they started with me and two of them were in the 1200s. And then you have your typical exogenous administration via enanthate or orcipianate. The method significantly changes what uh muscle gain experiences are. Eventually, most men, I'm assuming this is from a context there, make their way to enanthate or cypionate because it simply works better. And for all four of those clients who were on enclomaphene and had blood work in the 1200s, 1100s, 1300s, made their way to enanthate or sippinate, mostly a sippinate because they're United States based. The change in muscle mass in body fat percentage at nearly identical serum blood work levels is significant. So that is my very, very roundabout answer, long-winded one there. It's just very convoluted, unfortunately. You're muted. Yeah, okay. Yeah, so I, obviously Aaron shared my experience in that I've gained about 15 pounds in five months here. I do think the majority of it is muscle and other tissue, little bit of fat in there for sure, but um before I started TRT, I remember hearing some stuff and it wasn't Trexler, but it was other kind of experts in the field saying that if you go from a low-ish level of testosterone, say where I was around 300, and you supplement yourself up to normal high, like 800 or 1,000, something like that, that you would expect to gain about four pounds. uh Obviously that wasn't the case for me. And that kind of makes me wonder, and Aaron, you can comment on this, whether there's something to, is it androgen receptor density, or basically your ability to take the testosterone and then utilize it effectively for that purpose or for various purposes? And my sense, even before taking TRT, was that I had decent androgen receptor density, and I was basing that off of... the fact that even with low testosterone levels for many years in that like 300 range with like seven free, both are low normal, that I was still functioning at what was considered like a pretty normal level. And I felt pretty, pretty good for the most part, like sleep was fine, energy was fine, workouts were fine. Granted, they're a little better now, but at the time I was, you know, I went years and years and never considered TRT because I was fine. And I wonder if I had lower androgen receptor density, if maybe that would have impacted my state of being a little bit more. And thus, maybe that's why I'm receiving these elevated benefits from testosterone now that I'm taking it. And so that always is kind of in the back of my mind. And beyond that, I don't have a ton to speak to on the topic simply because I just don't know. But I am curious, Aaron, of the clients that you have. Like, how many of them have gained four pounds versus 12 or 15 pounds? Everyone has been on the the no, I can't say I have it the only people this is actually really good the I because I do have Two that I can think of of people who are on TRT who just don't do it, right? They're still drinking a lot. Their diets are poor like they're not living the lifestyle But I cannot say that I have had a single client who has, truly does live the life. And I'm talking about bodybuilding. I'm talking about male late thirties, forties dad who's wants to stay, wants to still have that physique. Everyone has had very, very positive experiences. Every single one. Cool, yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, I just don't know about the muscle gain stuff, but I mean, you kinda just need to try it yourself and see where you end up, but don't try it unless you actually need it. Yeah. All right, Aaron, do you think you will ever bring on an assistant coach? Never say never, but I don't love the idea of it. I think it's very, very challenging to do well. I have numerous friends with coaching businesses who have gone this route and it ends up being... It's new roles, right? And one of the things I'm a bit of a control freak and if I know if I do something, it's gonna be done right. I cannot guarantee that if I'm not doing it. um But I don't have zero aspirations to have a gigantic coaching business with 10 assistant coaches or something because then I'm not coaching. Then I'm just running a marketing business. no shade to people that do that, but it's just not something that I wanna do. Yeah, that makes sense. I considered bringing on an assistant coach during the height of my one-on-one online coaching and uh then subsequently started my kind of subscription based online programs and that sort of took away the need to do that. And honestly, I was quite apprehensive about it because I am such a control freak with how I want things done that I honestly couldn't have imagined proctoring somebody or coaching them to be the coach that I want them to be without feeling like I have to constantly look over their shoulder and then what's the point, you Yeah. All right. Yeah. sorry. I have one final and I'm a shitty business person in that regard because I I'd probably take it. It would probably be a disservice to me because I would want to pay them too much of a percentage. because that's just how I am as a human. But then it's just not the extra work and stuff that I would be doing isn't worth the money that I'd be bringing in because I wouldn't want to pay them 50 % of their rate or 60% of their rate. I'd want to pay them like 80 or 90. And then I'm just wasting my time doing extra work. Then if I just would have taken on like an extra client or something myself. So I'm just not business minded enough around humans to do it where it would be Beneficial for myself and that's just the fall of my own I feel that. All right, question is, how much of an effect on gains would being a vegan or vegetarian have when done right? When done right, which is more challenging than I think people would lead to believe, I think the net effect would be negligible. Yeah, yeah, I agree. And I think that like to your point, mean, done right is really the key there, because doing it right requires so much. I mean, the fact that not one of the single foods that you're gonna eat has the full amino acid profile is that you have to be constantly vigilant about making sure that the foods you're eating are balancing and. ensuring that all of the amino acids from this food and that food like beans combined with peas combined with various other legumes and soy and there's just so many components that go into making sure that you're getting a full amino acid profile. I think that's the complicated part. And then the other kind of downstream aspect of that is that many of these foods that are going to fulfill your amino acid profile are extremely high in carbohydrate. And so being able to get sufficient protein while also keeping your total caloric consumption within the bounds of maintenance or whatever your goals are is another challenge. Yeah, specifically they asked gains, right? So let's translate that to a caloric surplus. I think it's way easier to do. It's the deficit that where the challenge really presents itself because your food options become incredibly limited to where you're not. at par increasing your fat intake with each gram of protein intake. with the challenge is really the calorie deficit. And what that means there is you're going to be eating so much vegan protein powder and Citan. I mean, those are pretty much your only two options to keep your fats at a reasonable level, unless you want to diet super high on fats and super low on carbs. But I don't think you can diet super low on carbs because every single protein source is a carbohydrate. So that's the challenge. But in the context of gaining, I think it's significantly easier. And when done right, I do think that the net effect as in terms of a negative is very, very little to none. Yep, yep, all right, cool. We have one question left here. It looks like you have a lot to say on it, so I will kick this over to you. Full-time dad, work 50 plus hours, never done a show. What is the best way to mentally block out hunger noise? Yeah. So I asked this individual some additional context. So I asked if this is for stage, right? And he said, I'm not in prep, but his coach wants him at four weeks out condition so that they are insulin sensitive and can grow better. Well, there seems to be holes just simply in that statement, would agree with that yes he is approximately nine to ten weeks out currently 180 pounds approximately 2.21 hundred calories on training days 1600 calories on non training days so the best way to mentally block out hunger noise how I always like to explain this is hunger shows up in two variations We have a psychological food desire or food focus, and we have physical hunger pains, right? That physical hunger pain is that kind of stabbing feeling in your stomach. The psychological is just, it's the food noise. It's a food desire, but it is not necessarily that stabbing food pain. The mentally blocking out hunger noise, if it's the mentally driven hunger, you have to change the things around you, right? One of the biggest things that starts to happen is on Instagram, you see all these cooking pages and these treats and stuff. And the more that you look at them, the more that it gives you and that sort of thing. And the more you chase those flavors. So if you're doing Ninja creamies every night, and whey drips and all of these things that you're kind of trying to scratch the itch with these artificial uh bastardizations of what the original foods and flavors are, you are only going to propagate that signal. Go bland with your food. If you go very bland, your basic oats, your rice, your potatoes weigh in a bottle with water, your fruit will become very, very sweet and a lot of that psychological noise will significantly die down. If we are talking actual physical hunger, At 181 pounds at 2,100 calories on training days, some of your best options are going to be food selection, meats as lean as possible. oh Pretty much all of your fruits should come from berries at this point. High intakes of your fresh vegetable and as much of your starch. carbs coming from potatoes as possible because that meaningfully changes your food volume. I would also recommend on the non training days taking advantage and leveraging caffeine as a hunger mitigation strategy earlier in the day and then just pushing that first meal of the day back a little bit. But the real answer is on um which ah if it's more psychological or mental. The other one for physical, this is a really good one that I learned from Brandon Kempter, eating your meals with chopsticks. It forces you to slow down unless you are incredibly proficient with chopsticks, but by slowing down the rate at which you are eating, prolongs your time consuming food and helps with that satiation. satiety process and then if you are in the the western world where we have access to all of these um poorly flavored uh sparkling waters that helps that helps significantly from from a satiety standpoint so there you have some psychological approaches as well as physical approaches for um mentally dealing with the hunger noise, but I think one final thing is there is a point where you just have to accept it. You're going to be hungry. You're going to go to bed hungry. You are, you will be hungry if you want to be four weeks out condition and you simply have to accept it. Yeah, yeah. All right. Just without trying to go off on an extreme tangent here, just your thoughts on the idea that maintaining four weeks out condition is necessary so that he is insulin sensitive and can grow better. ah So I wouldn't say I don't think maintain maintaining it is is necessary But just getting to four weeks out condition so that he is insulin sensitive um like You have said on the podcast many times Ryan, there's many ways to roam right getting to four weeks out in terms of leanness Yeah, you will be insulin sensitive. You can also just order some labs and see what your fasting insulin is and Then you can see how insulin sensitive you are as well. So yeah, I think it's I think for four weeks out condition. You're effectively stage ready um You I don't see if the goal is to grow I think you're gonna spend an extra number of months doing something that you don't need to be that lean. I would get to like 8 % body fat and then it's time to start growing. But getting to like five or six, I don't think that there's any real positive benefit of that extra three to 4 % reduction in body fat. I would say if anything, it's even a negative. Yeah, so I only brought that up because I remember there recently, not recent, a couple years ago, there was a big discussion on Revive Stronger and it made its ways around the internet where I think it was Trexler who actually spent a whole bunch of time debunking this idea that starting from a leaner place actually creates a better growth environment. uh And so that's what I'm basing that off of. There was literally like, you can go find this stuff. Trexler did it when he was still. at uh part of Stronger by Science before that whole thing fell apart. em But I do remember there being like a lot of discussion around this and a lot of, he actually like put together a really compelling piece discussing that it really doesn't matter where you start. So I just thought that was interesting and potentially relevant. Yeah, I also think we don't have any insight into this, but PEDs come into play here. Four weeks out condition, let's assume this guy is natural. Four weeks out condition, I mean, you're gonna curb stomp yourself for weeks and weeks in terms of your ability to grow because your fatigue is so high, you're not in any situation to grow if you're natural at four weeks out. You have probably two, three months of recovery before you're actually putting on new tissue, yeah. Yeah, I think that's right. All right, cool. Well, I think that is all we got. All right, awesome guys, as always, thank you for the questions. looks like my camera shut off at some point. Oh, okay, uh sick. So hopefully I'll fucking figure that out and we'll talk to you guys next week.