#110 What If Your Libido Is Your Body’s Dashboard Light

We unpack the blunt claim “if you’re not horny, you’re not healthy” and turn it into a practical conversation about hormones, lifestyle, and what libido can and cannot tell you about your health. We share real-world examples from training, sleep, stress, alcohol, nutrition, and medications to help you spot red flags and make smart changes without panic. 
• libido as a subjective signal rather than a diagnostic test 
• why sex drive changes with age and what “normal” depends on 
• a simple breakdown of the HPG axis plus LH and FSH 
• processed food, excess body fat, and testosterone to estrogen conversion 
• why modern testosterone may be declining across decades 
• microplastics and endocrine disruptors plus big-rock mitigation steps 
• sleep quality, cortisol, and why chronic stress crushes recovery 
• alcohol, testosterone, and the reality behind “whiskey dick” 
• metabolic syndrome markers and why bloodwork matters 
• overtraining versus underrecovery and using libido as a personal cue 
• how aerobic volume and low calories can backfire even on HRT 
• blood pressure meds, low blood pressure, and a candid ED story 
• cheat meals as a weekly math problem and defining what “cheat” means 
• worst fitness advice we keep hearing and why it fails 
• the one exercise we’d keep forever and the bodyweight backup pick 
I’ll be putting out IG things for you guys to ask questions, submit whatever questions.

Follow us on Instagram here! https://www.instagram.com/doubleedgefitness/

Transcript

Welcome And The Viral One Liner

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Sync up that audio, dog. All right, you guys. We are here with podcast number two, your host, Jacob Wellock, aka J B Nasty. With DB Real, my older brother. Today's going to be a fun one. Last podcast and a clip that was shared on social media grabbed some attention. So we're actually going to start this podcast off with a little bit of health advice slash funny. So today we're talking about something that is serious. Let's be also funny, but we're going to be immature about it. Can your libido actually be a health marker? And my brother is the one that's super geeked out on a lot of this hormone stuff and everything, cellular functional, all the all the things. So I'll chime in where I can. But I'm really just going to be handing this over to you, and we're going to talk about it if you're if you're not horny, you're not healthy. Yeah. All right. Yeah, so to give you guys a topic for brothers.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

To give you guys the full context, Jacob came in last podcast and he told me to give him a one-liner that would, you know, be catchy. And for whatever reason, don't judge me, but that just popped right in my head and it flowed right off the tongue. Yeah, it did. It was pretty natural.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

I was a little caught off guard if you guys look at the clip on Instagram. I did not expect that.

SPEAKER_00 1:39

But to frame the context of that and why I've personally invested time and energy into learning more about it and understanding it. One, I live with a primary care provider, right? We've been down this hormone path with myself figuring it out. And I'll be able to uh share some history of my own path and all this as it relates to the topic at hand. I won't get too weird. So Nick guys, if you're listening to this stuff with your kids and everything present, I do try to keep the four-letter words at minimum, but I can't keep any promises. Doesn't happen all the time. And this topic in general, I don't want to stimulate the comp the the sexual conversation, sexual health conversation amongst you and your kids. So this one might want to be uh an earbud podcast.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

I mean, I'll just say most of the time I rate our podcasts under the explicit category. We have to. Not because of we're being over the top. It's just words tend to come out. And if you're in, yeah, if you're if you're around munchickins, it's just uh just be warned. You know, there are there are some words that come out.

Disclaimers And Why This Matters

SPEAKER_00 2:42

So this topic, in all seriousness, is a health-oriented topic, and I'm going to approach it from more anecdotally in my own history with it and what I've learned in that process. I am not a medical provider. I am not sharing medical advice. I am sharing my stories and my own learning and my own path in this. And I would suggest if any of this triggers something in your brain, like, okay, wow, uh, to have that conversation with your primary care provider, like a legitimate one, somebody that actually cares about optimizing health versus just saying you're in the range of health. And um, yeah, so I'm gonna do my best not to just read, because I have quite a bit of notes on this aggregated from my own journey, plus some some newer research. But so the question was, or the statement was if you're not horny, you're not healthy. Now, that in itself is a pretty blunt statement, but it is very clickbait. It is not the full story. Men and women are very different, right? And the different hormones, uh, sexual response and desire is different for both men and women. What drives men and women are both different. The context that I will be discussing obviously is from a more male perspective. And if there's future interest, you know, getting my wife on here to discuss, she's much more knowledgeable in the female aspects of it, both as a female, but more importantly as a primary care provider. So you guys take this for what it is. If there's somebody out there in the medical space and I totally screw something up in my explanation, by all means, call me out on it so I can correct it. My goal is to share accurate information the best that I can. But again, this is not medical advice, don't take it. But if it stimulates a good conversation for you to have with your primary care provider, I think that's a good thing. So, did I cover my basis, the lawyership enough with that? You think?

SPEAKER_01 4:58

I think so. I think so. Hopefully, we get to a point where you actually have to worry about that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

Well, I mean, arguably we do have quite a few people in the gym that take what like I have to be very mindful of the health advice I do share because there are people in the gym that do take it seriously and 100% and apply it to their life. So it's like I when it comes to things that are above protein, powder, and creatine, I try to reiterate this is not my main area of expertise, like when it comes to exercise training.

SPEAKER_01 5:34

No, I mean, I think that could be said for any fitness coach. Yeah, I mean, what we're speaking from is lots of experience. We've been in this building. I was talking to my client this morning. We've been doing this here specifically at this gym for over 13 years now. Um so we have a lot of experience with things. And this is a topic that is not uh necessarily discussed or could be, I guess, labeled even taboo. So I'm curious to hear about your findings and experiences within reason.

Libido Changes With Age

SPEAKER_00 6:07

Let's let's talk about the overarching here. So, like I said, if you're not horny, you're not healthy. So we're talking about libido, your sex drive. And this starts young puberty, right? That's when hormones start developing. That's when reproduction, our own evolutionary or creationism bodies that were designed in our experience and belief by God to procreate offspring, right? That is the driver of sexual desire. That's why it's there to procreate. So as we age, this changes and it makes sense, right? We're getting older, we're not meant to live forever. And arguably, as we get older, our ability to take care of children, offspring, and to procreate healthy children goes down as we get older. Cell division, metabolic health, all these things play an influence on our genetic profile. And when those genes are coming together to create a child, you want to be the healthiest version of yourself possible. And that's typically in our younger years. So that's typically in Jake, we're working on our posture and our coordination for this. So typically in our younger years, that's going to be much more optimal for all the obvious reasons. You have more energy, you're healthier, you're younger, everything's firing off. So as we get older, decade by decade, it is normal to have changes to sexual desire in your health in response to that. And what I'm getting at there is as we get older, having lower sexual desire does not mean you're not healthy, like the clickbait said.

SPEAKER_01 7:55

I mean, I could even if I flip the script on that, I think I know probably from your experience, let's talk about high school, college, or whatever. Yeah. Know many people that are very unhealthy and are some of the horniest people I've ever met in my life.

The Hormone System In Plain English

SPEAKER_00 8:10

Oh, 100%. And yes, young, thriving hormones can overcome a lot of metabolic and poor life habits. Shitty sleep, drinking. I mean, we everybody remembers college days, right? Poor nutrition choices, lack of exercise, getting fatter, and you still have a sex drive. So, I mean, good hormones, high-producing brain activity in our younger years can overcome that. And that's a big area of why you can get away with so much shit. And I think everybody knows this and can relate to this. What you can get over with in your later teens and your 20s starts to go downhill in your 30s, and then in your 40s, you really start to notice it. You're not getting away with that stuff anymore. And this is a big driver of it, is hormones. So yeah. So at the top level, you have the hypothalam hypothalamic pituitary gonatal axis. Hell yeah. Yeah. The HPG axis. Love me a good HPG axis. So that is a hormone signal to your pituitary gland to trigger your luteinizing hormone and your follicle stimulating hormone. So your luteinizing hormone is gonna go to your testes, ovaries, and tell your body to produce um anergens, testosterone, estrogen, so forth. Your follicle stimulating hormone is gonna go to your testes and your ovaries and trigger your production of sperm and your production of eggs. So those are the two main drivers there.

SPEAKER_01 9:48

I'm learning here too.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

So, yeah, pituitary gland is what triggers all this. And that's the top level. So there's a lot of things that affect this, the inputs that affect the outputs of this. Um energy availability, so calories, uh, stress levels, sleep, body fat, inflammation, um, overall your hormone levels, um ghrelin and leptin, your hunger hormones can actually signal they can't really remember this, but like they can signal in the inverse, if I remember right. So this is where I stumble. But okay. Like overeating a ton of processed food, let me simplify this, right? Eating a bunch of junk food, processed food, sugary food, things that are quote unquote, whether you believe they're addictive or not, can disrupt the hormone signaling of your sex hormones. And you're not getting accurate inputs from leptin and ghrelin to just tell you when you're full and um hungry accurately. So they can create this hamster wheel of a negative effect where you know you're driving your sex hormones down, but you're also, you know, gaining tons of body fat. And when you gain tons of body fat, it can really start disrupting your metabolic health, which shouldn't really start disrupting your hormone production. And one of the big things when we start getting excess body fat is uh you start aromatizing more testosterone into estrogen, and that can get really out of whack for men in a very meaningful way. And it'd just be this cascade that once the snowball starts downhill, it's pretty tough to stop it and change direction. Hope that kind of makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 11:59

Um so interesting. Would you probably seen this study before? I don't remember who did this study. It's probably an easy, quick Google search. I've seen it multiple times. And the scope, your opinion, I have my opinions, but I'll ask your opinion. So in the 1950s, as compared to now, men's testosterone is about 50% less than it was back in the 40s, 50s, and 60s. What and why, what are the biggest contributors that are modern today that weren't back then that could be contributing to this massive decline, and specifically men?

Food Body Fat And Aromatization

SPEAKER_00 12:35

Yeah, so you're right. It's 30 to 50 percent, is what the studies say, from depending on what decade you pick there, but there is a well-studied and scientifically accepted decline in male testosterone across the board. And it's a problem. It's a problem. Like there were men in the in their 50s and 60 years old that were higher testosterone levels in the 50s and 60s than your average 30-year-old is now. So, in my opinion on this, it is environmental, it is lifestyle, are the two biggest drivers in stress.

SPEAKER_01 13:17

Sony, you when you're talking about environmental, what do you mean specifically?

SPEAKER_00 13:22

Um, I hate to get too weird on the whole microplastic topics, but we are exposed to a ton of estrogen-oriented things, and your body can our bodies do absorb microplastics. They actually do cross the blood testicle barrier and the blood brain barrier, and it has shown that they can bind to estrogen receptors. So take that for what it is.

SPEAKER_01 13:49

I don't even think it's really conspiracy theory anymore. I think that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_00 13:52

Well, no, they're finding it in cadavers, like up to two, I think it was two tablespoons of microplastics crossing the blood-brain barrier.

SPEAKER_01 13:59

Yeah, and some of these forever, forever chemicals. I mean, there's specifically, and I'm speaking on men's behalf because I am one of them. I can speak to it in experience, that there's brands, one of them being called NADs, which is a men's underwear brand, purely built and based around this principle of like modern polyester underwear for most suits, which I still wear, but same. Um I tried NADs. Yeah, it was terrible. Yeah, some of them, it's like it's almost like too much. Like there's the camp of like, who's the meat eating guy? A lot of them. The Saladino dude. Yeah, who's like, well, you should only wear cotton everything all the time, and sometimes cotton stuff, depending on what you're using for, kind of sucks. I mean, I understand the argument, but there's like pick your battles, but there actually are proven studies around these things now between microplastics, what your body absorbs, what we wear, what we eat, all these things.

Why Testosterone Is Declining

SPEAKER_00 14:48

Just to get off topic, but on topic, real quick. When it comes to microplastics, and any of you guys, some of the coaches know really well, but when Claire had her diagnosis, I kind of went heavily down the rabbit hole on all things potentially body disruptive. Microplastics was a big topic in our house. And before um I got too crazy with it, and me and Cassie both went down the rabbit hole on this. You can drive yourself nuts on this topic when it comes to environmental things affecting your health. Yeah, it can be exhausting. And it comes down to is this the thing that's gonna kill you? Probably not. But there are big apples, if you will, or big rocks that you can limit your exposure with simple change. And that's kind of where we settled. One of the big ones when it comes to microplastics going back into the environment and into our clothing is um washing machine pods, things you throw into the washer. Yeah, that's interesting. Um, those plastic pods, they dissolve, but they don't really disappear. Yeah. So it ends up in our water system, it ends up in your clothing. And that's that is a that is one of the massive ones studied that contribute to microplastics going in the environment. Um so in that context, it's in your clothes, it gets on your skin.

SPEAKER_01 16:17

Well, an interesting, misleading one because our government and food industry and everything is so honest about everything. On that topic, if you consume things from cans, majority of the cans, um they're lined with plastic. Yeah. So it's actually not even like an aluminum can on the inside of it, it's just a plastic, yeah, probably. Yeah, speaking of that was cracked open, is a plastic barrier. So it may be, you know, microscopical on what is being digested, if you will. But if you're doing this over the course of years and years and years, thousands of cans, clothing, washing pods, whatever it is, if you're exposed to it from a hundred different areas multiple times a day over the course of decades, that's where these, like what'd you say, the teaspoon or tablespoon, brain barrier, whatever, like that is where it's coming from because we're exposed to it in so many different ways.

SPEAKER_00 17:12

You're gonna get exposed to it. There's no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Living in the modern day world, you're gonna get exposed to it. Your body does deal with it pretty well. Your liver does filter it out. You do piss out a lot of it, but it does cross the blood brain barrier and the blood testicle barrier, which are two of the most protected parts of the entire human body.

SPEAKER_01 17:31

Aaron Powell And these were things that were probably people in the 50s were not exposed to. Or if they were, it was in very minimal amounts. It wasn't the daily routine.

SPEAKER_00 17:41

Honestly, if I had to pinpoint it, it was the advent of Tupperware.

SPEAKER_01 17:44

Yeah, it's yeah, yeah. You're storing your food, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 17:47

So before then, you know, lots of things were made of clay, glass, so forth. People weren't storing food for mass term, long-term duration. Sure. Like you're buying your food or killing it or growing it and consuming it like that week. Right. So the whole food industry changed, longer shelf life, um, transported. Foods now being transported from around the world to our grocery shelves. So how that food is transported was in affected by this plastic, which is ultimately driven by petroleum. And it's here to stay, it's not going anywhere.

SPEAKER_01 18:25

So it's how we mitigate it, right? But I mean, this this is just one of many things that I'm sure we'll talk about contributors to it screwing with everyone's hormones on both sides of the aisle man and women.

SPEAKER_00 18:35

One last point on it. If you guys want to know what the big rocks are to limit your um microplastic intake, one, if it's hot, drink out of clay or glass, ceramic or glass. Yeah. Uh, or stainless steel, like Yeti cup and whatnot. If it's hot, the heat will extract more plastics into the fluid than not. Yeah, in a way, and not quite literally, but it's gonna like melt in the bigger. Cups that you get at a coffee shop or whatever, are one of the biggest contributors, like the biggest by all means. Next to that is plastic water bottles. So, any plastic water bottle, chances are that sitting in a warehouse, it went through heat cold cycles, um, and it just is going to absorb at some level some kind of microplastics. So limiting your consumption of fluids from things that are plastic, especially things that go through potential hot cold cycles, traveling in a truck, sitting in a warehouse, whatever. So, not drinking out of plastic cups, especially hot, is like the number one biggest thing. And then um, one of the um other ones is uh heating and cooking in plastic.

Microplastics And Easy Mitigation Steps

SPEAKER_01 19:53

Yeah, it's interesting. So I've always kind of known that and felt that about water bottles. You drink out a water bottle that's in like a crystal geyser water bottle out of plastic and you drink it on a hot day, it kind of tastes like shit. It's like part of you knows it's like this plastic is melting in there. So in my house, if I have for emergencies or whatever, some random couple bottles of water in there. And if they're through there through the summer and I haven't drank drank them, I throw them in the trash, the whole case.

SPEAKER_02 20:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:19

And it's funny to think if you if you backtrack, and I could be wrong, there's probably zero regulations around these companies storing them in warehouses going through these hot and cold cycles. Like you said, they're probably not stored at an ideal temperature, and then when it's in the consumer's hands, it's up to them to manage it. Because that information, they're not gonna say if you don't consume or if you consume this when it's hot, it's gonna be bad for you. Well, and arguably bad for business.

SPEAKER_00 20:43

Well, there's that, but there's no direct, um, like scientifically studied direct correlation to do it by the health risks disrupting causation, right? Yeah. So when trans fats came onto the market in whatever the 80s, 70s, 80s, I can't remember, that caused such a massive increase in heart disease that was immediately seen amongst the population. It was immediately seen across the board where the government had to step in and remove trans fats from all things, get rid of it. Microplastics, it's one of those areas of Fugazi in the health space. Is it disrupting? Is it not? Is there enough evidence to be mindful? But is there enough evidence to drive yourself freaking crazy over obsessing about it?

SPEAKER_01 21:35

But it is worth looking into for these things. I mean, on an extreme example, there were doctors, again in the 50s, uh, that were promoting smoking as being a healthy habit. So take some of these things with a grain of grain of salt. If it comes from the FDA of the government, not sound conspiracy theory, like what they say is not, you know, a hundred percent for the benefit of all of us that it Is in our hands to do our own research and understanding.

SPEAKER_00 22:03

It's in our hands to do our own research. And I mean, you know, I'm in the camp of I think some lots of oversight sucks, but in their defense, it this stuff's really difficult to study. Sure. Right? Sure. If you just take it at the same time, I can't I can't take human beings and subject them. We're going to subject this group to five years of direct microplastic exposure and this group not. Like it's inhumane. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 22:28

No, absolutely. I think that's where it comes down to your own discernment of like, if maybe I shouldn't drink these hot bottles of water every single day throughout my kids' sports seasons. Well, it might be bad. Like there are certain things that you can you can do on your own.

SPEAKER_00 22:44

Certain and very simple, right? It's easy to drink out of a clean canteen, Yeti kind of deal. It's easy to refill one of those. It's easy to have those to get your coffee and stuff poured into. These are just easy, very actionable, executable. It saves the environment. We use less plastic. Like it's it's just simple. So it reduces exposure and it's simple in execution. It's reasonable. So next on the list of environmental.

SPEAKER_01 23:13

Oh, I was gonna add one last thing to that. If you're drinking hot water bottles, you're probably not horny.

Lifestyle Obesity And Processed Food Reality

SPEAKER_00 23:22

That's fair. Okay. All right. Moving on. Um, so another one, if I had to throw a dart, uh the amount of um hormones and stuff that are used in meat manufacturing, I have a hard time not believing that some of that doesn't come through into us to some degree. Maybe I'm reaching here, but there's been a massive increase in the usage of that over the last, you know, 20, 30, 40 years. 50 years. Uh so that's a that's that's me throwing a dart there. Um other environmental things. There's just there's a lot out there. I mean, there's a lot of, I mean, depending on what city you live in, the amount of air pollution. Flint, Michigan. Yeah, I mean, there's just shit, right? So it's it's just something environmentally being mindful. Yeah. You know, just not drive yourself crazy. I think it's I think it's important to get um some things tested in your house, get your water tested. We use reverse osmosis at our house. Uh it's just a layer of quality control. Uh, you can get your air tested for like radon and various other things. I mean, that causes cancer and all kinds of other shit. But you can do mold testing, these are other environmental things that can disrupt health that you can do some testing where you live and most active in and sleep in, that can be a very impactful on your health. So those are simple, X actionable things when it comes to environmental. Next would be, I mean, people's general lifestyles suck now. Our obesity rates in this country are growing at a rapid rate. The funny thing is, gym memberships are also growing at a rapid rate, but the country keeps getting fatter. So there's something not working there. Now, just because you're paying for a membership and that's how those things are collected, that those data points, doesn't mean you're using it andor using it effectively. So we know that there's not a correlation between money paid and outcome. Uh fitness is still one of those things that the work has to go in no matter what. And we are in a society that is way less active and way overcaloried. And getting into the processed food debate, processed food is an ultra-processed food, is so accessible. Is it the end-all be-all of health? No, but it is so accessible, it's scientifically designed to taste good, to satisfy your taste buds, and to get you to enjoy it and like it.

SPEAKER_01 26:04

Hyper palatable.

SPEAKER_00 26:05

Hyper palatability. And that's done by design. Food companies are for-profit companies, and they want you buying their products and eating their stuff. So, from a business standpoint, I get it. And it needs to be able to travel a long ways. It needs to be able to sit on a shelf and not go bad. It's just the nature of the industry and the world we live in and how we feed.

Who Is To Blame And Why

SPEAKER_01 26:27

So I watched a documentary, I forgot what it was called. Um, it was about, I think, the state of all these things that we're talking about, industry, American industry specifically. And foods. This guy talked about um bringing up this point, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts. So we know like social media, tech, food industry, all these really big industries literally spend billions of dollars a year to get the consumer us to buy into their product or be on their product, like social media. So that this guy who used to work for one of these companies actually argued that the state of American health, and one facet of this argument here, is actually not he put the blame on the industry and the people in power, the corporations, and actually said the blame is not entirely there on the consumer. When you have these this oversight or overlords, however you want to look at it, these people that are able to spend billions upon billions to make sure you are consuming or watching their thing, you're fighting as a consumer, you're fighting this uphill battle that what he argued is not your fault. He's like, the reason the way people are right now is because the amount of money and resources that are allocated to make us essentially fat because it makes us money. So I'd be curious if you think like how much percentage-wise, if you had to put percentages on it, how much of the percentages fault for the industry/slash corporations, and how much percentage fault is it on for the individual?

SPEAKER_00 28:00

So from a socioeconomic standpoint, the more educated you are, the more opportunity for knowledge you have. Again, where that education is driven from, right? Getting a nutrition degree in college doesn't mean you're gonna know shit about health. Medical doctors aren't taught anything about nutrition in medical school, like at all. So even our educational institutions aren't delivering the most current, accurate, up-to-date information when it comes to nutritional health.

SPEAKER_01 28:31

No, that could be said for a lot of things.

SPEAKER_00 28:32

So yeah. So when you think about going through life, you're exposed, you're the average of the five things and five people you surround yourself yourself with. So when this is the norm of what I'm surrounded with, how I was raised in my house, what was normal for my parents. That's where you're gonna pick up your habits, traits, knowledge, and understanding. You combine that with massive budget and marketing influence through social media and everything. They're gonna have your product in front of you, and nobody's gonna put a product in front of you that says, uh, in quotes, like, you know, cigarettes can cause cancer, like it has to be on there. They're not gonna put a product on these quote unquote multi-grain gluten-free chips that says these can also make you fat.

SPEAKER_01 29:16

Yeah, this is gonna give you diabetes.

Information Overload And AI Pitfalls

SPEAKER_00 29:18

Yeah, so like they're not required to put any of those warning labels on there. Should they be have to, should they not? There is personal responsibility, but there is a lack of education. So when it comes to blame, yeah, if you had to put a number on it, if I had to put just a generic, throw-a-dart number, 60 to 70 percent corporation, 30 consumer, but I do have a caveat of personal responsibility there. Our access to information is stronger and better than it's ever been in the history of the world. True. You can get into a library for free. You can, and on Instagram social media can be as powerful, as destructive as you want it to be, but there are good people out there putting out good free health content that will get your needle of health moving in the right direction. And with our modern day internet, AI, social media, our access to information and self-education is at the highest level it's ever been in history.

SPEAKER_01 30:25

This is true. This is to not go off topic, but with topic of information, I got two things to add here. I was listening to a pastor the other day, this is a whole different topic, but he brought up this uh point that the scientists did. The amount of information can also be exhausting in this day and age. Like you said, there is so much available free information for us to go out. So there is a lot of responsibility on us because the information is there, but then you could also make the counter argument there is so much information available that you're like, I don't even know where to start. You're presented a million options. But what this pastor was saying uh gets my two points, I'll throw it back to you, is every 28 days, the information that is accessible in the world doubles. Every 28 days. So all the information that's out there in the world because of AI and digital, our information is doubling at a rate every 28 days. Doubling with all the information we have, which is insane to think about. It's an outrageous number. Last funny thing to add, and this kind of goes off our last topic or last podcast, I mean, with AI and how AI can be a great tool. But if you don't know how to uh, I guess fact-check it, if you will, and kind of take it at a face value and not say, like, yeah, that is for sure. Like, that's true. I have a great thing that I brought up. And I wanted to see if this was true. I saw someone do this the other day. Um, and I'm like, I have to try this. This is gonna be hilarious. And sure as shit, it was right. Okay, so I asked Chat GPT, I want to hear what your thoughts are as a human being. This is AI. This is I'm go I'm going somewhere with this. So my question is, ChatGPT, I need to wash my car, and the car wash is 100 meters away. Should I walk or drive? What would your answer be? You uh drive. Why?

SPEAKER_00 32:12

Because you're getting your car washed at the car wash.

SPEAKER_01 32:15

So I asked Chat GPT this question. I need to wash my car and the car wash is 100 meters away. Should I walk or drive? ChatGPT's answer honestly, you should walk. Here's why. The distance is 100 meters, 328 feet. That's about a 60 to 90 second walk. Driving would take start the car, back out, drive five seconds, pull in, park. That's probably longer than walking. So the simple rule of thumb: if the destination is less than 300 meters, uh, you should walk. And if it's greater than 500, you should drive. Uh bonus, since you're a CrossFit guy, you'd probably burn like five to ten calories walking, which technically means you can justify one more bite of dinner.

SPEAKER_00 32:57

It's priceless.

SPEAKER_01 32:58

I saw this as a meme and I was like, this gotta be Photoshopped. I have to try it. Literally pulled out my phone, or I was already at my phone, pulled out Chat GPT, typed that in and went no way. It's not a so my point being is yes, it is great for like researching articles. Like there's different models you can use on there, like thinking models and stuff that will actually give you like sources. But if you're just using the auto features on a lot of these, this conversational feature, it will just give you some shit like that with no logical reasoning.

SPEAKER_00 33:26

No, I learned anytime you talk anything, scientific, health, nutrition, whatever, I have to tell it reference articles. Yeah, I want to reference scientific journals on these topics. Um, and it does it changes it.

SPEAKER_01 33:39

Yeah. So that's just funny with as far as going back to corporation industry, putting a percentage on it, like having access to information. Yes, these AIs are cool because it gives us so much information. But if you were to take these things in a literal sense, what it's putting back at you.

SPEAKER_00 33:53

And another thing, especially when it comes to heavy topics like this that are very subjective in nature, even this goes for us right now in this podcast. There are, like I said at the beginning, a lot of this is like anecdotally to me. There's a lot of influencers out there in the space sharing health and knowledge that is anecdotally to them. Sure. Yeah. So somebody goes off the rails on this some outrageous claim that helped them transform some aspect of their life. And this popped up a lot in the Crohn's health research, you know, that I did for my daughter. It doesn't mean it's gonna work for you. Yeah, it doesn't mean it didn't work for them. The human body and body to body, genetics to genetics, respond to different things, inputs outputs differently to a degree. There are fundamental facts, and then there is nuance when it comes to the human body. Yeah, that's great. And this is when I go back to working with a knowledgeable, well-versed medical provider when it comes to these topics, particularly on a higher level, even nutrition, but even on a on a higher level when we're getting into the hormone stuff, it's vital. It's vital. Because now in this industry, there's so much bullshit out there when it comes to some of these clinics and the shit you can get online, and it's diluted, it's gross, and it's a problem. So absolutely. And when anecdotally, I mean, not to sound the ease in which you can get testosterone now online is disgusting.

SPEAKER_01 35:27

Sure. When we speak anecdot anecdotally, speaking from an influencer, it's easy to call them out, right? Hopefully, I I never that's a title I really never want, but maybe it is. I don't know. As long as the influence is positive. Is if I run a bullshit experience or experiment and then put it out to the world that this is fact, and then have a a group of people, a culture believing what I'm saying, um, that's where that nuance you said is important. So I like using analogies to make you think. So we believe eating whole foods, getting your protein and everything, like that is that is the good thing to do. You could have fitness influencers that says that is eating whole foods and doing all that, but let's say it's a bodybuilding influencer and it's been experimenting with a 200-pound male or experimenting with eating 600 grams of protein a day for muscle building. He's eating whole foods, he's technically, I guess, staying away from the processed stuff. But would you say that that is good advice for everyone else if he's running this personal experiment on himself to consume three times a normal dose of tys, most things bodybuilders experience aren't gonna be good for your long-term health.

SPEAKER_00 36:40

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 36:41

But I'm what I'm my point being, the nuance is by definition, he is eating the whole foods, but he's doing it to an extent that if you're like, oh shit, I need I'm a 110-pound female, I should be consuming, I guess, 350 grams of protein. Whatever it is, you know.

SPEAKER_00 36:57

So that's you're 100% correct. And it comes back to this key concept when it comes to nutritional health is the dose is the poison. That's good. So it's good. Put that on a t-shirt. Yeah, so water in excess can kill you. Yeah, right. What without water, you die. I think you get three days. I think you get 72 hours before you're you're you're done. Yeah. So the dose is the poison, and this comes down to damn near every single thing that goes into your body outside of like cyanide, right? It's like they're things that it's gonna kill you instantly. Yeah, but when it comes to protein, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, all the things nutritionally nuanced, um, is very dose-dependent. Um, additives, food additives is another one. It's very dose-dependent equation. Um saturated fat, polyunsaturated fat, uh, cooking oils, all these things are pretty heavily dose-dependent in also individually how your body responds. So there is a good amount of nuance when it comes to navigating your health journey. And I would implore people to be okay being slightly experimental. Yeah. Like, I know I know for me to function well in the gym, recover the way I like to. I know if I'm not hitting somewhere near, you know, 170 to 200 grams of protein per day after a week or two of that, I'm not doing well. I know some people that feel great getting, you know, one point one gram per uh kilogram of body weight, whereas I need closer to two. And that's, you know, maybe my activity level is higher, muscle density, training, the way I train, like all these things play into that. And it is not, there are guidelines and rules, but you have to be willing to experiment to a degree pushing the envelope needle one way or the other on these things. And uh some of it is nuance in testing, but also blood work can help guide the dose of whatever, like for instance, cholesterol with me, I have to be very mindful of my saturated fat intake. Somebody who has a uh well-functioning liver that metabolizes saturated fat very well and is not storing and uh creating LDL cholesterol at a rapid rate can have can maybe thrive on a carnivore diet, right? Yeah. And have good blood markers. But then you hear that influencer say that story, and it's like all of a sudden carnivore is the way to go. And that was a trend for a hot minute. And it could be the way to go for those two, three out of ten people. Yeah, but for the other seven, it's not.

SPEAKER_01 39:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:42

So I don't function well on a vegetarian-oriented diet. I feel absolutely terrible, even if I'm getting my protein up there. Yep. These are testing things that I've done in my life. But to get back to, I guess, our topic of if you're yeah, I mean, I have a couple points to bring up.

Sleep Stress And Cortisol Effects

SPEAKER_01 39:58

Yeah, go ahead. So we'll recap that real quick. I got two things I bring up, and then you can bring up whatever you want, is your environment plays a huge part in your hormones. Essentially, you being, I guess, consistently horny, means that you probably have some balance of if you're not like a teenager or let's just say a middle-aged person, that you probably have some level of balanced health to you if it is a if it's not out of the norm of, you know, your libido. Uh, but I would say we take out the environmental factors and f people's shit diets, um probably the next biggest contributor, in my opinion, would probably be sleep and stress.

SPEAKER_00 40:45

Oh, huge. So your overall health, sleep and stress are gonna affect your overall health, but they're really gonna impact your hormones. And this can be both what's considered good stress and bad stress in excess. I will say the majority of people out there, even those who listen to the this podcast who are members at the gym, overtraining is not something that I'm concerned about. No, there's a few people that that topic can be discussed, but um, in general, it's the stressors of life, work stress, relationship stress, the stress, the stress. And I think, and we'll get on my hill and say that stress is a massive driver of our state of health in this country. And it's both self-inflicted stress, us worrying about shit that's completely out of our control, you know, consuming political shit, the bullshit on Instagram, things that you have zero control or influence over, but is causing you to have a heightened level of awareness and anxiety about it. And we're inundated with it nonstop.

SPEAKER_01 41:57

I think that's like that information overload.

SPEAKER_00 41:59

Information overload, and all this information, particularly from some of these topics, are done to get engagement to drive that response so that you re-engage. It's perpetuated. Uh I mean, obviously, everybody has work stress and you know, kid stress and um whatnot, but stress is massive.

SPEAKER_01 42:21

Through the strength training world, uh, and just knowing how um anabolics can affect and trend, like powerlifting, Olympic lifting, stuff like that. Testosterone, trend, and bodybuilding and things like that. They're actually bodybuilders that are um open about their drug use, but actually um, what's the word I'm looking for? They're very like caring to their audience. They're like, I take this, this, and this. You should not. This is why, but this is why I do it. Uh, some of these guys and bigger names that I follow that have been super honest about their journey, um, have anecdotally tested these things, and there is some science to back this too. That if you could be on all the trend, if you guys don't know what trend is, trend is trend balone, it's like the most potent anabolic steroid you can take currently. Um it actually completely rewires your brain. It's crazy what it does to people, it makes you huge. But uh you could be on god-awful amounts of trend. Let's say it turns you into a superhuman, you're only gonna live for like five years, but you'll be superhuman in that time frame. That if you could have god-awful high amounts of trend with zero sleep, the opposite, the bodybuilders would actually pick good sleep over taking high doses of anabolics because good sleep is so much more powerful than what the the power that we give it, that you can't essentially can't take enough steroids to outperform a shitty sleep habit.

SPEAKER_00 43:51

No. Uh five five consecutive nights of disrupted sleep will drop your natural testosterone by up to twenty percent.

SPEAKER_01 44:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:01

And that's simple. Sleep is the single most powerful restorative tool for both brain and body. There's nothing more important than that. In my mind. Like it's something I still am constantly trying to work on my sleep hygiene, and there are facets that I can still dramatically improve. But sleep is the biggest performance-enhancing health deal there is.

SPEAKER_01 44:30

And to keep us on track with our serious, not so serious topic, uh, we kind of talked about, I think, for maybe a few seconds last episode. Is you're getting good sleep, you're a man, you're making waking up of morning wood. So that's actually an indication of probably good sleep, testosterone. I mean, you break that down, go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 44:50

Yeah, and I will even share my own stories with morning wood. Yeah, you will. Yeah. So testosterone men, FSH supports sperm production, and then that luteinizing hormone stimulates um, so you have FSH, LH, these stimulate testosterone production and sperm production. That's the two big triggers. Then when you create testosterone, these this is going to influence in men, I'm talking about men right here, uh, limbido, libido, not limbido, libido, muscle mass, bone density, mood, energy, obviously sperm production. In women, it's going to influence more estrogen production, progesterone, and ovulation. So men and women both have testosterone, estrogen, progesterone. They're in completely different ratios, and the uh male versus female bodies respond to each one of those uh differently. Testosterone is primary for men, estrogen is primary for women. But both humans need all three in ratios. So that's where working with medical providers absolutely fucking matters. Uh these hormones control for women, menstrual cycle, fertility, libido, bone health, and mood in a massive and all those in a very meaningful, massive way. So men, as we get older, testosterone, everything starts declining with age. Men, it hits testosterone first, women it hits estrogen first as we get older. Uh, men can go into, it's not socially coined term, but menopause, and women go into menopause. That's where basic hormone production basically shuts off. And not to get too um off topic, but a whole generation of women got completely screwed out of hormone replacement therapy because of some bullshit studies that have been completely debunked then that really changed how our medical system approaches hormone health. And it's starting to change in a very meaningful and long-term health way now amongst medical providers, uh, which I'm very happy to see. It didn't affect men very much. And there's a few podcasts, uh female podcasts out there talking about men and women's hormone health that is very much towards women's hormone health and how a whole generation, so basically, like our mom's generation, you know, people that are in their 50s to maybe late 60s right now, probably got the brunt of getting screwed over by that science. To where they went through perimenopause, menopause when there was support there medically to help that time of life that was never offered or even considered. Whereas men have been able to get testosterone and HRT therapy uh since forever. You know, it's really become commonplace now and much more popular because of access to information. And arguably it's become too easy, but that too ease and these clinics and the online shit has all come up because true medical providers haven't evolved with current research to provide their patients with good medical care in this topic. And people got desperate and wanted help. They want help. It's that simple. And I mean, I got caught up in that. You know, I have a story of working with a couple different primary care providers trying to figure out what and why is wrong with me in my late 30s. The runaround and the shit and the bullshit stories and the lack of what he's gonna say, empathy or give a fuck was disgusting. Oh, yeah, that's and it it tipped me over. So women, there are providers out there now. Men, there are providers out there now that truly invest time, knowledge, education up to current information on all this stuff, and they can truly help guide this in a health-oriented way to support your long-term health span. So we know these hormones affect all these things. So, how does being having sex drive matter in all this? So, we know environmental things, stress things, age decline, all these things are gonna affect these two hormones in a massive way. So, if our sex drive is going down at a rate that's not acceptable to normal, natural, healthy age decline based on your lifestyle, this is where the red flag comes in. This is where the subjective analysis comes in of this being a health marker. So it's irresponsible to say I want the sex drive of late teenager, early 20-year-olds. That's prime time for breeding. Right? It just is. So everything's firing off. That's when the human bodies, we go through um puberty, and going through puberty makes us sexually viable to reproduce. That's the way it is. So that's gonna be peak time. Once we hit our 30s, though, things start to decline, affected by all the things we've already discussed. So this is different for everybody. Everybody's sex drive is different. You have people who are hypersexual, and this can be driven by dopamine addictions, this can be driven by porn addictions, this can be driven by all kinds of bad shit. This can also be driven by you have your body has a great ability to produce sex hormones. There, so it's very individual. There's there is no consensus across the sex therapy world, the medical world, to my knowledge, of like you should have sexual desire three times per week. Sure. Right? There's no number to put on it. It's very individual to you, what matters to you, your life, your relationship with your significant other. And um, that's how you kind of measure this.

Alcohol And Why Things Fail

SPEAKER_01 51:29

Yeah, I would I would just say that this though, the lack of again, being on topic, lack of being horny really is just like a byproduct of some of these other things that could be contributors in your daily life. Yeah. So, like, you know, the processed foods, the stress, like looking at the things that you have control over and you can mitigate, like there are genetic components, sure. There's a big one I'll bring up here is my last topic, and then we can move on unless you have something else you want to add to it. Um, but these are all things that are in your control, especially this last one, which is a really tough one, or last point that I'll bring up, which is a really tough one for most people. I would say, even, you know, at a point, ourselves included, um, because of the social thing around it, and that is uh consuming alcohol.

SPEAKER_00 52:18

Oh, alcohol's a big one. So alcohol is a huge uh endocin disruptor.

SPEAKER_01 52:23

Yeah, I mean, not to be crass, as I'm, you know, I'm wearing my my cross, but particularly men who were, I was not one of these people, but who, and that's not a joke, but who are very or who were very sexually active in their younger years. The joking term being used, and you can expand on this if you want, if you know the science to it, between your lutezing and follicle hormones, is the joking term of whiskey dick. Um, there's a reason why that happens and how alcohol affects you in more ways than just this. I mean, alcohol, I mean, don't get me wrong, I love a beer, I love a good glass of whiskey, I love it. But there are literally zero benefits to alcohol at all, other than like the actual like just enjoyment factor, there are no benefits to it physically, physiological physiologically at all.

SPEAKER_00 53:17

When zero zero metabolic policy.

SPEAKER_01 53:20

The context of sexual reproduction here, the whiskey dick. Um, if you can, I can't, I don't know why that is. I know the expression, yeah, but I don't know like why why does that happen? Why is alcohol such a big indicator not indicator, big issue in this?

SPEAKER_00 53:38

So chronic alcohol use is going to completely disrupt your metabolic system. And it's going to wreck your testosterone. It's gonna wreck your sleep, which is also gonna wreck your testosterone. Your body is dealing with alcohol, cert, um, and I'm having a brain fart right now, but it's treating alcohol as poison, acetyl alcohol. It has your body has to shut down all other metabolic processes to for your liver to deal with the alcohol because if it doesn't deal with it, you will die quickly. Quickly. If you um I can't even remember right now, but uh the form of alcohol that it breaks down into acetylaldehyde. Acetyl Aldehyde, yeah, yeah. It will kill you.

SPEAKER_01 54:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:24

So your liver deals with it and gets it out. Well, when it does that, everything else in the body goes on back burner.

SPEAKER_01 54:32

Obviously, no scientists, but I listen to the podcast. If you got, I'm sure there's people who listen to this who um listen to Andrew Huberman, did like a two-hour podcast breakout individually of him doing his own thing on the effects of alcohol, not speaking from like a judgmental thing at all, like to just gave the straight scientists. Here's the biology. This is what happens with alcohol. Um, is very fascinating. Listen, and I think in that he was talking about alcohol is the only if we're speaking of addictions like drug addictions, alcohol addiction, alcohol is the only one that you cannot just completely come to a stop cold turkey if you're truly like a raging alcoholic, because you will die. You'll die. You have to wean off. But other like you can come off of heroin and these other crazy ass drugs, like you could stop right away. And with you know, regards, I'm no fucking doctor. But my point being is alcohol is the only one that truly stands out as like you have to slowly come off of this.

SPEAKER_00 55:29

It's the only social drug that you're made fun of for not participating in.

SPEAKER_01 55:33

Yeah. So the social impact of it is it's a big deal because it's now including more.

SPEAKER_00 55:40

And I will say alcohol consumption is going down dramatically, especially amongst our age group, but weed consumption is going up a lot, which has proven not to be a healthy alternative. Shocker. Shocker. So uh alcohol, whiskey dick. If I had to once again throw a dart and guess, it has to do with probably dopamine. Um blunting that for the short term. A huge part of sexual drive is gonna be dopamine. And when you consume alcohol, you kind of have um your well, your stress, what's it called? Like, I'm not as scared to talk to the girl. You're you're not as what's the word? I'm not sure. When you have a drink, the edge comes off. Right? Oh, yeah. Like you're able to go, you you feel confident, false confidence. Yeah, it brings it.

SPEAKER_01 56:38

Yeah, you you drink, you drink before you go and tee off, it makes you feel like so.

SPEAKER_00 56:43

There's this balance, especially in the sexual health world, that you hear about people having a drink or two and it providing a very positive to their sexual life versus getting drunk, yeah, and then things don't work y. So, and that a lot of that comes down to the psychological side of it because your fears, your, you know, if confidence, whatever, your inhibitions are put back from a drink or two. So there is, I'm not saying to drink to have whatever viable, high quality intercourse, but there is a balance to where your inhibitions, so the brain is not stopping, you're not overthinking it. If you will. Yeah. So I would say You're gonna get some courage to say some stupid shit. So if I had to guess outside of it absolutely destroying your testosterone production in long term, ending up with erectile dysfunction from drinking, but in the short term, going out and throwing down five, six drinks, getting drunk, and wondering why your wee wee don't work y it's probably because I mean, well, your metabolic process come completely off blood pressure, maybe out of whack, and your dopamine is just whacked. So word. If somebody out there smarter has the actual answer to that, I was gonna say we're just a couple of bros.

SPEAKER_01 58:12

You're smarter at this than I am. You know, I have my smarts and other things, but we could get a doctor on the podcast. If this is something you guys are truly interested in, we could actually get someone on here who could really break this down with their background and credibility, exactly. Um, so just take it, you know, as we know.

Libido As A Subjective Health Marker

SPEAKER_00 58:29

We just fly through the rest of this. Um so testosterone being one of the major drivers for sexual desire and erectile function. This is in men. Women, testosterone does play a role in it, but it's not as big of a role. Estrogen plays a role in it, it is a bigger role than testosterone, my understanding for women. Um men are more animalistic in their sexual desire to it's pretty linear with men in sex. I think everybody can uh attest to that. And women, it's a lot more multifactorial. Um, you know, and I'm not sure I think there's nuance to that too, right? Yeah, there's nuance to it. And not to sound like an asshole, but time of month. Hormone production is different for women during different times of the month. Men are pretty constant, and whether their hormones are either on a constant decline or constantly stable, it's it's it's a different um endocrin driver when it comes to sexual desire men versus women. Like I say, men are very linear, uh, women are more complex, and it's by God's design and it's for a purpose, and it and it's just different. It just is what it is. Um, so getting to sexual desire in relationship to subjective perspective on your health, this comes down to you acknowledging where you were when you're at a healthy time, how you felt, understanding the rate of decline, where you're at by decade, what's gone on with your health, what's gone on with life that could be driving these factors to where, you know, if you're in your late 30s, early 40s, 50s, and you desire to be more sexually active and you're not, that could be a red flag that something may be going on in your health. And that's going to be a different question and answer for every single human being.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:21

And I think that's the main point of this entire topic.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:24

Yeah. Yeah, there's no set markers. So when it comes to metabolic health, men and women, um, metabolic syndrome, which is heart disease stroke, type 2 diabetes, are going to be high blood. So metabolic health. How much visceral fat you have, so large waist circumference, what's your blood pressure at? If it's 130 over 85, what's silly is this number keeps going up as far as a low-end standard. Used to be 120 over 80, now it's 135 over 85. But visceral fat, blood pressure, elevated fasting, blood sugar, high trigist, high triglycerides, and low HDL, elevated LDL. So good cholesterol, bad cholesterol. If your blood markers, these objective markers, if three of the five are present, you're clinically diagnosed as being having metabolic syndrome. Does that make sense? Yep.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:29

So a lot of fanciness.

Metabolic Syndrome And Bloodwork Basics

SPEAKER_00 1:01:31

Yeah, so you go to your primary care, you do a physical. They're going to measure this at the bare minimum. Yeah. If three out of the five of these, you have red flags for your overall health. Metabolic syndrome is one of the big contributors, which drives insulin resistance, which is going to just send your health cascading down. Hormones follow that, and sex drive is going to follow that. So the more unhealthy you get, the more fat you carry, the more insulin resistance you get, all these things are going to start declining in succession. Right? That's that's both for men and women. It's probably more recognizable, quicker for men, potentially, because more of our sexual desires driven by testosterone, and these things are going to drive down testosterone a lot. But it's going to affect both. Uh, sleep and stress, most of our testosterone is made during REM sleep. If we're not getting high-quality sleep, we're killing our testosterone. Cortisol increases, dopamine uh decreases, and our insulin sensitivity goes to shit and negatively impacts our libido, right? Stress elevates cortisol. Cortisol suppresses reproductive hormones from an evolutionary standpoint. In this, you don't want to be creating children in a high, stressful environment. Your ability to care and raise them goes down in a high, stressfully high risk environment. So it's our body's natural defense mechanisms to protect ourselves. Is a is a creationism evolutionary way to think about it. How the human body functions, how by design it functions. So nowadays we live in a very chronic stress environment. Like I said, in many ways, we're not worried about getting shot on the prairie nowadays or whether some random disease is gonna come and get us while we're taking a shit. Damn. You know, is when you're looking at when people are coming over here on the Oregon Trail, your daily fears were driven by Sure. I gotta have 10 kids because by the time we get to the end of the Oregon Trail, only three of them are gonna be with me. Like that's real. So stressors back then are a little different than they are now.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:55

Now we worry about what iPhone we're gonna get.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:57

We're worried about what fucking Trump says or yeah, the next technology coming out, you know, this stuff that's constantly jammed down our throats, yeah, that we choose to engage in. They're not immediate threats. They're not immediate threats, but our body's going to perceive them as a stressor.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:12

Yeah, as a threat.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:13

And when you're constantly and chronically engaging in all these things that that's why I've reiterated to you multiple times, if I can't control or have influence over it, I really don't want to hear about it. Doesn't mean I don't want to be uneducated or uninformed on this, but it's like I'm really trying to, for my own personal health, make sure I'm engaging properly in the things that I have control and influence over. And, you know, being aware, being knowledgeable, educated voter, if you will, but uh hyper stressing over things that you don't have control or influence over is a negative impact to your long-term health and your happiness. And those things drive libido.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:54

So take it for what it is, you guys. Um last topic on this topic since I've been on it for a minute.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:02

I know do you have like 25 pages of notes on this topic?

SPEAKER_00 1:05:05

I do. Damn. Um is more around the overtraining question.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:11

That could be a whole different topic. I could just argue straight up in the gym, 98% of people are not overtraining.

Overtraining Versus Underrecovery

SPEAKER_00 1:05:17

In society, it's not an issue. Yeah, right. It's not the issue. But for those of you who are performance-minded and do train hard and train consistently, it is something I want to bring up because we are a gym podcast. So when it comes to overtraining, the equation comes down. We said this on the last podcast, but it comes down to under recovery. You can train as much and as hard as you can recover from. If you're not recovering from your training, it's counterproductive. It's a negative stressor that will compound into your body breaking down. Training is a stressor.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:54

And when your body recovers from it, it gets fitter, stronger, healthier. But in context, When it comes to libido and overtraining, this is probably an area that I personally notice things most. And um it's a subjective. I know I've talked about my HRV, my resting heart rate, how I feel after you know getting a good warm-up in and listening to my whoop, and why do you have a whoop if you don't listen to it? There's lots of factors that go into me understanding if my body is primed to train and if I'm recovering from training. Uh libido is something I am very attuned with with myself, and it's something that as of the last four or five years, three years for sure, but probably four or five years, um, I've I've noticed as I've approached 40s and got into my 40s that it is more affected by me not training smart, uh, me not new putting in the recovery things intelligently. And I'm not saying my sex drive has been a driver of changing and isolating my health. My whole health picture has been a driver, including everything that happened with Claire. Like it's a big picture, right? And we don't need to go over all that stuff, but it is a subjective measure that I can pick up on with myself that I might be taking shit too far when it comes to training.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:29

Um what I would add to that for overtraining, this isn't to sound like an asshole. There are elements of overtraining for the everyday person, especially I would say someone who is like an ex-athlete, let themselves go, jumps in, knows how to go hard, train really hard for a long time, or someone who's very excited about this new adventure and fitness. There is an element of overtraining there that can happen, but more often than not, they're gonna have limitations on them from being out of the game, whether never having been in the game in the first place, or being out of the game, that are gonna slow them down before they really hit the pools of what overtraining feels like. The overtraining camp, in my opinion, as a coach and actually having experiences just a few times, and we've been athletes our whole life, really, that I would say is a very exclusive camp of people that if you're truly over-training, this is a group of people that are, I would argue, probably pretty fit, have all these other factors, environmental facts, all these other things, for the most part, I would say relatively dialed, but maybe ignoring the aspects of recovery and sleep and things like that uh for the pursuit of performance when it comes to overtraining for most of these people, like athletes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:44

I mean, there's still this concept that exists, the Dave and Goggins mindset of more is better. Sure. So you apply that to a high performing person. Well, like we we grew up with a mindset of, you know, no pain, no gain. Yeah, you need to be doing the work that nobody else is willing to do.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:03

Yeah, and there's there's truth to that. And that's why we have people in our past that we've trained with before that would always complain about, oh man, my CNS is just smoked today. Ah, my CNS. Your CNS is not smoked. Like there are people that use this to romanticize this idea of their overtraining when they're just working out hard. Like true overtraining can lead into like depression. My greatest example of I'll say overtraining when I was first, like, not first, but a couple years in a CrossFit where I was actually physically able in all of these areas when I really was training my ass off. And maybe you can break down the science of this. I was training so hard as a grown man. I think I was 28 years old, 27, 28 years old, I pissed the bed because I was in a season of competition training. I was training so hard every single day, having morning session, afternoon session, evening session when I got home and I was doing this all the time with the aspirations of making it to regionals on the competitive side. Now, there's like, okay, that actually is overtraining. If you're a grown man, you piss the bed and you didn't drink a lot of liquids the night before, your body's shutting down, you're depressed, you're like, what is going on? Looking at all the other aspects of my life were dialed in. I wasn't drinking, I wasn't doing all this other bullshit. You know, you might be thinking, like, oh man, I'm tired after training, I'm depressed. But I drink a bottle of Jack every single night. Like, well, eliminate that first, see if that fixes it. Like, there are elements, if usually the overtraining camp is what I'm saying, is they have most other elements of their life, I will say dialed loosely with a grain of salt, that when you experience overtraining, yeah, you're not gonna be horny. I mean, you're not gonna be tired, you're gonna be sad, you're gonna be depressed, but it's not, it's not a recurring thing for people.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:51

And overtraining, it's it's an envelope of a lot of things. And it comes down to your inability to recover. So if everything is not going, you're not eating well, you're not sleeping well, stressed out of your mind, work, kids, family, like whatever, all that stuff's going to affect your recovery. So when you are trying to train hard and be consistent and you have all that other stuff going on that's negatively impacting your recovery, it's still in context over training. Now, am I going to blame the training first or am I going to say, hey, we're not doing necessarily too much training. Maybe we are for where you're at in your personal life, but we should, we need to, depending on goals, right? Somebody's in that situation, but they're like, hey, I want to qualify for the CrossFit games. Yeah. That's a hell of a lot different conversation than you know, the person that's just trying to be a, you know, move their health needle and, you know, get their blood markers in line. That's a different conversation for each one. So when we're talking about overtraining, especially when it comes to using libido as a subjective indicator of whether you're taking things too far, you can't just look at training and say that's the reason why this is down. You have to look at training multifactorial with every aspect of your life. And maybe you're trying to train too hard because you have and you had in my scenario, you're training too hard because it's your number one stress management tool. And you have shit going on in your personal life that's stressing you the hell out. And it becomes this cascading effect of driving yourself into the ground because your refusal to deal with the stuff going on in your personal life.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:39

Or you're putting so much weight on the analogy of tipping the scales, you're literally trying to out train all other facets of your life to compensate for that. Yeah, it's a dopamine addiction, too. All this shit over here, it's weighing you down. So I'm gonna train way harder to try and bring it up, and it's just gonna wear you out.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:55

I mean, uh physical activity training is a great dopamine cake. And when you're stressed, fighting, you know, depressive symptoms and this and that, physical training is a huge tool for that. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:09

And that's very much a personality thing, too. A lot of people in the gym would say you take it to a whole nother level, you specifically, you also have a capacity to do things that most people don't. I have my own forms of stupidity where I do that shit in in elements of training. But in the scope of overtraining, and I think you would agree with me to this extent, this should be the last box that you check on your list of things, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:35

And you don't need to keep beating a dead horse. We know not everybody trains that hard. Right?

SPEAKER_01 1:13:40

So but if you So point being, if you do feel like you are overtrained, you need to reverse engineer it and look at the other aspects of your life. Well, yeah, coach, man, I'm fucking, I think I'm training too hard in the gym. I'm hitting these MACCOs too hard. Well, how do you sleep? I average about four or five hours a night. Oh, I drink this, oh, I eat that, oh, I do this. I'm stressed all the time. I'm going through a divorce, like whatever it is. Like you look at those things first, and then you can look at overtraining as a true viable thing of what's happening.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:10

Let's break this down a little more because you have that person, that client that's trying to do something positive for their life, right? Exercise gives them an uplift, the community being around it gives them an uplift. Great positivity. And if we're getting three to five workouts in per week and we're still not feeling like we're recovering from it, right? We're still feeling like shit. We're not, you should have one to two days per week of, you know, per seven-day training span in my mind. One of those two days out of every single week should be like thriving training sessions. Like you're feeling good. You want to push, the weights feel good, you just feel good. And this is something I've adopted the last couple years.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:53

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:54

Like if I don't have one to two of those a week, something's not going right. So if you're not having one of those, if you're not having some of that, it's okay to train beat up. Today I trained beat up. Didn't feel great. That's okay too. It's the chronic exposure to this. And this is where a conversation comes down with me, your coach, and we just kind of look at things, right? Your life might be in a situation where meaningful training and recovery for you might be three days a week, with where everything else is. I'd say the goal for optimal health, performance, lifespan, health span, longevity is that we get to where we're moving our body intentionally five to seven days per week. I said intentionally. I'm reiterating that. I didn't say we move our body with intensity five to seven days per week.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:42

We're not cross-it macronning seven days a week.

Aerobic Volume Calories And HRT

SPEAKER_00 1:15:44

No, and that's a huge growth curve for me that I wish I would have adopted a long time ago in high school. So we have to train intentionally. There needs to be intensity, there needs to be volume, there needs to be a reduction in intensity and volume and being very intentional when intensity and volume are combined. When those two are combined, needs to be very intentional. And you need to understand it's going to disrupt things. So depending on what your whole 24 hours looks like, seven days per week, every aspect of your life, is all going to be influential on this whole equation of recovering from training. We do know that improving our physical fitness health is the single biggest lever that you can pull in your long-term health span and lifespan. Now, I will say statistically, in our country, people are living longer. They're living longer, drug supported. So their health span is shit, but they're staying alive longer. So if we want to optimize our health span as we get older, we want to be sexually functional as we get older. If that's something that's important to us, it happens to be important to me. If we want to be able to play with our kids, if we want to be able to go on the hikes and the trips and the travel and do the things, optimizing your physical fitness and work capacity, the younger you are, to the highest level you can is going to set you up for success there. So getting to where we are intentionally training five to seven days per week, moving our bodies, eating healthy, and moving the needle on that, we have to make a choice of how we're going to approach all the other influencers in our life that can take away from that. So we have to deal with those other stressors or understand we're not going to get the best out of what we can get out of our health and fitness. And that was a word dump, but I'm just, I want to reiterate that I understand that everybody's at a different place in their life and their journey. Kids' ages, job, career, life circumstances, and shit going on. Like everybody has, everybody wakes up every single day with something different. You do versus me. We own the same business. We have different stressors that drive us in this business. We have different stressors that drive us at home. There's just differences for every single human being. So being able to empathetically work with somebody and digest that and then put the most focus and purpose into training and every other aspect is going is the best way to approach this as a coach. So those of you guys, there's no question that getting more physically fit is probably going to add value to every other aspect of your life. Period. It's going to make you more productive, you're going to have more energy, you're going to sleep better. When you sleep better, your stress management's going to improve dramatically. Like all there's no question, physical activity positively influences all these other factors in life. And then when you're happier, maybe your spouse is happier and everything's better. When you're eating healthier and spouse is eating healthier, everybody's eating healthier, people are sleeping better, people are recovering. Like it all works together. So look at it all. So overtraining, I do use where my libido's at for a 41-year-old who is on hormone replacement therapy as a subjective cue to what's going on in my life. And if I am maybe tipping the scales too far, pushing too hard, and not recovering from it appropriately. I can say this as of this moment today, right now, I'm having conflicts in this issue. And it has to do with the huge increase in aerobic training that I've done in the last 10, 12 weeks. For high ROCs. For high ROCs leading into the RTO doing the ultra team. I have noticed my fitness has improved, my running capacity has improved, my VO2 Max has improved. But I can tell, and I'm on HRT, I get exogenous hormones. I can tell that my recovery from increasing so much volume in the aerobic space has negative, has been um negatively impacting me in this area.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:28

I think that goes back to the dosing poison example analogy. Is like you could say, like when people complain or use the excuse of like not wanting to get bulky through lifting, like there's negatives that can happen through your joints and everything. If you're constantly lifting, not doing any aerobic, like you're not, you're not building your cardiovascular. There's negatives to what people would think. Contrary to popular belief, doing aerobic stuff only is not going to make you lose weight, and doing too much of it can actually have its own detriments. Where, like marathon runners, like female marathon runners that are actually professional, like marathon runners, vast maybe not majority, but there's a shitload of them that can't even have periods or anything anymore because they've beat their body into this submission to overtraining on the aerobic side of things.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:16

It's it's the whole concept, even when it comes to that topic, it comes down to not having the calories on board to support hormone production. When your body fat drops too low, hormone production goes to shit. When you are undercaloried, your hormones go to shit. And so, as everybody knows, I on hormone replacement therapy, I get testosterone exogenously. So my hormone signaling is gone internally, and I still notice my body not responding downstream of what the hormones do from overtraining. And I think a big part of that when it comes to the massive increase in aerobic training for me personally has to do with getting enough calories in. I don't know if I told you this, but like I'm seriously considering starting to take mass gainer, which I've never taken in my life, just to cram in more calories.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:10

But it it makes sense inputs to outputs, though. I'm down 20 pounds. Yeah. Your output is so is is is exceeding your input. So, like a scenario like that would make sense to increase your caloric intakes, your supplementation, because you're not just gonna be stuffing your face full of food on the big words.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:27

Tell people like when you eat whole food, which is mostly what I eat, you know what I eat and make us the same food. It's hard to really go over caloric needs when you're eating healthy old food. Yeah, because you get full, you're satisfied. And because my refusal to eat highly processed, highly caloric foods, and you'll hear this, Michael Phelps, when he was training for the Olympics, he would eat like what 3X large pizzas a day or some shit. Yeah, because of the amount of caloric burn he would go through.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:55

Yeah, 10,000.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:56

You have to eat this highly caloric, ultra-processed food to keep up with some of these training demands. And because of the way my family lives, I refuse to do it. And that's where I'm struggling right now. Like me and Faye were talking about this, and when she was training for an Iron Man, like they had no problems going and killing a whole cheesecake by themselves after training. And that's extremely caloric dense, right? You just need the calories to support training, and that's where that equation comes in. But because I'm health first and my family's health is priority and we don't eat that way, it's been a struggle for me to get calories in with the increased aerobic volume, which is affecting all this.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:40

Um supplementation is important in scenarios like this. Like supplementation is addition to something that you're trying to add on top of. Like if you're a little guy trying to gain weight and you're already eating all the food and you want to gain more weight, it helps to add in to supplement too. Or you supplement because of lack of something. You're supplementing here because your your outputs are exceeding your inputs, and you can't just be stuffing your face full of healthy food all day long. It's not viable. Then you could argue that wouldn't even help your outputs because you wouldn't want to run because you just feel like a sack of shit because how much food you're eating.

Blood Pressure Meds And ED Story

SPEAKER_00 1:24:16

Yeah, and like that is an equation that I'm working through right now. Yeah. And um, yeah, the other, the last deal that I'll before we is um move on. Um, I forgot it. This is this is a heavy topic. So so you guys oh that's what I was talking about. Medications. So I was on a blood pressure med your year or so ago I started because when your blood pressure is chronically too high and I lived in denial of my blood pressure going up a little bit each year, I was consistently in the 140s over 90s, like eight, nine months ago. So I decided I think it was laprinticil. I can't remember the names of these things, but my wife knows all this stuff. But I was on a low dose blood pressure med to get my blood pressure normalized. Because when your blood pressure is chronically elevated over time, it can affect kidney function, and it is one of the silent killers of society. Hypertension, pre-hypertension, it goes on undiagnosed 10, 20 years, and then all of a sudden you're having cardiac events. Because when the face of blood pressure shows up as a symptom, shit's gone sideways bad. So, because I check my blood pressure regularly and this and that and notice this trend, and knowing these outcomes, I decided, okay, I'm gonna go on a low-dose blood pressure med. And testosterone replacement therapy can, in some people, increase blood pressure. So I have this going on, that going on. I take the med. Blood pressure normalizes, feeling great. We get rid of a big stressor, right? We make the decision that we're gonna go down to one gym. Simplified our lives in many very meaningful ways. And then I start training for high ROX and increasing my aerobic work. Well, my blood pressure, I was still in the med. And I was still checking my blood pressure, but it was stable, so like once a week, I wasn't checking it every single day anymore for like a three-week window, there, four-week window. And it dropped dramatically to where like 90 over 50, to where I couldn't, you remember like if I stood up too quick, I'd get lightheaded. Where I was like kind of passing out and it was happening often to check my blood pressure, super low. So what I'm getting at here is this is the first time, so high blood pressure can cause erectile dysfunction. Low libido, low blood pressure can cause this, and I will say, not bear to say it, but this was the first time in my life that I experienced erectile dysfunction. Like in a worky. And it being a healthy, fit, 41-year-old on HRT, it was um not a revelation, but just like a sympathy for people that actually do have to deal with deal with that all the time. Like I was like, like your brain's engaged, your desire's there, your libido is there. Like my libido existed.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:50

Little homie just didn't want to come out of the cave. He didn't want to work. And that was um quite stressful for me. Because, like, okay, what's wrong with me now? What's broken? What's what's going on here?

SPEAKER_01 1:28:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:06

And honestly, it took over a month for my blood pressure. I got off the meds. Everything's normalized now. My blood pressure's perfect. And I've normalized. So when it comes to that, I'm talking specifically men out there, just have a primary care provider that knows what the hell they're doing, that can have some conversations. I'm grateful that I live with one. And then my main primary care provider, he's pretty awesome. Um, and I'm I'm very comfortable having these conversations so that we're able to like, okay, you're coming off the meds, but I need you to track it. We're we we want to see you regain normal function as a healthy, thriving, you know, male. And um, yeah, so that goes back to know medications, know your lifestyle, know your body. And that was just, I guess, a sure side story.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:05

So I'm gonna I'm gonna sum all this up off the top of my head to kind of break it down because I know there's a lot of information. There's probably an hour, probably more than even what we talked about, and you still got like 12 pages on there. But we'll move on because we're gonna go into our Instagram and general questions here next. But if I had to sum all that up, all jokes aside, if the libido is not there, the interest is not there, um, and you know that it should be, you probably have something else going on in your life. And it is up to us with the information available to pick out a few of these things that we can figure out. So, what I would say is if this is something you do struggle with, and this is a you know a private thing for most people, not everybody. Some people are, you know, loud and proud about it, um, about what they do at home. But if this is truly a struggle, you're like, I want to, I know I should, but I don't really want to. Whatever it is, this is a marker for something else that's going on in your life. And what is that marker? Is it I would pick two to three things in your life? Is it, are you eating hyper palatable foods to process, you eating twizzlers and shit off the shelf? Are you overtraining? Are you drinking too much alcohol? Is the stress at work doing a number on you and can you mitigate it there? I would pick two to three things that stand out to you. Like you had, I'll use you as an example here. I'm finish up my thought. Is you are known and reputation of the gym to have everything pretty dowely, pretty healthy, dude. Okay, but you still have your you we all have our shit. So for you, it's stressful because you have everything dialed, and that was the well, the last limiting factor. For most people, there's gonna be multiple there. And for most of us, fortunately, we will be able to pick some of these things. I can guarantee there's no one in the gym that I know of have ever experienced who's gonna be as disciplined as my brother is with all this stuff, just growing up with you and where you're at, and especially with the stuff with Claire and the household. Like, you're the exception, right? Most of us, if we take a hard look in the mirror, can pick two to three things that like if I optimize those things, it will improve this. And it may not even be like, you know, a horny issue. It could be just like a quality of life, how you sleep, how you handle stress, bubble guts. I mean, it could be just it could be anything. Pick two to three things that are in your control. You know, if you're hella depressed and anxious about what's happening in the world, get off Instagram. All right. If you're like, man, I can't take a normal dump, maybe get in some more fiber. Like there are there are things that you can do to mitigate these things. Find two to three of them, make it happen. And if you have questions after that, you do those things and you're still struggling. That's where you'd have, you know, but that's where it's worth, or even before that, getting in with your primary care, asking us, maybe we can give you some insight or guide you in the right direction to go with that. So being horny is good. If you want to be horny and can't be horny, then there's something going on. Yep. That is my summed up version of all of that.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:15

Yeah, just to reiterate here, low libido is not a diagnostic test. It's not an objective test for anybody, male, female. It's a question, right? It's a question and it's a signal of maybe, and it's gonna be more meaningful to some than others. So using it in that subjective nature, improving every aspect of your health can have a very positive influence on it. I do think sexual health is an important conversation for people. It's just not something that's openly talked about for obvious reasons. And um yeah, I would, I would, I would give it some level of importance in your subjective outlook on how you approach your health. Because weight training does increase your testosterone, eating healthy does increase your testosterone, sleeping does increase your testosterone, doing all these healthy things increases your sexual hormones, both men and women, and should have a positive influence in this area if it's something that's important to you. Perfect.

Practical Takeaways Before Q And A

SPEAKER_01 1:33:28

Moving on from being horny. Um we're gonna go over just a couple fun questions now to finish out the episode. Uh a general question. It seems silly. It's something I struggle with because I have a sweet tooth, but it seems silly, but it's not. Right. And for us less perfect people like myself, all right? Not not you over there with all the vascularity and abs.

Cheat Meals And Weekly Math

SPEAKER_00 1:33:56

Me over here with uh starting to look like I got some kind of other disease. Drop 20 pounds. Uh how should I approach cheat meals? How should you approach cheat meals? Cheat meals comes down to a calorie equation goal-driven decision. I look at food with purpose. I like my food to taste good. Like I don't want to just I joke sometimes that you know I'm eating cardboard right now. A lot of the food I eat is with almost everything I eat now is purpose-driven. Yes, I'm that fucking guy. But it's very driven by my daughter and the way our house approaches nutrition and health now. So when it comes to people living 90% healthy, 80%, you know, still you never know when you're gonna get hit by a car, slip and fall on the bath and break your neck. And if you want to go have that great meal, have that treat, that dessert, um, by all means, these one-offs aren't going to kill you. But I do think we need to be intentional about it and it's goal driven. So let me do the quick math. Real quick.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:16

Oh, while you're figuring that out. I would say the first thing you need to do is to figure it out. Is to define your cheat meal. Are we talking about cheat meal? Are we talking about cheat week? Are we talking about cheat month?

SPEAKER_00 1:35:32

Are we talking about cheat weekends? I would say general context for most people is Monday through Friday, pretty good. Days and lives are structured Monday through Friday. Work, kids, school, everything's really structured. Once we get to the weekend, you want to kind of not have structure. So for a lot of people, it's going out to eat. We're gonna go out to dinner, we're gonna go out to breakfast, we're gonna order food, we're gonna have food delivered Friday night, we're gonna have pizza delivered. Um, I would say the majority of people, it's a one or two meal situation andor weekend Saturday, Sunday situation. Yeah, there's a lot of people out there that eat like shit Monday through Fridays, but I'd say when if people are talking about cheap meals, they're trying to, I would say they're trying to put intention into some aspect of their diet, or they would just say, well, my diet sucks. But they're aware of a certain block of their diet that they recognize that that is a cheat meal. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_01 1:36:33

Yes. Contextually, I think there's there's nuances scenarios with different people that don't necessarily look at a meal as a cheat meal, being able to identify what the cheat meal is. If I look at a pint of ice cream and say, okay, yeah, this is cheating, I'm gonna eat this whole pint of ice cream. But earlier in the day, I ordered a cheeseburger. I'm like, yeah, well, it's not that bad in my head. I'm not saying me, but this is generally, people won't categorize that as a cheat meal based off of your goals and what your lifestyle has looked like. Like the cheat meal, that's why I brought up the cheat week and the cheat month and the cheat lifestyle. If you're in your head kind of eating healthy, but every time you pass by the cupboard, you grab a handful of petrings or you know, trail mix with extra MMs, like these cheat meals are irrelevant because of the lifestyle that goes into those cheat meals. So if you're truly laying it out as a cheat meal, there's probably a level of discipline there in your other aspects of your life. Like you said, your Monday through Friday, maybe your weekends will get you. Um, but you need to be able to identify your cheat meal. And a simple thing that I asked myself this question that I came up with a long time ago, I'm sure I'm I'm not like the originator of this, is whatever I put in my mouth, drinking or eating, it's either gonna get me one step closer to my goals or one step backward. And I need to be able to accept that if what I'm about to consume is gonna take me backwards, I'm gonna be okay with it. So if I go to eat something on the weekend, I'm like, yeah, we're gonna eat, we're gonna go fat shitting, like what me and my brother used to do. We're gonna eat an extra large bazuki at BJ's, maybe two of them because we've done that before. And we know consuming this is probably gonna take us a couple steps back, all the work that we put in towards getting to this point and everything, like we're probably taking a step back. We're accepting that we're doing this why we gave it the verb and adjective of going out fat shitting. We're you're consciously accepting that you're doing this. So every time I would say, if you can get in a habit of every time you put something in your mouth, drinking or eating, is this putting me closer to my goals or farther away? Yeah. If it's gonna put me farther away, I need to be okay with it, or if go, oh no, that's gonna put me farther away. It's not worth it. This this bite of ice cream or this pine ice cream or whatever it may be is not worth it anymore if I look at it from that scope. Yeah. That so your cheat meal, like like Faye, you know, training for an Iron Man, okay, the hardest physical event in the world. Her eating a cheesecake for most of us, yeah, that's a big step back. That is a dense piece of freaking cheesecake. It's 5,000 calories for her and what she was doing is needed. It's not, it's actually probably a step forward.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:18

It's a step forward.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:19

Because it is one of the only ways to get in that caloric need for the output that she was putting forth. So you need to put it in context, what your daily life looks like, and be honest with yourself. I mean, honestly, like sometimes a lot of times when I eat some of the shit, and I I got a sweet tooth. I love me some junk food. I know when I'm consuming those things, I know that I'm not the next day wondering, like, oh man, why is this, why am I not losing weight or why do I feel like shit? Like, I know sometimes it's my own detriment. I'm like, yeah, it doesn't make me feel like shit, but I might do it again. Like, I know these things. And then there's just a level of maturity to be like, okay, pull your head out of your ass, bro, and just start making better decisions, which is what I've been doing lately. But again, I love that because it's worked really well for me and a couple people I've talked to. If you just look at whatever you're eating, is it putting me closer or farther away? And if you're farther away is outweigh, like if you tallied them up and your farther aways are greater than putting you closer to your goal, there's your there's your literal information objective data right there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:20

I mean, and not all not all food needs to be fear-mongered. No, right? So it's like you have marketing presence out there, you have this, you have that. It's quantity, it's dose dependent, and it's goal dependent. So is it moving me closer or further away from my goals? Like you said, I will say there are some products out there and marketing things that you might actually think and believe that that's moving you closer to your goal.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:53

But it's not that's I'm sorry, but that's an education thing. It's an education thing, and I'd say just get in the habit of asking the questions about how's this food made, what the ingredients are, put a little effort understanding the ingredients, understanding the caloric impact of that food. There's some things out there that are healthy, whole food, massive caloric impact. Um, for instance, people like, well, why aren't you getting your calories in? Well, for me to punch the calorie curve up, for me personally, I would have to increase my fat intake. Well, if I increase my fat intake, I know this, my cholesterol is going to go up. I am actively trying to keep my cholesterol down. Even if I'm burning that off training, it's an equation I'm not willing to play with.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:42

So, not to interrupt you, but I know this would be a question, is like, let's say the high fat meal, like the cholesterol. Now, I'll put it in the context of this approaching as a cheat meal. If you have like one cheat meal that is higher in fat, is that gonna have an overall effect on elevating your cholesterol just that that one meal, like that's your cheat meal, or is it more of like weeks of doing it, months doing it, lifestyle? Like, is the one meal going to if you went and had your blood work done, you know, the very next day, is that one meal gonna go screw everything up?

SPEAKER_00 1:42:13

It will it will elevate it. You go eat a high fatty meal and go do blood work, that's why they typically want it fasted 12 hours. Um, so if you eat a meal and go immediately do blood work, it can elevate your blood lipids. Um, does that mean that you are chronically elevated? No. Yeah, so that meal can throw off that reading. Yeah, but it comes down.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:33

The one meal is not gonna ruin everything for you.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:35

Yeah, these are all chronic exposures, and your body not able to deal with it day in, day out chronically is what elevates these blood markers.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:47

Yeah. I mean, so cheat meals, yeah. I would say tally, just ask yourself the verbal question. Yes or no is pushing me closer or farther away. And honestly, in my experience, I think that can clear up a lot of things. And if you're honestly like, yes, push me away, yeah, it's pushing me away, and you keep doing that, then you really can't. You have no grounds to ask questions or complain about your lifestyle to your coach if you can honestly assess that. Yeah, everything I eat is shit.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:13

And I throw this out there often. I'm here to help you.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:17

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:18

I'm willing to dive in and ask you the questions because there are people out there that genuinely don't know. Like, is this food bad? Is it, you know, and they also don't know, like, my goal is X, get to 15% body fat. They don't have the framework understand what that actually is gonna take. So if you're healthy Monday through Friday and kind of do whatever you want Saturday, Sunday, you're at 71%. That's a C grade. Except expect a C body.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:48

Right? Expect to see physique, except to see metabolic health, except a C grade.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:55

I love analogies, it's a great way to look at it.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:57

So that's how I look at it. One meal out of seven full days of eating is still like a 95%, 98% grade. One meal out of a week of meals. Yep. So if you're looking at all your nutritional intake across seven days, and I'm gonna go out to dinner with my family, have a drink, eat the cheeseburger and fries, and get a dessert, that one meal out of my last seven days, I'm still 95%. Yeah. I don't that I care less about that meal.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:31

Yeah, I mean, that's a great way to look at it. I mean, if you looked at some people's super busy lives, they can do a breakfast, they do a family dinner. Let's just say you have a healthy breakfast, but you have a super high calorie dense and not in a good way, dinner, like fettuccine alfredo or whatever, you can literally look at a mathematical equation of 50% of your your intake is not good.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:52

It's not good. And when it comes to calories, you guys, calories need to be looked at from a weekly, monthly scale, not a meal by meal scale. Meals do matter in caloric intake, they're all additive, but we need to look at we you need to stop microanalyzing calories on such a small scale and look at it broader. It'll be more impactful for you making these decisions. Like, I don't care if my breakfast had an extra 500 calories in it. Like it's it's it's gonna get made up somewhere. So, you guys, when it comes to nutrition, I'm here to help you. I want to help you. I don't, and one member yesterday told me they're like, Well, I don't set up a meeting with you because I know what to do, I just don't do it. Yeah, no, and that's valid. Like, people, there's a lot of people out there that know what to do. They're just not, they haven't had that moment of they don't have that reason why to change what they're changing, which is fine. That's not a bad thing. Like, if you're happy where you're at, cool by all means.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:56

It's we both had these conversations of like, man, I'm just really like, I'm frustrated and stressed. I'm not losing weight. Well, what does your lifestyle look like? What are you eating? Well, I eat X, X, and Y. Well, let's cut that out. No, I like those things. Well, what do you do on the weekends? I drink a ton. Well, let's stop drinking as much on the weekends. No, I don't want to. It's like, well, okay, then just accept. You just know where I'm at with those people. I know. I don't give a fuck. So, but these are conversations we've had. You got to look in the mirror and be like, okay, yes, I'm willing to do these things or I'm not. And if you're not, then be happy with what you're doing.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:35

It's hard, it's trial and error, but it's a process, and it's a long process. Somebody made a comment to me the other day, like, dude, you're all shredded now. Yeah, I get it. Jacob makes me look good on Instagram now. But that's been near a three-year process.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:55

Going from a pretty decent level of fitness. Like, I wasn't unfit three years ago, pre-Claire's thing. But to where I am now, physique-wise, has been a three-year process of owning every fucking aspect of all this. And it's not for everybody. But when it comes to your overarching health, when it comes to body composition, I think women need to strive to be under 30% body fat, and men need to strive to be under 20% body fat. When you're over those, you're jeopardizing your metabolic health in a very dramatic way. So if you're under those and you're happy, cool. If you're not under those and you're not happy and you need help, I'm here to help. If you are under those and you want to take it to another level, I'm here to help. Just know I'm here to help. I'm very honest with you guys. It's probably the scariest part. But I'm here to help. And if you want to sit down and have those conversations, I'm more than happy to do it.

The Worst Fitness Advice

SPEAKER_01 1:48:06

All right. Two more questions. Don't call it a day. What's the worst fitness advice you've ever received or ever heard?

SPEAKER_00 1:48:19

The worst fitness advice. I mean, in practical, like more is better. Because that's not the case. More is not always better. So that's like a practical application. Um walking is useless because it's not, it's extremely powerful. Um intensity cures all. Like that's not true at all.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:55

Uh mine, even though I'm not the nutrition guy, would be from people from a macro standpoint, not like a macro, like big picture thing. I'm literally talking about macros on nutrition. Is that as long as you're hitting your macros, it does not matter what you are eating. Some of the more popular fitness people that I followed in the past have literally said this as long as you're hitting your numbers, it doesn't matter how you get them.

SPEAKER_00 1:49:21

Well, I will I will argue that even being the guy that refuses to eat processed food. It's goal dependent and how it's going to disrupt your gut and your microbiome and this and that. Yes. But at the end of the day, the depth of my research and understanding physiology, the mass majority of composition is a calorie equation, independent of what the macronutrient is.

SPEAKER_01 1:49:55

The reason why I bring that up is because there's two people that We're tracking their macros using influencers and would track them eating Snickers in pastas in hyperpalatable processed foods on that. It wouldn't change their lifestyle in the shit food that they were eating because those were still helping them hit macro numbers, proteins, carbs. Yeah, it's so they're ignoring all the chemicals with it, the high amounts of sugar, but it was some of these things were getting them closer to hitting their macro. So they did not change anything in their lifestyle because the blanket advice of it does not matter what you're consuming as long as you're hitting your macros.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:48

So every macronutrient is going to have a different effect on your metabolic function. Right? So you're eating Snickers, it's gonna have a much different impact on your insulin sensitivity and your pancreatic response to it than eating fruit. Could be equal in sugar. Could be a completely different response because of fiber. Snickers has little to zero vitamin mineral to it. Your body needs vitamins and minerals for metabolic processes. So that's where the hole gets punched in to eat whatever you want as long as you hit your macros. You can hit your macros of fat, protein, and carbohydrates made up of the most random god-awful shit, but it's so nutrient depleted, vitamin mineral-wise, fiber-wise, that it's going to wreck your health. Now, from a thermogenic standpoint, if we're controlling calories equally, uh person eating shit food, person eating healthy food, calories controlled, could have the same weight, body composition adjustment over time. One person's probably going to feel and perform a hell of a lot better. The other person's probably going to crash and burn sometime. And that's where the quality equation comes in, in my mind. If you're just trying to control some fat, cut calories and manage calories, you can control fat. If you want to perform and have your body function optimally, that's where that whole concept is going to go to complete shit. So you have to ask you guys yourself that question on what you want out of it.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:36

Yeah. Uh yeah, it was interesting to me looking at that because I understand where you're like where it's coming, like, like you said, from a thermogenic standpoint, influencers want to use that to make counting your calories easier.

SPEAKER_00 1:52:54

Yeah. Mentally, I don't have to cut out all these foods I love, right? It's a very cushy way to make you feel comfortable doing quote unquote whatever diet you're doing. Like I can still have this. And the truth is, yes, you can, but if that's the makeup of your food, your body's going to crash and burn. Yep. Okay, last question.

One Exercise For Life

SPEAKER_01 1:53:14

Um, if you could only pick one exercise to do for the rest of your life, you come into the gym, you cannot do another thing, or you do it from the comfort of your home. Wherever you could only do one thing forever, what would it be?

SPEAKER_00 1:53:33

So the answer to this question has to be indefinitely scalable. I have to be able to do it regardless of my age. It has to hit every single muscle group in the body, has to work my cardiovascular system also. That move is a squat clean thruster.

SPEAKER_01 1:53:52

Ah, that's what I was gonna say, too. Damn it. I was hoping you would say something else. It's the only move. Yeah. That's the only answer. I mean, from it us being educated and knowing, some people might wonder why. Why, why would this be the choice of movement? Obviously, I didn't really know what you were gonna say. I kind of gave you a preface of some of these questions beforehand, but I had no clue what you were gonna say. Uh mine is the squat clean thruster, it is the only, like to your point, if it can be scaled up or down. Um, it's the only true full, complete full body exercise you can do. You get pulling from the floor from the deadlift to the clean portion, you get legwork from the squat, and then you get pressing from the overhead. Yeah, there's not a muscle.

SPEAKER_00 1:54:37

If you hooked up an EMG to me, there's nothing that would be left out.

SPEAKER_01 1:54:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:54:42

Now, some muscles are working harder than others.

SPEAKER_01 1:54:44

Sure. But it's the only thing that one move is going to hit it. Yeah, we can do it all. You can do very lightweight for a ton of reps, do a hundred squat clean thrusters a time with an empty barbell, you could get a pretty damn good work out of it. Rip your heart rate up. Do five really maximal singles, work on your strength. So that's true. Okay, so since we were both on the same subject, I'll narrow it down. What if you can only pick one body weight movement, what would it be?

SPEAKER_00 1:55:15

For the rest of my life? Body weight? I like balance.

SPEAKER_01 1:55:25

What's my what's my main goal in this nothing? Long-term health. You just get you get your choice. You can pick one body weight movement, you can never do anything else ever again. It's probably gonna be a lunge. Okay. Interesting. A lunge. Because you're gonna build that ass and legs.

SPEAKER_00 1:55:45

Well, it works the legs, works the legs unilaterally. Legs are the biggest muscles in your group, they're the biggest dump for glucose. They're going to help stabilize your metabolic health more than any other exercise, like using the leg muscles. So if I I'm not gonna just pick doing push-ups, it's some of the smallest muscles. Sure. So for long-term health, I can lunge fast, get my heart rate up. I can run lunge under tempo, build strength, and yeah, probably gonna build a great ass in that. I'll be sad because I do like working my upper body, but I would want something that is scalable also. Squats might get pretty, air squats might get pretty gross over time. I feel the lunge is a safer exercise to do in my 80s and 90s, potentially.

SPEAKER_01 1:56:37

I have my answer. Burpees. My least favorite movement of all time would be the burpee. And I'll throw in. Where I coach to not do this is an efficient burpee, the shitty burpee with the air squat. So burpees. You look conditioning, a little pushing, a little squatting. That you can change your answer.

SPEAKER_00 1:56:58

I'm not changing my answer, but that is a better exercise to pick.

Closing And Listener Questions Plug

SPEAKER_01 1:57:03

All right. Well, so today we talked about how to be horny, what makes you not horny. Um if you can't be horny, here there's some of the things to do to make you horny. Um but in all reality, all jokes aside, uh, it is a very strong heavy marker, metabolic health marker.

SPEAKER_00 1:57:26

It's a very if good subjective thing to be mindful of.

SPEAKER_01 1:57:30

Yep. And you can look at that yourself and be like, hmm, maybe I actually do struggle with these things. Or maybe I don't. Okay. Maybe the horniest person ever walked face to the earth. But that's gonna wrap up episode two for us. We're gonna keep these things going. Um, I'll be putting out IG things for you guys to ask questions, submit whatever questions. We may address them, may not. We'll see. But um, number two in the books. And yeah, that's about all I got. I don't have a closing statement. Damn it. I need to work on that. All right. That's it, you guys. Love you guys. Peace. Thank you for being here. We'll see you in the next one.