Not The Ozempic Allegations

We're working on our fitness and we want to tell you all about it! Join us for this week's episode talking all about our ~health & wellness~ journeys & even some...ozempic allegations!? GASP. 

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Let's Dig In: @letsdigin.podcast
Matt Benfield: @mr.benfield
Omar Ahmed: @omarahmed.co

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Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Good night. Welcome back to, why does it sound Like Hard? You sound like a criminal podcast. Oh my God. on this Hollowed Eve, Who knows what you will discover once you open the doors? Could it be chaos? Or could it be disaster? What? I dunno. Sometimes I feel like I'm on crack. You might be. You're drinking Celsius, so it's pretty close. Welcome back to another episode of Let's Dig In Where we Are, your hosts, where we are, your hosts, and the skies above our heads. Actually, it's a ceiling. Shut up. We're gonna talk about fitness today and body image. I feel like body image. I feel like body image is so crazy. You said actually. No, we're talking about body image. Like I'm talking about fitness too. Like I just had this idea where I was like, I really want, this is something I really wanna talk about. 'cause we're in our fitness eras. I know how you hate the word era, but it's something that we're in. It's out, but we can be in it. We are in it era, but it era of fitness. But it is out. We're in it. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And I just feel like it's really shaped my it's shaped my entire life at the moment. My body image and the way that I like want to, I don't know, be in my skin. It's a big thing. I think it's a big thing for everyone right now. I think everyone's talking about fitness and body image and being skinny. Being skinny. Being skinny. He said, oh my God, you had hair, hair, hair, first, waist to wear. You had hair first. Listen, I believe the children are our future. That is the funniest TikTok I know to ever come out of world I've ever seen That episode. That episode. Hello? Rupa RuPaul gets on TikTok and says, I believe the children are our future. And the top comment is, I believe the children seal emoji our future. And he is standing in like 16 hundreds Britain. And someone made like a Hope Core video out of it. And then one of the little clips is when RRR won the Oscar. The Oscar for best picture a couple years ago. Ah, it's so funny. This is. True brain rot. Yeah, for sure. This is internet brain rot. If you want internet brain rot, you've come to the right place. Anyways, let's dig into health, fitness, body image, all of that shit. Do loo. It's Let's dig in with Mad and Omar, imagine if that was a pathetic little fucking intro. Like, Honestly, we also we're like, what, 12 episodes deep and we say that we're gonna do a, a, we say a lot of things jingle. I can't be bothered. I don't wanna do it. I don't wanna do it. Like, Why don't we just record something And just like in the voice notes, I. And then just put it on there. Okay. As a jingle and we just sing it. Okay. I'm at, this is, why was I come. Let's dig in. Twang Yu. Oh, where should we start? When did you start doing fitness? When did I start doing fitness? When did fitness become Genesis? My favorite topic. When does the When? Oh. Do you know how it should start? I just had a really good idea. Oh God. I just had a really good idea. I love when you have this, you are all witnessing the, just like the spark of something genius. Okay. We have always discussed how did to structure this podcast. We've discussed amongst ourselves, we've discussed with our team, how do we do it? We're at the bloody dinner table. Start a main course and dessert. Oh yeah. What idiots. Oh yeah. We need to, come on. We need to really do the branding. 'cause here we are logistically it is not very, the podcast setting is not very suitable to like actually dine. We ask that at a dinner table. And if you're watching on YouTube, you can see this like makeshift situation that we also smacking sounds on a microphone just, or not disgusting unless we do asmr. No, that's disgusting. This is not an ASMR podcast. I have a Celsius and that's about as much as I'm willing to consume On this podcast. Speaking of body image, speaking of body image, did you know that Celsius makes you burn so much fat? Yeah, it's like green tea esque, essential energy accelerates metabolism, burns body fat. I don't know if it's true. No. When I was like chugging Celsius to like my heart's content, last year when I had those ozempic allegations, I was burning those fat cells off my body. You were also eating about 1200 calories a day. I was eating like. 15, that is a 10-year-old child's dad. Yeah, I know. We watched that episode of supersize versus Super Skinny. 'cause I was trying to educate my friends on UK trash TV culture from early two thousands. And supersize versus Super Skinny came up and I was like, you have to watch this crazy show. They take a really. Morbidly obese person and an insane what? The UK is crazy. Can I not say that? No, of course you can say that. Yeah. But the UK is crazy because that's a TV show that exists. And then they take someone who is like borderline anorexic. And they make them switch diets. And basically the supersize person, the supersize, I'm saying this because that's what they're called on the show, the supersized person will eat a protein bar and then an energy drink for breakfast and some almonds and another energy drink for lunch. Whereas the super skinny person has to eat 15,000 big Macs a day. Yum. It's crazy. It's crazy. And your point, body image. And your point was that's what you were eating last year? No, my point was, thank you so much. My point was they did a segment and they were like how many calories should like you be eating if you're a child or toddler? A 10-year-old, a teenager, an adult? I think it was like 1500 was like a toddler. We'll get to your ozempic allegations from last year. But we should start at the beginning, at the appetizer. come out with my eating disorder? Yes, come out. Come out as having an eating disorder. Yes. I don't have an eating disorder. Should we trigger warning the shout of this episode? Maybe. I feel like body image is, oh, this is deep. I think we got a bit too, we got a bit too crazy. If you click on the title of this episode, you will know what it's about. So I don't need to add a trigger warning. Trigger warnings are so dumb. Oh my God. I'm sorry. You are becoming so, you are becoming a version of your side. I am sorry that you in the, in like 2020. Did you agree that? Yeah, I do agree. Yeah. Yeah. No, you in 20 yay or no? I, no. Yeah, I know. I say yeah, I know, but I said yay. I know. Okay. Calm down. Yes. The old version of me in like 2020 would hate, but I think trigger warnings are dumb. I'm sorry. You choose to consume what you want to consume. It's not anyone's responsibility to tell you. What about at people? I'm not yelling at people, I'm just speaking my mind anyways. Trigger warning, we're gonna talk about probably eating disorders and body image. Okay. well, When I started to work out, I, no, not even work out. It's like when did you start start thinking about fitness? When did you think about oh, maybe I shouldn't eat that. Or maybe I should eat this instead. Well, I was fat. So in the beginning I was in the beginning, beginning God, God created heaven and earth for what's worth. No one say ing I. They do. No one will say hate ing. I was what you would call Husky, Husky, Husky, Husky. I shopped in the husky. Think that's so crazy that is even a it was just regular boys clothes up the bottom and then husky clothes. Like Husky boys. Husky boys. I don't know if there was husky girls. I think it was just petite and like. regular. I don't think there was a, I don't think there was a plus side section for women back in the day. I think it was just husky men. Like young, young, like young, like young girls. Yeah. Yeah. Because I had a husky section and that's where I would get my clothes because I was fed a diet of Big Macs and french fries. I got home cooked meals a lot of the times, but my aunt would also bring me. McDonald's every week. Multiple times a week. Actually, I would get McDonald's just brought to me a Happy meal and then I'd get a toy. I had, I have two. It's the size of a, like a double bed. I have two big plastic boxes underneath my childhood bed. Just full of Happy Meal toys. Oh yeah, that's approximately 500 probably Happy Meal toys. You still have them? They're all Furbies. Probably Furies. No. Oh, when Happy Meals had furbies, don't trigger warning for the FIEs. That was trigger warning for the FIEs. That was a a good time. No. When they did the Beanie Babies, they're like yeah, yeah. Oh, that too. The little animals. Generally when they gave actual toys instead of shit. Pieces of plastic. Like pieces of plastic. You have to make yourself like fuck off. Yeah. And apple slices because what did you used to eat at McDonald's? I would get cheeseburger and french fries. Crazy. I'd get fish fingers and chips. Whale. cause it was the only thing that Hal at the time, that's why I love the fish filet. No, that's freaky. Your favorite thing from McDonald's is a fish filet. Good. You enjoy what you grew up on. Okay. You eat fish from McDonald's. Yum. Ew. Yum yum. Bo. That's why I don't like eating. Like even though I'm not a mus, I don't, I'm not practicing Muslim. I just still don't enjoy eating pork or pork based products. We going Islam. We are not going to Islam today. We did that last week. that's the beginning of my, I didn't think about health until college 18 probably. Did you go to the gym when you were in college? Yeah, I started to, but not really. Okay. But I got really intimidated by the gym. Yeah. 'cause it was all straight boys. Yeah. When you're husky, when you're a husky, little homo husky and a Hu Husky, little homo husky little homo, that's husky little homo with a lot of little rolls, back. Rolls back rolls. I did have back rolls probably. Did try. My dad did try to force me to play sports as a kid. As all straight fathers. Wait, wasn't you the coach of some like sports team? He was the coach. He was my coach for every single sports team. He tried to get me to play. What so T-Ball? I like T-Ball. T-Ball was a good, do you know what T-Ball is? No. It's like the beginning, the like children's version of baseball. We'll have like instead of it being thrown at you, you just have the baseball on a little. I lost interest. Stop. I lo No, I'm telling you I lost interest. I zoned out. I zoned out so fast. I can see it happening you guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, you have the baseball on a little stand. Why are you why are you continuing? Because I want to explain what T-Ball is. I don't care. I don't care it bowl, I don't care. It's got a bowl in it and there was a T shape. Great. Those were kids and then he was my coach for that, and then he was my coach for. Flag? No, he wasn't like coach for flag football, but he tried to give, what the fuck is flag football? It was like beginner football. Oh, is that what you like? Instead of like you tackling someone, you just take their little flag? Yeah, yeah, Pussy. But then I went to my first game and then I got a grass stain, and then I stopped playing because I said I didn't want a grass stain on my new white pants. Period. As you said, diva, my parents said you were gay. And I wasn't That Isn't that crazy? Crazy work. Hello? Isn't it so crazy? I got a grass stain and I stopped playing football. Wait, I've always wanted to tell this story on here. Okay. And now I, I have got a reason to tell this story. It's time. High school PE was so crazy 'cause I just really wouldn't participate in it. And I would like lie about being sick all the time because I fucking hated getting changed. A, in the boys changing room. Oh yeah. B. Participating in the boys sports because they were always like football or fucking basketball or rugby or. Tennis was okay. Annoyed me and I wanted to play gymnastics with the girls. Did you have cricket in school? Yeah. You did cricket. That's fun. Yeah, I could play. Did you play it play cricket? I used to play cricket with my brothers. Cricket feels fun. So my, in my back, back garden, I feel like it's just such a, like South Asian sport. It is, isn't it? It's such, it's just really popular there. Yeah. So I feel like, yeah, I just grew up playing cricket with my brothers, breaking neighbor's windows all the time. That is a, do you use a, do you use a bat? Is it kinda like baseball? It's like baseball, but the bat is longer and flat on one side. Oh, like a paddle kind of. It's long, right? Like a sword like, kind of like a sword. Sword. Paddle. Yeah. Exactly. yeah, I enjoyed it. It was a fun sport, but then, but not one had to play it like competitively in school. Fuck off, right? Stop telling me what to do, right? And get your stinky pits away from me. Those stinky pits boys, I hate them. yeah, I would lie all the time. And when I like came out and I was like, actually like actively gay. A actively participating in the gay. They would try and bully me in school, in the locker room. The boys, The boys would try and bully me in the locker room Yeah. As boys do. And they'd be like I don't wanna get changed next to Omar is a bender. And I'd be like, I wouldn't wanna look at you if you were the last piece of shit on the planet. I once almost got suspended because I was talking back to someone in the locker room A teacher came to walk in and he was like, both of you out right now. That's, what are you doing? That's not how you speak to people. Yeah. And I was like, he's literally started it. I dunno what's wrong with you? I'm really pissed off at this whole situation. I fucking hate pee. I fucking hate you and I hate smell. That's what I have to say about that. for a year, I think I was like changing in the. Staff room. The staff locker room. They let you? They let me. Yeah. Huh. But I was like, I hate it here. like, I always lied or I was like, either Skived off. Didn't go. Huh? Played truant. Skied. Skived. Skived too. Truant. What are you, you, what do you, what do you call it when you like miss a class? Um, Hooky. Hooky. Hooky. Yeah. You skived off? Yeah, I skived. I've never heard that before. Great. Okay. I've never heard hooky. Yes, you just said it. Yeah. 'cause of tv. Skived off. I like that. Skived. Oh, I just would skive all the time. or I just would pretend to be sick. So you could say I wasn't the fittest. Person, but I wasn't in any way. I was just, I've always just been like, good, skinny. Did you have a gym at your school? Like a fit, like a weight. Weight, a gym, a weight, weight lifting. No, that's crazy. I think that's just Oh, really? That's an American thing. We have that. Yeah, we don't have that. Oh. So in our school we had changing rooms and then we have an indoor gym. Yeah. Which you'd use for like basketball, gymnastics, like a gymnastics section, a basketball section. And then outside gym where you'd have like football. Like AstroTurf. Yeah. AstroTurf. Demonic. A demonic substance. What do you mean? AstroTurf? Yeah. What about it gets everywhere? Huh? AstroTurf gets everywhere. It's the one with the sand in it, so it'd have like sand all over it. What they would like? Resand? You mean fake grass? No, no, no, no, No. Huh? It was like fake grass, but it was like sandy. They would like put as AstroTurf, that's what it was. But it wouldn't just be like fake grass. They'd put fucking sand on it. Oh. To make it like, I don't know, bouncy or if you fell you wouldn't hurt yourself as much, but. Sure you get AstroTurf burns like crazy. Sure. Oh yeah. Wait. Yes. And I remember, I understand you'd get like AstroTurf in your socks and shit anyway. Fucking high school. Piss me the fuck off. And so I would get changed in the staff changing rooms, obviously when the staff weren't there. 'cause that's fucking weird. And then they'd be like, how can we help you participate? Which was really nice actually. That is, That is progressive for that time period. I had, there was a she was actually the head of our. Our year group. So like like each year group had a head, head, head boy, and head. Gail? No. Had like a head teacher. Like a teacher. Oh, like a teacher that was responsible for the year group? Yeah. And ours was the new, one of the new PE teachers, Ms. Watson. And so, oh, love a female PE teacher. Love a female PE teacher. Oh, lesbians. Yeah. Love, love her. Well, She a lesbian, so I don't know. Probably. I don't know. And so she basically asked me like, how can we help you participate in p And I was like first of all, I. I'd wanna die. But if that's not an option, then I guess integration would be so nice. I'm like, all my friends are all the other girls. I'm friends with all the girls. And I hate the fact that I can't do sports with my friends. I fucking hate the boys. They're all losers. I. And they're all losers. And so I came back to high school right before my final year of high school. They changed the curriculum of PE so you could integrate. You got to decide the very first day of year 11, we got to decide whether or not we were, we. We, it was like a category of sports, so it was like gymnastics, dance fucking hula hoop or whatever the fuck we did. We just did dumb shit. And then, or you could do like, tennis, tennis rounders oh, girl sports. Gay sports. Men's sports. Right, right. Yeah. Like you could decide which ones you wanna do, or like, it was like basketball, football, rugby. Like you could decide what to do. There was a lesbian in the high school. She chose to do the football like. Yeah, why can't we do that? Why is that not normal? Exactly. No, it was crazy. 'cause you know, you'd get changed in your own changing rooms, whatever, and you'd go and play the sports that you want to play. Why is this not normal? And so I was like, oh my God, divas, I'm gonna be like playing gymnastics and do dance with my like, did you hula hoop? I don't know. I made that up. It was gymnastics, it was dance. I can't remember what else it was. And then all of a sudden I was like, yes sir. I get to do this for the whole whole year. And I was so excited about PE again. yeah, I would just go and dance around. It was so fun. Why is that not the norm? I'm trampolining. I always want to do trampolining. Is that a sport? Yeah we, we had a trampoline. We would do trampolining. What's the sport? Trampolining. But what do you do? Jump around. Like in, yeah, everyone would have a go in a, for you just jump around. It was like an actual, actual trampoline. Not like a fucking, not the one that you have in like your backyard. In your backyard. Yeah. Not one of those ones. It was like a full rectangular long. What would you do, like trampoline? you would do routines. Oh, routines. Okay. You like, do now do a front flip. Do a back flip. Okay. Do like a little thingy where you Good. Do like a sit where you can do a sit, like jump, jump, sit, and then stand up again. Yeah, it was good. That's so dumb. I wish like we had that was good enough. Anyway, and then I loved it and then I was like, Ugh, fitness, love that. turns out actually like being in a setting where you actually enjoy the people and the sport itself makes you wanna do it. You know what's interesting? We didn't have. you could play sports, but you didn't have to choose a sport. You would just go to pe, which was just like a general like run around the room for a couple times, do some sit ups. That's crazy because that's crazy because our PE teachers would like create a, like a plan, like a day, what we gonna do? So for example, oh really? Like the boys, for example, in the September to December months, they would play outdoors eSports, but then in January came around, they would go inside and play like basketball inside and then they would do like January to like March. They'd play like mm-hmm. indoor sports. Mm-hmm. Oh, and we'd have like track, but like more so like the track relay race. Oh, and rounders. Rounders, huh? That's that's like a really gay version of baseball Rounders uk. Yeah, and it's like, sounds like you have a bat, but it's not like a baseball bat. It's like a smaller bat than a baseball bat. We love bats. We love bats, but it's rounders. It's like baseball. But it's so gay and it's really like, it's really fun and like fast and okay. Only the girls played it until I joined the team and it was like, okay, slay. The gay has arrived. It was so fun. No, we didn't have a sports like that. We just played, we did a mile runs. Did you do a mile run? No. See how many, how long takes to run a mile. Do you ever have to do what were they called? Like a sports. Do you have a sports day? Every year we'd have a sports day. What do you mean? And like yet everyone would have to participate in something. No, we had Farm Day. Okay. What have I told you about that? What the fuck is Farm day? Yeah, we had a farm day. Tell me, I don't know anything about this. So we had a wait. Oh my God. Sometimes I think we've told you each that everything, there's nothing that can, there's nothing you can possibly say that's gonna make me. Stumped. It's gonna stump me. We had a farm on our school, so our school had a farm. Okay. Our school had a farm, and you could take ag classes. Agricultural classes. Oh, that's useful. Like you could, if you wanted to be a farmer, you could take classes to become a farmer. That's useful. Yeah. It's good for people in North Carolina. There are tech pros out there. Someone get on the fucking farm. Exactly. But then we would have a farm day, one day, A year, a semester, Where you could bring your animals from home. To school what? Into like a petting zoo kind of thing? so people would ride horses, shut up, shut up to school, shut up and put them in the farm in like the zoo petting zoo area or whatever. We have. Shut up. Sports people would bring their dogs, their cats, their pigs, their horses, their, they didn't bring cows. Maybe they brought cows. Actually, people from farms brought cows. If you were in, in a farming family, you could bring your. Animal. That is crazy. So then everyone from the school, what did you bring? What did you bring? I didn't bring anything. It's Did you have toy day? Like everyone, lets bring in a toy. No, we had gender bending day. I'm sorry, what? You know, Spirit days. What Spirit days? Yeah. Like you've seen this on TV I'm sure, where like it's like a week full of like, I think it's when the homecoming is when like the last football game is, no, this country's crazy. And then you have different days that are different themes. No, and one of the themes, I don't know if they still do it, probably don't because it was very problematic, is gender bending day. I don't know if it was called that. It was like gender swap day or something where you would dress as a boy or a girl. If you're a boy or a girl. That's crazy. Man to woman or woman to man. Oh my God, that's wild. Oh my God. Yeah, we would have that. Wait, how progressive of you guys I. Uh, I don't know if it was progressive. That's crazy, dude. Um, Yeah, we had that, we had Farm Day. We did not have a toy day, whatever that was called. Gender bending day. That's cra that's a crazy thing to say. You've never seen that. It's like a bi, it's like a No, I've never seen that. I had Toy Day and that and World Book Day. We had book day. Yeah, we had book day where the Scholastic book Fair would come and, oh, this is my favorite day. 'cause I was a. Fucking nerd. Then we would go, the book fair would come Scholastic Scholastic book Fair Book Fair. Where the people would come with the books and you would go and get the best books. Scholastic. Scholastic. Tell me that. Like scholar, okay. Scholastic. I don't know if that's actually a word. Fucking losers. Whatever. It would be like, it would be like a book fair where so the loser Brigade would come with their loser. Yes. Yes, me and my Battle of the Books team would go and we would go, I'm sorry, what I've told you about that. What the fuck is going on? What the fuck? Farm Day battle of the books I've told you about. Battle of the Books. Next, you're gonna say that you were in the Glee Club, which you were. You know what you were getting into. Fucking Loser. Oh my God. Sometimes I'm like, who did I marry? I have the ick. Do you know what? Cancel, cancel. No this, this show's canceled. Wait, lemme tell you about, about the books. Lemme tell you about Battle of the Books. What is this episode about? It was about fitness, but now it's about books. Battle of the Books was a very important part of my life 'cause it taught me about reading. Actually I was a big nerd before then, but it like enhanced my love for reading. You would in middle school, we would get like a list of books that we would have to read for like the semester and at the end we would go to like. a competition with the other schools where there would be judges and they would ask you questions about each of the books. That's fun. Fun. And you have to know the answers about them. Yeah. That's fun. So you need to know the synopsis. You need to know the plot. You need to know reading comprehension. You need to know that. Just comprehension. Yeah. But you would need to know, like we would have that in English, like that would be part of a curriculum. Exactly. But it was like you had to read 20 books. But you're like doing it competitively. Yes. Competitively. Because you're, yeah, I was a nerd. Yeah. We got really far. That was really good. I will say that's really crazy. So when would you say you actually got into health and wellness and fitness? And I feel like I just didn't, I didn't until I came back from traveling way after university. One of my roommates at uni, he was super into the gym and was he hot? No damn. Sorry. Good body. Okay. Body was T that counts He would only talk about like taking creatine and supplements and I'd be like. Okay, but like, have you seen how nice my hair looks today? Is this the guy that you took pre-workout with before you went that one time? Yes, I did do that one time. I know that story exactly. Okay. I guess my first time taking pre-workout, I was so tired, but I was like, I have to go on a night out. I have to get ready and I have to go party with the divas, but I'm a little hungover. By this point of the podcast, you should by now have grasped that I was a fucking crazy person growing up. Still are little bit of a party freak. Yeah. And I um, just couldn't say no to a good night out, but I was like so, so tired was like, oh, you have this like pre-workout, mix it with water and drink it. It'll give you energy. And I was like, that sounds amazing. Let me try that. And the name pre-workout didn't really like trigger anything. Yeah. I'm about to go like dance around. Perfect. And then I drank it and I was like. I obviously, 'cause I was like stationary, I didn't move. 'cause when you take for your workout, you have to like move 'cause you get like, yeah. You know your body. It's doing something to your body. It's not doing anything. No, I know. It turns out uh, no, it's like making your, like it makes me, my skin like itchy and like a bit tingly. Yeah. And so I was like, I feel crazy. And then I like got in the shower 'cause I was like, I need to like scrub this off of my skin 'cause this feels crazy. I mean, it woke me up. So then I went out and had a great time. Great. You didn't want to get like a Red Bull? No. I dunno. I didn't think about that. Yeah. Uni, I never worked out. I really just didn't. Didn't, and like, I feel like fitness culture wasn't really that huge. 'cause of social media. Oh, totally. Which, just getting started on social media and like, I think, what was I just on Instagram in my, like second year of uni? Yeah. No one was posting thirst straps there yet. No. Yeah. No one was posting like, no, I was just on Instagram. Like you were taking pictures of like a a coffee. latte art. And then that's it. That was what Instagram was. And I feel like fitness, culture in the way that I guess is so domineering over our lives right now is truly because of social media. yeah, I came back from traveling after a year away. I think that was the first time I went to the gym. I joined the gym. I was like seeing this loser. But he had great body. And I was like, let me try and do that too. And then, yeah, I started going to the gym and then I started like seeing all these men on my Instagram all of a sudden. And I was like, oh my God, wait. Men are hot. I want have, I wanted abs before? Never. But now I do. Yeah. And I'm like, what? 23 already? Yeah. You look at 23 year olds now. Fucking hell look my age. They're crazy, but they're jacked. They're ripped. Ripped. How do you get like that? Sometimes you'll see someone like, you'll scroll TikTok, and you'll see someone who's like. Fucking hell. I do think also the usage of steroids is more prevalent than we like to think. Yeah. We like to think that everyone is like natural and they like, no. I know They don't like that because they worked hard. They now 'cause they're on steroids. No, it's crazy. How many people are on steroids? It's crazy. It's crazy. Lot of gay men. It's Yes. A lot of gay men. Yeah, it's crazy. It's like a big thing. body image. Body image. We'll talk about that. No. Have you ever wanted to on Ros Roids? No. I just think it's crazy because in my mind I'm like, if I can't obtain something naturally, I just don't care about it. But I know the negatives of the steroids. Right? Totally. you go bald. Oh yeah. Ew. Yeah. You can tell, you get acne, you get back knee. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no, no, No. I'm not getting back acne so I can have abs just read me before, like my hair is like my price possession. I'm not doing anything to damage that. Literally, who's gonna be interested in me if I have acne? Nobody. Not you. Not me. Not I for sure. I'm teetering on the edge whether or not I am because of everything you just said about your book nerd thing. Shut up. So anyway, so you started working out Then I started going to the gym. No, I started going to gym. Oh, going to the gym. Different what? I knew what I was doing. Oh, I didn't, yeah, I didn't really start. what I was doing. The thing is my brother had a gym membership and then I like when I was like at home for a couple months before I moved to Berlin, I would like just like take his membership and just go to the gym and pretend to be him and do what I really don't know, like ab work workout. I would like go on the elliptical, like not the elliptical. I didn't do, I really didn't know what to do, not the elliptical. And then again, I'm gonna like really speed through this 'cause this is really just not that interesting Move to Berlin. Started going to the gym more frequently. I met you at the gym. That's how crazy like gym culture was. it wasn't until I made guy friends in Berlin, but they were all straight. All of my guy friends were straight in Berlin. It was like my girlfriend's boyfriends. And I started becoming close with them and then. I started going to the gym with one of them and then he was like showing me things. Mm-hmm. He'd be like showing me what to do for like this workout or that workout and that's when I started doing things. Mm-hmm. For the first time ever. Not properly, like not well, but, and also I wasn't eating properly at all also. You've heard I was partying all the time, so it was no positive effect of me going to the gym ever, other than the fact I said I was going to the gym. Right, right. And I met you and you met me. Without the gym, we wouldn't be together. That isn't that lovely. I think I started working out regularly when I moved to Berlin, honestly, I didn't really understand what I was doing until like maybe in the past two years have actually clicked in my head what to do. And a lot of that's because of TikTok. Yeah, I know. I'm not gonna lie. I know learning about, like it was harder to find information about working out on social media. Back in 2017. Yeah, 2016. I feel like I always have these like moments when whenever we've gone on trips together. And I like used to take photos and see like, see how I looked and I'd be like, I'm not really satisfied with my progress so far. Mm-hmm. And I like would be like, now I need to commit even further as soon as I go back and, and then I'd do that a couple times in a row. Mm-hmm. A couple years went by and then I'd be like, okay, now I need to like really get into it. And then covid happened and it all went to shit. Before Covid, we were looking good. We look back on pictures of ourselves and I was like, I was actually skinny. Not really muscly. Oh, I didn't even talk about my berries phase. Oh my God, that was crazy. My big berry phase. Oh yeah, you were insane. Like I go to berries now sometimes like maybe once or twice a week, just depending, but like when 20. 1818. 2018. 2019. Because you did like a partnership with 'em, so you got like free berries and you would go all the time. Right. I feel like, 'cause you didn't have I had a job that I went to, so I had my friends there. Yeah. I was trying to make friends made friends with all of the Barry crew losers who are fucking. Lame. Sorry. I don't give a fuck. You're, oh, I don't care. It was just like that, that like the culture, the fitness culture. at the time, I don't think it is that much right now. 'cause like we go to Barry's now and I just don't think it's that crazy. Yeah. As it used to be. But the whole like hashtag FitFam thing give me a fucking knife so I can slit my own throat. Like, That is so annoying. I was in the FitFam. That is, I was a FI was, I was a founding member of a FitFam. That is crazy. I was so into the cult. Yeah, it, it was called Cold. So it was such a cult. Uh, I would go to Barry's at 5:00 AM I would go to like the 5:00 AM class, hideous for no reason. No. Did I have a job to go to? No. I was an influencer. What the fuck was I doing? Going bears at 5:00 AM I would sometimes go double days. Like I would go again at four, three work. 'cause you wanted to look like all these new people that you were surrounding. I wanted to look like them so bad, but I didn't realize that doing that much cardio and doing 15 mile an hour fucking sprints without eating properly. I wasn't eating, I wasn't like fueling my body properly. I was just getting skinnier and skinnier. You could see like all my fucking ribs. I had muscles. Yeah. I mean, Your abs were like, my abs were popping aing, but this was because it was nothing else. But I look skeletal. Yeah. I was really skinny and like my body frame I feel like looks good with a little bit more muscle on and a little bit more. Meat on my bones. Meat. We love meat. We love meat on my bones. We love meat. Uh, We love meat on your bones. I do. I look better now that I have some fucking meat on my bones in my mind. I can't tell, I can't tell. When you gained weight, like you look filled out. I look at photos of you from 20, I guess 19. Even like right before the pandemic and when we were like, into the fitness culture a lot. Mm-hmm. And I think we were on a really good trajectory to like mm-hmm. be Fit and healthy. We were also vegan for three years. Yeah, we were vegan. That was crazy. And that kind of, oh, we could talk, talk about that. We should do another episode on the Yeah, that is crazy. That was crazy indoctrination. Oh, we were really in, wait. We were really susceptible to indoctrination from multiple sources. Brought the berries cult and then the veganism. I think generally we're kind of susceptible. No, I mean, I just feel like there's lots of forces at play. I think I filled out through the pandemic 'cause during the pandemic we wanna talk about body image. The most depressed I've ever been, because we were stuck in Canada, we were in Canada for the pandemic, so we could not actually leave the country. We weren't permanent residents, forced citizens close for fucking eight months at a time. And the gyms were closed for like yeah, a. Year, I think the gyms were closed. You couldn't do anything. You could only work out in your living room or workout outside. But in Toronto, the winter is from fucking November to May. So you can't really work out outside during those periods. I mean, I remember the first week we were like moving the couch and we would like put one of the fitness instructors lives on Instagram live and tether it to the TV and be like, this is really fun. Let's cute for a second. I love jumping around my living room. The ceiling is not low at all. I was like, why don't we just buy like a, we fit. That was actually the beginning of my body image issues that I'm not gonna lie. Yeah, that's crazy. I'm going to blame. We fit. I'm gonna blame Nintendo as a company for starting my body image issues, making me step up and step down and step up and step down. Say that I'm obese at the beginning and say I weighed more at the end of that workout. That's crazy. It is like you are more obese now. Go check with a doctor. Oh my God. Or do yoga on this. We fit board crazy. Oh, through covid. Oh, I had another idea. Oh wait, I need to finish my thought. Yeah, go hold that. Hold that one. Hold that thought. But my idea. No, hold your thought. Through COVID. It was really depressing, so I ate a lot of talkies and drank a lot of wine, specifically wine and talkies. I gained a lot of weight during covid. Do you know how much you weighed at your like peak? I think actually over 200. You were like, whoa, I think it was like 200 or over. Not of muscle, like of fat. Yeah. that was in the era of big body positivity and I was trying to like, make myself feel better by being like, I feel great in this body and I, I feel like I look, I feel good. I didn't actually feel that good. Yeah. 'cause I wasn't a doing anything nutritionally well for my body. I wasn't working out, I wasn't moving my body, I was moving my body wrong if I was working out. I'm just like, I was kind of lying to myself that I was happy where I was, I was, and fitness people like right now, like when you thought, when you think, when you think about like fitness or like body scams. I feel like the body positivity movement itself is and was like a little bit toxic. I agree. And like slightly I'm trying to tread lightly here, at the same time as you being. Again, having gained a little bit more weight from the pandemic, at the same time, it's okay to maybe take steps to feel better in yourself. 'cause truthfully you didn't feel good. I didn't feel good. I was drinking so much. I look back at photos of myself from that time and my face was so puff, my face's face was like double the size. Yeah. That's why I had ozempic allegations. Oh. Two years. We could talk about that. Fucking hell. First of all, you just reminded me of when you first noticed. Nintendo called you a big fatty. Mm-hmm. I just remembered that if in my house, ski grope in a South Asian household either your mom or your auntie is gonna be like, oh, you should have more food. And if you help yourself to some more food, they'd be like, oh, you're having another serving? And I'm like, hello? Oh, fuck me. Excuse me. Oh, fuck me that you told me to eat more. Literally. Oh, you're gonna have another, you gonna have another non, are you gonna have another roti? Oh. I'll just go kill myself. Didn't your mom also doesn't your mom also, if someone's like bigger, they call, she calls her healthy. She calls them healthy. Yeah. My mom is like, okay. She's describing a friend of mine or someone that we know. She's like, oh, that healthy one. But she means she means healthy. She means a little bit, chunkier, but then shames you for eating an extra non shames. She seems shame so much, like I think now too, me and my brothers grew up like really skinny. Like we were just like generally like very slim. And so she'd just want us to eat more. But then that was the worst part. 'cause she'd be like, you look too skinny. You need to eat more food. You need to eat more food. And she's just been saying that like our whole lives, yeah, you look weak, you should eat more. And I'm like, can you shut up? Yeah. Literally. Literally. Can you shut up now? Look at you. You're not weak. You're strong. I'm strong. This is the first time you've ever like looked like beefy again, because I actually participated in learning education. It's the nutrients, isn't it? Yeah. It's more so the like, the workouts are one thing, but like the nutrients are really, I feel like yeah. Pandemic happened. I like really fell off of my fitness. Yeah. Journey and then like as soon as the gyms opened up again, we were like going to the gym. Mm-hmm. TikTok helped by like, I think two, I guess two years ago when I was like first seeing. Workout videos for different muscle groups. And like TikTok was really like thriving. Mm-hmm. Two, three years ago. And so I was like saving these videos and then doing these workouts at the gym for the first time. Like I'm gonna do like a chest day and then a back day, and then like a leg day. Yeah. And then, and now I have like, I go to the gym four or five times a week, and then I go to Barry's and Solid core here and there. Yeah. And like I just feel like I've got a good rhythm going, but I wouldn't know how to do any of that. And I wouldn't know what to do if it wasn't for the fucking internet and TikTok and these gym bros. Yeah. and actually know the gym guys. I don't listen to boys when it comes to life. Some of the boys are good, some of the no, no. You I do boys workouts for upper body, but I do the girls workouts for, yeah, lower body 'cause. the body is tea, but some of the straight men on there are very comforting for me. Like Some of them are annoying. I, no, I have them. I have them. They're saved. Everyone's saved most of the straight men for like nutrients. Like they know about the protein and the foods. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And they do a How would you have known about creatine monohydrate if it wasn't for. one of the boys, the girlies know how to make the craziest protein meals. Yeah, Yeah. Protein based meals. the cottage cheese cookie dough. Crazy cottage cheese pizza. I'm not doing cottage cheese. Did you see there was a video that came up on my TikTok before this girl had made a pizza with chicken as the crust. Oh, that chicken as the crust now. That is excellent. Well Then you just. What you grind? You blend up the chicken, grind up the chicken bones in like a mixer. Yeah. Um, You grind up the chicken, right? Sure. And then you put flour. I don't assume know. Okay. I dunno. I didn't watch it. Oh, you okay? She, I saw chicken, pizza, crust, and I was like, next I could do that next. That's crazy. What's wrong? I don't know. It was a bit crazy. It's just the high pitch. Anyway, fuck me. Thank God for TikTok. Thank God for TikTok. And then I feel like because of the last. I saw it like, oh, this is going to, this is going to ruffle a feather or two, but I did have slight more weight than I wanted to like two years ago. No, I didn't take Ozempic. Fuck me. There is like online forums about us and there is Ozempic allegations. It's a forum. People need to know about the forum. No. Don't they know about it? People know about it. No. Nobody needs to know about the forum. People know about it. One needs to about, it's a common thing. Everyone knows about it. Don't say the word. Don't say the words. You know the form if you know it. Don't say the words, but you know what form it is. And also like, in my mind I was like, so when I found out that it existed and we were like on it, yeah. I was like, obsessively like looking. 'cause I'm like, people are talking about us and people are talking about our bodies. Yeah. And I'm like, really? I'm like ashamed or objectifying. I know. I'm like ashamed. I say the weirdest shit and I'm, I'm like, I'm disgusted. Yeah. I feel violated a little bit, but also kind of obsessed. No, I don't do it anymore. I was obsessed. I will, you still look at it Sometimes. I'm interested in what people are saying. Don't ever send it to me. I refuse to know what anyone's saying about me. 'cause in my mind I'm like, why do I care what people are saying about me? Yeah. Yeah. Totally. I don't know that you exist so, sorry. I'm not, I'm not listening to what you say. No, I don't care. I find it like a little bit disturbing and like a little bit upsetting that people are having these conversations about. Us and our bodies online. Yeah, I think it's fucked up. Anyway, I was Mpic allegations with one of them, which is fucked up. And also one of my friend's friends, one of my friend's, I think sister said that she thought iHeart was on I pic. Yeah. And I was like, bitch, when? Like I wasn't even big. You did lose weight fast though. It's 'cause I stopped eating. You wouldn't calor, you wouldn't An extreme calor. Literally, in my mind, I'm like, if I can be obsessive about something, like if I am my A DH ADHD brain is gonna like really fixate on one thing. Yeah. It's gonna be this one thing. And I would allow myself if I have this goal, I track my macros for the first time. This was like a, maybe a year and a half ago, and I was like, okay, maybe I wanna like lose a little bit of like weight before I start gaining muscle. Mm-hmm. Lose some fat before I gain muscle. I dunno if that was the right way to go about it. 'cause I've always been like skinny and then maybe there was like a little bit of like skinny fat involved just because of my diet. And then I started like cutting out so much stuff and then I would eat like a fucking toddler. Last year, maybe like the beginning of last year a little bit. And then I got a little bit obsessed. With it. And then I was going out so much at the beginning of last, like this time last year, and I just like really wasn't dieting properly, but I looked snatched. Yeah, crazy. Yeah. Yeah. I look back at photos and I'm like, I do look really skinny. Yeah. Because now I've, since then, I just focus on eating more protein. I'm like actually like hitting my like goals and like. just prioritizing nutrition in a more healthy but also long lasting way. Well, Yeah. So like the extreme caloric deficit you were doing, why am I on that for five months? You only supposed to do, if you're gonna do like something like that, you're supposed to only do it for like a month and a half or two months max, two months max. your body will start eating your muscle. Yeah. And you don't want that. In the spirit of being open and just transparent. Transparent, that's what I wanna say. That's the word. I want to share this information with everyone because. If this is a podcast where we talk about shit like is, is as if you're a friend, you're sat with us and we're having these open discussions. Sometimes they're a little bit difficult to say and even to hear, and I think sometimes I don't share these things. Publicly. If I'm like on Instagram or whatever, I might talk about them with my friends all the time. I don't speak these words aloud. This is why I think we wanted to create this podcast to begin with, is to have open dialogue about things that maybe we wouldn't like make a TikTok video on, or maybe I wouldn't post an Instagram story on, I was eating like a fucking baby rabbit. I lost a lot of weight. I was parting like a crazy person. I looked snatched like, fuck. My mental health was a little bit of a low. I was also navigating like new social dynamics for the first time. Mm-hmm. Like moving into the city. Also, this is the first place I've lived where I've been surrounded by gay men. Specifically San Francisco is such a male, gay, male dominated city, and I'm surrounded by all these men like, you look a certain way, you look a certain way, and it's just like, how do I fit into that culture? And also being here and like last year, this was going through my mind a lot. I feel like San Francisco is not the most diverse place. There are pockets of diversity, but I feel like the city itself, especially the Castro, isn't very diverse. So I found myself in a space last year where I was trying to figure out myself, my body, my image, and how that related to being here and surrounded by all these people. Huh. Thanks for coming to my fucking Ted Talk. Welcome. as like people on the internet, we've gone through different phases in our life and sometimes we're talking about different things. Like I was talking about body positivity in 2020. Now I'm like, I was fuck that, fuck that. I did not actually feel good and I'm going through these processes myself and that's okay for us to share. That's, this is what this podcast is for us to share what we're feeling right now in this moment. Yeah. And I'm feeling really good in my body. I'm feeling great. I'm feeling strong. A I'm feeling strong. And that's the best thing. And that's the best part. Strong, right? It's not about what I look and like Strong. Strong. Yeah. It's like that. It's not about how I look and like, yeah, sure, I want fucking abs and I wanna look good and I wanna look beefy. I have a body type that I'm trying to aspire to. Sure, that's fine. But that was a choice that I made, not a choice that. That's not like pressure from like social media or pressure from anyone else. That is how I wanna look, and I'm working towards that. But most importantly, I feel strong and I feel healthy. And what I'm eating is good. And that's the goal. My workouts are good. And that's the goal. And that's the goal and that's the goal. And if the end product is, you look like one of these fucking guys on my discovery page on Instagram. Fantastic. And I think that's like the main takeaway is that like. When we've been going through these like journeys of self discovery when it comes to like fitness and working out and like body image and stuff, have you felt healthy? Have you felt fit? Have you felt strong? The answer is most of the time has been no. Until very recently. I can look at the mirror and I'm like, sure. My abs aren't showing as much as they did last year when I was literally eating the diet of a like a literal rabbit. Yeah. do you remember there was like one moment I remember. I remember it very vividly. We were in the Whole Foods and there was like free cheese samples and I was like, I can't eat, I can't have one cube. I was like, oh my god, free cheese. Let's have a like a slight cheese. And I was like, no. It was the tiniest little block of cheese. Can't over my caloric intake for the day. And you said no, no. I was like, just have a block of cheese. And you said nar. No. Isn't that crazy? That's crazy. That is really crazy. Eating disorders happen. Eating disorders do happen. That's fine. And in my mind, I don't think I like had, I mean that, that is disordered eating. That is like full. Yeah full, full hand on heart. That is disordered eating a hundred percent. But it's about your relationship with food back then. Yeah. Yeah. That a year ago you did not have a good relationship with food. No. You've improved your relationship with food a lot. Yeah. Because you will. What changed? I don't know. I think it just had a little, like a little bit of a wake up call where I. Realize it just was not sustainable. It's not a sustainable way of existing. Yeah. And I felt tired all the time. Yeah. And also there was a moment, I think this was my like breaking point where I was like. My hair health, like nutrition and like hormones have so much to do with your, like the health of your like body and like your skin and your hair. And I was like, my hair feels so dry. Yeah. And it took me a really long time to figure out why my hair, my skin, it was just like, I'm like crusting and falling apart. And I was like, oh, my nutrition is. Abysmal. Yeah. And I think it was the end of the summer last year where I was like, oh my God, I need to make a change. And I was just like, let me eat the right types of food again. And because I think I was tracking things, so to the tea, I now know like how much protein I need to eat. Like I don't track my calories at all anymore. I like, I'll have my meal plans and like set, set foods I want to eat and then make sure I'm just hitting my protein goal. Do you sometimes miss the days when you didn't know what a calorie was? Yeah, because I do. Yeah, because when I go to the store and I look the like aisle of Oreos, I know how many calories are in one Oreo now? No. It's crazy and hurts me. And we, and when we were vegan and we could only eat Oreos, we would eat a packet. for like a whole packet a whole packet after dinner. After dinner with two bottles of wine. That's like over a thousand dollars. Do you know how many bottles of wine? I used to go through a day. Oh, that's the wine. The guy at the wine shop next to our apartment knew me by name. Ugh. And then once when we, I think we were like away for a bit when we first could travel, he was like, where have you been? My number one customer? That's what, know it always had my like two bottles of rose like waiting for me. would be good to live in ignorance, but now as soon as you learn what a calorie is, as soon as you learn what a macro is, you can't go back. I think as well, like I'm in this stage of my life now where like I really do value. The types of food I put in my, like a hundred percent. I know I'm going to Chili's like sometimes, like I will once in a blue moon obviously go and have a little shitty meal just because it feels good and like I can do what I want. But you also know now how that fits into your larger goals. Totally. Because you can fit these meals. We're gonna the Cheesecake Factory later. You can fit these meals. Why are we going to the Cheesecake Factory? Not my choice. We can fit those meals though into our larger caloric goals. Yeah. 'cause it is a big part of our lives. So like I know how many calories I am eating in a day right now because I'm tracking my macros currently. You don't have to, but I know how I can fit some macaroni balls from Cheesecake Factory into there. Crazy work. Well, Yeah, that was fucking great. I love that. I was like, we covered a lot of topics from Battle of the Books to Macaroni Balls. I thought you were gonna say bowel movements. That too. I'm not quite, that is a big part of health and fitness. Oh my God. The company. This is a dis, this is a dysentery outbreak right now. Yeah. Listen, I'm not talking about dysentery. That's crazy. That is wild. This we can have another whole No, we're not episode. No, we're no. We're not on infectious diseases. Oh my God. Thank you for listening to this week's episode. If you wanna rate us on Apple Podcasts, we would love that. If you want to. Subscribe on all of our various social channels. We would also love that. Please do and rate us. Don't hate us. Never hate us. Bye.