Peptides & Alcohol, Getting Shredded in 6 Weeks, CURING DEPRESSION - The Coach's Brain

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🎓 ABOUT THIS VIDEO 
In this episode, Optimal Nathan dives deep into practical protocols for life’s inevitable setbacks, seasonal fat loss, and overcoming anhedonia. Whether you're recovering from a weekend of overindulgence, aiming for sustainable fat loss, or restoring your motivation and pleasure, this episode provides science-backed frameworks to optimize your biological systems and mental resilience.

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🧠 TIMESTAMPS 
00:00 - Introduction: Life-proven protocols for recovery, fat loss, and motivation

02:00 - The importance of treating recovery as a strategic process, not shame-based punishment

04:00 - The Bender Recovery Framework: Organizing your body like a city for damage control

06:30 - Supporting mitochondrial function before alcohol intake with ubiquinol and L-carnitine

08:00 - Magnesium and B1: Critical nutrients to buffer alcohol stress and support nervous system stability

10:00 - Hydration, electrolytes, and pre-drink preparations for optimal recovery

12:00 - Post-drink detox support: Glutathione, activated charcoal, and nutrient replenishment

14:00 - The importance of delayed detox measures and sleeping strategies

16:00 - The second night recovery protocol: Cortisol management and sleep optimization

18:00 - The Summer Shredded Stack: Activating fat-burning pathways with peptides and supporting compounds

20:00 - Training and nutrition strategies for sustainable fat loss without metabolic crash

22:00 - How peptides like AOD 9604 and NAD+ can enhance lipolysis and mitochondrial efficiency

26:00 - Adjusting protocols based on individual metabolic responses and thyroid support

28:00 - Addressing anhedonia: Rebuilding motivation via mitochondrial and neurochemical support

31:00 - Supporting dopamine and mood stability through peptides like SIMAX and stress resilience peptides

34:00 - The role of inflammation and gut health in mood and motivation recovery

36:00 - Case study: Mitochondrial repair in a client with chronic fatigue and anhedonia

37:30 - Using THC strategically for creative thinking and mental flexibility during recovery

38:50 - The importance of understanding bioregulators and control systems for long-term mastery

40:00 - Final thoughts: Building your own system for ongoing health, vitality, and mental clarity

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

All right, what is up, everybody? Welcome back to the coach's brain. It's another Monday, another beautiful fucking week, and we're gonna start it the right way. I am Nathan, I am your host, Optimal Nathan, on Instagram, if you don't already know. And today we're gonna be hitting three protocols that are honestly like they're gonna be some of the most useful shit for you for like your whole fucking life because they are built for some real shit that really happens in life, not for some like hypothetical scenario or perfect conditions that nobody actually lives in. So we're gonna talk about some three protocols that I go in depth and showing you how to actually utilize these things and uh my rationale. This is all coming from my peptide course, which you find inside of the OpsLat Engine. The link is in the description. But I want to give you guys some stuff here for us to start thinking about, right? We're gonna be covering basically starting with the Bender Recovery Framework, which is just, you know, when you go off the rails and you just want to recover smart instead of just wide knuckling through shame and punishment. Then I'm gonna present you what I call the summer shredded stack, which is a seasonal fat loss that doesn't actually have you feel like you're slowly fucking dying from restriction. So after that, we're gonna be hitting something really, really heavy, which is killing anhedonia, right? This is the loss of motivation and pleasure and uh, you know, a drive that a ton of people deal with and uh it the the wild connection with your mitochondria as well as your inflammation, because most people think it's just a mental health thing when in reality it's actually very much rooted in biology that you can fix. So here's the thing these protocols, they prove peptides and compounds, they're not just for biohackers or for bodybuilders trying to get huge, right? They're tools for your real life, they are the difference between treating your body like uh some problem that you gotta punish it, and then treating it like a system that you can actually work with. So let's get into it and remember all of this is covered in extreme detail with lectures and accompanying handouts and and and all of this good stuff inside of the Optolab engine. If you want to go deeper on the specifics, and uh coaching is where you go if you want personalized guiding for your situation. So let's get started. Let's start with the bend or recovery framework here. So this is something that I built because I don't believe in people having to sacrifice their lives, right? I don't believe in like starting a program and then just having to like never have a drink again in your life and stuff. And I'm I'm gonna help people actually stick to their health protocols long term. So if I'm gonna do that, I have to account for the fact that, you know, sometimes uh life happens, right? You take a vacation, you have a celebration, you hit a stressful stretch, and now you just say screw it for a week or two, a week or two, right? So you go through this period where you're not careful with your food and you're eating like shit, you're you're drinking more, you're sleeping less, you're in a different environment, you're around different people, dealing with, you know, something that pulls your attention off the usual protocols. And the the way most coaches respond to this is actually shame, right? Like uh like you fell off the wagon, now you gotta punish yourself back onto it, which is such fucking like it's such a backwards piece of shit mentality that I I never fully understood. Well, maybe you guys can help me in the comments, but instead, I actually start thinking about recovery as a smart process, like the same way that you can recover from training. So, look, when when you over-train and you feel like absolute shit, you don't punish yourself harder, right? You just dial back, you manage your nutrition, you sleep more, you handle your stress. So, recovery is strategic. And the the same shit is gonna apply whenever you go off the rails. So if you've had a week or two where, or even a few weeks like where you just weren't careful with your food, you drank too much, you weren't sleeping, you probably stressed the hell out of your gut and your liver and your metabolic flexibility, like your immune system took a hit, your inflammation load went up, right? Your gut bacteria got really fucked. The bend of recovery framework is the framework that I can use to like build to apply to those specific stresses, right? To to the in a smart, systematic uh way without uh the shame that actually makes people less likely to stick with their goals long term, right? So think of your body like a city, right? Because I'm I'm gonna run this metaphor through the whole episode and the rest of this series. So you've got these power plants making energy, you got roads and you got drains that are moving shit around. You've got the waste treatment plan, right, which is your liver. You've got water pipes and mineral wines, which are your electrolytes, you've got garbage trucks that are hauling off junk, which are your detox systems. When you when you go on a bender, what you're doing is you're basically throwing a massive amount of toxic like into this festival that's happening in the city. So alcohol, it's gonna be the confetti that you're kind of dumping everywhere and it's gonna hit every system at once, man. The power plants, they get stressed because alcohol basically screws up energy production inside of the mitochondria. The roads that you have, they're gonna get clogged now because of your lymphatic system, because it literally can't handle the inflammatory shit that you've been throwing at it. Um, the waste treatment plan, dude, this is gonna get so overwhelmed because your liver is literally trying to process ethanol and all of the toxic like intermediates, as they're called. The water pipes, they're gonna drain because alcohol dehydrates the fuck out of you, man. And the garbage trucks, they can't keep up because your detox systems are running on fumes. You see how I just explain everything in the simplest way possible? This is exactly how I teach it inside of my peptide course, okay? I teach, I teach, I basically get you from having no fucking understanding whatsoever about peptides, and I build you all the way to the point that you can read papers on your own. Literally, it's the course for peptide, which is why it's divided into five modules. And guess what? The advanced one is still coming. This is this is just the fucking beginning. Now, here's the thing that uh here's the thing. But biology, uh, like biology-wise, like a rare and contained toxic storm that hits very hard and then you clean out is of actually less terrible for you long term than a constant little drizzle of poison every single time. So, like one big bend followed by this smart recovery framework that I'm presenting here is generally less damaging to your metabolism, to your liver, to your hormones than the guy who has like three drinks like multiple times a week or has like just one drink a night, right? So that's not a free pass to get fucked on the weekends, right? This is just the reality of the shit. Like, if you're gonna get drunk, doing it on an occasional event with real support is gonna be smarter than chronic, like low dose daily boost, right? Because we're not Micah's Rittel here. We we know how this shit actually works. But this whole framework, it assumes that you're using it a few times a year, not every fucking weekend, okay? You can't like fortify your city uh this way, okay? But the first phase of the Bender Recovery Framework, whenever you start about like thinking about recovering from this toxic storm, it's gonna start 48 hours before you actually go out. So I call this the fortifying the city phase because you're literally prepping your systems for the stress that they're about to eat. So the goal for us is gonna be to stabilize your power plants and the waste systems before the alcohol hits. So, how do you start that? You start with something like ubiquinol, right? At like 400 milligrams. So your power plants, those mitochondria, they make energy for everything, for your brain, for your muscles, for your liver. And alcohol is gonna mess with the balance in those plants by disrupting the electron transport chain and jacking up your oxidative stress. So ubiquinol is gonna support those tiny little engines that make energy and is gonna help them handle the alcohol better. So think of it kind of like giving the power plants some backup parts before the storm hits. Then you're gonna add alcar. And you guys already know I'm not a fan of acetyl-L-carnitine or conitine in general, but for this purpose of recovery from the bender, I believe it's useful. So you're gonna have it at two grams a couple of times a day, right? So uh alcohol, it's gonna push your body away from burning fat. So your system, it's gonna get busy dealing with the booze and it's gonna store more calories instead in response to that. Al car can actually help you shuttle fat into your tiny engines in order to get burned as fuel here. So it has a use and it's gonna keep fat burning online even when alcohol is slowing things down. So you're basically telling your body, like, hey, even if alcohol slows down my metabolism, we're gonna keep fat burning as functional as we can, okay? Then we're gonna layer in magnesium. It's gonna come in at 400 milligrams, okay? So this one is very critical because every single molecule of your main energy currents, like ATP, is basically bound to magnesium, right? We already know this. Uh now, alcohol, it's also notorious for uh wasting magnesium through uh just more urination as well as distorted absorption. So it's gonna crank up stress and it's gonna uh and tension in your nervous system. And magnesium before drinking can actually keep your energy system from falling apart, as well as your nervous system uh uh a bit before you like uh head out. So uh theamine or vitamin B1, it's gonna come in here as well at the proper dose. So alcohol, it's actually infamous for draining B1 from the body. So when B1 is low, what happens? So B1 being low, in like certain parts of your system, of your energy system, they're gonna stall, right? You can't process fuel efficiently. And in some cases, with like long-term drinkers, it can actually start to damage brain structure. If you take thiamine at a pretty decent dose, like the day before, you're gonna be giving your body some extra B1 in order to handle the storm and then protect some of the pathways that alcohol shut down. Now, betaine, okay, this is interesting. It's also called TMG. It goes in very, very high. So your body uses these methyl groups, like uh, they're kind of like tiny little like chemical tags for detox, for repair, for DNA handling. So alcohol is gonna be uh uh draining these methyl groups at an alarming rate. Betaine is then gonna donate methyl groups and is gonna help keep that storm that's basically the chemical tag system from uh stalling during that toxic storm, right? NAC is also very useful at a super high dose because it's your main internal antioxidants, which like you can think of like your rust remover, but it needs like some uh building blocks, right? So alcohol, it jacks up your oxidative stress, which basically is just rust inside of your cells. And NAC is gonna give your body the raw materials in order to take and make more glutathione, which is a rust cleaner. So this is a very critical step because alcohol itself is toxic, but the breakdown products of alcohol are even worse. And this is something that people don't realize. Now, I'm not even gonna try to say this actual name, but just let's just call it Tudka, like everybody does, right? We're gonna add it at a pretty hefty dose. Uh, if you know that your bile flow tends to get sluggish, you can measure that, okay? And you you should be able to do that. Now, assuming you do, you've you've if you've ever felt like heavy after your meals or you feel like bloated or nauseous whenever you're eating fats, that probably means your bile is moving a little bit slower. So alcohol, it stresses the liver even more, as we know. And Tutka is gonna support bile flow, which is gonna help your liver process as well as push out waste a little bit more efficiently. And throughout the 45, 48 hours before, you're gonna be drinking electrolyte water, not just plain water. Why? Because alcohol it dehydrates the fuck out of you. So you have to like you have to start this phase in an already well-hydrated with the proper mineral balance, not over hydrated because in the data set we have, people who are dehydrated don't dehydrate more with alcohol, but the people who are overhydrated dehydrate more than the dehydrated people do, okay? So you need to find the right balance. So plain water is actually counterproductive here for us because it's gonna be diluting more electrolytes, which the alcohol is already like sort of doing, sort of doing. Don't just kind of, okay? I'm just oversimplifying everything here. Four to days before, you want absolutely no fucking caffeine. You should not walk into a bender with your nervous system already revved up and fried up as hell, like and absolutely no fasting whatsoever. Like low glycogen, it's always gonna pull uh plus plus alcohol, it's always gonna equal like a faster crash and it's gonna cause a metabolic nightmare, so to speak. You want normal meals and some steady blood sugar coming in. You don't want a starved body that's gonna get hit by alcohol and it immediately goes into emergency mode like it's the end of the world. So now you're at the actual event, right? During the bender, the goal is to not undo alcohol. Like you can't do that. The goal is to limit how toxic its breakdown is gonna get and it's gonna keep your liver and your cells from choking. So you're gonna take glutathione at a pretty hefty fucking dose, okay? I'm talking very high dose here. Uh why? Well, you're gonna do that before you go out, like right before, like in the fucking parking lot if you if you can. Alcohol, it gets broken down in steps. So alcohol becomes a toxic intermediate that I hinted at before. That intermediate becomes less bad stuff that the body can clear. So the middle step is the super nasty shit and where most of the damage happens. Glutathione is one of the main tools that your liver uses to neutralize that intermediate and limit some of the damage. So taking glutathione right before you drink, it's kind of like putting a bunch of soldiers in your liver before the attack starts. You want this on board before the boost hits, not just after. You're gonna continue taking the betaine and the electrolytes through the night if you can. Uh, the beta is gonna be helping replenish the methyl groups while you're drinking. And then the electrolytes, they matter because you're peeing more. So you're losing minerals and you're dehydrating faster. So sip your electrolyte water through the night if you can manage as well. Let's take a sip of my water. Now, at the end of the night, whenever you're stopped drinking, right, you're gonna take activated charcoal at a pretty decent dose. So activated charcoal is gonna bind some of the toxins as well as the byproducts in the gut and is gonna help cut down what actually gets absorbed after drinking. So the timing is very important though, right? So take this like when you're done drinking, not at the start. Like, and don't take it close to minerals, uh, to meds, to the electrolytes, uh, or like any supplements that you actually want because charcoal, it doesn't give a fuck, right? It will bind to good stuff too if your timing is off and then you're not gonna absorb any of it. So as soon as you get home, don't just face plant on the couch, okay? You take another bolus dose of glutathione. You're already throwing a ton of toxin and intermediate chemicals in your liver. Another dose is gonna give extra support for that detox step and it's gonna give you a better shot and not waking up feeling like you got hit by a truck. So you're gonna take a pretty hefty dose of magnesium with that as well for your nervous system and your muscles to calm down because alcohol messes up with your magnesium and it rattles up your nervous system. So the damn like cramps and the restless sleep, they're super common post-alcohol use. So, this much magnesium, like that I'm proposing here, a mega dose of it, is gonna help relax the muscles and also stabilize your nervous system enough for you to get at least some decent sleep. Now, you're gonna be doing some mega dosing of taurine here, and I'm not giving you the doses, the guys can you guys can check the dose inside of the ops lab engine. But taurine is just basically gonna calm certain brain systems that the alcohol just wiped out. So it's it's got some support roles in the liver as well as bioflow, like uh like some something like a pretty hefty dose of glycine stacked on top of here because it supports liver detox and it also helps with the deep sleep phases. So, this that like the amount of glycine that you should take, it should be like like enough to like help you disleep significantly deeper and recover more overnight and also process more of the damage in that first sleeping window that you got. You're you're literally giving the body a real shot now at repairing while you're out cold. So the morning after you wake up and you feel way less shit than usual. You still don't feel perfect, but you feel way less shit than usual because you're running the protocol that I presented here, because the protocols that I fucking give you are protocols that are useful for your life. We're not just giving you another fucking fat loss stack. And when we get to the fat loss stack, you're gonna get it's it's it's it's it's it's pretty fucking crazy. So we we we basically like we're we're gonna rebuild now. Okay, so you're gonna be taking another dose of uh the amine. It can be a little bit smaller, right? So we're gonna just be we we we basically topped it off before, so we're gonna hit it again. The the alcohol, it also drains some of it last night. So another dose is gonna give your body some better handling of carbohydrates and cleaner energy so you don't crash. So two grams of beta for the methyl group is gonna be a good idea. Um, we can actually drop uh the dose here for uh for the betaine here, but we're still rebuilding the methyl resources and we're helping to detox in the repair signaling. We're gonna be dropping a little bit of the dose of ubiquinol, but uh, but uh like your engines, they're still stressed, right? But this is still gonna be enough to support energy and health and heart and liver function the day after. Uh, we're gonna be adding another hefty dose of L-carnitine, uh, L-car, two grams in the morning. It's basically gonna help your body get back to fat burning and is gonna support brain energy a little bit as well. So you're switching from handover slug back to a functional fucking human. And uh, at least 20 ounces of water with electrolytes is mandatory first fucking thing in the morning. At least 20 ounces. I drink 40. You you lost a lot of water, you lost sodium, you lost potassium. So dehydration and mineral imbalance like literally equals a headache. It equals fatigue, dizziness, and just that shitty mood that you experience. So a big glass of electrolytes is gonna be completely non-negotiable. The second night after the it you drink is gonna be another critical window that people ignore it, but we don't. Your stress hormone, they can spike the night after alcohol as well. We have this in data. So you're gonna sleep like absolute shit the second night. Some people report sleeping better the first night, but the next day they feel beat up. Now we're gonna fix the day after, and we're also gonna fix the night after so that you're basically brand new in two fucking 48 hours, okay? So the brain, it can still feel like shit, but we're gonna fix that. We're gonna be adding a pretty decent dose of phosphatidyl serine to calm down some of the rebound cortisol spike from alcohol. We're also gonna be adding some uh well, just think about the phosphatidylsirine here for a second before we talk about uh the the next one, which you guys are gonna fucking love because I've never seen anyone talking about that compound in this context. So high stress hormones at night, it literally equals a racing brain, right? Which causes you to have those night sweats and a shallow sleep. So phosphatidyl serine is useful. Why? Because it basically helps you knock down that rebound cortisol and is gonna calm your brain's stress response enough for deep sleep. So paired with the glycine and everything, like it's a fucking bomb here, right? So this is how you're gonna avoid surviving the hangover and then not being able to sleep the next night. Now, we're gonna be adding a low dose of methylene blue. So low dose methylene blue supports the tiny engines in the brain cells and it helps restore some more cleaner energy flow. It can also give you a little bit of a bump in mental clarity so that sluggish, like fog, literally gets wiped the fuck out with methylene blue. Um, this doesn't get you high, right? It's just helping your brain's power grid come back online after the toxic storm. Huge fucking lever here. Never seen anyone covering in this context whatsoever. So, what if you notice that your bile is still a little bit sluggish the day after? You're gonna be adding tutka and you're gonna be adding some ginger extract now. If you feel like you're you're heavy, like a little bit under the rib, or you're nauseous whenever you eat fats, or you're bloated after your meals, it may be that you're biosluggish. So the tutka is gonna support bile flow and is also gonna give your liver some more like help to be moving waste as well as fats. Uh, ginger is also gonna support digestion, which is gonna help with nausea, which has some anti-inflammatory effects directly in the gut. So together, they're gonna be flushing the pipes and calming down the stomach so that you're not dragging this bender into your whole week. So the whole bender recovery framework, it's really about like damage control at the mitochondrial level, plus liver support, plus nervous system protection. So it's not a permission to slip uh to to just go insane every single weekend, right? It's it's not a full shield that makes alcohol safe. Uh, it is the safest protocol that I've ever seen anyone present, but you're still pouring a known toxic into your system on purpose. What this stack does is it it loads your power plants and your detox crew with raw materials before it gives your your liver the defense, right, when the toxins are gonna uh are gonna hit, and it's gonna help you sleep and start clearing out the damage faster. Then we're gonna refill some of the nutrient gaps and we're gonna slower the stress rebound and clear the sludge from the liver and the gut the following days. So instead of like three to four days of feeling absolute fucking broken and regretting your decisions or losing your whole week to one night out, you can actually compress the damage and recover significantly faster. It's still not a free lunch, it's still not smart to do it all the time. But if you gotta run a toxic weekend storm because fucking life, dog, this is how you respect your body enough to help your city basically clean itself afterwards. And I said we're staying pretty fucking practical, so I'm staying pretty fucking practical here. Let's get now to the summer shredded stack, which is a completely different animal because this one is actually a planned, periodized approach to seasonal fat loss. It's not some desperate scramble to get lean before the summer. So a lot of people they they try to cut year-round, which is just like trying to be in a growth phase year-round. It doesn't work great. It wrecks your hormones, it fucks your metabolic health. But the the summer is actually a good time for a cutting phase if you approach it smartly, right? Because the the heat is gonna bump up your metabolic rate naturally. So your activity level is gonna go up naturally. And the days are also gonna be longer, which means your circadian rhythm is also naturally gonna support some better appetite regulation. And then there's this seasonal momentum where people are most motivated to lean out because they're about to have their bodies visible to everybody else. Now I know this episode of the coach's brain is already a little bit long, but it's gonna be longer, right? The reason is because I want to have an episode in the coach's brain where I'm showing you how I actually teach you how to think about peptides because that is what makes the course so fucking powerful. Because we are not just telling you, hey, it's not just like, you know, when you go to an influencer's uh page and they have like a peptide cheat sheet, that doesn't teach you how to think about these tools. That doesn't teach you how to use these tools, it just teaches you to become dependent on that person so that you always have to be reaching out for them to figure out what the fuck to do. I'm not doing that. I'm teaching you the whole entire framework. And then when it comes to like um the the first the first course of on peptides, it's literally just the foundation of pharmacokinetics, the pharmacodynamics, the cross talk problem, these receptor internalization, all this stuff, not taught with these words. It's just taught in an easier way so that you can understand like here's why we need to take time off. Oh, here's why we actually need to like uh do a ramp up phase, we need to do a prep phase, we need to be coming out of, we need to have an intricate protocol. This is why we don't stack these two things together, this is why we don't mix these two things on the syringe. So you learn all the basics. And then we actually start tackling every single one of the peptides that are the most famous ones. And then after that, we're gonna be tackling the molecules that are the most famous ones, and uh, and then we're gonna be going to the protocols. And when it comes to the protocols, which is something that I'm I'm presenting here to you guys a little bit and in in in way less detail than what is in the course, I teach you basically how to think so that you don't have to become dependent on me. So I'm teaching you how to think in terms of like what is the damage that you're creating? What is the goal that you have? What are the debts that are gonna have to be paid? And can we route some peptides and supplements and research molecules in order to like pay off some of that debt? So that is the approach that I'm proposing here. And that is what makes it so fucking powerful for you. And I feel like a lot of people don't get that. So I wanted to have at least one lecture that's free out in the public that everybody can benefit from, and also understand that, like, oh shit, if I want to like fucking like get this stuff and not like just be dependent to like copying people's sacks, like, damn, then this is gonna be like this is the place. To go right, so it really is. I would love to be able to help you with this stuff. So let's continue here with the shrummer stack, shummer summer shredded stack, the shrummer stack. I need to call you that instead. Uh, the shrummer stack. I love this. Uh, so it's built around AOD 9604. Surprising because a lot of people shit on it, but uh AOD 9604, it's a it's a it's a peptide fragment with some very specific uh effects on fat tissue. So AOD is going to be enhancing lipolysis, meaning it increases fat mobilization from adipose tissue. It literally tells your fat cells to get fucking rid of their energy. So it's it's somewhat selective for visceral fat, which is that dangerous fat around your organs, uh, which comes out from like PD use a lot, and as well as like poor dieting and and stress, as well as uh low T3. Uh, but you're guys gonna know that in more detail coming up soon. Uh just keep your eyes fucking peeled for what we have coming out of the optolab. So uh you're you're preferentially with AED burning the stuff that is the worst for your health and your longevity. It also improves glucose metabolism and insulin sensitivity, which means that your body is a little bit better at using carbs and less likely to store them as fats. And your cells are also most more responsive to uh insulin signaling. So uh it's got some uh metabolic uh rate bumping effects as well. So you're basically gonna be burning slightly more calories at rest without actually doing more work. Sorry, I had to get out. Now, alongside AOD, you're basically gonna be looking at some metabolic support. So this may include something like NAD Plus again, because NAD Plus is gonna be ramping up your body's ability to use fat as fuel in the source through the sertuan activation. Uh so sertuins are just the the the the the responsible for repairing your DNA. So uh with NAD Plus is gonna be doing for us here, it's basically gonna be telling your mitochondria to prioritize fat oxidation. So this is how you utilize NAD plus for fat loss. Um, it might also like include some mitochondrial support, like SS31, because mitochondria basically sets your metabolic capacity. So they're they are there they're at the actual factories where the calories get burned. So you want those factories running clean. Uh, it might also include thyroid support if your thyroid function is getting suppressed by the aggressive diet, which it it has to be, because uh your your thyroid it downregulates when you're in a deficit within 36 hours, and then uh that's gonna stall your whole cut. Uh, you may also use some metabolic peptide compounds like uh 5 ometer 1MQ. What they do is like they reprogram your cells to burn fat as the preferred source of fuel. So the idea is that you're using AOD9604 to signal fat loss at the tissue level while you're supporting like compounds are basically holding your metabolic rate and your cellular energy production so you're not crashing your metabolism the way that like old school calorie restriction does. Now, the training piece of the summer shred and it matters as well, right? So this isn't just about peptides, this is a complete protocol. I presented here a complete overhaul of this, right? And the peptides without smart training and nutrition, they're just kind of expensive piss, just being honest. Um, so your training is should include some high-intensity interval work to uh hold your metabolic rate as well as your muscle mass, but not so much that you're constantly catabolic and just breaking yourself down faster than you build to. So you need to find that good ratio. You also want some steady state uh low-intensity work that's basically gonna train your aerobic system and it preferentially oxidizes fat as the source of fuel because training your aerobic system right is one of the best tools that we have for fat loss. You also want some resistance training to hold on to muscle mass and metabolic rate because muscle is expensive metabolically, and keeping it while you are losing fat is like a whole like complexity of topics, right? So it's a balanced, sustainable approach. It's not some extreme circuit thing where you're just gassed out and just hating your life every single damn day that you're working with your fucking PT. Now, the nutrition during the summer shredded is typically a moderate caloric deficit, right? Maybe 300, 500, um, uh hundred like calories below your maintenance, depending on your starting point and like how much you are you need to like lose fat, actually, because some people do need to go to poverty calories. This is not a bug, this is just how their bodies work. For myself, I'm growing on like 5,000 calories. When I'm cutting, it's like 1400. It's just the way that it goes, and I lose like 1% a week. This is not a fault in the system whatsoever. This is just the way that it fucking works, okay? So you're not chasing extreme restriction, you're just doing a sustainable deficit that you can hold for at least 8 to 12 weeks without feeling like you're slowly dying. And honestly, like the key insight here is that you are in a caloric deficit, but you are supporting your body's ability to handle that deficit with better metabolic function and better hormonostatus. So let me go deeper in how these pieces work together here because the shummer summer shredded stack, it basically lives or dies on the supporting compounds, not on AOD9604 alone. So NAD Plus is doing some real work here because through SER2 in activation, it shifts your mitochondria towards fat oxidation, which is basically gonna tell your cells to prioritize burning fat for fuel, which is exactly what you want in a deficit. SS-31 is basically gonna keep your mitochondria itself efficient so that your metabolic rate doesn't crater as the diet drags on, which is the thing that usually wrecks a cut. Now, if thyroid output starts dropping from the dieting and it does, this is where the target targeted thyroid support is gonna come in because your thyroid downregulates under the deficit and a suppressed thyroid means a stalled cut. In a compound like 5 amino 1M2, it reprograms cells towards using fat as the preferential source of fuel by inhibiting an enzyme that otherwise actually limits NAD availability. So the whole point of the snack is that AOD9604 it signals fat release at the tissue level, while the supporting compounds they support to protect your metabolic rate and your energy production. So you basically lean out without crashing your metabolism the way pure caloric restriction does. So the whole summer shredded stack is typically like eight to 12 weeks, and the goal is just to lean out substantially while holding your muscle mass and the metabolic health. So by the end of it, you will be significantly leaner, but you're not gonna be in some metabolic trash state where your appetite is out of control and your energy is in the shitter, and now you gotta binge fucking every other fucking thing inside, right? So you're you're already actually healthier, you're already feeling good, your training is still strong, your sleep is fucking nailed, your energy is very stable. Now, the last piece that I want to give you here as another example of how to think about peptides, and this is the most interesting one because I don't see a lot of people working with. So anhedonia is basically the loss of pleasure and the motivation and drive, right? And a ton of people they deal with it, but they have no idea what's causing it. So depression, sure, that's one cause, right? No, no fucking shit, Sherlock. But chronic stress, it's gonna be another. But one of the biggest causes almost nobody talks about is actual mitochondrial dysfunction and chronic inflammation. So that's the angle that we're gonna be hitting today because it's actually fixable through biological protocols. So your dopamine system, which is what actually drives your motivation and pleasure as well as reward-seeking behavior, is insanely energy intensive. So it needs a buck ton of ATP to work, which comes straight out of your mitochondria. And it's also gonna need the proper nutrient status, particularly dopamine precursors. What are those? Magnesium, iron, tyrosine, like B vitamins, right? When you're when your mitochondria is dysfunctional, your well are dysfunctional, I keep making this mistake, um, your energy production is gonna be compromised and your dopamine synthesis is going to suffer as a consequence of that. So when you're chronically inflamed, that inflammatory environment is basically gonna screw with dopamine receptor signaling and dopamine synthesis, and basically is just gonna tell your brain that things are dangerous, which is gonna shut down your reward seeking. So, anhedonia, in a lot of cases, is actually a downstream signal of metabolic and inflammatory dysfunction, not some primary mood disorder bullshit that just happened to your brain when you took too much KSM66. So think of your brain like a big like music studio. Uh, this is another analogy that I used to teach this. So um, there's and everything that I teach is always through analogies because I I I want you guys to learn. I don't want, I don't care about sounding smart. I talk just like you guys. Okay. So there's a main mixer board where you're gonna be controlling the volume in the studio, right? You're gonna be controlling the balance, you're gonna be controlling which tracks you're gonna play. There are also speakers that are gonna actually push sound into the room. There are amplifiers and power cables that are keeping everything connected, and there's the recording engineer deciding what gets recorded, what doesn't. There's also soundproof walls that are keeping the outside noise from wrecking the mix. So when things are healthy, the music is loud enough, you can actually feel the song. You can be basically turning a knob that actually changes the sound. You can record new tracks and you care about them. When you've got Nhedonia, it's like the volume is always set to zero. The speakers barely working, the power cables, Amazon brand. The engineer is exhausted and he goes, like, why bother? I don't feel anything from this. This music sucks. So you still see life, you can still like do things, but you don't really feel them. So food is fine, hobbies are whatever, winds just don't hit, like shit just doesn't land. So the losses even don't even hurt that much. Everything is just flat as shit. So this protocol is about killing inhedonia by fixing the studio, not about yelling at the music. So the goal is gonna be to restore brain function in the tracks that handle motivation and reward, which is gonna be dopamine and mood and safety, which is gonna be serotonin. So you're fixing those tiny engines and the wires that power those tracks. And when you're doing it in phases slowly, the system is gonna feel safe enough to turn the music back up. So the protocol for building an endon is gonna start where it always starts at the foundation in the mitochondria. So if you're dealing with mitochondria dysfunction, you are running mitochondria support like SS31 and N80 plus to restore energy production and cellular efficiency because a dopamine system that starts of ATP cannot generate motivation no matter what it is upstream. So if you're dealing with chronic inflammation, you're gonna be running some anti-inflammatory protocols that we have presented here, and you're probably gonna be addressing some gut health because there's a lot of systemic inflammation that it comes from that. You're you're probably gonna be optimizing sleep because sleep is where a lot of the metabolic and the neurobiological repair happens, where your brain is basically gonna be clearing out metabolic waste where your hormones reset. Um, you're also gonna be getting morning light because that resets your circadian rhythm. You don't need SR9009. Uh, this is also gonna set up your dopamine and your cortisol, right uh the tune for today. So these are non-negotiables. Then you're gonna be looking at some specific peptides that target dopaminergic function. Okay, what are those? We already covered a lot of these in the in the coach's brain. But the way that I think about this is like Symax is interesting here because it's got multiple mechanisms. It basically enhances BDNF production, so brain-derived neurotropic factor, which is basically the growth factor for your brain and specifically for dopamine-producing neurons. So it's it's like a fertilizer for the cells that make dopamine. It enhances cognitive function as well as focus and it improves mood and motivation. But there is a critical rule, right? You do not use CIMAX early when you have anhedonia. Why? Well, because early on, your base signal is very flat and messy. So turning up learning and sensitivity at that stage is just gonna lock in that like life is dead shit way, way harder. I explained this in much more detail in the course. But we're gonna be micro-dosing SIMAX only after the sleep is more stable, after that tiny little spark of interest comes back, the inflammatory load is lower, and after the brain is no longer constantly in survival mode. At that point, then is when like SIMAX can actually sharpen the signal that's coming back instead of amplifying some static noise. Alongside CIMAX, you might use something like CELENC, which is a peptide that enhances stress resilience and emotional regulation. So pselenc, it directly reduces anxiety and worry, which matters a lot for us, right? Because anxiety and anhedonia, they go hand in hand. And stress-induced anxiety is actually one of the causes of anhedonia in the literature. So, psych, it enhances GABA as well as serotonin signaling. So you're getting some neurochemical support just from a different angle. You're not like pushing dopamine at this point, you're just creating an environment where your nervous system can actually calm down and feel the reward. You might also add some dopamine support synthesis through precursors like uh L-thyrosine if you are low on that, particularly like if you're dealing with some high stress and dopamine depletion. If you do this in cycles, maybe like five days on, two days off, this is gonna like basically allow it to have some continuous dopamine precursor supplementation that can lead to adaptation where your body downregulates its own synthesis because it's learning on it's leaning on an external source. So you're always gonna do this in cycles, okay? So the whole anhedonia protocol is probably like four to eight weeks long for this first phase. The way that I have set up for clients, it's actually we run through it's pretty much an entire year for reversing anhedonia in the people who are treatment-resistant anhedonia. So the people that do not respond to SSRIs, right? Actual clinical stuff. So this is just the beginning of the first phase. I'm not even giving you the full stack here, it's just something for you to think about. Now, the interesting thing is that a lot of people they think they gotta address anhedonia through like mind stuff, through like therapy or whatever. And sure, in my opinion, that is a part of it. Therapy can be really helpful. You guys know that I'm super fucking big in therapy. But if the underlying mitochondria and the inflammatory is actually probably fixed, the anhedonia is often just gonna resolve itself on its own. So you're gonna feel itself like yourself like yourself again. You're gonna be motivated again, you're gonna enjoy things again because the biology is fixed. Now, I want to be clear here because I am not saying that all depression or all anhedonia is mitochondrial dysfunction. That is flat out not true. There's definitely psychological and neurological dimensions that just don't vanish when your mitochondrial works better. There's also T3 elements here, but uh, I am saying that it's way more common than people realize and way more fixable through biological protocols than it is treated as a being right now. So I have a client who dealt with anhedonia, and I'll tell you how the protocol works. So this guy, yeah, who's been working in the fitness world for years, he achieved a lot. He built a very good body, he trained consistently, but somewhere along the way, he just stopped giving a shit. He would go to the gym, but he would feel like uh basically like the the the work instead of like the gym felt like a chore. It's not it's not like something that he was driven to to improve anymore. It's not like something that it's not a place that he wanted to be. He was also eating pretty reasonably, but he didn't have enthusiasm and he was sleeping okay, but not great. His energy was overall in the shit, and it just honestly just felt fat. Like the the volume had been turned down on absolutely everything. So we tested him, we tested his inflammatory markers, they were elevated, his NAD plus was depleted, his mitochondrial function was compromised at multiple complexes, uh, his cortisol patterns were a little bit off, which was pointing at chronic stress. His dopamine precursor levels, when we measured, they were okay, but his metabolic capacity to make dopamine was at least questionable given his mitochondrial status. So the way that I reason is like, okay, let's start him on the anhedonia protocol. So let's add some mitochondrial support through SS31 NAD plus, some anti-inflammatory support through dieting and some targeted compounds, the SIMAX to enhance BDNF and then dopamine neuron health, right? And then a slang for stress resilience. And then we had him lock in, sleep, as well as the other foundational places. Within four weeks, he said his motivation was starting to come back. Within eight weeks, he was training with enthusiasm again. He was actually engaged with his nutrition and his energy was very consistent the way that he actually wanted to improve again. His markers all came down, his mitochondrial function improved measurably, and NAD levels came up. And honestly, he said, like it was kind of like somebody turned the volume back up. And it's like, yeah, that's why I use this analogy. Like everything that was always there, like available, was suddenly available again. Like it was made visible. So that is the power of fixing the actual biology substrate instead of just treating the system. Now, I want to hit one more piece here before we wrap up, and this is about using THC intentionally with the system. I'm gonna be careful here because people get really weird about this, but the reality is like some people find that strategic THC it actually enhances associative thinking and creative problem solving when it's actually used intentionally and infrequently. So I'm not talking about getting stone all day, I'm talking about occasional measurable use specifically for creative and associative thinking. Like if you're if you're working through something complex and you need to make a novel connections and think a little bit outside the box or differently about a problem, a small dose of THC in a controlled setting can actually be helpful for that. So it's a tool, and like any tool, it can be used very well or it can be used like shit. So the reason that I mentioned this, and I do have a THC protocol, which which no one else has, I do have a THC protocol teaching you how to leverage THC for this. But the reason that I mentioned this in the Nhedonia protocol is because sometimes part of what's killing your motivation and your pleasure is that your associative thinking is literally locked up. So you're you're in a rut, you're thinking in the same patterns always, and you lost the ability to imagine things being or feeling better or different. And yeah, like fixing the mitochondrial function and inflammation is gonna help, but there's also something about intentional experiences that open up associative thinking that can help rebuild your sense of possibility as well as motivation. So I'm not saying run out there and use THC every day. What I am saying is if you're dealing withinhedonia and depression, sometimes opening up your thinking through various means, not just THC, including like some intentional compound use, it's gonna be part of the recovery. So just use it as a tool in the system, but not as an escape from the problems that you have. All right, so now you know how to think about three particular cases that you deal with uh like very, very constantly, guys. You got the Benjo recovery, the summer shredded, and anhedonia. All of them, these are covered in detail in exactly the way that I teach with the doses, the substrates, the cofactors, what to think, what to monitor, the blood work, the tests you need to take, like absolutely everything teaching you how to think. And all of them have some personalization based on your specific situation, which is why I teach you how to think as opposed to just like do this, right? So in this series, I'm just showing you how I do things and uh you can become a little bit more familiar with that. Now, if you want help with all of that, this is where consultations are for, right? We can assess where you are at. We're gonna build the right protocol for your situation and then guide you through the implementation of this step. You're gonna get a full package. My consultations are not like other people's consultations, just talk to the people that do consults with me. Uh the the you're you're you're you're actually going to get a full game plan and a follow-up call, which no one fucking offers as well. So that is episode 13 of the coach's brain. We covered a brainder recovery framework, the summer shredding stack, andhedonia protocol, the beginnings of it, right? And hopefully you can see that peptides and smart protocol design, they're not just for getting bigger or trying to live forever, man. There are tools for actually handling your fucking life. So the benders happen. The summer comes around every year, and it's a good time to lean out. And people deal with motivation and pleasure loss way more than they like to admit. So having some smart frameworks for these situations is what's gonna be separating people who can actually stick to health long term from the people who are just gonna wide knuckle until they burn out. And again, all of this is inside of the Optalab Engine. If you want the full breakdown and coaching programs, it's where you get the personalized guidance that you need. Now, we've hit the practical application episodes covering uh, you know, the specific protocol stacks. And next week, we're gonna shift some into something completely different. We're gonna start talking about bioregulators in depth and the science behind some of this stuff and why they're completely different from the peptides that most people know. So it's uh it's good to understand what's actually proven versus what's still emerging versus what's just straight up marketing bullshit. So from now, if you are anywhere in your peptide journey and you feel like your results are not where they should be, if you feel like you've just been taking stuff and you're not getting consistent return on your investment, or if your blood work is a mess, or if you just don't actually understand why you're taking like everything that you're taking, that's the signal that you need to step back and build an actual system. And that system it starts with understanding bioregulators and understanding recovery phases and ends with you being able to control your own optimization instead of just being a consumer of whatever the fuck is popular on Instagram right now. I'll I'll see you guys next week.