Biggest Dieting Mistake We've Ever Made...?

Welcome everyone to the Arby Shank podcast. I'm Nick Shaw and joined by Dr. Mike. What's up, man?

Yo, yo, do you ever play with yo-yos when you were a kid? Oh, I tried, but I wasn't skilled enough to get anything out of it. And so I quit. I would say that that aptly characterizes my experience with yo-yos as well. I tried it out and I was like, what the fuck is this? Nope. Okay. I suck at this. I'm done. Two contacts. Um, what's up, man? So you were just recently down in Austin, Texas. How was that? You were down there for a while. Yeah. It was a week and a half of collabs.

It's strange to tell people when they ask you why you're somewhere that you're there for business, and then they sort of get to what business is. And you're like, I'm here to film podcasts and stuff. And they're like, oh, OK. So yeah, Austin is definitely popping lots of stuff to do. It kind of feels a little bit like a place where things are happening on a global scale, different from like in Metro Detroit, where I usually am.

Really on a global scale. And again, this is not to get political at all. But, dude, the fact that presidential candidates are going on people's podcast. Now, this is both sides. Dr. Mike, the guy in New York City, had on Kamala recently I saw. Joe Rogan had on Trump. Like, this is outrageous stuff, man.

Could you imagine this four or eight years ago? There was never a thing, but that's just to go to show. Podcasts are a very real source of information for a lot of people. It's a very interesting podcast, a very long form, and at least as far as the real doctor, Mike, who had Kamala on,

And as far as Joe Rogan are concerned, podcasts are very genuine. And you sort of, people who talk to Joe Rogan seem to think that he's just expressing his honest beliefs. And same with Dr. Mike, now I've been on Dr. Mike's podcast and he just sort of calls it like it is. He'll disagree with his guests right on camera if they bring up something that doesn't make sense, which is kind of cool. And it's all like genuine, you know? And I think it's a big difference between traditional media

Like when you go like traditional media, say this without being too rude, a lot, not all, a lot of traditional media is kind of a joke because everything's sort of slotted into one to two minute slots and they want some bombastic quotes and they want to got you a moment. And no one who's interviewing you really gives a shit about what you're saying and they're just doing their job.

There a lot of news media outlets are not even the business of pretending they supply objective reality or kind of anything. They're just there to entertain you with pseudo takes on stuff. So I think that's been the case for a long time. And now big podcasts are starting to finally get traditional news media really shaky because it's like, I don't think anyone wants to hear from you guys. You've been

sort of like implicitly lying in one way or another, depending on your politics for generations. And so it looks like you guys don't really have as much of a function as you used to anymore, which is really trippy. It's kind of cool to see in some sense in another, a little bit strange.

It's pure, you know, clickbait, but in sort of video format, sensationalism of, you know, you'll take clips. This goes both sides, obviously. We'll do this. And yeah, it's it's because, Mike, I mean, you've been on a number. Actually, I just saw an image pop up thinking of my phone or something. You and I did one in Charlotte here in like 2016. It was a big deal. It was a big deal. We thought it was going to be huge. It's going to be an absolutely nothing, but

To give you, you literally get, what, 60 seconds? Maybe two minutes. I don't want to say it's all scripted, but it kind of is. And I'm sure at that level, like if you're some big candidate for whatever president, governor, et cetera.

I got to assume they're probably spoon feeding you some stuff ahead of time and like your people are like, no, no, no, no, no. We need to know what's going to be said. And then it's like, it's not authentic. But man, if you go on a podcast for an hour, two hours, three hours, you, there's no possible way that can be scripted whatsoever. Yeah. Very authentic. Yeah. I think that's what people like. That's the whole social media trend. Like people are tired of the bullshit stuff. It's like, no, no, no, no, be just be authentic, just be you and people appreciate that.

Yeah, the downside of being authentic is that you can upset a lot of people. The downside of not being authentic is as someone thought it through, or like history has kind of mulled it over for people and delivered a new zeitgeist to the younger generations, you can kind of conclude that if something isn't genuine, it's actually just worthless because

Like if I go on like, you know, Newsmax or Fox News or MSNBC or CNN, I can just be like, pause, pause, pause, hold on, anchor, hold on, hold on. We tell you what you're going to say and exactly what you're going to say. Here's your parameters. And you're going to be correct. It's all like just so such a big facade. Like once you know something's a facade. Yeah.

You know, why the hell would you like imagine being at a dinner with some friends and like a wealthy oil baron, like some kind of chic from the United Arab Emirates?

And if you, if he was telling you about how rich he was and all the mansions he owned, it was genuinely, he actually had these things. You would be like really curious, like, Oh my God, like, wait, how many houses do you have? How many servants? How many gold Lamborghinis? But if the same person you already knew had just literally a facade, like they weren't actually super wealthy, it was all kind of

conjured up. And in addition to that, maybe they did have some money and had some houses, but they were a bit shy about it. So they never really like fully revealed the extent of their wealth or what to do with their money. It was all like stuff they say to you that is nice to hear. And if you knew that ahead of time and someone's like, Hey, like, are you excited about gender tonight? You'd be like, I'm not going to go. Like, why? Like, you're just going to say prescriptive stuff. They're trying to say in order to get a certain outcome. Why would I have any time for that in my life? Like, why fuck am I doing that? Like,

What am i gonna learn watching fox news when i'm gonna learn watching cnn nothing you can google and it's just gonna be a giant waste of time and so i think a lot of people are starting to figure that out and it's kind of weird cuz news media is holding a big kind of empty sack of what used to be filled with money and kind of looking around and be like oh shit.

It turns out that when you deliver news entertainment to people when they no longer sufficiently entertained and the news is tainted because this is all fake the whole time, or fake more specifically highly curated and very biased. At some point, a lot of people are just like, I don't think you're going to give me a real take.

Joe Rogan will give you a real take doctor michael give you a real take what he actually thinks you can really take from the news media that's ridiculous and so a lot of times that really is kind of like a giant question of. Exactly why my listening to this person.

Yeah, just for fun yesterday, I went on two different news sites, wildly different sides of the political spectrum. And it's just funny because I'm just reading it. I'm just kind of chuckling. And then I'm like, well, this is interesting. I'm going to go see what what's on the other side. And with the other shows, I was like, what the fuck? This is like two different realities that people have. It just it was it was very interesting. Nor I almost never go to news sites like at all.

Funny enough, Chris Williamson just had a post today. And the very last one was like, hey, check out my calendar this week. And it was all like doom scrolling around the election. And I'm like, God damn it. That's, that's funny. Unfortunately, slightly accurate. I'm sure very accurate for a lot of people. But yeah, wild stuff, man. Did you have like a favorite podcast you did when you were down in awesome?

Oh, I can't play favorites. That's me being fake and political. My podcast with Peter Attillo is very insightful, very deep. My podcast with Chris Williamson, we did a few. It was as good as always. Really cool scene, different setup. I did a podcast with some Jiu-Jitsu folks, which was not the usual thing that I do. It was kind of cool. And then I also did a podcast with a podcast called The Coach Amup Podcast with Tim and Zach and

I really like that podcast because we got a chance to talk about how to train athletes in strength conditioning and myths and stuff. This is not something we talk about on the YouTube channel a lot because it's so hypertrophy focused. It was really cool to be able to get on there. I'm actually going to be coming on the podcast a few more times. Their podcast is where I'm going to be vomiting out all my strength and conditioning knowledge and answering those kinds of questions.

a podcast we have coming up that's going to be recorded in a few months, so it won't be out for some time. It's going to be kind of a two-parter, a really related one. What are D1 athletes actually like as people? And because there's so many myths around that, right? From people watch sports, from people who are on the fringes, people who want to coach, they're young strength conditioning coaches, they have all these ideas. I had tons of ideas about how D1 athletics worked.

Lots of them are just wrong. And so that's going to be a really cool thing to talk about. And in addition to that kind of combined is, now that you know who they are as people, how do you coach them the best in a human relation side? Obviously the programming is much more straightforward and a much smaller piece of the puzzle than dealing with humans.

How do you talk to them? How do you motivate them? How do you inspire them? Is it even possible? How do you play that balancing act of authority figure and person they can chill with and talk real stuff to, like all of that whole situation, different kinds of athletes dealing with different personality types, you know, as you got.

Type A hard workers on the team. You got like show off talent and motherfuckers on the team. You got to deal with them a little bit differently. Males and females, you have to deal with differently. So that's going to be a really cool thing that's going to come out down the line. But you were at our court of them? No, no, that's going to be recorded. The one we recorded just now was basically like, what is the purpose of strength and conditioning? And how do you know, theoretically, how to do it right? Like,

Basically, the TLDR is strength conditioning is just one of several subtypes of ancillary sport training that is required to be done outside of the sport practice itself, because the sport practice either does not give you enough numerical opportunities to express certain fitness qualities, nor does it make them intense enough.

and enough time spent doing them to actually make them adapt as maximum beneficial. So like a really easy example of like, can you do wrestling practice? Does that make your muscles bigger and stronger? Yeah, yeah, it does. But is there enough hard wrenching in specific positions in wrestling to get you as strong as would be nearly ideal for the use of time? No, like wrestling practice is missing some of that. So two or three sessions in the weight room per week in very specific

Ways of training can give you the strength and power characteristics of muscle growth that wrestling practice just doesn't do enough of. Let's say it was similar to why boxers do road work and run distances because the aerobic capacity to get from boxing isn't stressing the system enough to push it to its adaptive limits and get you as good as you could be.

So it turns out like sport practice is the core thing that makes you better at sport. There's a couple of other concerns that are done at their own time and strength is one of them and conditioning is one of them. And there may be a few others in some context, but those kind of the two main ones. So there's another form of training, mental training for sport, which you meet with your athletes and you talk about strategy and tactics in practice and in play. You don't get the football team together, talk about routes and stuff and contingencies for teams.

That is also something that doesn't occur on the football field that occurs in an electric classroom. And so it's basically like, why do we do that? Like don't you absorb enough football wisdom just practice in the game? Like you absorb a lot, but not just, it's not enough. And so you need a little bit of extra. And that's what strength conditioning is. And when you simplify the little bit of extra of just getting you bigger and stronger as a basically all strength conditioning or almost all of it, it really starts to clarify your perspective on like hyper specific moves, like taking the basketball from the court and

Getting into the gym and lifting basketball shaped things and doing basketball tub movements in the gym kind of seems like it's right on because all kind of falls under sport training. But when you realize that really sport training handles almost all of tactics and techniques and skills and what you're missing.

You know, isn't more of that like people are like, well, shouldn't we lift weights in the same way we throw a basketball or something? Well, like, yeah, if you needed more basketball technique training for your arms, but you don't, you get all that in basketball. It's actually better in basketball because it's it's ecologically valid. It's right there on the court with the real ball. It doesn't cross contaminate your ability to throw a ball. Like if you take shots with a heavier ball, it's actually going to fuck up your trajectory to where you overcompensate or undercompensate to get back in the normal.

So you're really asking the question of like, well, why are we in the weight room? It's really just to make your muscles like bigger and stronger, like, and then you take those same muscles and basketball practice does the rest of letting them be used as specifically as it's required. And when you can do that, strength conditioning becomes such a simple thing that requires just a real basic approach to cover almost all the bases.

And that's such a really awesome thing, I think, for people to know, because then it's not like, oh, these advanced techniques, balance boards, Boseu balls bringing in real sports specificity in the weight room, that's just not what it's for. What's that one bar, the tsunami bar, I think?

Yeah, the one that wobbles and stuff. Yeah. And people will say all sorts of fun things about it that just almost certainly can't be true. And it's just a good example of a gimmick that you could see benefits of it. But there's a difference between seeing benefits overall and benefits in context. Imagine you

You had like, you were training like Navy SEALs of Delta Force guys in the weight room and you had them like bring up a like 45-pound bar just like they're like adjusting the rifle for a good shot and you have like have them hold like that for a while and bring it back down and bring it back up. It's like, do they need more practice on putting the fucking rifle where it is? No. Well, if they did, they would just do more of their training, which they do in compounds and shooting ranges. Like, okay, so that's actually the most ideal place to do them.

Okay, so like, then what do we do in the gym? Like, we'll just be bigger and stronger. And when you, when you simplify, it's almost like this, like, you take the guys to the shooting range to work on precision, like rifle rounds, like sniper shit. And then all of a sudden you're like, all right, we're going to also like, have you guys do some like combatives hand to hand, like right here on the sniper range, like you've got us to fight each other on the sniper, sniper range, like, aha, like it's

Don't we have a studio for that back at the base? Don't we have a mat for that sort of thing? You can't mix everything together. So a lot of sport performance, strength and conditioning stuff involves just too much forgetting of the fact that they already take care of their sport and practice. And if they needed more sport training, they would just do more sport practice because it's ideal.

And then it allows you really simplify and do what you do another really quick analogy for those listening, you know, there's times to think about track routes and racing and there's times to get your tires fixed when the mechanics fixing your tires is not a very long conversation about what routes you're writing and how you're pulling in the turns and everything and what your strategy is for turn three.

It's a whole other part of racing. And so when you're fixing the cars physically, like you just worried about the car being robust and well-oiled and all that stuff. And then like, that's what you do. So mechanics, if you talk to a mechanic at Formula, and they're like, they don't really know a ton about racing strategy. They don't have to. It's not their job. And a lot of times people get up twisted and sport performance. They forget why we're there. You know, it's a let me actually fuck, man. Let me young.

Another really quick analogy is actually more sport forms related and even more of an absurd claim. Imagine if you were a professional grappler and you were training Jiu Jitsu, a ground game, you were training Jiu Jitsu takedowns and you also did gear work so you had to train Judo. Judo is the art of taking two standing people in geez and one of them throws the other.

Let's imagine if during Judo practice, which you do, let's say twice a week, Threstus, Judo practice, you, as soon as the Judo happened, you and your partner would fall to the ground, and then you would continue a three-minute jitsu round down the ground during Judo practice. The Judo instructor would be like, guys, it's not part of what we do. You'd be like, but it's more specific. No shit, dumb asshole. That's what you do in Jiu Jitsu practice. In Judo, we're only doing throws.

As soon as the guy hits the ground, you get your top position secured, it's over, you snap back up, and you do it again. And it'd be like, yeah, but couldn't it be more specific if we integrated in Jutsu? Yes, totally. You would get less time doing throws, which is why you're there. So really is, do you want to be like somehow more integrated into basketball, in the weight room, or do you want the guys to jump higher and push people around more? The answer is the latter, which it is.

You just stick to very simple weightlifting when you're in the gym and that clarifies so much stuff. You know what I mean? Like specialization and interaction. Specialize on various things and then you do those to their best abilities and they integrate themselves in the actual athletes. Some integration techniques are really good. You don't have to use only strength training to do power training. You could do some speed work, but if it's anything other than super basic, you've really just

What is that? You've lost the plot is the best way to say that, you know, like you don't even know why you're in the way anymore. And a lot of people in strength conditioning just don't to begin with know why in the weight room, like we're trying to get the athletes like better at basketball, like, okay, but more specifically and then they don't know something to do with muscles mobility, maybe injury prevention. So we, we beat that to shit. That'll be out in a few weeks long form on their YouTube channel. Yeah. I mean, it sounds like

Yeah. Again, you go to school to get a PhD to learn this stuff, right? And you learn how to make athletes better. But it sounds like there's just like a bunch of mistakes made out there. It's sort of the real word practice with the best of intentions. I'm not, obviously we're not accusing anyone of trying to almost always with the best of attention. It would be really strange to sabotage the team that you work for. So they lose more to just reflect poorly on everyone, mostly your resume.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no, for sure. Internals are very well aligned there. I mean, you'd have to be in some like way super deep Connor Stallion's kind of shit, like beyond, you know, Connor Stallion's this, right? Do you watch that documentary on Netflix?

a dude, my wife and I love shit like that, man. I don't think, I don't know if this specific one, was it the basketball? No, no, no. Connor Salience was the Michigan football guy that was, he was a signed sealer guy. Oh, fuck. I got it. We got to get out. Yeah, you should watch it. I honestly watch it. And I was like, yeah, that seems like something I would do. So hey, kudos to him. He's a fucking man.

He's the man. Yeah. It's good. I mean, complete bullshit. But again, you know, anyway, speaking of sort of mistakes made, there's a YouTube video that came out last week and you were specifically talking about training mistakes you had made earlier on. And so it got me thinking because, well, one, I probably made a lot of those same mistakes because you showed me the ropes largely coming up. Yeah, the wrong ropes sometimes.

You know, live and learn, right? Let's, again, I think there's a lot of value to be had from people who've, I mean, how long have you been lifting now? 25 years? 25 years. I've been lifting for like 22 years. So there's a lot of people out there that are just recently getting into lifting or relatively new or even shit, even if you're intermediate or advanced, like you look up to people that have been doing stuff for a really long time and you sort of can learn from their mistakes. Hopefully don't have to make them. And I think that's a large part of the value of this podcast as well. We've made a lot of freaking mistakes along the way.

So it just got me thinking to select between the two of us. I bet we can come up with some of our top mistakes that we've made over time. And so I'll throw it to your with these can be diet or training because to me, I got a huge diet one that probably hit on a little bit before, but we need to probably hit on it again, but like.

Thought over your way what would you say is the biggest mistake that you made in your i guess earlier i guess doesn't have to be earlier, but in your diet and training slash career i got really fat on purpose that mistake. Has cost me the development of.

access skin and access fat cells, which distorts my aesthetic appearance. It makes dieting way harder because fat cells like signal to you to increase your hunger levels and everything and to reduce your physical activity.

and will require surgery at some point hopefully in the near future for me to remediate some of that and took years off my life and arguably didn't really help much upon examination in supplying muscle gain.

Definitely not worth the trade off that even was an upside, but at the very least, that mistake allows me to be ultra, ultra confident in recommending to other people that was called super bulking or dreamer bulking.

Is just wrong there's tons of nuance and many many things some things are just more black and white like is just wrong to do and so every now and again you get someone who. Some creators who say like all like you know.

Dreamer bulk works for me if you do it right blah blah blah and just all wrong up and Most of them have been wrong enough to really see that downsides you and I were wrong enough to see the downsides and so it's one of these like It's just really stupid. You know and just just don't do it. It's it's kind of like someone with like very very high claustrophobia and anxiety and kind of restlessness and

goes like, hey, should I take that like 18 hour flight from New York to Singapore in an economy class? You're like, no. And they're like, well, isn't there like a TV and people to talk to you like, it's just a bad idea for you. There's a 99% chance it's really terrible. Feel free to make your decision going forward. And if you would not have known this, had you not flown a lot yourself and been like, well, me as a relatively normal person, 18 hours in economy is kind of fucking torture. If someone's like, dude, I really have trouble with a three hour flight. Oh my God, we the last thing you want to do.

You know, dream of walking has this appeal of like, it's got sort of dual appeal, maybe three levels of appeal. One is you get to be much less restricted on what you eat, which is cool. That's number one, like you just get to eat whatever whatever you want. Number two is you get to eat fun stuff all the time. So then not only do you not have to do the real weird like really restricted eating, but you can also eat really

tasty stuff and the other one is like it packs on the pounds fast and your strength skyrockets you build lots of muscle and so like that sounds quite good but then you realize like that excess fat and so I've made a variety of other there's lots of videos on YouTube of me talking about this way way way greater depth if you guys want to check them out but one of the things I said in one video was on average for the average person frame size wise and every you can gain

About 15 pounds of fat, in most cases, from your baseline normal weight, from being roughly relatively lean. You can gain about 15 pounds of fat. And from your set point? Yeah, just like, let's say you're somewhere between 10 and 15 percent body fat as a young male in an early 20s. Or a young female in an early 20s. You can gain and lose 15 pounds one way or the other. And it doesn't really affect anything permanently. You're not going to get a ton of skin stretching, gaining 15 pounds.

You're not going to get a ton of extra adipocytes, extra fat cells that are probably later. It's going to affect your health a ton. But what I said in that one video, which I talked about, it's like anything much north of that and you're starting to pay some consequences. Like if someone

loses 30 pounds of body weight. Let's say it's a 5 foot 3 girl who typically used to weigh about 160. She got up to 190 and then back to 160. This is going to be loose skin. Now, their genetics matters a lot. I was going to say, yeah. Skin care matters. Yeah, like if you have the skin plasticity of an Asian,

East Asian person, then you might be really lucky and 30 pounds plus or minus like your skin's a little looser, but people can only tell by touching you in your ab area. They just can't really tell at all visually. That is still a downside, I would say, because most people

women especially love tight skin, it's very youth indicating. And so even that's not great, but it could be like, well, you don't need surgery or whatever. But for many people, especially if you're of Caucasian ancestry, well, as I say, if you're an African American ancestry, you gain 30 pounds, you're probably going to have some visible scratch marks, which on black people show up just way more because of the contrast.

And then like, well, you know, stretch marks are hot as fuck. I love it. That means you used to be thicker girl. You feel me? Come over here. Let's chat. But a lot of people, including people who have them just don't like them. They just don't go away. They'll be with you forever. Unless you get them surgically removed, then there's a scar. And for many, yep, there's yours. Yeah, there they are. I mean, I definitely so. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, but I mean, that's inevitable if you get super jacked in the upper body. But like, if you have them all over your abs, it's like for women, sometimes they're thighs, like it's not the look they want. And then if you're Caucasian, there's a high probability in many other races too, that you gain and lose 30 pounds, you're going to have visible kind of a little bit foldy in on itself, like the skin. And man, like that is an aesthetic psychological mind fuck.

huge mind fuck and it's not like it's a it's a real thing in the real world because someone could be like oh it doesn't matter what you look like like we ended up I'm doing all of this to look a certain ways of course it fucking matters it's a getting a dent in your new catalog someone's got on where it's still a Cadillac you like

I know. Take that one step further, though, because we're talking about general population that doesn't want to get on stage, but you literally get on stage. You're being judged with a fine-tooth comb. It's not great. I have some stretch marks on...

My abs, I've got them all over my armpit area, all over my lats. I mean, I haven't gained a ton of weight in a really long time, so they're not super noticeable anymore. But I remember a decade ago, man, they were. They definitely stood out.

Yeah. Yeah. 100% and stretch marks are the least of it. You know, I mean, they're all over my thighs. The loose skin really is a big thing, especially loose skin and sort of not ideal areas. You know, if you're thinking, because here's, here's why this is important. A lot of people just out of not knowing any better, which is totally understandable. And I didn't know any better. They assume that most of what you do to your body composition wise aesthetics wise is reversible.

Like they see a lot of people who have lost lots of weight and perform after pictures, like I used to be 250 and I'm like 170. And do they have abs and everything, and striations and veins? And if you don't have a fine eye for detail, or you're wondering why their underwear's pulled up a little higher than normal because they're hiding literal folds of skin, if you don't have that eye for detail, you could just surmise that like, oh, I can always just reel it back in.

And if you gained your first 15 and then it's your second 15 pounds and you're on your third 15 pounds or gaining up to 45 pounds total, if you also like, you know, it's tough, like gaining is easy, losing is hard. All the excuses boil up in your mind. If you're also under this opposition that

Well, this is all reversible. I can just get it off later. You're in for real nasty discovery. That's how it works. You get much beyond 15 pounds. You're paying permanent costs, unless you want to get plastic surgery, which is self-insane and scarring and risk and downtime and all that.

Shoot, they have an aim for it. A lot of, not a lot, but decent amount of women get it after they've given birth. Tummy tuck. Yeah. The mommy makeover. The mommy makeover, I believe, is when they do abdominal plastic, which means they reshape your whole abdomen, and also they pull the titties up. And then so it's just a baller surgery. I believe that's the exact medical term that the doctors use, too.

pull the titties up, pull them titties up. And as the, as the woman is lying on the operating table and slowly like passing out from the anesthesia, the, the head surgeon is standing over her and like, like releasing $1 bills to fall on her face and her breasts as she passes out. So you know what I'm saying, girl, you got titties. You basically, you're a stripper now. You feel me? You got to make these bitches feel real, but

Outside of that, not ever actually happening, hopefully. The abdominal plastic and mommy makeover in general is one of these things that is two things are true about it. One, it's transformative and can increase your aesthetics by a qualitative leap.

Just totally different look. It's rejuvenating by 20 years. It's just unbelievable results from these things. The other thing is, you don't want to get it any sooner than you have to, or arguably ever, because it's a big deal. It's a big recovery thing. It's a big thing. I really want to

take my current house, demolish it, and build a super future mega modern home on the property. Okay, that's both going to be amazing, because it's going to be an unreal house if your house was built in 1962. Of course, today's house is going to be way better. Right. But like, from what I haven't, what I've understood, because Chris and I asked that question before, how that work.

You have to leave your house for one year. Like you can't live there while they break it down and direct a new house one year of living outside of your home. That's a big deal. And so there's this thing that Chris I like to say to each other every now and again, hopefully less cynically than than needed. But it's that as a quote from the Lord of the Rings, one does not simply, you know, because people it's so easy Nick to say things. But like all just lose the weight. How many times have you heard people be like all packing on for the holidays, but well,

I'll get it done in January. Here's the thing. The great news, if it's plus or minus about 15 pounds, it's just true. No worries. You don't have to worry about five or 10 pounds, gain away. No fucking worries. Go on vacation, fuck it. But it just does not work the same way when you're on your 30, 40, 50 pounds. You're going to be paying the cost. It's a big cost. It's a little tragic if you just didn't know any better.

I again like this works for two people one is dreamer bulkers like you and i who did this on purpose to ourselves but the others people who are like maybe they're considering like they're gaining way currently and they're considering like should i try like was epic or whatever.

I am already exercising already try to eat clean. I just have this appetite. Um, I think I'll just try to do it without a Zen pick for a while. It's like that is a totally valid choice, but understand that every several pounds you gain past a certain point.

You're stretching skin, you're adding fat cells, you're making the journey back down, much more complicated, much more difficult, and existing in any future body weight, much more complicated, much more difficult. And so it's like, these are neutral things. It's kind of like, let's say it's nighttime.

And your plane crash landed. Everyone survived in somewhere in Alaska. And you see that there's a town in a few miles away, and it's got lights on and everything. And it's almost starting to get close to dawn. So you're going to be able to see the road much better. Do we walk down to the town now, or do we wait a few hours until it's light? That question is very different than if there's growling bear nearby versus just nothing.

Cause if there's nothing you're like, let's just stay here. Let's cuddle up. Let's not break our legs or fall down ravines, walk in at night. We know there's a village over there. It's going to be fine. Let's just, it's almost light. Anyway, let's wait until it gets light. But if there's like every now and again, like not between you and the town, but the other way, there's like a, you're like, all right.

We can't just stay here. And so that idea of like, oh, I'm gaining weight, but, um, I don't want to try like any kind of mega movers like was epic. Like, look, was epic is a tiny, tiny drop in the bucket. As far as how much cost you're going to pay for it, logistically, monetarily, aesthetically, everything versus like, Oh, I'll just eventually get plastic surgery. Like that's a big fucking deal. And that's just a lot of people just don't know that. So.

You have the situation that which i've seen a bunch of times watching like the my six hundred pound life tv show for those who don't know it's people who like you know i've been over six hundred pounds i get bariatric surgery like a lot of them kind of expect like oh i'm gonna like be a regular person you're never gonna be a regular person after this.

You're going to come somewhat remotely close if your clothes are still on you, if you not only lose like 400 pounds, but also get bariatric surgery and then skin removal surgery, which is insanely difficult procedure takes forever. They have to clip off every major blood vessel, cut the fat around it off, unclip it, then move on. It's fucking wild.

It's to recover from man. Oh my god. Oh my god. Very hard. And then you look at yourself and you're like, this scarring is really intense. Like, what did you expect? So it's just one of these things where people say, ah, gain some weight, no big deal. Like, yeah, for the infant 10 or 15 pounds, no big deal. You start getting north of that. You just have to understand you're doing permanent shit to your body that only late 2030s future nano tech might be able to totally heal up and like,

Long time until then man you know i got i got a couple things from that two questions one well i guess three questions secondly the first one is when you're talking about the wilderness in alaskan have you ever seen the movie the gray lemneson just part of it but i have seen the edge with Anthony Hopkins probably similar i'll go on record is saying the gray was lori would agree with me because we both watched it when.

The movie finished, we just looked at each other and we were like, that was the worst fucking movie we've ever seen. Is it depressing, isn't it? It is incredibly depressing. Like, listen, if I'm going to watch a movie, I want a nice ending, right? Like, yeah, I get real endings in my real life. I don't need any more of that shit. For sure. That ending's look at my middle school years, you know, I've had enough of that. Totally. And so like, you watch a movie to be uplifted. And then that movie hits the end scene. You're just like,

Doesn't the wolf like get him anyway? I don't want to ruin it, right? You know TLDR not everyone's okay TLDR Nobody survives. Yeah, and you're just because you're like waiting for it. He like he keeps surviving through all the shit. You're okay. Great. Oh, he's finally gonna. Okay. Oh God, and it just ends you can see it by a fucking wolf and you're like ah

Why don't I just watch this for two hours? Yep. Damn. So that's that one. I would highly encourage everyone to go watch the gray, especially if you want to be depressed for a week. So I'm the, I'm on the perma book. Two questions.

When you were, I guess, earlier in your career, when you were coaching people, when you were doing this, did you coach people to do this as well, to gain all the time? Almost never. I did it a few times, and I was like, ah, this ain't it. And I stopped shortly after just several years. And I never tried to encourage people to go ultra ultra super, super heavy.

But definitely heavier than they were. And so, yeah, you, who bailed men, a few other folks, like, definitely paid the cost. That, you know, that was a thing. And I remember sometimes, like, my advocacy was a more measured approach, but when people were really super bulking, I wasn't like, hey, like that is real downside. I was like, oh, I'm glad they're having fun. And hopefully, like, if they're okay looking like this temporarily, eventually they'll look great. But the thing is that eventually look great is highly modified. And, you know,

Some of those lines, you don't get back unless you go under the knife big time. You got to have a real long-term time rises. I remember people at our gym where you and I worked would would criticize us. And we had the ultra long-term perspective of like, we're doing this for a reason, but they had every right to be criticizing us because, well, looking back, yeah, because I wrote down my number one mistake too, was so just too much gaining weight. Yeah. When I was

22, 23, somewhere right around there is when I did it. Got up to 265 pounds. Dude, I got pictures, man. I look at the one picture and I'm like, I'm embarrassed. I'm like, how did someone not say something to me? Like, hey, have you seen, have you looked in the mirror recently?

What's obese 30%? I don't know if I ever got 30% body fat, but I was probably not. Obesity is. I don't think there's any formal governing body, which judges obesity by body fat percent. It's just done through body massing. But you were definitely like class three or whatever, like I was class four at some point. Because you were shorter. Yeah. And we just. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, man. Now, so I definitely recall two instances. I won't say their names because they were clients of mine real early on where I had them gain way too much weight. Now, probably not as much as we did, but yeah, looking back, I was like, man, that was a mistake. I made that mistake. I get tons of that.

Some early clients paid the price a little bit. Looking back, I feel bad. Shouldn't have done it. Shouldn't have had the gain as much weight. I remember I didn't coach. I helped a few folks out with bodybuilding shows and they did a big rebound afterwards and they got their decks of results and they were like, I didn't gain any muscle. It was like a pound or two.

And it was like, whoa, seeing objective data like that, even if it's imperfect, after a few of those decks of results, you start to be like, man, that exactly is the upside here. Live and learn, but now we can be confident that that's a fucking stupid idea. Well, we don't recommend it anymore either.

Well, it's funny, right? Because this insight, actually, there's something kind of actionable that happened more recently, not super recently, but there's a kind of big debate between myself, Greg Knuckles, Eric Trucks, there are metal Hanselmans, and we actually went on a podcast to have this discussion was really productive, but

Uh, you know, what is the ultimate, the optimal P ratio and what is the optimal body fat at which to bulk? Do you gain muscle better or certain body fat versus not? That's not really good stuff. But one of the perspectives I had that was different than many other people at the time was because I had been fatter on purpose before.

And the perspective was a lot of people used to think incorrectly that when you were leaner, you gain muscle better. And that was, was not true. And then they said, well, actually, like some of the recent data shows confidently that even if you're 20 to 25%, and even 20 to 30% body fat, you can get muscle just as robustly as if you're 10 to 15 or 10 to 20%, which was true.

And then people would say, so like, if someone wants to gain body weight and they're already in their 20s and body fat percent, there's nothing wrong with gaining further. And I was like, I'm going to stop you right there. Absolutely is something wrong. Oh, you'll gain just as much muscle.

But that's also not a real upside because you would have gained just as much muscle if you'd stayed leaner and your health is better, your mobility is better, your fitness in the gym is better, your appeal to the same or opposite sex, depending on your interest. Because let me tell you this, man, if you're into girls and your guy, girls like you leaner on average, if you're a guy and you're into guys, Nick, do you remember the ruthlessness and objectivity of the fucking gay scene in New York?

If you got it all, bro, if you were a fat-so, do the gays are fucking ruthless, man. They like what they like, and they're fucking kind of bash it about it, and you go in the club scene and try to make it fucking happen, you had better be in good shape if you want your best options up ahead. It's a real thing. The gays train harder than everyone. They're super fucking aware of that. There's some people that do the bigger dudes.

Exactly but here's the thing like let's find the left let's noodle in on this if you are a dedicated bear and. I am the fan of big fat is a part of who you do like that's great but here's the other thing if you're a bear and you start to like not be as my killer. That's a fucking problem here's another one if you're a twink.

or an otter, and you get too fat, you ain't no category at all. A fat twink is like, no offense to anyone, but you may have excellent qualities in 50 other regards, but your body is a big downside to potential hookups in the gay community, and you're just going to pay a fucking price for that shit. Here's the reality. If you are in the 20s, and body fat percent is a male,

you want to go up, your idea of what you could look like eventually at 10% ish is just going to have to change because you're growing excess skin, excess adipocytes, excess health risk, and all of that stuff. So this has changed my opinion of what to tell people when they're asking, they go, hey, I'm at 18% by 85. I've been lifting for a few years. The gains are great. They're kind of not plateauing, but kind of stabilizing a little.

And I'm wondering if I should bulk or cut next on hypothetical grounds, not having ever experienced this rapid weight gain and excessive adiposity, getting into the 28% body fat range, you could easily just say like, yeah, you can gain, you can cut, you can do whatever, but almost always say, get a fat loss face first, get nice and lean, and then get a little pudgy leaner, nice and leaner. You want to be in the leaner and then the bigger end of that all else is equal spectrum of where you gain the most muscle and have the best quality of life. Because here's the thing.

That's literally true, that there's a genetic differences between people, but there's a lot of truth to the following statement in many cases. Somewhere between 10 and 30% body fat per unit time of time spent gaining in that range, you're going to gain roughly the same amount of muscle.

So if that's the case, where do you want to make your 5% increase and decrease? Do you want to gain from 25 to 30? Then back to 25, back to 30, you could. You gain great gains. I did. Except like you're just fucking fat and miserable the whole goddamn time. Yeah, really, really strong. Really strong. Sure. You're very safe. But also your mobility sucks. I mean, clothing, appearance. You made that point. So the Trexler long form podcast. So I think it was broken down into a

One of the smaller videos too, but yeah, you guys were talking about that. And when you're our height, 260. Mmm. You're leverages change around quite a bit, man. You're not lifting the same way. No. I remember. I couldn't wear a deadlift belt to deadlift.

Yes, because it would just choke you to death. It felt terrible. I just couldn't get down into position as low as I wanted to go before picking the bar up because those belts are just leather and they're solid and sturdy and like, dude, that shit would just ride into you and it would just not feel good.

Just it prevented you from being able to do certain things. I mean, if you think about it, if the last couple inches really matter, unrange emotion, you got a big ass gut, man, you're doing bent rows. Yeah, man. Two, three, four inches. It's bad news. The deadlift suffers, the bent row suffers, tons of stuff suffers. And the other thing is, so if you go from 25 to 30 back and forth, fine.

If you go from 10 to 15, you get basically the same results, except you always exist in an aesthetic and health and mobility and cardiovascular space. That's just categorically better. It's just better. And so that's why I'm super big now. And you know, people ask like, nowadays my bulking takes me to media.

Maybe eleven or twelve percent more like ten and then back down to kind of seven and back up. People are like, oh, like, does that work for you? I'm like, it works better than the alternative. I'll tell you that much. And I've been high enough for long enough that I just don't need no need to see those high numbers anymore.

It's an interesting combination of scientific data and practical data that lets us know, like, yeah, you could gain anywhere from 10 to 30%, but you probably want to be hanging out mostly on that middle to lower end. There's nothing for you up on those high-body fats that you're very interested in, and getting up there brings permanent changes to your skin, to your fat cells, and it'll not result in anything super awesome. Again, another really big one, which we're skating over, but it's a super pertinent

Your overall cardiovascular risk exposure over time, your blood pressure over time, heavily depends on adiposity and body weight. So if you eventually cut down and you're a shredded 160, if you spent most of your life at a not shredded 220 versus most of your life are pretty shredded 180.

After 10 years of either one of those there's a big difference in how your blood vessels are, how your atherosclerosis is, the total pressure that was put on your organs. It's a very, very different world and you want to be in the leaner side of that world rather than fatter.

I was on a Peter Attias podcast recently and that'll be out sometime, I'm sure, but he was asking about blood work and stuff. And I was like, my blood work, I told him my cholesterol numbers for my last blood work. And he was like, that's your total? I was like, ah, because my total cholesterol was under 100 last time I checked it. That's just genetics has to be pure Ashkenazi immortality shit. And the thing is, is that it's not just genetics because my cholesterol be substantially higher for me personally, and for many, many people that I consulted with.

When you're a leaner, you're just so much healthier on every metric. Well, I mean, we have a podcast episode where we cover this on my own. But Mike, I remember being, you know, 260 plus in New York and going to a doctor that's a couple blocks away from me up on each side. And none of my numbers were good. I had he put me temporarily on blood pressure medicine. Oh, blood pressure. Oh, man, I might have taken statin cholesterol a bit.

I might have, I don't remember exactly, but I definitely remember my blood pressure. For sure. And then I can absolutely speak to the experience of, and this is why, like I'm no longer, I don't want to be 225, like I was like, I got to be down around 210. All my labs and everything are much, much better. And, you know, even on the high side, if my blood pressure is up a little bit, I'm still under like the 120 over 80, like I'm still under those.

Yeah, leaner is better, man. In most cases, obviously, there's such a thing as to lean. Your hormones are wacky, your sex drive sucks, your joy of life sucks, you're injured more, you're too dry, you're too dided down, food focus, fatigue is too high, your gains aren't as good. So there's definitely a, like if you're getting much under 10% body fat and you feel like shit and your training is like shit, don't do that. 10 to 15 is very different than 25 to 30, even though the fluctuations could be the same between those night and day. Yep.

Yeah, no, we always tell people now. Anytime anyone asks me, I'm like, if you're above 15% body fat, I'm not telling you the bulk. That's just my personal take. Some people can be totally fine going up to 20. And listen, that's a little bit of a personal choice in there, but I wouldn't recommend it again, because you and I have literally lived it. It's just, it's funny. I suspect that that was going to be your one of your big ones, but it was absolutely my number one. It's like that was terrible.

Yeah, you know, regrets are a trippy thing. They're not comfortable. They're not very positive to ideate on and mill on and all that stuff. But that being said, if someone's like, do you have any regrets about your bodybuilding journey? Yeah, I would say having gained way too much weight.

up front is probably a big one. And if I could go back in time and tell myself anything, obviously they're more important things to tell yourself than this kind of shit. But yeah, I wouldn't mind if like 18 year old me heard like, hey, never like get sight of your abs over six weeks with the following diet, never lose sight of them. As soon as you lose sight of your abs, you're going back down until their crisp again.

And that's for many people, many men, what I would say is a decent, very rough advice is you have an outline of abs. You're good. Your outline of abs turns into kind of a one looking pack, two pack back to six pack. You have to be the sharpest six pack in the world, but back to a clear six pack. And then you want to buck back up, do a nice and slow half a pound per week. And to get your back into that levels and then back and down and back and down, that's kind of.

I'm going to try to make the case for I think a scenario in which you can kind of perm a bulk. But I think I already know the account argument against it in my head is as I'm literally thinking through it. But let's say you are 17 and you're 130 pounds. You're just super, super skinny and you're like, I want to get jacked.

So you spend a couple years, you know, getting up to 150 and then you keep going to 160 to 170 and maybe eventually get up to 180 over like a few years. Like that to me is about the only time I can really see that over a few years span. I'm just trying to gain a bunch of weight. Think of that.

I think it's good. Really the question is how lean are you at any one point in that process? Like if you're trying to get spillover love handles and you have a one pack, it doesn't really matter what circumstance you're under unless it's like you have to play D1 O line and you have to weigh over to 90 and you wait to 85 and

We don't need you to be lean because you need the fat for ballast like other people can't be allowed to move you because. Actually lost a in class debate with a student was who was very good to student grade athlete. I said power to issues the only thing that matters American football is no benefit of being big by itself the only reason people get huge is because they're makes the mega strong.

And after class, he was like, listen, all due respect, that's not true. And I was like, historian, he's like, ballast, like, if you're OD line, I want you to be immovable as well as be able to move others. And if you're ultra strong for 180, deadlift, 650 or whatever, you might be as strong as an alignment. But I pick your dumb ass up because you only weigh 180 and I throw you the fuck away. It doesn't matter how strong you're on when your feet are connected to the ground.

But if you are the same strength, but you weigh 350, first of all, you can move people around just leaning forward. But second of all, ain't nobody moving you at 350 and they can, but it's just not far. And so you got to get around you, then the quarterback's already fucking got the ball off. And that's it. Like your team scored just because you were fucking too big to deal with. So outside of that circumstance, I would say that to that person gaining 130, 140, 150, 160, check in to see how you look. Now, I will say, we're going to spend the rest of this podcast.

Yeah, yeah, we'll do training on the other one for sure. Yeah. Yeah. It's good to like really get drilled in on the specifics here to make sure people that walk away from every listen to the most of their holy podcast can be like, well, I really, really know why this is a bad idea. And one of one of the things, you know, spread folks listening to spread the word, spread the fucking word and tell other fucking people that are on this dreamer bulk path or on just the carelessness of gaining weight in their youth. Like,

I'm really not really not really not like you don't you're not going to want to go one other case I could make for our yeah let me uh yeah let me so just real quick to deal this one. If you're noticing spillover facts and you're gaining one thirty one forty one fifty. You might be one of those people that have heard this often in forums and in a Q&A.

Personal be like look, I'm skinny. If I gain a bunch of weight, I feel better and close because I'm bigger, but I don't look better without close because I'm fatter.

But I know that a lot of times you guys want to create more runway for your foul game phase. A fat game phase is good. Got your muscle gain phases. So you want to start out at a pretty lean body weight. And I'm like, yeah, you do. And then they're like, but the thing is when I'm lean, I'm also small, because I only weigh 130 when I'm lean and I hate that. And then they're stuck with this question. It's very pertinent to them of, do I bulk? Do I cut? What do I do? Because when I bulk, I get fatter. When I cut, I get too skinny.

The reality is just like, look, you have a certain amount of muscle. You can't bulk 50 pounds and expect to gain 45 pounds of muscle. This is not going to happen in almost any case. It's going to be like five or 10. So use slow bulks to get the muscle. You can small cuts to get rid of the fat you gain, which should be minimal.

is just going to be a slow journey. So if you weigh 130 pounds and you're like, I just hate being small, unless you want to get fat and have permanent fat deposits and skin and fat cells and also the bad shit, there's no way for you to get into jacked. There's not like a one year long super plan where you're like 180 is people do that, right? They have some muscle and a decent bone structure of the way 130.

to go to perma bulk software high school come into school junior one eighty to gain some also because they're wide frame and and because they have decent genetics they look like still not obese right under the shirt is a one pack they got some love handles some some bits that's not a lot of that look but at least in.

Clothing in school, they're like 180 pound dude. And the way other young boys treat you when you're 130 versus 180 at the same height is very different. Like 180 is a fucking man. 130 is like, I can punk that guy out. And so it's a big deal to that person. But what I recommend is like, why don't you just get 140 next year and then 150 the year after that? So you can always be on the leaner end and a lean 160 versus a pudgy 180. I mean, one of those wins in a fight for sure, I don't the other.

And also you get way more fucking pussy that way and the whole goddamn gamut. So yes, it's tempting to try to just like insta teleport away from small version you, but you're not going to like where you teleport. You're not going to end up in a great place and you're going to have done some permanent stuff. So I would say just, you know, it sucks. Slow gains and stay relatively lean.

Do you think there's a case to be made for, because I think, yeah, when you get into your 20s or whatever, like, unless you're using PEDs, you're only gonna gain, you know, five pounds of muscle a year. But man, it's like a 15, 16, 17 year old kid when, you know, puberty is really kicking in first time. I mean, again, it's kind of like taking PEDs because you're really getting tests. Man, I don't find it hard to believe that you can only gain, you know, five pounds of muscle or something like that a year. Like, I would think you could probably do triple quadruple that.

Well, maybe the first year, if you have really good genetics, whatever we actually don't have to speculate because here's what we can do. Gain slow, gain half a pound a week. If you gain half a pound of muscle per week, holy shit. If you have the genetics to do that, you're going to gain it one way or another. So you gain half a pound of weight per week every two months.

reassess how you look. If at any point, you're starting to get a little pudgy. It's time for an eight week phase of losing a pound per week. That's eight pounds down. You're way leaner. And now you have another window of going eight pounds up again over the next 16 weeks. So the real thing is we can speculate 40 is 30 pounds is a 50. Can I gain 60? Should I only gain 20? The answer is gain slowly and check in with yourself over a few weeks to see how you look and feel.

And if you're ever getting under that, like, on too fat territory, that's when it's time to pull the plug, maintain for a little bit, mini cut a little bit, or a nice long cut, eight weeks, and then go back up. It's all a matter of how's it going. Because here's the thing, Nick, to your point. Someone could start gaining at 150.

A year later, they're 180 and they're just about as lean. I don't want to tell you to stop because you're just about as lean. If you started 150 and you wanted to go to 180, but by 165, like visibly fatter in a way that's like, if you've had on this, it's going to be spilling off of me. It's how you right now that nothing 180 you want to look at. There's nothing there you want to look at. What you want to do is go back down to like 157 and then start coming back up to 165 again. And then 170 and then 175. And then years later, you're going to be able to fill out a frame that's 180 and actually be jacked.

Because the first time I ever got, so I actually had a physical done for work today, Nick, and the lady came over to the house and took blood work and took my height weight, and I weigh 237 pounds. But I have faint but visible glute striations and completely vascular all over my abs and everything. There's a very different 237 than the first time I went to 230.

I was like a fucking Pillsbury. Oh boy. And the thing is, like, I wanted it just to be 230. So I could say, oh, wait, you 30. So you'll be being strong. They're very different looks at 230. And so people get fixated in a number or they go, I need to wait 180. It's like, what hold on a second? Like what kind of 180 do you want to look like? Because there's Jared Feather during his natural days on stage 180, which is just like a revelation. And then there's like,

Most of us at 180 who got their way too fast from 130, and it's just like a guy with some bitch tits and slightly wider shoulders than average, like, ooh, you know, the number focusing on the number. Dude, that could be a whole other goddamn podcast. 180 at 20% versus 180 at 10% to hell, the different thing.

Nick, it's such a big deal because if you run the numbers 10 and 20, you're talking about, unless my math is off, something like a little bit more than 15 pounds of muscle versus 15 pounds of fat because it's a 10% difference, 10% of 170, 17, right? So 17 pounds of muscle versus fat different on average.

We're not talking about, here's the really crazy thing, folks are listening and really giving us some thought. You take someone who weighs a certain something and you add 17 pounds of pure muscle to them, they're going to look way different. You take someone who weighs a certain amount and you take 17 pounds of fat off of them without reducing muscle, they're going to look completely transformed. What happens when you do both at the same time? That is a different human being.

When people look at folks like Jared Feather, or whoever it is, your person you're looking up to, and they look at pictures of them, drug-free 180, and they weigh 130 at the time themselves, and they go, dude, 180, that's the body weight I need. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. What is it? The body comp you want? It's the body comp you need, and someone's like, okay, well, I'm gonna gain 220, and then come back down to 180. You gain 220, unless you stay really lean somehow. If you stay really lean, you can't cut to 180. Like, I can't cut to 180 right now.

I get leaner, I get into the mid-220s and I have glute striations and I'm like, ah, there's not much else to go. So that's not going to happen. But if you want to weigh 180 and be sharp, then you can't gain 220 because it'll fuck up all your lines and fuck up your body fat and skin and stuff. And so like the only way to get to a Jared Feather look in 180 is really like your best bet is to go nice and slow, increment, increment up. And you'll still gain at the same rate of muscle that you would have if you'd gotten fatter. It doesn't help you gain

muscle faster. Now, there are extremists on the other position, of course. There are people that, like, you know, you should gain, aim to gain about one to two pounds per year, and you're like, fuck mine. You got to get some flux going. You got to get some ups and downs. You got a consistent hyper caloric condition. So for me, if you're averse to gaining half a pound per week,

of body weight on a gain phase, you're just not doing so well upstairs and you're just fat phobic and they've known to help you. And also, like, there's a big measurement problem. It's a very difficult to even measure if you've gained less than a half a pound per week in any reliable way that can let you auto-rail yourself on the spot. I mean, I tried doing that a little bit here the last couple of weeks, because I was pushing training on me. I'm just going to try to gain a little bit. I mean, dude, you can jet up three pounds in like a day. Yeah, body water. I can't tell what's going on here.

And then you drop back down three pounds next and you're like, am I gaining weight? Yeah, it's already enough noise. So with, with, you know, half a pound, I think a week everyone can gain. I look, if you're like really trying to step out and you haven't gained before, just gain for four weeks. It's worst case scenarios, you gain two pounds of body fat, which means you almost certainly didn't multiply any fat cells. You didn't stretch your skin.

You just pay zero cost. You lose that next week. And best case scenario is you gain a lot of muscle and you diet for 16 weeks and you gain maybe 8 pounds of muscle if it's your first time or whatever. That's huge, huge difference. But then you just lose 8 pounds of fat and you're back to super lean with all that new muscle and you go at it again, just gaining way more than 15 pounds in one mass phase you'll pay for.

It's tough. Yeah. So the last case I'm going to try to make here and this is because I picked it up from the Trexler video, you know, because he was talking about, I don't know if it was him specifically, but he was talking about some experience with D1 athletes, right? When they get to college for the first time and let's say they hadn't really been serious into lifting, you know, they got to gain 30, 40 pounds and they do it and they don't like, they don't really seem to get hugely fatter. And then he also mentioned something

around sumo wrestlers. And it just seemed like they could gain as much muscle even though they were 20, 25, 30% body fat. So it's a little bit of a guess for specificity because the other cases that could potentially make a strong man, you just got to be big. It's kind of the same thing. You just have to be big.

Yes, you probably want more muscle in best case, but sometimes you just have to be big weight wise for your specific sport. It's definitely a thing. Strong man is getting more competitive all the time and the number of fatter dudes is dwindling and the number of leaner dudes at every given height and body weight is going up.

which is scary, but like, Hofthor Bjornsson is not very fat. 400 pounds? Yeah, like, yeah, 420 and Brian Shaw was like not super fat. Well, not fat. You think they are 15, 18%, 20? Hofthor is somewhere in like the 15 to 20 range. Brian's probably in the 20 to 25 range, but like we're not talking about 30, 40%.

Think they could probably a muscle just as well in every range and so the sumo wrestler stuff in the football player stuff is well noted, but that's like when your sport requires ballast or you just have to wait more for whatever other reason. Ideally, you know, for physique purposes, you take a alignment and they retired from football.

It's difficult to make a transition to bodybuilding because they've carried so much fat for so long that their skin is misshapen. You get, you know, you get a running back and a lot of those guys end up being pro bodybuilders because they have the super lean, super small ways. They already are, man. They look like a pathway. Yeah. By the way, I don't know if you saw this clip. Do you know who Saquan Barkley is? No.

Amazing running back. It was like the number two draft pick like 2018 or something like that. I just saw a clip. I shared it on my Instagram stories. I was just like, this is the most outrageous thing I've ever seen on a football field. He did like a 360 spin and he was still facing backwards as a guy was coming to him. You know, sometimes running backs will leap over somebody.

Oh, yeah. He did a backwards leap. Like he just, he was, the guy was coming behind him. So he was facing the other direction. He jumped up in the air and the guy went underneath him and he landed. I'm just like, what the fuck, man? Yeah. Yeah. That is my... God.

It's really difficult to teach that possibly. You can't possibly teach that. I think you can teach that whatsoever. That's just God gifted ability that, like, congrats, man. You are it. You're the man. Yeah. You just shake your head. Last little side tangent I have. Yeah. So my daughter's playing softball. She's just like, she freaking drilled one. Just happened. Ten years softball, this girl caught it. It shorts up. Like, one out of 20, that ball's getting caught.

Yeah. And she was really ticked off. But I'm like, sometimes you just got to tip your hat to the other team. Like, that's just amazing play. Like, I'm like, you do that every single time up to bat. Like, you're going to get a home run probably five out of 10 times. Yeah. It's just.

shit happens, man. That's sport. Yeah. And when you're in physique sport, you got to think, yeah, football players can get away with some stuff, strong and get away with stuff, but they're not trying to be their leanest and most aesthetic later. Even if you're not in physique sport, you're in the sport of looking good, you know, with your swimsuit on. And that's where that kind of stuff can can really make a difference. Yeah, indeed. So biggest diet, I guess, mistake.

I don't know if I want to call it or read either because I got really strong and it was really fun. And I think it was actually when Laurie was pregnant with Zach. So we got takeout way too often New York City watched way too much like Netflix. And it was fun. I don't I don't have a single regret about that. It was incredibly fun. But from a long term physique development standpoint, yes, slight regret, but just from

Regret's kind of a useless emotion. You can't turn back time. You get good experiences or you get lessons, and you and I got some good experiences out of that. We also got tons of lessons. Now that we're kind of trying to help teach the world about how to be fit and aesthetic and healthy,

It's great that we have those lessons. Now, I'd much rather in my current position, our current position of being on YouTube and teaching people how to exercise by millions at a time. It's much better for us to have made lots of mistakes, to have people learn from stuff that do this, not that.

I mean, if I'd never made, you know, oh, I regret it. OK, great. Well, let's say somehow we restart the universe and gods like, all right, we're going to put some atoms here versus there. It's going to set you up for just never having gained excessive weight. Well, though, I probably would have done better in competitive bodybuilding. I probably would have had a better time with the opposite sex as a younger person.

But I wouldn't have learned all those lessons. And then so when it comes time for me to do my today job of teaching people how to do things right in fitness, I would have had less to say. A lot of times there's actually a comment that's really funny. I was on a jiu-jitsu podcast and they posted a picture of the five of us.

Everyone's sure they would like let's do a shirtless over shirtless and i kind of have like you know i'm like a 40 year old dude and these guys are all 20 something they're all very different weight class they all have these little teeny abs tiny wastes. Have these fucking big block abs big ass waste and some guy comments on the picture. He's like oh uh you know like laughing emojis and is like like with all his science and all these guys look better than he does.

And it's kind of like, you know, there's, I didn't respond to the comment because, you know, there's just, I know it's clear I was supposed to say to that, but it's like, um, these guys are just professional Jiu-Jitsu athletes. They just train so much and they're young and they're very gifted. They just exist.

like with six packs. And if you ask them, hey, how do I get a six pack? They'll be the those are the the guys from B team. They're fucking chill down to earth, my fuckers. They'll be like, I don't know, man, like eat better train with weights, I guess, but like ask somebody who that's like, ask me how to do jiu-jitsu stuff. I know all about that. But like, how to get like lean and jacked? Like, I don't know, I just kind of exist like this. Like one of the guys, um,

He's 22 years old, and he's ripped and fucking jacked, and like, that's just who he is. And so if I was that guy, I have a lot to contribute in other ways, but sure, shit would not be how to get lean. He'd ask someone like Ethan simply who had been to 530 pounds.

not on purpose, and lost a ton of weight and recomped. He knows so much about what works and what doesn't, from a personal perspective, died journey-wise, that he has a whole podcast about it. He has tons of people on it, and we've profiled him. Whereas if you have someone who imagine looking at Justin Bieber,

And Ethan's a plea and you're a person, you're like, Ethan's a plea today is like, you know, 50 year old with, you know, some loose skin here and there, some abdominal surgery stuff looks good, but kind of a bigger guy. And you look at Justin Bieber today, you know, I'm sure he still has a six pack or something roughly like a six pack. And, and you're like, okay, hey, kid, like, who do you want to ask about how to lose weight? They're like Justin Bieber, of course, wrong, wrong, because in no offense, Mr. Bieber, but he made, he made a nothing about how to lose weight.

And so that idea of regret is like, yeah, you could turn back the clock and never had made those mistakes. You also will never be able to have the wisdom of having made those mistakes. And it's a big deal. Yeah, that's why I said I don't really regret it, but totally is a mistake. And that way people can learn from it. And moral of the story is don't get excessively fat, especially if you want to long term be leaner and compete in physique. Well,

There's definitely a competing physique, but just be leaner and have a good time of it, not being saintly and sustainable. And also, Manekati, man. It's the last thing I'll say. Expecting when you diet now to look aesthetic is a universal. Everyone who starts a weight loss journey, who especially starts to gain some ground.

think of someone with a small waist and with ripped abs and tight skin and all that bullshit as the end goal. Coming down in weight and realizing that you're just like, you've seen folks who've been much fatter, they're nipples hang at their abs because that much excessive skin had formed and they can do this with their pack and they don't even have a nipple.

And you're like, oh, hit. And then they have to wear their shorts over their pooch because they have a skin pooch that's several inches long. And what he plans for that shit. And when you're in that position, people are like, oh, my God, congratulations. Your weight loss is so incredible. You're like, thank you. And then they're like, do you want to go to the beach tomorrow? And you're like, I'm busy because you don't want to show that off.

Now of course everyone's beautiful and it doesn't fucking matter go have your fucking best time easy to say that versus easy to do that. And so the idea that like all just lose it later and it'll be great folks is just not how it happens and you do not want to experience the relatively tragic realization that after the conclusion of a right last journey. They something missing and that's nothing that you can fix outside of plastic surgery which costs.

dozens of thousands of dollars and is a one hell of a procedure and still comes with looks different and it looks like you have a scar and all that whole bullshit. So it's a thing. Yeah, 100% folks. So take home us. Don't make that mistake. Say a little bit leaner. Probably.

Very much thoroughly. Enjoy it. Folks, thanks so much for tuning in. We'll probably hit biggest training mistake next time on one of the episodes. Just keep this on a diet. Folks, thanks so much for tuning in. Thanks so much for listening. Thanks so much for supporting RP. We appreciate you all. We will catch you on the next episode.