Austin Stout: The Gut Health Guru

What's up homies?

Today we've got Austin Stout.

Over the last 15 years has mentored hundreds of coaches and competitors such as Terrence Ruthen and non-competitors of all ages as well as athletes outside of the physique arena in health including digestive, GI, hormonal and thyroid health, muscle and physical enhancement.

Before starting this podcast, I just wanted to say that ideating steroids for a full show is not widely accepted because it discounts the real work which is the backbone of this sport.

And unfortunately, spreads that an unsafe chemical solution is all you need for results.

Both of these are an antithetical society's understanding of the sport and while there will always be some that claim that PEDs are all you need, I would like to deliver an honest message of what is required for achieving top performance as well as the dangers associated with this route.

I received this comment from a user named Night Scarens.

But just as a rock climber, The athletes undergoing this path in the sport are willing to put their life on the line for their passion, just the danger between the two sports is different.

Luckily, we do have safety nets in this sport, such as organ imaging and regular blood work.

But that doesn't change the high risk one must accept in taking on this competitive lifestyle.

I just got a brand new camera, so making sure everything looks pretty clear.

It's almost too clear, man.

Makes all my gray, all my gray hairs showing up extra good.

That's crazy.

You look very handsome, man.

Thank you, sir.

Thinking what you're talking about.

The gray is just more distinguished.

Gives me more credibility.

You know, exactly.

It gives you more wisdom.

Right, for sure.

Yeah, it's not a problem.

I actually have,

I think my audience needs to know this, but I actually had a single gray hair come up this last week.

Did you?

How did that feel?

Was it a crisis?

Are you all right with it?

I felt very wise.

Yeah.

I think it's because of all the stress that I have having a podcast and still looking at people's comments.

well they always say you know they always say as you gain popularity you should stay out of the comment section yeah i know

i know i know um i uh i just really do enjoy still conversing with a lot of my guests a lot of them are still supportive and a lot of them have i think the thing that i enjoy the most is like

after i started just doing

Instagram and showing up my physique, it's like, oh, cool.

He has a cool physique.

But after I started the podcast, there are so many people I connected with.

So it's really fun to be able to connect with these people and continuously continuously talk about topics like one of the people actually

one someone actually posted a comment asking about digest digestion and we brought you up so i thought it would be the perfect time for us to discuss it but yeah um

anyways all things considered though like

When I I just feel bad because I just posted this.

I had this podcast with Jack, Jack Eagles.

I don't know if you've seen Jack.

I haven't seen that show.

I mean, I'm familiar with the name.

Yeah, so Jack is like, he's like a 22-year-old classic physique pro, and he just did his pro debut recently and is doing the Detroit Pro.

Looks really amazing and everything.

I think maybe he just needs a tiny bit of more size and maybe a tiny bit of better conditioning.

He's young, though, I think.

A lot of us do when we first start.

22 is so young.

Yeah.

But

one of the comments, though, was he was basically stating, like, I'm sure you're familiar with this too, but there's a lot of people that titrate up their DHT doses very high.

I think John Jewett is someone that discusses this concept a lot as well.

So a lot of these people obviously would likely aromatize at a higher rate.

I would expect than the average person.

That's why they're allowed to, or they're able to titrate it up very high.

Darren Farrell is another one of those people who titrates up his Primo or his mass to like about a gram, but then he has like tests at 200, which is shocking.

I'm like, wow, 200 only?

but he's like, yeah, if I run anywhere higher than that, then I need an AI on top of that.

And I'm just like, what's the point of doing that?

You know?

Right.

So, yeah,

for some people, they

would have like some serious erectile dysfunction at

that kind of ratio, but other people do good with it, you know?

Right.

Yeah.

And I mean, like, bro, I would literally, I've done DHT higher than my test.

Um, and I just become like, yeah, my shit just gets very flaccid and floppy.

And then I become really asexual and

really irritated.

It kind of feels like an AI, honestly.

I just become emotionless.

So,

and then I feel like I have my grandma's bones.

So normally I don't do that.

Yeah.

But these guys can.

So someone like just didn't really understand that.

And they assumed that he was just taking low doses because he runs 350 tests without considering the fact that he runs a very high level of DHT and then starts the normal commentation of like,

oh, somehow all of these high-level competitors are running lower doses than most people's first cycle.

Well, that's, I mean, that's silly.

And also, you got to consider some of the more seasoned people,

they can run, potentially run lower doses because they have had that tissue for so long.

Like, are we talking?

Like, are we talking somebody that's kind of peaked out, that's looking for a little bit of extra tissue or that's maintaining?

Are we talking somebody that's really young?

You know, like, there's a drastic difference.

And John would tell you the same thing.

You know, he'd be like, what got them there?

You know, like,

that's why you probably shouldn't, probably shouldn't ask the question of, what are you doing now?

It's like, well, how did you get here?

That would probably be a more relevant question.

You know, that would be a more useful question.

There's a lot of context that goes into that.

Right.

And we've seen that type of thing.

I mean, a lot of us can, or you've seen people that retire, right?

Or later in their career, you're like, man, there's no way they're staying so big on

whatever dose.

I'm like, bro, they've been, dude, it was like 300 pounds for like 15 years.

You know, it probably doesn't take, probably doesn't take as much to hold that as you think.

Right, exactly.

So, I don't know, I think it's just, I think a lot of people, most people

understand,

like, you know, they have the same, a similar level of comprehension as you and I do about how doses aren't really

a great way to just

determine the credibility or quality of someone's muscle gain or someone's like

I don't know

yeah and and genetic maturity and genetic variance is

that's another thing that I think people get so butthurt about is like genetics are a real thing guys I'm sorry I hate to break it to you but There's if you got honest answers, and again, I don't know how truthful everyone is, but you would you'd find a huge discrepancy in what people do in the pro league or on the national level like there's there's going to be huge variance in dosages and ratios of dosages and stuff and it's like well i can't believe he only takes this well yeah but he was 240 pounds in high school right

you know there's i'm sorry it's like well i was 140 pounds in high school the little yeah context a little different

and i think people need to let let go of this concept i mean some people need to let go of this concept that like if someone's taking less than you it means that they're just better or it means they're just doing their training better they're doing their diet better or maybe whatever it's just like it's so not related you know what i mean yeah the context is everything right and that's why you know even on that topic you know like i post a lot of information on social media and that's something i've just consistently done for

every from the beginning, right?

And I noticed the way one thing I've done, I think it was more organic than anything, but I kind of the way that I started

giving information changed a little bit because I noticed when I was like talk about ultra-specific stuff, people would just take things out of context or they would insert their own context into it.

And I'm like, okay, well, this information is actually not that helpful because

it can't really be applied.

You know, so like, I think that you

you can gain something from that, from listening to these people and you can gain some level of knowledge, but you've got to hire them, man.

You've got to

get in there and actually try to apply it to yourself.

You're not ever going to get the answer, the exact answer that's relevant to you on social media.

It's just not how it works.

There's too much context.

Right.

I also understand the hesitancy and like believing a lot of these people, right?

Believing, believing a lot of bodybuilders these days.

But like, you know, if you listen to like what Jack says, he says with a high level of confidence, like I take 350 of tests and I've never really had to, like, I turned pro on 300.

He says that with a confidence level of like, that's something he's almost proud of or maybe something that's like

he.

knows for a fact that he rheumatizes a lot.

So he has to keep it down low.

And then when he mentions his DHT and how he takes it at a high level, he doesn't specify the number.

And that's because I believe he would choose to be truthful about it.

But obviously, because it's a high level or a high number, like most people, they don't really feel liberated to publicly say their high numbers because then, you know, people who don't understand bodybuilding will think that they're promoting high levels of drug use, right?

Like no one really wants to be painted as like a bad influence, hopefully.

So

it just seems like a normal psychological thing to be be hesitant about saying a high number.

And it's clear that he did that.

So I don't really see how there's any lying there either.

So it sounds pretty truthful to me.

100%.

Yeah.

Anyways, let's talk about some diet shit.

We brushed out a lot of things on the last podcast, which honestly, I know that you were really tired, but bro, like, I think you gave, I think you presented so much really valuable information in a really good way.

So I don't know.

It still kind of blew my mind.

Sorry for being so erratic with the timing and the scheduling today, by the way.

We just moved into a new place, as you can see.

So it's a total fucking mess.

So yeah, moving, there's nothing easy or fun about moving.

Yeah.

So I appreciate you like being patient with me and not judging how shitty it looks over here.

But

now that we finally got that sorted.

We discussed some things in the last podcast, such as like, I think compound use,

protein intake, and how I think, how stress seems to affect how a lot of people feel or how a lot of people perform in bodybuilding.

Yeah.

Which I think is a little bit, I think still to this day is still underlooked.

But protein, do you think bodybuilders are eating too much?

Not all.

Of course, I think that there's certainly situations where

I'll preface.

So let's preface this.

First off,

we know, I mean, we know a good amount about protein.

Like protein is something that is heavily studied, you know, and I'm not a, just so people know, I'm not a die-hard research guy.

I think there's relevancy in the research, but I also fully understand that there are outliers and there are also

gaps considering we're dealing with pretty

uh pretty intense training, also anabolic use and things like that.

So, like, you can't rely on that necessarily, but

pretty much, you know, what we've seen is you can elicit a pretty similar response in a pretty wide range of protein intakes, right?

So I guess the idea that the idea that it takes a very high amount to elicit the, you know, the muscle protein synthesis response is probably maybe a little bit flawed.

However,

there are plenty of people that do really well on high protein intakes.

And where I run into a lot of issues with higher protein, and this is where I'll say, yes, there are a lot of people that do overconsume protein and that's more from a digestive standpoint.

It's like when you get to,

you got to remember, A,

protein requires a lot of, a lot of stomach acid, right?

It requires a lot of acid to break down in the system.

We, our bodies will adapt to our, you know, to our, our needs as far as the digestive juices that it secretes.

So bile acids, HCl, like from the parietal cells and the gut.

So we can adapt to that to an extent, but humans weren't really designed to eat 400 grams of protein.

Like that's not really

an adaptation that's probably occurred in us, right?

So, there's going to be a limit there where it's going to start causing problems.

Now, what is that limit?

I mean, I couldn't sit here and say, like, hey, if you eat over 250 grams of protein, you're going to have, you know, digestive issues or acid reflux, like, but there's going to be a limit there, right?

So, in my experience, a lot of the

as like a baseline defense for a lot of the digestive issues that I'll run into, high protein intake for that individual is a big culprit, right?

Like, that is one of the things that can very easily be fixed.

And it's a kind of a common denominator that I see a lot with people.

So, for example, males, especially, because men just have higher caloric needs than women in general.

Like, you just have to eat more of everything a lot of the time, you know, in an off-season setting, for example.

A lot of people have experienced that, you know, I hate food, I don't want to eat anything, I have no appetite, that type of scenario.

And among the digestive issues that we see, GERD type symptoms, so acid reflux, excessive, like even like excessive burping.

I mean, I've had people where it manifests into hiccups, like they can't stop, they get like chronic hiccups all the time type of thing.

That's probably one of the more common issues.

And then second to that would probably be like

inflammatory bowel disease type problems, Crohn's, colitis, diverticulitis.

You see a lot of that in male bodybuilders.

But with that being said, if you think that, okay, protein requires HCL to digest,

what's one of the easiest ways we can mitigate some of those symptoms?

Well, we can just reduce the acid requirements by reducing protein intake, right?

So like we could just, instead of supplementing with something, and you can, like you can take betane HCL, for example, which is, you can do it.

And it will help a lot of people and it can be useful.

But if you're consuming,

it's like

you're kind of trying to fix a side effect with another supplement when we could probably

improve the protein intake, maybe bring that down a little bit.

So if you're the guy that's eating 400 grams of protein,

you're going to be fine eating 300, most likely, you know, 325.

So you can do that.

And what you'll find a lot of the time is, yes, the symptoms are a lot better.

Two, is a lot of the time people grow better.

Their digestion is better.

They feel better.

They get better pumps in the gym because at a point I started noticing that

I was seeing like a lot of nutrient deficiencies and men.

And I'm like, man, that's kind of odd because you think, well, how would you have, you know, how would you have nutrient deficiencies in guys that are eating this much food?

Especially the stuff bodybuilders don't eat.

not all, but a lot of bodybuilders don't have much variance in their diet.

So that's one reason that you could have, you know, nutrient deficiencies.

It's like, right, if you're eating chicken, beef, and rice for five years and you never touch a fruit or a vegetable, that could be problematic.

But also, when we're seeing deficiencies in things like iron and B vitamins, you're like, man, that's odd.

Because what are the main sources of iron and B12, for example, and like beef, chicken, you know, the stuff that, the stuff that we're all eating.

So it, how is that happening?

Well, we have absorption issues.

We're not absorbing things well because of the damage, you know, the damage in the stomach lining.

So when you go back and look at what happens when we have insufficient stomach acid, you see that's actually a cause of a lot of those nutrient deficiencies.

So you kind of have to fix the stomach acid issue, right?

So either, yes, you can cram a bunch of betane in there, betane HCl, and that might help, or you can just simply fix the macronutrient, you know, what you're eating, and that will usually solve the problem without any supplementation.

And then you would just add carbs back into the diet or you know dietary fat or something you know we know carbs are protein sparing so

and and in an off-season setting especially i really don't think most people are going to be susceptible to

you know like you certainly shouldn't be losing muscle tissue or worried about having a little less protein like there's not really a scenario where you're like man if i don't get if i don't get 400 grams of protein i'm gonna lose my tissue i'm like dude that's not gonna happen to you i promise in this scenario scenario, if you absorb nutrients better and you can train more efficiently and you feel better and you're getting better pumps, you're only going to grow better.

Right.

So that's where, so when you ask that question, it's, it's like, yeah, there definitely are some people that could probably benefit from dropping that protein intake down some.

It's kind of a shock for people at times because it's such a, it's something that's, we're so, it's so ingrained in our head, you know?

And we've seen over the years, there's been shifts in this, you know, we've, there's like, like, there's some camps out there where people are really high protein.

They're like, all their guys are on 400 grams or they're super high doses.

And there's some people that are a little more moderate.

And I don't really fall on any one side or the other, but what I can say is that

as a defense to those issues, lowering your protein intake 99% of the time will help.

So you can take that for what it's worth.

You know, I'm like, it, it's definitely a big problem that I run into often.

But

keep in mind, I am the guy that's getting a bunch of the digestive issues.

So, like, for someone that's not maybe seeing those clients as much, they might not run into it.

But that's, I get some of that, so much of that walking through my door that I am seeing it pretty often.

You know, gotcha.

Yeah.

What are some of the macronutrient, or actually, no, just what are some of the nutrient deficiencies that you do often see when bodybuilders kind of use issues, especially with the ass, with the amount of acid?

Yeah, so there's, I mean, so the low stomach acid can be, can be a driver for some of those, but like I said too, bodybuilders are, I mean, while you're eating a quote unquote clean diet with hopefully a pretty high amount of unprocessed food sources, it's, it's the variety in the diet that's a limiting factor for some people, right?

So

you,

I think we've gotten better at that.

I think that's gotten a lot better in recent years.

I remember when I first started bodybuilding, people wouldn't eat fruit, like fruit with sugar, you know, like, dude, way back, you know, and there's people that have been around longer than me.

I'm dating back, you know, pre-2010,

you know, early 2000s, stuff like that.

Like that was a thing.

People just wouldn't even eat fruit.

And then slowly over time, we started to add some blueberries into the diet.

You know, people started to eat that a little bit more and

maybe occasionally another fruit or vegetable here and there.

So the days of just, I like to think the days of eating only chicken, broccoli, and rice are kind of gone.

I mean, I know there's people that still do it, but I know that we've at least gotten a little bit better with that.

Yeah.

So I feel like I get farts just thinking about broccoli.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I, so I used to love broccoli.

I, uh, I don't eat a whole lot of it anymore.

My digestion doesn't like it very much.

But, um,

so we've definitely gotten better.

But yeah.

We can still see, even despite having a high intake of these things, we can still see iron deficiencies.

We can still see B vitamin deficiencies.

Another common one,

surprisingly, and this might be a surprise to a lot of the listeners, is magnesium deficiencies is a big one that I see.

And that's an interesting one because a lot of people supplement with magnesium.

That's a really common thing that people supplement with.

You know, they'll take their magnesium glycinate, you know, 400 milligrams or whatever, you know, last meal the day, pre-bed, pretty common practice.

A lot of people do.

But

first off, magnesium can act very similar to it's an electrolyte in a sense.

So like you, you will lose some of that like you would lose sodium, potassium.

But also the other thing about magnesium is, or even like a lot of minerals in general, is the demand of those will go up if you're big, if you're training hard, if you've got a lot of muscle tissue, right?

So

what we see with magnesium is if your body is producing a lot of adrenaline, you know, you're training hard, you're high stress, you're in prep, maybe, you know, stress on your body is a little bit higher.

The metabolic demand of that increases.

So you're, so that 400 milligrams might not be enough anymore.

You know, you might need 800, you might need a thousand.

I see this a lot on blood work through if people want to look at their labs, like alkaline phosphatase level is usually a pretty good indicator of magnesium deficiency.

I think in the U.S., like Lab Corp, your range generally

will go down to like 45 or 42 somewhere in there.

And then

I really like people to be over 50 usually at minimum.

But I start seeing, you know, I'll get guys that come in.

They're like, yeah, I'm taking my mag glycinate

every day and ladies and the ladies too.

And I, I mean, I'll pull them like 30, 25, nine, eight, six, like some of these that are really stressed out people, despite them supplementing with this.

So of alkaline phosphorus.

Yeah, like the numbers that low, right?

I mean, they were talking like way out of range.

And that could be a zinc deficiency as well, potentially, but I've noticed it's usually more magnesium related because, again,

the demand of that, kind of the metabolic demand of that mineral gets so high.

So the interesting thing about that is

as I started noticing that, I started playing around with dosages with people.

And I said, okay, so how much does it actually take to raise these levels in some of these individuals that their body is pretty stressed out?

I did this with myself first.

So like, I like to take the labs and I like to do stuff with myself first.

So I did it.

It was in prep several years ago.

And I was someone, dude, I always struggle with the low alkaline philosophy.

So my doctor at the time.

If you don't mind me asking,

what was that?

Hello, if you don't mind me asking.

I think mine, I think mine was in the 20s at the lowest.

I mean, it was relatively low.

And I was supplementing with magnesium.

And, you know, my doctor at the time,

Dr.

Eric Serrano here in Ohio, which a lot of people know, I'm sure from the bodybuilding realm, it's like, yeah, it's likely a magnesium or or zinc deficiency.

I'm like, well, I'm already covered on zinc.

So I had started, I was in prep.

So, of course, the demand for that nutrient had gone up.

It took me up to about a thousand milligrams of magnesium to get my levels in range.

So,

a pretty high dose.

So, I kind of experimenting with that with other people over the years.

Which magnesium did you use, by the way, if you mind me?

So, glycinate's fine.

Like, glycinate's perfectly fine as a general use.

It absorbs well.

It works well for people.

It doesn't cause digestive upset.

Now, there are other forms

for guys.

Like citrate, so we can have massive shit.

You don't have to

citrate.

So citrate does not absorb that well, which is kind of why it has a laxative effect for people.

But

glycinate is fine.

I also am a fan of...

For my guys, I'll use glycinate.

And then if we need to go high with a dose, sometimes I'll add taurate in there as well.

The tourine, the taurine element has some good cardiovascular effects.

So it's just kind of an added, added bonus.

Oh, I could use those.

What's that?

I could use those.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The torate.

So I stopped breathing so hard to my mics.

Yeah.

So you figure when you think of minerals, when you think of minerals, like essentially all it is, is it's magnesium, and then there's something else bound to it, right?

Taurate, glycinate, citrate.

It's malate.

Malate.

Yeah, I like malate as well.

So my favorite, probably the form that that I'm using most often, mallet absorbs pretty well, very well tolerated.

There's a brand that I've been using pretty often, Seeking Health brand has one called Optimal Mag,

Seeking Health Optimal Magnesium.

I think it's the actual name.

It's a mallet and glycinate blend.

And so I use that pretty often.

I think it's 150 milligrams of capsule.

But the thing you have to watch for with the minerals is they have, since they do have something bound for them, if you read a label, and this is where people can screw the doses up, if you read a label and it says on the front of the bottle, 2000 milligrams, whatever, but then you read the back, it'll say 2,000 milligrams, which yields 150 milligrams of actual magnesium because there's all this other, there's this other stuff bound to it, right?

So you're like only actually getting 150 milligrams of the elemental magnesium.

The rest of it is whatever's bound to it.

So if you guys are looking at that, make sure you're reading the back of your bottles because you may only be taking a very small amount, right?

But yeah, magnesium,

vitamin D deficiency, of course, is a big one.

Maybe not in California so much, but maybe for the coaches, everyone that's hermits stuck inside their house all the time,

they may have issues with that.

We can check that on labs pretty easy.

A lot of people just use the vitamin D 25 hydroxy

OH, I think's the reading on there.

Over 50, you know, try to keep it 50, 60, above.

I mean, there's others.

There's others that are a little bit harder to check.

Like vitamin A is one that we'll see.

Again, like I said, iron.

I mean, you can be deficient in anything, essentially, but those are probably the more common ones that we're running into most often.

The magnesium one's so interesting, though, man.

Like, I get these really low.

I'll get labs from people sometimes that want to do consultations.

Like,

I had a gal, she just had chronic constipation, just gonna go to the bathroom every two, three days, right?

And of course, she had some other stuff going on, but I got her labs back and her alcohol cost is so low.

And I said, Look,

before you even pay me to do anything, like, just try this, you know,

because I said, you got to fix this first.

You know, I'm not going to give you a bunch of gut supplements when you're chronically deficient in

minerals.

So

advocated high-dose magnesium.

She's like, dude, I'm going to the the bathroom every day.

Yeah, there you go.

We fixed 80, like, and that's the thing is.

And she wasn't going to, how often was she going to the bathroom?

Three to four times a week at most, you know, and then, and then started having a daily, daily bowel movement.

Now, granted, granted, did that fix all of her problems?

I'm not saying that.

I really doubt it.

But my point is that

you,

you can't like with all these things, people get so focused on hormones and digestion and like supplements for all these things.

I'm like, you've got to fix, you've got to fix the catalyst to these processes first, which is vitamins, minerals, and nutrients.

You can't, like, you can't initiate a process or heal something if you are void of all this stuff.

Yeah.

Uh-huh.

You know, so fucking shit.

I just lost it.

Well, first, I feel like you'd be happy to know that my alkaline phosphatase was 61 at my last blood work and 66 at the previous one.

Previous.

We're above 50.

And

you're sitting good.

Cool.

Nice.

Which probably means, which probably means that you're consuming enough.

And despite what you may feel, your stress level is at least relatively managed.

You're doing a good job.

Oh, yeah.

That's good.

I think when I got this blood work done, I was probably a little bit less stressed than I am right now, too.

So that's good.

I almost feel like people can hear the stress in my voice sometimes.

Yeah, well,

I just tell people I hide hide it well.

It's all a front.

Yeah, me too.

I'm actually really crying.

It's like the

duck, you know, feet

under the water.

They're going like this, but on the surface, it's calm.

It's like kind of like that.

Yeah.

I'm actually crying on the inside with every word I say.

But

if the range is 54 to 121, would you recommend me doing anything to even improve that level even more?

Or no?

Would you say that's pretty sufficient?

You're probably fine there.

I don't know that you would really gain much benefit above.

I'll say this: if we're anywhere in the vicinity of 60 or so, I don't really advocate for much more than that.

Cool.

Okay.

I'm not going to hurt anything.

All right.

And then

someone I know, I think I need to recheck their alkaline phosphatase level.

I would actually be curious because I feel like whenever we bring up some actual data, I feel like it provides a really good baseline of info for people to compare to.

You're going to see if you start checking this,

I can pretty much guarantee you're gonna start seeing this a lot because it is that is probably one of the most common it's like when we in my mentorship when we're especially in like my group mentorship we're going over case studies

we're like what's the alkaline phosphatase what's alkaline phosphatase it's like one of the first things that we look at because like

80 of people are deficient okay well um

I wonder if I can get this person's blood break.

I feel like they sent it to me at some point, but basically, they also have an issue where they have uh anemia

okay

um low red blood cell count and

whenever they take iron supplementation as well as their mom taking iron supplementation uh they tend to have constipation from that yeah which

which I know is also kind of a thing that can you can also get from just having anemia too, right?

Yeah, and and the iron, iron does tend to

iron supplements do tend to cause some constipation in people depending on the form.

So

there's a couple of things you can do about that is A, of course, make sure

dietary iron, you know, first and foremost.

You kind of assume, I mean, most people, even females, are probably getting enough dietary iron if they eat, you know, like animal proteins in the diet.

What if they don't, what if they, what if they're like a pescatarian or a vegan, for example?

That's going to get harder then, right?

You're going to have to, either you're going to have to be really strategic with your diet, or you're probably going to have to supplement one or the other.

Now, let's assume, like, assuming that the person is consuming enough, it can be an absorption issue again.

If it is something like low stomach acid, that can be a problem.

Also,

a lot of people seem to, when it is more an absorption issue, I like to use, I'm going to give away, I'm giving away all the good tips here too, by the way.

People are,

there's some stuff you can do there.

A,

lactoferrin is clutch here.

So lactoferrin is a component of dairy.

Okay.

So lactoferrin is really good with iron, what they would call like iron homeostasis, like balancing iron levels.

And that's because it will help essentially scavenge circulating iron and get it into the bloodstream.

Okay.

Okay.

So

it has some other benefits too.

It has like some antimicrobial effects, like balancing gut bacteria and stuff, but we'll use it a lot for actually, actually balancing iron.

So it's one where you notice people are a little bit low in iron or they're having some anemia issues, and you'll do, you'll do some bovine lactoferrin.

We use a life extension brand a lot, usually like two caps a day,

rocking right there.

Because again, a lot of people are consuming enough.

It's just, we're just not absorbing it that well.

So we get something in there that kind of helps.

It's like a, it's like a little Pac-Man, you know, it's going around, it's just scavenging this stuff and getting, and then help facilitate the absorption in the bloodstream.

And then boom, iron levels go up.

You know, you'll see,

and with like with your, this client, for example,

you can, you also want to check.

I also always tell people, like, check a full iron panel, like look at their ferritin levels as well.

Because iron deficiency can can be like kind of subtle it can be pretty severe you know we see serum like serum iron levels like how much iron is circulating in the blood so when you do that blood work and it says iron that would just be you drew your blood on monday morning that is how much iron was in your blood right

but we also have ferritin levels which is a storage form of iron right so You can still be, you can have normal iron levels, but let's say your ferritin is really low.

Let's say your ferritin's low low end of range or even below range.

I would have to have to look.

I think the range goes down to like 50 or somewhere in that vicinity.

You're still iron deficient.

I mean, if your ferritin is very low, but your serum iron is fine,

what that's essentially telling you is your body's having to move all of that iron out of ferritin storage just to keep you,

you're barely hanging on, right?

It's like, it's dumping all that your storage reserves to kind of keep you maintained.

So, you want to check the ferritin, you want to check the iron and make sure everything's balanced.

Um, but again, like I said earlier, if supplements are fine, you can use the lactoferrin, but if your gut is a wreck, that's likely where a lot of that's stemming from.

There are other forms, so if you do have to supplement with iron, maybe it's one of those pescatarian, or you have a vegan client or something like that.

There's um, there's a supplement called, I think, I want to say the name is, I think it's profarin, I think is the name.

I could be wrong on that.

It's not one that I have to use that often.

I believe it's called profarrin, and it's an iron polypeptide.

So the whole concept is it's basically very easily absorbed.

It doesn't upset your GI tract.

So that's a little hack you can do in there.

I want to say it's called profarin, and I could be wrong,

but it's just very well absorbed.

It won't make you constipated.

I'm assuming this is only something you would recommend if they have a low ferritin level?

It would be if you, let's say you were iron deficient, you had really low ferritin or you had low serum iron and you couldn't get it through your diet.

Like my point is, I don't really advocate iron supplements unless we just can't consume it.

We just can get it through the diet for whatever reason.

And if they're like a pescatarian or a vegan, for example.

That could be a reason.

That's a.

That's right.

Okay.

Yeah.

That could certainly be a reason because I don't,

I really don't have a whole lot lot of people where I'm like, man, let's just throw an iron supplement in there.

You know, because it's normally, because a lot of the time when you're iron deficient too, you figure if you have a gut issue, you want to really kind of fix the root of that problem anyhow or try to.

Right.

Right.

Yeah.

But yeah, certain dietary styles could be a problem for sure.

Okay.

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I think for this person,

first it's a genetic predisposition, of course, that they have anemia.

their mom has it but then unlike their mom they have this diet change where obviously they're not getting enough iron in their diet because of their diet stuff so um i think i recommended to also take this supplement that had vitamin c implemented in there with the iron for greater absorption

i believe it has helped i believe they have seen less constipation but

I don't know.

And it's hard.

I don't know.

Obviously, I like to be skeptical and it's hard for me to believe that I offered a

potential solution that just solved all the problems.

So I'm sure there's a lot of other places where this person can improve for sure.

So I think

what you said is something that I find interesting.

Like,

I guess maybe we should take a look at their ferritin, their alkaline phosphatase again.

But do you think that

proferrin is something that would be beneficial to them?

For them, probably.

I mean, for them, it might make sense just because of the dietary, the dietary thing.

And if they're genetically predisposed like there are some genetic forms of anemia where people they actually don't absorb iron well like it is a genetic issue where they they just cannot absorb iron the way that you and i can so even though you might

even though you might have sufficient dietary iron intake through your diet which they don't so they're already at a disadvantage but even if you did they may still end up having a deficiency I'd run into that more recently with somebody and we found out they they actually had a pretty rare genetic, uh, genetic issue.

It's like, man, what?

Like, this is so strange.

But long story short, that was a, it was purely a genetic thing.

Um, but you can also see,

you can also see it, and you said they're low, low red blood cells, but you also look at in the CBC, your complete blood count.

It's, I think that learning, first off, learning how to read a CBC is clutch because there's a lot of stuff in there that's really helpful.

So, don't just get focused on the hormones and the thyroid and all this this stuff.

Like, if you can read a CBC and a CMP, you're going to be able to do a lot of good stuff.

But

with that, you can also look below the red blood cells.

You have your hematic or hemoglobin, but then

you have things like MCV, mean corpuscle volume, or RDW, red cell distribution.

With this, these are like size and shape of the blood cells.

So what you'll see in a lot of people with deficiencies is those numbers will be off.

With iron, you might see a low MCV, low mean corpuscle volume because

the cell is like small, right?

It's shrunk.

It's,

you'll have microcytosis, where they're getting smaller, or macrocytosis would be they're getting bigger, right?

Um, so

those markers can be helpful, but if you want to just skip it all, just go right in, look at your iron, look at your ferritin,

and that's going to give you the most clear picture.

And there's, yes, there's other stuff.

You can look at like iron binding capacity, like how well is it binding and all that stuff.

But usually if those things are off, that is going to be secondary to, that's because of the deficiency.

Okay, gotcha.

So if,

would you think that the magnesium could be off at any point with this issue as well?

Do you think that could also contribute to these constipation issues?

For sure.

Yeah, it's one.

It's and like I said in that other case, which of course her alkaline phosphatase was like really, really low, but you will see magnesium, it's a pretty big driver of digestive motility.

So when you're thinking of digestive motility, it's not, it's not a, like a,

it can be related to the bacteria.

It can be related to the balance of bacteria, but digestive motility is also very largely nervous system related.

Like, you know, you, let's say you travel or something, you're stressed, you miss sleep, and like you can't, can't poop.

You know, like that is, that is, A, that's a circadian disruption because bowel movements are very circadian-based, which is why a lot of people, if you're on a good schedule, you kind of poop at the same time every day, usually, you know, probably in the morning or something like that.

But

also,

if you have a huge bowel of stress in there, then if you have that sympathetic nervous system drive, which of course slows down the parasympathetic rest and digest.

But minerals are important in there as well.

So that's why minerals, magnesium is an important one, and also sodium and potassium are important and hydration.

You know, we like, if you're dehydrated, you might get constipated.

You know, you'll have, there's not enough water in there to help you form, take the waste and the, and the water and form like a stool, you know, so hydration is important as well.

I think it's hard for some people to know when they have like a good balance of electrolytes in their system, though.

So I think most people just try to band-aid it by taking a, you know, a electrolyte supplement.

Yeah.

How do you know that?

And the problem with this too is like most electrolyte supplements, they're not in the same ratios.

You know, you have some, some, some that are just made to taste good and they have a low amount of sodium in them and then a high potassium, high everything else.

And then you have others like element that have like a whole gram.

Super high sodium.

A thousand, yeah, a gram of sodium.

I think, right?

Yeah, it's like

something like a thousand milligrams of sodium, but there's not a whole lot in the potassium side.

Yeah, and that's a, I love that you brought brought that up because I do, I don't know where this started happening, but everyone started like arbitrarily taking electrolyte supplements,

which are fine.

Like, I don't think the

thing about electrolytes is if you train hard and you, or you sweat, or you have muscle mass, like, dude, you could take.

You're going to need them.

Yeah, I mean, you can take an electrolyte supplement around training and you probably salt your meals and all that stuff.

And that's fine.

And you're not going to hurt anything.

You're probably only going to help.

But yeah, if I've, I've seen some some cases where people are you know slamming like two or three lm and t packs a day and salting all their meals and stuff but they're not eating any vegetables in their diet i'm like you're eating like no hardly any potassium in your diet so you you could create an imbalance your kidneys assuming your kidneys work the way they should i mean it should balance most of that out on its own like your body's not going to let you sit in that in that state for long you know it will balance it out on its own you You have,

and your adrenal glands, like you have aldosterone, right?

A lot of people familiar with aldosterone, if you know anything about like diuretics.

Everyone's favorite.

Oh, yeah.

You know stuff about diuretics, right?

So

your body will compensate for that, but there are cases that probably would warrant electrolytes.

For example,

let's say that

probably the most common case, now this is outside of just the basic stuff.

Like if you are otherwise healthy, you don't really have any digestive issues, and you salt your food and you eat fruits and vegetables in your diet, you're probably golden.

Probably fine.

If you want to add an electrolyte supplement around training and you get better pumps or you sweat a lot or you live in Texas or something, you train at Metroflex and you like,

it's cool.

It's probably going to help you.

And really, again, we go back to very high stress situations that could warrant changes in electrolytes.

So for example, the biggest one that I'll probably see is with the adrenal glands.

So, the adrenals are responsible for aldosterones up or down, right?

So, if we have high aldosterone, we're seeing sodium and water retention.

If we have low aldosterone, we're seeing

sodium and water excretion

and potassium retention, right?

And that's why people get in trouble with diuretics if they misuse them, right?

And then they restrict their water.

They'll use like a potassium-sparing sparing diuretic and then they restrict a bunch of water and

can be dangerous right so

but you again your body balances this stuff out pretty well but if your adrenals are

cooked like for example let's say

most people when you hear the word adrenals you think high cortisol you think like my i'm stressed you think my cortisol is really high but there's probably just as many people that have adrenals that are very suppressed that are they have very low cortisol also also

and those individuals don't hold on to sodium and water very well at all so they have a hard time getting a pump you know they but they like pee a lot they're thirsty if it's really bad they might even crave salt to some extent so you know are they normally dry like can you see a difference in their appearance

if normally dry in like their bowel movements or their physique Physique.

If anything.

Well, both, actually.

Well, I mean, short-term, short-term low aldosterone would probably make you look drier, but long-term, you would just look

flatter.

You know, because you know, if you, if you hang out there too long, you're probably just going to look kind of deflated and you can't get a good pump.

You know, you're not as full.

But if you are in that state, those people would benefit from a higher sodium intake.

Like they, they would be somebody that could

And again, I don't feel like I don't want to like throw numbers out there, but if they did a couple LMT packets a day or something, they would probably feel better and they'd probably get better pumps and they probably get better muscle contractions in the gym and stuff.

And you can check, I mean, you can check that stuff.

You can check cortisol, like your fasting cortisol levels in blood.

Is it the most accurate thing in the world?

No, because it's just

one,

just one number.

It's something, though.

Like, it is something.

You know, I, I, I use it.

so i i pretty much anytime i have people draw blood for the most part we'll have a cortisol on there and that's just because i figure hey we're already going in there we're already checking it might as well just add that on there it gives us some indicator so if you are going to do a morning cortisol on blood if you again it's not 100 accurate because you have this whole circadian rhythm where your cortisol varies throughout the day

But try to get your labs done within a couple hours of waking up.

The idea there would be you're trying to kind of catch your waking response in the morning where your cortisol is rising and getting you prepared for the day.

So you would try to get it within a couple hours at most.

If you go too long, that number has already dropped off.

So you're not going to get a good reading.

Be hydrated for the labs.

So you can still catch that in there.

If you're seeing a cortisol, if you're doing it early enough in the morning, you're seeing a cortisol that's like below, below 10, below,

I would say below 10 to 11 is kind of low end.

You're seeing like single digit numbers and you're feeling like shit.

You're really tired all the time.

You don't get good pumps in the gym, even if you're eating enough food offseason, your adrenals are probably hurting.

So it's still, it's still something.

And if it's bad enough, in fact,

if it is bad enough, you'll actually see it in the electrolytes.

Like, so when you look at that CMP on the labs and you look at that sodium and potassium reading, like by their GFR, by their kidney markers, you'll actually see people that have really suppressed adrenal function.

I, you'll even have people where their potassium flags high in the labs.

And the first thing the doctor's like, your kidneys, there's something wrong with your kidneys.

Then you look at their cortisol smash and they're super fatigued all the time, like, no, dude, your kidney markers actually look fine.

It's your adrenals, right?

Or on the flip side of that, their cortisol is super, super high.

And you see the sodium is like way up in the range, and the potassium is low in the range, right?

So, you can

it doesn't always manifest in one direction.

It's not like it's not like the electrolytes will always be flagged, the cortisol is not always flagged, but you can gain some insight

by looking at those things and then matching it up with their symptoms and how they feel, you know, because adrenal insufficiency is the term that we kind of use.

And again, that's not a medical diagnosis.

The real, the only real medical diagnosis would be Addison's disease, which is autoimmune disease more so, where they'll have, that's pretty dangerous disease, but you can still, with adrenal insufficiency,

you're going to feel like, you'll just feel like shit.

You know, you'll feel really shitty.

You'll have very low arousal, I think is a really good way to describe it.

It's not just being tired.

It's also like, it's also,

you, you can't, like, even if you go train, you can't even get stimulated by training.

Like you don't even get that, you know, you don't even get like that

rush where the adrenaline and the dopamine everything goes up in training you're just

flat you don't care

apathetic is the word you would use like completely just apathetic to everything

so not a good place to be not a fun not a good time

no yeah what would you recommend for someone if they are experiencing adrenal insufficiency or at least they suspect that they are like interesting compounds anything else I mean, interestingly enough, adrenal insufficiency and really high cortisol fixing it is

you essentially have to do the same thing, which is reduce, like from a lifestyle standpoint, you have to reduce stress load

one way or the other.

Now,

the difference probably is that

insufficiency normally is

anecdotally is normally the step after high.

Like it'll go, it'll go, it'll hang out high for a long time.

And then eventually the body can't keep up with the demands.

And then you crash out.

So you figure if you are to the point of insufficiency, you've probably been,

you've probably been hanging out pretty high for a long time.

Like you've been under chronic stress for a long period of time.

So

unfortunately, with insufficiency, that's not a case where it's not a case where you can probably just take some ashwagandha

and like call it a day.

You know, it's, it's probably not going to do it for you.

I mean, yeah, it might help, but realistically, you got to, you got to back the training off.

You got to figure out like, why, what is this driver?

I mean, what's your sleep?

Is it your sleep schedule?

Is it your training load?

And it's, it's going to have to be a case of longer term adjustments.

I know that's a really broad,

a really broad suggestion, but like, for example, I ran into that 2015, I want to say.

And this was when I got introduced to the, are you familiar with the Dutch test?

Have you heard of that test?

Yeah, so it's a Dutch test is a urine test that tests cortisol metabolites and hormones, tests all kinds of cool stuff.

But essentially, I was feeling all those things.

You know, I just like, dude, I, I can't,

I'm, I couldn't derive any joy from anything.

Just felt completely and utterly flat and spaced out, right?

So,

long story short,

this test was brand new at the time.

It was newer at the time.

So, I checked it.

My cortisol is crashed.

It's flat lined all day long, you know, garbage, whatever.

So,

for me in that situation, I actually had reduced my training volume by probably 25% and did everything around

six to seven out of 10 intensity.

And it took like four months of that to get it

to get it back up.

Now,

keep in mind, now keep in mind, that is, there's varying degrees of time.

Like I tell people, when you get in that point,

it can be a case you can fix it pretty quickly if you're willing to get in there and just do the work, you know, back off the stress load and just do it.

The problem I think that what happens to a lot of people when you're dealing with this or any health issue is mentally mentally, you fight the change.

You know, it's like the longer you fight, it's like the longer you fight the change, you are prolonging the inevitable, right?

You are prolonging something that you've, you have to do.

It's like, I mean, it's like, dude, you're having a,

you get really terrible labs back while you're, you know, on high dosages.

Like, you know, you got to stop.

It's like the longer you fucking prolong.

fixing it,

the worse it's going to get.

And the longer you're going to have to fix it later.

So it's like, pick your poison, man.

Fix it now, fix it later, take longer, take a shorter period now, or take a longer period later.

You know, so, um, that's so hard for a lot of us bodybuilders.

It's hard, man.

I don't discount that at all.

Like, I tell that the clients, I said, hey, man, it's not

if I could, if I could just, if I could fix this in a week, I, obviously, I would.

You know, obviously we would just do it.

But I think that for a lot of people, it's not even so much, even the ones that are pretty willing to make the lifestyle changes as far as like the training and fixing their sleep and stuff.

A lot of it's just that it's this that it's fighting them.

It's just because they're having a hard time mentally with the change.

So they for, I mean, for example, like if you, if you had to, if you had to make a big adjustment and you couldn't do exactly what you wanted to do, you would tend to fixate on that.

You know, it's, it's easy to fixate on that.

So what that's doing is it's constant mental stressors, right?

You're just constantly driving, driving it, driving it.

So if I told someone, hey, I want you to take, I want you to take five days out of the gym,

which could be a really long time for some people, right?

I don't really, I mean, five days out of the gym is a decent amount of time.

So if you had to do that,

but

you were at home and you were pacing around your house and like twiddling your thumbs and like, oh, I don't know what to do do five days out of the gym.

You're offsetting, you're like offsetting a lot of the benefit that you're getting from taking five days out of the gym by freaking out the whole time.

You know, so there it's like you have to, if you want to speed up a pro any process of healing, you just have to accept that this is what it is.

And the quicker I accept it, the quicker you'll be on the other side and it will pay off.

You will feel better.

You will perform better.

You will look better.

You will get better results.

So

it's difficult, man would you say that's a pretty good reason too for people to be a little bit conscious of uh their total allostatic load going on so like say that like i i'm like probably the easiest example i can think of um off the bat but like for example say that someone's like moving um and then say that they have like relationship stresses i don't have relationship stresses right now but just say that's like an additional thing um

and then say that like they also have a ton of workload that's on top.

I feel like all of these things kind of just add up to your psychological stress in ways that just drive people crazy, but then they don't really consider that in their training and their nutrition.

They don't.

Yeah, they're not

adjusting.

They're not adjusting the other variables around it.

Because when you think of the term,

I've always used this example of, you remember back in, in school, we had a pie chart, right?

And it was like a graph.

You got percentages, different pieces of the pie.

Like Like, if you had a pie chart, 100% of the pie, that is the stress load that you have to work with.

That is your personal capabilities, right?

What your body can handle until it breaks down, you know?

So, if

some of that pie is training, you don't have very good sleep.

So, that takes up kind of a big chunk of the pie because your sleep's not good.

And then you have relationship stress, that's another big chunk of the pie, or you're moving and you've got crazy workload.

How much pie is left to train

not that much you know so it's like do you have to stop training no

no

i'm i'm not advocating that but you have to realize that there has to be potentially an adjustment in the training right and in because your recovery capabilities and it's not just your muscle like a lot of people they get They're like, well, I'm eating enough protein, you know, I'm doing all these things.

And dude, you could eat enough protein.

You can even sleep eight hours a night and still your body could be way too stressed, you know,

because you have all of these other things that are coming in to your, you know, to your stress load or to your allostatic load.

But the one that, the one that really is hard for people is psychological stress.

Why?

Because you can't quantify it.

Yeah, you can't quantify it, right?

You can quantify training.

You can quantify, like, I'm doing this much.

Well, that's pretty, I mean, that's a pretty easy thing to quantify.

It's also an easy thing to adjust up and down.

So for, if you're, you know, if you're coaching someone or, or you're coaching yourself or whatever, and you're like, how can I immediately reduce stress?

That is a quantifiable variable.

Psychological stress isn't because the unfortunate thing about life stress is A,

you can't really get rid of life stress.

I mean, you can try to get toxic shit out of your life.

You can try to get rid of some stuff.

You're not going to be moving all the time.

That's a temporary thing, obviously.

But the reality is that for some people if they own a business or they have high workload or they have family or they have relationships like those things will always be there you know so

you have to adjust your you know your training around those things because doing more is probably going to get you worse results in the long run so you have like how much can i do

But the thing that I think the thing that beyond training is really just the perception piece.

And this is where, this is where really, the really good stuff happens, but this is the hardest part is for me, like for me personally,

I do it, my workload is always crazy.

It's get up

first thing I do, you know, or time I get up, time I go to bed, like basically every day, you know, pretty much.

We're always doing stuff.

And then if I'm not doing that, I have, have other, you know, responsibilities for family and things like that.

So there's always something there.

So like, what am I going to do man i can't you know what i mean like i can't get rid of it i have i have adjusted my training to

what i can recover from and what i can progress with so i've already done that but the biggest thing for me and the biggest thing for most people is really just adjusting your your perception to what stress is some of that's just life experience you know like If you took your workload now and you gave that to yourself right at the beginning when you started your podcast and started bodybuilding, it would probably you'd crumble, you know, but you've adjusted to it over time, right?

Like, what used to be a 10 is now a two on your scale.

So, I think simply just because of habits, right?

When they become habits and you get used to them, it's no longer a thing that's like taking up your conscious mind, yeah.

And that can be good and bad.

I think that's good in the sense that you

getting used to something is good, but getting used to something could be bad because you might unconsciously be way more, way more stressed than you realize.

But I do genuinely think that people can adjust their

over time.

And again, no one's perfect at this, but you can adjust just how you view things.

I think that

maybe you can't do it by yourself, man.

Maybe you need a partner, a friend, your girlfriend, your boyfriend, your husband, your wife.

Maybe it's a therapist.

What is it?

Because

a lot of the time people can, they are reacting poorly.

They're very negative.

They, they hang around with people, and all you do is just commiserate with each other.

Like, it's just like all negative gossip and just shit all the time, or all that they consume on social media is just,

you know, garbage and negativity and stuff.

I'm like, man,

if you, if you could set yourself up a little bit better environment and not just consume and output so much negativity constantly, you think if you did that, if you could reduce that by 5%,

but do that every day,

that adds up.

That's hugely beneficial.

So, I mean,

that's really been my biggest goal with myself and with clients is like just being a little more conscious of your attitude and how you feel and how you react to certain things and who you're around.

And what conversations are you having?

If you find you and your buddies are sitting around, you can gossip.

You can, you know, you can talk some shit here and there.

Cool, that's fine.

But if it's just constant chaos and constant negativity about everything and all you're doing is consuming gossip and garbage, dude, you could probably train, you could probably train more and get better results if you just didn't fill yourself with all that crap.

You know,

like that's allostatic load.

Like that's psychological allostatic load over time, but that's hard.

That is hard to do.

You're getting into like, you're getting into something that is hard because it's habitual.

It's bad habits.

It's habitual.

It's like how you were raised, you know, who you hung out with, how, what, I mean, that's, that's a whole can of worms to get into.

It is.

I've been training for over 15 years now and I was too lazy to track anything training wise for about the first 10 years because science-based training is for pussies.

But I kept hitting plateaus from burnout, fatigue, joint issues, and injuries, and other factors that at the time I didn't really fully understand, realizing not everyone is built to handle the intense, insane workload and injury resilience as Tom Platts and Ronnie Coleman, Sadface.

I wanted to speedrun that shit, but the reality is dudes that have always known their body best are the ones that have been lifting for at least a decade.

Shit takes a long ass time to figure out.

I started tracking all my training on the notes app on iPhone because I don't know what paper is.

Until recently, I started using the RP Hypertrophy app.

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It'll basis this on your pump, how fatigued you feel, how your joints feel, and more.

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None of which I took into account in college because the only accounting I did was counting how many dumpies were in my class.

Look, there's a titty.

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You can just hoist heavy steel and track it because we all know that the people who say that they remember their weight sets and reps every week are full of shit.

IMO, there's a sort of middle ground where you track your progress and make sure all the variables are right in your food, sleep, gear, progressive overload and then you go to the gym and slam those heavy PRs until your blood pressure is higher than Miley Cyrus.

If you're still unsure they've got a 30-day money back guarantee so if you still don't like it and it gives you a bad tan you can get your money back that way when you compete at your next show your tan doesn't cost you the first place that you so well deserve so go to the link in the description below or you go to rpstrength.com slash nihil and use code nile at checkout that's rpstrength.com slash nile code nile at checkout i used to uh stand up during my video call podcast too but then i was like fuck that yeah i the people

the people that I do a lot of calls and like,

you know, getting like steps and shit.

And they're like, why don't you get a walking pad and just walk on our calls?

I'm like, dude, I can't do that.

I can't.

I'll get my steps in somewhere else.

I'm not going to sit here and walk the whole time that I'm trying to talk.

Well, you're trying to talk to someone.

Plus, it's also, plus, it's also

kind of distracting.

Yeah.

You know,

funny.

Have you seen any digestive issues with any new compounds or peptides?

Like SLUPP 532 or MOTC?

Any from consuming them, from taking them?

Yeah.

So

I don't have as much experience with the SLUP

yet.

Get back to you on that one.

So far, no.

Okay.

Yeah, so far, no.

That one's still a little bit newer.

Gotcha.

So

I don't have enough anecdotal data to say one way or the other.

MOT C,

no, not that I've noticed.

Nothing, nothing really like on the mitochondrial, like mitochondrial peptides and some of the stuff that's kind of hot right now.

You know,

I haven't really seen anything too crazy there.

I think that if anything, you'd hypothetically, you'd probably see an improvement in

digestion, at least indirectly, with improved mitochondrial function.

I mean, there's a lot of, I know that's like a super hot, hot topic right now.

There's a lot of stuff.

Yeah.

A lot of stuff people are dabbing with that.

Methylene blue, the, you know, all kinds of,

all kinds of stuff going on there.

Yeah.

So I'm still,

I, I will, I'll have enough, enough data eventually to figure it out.

Okay.

I'm intrigued.

We're going to have to see in touch, bro.

Not for my personal use or anything.

What about digestive issues and stress issues issues that you might have seen with glp ones like semaglutide yeah for sure so that i mean that one seems pretty obvious right the uh yeah the glp ones are glp1s are interesting because i mean a lot of most people know how they work by now i mean a lot of what they're doing is slowing gastric motility so you're less hungry right so

what it's a i mean it it's a pretty pretty direct mechanism that's going to make you less hungry and in turn probably want to consume less less calories.

I mean, there are some other things that it, that they do potentially with inflammation reduction, insulin, insulin secretion, you know, blood glucose balance, stuff like that.

The thing about GLP-1s

that I think is,

this is where I think people go wrong is, and I don't know where this came from initially.

And I know GLP-1s, from my understanding, were originally a diabetic drug,

but I don't know really where the idea of just continuing to titrate doses came from.

So, somewhere down the line, when people were using these, or maybe it was a doctor's prescription or the clinics and things that were prescribing them, I'm not exactly sure.

But people would start at a very low dose and they would just continue to titrate up, right?

So,

obviously,

you get into higher dosages.

I mean, eventually, there's going to be a point where it's going to slow gastric emptying so much that you're going to potentially run into some

GI issues.

Right.

Now, I think I will say this.

I'm not pro-GLP1.

I am not anti-GLP1.

I am like, if it makes sense, there's probably

a select context where it probably

hypothetically will help people.

I do think that for some people, especially really overweight people or maybe in prep, maybe certain scenarios, again, I'm not advocating these things, but they would be quiet some of that food noise, you know, take the edge off of some of that food noise, the craving.

The stress that comes from just trying to diet with that.

But kind of just turning, like turning that dial down a little bit where you're focused on that stuff,

I could see some efficacy there.

Now, unfortunately, in like in prep situation, you're already dealing with high stress situation, which probably slows your motility down anyhow.

You know, the reason that you're hungry in prep, it has nothing to do with motility.

It has to do with A, you have low body fat, and B, you're not eating that much.

So being fucking starving.

Like, right, it's not, it's completely unrelated to motility because you could be, you could be totally stressed out and constipated in prep and still be hungry, you know?

So, completely unrelated.

So, I think that if you were to utilize something like that, you would just have to be careful in how high the doses go.

You know, if you, again, like,

in theory, if you were to dose it in a way that could

turn that dial down, that food noise dial down a little bit, but not slow your motility down so much to where you were having stomach issues, it could be a pretty effective strategy.

It's just that almost most of the issues that you see with people are the doses are way too high.

Or I'm saying, I don't say way too high.

They're too high for that individual.

They kept titrating up and up and up, or they already had digestive

you know, prior.

Prior.

And then it slows it down.

Cause you've heard some,

I'm sure people have heard some horror stories with those drugs and some of the things digestive-wise.

I mean, I know I've gotten, and I'm sure I'll get more because people have been using them longer.

Some of those issues with people coming in, and

but inevitably, they're almost always on higher doses.

Like, I've very rarely seen somebody

very rarely seen someone have those same issues on low dosages.

Yeah.

That's what I was going to mention.

Because I wanted to, I was curious if you've had any like specific circumstances.

Because honestly, in my experience, I've only heard from a few people that I've used it a couple during prep and they decided to leverage lower doses, knowing the same thing that you did.

And no one had, none of them had any issues.

So I'm curious about what you've seen anecdotally.

Yeah, there's there

and in each in each like new rendition of the drug, you know, you had semagglutide and trizepatide and we keep like evolving into these different,

slightly different variations where they have a GLP1 and then maybe also like GIP, I think, like different, they're adding additional mechanisms or changing something because like, well, semaglutide causes all these, all these issues, so they switch to something else, you know, blah, blah, blah.

But a lot of it, again, is just because dose is the poison.

I mean, that's really what it boils down to.

I mean, I have seen, I have seen people do perfectly fine on low doses of GLPs

for, you know, again, for, for helping with hunger and prep or for another, another very select scenario where it could potentially be useful.

And again, these are pretty like context-based scenarios.

If someone's really obese,

The interesting thing about obesity, if you got, you know, if anyone here works with like really overweight clients, again, I don't think you need to throw that at them initially because there's probably a lot of lifestyle changes that there's probably a reason you're obese, you know?

So maybe think about that first.

But

I think unfortunately with obesity, you start to get to this scenario where you're, you get very leptin resistant, hunger signaling is thrown off because of that.

Like, remember, I mentioned at the beginning, you get to that point in offseason where you don't really want to eat anymore.

Like, you're just not hungry.

Isn't it interesting now?

Yeah, and me too.

It's interesting with obesity, though.

You know, everyone knows the show, My 600 Pound Life, right?

Seen the show.

They've seen all the memes and stuff and the videos and the reels.

How could you be that big and be hungry still?

Like, doesn't that seem counterintuitive to us where it's like, man, I couldn't even imagine eating food if I'm.

If I'm just like cramming this stuff down all the time, how am I still hungry?

Right.

And a lot of people.

I know there's other reasons, but I feel like the first thing that comes to many people's mind is like PDs, maybe.

Well, I don't think, I really don't.

I think a lot of it, again, has to do with your body.

Your body is pretty good at protecting itself from a hunger, you know, from a hunger standpoint.

If you don't eat enough and you're low body fat, you're not, you're going to get very hungry.

If you eat a ton of food and you're trying to like push your body weight up and get big, your body's like, bro, no, we don't want to do this.

Hunger done.

Until you're eating all the processed foods.

Yeah, and it shuts.

Right.

And so we do things to try to compensate for it you know change food sources some people might take you know take certain peptides or whatever right but ultimately your body is still trying to protect itself but with obesity if you get to this point of leptin resistance where leptin levels go up when you get fatter

and eat more But when you become resistant to leptin, it's it's like it's there,

but it's your body's not using it very well.

So this hunger is still thrown off.

So now you're fat and hungry.

And that's not a good place to be.

Like that's a really,

and ghrelin levels are off there as well.

But like that is not a good scenario to be in.

You know, so that's why for some people, and I feel, I mean, and honestly, a lot of people say, like, man, it's, it's a choice.

It's a choice.

Like, listen, it is a choice.

First off, like, there's, there's genetic things and there's predispositions and there's a lot of stuff like genetic variants.

I get that.

But it's still, you still don't get there by mistake.

However, I don't think a lot of people fully understand how difficult it would be if you were that big and hungry all the time.

You know, like, man, that would be really tough.

Like, think about prep hunger.

Maybe it's not that bad.

I don't know.

I've never experienced it.

But if you felt like that and you were just really morbidly obese, like, dude, how hard would it be to push yourself to lose weight?

It's fucking hard.

That would be so hard.

so yeah i could i could see in a scenario like that potentially where something like a glp could be a way to bridge that gap to get you gotcha to get that get that ball in motion and quiet some of that food noise and actually just help with adherence man you know just help with like basic adherence to a diet long enough to where you can get to a decent body weight and maybe you don't have to use it anymore but right unfortunately in general populations out because we're you know we're talking about like prep scenarios scenarios, which those are short term, but in general populations, I, they probably just don't establish the lifestyle stuff that they need.

So then they stop the GLP, they regain all the weight, on and on you go.

The cycle repeats itself.

I mean, that's this

every everything we know about weight loss statistics pretty much shows the amount of people that lose weight is decent, but the amount of people that keep weight off is not good.

Weight regain.

You mean

in what sense, like if they were doing what protocol?

I mean, like if you were talking, like a general, not a bodybuilder, like just a general population person, like they,

the, the statistics on weight regain after people lose weight, most people gain it back.

You know, that's just the stats show it.

I mean, the numbers are there.

So I thought you started referring to if they were using GLP1s as well, but you just simply mean.

Well, and I guess my point there is if they were using the GLP-1

and they didn't really establish good lifestyle habits in the process, I would say they would, if they came off, they would probably just be susceptible to gaining it back again anyhow.

Right.

You know, I mean, unless they just took the drug the rest of their life, I guess.

Yeah, that's what I would think so, too.

I don't have enough data on that, but that's what I would, I mean, it's so easy for us to assume that.

Well, given the circumstances.

I know that.

I know that a few years ago when those started to come in, I said, just wait, give us like two to three years.

There's going to be some rebounds from hell.

There's going to be some gnarly rebounds going on.

I think at this point, most of these people are probably just going to take it for forever, honestly.

And maybe.

Kind of like a lot of people who do the rec drugs.

Yeah.

And maybe, and maybe that is the case.

I don't know what the long-term, you know, what the long-term data, safety data is on that stuff.

I mean, there's been some other concerns that have popped up with

those drugs.

I don't really know.

I mean, diabetics, I mean, do they take them forever maybe i'm not sure i really don't know yeah maybe they do i mean

maybe at the doses that we were talking about prior at the low dose or whatever dose that's actually beneficial for them not like how many doctors are kind of prescribing overdoses to people in terms of all types of medications including adderall yeah it's uh unfortunately it's it was a big money you know it was a big money grab

Yeah, big money grab, man.

I mean, you feel, I knew it was, I knew it was becoming a problem when you were seeing like all these boutique clinics and stuff prescribing.

I'm like, dude, you're, you do Botox, stick to Botox.

You don't need to be prescribing this shit to people.

You don't,

you know, HRT was the same thing, man.

HRT was the same exact way.

You saw these like pop-up clinics and stuff that were doing cosmetic, you know, doing cosmetic stuff.

And I'm like,

what qualifications do you what maybe you, maybe you can prescribe that is your qualification is you have a, you have a pen and a pad, but and so like what experience and real qualifications do you have to be doing this to people's hormones?

Like you you do lip filler, you know, stick to that.

The lip filler is crazy.

I'm not not, I'm not even knocking any of it.

I'm just saying like stay in your lane, you know, I mean, like, this is just because you can prescribe stuff, and I get it, it was a money grab, dude, because everyone wanted the shit.

Right, right.

It's like, look i'm all in for

i'm all in for informing people of things that can benefit them for sure because i was always kind of against the whole glp one uh route when related to bodybuilding partly because of the slowing of your digestive system that being such an important factor for us but also

Like, you know, it's kind of hard for bodybuilders to suddenly grasp the concept that holy shit.

Now there's this drug that just makes it easy when like a huge massive part of it was just starving ourselves to death

so yeah

it's uh

it's definitely it's definitely a weird it almost feels it almost feels wrong in a way you're like it feels wrong yeah it does now i don't know that it's any different i don't think it's any different than any the evolution of any other sport though i mean if you look

if you think about like any pro pro athlete I mean, in the 80s, were pro athletes getting, did they have nutritionists?

Were they getting in hyperbaric chambers and getting massage, deep tissue massage?

And God knows what else, like getting PRP and stem cells.

And they're like, I really doubt it.

You know, it's just, it's just the evolution of anything.

So

I don't think that utilizing the tools that you have available to you makes it wrong or bad or a cop-out, but

there's not, there's no free lunches still.

You know, you just have to understand that these things can help in small amounts.

You know, if you get too greedy with anything,

there will be issues.

I think that's the thing I do like about the idea of the low dose of taking a low dose GLP1

is,

I think, things like regulating blood sugar

and insulin resistance, which I think is a huge problem for a lot of bodybuilders in the first place.

So, I mean, there's an assortment of these things that just seem like they could be big benefits for bodybuilders, but obviously, if they take the right dose, which is already a problem that most bodybuilders have, yeah,

doses.

If this much, it's the idea, if this much works this good, then more will work better.

Yeah, like anything, like anything else.

Um, but yeah, our just our awareness of everything is, is,

is better.

Um, I mean, we have better, we have better support supplements, we have better over-the-counter supports, we have more knowledge of that stuff.

I mean, we have, we just have more of everything at our disposal.

And

I do, I will say this, though, I do think that there is an element of, to your point where you said it almost feels like cheating.

I think that there is an element of

if

things get too easy, and I'm not saying I don't think that makes things too easy, maybe easier.

But at what point, if things get too easy, does it actually end up degrading the quality of some of the competition?

Like, does that

does does it,

does it make us worse in the sense that things get too convenient and people get too lazy at a point?

Like, does that become a thing eventually?

You know, do they, do people just start relying on things too much?

It's always something that I've kind of battled with.

And I was talking to someone today about

on one of my calls about conveniences.

We're like, you know, now we get, we can get our groceries delivered.

We can have somebody our lawn.

You know, like, we don't, if you're busy and you want to allocate work, you don't have to do anything.

You can just do what you got to do and you can have everything else can be done.

But at what point does that

maybe,

maybe

make you kind of lose touch with the process and actually feeling something and like working hard?

I mean, I don't know.

Maybe it won't, but I could, I feel like at a point, it could eventually go the wrong direction.

I agree.

I think it depends on the person for sure.

For for sure 100

i agree with that just kind of how um i think

addiction right can also vary so greatly uh yeah

all right i want to do this q a real quick too before i leave and roll

because

i finally got a second episode with you and uh if you leave me now then

a little more brain power then I'm never talking to you ever again.

All right.

So there was someone in that someone in the episode that I had with Kyle and Jared that commented, that commented asking for some input or some advice.

So

this person was from Ashley Kettle, and he or she said, I've been having digestive issues for a while, eventually leading to me developing an autoimmune condition.

Jared talking about the effect that digestive problems has on mood definitely explains a lot.

I'm like a different person now in the last couple of years, way quicker to stress out, which ironically makes it worse.

Anybody have any thoughts or solutions they know of?

Yeah, the autoimmune thing is, so when you look at digestive issues, there's two,

there's, there's kind of two things that start to go

wrong in a sense when you have them long-term.

Create a lot of inflammation.

Your immune system has to react to the problem, right?

So immune system is reacting to the damage, essentially.

So you have a number of things going on there.

So you have various white blood cells, neutrophils, lymphocytes.

There's a lot of stuff that's coming in to

heal it, you know.

So you can,

when that, when that immune system is overly stimulated, some people do develop some autoimmune conditions over time.

So, like, for example, most of your individuals with common autoimmune issues, so like Hashimoto, you know, Hashimoto's hypothyroid,

almost every one of those people probably has or had a gut problem.

Not all, all, but most of them, right?

Or other common autoimmune issues, autoimmunity can manifest in a lot of ways.

It could be like chronic skin issues, it could be, you know, eczema, psoriasis, joint pain, you know, rheumatoid, like rheumatoid arthritic, arthritic type symptoms, you know, chronic joint pain throughout your body, stuff like that.

So, because that's the immune system has been dysregulated over time.

So, as far as

I mean, as far as fixing that goes,

you don't necessarily want to think of it.

I mean, mean, is there a bacterial issue?

Probably.

But I would still go in first, like we said earlier, still cover the nutrient deficiencies.

Again, like you, you have to fix that.

You have to start there.

Secondly, is focus, if you're looking at supplementation, focusing more on inflammation support and focusing more on the immune system.

before you start getting into worrying about, do I have like SIBO or small intestine bacterial overgrowth and stuff like that.

Don't like, don't look at that.

That's not the first thing I want to look at.

I want to regulate the system first.

So

there are some over-the-counter things and there's also some fringe, we'll call them like fringe things.

I'll start with the fringe things first because people love fringe.

People love the gray area stuff.

So in autoimmunity or in really severe like inflammatory bowel disease and things like that, those are potentially individuals that can benefit from some of the like peptide therapies like oral bpc peptides kpv ghk copper peptide like some of those things that are a little more pharyn area um i have a really stupid question how would you know if you might have uh inflammatory bowel disease so i bd i mean if you did a

i mean a doc a doctor or a gastro doctor could diagnose with it i mean they would they would do a colonoscopy and they would look but

and they would see you know damage in the lower gi tract but i mean you don't have to do that necessarily.

You could also, like I use GI Maps, diagnostic solution, GI Map, and you can see things on there, like high inflammatory markers, high secretory IgA immune markers.

I mean, you can see it,

blood, calper, like occult blood, like blood on the stool, things like that.

I mean, you can see those things.

Normally, people with IBD usually have more issues with loose stools.

a lot of the time, reactive stools where they eat and they have to like run to the bathroom and like

have diarrhea that type of thing

so you

I mean there's there's definitely things you can see I mean but again you can go to a doctor they can they can diagnose you with that stuff doctors will normally prescribe so with IBD a lot of doctors will prescribe two things

pretnisone or corticosteroid they'll want to bring the inflammation down corticosteroids are not good I'm not a doctor, but I'm just saying they're not, that's not something you want to have deal with very much.

um

and they may if it's bad enough they may prescribe an immune suppressant type of drug where it's calming down that immune response i'm not advocating people take these things again like there are people that probably have to have them initially because it's so bad like they're in the middle of a flare and they have to like go to the hospital that type of thing where it's really severe But for most of the people that are listening, that are just dealing with something on the side,

probably not.

But

yeah, so some of those like fringe area peptides and stuff, there's a brand,

there's a couple brands out there.

There's one out of Australia that's pretty good, level up.

It's LVL up, and they have something called Ultimate GI Repair.

Maybe people maybe seen that floating around.

That has oral BPC arginate salt version, I believe, has

APV,

lorazetide.

I believe it has GHK copper peptide.

There's a

few other things in there.

So these will heal.

These will help heal the inflammation, regulate the immune system, heal up the junctures in the gut.

So kind of like fix that leaky gut type of scenario going on.

So those are good healing things.

All your over-the-counter anti-inflammatory stuff is helpful.

High-dose curcumin, Auswalia,

PEA is another good one.

I can't say that.

That's another good one.

I'm going to give a shameless plug for me on this one is I have a the company that I formulate for, we have a product called Heal Factor from Pure Factor Formulations.

And like, basically, that is what that product is designed for is autoimmunity and those types of IBD issues.

So we've,

we've formulated all that stuff in there.

So you can.

Yeah, shameless, for sure.

Shameful, maybe.

But we, uh,

but you can insert, I mean, that's kind of a baseline defense on that stuff.

So like before you start focusing on taking antimicrobials and things like that, focus on inflammation, focus on the immune system.

Diet, nutrition is huge here.

Again, if you are that person that has really poor diversity in your diet, you got to work on that because what happens over time with that is the good, the good bacteria or the commensal bacteria in the gut, if your dietary choices are very, very slim, that diversity narrows and narrows and narrows and narrows, right?

Because

you're not feeding that bacteria.

So the problem with that is

that good bacteria is your host defense system.

Like that is the system in the gut that helps fix the problems, essentially.

Okay.

So diversify.

What are the, what kind of fruits and vegetables would you recommend the most for bodybuilders to eat?

Because I know a lot of bodybuilders have trouble eating that in the first place.

Especially vegetables like cruciferous vegetables.

You know, most of us don't even want to touch those.

Fruits are usually a little bit easier if you're trying to start to diversify.

Veggies can be a little more temperamental if you're having gut issues.

Like carciferous veggies are tough.

I don't, I wouldn't even bother.

Like, don't even worry about,

there's nothing wrong with broccoli, it's great, it has a lot of nutrition, right?

There's a lot of nutrients, but if you're having gut issues, you're going to have a hard time pounding down some broccoli.

Oh, for sure.

You can probably stick to more

to like less,

uh less what what's the word i would look for like less dense vegetables um less histamine uh containing vegetables cucumbers zucchini maybe like carrots are really easy one that are soft and most people can digest pretty well red like bell peppers some people can do okay

but i like to leverage the fruits a little bit more people tolerate them better i do too People, I know people, you don't have to go too far off in the weeds.

Like people want to think like low FODMAP fruits and high FODMAP, like, dude, if you're not eating any of that stuff, if you barely eat any fruit, don't even worry about that at first.

The main thing you want to worry about is amounts.

Because if you told me, if you said, hey, Austin, I can't eat, if I eat a banana, it upsets my stomach.

I said, okay, but you could eat this much of a banana, right?

Perfect.

So just start introducing things slowly.

I mean, you could eat 20 grams of blueberries.

You could eat 20 grams of strawberries.

You could eat a little bit of an apple or an orange.

So just start with one serving.

Dude, start with one serving a day.

If you tolerate that for the first week, go to two servings a day.

Then go to three servings a day.

Like get that up to, you know, get that up to the point where you're eating three, four, five reasonable size servings.

But if you titrate that up over the course of several weeks, you'll slowly repopulate.

you know you're repopulating all that good bacteria in the gut and it's not going to upset your stomach if you just say if I just came in and said, hey, Niall, I don't ever eat any, I don't ever eat any fruits.

And you're like, yeah, dude, we're going to start with two apples a day, a banana, an orange, and some blueberries.

I'd be like, oh, dude, I'm going to be wrecked.

And I probably would be, you know?

So you can slowly reintroduce stuff over time and you'll tolerate it and it'll it'll slowly diversify that microbiome.

So cool.

That's super important.

What about like dark leafy greens, like spinach?

So people,

I like, so I think that spinach and kale are fine.

I think, you know, some people, they contain a lot of oxalates.

Some people don't do well with those.

The one thing, and I think kale tastes gross.

I think it's disgusting.

But

I don't know.

People, some people like kale, but

kale tastes gross.

One thing, one thing that's that can be helpful is

if you are someone, maybe you just don't like this stuff.

Maybe like, I don't really like fruits and veggies.

Okay.

So what if you

have your whole food meals?

What if you have a couple smoothie meals a day?

You know, blend that shit up.

You're not going to really lose much of the nutrition or any by blending it and it will taste fine.

And

you can hide some of that stuff in a smoothie with some whey isolate that's vanilla, you know, or something like that.

For sure.

Yeah, and you'll be fine.

You'll be fine with that.

But the whole point, like the bottom line there is just reintroduce slowly.

But like

when it comes to vegetables, though, you would want a variety of vegetables, right?

I mean, even if we were reintroducing slowly, but

you wouldn't recommend something like someone if they only, if they liked doing like dark leafy greens because they were small and thin and easier to eat.

And, you know, like you wouldn't recommend only having those, right?

So when you think of variety, you don't need, you don't necessarily need 25 different fruits and veggies on tap, you know, but I think a really easy way to do it is this.

A lot of people like to pre, if they, let's say they like pre-planned meals, fine.

They eat three days at a time or a week.

I don't know.

I don't know if many people do a week.

Some people do, but a few days at a time.

Like, why don't you just think every time you go to the grocery store or every time you order groceries to your house from Instacart or whatever, you

just try one new thing.

You know, you did spinach one week.

Cool.

I'm going to do kale the next week, or I'm going to do green beans the next week, or I'm going to do, I don't know, like zucchini or cucumber, whatever.

Just start rotating stuff.

And I think that's an easy way to,

that's an easy way to make it convenient.

And it's an easy thing to remember is just try one or two new things when you rotate it in.

If you're, if you're like eating a macro plan from your coach or something, that's easy.

If it's a meal plan, then you know, talk to your coach about it.

But I'm sure that you can probably, it's going to be a pretty close exchange with most of that stuff.

So

I just, I just think that you don't have to get too mixed up in this idea of I've got to rotate every day or I have to have six different types every day or something.

I think that's just

what you're probably going to do is get stressed out trying to figure out how to eat six different types of vegetables every day.

Right.

And then Ashley Kettle said that they'd also, they'd be interested in knowing the digestive, the role that digestive health has on hypertrophy and mood in general, really.

Just a very interesting topic because they feel that they're basically screwed when it comes to being in a surplus of food now, as that puts more stress on their digestive system.

But what could they do to mitigate the effects and continue to lift with the intention of putting on muscle?

Well,

being in a calorie surplus long-term is hard on your digestion, even with good digestion.

We know that.

It's just

again, like the limitations on that.

But

by

when you go into a surplus and the food starts getting higher, what's one of the first things that happens?

Vegetables are out, fruits are out, save more room for rice,

you know?

Yeah, Frank, I get it.

I mean, I know how it goes.

So I think that, you know, I think that making it a, making it a point to keeping a little bit of that in the diet, even if it is the smoothie, right?

Even if it is like, I'm going to blend it, hey, that's better than not.

Dude, even if it's,

even if it's like those organic fruit puree packets where you can get two or three different fruits in there and you squeeze it back and it's like, I'm done.

You know, that's probably more, you do three or four of those a day, dude.

I mean, I use those during the offseason a lot because guess what?

I'm not going to, I don't have room in my stomach where am I going to have, you know, the even mental capacity to sit there and just eat a pound of strawberries every day.

Is that not considered like, is that not considered processed in a way that will

just, I mean, sure, it's processed.

It's pureed, but i i really if you're going to do stuff like that really try to lean on the ones that are that are just fruit that are just fruit puree then nothing else added you know okay it's just fruit pureed it's all it is you know it's nothing nothing special i mean the only thing you really are probably going to lose in that sense is you might lose some of the fibers fiber yeah you might lose a little bit of the fiber from like the peel or the or the the

like the skin of the fruit potentially depending on what they're fructose without fiber yeah Now, a lot of them will still have some fiber in them, but of course you might lose some of that.

But yeah, in the offseason, I mean, it's still important, but you might have to shift towards, again, you might have to shift towards vegetables that are even shift towards veggies that are a little higher,

a little higher calorie count per volume.

Like zucchini, for example, that's a really good one in prep because zucchini is super low carb and you can eat a lot of volume and it digests really easy.

But think of something like, what is like, what's a fruit instead of blueberries?

I mean, those are great, but what's a fruit that you could eat in the offseason that's actually going to bolster your carb count while still getting you nutrients?

Well, a banana, you know, bananas will probably be a lot more than an apple.

You know, it's like you could eat probably per weight, it's going to be more carbohydrates, right?

So you can still get those macros in and get those carbs in.

So you might know that just like anything else, just like in prep, you probably shift away from eating stuff that is really low, you know, really low volume because you want the high volume foods to fill you up.

So, quite the opposite in the offseason is you're trying to get the fruits and veggies, like shift towards stuff that's a little more

calorically dense.

Yeah, gotcha.

The same deal.

Cool.

Let's finish off this last topic real quick before you

have to leave.

How much time do you have left?

No, you're good.

You got it.

You go for it.

Okay.

Cool, cool, cool.

So we kind of mentioned this in the other podcast, but very briefly.

But for women, for example, utilizing other non-androgenic methods in order for them to i guess overall reduce risk of viralization right um and i think a couple of these that you

that you mentioned were for example gh and insulin like leveraging these over actual more androgenic compounds um

i guess what is your experience with this in improving, I guess, the outcome that we're all, that, that many of us are looking for?

Like if you're a woman, reducing viralization, if you're a man, reducing

side effects associated with these androgenic compounds, whether or not they be physical, whether or not they be cosmetic or,

you know, seen in our blood work or in our the health of our organs.

Yeah, it's not that, it's not that, I mean, we know growth hormone has, you know, raised your blood sugar potentially.

There's the debate of

there's the debate of growth hormone potentially having systemic effects on growing other tissues and stuff in the body.

Like, is that it probably, probably at some point, you know, with enough exposure.

I mean, with women, with women, I mean, the dosages are generally lower of everything anyhow.

So it's lessly like of it, likely less of an issue.

But I think that people, GH and insulin work very much the same in women as they do men from a mechanistic standpoint.

It's like, why would a man use that stuff?

Well, we have this idea of like, you know, the the safer use model, things that people are promoting now,

which to me, that whole idea of a safer use model would be using multiple mechanisms to accomplish a goal instead of cramming the square peg into the round hole by just increasing the androgens.

You know, so

yeah, growth hormone with women would be effective just like it would be with men.

When we're getting an increase in IGF-1,

we can facilitate that further with our insulin, or we can control blood sugar levels better

with insulin if the food's getting higher.

So,

I don't see a reason that women couldn't leverage that just as much as men, really.

I think that that's hugely important.

Plus, I think that too,

there's this stigma,

less so now, but there was a huge stigma around insulin for a really long time.

And I think that

I can see why

but I also think that the problem with insulin is that and I hope people aren't doing this as much now but using insulin is not a reason to eat way over your caloric

you know in a giant caloric surplus I mean you're still

you're still eating in a giant caloric surplus is still going to be problematic it's like you should really just be using insulin to support your blood sugar levels of what you're already eating essentially.

You know, it's like you, the thing about the thing about insulin is there was a lot of concern with

you're going to overdose on insulin or you're going to

cause yourself to go hypoglycemic.

And I'm like, okay, yes.

However, you can only take as much insulin as you have glucose in your bloodstream, or you will go hypoglycemic.

So

you match your insulin needs to what you're consuming and what your glucose levels are, and you will be fine.

You know, so it's like

don't match the food to the dose, match the dose to the food.

And that's, you'd be good.

But, but, yeah, with women, I think that's, I think it's really helpful.

With men, the GH seems to be a huge, a huge factor.

Like, it really does, and I, I firmly believe it really is one of those things that gives you the roundness, it gives you like a roundness and

look and effect that not a lot of other things do.

And some of that's fluid.

Well, yeah, yeah.

Some of it's fluid,

but it definitely it definitely can do that very much so in women as well you know so okay um yeah i think that's a i think it's hugely beneficial to females also i think a lot of females might be a little bit concerned about the water retention from it um say that they're having trouble getting dry enough um is that something that you would just a simple solution such as just come off of it like a couple weeks before show or yeah and i suppose it would i suppose it would be just like guys i mean in an ideal world you would just keep it in.

You try to keep it in.

I mean, I think if the ideal scenario was you get lean enough to where it's not really a factor and you can you can just keep it in all the way through, I think that right, but of course we also know that's genetic on like how dry you look when you get as lean enough as you can.

For sure.

Right.

So it's it could be it could be a case where you have to reduce the amount or even pull it, you know, even pull it prior to the show.

But that's going to be a very person, very person dependent and also category dependent.

I mean, if you're using it

if you're using it, man, I don't even want to say category-dependent because I was going to almost

cite wellness, but I don't think that's good anymore because wellness gets really lean now.

So, I don't think that's even a good,

I don't think that actually works anymore.

Yeah, I can't even use that example.

Uh, I have a couple,

they're all minotaurs, dude.

I have a couple wellness, I want to have glutes like that.

I have some wellness, a couple wellness pros that I work with, and one, yeah, yeah, I'm just like,

it's what that has evolved to is crazy, like it's insane,

it's epic.

I mean, it's, I mean, I respect it, I appreciate it, but it is, it's like, if you actually see these girls in person and

it's very impressive,

yeah,

it's wild, but it's also genetic, like there's, there's a lot of, I can't, I can't tell you how many situations where I've had bikini clients or bikini competitors like, hey, come, come, I want to, I want to hire you.

I want to transition to wellness somewhere.

Okay.

Yeah.

You're like 105 pounds.

And have you, have you seen pro wellness?

Have you gone?

Go to a show, come back and let's talk.

Yeah.

And then you can decide if that's a route you want to take.

Right.

It's insane.

I feel like pro wellness is under lower body.

I feel like pro wellness's legs are like bodybuilding's arms in the 80s and 90s.

Dude.

In the Lee Priest era.

Dude, it's just the most beautiful arms, man.

Yeah, it's wild stuff.

Stream a habit someday.

Yeah, the arms.

I'll do anything, man.

I'll inject every injection in my arms if I have to.

What method would you take?

I mean, I know this is a very common question.

I think still to this day, it's a little bit like...

something that matters to a lot of people.

I mean, it would matter me as well, but I think, you know, a lot of times we see people who we don't know what the circumstances, but say that, for example, they were on prep or whatever, and then they didn't reverse that properly, but they just have this lower metabolic rate and it's like hard for them now to prep properly.

Like sometimes they have to go to like a thousand calories if they're a woman, for example, to

prep and get as lean enough.

Or, I don't know, 1500 calories as a guy.

You know, no guys, no guy wants to eat 1500 calories.

Really?

I mean, in these circumstances.

Yeah, I have two.

I had to eat 1,200 for the one that I got got my pro card in.

Luckily, we're up to 1,700 now.

There you go.

And then prep at 700 calories, we're getting somewhere.

Yeah, yeah.

But,

I mean, I guess is there any recommendation specifically that you would have other than the typical, like, oh, let's reverse diet and have them come back up to a higher calorie through like reversing after a prep?

So

I'm going to give it, I'm going to give the

honest answer that no one wants to hear on that one because the reality of that is,

yes, if you go into prep, if you go into prep in a metabolically compromised state, so like you didn't have a good offseason, you got too fat, you know, you just, you didn't have enough time between shows, like all those things could make your prep harder, right?

For sure.

But

in reality,

there's still limiting factors on what it's going to take to get to contest lean for a lot of people.

You could improve your offseason.

You could take more time in between.

You could be, your blood work could check out good.

You could be eating more food this offseason, the previous offseason, and you may still have to come down pretty close to where you were, you know, in previous preps.

And I've seen that with myself because I've competed enough in the last, you know, in like the last,

I don't know, 16 years roughly.

And I've done offseason in a lot of ways.

You know, I've gotten, I've ended leaner with slightly, with like still pretty good calories, but a little bit less.

I've ended a little bit more body fat with higher calories.

I've had three-year off seasons, I've had one-year-off seasons, and inevitably,

it always ends up almost the damn same

at the end.

Not ex granted, not exactly the same, but

it ends up close to the same.

Now, I will say, I will say this, though.

I will say that there's probably,

especially with females, there's probably

a large majority of them that don't have sufficient time.

I mean, time is a big, time is a big factor when you're talking about frequency of prep.

A lot of people have experienced this phenomenon where they do their first prep.

They're like, okay, maybe I wasn't quite lean enough, but it was okay.

I got through it.

Second prep, they get a little bit leaner.

It's a little bit harder.

Third prep, they're like, wait a second.

Why am I not, this is not working.

the way that it did on the second prep.

Why is this so much harder?

Maybe they get through it maybe they just like drag their ass through it and they try to do that fourth prep on you know like fourth year in a row and they're like dude nothing is happening

and you see this over time where these long-term adaptations start happening and but unfortunately a lot of that is you you do have to understand that some people are just not going to get away with prepping every year just aren't like it's not it's not on the cards for you metabolically and genetically you're going to have to take you are going to have to take time i mean are there people that can do it?

For sure.

You mean like longer off seasons?

100%.

Yeah.

Having, because it's not just getting your calories up.

It's also like, how long do we stay in that state?

You know, I mean, that's a factor as well.

Because

you can get your calories up and that's fine.

And that's important.

But

if you prep, if you're prepping every September for the same show, and it's an arbitrary month, but every September you do the same show.

It's taking you, I mean, as a female, it's taking you four or five,

probably three to five months to fully get back to homeostasis.

And then what are you?

And then what are you in?

You're what are you there for like a month,

two months, and you're back in prep again.

Yeah.

That's nothing, man.

In the grand scheme, it's nothing.

And the body's pretty smart.

I mean, the body is just trying to protect you.

It doesn't want you doing that over again.

It's amazing what taking, just taking a year off

will do for people, you know, and not only from a metabolic standpoint, but from a

physique standpoint as well.

You also have to ask yourself, Am I improving if you're just dragging your ass through prep every year to look the same

or

barely better?

Because you can only get so much more condition.

You might move up in placements because of your conditioning.

You might do that the first couple preps, but there's a dead end to that.

You're only going to get so conditioned.

Some people just have to take time.

I know people don't want to hear that.

It's just

very true, bro.

That's just the reality.

Yeah.

Just the reality of it.

And you don't, and the last thing I'll say about that is never compare yourself to somebody else.

Don't worry.

Don't be mad that X, like

XYZ pro competes at the Olympia every year.

Like, okay,

that's not you.

Don't worry about it.

None of that matters because

if you looked around at the shelf life especially of female competitors how many female competitors get better for a decade or 15 years

and don't fall off not that many

most of them fall off they get burnout they have health issues they don't they stop improving they quit whatever if you just would take you'd break that up a little bit and take an extra year here and there, you imagine how much more progress and you could prolong yourself for so so much longer.

But that's hard, that sucks.

That's not fun, that's boring.

Yeah, for sure.

I get it.

I mean, I get that.

Awesome.

Thank you, bro.

Um, if you had

if you were uh to disappear from the world tomorrow and you had one last question, or one last, uh, sorry, one last thing that you could tell the world today,

what would that be?

I would say, I would say that

your problems, your problems are probably much more insignificant than you think.

And I would tell myself that too.

I'm talking to myself as well.

That is, that is a, that's going directly to me and everyone else.

Yeah.

Yeah, I get that too.

It always takes me a while to realize that after the problem.

Always.

And then I'm like, what was I even worrying?

Man, wasted.

Wasted some energy on that one, but easier said than done, right?

Yeah.

Thanks for coming on, bro.

That was awesome.

Yeah, I appreciate you having me.

Hopefully, we can do it again sometime.

Yeah, I would really love to.

I feel like our conversation can go on for hours, to be honest.

Yeah, I'd love to see that.

There was a whole section, and I think there was a bunch of questions from the last QA that we ended up not asking.

And I was going to ask that on this podcast, and then I didn't get to.

We just kept chatting.

All good, dude.

I hope that your move, hope you guys get settled in, get everything figured out.

Yeah, feel free to hit me up, you know, a couple months or whenever you guys, guys, whenever you run out of good people to talk to and you need a backup.