Austin Stout: How To Fix The Worst Problems in Bodybuilders & PED Use

What's up, homies?

Today, we've got Austin Stout.

Probably the craziest thing I've seen is the reduction in the need for gear when you correct the GI issue.

Over the last 15 years, has mentored hundreds of coaches and competitors, such as Terrence Ruffin, 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.

If you are not having any pre-menstrual symptoms at all, chances are your hormones probably aren't fluctuating correctly.

People hear that and they're like, well, my cycle is pretty mild.

I'm like, that's good, right?

It shouldn't be extreme.

It shouldn't be debilitating, but it's completely normal to have some symptoms.

Seeing someone on trend for 18 months, near-gram dosages, seeing people with like blood glucose of 200 post-show and shit like that because their body's so stressed out.

Seeing people need like two, 300 I use Ablantis to control their blood glucose.

It's like, nah, dude.

The poison's always in the dose, right?

I'm cooked right now.

This is the absolute worst I've ever felt on a podcast.

Well, a lot of people would use glutamine for a long time.

That's going to do kind of one or two things, and colostrum is probably going to give you a more broad spectrum benefit.

Two, three, four different types of fruit in the diet, maybe a serving of each at every meal.

Most days, you are going to probably prevent the vast majority of long-term GI issues and also recurrence of GI issues once you have corrected something.

If you don't have outside hobbies and you don't have outside interests and you don't have relationships and you don't put focus and prioritize those things, you will not be the best bodybuilder you can be.

This is the first podcast I think I've done past 6 p.m.

Is that true?

I think so.

Wait.

I might have done one podcast over video call at like 10 p.m.

I think that was pure torture.

And then I did another podcast, I think, over video call with

Stefan Kinzel, boss of Outlaw, you know, coach of Urs and Wesley Visitors, Martin.

I think we did that at like 6 a.m.

or something.

That was also torture as fuck.

So,

yeah, because he's in CET time.

You can just tell also.

I mean, maybe

people can tell now that I said it, but you can just tell that I, like, I didn't feel like I didn't fucking know what I was talking about when I was with him.

Yeah.

Everything was just like...

Do I,

I feel you're on the time zones, though.

Like, trying to coordinate with people.

Dude, that's rough.

Wait, so you flew this morning.

Yeah, are we recording?

Yeah, we're recording.

Sick.

Yeah, so I was

Eastern, so it's three hours, three hours back, or three hours forward right now.

So I was up at

5:30 Eastern, which would be 2:30 in the morning here.

Playing.

Had a layover in Denver.

And then

here.

So, Jesus, bro.

Dude.

Well, and

three and a half weeks out, you got

plus.

That's what I was about to ask.

Yeah, plus you've got

doing NPC nationals.

Plus, you've got

what else was I going to say?

Trying to think what.

Oh, and then, and also get on the plane, can't get hydrated, heads fucking pounding.

We've got, you know, it was, it was a rough day.

Do you tend to find or feel like a lot of hydration issues when you're on prep?

I generally don't, but you know, I'm just,

I'm running my routine all day, so it's pretty easy.

Yeah.

But you know how it is, like off season, off season, you have more, a little more fat, a little easier to stay hydrated.

You know, prep, you're just like pee, pee, pee.

Yeah, bro.

It's insane.

It's the worst.

During podcasts, I feel like it was

the most relieving feeling every time we took a break the most relieving feeling i had like an explosion in the restroom it was amazing yeah i mean preps great preps great and all aside from all the uh copious amount of problems i feel like i'm encountering i feel like i'm like you know computer program but then you have like one semicolon off and then suddenly you're all your entire fucking thing is just haywire well that's the thing if we that's i mean like

one little thing off in the day and it's checked out.

Yeah.

But maybe we can talk about that too.

So I don't know what you had in mind.

Did you threw up a question box?

Oh, yeah.

I always do that for every podcast, like a little QA.

So people can just ask questions if they want to.

You know, the audience has some input.

Get my brain, get my brain going.

Yeah.

I saw Terrence, Terrence Ruffin.

That's who it was.

Oh, so that's who it was.

It was.

It wasn't Terrence.

I've worked with Terrence.

It was,

and you've had him on.

Yeah.

It was another one of his coaches, or at least worked with Terrence at the time.

So I had Terrence, a funny thing is, I started doing

mentorship.

We'll call it that.

Terrence was actually one of the very first people that ever approached me

when I opened it up publicly as an offer, like as a service.

So Terrence was like one of the first people that paid me for that.

To be mentored, right?

And coached.

I essentially had

no, like, no programs, no classes, no, you know, no nothing.

I was like, we can do it.

I'm going to kind of like, so it was funny because I had him and I think one other person and I was just building it out as I went.

You know, and then now, of course, I have all my PDFs and classes and all these things, like a curriculum's a little more set.

I was like, all right, dude.

But it's always cool because he's, you know, we've circled back, we've ran into each other, different speaking events and stuff.

Like, I think I was in

Tampa.

Might have been Tampa, a couple different places.

He's in town.

You know, he always comes say hi, see him at the shows, you know, stuff like that.

Yeah.

It's like we've, we've stayed kind of somewhat connected.

Tags me in the stories.

He always gives props, you know, stuff like that.

Terrence is a dope guy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Super fucking down to earth.

Yeah.

I wish I could, I wish I could replicate his energy sometimes.

Oh, it's just like plain stoicism.

Did he just tend to?

I'm like, you all right, bro.

You all right, bro?

Yeah, he's always chill.

I'm just like, I feel like, bro, like, I feel like I'd be like you if I was always high,

but you're not.

He's just like that.

Yeah, I'm not.

I'm like complete polar opposite.

Pretty.

Like neurotic maybe or no?

Oh, for sure.

But, but over the years, um...

Over the years, I would say it's definitely gotten a lot more

kept a lot of the good, got rid of a lot of the bad bad parts.

So it's now it's a lot more just focus and actually take those characteristics and like use them productively.

Versus, like, I'm definitely, I'm definitely not one of those people that's like micromanaging every minutiae within myself and my clients and stuff, which you know how bodybuilding is.

I mean, and that's a hard part about coaching.

And now, especially with so much information out there, people are like, should we do this?

Should we do this?

Should I track this?

I'm like, dude, we've got like 5,000 pieces of biofeedback here.

It's like, what are we going to do with that?

You know,

yeah.

Cause then you're just, you know, you're kind of like, you're missing.

It's like you're, you're trying to pick up pennies and you're missing the dollars.

Yeah.

You know,

and, um, and that's with anything.

That's with, and, and health, you know, a lot of the functional health stuff that I do is the same way.

They, I think people are inundated with so much information about

every, you know, every single marker and symptom specifically.

like when you look at symptoms, they can give me 43 different symptoms, but I can kind of all bring it back to like two or three things.

It's like, here's a system we need to work on.

All the other stuff will resolve itself, right?

And like, GI is a perfect example.

I know we talked about digestion.

It's like

when you look at

the interplay and the feedback loops in the system, hormones, males, females,

brain, cognitive function, prep,

really any, any like

systemic symptom that you have, you almost always have to start with GI.

You know, so that's, that's where I think people are like, they're, they want to come in and they're like, I want a protocol for this and this and this and this.

I'm like, no, it's not, it doesn't work like that.

First off, you can't make it through a full week with, you know, consistently.

So we got to start there.

You know, secondly, we're probably going to scrap like 43 different things that you're doing, restart baseline.

Because a lot of the time now, with people, is they

have so much information that they're coming to me and they're doing.

They've like piece things together.

You know, they're like, I'm doing this from here.

I've read this symptom.

I worked with this coach.

You know, I took this class.

And it's like, yeah.

Like, you have no idea what's going on.

Neither do I at that point.

So I think that when we

when we're looking at, we're looking at these types of, types of issues,

first and foremost is education is kind of the

education is the way that we mitigate a lot of fear with people.

So I think that people just don't understand what's actually happening with them.

Right.

So like when you go to a doctor and you give them symptoms, they don't tell you what's wrong with you.

Give you a medication.

You go to a coach and you're like, I, you know, I have digestive issues.

You're like, take a probiotic, take a digestive enzyme, you know, take a, or let's get blood work done, or let's do this.

And it's like, but they don't actually understand

how these markers,

how these markers coincide with one another and how you can actually make the connections to

piece everything together in a way that's going to correct that whole system.

So, for example, if we're looking at, would you say that your demographic's mostly bodybuilders?

Yeah.

So if we're, if we're looking at that topic specifically in bodybuilders, like what are the things that bodybuilders are doing specifically?

Either really high food, we'll talk males, right?

A lot of food or

gear or,

you know, oxidative, any kind of oxidative stress.

Like, and so you're compounding these issues.

Like first and foremost, a

nobody is designed to digest 300 to 400 grams of protein first off

you can do it i think that people think that because our requirements are higher because either your your androgen levels are higher or you are

training that you automatically you know necessitate this it's like okay but

Also understand that

systemically, we all kind of work the same,

right?

you know it still requires stomach acid still requires enzymes bile like all of these systems so there becomes a point of diminishing return

where

yes we can continue to increase calories we can continue to increase you know macros tend to increase all these things but if you were to look at if you were to look at like a offseason because we're kind of on that topic what stops people in an offseason if they're body butter?

Either A, they get too fat.

But I would argue that probably a lot of the higher level guys probably don't even deal with that as much, right?

Because you also have other assistants in there and you probably have a leaner starting point, right?

Two,

they can't eat anymore.

Would you say that's probably a pretty common one?

Like blending their meals.

Yeah, some crazy stories.

I got some crazy stories.

Yeah.

Well, dude, I mean, I've been there.

So, you know, I've had offseasons where I was eating 7,000 plus calories and I end up

And I was, and, you know, when I was diet back down, it's like, all right, I gained two pounds, you know, but, um,

but also on the flip side of that, I've had people come in from those situations where

when we, when we kind of peel it back

and we, you know, start correcting some of those GI issues, next round, guess what happens?

Now they're eating 4,000 calories and they're growing, requiring less gear, requiring less stimulus, and everything's working working better.

And then on top of that, you start getting all of the other benefits that coincide with that.

So cognitive functions better, sleep better, get in there, start looking at hormone profile.

Guess what?

Like estrogen is more controlled.

Their skin looks better.

Joints don't hurt anymore.

You know, it's like

now we're, now we're actually seeing the systemic effects of how these, you know, how these systems coincide and work.

Yeah.

I think that's one of the coolest things too about like this day and age is this

bigger realization that a lot of the issues that we may be encountering come from our GI or maybe even a lot of

issues that people are running into that might be originally genetic

could be symptomatically like solved through various diet changes.

And I think this was never a realization like way in the past, you know, people would just patch things up with medications and shit.

Right.

And I think that's one of the things that I really like about what you do is because

even though that's something that I think has been,

people have become more aware of now,

I feel like you

were amongst one of the first people to press the severity and importance of this and like in-depth of the automatic of the autonomic nervous system, specifically in bodybuilding.

And I think that's like...

Probably one of the most important things that I think a lot of us should really pay attention to if we want to do well in the sport, but a lot of us really don't

considering how much we're eating and how much

our success is literally rooted in what we're eating and how we are.

It's difficult because when you look at this, like the term now everyone uses is functional health, right?

That's kind of like that lumps together all of these

different alternative medicine practices, right?

But that all originated around everyone looks at that term and they think like

women,

bikini competitors you know moms um or even even on the the gen pop side like pregnancy disease diabetes heart disease things like that but i would argue that there's a far less people that actually know how to apply those things to bodybuilders

right

which

who are some of the most

who are some of the most dysfunctional system you know people in the world bodybuilders

right because like because essentially you're designed to do the same things, but we're also,

we're also

adding exponential amounts of stress.

So, for example, I always tell my guys and my gals, they,

I'll preach stress a lot.

And they're like, well, I sleep, I,

I eat enough food.

I'm like, okay.

But you also have all the same stuff that everyone else deals with, right?

You have family, you have a job, you have relationships, you have all these other things that are like consistently compounding then you go and train six days a week beat the hell out of yourself you add in thousands upon thousands of calories

add some gear like now

now can you see how cumulatively that stress is going to be

10 15 20 times more than your average person so um

A way that I'll look at it a lot is like, why could someone off the street that eats McDonald's three three times a day not have super profound GI issues?

Because they don't beat themselves up.

Now, their health is not going to be good.

I mean, there's still going to be aspects of that that are not going to be good.

They're still going to be susceptible to disease.

They're still going to have systemic inflammation, probably nutrient deficiencies, you know, all kinds of stuff.

But

I will, I can confidently say that when I would go in and like look at lab work, for example, or look at some of these symptoms,

these people in our population on paper are doing everything right, but their issues are 20 times, 30 times worse than a lot of these people that just saw off the street.

Damn.

Yeah.

And

you think that's basically all because of lifestyle factors and drugs?

No, not necessarily.

I think it's just the fact that, oh, well, I think it's the fact that they are,

they think that they're doing everything right because we're, you know, we have some of these lifestyle factors dialed in.

It's like I rest, I exercise, I drink water, electrolytes, like all that, you know.

And, but what they're missing is the fact that A,

they're adding all that other systemic stress, like I said, training gear.

So there's one.

Two is that they're probably,

they're probably very neurotic.

They're probably very type A.

So it's like when you look at stress, a lot of that.

It's true, but it's just like water dripping on your, water dripping on your forehead all day.

Like look at some of the, look at some of the bodybuilders that probably have

the best success on show day or the best success on prep.

It's like they don't think about anything.

Yeah.

They're just chilling.

Yeah.

Or they don't know.

I mean, those are some of my favorite competitors to work with.

They just don't think about anything.

They're like, yeah, dude, sounds good.

I'm like, you don't need a diuretic.

You don't need anything.

Just show up.

Yeah.

But when we micromanage and when we have, you know, when we're, we're trying to control every variable, and then on top of that, we're obviously adding all these other systemic stressors in there.

It's like, it adds up, man.

Like, it can't.

You can't, it can't not add up.

It's something that's just so unquantifiable for us.

But from what I've seen, from all the people I've spoken to and all the athletes that I've conversed with, it's probably one of the biggest factors to how you look on stage.

Sure.

Well, and

what you said right there is exactly right.

Is it it is

it's not quantitative.

And that's why it's so difficult for people to conceptualize

because we like numbers.

Like, well, I can measure my blood glucose.

I can measure my blood pressure.

I can check, you know, do my labs.

Like, it doesn't always show up like that, though.

It's like, yes, maybe your lab work looks like this, or maybe we do some specialized testing.

Like I use GI maps and some different things, stool testing and stuff.

And sometimes it's super obvious.

Sometimes I can pull a test and I pretty much know what's going to be on there for the most part.

It's patterns and trends.

Like you see the same stuff over and over again.

But then again, there's people that will have pretty outrageous symptoms that have very little going on.

I'm like, okay, so why would that happen?

It's like, well, you mentioned autonomic nervous system.

It's like, maybe it's that simple.

Maybe it's just the fact that your digestive motility is slowed down because you just can't chill out.

Damn.

You know,

an example would be,

let's say that, and I actually saw this a couple of weeks ago.

And something we talked about in one of my groups is there was a gal that was,

every time she would eat, she would bloat.

She would have symptoms.

She would get some indigestion.

Okay.

Normal.

Nothing crazy.

What do you mean by normal?

I would say it's like a pretty mild symptom.

Right.

Just like mealtime bloating, mealtime indigestion, a little acid reflux.

That type of thing.

Right.

But that consistency isn't something that's normal.

Right.

No, that is not normal, but I would say that it's mild as far as symptomatically.

But when she would have food that was off her plan with family and friends.

No problems.

Zero.

Damn.

Another example, vacations.

I've seen people, you know, I've seen people where during the week, every meal they eat, issues over and over, wake up loaded every day, you know, look like they're eight months pregnant by the end of the day.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Go out of town, stop everything.

They're fine.

And you can't tell me.

And

what is their response?

They're like, well, the food quality is better.

On

you know, I went to wherever and the food quality is better.

I'm like, dude, it's not.

I mean, yes, but you can't tell me that you were doing all of these corrective things that should work mechanistically, but all of a sudden, just this improvement in food quality and you scrapping all these techniques, like your digestion's fine.

So there's more to it, right?

Right.

And hormonally, same thing.

I mean, I've had people where they have done everything on paper and then

they spent thousands of dollars on testing.

They track everything.

You know, they've got data just till your head falls off.

It's like, why are we not getting a menstrual cycle back?

It's like, why are we not seeing any of these things improve?

There was a story that I tell a lot

where I had some lady come to me for a consultation and she'd worked with a pretty well-known coach and they had, you know, spent, spent a lot of of money.

Anything you can check, she checked, right?

Everything you could do, she had done it over the course of, we'll say like two to four years.

Like what kind of things?

So hormonally, so she, you know, basically urine testing, saliva testing, blood testing, tracking any variable you can, like ovulation testing, tracking your cycle, tracking your basal body temperature, tracking like all this stuff, blood glucose, HRV, you know, anything, anything you could track, she tracked.

Doing like hair mineral analysis looking for nutrient deficiencies i mean just anything you can think of and i can't and it was to the point where i she says hey i don't want to work with a coach anymore but i'm i'm going to stop working with my current coach i just want to get a second opinion before i go off on my own i was like cool so we did a consult and um

i said what do you you know wait what are you trying to accomplish and she says well i i would like to get a menstrual cycle back i was like okay well

I mean, it's been a long time, you know, been a decade or whatever it been.

I'm like, you've really done everything, but I gathered really quickly that the

amount of hyperfixation that was driven by this, a lot of the stuff that was going on could be part of the problem.

I can't fix that.

Like, I'm not a therapist, you know?

I can see it and I can definitely give suggestions and I can relate to it.

And there's a lot of things that I can do.

But when I talk to someone for 45 minutes, I can't fix that.

So I said, How about this?

I said, What do you have coming up in the next couple weeks?

She's like, Well, I'm going on vacation.

So, of course, that's a that was like a very that's a trigger, right?

I said, Do me a favor.

I said, Why don't you just?

I gave her, you know, two, three, four things.

I'm like, take these preventative items, it's just real basic stuff.

I was like, Get rid of the rest.

I don't want you to track anything.

Eat whatever you want within reason, you know, try to stick to mostly local fresh foods, whatever.

Okay, cool.

So she does.

I get an email and

it's like a two-week vacation.

I'm in tears right now.

I just got my menstrual cycle back.

I was like,

and that dawned on me at that point.

Like that was just an educated guess by me.

Yeah.

I knew that it would help.

I knew that doing that would help at least relieve stress.

But my, and my hope was that it would kind of just prove a point.

But I didn't expect that.

Right.

And then I didn't expect that.

And I mean, that, so I think from that point forward,

I realized that, and, and it's so much worse now than it was even then is because we have so many more people in the space and so many more people trying to implement these things that

it often is just a case where you're just doing too much.

Everyone thinks they're not doing enough, right?

Yeah.

bodybuilders not doing enough.

It's like, what's always like, what's the thing?

I'm like, dude,

the thing is that, the thing is that you're skating around the thing, right?

Like, you're looking for the thing.

And I'm like, the thing is that you got to stop worrying about it and actually just be consistent and understand, A, how does your body function?

B, how do you be, you know, how do you, how can you like

replicate this?

How can you be adaptable?

It's like you avoid,

you're doing everything except for the thing that I want you to do.

Yep.

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I think Chris Bumpset said something on

the real bodybuilding podcast with Fowan.

So I don't know how many people watch this.

Maybe he's got like 40k views or something.

But when I heard him say that, my first thought was,

I feel like other people will think, oh, well, he's a genetic anomaly, so he can do this.

But I think...

What I realized when he said that was like, my thought was,

I feel like this is one big reason why he's the best.

And he said, for this last prep for Olympia, sometimes if he felt like he wanted to eat something off plan, he did.

Sometimes, if he felt like he looked really great in the morning and uh, he was supposed to do uh fasted cardio, and Hanny wasn't maybe available to respond immediately, he just took the cardio off.

He's like, I look good, I'm fine.

So that's what he did for prep.

So you think

it's like

you think the thing for him and for a lot of people is probably

is probably

well beyond the like the repetitive stuff that he already knows how to do.

It's like, dude, he knows, he knows how to do everything.

Yeah.

And that's the case with a lot of people.

You know, I think, I think that if you are, if you've been doing this, and a lot of people aren't advanced, as Chris Baum said, obviously, but I would venture to say that the majority of people that have been in the space for at least a couple of years, if they've competed regionally, even nationally pro level, it's like,

you know how to do this stuff already.

Like, what am I missing?

I'm like,

you're missing the fact that you're still looking for something that's not there.

It's like

you're missing the fact that A,

you are constantly searching.

You're missing the fact that you're just constantly looking for,

you're looking for like one missing piece.

but

you're already doing everything correctly.

So the next step is what?

The next step is that we got to calm down.

The next step is that we have to execute consistently.

And then we have to start digging into your psychology and figuring out like, all right, what makes you click?

What are we actually missing?

I mean, that was how I, that was me, right?

I mean, my, my progress actually started to get a lot better when I worried about less stuff.

You know, so like my whole

whole last offseason from

I did nationals in 2022 and

now we're in 2024.

People are, some people that that work with me will probably be like, are you kidding me?

It's like,

I literally track calories the whole offseason.

I didn't track a single macro.

Damn.

And I made the best progress.

Oh my God.

And now do I advise, do I advise that to people?

Not necessarily, because I don't think people know how to be intuitive enough to do something like that.

You didn't even like write your own, like, I guess, like, somewhat structured meal plan.

Yeah, I mean, I ate pretty consistently, you know, generally the same stuff.

Something

like the same stuff.

But one of the reasons I did it is, A, my food requirements were pretty high.

So, you know, palatability, some days,

some days.

more fat would be a little more palatable and accepted digestively than carbs or vice versa.

Right.

And so I knew that if A,

if I did that consistently and I was able to not, you know, not hyper-fixate on the fact that it's like, dude, today I've got to eat the thing that I ate yesterday.

It's like, I just can't anymore.

Why don't I eat something else?

What happens?

Inevitably, nothing happens.

You just

go on.

It's like you just go on with your life.

Right.

Training was the same way.

I would say that, I would say that with training,

probably a little bit less, a little bit less focus on

a little bit less focus on like

some of the minutiae with mechanics and things like that.

Because the thing is, I know how to execute reps.

I know how to control weight.

I know how to drive tension of the muscles.

Like, I know how to do all that stuff already.

So it's like, what do I need to do to improve from a training aspect?

A,

get the idea of like needing to do certain movements out.

So I was like, all right, well, I have a gym at home.

I have a, I train out.

I don't know if you saw any of my videos, any of my training videos, but I train at my house.

So we have a, um,

we essentially have like a barn gym, right?

Yeah.

So I used to own a gym for a while.

So we sold that.

We moved some of the equipment, sold like a lot of the commercial stuff that was, you know, that we didn't need anymore.

So essentially, I train at home in a pole barn, right?

Now,

if you were to go in and write down the equipment that's in there, it's like

you'd have a hard time.

Some people would be like, dude, I can't train here.

I'm like, why?

Well, maybe you can be a little more creative.

You can definitely be more adaptable, especially if you know what you're looking at.

But I think that

I'm less focused on like, all right, I have this exact movement profile and pulley system and all these things just based on, you know, Atlantis versus Cybex versus Prime versus i don't know whatever take your pick arsenal

and ultimately what happened was here's the movements that feel good based on the availability that i have um i'm going to get rid of a lot of the stuff that's that's low uh or that's higher risk as you know as you get stronger it's like it takes a lot there's a lot less roi on a lot of things like if you can do rdls with six plates aside it's like dude that's a lot of warm-up sets.

That's a lot of energy to set that movement up.

That's a lot of systemic fatigue.

It's like, well,

I can also just use more brace movements and lock myself into a certain movement pattern and do things like that.

And just do it over and over and over and over and over again.

It doesn't feel right when we change it, do something else.

But what you'll find with a lot of people that are more advanced is, um, they,

and maybe you can relate to this.

It's like, if, if you can't progress on a very similar plan for months and months on end, then you're probably trying to change stuff too often.

I would say, I would say that there's probably exceptions to that with people.

But once I start with a client, whether it's, you know, whether it's related to health or not, there's going to be a lot of fine-tuning at the beginning of the process.

You know, a lot of the people I'm working with, there's, they have a lot of complex issues.

So when they come in, it does take me a month, two two months to actually establish some kind of pattern and get some kind of like you know, get some reps going.

But once we get to that point, A, the body's pretty self-healing, and

systems don't fix themselves that quickly.

So, they're like, What, what are we going to do next week?

I'm like, I don't know.

How do you feel?

Like, well, this is getting a little better.

This is getting a little better.

I'm like, Why do we need to change?

Yeah, exactly.

I'm like, Well, because I'm bored, like

you're in the wrong place.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I think

what's most important is like the fact that you keep things constant and you progressive overload is just the easiest way to, you know, quantify and thus measure out your progress.

Just make sure that you're actually progressing without getting fat or just without just getting fat and there's there being no progress.

Sure.

But

I mean, if you, as long as you have, say, like those main things that you are measuring, say, like a main compound for your chest or a main compound for for like your legs or your quads, then I think if you really feel like you need the change to enjoy going to the gym, then I understand like changing around your accessories.

Yeah.

And plus, and plus there's only, I mean, there's only so many ways that you can, that you can do something.

Yeah.

You know, like I, at, we can write a program.

Like how many, how many movements can you actually use for

to train your lat?

Like there's a lot.

Vertical, horizontal elbow paths yeah make a huge difference you ever watch any of Eric Janeke's videos and you'll find like 15 more dude I mean there's so many however

once you figure out what works for you mechanically

there's not as many you're probably wasting your time doing a bunch that are probably not going to benefit you that much

I pretty much know like mechanically these things feel good these things don't feel good

train them

I can move around I can use a D handle, I can do a prime handle, I can do a mag handle, I can do stuff like that.

But it's like ultimately, you're doing the same thing, right?

You know, you're doing the same thing over and over and over again.

And that very much applies to when we're looking at these functional health issues.

Is that

something I was talking to someone about the other day was that the body is self-healing, so

every system that we have has a built-in healing system.

So, for example,

when we, if we're looking at like digestion,

I would say hormones, autoimmunity, really anything, there's a few things that are going to happen.

A, there's always, it starts with the stress,

and that could be anything, right?

That could be training, that could be life, that could be whatever, input, whatever stress you want, or accumulation of stressors, right?

That's going to trigger a cascade.

And once that starts happening, the body's going to react.

So like, what's the first thing that happens?

Like, well, the, you know, maybe your cortisol goes up, you create some inflammation, white blood cells start to react because they're essentially reacting to an insult or an injury, which is fine because that's what they're designed to do, right?

So, like, if you eat, if you go out and eat a large pizza, what's going to happen?

You're like, I'm a little bloated, right?

But it's not going to last.

Might take a couple days, or I don't know, maybe you feel normal tomorrow.

But when you're leaving yourself in that constant state over and over and over again for long periods of time, now the counter system is not going to react as well.

So it's like, now you have inflammation all the time.

Now what starts reacting?

Well, you start having,

you're going to start having other aspects of your immune system react.

So that inflammation that's coming out, so like inflammatory cytokines and neutrophils and lymphocytes and all these white blood cells, there's no counter system to actually bring them back down.

So now you're stuck in this state all the time, right?

And then, and this is where a lot of the bacterial changes start to happen.

So when we look at digestion,

some of the most common issues that I see, I would say this probably applies more to

men and women.

I would say mostly a little more to the females.

And I'll explain what, like, what the differences are between the males and females.

But

once we start creating this imbalance in bacteria,

we really have two

types of bacteria that are going to start reacting.

A, we have commensal bacteria.

So this is like your good, good stuff, right?

These are the, when you hear probiotics, when you hear like protective, you know, that that's, those are the bacteria that we're talking about.

Now, we also have dysbiotic bacteria or opportunistic bacteria.

So when you hear over, when you hear like dysbiosis, that's what that is.

And that, and they're opportunistic because

they can easily feed on different fuel sources.

So like when we, what would, when we look at a diet, what's, what's probably the most common, what would you say is the most common mistake that a bodybuilder makes nutritionally, if you just had to guess?

The most common mistake.

It's probably not going to be super obvious, but I think when you hear it, it'll make sense.

Okay.

Well, let me rephrase the question.

What do we do

consistently as far as food selection?

Do we eat 20 different things?

Yeah, we eat the same, right?

There's not very any...

There's a huge lack of variety the majority of the time.

Right.

So

and that's and that is trackable.

It's easy to track, right?

It's easy to meal prep.

It's easy to like do all this stuff.

But on this, at the same time, you're also dealing with the fact that we're starting to narrow this microbial diversity in the, you know, in the GI tract.

So

what that essentially means is that with these microbes, there's less foods coming in that are feeding different types of bacteria.

So

you will over time start to create some resistance that way.

Right.

Now,

when that happens, you can just introduce different types of foods, but you can't always do that really quickly with people

because it's like you haven't been eating it.

So a lot of the time you'll see like when I have a lot of food intolerances, I'm like, yes, because

you've eaten the same six things for, you know, I don't know, five years, 10 years, whatever it is.

So

we start creating these imbalances.

And what happens is that commensal bacteria goes down, down, down, down, down.

Opportunistic bacteria goes up, up, up.

And then that starts to create bloating gas, things like that, because they'll start to produce hydrogen and methane gases.

And then next thing you know,

you're bloated.

So what would you recommend for a lot of these top bodybuilders to include in their diets?

So like an overview of foods.

Well, there's a few things that you want to do.

A, over-consuming protein is a huge issue with people.

I would say that our protein requirements are high, but definitely probably not as high as a lot of people think.

Just how high do you think?

Well, if we're looking at actual numbers, if I'm looking at,

like myself, for example, I have done 400 grams of protein.

I have done 200 grams of protein, you know, anywhere across the spectrum.

I have drastically better digestion around

225 grams of protein.

And I grow a lot better.

And how much do you weigh and how tall are you again?

I'm like between 5'8 and 5'9.

Off-season weight, I'm anywhere a pretty good like 240 to 250.

Damn.

I've been heavier than that before.

But at the same time,

when I would go higher, you know, I'd go higher with it.

A lot of indigestion issues.

So, like, when you're actually testing stuff, the common things that we'll see in males, because they tend to have a lot higher protein, they have higher protein requirements, but they're the ones that tend to overeat protein

more.

Way more for sure.

I feel like a lot of women I know honestly kind of enjoy undereating protein.

Oh, for sure.

A lot of like H.

pylori issues, if you're familiar with that.

A lot of damage and stomach lining.

So, acid reflux,

upper GI.

And this tends to happen a lot through.

Yeah, okay.

I kind of sit in around the same place that you do.

I'm like maybe an inch shorter than you.

And then in

when I step on stage, I'm like maybe 180 around there, but I sit feeling comfortable most at around 250 grams of protein.

And I've had coaches try to push me up.

And obviously, that causes a lot of distress in my GI.

But then normally as they kind of press on me

in the next few weeks or even if it's a month or more, my body adapts.

And it has.

So one time a coach pressed me to start consuming 275 grams of protein every day.

And that fucking sucked for a while.

But after a certain point, my body adapted.

And I started being able to consume that fine.

But

I still think that

if I came off of the 275 grams of protein for a much shorter amount of time than it took me to adapt to it,

immediately, if I jumped back onto it, I'd have the GI issues again.

And that just wasn't really comfortable.

So 250 for me at least is a place where I feel like just seemed to make sense.

And it also kind of aligned with a lot of

what top

Stefan Kinzel and Patrick Tuar are two coaches that I like to talk about a lot.

And um, obviously, they have a lot of really, really, really successful athletes right now.

Um, and they both align their protein requirements for their bodybuilder athletes about 1.5 times their weight and protein, which

I mean, I think is not on the drastically high end of the bodybuilding industry because there's 300 to 400 grams and it's not low in terms of it's not even close to low when you're, when you're, you know, putting it in reference to literally just the normal population.

Yeah.

And there's always inter-individuality with that, right?

Like, some people feel better with,

let's say, that maybe you work within like a 25-gram up or down window.

Um, but I've also, with some of my bigger guys, like, for example,

one of my guys that uh competed this year,

pro-debut, open bodybuilding, you know, 300-plus-pound off-season abs, like the whole big, big guy under six six feet tall.

And

when we started, he had a lot of, a lot of

IBD issues.

So that's extremely common.

That's something that we should definitely touch on

is like more inflammatory bowel, which is what a lot of the males tend to deal with.

Outside, I would say that's probably the

that's probably the second, if not first, most common kind of between that and upper gastrointestinal issues with things things like acid reflux, right?

And the reason that males deal with a lot of that is because they're living in such a high inflammatory environment.

So when I say IBD, we're talking like Crohn's, colitis, diverticulitis, like things like that, lower colon,

lower protein right off the gates, like

huge improvement, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, big improvement.

Now, I'm not talking super low, but I think we went from,

I would, I would say, and man, this has been years ago, I would say we probably dropped it from, you know, 400 grams to 275 grams or something, like literally at the time below his body weight, which was temporary.

We brought it back up some over time.

But

pretty drastic improvement right there.

As far as a lot of the gastrointestinal symptoms go, of course, what else went away?

Acid reflux is gone.

Yeah.

You know, because acid requirements drastically drop with that as well.

I feel like this is so true for so many different things, including like drugs, taking anabolics or any other PEDs.

Is uh, it's just so important for us to find that like perfect balance, that perfect middle ground that works for our own bodies.

But there's always that perception, there's always those few people, you know, few people in the industry or those few people in the continents that are like saying that all the biggest and most successful bodybuilders are taking five grams of gear.

And

I can't, I can only speculate.

I mean, I know at least

on my end, um,

pro bodybuilders are not my, that's not like my primary population.

I do have some.

I do have some pro-females.

I've done a lot of consultations with them so that I have an interesting perspective because they come to me when they're broken.

So, I mean, I've, I've consulted with a lot of them that I won't say anyone's name.

I mean, it's all like.

It's all confidential and private, but

but inevitably they all have like all the same problems generally.

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By the way, guys, getting back from the restroom, if you guys didn't know, it is actually 10 p.m.

in Austin's time, and he's currently dying.

of a massive headache and migraine and

jet lag and assortment of other car sicknesses.

Probably no jet lag yet, but but uh I don't think I'm gonna have to deal with any jet lag, luckily.

I'll be going back tomorrow.

Well, I mean, don't you wake up early?

What time do you wake up?

Well, so like, like you and I were talking that generally when I do, generally when I do podcasts, like

I, I mean, I can do all this stuff in my sleep.

And uh,

but lately, but lately, of course, we've got prep.

Um, I'm three time zones, you know, I'm three time zones ahead.

I think what Yeah.

I would be three time.

I am three time zones ahead at home.

So I've been up since 5.30, had the flights.

Yeah, that's fucking crazy, bro.

Well,

not only.

You've been up since 2.30 my time.

Right.

We're talking about, we're talking about on the way.

I get off the plane, right?

Yeah.

And I'm like, kind of this morning, I'm like, I'm ready to go.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

5.30, getting everything ready to go.

Me and my fiancé were just chit-chatting and stuff she's like

you gotta chill out a little bit dude by the time i got to the airport i was just like crash

so that and then it being a wednesday it's you know wednesday like middle of the week it's normally really heavy check-ins and stuff so that threw me off my schedule get on the plane Wi-Fi wouldn't work, couldn't do anything.

I'm like, all right.

Oh, fantastic.

Right.

Exactly.

Cause I'm thinking, I'm going to travel all day.

Like, I could get everything done.

It's no problem.

You know?

And then

get to layover, get some stuff done.

We chit-chatted a little bit.

And I was really okay up to that point, but also,

but also I packed really light because

I was trying to keep things as simple as possible.

So, you know, I didn't have the food volume.

I didn't have a lot of the other stuff that I would normally have to keep me satiated and keep me happy

throughout the day because I was trying to go minimalistic on everything.

And

by the time I got to, by the time I got to California,

I'm like, oh no,

I'm like, oh no.

So I got, I got out.

I actually flew into Burbank.

So I didn't fly into LAX.

I flew into Burbank because I had just basically seen, it was like, hey, it's a lot smaller airport.

Don't have to deal with LAX if they have flights there.

Right.

And it was, got off the plane, you know, whatever.

Hit the car, got in the Uber, and it felt like someone had my head in a vise.

I'm like, oh, God.

So

pounding headache, get back to the hotel.

And you had actually messaged me.

You're like, hey, we got done a little early.

If you want to come out,

and I would have definitely taken you up on that, but I was talking to my fiancé and she's like, you need to just turn your phone off and rest.

Because it was to the point where I, in the car, I was like, I'm going to get a migraine.

And of course, at that point, you're like, dude, you came all the way out here.

You've been planning this, you know, so on and so forth.

So I was like, all right, I got to chill.

And then not only that, but being deep in prep, I'm like, dude, I haven't got all my steps in today.

Still making,

you know what I mean?

Like, bro, it sounds like someone is running into

his own fucking problems.

Problems.

Now.

His own career.

Yeah.

And I was like, you know what?

I'll make that stuff up tomorrow.

I'll adapt.

I'll just adjust my food.

I'm not.

So that really wasn't a huge priority at that point.

Right.

Right.

It just became, became, I was like, am I going to feel okay in two hours?

That's woke up from a little nap, slept for about 40 minutes and

feel a little bit better.

Get in the Uber on the way here.

So I did a couple things, you know, got ready to go get in the Uber on the way here.

And of course,

what do I do?

It's like, oh, LA traffic.

Like, sweet.

Because I had, I had

checked the time before I left.

No, for a few hours before I left, it said 20 minutes or it said 15 minutes or 20 minutes or something to get over here.

And I checked it again.

It's like, it's like 55 minutes.

And I messaged you, and you're like, yeah, dude, welcome to LA.

Like, shit.

So sat there, like I'd mentioned to you, I already

get a little bit of car sickness, especially when I'm not driving.

I got five or ten minutes in the ride, and I was like, oh, God.

So now we're, now we're what?

What time is it?

7, 7 p.m.

So 7 p.m.

you, so it's

10 at home.

I would be getting in bed right now.

Already have eaten.

I would be going to sleep.

Yeah, that would make a lot of sense.

Yeah.

I would actually have probably already been asleep on my couch and then had to wake back up and go to bed.

Sounds like a case of someone's got too much on his plate.

Oh, for sure.

For three weeks out.

Yeah, it's been,

and there's been some other, you know, there's been some other things like outside of coaching and business, like additional business stuff that's been going on.

But sometimes, you know, sometimes you got to, you got to strike while the iron's hot, right?

Right.

And take

your opportunities.

I think that's one of the things that's like, that's probably one of the hardest parts.

It's like we talk about these things.

Like, you know, we talk about how,

you know, don't be stressed out, you know, because that's going to cause you to gain a lot of weight and stuff and all this shit.

But

I mean, I feel like it really depends on our personality.

Sometimes it's so much harder than said, you know?

Like, what do we do?

We just meditate?

Like, how the fuck are you supposed to meditate when you have all this?

You know, when you're.

That's a great.

It's a great question.

It's a great question.

I mean, what's the first step?

I mean, the first step of that process is awareness.

Would you, would you agree that most people aren't aware of how stressed up they are?

Or let me rephrase that.

They, they know that they're stressed.

So like, let's say they, you know, they check in, they're talking to you, we're having a conversation about it.

And it's like, I can see all these markers of stress.

They will specifically cite things that are stressing them out.

They're like, this happened at work, my, you know, my family, my job, my relationship, whatever.

It's like, those are quantifiable things, right?

Like, but what about all the stuff that you're not paying attention to?

You know, what about your personality?

What about like all the stuff that we're talking about?

All the extra things you're trying to do, training, adding all this stuff up.

It's like, that's not quantifiable.

And I think that's where we as bodybuilders get into trouble because we are, a lot of us are pretty type A, and a lot of us

try to do too much.

A lot of us are perfectionists.

A lot of us, and I use the word perfectionist instead of,

I was always under the impression that

it's like upset, like an OCD tendency, and really it's not.

It's more of a perfectionist tendency.

And I'm not going to go into therapy because that's not technically my

scope practice, but

I will say that

I will say that the lack, I think the lack of awareness comes into play because it is not quantifiable.

It's not obvious.

Does that make sense?

It's like, yeah, it's there, but how do we, it's like, but what is it?

And what do we do with it?

So you're like, do we meditate?

Who's going to be able to meditate, journal, do soft belly breathing, go outside with their, you know, socks off and like stare at the sun in the the morning.

A, you don't have time to do that.

I mean, I don't.

B, you probably can't sit still.

You probably can't sit in your head for more than 10 seconds.

Right?

It's difficult.

C, you probably won't enjoy it.

I mean, there's a lot of reasons that someone with that personality is not going to thrive there.

So what do they generally gravitate towards?

They generally gravitate towards things that will take them out of

that will probably mask it.

And

recreational drugs right

um

dopamine seeking behaviors

yeah you know like and the fact of the matter is anything anything in moderation could have could be applicable it's just that we are creatures of you know we're we're dependency type people so you got to be very careful yeah and and you also don't want to you generally want to try to not replace one thing with another as far as

they could, they're like, I want to bodybuild, or I want to do this.

And it's like, I used to have an eating disorder.

I'm like, no, you still have an eating disorder.

First off, right?

And I'm not knocking anyone.

It's just that

I had a drug addiction.

It's like,

okay.

So this is a maladaptive behavior because you are,

you're replacing.

Right.

And we do the same thing with stress.

So we're like,

I'm not doing this anymore.

I'm going to do this instead.

Like, hey, coach, I'm like, I need you to take a rest day.

They're like, okay, well, I'm going to go hike for 10 miles.

Like, no,

that's not it.

Right.

Yeah.

Right.

I'm like, rest.

Like, what is that?

I'm like, this is resting.

Right.

Yeah.

And it took me a really long time to actually appreciate that.

You know, I mean, that's

And obviously in our conversations, people are like, this dude's full of shit because he's just sitting here talking about all the stuff that he's dealing with on the way here.

But I mean,

I live and learn the hard way just like everyone else.

I mean, a lot of the reason that I got into the functional space and actually became aware of a lot of these issues is because

I had to go through them and there really wasn't anyone talking about that stuff at the time.

Like if you said,

if you were like digestion,

no one really knew what it was and no one or they knew what it was.

They just didn't fully understand the the importance of it.

Or a lot of the things I was talking about early on were very,

I would either A, get laughed at, or they'd be like, Yeah, that doesn't matter, right?

Until,

until

other people started talking about it.

And then once other people started talking about it, it's like, okay, so now we're starting to understand the importance of it.

But I was already kind of there,

applying things, dealing with a lot of my own issues early on.

Yeah.

Don't we all remember when the bubble gut was all just GH gut?

Yeah.

And now we're realizing that it's that's probably the least of it.

100%.

And that's

and not to like veer too far off, but and that's why I think that understanding, understanding, you know, I'm really big into psychology and I think that understanding differences in

the needs of our populations and how how it's drastically different and very hard to understand for some people.

And I think that we actually struggle to coach certain people because of that.

So, for example, when you do get someone that comes in, that's more lax.

You're like, you don't care about anything.

They're like, no, they're just not like you.

Right.

And so that, and that doesn't, that's hard.

It doesn't register with us very well.

You think that they just don't care or that they, it's not a priority to them or, or whatever it is.

It's like, no,

they're just not neurotic like you.

Right.

And

i think that when we

when we discount the fact that people can be different and we discount the fact that if we don't if we're not able to

if we're not able to relate the material

to all of these different demographics and it's gonna you're gonna have a hard time you know getting the buy-in and getting the results does that make sense like

because i can tell you i can tell you to reduce stress and I can tell, you know, soccer mom Jill to reduce stress, but how we actually get there might be drastically different.

Yeah.

Because for her, writing in her journal might actually be pretty applicable.

She enjoys that.

You know, she's like, yeah, I can write in my mindfulness journal.

Like, that's something I like to do right now, what I'm grateful for, and so on and so forth.

You're like, dude,

I can't do that.

Right.

I mean, I can't.

I could,

but it's just not something that, it's not something that I find a lot of value in for me personally.

I find more value in something that probably completely removes me from, completely removes, and, and this would, this would accomplish this, but something that completely removes me from bodybuilding and coaching and just all those things in general.

So it's funny because they'll be like,

what's, you know, how do I relieve stress at night?

I can't sleep.

So on and so forth.

It's like, well,

what do you like to do?

Like, well, I like to

watch TV.

I'm like, okay, so let's do this.

How about,

how about we put our like blue light blockers on, which I would have on right now normally,

put our blue light blockers on, like find a mindless show on Netflix.

sit and watch for 30 to 60 minutes.

How do you feel?

I'm like, well, your melatonin levels have gone up.

You're starting to relax.

And why is that effective?

Because you aren't thinking about all the other stuff that you're, that's, you know, constantly in your head.

And for some people, for some people, that isn't, I mean, that is a great way to

accomplish that.

For other people, it's like, nah, we actually need to, we actually need to put you in something where it provokes a little more thought, which would be like writing it down, talking to someone, doing therapy, doing whatever it is.

And for some people, it's a combination of those things.

But for me, it's always been

it's always been a case where

i have to force myself into situations that are uncomfortable to

to be able to actually

realize where those gaps are does that make sense

putting yourself comfortable to realize where those gaps are so what i mean by that would be

we generally we're generally going to from it like we're talking about stress, we're generally going to probably just gravitate towards things that are

easy, right?

That make sense, that are easy to latch on to.

And that's where a lot of those dependency behaviors and stuff come from.

So, for example,

if we, if you have a tendency to,

if you have a tendency to

overanalyze something,

and you're probably going to have a hard time sitting down and sitting in your head, right?

Would you agree with that?

Sitting in your head as in just letting it go.

Like if someone's extremely neurotic,

could they just sit there with no distractions

without losing their shit after five minutes?

It'd be

extremely difficult.

Sure, it would be very difficult.

And it probably wouldn't be effective at first, right?

Probably actually be really ineffective at first.

But if we can, you know, if we can build the awareness first, then we can start to, you know, we can start to actually

do some of those things and rationalize those thoughts.

So

I think, and that, and that's why I was talking about awareness so much, because it's like you don't know, you don't actually understand what all these things are that you're, that you're struggling with and the behaviors that you're struggling with.

So, and for some people,

you need help.

Like, you need someone else to tell you what they are.

I can't do it.

A therapist might be able to do it.

If you don't have anyone that can help, you know, your fiancé, your husband, your wife, your sister, your brother.

This is exactly what I was thinking as you were saying.

I mean, what you were saying, literally like the last five minutes is like the first thing that came to my mind is what would be the easiest way for a lot of people to get to this is normally someone like a therapist or like even their partner to tell them.

But the problem with that is it's kind of hard to rely on something like that.

Right.

And I think that's why, like, what you're saying, this awareness, like if you have the ability to be aware and to tell yourself,

I think that can solve a lot of the problems.

It's just, it's so fucking difficult sometimes.

Well, it is extremely difficult.

And, you know, I was,

I don't always like to use myself as an example, but it's applicable here because that's,

it took me forever to find that out, to actually understand like, oh,

these are all the things that I'm doing and here's why.

But I didn't learn them all on my own.

Right.

The only way that I learned them was other people.

And I mean, I learned a lot of them on my own, making mistakes, but other people getting put in uncomfortable situations that made me feel things.

I'm like, oh, shit, like this is not.

I'm started to realize a lot, what a lot of those tendencies were.

And most people avoid those situations, right?

You're not going to go out of your way to make yourself uncomfortable generally.

Like, well, I'm comfortable with being uncomfortable.

I'm like, dude, you can train hard,

but you can train hard and you can eat low calories and do all those things.

But I would argue that that's actually probably where you're comfortable because you're progressing.

Well, you're progressing.

And if you, and it, it, in your head, it serves a purpose.

Like,

I think that they,

and I was in that mindset.

I was like, if I don't hurt or I'm not in pain or I'm not physically ill or I'm not like

feeling suffering, then I'm not doing anything productive.

I think that's one of the things.

Well, I mean, obviously that may be true of the neurotic people, but I think also in bodybuilding, right?

Especially for people that might be on a higher level of testosterone and like hard work feels good.

Progressing feels good.

This is something that makes us happy and makes us feel fulfilled.

So why would we not go the extra mile to do all the extra shit that we feel like we should be doing to beat the other person?

Right.

But sometimes that's not actually the answer.

Sure.

I mean, it might, it might be the answer.

I would say it's probably the answer more often than not

once you get to a certain level.

Right.

And I think not for a beginner, but like

later.

Yeah.

I'm saying this like

assuming that we're talking about people that are

say in a competitive field, or even if they're not in the competitive field, but they are always on themselves to be perfect in whatever they're doing.

And I think a lot of people that listen to this this podcast might be in that demographic

because I know a lot of the people in this podcast like to listen to informative things and like to learn more and like to do more.

And a lot of these people also tell me about how they're competing and it's really

cool to see.

But

seeing that makes me feel like a good amount of them are probably in the place where sometimes they feel like they're not doing enough.

So they want to figure out what they're doing.

wrong or what they could be doing more or sometimes someone might think that there's a secret out there that they don't know to get themselves themselves better, or maybe there's like a secret dosage, you know, but in the end, a lot of the times it's not.

It's just time.

It's time.

And then, you know, you'd use the Chris Bumstead example earlier.

It's like, well, what, what are you actually lacking?

And likely when you get to that point, it's probably unit's probably completely unrelated to anything that you think you're lacking.

I mean,

again, because you know how to execute these things.

There's not, there really shouldn't be a scenario where it's like, if I tell you to follow a plan, they're like, well, I can follow a plan.

I said,

you can follow a plan unless I tell you to do something that you don't want to do.

Yeah.

Unless I can tell you to do something that makes you uncomfortable, which is why I use that when I mentioned being, you know, getting comfortable, being uncomfortable.

It's like, well, I can do that.

I can do all these things.

So, what if I tell you to rest?

What if I tell you to take less?

What if I tell you to

eat, I don't know, fruits and vegetables?

I mean, I don't know.

It could be anything.

Like,

why would I want to do that?

I'm like,

because that, these are things that you're not doing that will actually help you progress.

Like, well, I don't want to do that.

I'm like, then you, then you don't want to give, you know, I mean, you really aren't willing to do what makes you uncomfortable at the end of the day, but you have to baby step that.

You can't just.

You can't just throw someone right into,

it's like, here's 10 things that you can do.

You're probably probably not going to be able to do them all at once.

You know, it's probably going to take time and I'm probably going to have to phase them in.

And

a lot of the time, it's kind of coaching this path of least resistance with people.

It's like, I know there's five or 10 things that we probably can do to help you improve, but what's the easiest things for us to implement?

Let's start there.

What am I going to get the least amount of pushback on?

We'll start there.

Gonna make a little bit of improvement.

And then what we do is it's like, use the the word so in business and marketing or in uh

we would use the word like scalability right

so anyone that's anyone that's in the business field or entrepreneur field or if you guys are coaches or if you have separate business ventures or even you see a lot of the business coaches online that hear this word scaling Well, we're scaling a lot of, we're doing a lot of the same thing within the coaching.

It's like, this is pretty easy.

So if I need you to go from six days a week to five days a week training, maybe not forever, but maybe for a time,

that's going to give us, that's going to give us like this much result.

But that's not maybe a pretty, that's a pretty easy thing for them to do.

It's like, well, I need to, I need you to change these six things in your digestion to get to the next step.

It's like that steps us up a little bit more.

But

I started, you know, we start at the bottom and each time we want to progress, we have to scale with the goal, which means you're going to get a little bit more uncomfortable each time

until it's habitual, until it's easy, until it's automatic.

And I had mentioned like the off-season thing and the way I was tracking and doing all that stuff.

It's like, dude, I never would have done that 10 years ago.

Never would have done that five years ago, let alone when I first started.

But then, but I mean, it took so long to understand like, this is not that important.

And again, I'm not advocating that or condoning that for everyone, but that's what I needed to do personally.

And there are a lot of competitors, a lot of general population, but there are a lot of competitors that if we took that idea and we just

removed a lot of the things that they're worried about that aren't that important.

And it's like I said.

You're picking up pennies and skipping the dollars.

How much variety have you seen?

And obviously this varies per person, but how much variety have you seen in a competitor's diet when their GI or their digestive issues have basically dissipated?

So an easy, we can kind of like a practical example is I had a gentleman recently,

and I would say this is probably a lot of people listening will probably be like, oh yeah, this makes sense.

He was having, he was having a lot of typical, when I say typical symptoms, again, we're talking about things like bloating, gas,

meal, like reactive, reactive symptoms with meals.

You know, it's like, hey, I get really full as the day goes on.

I can't finish my meals.

Okay, fine.

Look at the diet.

It's like, I'm eating.

I have, well, he had actually taken it upon himself to dwindle everything down.

you know, kind of eliminate the things that were causing since

intolerances.

What kind of things?

So the diet, you know, the diet basically had come down to it's like beef, eggs, chicken, rice, most of the starches from like rice, very little fruit and vegetable, very little fat other than trace fats and things from the meats, right?

Because

too many carciferous veggies,

too many fruits that just cause gas, they cause bloating.

And that's why he was cutting out because it was causing him bloating.

Right.

So just so just kind of gone through his own elimination diet.

Okay.

And I would say that maybe that's pretty limited, but there's probably a lot of bodybuilders that probably

eat less than 10 foods

on a regular basis for long periods of time.

Right.

So

if we look at that situation, I know right off the bat, I'm like, okay, so A, you probably don't have that many food intolerances.

You probably actually have an underlying GI issue.

That's first, right?

Like

you,

food intolerances and food allergies, which are not the same thing, but they're very real, except for the fact that

the vast majority of people aren't intolerant to everything.

Right.

So when you start dwindling it down, it's like, are you actually intolerant to all of these things that you think you're intolerant to, or do we have some kind of underlying GI issue?

Why can we not eat them?

So

it's like, okay.

Have you tried reintroducing any of these things?

And we were doing some other stuff, which I can talk about.

It's like, I can't because every time I do, you know, symptoms will increase.

But how much are you adding in?

Like, well, if I have,

I don't know, let's eat a banana.

I have, you know,

bloating from the banana or I have some indigestion.

I'm like, what if you ate this much of a banana?

Yep.

I've never eaten that much of a banana.

Like, why would I do that?

Like, because you could eat this much of a banana.

You just can't eat the whole banana.

So for somebody like that and for a lot of people, when we're doing food reintroduction to start to diversify, re-diversify that microbiome and start building out some of that microbial diversity, just little bits, right?

You don't have to do 200 grams of vegetables.

You don't have to do...

150 grams of blueberries.

Like you don't have to do that.

We can reintroduce in really small quantities even over the course of weeks.

And there are different ways to do it.

Sometimes it could be

weekly rotation.

I've seen some people, and I've talked about this with one of the other coaches on my team, even doing like daily rotations with things like a little bit of rotation day to day to introduce new foods.

That can be very helpful to people.

For some people, that's just like a little too tedious.

You know,

I'll often do like weekly rotations or how often do you, you know, go to the grocery store?

Like, well, well, I prep food twice a week, I go to the store once a week.

I'm like, perfect.

Every time you go to the store, we're going to rotate.

We're going to rotate something in.

Okay.

And then I could scale that up over the course of four weeks, six weeks, eight weeks, whatever it is.

And by the time, and so for like this gentleman, by the time we got to, I believe it, we had used a,

I want to say like a six-week reintroduction,

he had

one, two, three, four,

probably 10

servings of fruits and vegetables in the diet from zero with no

with no intolerance issues.

Wow.

But if we just dump that in there,

it would be a huge problem.

Right.

Now, on top of that, noticing a lot of the other, you know, a lot of the other secondary GI issues had started to subside.

Right.

So in particular, he was having a lot of what we would call like histamine symptoms, which, so when you think histamine, you think of like allergies, right?

A lot of people have histamine symptoms indirectly from just an immune reaction.

So, it could be on the skin, like eczema, psoriasis, acne can be a histamine symptom, rashes can be a histamine symptom.

Um,

any kind of swelling that you get from meals can be a histamine symptom, joint pain can be a histamine symptom.

Um,

there's a long list,

so those started to go away because why?

The immune system's like chilling now, right?

But that was really simple.

It was just like...

And the immune system was chilling because after he introduced all these variety of foods, he stopped having the GI issues.

Correct.

But that's a very, very simple example, right?

In a case like that, in most cases, you would probably have some other secondary, like supplemental support too.

So things we would be probably doing there would be

working on mucosal lining in the gut.

So our GI is lined with the mucus lining.

That gets very depleted.

You hear that term leaky gut.

That's kind of where that's not a medical term.

So nobody shoot the messenger here, but where you're depleting that lining and you're having a lot of like intestinal permeability issues.

So you might sometimes hear people say like

seal and heal.

Seal is like build the mucosal lining back up.

Heal would be kind of healing the other cell surfaces.

So there would, in most cases, there would be other supplementation that would probably go into it, but it's not always, you know, it's not always super complicated.

It might be two or three, four things.

And

then just food reintroduction.

A lot of the time, it just takes time for the body to heal itself.

What's the craziest shit that you've ever seen with digestive issues?

Oh, boy.

Craziest?

Yeah.

I mean, I've seen everything from,

we'll say this, craziest that I've actually like had part in working on.

I've seen everything from like frequent hospital visits, like, you know, severe rectal bleeding

to

gastroparesis cases, which is a motility disease that you talked about, autonomic nervous system.

That's kind of how that.

ties in.

It's like an extreme motility disease that generally will

slow motility to the point where

I guess the easiest way to think about it is

everything from everything from here is not, you're not having, you know, gastric emptying is not happening or having, and a lot of that's neurological.

A lot of the time there can be like neurochemical imbalances.

Usually those people end up on a lot of medications that are,

I would say a lot of medications.

They'll end up on medications that are motility,

motility-related drugs that tend to have a lot of side effects or sometimes they're blocking certain chemical pathways in the brain.

What drugs?

I'm trying to think of the drug that

that particular case was on.

I'd have to circle back on that.

Why not just a little Mirillax?

A little Mirillax.

Yes,

a little Mirillax

would probably not stimulate the nervous system very well.

Honestly, there's so many.

There's just so many and there's such, there's such a variety.

I guess it depends on, I guess it depends on what you consider severe.

And also, I think there's a lot of them that probably people wouldn't even necessarily relate to GI.

Yeah.

Were a lot of these from bodybuilders or non-bodybuilders?

A little bit of both.

On the bodybuilding side, you generally are going to see more.

You're generally going to see,

I don't like to speak in absolutes, more of the inflammatory, a lot more of the inflammatory bowel issues, like I said, especially with the males.

And then sometimes they'll have some of the upper gastrointestinal issues, like your acid reflux and things like that.

And that's just because

food requirements are so high.

And they, and, and males tend to have, you know, more gear, more like everything.

Women

or general population, I would say a little bit more on the side of the bacterial, of the bacterial issues, like yeast, fungal issues, things like that.

And also, you got to remember that women have their pH levels and stuff are going to change throughout their mental cycle, assuming that they're having one.

And so,

you tend to have, you tend to maybe have a little bit more on that side with them.

But it's really hard to lump it in because

I've had plenty of males with yeast and

fungus,

parasites.

Weird, juicy stuff there.

Yeah,

people, people passing worms.

Oh, fuck.

People having a lot of rectal itching.

Damn, that's crazy.

There's all kinds of stuff.

Oh, rectal itching sounds crazy.

Yeah.

I have a lot of female friends that are competitors that I

have told me about some of their own GI issues and their own problems.

And I seem to see a lot of these

a lot of times like.

say like they haven't pooped in three days or

they're always bloated and it's it's hard because obviously you know a female competitor wants to make sure that her waist is tight, sometimes more than a male, you know, because she cares about it on a daily basis.

Some of us guys on an offseason, we're just like, fuck, if it's big, it's big, you know.

Right.

But

I mean, I know that like you would probably say that these are just, it's hard to like hone down on what these issues could be because there could be just such a wide variety of issues here, right?

That's true.

While that's true, usually there's maybe a few other symptoms in there that are probably, if you know, if you've seen these patterns over and over again, you can probably pinpoint it.

And sometimes we will, we, you know, may necessitate like some more advanced testing to actually see, is there bacterial overgrowth?

Is there fungal overgrowth?

Is it just a stress thing?

Is it an immune system issue?

But I would say nine times out of 10, you can probably have somebody like that fill out, you know, fill out your initial intake form, gather information.

and then watch it, watch their process for a week, two weeks, or maybe they have enough historical data where you can pretty much pinpoint it after doing one phone call with them or something.

From seeing the historical data, or at least from your own clients and your own experience, what have you seen most often?

Often?

Well, there's always a stress component.

Always.

How much of that is purely stress-related versus something that's

deeper GI?

It's,

I mean,

it could be almost all, could be almost all stress-related.

Like I mentioned some of those cases in the beginning where we just remove stuff.

I'm like, hey, go chill.

And they're like,

I feel better.

Hanging out with your friends.

I mean, I don't know.

It could be any number of things.

Right.

Right.

Like, that's,

that is, that's a, a really easy scenario to fix if they can actually

buy into that process and do it.

Because once they do it a couple of times, they're like, okay, now I can see it.

It makes sense.

And then you can replicate it.

But getting that initial buy-in, I'm like, if you just do this, you're going to feel better.

Have you ever seen any of these stress-related issues or GI issues come from, like derived from the menstrual cycle?

Sure.

Yeah.

So when you go through different phases of the cycle, you're going to have

different

speeds of motility.

So like luteal phase, for example, when you're getting, when you're getting close to, so you'll have the follicular phase, things are generally the most calm.

So that's where you'll see the female, it's like right after the, right after the bleed, that's where you'll generally generally see like

the least amount of water retention.

You'll see the least amount of, you know, digestive swings, the least,

the best weight loss even.

Like if you're looking over the course of a menstrual cycle, because it's just generally where things are the most calm, assuming that the menstrual cycle is normal,

right?

Around luteal phase, where we're starting to see things get a little bit funky, you see the digestive slowdown, you start to see the bloating, you start to see all those things.

And sometimes it's really easy to pinpoint and say, hey, this happens.

You said the luteal phase with the bloating.

Yeah.

So,

so we'll have period.

Like if you look at, if you say, like, first day of the period would be like day one, right?

That'd be the first day of bleed.

Then we would count forward from there.

So luteal phase would be shortly before the bleed.

Okay.

And that's that.

So it's going to be like right after ovulation.

And then then they start having symptoms and it's relatively short.

But like I said, if the period is, if the period is relatively normal or

they're having it in a, in a, a consistent interval,

then that's something you'd be able to point out and be like, okay, this happens at this time every month or every

however many days your cycle is, right?

And we could see that.

So should I guess the question there would be like, is that even something to be concerned about from a digestive aspect?

Probably not in a lot of cases, unless it's to the point where it's debilitating, of course.

And then maybe, maybe there's some real simple support that we would add in for a couple of days or for a short period of time just to mitigate some of those symptoms.

But otherwise, if you're not having any,

if you are not having any pre-menstrual symptoms at all,

then chances are your hormones probably aren't fluctuating correctly.

And I don't like that, like people hear that and they're like, well, my, my cycle is pretty mild.

I'm like, that's good, right?

It shouldn't be extreme.

It shouldn't be debilitating, but it's completely normal to have some symptoms, right?

It doesn't mean that there's anything wrong.

So this is something to keep in mind.

Because you were asking about whether or not if those, you know, if those digestive issues are at certain times of the cycle, it's like

my question is: are they happening only at that time of the cycle?

Is this a consistent pattern?

And if so, is this something that we even need to even need to be concerned about?

Because you being a little bloated for two days of the month's not

pretty normal.

Okay, gotcha.

Cool.

Makes a lot of sense.

One of the craziest, what's the craziest shit that you've seen with gear?

Gear?

Yeah.

I'm not going to, I don't, I won't say exactly who.

Well, I would say

some of the craziest, some of the craziest actually probably had a little bit more to do with just the

quantities, but also just duration.

You know, I think, I think probably one of the crazier scenarios, and this probably happens a lot, is

typically like, what do we do post-cycle with gear after we've been, let's say someone has a really long contest season.

It's like, okay, you've been blasting.

You've been on super physiological amounts for six months, eight months, 10 months, 12 months.

And then what are we going to do post-cycle?

It's like switch a few compounds, try to rebound.

You know, so

seeing someone on trend for 18 months and

near gram dosages, seeing people with like

blood glucose of 200 post, you know, post-ship and shit like that because their body is so stressed out.

Seeing people need like two, 300 milligrams or 200 IUs of Lantis to, you know, control their blood glucose.

It's like, nah, dude.

Damn.

You know, just stuff like that.

200,

that's crazy.

Yeah.

I won't, again, I won't say who.

I'm sure he'll listen to this, but

seeing like a blood glucose of 200 with,

I want to say upwards of 100 to 200 IUs of Lantis still.

Damn.

And, you know, and that should never, there should never be a scenario where you need that unless you're, you know, extremely diabetic, and especially not post-contest when you should be pretty insulin sensitive,

right?

Or really ever for that matter.

Right.

But that's the kind of stuff, like, that's the kind of stuff that,

that I think is

most concerning just because

Really, a lot of the long-term issues are probably going to revolve around like

more of like this metabolic syndrome type of scenario where it's like

high cholesterol and isolation is probably not going to be the problem.

Blood glucose and isolation might not be the problem.

But when we start combining the fact that these bodybuilders are dealing with these, this cluster of symptoms for a long time, you're basically just an obese person.

That the only reason that

you don't have type 2 diabetes is that you prep once in a while.

Right.

It's like by the end of the offseason, you basically are that person and then you rinse it off.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

It's like you rinse it off for four months, for five months, and then you do it again.

But ultimately, you know, it's still kind of the same cluster of symptoms.

Yeah.

It's crazy.

What are the craziest things you've seen from gear use with GI issues?

As far as like,

as far as as a result of gear use, I would assume that would be probably the most common as a result of gear use.

Well, I mean, an answer that a lot of people relate to would be like, would be like

orals, you know, methylated orals and

having those types of issues.

But I feel like a lot of people have seen those.

And a lot of, so that's, that's probably more common.

But probably just honestly, probably

just related to just total dosing and seeing, well, I'll flip that question.

Probably the craziest thing I've seen is the reduction in the need for gear when you correct the GI issue.

And people are going to be like, well, how much

would be like, I think that that's a little bit,

that's a little bit of a stretch.

It's like, it is to a point.

I mean, you're not going to, if you're a pro bodybuilder and you need three grams, you're not going to be able to all of a sudden miraculously need, you know, a thousand milligrams.

It's not going to work like that.

But there definitely becomes a point where

your needs can reduce to a pretty substantial amount.

I think that's probably where what throws people the most when they start working together.

You're like, I'm growing on a lot less.

I can grow on less food.

Or even if the amount is the same, you're just getting a lot more from it.

If that makes sense.

I feel like I've heard of some situations like this, and I feel like this makes sense.

But what do you think that is?

Do you think that's just because of like maybe

like a reduction in systemic inflammation?

Yeah.

And also keep in mind that like total serum hormones are just like when you do blood work, you're just seeing like, here's how high the testosterone is.

I mean, you can't even really test other androgens in there anyhow.

It's like there's not a primo serum level, right?

I mean, you test your testosterone, you look at your esteemed, like you look at these things.

But what you're not seeing is really metabolism of those and like where are they, like how are they being utilized in the body.

A really common example would be aromatization, males, right?

So like, I can take,

you know, I take X amount of testosterone and above that point, I need a, you know, I need an AI.

Fix the gut.

Now you have less recirculation of estrogen back into the body.

They don't need an AI anymore.

Now that's gut and liver related.

But, I mean, that type of thing you see all the time is just better utilization of or better metabolism of the actual

drugs themselves.

Because

most hormone metabolism is really going to take place in either

is really going to be like liver, gut.

And those two systems work in conjunction with each other.

Because when you look at

when you look at detoxification of the liver, it's like phase one and phase two.

Phase one kind of breaks things down, phase two

into more usable molecules.

Phase two kind of decides like what it wants to do with them.

Do you want to, do you want to get rid of them?

Do we want to reallocate them to something else?

And then we

phase three would be more of like excretion,

urine, stool, kidneys would also be part of that process, right?

Right.

Or excretion.

So

just better

just better utilization of the hormones from fixing the gi if that makes sense yeah

yeah is there any specific compound or any compounds in particular that you feel like have caused the most issues or that you see cause more issues than others well i mean the the poison is always in the dose right

i mean so

something that like so something that i'll point a lot would be like females for example so they're like well

what's a root and again some people some people will probably totally,

totally disagree with this.

And that's, that's fine.

But like, what is a,

if we look at females, what is a replacement dose of testosterone for females?

Like if we're looking at HRT dose, that's going to put them in mid to high normal range.

It might be.

It's tiny.

Yeah, it's, it's small, you know, three, four, five milligrams.

I don't know.

Somewhere in that realm.

And five might even put some people over range.

So if, and again, none of the androgens are like one milligram of anivar does definitely just not equal milligram of testosterone, but let's say hypothetically it did.

Then what would five milligrams of anivar a day be?

It's 35 milligrams a week.

So it's about seven times, you know, that's about if they were one to one, that would be about seven times normal physiological dose.

Right.

So I think that when we look at it from that angle,

there's probably,

I think there's probably a

overuse, especially in newer people with some of the compounds.

Because with males, if you, if your replacement dose is 150 to 200 milligrams, probably not even 200, 150 milligrams, 100 milligrams, you're probably, and some people do, but you're probably not going to be like, hey, you take 100 milligrams first cycles, 1500 milligrams tests.

I mean, people do it,

right?

But oftentimes, there's probably you probably would have, especially now, because people are kind of using this idea of safer use.

So they're, you know, 200, 300, 400 milligrams used to just be 500.

Everyone just started there.

Or, or if they found some crazy cycle online, they might just jump right into it.

But, but I think in females, especially, it's

the need is probably a lot less.

And so the poison, like I said, is in the dose because, yes,

trend ballone might have more, you know, might have more susceptibility to side effects than something like a Primabolin.

But there's plenty of people that five milligrams of Anabar causes a lot of problems, right?

And there's other people, you know, because that would be 35 a week.

And there's other people that can take

you know, can take 50 milligrams of Primabolin in a week and they do fine.

I mean, there's comparable dosages, but but ultimately, probably starting lower and escalating up, I mean, there's no, probably no reason that as a bikini competitor, you need to jump right on, you know, five milligrams right off the rip.

Yeah.

Right.

Or pick a different sport.

I mean, if you're a pro or if you're trying to jump to that level, absolutely, like, I'm not naive to the fact that you're going to need more.

But even then.

I mean,

yeah, I think that comes later down the line too, right?

Because, you know, as you continue to be on these substances for a long period of time, you're going to slowly want to titrate those up in order for you to continuously respond as well as you want to, or at least progress to the rate you want to.

And then on top of that, too, I mean, you and I already know that, like, for a bikini girl, too, if you're, if you're in bikini, you probably do want to, like, have some awareness of viralization.

just these constant slow changing transformations that you cannot see with your eye.

You just can't.

Right.

You know, you say that you're jumping on something that you don't realize is too high.

And then a year from now, suddenly your voice is a little deeper.

Yeah.

Which is also why, you know, also why people have become a lot more privy to the idea of like adding in, utilizing multiple pathways.

It's like, oh, you can use growth hormone for women.

Oh, even insulin for women in cases, right?

Like it's still, mechanistically, it still works.

It's still the same thing, right?

You still have a pancreas.

You still need, like you, you still have beta cells, like you still need, need that insulin.

So, like, synergistically, you can do a lot of those things with females, just like you do males, to prevent a lot of that virilization, right?

So, I think people are, but people are doing that now a lot more than they were, right?

Instead of just like increase the dose of androgens, like we can also just utilize other pathways that are non-androgenic that probably aren't going to cause side effects or less side effects.

I was talking with Stefan Kinzel on this as well.

And I was wondering why you might think some competitors, especially open bodybuilders, seem to not get dry or lean enough for the show.

For me, I feel like it has to do with inflammation.

I feel like it has to do with the amount of compounds that they're using.

And I feel like I recall you mentioning

titrating up doses less in the show or for your peak.

And I feel like that has a big thing to do with it, honestly, personally, too.

I'm trying to remember what I said specifically, but

it might have been something along the lines: like if we think about

if we think about what androgens really do, I mean, what do you use them for in prep?

Some cosmetic effect, muscle retention,

so on and so forth.

But we could also say it probably takes

it probably takes less to maintain than it does to

cause like a hypertrophy response.

Right.

It does.

So,

which is why typically when someone says

i take

very small amounts of my off season and i try to create some kind of like you know

heightened response in prep like that can work but you would have to literally be detraining yourself in the offseason like they're like pulling the kevin lavrone where he doesn't train for

X amount of time.

It's like, yeah, muscle memory.

He will regain a lot of that tissue.

It's going to be a crazy transformation.

But

really, I mean, I would say that if you're, if you're utilizing two, three times the amount in prep than you are in the offseason, you're probably kind of missing what that, what those androgens are doing for you.

And so to your point,

are they not getting dry and lean enough because of that?

Yeah, I would say that's probably a factor, but also like we've been talking about digestion.

That's definitely a factor.

Terrence Ruffin says, great choice, man.

He mentored me and a few other coaches over the last few years.

Over the years.

Yeah.

jillian garcia says top five supplements for digestion and reduce acid reflux top five

probably don't need five there's probably i mean there's definitely five things you could take so he says to well so he says digestion and acid reflux which acid reflux would be like a kind of like a subcategory there

um okay

So let's say like top five overall broad spectrum supplements that could be applicable to most people.

One is

we'll break that down.

So one, we're looking at kind of immune system, probably inflammation, maybe like overall bacterial balance, like mucosal lining, stuff like that.

One that probably gets a lot more love now that didn't, that some people maybe don't know about, a lot of people might,

something like colostrum.

Getting some high immunoglobulin content, colostrum could be helpful.

A lot of people would use glutamine for a long time, which it still has good application, but you're kind of getting like the easiest way to think about it is like that's going to do kind of one thing.

One or two things, and colostrum is probably going to give you a more broad spectrum benefit.

Okay.

What are the one or two things that you're thinking about with glutamine?

So, like, glutamine will raise secretory IgA, maybe help with mucosal lining.

So, it's good at what, it's good at what it does.

It's very cheap.

It's easily accessible.

It's probably about a tenth of the cost.

But with colostrum, you'll still get a lot of those other benefits plus helping control inflammation autoimmunity

especially for a lot of those bodybuilders that do suffer from a lot of those ibd high inflammatory issues great for preventative in the offseason or contest prep keeping those things at bay i mean a lot of people probably say zinc carnosine would be one that's maybe a common one it's cheap It'll help with,

it's going to help with, again, that mucosal lining.

It's going to help with all the tight junctures in the gut.

Talking about that leaky gut or the, we'll call it intestinal permeability situation.

It's cheap.

I mean, really, really the only downside there is it does have zinc in it.

So you got to make sure you just have some copper in your diet.

So you're not having zinc and copper imbalances.

But for most people that eat animal proteins, I mean, it's not too big of a problem.

A lot of people probably think I would say like probiotics, really not.

Prebiotics, eat the food variety is going to be a lot, you know, a lot bigger.

And if you are somebody that, if you are somebody that lacks food variety, then you're also probably going to be lacking in fiber in a lot of cases, especially if you're the bodybuilder that's eating in their offseason, that's eating like all rice for carbohydrates and you haven't seen a vegetable in six months because there's no room left in your stomach.

I mean,

you know, so you're probably going to lack prebiotic feeder foods that create things like

create things like short-chain fatty acids that are

that are actually going to ferment, that are going to feed bacteria.

So, I mean, that's not a supplement,

but

that is, you know, it's something that people need to be doing

up to a point.

Okay.

What do you think about betane hydrochloride with pepsin?

Yeah, betaine.

Betane is definitely fine with low stomach acid issues.

Again, if you have H.

pylori, there's some controversy on that.

Is that going to irritate that tissue?

If you have ulcers, is that going to irritate that tissue?

Probably not in low dosages, but

the, you know, the thing to understand is like a betain HCl might have 600 to 750 milligrams per capsule.

I mean, that is like a drop in the bucket compared to how much stomach acid you actually should have.

Okay.

Right.

Yep.

But a lot of people will just, a lot of people will start with that.

Let's say they do something like the

one that a lot of people use will be like the baking soda burp test.

Check and see if we, you know, we'd have low acid.

Like, do you burp?

Do you not burp?

If you burp, you probably don't.

If you, you know,

if you, if you don't burp, then maybe you have low stomach acid.

That's like a super duper rudimentary test.

Okay.

That's basically free other than baking soda.

It's not.

It's not 100% accurate, but it is easy and it is, doesn't really cost anything.

But people would, and a little off off track, but people would take B10 HDL because HDL is hydrochloric acid.

So it's like it's a replace, replaces acid.

But do you say, I mean, I think some in the bodybuilding industry will take that if they feel like they're not digesting their protein properly, or maybe they consume too much of it.

Right.

Because

you're going to have, you probably have higher acid requirements than what you can make.

Acid could go down as you age.

If you're eating a lot of protein, that's, you know, far and above what you,

what amount of HDL you can produce endogenously, then you might require more acid.

Genetics might require more acid.

Even

I would even go as far as to say that

if you have

had specific nutrient deficiencies, long-term like proton pump inhibitor use, you know, anti-acid use, like medications, things like that, you might require more acid.

Okay.

But a lot of the time people

can get away with taking,

can get away with taking even simpler things like even a little bit of apple cider vinegar, bitters,

stuff like that.

And they don't ever require betane, like eat less protein.

And half the time you don't need it.

Now,

and people might find this, find this kind of interesting, but I used to use betane a lot more and I use it a little bit, but there was, there were cases where I would use pretty high amounts of it with people or where we're trying to like re-acidify after

removing proton pump inhibitors.

Like, hey, I want to come off these PPIs.

I've been on them for decades, you know, whatever.

And we remove those and start titrating those doses up.

Looking at those capsules, I mean, I've seen people on 10, 15, 20 caps per meal, even

to try to achieve a high enough acid level to, you know, to digest the food.

But then I found that it's like, that's probably largely unnecessary for most people.

You have a lot of questions here that are literally just people excited that you're on the podcast.

Like Forrest Drummond said, legit, I'm about to hire him as a coach December 2nd.

Happy to see this.

Going to fix the gut issues.

And then C.T.

Brickley says, yes, good pick.

Where did his interest in bodybuilding originate?

So got a lot of fans, man.

Awesome.

Coach Pet Vuck McGinnen.

That was crazy.

How we proceed to do a GI map.

Where's he from?

So, okay, well,

that's not as relevant.

I mean, GI maps are from a company.

GI maps are from Diagnostic Solutions, which is a U.S.

company-based company.

You can get them in other countries.

And I've had success in basically any country.

I really, if you're out of the U.S.

I would just literally email them directly and just say, hey, do you have any distributors and insert

wherever you're from?

Usually, what it will look like is if they don't just, if they will not ship it from their website, there's going to be some kind of clinic or website or naturopath or someone that does provide the kits and they can get them.

Just like a lot of the blood work, you just order it privately.

You don't need a script.

A lot of HRT clinics can offer that stuff now.

So if you want a referral, you can in the U.S.,

places like, again, a lot of the HRT clinics, I've used a site called Planet Naturopath many times.

If you go online and type in GIMAP, order GIMAP, I guarantee you'll find

a place to order it.

It's a stool test, comes right to your house, collect the sample, send it in, get your results.

North Kyle asks, how long does thyroid take to recover from chronic dieting?

How long does it take to recover thyroid?

Yeah, from chronic dieting.

Oh, I couldn't even, man, it's going to.

Vary.

Yeah, it varies a lot, huh?

It's a ton.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Usually it it will.

We could say that much.

I mean, assuming, assuming that

your

endogenous levels are pretty normal prior and you weren't already hypothyroid, then probably will.

That's about the best.

I mean, it's about the best you could say.

Yeah.

Duration probably doesn't have a ton to do with it.

I mean, it might in some people, but you've seen people on for really long periods of time.

I would advise people to get their genetics done, or at least any testing of genetics done, and also ask your family and your parents, like, what of medications they're on and what runs in your genes.

I had a friend that thought that they were just dieting way too hard, but they could never get their thyroid back up.

And they found out that her mom was actually hypothyroid and she's on armor thyroid or she's on thyroid medication.

So, and a lot of the time, sometimes you don't know.

A lot of the time, thyroid is, you know, can simply be something like a conversion issue, like poor T4 to T3 conversion.

You look at that feedback loop, a traditional doctor may only test TSH, and it's like, well,

TSH is

mostly reacting to low T3.

So it's like TSH is a signaling hormone, right?

So

thyroid stimulating hormones.

So if T3 is low, then it's going to signal back up to the top, produce more TSH, which makes more T4, which then has to convert to T3.

You may produce a completely normal amount of T4, but just have us, you know, be

poorly converting.

And then...

they test your TSH and they're like, hey, you're hypothyroid.

I'm like, no, you have some nutrient deficiencies, stress is high, Like, fix those things.

T4 to T3 conversion goes up.

You don't need meds.

Gotcha.

Right.

Easier said than done.

Yeah.

You know, because the, like, again, if it's a stress thing, that might not be like a

quick fix.

And for some people,

even that are slightly, you know, slightly hypothyroid, um,

the way that I think about it, and this is the same way I think about HRT in general.

A lot of people ask, like, should I do it?

Should I not?

It's like,

or can you help me prevent having to do it?

It's like, let's say I can get you up to here.

This is 80%

of what we would consider optimal.

What did we have to do to get there?

And can you sustain those habits forever?

Because as soon as you go to prep again, tank.

As soon as you go to, you know, as soon as you go back to where you were again, tank.

So how realistic is it for us to replicate that environment year after year after year after year after year?

Right.

It's one of the scariest things, looking at your own genes when you're figuring, when you're figuring that shit out, seeing that you might not be suited for the lifestyle.

This same guy asks opinion on thyroid treatment, T4, T4, T3, or NDT.

Seems like to me like he might be actually living that kind of lifestyle that we were just talking about.

Maybe he was competing or something

and he's been having thyroid problems.

But yeah, do you have any opinion on thyroid treatment?

You'll hear different opinions.

Some people will say T3 only.

Some people say combination therapies like a T4, T3.

I think either of those can work well.

Unfortunately, usually the baseline defense from like your typical physician is going to be a T4

centroid.

It works if you convert it.

If you can't convert it, then it's...

What about like an armor thyroid?

Yeah, armor.

Armor.

That kind of consists of all of it.

Yeah, armor, NP thyroid.

And those are...

Those are going to be combo therapies, T4, T3 therapy.

They're very similar.

I think there's nature's thyroid or they're used to be.

Yeah, I mean, they work fine.

I wish we, man, maybe we'll just talk about it next time if we have another podcast, but I wish we talked about training.

I wanted to ask you about like high-frequency training and upper-lower splits and Q ⁇ A.

Do you do any via video too?

I have started doing some video, so we can definitely do that.

I could give you a lot better one

if I'm not completely fucking smoked.

I'm cooked right now.

Yeah, that sounds good.

We'll do that.

At least I'm glad you mentioned it in there.

I'm glad you were like, hey, give the guy a little bit of grace.

Smoked.

Bro, you're being smoked is crazy.

The amount of info that comes out of you.

I don't know how you do it.

I am like, this is the absolute worst I've ever felt on a podcast.

That's

awesome.

I'm fucking honored.

Yeah.

Record.

I'm glad you like it, though.

All right.

Last question.

I'm assuming you don't, I'm assuming like one of these people asked the tips for digestive issues, like what what kind of fruit or vegetable is good for digestion.

I'm assuming literally just including these back in your diet in general.

Yes and no.

So that might be a good, that's, I think that's a good one to just touch on a little bit.

Okay.

First and foremost, you probably get a little more bang for your buck from fruit for a lot of people.

So

veggies tend to be, so if we look at it from like a fiber standpoint, if we look at it from.

Well, let me ask you this.

So if you, if you were someone that couldn't digest carciferous carciferous green vegetables, it would be like broccoli, for example, I would say more people probably have issues with that than eating something like blueberries, right?

The blueberries also probably have higher polyphenol content.

They have the, you know, outside of the skins, which can be somewhat of an issue for people.

They generally will just digest easier.

The fiber ratio is a little bit better.

So

fruit.

probably will be better tolerated and you'll probably get a little bit more bang for your buck versus vegetables.

So you should still eat both.

But when we're repopping or like reintroducing food, there's usually a little bit more focus on fruit and vegetables are secondary.

And also from a volume standpoint, you will get more,

you're going to get more out of fruit.

Or I would say they require less volume, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

To get the effects

of poor versus a vegetable.

I've been keeping fruit, a variety of fruit in my diet for so long now, and I just think it's been so beneficial for me.

At least it's felt amazing.

And that's a great, a great takeaway is just

if there's one thing, maybe that's like a, like the, the tip to use,

even though, I mean, we talked about quite a few things.

I mean, if you can,

if you're a bodybuilder and you are someone that has a limited diet like that, you're looking for

assuming that you're not.

I mean, if you're really far gone, you're like the guy that has intolerant to everything, you can reach out to someone like myself or other people that I can suggest.

But if you want to look at long-term prevention,

two, three, four different types of fruit in the diet, to maybe a few different types of veggies in the diet,

if you can have a serving at every meal, maybe a serving of each at every meal, most days.

you are going to probably prevent the vast majority of long-term GI issues and also recurrence of GI issues once you have corrected something.

And that's, and I think that's super important is, is that it's not only fixing it, it's also maintaining that, right, long-term.

And that's easy.

I mean, it sounds simple, but hardly anyone does it.

Yeah.

Bro, I think that was honestly the greatest takeaway that we could have, honestly.

And honestly, the best way to end the podcast.

Because I mean, yeah, just like you said, like a lot of us, a lot of us who are in this field, whether or not you're a bodybuilder or whether or not you're just someone who doesn't even bodybuilder just things on a daily basis yeah dude it's hard for us to just make sure we have like a couple servings of each of these every day yeah it really is um and honestly the only reason that i've been able to do it is i just decide to keep it all in my freezer and my fridge and if i feel like i i'm ready for one during the day i'll fucking pop some fruits or i'll pop some spinach and kale or something when i feel like it's necessary like sometimes my poops even get a little harder and i'm like i could probably use some extra spinach in there and i'll just fucking sometimes i'll literally just get out the bag and just eat some fucking spinach it's crazy i know most people wouldn't but yeah that's the uh it's always it's always funny when people i'll start with someone and they're like i'm gonna eat i'm gonna eat all this fruit like yeah like man i feel way better

like yeah yeah

cool um i asked one last question at the end of every podcast to every guest but if you were to leave the world tomorrow And you had one message you could send to the entire world today, what would that be?

Oh, boy.

Sorry to put you on the spot.

Outside of eat your fruit?

Yeah.

Oh man.

Man, I don't even know how to begin to answer that question, especially right now.

Don't wake up at 2.30

Pacific and try to do a podcast.

Oh man, that's such a hard question to answer.

You know what?

I'll say,

is it non-bodybuilding related or just anything?

Anything.

I'll go back to,

well, I'll say this.

I will say that there's more to life than there's, there's definitely more to life.

If you want to be a good bodybuilder, since this is a bodybuilding podcast, if you want to be a good bodybuilder, then if you don't have outside hobbies and you don't have outside interests and you don't have, you know, relationships and you don't put focus and prioritize those things, you will not be the best bodybuilder you can be long term.

So that's, I mean, that's still bodybuilding related,

but it's something, you know, from like a maturity standpoint that takes a lot of people a long time to figure out.

Because when you're 22, 23, and you're bodybuilding for five years, it's like, I mean, that's 30% of your life and 50% of it you don't remember.

Yeah.

So I think that life and a lot, I would, I'm sure there's people that are a lot older than me in the sport that probably tell you the same thing.

It's like, hey, it took me 15 years to kind of figure that out.

Bro, yes.

But that's been huge for me as I talked about,

I talked about taking away some of the things that I was a little bit more hyper-fixated on and

laxing on certain things, you know, stuff like that.

But also a huge component of that was I do so much other stuff in my life now that I never would have done because bodybuilding is, you know, generally very isolating.

And it doesn't have to be.

Yeah.

Because bodybuilders are just normal people

that that eat and drink and sleep and you know go to the gym.

I really love that you said that because it took me a while to figure that out for myself.

I was always feeling a little bit uncomfortable that I spent too much time with, I don't know, friends or too much time that I, whatever, like this.

But I even had a podcast with Sadiq Hasevic, and he said when he was working with Chris Isido, he was like, Chris, I'll fucking give you 100%.

I'll give you 100%.

Chris is like, no, don't give me 100%.

Give me 99% because you're not going to be the best bodybuilder if you give me 100%.

You have to have a life outside of this.

You have to.

You can't live 100% because it'll eat you alive.

Eventually, you'll have to.

You won't even look your best because you won't have the balance that you need to

take the stress off or to be happy.

Right.

Like, appreciate.

This prep's been funny because I got, you know, I did my, I had to re-qualify for nationals or whatever.

And I was, which was not last weekend, but the weekend prior.

And I think it was Tuesday or something.

And we were sitting there.

I'm like, shit, I got to pack my shit because we got to show them, you know, but it used to be, it used to be, it's like, oh, it's peak week.

Oh, it's two weeks out.

Everything's mapped out.

It's a lot of just always thinking about what the next step is going to be.

And it's just like, didn't post about prep, didn't talk about prep other than to just a few people.

And

did, I mean, this week, last week, we went to the movies on a Tuesday night, you know, in prep.

I'm tired sitting there, but I'm enjoying it, right?

Never would have done that 10 years ago.

But I think all those things are what made me a lot better person and what have ultimately made me a lot better bodybuilder is just having some of that variety.

You just got to fucking enjoy it too, right?

Yeah.

And it's not really that big of a deal at the end of the day.

Where can everybody find you?

Easiest way to find me is on my social media.

In my bio, I have a link tree on there.

So if you go to my Instagram, I'm Austin ST, the number eight on Instagram.

Link tree in the bio will take you to most of the other resources.

So, like I have an education shop where if you're interested in individual courses on things like

digestion, for example, hormones, specialized testing,

adrenal health, I mean, all kinds of different stuff.

You can get on there for low barrier of entry

and take these classes, usually anywhere from like one to two hours.

These things are not going to teach you how to be like the ultimate expert on these, but they are great introduction to the topic.

They have a lot of practical takeaways.

They are going to pack as much practical information as you can into that time.

If you want to take that a step further,

you can reach out to me directly.

My email is in there.

So if you're looking for something like mentorship services, this is where we get,

we go, well, I would say that we go really deep depending on

depending on your needs.

So I work with people that are brand new, that have zero clients.

I have people, you know, I've had people that have six, seven, eight coaches on their team at the same time.

So I may work with their assistants.

I may work with them directly.

So if you want to do that, you can reach out to me via email.

Everything's, you know, everything's in there.

I think email is easiest, really.

Fuck yeah.

Hell yeah, bro.

Cool.

Thanks for coming on, man.

That was awesome.

No problem.

It was epic.

Yeah.

Tons of information, guys.

That kind of blew my mind.

Even though he's working at 40% of his normal capacity, I don't really understand how that's possible.

But if you guys would like to support the podcast, you can by rating us a five-star in Apple Podcast, Spotify, or anywhere you find a podcast, or subscribing to the YouTube channel, and clicking the bell button, which helps us get great guests like Austin today.

So, thanks, dude.

Thank you, bro.

Appreciate it.

Thank you guys.

Fucking sick.