I try to pick what's best for the client, right?
Like any diet can work, but what's going to be the most
adherable like adherence is always the top priority.
Essentially the certain set point like genetically of like
body fat percentage wise where you're performing good, joints
feel good, and then hunger signaling is more level on the
opposite ends like below it. If you're like a lower body fat
percentage, there will be that higher signaling if you go above
a certain body fat percentage away from your set point.
I noticed that for me, I got to just like keep labs in check in
my essentially my insulin and glucose levels and stuff like
that. Just track that a little bit
because I'll be having a little more palatable food that's
probably going to be higher in sugar naturally, just to get in
the amount of calories that I would have to get in because
Hunter Stanley starts to go down.
And we are live. Austin, how are you, brother?
Good. How are we doing?
Good man. You still in?
You were in Spokane for a while, then you were in.
Where you at now? Are you in Arizona?
See, I know I'm like a gypsy. I just go all over.
So we were down in Arizona for like 5 years and then we still
have our condo down there, but we're up in, if you remember,
Coeur d'Alene is right next to Spokane, kind of like right
across the border right there. So we're in the Coeur d'Alene
Hayden area now, so. Nice.
I like that spot, man. My, my wife and I, when we were,
because we were right there in Spokane, it's like 20 minutes
from Coeur d'Alene. So we would drive over there on
the weekends. We didn't have any money at the
time, so we would just go over there and like walk around the
boardwalk. Yeah, the boardwalk's pretty.
The lake. Yeah, Yeah.
It's pretty, pretty spot, man. Yeah, yeah, that's right.
I forgot you has some family or your wife has some family up
here. Do you guys, did you guys come
this summer at all or are you going to come over here this
summer? No, well, she's got so she's
about to have a baby. We're going to have a baby like
literally any week now dude. Congrats another.
One another one another boy. So she's got a bunch of her
family coming down in the next several months to kind of help
out with that. But then as soon as he gets a
little older, we'll probably go back up to Spokane area because
she's got family in Pomeroy, she's got family in Spokane.
So yeah, we've got a bunch of roots in Washington and I like
Washington, so we'll go back up for.
Sure. That's where we met.
That's. Right.
That's where we met, man. You've been on the podcast.
Is this second or third time on the show?
I care this might be you're. One of the OG guests that you
were, one of my very first guests when I first started the
podcast way back in like 2016 I think.
And then I had you back on, you know, several years afterwards.
And now we're you're right. This this is another third kind
of thing. Yeah.
I like it man.
That's funny. That's been, it's so crazy to
think back like, 'cause yeah, you won that show.
You're, you won the bodybuilding.
And then my Tom, if you remember Tom, that's right, It was Tom.
Which show was this? It's just.
Like I think, I don't even know if that circuit's still going
anymore, but it was the NGA or the it's called NGA, the NGO.
There's the GBO. No GBO cause yeah, NGA is the
natural federation, but the GBO and that was untested and you're
natural and you still want it. So that was.
Yeah, the, the guy I won the classic, but the guy that won
the bodybuilding, he, he was, he was definitely not natural.
He was, he had like you remember that competitor, man, he was
huge. He probably had £100 on me and
he was like losing his hair in all different spots on his
brain, man. And I was like, what?
Look at him. Oh, no, I know which one you're
talking. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, like what causes that? Do you know what even causes?
Yeah, I don't know with his receptors like if it is from the
drugs and it's just like the like downstream of more like
rheumatizing and estrogen or if it's more of like a
dihydrotestosterone like I don't know if it's just genetic as
well. You know, I have I don't know,
but I don't I haven't seen that type of it didn't seem like a
male pattern baldness. It seemed like a a condition of
some kind. You know what?
I. Mean yeah, yeah, yeah.
And it's, it's funny because like, I don't know hardly
anything about all of the performance enhancing drugs side
of things because I don't ever, you know, dabble with it.
So it's amazing how ignorant I am towards it.
But like, I, I see people that are abusing things or whatever
the case may be, they're just like not clearly not healthy.
And it's like, man, they may be jacked, they may win this show,
but I don't want any part of what they're taking.
Yeah, it's, it's a, it's a slippery slope for sure.
And then you you can usually notice too.
And the biggest thing you see at the amateur level, I guess at
the pro level 2, but there's a little more dialed in.
Obviously I get the national shows, but at the regional level
you'll just see people try to mask the lack of getting
conditioned with, you know, pushing more drugs.
The problem is, is then you'll see a lot of people have that
water bloat. Maybe you're used to like their
face gets all puffy or they'll have like their midsection.
Cause the body can. I mean, in my experience, like
even if you push it super hard with PEDs, like you still need
time and the body still needs time for fat loss and you can go
quicker. But the amount of stress you put
on the body you have to take into account too.
I feel like 'cause you'll have this stressed, like cortisol,
just puffy look, you know, rather than a hard grainy like
during your peak week especially.
I see that all the time. But yeah, it's like a very fine
line where more is not always better.
And I think I don't know what you've been here and stuff, to
be honest with you. I don't really talk to a lot of,
I'm kind of my own lane all the time.
But the people I do talk to, it just seems like I think more
education is coming out finally to actually get blood work done
and to actually try and be healthier with using PEDs, you
know? But yeah, it's.
I feel like like TRTHRT is just mainstream now.
Like back when you and I knew each other in Washington, like
there were people that were taking drugs in the bodybuilding
stage to compete at a higher level, but it didn't seem like
the general population was that well versed in it.
Now it seems like almost everybody in their their cousin
is on some form of TRTHRT. So I feel like just by way of,
you know, downstream education, more people are getting educated
to, OK, we probably should get lab work drawn on a regular
basis, let's do this the right way.
But you get with that just a lot more noise in the marketplace
too. That's it.
Yeah. And this is actually because you
asked me about certain topics like this is an interesting one
that there's like 2, there's like A2 sided coin here where 1
is great. There's more education and
available like quality substance, right?
Like, you know, actual testosterone from a pharmacy.
And the old school doctors are like maybe going out and
retiring or like the more the new people, new, you know,
doctors coming in, they're more trying to take this approach of
lab work and testosterone is OK versus back then people are
like, oh, you take testosterone, you're just taking a bunch of
steroids. It's like, it's by identical.
It's like what's in your body? The, the, so the good part is
it's like there is more education, but like you just
said, when there's more education, there's more
attention on it, there's more noise and then becomes more
false information as well, right.
And so that's kind of the bad part.
The other part is, is what scares me is in my experience
with my clients, I didn't really have to worry a ton about super
skewed lab work. Like 5-10 years ago.
When we first like 5 to 8 years ago, it was kind of like, yeah,
you know, we got a guy that's 55-6 years old and maybe he
wants to kind of, you know, amp it up his testosterone a little
bit. You could start with some like
Clomiphene, like NAD, like try to just use that route first.
And if that doesn't like hold, then we can go to TRT and you
know, they feel a ton better. But now dude, the average levels
that I see and I'm talking about, I've seen guys in their
late 20s, early 30s. And for some reason, I don't
know why if it's all the the extra estrogens, if it in our
just epic environment, if it's in the food, all the probiotics
and I mean the antibiotics and all that stuff.
But the average levels that I see are significantly lower
across the board on all age groups now than it was like 5
years ago. So it's like one of those things
where it is a need, but why does it need to be a need?
Like what's the actual underlying problem that could
maybe be fixed? And that's US specific, but I
don't know other country stuff, you know?
No, it's interesting man. Like I've I've seen different
stats and like something that I've seen is like the average
male testosterone has dropped by like 50% over the last 50 years
or something like that. Something easy to rattle, left
tip your tongue. And I've never had super high
testosterone. I mean like my average numbers,
like I just got tested the other day and I think my total was
like 350 or something like that. Really.
Yeah, it's never been high. And then my my average windows,
like 3 to 600 probably is my average window.
And then like when I was 3.9%, it dropped all the way down to
89. So crazy low then.
But I've never had super high tests.
And I feel like for me, it's because I'm just super stressed
and don't get enough sleep with the business.
A lot of people will look at my numbers.
Oh, it's because you've been keto for 10 years.
But one of my clients that works here, he's been keto for 10
years and his testosterone's 1000 plus, he's, you know,
several months into prep and he's still 800 something.
So it's not that. I just think mine's lack of
sleep honestly. Yeah, I think to be honest,
that's a, that's a big culprit too, like whatever, like food
selection or manufacturing, all that.
But I think if I was also comparing notes of like the
perceived stress versus actual stress, you got to look at that
too, like how the user can handle stress.
But even then, a lot of guys like subconsciously if they can
handle stress, it's still there. And that would it's gut issues.
I haven't seen one case that isn't linked to some form of a
stress trigger as well as yeah, the hormones get pretty beat up
from the stress and the lack of sleep too, for sure.
So I bet you you're probably right, yeah.
And there definitely are like a lot of xenoestrogens and
environmental toxins that we could certainly mitigate
against. And like the, you know, like
the, the soaps, the conditioners, the, you know,
cleaning products that we use, the clothes that we wear, you
know, like most people's clothes are coming from China or some,
you know, the country where it's like recycled plastic.
So you're getting a lot of, you know, xenoestrogens there.
It's like all that adds up over time.
But yeah, the lifestyle factors I think is key.
I mean, people that are not getting enough sleep, spending
all their time on their phones right before going to bed,
they're not getting a deep quality sleep, but they're
drinking too much alcohol. I think alcohol is a huge
detriment to testosterone. So mitigating against that I
think is is key. But but yeah, it's become
totally mainstream. The whole TRT thing.
I need to make a video on this too, though.
But I feel like a lot of people, they get labs drawn, they don't
feel optimal. They see they've got low
testosterone by the book, so OK, I need to get some TRT to feel
better. And they go to the clinic and
there's a clinic on every street corner now, so.
And they're like, yeah, let's meet him now, dude.
Yeah, you're going to take this, we're going to get you up to
this number and you're going to have more vitality, more energy,
better recovery, more libido. And they're going to just list
off all these things that it's going to improve in your life.
And then I look at all of those things in my life now with, you
know, quote UN quote, low testosterone.
And I'm like, man, I feel like I've got all kinds of energy.
I don't have a dad bod. I'm staying lean.
I've got recovery, I've got libido.
I got a baby on the way. It's like I've got pretty good
vitality for life right now and zeal.
Like I don't think I'm missing on anything.
Yeah, no, I I agree. And you probably your lifestyle
like obviously you're not drinking a bunch of alcohol and
have these bad habits, you know, patterns you have to break, like
you're leading by example with doing what you need to do with
your nutrition and exercise. I mean everything.
So yeah, I think it's it's become mainstream and it is
becoming a point. Like I was wild to me when I
started seeing like ads, Hey, want to get testosterone had
like a vial and everything. I'm like, we're running ads to
this. I'm like, I don't.
So that's legal, I guess. I don't know, but but anyways,
yeah, I think it's become really mainstream, easily accessible.
But it's another thing where the the only difference like with a
fad diet or something like that where they give you certain
supplements or it cleanses or blah, blah, blah.
It's like, I think there's another level of like riskiness
if you want to call it, because it's messing with your endocrine
system. And those have like balancing
with your hypothalamic acid, you know, everything in your brain
like kind of regulating. That's like another level where
it's not just take in some, you know, dandelion root or just
something that's like flushing you out or a cleanse or just
something simple. It's like they're kind of
marketing like almost like a fad though, you know, it's kind of
wild. And then the peptides come into
play now too. That kind of come, I think
intertwined with the HRT is those same health optimal
clinics or whatever you want to call them pushing.
Yeah, the peptides are interesting, man.
And there's been a lot of, you know, a lot of controversy come
out around that. And like, I don't really have a
dog in the fight necessarily. Like, I feel like we obviously
have an obesity epidemic. So if we can get people to lose
weight and be healthier, that's a positive.
And I obviously think how we go about that approach is key.
But at the end of the day, actually reaching the desired
outcome is of paramount importance.
You know, so like, I understand that I sympathize with people
that want to go that route to kind of get some, some momentum
going, but my hesitation is that it's not really fix the root
issue. And if you put people on, you
know, the peptides and they're just simply, they're not
changing the types of calories they're consumed.
They're just eating fewer overall calories.
Like I was getting my hair cut the other day and, and the woman
cut my hair had lost 20 lbs using the peptides.
If she was all excited and she's like, you know, now I don't need
to eat the whole sleeve of Oreo cooked 'cause I can just eat
half of it. And I'm like, OK, what are you
doing for protein? She's like, I'll get all my
protein from peanut butter. And I'm just like, at least a
moment. It's like, OK, we we got to fix
some of these underlying issues in order to truly reach the
desired. Outcome here.
You know, that's funny. Yeah, it's always peanut butter.
I don't know why I'm getting all this protein I'm like, but no,
you're right. I'm.
I think we're on the same page. I've like to be completely
transparent, like I haven't done enough research into all of it
because I didn't even want to get in the fight kind of thing,
you know, like it would probably good for content, you know, to
make it combative and all the stuff.
But I'm like, you know, it's going to, it's people going to
go through it. And you know, I've had a lot of
clients come to me after they've done it and they did it
incorrectly. I think it's just like anything
where, yeah, you can use it as a tool, as an aid, I think that
that you can abuse it. I think that your exercise and
protein is what people usually lack.
So then a lot of skeletal muscle tissues lost, which is not good.
But yeah, like you're saying, it's just, it's the same thing
like just reducing your appetite to consume, you know, lower
total calories. Cause at the end of the day,
total, I mean, it's total calories, you know.
So I guess that's curious. I'm curious your thoughts of my
observations of the last few years because you do keto, but
do you have more of a macronutrient approach with keto
or do you have more of a rigid more like specific meal
selection or food sources that they must get in like for your
clients? Or do you have a like what's
your flexibility? There's two offsets of the
spectrum, you know, where are you kind of at, I guess.
So I, I feel very fortunate because I learned so much when I
was in my like bro bodybuilding, flexible dieting days.
And I mean, I was able to obviously change my composition
effectively with that approach. I don't think it was the optimal
approach from like a hormonal or sustainable or metabolic
standpoint. So I feel like keto answered a
lot of those issues, but a lot of people in the keto diet that
didn't come from that background, which is most of
them are very ignorant when it comes to macronutrient
partitioning. And you know, calories, like
there's a big fear of the calorie word in not all keto
people by any means, but like the low carb ketogenic carnivore
space, so much so that they like say, OK, calories are totally
irrelevant. They don't matter.
It's all about hormones, specifically insulin.
And that, to me is just always frustrated me because it's like,
look, it all matters. Like, hormones are very
important. You know, depending on your
hormone manipulation, you can, you know, influence how much
caloric expenditure you're actually deriving from the foods
you're consuming. But at the end of the day, a
calorie is just a unit of measurement.
And all foods have a specific calorie count.
They all impact the body metabolically and hormonally
differently, but they're that's just a unit of measurement.
So swamp out the word calorie for fuel and, you know, and then
use that. So that's been a big frustration
of mine. So I'm always like, when I'm in
a prep, I'm 100% manipulating my calories down.
I'm very specific with the distribution of those
macronutrient ratios. But I would never recommend
people throw all caution to the wind and never take into account
how much total fuel they're consuming or not consuming.
Interesting. Yeah.
OK, so it seems like you do there's like witness serious
dieting like for prep, like there's manipulation with that
total chloric intake on purpose. And it's not just like there's
some people where they won't track, they won't track
anything, right? It's just more like they only
use specific food sources. And then in my opinion, I guess
it's like, yeah, you can manipulate hormones to for the
caloric expenditure like you said.
But at the end of the day, the, the data that you're collecting
to manipulate like when you're getting deeper in prep and stuff
like that. I'm just curious if like how
rigid meaning like you're on the dot with your caloric intake and
your certain macronutrient ratios.
Like you say, if you're just like really rigid and you eat
the same thing everyday kind of thing, naturally you might eat
similar if not the same thing every day.
Once you kind of get to low prep numbers because you're like not
thinking about having all this crazy flexibility.
I don't know how you work. I just, I'm just trying to get
my meals. Yeah, so, so I pretty much I'm
really rigid with my macronutrient Graham goals.
And I tell my clients like, hey, look, because I'm manipulating
their macros every single week. Like I update their macros for
the following week, you know, every Friday or Saturday
typically. And I'll say, OK, look, your
macros are changing every week, pretty incremental changes.
You know, 510g adjustments. Try and consistently get within
5 grams of the gold macros every single day.
Like if you're doing that, then I'll be getting good data back
on how your body's responding, then I can make better
adjustments for you going forward.
And if they're hitting those macro goals, then all by
definition know what their caloric intake is as well.
And like, OK, so I think you and I are very similar in that
capacity then well, I bring it up.
I was just curious, do you have you had any scent or hint?
I know we're in different industries, but the whole like
tracking macros as I look at it, at least that you, I don't want
to speak for you, but it's like you're accumulating data.
It's just like a, it's just like the scientific method
essentially, right at the end of the day, like you're in high
school, college, whatever, and you're doing these, you have a
control group, you're trying to create a control at least, and
you're testing variables and whatever adjustments or ratio or
whatever. But and then you get a bunch of
feedback, see what the outcome was and then based on the
outcome, change the plan kind of thing, right?
You're making the adjustments and you kind of do that every
week. That's like a more of a
scientific approach. I feel like it's pretty much
scientific in that capacity, but I feel like or maybe observe
that the whole tracking macros might be perceived to a new
user, a new person, and going into fitness as almost like a
fad diet. Yeah, it's, it's weird, man.
Have you? Does that make sense what I'm
saying though? Yeah, no, for sure.
Like I'm, I'm a big advocate for tracking macros.
I, I don't think people should be a slave to macro tracking
like I've always told people like if you're happy with how
you look, then, you know, don't become a slave to tracking
macros. And I think that if you are, you
know, regulating your, your blood sugar response, and if
you're eating real quality food that is nutrient dense and not
hyper palatable, you can be more intuitive with your eating
because your body's gonna be giving you better hunger
signaling cues and you're not as at high risk of overindulging.
But if all those criteria are met and you are still not happy
with how you're looking, then you know what can be measured
can be managed. So take a very objective view
towards things, get these metrics in place and then figure
out what needs to be manipulated to actually reach the goal.
So like, I'm totally for it, especially if you're having a
very specific goal in mind. And like with the bodybuilding
prep, like you can't intuitively get some 5% body fat.
Like your body's going to fight you.
So like, you got to look at the numbers.
But yeah, there's people that are very opposed to tracking
because they look at it as not necessarily a fad, but more of
like a disorder, almost like, hey, that's bad.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's where it's just been
interesting, like, oops, sorry about that.
Interesting observation. Like at the end of the day, I
try to stay away from, I try to pick what's best for the client,
right? Like any diet could work, but
what's going to be the most adherable?
Like adherence is always the top priority, essentially, and
adherence to, like you said, manageable, like actual data
that's concrete. But for whatever reason, I don't
know if just like everybody, the whole flexible dieting took it
extreme, right? And the noise of having Skittles
all day and kind of BS like that kind of messed with it.
But it just seems to me like, yeah, people, the tediousness
from tracking for one. But also it's almost like, yeah,
it just seems like I'm a, you know, it's a food disorder kind
of thing. I'm like, well, you know, I try
to explain to him, well, do you go to work?
Do you, do you get a paycheck, you know, every two weeks or
every month? OK.
Do you have bills that you have to pay?
So and they're like, yeah, I'm like, so you're telling me that
you're going to go spend money based on what you think you are
making, you know, every month, regardless if you actually know
what you're spending the, you know, how much you're actually
making. So that means that at the end of
the month, like if you're -1000 bucks 2000 bucks, what do you do
then, right? Or just that makes sense.
Like I try to put a real world example where it's like, well,
I'm not trying to be, you don't have a disorder by going to work
and making money for to pay your bills, do you?
Right. It's kind of a similar
perspective I try to give, but yeah.
Yeah, no, I totally agree with you on all fronts, man.
I mean, I feel like, you know, in a very simple time, in a
super simple time, you know, rerun the clock 500 years.
Like nobody is overweight. We don't have an industry, yeah.
We don't have industry and like you're bartering with your
neighbor for like what you need. Like if you need some more eggs,
then rather than go on and punch the time clock and getting a
paycheck in two weeks, you can just trade them some of your,
you know, wool from your sheep for some of their eggs.
Like you can just make it work and like man is a beautiful,
beautiful setting setting. I would love to go back there at
times, you know, but like, that's not our current reality.
Like we have a much more rigid structure and our psychology,
biology, DNA, like we are, we've evolved from that primitive root
structure, but like we live in a very different time.
So like you have to take that reality into consideration and
adjust things according. Like it would be a luxury to not
have to track any food, to just have enough activity throughout
our needs of survival to stay fit and healthy.
But like, the reality is you could literally pay the bills by
working in front of your computer on whatever job you're
doing and not have any movement. So you wouldn't be checking that
box, eating hyper palatable foods that are delivered to you
through DoorDash. I mean, like we are so far
removed from what we evolutionary have been.
You know, coming from that you have to have all these other
interventions in place, tracking being one of them.
I agree 100%, Yeah, It's just the adapting over the current
society for sure. And I think it's only going to
keep going in that direction. Obviously, you know, yeah, like
we were talking about with AI and all kinds of stuff where
they'll come out with whatever machine stuff and robots.
Now he wants, you know, come out, eat robots and then
everything, everything will be removed.
Where it's, it's it's like very interesting.
But it's also like scary in the sense it might be sad because
like you said, I, I wish I'd go back to cause like it's simple
because it's simpler life and it's just the people, I guess if
you're not afraid of working hard, are actually doing things
like it's more simple where it's like, OK, I do this, trade it
for this and you'd probably spend a lot more time.
I think in other countries that aren't as advanced are shown
like a lot happier, even though we think they're not because
they don't have as much technology or something like
that. But they spend more time with
their family. They have to do things in groups
to like, you know, farming and that kind of stuff.
But it's a lot simpler of a life that sounds sounds interesting,
you know. Oh yeah, it sounds appealing for
sure, man, especially that I've got kids.
It's like, like I, I look at what interests them because they
don't have any biases placed in the world yet.
So like, they don't care what's on my macro tracking and they
don't care what the paycheck is the end of two weeks.
They don't care about any of this stuff that they care about
rolling around in the mud and going to seeing something new,
you know, like that. That's what matters.
But yeah, it's, it's funny, man. Times change it for sure.
But I do think in light of all that, like it's like this past
week I took Saturday and Sunday because I've been tracking
pretty consistently and I don't think track is bad.
Like I track more often than not because I'm always doing some
type of experiment too. But this past Saturday and
Sunday, I didn't track at all and just ate intuitively because
it's been, you know, significant time since I've done them.
And it's kind of weird because like when you track more often
than not, and then you allow yourself time to not track at
all, it's almost like you have to relearn what satiety feels
like, what fullness feels like. Because like, I mean, I was just
listening to my body, but I, I put down probably 5000 calories
each day no problem. And my I should definitely be
full, but I could keep eating more if I wanted to, you know A.
100% yeah that because didn't what did you compete like how
long has it been since? I did those five shows in 23 and
then I'd reversed, I added up from that and then I'd got up
like 200 lbs at the peak of my build and I was just too heavy
at 200 lbs. So I died it down to like one
77180 and that's pretty much where I'm at right now Got.
You. Yeah, no, I agree.
Like usually that just the hunger signaling and stuff,
depending on how deep I I see like kind of like a pendulum,
the harder you push, the harder that signal is going to be on
the back end. It's just like pretty much
managing it emotionally and with brain power pretty much.
But but yeah, no, the certain body fat percentage, I don't
know if you noticed this. It's just like it the certain
set point like genetically of like body fat percentage wise
where you're performing good, joints feel good and then hunger
signalling is more level. But on the opposite ends, like
below it, if you're like a lower body fat percentage, there will
be that higher signalling where you might have more.
For me, it would be like fibrous food, vegetables and like not as
palatable like you were saying, and have those to kind of try to
get a little bit of hunger signaling down.
But then like if you go above a certain body fat percentage away
from your set point, I noticed that for me, I got to just like
keep labs in check in my essentially my insulin and
glucose levels and stuff like that.
Just track that a little bit because I'll be having a little
more if you want to call it junk food, but just have more
palatable food that's probably going to be higher in sugar
naturally, just to get in the amount of calories that I would
have to get in because hunger Stanley starts to go down.
And then, yeah, so I don't know. So that's what's weird for me
man. Like I, I remember when I first
was starting to gain weight, like way back in the day,
because I was 115 lbs when I started, like I was naturally
super skinny and I had to work really hard to bulk.
Like it took me significant effort to put on weight.
Whereas now, like I don't ever feel like I'm force feeding.
I, I vividly remember force feeding back then, whereas now
like I don't feel like I'm ever force feeding.
Like I can easily eat 6000 calories a day of the most high
quality nutrient dense, you know, steak and eggs and it
wouldn't be effortful to do so. Like it would just go down easy,
which is kind of weird to me. That's.
Cool. Yeah, because I know there's a
lot of that's interesting to me because of because all the
people that I've talked to or just know that done more of a
keto style approach and just insulin is so much more level
stable. And people say like it's easier,
let's say like dieting too, if they can get into the lifestyle,
like actually get into ketosis and manage with food selection
and do a real keto style approach rather than I don't
know what your thoughts are, but like a carb refeed, you know,
like a modified kind of approach with keto where they're kind of
bumping themselves out of ketosis.
Or a lot of people will tell me like, yeah, I'm doing keto.
And then it comes to, I asked them like, well, do you feel
like crap all the time now? And they're like, yeah, I'm
like, I don't think you should probably feel like crap all the
time if you're actually in ketosis.
That's called a low carb diet, you know, So, but it's
interesting that you say that because just with insulin and
hunger, like ghrelin, greylin, whatever you want to pronounce
it, the spike to help with eating more.
But if you feel like you just keep eating, you know, your
insulin's a lot more stable and your glucose too.
That's actually that's interesting to me.
And I don't necessarily like that because like, I would love
to feel more full. Like I don't want to eat 6000
calories and still be hungry, you know?
But but it's like, it's weird. And then the same is kind of
true in reverse. Like when I'm dieting down, I'm
definitely hungry, but it's like I don't get hangry like I did
when I was eating a bunch of carbohydrates.
So I mean, I got blood work drawn the other day and my
fasting insulin was good. Glucose is always good.
You know, I'd be, I've never actually tested leptin Ingrelen,
but I'd be curious to see what those numbers are looking like.
Yeah. Yeah, I haven't ever tested that
extreme of like hunger hormones stuff and gone through all that
I've done like multi point salivary, like cortisol stuff.
I kind of look at that in line 2 within different insulin points
in the day and glucose level during the day.
But to be honest, with the last year, dude, I've the last year
and a half, two years, I haven't even been an athlete, so to say
because all my. Testing you, you recovered from
your remind me the details on the injury and what all the
specifics were on that. For my pituitary tumor, yeah.
Yeah, that was back a long time ago.
So it's funny, we bring up light TRT like I've been on TRT for, I
don't know, 8 probably since I've known you.
That's when I got it was when I was 19, I think.
So yeah, at least nine years. So anyways, because that shut it
down. Like we tried clomiphene and ACG
and all these things to just try to get it back up naturally.
But that tumor, what it was is prolactinoma I guess is what
classified the the name of it. So it push up prolactin and
that's an antagonist for testosterone.
So just like kind of push it down and keep it down.
Colburn is, I think it's shrunk, but just being on TRT for so
long and just the suppression of your natural production since
you already have the exogenous, you know, form.
I'm trying to have a baby, I'm trying to get on your level and
it's just been extremely difficult.
So all the last year I haven't been on TRT for at least a year
and a half now and just blasting high doses.
I, I think the research, I think the anecdotal evidence versus
the research like push ACGA lot higher when you're trying to,
for fertility. I think that you can go a lot
higher than what's probably suggested or recommended.
And that's what I've been doing is like a little bit extra that
I'm supposed to and. So you're pushing the HCG, but
you're off of the. The testosterone the.
Exogenous TOT OK. And you're getting your so
you're, you've been off of that for how long now?
It's been about a year and a half.
So it's a combination at first, usually with like my
bodybuilders, like my enhanced guys, like depending on the
length of time they're on, but also their usage of like if this
is their first cycle versus that, you know, they're been in
the industry for 10 years. The amount of like time as well
as like pulsing certain things like clomiphene.
I like clomiphene better, which is a SERM that's an oral form.
And then if they need it, like I'll blast clomiphene.
If they need it, I'll put an ACG as well.
But I try to just start with like the minimal amount of
things to get them back back up naturally.
Because then you get to a point to where like if somebody's been
in it for a long time and they're not trying to have kids
and like trying to go to the next level.
Then you've heard of maybe like blasting and cruising and stuff
like that where they'll have more levels during into prep or
certain parts of their offseason and they'll come down to, let's
say, you know, additional dose would be 200 milligrams a week
of testosterone, no? One's like cycling off and.
Yeah, they don't even cycle off. They just like the delta or like
the change in how much they take.
They try to do less because it'll help resensitize the
receptors essentially a little bit.
So if you're just blasting all the time, it's just like
anything else in the body, that tolerance kind of concept with
like caffeine or anything, right, That'll kind of happen as
well with the receptors. But anyways, yeah, so me
personally, I've been blasting, I did clomiphene first to see
and it just really wasn't enough.
And so I've been blasting clomiphene with high doses of
ACG and I'm finally back up to, I think my last lab was mid 7
hundreds. So it isn't going to be as high
as like on testosterone, but it's more about like the
fertility components of like your sperm quality count,
motility, all that kind of stuff.
So that's what we've been working on and.
Well, that's exciting, yeah. So we'll see.
We just started, actually. Hopefully Kaylee's OK with it,
but we just started. I'm pretty open about
everything, but because I think there's a lot of people that
have been struggling with this, I didn't even know.
And once I started like bringing it up, people like, Oh yeah, I
had a friend that's going through that too.
And then they had a friend and everybody's doing like IVF.
We haven't gotten there yet, but we're starting with what's
called IUI, if you're familiar with that.
But that's where we're starting just to see because I think I
was the problem. And if they can kind of, you
know, we can get it figured out there.
If not, and then we'll have to move to to IVF.
But yeah, interesting. Fingers and crossed for man
thinking and praying for that's that's exciting for sure.
This will be your first one, right?
This will. Be the first one, yeah.
So we're time, it's all you know, it's not up to us.
So we're just praying and, and when it happens, it happens at
the right time, you know, so. Yeah, that's awesome, man.
Super awesome. Well keep you posted there for
sure. Yeah, 'cause you what?
So any any day now you're saying with your.
Yeah, so like my my son Roger, he just turned 3 like 2 weeks
ago and then we like crystals do end of this month with our
second. So like she could literally have
a baby. Like I could pause this podcast
and be rushed to the hospital right now.
I mean like any, any day now and any day in the next 4 weeks is
totally up for grabs. So so yeah, it's kind of what
we're at right now. I've got my whole calendar
blocked down after the next week because it's probably going to
happen soon. Yeah, dude, that is awesome.
So happy for you man. And I can't believe your first
one's already. Three.
Yeah. Are you guys going to have more
or is it 2 and done? I don't know, man, I feel like
we'll, we'll probably know after we've had the second for a
little bit, but like it's, it's interesting because I mean, I'm
not, I don't know anything about parenting.
I'm learning as I go, you know, there's no rule book for this.
I feel like we've got a really respectful kid.
I feel like he's super smart. I feel like he's really healthy.
He's like in that definite, you know, devious, you know,
mischievous, defiant stage right now, which is trying because
it's like I take responsibility for everything.
If like I'm failing him in some form or fashion, if he's just
crazy right now. But everybody's like, no, he's
3. So just take with a grain of
salt. But everybody that I've talked
to that's had more kids always says have more kids.
So like, you know, I got to, I got to consider that too.
Yeah, well, you guys will. It'll all align how it's
supposed to. But yeah, now that's awesome.
Dude. I'm really happy for you.
Well, I'll have to just be on the lookout.
Maybe it'll be a a baby poster, I don't know.
Just maybe you'll shoot me text or I'll see it on your Instagram
or something like that of what's the what's the what do you know?
You guys have a name yet? Yeah.
So Rigel is his full name is Robert Rigel Sykes.
So Rigel is the brightest star in the constellation of Orion,
which is my middle name. And then the second one, we're
like, OK, we got to do something.
We can't do another star in the constellation Orion because what
else we got to pick from, like Beetlejuice or something?
It's like a big start. So we're going.
We're going to name him Hazen Wilder Sykes, so.
Dude, that's sweet. Yeah.
It'll be. Cool.
It's interesting to me, like the unique names coming out now,
because that's what Kaylee, she'll just start, rattle him
off, all right, Don't even think about it.
Yes or no. And she'll just start naming all
these names and I'm like, OK, yeah, yeah, well, that's
different. So there's a lot of, like,
different names coming out and that's cool.
I like that. Appreciate it, man.
Yeah, I mean, I called Raj Raj. He's got all kinds of nicknames,
so we'll probably call Hayes, Hayes and Hayes or something
short like that. But yeah, man, having boys, I
wouldn't know the first thing about having girls.
But Raj, he's like full blown boy.
Like yesterday I came home so my wife could come up here and work
out. And like, first thing he wanted
to do when I got home is drive his electric tractor to the
yard, take all of his clothes off, and then just dump jump
into this big mud hole. And like I spent the next 30
minutes spraying them off the water hose.
Like, that's just my day right now, which is awesome.
Dude, that's awesome. Do you have, so you have one of
those electric like what do you got like a skistor or not a
skistor but you have like a tractor or something like that?
Yes. And he's got a little tractor
and a trailer and then it broke down.
So I got him a little zero turn mower and he had that just like
my mower. And then we got the tractor fix
and I always get a tractor in a zero turn mower.
He just spends hours in the yard just driving around going
through puddles and stuff. That's awesome, dude.
That's super cool. Oh.
Yeah, we love it. That'll be you. 4 did.
I'm hoping man. Yeah, cuz I don't know if
there's any validity of this. So funny.
Kelly just likes to research a ton of stuff.
And then she was, she brought up she's like, you know, it's going
to be tough. I'm like, why is that?
Cuz I'm only 5-6 on a good day, probably 55 most of the time.
And Kaylee's 411 and she's like, oh man, if we have a boy this
kids going to get bullied. But but no, she said that with
the IUI stuff because of what they do with like there's a
certain process in a machine. They like do all this cleaning I
guess, or like they kind of get it prepared.
And once they like kind of bypass and they go directly to
trying to implant to the egg pretty much.
The male, I don't know, there's validity, right?
But Kelly was saying that what she was researching is the male
sperm swim a little bit faster on the probability of having a
male or a boy was like 3 or 3 1/2 to one I think, when doing
IUI. So I was like, oh, that's
interesting. So I don't know if that's good
or bad, but you know, I thought that was interesting.
Just that research, you know. So maybe you're tall Male sperm
will get there first. Well, dude, I don't know what
happened in my side, my family, I'm the only short 1.
So everybody, my dad 62, Noah, my little brother, he's 63,
Tyler, he's 6-2. And then Kaylee, her side her,
the women in her family are even tall and she's just a little
runt of the family too. So I don't know what happened to
us, but maybe we'll get some recessive.
Genes we can speak taller than you probably yeah, like, I mean
that's that'd. Be funny looking up to your kid,
no? No, it'll be exciting, man.
I'm excited for you. It's the best thing in the
world. I mean, like we got all these
stressors of work and business, entrepreneurship.
It's like you come home and like none of that stuff even matters
anymore, you know, Like it's just what can I do to make to my
to my kid right now? How can I be there for them?
That's all that matters. Yeah, no, 100%, yeah.
That's like the simple stuff. Yeah, I'm, I'm looking forward
to it for sure. But.
Yeah. But yeah, dude, other than that,
I think that's kind of all been new with me with family stuff.
Do you have your man? You told me a while ago about
the whole facility that you got going now, but do you still run
in all the keto brick stuff and and do?
You have any? Is it?
Only the keto brick still or do you have any other SKU's I guess
or whatever you want to, you know, products?
Yeah, we, we got all kinds of things, more commands.
So we got we got the facility. So I've got my own gym in there.
I'm building out my gym with more equipment.
We just put a shower in this past week.
So I got a legit shower in my gym now, which is nice.
Got the podcast studio going to do a lot more in person podcast.
We got the keto brick kitchen. And then we got like, you know,
an apparel side. So we're totally revamping our
apparel. Like I'm getting the website
redone now. We're totally changing how we're
doing the apparel. So we're going to roll that out
as a relaunch later this year. And then I've also got plans for
two other businesses at some point in the future.
I'm, I'm, I'm like a serial entrepreneur, but I got to be
careful because I need to like get everything that's currently
active honed in and down. Yeah, very similar.
Yeah, I've got that. And then obviously all the stuff
for the content like keto, bodybuilding, the course, the
coaching, all that stuff. But yeah, always something work.
I didn't get you out here, man. To Arkansas.
Yeah. No, I haven't.
I haven't. Think about that because I want
to come out and then I want to bring, if you don't mind, bring
my brother because you have your media guy, right?
But I have my brother is my so we have a media company that we
run up here in Idaho. He's more specific in all the
real estate videography and photography and stuff.
But and would you like drone work and the whole thing?
But he's done a lot of my content because he's he's the
smartest dude I know with that. So I don't know anything about
it, but he. Loves it.
He's your. Brother, yeah, he's my brother.
So I was like, yeah, we can get a some content or something like
that. I'd love to come out and see the
facility, you know? Yeah, for sure, man.
Let's make it happen. Let's make it happen.
And once this baby comes, like I'm just going to, what I'd
really like to do is I want to because I've got like a separate
Realty company as well like that the that I purchased the
building through. And I want to start, you know,
buying real estate as an investment.
And I'd like to get a, a place not far from our facility that I
could have as an Airbnb, but that anytime people want to come
out for a podcast or just in person, whatever, I just book
out that house as an Airbnb for them.
That way I could host people more, you know, efficiently.
So yeah. That's awesome.
And you've been dipping in more real estate now, but I don't
even know the market over where you're at, but like it's crazy
over. Here.
Well, it's funny, man. Like I actually got my real
estate license when I was in Washington.
Really. I was, yeah, I was with the
railroad. That's what took me to
Washington. And then I was trying to start
my own business there. So I was going to get into like
rental properties. So I got my license for Coeur
d'Alene for Idaho and Washington.
And I got, I started working as a, as a, an agent, you know,
buying and selling agent and you know, had a few people buy
houses through me that were also with the railroad.
But the whole goal with this was to just buy rental income
properties. But as soon as I quit the
railroad, I lost all my financing for the rental
property. So then I went Billy up, got
like quarter $1,000,000 in debt and then started the business,
you know? Yeah, yeah.
No, that's, it's, that's a hard thing.
You got to, it's like a kind of have to have the business, the
cash producing business before the whole like investment side
of things. I think the gurus online saying,
oh, you can make all this money. I'm like, yeah, but it's a
little different than what you're saying, you know, and
then you got to live through it. I mean, I've tried, I mean, I'm
just pretty small fish, but I've just tried to like buy.
And then Kaylee and I thing right now is because we like to
bounce around. So we'll like buy like this
house. We just took a bunch of content
for this house fully furnished and we want to just see what it,
what kind of demand or interest for like the area, especially in
the summer time now it's pretty touristy now like you if you
remember being up here with the lakes, but I was like, well, if
we could charge a premium then we can go back and forth or get
get another property, you know what I mean?
It's just kind of depends. And we haven't done like the
full investor like hardcore full time thing.
But I think like over time you accumulate.
I think for the average person, even you got like 5 properties,
you know, that could be half paid off or at least the it's
all the interest is done and like it's primarily principal
after 15 years, you know, I think you're sitting pretty good
for, you know, afterwards, but that's what you're doing.
And to me, yeah. And to me, it's just tangible,
man. Like I, I totally get the whole,
you know, Bitcoin crypto, like I, I totally respect it.
I know I need to dive into it. I've had a few podcasts on.
I probably should buy into it, but it's like man, like I'm a
tangible kind of person. Like I like I real estate
because I can go there, I can drive there.
I can see it in my own two eyes. Whereas like stock markets and
crypto, it's like man, it's just not as tangible for me.
A. 100% yeah. I mean there's only so much land
or you know what I mean? That is a scarce like there's
only so much land. So those stock markets and all
that like it'll go up and down and blah blah and those guys are
smart and that's cool. I just, I try to, I'm trying to
get past my impulse stage and like, you know where I'm like,
oh, and my buddy said this, so maybe I should and more so of
like actually understand what I'm doing and I don't understand
any of that stuff, you know, Yeah, I try to listen to like
real estate stuff to understand like lending stuff and rent all
this and markets and whatever. But Kaylee's going to be the
group she was in down in Arizona.
That's what she did was it wasn't retail like in a retail
agent for a broker. It was more of wasn't a
wholesaler, but I would be similar where they did fix and
flips with investors because it's a Phoenix metropolitan area
is like a huge area for that and she loves that stuff.
And it's very interesting how they they do it all too.
But there's a lot of moving parts, so.
Yeah, it's, it's cool, man. I feel like, you know, you get a
good team. It's all about like having a
really good team. Like you get it like we're doing
figs and flips, like having a really good group of
contractors, subcontractors you trust, you know, have with all
that stuff. But like for me, like I feel
like as long as you're in a good area and we're like in Northwest
Arkansas, this is where the university is, a lot of, you
know, big corporations here. So like this is definitely the
spot to be in in Arkansas. So I think it'd be a good spot
for it. So.
It's just dude, yeah, let me know if you do.
If regardless, though, I still want to get out there if you get
Airbnb or not or whatever and I'll I'll stay whatever because
I want to come check it out. I know we've been saying this.
We're I'm terrible. I'm sorry.
We've been saying this for I'm the same boat.
Man, this thing, but you know, it's funny though, because like
you and I both recognize the matter says like we, we got a we
we just get stuck in our own world and their own grind.
Just, you know, doing the day. But it's like we both know that
relationships at the end of the day is the only thing that
matters. And, like, none of the other
stuff is going to. They weren't even think about it
when we're sitting on our deathbed.
But if we're like, you know, reflecting back on a good
conversation or a shared meal or something with people that we
respect and admire, like, that's what life's all about.
So it's like, got to make that happen, ma'am.
Yeah. No, we will.
We will. We're going to make it happen.
I'm going to I'm going to look right after this.
When, when is a good time of the season because you got a baby?
So it might be a couple months, but when's a good time of year
to come over there? Man, this, this area is
beautiful, like in the fall because like in the fall you've
got all the leaves changing colours.
You're in the mountains here. So I would recommend, you know,
oh, I'm doing my show, like I'm hosting a show in September.
You got to come down for that. You got to bring some athletes
down for that show. In September I'm going to have
my dad cook a BBQ show. Like a competition.
Yeah, like I'm, I'm promoting a show this year.
Yeah, yeah. So it's going to be September
27th. It's going to be called the
Natural State Savages, but yeah, it's natural show.
But yeah, man, like we're going to be like, I've already got the
judges, I got the venue, I got a nice venue.
It's going to be awesome, man. So you got to come down for
that. That's it, Yeah.
I have to see not any natural athletes during that time.
I got to see it through. The roster for any natural guys
are going on September time. I'll take a look.
I know they've got some enhanced guys, but that won't work.
Yeah, well, I tried to because like you get like within the
WNBF, you get, you know, Worlds in November.
So you got a lot of people doing shows, you know, leading up to
Worlds to kind of like get qualified and everything for
them. And this will be a pro
qualifying show. Nice, nice.
Yeah. So yeah, it'll be as long as we
get enough competitors. So it it should be good man.
Good for you, dude. Well, yeah, maybe that.
Maybe that'll be. I should come down in September
then. Yeah, that'll be perfect.
Because yeah, I'm pretty much, that's right, because I run
another business and it's just seasonal June through June
through August. So right after that, I might be
actually perfect timing just because I'm going to leave and
Kim and I'll probably go back down easy in the winter time
anyway. So be kind of nice to go
somewhere for September. That'd be nice.
Cool. Yeah, let's do it.
We'll swing through Arkansas on your way to Arizona, man.
Yeah. Yeah.
Little little roundabout trip. Little scenic round.
There you go. Katie would love it yeah, she
she likes doing that stuff and stopping it all the to her like
lakes and stuff like that. So.
Yeah, yeah. Now her and Crystal needed me.
They'd get along good. Yeah, yeah.
Well, yeah, you have to tell Crystal hi for me.
And I'm glad everything sounds like she's healthy and kids on
the way and. Yeah, she's she's happy,
healthy. She's excited to get her body
back though, man, like for, I don't know about Kaylee, but I
mean, I'm assuming she's with you.
So she's probably like fit and athletic and trains and stuff
like it's. It's an interesting.
Yeah. No, I guess I'll give her
credit. She's been getting back in it,
Yeah, but she's, she's got those natural, those genetics.
She's like four 1100 lbs, dude. Like she's tiny, but she's hard
for her to gain weight. But yeah, I know she she's
working out. She's been starting to bless her
heart, dude. She's been trying to run and
I'm, I'm not a runner, but she's been trying to like weight
train. And then with my sister, she's
like they do, running like two or three days a week.
So this whole hybrid thing is like really popular.
Right now I feel, yeah. Pulling up, run.
Clubs and stuff around locally, even to me I'm like Dang, all
right, cool. Yeah, I mean, I don't, I don't
mind running. I'll run every once in a while,
like I ran this morning for like a mile, you know, like nothing
impressive. But yeah, I'm definitely not a
runner. I like my background, believe it
or not. I was playing basketball growing
up and kind of got into this, I don't know, I got recruited, not
recruited, but asked to coach this high school skis kids
locally to me. And I was like, oh, this is a
great opportunity to maybe just get involved in the community.
And it's been a ton of fun. But I'll like run some games
with them. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, yeah,
I need to do some more cardio. But that's what I like to do
when I'm like, you know, doing more cardio based stuff is try
to rather than just run. It could be like something
active, you know what I mean? Like a sport.
That's where I still like In the summer, I'll try to, on purpose,
go do some manual labor. It's because like when you're
behind the desk all day everyday, sometimes I don't know
why, but it's like, you know what, it might, it sounds kind
of good to go like mow some grass, you know, or go do
something that's more labor intensive that most people like
what the heck? But and I it's nice.
You know, therapy for me, I love it.
It's like therapeutic, yeah. No, that's like favorite part of
the week. It's like mowing the grass and
you know, being outside and sure with you, you got to watch your
kids mess around and stuff like that.
So. Yeah, yeah, it's it's the
highlight for sure, man. But yeah, you got to, you got to
move like I, I don't know about you track your step count like
do you put any stock in that at all really?
To be honest, you're not really. I do when it's needed.
I guess I would say so. Yeah, I don't track it, act like
I don't proactively track it. Like I have a Garmin watch and
most days with me in front of a computer, I'm averaging like 5
or 6000 steps a day, which is nothing impressive.
So I got to get outside and just like, move my body more, you
know? Yeah, I'm the same way.
I think you kind of, I don't know, I do you have that feeling
where you get kind of cooped up and even, you know, when you've
been sitting a little too long, you're like, OK, I just need to
just go outside. Like, it's nice now in the
summers here. But but yeah, just like moving.
It's, it's wild the way it can do just for the brain and just
the just the function to focus for the rest of the day, you
know? Well, I feel grateful.
I've got all my employees here and I've been trying to get them
all, you know, fit and active and a lot of them are in prep
for this show that I'm hosting, which is nice.
But one thing I've been doing with them daily is we'll all
take a, a break at some point. We'll go rock out some pull ups.
We've got the gym here on site too.
So I'll take like, you know, we'll all go do 30 pull ups or
something and we'll just cycle through five sets, 6 or whatever
as like just a, you know, way to break up the day.
And I think that's been super good for.
Us No, that's super cool dude, have a team and yeah, no, I'm
the same way though yeah, I got to I don't track it because I
just I try to reduce as many variables as possible to keep
track of and let that intuitive like the natural intuitive kind
of approach. How do I put this?
So we're going to track macros and stuff like that I think is
important with a margin of error plus or minus something like you
said. But I try to reduce other
variables until they show themselves as more needed to be
focused on. Just for like try not to have
the client or myself like worry about a million things right out
the gate kind of thing, you know, like sodium sugar for us,
fiber and then your steps and then got the timing of yourself.
I mean all these different things.
I try to like not do that at 1st and get some momentum and then
work your way out with nutrient timing or taken to make sure
that you have enough fiber in the day or you're not blasting
100 grams of sugar in a day or something like that, you know
so. Yeah, you got it.
You can't hit them with everything all at once.
I mean, it wouldn't be, wouldn't be worthwhile.
You got. Do you have any like experiments
that you're running right now and you think you're trying out
that that's new to you? Good question.
I who was that with? This was with my assistant coach
Mike. I don't know if you've met or
seen Mike. I've I coached him for a long
time and then I kind of brought him on as assistant coach.
He's done really, really well. I'm really proud of him.
But he had a client that was competing and she was her novice
like she was her first show and she won novice, which was pretty
cool to see Mike, you know, do his thing and, and have her win
her class. But it was interesting, I'm
finding my peak week strategy because you know, like my
background with Cliff and everything, like very dialed,
there's certain specific peak weeks and all this stuff.
And I feel like there's been an extension that I've been like
trying out and it's more of like a two week peak week.
OK, I'm listening. And I noticed this plays more
into the maybe I shouldn't say this on camera though, because
of my clients are like, oh, is that what he's?
Doing. No, I think I'll, I'll tell you
this just and then like we can, we can talk about it whenever,
but the two week peak week is different than like a front
load, mid load, back load, back load, clean up day, like all the
different stuff maybe you've seen in like Cliff's book and
like would I have my background? The two week is because of the
psychological adherence that if you have a client that maybe
hasn't gotten it done in the last stages and you're just like
almost to the stage way that you're trying to get to, but
either it's just become very difficult or adherents just
starting to get a little wonky. I find that you can do a lot in
two weeks if you have the mindset of the client able to do
it. And So what happens is, is when
a client usually, especially more first time competitors,
when they hear the, their, their coach say, Hey, we're going to
start peak week, it creates excitement.
So usually adherence goes up and whatever variance of not hitting
macros or the extra food they're sneaking and that kind of stuff
will stop like immediately because now they're getting
excited. Like, oh, cool, peak week
usually means I'm going to get carbs, you know, with people
like loading for traditional style peak weeks.
But what I noticed is like the level of attention to detail
increases dramatically. And you're not like doing
anything crazy in terms of the actual peak week.
It's just all in the communication of starting the
peak week, if that makes sense. But essentially what you do is
just like I'll usually do one if the person's been like really
low and messing up, but usually just like 1 little higher mid.
Not like a high carb day like a high refeed, like a high high
refeed, but more of a moderate refeed to kind of start, start
it and then hit him pretty hard with the with the deplete.
And then instead of having let's say like a four or a five day
slow linear load with carbohydrates, that's how you
know that's the difference between us.
But instead of like a linear load, that linear load becomes
very, very small over 10 days, 11 days, something like that.
And the interesting part is you would think, because when you do
a huge def depletion and then you start adding food back in,
you're still in a heavy deficit if you're making small additions
to your calories. Because, for example, like, just
to give people listening like context, let's say that your
maintenance, this is not going to be what it is.
So let's say your maintenance is like 2000 calories and you're
eating, you know, 1200 calories at the very end or something
like that. And you start adding food back
in like 100 calories. So 1300 calories, 1400 calories,
you're still in that that deficit, even though you're
adding calories back in. Does that make sense?
Totally. So you would think that the like
the symptoms of just the huge deficit and the hunger and just
the the lack of energy and the focus or whatever would be still
very dominant. But like I said, it's been
interesting because the communication that we're
starting peak week two weeks out versus, you know, 7 to 10 days
out. It, I think it's a it's an
emotional, it's adrenaline, it's whatever the emotional component
of them getting excited for the show.
And here it gets a ton better. And then because you're still in
the deficit, even though you're adding small amounts of food,
you're losing fat like you're losing the more body fat that
you needed to lose to to get to where you wanted to be for that
stage weight projection. So the difference here is like
if we didn't do it, like I haven't tried it, who will know?
I don't have like a control to, to, to kind of compare against
for that specific one individual with two different types of peak
week, right? I don't have that data yet.
But it's more like, you know, if we start a 7 day out kind of
peak week, would we have gotten to this conditioning if we did
it this way versus if we did that two week peak week and how
we communicated it to get us started?
And does that make sense of the end result essentially?
Yeah, and the psychology of prep and peak week specifically is a
whole nother thing in and of itself.
And like it, it goes like human psychology especially goes way
beyond just like the macro manipulation, because the
hormonal repercussions of their excitement or lack thereof in
that finite period of time also changes their caloric
expenditure in life. And there's so many freaking
factors that go into play. Experiments on your testosterone
levels, thinking that you have low T, you know, lower
testosterone and then all of a sudden it drops.
Then you have high testosterone during prep.
They've had studies on that with people that are lifters and
stuff and if they think they have high testosterone, usually
it doesn't decrease as much. You know, it's interesting.
It's crazy, man. It's great.
It's it's, it's totally science, which is why I love it.
Like there's so always, always something to to manipulate and
try and tweak and then be able to see the outcome with your
clients is super fulfilling. Yeah, man, I love it all.
I love it all. Have have you followed along
with any of this sugar diet stuff?
Has that been making waves in your space at all?
I don't know. I don't know about sugar diet.
I know, I don't know why I've seen this guy.
Maybe he followed me and I fell him back or something, but it
was like a snake diet or something.
It's all sugar. Yeah.
Because there might be multiple people now doing the whole sugar
thing. Multiple people, but he's kind
of one of the ringleaders. I don't know much about him.
His name is Cole. He was doing, like, hardcore
keto and then fasting and then carnivore, and now he's doing,
like, eat nothing but sugar. So he's like all over the board,
but he's kind of like he's always just yelling at people,
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, he did get my
attention. Probably because, you know, he's
just yelling. I thought was kind of funny.
But yeah, Mark Bell, who I'm good friends with, is doing it
and they've had each other on the show before and I'm not
doing the sugar diet. But interestingly enough, the
main mechanism of action of the sugar diet is because of a
hormone called FGF 21, which is amplified in the context of low
protein. So like, basically when you
reduce protein, which people are doing by eating predominantly
just sugar, that hormone increase in circulation, which
supposedly ramps up metabolic rate to the tune of about 500 or
600 calories. So I'm kind of, yeah.
And this is all kind of like new.
There's been a few studies done, but you know, I'm not going to
be advocating the sugar diet for other reasons beyond the
metabolic implications, but like just from a health and longevity
and Wellness standpoint, like I don't get behind it.
But I'm kind of doing the opposite of that with a super
high fat, a minimal protein approach to see what happens.
And I'm basically doing like a four to one ketogenic diet.
So 4G of fat for every combined gram of protein plus
carbohydrates. So my macros right now are like
obnoxious, man. They're like 425 grams of fat
and like 115 grams of protein. It's kind of crazy.
I don't recommend it, but I'm just trying to do this for an
experiment to see what happens and it's it's, it's interesting,
man. I'm curious to see how.
Yeah, dude, you have to let me know.
That's super interesting, especially if there's.
Yeah. Anything with like are you
testing it in a deficit or in a surplus or a maintenance or do
you have any contacts? There I'm doing it in surplus
because I wanted it to be apples for apples.
And a lot of people that are doing the sugar diet, they're
all doing it to like lose body fat, but they're their main
thing is like it's effective because you're able to eat to
satiety eating a lot more sugar. So your calories are higher, but
you're losing weight. That's what they're all
proposing. And I'm OK, well, I want to be
able to eat this society and not worry about that.
So I'm at a pretty significant surplus.
Like I'm at 4200 calories right now, which is a lot.
And it's all coming from fat for the most part.
So satiety is there, cognition there, mental clarity is there,
ketones are there, glucose is low and my weight's holding
stable at that intake whereas my maintenance is like 3000
calories. So interesting to see for sure.
Yeah, Now that you don't have to let me know because that is
super interesting of if it if, if there could be understanding
if it's their certain enzyme proteins like you were saying or
if it's something to do with the adaptation to like just I don't
know because you've been in ketosis probably for I don't
know how long. But if anything that has to do
with it or just because that's a significant increase in caloric
intake to stay maintenance out. You'll have to let me know if
you think that it keeps maintaining your body weight
even with the higher intake than what you suspect would be your
maintenance. Or if it starts the pendulum
where it's like it ramps up to offset the increased calories.
But then over time it starts to slow down where like you start
to see the scale start to come up like after a month or so,
kind of like a post show period. If you've noticed that like just
you're starting to feed and you can really like metabolic
flexibility is like super high in my opinion, where you can
start ramping things up if you do it controlled and then but
over time like that, I don't know if you've experienced this
like after a show, you get like huge palms.
Vascular is crazy. It's like it's just like pushing
us the skin so much harder. The muscle you know get like
that shrink crap effect go growing out for the 1st 10. 15
lbs Invincible. Yeah, right.
And then all of a sudden you kind of start to get soft, like
it gets to a peak and then you're like, okay, level out.
And I've noticed with that, I feel like when I'd go to the
reverse that like the first two months are like super solid and
months three and four and five, it's like you start to deflate,
so to speak. And not that your performance
deflates, but like that look that is just so appealing is
kind of on the wayside. But for me, I've noticed that I
put on more body fat after my reverse period when I'm super
aggressive with the protein. So I'm not advocating people
taking low protein by any means, but I do think protein and
excess could certainly be a contributing factor to, you
know, just unnecessary body fat gain.
So I'm curious to see if I can maintain a higher caloric intake
but add a more reasonable protein intake with this
experiment, if I can keep that, you know, under wrap, so to
speak. So you're, that's interesting.
So you're saying when you've done prep like deep in the prep,
right, like going into your show, you've noticed a
difference in like like the rebound component or like just
fat accumulation? If you fat accumulation post.
Show when your protein was higher.
Yeah, of course, overall calories are higher too.
So like obviously that's the main contributing factor.
But I feel like even when calories are equated, if I'm at
a much higher fat ratio relative than the protein ratio, I tend
to put on less body fat. So that's been interesting to
find. Yeah, yeah.
Thank you for experimenting and controlling the.
Yeah, that's super interesting. Yeah, at most more people would
do that rather than post show. It's just a all hell breaks
loose, you know what I mean? So no, because I'm the same way.
I did case study of myself, but I haven't competed in a long
time. But the last time I did it
nationals and yeah, it was it's wild when you do controlled and
you really mentally you can still hang in there, you know,
and just like go through it because I think I added like I
want to say, well, it isn't as crazy as probably your numbers
with what you're saying with fat intake just bumping up total
calories in general. But I still had shred like
shredded glutes. Definitely 8 weeks out, eight
weeks post show. And then I know 12 weeks post
show is like I was holding some some good light even in my
glutes a little bit. But it was like that breaking
point where by 16 weeks I was like starting to kind of, you
know, deflate as you were saying.
But but yeah, if you do a control, man, like I think I
added like 3400 grams of carbs. So at the lowest I was like 100
and I want to say 30 or 50 somewhere in there.
And we never really go below 50 for our fat unless it's
absolutely necessary. But that's probably 50 grams of
fat for normal days. I would have one refeed a week.
But but then yeah, I think I added like 3-4 hundred grams of
carbs and then like 50 or 60 grams of fat in, in an 8 week
period. And it was like just ramping up
the metabolic flexibility is just nuts.
But you have to do it like controlled, because if you have
the binges, that's what screws it all up, you know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah. And see, that's happened to me.
Like, I was super controlled for like the first two or three
months. And then I was like, looking
great and holding steady. And then it's like, all right,
screw it. I'm hungry still.
I don't have a competition anymore.
Like, what am I doing right now? And then, you know, it'll get
you in trouble. So then I'm blewing up to 200
lbs. And then I was like, I'm just
too fat at 200 lbs. Write it down.
You know, such as life. Listen man, I know you got all
kinds of things cooking today. I don't want to keep you too
long, but let's definitely get in the books to have you come
out here. I'd love to have you come out
for my show. Would love to see you in person
one way or the other for sure. And just keep the conversation
going, man. Yeah, I would love that.
I'm going to take a look at that and then maybe we'll tell me at
a time in September. That would be ideal because I
know you got baby on the way, which you have to let me know
when he's here, but hey, let. Me know when you get 1 coming.
Oh, dude, yeah, Kelly said. I have to wait first trimester
once it if we get it through it, then she's like you can tell
everybody I'm like, OK, cool. OK, OK, it's me.
Got to respect the lady's wishes.
Exactly. Well, Austin man, super excited
for you there. Congrats again.
Where do people go to find out more about you and dive into
your world? The plug, I think right now just
the old Austin Paulson Fitness, it's I'm terrible at marketing,
obviously, so I have to put my name on my shirts, you know, so
Austin Paulson. Fitness.com.
I like it. I like it.
Well, sweet man, I'll link out. Make it easy people to find you.
Keep in touch, brother. And there's everything I do for
you, man. You just let me know.
Same as you. Thank you.