Doing this at home will give you

phenomenal overall results with not so

much time investment. It's not so

difficult. We're talking about a sum

total of Really?

Yeah, yeah. Doing that per week will

radically transform your body. Dr. Mike

Israetel is a leading sports scientist

who provides no-nonsense, science-based

strategies

on muscle building, fat loss, and

helping people maximize their fitness

potential. My intention is to get

everyone in as good of shape as possible

with minimum time investment.

So, where do we start?

So, it's the consistency that matters.

Doesn't matter if it's 2 hours a week or

if it's 18 hours a week. If you're

consistent, you can get amazing

benefits. And then there's the

specificity, which is the most important

principle in all of exercise science.

It's telling yourself, "Okay, I want

bigger biceps." And then focus on that.

And also every real working set should

be challenging. Is there a perfect

amount of repetitions to do? There is,

it's a trade secret. But it's

How long will it take me to lose the

muscles that I've gained if I don't go

back to the gym?

After about 2 weeks of not lifting, you

start to lose muscle. But most people

think, "Oh my god." Another 8 months

just to get back to where I started?

But when you gain an initial amount of

muscle, it never goes back to the same

size as when you started. It's just

always going to be bigger. And then got

a couple of hours a week. I just want to

get a bit leaner and I want to gain some

muscle.

Okay, the first thing we do is

Dr. Michael, are there any supplements

you suggest I take?

Whey protein, casein protein. What about

steroids? Jesus Christ, I'm really going

to say this. You recently on like a

boatload of steroids. There are a few

downsides.

What are the downsides that no one's

talking about?

They're unspeakable. You really want to

know?

This is a sentence I never thought I'd

say in my life. Um we've just hit 7

million subscribers on YouTube and I

want to say a huge thank you to all of

you that show up here every Monday and

Thursday to watch our conversations. Um

from the bottom of my heart, but also on

behalf of my team who you don't always

get to meet. There's almost 50 people

now behind The Diary of a CEO that work

to put this together. So, from all of

us, thank you so much. Um we did a

raffle last month and we gave away

prizes for people that subscribed to the

show up until 7 million subscribers. And

you guys loved that raffle so much that

we're going to continue it. So, every

single month we're giving away

money-can't-buy prizes including

meetings with me, invites to our events,

and a thousand-pound gift vouchers to

anyone that subscribes to The Diary of a

CEO. There's now more than 7 million of

you. So, if you make the decision to

subscribe today, you can be one of those

lucky people. Thank you from the bottom

of my heart. Let's get to the

conversation.

Dr. Michael

What is the mission that you find

yourself on in this phase of your life?

For those who would like

to get everyone who would like in as

good of shape as possible

with as minimum of a time investment,

injury probability

and

inconvenience uh in general as possible

and the highest likelihood of best

results while trying to completely

excise doing anything that is pointless

and also

I'm going to say this politely

telling people things

that aren't true.

We're trying to get as many people fit,

leaner, more muscular, more flexible,

healthier, etc. as humanly possible to

the extent that they are interested in

that sort of thing. Cuz not everyone's

into fitness, I understand that. I mean

I think I look kind of, you know, freaky

and it scares certain people. So, I have

a lot of time for that. But if you want

to get fit, uh

we're trying our best.

What are the the big myths that end up

standing in the way of most people? When

they when they hear this conversation

now

what are the most frequent rebuttals

that you'll get when you say that

someone can get in shape and be a be

lean with limited time?

Two super common ones are

I don't have the time to work out. And

into that time to work out is included I

don't have regular gym access or I

technically do, but I'd have to drive to

the gym. I just don't have the time or

the bandwidth or I don't have the

scheduling positioning in in my life to

do this sort of thing. And baked into

that is the assumption that getting much

healthier and much leaner and much more

muscular takes like an inordinate amount

of time. What are the most common

questions I get out in the real world

when people happen to look in my general

direction cuz usually people just kind

of go like, "What the hell's wrong with

that guy's head?" But uh one of the most

common questions I get is how many

uh hours a day do you work out or how

many days a week do you work out? And

every single person is expecting an

answer

that is kind of like asking the tallest

basketball player you've ever met how

tall they are. You want an answer that's

like 2 and 1/2 m. You want something

meaty. And if they tell you like, "Well,

I'm a meter 90." You're kind of like,

"Ugh,

it's not that cool." And every time I

tell them how much I work out, which is

really like

at at my real like trying to be as good

as bodybuilding as possible, it is

really 8 hours a week. And this is to do

this insane thing for people just trying

to be fit and healthy, etc. We're

talking about a sum total of 1 hour per

week split into two or three 20-ish

minute sessions. Something we'll be

trying later on

is such a huge stimulus and can

radically transform your body,

especially if you have attention to

nutrition. And that's the second thing

that's a big dogma, big myth is

people have

ideas about what comes in to nutrition

and nutrition for being more lean, more

muscular, and healthier. They have all

these kind of a constellation of ideas.

Um uh economist and philosopher Thomas

Sowell calls them notions. So, if you

have a hierarchy of understanding, you

have theory at the top, which is like

gravitation, evolution, things super

super confirmed. Just beneath that you

have model like the standard model in

physics. It's not quite good enough,

quite good enough support be a theory,

but it's very well understood space with

a few mysteries. Under that you have

hypothesis,

which is, you know, you have a real good

idea formally phrased. And underneath

that you have a notion. And a notion's

just things people say and people are

like, "Uh-huh." And no one even asks or

answers about, "Is this really true?"

And so, when you talk to people about

nutrition or they talk to you about why

they're not in such great shape. Another

thing I get is when you're pretty jacked

and lean and you sit next to someone on

a plane, they treat you almost like a

religious figure, like a priest or an

imam. And they're like, "Apologize."

They're like, "Oh, you look like you're

in good shape. I just haven't been to

the gym." And I'm like, "I love you as a

human being." You know, all the time.

All the time. They apologize for the

state they're in? More or less, yeah. Or

they'll see me eat a protein bar and

they're getting like the food on the

plane and they're like, "Fsh, this is

bad for me, huh?" And I'm like, "No,

it's actually quite fine." And they

always look a little bit confused. So,

all these ideas people have about

nutrition organic artificial sweeteners

are bad, gluten-free, GMOs, um you have

to have very meticulously well-prepared

meals. There is a ton of food that's

huge laundry list of food that's

unhealthy and bad for you, makes you

fat. There are other foods that are a

little bit more nuanced and difficult to

find that are super health foods that

will radically transform you. I can go

on for hours about these myths. But

people come in with these myths as

notions, as things they believe that

they're like, "This is how it is,

right?" And when you tell them like,

"This is actually that's not true." A

lot of them are like,

"No way." Cuz maybe that's the first

time they've heard about it. So, you

tell people

working out doesn't have to last

forever.

If you do it intelligently, which is

what we specialize at RP about teaching

people how to do and demonstrating

digital products,

you can get into really really good

shape with not so much time investment.

It's not so difficult.

Um

It's difficult in the moment as far as

you got to try hard, but you know, an

hour of trying hard a week is not the

end of the world. And then on the

nutritional front, they come in and they

think it takes all these crazy special

things like people watch me eat regular

food and they'll be like, "You eat

that?" And I'm like, "Yes." Like, "But I

thought that, you know, but do you need

the super special food?" I think that's

never been true.

But um

people come in with their stack of ideas

and these there's just dozens and dozens

of myths on both of hands. We'll go

through all of those myths. But but my

last question before we get into it is

why does it matter to be in good shape?

And this is I I yeah, I'm asking you

here to really draw on some of the case

studies that you've probably been

exposed to where people have turned

their lives around. What is the net

benefit of someone who's listening right

now, who's maybe heard about fitness

stuff before and has heard from personal

trainers and bodybuilders and whoever

else. But for whatever reason they just

haven't been able to get up off the sofa

and get into action. It's difficult, you

know. What is what Why should they? Why

should they care?

I love that question.

The first thing I'll say is um

is maybe not a surprise to many of the

people that know me.

Politically, I'm like super pro-freedom,

freedom of all kinds, inclusion.

And that means to me also that if

someone doesn't want to pursue fitness,

as a human being, you have the same love

and respect, at least for me, that

anyone who is fit would have. And so, as

far as like, "It'll just make you a

better person. You got to you got to get

fit." People will see

uh people that are obese and they're

like, "Look lazy." And "Ugh, how do they

live with themselves?" I don't ever

think things like that. Not cuz I'm a

good person. I'm not a good person at

all. But

what fitness won't give you is it won't

elevate your status as a better person

in some way.

However,

the other benefits

of fitness, we could have a 10-hour

podcast where I just go through one one

at a time and we would never get through

all of them. I'll give you a couple of

samplings of kind of the big hitters.

One is health, straight up. So, if you

reduce your body fat substantially and

you increase your muscularity

substantially and you adopt a lifestyle

of

moderate to moderately high physical

activity quite regularly,

this is about as close in real life as

we have so far to a panacea, a cure-all.

It isn't cure-all, but the degree of

preventative

uh you won't get really sick very soon.

The fact that has is just radical.

I

just coming off of them, but if it's

okay to say it was recently on like a

boatload of steroids, like the worst

ones.

Got blood work right in the middle of

that. Because I was a very lean and very

physically active and very muscular, my

blood work stellar. Just being leaner

and more muscular and more active, just

cleans your blood work up like crazy.

And makes your long-term it increases

your longevity considerably, but it does

something I think is pretty close to

equally important. It increases

the kind of time you're having in your

life

while you're alive.

It makes it way better. It reduces the

morbidity. And so cuz you can be around

a long time living in assisted care

facility and like on machines to keep

you

That's you're alive, sure, but it's

something missing there. But if you have

more muscle, less fat, and more physical

activity, you ever see like an

80-year-old that's like cardio walking

down the street and you're like, "My

man!" It'll give you that. So that's a

big deal. So health, it'll give you uh

usually people experience a perception

of wellness that's psychological. They

just feel better. They feel cleaner.

They feel more energy. The cognitive

benefits of health and fitness are now

being addressed seriously in the

literature and they have been for a

little while, but it's kind of swelling.

Uh it's unequivocally true now to say

that regularly engaging in fitness makes

you literally smarter.

Just straight up. And it conserves your

brain's cognitive health for decades

into the future as you do it

consistently. It's just win all the way

across. What is your

background in terms of your academic

qualifications and experiences that

you've had that feed into everything

that you know? This is sounds so

pretentious. I can't believe I'm using

this nomenclature, but I did my

undergraduate work at the University of

Michigan where I met uh my fellow

co-founder of RP Nick Shaw.

And um that was in kinesiology,

specifically subset of something called

movement science. I then went on to do a

master's in technically strength and

conditioning but exercise science at

Appalachian State University. Then I

went for 1 year to go work in New York

City with Nick as a personal trainer.

At the end of that process, I realized

that for my own personal like vibe, I

just didn't know enough. And I wanted to

know more. And so I got accepted to a

PhD program at East Tennessee State

University under the great Mike Stone

who is

probably one of the most well-published

sports scientists of all time. Maybe

definitely in the conversation for the

greatest American sports scientist of

all time.

And I went to that PhD program and that

was in sport physiology. And the best

way we had of summarizing what it is we

were learning is the thing we're

learning best here is how to take good

athletes and make them better.

And so I did 3 years of that. Sounds

like some prison time. I did 3 years in

ETSU.

And uh

that was the conclusion as a terminal

degree. I got a PhD in sport physiology.

And then I spent oh jeez, 10 years in

various professorships uh teaching and

doing some research and all this other

stuff. I'm no longer a college professor

mostly because like there's only so many

things you can do at the same time well.

And I was kind of like this is this

YouTube thing is getting kind of insane.

So I was kind of pivot to that. But um

I'm still actively involved in research.

Our company funds research. I still look

at manuscripts. I still co-author. So

I'm still involved in that capacity as

well. So I want to start with a start.

If someone's listening to this right now

and they have walked into your This is

your

This is your practice. You're This is

your hypertrophy practice, let's say,

this table. And they sit there and they

say,

"I would like to gain more lean muscle

mass and I'd like to lose some weight.

Um I live a busy life.

Where do we start? What's step one? And

you know, like I'm actually going to

hazard a guess at step one and to see if

I'm correct, but for me step one is

quite psychological.

Because it's all well and good me having

the tactics and strategies and the

information, but if I don't have the

motivation, then if it's going to matter

anyway.

So is step one

psychological in some way? Absolutely.

My god. You should just be taking my job

at this point.

No, but yeah, okay. I thought so. I

thought that was So what what would you

do for me to get me in the right

psychological mindset?

I would even take a step back before

that.

Okay.

The first thing we do

is called a needs analysis in formal

sports science.

A needs analysis is

what do you want

specifically? Do you want bigger arms?

How much muscle are you trying to gain?

It's a very different conversation if

someone weighs 150 lb and they're like,

"I want to be 155 but leaner."

versus I weigh 150 lb and I want to be

200 ripped. Different timelines,

different approaches, different

tradeoffs. Okay, give me the typical

answer to that question. Most people are

just open-ended to be completely honest.

They're like, "I just want to get much

leaner." And some of them will say, "I

also want to put on a lot of muscle."

The muscle thing is a lot of times with

females they just want the leaner part,

but they understand in many cases that

if they just jettison their muscle

entirely, they end of looking more sick

than healthy. Uh but a lot of the males

leaner is important, but also getting

super jacked is important. But how

jacked and how lean, that's the

conversation is if they come in with

totally open-ended concerns. It's kind

of like walking into a car dealership

and be like, "I want a car." Like you

kind of have to be a little We'll sell

you whatever, but you're going to have

to tell me a little bit more about what

your use cases are, about what your

budget is. So that's another big thing

in a needs analysis is

how much time can you give to this?

Because if someone says, "I want to

eventually be a professional bodybuilder

and I've got nothing but time in my week

to do the thing." They're getting a very

different plan than someone that's like,

"I just want to be able to see my man

down there again and like just not die

soon.

And I have 2 hours a week to give you."

Very different plan. So I've got let's

say I've got a couple of hours a week.

So you know, two, three Mhm. hours a

week that I could probably spare, maybe

four. And I just want to get a bit

leaner and I want to gain some muscle.

Yeah.

I also ask, "What have you been doing so

far? Tell me about your approach to

fitness." And the answer could be, "I

don't have one. I've never tried to do

anything." Once we get a lot of that

information, I don't want to say the

plan writes itself, but it sort of

almost. Now we really really really have

all the details to fill in the blanks.

And then from there, once you've done

that sort of needs analysis and you've

understood the investment that they're

willing to make, you understand what

their goals are, you understand their

current approach to fitness, what

becomes step two? So if again, I'm

trying to embody the viewer here who's

trying to change their life. Yeah, yeah.

Get going for Step two often times just

to keep it We can I We can definitely do

nutrition if you'd like. So please keep

me in for that, but I'll just use

training as a quick example here.

Uh a big one is

do you go to a gym?

Can you make it to a gym or are you

going to be training at home?

Because training at home is a bit of a

different world. You can get amazing

results at home, but we need to make

sure you have the right equipment. And

it's super minimal. Two 20-lb dumbbells.

I like that you're looking over at the

dumbbells like

At least 20 kg dumbbells. The 20-lb

dumbbells. Is that what I need at home?

For many people, 20 like adult males

bright and spry like yourself, 20-lb

dumbbells at home will give you

phenomenal overall results. Yeah.

What is that? 9 kg or something? Oh,

here we go.

Your assistants are quite strong by the

way. Thank you. Do you fight crime in

your spare time?

Okay, so these

are 20-lb dumbbells.

You're just showing off now. But these

are what I need at home to to do your

workout. Uh yeah, somewhere between 10

and 20 lb. 10 for smaller lighter

females, 20 for larger more strong

males. Somewhere between that. Two of

those dumbbells at home and a little bit

of floor space can be the beginning of

an absolutely revolutionary workout

program. Really?

Yeah, yeah. How So

give me the starting position and the

end position that I could get to just

with these dumbbells at home?

If you properly control your diet

and you haven't really lifted weights

before and you're let's say 30, 40, 50

years old, in a 6-month time span,

we can reliably get you to gain 5 to 10

lb of muscle. Which if you go to the

store, what is that like? Five, let's

say the two to five kilos of muscle. You

ever buy two to five kilos of meat at

the store? That's a lot of meat. That's

going on your body. And we can reliably

get you to lose oh gee, five to seven

and a half kilos of fat in a 6-month

time frame just by being intelligent

about your diet and doing

two workouts per week at home with your

dumbbells. And the workouts each take

roughly 20 minutes.

So that's 40 minutes a week.

Mhm.

Oh yeah. Now that's if you're on a

custom then and unadjusted. If you have

already That's why those intake

questions are important. Cuz if you're

like, "Look, I go to the gym six times a

week. I spend 2 hours at the gym." Like

the dumbbells can keep you in pretty

good shape, but they're not going to

elevate your shape very likely. At the

very very least it'll be highly

inefficient and incredibly discomforting

for what you'd have to do with such

dumbbells.

So what is step three then? So if we've

got the equipment part figured out, and

I guess the complicated element of that

is some people have anxiety as it

relates to going to the gym. I've got a

lot of friends that because they're so

inexperienced with weightlifting or the

machines, they feel embarrassed to go to

the gym. So that Well, at least that's

what they tell me. Now I don't know

whether they're BS-ing themselves, but

they tell me that they have gym anxiety.

Yes. You know, you walk And I No,

actually, I can relate. You walk into a

gym, especially if I go to like a

like a bodybuilding gym,

and I do look around and go, "Okay,

everyone here knows what they're doing

more than I do." Ooh, that's already

wrong, but we'll get to that in a bit.

And are they looking at me? Are they Do

they know that I I don't know how this

machine works? And if I don't know how a

machine works and there's nothing, you

know, no label to tell me, sometimes I

just avoid the machine if I'm in a in

like a bodybuilding gym, cuz I go, "I

[ __ ] know I don't know how to do my

wrist muscles." Yep.

I just look like a doofus and everyone's

making fun of me in their head.

I think sometimes. If I go to like a

really elite gym, so. Yeah.

So, first of all, I think people's gym

anxiety is absolutely real thing. I can

speak to that at at length.

The next step would be to say, "Hey,

listen,

based on all the information we've

collected on your limitations, desires,

abilities,

we've cultivated a plan for you. Be diet

plan, and it's just just sticking to the

muscle growth stuff.

Here's your plan for your training.

And we actually have an app for this

sort of thing,

where we would say, "Okay, here's how

you type in all your stuff in the app.

The app will create a plan for you, and

it'll tell you, here's what to do for

warming up, here's you know, you pick a

weight, it tells you how to pick your

weights, and then it programs the rest

of your your 2 months of training for

you. You fill in the how do we how do I

feel, how am I recovering? It'll take

care of everything else.

And if you ever get confused, you click

on the exercise and it opens up a video

with an audio demonstration of how to do

it and of someone a professional

bodybuilder doing the thing. You go,

"Oh, that's that's what bicep curls was.

Okay, got it." So, now you have all the

answers, and you don't have to have our

app. We think it's nice. You don't have

to have it. Just whatever kind of plan

you have,

that's your little map of the Caribbean

Sea with the X's and the pirate ships,

and you know exactly where to go. And

it's you,

your app or your map of how to train

your program, and everyone else like in

the Avengers movies, just

just floats away. There's no one else.

There's not even any other machines.

It's you

and the bicep curl machine, and

hypertrophy app says, "First set is 12

reps at 50 lb." I take the selector I

stack I go to 50, and I'm nice and

warmed up, and I do 12 reps. And that's

as far as you have to think about it.

Comparisons, whatever everyone else

thinks, without a plan, oh boy, are you

second-guessing yourself. With a plan,

you don't have to second-guess anything.

Most of those people don't have a plan.

They're just in there on vibes. Like, "I

don't feel like my delts are going to

grow today if I do this." Like, "Thanks.

Thanks for that intellectual opinion."

You said there's two types of effective

training. One of them's hyp- Can't say

this, but one of them's hypertrophy?

Very good. And the other one is

periodization?

Uh so, periodization is the

scientifically based organization of any

kind of training that you want. Okay.

Hypertrophy training is a type of

training. It's just muscle growth

training. It's like a fancy [ __ ]

science word for

just getting more jacked, putting on

muscle. That's is technical definition

of hypertrophy. And when you train

hypertrophy, you can do it kind of like

by feel and more or less at random, and

you'll get pretty good results in most

cases. But to get your best results, you

want that training to be periodized.

Periodization is the scientific approach

to how to organize your training to get

sort of roughly three things. Some of

these are a bit more for athletes and

not regular people.

Get the best results that you can.

Peak at an appropriate time, abs for

summer.

And minimize injury risk.

And taking all the science that we know,

that plan that you've made because you

did it in evidence-based fashion, that

is now what is considered a periodized

plan. So, that's how those two concepts

relate to each other. What do I need to

know about hypertrophy in order to be

able to achieve it? Is there anything

really foundational, cuz

I think everyone wants a bit of muscle

growth. And I spend I think I spend too

long in the gym. I think I could be much

more efficient um when I'm training.

What would you recommend that I start

thinking about as fun- foundational

principles when it comes to hypertrophy

muscle growth?

One is specificity.

It's the most important principle in all

of sport training and exercise science.

Is uh

what am I here for? What do I want?

Because you can do a bunch of exercises

in the gym,

and you're like, "That was great." And

someone's like, "Are you getting the

results you like?" You're like, "Well,

what I want is a bigger bicep." Like,

"How many bicep exercises did you do?"

Like, "I think upright rows, maybe." So,

I want a bigger bicep. We just focus on

getting Steven Bartlett a bigger left

bicep.

So,

specificity is telling yourself, "Okay,

I want bigger biceps and whatever X Y Z

other muscles."

Then we move in to the principle of

overload, which means you have to

challenge yourself.

If most of your sets,

someone else watching them can't tell if

you're warming up or doing what's called

a working set, like a real set, you have

a problem.

So, towards the end of all of your sets,

either the weights are slowing down,

or even if it's the same speed, to you

they feel perceptibly harder. You know,

you do this this this, and in a couple

reps you're like,

that's what you want. Every real working

set should be challenging. You should be

work approaching every real set with

just a teeny teeny dose of trepidation.

Like, "Oh boy, here we go. I'm going to

have to try."

Once you have that, And a set is a a

group of repetitions.

Correct.

So, if I do 10 repetitions, that's one

set.

Okay.

And so, your sets have to be

sufficiently heavy,

uh anything between roughly five reps

per set and 30 reps per set, where the

last few reps are getting close to you

not being able to use good technique and

lift the weights.

Check plus. So, there's not a set a

perfect amount of repetitions to do.

There is. It's a trade secret, and I'd

have to say it off camera to you. Like

Okay, NDA aside, we're off camera.

All right, great. So, it's 17.

Um there is so there's just tons of tons

of contextual nuance kind of stuff. Some

people some of their muscles will seem

respond better to sets of five to 10.

Other folks, even the same person could

have muscles in their body that really

respond better to sets of 20 to 30 and

everything in between. But generally,

you get in in the exercise science data,

you'll have a group of people training

for sets of roughly five reps and

another group training for sets of

roughly 30 reps, and their change in

muscle growth over 8, 12, 16 weeks is

statistically and differentiable, which

means if I de-label the groups and you

don't know which ones which, you can't

actually tell me who trained with higher

reps or lower reps. For muscle growth,

it's roughly the same.

And that's so crazy. Using the same

weight, I'm guessing different

weights.

A weight that is challenging for five

reps is much heavier than a weight that

is challenging for 30.

Uh okay, so I do wonder this all the

time when I go to the gym. I wonder if I

should be doing, I don't know, 30 reps

of 10 kg on my bicep, or I should be

doing 10 reps of 20 kg. They're both

right answers. No wrong answers there.

And they both have the same chance of

growing my muscles as long as the strain

that I experience subjectively is

difficult at the end of those sets.

Correct. Okay, interesting.

Which is really good news, because

that's like another thing you don't have

to worry about. Which means at home I

can get any range of weights versus

having to get really really big ones to

grow my muscles.

As long as they're not so tiny that

you're on rep number 45 and you're like,

"I could just do this for forever." Or

they're not so enormous that you're

like, "I can't really even do two reps

of this." Anything between roughly five

and roughly 30 reps, challenging, is

really really good.

How many sets and how often do I have to

visit the gym

to get this bicep to grow? That answer

depends on how much you've been doing

before. Okay.

But if you're new to the gym,

two sessions a week

with two to three sets per session for

your biceps

is something that's going to cause

months and months and months of

consistent progress. Really? Can you do

more? Yes. Do you have to do as a

beginner? No. Eventually, as a more

advanced person, do you need to do more

sets and perhaps more sessions to get

consistently better results? Yes. But

for beginners who haven't been in the

gym very much or at all, the minimal

effective dose is profoundly small,

which is why I can say things like if

you work out for 20 minutes twice a

week, you're going to get great gains.

What if I go to the gym and I do

six sets on my biceps, and I just go to

the gym once a week. Does the distance

between the workouts in a muscle group

have an impact? Yes.

Once a week training gives you good

results.

But twice a week training for the same

muscle

gives you notably better results.

Training three times a week versus

twice. Training four times a week versus

three times. Training five times a week

versus four times is uh an uh an

exponentially de-escalating amount of

impressive differences. So, one time a

week works. It'll get you results.

Two times a week gets you like one and a

half times the results, like way better

better.

Three times a week is like another

little bit more results, still notable.

Four times a week is like you got to be

training for a while to notice the

difference between three and four. Four

and five is contextual and nuanced, and

I can't actually tell you that

categorically five days a week is better

than four. There are some things I would

have to know about your plan and

everything else to make that conclusion.

So, really I want to be aiming at twice

a week per muscle group.

Twice is our minimum. Two to four times

a week is what I say as kind of the best

overall recommendation per muscle group.

And if you train all of your muscles

together at the same time, a whole body

workout, which most people in the realm

of just I'm busy and I can't train a

lot, it would be all the major muscles

of your body

in the same session,

twice or three times or four times a

week, and that is an awesome beginner

fitness plan. What's going on in my

muscles that's encouraging them and

making them grow? And when are they

growing? Is it when I go to bed at

night? Is it when I Do they grow the

minute that I curl the the dumbbell?

What's actually going on? Cuz sometimes

understanding what's actually going on

inside helps me to think through and

change my behavior.

Yeah, so the primary stimulus for muscle

growth is there are molecular machines

in your muscles in your muscle cells and

they are designed to detect the presence

of

tension.

And when your muscles generate tension,

the molecular detector machines go "Ooh,

we got tension here." And they start

saying to other parts of the cells like

"Hey, let's get this muscle growth thing

started." Started, not happening,

started. So, the stimulus of muscle

growth.

There are a couple of other mechanisms

which

might {slash} probably have an effect.

And that a couple of them are metabolite

sequestration, which is a very fancy way

of saying the burn. You know, at the end

of a set you're like

The metabolites, the

byproducts of training, if they

accumulate to high levels, it's been

shown in tons of animal studies and a

few human studies that like

mechanistically they might also tell the

molecular machinery that grows muscle

for you again later

to hey, get the muscle growth process.

Another one is the pump. So, you know,

you do a couple of sets of biceps,

you're like "Oh my god, what's going on

here, baby?" Flash it at some girl, she

runs away as usual.

And the actual cell swelling itself

might play a causal mechanistic role in

generating more muscle growth, but but

we know it's probably at least at least

80% of the muscle growth anyone will see

is because of those receptors for

tension.

Muscle growth

as soon as you leave the gym is negative

because the gym is catabolic, it's a

breaks down your muscle.

Actually training breaks down more

muscle than it builds.

However,

as you go home and you start eating

food, protein, carbs, fats, and you have

several meals per day

and you're resting

when the food's coming in several hours

after training begins, if you measure

muscle growth consistently, which is

really difficult to do, they don't do it

super often, you have to keep people in

a laboratory, you have to do radioactive

tracers and measure all this weird

stuff.

Ev- every couple of hours they measure

the amount of muscle growth that's going

on in the biceps goes up and up and up

and up and it usually peaks about

half a day to a day and a half after you

lift, depending on how hard you went. If

it's a pretty easy workout, it peaks a

little sooner and

dives and drops off about a day or two

later. If you train really crazy hard,

it'll peak like a day day and a half

later and then half a week later it'll

drop off back to baseline levels.

But it's this really smooth curve. And

you're growing muscle at every single

point on that curve. So, when you say

"Is it while I'm sleeping? Is it while

I'm eating? Is it while I'm resting?"

The answer is all of those, except it's

not at the gym. You don't grow muscle at

the gym, you give yourself a signal to

grow muscle at the gym. And then what

you do outside of the gym matters. So,

some people train really hard,

they don't eat right, they don't eat

enough protein, their sleep is total

insert bad word here, and their stress

levels are just totally psychotic. They

train hard and then week after week

after week they're like

"I'm not seeing any results." But the

results are actually created when you're

resting, when you're sleeping, when

you're eating nutritious food. They're

stimulated in the workout, but that's

just phase one. Phase two, the actual

growth occurs outside of the gym and it

occurs not at any specific time point,

that magic window of 2 hours after the

gym like that's when all the growth

occurs. That's actually when it just

starts to go up. It's for days

afterwards. So, if you train twice a

week, you train on Monday, you're

growing a lot of muscle on Monday night,

Tuesday and Wednesday. Back towards the

end of Wednesday, you're just not really

growing much more muscle.

You go back to the gym Thursday, you hit

it hard again, you have that curve up.

By Sunday, you're totally relaxed.

During Sunday, you're not growing any

muscle, your body's really recovering a

lot of that fatigue, and then by Monday

you're fresh as a pickle and you're

ready to go at it again.

How long will it take me to lose the

muscles that I've gained if I don't go

back to the gym? So, again focusing on

this bicep, I train it, I do two times a

week, I get it nice and big.

How long before it vanishes?

Great question.

Two-part answer.

Part one

is

within about 2 weeks of not training it,

the first

reduction in muscle that is detectable

by modern machinery occurs.

So, if you don't lift for 2 weeks

and we put you in an MRI scanner or a

DEXA scanner, let's say week and a half

you don't lift, I can't tell.

You're not really losing any muscle yet.

You're just going insane. And so, me

personally, I'm like addicted to

lifting, so if I don't lift for a week

I'm like "Oh my god, oh my god, all my

muscles gone."

There is some kind of intuitive truth to

that because when you don't stress your

muscles, they when you do stress your

muscles, they get a little bit inflamed

and they bulge up a little bit. So, when

you're not training for half a week to a

week, your muscles look smaller like

they've lost weight, but it's really

just all water that they lost. You do

one gym session thinking like "Oh my

god, my biceps are gone." A week and a

half later,

you do one session at the end of that,

you flex, you're like "Oh my god, I'm

the biggest I've ever been. I was just

delusional that whole time." Cuz that

stuff comes back super quick.

After about 2 weeks of not lifting,

you start to lose muscle, but it happens

really really slowly and takes weeks and

weeks and weeks and weeks.

After several months of not lifting,

you're going to look considerably

smaller in your biceps,

but probably not as small as when you

started lifting because your muscles

have a certain memory, if we can call it

that. Is that true that there's a memory

thing?

yeah. And so, a lot of times when you

gain an initial amount of muscle,

especially if you've been at it for

years, it just never goes back to the

same size as when you started. It's just

always going to be bigger until you like

reach your 80s or something like that.

That being said,

yes, you will notice reductions in size.

So, 2 weeks is the direct answer there

and it's going to take weeks and weeks

and months and months to recede.

However, here's part two and this is

awesome news.

Because of that muscle memory situation,

however long it took you to gain the

muscles initially,

it's going to take you

an order of magnitude, a factor of

10-ish or so less time to get it back.

If you've been more jacked before, if

you've had bigger muscles,

they come back to their old size.

If it took if you you you lifted for 8

months, you got a bigger bicep, and you

stopped lifting for 3 months and it

looks about the same as when you

started. If you're really careful like

"Okay, it's a little bit bigger, but

really it's just back to square one."

Most people think "Oh my god, another 8

months just to get back to where I

started." Forget the truth is after

roughly about a month, maybe as little

as 3 weeks, you're going to have the

same size biceps that you did in your

peak.

Because the degree to which your tissue

grows, if it's been a certain size

before, especially

if it was notably bigger than normal and

you held that around for a few months

and a few years,

it comes back

in a way that is so fast, if you

experience

if you experience it yourself, it's it's

like you don't believe that it's

happening to you. Have they been able to

like scientifically test this? Oh, yeah,

all the time. Yeah, retraining studies,

detraining, retraining. Oh, yeah,

they've they've done studies where they

purposefully like lift for a while and

they stop lifting for a long time and

they see how long it takes to get back

and um

there's one study I'm familiar with

offhand that there's a group of people

that trained consistently for multiple

weeks. And there's another group of

people that trained consistently for a

few weeks and then took 2 weeks

completely off in the middle and then

just started retraining again for a few

weeks later.

Both groups had identically sized

differences in muscle at the end of the

study. And so, you're like "Okay, so so

that group that trained consistently

never took 2 weeks off.

Could we say that they purposefully like

dunked 2 weeks of their time away for

nothing?" Uh-huh.

Yeah, your body

goes right back into regaining old lost

muscle so rapidly that

this is such great news because look,

let's say you lifted consistently most

of the year. Holiday season comes up,

winter holidays.

You're not going to the gym as much,

maybe not at all. 3 weeks later of no

gym, you look at yourself, you look a

little smaller, kind of deflated and

you're like

"Oh my god, I'm going to have to restart

all this from scratch." Nope. 2 weeks

later, you're in the best shape of your

life again. If you left the gym for 6

months,

1 or 2 months later, you're in the best

shape of your life again. That's how

rapidly it comes back. So, it's really

good news for anyone who hasn't been in

the gym and is feeling guilty about it.

Go back, get consistent again, you're

just going to skyrocket.

That is very exciting. Because yeah, we

always have sometimes it's the trough,

the the couple of weeks off that makes

us demotivated cuz that's crossed my

mind before. "Oh my god, that took me 3

months to get there and

it's going to take me another 3 months

to get back." But

what about So, if I'm training that

bicep, how have I got to think about

stretching and warming up

before I start before I get going with

my training?

There are many ways to do it, but

uh there's some research on this

recently actually.

You don't need much.

One of the simplest ways to warm up

that we recommend at RP and our app has

it in the in the instructions,

you want Let's say you have your final

weight already picked out. Like last

week you did 20-lb dumbbells for sets of

15, this week it's sets of 16 with a

20-lb dumbbells.

What you want to do is

you want to do very light weight, maybe

the 5-lb dumbbells for a set of 12.

Just to get everything moving and

grooving, good technique, same technique

you're going to use.

30 seconds of rest, a minute of rest.

You pick up the

10- or 15-lb dumbbells and do a set of

eight reps. That's a little bit more

challenging, you're feeling your groove

a little bit, but your body's already

more warm, your nervous system is more

active, your muscles are more pliable.

You rest a a minute after that and then

you'll pick up the weight you're

actually using, the 20-pounders,

and you'll do a set of two to four reps

with them. Just to get the feel of that

heavy weight that you're going to be

doing to acclimatize not just your

muscles and your nervous system but your

psychology to like, "Okay, this is this

is the business weight that I'm going to

be using."

So, 12 8 4.

Rest another 30 seconds. First working

set of whatever, 16 reps. You're up.

When you have multiple exercises for the

same muscle group,

you just need to do one set of like four

to eight reps

in that middle weight range between zero

and whatever you're going to do just to

get the feel of the exercise cuz you're

already generally warm in that area.

One little warm-up set, rest uh you

know, 30 seconds to a minute, and then

hit your first set. If you're switching

which muscles you're using, like you

were training chest but then in the same

session you start to training back, that

first back exercise, 12 8 4. The weight

goes up up up, the reps go down down

down, just a little bit of time between,

and then you hit your first work set and

you're good to go. You don't have to do

cardio before, you don't have to get on

the treadmill. You can if you like it.

You don't have to do some kind of cardio

warm-up. You don't have to do any kind

of stretching or anything like that. You

don't have to do any kind of weird Bosu

ball band around your neck crazy

potentiation exercises. Just that little

ramp up is basically in 98% of all cases

exactly and only what you need to do.

What is a warm-up? What is going on

physiologically inside my muscle?

Because we we will just warm up and I

don't think anybody actually knows what

what's going on. Yeah. So, your muscle

tissues

um they have

uh they have physical qualities that can

be measured almost in like a fluid

dynamics terms like viscosity and

hysteresis and all that stuff.

And so, when you're very cold,

a lot of times the uh there's kind of a

frailty implied there.

As you're warming up, you're sending

blood to around the muscle. The muscle

itself is literally becoming warmer.

And a lot of those kind of tight

structures that are uh they're proteins

that are made of kind of stretchy

material, they loosen up a little bit.

And that allows you to go through that

full range of motion in training and not

actually get hurt.

And that's from the muscle perspective.

You also get some kind of chemical stuff

that happens and certain structures fill

up with chemicals, certain structures

chemicals go down, and that gets you

ready to perform super hard work.

But that's part of the story. The other

part is the nervous system because your

nervous system is also getting warmed up

and in technical terms it's called

potentiation.

When you

just show up to the gym

and you let's say we said, "Look, okay,

we re-engineered your tendons when you

were asleep." You're not going to get

hurt. It's impossible for you to get

hurt. Like a car would have to hit you

for you to rip your bicep off.

You can just go and just hit the curls

right away. You wouldn't get hurt. But

it would feel really strange and you

wouldn't get four or five reps close to

where you're supposed to be from last

week. Cuz your nervous system is like,

"What

hell is going on? I'm supposed to be

doing something so you knew what the

nervous system a part of that is

literally like the actual nervous system

itself down to the cellular level is

flushing all kinds of metabolites

through, the connections are getting

stronger. You're uh sort of doing a

little bit of kind of mini re-wiring of

primary motor cortex to say, "Okay, go.

Oh, we're doing curls. This is how you

execute this pattern." Another part is

technical.

Like, "Oh, this is the technique I'm

going to do." All right. Because if you

just get in the muscle and just do

stuff, like imagine if I told you like,

"Hey, here's a ball. Just like go go

shoot some hoops. Just get hit that, you

know, three-pointer shot." You're like,

the the

I need a couple shots to remind my body

of what it's like to shoot the

basketball. Yeah. Same idea for lifting.

You need to remind your body of what a

curl motion is. And if you remind it a

couple sets in a row, by the time you

hit that real working set, that fourth

set, your body's like, "I know exactly

what I'm going to do, which parts of the

muscle I'm going to activate to

contract, which other parts of other

muscles I'm going to activate to relax

and co-contract to make this whole thing

happen."

What are the the other sort of common

mistakes people make when they they go

to the gym or they start training or

they start exercising? So, there I've

I've kind of ticked not stretching and

taking on a

heavy load too quickly.

Um but also ramping up volumes and loads

too fast. So, that sort of overstrain

before my body is ready for it. Are

there any really other sort of common

obvious mistakes people make that

inhibit their progress?

One of them is uh failure to pay

attention to good technique. Okay.

There are sort of some universal

principles of what is good technique in

the gym for muscle growth.

One of them is are you moving in a way

that properly activates, stimulates that

muscle to actually get it to grow?

Because if you do a curl that arcs up,

it does a lot of bicep. If you do a curl

that arcs back this way, because the

bicep is being pulled one way and pulled

the other way at the shoulder and the

elbow, it ends up doing more of a

stabilizing contraction than actually

being the prime mover for the movement.

So, when you see people curling at the

gym and they're just kind of doing this,

you're like,

"Yes, that is training your biceps." But

if you just moved a little bit

differently, it would be so so much

better. Here's another example,

squatting, right? For your legs. If you

squat really far back and not so far

down,

like your glutes get hit okay, your

lower back and upper and mid back is

going to get hit a lot. But because

there's not a huge change in your knee

angle,

you're not getting a ton of quad

stimulus. If you stay more upright and

your heels and toes are on the ground

and you allow your knees to go way

forward beyond your toes as you stay

upright and sink down really low so that

your knee goes into one of these, oh my

god, it's all quads all day long. So,

you want technique that is targeting the

muscle, it's very similar rep to rep to

rep, and it puts the muscle consistently

through a range of motion that is in

that deep painful uh lengthened stretch

position. If you just have all those

three, everything else we can say about

your technique is just nuances and finer

points. Those are really the big ones.

We talked about nutrition earlier as

well. So, if I want to make my bicep

grow and also drop off the weight around

the bicep so you can see it see it even

more, what should I be putting into my

mouth?

The number one requisite for muscle

growth is protein.

Foods with lots of protein in them

ideally should be consumed three to five

times per day at roughly equal distant

intervals.

Breakfast, lunch, dinner, totally fine.

Even better, breakfast, lunch, dinner,

evening snack.

The average person needs

a little bit less than, let's say, a

gram per pound of body weight per day of

protein. Actually considerably less.

That's kind of the top limit and a cool

aspirational thing to shoot for. So, if

you weigh, let's say 200 lb,

you should be consuming something like

150 to 200 g protein per day. And 150

for almost everyone's totally enough.

But if you're real serious and hardcore

and you just want that insurance policy,

200 g of protein per day.

So, then if you're eating four times a

day, that's Oh, yeah.

30, 40, let's say 40 to 50 g of protein

per meal. Can I eat too much protein?

And then and then it becomes fat or

something.

Uh that's uh so, protein by itself, no.

If your protein is so high that your

carbs and fats are the same and you jack

up your protein super high but your

carbs and fats stay where they are, your

calories become excessive. That will

cause fat gain over time. But if you're

doing a diet where you have ton of

protein but you dropped your carbs and

fats and your calories are at

maintenance levels, you're not going to

gain any fat. It's not bad for your

kidneys. It's not bad for any other part

of your body. Excessive protein as a

health malady has been a myth the entire

time. And that's one of those um notions

that people carry with them that "Too

much protein's bad, right?" Like, yes,

if you've had kidney surgery,

absolutely. Short of that, you're

probably good to go.

You'll fart a lot and people will hate

you, but you know.

You mentioned three to five meals a day.

A lot of people are now in this camp of

of fasting and intermittent fasting

Yeah. and not eating often. Is it

possible to fast but also to gain muscle

mass in the way that you've described?

Yeah, totally. It just won't happen at a

as an impressive rate. So, you have to

make a trade-off for yourself. If you

want, you know, most jacked Steven that

you can be, three to five meals a day

consistently spread in almost to an

individual

competitive bodybuilders eat

that frequently and eat high protein.

How often do you eat? Uh I eat at five

five times a day, four or five times a

day usually. And do you eat before or

after you train? Both. Okay. So, before

you train and after you train.

Yeah. Do you eat different things? A lot

of times I'll train early in the morning

and so I won't train at all I won't eat

at all. I'll wake up and I'll have like

a protein and carb mix shake with my

training. Totally optional. Super extra

credit. May not do anything at all if

you look at the literature, but I find

it a little bit compelling to do a

little bit of that. And then afterwards

I have my first post-workout meal,

second meal, third meal, fourth meal,

bedtime, wake up, do it again. What do

you take to get you going? Do you do

pre-workout? No. Why? No. Uh I don't do

any stimulants of any kind. Why? Uh I'm

just kind of cooked up all the time

naturally. So, like if you give me

stimulants, it's just going to go into

the not so pleasant side of side

effects. Like I'm just going to be like

this and way too amped up, super high

anxiety, and my thoughts get to be like

I have less fluidity of thinking and

stuff. So, I just There's just a lot of

me, I guess. And so when I wake up in

the morning, I don't need anything to

get me going. I just go. And a couple

warm-up sets later, I have all the

energy I need. That's not everyone and

so

some green tea, some black coffee, or

some pre-workout 30 minutes before the

gym is great advice for a ton of people.

I feel like pre-workout can't be healthy

if you're doing it five, six, seven

times a week because some of that stuff

is so unbelievably strong. Like I've had

it before. I've got literally like heart

palpitations when I've had a pre-workout

and you know, they talk about anxiety,

that anxious feeling. It can't be It

can't be help healthy for people to be

doing that frequently.

It seems to be quite fine. It seems to

be quite fine. Now, at the extremes and

in for some individuals, it's not ideal.

But um

the upper limit dose of caffeine in

milligrams per day

at which we can confidently say most

people will experience the beginnings of

health maladies

is 1,000 mg.

Mhm. And a cup of coffee has, depending

on which cup, 50 to 100.

Now, some pre-workouts have 250 g

milligrams of caffeine, some have 500.

Uh last I checked, Ronnie Coleman's

pre-workout has 550 mg of caffeine per

scoop or per serving.

And so that's kind of a lot. Uh

I If I took 550 mg of caffeine, you

don't take me to the gym, just take me

right to the hospital, put me in the

psychiatric ward, 36 hours later I'll be

okay.

But for some people to get so accustomed

to high doses of caffeine that it's

supposed not unhealthy for them to

consume and also uh they feel quite

fine. So, I would say start with as

little as you need to get you going and

if you need to titrate and work up from

there, that's a good thing. The other

thing I would say is

I would have a compelling case for

pre-workout or stimulants.

If I ask you like, "Hey, how much energy

do you typically have at the gym?"

They're like, "Oh, it's super great."

And they're like, "Should I take

pre-workout?" I'd be like, "No, there's

no compelling case for that at all." If

you're like, like I wake up in the

morning, some days I just don't get a

ton of sleep

and I need something to get me going,

not every day, but sometimes, I'll be

like, "Hey, look, consider green tea,

black coffee, some diet soda or all the

way up to a pre-workout if you need it."

But some people take it kind of as like

um

a like a religious thing, as a habit, uh

as a ritual and it's like, "Dude, you're

training your forearms and biceps for 20

minutes total at 9:00 p.m. You do not

need three scoops of pre-workout for

that. I don't even know where it's going

at that point." So, some people get a

little crazy with the pre-workouts. The

end of the world is at at best needless.

What's your stance on the whole idea of

calories in calories out? A lot of

people just focus on that as the the

sort of

the script to lose body weight, lose

body fat and gain muscle. Is Is that a

useful frame to to use? And why do so

many people fail at it

if if it is a useful frame?

Most people fail at it because they

don't consider both the calories in and

calories outside of the equation.

And a lot of people fail because they're

very bad at estimating food amounts and

calories.

They'll Someone will say like a

tablespoon of peanut butter. Steven,

have you ever actually seen a tablespoon

measuring cup?

It does not look like mom's tablespoon

where she takes the peanut butter and

goes like, "Ah!"

That's like four tablespoons. And so

they're like, "But I'm eating the

calories, blah blah blah."

Every time you take people into what's

called a metabolic ward

which is a study center where you're not

allowed to have visitors that bring you

food

the workers only give you the food that

you need and all of your exercise and

your output is controlled and monitored

and so is your intake

no one has ever violated laws of

thermodynamics. We give you a certain

number of calories and we expect you to

lose a certain number of weight. There's

a variance about that, but it you're

going to lose the weight that roughly we

predict. If we account for all

variables, you're going to lose almost

exactly the weight that we predict. So,

calories in calories out is

incontrovertible. In among

90-something percent, 98% of people who

do research in the field and are

scientifically literate and educated

calories in calories out is not

controversial. It never has been. There

are some people who say, "Well, the

calorie counting didn't work for me."

That's probably because you did it wrong

or you weren't even concerned about how

much protein you're taking in or how

many carbs or how many fats. There are

other details that matter.

Like if you say

"I need a V8 engine in a car. That's all

that matters." Like, "Okay, well,

there's no steering wheel and there's no

pedals." Cool. Like, well, "I need those

things too." So, calories in calories

out is the very core cuz without an

engine you're not going anywhere.

But what types of foods you're eating

matters a little bit.

Are you getting enough protein, carbs,

fats? That matters a bit too. So, people

like to just bash calorie balance and

calories in calories out as well. It's

totally messed. It doesn't work. No, no,

it works great. It's just not always

enough to get you in the best shape you

can. But if you do it right as far as

net balance weight gain or weight loss,

calories in calories out is actually the

only thing that matters.

Tissue-wise, is that gain mostly muscle

or mostly fat? Is the loss mostly muscle

or mostly fat? That has not so much to

do with calories. It has much more to do

with proteins, carbs, fats, the quality

of food you're eating, nutrient timing

and all the rest of it. So, calories in

calories out is amazing, super

explanatory, critical but it's just not

the whole picture.

And that's really yeah, I guess because

so many people say they've heard about

calories in calories out, but they fail

at maintaining it. Now, that's really

about motivation and the psychology of

doing such a thing. Um some people have

said to me that our bodies want to

defend our weight. So, if we start

eating less, we'll become a little bit

more hungry. If we go for a run, after

the run or after a physical exertion,

our body will try and make up for it

because it's programmed to try and

defend its weight cuz it's weight

correlates to our

ability to survive.

Um

Why do people fail at it? You One of the

reasons you said is because, you know,

that they're not actually measuring the

calories correctly. But the

psychological reasons that it isn't

hasn't worked for some people.

Can you think of many? Because when I

When people talk about calories in

calories out, if you look at the comment

sections on those videos, people say,

"I've tried this and it didn't work."

Okay. So, first of all, I typically

don't look at comment sections of videos

because comment section is not

representative of the population. It's

not representative of the people that

watch your videos. It's not

representative of the hardcore

demographic that watches your videos.

So, just as a statistical artifact,

every single claim by people against

calorie balance in that comment section

could be true for them, but they

represent 1% of the population. So, 99%

of people it works just fine. For 1%

they get into some kind of trouble.

Usually that trouble is they didn't

count calories properly. They didn't

account for macronutrient profile,

protein, carbs, fats. They didn't

account for nutrient timing or the kinds

of foods that they're they're doing and

so on and so forth.

And another one is like you said,

sustainability.

How long do I have to count calories for

in my life for me to get the body that I

want and keep it? It sure [ __ ] not going

to be forever. So, what I'll do is I'll

count calories for a few months, I'll

lose a lot of weight. Then I'll go back

to eating on vibes and the weight comes

right back. Absolutely. So, better than

just counting calories, what we want to

do is instill people with good eating

habits. If you learn how to construct

meals made of lean proteins, veggies,

fruits, whole grains, healthy fats

you know roughly how to see how much

food you need and how much food looks at

least like it's what you eat per day. If

you're checking your body weight

relatively often and

when your body weight starts to get a

little higher, you can kind of clean up

your diet a little bit. And when your

body weight's nice and low, you get a

couple cheat meals, couple kebabs, you

know, burgers and stuff. That's all

good. If you do that and you have those

healthy habits, whatever weight you lost

on calorie restriction, you can maintain

with very, very little work, not

counting a damn thing, just on good

habits. But if you count up calories,

you do some weird diet where you only

eat like two foods, orange slices and

protein shakes or something.

Yeah, the calorie counting will get you

wherever you need to go. But then

afterwards, after the diet's over,

you're like, "Well, some some Now what

do I do?" Like, "Uh good luck. Go out in

the world and eating the same diet that

got you fat in the first place." That's

the big kicker.

People might say it takes too much time

to count calories. It leads to a an

unhealthy relationship with food.

There's a big movement at the moment to

try and get calories off menus because

it's said to increase the amount of

people that have eating disorders and

things like that.

Is that a

conversation worth entertaining in this

in this regard?

Sure, sure. Very few people

will develop eating disorders

based on increases in information they

are presented.

I would actually call that eating order

instead of eating disorder.

Most people who get eating disorders are

highly at risk genetically and with a

few other social circumstances.

Eating disorders are

for example, the most

deleterious eating disorders, anorexia

nervosa

seen not exclusively, but almost

exclusively in females of reproductive

age.

They ain't calories on a menu doing

that. That's something you bring into

the table.

Uh Usually because you have the genetic

proclivity for it.

And additionally because you've been

in a social and cultural circumstance

where

not only were you the wrong person to

get ridiculed for your weight

but also a lot of people ridiculed you

for your weight. And then you go all

careening off on this path where no one

can even tell you you're super skinny

anymore because you don't believe it.

So, the idea that uh you're going to see

much higher prevalence globally in

eating disorders from putting menu

calorie labels on things is true by this

much at the margins and it's just

largely not the case.

Adjacent to that is this idea of muscle

dysmorphia which affects

a lot of people, but specifically men,

roughly 87%

of men that are between 15 to 32 years

old that experience muscle dysmorphia.

Which is what?

So, muscle dysmorphia generally is

for whatever level of jacked that you

are, you think you are considerably less

jacked both in reference to yourself and

your own desires and in reference to an

ethereal make-believe comparator

population in your head. So, if you were

to ask me like, "Hey Mike, do you feel

jacked?" And I'm like, "Nope." You're

like, "Ooh, not good. Not a good sign.

Clearly he's jacked." And then you can

ask me, Mike, "Compared to other

40-year-old Ashkenazi Jewish men, how

jacked are you?" And if I'm like, "Pff,

I'm probably like

bottom 50% for sure, probably bottom

25." You'd be like, "Okay, he's mentally

ill. Take him away." That is high-level

muscle dysmorphia, a dissociation from

any objective reality about how much

muscle you actually have.

Do people overestimate or underestimate

their appearance as it relates to their

muscles?

Uh dysmorphia is almost always cataloged

as an underestimation. But but from your

experience working with people, do

people think they're more jacked than

they actually are?

It really depends on the individual.

Most people that are in gym culture,

that are very invested, if you catch

them on their not-so-great days, they

think they're substantially less jacked

than they really are. And if you tease

it apart via conversation, they'll end

up being like, "Yeah, no no, I know I'm

jacked, but I'm just saying like" and

then it's aspirational like, "For my

goals,

I'm not as jacked as I would like to

be."

It's interesting cuz we typically think

of

women, think stereotypically in society,

as caring more about their

body image. Mhm. But I've I've read a

lot of stats lately that suggest men

care equally about their body image, but

just in slightly different ways. And

then about the correlation between their

perception of their body image and their

own mental health and the link between

the two. Sure. Sure. Do you see a lot of

that? Do you see this link between

mental health and male body image?

Yes. Huge proportion of psychological

proclivities are genetic. The others are

very individually acquired. They change

through time. It's not as easy as saying

upbringing or family environment. So,

the one consistent thing about how you

relate to the world and your own

thoughts is genetics.

And a lot of the traits tend to

aggregate together. So, it is true to

say, on a spectrum, very nuanced, that

some people aggregate a lot of negative

psychological traits, and some people

aggregate a lot of positives. And there

are absolutely people Everyone's a mixed

bag, somewhere in between, but there's a

little bit of this kind of

I don't want to use a a term for a

another mental illness, a bipolarity to

the distribution, right? And so, a lot

of people that are generally neurotic,

they feel consistently

unsafe and unsure of themselves, are

going to be also the type of people that

when they get more jacked through

lifting, they're still not going to

believe that they're as jacked and

accomplished and awesome and alpha male

as they really are, because they're

always like, you know, to use the old

Jewish joke stereotypically, "Oy, oy,

I'm never going to be big." And it's

like, "You're already big." Like, "Oh, I

don't know. It could get It could get

worse tomorrow." And a lot of people

just bring that to the table. And so,

when you get neurotic people jacked,

they don't think they're that jacked.

They're always like, "Oh my god, it's

always going to end." But if you take

not neurotic people and make them

jacked, you one week of lifting into

those people, they're like, "Dude, I'm

like Do you think I should turn pro in

bodybuilding?" Like, "Get out of here.

You're just overconfident." So, it

really depends on who's doing the thing.

Now, cultural stuff, social, who's in

your circle. I'll give you a good

example.

I have a lot of my closest friends have

no relation to fitness whatsoever. A

bunch of them are actually

neuroscientists, just randomly people I

knew in college that ended up being my

friends for life. And so, when they

assess their muscularity relative to

myself and my bodybuilder friends,

they're like, "I'm in terrible shape and

I'm not remotely jacked." And they have

such a weird comparator population that

I always remind them like, "Dude, not

everyone looks like this." They go to

the store, they go to school, they go to

the bank and they're like, "Oh, crap,

you're right. I'm actually the most

jacked person at the bank. It's just not

like Gold's Gym where everyone's

enormous." So, if you happen to be in an

environment, let's say you're a

university student and you go to the

university gym and there's lots of

jacked people there and you're there all

the time trying to do your best, you

may, if you're neurotic to begin with,

more neurotic, start to develop a sense

that you're just not nearly as jacked as

you should be or could be or whatever.

But if you like hang out at an old

people home with your grandma and

grandpa all the time, you're going to

feel like Superman all the time, because