Layne Norton (scientist and bodybuilder)

Welcome welcome welcome to armchair experts on expert. I'm Dan Rathers. I'm joined by mrs. Mouse the Duchess of Duluth Is in Duluth me the Duchess currently yeah, I ran into some arm cherries in Duluth I ran into one in Duluth to an offense You know they showed one of the football players that was a standout at the game I think their running back is really incredible the dogs running back uh-huh from Duluth saw the screen got really excited Yeah, I didn't even know that yes well now.

I'm a super fan so I'm gonna educate you on the dogs. Please do go sick them roll I almost had it actually you really can't do that now you really can't because we might play I don't know It's gonna happen, but we might in the SEC championship, so you have to really do have to stop saying that okay? Well, by the way it worked whatever I was doing worked you get blew out Tennessee We know but Tennessee has nothing to do with Bama. I know but me saying roll tight a lot got the fire in the guts I'm gonna get in trouble.

Okay. Okay. Okay. We have someone today that I am obsessed with this was a very fun interview for us to get to For me to get to do because I follow Wayne and have and he's kind of he's my dolly llama If I don't have a guru, but maybe he would be my guru because he's a scientist Yes, a full-blown scientist he breaks down all these studies that are being totally weaponized and reported wrong And he debunks tons of these diet fads and crazes and workout fads and crazes and he himself is a Powerlift champion and a bodybuilding champion all natural no juice.

He's not dirty like me. He's not on testosterone Yeah, so I totally admire this guy. He's so wonderful. I was kind of like this is gonna be so boring You thought I had like a bot my bodybuilding buddy coming right?

Yes But he was awesome. He was so interesting very smart He's to me very similar to Huberman there to peas in a pod in the way that they communicate in the way that they I think approach things They're very lab labby guys. They're very yes. Yes.

Okay. It delivered beyond all my expectations I love Lane Norton. This was so much fun. You're gonna love it too He's gonna debunk so many things that you hear talked about at dinner parties and around dinner tables and at grocery stores He's a great source to debunk all things go to bio lane calm if you want to check out his recently launched reps research explained in practical summaries B I O L A Y N E by lane calm.

Please enjoy Lane Norton What happened Oh, did you get what you wanted? Oh, yeah, okay? Why do you stuck with it? I was too late I was part committer Lane.

It's important You know because you should always be aware of what you're walking into Monica Just had a very traumatic experience inside you use the insta-hot And she spilt it everywhere. Oh, and then there was a clean up and now there are floaties and also I also I opened a Milk, I don't know if I'm allowed to do that. What do you mean? It was unopened at my house And I was like what if it was gonna go to a party?

Oh geez come on Up Right I'm being too thoughtful you're being very thoughtful. I'm gonna say to there's a judgment into you Lane welcome for me This is as excited as I've been for a guest I interview crazy scientists crazy professors That's the exact name I want to impress you with no pressure then right? But if we're talking about what I spend the most amount of time in my life doing other than caring for my children It's in black maul paradise lifting weights and you are my unicorn I am so into what you do in my good friend Charlie perfect on Charlie. He's obsessed with you I'm obsessed with you have our conversations are oh, do you see what Lane posted about this?

Oh my god, yeah, I'm this and we're both trying to figure out more about you that's not available publicly He'll pick up a scrap here. So this is a trip to Disneyland for me that you're here. I'm genuinely so excited I'm very excited as well. All right, I deliver and don't suck, you know, you're gonna be great.

We edit so anytime you're like oh that took me three minutes Remember that they won't be on the day even if you're bad. You'll be great You have a bachelor of science in biochemistry, okay, and then you have a PhD in nutrition. Yes. All right.

I'm representing that correctly Yes, okay. Does it matter where yeah University of Illinois, which is currently one of the top five universities for nutritional science? I think it was ranked second when I was there, but honestly what made the difference is I had a fantastic PhD advisor named Don Layman A great mentor and just made a huge difference for me. Okay, great.

Yes, when I look you up today. I was like oh wow, okay First you're thinking I'm just having one my muscle. Yeah, I'm like, okay, all right I see how this is gonna go, but then I saw the PhD. I was like, okay, there's a appropriate for that There's a major substance.

Yeah, and I appreciated that. Yeah, you thought I was having like a J. Cutler type should I just say I can't make it? Yeah, I would have understood that to be a lot of grunting and ugs, you know Shorts off within five minutes.

Okay. Now the other really relevant thing is that in addition to having this academic background and being a Full-blown scientist, you're also a many-time gold medalist power lift champ I feel like it's not in the Olympics. It's an organization I compete in it's called the IPF and they are IOC recognized So it's in the world games. So I was a two-time national champion in the 93 kilo class in 2014 2015 Which was what 208 is 205?

Okay, and then in 2015 I got a silver medal overall at Worlds and actually got a gold medal in the squat And set what was at the time a world squat record of six hundred sixty eight pounds That's you that's me. That's Rob and then that's a bunch of the equipment in the room And he's only 205 at the time. Wow. Does he even wrap my head around?

He's my dream guy cuz he's a son. I know you invented him in a lab I know that's it's funny because when people ask me to describe myself I'll say two ways first way I'm a geek who loves to lift heavy shit Okay, so I'm a meathead who loves science and you pick whatever you're more comfortable. That's an entry attractive He called that mixed message here. Yeah, we really love a mix of messages.

Okay, so I don't think you could have better Qualifications for me to listen to you about transforming your body a you've actually done it and we've been duped a couple times Sure, we've had a couple guests on well, yeah, that sounds right I guess and they left and we're like oh, I think we've got a good way we can say one you had a video and you were kind enough to not comment But Dave S. Brace in a grocery store and he's telling all the reasons why this thing is gonna promote aging oatmeal Yeah, he's on a war path against oatmeal. He's one of the anti-aging guys now We had a month before he was doing that. Yeah, he hadn't fully gone there Anyways, you know, you just very gently said if he's the master of anti-aging do we think he looks much younger than his age So let's not walking the walk you lose a little credibility for me Can I give you one more example?

There's a big conspiracy theory that Bill Gates has been kidnapping children and draining their body of a Dremel chrome to keep him young we've interviewed him a couple times and I say to people it's not working He doesn't look young It's not happening it's not working looks as age Yeah, usually when I say to people about that kind of stuff I guess it's possible, but it's also possible that there's a teacup orbiting Saturn I have a pretty high level of confidence that there's not a teacup orbiting Saturn So you can take that for what it's worth. Okay, so my entry we're making obsessed with you was two of your issues You have many many issues I urge everyone to follow you on Instagram by all lane on Instagram the first was this guy came and he was an internet sensation His name is liver king. Oh, you know that you're excited. No, okay He seemed like someone I'm You would be so put off by the working it was probably what you were picturing when you were coming in today.

Oh, okay? Okay, okay, yes He's what you were picturing his premises. He lives like his ancestors did He's telling you all about Neolithic people regularly and how they ate he claims that they ate Orgamy and that through this eating of organ meat and lifting logs you will look like him now He is by all accounts Jack to be on belief. He's fucking enormous.

I don't know tall He's way shorter than he's very short. Okay, that helps if you saw a mannequette a beach you go that guy's a professional body But he's fucking enormous. I don't want to get sued by him So I'm not saying I have any knowledge of what he puts in his body But it appears to me that he's on every single stairway that's ever been invented. Okay, he's Inordinately Jack the way humans just don't get Jack and he's selling a lifestyle of eating fucking raw livers And any liver capsules paleolithic liver capsules, you know, yeah, everyone knows about those hunt him out in the woods You throw axes.

That's how you get his Jack to sit. He's entertaining. I'll give him that the first video I think I ever saw of yours on Instagram was you kind of going at liver king. Yeah, and Monica That's a dangerous road.

I appreciate people love the liver king. There's dudes all over the Why? Because he's fucking things are exploding up because if you look like a cartoon character people will worship at the altar of your life Unfortunately, I think you have stuff about muscles and I have questions about why any of this is appealing. That's coming.

Okay, I promise I have a lot of theories on that. Yeah, so just for a second your first volley at liver king. What were you letting people know? So first of all people started sending me this guy probably about 18 months ago I say my first song honestly my first initial thought was that is so stupid Nobody is going to actually believe that and then I forget that people are insanely gullible and they want to believe in bullshit The idea that you can change somebody's mind You really can't they have to be open to it and people just tend to default into whatever bias they have There was actually a study done where they took Republicans and Democrats for both camps They gave them information that would either refute a position they held or support a position they held and for everybody This was the same across Republicans and Democrats both things were equally as effective at just further increasing their preconceived bias Even if you had something that was actual legitimate proof Mm-hmm.

It didn't matter. That's how cognitive dissonance works And so people become very tribal about these sorts of things liver kings kind of in this carnivore crowd that's come up roughly pally Oh, now they're like well, just get rid of the fruits and vegetables because that's what's making you sick I've never been on a podcast where I was debating somebody in carnivore and my PhD research was in protein and was funded by the National Dairy Council The National Academy of Beef Association all these protein heavy associations and I said in all my life I never thought I would be up here defending plants. I'm just not willing to buy into insanity. Okay, you put me in a corner Yeah, so you like 20 30,000 followers simply for soon to me now He's got like two million followers.

Yeah, so I drastically underestimated how much people want to buy into bullshit according to the stuff I saw and by his own account his company like a hundred million dollars last year Just this part of me. It's like God if I just didn't have morals. Yeah, why? Yeah, the liver king who lives as our forefathers did our ancestors are paleolithic friends of lies private So a lot of videos are a ham shirtless on a private point is pretty spectacular theater now Okay, the next thing that I loved is I'm a huge drinker of Diet Coke when you hold a can of Diet Coke other people think you've invited Everyone's opinion on this thing like no one would be holding a Budweiser and then a person of a person would come be like That's a shitty beer.

I'll tell you why it's a shitty beer You just go like oh I prefer Miller Diet Coke They're gonna save your life if they see you with can of it and I had been so sick of debating people in fact The thing I like most about Bill Gates he drinks about three dozen a day I was like well as a smart as a gun plant he's drinking three dozen He's not claiming to be the healthy No, he's not I took some comfort in the fact that one of the smart as a little stringing so many of them But you remind people of all these different studies about artificial sweeteners and often aspartane So a why did you even pick up this cause and thank you? I've changed my mind on so many things over the years So when I first got into bodybuilding circa 2001 somebody had told me hey Don't drink Diet Coke because it's basically the same thing as just regular Coke in fact It's even worse for you because of these chemicals after having advanced chemistry courses Nothing is more triggering to me than when people say well that has chemicals in it You mean like everything yeah like the air you breathe everything is a chemical It's like rent and so a few years won't buy I didn't really think about it And then I was getting into graduate school and just the process of graduate school where you think you know something and then you get crushed Because you actually don't know it because then you find out there's five different studies that have actually disproven what you held To be true that experience of grad school let me down this whole path of like what else is bullshit So I started looking at these studies and I'm like wow every single study that supports the notion that artificial sweeteners are bad for you It's basically one of two kinds either it's in rodents where they just give insane doses and they're like well look look what happened I'm like yeah If you take four times about a time long as it's taken die you tell me you've had a thousand times a normal amount of aspartane And something weird happened okay, let's follow this under the no shit category Here's the thing with studies and people is stories so whoever makes it to press first can somehow control the narrative sometimes for decades So I think the very first study that freaked everyone out was that it increased the rate of liver cancer in lab mice And then what I later found out was that 50% of all mice get liver cancer anyway So that's their prostate cancer They're already super prone to liver cancer and so maybe it's not the greatest example most of my research was actually in lab animals So like I have no problem against animal research But I'm also very conservative with how I talk about that research right and actually they don't got validated humans and especially when you're gonna use animals You have to pick the right animal for the right model Lab rats are actually a really great model for human protein metabolism So for that particular question usually it will carry over but if you want to do it for digestion They're terrible for digestive most part you want to use like pigs or dogs or something like that Those are much better animal lines for those particular questions. They do research in cows Well cows have four stomachs and aruminants so if you want to do like insulin research in cows It's a really bad model right not all the glucose users like that getting back to as per tame So you see these studies they feed it to lab rats and they get a ton of problems And then the other kind of study you see it is what's called epidemiology right? So where they say well we look at this population who has these characteristics versus this population as these characteristics And we see if there's a correlation.

I don't want to say something cavalier like epidemiology is garbage. It's not garbage That's how we kind of determined that smoking wasn't good for people right like you can't do a randomized control trial We're like okay, well we're gonna have you smoke a pack a day But not you no internal review board is gonna approve that but it is a very consistent effect So you have significance which tells you if an effect is real and not due to random chance And then you have effect size which basically tells you how powerful the effect is so then when you look at the effect size of something Like smoking I mean it's massive you're talking like sevenfold risk of certain cancers But when you look at things like artificial sweeteners I mean you're looking at a relative risk of some of these diseases of like point one which basically means a relative 10% increase in risk That sounds scary, but let me put that in context that's not you have a 0% chance of getting cancer now you go to 10% That's your basal risk is about 5% and now you've gone to 5.5 right again It's not a consistent effect and when we look at the usually say this very I'm like the human randomized control trials where they control these other variables You don't see these effects and the issue is when you're looking at populations the best kind of epidemiology is probably what's called cohort studies So this is where they take groups of people and they track them for several years There's no intervention they just say do whatever you do and then they look at how many of these folks got sick and then what are their characteristics Right? Well the problem is people don't just do one thing in isolation if they're drinking more Diet Coke Whatever those are also wrapped up together with possibly other behaviors and you can correlate crazy things There's a website out there if you search spurious correlations. I don't know if you've ever seen this now blow your mind It's like the spending on space and technology has like an R of 0.96 Which is almost perfect correlation with the number of people who died by becoming tangled in their bedsheets Wow Consumption of cheese and divorce rates in Maine are When I was a smoker 18 years ago Here was my little bit of cynicism about even the lung cancer data was like you can't look at smoking people who smoke I think it'd be safe to say probably also might drink more they might also eat worse They're stuck in this dopamine degeneration cycle where they're trying to add things non-stop to it trying to isolate any of these things even Within a core it is a little tricky.

How could we determine something like that is causative? We don't have randomized control trials, right? Well, it's just that consistent effect that we see it consistently and we do have a mechanism for it You see this with any form of smoking essentially like even vaping now They're finding it's probably not as bad as smoking say tobacco, but it's still not great because you know Just that smoke has some sort of damage to the endothelium if we have enough evidence in epidemiology We can say okay. We think these things are causative, but like when it comes to artificial sweeteners I mean the effect is not powerful when it's even there which is not always even there Can I say the dumbest stuff people say yeah, okay, so your body thinks that aspartame is sugar it can't tell the difference So then you get a huge insulin dump people say this all the time to me tell me whether or not that's true They've had studies looking at the effect of aspartame unglacing me and they don't really see an effect And if that were true one of two things would have to be happening So if you pump out a bunch of insulin with no change in blood glucose because aspartame doesn't contain glucose and keep in mind aspartame You're not getting like if you're drinking a Coke you're getting like 40 grams of sugar You're getting I think it's like 200 milligrams of aspartame because it's many times sweeter than sugar Yeah, so you're getting a very small amount and there's no glucose.

It's actually a peptide So it's a combination of a couple amino acids and then a chlorine molecule I think there's no pathway for it to bump up your glucose But if you're bumping up insulin, but what does insulin do it drives down blood glucose? So this was actually creating this effect you have people drink a diet coke and just pass out from hypoglycemia right that doesn't happen Especially if you drink 12 Dead decades ago right the other thing is okay Well, maybe it's activating glucagon because glucagon can stabilize blood sugar and raise blood sugar That's the function of glucagon glucagon it counteracts the effects of insulin So you know that was the case what you worried about and again, they've shown in studies It doesn't seem to affect glycemia. There was a recent study that came out They got a lot of press that came out and sell it was actually a really well-designed study So they took people who basically had avoided artificial sweeteners and so they started with like 1400 people and I think at the end They had less than 130 they went through very cautiously to make sure that they had not consumed artificial sweeteners I got you and people realize artificial sweeteners are so ubiquitous. They're in so many things in the emergency pack Yeah, it's in everything Yeah, so they took these people had never had them before and they had them consuming for two weeks And for some of I think aspartame was one they did see a change in the gut microbiome and I can't remember for the One of the other ones I think it was sucralose that they saw an increase in blood sugar in a or glucose tolerance test Which an or glucose tolerance test is basically you drink like 75 grams of glucose and then you watch how long it takes your body to clear it Okay, back to baseline usually it's like two three hours again I want to slam the study because all this stuff could very well be valid But it's just one study and I'm very cautious about how I interpret one study And there's a few problems I had one they had the subjects administered their own or glucose tolerance test They were wearing continuous glucose monitors and so they had them drink it doesn't sound like much But when that's your primary outcome measure in a study you really should be doing that supervised in my opinion The other thing is they were not able to blind the participants to the treatments Meaning no one's taking a placebo in this study.

They did have a placebo I think it was sugar but the problem is if you've never taken an artificial sweetness before you used to make it a sugar And you start consuming I mean you're going to know I got you So the researchers said we couldn't blind the study because of that They see these effects but part of me is very concerned that what they might have been seeing is a placebo effect now People think about the placebo and what they typically think about is oh, I felt something placebo is not just feelings placebo will actually change your physiology I was gonna say we've got a lot of signs on your state placebo is real absolutely real it has in some cases a similar effect to pharmaceutical drugs Yeah, so I'll give you a great example of this one just came out so there was a study on creatine We know creatine works creatine is the most effective sort supplement out there increases the water content in your muscles increases strength increases your lean body mass Part of that's just through putting the water inside your muscle cell It also increases your phosphocreatin stores So you have a high energy phosphate donor which can increase your workout performance So they did a really cool study where they basically had four groups where it was didn't get creatine told They didn't get creatine didn't get creatine told they got creatine got creatine told they didn't get it Mmm got creatine told they got it it didn't matter what they got what matters is what they told them your beliefs about what creatine does Are actually more powerful than what it does and there was a study where they told subjects They were giving them anabolic steroids and they saw that group gets significantly better gains than the other group that they didn't tell that Even though they were just getting a placebo is that because then they're working out more because they're like I need to maximize this time They train harder. I think they actually standardized the workout programs really yeah So it is powerful how it changed your physiology. I'll give you one more example I hope I don't butcher the study but I don't think guys have ever heard of a hormone called ghrelin It's basically a hunger hormone if you raise ghrelin it will raise your appetite So we know that based on genetic polymorphisms you can have people who naturally secrete higher or lower levels of ghrelin right I mean they're hungry or less hungry. Yeah baseline Well, it can be a little bit tricky because sometimes a higher level doesn't necessarily mean hungrier if that's your normal baseline Right like it might be the change is actually more important But so they did a similar thing so they tested their genetics and then they tested their own levels But what they told them was random so you had four groups again low grilling told they had low grilling low grilling told they had high grilling High grilling told they had low grilling high grilling told they had high grilling once again It didn't matter what their genetics where it matters what the researchers told them It's not like you can just sit there and think about okay, so creep more ghrelin you know like it doesn't look like that So getting back to the study it's like okay if these people had been purposefully avoiding artificial sweeteners And that's really the only way that you could not be consuming at least some during the course of your day That's probably because they perceive that there's some negative to that the other thing is this study was two weeks and again They tested a lot of stuff So I will never call this study a bad study because it wasn't what my problem is is the over interpretation of studies Yeah, so this is why I always tell people don't tell me about one study wake me up when they've got ten in different labs and different countries and replicate these results This could be something where they had never been introduced to this before and so it caused a change But it's possible that that change would actually abate over time as well So that is the one thing about the placebo effect it seems to have an arc so it's real But it tends to dissipate quicker than the pharmacological answer to it.

I actually don't know the answer to that So here I go being intellectually honest. This is not my talk about a lot people have a really hard time picking out who actually is an expert in something Okay, you could say well the person has a PhD okay Well, I've got some PhDs that were cognitively dissonant in fact Intelligent people tend to have much worse cognitive dissonance because they use their own intelligence to justify like well I wouldn't believe in bullshit. Yeah, no anybody can get something everybody believes in bullshit There is actually a long history of Nobel Prize winners who in other fields believed in absolute quackery And so you just got to be very careful one of the things I tell people is if you and I are having a conversation Like we start talking about cars. Yeah, it is going to be very obvious to me very quick that you know more about cars than me But if you're debating about cars with somebody who also knows more about cars than I do of the two I'm not gonna have any idea who is more knowledgeable.

This is why debates can be a waste of time as well So AI agree with you This happens all the time We used to listen same-hear us a lot and there'd be points where he and another brilliant well-spoken person are really hashing it out And at some point you're like well, fuck I don't know because I don't know enough about neurology to see who's full of shit Now within that I actually do think this goes back to conversation We're having before this interview started I actually think there's big tells in humans when they are clearly being bested or out-witted or out-foxed And so I got to say I've often been lost in the details of some of these debates And I've been like no my spidey senses know right now this guy's getting as ass-wipped But getting your ass whipped in a debate is also just telling of how well somebody can communicate or how good they are at debating Not necessarily Lane has that same point of view How smart they are their knowledge level Yeah, I mean I've had a debate with somebody where the consensus was that I lost Okay, I was just so blown away that their position was so insane that I just couldn't really recover from it to be honest Yeah, this Mars man the role might not be the best on Jeopardy. There's a time to component right there's a televised component There's all these other factors and a confidence component as well. Yes It's actually the opposite of what you'd expect if you want to find somebody who's a real expert because a real expert is gonna use words like probably Maybe possibly might you attributed that observation to someone you know look for people who seem unsure if you want to find out someone knowledgeable I love that. Yeah, I love that use of the opposite the other day about essentially about essentially Yeah, you said the word essentially is a give that they don't know what they're talking about.

I stand by that I think I think you see as someone starts losing footing There's the word right I think it's fine I'm just gonna plant the seat just look for it because it's ubiquitous the word essentially has replaced literally as the pop word Everyone says it was essentially 10 to 1 what that means is I don't know if it's 10 to 1 But I remember it's big it's a mitigating word that basically says this isn't exact That's why I'm saying essentially because I don't know what it is exactly and as you watch people ramp up how often they're saying essentially to me It's when I can detect they've run out of info and data Wow We're now saying essentially like every third sentence in this debate Oh, it's just gonna see if you and it go to observe it and it clicks for you at some point I think it's fascinating to clock people's use of the word essentially one of the things I try to do is qualify All of my statements with my level of certainty. You're very at the point. I like that You got to watch him with Peter at he is you know who he is he remember just had him on He's like a longevity doctor. He's incredibly smart.

He's very smart. Yeah, every accolade one could win as a doctor And now he has this practice. He's super knowledgeable. He and Huberman geeked out there again.

I love Huberman. You've been on I assume You guys are two peas in a pod. Yes, and we've had humor manon. Yes another qualification I'll give you is you one time called humor now This is probably why you know each other and he had enough integrity to say I'm glad Lane called me out He's right.

I was quoting a study that was kind of incomplete. That kind of shocked me. It's like oh not you some doing that You know, so I think this is a great segue into how people don't understand quality of evidence either Right, so somebody will cite like a mouse study one They don't know what's the study mice and to give it the same weight as a randomized control trial for six months and humans They had 200 people no these two things are not equivalent, but people get really caught up in the weeds the mechanisms I understand because it's a biochemist. That's what I was like if we just take this pathway and we do this and then we do this and we'll get this What you have to realize is the mechanism looking at a pathway?

That's just one pathway and your body is like a symphony Yeah, so the French horns a little bit out of tune I mean you're probably not gonna hear it that much unless you really really know it right yes But the entire orchestra is a mess then you're gonna notice it mechanisms what you see as an outcome for example muscle hypertrophy Would be an outcome what's that word mean muscle growth? That would be an outcome Well, we also know that part of that is increasing the rate of muscle protein synthesis But just because you increase the rate of muscle protein synthesis doesn't necessarily mean you're gonna grow more muscle because it's also balanced with other things Right, so mechanisms are interesting But what you see as an outcome is the summation of hundreds if not thousands of mechanisms Right, so you can't just pick one and then say well we did a to be and that means we'll get this so getting back to human statement He was talking about how alcohol he's so against alcohol and we Increasing the romanization of testosterone estrogen sounds really bad meaning it increases how often testosterone converts to Asteroid the aromatase of the enzyme that catalyzes that etc. There's me using my big fan I like it. So I have to do the PhD Alcoholic mechanistically it does that but let's look at do we actually see differences in testosterone Levels do we see differences in estrogen levels right because if this is a powerful effect we can measure those things Right and so what you see is when you look at like low or moderate levels and alcohol intake You just don't see a change in testosterone or estrogen in fact in a couple of studies actually saw a small increase in testosterone without call Conception because you're at a bar and other guys are fucking Every Thing too because people get really caught up in like short-term changes in testosterone and really it's the long-term basal level of exposure You have that tends to make the biggest difference.

It's an attractive metric to look at culture very quickly I'm on testosterone full disclosure. It's the easy metric to taker with so it's the most appealing Yeah, if you're taking testosterone, I mean that's a big difference than just adjusting by like 10% in your physiological range That's not gonna have an effect on muscle building but taking it is going to have an effect because you're talking about doubling it or whatever I must be double of what my natural state at 47 would be so when they measure I was hoping you'd have a sexy look No, I'm gonna throw up. Well, I know it just not throw up well I don't tell it's dangerous. I haven't looked into specific testosterone because I've always competed drug tested I mean people will watch this and be like all he's lying because everybody lies I need a breakfast at for you You were in your first body building contest at 19 years old yes, and it was a clean body building Yes, because here's what's tricky and this is why people are right to be suspicious You'll often see someone competing in some kind of event now You could very easily pass the drug test for the event but you could have been juicing for nine straight months and then just clean Now, so it's right to be suspicious of you like next time You I believe from numerous reasons one is you've never even gone long enough to really go through a huge cycle where you wouldn't have been competing or wouldn't have been monitored and You're not even anti it.

I love hugging dudes and kissing dudes. I think it's why hug you right away that was step one at the end We're gonna get People be like why do you just come out as bi and I just always think of all people you think I would have a problem admitting I'm bi it's if anything I couldn't be more accepting than promoting of anyone And you are not judgmental about no, no, I look at it like that's a personal choice for me I love to compete and if I wanted to compete non-tested I mean now you gotta take a lot that's not safe to be competitive right? But what I'll tell people is hey, just look at my progression over the years My body really hasn't changed in 10 years. So if I'm on gear, it's some pretty crappy gear Yeah, I'll say to my wife that guy's juicing well How do you know this is the easiest thing for people to now have going forward go look at lane by Elaine's page This is a man who set a record for deadlift.

This is as strong as a person can be at 205 pounds I mean sure there's probably some outlier above you, but this is the maximum of a human body You've dedicated 30 fucking years to it. You do it scientifically. You're setting world records So when you see a guy that's too exercise of lane one must conclude There's another thing on the table I have been around people who I was quite sure were on drugs who are so impressive who were genetic freaks So always say it wouldn't surprise me if they were it wouldn't surprise me if they weren't high percentage But again, I look at time course I mean there's a guy named Doug Miller who's one of the best natural bodybuilders in history if you look at him now You're like there's no way, but then if you look at him 20 years ago He was also really Jack 20 years ago. So what I look for is okay that dude looked like that a year ago and now he looks like this Look at me two years ago, right?

Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare Back to the human statement when you look at alcohol basically I tell people if you're drinking enough to where you're feeling drunk That's when you're starting to get some of the negative effects But if you're having like a glass of wine or a beer with dinner or whatever even a couple It's probably not that big of a deal at least in the randomized control trials They just don't see negative outcomes I don't see negative outcomes for fat loss as long as you're accounting for the calories The one thing I would say is sleep and depression I haven't looked at that literature specifically But my guess is when they look at it if there are randomized control trials on it if it's a modest amount alcohol And they're controlling for other lifestyle factors My guess is it probably doesn't make a big difference the issue is so you look at corporate studies And you say well we've looked at people who averaged more than four drinks a week versus those that had less than four drinks a week And then we say okay more than four drinks a week We see increased risk of cardiovascular disease crease with this crease with that But once again people who drink more always smoke more exercise less each year at 2 a.m. I'm right I'm not trying to like alcohol doesn't appear to have any positive effects Some people need that social lubrication, but I reduce myself to people it's so funny Sometimes I tell people I wish I was like an astrophysicist or something because since I say well I have a PhD nutrition a few things happen either they get like super insecure about whatever they're eating or Doing how they look right? Those I know I'm eating like a pig and I'd be like I literally don't care I know I'm like yeah, I'll have the burger with fries Thank you, you know, I'm like the most laid-back fitness person You'll probably ever meet because your life is also important too Honestly, some of the most unhealthy people I've ever met in my entire life mentally as well are some of the most gorgeous physiques you've ever met Sure trying to live an overall healthy lifestyle, which there's some big rocks that you can pick up to do that I'll talk about those but you also got to think about like everyone's why I post a picture I mean I'm smoking a cigar right people like you don't say Yes, but I understand that there is a downside to this. That's something I do all the time I am offsetting that with it's an experience for me.

It allows me some sort of mental clarity I value that it might lower your cortisol levels to a healthy We don't know all the things that could be resulting in that's different than somebody who's smoking two packs a day And different than somebody who's like binge drinking themselves again the problem with some of these cohorts It's difficult to pick that out in my opinion if you wanted to like improve your health There's a few big things you can do don't eat like an asshole. I'm not making a judgment on that I'm just saying I'm all for not shaming people's bodies I'm all for people being allowed to be autonomous and their food choice I have no problem with that But also don't tell me it doesn't negatively impact your health because we have quite a research that it does so when I say like an asshole I mean basically portion control number two exercise and it doesn't have to be a high barrier entry people think Well, I can't go to the gym for two hours day. You don't have to go do 30 minutes of movement Just walk around there's a lot of data showing that from Two thousand to eight thousand steps a day that there is a precipitous drop off in your risk of mortality. Yes years of your life Oh, yeah, yeah, not like a few months Yeah, most of the research on exercise shows that if you just basically get like a hundred and fifty minutes a week you get almost all the benefits I can argue that exercise in some ways is more important than nutrition because it's one of the only things where you can have absolutely No change in your body weight and your insulin sensitivity inflammation all these things will improve and also what it does for depression your Self-confidence, wait lifting taught me so much about self-confidence So those two don't smoke or limit it don't drink too much get enough sleep and limit your stress And one of the things I'll tell people is you realize that the stress you caused yourself by worrying about all these little Micro things is probably worse for you than if you just stopped worrying about that thing You got people worried about like should I eat at 230 or 245?

You know, it's like dude that was a very small pebble that you're worried about there probably doesn't matter Yes, and taking you backwards in your overall goals. So I think we're there There's another aspect of what you often talk publicly about that I think is dangerous at this moment There's been this very interesting societal shift warranted for many reasons 80% of jokes on TV in the 80s We're fat joke right commercials shamed people. There's a pendulum that needed to swing for sure It's crazy when you watch older stuff also you and I are both aware of the ACE study, right? So the group childhood adversity the reason we have that is this scientists in San Diego I think started working with obese women and came to find out almost all of them had been sexually molested And then this gave rise to this whole ACE score and what kind of predictable outcomes you'd have if you had a score of four or five or six or Whatever above there's ten things.

I'm very high on the ace. I'll have you know proud of it So you have to factor that in right? There's also this whole other element that's going on and that needs to be observed recognized and honored and I think you do a good job of That okay with the pendulum is swung that I think is a little bit dicey is that to embrace everyone we have to kind of lie A little bit about whether or not it's just healthy and this is what I'm frustrated But I always bring it back to alcohol because I'm I'm recovering at it. So I don't give a fuck if someone drinks I'm so pro drinking I'm pro drug use I'm pro everything it stops when you tell me that it's good for your health or that It's something that should be aimed at I'm just a little bit like just do your thing But we don't need to pretend it's a healthy choice and that to be self-actualized once you just learn to love that They're a fall down trunk So there's a really dicey middle ground here and I get it people feel very shamed publicly I'll tell you we had this great show called race of 270 I had one friend who's 315 who just gotten sober.

He's been living like a fucking trash can for 25 years me now Call it he's 315 but he Charlie is in a donus. He's 220. You look like Charlie. I'm noticing it a lot Yeah, yeah gorgeous.

Yeah gorgeous. It's a man. I said I'll give 10 grand to whoever gets to 270 pounds first Charlie would you be up for gaining 40 pounds? I guess he was 230 He likes doing weird.

He loves changing his body, right? He's like yeah, I'd fucking love to do that So these two raced it was an incredibly entertaining show the most improbable thing happened and they tied oh my god Hey, both guys. It was a blast Aaron has some no I don't think they could I'll tell you why it wasn't set up like it required Aaron getting covid at one point and then going off of Testosterone it was a fucking blast of a show Aaron wanted to do it. It has resulted in Aaron He's fluctuated from 270 But he's never gone up past 280 cents then so ultimately two years out It was kind of a great thing people were up in arms that I was promoting diet culture that I was making up side show out of Aaron Taking it very personal what was happening between three best friends, right?

And so I've waited into that water now what I've appreciated about your approaches I think you're really fair at acknowledging all the different reasons. It's not the same for everyone losing weight It's much harder for people just like addiction is harder for people. There's childhood trauma. There's genetic stuff There's all kinds of things but the truth you will not ignore is that when you consume more calories than you expend in a day Those calories are gonna get stored.

Yeah, so I think just what you said people insert judgment that doesn't exist with that at a mechanistic level at a fundamental level Obesity is caused by a sustained calorie surplus over time where you're consuming more calories than you are burning or you're expending what people here is you're lazy You're a sloth you're a glutton and we need to be very careful about using those like I'd tell me like well I've never hired an obese person because they're just obviously lazy like that's a really dumb thing to say There are obese people who are incredible business people and brilliant minds you see one characteristic of somebody and you go Okay, you go in that box people are way more complicated than that Yes, so you're absolutely right and the pendulum did need to swing and I'll be honest when I got to grad school I was kind of out of the mindset of yeah Obesity is definitely the fault of the individual and then I think fault and responsibility get mixed up a lot This is a big problem. So just what you said there was a study that came out that showed okay people who have experienced trauma are much more likely become obese We've also got brain and our eye imaging showing that obese people get a much stronger reward from food compared to like a lean person Right, so like the craving for you isn't the same as the craving for an obese person all is not equal And some of them use it as comfort It's maybe their addiction or their habit how they regulate their internal things with an external item I go with cocaine some people do a gambling you know a bunch of stuff out there right and other shopping More than I have so it's not But you can be in a bad mood and change that mood Works for like 30 seconds As the human mind the ability to make you happy just give you dopamine it's like I know So where I sit is I am all for you should love your body for sure and if you're obese doesn't make you a bad person There's no reason that you should feel down on yourself for that I don't think you guys the right to say hey you should lose weight right now This gets kind of sticky with doctors and whatnot I think as a physician it's fine to say hey here are the risks associated with obesity if you want to mitigate these risks Here's some options for you in a very non-judgmental way Yeah, right and so really what people have a hard time understanding the concept of what we call an independent risk factor So independent risk factor means regardless of anything else in their life having this characteristic increases your risk for something right? Okay, there was this concept a while back called fat kind of healthy in every size, right? Which is I'm gonna have healthy behaviors the idea that you can have healthy blood work being obese You can there are some people who are that way and even if you're exercising as obese person You have healthy biomarkers You're healthier than obese person who has you know poor insulin sensitivity and some of these other things But when they have taken studies and they compare obese versus non-obese and rates of mortality cancer heart disease with both groups having healthy biomarkers blood pressure Insulin sensitivity the people who are obese still have a higher risk of mortality and cardiovascular disease and cancer Could we have forgotten back to isolating factors here?

Could we say that's potentially a stress marker of feeling bad in the world argument? Yes the argument good job. So that the issue is based on what we know about stress the effect size as we see of obesity on this Are way too powerful to really be explained by a stress response and then if we look at again They're blood markers are normal so the cortisol is actually normal so That's a stress hormone not necessarily indicative of psychological stress necessarily But I feel really confident that obesity is an independent risk factor now that being said if you're obese still exercise And you know you don't have to like beat yourself up about this kind of stuff because yes You will absolutely be healthier because you're gonna move within the latitude as well Let's say you were supposed to die ten years earlier on this chart and you got in pretty good cardiovascular shape You might shave that down to five you could have a huge improvement, but overall you're playing not gonna escape that actuary Yeah, you know people will cherry pick out examples like well I know this person who's obese they live to be a hundred genetics are powerful you can always find a single example risk is not an absolute Risk is just saying on the average this characteristic is more likely to result in this now again You could be an obese smoker who drinks like a fish every single day and live to be 90 Yeah, but it's a pretty low probability compared to somebody who's exercising and living overall healthy lifestyle You got to pretend you're in a casino you play this game with a 70% outcome of winning or this one you get 12% We can argue all day about the 12% who won or just one you want to put your money on right? That was the first analogy I said that he liked a lot you see the smile It was great.

I talked about mixed up fault and responsibility when something is not someone's fault They don't want the responsibility to be theirs to fix it. It wasn't my fault should be my responsibility. Yeah, this the problem is okay Maybe you had all these other things that set you up and made you obese prone actually metabolic rate doesn't seem to be on average different between obese and none of these one thing that does appear to be different is they can make a reward from food and They tend to have less digital movements and what we call neat which is not exercise activity thermogenesis So if you ever seen somebody is tapping their foot a lot or they pace a lot for not always You know like that's actually extremely monifiable just to show you how wide the variances There was a study probably 30 years ago now where they had people in a metabolic chamber and they overfed them by like a thousand calories a day for six weeks Most people gained weight one person barely gained anyway only like point eight kilograms They should have gained like seven pounds, but they only gained like a pound and a half and what they found was they didn't tell them to increase their activity But just spontaneously this person started moving more right so those stores they call obese resistant because they tend to just spontaneously get more active whereas obese prone tend to not increase their Spontaneous activity in response to overfeeding and there's also some evidence that if you're more active that you actually have a better Sensitivity to satiety signals telling you you're full There was a study in the golly workers in the 50s where they actually looked at people who were Sedentary likely active moderately active and heavily active what they found is in terms of intake It was like a J shaped curve basically when they were between lightly active and heavily active They mostly just compensated for their activity by increasing their calories appropriately Okay, whereas the sedentary people increase their calories where eating more calories than people who are lightly active or moderately active interesting And so what that tends to suggest and we do have some mechanistic data now to support this exercise tends to improve your satiety Signal so you burn more calories from exercise and people say well then you're just gonna eat more tends to be the opposite people actually tend to be more Satiated by exercise mmm. Mmm.

You get sustained dopamine release from exercise So you're not antsy and itchy and wanting to regulate this bad feeling so that could also be in the mix It's like you have a satiated feeling from the extended dopamine release It's possible There could be psychological where like now you're being active and you're almost are paying attention my nutrition more But there does appear to be something that happens with the brain and some of these hormones in the hypothalamus where your body just becomes more sensitive to them It's very interesting Yeah, when you're on a medication and you're like I've gained weight doesn't has happened to me and when I'm off of it I've lost the weight so I do recognize I think it's based on the medicine But what's happening in my brain give the exact example because I think it's helpful an antidepressant Yep, and SSRI also a birth control so some of those can affect appetite regulation You know I don't know the specific ones and again people hear that a lot of times ago You're telling me I'm a glutton or this or that no no most people when they're overeating It's not a conscious thing not a psychopath like me where I'm like waiting stuff I think what people really struggle with is there's all these things coming together that may make them more obese prone than aren't their fault But if they want to lose weight or change their lifestyle their responsibilities theirs So for me eight out of ten ace probably not my fault I turned out to be an addict everyone that gone through what I have eight out of ten change you're gonna be an addict now I'm gonna go shopping for an addiction it probably just happened to me I probably was the victim of that but no one's gonna come around now Invicts me the only person unfortunately that can address it is now me whether or not I deserve it or not doesn't really matter I'm the only person around to take responsibility and deal with it And I think it's easier for some reason addiction to recognize that because you're gonna die or you're gonna destroy everything in your life Yes, and if you talk to addicts, it's almost ubiquitous. It got better when I decided to my brother was an addict for a long time By the way, you're one side of an addict coin you have a different addiction Yeah, I've got the brain I kind of define addiction a little bit different if it negatively impacts your day-to-day life or if you go I'm not gonna do that today and you find yourself still doing it. That's a problem Okay, I have a different one Yeah, if you compulsively do something to regulate your emotional state you have an addiction now There's great ones and there's bad ones. Yeah, I would just argue you have a good one the aliens looking at all the monkeys right They're above like this guy is doing this repetitive thing.

Yeah most of his life That's clearly compulsive, but the outcomes lovely. So who gives a fuck it's fine to have addictions. He's got the right ones Okay, your brother. Yeah, I asked him like you decide to change and he said you know it wasn't anything anybody said to me I just realized that I lose everything I've got he's like I'll get a little bit of money I'll lose it.

I'll get a relationship and I'll lose it. I lost my family I just got sick of losing everything and he's like and I just decided that I wasn't gonna do that anymore They say we got sick and tired of being sick and tired. Yeah, I think it's much easier to address alcohol and drug addiction than it is food addiction for two huge reasons One is it's not actually acutely life threatening. I have OD it was pretty obvious death was on the table soon That's a great motivator.

I don't believe in God. I don't want to fucking do step two I don't want to turn my wheel over to a higher power, but I want to do that a little less as much as I want to die Yeah, so the threat of death got me willing to do shit I just would never have been willing to do secondly I don't have to do cocaine three times a day that blows my mind anyone can confront a food addiction because you do have to eat you Have to interact with your drug of choice three times a day minimally my mind's blown when people can conquer that it's so admirable one of my close personal friends He has a great podcast. It's John Gulloney, and he's a mental health expert and just a lovely human He talked about that exact same thing. He said any kind of food addiction or eating disorder is one of the most difficult things to beat Because you can't just stop eating you can't abstain from food What if I had to use a slot machine three times a day who's right?

If anybody out there struggling to sort of eating people will my Q&A say what should I do? I'm struggling binge eating or this and that say go get professional help the likelihood is you're not going to eat it on your own and If you can't afford professional help then read books and there's a national eating disorder hotline There are things in place to help you, but if it's gonna be I'm gonna do this on my own It's very unlikely that things are gonna work out back to the statistics things. Yeah, you're in the 8% success rate. Yes Yes, it's very very he sucks at like 30% But it's a lot better than the 2% doing it lone wolf exactly Well, and then I do think part of the conversation that we have about obesity being unhealthy which it is You're afraid to say that yeah, everyone's afraid to say it but I will say it is so is depriving your body so that you look a specific way They're both unhealthy the one might be even worse low body weights actually have a higher mortality rate than obesity does The people who are kind of trying to spin obesity is being healthy will say well, you know, it's like yeah, but that's the other side of the J.

Shae Curb right there is also this healthy range which by the way most things sit there in physiology is it's like too little bad too much bad I just want to have one more thought on this topic because I was walking with Aaron We're talking about this. I think because I knew you were coming I said I understand the cognitive dissonance for a lot of people because they have an image of someone who's overweight and how they eat and what they Underestimate is cumulative lifestyle, right? So if I only eat a hundred calories more than I expend a day That's almost unnoticeable. That's not crazy binge eating.

That's not anything you see in a Championship exactly and if you consistently seven days a week eat a hundred calories more than you burn that's 700 a week times 52 You're talking about 35,000 calories a year now you do wake up without ever having been quote reckless or something use on TV And now you are carrying 30 40 extra pounds. So this back on this. Oh, please do one of the really interesting things that we've discovered about metabolism It's actually quite adaptive. So in your sorry, I'll talk about like hundred calories over eating Yes, you would gain some weight, but it would likely plateau relatively early because your energy expenditure would increase So actually what tends to happen?

This idea that people kind of gain weight literally throughout the year is not true There is a specific period of time when people put on most of their weight holidays the six week period between November and January 1st The average weight gain in the adulthood is around three to five pounds and on average people don't take it off They mostly maintain the rest of the year. So on average people actually do regulate well and again Generalizing your anti-Christmas So think about like those are times we work purposely over feeding ourselves. It's encouraged A lot of people trying to die through holidays. I'm like that's gonna be miserable.

Just try to maintain if you maintain you actually have the game So how does it maintain? I wrote a book called fat loss forever I really tried to tackle the fundamental question of why do we have such a difficult time losing weight and keeping it off? Because six out of every seven obese people will lose a significant amount of body weight in their lifetime almost all of them We'll put it back on and in many cases They put on more than they lost and when you look into the literature your body fights so hard for that homeostasis That there is just a multitude of things that happen to try to drive you back towards your pre-existing condition when you start dieting one Appetite increases over a period of time, but also people eat for a lot more reasons than just being hungry That's what a lot of people don't address boredom societal cues when was the last time you went to an event that didn't have food Sit down watching TV. Okay, it's time to have some snack food There's a lot more stuff that goes into this than what people think and so you have these physiological pressures turn to drive you back because your BMR will drop so your metabolic rate will reduce it's not a ton but it does reduce your non-exercise activity thermogenesis will go down and People's motivation to exercise sometimes can drop when they're losing weight as well You're decreasing your calories outside of things and at the same time your appetite's increasing trying to drive more calories in and here's the more fundamental reason Is that people diet in a way that is not sustainable?

You said like what's your exit strategy when you're post? Yeah, the best of weight loss is the one that A is easiest for you to adhere to too. Do you have an exit strategy? Absolutely, so they give zero thought to the diet after the diet.

It's like a finish line, right? Yeah, yeah, so think about medication most medications for a disease chronic diseases You can't just take one pill and you're done if you want to keep off the weight that you lost you have to sustain those behaviors So when you look at the overall body of research One there isn't a single diet that emerges is better than other diets in the long term whether it's keto plant-based weight watchers, whatever There was a meta analysis of 14 different popular diets and they were all equally terrible for long-term weight loss Another great reason to follow you on Instagram because you take aim at every one of these diets that you are being right now Someone's proselytizing to you about keto about paleo about low carb about meat only about plan only This is a great resource to have a defense against this ultimately if they work it ends up being a calorie restriction It is now people get a little bit crossed up because of all I went low carbon I was eating way more food than before no your perception is you were eating more food because you're eating more voluminous high satiety foods Whereas before you're eating junk food so when you switch to these other diets it probably felt like you were eating more but the fact is you were consuming less calories There's no one diet that sticks out as being better, but when they did a breakout in this study they looked at okay What if we stratify with it here? It's right so regardless of diet we go people who are at least here to most adhere it And then you see a linear effect of how effective the diet is the conclusion of the researchers Which is what I said is choose the diet that feels easy because they all work if you're super religious about that Right you have to use some form of restriction whether it's calorie tracking, macro tracking, cutting carbs, low fat, intermittent fasting, whatever You got to have some form of restriction But you should choose the form of restriction that feels the least restrictive for you I'm somebody who like when I got into bodybuilding I actually struggled with binge eating because I would like try to eat clean By the way, there is no objective definition of that. I hate the term I tried to eat clean and then on the weekends because I was in college I ended up binge eating You know like my buddy's order pizza I had this epiphany I'm like, you know, I wonder if it's not the pizza per se that's the problem is the fact I eat the whole thing Yeah, right, right So then I just was like okay, I'm gonna start trying to track and just eat this stuff as it fits in my macros For me that felt easy my former restriction was basically portion.

I don't weigh every single thing anymore I would never tell somebody I'd do that forever But if you never had experienced weighing stuff, you will be shocked You want to be depressed go away on like a serving a cereal or go away on a serving of ice cream and then you'll realize oh wow I'm having three or four servings of ice cream when I ice cream I had a tablespoon of peanut butter. You had four. Yes And so if you look at again, this is where things can feel really attacking for obese people There was a study a very classic study nutrition where they brought in people who self reported that they could not lose weight on low calories On average they reported that they were eating 1200 calories a day now the researchers tracked them and they tracked their bmr They tracked their total daily energy expenditure using something called doubly labeled water Which basically is an isotope that allows them to estimate within a reasonable amount How many calories you burn per day because the in products of metabolism are co2 and h2o you know you breathe it out and you beat it out So if you've got this doubly level water, you can collect their breath and you can also collect their urine and you can actually figure out How many calories they're burning per day? It's not perfect, but it's pretty good unless it's a low carb diet and it doesn't work because the equation will underestimate the amount of co2 You're gonna produce, but it's very technical so they told the subjects We want you to be honest about this and if you are under reporting we will know they under reported by about 50% Well, what that tells you is that they believed it themselves.

That's what's important Right. This is a great example So people will hear under report and they think well, I'm not a liar. I don't think people are lying No way They knew they were being observed if you've never had that experience of looking at what a serving actually is you would think that you're eating 12 I eat a salad You know meanwhile they're putting oil and dressing on it You know, I just had a handful of nuts and actually four servings You don't really know and again I'm not saying you have to weigh and measure but you got to practice some form of restriction in some way again I like macro tracking I developed an app that's based on nutrition coaching with macros that gives you macro targets and then adjust them every week What's macro? I know the word macro protein carbs and fats Yes, so your macro nutrients for some people tracking is actually very stressful for them They'll say yeah, but I did it in fasting and it was easy then do that Absolutely So you've got a few different levers you can pull or you can do nutrient exclusion where you say well, I'm just gonna do low carb I'm gonna do low fat any of those can work So find the lever that's easiest for you to pull But just keep in mind that it is something you'll need to be able to sustain and there was a study that came out that they took people who had lost weight and kept it off And tried to identify some common characteristics of them and some of the things you expect they tended to exercise more they tended to practice cognitive restraint They tend to self-monitor more in terms of taking their body weight and whatnot But one thing that really struck me that I never thought about is they identified that they had to develop a new identity And I'm sure this will vibe with you as a recovering addict They had to develop a new identity because you're really trying to become a different person And you cannot drag your old habits behaviors behind you you have to shed them and people struggle with that because if you're an addict You've been hanging out with people who also do this stuff, right?

And you've been developing your whole lifestyle around it and now you've got to totally change your lifestyle That's really hard for people. They don't think about just how much is going to change you can't hang around your old friends You can't go to the same place as you used to go to so do you know Ethan soupley he's one of my best friends I love Ethan he's a great guy He has a phrase he says which is I killed my clone today and I actually messaged him I asked him I'm like I think this is what you mean and I talked about like forming a new identity And he said that's exactly what I mean because there's still the old me somewhere in there And I got to go up and do this every day and make sure he doesn't come back. Yeah. Wow Well, and this is more of a social science thing psychological even somewhat maybe mystical which is the power of stories So we have any I am statement right as an identity statement and so it's a declaration of your theory about yourself It's a declaration of the story you believe in and people don't realize how active their brains are all day long at confirming the story They believe in and excluding all contradictory information that would threaten the story So if you don't change your story, you'll only see all these things that are the common reasons that can't be done The story is fucking embarrassingly important and your reasons too.

You have to have a very powerful reason as to why you're doing some like we have a facebook group for our app Our participants in there. It's really great community. Sometimes I'll get somebody saying you know, I'm just trying to lose this last five pounds I just can't seem to do that so why are you trying to do it? What's your why behind this and it's like well I just feel like I should like no no no no no no it has to be something where there is no other option for me It's when I go home, you know, and I'm not saying everybody should lose five pounds only if that's your express goal Right.

I get into this with buddies all the time. I want a family. Okay. Do you want one in theory?

Absolutely or do you want a family? Yeah, because there's very specific steps one has to take to have a family There's a specific criteria by which you're going to evaluate potential partners if you want a family You can't just want to family. Yeah, and it extends to everything pro tip fucking strangers doesn't generally result in this There are not a lease. There are not a lease.

But in general doesn't lead to families Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare I think it's one of those things that people just don't think about that. Well, I should lose this way No, no why even can tell you exactly why oh, it's the greatest sit on an airplane It's the best fucking origin story ever getting into the bathroom Yeah, him talking about you know, I met who would go on become his wife and he's like she was active and I wanted to do stuff with her When it gets tough if your reasons are good enough you can keep coming back But if you're reason just like I should probably do this we don't do our should's even your reason is vanity That's from fleeting. I hear so often people's diets are revolving around an event. It's a wedding It's a trip onto the beach.

You better in perpetuity be at a beach or this approach probably isn't gonna work And that's where the power of habit formation is really important So I was hanging out with some friends a few years ago and she's really into psychology and I spent the weekend with him And she was like it was really interesting to observe your habits and I was like oh boy When a psychologist tells you she's been observing you. It's like oh boy She's like when we had breakfast you selected to have egg whites I'd also made bread pudding and you didn't turn it down either We went out to dinner and you picked a lean kind of beat but you also had fries the things you can control you pick low calorie options So that then you can therefore have the flexibility to include something else that's a little bit higher calorie And I never even thought about that like well when I go like an egg I just get any whites Yeah, just something I've just been doing for so long. I see this nonstop We love buying every thinking right everything's all in or all out. So it's like if you fuck up on the bread pudding You're inclinations ago.

Well, it's over and I blew it. So let's go fucking denverama I'm like you anytime. I could make the right decision and it's painless I'll do it and there's some that are quite painless to me and others that are very painful But it is a sum total. Yeah, it's not this one meal.

It's not the one decision again human brains are so dumb Yeah, well, I can't do it perfect. So fuck it. That's like you get out of your car and your tires a little bit flat because it's nailed They all fuck these other tires Stabbing those as well, you know, it's like no you still have three good ones. Just get the spare out When I talk about coaching we have a team by lane coaching team And one of the things I talked to our coaches about a lot is accountability with empathy I think this is so critically important for good coaching and just in general like even for yourself It's important to be empathetic to people because otherwise if you're just a drill sergeant that's beaten over the head every single day One they're gonna start lying to you so they're not gonna beat over the head and two they're just gonna tune you out because I go It was like he's yelling again, you know, yeah They don't understand me and once you've determined someone doesn't understand you and that you're unique Now you get to have a whole different set of rules.

This is like an anything as well It's called terminal uniqueness and people need to recognize that you actually have taken the moment to understand how they feel and then maybe the suggestion becomes different Right. That's why the empathy piece is important, but you can't just have empathy, right? Because then there's no impetus for change. Yes.

So I always tell them it's empathy with accountability I still have a few one-on-one coaching clients. I don't take on very many at all, but I have a few Obviously So she said well, you know, really rough week I found out my parents had been victims of fraud and they said somebody stole a bunch of money I said oh, that's really horrible. I totally get it. This was not your priority at the time Where did you feel like you kind of fell off track?

What was the situation and now let's see if there's any like low-paying things that we can institute to try to buffer that as opposed to just saying Well, I don't care about your situation. No excuses. No days off. You know, that's not gonna do anything I'm not gonna stop coming at you.

Yeah, that's always my favorite like a single 25 year old trainer telling the single mother of three that she just needs to want it badly enough It's like these two things are not equivalent, right? But I talk a lot about priorities. I do this not to shame but actually to make it apparent what should be priorities Some of us say well, I want to lose weight. We'll start they may have had some few stumbling blocks I was like you're telling me this what you want, but your actions are not in line with what you're saying your priorities are single Mother two kids working nights going to school.

Maybe diet should not be your priority right now Like it's probably a good reason like we don't have band with yeah, okay. Let's try to just you know do what you can with what you got right now That's okay. There's no judgment on that I'm kind of a big fan of what I call fat loss sprints So I have a client who's a very very successful guy like worth multiple billions of dollars The rock not him, but if he's listening If he need help bro Black His lifestyle is quite unique. He's traveling every week.

He's going to all these events You know those sorts of things and he's like you know when I'm home. It's easy. Yeah, but when I go to these things I said well instead of like feeling like we're beating you over the head Let's just focus on maintenance. Okay, let's focus on maintenance those weeks And then when you're home, we're gonna go hard right because you're regimented during your environment if one week out of the month We can go hard, but you lose one or two pounds that week and we can maintain it over the course of the year We're gonna have 15 20 pounds off right so I think people have just thought well, I'm starting this diet I've got to be on this diet You can break it up Ethan said that was actually kind of a big game changer for him Was like the idea that I don't have to be on a diet perpetually and he's a fucking addict on top Right.

Yeah, he's like monitoring his nicotine intake like I am. There's a lot going on Yeah, well, I thought that we wouldn't worked out when I was out in California Oh, you did and I'm Florida now by the way He does we're actually kind of talking about a project together which I love to do. Oh good I'm obviously he's busy. I'm busy trying to work it out.

I'm like fucking busy playing Oh, he is not busy. I didn't realize that he was recovering I was like if you want to grab beer afterwards something like that Oh idiot, you know like There's no reason for you to know unless he tells you no okay What I love is that you will take these people saying that keto's everything you'll kind of debunk it Then you'll take the people saying that no carbs is everything then plant is everything We're not getting away from this kind of golden rule of in and out taking carbons They got to go somewhere right now with that said what would be the difference if someone ate? 3,000 calories a day of pure sugar. Yeah, every single calorie through table sugar.

Okay versus 3,000 calories of protein What would happen? So one thing I will say I'll push back a little bit this what we call a false dichotomy Okay, right nobody really eats like that But let's say somebody did first off eventually you would die on the sugar diet because you'd have I think it's question core Which is basically protein malnutrition if you don't mind me walking it back to maybe a little bit more of a realistic example This is literally just I get curious like of calories or calories Uh-huh I do too and I worked out and I burned the 3,000 calories of sugar I do feel like my body composition would be different Yes, because protein is important for lean mass you would be losing lean mass if you weren't getting any protein in okay But let's take protein equated between diets protein is the biggest lever for body composition in terms of the individual macronutrients Higher protein we know better for lean body mass better for recovery But if we look at diets that are equal in protein and equal in calories when we look at tightly controlled randomized controlled trials sugar doesn't seem to make a big difference So you just had a pro sugar post Sugar Again, I was one of those people I was like oh yeah sugar's bad for you. It's fatening independent of calories. I'll never forget this I was in a graduate school mixer.

So it's like 2005 and one of the Researchers who was doing research on sugar. I was over here in this conversation This is the time when I was like, okay, you know sugar is definitely fattening regardless of the calories It's bad for you, etc And I'm listening to this guy who's published these studies in rodents where they showed like these really crazy outcomes feeding high fructose diets Right? So I'm like okay sugar and fructose bad and he's on the side of the professor and the other professor's like yeah I feel like high fructose corn syrup is the cause obesity the professor who done the research was like Yeah, just because it's really palatable and cast calories and the guys like you don't think that it's fatening independent of calories And he was like no we fed these animals, you know, 70 percent of their entire calories from fructose You could not get that through the diet if you try because even things are high fructose like high fructose corn syrup is only 55 Fructose. So anyways, I remember listening to that going oh, I wonder if my thoughts about sugar or bullshit, right?

Every single study that I've ever seen where they equate calories and protein singles for carbohydrate overall, but sugar They don't see any difference in pretty much anything even inflammation the downside is fiber is important I'm not saying that there's no downsides, but body composition standpoint there was a really classic study that I think is the most telling And the meta analyses so meta analyses are kind of a study of studies So they have specific inclusion criteria and then of any study that fits that inclusion criteria They all love them in and they try to see okay. What is the overall effect? And so when you trade out sugar for non sugar but calories are created They don't see any difference away loss or foul loss. So this one study from by 25 years ago It was really good because it was six weeks which is long enough to see differences in body composition They mentioned a bunch of biomarkers of health, you know, like cholesterol glucose insulin all these sorts of things both diets that they fed to people Were exactly the same so same protein carbohydrate fat content same calories one diet had over 110 grams of sugar a day The other one had about 10 and they provided all the meals to the participants So it's very tightly controlled both groups lost the exact same amount of body weight and body fat All the biomarkers all improved but they improved the same between groups The only difference was the LDL cholesterol improved a little bit better in the low sugar group And that is probably because the low sugar group was eating more fiber and we know that fiber can bind cholesterol reduce cholesterol So what i'll tell people is like don't get so focused on the sugar focus on eating enough fiber Like you went along Jevity hack fiber is a longevity hack There was actually a recent meta analysis that fiber is something that consistently in all the epidemiology all the cohort studies Better longevity lower risk of cardiovascular disease lower risk of cancer So they found that for every 10 gram increase in fiber in the diet it reduced the risk of mortality by 10 And there doesn't seem to be a cap like if you can get higher fiber don't worry about your sugar because the one thing you want to is like fruit is High in sugar, but it's also high in fiber.

Right? It doesn't spike your insulin the same way some fruits have a little bit more insulin insulin has been demonized too Really i tell people like focus on your overall calories focus on your protein focus on fiber Those are the big leavers they do carbs and fats like all you need to do keto or you need to do this or do intermittent fasting There was a meta analysis of over 20 studies looking at studies where they equated protein and calories But varied the carbohydrate and fat content the inclusion criteria for the studies was either the food had to be a metabolic word Where they're providing everything and you're basically in food jail or it was all just provided to them at home So they wanted very tightly controlled studies and the outcome from that was it didn't matter really whether you're low carb or low fat or anything in between It was about having enough protein and getting the right amount of calories. Now remember we had this talk about mechanisms versus outcomes, right? So people will say well if you're a keto diet, you're burning way more fat, which is true They'll say like you run on a glycogen.

That's what your body wants to burn first, right? That's easy carbs are building glycogen That's easily accessed, but you run out of that now. It's gonna go to fat reserves. I've heard this and I think that's true So it is true.

Okay, so if you do a high fat low carb diet, you will burn a lot of fat We are also taking on it. Yeah, which are also eating a lot of fat But the loss or gain of body fat is not just fat burning. It is the balance between the fat you store versus the fat you burn people only look at one side of the equation They look at fat burning. Well, we don't really store carbohydrate as fat So there've been metabolic tracer studies where they can basically label one of the carbons on carbohydrates And then they can look at where it goes, right?

Okay, I think it was a study in females where they overfed by double their maintenance calories And they were able to to the gram see where the fat in adipose was coming from what's the adipose? Adipose is that tissue. Okay, the average daily deposition over the course of the study was about 282 grams per day Four grams of that came from carbohydrate. Oh, no kidding 278 grams came from fat.

There's a mechanism called the novo lipogenesis where you can convert glucose to fat So what that says is that really doesn't happen much in humans. It's a very very low amount So carbohydrates when you take them in you have very limited storage, right? You can store this glycogen, but after you build up your glycogen stores, you basically have to burn it since you're burning glucose It's sparing the fat you eat that it could be stored as fat So now let's go back and compare these two different diets high carb low fat versus low carb high fat on a low carb high fat diet You burn a lot of fat, but you're also storing a lot of fat because you're eating a lot of fat On a low fat high carb diet, you're not burning much fat, but you're also not storing much fat, right? What is going to determine the overall balance is energy balance?

Are you eating more calories than you're burning? And that's why even though low carb diets increase fat burning quite a bit They don't produce better fat loss compared to other diets when calories and protein are equated You ask is a calorie just a calorie? Yes, because calories are simply a unit of measurement If you read the studies about how they came up with the concept of the water values for calories, it's pretty crazy It's not a physical thing It's literally the chemical energy contained in the bonds of food in the molecular bonds of these macronutrients And when you break these things down during digestion and absorption and metabolism You free that energy and it winds up basically in something called ATP, which is your body's energy currency So yes, all calories are equal just like all miles per hour equal going from one mile per hour to two miles per hour It's not different than going from 99 to 100 all horsepower is equal Right, but different sources of calories may have differential impacts on your appetite and on your energy expenditure So there's what's called the thermic effect of food Which is basically how much energy do you have to put into the food you eat to extract the energy from it? Something like dietary fat.

It's a value of about 0 to 3% So if you eat 100 calories of dietary fat, you end up extracting about 97 to 100 calories Carbohydrate is about 5 to 10% so if you eat 100 calories of carbohydrate, you're extracting anywhere from 95 calories Protein is about 20-30% It's very hard to extract You're still getting a net positive but it's a lower amount than carbohydrate fat Because it requires energy to make it Part of it actually is likely the fact that when you eat enough protein it increases muscle protein synthesis Which is an energetically expensive process This is one of the things that my research supported that the increase in muscle protein synthesis is part of the reason That eating more protein leads to greater energy expenditure So a high protein diet can be helpful in so far as okay Your protein tends to be more satiating compared to carbohydrate fat and it tends to increase your energy expenditure Which is why when I talk about these studies I always say when they equate protein and calories Because there were some low carb studies originally where they were doing low carb high protein versus the food guide pyramid diet And they were saying oh we actually saw more fat loss in this low carb diet and their hypothesis was it was low carbs But it turns out it was probably actually the high protein Oh, which is so Yes, all calories are equal but all sources of calories are probably not equal I think beyond all of this talk about weight loss and body composition and strength and all these different things I think there's a message that's kind of bigger than that I'm gonna give you my example essentially no Prepared I got interested about two months ago. I just was randomly thinking I thought oh, I remember sweden decided to not Socially distance and they did not enact a quarantine as their approach to dealing with covid And I thought wow, I guess we're far enough away from it now But the truth will be known we'll find out what the right or wrong approach was and I was just genuinely curious like how did that turn out for them So I searched how did sweden's response to covid turn out? I probably saw immediately like 30 really important publications recognized esteemed ones you would trust All had virtually the same headline which was their mortality rate was 25 percent higher as a result of that And so I thought wow wow so it didn't work out for them And then I just for whatever reason got a little more curious and I started looking at some of the charts and then I saw the source of the Dad on the study and while that was true it was 25 percent higher It was 25 percent higher in that their neighbors denmark finland Norway They had a death rate of four per 100,000 people Sweden had a death rate of five per 100,000 people So in fact it was 25 percent higher But that is an incredible way to frame that bit of data because I will say you could have easily had the headline read Sweden had a rate of 0.005 percent death for their approach in denmark had a rate of 0.004 percent It's fucking nothing. It's so insignificant, but boy the headline 25 percent higher So I just want to say in general you have an obligation to really see what the other way to look at the study is and I think that's primarily the service you provide Yeah, so my PhD advisor used to say if you torture the data enough it will confess what you wanted to say I always tell people science is perfect.

It is the scientific method is perfect The problem is it's being done by humans which are really imperfect. Okay. Yeah, I break those down weekly my videos And then we also just launched a research review called reps to a website where we basically take like five studies every month and review them There's some really good research reviews out there now, but a lot of them are kind of written for scientists Yeah, we try to write this one for the lay person. Here's what the study tested Here's what the results were here's what we think it means Here's what we think it means for you if we don't agree with the authors conclusions We'll tell you because remember when you read a conclusion of the study.

That's the author's opinion, right? The only thing absolutely and it was the numbers they put next to it. Yeah, exactly right Which is why actually when I read studies the first thing I do is I go to the results I don't read the introduction because I don't want somebody's opinion I read the results then I read the methods then I read the results again Then I'll read the discussion of the results the conclusion and then I'll go back and read the introduction because I want to see the facts first Yeah, before I get clouded right and you know, I think 20 years from now. We're gonna look back and go There's the world that was before covid the world that was after covid there's this distrust in science now And it really makes me sad what's about right because there's nothing scientifically that happened wrong It was all the people that wrote about the science and the problem was typically you get to form a scientific consensus over decades We were trying to build the ship while we were trying to sail the ship in very stormy waters, right?

That's all I was saying They're getting real time information every day. Oh man. How do I get people on this? But it's like the vaccine's gonna kill you and you're gonna go throw down like Data says is you know, mostly pretty safe, but there are some people who get myocarditis from it There's some people who have probably died from it.

We can't hide that Rate per 100,000 versus the rate per 100,000 people are dying of covid. You're just gonna make a risk reward and that is that is exactly what I'll usually say It does appear on the net to be a net positive, but for some individuals, it's not a net positive The problem is when you're in politics, you can't say stuff like that. Yeah, right? As an appetite for you can't say that right?

You can't say something like hey guys We don't really know what we're doing and we're just trying to make the best decision We can yeah one of my favorite phrases when it comes to policy. I think this is a nutrition too is there are no solutions There are only trade-offs. There we go. This is kind of our soapbox.

We're always on we've interviewed so many hundreds experts They're so brilliant. They're smarter than us. Literally the inclusion I guess it'd be the far end of the donning crew curve is like all I've learned is that a fucking slam dunk's gonna be about 65% Certainly that's where we're at for get COVID. It just extends to everything Yeah, it was tough to watch as a scientist I think a lot of this is just social media like us being isolated We just aren't demonizing everybody who thinks differently than us because we sent our information silos and we don't go outside that We don't follow people.

We don't agree with you know when we were growing up You would have to be exposed to a human who had different opinions than you well And you'd turn on the news that was attempting to put it right in the middle now You go to your news station and you follow your Instagram accounts and you follow your Twitter And then you start to think all right by thinks this way and then you can expose to something different and the reaction is well This person must be a bad person. Yes There's always a moral implication when someone disagrees with you. Okay, so there's two things I think one is I think it's just a generally great call if you're not even going to attempt to understand the studies better or dig deeper At least take the studies you're hearing about with some cynicism You also don't want people to think science isn't legit What I'm trying to say is that there is a layer between the science and you hearing it and that layer is either a human being on Instagram It's a journalist who has an agenda. That's what I'm saying is that you need to really delineate the difference between the study And then the message that's built on top of the study.

That's what people need to be cynical of Yeah, the sensationalist headlines when I see these headlines. I'm like I'm pretty sure when I go read the study That's not gonna be what it says. Yeah, that was a percent I'll never forget there was one where it was like smelling your partner's farts might increase your lifespan or something like And it was like basically like one of these volatile fatty acids that's produced that comes out in gas When they supplemented with it in rats that it increased their lifespan. It's like yeah, that's a little bit further off Farts Yeah, you've built a pretty big house on top of that foundation.

Okay, the second thing I just want to point out I also think people need to be a little bit suspicious and actually correct me if I'm wrong This is more of a question often have people explaining to me why their diet makes sense or why they're eating this way or why this supplement works And they tell me well what happens is when you take this in your body if this happens I think so many people are talking about things as if they've been observed and unless I'm wrong We're not there SSR inhibitors. We're not actually observing the uptake. We can measure downstream We can take blood we can have a sample we can put something in the body and then we take this sample out of the body And then now everything beyond that is we're kind of theorizing right we're doing our best case to figure out the mechanism There is some advanced imaging well you just mentioned one there's like an isotope that they followed all the way to the But even that so I did isotope labeling for protein synthesis that I measure protein synthesis stable isotope basically means like a carbon for example It has an extra neutron or a hydrogen that has an extra neutron So we use what was called a deuterated finilality for our studies. I love deuterated Philomani Just to give you an example like if you want to see the rate of muscle protein synthesis what you do is you give this deuterated finilality to either a rat or a person is usually an infusion and since finilality isn't metabolized by the muscle if it stays in the muscle Then you can be relatively confident that it was incorporated muscle protein tissue And so we look at what's called a precursor pool, which is the intracellular space But essentially the way we measure is we're not actually viewing it happen in real time What we're doing is we're going to take this biopsy and then we're going to take that We're going to put liquid nitrogen we pulverize it we homogenize it Then we separate out the intracellular amino acids versus the peptide bound amino acids by using perchloric acid And then we hydrolyze the peptide bound amino acids with hydrochloric acid We put in a buffer to buffer that and then we do a few other things and then we put all what's called a gas chromatography mass spectrometer Where basically we'll separate molecules based on their weight So a heavier hydrogen a heavier finilality is going to come out later and so we can see okay There was this much of the label in the precursor pool versus the actual protein bound pool And that will give us the rate of muscle protein synthesis So when you're looking at these studies where they're looking at where things are going They're usually using stable isotopes to do so But they're not viewing it in real time like you were talking about like I think a lot of you have the sci-fi version My overarching public service announcement is when someone tells you that your body sees aspartame as sugar and releases insulin You must at least remember that's never been observed.

That's unobservable at this stage of science I'll say one thing about aspirin specifically. So let's look at the breakdown products of aspirin team First off you're getting a very low dose the breakdown products are basically aspartic acid So amino acid finilality and amino acid which I find it hilarious that they put like people with pku There's finilality in this you get 20 times more finilality in the mistake Literally any source of protein will have more finilality This is the formaldehyde thing with people You also get methanol which can be converted from out. You get more methanol and a glass of tomato juice than you do from a diet Coke So if you can just remember one thing from this whole podcast the dosage makes the poison there is a small amount of cyanide in apples It's great. Yeah, you're not gonna eat a couple apples and die There's things that are bad for you that you can have in small amounts that aren't gonna negatively affect you and there's things that are Quote good for you if you have too much of if you drink too much water you can die Don't get Okay, great now my last question because you brought up identity and I thought maybe you could relate to this So you had to watch the running coma document Yeah, he's a weak guy.

I love running fucking love that documentary I've recommended it so much I'm like even if you're not into weightlifting is great back in my but what did occur to me because I think about identity all the time is Boy, here's a guy that is on a walker continuing to wake up at 4am and go to the gym and lift Heavyweight when it's clearly killing him I looked at that and I thought this might be the most poignant example of your identity where it can lead you by the way I relate on some level the notion of him of getting small and weak is actually worse than maybe permanent paralysis He's had however many 15 back surgeries 20 he was in wrote to get another one I just was like man This is the most poignant display of identity and where it can lead you and I saw it as like something I need to think about I need to be aware of this And so I was listening you talk about all the different injuries you've gotten through when you're talking to Peter And you have a great approach to it and you're very scientific and you're methodological about it and it's seemingly safe and it's worked for you But it take cross my mind Can you imagine yourself being weak when you imagine that what is that feel like the good thing is strength is one of the last speed Will leave before strength to give you an idea my world squat record got broken by a guy named David Ricks Who was 57 when he broke it? Wow They don't call him Superman for nothing He's actually already in the power thing Hall of Fame still competing Oh, he's 63 now he just competed master I think he's quite like 628 at master So I think that's why it's important to not just be one thing I look at it as okay. Yes, that's a big part of who I am but it's not all of who I am I'm also a dad. I'm also an entrepreneur I'm also a scientist So if one of those things goes away be really painful But it's not all I am with regards to Ronnie it is really hard to watch Yeah, what's great to is when people ask him like hold you regret the way you lifted or whatever like the 800 pound squat And he goes only thing I regret is I didn't do a second rep because I'm pushed out He lived in life exactly what that guy was eight time world champion when they interview Olympic athletes they did a study where I think it was something like If you could take something that would get you a gold medal, but you'd be dead in five years Would you do it was like 90% of them said yes, right?

What yeah, it was wild Well, yes, your life is singularly focused on one thing This is the purpose of me being alive as this is why I'm waking up I would rather die than not get this yeah You can have that you can be at that level Yes, and you can call it disorder you call it whatever you want But you're only gonna have one life as long as you're not doing something that's harming other people I am pretty non-judgmental about that kind of stuff I do think Ronnie got some really bad advice when it came to his back And I've seen some of the foremost back and pain specialists in the world we could go for like a two-hour Yeah, of course, but the consensus that I've seen is do not get back surgery unless you absolutely need it in terms of you Have a nerve that's in danger of being deadened from you know a disc herniation or something like that because I've had To herniated dissimilar back. I've had two bulge dissimilar back I've had two herniated dissimine neck. I've torn a muscle in both hips They're about 50% successful on average back surgeries and usually just means you're gonna need another one So my thing is like those aren't the odds again. I'm sure people they're totally warranted There's too much pain.

I mean what do you do which is for me anything that's 50 if you tell me eating a lot of proteins gonna work 50 50 I have no marching orders. So I'm gonna give you some information I'm pretty sure I'm characterizing the study appropriately So if I mess it up, I apologize, but they did a study on back surgeries I think I also this with meniscus tears It was a randomized trial where either people would get the surgery or not and this was right down to the surgeon didn't know Until he got in the room whether or not he was doing the surgery or not and he would open a card and it would say you know Yes or no if it said no they would still cut the person open. They just wouldn't do anything right and they just back up Did you know there was no statistical difference in the long-term recovery outcomes in those studies because what happens when you get surgery? Well, you've got to rest and you've got to do rehab and all that kind of stuff and again, I'm not a back expert I want to really qualify this with you should read this literature yourself You get a chance But the consensus among the back pain experts that I've spoken with is do not open up if you can avoid it at all Like you're better off doing rehab and pain is a really interesting thing too Because we used to think about the body as basically a bag of meat that's attached to your brain And if you poke the bag or you cut the bag or you burn the bag or you punch the bag the brain goes owie It turns out it's not really like that actually because how can you explain people who have phantom limb syndrome where they get pain Where limb used to be how do you explain people who get shot in battle and don't even realize they're shot until after the fact, right?

Unless it's like a mortal wound you're journaling so high it's an analgesic So one thing to keep in mind is that tissue damage doesn't necessarily mean pain and pain doesn't necessarily mean tissue damage When you talk about herniated discs, did you know of Americans? I think over the age of 40 people who have no back pain If you put them on an MRI over 50 percent will have disc abnormalities like herniated disc bulge discs So you can have herniated disc and have absolutely no symptoms It is very complicated and we're only really starting to scratch the surface of pain science so all that to go back to Ronnie I wish he had gotten some different advice and maybe done rehab or just taking some time to go light The question is the identity the identity but you kind of answered it in some I think I am always a proponent of on here as well, which is be flexible have other pokers in the fire to find yourself in a lot of ways You're right if it's not harming anyone else. It's your decision Oh, yeah, I'm all for I do what I want. I just I don't want to be Ronnie I want my identity to put me on walkers.

I've thought about that a lot I'm not gonna be able to do this forever even though they do have like a 70 plus masters group as well But it's one of those things that you have to learn to let go Sometimes you also need to learn to let go my plan is I'm gonna keep doing my heavy lifting and doing this stuff And as long as I can't do it and feel good. I'll keep it up I'm watching every frame of it. I'm writing on the comments. I'm all for it.

Listen lane Norton You're awesome. I want people to follow you at bio lane on instagram also go to bio lane calm That's la yne calm. You can check out reps which is research explained in practical summaries It's really really fun. Also, I take your outwork nutrition my wife go the pre-workout You think you're into him.

I have his shit awesome. I take it now and she's not taking it so Same thing net positive though. Yeah, so check out all those things. You're awesome.

There's been everything I hope to be monitoring very cool. I was wrong. You're shook. I was wrong.

I can grunt a little bit if it was Yeah, now. Yes, so let back there we go break some shit when we take pictures All right, this has been awesome. Thanks so much for coming in. Thank you guys And now my favorite part of the show the fact check with my soulmate Monica badman Hello, can you hear the yes?

Are you standing like who was it that we interviewed recently that was standing who was standing? You know what I was watching an interview with lane Norton Oh, is this his back check? Yeah Yeah, when he did his peter atia interview his podcast which was two hours and 40 minutes He was standing the whole time. Oh wow.

Yeah, I'm standing. I'm doing standing desk But are you yeah like intentionally or there's just no places said or something? No, I could have sat somewhere Okay, but I chose standing desk honestly partly because of way nor way No way Norton because you know, he talked about some people just like move a lot Yes, their metabolism goes up through some movement Yeah, and I do think that's me generally but I thought I could up it a notch That's funny because I thought of him as well when I was driving the motor room because I found myself just bouncing my legs and knees a lot Intentionally thinking like us grab a few extra calories because I'm just seated all day long driving Do you ever stop and walk around because blood clots? Never it's all about time.

It's it's time and it's trying to get as far between stops as humanly possible I think if I just sit for a few days a year, I'll be fine. No No a few days. No, you do have to get up every couple hours Well, right. I know about the blood clot thing I'm just saying in general on that driving the motor home for long stretches so many days a year All right, well, I'm in trouble It's like those guys who are held underground and bunkers of terrorists and then I get blood clots Oh, do you know about that?

There's been a big outbreak of blood clots among okay? What a montano or something. Yeah, something but I think they can move around it's not like they're chained to chip Well, I don't know what they're doing over there. No, they're all cramped up and then they get blood clots Oh How are you doing?

Congratulations on your enormous victory. Thank you. That was a dominant performance I know you watched it every single place And I got so sucked into it. It's crazy the power of story, right?

You have two undefeated teams like oh that just ups your interest immediately Of course like someone's leaving in heartbreak Someone's vindicated is unstoppable And what they've won like 26 of their last 28 games or something crazy. Yeah, any who you got that element right two undefeated teams Yep, and going into it even though you said on the fact check that georgia was number one I think in the rankings tennis people at Tennessee above georgia in that game It literally it moved after I said that it was ranked one and two and then it moved to us being three Which I didn't understand at all. Um, but now I'm sure we're one again. Yeah, you must be also Um how arbitrary that you guys shot to number three But also another good bit of inspiration like the Jordan thing where he had to decide he hated someone on the opposing team To be called number three right before the game like they did georgia favor.

Oh my god It was so fun. It was so buzzy Start at the tailgate start at the time. So what time do you get to the tail? No, I'm gonna start on Friday.

Okay, okay I'm gonna start august 24th 1987 born in a very small town With a big dream of being a state champion Well, that's funny that you bring that up ding ding ding because okay, so friday I went to Athens I met with shout out maryth from the alumni association who hooked all of this up for us and oh my god She was amazing. She picked me up from the house. She drove me to campus We did I did a little video for them. Uh-huh and it was so sweet.

There was this awesome shout out Just a shout out a lot There's there's a um what do we call our student? There was a student? Um Her name was sydney and she asked me the questions and she was really sweet. Oh, there was a little like town hall q&a with you It was a video though like it was just an interview that they shot But she asked the questions and she was so sweet and cute and she wants to move to LA So I I know but no, no, I said call me when you get there.

Oh my god. Wow. That's very generous of you I'll have a new phone number. Okay.

Okay. Okay. I'm kidding. She was so so sweet Anyway, but one of the questions was what's your proudest moment?

And I said it's a tie between spotify uh-huh and the state championship Oh wow, you're putting spotify up with your state championship? Yeah, Monica. Oh my god I have nothing that like there's nothing I need to even top. I've never finished more than third That's not true.

I want a couple carways point is I don't have a state championship. Okay. Yeah, very few people do I know let alone too So this is very exciting. I feel very honored Yeah, I mean, it's funny because you know most people would think the opposite of what you're thinking Which is who cares about a state championship?

Right? If you if you become exclusive to spotify, that's a big deal But both are huge those people don't know about what builds character. They don't know about life No, they don't know about what it has where are those trophies by the way? Uh, no, they're rings.

I don't have a trophy Oh, you got a ring though two rings. Why aren't you ever wearing them? I should wear them more. I think so yeah Speaking of ding ding ding shout out.

Um when I was at the I was at the game There was a couple other people in this week It was also so embarrassing because me know mayor to send out an email like here's some other people who are going to be in this Sweet and it was this person plus one and you know whatever you know the other people got is like Monica Padman plus eight Yeah, yeah over two of this No, but I think they were really happy to have us there because we were rowdy. Okay, mainly my friends were they're so into it You know, so they were really like bringing the heat getting people riled up right everyone left their clothes on I assume Yeah, okay. No one's upset when nine pretty girls come into a room. I know what's in my girls Oh gross you had some boys Get those fucking guys either.

Yeah, now I am mad People but five oh six lose of two dudes now. How many dudes were there? Robbie Matt Zach max four. Oh half the crew Yeah, that's how it works.

It all couples and then me Okay, that's terrible Normally used to be all couples and me and cali but now cali has max right Bibles Cynthia I would have taken back for the tickets. So this is just for the girl here mayor death I'm sorry. Cynthia was a character in this as well. Cynthia Cynthia Oh, no, sindy.

No, she oh my god. Oh my god. Listen. So malcom mitchell, do you know him?

No, I know malcom glad well Me too. Shout out. No malcom mitchell is a football player. He played for torture, but then he played for the Patriots So he won a super bowl.

Okay. Yeah, that's just my I'm ignorant on football. So no disrespectful malcom in the mitchell Yeah, malcom in the middle. He's very handsome.

Oh, and he was I think illiterate and then now has his children's book It's a beautiful story. Anyway, it's called the magic hat apparently. It's huge and awesome Anyway, he was there and I was starstruck. Oh, you were was he single?

I don't know. I didn't ask Rob says it does not appear that he is wed. Did you guys have any chitchat? Little little here and there?

Hi, are you getting the hot dogs? Oh, he lives in Atlanta. He said he was a fan. I think he just lied sure I'm sure you said you were a fan, right?

Yeah, I did. Yeah, that's just a blugate for you. I'd say that you never know you just don't know But he was really cool. Oh, but he was wearing his super bowl rate.

That was exciting. Yeah. Oh, yeah Oh, yeah, are you guys the same age? Be peers?

Rob, how old is he? He's 29. Oh, oh, he looked young. I thought this I thought how is he already he's so successful?

Well, that's the nature of athletes. They hit their peak early in life I actually was confused by this because the Georgia quarterback is 25. Oh, I got so confused by this too watching the game They can talk about the one year six. Oh, he's a year six player out of they're letting them play now for six seasons What is it?

No, I think they're red-shirted. It's called being red-shirted and I think it means that you stay longer I don't really know all the details about it. Well, it's a come to find out Neil graduated early Comparatively, yeah, he's sort of through he did consider the rest of the football teams on the six-year plan My brother had a great time at the game. He tailgated with us.

All right, so back up. So Friday questions. That was a sweet moment Thanks for sharing it. Then everyone arrives.

You have the party at your house Friday night Yes, I meet Cali Max already there. We meet downtown. We have some wine and beer We go to the house that everyone else arrives. We'll go back downtown for dinner Really fun.

Good dinner. And then we went to a rowdy was a rowdy-ness all around the street I mean, yeah, yeah, okay. I will say I think this is the first time in my life. I really felt I was old Right like this scene is too much for me.

No, no, no, not too much. I was just looking at all these young kids So I had a similar moment about you two watching the tell-a-cast which is that I was old? Well, I think of you as still going there, of course. Yeah, me too, right?

Because you know you're 100 years younger than me So that's confusing in itself But I think of you as a student there and then they were cutting to all the students celebrating and their children, you know The children go to college. Exactly. I know I was standing in the Starbucks line They have a Starbucks now on campus and oh my god, so exciting guess what they had at the Starbucks a Cassie's a Georgia mug Yes, Georgia mug, yes, Rob a Starbucks and I'm competing with Rob for these answers now. I'm just getting stressful Can you imagine my excitement?

I can't how limited edition I'm already so excited about them all over the place let alone in my college and perfect timing because you're you're feeling old and then obviously You see that mug and you're like I can't think anything about anything but this exactly and all these kids are like, you know In line and they're probably drinking and I'm like oh my god, I'm like oh my god I'm having a mug this I've been waiting for this mug my old dog mug. This will look great with my collection That is really what I thought okay, so yeah, they were cutting to the gals in the in the audience and I was like, yes Yeah, Monica is old. That's what I'm saying. I just realized you're not a student students are children I am a geriatric pregnancy.

Well, but hold on so you're down 10. Okay. Yeah, so Starbucks. Are you okay?

Yeah, that's like greens because sometimes kids in the wrong pipe. I don't know like my lungs want it in there too It's so healthy. Oh my god because you're old too. Yeah, but that's not a revelation.

We know math No, I still sometimes I don't think of any of us old and then it turns out we are Yeah, so I'm in line and then I'm looking at all these yes children in front of us And I got really anxious about it. I felt so old when I was there. Yeah, of course you did So much mature. I felt so mature and I wanted to ask all these little people like what are you majoring in?

How's it going? And I'd be like, uh, whose mom is all up in our ship? Exactly. Yeah, do you think they'd all just been rolling around with each other in their dorm rooms?

I hope that's all I think about when I think of young people like oh, are they all just rolling around all day long? Like we all have different things about youth we miss I guess and for you. It's like declaring your major For me like who just rolled around in this line. It's a romantic time of year.

It's getting it gets dark earlier You want to get cozy so many leaves. It's such a pretty campus in fall. It's so nice You're the best ambassador for your school. I'm glad they picked you.

I believe it. It's real I love UCLA. I love that I went there, but I'm also you know, it wasn't East Coast enough. There's not leaves everywhere I don't know I couldn't be the spokesperson for it.

I would just be like if you love education come here if you want to have a good time go somewhere else I was so grateful. I mean, I'm always grateful to have gone there, but I really walking around. I was so happy that that's my college Yeah, because I was thinking about UCLA and USC like those schools are great schools, but they who wants to go there like boring Well, also, you're just not and by the way, I think for a lot of people they were I'm thinking maybe I was rare, but you're not in a college bubble. You're smack in middle, Los Angeles It's like you can see the four of high how bubbly can it feel and then westwood, which is your little town Well, guess what?

It's also where everyone on the west side's gonna go to see a movie So you know I know there's something about door to read you felt protected and independent It's like the only time in library have that but if you're in UCLA, you're not protected. Oh, you're a sitting duck. That's you really are Yeah, yeah, without that anyway, so everyone should go there. Okay.

So now tailgate, please How whose car who drove there whose car you got the trunk popped on? No, no, no, no, that's for that's for pansy No, no, no, no, you're starting to say I only got to say Sitting duck a patsy. I said because that's a line from intolerable cruelty now. You're saying pansy, which is a straight.

That's a That's a homophobic slurry. Yes. Oh fuck. That's okay.

Well, it does it does it does it was is questionable But definitely pansy means a gay week man. Oh, then I'm I'm cutting pansy. It's a flower Yeah, a little pansy. So how is that a gay week man?

That's what they called gays Okay, I'm not gonna call I'm cutting. Why don't we learn real time about some other people don't know that you can't say pansy It's very rare that I have one that you don't know. It's true. Yeah, okay.

So we shouldn't say that so it's for I don't want to say pussies. I don't like that. You think this is wimps. You're allowed to say wimps.

There we go. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Okay. Um, so That's for wimps You're in your trunk open Yeah, in in real tailgates in southern tailgates you have tents you pop ups cover the whole campus intense You sometimes have grills. We didn't grill though. We got barbecue and then you have your chairs out Cornhole you ladder ball.

Oh wait, who's lugging all this shit there? That's why you brought four boys. Yeah boys kind of handled that Okay, that's one thing we can do. Where do you want me to put this?

Where's this go Monica? I didn't go they went early. They set it up and then I arrived Okay, that's what the girls do. Oh every girl not just you.

Yeah, okay Anyway, I was just really fun drinking. Well, what time did the tailgate start 10 a.m Yeah, about 10. Oh, what could be more fun than having that first cocktail at 10 a.m. Yeah, it's so fun, right?

It is fun. Do you have wine though? You got a bloody mario or something? I had wine rose for breakfast.

No, I love it I love my breakfast. You got a beer or a bloody mary for breakfast No, we had mimosas, but I I didn't have that. I don't know why I just had wine. Well, we were laughing okay This is bad.

So max was there and it was really exciting to have him there But at first on Friday, he was being a little bit of a coastal elite Coastal elite tell me how It's getting a little trick or Max like you can't what was it? What was it? How was it? Show?

He's just in a little bit in culture shock. Max is from LA. It's a different beast. So yeah, he's just what things was he observed?

Like, you know, there's a specific look khaki shorts, polo shirt. Oh, I hate that too. Yeah, that's right I know you do but I feel like you maybe like it more because Michigan's can't have a similar thing It's the part though that I didn't like about Michigan, you know, I was the first to the khaki pant crew in the color. Yeah I hate it because it's just an attempt to look wealthy.

I guess I mean it's also just but if you do what's around you It's not I don't know. Anyway, what was I saying about? White wine a little bit of a coastal elite and then we I have wine in the morning. I am by the time you got into the arena What time did you enter noon three no the game started three thirty?

So what time did you enter the arena three? Oh, okay. How many wines had you had? How tipsy were you by the time you got in there?

Not tipsy enough. That's five hours of drinking I know but I didn't do a good job. I didn't like drink enough. You didn't drink hard enough No, now Neil was a part of that whole aspect and was he putting the pedal to the metal a little bit?

He's younger than you? He was yes, he was You know my dad. Yeah, I sure do My dad dropped my brother off. I don't I don't want to talk about this story.

We're talking about this He drove my brother to ask Don't bother to ask it's an hour away on a normal day and then he dropped him off downtown. He drove back home Then at the after the game he drove Well, at least go to your well, I guess you want to be with your mom to watch the game But why didn't he just go to your Airbnb? He wouldn't want to just stay in Athens all day. Okay.

He'd rather drive four hours Yes, yeah four hours more than that because traffic sure I was like gobsmacked. I was like dad you can't what do you mean? And he just didn't want Neil to drink a lot of the game and then drive home, right? And that's what dad sometimes have to do.

Are you prepared for this? I won't do something like that I mean for real There's a total lack of responsibility which is like you're in your 20s if you're gonna go to this game and get hammered You need a plan to either get yourself home without driving or you need a place to sleep It's you're in your 20. I'm it's not my job to drive four hours to prevent you from making a bad decision I know but if you love someone that much if you you know, what do they call it? They call it something No, he wasn't the thing is I think everyone thought that you could buy alcohol in the stadium and you couldn't so also it was a waste By the time the game was over.

He was not drunk anymore. So that's a peculiar aspect, right? So yeah, most college arenas you there's no alcohol in them. Yep, stables don't have any which is kind of weird I don't know that's a side note But how rough to get a nice buzz and then go lose it for three hours are people cranky by the time they're leaving that?

Well, if we lose oh, but it's a tinderbox Everyone's like got a headache and his drowsy and they've lost their buzz and you guys lost every oh what is soup? Well, we used to sneak stuff in well, yeah, and even as there's no booze, huh? No, no, we did we did have oh, so we do have booze Yeah, oh then there's no problem For us there was no problem. Okay, great.

I'm only worried about you guys. I don't care about oh no no Neil though That was the whole thing. So he could have driven home font. Anyway, it was really special It was so happy to be with all my college friends and to do it like that.

It was such a full circle It was really really special cheering cheering cheering well That's probably the first college game I've ever watched start to finish and I told you I liked it so much that when I got to my hotel that night in Sedona I then watched the UCLA game There's 71 I know any of they were so good this year. Yeah, that's fine I told you that's when I knew UCLA wasn't school for me is that Brie and I had snuck in a ton of booze And we were in the student section and we're like popping beers and taking shots of Jack Everyone's looking at us what may or coastal elites. They're like how does trash get in here? We felt so trapped.

I think we were killing cigarettes and stuff. Yeah. Yeah, we did not feel welcome You would have done great at Georgia. Oh, absolutely.

Yeah, I would have done just fine You would have loved the downtown scene. Oh, yeah in the tailgating. Okay. Tell me about your wait first of all You said you were gonna look for me.

Did I show up dozens of times Now you could tell they were trying to zoom in on the on the um suites to get a get a good shot of you But the glare was such that they kept having to abort but they were trying and trying Yeah, I think you would have been out in the stands the whole telecast would have been you Yeah, I think you're right and the commentators are drawing like wax on the screen like wax pen And they're like we think she's here. They were circling like the shadows. Yeah. Yeah, and then Cynthia Cynthia was like, you know, this is her favorite Oh my god speaking of Meredith.

She got me a my strawberry cake. Oh my god I know you know what you got this weekend is the thing you've heard me say I I covered it It's the moment in american idol When they made to the finals and they go back to their town for a parade and they sit in a convertible everyone shares for them that you just had that Carrot Your favorite cake I know Free tickets. Oh, sasilias anyway, okay. So tell me about your trip my trip I arrived in Houston Thursday night.

I then got picked up by tile tile and I drove to an empower's nacadoches tile tiles his name It's such a cool original name. We ate at a steakhouse in nacadoches. Did you have a loaded baked potato? No, I had a flight with bernay sauce And um he got lobster grits that I got into a little bit.

Oh, that was nice in southern Yeah, and then the next day I went to four travel and I um Was hoping to leave at nine. I didn't leave till noon And then I got on the road and then the challenge just started So I was in a tornado warning a lot of the drive pretty windy whatever pull over to gas station The winds blowing so hard. I mean it said on my iPhone that it was blowing at 45 miles an hour But I think it was much higher than that where I was at So I'm directly to this is reminding me so much of the time that breen I were in a tornado Directly to the north of me sky pitch black and kind of swirling ominously Immediately to the south of me sunny and nice and I was right on the border at this gas station You know, it's a long-ass walk from the semi pumps where I got to be into the thing I put a bunch of money on the thing go out start pumping Anyways long story short the wind shut the pump down like probably seven times. Oh my god ding ding ding this is what we were just talking about We were yeah last fact check about I was asking oh about the nozzle.

Yes. Well, this was like making the actual pump show error messages All across it like it had some kind of Wi-Fi connection or something that kept going down anyways, that was about A 75 minute stop. Oh my god, you know, I know rottic about time. It's so stupid I have no reason to care because I don't have to be anywhere anywhere But I start getting obsessed with how much ground I'm gonna cover in a day where will I stop blah blah blah So get back on the road.

Oh, that was rough 75 minutes stop to get gas And then I start noticing my tire pressures dropping in one of the dualies on the driver's side the inside tire And I'm for you know, it's supposed to be at like 115 pressure or below 100 now now it's at 80 70 And I'm just kind of tracking it. I'm in the middle of nowhere So there's really nothing I'm gonna be able to do to I get to a major thing But the time I get into New Mexico, we're down at like 35 pounds of pressure. Oh my god What are we gonna do here? I can't change that tire.

I don't have a spare I need to get it to a qualified like semi tire shop at some point the following day So my plan is I'm gonna have to load it with fix a flat when it gets to almost zero and there's no pressure And then fill it up with my compressor to 125 hope that seals it enough to get to a big town where blah blah blah By the time I pull off the road at 10 30 in a weird town. I can't pronounce the name of a new mexico It's now 26 degrees out. I buy fix a flat. I go to fill it and the nozzle that's about six inches long Because it goes to the inside wheel that breaks right off and now the tire deflates in tight So what had happened was that valestem was cracked Which is why it was leaking all that air and then all it took was me kind of touching it and it broke right off So now I'm like oh fuck go across the street to a loves.

I left the pilot I went to a love truck stop. The dude was just about to get off work. He had seen without a paddle He was very excited he stuck around oh wow thank fucking god And they took the wheels off the bus put a new valestem in put it back together That's lucky. Yes, that was really lucky But now that was that was a good two hour ordeal get back on the road make it I've drive to about 1 30 in the morning sleep at a Walmart as I do beautiful night sleep in the bus In the Walmart parking lot 26 degrees outside, but I was cozy inside the bus It felt snug in a rug hot chocolate tons of hot chocolate I poured all over my body And rived around in my brookalinese Really made a mess with this brain.

Someone would come a lick me clean Put the bait out but no one was taking it. So then next day woke up drove to enchantment to Sedona I got a backup when I got to four travel. I saw my whale and Jennings logo on back for the first time I almost started crying. It's very cool.

I can't believe how gorgeous it is. I sent it to Aaron and he said I have goosebumps I think that's the coolest thing I've ever seen in my whole life I agree with him kind of eric a little bit of a grievance sure so you tease that there was something exciting happening on the bus That's right and then we joke that it was a little me. Yeah, and the murals big little brown baby Yeah, and then I said, okay, is it a mural and you said no, but that's a mural right? It's not a mural A mural is a painting of something.

It's like it's a landscape. It's a An action scene, right? It's this is a logo. You know, this is Wayland's flying bird logo.

Okay, okay, okay But it's so big that to me it is a mural. Yeah, we call it a mural. I don't mind. Okay, but I think technically I was fine denying that it was a mural When I think you're on the airbrush image of something right you think a face or a landscape or some horses going across the desert Oh a picture, you know, and so I love that.

Okay, get to Sedona pull into enchantment where you would check in Before they let you go up to reception on the right side. There's an awning well that awning is way too low for big brown So I cruise through the exit and as I do someone runs out, but I'm on the move now now. I'm gonna stop the bus So I just keep blasting so then I see reception and then I I'm like I find a patch of grass next to the river I go I guess I'm parking big brown here as I get out of the bus. There's a couple of golf carts God bless the they knew it was me I put in my reservation.

I'm in a 45 foot bus. Where do I park it? It was never answered, but when I arrived to golf carts they knew it was me they already had my key I followed them there was a lot at the end of the the road that was big for big brown Bob's your uncle wonderful go inside. It's a brown is such I'm sorry Dax, but big brown is such a headache I mean there's never been a story about big brown that doesn't include some anxiety so much Totally.

I guess that's what makes it great is if it works. Yes, because the things in life You enjoy the things in life I've enjoyed the none of them are the things that are just come easy Not one of them everything I like requires some effort But don't you think it's a little pro it's like that's a tiny bit problematic thinking of like I can't just enjoy something it has to come with some challenges I'm not saying that I have a rule I won't enjoy something that doesn't come with challenges I'm saying when I look at my life all the things I'm proud of about is like the car I kept running till it got to the racetrack and then it made a good time or my motor's like, you know When I get it when I put the pop outs out at Walmart and I make myself an oatmeal You know and I got the heat on and I'm like yeah, this is awesome and it's worth it and I earned it Driving it. Okay next day wake up journal right blah blah blah and I go on a two and a half hour hike all around the property gorgeous Channeled mcconnhey while I was up on the rock he hit oh, yes took over my body and then uh went in the hot tub I had two room service orders the hamburger ball times delicious. Mm-hmm.

It was great. Then yesterday drew I left there at about 11. I got back to LA at 6 30 It was a you know event-free ride other than it was raining for a couple of hours, but it was oh here's a crazy thing I don't you'll know him unfortunately you should he's a legend carry heart. He's a motorcycle.

I know carry heart Yeah, great carry hearts married to pink carry heart is married to pink So I'm I'm driving down the road in Arizona in big brown and I see two motorcycles coming up hot behind me And I'm like oh, this is cool. These guys are fucking blasting through the desert as they pass me I noticed they're both Indians motorcycles, but you don't see a ton of I mean it's a big brand But still I don't see a ton especially like totally tricked out gorgeous and as the lead dude passes me He throws up a very like specific peace sign, right? Uh-huh so I give it to him and I literally I swear to god I thought I wonder if that's carry because carry has a deal with indian the bike looked awesome He's in a full-face helmet. He's fucking ripping then he throws me a sign and then I waved and then an hour and a half later I look at my text dude coach looks awesome great.

Oh, that's crazy So we were budges both out on this stretch, arizona desert flying me and my coach him and his motorcycle and we saw each other and waved at one another Isn't that crazy god sim very simp that's really fun and then you got home and then it's been raining It's been raining. There's been a lot of water issues on the property it rained during the game. I sure did I saw that but you're sorry I know I've never felt more privileged Ghost elite speaking of coastal elites today's a big day. I didn't really realize I'd be here during the election Oh big day here.