Abs at 50 Episode 2 Calories

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:06] Speaker B: Yep. I guess we're gonna stop saying all the funny things because we're now on the podcast. Welcome to ABS at 50 episode two. We're here. It's a. It's a very exciting time. It's it. It. We inspire. We aspire. Inspire. Aspire. Aspire. Aspire. Aspire to be better than Hot Shots part deux. Electric Boogaloo. [00:00:32] Speaker A: We aspire to inspire. [00:00:36] Speaker B: I've got a nice strawberry starburst drink here. Sugar free. Now you got. It's because I took the last of the good ones. [00:00:49] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:00:50] Speaker B: All the drinks at the house are strawberry right now because I bought them. [00:00:54] Speaker A: While I was hilarious. [00:00:57] Speaker B: Strawberry is the best. I don't know how you feel about Zevia flavors. I know how you feel about Zevia flavors. I don't know how about the audience feels about Zevia flavors. I feel like the fruit. Zevia flavors work. Like, the orange works, the grape works, and the strawberry works. But they don't sell the strawberry anywhere, so you have to buy it off of Amazon. It's kind of frustrating. [00:01:18] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. And they usually target premium. [00:01:21] Speaker B: Yeah. I got it on sale during Black Friday. That's why there's so much strawberries Eva here. So that's what's up. Paul is not the biggest fan of the fruit flavored ones. [00:01:32] Speaker A: I do like orange. Orange, orange. [00:01:36] Speaker B: You like the root beer, right? [00:01:38] Speaker A: The root beer does me pretty good. I like beer. [00:01:42] Speaker B: Root beer has that weird ginger. I don't like it. [00:01:46] Speaker A: Yeah. I don't know. I am generally suspect of drinking any brown sodas, even though, you know, I do drink the zero sugar ones. Like, that's what I like about the Stevias is that their lights are okay with their drinks just being clear. So I feel like that's. There's less additives that have to go into it. It's probably. [00:02:08] Speaker B: That's probably true. Yeah. I mean, admit, admittedly, objectively, if you're drinking sparkling water with flavor, Zevia probably is the best option. [00:02:22] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:02:22] Speaker B: I guess from a health standpoint, like, I can't stand sparkling water, so I'm never gonna drink that. Like, I'm not gonna be drinking any Lacroix or any of that crap. It tastes terrible. I will just drink regular water at that point. I mean, that seems stupid. [00:02:38] Speaker A: So they offer you a ton of money to sponsor the podcast. [00:02:42] Speaker B: Like, if we ever got a sponsorship from Xevia, that would just be the end of my universe. Like, there's no way with a straight face I could say that that crop tastes good. It tastes like shit. And it's, it's some of the worst. Like, I don't know how people drink it. You again, you might as well just drink water or drink sparkling water. Like get a soda stream at your house and just inject your own sparkling water and then drink it. It's like drinking way cheaper that way. [00:03:05] Speaker A: To clarify for the record, he's talking about Lacroix, not these wonderful brand name stevias that we would gladly take a sponsorship for. [00:03:14] Speaker B: Oh yes, we love Zevia. Yeah. Superior to Zevia is far superior to La Croix. Honestly though, Xevia is not that expensive in the big scheme of things. Like I bought, I think those cases for 18 bucks. Like regular soda is like $12 a case now. [00:03:30] Speaker A: Yeah, you know, well, that's true. Like with everything that we talked about too is you have to put the embedded cost in all these things as well. Right. Like, what are the downstream costs of drinking, you know, 12 Coca Colas a day? Like, far worse for you than, you know, whatever the cost differential is to, like, if you like. For me, certainly when I'm consistently cutting weight or doing whatever, it just really helps kind of deal with that psychological urge to want to drink something that's not the two gallons of water I'm drinking in a day. And so if stevia is something that you like or you find an alternative one that you like, you know, there's no. I, I don't really like them, but they're really popular at Whole Foods. The Ollipop ones or whatever. Yeah, yeah, Those aren't zero calorie, but they're pretty low calorie. And so if you're replacing just a standard, I mean, there's just so much sugar in like a Mountain Dew or Dr. Pepper with coca Cola. Like it's just that extra, you know, 180 to 280, how many fluid ounces it is that you're getting. [00:04:42] Speaker B: Well, there's a reason I started talking about soda today. Cause we're gonna talk about calories today. And. Yeah, and honestly too, like, if you're drinking, you know, if you're gonna, you, you don't even have to drink Xea. Right. Like we're talking about fine points like here. But you know, if you want to drink a lot of water during the day but have a couple of diet sodas, like, I'm not gonna go crush anybody's soul for having NutraSweet or, you know, that's fine. Right. Like if you want that, if you want that in your soda or you want the, the color I'm drinking, you know, I'm drinking an ice strawberry Starburst right now. Right. Like I'm gonna probably be okay. Like I'm probably much better off than if I was drinking a sugary strawberry drink. [00:05:29] Speaker A: Right? Yeah. [00:05:32] Speaker B: And you're just, your calories just go so fast. And, and honestly too, like if you're counting calories and you want to build cal, you want to build a soda into your, your intake for the day, that's fine. But you just have to realize that's gonna be like 180 calories of no nutritional benefit for you. So you're gonna have to make up those nutritional macros somewhere else. [00:05:54] Speaker A: Yeah, that's, that's the hardest part is making that balance where it's just, you know, often referred to as empty calories. Right. Whatever that term means to you, that's really what it means. As far as, like the way we're looking at it is we're trying to get. You only have so many calories allotted in a day and you're also trying to hit certain macronutrients goals as far as the carb to fat to protein ratio. And so the way that it's empty in that scenario is that it essentially fills up nothing. But maybe the carbohydrates and the, you know, the carbohydrates is the thing that you're probably trying to mitigate the most in a calorie restricted diet. Because that or unless you're taking in a lot of fats. So you know, every gram of fat tends to be more calorically dense. So. [00:06:44] Speaker B: Right. [00:06:44] Speaker A: You still want to get your essential fats as well. That's the other, the other side of that aspect is you want to make sure you're getting proper fats, proper carbs and proper protein. And yeah, if you just ill, you know, too hard. I mean it's just like that. You're talking about if you drink a 12 ounce soda. [00:07:03] Speaker B: Right. [00:07:03] Speaker A: So if you drink a 20 ounce soda, like you're gonna have, I think that's like 240 calories. Like that's just so many calories that you consume so quickly without thinking about it. And I mean I did that as a kid. I drank mostly sodas as a kid. You have no context of it growing. [00:07:19] Speaker B: Up especially, oh, I drank a ton of soda as a kid, like, and it was mostly Coca Cola. [00:07:26] Speaker A: Yeah, My name is Dr. Pepper. My parents only drank Coca Cola. That was one of my, the faults for my father. I begged him for years. It was like we'd be together and like, would you drink something other than Coca Cola around me, please? Because it's quite frustrating with all the health issues that he had leading up to the end of his life. It's just like one of the easy things that you can do that I think will have an immediate health benefit is if you can just reduce the amount of soda, sugary sodas that you're drinking. You're probably not. I mean, I think, you know, you're. On average, you know, Americans, I think, gain something like 10 pounds a year just from drinking soda. Like the amount of calories, it just adds up. Like if it's a staple in your diet, like, that's one of the easiest changes. I think that the other thing too is if you're looking for just simple, like heuristics to try to lose weight, not drinking your calories is like the easiest way to do it. Because just the physical act of having to eat your calories is just more energy intensive. I think you're just more cognizant of it. I think, like, you just sit down and drink 300 calories and not even notice. But. [00:08:40] Speaker B: And that includes, like fruit juice. [00:08:43] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Refrigerate fruit. First use, I believe, has finally been recognized by the Academy of Pediatrics, whatever they're organized by. This is to being very detrimental to the development of fatty liver disease in children. So, you know, you really want to. And the other thing too, having just come back from, you know, international travel again, it's. It's socially dependent, right? It's. We're talking about the juice that you're getting in America, which is usually highly concentrated, oftentimes will have added sugar. Like they will add sugar to these things that are already, you know, super intensive from the fructose. And so you have to watch out for that. And it's not like in. So like, you know, just coming back from Brazil. Like in Brazil, we drink juice all the time. But it's like, number one, your fruit is just of higher quality because of geography. That something. It became readily apparent. And number two is like all the places they're culturally, they have like real, you know, high quality, like juicing machines. And so like, they're like, you're getting, you're still getting some of the phytonutrients and you're getting some of the fiber. Like, it's like, is like, you know, juice with pulp. But it's, it's made well and you're not getting that from the stuff you're buying at the store. Right. So you're not getting any of the fiber. Like, like eating fruit is significantly different from the way your body is going to metabolize it and the way your blood sugar is going to fluctuate because you're getting, you're having to process it differently, you're having to chew it, you're getting the fiber. All of that matters. Like, you know, if you're, you know, having like one tiny little glass of Horseshoe is gonna be fine. But like when I get sick, I, I'm the worst offender at this. Like I'm like down in a whole bottle. It's so easy, so easy to take in, you know, 20 flu. [00:10:46] Speaker B: But again, you know, there's so many products to get like vitamin C or things like that, right? Like if you, they have. And I'm sure somebody is gonna be like, Dan, supplements are terrible and you're just gonna pee it out and all that. But I think you're just gonna pee the juice out too. Like the, you know, you, you emergency has a zero sugar pouch right now it's not even a pouch, it's like a round cylinder cuz the sugar's not in there, right? So you can get, you know, zero. If you want to drink the vitamin C, you can get the zero sugar vitamin C supplements. Like those exist now and they're readily available. Like you, they're easy to get. I think there's a lot of ways that you can do that. And in the other part too though, I mean you are, you are the worst offender. I agree on the juice thing, but we could just tell somebody when they're sick to eat an orange. Yeah, that would be a much better alternative. I got some oranges the other day to eat. I've been really focused, you know, in this too on getting fruit and making sure I have fruit around to eat because that's a better source of carbohydrates too than it is to eat, you know, straight sugar or go have some rice. I have eaten rice too, but pasta and whatever. I mean if I'm carb short for the day, it's much better for me to go grab a banana than it is to grab, you know, rice, right? Or anything else. And I'll, I'll just say this too. We were joking about this the other day. If I'm gonna drink my calories, I'm gonna have a milkshake. I'm gonna get protein in there, I'm gonna get milk fats. I know some people can't do dairy and that's fine, but I'm gonna get Milk, fat, I'm gonna get. Yeah, obviously I'm gonna get sugar, right. Which I don't want. But I'm gonna get milk, fat and protein, which is a much better option than drinking a soda or drinking juice. And none of them are good options. Right. You know? Should I have a milkshake? Well, yeah, I had a milkshake on this journey because it fit into my calories for the day. Okay, cool. You wanna make it fit into your calories again once in a while. We're not saying deprive yourself of sweets forever, but we're saying be super conscious about it, right? Like, I'm not never gonna eat a sweet again. [00:12:51] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:12:52] Speaker B: It's just a fact. [00:12:54] Speaker A: Yeah. No, and I think, you know, what you're discussing is your personal choice, right? Like, if you, if there's like some, you know, guava fruit juice smoothie that just kills it for you, you know, like you like taking it, say, approach workout or whatever, it's something that really satiates you and it's like, man, I really love that and don't want to give it up, then don't. I think, you know, one thing that, that you just have to do on this type, if you're taking a, a conscientious effort to, you know, significantly reduce your body mass and lose weight, is just, you're not gonna be able to have it all, right? So you do, at some point have to make certain choices, but you want to do those that are, you know, going to be psychologically tolerable to you long time. You want it to be something that you can keep up over time. So it's like, if there's only one thing that's out there that's keeping you going and you're like, I just can't give this up. Well, if you can fit it into, you know, the rubric of your daily core intake, like, unless you're, unless you're doing like, you know, a bike building tournament or something, and you're trying to get to superior super physiological low body fatigue, it's not going to make much of a difference, you know, and we're. [00:14:08] Speaker B: Talking about people that are training and choosing to lose weight. We're not talking about a hyper athletic state, right? Like, we're not talking about like your friend Zach training for the Olympic trials in wrestling, right? Like, that is not me or even close to me, you know, we're not talking about, in your case, training for a jiu jitsu competition, right. Where, you know, and of course you burn so many calories In a day you can pretty much eat whatever you want in re. Within reason. Except when you're cutting weight and that's a different discussion. Like I don't even wanna get into weight cutting today. But. Well, and you know, we were. I just bought some stuff for me to satiate myself too. Right? Like I have some. We. You found this, that eflow nutrition protein. And you know that works pretty decently for me. I wouldn't say I'm not great with whey protein. So I will say sometimes when you're looking at calories too, you have to be careful when you're doing proteins and stuff. You don't wanna ruin your stomach. But you know, we have that. But I also just bought myself some what I'm what our roommate called junk protein. Right. Some ghost protein. But it's like Chips Ahoy flavored. You know, I think there's other things out there if you're dying to get something satiated. I know the, the Mark Bell group is big on the. I've got em right next to me. I never eat them. The legendary stuff. Yeah. There's ways to do it. But let's transition into that. I want to get into a calorie discussion. I know we already ate up like 15 minutes of time talking about drinking your calories, but I think that's an important first step is to thinking about that and just being really conscious about it. Let's do a quick update. I have a couple of questions for you on my update and then we can get into, hey, is calorie counting worth it? Like I heard somebody on a podcast the other day say calorie counting wasn't worth it. You're not going to be accurate. It's not gonna do anything for you. You should just eat. Eat and do what your body tells you to do. Let's. I wanna get into. Discuss that a little bit, see if that's, that's good advice or not. And. But I do have, we do have an update. So way back we started out this journey at 29.8% body fat. And we just did an update today. You're back from Brazil and body fat percentage was 26.9 down from 29.8% at the end of, at the start of 1st of November. And then. So what. How are you, how are you feeling about my progress there? [00:16:36] Speaker A: Yeah, I, I think that right now I'm, I'm less concerned about the body fat percentage though. I know that is one of the goals as I, I'm actually happier about just like where the weight loss is at because you're under £200. So I think psychologically I think that's a big win for you. So I think that's good to just acknowledge that and revel in that for like again. And in the. This is one. I mean that's one of the cool things about setting high goals, right? Is like when you set high goals and specific goals, it's like you get other things that you want as a byproduct of those goals. It's true in athletic endeavors. True. I think in business endeavors. Yeah, I guess that's true for you too. [00:17:19] Speaker B: Well, and the weight's down from 211.1 where we started to 198.6 as of today. And that's an afternoon weigh in so not a morning weigh in. There is something I am concerned about though. And, and, and back to the goal. So the goal was about around 174 pounds to at the end of this and around 15% body fat. So that was the goals we started with. It was a question I have for you. And of course this could just be the accuracy of the scale. But when I started back at the beginning of November, the scale said I had 140 pound 0.7 pounds of muscle mass. And today it said I had 137.9 pounds of muscle mass. So are you concerned about that at all? [00:18:01] Speaker A: No, I'm not. Number one, the scale that we're working with is exceedingly low quality as far as like its measuring abilities. So I taking that as, you know, is a fair approximation. But number two, I saw you today as far as like just looking at your muscularity, it's really looks really good. It looks better than it has in a long time. Like your arms are looking more cut than they have and you're commenting about being able to see veins and so. And you lifted my legs? Yeah, yeah. [00:18:36] Speaker B: Not my upper leg, but lower legs. [00:18:39] Speaker A: You lifted really heavy shit today. So, you know, I, I don't. It's not an overriding concern for me at this point. [00:18:49] Speaker B: Okay, what would be an overriding concern for you? Like if we're looking at like four weeks from now, like if it went down by how many pounds more, what would start to concern you? [00:18:59] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, the, the number one thing you have to understand is that you're gonna lose a little bit of mass. There's just no two ways about it. Right? Like it's just like it's. What did Matthew call it? He's like, it's like the Golden Rhino. Right. It's like. Or the White Rhino. You know, you. You want. You know, you want everything all at once. And so. [00:19:22] Speaker B: Right. [00:19:23] Speaker A: I, I'm not concerned about really any measurements of muscle loss as long as you're able to do the workouts. Honestly, like, I'm not the number. I'm not worried about the number as far as muscle loss. Like, unless it just became like, catastrophic where you, like lost 40 pounds of mass, then you're like, dying. [00:19:44] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:19:45] Speaker A: But as long as you're able to maintain the same workloads that we're doing and maybe even increase them like a slight. Did you're. Cause you're. At some point you're going to hit a little bit of a lag. But again, we're not starving you. So the idea is for you to be able to have like, marginally higher or at least even just keeping. Maintaining the workloads as the calories and weight goes down and down. Because on the inverse side, what we know that Dan doesn't have a problem with is going to be gaining weight and eating food for exercise. [00:20:20] Speaker B: So if it's like, I love both of those things. [00:20:22] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:20:23] Speaker B: Not the gaining weight part. I love the eating food part. [00:20:26] Speaker A: Yeah. So I'm, I'm based on the work that we've done, I mean, over the course of the last 10 years and the work that we've done together over the course of the last year and a half that we've. Dylan did. I don't have general. So Dan, by nature is an obsessive person and gets into routines. And so you have the routine of lifting. So until such time that the amount that you're. The calorie deficit would be. You're like, oh, I just missed six workouts in a row. That would be more concerning to me more than any number on the scale. Loss for muscle mass. Because. Because I have faith in our ability to put. If we deem that you are somehow under muscle. I just don't. I just. You're lifting too heavy of things and doing too much of workload for that to be. For me to be a major concern. Again, not a medical professional. So if it started dropping precipitously or you're like, down £40, I'd be like, okay, we're not worried about anything. You need to go to a doctor and see if you have cancer. Like. But as far as. It's an excellent question as far as your observation and, you know, I mean, it is. It is a number to watch. It becomes catastrophic but if you lose, you know, another eight pounds. If it says you lose another eight pounds of muscle mass, number one, I'm more just because, like, again, the, the gold standards are still, you know, the dex skins and, and is like calipers. [00:21:56] Speaker B: Right. [00:21:56] Speaker A: And what is calipers? They literally just take the skin and they just measure it. [00:22:00] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:22:01] Speaker A: You know, with the, the, the measuring tools that they have. I mean, that's a visual check. Right. Like I can tell visually when someone is muscular or not. I'm going to be able to tell visually if you're anemic or not. Are you looking flat or not? Does it look like, you know, your arms are losing, you know, you know, fat, or does it look like they're losing overall size? [00:22:28] Speaker B: Yep. Well, and it was the question. I mean, and technically, too, looking at this, right, if I've lost about 12 and a half pounds, I say about. If I've lost 12 and a half pounds and 2.7 pounds are supposedly based on the scale of muscle, that means the rest of that, you know, 12 and a half. So what about 10 pounds has been fat and water. Right. Yeah. [00:22:53] Speaker A: So pretty solid ratio. That's a pretty like, you know, if you're looking at, I don't know if you want to name names at this moment in time, but if you're looking at certain pharmaceutical products that are going to be making people lose weight, there are reports that that certain mainstream pharmaceutical. [00:23:10] Speaker B: They're called GLP1s. Just call them what they are assuming. [00:23:13] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. GLP1s are. Have. From reports that I've seen, have, have had people whose inward up to 60% of their weight loss coming from lean muscle mass, which in fact is far more catastrophic than a, you know, a two out of 12. Right. [00:23:30] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:23:31] Speaker A: Like you. That. That percentage is far more sustainable and healthy from my perspective. A 2 out of 12 as opposed to, you know, I mean, that would be like being like 8 out of 12. Right. Like, you're talking about over 50% of pure loss coming from lean muscle tissue. Yeah, that would concern. [00:23:48] Speaker B: Yeah. And yeah, bring it. You know, somebody sue us over GLP1s. I'd love to see that happen. I've watched, I've talked to pharmacists about GLP1s. They shake their heads. Literally shake their heads, right. They have to dispense them, but they're literally shaking their heads at people using them. Like, it's. I kind of feel like if, if you stumble onto this podcast. Cause you're like, abs at 50. What's that all about, you know, hey, I'm interested in hearing this, this journey. Please listen to the journey and, and reach out to, to Paul, right? Like, we will give you a workout that will, can benefit you. Like even if that workout is walking a couple miles a day, right? Like, would be far superior to, to taking a GLP1 except in extreme circumstances, right? Like, yeah, if you can't physically walk two miles a day and you're working up to that, then yeah, work with your healthcare professional and get that figured out. Right. And please do everything you can. We're not gonna tell you, oh no, you're terrible for taking a GLP one, but there are a lot of people out there that could benefit a lot more from walking outside in physical fitness and taking that GLP one. And we don't even know the long term side effects of GLP1s for weight loss yet, right? GLP1s weren't even for weight loss. They were for, for blood sugar management. [00:25:14] Speaker A: Yeah, I think, I think I heard Dr. Mike or something have a take on this where it's like, you don't want to deny yourself tools that clearly have, you know, justification to them. So like, clearly it can make people lose weight and we have a dire need for people to lose weight in this country. So, you know, I'll reserve judgment to see what the long term data says. But what I can tell you is from lived experience and pretty much everything I've ever seen in any physical activity or physical endeavor is there are no shortcuts that are sustainable. Like, you know, everyone pays a price, right. For people who take, you know, performance enhancing drugs, you know, they sometimes pay that price later on in life, but everything comes at a cost. Like if you are doing things other than just the hard work that it takes to build lean muscle, then, you know, your health problems long term are not going to be as strong as doing the hard work. Right? Like it's, you know, it's the, the hard thing is the thing that needs to be done and that's why it's called the hard thing, you know, is glib. Is that it? To say it's, you know, if it were easy, everyone would do it. But on the flip side of that, what is, what I can tell you when you get to the other side is barring some catastrophic event, you know, no one, nothing's going to take that away from you, right? Like once you put in the literal sweat equity to increase your muscle mass to be at a certain, you know, physical fitness level, you make the changes, you make It a habit of your life. You know, then you, you can, you can, you know, let go a little bit and you don't have to. I mean, getting into, you know, our, our discussion that we're leading up to as far as down calories, but you're, you're doing the work to where you have edifice, you have the, the framework of your body set forward for success. Of course anything could happen. But, you know, you've taken the consistent over time, month to month, year to year to build your body up. And so that's not just gonna go away. It's not just gonna go away. And I, and I have met so many people that, that should try to take steroids, right? Like, like high amounts of steroids. And they're like, you know, I just have never, I, you know, I'm not half as strong as when I'm, you know, on a cycle or something. And I'm like, yeah, it's because you didn't earn it. Right? Your body can't lift that weight because your body can't lift that weight without potential drugs. [00:27:54] Speaker B: Right. [00:27:54] Speaker A: Like for me, I can take tyle off from lifting because I go through cycles of heavy lifting, hypertrophy lifting, rehab, prehab, you know, depending on what my goals are. But I can go back to it and I can build back up my bench press in, you know, weeks, a month because I spent years of consistent time, you know, lifting and training and staying in shape and taking a little bit of time off of any one thing that would diminish my ability to do those things because I did it the hard way. And could I, you know, would I be, you know, five times stronger if I'd been taking steroids the last 10 years? Yeah, sure, maybe I'd be lifting 900 pounds, but it wouldn't do me any good for anything that I want to accomplish both long term, health wise and in, you know, in my athletic endeavors. [00:28:41] Speaker B: Well, I think that might be a good discussion for a different podcast though. Low dose trt, high dose steroids, right? Like, what's working? Cause you were talking about the tools too, right? [00:28:53] Speaker A: Sure, yeah. Yeah, I, I definitely think we can, we can table that discussion for the future. Which is not to say that at 70 years old, I'm not going to take care of steroids. [00:29:03] Speaker B: What we're or at 50. But I'm certainly, yeah, I'm, I'm on low dose TRT. I'll disclose that to folks right now. Right. But I'm not on high dose anything, so. [00:29:16] Speaker A: No, and, and you know, I think, you know, you know, I discussed the fact that you, you know, you've had low test cell levels for, For a while, and, and there, there is a legitimate need for that in this country. And, and I think people should get regular blood work and, and see what their TRT levels are. And if they're bl. Go normal. I'm all in favor of. I mean, it's no different than it's a hormone. It's no different than any other hormone. It's no different than any other nutrients. If you, you know, if you do, if you don't have enough vitamin D, I would say you should supplement some vitamin D. If you, you know, if. [00:29:46] Speaker B: You do that too. [00:29:47] Speaker A: Yeah. If you don't have, you know, I think everyone should be taking creatine. So if you're not taking creatine, you should be taking creatine. Um, you know, it, you know, for thick wealth or whatever it is. I think you want to get to proper ranges of what is designated as medically healthy physiological doses of everything. I mean, that, that is optimality. You're trying to have an optimal life, you're trying to have an optimal balance, and you want to have an optimal. Of all this, including, you know, for both men and women. Right, Men and women, and also need to have proper test and learn a lot of things. And you can get all in different kind of discussions as far as, you know, physiological, sociological, whether it's our fruit, the environment, whatever it is that's causing mainly men to have. I mean, that. That's essentially you can take, you know, judicial notice, as we would say, with this. The fact that men's testosterone levels have been measured as going down below last 30 years. So there's all different kinds of, you know, confounding issues to that. [00:30:56] Speaker B: But, well, you can also use them in different ways. And like I said, let's do that as a separate podcast. But I will just say, like, I, I want to summarize too, and just say, you know, you could abuse that the same way you could abuse a GLP1 or anything else. Right. Like, you can. You were talking about people that, you know, that take, you know, all sorts of steroids to just get shredded for whatever. Right? [00:31:20] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:31:21] Speaker B: But there's also the abuse of taking it to, quote, unquote, feel better. Right. But not training. So there's the flip side of that too. Oh, well, I need a TRT supplement because it makes me feel better and it makes me feel more attractive and I have more confidence. Okay, cool. I don't Know what the purpose of that is? Right? Yeah, I feel like there's other medications designed for that that are probably better for you if you're getting into that. I'm also not a medical provider, so. [00:31:57] Speaker A: Yeah, aura or there's a lot of things it could be, you know, people have mental health issues, could be that there are other hormones that are out of balance. So testosterone can just generally make you feel better in the moment. But it all has to be weighed against keeping your, I mean you don't want to especially. I think we'll take this moment to speak to young men as someone who was a young man, was not particularly happy with their size or physical prowess, which is you could do long term irreparable harm to your body if you started using high levels of testosterone and steroids at a young age. And so I would discourage you from doing that. It sucks because you can't look the way you want to look in this moment in time. But if you take the years and it might be a decade worth of time to actually earn the body that you're going to have, you can live along and cause the aggressive life as opposed to sacrificing, you know, the last 20 years of your health span to try to look the way you wanna look now. But for some. [00:33:12] Speaker B: Well, let's talk about that too. Right? So that's a good transition into the calorie piece, right. And so when we started this we, we used two calculations, right? We used the scale but we also used, calculated my basal metabolic rate. We figured out with the amount of training that I do and obviously it's not gonna be static every single day. Cuz I train at different levels, different days, but on average I need 2,800 a day to maintain my body weight. And so we've got, then got the calculation of 18 to 2200 calories a day to lose.07% of my body weight each week. So that's where we're sitting and we. I like I said I heard, you know, the other day. Oh well and I've heard this other times too. Like. Well you don't really need to worry about counting your calories because you're not gonna be accurate and you should just do what your body wants. And now I want to be really clear. I know the folks that are talking about that aren't talking about say like intuitive eating. That's, that's a whole nother community that I'm not even gonna get into because one, if I say anything bad about it, I'm gonna have 5,000 people flaming me. But. And so then I'm automatically gonna say something about it. I don't believe in that. I don't think it works personally for me. Intuitive eating, like means that I eat when I'm hungry. Let me tell you, if I eat when I'm hungry, I'm going to eat everything. The amount of chocolate that I can eat is amazing. I have, you've seen me on days where I'm just insane and just want every piece of food in the, in the building, right? Yeah, I think, I think that, that, that doesn't work for me. I'm just gonna be real clear. Intuitive eating is an out that does not work for me. [00:35:06] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, at the base level, you know, to be the lawyer in the realm is, you know, you start with understanding your definition. So like we always talk about calories, but like I always go back and. [00:35:20] Speaker B: What is a calorie? [00:35:21] Speaker A: Calories is a, it's a unit of measurement of energy, right? Essentially to, you know, the chemical energy needed to raise, you know, one gram of water by one degree centigrade. [00:35:34] Speaker B: Right? [00:35:34] Speaker A: Like that's, that's all it is. It's just a definition of a unit of measurement of energy. Okay? So we are biological beings and we take in, you know, chemical subs, you know, sustenance in order to generate chemical reactions. And that is governed by something we call calories. So a calorie is just a measurement of how much energy something has. And the number one, I mean it is almost reductionist to say that the number one cause of obesity is an excess of energy. Right? Your body cannot process the amount of energy that you are taking in for any number of reasons. Could be you're overeating. That's the most likely culprit, right? Because we live particularly in America, I mean, it's just ridiculous of how food rich of an environment that we have. There are calories, highly processed, sugary, carbohydrate based calories, oftentimes devoid of essential nutrients. And every turn in America, all over the place, all the time. That's the environment that we live in. The other thing is we have, I mean, it got even worse during COVID Covid did no favors to anyone when it came to physical activity levels. But we have a very sedentary lifestyle and it starts from childhood. Kids are far less active today than they ever did. Right? And we talk about, you know, the difference in sociology and environments where it's like, you know, latke kids versus, you know, where, you know, can't Kids go out to play like they used to before, um, I mean, and again, you have a whole generation of kids that are growing up in the, in the post, you know, Covid era and they never learned to go out and play because it was literally forbidden in many parts of the United States. [00:37:23] Speaker B: Yep. [00:37:24] Speaker A: And so the notion that you should not count your calories because your body will just tell you what you need, I think is, doesn't seem to me to have any basis in reality. I, I don't know of any study that has ever supported such a doctor. If anyone finds one, feel free to send it to me, I'll read it. But my, my general premise is this and I challenge anyone to come up with a better premise, which is to say that the environment in which we live in America, which demonstrably has the highest levels of obesity we have seen in human history, is because we are out of touch with what our bodies are telling us. We're out of touch with the, this sensation of being full. We eat too much, we eat past being full. We're out of sensations of whether or not we're hydrated. We are just generally, as a people are not very attuned who are unfit. Like, if you have spent your entire life being unfit, your parents were unfit, you grew up in a household where everyone was unfit, you don't know what it means to be fit. Again, that's not necessarily your fault, and likely not your fault because you working culture or in a family that promoted those things. But you don't know what it's like to be properly hydrated, to do a, you know, to do a half marathon or to, you know, lift for three hours or to, you know, climb 15 miles up a mountain, right? Like you've never done those things. So how could you possibly be in tune with what your body needs to accomplish those things? [00:38:59] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:39:00] Speaker A: And at the same time, if you're consuming, you know, the, the amount of calories you need to climb a mountain, and you've never climbed a mountain, then you're out of balance in the, you know, the energy calculation that you need in order to have a, a well balanced lifestyle. You're, you're out of balance. And so the only way, you know, I, this is something that I've been just studying more and more and more. Every book I've read, many of the books up there, many of the books I've listened to, right? Is like when it comes to business, right? Like if you can't measure it, right, Then you can't manipulate it, right? Like I can't, I can't measure what my marketing is doing for my businesses and I can't manipulate it. I can't make changes for the better. And you know, I think that is just the same that the average American who has never counted calories before doesn't actually have a good sense of how many calories are in anything that they're eating, even if they're reading packages. Right. Because packages are in themselves can be misleading. [00:40:02] Speaker B: Right. [00:40:03] Speaker A: It'll be like, you know, oh, it's 130 calories for one fourth of a, of a serving. And it's like, who eats one fourth of a whole day back? Like, like, I don't know, like that I'm, that I'm measuring it. [00:40:16] Speaker B: I was, I, I made a meatloaf tonight and I use pork rinds in the meatloaf instead of using breadcrumbs a lot of times. So I'll grind them up. Do you know how many servings are in that little light weight bag of pork rinds? [00:40:32] Speaker A: I don't know. [00:40:33] Speaker B: Six, Six to eight. [00:40:35] Speaker A: Six to eight? [00:40:36] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And like, pork rinds don't weigh anything. Right. So you could easily eat half that bag, you know, like. And yeah, to Paul's point too, I think, I think it's easy. It almost, I don't want to say it does kind of come from a privileged position, though. I don't want to get into privilege too much. But for somebody who has no, has the knowledge Paul's discussing to say, oh, well, I don't count my calories because I'm super familiar with what I eat. Well, yeah, like, I can tell you right now because I'm familiar with like cooking at home and eating that. If I eat a four egg omelet with a piece of cheese in the morning, that goes in the omelette. And then I eat some chicken and rice for lunch, and then I eat a small steak and some pineapple and some greens for dinner. I know I'm going to be under my calorie threshold. That also doesn't mean I'm not counting the calories. Like, I may not be weighing them. It may not be. Exactly. But I'm looking at the food and saying, okay, yeah, like, but where that gets really dangerous to your point is like chicken and rice, right. Like, a hundred grams of rice is about all you should eat with a meal most of the time. And you're looking at chicken on top of that, man, you could easily scoop more rice and end up with, you know, 4 or 500 calories. Of rice in your bowl instead of a couple hundred calories of rice easily, you know, that's where. That's where weighing comes in. So what we did for this is I have a scale that I use to ship things, but it also works for. It's got batteries in it. Do you remember how long it took me to figure out I needed I could use my scale with batteries and not the. The cord? [00:42:25] Speaker A: Five years. [00:42:27] Speaker B: Was it really five years? I mean, that seems like a long time. [00:42:30] Speaker A: You already got the last house that we owned. [00:42:34] Speaker B: And then I like. And I was like, oh, I broke the cord. Oh, wait a minute. You can put batteries down here. Oh, that would make things a lot easier. I can move the scale wherever I want to put packages on it. Yeah, well, it's really nice in the kitchen because I can just move it around the kitchen, Right. So, you know, I'm not tied to a wall. So you can get a little battery scale. I'm. I mean, I. I'm not endorsing any particular scale, but this one is also great because you can set things on it when you turn it on, and it weighs the container. So, like, if I'm piling things onto a plate, for example, I can start out with the plate, right. Add chicken, and then restart it and add the next thing, and it always resets to zero. Right. So I can keep building a plate full of food that makes it really easy to measure your food. So I highly recommend a scale that will zero out with whatever you start with. Right. So if you've got a plate on there, then you can just keep adding to it. But I think the big thing about doing the food tracking for me is, you know, when I'm weighing it, there's no lies. And for me, I'm also a grazer. So when I'm weighing, there's no grazing. [00:43:47] Speaker A: Yeah, I think. I think the other thing is, so, number one, I mean, there's just. Just tons and tons of data, oodles of data from epidemiological studies that show that, you know, there's like, one natural Health nutrition examination survey that shows over 40 years that anywhere from 58% of men, 67% of women made. They essentially made calorie estimations that were not plausible or not credible. Right. So it's just like, there's just, um. And I think that just, you know, humans do have, like, in the grand scheme, humans have good general intuition, but when it comes to minutia, we have terrible intuition. That's why we had to develop mathematics that was One thing I was thinking about when you were talking about is, like, well, it's just gonna be an approximation. But that is what mathematics is, right? Like, that's what every measurement that every human being has ever made should have. You know, the two squiggly lines that they have for. For mathematics and the approximation. That's what it is. Like when you're measuring something, like, you know, you're measuring it in, like, meatloaf, 630 grams. But it's not 630 grams. It's 630.1027 to, you know, 90th. Yeah, decimal point. But that's not practical. And that. That's not how we measure things, right? I mean, now that we're in the age of quantum computing, and maybe there's something out there that can scare a piece of chicken and tell you down to the absolute molecular level, to the 9 millionth decimal point, exactly how much it is. But that doesn't have any utility as far as informing me any more than 650. 30 even is right. But 630 is very useful to me if. I don't know. I was thinking about it like, you and cashews, right? How much, like, you just can devour a bag of cashews. But so I want, like, an experiment people could do is get a little scale, and then without looking at the bag, without thinking about anything, guess, take a handful of cashews and get. Guess how many calories are in and measure it exactly. And then get the exact measurement. And I am almost assured that you're gonna. It's just things like that and that again, to do the Billy Bean line, right? Like, that then matters in the aggregate, right? Because if every time you're making a choice and you think you're eating 30 calories, but you're eating 90 calories, you're off by, you know, times three, right? Like, you're off by a factor three. And so if you're off. [00:46:32] Speaker B: But I had the experience the other night, so I buy big packs of chicken thighs, right? And we'll make them. And those are usually bigger chicken thighs, right? Like when you're buying them from the store than when you get. When you say, go to a restaurant and get fried chicken, right, Usually. [00:46:49] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And, well, that's the thing, too, is, like, you know, you have the locus of control when you're eating at home, too. So, I mean, that's gonna be a surefire way for you to just reduce your calories. Because, I mean, I mean, I think, like, if you're at, like, McDonald's or something that they. They have enough liability these days that they're probably pretty accurate on their calorie counts. But, like, if you go down, like, your local Mexican restaurant and they tell you something, I mean, I. I don't know that you could trust that. I don't know that's their fault. I don't know that they have good mechanisms to be like, yeah, it's seven calories. [00:47:24] Speaker B: And let's talk about how to not trust it, though. I think this is where the. It's not intuitive, but this is where learning what you eat and being able to visually check something starts to become very valuable to you, right? So the other night, I'm at game night with my friends, and they're like, what can Dan eat? Well, they ordered fried chicken, right? So, you know, maybe the skin's not perfect for me, but fine, we got fried chicken. That's definitely something that's gonna be healthier fried me than getting a lot of different meals, right? So, you know, I eat three pieces of chicken, and I go into the little calculator that we use. We're using Fat Secret right now, mostly because it's free mode is probably the best free mode we've found so far. Is that a fair. [00:48:06] Speaker A: It's pretty good. [00:48:07] Speaker B: I used to use a different calorie counter, which I won't name, but they got bought out by Under Armour, so I'm sure everybody will figure it out really quickly. And, like, all the apps that got bought out by Under Armour, they were terrible afterwards. [00:48:17] Speaker A: Afterwards. [00:48:18] Speaker B: So Under Armour, please sponsor us. So the. But I ate, you know, two. I ate a chicken thigh, a chicken wing, and a chicken leg. But they're all small. And so I. I throw. You know, I didn't weigh them out, right? I'm at a friend's house. But I throw them into the calculator. Like, small chicken thigh, small chicken. You know, it's telling me chicken wing. And I was like, I need to eat two more pieces of chicken. Because, like, I added up everything, and I was like. And I'm doing the visual checks too. Like, yeah, that's not one of the big, giant chicken thighs I'm making at home, right? Like, it's naturally smaller, but you're doing the visual checks. And I was like, oh, wow, I have to eat two more piece of chicken. Well, here's the thing, too. What if, hypothetically, if I'm going between 18 to 2200 calories and I eat two more pieces of chicken, and those pieces of chicken range between 150 and 300 calories. Right. Each. And I know that. What happens if I accidentally go to 2,300 calories for the day? [00:49:22] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, if it's on any single day, probably nothing. [00:49:25] Speaker B: Nothing. Yeah. [00:49:26] Speaker A: And. And depending on the workload that you have to the day, it actually could be potentially be controlled because we all spend that in. Again, if you're eating even fried chicken, it's gonna have at least some protein in it. We know that at a resting rate, lean muscle mass is provided by protein, and lean muscle mass produce more calories throughout the day. So again, that's another thing that in the aggregate is just gonna make those changes. Right. Or lean muscle mass that you have. I mean, it's not a crazy amount, but it is a statistically significant amount of higher calories that we burned. And you're resting metabolic rate. And so, yeah, I. I think, you know, our. Our discussion that we were having earlier, before this and should make sense to people is it has to do with calibration. Right. And ranges is, number one, you are learning. I mean, so if you've never done any of these things before, you're like, oh, I've tried everything to lose weight, but you haven't done any of these steps. Certainly haven't done your. You can to try to lose weight. But the other thing is. Yeah, I just. You. It's like in jiu jitsu, right? It's like if you're a white belt or something, you shouldn't trust your intuitions on anything. Right. And so, yeah, this is just to recalibrate or to just calibrate. Maybe it's not even recalibrating. You just don't have good intuition as to how much calories are actually in things. And then over time, you build a, you know, a good pattern recognition of knowing, like, oh, I have a pretty good idea of how many calories are in something. Then you can back off of having to measure maybe so much. But you think if you start gaining weight or something happens, then you probably have to recalibrate again. You probably have to start measuring again because you're like, oh, it turns out, you know, when I stopped tracking, you know, I started letting myself have, you know, for me, it's like a peanut butter sandwich at night, right? Like, often. And when I have to eat the weight and worry about sleeping coming out, so that's the first thing I gotta expect. So, like, okay, I'm making an extra, you know, 350 calories at night that I just don't need or that aren't, you know, that aren't serving my purposes as much or whatever, right? And you can do that. And you just ended up with everything you do with your life with, you know, candy, cookies, drink, you know, going back and drinking soda, right? Oh, I added a Coca Cola back in, and you stop measuring it, and you're like, oh, I forgot I had a Coke this morning and I had a Dr. Pepper this afternoon, or whatever. The three I had cough. You know, I went and got Starbucks, which are large sugar bombs, and many of the things that they make, right? That was 600 calories. And then I had a, you know, another drink or a glass of wine or whatever it is, right? And you're just. You're not measuring it, and so you're like, oh, I forgot that I had that this morning. So you forgot that you had an extra 600 calories, right? Well, if you do that 10 times, that's an extra 6,000 calories that you've taken in over the course of, you know, weeks and months. It's again, all those things out. [00:52:29] Speaker B: Well, and what I would say, too, is, you know, I'm. I'm kind of kicking myself a little bit. I've had the scale here. You know, people say, oh, it's such a pain to measure my. To weight the food out. It really isn't. Yeah, set the plate on the scale, you add one thing, you 0 out the scale, you add another thing, you 0 out the scale,. You add another thing. It takes a minute. It is not time consuming to weigh out your food. I just don't want to take the time to weigh out my food. Yeah, that's a myth. Let's dispel that myth right now. It doesn't take any time to weigh out your food. When you're eating at home, I would almost say, why not just do that, right? Like, when you're looking at a meal at home, if you've made the food just it out, like, it's not hard to do, and put it in some sort of tracker that taste take. It takes a minute, right? It's not a even time consuming. And even I've been putting recipes into the thing, and as I'm making the food, I write out everything I put in there. So I'm not even trying to play with the app right then, right? I'm just writing out, hey, this is what's going into the recipe. And then I go put it in the tracker when I'm done, right? So I'll go sit watching tv, whatever. I can sit there and put the food into the tracker. It takes no time to do it, so it's really easy. And that gets you the discipline to. And, and knowledge. It's not just discipline, but discipline and knowledge to when you're eating or when you're doing something else. To look and be realistic about what you're doing and to be semi accurate. Because that was kind of the point of the other person. I heard too, well, don't bother to track because you're not going to be accurate anyway. And you were already hitting on this too, like it's, that's fine, but I'd rather be close. I listened to a financial. And you are. You mentioned metrics already too. I listened to a financial podcast called Afford Anything by Paula Pant. Really great financial podcast, if you're into that. It's all about metrics and her mantra, her podcast called Afford Anything. But her mantra is you can afford every. Anything you can afford. I almost messed it up. You can afford anything, but not everything. And I'm going to say the same thing about this journey too. I can eat anything, but not everything. So let's circle back to that to kind of conclude the discussion on calories, right? If I'm looking for my calories during the day, and it was the weekend and our roommate was like, Dan, I really want a hamburger and a milkshake and some french fries. And I had been eating for the day and so I looked and said, you know what, I bet I could do that today. So I looked and I could. And yeah, I did weigh my french fries when they got home. That's the only thing I weighed. You know, I had like a 10 ounce milkshake and a burger, right. I didn't even try to raid the burger. I just looked up burger on the app, right? And burger with vegetables on the app. Put it in so you can do that. Is my calorie count for that day gonna be a hundred percent accurate? No, but it's gonna be a close approximation to what I ate for the day. And that's fine. You don't need to be exact every single day. But you do need to have that knowledge, right? And the same thing, like it'd be crazy for somebody to say, of course I, I know people do it. I, I have friends that do it. But like crazy to say, like, oh, well, I don't really track my money because I don't need to because there'll just always be money there. Can you imagine just somebody. I mean, unless you are independently Wealthy or a trust fund baby. There's not always just money there. Like, you have to make a conscious effort in some way to track that spending. Now, am I recommending that you, you know, have a ledger for every penny you spend? No, not after you get familiar with money. I'm going to make the same argument. Right. Once you're familiar with the money you bring in each month and the amount you spend. Well, yeah, I mean, you don't need to keep a ledger of everything you're spending because the bank's going to do that for you. We have lots of tools that do that for you now. But when you're starting, if you're in debt, if you're starting that journey, you should absolutely keep keeping a ledger of everything you're spending. Whether that's like an envelope system saying, I get this much for this thing each month, or that is a concentrated check in your bank account literally every day. Like tallying up at the end of the day. I spent this, this and this. You should absolutely be doing that when you start. And if you're setting a money goal, Right, So I guess it's not weight loss, it's money gain. Right? In that case, we want to gain. But if you're trying to eliminate debt and you're saying, my goal for this month is TO I have $10,000 in debt, and my goal each month is to eliminate a thousand dollars of that debt, you better be tracking what you spend. It won't work in the same way. Why would we ignore that? With fitness, that principle still applies. So we could have business metrics like you talked about. I certainly measure everything in my job, too. It could be your personal finance metrics. Why would you then say, oh, I'm not gonna do that for my fitness? If you, you know, want to get to a certain goal, and if you don't, that's cool, too. But I mean, we would encourage you to get into that journey. Why not get into that goal with us? I mean, you know, and the Fat Secret Secret app is really easy to use if you have some. The one thing I will say about those apps, here is my one gripe about the apps. I think for beginners using the apps, it does encourage them to scan barcodes. I don't be tricked into that. You can look up onion and just pick an onion, right? And put it in there. You don't have to like scan barcodes for everything. [00:58:14] Speaker A: Yeah, he has 96 drinking something or something package. [00:58:19] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I think the barcode feature is nice. I just don't want people to get locked into. The easiest way to measure is with the barcode. And that's all I should do, because then you're just buying prepackaged food, which is kind of defeats the whole purpose of the beginning of the discussion. Right, but you're. Yeah, but you know my. And my argument be, why not? Right. You do it in other areas of life. It only takes a couple minutes. Track it, and you're gonna be better off. And quite frankly, I'm happy. And we've been laughing about this a little bit. I've found days at the end of the day where I've looked at you and said, I need to eat 300 more calories. What do you want me to eat? Yeah, and that's weird. That's a weird position to be in, too. [00:59:08] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, I think the biggest thing for you, too, is. Well, I guess I'll ask you. Is that during this process, have you been feeling like you're. Like you're starving, like you're outgrading? [00:59:17] Speaker B: No. Yeah, that's the weird thing, because I think you're consciously thinking about foods, too. Right. And I've been eating really good meals. I mean, we're looking at, like, a ribeye steak. I took a picture of one. It was like a ribeye steak, rice, and pineapple. That's really good food I'm eating at the end of the day. You know, I love fresh pineapple. I know. Not everybody does. There are some fruits I hate, like, that you probably could benefit from. Melon is really fantastic for filling your stomach. I don't like it, so I don't eat it. But a lot of people like melon. And, you know, there are good fruits and like, Paul was talking about with fiber and. No, I don't feel calorie deprived now. I will say I did hit a wall. Was it Wednesday when we. Or was that. No, it was yesterday. We lifted. You had me riding the assault bike. I hate you. And those things are the devil. I don't know. Anyway, but we had a pretty tough workout yesterday. Would you say, like, it wasn't. It wasn't tough, but it wasn't an easy workout. [01:00:23] Speaker A: Yeah, it was good. [01:00:24] Speaker B: And, you know, I got home and I'd only had. I made some stew in the morning for lunch, and I'd had that stew, and I'd only had, like, 500 calories in me for the day, and I got home and felt like I was about to die, and, you know, made four eggs and, you know, immediately ate. Right. So I. I Won't say a hundred percent of the time. I've always felt full. Right. I've made some mistakes or you know, with the best intention. Right. The, the soup was great. Like it was two and a half pounds of beef in the soup and you know, vegetables and everything really healthy. But you know, it didn't give me enough calories, right. So there are a couple of times where the soup made me feel full cuz it's got the water and broth component but I need, needed more calories. So there were a couple times, I will say, like where I did need more calories and I didn't feel like eating them, if that makes sense because of the food choices I was making. [01:01:22] Speaker A: Yeah, but I think that's a better problem to have is like you're eating. I think that's the other thing too is you are more conscious about getting the most out of your calories, but you're also eating things that are filler. Right. Like you're killing comes from the fact that you're more nutrient dense. [01:01:40] Speaker B: Right. [01:01:41] Speaker A: Like more nutrient dense, high fiber, high protein. Ribeyes, things like that, they're more satiating, right. And so you're, you're reinforcing that feedback system where it's like you're eating the right things you're tracking. So you know, okay, I can eat even more. And then at the end of the day you're like, okay, I, I've hit all my macros, I've done everything I need to do now. I can have, you know, a little bit of whatever. It's not that, it's not information. It's like, yeah, you can have, I don't know, whatever I was doing. Like you have a bagel. Yeah, that's not gonna kill you because you hit, you've accomplished all the other goals that you set out to do throughout the day. Um, but I think that's again, that's what you're getting from tracking, right, Is like you have a daily goal and it's not even a big deal, it's just like, yeah, I want to get 50% of my calories from protein. Right. Like, that's not, that's not like even a crazy goal. That's not. I mean it's doable for everyone, but you have to be conscious about it because. Yeah, I mean it's just, it's just too easy to just be like, oh, I. Well, you know, I went to lunch and I had a sandwich so I got some good protein there. But then I ate, you know, a whole Bag of chips and I had a soda and I was like, okay, well then you ate 900 calories that didn't get. I mean, at the end, they didn't give you any protein, right? And that's really a baseline of. Of what people are probably undernourished with is they're probably not getting enough protein. Diets know it, and they don't know it because they're not measuring. Like, they're like, I. I had that realization four days ago. I was like, I just. Was like, I'm just gonna try. When I first started tracking, I was like, I'm just gonna track like, what I've been eating when I haven't been day intention. Like, just like, I eat whatever I want. And I got to the end of the day and I was like, oh, I only have a hundred grams of protein. I was like, that's my problem. And, and for a lot of people, they're not even getting close to a hundred grams of protein, right? Like, they're not. They. They. You know, I'm consciously trying to take in protein. I didn't have a protein shake that day. And so I was like, oh, no. And I got to the end of the day and I was like, do I want a protein shake or do I want this peanut butter sandwich? Or she saw the peanut butter sandwich one out, but. Cause I only had like 300 calories left of the day. Um, and again, this is a decision that I made. Um, and I may have fallen a little bit short on my protein goal, but I still heal probably like 130 grams of protein, which again, is low for what I want and need, but is probably significantly higher than protein. You know, 80% of people are getting in their diet. Like, I think most people would probably be very surprised how little protein they're getting. So that's the great thing about this particular app. That's your secret app. It's just at the bottom, it's just got a nice little chart that just outlines it for you. It gives you all the percentages when you're tracking, right? Again, you give it through approximation. You get an approximate understanding of like, oh, I. You know, for that day, I think I got 50% of my calories from. From carbs. It only like 35% from protein. And I was like, oh, no, I gotta change that ratio. I wanna accomplish what I wanna accomplish right now. I gotta change that ratio. And so that's just like, the first thing that gives me an indication of, like, what to focus on. [01:04:56] Speaker B: I would say when people start and let's get, I think in the next one of the next couple of podcasts, let's start talking about like protein intake and why you would take in more protein routine and, and what your goals are. But I would say if I could teach any, anybody a lesson from right now, obviously we want people to take in protein. Right. We want good ratios. I think the, the Fat Secret app defaults you. It's not a great ratio to me, honestly, for what we're doing, but I think it's a great ratio for an average person getting started. Right, Right. Isn't there like 50% carbs almost on their automated goal? I'd have to look it up. I don't want to try to dive into it right now, but, but get there and it will kind of highlight red and areas for you. You know, if you're getting started on this, just get started on the calories, start figuring that out for a couple weeks and then start adjusting the macros. Right. So get used to eating the right amount of calories for you and then go from there. What I also wanna say too is don't go insane. Don't try to like, just, you know, you need to figure out your basal metabolic rate and figure out how many calories you need each day. Mine has changed substantially from when we started. Remember when we started, mine was 12 to 1500 need. And now it's 18 to 2200. I mean, that's because my body composition has changed. I have more muscle, I burn, burn more fat and just sitting than I used to. I didn't have any muscle when we started. So when we started it was 12 to 1500. Right. If I remember correctly, that was like 10 years ago. [01:06:38] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:06:39] Speaker B: And now that I will admit, was a little bit more difficult. Like 1500 was a bit of a challenge. But once we started losing weight, then, wow, you know, I could almost eat whatever I wanted for a while. So that will move around and it will age, will impact that for you. Like, there's different factors, but, you know, we're definitely not telling you, for heaven's sake, don't starve yourself. Right? Do not starve yourself. Eat good things. That's what we're asking you to do. Eat anything you want. Right. Within reason. Eat it. Eat everything. You know, afford or eat anything. I'll use Paula pants line again. Right? Eat anything. Just not everything. And you, as long as you can fit it into your matrix for the day, enjoy your food. And the last thing I would say, don't get into a negative relationship with Food. Right. You know, I do think the intuitive eating community has one thing going for it with their mantra is they want. They're trying to teach people not to have a negative relationship with food, right? [01:07:43] Speaker A: Yep. [01:07:44] Speaker B: And you shouldn't. Don't think. I've had a friend say, oh, if I train, this is actually with Dylan. So they were like, oh, I should go train with Dylan. But is Dylan gonna tell me what to eat? And I'm like, yeah, Dylan's gonna tell you what to eat. Like, Dylan's not gonna tell you what to eat, but he's gonna tell you how to eat. Oh, I don't wanna do that because I don't wanna be told how to eat. And it's like, I think peop. Well, you, you had that face. But people do have a hang up with that. Right. I don't think food is one thing that people control. Like they. A lot of times people don't wanna be told how to eat. Right. Or what. They want you to be told what to eat. And they think when you're telling them how to eat, you're telling them what to eat. And we're not telling you what to eat, we're telling you to eat, you know, 50, you know, whatever your calorie count is, in my case, 18 to 2200 calories. And then fit the things into that schedule. And if most of the time you hit your protein goal or you set sub goals, that's fine. There might be. There's gonna be a day when I don't hit a protein goal and that's okay. But I'm gonna continue to lose weight and I'm gonna continue to get toward the body fat percentage I want. As long as I'm staying under that calorie threshold. If you remember that, you're gonna be in good shape. You have anything else to add to that piece? [01:09:01] Speaker A: No. [01:09:04] Speaker B: Well, let's wrap this up then. So this was our discussion on calories and obviously we did a little update earlier in the episode. So we'll keep giving you the updates on how I'm doing as things go on and. Yeah, and we'll probably, you know, if you have a topic you want us to talk about, let us know. But. And you can let us know on lots of different ways. You can let us know on Facebook, you can let us know on X. As long as we stay there, you can let us know on Blue Sky. I might just get mad and get rid of X someday, Paul. Right. At some point I'll get annoyed. I don't know and maybe you know what, though, X, if you want to sponsor us, Paul and I would both appreciate free Teslas. [01:09:44] Speaker A: Yes, I will take a free Tesla. [01:09:46] Speaker B: We will take a free one. I'm not paying for one, but I will happily take a free one. We're also on Instagram, we're on YouTube. So you can find us if you want to listen to podcasts on YouTube or any of the podcast ways, Apple podcasts, podcast, Attic, whatever that is. So you'll find us there, you know, like us, or follow us on whatever app you have that helps us out and helps us understand where you're at. And then if you want to reach me, you can reach [email protected] and if you have a question topic you want us to discuss, if you want to learn about fat secret, if you want a link, if you just want to reach out to somebody, hey, that's fine. Connect us on the journey. So that's it. Paul, do you have any. I don't think you had any plugs last time. You have anything to plug besides go to certified martial arts or certified jiu jitsu at 27th and Bridgeport, slash Jackson in University Place slash Tacoma. And he's got the shirt on. You can play with him. [01:10:43] Speaker A: Yeah, nothing to plug other than right now. Yeah. If you're following us on YouTube, you can follow one of our various YouTube channels. Certified Jiu Jitsu on YouTube as well. Check out my, Check out all my instructional videos. [01:11:01] Speaker B: There you go. And if you and. And Paul will happily, like, Paul will happily negotiate with you on a pricing structure to get you in shape too. So if you want to train with Paul. But the, the great thing about Paul's gym is if you want to train with Paul, you could pay Paul for personal training, but his gym is a flat fee. So if you go to his gym and you're in the third Seattle Tacoma area, you pay a monthly fee and you have access to all of the classes at the gym. So you have access to striking, you have access to jiu jitsu. And then if you want to set up some personal training with Paul, he'll put you through training like he does with me, like carrying heavy sandbags around the gym. Good, bad, you won't start there, but eventually you'll get there. I definitely didn't start there, but geez, I don't think you thought I was going to get done today. [01:11:50] Speaker A: You. You struggled today. I'll be honest. You never struggling today. Hey, look, I went back to back because you were. Cause I was out of Town. [01:12:01] Speaker B: But I did go. I did move the sandbags across your gym twice in an hour. So that's what I normally do. So no easy. [01:12:10] Speaker A: So if anyone thinks that's easy, come try it. [01:12:12] Speaker B: You didn't see it at the end, but I did get the 200 pound sandbag lifted up. I only drug it across once. I carried it on the way back on the last round. Very proud of myself. But, yeah, it's. But there's a lot of different ways. We do functional training, too. A lot of. We do a lot of functional training. The sandbags are my fun end of the week training. Did I used to call the sandbags the fun training? [01:12:34] Speaker A: No. [01:12:36] Speaker B: Now it's like, I look forward to the sandbags. [01:12:38] Speaker A: Maybe someday you'll call this aerodyne bike the fun training. [01:12:42] Speaker B: The aerodyne bike will never be fun. Nobody says it's fun. There's zero people in the entire world that say it's fun. It is a thing that helps you. It's a tool to get you better, but it is not fun ever. Nothing that makes that much noise is fun anyway. All right, well, we're out of here, but we will see you next time and we'll talk more about this cool, super fun journey that I'm on. And hey, you can get on the journey too. And Paul's on a semi journey too, so he's blurring his way back down for competition. So we get to kind of do it together a little bit. And then we may have an announcement from my other podcast, Funny Book Forensics. Hey, if you're a nerd too, like me, you can see all the comic stuff by me. You can listen to Funny Book Forensics with me and my podcast partner, Greg and Paul. Greg said something about, oh, Dan, since you're setting a goal, I should set a goal. [01:13:45] Speaker A: Yeah, that would be interesting. That's. I'll. [01:13:49] Speaker B: I'll let him know your response. That would be interesting. Well, I think it would be interesting. And maybe we could get Greg going too. So I think that's the thing. I think with my friends, you start doing this and it gets infectious. Like, even you, you weren't measuring your food before I started this, but then you were like, what app should I use? And I've got to do this now. [01:14:09] Speaker A: Yeah, well, for me, I'm just trying to be more proactive so I don't have to cut much weight in February. [01:14:15] Speaker B: So you weren't doing it before. [01:14:18] Speaker A: Social accountability, it's a real thing. It really works. A member of a group, your group's behaviors will influence your individual behaviors. That is a. [01:14:27] Speaker B: Or do a podcast telling everybody you want to get to 15% body fat. That will. And let that out for the whole world. That'll definitely get some accountability going. [01:14:35] Speaker A: So, yeah, all right. [01:14:38] Speaker B: I go big or go home. I've never done anything small. For those of you that don't know as I, I, I will end the podcast, I promise. But for those people, those, those folks that are new to me, I quit drinking caffeine one day, and it was also the same day that the property Paul and I owned flooded. It was the second day I quit drinking caffeine. And I, you know what? I just figured if I can get through the headaches and all this, with all this stress going on, I'm never gonna have to pick up caffeine again. And I haven't. And nobody wants me on caffeine anyway. [01:15:18] Speaker A: I love caffeine. [01:15:20] Speaker B: You do love caffeine. I'm not saying people should stop drinking caffeine. I, it's just bad for me. I'm an addiction. I'm terrible on it, and I go crazy and want to murder everyone. So it's, it's not good. But you get, you know it. You don't have to stop drinking caffeine. That's what I'm saying. But that's just kind of my personality. Go big or go home on this. So we're going to go big. Let's do the social accountability and be done. All right, we're. We're getting out of here, and we'll see you again next time. [01:15:51] Speaker A: Sa.