Visceral Fat Can Destroy Your Health: This Expert Ranks the Best and Worst Ways to Break Its Grip On Your Body with Sal Di Stefano

So, welcome back to the podcast. Thanks for having me on, man. You know, last time I flew up to you guys, and it was nice to be in your studio, and you're down here in our studio. Yeah. We had a fun conversation for people. We were chit chatting a little earlier, and I was saying that as I step into parenthood, and as somebody who really only started taking fitness more seriously at 40, I've noticed that all this hard work that I've been doing, you're starting to see a little bit of the chipping down. It's natural. I'm in a stage of life. I'm not sleeping as well. I'm not getting as much movement. And what I'm talking about is I'm noticing a little bit more belly fat. I'm noticing I haven't done an updated DEXA, but I bet if I went and did one, I would have a little bit more visceral fat that would show up inside of there. And I'm already predisposed to that being South Asian body type. I'm sure you see a lot of that in the Bay Area. You could end up being skinny fat, under muscle. You got a little of that gut. And I'm like, you know what? I have the man with the master plan coming down here. Let me do a conversation that is actually a good reminder for me about some of the basics that I need to hit when it comes to reducing visceral fat, belly fat, and it's not just for looks. One of the things that started to translate in the last few years and you guys do this so well at Mind Pump with your content is you're helping people understand that actually, if you have a lot of visceral fat, if you have a lot of belly fat and you carry that over years, that is incredibly detrimental to your health. Yeah. So before we go into ranking, we have a tier ranked episode today where we're going to be talking about the best and worst things for belly fat and getting to the root of visceral fat. Let's start off big picture. What can you tell our audience, remind our audience about the dangers to your health truly if you're carrying around visceral fat? There is an association between excessive body fat and poor health outcomes or increased risk of chronic disease, lower quality of life. Okay. So that's generally true. It's not just that. If you're fit with more body fat and it makes a big difference than if you're not fit with a lot of body fat. So a fit athletic, let's say, you know, a man that's got good stamina, good strength who's sitting at, let's say 20% body fat, which is a good 5% higher than where he probably would want to be, is going to be very different than a man at 20% that doesn't have good strength, good stamina. Same thing is true for women. You know, a 30% body fat fit strong is going to have different health, better health than a woman is 30% body fat that doesn't have good physical performance. So if you have some muscle and you're fit, you have good stamina. It makes a big difference. Even if you have a little bit of subcutaneous fat, it's still a protective effect from that muscle that's there. Fitness is a tremendous protective effect. Even when you start to get into the higher body fat ranges. And by the way, just to sell it because people love this part, you look different. So a man with muscle on his body at 20% looks different than a man at 20% body fat with not that much muscle. Same thing for women, right? 30% with some muscle versus not muscle. So athleticism or fitness or athletic performance, you know, stamina, strength, mobility make a huge difference. Okay. So there's that number two, where you store the body fat actually makes a difference. So for women, for example, if they store it more in their lower body, that seems to be healthier than if they store more around the belly. And with men in general, we tend to store around the belly. And then there's visceral body fat, visceral body fat, which is the body fat underneath near the organs seems to have the most detrimental effects. Can your body fat distribution change over time? It can. And it's probably related to hormones and probably related to insulin sensitivity. So as you start to lose insulin sensitivity, you start to see higher percentages of overall body fat being visceral body fat. And then as your hormones change, as if the man's testosterone go low, he starts to store body fat in what would be considered more feminine ways, more upper body, you know, upper chest, body fat, arms. And with women, as they go through paramanipause and menopause, you start to see fat distribution start to change as well. And body fat or belly fat starts to become more common. So, you know, women who are going through that, who are like, what happened? I haven't changed anything. And suddenly I have belly fat. It's not on your head. Even though your doctor may tell you that it may be related to changes in your hormones. Yeah. The estrogen shifts that happen. There's genuinely proven to redistribute weight. That's there. That's right. And then this is a controversial one. And I've seen a lot of people go at it. And I love to get your thoughts. So that's known. And even the people that are hardcore sort of calories in and calories out acknowledge that, hey, yes, there's a distribution of weight that shifts when women are going through this major hormonal shift. Mm hmm. Paramanipause, menopause, that's there. The area that seems to be a little bit controversial is some people saying that just gaining more weight is more likely during this time period or being caused by hormones. What are your thoughts about that? You, this is true. You only gain weight, whether it be body fat or muscle, which is the same body fat. You only gain body fat if your energy intake is higher than your energy expenditure. That's a fact. Okay. So can't get around that. That is a law of thermodynamics. Does hormone profile change the formula? In other words, does your hormone profile change the energy expenditure side of the equation? Yes, it does. It absolutely does. If you take a man with low testosterone and bring his testosterone levels up to the higher ranges, will he become leaner with some more muscle? Yes, he will. Will a woman have changes in her calorie expenditure, you know, basal rates with each shift in hormones? Yes. So it's all of it. So it's not just one or the other. Now you can't get around energy versus energy out. So when people argue that, that is true. But to say that your hormone profile doesn't affect that formula, that's just wrong. Of course it does. Absolutely. Gourmet hormone levels will affect it. Testosterone levels will affect it. Estrogen progesterone will affect it or at least the ratio of them, the combination of the two. Cortisol, cortisol has an effect on all of those things. At the very least, some of these hormone profiles will promote more muscle or less muscle, which has an effect on your basal metabolic rate. So we have to be very clear. Mammalian metabolism is extremely complex. It's extremely complex. I mean, if you actually break it down and look at all of the mechanisms that we've identified, it's like one of the most complex things we've identified in the universe. So when we say calories in versus calories out, and that's all there is, there's some truth to it, but it's not the complete truth. And definitely it's not true for people who are living this experience. And women have experienced this more than men do where they're like, what is going on? I'm doing everything the same. And suddenly I'm just gaining body fat and suddenly I'm gaining in my belly. Like I never did that before. And then they have some, you know, fitness dork telling them it's just calories in versus calories out. She's like, no, no, I know my body. Something's different. Well, yeah, it is something is different. Well, so let me lay this back out to you. You tell me if I got it right, right? Because I'm sure my audience is, you know, navigating the same thing. So it's known and there's scientific evidence we can link to in the show notes that weight distribution relates. We're talking about women right now. Weight distribution in the body and the body will store more belly fat when you're going through these major hormonal shifts. Perium, menopause, menopause, largely I'm not an expert in this area, but I understand from people who've been on this podcast before estrogen and the shifts in estrogen will change how that weight is distributed. Now, the next part of that building from there is that during these major shifts, perium, menopause, menopause is that total weight gain is a factor of a lot of different things that are there. You're not sleeping as well. These things can all influence hunger. That's right. And at the end of the day, if you are gaining weight, because a lot of people on this podcast have heard a lot of different things for different people. If you are gaining weight in that phase of life that women go through, total weight, not just distribution of weight, you still are eating more than you are burning off. What you're burning can change based off of your hormone profile, even at rest. It also changes your behaviors, which can change your caloric expenditure can change how you feel, which changes your cravings. So there's a lot of things that are happening here. And so to say that your hormones, your cortisol, your estrogen, your progesterone, your testosterone, it's just calories in versus calories out. Those affect calories in versus calories out. There's a deep interplay that's there. Of course, 100%. Well, let's flip it the other way, right? And this kind of goes to like our tear ranking. You know, we'll jump around a little bit. But now that there's so much awareness around, hey, we did people a disservice by not recommending for women hormone replacement therapy and all the stuff that went into that. The big nurses study and the concerns around hormone replacement therapy, making it more likely that a woman's going to develop cancer and pulling all these women off of it. And, you know, so many leaders in this space that have been on this podcast before. The part of that that's there, some women feel like they're being told that, hey, if you do hormone replacement therapy, that can be enough to help you lose weight. Yeah. Do you have any thoughts on that? I know you're not a clinician, but you work so deeply with people and training them and then their teams and assembling teams for them. And you have just so much life experience being in the space. What are your thoughts on that? You know, a lot of protein powders out there talk about being clean, quote unquote. Clean, but very few actually prove it. Show us your homework. 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Again, that's 15% off at one O and E skin SKIN dot co slash DHRU. After the purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please tell them we sent you. It really helps support the show. Oh, I mean, can it have an impact? Absolutely. First off, the hormone therapy that they were doing in the past was not using. They were not using bio identical hormones. They weren't the same estrogens or progesterones that your body is producing. They're like birth control versions of these hormones, which is different and how they act in the body. So that's number one. But can it have an impact? Yeah. Let's just start with the basic. Do you feel different? Do you have more energy? Do you have more drive? Are you more calm and less anxious when you're on hormone replacement therapy for a lot of women? The answer is yes. Will that affect how much you exercise? Will that affect the food choices that you make? Will that improve the quality of your life or change the quality of your life for the better? For many women, it's a yes. Now, I do want to be clear. Is hormone replacement therapy like necessary to become fit and healthy and all things? No, it's not. But does it make a positive difference? In many women, it makes a huge difference in how they feel. And that, I think, alone. Okay, because we'll talk about the hormone effects, but that alone will have a huge impact on your behaviors and your cravings and all the things that affect things like muscle and fat. Now, do the hormones themselves affect how the body builds muscle and burns body fat? Yes, it's done. Testosterone alone. Testosterone and thyroid are the two that have been labeled by some of the experts I've had on the show. These are actual hormone specialists. They call those the aesthetic hormones. Okay. When your testosterone is low for men and for women, it's harder to build muscle, which is harder to build muscle. Does that affect your ability to burn body fat? Of course, it does. Building muscle makes your body burn more calories, makes you move more. You feel different. You feel different when you have a little bit more muscle on your body. Does thyroid affect your body's ability to burn body fat? Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, if you're not producing thyroid, you're going to gain weight with the same amount of calories. So those two hormones alone, not even talking about progesterone and estrogen, will have an effect on those aesthetic changes that you're looking for. I think the big question is, does it improve longevity or is it detrimental to longevity? Well, the best explanation I've had on my podcast from experts on this was like this. They said, look, if you're exercising and eating right, hormone therapy is going to be a major plus. If you're not exercising and you're eating terribly, we're just throwing hormones on a dumpster fire. And it might not be a good idea. It's like putting a man on high testosterone who's not exercising, drinking, smoking, probably going to be inflammatory. Probably not going to be good for you. But a man who's exercising, strength training, he's eating healthy, going from low testosterone to mid to high testosterone, probably going to improve quality of life, which then I can argue will improve longevity. So I think the big question, the big thing to discuss is quality of life. Does it improve quality of life? And the answer seems to be a resounding yes. Yes, definitely. So as I mentioned before, we're doing a tier ranked episode. You've done some of these before. For the audience that's not familiar with these, we have a system over here. If you're on video on Spotify or YouTube, you can see it on the screen share. It's a ranking system. Imagine like a report card, right? You got ABCDF in the standard way, right? A is the best, F is the worst. But we have another one that's on here, which is S. Don't ask me where this all came from. It's part of this whole meme internet YouTube culture. S is supreme. It's even better. Imagine it's like an A plus. So what we're doing here, we're going to take some of the things that Sal mentioned, some of the things that went tee up for him. And we're going to be ranking them as is related to the core conversation of getting to the root of visceral fat and belly fat, which visceral fat operates as its own sort of almost organ system in the body and releases all sorts of detrimental hormones that make you worse off. Again, I'm not an expert on it. Had a bunch of people on here that can explain it. You've explained it a little bit as well, too. So it's one of those things that we want to make sure we keep in check, especially as we age. So let's take a couple of things that you mentioned, Sal, right off the bat. So we have an image of testosterone in the category of hormone replacement therapy. Let's rank testosterone starting off with this idea. It's a man. So for men in particular, how important is this and where would you rank it with all the nuances and context you want to add? Okay. Of testosterone replacement for men. For, okay. For belly fat. For belly fat, visceral fat. In the context of exercising right, eating right, you know, doing all the right things. I would place it, I would place it a. It makes a big difference. A man with low testosterone who's doing all the right things is going to find belly fat to be a bit stubborn in comparison. So I would put it as an A that testosterone is again, that aesthetic hormone. It definitely changes how you store body fat, where you store body fat and then how you build muscle, which contributes to all that. I feel like for a lot of the guys that I know that are on testosterone, I don't have a bunch. I'm sure I'll have more as, you know, as I get older. If their testosterone is super low for a whole host of different reasons, it seems there could be some people may be more genetically prone. Some people just, you know, got into fitness and eating healthy later on in life. Some people just chronically spending time indoors. I was amazed at how much just working out outside and being in the sun, going from like maybe two days a week of strength training to four days a week of strength training. And it's not like I'm killing myself, right? I'm having fun. I'm outside. I'm working out with my friends. I saw a jump in my testosterone, which was naturally low, but I still felt pretty good. Like low comparatively, that was probably appropriate for me for the amount of muscle mass that I had. I've shared my lives before in the podcast. I was around like four, 20. And just through working out outside, being more, you know, regular about my strength training, I jumped up to like six, 50. Not taking any testosterone, right? Increasing my protein, increasing all these things. Like you can make major differences even without it. Yeah, that's a big difference not to mention the increase in androgen receptor density that you experience through strength training. So not only do you have more testosterone, but that more testosterone has more places to dog. So, and that's, you see that reliably. You're building muscle, you're increasing androgen receptor density. So even if your testosterone didn't go up, if you're building muscle, the amount of testosterone you have is going to feel like more testosterone. Yeah. And what I forgot to mention that I was teeing up is that the guys that I know that have been on testosterone, that have needed it or have decided to go on it. One of the first things they say is that it really shifted their drive and they felt more excited about all sorts of things. Right? They felt more excited about their libido. They felt more excited about going to the gym. They felt more excited about work stuff that was there doing things, being out there. So anything that sort of shifts your, you know, feelings and mood, if it's appropriate for you, would have that difference. What about for women? What have you noticed? Same. So testosterone is, it's for drive, motivation, libido. It's also that for women. Testosterone is a fundamental hormone for women, like it is for men. It's just a different ratio. They just have lower amounts of it. But a woman with low testosterone will have the same symptoms that a man will with low testosterone. So excessive body fat, muscle recovery goes down. I don't feel as driven. My libido isn't as high. I don't have the same energy levels. I like to think of testosterone as like the dopamine of hormones. It's that thing that gets you going and moving and wanting to do things and, you know, wanting to build things and wanting to accomplish things. So when it's low, you just feel kind of, you just don't feel great. Confidence goes down. And it's not just because you have less muscle mass or whatever. It's actually a feel good hormone in that sense. Okay. And where would you rank that for women? Also a yes. Okay. Yes. If you need it. If you need it. And it's the right fit for you. You'd put it up there as one of the things that will help you significantly in reducing belly fat. And then it forces in the context that you're exercising any right. Yeah. Let's take a couple of the things that you mentioned. Let's take cortisol and I'll tee this one up. So cortisol in the sense of there's a lot of things that people talk about with cortisol. There's been people on this podcast that have shared before and people on social media that have shared that. Hey, cortisol is the central driver of belly fat. And therefore you don't want to do anything that is even workouts that are so intense that they drive up your cortisol because you're going to be building up belly fat. Yeah. And then there's other people are saying, Hey, look, there's cortisol management. You don't want to have inverted cortisol where you have low cortisol in the morning and high cortisol at night and you feel that sort of wired but tired feeling. And you want to have stress management, mindfulness management, things that you bring into your life, better sleep hygiene, living in a less stressful way, managing your caffeine and cortisol is part of the picture that plays into belly fat, but it's not the central driver of it. What do you where do you fit on this landscape and what nuances do you want to bring into it? Cortisol, first of all, if you had no cortisol, you feel like absolute dog crap. Yeah. Everybody thinks the cortisol is bad, but there's so many good things that cortisol brings to it. It rises in the morning. It gets you up. It gives you the energy. It starts to go down in the evening so you can sleep. You mentioned the inverted cortisol profile. This is where it's like you're dragging in the morning and you need lots of coffee by the time evening comes around. You're tired, but wired. So you want healthy levels of cortisol. Now, aside from the and we definitely need rest. We definitely need sleep. We need activity. We need good nutrition. Okay. So those are the basics around stress. Okay. If you're getting crappy sleep all the time, that's going to be a major stress on the body. You have a new child, you know what that feels like. Not getting new sleep. It's like your capacity for exercise, your capacity for work, your capacity for anything stressful, dramatically goes down because your sleep and you crave carbs. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you crave comfort because it just doesn't feel good. Right. So sleep, proper exercise and activity and good nutrition. So those are the basics. Now, people go really far with this like stress management, have nothing stressful in your life. You know what seems to have a much greater impact on that is purpose and meaning behind what you're doing. When you're doing something that's hard, but you feel a great sense of purpose and meaning behind it. It is far less stressful than when you're doing something hard and you're like, why am I doing this? Like, why am I working so hard? Why am I worrying about this thing? So the framing around stressful things in life make a big, big difference. Now, cortisol that's constantly elevated where you're constantly perceiving the stress to be bad and you're getting bad sleep and all this other stuff. When it's elevated for a long time, it affects insulin sensitivity and poor insulin sensitivity is very seems to be strongly connected to this robot effect. In fact, it seems pretty consistent. If you have a high percentage of your body fat as visceral and I don't, I can't think off the top of my head what a healthy percentage of body fat being visceral is. I can't remember that number was, but if it's really high, it's a pretty good indicator that your insulin sensitivity is something you need to look at. So improving insulin sensitivity makes a big difference with that. One of the best ways to do that, build muscle. Building muscle is a great insulin sensitizer. Diet, of course, plays a big role in that. And if you're overeating all the time, especially if you're overeating a lot of processed foods and sugars, that'll affect your insulin sensitivity. And so that's, I think, where the cortisol, where cortisol starts to become a problem because cortisol breaks things down. It's an energy producing hormone, but it burns things and it is anti muscle. If it's constantly high all the time, very difficult to build muscle and cortisol is high all the time. So let's see how do we set this up so that you can rank it appropriately. So in the context of understanding that cortisol is important and saying that you don't want to do anything stressful is actually a way to make you less anti fragile. It's gonna make you more fragile in life when you don't do stressful things. And a lot of data that's out there, we were in a newsletter about this. So I'll link to the show notes and we'll put some of the studies in there. But it seems to be that doing appropriately intense things for you, right? Like not killing yourself, but doing appropriately intense workout or doing something difficult like strength training. Yeah. You might have a better response to the stressors that you're going to face on a regular basis versus not doing those things. So within the context of understanding that cortisol is important. We don't want to demonize it. There's a lot of good things, but we want to have healthy cortisol management. Where would you place that on the tier list that we have? Oh, I put it next to testosterone. Okay. You put it as a, don't fear cortisol. No, don't fear doing difficult things. Lean into some of that and don't be chronically stressed, which goes into a lot of different aspects of our lives. By the way, look, you take, you know, it's a good population to look at with this is look at retirees. So when you look at retirees, you have this massive fork in the road with longevity. Some people retire and they do phenomenally. Some people retire and they do terribly. And it's like this huge fork. You know what the difference is? The difference is those that do well have a purpose. They go teach. They go volunteer. They have a purpose life. The ones that do poorly, it's like, oh, cool. I'm done working. I'm just going to do nothing, which, oh, you have no stress in your life. That's actually very stressful on the body. So it's that purpose and meaning is the root of it. It's not just like what I'm doing. It's like, do I believe in what I'm doing? Is it for the greater good? That makes a big difference. Yeah. And also this idea of like, use it or lose it. You're not using anything. You're not being stimulated. So your brain, your body is going to atrophy. Yeah. The whole idea of like, I'm going to be in a beach drinking my ties. That's what I'm going to do for my diet. Okay, go for it and see how you feel in six months. Yeah. Get super old, super quick hormone replacement therapy, like separate from testosterone. Talking specifically about women that are navigating menopause. Yes. Where would you rank that? As we get older, our body starts to lose protective compounds, which leads to what we see as aging. I'm talking about gray hair, skin changes, muscle loss and just slowing down in general. I'm talking about things like NAD and glutathione. NAD is essential for cellular health, DNA repair and mitochondrial function. 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For a woman who's exercising, eating right, and she's looking at belly fat hormone replacement therapy done well with a good practitioner because you are testosterone hormone replacement therapy for men is far more straightforward and simple than it is for women with women. You're looking at you're managing quite a few things and it can take sometimes six months, sometimes longer to figure out what's right. You have a good practitioner exercising right eating right. That's S makes a huge difference. Wow. Huge difference when you're looking at belly fat and visceral body fat. Amazing. Okay. Good. Good to put that up there. All right. Let's continue down the list. If you're open to it and then naturally we'll bring up some of these root causes. You have a great episode we'll link to in the show notes where you actually covered a lot of the root causes that are driving this in the first place when it comes to visceral fat and belly fat and it's stubborn for a lot of people, especially in our environment of an ultra processed world. That's not just food. Social media, sedentary lifestyle, we take it to all the extremes over here. Stress, eating in front of your computer last minute between meetings. All these things contribute. You've been bringing a lot of these up naturally as part of this. You'll all hint to a few of them and bring them up. You've covered them naturally inside of here. Insulin resistance is one of the ones that are there. When you have less insulin sensitivity, that drives the shift that people see and that connects to a lot of different things. You've mentioned one already, sleep deprivation. Right? In fact, where would you rank that? We have sleep deprivation on our list. Yeah, way up there, man. So getting your sleep in order is one of the most important. At least on this tier ranking system, the most important thing that you could be doing. It will affect all the other important stuff. If you're getting poor sleep consistently, it's going to affect your ability to exercise. In fact, there's almost nothing that will increase your risk of injury faster in exercise and sleep deprivation. It's pretty remarkable when you look at the data. It'll affect your diet. It affects your cravings. It affects your hormone levels. Sleep is very important. Now, people can obsess over this a bit and there's lots of things that don't have blue light on or don't stare at blue light before bed and don't eat two hours before bed and make sure I have this, that, and the other. There's actually one thing. All that stuff makes a little bit of a difference, especially when you combine it all. But there's actually one thing, two things that make the biggest difference, I would say, when it comes to improving sleep quality in particular. One is caffeine. Caffeine almost always affects sleep quality, even if you have it early in the morning. But obviously, if you have it after 12 o'clock afternoon, caffeine is one. Then the second one, this one's actually really big, go to bed and wake up at the same time every day. So, consistency. This is what everybody does. Almost everybody does. Even people who are like, yeah, I get good sleep. They go to bed at the same time, Monday through Thursday, and they wake up at the same time, Monday through Friday. Friday night, they go to bed late. Why? Because I can sleep in Saturday. And then Saturday night, I go to bed late. Why? Because I can sleep in Sunday. Sunday night, okay, I should probably go to bed at a normal time because I had to wake up early Monday. You're jet lagged. You have just shifted your circadian rhythm by a couple hours every single week. Every single week, most people jet lag themselves, and it takes them until Tuesday to get their circadian rhythm back in order. And then Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and then they repeat it. So, every month, four times a month, they're jet lagging themselves because they're not going to bed and waking up at the same time. And this has far-reaching effects on our health. We just don't realize it because we, you know, caffeine and a little wine at night, and we're kind of used to it. But this is what I tell people. By 30 days, just 30 days of going to bed and waking up at the same time, you'll have a, it'll have a profound impact on how you feel from your sleep. That's incredible. Yeah, there was a big UK biobank study where they extrapolated some of the data, and they found that one of the best things that was related to high-quality sleep, again, these are associative studies, right? So they're looking at all the different data for tracking people. There's thousands of people, it's like 32,000 people that were part of it, and they found that sleep consistency going to bed within, you know, around the same time that you always go to bed and waking up was deeply connected with quality of sleep. 100%. That's why everybody hates Monday. You're jet lagged. Yeah. You don't realize what you're doing to yourself. Okay, so sleep, we put that as an S separate from going to sleep on time. Have there ever been, are there other things that you found that are like super crucial to that, to do any of the stuff like keep your phone, you know, far away from bed, not be on devices, other stuff, anything else? That all makes a difference, especially when you add it all up, but the big rocks are the first one that I said. Caffeine's another one. A lot of people don't realize that you have coffee at noon or one o'clock. Almost every study shows that that'll impact in some way your sleep quality. Getting some sunlight during the day seems to make a decent difference. Exercise makes a big difference. Yeah. They don't have that sleep pressure. Just move. You don't get into anything crazy, but just do something. You know, I like to recommend to people who sit at desks all day long, which is a lot of people, every two hours, set a silent alarm on your phone and get up and go for a five to 10 minute walk. That's all. So every, every couple hours is get up and go for like a 10 minute walk. You'll have a huge difference on productivity and how you feel, your behaviors and your sleep later on that night. Let's get into some aspects of movement and some aspects of working out. Yes. As you mentioned it. Yes. And it's connection with visceral fat. And this is built off the idea that one of your other root causes that you identified in your video that significantly contributes to visceral fat, belly fat is the loss of muscle. Yeah. And people don't often make that connection. It's obvious when you look at it, but it's not so obvious if you don't know the connection. And you're seeing that you are getting more belly fat, more visceral fat build up over a period of time, but you're not always seeing your loss of muscle that's connected to it. Is there anything you want to say about that before you rank a few of these? Yes. So if when you start to lose muscle, your metabolic rate starts to drop, meaning your body is burning less calories, meaning again, it's easier for you to gain body fat eating the same amount. Okay. So remember when your expenditure drops, I have all things being equal expenditure drops as you've lost some muscle. Now what you're eating becomes a high, it can potentially become a surplus. And so it's easier to gain body fat. So that's number one. Number two, we talked about insulin sensitivity and its effects on especially visceral body fat. If you had two people gain the same amount of body fat, one with poor insulin sensitivity, one with good insulin sensitivity, the one with poor insulin sensitivity will have a greater percentage of their body fat be visceral body fat. So there, there is that connection. Okay. Muscle is a great building muscle and having healthy muscle muscle is a great way to improve insulin sensitivity. In fact, they have studies on obese individuals where they lose no weight. They just get stronger and you see this great effect on insulin. It's one of the places you store carbohydrates. You got your liver and your muscle build a little muscle and it becomes, you can now store more of this sugar that's in your body and your muscles very insulin sensitive. So it's, it's profoundly impactful on body fat. So let's talk about some of these things that you see out there when it comes to the general category of movement. So the first thing I'm going to put in there is heavy compounded lifting. Yeah. Something that we talked about on the podcast previously as that's related to visceral fat as it's related to belly fat, where would you rank that? So in the context of ones that we're ranking now, I put it as solid B and it's going to be higher than other forms of exercise. So all the other forms of exercise are going to fall under strength training mainly because of its metabolic effect and because of its insulin sensitizing effect. So it's a good solid B. So if you're a guy who grew up in the 70s, 80s, that time period and you're watching TV, we've all seen some infomercial around like an ab burner workout or even sometimes at like equinox and other places, a brand new equinox that opened up down the street from here, you'll see classes that are advertised as ab burners or specifically targeting that part of your body. And I feel like a lot of it's obviously targeted towards women. Sure. Where would you rank that approach for, hey, we're going to do specific movements that are going to work out that area more so that you burn more of that fat? No, you're not going to spot reduce. That's that's almost entirely a myth. Now, there's some data that suggests there might be a little bit of kind of targeted fat loss, but it's so splitting hairs. It's a complete waste of time. There's most of the data that shows that you can't pick where you burn body fat. I can't train my arms and burn more body fat from my arms. It's more systemic. So no, that's a total lie. Now you can target strengthen. You can target sculpt through building target muscles. But if I want to lose body fat from a particular area on my body and everything else stays the same hormone profile, the whole deal, it's training that area isn't going to make it leaner. So that's like, what's the lowest F? F is the lowest. Yeah, that's like, all right, we got our first F. The last time I was up in San Jose, we got a chance to do an interview together. We're talking about the power of walking. Something that seems so simple on the outside, but yet could have so many profound effects in ways that we don't even we don't even fully understand it. We're starting to understand more. But from what you know, as it's related to this topic of visceral fat, belly fat, where would you rank walking? Walking is great for general health. OK, overall general health and activity and being healthy in general is going to help with this robot effect. Now, if you're like, hey, I'm going to walk 30 minutes a day and then not change anything else and expect to see a bunch of body fat lost, you're not going to. It's just not this huge calorie burner. Number one, you're not building muscle while you do it, but it's really good for you. It's healthy. So I don't want to deter anybody or discourage anybody, but the question is in relation to visceral body fat and I'm ranking it and as a form of exercise for overall health, it's great for visceral body fat. It's not that great. So you're looking at maybe C. So we put that as a C. What do you think about this idea of rocking, walking with weight and that idea of you not visceral fat and belly fat, but just if you are a big walker and you're trying to increase a little bit more of the resistance that's there in your life, walking with weight burns more calories than walking alone. Using exercise as a way to burn calories for that, for the value of losing body fat. So in other words, I want to lose fat. So I'm going to try to burn a lot of calories for activity. Isn't a really great strategy. But number one, burning calories is hard. Takes a lot of work and you don't burn as much as you think. I mean, what you burn in an hour of intense exercise, you can eat in five minutes. Yeah, you could drink in 30 seconds and all these calorie estimators that people have Apple watch, they overestimate. They're super off. Your body also becomes, learns how to become more efficient anyway over time. Your body's an efficiency machine and. High calorie burning activity that isn't sending a direct signal to build muscle in combination with a calorie deficit is a is it tells your body to pair muscle down. Your body's trying to become more efficient with calorie burn. So if you look at the data on like cardio plus diet for weight loss, what you see is a good 40% of that weight coming from muscle. And it's not that you're burning the muscle, your body's just paring muscle down to become more efficient at that activity. So the way you should view exercise is this and this will help people a lot. And I get it, like your main motivation for exercise, you want to look better. So I get that, okay, but this will help you if you want to look better. Look at exercise in terms of athletic pursuit. What kind of physical ability am I trying to improve? Do I want more stamina? Do I want more flexibility? Do I want more strength? Do I want more mobility? Do I want more athletic skill? So viewing that way, what do I value the most for myself? What do I want more of? And then look at those in relation to the aesthetic part. Okay, but I also want to look leaner and be more sculpted and then throw in their time. How much time do I really have to spend on this? When you look at all that, strength training is the best that form of exercise. It produces, it's sending a direct signal to build muscle, which is great for metabolic rate. It doesn't burn a lot of calories while you do it, but it teaches your body to burn more calories. It's great for hormones. You don't need to spend a lot of time doing it to get great results. In fact, if you're looking at how much strength training does the average person need to do to reap 85% of all the potential benefits they could ever get for strength training, take three days a week. Okay, two days a week, most people would be super satisfied with. That's like 75% of anything you'll ever get from strength training two days a week. You don't need a lot of it. So it's awesome in that regard. Not feel like, hey, I want lots of stamina. Like I want more than the normal amount of stamina that I need for life. I want stamina. I want to be able to run whenever I want, cycle whenever I want. Well, then you're going to do those forms of exercise and they're going to give you that. And then if you're looking at overall health, walking with a little bit of strength training and good diet is just a great formula. Now, again, why walking? It's appropriate for most people. You don't need a lot of skill to do it. Average person could do it without getting hurt. It's convenient. It's also recuperative. So if you're under a lot of stress, you know, if you come to me and you're, you know, you got a new kid, your sleep is off, your diet isn't that great. You're like, Sal, I just feel out of shape, man. And I'm under a lot of stress right now and I'm not sleeping great. Walking is appropriate. Running is not appropriate. Hit classes are not appropriate. You know, bodybuilding hardcore splits are not going to be appropriate. Walking is almost always appropriate. It's one of the reasons why I like it so much. So yeah, so that in a nutshell. That's great. So walking by itself great for health. Overall health. We did a whole episode on walking and some of the data that's out there, especially on these sort of modern day hunter gather groups that people have looked at and how even within these groups that have very high saturated fat levels, it seems that walking is a crucial part of lipid clearance inside of the body. Right. Not that saturated fat is bad. That's a whole sort of nuanced conversation. But the idea of clearing out lipids from the body walking plays a central role in that. We talked about the glucose aspect of it and, you know, using some of that free floating sugar that's going on in the body, getting sunlight, which is increasingly we're learning more and more about how much that alone can help with glucose control, can help out with mood. You know, the thing with sunlight too is the sunlight itself is good for you. It has a mood lifting effect. It does seem it does promote kind of these neurotransmitters that feel good. Just going out the sun. We all know this. You go outside and just feel good. Helps with vitamin D synthesis, which comes from cholesterol. So you get some potentially interesting effects on blood lipids just through the synthesizing of vitamin D. But here's the other thing that we can't parse out from the data. People who get more sunlight are probably also moving more. Yeah. So I think it's a combination of all those things. Totally. It's not just the sunlight because then you might get someone who's like, I'm just going to sit by the window. There's some benefits to that. But I don't think I think when you look at the data, what you're also looking at is they're not just sitting by the window. They're doing stuff. They're walking. That's right. They're seeing nature. They're doing all sorts of things. So walking is fantastic. In the context of this podcast, walking to sort of reduce belly fat and overall fat, it's not going to be a super effective thing. So you put that as a C. Yeah, C. Okay. Great. All right. You cannot have a conversation about visceral fat and belly fat without talking about alcohol. Yeah. So let's talk about alcohol because it was one of the things that you listed as your root cause for why some people notice even if they've been eating about the same that if their alcohol intake starts to kick up, especially during certain stages of life, you know, I hear a lot from my some of my wife's friends or friends of friends that are out there that there can be this whole drinking culture for new mothers who feel like I finally, you know, you know, once things settle a little bit, not right away, you know, I finally need some me time. We need some time to, you know, de-stress a glass of wine turns into like two. If you live in New York or Philadelphia, I got a buddy out here that just moved from Philadelphia and he's like, man, just everything on the East Coast revolves when you meet people up, business, friends, whatever, it's all around drinking. Yeah. I'm a buddy in town from London this past weekend. He was talking about the same thing. So alcohol, visceral fat and belly fat. What do you want to say about it? So I love that you brought this up because remember, I trained people. So a good coach or a good trainer with some education is always going to look at things with nuance. And alcohol is one of those things. Now you can drink excessively and you can have a bad relationship with alcohol. So I'm not talking about that. So let's take typical person. Okay. From a physiological standpoint, there is no healthy amount of alcohol. There just isn't. It's not good for you. Period. End of story. That being said, here's the nuance. I like to go spend time with my friends sometime and we'll have a glass of wine and it's like social lubricant. Is that good for me? Maybe it might be. In fact, if you look at the data, the confusing data that'll come out and say a glass of wine every night has been connected to better health. What they're looking at are populations where social connection is a part of people's lives. And alcohol just seems to be a part of it. Like in the Mediterranean, oh, a glass of wine. You're also looking at people like they're together at night and they're having a little bit of wine. Yeah. Like in like your background Sicilian? Yeah. So I went to Sicily a few years ago, had an amazing time over there and people are like sitting at a table. Nobody's drinking alone in their room, in their house. And then, you know, you're not numbing your feelings. It's just a part of the social thing that we're doing. So there's a lot of nuance there with alcohol, but physiologically speaking, like physically speaking, there's no healthy amount of alcohol. So now it's impact on visceral, body fat, alcohol, especially excessive alcohol is an insulin sensitizing destroyer. Like it'll kill. It's like one thing you could do that'll really have a negative impact on your insulin sensitivity. So it's going to be high, but it depends on the person how much they're drinking and why they're drinking. So that's a really hard question for me to answer. So I'd say depends on the person. Like if you're drinking because you're numbing yourself and you're having a couple of drinks every night, cutting that out, I just have a huge impact on your belly fat. So that's an S for that person. If you're like the, you know, a few days a week, I meet with my friends and family and have a glass of wine and we got great connection. We'll cutting out that glass of wine, have a huge impact. No, no, it's not going to make that big of a difference. So it really depends. And I hate to answer that way, but no, no, that's why we do these episodes. We are seeing a general awareness that alcohol doesn't have these automatic health benefits as a liquid. And then now you're seeing a little bit of that. I'm not going to call it backlash, but that, hey, hold on one second. That's right. Right. Mark Sisson has been doing some great content around this. You know, he's like, Hey, listen, I enjoy, he's a big fan of dry farm wines that they're like sourced like I have no affiliation with them, but I know the guys of the company really, really sweet people. They source wine from vineyards. I think there's 500 vineyards on earth that practice wine making in the traditional sense where they don't even give water to the grapes. It's just based on like the rain that's there. They don't have like irrigation. They just do it naturally based on what the climate is. And then on top of the company, test the wine for like mold and mycotoxins and this and that, because there's a big problem with these barrels that get reused over a period of time. And I don't drink right now, but I used to in the past and they definitely have some nice wines that are there. And he's like, if I want to sit down at night after a day of like being outside in the sun and working out and doing these other things that I want one glass of wine and I'm with my wife and I'm with my son enjoying and we're, he's like, I don't know how somebody's going to say that that's a bad thing in the context of my life. And then the neighbor sod who I've been a big fan of over the years, he's from a UCSF and now he's part of the administration at the FDA and NIH. I can't remember where he wrote that the alcohol studies, yes, there's no amount of alcohol that's healthy. But when you look at these bigger studies, like doing really high quality studies on alcohol is actually very difficult. I'll link to it. It's part of the sub stack article that's there. It's tough to parse out certain behaviors, which is exactly what you were talking about. 100%. 100%. You look at cultures where it's a part of the, and oftentimes they have strong social. The social framework seems to be the biggest thing. Very strong. Like you go to Sicily, you know, I know it's changing. All modern societies are moving away from kind of this traditional, like let's all meet together or whatever. But look, you grow up in, I'm in Silicon Valley. It's very different when you go to Sicily. Like people are together. They're hanging out together. Dinner is three hours long. Like I go to dinner in the Bay Area. It's like they bring you the bill with your meal. It's like get out, right? And people are enjoying themselves and they're having, and they're not like getting smashed. Nobody's drinking a ton, but they're having a glass of wine enjoying it with their meal. So we have studies that show those people have great longevity. Is it the wine? I think it's a part of the big picture. And I think it's the socialization. And look, and saying this might be a little controversial. A little bit of alcohol, I think helps people socialize a little bit. I mean, people, social anxiety is far more common. You know, you can be crippling for many people, but most of us, you know, you're around a group of people and, you know, a little bit of wine, again, like maybe a glass. And suddenly people loosen up and have conversation. The social connections start to come together. And I'm not talking about like getting hammered or like I need it to talk to people. But that's like, it's a real, that's a real thing. Yeah, that's great. So the nuances that's there, if you're drinking without that social aspect, if you are having more than a couple of glasses a week is typically what they talk about. Yeah, it'll make a big difference. It's also can be a hidden source of calories for a lot of people that are there. Then you got to, then you got to, you know, cut it out. It could be significantly, you know, contributing in that instance. So I have an image of it, but just imagine where we would have ranked it based on this. Yeah, that's a tough one. This conversation. Let's move on from there. I want to talk about GLPs. Yeah. You know, you have Client Seed of Train, friends, network, people in your community that are on GLPs. What do you seem that happens for those folks? Who needs it? Who doesn't? And the impact that it's made on visceral belly fat. And then you have big pharma GLPs. And then you have this controversial area of compounded GLPs, which lead to fractional dosages that people are at where they're not on these full dosages. Well, what's your lay of the land? GLP ones or GLPs, because GLP one refers to the first generation. Now we have like Terzepetide. We got GLP threes coming down the line. Yeah, they just did a phase three trials and just published those. Interesting, by the way. A significant percentage of people dropped out of that study because they lost too much weight. Yeah. Pretty wild. That's crazy. So GLPs. Is it, was that with the, I don't know. Retatrutide. Retatrutide. Yeah. And I'll try saying that three times fast. GLPs are easily the most effective medical intervention we've ever seen when it comes to obesity. Like nothing comes close. Nothing we've ever done in terms of medical intervention comes close to GLPs. Okay. So they are extremely effective. Here's the problem with them. There is some insulin sensitizing effects from the GLP itself, just because of the way it works. But a large percentage, the majority of the reason why they cause weight loss is they make you eat less. They just make you eat less. You just don't want to eat as much. If you just eat less and you don't strength train and you're not monitoring things like protein, you're going to lose muscle. A significant amount of the weight that you lose is going to be muscle. And I'm going to tell you what we, what happened with us at Mind Pump. So we, we saw this coming down the pipeline. It's this crazy thing. And we said, okay, let's put together a group of people that we're going to coach for the next three months who are on GLPs, just so we could speak to this more accurately. And we predicted what we thought would happen. And we were pretty much on point. People on GLPs plateau, just like people who just cut their calories. Why are they plateau? Their metabolic rates adapt. Like I'll give you an example. There was one woman, and I have lots of people that I've seen like this, but there was one woman who had a significant amount of weight to lose. So I think her, her, her ultimate goal was like 80 pounds. And she had been on a GLP one for, I think a year and a half. She lost 60 pounds, so a significant amount of body weight, and then plateaued. She plateaued with about 20, 25 pounds left to lose on the scale. And now the problem was her calories were clocking at like 1200. Where did she go? What are you going to do? Up your dose and decrease your calories even more. She was already tired. She was already consuming not enough calories to sustain any type of physical activity or exercise or regular exercise. She was, she had to consume supplements and nutrients through supplement form because she's not getting enough through food. And so she was like, what do I do? Do I increase the dose of my GLP one? I'm like, no, increase your GLP and you're going to drop your calories even more. You're going to feel terrible. So we did what was called a reverse diet. We had her increase her calories. She added strength training. We started building muscle. We had her work with a doctor to de, to lower her dose because it was hard for her to eat more than 1200 calories because that's how strong they are. And we got her to calories to go up to about 2,300 calories over time through the process of building muscle. Then from there, she was able to cut her calories again and saw body fat come down. So it's not this like miracle thing. Muscle loss will happen if you don't strength train and you don't pay attention to protein. It will happen and you want to protect that muscle is healthy. It's protective. It gives you mobility and movement. So you don't want to just go on this thing and just follow your appetite signals. Work with a trainer. Work with a trainer who understands strength training. Monitor your protein intake. Make that a goal. I need to hit my target body weight in protein and I'm going to do that no matter what. And then compound pharmacy GLPs are in my opinion superior because you can adjust the dose. There seems to be a pretty strong individual variance will help people react to them. A starting dose for one person may produce minimal side effects for another person. They're so nauseous they could barely eat or they want to throw up. I mean, I know people who went on it who compared it to the first trimester of pregnancy. That's the kind of nausea that they experienced from it. So the compounded versions allow you to do far lower doses and or fractional doses and they allow you to scale down. So I strongly believe if you're going to go on a GLP on a GLP, make sure you have a strategy for coming off. So the strategy to go on, what does that look like? I'm going to work with the trainer. I'm going to do some strength training. I'm going to hit my protein targets. Then when I hit my goal, which may look like increases in calories to do that reverse diet to get the metabolic rate back up. So it's not going to just be this thing. You'll have this initial weight loss, but you may need to do some reverse dieting. Then when you hit your goal, okay, now let me slowly scale off while trying to maintain these behaviors that I built over this whatever period of time I've been on one. So if you do it in the right way, most powerful tool that's ever been invented for fat loss. In combination with a coach, oh man, you've got like a winning format. Nothing's 100%. Sure. But if you've got a significant amount of weight to lose and you've struggled with this for a long time, you hire a trainer who has experience working with GLPs, go on the GLP and your odds of success are better than you could imagine. Yeah. I have these like two worlds of people. Let's say on one side is friends or family members that have fallen into and gotten very excited about these drugs and given gotten recommended by their practitioner that they're working with or they're working with like an endocrinologist and they had a significant amount of weight to lose and they wanted these drugs and they did lose a lot of weight and they're deathly afraid of getting off of them even though they don't feel amazing now having been on them for a while. And a lot of the studies show we had some researchers on the podcast that presented this data but they did one of the largest studies to see why do people get off of these insurance, changing insurance, changing that, the cost of them. But the other one was side effects. People have the side effects and that's the number one reason that they get off of them and that's why 50% of people a year later on end up, you know, start tapering off or getting off of them. And anyways, what I was saying is that these two camps of people, people that have been on this one size dose fits all that even though they lost a lot of weight are starting to feel a lack of motivation for a lot of the things that are there, not getting a lot of pleasure. Again, this is completely anecdotal, maybe even getting a little bit irritable or their family effect members feel like they're kind of more irritable because they're not really finding a lot of pleasure and stuff. And then these other folks that have a trainer understand the conversation that you just had about the importance of prioritizing protein and having to work a little bit harder because sometimes your appetite comes down and you have to actually force yourself to eat. Isn't that wild? Yeah, it's crazy that that's there. But they're on a more personalized dose, that's right, rational dose, which it goes back and forth, right? The FDA comes out and says you can't do it this way. And then another version of the drug comes out. And then just recently, I think like one of the big companies that was doing trezepotide, what was it? Hymns? Yeah, Hymns and Hearst, they got dinged, you know, by the by the FDA. So I hope that these drugs will get better and people can kind of find a personalization. But the ones that are personalizing it, they don't have all those side effects in the same way, and they feel better, and they're not afraid to stay on that long term because that's might be what they need. That's right. And that first group you said, a lot of that, in my opinion, is because you've been on so low calorie for so long. If you lost 80 pounds or 60 pounds on a GLP one, because you're eating 1400 calories a day, you're going to feel crappy at some point, 1400 calories a day, or 1300 calories a day or lower, you're going to feel unmotivated, tired, you're going to feel irritable, you're just not eating enough, you get that person to eat more food and suddenly they're like, Whoa, I got all this incredible energy and my mood has lifted. Well, yeah, you got you weren't consuming enough nutrients, your calories were were too low. The other thing is, when you're on these, your hunger signal is greatly dampened. And so the way that you may have used food in the past is going to change. But you can't just rely on that. What you want to do is replace old behaviors with new behaviors so that you have something you can rely on when the hunger cycle comes back. So in other words, you know, I over ate and some of the reasons why I overate, let's say for example, is because I eat when I'm stressed or when I'm bored, like that's another one when I'm watching TV or when I'm bored, or, you know, when, you know, when when I'm at the movies or whatever, you've got these behaviors that are built, these coping mechanisms, these ways that you reach for food. Now you're on a GLP, and your appetite is greatly reduced. And so you don't reach for the food like you used to, but you're still going to get bored. You're still going to get stressed. You're still going to experience these things. So when you're in those states, find other behaviors that you could start to develop around them. Because when you go off the GLP, appetites can come back up, you're going to get stressed again. And you might want to go reach for that food. But now I've developed this new thing where when I'm stressed, I go and I meditate or I read or I pray or I go for a walk. And so these are just strategies. So we have a lot of coaches that work for us who work with clients on GLPs. And this is how they work with clients to get them eventually off and stay off. There's also, and by the way, if you do this right, your odds of long tricks, some set long term success are pretty good in our experience because those neural pathways from those old behaviors start to loosen because you don't practice them. You replace them with other neural pathways of behaviors of dealing with, you know, stress or anxiety or whatever. And your odds of success seem to be a lot better, at least in our experience. And then also, if you're using the compounded ones, you can always go back on for a little bit if you start to fall back off. And we've had experience with clients like that, where they went off and had to go back on for a little bit and come back off. And then, you know, two or three times and now they're good. Now they're off. Yeah, that's great. I think the only challenging part about the compounding, and I think, again, this is going to be figured out in the free marketplace is that they started off very expensive. And I think the price is getting a little bit better. Is that what you've been seeing? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. The markup on them is insane. If you find out how much they pay to get them compounded versus how much people are paying, it's insane. But it is getting more competitive. It's getting more competitive, which is great because that brings the price down. Way down. Yeah, there's a lot of companies that are getting into it. So yeah, buyer beware. We'll have the links in the show notes. A few more things to talk about here to rank. We all know ultra process foods are not great. And generally, the people listening to this podcast are going to be people that are very mindful of the fact that we don't want to be really building our diet. What are the stats? Americans, 70% of diet is based around ultra process foods. I think people understand that, hey, I don't need to be an extremist. That doesn't mean I can never have some that cereal, kids cereal that I grew up with that I miss or whatever it is, but I don't want my diet to be based around that. What is the nuance you want to bring to the conversation of ultra process foods in general? And where do you want to flag the warning signs for people who are having a tougher time losing some of that visceral fat, belly fat? If they're not aware of hidden places that ultra process foods might become in their diet. So ultra process foods, the single most impactful for most people, the single most impactful dietary step you can make that will have the biggest impact is just to avoid those. Just avoid them. Period and historic. On average, in my experience, the average person will lose around, over time, if they just avoided them around 15 pounds, just from anywhere between 10 to, I'd say 17 pounds. So right right around that range, just from not eating those and eating until they're satisfied. These foods, all of the money research and development that goes into processed foods goes into making them as palatable as possible. So your natural satiety signals are just going to be thrown off. So trying to eat the appropriate amount while eating ultra process foods requires tracking. If you just listen to your body, you'll overeat. Just how they just the science that goes into those foods is insane. So it's one of the biggest and most important steps you can make. Now, does that mean you should stay away from them and like they're poison? No, but if your goal is fat loss and weight loss, and you don't want to take a bunch of dietary steps and you don't want to track and you don't want to have to make, you know, stressful and you want to eat and when you're sat in when you're hungry and tell your satisfied, just avoid those foods and then use as much as you want. Watch what happens. You'll lose you lose a nice chunk of body fat and you'll feel a lot better. By the way, this also goes for health process foods, you know, the top selling protein bars and wellness foods that are processed foods are the ones that taste the best. It's a fact. You want to sell a protein bar and you want to crush the market. It's not about how much proteins in there are the quality of it, the taste, the taste is what's going to get people to buy it. That's just human nature. So it's, I would say if I had to pinpoint the single dietary thing that is responsible for the, you know, what has been labeled as the obesity epidemic, it's that fact. And as is related to the conversation of visceral fat and belly fat, it's a no, it's a no brainer. It's at the top. S. S. Okay. Yes. We're going to throw it up there. Even though we all know that, we all need a reminder sometimes or there might be a friend that you're sending this episode to. If you're that friend and you got sent this episode, this is the reason why. S. S. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But you know, don't, don't, don't put shame. Here's the thing too. And this is the coaching, the coach part of me. Shame that shame spiral is terrible for long term success. So it's a journey. You're going to fall, you're going to stumble, you're going to mess up. Like that's okay. You get back on the world is not organized in a way to just, you know, if you just live in the world, the way the world tells you to live, you're going to be unhealthy. So it's a hard world to manage from that standpoint. So it's going to be a challenge. It's going to be difficult. So don't freak out. If you know, you're like, I can't cut all processed foods out of my diet. Like that's almost all like, what do I eat? I have people telling me like, what do I eat? Like let's just start with the big ones, stay there for a little bit and then slowly move yourself towards that's where my shame never works towards other people towards yourself. We got to get that voice in check and realize that we didn't create this environment around us. We were born into it. That's right. And we're working all hard. Whether you have kids or whether you don't, we want to make the world a better place for the people. And that starts with obviously being educated, which is why we appreciate everything that you guys do and coming on the podcast. So couple other things. Now that we're talking about food that come into this idea around visceral fat. One of them is calorie tracking. Yeah. Hardcore tracking from our last conversation is not usually something that's sustainable for most people over a period of time. And unless if you are somebody that's operating at some level of performance, bodybuilding, etc. where that level of detail might be needed, it's not going to be a long term thing. But what about calorie awareness, especially when it comes to targeting that visceral and belly fat? Yeah. It's hard to concentrate when you're worried about your health. It can feel like there's a wall between you and the rest of the world. Like you can't be fully present. Hello, AXA Health. How can I help? At AXA Health Insurance, we build our teams with people who care. So when you need us, we're here to support you for cover that cares. Search AXA Health Insurance. Pre existing conditions are not covered. I like calorie and macro tracking as an awareness tool. Because a lot of people just don't know, you know, what is 30 grams of protein look like? What is 75 grams of carbs look like? What is a 600 calorie meal look like? So as an awareness tool, I love it. As a lifestyle, it's terrible. You're just, it's a stressful way of living to count everything. And it's also not necessary. If you eat a high protein, whole food based diet, your calories tend to fall where they're supposed to. Meaning, if you're building muscle, your appetite goes up a little bit to help you build the muscle. And it tends to drop to get you at a relatively healthy body fat percentage. So as an awareness tool, love it. As a lifestyle, hate it. So for awareness, S for lifestyle, F, like that's, it's one of the hallmarks of orthorexia is this like tracking everything all the time, everything I eat goes in my macro tracker. You don't want to live there. Yeah. So we're not going to put it on there for hardcore calorie tracking. That's long term for most people, you know, that's an F. We don't have an image for that. But the awareness portion, if people wanted to go on an experiment, if they wanted to sort of try that, you know, I've never really looked at that aspect. How was your recommendation? Yeah, I think you should track. Typically, I'll tell people to track for two to four weeks. So everything that you eat, they have these great apps now, by the way, you can take a picture of the food, it'll calculate things for super easy. Back in the day, we used to have to use books, like calorie king, you have to go in and add it up yourself. But track for two to four weeks, don't change your diet, just eat like you normally would, and then give you and then figure out what your averages are. Oh, it looks like I average about this many calories per day. It looks like I average about this many grams of fiber and proteins and fats and carbohydrates. And then you know where you can make some changes, what you can chase and what you can avoid to, you know, kind of pull some levers to improve your health. Since we're talking about this, you know, people think that calorie tracking is primarily around total calories, calories in, calories out. But one of the biggest things that I've seen, especially more recently, because, you know, a lot of people got the memo about protein from people like you, Dr. Lyon, so many people that are out there over the last couple years. But still a lot of people haven't fully gotten the memo around things like fiber. And if you don't track, you actually don't know how much fiber you're getting. And most people are chronically getting so little fiber. And, you know, cancer is so multifaceted and every cancer is its own sort of disease. And breast cancer can be very different from this other type of cancer. But one of the things that's very concerning, and was partly in the headlines a couple of weeks ago, through the passing of the James Van Der Bee, he had colon cancer and colon cancer rates are increasing amongst young people. And again, it's a complicated subject. There's a lot of things. But one thing that we definitely know is having appropriate levels of fiber, not being chronically under fiber is associated with reducing your risk of things like colon cancer, at least from my understanding. Do you want to talk about fiber as a whole, but in particular, as it's related to something like visceral fat? So fiber is a satiety producing compound like protein. So if we're looking at things that produce satiety or fullness or give you that feeling of satisfaction or, you know, getting to the point where you don't want to eat anymore overeat, there's protein and there's fiber, those two components right there produce a lot of satiety. What you're seeing with a lot, and here's the thing with nutrition studies or diet studies is they're almost all observational. So it's very difficult to parse out exactly like what's happening. They're not done in labs, like we have groups of people like, Hey, you're living here for a year, we're gonna feed like this, feed you like that and see what happens. It's more like, what do people eat more fiber? What tends to happen with those people? And it's based off of surveys. What did you eat last week? Tap a deal. So that could be notoriously off. But here's what's happening with fiber. Yes, I think it's good for you. I think it's the data seems to show that it's good for you. I think it's really also though, more related to why people are getting more fiber is the probably eating more whole natural foods, the probably eating more fruits and vegetables. Last one was ultra processed food. That's right. So, you know, there's not a lot of high fiber, ultra processed foods. If there are, then it's the ones that are high fiber, and they don't taste good. We don't want to eat those. So I think that's what we're seeing a lot, mostly from that is that these are people that are eating lots of fruits and vegetables, and they're probably eating a healthier diet. There's this self selection bias to with some of this, which we've been getting the message on fiber for decades now. And so people who tend to eat more fiber tend to probably exercise more and tend to also be a little bit more health conscious. So it's really hard to kind of parse it, parse it out. But a diet that's high on fruit and vegetables is generally a diet that's healthier for you. I love berries. It's my favorite source of fiber, very high fiber, low sugar content or low calorie content, I should say for fruit, high in antioxidants, you know, when people label super fruits, like to or super foods, like to pick out exotic foods you've never heard of, but it's like look at a blueberry and a raspberry like it's like right up there. So I love berries. Cillium husk is a supplement that you could take that helps with motility is a insoluble fiber seems to have a lot of health benefits. People are now speculating that Cillium husk consumption can reduce the absorption or help rid the body of things like microplastics. I've been using Cillium husk daily for probably 15 years, something that I typically recommend to people, especially when they have motility issues. I put in my smoothie every morning along with a few other fibers that are there. I try to my morning smoothie, I'll post a recipe in the show notes. I try to get at least 40 grams of protein and I try to get at least, if you're not used to having a lot of fiber, you got to probably build up to it, but I try to get at least 20 grams of fiber in my smoothie. So you have berries in there, Cillium husk? I'll have strawberries, I'll have Cillium husk and then I'm a big fan, no affiliation. There's a Garden of Life fiber product that they have that is like apple pectin, apple and orange peel. I think it's a nice diverse source of a few different things. And then I've been testing out recently, one of our sponsors sent us pendulum, they have a new product in the works and they've been sending it over and so I've changed a few other fibers for that. That's another great source. It has like oat beta-glucan inside of it and a few of these emerging fibers that are showing the combination of ones that feed, that are both good for motility, yes, that are also the fuel source for beneficial bugs like acrimancia, and some of the other bugs that are there that you're really eating fiber for them. You are, yeah, they're prebiotics. They're prebiotics, you're eating fiber for them so that they don't start destroying your mucin layer. I went on a low fiber diet for a period of time when I really started getting into strength training and my weight, I didn't do it on purpose. It kind of happened by accident and I started having some of these symptoms. I would develop a little bit of when I would have caffeine or certain things, I'd get a little bit of dryness, eczema on my hand. I was talking to my functional medicine doctor about it. He's like, just as random, I'm just throwing this out there, but have you significantly cut down your fiber? And I was like, I actually think I have by accident. He's like, when you go really low fiber, you start to have these bacteria in your gut that are used to this fuel source. They can't find it, so they start eating that layer of mucus that is the protective barrier that's there. And he's like, there's not a really great way for us to be able to test for that, but add back in fiber and see what happens. And I started to notice that those things started going way a little bit. Yeah, you get that leaky gut syndrome. You get that leaky gut because your bacteria just doesn't have the fuel source that it needs. And I also think the motility part, especially in relation to the colon cancer, well-cooked vegetables, by the way, is a great way to help with motility. This is like a go-to for me as a trainer, as a coach, was always well-cooked vegetables. And I say well-cooked because people think raw or crunchy or crispy. You eat a lot of vegetables like that, you're going to have some gastro issues, but you boil the heck out of some vegetables, get yourself some broccoli, Robbie or whatever, boil the heck out of it, eat it, and then tell me your motility hasn't improved. Awesome. So that's fiber. If you put fiber and you rank fiber in the idea of getting your fiber up to the appropriate levels, I think the average American is getting like 15 to 18 grams a day, which is pretty sad. And people want us to get up to the place slowly over a period of time of probably like 30 plus grams of fiber, at least doubling that. I try to shoot for somewhere between 40 and 50 grams of fiber a day. That's where I feel the best. More than that, start to get a little bit of bloating, less than that, I don't feel as great. So getting appropriate levels of fiber, do you think it has any impact directly on visceral fat or is it more the indirect aspect of satiety? Yeah, indirect with satiety and probably some insulin sensitivity effects, but it's healthy for you. But for visceral body fat, I'd have to put it like a to see. I see. It's good. It's not directly working on that. That's right. But it's indirectly working. That's right. So it's going to be a good thing for you. Coming back to diet, there are a couple of the things that I had for you just that are trending right now and you get marketed all sorts of stuff these days, through ads and different things on social media. So everybody's talking about creatine. We did a whole thing on it before, but some people are saying that there are, there's actually billboards in Los Angeles. I don't have seen this before. There's billboards in Los Angeles that are targeting women saying that there's specific types of ways of guess delivering creatine that are better at like sculpting the women's body versus like bulking them. I've seen advertisements for creatine gummies that are combined with things that are for targeting belly fat. What do you think about all that? Creatine is one of the most studied supplements in human history. There's thousands of double blind placebo controlled studies on creatine. It's remarkably beneficial for, we know it's good for athletic performance, but it's good for health, longevity, brain health, good for your skin, good for your bones. There's some mental health effects. It seems to be good for depression, anxiety. So it's a great compound. Almost all the studies done on creatine were done on creatine monohydrate period in the story. It's well utilized. It's well absorbed. You don't need some weird, what they're trying to do is they're trying to take something that's well established that everybody knows is good and they're trying to differentiate themselves so they can sell your product. That's all they're doing. So there is no better absorbing form of creatine than creatine monohydrate. There is no better, you know, studied form of creatine than creatine monohydrate. There isn't one that bulks you and one that sculpts you. Creatine is creatine. It's creatine monohydrate. I like gummies only because it helps with consistency. That's it, period in the story. So, you know, gummies might have a little bit of sugar in them or whatever. It's not much. It might get like three grams of it. So it's inconsequential. But one of the hard things in this, again, this is the coach in me speaking, one of the hard things with supplements is getting people to take them regularly. Yeah, they can be great supplements that are out there that have a lot of evidence space. But if you can't get people to take them regularly, they're not going to get the better. I mean, you should see the data on medications like prescription medications. People are terrible at taking that consistently, let alone a supplement. So the reason why gummies are blowing up is because it gets people like to eat gummies. And so suddenly I'm taking creatine daily. Whereas before I was like, I forgot, I only take it all the days I work out. It's only twice a week. I like what's going on. So that's the only reason why I like gummies. But otherwise, just pure creatine monohydrate powder, I don't care. Take it however you want to take it. It's great for you. And in terms of the benefits of creatine, we talked about them before, but they're going to be supportive for overall, you know, strength building. And now we're learning about some of the cognitive potential cognitive benefits. But it's going to more operate indirectly as it relates to this idea of belly fat, visceral fat. It's also a supplement. So when I preach the benefits of creatine, and I'm shouting at it from the rooftop, how great it is, this is the context of the world of supplements. And supplements generally speaking, don't move the needle that much. Now, if you need a nutrient, because you're nutrient deficient, a supplement can make a profound impact. Your deficient vitamin D, taking vitamin D will change your life. You deficient in zinc, taking zinc, it'll change your life. But generally speaking, supplements in the context of what's going to make a big difference in my health, in my wellness and fat loss and muscle building, it's like, it's like low on the list, really low, really low creatine is the king of that low list. That's all. So in terms of this, where it's an F, make that bigger difference, right? Beneficial for you overall, but not something that's going to be targeting the, you're not going to notice a difference. If you don't do anything else, it's just a great thing. Yeah. You know, one of the, on the movement that I didn't get a chance to ask you, that I've been trying to incorporate myself a little bit more, love to hear your thoughts about overall sprinting. Yeah. Just general thoughts first. And then we've already talked about how exercise as a whole is not a great way to lose weight. It can help with the maintenance, right? Yeah. We chatted a little bit about that last time, but what about sprinting as it relates to movements and how important is it? Is this something that you incorporate, something that you talk about with your clients? So sprinting is a high intensity form of cardiovascular activity. It'll build great stamina, great endurance, great athleticism. It's inappropriate for 90% of the people, 90% of people listening to this unless you're, you're, you've been an athlete and you're still an athlete. You go out and sprint, you're going to run terribly. First off, running slow, you're running terribly. Now let's make it run fast. It's even worse. Your risk of injury goes through the roof. And so it's just not inappropriate. We forget running is a skill. It's like, it's a skill. And if you haven't done it and practiced it this whole time you've been on earth, don't go out and just do it hard. You're going to hurt yourself. You're going to hurt yourself. So it's not going to be great. If it is appropriate and you do it well, it's a great form of exercise. It's explosive. It's going to give you stamina and endurance. It's the more muscle building form of cardio because it's explosive. Not that it's a muscle building form, but it's more than let's say the kind of slow, long duration form running. But it's just not appropriate for most people. You know, you pick out 100 people off the street for me who want to, you know, lose this robotty fat and I would apply sprinting to zero. It's just, it's just, it's just not, it's a high skill form of exercise. Yeah. It's really not something that you should be starting off with initially. If it's something that you already have doubt in your strength training and your diet and other stuff. Yeah. Higher running coach. Yeah. Yeah. You wouldn't go out and max squat at a nothing, at a nowhere. Higher running coach, work on your biomechanics, learn how to run, give yourself a year, build up stamina, build up your technique, and then it'll probably take you six months to a year with a coach before you're like sprinting and doing a great job. We've ranked a lot of things today. And as we're getting towards the end of the episode over here, I wanted to get into mindset and some of the mindset things and kind of ranking those because mindset is such a huge piece. You guys spend so much time on your YouTube channel, on your podcast, talking about the mindset component of it because it's so crucial. What do you think is the one of the most damaging mindsets to have? Stories, narratives, whatever it might be when it comes to somebody who says, hey, listen, I don't feel my best right now. Maybe I don't feel like I look the way that I want to. And in particular, I feel like part of that is that I have this belly fat. And I'm also learning that this whole fat is not something that I want to hang on to for years. Yeah. Sure. I want to look good, but I also want to feel good as well too. And I know that I want my body to be in a better health state. I'm not sure if I'm good enough, smart enough, strong enough, whatever enough to be able to execute the plan. What are the mindset things that you've seen, the narratives that are most damaging to people who have truly the potential to do whatever they want to do, feel as good as they want to look as good as they want to. What's the most damaging mindsets that you've seen out there? I mean, number one is doing it because you hate yourself. If you're like, you feel like something's wrong with you. If you're like, I'm working out because I'm gross, because I'm ugly, because I'm not attractive, because I don't have a lot of value, because I don't like myself. I hate myself. That's a dangerous mindset to enter this into. With that mindset, exercise is a punishment and diet is a restriction. And it's always going to feel that way. You're going to work out and you're going to use it to punish yourself, which can feel cathartic at first. You go to the gym and you beat the crap out of yourself and you're crawling out of the gym and you feel a sense of accomplishment and pleasure, not realizing it's because you just beat the crap out of someone you don't like. And diet feels very restrictive, and it sounds a lot like, no, I can't eat that. I can't eat that. I can't eat that. Not that I don't want it, but there's someone inside of me telling me, you better not. You can't. And so you end up tyrannizing yourself. And what that looks like is on off, on off, on off, and then eventually off, off, off, off, off, because you hate it. This is when people stop exercising and stop watching their diet because they just want to enjoy their life. How many times people say that? Oh my God, I stopped that. I can't work out, man. It's I hate it. I hate it. And I don't want to eat, right? I just want to enjoy my life. Well, we, of course, I mean, you're beating yourself up all the time, of course, which it's so interesting, like name one piece of your life or one part of your life that wouldn't improve if your health and vitality didn't improve. Yeah, everything. And yet you stop because you hate it because you want to enjoy your life. We have to look a little deeper. So doing it because you hate yourself is the most common mentality that people have going into exercise, and it's the number one reason why people can't stick to it. If you go into it because you're caring for yourself, because you already have value, not because you need to get valuable, because you already have value, you're doing this and you're treating yourself like somebody who deserves to be cared for, because you love yourself not through feeling, but through action. Well, now you've got the right mentality that's going to lead you down this path, ups and downs, but naturally creating balance and treating yourself through exercise, through diet in a way that feels good. Why? Because I'm caring for myself, or I'm improving my ability to care for others even more important. It's making me a better father. It's making me a better husband. Oh man, I'm more productive at work and I'm less annoyed and irritable. And I enjoy time with my kids because I can get on the floor and get back up or because I can run. Like when you view it that way, that mentality, that's going to, and if that'll guide you over time to develop this relationship with exercise and diet where you'll never stop, you'll never want to stop. Yeah, it's such an important thing because the question always for everybody is like, how do you make anything sustainable? You can't use willpower long term. And if you truly are not enjoying it, maybe it's an opportunity to take a step back. You know, one thing that you said that was really profound on our first podcast together is that you said, when you really dial in working with a good coach or a trainer, when you really dial in a good strength training routine for you, as a lot more people are becoming aware, eating more protein, strength training, preserving muscle, you realize like the goal is not to kill yourself at the end of the workout. You actually should be leaving feeling more energy. That's there. And yeah, that doesn't mean that you're not going to do certain lifts or movements that are tough. Right? I don't love Bulgarian split squats, but because of that, I kind of do love them because they're a little bit tough, but I'm not destroyed. I look forward to it. Once I doubted that and I found a good trainer for me and I got into a good routine. It's like the gym, which is where I work out right now, it's a happy place for you. That's right. Right? That's right. Sure. There are days that you feel like, oh, I got so much going on. Do I really need to be doing this right now? And then you're like, no, I feel so incredible when I go and I don't feel incredible when I don't go. When you make that shift and I've had trainers before that because they were following a particular protocol or, you know, trying to get certain results that are there because it's part of a particular group. You're getting your butt kicked. You get your butt kicked and you're just like, I just, I don't want to do this. I just don't want to do this. No, if you look at your, remember, remember, okay, the ultimate goal here is that you do this forever. But I think everybody knows you have to do this forever. Okay. So I want to develop a relationship with this thing where I want to do it. Otherwise, how the heck am I going to do it forever? So that's number one. Number two, your body was not designed or evolved or whatever you believe to go full out high intensity all the time. Not even pro athletes do that. Pro athletes, the specimens of physical pursuit of athleticism, the pros, right, the 0.001% of the world, they have in season and off season. If they were always in season, their careers wouldn't be very long and they'd be broken down and injured. So when you look at your whole, you look at a whole year of consistency, 90% of it's cruising, 10% of it is sprinting. There's that 10% of the time when you're getting after it. 90% of the time I'm practicing exercise. I'm going through the movement. I'm feeling energized. I feel, and then 10% of the time is man, I'm going in there and I'm going to get after it. And you know what? You take, you time that 10% for, I got good rest. I'm well fed. I feel good. Let's go for it. By the way, seasons change that. Like you got a newborn at home, you're going to be a 100% of time cruising. And it's not going to be a little while until you go, you start to chase after it because well, at the end of the day, needs to improve the quality of your life and you will beat yourself up while getting lack of sleep or whatever. Like you're not going to be able to do anything. Yeah, it's true. If I can make it to the gym two times a week right now and keep everything else sort of organized and moving, you know, I'm proud of that. But I will say that before my son came, having had, you know, that training and working and other stuff, there's also a part of me now that in the past, I would feel like, man, I, I'm going to go through this season and I'm so thankful that, you know, we have a baby who's healthy and I'm so proud of my wife and, you know, how amazing she is as a mom, everything she went through during her pregnancy and labor and everything like that, just magical. There would be times in the past that I'd feel like, oh man, I'm entering into a season. I'm a little worried that I'm not working out as much. I'm not doing this. I'm not moving. And now I understand that, okay, this is a season. That's right. There's so many beautiful things that come along with it. Maybe I'm not training as much as I could, but actually one thing that you said to me, I think it was on our second episode together, you were like, just trying to maintain your protein level during this time, even if you're not working out as much. It helps. That, that is, at least one major thing that you could do to preserve some of that, you know, muscle loss that happens when you're not training. That's right. That's right. So I look at the things that I can control. I'm like, okay, let me just focus on these couple of things. And this is a season and there'll be a time where I'm back in that and I'm working out in the same way. You know, who this is most, in my opinion, most important to communicate this to. And we said, we talked briefly about this off air when I first came in. Women during and post pregnancy, this is such an important thing to communicate to them because they have so much messaging that they need to look a particular way. This is how long it takes you to get in shape and then you bounce back type of deal. Meanwhile, their body goes through a radical change, radical. We don't, we don't fully, we, I don't think anybody communicates this well enough. It is a radical, dramatic, physical and mental and emotional shift that happened. Even a woman's perception of sound changes. There's great data on this where she'll hear a baby crying or a certain noise that your, your child, and she's like, she's on, she's a light sleeper suddenly. Suddenly she's like, awake. They've done studies with this with her dads, by the way, a sound that sounds like someone's coming to the house, will wake us up. Yeah. Baby making noise, sleep all the way through. Yeah. So it's remarkable. And women go into this and they're like, my body's not my own. Why can't I do what I used to? Why do I hurt? Why am I hurting? It's four months postpartum. I'm doing barely what I used to do and I get hurt suddenly. Like what's happening? Why am I not responding well? I'm seeing this information on social media that says I should bounce back this quickly. And it's like, no, this is a completely different season. And it really respect the changes that your body's gone through and have a much, have a more realistic perspective, one that's, it needs to get communicated more often in a real, honest way. So that women don't go with this crazy expectations of what it's supposed to be like and then hating themselves because they're not meeting these unrealistic expectations. Yeah. Well, I appreciate, even if it's for a few minutes here that we talked about it right now, because as you mentioned, this is something that needs to be talked about more. And who knows, maybe one day we'll do a whole podcast on just that alone. And the family and the pressures that dads face, that dads face and families, you know, you have to really fight for your family to be healthy in this modern world. And that means also mentally, you know, you have to protect your family from all the different influences that are out there, social media, foods, friends that may not be the best influence on them. You have to protect your wife. You know, they're in a very vulnerable stage after giving birth. And, you know, my wife is like the amount of comments, both being pregnant and now having delivered the baby that I get largely from other women. You know, this is her saying this, about my body, the way that things should be, the way that things shouldn't. It's crazy. It's nuts. It's crazy. It's really nuts. Yeah. Our modern society is really aimed, and I say society, it's largely driven by the products we consume in media. That's like everything, right? It's designed to capture your attention and your dollars. It's not designed or it's not organized or there's no incentives to make you healthier or more joyful or have more, you know, satisfaction in life. Unless those things get them more attention and money, but the incentive is attention and money. And so, yeah, that's the world that we navigate. And if you look, and this is very clear, I don't think I need to make the argument, the default is poor health. Yeah, not just poor physical health, mental health. That's the default. In other words, just follow the world. And what's probably going to happen is you're going to have poor health, both mentally and physically. I love at the beginning episode, how you brought up processed things. And you mentioned things like social media and we have processed everything. We haven't just processed food. We've processed connections. But what that looks like is social media, likes and comments. We've processed sex with pornography. We've processed, I mean, all aspects of things that we need for good health. We've processed relaxation with like, you know, well, I got to go, you know, get in this pod and float in water and whatever when really just got to turn things off and chill out. So it's all this processed stuff. And then we wonder why, you know, we're not feeling so good amidst all that. There are some bright stars that are out there and I am thankful for social media, YouTube, other things for connecting me with people like yourself. You know, we wouldn't have met probably, right? If it wasn't for that. So we take the good with some of the bad that's there. We protect ourselves, protect our family, protect our bodies. And just with a little bit of education, some practice that's there, some end of one experimentation. It's not that crazy. You build a foundation and now a lot of this stuff starts to happen automatically. Yeah, I'm definitely getting there. It's been it's been a journey when it comes to like the fitness aspect. And after not really giving a lot, I've always been somebody who's been very active, played sports, all this stuff, but just strength training was not something that was in my world. And probably didn't have a lot of examples of that growing up in sort of my my community. But I'm so glad that I got into it now. What inspires me a lot to make these habits, you know, more consistent is like, wow, like now I have a kid, he's watching. Yeah, he's watching, he's getting a chance to see. And it's like, it's very motivational for both me and my wife to feel like, Hey, like, all these things that we've done for years, it's even that much more important because that's the world that he's going to be brought up into. He's not going to know anything differently. So as always, it's such a pleasure to have you on. Thanks for being open to a different style of an episode. Yeah, you brought the fire as always. And you had a lot of really interesting thoughts for us on this topic of we're starting with what people think they want to talk about, which is the visceral fat and the belly fat. Nothing wrong with that at all. What got me into health was I had really bad acne. And I realized like, Oh, wow, I actually had a dairy issue. I had a dairy allergy. My acne went away during that period of time. Vanity got me into this. There's nothing wrong with a kid wanting to be like, Hey, I want my skin to be clear. Sure. You start there, but you end up somewhere different. And I'm glad we talked about the mindset piece, because ultimately that's the most important thing. We have to love ourselves. We have to think that we're worthy enough for investing in ourselves. So we really appreciate you bringing that reminder. You mentioned your coaches. Let's give a little plug for Mind Pump. If people are interested in that, where do they go? Oh, you could go mindpumpcoaching.com. We really don't advertise it publicly because we can't service as many people who are coming through. We're trying to grow as fast as we can, but I'm not going to grow faster than the amount of good trainers I can hire. Yeah, you need to find like good coaches. I mean, remember, we were trainers for years before, for decades before we started. The bar is very high. Oh, yeah, like you represent us, you got to do a really good job. So but we're adding them. And then of course, you could just listen to the podcast and everyone's what we'll point to our coaches. Mind Pump, people can check it out. Link in the show notes. Fantastic podcast. Sal, can't wait for the next episode together. Thank you. Thanks for having me on, man. I appreciate it. Hi, everyone. Drew here. Two quick things. Number one, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you haven't already subscribed, just hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. And by the way, if you love this episode, it would mean the world to me. And it's the number one thing that you can do to support this podcast is share with a friend, share with a friend who would benefit from listening. Number two, before I go, I just had to tell you about something that I've been working on that I'm super excited about. It's my weekly newsletter and it's called Try This. Every Friday, yes, every Friday, 52 weeks a year, I send out an easy to digest protocol of simple steps that you or anyone you love can follow to optimize your own health. We cover everything from nutrition to mindset to metabolic health, sleep, community, longevity, and so much more. 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