What is going on guys? Welcome back to Eat, Train, Prosper. This is episode 175, our November, 2024 Instagram Q &A. Brian and I were just chopping it up before we hit record and we kind of came to the conclusion we don't really have any updates this week and these episodes typically tend to run a bit longer anyway. So we're going to jump right into this episode and get started. So this first question, Brian, I think I'll kick over to you if that's okay. Mm-hmm. In your sessions, do you ever swap exercises to still be able to train certain muscles? For example, I train my triceps Friday. Today, Saturday, I'm planning on doing chest, where I have dumbbell press. My triceps are still sore, so this will likely affect my performance negatively. I see two or three options here. Swap the press for a fly, rest another day, or just do the session anyway. What would you do? Yeah, it's a good question. This one actually came through my DMs a few days ago and I didn't get to reply immediately due to life and things. And so I came back to a DM from him like a few hours later that said, fuck it, I'm just gonna train. And so he ended up making a decision without my input, which is totally fine. Cause I think training with sore triceps, training your chest with sore triceps is likely at least something that you should try and see. if it does in fact affect your performance. My inclination though would have been to tell him to just try and rearrange his training program in general so that he doesn't have a debilitating triceps soreness heading into chest day the very next day. You could have even put one rest day between those two, maybe made that biceps that day instead of triceps. I mean, a number of different ways you kind of could have manipulated the training program. so that you don't have to deal with this issue. Even if it's not an every week issue, it's just why deal with it if you don't have to. So my suggestion would have been rearrange the program, find a better way to do it. But in this case, not a big deal if you want to go train, see what happens, see if you lose performance, and then decide if you want to make adjustments from there. I don't think it's worth over analyzing or over stressing about. And I would just kind of experiment and see whether it does in fact have negative impact on performance. Yeah, but my initial inclination was similar to yours as the I would. think the best case would be to program around this if it's triceps are still sore or you're going to train triceps and then chest the next day. If triceps are the priority, then you just kind of take that a little bit. But if they're not the priority and the chest would be a higher priority, you might want to program around it or like you said. Just train it and see. think there's. It's it's unpleasant. In the beginning, but there's been numerous sessions. Some of them I've been like legitimately under recovered for and I get like two sets in and I completely forget about it and it's just like a training day, you know, and I've had pretty good performances now. Don't get me wrong. There's probably some pretty good devil's advocate to play on there that because you're not recovered, you're not going to produce the. stimulus or the adaptations will not occur and I wouldn't necessarily argue against that but like Brian said you might just want to find out for yourself a little bit. Yeah, to go back to the beginning of the question we didn't quite answer in your session, do you ever swap exercises to still be able to train certain muscles? So I guess what he's referring to here would be like, okay, so yeah, here's what he said, swap the press for a fly. So in that case, he's like, hey, you know, I have my triceps scheduled before my chest, but dumbbell pressing is going to involve my triceps. So what if I swapped out the dumbbell press for a fly? decrease the involvement of my triceps still get the stimulus to my chest. So my response there is basically that now you're making adjustments to the program, which makes it harder to track progress and harder to diagnose whether in fact you are progressing. So my thought would be like, hey, if you really want to train triceps before chest and you don't want to rearrange your program, then maybe you make a permanent swap. And maybe that dumbbell press always becomes a dumbbell fly. And now you've kind of mitigated the problem while also still being able to keep the the sequencing in your training the way that you wanted to with triceps, then chest. But ultimately, like we were saying, I just don't see why it has to be arranged that way. And I would probably try to just arrange the program in a manner that doesn't have that that that soreness in that. This next one I think we should kick over to you as well. Heart rate recovery is all the rage these days. How do you go about assessing this for yourself? I find it makes a huge difference in the heart rate recovery score depending on whether you move around or drink anything immediately. Yeah, I agree 100 % with that latter part. So this question came in after I posted an insane heart rate recovery for myself where I went running the other day. And I finished my run with I was doing 30 30s, like 30 seconds on 30 seconds walk type thing. But at the end, I was just like, you know what, I want to get to four miles I have, I think it was point one five miles left. So I just ran the whole point one five miles didn't stop. think it took like close to a minute, 45 seconds, something like that. When I finished that, was, my heart rate was at 169 beats and it heart rate recovered down to 65 beats in the first 60 seconds. So I dropped 104 beats in 60 seconds, which is my personal record, my prior record was a hundred and that was a complete outlier. So to see a hundred and four was like, what is going on? And so I posted that. And then this prompted this guy who's a regular listeners of ours. think his name is Jason to ask this question. And he's a hundred percent right. Like if I were to have finished that run and then gone inside, gotten a drink of water, walked around or drank my water while even sitting down, all of that changes the response to the heart rate recovery score. And so My general approach just for consistency purposes is that as soon as I hit end workout on my watch or whatever, I just sit down and don't move. I try to focus on my breathing in the early stages when my heart rate is racing, I'm still breathing through my mouth because there's not enough oxygen coming in. As I get to about 30 seconds in on the heart rate recovery, I'll switch to nasal breathing and I'll see the heart rate drop a little bit more. And so my process is hit the end workout, sit down, don't move, focus on your breathing, don't drink. That's what I do. Like I said, if I were to even be sitting there, but also drinking water, like even things like messing with my watch or playing on my phone will keep my heart rate up another five to 10 beats over what it would have been if I just close my eyes, sit there and don't move. And so I don't know if that is creating this sort of overblown heart rate recovery score that I'm getting. or if it's really just a matter of how one might go about doing that and creating consistency around that practice, which would be my suggestion. So I just think whatever it is that you do should just be the way that you do it each time. So you can compare apples to apples and see where you end up. Yeah. How do you, do you ever even look at that metric at all when you're doing it, Aaron? Only when it tells me that like you're in danger. It's pretty much like mean, mine is poor, but I'm also like, I wouldn't say I have intelligently structured training. Cardio training for like a progression. It's just I need to if you don't use it, you lose it sort of thing. And I want to keep my blood vessels like what's the what's the terminology here? Like they're like pliable. exactly. So I spiked my heart rate a couple of times, it's just like, I'm not, what it probably is is I'm not in shape enough to be pushing myself like I am, and then I'm falling apart afterwards. Yeah, because your body is not like it's not it's not decreasing its fatigue level super fast because your fitness isn't super high. Yeah. Yeah, like my watch, which I don't I don't wear my watch all the time. I pretty much only wear it like when I'm doing like heart rate monitor stuff. But it gave me a notification when I was like right after I wrapped up my cardio. It was like fitness age decreased to 38. Sick. I'm 36. Yeah, there. shape is what it's saying. Yeah, there's like some some like, what would you call it like a proprietary metric to Garmin? It's like a fitness age that it calculates based off the inputs you give it and it's like, you're fit. You're as decreased to 38. So yeah. Well, at least you're getting you're getting super yoked. My guess is that that that algorithm is probably somehow affected by body weight. And so as it notices your body weight going up relatively to like your output, your view to Max is inevitably going to decrease as body weight goes up because you have more human to power. And so I'm sure that's part of that calibration as well. Okay, we'll kick this one over to you to start off, guess, with this as well. So the abbreviated training is peaking my interest. Do you really believe this will work for most people with such low volumes? Does it change depending on your training age? Yeah, so this question comes on the heels of our last episode, which was something around effort episode 174. And I had a bit of a tangent where I went off discussing kind of the current state of my training with abbreviated training and a number of the people that I've been associating with over the last six months or so as part of this kind of abbreviated training group. And then also referencing how this is how I actually got my start in training 25 years ago was was through abbreviated training. So I think it's important with regard to this question to note that like as much as I am currently using this and I think that there's a ton of value in it, I don't program abbreviated training for my clients. I still follow an evidence-based approach that stays somewhere between eight to 15 or 20 sets per muscle group. using a variety of different exercises, using RIRs and somewhat biased, you know, N1 style movements to target specific musculature. So like a lot of the things we talk about on here are the ways that I program for my clients. I am moving closer and closer to this idea that I think abbreviated training is, I don't wanna say the way. because there's multiple ways, but I think it is an effective way for many people to train. And I think a lot of my decision-making framework around that is based on the fact that 99% of people aren't actually trying to 100 % optimize their physique and stand on stage with as much muscle as humanly possible on their frame. And I do believe at this point that training really hard, intensely focusing on progressive overload with big compound movements, even on an infrequent low volume basis, will get you the majority of the way to whatever your strength and physique goals are. And so when it comes to this balance between life and all the things that go into life, like work and family and other obligations, plus you balance that with the desire of trying to be strong, be healthy and have a physique that you're proud of and maybe is admired by others, that can all be achieved with this kind of lower volume, lower frequency approach. And so it really depends when you come to me, like what you state as your goals and how important is it for you to get that extra one, two or 3 % that maybe, we don't even know, maybe you would get. by using higher volumes and more biased movements and things of that nature, like we discuss on here. So it like anything with coaching, it's all a conversation that begins with a discussion around what is your time commitment? What is your desired level of duration, like duration per session, frequency per week, and desire to input effort, because abbreviated training only works with higher efforts. So I think that's a general basic background of my belief on it. Yeah, I have some other thoughts, but let me kick it over to you for anything you have to kind of say on the topic as well. Yeah, so I'm going to break down the question a little bit more. Do I really believe this will work for most people with such low volumes? Yes, I do believe that. But asterisk, asterisk, the effort needs to increase per set like Brian mentioned. Does it change depending on your training age? Ultimately, I do think that but not. but I don't think it's causative. think it's like a discovery sort of thing. If you if you talk to almost any lifter who's been around for like 10, 15 years, something like that, someone like, you know, me or Brian or Alberto Nunez, Dave McHoney, something like that. Almost all not all, almost all tend to do a lot less volume now that they're older, have more muscle than they did when they were younger and the quality of that volume. it should is also very likely to be much more quality now as opposed to when we were younger. So I think it's I think most people end up doing less volume as they get older. But it's not because they're older. It's because that they've discovered through whatever, you know, method of their own that if they did less work, but more quality work, it's more favorable for what they want. And that's I've I mean, I'm a I'm a recovering high volume person like I used to do a lot of volume. But I just don't think it needs to be an asterisk, right? Like I had a client ask me in this check in this week. Hey, if I like what would you suggest if I want to add some extra sets at the end of my day like like this past leg day, I kind of wanted to add some extra sets of hack squats. My immediate thought was like what like. Right like you should be working harder, dude show me your sets of hack squats if you want to add extra sets of hack squats and unfortunately yeah yeah right and unfortunate I mean I shouldn't say unfortunately it's fortunately unfortunately he's a member at this kind of like boutique gym where they don't allow any filming like no filming at all so like I can't see his sets unfortunately but that was my initial thought like what extra sets of hacks what like I need to see what your hack squat looks like because My initial thought is you're probably at like a seven, eight RIR where I want you at a two and then you're not gonna want extra sets of hack squats. So yeah. Yeah, I am really like the way that you kind of brought that up and frame that. And I think that the way to wrap that up is to say that show me somebody that brings the effort and knows how to work with high intensity. And I'll show you somebody that cannot do higher volumes. And so that's sort of that natural progression that Aaron is talking about is you can do higher volumes in your earlier intermediate stages because you don't know how to bring the intensity the same way that you do. as your training age increases. And that's why if you reference our episode that we did a couple months ago, that was something like a training volume over the training age or something along those lines. We have a whole episode dedicated to what happens to training volume as you're a beginner intermediate advanced and then super advanced. So Episode 167, personalizing your training volume. Perfect, yeah, so I would check that one out as well. All right, let me kick one over to you for once and let you start with it here. So, back offsets, what purpose do they serve and when to use them? I really like the positioning of the questions because a lot of the things that we just talked about in the prior question apply here. Like Brian said, as your training age increases and you learn to like really bring it and take a set to the house, repeating that is mentally just traumatizing. Really. I mean, if we're talking like I think like a heavy leg press set for like a set of like eight to 10 reps is just brutal. And then doing that again, mean, stimulus will increase. Yes, but this is where the, you know, a theory from Dr. Mike Isertel like stimulus to fatigue ratio comes into play. That second set is going to cost you from a CNS standpoint and fatigue is going to skyrocket. So this is somewhere where using like a back offset is nice because we get less total load. So we get less total load on the CNS. we get to work in a slightly higher rep range, which if we're someone who wants to, if we wanted to use that, theory of undulating rep ranges, can take that into advantage as well. And it allows you to have a second or even potentially third, however your volume is structured, approach towards failure, but at a less total load or less absolute load, therefore less like loading to the CNS. Yeah, that's that's totally accurate. And I agree with it. As you were talking and you were talking about how hard psychologically it is to do a second set after you do the first sets using the leg press example of eight to ten. If you're doing a back off set, you do your eight to ten and then you drop the weight 10, 15, 20 percent, and then you do this higher rep set that Aaron is talking about. That to me psychologically is way more daunting. than just doing another set of eight to 10 with the same weight. So I think at some point, you know, this discussion involves your individual psychological makeup and whether you would prefer to drop weight and do higher reps or whether you would prefer to just do a second set at that same weight. For me, I tend to be one that like I always thought and wanted to like back offsets. I romanticized it in a sense of like, yeah, different rep ranges, different stimulus. less need to try to like match performance, so to speak, like it's it's almost like a separate, complete thing. And I can progress this set, and then I can progress that set. And it's all good. But when I actually get into the practice of it, and I do it, I started getting to a point where I would dread that back offset, because I knew that it was going to hurt so much more than the set that I just did, which already hurt so much. And so I think, you know, whether you use a back offset or whether you just do two straight sets of the same thing. I think we're just grasping at straws I don't think it really, it's marginal. It doesn't make a huge difference in your gains anyway. So I'll revert back potentially to just the psychological rationale of, you prefer to do a second set that's higher reps or do a set that's the same number of reps or around the same number of reps? And in both ways are effective in both ways work. The last thing I'll note is that, in the Schoenfeld meta from 2017, think they parsed out sort of, I think it was this meta, maybe it was something else that I'm confusing it with, but either way, then the study around that timeframe, they parsed out the impact of one set, two sets, three sets, four sets on the overall stimulus achieved. And so we have to remember as I give these stats that these are general population people that are part of a meta, meaning they likely can't push themselves as intensely as Aaron and I were just talking about in the abbreviated training section question prior. So in this, in this study, I believe it was something like 64 % of the stimulus occurs in the first set. And then something like 85 to 90 % gets you, you get from the second set. And then basically any set after the second set, you know, you're really working with marginal at that point. So maybe you're at like 93 or 94 % with the third set and then 96, 97 % fourth set, et cetera, as you're inching your way closer to getting maximum stimulus, so to speak. But with that said, I think if you're an advanced athlete that knows how to bring the intensity, I believe that you're getting the majority of the stimulus that you're going to get from the first set and that the second set is probably getting you about as close to that 100 % as you would need to be for somebody that's committing to this long term over the course of their life. Yeah, I really like what you said there. And that is one where I would say that the top set back off, I think, has more utility as your training age increases. And it's not your training age inherently. It's your your your skill as a train a trainee, I guess would be the or an individual, right? Your skill. If if you were to, again, put in early intermediate on the leg press and you're like, OK, drive that stimulus like they're probably going to get. I forget the numbers you said, but they're going to get a chunk of stimulus. But I would put a fairly large amount of money that if you put like a 15 year, you know, veteran trainee on the leg press, you're like, okay, get all the stimulus you can out of set one. It would be statistically significant way higher than the early intermediate person. And that's why. Okay, this one I'll read for you, Brian. Cool. Without getting too political, can you elaborate on your intention in posting the Adrian Chavez piece on chemicals in our food and environment? Yeah, for sure. Are you being in Bali? Have you been apprised of kind of what's going on with the RFK junior appointment in the Trump administration with Maha and all that stuff? Yeah, so yes, I get. Yeah, I saw that I watched his I watched the RFK like concession speech, whatever you would say, where he's like dropped out and said he was endorsing Trump. Like I I did watch that. I have a. A professional interest in that sort of thing, like as a nutrition professional, right, I am in minorly right. I'm minorly interested in it being. talked about at least now. Yeah, no, I agree. I, I sit on both sides of the fence on this issue. And to give some background, I come from a household where I grew up in the nineties, where my mom was extremely cautious of any sort of outside chemical or toxin. I'm talking preservatives and dyes in our food. I'm talking dyes and things in our laundry detergent, our deodorant, in the toothpaste we use, in the environment at large, you know, all of the runoff of the chemicals in the Midwest, like all of this stuff my mom was hyper aware of and very bullish on ensuring that none of that touched my brother, I or our family as we were growing up, which creates a bit of a... confusing place for me to be because... while I believe that that stuff is inherently bad and for sure has been linked to a number of different. diseases down the line. mean, some worse than others like the runoff in the fields in the Midwest is likely going to be way worse than a couple preservatives or dyes in our food. So I think we're talking about levels here. But to kind of get back to the original question as to why I posted that. So the post was quite polarizing, and I probably should have posted a different swipe. So the main the main swipe was basically like, I eat chemicals in my food, and I'm totally healthy or something along those lines. And I was like, me too. But if you were to swipe through that post a bit more, the point that I really wanted to make, and I shouldn't have just assumed that people were going to click on that and then read the whole post, like everyone, of course, is just going to look at the the swipe that I posted. But the post basically talked about how we have all of these really large prevalent issues in our society that are contributing to our health dilemma and the childhood obesity epidemic and all of these different things. And I was trying to say that I think that a lot of times these chemicals, preservatives and dyes and stuff in our food are being used as a scapegoat for people just being unhealthy in general and being sedentary, being obese and then having health issues and being like, I'm unhealthy because of preservatives and dyes and other outside chemicals and toxins that they're experiencing. And I'm not here to diminish the impact of mold in your house or any of this stuff. I do believe that's real. And I think that people have varying levels of sensitivity to this stuff. But my point was more that if I had to nail it down to something slightly polarizing would be that if you're exercising and active at a base level, It mitigates the negative impact of a lot of these things that people are claiming are truly affecting our health negatively. And it's totally possible that this stuff could be cumulative and there could be a point at 80 years old where you're like, shit, I had preservatives and dyes in my food throughout my 20s, 30s and 40s. And now I'm dealing with the ramifications of that. Like I'm open to that being a very possible outcome. My view just being mostly that if you're active, lead a mostly healthy lifestyle, eat whole foods, fruits and vegetables and stuff that the little bit of this stuff that you're exposed to is likely at such a low threshold that it's not going to at least create immediate impacts into our health that are are extremely detectable and noticeable. So yeah, that's that's my not so concise way of phrasing that. I'm trying to think if I want to add anything on without exposing like just tin hat Aaron. But I will try to stay very, very focused here. I agree. mean, I agree. Everything of what you said, and I knew exactly what you would say, and I knew exactly that I would agree when you started. I agree that we're grasping onto like claims like seed oils or why our children are on are unhealthy. Do I think that? the United States populace will benefit from having, removing lower quality oils or shifting back towards higher quality oils? Yes. Are all the type two diabetic children gonna automatically not have diabetes because there's not seed oils in the food anymore? No, unfortunately not at all. Like not at all. They're still gonna have diabetes because our culture has shifted towards a lifestyle that is very conducive towards childhood obesity and type two diabetes, right? If you are like a head of household or something like that and wants to get control over things, stop eating out as much. Cook more of your own food. Cook your food in avocado oil for higher temperature things. There's others that you can use as well, but avocado oil is a simple one. Use olive oil for lower temperature things and probably eat a lower fat diet in general. and reduce the refined carbohydrate and sugars for things like vegetables, fruits, whole grains, lean meats, right? That's always been the answer. It's been the answer for like 50 fucking years. It's still the answer, whether people wanna believe it or not. And yeah, I think it's good that things are starting to change at the top, but it's unfortunately not likely to have a strong impact on your family, you. The person head of household, mom, dad, older brother, older sister, are the one who is likely to have the change in your household. Yeah, no really good points and I'm glad it inspired another thing I want to say real quick too, which is that There's an economic barrier to eating fresh fruits, whole grains, lean meats. All of these things are an economic barrier and I'm not insensitive to that. I understand that people can't all afford that food, but it's important to understand that if we now go and extract seed oils and preservatives and dyes out of our current food base, prices are going to go up. The reason that they're using high fructose corn syrup and seed oils and all of these things is because they're cheaper and we live in a society where we're already extremely subjected to this high level of inflation, which is a huge factor in why Trump was elected. I think as well, people are just so unhappy with the economic state of inflation. While this problem could potentially be ameliorated a bit by long-term by taking these things out of our food, the ultimate increasing cost, think would alienate a lot of the people that actually are for this movement in general. And so I think it's important. Yep, yep, very good point there, Brian. Okay, I'll kick this one to you since it's about you. Brian, your calf story. Curious what you guys each usually do for your calf training and for clients. Yeah, so I just posted yesterday that I was doing calves for the first time in like a year. And and I got like a bunch of responses from people about this with varieties of questions. The reason for anyone curious as to why I started doing calves again was not because I care about the aesthetics or I think that my calves are going to improve by training calves. It's actually because when I now that I run once a week, I've noticed that my Achilles tendons get kind of tight for a couple of days after I run. And I'm thinking that by doing this loaded stretch and contract movement through the dynamic range of motion, that I should be able to help my Achilles become more resilient to that beating. And so that's really the main motivation for instituting calf back into my program. As far as the actual question, which is what we do for calves for ourselves and for other people. For me, I've basically reached a point in calf training where I think the seated calf raise is mostly unnecessary. I mean, if you are a very top level bodybuilder and you happen to lack soleus development, which is the lower part of your calf, like yes, maybe for like 0.01 % of the population, a seated calf raise has some value. For most of us doing a standard standing calf raise, it's going to hit both your gastrocnemius, which is the top of the calf and the soleus, which is the bottom. And thus, I think biasing the majority of your training to standing calf raises is great. I think whatever variation of calf raise you choose, it should, based on the predominance of research with calves response to the length and position, we should be spending a ton of time at the deeply stretched position where your heel is basically hanging off the edge of a platform and you're under load. So I think every rep of your calf raise should have like a two to three second pause at the bottom. And I think which calf raise you choose doesn't really matter as long as you can load it and it's stable. My absolute favorite one is the single leg dumbbell calf raise standing on the edge of a stair. So I just hold on to the handle of the stairway with one hand and I hold the dumbbell in the hand of my working leg. And I do my calf raises that way. If you have a great calf raise machine with one of those like, you know, pads that sit on your shoulders, or something along those lines. Then you can do both legs at the same time, which makes life a little bit easier. But any of those options are fine. And as far as volume, I don't know. mean, dude, calves are one of those muscles that like if you haven't trained them for a while and you do two sets, they could be sore for like four days, five days. But you can also adapt to them really quickly to the point that if you wanted to train them four days a week with 20 total sets across the week, you could probably work your way up to doing that over the course of a number of weeks or months and not actually have any soreness in your calves. And so that's a result of the repeated bout effect, which the calves seem to be quite susceptible to. there's a range of volumes that can be effective for you to train your calves. Yeah, I want to echo what Brian said around how to train them. wouldn't. I'm not programming a seated calf raise anymore for clients in a lot of times that clients, don't really want to do calves. So I mean, some do, but many would prefer not not to. So I try and keep things simple. And I like to do a standing calf raise variation, like Brian said, a heavy emphasis on the stretch and then only coming up slightly above parallel. I mean, your first couple reps, two, three, maybe four reps, you'll be able to get like a full contraction. But then after that, just getting to above parallel, like there was a pretty good research article that came out, I think earlier this year that showed, and it was pretty well designed, like just getting like focusing on a deep, good stretch, contracting enough to get you, know, basically above like a flat, above like heel that would be on the ground. That's all you need, you know, and really just emphasis on load. And that's exactly how I've been training them. Ironically, I have a soleus strain right now, so I have been having to like very trepidatiously tiptoe around calf training. I actually did the seated calf raise for the first time in like months and months yesterday with very light loads since I do have like a soleus strain and I wanna just put it under some load, but yeah, I wouldn't be training the seated calf raise unless I again have a strain or need to work around something. Yep. What's the type of volume that you generally use when you're peaking like when you're training calves optimally? How much volume per week are you using? Four to like six sets. So I might do like two sets on a day. I really like to use cluster sets training calves. Like I'll do like triple clusters of like a six, six, six, up to like an eight, eight, eight, something like that. Maybe a 10, 10, 10 if I wanna use a lighter load. Sometimes I get like plantar fasciitis if I'm training the calves too heavy and I'll use a lighter load to try and work around that. But typically like four to six. Cool. All right, I'm gonna kick this next one over to you. What are your thoughts on deli meats or smoked salmon? Possibly carcinogenic? So I think the, it's not something, like smoked salmon, I'll have like some clients use, know, it's something, it's a good way to get some salmon on like during travel or something like that, but it's not something I would regularly use for clients. It's not really cost effective at the amounts of protein you would really wanna get out of it. The carcinogenic side of things, I think it comes from the nitrites, if I'm not mistaken, in some of the curing methods potentially. But in full transparency, deli meats are like a T, or sorry, a C tier option that I use for clients only like when we need it. Again, if you're, it just becomes kind of cost prohibitive if we're trying to get 40, 50 grams of protein out of a meal and you're using the deli pack. So you're gonna be eating one. every single time you use it and it's just not really cost effective. I don't think they are bad, know, or evil per se, possibly carcinogenic potentially, but it the economic structure of how they are sold and the quantities they're sold, it's not over. It's like I said, it's gonna be a C or a third level choice for a client because of the cost. Yeah, I agree. The cost is important for a lot of people. I literally cannot remember the last time that I bought deli meat, like in a vacuum sealed package, the way that they come. It probably has been like 20 plus years, maybe college. Like for real, I buy any meat now, I go to the deli counter and then I have them take the big turkey and thinly slice me pieces from there, which... I don't know if the meat, I'm gonna assume the meat isn't prepared the same way that it is when it has to be like vacuum sealed and like there's like that liquid in there and it's all like slimy and disgusting when you pull it out like those little kids pepperoni or salami pieces or whatever those are. Like I don't have science to say this is true, but I just feel when I like touch those things that they must be carcinogenic because they are fucking disgusting. And I judge people that eat those at some level. So even like little kids, see little kids eating those little like snack packs with the dripping like salami coming out of it. And I'm just like, like, what are you doing to yourself? There are just there are just better options out there. And especially as Aaron said, if you want to get like higher levels of protein, that's just a completely poor way of getting protein in your diet and If it comes with like a ton of preservatives and nitrites and all of this other crap with it, like I would just veer towards eating something else personally. There's one final thing I'll say on this. Now there are some higher quality options where it is like pure turkey breast or something like that. Again, the cost is gonna be even higher, but something that, is something, man, this is probably like 2019, 2020 that I saw and it was like a joke around like the deli ham and the meats and stuff and how they're actually prepared and like it's many of them, like I said, not all. but it's like a homogenous structure of various different cuts of meat and the way that it's like melded together. It's like the tippy top, the cherry on top of like the bastardization of like the American food industry. Like that is deli meat sitting on the top. I, again, like I said, only in a time of need if someone's like traveling and we need. some sort of protein like, will I use it? But I can't tell you the last time I put that in a client's plan, probably well over a year. And it's just disgusting. Okay. What is the biggest thing each of you have changed your mind on in the last 12 months? Do you have one off the top of your mind, Brian, to go first? Okay. it goes back to to what we were talking about in question number three, which is the abbreviated training. I think, you know, if someone asked me what's the thing I've changed my mind the most on the last 12 months is the training volume and training frequency that I will likely be using for the majority of the rest of I just think like a year ago, I was so bought in to evidence-based everything, volume being the primary driver of hypertrophy. Like, I never trained with extremely high volumes, but I would always train with the highest volume that I felt like I could recover from. And for me, you know, that was 12 sets for back, nine sets for chest, eight to 10 for each quads and hams. Like it wasn't extremely high volumes when it's evidence-based volumes, but I was really pushing. the limit of what I thought I could recover from. And now I've completely shifted where I'm almost training with the least volume that I can still progress with. at my training age, it's likely that those two things don't actually, actually are not much different. So whether I'm doing three sets or 12 sets per week with the amount of intensity and effort that I personally can bring, I don't think there's a huge delta. between what my results are going to be from those two very distinct approaches. And so yeah, in the last 12 months, I would say my approach to volume and frequency have both shifted quite a bit. Man, I think, and I hate that this is my answer, I think mine has probably been something to do through my revelations with PEDs. That's probably been the biggest. I would say. probably experiencing in having like a much deeper level of empathy for some of my female clients because I've had like, I've experienced really, really low estrogen, which feels terrible, by the way. You feel like an empty robot. I've experienced really, really high estrogen as well. typically as a natural normal male, like your estrogen pretty much sits by the time you hit like 15, 16, it's like, here it is in your, you know, late teens and twenties, like things rise with your testosterone a little bit, but then you're just pretty much at your baseline for your life. Whereas, you know, women have, it fluctuates pretty significantly throughout the month and there's, it impacts your thought process, how you feel, how you approach certain things and just having like experiencing that firsthand and being like this fucking terrible. You know, I, I, I apologize if I had ever been short or rude or, know, inconsiderate of how that can really be. But yeah, the the the few times that I've had like bottomed out estrogen, you feel awful as a human being. So probably probably that Yeah, I thought it was gonna be around that because when you look at the last 12 months, 12 months ago, you were natural and now you're not. So I mean, when there's things you've changed your mind on in 12 months, that has to be part of that. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah. All right. this is question for me. Mm-hmm. Am I still on my hiatus from cannabis? How is that going? I knew this question was going to come up at some point. It's been too long. So for anybody that didn't know, in January 1st of 2024, I completely quit marijuana, which has been a huge part of my life for the last 20 plus years. I completely quit it for 33 days. And then on February 3rd or 4th or whatever it was, I went back to it. but not smoking it. My intention was to only do edibles and then to keep the dosing low. So dosing low meaning, you know, a five to 10 milligram gummy at night, but like not throughout the day at all, no smoking, et cetera, et cetera. I was able to stick with that for about three or four months after the early February point. So only edibles with low dose up until mid spring, say. And then, I don't remember what it was. think I was with a buddy and he wanted to smoke a joint or something like that. And I did. And then I just fell right back into where I was. And it's not even like the joint was that good. And I was like, smoking is the best. Like what if this is what I've been missing out on or something like that. It was really more about the convenience of it in that. When I want to go for a bike ride and I want to take a hit or be like, slightly high before my bike ride, which I love doing. Doing an edible sucks because I have to take the edible then wait 45 minutes. Then you don't really know how the edible is going to hit you, et cetera, et cetera. Whereas if I'm just sitting out there ready to go for my bike ride, I can take one hit off my pen and then boom, I'm on the road. I'm biking again and I'm happy and life's good. And so about mid spring, I went back to smoking with my vape pen. I quit again at some point because I felt guilty about it in midsummer for like a week or two. And then I had another hangout with a friend where we smoked and then I was right back to smoking again. And this question is actually fortuitously timed because I've just again been starting to have personal guilt about smoking and and feeling like I need to stop this again. And So to answer the question, I'm kind of right back to where I was a year ago. I do have more awareness around it, my use. I don't just use and then put it into the back of my mind. I make a conscious decision to say, I'm going to use right now, but then I'm going to not for the next six hours, eight hours, whatever it is. I feel like I'm justifying, but. Ultimately, I fucking love marijuana and I feel like it's mostly good for me. I just really do need to stop smoking it because I think that it's not good for my lungs and I know it's not good for my lungs. And with my focus on health and longevity, while I do think marijuana is good for me in general, I don't think it's good for me to smoke it. And so I'm gonna be back on that train here again at some point. Yes, Aaron. Do you think there's any testing you could get done into like your lung quality? Well, here's the thing, I can almost guarantee you there's like testing you could get done into like your lung quality and stuff. Have you looked into it or thought about that at all? I haven't and I should. But the reason I haven't is because the last thing I want is for it to come back that my lungs are totally clean. And then for me to be like, have an excuse to just say, well, I've been smoking for 20 years and my lungs are fine. Now I can just keep smoking for the rest of my life. I'd almost rather assume that it's bad for my lungs and then make a decision that's beneficial for my health and longevity in that framework. That is a test that I'll likely do if I can ever quit smoking for like a long duration, say I can go a whole year where I'm not smoking at all. I think at that point, maybe I get tested and see where I stand. But ultimately, I just want to stop smoking. Like that's really the goal. I just want to stick to edibles. I want to try to make that the thing that I do when I want to be high and understand that that means that I have to wait 45 minutes to get that feeling. And that's just like the cost that I pay for that. Yeah, it is what it is. I'll keep you guys updated as things change. Very good question, question asker. What is the best piece of home gym equipment for Zone 2? If you could only pick one. Yeah, I love this question. And I think that it actually depends. Big surprise. So anecdote here, when I first started doing zone two, a number of years ago, I tried to do it on a bike that did not have arms that move. And because I was not fit enough aerobically, my legs could not clear the lactic acid fast enough or the lactate is the proper way of saying that. And thus, I couldn't even get into zone two on a bike without arms that move. My legs just started burning too much and kept me from getting my heart rate high enough. That cleared within a number of weeks and now I can bike no problem without arms. However, depending on your base level of aerobic fitness, the safe bet would be to get some sort of assault bike or air dyne or rogue echo bike or one of those bikes that have arms that move. Echo bike has arms that move, right? Am I wrong on that? I don't know. It does. Okay. So yeah, getting, getting a bike with arms that move, allow you to make this into a full body workout, which also actually makes it more effective for zone five work. So it can be effective for zone two, but it can also be very effective for zone five and that you can utilize your entire body and really get some metabolic impact there. However, what I don't love about the bike with the arms that move specifically for zone two is that you are occupying your hands the entire time you're doing zone two. And one of my favorite parts about zone two is that you can do things with your hands. So I could potentially be playing on my phone or reading a book or an article on iPad or like any other number of things I could be doing while I'm doing my zone two, which makes zone two more bearable. and so I think you're kind of left with a decision there as to like, do I need the arms that move? Am I willing to put in a few weeks of time without the arms that move to kind of get my legs to a point where they can clear the lactate fast enough and that I can get into zone two. and so you've seen, I've been focusing on the bike a lot here because I do think the bike is probably the best tool for zone two. rower is not a great tool because of the slide stroke, I believe it's what it's called, where you release and you go back to the beginning. There's that one or two, that one second period where you're not actually working per se. So I think that the rower in many cases is better for higher intensity aerobic work, where you can really crank on it and get your heart rate up. Maybe not quite as good for zone two until you become a really proficient rower, which many people are not. Running is also a totally fine option for zone two. I love, I love running, but Most people aren't in good enough shape to run and still stay in zone two. So again, for most people, running is going to be better for higher intensity. It took me a really long time to be able to run at a pace that was zone two. But if you talk to experts in running, they'll basically say that if you're running that slow, like for me, it's about a 10 and a half minute mile pace is my zone two. If I'm running that slow, it's likely that my gate isn't great. So I'm not actually running with proper form. And so if you want to do zone two for running, you kind of have to get in good enough shape that you can keep a nine, nine and a half minute mile, probably maybe 10, but enough that you can keep good running form. And so again, for a lot of people running is just not a great choice. So yeah, I hopefully provided some wide perspective on that, on the different options that are available out there. And I would just veer towards one of the two bike options depending on your situation. My vote would be stationary bike. And yep, you're gonna. a bike without arms, right? For zone two, yes. For my sprint sessions, no. right that which makes total sense. How did you find the clearance of lactate in your legs when you first started doing that? I remember messaging you about it because it was about no, about two and a half years ago because it was when I we first moved back to Bali again. And yeah, I couldn't get my heart rate high enough because my legs were just screaming at me. And then within like three weeks, it just went away. And then and then like I could do it. So it's one of those things like you just you have to get in a little bit better of biking shape and it just solves it on its own. And now it's like now zone two is so chill like his own two is quite nice if you have like a show you're into or whatever you're talking about killing two birds with one stone without like feeling like you're dying or even really working out. Like I feel like I'm just kind of chilling. You know, I check my heart rate. I make sure I'm where I want to be and I'm really just sitting on my ass watching the fucking show, which is pretty sweet. Yeah, no, I agree. think three weeks is also about the right number. That's what I thought as well when I was getting into it was about three weeks to clear the lactate and become in good enough shape to actually get something out of the stationary bike. All right, this one is long and for you. So how do you determine what maintenance calories are for someone who has potentially been maintaining in a chronic deficit? That sounds counterintuitive and dumb, but possibly true. For example, I weigh 200 pounds and maintain that by eating 2,400 calories a day at 10 to 12 % body fat. So this person's quite lean. mean, 200 pounds at 10 to 12 % body fat. I'm rarely full after meals, but generally satisfied or slightly less than full. I've heard a lot recently about the magic of eating at maintenance for people that have been in a chronic deficit or surplus from people like Dan Garner and wonder what to target. Is there a natural point of homeostasis where hormones, fat-free mass, hunger, and fat mass intersect for a given level of daily or weekly energy burn? How do you know when your clients achieve true maintenance? So think what I wanna do is back it up a little bit and we'll walk through this in chunks. I think I'll start at the end. How do I know when clients achieve true maintenance? We have nearly identical weekly averages over a period of like two to four weeks and we have calories the same with the number of deviations the same as well. And what that typically looks like is one to two meals out and I ask them to steer their meals out. towards similar semi-moderately controllable sources. Very simple sushi, Vietnamese, like a Turkish kebab, rice salad sort of place, right? That's how we find true maintenance, right? Typically it's after a calorie deficit and we're starting to going through our reverse diet and we wanna find out what maintenance will be. I turn the dial of food up and then we see where weight stops going down, normalizes. We have a consistent average and then we tick that to see where it starts increasing. Right. So that's how I find that. Now, backing up to the beginning of it, how to determine what maintenance calories are for someone who has potentially been maintaining in a chronic deficit. This is industry speak that's gotten pretty bastardized. And what it typically lends to is you're not controlling your variables like you think you are. If you have been in a chronic deficit, your weight will have been consistently declining, right? objectively. What ends up happening is typically what I call like lifestyle creep. You're not eating a lot on certain days throughout the week, but then we're either drinking on the weekends, we're going out multiple eating multiple times out over the weekend. At some point throughout your week, you are achieving an energy balance. It may be heavily lopsided from weekdays to weekend, but if your weight is not consistently going down, you are not at in a chronic deficit. are effectively maintenance, right? Or what it might be is some weeks are really, really adherent, or I shouldn't even say adherent, really low in calories, weight is sliding down, then we might have two weekends of the year or two weeks of the year where we have, sorry, two weeks of the month. We have more and we end up at a monthly effective isocaloric level, right? Now, to unpack things a little bit more using your example. 200 pounds at 10 % body fat is massive and shredded. I don't care if you're like six foot one, that is about natural ceiling potential, like natural, what do we call it? Like your natural ceiling. Thank you, thank you, Brian. That's pretty damn good. Even 12 % body fat, which is 20 % different than a 10 % body fat, but still. very, very good. Maintenance calories is not 2400. You are hundreds off, right? And even if you have a low activity level, staying at 10 % body fat at 200 pounds, you have a large amount of muscle and are quite active from a training standpoint, or you wouldn't be able to maintain that level of muscle at that level of body fat, right? So there's just, when you work with enough people, you see enough cases per se, maintenance calories are not 2400 for 200 pounds at 10 to 12 % body fat, not even close. We're six to 800 off to the low end here, guaranteed. Now, I heard a lot recently about the magic of eating at maintenance for people that have been in chronic deficit or surplus and wonder, you know, what to target. What it typically is is people, we actually did an episode of Jeremiah Bear, man, probably a year and a half ago or further. He puts it the best way I've ever heard it. People are under fueling themselves. They're not under eating from a caloric standpoint, but a majority of their calories are, let's call them non-productive for the body composition they want, but they are still calories, right? Think wine, lots of cheese. Bread at times, you don't really need bread in combination with wine and cheese, like these sorts of things. For those people, if they just start shifting towards more micronutrient dense foods that are going to be typically higher protein, higher carbohydrate, but in specific times around training pre, intra, post, you're able to get improvements through food timing, but then also increasing your consistency and therefore reducing variables, right? Like the number of meals out, the types of meals out by controlling those a lot better. Now, the last question, is there a natural point of homeostasis where hormones, fat-free mass, hunger, and fat mass intersect for a given level of daily or weekly energy burn? Yes, there is. However, the delta, is not that far off. like, let's say you're, let's take your example, you're 200 pounds, 10 % body fat, right? That might be. let's call it 3000 calories for simplicity sake. But now if we're saying, hey, but now I'm not 10%, I'm like 13 % body fat, it might be like 2,946. So it's like 60 calories per day or something like that with that shift in 3 % body fat. So again, people, is there a difference? Yes. Is it pretty much inconsequentially small? in the grand scheme of a day of calories. Yes, the things that people run into is people are nowhere near as consistent from a caloric intake day to day as they think they are. If you would like to run this for yourself three weeks, no meals out, eat a meal plan every single day that you cook for yourself or get prepared from the exact same place and you will see I can all but guarantee if you ate 2400 calorie meal plan. at where we at here 200 pounds right 10 % body fat your body weight will go down over that three week period so just a little bit of a misunderstanding of things that can be true but get miscontextually applied very often Yeah, great answer. I'm not going to add anything to that, so very thorough there. Next question asks, do you train differently based on aches? My knees have started hurting recently. first thought in looking at this question is to reflect back on our CrossFit days and how my knees are always hurting. And I think you were in the same place because we're basically squatting dynamically through various Olympic lifts and squat pattern movements multiple four or five times a week or more. So that's obviously an outlier case. And I'm going to guess this person is not a CrossFitter that's training with that type of volume. But to answer the question, as far as do I change my training with aches, the first thing that I would do is try to figure out how I can warm up thoroughly and do some outside of the gym body maintenance work to try to mitigate that problem. examples of that might be doing some barbell mashing on the susceptible areas of your quads before doing any sort of squat movements. So barbell mashing would be taking the edge of the barbell and kind of like rolling it along your thigh, which is really, really painful. You can do things like the voodoo floss, where you wrap the rubber band essentially around. the upper thigh just above the knee and or just below the knee and then do some squats with that on there to kind of create some distractions and blood flow to the area. So I would be doing at least at a minimum those two things before squatting. And usually what you'll find is that even if your knees are kind of bothering you going into that by the time you finish that pre training maintenance routine, or prep routine that you can squat mostly pain free. Ultimately, I would probably look for movements that cause you less discomfort than others. And so it's tough to say what may or may not be a problem for you. But I know like, for me, one of the things that really seemed to help is making sure that in any squat movement that I'm doing, that I'm doing it very deliberately with a pause at the bottom. where the quad is stretched. when your butt is kind of down on your calves, pausing down there, and then as you initiate your ascent out, making sure that that ascent is being initiated with your quad muscles and not with your knees. And I know that like both are working no matter how you think about it or whatever, like both your knees and your quads are both going to be impacted, but through deliberate focus, which may require slightly less weight. but with deliberate focus on making sure that you're pressing through your quads to ascend out of any squat, you're gonna take a little bit of that pressure off of the knee. I also, as crazy as this sounds, I think like 15 years ago, 10 years ago, if you would have said this, people would have said you were crazy, but things like sissy squats and other things where your knees go over your toes, like knees over toes guy, these types of movements are actually really, really good. for strengthening your knees. And like I was saying 10 or 15 years ago, it would have been blasphemous and people would have been like, your knees are gonna shoot out of your, your skin and like you're gonna have any surgery, your ACL is gonna tear whatever it is. It's like, no, this stuff is actually really good for you, but obviously you can't do it if your knees are in extreme pain. thoroughly warming up and making sure that they're in, that they're not in extreme pain and then doing these types of movements will in the longterm help. And then the last thing I'll add in is, is weighted reverse walking. So walking backwards, but with weight, very, very helpful for the knees. You can use a sled. You could walk up a hill, like in the absence of a sled, you could walk backwards up a hill or something like that. But some sort of loaded backwards walking is extremely good for knee health and something that I've, I've been incorporating. It's also by the way, really good for your nervous system. So in balancing your parasympathetic and sympathetic, walking backwards has a unique effect on that. I just read something about that recently, but it does help with knee health as well. So backwards walking should be something that you include. Yeah, those are all really, really good. The backwards walking I forgot about. I ironically have been dealing with like bad knee pain the last few weeks and it's getting the best of me. If I'm honest, they feel fine until after training, like about two hours after training. They just ache like hell, right? Like just the patella and it'll hurt for like three days. It started after coming back from my hernia. It's like the first leg session back and like deep knee flexion. Like, fuck, my knee hurts and It's just been like that way. So it's been very frustrating. I'm reducing my knee flexion volumes because it's that. It's like leg extension, zero issues, but any kind of deep knee flexion, I'm getting aggravation post session. Training performance is fine. I don't have any in session, but after it shows up. But yeah, I just haven't really uncovered what the source of it is yet. and you haven't been able to kind of figure out how to decrease that injury through maybe more, one thought just to be maybe more glute dominant squatting. So less, maybe less knee over toes and maybe pushing more into like keeping a vertical shin when you squat or something along those lines. really interesting is that has that had like training legs in that manner always would give me knee issues. I had to always take my knees through like a full flexion to avoid knee pain. If I did any like glute kind of dominant squatting, I would get like achy knees from doing that. And now they both now both are doing it for me. So I it's got to be something I just haven't figured out with. It could be. because you know, like my my adductors and stuff are so much bigger. I might be like my gate might be different or there's something that's changed recently why it's happening and I really just haven't figured it out yet. But yeah, it's been it's been bothering me and pissing me off to be completely honest. I can imagine. We'll definitely try some of that like weighted or uphill backwards walking. And I think that will help. Okay, if you had minimal equipment options for your home gym, what exercises equipment would you choose for the back? I'm building a home gym without much money. Yeah, I had to clarify this question because originally the question came through and it was just like minimal effective equipment options. And I was like, what are we asking here? So I got this clarification and I still like kind of wish I had more because I don't know if we're talking like home gym build where we're just going to have dumbbells and barbells or home gym build where, you know, there's barbells and dumbbells, but like maybe he can afford one back machine or something along those lines. I didn't get that clarification. So I'm just going to have to go out on a limb and assume here. But, if we just had a barbell and dumbbells, one thing you could do would be go back and look at our back training episode that we did, which was part of our muscle group training series, where we literally covered how to train your back for our home gym, full gym, and with dumbbells only. So you could check that out. But just to be a bit more concise here, I think, you know, the standard free weight exercises are going to be your bread and butter. So things like a bent over Rose, whether that's with a dumbbell or a barbell, totally fine. The nice thing about the dumbbells that you can change your hand angle. So you can go, you know, with that pronated grip, like you do with a barbell to get a little bit more of that upper back. You can go with more of a neutral grip, keeping the elbows in tight to the body. which are going to give you a bit more of the lat focus with your dumbbell rows. The unfortunate result of either of any type of back work that's only with dumbbells and barbells is that you can't do any vertical pulling. So then we'll assume that you have a pull-up bar. I think that that's a pretty normal assumption to make if you're building a home gym is that you have a pull-up bar. And so once again, you can go with that wider pronated grip for more upper back or Terry's focus. and more of that neutral closer grip with elbows in on your pull ups for more of lat focus. And I really, like the one arm dumbbell row variations too. So instead of using two arms, you know, being able to do a one arm where it's like a croc row where you're supported with one arm or you have your knee on the bench or something along those lines. And again, you can use all the different variations of either like pronated, semi pronated, neutral, you know, elbow comes all the way back, elbow stops at the midline. a number of different variations you can use there to slightly bias different tissue. And then if I were to be put on the spot and say one piece of equipment that you could buy that would really go a long way in helping your back training, I do think it would be some sort of like lat pulldown station with the knee, with the thigh pads. And like you can buy a lap pull down tower with thigh pads that literally doesn't have anything else. It's not a functional trainer or anything like that, but you can buy one of those, I think for two or $300 and it's, know, plate loaded and has a cable and it has the thigh pads for you to do your pull downs and a couple attachments. I think that would probably be my choice just because I think you can thoroughly train your horizontal pulling quite well with barbells and dumbbells. but I would personally not enjoy making pull-ups my only vertical pulling. so having some sort of cable lap pull down, I think would be a huge asset there. One that that was a old school favorite of mine that you can do in a home gym setup is ratchets, which is like a pull up variation, but it's slightly different. Yeah. but because your feet are somewhat supported, I think you can get a much better connection with your lats oftentimes than you can when doing like a... Yeah, and like Brian said with the lat pull down, it depends on what home gym rig option you're gonna use, but in this past year, what's the word, ingenuity is not the right word, but the creativeness of the home gym industry is insane. With all these bolt-on lat pull downs, Smith machine that you can turn your rack into, full-blown cable stacks that are bolting onto racks, it can be one of those things like. If you haven't got your rack yet, get a rack that has some, what would we call it, like third party market around it. And then you can like piece together stuff as you, you know, put away some extra funds and you can really expand the capabilities of like your rack. I mean, it's gotten insane what people are actually doing now, which is really, really cool. But yeah, like the rackchains and then, you know, having something that you can do like a proper vertical. That you get like a cable that you can do a vertical pull down lat pull down unilateral Chest like a supported high row sort of thing. It pretty much increases your options and availability for yourself there Yep. Yep. Totally. Okay. I got to bounce. There's one question left. I'll let you handle this and I will catch you next week. See you, So final question, is muscle memory the same if muscle is lost through an eating disorder? So this is a really, really interesting and thought-provoking question. So I'll give you my high-level answer first. Yes, I think muscle memory will be the same if it is lost through an eating disorder. If we think about how muscle is lost in any fashion, either through effective, you know, an intentional dieting or an intentional dieting, like in the, in the case of an eating disorder, it's the catabolization of tissue. The body is in a net negative where it needs to catabolize its own tissue as a fuel substrate for energy production, right? This happens in to a varying degree when we're dieting because we never retain a hundred percent of the muscle mass that we have or through something like an eating disorder, which is just you know, very unsustainable and unhealthy dieting, right? Now here is where I think this question gets really interesting is typically what we see with eating disorders are in younger parts of life, girls coming of age, men coming of age, trying to get into like modeling or something like that, typically quite young into age before building a significant amount of muscle. Now, I think, you know, in the bodybuilding world, do people have eating disorders also? Yes, but I don't think it's there necessarily losing muscle, like what would be an eating disorder of someone who's like 16, 17, 18. So it's a little bit different. But in those cases, that person would have a considerable amount of more muscle than if they did lose it. through an eating disorder, yes, I do think the muscle memory would be the same. I think you're hard pressed to find any research on this to provide a definitive answer. So unfortunately, you know, the answer that we have here is my conjecture and speculation. If anyone was to produce some published research on this, I would love to see it, but. If we can look at some of anecdote, there's a, I know of a few people offhand and I don't wanna air out people's business so I won't put it out publicly, who did have legitimate anorexia and eating disorder and who have built amazing physiques, top world class physiques. So definitely can be done for sure once the. mental paces are worked through with the proper professional help to get past the eating disorder. So a really, really cool thought provoking question. A lot of good questions in this episode. As always, Brian and I are appreciative of those of you guys who asked the questions to help us produce these episodes and we will talk to you next week.