What is going on guys? Happy Monday or Tuesday, whether you're tuning in from the podcast platforms or YouTube, welcome back to Eat, Train, Prosper. This is episode 194 and we are talking nutrition, training and recovery for new and expecting parents. So this came in as a requested topic from a listener who is about to become a father for the first time and has some concerns around accepting some of the, the reductions in training volume and how to structure things to make the most out of the time, not get completely overwhelmed, not regress to a fairly large degree, but also understand the new much more significant higher priority uh in his life. So we thought it'd be a really, really good topic to extrapolate onto for kind of full transparency. I am not a parent. So I will be speaking from the things that I have used with clients um who are parents and Brian can speak from direct personal experience. giving it to us straight. before we dive into today's topic, always, Brian, what's the latest, my friend? Yeah, I just got back from Wisconsin for our kind of annual week long trip there to the lake. good for the most part. mean, I think one thing that's relevant to the new parenting topic is that parenting is parenting. Like it kind of doesn't matter what age the kids are at in some ways, like there are sacrifices and compromises that must be made. And there's a saying among parents that when you travel with kids up until a certain age, whatever that age is, is that it's it's not a vacation, it's relocation. And the problem with relocation is that you don't have any of the things that you usually have at home to appease your children. So you're essentially flying blind in a new location and you go into it with this sense of, I just I need this vacation. Like I really need this relaxation time and to calm down and read a book by the lake and all of this stuff. then that. doesn't actually really come to fruition because you're just running around like a chicken with your head cut off trying to keep kids from drowning. So um yeah, it was fine for the most part. uh I got a bunch of long walks in, I got a couple runs in and I I got two lifts and then a bodyweight workout. brought my rings. I'm a big fan of bringing my gymnastics rings anywhere I go. And that's a really easy way for me to get a super high quality upper body workout in wherever I am, hanging them over a tree branch or something along those lines. So, uh, yeah, I would say overall I did fine. One thing that I thought was, was interesting is I, so I have this, uh, habit at home. where after dinner I just mound calories. You and I have discussed this before. And in Wisconsin, none of my go-to foods that I prefer to just mound at the end of the night were available. And so after we would finish dinner around six or 630, I just wouldn't eat again. And what that led to was five pounds of weight loss in a week. so I posted this one picture in the gym where I like lifted my shirt up and looked in the mirror and I was like, holy shit, like my are back. I feel really lean. This is wild. Like I couldn't believe how lean I actually felt at waking up at 196 pounds. And it made me really happy because I hadn't seen myself that lean in a while and to be that lean at 196 gave me some confidence that what I'm doing with my training is at a minimum not not working. It may not be like continuing to produce incredible amounts of muscle for me at 42 and three quarters years old. but at least it's not having me lose anything. And that felt really good. Like my strength is where I would expect it to be. And now it seems like my physique is where I expect it to be with. At this point, I'm literally lifting two to three hours a week, spread out in multiple two-to-three ways, but two to three hours of total lifting time a week. Been doing that for a number of months now. And it's kind of cool to just see that everything is still good. What did you do cardio wise when you were in Wisconsin? So the gym was two and a half miles away from the house and I was able to walk both days to the gym and back. So on those days I got five miles of walking in plus, you know, a 45 minute lift session. And then two of the days I went for a run. One of the days was like a long zone to kind of easy run. And then I did one like interval hill run. ah Actually, that was just a that that one was a 50 minute. all out run. basically I was like, I just want to go to the gym, but not actually train at the gym and then turn around and run back. So I ran to the gym, ran back. That was five miles, no stopping heart rate was mostly in zone three and zone four the whole time. So one intense run, one easy run, a bunch of walking and two or three resistance training sessions. That's a lot of activity for a vacation. Yeah, but I mean, isn't that like some people take vacation and that's what they do with it, right? Like I one of my clients just went on vacation and he literally was like, this is what I did. I played a minimum of 18 holes of golf where we would walk the course. So that's like four miles of walking. Then he's like, I lifted almost every day and I would run like every other day. So this dude's on vacation and like he's doing even more activity than I am. But but yeah, I mean, vacations are what you make of them. Like, like for me, it yeah, it's it's like. I guess I could have used that time where I was walking to the gym to actually have that vacation and sit by the lake and read a book or whatever. But my nature is to be antsy in those situations. And so I can't actually sit down and enjoy reading a book by the lake until I've done the movement of my body and found my mental reprieve, my space. uh And so I had to kind of choose. And in this case, you know... My choice is to get my movement in and then fit in relaxation if available. Yeah, I mean, that's I know. I like I said, I think it's what's most important is that you spend it doing what you want. And that's the privilege and the nicety of the vacation. Right. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And then two other quick updates. I actually think maybe we turn these next two updates into a full episode either next week or the week after. But I got my blood work back. You and I and Dave McHoney have kind of been discussing that in our chat. ah So I think that that's worth maybe covering in a little bit more detail. The NetNet TLDR, I guess, is my experiment has kind of been... you know, eating all the food, I just mentioned, crushing food at the end of the night, ah essentially living what would be considered like a high energy flux lifestyle where I'm doing a bunch of cardio, walking, lifting weights, but I'm also eating an insane amount of food and it's not always high quality food. And so I was really curious kind of to see where my blood work would fall. ah And for the most part, it was pretty much as I expected it to be. It was pretty similar to the blood work I did last year with a few small exceptions, some improvements and some small detriments. so, you know, listeners are usually into this sort of stuff. So maybe we cover that in a little bit more detail next week. uh we'll do a blood work episode and I can probably find out how we could actually share those files and stuff for the YouTube video um on the screen. Obviously, we'll like, you know, pull out PII and all that stuff like your address and everything. But I have recent labs and stuff, too. And it would just be nice to see like, hey, this is what things can look like. I do have a quick question before we dive in. ah I did look at your blood work multiple times this morning when I was when I got those messages, but I didn't. C, was there any what would be considered like a statistically significant increase from your Tonka Ali and Fidoja Agrestis experiment? So the Fadoja actually got taken off the shelf like a month or two after I started taking it because they said that the science was no longer showing that it was effective. So Momentous took it off the shelves and basically just been promoting Tonka Ali now. And yeah, for the listeners that have been curious about whether the Tonka Ali has improved my testosterone at all, the answer would be a resounding no. ah So my testosterone last year was 349 and it's 306 now. So it went down a little bit. But considering you know six to eight hours of cardio plus a bunch of walking plus lifting plus eating probably too much sugar I I don't I'm not like completely surprised by that And then we can get into this more in the next episode But we had the response from my doctor who mentioned that he thinks I should get an MRI of my pituitary To ensure that the testosterone issues are not downstream from that Yeah, I think it's well worth just shelling out some money just to for a I mean, what would that be called like a not a cover your ass, but it so it's like out of the back of your mind sort of thing. Whatever that phrase of speech that I can't seem to find right now. Yeah. was pretty good and I'm nothing really super worrisome in there and a lot of improvements actually surprising. Like I literally went into the blood work and I before doing it, I was like the two days prior, I did a two hour long mountain bike ride that destroyed me. I spent like an hour in zone four, zone five. And then the day before I did a heavy resistance training session with deadlifts. So I was like my A.L.T. and A.S.T., my liver enzymes must be just atrocious because of all this like hard training I did leading up to it. and they were better than last time, so who the fuck knows. Yeah, it's typically only the AST that you get a uh skew in that because that's in much higher uh prevalence in skeletal muscle tissue, which is how I remember the difference. So AST, I remember it as skeletal muscle, the S in there, and then the ALT is more liver specific. So the L I remember for liver, S for skeletal muscle. So yeah, the AST is much more easily skewable by you know, muscle protein breakdown and those sorts of things. But. Yeah, yeah, but I've I've I've seen it, it can skew like a little bit, but I've never seen it like significant, you know, where you're going to go from like a 30 to like an 80 or something like that. So it's always like you can push it slightly, but nothing, nothing to where it's like at a level where you're like, oh, fuck, my enzymes are a concern sort of. Cool. Well, that's good to know. We can cover it more in subsequent weeks. Cool. And then my last update is just yesterday I did a workout that consisted of a bunch of same muscle group supersets. And then I went on my story on Instagram and just kind of did a number of videos and me kind of walking and talking about some thoughts on same muscle group supersets because they've been just a huge part of my training cabinet for many, many years. I just, I've always been such a huge fan of them, specifically pre-exhaust supersets, but any same muscle group supersets I find super effective. uh like another thing we can probably discuss next week if we want to kind of make it a two-part kind of blood work and discussion of training episode or whatever, but I kind of was ruminating on what it is about the literature that always makes these seem so ineffective. And I think there's a couple avenues for why, but the main one that I just want to throw out there today is that when you look at the literature, they are always looking at, say, muscle group supersets as it consisting of two sets. So if you do like a dumbbell fly to a bench press, the literature says you've done two working sets. And so if you did three rounds of that, the literature calls that six working sets and then they compare that six working sets to somebody who did. six straight sets. And obviously, I think it's not even a question that you could intuitively assume that that is going to underperform compared to doing six straight sets where you have sufficient rest between each one. My argument was essentially that as a time saving mechanism and a way to increase stimulus per time capita, that I think about those same muscle group supersets as one set. So when I go dumbbell fly to bench press, I consider that one working set with two failure points. And what I'd love to see in the literature is some sort of comparison where we take my perspective of how I count that volume and then compare that. Because comparably, it's essentially taking almost the same amount of time as it would be if you were doing straight sets all the way through. And yet you're getting six failure points for the time that it would be for three straight sets. And so my assumption is that comparing it that way, you would see a much stronger response. from the same muscle group supersets. And I think the literature just, it can be a bit confusing when you view it from the perspective of the way that they look at those same muscle group supersets. Yeah, one thing that I think is very pertinent that you use there that is a term that I've been using a lot more, but I think people hear it but don't really sit with it as much as stimulus. Right. We always speak in terms of like volume sets, etc, etc. But like you can do six sets of like a chest pressing and get like a pretty mediocre stimulus or you can do like two really high targeted sets, right, and have an incredible stimulus. And I think that it's hard to quantify because a lot of ability to generate stimulus is on the lifters ability to like, contract and press in a way or have access to a piece of equipment or a pressing angle, an amount of convergence like it's, it's not trivial, but I do think it's not you're not necessarily comparing apples to apples with that. I do think like stimulus is for anyone out there who is maybe considering like reducing volume or trying to change something, whatever like chase stimulus, I would say is a very probably. uh worthwhile effort. Mm hmm. Yeah, I think that's a really good point because, you know, we've talked about this on the podcast a lot that the muscle is just a dumb piece of meat and all it knows is tension. And, uh you know, back in the day, call it 10 years ago, the discussion was, you know, same muscle group supersets are not good because it forces you to use less weight on the compound movement, which then creates less mechanical tension. And I think that that's now kind of been disproven in that It doesn't matter if you're bench pressing 285 or 145. All that matters is what your muscles feel while you're doing that. And if you're reaching a point of fatigue at 145 pounds because you're tired from the dumbbell flies you did first, that's going to provide a similar mechanical tension as doing 285 pounds fresh or something along those lines. Yeah. All right. What's going on with you? um I am 12 days out as of this morning, Tuesday, July 8th. So when this episode releases, let's call it Monday, the 14th or Tuesday, the 15th, I will be in peak week about to head to Taiwan. So today is actually also day 100 of prep and I am feeling it. So. I was speaking with Brian very shortly before the episode mentally. feel pretty sharp. Although I think what's funny is if I go back and watch some of these episodes and maybe three months, we'll see how much slower I'm speaking in how kind of like just delayed some of my thought process, et cetera is, but I still feel pretty sharp. You know, Tuesdays are a long day for me. I have a full day of client check-ins. I train, you know, those sorts of things. And then we record the podcast at literally eight PM for me. So mentally I feel pretty good, but physically I can just feel it. It's it's like all the caffeine now pretty much just gets me a little bit below baseline. So a level of caffeine that would have me like fucking jittered out and like shaking and stuff before. I'm like, I feel almost like chin above water sort of thing. And now um or head above water. So it's I'm tired, but that's just what happens when you get to this level of lean. But um I'm close and that's exciting. Yeah man, what's your body weight at right now? 226 this morning. It's. It's it's it's insane. It nothing makes sense and a lot of my plans and stuff are kind of falling apart and I'm starting to get a little bit concerned. I had I had thought that realistically I would be around heading into these this show. Maybe like I was hoping I could be like 209 210 sort of thing. And then I'm like, OK, after the shows, because we get married September 26th, three weeks after not even like 19 days after my final show. And I was like, OK, I have, you I just got to like keep my body weight and check a little bit once like the food and stuff, because a lot of people post show they're up four or five kilos, you know, in a handful of days. I'm like, I can't do that because I got to fit in my suit and everything like that. And now I'm like starting to get concerned. Like, I going to be able to get enough weight down so that I can fit in my suit? Like, I can't go to this wedding at like two thirty five. I won't fucking fit in anything. So I am like starting to get a little bit concerned and obviously like immediately after the shows are done, like I just go back down to like TRT levels. But I don't think you're dropping like 15 pounds of muscle in 14 days. You know, so I am a little bit concerned. um But we'll cross that bridge when I get there. Yeah, I mean, I guess on the positive side, you've just been doing this so effectively. I mean, in the grand scheme of things like standing on stage at a shredded 225 is going to be more impressive than standing on stage at a shredded 212. uh So, so, yes, that's great. And then also, man, it just I was thinking about it the other day, and it just boggles my mind that when you did your super shredded lean diet as a natural right before you started TRT and stuff, you were down to I believe it was 191 192 at you know, ish percent body fat. And now you're probably around eight ish percent body fat at 226. So that's 30 that 34 pounds of 34 pounds of muscle. yeah, yeah, it's really wild. It doesn't feel like it either. um Which in full transparency, I guess I'm a little bit. I'm always really hard on myself, you know, and but I think it does bring out like ambition in those sorts of things. But I do. I'm still a little bit like I have to take check and photos and stuff in the morning and I do my posing and there hasn't there's been a call like one or two times from like Okay, like this is cool. Like I'm really happy with how I look. But oftentimes it's a lot of like, that's it. That's it. That's it. That's what I look like at 7 % body fat, 225. Like this is all we fucking have right now. You know, so there is a little bit of that, but I'm also like intelligent enough to know that I'm not going to go chasing because I don't want to be a shredded 240. I don't want to be a shredded 245. Like that's way too big. I want nothing to do with that life. um So I'm I thought there would be more, which is a little bit of like a disappointment, but also like the stage, the atrix, the dehydration and stuff like it will all come together. I'm sure as long as I don't fuck up my posing or completely botch my refeed or something like that, I'll have a pretty decent showing. I'll be happy with photos and stuff, but it was it has been a little bit. I just thought I would be a lot more. I thought I would look differently. I thought, man, I'm going to look like this giant, but I think my pers- like our perception of self is different than other people's perception of us, of course. I mean, you are huge straight up from like an outside perspective. And then the other the other side of that is like, if you and I know you're not going to continue with the the PEDs the way you're doing them currently in the future. And you've talked about, know, just going back to TRT. But if this was like your life and you're like for the next 10 years, I'm to try to, you know, do the IFBB thing like at 225 shredded. You're talking about your offseason being 265 plus. So you literally could be like walking around at kind of like pro bodybuilder levels of size in the off season, which also kind of boggles my mind. Yeah, I just I just don't think I want it. And it's. I mean, don't get me wrong, I respect the hell out of it, but like all my friends and stuff that do it, like they're wearing CPAP machines to sleep and stuff, they sleep in different bedrooms than their wives and partners. It's just it's I just don't want to live my life that large, you know. um Yeah, like I said, but. We'll see. Let's get through these next couple shows in that sort of thing and see how things go But I have I should say I have really really enjoyed this endeavor I'm still enjoying it even though it is really challenging for me right now energy level and stuff, but but I'm committed uh Work has been great and not suffered really at all and I feel like I've done a really a decent job managing everything but um I am very happy with the decision to give this a run Yep, awesome. Cool, let's talk becoming a parent and how that obviously needs to impact the decisions that you make with your training, your nutrition, and ultimately parts of recovery. So Brian, you laid this out pretty nicely for us. So do you wanna give the listeners a little bit of a rundown of how we have it structured? Yeah, we're trying to structure it chronologically, I think for the most part, throw in a little bit of nutrition chat in there too. But um yeah, we'll just go through it kind of section by section. We have like seven or eight sections here. The first one I titled the problem in quotes. So, you know, you can call your your pending baby a problem if you want. It really is just a change. And I think that's that's where I'm going with that by kind of putting it in quotations is the problem is that you're having to adapt to change. And uh I think that that change begins to occur even before the baby arrives because in the final weeks uh of your wife carrying the baby for you, she's not operating at her best. mean, there's a lot of excitement brewing and palpable levels of of like happiness and a growing connection to this thing that you've never seen before, but being the kind of astute and present partner that, you know, I was, and I know you will be, and many of our listeners are as well, or will be. you know, you begin to feel that baby kicking a little over halfway, like in the 20, 25 week range, you'll start to feel the baby kicking and it will start to react to things that the wife does. And it even begins to react to like your voice and your touch. And when you put your finger on her belly, like the baby moves and like will kick your hand. And it's just, it's so crazy how impactful. that can be on your life in a very, very positive way, but it also then leads to kind of the point where eventually you get into the 30 weeks, 33 weeks, 36 weeks, and in that final month and change before the baby sees the world, uh your job as partner is already beginning to be impacted and it affects your... regularly routine and schedule and habit formation and all that sort of stuff. So I think that that's kind of the first egg to lay is just to kind of note that that begins before the baby even arrives. Yeah, the one thing I will say with there's two clients that come to mind who who we've we've known and planned and prepared in one thing that I, you know, wanted to do was change training and stuff a handful of weeks before. Because, you know, from my standpoint, again, I've never done this except for helping a couple clients. I was just like, OK, what do I think is going to happen? What do I think is going to go wrong? There's so many things are going to change. right when that baby's there. I'm like, let's get things that are already in a new structure before. like we've reduced training days, training volume, like a handful of weeks before. So they were already integrated into that system, um changed, you know, our nutritional approaches and things like that so that they were, there was less, I tried to make some changes early so that there was less things changing all at once, you know, due date week or after sort of. Mm hmm. Yeah, that's totally right. I mean, you want to formulate your plan and understand that your plan needs to be malleable. um trying to formulate some sort of plan so that you don't go into it flying blind is extremely helpful. And so I as somebody who, at least with my first child, was still like right in the heart of being obsessed with progress. uh I began to kind of think about, know, when is, when am I going to be able to train? Am I going to be able to go to a gym? Am I going to have to do mostly body weight stuff at home? Am I going to have to pick up running because like, I don't have time to go for long walks and stuff like that. And so yeah, you start kind of formulating a plan that probably begins to get implemented, you know, prior to the birth, because you, you have to be there as a partner. in case it happens. Like you don't want to be at a gym doing a two hour marathon training session and missing the call from your wife who's like going into labor or something along those lines. I mean, you want to be a present partner that shows that you care and like she's the one carrying the baby. So you don't want to be extremely selfish and narcissistic kind of in those last few weeks. You want to be a good partner and be there for her. Makes sense. Go ahead. I was going to say, so with the kind of second next point we have with finding time in the early days, so let's say babies, babies happened. You've made it through the first. Let's call it 72 hours of storm. And like I would imagine right again, you're you're doing zero gym for like the first four days and all foods just going to be what. You know, maybe a day or two at the hospital, depending on and then whatever delivery things people tend to the house, that sort of thing. I don't know. I have had a client who they prepared a bunch of like uh freeze packed meals that they just like put in like the air fryer or crock pot sort of thing for when they got back. That that can work. But like those that first week, let's call it a week. That's going to be a push. You're in like surviving that sort of thing until you find a little bit of routine after about let's call it seven days. you know, some buffer, we now need to settle into a little bit of like schedule thing there. uh So yeah, I think you're exactly right in that I think you have to allocate about an entire calendar week where you're not going to train. And I would say that that for most people, me included consists of like the two days before birth, assuming that, you know, your wife is going to carry it to full term. Uh, so you kind of know, like you're kind of like, okay, we're at, you know, 39 and a half weeks now, like this baby's going to come in the next few days. made most, likelihood. So yeah, the last two days before the baby came, you we were at home, she was having contractions. uh I wasn't getting any fitness in at all. And then you go to the hospital. even if it's like a really fast, easy birth, like you're still looking at two to three days there, because you know, an easy birth, maybe less than 24 hours of actual kind of being in the hospital, beginning to push, make the baby appear. situation. And then you're in the hospital for another two days as they kind of monitor the baby and you're sleeping in the hospital. uh Luckily, where I was there was a second bed for the husband or the partner. But not all hospitals are that way. Some of the some of them I believe are just having a small couch in the room. uh So I feel I feel quite lucky in that way. But uh but yeah, you're you're you're piecemealing sleep together. uh notoriously, the baby has its most aggressive night of not sleeping on night number two. So night number one, they're still kind of inundated with a lot of the the birthing drugs. So they're kind of in this calm state. And you're kind of like, wow, my baby's perfect. This is amazing. They're just like so calm and chill. And then night two comes and it's just like all terror and hell broke loose where this baby's like, shit, I'm not in the womb anymore. And there's this weird, scary world out here and I'm not touching mom anymore. And like, it's just that that second night is atrocious. Like I don't think either of us slept the entire night and there's constantly doctors coming in and like picking the baby up, doing tests on it, sending it back. Like it's just not sleeping and you're not sleeping. So you're already in this huge deficit. And then you get home and you're in a malaise, especially with the first kid. You're just like, what? like I own this thing now this is wild um and and so yeah you're trying to like figure out how to keep it alive and find your rhythm and all that stuff so I think allocating at least you know a full calendar week to to no fitness is probably a prudent step in kind of your planning process A question here, which I think could be a little bit relevant. So the question asked her was a father. So, you know, for the listeners out there, we'll probably tailor this a little bit more to a father. um Obviously, there's going to be a lot of applicable things. But in those first, like let's call it those first five days post birth, how much hands on baby time as a dad? Are you really like how much can you actually do right? Yeah, that's a good question. was gonna get into that because It depends, I guess would be the answer. Like what you really wanna do when you get back is you wanna make sure that your wife is able to recover because she's the one that went through the huge trauma. And so while maybe you are not able to appease the baby and feed the baby like your wife can, you do try to step it up and do pretty much everything that you can aside from feeding the baby. you you're... you're watching the baby and making sure everything's fine, you're constantly eyes on it. And then when the baby cries and needs mom, you pick the baby up, you take it to mom, it feeds for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 40 minutes, whatever it is. And then you take the baby back and you kind of watch it again for a few hours and hope that it sleeps. uh so while I think that to your point, there's only so much that the father can do, one thing the father cannot do, is leave to go train. uh So you're there, but like, yeah, in many ways, it's not that cumbersome for the father because I have very clear memories. was Bryson was born September 9th and right at beginning of football season. And I'm like, you know, I'm into fantasy football. When he was born, I had won it like three of the last seven years. Like it was a big part of my life. uh And so football season was on and I had, had the baby in this little rocker. And there was a little foot. It wasn't a foot pedal, but I could use my foot to kind of rock the rocker. So I'd literally just sit there for hours and just watch football and like do many CC did calf raises on this, uh, on this baby thing as it rocks back and forth and the baby kind of, you know, soothes itself to sleep through the movement. So, so no, you can't go train. You can't, you can't really, I mean, maybe if you had a home gym, we'll get into that later, but, um but yeah, there isn't like a way for you to get up and leave and go have like a really quality training session. So. but you can continue to live life in some capacity. And that like, I was watching football. I was, I had no problem doing work. Like I was able to sit on the couch and do my programming and let the baby fall asleep on my chest. Like I have a really cool video of the baby who's like literally the size from like my belly button to my chest. And it's just like sitting on my chest as I'm, you know, typing on my computer or whatever, or watching football or whatever it is. So there's plenty of opportunity to do stuff. um, sedentary, but you just can't really get up and move your body too much. Okay, so the real reason I asked, and thank you for elaborating there was like, would this be a time where you could get things planned in terms of like a nutrition standpoint? Could we get our freeze packed meals? Could we get our air fryer meals and things going to where we are at home? Maybe your baby is on, I don't know, kitchen table on its swinging thing or whatever. could we be actually like, is there time for you as the father in those days too? get ahead on some meal planning and stuff for like five, six days for the two of you guys. Yeah, for sure. This is a great transition into kind of the nutrition discussion because yeah, I mean, you absolutely could. Like you could use that time instead of doing work on the computer and watching football. Like you could probably use that time to to be cooking in the kitchen, preparing food, stuff like that. But what we did and what pretty much all of my friends that have babies over the last few years have done is you have like a really close friend set up what's called a meal train. And so it can be a few different things. You could have like a gift card to something like flower child where every friend contributes 50 to a hundred dollars. So by the end of it, have, you know, 500 to a thousand dollars of free meals from, from flower child or wherever else you want to meal train from. alternatively, like what we did, we didn't actually do the flower child meal train thing. We had friends actually cooking us food. and bringing it over. So we had like a friend bring a bunch of lasagna. We had a friend cook a bunch of burgers and bring them over. had, you know, like, whatever it is, like people are bringing you a bunch of food and being like, Hey, you know, don't worry about cooking. Just take care of the baby. Here's all this food. The problem with that is that then you're not really getting to choose the type of food that you're eating. You're just kind of at the peril of whatever people are cooking for you. So I think both of those options are great in that they save you the hassle of having to cook. But if you're very concerned about the quality of the food that you're eating, then maybe that second option isn't the best one. And that that's kind of what I was getting at is I think if it's someone who's like a listener, you know, to this podcast and they are concerned about their. I don't know, letting their physique fall apart in the in the first two months and like, don't get me wrong, there's going to be some sliding. That's inevitable as you reduce things, but, you know, and I love the examples that you made because like, let's think, let's let's pretend like it's me, right. And Jenny and I are just having our our first child and friends are like, here's lasagna, here's burgers, right? That's a nightmare. It's literally a nightmare situation for the two of us. So I think it depends and it's hard because yeah, they're your friends and people are trying to help. like, if there's one thing I can unequivocally say with supreme confidence is that the general state of nutritional knowledge for adults in the United States of America is absolutely piss fucking poor. Right. And if that is what you're going to base like the first week on, you're probably not going to feel your best. So that that was one of the things where I think. It's hard, right, because people are there, they're trying, but they're operating on a, like I said, just a poor subset of information. I think about my family and Jenny's family, right, who they're they're caring, they're loving, they would love to help. The food would be horrendous for us. And that's just the nature of it. um So I think if if you are you and your wife or you and your partner are very health focused sort of thing, you're going to have to try and steer that or else you're going to get what comes with. Charity? Is that a decent word to use? Is that appropriate? Okay. Yeah, no, I agree with that. I think in your case, maybe the better route then, because people do wanna help, and that's the thing, is like, wanna help in some way, and so you just pushing them away and being like, no, no, I don't want your food, I'll just cook it myself. I feel like that almost kind of feels like a slap in the face, because people do legitimately want to do something and be a good friend. So maybe for you, the route is... doing the meal train piece where you get to kind of choose the restaurants that you want people to buy you gift cards to. And so in Bali, like you eat out all the time, you eat at that little like bodybuilding kitchen thing where you get your rice and your chicken and your veggies. And like, it's similar to what you would get at flower child or the urban kitchen or any of those other kind of flower childish type restaurants. And so yeah, I think you kind of have some autonomy or some decision in what people do for you. And I think the key is, know, whichever group of, whichever friend it is that's kind of organizing this is just being transparent with them and letting them know what you want. And then they can kind of send the email out blasted to all the friends and have them contribute. Yeah, yeah, I think that that's something that I would strongly encourage, um just so that you remain some semblance of control in a time where control is going to get very inverted in your Mm hmm. Yeah, I also do think, though, that there's an importance of being able to kind of relinquish some control and just understand that this is the period of time that it is. And you're not going to train for a week and your nutrition might not be perfect. And your sleep is going to be extremely, extremely compromised. And so, like, I get where you're coming from, where you're like, look, if there's one thing I can control, it's what I put in my body. And so that gives you a sense of peace or whatever. But um I just found it much easier to put less of a priority on the nutrition and just kind of let it be what it is for a week and understanding that as long as I'm getting enough protein, you know, I'm not going to completely disintegrate and it's going to be okay. Yeah, I think. I think it really depends on the role of like nutrition in your life. Right. And it's not that in a kind of I love that we're talking about this because one of the things that I was going to pretty heavily strongly recommend is like this isn't a time to be like tracking your macros and calculating calories or any of that shit. It's try to eat four times per day. If you're a four times per day eating person, if you normally do three, do three, try to remain that keep that same feeding frequency. But just we're not weighing things. We're going to say, hey, normally my food looks about this approximate size on the plate. Replicate that and move on sort of thing. But what I was kind of getting at is. Nutrition is a a is a is a one of the levers of a way that I can ensure that I feel good. Right. And if we're at a time where we're not training, right, so we don't get that kind of release of kind of similar to like you. It's like, hey, if vacation, Brian, you were forced to just sit at the lake and they said, no, you can't go do your walk or your run or your lift. Like you're going to feel a little bit anxious from that, from that regard. Sleep's going to be. severely compromised that first week. So you're going to be operating at an additional reduced capacity. And if it's also, hey, you have to eat these foods that you're probably not going to digest well because you never have them. And then your stomach's all fucked up on top of it. That's where I was from the standpoint of like, I'm going to remain one. I'm going to hold on to the one modicum of control that I know that I have because I don't want to. I'm already going to be operating below baseline. I don't want to be like very low below baseline because I'm just eating whatever on top of it. It was my real main part. Yeah, I think that makes total sense. And I think it also goes to the basis of, you know, what for you is the thing that gives you that sense of control and homeostasis. And I think for me, it's much more about moving my body in whatever capacity that I can, because that's what makes me feel amazing. Or at least it decreases the negative impact of Yeah. A couple little final things before we move on from the nutrition stuff. So some things that I thought I don't think I said this already, but like air fryer recipes, you just put mix everything in the air fryer, throw it in there, comes out ready to go. You know, if you're cooking for you and let's say it's the first child, right? So it's just you and your wife. Like you can make one of a meal with plenty of protein, whatever the both of you need in that single air fryer done slow cooker recipes. If we want to make things in bulk. or another option. And then another thing that people oftentimes forget is like no cook meals, right? And one that I have here is like yogurt, oats, you mix the oats right in with the yogurt, some protein powder, berries, right? You mix that in a bowl, you get a uh pretty high protein, we get some starch in there, we get some some nutrients, and that's like a really quick, not even five minute thing that you can prepare two of those, you know, four, so um leverage those sorts of things where again, Focus on the the big rocks of covering your bases and don't get lost in the sauce on it and just try and keep things accessible and time efficient. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I found myself just really trying to prioritize high protein meals because I knew that at a minimum controlling that at least, you know, keeps me from backsliding too much. And so doing things like yogurt is great. um Various like protein bars that sit well with you, whey protein, doing smoothies, stuff like that. Yep. Yeah, I'm sure wife would probably be in a smoothie mood. I would imagine of my perception of what post pregnancy may desire smoothies. feel like would be on that list. Yeah, and then women need to eat an extra 500 calories per day to support the breastfeeding. So, you know, a 2000 calorie based diet suddenly becomes 2500, increasing by 25%. That's a pretty large increase in the amount of food you're eating. All right, cool. Well, the next section, I don't want to spend too much time on, but I found it meaningful. So just wanted to include that the having some sort of morning routine and I wrote that this is kind of in pursuit of mental health and finding equanimity. uh Equanimity is a word that I just began using in the last year or so. I really love it. And basically meaning that you remain calm, you remain calm in a state of chaos uh and I've actually been hearing that word a lot recently with the current like political state of the world and stuff. And so I think being able to be a quantum is aided by having some sort of morning routine where you have time to yourself that is not compromised by a crying baby or a wife that needs you to step up and do something. And so for me, it wasn't long, I didn't expect to have a 30 minute drawn out meditation where I'm staring at the sunrise or anything along those lines. I'm literally just talking about, you you wake up and you get the baby to mom. So baby can feed for 20 or 30 minutes and you go wherever your happy place is and just close your eyes, keep your eyes open mentally, kind of disengage from the world in whatever way makes sense for you. uh For me, it was literally just laying on the couch with my eyes closed and focusing on slow, deliberate breathing for five minutes. And even doing that would bring me a sense of calm and peace that I think would resonate throughout the remainder of the day. And yeah, I just, I just can't highly recommend enough having five or 10 minutes that is just yours where you're not trying to think about. what work I need to do or what food I need to cook or how am I going to fit my workout in or anything along those lines. It's just time for you to just be at peace and whatever that means for you. I that has been my single most valuable discovery of prep. I do it every single morning. That's when I do my journaling, right? I get up. um It's the second thing I do. The first thing I do it. Well, first I brush my teeth and I do something that's not very fun just to get it out of the way. And then I go sit down. I make a quick coffee and I do my like 10 minutes of journaling. And what I really liked is you used words that I'm constantly like journaling about. calm, the peaceful. It's like a really calm morning. I feel really like at peace with everything going on right now. And I, I don't look at my phone yet. Well, I do quickly log my morning weight just so I don't forget it, but no messages I look at no emails, no nothing, no social media, like everything is after I spend those 10 minutes to myself. And it's made a profound impact on like the enjoyment and perception of my life and stuff. And I, I've really am going to do my damnedest to continue to keep that. place of just having like those 10 minutes of un it's like unprovoked air and time or on on this uninterrupted. Yeah, because something that can really happen to especially in a time like post baby or something where you don't have your normal like work structures or stuff. And this is part of like the entrepreneurs dilemmas like there are days it's a Thursday or a Friday. I honestly don't have anything to do. Like that does happen. clients are taken care of. I have no calls. I have no consoles. There's nothing I need to get done. And it can be very easy to like waste that day if you just wind up on like Instagram or YouTube or, know, doing these unproductive behaviors. And that's really, really helped me to like center myself for the day before these things kind of like pull at you a little bit. So I can, I cannot recommend that enough. Yeah, I find it completely invaluable. And it was actually through this first baby, Bryson, in 2017, where I began to establish what is now kind of my morning routine breathwork practice that I do. And it kind of came out of that five or 10 minute sequence that I would do. And it's just been invaluable. Like, I can't really use another word. So cool. Glad you feel the same there. And definitely something that I encourage all parents to make sure they employ. as they're kind of in those more difficult days in the early time. Okay, now let's get to the fun stuff, right? Talking about training. before we have a little bit of an aside right before we talk about training and it's kind of just like a disclaimer. You have to simply accept that you have recovery capacity limitations, right? Sleep is going to be probably disrupted at a minimum of 20 to 25%. And that's probably being a little bit generous. Brian's probably gonna like chuckle and be like fucking 60%, something like that. Okay, okay. So we are going to have recovery restrictions. These little things like you're not going to be able to control your calories as tightly as you would. uh And energy levels and stuff are going to be down. Stress is going to be higher, which eats at total, know, allostatic load and total recoverable capacity. So you have to accept that your training volume. is likely going to come down probably because of a necessary frequency reduction because of just a reduction in total available time. But you have to accept that this isn't going to be probably the most uh progressing time of your lifting career. And that is what it is because there's a new priority in your life right now. Yeah, I did progress during this time, but we'll get to that as we get into the training and kind of talk about some of what I did. but yeah, 100%. So sleep. I just had a buddy who a good friend of mine here who just had a baby. And he said I think that he had slept five hours in the first 72 hours. And that that included you know, the time in the hospital and stuff like that. But but five hours and 72 hours. Yeah, dude, it was really bad. I don't know that I've heard too many, too many worse than that. um I would say the more normal is likely that you're getting two to three hour chunks of sleep. I would say that that's pretty standard. Like if you have a baby that's sleeping three hours at a time in the first couple of weeks, you're quite lucky. But I think you can consistently get, you know, two to three hour chunks. And then setting some sort of uh structure with your wife where like, like my friend who just had a baby, you know, he's on duty every morning from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. And that's just like his time. So his wife gets to sleep. He's on baby duty. If the baby needs food, he does a bottle like the wife gets these four uninterrupted hours from six to 10. Alternatively, you know, he gets some time at a different time of the day where where it's his time to kind of get sleep and recovery and stuff like that. And so I think having some sort of discussion with your wife going into it as far as how you wanna organize that so that you're not just both feeling like you're both on duty all the time, because that can really start to eat at you and cause strain because you're just so depleted and stuff like that. And so like we talked about, planning your training, uh your nutrition, like planning all of these things, you can also plan. for how you're going to ensure that you get the minimum dose of recovery through some small bit of quality sleep. um So that goes a long way in just making sure that you're getting some sleep. And then, you know, I sleep seven and a half hours a night. That's my norm. Like that's been my norm since as long as I can remember. And I would say that even in the first few weeks of having... our babies, I was still getting seven and a half hours. It just wasn't the way that we usually get seven and a half hours. It would be, you know, two to three hours here, then get up, do a few things, two to three hours here, do a few things. uh And that just is the way it is. Like maybe you get it in three doses. ah But, as long as you're still getting that amount of time, you can function. And I think that that's really the key is maybe you're not optimizing things, but at least you're functioning. And then when we talk about the whole milieu of things that go into recovery, it's easy to hyper-focus on sleep because that's the thing that gets the most depleted. But we've already discussed nutrition and that's another aspect of how you can really kind of amplify or improve your response to the recovery. ah And then managing stress. So you in the morning routine with the breathing and stuff like that. ah All things that help a little bit in improving recovery. and being in this this caloric surplus, like, yes, that's that's related to nutrition, but making sure that you're not just eating quality foods, but that you're eating sufficient quality of food, like it's not a time to be in a deficit, or maybe even at maintenance, maybe it's a time to eat in a slight surplus because you're being stressed recovery wise. So yeah, anything else to kind of add to that? I did have a question when you were saying that you were you got approximately the same seven and a half hours, but it was just distributed differently. Were you finding yourself like taking a nap in the middle of the day as part of that? OK. in the first few weeks was that we would go to bed at, you know, nine or 10 p.m. normal time, put the kid down. I'd usually be up at midnight to grab the kid, get it to Kim so that he could nurse. And then I don't fall back asleep during that time because I know I have to then grab the kid from her and put it back into its its cradle or bedside. What is that thing even called? It's been too long since I've had a kid. The bassinet. Okay, I'm not even close. on, come on, Straker, get with it. Bassinet, bro. So, so, so I wouldn't sleep during that time. So I basically have like, call it uh 930 to midnight. Generally, I would sleep and then I'd be up from midnight to one. And then I might sleep again from like one to three. And then I'd be up again from three to four. And then I probably would just get up for the day at that point, do some of my like personal morning breath work stuff. So at that point, I'd only slept maybe five hours throughout the night. And then you go through the day you ah usually around 9am 10am, we would put the kid back down for another nap. And then at that point, I would lay down and try to get another hour or so. And then maybe later in the day, I get another hour or so. So it's kind of like piecemealing seven hours together over four sleeping segments. OK, yeah, I'm glad I asked. That's that's definitely some some helpful additional information there. Yeah. Are we done with recovery? Yeah, cool. All right, well, I think the next two sections I can kind of smash together into one, but quickly, know, the way I separate them out is a minimum effective dose training, balancing volume and frequency. And then the next session is sections kind of talking about what I specifically did for both of my kids and how they differed. But I do think, you know, at least addressing minimum effective dose is important because... We've touched on this on the podcast a ton with the literature on maintenance volume being, you know, somewhere between 30 and 50 % of the volume it took to build. And to a point that we made actually in the introduction before we actually got into the main topic, we were talking about stimulus instead of volume. So that's a much better word to use than volume. So I would say 30 to 50 % of the stimulus that you were getting prior is likely enough. stimulus to maintain uh your current state. so keeping that in mind as you kind of design whatever your training is going to look like, I think is hugely important. And then there's the balance of volume and frequency where you could take one extreme or the other extreme. And in my personal case, I actually had one extreme for my son and completely flip flop that and went with the other extreme. for my daughter. So before I get into that, any kind of thoughts on that? I mean, not really. think it's all incredibly accurate. was what I kind of, guess in full transparency, my kind of plan is to use this time to test some of my. How do I wanna put this? To test things that I never really gave the time to test because I had so much time, if that makes sense, right? So maybe like I've always been kind of like a moderate to high volume person, right? Even my like low volume training isn't really low volume. It's probably moderate volume. I've always justified it as I have the time. I have no other hobbies. What the fuck else am I gonna do effectively, right? If you're like, ah. We are you spending for only like more than 40 minutes in the gym per day because I have nothing else to do with my time is the answer. Right. um But at this time, like I think this is a great time to take maybe follow like a Mike Menser ask approach where we have three like a Monday, Wednesday, Friday or three sessions. Obviously it might need to float on days a little bit. And you're doing like one hard set and moving on and just trying to progress that. micro loaded each week and just test some hypothesis that you just never really took the time to test because now we have a very, very time sensitive uh appropriateness to do so sort of thing. Yeah, dude, I love that. I think that's amazing. Especially, you know, being able to reflect on the maintenance research and knowing that you can get away with such less stimulus, you can kind of confidently go into a test of this sort or a study of yourself and be relatively confident that as long as you're bringing the intensity that you can get away with low volume. ah So yeah, I think that that's a great opportunity, a great time for you to test things. And that's sort of what I did because going into having baby number one, I was in the transition phase from CrossFit to hypertrophy training and I was trying to do it all. because I didn't want to lose the skills that I had gained in CrossFit, like the snatching and the clean and jerks and the muscle ups and the handstand pushups and all of that stuff. But I also was trying to pursue what was the the new science of hypertrophy training in 2017, you know, where volume was the main driver of hypertrophy. And you just had to do more and more and more and increase your effort week to week. And Dr. Mike was promoting, you know, the escalating volume protocol. And so I was following a bit of that. And then I have a baby and I'm like, Whoa, like, you know, I'm trying to optimize everything. Like that was in the period of time where like optimization is key, you know, and so I didn't exactly know what was going to happen when I, when I made the change. And so what I ended up deciding to do, which was completely different than anything I'd really done since my first three years of training was I, uh, I essentially started doing rip it toe style training. picked, uh, the Texas method from his website. And at that time, our buddy from the gym, Jason Varnum, had just started a... starting strength. gym, starting strength gym. Yeah. The rip a toe stuff. And so he and his girlfriend, Nicole owned a gym that was 20 minutes away from my gym. And, I just decided like much, like you said, to try to test something just as you'll see what happens. Um, I decided to do the Texas method and the Texas method consists of three full body training sessions. It focuses on three or four exercises per session where you're doing something like five by five, three by five, two by five, three by three, basically sub five rep stuff, relatively close to failure, trying to force progression week to week, uh mostly powerlifting movements. So a lot of barbell work. And I, I was training three days a week, but each session was close to two hours total. So I would have to drive to the gym. I would drive back. So you're looking at like 40 minutes there. And then I'd be training for about an hour and a half. So you'd have over two hours of time commitment. But I had kind of discussed this with my wife and I was like, Hey, you know, all I need is these six hours a week over these three days. Like when can we make it work? What are the times, et cetera, et cetera? We put a plan together. And for the most part, for the first call it eight weeks, eight to 10 weeks. of baby number one, we were able to get me to the gym for those two hours, three days a week. And there were certainly days where, you know, I didn't make it and I would have to push a session back or roll a session over to the next week. And like, you just have to be malleable with that and understand. But this was extremely effective for me. And it's hard to parse out whether this was effective because it was so different than what I was doing. maybe it was because it was significantly less volume than what I was doing. Like I was training six days a week, trying to combine CrossFit with bodybuilding and maybe my body just really needed to go back to the basics and focus on the big compound movements. whatever it was, this worked extremely well. And by the end of the cycle at the 12 week Mark. So my son was three months old. I had set all time PRS in, in the back squat. and tied my PR in the clean and the deadlift, uh which was really beyond anything I could have expected. And granted, I was eating like a champ, like I was eating in a large surplus. I gained probably 10 pounds over those 12 weeks. I'd like to think there was some muscle in there since I got stronger. um that, for baby number one, that setup was super effective for me. I think the reason you gained all that strength is probably because you had just become a dad. Dad strength. There's no arguing against dad strength. low bar back squat and dad strength are just, they're friends, yeah. So uh with baby number two, I took a completely different approach because baby number two, we had moved away from San Diego. We were now in Boulder. We had just moved to Boulder and COVID was just about to hit. So my daughter was born on the second to last day of January and one month later, actually, I guess it was like five weeks later, COVID hit and the world shut down. What I had been done doing right around the time my daughter was born was I started collecting just very bare bones stuff for a home gym. So I already had my rings, which I talked about earlier in the intro. And so I had those, I had them hung on a tree outside and I had dumbbells that were 25s, 50s, 75s and hundreds. And I had a bench and that's it. those, that was all I had for the first, you know, 12 plus weeks of having baby number two. But with that, I realized that I could train all the time because it was in my basement or rings hanging from a tree. And so the plan that I put together for baby number two utilized frequency as the primary component. So I was actually training 12 times a week. Meaning I had a AM session and a PM session or basically whenever I could fit it in, but each session was only 20 to 30 minutes at a time. So I would do say it was, uh, this is actually, think what I did was I did a push pull legs, but I would split each of those like push into two sections. So I would do like chest and maybe some shoulders in the morning. And then I would do like triceps in the evening or something like that. Then the next day I would do back in the morning. biceps in the evening and then the next day I would do quads in the morning, hamstrings in the evening and literally talking 20 to 30 minutes each session and all I have are these dumbbells, at least for lower body work. That's all I could do. I couldn't really do much else. So it was a lot of like split squats and single leg RDLs and ah stuff like that. But that setup worked really well for me the second time around because instead of having to pack my stuff and tell Kim I need two and a half hours to get my ass to the gym and have this really hard full body training session and then get my ass home. It was like, hey, baby's down for a nap. I'm going to go hit this for 20 minutes. By the time I hear baby cry, I'm good to go come back up. And then a few hours later, when baby goes down for another nap, finish my next 20 minutes. And there you go. 12 training sessions a week. I was able to hit that pretty consistently. Anytime that I couldn't, I would just push it back a day and kept rolling forward. And uh so yeah, I think it's interesting to look at those two completely different setups and realize that both were effective for what their purpose was at the time. Yeah, those are literally polar opposite approaches. Yeah. Yeah. And kudos to Kim for for giving you two hours, three, three times per week to to to dip away. think I don't know. I think stuff like that's important, right? You know, like communicating what's important to obviously each of you guys. And I'm sure there was something where she was like, hey, I need this time, Brian, whatever. And you were like, yeah, sure. But I just think it's. you know, major props to you guys for communicating that. And that's something that I know I'm getting a little bit off topic, but I definitely let's say we don't want to use here. I don't think appreciates the proper term, but I like strive for like you guys are still you guys have the kids and stuff, but like Kim will still like go take a trip to Spain with her friends or something like that. And you're like, yeah, I'm super dad for like the next nine days or something. Or you go like that's something that I think is really cool that you guys do as a husband and wife or you're still able to like. take time away as an individual. Yeah, I mean, that definitely gets easier over time, but I think that it's important to start integrating that into kind of the culture of your family from an early age. And this was actually one on that note. One of the things I meant to mention earlier is that I'm a huge believer in getting your newborn baby out of the house as much as possible. Like I remember on day two, after we got back from the hospital, maybe it was day three, we took our baby to a The patio, do you remember that restaurant uh in San Diego? It was on Lamont Street. Anyway, uh we, of our favorite kind of happy hour restaurant spots in PB. And it was loud and noisy and there was a bunch of people talking and there was some music. And I think it's just really important to start that early because what I've noticed from clients and friends that have had babies and they kind of have that tight grasp on them where they're trying to keep them from those types of situations. is then the baby is not adapted to those and they tend to be more contrarian when you do end up going out to those later on down the road. And so I think part of why my kids, maybe I'm wrong, maybe it's just their inherent nature, but I like to believe that part of why they're so good in public spaces and going out to do things and they're adaptable is because we started it when they were so young and exposed them to these types of situations. And so I think the same thing can be applied and extrapolated out to where we are in our life currently, or even a few years ago, where once it was feasible, and I started taking these trips. And there's so many friends that I have where the kids like when the parents leave, the kids throw a fit and they're just like, no, mom, no dad, like, you know, they don't do well with babysitters, like the whole thing. And uh because we established a routine in which Mom and dad leave, but you know what? Mom and dad come back. And uh that's been great. And I don't know how much of that is attributed to their inherent nature and how much of that is attributed to the way in which we went about kind of exposing them to this stuff gradually over time. But I do think there is something important about letting them know that you have your own life and that you're gonna go. They don't have to understand it in those terms. But they just understand, mom and dad leave, mom and dad come back. And there's a sense of security with that and a sense of acceptance. Yeah, I think that's brilliant. I hope that we can do something like that because I love spending time by myself. Honestly. Okay, so we have one kind of final uh facet as section for this. And I think it's around setting realistic goals. Or not I think it's around it is around. I think it's important to set realistic goals and I think it's, you have to have some grace for yourself in a time like this. It's going to be challenging and you may need to accept certain things that, you know, this is potentially like a first in your life. Like I do in full transparency see myself struggling with a time like this where I'm, I wouldn't say I'm a selfish person. I'm kind of, I'm time selfish in that I've always spent so much time. by myself and for as long as I can remember. I remember being like 15 years old and remembering like I can't wait to turn 18 because I'm just going to leave and go do what I want to do. You know, and then that worked out great. And then it just like kept working out great, you know, and there was I love spending time by myself. Like Jenny's gone for three weeks or something like that. And don't get me wrong. I love obviously Jenny and I look very much forward to when she comes back. But like I'm. doing really okay on this time with my by myself, you know, and maybe around like day like 1214 I start feeling like, okay, like I think I want I'm ready for her to come back and stuff like I have a solid two weeks where I'm just like great by myself, you know, day in and day out. um So I do think it's important for setting those those realistic goals and what it might be what it might realistically be is like, hey, I want to be body weight stable during this time. And I want to micro load my compound lifts and you might maybe it's a great time to grab the $50 change plates off of Amazon so that you can micro load if you're going into a commercial gym or something like that where they do not have that and like that is your goal and you weigh yourself four times per week and you pop it in whatever app and it averages out your weekly average and as long as you're within that like two pound fluctuating up and down homeostatic range like you are on track right and then we lead this new priority in our life and keep just small maintainable goals. But I would say as a father, I don't think this is the best time to be in calorie deficit. um As a mother, obviously, you're not really in a calorie deficit, but you do start losing weight pretty soon just from like the breastfeeding and the obvious different things in there. But I wouldn't try to hyper prioritize that in the beginning. The sole exception I would say to this from a fatherhood standpoint is if you. If you had been through a period in your life where you had not been prioritizing your health and you are overweight, unhealthy, this is a wonderful new catalyst to get your shit together for your family sort of thing. um This is one time where like I for example, I have a client like this now and I really leverage that. for him, you know, or I shouldn't say for I guess against and I'm constantly reiterating this one when he's having his like challenging weeks and stuff. So that is the kind of soul, you know, opposite use case, I would say is it's a great motivator for, you know, improving your habits in ways. um But let's say you are pretty much body weight stable, healthy. body composition from a blood work, internal standpoint, those sorts of things. Body weight maintenance in uh homeostasis is a wonderful goal to just stick at. Yeah, setting goals is tough. I think because of the success that I had in the first iteration where I was doing the rip-a-toe Texas method stuff, I didn't go into it thinking or expecting to progress, but I did. And so I think that skewed my perception of what is possible. And... While initially my goal was just to show up, that was what I told myself, is just have these three sessions a week and just show up. And then I was surprised by the progress. I think it was very different the second time around where because all I had was the dumbbells and a bench and some rings, my goal that I stated to myself was simply to just show up and do the work. Mm-hmm. And I would take progress if it occurred, but mostly it was like, hey, this is on the agenda. I need to do this for my own sanity, my own wellbeing, uh and to find a sense of equanimity on my own. so I think the goal in most cases should probably be stated as simply showing up and doing it because it's good for me physically and mentally to do it. and to have some structure. And if progress ends up coming from that, then that's kind of like a cherry on top type thing and not necessarily something that you go into it trying to pursue. And then also keeping perspective that this is, it feels all encompassing when you're in it. Like it feels as if it's never gonna end and that you're just stuck in this malaise forever. I equate it to like when Bryson just broke his wrist, like it was only seven weeks from the moment he broke his wrist to the point where a doctor was like, you're fully healed, like you're all good. But those seven weeks were so intense and there were so many doctor appointments and so many tears and so much accommodation that had to be made. And it literally was like, my God, like is this dude's wrist ever gonna get better? And now it's been better for a month and I can like barely remember. the misery that I was in for those seven weeks. And I think that a lot of that applies to having a baby as well where when you're in it, it just is completely overwhelming and all consuming. And you can get in this mindset of thinking that this is just the rest of my life. And then that can start to depression or anxiety or some combination of both. And so I think being able to go into it and A, realize it's temporary and B, realize that you just are showing up for yourself and any progress that occurs, you know, is great, but that's not really the expectation. I think that is a wonderful wrap up of like insight that could only be provided by someone who's been through it. Right. It's like, hey, progress sick if it happens. But like I'm showing up for myself because I need this to maintain like my mental health and because I said it's something that I was going to do. um I love that. Cool. So is there anything else on the back end of this one that you wanted to add that you don't think we covered? man, I think that was good. That was an awesome episode. Okay, yeah, hopefully this has been helpful, right? Obviously, Brian was able to provide a lot more feel like biteable stuff than I could from, you lot of my like theory, but in a couple, I don't know, maybe in a year or so maybe we'll have a follow up episode and I can say whether I'll come back and listen to the things I said and say, yeah, he didn't know what the fuck he was talking about. maybe we'll do that. I think you had great perspective and I think that it'll be really fun for us to come back and do a Aaron's a new father episode and how are you handling it type thing. Yeah, actually, I did have a question that I wanted to ask. Let's say, you know, from up for someone like you from a movement standpoint, how soon can you put the baby in like that chest strap thing where you were like, how what approximate age or they can they go in that? I think pretty damn soon. honestly can't remember exactly because you have a number of weeks where you have to support the neck before the baby can actually hold its neck up on its own. And I can't remember how long that is. don't know if it's until they can, it must be until they can like lift their head on their own. So maybe it's a number of like two months. I don't know. I honestly, I can't remember. But just because they can't support their neck doesn't mean they can't be in the thing because there can be like a headrest for them or they can be resting against your chest. ah So I wanna say that we started doing it like really soon, like maybe not immediately, but I think it's a matter of weeks, not a matter of months. Okay, so I guess the question I was going to ask there is like, you wanted to put in like a home spin bike sort of thing and just get in some like simple cardio movement on that you can always just have baby strapped to your chest while you're riding that would that be reasonable? Walk? Yeah, I meant I was thinking if it was cold for some reason, but yeah, walk work obviously works. One thing I didn't mention at all was that with both my kids, the one guarantee that would keep them calm and get them to stop crying and usually to fall asleep would be to put them in the stroller and push them. So I honestly think, you know, with baby number one being in San Diego, I think I probably went for like three or four walks a day because sometimes I'd be on duty. and Kim would be sleeping and the baby would just be crying. And I'm like, I just fed it. Like, I don't know what else I'm supposed to do. But then I discovered that if I put it in the stroller and they're in, you know, they're in their car seat when they're in the stroller. So they're completely supported. You can do this from, two days old, like at any point, put them in the stroller in the car seat, go for a long walk. Baby stops crying, baby sleeps. You get to listen to a podcast or whatever. And that is uh extremely valuable. Wonderful. I'm glad I brought it up because that's I feel it could be very helpful. Additional insight. Cool. This one was fun. uh Guys, let us know how we did on it. Anything we potentially missed. Just drop us a comment on YouTube. Any other future episode discussions or anything that you would like for us to do? You can always drop us a recommendation on Instagram or on YouTube as well. Next week, Brian will be kind of hard. I fly out Wednesday to Taiwan and be have a very strapped week, like in terms of getting the episode and stuff prepped. maybe we we punt next week. So we may need to punt the following week too, because we are taking a trip to Yellowstone and Grand Tetons. I'm not entirely sure what our days are that we're leaving. Actually, you know what? I will be gone, because we leave on a Saturday and come back on like a Thursday. So uh we'll essentially be off for two weeks. And then when we come back, let's do the blood work episode. Perfect. Sounds good. So blood work episode guys should get recorded about the 29th ish or so, and then we'll come out the first week of August. Okay. As always, thank you for listening. Brian and I will talk to you guys soon.