Welcome back to Eat, Train, Prosper. You guys may notice that it's not this amazing baritone voice coming at you from Mr. Aaron Straker. It is myself, Brian here to introduce you guys to this week's podcast because our boy, Aaron, just became an IFBB pro this last week and whatever updates I have to talk about are significantly less important or cool than what Aaron achieved. So The very first update must go over to Aaron. Huge congratulations. Newest IFBB Pro. ah Tell us about the experience, dude. Yeah, thank you, Brian. Thank you. Thank you very much. uh The note that I have in my update here as Brian and I keep little notes was prep was successful. L. O. L. So Brian and I were joking that this was the goal, right? Earning the pro card was the goal. I just didn't really think it was achievable um in the time frame, right? I in if you're not in the world, basically you have There are pro qualifier shows, but you also have to do a regional if you are in a certain country. There's there's all like there's this massive list of like the NPC worldwide rules. So I had to do at least a regional, which was the show I did in Thailand in the beginning of June before I could do a pro qualifier. So I was fortunately, you know, able to earn this pro card literally as fast as you can. um It was a very, very overwhelming experience. It was probably my largest range of emotions in a given day. And Brian, you and I have often joked that my emotions run from like a six to a four. Like six is like a great fucking day and four is like the world is falling apart. You know, I feel I'm always like very lukewarm, Aaron, you know, emotionally. Yeah, yeah. too high, too low, we kinda stay in the- Yeah, but but the the show day was a very wide range of emotions earlier in the morning. Things were great. In my Airbnb, in my element. It's my tanning starts at 1130. I wanted to be there at like 1045 to get there early because the day before registration was a madhouse. There's 600 people there. There's the line is literally hundreds of people long. like, okay, this is going to be like really hectic because there's over 600 people competing in the show. It's raining the day of I go to order my Uber and there's no Ubers. When every other time that I had ordered an Uber for the three days prior, it was outside in 90 seconds. And now, of course, when I need it there, it was it took like 25 minutes for the Uber to arrive. And then I had another like 25 minute ride. So I'm like, get there like just in the nick of time. And I'm very, very overwhelmed. It's I'm by myself. I have no support. It's literally myself in Taiwan navigating this. Everything's in Mandarin. And and the day does not start off very, very good. I get my two coats of tan. I don't look very dark, which I'm concerned about. Well, yeah, Aaron, because you're. the fucking black man that shows up in Taiwan where everyone else's skin color is completely different color. Like, what do you expect? You know, so I'm in the beginning almost immediately. Like things aren't aren't aren't well. And then backstage at a show like you've done one before, Brian, but it's it's a madhouse of people just laying on the floor. It's super packed. And apparently everyone got this memo that you like bring a blanket to lay on the floor because it's just like a concrete floor, you know. Not my dumb ass. I just have a backpack. So eventually there's like a sub a side room that's it's literally a loading dock and I'm just in there laying on the concrete floor like with my backpack eating my rice cakes. And I'm like, here we are. Like this is the day, you know, and it's I'm a few hours early and I pop in periodically to check the show. Of course, it's running behind schedule because like none of these shows ever remotely run on schedule. And then I'm in contact with, you Jackson about like timing itself. And he's like, OK, let's eat, eat your final meal before we go. And, you know, let's let's move over to like, you know, the pump up area and that sort of thing. So I register for two classes, Masters 35 plus and then open class D in the open classes are based on heights. There's only two of us in the in the master's class and the other guy is in pretty damn good shape. And I. I'm immediately just doubting myself hard. And I'm like, you're not even going to win your master's class. You're going to take a two out of two in your master's class. And today is going to go 100 % opposite in the direction that you had hoped it would be. So like, I'm just not feeling good about myself. And there's only two of us. They're not like moving us around and stuff. So that happens. And then within like 30 minutes, I'm back on stage and open class D. There's 14 people. I believe in open class D. um And I made the first call out an open class D. So I'm like, hey, that's positive. That's that's pretty decent. They move me toward the middle. But there's like seven people up there. I'm just focusing on like not breathing super hard, hitting my poses. So I don't really know exactly where I am. And then as I leave, one of the stage helps. OK, you're in the top five. So you can't like you can't go. You have to stay like right here because that Open class D is the end of men's physique. And then, you know, the awards and stuff come out. So words come out. I win the Masters 35 plus. So I'm like, OK, cool. I feel yeah, I'm feeling better about myself, you know, and then I'm standing there for the the top five and they call out like the fifth, the fourth, the second or whatever third. And I'm like, fuck, dude, like I have a chance here. And then they call it the second. Oh, my God. I fucking won my class, you know. So that's cool. go collect my award. The thing that's really cool is one of our friends, uh Ray. He's a uh pro men's physique athlete in Taiwan. He has a supplement company that like sponsored the event. So he was the one like giving me, you know, the award and stuff. And that was really cool because he's just like one of my absolute favorite people, just a wonderful human being. So that was really, really cool. And then the promoter is like, hey, you're in the overall. You got to stick around for for the overall comparison, which happens at the End of the show. So now I have another like three hours until I'm back on stage again. So I message, you know, Jackson and I'm obviously feeling like a completely different thing. I'm like, oh, fuck it. It sets in like, hey, you won your class. You know, you're in an overall you have you have three people to beat for this pro card like this. This can happen because there's four classes open a open, be open, see an open D. So I message Jackson and he's like, OK, this is the plan. We're going to eat this now. If you can get someone to send you take some physique photos of you so I can see what you look like, you know, can you please do it? And I had kind of made friends with the other guy in the master's class. So I asked him and he was like, yeah, of course. And that's the first time I see myself on the day because I was tuned. I just couldn't bring myself to look at myself in the mirror because I was so fucking scared and nervous. And it's rather ironic because if these shows. Everyone's practicing their posing, doing all these things in the mirror, checking their like abs and stuff. And like I just cannot bring myself to look at myself once all day long. I was just too fucking scared and too nervous. Yeah. So I send him photos and I see him and I'm like, oh, fuck, that's what I look like. Like, and I'm now like 20 minutes post stage, like my pump is gone and stuff. And I'm like, damn, that's pretty decent. Like I'm pretty OK with that. And Jackson makes some adjustments to like our feeding protocol. Unfortunately, I had the foresight to like overpack a bunch of food and stuff um just in case. And then he said. There was one guy that I knew I had to be. There was a guy from South Korea who just had an amazing physique. I he's the one I need to be. So Jackson said, watch him when he starts pumping up, like you start pumping up. And that's what I did. And I was also speaking with Brandon Kempter. Our friend who also won his pro card this weekend. It was a very big weekend for the undefeated boys Yeah, and and he said just get the biggest pump of your entire life and that's literally what I did I just turned my brain off and like let my body go and and even as we were like lining up You know before to go on stage for the overall I my body was like screaming at me because I pumped up so hard Everything is like completely blown up, incredibly fatigued. My heart rate's like super high. I'm like just trying to like breathe and get it down because posing is like really, uh, it's it's strenuous. Yeah. And I'm like standing there before going on stage. My heart rate's probably like 140 already because I just kept pumping up so hard. And then we go out there and they just like put us through the rounds, you know. But one thing that I kind of knew this would happen because I get so scared. that but fortunately like throughout my entire athletic career like I'm so so scared but like when the time comes it's like my body just takes over and I get that like hyper focus competitive nature sort of thing and I'm just like ready to perform you know so that took over and I was just like staying focused like you know keep your breathing tight make sure the posing is like perfect and I did it and apparently I did a good enough job because they awarded me the pro yeah, buddy, that's so cool, man. What a, what a very cool story. I'm gonna take a minute and dig into some things that I'm curious about and maybe the listeners are as well. But one of the things that I always find interesting is kind of this, I don't know if it's a facade of confidence that people seem to have on stage, but there's kind of like a fluidity to the way that people move through their poses and kind of like this. cocky, like, check me out, like, I know I've got the goods type type thing. And you can kind of tell when people are seasoned because they are able to implement that kind of cocky confidence in a really transformative way that I think speaks to the audience and speaks to the judges. Did you feel as if, you know, at any point going through this progression that your confidence, your cockiness kind of built and you felt yourself like more fluid in the moment during those poses or was it kind of like a little rigid and challenging questioning yourself? What did it feel like up there? I mean, I can't say that words, Aaron and confidence ever are remotely close to each other in any stretch of the imagination. But I I practiced my posing so, so, so, so much. It was autonomous at that point. Like I had literally practiced it every single day after training since March 31st, you know, and I had it was. it. Yeah. I could literally close my eyes and this is what I was doing like backstage. I was just closing my eyes and like walking myself through each step, each pause, where that goes, how the hands sweep. But I've just done it so, so many times. That's the one. That's why it looked fluid. I mean, I'm up there like fucking shaking in my boots mentally, but I have just done it literally hundreds of times. So it was automatic feeling. Yeah. Did you have a sense of like, belong up here? I mean a little bit, but only from like the. The perceptions of the other competitors, right? Like when I was lined up in in open class D, one of the other guys who ended up like kind of becoming a friend said I'm not even going to go out on stage because I cannot compare to you. You know, and it was one of those things I'm like in the same thing kind of happened at the Thailand show too. OK, people can see something on me. or how I appear that is different from how I perceive myself. Yeah, for sure. think that's always the case. always have a little bit of an under perception of ourself, which I think is why that confidence cockiness is a little bit of a facade on stage, but also an important piece of like the showmanship, you know? Yeah, and in, you know, in full transparency for the Hong Kong show, I have to kind of step. I'm going to I'm going to have to pretend to be someone that I'm not because I'm not that person. But that's like the aura of the pro. If you watch like the pro posing versus the amateur posing, you get a lot more time. Like in the amateur, I get like 11 seconds or something like that to do my stage routine. The pro goes up like 30. So like triples in length, you know. And so there's a lot. more that I have to kind of like add to the routine of oval to make it of like a pro routine. And that's going to be completely all new for me again that I have to learn for sure. Yeah. Well, you definitely approach this entire thing like a pro. And I'll just compare it to the one time that I got on stage in 2015 and you were there, which was super cool. But I definitely did not prepare like a pro and I wasn't a pro, but I didn't spend the time that I needed to on the posing. And so I think when I got on stage, I had too much of that rigidity and maybe questioning my movement. instead of feeling like it was second nature and kind of in that fluid flow like you're discussing. So I think that just goes to speak to, know, anyone that does bodybuilding knows that posing is the thing that separates you from someone else. Like everyone has great physiques and there, you know, subtle differences here and there, but the way that you represent your physique through your posing, your fluidity and your confidence are kind of the things that uh really make a difference in the eyes of the judges. It's huge. I mean, it really, really is. And even learning how to pose for your physique. Right. So like for me, when my, you know, like my front poses, hands on the hips. Right. Whereas some guys might do like one hand on the hip and the other hand, you know, kind of raised or both hands raised. When I have both hands raised, my delts disappear. Right. But when I put my hands on my hips, my delts fucking pop out. You know, so like there's these little things that you just have to learn for your own physique and your own anatomy and different things. Like I have the open hands on the hips, right? Where some people do like the closed fist. I can't do the closed fist because my forearms are so long. So if I put the closed fist, my lat disappears because my arms too far away. You know, so like there's these all these little things that that we learned through, you know, posing to make it literally just 100%. personal to me and my anatomy, things that I'm able to control well, things that I can't control well. You know, like we had to change my footwork from show one to show two because I just could not get my fucking left foot in the right position in show one. And I just kept fucking it up like again and again and again. So eventually we just scrapped it. Yeah, makes sense. ah What was the next thing I was gonna ask? What do you think your best money-making shot pose is? It's that front pose for sure. Hands on the hips. Yeah. yeah, that's kind of like a front relaxed is what they would call that. You know, I don't even have a clue what it would be called. Okay, Sweet. Well, those are my posing questions. far as uh like we were talking uh off air before we started, but I was curious about your body weight going into the show. So if you want to tell everyone the story you told me, that's pretty wild. Yeah, so morning of show, I was 220.1. We um did a two day food load. So Friday and sorry, Thursday and Friday where we're food loads. And then what we would track was the weight at the end of the night versus the weight in the morning so that we could see how much, you know, fluid we were losing overnight. And I lost nine pounds from the night before the show to morning. show. So I went to bed at 229.1 and I woke up at 220.1, which was wild. um Also that I think was relevant. The food load went completely different from the Thailand show to this show at the Thailand show. Like when we were loading food, day one was fine, but day two of the food load, like I started getting like heartburn pretty bad and I was feeling like pretty full and the morning of one day out, like you could see the distension in my stomach a little bit. Whereas this time, I don't like the it's like the planets aligned. I don't know where the fuck my body was putting the food, but it was putting it somewhere. And we did nine hundred and seventy five grams of carbs on Friday. And then that final meal went down at like seven p.m. And I was like it was like my stomach was vacuum tight. I could have easily eaten more. It was insane. Yeah. What's the ruling as far as maintaining your pro card now that you have it? Like you're doing another show here coming up, but like, you is there a, have to compete each year, every other year? What does that look like? You can have you can be inactive status for three consecutive years. And that was a rule that they just put in last year, whereas I think before it was like pretty open ended. So I'll compete, you know, in September. It's doubtful I will compete next year, although who knows so much is changing so rapidly right now. But my priorities have still remained the same wedding post Hong Kong. restore my fertility, get married first, restore my fertility and try and start a family. And then I would imagine that entire first year is full hands on deck dedicated to supporting my wife so that she can get her body back post pregnancy. And then once she's happy in everyone's hunky dory, if I wanna do any additional competing potentially. Cool, that's awesome. That sounds like a really prudent, well thought out plan that obviously supports Jenny throughout the process, which is of utmost importance with a new baby on the way. Cool, so uh we also are gonna talk about blood work today, but before we do that, tell us a little bit about your training leading up to it. Did you take two, three days off? What was the kind of tapering protocol there? Yeah, so um Monday, Tuesday were my normal training days in peak week. Show was on Saturday. um I started travel Wednesday night and we did Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were depletion days. So fiber came all the way out to zero. Not not actually zero, but like no additional fibers foods, like nothing like oats, no vegetables were in like minimal fruits. um And then Thursday, Friday where the food load. I trained normal Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. I had my final posing session, which posing class on my final depletion day. I don't know what the fuck I was thinking when I scheduled that. But that was one of the that was like probably the hardest part of prep. And she like put me through the paces. And it was one of those times like, you know, like when you're deep in those CrossFit workouts and you have to like talk yourself like through it. Yeah. Yeah. like. was a come on air. And like you can't you cannot quit. You cannot ask her to stop like you got a handful more rounds and it's over. Like I had to talk. I like my energy was nonexistent and I was like running on fumes and I still had to like pack and get shit ready for the cats, you know, for me leaving. And Jenny was already gone and like it was just a lot. And I was I was feeling pretty low. um And then on that day, which is normally my leg session, I was like, I don't see any good reason for me to do any hip hinging or squatting. I uh four sets, 10 to 20 alternating standing hamstring curl seated leg extension just to like, you know, get some blood flow pump in there and also like kind of remove some final uh glycogen. And then I did four sets of calf raises. So like 12 total sets, um alternating exercises. And then on Thursday was my final kind of upper body pump up, which was fasted in the morning before we started our food load after my overnight travel into Gaussian, which was quite challenging. Sorry, I'm sorry, I just saw something on my screen and I stopped paying attention. Can you just repeat that last thing for me? Yeah, yeah. So on Thursday was my final morning of my final kind of pump session um fasted before we added food, which was like at like 9 a.m. you know, after my overnight travel into calcium. So that was pretty challenging because my final meal was like 7 p.m. the night before in the airport. I had a four hour flight to Bangkok and then like a three hour layover in Bangkok. And then I don't know how long the final flight was into Taiwan, but overnight flights, you know, being up in the airport in the middle of the night, like it's just very, very suboptimal. All will all well not eating. And at the final day of your your depletion, ah I was feeling quite shitty. And then I'd like check into my Airbnb, you know, make a pro. I did have a protein shake before the training and then grab an Uber up to the gym. and then go train, which ended up being a lot of fun. The gyms in Taiwan. Yeah, they looked great. I saw that. Did you do anything to try to re-regulate yourself after like, you know, overnight flights and shitty sleep and all that? No, sleep got actually very, poor in the final nights. um I was just a little bit like too wired in stuff and I would wake up at like 4 a.m. and be like, all right, Aaron, you can't start your day yet. And I would like force myself to stay in bed until at least five. And then I would like get up and do my journal and stuff. But I, know, Wednesday night I maybe slept a total of like five hours between the planes Thursday night into Friday night. Maybe another like five and then the night before the show, probably only like four or something. Yeah. that your ability to kind of still peek through that is a partial result of the exogenous substances? How do you think that would have played out with a natural in a similar situation? I think the same thing happens like when like Brandon competed the day after me. And I have WhatsApp messages from him at like 345 in the morning. So I think it's a very common thing. Just nerves, jitters, the stress, the high cortisol. You're just not sleeping in the great in those final nights. Yeah. it doesn't seem to ruin the physique at least acutely in those like final day or two. Yeah. think it's a lot more... I think it's a lot trickier for the naturals because like with me, we used exogenous substances that are great at cortisol modulation. So even with like poor sleep and stuff, those things are at least moderately managed, whereas, you know, in the naturals, you obviously cannot do that. So you have to do more like tangible, actionable things of like trying to regulate, you know, your your uh parasympathetic, the sympathetic and those sorts of things take naps, lay down where whereas I just I still think those actions are still equally as as beneficial, but it's not the only tool you have to use oh on the enhanced side of things. Yeah, for sure, for sure. Okay, what else is there if there's anything that you think we should discuss or point out to people before we kind of move on from this topic? I would just, guess I'm very, glad in my approach, right? And I guess in my... I don't want to say confidence because I just earlier in the episode said, you know, I rarely do actually have any confidence in and I would agree with that. But I decided when I was going to do this prep, I'm like, there's different ways that you can do a prep and I'm going to do it in a very black and white fashion. There's going to be no free meals. There's going to be no, you know, cheat meals. I'm not going to play the macro games. I'm just going to eat the same foods day in and day out. Turn my brain off and try my best to operate like. I think a professional would who was like seasoned at this. And there were times where like, you know, sometimes like people send you like Instagram messages and stuff, and it just kind of like gets under your skin a little bit. And there was a little bit of those or the ones that I got most commonly were because I did my cardio like walking around the house and like, but that's not real cardio. I'm like, it's it's energy. Like, yeah. get sufficient for what we need it for. And it and it helps me from a time standpoint. And lo and behold, I'm still pretty fucking lean on stage from just doing all my cardio, walking in the living room. um But but I'm I'm glad that I chose to do it the way that I did, because psychologically, the prep was rather not overly challenging. And I think because I just removed things from the start. And I think if I would have tried to like, I'm going to do this like yogurt smoothie bowl this week, it just I feel like you end up chasing flavors and stuff or where I know, hey, I get fucking chicken, rice and vegetables. And after like two weeks, you just relegate to the fact that I can't have this until the second week of September. And as long as the date is before the second week of September, it's a simple I cannot. And that's just it is what it is, you know. um And now Looking back on it, you know, the feelings of like that immense. Accomplishment that I had, you know, earning that broker, like all those, I can't even really call them sacrifice trade offs. It's 100 % worth it because none, no smoothie bowl or anything is going to feel remotely as good as like standing up there in achieving that, you know, impossible goal that I had had set. So I'm very happy that I stuck to my guns. and ran a more rigid approach, even though it's often frowned upon because it worked out. Yeah, no, a hundred percent. I'm super proud of you. I'm super amped for you. And, uh, just kind of excited that what you've done is really like a manifestation of, you know, 20 plus years of dedicated training to the pursuit. And like people can say whatever they want about, well, you jumped on exogenous substances and that's why this or that's why that, but like, none of that would have even mattered without the 20 years of base that you put in the time commitment, the dedication and, It's just a really cool example of how putting your head down and doing all the right things leads you to success. And uh you're a model, man. It's Yeah. Cool. Well, one of the things that you are so good at is what you said, being regimented and not deviating at all and understanding that nothing tastes as good as that feeling of being on stage. And that's actually the exact mental state that I would put myself in in my first five to seven years of training when I was really, you know, I was a teenager into my early twenties and I was really dedicated to, want to get chiseled. want abs. want to impress the girls. I want to blah, blah, blah, all these things. And that was always the thing is like, nothing will taste as good as being able to like feel good in my body will feel, you know, that was always the way that I thought about things over the last three or four years. I've gone in a very opposite direction to that, where as we've discussed on here, I've gotten this really gluttonous streak. um I think initially I justified it all as being necessary for all of the kind of hybrid training that I was starting to incorporate, that I'm doing all of this cardio and I'm biking and now I'm running and I'm lifting and I'm a dad and I'm working and all these things. And thus like, I need all this food to support me. And I guess there is like a small argument for that in that my body weight is stable. So it's not as if I'm getting fat. doing this, but there's certainly, you know, better quality foods that I could be eating. ah Which leads me into kind of this next section of our podcast, which is blood work. And one of the reasons that I personally wanted to get my blood work done when I did two or three weeks ago is because this gluttonous phase of my life of really going ham on cardio and going ham on food, whether it's high sugar, sometimes high fat, high carb, ah it just took on a whole new, new level in my life. And so for the last three to six months, I've been just as gluttonous as I, as I've been in my entire life at any point. And I wanted to get this blood work and see if me going completely off the rails and eating basically whatever I want all the time had negative impacts on my blood work. And that's kind of what we're seeing here. And there's a few things that I think do potentially demonstrate that maybe I could clean things up a little, but For the most part, it does seem like this kind of energy balance of food coming in, energy going out, body weight being stable, has mostly led me to a relatively healthy place. And I think that's both reassuring and also in some ways, I kind of wish it would have not come back as clean as it did so that I would have more impetus and more reason to actually clean my shit up and eat better. So anyway, that's just my long introduction to why I did blood work and kind of, you know, what we're going to go over and expose a little bit today. Cool. Do you want me to share uh your blood work first and we'll walk through it? Yeah, we'll do mine then we can jump into yours after. All right, let's do this. So for anyone watching on YouTube, we are going to share on the screen. However, in full transparency, this is the first time we are doing this. So no guarantees that it works out wonderfully. So let me, here we go. right, so we're starting with the cholesterol panel here, cardiac health. So you can see on here my current numbers to my previous numbers. And for the most part, all of them are within 10 % or less from where the prior one was. So my triglycerides went down slightly. All of these are in the green range. My HDL is a little bit too low. So it was 57, which was barely acceptable. Now it's 51. So it's slightly below that range. I think a large piece of that is just the lower quality fats that I've been taking in, unfortunately. But all of that stuff looks good. Homocysteine also, you know, in the in control range went up one point from where it was prior. It was eight. Now it's nine. Apob went down. So that's an interesting one in that my prior APOB was 72 and now it's 65 despite the crazy increase in these palatable foods. But both those numbers are actually still higher than where I was the prior blood work from two years ago. I think my APOB was 55 at that point. So somewhere in the middle there between the readings and CRP, like this is crazy. So it was 0.6 last time. So that the range is you want to be under 0.9. Last time it was 0.6. I think the time before that it was 0.8. And now it's 0.15 or less. Like what does that mean? Like does that, I have no inflammation in my body or how do you interpret that? Indetectable pretty much so no nothing that's picked up off of this high sensitivity CRP and that's high sensitivity, which is really really good. Now the thing with the the HS CRP is it's it's kind of like a general eye like a general inflammatory marker in the body. So if you are the most common times you see this is if someone is like coming off of. like an illness or an infection or something like that that would provide, you know, inflammation in the body that will come up for those who are using performance enhancing drugs. If you're using sketchy underground labs who are mixing in excipients and solvents, this can come back really high. I posted something on my Instagram stories a few months back. Sorry, a few weeks back. This I had someone come in at like 126 or 116 or something. not 1.16, 116, to which I met, yeah, to which I immediately messaged him and said, immediately stop injecting everything that you are injecting in your body and throw it all away. Yeah, so that is another reason there. mean, there's, I've seen it in, I've seen that the high sensitivity C-reactive protein elevated in some of my like uh crossfit clients who just train constantly all the time. And I mean, I'm sure you remember that feeling of like where your body's just like beat up all the time and you're just in a state of inflammation and the CRP can come back in like a uh six range I've seen before in those clients. I pulled their training volume back. I made them start taking rest days. Lo and behold, that comes down. Yeah, you know, it's I expected it to be higher though, simply because I am kind of training with the similar volumes that I was doing during CrossFit. Like it's a little bit different modality and that I'm doing hypertrophy and strength training in one bucket and then I'm doing all this cardio and another bucket. But the total amount of time that I'm committing to training or my heart rate being elevated or under stress is just as high now as it was during my CrossFit days. And so I don't quite understand why that CRP number even went down from where it was to such a kind of indetectable range at that point. Okay, so on the next page here, we have HbA1c and insulin. My HbA1c is creeping up and that is slightly concerning to me. So the prior one was 5.4 and the one before that was 5.3 and now we're seeing 5.5. And so I can only assume that this is a result of me eating significantly more amounts of simple carbohydrates, processed food, sugar, things like that. The confidence that it gives me is that if I were to clean my diet up, I think that that would move back into the right direction. It's somewhat reassuring that it's still in control despite the way that I've approached my diet, um but it does. give me a sense of pause in kind of how I'm approaching my diet, especially because as we'll see later on, my glucose reading, my one fasted snapshot acute glucose reading was 102, which I've never had a fasted glucose reading above, I think 85, maybe 87, something like that. So to see a 102 and then to see this HbA1C number a little bit higher certainly gives me little bit of pause. But the insulin is, in range. It's more or less exactly where it was the last time at 3.6. so feeling pretty good about that. Yeah, insulin is fasting. Insulin is a wonderful marker because like fasting glucose can can rise for various reasons. Like we have the chat with Dave McConnie about this, where him and I are like pretty similar. Like we very rarely get great fasting glucose readings. But before any real insulin resistance can develop, this fasting insulin number will start climbing through like your tens, your twelves into the teens. If you're in the teens, you need to start making some changes because insulin resistance is building. You get into those low 20s, that's not an area that you would like to be from an insulin standpoint. What do you find about reversing insulin once it starts to kind of climb? How hard is that process to get it back down? I mean, it's not it's not incredibly like the best thing to do is just a calorie deficit, get weight off people, bring down their their dietary intake. um This would be a wonderful situation. You know, I know we often in terms of calorie deficits, it's very often talked about. um Where it's like, it doesn't matter like carbs versus fat as long as you create the deficit. But if you like have insulin resistance building, it's a wonderful time to go with a higher fat approach, lower carb approach, because when you have insulin resistance, like it's textbook kind of showcase that you are not partitioning that carbohydrate. Well, you won't partition that carbohydrate will due to that resistance nature. So that would be a wonderful context to go with a lower carb, higher fat diet approach. Cool. right here, moving on to the comprehensive metabolic panel. uh Pretty much everything here is within range. The red ones that you see highlighted here are, well, I mentioned the glucose already, but then the rest of these markers, bun, creatinine, and EGFR are kidney markers. And as many of you know, if you take creatine, then it's going to show these three specific kidney markers to be a bit off the charts and a bit high. And I've been taking quite a bit of creatine recently since all the new studies have come out showing that five grams a day is great for muscle, but 10 grams a day is kind of where the cognitive benefits begin. I've been taking 10 to 12 grams of creatine a day now for a while. And you'll see this creatinine number up to 1.5, which is the highest I've ever seen it. So my doctor ordered me to get a C-statin C. kidney reading as well, which essentially takes out the fact that creatine is being consumed and gives you a more uh accurate reading of kidney function. And so we'll get to that a little bit later. Um, but everything else here looks pretty good in range focusing on the ALT AST, which are the liver enzymes. those actually are either the same or slightly lower than where they were the last time. And I'm surprised by this because the two days before the blood work, I did a two hour interval bike ride, uh, two days prior. And then the day prior I did like a super gnarly hard leg workout. And so I went into, I told my doctor, I was like, Hey, we're probably going to see these liver enzymes, you know, off the charts, probably a little higher than normal because the last time I did my blood work, I took like four days off of training prior because I wanted to get a very accurate, you know, reading of what it would be. Now I train super hard two days, the two days prior and my numbers are basically the same. So I don't know what to make of that, but I'm happy to see those are at least in range. And then we're onto thyroid, no real issues here. It does seem as if my reverse T3 is like a little bit on the higher range, like it's still in range where it's showing the range is seven to 23 and my reverse T3 was 18. So it's trending toward that higher end of the range. But for me, that's pretty much where I tend to sit with that. Like I've had readings at 20, 21 in prior blood readings. So seeing me at 17, 18 range is a bit... better for me. What do you think of that and where do you make sense of those readings? Yeah, so the reverse T3 like anything once it gets above like a 15 it can be indicative of kind of a stressful situation or stress going on. Whereas the body is then converting free T4 which normally would get converted to free T3 into reverse T3 to kind of like put the brakes on on you know the the metabolic thermostat you know and thyroid right overall thyroid output. However, You know what really what ultimately matters most in the thyroid panel is going to be your free t3 in your free t4 right free t3 is the most like downstream and Seeing it between like a 3 and a 4 is wonderful, right? but then it's also really important to look at it in the context of Application right? So like Brian we were just talking about this photo of you in Wisconsin like 196 pounds Probably what like Ohio leavens maybe body fat maybe a 12 if you wanted to get lean right now You would have zero issues, right? And that's the real thing that we look at into thyroid specifically with men, right with women. It can be a little bit different Because it can there it's much more likely that women have a hypothyroid situation than men and then that can affect things like motility and stuff, but you know, TSH is a little bit higher than we might expect, but we don't see any kind of downstream cascades. But we also know that your feeding environment, like food's been super high. If we've been constraining food or like in a prolonged caloric deficit, it's very, very common to see down-regulated thyroid numbers. But again, in your current context, you've been eating a lot of food. We're still pretty freaking lean and downstream free T3 is still out of 3.0. So even though everything's not perfect, I don't see it being any have any practical detriment in real world application. Cool, appreciate it. Let's move on to the next page. Here we have hormone panel. This is where things get a little wonky for me because you'll notice the estradiol number at the top says under 10. So I don't even know that could be two or four or eight. All it says is under 10. My last time it was 30. So I went from being low in the range, the range is 26 to 60. So I was 30. I was already on the lower end. Now I'm at under 10, which is the really low end. And so I was talking to you and Dave and talking to my doctor about this. I've been having like, I've never been a great sleeper since college, but I'd say, you know, it's probably a little bit worse now than it has been as far as the number of wakeups that I have in the night. Like I'm falling asleep so easily. And the first three or four hours of my sleep are just dead to the world. But then around at 2am something like that I tend to wake up and I'm like a little hot and uh maybe I'm going through like perimenopause I don't really know but uh I'm sure the estradiol has some some factor in there so so that's really the big one that I see there and then you know going down you'll see my testosterone total was 306 and the free was 6.4 both of those are pretty similar to where I was last time the free testosterone testosterone or the total testosterone rather slightly lower, maybe like 8 % lower. The free testosterone is about the same. Both of those are low, like they're showing in control as green like you're good. It's cool. ah But I'm clearly ah in the lower end of both of those ranges. And so that's something that my doctor and I have discussed, he wants me to get an MRI of my pituitary because he thinks that it's downstream from that. ah So maybe I'll be doing that in the fall. But any thoughts from you on this hormone panel here? I mean, I would agree with with at least ruling anything out with getting an MRI of the pituitary. It's very uncommon to see estrogen like this, um especially because, know, typically like as a male, we sent out kind of that that pulsatory similar amounts of testosterone all the time. If again, if you were in a super post super hard calorie deficit, something like that. Yes, all sex hormones are going to slide down. That's a compensatory mechanism. But it's interesting that we have a massive, and I mean, this isn't 10, this is under 10. This could be nine, this could be four. That's like bottomed out estradiol, and I'm surprised that you don't have any of the typical symptoms that are associated with that, like achy kind of joints, like skin feeling really, really dry. emotions being incredibly blunted, dry lips, those sorts of things. So like those are low estrogen symptoms, but it could just be also to, you caught it on like a fluke low day and then maybe tomorrow it's back in like, you know, the low twenties or something like that because it does fluctuate, of course. But like LH and FSH are exactly where it would be expected. Your DHA is like very, you know, middle of the road, actually towards the high end. SPHBG is exactly where we would expect your total and free is very, very indicative for where you've always sat over the blood work that I've seen from you for like the last four, fourish years. And then progesterone is always going to be super, super low as a male. And then prolactin and dihydrotestosterone are actually very infrequently ordered on labs. Yeah, what does that tell you? Like, so D-hydrotestosterone is the DHT, which is the one that affects male baldness, right? Male baldness, aggression, uh motivation, those sorts of things. There's it's it's highly associated with like androgenic side. So like male pattern baldness, how hairy you are, um but also positive. Kind of male characteristics like motivation and stuff to is plays a part with that. to be higher? Like if it's higher, does that mean you're gonna be more likely to bald, less likely to bald, have more motivation, less motivation? I don't I can't confidently say around the balding. think the balding is very. um What is it called? Oh, my goodness, genetic specific, right? Like I would imagine my DHT is sky fucking high right now because I'm using a DHT derivative. My hair hasn't changed at all. um But I will say like my motivation and willingness to get things done is significantly. higher. And I've, I'm gonna find out come like September when everything comes down and I go back to my 150 testosterone and if like work gets really fucking normal to do again, but I'll have I'll be able to answer that question better than but yeah, I don't think it's a and I think it to it might have to there might be thresholds that are outside the physiologic range before some of these symptoms or manifestations, representations start to kind of like take place. For example, a very, very common misconception with with testosterone, right? Well, like if I, if you were, the common misconception is like, hey, if I double my testosterone from 300 to 600, I'm gonna build more muscle, right? Because I've doubled the amount of testosterone. Unfortunately, no, that threshold is like, a little bit outside the physiologic range. So it's around like, from what I have heard, I haven't been I haven't actually seen the research on this. So this is potentially a little bit of bro lore, but it's around the like 13 1400 before it's you're moving into super physiological ranges of testosterone. So yeah. All right, let's move on to the next page. We have complete blood count. All this stuff looks pretty good for the most part. My white blood count is a little bit low. It's higher than it was last time. ah I, my doctor said he's not worried about it, uh, as far as, know, how it relates to everything else that's happening. I don't, it's looks like the immature granular sites are a little bit low as well. or a little bit, yeah, I guess a little bit high would be the answer there, but they're lower than they were last time. So we'll call that improvement. Um, Probably nothing to really expand on there. I'm not super familiar with how to assess and interpret a lot of this stuff. I mean, aside the most important things here on the CBC for most people is going to be like your hemoglobin, which is your blood viscosity, and then your hematocrit. So like those are those two things tied together. If you are dehydrated, hematocrit can come back high and make it look like your blood's a little bit thicker. But hemoglobin is an independent factor of your hydration level. So one of the risks for certain people with like TRT and stuff is blood viscosity. going up, which up from my experience and clients seems to be hugely genetic, unfortunately. uh But that would be the most common thing that your actions could really be driving a lot of the things like your, know, MCH, mean corpuscular hemoglobin, your MCV mean corpuscular volume, and a lot of like your neutrophils, your lymphocytes, your monocytes, that's like your immune system. So if you're like getting over a little virus or a bug, some of these things will be a little bit out of whack. But before anything would be a concern, these things would have to be like very far out of the reference range. And that's where like. Yeah, I mean, if for I'd be talking like five, 10, 20 X reference range, and that could be like indicative of like disease or some. Cool, well that's good to know I'm disease free for the moment. uh Uric acid is a bit high. It was 6.1 last time, which is still high. Now it's 6.8, which is even higher. This I'm 100 % confident is a result of the shitty quality diet that I'm eating with all the sugar and the processed food and all of that. So much like HbA1c and glucose to an extent, I feel like through cleaning up the diet a little bit and kind of getting back to more complex. uh foods is probably going to do a lot to help that number. And that's my plan over these next three months to kind of see what cleaning up the diet then does to some of these markers that were off the board a little bit. So you'll see uric acid high, you'll see my C stat and C measurement here, which is my kidney function sans creatine. ah It's the exact same number as last time, it appears to be high here. But when you do a calculation for EGFR based on body weight, it actually puts me in the range like super healthy. So my doctor did that kind of reverse calculation and determined that everything looks fine. I would say if there's one organ in my body that I do seem to be slightly more concerned with than any others, it is my kidneys. But I don't see anything at the moment that kind of freaks me out or makes me feel like things need to be assessed in any further way. Question for you, Brian, while we're here about that. Or do you do any supplementation to improve kidney function like a, oh my goodness, astragalus or astragalide, uh astragalicide uh four, which is kind of the extracted version of it or any of those supplements there? No, I don't. Since that uric acid reading, my doctor told me to start taking berberine and curcumin once a day with my biggest meal. So I've been doing that. ah But no, I haven't done anything for kidneys. Okay. Fatty acids here is the next one. So I really like this reading. I think this is one of my favorite things about getting the blood work done here is this omega-3 index. I love this pursuit of trying to increase the amount of omega-3 in my blood. And so I'm taking a lot of omega-3 to do this. I was talking to my doctor about it and he's like, dude, it's great. Your omega-3 is like in a really great range. It's 9.5. The range is 8 to 12 is kind of the in control range. and he said he likes his to be 10 plus, but 9.5 is, you know, getting there. I told him I need to take seven omega-3 pills a day. So that's basically like, I don't know, a little like five grams of pure DHA, EPA. And he said he does about the same. So I don't eat fish, which probably is a reason that where I'm taking that much and still not getting into like the 10 plus, but I'm happy to see that that is. continuing to climb from where it was before. And then we have a breakdown of how much DHA, EPA, and the different types of kind of omegas and different fatty acids that I have in my body. And all of those are looking pretty good in range where they should be. And then at the end, we have vitamin B12 and vitamin D, vitamin B12. We were worried it was a little bit high last time, like it was still in range, but it was 1200. Now it's 1100. So it's getting a little bit lower, which is good. To do that, I actually had to decrease the multivitamin I was taking. I was taking a Legion multivitamin and I was taking the full dose, which was four in the morning and four in the evening. For the last year, I cut that in half to two in the morning and two in the evening. So that seems to be the right dose of multivitamin for me considering I'm eating a bunch of fruit and vegetables. And then vitamin D is 41. That was a result of me figuring that since it's spring into early summer that I was going to be outside a lot getting a ton of sun that I wasn't going to need to continue supplementing with vitamin D. So I completely stopped it in maybe April and I only have been getting outside getting sun and my doctor says that number is a bit low. is the range is 30 to 100. So it is in range. I've heard more nuanced numbers say that the ideal range is like 50 to 70. So it would be like slightly lower than that 50 range. So I did start supplementing again since this blood work with vitamin D and I'm just taking like 7,000 I use two to three times a week because vitamin D stores in your body. You don't really need to do it every day. It's fat soluble. So I tend to take it every other day. And that in the past that has gotten me to kind of where I want to be with vitamin D. And my doctor said the same, that he was surprised with himself when he went through this a couple of years ago, that he was outside getting two to three hours of sun every day in the summer and still his vitamin D levels were low. And so it just seems that. man, we're just not absorbing vitamin D as well from the sun. And the further problem is that as you get more tan, then your skin is darker and it takes more vitamin D to penetrate through. So I think that that's kind of part of this milieu as well. I think that might be the end of it. Yeah, that's all I got. um I guess, fuck, dude, we don't really have time at this point to go over your blood work. So maybe we can do that in the next episode unless you want to do like a monologue solo on it. I can run it solo. Yeah, I don't see any reason why I can't do that. well, because I mean, so much that's going to be very, very similar than I can point out some other like PED differences and things that are out of range and reasons why and stuff. Awesome, yeah. Well, I guess to just put a wrap on my blood work, I uh am now intending for these next three months or so to take that berberine, the curcumin, to uh try to clean up the crappy food that I'm eating. Cause like one of the things is that I've always been eating quality food with my crappy food. Like I still have a serving of vegetables every day and like three or four servings of fruit and a bunch of protein. So it was really just the extraneous stuff on top that I'm now gonna try to cut back on. And in three months or so, we'll go back in and do another set of blood labs and see if that uric acid, the glucose, the HbA1c and any of those other things kind of come back around. Um, and that's really all I got. Cool, sounds good. All right, B. right, I'm gonna bounce and Aaron will finish you guys up. That's good. All right, here we go. So let's fire up. my labs. Okay, so a little bit of context for you guys here. This is collected two days after my Thailand regional. Okay, so these labs are about almost two months old now that it's almost August. So reason being I didn't collect labs after this most recent show is one they get labs are really expensive. here in Bali. um And I'm just going to collect everything and I wouldn't make any changes based off of the labs. So I'm going to collect everything post my final show in Hong Kong um once I'm back in the States where I can get things a lot more appropriately priced. And therefore it's going to give me a little bit of time post show to let some of the like drug detoxification and stuff happen and get a better picture of what specific changes I would need to make because there's half-life to some of the um androgens and things like that. And if you capture some of it too early, things are going to be detoxification, detoxifying out of the body and stuff anyway. And you wanna capture where things look like a few weeks after, after some of those half-lives have cleared to give you a little bit more clear of a picture of what an action plan might be. But it had been some time. And I did want to in labs in Thailand are cheap. So I was like, I'm just going to grab them here. Now, a little bit of additional context. As we look at this, there were no orals used um for my regional and orals are a lot. I guess what a decent term would be unhealthy or less healthy on your liver because the most orals are the ones used are 17 alpha alkylated and have to go through first past liver metabolism to make it into the system. Okay, so you typically get a little bit more of an impact to your liver when using them. So I'm gonna touch on some of the more kind of highlighted things that are obviously out of reference range for myself and some of the things that are a little bit more contextually appropriate because of the higher risk endeavors that I am partaking relative to Brian. So very similarly, like, Brian had talked about here on Brian's lab work in my CBC. I just botched that. I don't want to do that. Let me get rid of that. Hemoglobin and hematocrit. So I am very fortunate in that my PED usage does not change my blood viscosity. I think that is very largely genetic. And even when I was running less safe compounds that are known to increase blood viscosity. I did not get a budge in my hemoglobin. So um that is very, very fortunate for myself into a lot of these other things in here, very, very all within reference range. um And then I also have a urinalysis in here. That is something that I will always include because one of the primary concerns of AAS usage is your kidneys. Now, the reason being is a lot of your other organs can kind of be like repaired. There's some crazy stat about the liver. The liver can get rotted down or cut down to like 15 percent of its original volume and like regenerate itself. Kidneys can't do that right once your kidneys are in, you know, stage two, stage three of like renal degradation. They don't get better. Right. There's just management at that. uh degradated level. So always get a urinalysis because certain things like if you start filtering, uh filtering like protein out into your urine and stuff like that's going to be an indicator of an impaired kidney function. So I always get this everything comes back completely normal and clear. And there in my urinalysis coming down into my Chemistry here, my fasting glucose here is an let me make sure I'm not on that anymore. An 89 or sorry, a 99, which like we spoke about is very, very, very, very typical for myself. Right. Running a higher fasting blood glucose. And then very similar to Brian. We talked about that creatinine. Brian was Ryan's was a one point five, I believe. Mine is a one point six eight flagged high. And that is again from that higher creatine dosing and that I am using 15 grams of creatine per day. So it's going to bring that creatine number up and then any. Sorry, any yeah, any estimated glomerular filtration rate derived from that creatinine will look bad, right? It will make it look like your. Kidney filtration rate is low because the creatinine is high, but the creatinine is only driven high because of the creatine. So as a stop gap, cover your ass, you order a Cistatin C and a Cistatin C derived EGFR. Unfortunately, this lab did not have Cistatin C, but when I got home the next week in Bali, I did grab one and the kidney function in terms of Cistatin C and EGFR were both wonderful. um As you can see here, the uh CPK total came back very, very high and that is a protein breakdown, right? Because I trained the day before and that came back really, really high. Fortunately, looking at my high sensitivity C-reactive protein, still very, very low at a 0.8. And that's quite good for someone who's using um PEDs. My gamma GGT. So this is a GGT specific liver enzyme. is a 20. So the reference range is sub 55. So this is really, really good a marker to add because this is liver specific. Now, if we go down to some of my other liver function tests, you will see my AST and ALT are both rather high. About ALT is about 50 % above the reference range. And then the AST is about 200 % over the reference range. Now, these are commonly high in PED usage because of protein turnover and muscle damage. And that is why we order the GGT, the gamma GGT up here, because this is liver specific. So it's a little bit of a insurance policy. Now, coming down into my lipids. uh Now, it's important to note that certain androgens are very, very well known for skewing lipids, right? My triglycerides very, very low. This is mostly because my fat intake is very, very low in contest prep. My HDL, which is the positively associated cholesterol, has been getting driven pretty low. I'm at a 36. I believe Brian's was like a 40, 46, a 49, something like that. This is one of the consequences. Fortunately for me, my LDL is also really low. As a natural, I could never get my LDL sub 100. I would sit like 120 to 150. This was a positive side effect of my adventures into anabolic is my LDL cholesterol has improved a lot by using the exogenous testosterone, which is a little bit unexpected, but I have like six or seven labs now that all show this. So interesting tidbit there. Now the other large liver function tests like albumin, globulin, total bilirubin, alkaline phosphatase all look wonderfully normal. It's just that AST and ALT that are approximately 50 % and 200 % above the reference range. Growth hormone is high, about double the reference range. I'm using exogenous growth hormone, so that would make sense. um And then coming down into some of the other hormones. This one is rather comical. My uh estradiol E2. You will see the reference range is 11 to 44. 44 is the high end. So let's call that about 50. Mine is at 1600. So that is something like, oh my goodness, 10, like 30 times the reference range, something like that. This is something where this method here. Right, so there's a method, this CMIA method is not incredibly sensitive. And therefore, other hormones that have a similar chemical structure to estradiol can get positively flagged as estrogen on serum lab work. I've had three of these now happen. um If you want to circumvent this, what you need to use is an assay called LCMS, which stands for Liquid Chromatography Mass Spectrometry. It is incredibly sensitive. if you are using, if you're on TRT or PEDs and you really want accurate estradiol and total testosterone, you want to be using an LCMS. Fortunately in the US using Quest, or LabCorp, you can easily request those assays. um Free T4, a little bit low under that 1.2 reference range like we had in Brian's, but I was dieting for 12 weeks at this point and we would expect some um down regulation. Also, while we're here talking about it, I opted not to use any synthetic thyroid hormones for my contest prep. So that's also something that sometimes people use. T3, T4, I didn't want to do that. So um I'm just letting my numbers naturally cascade down. And then after my diet is over and I restore food intake and body fat comes up again, all those things will return to normal. TSH is still low. DHEA sitting very middle of the reference range, similar to Brian's. um My testosterone, the reference range is 242. It's basically like about 250 to a thousand effectively. Mine is sitting at a 3,460. yes, testosterone is sky high. That is what happens when you are using performance enhancing drug levels of exogenous testosterone. Free testosterone is also very, very high as is bioavailable testosterone. And then it's also very common to see a sex hormone binding globulin driven down because there's so much bioavailable testosterone. um IGF-1 is pretty much right in the middle of the reference range, even with using growth hormone. If you want to test your IGF-1, it's very timing specific and it's very, very quickly. So I wasn't really in particular concern of that. So I did it. My HbA1c 5.5 identical to Brian's. And then unfortunately on these labs, I do not think I have a fasting insulin, which is a little bit annoying. um But given that I am in a caloric deficit under a constrained energy environment intake, it would be highly plausible that fasting insulin would be rather low because of that environment. But then also the androgens and exogenous testosterone greatly improves insulin sensitivity. um those are my labs. What I think will be cool if we do a follow up post-Aaron's competitive season lab work where I can maybe capture things where they look a little bit worse because of the use of Orals heading into my uh pro debut. And then we'll maybe get things that look a little bit, I would say more appropriate. I would say based off of these labs, any deviations in terms of my lab work is rather mild. And the potential concern there is it gives you a false sense of I'm healthy, things are good, but that is not something that I would want to develop, right? I want to keep my very kind of concerned edge of using PEDs. um And I would prefer that lab work did not come back so well so that I get that very real representation of, hey, things don't look good. You need to prioritize your health and get off of some of these things so that things can come down and then put in protocols to improve some of these markers. I was quite surprised at how mild a lot of these deviations were. But like I said, things will probably not be as favorable after the second contest because total duration will obviously be longer, as will be some harsher um usage for those orals on the liver. So hopefully this was an informative episode for you guys. always, Brian and I try and be very, very transparent. and informative and educational about everything. Hopefully I did a decent job explaining um my experience with earning my pro card. Thank you to all the listeners who sent me very, kind messages. It was incredibly overwhelming. And I have to share that it felt really nice to feel like a winner for it for a weekend. And it felt. wonderful to have all of that hard work result in a uh tangible positive outcome. And you can see my pro card right here. I have not unpacked it from when I had to check it and let you know in full transparency. I'm probably going to leave it all wrapped up before I ship it back to the U.S. anyway. um But again, thank you to all. Thank you guys for listening. And Brian and I will talk to you next week.