#233： Diet and Nutrition Advice From the Doctor of Gains
Episode Stats
Summary
When it comes to fitness, figuring out what kind of diet to follow can get confusing and confusing. Today on the show, we cut through all the confusion by talking to Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum, a starting strength coach diet consultant for some of the best competitive powerlifters and crossfit athletes in the world, and a medical doctor currently doing his residency at UCLA.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast when it comes to
00:00:18.660
fitness figuring out what kind of diet to follow can get really confusing really fast i mean there
00:00:22.960
are so many plans out there for a person to choose from paleo slow carb carb backloading
00:00:27.980
intermittent fasting if it fits your macros etc and compounding the confusion is all the
00:00:32.560
information out there about timing your nutrition so you get maximal muscle gains while reducing fat
00:00:37.020
accumulation choices can be so overwhelming that some men just give up altogether and go back to
00:00:41.160
eating whatever it is they feel like mainly cheesy poofs today on the show we cut through all the
00:00:45.500
confusion when it comes to nutrition and fitness by talking to an actual doctor of gains his name is
00:00:50.600
jordan feigenbaum he's a starting strength coach diet consultant for some of the best competitive
00:00:54.700
power lifters and crossfit athletes in the world and a medical doctor currently doing his residency
00:00:59.420
at ucla today on the show jordan i discuss why barbell training is the best medicine for overall
00:01:04.340
fitness the best way to approach diet for strength training and why you can't gain strength and muscle
00:01:09.080
while simultaneously losing fat sorry to tell you that we also discuss which supplements are the
00:01:14.460
biggest waste of money and which ones actually are scientifically proven to work this episode is
00:01:18.640
jam-packed with actionable information so be sure to take notes and also after the show check out the
00:01:22.840
show notes at aom.is barbell medicine all one word for links to resources where you can delve deeper
00:01:28.120
into this topic all right jordan feigenbaum welcome to the show thanks for having me appreciate it all
00:01:36.980
right so you've got a really interesting background you're a starting strength coach dietitian and a
00:01:43.060
medical doctor an actual medical doctor can you walk us through your cv and how your experience in
00:01:49.880
different but related fields and health and fitness has shaped your philosophy towards fitness
00:01:55.780
sure yeah it's um so it's been an interesting journey um i went to undergrad got a biology degree
00:02:03.640
from truman state university graduate in 2008 and actually i wasn't pre-med or pre-anything which is an
00:02:09.860
interesting you know thing to get a biology degree because what do you do with the bio degree there's
00:02:14.400
nothing you can do unless you want to go research or go into a professional field but i wanted a
00:02:20.160
science degree and i came out started coaching people at the gym because that's the only thing i
00:02:25.140
was really interested in doing and did that for about five years over the course of that got my starting
00:02:31.800
strength coach i started doing that started working on staff at the starting strength seminars and
00:02:37.800
doing my own thing coaching people privately at a separate facility and uh yeah i got to a point
00:02:45.040
where um i was coaching a lot of people it's really fun i love coaching um but i wanted to have a bigger
00:02:50.520
platform to uh get some of these ideas out there as far as using uh strength training and nutritional
00:02:58.420
changes and lifestyle modification overall as a sort of you know preventative health uh uh sort of
00:03:05.160
sort of thing and so i i realized no matter how many certifications i got or how long i was
00:03:11.100
coaching that i would never have enough cachet to sort of be a big voice in the in the public sector
00:03:17.220
so i thought uh well let's go back let's get a medical degree so no biggies like seven years you know
00:03:25.780
yeah yeah well so yeah i actually had to go back i got my master's uh in anatomy and physiology uh from
00:03:31.540
saint louis university school of medicine i did that first to kind of bone up on my my application
00:03:36.680
to medical school because it's super competitive uh so i did that that was two years and then i got
00:03:41.300
into medical school at uh eastern virginia medical school uh out in norfolk so that was another four
00:03:48.340
years um and then after that uh yeah i started my residency here at ucla um in santa monica and that's
00:03:56.300
where i'm at now so uh doing all this to sort of gain enough training and knowledge and sort of
00:04:04.120
uh again this sort of cachet like oh he's a doctor we have to listen to him which sounds silly i mean i
00:04:10.300
understand it sounds silly but um you know i recognize the public as deaf will definitely be more
00:04:19.140
receptive to a message from a physician whether that's right or wrong um as far as lifestyle changes
00:04:25.360
go and so again it's been my passion for a long time i i love coaching i love the strength training
00:04:32.580
just myself anyway um and and yeah now that i can sort of be uh they have the medical aspect on the end
00:04:40.260
of it i feel like it's going to uh be helpful in getting the message out to the public so long story
00:04:47.280
short i've been through a lot of school i've done a lot of uh uh of academic related things and uh
00:04:54.540
hopefully this will pay off uh as i try to get this message out there right and so i mean that's
00:04:58.960
interesting because people do listen to physicians about when it comes to their health and their
00:05:03.820
lifestyle and you know you're a proponent of barbell training you're starting strength coach but
00:05:08.620
barbell training has a bad rep in the medical field amongst physicians physical therapists
00:05:14.980
um so i mean in your experience dealing with you know being a medical student um dealing with
00:05:21.240
physicians what are some of the most the common misconceptions that you see doctors have about
00:05:25.460
barbell and strength training oh yeah so uh when i was in medical school i mean i constantly would
00:05:33.180
get challenged by the attendings or even the residents you know why would you recommend somebody do barbell
00:05:38.960
training it's uh one you know there'd be multiple lines of arguments the first would be oh it's
00:05:43.840
dangerous the second would be you know how can you be sure that it's effective or you know why don't
00:05:49.320
we just why don't we just have them walk they just walk more it would be fine so you know and i
00:05:54.260
since i graduated medical school and started residency i have a little bit more autonomy you
00:05:59.120
know because now i'm no longer reporting to you know a middleman i've kind of just seeing patients
00:06:04.740
and and doing that which is just nice so i've had to like deconstruct these over the years and come
00:06:10.280
up with rebuttals so you know the first the first thing and probably what most people will
00:06:14.800
or most physicians or clinicians will suggest is that barbell training is inherently dangerous
00:06:19.680
which is not supported by any evidence at all actually so and you know when i say these statistics
00:06:26.700
or or these you know short little sound bites that the people will love to hear uh that's taking
00:06:32.940
into consideration all the limitations of the data which is people underreporting injuries or how they
00:06:38.140
define injuries are not you know the same between studies so you know take that at face value but
00:06:43.440
the injury rate for competitive weightlifting all right where the weight on the bar matters more
00:06:48.940
than anything else all right so you'd expect a higher injury rate uh than in the general public
00:06:54.760
is 0.000s three zeros uh six uh injuries per thousand participation hours so you know a very small
00:07:03.780
fraction uh compared to soccer which is a six you know a thousand times greater um and so and that's just
00:07:13.080
one study there's multiple studies that have looked at this and you know the injury rate from barbell
00:07:18.000
training is just so low to just not it's a it's an outline it's a you know it's a it's an error bar
00:07:23.620
you just don't even worry about it especially when you consider the benefits so you know every medication
00:07:29.740
even over-the-counter stuff has a risk benefit profile right and so we're always constantly assessing
00:07:35.760
you know do the benefits outweigh the risks or vice versa for this treatment or intervention well barbell
00:07:41.460
training training training in general just has such a high upside such a great benefit profile compared
00:07:47.800
to the perceived risks which don't even appear to be that great uh it's just funny to me that we
00:07:54.800
wouldn't push this on everyone you know we're afraid of somebody getting hurt and it's like well that's
00:08:00.000
we don't recommend against soccer right or we don't recommend against uh um you know other activities
00:08:06.920
that have a higher risk profile than than uh than barbell training so the the injury thing to me is
00:08:13.040
silly it just that just tells me some no one's ever they haven't looked at the data they have no
00:08:17.760
experience with you know training themselves so can't really can't really support that um the second
00:08:24.660
thing is a little bit more nuanced you know that is barbell training effective and then this you have to
00:08:31.520
have a secondary question is is it effective for a certain outcome so i need to know you know what
00:08:36.280
outcomes are somebody looking at if they want to say weight loss um i feel like that's almost too
00:08:41.960
it's too nebulous or it's too uh multifactorial to actually say equivalent you know unequivocally
00:08:48.020
the barbell training is better or is helpful for that i mean weight loss by and large if you look at
00:08:53.860
long-term studies on any intervention for weight loss except for surgery it's poor so legitimately any diet
00:09:01.480
that's ever been looked at in the in the literature has terrible outcomes at like a five-year and ten-year
00:09:08.140
mark um almost everybody and i would say almost like 95 to 99 of people who undergo a dietary change
00:09:16.280
at five or ten years will have either regained either almost all of the weight that they've lost
00:09:21.360
or more than they lost that's depressing it is depressing and so yeah i mean that's that's definitely
00:09:27.100
another question maybe even another podcast but you know people get really bummed out they're like
00:09:31.180
oh well you know they did they didn't go low carb enough or they didn't do intermittent fasting or
00:09:36.260
they didn't do this particular type of diet you know the person who's arguing for it has is currently
00:09:41.080
doing it's like well i would argue that whatever sort of counseling method or accountability method
00:09:48.920
that that person's using is not enough to keep them compliant a and then whatever physical activity
00:09:56.080
that they're doing is not enough be and so the physical activity aspect of it is kind of where
00:10:02.840
barbell training comes in um if you look at what barbell training has the potential to do as sort of a
00:10:09.200
uh not only a physical like 401k is how i like to refer to it as but also how it affects people's
00:10:16.240
metabolism compared to something like running walking or you know other activities yoga pilates whatever
00:10:22.880
the potential for barbell training to improve glucose talent tolerance so how we handle sugar
00:10:31.800
to increase uh metabolism overall because uh as effectively causing a person to burn more calories
00:10:39.220
um making them stronger increasing their bone mineral density uh you know increasing their functional
00:10:46.460
work capacity their ability to do activities daily life like barbell training is much more potent than
00:10:52.680
any other training modality there is and and so when you look at from a time you know an economy-based
00:10:59.040
uh perspective you just barbell training is is the king it doesn't mean that people shouldn't do other
00:11:06.420
stuff if they want to or if they have time it just means that in my opinion barbell training is the
00:11:12.720
base of the pyramid if someone only has you know three hours a week to train or to exercise they should
00:11:18.060
be doing barbell training it's just the most effective use of that time um and i think that
00:11:24.120
gets more and more important as someone gets older mainly because someone who's unable to uh do their
00:11:31.980
activities of daily life without assistance um you know putting you know putting dishes away cleaning
00:11:36.860
around the house getting up to the shower or to you know take a bath or to the bathroom by themselves
00:11:41.100
because they're so weak that person needs to go into a skilled nursing facility or long-term care
00:11:45.920
facility and that's not only big money but that's a you know that's a poor quality of life so i don't
00:11:51.480
really care what you know how how uh how fast they can run a mile at that point that's that's beyond
00:11:58.460
i'd rather i need to know how strong they are you know um and that's also uh i know i've been
00:12:05.000
rambling on for a little bit but that's also actually supported by data when you look at uh functional
00:12:09.680
outcomes of elderly people um the it's very tightly correlated to that their strength
00:12:15.580
uh the strength or and or power which power is just a you know a proxy first uh of strength
00:12:22.800
so it's just interesting i don't know i i i guess i don't get why these very learned individuals in
00:12:28.880
the medical field are so against barbell training it doesn't make any sense to me it's not supported
00:12:33.720
by evidence i just think we intuitively feel like oh it's dangerous or since i don't know much about it
00:12:40.180
maybe it's not that effective it's like well you just haven't looked at it right haven't looked at
00:12:44.900
close enough and besides the um the the exercise component i mean what about myths about diet that
00:12:51.820
exist amongst medical doctors i mean oh man things things like you know don't eat too much protein
00:12:57.120
because you're gonna it's it's bad for your your kidneys or you know things like that why what are
00:13:01.880
some other myths like that that exist in the medical field yeah just to briefly on the protein
00:13:06.600
kidney thing that's super interesting uh to me i'm actually writing a piece uh for the starting
00:13:11.960
strength website uh called it's the problem with protein and kidneys so that'll be it's not very
00:13:18.300
it's not a very sexy title but uh we'll uh it should be it's pretty it's pretty thorough um there's
00:13:24.680
actually not evidence to suggest that people eating a higher protein diet have negative changes in their
00:13:33.440
kidney function they tend to be adaptive changes in how the kidneys filtering and processing uh the
00:13:40.360
basically the blood you know that's effectively what the kidneys do and they just keep filtering the
00:13:44.500
blood uh you know all throughout the day so it just tends to be like an adaptive change once you have
00:13:49.460
more protein it just does it a little differently and adapts accordingly that's your body isn't able
00:13:54.840
to adapt to different things so it that's going to be an interesting article but from a dietary
00:14:00.060
perspective uh there's kind of two big problems or three big problems i see with uh medical doctors or
00:14:08.020
clinicians when they either counseling patients on diet or talking about nutrition thing one uh they
00:14:14.520
don't so the first problem is they just they just won't do it they won't talk about diet or it'll be
00:14:20.000
the last 15 seconds of an office visit like hey and you know you should really eat better uh or they
00:14:25.000
or they throw a pamphlet at them or something you know um and it's it's just one of those things
00:14:29.860
it's like that's not not not only is eating better too vague to actually be actionable it's just you
00:14:35.980
know uh it it's a waste of time you've effectively done nothing for the patient
00:14:40.720
um thing two is not understanding that accountability and uh is probably the biggest
00:14:50.200
driver uh of success you know of the uh when it comes to dietary interventions and outcomes like
00:14:57.660
losing weight or improving health metrics whatever metric you want to talk about whether that's
00:15:02.120
an a1c which measures you know how well a diabetic's blood glucose has been controlled over the last
00:15:08.280
three months or um you know cholesterol levels for somebody who has elevated cholesterol and that's
00:15:14.060
been deemed a risk factor for their cardiovascular risk but so accountability um tends to be uh and as
00:15:22.540
that as that pertains to compliance those tend to be the biggest or tightest correlates to success so
00:15:28.460
you can't have if you're trying to counsel somebody on nutrition as a physician it can't just be you
00:15:33.740
know you should do this for 10 you know 10 minutes at the end of a office visit and i'll see in six
00:15:38.600
months it needs to be you know we need to check in on a regular basis or you need to um join the
00:15:45.140
american weight loss registry or you need to we have this nutrition counseling service that you need to go
00:15:50.760
to on a weekly basis it's just there needs to be more follow-up right so that's like just from a
00:15:56.140
practical perspective uh but as far as thoughts on nutrition and like how they counsel people
00:16:00.900
we're not as physicians just not educated in nutrition there's no nutrition course in medical
00:16:05.920
school for most uh medical schools anyway and the nutrition course is basically biochemistry if they
00:16:12.080
have one you know so you get to learn all of the enzymes of the krebs cycle and all the atp things
00:16:18.000
which is very impressive if you want to you know uh woo somebody by oh you know when you're
00:16:24.060
standing at a whiteboard with a dry erase marker but it doesn't really help you understand about
00:16:29.000
practical nutrition changes for a patient so you've got doctors saying that you can't do low-carb diet
00:16:36.780
it's just bad and that's you know and so the first question that i would ask if i were a patient would
00:16:41.160
be well why they don't they don't have a why and if they do they're lying to you you know or if you
00:16:47.000
brought up uh you know intermittent fasting um and the doctor would say i don't know about that that's
00:16:52.560
um i'm not sure it's just because it's just a lack of education in that area so if they don't
00:16:58.580
understand or haven't heard about something i think they just feel like they have to give an
00:17:02.700
opinion on it versus saying versus saying i don't know and and i know you know a lot of my mentors
00:17:08.040
have said that you know the greatest thing you can say is doctors i don't know and i agree but then
00:17:12.460
they just don't do it they just say just say i don't know when it comes to nutrition and call me over
00:17:18.080
i'll help like uh i'd be happy to um to get in there um so it's yeah it's interesting i feel like
00:17:27.020
there's a lack of education and then also a lack of training and how to actually counsel people on how
00:17:32.800
to change certain habits you know even if you had all the knowledge but if you couldn't talk to
00:17:38.240
somebody about how to act practically like implement it that would be it'd be very difficult
00:17:43.340
to be successful that way as you know as a practitioner uh or if you have no experience
00:17:48.680
helping people and therefore kind of know how to troubleshoot or what are the things that constantly
00:17:55.060
pop up you know when people are trying to make changes then it'd be hard to be good at doing that
00:18:00.960
so overall i think it's a lack of education and lack of experience um with both not only the
00:18:06.400
actual you know academic side the knowledge but then also the practical implementation um
00:18:12.200
it's it's kind of it on the one hand it's very upsetting to me that doctors can't and don't
00:18:21.000
really do that uh they don't take the time to learn all of this stuff on their own because i think it's
00:18:27.800
very very important um and they always say oh lifestyle is you know a huge huge thing that we need
00:18:34.380
to work on as a you know as a as a profession as far as counseling people but on the positive side
00:18:40.100
since they're not really doing that or nobody's really made a big push to do this publicly that
00:18:44.980
leaves a nice little market open for me right i'm torn it's like a lot of people were doing this
00:18:52.080
maybe i wouldn't have a job i don't know i'm not sure well here let's get into that um because you're
00:18:56.680
a strength coach but you've made a niche for yourself offering dietary consults for um high
00:19:02.340
performance strength athletes we're talking crossfitters who compete at the crossfit games
00:19:06.820
power lifters etc and i like to get in the nitty gritty of you know eating or diet for you know
00:19:13.660
strength uh training but let's talk big picture first i mean there are a ton of diet approaches
00:19:19.660
out there and i think diet is i think that confuses most people confuse people the most when it comes
00:19:25.520
to strength and fitness you know there's paleo there's low carb slow carb intermittent fasting if it
00:19:30.920
fits your macros carb backloading you know eat six meals you know a day that are small
00:19:36.680
what's your overall approach to diet when it comes to strength and conditioning do you fall into any
00:19:43.440
particular school or do you just are these do you see all of them as tools to be used in certain
00:19:47.920
situations yeah yeah so i think that's probably the latter you know all of these tools are things that
00:19:55.100
i've used at different times um so you know that's a broadly speaking but i guess if you had to you
00:20:01.300
know gun to my head what's your preferred approach it's probably more of a if it fits your macros
00:20:06.520
kind of approach and it's become almost so popular these days that i almost feel embarrassed saying it
00:20:12.140
but the the thing is i find that it allows people enough dietary freedom to eat a wide variety of
00:20:20.200
foods if they want so it'll you know that tends to be improved compliance for many folks you know
00:20:26.380
that uh people who would eat like a paleo or a slow carb diet uh or even the carb backloading would
00:20:32.500
sometimes feel so limited by what they could eat or when they could eat them that would be hard to be
00:20:37.660
compliant right and so they felt like once they would either you know mess up or have a little issue
00:20:43.300
that the whole day was blown and then you know there would be some sort of binge eating behavior
00:20:47.360
which is ultimately bad and then if it fits your macros tends to avoid that um but on the other
00:20:53.080
hand uh you have people who they have all these choices now and uh that's a problem in and of
00:20:59.000
themselves they almost feel like they have too many choices and that can lead to you know uh if they
00:21:04.180
choose to eat high sugar highly palatable foods yeah so like from a palatability perspective the more
00:21:12.340
fat sugar and salt that's in a meal the more palatable it is it's there's like a bunch of
00:21:16.900
different food science terms that pertains to that like how it feels in the mouth the you know
00:21:22.560
savoriness like all these different categories but anyway if if they eat too many of like those kind
00:21:27.660
of foods that can actually cause you know uh some overeating that they otherwise had not planned on
00:21:32.840
and maybe not they wouldn't have been exposed to had they been on a more rigid diet so you know
00:21:37.980
kind of depends on the person the just as far as which the preferred approach but i generally default
00:21:43.520
towards and if it fits your macros giving somebody a protein level a carb level a fat level and then
00:21:50.140
a fiber goal to hit for the day and then tend to adjust from there so even if somebody is what i
00:21:56.440
would say failing and if it fits your macros type approach because they feel like they have too much
00:22:00.500
freedom or it tends to lead to food decisions that ultimately sabotage them that i'll still use kind of
00:22:08.840
that if it fits your macros approach uh but just have another like caveat and make it like a paleo-esque
00:22:16.140
if it fits your macros to so the food quality is very high um and then that you know you just kind
00:22:21.220
of use whatever tool you need to get the outcome you want um yeah i mean which like duh right you know
00:22:27.860
we're gonna use what we have to do to get the job done right let's talk about you know if it fits
00:22:33.060
your macros and so yeah like you said if it fit your macros is the idea that you you have a certain
00:22:37.980
amount of protein carbs fat and fiber that you can eat through the day however you can get those
00:22:43.380
calories or macros is up to you right gives you some choice but let's talk about um if it fits your
00:22:49.700
macros in the context of strength training on a progressive program like starting strength or the
00:22:55.740
the texas method what should a macro makeup look like for someone who's engaging in strength training
00:23:03.580
because it's it's very you know because it's like the the i guess we can get to like kreb cycles and
00:23:08.260
atp because it's different from like running right like you need yeah different types of source of
00:23:12.320
energy that's different um from that in in strength training yeah well so okay let me just nerd out for a
00:23:22.360
second the if you have somebody who's running you know and so let's say that's just aerobic activity
00:23:27.980
uh you could make the argument that that person um is going to use a lot of carbohydrates and fat
00:23:38.920
during the whatever event they're doing uh training for and you would say that depending on how fast
00:23:44.900
they're running that's going to determine how much carb or fat they're going to actually use
00:23:48.740
whereas strength training is almost purely anaerobic in that it just it's using atp creatine and sugar
00:23:56.580
effectively that's what you're using while you're training so you could make an argument that oh
00:24:02.280
well the strength training might need more you know carbohydrates than the person who's training
00:24:09.200
for a marathon or half marathon uh but then you have to go down the rabbit hole of well how much
00:24:13.540
training volume is actually going on you know because the person training for the marathon may actually
00:24:17.840
be running or training you know 20 plus hours a week versus the person doing starting strength
00:24:23.400
uh may only be training six six hours a week and then it's just you know what are the different
00:24:29.140
body weights uh and and how how that reacts to a diet uh but so in general broadly speaking if you
00:24:35.820
have somebody who's doing like a texas method or starting strength novice progression and they are not
00:24:41.760
overweight um the idea would be that you're going to fuel them enough such that their weight goes up
00:24:49.520
progressively all right the weight should be increasing and and and this is just no other
00:24:56.180
considerations being made except for we want to get as strong as possible in the most successful way
00:25:00.740
possible so we're talking weight going up on the barbell not body weight both both i would say both
00:25:05.740
yeah yeah and so you know if you have a person who is effectively not overweight they can stand to
00:25:11.640
increase their body mass um which does a number of things thing one you cannot gain muscle mass
00:25:19.340
skeletal muscle mass without gaining weight period it just i mean and i hate i never talk in absolutes
00:25:26.860
except for just there and then the statement before that right i i i do i hate saying always or never or
00:25:33.200
100 of the time but it is true if you are not gaining weight it cannot gain muscle mass it you just can't
00:25:43.080
even if you're obese right obese untrained you start training with the barbell if you're losing
00:25:49.700
weight you're not increasing skeletal muscle mass it's just not happening so you can't like gain muscle
00:25:57.740
and lose fat lose fat time no no like and and you know me saying that is probably costing me business
00:26:04.020
right if i just lied to people right oh yeah you can get really strong and be ripped and be ripped
00:26:11.380
yeah yeah and if you're not already ripped right so it's funny just as an aside i promise i'll get
00:26:16.940
back on topic but this is something that just irks me you know you see people on instagram facebook
00:26:21.360
twitter whatever the social media world who are super lean and strong and athletic or whatever and
00:26:27.060
they're just selling coaching right and i have no problem with people making money but people are not
00:26:32.220
taking into consideration a handful of things thing one their genetic predisposition right so if you're if
00:26:38.880
you're just rolling around untrained uh and you're nine or ten percent body fat that's just your you
00:26:43.680
know what you're working with on a base level and then you start training like hey you're gonna be lean
00:26:48.960
like just yeah you're like you're that's you and you don't have to work hard for that and if that's not
00:26:54.480
a negative it's just hey you're able to support a higher level of strength at a lower body fat than
00:26:59.860
somebody who's not predisposition to being lean all right oh uh and then if you have somebody who's been
00:27:05.200
training for 15 years on top of that like it's hard to sort of temper people's expectations or
00:27:13.060
ground them in reality when you have that sort of you know situation being exposed on on social media
00:27:19.000
right so you have a person who's got really good genetics been training for a long time plus or minus
00:27:22.920
drug use and it's like that's just not a realistic expectation so when i have people come to me and say
00:27:28.420
hey i heard you can you know gain muscle and lose fat at the same time i'm like um no no no just not
00:27:35.420
on gear or something like that right even even if even if right yeah it's just i mean it'd be you know
00:27:41.820
again there's multiple studies out there suggesting that it's just not possible uh you may like a small
00:27:52.780
increase in skeletal muscle mass maybe if you're on drugs and and you know for a long period of time
00:27:59.320
and you're untrained and so now now you're training maybe um let's just yeah not gonna happen i mean
00:28:05.960
most of the studies when when they look at people using steroids or whatever they're actually gaining
00:28:09.780
weight and so but they gain more muscle when they gain weight when they're on steroids that's like the
00:28:14.460
thing that they do um so and at any rate back to the topic if you're underweight uh or not overweight
00:28:22.800
anyway and you're on a novice progression the idea is to get as strong as possible gaining body weight
00:28:28.440
will allow you to gain muscle mass and a bigger muscle is a stronger muscle all other things being
00:28:33.160
equal that's thing one thing two if you're gaining weight that tells me that the uh metabolic and by uh
00:28:43.560
and in physiological milieu that is occurring in your body is such that your recovery is maximized
00:28:51.060
from a food perspective from a nutritional perspective because if you're gaining weight
00:28:56.800
you're not at a deficit right you just have enough fuel enough resources to go around um to remodel
00:29:03.660
repair and otherwise recover from training now that's not taking into account sleep that's not taking into
00:29:08.540
account you know environmental stressors like your girlfriend or boyfriend broke up with you or
00:29:12.420
you know you're having a tough time at the job at work but at least from a nutritional perspective
00:29:17.640
we've sort of maxed out on recovery that kind of makes sense that makes sense right yeah so if now
00:29:25.080
on the other hand if you have somebody who is uh i mean brett how much do you weigh i weigh 210 now
00:29:31.060
i'm kind of in a cut phase i was at 220 um but reynolds has me on a few a little fewer calories right now
00:29:38.660
you're trying to be you're just trying to be sexy i'm trying to be sexy i got i got really strong
00:29:43.120
um and i i saw that you pulled 500 right yeah i deadlifted 500 um awesome man but i i i just wanted
00:29:50.040
to lose a little bit of body fat but but because of that like my strength has gone down a bit
00:29:56.540
so you understand i mean right and so you're what i'm telling you is no surprise to you you're like
00:30:01.380
duh like if you if the calories are low enough for you to lose weight
00:30:05.600
is very difficult to sustain a linear progression of any sort unless the recovery periods are very
00:30:13.420
long so in the novice phase for instance your recovery period is 48 hours right and if you're
00:30:19.320
losing weight it is very difficult to recover from that to recover from you know day one to day two
00:30:25.480
and progress on a texas method it's difficult to do to recover within a week if you're losing weight
00:30:30.880
so because that's your nutritional status is such that you're not maximizing your recovery
00:30:36.020
um so you either have one or two choices if you're trying to lose weight either you accept that your
00:30:41.680
your rate of strength improvement is going to be lower all right or slower rather uh or you just say hey
00:30:48.580
you know what i'm i'm going to uh attempt to change my training in a way that my recovery periods
00:30:54.740
longer so that might be a person doing texas method where the weight goes up every other week
00:31:00.180
or that they have an extra light day you know so it'd be volume day light day light day intensity
00:31:07.940
day the following week you've just stretched out the recovery period to try to allow that
00:31:12.480
to happen um because you're just having less resources contributing towards recovery
00:31:17.200
uh but at any rate if you have somebody who's trying to get as strong as possible they're not trying
00:31:22.620
to cut you just just there's not you know uh but that and it should be noted that that's different
00:31:29.600
than trying to get as competitive as possible in a in a weight class sport it's not the same thing
00:31:34.160
you know um people will say well you know jordan you're a 198 pound or two you know or 93 kilo
00:31:42.660
lifter and you're just you how come you don't gain weight uh and it's like well i'm you know fairly
00:31:49.000
competitive in my weight class although if you ask ripito he would say that i'm massively underweight
00:31:55.320
yeah rip will always say you're underweight no matter what first time i met him i was uh i think
00:32:01.520
it was 178 pounds or no yeah i just had weighed in 176 at a meet previously and he's like uh bag and
00:32:10.060
you'd be a real good uh 275 if you just eat right he told me that a man should weigh at least 200
00:32:19.720
pounds you're not a man if you don't weigh 200 pounds i know and the first time i met him i was
00:32:23.980
like 185 and then i saw him again like six months later and i'm like hey i'm 200 pounds now it's like
00:32:28.980
all right you're a man did he call you an ant did he say yeah no he didn't tell you an insect
00:32:33.300
an insect it's like yeah it's uh it's funny he's tempered his recommendation now now when i see
00:32:39.600
him he says you know you just do 242 come on 242 that's just 242 right um so yeah i know that's a
00:32:47.360
a kind of a a broad question like did the what do you do nutrition wise if you're trying to get strong
00:32:53.940
and it's like well you know you need to and how's that different between running and and strength
00:32:59.540
training it's i think that on balance if uh someone's not old uh not female and not a vegetarian
00:33:09.600
or vegan they would be best served by putting their protein at about a gram per pound of body weight
00:33:14.620
uh eating a higher percentage of their calories from carbohydrates compared to fat and then adjusting
00:33:21.880
those two macro inputs uh carbs or fat uh up or down depending on what their weight is doing and what
00:33:29.020
they need to do so if you're trying to gain weight then you need to add carbs and fat on a weekly
00:33:35.300
basis or you know every other week in order to drive the weight up you probably don't need to add
00:33:40.740
protein if you're doing one gram per pound uh if you're a vegan or female if you're old um you may need
00:33:48.560
a little bit more protein than that to optimally um um kind of uh uh to have enough protein for
00:33:59.080
recovery uh alternatively if your calories are super super high like if you're at 5 000 calories a
00:34:04.520
day that's a lot of carbs and fat which all have like trace proteins so you may need a little bit more
00:34:09.080
protein too but that whole argument of how much protein is enough to optimize muscle protein synthesis
00:34:15.780
that's like a rabbit hole that i don't think most people are prepared to go down even those who
00:34:20.440
have written about it on the internet it's just there's too many complications too many too many
00:34:25.880
unknowns to really say confidently but the gram per pound thing has been i feel like it's a very
00:34:31.400
practical recommendation to be honest okay so i guess the big takeaway here then you know you have some
00:34:37.040
specific macro recommendations but the big takeaway is like you have to decide what your goal is when it
00:34:41.820
comes to your fitness you either want to get stronger if so you're just accept the fact you're
00:34:46.360
going to gain some weight and if you want to lose weight and you said accept the fact you're not going
00:34:50.980
to get as strong as you would like sure and you know right and you know that's a decision everyone
00:34:56.420
has to make on their own i would my bias is that if you're untrained right now if you're if you have
00:35:02.720
not touched a barbell or have not gone been on a formal strength program then just get strong
00:35:06.960
just get strong take 12 weeks out of your life and just get strong don't worry about losing weight
00:35:12.740
don't worry just get strong out if you're overweight okay you don't need to gain weight during this
00:35:19.400
process okay you may be okay losing weight slowly during this process okay if you're markedly overweight
00:35:25.820
if you're just a little overweight don't worry but just get strong right you have one chance
00:35:30.560
to to really maximize your return on investment at the gyms just don't worry about losing weight right
00:35:35.880
now you can do that later okay alternatively if losing weight is going to make the biggest
00:35:41.800
difference in your life right now it's going to make you feel better it's going to make you more
00:35:45.320
social whatever it's going to have the highest improvement on your quality of life then just
00:35:49.120
lose weight don't try to do starting strength and lose a bunch of weight it's just you're setting
00:35:54.820
yourself up for disaster right at best at best you just won't have very good results okay at worst
00:36:01.700
you'll get injured and burnt out and then you know end up 20 years later doing yoga and being
00:36:06.660
really skinny you know which is fine no judgment no judgment but it's awesome yeah and i think you're
00:36:14.760
going to that argument that you know focus on strength first i mean one argue can be made that
00:36:18.640
you know muscle mass is hard to put on it's hard to acquire but it stays around longer um like body fat
00:36:26.420
is easy to shed right yeah and you can just through dieting you can get that stuff off i mean that's
00:36:31.920
like what you know like old school bodybuilders they would just get really fat um and wear sweats but
00:36:38.820
like they gain a lot of muscle mass and when as it got closer to competition they just diet down and
00:36:44.620
they lose muscle in the process but they lost all that fat too yeah it's it's to me uh your the amount
00:36:51.980
of muscle mass you can acquire is your 401k it's super persistent it's you know hard to get stays
00:36:59.840
around you know despite even if you were people will argue in the common circles they'll say they'll
00:37:05.180
say you know if you stop working out the muscle is just going to turn to fat which is so i mean
00:37:10.940
or fat turns to muscle you can turn to muscle yeah so just to do that you met yeah geez if i made a
00:37:16.260
supplement that we'd be we'd be millionaires it there's just so neither of those happen
00:37:21.560
the other thing is even if you were to stop training okay the muscle mass that you have acquired
00:37:27.280
persists it can it just stays there your muscles will get a little smaller because you're storing
00:37:33.820
less glycogen in them the amount of pro extra protein non-contractile proteins that you have
00:37:40.440
and the muscles will be a little less the actual diameter or size of the muscle will be a little less
00:37:45.540
but you lose very little muscle mass with when you don't train unless you're on like bed rest
00:37:53.240
in a cast you know like that's that's the time or you have like a muscle losing a disease like
00:37:59.760
age you got you were it burned really badly or something like that um so anyway it's you're not
00:38:05.480
going to lose it it's you're just you've spent the time to acquire all this muscle mass that's going
00:38:09.600
to pay off later um and so i think most people i mean granted we do have an obesity epidemic here
00:38:18.000
in the united states um i just feel like we all of our methods to combat that have been wildly
00:38:24.720
unsuccessful you know just oh just eat less and do more walking right that's just been wildly
00:38:29.800
unsuccessful so i'm like well why don't we just have people strength train it's motivating for a lot
00:38:35.900
of people because you see the progressive results okay i know that it's going to improve uh metabolic
00:38:40.720
function you know or at least has a high potential to okay the positive sort of feedback cycle from
00:38:46.420
you put in the work you get to go up you get you get better is uh you know it's good rewards to get
00:38:52.500
people to buy in and be compliant all right and then you can leverage that into changing nutritional
00:38:58.080
habits right so like if you're my client uh and you and i and you know we're training together or
00:39:03.320
whatever and you say hey look jordan it's great my squat's going up my my strength numbers are
00:39:07.360
getting better how do i take this to the next level you know what's what do i need to do
00:39:10.440
nutritionally you know that's that for that's an easy in versus versus well you should just walk more
00:39:17.860
and uh and eat less there's no there is no sort of positive feedback loop in that there's no sort of
00:39:23.360
way to leverage your walking improvement to dietary changes so i kind of think let's just get people
00:39:29.960
under a bar get and have them get stronger and then we can address the nutrition along the way
00:39:35.440
if they need to lose fat after this linear progression then let's do that but okay that's
00:39:40.300
that's some solid advice all right so you can't have it all you have to pick your poison you can't have
00:39:43.880
it you cannot have it all you can't have it all all right well let's here's here's kind of more
00:39:47.980
specific question um you know if you're on a linear progression or like a texas method there's always
00:39:54.160
the chance you're going to become overtrained where your body can no longer make the adaption
00:40:00.000
recover fully um how should diet change if you're starting to feel overtrained okay well so you and i
00:40:09.940
are assuming that there is such you can be overtrained it's just yeah there's some uh some people would
00:40:19.040
argue there's no such thing as being overtrained it's just under recovered but then you're like well
00:40:23.080
what is under recovered isn't that just the same thing in a different word i i don't know i another
00:40:27.420
podcast maybe but uh as far as dietary changes when someone's overtrained i think first you have to
00:40:33.620
identify what was the nidus for becoming overtrained why did someone get to a point where they can no
00:40:39.240
longer progress at the same interval as they were previously was it not enough stress that is like on a
00:40:46.820
texas method uh if volume day drives intensity day and intensity day drives volume day they're kind of
00:40:53.740
synergistic in that that respect was is was one or both of the stimuli not enough to allow you to
00:41:01.260
improve and if that's the case then the dietary change is moot there's no dietary change it's just
00:41:07.800
one of those variables needs to change or was it that there was not enough recovery time between
00:41:13.980
stress applications right so if there if there's not enough recovery between stress applications
00:41:20.680
then you can make the argument that increasing dietary intake increasing energy intakes mostly by
00:41:27.440
more carbs uh and fat may may may correct for that so if someone has a really good intensity day
00:41:37.360
they're able to go up like they planned to hit the reps and then volume day comes around and they just
00:41:41.940
get crushed you might make the argument that there was not enough recovery that occurred between
00:41:47.480
intensity day and volume day and providing more fuel may augment that you could also make but then
00:41:56.940
you'd also have to make sure that hey there were no extra life stressors that occurred in this interim
00:42:01.160
so again girlfriend or boyfriend didn't break up with you like didn't have like a deadline at work to
00:42:06.400
meet and you know because we've got pretty good evidence that psychological stress is actually
00:42:11.980
more taxing than physical stress uh as far as you know uh performance is concerned so if you've ruled
00:42:20.540
out all of that other stuff sleep is good no extra psychological stress you know no you know massive
00:42:26.320
equipment changes or whatever then you're saying well maybe just not enough recovery occurred in which case
00:42:31.500
adding more fuel may that would be the first line sort of treatment so yeah a small change you know 100
00:42:39.200
calories 200 calories it's a good idea i'm not in favor of people going out it's funny people will
00:42:45.840
oh i've got a big squat day tomorrow a big volume day i'm gonna go out tonight i'm gonna have pizza
00:42:50.360
pasta wink the whole thing right and then they show up the next day they feel terrible just a bloated mess
00:42:58.000
it's like you know their face is three times their normal size all right their belt doesn't fit right
00:43:02.540
all of their warm-ups feel terrible they feel sluggish and they're like but i ate so much yesterday i
00:43:06.880
should be fueled up and it's like no that's just not the way that's not the way it works i i would
00:43:12.960
have taken somebody's base diet and added like 50 grams of carbs 10 grams of fat and uh just see how
00:43:19.420
they do just a small change a little more fuel see how you do there's no reason to just you know dump a
00:43:25.220
bunch of fuel in there and hope it works out you just feel terrible right no carb loading no i you
00:43:30.940
know yeah especially for weight training there's just what's the point right especially especially
00:43:35.440
if you can't use your belt like if you're normally on your third hole on the belt and now you have to
00:43:39.120
use your second hole because you're so bloated it's like you've just changed the mechanics of all
00:43:44.000
of your lifts yeah so now so now your your mechanical your technical mastery has uh gone down just
00:43:50.620
because you ate an extra plate at the buffet yeah okay so don't do that well let's talk about
00:43:54.980
another topic so i've done intermittent fasting before and i've enjoyed it i mean it's just it
00:44:00.660
simplifies your life you don't have to worry about a meal but uh how can intermittent fasting affect
00:44:06.700
strength training is it are there benefits to it are there a lot of downsides where you just be like
00:44:11.180
well you'd probably be better just sticking with uh if you fit your macros type of routine
00:44:15.020
okay uh that's a good question i'll give you the tldr uh it probably doesn't matter that much
00:44:22.120
that's what my ultimate thought on it it probably doesn't matter that much from a very nerdy
00:44:28.200
academic side i could make the argument that any period of fasting um any any period of fasting
00:44:35.580
uh that's that's different than what you where you normally fast on an if it fits your macros type
00:44:41.300
approach because we everyone fast while they sleep right so uh but the extra let's say eight hours
00:44:46.620
waking hours that you're fasting on intermittent fasting compared to an if it fits your macros type
00:44:50.720
approach is time spent not uh undergoing muscle protein synthesis so effectively a person who's
00:45:01.000
doing it if it fits your macros type approach could have two or three additional bouts of muscle
00:45:06.340
protein synthesis over the course of a day where an intermittent fasting person couldn't just because
00:45:11.940
they're not eating all right uh does that you know make a difference at six weeks 12 weeks six months
00:45:19.960
i don't know i think it does you know i think if you were a high level athlete you know and you're
00:45:27.280
working out multiple times per day uh or competing multiple times per day then i think the argument
00:45:32.320
becomes a little clearer as to you probably shouldn't do intermittent fasting just because
00:45:36.460
your recovery time is so short but if someone's doing like a text method or starting strength thing
00:45:42.160
and they want to do intermittent fasting i'd be really hard-pressed to say that intermittent fasting
00:45:46.320
won't work because you have so much time between sessions right the bigger problem is how if you
00:45:53.760
can't get enough food in that window to to make your body weight do what it needs to do then ultimately
00:46:01.240
i think it's it's not a good approach but for weight loss you know i've had people do it just because it
00:46:07.560
simplifies their life it almost is like a it prevents them from eating too much and they feel full
00:46:12.120
so okay that's some good insights there let's let's talk about this because this is something
00:46:17.000
that people debate all the time on the the forms and on the you know blog posts is it you know pre
00:46:23.140
and post workout nutrition right all these things are you have the magic window and there's a magic
00:46:28.320
window if you consume things at this magic hour then like you will just put on muscle mass and not fat
00:46:33.260
right so i mean what's your approach to pre and post workout nutrition sure um so pre and put my
00:46:41.080
general like rule of thumb is right when you're walking into the gym uh ideally someone would have
00:46:46.520
five to ten grams of bcaas um they could have their creatine uh three to five grams of creatine
00:46:54.540
monohydrate only type of creatine someone should be using and uh plus or minus some beta alanine plus or
00:47:00.920
minus um betaine anhydrous also known as tmg uh plus or minus caffeine if they're into that and the
00:47:08.700
general caffeine dose that's been shown to be effective is about three to nine milligrams per
00:47:13.000
kilogram which is much greater than a cup of coffee but anyway that's just my general pre-workout
00:47:18.240
recommendation which is on the starting strike nutrition forum and it's like all over the place
00:47:22.860
and then post-workout is the exact same minus the creatine minus the caffeine so effectively you got
00:47:29.120
bcaas you got beta alanine betaine anhydrous those are all really well studied supplements and uh and
00:47:36.940
creatine and caffeine i mean that's very simple very basic not sexy but it's you know somewhat
00:47:43.320
evidence-based and uh seems to work pretty well what does it do like what is like bcaas and all
00:47:48.600
these things what is the purpose of them sure so bcaa is effectively is whey protein on steroids uh
00:47:55.540
it's the bcaa is leucine isoleucine and valine and they uh effectively will stimulate muscle protein
00:48:04.980
synthesis in and of themselves um so you got a little muscle uh muscle fuel to simplify it uh beta alanine
00:48:13.240
is increases uh uh carnosine which is a buffer um at the level of the muscle so it's been shown to
00:48:23.260
increase time to fatigue so if it normally took you you know eight reps to become fatigued now you
00:48:29.620
could do 10 reps so it tends to support a little bit greater volume uh tolerance or or exercise
00:48:36.260
tolerance um creatine does a number of things it's really well studied everyone says that which is
00:48:42.600
true creatine does a number of things thing one it increases water at the level of the muscle
00:48:48.360
um it actually draws water into the cells which is good so because a hydrated muscle cell is an
00:48:54.420
anabolic muscle cell and so in fact if you were to try to buy a creatine that said oh it doesn't you
00:48:59.740
don't retain water on with this creatine then effectively what they've told you is the creatine
00:49:04.140
is not useful that's actually one of the it's one of the ways that it works right so uh yeah creatine
00:49:10.160
monohydrate does that thing too it actually increases uh muscle satellite cell uh uh recruitment so
00:49:17.360
after you train you have a bunch of damaged muscle tissue and you have satellite cell recruitment to
00:49:23.400
the level of the muscle it helps repair regenerate and ultimately make new uh muscle cell nuclei which
00:49:30.800
are called myonuclei each myonuclei is responsible for a certain area of muscle and the more myonuclei you
00:49:39.320
have the more uh muscle protein you can synthesize per bout of muscle protein synthesis so that's one of the
00:49:47.260
things testosterone does testosterone increases the number of myonuclei at the level of a muscle
00:49:51.880
which means that every time that you're exposed to a stimulus that causes muscle protein synthesis you
00:49:57.520
can generate more muscle protein which means your muscles get bigger so creatine does that but on a
00:50:01.420
much lower level than testosterone the other thing that creatine does is increase intracellular energy
00:50:07.980
sources so that's atp effectively so which is why there was some study for using creatine in alzheimer's
00:50:15.280
parkinson's huntington's all these neurological diseases uh cerebral palsy as well it's been
00:50:20.060
really well studied super safe there's no contraindications to using creatine everyone
00:50:24.780
should use creatine your grandma your mom like everyone in your family should be on creatine in
00:50:29.380
my opinion um so anyway that's way too much than anyone ever wanted to know about creatine that's one of
00:50:34.620
the things i recommend uh betaine anhydrous is a effect it's from beets made from beets it's an
00:50:41.240
antioxidant um it basically helps drive muscle protein synthesis uh by combating uh free radicals
00:50:50.340
at the level of the muscle so it's been it's effectively been dubbed the new creatine so and
00:50:56.640
that's actually yeah it's pretty well supported so i like that just very simple it's a pre-workout
00:51:00.380
post-workout nutrition you kind of get all your supplementation done for the day um but the idea
00:51:04.940
that there's this like post-workout window that you must get all of your food in because it's magical
00:51:10.820
is bs and it is true that as you you know let's say you finish your workout at time zero it absolutely
00:51:19.780
48 hours later from that the rate of muscle protein synthesis is less that is true okay but it's nearly
00:51:27.900
maximal for most of the 48 hours until it finally tapers off so that means that if you got done
00:51:34.280
training at time zero and you didn't eat anything until two hours later you're fine you're still taking
00:51:40.460
advantage of that post-workout window and if you're only training three times per week this is a
00:51:44.760
non-issue post-workout nutrition is a non-issue if you're training multiple times per day or competing
00:51:50.280
multiple times per day then absolutely post-workout nutrition is much much more important okay but for
00:51:57.080
the average person who's training a handful of times per week it's just not i just like people will ask
00:52:02.600
me what kind of carbs should i use post-workout i'm like i mean i don't know what kind of carbs do you
00:52:06.920
like to eat like potatoes rice or whatever you want it doesn't matter it really it really doesn't
00:52:12.540
matter the only kind of hard line i have on this is your pre and post-workout meals should ideally
00:52:18.440
be lower in fat than your other meals that's like the only why is that yeah so if you put a gun to my
00:52:27.320
head and said jordan where should i partition most of my energy i would say hey let's make your pre-workout
00:52:34.140
meal the actual meal you have a little higher in carbohydrates and let's make your post-workout meal
00:52:38.940
a little bit higher in carbohydrates just because uh to the effect that this nutrient partitioning
00:52:44.320
effect of the workout is real which it's a little real but overall not doesn't really matter um we can
00:52:51.100
use we can leverage that right this is especially important or more important i'll say and somebody
00:52:55.640
who's trying to lose weight or who's trying to optimize body composition it's just a little thing we
00:52:59.320
can do to try to you know tip you know tip tip the scale towards where how uh the direction we want
00:53:04.720
to go and so if the meal is higher energy in carbohydrates then i would prefer to keep fat
00:53:11.640
lower so that uh we can use fat in other meals to make other meals more satiating right versus them
00:53:19.180
just being protein only like it's high protein low carb low fat that would be you know not very or not
00:53:25.380
very full or rewarding meal for most folks and then additionally uh fat tends to slow down uh the
00:53:32.440
emptying of the stomach gastric emptying so you're the amount of when you take in a meal it would
00:53:37.900
actually not get into your small intestine and then not into your bloodstream as quickly if you have a
00:53:42.820
bunch of fat or fiber with that meal so having a bunch of fat in the meal would actually slow down
00:53:48.240
any sort of time related uh process that we're trying to trying to push so if we're trying to get fuel
00:53:54.880
into the system to augment recovery i probably wouldn't i probably keep fat low and then finally
00:54:00.080
as a third thing imagine you have this high energy meal a lot of carbohydrates because you're following
00:54:05.200
my recommendation uh and then you also have a bunch of fat well you're gonna push carbohydrates into the
00:54:12.060
muscle yeah that's true but any extra is going to be stored as fat and any extra fat is also going to
00:54:17.200
be stored as fat so there's there's really no reason to have a super high energy meal um that has
00:54:23.940
both energy components post-workout i feel like there's enough sort of negatives to the situation
00:54:29.920
that you might want to just any other meal just put fat in it but you know uh would it would it matter
00:54:35.560
over the course of a year i don't know probably not probably not but it's just kind of i just have
00:54:41.440
this bias towards low fat pre and post-workout so it's just mine that's awesome and i mean so you
00:54:48.360
mentioned some supplements that you do recommend are there any supplements that you see a lot of
00:54:51.440
guys taking that are just like that's a waste of money you're just pissing that away yeah well i mean
00:54:57.620
so many um the um well you remember the deer antler yeah deer velvet or whatever deer yeah actually
00:55:06.580
there's a company i think it's like tens performance there's like pushing it in the crossfit
00:55:10.380
scene and it's i mean it's just bullshit it's uh so if you could take hormones like an insulin so
00:55:19.020
igf1 is what it's supposed to improve so that's insulin like growth factor one um if you could take
00:55:24.600
insulin by mouth then diabetics wouldn't have to give themselves injections right so you know
00:55:31.380
pharma pharmaceutical sales is heavily invested in getting orally available insulin agents and they
00:55:38.320
haven't been able to figure it out yet uh so yes the deer velvet you know extract whatever the hell it
00:55:43.760
is deer antler stuff does it have igf1 in it yes but you can't absorb it uh people taking gluten like
00:55:50.760
these antioxidant supplements is dumb there's no reason no evidence to support that uh people taking
00:55:57.260
um zma oh it helps me sleep better i mean the magnesium is kind of a sedative we give it to
00:56:02.960
pregnant women if they're hypertensive or there's like a seizure risk or whatever but zma is not
00:56:08.720
there's i wouldn't take it um it also will make you poop a lot if you overdose on the magnesium
00:56:15.040
well i mean just saying it's the magnesium yeah yeah good or bad right um the glucosamine
00:56:21.260
chondroitin stuff um the evidence is very very poor on it in fact the evidence right
00:56:27.260
now suggests that uh the the uh glucosamine chondroitin it's when it's connected to a sulfate molecule
00:56:35.420
that it's actually maybe the sulfate that is effective um and interestingly you in australia
00:56:41.760
that's prescription only if it's connected to a sulfate if it's connected to another molecule
00:56:46.820
which is if it's chelated to another molecule yeah it's not prescription um other dumb things melatonin
00:56:54.340
uh on balance melatonin makes you fall asleep about two minutes faster but doesn't have any
00:57:01.640
evidence that restoring sleep architecture or making you sleep better it's got a really short
00:57:05.680
half-life but placebo effect is real so you know if you're listening to this podcast and you like
00:57:10.520
melatonin like don't stop taking it it's just placebo effects very real um pretty much anything
00:57:17.100
that's ever been marketed to crossfitters so uh anything from progenix or uh uh pure pharma
00:57:25.700
or it's pretty awful like it just it's overpriced like progenix has official or a fish protein
00:57:32.560
it's 95 or something per container which is outrageous um and it's under the guise that it's
00:57:41.740
better but whey protein is the king right and it's fairly inexpensive uh so you're paying double
00:57:50.420
for fish protein it's you know it's not any better they're just luring you in by saying it's better and
00:57:55.960
it's not uh whey protein concentrates actually like the one of the cheapest whey proteins you can get
00:58:00.460
and if you can tolerate it it's it's better when i say tolerate it there's a there's a molecule
00:58:07.260
in the protein called beta lactalbumin which is sometimes messes with people's gi tracks so
00:58:14.040
they'll like take away and be like oh i get a little queasy and in that case i'd recommend like
00:58:17.700
a whey protein isolate um that's the only time i would recommend an isolate over a concentrate though
00:58:22.600
because concentrates cheaper has a higher leucine content which is one of the bcaa's we're talking
00:58:26.820
about and uh it's cheaper so i would recommend that um yeah but it's just all that stuff it's like
00:58:33.880
it's overpriced it's not effective right and i feel like if you're gonna spend your money on
00:58:39.980
something it should be worthwhile you know there's a bunch of crooks out there is the deal it's uh
00:58:44.860
makes me upset as you may or may not have noticed right no yeah spend money on actual food right
00:58:50.480
right or don't or yeah or save it you know donate it there's a bunch of charities that could you you
00:58:55.280
know like research could use your money i could use your money just my paypal
00:58:59.920
send me a donation hire jordan right well so yeah speaking of like jordan this has been a great
00:59:07.160
conversation i mean we've gotten some nitty-gritty we nerded out on a lot of topics um but you've got
00:59:12.400
a lot of great content on your website barbell medicine where can people find out more about
00:59:16.620
your work and possibly work with you as a diet consult sure yeah um so do nutrition and programming
00:59:23.280
consultations and like lifestyle stuff um so the website barbellmedicine.com there's contact
00:59:29.680
form there uh social media it's jordan underscore barbell medicine on instagram
00:59:34.840
uh my facebook is open and public uh or you can email me it's uh info at barbellmedicine.com
00:59:41.620
happy to talk about anything the more scientific the better or if you just want to talk talk training
00:59:47.460
always available so awesome well jordan feigenbaum thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure
00:59:52.040
all right have a good day man my guest today was jordan feigenbaum he's a medical doctor starting
00:59:56.620
strength coach and diet consultant you can find more information about his work at barbellmedicine.com
01:00:01.920
well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice
01:00:16.860
make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com and if you enjoy the show and
01:00:20.900
have got something out of it i'd appreciate if you give us a review on itunes or stitcher
01:00:23.880
really helps us out a lot as always thank you for your continued support and until next time this