Ep. #1160: Sal Di Stefano on Enhancing Body Composition with Peptides

Sal: We may be at the beginning of a really big strength training movement fueled by the use of these peptides, because I think a lot of people are going to use them expecting a panacea and then being disappointed in some ways. I think there’s a right way to use them in a wrong way to use them and just taking them.

Probably not the right way, but that’s what you’re seeing 

Mike: welcome. Welcome to a new episode of muscle for life Thank you for joining me today I am your host Mike Matthews and this discussion is going to be about peptides which are more Popular now than ever before and which are gaining more and more popularity.

I think that this trajectory is exciting And that is going to continue to be the case for years to come. And in this talk, you are going to mostly be hearing from Sal DiStefano, the renowned fitness coach and co host of the most popular fitness podcast in the world, the Mind Pump podcast. And he’s going to talk about why.

peptides are so popular and gaining so much popularity. He’s going to talk about GLP 1s for weight loss and how they compare to calorie controlled dieting. He’s going to talk about the problem of muscle loss while taking GLP 1s, which is becoming a big problem for Many people, but as you will learn, there are things you can do to prevent it from occurring.

Sal’s also going to talk about his experience with different peptides, not just GLP1s, but peptides for muscle growth, peptides for recovery, and More. Before we get into it, how would you like to know a little secret that will help you get into the best shape of your life? Here it is. The business model for my VIP coaching service sucks.

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Sal, it’s nice to see your cute face again. It’s been too long. Thanks, Mike. I appreciate the compliment. It’s been a while. It’s been a while. We’ve talked a couple of times on the phone, but I haven’t seen you in a while. 

Sal: Yeah, no, I always enjoy talking to you. You’re it’s a great time.

If people need to meet you because you’re one of the smartest, honest. And also sometimes controversial people I’ve ever met, but you don’t bullshit. That’s what I like about, one of the things I like most about you is it’s, you know what you think. Cause you’ll tell me. 

Mike: I think of those two truths and one lie means, 

Sal: no, you’re it’s no, it’s great, man.

I love what you do, bro. You know that love what you do. And I love anytime you want me on your show, man, I’m there. 

Mike: As I’ve been a fan of your guys work for a long time now. So it’s too bad that there are so many miles that separate us. I always have a fun time when, whenever we can hang out, whether it’s virtually or more so in person.

But 

Sal: yeah, totally. A hundred percent, man. 

Mike: So we’re here to talk about peptides and maybe we should start with what cocktail would you prescribe for Biden or are peptides not enough that we need to go hardcore 

Sal: anabolics? I’m sure he’s on everything anyway. I’m pretty sure they have him on a cocktail of all kinds of different things to help.

What 

Mike: was the Nazi? It was the high grade meth. Yeah. What was it called? Per something there? 

Sal: I have no idea, but I know it had something to do. I know there was meth in that mix. 

Mike: It was, yeah, it was meth. It was like lab grade meth basically. 

Sal: No, I, I think yeah, Biden aside what’s happening there?

I’ll save my opinion for that, for off air, but the peptide. World is really getting interesting, mainly because these GLP 1 agonists somaglutide, terzapotide, Wegove, ozempic is going mainstream. And, peptides have been around now for a while, actually a long time. And for a while there was like fitness enthusiasts and bodybuilders.

Then it was like longevity clinics that were using them. I know that in Eastern Europe, they’ve been using peptides for a long time. But it was these GLP ones that really have brought just the word peptide a bit to the forefront. Even if you, I have a 14 year old daughter and she mentioned Ozempec to me the other day.

And I’m like, how do you know what that is? And she’s Oh, it’s something that makes you lose weight. So it’s a fascinating. Space. It’s an interesting space, but in particular, the GLP ones fascinate me because I don’t know how deep you’ve gone into the data with those, but by far, there is no medical non surgical medical intervention that we’ve ever seen that can produce this kind of.

Weight loss in people. It’s be, there’s nothing that comes close and it’s not in his stimulant. It’s like a fen or something like that. And these next generation ones, these triple agonists I saw some, I was at the peptide Congress in Las Vegas that was hosted by Dr. Seeds. He had me speaking they’re not on peptides, but on strength training, but I was able to attend some of the talks and some of the data they were going through.

On these peptides is just, 22 percent body weight loss that’s on average, what people are experiencing with these new triple agonist ones, these, some agglutide where you have 15%, you’re 200 pounds, you’re going to lose probably in, in condensed 

Mike: timeframes too, right?

Sal: Yes, it’s pretty wild and I have a lot of thoughts around it. I’m definitely not in the camp of miracle drug. This is going to solve everything. I’m also not in the camp of everything has to be natural and there’s no use for these types of things. But beyond that. And we’ve been talking a lot about these in particular to our audience, especially our coaches and trainers, we’re going to remember this time as very similar to the birth control pill movement or moment or antibiotic.

This is a huge, this can be a huge culture defining. medical intervention that’s going to shift culture in similar ways to antibiotics and birth control. And let me remind everybody with antibiotics and birth control. We also saw a lot of negatives that we couldn’t predict as a result. Lots of positives, but also lots of negatives.

And the GOP ones I would put in that same category. There’s a right way, a wrong way to use them. There’s a right kind of person, a wrong kind of person to use them. And then there are things that you should do while using them. To mitigate any potential negatives, but also so that you don’t become a permanent user of these these peptides.

Cause that’s what it’s looking like for a lot of people. I’m just going to always be taking this peptide. So it’s really interesting. So I’ve really looked at the, I just saw a study that was shared at the peptide Congress, which blew me away, my coat. So my thought process around GLP ones was that the weight loss that came from them really was just the result of the calorie deficit.

You lose your appetite. Yeah. It 

Mike: turns off your hunger. 

Sal: Yeah, and you eat less, right? And I thought, okay I would like to see a study that compares groups where you have one group on a GLP 1 and another group that’s on a calorie restricted diet. So we have that control and then see if there’s any difference.

And my prediction was you wouldn’t see a difference. You would see the same weight loss, everything would be the same, whether you’re on a GLP 1 or not, it’s just the GLP 1 makes it easier for you to eat less. That’s not what the study showed the study that I saw that was shared. Now, this was a triple agonist.

So there’s three receptors that it agonizes versus like trisepatide, which is double and semaglutide, which is one receptor, but nonetheless, what they showed was twice as much fat loss. So the calories are controlled twice as much fat loss. They also lost muscle, which we’ll get to in just a second, but it was a smaller percentage of their body weight loss.

So there’s a muscle preserving effect and their metabolic rate did not adapt as much in the downward, in a downward trend. So when you cut your calories, metabolism starts to adapt to meet the new energy intake and they’re, the people on the GLP ones didn’t get the same slowdown. And then when they went off the GLP one, and then the other group, they told me normally the weight gain happened much slower.

Mike: Were there comments on proposed mechanisms of how that might work? 

Sal: Yeah increases uptake of amino acids and glycogen into muscle. So there’s a muscle preserving effect, which may be why you had less of a metabolic slowdown and the fat loss. So kind of insulin sensitizing and then the muscle loss, because a lot of people talk about the muscle loss, these peptides don’t cause muscle loss.

The muscle loss comes from the restricted calories, reduced protein intake. They’re not strength training. And here’s a big one. It also blunts the thirst signal. So when you’re in a calorie deficit, low protein, and you’re not consuming as much water, that’s like a perfect storm for muscle loss. And they propose which, a lot of forward thinking practitioners have already been saying, if you’re on these, make sure your protein intake is up.

Strength train, and then let’s look at keeping your water intake high, but also using compounds that help draw water into the cells, into the muscles. So like creatine, probably it’s valuable for everybody. It’s turning out creatine is good for everybody, which I know you’re ahead of, but creatine would be very good supplement for people on GLP 1.

And Protein sources that are high in proline and valine or proline and glycine, excuse me because both of those are osmolites, I think would be the term they attract water, which collagen. 

Mike: Yeah, I was going to say collagen protein could finally justify its existence. 

Sal: That’s right. Yeah. Prolene and glycine, very high in proline and glycine.

So I’m looking at this like this okay we’re fitness professionals. Our podcast reaches millions of people a month. So we have a pretty large influence on the narrative and the direction. And what we’re trying to do right now is coaches and trainers, because this is happening. I don’t care where you stand on this.

I don’t care if you’re a zealot, natural trainer. I only work with real food. I only, I don’t take, we don’t, Do anything else. We only work out, with rocks or whatever you do. I it’s happening. It’s here. This is going to be culture shifting. We’re, you’re going to see most likely, unless some crazy thing happens, like a third or half of the population is going to be on these things.

So you need to learn how to work with them. You need to learn how to adjust your workout programming. Cause you do need to adjust your workout programming. You do need to know how to coach these people through behavior change, because. Now you’ve got something that helps with that powerful hunger signal.

Don’t stop there. Let’s now create new neural connections and pathways to new behaviors. And let’s continue to weaken the ones that were so strong before. So that maybe we can get you off this thing and then you have these new behaviors. So that’s what we’re talking about. 

Mike: In a sense, it creates a window of opportunity that maybe would otherwise always remain closed for various reasons.

Sal: Totally a hundred percent. So that’s what we’re communicating to, to trainers and coaches because it’s like turning into camps, like one camp is like the pro take everything. The other camp is anti everything. It’s look I don’t think this is a first line of intervention. I think there’s a lot of abuse potential, people are going to use this for summer for vacation.

People who don’t need to lose more than 15 pounds are going to be on these. 

Mike: I’m already seeing it just in the local gym. I go to with younger women who want to go from fit to super fit, or maybe go from unfit, not even overweight, but just maybe just normal. And then they want to go from that to just skinny or even skinny fat or are taking it.

Sal: Yeah. Yeah. So there’s abuse potential there. Bodybuilders, competitors. For sure. I’m going to use this pre contest. 

Mike: There’s no stopping them. So 

Sal: no, they’ll do anything. They 

Mike: use I don’t know. If it were used to castrate elephants, they would still, they’d be like, yeah does it help me get shredded though?

There’s a compound called DNP. Have you heard of this? It’s a made, made from dynamite. And if you take too much, you die. Even if even if you’ve taken too much and you go to the hospital, there’s nothing they can do for you. You are dead. 

Sal: And you sweat yellow and it gives you a fever and it makes you burn more calories, but it makes you lean and bodybuilders will use that stuff.

So yeah, you’re right. There’s nothing good. I don’t put anything past the bodybuilder space, but yeah, so we need to figure this out and get ahead of it. So what we’re trying to do is communicate it the right way so that the narrative gets built before we play catch up. Because what I think, what I’m afraid of is that the fitness space is either going like I said, go all in and turn into.

Yeah, just take this, it’s the whatever, or it’s going to go anti and then people are going to be like, what are you talking about? Of course it works. You’re telling me not to use it. But look, I got healthier. Look at my blood markers. What are you talking about? So I really want to get ahead of this and start to create that narrative.

So we at least have some responsible information and communication, but it’s interesting too, because talking to the experts on this topic, Dr. Seeds, like one of the leaders in this and other doctors and researchers. Communicate its effects on autoimmune issues. And then here’s some, there’s some strange, there’s some studies right now, Mike, on GLP1s and what would be labeled as hedonistic behaviors.

So like people are, they’re not craving alcohol or they’re not wanting to smoke. 

Mike: So that would mean other, yeah, drugs, recreational drugs. What are the other risk type of risk? Taking type behavior, like even gambling and 

Sal: yeah, there’s some people are reporting that they want to gamble less, so it must be the same hedonistic reward center that people get from food in some cases is being affected, which makes me look at it and go, so everybody’s oh, that’s a good thing.

That’s a good thing. But could that affect behaviors and other subtle ways that we may not see? Downstream, that makes me, if anything, it makes me perk my ears up. Okay what else could that affect? And, like for example, birth control, we now know this, it changes a woman’s desires, right?

So she’s, she desires a man with less obvious signs of testosterone. How has that affected mate selection over the last 30, 40 years? And what has that done? I don’t know. I’m cautious, but definitely I want to get ahead of it. And look at, but now everybody’s talking peptides because these GLP ones are making their way.

So the average person now knows what a peptide is, or at least knows the word. Maybe they don’t know what a peptide is, but that whole world of peptides is so much bigger than the GLP ones. Very fascinating from the outside. I’m not a peptide expert, but over the last year and a half, I’ve interviewed and talked to a lot of people who are, and I’m just blown away.

Mike: Do you want to quickly explain to people listening what a peptide is? Some people they’ll ask that they want to know, is it like a steroid? Is it like a SARM? Is it an amino acid? Is it something else? 

Sal: Yeah. You’ll always hear people say this, right? It’s a chain of amino acids, which I think assumes people are dumb and tries to make it sound like it’s innocuous growth hormone is a peptide.

So it was insulin and they’re both hormones. Okay. So yes, it’s a chain of amino acids, but they can have profound effects in the body or they can have subtle effects in the body. I think the big question is, and I asked Dr. Seeds this, my question was, what’s the difference between a peptide and a drug?

That was my question. Okay. So peptide drug, what’s the difference? Peptides already occur in the body. We isolate them. We identify them. We see what they do. And because they already exist in the body, there’s already a signaling mechanism, there’s already protection mechanisms or downregulation or upregulation of things to control what happens if you, if there’s too much of this peptide, too little of this peptide to an extent, so unlike a drug where we find a receptor and then we create a molecule to.

To shoehorn into that receptor to cause a reaction. And then because the body has never seen this drug, we got to watch and see what else could potentially happen. Peptides are in our body. BPC one, five, seven, one of the most commonly used peptides. We found that in animals and in humans.

So it already exists. Same thing with thymus and beta or alpha or some of these other peptides. So they tell the body to do something and it’s already used to seeing this, these peptides to tell it to do something. So that doesn’t mean it’s innocuous, but it doesn’t put it in the same category as drugs.

Where you have these crazy talks, like you could really kill yourself with a drug very quickly or get all these crazy side effects with peptides. And I’m going to say this very carefully. They’re safer with less potential negative side effects because they exist in the body. 

Mike: Creatine is a peptide for people listening who don’t know that.

Technically creatine is a peptide. 

Sal: That’s right. Because it’s a, what are the amino acids? Methionine and something else that make. 

Mike: Yeah, two, two, yeah, is it two or three? 

Sal: Yeah, that makes great team. So that’s the big difference between peptides and and drugs. So if you took growth hormone is a peptide, but you could also take a peptide that would cause your body to release more growth hormone.

What’s the difference. I can take a lot of growth hormone, but my body will only allow me to produce so much if I signal it to with the peptide. So if I take a peptide that tells my body to produce more. Growth hormone it’ll hit like a limit and it’s probably going to be what I produced when I was 18 or something like that, maybe a little above that growth hormone, I could take a law.

I could take a ton and get my growth hormone levels through the roof. So that’s a big differentiating factor. Factor between them, but there’s a lot of them. There’s a lot of different peptides out there. And what’s interesting, cause I’ve used a lot of them now. We work with partners and we only work with doctors that prescribe them.

We don’t do the gray market. That’s the other interesting thing, Mike, they’re under interesting. Regulation. So technically a research chemical company can 

Mike: sell for research purposes only not for human consumption. 

Sal: And what people are doing is they’re buying them from these research chemical companies, reconstituting them themselves, and then.

Figuring out the dosage and then taking it and I would not do that. Speaking with Dr. Seeds, he goes, you could have it be off a little bit. It’ll still do what it’s supposed to, but you don’t know what else is doing. 

Mike: You also don’t know what you’re getting either. We’ve seen enough of that in, I’m sure you’ve seen a number of these studies over the years on SARMs and anabolics come coming from random underground labs and in many cases containing very little or maybe even none of what it’s supposed to contain being adulterated with other drugs.

So depending on what we’re talking about, in some ways you’re taking your health into your own hands. If you go that route. 

Sal: A hundred percent is so we work with a company that works with doctors and they work with regulated pharmacies. So they still have those controls at least. So it’s, you’re getting what you’re getting.

And then of course the doctors are going to do things like monitor your, your blood and whatnot and modify it from there. But now, I’ve used quite a bit of them now. It’s a good and bad thing. I have access to peptides. It’s good because it’s cool. I get to talk about them bad because I have a bit of an addictive personality with things like that.

So it’s Oh, cool. Let me try that. Let me try that. Let me try that. Mr. N one. Yeah, exactly. But they do work. 

Mike: They definitely do work. Can you talk about some of your experience when you say they do work specifically what, and to what degree and so forth? 

Sal: Yeah. And they’re not all great.

Like for everybody, like I used Tessofencin, which is a technically a peptide, but it’s a dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor. Okay. So I took that and it felt crazy. Like I literally felt they’re like, Oh, this is good for cognitive performance, make you feel like you’re awake and whatever.

And it made me feel crazy, like literally almost like I was manic and and I cut the dose, still felt crazy, cut the dose, still felt crazy. So I stopped taking that one. I took MOTC, which you can’t even get anymore because that’s another thing too, that the regulatory bodies are, seem to be making it more difficult.

Cause peptides are generic. So Ozempic is the brand name of somaglutide, but you could buy somaglutide from a compound pharmacy, pay a fraction of the price. And so I think they’re trying to stop that competition because it’s okay, I could get Ozempic or you get the same thing generic for far less type of deal, but I tried MOTC.

I felt amazing on that great energy that helps with mitochondrial function, but I didn’t use it for very long. The two that I would say I had the best experience with were BPC one, five, seven, seven and thymus and beta. I could tell. When it comes to like my joints, my skin and some recovery, I can definitely tell both of those work.

And I’ve had a couple nagging, when you get a little muscle strain, you can do site injection with BPC and it’s actually a little eerie how well it works. You almost don’t trust that it worked that well. 

Mike: You suspect placebo, but then if it’s a serious injury, that it can’t be placebo.

Sal: It’s not even that it’s I don’t want to test this. It doesn’t hurt, but I feel like I’m like, I’m scared to test it because it was just hurting that, that bad, five days ago, like Adam tore his Achilles. Used BPC, and he’s I feel like I’m back to normal, but I’m scared to test it out.

It feels too soon. And then thymus and beta is also a signaler for actin there’s a part of the muscle fiber recovery. And so those two I liked quite a bit. And then I’ve tried some of the growth hormone releasing ones. Those were interesting. The test of Maryland, you can tell. You can tell that your growth hormone is higher, skin, hair, sleep, that kind of stuff.

Ibutamorin, that one’s a monster. That’s the MK six, seven, seven, I think is the other name for it. That one is like you gain mass on it. Like I’ll gain eight pounds and that one’s an oral capsule, but that one also makes you hungry cause it’s a growling mimic, so that’s the other thing, but they definitely do something.

But I will say this, it’s not like what workout diet are going to do for you. I want to say that. Cause I know there’s a lot of people who are looking for that miracle, something, it’s not going to be that. That’s for sure. 

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No forms, no return even is necessary. So you can’t lose, go to buylegion. com slash Pulse, order now, use the coupon code muscle, save 20%, try Pulse risk free and see what you think. Are there some peptides that you have explicitly avoided that are maybe popular, but you decided against probably for reasons related to safety concerns or maybe if there are some popular ones that, you would warn people off.

Sal: What’s interesting with the pro Recovery pro, neurogenesis or cell growth ones. I always wonder if that, what that would look like in a pro cancer environment, would it accelerate? Could that be a bad combination? Taking testosterone with the testosterone sensitive hormone cancer, like prostate cancer or something like that.

Would it fuel it? I don’t know. Because then I look at data that shows that in some cases they’re anti cancer, but I would still warn against, if you have if you had a shitty lifestyle and then you’re going to take these like high doses of. Peptides that speed up, cell differentiation and growth and stuff like that.

I don’t know if that would necessarily be a good idea. I’ll tell you my experience with the GLP one. So Adam tested it purely for the purposes of being able to communicate it on the podcast. And he went into it. Like a consumer would. So he said, okay, I’m going to take it and I’m just going to eat the way that my appetite tells me.

I’m not going to he’s cause I can force feed myself, but I’m just going to see what happens. And he took the recommended dose and it crushed his appetite, crushed it. He’s dude, there’s days I could eat 500 calories and it’s not a problem at all. My wife went on it also to test it, but also to see if it would help With any behavior change because we saw some of that data and it was so strong and she went on a quarter dose They tell you start in a quarter.

It was so strong She said it was like the third try the first trimester of pregnancy like she couldn’t yeah, she couldn’t eat She just it didn’t feel good nauseous That whole deal and then my personal experiences with micro dosing it which I got some Advice from Dr. Tina and she microdoses it with patients for other reasons.

And so I said, let me see what that does. I don’t want appetite suppression, but I want to see if I have any other potential effects and my gut health Dramat dramatically and i’ve talked about this on my show now five times Like dramatically improved and she did say that they’re researching it for autoimmune issues To the point now where I can actually have dairy and gluten, which I couldn’t touch before so that’s interesting.

The one I won’t touch though is a test of tensile fencing. And that would be by reducing inflammation levels. It seems to have an amino modulating effect. So like Adam psoriasis got better when he was on it, he thought it was reduced calorie intake, but it was it was that could be the slowed gastric emptying that it causes.

My issue was IBS D and it’s slowed down gastric emptying, which might’ve been what I needed. Slowing things down. Not so moving so quickly. I’m not sure, but I’m on a tiny dose of terzapatide, like one eighth or less of what I recommend of what a efficacious dose for weight loss is, and that’s what I’m noticing.

So have, do you have any experience? 

Mike: No, I haven’t used, I haven’t used any I’ve only done desk research. I’ve only read papers and I’ve written a little bit about them. Just giving my interpretation of the data that’s available, but I don’t have any firsthand experience now. 

Sal: Yeah, I think what you’re probably going to see moving forward are use of some of these peptides in rehab recovery longevity clinics, love them.

So you’ll probably always see that, the anti aging stuff and then the GLP ones are going to go. It’s game over for that. 

Mike: It’s already meteoric. It’s just going to be stratospheric over the next several years. 

Sal: See, just think just to illustrate, I don’t know if you’ve seen the data, Mike, on snack food sales, Walmart.

Mike: Yep. They’re already, there are, the market is already starting to bake this in. 

Sal: Yes. And pharmaceutical companies are freaking out because there’s a lot of medications around the negative effects of obesity. Blood pressure medications. Statins, other diabetic type, medications, whatever.

Mike: There’s all types of disease, that are downstream of obesity that will be impacted. There’s the farm pharmaceutical impact, but then there’s going to be impact across many other interventions that are required because of diseases that stem from obesity that aren’t just diabetes, even look at cancer, for example, and its association with obesity, heart disease.

Sal: Yeah. So what you’ll see probably definitely is because we’ve identified this peptide that has this effect this commercially desirable effect, of weight loss. You’re going to see billions of dollars getting poured into it already, poured into researching just GLP one and GLP one type, interventions.

Like I said, these triple agonist ones are going to be coming out and then who knows. What’s next? I think for those of us in the fitness space this presents a tremendous opportunity because simultaneously alongside the awareness of GLP ones, what they do, and then their usage, you’re now getting the awareness around strength training.

I don’t know if you’ve heard, I’ve never heard it. It was already on the upswing, right? Strength training was already been trained. It’s already been training positive. Women are really grabbing onto it. Big box gyms. I just saw a report. I saw a report last year where the footprint of big box gyms is shifting and you’ll see that with trends.

And so they’re taking space away from cardio, devoting it to strength training. The awareness around strength training is going to explode even more now because. People, if you talk to the average person and they’ll say, Oh yeah, I’ve heard of a Zempik. What does it do? It makes you lose weight. What are the negatives?

Oh, you lose muscle. So now you’re going to see awareness, more and more awareness around strength training, which is only going to fuel the already growing trend. So like trainers and fitness professionals, like this is an opportunity where you’re going to get people who never would have even considered hiring you to lift weights, who just got prescribed.

Oh, Zempik and their doctors, like you should probably strength train. And to those people, I say you really get ready because the training and programming is going to be different. When people first get on these GLP ones, when people get on GLP one. Initially their calories drop significantly.

You’re already working with a beginner or deconditioned individual who now is at a calorie deficit. Their ability to adapt and recover to strength training is greatly reduced. 

Mike: And their energy to exert in these workouts is also going to be greatly reduced. 

Sal: One of the biggest mistakes trainers and coaches are going to make is they’re going to take someone on an Olympic and then they’re gonna throw everything, crazy workouts at them.

Oh, cool. You’re already less, less hammery. 

Mike: Which I see trainers doing all the time, even without. Ozempic in the equation. 

Sal: Yes. Yeah. The over application of extra of intensity and volume is the biggest problem in the trainer and coach space. They just don’t use training. They don’t program properly.

They don’t understand it. And so they over train people, beat the crap out of them. Drive them 

Mike: into quitting basically. 

Sal: Yes. And in terrible plateaus and injury and all that stuff. And then what you’re gonna do is you’re gonna take a compromised individual who’s deconditioned. It doesn’t take much, right?

It doesn’t take much to take somebody who hasn’t done strength training ever, or for years to just get their body to move in the right direction. It doesn’t take much at all. If you train them properly, you’re going to do a good job. If you over apply anything you’re only going to move them forward, slower or backwards.

Then you get them in a calorie deficit because they’re on a GLP 1 and it’s even worse. So a lot of it has to do with the trainer because they think harder is better to take pride and beat people up or making them sore. And the other part is the consumer, the consumers believes that harder is better and that you need to beat me up.

And so they’ll, they tend to demand those kinds of workouts. So trainers need to be educated on how to counter that. When you get a client that says, yeah, no, I need someone to kick my ass. You’ll hear that all the time, or I want a trainer to whip me into shape. Like you need to be prepared to educate them.

So you could train them properly. Otherwise they’re going to get a bad experience with strength training. So what we’re doing is we’re actually going to be putting out a program. We weren’t going to do this, but we changed gears. We, as we put out a program every quarter, a workout program.

We were going to put one out and we changed gears and said, we need to get ahead of this. And so we’re putting a maps GLP one program, which is like a workout program. And it’s phased. Cause what happens when you first get one, get on a GLP one from The people who work with them that are explaining to us.

Calories drop pretty hard at first, but then things start to come up and then level out a little bit. So that initial stage needs to be a much lower intensity, lower volume style of training effective to prevent that muscle loss or whatever. And then there’s some other stuff that we put in there for.

Behavior modification. But yeah, it’s we’re going to, we’re going to look back and again, this could be one of those moments where oh yeah, I remember when these were introduced, that’s how big of a deal they’re going to be. Make 

Mike: America skinny again. Maybe. 

Sal: Yeah. I predict what we’re going to see is a lot of investment into muscle preserving or anabolic compounds as well.

Maybe milestone inhibitors or something like that. 

Mike: H M B just on the supplement side. H M B is gaining. In popularity right now for this exact reason, just for its anti catabolic effects. 

Sal: Yeah. I, so I predict, so I already was funny. You say that. It’s so funny. I love talking to people who get it because it’s obvious, right?

You’re going to see this. You’re going to see the explosion of HMB branch amino acids, essential amino acids. Okay. G AKG glutamine, all the anti catabolic compounds creating for sure. Obviously, this as well as I do. If you eat enough protein, you don’t need to take all those. However, It’s hard to eat enough protein when you’re on a GLP 1.

For sure, HMB is going to be, that’s one of the best anti catabolic compounds you can take. 

Mike: Yeah, better, better. Out of the ones that you mentioned, people listening, if you’re wondering, I would recommend HMB for that purpose. Now, creatine you should just be taking, period. I would even separate that. But specifically for anti catabolic effects, which previously was usually in the context of fasted training, HMB I think is the go to because you only need a small dose, couple grams, no insulin response studied.

There’s just no downside to it. 

Sal: Yeah, no, they’re, they even put it in some of the supplements in nursing homes because of it’s positive effects on preventing cattle. Now, again, if you eat a high protein diet, then you’re getting all the, you’re not going to get any additional benefits, as well as I do that’s hard, eating your target body weight and protein.

Mike: Especially if they just don’t have a big appetite. I have a friend who struggles, a guy who struggles to eat enough protein, just because he has a small appetite, that’s just. Normal for him. He is probably 140, 130 pounds. He’s a smaller guy, but it’s difficult for him to eat a hundred grams of protein per day, just getting to around that 0.

8 is hard for him. 

Sal: Yeah. So taking four or five capsules of HMB makes a lot of sense for its anti catabolic effects. And then, there’s a lot of myths around them too, or I don’t want to say myths, but maybe misunderstandings like ozempic phase. Have you heard that? Nope. Yeah, you gotta look it up or it’s Oh, look at these celebrities.

Their faces are so gone and their skin is saggy. And what’s happening is if you go from eating adequate protein, most people don’t even eat the high protein targets that you see the studies recommend, right? So 

Mike: at best on average, I would say people probably are getting best, maybe a half a gram per pound of body weight and maybe even per pound of lean mass.

Actually. 

Sal: Yeah that’s more like it. So what you’re seeing is people who are eating enough protein to get by, then they go on a Zempik and their protein intake drops, everything drops. But you know what you need protein for? College skin. You need it for so people are like, what’s wrong with my face?

Why is my skin melting? Yeah, you don’t have enough you’re not consuming essential amino acid, enough essential amino acids and proteins. Yeah. So I, again, I want to get ahead of it and communicate these properly so we can do this the the right way, the wrong way would be to go on and then just, cause here’s the other thing too, Mike, a sizable minority.

Of people with diabetes, heart disease, or cancer. We’re not obese. The majority are obese, but there’s a sizable minority, something like 20 percent or something like that. So we’re talking about millions and millions of people who were never obese, who get diabetes or heart disease, like what’s going on here, even if you control for smoking I strongly believe in the data now starting to show this, that.

Part of the problem is obesity, but the other part of the problem is people are under muscled too little muscle. This is a very metabolically active tissue. You want insulin sensitivity, build muscle, you want healthier mitochondria, whatever the, the hackers, the biohacker build some muscle. You want to improve your VO two max build a little bit of muscle.

If your muscle mass is too low and you’re weak, your all cause mortality goes through the roof. A simple grip strength test. Which is a proxy for whole body strength, right? Nothing special about the grip, but it shows kind of whole body that’ll predict all cause mortality better than almost any other single metric.

Why am I communicating this? You get a bunch of everyday people who are overweight, but also under muscled, and then they go on a GLP one, so they just eat less. That’s all they do. They just eat less. So they’re eat this garbage here. Now they’re eating less of the garbage. They don’t strength train.

We may see some cases where we’re, what’s the term robbing Peter to pay Paul. So I lost weight, but I’ve lost strength and I’ve lost some mobility and bone density potentially could get affected. And, am I healthier? Maybe a little bit, maybe not. I don’t know. So it’s really important.

We communicate this because. Losing muscle is not good for you. There’s always, of course, there’s an extreme with muscle, like bodybuilders and all stuff, but let’s talk about that. But the average person, there’s a myth that people think that overweight people have more muscle on their body. It’s not true.

Mike: They have bigger calves. Is that just swelling though? I don’t know, man. The I can think of a few people over the years. Guys with the biggest calves, one in particular. His calves were so perfect that guys would come up to him. Even bodybuilders would come up to him in the gym and ask, what did you do to get those calves?

They were insane. They looked like stakes on his, on the back of his legs, perfect. Split and everything, and. He had never done a single set of calves, calf specific training in his life. He was just fat for a long time. That’s it. That was his answer. He was like, I don’t know. I was just fat. Now I’m not.

And this is the vestige of my previous obesity. 

Sal: I know I’ve seen that too, but no, they’ve shown studies that they’ve done this and Obese individuals are have a higher rate of sarcopenia than normal weight individuals. They’re over fat and under muscled. 

Mike: That that definitely makes sense, especially as people get older.

It’s not having a bunch of body fat is not going to help you preserve muscle as you get older. If you’re not working to preserve it, that’s for sure. 

Sal: No, osteopenia rates are higher than what would be considered normal body weight individuals. Again, back to strength training, like we may be at the beginning of a really big strength training movement fueled by the use of these peptides, because I think a lot of people are going to use them expecting a panacea and then being disappointed in some ways, I think there’s a right way to use them in a wrong way to use them and just taking them.

Probably not the right way, but that’s what you’re seeing. You’re seeing people are just going on them. This is the 

Mike: first phase. This is the wild west phase in some ways. 

Sal: Yeah. Yes, definitely. But yeah, we got to get ahead of it from our space because if we fight it, we’re going to be You’ll be left in the dust because I have coaches that, there’s a lot of coaches that listen to us and they’re nutrition coaches.

What am I going to do? People are going to go on these peptides. They’re not going to need me anymore. I’m like no. Your job was never telling people what to eat. Your job was always behavior modification and helping people develop these long term relationships. 

Mike: Which is the question that I want to follow up with is, and this is a common criticism of these drugs and that is, okay, so what happens after you lose the weight, are you supposed to just take a smaller dose of the drug forever?

And there will be criticisms to the effect of You’re basically guaranteed to just gain a lot of the weight back. And so is this just a temporary solution? This is just a bandaid. 

Sal: Some people are communicating that you’ll be on this for the rest of your life, so you’ll always be taking this.

Other people are saying there is a way to come off and then. Not getting the weight back or whatever. So to be clear, when you get off the GLP one, the hunger signal will come back. Okay. So whatever appetite suppressing effects you had, they’ll be gone when you come off the GLP one, but that’s not the whole story.

Okay. There is a potential silver lining here with that, which is the more you practice a behavior, the more you engage in a behavior, especially if there’s a hedonistic reward, the harder it is to break. You create those neural pathways and you strengthen them every time you practice the behavior every time.

This is why anything, any habit or bad habit or whatever, if you’ve ever stopped something at first, it’s really hard. And then it’s starts to get a bit easier for most people. I should say behaviors are really complex, but for the most part. That’s how it seems to work. So you strengthen those neural connections with that behavior.

So I’m stressed. I eat, I’m tired. I eat. It feels good to eat. It feels good to eat. It creates this kind of temporary hedonistic, feeling you go on the GLP one hunger signal is blunted. You don’t longer get that. Experience for meeting. You no longer even think about eating that much. So while you’re on it, those neural connections, those behaviors start to weaken because you’re not practicing them as much.

But I think there’s another side to it, which is okay. We’re wait, we’re weakening those behaviors. So now let me try to replace those behaviors with other behaviors. So this takes, this is where I think coaching could be very valuable. Which is okay. Have you identified when you make the worst food choices?

It’s when I’m under a lot of stress or when I’m out with friends or when I’m anxious or depressed or whatever. Okay, cool. Let’s identify those because you’re still going to have those experiences while you’re on the GLP 1. Now let’s find a way to, let’s create a new behavior around that. So I’m stressed out.

All right. What can we do? Or I’m anxious. All right. What can we do? So now you allow the old behavior to weaken because you’re not practicing anymore because the strong hunger signal behind it is gone, so it’s easier to just not do it, but now let’s replace that with something more positive. And then when you get off and the hunger signal comes back up, do not Engage in that old behavior because that old neural pathway will come right back.

So try to be as consistent as possible when you’re off. And when you get the, that hunger signal, replace it with better behaviors, better food choices or whatever. So theoretically, this is how I think. We can use this as a positive I’m borrowing, by the way, because look, we don’t have a lot of experience coaching or working with people with these.

These are relatively new interventions, but I’m borrowing from my experience of working with. I’ve trained a lot of people, trained people for a long time, and I’ve trained a lot of doctors. I’ve trained a lot of both Psychiatrists and surgeons. And I remember there was one woman I trained in particular, she was a psychiatrist, she was brilliant.

And we would have these discussions around some of the psychiatric medications that she would work with, just cause I’m curious. And, you train people for years. It’s I’m going to ask you questions too. That’s a good time. We were friends. The discussion was, okay, you’re going to antidepressant.

Can you come off of them? Do you have to stay on them forever? And she says, a lot of people do. She said, but I’ve seen people come off of them and this is how it looks. The antidepressant gives them enough energy to get to so that they can do the things that will improve their well being.

So they were so depressed before they couldn’t come off the couch or they were so depressed before they couldn’t get some sunshine or they were so anxious before they just didn’t. Make any connections with people select training wheels. So she said, I’ve had people who go on these, then they’ll go do the things that we know, because now they have the energy and they feel like they can.

And then we slowly take them off and they continue those things and then they stay off the antidepressants, but that takes some work and the average person, I don’t know how much work they want to do, but that’s where I’m borrowing from with my ideas around this GLP ones. And I’ve run them by doctors that work with them who have experienced this and said, Oh yeah, that’s.

I’ve worked with people. That’s what I did. Some people stay on them, but some people can come off and that’s what the ones that come off successfully. That’s what they do. So I think there’s a huge opportunity for coaches to work with people, but I don’t think it’s any different than what we’ve been doing before, which is behavior.

A really good coach works on behavior modification. A really good coach isn’t giving people meal plans and just saying, eat this, follow your macros and you’re good. It’s if you really want to be effective, you have to work with with the person and help them modify those behaviors so they can develop this long term.

Success type of thing. So 

Mike: especially if they’ve had a lot of failures in the past, then just giving a meal plan and giving a training plan that, that basically never works. There’s a lot more that the person who can do it that way. Is in the minority and they’re out there for sure. And they probably need coaching the least out of all the people, the types of people who are interested in coaching that the people who need it the least are the people who can just be given a meal plan, be given a training plan, just go off, left to their own devices and come back shredded.

Thanks coach. It’s great for those, you that, but many people that approach just does not work for many people. 

Sal: No, most people are not like you, we’re yeah I know you very well and you’re like I’m gonna do this and then you do it like most people not Able to turn it on that way.

We’re driven by our emotions and and feelings and behaviors. It’s hard to change them. It’s very hard to change certain behaviors and food is it’s so ingrained in who we are and how we experience life and then again, and we’re also, we’ve put ourselves in a shitty place the vast majority of research and development that’s gone into food for the last 70 years has gone into how to make it as pleasurable to eat as possible.

We’re in this bad situation where it’s like we’ve made things so irresistible and inconvenient that there’s no wonder why a majority of people are in such poor health. And then on top of it, we’ve designed our lives to be as sedentary as possible. So we’ve put ourselves in a really bad situation.

But again, I see this as an opportunity, on the strength training front. I’m excited about this because no. Other form of exercise as is well positioned for the average person is strength training. It really does. There is no perfect form of extra of exercise. It’s as close as you can get with all the modalities that exist.

You do with the least for the most results, it sticks around with you the most. It allows you to eat more food. Not because you’re burning more calories because you’re moving, but because you actually affected your metabolism in a positive way. It’s protective against 

Mike: It’s more fun. It’s more fun than just going and droning away on the car on the cardio machine for 30 45 minutes.

So much. So I see it with my 11 year old son. He wanted to start coming to the gym with me. Great. So now we go to the gym together in the morning. And of course we just do our little strength training workouts. And I just have a, an appropriate routine for his age. It’s mostly machines and some dumbbells.

So just so he can gain strength without having to worry too much about technique and learning the intricacies of compound lifts and so forth. And so even for an 11 year old kid. He thinks it’s fun, thinks it’s fun, but it would, he would not have fun. If I were going there and just jogging on the treadmill, he wouldn’t be coming with me.

Sal: Yeah. Not going anywhere and just running in place. And it’s also because its main adaptation is build muscle. It’s very protective against being sedentary, being sedentary. Is deadly, even if you do lots of activity otherwise, but then you work at a desk, which most people do, it’s not good for you.

The best thing you can do if you’re going to sit all day is have muscle. It’s the best possible thing you could do. It’s also the most, it’s the easiest approach. Otherwise it’s Hey, every hour, get up and walk for 15 minutes. That would be great, but most people won’t do that every hour. So it’s okay, have some muscle.

It’s very protective. And then, and I already said this, but you don’t need to do much. I don’t know if you saw the latest, some of the, seeing some of the latest data on how much strength training is required to prevent muscle loss. So forget building muscle, but just how much would you need to stop the, I don’t remember what it is, 8 percent muscle or strength loss every decade or whatever.

I don’t remember what the number was, but. The amount of strength training required something like once every two weeks. It’s so little, it’s not even funny. 

Mike: And that that one workout would probably be an hour or so. 

Sal: Maybe 40 minutes. Probably. So it’s so perfectly poised.

And so I’m like, okay, let’s take this opportunity, everybody to get people to move in the right direction whether they use these peptides or not, people are talking about them and I think we could do a big positive. A big positive thing for sure, but also worn against the abuses and negatives.

I don’t want to be on the wrong side of history. 

Mike: To this point of just how little it takes. It’s from there, you do your one workout every two weeks, let’s say. Then you figure I’ll do one workout a week. This is just naturally how it goes. Cause you start to notice some improvements.

You start to feel a little bit better. All right. Now you’re doing one full body workout per week. And then from there, you look at your calendar and you Yeah, I could do two workouts a week. How about that? So that’s also, I’ve just seen that so many times over the years with strength training in particular, just because the rewards are more noticeable just in the mirror and therefore.

Are more emotionally satisfying than if you compare that to doing cardio and I’m pro cardio, I do a couple hours of cardio per week, and I think that’s a smart thing to do. But. Is strength training seems to be a better gateway modality, so to speak, for getting somebody into enjoying exercise and really establishing that habit versus cardio.

Sal: Yeah, all forms of exercise have value if they’re applied appropriately, but strength training is perfectly poised for the modern life because of the things that I, things I mentioned, you don’t need to do much of it speeds up the metabolism, whereas other forms of exercise don’t really sometimes actually cause a metabolic slowdown.

Excessive cardio can do that. For example sculpts and shapes the body. So it’s as close as you can get to target, shaping it’s empowering. This is what women experience when they do it. Oh my God. I like feeling strong, but I’ll tell you what the way that I think that the, we’ve been communicating strength train to the average person.

I think that there’s one, a better way to communicate it in the sense of, you said one workout a week, which I would say once or twice a week. That’s all you need. I think a better approach may be something more like. One lift a day, literally, if you did one, three or four sets of a compound lift a day, it would take you 15 minutes and it wouldn’t feel so grueling.

You would get adequate volume. It’s because it’s a daily thing. You’re going to, the habit tends to be built a little easier. Doesn’t require a big block of time to be taken out of your day. And I think that’s probably a better approach. It’s one compound lift a day. I think for the average person would be plenty.

And it’s funny when you look, so I looked at old Soviet, Olympic lifting data, they have some crazy studies that frequency approach is pretty amazing when it comes to building muscle and strength. It’s pretty wild. They would do these all day workouts where they would have people do a few sets and then they wouldn’t do anything for an hour.

Then they’d come back and do another few sets and they would do this all day. Antibiotic response was crazy with an amount of volume. They wouldn’t be able to accomplish all at once, but it was essentially like a long rest in between these mini workouts. Pretty interesting stuff. But yeah, I like to tell that to people.

It’s one lift a day. And you would be great. The average person would be perfect with doing something like that. And then do some walking throughout the day after breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and you’re set. 

Mike: Yeah, that’d be a great approach. The only wrinkle that I’ve come across in talking about that approach with various people is if they have to go to a gym to work out, then it’s a little bit anticlimactic to do the drive.

Sal: Yeah. 

Mike: One lift, go home. Exactly. And you’re going to do a little bit of a warmup for whatever you’re doing, and then, you do your few sets and they say that once they’re there, They like to do a bit more and it seems like for most people, the sweet spot in my experience seems to be about 45 to 60 minutes where that’s enough to where you feel like you’ve exerted yourself, but you’re not exhausted, you have a nice pump and it justifies the time that you spent.

Sal: Yes. No, you did it. One of the other Roadblocks is that strength training is, it’s complicated in comparison to other forms of exercise. 

Mike: It doesn’t have to be, but it, there are a lot more moving parts. A lot, let’s just say there are a lot of, a lot more ways to mess it up than just putting on some shoes and going for a run.

Sal: Now I will say this though, technique is extremely, it’s, We misunderstand the value of technique and cardio. We think, oh, you just run. But the reason why cart running has one of the highest injury risks or rates is because people don’t know how to run. You stop running when you’re 12.

Then when you’re 35, you decide you want to work out. You put on some running shoes and you go to your tired, which is the worst way to teach your body a proper skill. Fatigue makes your form go out the window. I understand biomechanics because that’s what I did for a long time. And when I watch people run, it’s oh my, I could tell when someone can run well.

Very easily versus when most people can’t so people go and just train to fatigue and their form goes out the window But they do that, strength training is more complex in the sense that there’s different movements technique is Important just like it is for all forms of exercise But I don’t necessarily I think it’s bad and good because the good side is people Appreciate more that they need to do a technique right with strength training whereas with other forms of exercise They just do it but again that opens the door for coaches and trainers because And a lot of people don’t understand this You All exercise is a skill, but strength training in particular is a skill.

Every exercise that you do, every movement is a skill. And like any skill, the better you perform that skill, the more you’ll get out of it. The worst you perform a skill the, or one of those exercises, the less you’ll get out of it and the risk of injury starts to go through the roof. I try to tell people when you’re doing strength training, don’t think of it as a workout.

Think of it as practice. I’m going to the gym to practice deadlifts. To practice bench press, to practice overhead press or whatever, that’ll guide people far better than the, I’m going to go hit my legs. I’m going to go hit my back. I’m gonna go hit my chest because then they tend to. The movement becomes just a way to get the muscle sore and technique and all that stuff goes out the window, but rather go to the gym or practice those lifts.

And then you’ll probably have an appropriate amount of intensity because you’re looking at perfecting your form. So you’ll go as hard as the form allows you to go. And you’ll appreciate and then start to see the value of the technique itself. But that would be, the roadblock is it definitely more.

Complex. There’s a lot of exercises and there’s really one way to do them right. And a million and one ways to do them wrong. What’s the saying? All strength training exercises are low back exercises. If you do them wrong. 

Mike: Yeah, correct. We’re coming up on time and I want to be, I want to be respectful of that.

This, we got through all the bullets I wanted to discuss. Is there anything else before we wrap up that you want to add something that I should have asked or bounce around? 

Sal: No, I’ll ask you, you’re one of the leaders and I consider you one of the leaders in the supplement industry.

You’re always ahead. You mentioned HMB sales going up. Do you see, do you predict any trends in the supplement space? Either generally or as a result of GLP 1s. I mentioned essential amino acids, branch amino acids and HMB. Do you see anything else that’s coming on the horizon? 

Mike: Yeah. So anti catabolic HMB that we’re already seeing that we’re looking into the viability of releasing, cause we have HMB in one of our products, but it is, it’s with yohimbine and sinephrine.

So it’s a fasted training, really a fat loss product with HMB to just Help mitigate the increase in muscle breakdown rates that, that occurs particularly after a fasted workout, if people aren’t going to be eating right away, but we’re looking into the viability of just releasing HMB as a standalone ingredient, because we’re seeing this market increase in demand.

It’s really the points that you touched on amino acid supplements. I still don’t sell, I don’t foresee a scenario where I will start selling them because HMB will, if we’re talking about this. use case specifically HMB is just better. That’s what I would take myself. I wouldn’t take BCAs.

Why? The isoleucine and the valine are basically useless. We just want the leucine. And if we’re just going for anti catabolism, HMB is better than leucine. It’s a metabolite from leucine, but it’s better for that purpose. So I wish I could make an evidence based argument for An amino acid supplement because , BCAs and eaas are the two BCAs as number one.

EAs are gonna be top five BCAs, at least number one most requested product from our customers. And we have a lot of customers at this point. It represents seven figures in annual revenue, just BCAs. But I can’t make a good argument. What’s the argument? That it’s tasty water and there are customers who.

Who acknowledge that and they say, yeah, that’s actually why I take BCA is because it just helps me drink enough water. And I respect that and I think that’s totally fine. But that’s not a very good sales pitch. Most people, if that’s all it is, if it’s, hey the overwhelming weight of the evidence shows that this supplement is not going to do anything for you if you’re eating enough protein.

And if you’re not eating enough protein, you should be eating enough protein because of course you can’t even replace inadequate protein with BCAAs or even EAAs. You need to eat enough protein. So I’d much rather have my customers figure out. How do you eat enough protein? And there are many ways to do that, especially understanding that there’s, and this, that this is, this was always a talking point, but there’s research that came out recently to, to bolster it.

And that is that there seems to be no effective ceiling on the amount of protein that our body can assimilate in one meal. And there might be a limit but practically speaking, it’d be over a hundred grams, for example, in one meal. 

Sal: It’s probably, it would be your digestion would be the limiting factor, I would guess.

Mike: Yeah, probably. It’s, it would just be almost like a mechanical limit. And so then if that’s the case, there are many ways to figure out if, especially if you’re, let’s say you’re a woman and you only need to eat a hundred grams of protein per day, let’s say, and you could eat half of that in just one meal or more if you wanted to.

If you’re a guy, you need to get up to 150 or maybe you need to get up to 200 and you have a healthy appetite. You can eat a hundred grams of protein. in one meal. Okay. So it’s very easy to eat enough protein if you just are willing to look into your meal timing and your meal composition a little bit.

So although I think you’re right, I think that the demand for amino acid supplements is going to increase because of these GLP 1 drugs. I’m okay with HMB because there’s good research on that and I can get behind that. So that would be my answer to that. I do think that protein supplements, which have also been growing rapidly in popularity over the last 10 years or so, this GLP one trend will probably impact that as well.

We’re seeing more and more protein fortified drinks and foods as well, because More people are becoming aware of the importance of eating enough protein, and this GLP 1 trend is going to supercharge that so a lot more people are going to be cognizant of their protein intake, at least to some degree, minimally looking for some higher protein foods, which can include higher protein Snack foods, even that you can sneak proteins into a protein cookie, for example Oh, that’s okay.

Here’s my little dessert. I microwave my protein cookie and I have some high protein ice cream, protein cereal. We’re looking into that as well, actually to do like a natural ingredient, a clean, nutritious type of. Protein fortified cereal, so we’re looking into doing some high protein foods as well.

And to your point that I do think that it’s going to have a rising tide effect, right? Because as more people not just lose the weight, but hopefully use that as a springboard into a healthy lifestyle that includes regular exercise and that includes regular strength training that is going to.

To drive interest, of course, in sports nutrition. I would expect that the compounded annual growth rate is going to be lifted by that. 

Sal: Agreed. Yeah, I agree with that. I think I think you’re gonna see more awareness around all protein and muscle building type supplements. And you mentioned protein snacks, hyper palatability is actually going to become important for some people on GLP ones, because.

It’s for some people that crushes, like literally will crush their appetite. 

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. If the food is not delicious, you take one bite and you’re like yeah, 

Sal: exactly. No, interesting. No I’m I wanted to ask you that because I’m trying to predict what’s going to be happening with this, because like I said, I think this could be a culture shifting intervention.

I think, it’s going to affect clothing sizes, pharmaceuticals, fast food. Clothing trends, 

Mike: certain types of clothing. The demand is going to go way down. Moo moos, for example, probably going to be selling fewer. Moo. So I’m going to, I’m going to guess more Lululemon. 

Sal: Yeah. So we’ll see what happens.

But I think for those of us in the space, let’s get ahead of this because otherwise we’re going to get dusted. 

Mike: And maybe other nutritionally fortified, more processed foods, which I think, and this is similar to what you were saying earlier about, we need to meet people where they are and like the, these drugs are going to become much bigger than they currently are.

Many people are going to use them. And so we need to accept that reality and. See how we can use that to try to engineer a positive outcome. So if you look at processed foods, snack type of foods I think that. It is important to help people eat less of those types of foods, but people are going to eat those foods and it’s okay if they eat those foods up to a certain point.

And so if we can make those types of foods more nutritious, if we can fortify them with protein, if we can fortify them with fiber, if we can maybe fortify them, so to speak, with whole foods and acknowledging that. That people are still going to eat them. Can we also just again, create a net positive effect as opposed to just saying, no, you shouldn’t eat any of those foods.

If I were king, I would just delete them all. 

Sal: Yeah, no, I think now that I’m thinking about it, you’re probably going to see an increase in nutrient deficiencies because you dropped. Calories. You also drop your nutrients. So multivitamin supplements are probably going to be important. In fact, I would bet that a lot of practitioners are already recommending that their patients take a multivitamin if they’re on one of these.

Mike: Yep. Yep. That’s a good point. And I think it’s probably generally smart, even for people who aren’t using these drugs, especially if you’re going to be restricting your calories for an extended period of time. And I do think that taking a good multivitamin is just generally a good idea for basically everyone just to help plug any possible nutritional holes that might exist.

Sal: We just did an episode on the top four supplements. Everybody should be taking multivitamin was that was at the top because if you have a nutrient deficiency and you feel that nutrient deficiency, it’s like, it’s game changing, it’s life changing because it’s an essential something that you need, but yeah we’re doing, we have the maps GLP one program and then what we did and we’re going to experiment with this is we’re going to be coaching personally, myself, Adam and Justin, and along with our head trainer, we’re going to do a Facebook group of 50 people.

We’re going to only limit it at 50. Of people who are on a GLP one who, and then once a week we’re to go in there and we’re going to coach them, it’s going to serve two, two, two things. One is we can work with people and coach them, but two is we want to work with people on GLP ones so that we can better learn how to communicate this and see what pops up and what happens.

Mike: That’s smart, then you’ll be able to also augment your GLP one program based on the feedback that you’re getting. I know you guys have already put a lot of thought into it, but you can’t think of everything. It’s just not possible. 

Sal: No. And most of the stuff that I’ve learned, it’s through experience working with people.

So we’re going to be doing that that as well. And and then modifying whatever we need to, as we continue to move forward. But I think that this may be a great opportunity in, for those of us in the health and fitness space, if we are. Good about it. If we do it right, if we don’t, you’re going to be less than left in the dust.

Mike: Anything else you want to let the listeners know about any other new programs or any cool things that they should check out? 

Sal: No, just the podcast. You can find us anywhere on YouTube or Spotify or, and Yeah, and that’s pretty much it. We’re gonna try and stay ahead of this and continue to our goal is and always has been to talk to the average person.

Coaches and trainers like listening to us because they can learn how to talk to the average person. But I’m trying to reach the people who are not being reached. Too many trainers focus too much on the people who are 

Mike: already jacked and that’s a mistake. 

Sal: Stupid. I don’t care. I don’t care.

I don’t care about communicating to you about fitness and nutrition. You’re fine. I don’t need to talk to you about it. 

Mike: How do I get another half of an inch on my biceps? 

Sal: Yeah, exactly. Nice flex by the way. Like I, I handed that to you. Flex for everybody. I, I want to talk to the, your neighbor or the lady down the street, who’s.

Tried working out a couple times or can’t figure it out or has no interest and doesn’t to be able to reach these people that Are unreachable. That’s our goal. It’s always has been our goal. So we’ll continue doing that. 

Mike: Love it Well as always enjoyed the discussion look forward to the next one. I 

Sal: appreciate it, brother 

Mike: Have you ever wondered what strength training split you should follow?

What rep ranges you should work in how many sets you should do per workout or per week? Let I created a free 60 second training quiz that will answer those questions for you and others, including how frequently you should train each major muscle group, which exercises you should do, what supplements you should consider, which ones are at least worth taking, and more.

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