Lose Fat and Get Shredded with Less Effort and More Energy (Alex Feinberg) | Ep 340 - Wits & Weights | Fat Loss, Nutrition, & Strength Training for Lifters

Episode Transcript
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Philip Pape (00:01):
If you're a go-getter, high performer, and
you're grinding yourself intothe ground, chasing success
while your energy tanks and yourphysique suffers.
Listen up.
My guest today reveals why themost successful people treat
energy like currency, and howyou can achieve and stay healthy
, even shredded year-round,while working not more, but more
efficiently.

(00:21):
You'll discover why trying todo more with your training is
holding you back some surprisingmental models to make fat loss
easier, and why doubling yourprotein on pizza might be the
smartest nutrition hack you'venever tried.
You don't have to trade yourhealth, energy or physique to be
successful in your business orcareer.
You can have both, and todayyou're going to learn how to
make it happen without burningout.

(00:42):
And today you're going to learnhow to make it happen without
burning out.
Welcome to Wits and Weights,the show that helps you build a
strong, healthy physique usingevidence, engineering and
efficiency.
I'm your host, philip Pape, andtoday we're digging into the

(01:03):
realities of being a highperformer without letting your
health suffer.
We're going to discuss theconcept of treating energy as
your most valuable asset if youwant to transform both your
physique and your success.
My guest today is Alex Feinberg, a former professional baseball
player, hedge fund analyst andGoogle executive who now coaches
high-performing men on what hecalls insane efficiency.
We love efficiency on this show, so I'm excited to talk to him

(01:25):
today.
Alex has developed a uniquephilosophy, and it's based on
psychology, behavioral economicsand lots of other concepts that
come together to help highperformers achieve better
results with less work, to staylean while eating foods they
love, and to build sustainablesuccess without flaming out.
Today, you're going to learnwhy intensity might trump volume

(01:47):
in training, how to identifythe highest leverage actions
that make everything else easier, and why Alex believes energy
is literally the new money.
Alex, welcome to the show.

Alex Feinberg (01:56):
Thank you very much for having me, Philip.

So you've said that making money with energy is
easier than making money withenergy.
What do you mean by that?

Well, what I said is making money with energy is
easier than making energy withmoney.
And to put that more precisely,say there's a billionaire and
you tell that billionaire, wouldyou give up half of your net
worth to double your energy?
Or would you give up half ofyour energy to double your net
worth?
Which would you even bet onpersonally?

(02:26):
A person with a ton of energywith a $500 million net worth or
a person with almost no energyand a $2 billion net worth?
Who do you think is going to beahead five or 10 years from now
?
Energy can be converted intomoney.
If you wake up and you're inshape and you've slept seven
hours and you have a couple winsunder your belt from the
previous weeks or months, you'reunstoppable.

(02:47):
And just think in your life,how many wins have you had when
you felt unstoppable versus howmany wins have you had when you
woke up?
You feel terrible.
Your body isn't giving you theright signals.
It's hard for you to work aneight hour day, let alone 10 or
12.
Which person do you want to beand which person do you think is
better suited to succeed in ahighly competitive world?

(03:07):
The guy with energy is going towin over the long run, and so
the person who's optimizing forenergy is going to end up with
more money than the person who'soptimizing for money over
energy.

Yeah, that makes total sense.
First of all, did I say itbackward Because when you said
it, I looked at my notes and itwas exactly what was written
there, so I must have justflipped it out of my mouth.
That's pretty cool.
So, yeah, that makes a lot ofsense, not even conventional
wisdom, but just intuition andmy own experience, having not
focused on health much of mylife and chased my career and

(03:40):
getting more tired and worn downwith age.
Just the idea that fitness,health, strength, all the
aspects of energy that I thinkwe're going to talk about today
are leverage points, right, theyallow you to do more, they
allow you to accelerateeverything else.
And there's a client I canthink of who is very much
focused on his fitness, but hisbrother is very much focused on

(04:00):
his wealth and his brother isfar out of shape and always out
of energy and not able to workthe hours.
And it makes a lot of sense.
But I want to get into a littlemore, because you've worked in
finance, you've worked in tech,athletics.
I love the combination of,probably, numbers tracking,
optimization, all that fun stuff, but we can go overboard on
some of that.
I know we can, and we can talkabout it.

(04:20):
Um, you talk about peopleoptimizing for the wrong thing.
So let's get into this a littlebit.
You know, when people are wayoff base, like what's when it
comes to this stuff, what'shappening?

Well, especially financially successful people.
You know, most people willjudge their self-worth based on
the thing that they assumethemselves to be good at, and so
smart people will judge theirself-worth based on their
intelligence relative to otherpeople.
Good looking people will judgetheir self-worth based on how
good they look relative to otherpeople, and people who make a
lot of money will judge theirself-worth frequently based on

(04:50):
how much money they haverelative to other people.
And if you're in the latterbucket, very commonly you can
look at your bank statements,look at your brokerage
statements and mistakenly thinkthat if the number has gone down
, I am worth less than when thenumber goes up, and what that
means is on a short-term basis,you're more likely to go through
a proper probably disorganizedchecklist of all the things you

(05:12):
need to do to get your cashflowup that month without
necessarily paying attention tohow it's making your body feel
or the long-term healthimplications of your decisions.
But if you think about whatyour life would look like if you
continue to make the trade-offsthat you're making, not just
for the next year, but the nextfive years, 10 years, 20 years,
30 years very often you mightfind yourself in a position with

(05:32):
more money than you can spendand you're going to run out of
money before you run out of time.
And so, realistically, if youwant to attack life in the most
intelligent way possible, youneed to understand where you are
most resource constrained.
And you are most resourceconstrained if you're already
wealthy around energy and aroundnumber of quality of years left
.
And so I know people.
I've worked with people whohave FU level money eight plus

(05:55):
figures of liquid net worthpost-tax and they're concerned
about getting an extra $20,000,$30,000 in free cash flow the
next month when they're a coupledozen pounds overweight.
And it's like dude, you are ata high predisposition to have a
life-ending event earlier thanyou want to, and you're
optimizing for a dollar amountthat is going to be basically

(06:18):
inconsequential for you in thelong term.
What matters is the amount ofquality years that you have left
on this planet, and if you havean eight-figure net worth,
chances are prioritizing yourhealth above all else is going
to maximize those numbers ratherthan maximizing the number of
dollars that you see in yourbrokerage statement.

So what I'm hearing is that if you're massively
wealthy and not focusing on yourhealth, it's going to still
hurt your further accumulationof wealth, and if you're not
wealthy, not focusing on yourhealth prevents you from
accumulating.
In other words, reinforcingkind of the main message here
about the importance of yourhealth and the energy behind all
of this.
You talked about a disorganizedchecklist.
Tell us more about what thatmeans for people.

Most people will wake up and they have a million
things to do and they only have15 hours to get them done, 12
hours to get them done, 16 hoursto get them done.
If they're working all day, andvery frequently people will
focus on the thing that hurtsthe most.
The fire that's burning thebrightest gets the most
attention.
The wheel that is thesqueakiest gets the most
attention.

(07:18):
Unfortunately, if you approachproblem solving like that, you
end up spread too thin andyou're not solving as many
problems as you possibly couldsolve.
So what I tell people to do,and what I try to do myself, is
identify a kingpin around whichyou can knock out one problem

(07:38):
that leads to other problemsbeing solved more easily.
So a great kingpin is yourenergy right?
If you sleep seven hours, wakeup, get a workout done before
9am, chances are the next 10hours of your day are going to
be twice as productive as if youwere up until 2am the night
before.
You got five or six hours ofsleep.

(07:59):
You didn't get a workout in.
You skipped breakfast.
You're running on coffee andadrenaline.
You didn't get a workout in.
You skipped breakfast.
You're running on coffee andadrenaline.
Like that is not high qualitywork that you're outputting.
And sure, there may be timeswhere you have no choice for a
one, two, three day sprint, one,two week sprint, I get that.
But if that's your everydayapproach, you are leaving so
much progress on the tablebecause you're just not going to

(08:22):
be as creative as you couldpossibly be by shortchanging
yourself on sleep andshortchanging yourself on
exercise.
Ultimately, in a highlycompetitive economy, you need to
be able to bring ideas,services and products to the
table that are differentiatedfrom the competition, which
require innovation and requirecreativity to put to market.
If you don't sleep, if youdon't have yourself at a high

(08:43):
energy, high optimism, highconfidence place, you're just
not going to be able to bring acompetitively differentiated
product to market and ultimately, you're going to lose market
share, which is the first stepto you losing pricing power,
which is the first step to youbecoming a slave in our
capitalist system.
You need to have adifferentiated point to offer
the market and you're not goingto have it if you feel like crap

(09:06):
all the time.

Yeah, all I could imagine is running around
putting out fires all day, right?
I see it in my career as well,where the urgent but not
important things get theattention right and sometimes
it's the I'll say, the easy,simple tasks on your checklist,
because now you're busy, you'rechecking them off.
It makes a lot of sense and thekingpin approach is a good way
to put it.
So you also talked about, interms of context of energy, how

(09:29):
your body feels, or listening toyour body, and that term gets
thrown around a lot, but I agreethat it's a common thread in
this space.
What do you mean by that andhow can someone objectively
listen to their body andunderstand how their body feels
right now, when they're in thethick of this kind of lifestyle
you're talking about and need totake a step back?

Well, it's a lot easier to understand your body
if you have a history of playingsports.
It's a little bit less easywhen you don't, because you
become attenuated to feelinglike crap.
It might be a pleasant surprise, or a shocking surprise, that
most people who are healthydon't feel like crap every day.
They don't feel tired.
In fact, they feel invigoratedand excited to get work done
that you might find to beanxiety-inducing.

(10:09):
Try it.
Try two different approaches.
One you sleep five hours.
One you sleep seven hours.
You view the exact same task orexact same person.
If you slept seven hours, youview the task that might be
daunting as challenging and cooland exciting.
You might view a person who,with five hours of sleep, you
view exhausting.
With seven hours of sleep, youview energizing, exhilarating,

(10:30):
and so you are more open toenjoying the challenges of life.
When you have more energy andif you're the type of person who
can look at a challengingsituation and say, no, hey guys,
I know this is going to be hardbut it's going to be fun,
you're going to become the typeof leader that other people want
to be around.
So if you don't know how yourenergy is number one, if you're

(10:53):
testing yourself in the gym,testing yourself cardio wise.
You're testing yourself weightwise.
You know if your output islagging behind your normal
sessions.
Now, that might not be becauseof sleep, it might be because
you're dehydrated, it might bebecause you're not eating enough
protein or not eating enoughwhole foods to get the amount of
macro or micronutrients.
But if you get yourself on areasonably consistent gym

(11:15):
schedule, you will know if youroutput is lagging where it
normally is, and that is a verystrong indicator of your
recovery levels and your energy.
That is, of course, if you'renot tracking it with a whoop or
an aura, which I don't, becauseI prefer using gym metrics to
inform me on my recovery ratherthan artificially or
scientifically created recoverymetrics that are meant to

(11:36):
approximate my ability toperform in the gym.
The number one criteria for ifyou're recovered is if you can
physically perform and mentallyperform, and so your performance
marks are going to be the mostaccurate measurement of your
actual recovery.

I'm so glad you said that, because we are
definitely all about lifting inan intelligent way that balances
the stress versus the recoveryand sometimes recovery is the
missing piece here and the ideaof using a consistent gym
schedule, whether it's three,four, five days a week, whatever
, and going in and you knowpretty much like clockwork how
you feel, I mean, to the levelof eating the twice-sized banana

(12:10):
before your workout affects youthis way and affect you this
way yesterday, and it's, ratherthan being a lagging indicator
or, like you said, a numberwhich is at best a correlation
that may not even be accurate ona wearable, you know you can
get more reps or you're maybenot eating enough, not sleeping
enough, whatever.
Before we get into the gym stuff, because I definitely want to
talk about it is it normal forsomeone to wake up in the

(12:35):
morning and have what youdescribed in terms of energy,
right, super excited, ready togo face the challenging projects
head on, and by one, twoo'clockclock that has completely
flipped, you know, cause?
This is the normal profile wehear from people is that drop
throughout the day, the 3 PMenergy crash, the total, I mean,
you know, by six, 7 PM at night?
You don't want to do anything.
You want to binge Netflix.

(12:55):
Is that normal?
Is some level of that Okay,like what?
What are your thoughts on that?

Well, by population standards, it is
normal, whether it's normal orhealthy or necessary or three
different uh you know questionsor forms of evaluation.
I would say a vast majority ofadults experience that, but if
you're aware of the foods thatyou put in your body and the
pace at which you work and howthat makes you feel, uh, you can
stave off probably two-thirdsof that.

(13:22):
I got off of a call with one ofmy clients a few weeks ago
who's just absolutely burned outwith his work at his startup,
especially coupled with the sidebusiness that he runs, and I
told him look, you have threeoptions because even if you're
managing your energy asefficiently as you possibly can,
um, uh, from a sleep standpoint, from a training standpoint,

(13:43):
from a diet standpoint, you needto work less.
And there's three things thatwe can have you do.
We can have you delegate more,and we've already gone through
your schedule and we canreasonably assume that 10% of
the things you're doing you candelegate.
So it's not like 100% you canjust farm out, but most people
they can look through theiraction items and if they have a
12-hour exhausting workday, 10%of that can probably be

(14:04):
delegated to other people.
You can decline other things.
And so this is what one of thebenefits of being a high
performer who's kind ofirreplaceable is if he declines
work, what is his employer goingto do?
It's a little bit different ifyou run your own company but
he's an executive at someoneelse's company.
You can decline work right,where it's going to be a lot

(14:25):
easier for them to find somebodyelse to do the work that he's
declining than it is for them toreplace him.
So he can decline the work,delegate decline or ignore.
The third thing is if it's alow priority item, he can just
ignore it.
You don't have to do everythingthat you're expected to do.
And the specific case for himwas there was one piece of a
puzzle that impacted forecastsfor a small percentage of his

(14:48):
company's quarterly revenue, andthe reality was the amount of
time that it would take him todo this thing right would be
insignificant compared to theamount of time it would create
to just grow the business by 5%extra.
So rather than get the forecastright to a 10th of a percent or
a half of a percent, why don'twe just figure out how we can
grow the business by 5% and say,hey, sorry, I didn't have

(15:09):
enough time to do all the otherthings, and so there's typically
ways that we can augmentperformance while reducing the
amount of demands that peoplefeel, and what that will allow
them to do is pace themselves alittle bit more evenly or
intelligently throughout the day.
Because even if your sleep is onpoint, even if your training
and diet is on point, you couldfind yourself tired at 3 PM and,

(15:30):
by 7 PM, just wanting to gohome, have a drink and watch TV.
Okay, so that's number one.
We need to figure out how youcan be more efficient with less
time.
Number two we need to be moreefficient with how we train and
how we eat.
So morning training will wakeyou up for the day.
Evening training will typicallywake you up at night and will
make it harder for you torecover and will make it harder

(15:51):
for you to have energy the nextday.
So I much prefer morningtraining or lunchtime training
is early in the day for peoplewho can do it.
The second thing is try not tooverload on carbs at lunch.
Right, I know that pasta mightseem appealing, I know pizza
might seem appealing, a hugeburrito bowl might seem
appealing, but if you're goingto overload yourself with carbs
at lunch, you're going to get ahuge insulin spike after lunch

(16:13):
and you're going to want to takea nap.
And maybe you work for aChinese company, like the
company I worked for when I wasworking in the cryptocurrency
space, where you can take a napat your desk for 20 or 30
minutes after lunch.
But chances are, if you work inthe United States, you don't,
and it's not common for you tobe taking a post lunch siesta.
And so if that's not common foryou, then we need to be more
intelligent about how many carbswe're consuming and when we're

(16:34):
consuming them.
So skip the carb bomb in theafternoon and you will not have
an insulin bomb in the afternoon.
And if you don't have aninsulin bomb in the afternoon
and if you don't have an insulinbomb in the afternoon, chances
are you're not going to havethat lethargy that you've been
experiencing.

Two three, four o'clock and beyond.
Yeah, cool.
So I'm just taking notes herebecause I agree with everything
you said and some of this has.
For some of us, we've learnedthrough the school of hard
knocks.
right, let's be honest, or we'reself-included right or working
with clients, because I canthink of one client right now
who's faced the fear of carbs.
He's super lean, high performer,very much afraid to gain weight
and afraid to eat carbs.

(17:09):
But what you're talking abouthere is there is an
experimentation aspect to thisas well.
There's data and tracking.
We can get into what trackingmeans, because I've heard you
talk about people obsessing overtracking too much for what they
get out of it is not worth whatthe effort it takes to track,

(17:30):
kind of like your example withignoring things or declining
things or delegating.
So when it comes to carbs, forexample, that's just a great,
highly effective tip.
As well as working out in themorning and I know people make
excuses for things and we cantalk about maybe how to get
around those but when youcombine eating a good breakfast,
having carbs around yourtraining, having a balanced
lunch and then would you agree,having some carbs, that in the
evening can be helpful for folks.
I know for some it helps withsleep.
What are your thoughts on that?

I mean I would prefer to be stacking more food
earlier in the day and I don'tnecessarily do this by example
Like, if you actually look at mymeals I eat, my dinner is my
biggest meal and that's notsupposed to be the case, because
it does affect your sleepquality.
But yeah, I mean, if carbs atnight make it easier for you to
sleep, it's because of theinsulin that you get after you
eat the carbs.
The carbs themselves shouldmake it harder for you to sleep,

(18:12):
and so the question is are youwaking up in the middle of the
night, perhaps more than youcommonly do after eating like
large bowls of pasta for dinner?
And if that's the case, thenmaybe those carbs are helping
you go to sleep, but they're nothelping you stay asleep.
So be cognizant of that.
Pay attention to how you feelafter eating certain meals, and
if you have outcomes that youwant to repeat, perhaps consider

(18:33):
repeating those meals, and ifyou have outcomes that you do
not want to repeat, consider notrepeating those meals.
I know it sounds crazy, butyour body will have very
predictable responses to thingsthat are good for it and bad for
it, so just pay attention.

That's the best tip you can give of the whole
podcast, and the one that people, I think, ignore the most is
they want an answer.
They want you to tell them whatto do, and I'm like usually the
answer is your body will tellyou what to do.
You've just got to try it.
Like it may not work, so try it.
The morning training, too, isanother one that I just get.
I see so much resistance aboutwhere you've got these

(19:06):
trade-offs you're making.
You're like okay, if I train inthe morning I have to get up
earlier.
Does that mean it now cuts intomy sleep?
But of course you're pulling itfrom somewhere else.
Assuming you're trainingconsistently already and it's
like 4 PM training, how do youshift it to the morning?
What are the biggest roadblocksyou see for folks trying to
make that move?

Here's the deal.
Okay, when I worked incorporate America, I got up
earlier than everybody else thatI worked with, but I was one of
the last people in the officeand nobody cared.
And the reason nobody caredwasn't because I was the top
producer, it was because I hadthe best physique of anybody on
the floor and everybody knewthat I was up early, working

(19:44):
hard.
And so if nobody actually caresif you're the first person in
the office, people care ifyou're lazy, and so if you
realize that you're not beingjudged on the things that you
think you're being judged on,you're being judged more
primally.
And if people know that you'reup moving weights and sweating
in the morning, you have a muchwider grace period in most

(20:06):
professions than other people.
Training in the afternoon doesnot afford you that luxury.
So you will not get away withleaving work early, so you can
go to the gym as easy as youwill get away with showing up to
work late because you are atthe gym, okay, and so remember,
this is not.
This does not mathematicallyeven out.

(20:27):
There are certain buckets thatyou can pull from that.
Don't just net out If you cando it the same thing later in
the day.
You need to understand wherethe cheat codes are, and the
cheat code is if you get up anhour earlier, say, it takes you
two hours to get to the gym,train, shower, do all that stuff
.
If you get up an hour earlierthan everybody that you work
with and you get to work an hourlater than everybody you work
with, but everybody knows thatyou were training your butt off,

(20:49):
nobody's going to care.
Okay, so you're actually savingtime.
Instead of using those same twohours after work to get to the
gym to work out, to shower,you're using them before work.
It takes half the time.
Okay, in addition to it takinghalf the time, you're going to
be probably 10 to 20% moreproductive during your day for

(21:10):
having got that workout donebefore, and your sleep is
probably going to be 10 to 20%better because you're not.
You know, you don't haveadrenaline running through your
veins from, you know, finishinga workout and maybe a
pre-workout drink at 5, 6, 7 pm.
So you're not actually investingmore time.
You're investing substantiallyless time going to the gym when

(21:32):
you do it early in the morning,but it does require that you
wake up and go do it, and solook, if you can't wake up to an
alarm.
I know you can wake up to anearly alarm.
You've had an early flight, butyou've had an alarm go off to
and you've not missed the flightmost times, so you can get up.
It might take a week or two orthree weeks of adjustment, but
you're going to end up gettinghundreds of hours of

(21:53):
productivity back by making thatswitch, and those are the
switches that you need to make,the ones that will pay you back
in time and energy over the longrun.
You make investments.
You make financial investments.
You're investing $100,000 insomething this year where you
could buy a nice Mercedes, oryou could put $100,000 into a
stock or cryptocurrency orsomething that you expect to

(22:15):
grow over time.
Well, the same thing is truewith your time and your energy.
You can invest a small amountof time and a small amount of
energy in the morning and overtime, you'll get that time back,
you'll get that energy back andultimately, it will grow and
multiply in the long run, thesame way a financial investment
will.

Is this the suspiciously simple logic you
talk about a lot Because youmade a lot of points that are
almost never made related to theefficiency of morning workouts.
Right, we could argue forhaving more energy.
That's awesome, but the factthat not training in the morning
and trying to train in theafternoon has all these other
implications were judgedprimally.

(22:53):
That's a great way to put itjudged primally.
I see that myself and, havingworked in a field with engineers
and software folks who roll inat 10 o'clock anyway, it almost
doesn't matter, and since COVIDnow, people working hybrid and
everything generally doesn'tmatter.
I'm sure there's specific jobswhere you know if you have to
clock in.
Unfortunately, that's adifferent situation.
No-transcript.

(23:41):
Why are the way most peopletraining not working for them
and holding them back Even ifthey do track?

their workouts, but they're chasing the wrong
thing.
It's because most people eitherdon't think about fitness 11
months out of the year and thenone month out of the year, they
look at themselves in the mirrorand they're disgusted by it and
they think that they have apenance to pay, and they think
that, because they've beengluttonous for the previous 11
months, that the opposite ofgluttony is the solution to
their problem.
Number one or number twothey're stuck in intermediate

(24:11):
mode.
Intermediate mode meaning maybethey were overweight a couple,
two, three years ago and the waythey got out of being
significantly overweight was bynever missing a workout, by
being consistent, by maybetracking their macros, and
they're so scared to regressfrom the changes that they made
to go from beginner tointermediate that they're
incapable of making the changesthat are necessary to go from

(24:34):
intermediate to advanced.
And so, typically, when whenyou're going from beginner to
intermediate, you do need toundergo a little bit more pain,
you do need to get a little bitsore, you do need to sweat a
little bit more than you wereaccustomed to, but success isn't
linear, and so simply doublingthe changes that you made to go
from beginner to intermediatedoes not guarantee that you're
going to go from intermediate toadvanced.

(24:54):
In fact, frequently it can leadyou to burning out faster or
even regressing, and so,unfortunately, a lot of
offerings that are made topeople commercially are built
around the myths that peoplehave about what they need to do
to be fit, namely sweat a lot,get sore or try something really
hard.
I get so many people say, oh,you should try this workout, you
should try CrossFit, it'sreally hard.

(25:14):
Or you should try this workoutit's.
It makes you super sore.
Like, I don't care about thosethings.
What I care about is being ableto run faster and lift
progressively heavier weights,and if it's hard and doesn't
allow me to do that, that is theworst workout I could possibly
do, because it is a highinvestment, low return workout.
It's going to suck and you'renot going to get anything for it
, yeah Right, if it's easy andit lets me do those things.

(25:36):
That was the best workout thatI can possibly do, because it is
a low investment, high returnworkout, and the reason why
people should be focused ontheir output more than their
input is because having a highresting metabolic rate will burn
far more calories outside thegym than having a high calorie
burning workout will burn insidethe gym.
So in my early 30s, I was infar better shape as a

(25:58):
cryptocurrency executive than Iwas as a professional athlete in
my early 20s, and this is notsupposed to happen, because my
genetics are the same and Iwasn't on any performance
enhancing drugs and I had afull-time job.
But what was different was Iwas allowing myself to take days
off whenever I wanted to takethem off, when my body was
telling me to take them off.
I was able to train exactly theway that I wanted to train,

(26:19):
taking as much rest periods inbetween sets as I wanted to, as
well as in between workouts.
Like I had mentioned, what thatenabled me to do was train at a
higher capacity than I had evertrained before, meaning I was
running faster, or at least myintervals were faster than they
were in my early 20s.
The weights I was lifting wereheavier than they were in my
early 20s because I was doingless of it.

(26:39):
Okay, so, because I was doingless of it, I was able to get to
4% body fat using hydrostatictesting.
Shredded abs, eating three to4,000 calories every single day
of like pizza, burgers, friedchicken and tacos Awesome food.
Never in a million years did Iever think I would look like
that.
That was not my intention whenI underwent those workouts.
All I wanted to do was performat a higher level and I couldn't

(27:02):
figure out why I was getting insuch good shape, considering I
was not in that shape in myearly 20s, when I was actually
getting paid money to playsports.
Okay, so enter the basalmetabolic test right, where I
had my my basal metabolic ratetested by body spec, who also
does DEXA scans, and I went inand I found out that my body was

(27:24):
burning like 3,300 caloriesestimated on days that I didn't
even work out.
That was just about a 2,600calorie resting metabolic rate
plus 700 calories like talkingto people on podcasts or writing
emails or walking to therefrigerator, like not including
any exercise.
And so, clearly, the way that Iwas training in the gym was

(27:44):
leading me to burn almost athousand calories more than the
average male my age.
On days that all I did was siton the couch, okay.
So most workouts that you do,the really hard workouts where
you sweat a lot and got reallysore don't allow you to burn
1000 calories in the gym.
Okay.
Well, just like, investing inthe right cryptocurrencies and
investing in the right equitieswill lead to a far greater

(28:08):
financial return than getting ajob that pays you a lot of money
on a monthly basis, investingin the right exercises will
yield a far better restingmetabolic rate benefit than will
going to the gym and doing avery hard workout that makes you
sweat a lot and gets you reallysore.

Yeah, I 100% agree with that.
I think this easy versus hardand the compound interest from
your metabolism are highlymisunderstood concepts and, like
you mentioned, you can onlyburn so many calories working
out and there's lots of issueswith that too, because that's
not why we work out, we train.
It also doesn't hold up when welook at the constrained energy
model and how we adapt and allof those things become more

(28:47):
efficient, which backfires.
When it comes to that, I wantto just sit on the easy versus
hard spectrum because a whileago, when I was revisiting the
language of my podcastdescription, right, One of the
phrases you hear a lot is worksmarter, not harder, and I think
that's a misphrased.
I don't know, you tell me, butlike, I always think it's work
smarter, not harder, right, butyou still have to work.

(29:09):
Quote unquote hard Hard is kindof subjective, I guess in some
way Do you think it's an inversecurve of like easy versus hard
and the output when it comes totraining?
Well, almost like there's aprofit maximization curve, like
right in the middle you have tofind like the price versus, you
know, demand, or is it more of a?
There's always a hard, it's thetype of hard.

Well, there's that too.

It's the type of hard right yeah.

Your workouts need to be hard, Like you're not
going to increase your workoutcapacity by not going through
singular moments of discomfort,right?
So if you want to get better atrunning intervals which I think
has a very strong correlationwith your not just VO two max
but your resting metabolic ratethose are going to be
uncomfortable, particularly thelast 10, 20, 30 seconds of your

(29:55):
last two, three, four intervals.
They are, there's no two waysabout it, but that doesn't mean
they should be hard every singleday without resting ever, Right
?
Uh, your last few reps of a setare going to be hard, but that
doesn't mean you need to do 20of those sets, Okay.
So there is a?
Uh, you know, just like yousaid, there's, there's an
efficient frontier of how hardit needs to be, and ideally it

(30:20):
needs to be very hard, but theredoesn't need to be that much of
it.
And so if you think about aworkout that I'll do, you know
I'm only doing nine to 15 setsin the gym three days a week for
lifting gym, three days a weekfor lifting.
Now, those sets might requiremultiple warmup sets, but it's
nine to 15 working sets plus 13minutes of cardio most of the

(30:42):
time.
So I'm doing a 13 minute cardiowarm up, Um, and then I'm doing
a nine to 13 set lift highintensity.
Right, it takes me four minutesof rest to recover from my sets
because they're they're at, youknow, near peak load.

Yeah, let's define intensity.
We're meaning we're meaning thetraining context of intensity
as in load, just so people don'tthink intensity means something
else.

Yeah, so I'm pushing my body and all of my
lifts require a tremendousamount of core engagement, a
tremendous amount of luteengagement, a tremendous amount
of lat engagement, becauseeverything in your core is going
to make it easier for you tomove weight and so, especially
as you become more effective atlifting weights, what it is is.
It's a neurological change thatyour body makes by being able

(31:28):
to harness a greater portion ofyour skeleton.
And when you're able to harnessa greater portion of your
skeleton to move weight, youneed to rest longer in between
sets, you need to rest longer inbetween workouts, but that's
the only thing that you can doto continue to push your body to
get stronger and better andmaintain or increase your
resting metabolic rate over time, and so you ultimately learn to

(31:50):
deal with the discomfort ofthose last one, two, three reps
of you know six, seven, eightsets per workout, and then
that's all it is.
But if you look at, you know alot of the commercial classes,
whether it's an orange theory orsomething similar, it's like
they're doing, you know, a setevery 60 seconds.
You're doing 45 sets in aworkout.
It's like and those are allhard Every rep burns and I

(32:14):
guarantee you, my reps, don'tburn.
Yeah, burn is not the, is notthe feeling that I feel when I'm
close to failure.
My sets are hard but they don'tburn, and so realize that
burning is simply a, a feelingof lactic acid buildup.
And unless you're talking aboutdoing, you know, assault bites,

(32:34):
bike sprints, which will burn,um, and you will have a lactic
acid buildup.
If you want to set PRs, doingthose, your lifts really
shouldn't burn.
Um, when you're, when you'renearing mechanical failure,
you're going to near mechanicalfailure.

Your body's going to get fatigued, but it's not
going to burn, yeah totallyagree, and I think there, when
people get started on a properstrength training program with
all that rest and recovery, whatlooks like a bare minimum
effective dose of sets?
If you looked at justhypertrophy literature, which is
not what we're necessarilytalking about, right, we're
talking about strength andhypertrophy.

(33:08):
It depends on your goal.
People are always surprisedLike I'm not sore, am I actually
making progress?
And I think that's where theinitial doubt sets in, for a
beginner perhaps.
And then they need to do withthe tracking that you talked
about and actually show that no,you're actually getting
stronger, you're getting aresult here.
What's your ideal type ofapproach for a beginner?
Is it a starting strength stylelike barbell program?

(33:29):
Yeah, yeah.

So I mean you don't need to do barbell if
you're a beginner, especially ifyou're a beginner, especially
if you're you're into your 30s,40s or beyond.
Dumbbells are are fairlyappropriate.
I don't have anybody barbellsquat, uh, you know if they
haven't barbell squatted, uh,it's just not a movement that I
think is really great forbeginners, requires more balance
and mobility than most peoplehave.
But if you've done it, you knowhow to do it.

(33:51):
Okay, like we can talk aboutsafer variants of lower, uh less
lower, lumbar stress.
And then I prefer dumbbellbench press to a barbell bench
press.
But you know, like three by 10,three by eight, three by five
style workouts are fine forbeginners.
The difference, uh, I wouldactually prefer higher reps for
beginners because beginners needto practice lifting weights.
So, just like shooting freethrows or hitting baseballs, you

(34:14):
become more efficient at doingthings that you have a lot of
practice reps doing.
And if you're just starting outlifting weights, I think a lot
of newbie gains are from peoplejust practicing lifting, and so
a lot of the ideas that peoplehave about what they need to do
to be more effective as a lifterare what they need to do to be

(34:34):
more effective as a beginnerlifter.
So never miss a workout whenyou're a beginner because even
if you're tired, your body canstill use the practice.
But once you've gotten throughthose first two or three years,
then it requires a little bit ofan adjustment where you have to
start paying attention to howyour body feels.
If you pay attention to howyour body feels as a beginner,
you're never going to go to thegym the second day you're there
because the first day it's goingto get too sore.

(34:55):
But if you don't pay attentionto how your body feels and
you're 10 years in, blow a discout, you could, you know you
could sublux certain things, youput yourself at injury risk
that you don't want to be in.
And so oftentimes life ischallenging because the lessons
that we learned yesterday arenot applicable today and the
things that allowed us to get tohalfway up the mountain are not
going to allow us to get allthe way up the summit.

(35:16):
And we need to be nimblecognitively nimble enough to
recognize when the things thatworked in the past are not going
to work in the future.

Yeah, cognitively nimble, that is true.
Sometimes I use the image thatthe person we are is constantly
changing, right, even whenyou're talking about your diet
and how you respond to say, acalorie deficit may change from
fat loss phase to fat loss phasebecause the person you are in
that moment has a lot ofdifferent variables going on in
your life and the person you areand your body has changed, etc.
You talked earlier about thelinear approach works at first

(35:45):
for beginners.
You can have a lot of frequency, like you can get into the gym
frequently and recover fairlyquickly and grow fairly quickly.
Fairly quickly, would you saythat the executives and high
performers you work with aremostly in the beginner camp
because they've neglected theirhealth and starting off, or a
lot of them have really tried togo to the gym and now they're
close to that intermediate point.

A lot of the people that I work with may be
technically in the beginner campbecause of what they've done
over the last six months, butthat doesn't mean that they're
going to follow a beginner styletrajectory, because if you've
built up training capacity, evenif it was 20 years ago, uh, yes
, you may be on a three by 10style plan for your first six
months, but you're going toyou're going to get that get

(36:25):
those gains back very quickly,um, and if you're consistent
with it, you know, probablywithin a year you know 12 to 18
months you'll be in a betterspot than you were, you know,
three years into lifting, soyou'll get it back.
It does take patience, um, andyou know you will feel like
you've regressed a little bit,but you know, number one, you're
not trying to get hurt and soyou need to challenge your body

(36:47):
with the appropriate stimulus.
That's challenging, but itdoesn't put you at injury risk
and so, like, yeah, we're notgoing to load the barbell with
two or three plates on it whenyou haven't lifted in six, six
months.
Like, you're gonna have to be alittle bit more intelligent
with it, but you can scale itfaster.

A hundred percent.
So you also mentioned thejourney you went through, uh,
related to your leanness andyour training, consistency and
proper rest and recovery, andhow you could eat pizza and
tacos and burgers which I lovebecause, like, we're all about a
flexible diet that makes sensefor you.
So break that down for us.
Right, like people are hearingthat saying, well, I, you know,

(37:23):
I'm not going to burn 3,300calories right, there's the
skepticism of how that happens,how you can maintain leanness.
Is there variability fromperson to person?
There is, but how muchvariability is there?
Those kinds of, I'll say,skeptical, curious questions
that will come up around that.

Well, there's definitely variability person to
person, and I will tell youfrom personal experience there's
nothing great about being ableto eat 3,300 calories per day.
In fact, if I could satisfy myhunger on 2,200 calories per day
, that would be easier, it wouldbe cheaper, it would put less
stress on my gastrointestinalsystem.
I don't need to eat eightslices of pizza for the sake of

(38:00):
eating eight slices of pizza.
I would much prefer to besatiated after four slices of
pizza.
It just so happens that mymetabolism is running so fast
that it requires eight slices ofpizza for me to be full, and so
, no matter where your restingmetabolic rate is, if you're
eating when you're not hungry,you're going to get fat, most
likely.
But if you're eating proteindominant real food when you're

(38:22):
hungry until you are full,there's a very good chance that
your caloric intake is matchingwhat your caloric needs are.
If you're training at a highintensity Okay, so that's the
key.
If you're training at a highintensity and you're eating
protein dominant real food onlywhen you're hungry, stopping
when you're full, whether yourresting metabolic rate has you

(38:43):
burning 3,300 calories on restdays or 2,300 calories on rest
days, you can eat pizza, burgers, fried chicken and tacos, you
can't necessarily eat them withthe same macronutrient
proportions that come when youbuy them commercially made.
So one asterisk is I would bethe one making these foods for
myself.
I would generally be using seedoil-free ingredients, but, more

(39:05):
importantly, I would bedoubling or tripling the meat
compared to what you would getin a commercial substitute, and
I would stop eating it when Iwas full, not stop eating it
when the meal was completed.
Okay.
So if you have the disciplineto say, hey, you know what, I've
had half of a doublecheeseburger I'm good for now.
I'm going to finish the otherhalf in three hours.

(39:25):
When I'm hungry, cool Right.
But if you have to eat all thefood that's in front of you,
then you know, no matter whatyour threshold is, whether it's
2,200, 3,200 or 4,200 calories aday you're going to have
trouble stopping.

Got it?
Yeah, no, really great points.
It's funny you mentioned thedouble the protein, because if
you see it in my sandwiches youalmost lose the bread, right,
because there's so much meat onthere.
And all those people are like,why don't you just not have the
bread?
It's all me, yeah.
But uh, yeah, the fact that youhave to be training at high
intensity as a prerequisite isgold, because I get into
arguments all the time with theYouTube haters about when I talk

(39:59):
about eating carbs or carnivoremaybe isn't serving you if
you're training and they're likeyeah, but you get fat eating
carbs Like yeah, probably ifyou're not training right, if
you're not training at all, letalone at a high intensity.
And then the making at home isreally important.
You mentioned dinner is yourbiggest meal.

(40:20):
It would be my biggest meal ifI made most of my dinners.
My wife now does.
She's become such a great cookthat she tends to make these
like fairly lean four or 500calorie dinners.
So I've sort of been trained toget my food earlier.
But it really works out wellbecause then I kind of can have
some flexibility there.
Anyway, side tangent, how oftendo you think people should in
their diets incorporatequote-unquote.
Real foods, whole foods,nutrient-dense foods versus how

(40:40):
much allowance is there in aflexible diet for just utter
indulgences?
Hedonistic indulgences, let'scall them I don't know.

I think 90 of the food at least that you eat
should be.
You can't answer that with aone-size-fits-all answer.
Fair point, um, it's like howoften should you drink?
Well, if you're an alcoholic,never if you're in.
Some people are addicted tosugar.
I've worked with people thatare like I can't just eat a cup
of ice cream, I have to eat likea half gallon.
I'm like well, that's going tobe a problem For me.

(41:09):
I can eat a cup of ice creamand so you know I can eat ice.
So, ideally, I don't likepeople eating junk food every
day, because when it's aneveryday type thing, you tend to
do it, whether you crave it orwhether you don't crave it.
So I much prefer to spaceconsumption around cravings,

(41:33):
where you just ask yourself am Icraving this or am I not?
Because the thing aboutprocessed food, the thing about
sugar, is, the more you eat, themore you crave.
Sugar is, the more you eat, themore you crave.
So if you tell yourself and thisis one reason why I don't like
caloric based plans is becausepeople are like, oh, I have 200
calories left, I can have thisice cream bar Like, okay, well,
you know what that means is,even if you weren't craving that
ice cream bar today and you ateit because you had 200 calories

(41:55):
left, now tomorrow you have anice cream craving and you may
not have those 200 calories left, and so it's going to be that
much harder for you to getthrough that diet that's based
around a number that's notaligned with what your body's
telling you, and so you knowthis is one of the big things
that I tell people around theholidays is you're always going
to be around sweets.
It's okay to have them, justmake sure you're craving them.
You stop eating them when youstop craving them.
That, ultimately, is what isgoing to reduce your cumulative

(42:18):
consumption the most, with theexception of people who are
addicted to sugar.
Those people are a little bitharder to coach because they
really can't have any.
The way you can't say like oh,I know you're in like the 12
step program so you can justhave like one beer every three
days.
It doesn't work like that Shoutout to Philippe.

Max (42:34):
I know Philippe for a long time.
I know how passionate he isabout healthy eating and body
strength and that's why I choosehim to be my coach.
I was no stranger to dietingand body training, but I always
struggled to do it sustainably.
Philip helped me prioritize mygoals with evidence-based
recommendations, while notoverstressing my body and not

(42:55):
feeling like I'm starving.
In six months, I lost 45 poundswithout drastically changing
the foods I enjoy, but now Ihave a more balanced diet.
I weight train consistently but, most importantly, I do it
sustainably.
If a scientifically sound,healthy diet and a lean, strong
body is what you're looking for,a free lead pay is your guy.

For sure.
There's definitely those caseswhere something in the house is
going to be a problem, no matterwhat, even if it's hidden away,
and we have to pull out adifferent tool for that, like
utter avoidance, like youmentioned.
So you mentioned satiety andhunger signals a few times,
including the craving, and Iknow some people are thinking
well, how do I tap into that?
How do I train myself to dothat?
Like there must be a habitformation period.
What's your process for goingfrom what most people eat, which

(43:40):
is like 70% processed, ultraprocessed foods in America Like
that is the number, it's insaneto what you're talking about,
which is 90% eating for yourhunger, eating for your training
goals?
What's your process?

It's not hard to make burgers and pizza and tacos
at home, like, it's just notright.
So you can buy a bunch of ofground beef and you can grill it
all, especially now it's thesummer.
You can grill five pounds ofground beef on the one Sunday
and you can probably do it in 45minutes, okay.
So five pounds of ground beef,that's going to feed a family of

(44:13):
four for a day, or you, yeah.
Or one meat for a day, right.
But like you, or and you canyou can prep 12 pounds of ground
beef Like a grill can hold alot of meat, and so you need to
realize that you can do it.
You just need to start preppingfood in bulk, and so ground
beef is one of those foods thatyou can prep in bulk.
You can buy pizzas, wherethere's nothing prohibiting you

(44:36):
from buying pizza and thenbuying chicken and then slicing
the chicken up and throwing thepizza in the oven and adding
your own chicken to the pizza.

Max (44:43):
Pretty easy actually.
And throwing the pizza in theoven and adding your own chicken
to the pizza Pretty easyactually.
Yeah, right, so it's like it'snot hard.

The reason why you don't do it is because it's
anxiety-inducing and it seemsmore challenging than pressing a
couple buttons on your DoorDashapp or going through a
drive-through.
But if you actually think aboutthe challenge, it's not hard to
buy chicken, slice it up andput the thing in the oven.
It takes almost the same amountof time as like pressing a
couple of buttons on DoorDashand waiting for the food to come
to your door.
So there's very simpleadjustments that people can make

(45:08):
to turn their food fromsomething that's like highly
processed to something that'slike generally acceptable.
They just need to getaccustomed to change, and change
is the hardest thing becausechange itself is anxiety
inducing and we're wired to wantto continue the habits that
we've established over the lastdecade of our life.
Um, no matter how urgently weneed to change them, no matter

(45:31):
what the upside or that changeis, we want to stick to what
makes us feel comfortable.
Unfortunately, that's going tokeep us in the same place or
worse than where we are today.

Yeah, change a hundred percent.
It's a roots in that necessity.
So you met.
I like your approach of right.
We don't.
We don't like restriction.
We don't want to cut and avoidjust just as our entry point,
but instead make the thingsourselves at home.
I had a client who lovedChick-fil-A and this is a habit
stacking example.
Maybe we could talk about that.
He loved his Chick-fil-A and Isaid you could just make exactly

(46:00):
what they give you at home.
It's like super simpleingredients and guess what?
You're going to save the walkor the drive to the place every
day and you complain you don'thave enough time to go for a
walk.
Well, there you go.
Two birds in one stone, right.
But meal prep and planning,it's just one of those things
you said.
It's changed.
People think it's overwhelmingin their brain.

(46:21):
And then oven it takes me fiveminutes to prep and I can cook a
whole starch or vegetable thing.
It really is that, I agree.
What about the habit stackingor something else that you talk
about, which is like actionsthat have cascading or what are
they called Knock-on effects orsecond order effects that make
other things easier?
Can you give us some goodexamples where people can really
leverage their time that way,beyond what you already have?

Train for intensity, doing high interval
sprints right.
So measure your intervalsprints.
Do them better today than youdid them last week.
What that's going to do is it'snot only going to increase your
resting metabolic rate, andexponentially so.
So the better you get at them,the more it's going to increase
your resting metabolic rate.
Very likely it's also going tocurb your hunger.

(47:06):
And so people say, oh, you wantto build lean mass?
Because lean mass increasesyour basal metabolic rate.
It does.
It doesn't actually increaseyour basal metabolic rate that
much, otherwise powerlifterswould be leaner than they are.
But having a really high VO2max, having really high cardiac
output, absolutely increasesyour resting metabolic rate.

(47:28):
I challenge you to find a guywho can run a six-minute mile,
who's fat and it's not because,oh well, if you carry that much
extra body weight, you can't runa six-minute mile.
No, if you look at guys who arecollege-level runners, they're
running 430 miles and, generallyspeaking, every pound you add

(47:48):
will add about a second to yourmile time.
So there are people who havethe genetic capability of
running sub five minute miles.
They're not going to be able torun sub six minute miles and
carry 60 pounds more fat.
They could run a sub six minutemile if they wore a 60 pound
vest on them, but the fat itselfisn't the thing that's making

(48:10):
it hard for them to run.
Actually, being able to run ata fast pace makes it very, very
difficult for your body itselfto hold fat.
That doesn't mean you need tostart running, especially if you
weigh over 200 pounds.
That could be more damaging toyou than what the reward is.
But you need to be able to domeasurable cardio at a very,

(48:31):
very fast rate, and thedownstream effects of that are
going to be greater thanprobably any other exercise you
can select in the gym.
The other thing is most peopleneed to be working on what they
ignore, right?
Most guys?
Oh, I work out all the time.
Okay, so you do upper body allthe gym.
The other thing is you knowmost people need to be working
on what they ignore, right?
Most guys?
Oh, I work out all the time.
Oh, okay, so you do upper bodyall the time.
How many days a week are youdoing squats, like to parallel?

(48:52):
How many days a week are youdoing cardio?
Oh, I'm not really good at that, okay, yeah, that's why you're
doing.
You're doing a frat bro workoutwith a frat bro diet and you
wonder why you look like a 35year old frat bro.
That's like you need to trainlike an athlete.
Athletes train legs.
Legs have 55% of your musclemass in them.
Legs are ultimately what'sgoing to keep us healthy, keep
us at lower risk for breakinghips as we get older, as we can

(49:13):
stay healthy and mentally alert.
So we need to be training ourlower bodies, we need to be
training our cardiac capacity,our VO2 max, and the downstream
effect of that is going to beenormous, because not only is it
going to put us in a positionto feel better and look better,
you're going to start to realizethat these mental frameworks,
mental models, don't just applyto fitness.

(49:33):
They apply to almost everywhereelse in life.
And once you start stackingwins, the momentum of those wins
will be get other wins.
It'll be easier for you to getpromoted at work, easier for you
to negotiate for more moneywith your next job, easier for
you to get promoted at work,easier for you to negotiate for
more money with your next job,easier for you to have better
relationships with your wife orother women probably not both
and you're going to see thedownstream effects of just being
a better winner.

Yeah.
So those are your massiveleverage points right there.
And you're kind of inspiring meagain because less than a
couple months ago we had twoquick in succession episodes
about sprinting, one with BradKearns he's co-wrote Bored to
Walk with Mark Sisson.
Highly recommend checking thatout.
He advocates a lot of what wetalk about, which is you got to
lift, got to sprint.
It actually is kind of againstlong distance running, mainly

(50:17):
because most people can't do itright.
We can talk about that, butwhen you talk about sprinting,
are you talking about, say, acouple of days a week on flat
ground for, you know, 10 minutesof high recovery, low work
intervals, or this is more likeHIIT style, tabata style type
sprints.

It depends who you are Like.
I don't actually I thinksprints would be great for
people to do.
I am an ex-professional athlete.
I haven't run a sprint in over10 years, just because I don't
think that I'm at the traininglevel to where it it makes sense
from a risk reward standpoint.
Right, um, interval sprints Ican do, and my interval sprints
might be at the same speed assomeone else's sprint, although

(50:57):
they're like kind of the samespeed that, like elite marathon
runners can just run for 26miles in a row.
Um, so you know, my intervalsprints are going to be like
they're going to peak at like 12to 13 miles an hour at a slight
incline, and so that's going tobe higher than most people's uh
interval runs.
But it's actually like, thinkabout it, these Kenyan guys
could run like 14 miles an hourfor like three hours in a row,

(51:21):
uh, without stopping.
So you know, if you compareyourself to the wrong people,
you'll get dejected and decidethat it's not worth it to
continue.
But if you just compareyourself to the person you were
a week ago, you'll find itinvigorating to continue to push
your upper limits, and so Idon't think you need to be
sprinting at a hundred percentmax capacity, but I do think
that you need to occasionallyeither be running or assault
bike sprinting, especially ifyou're over 200 pounds at a

(51:44):
capacity that is verychallenging for you to do a
couple of times a week.

Good, yeah, no, I love it.
That's great, especially thebecause it's anabolic and also,
you mentioned, it could increaseyour expenditure quite
dramatically if you're notalready doing it.
It also aligns with saying workon what you ignore, because
most of us are not doing thatpiece of it, even if we're now
into lifting.
And I think you mentioned thehunger signals as well.
Again, that's a really bigthing, because people doing the

(52:11):
more chronic metronomic cardiotend to have more hunger versus
the ones doing the style thatyou're talking about.
So, all right, really good.
I know we're short on time hereand there's probably more we
could cover, but what'ssomething that I didn't ask that
you think would be reallymeaningful to cover?

Okay.
So why you need to prioritizefitness over over work and why
it's going to make sense for youand you're going to get paid
back both ways, is not only dueto the more energy that you have
, but good looking people makemore money, and so if you can
make yourself into a high energyuh income magnet, money is
going to be it's going to findyou right A lot, and so the

(52:48):
actual way that you're going torelate to the world is going to
fundamentally change when youaffirmatively decide that you're
going to be a high performing,high physical output machine.
It takes a little bit of amental switch, but you just look
at this, look at the studiesgood looking people get paid
more money to do the same job asbad-looking people.

(53:09):
It's just that is you need torealize that humans are primal
and humans treat other humanswho are in good shape better,
and one of the keys that Ilearned when I was a student
athlete at vanderbilt universityis if you want to lose, find
games where you have to play bythe same rules as everybody else
, and if you want to win,identify games where you can
play by different sets of rulesand run on an inside track

(53:30):
relative to your competition.
This was the same thing that Iobserved when I elevator pitched
my way into Google with noexperience in tech, just having
the ability to speak well andlook good in a custom tailored
suit.
It's helped me over and over inmy career.
Prioritizing fitness overgetting promoted has allowed me
to grow my income statement,grow my balance sheet, grow my

(53:54):
professional network andultimately succeed, not just
financially but physically, andso most people need to be
prioritizing their physicalhealth in order to maximize
their personal wealth.

And I think people shy away from talking about that
.
I'm glad you did because it'sjust reality.
I mean, I know it from lookingaround me at folks I work with.
I know it from my owntransformation over the last few
years and I'm still working onthat.
But, like the way peoplereceive you, the confidence you
have, uh, just the you knowstature walking into a room, all
those are important things.
So, especially in business,especially with high performance
, and, like you said, it's aninside track because how many

(54:29):
people are doing it?
It's it's like the elite youknow 1% that are even doing that
.
So this has been great.
A lot of really cool pointshere that you know we haven't
quite covered on this show.
So thank you for coming on.
Where can people reach out toyou, alex?

You find me on X.
Find me on Instagram at AlexFeinberg one F, e, I, n, B E R G
If you can't see it in thetagline, or go to Feinberg
systemscom.
You can see what I'm doing onthe health side.
Also, if you are a high poweredexecutive and want to learn
what I do for my high performingclients and send an inquiry
note and we can get in touchthat way, but my DMs are open

(55:04):
you can find me on the majorsocial media networks and we can
chat more that way.

Great.
We'll put those in the shownotes.
Xig Feinberg systemscom.
Alex, thanks so much for yourtime.
Really enjoyed discussing thiswith you.
You're a great communicator.
Really really interestingconcepts that you know I
definitely agree with and morepeople could benefit from.
So thank you.

You're welcome.
Thank you so much for having me.

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Lose Fat and Get Shredded with Less Effort and More Energy (Alex Feinberg) | Ep 340

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Lose Fat and Get Shredded with Less Effort and More Energy (Alex Feinberg) | Ep 340