Fitness essentials, the truth about fasting, and habits that keep you healthy with Brett Billings, F-NP

I'll sleep when I'm dead and I just need to push.

That's actually, that does not work.

You're gonna die way faster if you're not sleeping.

You can get away with a lot of bad habits

when you're in your teens and twenties,

but as you get older, those things catch up to you.

So you need to eat, like eating is good.

You also need to have periods where you don't eat.

Your body's incredible at what it can handle and what it can do.

It's like if you prioritize your health,

you're gonna be in it for the long run.

Welcome to Dealer Out of Office.

We're your hosts.

I'm Frank Zambo.

I'm Jake Burkle.

And we are here to talk to you

about Dealer's interests outside of the office.

Now watch this drive.

What is up, everybody?

Welcome back to Dealer Out of Office

As always, I'm your host, Jake Burkle,

alongside my good buddy, Frank Zambo.

We had a hell of a guest in Alidona last week.

And I think because we could have made that another two or three hours

because of how invested we were in our own health,

we want to keep that, keep that train rolling.

So I want, I think it's that for everyone right now.

It's like, how, how do we get in the best shape possible

for those summer months,

especially some of the guys here in Michigan?

She's already been quitting time or quit.

What's the quitting week two weeks after?

Yeah, you're right.

So we were already kind of past that,

but for the people that are still holding on strong

and want a little bit, a little, you know,

maybe an extra push or a little more knowledge

who are getting into the fitness game,

we have an incredible guest on.

We saw him with the shirt off.

That's that was the sun for me.

So we're like, what is he doing?

The dude's yoked.

What is he doing so we can get to that point?

Give us, give us his.

Yeah, absolutely.

Right. So with that said, welcome to Dealer Out of Office.

Brett Billings, what's going on, buddy?

Hey guys, I'm good.

I'm good. Thank you for having me on.

I'm excited to chat about whatever you want to talk about, but.

What's working for you is what we're going to,

we're going to get, we're going to get off the rails a little bit,

but we're going to try and keep it on for right now.

So before we dive deep into just, you know,

again, why you're yoked and what we can all do to get there,

give us a little background where you're at, what you do,

you know, at least for, for the professional aspect.

And then of course we'll, we'll dive into the other stuff.

Yeah, sure. So I'm a family nurse practitioner.

I've been in practice now for about six,

going on seven years, I think.

And then about, about two years ago, I opened my own practice.

I'm here in Southern Oregon in Medford.

And I have two different practices.

I run one as a family practice.

So I still see men, women, children of all ages.

And then I have a men's health clinic.

And that's where, I mean, it's really my,

my goal of that is to just help each patient optimize their health

and really focus on, you know, men 30 to 60

and trying to get everything optimized as well as we can.

Well, that, perfect.

Cause that's what we're, that's what we want.

Cause we're in that, in that range.

So I think one of my first questions is like,

everyone's busy, right?

A lot of the people that listen to this podcast,

they're, you know, GMs, they're, they're high up in the dealership life

and the automotive life, or just, you know, busy in general.

So you got three kids, you have two practices.

What's like the non-negotiable for you in terms of fitness?

Like is it three times a week, five times a week,

or just, hey, you got to get your steps in.

What is it that you find that is just the consistent and all that?

Yeah. Yeah, that's a great question.

I really try to prioritize some kind of exercise,

like five to six days a week.

And generally I'll do like some, some resistance training

three to four times a week that I try to like have consistent

throughout my life, regardless of time.

And then I'll, I'll have various types of like longer distance

endurance training or, or cardio type stuff that I'll do.

And that kind of ebbs and flows a little bit more

depending on how much time I have in my schedule.

So they're, you know, seasons where I mainly do

like one or two times a week for 45 minutes

or times when I have more availability

and I'll train for some event or do something

where I can really spend more time on it.

But I really try to have, I would say 45 minutes

devoted to exercise every day,

five to six days a week that I, that I pin in there

that is time that can't be taken over by something else.

So I love it. I think everyone knows too.

It's like, you got to work out to get, to get big.

Someone as busy as you, how old, how old are you again, Brett?

Right now I'm 35.

35, kids?

Yeah, my kids are five, five and three.

Okay. And you got two businesses, two clinics.

Um, me, I have kids 11, nine, eight, five, all boys, all in sports,

got a job, you know, eight to five.

Then I got kids sports afterwards.

Then all of a sudden you like to golf on the weekend,

you know, golf on the weekdays too.

You got golf league, you got dart league, you got whatever.

Balancing it all, when do you find the time to fit it in

and when do you find the best time to get that 45 minutes

to an hour workout in?

Yeah, for me, it, it only works if I do it early in the morning.

I inevitably, there's more things that need to be done as the day progresses.

And if I wait till like midday or afternoon or in the evening,

even it just, it never happens.

And I'm also the kind of person that after like seven or eight PM,

I'm toast man, I do not have the energy to like go do a workout.

So usually I am up around four every day and I'll try to do my workout

and get all of that done by like five, sometimes a little later.

But that time is almost guaranteed to be available because no one else is awake.

Yeah, yeah.

So again, two boys for me, two and a half and six months.

So I'm a 430 in the morning kind of guy.

And it took me, you know, the better part of a month to like just, you know,

telling yourself, you're not, you know, don't be a lazy, you know,

piece of, you know what to get out of the door, right?

What's kind of your mentality other than like, hey, this is a non-negotiable

for people that are trying to get into it.

Is it, you know, don't put all your eggs in one basket too soon

because you're going to get burned out.

I see that a lot.

Everyone goes, you know, full bore four AM for a week.

And then it's like, no, my body just can't catch up.

Right. So for someone that's, hey, I'm very busy, you know, seven to seven.

And they only have that morning time.

What's a little, a little hack or little trick that you've used, you know,

to kind of get into that routine or rhythm?

Or is it just that, like, just get out of bed and start moving?

I mean, I think it's probably both.

Like there has to be some level of commitment because there's a lot of

mornings when I would much rather sleep or, you know, not work out.

But I do think that one thing that's really helpful is committing to a bed time.

You know, you have to, like, decide to go to sleep and within a reasonable hour.

So I don't really ever stay up past 10 o'clock.

I mean, there's exceptions for, I don't know, some celebration or event.

But on your day to day routine, you really have to decide, like,

do you have to commit a little bit to sleeping a little earlier if your time,

and then you probably need to go to bed by, you know, 9 or 10 to still get decent sleep

and feel okay to exercise.

So I think committing to a good sleep pattern is critical.

And then it just takes time to develop that habit.

Your brain will adjust.

You'll kind of get used to it, but you just have to set your wake up time and make it that morning

or make it that time every morning over and over and over.

And eventually your body kind of adapts to it and it feels a little bit more normal.

It's still going to be hard at times.

But I think if you can get a good routine of bedtime and wake time, it helps a lot.

Was it 60 days to become a routine or something like that?

Well, I think two is like the Glenn Mundy don't hit the snooze button,

like set that snooze and see how long I've actually,

you know, like the Michael Jordan, you quit once it becomes a habit.

And it's like, all right, don't quit on that snooze.

Because like at the end of last year, I was hitting that snooze three times,

four times, all of a sudden that five, a morning wake up turned into 545.

So far this year, I've been good.

I don't want to be the first to stop.

And then, you know, once you started, because then it's easier to quit,

you know, to hit the snooze the second time.

But then I find out too, I have a similar schedule.

I try to get in bed, you know, you try to get in bed by 10 o'clock.

And then I got the kids and then they're up at nine, nine 30.

And, and I try to get that at nine, but then, you know, you never,

you never know when the old lady might, you know, I mean, is it my dyke?

You never know.

And then, and then you're off to the nine and then that turns into a five,

you know, you only get five hours of sleep, six hours of sleep.

So it's, it's tough balancing as a 35 to 40 year old guy trying to do it all

and get those early morning workouts.

I get it.

You know, there's a lot of excuses that creep in and.

But it's a routine too, right?

Like if you're doom scrolling, if you're watching TV, like,

I think that's a big part of it too is, is getting into a routine like,

hey, read a book, like do, you know, do something to turn your brain off a little bit.

You know, to just scroll and scroll and scroll and then try and go to bed.

You're just wired and it's never going to work out for you.

So having a.

You do have to get that.

But my point though, too, not just like that kind of time, but like time with

your sniffing out like there's wind.

That's true.

You're at the work all day and then you're driving the kids to sports and then

your kids are in bed by nine o'clock.

And then it's like, then I want to be in bed by nine o'clock.

It's like, Hey, Jessica, I didn't see you while we, you know, it's like,

so you got to find that, that perfect balance of everything.

And then when do you find time to go, uh, you know, hit tea times at night or.

Dart league, you know, it's, it's a lot to balance.

No question.

Yeah.

I think it's good to like figure out your top priorities in life, like your

family time with your wife, exercise, whatever they are, and kind of narrow it

down to, I don't know, a handful of things that you're saying, either decide,

like, I won't compromise on these no matter what.

And I will decide whether or not I'm going to commit to doing some activity or

even let my kids commit to something based on whether or not I can maintain

those things.

Like, uh, it's for me, it's critical that I get to be home by four or five every

day because I want to spend time with my kids and I don't want to get caught in

this rut where I start working more and more and more.

And then I never see my kids, uh, and I also want to have time with my wife and I

want to have time to exercise.

So there are certain things we say no to, um, I think there's a, especially in

our culture, there's a lot of, um, push to just do more and more and more,

especially for men.

And there's probably some value in doing less sometimes if it allows you to

prioritize what really matters in your life.

So while, while staying on kind of the sleep topic in your professional

experience, I know some guys are very different and Frank brought up Flynn

Lundy, who's a consistent, like four hours of sleep guy, but he's, you know,

as he's deep into his room, he's even in the, in the good sleep.

So how much sleep is truly needed for recovery, you know, both physically,

mentally, in your, in your opinion, should everyone be get it?

Yeah, you know, the, the typical number that's thrown around, especially in the

medical books and stuff is like eight hours.

It's kind of the magic.

Usually between the six to eight hour window of, of time in bed is like

sufficient to get enough sleep, but it totally depends on your quality of sleep.

So you can, you know, be in bed for 10 hours and still have really poor sleep

because you didn't get enough of those deep and rim cycles.

And you can be an hour in bed for, you know, in theory, you could be in bed

for four or five hours and get everything you needed.

If your brain was able to just like basically stay in deep and rim sleep.

So there are some just fortunate few who can get along with four to five hours because

there's a component of that that's just out of your control.

We, that you, most of us don't have that ability.

And so you should probably expect that you're going to need to be in bed for

seven hours on a, like the short side to actually get sufficient,

like quality sleep.

But, you know, there's a lot of good sleep tracking technology now that you can get

on like a Garmin watch or those, you know, whoop band or the order rings.

And it's super helpful to actually start tracking and look at like, okay,

what are my normal habits?

And then you can see the way things like caffeine late in the day affect you or a

meal late at night, or there's so many things that can influence your sleep a little bit.

And it's really helpful to be able to look back and say, oh yeah, I should probably avoid that

because that really disrupted me.

Brett, for, for the folks coming into your clinic, your men's health clinic.

So last week we talked to, to Ali, she was more, she looked at our blood work.

She has a great sense of both sexes, but it sure was a lot of female.

Her clinic was more female oriented.

Yours being more male oriented.

Our listeners are a lot in that like 35, you know, 30 to 55 range, 60 range.

Let's say what are most gentlemen in that age coming in to see you about right now?

A lot of the same stuff we're talking about, just sort of a general feeling of

fatigue or lack of energy, low libido, they feel like they're, they're starting to notice that

they don't feel like they did when they were in their 20s.

And it's usually kind of general type symptoms, but longer recovery times from exercise,

like me and I'm sore now for four or five days or, you know, a difficulty building muscle or

maintaining strength, just kind of seeing some of what would be normal for age, but like at a

significant pace. And I think the most common would just be like, I just feel tired or physically

like I don't have energy. Sure. So as we kind of get into it, we're kind of wrapping up sleep,

but we're going to talk obviously nutrition and we're going to talk supplementation,

we're going to talk exercise. Where do you rank those in terms of like most important to like

least important or are we tying like you got sleep, nutrition, exercise, supplementation.

I mean, some people have heard, are you sleep's number one? I've heard some people are you nutrition

number one, right? So in your opinion, what should people, our listeners be prioritizing and kind

of chip away at? Yeah, I would be hard to pick probably the number one because you're, they're

all important. I understand. You're all essential. I would say something that I feel like has been a

recent development or discovery for me is, is sleep being the most important for me. And I think

this is probably true for you guys, but any like ambitious young male is usually going to try to

just push, push, push. And I think in our like, in our time when growing up, the general mantra was

like, I'll sleep when I'm dead and I just need to push. And so as I've gotten older, I've realized

like, that's actually, that does not work. You're, you're going to die way faster if you're not sleeping.

And you just can't function. I mean, you can get away with a lot of bad habits when you're

in your teens and twenties, but as you get older, those things catch up to you. So

I really have put a priority on sleep in the last probably two years and that's made a big

impact for me. But I think exercise is, is equally as, is critical. And I like to sometimes tell my

patients the, or broaden the term from exercise to like movement. It's not just about like going to

the gym and lifting weights, which is I think when most people think about exercise, it's really

about just a lifestyle where you're physically active, where you, you're out, you know, hiking,

you're working in your yard, you're, you know, you do some weightlifting, you do some running,

but you can do so many things. I think just making an active lifestyle is, is really critical.

And then those are top two for sure. Nutrition is critical, but I would put exercise and sleep.

It's funny how they go, Brett, like hand in hand, because I did start tracking my sleep

over the last 18 months, I would say. And I would say, I played nine years in the NFL.

I didn't drink a whole lot. A lot of that time was spent training. Now that I'm out of the NFL,

I thought maybe I would start drinking alcohol more, you know, like now I'm just living for me

now. I'm not living to go perform on Sundays. But now when I see the effects alcohol has on my sleep,

where everyone maybe thought like, oh, I'll go crush a bourbon before bed and I sleep like a

rock or have a glass of wine. I sleep like a rock. If I did that, now I see, even though

maybe I can sleep eight hours, but my sleep score is like through the floor, you know, it's,

it's terrible. So my body is obviously not reacting well to alcohol. I've come to find that out.

And I just now, maybe it's mental, maybe whatever, I don't handle alcohol very well. So I probably

drank less alcohol now than I did even in my senior high school, just because I know it's

bad for me. Now every once in a while, you mess around with the occasional like gummy or whatever,

just to kind of have some type of something, you know, but even that, and even last night,

I took a, I took a gummy and I didn't sleep great. My sleep score wasn't great. Whereas

like the last couple of days before that, I didn't do anything and had great sleep scores. So

yeah, you gotta have some give and take. Yeah, just give and take some balance.

You brought up a funny point and I kind of glad you did because we see in our, you know, in the

industry, like everyone, you know, four a.m. wake up, you know, splitting everything, you know,

you got a, you know, four o'clock, you sleep at noon and you got a grind, grind, grind,

where it's just like, yeah, but you know, what is that going to do for you in the, in the long run?

You know, I think there's been too much of a, I don't want to call it pride thing. I don't know

what it is, an ego thing of trying to work hard in the next guy. Whereas like, if you prioritize

your health, you're going to be in it for the long run, you're going to be able to, you know,

what do you always say to me? It's not the hours you, it's not, it's not how many hours you put

in is what you put in your hour. There you are. So that's why I'm only here a couple hours a day,

Brett. That's because of what I put in my hours. Frank doesn't know what the office looks like

after 3 30. No, yeah, I did say really in the thing, I was eight to five, but eight to 3 30.

Switching gears, something that Frank and I are both big on is also nutrition. You know, we,

you know, we talk about fasting and autophagy. We talk about whole foods, whole foods, and that's

kind of where like, I got two kids and that's a big thing in my house is like, it's whole foods,

right? If you can pronounce it, you can eat it, right? Looking at ingredients knowing, hey, you

know, an apple is, you know, an apple, right? You know, vegetables, meats, you know, sourcing

correctly from, you know, places, you know, the food is sourced from, right? Like I bought a half

of cow, right? I know exactly where that cow was from. I know exactly what they put into it. So

stuff like that. For people that are constantly moving, I mean, you said nutrition is equally as

important as up there. What are you doing? What's kind of your, what's worked for you? What diet?

Every two hours kind of guy, are you doing intermittent fasting? You know, what, what do

you find to be productive? Yeah, well, I will say that it, it does depend on the person.

You know, there are different phenotypes, your body will process like carbohydrates,

for example, differently. Some people like metabolize those so quickly, and they're able

to tolerate a lot of carbs and look great and have low body fat. Some people, their body just

soaks those up and turns them into fat so fast. So there is some variation amongst just sort of

your genetics, but I think generally speaking, the key things are like having some awareness of

your macro nutrient intake is just so helpful. You don't have to count calories, but it's,

it's a good idea to have a general idea of like how many calories do I even eat in a day, because

I think most people will basically have the assumption that their diet's pretty good. It's,

they're just thinking back and they're comparing themselves to a typical American, which has a

terrible diet. So it's really helpful to like track some of those things for a while, like what

do I normally eat? And, and what does that translate to how many, you know, how many grams of protein

am I getting fat and the calories? I, I do eat typically every three to four hours. So I have

a routine since I've been on since in high school, and just developed that habit when I was an athlete

playing sports all the time, which is a pretty common one. You're just hungry all the time. So

you just eat like anytime you get a chance. But I've been able to kind of maintain that. And it's

just, it works for me. So I have like small, high protein meals every probably, I don't know, four

hours or so. And that varies. Sometimes I do just like drink a protein shake or eat a protein bar,

but I really do try to eat whole foods, you know, actual, you know, meat, vegetables, those sorts

of things. Having kids has dramatically thrown, just like I mentioned, the works for me. And that

can be a huge challenge. Boom. Yeah, I eat the words I've ever eaten in my life after having kids.

And that's a challenge to like overcome. But yeah, I try to stick to, I mean,

we can get into the details if you want, but the, the actual, you know, grams of percentages.

And, you know, we can go down the trail of fasting too. But generally speaking,

just having awareness of your macro nutrients and kind of monitoring that.

Yeah, I mean, I, I would like to get into it because I think nutrition is something that you can,

nutrition, in my opinion, is something that you can have the most control over, right? You know

what you're putting in your body, you can, you know, you can say yes, you can say no,

you know, time, sleep, like kids, exercise, that's going to be a problem. All of these are stuff that

we have control over. And if it was easy, everyone would be looking like Brett, right? Sure. It takes

discipline. And then when, and then Ali got to a point when you've put in the work, and it still

isn't working for you. Now you can get into some supplementation to help aid that or speed that

up, right? Once you've proven that, Hey, I've tried everything. It's just not working for me.

And you brought up a good point about like phenotypes. And hopefully I said that right.

It is again, not to keep dropping the NFL card. I played in locker rooms with folks from all over

the country, all different types, walks of life, different nationalities, backgrounds.

There's a true thing about some people process carbohydrates, like it could be Kool-Aid or a

bag of Skittles differently than I break down a bag of Skittles. And almost like it was their

protein shake I watched. And again, it could be African American, whatever it is, but

one of my good but Alan Bailey, the guy was just Jack, not that he had a poor diet, but I would

say my diet was more around meat, because that's what I needed. That was my edge to stay in the

league, whereas Alan was just like an absolute freak, big, like a 310 pound version just of Brett,

Brett just delts and just arms. And again, he could just eat kind of whatever he wanted and

just built muscle. So I think some of those food sensitivity tests too, to find out what your

phenotype or what your body can process the easiest to generate, to stay healthy, to generate

muscle, whatever that is, is important to find out as well. So in terms, I know we kind of talked

quickly about like fasting, and that's something that I've kind of gotten into with autophagy and

you know, did a 72 hour fast stuff like that. I hear more and more about autophagy, right,

as you kind of go through eating, cancerous cell stuff like that. But to actually track it is very

difficult because you got to get it on a cellular level. Fasting, we're saying thumbs up, thumbs

down, you know, how often should you do it? Does it really make a difference? What are your thoughts

there? Yeah, I think it's helpful to define fasting a little bit because it varies a lot

in people's heads what fasting means for them. But you know, generally, depending on what you ate,

your body's going to be in a fasted state probably four to eight hours after a meal.

And it's essentially processed everything you've eaten. That spike in blood sugar has come back

down to normal. And so you can enter a fasted state, you know, relatively quickly after a meal.

And then how long you sustain that is generally what we would consider fasting, like how long

you've gone before you've eaten. So overnight, you typically, you know, you're you're fasting,

it's, you know, what we call breakfast, breakfast, you're breaking that fast of,

you know, no food there. So your body is that's why you call it like I'm 31 years old. That just

that just hit you. That just hit me. You're breaking the fast. Holy hell. Gotta break the fast.

God, I feel like an idiot. Gosh, you learned something today.

So, you know, your body needs to have being periods of feeding and of fasting. And so you

need both of those similar to like you need sleep and exercise, you can't just exercise

continuously without sleeping without collapsing, and you're not going to just sleep continuously.

You need to be you need to eat like eating is good. You also need to have periods where you

don't eat. There is so much debate, even amongst the highest level of specialists in this world on

like, what is the optimal amount of like time between meals? And should you eat two in a day

or one or should you eat every three hours? And I don't know that we'll ever come up with a very

clear answer. I think there's some some components of it are just every human body is a little

different. And so there may be people that do really well with certain types of eating schedules

versus someone else. But I think generally speaking, doing a basically intermittent fasting where you

go 10 to 16 hours without eating, or a better way of looking at it is having a strict feeding

window when you're eating, I eat all my food between, you know, 10am and 6pm is really helpful

because it gives your body ample time of no food to like really process and digest that and then

all sorts of cellular things change and transition when you're when you're not eating. And so that

is probably the ideal. At least that's the consensus right now is doing like a feeding window

about eight hours, maybe up to 10 in a day. And then you don't eat generally one to two hours

before you wake up. And then you try to avoid eating anything about three hours prior to bedtime.

And is that just I mean, you talk about people like intermittent fasting has helped me lose

so much weight. Well, it's really still calories and calories out, right? You're just limiting

that window. So at the end of the day, you just can't consume the bag of chips at the end of the

night. The cereal before bed. I mean, your chips and glasses. I don't know that there's

like significant magic effects of intermittent fasting for losing weight. I think it's that

it really helps people control their calorie intake. And then they're not also just continuously

having spikes in their blood glucose because they eat, you know, at 10pm and at 5am and again and

again and again. So but yeah, I mean, there's all sorts of claims about the power of fasting and

some of it may be true. I just think the general idea is that you should have, you should have

deliberate periods where you do not eat food and it shouldn't be just when you're sleeping.

All right. My last one is autophagy. I'm sorry. I'm very, you know, I'm very into this one.

What, you know, you read different things, right? There's different tests. It's like,

hey, you know, your body goes into autophagy after 24 hours and you read something else

at 36 something else, 48. And then you see like 72, right? That was awful. Trying to do 72.

Right. Like, but there was a truth to it that you got after the 48 hours, like, okay, like,

I'm okay. Right. I fought through some BS. I'm okay. Like your body's incredible at what it

can handle and what it can do. Is there another word for saying getting into ketosis, right? Would

that be autophagy? Basically autophagy, isn't that when you start to eat your own set, like all

that? Yeah. Which which ketosis is when it starts eating your own body, your own stored fat for

fuel, correct? So is that something that you're like, hey, if you're, you know, if you're a healthy,

you know, 30 to whatever your old male, like, yeah, try it, see what happens, like be a guinea

pig or you're like, no, there's really, you know, there's no science behind it. Yeah. I mean, there

are definitely some, some things that occur in the body, some cellular changes and in hormonal

changes that come with prolonged fasting. I think you can get the majority of the benefit of that,

though, with doing like a 12 to 24 hour fast. The the value of a greater than 24 hour fast,

I think is mostly in the mental. And this is somewhat of my opinion. But, you know, there

is some value in just like doing something difficult that you didn't think you could do,

whether that's fasting or some physical challenge. But to break your mind of like, I need to be eating

all the time and realize like, I'm okay, like I will survive if I wait on this, this meal or if

you go two or three days without eating. It does give your body a chance to essentially clean itself

out though, like a prolonged fast. I mean, your GI tract will mostly empty out. And you can have

a lot of like, autophagy, I think is I like just describing it as like a cleanup, your body's kind

of like going through and just eating up stuff that it doesn't need anymore. That does happen,

like even when you're eating food, like autophagy is, you know, it's something your body's doing

all the time. But there's some unique things that happen during fasting. So I don't usually

recommend fasting for more than a 24 hours to patients unless they have like a mental or spiritual

purpose. And it needs to be very specific of like, I'm trying to do this for X amount of reasons.

And it needs to be kind of planned, especially if you're doing more than three days, like you

really need to kind of pay attention to what you're doing, make sure you're getting enough salt and

water, you're going to get really low blood pressure. That did happen. That was bad. I like

there were a few times I went to pick up my my six month old and I was like, there was some there

was some black spots going on. Like I got sit down, like lemon water was salt. And after that,

I was actually feeling pretty good. So I like what you said there, Brett, about the mental battle

there, because that's almost why I always hated running growing up because running for me was

always a sense of like, it was like a disciplinary act of like, Oh, you screwed up, oh, you're

talking, go run a lap. So when I run, it's almost like innate in me my whole life was like running

a lap was like punishment. So now when I go run, you know, three miles, I got to break that of like,

hey, I enjoy this. I never really enjoy it. It's more of like a mental battle. I have like,

not just physically it hurts. But mentally, if I tell myself, I'm going to go run six miles,

I'm going to go run a 10k, you get to that mile marker four in your head and you're now you're

battling yourself of like, I don't, I'm hurting. I want to quit. This sucks. This sucks. Quit,

quit, quit, quit. And then you're like, Nope, then you get the mile five, then you get the

mile six. I did do a do ethylon sprint. You know, you run two miles by 12, then you run a

5k at the end of it. And I was dog tired. And that last mile, it was like, I just walk, just

walk, just walk and you're just battling yourself. So the mental, not just the physical but the

mental aspect of the mind is an amazing thing. And that internal struggle you have is the real

deal. Oh, I have a one. So we kind of talked about nutrition, talked about these things.

Time to spill the beans, Brett. I knew you were going worse. I didn't know if I was for creatine,

worst I ever done, right? Up until three days ago, someone may have popped a couple peptides,

tried it out and trying it out. What we have some high testosterone up here in Michigan,

I don't know what you guys are like in Oregon. You saw the lab, didn't you? You saw the labs?

They were good. So I don't know what is the testosterone levels like over there in Oregon

for you and for your folks and what's worked for you when it comes to, because right now,

the big thing is TRT in our age group in our area, TRT peptides. Let's jump into some of that stuff.

Yeah. Well, on the question of like testosterone levels, you know, for guys who are not taking

TRT and that like 30, let's say 30 to 40, 45 maybe, so young, but not in their 20s. I find

most guys are hovering between with their total testosterone hover somewhere between about

400 and maybe up to 600, but I don't, it's pretty rare that I find guys who are over

600, like less than 5% of the time. And that's really among like pretty healthy guys, like a

huge percentage of my patients are firefighters and that kind of professions, you know, where

they're pretty physically active and engaged. So I think I commonly see guys in our, you know,

age group 30 to 40 though that are under 300 even, which is, you know, obviously quite low.

I think an optimal testosterone would be somewhere between 500 and 1000 as the total

testosterone. And then of course the free tea, it does matter, but there's a lot of factors into

what your optimal members should be. And it's not all the same for everyone.

So, so to that, you mentioned the range and it's like the range has changed so significantly.

It used to be like 200 to 700, which from someone from an outsider's perspective,

that's super wide. Now we're saying 5 to 1000. Like, what does that range really mean? I guess

it's kind of my question and like why we keep moving it up, we keep, you know, why is it just new

studies are coming out? Is why the fluctuation, how big that range is? Yeah, I mean, for the most part,

the reference ranges have kind of hovered around somewhere between 300 to 900 or 1000. That's been

relatively consistent, but you'll see every lab will establish their own reference range and they

will vary maybe 100 to up to 200 points. And some of that just has to do with how the lab

determines its reference ranges. But I think from a medical professional standpoint, what would be

considered unanimously low would be a total T that's under 300. And then I think unanimously high

would be somewhere over 1000 on a regular basis. So that usually makes up kind of the typical range

that a medical professional is going to be thinking of is somewhere between 300 to 1000.

I wonder if your testosterone levels, I was just thinking, Jake, correlate to how far you hit a golf

ball. Because there's not many people that hit a golf ball further than me, except for Jake.

My testosterone 750, Jake somehow is 850. And Jake's a strong dude, he's not overly tall. I mean,

I'm taller than him. You're not going to look at me like, Oh, that's a big duty hits a bread.

Going into the goal, you wouldn't say that guy hits a long golf ball. Me walking up, I'm excited

to see this guy hit a bar better goes a far ways guys come up to me. Jake's like a surprising

like, Oh, I didn't know that was coming out of that guy. I'm 59185 the most big legs, the most

average height numbers, but can hit the piss out of a golf ball, like it goes a mile. So

maybe there we should do a study on testosterone levels in drive distance. It's got Matt Wenner,

another listener here. I'm going to have to get his testosterone tested. Big strong,

he's strong dude looking dude doesn't hit a very far ball ball somehow. So yeah, we're gonna have

to maybe do a side study on testosterone and drive. We're gonna have to at least take a couple

days to figure test this out from the office. Yeah, put that out. Yeah, we're gonna do a company

expense Royce. We're doing a study for the podcast. I think everyone here's another question too. So

let's just say I come into your clinic and I am a 300 level 400 level testosterone. All right,

I'm 3540 and I want I need to get on testosterone. What does that commitment look like? Cost,

time? Now am I going to be on? What is it going to cost somebody a month or a year?

And then how long are they gonna be on it? Is that rumor true? Like once I get on it,

now I'm gonna be on it for the rest of my life. I have to do this now for the next 60 years of

my life. You know, like, what does that commitment look like? Yeah, well, if you're if you're starting

on testosterone, you know, there's there's kind of two ways you can get it. There's a ton of clinics

now that like my especially big online ones you can join like Kone or something else like that,

where you can just pay a monthly fee and then be on essentially have testosterone prescribed to you

for as long as you want. Those generally cost you somewhere between 150 to 300 a month. You know,

they vary a little bit, but that's pretty standard if you're just going through one of these like

online clinics and a lot of local ones like even mine is is a monthly recurring cost. You can go

through your insurance and just kind of like let's say your primary care guy is checking it for you

and it's low needs a gal start you on it. You can get insurance to cover that, but you have it has to

be consistently under 300. And then in theory, it's free. I mean, obviously some of your costs of

having insurance and whatever. Is there something to say to a physician to kind of help your cause

a little bit like, you know, people when they need riddling, they're like, I can't focus and whatever

it's like, here you go. Is there something you should walk in there and be like, I can't, you

know, whatever it is. Is there something to say? I mean, yeah, from a medical professional's point

of view, you have to have symptoms. So if you're coming to me, you're like, I feel so great. And

we just happen to check your testosterone and it's like 400 or even 350. But all I hear from you is

you're feeling great. I'm not going to put you on testosterone because there needs to be some

amount of like, I feel, you know, fatigue, worn out low libido, there's got to be some symptoms.

And then you're usually just need to let them know that it's been like consistent, you know,

it's not like, Hey, I felt tired three days ago. I wonder if my T is low. It needs to be a kind of

a pretty consistent pattern of at least three months of like, I'm doing everything I can, my

sleep's fine. I'm, you know, doing a normal life, but I just feel like I don't have physical energy

and all those sorts of things. And then you're still going to find some doctors will either

check it or they won't. I think most people are in one of two camps of like, I don't mess with

testosterone, I'm not going to check it, like, don't ask me about it, or they're like, much more open,

or going to look at it for you and try to give you some feedback on it. But yeah, you can always ask

and just sometimes you just have to say like, just I want this test, just order it for me.

Are you able to tell us because there's one part of my question earlier, Brett, that you've

never answered. Have you tried, and if you want to say no comment, I guess you can say that,

have you experienced TRT? Yes. Yeah. I, when I was like 27, it was before I'd done like,

I mean, you're at that age, most men don't do any medical care. So I hadn't done anything,

but I was constantly exhausted. Like I just felt so worn out. My sleep was fine. I was like, I don't

know. It was enough for me to want to go see a doctor. So I wouldn't saw a guy and

they checked a bunch of stuff. But my testosterone at that time was like 17580,

somewhere in that range. And so, you know, we did a whole long process, had to have it repeated.

It was still that low. Then I had to see a urologist and went through all these tests and

they're like, yeah, we don't know why, but you just have really low T for whatever reason,

your testicles just decided to quit. So they're like, you can go on testosterone or you can just

keep living like you live. And I was like, well, let's do testosterone. So since that time, I have

been off and on. What happens is I'll get on it for a while. And it like, it's super effective.

I feel much better. I feel normal is the better way of saying it. I don't feel like a superhuman.

I just feel, I don't feel terrible anymore. But I kind of just get tired of doing shots and dealing

with blood work and follow up. And I'm like, yeah, you know what, I'll be fine without it.

And since I started it, and I've stopped and started like, I don't know, four or five times for,

I mean, we had kids. So I stopped it for a while so we could have kids. And then it seems like my

normal levels of production vary between about 300 and 400. So it's never got as low as it did before.

But it stays like just kind of chronically right on edge. And so I kind of go back and forth. I'm

like, you know, I'm kind of tired of dealing with the little bit of like dragging and low, you know,

feeling kind of lack of energy, long recovery time. So I'll get back on it. So I'm on it right now.

But I kind of cycle off and on periodically. So sorry, Jake. So I saw the after picture when we

were recruiting you for this podcast, Lindy showed me a picture, I think you were holding maybe one

of your children or something stacked. Before, were you not so stacked or were you genetically

always been pretty easy to low lose body fat? Because I think what was your what are you down?

Like what it maybe it is now or whatever, but you got down to like 6% probably or maybe lower than

that. And were you not like that when you before? No, I mean, that's, it's probably like slightly

more muscle and maybe a little leaner when I'm on testosterone. But I don't think it's dramatic.

In fact, the picture I think I don't know exactly what picture it is, but I don't think I was on

the show in pictures of you. There's all kinds of pictures. We're all

Yeah, if I was on the baby, I probably was not on it. So I mean, a lot of that's just been my

my routine of like consistently exercising and I'm pretty tall. It's easier for tall guys to

look a little leaner. And then I stayed, especially when I was younger, I was very diligent on my

diets. I really paid attention to my macros. So kind of doing all the things that are within my

control to just be as lean as I can. And then I just did absurd amounts of exercise. Like I could

not keep muscle on really because I just was constantly doing, I don't know, all sorts of stuff.

So in whole, in whole what I'm hearing is it's not just an easy button. You're still

has a lot of work involved. It's not just, Hey, I'm going to jump on TRT and I'm going to look

like Superman. Well, and that's kind of the question I wanted to ask. It's like, you know,

for the guy, you said like, Hey, I don't want to go through the shots.

I want to go through the shots and the blood work and all that, you know, is it,

you know, what's the most natural way to increase tests to write it there? Like, Hey,

is it, is it the lifestyle? Is it just putting in the work? Or is it something, you know,

what have you found outside of TRT to kind of improve? Yeah, well, and I'll say,

if you're not on testosterone and you're can sit, you know, your levels are, I don't know,

three, four hundreds or 500 even, and you're considering it and that medical person's like,

let's do it. You should absolutely before you do, you should make sure that your lifestyle

and routine is like really dialed in before because you can fluctuate your levels of testosterone.

I mean, but you can double or triple it sometimes just by making sure you're sleeping well, eating

properly and exercising. But if you're going for the biggest bang for your buck, the two most

significant things to raise testosterone naturally is going to be really resistance training,

especially doing like heavy ish lifting, like compound movement.

Hang cleans, hang cleans, squats, deadlifts, bench press, pull ups, even push ups, like,

you don't necessarily have to be doing heavy weight, but it's doing, you know, it's load

bearing on the muscles is going to stimulate testosterone, but that's not for like one week.

You got to be consistent for, you know, a month or two to really get a good response and then

sleeps. So to recap that, right? There's no, and I've always said this, like the fitness isn't

in a bottle, right? I mean, there's some things that you can do and we're going to get into this

because I know you're chomping at the bit for peptides, but like, hey, check your, check yourself

first, right? Are you doing the right things? Are you exercising, you know, make a lifestyle change?

Are you, you know, are you going eating chicken wings and pizza for lunch? Are you having beers

after work? There's a time and a place, but at the end of the day, make sure you're doing all the

right things and, and, you know, the rest follows. You also got to live, right? I guess it's just

figuring out maybe it's one day a week, two days a week, but when you're doing it every day, it's

going to catch you. And well, I see a lot of people, I think it's all a balance, right? Right.

You see people who they're like, oh, I'm so locked in, I'm locked in, I'm locked in, and they, you

know, they lose a ton of weight, but they're just like this lifestyle isn't sustainable for you.

You're eating. It has become a lifestyle. You're eating 1200 calories a day. Like that's not

sustainable. You got to figure out a way to do it further for the long haul. So

again, I know you're chomping at the bit. Peptides. Peptides, what is, have you experimented with them

at all? Have, would you, is there certain ones that you would recommend? Yeah, I will say, you

know, peptides is a huge like category that can mean different things for different people.

There, there's a ton of different peptides available. I would be very cautious of using stuff that's

either new or that you don't really understand what it's doing. Even if your buddy's like, dude,

you got to take this, I promise it's going to work. It's worth really diving into figuring out what

is it, what it is, how it works. Ideally, you'd have a medical professional kind of helping you

on that. But I know there's very few that do. I will say that of the peptides that's around,

the few that I am in favor of and that have trialed are going to be BPC157. And then that in combination

at times with TB500. Those are like well studied, been around for a long time, reliable. They really

do help accelerate your repair and recovery, especially from injuries. And it's, they're,

they're quite effective. That and then there's some growth hormone related peptides. There's,

there's quite a few actually, but the most tried and true is Tessamorellum. That's actually an FDA

approved drug called Agrifta, but it's also a peptide you could buy from, you know, wherever.

That will cause your body to produce more growth hormone and growth hormone is an excellent

hormone for helping develop muscle, burn body fat. It actually does help improve your sleep

quality. But with any peptide, you should, it's not something you can just stay on continuously

forever. There's just not enough data to support that it's safe for 20 years of use. So you just

need to keep that in mind too, if you're going to try all stuff. What do those cycles look like?

Or how long should one stay on them and then take a break off them or what should take?

Yeah, it kind of depends on which one, but for the most part, the standard cycles are three to

six months at a time and then stopping for probably the same amount of time you use. But

you can rotate, you can use like VPC 157 for a few months and then stop and start using something

different, you know, they're, they work very differently in the body. So it's okay to sort

of stack them. But it's, I think for me, if I'm going to help a patient figure out what to use,

I want them to have a very specific reason they're using it. Because otherwise, if you're just taking

it for like, I don't know, I just want to feel better. It's really hard to gauge whether that's

happening. And that's not a good enough metric for me to say like, yeah, this is worth doing.

It should be like a more specific goal. Like I just had surgery, I want to recover faster.

I'm dealing with this, I don't know, torn Achilles and I want it to get better sooner,

or I'm doing, you know, some, I have a big athletic competition or whatever it may be to try to help

improve your muscle strength stamina. What if it is, I want to go to lifetime and put on a show?

So what peptide would put me in the best, put me in the best position to be a mutant over at lifetime?

Yeah, that's what I'm at now. That's what I live for now. Brett used to be a little bit of different

for now. It's only thing I got is you walk into like, oh, look at that guy's pretty, you know,

big. And that's it. That's it. Yeah. That's where I'm at now. Man, I mean, there's a lot of things

that you walk around and just puffed up to jack through your vest. How do we get there?

Yeah, well, in terms of the peptides alone, any of the growth hormone, they call them

growth hormone, secretogogs, but peptides that increase growth hormone are going to help you

a lot. Tess Morellin is one I mentioned. There's CJC1295 and Morellin MK67. There's a bunch of

different ones. They do work a little differently than each other, but for the most part, the end

result is the same. You're getting more growth hormone in the body, and that's going to help you

build muscle faster, but it's not going to do it just because you took it. You have to be doing,

you know, heavy lifting to build muscle. That's not Frank's problem. I'll say that for free.

So, well, I feel huge strength gains. If I'm bench pressing a certain amount,

and I'm on this for a month, am I going to see, and I'm just doing the same work,

am I going to see a bigger bump than I would before being on some type of...

You will see strength gains a little faster, but you'll note, you'll look bigger and you'll feel

that. You can tell your muscles will feel a little bit more like full, and some of that's

because you'll get a little bit of water attachment to the muscle, too.

Should I stay on creatine and be on CJC or any type of peptide?

Yeah, you should stay on creatine for sure. Go ahead. No, no, no. I think what I've taken

from a lot of this though is that you are always in the camp of having a better lifestyle,

changing lifestyles before we go into supplementation, though, would you?

Oh, for sure. Yeah. I mean, there's no shortcut to good diet, exercise, and sleep,

and you can take all the peptides and steroids you want, and if you're not doing those things,

you're still not going to look like you want to look. I mean, even a bodybuilder is a good

example. I think most people get fixed on what they're taking and all their gear and whatnot,

but the majority of their effort is spent on an unbelievably strict diet and continuous,

progressive overload. They are so faithful to go to the gym and do progressive overload training

every single day or their routine. Well, then you look at one of the goats and Ronnie Coleman,

and the dude can not stand up anymore for any bodybuilder fans out there. You can't squat

800 pounds for 20 years and then be okay. So it's pretty cool when you can.

I like that you said progressive overload is the type of workouts. Have you ever followed

Charles Pollack when does that name ring a bell do it all? Who's the strength coach?

I'm familiar with him, but I haven't followed any of his stuff.

Big progressive overload guys, kind of how I've faced my workouts over the last 10 years or so.

And a big thing of working out to tell everybody, keeping track of your weights,

don't be the guy that goes to the gym or the female that goes to the gym and you're just like,

oh, I'm going to bench press today. Have a plan, write your weights down from one week,

go a little bit more the next week, do a little bit more the following week, and that's how you

progressively overload. But you have to be able to keep track of it some way or

form. You can't be like, oh, wait, what did I do last week? I think it was 225. It's like,

you just screwed yourself. You're wasting, not that you're not wasting your time,

but again, you're not going to, you'll go here, but you could get here by doing that the right way.

Well, Brett, this has been, I appreciate you coming on. I think, again, this is another thing

we could talk about for a while. We want to be respectful of your time. If there's one thing,

and I think we probably covered it, it's probably going to be redundant, but one piece of advice

you're giving for anyone out there that's just trying to be better in their everyday life,

what would that be? Oh man, that's good. If I'm going to try to make it one thing,

I would say move outside. I think the value of just being outside, being in the sun,

being exposed to cold, heat, whatever is really helpful. And just movement, like whether you

hike or run or swim, I mean, your body, you just, it thrives off of being active and moving.

And so that's something that I think there's mental benefits of just sort of like going on a

hike, being around outside and kind of checking out of the screens and the TV and all the stuff

that we kind of get sucked into. And so I think for your mental and physical benefit, just move

around outside. I love that too. It's a big thing for me right now is not just improving your life

spans or it's your health span and being able to go on those hikes when you're 70 years old. You

got grandkids, you want to go on a hike or you want to go to, you want to take your kids, your

grandkids to Disney World. And I don't have to be in one of those little moped things, you know,

whatever hone around. I can actually carry my grandchild and I can go to the next, you know,

something like that. I was listening to that Peter Taye book too. And he's like, you should be doing

like hang on some monkey bars, try it. I was, I remember I was listening to the podcast or his

book while I was cutting my grass and I'm going and then he's like, you should be able to hang for

like three minutes. And I was like, just driving by my kids like play set. And I was like, shut the

lawn more off. And I hung there. I hit my watch like timer. And it was like 90 seconds in and

all of a sudden I'm like ripping at my, at my lats. And I'm like, this is terrible. Like there's

a, like just doing something. And the reason that's important too, is like once you get older,

he says like the way you're going to die after like 70, 75, 80 is a trip and fall bone density

trip and fall, you get hurt like that. And then your, your health just drastically takes like a

downhill. And you should have strong grip strength in case you are going to fall, you can grab onto

that railing or something like that. And just little things like that, preparing yourself from

when you're older and then you can live a better life longer. Sorry to go on that little spiel at

the end there. Close out. Well, Brett, once again, buddy, thank you for joining us. We appreciate

you. We appreciate your time. And I think this is something that maybe, you know, we got our

blood work done again, and we got to bring Brett back on for a little bit. Give me a call. I'd be

happy to go through it with you. It'd be fun. Awesome, man. Well, thank you again, buddy.

Yeah, thank you guys. Thanks Brett. Thank you for watching the most recent episode of Dealer

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