1 Solcast - Episode One - My Training Background, Resetting your Sleep Cycle and How to Lose Body Fat

And welcome to the Soulcast. This is Sol Brah. I'm your host, and I think we're just gonna go for a bit of a journey today because I don't really know what I want to talk about exactly. But the first thing I would probably should start with is my training experience and how I got to where I am, a bit of background, uh, so you can get to know me a bit better if you care. So I started lifting weights when I was in year 10. Which was, you know, 15 years old pretty much. I got a membership at my dad's gym and I would go there after school with him, which was nice. Always a good little activity to do with your dad. He can't train anymore, which is a bit sad, but that's another story. So basically I would go into the gym I had read a little bit online because I had, uh, been on the fitness image board on 4chan. Lol. A little bit, so I knew the basics, you know, the meme of starting strength and things. So I decided to do that. Um, I did not know much and I didn't really know about form. Um, I have a vivid memory, cringe memory, of quarter-repping squats, uh, with I think it was 3 plates, so 140 kilos. And I was, you know, barely bending my knees and then coming back up. And, you know, absolutely not what you want to be doing with squatting. So I was doing that stuff for a long time because I didn't really know, and I I think this happens with anyone. You go in and you just have to get used to it and experiment with it because that's the only way you learn. You know, I can think of tens of times where I've fucked up something, embarrassed myself or whatever, but that's how it is. So you got to kind of roll with the punches. You know, it's like learning any skill. You have to put in the work and the people that are really good at things have made mistakes hundreds more times than you've even tried, you know. So that's where your skill comes from, is from fucking up and correcting yourself and learning and being like, well, shit, okay, don't do that next time. Learning the best way to do things is— and it's another thing, is like everyone's unique, so Everyone's going to have different styles of training in terms of exercises that work best for them. Exercises where they feel their triceps more, exercise where they feel their quads more. Everyone's bone sizes are different, their biomechanics are different, basically. So that's another reason why experimentation is so good. Trying new exercises once you're used to things You want to be doing the exercises that you enjoy the most. You're going to be doing them the most and trying them the most, you know. Don't, don't force an exercise if it doesn't work for you and you don't feel it. Obviously, the, the caveat of that is make sure that you're doing the mobility work so that you can hit the right form on, you know, process of exercise. So don't use this like a cop-out and be like, oh no, I don't feel that, I'm not gonna do that. Just try and do your best and learn. So where was I? I was talking about when I first got into the gym. You know, I'm 25 now, so that was a few years at school when I was lifting, um, 2 years, and I was decent, you know. As long as you're lifting weights at that age, you pack on weight, pack on muscle, just like anyone does when they're untrained going to starting a weightlifting regime for the first time. Um, so I got those noob gains, as they're called. I was always skinny. I'd done soccer and volleyball at school, so not really like the most physical of sports. But I enjoyed them. Wasn't really a fan of the physical, just rugby I used to play, but I'd rather not get hit in the head and tackled and fucking hurt myself. But that's just me. Um, so yeah, I was playing those sports and weightlifting into school At home, my food was pretty good. Like, there were a few things, like sometimes I'd have Nutella on toast, which I look back and cringe on. But for the most part, my dad was always into healthy eating. Like, both my parents were quite fit. Dad went to the gym, obviously. Um, my— a common meal would be chicken, rice, and broccoli. Just the standard, um, which I don't think is that really good. I don't need that anymore. Broccoli, a lot of fiber, a lot of gas. Um, chicken, we used to have chicken breasts. I ate chicken thighs now because the higher fat content, they're just tastier and a bit more, a bit more nutritious for you with that higher fat content. And things like that we were eating. I was That's why I was pretty skinny. I had abs, but looking back, it's like, ah, are they abs at that point? Because skinny guys with abs, the whole thing, like a fat girl with boobs, do they count? Yeah, not sure. Um, but I wasn't fat by any means, or untrained really. So I started lifting a bit more hardcore when I went to uni, college, as the Americans say. We had the gym over the road, so we went every time we had classes, probably 5 or 6 times a week, doing hour and a half sessions, probably more volume than I would recommend now. You know, back then, once you get into it, you just get held turbo and you want to go 6, 7 days a week because you love it so much. But in my experience now, I don't really think that that's the most optimum way to do it. Now I train 45 minutes to an hour at the most, supersets, high intensity, lots of blood flow, uh, really, you know, attack the weights as such. And I found that, you know, get in, get out that whole shorter training session. It leaves you with less aches and pains in your joints. Uh, you still get that muscle effect. Like, really, as long as you're trying hard, that's enough time for you to stress the muscle, elicit that hypertrophic reaction, that response, and then kind of save your— the wear and tear of your body. It's also time-saving. You can spend more time stretching, maybe You know, in an hour and a half, there's quite a lot of just sitting around, which I don't think is optimal in terms of muscle building. You know, if you, you want to aim for strength and you're just physically in the gym waiting to do on sets, it comes down to personal preference as well a bit, whatever's going to fit into your life and your preferences, but I do recommend doing that, especially if you're trying to purposely build just muscle, which is a lot of you, I'm sure. Um, so how long has it been on the, the journey so far? Probably 8 years. Yeah, something like that. Maybe even more. Um, I started with push-ups probably 15, so yeah, 10 years all up training, I guess. And what are the main takeaways I would have from that? The big rocks you have to take care of in terms of— so big rocks analogy is like, what's the biggest bang for your buck? If you could think of one thing, that's the biggest rock that's going to make biggest change to your— whatever your goal is. So let's say ours is general fitness. What are the biggest rocks that I think as part of that category? Sleep. You need a regular timed sleep schedule. I sleep 9 to 6:30 optimally, sometimes like half an hour later. Uh, but I'm really— I don't stray from that time much because it's so— it's such a game changer. Like, I don't need an alarm. My rhythm is just timed now so that you just wake up at 6:30. That's just what happens. Your body knows. Um, if you consciously tell your brain, all right, let's wake up around this time, um, you will wake up at that time. It happens. Try it out. Almost like you're talking to your subconscious there. And so sleeping, you just, you're not tired throughout the day. That's a big thing that people, maybe they decry about their sleep is they feel tired in the afternoon. But when you have a, my follow-up question is always, okay, so are you sleeping? And they go, yeah, yeah, I'm sleeping. Uh, maybe like 6 hours a night, staying up till 12. It's like, uh, okay, stop doing that. You need 8 hours minimum. And if you're weightlifting, doing heavy training at all, or even hard training, sleep is where everything gets repaired. That's when the majority of your muscle building is done, during sleep. So If you're sleeping 9 hours optimally, LeBron James and all those guys, they're sleeping 12 hours a day. Like, they're lit, you know, they talk about working hard and I'm sure they do, but they're athletes, they're taking naps, and you have to at that level of professional sport, the toll on your body. So sleeping is really important to your general mood as well. You're happier when you're tired— when you're not tired. You're less snappy with people, and all of those things contribute to a better quality of life. So I would say for sure, if you haven't— like, if you've maybe put off dealing with your sleep, then that's definitely something that you should look at. I have a sleep thread on my Twitter. I'll link to it somewhere, I guess. Will I have show notes? I have no idea. I will, uh, we'll go check it out. It's in my pinned thread, in the master thread anyway. It's good info there about how to upgrade your sleep, how to feel better during sleep and all that. Deeper sleep supplements for that— glycine, ZMA— both critical that I recommend to anyone, not even, you know, purely bodybuilders, but Everyone that I've got onto that has slept like a rock, so check that out. Next rock, less of a specific thing, but consistency. If you're working out hard but it's not consistent, that's not as good as working out moderately consistently. Like, the repetition is what trains your brain in the skills of working out, and the repetition is what cements the behavior. So you really want to put it in the same part of your routine so that those mental grooves of getting ready for the gym, training they really, they just get cemented in when you do them over and over at the same time. It's like automatically your brain goes, okay, we need to learn this thing because we're doing it consistently in our life. You know, that's the evolutionary pressure is that you get better at whatever your environment is forcing you to do. So you can consciously change the behavior of that by forcing yourself to do these things, and then your brain goes Okay, we're doing these things each day, we should get better at them because that's gonna increase our biological advantage in whatever field we're in or environment we're in. So that's a bit of a hack, I guess, you could think about. Just practice makes perfect. Getting the consistency of not only training, sleeping, which I mentioned before, and eating as well. Because that is gonna make— like, if you— even if you have the weekends off, 5 out of 7 days, yeah, you're doing well. But then you have 2 days, which is like you— if you look at an exponential graph, you're just going up, up, up, bang, and then down again. So you really need to avoid those kind of backsteps if you're serious about it. Like, once in a while, whatever, but if you're really trashing your body on the weekend you know, you have Monday, Tuesday, maybe you'll be feeling better in terms of a hangover if you do that, if you drink, or even just a lack of sleep because you stayed up late or whatever. And I do that sometimes, but I always make sure that it— I can sleep in in the morning so I'm still getting 8 hours. Because honestly, the next day, if you're tired, I've come to realize that there's just no point in being tired and just having a shit day, basically. Um, yeah, so third rock would probably be your diet, of course. Um, this one is a bit of a no-brainer. What you eat becomes you, very simply. All the energy, all the vitamins, all the minerals, all the building blocks that go into your body, that's what comes from eating. So when you're eating like literal garbage foods, you're going to become garbage. In that sense. Like, a lot of the time these things are manufactured, they have vegetable oils in them, or they're cooked in vegetable oils. All those things kind of— you just go, okay, well, I'm not going to eat those anymore. It's less of a, I'm trying to eat healthy. It's just, no, I don't want to poison myself with that. And that's a better way of doing these things, is like, No, I'm done with that. And then, like, I'm not the person that would harm myself for a quick bite that, you know, doesn't even taste as good as a healthy, well-cooked meal, home-cooked meal. So that's my philosophy on it anyway. Um, I've always been a proponent of putting in the effort to make a nice more nutritious, fresher, more tasty home-cooked meal than shit, basically. So yeah, but back then I was eating the very standard chicken, rice, broccoli, pasta occasionally, a lot of fruit. Always ate a lot of fruit growing up, just like that's what we would have as snacks. And I recommend the same, just have a fruit bowl bananas, oranges, apples, my favorite mandarins. Been eating a lot of pineapple recently. You can't really have that in a bowl, but have some cut up and then just in a Tupperware in the fridge is just a nice, delicious, tasty treat to have in between meals. Um, pineapple as well has bromelain in it, which is an enzyme that breaks down animal proteins and is the only place in the plant kingdom where that is found. Interesting fact for you. So having a bit of pineapple before you have meat as well is good, helps to break that down in the stomach. Um, digestion of course is another thing that you must optimize in order to assimilate the most nutrients into your body. Um, it's all well and good eating something that has the vitamins and minerals in it But if you're not absorbing it and it's just going through you, then what was the point of that? You know, so getting into improving digestion was another one. Um, so moving away with a lot of things, a lot of fiber, um, just eating things that the human body can absorb way better, and things like meat, eggs, meat, dairy. That's really what we absorb the most nutrition from. Fermented vegetables, also key. Been getting around sauerkraut a lot recently. The fermented— the fermentation process is just breaking it down in a way because our stomachs aren't designed for that like the way a cow would. Oh yeah, they have 4 stomachs. Because they need to digest the grass. Like, we can't eat vegetables the same way. So fermentation, good. Fruit, all made like evolutionarily, uh, made to be eaten because they want to spread the seeds. Of course, that's their genetic reproduction process. They want animals to eat the yummy fruit, uh, drop them, you know, a few kilometers away when it later comes out the, the other end. So fruits are designed to be eaten, so they're quite digestible by the human body, at least I've found. Excuse me. So with those things in mind, my current diet that I've owned over the years, narrowed down to things that I really enjoy eating, as well as stuff that doesn't give me any digestive trouble, is a mix of stuff, mainly meat, eggs, white rice, oats, fruits, berries of all kinds, and that's about it. You know, it's, it's those, those big groups. I get a lot of my calories from eggs. Sourdough bread's another big one. I usually have that for breakfast or as a little snack. Butter I eat on my bread. I cook in ghee, which is clarified butter, which has a higher smoke point than olive oil and butter, so it's better to cook with. It also makes things taste delicious, so try that if you haven't. Animal products, so super good for you. Meat is usually steak, some kind of beef. I found that I absorb that the best. I like the taste the best. So I'll, I'll buy a big kind of hunk of meat, a big slab, and then a porterhouse cut, and then cut up the steaks myself a lot of the time. So I don't know what's near you, but there's certain supermarkets which will, will do in bulk, and you can usually get like a decent quality meat, uh, for cheaper by doing that. So you're cutting up like 10 steaks for like $30 or something, which is pretty good for an actual quality steak. Um, and I'll, I'll bag them individually, freeze them if I want. If I'm going to be eating a lot of them, I'll just leave them in the fridge and cook them over the next 2 days. I'll usually put sage, rosemary, thyme, sea salt pepper, olive oil in a bowl with a steak as like a marinade. Sometimes a bit of cayenne pepper is nice to have. Rosemary, I don't know if I said that, but that's a critical one. Celtic sea salt, highly recommend the taste for that as well on meat. And I'll just do that in the air fryer thing that I have, or pan fry it in a stainless steel or cast iron pan. I'll have the meat sometimes with a couple fried eggs on the side. If I'm, if I'm going low carb, I'll have that. Or if I want to be eating more, I'll have that with white rice. That's usually my lunch and dinner, is cut up meat, whether that's the red meat like I just mentioned. Mince is another good one, super easily digestible if you, if you need to eat a lot of calories to put on weight. That's a good one because as the name suggests, it's already mixed up, minced up, so all the meat and everything is grinded up. It's just super easy for your stomach to absorb— well, to absorb into your body in the intestines. So that mince, white rice, olive oil, that is the basis of a lot of my muscle is probably 75% that, to be honest, because it's so easy to make. It stores well. You can keep it in the fridge for 2 days. You can make a huge batch all at once. Uh, digestible, hits macros. There's fat in the mince, so you're getting those good animal fats as well. And yeah, you can, you can put in vegetables if you like that. To that. Everything kind of blends with it. Of course, the extra virgin olive oil for taste and extra calories, extra good fats. Highly recommend that you put olive oil on all your savory food. That's what I do. Helps to— if, if you have a little bit of a dry food, maybe you overcook something, a little bit of olive oil can kind of moisten it and, and give it a bit of a sauce without actually being some gross processed sauce, which I would say you should avoid as well. If you have any sauces in your fridge or cupboard that are pre-mixed, like vinaigrettes even, a lot of them have either high sugar, weird food colorings. Anything like that that's processed is probably better than not to have in your diet. It's better not to have them. In your diet. Like, it's probably not going to kill you if you have them occasionally, but I'm always of the opinion that you should minimize all possible negatives, slowly optimize your life to be as the best as possible. So these low-quality products, no thanks. You can just as easily make like a nicer one. Like a tomato sauce you can do yourself, vinaigrettes you can do yourself, dressings you can do with olive oil and other things. You don't need those, those pre-mixed ones, which usually— one, also you're not getting as much for your money than compared to making it yourself. And also they have vegetable oils or sugar or flavorings and preservatives that you just would rather not consume. So olive oil is good for that, to replace sauce in a way. Uh, what else do I eat? Pineapple, it's been a big one. I usually do— I sometimes do shakes, another good one for weight gaining. You can have bananas, coconut milk, bit of ice, whey protein, raspberries you can chuck in there, mango. Pretty much any fruit that you'd like chucked in with some coconut milk, some ice, uh, can be a good way to get those extra calories drinking them. If you're calorically challenged, you find it hard to eat, that's, uh, definitely a way to get those extra calories in and can be taken on the go if you get a little little shaker or smoothie container like the Nutribullet things. I use a Nutribullet, no affiliation at all, but that one you can just kind of blend on the spot, pack your lid on, and then you have a yummy nutritious snack just on the go. If— I know most people aren't on the go at the moment, including myself, but Something to think about for sure. And yeah, that's basically my diet. It's, it's very simple. I have a few things that I eat. Uh, I will cycle meats to mix it up, but I eat so well and so clean because I enjoy it. It's so delicious the way that I make it. And it's digestible. Like I said, it's very key. Like, eating a lot of broccoli and fibrous vegetables, beans, things like that, you just— yeah, there may be nutrients inside them, but the human digestive system isn't that good at breaking down. Like, fiber literally doesn't break down in the stomach, so you end up farting. And just, I don't think that's very conducive to absorbing a lot of the nutrients within unless we have them pre-broken down or pre-cooked before you eat them. Um, and even then it's not as good. Like, if you go by pure nutritional value, meat, eggs, they win every time. Liver pills is another thing that I eat most days, just desiccated liver in these little tablet things. So I'll have a couple of them with each meal just to kind of top up your body with that pure nutritious meat. Obviously the best is pure organ meat. It's a bit hard to find, a bit hard to prepare, and the taste— not the taste as such as the texture that people blanch out a little bit. I had chicken liver. I haven't found a good butcher near me that does like a good beef liver or anything like that, but I will get on to that. It reminds me of a kind of ancient knowledge, I guess you would say, historical knowledge of that. If you are having eye problems, you should consume animal eyes. If you're having heart problems, you should consume animal heart. And the idea behind it is that the nutrients required to create that organ will thus in turn nourish you if you consume them. And I've heard a few anecdotal things, so I can't, you know, I'm not, I'm not saying it's magic, but it does make sense that perhaps if you're a certain area, if your body isn't working very well, maybe it's sore, um, to just boost yourself with the nutrients by literally eating that thing. I, I mean, that makes sense to me. So that's something to think about as well. Um, other kind of— maybe the drinks that I have, liquids. I've been drinking a lot of coconut water at the moment. Coconut water, it's got electrolytes, pretty low in sugar. There is a little bit, but if you're lifting, it's not a significant amount to worry about. Really nice taste. Having it on ice is amazing. I'll have that I'll have San Pellegrino mineral water, sparkling, nice texture. Chamomile tea, a lot of turmeric tea, peppermint tea, a lot of tea, uh, helps to mix up and get the water intake in a bit of different, different way, as well as having their own benefit for the nutrients themselves. Peppermint tea helps with digestion. If you have a sore tummy or something, like a little, a little glass of hot peppermint tea will settle that down. I know, I know that works for me. I think people think that I'm quite strict with my diet, and I am in terms of the, like, how strictly I follow the diet protocol. But within those guidelines, I, you know, if there's a— I'm quite liberal, I think, as long as it doesn't have vegetable oil, excessive processed shit. You know, I'll eat a cake that's a nice apple pie. That's homemade apples, proper pastry, butter. Like, hell yeah, I'm into that shit. I'm not gonna make it myself just because it's a bit time-consuming. Maybe I will. Apple and blackberry— apple and raspberry blackberry crumble, something like that. I really enjoy— that's one of my favorite desserts, so maybe I'll do that. But as far as day-to-day eating I stick to what I like, what I know is good for me, what suits my nutritional needs, and I don't let other people bring you down about that because they will try because they're jealous of the diet and your resolve. And they'll be like, oh, come on, man, just have this, this little muffin. I brought them for everyone. But it's not worth it, honestly. Like, first of all, it doesn't taste good. So why would I eat it just based off that? You know, ignore all the rest of this stuff, but if it doesn't taste good, what— why— what are you fucking doing? So that's my point. I just say, oh yeah, no, I don't really like eating them. Cool, end of story, moving on. Uh, junk food even doesn't taste good to me anymore, which I think happens once you quit the excessive sugar, the excess processed stuff. Your, your tastes adjust, and your cravings for them will go down, which is important, helps to stick to it. But the hardest bit is, is obviously that first grind of getting away for— away from them. But then you're done, and literally in 2 weeks, as long as you can stick to those 2 weeks, you— most of your cravings should go away, and you'll be on to you know, a better feeling, better, more energy, all those great things that come from eating properly, whole foods that you create yourself. Um, yeah, well, I will speak more about those things obviously in future episodes, but it's kind of a rambling, directionless podcast to start. But I think we'll go into the second half of the podcast. It's a little segment that I think I'll do where I just talk about questions that people have sent to me. I think I'll set up some kind of submission page where you guys can lodge questions you want to see me talk about or hear me talk about. Rather. And yeah, I'll just try and give my 5 cents, my little tips if I have any. Um, yeah, so the first one, the first question I got was, how do I reset my sleep cycle? So some people, they want to sleep more, but they just don't know how. Or maybe they want to get back to waking up in the morning rather than waking up at midday because they're staying up till 2 in the morning. Well, the first thing you need to do, and probably the hardest step, is to get up at the time that you want to get up at. So let's say that's 6 AM. You get up at 6 AM no matter what you your body and brain is telling you when you wake up, and that alarm goes off and you go, oh my God, this sucks, I don't want to get out of bed. But what you should do is set an alarm, put your phone on the other side of the room so you can't do it from your bed, so you're physically out of the bed to turn off your alarm at that time. And then when you're out of bed, just get straight in the shower, and once you're showered, you're pretty much good. But the point of that is to get up at that time, spend your day doing whatever you would normally do. If you're up early, maybe take advantage of it, do something that you wouldn't usually do. But the idea is so that when it comes down to the end of the day, because you've gotten up so early— yes, that first night is going to be probably— if you're going to bed at midnight and then getting up at 6, you're going to be tired the whole day. But the point of it is to reset your sleep cycle, you need to be tired throughout the day so that when you go to bed earlier than when you usually would, you're tired. So rather than your, your body naturally getting tired at, you know, midnight, you're tired at hopefully 9 o'clock because you got up 4 hours before you usually do. And I think the best way to do that is a hard reset like that. Um, you can try and scale it down, like do hours, but it's best just to— you'll be so tired by the end of that first day reset that you will fall asleep early. And then set your alarm for the same time, other side of the room, get up, get in the shower, and by the time you're in the shower, you hopefully should be awake that you don't go back to sleep and you you can start again, and you just repeat that cycle until it's kind of reset. Other things that help with that is to get sunlight first thing in the morning. You want to get at least something to eat to time your circadian rhythm, as well as getting in the sunlight upon waking. And you want to— obviously you don't want to stare directly at the sun, but kind of look in the direction of the sun. If it's cloudy, it still counts because light is still coming through. And just get those, those natural sun rays, uh, to into your eyes because that times a lot of biological processes in the body, one of which is sleep. Those morning light wavelengths actually tell your body, okay, it's morning time, this is the time we should kind of get going, this is the time we need to raise our cortisol levels in the morning to wake you up. That's one of the ways the body wakes you up is to increase cortisol in the morning. So that's a strategy you can employ. Like I said, having a little bit of food also helps because then your body's going, okay, we're usually eating at this time, we should probably start getting the biological processes in order, in order to do that. So hard reset, eating food, getting light in the morning, timing meals for breakfast. And if you repeat that, uh, you know, you can, you can lean on caffeine. I know a lot of people will lean on the caffeine, especially for the 6 AM wake-ups. But this is another rule that I have, is that I won't have any caffeine past midday. And that's really helped to make sure that I'm super tired. I used to have coffee in the afternoon, as you do, you're studying or something and you just want a little pick-me-up. But now I only have it in the morning, which I think has really helped. The half-life of caffeine is 8 hours, so there's still some in your body even after that whole break of— say you had your last coffee at 10:30, you go to bed at 9:30, that's 11 hours. So a lot of it's gone, a lot of it's still in your body, but not to the point where it makes any real difference on your alertness or tiredness or whatever. So even then, I've been experimenting with the idea of doing caffeine-free just to see if the sleep improves. So I'll let you know if I do that, but that's something to think about. Definitely cut it out past lunch, and that might suck if you're dependent, but it's something you need to do to get your sleep better. So stop crying and just do it. Slowly tailor it down. If you have 2 coffees, have 1. But it definitely is a big thing for a lot of people. Energy drinks, all that stuff, come on, you don't need to eat that, drink those. I used to drink the, uh, white Ultra Monster Energy. They're pretty yummy. I think that one was made to be less sweet than the others, but you know, I cut that out because I couldn't really be claiming to want to be the best for my body and drinking that kind of processed stuff with all the sugary— uh, not sugar, but it was sugar-free. You have the sweeteners which also ruin your gut biome, so don't drink those either. Just have— if you're gonna have sweetener, just have sugar. Like, you can have 5 grams of sugar, it's not going to kill you. It's you know, it's not that much energy in terms of if you're trying to lose fat or whatever. So don't be scared of just the natural sugar as long as you can fit it into your calorie requirements. Um, you don't have to have sugar. I don't have sugar in my drinks. I think that's another thing where you, you tailor it down and you have less sugar over time and then your tastes adjust, but Where was I? Yeah, the sleep cycle. That's a few things. Anything else for the sleep cycle? Oh yeah, the other thing is to make a lot of people— if they're not falling asleep, it's because they're not doing shit during the day. You have a thing called the sleep debt, which is a lot of whatever energy you expend during the day, right? The higher that is the more tired you're going to feel. Makes sense. You use more of your battery, you're going to need more to recharge. So if you're having trouble falling asleep at night at a reasonable time, do more shit during the day. It's pretty simple. You're going to be expending more energy, your body needs to recuperate more at the end of the day, so you're more tired. If you like, oh, I can't fall asleep— do you think you would be unable to fall asleep if you just walked 20 kilometers? No, you know, there's, there's days you have where you have just— maybe you've exercised all day, for some reason you've been on a camp or a hike, you just get back at the end of the day and you go, oh, you're fucked. And you don't have any trouble falling asleep on those days. So same principle. I'm not saying do that every day. If you can, great job, but not everyone can. But definitely expend physical energy And if you're not tired, you can do more, like walk more. That's a very simple one, but make sure you're doing something to expend the energy each day, and then you'll have a better time of falling asleep at the end of the day. Uh, sleep cycle, other supplements. So melatonin can be one. Melatonin is a chemical that gets released when you're falling asleep, or when you should be falling asleep in terms of your circadian rhythm. And if you, you can take like a couple milligrams of that at a time when you want to fall asleep, um, it's not really gonna make you fall asleep quicker as such. It's not like, uh It's not going to knock you out or anything, but it can help to kind of signal to your body, this is the time that we should be going to sleep. Not really sure the effectiveness of it, but I have tried it before. I never really had any trouble sleeping, so I can't really say whether it helped, but, uh, that's something you could look at, an idea. Um, Hitting a plateau on fat loss. So this guy messaged me, he said, hey, I've lost a bunch of weight from calorie restriction, but now I've kind of hit a wall, and if I drop my carbohydrates or food any lower— he, it was— he's basically feeling shit at the calories that he's intaking. So How do I lose fat without kind of cutting my food more? So there's a few things that you can look at for that. I'm just gonna bring up this notepad I had. So obviously the first thing is if you're restricting your calories a lot that's gonna say to your body, hey, we're, uh, we're in a very low calorie environment. And if your body needs to survive in a low calorie environment, then there are a few things that it does, one of which is to increase the amount of fat on the body in order to use at a later date. That's what your body thinks, right? It thinks this is very low calorie times, we need to store as much of these calories as fat as possible in case it, you know, runs out further down the line. So it can actually be counterintuitive to restrict your diet that much. Uh, if you're restricting your point to the point of where you have low energy and you're lethargic, you're not going to have the motivation to exercise. But you're also— your body is going to be unable to repair itself as well, and you'll experience burnout, injury. You just feel like shit, and it's just not an optimal hormonal environment to lower fat and lose, lose fat. Um, but it's just like depressing almost for you as well, so it's not good. In terms of the best long-term strategy for keeping body fat lower, you should increase your body's resting metabolic rate. Now, what is this? The resting metabolic rate is the amount of energy that your body uses at rest. So what is the amount of food that you need to eat each day, even if you did nothing, you didn't move? There's a lot of processes in the body that require energy. Muscle repair, um, your brain uses up a lot of energy just doing its thing. Obviously, if you are moving as well, you need energy for that. But your resting metabolic rate is how many calories am I burning at rest. And a way to reduce body fat long term is to increase this. And there are ways to increase the resting metabolic rate, one of which is to increase the amount of muscle you have. So your body needs more calories the more muscle you have just to maintain the tissue. So this is why you see bodybuilders consuming 4,000 calories and they're not putting any fat on. That's just what they need to run the engine of the body just to exist, basically. So you want to increase that because it almost— it's like running in the background the whole time, you know. You're not— these are calories that you're used to, like, using up at rest when you're not doing anything. You're not even exercising, uh, and your, your calories are being burnt up. So a good way to help lower your fat is to increase the amount of muscle on your body. Additionally, resistance-based training, which is lifting weights, burns calories even after you've stopped working out. It ignites the metabolism, so the day-to-day processing of calories seems to be a bit higher when you're training weights. So I think this guy was, was training weights already, but I told him to basically, okay, increase fats is a big one. People cut fats out of their diet, which I think is wrong. They see it as like eating fat makes you fat, or eating fat, it seems unhealthy, and that's just plain wrong. Your, your body needs fats in order to create hormones, number one of which testosterone. You need cholesterol intake, dietary cholesterol. There's no link between dietary cholesterol and blood cholesterol, so there's not really an impact on that. That's more to do with how much fat you have on your body rather than the animal fats that you're taking in. So it's another wives' tale to, to, to, uh, lay by the wayside. So another thing you might be doing if you're trying to lose fat is too much cardio. When you engage in aerobic exercise, long form, your body wants to work as efficiently as possible while producing the greatest amount of physical output. So if you're doing these gargantuan cardio sessions, uh, increasing the length of time that you do it, and the frequency, in an effort to lose weight, your body tries to adapt, as it always does, to the environment that you put it in. So what type of weight is more or less unnecessary when you run due to its need to be carried around, maintained, and cooled? Muscle. What's a great source of stored usable energy for long-term cardio— body fat. So what happens is if you're doing excessive cardio, your body decreases the amount of muscle you have because it's costly and tries to store fat to prepare for each bout of cardio. And you also get downregulation of testosterone, growth hormone, hormone, as they are kinda antithetical to extreme endurance efficiency, which is what your body tries to do when you're running all the time, or rowing, or whatever. So don't do too much cardio if you're trying to lose weight. Well, that takes us to the end of the first Soulcast. Thank you for listening. If you're not following me on Twitter, please do so. I assume you are, because that's the only way you would have found out about this. But I know the first episode's a bit here and there. I was kind of rambling, but that's fine as well. I'm just gonna keep doing this, keep putting this stuff out for you guys, and I'm sure it'll, it'll find its feet. We'll make mistakes, but we'll improve and keep going, and that's all you can do. If you want to buy a t-shirt, I have a Teespring. It's on my Twitter bio. I'm going to be uploading a few designs to that, which I think would be pretty fun, pretty clean. A few Sun logos, a bit of, a bit of history icons from history kind of thing. So have a look once I get those up. Otherwise, I'm not sure where I'm going to put this, but if you can give me a rating, please do so. 5 stars or whatever you rate it as. And yeah, we'll see where this goes, but thanks for listening, and I'll put this together and up for you guys. Peace.