181: Fighting the Fat-Loss Plateau with Thunder

Scot: It seems like losing weight is a perpetual state, and if you're struggling to shed some body fat for your health or maybe your appearance, we hope that today will give you a new way forward.

This is "Who Cares About Men's Health," where we bring you information, inspiration, and a different interpretation of men's health. And with us today is Thunder Jalili. He's got a PhD in nutrition and he also specializes in biochemistry and molecular biology. And despite all those incredible credentials, he seems to have a knack for kind of cutting through the noise and talking the way us normal guys would understand.

Today, Thunder is going to help us work through weight loss by covering some of the common mistakes men make when they're trying to lose weight and how we can overcome them.

So, Mitch, I know you're trying to lose weight. How much are you trying to lose? Where are you at on that deal?

Mitch: Well, as of today, I weigh 225 pounds. I feel I carry it okay, but last time I met with my primary care physician, he was like, "Hey, you are now technically obese." And I'm just like, "Okay. Well, what do I need to do?" And his response was basically like, "Oh, diet and exercise. See you next time."

And so I've tried making some changes, but yeah, I need about 20 pounds to be back in the not-so-terrible category and maybe even another 20 after that if I want to be back in the normal range. So a lot.

Scot: I'm trying to lose about 20 pounds of fat. I'm very specific about that because I think a lot of guys . . . and Thunder, you can tell us. A lot of guys think of weight and we start losing that weight, but sometimes we lose that muscle mass. I'm interested in losing 20 pounds of fat.

I had a BOD POD, which is this contraption you get into that tells you your body composition. So I know how many pounds of my body weight are actually fat. And about 20 pounds would make me happy.

Thunder, are you happy where you're at?

Thunder: Yes, I'm happy where I'm at. My quest is always to kind of maintain fitness and try not to fall apart, just try to maintain strength. Different people have different goals for various stages in life.

But no matter where you are, whether you're like me, you're just trying to kind of maintain what you have and keep it going, you need to think about diet and exercise, or where you guys are at, you want to lose some pounds, you still need to think about diet and exercise. So I don't think that really ever goes away if you're a guy, especially as you kind of advance through your years.

Scot: Yeah. I said I had a BOD POD done, and I've done this since about 2017, so I have some data. I'm essentially right back where I started in 2017 with my body composition and body weight.

I had gone through a process where I had lost, I think, 20, 25 pounds of body fat in a couple of years. And then COVID came along and I kind of stopped getting BOD PODs, and when I went back in, here I am again. I'm kind of right back where I was . . .

Thunder: Full circle.

Scot: . . . four, five, seven years ago, right? So that's a little frustrating. But I guess the encouraging thing is I did it once, maybe I can do it again, although I seem to be struggling. I'm hoping that maybe you can ask us some questions. Maybe there's something I'm overlooking. Maybe there's something Mitch is overlooking.

Thunder: Scot, let me start with just asking you a couple questions about this BOD POD test. Why did you land on 20 or 25 pounds as the amount of body fat that you should lose? Because I'm assuming that's not all the body fat that came up in your BOD POD calculation.

Scot: No. So I'll be open and honest. I'm 50 pounds of fat. That puts me at 27%. And looking at my past performance when I was at my best, which was 18.6%, I was 31 pounds of body fat. So that's about 20 pounds.

Under the 20% is where I want to be, because it's my understanding that that's where you . . . that's kind of the healthy range, right? Under 20 is pretty healthy.

Thunder: Yeah. And that's a great way to look at it. There's no kind of normal or abnormal. There's basically "What levels of body fat are associated with health, and what levels do the health risks increase?"

Scot: Exactly. And what is that level? Do you know off the top of your head?

Thunder: It's generally a range. So, for men, it kind of depends where you look at, but if you're just looking at a percent body fat, anything over 18% or 20%, the health risks start to increase.

Mitch: I found my info. I'm at 27% body fat, so I need to drop that.

Thunder: You guys are in the same boat roughly.

Mitch: Yeah.

Thunder: Did I get that right?

Scot: Is your raw poundage of body fat roughly the same as mine?

Mitch: Sixty-two.

Scot: Okay. So it's 12 pounds more-ish.

So I would imagine guys are interested in losing the fat. We're not interested necessarily in losing the lean muscle mass. And a lot of times when you start dieting, not eating enough, you can lose muscle along with that. I don't know if that's going to get peppered in through there, but that's my concern. I don't want to lose any of my precious muscle because I don't have a lot. I don't think I carry a lot of muscle to begin with.

Mitch: Precious.

Scot: It's very precious.

Thunder: I wouldn't be overly concerned about that because as long as you have a good protein intake, things we've talked about before on this show, and it's spread out in intervals throughout the day, you're not really at a danger of eating too little. It's only when you're combining eating too little with not enough protein that that could be a factor.

Scot: All right. And that number is what for protein consumption if you're trying to lose some body fat?

Thunder: It depends on what your activity level is. So if you have a very intense exercise routine that you're doing, really intense, you're doing it five days a week or something . . .

Scot: Thank you for thinking that of me, but that's not the case.

Thunder: So the requirement would be more with that particular example. Maybe you're talking 1.5 to 2 grams of protein per kilogram body weight.

Scot: Per kilogram, not per pound.

Mitch: Yeah, that's the math I screwed up before.

Thunder: Yeah, and that's a common mistake people mess up. But for more of a kind of, for lack of a better term, normal workout, you go to the gym or you run three, four times a week, you're probably looking at 1 to 1.5 grams of protein per kilogram body weight.

So those are very loose ranges, but I think as long as you fall in those ranges, you should be fine.

Problems occur if people don't consume enough calories and they're exercising and their protein intake is less than 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight. Then they could probably lose some muscle. But as long as you're not hypocaloric, it's going to be okay.

Scot: Okay. Let's go ahead and get some other questions here that might kind of indirectly address . . . as guys are listening too, maybe if they're struggling with the same thing. What are some mistakes you see or what are . . . I mean, I don't know what the right word is, but go ahead.

Thunder: Sure. Well, let's start with just a couple more questions then. So what does your exercise routine look like in terms of what you do and how many times a week you do it?

Scot: I'm really proud of myself of this. I've been consistent for the past year strength training twice a week for around 45 minutes, full-body both times.

This summer has been super hot, so I haven't been walking the dogs to the park as much as I used to. But generally, I get out daily and walk the dogs for a half hour, but I wouldn't say that that's necessarily vigorous walking. And that's kind of the extent of it.

One of the things I'm thinking is maybe I need to up some of that intensity and aerobic activity a little bit. But that's what I'm doing right now. That's what I've got.

How about you, Mitch? Why don't you throw yours in there?

Mitch: So, for me, I do 30 to 45 minutes of weightlifting. I do bro splits two to three times a week. So push/pull/legs two to three times a week, more often two than three.

And then this summer, I have been trying to get back up to my 5K running stuff after an ankle injury. And so I've been doing this slow Couch to 5K, but I do that about 3 times a week, 30 minutes or so each time. It's not the most intense that it's ever been. I am doing a lot of walking because I'm babying that ankle, but I'm getting out 30 minutes daily.

Thunder: Mitch, it sounds like you have a pretty good routine in terms of variety and you are doing stuff on a daily basis, which is great. Mitch, do you ever feel like you're doing too much, like kind of spreading yourself too thin with too many different activities?

Mitch: Yeah, there are some times that I hit the Friday workout with my buddy Rob that I'm just like, "Ugh." I have nothing left.

Thunder: The good thing is you guys both have a strength-training component to your routine, which I think is really important. And muscle does take a lot of energy and calories to not just maintain, but also to build. So it's good to include that in there.

One thing, just hearing about it, is it's possible you may be better served by increasing the amount of strength training you're doing. And when I say increasing, maybe breaking up the type of workouts you do. Not just doing kind of the same workout each time for 30 minutes or 45 minutes, but maybe, say, splitting it into kind of an upper body, lower body workout.

Scot: Are you talking to me now, or both of us?

Thunder: I'm talking to both of you, yeah. So what I'm basically getting at is to try to do something a bit more intensive on the strength side. Fewer body parts, like an upper body and a lower body day. And that way, you can maybe do a little bit more weights, maybe a little heavier weights, and maybe a bit more intensity to it.

That's one thing to consider on the exercise side, because kind of doing the same workout all the time, your body does adapt to it. So every 8 to 12 weeks, try to mix things up in the gym and that can help quite a bit.

Scot: For people that are listening, that's one of the hardest things, though, is to figure out, "What does that even look like?" I've had some knowledge in strength training, so I have some idea, but I still have questions.

If you're suggesting I do upper body, lower body, more sets, more intensity, different exercises, when you say switch it up, what does that mean?

Thunder: Right. So, for example, focus on big muscle groups in the gym. Let's say today is my upper body day. Instead of going there and doing bicep curls and some triceps extensions as part of your routine, that's kind of a finishing beach exercise. Don't worry about that. Upper body day, do bench press, incline press, pull-ups. And then if you've still got it in you, do some dips.

Scot: All right. And how many sets of each one of those?

Thunder: Two general approaches. One approach is you can build strength by doing a three-by-five routine where you do three to five exercises for one body area or body part. With each exercise, you do three to five sets, and with each set, you do three to five reps. That's one approach. In general, that's a strength-building approach. And you do heavy weights, stuff that's really hard to lift.

And then the other approach is you do a bit more muscle endurance and kind of toning, I guess, for lack of a better term, where you do more lighter weights and you do more reps, like 10 to 12 reps per exercise.

Scot: That three to five scares me a little bit. I mean, for somebody beginning, that's a lot of weight to move, right? Your form would have to be pretty good. You'd have to have some pretty good experience lifting. That even intimidates me a little bit.

Thunder: Start off light. Don't start off with the most you can lift the very first time you do this. Spend the first couple weeks with weights you can very easily handle, make sure your form is right, work out with a partner, get familiar with the exercises.

And remember, just try to think of big muscle groups. As you get better and you have a baseline, then start increasing your weights.

You do this sort of thing for 8 to 12 weeks, and then you mix it up. Then maybe after that, you go to the other side of it where you do more reps and you do some lighter weights, and you do that for 8 to 12 weeks. Then you switch back to something else. So that's what I mean by mixing it up.

And you can do the same thing for lower body, right? We're thinking big muscle groups where you can do hack squats in the gym that's on the machine. It's relatively safe. You can do leg presses, same thing. You can do trap bar deadlifts, which are easy on the back. Do you know what a trap bar is?

Scot: That's that bar you kind of stand in the center of?

Thunder: Exactly.

Scot: It kind of goes around you a little bit. It's not a straight bar, but it goes around all sides and then . . .

Thunder: Exactly. So, again, that's almost a whole-body exercise. You stand in the middle of it, you hold it with your hands, and you basically kind of bend your knees and send your hips back, and then you stand up straight with the bar using your legs and your butt and everything. So things like that, that's what I would spend time on in the gym.

Scot: Hey, Mitch, have you noticed something? We've got a nutritionist on, a guy with a PhD in nutrition, and the first thing he told us is to . . . He hasn't even talked about nutrition yet. He's telling us to strength train.

So how is this helping with my fat loss then, Thunder?

Thunder: It's helping with your fat loss because you're obviously burning calories, moving weights, and your exercise routine is probably a bit more intense, which means higher heart rate maybe and more energy use that way.

And then building muscle is very energetically expensive. So your body will really be using calories to try to build strength and try to build muscle. So I think that could help with weight loss. In large muscle groups, you just end up burning more calories.

Scot: Got it. So sounds like we need to step up our weight training a little bit, Mitch.

Mitch: On it.

Scot: What other questions do you have for us? I'm curious how long it's going to be before he starts asking us about nutrition.

Thunder: Well, I wanted to get the exercise stuff mostly out of the way first.

Scot: Yeah. I should also say it's interesting because I think a lot of guys think, "I'm losing fat. I need to get on the exercycle, or I need to get on the treadmill and I need to get my heart rate up. I need to do cardio." But you're kind of telling us a different way. Or is that your next thing, that you're going to tell us we need to step that up a little bit?

Thunder: Yeah, you can do that as well. I don't know if you necessarily need to step it up. One of the reasons why weight gain occurs, particularly as we age, is we do lose lean body mass. And as we lose lean body mass, our caloric requirements are decreased. Yet people's eating habits don't often change. So now they may be eating a little more calories than they actually need.

So what we are trying to do, part of this maintenance and not-fall-apart approach, is try to keep your lean body mass where it was when you were younger, or try to increase it if you can. That will enable you to require more calories, which makes it a little easier to maintain weight and lose weight.

Scot: I will say the bright spot in my seven-year journey is my lean muscle mass is the same as it was seven years ago.

Thunder: Perfect.

Scot: Yeah. I haven't lost any, which is good, because I know as you get older you can start losing some. But it would be nice to put some more back on, because I'm sure it's less than what it was when I was younger.

Thunder: Yeah. Mitch is in the best boat of all of us here because he's the youngest one. So, physiologically, he has the best shot of putting on muscle.

Scot: All right. What else? What's the next thing? What's the next question here you're going to ask if we're struggling with losing some of that weight, that fat?

Thunder: So you guys want to talk about food?

Scot: Yeah.

Mitch: Yeah.

Scot: That's why you're here.

Thunder: Oh, yeah. That's why I'm here. So food is kind of tough because I think the society that we live in really makes it easy to consume a lot of calories, and especially a lot of calories that really don't do us that much good. I'm getting to the sugars and the foods like that.

I think there are a lot of maybe unnecessary calories that are also packed into the health food scope. People will go to the gym and they're like, "Okay, I need a pre-gym energy bar or something before I work out," or, "I need a thousand-calorie protein shake when I'm done," or a protein and weight-gaining shake, things like that.

I don't think you guys are doing that, but just as a general message to the listeners, you have to be careful with that because even though things may be marketed as muscle-building or health benefit and so forth, they still may have a lot of calories. They still may have actually a lot of sugar added to it. You just don't know. So be careful about those supplemental foods.

Scot: Kind of getting sucked into the lifestyle of, "I'm strength training, I'm working out, I'm being healthy, so now I need to eat those things and consume those products." Isn't that kind of funny how that works?

Thunder: Yeah. Let's just use a practical example. Let's say we decide to go to the gym and do this strength-training routine that we were just talking about. So we spend an hour there, we go through all the exercises of three-by-five, and we're feeling great. It's like, "Boy, I'm starving now. I just got done with the workout." Instead of going and having some artificial big protein shake or smoothie or something that may have 1,000 calories or more, maybe just go and have lunch, actual food.

Scot: Just like regular people do.

Thunder: You can go and you can make your own lunch, have a salad, have a sandwich, something. You can have 30 grams of protein in that lunch. It's not too hard. And that'll satisfy your amino acid requirement for the post-workout, and you're having kind of normal food. Maybe it'll fill you up more too than a smoothie or a shake.

Mitch: Maybe I am brainwashed by the muscly dudes on the containers, but . . .

Thunder: You mean the paid models?

Mitch: Right. So the question I have, though, is that I thought that there were certain foods you were supposed to eat after a workout to make your muscles bigger.

Thunder: Yeah. You should have some amount of protein. What will stimulate your muscles to grow? What will stimulate muscle protein synthesis? So amino acids do, right? We get that from food, from protein that we eat.

Also, insulin stimulates muscle protein synthesis. So to refresh your memory, insulin is a hormone that's released from the pancreas after we eat. And it signals to the body, "Let's take glucose out of the blood, use it for energy. Let's make fat because we have nutrients on board. Let's take amino acids and build muscle because we have nutrients on board."

So insulin and amino acids stimulate muscle protein synthesis, and you can get both by just eating food. You don't necessarily have to have . . . A lot of people have the big shake and they'll have the food. That's probably overeating. So you have to be careful about things like that.

Scot: Try to get those 30 grams of protein. After workouts, I like tuna sandwiches. I love tuna sandwiches.

Thunder: Perfect.

Scot: A couple slices of bread, a can of tuna. I like chicken and rice and beans. That's good. Quinoa sometimes. Does that sound good? Maybe, if you are on the go, some yogurt and some fruit.

Thunder: Yep. Plain yogurt, not flavored. All those are great ideas.

That kind of brings us to another thing to consider when it comes to weight loss, and that is what's the quality of your carbohydrate intake? Quality and quantity.

We all know about the garbage carbohydrates, like the high-fructose corn syrup that's an additive in food and drinks. I think everyone is aware of that. So I would just say be careful and read your labels and make sure what you're eating doesn't have it in there.

But what about other kinds of quality and quantity for carbohydrates? One of the places we can look at is what kind of bread are you having or rice or things like that? Now those foods do tend to, in some people, stimulate more insulin and cause a bit more fat synthesis. So some people need to be careful of that. And I think when we get towards middle age, we get more sensitive to the carbohydrate thing.

This is where I'll throw in kind of my personal story and journey here. And I want to say that not everyone may fall into this camp, but I found when I cut out or reduced sugar intake and reduced the amount of bread and pasta that I ate, I lost probably five or six pounds of fat pretty quickly, in probably six to eight weeks.

Mitch: Wow.

Thunder: And I was really surprised at that. Now, I still eat carbs, but my carbs are coming from vegetables, from sweet potatoes, from beans, from quinoa. I still eat rice, but I tend not to eat it as much as I used to. I was a big rice eater. I tend to eat overnight refrigerated rice. And I do that because it turns the . . . it develops resistant starch in the rice, and that makes it a bit more like fiber and it slows down the digestion and gives you a little blunted insulin response. So that worked for me.

Scot: Quick question on that rice. So you make it in the rice cooker, and then you throw it in the fridge. Then is that effect good from there on out? Can you reheat it? Or when you reheat it, does that kill the effect? Do you have to eat it cold?

Thunder: No, you can reheat it.

Scot: Okay. But it's just a matter of going from hot to cold is what does that transfer?

Thunder: Yeah, the overnight in refrigerator. It's more resistant starch. Now, again, I said this worked for me. Some people, it will help. Some people, it won't really make a difference because they don't have maybe the same carbohydrate sensitivity.

Scot: How would a person know? Are there any ways that a person could know if that would be them other than trying it?

Thunder: Try it. I mean, I wish I had a better answer, man. Yeah, try it and see.

Scot: So I'm going to go ahead and throw me in. I feel like I eat fairly clean for the most part. I don't really eat rice anymore. I eat quinoa and beans. I do have two slices of bread when I do eat my tuna sandwiches.

But I tend not to eat any kind of what I would consider junk carbs. I tend to keep my simple sugar intake very, very low. And none of that seems to help. I would think that that would help.

So, in that instance, if somebody thinks they're doing the right things, what could be some of the issues?

Thunder: Do you have bread on a daily basis?

Scot: No.

Thunder: Well, without doing a full dietary analysis to really see what is your macronutrient intake, what I would say is I would probably look at your exercise side to start with to see what we talked about. Can we do more big muscle group weight training in the gym and get a little bit more benefit out of that?

Now, if I did a full dietary analysis and looked at what you're eating, maybe I'd probably have some other things on the diet side as well. But just from what you described, it sounds like it's probably okay.

Do you ever track your calories, Scot? How many calories do you eat in a typical day?

Scot: I mean, I had. Remember you used to make fun of me for counting my calories? And then I think one episode you basically just said, "Hey, why don't you just kind of eat more intuitively, and the stuff that you're not supposed to do, get rid of?" So I quit drinking beer and alcohol two months ago. I thought maybe I would see some big changes there. You hear the stories that go, "Oh, I gave up beer and I lost 10 pounds." No. Actually I've gained weight since then.

Thunder: What?

Scot: I know.

Thunder: So unfair.

Scot: I did have an epiphany, though. I was eating a little bit too much sweet at night. My wife and I would have some ice cream. I did start tracking my calories again recently, and I thought, "Oh, I'll pop that in there." I think it was 300, 400 calories of ice cream, which if you're at the borderline of what your maintenance calories are, that puts you over pretty quickly.

Thunder: Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing with ice cream is it's probably 20 grams of sugar in one serving at least, maybe more.

Scot: And I think I had three servings to come up with. That's what shocked me. My serving size of ice cream, when I looked at what the serving size was, was probably three. So it was quite . . .

Thunder: Yeah, that's about 60 grams of sugar, which is a pretty potent stimulator of fat synthesis.

I'm not a fan of religiously counting calories all the time, but sometimes you do need to do a diet analysis just to get kind of a baseline. What I've been doing, what is that? What does that look like, and what am I getting?

Scot: Yeah, the thing I'm afraid of, though, is it seems like . . . So I've kind of half been keeping track of my calories, and on the days that I do, I'm undereating what I would imagine that I should be eating. I'm trying to be at about 1,800 calories, which seems pretty reasonable.

Thunder: Yeah. It doesn't seem bad at all.

Scot: Yeah. I mean, I feel like I'm undereating most of the time. What might be going on there?

Thunder: I think most people in general, and this is just my . . . I don't have a specific personal study to back it up, but from what has been reported in the literature and from what I've observed on other people, we do tend to kind of underreport our calories.

When we count or we keep track, we think, "Oh, yeah, maybe it's like 2,000." But in reality, we may be off by 400 or 500 calories. Maybe it's 2,300 or something, or 2,400. That seems to be pretty common.

Scot: All right. So I think it's time to start to wrap this up. I think we've covered a lot of issues. Let's try to put some meaning behind this for guys, because sometimes this can be very ethereal. It can kind of be out there.

So I think my takeaway is, man, I'm just afraid that if I add more weight training, more days of weight training, my consistency is going to go away. I've been really happy with my consistency.

Thunder: I wouldn't say add more days. I just say change your workout.

Scot: So I could still do two days a week, and one day it's upper, one day it's lower. I mean, is that enough?

Thunder: Try it. Yes.

Scot: Oh, okay.

Thunder: Or if you want, do three days a week, one day upper, one day lower, and maybe on that third day focus on core and maybe some of those bicep curls if you miss doing those. And that can be a shorter workout. That can be the 30-minute workout. But challenging the big muscle groups, yes, give that a try.

Scot: So remove the small muscle groups. On upper body day, don't worry so much about the rear delts or the biceps or the triceps. Maybe then take that volume and do an extra set of chest presses or an extra exercise that is on the chest or the shoulder.

Thunder: Yeah. Higher weights, lower reps, and then kind of go through these phases. Two, three months of that, and then you can change it up and do maybe lower weights and higher reps. But not the same thing year-round.

Scot: All right. I'll work on that. And I think I'm going to kind of just keep my diet where it is. I don't think I'm going to worry about that too much. I think I'm getting good protein intake. I guess I'll try to watch those ancillary calories. Am I maybe cheating a little bit more than I think I am? Are my servings a little bit bigger than I think they are?

Thunder: I mean, the reality is . . . again, this is coming back to kind of "the middle-aged guy." Ice cream tastes awesome, but we can't have it that often because it's easy to overconsume the servings, as you know, and the sugar has an effect. So watch how much of the treats you get. I feel like a killjoy saying that, but . . .

Scot: Well, you are.

Thunder: I know, I am. But unfortunately, this isn't politics. I can't promise you the world. I have to tell you the truth.

Scot: Right. And I guess trying to lose weight is out of the normal, right? So you've kind of got to do out-of-the-normal things. Once you get where you want, then maybe you can be a little bit more lenient on those things.

I have put on a little bit of weight, but I've kind of maintained the same thing. And if I up my calorie expenditure, then I . . . Anyway, blah, blah, blah.

Mitch, what are you taking away from this? What are your actionable things you're going to do?

Mitch: So I think I'm doing okay on the workout front. But when it comes to the actual day-to-day eating, I think I need a baseline. I think I need to be a little more . . . Again, not forever, but maybe do some weighing of the food. Maybe really make sure that what I'm putting in and counting actually is what I'm putting in my body.

It's those little cheat meals on the weekends. It's that extra little something at the end of the night. I eat pretty clean. I eat one-ingredient type stuff. But if I'm eating too much of it and if that's my problem . . .

I think that's where I'm going to start, because I'm wondering now if I'm bringing in preconceived notions about how much I should be eating or one thing or another. So maybe I'll do a nutritional analysis and maybe we can judge me later about it on an episode. That might be fun.

Scot: So you're going to start trying to track your food intake a little bit more accurately, maybe understand your portion sizes a little bit better?

Mitch: Yeah.

Scot: Processed food, is that a problem that you have?

Mitch: Not really.

Scot: Okay. That's good.

Thunder: Mitch, I think if you're wondering about the diet . . . Again, we don't want to be obsessive and always be counting calories and all this, but to say, "I'm going to take this week and really keep track of things to get a baseline," I think that's a good idea. Then you actually have data from your own personal situation.

Mitch: Right.

Scot: All right. Well, Thunder, thank you very much. A little dose of reality for us, Mitch, and things to try.

It's just so hard. This is where I'm going to whine. It's so freaking hard. And I think it comes back to what Thunder said earlier. If you think of any animal in an environment, if that environment is rich in calorically-dense food and food that's not necessarily great for you, you have to really pay attention to what you eat.

And that's a paradigm that animals generally don't have. Generally, animals have to expend calories to get calories, and the calories are harder to come by. We just don't live in that environment.

Thunder: That's such an excellent point. Five thousand years ago, 10,000 years ago, we spent 16 hours a day running around trying to get food. And we just don't have to do that now.

Scot: And if you've ever had a garden, you get excited when you've got six beans.

Mitch: The best six beans.

Scot: If you were a hunter-gatherer, you were probably excited if you got eight raspberries in a day.

Thunder: I know.

Scot: And today, you go to the farmer's market and you could eat a whole pint of raspberries and get them pretty easily.

Thunder: It's so funny you say that, because I got a strawberry plant in the beginning of summer. It's in this pot. And this is one of my prized possessions in life because it's so cool. The strawberries are delicious to come out of this thing, but I get one strawberry a week.

Scot: Yeah. Food is hard to come by when you're getting it like that. But when we go to the store, it's pretty easy to come by.

All right. Thunder, thank you very much for being on the show. We appreciate you helping us out. Mitch and I will try some of these things and we'll check back in here in a couple of months and see how that's impacted things. Maybe what Mitch found out with his analysis of his nutrition. Maybe if changing my workout routines helped or not.

Guys, if you have some thoughts or comments or found something that works for you, by all means, reach out to us at hello@thescoperadio.com. Let us know what your takeaway is and what you're going to try to lose that extra weight.

Thanks for listening. Thanks for caring about men's health.