Testosterone Replacement Therapy, Weight Loss and Fitness in your divorce recovery - Derek Hoffman || DPTSP #072 || David

[00:00:00] Welcome to Don't Pick The Scout Podcast, the podcast for men over 40, divorcing, recovery, all that good stuff. Today we have Derek Hoffman on the line. He is the owner of Ignite Performance and Health. He has a doctor partner and they're creating radical disruption in hormone replacement, weight loss, fitness industries by combining all three into medically directed and care based model for guiding people to real body recomposition and life.

[00:00:30] I have a transformation in six months. So I reached out to Derek because I think he can help my men over 40 or some of my men over 40 that are going through the worst and a lot of them out of shape, things like that. So tell us a little bit about yourself, Derek, and see what we can do with my men.

[00:00:45] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:00:59] Welcome to the Don't Pick The Scab Podcast with the premise of connecting men over 40 with the tools and community to thrive in their divorce recovery, either before,

[00:01:10] during, or after a divorce.

[00:01:13] Well, thanks for having me, first of all. It's a pleasure talking to you. I really enjoyed getting to know you a little bit before this.

[00:01:18] So Ignite Performance and Health, first I'll talk about me. I've been in the Department of Defense, military, paramilitary, intelligence community for about 25 years.

[00:01:28] So staying healthy has always been a priority for me. It's just the culture around me has always been you take time for yourself because if you don't take care of yourself, you can't get back in the fight. If you can't get back in the fight,

[00:01:40] you're no good to anybody. And as I've gotten older, that it just becomes more and more true.

[00:01:45] I think that men, we put ourselves last. That's our culture. Yeah. Take care of your business. Take care of your community. Take care of your family.

[00:01:52] And then if there's time left over, take care of you.

[00:01:55] So anyway, we Ignite Performance and Health is a concept that we came up with based on seeing a lot of men and women too,

[00:02:02] but particularly men over 40 struggle and just not really be able to have the life that they want to live physically and mentally,

[00:02:09] basically because of life, man. You have kids, you put a whole bunch into your job.

[00:02:14] Maybe there's something that happens, but it just, you put yourself last.

[00:02:18] Just your body gets let go. And then you find yourself at a spot over 40 where getting back over that hump just doesn't happen the same way that it used to.

[00:02:28] You go back, you finally take some time for yourself. You do the same things that you used to do, but you're not getting the same results anymore.

[00:02:35] And then that gets really frustrating. It gets depressing. It gets hard.

[00:02:38] And what we're here to do is to combine a bunch of industries together to show people how they can actually do it.

[00:02:43] And an amount of time that doesn't get sad, doesn't get hard, but really does require commitment, does require medicine, does require knowledge, does require time, does require effort, but is actually totally achievable.

[00:02:56] It's not a sales pitch. It's not snake oil. It's not a prescription. It's a habit change and it's a way of life change.

[00:03:06] What's your own experience or observations of divorce influence your approach to health and wellness for men over 40?

[00:03:13] Yeah, I'm 44. I'm on my second marriage. I keep telling my wife that the third time is a charm. She does not think I'm funny at all.

[00:03:20] So we got that going for us. But I have a lot of friends that are still today going through divorce and I see what they're going through, man.

[00:03:28] They want to do right by their kids. They want to do right by their soon-to-be or ex-wife.

[00:03:35] They want to do the right thing. They want to be these people. And in order to be those people, they put themselves last.

[00:03:41] I have a lot of friends that have gone through divorce. I have family members that have gone through divorce.

[00:03:45] I'm a child of divorce. I'm involved with nonprofits here in St. Louis, Missouri, where we provide counseling to kids and families going through divorce.

[00:03:55] It's a big deal for me. It always has been.

[00:03:58] And just seeing the mental struggle that men go through post-divorce is not easy.

[00:04:04] We're in a society where we're not allowed to put ourselves first.

[00:04:08] We're not allowed to say, hey, listen, these are my boundaries and this is how I'm going to – I need this hour a day for me.

[00:04:13] We're not allowed to do any of those things. We're not allowed to talk about our feelings about it.

[00:04:17] We're just not allowed. We're just supposed to suck it up.

[00:04:20] And we're here to tell men that they don't have to just suck it up.

[00:04:23] There is help. There is change. There's a team behind you.

[00:04:26] And there's a way to do it right. There's a way to do it safe. And there's a way to do it fast.

[00:04:34] What men do you focus on helping men navigate their health during such a transformation time?

[00:04:39] Yeah. So I've got a couple of friends. And we're not just men. We're not just male-focused.

[00:04:44] We do a lot for women, too. But just on the men's side, I have a really good friend, probably my best friend here.

[00:04:50] I watched him. He's gotten older. He's in his 50s now.

[00:04:55] He's got adult children from his wife's first marriage.

[00:04:58] And he's got a kid of his own that's the same age as my kid.

[00:05:02] And he's struggled with his health. He's gotten a little overweight.

[00:05:05] He's not doing the same things he used to do. He doesn't have the same activity level.

[00:05:10] And then life catches up, man.

[00:05:12] And I watched him. He went to one of these TRT clinics.

[00:05:15] And they gave him a whole bunch of promises.

[00:05:18] They said, hey, listen, yeah, you take this. You're going to lose weight.

[00:05:20] You're going to build muscle. You're going to feel good.

[00:05:23] All your life's going to change. It's going to be awesome.

[00:05:27] The reality is, and I know this because I've used testosterone replacement therapy for about four and a half, five years now.

[00:05:33] I learned it the hard way.

[00:05:34] I learned a lot of stuff off the internet, interviewing different doctors, reading a lot of research,

[00:05:39] talking to guys that do this professionally, and just a lot of trial and error.

[00:05:43] Probably to my body's detriment, really.

[00:05:45] So I consider myself not an expert, but definitely a guy in the know.

[00:05:49] And my friend, he's been going to this clinic, and he's paying a good amount of money every month.

[00:05:54] His life's not changing the way they said it would.

[00:05:57] And he had started coming to the gym with me.

[00:06:00] And I'm talking to him, and I'm like, so how do you feel?

[00:06:02] And he's like, yeah, you know, my joints really hurt this week or this or that.

[00:06:05] And really, without getting into a whole bunch of details, I started recognizing symptoms of low testosterone, low estrogen.

[00:06:13] And I said, hey, Mandy, have you gotten your blood work done with these people?

[00:06:16] And he goes, it's been a few months since they've done my blood work.

[00:06:18] I said, okay, go back.

[00:06:20] Tell them.

[00:06:21] And I said, get your blood work done.

[00:06:23] And I said, bring that to me.

[00:06:24] I looked at his blood work, and I saw that his testosterone was not very high at all.

[00:06:29] It was probably lower than it would have been naturally.

[00:06:31] His estrogen was at zero.

[00:06:33] And then some of the instructions that they had given him on how to inject this and how to dose this were things that I would not do myself.

[00:06:41] So I said, here, man, let me help you.

[00:06:43] I wrote him a whole list of instructions.

[00:06:44] I said, I want you to go back to this place.

[00:06:46] He said, you tell them you've taken this piece of paper, and you say, do this.

[00:06:50] Give me this, and then you do these things this way.

[00:06:52] I don't care what they say.

[00:06:54] And he got – he had a noticeably better experience after that.

[00:06:57] And for me, what I saw was men over a certain age just being taken advantage of.

[00:07:05] Like, they give you these promises.

[00:07:07] They say testosterone will do all these things for you.

[00:07:09] And I'll be honest with you.

[00:07:10] The normal range of testosterone, if you go get your T checked with your doctor at a clinic on your own, doesn't matter.

[00:07:17] The normal range of testosterone falls between 300 and 1,100.

[00:07:21] Now, that might be an arbitrary scale for all of us.

[00:07:23] But here's what you need to know.

[00:07:24] If you go get your blood work done, there'll be a left and a right boundary.

[00:07:27] The left one's 300, and the right one's 1,100.

[00:07:30] And if you're in between that, they say you're good.

[00:07:33] For testosterone alone to do all those things that they promise you that it will do, your testosterone – because I've seen it, and it can do it just by itself.

[00:07:41] But you really need to be at about 25 to 3,500, which is a very unethical range because while that can help with a lot of things,

[00:07:47] it presents a whole bunch of other problems when abused like that with everything from your lipids to your cholesterol to your heart to your blood viscosity.

[00:07:56] So no doctor is going to prescribe that and tell you that you're safe and that you're on the right path with that amount.

[00:08:03] Now, if you are on a very high end of that normal range, that 1,100, if you're somewhere around 850, 900, and you've done blood work repeatedly to learn where your lipids are, where your cholesterol is, where your blood viscosity, your hematocrit is,

[00:08:19] it can be done safely, and it's very mild, and it's okay.

[00:08:23] But it needs to be at that very high level, and you need to be lifting heavy things, and you need to be eating right for it to really make a transformation.

[00:08:32] And I saw this, and I started looking around, man, and I had a lot of different friends.

[00:08:38] And there's always one of three barriers to people really figuring this mystery out.

[00:08:42] Okay, and it's either that they're afraid of the drugs and the medicine because I don't like this whatever men's clinic that's down the street.

[00:08:50] I don't know them from Adam.

[00:08:52] They go into these places.

[00:08:53] You may or may not see anybody with a graduate degree or a postgraduate degree.

[00:08:58] They don't trust it.

[00:08:59] They don't know it.

[00:08:59] They've heard a lot.

[00:09:00] There's a lot of stigma around it.

[00:09:01] There's risk that they don't know how to mitigate.

[00:09:04] Cool.

[00:09:05] Then there's the nutrition piece.

[00:09:07] There's a lot of people.

[00:09:12] They really calculate the macronutrients and the calories that their body needs either to lose weight or to gain muscle or to do both at the same time, God forbid, because it can be done.

[00:09:23] Or the barrier is the gym, and the gym barrier comes in one of two ways.

[00:09:27] It's intimidation or error, and the latter is worse.

[00:09:30] Intimidation means you never go.

[00:09:32] The error means that you never learned how to do it correctly, especially for men over 40, and you probably hurt yourself, which is the worst thing that can happen.

[00:09:42] I struggled with back injuries for years.

[00:09:44] I had a lot of shots.

[00:09:45] I had a spinal surgery.

[00:09:47] I tore my ACL.

[00:09:49] I did some things like that.

[00:09:50] It's just, man, when you're over 40, coming back from that stuff is not the same.

[00:09:56] It's a whole journey just to come back from those injuries.

[00:09:59] You're not right.

[00:10:00] You're not normal.

[00:10:00] You're not comfortable for at least a year.

[00:10:03] When that stuff happens, man, and then you can't go to the gym, and then you get depressed about it, and you can't do the things you want to do.

[00:10:08] You can't take care of yourself.

[00:10:11] That's a downward spiral that happens real fast.

[00:10:13] What we do is we try and not only give you, not try, we do.

[00:10:17] We give you a trusted partner to help you through the medical side that tells you everything about it, that tells you how we do it safely, how we do it right, how we do it in contrast to others.

[00:10:28] Then on the nutrition side, we teach you exactly how to eat.

[00:10:31] We use weight loss medicine like the tears appetite compounds, the semaglutide compounds that are all the rage out there.

[00:10:36] I can talk more about that.

[00:10:39] But suffice it to say, we use those drugs as a tool and not the solution.

[00:10:44] We use them as a tool to give people a break so that we can stop the emotional rollercoaster of food and that we can teach men how to eat and how to get the habits behind their nutrition that they need to really be successful in life for the rest of their life.

[00:10:58] And then at the same time, we have a full boutique training facility here.

[00:11:03] We prefer in-person, but we absolutely do virtual.

[00:11:06] We have our own app where you can get all your workouts under your phone.

[00:11:09] But we teach people how to strength train.

[00:11:11] We teach people how to build muscle, basically how to bodybuild safely and to build muscle to help them look better and feel better, man.

[00:11:20] I don't know about you, but it's hard.

[00:11:24] Maybe you haven't worn that suit for a few years and then you go to put it on.

[00:11:27] You know what I'm saying?

[00:11:28] And it doesn't fit well.

[00:11:30] There's nothing more just internally deflating than that.

[00:11:33] But if it does fit well, you're walking in with a little strut in your step.

[00:11:38] You know what I mean?

[00:11:40] Yeah.

[00:11:41] And my experience here, man, is I want men to walk into that room with a strut in their step.

[00:11:45] I want them to walk into their home with a strut in their step.

[00:11:50] I want them to walk into the boardroom with a strut in their step.

[00:11:52] I want them to walk into a social situation with a strut in their step because they feel confident about who they are and what they're doing at this point in their life.

[00:11:59] And your physical health has a ton to do with that.

[00:12:03] And it impacts your mental health.

[00:12:04] It impacts your comfort, your stability, your confidence, everything.

[00:12:08] And that's what we're about.

[00:12:11] You just gave me the title to the podcast.

[00:12:14] You want to strut in your step.

[00:12:15] I want to strut in your step, baby.

[00:12:18] Our tagline is look better naked.

[00:12:20] That's all we're trying to do, man.

[00:12:22] At the end of the day, we're trying to help people look better naked.

[00:12:24] In what ways can hormone replacement therapy support men emotionally and physically during the recovery of divorce?

[00:12:33] Because I know there's like the emotional component of it.

[00:12:36] Yeah.

[00:12:37] So I don't want to dive too deep into the emotional component because the research that's been done, the hard science, is mainly around the physical, right?

[00:12:45] When you get into the emotional, the psychological.

[00:12:48] I have my own experience and I can talk about that.

[00:12:51] But yeah, my partner, who's a physician, he tells me all the time, like when we do interviews together, I will talk about how I believe testosterone is actually like having higher testosterone has given not only given me energy and recovery and some different things, but I feel like my anxiety is a little bit lower.

[00:13:10] I feel like I'm calmer.

[00:13:12] So I think there's some misnumbers around testosterone.

[00:13:15] Now, he will tell you, I don't disagree with you, but I don't want to put the white coat on and say that necessarily because the research isn't there behind it yet.

[00:13:22] And we're very big on what gets measured gets done.

[00:13:25] And it has to be data driven and it has to be research based and it has to be evidence based.

[00:13:30] And there's just the right, the research and the writing has not been done on that.

[00:13:35] So we don't like to talk about that as a fact.

[00:13:37] I will tell you my own experiences is I feel better.

[00:13:40] I feel calmer.

[00:13:42] I feel more confident.

[00:13:42] I feel more energetic with my testosterone levels at the higher end of normal.

[00:13:47] I will tell you like that feeling that you get when you, after you eat lunch and then you've got like a meeting and it's okay, everybody's sleepy.

[00:13:53] I don't get that.

[00:13:54] I used to have that.

[00:13:55] And now that my testosterone is around 850, I don't get that anymore.

[00:13:59] I'm just like, this is, we're just at hour eight.

[00:14:02] Let's keep going.

[00:14:03] When I'm in the gym, when I'm lifting, I just, my energy level is exceptionally higher.

[00:14:09] My push, my drive, it's there where like when my testosterone's land up, by the way, I've done the gambit to my body.

[00:14:16] I've jacked my testosterone way up higher than it should be.

[00:14:19] I've let it come way, way down to what we would consider like normalized levels, like four to 500 and experience this roller coaster of energy.

[00:14:28] And then drive as it really, when I say drive, like when I'm doing something physical, like when I'm in the gym, it really shows up my ability to keep pushing, to really go further, to not quit.

[00:14:39] When it's low, I'm just kind of, I'm done.

[00:14:42] I'm spent.

[00:14:42] I'm hurting.

[00:14:43] I'm out of here.

[00:14:44] When it's high, I'm like, let's go.

[00:14:46] Let's finish.

[00:14:46] I get to the end and like, it was moderate at best.

[00:14:50] And then my recovery is much higher.

[00:14:52] I currently, I lift six days a week.

[00:14:54] I'm pretty sure that with normal testosterone levels, that would be three to four days minimum.

[00:14:59] And that does, it allows me to be healthier, man.

[00:15:02] It allows me to hold on to more muscle mass.

[00:15:04] It allows me, and it's not just the muscle thing and it's not just a physical thing.

[00:15:08] When I get in there and I get to exercise like that, it's a mental thing, right?

[00:15:11] Like, it releases endorphins.

[00:15:14] It gives, also, it's just me taking time for myself in the day.

[00:15:18] And that's important.

[00:15:19] Yeah.

[00:15:20] And I don't think men do that enough.

[00:15:21] And I have other ways of doing self-care too.

[00:15:23] I'm a big fan.

[00:15:24] I like the sauna.

[00:15:25] I like meditating.

[00:15:26] I like doing, I like reading.

[00:15:29] There's other self-care ways.

[00:15:30] But like ones that are physical and release those endorphins are important for men.

[00:15:35] And if we're not doing that, we're missing out on almost like an evolutionary imperative that's in our bodies.

[00:15:42] And I really believe that.

[00:15:44] Like when you feed into that and you satisfy that, you feel better.

[00:15:48] You feel stronger.

[00:15:49] You just feel good, man.

[00:15:51] Everybody deserves to have that feeling.

[00:15:53] And I think just because we put ourselves last, there's just millions and millions of men out there who don't have that in their life.

[00:16:02] Some of the misconceptions with HRT that might prevent men from seeking help during the recovery.

[00:16:10] So the first and foremost, yeah, first and foremost, there's a ton of them.

[00:16:14] But I think the biggest one is the old roid rage.

[00:16:17] So that's not a thing.

[00:16:19] I've not experienced that.

[00:16:20] And I know a lot of bodybuilders and a lot of these misconceptions come from the bodybuilding world, right?

[00:16:26] Or you see these guys that are huge, like three of me.

[00:16:30] And they're like, the bottom line is that they use a lot of different compounds, not just testosterone.

[00:16:36] They use other compounds that are not even generally intended for human use in some cases.

[00:16:40] And yeah, man, they mess with your hormones and they mess with your ability to regulate emotion.

[00:16:48] Testosterone alone, though, is really very mild.

[00:16:50] And in the normal range that we're talking about, even the high end of the normal range, there's none of that.

[00:16:55] It's not a real thing.

[00:16:57] It's just a lot of goodness if it's managed correctly.

[00:17:00] And there's none of those mental side effects that people think.

[00:17:03] Number one.

[00:17:04] Number two is the fertility issue.

[00:17:06] If you are, but we're talking today about men over 40.

[00:17:10] So there may be a lot of men over 40.

[00:17:11] They're still looking to have more kids or maybe they marry somebody younger and they want to have a family too.

[00:17:15] I get it.

[00:17:16] But testosterone is not something that is going to make you infertile.

[00:17:21] There's a couple of drugs that you can take along with the testosterone.

[00:17:25] So taking synthetic testosterone will shut down your body's natural production of testosterone for the time that you are taking it.

[00:17:33] And then when you come off of it, there are some other drugs that you need to take under the care of a doctor that will then re-stimulate that natural testosterone production.

[00:17:42] It can take anywhere from a week to a month, but it really does come back.

[00:17:46] There's lots of men who have been on synthetic testosterone who are still fertile.

[00:17:50] And it's not always.

[00:17:51] It doesn't mean that you're not going to be able to reproduce.

[00:17:54] Does it mess with your ED?

[00:17:58] No, buddy.

[00:17:59] When your testosterone is up to 800, 900, you're waking up with the morning wood like a 13-year-old again.

[00:18:06] It's really shocking when it happens.

[00:18:08] You're like, what the hell is that?

[00:18:09] I haven't seen you in years.

[00:18:10] Where's the blood?

[00:18:11] Where's the blood?

[00:18:12] Yeah.

[00:18:13] No, you do.

[00:18:14] It will raise your sex drive up.

[00:18:16] It really will.

[00:18:17] And it does improve that.

[00:18:19] I know a lot of guys that have come in and they said – I've had guys that have gone to their – they go to their primary care physicians, their general practitioners, and they try and get testosterone prescribed to them.

[00:18:28] And the doctor's first response is usually, let's just give you Viagra.

[00:18:32] And they're like, that's not what I'm looking for.

[00:18:33] But yeah, no, it does help with sex drive.

[00:18:37] And it does – one of the other misconceptions is that your heart's going to explode and you're going to die and it's going to take years off your life.

[00:18:46] Quite the contrary is true.

[00:18:48] My partner will tell you that there's a lot of research out there that basically shows that in men, one of the highest correlations to longevity in life is your testosterone level.

[00:18:59] And the reason for that is not necessarily causational, but it is correlational because the higher your testosterone level is, the more lean body mass you're going to carry around with you.

[00:19:09] And the more lean body mass you have, the better and longer you're going to live.

[00:19:14] And the reason why is because lean mass is like a retirement account for old age.

[00:19:21] As people get older, especially when you start getting into your 60s, 70s, and then on, lean muscle mass is not something you're going to come by a lot.

[00:19:28] Okay?

[00:19:29] Every time you get sick, every time you get injured, every time something happens, man, you're losing just a little bit more of that.

[00:19:35] And eventually what happens is you don't – like lean muscle mass is the difference between falling and taking a bruise and falling and breaking a hip.

[00:19:43] Because the only thing that increases bone density and fights off osteoporosis in old age is lean muscle mass.

[00:19:50] Because having as much lean muscle mass as you can as we get into our older age means that we're not just going to live longer, but we're going to live better as we live.

[00:19:59] And that's why it's so important to just start doing now that we're in this latter stage of our lives.

[00:20:04] So that's the misnomer is that, oh yeah, it'll take years off your life.

[00:20:08] You're sacrificing longevity for prime time now, but nothing further could – or nothing could be further from the truth when we're talking about medically directly – sorry, physician-led.

[00:20:19] There's a lot of medically directed things out there.

[00:20:22] Physician-led care and continuous monitoring and evaluation.

[00:20:28] So what we do at Ignite that's a little bit different than any kind of TRT clinic you're going to roll into is we're not trying to put you on testosterone.

[00:20:38] We're trying to figure out with you what is the maximum amount of testosterone that your body can safely and ethically carry.

[00:20:48] And I mean that in two ways because everybody responds differently to testosterone.

[00:20:52] So if you and me had never been on synthetic testosterone, TRT, and we both go to the doctor and the doctor gives us both a prescription of 150 milligrams a week, let's say, of a certain ester of testosterone.

[00:21:04] We both go do it the same way.

[00:21:06] We eat the same way.

[00:21:07] We sleep the same way.

[00:21:08] Maybe we even carpool to work together.

[00:21:10] Our bodies, our natural testosterone level, if we were to get that measured in six weeks, is not going to be the same.

[00:21:16] Mine's going to be different than yours just because our physiology is just a little bit different.

[00:21:20] Our whatever it might be, there's tons and tons of different variables that affect that, but they're not going to be the same.

[00:21:27] So number one, we need to figure out how do you respond to testosterone and the scalable level?

[00:21:33] And then number two, what is the maximum amount of testosterone that you can carry month to month and not have adverse effects or side effects, right?

[00:21:42] I have a friend who's a freak of nature kind of a guy, and he can run 1100 right at that top of the normal range, and he's fine.

[00:21:52] He gets blood work done.

[00:21:53] It comes back normal.

[00:21:54] He feels great, and that's him.

[00:21:57] If anything, I know from four years of doing this up and down that if I start to get north of 850, and I know, and I also, from that first part of this question, know where what gets me to 850.

[00:22:07] I know exactly how much I need to be dosing.

[00:22:09] I know if I go north of that, my good cholesterol starts to tank and my bad cholesterol starts to rise.

[00:22:16] That is a longevity issue, so I don't go over that number anymore.

[00:22:19] What we do is we try and help every individual figure out what that number is for them, and we do that by doing blood work every six weeks, which is a little cost prohibitive to us.

[00:22:31] It cuts into our bottom line, but we don't actually care as much as we do about caring about our patients and caring about our clients, so we're just trying to help men figure out what that level is.

[00:22:40] We feel like six months is the minimum that we need to come to a conclusion and say, okay, we're dialed in.

[00:22:47] We're seeing normalcy.

[00:22:48] We're seeing regulation.

[00:22:49] From there, we do reduce the blood work after that to about once every six months unless there's some sort of symptom or side effect that's occurring that we need to get checked out.

[00:23:00] What about nutrition?

[00:23:01] We talked about that earlier.

[00:23:03] We touched on that.

[00:23:04] Nutrition is a big deal, almost, I think, as important as the dosage.

[00:23:11] I think nutrition is more important.

[00:23:13] Yeah, it's more important than the gym, and it's more important than the drugs.

[00:23:16] Because if you're going to eat like crap, man, if you're not going to give your body the protein that it needs, if you're not going to give you the carbohydrates and the fats that you need, you're not going to build muscle.

[00:23:26] You're not going to retain muscle.

[00:23:27] And this happens a lot with the, not necessarily testosterone, but the weight loss medicine that's out there.

[00:23:33] The teerzepatide and the semaglutide compounds.

[00:23:37] They prescribe these to you, and they advertise them as weight loss drugs.

[00:23:40] But here's the thing.

[00:23:41] If you just, and those drugs are really effective, by the way.

[00:23:45] If you've not taken one, let me describe it for you.

[00:23:47] It's very amazing.

[00:23:48] What happens is it's called a GLP-1 agonist.

[00:23:52] And what that means in plain language is there's a molecule in your brain that triggers the hunger response.

[00:23:57] And these drugs suppress that.

[00:23:59] So you really just don't get hungry.

[00:24:00] You still do get hungry here and there.

[00:24:03] If you don't eat for hours and hours, you will get hungry.

[00:24:06] Okay?

[00:24:06] And then eventually you'll eat something because that primal drive kind of pushes through it.

[00:24:11] But if you don't change anything, if you don't get your diet right, here's what happens with those.

[00:24:15] You just stop eating, and then your body cannibalizes itself, right?

[00:24:20] And the first thing that gets burned off is lean muscle mass.

[00:24:22] It's not fat.

[00:24:24] Muscle's heavier than fat.

[00:24:25] If you're not doing things like lifting weights all the time to give your body this bio signal that says,

[00:24:31] Hey, I need muscle because every day we're doing these things, and I can't do them all.

[00:24:36] I fail.

[00:24:36] I come to failure pushing or pulling this thing every day.

[00:24:41] Your body's not going to hold on to that muscle.

[00:24:42] And if you're not giving it the right nutrition, it's not going to hold on to that muscle.

[00:24:45] And then what happens is when that burns off, your muscle's what gives you your metabolism.

[00:24:51] Basically, muscle burns calories while at rest.

[00:24:54] It essentially is your metabolism.

[00:24:57] When you drop that off, you need less and less calories every day.

[00:25:02] So what happens is people take those drugs, they catabolize their muscle mass off,

[00:25:06] but they're seeing numbers go down on the scale.

[00:25:08] And they think that's important because that means success, right?

[00:25:12] That's what we've been taught is that numbers going down on the scale means you're getting healthier.

[00:25:15] That's just not true.

[00:25:17] Weight loss is not fat loss.

[00:25:19] Weight loss means nothing.

[00:25:21] If you go onto our website at ignitepah.com and go to our before and afters,

[00:25:25] our first client is actually our medical director, my partner, Dr. Scott Harshman.

[00:25:29] If you look at his before and afters, they're about 100 days apart.

[00:25:33] He goes from dad bod to hot rod and he weighs about the same.

[00:25:38] I think it's three pounds difference in the before and the after.

[00:25:41] And you're not going to believe me if you go look at that.

[00:25:43] And the biggest key to that though, through the whole thing was nutrition.

[00:25:47] He ate enough protein and enough calories every day that his muscle mass was not burning off.

[00:25:54] Okay.

[00:25:54] The fat will come off.

[00:25:55] If you do the exercise, if you take the drugs, you do the walking, you do the nutrition,

[00:26:01] you lift the heavy things, it will happen.

[00:26:03] But you have to have the nutrition behind it that will maintain that muscle mass.

[00:26:09] That's why these big bodybuilders, these guys that are huge, they have to eat 5,000, 6,000 calories a day.

[00:26:13] You think losing weight is hard?

[00:26:15] Try maintaining that kind of mass.

[00:26:16] That's a lot harder because they're eating themselves damn near sick every day.

[00:26:20] And what we're trying to do here with your nutrition is over that six-month period is really give you a better idea of what your specific body needs.

[00:26:30] Just like people respond differently to testosterone, everybody's macronutrient needs are different.

[00:26:36] Everybody's caloric needs are different.

[00:26:38] And we work with our clients to – we use an ultrasound technique where we measure key sites of their body for skeletal muscle mass and body fat percentage.

[00:26:47] So we come up with a whole picture of you and your specific body over time.

[00:26:52] We use that with your training data to see if you're hitting progressive overload and all your lifts, as well as circumference measurements or the soft tape measure.

[00:27:01] And we work with an integrative nutrition coach to track your calories and your macros every day.

[00:27:06] So really bring all of these areas together to see where your progress is and if it's stalled.

[00:27:13] Why is it stalled?

[00:27:14] Where do you naturally hold on to body fat?

[00:27:16] Where do you naturally build muscle?

[00:27:18] We all build muscle in different spots.

[00:27:20] I don't know if you ever noticed this, but there's a lot of guys that – okay, if you saw me and I wear like a tank top, my arms are real lean.

[00:27:26] I got a lot of veins and stuff.

[00:27:28] So it looks like you'd be like, oh, this guy's at like 6% body fat.

[00:27:31] And then if I take the whole shirt off and you get to see my belly though, I am not at 6%, 7% body fat.

[00:27:36] You got to add a digit.

[00:27:38] Let's put it that way.

[00:27:39] So I'm not running around that lean, but that's just where I hold my body fat.

[00:27:42] I know other guys that hold their body fat on their back or in their legs or in different spots, but like their abdominals can be ripped up.

[00:27:51] So what we do, man, is we really try and figure out like where these different spots are for men and on their particular bodies.

[00:27:58] Where do their bodies – and also like where do you grow muscle naturally because – and it took me 25 years of working out to figure out.

[00:28:05] I don't actually really have to work my biceps.

[00:28:08] I don't have to work my calves.

[00:28:10] Those two muscles just for some reason in my genetics will just grow.

[00:28:13] I really have to work on my chest and my shoulders because they do not.

[00:28:19] I have to work on my triceps.

[00:28:21] My back grows real naturally in different spots.

[00:28:24] There's a couple of muscles in my back that don't.

[00:28:26] Yeah, over time I've learned exactly where I need to focus my time and my energy in the gym.

[00:28:33] And what we try and do for folks is help them figure that out in just six months.

[00:28:38] Okay, you're actually a natural at these things, but at these things your body does not like.

[00:28:43] For whatever reason, your genetics say we don't need to carry muscle here.

[00:28:46] So we need to send your body a different signal, a different message that says that you do.

[00:28:51] And as far as the nutrition goes, for men, I'm a big believer in you need more carbohydrates than you think you do.

[00:29:02] Number one, if you want to grow muscle and you want to get bigger, carbohydrates are the number one thing that are going to help you grow.

[00:29:09] The misnomer around carbohydrates is it's a false positive when you lose weight from cutting carbs.

[00:29:15] If people don't know this, there's three types of macronutrients.

[00:29:18] There's proteins, there's fats, there's carbohydrates.

[00:29:21] Carbohydrates are basically the macronutrient that hold all the water in your body.

[00:29:25] So if you cut carbs out, what happens is your body holds on to less water.

[00:29:29] Okay, so you lose water weight and you will drop on that scale.

[00:29:32] You'll see the scale go down.

[00:29:33] But again, weight loss is not fat loss.

[00:29:36] It does not mean you're going to look better naked.

[00:29:38] It just means that you weigh less.

[00:29:41] Your fat content is still high.

[00:29:45] Your muscle content is still low.

[00:29:47] That does not equal you looking better naked.

[00:29:49] That just equals the scale going down.

[00:29:52] We teach people how to eat for their own bodies.

[00:29:55] And everybody needs different amounts of macronutrients.

[00:29:57] There's some guys that need a ton of protein.

[00:29:59] There's some guys that have that much protein makes them sick.

[00:30:01] Same thing for fats and carbohydrates.

[00:30:03] So we just continually tweak it over the length of the engagement here until you can.

[00:30:08] Our goal is to have you measuring all the things that you eat.

[00:30:13] And our app has a nutrition module where you can enter in, scan in with your barcode scanner,

[00:30:23] or manually type in and use a food library to track all of your calories, all your foods,

[00:30:29] and it populates your macronutrients.

[00:30:31] And our coach, our integrative nutrition coach, is looking at that.

[00:30:34] And she adjusts your macronutrients and your total calories based on how you're doing.

[00:30:40] And then she does an hour intake and then a half hour every week with you throughout the length of the engagement.

[00:30:47] And the reason is she's trying to figure out how you're feeling, what your psychology around food is.

[00:30:51] Are you sleeping okay?

[00:30:52] What's your energy level like?

[00:30:53] Are you grumpy?

[00:30:55] What are those things?

[00:30:56] Are you hangry?

[00:30:57] Because we really want to understand how we can get you in the habit of eating in a positive manner every day

[00:31:05] where it's just not an issue and what you need to eat.

[00:31:08] So while we're tracking everything up front, yeah, we're tweaking it so that by the time you leave here,

[00:31:13] it may not be perfect.

[00:31:14] And life's about balance, man.

[00:31:16] We're not expecting people to go out there and be robots with their nutrition for their lives.

[00:31:19] I sure as heck aren't.

[00:31:20] But I do know every day, this is what I eat.

[00:31:23] This is when I eat it.

[00:31:25] This is how much protein I'm getting.

[00:31:26] This is how many carbohydrates I'm getting.

[00:31:28] If I do more than I normally do physically, I know I need to eat more.

[00:31:32] If I do less, I know I need to eat less.

[00:31:35] Pretty simple once you get it into a habit.

[00:31:38] All right.

[00:31:39] Good.

[00:31:41] All right.

[00:31:42] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:31:43] So we are at IgnitePAH.com.

[00:31:46] You can find us on Facebook.

[00:31:47] You can find us on Instagram.

[00:31:49] But I really suggest that for our men out there, go to our website, okay?

[00:31:53] And then go on our resources page.

[00:31:55] On our resources page, we put a lot of guides and a lot of information out there for free.

[00:32:00] We're not trying to make any money off of it.

[00:32:02] I just want men out there to read it and understand the truth about some of the things that are being sold to you as a consumer out there in this industry and for your lifestyle.

[00:32:12] Go read our resources page.

[00:32:14] Take that knowledge and do what you will with it.

[00:32:19] So we'll text in the show notes.

[00:32:22] But once again, thanks, Derek, for hanging out with us.

[00:32:25] Just hold on for a second and we'll close it up.

[00:32:28] Thanks.

[00:32:28] Everybody out there, have a good night.

[00:32:31] Thanks for having me.