← Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
More Plates More Dates on TRT, How to Burn Fat, Build Muscle & MAXIMIZE Your Energy
01:24:03
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- [00:00]
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- [00:03]
Derek
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- [00:46]
Tom Bilyeu
What's up everybody? If you've ever wondered about whether you should try testosterone replacement therapy and if you did, what would happen to your sex drive? And just overall, if it's worth it, then this episode is a must. Listen this was my time with Derek from More Plates, More Dates. If you don't know his YouTube channel, it rocketed to a million subscribers in under a year because this guy has amazing content focused on male self improvement, health, wellness, the whole nine. It's absolutely incredible. Derek has had on amazing guests like Alex Hormozi, Andrew Huberman, Paul Saladino and many others covering a lot of spicy topics including testosterone, cycling and spotting. Natty or not. And in this episode we get into a lot of amazing stuff like burning fat, building muscle, TRT and the benefits of drugs, drugs, drugs, as well as the downsides. You're not going to want to miss this one. Derek shares what he wishes he knew before deciding to go on steroids when he was younger, and why it's so important to know what you can actually achieve with or without them. If you guys enjoy this episode, please follow Rate Review it's the best way to support the podcast. We can help other people just like you, reach their full potential and be legendary. I'm Tom Bilyeu and welcome to Impact Viewing. When I was at my most sexually vital and excited about life, mid-30s, I was lean, had a decent amount of muscle, at least for me, and really felt good. My question is though, do you think if you had a gun to your head, did I feel awesome because I was lean and had a decent amount of muscle, or did I feel awesome because my testosterone was higher than it is now, in my mid-40s? And what I'm trying to figure out because at some point I am going to do trt, but so Far, I've done nothing. I haven't even gone out of my way to naturally optimize my testosterone. But I feel like I'm getting to the point now where I need to start really thinking about that. And so I'm just curious, between those two, for a guy of any age, if you needed to make them feel like life is worth living, would you optimize testosterone or would you optimize physique?
- [03:00]
Derek
That's tough to say, because when you say leaner, too, that could be. Not conducive to optimal testosterone levels, too. Because I know a lot of people in the fitness industry. For example, young guys in their 20s who are trying to make a name for themselves and go viral and stand out. They'll literally walk around at 6,7% body fat year round, and they look great and their ego is inflated and they get all the compliments and they think it's, you know, the best thing ever. But their testosterone levels are like, 200.
- [03:25]
Tom Bilyeu
Whoa.
- [03:25]
Derek
Yeah. They're like, literally hypogonadal at 21 years old.
- [03:28]
Tom Bilyeu
Jesus.
- [03:29]
Derek
Yeah.
- [03:29]
Tom Bilyeu
From being lean or from, like, calorie
- [03:31]
Derek
deprivation, excessive cardio, like, their body is in essentially starvation mode perpetually. There's definitely, like, a balance to be had where you could try and keep your hormones as ideal as they can be.
- [03:42]
Tom Bilyeu
Well, let's say that I did the blood test and I slide it across the table. What's the first thing that you would look for? You know that the person sliding it across the table saying, I want to feel awesome.
- [03:51]
Derek
Yeah.
- [03:53]
Tom Bilyeu
You go to what, what are, like, the top three things that you're going to look at?
- [03:58]
Derek
Okay. I guess from the neurological side and muscle building potential side. I would be looking at free testosterone in particular, which would be the freely circulating androgen that dictates muscle growth. If I was to be looking for signaling to actually determine if you were truly hypogonadal or not and needed something like trt, I would be looking at. They're called gonadotropins, which is the signal from your pituitary to your testes to actually make intratesticular testosterone. So that would be luteinizing hormone and follicle stimulating hormone.
- [04:26]
Tom Bilyeu
Would that go down if I'm on trt?
- [04:28]
Derek
Those would go to nothingness. Interesting. Yeah. Like, they would be subclinical and show that you're entirely deficient because you would be using an exogenous source, like pinning exogenous testosterone, which would then tell your brain, we don't need to make any more gonadotropins. Because we don't need to signal the testes to make any more testosterone or have spermatogenesis either. And that is where fertility rates can decline from using exogenous testosterone as well as. And then from there, that's where you get the testicular atrophy from using steroids.
- [04:57]
Tom Bilyeu
Super interesting. Okay, so that was two. What's the third thing that you would look at?
- [05:01]
Derek
Maybe like fasting insulin, just to see how insulin sensitive somebody is. I've seen you talk about this on your show multiple times, but it's kind of like your body's ability to actually utilize nutrients effectively and actually, like get glucose into muscle. And if you are having resistance to getting the actual energy into cells, you were going to have issues actually being an optimal functioning human and maximizing muscle growth and all of these things.
- [05:28]
Tom Bilyeu
It's interesting. So glucose has been my obsession, but now as I start thinking about what's that next level for me, as I get older, I really start to think about TRT and for people that don't know testosterone replacement therapy. So is that. Do you just look at numbers in a blood test? Is that an age thing? Like, how do you. If you're working with somebody, how do you help them decide? Is it ability to put on muscle? What's the determining factor?
- [05:59]
Derek
Ideally, it's a hybrid of symptoms and biomarkers. However, I'm sure you've probably met a guy in your life who had some unreasonably, I don't know, like, crazy genetic predisposition to gaining muscle. But then on their blood test, it's not necessarily reflected in, well, how come their testosterone level is only 500 or 600 and I'm not more jacked and I have an 800. It doesn't always work that it's just, you have more tests, equals more muscle in the next guy. It's also, you know, receptor sensitivity, density, gene expression. Subsequent to that, like, there are a lot of things that play into it. So it's not always down to just the number because hypothetically, you might need more testosterone than the next guy to achieve the same functions. From a, like, physiology perspective, like, you might be able to get away with a 400 total with a free, that is 2 to 3% of that and feel totally fine, have a perfect libido, be a vital human and have nothing going, like, seemingly wrong. Whereas another guy might have a 600 or 700 and have symptoms of low T because he either needs more or too much of it is being bound up by binding proteins because of his lifestyle or Diet model or what have you. So it kind of depends. Like, ultimately it would be dictated by, you know, are you waking up with morning wood, do you still have a good libido? How is it compared to, you know, in your most vital period of life, you know, comparing to your mid-20s or whatever? Assessing muscle growth potential, like that is kind of a metric that could be used. Like, if you notice your body composition is suddenly declining despite you seemingly having the same routine that you've always had, that would obviously be like, a pretty good factor to keep into account. But on blood tests, typically you're going to see the manifestation of low T in that signaling to your testes, or if you actually had. It's called primary hypogonadism, is when the testes literally don't respond to those signals. And that's like, where TRT becomes the most warranted.
- [07:57]
Tom Bilyeu
In general, can you spike the gonadal signaling or do you have to go, like, if it's low or it's present, but you're not getting the release of testosterone, is there something that you can do to boost that signal?
- [08:11]
Derek
Yeah, so the signal to your testes is all based on a feedback system. So it's your body determining. Okay, we don't have enough testosterone and estrogen to facilitate certain functions in the body, so we have to make more. But it's going to be dictated, too, by energy intake, sleep quality, macro and micronutrient intake. Not just your protein, carbs, fats, but also the micronutrients you're taking in, the quality of the foods you're eating, all those things are massively impactful on what that signaling capacity will actually be. So it doesn't always boil down to, oh, you were just too lean too. Like, if you were following a diet that was totally deficient in fat or deficient in zinc, magnesium, like, what have you. Like, certain things that are very more heavily, proportionally contributing to testosterone production. These things can have very negative downward pressure on your pituitary output of these hormones, and down the line or downstream to that, prevent you from making as much test as you could. So as far as, like, what you could do to spike it, a lot of the same principles that I'm sure you preach regularly on this channel about, you know, lifestyle practices, sleep hygiene, diet quality. A lot of people overlook problems with sleep, though, with things like sleep apnea is very common and men like, a lot more prevalent than people are aware of, and they think they're asleep. Oh, I'm in bed for eight hours and I'm sleeping, but the quality is atrocious. So stuff like that is very impactful.
- [09:33]
Tom Bilyeu
So if I want to put on more muscle, which I do, but not. So my thing is, honestly, we were talking about this before we started rolling. Your time is finite. You can only allocate your energy to so many things. You're going through that now with content creation versus actually building businesses. I have this same with building a business and building my physique. And so I always tell people, you can tell how much I care about physique by looking at me. I'm not overweight, but I'm also not jacked because it just took so much time and energy to do that. So I would like to put on more muscle. I don't want to be in the gym two hours a day, six days a week. And I know at your merit clinic, you guys aren't just like, hey, get on trt. Like, you guys are pretty thoughtful. But. So first I want to know it, should one put off TRT as long as they can, minus, like, symptoms that would require that? Like, when I heard Rogan say that he started TRT in his 30s, I was like, whoa. I. I would continue to push it off lest you tell me otherwise.
- [10:32]
Derek
Well, the thing with it, it kind of. Because again, you could go by the standards of the medical community or even kind of the more vague interpretation of optimization. It all kind of depends on what is important to you. So hypothetically, if you wanted to push your body harder than even replacement, you could just take full blown steroids if you wanted to.
- [10:52]
Tom Bilyeu
And it's kind of, why wouldn't we? Because I'm assuming you don't recommend that.
- [10:55]
Derek
Or that's the thing is because when you're saying, should I push off trt? It's kind of like, well, if you're planning on getting it on it eventually. How much do you care about fertility right now? Zero. Okay, so that's one in favor of the TRT side. Then you would look at your actual signaling to your testes and how adequate is it? Or inadequate? And also what is your, your actual response at the organ itself. And then you can kind of dictate, well, is it deficient? Horribly deficient. Like, where do I stand on that spectrum to actually get me to how I feel right now? Because again, you have a lot of pillars of health that are super dialed that are also supportive of you, like potentially being right on the brink of feeling not great. Like, I don't really know where you stand on that spectrum, but everything is contributing in Some facet to some degree. And trt, maybe it takes you up to the top of that spectrum. Maybe you're on like some guys are teetering on like the brink of like being sub functional in terms of not having a high quality of life. It kind of depends. So as much as I would love to say, you know, wait five years or wait specifically this amount of time, it would very much depend on a lot of context about your own individual situation.
- [12:08]
Tom Bilyeu
All right? So deciding when to do TRT really comes down to if it's not disrupting my life, if I'm sleeping well, if I feel good. In fact, check me if any of these are the wrong things to look at. If my libido is high enough, if I have sort of that zest for life, I feel driven. I'm still going, probably not the time
- [12:29]
Derek
to do it, probably not.
- [12:31]
Tom Bilyeu
So if I want to start adding muscle and my T were deficient because if that's not today, it's going to be a day soon. How do I approach this? Do I want to take testosterone directly? Do I want precursors? How do you go when somebody comes to you and is like, hey, I've tried sort of all the basic stuff. How do I now accelerate this?
- [12:55]
Derek
Personally, for me, it would be like a full blown analysis of their actual diet quality, which could involve like there's, there's programs that you can use online. Like there's one called Chronometer. You can just plug your diet in, it'll show the actual micronutrient density of what you're eating, like how many vitamins and minerals of each there are in the food you're eating. And then from there you can actually pinpoint if you have a real deficiency that is contributing or not. And then that's where targeted supplementation could actually be warranted rather than just blindly taking a bunch of stuff. Um, so there's that and then assessing your.
- [13:28]
Tom Bilyeu
What are some basic supplementation? Like what's a common.
- [13:32]
Derek
Yeah, vitamin D. Huge.
- [13:35]
Tom Bilyeu
Do you advise that through sun exposure or through supplementation?
- [13:38]
Derek
Depends on vitamin D, man. Because it's like modern day. Is it the most conducive to vitamin D that perhaps than it was hundreds of years ago? It's kind of, I don't really know what the answer is to that, but all I do know is I see a lot of low vitamin D statuses these days and it's very, very prevalent and a lot of the working environments and lifestyles are very anti conducive to getting enough vitamin D from outside. So and some people, it's just like literally where they live. So maybe supplementation is warranted.
- [14:10]
Tom Bilyeu
Says the man from Canada.
- [14:11]
Derek
Yeah, I have to use vitamin D myself.
- [14:14]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, no, I can imagine. I'm assuming sleep is in there as one of the basics. Do you consider working out as a way to spike testosterone?
- [14:23]
Derek
Yeah, it's kind of like, I figure it's called the Goldilocks zone or I don't know what the terminology is, but basically too much of it could be the opposite of helpful, but too little also not going to be helpful too. So having, you know, like a good resistance training routine where you were focused on trying to progressively overload and gain strength rather than just fluff workouts, going through the motions kind of stuff that's
- [14:48]
Tom Bilyeu
more important than cardio
- [14:51]
Derek
for muscle, certainly
- [14:53]
Tom Bilyeu
for muscle is going to increase my test more than.
- [14:57]
Derek
Yeah, building a good muscle focused body composition is the most conducive to that for cardiovascular health. Having, like, ultimately these are things that shouldn't be. Should I do one or the other? Like you should be doing both ultimately. So both are going to be helpful. But I would say making sure at minimum you're getting in your heavy lifts for the week. The most important of the weightlifting, do
- [15:22]
Tom Bilyeu
you consider heavy a rep range thing?
- [15:25]
Derek
Yeah. Like in general, it kind of depends on what you are going for though, because some people, you know, they're power lifters and they are prioritizing strength over hypertrophy. So the range will differ for them. But in general, like standard 8 to 12 rep ranges, using weights that you're not going to go to complete failure on your first set, but by the last set you're hitting failure on the last rep kind of thing. And then trying to progressively overload and add pound or two every single workout and focusing on that, keeping a very regimented logbook too. A lot of people will just do the same exercise and the same weights for years on end and then wonder why their physique doesn't change. But they have not been tracking anything when they could have been otherwise. Micro loading every single time they go in the gym. Like there are literally like 0.5 pound increment plates you can buy on Amazon that you can just chalk on if £5 is too high of an increment, which is a problem at some gyms. Like you have to. At some point you're going to plateau. And at that point is it reasonable to add five pounds every time you show up? No, you're going to be, you know, stuck spinning your wheels a bit and that's where using micro increments or going up by rep, you know, doing another rep on the set instead might be a goal. But I found those like 0.5 pound plates really, really helpful.
- [16:33]
Tom Bilyeu
What about. So your size, your duration of working out. I assume you've been working out since teens or twenties.
- [16:39]
Derek
Yeah.
- [16:40]
Tom Bilyeu
So for me, what I found was I, I got to the point where there were just. It was always a battle between I'm trying to get my weights to go up, but I keep getting injured. Have you given how long you've been at this, are you still like heavier lifts, more reps or at some point do you go, yeah, this is the weight that I do and I'm just going to stick here?
- [17:00]
Derek
Yeah, for me, I have prioritized other things over body composition for a while now.
- [17:06]
Tom Bilyeu
You're still jazz.
- [17:08]
Derek
Not nearly as much as I was. But I also, it would be unreasonable for me to expect to have maintained my lifts at what they were because I used to use reasonable amounts of steroids, whereas now I don't use those. So for me though, I've just, I try to progressively overload when I go in the gym still and track with a log. Well, it's not. Oh, it's a app, not a log book, but you can use a book or an app if you want. But yeah, I still try to focus on the same principles, but it's certainly. It's not the same weight that I was using back in the day, but it is the same principles applied and still trying to make progress. Because if you're not trying to make progress in the gym, like you're not giving the adequate stimulus to tell your body, okay, you need to actually grow to support this load because at some point it gets used to what you're doing and then you need to actually tell your body, hey, you know, this is an increasing demand on muscle, so build more to support it because you can't do it right now.
- [18:05]
Tom Bilyeu
So how do you, I mean, you're big. Like maybe not bodybuilder big, but you have very robust, which I'm sure comes across on camera even hiding under your sweat sweater over there. So how much time do you have to put in to maintain it? Like for somebody that really wants to build a physique, what are those straightforward principles that you're still deploying?
- [18:30]
Derek
Maintaining is magnitudes easier than gaining muscle, which I guess is sort of something people can look forward to is as much as it seems like a daunting task to build a bunch of muscle once you're there actually, retaining is not that difficult. Or at least I don't think so, given that you're not using a bunch of hormones to support it. So for me, typically, I can maintain my physique on just like a few days a week. Ideally four days a week is kind of my schedule now. An hour in the gym, in and out. Any more than that, Our gym.
- [19:02]
Tom Bilyeu
How many days a week?
- [19:02]
Derek
Four days. Yeah. And for me, that's just a classic split of, you know, chest, shoulders, back. Another day is arms and legs, I think. I don't think I'm missing anything there. Calves on the legs as well.
- [19:14]
Tom Bilyeu
If I came in during your workout, would I think you were trying to kill yourself?
- [19:17]
Derek
No, I don't think so.
- [19:19]
Tom Bilyeu
Interesting.
- [19:19]
Derek
Yeah, it's kind of like the minimum. Minimum effective volume I can do to maintain what I have is what I do. Because I also get my mental bandwidth sapped when I go really hard in the gym. So if I was allocating my priorities to gaining muscle and trying to build my physique up, my volume would look different and higher than it does at just maintenance amount.
- [19:43]
Tom Bilyeu
When you were adding the muscle, if I had seen you work out, would it look like you were trying to kill yourself?
- [19:49]
Derek
Maybe when I'm going to failure on the last set of each exercise, but I still do that.
- [19:54]
Tom Bilyeu
But were you like a guy that was like screaming in there two hours a day? No. What did that look like?
- [19:59]
Derek
I think that's a common misconception that you need to be in there for hours a day, six, seven days a week. Like, even for a bodybuilder who's a professional and is taking copious amounts of steroids, they would probably not be in there seven days a week for two hours.
- [20:12]
Tom Bilyeu
Interesting. Yeah, because at some point you're just doing so much damage to the muscle, you're never recovering. Like.
- [20:18]
Derek
Yeah, it's called junk volume. When you're just going above and beyond what you need. And it's almost like anti helpful.
- [20:24]
Tom Bilyeu
That's interesting. So where is the sweet spot? You get a guy, he's a total dweeb. What do we do? So let's start natty and then maybe we'll. We'll veer in a second. But. So starting him off supernatural. But we need to get this kid jacked. No fucking around. We have 18 months to do it. So one. How many pounds if we. He does whatever you tell him. He eats what you tell him, he sleeps when you tell him, he micronutrients, all of it. This kid is religious. He does exactly what you tell him to do. What is that going to look like for him? Like what do we, what do we start him off with?
- [21:01]
Derek
Probably figure out what his maintenance calories is, which is how much he needs to eat to not either gain or lose weight.
- [21:07]
Tom Bilyeu
2000.
- [21:08]
Derek
Okay so that's super low. But anyway. Yeah, let's just say we need a number.
- [21:12]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah.
- [21:12]
Derek
So 2000, it's probably gonna be closer to 3000.
- [21:15]
Tom Bilyeu
Really? Yeah. What? Yeah, for maintenance.
- [21:18]
Derek
For a guy who's exercising regularly and
- [21:21]
Tom Bilyeu
is young, this is because he's gonna work out. Yeah.
- [21:24]
Derek
If you were just sedentary and doing absolutely nothing, then you're just basically expending energy for your movements sitting down, like your fidgets and stuff, which is a lower calorie amount. I think it's called a non exercise or non activity exercise thermogenesis or something. It's like your neat calories. It's how much you're going to expend just by functioning as a human. And then on top of that is all your activity which you then factor in for your caloric intake.
- [21:50]
Tom Bilyeu
What's the average person? 21 year old guy. What's the average 21 year old?
- [21:55]
Derek
I think when you, if they are working out and exercising, their maintenance might fall between like 2700 to 3000.
- [22:02]
Tom Bilyeu
Wow.
- [22:03]
Derek
Yeah.
- [22:03]
Tom Bilyeu
Okay, so our guys at that, let's say. But now we're going to get him in the gym. How many days a week?
- [22:09]
Derek
I would start with four, probably Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Sunday. So every other day would be fine.
- [22:15]
Tom Bilyeu
Interesting. Okay, so now we get him in the gym. Are we using your split which you said was back. Sorry, shoulders. Chest back. What did you do on back day?
- [22:25]
Derek
It was just back. Yeah, it kind of for me just
- [22:28]
Tom Bilyeu
back or back buys.
- [22:29]
Derek
I do just back.
- [22:30]
Tom Bilyeu
But really do you get buys their own day or do you treat arms on the same arms?
- [22:34]
Derek
Is one day.
- [22:34]
Tom Bilyeu
Your mix is weird. Walk me through it again.
- [22:37]
Derek
Again, it would depend on what your weak points are. So if it's a newbie, it's totally different for me. Like for example, my shoulders are my dominant body part. So I just shove it at the end of chest day and I barely.
- [22:47]
Tom Bilyeu
Because your shoulders grow easily.
- [22:48]
Derek
Yeah, and they maintain easily too. So I don't really put that much volume into them. So for me it's a dictation of my weekly volume based on how much I can actually allocate before I'm fatigued. And then I distribute that volume accordingly based on the body parts that need more attention. So I Have a terrible chest. So I do more on chest versus delts. I barely touch them. So for a newbie, I'm angry with you.
- [23:09]
Tom Bilyeu
I just want to. I want the record to reflect.
- [23:12]
Derek
Well, maybe you have a better judgment.
- [23:13]
Tom Bilyeu
Your shoulders are beast mode.
- [23:15]
Derek
Okay.
- [23:15]
Tom Bilyeu
Okay. So we've. We've got the kid. It's every other day.
- [23:18]
Derek
Yeah.
- [23:18]
Tom Bilyeu
We're gonna allocate his energy based on what he sucks at for now.
- [23:22]
Derek
But it's like figuring out what he sucks at is impossible if he's never done it. So I would just do, like, basic, you know, the compound three lifts. You know, bench, squat, deadlift. I would allocate those to, you know, squat on your leg day, deadlift on your back day, bench press on your chest day, and then you know, fill in other complimentary exercises depending on, you know, I would probably start him on really low volume to begin with and then see how much he can handle. Is it so fatiguing that it's, like, affecting his next workout where he's not performing as well? And you kind of like micro adjust from there, but starting with just, you know, a few really strong exercises, like, it's not rocket science. You do like, three to four sets of each. Eight to 12 reps. Whatever you can handle. But actually, the thing is, is sometimes coaches will need the clients to send videos of doing the exercise because their interpretation of what going hard enough is actually not going hard enough. So me just telling him, do 8 to 12 reps, like, I don't actually know that he's going hard enough. I think a good target is by the last set of that exercise, you are hitting failure by, like, the tail end of that set. So, like, your last rep is almost impossible for you to do, and you need to spotter, essentially.
- [24:29]
Tom Bilyeu
Should you be able to walk out of the gym normally, if you're leg
- [24:31]
Derek
day or should on your first leg day ever, you will be a cripple for a week. Yeah, but that's just because it's a virgin muscle. Not me.
- [24:38]
Tom Bilyeu
The first time, I. So I very consciously went from I don't work out to I work out like a demon. And no one gave me that warning. And so I put photos of Hugh Jackman. This is like PQ Jackman Wolverine. Okay, I've got him plastered everywhere. I'm gonna look like Hugh Jackman. I'm going all in. So go in. Go so hard that if I sat in a chair for more than five minutes, when I would get back up, I would have to stop stretch before I could walk again. It was unreal. But that became my benchmark. I didn't want to get that far because that actually made it hard to move. But I remember one time at the end of a workout, so I was very poor at the time, and my driver side car door didn't unlock, so you had to unlock the passenger side door, reach across and unlock the driver's side. And I had just done chest and chest shoulders tries, which I would do on the same day, and I put my arm down on the seat to reach across to unlock it, and my arm just. It like gave way and I fell on my face and I was like, that's when you know you've worked out hard enough. Or was that stupid? And that was just. We're now into. It's moving me backwards.
- [25:49]
Derek
Yeah. I think it's kind of hard to say, oh, you went too hard to a newbie because they're super sore on day one. I think that's kind of expected. But they don't need to do as much as almost anyone else who has been actively doing it for years, because such a little stimulus is needed to achieve growth at that point that you can get away with much less volume at the start and still get your newbie gains going. So it's kind of like, you know, there's no magic number. But yeah, if you walk out on your leg day, like, honestly, after three sets of squats on your first leg day ever, you're probably going to be sore, even if you're a newbie, if you actually, like, went close to failure. That's just expected from a virgin muscle. So I wouldn't read too much into it unless you were literally doing, like, I don't know, 20 sets of body part or something. That would be way overkill for a newbie if they were just starting. Well, maybe not way overkill. Kind of depends on, again, how hard are you going on those sets.
- [26:42]
Tom Bilyeu
Right. So he's only got 18 months, though. So ballpark me. If 20 is probably too many sets per body part, what is the. He's doing what Derek tells him to do.
- [26:53]
Derek
Yeah, I think maybe like, again, this is just like a ballpark number, but maybe like 60 sets a week. And then the last allocating those between the four workouts. And again, like the split, if it's
- [27:06]
Tom Bilyeu
two 60 sets per week per body
- [27:08]
Derek
part, total split across how all the days. And if that was too intense for somebody too, they could technically split one of those days into another day in itself, like chest and shoulders. A lot of people, they need their Shoulders or their chest. Not like some supporting body parts might be fatigued that otherwise would warrant separating that body part into a separate day. Like, for you, obviously your triceps are not going to do as well by the time you get to them after you've done a bunch of bench press and stuff. So for a newbie, after he's hit his, you know, failure set on bench, and then you tell him to go do what's his, like, main compound tricep exercise that he might be doing, maybe he's doing. If he does a close grip bench press or something like, good luck, you're going to get zero out of that because you're so destroyed at that point. So that's where, you know, a separate arm day might make sense. So how you split that up again? Like, there's so many free programs online from people who are reputable in the space with workout programs and whatnot. So I think it's pretty easy and accessible to find that now. But ultimately like 60, 70 sets a week, if you can handle it. 80. But like, I think that'd be a good starting point. And just separating that across four or five days, depending on how you want to do the split. If you want to have a, you know, a separate shoulder day from your chest day or not, it kind of depends again, on your time and whatnot. But. And then, yeah, just going to failure in your last exercise of the set. And it's not that complicated. And make sure you get your body weight and protein per day in grams.
- [28:37]
Tom Bilyeu
And if it's not that complicated, why do so few people have physiques?
- [28:42]
Derek
Because I think a lot of unrealistic standards are putting. Being put out there by people in the industry that walk around, you know, with 200 total teas who are natural, that maintain these absurdly low body fat percentages. And then also guys who are on steroids and, you know, are very forthcoming or not forthcoming about them.
- [29:02]
Tom Bilyeu
Why would that make. So I'm gonna. I'll give you a counter argument. They're lazy.
- [29:06]
Derek
Okay, so put it this way. You thought The Hugh Jackman 2001 physique was great. Ask anyone in the fitness industry if that was good. They'd be like, that guy's skinny fat. Yeah, not kidding.
- [29:17]
Tom Bilyeu
Okay, interesting. But let's take this head on. So I don't think it's bad role models. I think it's laziness. You think it's unrealistic expectation. Why would that stop somebody from getting a physique? Because they give up.
- [29:27]
Derek
Yeah, I just Think there are a lot of, there's a lot of skewing of what people see as a good physique now as opposed to, I think they could achieve The Hugh Jackman 2001 Naturally and with, you know, most people could probably do that. It's just there is so much saturation of fitness industry physiques now that it has anyone who's kind of following that, I don't know, niche of content and maybe it is a bit more of a subsection. So maybe it is only a certain subsection of people that have the warp perception including myself but it certainly is inflating what is perceived to be good. So I think again the people who aren't achieving somewhat a semblance.
- [30:10]
Tom Bilyeu
So we're arguing about the word good.
- [30:12]
Derek
Yeah, which is all subjective.
- [30:15]
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- [30:45]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So fair. But I will say I very quickly got into a bodybuilding universe. So I know the most like distorted physiques ever. And I remember one time coming into work and showing my partners like I want to look this guy on the COVID of whatever bodybuilding magazine. I was like I want to look like this. And they were like guaranteed that guy's photoshopped. They're like, there's no universe in which even with drugs that somebody has a chest that bubbly. But even that, like having something to aim at, having something that excited me so much. The idea of being able to one day look like that even though there was no universe in which I was ever going to get there because it was Photoshop, probably steroids plus Photoshop, like really like extreme extreme. It still was exciting. And so it got me to go into the gym. And so when I look at the people that I love that and especially when I used to be leaner and bigger, people used to come up to me all the time like, what do you do? What do you eat? All that. And I was as natural as they come, which is why my physique was meh by most people's like a high level guy. Be like this guy's a joke, he's Fucking tiny and he's fat. But I felt really good, and so people would come up to me a lot. What do you do? How do you eat? Like, how do you get that physique? And my answer was always like, it's pretty basic in terms of, like, getting lean and getting bigger. Two separate things. So let's make sure we separate those out. I first got muscle, and then I leaned down, and I did it really stupidly. And nobody should take my advice, but you can. I'm walking around with the results, so that is what it is. But my thing was, like, the only hard part here is actually not eating the thing that you want to eat and then actually doing the reps and being willing to be like, oh, I think I'm about to throw up. So if you can do that, like, you're gonna get the physiques.
- [32:41]
Derek
Yeah. I would argue that you probably don't need to work to feeling like you're throwing up though, as well. So maybe that might even be putting people who are completely new hearing you say that, they're like, oh, like, no chance I'm doing that now. Maybe on, like, a heavy squat or a leg press.
- [32:57]
Tom Bilyeu
I'm certainly wasn't asking myself that every day. I'm too lazy for that.
- [33:00]
Derek
Yeah. So, yeah, like, honestly, there is most people that don't have the physique. That is the peak of their genetic potential is out of lack of willpower and adherence to something consistently, ultimately. So it's not like, oh, I'm not gonna work out because of this insane expectation I would never reach. It's also laziness too, but it depends on the person. I was just saying, you know, the. The celebrity goal physique is oftentimes unattainable because it's not realistic.
- [33:30]
Tom Bilyeu
Interesting. So we'll get to that in a second. There's something I want to ask you about that specifically, but first, do you regret doing hardcore steroids?
- [33:40]
Derek
No, because it made me very aware of my health and learning more about optimization and skewed me in the direction I am now, which is a lot more. It's not necessarily longevity focused, because again, circling back to the first discussion we had about should you take TRT or not, there's, like, absolutely something to be said about if you wanted to push your body. As long as you're aware of the give and take relationship of the pros and cons of it, you don't necessarily have to do anything within the confines of what is socially acceptable. So if you were wanting to take a shit Ton of steroids like you. You could, it would just be unhealthy. But there is potentially some level of, well, maybe I want to push my body a little bit. Maybe it takes a couple years off my life, but maybe the quality of life is significantly better via this. So for me it's, I don't know, I try to gauge these things in a more what I deem to be realistic way because I want a high quality of life too. So I, I feel like I've experienced the aggressive, polar extreme of I am deteriorating my body for this extreme outcome that is basically just cosmetically pleasing and is inflating my ego. And then on the other side of the spectrum, I'm very aware of the longevity research and the anti aging stuff. Be as frail and gaunt as you can until the last day you die, but you live to 100. So great fucking job. I want to kind of meet in the middle. That's where I'm at. So having that, I don't know, the education or learning about both sides has been very helpful and educational to me personally and I think helps me impart that knowledge on, I don't know, the people who are interested that follow my stuff.
- [35:20]
Tom Bilyeu
But do you think there is a moral case against people doing steroids? Do you have no problem? Hey, you understand this is going to shorten your life a little bit. But hey, if you're good, I'll walk you through how to do it. Well, are you unconflicted? You give that advice or is there a little like.
- [35:37]
Derek
Well, there's obviously some nuance, especially now that I have a telemedicine platform and things. Like some people might think, oh, he's trying to like promote taking hormones via the clinic or like I, I feel like I'm pretty. I've remained unbiased in that even from the business side of things. Like I would prefer people get the full context of their situation before they haphazardly jump on hormones. Because for us, like we make money on services and blood work and education of our patients. Not necessarily just here's a script, a test, Anastasol, this, that get out the door and we'll just make our money on the medication. Like that's not how we do business. So for me it's always been about the education and I don't really care what people do as long as they are educated about it ideally before they go into it. Like when I was younger and I started taking gear steroids, I wish I knew a lot of the stuff I know now in hindsight and that is kind of the, I don't know, manifestation of A lot of my content is stemmed from my experiences with that and what I wish I knew and education.
- [36:37]
Tom Bilyeu
Wish you knew back then.
- [36:39]
Derek
What do I wish I knew? Yeah, mainly the impacts on the cardiovascular system and that it deforms the heart. Yeah. It's morphology and function, like the shape, size, function of it all can be very significantly impacted from basic negligence on something as simple as your blood pressure not being modulated or assessing it. Like some people don't even check it and they'll be walking around like stage two hypertension perpetually because of the drugs they're on. And then they end up with a heart attack at, you know, 35 years old or younger. I've seen people die in their twenties.
- [37:13]
Tom Bilyeu
Jesus.
- [37:14]
Derek
From that wall indirectly, but it's because of the downstream effects of that. So. And the problem too is when I first started bodybuilding and getting heavily into learning about performance enhancing drugs and whatnot, there was this sentiment that went around the industry like, where are the bodies? And it wasn't very documented who's dying? Because it was not very highlighted. Social media wasn't really like prominent and it just really wasn't talked about that much. And typically the only people that get reported on that die are big names in the industry. So a lot of people, like bodybuilding wasn't like a mainstream sport anyways, if you can even call it a sport. And it just wasn't really being noted. And you oftentimes couldn't attribute a death solely to steroid use anyways. Because if somebody dies at 40, it's like, oh, the genetic predisposition or this or that. It's like, well, yeah, but the steroids plus the genetic predisposition make it way worse. So yeah, it's stuff I wish was more. The problem though is that education didn't exist too. So it's, you know, I wish I had it, but it wasn't really readily available as well. So that's kind of where I think now is great. Because people at least who are jumping into this stuff have education at their fingertips for free, letting them know, hey, this is the reality of this stuff. If you're gonna go down that path and it's not risk free, and here are the very real manifestations of risk profile that you could expect in the coming years. And if you're going to do it anyways, how to try and attenuate that risk as much as you can.
- [38:51]
Tom Bilyeu
Why does it piss you off when people lie about steroids?
- [38:54]
Derek
It doesn't really piss me off. I just think it's disingenuous and oftentimes it kind of depends on the person in the context. But if you're trying to sell a product or a service that is marketed around your physique and then you are heavily implying that it is solely your workout program or solely your. The coaching or whatever, it's like, yeah, these things are obviously the underpinnings of how you built the physique. But like, you also would be 30 pounds lighter if you weren't on steroids. So I feel like there's an obligation to at least give that context. Like, hey, by the way, this is also in the equation for me and this is why I look the way I do. Because it could otherwise be misleading. If you're this guy walking around who's this larger than life Persona and people are trying to aspire to be like, and you're also selling workout programs or what have you, and then you are supplements or whatever it is, and you are not being transparent and forthcoming about, hey, like, this is what I do, but I also do this other stuff, which is massively impactful on the end outcome.
- [39:56]
Tom Bilyeu
Would you have full respect for an influencer coach, whatever that was like, okay, here, here's my workout routine. I hope you sign up. It's going to be amazing. Here's the gear that I take and I've got here, you know, 30 people that have taken my course. They're all natural. You can look at their results. Not as cool as me because I'm on the gear, so I look way better. Would you be like, yeah, fuck yeah. Or would you still be like, oh God, there's gear involved. And even though he's being honest, it's just not as cool?
- [40:29]
Derek
No, it's fine. As long as you're just, again, it's like realistic expectations. If you're marketing it as if you are representing your end outcome as an expectable and repeatable process when it's just not without hormone augmentation. That's where it gets murky. If you're an enhanced guy and you just have good information on diet, but you don't talk about your drugs too. Like, I don't really have a problem with it necessarily. It's more when you're representing an outcome that is tied to something you're lying about is more the issue. So oftentimes, you know, it's kind of irrelevant to me personally.
- [41:00]
Tom Bilyeu
Okay, so now my real question, all this is preamble to, do you think it's cheating in sports if people do performance enhancing drugs, if it's against the
- [41:10]
Derek
rules of their sport. Like, it depends. Like Brazilian Jiu jitsu, for example. Rampant steroid use. But it's kind of unspoken that the majority of people are just using drugs they can. It's. That is like the most finicky conversation in that sport because it's technically not banned via. You're not getting tested. But it's also somewhat frowned upon if you're, you know, the gearhead and maybe not everyone else. You know, if, if you, if you're natural and you're competing against guys on gear, like, obviously you're going to think there's an uneven playing field in a sport that is actually regulated and tested according to water standards or whatever it is. Yeah. Like cheating is cheating. So it's just a very, very prominent
- [41:52]
Tom Bilyeu
thing that you wouldn't like the double standard. So it's like nobody's getting tested. Still think maybe it's not ideal because it isn't like, you know what people are doing or you know what the rules are. So it still could create an uneven playing field. Definitely hated in a sport where they say you can't. And so if there are people that are finding a way around it, that's really shitty. So I'm all for a world where we just say, hey, that we have these exogenous substances that people can take. And instead of drawing a line, I just want it to be out in the open.
- [42:29]
Derek
Yeah.
- [42:30]
Tom Bilyeu
And so that there is no double standard, so that people can decide whether they want to do it. But, like, for take something like BJJ or cycling. And I'm not an expert, man. And so who the hell knows, like, how many people actually do it or not? But for me, hearing that, oh, everybody's doing the blood doping or whatever in the Tour de France. I don't go, oh, now the Tour de France isn't cool. I go, damn. Like, these guys go hard. Like they're taking their blood out of their body. They're hyper oxygenating it, they're putting it back in. And it's like, I might say, I think that's pretty dumb because of the high risk and like, the odds of you dying are just astronomical. But, man, I want to see. I want to see humans push themselves. Now, I get though that what I'm saying, like, hey, that walks a line. Do we want kids emulating that? Do we want to put that out there? So is there like, is this just Tom not having thought enough about it or is it like, hey, once you get into the professional leagues, let people push themselves.
- [43:30]
Derek
It's tough, man, because it's like, I don't think there's a definitive answer to that and many debates could be had about it. I think that sport is entertainment at the end of the day. So it comes down to a debate as to, well, if you want to make it as entertaining as possible, obviously sauce everyone to the gills. That would be the logical answer if you wanted the max entertainment factor. And then it comes after that, it's like, well, do you want to be encouraging drug use among the youth to then aspire to be like, fill in the blank, professional athlete? You know, if they're going to be getting paid this much, is that something that they should just take that risk in order to get that outcome? I don't have the answer, man.
- [44:08]
Tom Bilyeu
Interesting. It's interesting because, yeah, I. I definitely don't want to encourage kids to do it. That one really scares me. Yeah, but at the same time, when you get into the professional leagues, so many people are doing it. I would rather just see, like, what's the truth of what people are doing. So, Obviously, the Conor McGregor thing is utterly fascinating. He's allowed to step out of the testing pool, and as long as he gets tested for six months, he can come back in. Now, I don't know shit about, like, steroid use, but it looks like he's probably been doing something.
- [44:45]
Derek
He sort of admitted as much indirectly, seemingly.
- [44:49]
Tom Bilyeu
And my thing is, I don't have a beef with that.
- [44:51]
Derek
I mean, either I. You know, if it's conducive to his injury recovery and it gets him out there quicker, like, if it's within the confines of the rules, like, go for it. I think just a lot of people, I don't know if he became aware of this rule through, like, his connections or whatnot, or like, finagling it in some special way that he was kind of given more leniency, or if it's just, you know, his location, it makes it more problematic and harder to test them because they have to outsource people who test on behalf of USADA in Ireland, who really knows? But, you know, at the end of the day, there's hormone use in seemingly all sports. Yeah.
- [45:29]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah. It's interesting, even as I'm giving my own answer it now, you can, like,
- [45:33]
Derek
hear yourself say and then almost debate against yourself.
- [45:36]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, well, so the thing, the right question is, do you want kids doing that? And then I definitely do not. Especially because you get parents that want to see their There was a kid that I went to middle school and high school with. Now I don't know him well enough to. I would certainly not say his name in case I'm wrong about this, but what I heard was that he was on steroids. Now when I say this kid had density of muscle at 12, I'm talking. It was unreal.
- [46:01]
Derek
And
- [46:03]
Tom Bilyeu
that always worried me that if that was true, that that was pressure from his parents and wasn't. I just can't fathom like how at 12, how do you even get steroids? But he, he was a freak. And he, he was, I think he was like 5, 8 and he could high jump 7ft. It was unreal, unreal. And so that, that worries me that he has potentially, if it's true, done, you know, long lasting damage. And I have to imagine that parents were involved.
- [46:37]
Derek
Yeah, I remember tons of guys in my high school that would take year for.
- [46:41]
Tom Bilyeu
Really? Yeah. For. Is that just because you're so young? It seemed so, yeah.
- [46:46]
Derek
For football. Trying to get a good scholarship to a college or university that is gonna get them further in their aspirations. And yeah, it's pretty obvious when somebody shows up to gym class and all of a sudden he can bench 50 more pounds within six weeks.
- [47:01]
Tom Bilyeu
Jesus. Yeah, that's interesting. Now BJJ guys don't see, I don't pay enough attention, but I don't think of BJJ guys as having physiques. So are they doing it for recovery or are they all jacked and I just don't pay enough attention.
- [47:16]
Derek
Body weight is very, very important for moving people around. And again, I'm not a BJJ expert by any means, but obviously if you're a heavyweight, the more muscle you have on, the easier you can impart and like get that.
- [47:28]
Tom Bilyeu
Is that broken down into weight classes?
- [47:30]
Derek
Yeah, but it's, there's deviations between them and ranges. So obviously if you're at the top end of your weight class, it's more ideal than being at the bottom or the middle. And the more you can push a guy around and use your weight to your advantage. Hugely impactful, obviously force production. Hugely impactful too on anything to do with manipulating somebody else's bodies, fighting against you. Oxygen carrying capacity significantly increased when you're on androgens. Really? Yeah. There's a lot of benefits from it. Like you could like it stimulates the release of EPO as well through epo. Erythropoietin. So like, never heard of that. Really? It's like the main drug used by Cyclists or it was.
- [48:10]
Tom Bilyeu
Anyway, when I say this is not
- [48:12]
Derek
my world, it's like the precursor to actually making new red blood cells. Yeah. So increasing your oxygen carrying capacity in sport, obviously, like broad spectrum beneficial in essentially anything you're doing with the exception of like, I don't know, archery or something. And there's drug use in that too. Beta blockers.
- [48:33]
Tom Bilyeu
For what? Anxiety.
- [48:35]
Derek
If you can slow your heart rate and calm down, Way easier to shoot a target.
- [48:41]
Tom Bilyeu
Whoa.
- [48:41]
Derek
Yeah. And if you use certain beta blockers that cross the blood brain barrier, like propranolol, you can actually like very significantly calm yourself down and get like an anxiolytic like anti anxiety effect. So it's very common among public speakers, pianists also using it.
- [48:59]
Tom Bilyeu
Interesting.
- [49:00]
Derek
Yeah. A lot of people use beta blockers.
- [49:02]
Tom Bilyeu
Drugs worry me. But at the same time, I'm not like, if I needed a drug, I would take a drug. I'm just trying to limit the number of times that I need a drug. Whether it's Tylenol, Advil, anything. I try to limit the amount. But that's from a longevity standpoint, not from a, like, I want to see people perform at their best.
- [49:22]
Derek
See, it's interesting though because it's like, there's definitely something to be said about some genetic risk factors are so aggressive and unique that pharmacology may be the only way to attenuate your risk for longevity purposes. So if you had familial hypercholesterolemia, for example, are you going to avoid taking a cholesterol or lipid modulating medication?
- [49:44]
Tom Bilyeu
Yes. Okay, but am I wrong? I mean, maybe here's the thing. I don't. I'm not coming from a place of superior knowledge. I'm coming from a place of paranoia. And so I'm just like, oh, I get it. But like, whenever people take drugs, there are second and third order consequences that we're not thinking about. And so that's the thing that worries me. I don't have a moral compunction with it, but it's like, like if I
- [50:09]
Derek
can avoid it, it's just weighing the roi. So it's like, is whatever benefit I could get out of the drug going to outweigh the potential side effect burden even in the TRT side of things?
- [50:18]
Tom Bilyeu
Especially the side effect burden that we don't yet understand? Yeah, that's the one that worries me.
- [50:24]
Derek
Thing though is that some people have genetic predispositions that, you know, you're not functioning correctly. If you have a complete deficiency in the production of an enzyme for Example, or you're not going to take a drug that might facilitate this function. Because I want to be natural. Like I feel like that would be potentially moronic.
- [50:40]
Tom Bilyeu
That would be moronic in my estimation. Yeah. Anything where I felt like it was impacting the quality of my life or if I really believe, like from a longevity standpoint, I'm actually going to live longer based on the. Well, in fact, I was going to say based on my, you know, genetic limitation or problem or whatever, but do you know much about rapamycin?
- [50:58]
Derek
Yeah.
- [50:59]
Tom Bilyeu
Okay, so rapamycin, I. There were people really pushing me to do. God, what's the other diabetic drug that everybody's like, you forgot on metformin. Everyone was like, bro, you gotta get on metformin, you don't understand. And now of course data's coming out where it's like, well, if you need it and you're a diabetic, yes, better to take it than not take it. But if you're not a diabetic, it could at a minimum blunt the impact of working out and may have other knock on effects. And it's that kind of thing where, you know, follow the science. Probably a bad way to say it since science is, hey, we're going to be wrong, we know we're wrong. And so we're going to keep refining, refining, refining based on the data. And so follow the data might make a lot more sense. But rapamycin is the first one where I'm like, ooh, maybe there really is something.
- [51:51]
Derek
I think ultimately this is where educating yourself is the most important though, because for you with a cgm, for example, you can assess what your blood glucose control is like and postprandial response to bringing that back down into range through going for a walk versus metformin. 10 minute walk, more effective than metformin in studies. Or you can use metformin.
- [52:12]
Tom Bilyeu
Interesting.
- [52:12]
Derek
Yeah. So, but again, does that mean metformin has no utility? Depends on the context. But if you are checking your metrics meticulously, like presumably you do and have all these things going on, you could probably set like be able to tell better than the data for your specific situation. Is it a worthwhile drug to be using?
- [52:29]
Tom Bilyeu
What do you think about rapamycin? Do you think it's going to end up being bullshit like everything else or anything else?
- [52:34]
Derek
But I don't know enough about it to say for certain, but I think anything that is anti mtor IGF1 what have you will have some positive impact on longevity potentially. But again, it circles back to the whole ROI on vitality of life, quality of life relative to that extra few years you've tacked on. So I think there is a way seemingly, and this is my just perception, to implement it with a negligible impact to any perceivable, you know, downsides from it. Like I think people like micro dose it on an infrequent basis and see no perceived impact in a deleterious way to their performance or anything. But that is just what I've heard anecdotally from some of my colleagues and whatnot. But I have never used it. I haven't really looked into it that thoroughly and could be worthwhile. But it kind of to me probably stems back to the whole context dependent situation and assessing what it does to you. Like sometimes you just have to take shit and then see what happens. You know, like if you're worried about what's gonna happen, like you almost, sometimes it's just take the drug and then see if it affects you bad and you can pull it out and the half life is short enough, that's out of your system in five days.
- [53:47]
Tom Bilyeu
So what, what are the things that you've experimented with like that? Do you think there's something interesting here as evidenced by the fact that you, you either use it with some degree of frequency or you use it continuously.
- [53:59]
Derek
I do use ezetimibe, which is a cholesterol absorption inhibitor essentially. And I feel like if I can keep my apob down, I have, I personally have better peace of mind that I'm not going to end up with plaque buildup. Now again, I could hypothetically get scans done regularly and, and check for soft plaque buildup before it becomes calcified and actually get a CAC score down the line. Like I can probably, you know, I could probably assess that regularly and figure out is my lifestyle and diet and everything conducive to that outcome to begin with, where I even need to be on the medication. But it's been a lot more difficult for me to get access to that kind of diagnostic service even in Canada, even as a telemedicine service provider myself, I have to go to the States to get stuff done and it's problematic. So for me, taking a medication proactively based on what I've seen in my blood work, has been worthwhile to date. Maybe in the future I'll drop it, but that is something that I've been using myself.
- [54:53]
Tom Bilyeu
So obviously the body needs cholesterol. Is there something that you do in your lifestyle that you think is creating an inappropriate cholesterol response.
- [55:03]
Derek
Yes. I'm on TRT for context, so.
- [55:06]
Tom Bilyeu
Okay. And that spikes your cholesterol, that lowers
- [55:08]
Derek
your HDL a decent amount, and then LDL can be slightly elevated a little bit. It inhibits lipid metabolism to some extent.
- [55:17]
Tom Bilyeu
Interesting.
- [55:18]
Derek
Yeah.
- [55:18]
Tom Bilyeu
Is that because it's exogenous or is there, like, guys just have a naturally problematic cholesterol?
- [55:27]
Derek
The reason why it has influence on these enzymatic processes, I don't really know physiologically why it happens. It's almost, you know, it could be a feedback loop from if you have androgens coming in and because, again, when you administer this stuff, it's coming in in a bolus that is not really representative of what would be normal and endogenous. You have a diurnal rhythm that, you know, pulses multiple times, and you have a. They're relatively small and they go up and down, and it fluctuates. Just like, for example, when you get your blood work, get it done in the morning, because that's when your test is at its highest. Because if you get it done the afternoon, you might be 200 points lower just based on the time of day, which is notable. But that sort of thing is like, there are feedback systems, and similar to what you said, what's happening two, three steps down the line. But with lipids, there is absolutely an influence from exogenous androgens. And the more androgens you apply, the worse it gets.
- [56:22]
Tom Bilyeu
What about. Do you worry at all about joint cartilage tendon formation if you're doing. I don't know if the same things are true of trt, but I know that some of the problems that bodybuilders end up having, which is why they tear their muscle. I remember my business partners and I used to talk, if someone tears their muscle from the bone, guaranteed on steroids. And is that like, have we gotten more modern with that and that's not as much of a problem, or are there things you can do to support that?
- [56:50]
Derek
Yeah, there are things you can do to support it, but in general, I think that issue more stems from the fact that when people use supraphysiological amounts of hormones, as in more than they can naturally produce, they end up with strength acceleration that is exceeding what their tendons and whatnot can handle. So just because your muscle can force something up, it doesn't mean that all of the supporting infrastructure can also progress at that fast of a rate. But force production from androgens, the psychoactive effects are definitely significant on your ability to Move stuff around that you wouldn't have been able to otherwise even meaning
- [57:27]
Tom Bilyeu
you're recruiting more of the twitch fibers or you're just being like a fucking psycho aggressive.
- [57:33]
Derek
Yeah. So it's like similarly to even stimulants, like there are things that can, you can acutely increase your performance even with the same amount of muscle because you can actually recruit more motor units than you would otherwise. Yeah, very interesting. I feel like people are conflating the fact that people's strength outcomes and the things they're doing in the gym, performance wise, are exceeding their infrastructure's ability to support those loads of. Not necessarily that the steroids inherently are degrading all of these systems.
- [58:07]
Tom Bilyeu
Got it, got it, got it. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. Talk to me more about estrogen. So if you have too much testosterone in your system, it gets turned into estrogen. It the common wisdom for an uneducated bro like myself would be you don't want estrogen. But obviously that isn't true. So is it a ratio between the two and as testosterone goes up, I want my estrogen to keep pace or do I really want like a huge discrepancy and I just need some minor amount of estrogen?
- [58:43]
Derek
Yeah. The first thing you said is accurate. There is a enzyme called aromatase and that is what converts or aromatizes testosterone into estradiol. And this is the main prime. There's multiple estrogens and different metabolites of them, but the main primary dictator of estrogen functions as estradiol and testosterone. Aromatizing into estradiol is done at a kind of like it's facilitated based on what you need in certain tissue. So you will have like site specific conversion to estrogen in your brain, heart like all over the place. And your body's regulation of this is dictated by how much input it has from the testosterone, but also how much it needs to facilitate functions around the body. And this is actually the main dictating factor or one of them on how much testosterone output you have. Because just like you said, there are a bunch of different things affected by one primary hormone. With testosterone, it converts into dht, which is the thing that pushes you through puberty but also to estrogen and that facilitates brain health. It's neuroprotective. And this is why Alzheimer's rates skyrocket in menopause. Cardiovascular disease massively impacted by lack of estrogen. Like it's very, very supportive. Cardiovascular health and vasodilation, multiple different things in the body. And having a lack of estrogen is counterproductive to health performance. Well being I mentioned the serotonin part earlier and even erectile quality. So for somebody, lack of estrogen. Yeah. So like a bodybuilder, for example, and I've experienced this personally, taking a bunch of steroids, tons of androgens in my body, but crushing my estrogen to nothingness with an aromatase inhibitor. I was literally asexual, essentially.
- [60:31]
Tom Bilyeu
Whoa.
- [60:32]
Derek
Yeah. Penis only existed to urinate. That was the function of it at the time. I also stopped caring about dating entirely. I was just. Nothing mattered to me.
- [60:41]
Tom Bilyeu
Is this peak more plates, more dates, early days?
- [60:44]
Derek
Yeah, I guess.
- [60:45]
Tom Bilyeu
That's really interesting. What the hell? So was that, was that like a three alarm fire in your head where you're like, I should want sex more than I do, or were you like, thank God, that's some. Anyway, like now I can focus on what I want to do.
- [60:58]
Derek
And I was just like, oh, wow, you almost don't even notice when it's happening. And I was dieting at the time too, so I just thought, you know, some of it is exacerbated by calorie deprivation because oftentimes bodybuilders will crush their estrogen levels to try and, you know, like, dry out for a photo shoot or a contest or whatever.
- [61:17]
Tom Bilyeu
Dry out meaning you get really lean? Yeah, well, I'm a, I'm a wet fat. I always look a little soft.
- [61:23]
Derek
Oh, God.
- [61:24]
Tom Bilyeu
Like it's not good. I, in fact, I empathized with Liver King in the emails where he's like, lower back fat man. I just can't shake it. Yeah, that's my woe. So crushing your estrogen will dry you out?
- [61:36]
Derek
Well, that is the perception, but I feel like it's a misguided one. I think that you can achieve a body composition that is dry looking as long as you're lean enough. It's just, again, we're getting to the hyper extreme. That's irrelevant for probably every single person listening, including us. So no one's gonna get that lean. Where they would ever be in a position to want to crush their estrogen to even try and get dry. Like, ultimately the main thing to know is estrogen is also very impactful, both in men and in women. For neurological health, cardiovascular health, facilitating sexual function, mental wellness, mood regulation, just a myriad of different things. Temperature regulation too. Yeah. Like women who are postmenopausal, like hot flashes. Brutal.
- [62:19]
Tom Bilyeu
That is so interesting. The number of things that the body uses hormones for. You would think, oh, it has one function. If I see this in body do this, but in reality, the body has wild amounts of context and it can use it in very different ways. When I heard that mitochondria have hormone receptors on them, so they both generate and can receive feedback via hormones, I was like, I had no idea that a, that they had any receptors whatsoever. But that's really fascinating how the body uses a relatively small number of hormones, neurotransmitters, et cetera, et cetera, to communicate and to get the incredibly complex symphony that is the human body to do what it's supposed to do at the right times.
- [63:10]
Derek
Yeah, it's wild how much stuff just like floats around in your body and goes to receptors and binds and then does stuff. And again, similar to the genetic predispositions, like some people who have sensitivity issues at the receptor might otherwise have an inability to facilitate some function because the receptor itself is not active enough to actually transcribe gene expression. So they might have to take some exorbitant amount of fill in the blank drug or some other thing in order to facilitate something that otherwise was just suboptimal and not conducive to their quality of life or health.
- [63:46]
Tom Bilyeu
Very interesting. So I want to go back to when your penis was just for urination.
- [63:51]
Derek
Yeah, yeah.
- [63:52]
Tom Bilyeu
Did. Were you. Did that set off alarm bells or it just happened so slowly you didn't really care?
- [63:59]
Derek
Well, it happened quickly and it was like I was. It was apparent that this was happening. But I. Yeah, I guess over time you have pattern recognition and I've noticed multiple times certain drug interactions or using too much of an aromatase inhibitor or whatever would cause a situation where even I would have a raging libido. But then the. My penis would have erectile dysfunction because I wasn't. I was using too many drugs that were overlapping or I was crushing my estrogen too much or whatever. Like, I was aware of it, but it wasn't really clicking that maybe estrogen is more important than you think. Like these are things that, that, I don't know, sometimes stuff happens. You aren't educated enough to connect the dots. So at the time I just wasn't. Which fortunately, now people are becoming more aware of the impact and why there is conversion to certain hormones and that just haphazardly intervening and just inhibiting the hell out of an enzyme might not be the best thing in certain situations. So, which is great that people are becoming more educated now though, because previous to that there was and still like very, very cookie cutter prescriptions of TRT out there where it will literally like compound an aromatase inhibitor into your testostero and force you to take it with your test and stuff like that. So as long as people are aware of it, I think it is the most important thing. But back then I had no idea.
- [65:17]
Tom Bilyeu
So I'm super freaked out by the fact that sperm counts are plummeting. That pre pandemic you had a third of like 20 to 30 something year old guys had not had sex in the last year. That that number has probably gone up since the pandemic, which has isolated us more and more. And so when I think about, I don't know if it's microplastics, if it's just being obese, which is something we haven't talked about. I think guys, everybody needs to be super careful about carrying too much body fat. But when I think about, if I'm not mistaken, you're more likely to have elevated estrogen levels if you are obese than if you're not. You're nodding.
- [66:00]
Derek
Yeah. So adipose tissue will be a direct regulator of how much aromatase enzymes you have. So the fatter you are, the more estrogen potential you have as well.
- [66:10]
Tom Bilyeu
The more likely you are to get fatter, the more likely you are to increase and it becomes a positive feedback
- [66:15]
Derek
loop indirectly, not because estrogen will make you fat, it's more because if you have more estrogen, that is more receptor activation, which is telling your brain, we have enough estrogen, but we had a lower amount of testosterone to get that amount of estrogen because you're fat. So the disproportionate amount of aromatase activity in that amount of testosterone, you have a disproportional ratio of testosterone to estrogen because you're obese. But estrogen is one of the main dictating factors that tells your brain we don't need more estrogen. But what is it that makes estrogen testosterone therefore less signal to your testes and lower testosterone?
- [66:55]
Tom Bilyeu
That's really terrifying.
- [66:56]
Derek
Yeah. So that obesity feedback system is like very, very suppressive on testosterone in like a indirect way. And that's aside from like the metabolic dysfunction, all the other stuff that could cause it.
- [67:08]
Tom Bilyeu
Woof. So do, are you unnerved at all by where we're going with young men being less, they pursue sex less?
- [67:20]
Derek
Yeah. Like it's pretty troubling. And I don't know how much of it is environmental. Poor diet, sleep quality is obviously diminished, widespread now and then. But also the lifestyle factors are very, very impactful too. And it's all like, it's all combined and is, you know, culminates into this, you know, clusterfuck, essentially. Yeah.
- [67:43]
Tom Bilyeu
If you had to start teasing apart the clusterfuck and assigning like not a precise percentage, but like, what are our big problems? Is it environmental factors, Is it dietary, is it modern dating? And so you're getting into this weird thing where your top tier guys are getting all the women. And so this is creating a problem. Like, if I had to start assigning blame, I would, I would 100% say those three things. So social media, I'll round the cultural problems to that. And then you've got bad diet is probably my number one, the thing that freaks me out the most. And then environmental factors like microplastics and things like that that are endocrine disruptors. Like, those are my big three.
- [68:32]
Derek
Yeah, I would probably say tide for one is sleep and diet. If I'm even allowed to do that in the scale we have here.
- [68:37]
Tom Bilyeu
Sure.
- [68:38]
Derek
So, yeah, sleep quality. You know, I'm you obviously big proponent of.
- [68:43]
Tom Bilyeu
What do you think up people's sleep, though?
- [68:46]
Derek
I forget what percentage is, but it's like 80 of people use caffeine. I don't necessarily think caffeine's bad, but I think a lot of people abuse it. And the half life, like five hours. So factoring in, it's called pharmacokinetics. When you factor in like how long it would take for a drug to work its way out of your system, it is still in your system. It takes 25 hours at minimum, depending on if you're a fast or slow metabolizer to like get it to a point where it's not, you know, significantly impactful on maybe it could be like 20, depending if you do four or five half lives. But in general it's like a full day of clearance, essentially. So people who are using it all day and pushing 500, 600mg caffeine or even 300, 400 or whatever if it's too late in the day. Even if you perceive it's not impactful on your sleep quality, it could very well be. So there's that stimulant abuse is rampant and then also that drugs Adderall.
- [69:37]
Tom Bilyeu
Like that.
- [69:37]
Derek
Yeah, yeah. And those are going to negatively affect your ability to get to sleep, stay asleep.
- [69:42]
Tom Bilyeu
Have you ever tried Adderall? Yeah, I've never tried it. Is it awesome?
- [69:48]
Derek
It's. If you're dialed naturally, it will give you the short term perspective that it's better, but I think in the long term that becomes your Acclimated set point. And at which point you would probably, if you didn't medically require it, it's doubtful that it would be. It's kind of hard to say because I know a bunch of people are shaking their heads right now like, no, it's fucking awesome. Shut up.
- [70:11]
Tom Bilyeu
So it's interesting. So the drug I most wanted to try in the world was Modafinil. And before I ever tried it, I told people I really would like to get addicted to Modafinil. I'm kidding. But that was like the joke. And then I tried it. And for people that don't know, Modafinil is an anti narcoleptic drug that fighter
- [70:29]
Derek
pilots use for sleep apnea.
- [70:31]
Tom Bilyeu
Huh?
- [70:32]
Derek
Yeah.
- [70:32]
Tom Bilyeu
For sleep apnea.
- [70:33]
Derek
Yeah. I technically have a prescription for it.
- [70:35]
Tom Bilyeu
What? It makes you stay awake?
- [70:37]
Derek
Exactly.
- [70:38]
Tom Bilyeu
So why would you give that to somebody? Oh, oh, oh, because they're tired all the time.
- [70:41]
Derek
It's the ultimate band aid because. And this is like a representation of the medical system as a whole almost is if you have sleep apnea, rather than trying to fix your sleep apnea, let's give you a drug that keeps you awake.
- [70:53]
Tom Bilyeu
Oh my God.
- [70:54]
Derek
Yeah. So it's like narcoleptics, obviously that's a, like a real problem that you can't necessarily fix. But with sleep apnea, oftentimes it's like a physical impediment of your neck being too large or you being obese or whatever, and that could be fixable. Or you use a CPAP machine and you manually fix it, which is huge on quality of life and everything that comes from good quality sleep. And it will add decades to your life potentially, if you're somebody who has a CPAP machine. Yeah.
- [71:21]
Tom Bilyeu
Interesting. Because your neck is so muscly.
- [71:23]
Derek
Yeah. When I got my heaviest, it became very apparent that something was making me unable to get high quality sleep. Because I started within sitting down for five minutes within a university class, I would fall asleep and I couldn't stay awake for the life of me.
- [71:36]
Tom Bilyeu
And this is big from muscle, big and fat.
- [71:39]
Derek
Because when I would bulk up the most, I got to like, I don't know, 260 plus or something. And I would sit there with. And when I was sleeping, I would basically be choking to death essentially every night. Whoa. Yeah.
- [71:52]
Tom Bilyeu
Is that a common thing among lean bodybuilders?
- [71:56]
Derek
Yeah.
- [71:57]
Tom Bilyeu
So muscle will do it. Maybe not as quickly as. But again, but it will do it.
- [72:01]
Derek
The distinction between natural and enhanced bodybuilders, I would say it's more common in lean enhanced bodybuilders, the natural.
- [72:08]
Tom Bilyeu
Why would steroids play a role?
- [72:10]
Derek
Because you have like 40 to 50 pounds more muscle building potential than the.
- [72:13]
Tom Bilyeu
But it is still. It's the muscle that's the problem. It's just that enhancing yourself is how you get that kind of excess mass is the problem.
- [72:20]
Derek
So if it's fat or muscle.
- [72:21]
Tom Bilyeu
Got it.
- [72:22]
Derek
Like, either way, you are getting like a physical. Like gravity is working against you and you have like a physical impediment of your neck while you're sleeping. And this is why a lot of people with sleep apnea, myself included, if I fell asleep upright, I would not snore and I would not apnea. But if I lie on my back, all of a sudden I'm apnea again. And it's almost worthwhile. Like, I feel like anyone whose way is more than. I don't want to put a number on it because this would be not like a medically qualified way to do this. But in general, just recording how you sound while you're sleeping, if you don't have a significant other to tell you, or just recording it anyways and just hearing what are you snoring? How bad is it? Sometimes people are shocked and terrified when they hear what's actually happening while they're sleeping. You would never know unless somebody told you. And even sometimes significant others, they will just think you're annoying. Loud snorer. I gotta. I'll go sleep in another room. I just can't deal with my husband, whatever it is, but he's actually like slowly killing himself.
- [73:15]
Tom Bilyeu
Whoa. Yeah, that's crazy. Okay, very interesting tangent. So Modafinil tried it and I used it. So my wife is British, so we would routinely fly to London. And I was trying to really perfect my switching time zones, which, by the way, for anybody that wants the time zone switch, like, it works like a charm. The second you wake up, get sunlight in your eyes, on your skin as much as possible. It is so much easier if you're going somewhere sunny and warm than it is going to. London is nightmarish. It's eight hours, so it's. You're only four hours off the exact flip of Nightmare City. And it's always gray and cold and so very, very hard. But anyway, get your sun exposure. But I was trying to find a way to not feel that sense of like, oh, my God, I'm so sleepy. And so tried Modafinil. And what I found was that you still feel tired. You just don't feel like you're gonna Fall asleep. And so I was like, it is better, but it wasn't enough. Better to feel like, oh, I've really solved this problem. But the other drug that I'm very interested in is Adderall. Just because I find. So I was diagnosed with hyperactivity disorder when I was young, but because I could sleep through the night, my mom decided not to medicate me, which I will eternally be grateful to her for, because she had to put up with the hyperactive child. So I imagine there were times where it was pretty tempting to medicate me, to get me to calm down, but she didn't. Very grateful for that. But when I'm writing especially, I find myself like, ah, my mind wanders to this. Ah, my mind wanders to that. And when I'm dialed in and I get so much done, I'm like, oh, man, if I could just find this flow all the time. Adderall is my one temptation.
- [75:15]
Derek
Yeah, it's. It kind of depends how it impacts you. And I guess my description of what it was like for me would be probably different than most people, but I actually find I'm almost more scatterbrained on it because it's really. It's very stimulating. And it also elevates my libido significantly. You had me at hello and. But paradoxically causes severe vasoconstriction. So you're horny, but your dick doesn't work.
- [75:39]
Tom Bilyeu
There we go.
- [75:39]
Derek
Yeah, not great. So. Oh, but it kills appetite so so much that you can extend your intermittent fasting window to like 12 hours with relative ease. And then you have four more hours of not only you hyper stimulated, but you're also way more mentally sharp just by nature of not eating food too. So there's that component. So there's a lot of pros and cons, and it kind of depends on the person.
- [76:00]
Tom Bilyeu
That's interesting. So what's the. As somebody who is very slow to take drugs, what's the downside?
- [76:09]
Derek
Heightened heart rate and blood pressure. Putting yourself in a state of perpetual sympathetic drive. If you're on it every single day, which, as much as you know about stress, putting your brain and heart in a state of perpetual stress, synthetically induced is going to be problematic. Also, it kind of depends on which version of you're using are using an instant release or a sustained release. The half life is going to differ for how long it stays in your system. And as a combo of two amphetamines, very, very potent in keeping you not in a state that can get to sleep and Parasympathetic and calm and relaxed. So trying to be that guy who somehow like gets the benefits of it during the day and then perfectly shifts into your nighttime routine and then wakes up and is like totally refreshed and had the best quality sleep. How realistic is that? You know, kind of depends. And that's where you would have to use it and assess and then get your feedback from your sleep quality and all these kind of things. And yeah, like, I feel like the utility of it, even if it was via recreational use, would be on an acute basis one to two times a week because once you start to exceed that, and depending on your dosage too, if you have too much dopaminergic activity, you're causing like cell death in your brain.
- [77:18]
Tom Bilyeu
Woof. Yeah, that I am definitely not keen to do. Yeah, drugs are really interesting. What do you think about the, the cultural like promotion is probably the right word of weed.
- [77:33]
Derek
I think that. Well, thing is, is it seems to have reasonable applications from a potentially health promoting perspective. But on the opposite, say what? No.
- [77:45]
Tom Bilyeu
Really?
- [77:45]
Derek
Yeah.
- [77:46]
Tom Bilyeu
Interesting. Okay, so keep going.
- [77:47]
Derek
On the opposite side of the spectrum, though, it is potentially impactful on hormone production, may have some interactions with also sleep quality. It helps your latency, so you could technically get to sleep easier. That's why people smoke at nighttime. But it wrecks your rem. So people think that they are getting better sleep because the perception of falling asleep is just, did my eyes close and I'm asleep. But the quality of it, most people aren't tracking. And in the long term you were creating a dependency on it where you will have a harder time not using it to get to sleep. But also your REM is destroyed. So, you know, maybe there's some people who can take it and they don't. That might be too aggressive of a statement. It'll destroy your rem, maybe it won't. Depends on the person. But there are a lot of people I know who just take it because they think it helps them get to sleep, but don't actually check. Did it help your sleep quality or did it help you fall asleep? Yep.
- [78:36]
Tom Bilyeu
So my wife is no stranger to marijuana and she was tracking her sleep and she thought it was broken because it was like you had seven minutes of REM and she was like. And that I think is a literal number if I remember correct. She was like, there's no way, there's no way. The ring must be loose or whatever. And then we looked into it and it's like, weed messes up your REM sleep She's like, oh my God. Like, I can't believe that it's crushed that much, which is crazy. Why haven't you tried weed? I'm very curious.
- [79:05]
Derek
It also seems to promote a level of apathy which I am not interested in whatsoever as the what I would consider, like, highly productive entrepreneur type. So for me, something that makes me just lackadaisically okay with floating around life isn't really conducive to anything about what I do. So for me it's. It's not great. Like, there's no application of it that I see as useful. I don't have a desire to feel high. I don't need it to get to sleep, which I don't even think it's good for that necessarily. And the kind of mindset it creates to me is not helpful. And if it makes me hungrier, I don't want to eat more, I want to eat less. And I want to. I get mentally sharp off not eating. So, yeah.
- [79:49]
Tom Bilyeu
Now talk to me about the. I know you no longer resonate with the name more plates, more dates, but what about the concept of like, getting. Because I think one of the most important things, if you want to be an entrepreneur and. Or you want to get laid, get in shape. The things you will have to do to your mind in order to get your body there, it is, I will say emphatically, it's the single most impactful thing that you could do for the rest of your life. Meaning all the areas outside of your life would be to get in shape. Agree or disagree?
- [80:19]
Derek
No. Agreed. And yeah, obviously the impact it has on health as a whole, mental well being, all that kind of stuff is huge. And if you look good and you're healthy and you feel good, that is going to manifest in so many positive outcomes that are outside of what you could even conceive. Probably. Like, even if you're having job, I don't know, business presentations or job interviews or whatever, it is, like, it's only going to be helpful for sure. So I see no reason to not prioritize it as like the lowest hanging fruit. That is the base infrastructure for everything you build on top of it. Like your health is the priority. Which is kind of funny because entrepreneurs will often skew in the other direction and neglect it, which I have to sometimes check myself on even because it's oftentimes you can be, you know, grinding away for 10 hours and then, you know what, maybe I'll just, you know, finish these emails and I'll put the workout you Know, back another day and then the next day comes, you know what, like, I'm probably fine and then just skip another day and before you know it, you haven't gone to the gym for two weeks. So it is something you need to prioritize for sure. And I think it's, I think people know the importance, they just don't necessarily have the habits formed or the fortitude to adhere to it necessarily or potentially don't know where to start, which hopefully some of the education out there now, like, it's definitely. There's enough information out there that at this point, if you're not doing it, it's kind of like, why the fuck not, you know? So, yeah, as much as the name of the channel, it's not like I would ever make an argument for like, no, if you put another plate on the bench, like you're gonna get more girls. That's certainly not the case. And at some point it's just like, especially when it comes to hormone augmentation, like girls actually care much less about the enhanced physique look than dudes do. So it's like at that point you're kind of just boosting your own ego and doing it for the validation from other men rather than women. Because a lot of women are quite satisfied with an athletic, lean looking guy who's healthy as opposed to the jacked out of his tree bodybuilder guy. So there's that. Which is at least a comforting thing to know because some people think they have to look like the fitness model to get the, you know, top tier women or whatever. But yeah, like ultimately the concept, as broadly as you want to take it applies where it's, you know, I talk about more plates, it's like physique, health, gym, fitness as a whole, and more dates is, you know, at the time it was representative of kind of like lifestyle. But even though it's more dates. So yeah, you know, I've thought about changing the name as I get older. It's kind of, kind of gravitate towards feeling like it's, oh, I don't want to associate myself with that name as much. But it's also what I built my brand on until this point, so it's hard to depart from that. Any thoughts yourself?
- [82:58]
Tom Bilyeu
I don't think it really matters. So it isn't, it's not like a gross name. I think that it actually does point at something that is true to your point. It's the dates. You have to broaden out to mean less about just getting girls and More about when you have your life together and you have the kind of discipline that it takes to add more plates to the thing. It really, it really is exactly the same kind of focus and intention and doing hard things and pushing through difficulty that you're going to apply to be good at business. But I actually wanted to ask you, so you're in like in it as an entrepreneur building businesses, what is it that draws you to that and is it the same thing that drew you to building a physique? Is it different?
- [83:44]
Derek
Yeah, there are certain niches that I'm interested in that I would nerd out on even if the businesses didn't exist. And one of those is pharmacology, hormone optimization, health and health in general, preventative medicine as a whole and then also dietary supplements sort of falls into that vein where it's things that are more on the straight edge but also fall into optimization, backfilling things that are otherwise deficient or imbalanced. And how can I, you know, these two things were areas of interest for me before the businesses existed. So it makes it very seamless for me to transition into a model where I am making content about it but also was already heavily researching it anyways but now it's in a monetizable fashion as well. So for me, fortunately I don't think I'm going to experience burnout. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe give me some advice on that. But for me I'm so highly passionate about the preventative medicine side of things in particular and the supplement sort of is supportive of that to some extent that I foresee myself doing this very long term enterprise, value minded. I am rewarded by the process more than the outcome. I have enough money to sit on that, I'm good. And this is just where my area of interest is heavily lies and I'm hyper passionate about so I don't really see myself deviating in any other silo because I'm so I know what I'm doing is what I'm supposed to be doing and I feel like not a lot of people can say that but I actually know for sure like this is what I'm supposed to be doing.
- [85:10]
Tom Bilyeu
Brother. This has been extraordinarily fun. Where can people connect with you?
- [85:14]
Derek
More plates, more dates. On any social media platform, essentially you can find me.
- [85:18]
Tom Bilyeu
I love it.