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Los Angeles Fit Expo Live Seminar Transcript

Los Angeles Fit Expo Live Seminar Transcript

The transcript of my seminar at the 2018 Los Angeles Fit Expo, covering full-body training, intermittent fasting, and more.

Written By Jim Stoppani, PhD

Updated September 27, 2023

Note: This tutorial video was recorded as a live Facebook event. The text below is an edited transcript of the tutorial intended to provide members with a convenient means of referring to and further researching the topics and content detailed in the video.

Transcript

Hey guys, how's everyone doing? Are you loving the L.A. Fit Expo or what? Who has been here previous years, like going back five years or so? Anyone? Has it grown or what? Yeah, right? This is awesome. And you know why it's growing? Because of you guys. You guys are growing this Fit Expo—your participation, your involvement. We can't do this without you, so I want to thank every one of you for coming down not just to come listen to me but to come and pay it forward with a lifestyle of fitness.

A Healthier Life is a Happier Life

We're all here preaching the same thing. There might be differences in philosophy, differences in supplementation ideas, training ideas, nutrition ideas—but at the core, we're all here for the same reason: A better lifestyle. A better way of living, and feeling.

I feel horrible when I see someone who clearly doesn't take their nutrition and exercise seriously. You can tell, right? You can tell. Because I feel wonderful every single day, eating right and training right; following simple principles that help your mind focus better, your body run better, and you enjoy life better.

Really, that's what we're all—when I talk about—for those of you who follow me and you hear me saying about "Pay it forward", that's all I'm talking about: Paying that message forward. Getting other people literally addicted to fitness, because what other way is there to live? To be miserable, in pain, always tired—or you can feel wonderful all day, have plenty of energy. Look your best, feel your best, perform your best.

But I'm not just talking about athletes—I'm talking about at work, or at school. Fitness is related to brain function. We know that exercise increases something called "brain-derived neurotrophic factor". It's basically a growth factor for your brain, and exercise promotes it.

Now, I do a lot of talking about advanced training techniques: How to get bigger, how to get stronger, how to get leaner. I've worked with world-class athletes, getting them ready for their biggest competition. I've worked with very notable celebrities, getting them in shape for movie roles. I do a lot of extreme transformations, and getting people ready to do extreme things. But—to be able to get all that extreme done? You have to know the foundation; the nuts and bolts.

And so everything that I do—a lot of people think that my message is more for the hardcore because of the way I look, right? I look pretty hardcore. But my message on training and nutrition fits for you and your grandma at the same time. It fits everyone, and it helps everyone.

A Whole New Approach to Training – Split Training vs Whole-Body Training

Some of the things that I want to talk to you today about as far as training goes—and I'll open this up to questions—who has questions for me? Does anyone have any burning questions they want to know about training and nutrition? Anyone? I know you do, everybody's got questions. So I'll leave plenty of time at the end so that we can open questions.

They could be anything: You could ask me questions about my tattoos; it could be about training, nutrition, supplementation. I want to get your questions answered, but before I do that I just want to talk a little bit about training. Not how to increase your bench press; not necessarily how to get leaner—but how to get healthier, leaner, stronger, faster, through whole-body training.

You know what whole-body training is? What's the difference between whole-body training and split training? A split is when you go in and do something like my Shortcut to Size—who's familiar with Shortcut to Size? You might go in there and just do chest and triceps one day. And then the next day you go and do back and biceps. Then you go another day and do legs.

The difference between that split-style and whole-body is with whole-body style you go in the gym and you train chest, and triceps, and back, and biceps, and legs, and shoulders—in one workout. Now, the volume is much lower but what happens is we increase the frequency.

So let's take a typical Shortcut to Size program, and what might you do on one of my programs for chest, in a workout? How many sets total? It might be anywhere from 8 sets to 20 sets, depending on the program. So let's take a roundabout, middle sort of number—let's say 12 sets. You go in and you do 12 sets for chest. Now you've got a week off to rest before you do chest again, if you're doing something like Shortcut to Size where you're training each muscle group just once a week.

With whole-body training, you might only do 3 sets for chest in one workout—and most people say, "Oh that's just not enough, I need more than that." Well, let's look at it over the course of the week: If you do 3 sets on Monday, 3 sets on Tuesday, 3 sets on Wednesday, 3 sets on Thursday, and 3 sets on Friday—you're already doing more volume per week than you are doing with the split training.

The Science Behind Whole-Body Training

So total work, when you think about, "Oh that's just not enough to stimulate my muscles," you're wrong. You're absolutely wrong. And in fact, research—because I'm about the science, so I don't just take something that we see happening in the gym and say, "Oh that means this does—cause and effect." No, we have to break it down and make sure that the research holds up.

Is there real science behind this? Yes. There's actual, real science behind whole-body training compared to a split style of training. The first thing it shows is better fat loss with whole-body training. Better fat loss from training the entire body each workout, compared to a split. And you know why that is? It has to do with gene activation.

For those of you who are familiar with my background—many of you may not be—I have a Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut. I have a wide range of specialties that I study, from biomechanics to biochemistry. While I was at Yale, I was in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Physiology studying how exercise and nutrition affect your genes—and people think of genes as, "Well I've got blue eyes because that's what I got from my parents. I got blue eyes. That's our genes." Right?

Well, yes and no. There are what we call genotype and phenotype. Your genotype is the genes that are going to set how tall you're going to be, what color hair you're going to have, maybe even your body type. Genotype. However, we also activate genes every single day to make proteins—and I'm not talking about proteins that build muscle, I'm talking about proteins that perform functions in the body.

There are thousands and thousands of proteins that perform functions in your body. Hemoglobin—does anyone know what hemoglobin is? Hemoglobin carries oxygen to your blood. It's a protein. It's a functioning protein that our body makes, and our genes tell our body, "Hey, we need to make more of this protein."

The main way that fat loss is enhanced with full-body training is because you're activating genes in all the muscles; metabolic genes. So let's go back to Shortcut to Size and think about if you went into the gym and you trained just your chest and just your triceps. You would activate only genes in the chest and the triceps. Well that's great, if it's you're interested in just growing a bigger chest and triceps, but you're not activating the metabolic genes in the legs, or the back, or the abs.

What if you went in and activated all those genes in your entire body, and turned all those genes on—how much more metabolic activity would you get, compared to just activating your chest and your triceps? A lot more, right? Let's look at a two-day split, where we cut the body in half: We do upper body and lower body, versus a full-body.

If you're doing upper body and lower body, on upper body day you're basically only activating half your body. And then that lower body day, you're activating the other half of the metabolic genes. With a full-body, you're activating all those metabolic genes in all the major muscle groups in your body. What does that do? Literally turns you into a fat-burning machine.

Can Full-Body Training Replace Cardio?

As a matter of fact—for those of you who aren't aware—right around this time last year I completely severed my quadriceps tendon; end of January last year. I had four surgeries between February and April of last year. Four surgeries—I still can't do any cardio. I can't run. I can't really jump.

So my physical activity decreased rapidly last January. Like I said, I've done zero cardio for a year now. Does it look like it's affected my body fat levels at all? How is that? How have I been able to maintain about 3-4% body fat with no cardio? Would anybody like to take a stab at how that's possible? Dieting, but also my whole-body training is basically my cardio.

You don't—you know, we think of cardio as the only way to burn calories, while weightlifting is to build muscle. No, that's not the case. The reason you're burning calories with cardio is because you're activating so many muscle fibers in the legs, and the legs are—in the average adult who doesn't go to the gym—the legs are the majority of the body's muscle mass.

So when you do cardio, you use your legs because if you did just an arm crank—you know one of those arm machines?—you'd only burn about half the same amount of calories, because we have far less muscle mass in our upper bodies. So there's far less that's being used, and far less that's being burned. When it comes to cardio, the only reason that we use running and cycling is because it's activating the majority of our muscle fibers.

But we're not just legs—unless you're a cyclist or a runner. For a cyclist or a runner, that's literally what they want to be. They want to be a set of legs with no upper body. That's the ideal athlete as far as an endurance athlete—a cyclist or a runner. Literally, a set of legs with no upper body. That's what you want, because you're using your legs, and the lighter you are the more efficient you are.

You can use whole-body training as your cardio. I'm not saying that you should stop doing Shortcut to Size if you are, but I'm saying you can actually add whole-body training to a regular weight-training program. And you think, "Oh I'm gonna overtrain." No. Why can you get on a treadmill and run like hell for your cardio, but you're not worried about overtraining your legs? It's not going to happen. You're not going to overtrain, as long a you keep the intensity down.

The Train with Jim Series

If you go to my social media—who follows me on my social media pages? My Instagram, my Twitter, my Facebook—every day I post my personal workout that I'm doing, for you for free. You guys can follow my program—the exact ones that I do every single day—for free, by simply going to my social media.

And I don't just put up the workouts and say, "Here, do this workout," I have a link there that takes you to the workout article that explains why you're doing it; why you're using this style, this technique. So not only are you getting results from the program but you're learning new techniques.

So make sure you're at least paying attention to the workouts I post, because I change up the training styles. We do German volume training. We do alternating rest pause. We do linear periodization, reverse, pendulum. We hit H.I.T., we do tabata style, all the weights, all different styles of training—you will literally get a training tutorial every single week on a new technique that you can apply to your training. And even if you don't want to do the whole-body training, I teach you how to apply it to the rest of your training.

But like I said, you can either follow along—those workouts that I post are literally the workouts—that's my personal training program. I might go in and do some more bench pressing maybe, or film, but that's my training. That's all I do. Some of them only take 30 minutes a day; others might take you an hour. Some might take you 15 minutes—it changes every single—and that is the point of whole-body training.

Whole-Body Training Means Strength Gains for Beginners and Advanced Trainers Alike

It's activating those metabolic genes, but also there's research on strength and muscle mass with whole-body training showing better strength gains, showing better gains in muscle mass. So if you think that whole-body training is just for beginners, you're wrong.

As a matter of fact, what we're now seeing is that whole-body training works great for beginners—and do you know why it works great for beginners? Is everyone aware of the science? It's due to the repetition. When you're a newbie, the first gains you make are neurological.

The first six months of training, mainly neurological changes are going on. Your body's learning how to synchronize the way it fires nerve impulses to the muscle. And the way you get stronger is not by building more muscle, initially—you get stronger by teaching the nerves how to fire better. So, for a beginner doing the bench press three times a week is better than once a week, because it trains their nervous system quicker, and they make better gains that way.

However, we then have taken beginners and moved them away from full-body training to do more specific split-style training, so they can focus more on chest, more on legs. But now what we're seeing in some of the data is that when we take advanced lifters—those with more training experience—and put them on a whole-body training program they tend to do better in strength gains and even muscle mass gains than a split-style of training.

I'm not saying you should only train whole-body, but you should definitely consider starting to employ those techniques in your training, particularly if you're a beginner or if you've been training for several years—particularly if you've been training for several years. Now's the time to start going back to some full-body or whole-body training. And like I said, it's easy to do—just go to my social media and you'll get a free tutorial right there.

Intermittent Fasting is Effective – and Easier than You Think

As far as nutrition goes—my nutrition, as we were saying here—how did I maintain my body fat without doing any cardio, with a severe drop in my physical activity? The whole-body training, and intermittent fasting.

Intermittent fasting is—and again, I'm not saying that everybody has to do intermittent fasting, but the way that I explain intermittent fasting to people is there are two ways to diet. You have two options: Either you can eat all day long—at any time—but not eat what you want; or you could only eat at certain times, but you get to eat a little more of what you want.

So are you the type of person that needs to just have access to food any time of day? "I'm hungry, I need something now, I don't care if it's just chicken and broccoli." Is that you? Or are you, "Well, if I don't eat for the next four hours, I actually can have a piece of pie with my dinner."? That's me.

With the intermittent fasting, I could go on about the science, and on and on—it's one of the areas of research that I actually studied at Yale, was fasting. And I could go on and on about why intermittent fasting works, but in a nutshell you just have to ask yourself: Would you rather have access to food all day long, but have limited choices of those foods, or would you rather limit the hours you can eat but have more freedom with what you're allowed to eat? Those are the main differences with intermittent fasting.

I know I'm jumping around here a lot, but one of the best things I really like about intermittent fasting—and this gets into the psychology—when we diet, it's a lot of mental work. You wake up in the morning, and it's about, "Okay, I've got this many carbs today, this many calories...I'd really love some pasta today. I don't think that's going to be able to happen."

Or you go to Starbucks, and you're just going to get a black coffee—but man, that pumpkin bread looks so good. I love pumpkin bread. And so you're standing there at Starbucks—and this happens all day long when you're dieting, going, "Okay, if I get a piece of pumpkin bread and I only eat half now, that'll be about 20g and then I could—" All day long, you have to do that.

Or: I walk into Starbucks, my feeding window starts at 4 pm and ends at midnight. When I walk into Starbucks at 10 am to order my black coffee, and I look at the pumpkin bread—which I love, by the way. I love the pumpkin bread—did you guys get that yet? I love Starbucks pumpkin bread. I love food...

My answer is no. No! I look at my watch—I don't have to do any mental gymnastics, I don't have to barter with myself, I don't have to promise myself I'm not going to eat the carbs I was planning to—none of that. It's over, I'm done. I've moved on to something else I'm focusing on now. I don't have to waste the time doing all the math and all the promising to myself over a piece of bread.

We've all been there. That's literally how a diet goes. I'm so sick of bartering with myself and promising myself, that what I've found with the intermittent fasting—the nicest thing—is the ease of choice. Yes or no. It's time to stuff my face or it's not. That's it. There's no "What can I eat, what can't I eat. If I eat this and that, then I won't do this." No, or yes. It's pretty simple.

In a nutshell—and I'm simplifying it a bit for you guys—you can go on and read my articles, you go to Bodybuilding.com where I have two new videos on whole body training and intermittent fasting, with articles to go along that look at the science. You can go to JimStoppani.com, read up on the science of whole-body training and intermittent fasting. I just want to kind of spark that interest in you.

Now, who has questions? And again, anything—you want to know how to take creatine, you have an intermittent fasting question, or a training question...

Coming Soon – Mass JYM

Question: "Are you going to tell us when Mass JYM is going to come out?"

For those of you who aren't familiar with Mass JYM—I hate to call it a "mass builder". You know those weight gainer mass builder products? Mainly what they do is they take cheap whey concentrate and then dump in a bunch of sugar, so you've got protein, you've got carbs—but again it's low-quality protein, it's sugar, and then they'll throw in some fat. And you're supposed to drink this several times a day to gain mass.

Typically, the only time I would suggest a product like that would be for a skinny 16 year old kid. I was one myself. I would literally eat a loaf of bread at a sitting when I was 16—I'd put some meat on there as well, but I would literally sit down with a loaf of bread—and that's how I mass gained. I could eat anything and everything, and I couldn't gain any weight whatsoever when I was a kid. I was so skinny.

So that's what, typically, mass gainers work well for. It's just getting calories in, right? Well the reason that mine's taken so long—and I've been working on this for years—is, first of all, my mass gainer—really, I won't call it a mass gainer, I like to call it more of a meal replacement because it's really—I've designed the perfect meal.

I have Pro JYM, which is my protein blend—casein, whey, egg—but then on the carbs, I didn't just take sugar and dump it in there. Typically, on most mass gainers the ratio of protein to carbs is usually 1 to 2, meaning there's at least twice as much carb as there is protein. That's kind of good if you're a really super-skinny kid and you need all that sugar, but really I'm more about making lean gains, so my ratio is a 1:1.

Every scoop, you're getting 30g of protein with 30g of carbs—but those 30g of carbs come, 75% of them, as low glycemic carbs. Only 25% is on the higher end. So that way, just like with the protein blend, you're getting a fast carb—but just a little bit—just like you're getting a bit of fast whey. Then you have this long, slow digesting carb to provide you longer lasting energy, but also to prevent that insulin spike.

So you're getting a lower ratio, and better carb source. However, I went a step further: One of the main things I promote is fat intake—I'm a huge proponent of getting adequate fat in, particularly for males. When we look at the data in male athletes, males who consume more fat—particularly saturated fat and monounsaturated fat—have higher testosterone levels than males who eat less total fat, and less fat from saturated fat and monounsaturated fat.

I know most of you who are following me and my programs do your duty with getting ample amounts of fat—half your bodyweight in grams of fat. If you're 200lbs, eat 100g of fat. But how the heck am I to expect you guys to go, "Well he also recommends that it's an even ratio of saturated, mono-, and poly-...so out of my 100g of fat, 33.3 need to be saturated, 33.3 need to be monounsaturated, and 33.3—" It's impossible.

So I helped you out. I have a fat that I've added to my mass product that provides that exact ratio—it's a 1:1:1 of saturated to mono- to polyunsaturated, so that at least the fat that you're consuming from my product is giving you that proper ratio. You don't have to worry so much about the rest of the fat.

The problem is I can't release it until the study on the fat has gone long enough, but it should only be a few more weeks. So, a long story short—the mass gainer will be out very sooner, but again the reason it took so long is that I'm perfecting—this literally will be the first product of its kind, that's truly—you never want to say you want to eat something over food, but when you look at a product like this it's all food-based.

The protein is coming from milk and egg; the carbs are a variety of sources from oats, from pea starch; and then the fats as well—it's all food, that's just powdered food. I'm not saying that you should eat this in place of your meals, but it would literally be almost impossible for you to sit down and make a whole food meal that is as perfect as the scoop that you're getting from the Mass JYM.

The ratio of the protein and the carbs, the ratio of the kinds of carbs, the ratio of the kinds of fats—it would literally be impossible for you to build a better meal. But again, I'm not saying this is to replace your meal. However, this is what's taken so long, because I truly wanted a solid product that I would consume myself, for my meals as well. So that's the Mass JYM.

The Return of JYM Supplements' Legacy Flavors

Question: "What happened to Chocolate Cookie Crunch Pro JYM?"

Cookie Crunch Pro JYM—that's actually finalized as well. As a matter of fact, I just had some the other day. We'll have the Cookie Crunch, we'll have the S'mores, and then we have the Cookies and Cream coming, and those will be at Bodybuilding.com as well, literally any day now they should be there.

New School Science Validates Old School Training

Question: "Do you think it's funny that science is now catching up to a lot of principles that guys like Charles Atlas and Joe Weider previously were promoting?"

I don't think it's...I mean, it's interesting, but the fact is that as a scientist I understand it's very hard to design the perfect study. You really can't, there are too many factors that are involved and controlling things—you really can never get an optimal study.

In my world, I like to look at what's happening in the gym. If something is happening in the gym, if we're increasing something, or changing something and we're seeing results—and we see it in one person, then we see it in another, and then another—that's kind of science. That really is.

Science is taking what's happening, documenting it, and making sense of it; trying to get to what's going on here. So what we call science—science is man-made, right? We decide what science is. When I'm a reviewer for a journal, I decide whether—it's still another human—a lot of people think, "Science is this ivory tower that you can never debate.."

I'm like, "Really?!" There's a lot of science that shows things are positive that then don't work in the real world, and the other way around. There are a lot of things in the real world that we know work but you can't really see in a study, because you can't design the study.

So guys like Charles Atlas, Joe Weider—they were scientists. They were true scientists. Their lab was the gym, and their subjects were the bodybuilders. Over and over, when you see those results, you start saying "Hey, if you do supersets maybe this happens," or "Hey, if you do pre-exhaust, maybe this happens."

"Hey, if we do linear periodization, look what happens." We don't need a study to say, but like I said to design a study you can't really design the perfect study. So a lot of the things that we've already taken as facts are now being supported in the lab as well as—it's nice to see, because it legitimizes what we knew.

I don't need a study to say—because I already knew; it's nice to have—but a lot of people do. I think it's nice for the people who sort of—everyone who's not a scientist views science as this sort of—I like to see those studies published because it legitimizes what we know is happening in the gym.

How Much Caffeine is Too Much?

Question: "Between Pre JYM and Shred JYM, I routinely take 700mg to a gram of caffeine a day. I get a ton of people who see my routine always preaching 'Hey you're taking too much caffeine', they throw words out like 'adrenal fatigue'. I just wanted your thoughts on people who take, routinely, 700mg to about gram of caffeine a day."

Let me start by saying caffeine is probably—arguably—the most studied ergogenic aid ever. An ergogenic aid is just a fancy science term for something that boosts your performance. Caffeine is probably the single-most studied ingredient that we have.

And what's interesting about it is that it's only been the last decade where the research is really highlighting the positive benefits of caffeine. People—particularly females—who consume moderate amounts of caffeine—somewhere around 200, 300, 400, 500mg a day—have less cognitive decline as they age.

Another interesting thing about caffeine is that based on your age, it can either help or hinder you. How old's your son? An 11-year-old should have no caffeine whatsoever. None. Zero. Caffeine in the developing brain is dangerous. It interferes with normal brain connections. However, in a developed brain, it can increase cognitive performance—and can help protect against cognitive decline.

So it's a very—like I said, what's so interesting about caffeine—I love this about caffeine—it's so well-studied and so misunderstood at the same time. How could something that's so well-studied be so misunderstood? And it's because it's differs based on who's taking it. In a younger person, it could be dangerous; in an older individual, it could be helpful.

So how much is too much? "Adrenal fatigue"—I'm not a huge believer in adrenal fatigue, or at least caffeine, for most people, causing an issue with adrenal fatigue. Sure—look, any ingredient you take, certain—creatine, branched-chain amino acids, beta-alanine—ten people could take it and get great benefits, one person could take it and end up in the hospital. Why is that? It's individual biochemistry—the way our brains and our bodies react.

Just like alcohol—one person gets drunk, and it turns them into a monster. Another person can drink the same amount of alcohol, the same kind, and have a completely different result. It's the way that the brain reacts to the chemical. And those could even change day to day.

Some people report that after they've been taking caffeine for a while, when they have a dose they now feel tired. Has that happened to anyone? It's real—you can actually get tired from caffeine. And again, it's on your brain at that moment in time when you're consuming it, the way it reacts. So that's why it's so misunderstood.

Does anyone know who Jose Antonio is? He runs the International Society of Sports Nutrition. He, like me, is a firm believer—he'll have up to 2g of caffeine a day. And again, like me he has a degree—unlike a lot of experts—Joe Antonio has a real degree, did a real post-doc. He's a very smart person. He knows what he's talking about.

I'm just giving you an example that I'm not the only one out there saying, "Oh you're fine with that much caffeine." It's not because I use it in my products—I use it in my products because it's one of the most effective ergogenic aids. So 700mg is not that much. How do you feel? Fine, right?

People are going to tell you the same thing when you're eating a gram and a half of protein, too. "Oh, watch your kidneys." You have no worries.

When to Say When – Frequency and Whole-Body Training

Question: "With the whole-body training and making that shift over or even incorporating it into a split, is there any need to cycle the frequency? Like you'll do it five to six days a week, but then do you find every three to four weeks you have to back off the frequency to three days or..."

I'll often go seven days a week. I do it straight through. But he's asking is there a time after a certain few weeks of doing it daily, that you want to sort of back off and give your body a few days. Definitely. It's more—I can't tell you what that is, it's more of an individual thing.

And with the Train with Jim series, you don't have much space on social media—because there's so much noise—to educate people about that, but one of the things I try to tell people is just because I'm doing it today doesn't mean you have to do this workout today.

Today might be the day you go, "You know what? My body's telling me take it easy. Don't even go to the gym," or "I'm going to go in and just do one set," or "I'm going to go in and not go to failure today. I'm gonna cut it back."

It's just listening to your body, and I do that all the time. I'll go in and I may decide I'm just going to do one set of everything, or I'm not going to go to failure today, or today I'm just going to skip the workout—but it's intuitive. As long as you're not doing that several times a week, "Oh I need another day off..."

Listen to your body, really. You know better than anyone else.

Scheduling Meals During Your Intermittent Fasting Feeding Window

So this is going to be the last question. I want to thank you guys for coming out. I will be at the Bodybuilding.com booth from 2-4 if you want to come by and get pictures, autographs—I think I have some samples, as well, to give out.

Question: "For the intermittent fasting, when you're doing that—you said you started at 4 pm to midnight—what's your schedule with eating like your breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, snack? Do you just do it every hour?"

In that window of 4-12, for myself it's not—you don't really want to think of it as "breakfast, lunch, and dinner", you really just want to think about it as "this is your feeding window." The only reason we call it "breakfast" is "break fast", right? Breaking the fast—that's your first meal.

In America, for some reason, we have to have eggs, bacon, toast, and cereal. You go to Japan and you're pretty much eating what you would eat. Thailand, you eat whatever you're going to eat for lunch—there's no special breakfast food. America and maybe a few other countries may have—in a lot of countries, there's no "breakfast food". It's literally just meals.

So when you get into the intermittent fasting, it does change your meal timing, but for me personal—what I do is I break my fast at 4 with Pre JYM and Pro JYM, and then I train. Typically—I'm on the road a lot so it'll change. Ideally, 4 o'clock comes around, I've got my Pre JYM and my Pro JYM. And then I go work out, and then after the workout I have my Post JYM and my Pro JYM. Then I have some carbs.

About an hour after that or so—maybe two, it depends—I'll have a meal. At that hour, it'd be dinner for most people, because it's usually around 6 or 7 o'clock. That would be the first real whole-food meal. And then I may have another one or two meals, and then the rest are usually just snacks. Sometimes it may be just one meal.

It depends on the day, but you don't have to really think of it as breakfast—it's more about getting in your total protein, whatever your carb allotment is, and then your fat requirement, within that window. If you can do that in one feeding, that's fine. If you can do that in two meals and a couple snacks, that's fine.

If you need three designated meals, you can do 4 o'clock—call that your breakfast—say 8 o'clock is your lunch, and 11 or so is your dinner. You can do it that way, but again it's up to you. It's just taking that feeding window and then getting all your calories and your macros.

It doesn't necessarily—the only thing I will say is that with the research that I did at Yale, one of the things that was shown was that when you follow the fast with a high-protein meal it further boosts the metabolic benefit. If you follow it with a high-carb meal, your metabolic rate is still elevated but it drops a little, from the carbs. So that's why I typically just do the Pro JYM and then train. Then I wait to have my carbs later, because I want that first meal to be a high-protein, low-carb meal.

Again, I want to thank everyone. If you were too shy to ask a question—I know to be on the spot kind of sucks—you guys know where to get me. I'm very active on all my social media channels answering your questions all day. I want you guys to get proper answers to your questions, so hit me up on social media. You can also get my daily workouts completely free—100% free.

Thank you guys, and again thank you for supporting the Fit Expo. Love seeing you here, and I hope to see you next year as well. Thank you.

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