All the things that your body does to burn calories in a 24 hour period are going to be very complex and almost pretty much they are impossible to measure. But you don't need to measure because guess what? All of that energy that you burn causes your body mass to either go up down or stay the same because your body either stores or uses that energy. Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast. I'm your host Philip pape, and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self mastery by getting stronger. Optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition will uncover science backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry. So you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in. Wits& Weights community Welcome to another solo episode of the Wits& Weights podcast. I hope you enjoyed our last episode 101 The truth about postpartum recovery and empowering women after childbirth with Peter Lappe about postpartum recovery diastasis recti and the unique challenges women face post pregnancy. Today for episode 102. We are doing another q&a to answer questions from the free Wits & Weights Facebook community and emails and messages from listeners which I always love to get. Whether it's a question whether it's feedback, a comment, maybe something you didn't like, whatever it is, I'm all ears and I'd love to hear from you. We have questions today from for listeners about training at home with a video versus your own programming or template. How supplements impact your immune system based on dosing, some of macro factors features that's the food logger and how they actually work and options for grains and cereals as a carb source. Now definitely listen all the way through because I'm sharing some of my favorite strategies in the answers to each of these questions. And I will refer to a few past episodes as well if you want to dive deeper into specific topics. Let's jump right into question number one. The first question is from tionesta. And she says I was a regular gym goer before COVID. Then I moved to another state and now workout strictly at home. And since I work from home, it's most convenient, I totally get that because I also work out from home. I'm more successful with following along with a video workout versus some programs I own that either have just a PDF with exercises, sets or reps or a five minute video showing the moves. But then you have to pause the video to execute. Is this just a mental block I have to get past I've accumulated a variety of home equipment that makes it convenient to stay home. When you follow a video. It's like having a trainer right there with cues. One of my strength programs as a fillable PDF that gives freedom to choose moves based on methods such as push pull, squat, push, pull, carry, squat, push, hinge, etc. Maybe I just need to take the time to compose the plan and start day one to execute. Okay, there's a lot here, but I'm sure many of you listeners can relate to what Ginetta is asking about this is the classic dilemma between having the structured guidance of let's say a video, a personal trainer or a class, right many of us have come through doing classes, whether it's boot camps, yoga, aerobic classes, strength training classes, CrossFit, et cetera. And it's the difference between that and essentially doing it by yourself to some level by either following an existing program, or designing your own or somewhere in between. And so I want to break down each piece of this because I think they're even though it's kind of one overall question. I think there's different aspects, we want to attack one by one. Because my overall philosophy with anything like this is, what is the true source of the problem? Where's the root cause? And where's the most friction? Because the surface level assumptions may not be the real answer, let's say. So first of all, the fact that you like video workouts, right? This suggests that maybe you're, you're doing a program that is too complicated, meaning the fact that you have to have a video to walk you through all these moves, and then every session is going to be new moves. It reminds me kind of like p90x Beachbody, that kind of thing that I used to do back in the day, that wasn't super effective. But it definitely required you to watch the video because it was always different. Well, when I see something like that, I think it's actually too complicated. And perhaps you're trying to do too much. And what we want to do is simplify our programming and make sure that it meets the basic principles of building strength and muscle. Are you are you performing more or less the same or similar movements from session to session, or every other session, depending on your split, and progressively overloading via the weight on the bar or dumbbells or the rep reps or sets? If instead you're doing something different every single time I mean, maybe coming back to the same move like four weeks later or five weeks later, or almost never, it's not going to be very effective. And it can be very complicated. And you will feel tied to having to do video workouts. So that's the first thing I would ask myself is, is it just am I trying to comp too much stuff because I want it to be, let's say fun. And I'm all for things being fun, but they also have to be effective. Another way to simplify your workout, if you're doing too much as some people are, for example, in addition to the workout, they're doing all sorts of warm ups and mobility exercises, and stretching and cooldown. And you don't need any of that you don't need quote, unquote, mobility, most people, okay, I'm not talking about physical therapy or rehab set sessions, or somebody with an extreme physical limitation that needs to get over that 95% of people just need to warm up with the movements. So if you're going to squat, just warm up with your squat, you don't need to do 20 minutes of quote, unquote, mobility, because mobility will come from working through the full range of motion on those movements. So just warm up with the movements. If you have different full body movements during a workout you want to, and you're going from, say legs to upper body, you definitely want to warm up the upper body as well. But if you're going from a leg movement to another leg movement, you're probably already warmed up. So what I want you to do is check out Episode 15, way back in the archives, it was called maximize your lifting sessions, warm ups, supersets, rest periods, and more about that. But continuing on my question, Shana is what is it that you like about the videos? Because let's focus on the positive as well, not just what you're not doing? Let's focus on what you get out of the videos. Is it the cues, right? They say, Okay, now do this do this, is it the tempo? Is it the immediate visuals you get on the form. And again, I think a simpler set of movements that you can master first, like, for example, most of my newer lifters, or people who start with me, after lifting for maybe three to six months, they're doing something like starting strength, or some other compound lift base program where you might be doing three or four sessions per workout at most. And these would include the big lifts, squat deadlift press, overhead press, and then some maybe rows and or chin ups and pull ups, for example, well, if you only have five movements to work on, it really simplifies the learning process. And the only cues you need are your own personal cues to focus on the things that you're working on in that moment. And this is where the mastery of these lifts is going to come in handy. And you may want to hire a personal trainer for one or two sessions to go over those and get the cues that way. But then once you have them, it's really up to you and your budget and time and all that you should be able to continue mastering those moves for the rest of your life. Now, you could also join a group where you can put form checks up on the group like the Wits & Weights community, we can do that for you as well, you know, totally free, where you film your squat, you upload it, you say what am I doing here, and I and others can let you know what the cues might be. And so that's that that again, comes down to simplifying and making sure you're not trying to do like 50 different movements, a whole bunch of aerobic or muscular endurance type movements, but rather, a few key strength base lifts. And then as you get more advanced, adding in a few accessories that support those lifts. Okay, so you also mentioned a mental block, right? Perhaps just hear me out, perhaps it's not you so much as the programs you've picked, and making it harder, harder on yourself, thus creating what seems like a mental block. For example, you mentioned a fillable. PDF. To me, that sounds like a lot of work that the work has put on you to design your program. That's a big source of friction of resistance. And I would say in my opinion, 95% of people out there or more can just use a good template. I mean, I think you mentioned templates as well. But when I say a good template, I mean one that again, is very effective focused on the lower rep ranges, the big lifts with some accessory movements, done in a way that maximizes rest periods of recovery, and works along with your your goals and your nutrition. So, you know, personal trainers may not like me saying that because their job is to program for you. But I don't think you need someone to program for you 95% of the time. A middle ground would be to be in something like a club like a barbell club. For example. I'm in Andy Baker's barbell club. I have been for probably three years now. He's one of the best programmers on the planet. And he writes a program for each week that everybody can follow. So it's not customed to you, but it changes so you get the variety. It's fun in that way and you get different options to choose from you get a four day split, you get power, or what do you call it? A basic barbell split For three days, and then you get a six day bodybuilding split, you can choose one of those to follow. And something like that is more than adequate for pretty much anyone other than if you're trying to be a competitor or something like that. And you need something very custom. So instead of a fillable, PDF, why don't you get a fixed template that is effective. So some programs that I I recommend for people starting strength, Mike Matthews for women thinner, leaner, stronger, and he has an app called stacked that's free that has the programs in there. So if you'd like using apps, you could just jump right into the app and pick one of those programs. Cody McBroom of tailored coaching method has a brand new app that came out I don't I don't mind plugging that for him no affiliation. And I think that's when you pay for it's like 29 bucks a month. But you also get access to tons of what I know are going to be effective programs for different goals. My good friends Katie and Heather at stronger than your boyfriend have a program called stronger. It's a four day split. It has a nice combination of big lifts and accessories that are kind of unique, some moves that you may not have seen before just to make it fun. But it it goes on a three month cycle like a 12 week cycle where each four week block, lowers in rep range. So you go from sort of a call it I hate to say hypertrophy rep range, but the higher rep ranges of eight to 12 down to like six to eight and then you end up at like one to four something like that. But it gets it kind of eases you into it that way, any of those would be effective. And you could easily learn the most basic movements by watching videos, learn the cues, and then execute them. And hopefully that helps you get over some of these blocks. Now, another block could be that you are not planning ahead. And you kind of alluded to that in one of my very early episodes, episode six. Okay, set your fitness and nutrition habits on autopilot. I do talk about how to pre plan for everything in your week, including your workouts. And I don't know how well that episode has aged but the principles are still the same. And what I like to do personally, and what I recommend to clients is anything you can do ahead of time, well, when you're thinking logically and you feel refreshed and have energy, like on the weekends for many people is going to reduce friction during the week. So simple way to do that is take the template that you're going to use now, let's say it's starting strength, where you know that there's a Monday, Wednesday, Wednesday, Friday workout, and go ahead and pre log, the exercises, the sets, the reps, and the loads that you plan to work to use for your top sets for your working sets. And go ahead and pre load those in your app or your notebook, whatever you use to track so that all you have to do is go into the gym, do it and then check it off. And of course, if you you know, if anything changes as you're working out, you can note it there. Pre prepare your gym clothes, your squat shoes, your belt, your pre workout or protein or creating all that stuff, just prepare all of it ahead of time. So that you get up Monday morning, boom, ready to go. Let's do it. And then that's just one less excuse. So the last thing is I'm a big fan of using resources and communities to figure this stuff out. So whether your medium of choice is a book or videos, but not videos in real time, but more like YouTube videos to learn the form. I like starting strength. I like barbell logic for the big lifts. Hiring a personal trainer for a few sessions, or even using an online community like Wits & Weights to post your lifts. And then of course, if you wanted to work with a coach like me, I'm a nutrition coach, but I do provide form checks. And again, I'm not dragging this directly you should edit but just in general, for folks to know that there are many, many options out there that that are kind of an in between for the answer to your question. Okay, hope that answers your question. I'm gonna go to number two. Now. The second question is from Christina. Do exogenous antioxidants. supplements like vitamin C negatively impact the immune system when consumed in high quantities? And how much is too much if there is such a thing? And yes, there is such a thing as too much. Let's get into some of the details. My general advice for people, my clients and just anybody listening is Be judicious about supplementation and use it for a specific known purpose for you as an individual, including nutrient deficiencies. So this is where you would use a multivitamin. Maybe you take magnesium, maybe you supplement with vitamin D, and the dosing and the need for or depending on your deficiencies for performance. So this is where creatine comes into play. I think everybody should be taking creatine honestly. And probiotics right for digestion and gut health which can be obtained from food but many of us like to supplement with that as well. Now I'm okay dosing with vitamin C, vitamin E, selenium, zinc, copper, whatever you need for deficiencies or immune function in moderate amounts in the amounts that you would normally See on an over the counter product. But an excessive amount of anything is going to be at best useless, meaning you get diminishing returns and at worst, toxic, right? We know that anything in too high of a quantity can be toxic. I mean, it depends on if it's water soluble or fat soluble, things like that, like for example vitamin C, it's hard to overdose on that versus a vitamin D. So you kind of have to understand those nuances. But the key is to keep it in a moderate dosing level per the recommendations. Now, the first source of all nutrients should be what food right period. This is why I prefer a diet of something like 80%, or more whole foods. Notice I said 80%. I didn't say 100%. I didn't say you cut everything out. We we are not about restriction here. This is more that if we are trying to improve our body composition, we're trying to manage our hunger. And we want to manage our health at the same time, we're going to seek out lower calorie density, higher satiety, higher fiber, lots of variety, fruits and vegetables, whole grains, all that a lot of which has been actually conventional wisdom for many years. But because of our modern food environment and the level of processing, it's hard to do that. And the more processed foods you have, the less nutrients you're going to have and the more deficiencies you're going to have. But I also like data, you know that you know that Christina and everyone listening, I love data, I love closing that feedback loop. And here you can track specific nutrients and micronutrients. If your food logging app can do that, and this is where I talk about macro factor all the time, we went into detail about it on episode 98. But it can now do that in great detail. You can track your macro micronutrients, you can set targets, you can automatically set targets based on what the science says. And that will give you a really good idea as well, if something is too much, right. So things that can be at a toxic level of intake, they will often have an upper limit to find not always but but they will in many cases, like for example saturated fat. So like anything, there is a minimum effective dose that you might need to to fill in that gap. And then there's often a toxic dose. And it varies based on the individual, right your age, your dieting, history, medical history, your activity, your diet, of course, one simple reference, if you're looking for numbers, Christina is the recommended dietary allowances the RDA is, and as much as there might be controversy over government sponsored recommendations, it's at least a starting point, right? Because they tend to be on the conservative side anyway. And you can look those up for specific nutrients and see if a particular supplement or antioxidant is way out of bed from those recommendations. As to your specific question about their impact on the immune system. A few things come to mind. First, the the supplements form of anything. So if you get anything in a pill instead of from food, it may not have the same benefits as the things in food, right? Because it's not complemented by the other nutrition and the other the other nutrients and the other compounds in food. So I think I talked about this, what did I talk about this on Oh Is my bonus episode about the carnivore diet recently, where I talked about how real food like fruits, vegetables have other compounds that aren't necessarily tracked. And they may have complimentary effects with these nutrients that you're trying to seek out here. They may not have the same benefits. And they might even act as what's called a pro oxidant which can cause oxidative stress, which is the opposite of what you want. We want antioxidants, not pro toxins. The second thing is that high doses could modulate the immune system in ways that we don't understand. Right meaning you're actually causing an effect on the immune system to compensate in some way. And this is beyond the scope of this podcast and should shouldn't be a concern if you're not taking unreasonably high doses of these antioxidants. So long story short, keep it simple. Don't use supplements as a shortcut. They are absolutely the lowest priority thing. When I work with clients after energy balance, macros, micros, fiber, hydration, even meal timing are all more important than supplements, but supplements can fill in that gap. Okay, so that was the second question. Let's move on to question number three from mn. She says I loved your recent episode 98 about food logging apps and macro factor in particular, great info. And by the way, I've gotten a lot of feedback on that episode. When I created it. I wasn't sure if it would come across as just like a sales pitch for the app. But a lot of people got back to me said You know, I was on the fence. I've been using, say my fitness power or something else for all these years. And it was on the fence because it's a paid app. And I jumped in based on your episode which clearly outlined why these other apps are problematic. And now all of a sudden, like within days or week of using it. I absolutely love what it's helping me discover about myself and helping me reach my goals. So thank you everyone who wrote in about it. Anyway, continue with the question she has no has three questions built into this one question? Does macro factor allow you to pre log the day before? Is it only via your bodyweight that it figures out how to change calories and macros? And can you change the macro amounts? For example, I eat pretty high protein for my weight as I'm a petite female? Or does it do a standard like one gram per pound? Okay, I love these questions because they go to the heart of features that make food logging apps helpful or not the very principles I was talking about in that episode. So I'm going to answer these one by one and then I will repeat and questions as I go along just so everybody can follow what I'm answering. Before I do I get again, I want to remind you to check out Episode 98, which is titled, is your food logging app, sabotaging your fat loss and physique goals? Go check that out. So you have some more context. Hey, this is Philip. And I hope you're enjoying this episode of Wits & Weights, I started Wits & Weights to help people who want to build muscle lose fat and actually look like they lift. I've noticed that when people improve their strength and physique, they not only look and feel better, they transform other areas of their life, their health, their mental resilience and their confidence in everything they do. And since you're listening to this podcast, I assume you want the same things the same success, whether you recently started lifting, or you've been at this for a while and want to optimize and reach a new level of success. Either way, my one on one coaching focused on engineering your physique, and body composition is for you. If you want expert guidance and want to get results faster, easier, and with fewer frustrations along the way to actually look like you lift, go to wits & weights.com, and click on coaching, or use the link in my show notes to apply today. I'll ask you a few short questions to decide if we're a good fit. And if we are, we'll get you started this week. Now back to the show. So NS first question was, does macro factor allow you to pre log the day before? The answer is yes, you can log foods meals or not meals, foods and what they call plates, which is multiple foods and a single time. Because macro factor doesn't use meals because meals is a limiting construct manufacture allows you to log to anytime you want. So if you eat 10 times a day, you can log it that way. Very flexible. So you can pre log or you can log a day, the previous day, you can log future days as far out into the future as you want. Even better as I encourage this practice as a way to meal plan for yourself. And to also solve problems that have been a struggle for you. So let me break those down. The first one, using macro factors a meal planner is is a beautiful thing because you can for example, if you know you're gonna go out on Saturday night, for a big dinner or to a restaurant and you know, it's going to be pretty indulgent, you can pre log that whole day and figure out what it's going to look like you can say, okay, walking back from right to left, I'm going to put in my dinner first. And I'm going to have you know, buttered butter dinner rolls, I'm gonna have that appetizer of fried onion rings, I'm gonna have a Caesar salad, I'm gonna have you know, a steak with butter, and I'm gonna have potatoes or I'm gonna have dessert, whatever, just right, I'm just randomly rattling off things. And you come to find that it's 1800 calories. And it's, you know, blown through your fat budget most likely, and your, your calorie needs or your calorie targets or let's say 2500 calories. So now you know you have 700 calories left for earlier in the day. And you go ahead and you plan out a light protein, veggie based lunch and breakfast. And maybe maybe it's more than 700 calories because you know you don't you know, you don't want to starve yourself, you want to have enough energy, you want enough carbs and protein throughout the day, you want to distribute protein and all that. And you don't want to feel like you have to binge. So you go over by maybe 300 calories. But guess what, that's just 300 calories, you've already figured out what you're going to do, you have a plan 300 calories is a drop in the bucket compared to if you didn't do that. And then you had a big breakfast because it's Saturday and then you know you had a big lunch and then you maybe your normal snack, and all of a sudden you get to dinner you've already eaten, let's say 1500 calories. If you still eat the way you are, you're going to plan to eat now you're going to be 1000 calories over your budget. So it's great as a pre planning meal planning tool. The other way to do this, as I mentioned was if you have trouble hitting a particular macro like protein, that's very common one you have trouble hitting in protein. Actually, a lot of my clients also sometimes have trouble hitting carbs because I'm asking them to eat more carbs than they ever thought they could eat, and still, you know, lose fat, improve their body composition, but it's true. And so, what I what I asked them to do is use macro factor and plan out their next day, let's say a routine day like today's a Wednesday. Tomorrow's a Thursday and I want you to plan out the day as if it is 100% successful right 100% macro and calorie adherence meaning, you know you hit it right, pretty much close to the ground, even though reality is never going to work. count that way, and that's okay. It will immediately tell you based on the food, you start to log, where you're off. I mean, it's pretty simple, you see that you need or you want 150 grams of protein and what you've logged as 100. You know, you're short 50 Now you have to start moving things around. So it's a perfect, logically driven, case, cool headed in the moment, non emotional way to tell your future self, hey, get real, what you're doing isn't quite getting there, we need to make a change. And now I'm pre planning how to make that change. Okay. So the answer is, yes, you can pre log. And then I just went on two big reasons how you why you want to do that, actually. And second question was, Is it only via your bodyweight, that the app figures out how to change calories and macros? So what she's asking because I'm going to reword this, what I get from a lot of people is where do I enter my activity? Like my exercise? Why? Or why don't? Why does it need exercise, right to figure out your expenditure and what the targets need to be? Well, here's the thing, all macro factor needs is two data points, you need your body weight, and it needs your calorie intake. And the beauty of this is that our bodies are a closed system, right. So you have energy coming in, in the form of food, which is measured by calories, you do a bunch of stuff, not just voluntarily, but involuntarily. All the elements of your metabolism, metabolism are happening all the time, every day, right, your organs have to function that uses a ton of calories, your liver, your heart, your lungs, your brain, those are using a ton of calories, your lungs to keep you breathing. All the involuntary movements like flat, you know, blinking your eyes and such. So that's like two thirds of your calories. You move around all day doing stuff, whether you're standing, sitting, walking, cooking, cleaning, all of that you are potentially exercising as well, right? You should be your training, your strength training, you're, you know, biking or walking or doing some sort of cardio, or whatever. And you're eating food as well. And the act of eating food and digesting that food burns calories. So guess what, if, when I hear the question, where do I enter my activity calories? And I know and you didn't ask that explicitly, I'm just extrapolating into what a lot of people think. I should also ask the question, okay, where do I log my digestion calories? Where do I log my, the calories that my organs need to function? Where do I log you get where I'm going, it gets kind of ridiculous. Actually, when I, when I make that hypothetical, that all the things your body does to burn calories in a 24 hour period are going to be very complex, and almost pretty much they are impossible to measure. But you don't need to measure because guess what, all of that energy that you burn causes your body mass to either go up or down or stay the same. Because your body either stores or uses that energy, it stores it in your fat cells, or it releases it from your fat cells, as well as glycogen, right in the form of glucose from carbs, and maybe from protein. If you don't have enough carbs, and your body starts to cannibalize its own protein, it's going to take immediate energy from the food coming in, and then stored energy from your fat cells. And what happens at the end of the day, your weight either goes up or down or stay the same. So macro factor only needs your weight and your calories to know how many calories you're burning, without having to know all the stuff that happens in the middle. Think of a car, think of it as a car. I don't know if this, this analogy will work. But if you wanted to calculate the gas mileage of a car, which is kind of which is kinda like its expenditure, right? Kind of like its metabolism, you're gonna say, how many miles did you drive divided by how much gas did I burn? All you have to know is how many miles you drove and how much gas is left in the gas tank. You don't have to know how much energy is used by all the components of the engine by the tires by all the wasted heat and mechanical energy. No, you have to know all that. Just what goes in? And what goes out simple and precise all in one. So to answer your question, yes, all it needs is weighed in calories. And I encourage you to log those every single day. If you log weight, it needs at least one way in per week. But I strongly encourage you to weigh every day to get better precision. Because if you do it once a week, as I've talked about before, you may be hitting a high point or a low point. And if it goes up or goes down from one point to the next, it may not be an accurate reflection of what's happening in your body. Macro factor will use an average over a three week period regardless, but it's better to have more data points. And then calories. You should be logging your food every day anyway. It's great for awareness and it's great for precision in the data. So it knows okay, I'm eating this many calories my body is doing this, therefore I'm burning this, then you'll know what to do you know, oh, maybe I should walk more and start to push that expenditure up. You don't need to log it in the app, the Apple will realize that you're eating the same amount of food and all of a sudden you're losing weight or you weren't losing weight before Oh, you must be moving more doing something that burns more calories. Alright, and last question related to manual macro factor was Can you change the macro amounts? For example, a pretty high protein for my weight is I'm a petite female, or does it do a standard like one gram per pound. Alright, so in macro factor when you set up a goal, to gain weight, lose weight or maintain, it's going to prompt you to set up your program, your macro program, and there's a few different settings there. And a few settings are universal, I recommend these universal settings, the first one is called coached. So you can either do coached collaborative, or I think it's called manual. And the coach profile is going to set your targets for you, based on your body stats, body composition, and the goal that you set, right based on the rate of gain or the rate of loss. And based on what weight you are right now. So if you want to maintain, it's going to be based on that on not changing at all. So I would use the coached profile for pretty much 99% of people. And then here's the thing, you can change the amount of fats and protein that it uses. So you can set it to low fat or low carb or keto, you can do that it gives you those options. So for somebody who just prefers lower carbs, and wants to give it a shot, do that, again, I usually recommend just the balanced option, which is let the app figure it out for you based on the evidence of a good balanced approach to your macros. And then finally, you can set your protein level you can set it to, you know, low, moderate, high and very high. And I usually recommend high or in some cases very high. And so the high and very high, it's gonna get it close to that one gram per pound. And then the low and the very low will be like around point seven 2.9. But it's all within the range of what the evidence suggests is optimal for results. And by results we mean improving your physique, improving your health, achieving your goals, losing fat building muscle. Cool. So your question was, can you change the macro mounts in that's the way I would do it, I would change if you don't want to do balance your little low fat or low carb or keto and if you don't want to do like very high protein you can go to high or moderate protein. Okay. The last question is from Alan. Cooler weather is coming and many people may turn to cozy oatmeal overnight oats etc for their carb sources making me hungry. I eat oatmeal every morning. Aside from oatmeal, are there any other cereals or grains that we can incorporate? It's a good question, right? Seriously, I love that we're asking explicitly like give me more carbs give me more grains and cereals because I know that those are carbs and they might serve my goals and there's nothing wrong with them whatsoever. Also do high protein cereals such as Kashi Go which I love with plain Kefir or Greek yogurt, or magic spoon offer an acceptable alternative? I guess the main question would be should we avoid going down the cereal and granola aisle and stick with plain oats? I think you know my answer to the question. First of all plain oats are down the cereal granola aisle generally but that's a technicality, semantics. I think when you're talking about grains, most of the options are going to be in the middle aisles of the grocery store, right? Because they're not perishable, like meat, dairy and produce what you would find on the perimeter. So you're going to find them in the middle or maybe you'll find them in the organic or the weak natural section some grocery stores have. But here's the thing. So you kind of know you kind of are leading me with the question, Alan, because you know, I'm all about flexibility and nothing's really off limits like I think you should, every aisle in the grocery store is open to having something that you enjoy that meets your needs period. I absolutely do love oats. I love oats because they're versatile. They taste great. I mean they're, they don't have much of a taste in of themselves. But you know, you can put them with lots of things to add flavor. And they are high in protein. Of course. I personally like old fashioned oats but there's many different cuts to choose from. There's the instant there's the like you said overnight, there's the steel cut, the quick oats, etc, whatever you want. Now, as far as other cereals and grains, I'm going to suggest seven of them. I know it's a big list, but I just want to put it all out there as a nutrition coach. There's a million options, but these are seven good ones. Quinoa. Of course, it's an ancient grain, high in protein, high in fiber. It has that nice nutty taste. Not everybody likes a texture but you can cook it in some broth and it gives it a little bit of a different texture. So you can go from like going from crunchy to soft. So quinoa, of course, Ferro is another ancient grain FA RR O, and it's more it's dense and chewy if you want that. So again, I'm all about mouthfeel I'm kind of a foodie. So if you're into that and cooking and recipes and you want different textures definitely play around with all these grains. And if you're finally back on the carb train after years of being low carb and you're enjoying the beauty of what carbs give you it's it's time to explore and go out go out there and you know pick these up at the grocery store and see which ones you like. So quinoa Farrell, the third one is barley. Barley is good in soups. It's good as a side dish. Yeah, it's in beer too. That's that shouldn't be your main source of it though, Boulder B you LGR is very quick to prepare and that's good in like salads or bowls like when you have those even like the vegetarian bowls, but of course I love adding meat to vegetarian bowls so it kind of defeats the purpose. The next one is rice. I mean rice should be on the list for anybody rice is a mainstay both white and brown rice, all the varieties, all the fragrances Jasmine basmati you know, brown rice is a nice wholegrain alternative if you want more fiber and decrease calorie density, but it is a little bit more. You know, because it's rougher and texture, it's not as smooth mouthfeel and if you're on let's say you're in a building phase Allen, which you are and you want to get a lot of carbs. You know, it actually may be too filling to just eat brown rice and you may want to have white rice I think white rice is is also versatile and delicious. So rice, the sixth one is couscous. Couscous is just made from wheat, it's effectively a form of pasta just in a different shape. That can be a lot of fun. Kids tend to love it as well. And you can, again very versatile. And then millet, it's a small grain right also very versatile cheese in portages, things like that. Now, some of these animals never eat and some of them I eat a lot of like I eat a lot of rice. I eat quinoa, couscous occasionally. The other ones not so much. It's just you know, how much do you want to keep in the pantry? And how much variety Do you want to have at home and try? Okay, so you also asked about high protein cereals. Now here's the thing, I personally have a subscription to magic spoon, I get a few boxes every few months or whatever a very small amount in case I get that cereal craving or you know, I want a cereal fix. I don't get a lot of cravings these days. It's something that you find happens when you go more toward Whole Foods You don't you don't have these massive emotional cravings like you used to which is part of why we do it. Keep in mind though, things like magic spoon, they're still processed foods right in terms of the spectrum but they're not. They're not crazy, like ultra processed side of the spectrum per se. I went back and looked at my box of magic spoon and most ingredients are fine. I mean it has chicory root as like a fibrous filler. That's that's a natural filler. I'm okay with that. It uses alue Lowe's, which is a non nutritive sweetener from fruit, it actually does have a few calories. I think for every 10 calories, you absorb one. So it has some impact on calories. But products like magic spoon, I think were developed for like the the low carb crowd and I kind of wish there were some high carb high protein versions like just kind of normal cereal with good ingredients that add protein. But you're fine with these honestly, because the food science is incredible. It's okay to take advantage of it where it serves you. And when you look at something like magic spoon, it's kind of like a protein bar. You'd have it occasionally don't have it every single day necessarily. Well, I mean, even if you had it once a day, it still probably would fit within your goals. To be honest, I don't want to be that restrictive for anything. But it's it's impressive, right? And they're tasty. They have all these now, they have not what they call natural flavors, which is really not natural per se. I mean you can you can go research what that means. And there were like two other ingredients. Honestly, there weren't too many. I think it's the the primary ingredient is Man, I wish I had it with me, I should look it up. But the primary ingredient is just, I think whey protein isolate, right? It's whey protein, something like that. That's where the protein comes from. That plus the chicory root gives it that, you know, Harvey texture. Okay, so here's the thing, I'm gonna let you in on a secret Alan, and everybody listening, the 1000s of people listening. If cereal is like the most delicious thing to you, it's the thing you just have to have. It's your non negotiables you just love it. And I know people like that with cereal, which by the way you can pour almond milk in and you know you don't have the extra calories from milk if you want to do that. And here's the thing if you have the calories and macros for it in your allocated targets for your flexible diet. All right, a bit of your favorite cereal, even if it's not high protein can absolutely fit in a sustainable diet. Yes, even those, okay, I'm gonna say even high sugar cereals made for kids. gasp There I said it. Right, some cinnamon toast crunch is not going to kill you if it's in your 10 to 20% budget for indulgences. Alright, and when you're eating 4000 calories and building muscles. Sometimes your indulgences come from interesting places. And in granted in a fat loss phase, these are the first things that we tend to limit, right because they don't serve our goals. Something like high sugar cereals just not gonna be very filling. It's processed, yada, yada, it's not going to have much in the way of nutrition although you'd be surprised at how much they fortify these things with after the fact. Anyway, that's what we mean by flexibility and not restricting yourself and so take that fear mongering fitness influencers. Okay, that's it. That's all the questions I have for today's episode. And I think that was enough so please send them in if you want your question answered in an upcoming QA In any episode, the best way to do that is send me a message on IG at Wits & Weights, or Facebook, either directly to my profile. I think my link is in the show notes but better off, go through the free fit a free, the free Wits & Weights Facebook community, those links are in the show notes. So our next episode 103 titled, sweet proteins, food science and the future of sweeteners with Jason Ryder. Wow, I couldn't have planned that any better. To tie off with that last question from Alan. We're going to be diving into the topic of sweet proteins. If you've never heard of these, neither had I before I met Jason. I obviously researched for the episode but even then I wasn't fully understanding exactly what they were until we talked. So check out that episode we're going to explore the science behind sweet proteins, their health benefits in your nutrition strategy, and then what foods you might find them in now and in the future. Maybe a magic spoon who knows? As always stay strong. And I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits & Weights podcast. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Wits & Weights. If you found value in today's episode, and know someone else who's looking to level up their Wits & Weights. Please take a moment to share this episode with them. And make sure to hit the Follow button in your podcast platform right now to catch the next episode. Until then, stay strong