Raising Testosterone, Burning Fat, and Dealing with Idiots – Warrior Soul AMA

Chris Albert 00:00:00 (link to this point)

The Warrior Soul podcast is written, produced, and edited by me, Albert. Our goal is to empower US military veterans to live their absolute best lives, and we do that by providing tools, tactics, strategies, and ideas that they can apply into their lives to become wiser, stronger, smarter, more resilient, and more capable human beings in the civilian world. If you're not a veteran, stick around because anything we talk about here can obviously apply to you. And if you like what we have to say, any information we provide, and the guests we bring on, please head over to iTunes and write us a written rating and review. It really helps to spread word about the show and to get this helpful information into the hands of more veterans so that they can in turn improve their lives and shape the future of this country.

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They're focused on getting veterans to live their absolute best lives, and that's what this podcast is about, and that's why we wanted to work with them. So if you're interested in volunteering or donating to save the brave, head over to www.savethebrave.org and make your donation or your request today. Finally, this podcast is brought to you by Warrior Soul Apparel. This is a clothing company that I actually helped to start a couple years ago as we were beginning the brand Warrior Soul. We've got some amazing t shirts.

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We'll have some information for you to check out. With that, let's get into the episode.

This is Chris Albert, and I'm here to remind you of one thing. Someday, you're going to die. That's not some morbid statement or scary idea. It's solid fact. Your time here on this earth is limited.

And we need to be reminded of this as much as possible for one simple reason, to live your best life while you can. This is the Warrior Soul podcast.

What is going on everybody? Welcome to this edition of the Warrior Soul podcast, and I'm gonna do something I haven't done in a while. This is going to be an ask me anything. And these are questions that I get from our private Facebook group. If you wanna join the group, it's free.

It's called Warrior Soul Agoge, empowerment and resilience. And basically what I do on that group is I put out daily motivation, daily information about how to live a healthy fit lifestyle, how to live a life that's worth living. And we've got about 800 members, a little bit over that. So if you're interested in that, head over the group and and join us. I'm gonna get right into the questions today, guys.

And the first one comes from Lee. Lee wanted to know how about instilling better work ethic in subordinates. Not sure if that's even a thing. Basically, I just got this text from a recent college graduate I oversee at work. And the text is this, we are really gonna have a meeting in this coldness tomorrow, l o l, laughing.

Wow. Yeah. That's I can see how that's frustrating. Right? Because those of us who are older, we'd like to believe that the younger generation should have a little bit of that work ethic instilled in them.

Right? We like to think that maybe they've seen a little bit of the world. Right? Particularly those who've gone on and done their university degrees. Right?

But we all know that college these days is pretty much a bubble. Alright? These kids are are going away for four years, and that's not saying anything against you if you're going to college. There's a lot of college kids who work their way through college, who pay for it. But these kids are going away to college and their parents pretty much take care take care of everything.

It's like a four year vacation. Right? So when you get somebody who's like, we're really gonna have a meeting in this coldness tomorrow, It's it could be a bit frustrating, but we have to remember something. We gotta remember what it was like for us at that age. And let me put it to you this way.

If nobody ever came up and kicked me in the ass, I don't know what kind of man I would be today. I don't know what kind of man I'd be today. If I never joined the Marine Corps and had a drill instructor get up in my face and get me to realize that I wasn't as important as I thought I was, that I wasn't the center of the universe, that the fact was that I wasn't really that important at all, then I don't know where I'd be today. And a lot of these kids, they haven't had the opportunity to do that. So let's put it this way, we have a choice.

And our choice is this, we can either complain about it, or we can do something about it. And doing something about it means that we're not just shaking our heads, we're not just saying no, or yes we are going to have a meeting. We sit them down and we tell them why they're acting like idiots. You see, most people don't know when they're acting like idiots. They don't understand that.

Right? You're overestimating people's intelligence, their natural ability to see things. We as human beings, and I'm talking about all of us, not just college kids, we don't have very good instincts. We lost that a long time ago to develop our brains. People aren't psychic.

People don't know. Right? They didn't grow up like a lot of us did either. So they have to have the opportunity to learn. Right?

That's not to say that that's right. That's not to say that I'm not concerned for society. But it's to say that if we want these things to change, well, the only way they're gonna change is if if we step up and we lead. Right? So lead.

Show this person why they're going the wrong way. Show this person that they that they're better than that. Like, come on. Right? Show it to them.

Cause you're better than that. You know better. So, again, lead. Let's get on to the next question. This one's pertaining to fitness, and this is from mister King.

Mister King wants to know calculating calorie, caloric value of certain foods. Chicken breast for example has a certain weight and certain content when packaged raw. Since cooking changes the weight of the chicken, does the caloric content change as well? Well, yeah, man. And this is the thing.

So generally, when I was measuring food, and I'll talk about measuring food in a second and why I don't think it's a good idea, but when I was measuring food, I always measured it after it was cooked. And that was for two reasons. Number one, I measured it after it was cooked so that I wasn't getting nasty chicken germs all over my scale. Number two, it's because the chicken loses a little bit of weight, right, and the the caloric differences are actually pretty significant after you cook a piece of chicken breast or chicken thigh or something like that, as opposed to being raw. It's very different.

So my advice is that if you are measuring your food for whatever reason, than to measure raw. And if you're looking for accurate calories on this, well, there's mister Google. Right? Google. You can Google the nutrition information on anything.

Raw chicken breast, cooked chicken breast, chicken thighs, chicken gizzards, chicken you name it, you you can find it. But here's a bigger thing. One of the things I I stopped doing after I was after I stopped competitive bodybuilding was I stopped measuring food. Right? And here's the big reason why I stopped measuring food.

Because it was becoming a reason for me not to eat healthy. It was becoming a reason for me not to be healthy. You're probably saying well Chris, being so disciplined measuring your food, wouldn't being disciplined entail you wanting to eat more healthy all the time? And the answer is this: No, it didn't. It was a pain in the ass measuring food, and when I thought I had to measure all my food, that drove me away from healthy eating.

It drove me away from being a healthy person. You know, the the is this. Right? Getting in shape is difficult. Why make it any more difficult?

Why make it any more difficult? Right? You wanna start to get to a point to where you're able to eyeball this. Right? So a fist size piece of chicken breast is generally around eight ounces.

Right? Your hand size is gonna be a little bit more. Right? No. A fist size is gonna be six ounces.

A a hand size is gonna be around eight ounces. Right? And that's pretty much the way to go about it. That's a serving size. Right?

And I just don't want people running around feeling like they gotta calculate every single thing, calculating their calories, calculating their macros, calculating this, calculating that. Sure. I'm contradicting a whole lot of fitness people out there who are saying you should be calculating. I think that yeah you should have a good ballpark idea of the amount of calories you should be consuming every day because you don't want to consume too many, don't want to consume too few, but if you're making it any harder than it should be then you're not gonna keep up with it. Alright?

Fitness isn't just about doing things when you have the time or doing things when it's convenient for you. Fitness is about being able to take care of yourself no matter what else is going on in your life at any given time. When I'm training clients, I don't want them to be in shape for just a couple of weeks or just a couple of months or just a couple of years. I want them to be in shape for the rest of their lives. And creating this super OCD system where clients have to calculate this, calculate that, all that's gonna do is it's going to ensure that whatever discipline that they instill in their diet or their their fitness plan for now is gonna be perishable when the shit hits the fan.

Right? Don't do shit that's not sustainable ever, whether it's in business, whether it's in fitness, whether it's in life. Right? Of course, sometimes you're forced into periods like that, but don't willingly try to put more complexity onto the situation. Right?

That's a really really important thing to understand beyond just, you know, the the differences between the raw macros. Right? We we need to start doing things so that we can continue doing them. Because the key to consistency with anything in life or the key to to success in anything in life is consistency. Right?

It's not doing things really disciplined for short periods of time. It's doing them over and over again for long periods of time for your entire life. I'm 40 years old. I got a freaking six pack. You can see through my skin.

I'm very, very lean, and I don't measure shit. Right? And that might sound cocky. Yeah. Second thought, that does sound cocky.

I don't mean to sound cocky. I'm just telling you that you don't need to be that obsessive. Next question. Barrett Leslie. He asked, what is the single most important thing you can do for expanding human awareness?

That's a tough one. That's a tough one, man. I would say number one, meditate. Right? And a lot of you are probably gonna be like, what the hell?

Meditate? Yeah. Meditate. Because a lot of us don't even know what's going on in our own brains. Right?

And that has nothing to do with anything spiritual, anything religious, or anything like that. The fact is that we've evolved to be this crazy crazy mix of primal beings that existed forty fifty thousand years ago, and these modern beings who have to deal with all these added complexities. Right? And so it's like we're living with a schizophrenic roommate all the time. Right?

We have a roommate that lives in each and every one of us that's still existing in a world that's 50,000 years old. Right? And that roommate is worried about saber toothed tigers. He's worried about other cavemen coming to kill us, all these different things. And so what that can do he's worried about sex all the time.

Right? He's worried about jerking off. He's worried about this, worried about that. And if we allow that part of ourselves to take over too much, it could distract us from the modern responsibilities that we have. At the same time, if we put too much into the modern shit that's around us, like social media and and the news and all this other crap, then we're alienating that primal side of us.

Right? So the idea is that we've gotta kinda strike a balance, and meditating can help with that because it helps you to understand those thoughts are there. You can observe them. And then once you're observing them, you can see where they're taking you. Right?

And if you can see where you're where they're taking you, you can see which ones are serving you and which ones aren't. It it's helped me immensely. It's helped me so much. And this is a thing that too many people write off. I meditate twenty minutes a day.

I use Sam Harris's, meditation app. It's called Waking Up. You guys should check it out. I've got a meditation group on there for Warrior Soul if you wanna come on. Sam's really good about explaining this stuff, and that's why I use his app as opposed to others.

I'm sure there's a few other good ones out there like Headspace and stuff like that. But for those of us who, for whom meditation might be an alien thing, like something that's very foreign to us, I appreciate Sam Harris in the way that he explains things, That's why I use his app. It's free for the first 50 sessions, and then after that, I think it's something like $3.99 or $4.99 a month. Don't quote me on that. I'm not affiliated with him.

I don't get any commission from saying that. It's just a really good tool that I think everybody should use. Drinking a little bit of tea today. A little bit of tea. Alright?

I like coffee. Coffee is my life. But one thing, I'm going through a little bit of an ulcerative colitis flare up right now. So I drink pretty much the not most non manly tea in the world. It's called ginger tea.

Right? And and it's it's good, lowers body inflammation, and I don't care what the hell you think. I'm enjoying my ginger tea over here. Let's get into this next question from Jacob. What is the best exercise to do from home or outside to increase testosterone and zap fat?

I've been thinking kettlebell workouts would be great for accomplishing both. Let's put it this way, so number one, there isn't a perfect exercise to raise your testosterone levels and zap fat, Right? It goes back to what I was saying before with adding complexity to things. Right? You you gotta do what's gonna be most convenient and allow you to be the most consistent.

Now, with that said, I like two things, body weight and kettlebell exercises. Right? If you're gonna do things from home. Okay? Body weight exercises simply because you don't need anything else.

Right? You don't need any extra equipment. You don't need bars. You don't need weights. Nothing like that.

You do some good old fashioned body weight exercises. Right? The other one to think about here though is that if you do want to do some resistance training, then a kettlebell is the perfect piece of equipment. You only need one of them. You could do almost any exercise in the world with them.

Can do squats, you can do deadlifts, can do Romanian deadlifts, you can do rows, you can do curls, you do presses, you can walk around with that thing for on your shoulder. Right? It's it's perfect. Right? And that's why I like the kettlebell.

Right? You can do high intensity exercises with it. You do so much. So much. Now, so it's really up to you what you want to include.

Right? So if you're if you wanna get a home system that's like this Peloton bike that a lot of people are doing, great. Awesome. You can get the same kind of work from a kettlebell or from body weight. Right?

Some people just need that extra motivation. Some people just like the feeling of riding a bike. That's great. But you could do the same kind of work with a kettlebell or just your body weight. Alright.

It's up to you. Body weight, I mean, again, you do anything. Squats, you could do upside down push ups or presses, you could do push ups, you could do burpees if you wanna do some HIIT training. All that stuff. Right?

Now so so my advice is to choose the modality that's gonna allow you to get the most done, right, for the longest period of time that you could be as consistent as possible with. Also, choose a modality that you're going to enjoy. So if you don't like kettlebells and you don't like body weight training and you can afford it, then fork out the money for a Peloton bike. Right? But I know there's a lot of those things gathering dust either way.

Whatever you do, here's the biggest piece of bit of fitness advice that I can give you. Right? Beyond whatever goal you have, you've got to have meaning behind why you're trying to be fit. There's got to be a meaning there. There's got to be something there that's bigger than than muscles, than burning fat, than raising testosterone, than getting girls, than pleasing your wife.

There's got to be a bigger meaning behind it. Right? For me, my meaning is that I have a mission in life. That mission is to inspire as many veterans out there and as many people out there to live their their best lives, their absolute best lives. I wanna empower them to be everything they could be so that they can come back and in turn change this country.

Right? For the better and teach our youth to be better at everything. And that's a really big vision. In order to do that, I need to be healthy, need to live a long time, I need my mind to be straight. And so every bit of fitness that I do, every bit of nutrition that I put into my body goes into trying to create that vision and make it a reality.

That's my why for working out. That's why I don't miss workouts. That's why every single day I'm doing something to make myself healthier, myself stronger, to make myself better. Right? You need something like that.

It could be your kids, it could be your family, it could be your business, it could be whatever it is that drives you. You need to make sure that that's what is gonna keep you consistent. Now, for those of you out there who are looking to to get started with training, I'm gonna plug the Warrior's Obituary Society. It's a group we run here at Warrior Soul. It's for men.

And essentially, what happens is we start out not not with just the fitness stuff. We we get you to write out your vision. We get you to identify exactly what you want out of this life, and then we derive goals from that. And then from there we put you through an eight week development program where we're focusing on specific areas of your life. We get you to develop your own customized fitness plan.

We get you to develop your own customized finance plan. We help you with building your network, with enhancing your relationships, with focusing on your career or your business. And unlike a lot of the programs out there, that program doesn't cost thousands of dollars. Right? We charge $40 a month.

And if that's something you're interested in, just head over to www.warriorobituarysociety.com. That's warriorobituarysociety.com. Alright? Sorry to plug something in here, but I think it's something that that can help all of you out. You men out there who feel like you're a little bit lost in your lives, and beyond that, the money goes to supporting this show and helping us to spread the message.

So everything's in a good cause. Next question. Chris Chris Popoff asks the top three useful semi invasive biomarkers to track as one enters their thirties. Bonus points for any tests that can prove or disprove digestive health. Well, first thing first, let me say this.

When it comes to biomarkers and it comes to tests, there is no one single biomarker that's going to give you the entire big picture. Right? There are certain ones that we really want to pay attention to, but there's nothing out there that's gonna give you a definitive proof that your digestive health is good. Alright? That being said, Viome makes a really, really good kit that will allow you to identify your gut microbiome and to give you solid advice on what type of nutrition you should follow, things like that.

Right now I think they're running a special, and again I'm not affiliated with Viome at all. With Viome at all, I'm not affiliated with them. But, if you want a kit right now, I think they're running a special for like a $140. Right? Usually it's like 300, $400 to do it.

So check it out, try it. If you want to to do it, that's there. Now other tests that you should take a pay attention to. The first one I would say is c reactive protein and c reactive protein is a marker of inflammation. Inflammation is one of those things that we all need to pay attention to.

If your body is inflamed, you're more prone to heart disease, you're more prone to cancer, you're more prone to diabetes, you're more prone to almost every chronic disease out there. More prone to things like low sperm count and testosterone deficiencies because your testicles actually don't like inflammation very much. It kills off the Leydig cells in there that produce testosterone. So I would check your C reactive protein and if it's high, then you need to get your butt on an anti inflammatory diet. The next one, free testosterone.

Free testosterone. Now a lot of times when we do tests, we're taking the total testosterone count. That's great. But if your free testosterone is low, you're not going be getting the benefits of most of the testosterone you're producing. Now what happens essentially is that our test if if we don't have a high free testosterone count then it gets bound up with something called sex hormone binding globulin.

It's a very sticky protein and it, ends up keeping us from being able to, keeping our our our sites our from being able to respond to the hormone. So how do you keep sex hormone binding globulin from rising? Well, if you're not eating enough calories, that could be a big factor. On the other hand a lot of us we produce enough testosterone, but we also produce a lot of aromatase. Aromatase converts testosterone to estrogen And so because it converts testosterone to estrogen, a lot of us who are producing enough testosterone, we're still not getting the benefits of that tea.

So what happens then is we end up in a position where our, we're not getting enough of the active hormone. Okay? So you want to make sure that your free testosterone is high enough. Now I also want to say this, there's a lot of these, testosterone replacement clinics that are out there. A lot of people are trying to get testosterone replacement through Veterans Affairs.

It's a mistake. Right? It's a mistake in a lot of these cases. And and why? Well, unless you're with somebody who knows what they're doing, who understands this complex hormonal cascade, then you're not getting taken care of properly.

Now there are a lot of great organizations and great clinics out there that do know what they're doing. I will say that I think Nick Koumalatsos right now is working with one of them, and he he that organization that he's working with is running a special right now. I think it's, $200 to to get the first consultation. I'm not affiliated with Nick. I like the guy.

I love the guy, but I'm not getting any commissions off of this either. So definitely check out check that out. There's another organization, and I don't know if they're doing this anymore. I used to be affiliated with them loosely, and it's called the Warrior Angels Warrior Angels Foundation. You can go check them out, just Google Warrior Angels Foundation.

They have a list of doctors who specialize in low testosterone for veterans who are affected by TBI. That's because essentially if you've had a TBI, that could completely shut down that hormonal cascade and you're going to need a much more complex treatment than just an injection of testosterone cypionate. Definitely check out those resources. The final biomarker I would really check out is called hemoglobin A1C. Basically that's a three month count of what your blood sugar looks like.

That's something we've got to pay attention to as a community actually. A lot of people don't know this but one in four veterans who've been admitted to the VA system has full blown diabetes. And that's not just veterans over 60 years old, that's veterans in their 20s 30s 40s 50s. Is completely unsat. Completely unsat.

Because diabetes is a situation that could be completely prevented by looking out for looking out at what you're eating, what kind of nutrition you're putting in your body. And if you're eating a bunch of sugar, you're eating a bunch of crap, then that's what's gonna happen. You're gonna your blood sugar is gonna rise. Right? Not good.

So, you wanna make sure that you are taking care of that. Alright. I think that's all my questions that I got through for the day. So, yeah, that's it, guys. That's it.

I'm never good at ending things. Again, guys, I just wanna say thank you. Thank you to all of you who've stuck with me through the years, Whether you've started watching me back when I was heavy on YouTube fitness, or whether you stuck with me through this podcast, through all the weeks and months that I've been producing this show, I know there's people out there. There are so many veterans in this community and so many people out there who are benefiting from it. That's what drives me.

I believe in you. You give me faith. You give me the power to continue every single day. And through all the crap, having autoimmune disease, going through financial issues, going through all the shit that I've been through over the past few years, It's been so helpful and so inspiring to know that you're out there. So if you can do me one favor, I don't care if you buy anything from Warrior Soul ever.

Whether you buy one of our t shirts, whether you you join the Warrior's Obituary Society, though I'd love you to do both. If you can, just spread word about this show. Let people know that we exist. Help me to get this information into the hands of more veterans and more people who can use it. The way you do that is simple.

You either click the share button on these episodes and share them out on your own social media or, you know, and and this is what'll really help, you head over to iTunes and write us a written rating and review. And I know a lot of you don't listen on iTunes, but, you know, just opening up the iTunes app or finding the podcast on on on Apple, on your on the website, and writing a review there is gonna help us so much. The more reviews we get, the more the algorithm favors this podcast and the more findable we are. So if you can, just do your part in that way. You'd never have to spend a dime if you don't want to.

I just really, really want to get this into the hands of more veterans. Alright? With that guys, I wanna thank you so much for listening. For those of you watching on YouTube, thank you for watching, and we'll be back at you next week with some more awesome stuff. Next week, we've got a gentleman named Justin Stenstrom coming on.

And Justin, he runs a podcast called the Elite Man Podcast, and he helps with a lot of lot of style issues, but also a lot of confidence building for men. And there's a lot of us out there who really need that. We also get heavily into how he started his business because I know there's so many of you out there who wanna be entrepreneurs, and, it's gonna be a really great episode. We had Donnie O'Malley on this past week. If you hadn't had a chance, make sure you go listen to that one because especially if you're trying to open up a business, that is a fantastic episode to listen to.

Over the past few weeks, we've had some great time. We had Bas Rutten. We had Vincent Rocco Vargas, US Army Ranger, and a an actor who's currently acting on Mayans MC. We had Nick Koumalatsos on before that. We had Robert Greene, the author of the 48 Laws of Power on couple of months ago.

And in the next few weeks, you're gonna be getting a lot more. You're gonna be getting Grant Cardone, and you are going to be getting Jonathan Levi of the Superhuman podcast. So stay tuned. Go back and listen to more, and get out there and live your best lives while you can. Take care, guys.