Better Health Equals Better Results | Samuel Johnston (Health + Performance Coach)

Today's episode is part of our effort to put a broader perspective on the work and life of trial lawyers: it's not just about the case, the training and the preparation. It's also about your health, your stamina, work/life balance and your mental strength.

Sam Johnston is a fitness coach and former college hockey player, who has become an expert in understanding nutrition, fitness and balance. Sam will be the first to tell you that it is not any one catch-all solution, or latest trend, that will make a difference to your health and stamina. It's finding the right balance, but also doing so in a way that makes sense for your body and performance.

Sam shares detailed information on understanding diet, protein, choosing the right fats (and how much is healthy), the impact of alcohol, what are peptides and how revolutionary they are, and so much more. 

But at the heart of it is recognition of something that we all need, no matter where we are in life: a coach and mentor. Sam has a coach. His coach has a coach. Sharif and Nael both have mentors who have helped guide them personally and professionally. 

When you look after yourself, you have better performance, and better results. And so, you can see why this is so important and relatable to trial lawyers. As in our previous episodes about family balance, team work, avoiding the workaholic syndrome and more, today's focus on health and fitness will help you be better prepared, better focused and better enjoy this work that we are so fortunate to do.

" I believe you need to take health into your own hands. You need to have agency over it." - Sam Johnston

In this episode, we discuss:

◼️ Why nutrition is foundational for success in the court room.
◼️ How getting regular blood work is so crucial to preventing health issues.
◼️ How to combat the pressure to drink alcohol in social situations, especially for trial lawyers.
◼️ What are peptides and how they can offer various health benefits when used correctly.
◼️ Emphasizing quality over quantity in fitness routines.

Chapters

00:00 The Foundation of Health
06:05 Cutting Through the Noise of Nutrition
09:10 The Importance of Mentorship
12:04 Understanding Nutrition Basics
14:58 The Role of Macronutrients and Whole Foods
21:01 The Importance of Blood Work
24:02 Understanding Recovery and Performance
32:02 Proactive Health and Mindset
39:00 The Importance of Accountability
43:55 Understanding Peptides and Their Benefits
56:06 Navigating Peptide Use and Purity

Courtroom Stories & Tactics | RVA Trial Lawyers
Available on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, and at RVATrialLawyers.com 

Based out of Richmond, Virginia, Courtroom Stories & Tactics by RVA Trial Lawyers exists for lawyers who try cases to juries on behalf of people. Through our podcast, we hope to learn from them, support them, connect them, inspire them, and preserve their work for future trial lawyers.

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Thank you!

Sharif Gray and Nael Abouzaki

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:00

Your health is your ultimate asset, right? We get so focused on promotions, career progression, 401ks, stock options, all these things. But at the end of the day, you're gonna have one body for this lifetime. And if you want to perform at your highest level, you need to prioritize your health. It's not optional, it's foundational.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

This is Courtroom Stories and Tactics by RVA Trial Lawyers, hosted by Sharif Gray and Niall Abuzaki.

SPEAKER_03 0:31

All right, before we get into the episode, I want to take a minute and introduce you guys to a friend and colleague, Sally Tierney. Sally works as a professional investigator based in Northern Virginia, but handles cases all over. I've had the privilege of working a case with her not too long ago. Sally, why don't you go ahead and tell us a little bit about what you guys do?

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Thank you, Sharif. So Clear Path Forward is the firm, and we do investigations for attorneys for criminal, personal injury, civil, by doing an extremely thorough investigation on every single case. And we add value for the attorney. Thanks, Sally. And for people who want to reach you, how can they get a hold of you? They can call us at ClearPath Forward 703-350-2073. That's 703-350-2073.

SPEAKER_03 1:25

All right, we're back. And today we've got Sam Johnson joining us. Sam and I met, I guess about six months ago or so now. I remember getting on, I think it was LinkedIn, and I remember seeing one of your posts, Sam, and it was something like, you don't need pre-workout. And at the time I had just like started taking this pre-workout, and it had me going crazy in the morning, which was both fun but also scary. You don't need pre-workout, you need eight hours of sleep, right? Like you don't need these fancy special diets, you just need to do the basics, right? And when I saw that, Sam, I was like, oh my gosh, this guy knows what he's talking about. And at the time, I remember just struggling with this good times when it came to fitness and nutrition, and then I would blow it. I would see a bag of Oreos at home, and then I would just crush them, right? And then just ups and downs, ups and downs. So I reached out, you and I spoke. I could tell instantly that one, you knew what you were talking about, and two, and probably most importantly, that you cared. And so we started working together, and not only have I gotten stronger, fitter, but I'm a bit taller now, too. I think now can uh attest to that. Is that right?

SPEAKER_02 2:36

So, Sam, I I owe it to you. I'm getting all these progress pictures from you know Sharif late at night. I'm like, oh, Sharif, what are we doing here? But Sam, why don't you introduce yourself and tell us a bit about you?

SPEAKER_04 2:48

Amazing. Well, Sharif, now I really appreciate you both having me here. Uh, really excited to dive into the conversation. So, yeah, my name is Sam Johnson. I'm a health and performance coach. Been in this space for the past five years. And right now, we're working with a lot of guys, such as both of yourselves, high-performing individuals, you know, lots of things going well for you, crushing your careers, great relationships, families. But oftentimes, as we all know, in the pursuit of career development in with the responsibilities of family, social commitments, too often our health and our fitness gets put on the back burner. And unfortunately, that can have a lot of short-term consequences, but also real harmful long-term consequences. So, my goal here with what we do within my community awful body system is to help high-performing men be the complete package and have the systems necessary to maintain their health and their fitness, be sharp mentally, be in optimal shape physically while still being able to show up as the men they need to be in all areas of life.

SPEAKER_03 3:46

And what's crazy is like your approach, Sam, is somewhat counterintuitive. I I mean, we'll get to your history, like playing hockey in college and all that stuff. But like a lot of times, athletes, we grow up and we have this sense of like, well, we just have to grind harder. We just have to go to the gym every day. We just have to spend not one hour, but two hours, right? Or starve ourselves. And it's counterintuitive because it doesn't work. And the advice that that I've learned from you is actually less is more. It's quality over quantity. But, anyways, before we kind of dive down that rabbit hole, let me take you back to you're a uh hockey player in college, you're doing what a lot of guys do, right? Like I'm sure grinding, trying to uh make sure you're ready to play hockey and in good shape. Tell us about what life was like then and how you kind of progressed down this fitness journey.

SPEAKER_04 4:37

Yeah, so uh I grew up playing hockey, and you know, throughout this conversation, my Canadian accent might slip out. I'll try to keep it, you know, hidden, but sometimes, you know, it pops out. I grew up on the west coast of Canada playing hockey there and about to live out my childhood dream of playing college hockey at a school in Michigan called Adrian College and played for four years there. And any college athlete can attest to the fact that when you're a college athlete, when you're in your teens and twenties and you're playing high-level athletics, fitness is just uh a part of life. You don't have to think about it, right? You've got your practices, you've got your games, you've got your matches, you've got the programming and accountability of coaches and your teammates, and not to take away from the effort that goes into it, but it's not something you have to go and make time for. It just happens automatically, right? And I think that, at least for me, I took that as a given. That was just how life worked. So during that time, I was very focused on my own training, nutrition, lifestyle from a physical and athletic performance standpoint. And then from there, I ended up working at a Fortune 500 company. And that's what brought me to from I was playing hockey in Michigan, ended up moving to Toronto. I was there for four years working for a Fortune 500 tech company. And, you know, things were going very well, but I ran into an issue that a lot of guys run into. And it's when you don't have that game plan, when you don't have that structure, when you don't have that accountability, your health and fitness really falls by the wayside. And you might not notice some really negative effects in the first few weeks or few months of doing that. But after time adds up, that can take a toll on your physical well-being, your mental performance, and just your own ability to really execute at the level that you need to be at to be effective in your career.

SPEAKER_03 6:22

It's interesting. There's also a lot of, I think, misinformation may be the wrong word, but it is hard to find the right guidance. And I'm sure now and I can both attest to this. Like, you get online, you can find a million different things. You should have this much protein. In fact, or no, you should fast. You should only sleep this many hours, right? Like, it's hard to find good advice. How did you kind of cut through the noise and ultimately figure out like what's worked? And I mean, let me preface it with this like one of the reasons why I have been so happy about working with you, and I've mentioned your name to so many others, and is that it works. Like what you've taught me and held me accountable to do has actually made a difference in my life compared to so many other programs that I've tried over the who knows, the last 10, 15, 20 years that I just, I mean, you do it and then you kind of you peter out.

SPEAKER_04 7:17

Yeah, and I went through that same problem, right? Let's just look at nutrition, for example, because I think that is often the world that people get lost in first. You've got so many conflicting opinions. You've got people telling you that calories are the only thing that matter, and you can eat Pop Tarts, Twinkies, and protein shakes all day long, and as so long as you're in a calorie deficit, you're gonna get the results you're looking for. Then you have the other camp that tells you actually calories don't matter at all, and you're you're silly for thinking calories matter, and the only thing you need to focus on is food quality. You know, get your grass-fed beef and your organic food and cut out all refined sugar, all seed oils. And then you've got people telling you that, no, no, no, no, carbs are the problem. You gotta cut out carbs, you gotta go keto. And then you've got your uncle that swears by intermittent fasting, telling you that that was the one thing he did to get the results you're looking for. And then to top it off, you go on Instagram and you see someone like Paul Saladino or Liver King telling you you gotta eat raw bull testicles and raw beef liver every day in order to be at the picture of perfect health, right? And unfortunately, the net result of that too often is people just feeling confused and overwhelmed and having this analysis paralysis that actually prevents them from actually taking the action required to be successful. So for me, it was a number of things. It was actually diving into the science behind what truly does move the needle from a health and fitness standpoint, and more importantly, understanding the hierarchy of importance, right? Because anyone telling you it's just this one thing or just this one thing, they're lying to you. It's multifactorial. But to approach your health and your fitness from an evidence-based perspective, you need to understand what's gonna make the 50% of the difference, then what's gonna make the 30% of the difference, then what's gonna, you know, make the five, 10% of the difference, and then finally you get up to those things that are gonna make a 2% to 3% difference. And I how I like to think of it with nutrition is we have a pyramid, right? And at the base of the pyramid, that's gonna be the most foundational aspect. And then from there we have, you know, other important pieces of the pyramid, but as we go further up that pyramid, they become progressively less important than the pillar underneath it. So that's how I approach really everything from a training perspective, a nutrition perspective, a supplementation perspective. And then I'm sure at some point here we're gonna dive into peptides, which can be super useful too. But again, these things like the supplementation, the peptides, they're amazing, but they need to be built on top of a foundation of proper nutrition, proper lifestyle, and proper exercise. And to simplify all that, we need to put first things first here, right? And until we do that, it's so easy to get lost in the weeds on things that might matter to some degree, but they're not gonna matter if you don't have the pillars underneath them dialed in.

SPEAKER_03 9:56

And how did you ultimately like come to that conclusion, right? Because I think now, and I'm sure we've both been there, right? Like it's like we see this trend or we're gonna try that, right? Like, at what point do you like figure out, like, okay, this is the stuff that really works, and this is who I need to be learning from?

SPEAKER_04 10:12

For sure. I mean, at the end of the day, it was a trial and error for me. I mean, I I did all the same things that most guys do. I uh thought I had to be in the gym six days a week until I got burnt out and completely stopped going to the gym. Uh, I thought I had to cut out carbs, which helped me lose weight initially and stay lean, but then I felt depleted and grumpy, and that wasn't sustainable. That process of hyper restriction and then swinging the opposite direction into just forgetting about it all and being like, oh, this isn't the time, I'm just gonna not think about it. That pendulum swinging from restriction to complete, almost surrender, that was something that I went through too. So the biggest thing for me was I found mentors in the space. I made investments in my own training and nutrition, and then went on to learn from the best in the space so that I actually understood how to formulate proper programming, proper planning on everything from the nutrition, the supplementation, the workouts. So I guess at a high level, like how did I find the right mentors? The biggest thing for me was looking for people who one had the results I was looking for, right? Two, were getting other people like me the results that I wanted. And three, seemed to know what they were talking about. You know, I would listen to their podcasts, go through their YouTube, actually understand absorb their content to really get a feel for does this person have a good grip on the principles that they're speaking on? And that was kind of my criteria for finding the right mentors, and that worked extremely well for me from a fitness standpoint, but then also from a business standpoint, too. I think mentorship in in business is just as important as it is in fitness and health. And that's been a huge part of my own success and growth and development. And a lesson I wish I had learned sooner, because I think that would have cut down my learning time probably by 50% if I had just found the right people and made the investments sooner.

SPEAKER_02 12:04

So, Sam, we all go through the trial and error, right? Where we experiment on our own and we often tell ourselves, you know what, we can do it. I can do it. I don't need a coach, I don't need the supplements, I'm fine, I watch my calories, I'm taking in my protein. Um but we never get to where we want to be. For you, you did the trial and error, just like everyone else did, and then you decided to bring the science in. And let's kind of focus a bit on the science. You talk about the hierarchy and the pillars. Yeah. When you think in nutrition, what is Sam thinking to lose weight, build muscle when we're talking about nutrition?

SPEAKER_04 12:38

Love it. Let's run through it all. Okay, so at the base of the pyramid, the foundational layer to nutrition is gonna be your calorie balance, aka calories in versus calories out, right? If your goal is to lose weight, it is impossible to do that if we're not maintaining a calorie deficit. Now, this doesn't mean, you know, sometimes I get people saying, Oh, I tried the calorie deficit and it didn't work for me. No, you weren't in a calorie deficit. That's like the fact that you need a calorie deficit to lose weight is as true as if I drop, you know, my phone here, gravity is gonna pull it down to the ground. That is just, it's an indisputable law of the reality we live in. So that's gonna be the primary thing. Now that doesn't mean you need to be in some kind of crazy calorie deficit. Typically anywhere from 10 to 20% is gonna get the job done. The goal is not to be starving, ravenous, and grumpy. It's to do it strategically so that you're forcing your body to tap into stored energy, aka body fat. Okay? You can use a number of calorie calculators to figure this out. Or if you just want to do some back of the napkin math, multiplying your body weight by 10 to 12 roughly is gonna get you close to that target that we're looking for. Now, that formula does break if we're dealing with someone who's 300 pounds. They don't need to be eating 3,000 calories, but for most people, we need to lose, you know, 30 pounds or less. That multiplying your body weight by 10 to 12 is gonna be a very effective way to give yourself a rough starting target for what that ideal calorie target is gonna be. Okay. Oh, any questions on that?

SPEAKER_02 14:03

So, yes. Um, how do you recommend? I won't know if I want to put an app out there, but do you recommend a calorie calculator? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 14:12

Yeah, I so I can give a couple of handoffs resources that I'd use. TDEE calculator.net. Again, that's T DEE, that stands for Total Daily Energy Expenditure. So TDEEcalculator.net is a great free tool that you can use. You go there, you put in your age, your height, your gender, your activity levels, and it'll fit out a target for what your daily maintenance calories are going to be. And then from there, you would take 10 to 20% off that number to get your initial starting target. And then from a tracking perspective, I'm a huge any tool can work if you're using something like MyFitnessPal, that can work. Uh Sharif will know very well within our community. We use a tool called Tronometer. And the reason why we like that is it tends to be very good on the micronutrient tracking standpoint, too. So those two tools together work very well from a tracking perspective.

SPEAKER_02 14:58

Right. So we got the calorie deficit. Now let's talk about the nutrition. What are we taking in our body?

SPEAKER_04 15:03

Perfect. So then the next pillar is we look at your macronutrient distribution, right? A quick way to think about this is your calories are going to affect how much you weigh, whereas your macronutrients are going to affect how you look. So the main three macronutrients that everyone's familiar with are protein, carbohydrates, and fat. There's actually a fourth macronutrient, that's alpha. Okay? It's kind of a weird one. So how this works is you get four calories per gram. Every gram of protein, you get four calories. Every gram of carbohydrate, you also get four calories. Every gram of fat is nine calories per gram. So that's where we need to be really careful because a lot of guys will say, hey, look, I'm eating healthy. I can't figure out why I'm not losing weight. And then I look at their nutrition. They're having four or five full eggs for breakfast. They're having, you know, a salad for lunch that's covered in cheese and olive oil and nuts. And then for dinner, they have a ribeye, right? And they're looking at this and they're going, I'm eating whole foods, everything's organic, everything's grass-fed. But brother, you're getting 70% of your daily total calories from fat because you're getting nine calories per gram with every gram of fat that you're getting. So again, I'm not saying fat is bad. Fat is essential for your health. It manages, right? It affects your hormone levels, it affects your energy, it affects the raw material your body has to repair the cellular membranes within your body. But again, if we're getting too many calories, it doesn't matter how high the quality is, you're not going to be moving in the right direction from a body composition or a health standpoint. So that's where we need to be careful there. Oh, and and don't let me forget the two tablespoons of olive oil you're using to cook your food, right? Where's that oil going? It's going in your food that you're eating. So again, being measured and being calculated on that front. And then alcohol is a bit of a funny one. So you're getting seven calories per gram of alcohol, but then on top of that, you're going to be getting the four calories per gram with any kind of carbohydrate that comes with that, whether that's a beer or a wine, or any kind of sugary drink you're having without alcohol. And the tricky thing about alcohol, and let me be clear, you do not need to give up alcohol to be healthy to get the results you're looking for. I personally haven't had any alcohol in seven years. That was just a decision I made. I figured I was better without it. So I don't drink, but you can have a drink here or there and still be in good standing with your fitness, your health, and your physique. But here's the more nefarious part of alcohol. It's not just calories we're getting. Here's an analogy I like to use to describe this. So we've all been on the highway. We're trying to get home at five o'clock, bumper to bumper, rush hour traffic, and then an ambulance comes up behind us with its lights and sirens on, and all the other cars have to move over to make way for that ambulance to come through. Something similar happens when we drink alcohol. Because alcohol is a toxic foreign substance, meaning when you ingest alcohol, your body goes, if I do not get this out of my body, it will kill me. It deprioritizes other metabolic processes such as fat burning and muscle building to prioritize the process of detoxification. So I very often I'll get a client that comes on board and they go, Yeah, I don't drink very much. I just have, you know, one to two drinks per night. It's like, okay, that may not seem like a lot to you, but basically what that means is you're spending the entire week in that quote unquote detox mode that's gonna make it much harder for you to lose fat and build muscle. So if we just focus on the frequency of how often we're drinking, and to highlight this point, I'll I'll exaggerate a bit, but I would way rather you have one night per month that you have 10 drinks rather than 10 nights per month where you have one drink. Even though total alcohol consumption is the same, because we're condensing the window, and look, I'm not recommending anyone goes and has 10 drinks after they listen to this episode, you know, disclaimer. But if we're condensing the window with which you're consuming alcohol, you're gonna be putting your body into that quote unquote detox mode less often, and that's gonna have a huge impact on your overall health and your ability to get the physical results you're looking for. So we'll push alcohol off to the side for now, and we're looking at protein carbs and bats. So typically a very quick and easy way to do this is we want to take your goal body weight and we're gonna eat one gram of protein per pound of goal body weight. All right. So if you're 230 pounds and your goal is to get to 200 pounds, 200 grams of protein per day is gonna be a very reasonable target for you to have on a day-to-day basis. All right. Then from there, we roughly want to have about 30% of your total calories coming from fat. So what you would do in that scenario is let's say, you know, through the calorie calculation that you did in step one, your total daily calories that you were consuming was 2,000 calories per day. You would take 30% of 2,000 and then divide that by nine to get your total gram per day target for fat. And then we're gonna take the remaining calories left over after we've taken out how many calories are coming in from the protein and how many calories are coming in from the fat, and we're gonna dedicate that to your carbohydrate intake. Now, that's obviously a very quick and easy way to do it, and it's a very general application. But for you know, 80% of people, 90% of people, if they just do that alone, that's gonna be a very reasonable approach to creating a macronutrient and calorie target that's gonna move them in the right direction from a body composition and health standpoint.

SPEAKER_03 20:07

Yeah. I mean, the whole notion of like, what is it, like it's 80% nutrition. I mean, you can't outrun your diet, right? You just can't. No, you can't. And I I it's funny, I'm hearing you talk, I can remember all these times, at least in my life, where I'm like, what do you mean? I had an avocado, and avocado is great, right? Yeah. Like, well, and I remember this CrossFit coach was like, but you had two large avocados. That's like a shit ton of calories. And so and then I remember this other time, I remember I was when I was clerking, I was I thought I was so healthy because I would get like a big bag of nuts and I would eat this whole bag of nuts.

SPEAKER_04 20:40

Oh, don't get me started on the nuts. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_03 20:43

Because they they're so evil and deceiving, right? Because it's like, you're like, oh, they're healthy, they've got these omega, all this stuff. But then if you actually like take some time and look at the nutrition label and realize that you just had 20 servings of 150, it's just it's insanity.

SPEAKER_04 21:00

So yeah, it's a sad day for a lot of guys when they finally measure out what a tablespoon of peanut butter looks like. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_03 21:08

Who came up with the whole peanut butter and protein thing? That is not a fat. It is not a protein.

SPEAKER_04 21:16

You know, peanut butter, I hear uh quinoa, beans, lentils, like all these things, people are like, this is a great source of protein. I'm like, no, it's either a great source of fat or a great source of carbohydrate, right? So more people need to know that that peanut butter, nuts in general are not going to be a good source of protein. They're gonna be a great source of fat, and more than likely, if you're not careful, are gonna completely throw you over your calorie target.

SPEAKER_03 21:40

Yeah. Well, it did for me, even though they taste really good. So we've got we've talked about on the nutrition side calories, macronutrients, micronutrients. Micronutrients, I think I know the answer to this, but my question is do they matter? And I remember you and I chatting at one point, like talking about the difference between whole foods and, for example, Uh lots of whey protein powder and manufactured stuff. How do micronutrients play into this?

SPEAKER_04 22:06

Yeah, massively. So if we go back to that original thing I was saying where the calories dictate how much you weigh, the macronutrients dictate how you look, the micronutrients are going to dictate how you feel, right? So from a cognition standpoint, from an energy standpoint, from a recovery standpoint, micronutrients are essential. So how do we load up our plate with micronutrients? Well, the biggest thing here is going to be focusing on whole foods. Foods that are single ingredient. And look, I'm not saying there's never a time to grab a protein bar or whip up a shake or do something that do something in the name of convenience. There's always going to be a time and a place for that. But we want 80 to 90% of our day-to-day nutrition coming from whole nutrient-dense foods. Not only sharif is it's going to have a huge effect on the micronutrient profile of the foods you're eating. But there's also a really cool thing that happens with whole foods, primarily protein, called the thermic effect of feeding or TEF. This is a big fancy scientific word that I feel smart saying that basically describes the amount of calories your body burns digesting a particular type of food. And if we just compare something like almonds to almond butter, well, your body has to spend more energy breaking down those almonds than it does the almond butter. And if your body has to spend more energy breaking down those almonds, that means there's less overall energy left over for your body to do something with. And if our goal is to maintain a calorie deficit, that's a very good thing. Same thing with protein, right? So protein in general, the thermic effect of feeding is about 25%. What that means is if you have a hundred calories worth of chicken breast, once your body digests that, you have approximately 75 calories left over to actually use. So not only is protein the most satiating macronutrient, meaning you're able to maintain that calorie deficit and you're not hungry all the time, but also it's giving you that 25% calorie discount on the foods you're eating, making it easier for you to maintain the calorie deficit required to lose weight. So that's just on the thermic effective feeding point, right? Then we talk about macronutrients. So when we look at things like red meat, uh eggs, chicken, turkey, fish, these are just packed with micronutrients. These are so important for your long-term health. And then of course you're gonna be getting some from your fruits and your vegetables. So by eating a whole foods diet, by eating a whole foods diet that is protein-centric. And when I say protein-centric, I mean when you sit down to have a meal, the mindset is not, oh, I'm gonna just eat something that I like until I'm not hungry anymore. The mindset is I'm sitting down for a meal. My goal is I'm gonna make progress on my protein target for the day. Right? So for guys that come into the program, let's say, you know, Nial, it's day one, you just started with the Alpha Body System, right? And we're kind of mapping out day-to-day what your nutrition is gonna look like. We're gonna look at your protein target, and let's say it's 200 grams of protein per day. I'm gonna ask you, I'm gonna say, now, for your schedule, do you see yourself doing better with three meals per day, four meals per day, maybe three meals in a snack? You tell me what works best for you. Then from there, let's say, for example, you say four meals per day. All right, well, then I'm gonna say, great, let's divide that total protein target, 200 grams of protein, by four, that gets us 50. Now we know that approximately 50 grams of protein is gonna be the target when you sit down to have a meal. Now, that doesn't mean if you don't hit that 50 gram of protein target per meal perfectly, that things aren't working. You could do something like, you know, 30 grams of protein for breakfast, you're gonna have 70 grams of protein for meal two, you're gonna have 50 grams of protein for meal three, and 50 grams of protein for meal four. That works, right? We can have variability between what that actual protein consumption is per day. But what I do not want to have happen, and this is very common if people aren't paying attention to it, is you know, they've got 30 minutes to grab a meal, they order something off DoorDash, they're not paying any attention to what they're eating, and at best, they're gonna get 15 grams of protein, maybe 20, maybe 25, but that's at the higher end. You're not, no one accidentally stumbles their way into having 55 grams of protein in a meal, right? That is something that happens through understanding what you're eating and making intentional choices. And an even more common scenario is we get guys that that do pseudo-intermittent fasting. And when I say pseudo-intermittent fasting, I mean they wake up, they have three cups of coffee, they get to work and they don't eat till one o'clock. I'm sure that sounds familiar to everyone on this call. It's the millennial term for skipping breakfast, intermittent fasting. They wake up, they don't have any breakfast, and their first meal is going to be at noon or one o'clock. And again, if they're not paying attention to it and they're just grabbing whatever's convenient, they might have 20 or 25 grams of protein. They get back to work, you know, they're doing what they need to do, and their next meal, they don't have anything till call it six o'clock or seven o'clock. And if they're not paying attention to it, again, they'd probably have another 20 to 25 grams of protein. Let's say hypothetically they then log that all into chronometer or my fitness pal, and now it's 7.30 at night, they've had 50 grams of protein, and they're going, man, how the heck am I gonna have 150 grams of protein in the next three hours before I go to bed for me to hit my protein target for today? Right? Obviously, that's not a winning strategy. So that's why spreading that protein distribution out throughout the day is a very effective strategy for making sure that you're not hungry all the time. But two, making sure you're actually making progress on your protein target, and three, making sure you're actually getting a strong micronutrient profile in terms of what your daily nutrition looks like.

SPEAKER_03 27:33

Make I've had uh realized that for me I have to be very intentional about getting a lot of protein in the mornings because if I don't, then I fall behind. And how do you feel?

SPEAKER_04 27:43

Now, let me ask you this. Sure. Now that you've been consistent with that, what's the difference in your energy level and your mood when you do have that nutrient-dense, high protein breakfast earlier in the day rather than skipping breakfast and just grabbing whatever's convenient for you?

SPEAKER_03 27:57

Oh, yeah. I mean, uh, it's it's night and day. So, like, I mean, it's it's great. I feel better, I sleep better, I mean, health, fitness, I mean, I gotta check in tomorrow with another DEXA scan. So for me, I've never had as much progress in my life.

SPEAKER_02 28:10

I've noticed a difference right here.

SPEAKER_03 28:11

So I was doing all the symbolistics. He's sending you his progress photos every week, right? I don't think I actually have, but now that it's now I think what Mal suggesting is that he'd like to see my photos. So without a doubt.

SPEAKER_02 28:25

Without a doubt.

SPEAKER_03 28:26

I may have uh I may have to have a photo shoot.

SPEAKER_04 28:28

I guess that's a group chat coming after this uh I think so too.

SPEAKER_03 28:33

Well, Sam, so another thing that I didn't mention when I introduced you was one of the things that I liked about what you focus on is you don't just focus on one thing, right? You say, let's get your blood work dialed in. Let's see what it is, let's see what you need, right? Let's look at your nutrition, which we just talked about. Let's talk about how do we optimize recovery. And I remember the example you used to me was if you squat 300 pounds, well, you can't do it again in five minutes, right? Like presumably that's like your upper end, right? You need to recover in order to get stronger. And then the last component is the strength fitness component. Can we talk just briefly talk about all four? And and specifically, I'd love to get into the blood work. Like, why is that important? Why do people need to look into that? One thing that's been eye-opening for me going through the blood work stuff that you suggested that I do is just how much more comprehensive it is compared to what you typically see at like a your primary care provider, to the point where it's like, yikes, I don't know why we as a society can just be okay relying on showing up to your primary care once a year.

SPEAKER_04 29:42

Yeah, I'm so glad you mentioned that. I actually made a post on Instagram today talking about this exact thing. And I think the unfortunate part about this is we don't really have a healthcare system in today's society. We have a sick care system, meaning very few people look at these things until there is a problem, right? Often people just kind of float through life without any awareness of what essential biomarkers like APOB, lipoprotein A, free and total testosterone are ALT and AST. These are essential biomarkers that will give us a warning sign if things are moving in the wrong direction before a big problem arises. And to me, that's healthcare. Healthcare is understanding that we can get ahead of these problems before they arise by doing twice annual blood work at the very minimum, and not just doing a shallow review that you would likely get from a GP or PCP, where maybe they're looking at 15, maybe 20 biomarkers. We're doing a full metabolic assessment where we look at 84 different biomarkers, everything from your sex hormones, like your total testosterone, free testosterone, estradiol, cortisol, SHBG, sex hormone binding globulin. We want to look at your inflammation markers like high sensitivity C reactive protein, HSCRP, your liver enzymes like ALT, ASC. So again, we live in the time where we have the technology to be able to get ahead of problems by doing our blood work regularly, understanding what's in range, what's out of range, and then making the behavior changes to correct things before we get too far off course. And I think, you know, for you, Shriek, that was an eye-opening process because a lot of people go through life and they're like, oh, my doctor's, you know, he's got my back or she's got my back. They would tell me if there was something that wasn't right. But unfortunately, oftentimes today, doctors aren't doing that. And to me, that's not healthcare, that's sick care. If you're just waiting until there's a problem before you take a close look at these things, that's like, you know, what's a what's a good analogy? It's like waiting until you run out of gas before you look for a gas station, right? Like the reason why we have the cast meter on our dashboard is to let us know when things are not in a good place and that we need to pull over and make some changes. So yeah, that's that's absolutely essential.

SPEAKER_03 32:02

Yeah, I've seen on a handful of times. I mean, knowing what my Instagram feed is probably concerning now that I've dived into the whole fitness stuff, but I've seen the whole post of like the heart attack at 60 started at 30. And things related to that, and I mean, you're right, it's true. Like, if we can be proactive, we can actually know like what's going on and what can we do to avoid hitting that that wall at a certain point.

SPEAKER_02 32:29

You know, uh, Sam, I'm gonna touch on the mindset because we can put everything you talked about the game plan, the structure, accountability. If you don't have the mindset, you can provide all the services in the world. Yeah, and they will not succeed. And we, you know, a lot of our listeners work very hard. And part of their play hard is not fitness, even though for some it is, it's usually the happy hours that you touched on the alcohol and the way the body processes alcohol. It's, you know, just going out to dinners, every every event we go to, everyone looks forward to the happy hour. Every bar meeting we go to, alcohol is the first thing that people walk up to before, you know, before they even say hi to others, they're like, hey, where's the bar? How do we get attorneys that are so stressed in the mindset of saying, you know what? If I want to look good, you talked about, you said feel good, look good, play good. And here, if you want to be a great trial attorney, you have to focus on your health. How do we get that mindset from just right there? Put that lens on from the start.

SPEAKER_04 33:38

Yeah. Well, alcohol's a funny one, right? Because it's the only drug that's out there that people, when you tell people you're not doing it, they ask you what's wrong. It's just the it's it's become so socially ingrained with the happy hours, the business meetings. And I know for a lot of guys, their biggest concern, I'll have clients tell me this. They say, hey, I don't want to drink, but I'm afraid that my clients are gonna think I'm weird if we meet up and I say, Oh, I'm not drinking tonight. As far as that goes, I'll I'll give you a personal story. So, seven years ago, I wanted to run an experiment, and I never had a drinking problem. You know, as you can imagine, growing up as a hockey player, that's pretty ingrained in the culture too. But it got to the point for me where I really wanted to take my health seriously. And I noticed that when I was making great progress throughout the week, oftentimes it would be two steps forward and one step back on the weekends. And with all the time and money I was investing in my health, it just didn't feel congruent to me. I was like, I'm pressing the gas, but also hitting the brake pedal at the same time. So I got to the point where I said, I'm not giving up alcohol forever. All I want to do is a two-month experiment to see what life's like with no alcohol. And when I thought about that, it actually scared me a little bit. I was like, oh man, I don't know if I'm gonna be able to do this. I don't know if I'm gonna be able to actually give up alcohol for two months. And to me, that was a sign where I was like, you know, if I am this unsure of my ability to go for two months with no alcohol, that's a sign for me that I need to try this and see if I can do it. So I decided to go two months, no alcohol. And the the mindset at that time was this is just a short-term experiment. I'm not saying I'm giving up alcohol forever. I'm just gonna see how this goes. So at that time, if I ever met up with someone, you know, a social hour, happy hour, and people asked me why I wasn't drinking, I would just say, Oh, I'm doing a two-month experiment to see how it goes. And that was a much easier way to frame it than, you know, I'm not drinking alcohol anymore. Ended up going through the full two months. And at the end of the two months, my sleep was better than it had ever been before. My performance in the gym was better than it had ever been before. I looked better than I had ever looked. Literally every aspect of my life was better. And at that point, I was like, why would I go back? I only saw cost and no benefit at that point. So I I guess you could say I'm still running the experiment seven years later, and I'm not at a point where I'm saying I will never have a drink ever again in my life. Maybe next week I changed my mind, but it'll never be a regular part of the fabric of my reality. It'll never be a part of my weekly or monthly experience. You know, maybe a wedding here or a trip to Italy there, sure, that's fine. But that was my mindset, and then that allowed me to build the momentum and really feel the difference between how I felt when I just cut it out versus having it in here and there. But I think from a mindset standpoint for high performers who are working a very high stress job, and oftentimes recovery doesn't get made a priority, I think at the end of the day, understanding that recovery is to Sharice's point, you brought this up a minute ago, recovery is where you make the progress. And the way that I describe this to my clients is you know, and I'll ask you now, what do you think would happen if let me back up one sec. So people think going to the gym makes them stronger, right? There's this idea, I need to go grind and push myself in the gym because that's gonna be the thing that allows me to make progress, right? Okay. So let's say hypothetically you went and hit a PR on deadlift this afternoon, and then you tried to do that same PR on deadlift three hours later. How do you think that would go for you? Not good. Probably not very well, right? And the reason for that is training is a stress, and the stress isn't what makes you stronger or better, it's the recovery from that stress. That's where the adaptation occurs. So that's where we need to give ourselves time. And and the same thing happens with psychological stress. It's the recovery from that that creates the adaptation that allows us to come back stronger and faster and better for the next time. So at the end of the day, that was the mindset that really helped me detach the detach from this idea that I thought I had to have alcohol as a regular part of my daily experience or weekly experience. And the understanding that recovery is king, and recovery is the thing that's gonna allow you to make the progress you're looking for when it comes to learning your physical performance, your health. Recovery is the name of the game. And that's why, Sharif, we have such an emphasis on sleep optimization, your sleep routine, even your light environment in the evening. That's something that we focus on massively, which I know you've seen improvements from. So recovery is often- I got my glasses on. I don't.

SPEAKER_01 38:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 38:30

There we go. There we go. Recovery is often the forgotten stepchild of fitness. Everyone wants to talk about you know, how hard they need to push in the gym, what supplements to take, what they want to do with their nutrition. But oftentimes sleep, recovery, rest is completely neglected. And oftentimes that's the missing piece. It's not how much can we do physically, it's what's the minimum amount we can do from an input standpoint, and how can we maximize the output. And oftentimes the missing piece there is recovery.

SPEAKER_03 38:59

You know, I bet there's also a level, and coming back to the mindset piece of there needs to be some level of accountability, right? Because I'm thinking, and I mean, I'm I was I'm one of them, right? I've experienced as a busy lawyer like the ups and downs and the eating out and the happy hours and all that stuff. And frankly, I've learned that if I don't have somebody holding me accountable, then I'm I'm probably gonna fall by the wayside. And so I know one thing with your program is that accountability is a big deal, right? You're asking people to post, you're asking people to do weigh-ins, to do all types of stuff. If you're talking to that trial lawyer who has been going through the ups and downs, they want to get in better shape, they don't necessarily know what to do. I mean, what are you telling them? I mean, of course, it what I would say is, well, join the alpha body system, right? But short of that, like, how do you say get them to say, you know what, embrace this mindset, go find an expert and find a way to be held accountable? What are you telling that person?

SPEAKER_04 39:56

At the end of the day, every dollar you spend is a vote for the person that you want to be. And disclaimer, I have a coach, right? And guess what? My coach has a coach. And at the end of the day, no matter how well I think I know all these things that I coach my clients on, I know my brain is going to further prioritize this if I have to report to someone else and we have that relationship. And I have someone looking at the variables for me from an unbiased perspective and helping me manage them. So every high performer has a coach, right? All the highest performing CEOs in corporate America, they have coaches. And there's a reason for that, is it doesn't matter how hard, you know, Olympians, guess what? These are some of the best athletes in the world, and they've got coaches. And there's a very good reason for that. It's because having someone that doesn't get affected by your own mental dialogue and they can just look at the variables objectively and help you cut through the noise and make decisions is always going to outperform you trying to figure this out on your own. You know, I put my money where my mouth is there. Like I said, I invest monthly in a coach, my coach has a coach. So it's really essential. And whenever I'm looking to make improvements in anything, whether that's health and fitness, whether that's business, relationships, I always look for a mentor. I say, who has the results I'm looking for? How have they helped other people in my position get these results? And I make the investment to help cut down the learning time for this. And you know, that applies to everything.

SPEAKER_03 41:22

I mean, it absolutely everything. And I learned a long time ago that, well, I probably didn't follow that advice a long time ago, but only recently have I truly embraced it. I mean, our f our law firm, for example, we have a we're a part of a business coaching program, and it we have skyrocketed once we join that group and have implemented what they've shared with us. I mean, as a trial lawyer, right? Like, I mean, we I have people I look up to and I go and I get coaching from trainings and events at home. I mean, I've been in counseling for over a decade, which has been super helpful. I mean, it's a life coach, right? Like, what's it's funny, like companies spend thousands, if not millions, of dollars on consultants, right? Yet sometimes we as individuals think, well, we should just figure out life on our own, right? Like we just have to kind of we should just know, right? It doesn't make sense. So I'm a big believer and I agree with everything you're saying. It's find somebody who you can learn from and hold you accountable, and that will get you to the next level.

SPEAKER_04 42:23

Yeah, I almost think it's a bit of a pride thing for some guys. It's like they feel like, oh, I can figure this out on my own, and maybe you can, but it's gonna take you a hell of a lot longer than it would be to work with someone who can just give you the clear path. It's almost like, you know, could you drive from Los Angeles to New York without using Google Maps? Probably. Yeah. Would you make some wrong turns? Would it take you a lot longer? Would there be some unexpected issues along the way? Almost certainly. But wouldn't it be better just to have a clear go on your iPhone, plug in the exact destination you're trying to go for to get to, and have a clear A to B path on how to get there? I think that's where the value of coaching comes in. And it really helps you cut through the noise and just have that direct, most efficient path to the results you want.

SPEAKER_03 43:09

You know, now I I think Sam was a traveler at one point.

SPEAKER_02 43:14

You know what's funny? You and I thought the same thing. I was like, Sam, your analogies are so powerful, and they tell a story, and I'm looking, and Sharif is commenting on that right now. So I'm that's why I was getting ready to say something. You do a good job hitting the point home, and I'll tell you, you've you've done it over and over again. And the ambulance on the highway when it comes to alcohol, and now I'm like, every time I drink alcohol, I'm like, oh, I don't know if I want to drink anymore. So no, you were a traveler in his past life, wasn't he, Sheree? I think so.

SPEAKER_03 43:45

I think so. I think you could maybe uh might have to uh find a way to incorporate that into your practice as well. But there's no way we're finishing this episode without talking about peptides.

SPEAKER_04 43:55

Let's go. Let's do it.

SPEAKER_02 43:57

So, what are peptides, Sam? Tell us.

SPEAKER_04 44:00

Let's talk about peptides. So, peptides are incredible. They're chains of amino acids. So, what are amino acids? Everyone's heard of amino acids. They're the building blocks of proteins. And peptides are chains of amino acids that give your body specific instructions. You can think of them. Here's another analogy that you'll love here, Nial. Okay, they're like they're like cellular text messages that give your body very specific instructions on what to do. And they just have a whole host of benefits. There are peptides that are very good for weight loss. There are peptides that are very good for improving sleep. There are peptides that are good for boosting your recovery from your workouts or improving the quality of your skin, even. There are peptides that can even help you get tanned before you go for a year vacation. So there are so many different peptides. And Sharif, I know we've been working very closely together on peptide protocols, and I think you personally have seen a just a huge benefit. And I know there's a bit of hesitation on your end, right? First few weeks, you're like, oh, I'm not so sure about these peptide things. And then finally we were like, all right, let's try them out. And I think pretty safe to say they've been a complete game changer for.

SPEAKER_03 45:04

Without the question. And for me, I mean, the thing that I think I struggled with most, and I'm starting to realize I think it's fairly common with people who are wrestlers in the past, is like, I can eat anything. Like, I mean, you put it in front of me, it's gone. I can I can finish it. There, there, I don't have there's no stopping, right? And taking the GLPs has really like the food noise, which I know sounds kind of weird, but like it's a thing. Like it's now I'm like, wait, is this what normal people feel like? They like eat a meal and then they're full. And so for me, it's helped immensely. And once I started seeing those results and feeling that like I I mean, it was the floodgate. It was like, just give me more peptides. Like, what else can I be using, right? And I know Nile's been watching from the side. Well, actually, Nile pulled a fast one on us. He had shoulder surgery, what was it, last year? And it was last year. He was back like doing push-ups and like stuff in the gym in like six weeks, if not, if not even sooner than that. And I was like, How did you do that? And he didn't tell me. And then when I told him about like the peptides I was taking, and then I told us, I was like, Well, there's a thing called BPC 157. Oh, he's like, Oh, I know that. I used to, when I had the surgery, I injected in my shoulder. I'm like, well, now it makes sense because I've had shoulder surgery and I was out forever. This guy was back in the gym weeks after the operation. So anyway, you're holding out on it too now.

SPEAKER_02 46:31

No, I also have to say, I did some stem cell injections and I did therapy, physical therapy before the surgery as well, which helped. So, yes, BPC-157 was part of the equation as well. And look, I'll tell you, Sam, if this wasn't a PG podcast, Sharif is all about showing. He's a show and tell top. I would have, you know, asked him to take his shirt off and just show our listeners how you know, and I know you've seen it, but you know, and everyone else has not. But I'll tell you the other day I grabbed him just by you know, I don't just grabbing him. And my hand went about an inch and a half into between one of his abs. Like, you know, that was like, I was like, hey, let me go, let me go. So Sharif, I I know it's working for you, brother. Uh that's why we're meaningful. It is. I didn't realize I like show and tell in the courtroom, right? But like So you've talked about the peptides. Uh tell us tell us more about them and how have they been successful? So we're talking about these messengers, right? That tell your body what's needed or how to produce more of something, right? And it's gone up to your brain and it it's firing. Tell us more about that.

SPEAKER_04 47:34

Yeah, let's talk about a few different ones. So I like to break them into different categories, right? Because I think a lot of people hear peptides, they they just want to go all in when really it's more about understanding what's the unique result we're looking for for NF1 client and creating a protocol based off of that. So, you know, Sharif's example. So when it comes to weight loss, a lot of people have heard of GLPs before, they've heard of OZMPC, they've heard of semaglutide. And there's a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding about these compounds. People think that these are very dangerous. And while I say, hey, this is not medical advice, and you should work with a uh qualified professional, talk to your doctor, understanding what these things do and using them properly for the right people can be absolutely life-changing. And I will speak for myself here because Sharif has already given his testimony. I have never been one to really struggle with my weight. You know, for a long time, I've been, you know, 10% body fat or under now. And when I first heard of Ozempic, I was like, man, this is just an excuse for laziness. Why are people using these things? Just, you know, get in the gym, work out, watch where you're eating. But then I started to really dive into the research, especially with some of these newer compounds like trzepatide or the newest, the most novel GLP compound is retitrutide. And started to see that this goes far beyond weight loss. These are things that are going to improve your insulin sensitivity. Retitrutide specifically is also going to increase your metabolic rate, how many calories you're expending on a 24-hour basis, and it'll even pull down neuroinflammation and systemic inflammation. There's a recent study that came out in 2025 showing that retrutite actually had anti-cancer benefits in rodent models. So this is something that goes far beyond weight loss. And for me, I started experimenting with red shrutide mainly out of a desire to understand how these things work so that I could better serve my clients and help share my own personal experience. And that food noise that Sharif mentioned, it was like a light bulb went off on my head. I was like, oh my God, I'm just not thinking about food anymore. But I still had the appetite to eat the foods that I know I needed to be eating. So it wasn't this issue a lot of people talk about the nausea or uh gastrointestinal issues. Those are more common with Ozempic or semaglutide. But personally, I've been using Retitrutide now for on and off for close to a year. I've had a tremendous results with it. A number of our clients have also been using retitrutide and just seen life-changing results. So that's one of the biggest players that we have on the metabolic and weight loss side. Now let's ship the conversation to something like injury healing, like your example here now. So BPC157, TB500, this combination is often referred to as the wolverine stack. And at a high level, what these do is these compounds help improve angiogenesis, which is the creation and formation of new small blood vessels. So if we're increasing the formation or if we're increasing the creation of blood vessels, what is this going to do? This is gonna help deliver more blood, oxygen, and nutrients to specific injury sites, which is gonna have a huge effect on healing. There are even people who will use a combination of BPC157 and TB500 before going into surgery to actually prime their system for recovery after that surgery. So those are two of the big players. You'll often hear peptides like KPV or GHKCU often used on the recovery side of things. I really like to use GHKCU before I do my red light sessions because that helps my body absorb more near infrared light. And a lot of people love it because it helps with collagen and elastin production in their skin. So when you look at skin health, GHKCU can be very helpful there too. And then we can look at other peptides on the cognition side. So things like Silong or CNAX. CNAX is very helpful for increasing focus and productivity, whereas CLONC is helpful for more of that GABA response, so helping your body go into that relax and digest state if you're trying to recover from a really stressful day at work. Another combination that I'm a huge fan of are going to be the growth hormone secretagogs. So when we look at something like CJC 1295 and ipomorelin, or even testamerelin and ipomerelin, I'll give a high-level overview of the actual mechanism at play here. So typically how your growth hormone system works is your pituitary gland is going to create growth hormone and then release growth hormone. What CJC1295 and ipramorelin do is together they tell your pituitary gland to create more growth hormone and release more growth hormone. So first the ipramorelin comes in, tells your pituitary gland to create more growth hormone, and then the CJC 1295 comes in and tells your body to release more growth hormone. Oftentimes, when people hear the word growth hormone, they think of you know these crazy jacked bodybuilders that have these distended guts. You know, think of your Mr. Olympia open bodybuilders. But the thing with peptides, that's what happens when you're abusing exogenous growth hormone, meaning you're just injecting straight growth hormone, and then you're getting to super physiological levels because you're no longer relying on your body to produce your own natural growth hormone. What these growth hormones secretagog peptides do, like the ipramoralin and the CJC1295 or the ipamoralin and the test moralin, is by getting your body to create more growth hormone, you're still playing within the physiological range that your body can naturally produce. So you love the analogies. I've got a great, this might be my best analogy of the day here now. Okay. So you can think of your hormones like a speaker, right? And there are things you can do to increase the volume of that speaker. And that could be things like getting good sleep, getting proper diet, lifting weights, and using peptides. When you use steroids, by the way, I've never used any kind of steroids. A lot of people don't like to believe me on that, but just to set the record straight, I'm not against it TRT or anything like that, but personally I haven't used it, haven't had to. When you use steroids, it's like strapping an external amplifier onto that speaker. And because you're no longer relying on your body to create those hormones, you can get to super physiological ranges that your body was never designed to handle. And that's where the issues can come into play. So with peptides, because you're giving your body those cellular text messages to create more of your own natural hormones, that's where you stay within the physiological range and you get that boost without having the potential long-term issues that come with being at super physiological levels for extended periods of time. So your healing peptides, those are gonna be your BPC-157, your TB500, potentially DHKCU or KBV. Then you've got your growth hormone peptides that can be really good for improving sleep quality, uh, improving recovery in the gym, even improving the youthfulness of your appearance, things like skin and hair, those are gonna be things like your ipamerelin, your CJC1295, or your testomeralin. And then you've got the peptides that are very helpful for weight loss and metabolic optimization. So those can be things like trusepatite or retitrutide, or we could even talk further about things like, you know, MOTC, SLU, PP332. Uh, there's a whole world, and I know for a lot of people it can feel a little overwhelming because it basically just seems like it's alphabet seemed a whole bunch of letters and numbers. But when you use these things properly and you have proper protocols in place and you pair them with proper lifestyle habits, nutrition, and exercise, they can be absolute game changers. So I'm using peptides, a lot of our clients are using peptides, and uh, I've got my mom off using peptides right now, too. She's 73 years old, and we're trying to do what we can to optimize her uh mental function, her cognition. So we've got her on peptides, and just I think a bit of backstory that I think is important to highlight. My grandma died of ALS. My dad has frontal temporal dementia, so FTD, and that's ruined his life. And my mom has had some symptoms that we want to make sure we can optimize. And that lesson has taught me that if you simply think that the healthcare system is gonna take care of you, you're wrong. I believe you need to take health into your own hands, you need to have agency over it, and you need to understand how to manage your lifestyle, manage your nutrition, have high quality workouts, and if it's a good fit, potentially use peptides if you know how to use them properly. And when you do those all together and you're not outsourcing your own health to uh a system that may not be the best for you, which in my opinion is our current healthcare system. My belief is over the next 10, 20, 30 years, these sorts of things that we're gonna talk about are gonna have a huge shift on the course of humanity when we look at things like lifespan, health span, and quality of life. And that's why I'm so passionate about it. And that's really why I do what I do with an alpha body system and why I love working with guys like you and having these conversations.

SPEAKER_02 56:06

So, Sam, that's very promising stuff right here, right? But that that you don't get from going to see a doctor. So, you, Sam, Johnson, how do you determine what peptides you should administer? And you know, a lot of people are concerned about, well, how pure is this peptide? Because a lot of these peptides they say it's for research purposes only, and some people are worried about injecting something for research purposes only. Clearly, not only are you prescribing them in a way or sending your clients to places to buy these peptides, but you've taken them yourself and you've been taking them for years. How do you kind of share that comfort with your clients and be like, hey, it's it's not gonna hurt you? You know, let me tell you about them.

SPEAKER_04 56:52

Yeah, great question. So I think there are a couple things that we can focus on here. First and foremost is understanding what is your goal, right? This is not a game of how many peptides can I stock together. It's what's the most efficient path to the actual results I'm looking for. So for some people, you know, Nial, for you repairing coming back from an injury from surgery, we're gonna look at things that are gonna help you with that. For someone who's more focused on weight loss, we're gonna look at things that can help with that. Or for someone who's just focused on longevity, there are peptides we can look for there too. So it's all about pairing the right tool for the right job. Then when it comes to purity, we always wanna make sure we're dealing with a company that does third-party certificate of analyses, actually showing the the third-party testing being done on their batches. So we want only companies that are gonna offer 99% plus pure peptides. So the sources that I use, everything's gonna be 99% plus pure. These are things that every batch has an independent certificate of analysis coming from Genoshic, which is the gold standard for peptide testing in the research space. And then the other thing is gonna be starting low and going slow, right? The goal here, like I said, is not to use the maximum amount of peptides. It's to find the minimum effective dose that gives our body that clear signal to get the result that we're looking for. And these are not things that we need to be on all the time. These are things that we want to have in for a specified period of time, and then we cycle out and we take a break, and then we might bring that one back in later, or maybe depending on the situation and what the goals are on that time, we'll have a different protocol in place that is an appropriate set of tools to get the outcome that we're looking for. So, in summary, there, it's pairing the right tool for the right job. It's making sure we're having a high quality product that isn't just being advertised as a high quality product. There's actually a third-party independent certification confirming that that it's 99% plus pure. And then starting low and going slow, providing that minimum effective dose, it's gonna get an individual the results they're looking for. And again, let me be clear not medical advice. I'm not a doctor. I'm just uh a nerd who absolutely loves this stuff, and I'm very passionate about providing people helpful and accurate information to help guide their own decision making.

SPEAKER_02 58:58

And if they want to see if it works or not, they just they can just simply visit your Instagram page and check out a few pictures, right?

SPEAKER_04 59:06

Yeah, and we've got you know my own results, we've got yeah, or maybe they just give Sharif a call and ask him how it's working for him.

SPEAKER_03 59:12

Yeah. No, absolutely. Well, and you Sam, you've done a lot of good work for a lot of people. I'm very grateful that I found you and that that you've agreed to work with me and some of the people that I've sent your way. So it you're making a difference, and it's very, very important. If you had one thing to share with the travelers that you want them to take away from this episode, what would that be?

SPEAKER_04 59:34

The one thing I would want to share is your health is your ultimate asset, right? We get so focused on promotions, career progression, 401ks, stock options, all these things. But at the end of the day, you're gonna have one body for this lifetime. And if you want to perform at your highest level, whether that's in your career, if you want to be as present and as emotionally available for the people that you love most, or if you want to be a strong example for your kids, you need to prioritize your health. It's not optional, it's foundational. And what I always say is when you're in good shape, when you walk around and you can tell that you take care of yourself, without even opening your mouth, you are subconsciously communicating to everyone around you that you're focused, you're disciplined, and you're willing to do the hard things that a lot of people today are not willing to do. And that tilts the odds of life in your favor. That tilts the odds of life in your favor in social situations, that can tilt the odds of life in your favor subconsciously in a courtroom, that can uh tilt the odds of life in your favor in a boardroom. And at some point or another, you can either choose to make your health a priority and reap the benefits of that, or you can wait till something goes wrong and be forced to make your health a priority. So it's gonna happen one way or the other, but one choice has a lot of benefits that comes with it, and the other choice has a lot of negatives that come with it. So those would be my my closing thoughts. Or what do you say in the courtroom? What's the final message that someone would say to you?

SPEAKER_03 1:01:01

I want a Sam Johnson analogy for uh for a closing argument.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:05

But now Sam Johnson rests your case.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:09

Yeah, rest your case, Your Honor. Yeah, yeah, this has been great. Well, Sam, it's been a pleasure having you. Happy to continue to work with you. It's truly a privilege. So I've I've gained so much, and I'm excited that I'm able to connect you with now and so many other friends of mine who've not only benefited from following and speaking with you, but I'm sure will benefit from listening to this podcast. And if people want to find you, where can they do so?

SPEAKER_04 1:01:33

Yeah, absolutely. So on both Instagram and YouTube at the Samuel Johnston. So at the Samuel Johnston, that's Johnston with a T, J-O-H-N-S-T-O-N. And then my website is alphabodysystem.com. So if someone goes there, they'll see a lot of client transformations, they'll have the ability to book a one-on-one call with me, and then we can always take the conversation from there. Thank you, Sam.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:56

Sam, appreciate what you do, brother. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:00

Thanks for listening to Courtroom Stories and Tactics by RVA Trial Lawyers, hosted by Sheriff Gray and Nial Abuzaki. Please subscribe and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or any major podcast platform. Together, we're building a tribe of trial lawyers to remind the world what human life is truly worth. One verdict at a time.