Architect of Resilience #012: Stan Efferding talks with Chris Duffin

Welcome to the architect of Resilience podcast, where we explore the secrets of overcoming life's challenges and unlocking unstoppable strength through deep personal conversations and expert insights. Welcome to another episode of the Architect of Resilience podcast. I love repeating my intro over and over again. Why? Because I want to see you become

the architect of your own life. To be able to, through the development of resilience, of body, mind and soul, to really challenge yourself, to be able to have a different perspective, to see the incredible gifts and value that are around us in the world today and that are hidden when we're lost in fear, stress, chaos, and defining that life. Thus, the architect of resilience, which we accomplish through these deep, kind of, hopefully powerful conversations with our guests.

And today I'm excited to have on a legend, a myth. That's right. Oh, you might even recognize from the, from the laugh there, I think, who we might have on. That's right. Welcome to the show, Mister Stan Efferdang. So Stan is, whoops, we need to make him bigger there. We'll make him the show. There we go. I need all the help I can get these days. Stan is a renowned figure. If you don't know who Stan is, he's a renowned figure in the world of strength, sports and fitness.

He's celebrated as an exceptional accomplishments and contributions that he's had just this relentless pursuit of excellence, and he's left an incredible mark on fitness and nutrition. So tons of powerlifting records, we could list off his incredible feet, squatting 900 pounds and benching 600 and deadlifting lots, but also an IFBB pro. So the versatility is really what makes Stan unique in the

longevity. He's the creator of the vertical diet, the master behind, behind this acclaimed, you know, nutritional plan that's embraced by elite athletes and health enthusiasts worldwide. His dietary insights have revolutionized the role of nutrition in achieving peak performance. And I'm sure we might mention some of the folks that he works with over

the course of this, but it's, it's a who's who. Strength coach and mentor, Stan has continued to have an impact, extending his coaching and mentoring where he's helped numerous athletes unlock their full potential with his holistic approach to addressing physical, mental, nutritional facets, transforming people's lives and achieving great performance and the entrepreneurship, Stan has succeeded as an entrepreneur in fitness and nutrition industry shield Keiki saying his

determination and strategic thinking. So he's, you know, some things have taken off, some haven't. That's the life of an entrepreneur. I hope to dive into some of these things with this legacy. Extraordinary accomplishments and unwavering commitment and passion, empowering others. Really excited to have you on the program today, Stan. Thank you, brother. Boy, how's that for an intro? That's amazing. I get any better, I always tell people that. They're

like, oh, man, you're my hero. I'm like, never meet your heroes. They'll disappoint you. It's all downhill from here. I love that I've had so many people, people at my house as I've been doing stuff lately, and it's. You're just. You're just another person. Like, well, yeah, that's it. Yep. We all are. Yeah. You know, that's one of the things that, when I grew up, of course, I idolized a lot of the bodybuilders, the pro bodybuilders at the time, you know, Flex Wheeler and

Ronnie Coleman and all those guys I used to watch train. And then later in my career, after I was done competing, you know, I'd worked with high school, collegiate professional athletes here and there throughout my career. But, you know, just the last six or seven years, as you mentioned, I've worked with some of the greatest athletes

in the world. You know, NFL football stars and, you know, Jon Jones, UFC heavyweight, light heavyweight, and heavyweight champion, and, you know, Lane Johnson, Philadelphia Eagles, and then all the strong men, you know, Mitchell Hooper, world's strongest man, and Brian Shaw, Hafthor Bjornsson. What you just said is what rang true to me the most. Even when I met.

Even when I meet big stars like Stone Cold Steve Austin when I went down and worked with him years ago in LA, these are real people, and they also have a lot of real problems. And I say that from a perspective of a coach trying to train an athlete in terms of whether it's nutrition or sleep or training, you and I have learned a lot over the years, and when we look at their programs, we realize there's big, gaping holes and there's often lots of contributions that we can make. And

that's the most satisfying part. It's a collaboration. We learn from them as much as they learn from us along the way. But I think what you just said is you learn that they're real people, have the same challenges as the rest of us. They're just incredibly genetically gifted and focused on their, you know, particular expertise. You know, that's an

interesting thought. If we explore that a little bit deeper in the fact that the real people, real problems in every one of them, even at those elite levels, always has an opportunity to look at, how can we refine this? How can we better be better? And that's where we need to not get stuck in this mentality of, I don't have anything to learn. I've got the perfect program.

It's, you know, I've known you for a long time, and you've continued to evolve with your approach and as a person, and, you know, everyone, everyone at no matter what level, hasn't achieved perfection. There is no. Every day you can be a little bit closer, and that is incredibly powerful. And I think the, you know, the position of where you've played a role is driving some of those concepts as it relates to, how can I take these well known facets and refine them just a little bit further?

Yeah, you hit on so much there. I think, first and foremost, I mentioned genetics reign supreme. Obviously, these people are just on another level, but hard work beats genetics. When genetics doesn't work hard, these people, in addition to their genetics, are obsessed with every single one of them that's at the top level. Trains extraordinarily hard. But I often say that some

of them are successful in spite of themselves. I get in there and start looking at everything, and we're like, well, that doesn't really work for any other reason than maybe placebo or superstition or that kind of thing. But you got to be cautious, because when you get a client, you have to ask them, what do you think works for you? And if they tell you something that they feel works, that you understand, there's no evidence to support that. You got to be careful not to

nocebo the person, because oftentimes placebo is a very real effect, and you might have to leave some of those things alone as long as you don't recognize that they could possibly hurt them. And another thing you said it was really important is the willingness to learn. You get a guy like Jon Jones, with 14 title defenses, the youngest UFC pro ever, unbeaten throughout his career, and is still unbelievably open to

asking lots of questions to lots of people. I'm just one of many I would call, say, coaches, maybe, but people that he brings out his circle to ask questions of. And I found that to be consistent amongst all of these great athletes, irrespective of their level of success, is that they're constantly asking questions and, you know, and willing to learn. And our goal is to really just kind of one do no harm, just stay the hell out of the way is probably the

first and most important thing you can do. But then just try and make things easier on them. They might be doing things that are actually making it harder on themselves. Sometimes over training is an example of that. Sometimes, just in terms of the caloric requirement necessary to fuel all the work that these guys do, you find that maybe they're making that more difficult than it needs to be. And they often get distracted by what I refer to as the shiny object

syndrome. These guys are so willing to learn and so open minded that they get onto social media. Next thing you know, they see some functional fuckery and they're like, hey, why aren't we doing that? You're like, well, a, because it doesn't work and b, because you've got limited physical capital and only so many hours in a day and, you know, what are we going to take away to put that in

and at what cost? So I know I'm speaking in generalities, but I just wanted to go through some of the things that you and I probably pretty often see with athletes. I wouldn't call that a generality. And that's actually really important lessons for somebody entering the field is a coach or a trainer. Like, don't be running in to try to show how much you know and say everything that you're doing is wrong and I'm going to show you the path. Let's

rebuild everything. Like there's some reason they're successful. And again, that nocebo effect is massive. If they've got something they believe and it's making them work and you go, that's pointless. And they're like, now they don't believe it and now they're failing. Right? And so there's so much

like, that is a very important lesson. Like, what can we look at this and how can we make some steps in transition and for you to find out, maybe there's something there that, you know, maybe the research doesn't back it, but it really does work in their environment, their need. Like observe, make adjustments. You know, it's a theory, right? Make adjustments, test and then continue. Don't throw it all out the window. So you mentioned, I like what you said.

You said test, which to me is the same as measure. And if you're going to implement anything, you sure as hell better be able to measure it and improve it and progress it over time and show that you achieved some positive result. Absolutely. Now, you did mention that a challenge with working with people that really want to, to learn and grow and they're the ones coming in and asking you questions is they're too willing sometimes.

What are some other barriers that you have in working with people at that level, as well as positive attributes that you see as commonalities? Yeah, you said it already. You said that you can't just come storming in there and take over everything. Most of these

athletes have numerous coaches, and I might step in. Although I have a background in exercise science and physiology and strength and conditioning, I might only be brought in for nutrition, which is the case with a number of athletes that I've worked with already have a strength coach, and you don't want to go in there and start trying to change things or become a distraction. If there's something I think needs to change, I don't go to the athlete, but

I go to his coach about it and we talk about it. And I have a respect for the fact that he's ultimately the decision maker in that department. And I would never usurp his authority by trying to backhanded go in and say something negative. The environment matters. The whole environment. There's one thing about John's camp in particular has so many coaches, but it's like a well oiled machine. They all are very cooperative. They cooperate with each other very well.

They're interested in what everybody has to say. But at the end of the day, we realize that there's a specific position, it's their call, and we can hash that amongst each other, but we don't distract the athlete with that debate. That's amongst us as coaches to try and keep things positive for him.

One of the best things that I ever learned as an athlete with a great coach is the ability to not to have to think about a lot of that stuff, just to be able to train and not have to constantly, because you don't know how we are.

We'll overthink it, and we might change things too often if left to our own devices, rather than following through and really understanding whether or not we were successful as a result of the program because we finished the program. A lot of people now, the last seven different coaches, they'll just pick what they like, have a hodgepodge or an a la carte, never really finish anything or bounce from thing to thing. And then how do you know what worked

and how do you measure that against future progress? That's why I always liked the way that the Russians looked at things when I trained with Mikhail Copley, Avio, he says, you guys have a three month plan for your next product. We have a five year plan, and we're very cautious about how we progress that over time. So, no, it's a lot of stuff to think about, but I think it's really important that we respect. Even though I say shiny object syndrome and there's a lot of distractions out

there, you got to respect that. The athlete, you don't want to overburden him with a competition amongst coaches, not a good plan. So I know that you've done this and people are often surprised that I did. Like, as a coach, when I was walking through my years of chasing big feet, I had someone else coaching me. Yes, and it was exactly for that reason. Even though you can be being coached doesn't mean that you're lacking the ability or the, lacking the knowledge by any ways.

But having that other perspective in your life when you're to check your ego, to bounce against, like, is, there's so many things

when you're in your, you could get in your own way. And having a coach is really useful is, have you stopped that out in anywhere outside of just the physical training environment, knowing your background in business and then entrepreneurship over the last little bit with starting your own businesses or in life in general, whether it's walking through some challenging, you

know, you know, emotional, you know, changes or periods in your life. Have you ever used a coach outside of just the, you know, the training realm? Yeah, I mean, you're familiar. Like you said, in the training realm, I've worked with a host of different coaches over the years and learned

a lot in business. I was fortunate to have a mentor when I was a young man who was a property developer, and I spent nine years working underneath with him and learned a lot about business, about financing, about construction, about management. So I had acquired a significant

amount of knowledge. So when I started my own business, I had a good foundation and then I did have a couple of really good business partners because I tend to be a perfectionist and I'm reticent to expand in the absence of everything running smoothly, whereas I had a couple of business partners who would know behind the scenes, would just jack up advertising and just make me catch up to the pace of

the business. And that, that actually turned out to be quite successful for us because I probably would have, you know, just sat there for another year or two trying to perfect everything. You're very methodical. Yes. Yeah, I tend to overthink it, and if it's not perfect, I want everything running smoothly before I. Before I scale. And he just scaled

and let me run. You know, I was just constantly catching up and, but we were expanding and, you know, just in this specific example was a telecommunications company that we started out of our apartment and walking around, knocking door to door in a small city in Washington, and next thing you know, he's running commercials on tv and we're getting licensed in multiple states. And you, it wasn't two years later we had over 100 employees

doing business in 20 states. And you just have to, I don't know what word to use for it, but it's kind of like a controlled crash landing a jet fighter on an aircraft carrier. So trust the process.

Trust the process. And that's the same thing. This trust the process idea. We're always pushing in the physical realm in our training. Like, you know, get in, just be in, head down, do the work, don't be trying to jump around shiny object syndrome, you know, stay focused on this. You have a plan, make sure you execute the plan. And that's an important lesson that, that we learn in the gym and learning training for meats that is often missed in people's careers

or their, I guess, career. I'm thinking, like, just in your job or in your case, being an entrepreneur, is these, these lessons, is there other things that, like, the strength training has taught you that you have passed on into realms outside of just being in the gym? And particularly, I'm thinking about just that you have a mindset around, like the residue, like, what does strength really mean to you, and then how does that play a role in those

other areas? Yeah, I mean, obviously pushing yourself to your limits, that could be the same in business. You'd find there were times at which I wouldn't get much sleep, and I was grinding seven days a week with, you know, 4 hours of sleep. Not necessarily the best plan. And, you know, we can talk about how that, when that works and when it doesn't. But the biggest thing was, for me, I was diagnosed OCD, ADHD as a kid. My brother went on medication and I just wouldn't do it. So I was so hard to

control. Bodybuilding for me provided me a structure for all of my craziness, and it was just the meal prepping, the scheduled eating, the schedule for training, the splits, the sets, the reps, the sleep. Everything was on a clock. And you kept repeating those same behaviors over and over and over again that became, and I talked about this on a rhinos rant, one. I love this because one of my first questions that I planned on asking was around what really

sparked your interest in strength sports. And it's not really what are some of those other facets? And this is exactly the sort of thing I was hoping to discover. So, yeah, let's roll. Tell me more, Stan. Yeah, I mean, it was just fortunate. I was a skinny kid that wanted to get big, and then when I got into training, I was playing soccer. But when I got into training with bodybuilding, as I mentioned, it's so regimented and consistent, and the time

management required. So I said in the video once, if anybody who's been successful in almost any sport, you could extrapolate bodybuilding to almost any sport. But bodybuilders tend to be very obsessive about all the little details, even historically, where some athletes might just go to practice, then go to McDonald's. We're counting macros and calories. We're tracking everything

to the nth degree. And I said that if anybody spent the same amount of time, consistency, discipline, time management and intensity on any income producing venture, they'd be a millionaire in five years. There's no question with that kind of focus and lack of distraction, anything that didn't make you bigger and stronger, you just, I mean, you snip that cord quick. So that was if you focused that same kind of drive into business.

And everybody's talking about it now, Alan, I don't know that it was talked about that much some 30 years ago when I started, necessarily, but that has always been bodybuilding. If it doesn't get you bigger or stronger, snip it. I'm thinking of the classic, like, bodybuilder in southern California, back in the day. Apartment with nothing, stack of eggs and chicken. This is my life. We cut away all the fluff, and guess what? That's, that's how I'm going to get on the Olympia

stage. And that's, unfortunately, that's the lack of, I guess, balance or whatever. But if you want to see extreme things, or be, you know, an outlier in any realm, it is going to take a level of, some aspect of that. Yeah, it's an obsession. There's no balance in

sports. I've always said, if you want to be healthy, don't compete. And I mean that in every sport, not just bodybuilding and the performance enhancing drugs, etcetera, but in any sport, as a 14 year old gymnast in the Olympics and the injuries they incur, and a ten year old badminton player in China blowing out a lateral collateral ligament. So, if you want to be healthy, don't compete. It's a very different animal.

Like you said, if you want to compete at a high level and win, that's the obsession, and that's the kind of individual that you're going to have to be. And it comes at the sacrifice of everything else. If you have a job or a marriage or kids, a mortgage, those things are all going to be a burden on your ability to succeed. Having said that, you look at things like the millionaire next door and you see that the vast majority of those people have been married for a long time and they have a

good support group, etcetera. But it does come as a sacrifice. You don't get to spend as much time with your family or your kids or what have you. Any sport would do that, any business would do do that. And that's your highly successful individuals that work a ton of hours for a lot of years.

You have done that in a dropping it in period buckets in your life. I mean, I remember I just met you when you were coming out of the telecom phase and you said, hey, I'm going to focus on bodybuilding, then move to powerlifting. And then as you started cutting those out, now I'm going to get back into creating some businesses again. And so I've seen how you've dropped that into buckets and now you have time, more time for your family as

you've gone into that path. So, you know, sometimes we get too caught up and this can chase people is like, I need to achieve that balance and everything, everything right now. And that may be hard to bring to the table to achieve great things, unless you want to look at things in a little bit broader perspective. Not suggesting that's the approach for everyone, but it's

certainly worth a thought. Now, I'm wondering how this obsession has related to the amount of push and what you've brought into the arena in the fitness scape, bodybuilding, lifting strength athletes around the measures around pushing people to understand the depths of different aspects of their blood work, the micronutrients, the impact on diet. That became the vertical diet where it was very, hey, my liver values are good, I'm not checking anything else. And my macros are here.

That's health, right? Yeah, you said, I happen to be. Wearing my Merrick health shirt today, too. But speaking of, it's, you know, it's just another metric. We said that that which gets measured gets improved and it has to be, you have to

track these things. It's just another tool that we have. You know, you can measure weight on a bar and sets and reps and calories that you take in and grams of protein, and you can look at the scale in the morning, you can look at your hours of sleep, maybe even throw a WHOOP in there or something to check the quality of the sleep. All of those things are ways to optimize your performance. The blood test becomes, I think, because it helps so much with everything. It kind of guides you

along the way. And this I learned from trial and error over many, many, many years. I mean, my first blood test when I was 20 years old is when I discovered I was hypogonadal as a result of varicocele. I mean, my testosterone was like 100 or something. And I had struggled for a couple of years trying to put. Put on mass and size. Yeah, that'll affect that a little bit. I imagine a few other things, too, in your

life. Yeah. And then as I started to gain weight after testosterone replacement therapy, at the time, of course, I devolved into more testosterone over time. When you see that, to a point, more is better, I get north of 240, and next thing you know, I've got sleep apnea. And that's not necessarily something that you look at in a sleep study, but if. Or in a blood test. But a sleep study is another measure. Initially, the stop bang questionnaire, do you snore and wake up tired?

But that made a huge impact on my. Not just on my performance, but my general health. And I saw how the blood markers affected that. And then later in my career, of course, you could start looking deeper into those blood markers, and that's a whole. I mean, we could go down into a two hour conversation on each and every one of those blood markers, but. And the bigger point is, for, I think, nearly 15 years there, towards the end of my career, at least for a decade, I was getting blood tests on

almost a monthly basis. And I could see as I bulked up to 300 pounds and as I dieted down to single digit body fat, I could see how the biomarkers. So my blood test markers would change, and I would try and implement some sort of intervention to optimize those throughout my career. And then when I started getting blood tests for my athletes and having them get blood tests, historically, it was always online through a. I forget the name of the company now, but I paid almost $400 every time I got

a blood test for a really comprehensive panel. And then Merrick comes along and I asked Smokey. Smokey, from Mark Bell's super training up there, went to work for Merrick, and I said, hey, what's the best deal you can get on a blood test on a blood panel? And he came back with an extraordinary number. That was half of what I used to pay for a same comprehensive panel. And I said, you know

what? I'd like to be able to promote that to my customers. And that's kind of how I got involved with Merrick, was that they provided a real value. And now it's kind of a win win. So I get all my clients to get blood tests, and they're as cheap as about 145 bucks for a very comprehensive five page panel that I used to pay three $400 for. And so I'm able to see over the course of the last many, many years, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of blood tests of clients, not just

athletes, but dad bods and soccer moms. And certain things, as, you know, start to pop up. You can almost predict them, what you're going to see based on somebody's body weight or the symptoms that they describe to you. And when they see those blood tests, it's kind of like stepping on a scale or, you know, looking at a, at a, at a WHOOP or something for your sleep. When they see the blood tests, it is another. What word would you use for that? It just, it compels

them. It gives them a measurable, objective metric by which you can make positive changes. Whether it's a teenage female athlete with anemia or it's an older individual with hypothyroidism, they can start to see, hey, if I make these changes and I can improve those numbers, I'm likely going to feel better. So it's a fantastic resource. How often would you recommend somebody be

evaluating these blood markers? And let's just take, you know, an average person of 30 to 50 years age versus that of an elite athlete, maybe on PDS or not. So those three different, like, what's a good starting point and what's some of the metrics that you would have them look at? Now, obviously, I'm wearing my Merrick health shirt. You're talking about them. Like, you can go, here's a standard set of panels. You want to know what

stand references, let's go there. But just as a general for our audience that maybe they also have, you know, a healthcare professional that they're working with and they want to check and go, am I doing this appropriately? Am I looking at the right things? We're not going to go into the two hour, just a broad strokes. Like, what's the starting point? Yeah, well, first off, like you mentioned, what tests@stanefferting.com? Comma, you go to my homepage

and scroll down. I have a link to says blood tests. Big banner on there. Click on that. It gives you all the instructions on how to get a blood test and what those blood tests are, even if you want to print that out and take it to your own doctor. Although I'm hesitant, because not all doctors will recommend all those tests, and for some folks, it's for good reason. Sometimes too much information can be a bad thing. You

might start to, what do they call it? Intern syndrome, where suddenly nurses or doctors start studying medicine, and all of a sudden they think they have everything that they're learning about. So I have to say,

I have to express some resurrection. Yeah. You also have people that. That may have a clinician that they're working with that isn't staying up to gate on the research, who doesn't have awareness or they have a certain bias perspective, which is really challenging, because then you have to have all the conversations. Well, how do I educate somebody on how to make sure they're working with a good clinician? But again, I'd say let's just point that.

Let's move on from that discussion and say that's a resource that we both know and validate on that side. So, yeah, let's keep rolling with the broad strokes. Get a baseline.

I think that everybody should get a baseline. And I'm of all ages. I just mentioned that I was working with a high school women's softball team, and there were 17 and 16 year old girls there who had experienced a significant decline in performance. And I asked the parents, and they said, oh, they've been really lethargic,

and blah, blah, blah. And I said, well, get a blood test, because as we commonly see in high school, especially girls, they both had anemia, and we were measuring 40 times on a laser, and so we could see they had a decline in performance, a very measurable decline. And so, you know, it begets the series of questions, are they sleeping well? Are they eating well? You know, the host, but also, what's the most likely cause of

fatigue in that age group or amongst women in general? And after sleep and is probably anemia and then thyroid beyond that, but, you know, girls that young, but anyhow, and then myself at 20 years old, discovering I had low t. How do you know unless you get a test and so at all ages, get a baseline and at least you can see where things fall. And then if you have a particular marker that concerns

you or you believe as a has a, or you or your clinician believes probably is having a significant impact on your performance or health or general energy or wellness, then you implement some protocol to try and correct that. And I've said for many, many years, that doesn't mean you go on medication right away if you've got low t or low thyroid, those things are, first and foremost might be caused by being overweight, underslept, overtraining, that kind of thing, lack of iodine, et cetera,

poor nutrition. And so I would suggest at least trying a lifestyle intervention for the first 30 to 60 days to see if you can remedy that problem. But in the absence of the ability to do that, maybe you've got hashimoto's. You're not going to fix that with diet. You know, it's autoimmune. So I got an interesting story there, Stan. I've never told you this stuff. I have. I have hashimoto's, and I found it

myself, so. But when we first started interacting years ago, even when I was like, I think you called me up and had me show up in an event to deadlift, like, 405 for reps or something like that, I I can't remember. Yeah, and that. Those were they. Your straps broke, otherwise you would have. No, man, that was so. There was no, like, do again. I'm like, really? I'm like, I didn't even warm up. You're hilarious, because you. I remember you flew

a red eye to get there. You. And you. You raced over there, and you got there, like, an hour before you were supposed to lift, and you were smashing it, and bam, your strap left, and you're like, oh, I got to get to the airport. That was fantastic. You've always been game. Always been game. So back at that time, I was actually suffering from pretty significant low testosterone. I had for. From, like, 28 to 32, and my doctors had gone through a few were trying to get me to go on TRT,

but I'm like, I need these drug free records. I need these drug free records, which I was setting, but I wasn't. I didn't realize how big of an impact it was for me when finally I'm like, okay, when I go submaster, I'll go get TRT. So I turned 33, and I went and got on some testosterone, and I'm like, oh, shit. Yeah, okay. I can see what they've been saying for the last five years. And so.

But then I still had some residual, like, lethargy issues, just some stuff that was kicking, and did thyroid tests and ended up on thyroid medication for another several years. And then I was starting to run a lot of tests myself, testing different things through time. And I ran a thyroid antibody test and boom, it says you got hashimoto's disease. So, yeah. How do you know? I showed that to my doctor. Yep, you got hashimoto's disease. Good thing you ran that test.

Exactly, and that's my point, you know, damned if you do, damned if you don't. But it gets frustrating when, like you said, some medical practitioners don't like to run a comprehensive panel for fear of, you know, pathologizing things that aren't necessarily causal. And there's significant reason to. Like, I counsel people all the time not to get imaging, like, on their back and things like that. Like, if we're agreed there's so many things that it's gonna show bad. You're a weightlifter at 55

years old. You've been training for 20 years. You're gonna show your back is fucking destroyed. Like, it's gonna tell you that you need, like, spinal fusions and all this sort of stuff. Anybody could. And the fact is that is actually not real because nearly anyone with their experience knows that, because we already, like. Yeah, we see the same thing as, you know, we could go into a whole

tirade on this, but we see the same thing. If you do a scan on your knee that hurts, ask the dog to do the other knee. It probably looks the same but doesn't hurt. And there's often interventions that can be done, just like there can be with lifestyle stuff as well. So that's. That's what the vertical diet. You're. Tell us about how the vertical diet addresses those from the micronutrient standpoint and what's going on with. Yeah, let me wrap up

the blood test real quick. We said that get an initial blood test, implement a lifestyle intervention. If it doesn't, if within 30 to 60 days or 90 days, give it a good effort. If you can't correct the problem, you might need your practitioner to further diagnose the cause of that problem. Like we just said, with the autoimmune disorder for Hashimoto's, which is a low thyroid hypothyroidism, and then you may need to use medication.

And then subsequent to getting medication, you're going to want to get another test in six to eight weeks to see if that measurement is corrected. And of course, there's symptoms that the blood test ranges don't tell you everything. You have to look at both and then dial in your medication with your practitioner. So it does take some follow up. It's as much art as

science. And then subsequent to that, you go a considerable amount of time, unless you're on performance enhancing drugs, in which case I would monitor at least every six months, depending, because you want to watch out for things like kidney and liver and thick blood and a host of other things that dyslipidemia, those kinds of things could accelerate with performance enhancing drug usage. So I guess it depends on the individual, like you said, whether it's an athlete or population. But I just,

I think they're a great resource to use. And if the cost is reasonable and you're not, as we mentioned, if you aren't, you may potentially pathologizing something that isn't necessarily as serious as you might presume it to be. Because again, the placebo effect can, can work both ways. So that would be my recommendation. And as part of

trying to remedy some of those problems with diet, from my experience and then my collaboration with Doctor Damon McCune, PhD, RDN, who's director of dietetics at UNLV, we wrote the vertical diet together and launched the book and the ebook to try and provide people with lifestyle nutrition interventions to help them with things like

low thyroids. Assuming it's not hashimoto's and maybe it's iodine or some other lifestyle overtraining, stress, underslept and then getting sufficient protein, getting sufficient iron in the diet was a huge problem with women. Which women? These girls in particular in high school and the ones that I used to train way back in the early nineties, would demonize so many foods. They were on such a restrictive, what I'd call a guru diet and only eat egg whites and tilapia and broccoli and peanut

butter. The fewer foods the better as far as they were concerned. And you started to see problems with that. One of the problems is low iron anemia. Another problem might be they eliminate egg yolks. Well, that's where your, your biotin is for your skin, hair and nails. They might not be consuming sufficient sodium or iodine, and so their thyroid function slows and then they get hair loss as a result, or calcium. They demonize dairy. For so many years, they demonized fruit, which is loaded with

potassium. So it would hurt performance in terms of your gym performance. I'm scrolling through the website while you're doing that too. Yeah, yeah, that's the. The vertical diet has a meal prep, a nationwide meal prep where I make meals and ship them nationwide. Stanefferting.com has my ebook, a link to meal prep and the blood test info, etcetera, and a host of other things. So. But that's, you know, those are the lifestyle interventions that we, that we utilize with, you know, sleep,

nutrition and training. The blood tests can guide the way, and that really helps us get our clients into just feeling and looking better, irrespective of their current condition or their goals. Back on the blood work with PED users, do you ever have them do blood work as they titrate dosing, like on new, new compounds that they haven't used before, for example, so more frequently? Yeah,

yeah. You see, somebody will throw in something like masturon or even primobol and next thing you know, their estrogen starts to decline precipitously. And that can be a problem. I know in bodybuilding, you know, we used to take anti estrogens for years and didn't realize that that actually adversely affected libido. It actually had a decline in strength. We saw endothelial dysfunction as a result, you know, women in particular, bone mineral density loss.

There's a whole host of things that I think are adverse effects from anti estrogens and oxygen. Yeah, pretty, pretty bad on you. If you don't need to take them, like, yep, I'm not a fan. I would rather have them titrate smaller doses or what we would say micro dose smaller doses. I'd rather have you do 25 milligrams of tests a day rather than 200 milligrams a week and see if you couldn't reduce your estrogen that way. But again,

I'm not suggesting you need to reduce your estrogen. And if your testosterone is high, there should be a ratio, twelve to 17 to one, or somewhere in there, of testosterone to estrogen that would push you out of the normal zone because your testosterone is higher. We don't have to go too far into it, but just saying it. Yes, that's why I test if somebody's going to take an oral, I want to look at liver enzymes. Some people, they're even on something like

amavar under the tongue. I'll see some people's liver enzymes start to climb. And that's not always a bad thing to do to just myoglobin in the bloodstream, just muscle tissue breakdown or the increased training load. And then you would look at how closely to the blood test did you actually work out, which would, you know, you could run a five k day before a blood test and have elevated alt and ast, the liver enzymes. So I am, I do like to get frequent tests every time somebody adds

medications. So I can see how it specifically. The interesting thing, because people want to look blanket answers. This compound does x, but there's so much with individual how pharmacology

affects people, because our biochemistry is different. And so, like, I'm a big fan of, like, if you're taking something that is potential risk, you know, to take it at a small dose for a few weeks, do a blood test on the markers that you expected on, and then slowly titrate that dose up so you know what the effect of that is on it. And then again, your impact on the micro dosing, that's something actually I started doing very

early on just because I'm. I don't know if it's OCD. Like you definitely, probably not like you, but I. I like brushing my teeth every day. Makes it easier. So it's like, if I got to do something, I'm going to do it every day instead of Monday and then Wednesday evening and so on, trying to balance that out. So I just happened to have done micro my whole entire time. And then I found when I started recommending that concept to other people, like ten years ago, they're like, oh, wow, this really,

really helps. Like, my estrogen isn't spiking as much. I feel better. I don't have that crash two days after my, my, my TRT dose, like I feel. And now that has started to become really common. I definitely wasn't one of the people influencing on that realm. But now we're seeing research. Yeah, you did it for compliance. But then we

discovered that it actually was more. It better replicated the pulsatile testosterone and had lower peaks and troughs, meaning it's the peaks that lead to the aromatization, the conversion of testosterone. Well, there's some biochemists that are arguing this, Stan. They're saying like, no, you don't understand the estrogen cleavage ratio rate. And it's not just the testosterone, how fast that's be absorbing, but the impact it has on all the other hormones.

The further you level things out, the better it's going to be. And there's plenty of actually massive amount of research supporting this. I know you know this. Yeah. And you know what? You hit on something that's interesting. There always seems to be an argument as to what the exact mechanism. I mean, for many, many, many years, we didn't know what the mechanism of action was for metformin. And then we come to find out there's actually multiple mechanisms

of action. But we knew that the end result, we knew what the outcome was. If you took it, the blood test would show a reduction in ha one c. We knew the outcome, but we couldn't explain the mechanism. That's common in a lot of things. We've been arguing about that with the physiology of hypertrophy for years. I mean, just five years ago, Schoenfeld was talking about muscular damage, and that's. Now, that's not the case. And now it's all, now it's all mechanical tension. So

we learn as we evolve. I want to give one example, a specific example from my personal experience that I later discovered. I don't know if this happened to you, and this is a small aside, very short aside, but oftentimes I learned what worked or didn't work for me after the fact, after the science came in, and I look back and I reflect upon things that I did 30 years ago, 20 years ago, ten years ago. And I'm like, oh, okay. That's why that worked. And I

probably, at the time, didn't even do it intentionally. Good or bad, whether something didn't work or did work, I took metformin 1415 years ago. I got weaker within two weeks, and then come to find out later, oh. And people are pushing a lot of other herbal supplements that do the same thing. They have the same mechanisms of action, inhibiting mTOR through Ampk signaling. And

it's like. And you find people that have done it successfully, and it's where they place the metformin around their training times, and that relates to nutrition. And it's like, you'll, you'll bungle onto this stuff. But I found. So I used to play around with, uh, a lot of those compounds maybe 15 years ago, and I was able to stay really great body composition, but I didn't add much muscle. Right. And that's, you know, it's. Yeah. And

it kind of goes back to, you know, I always said, one of the greatest philosophers, a good friend of both of ours, uh, once said that strength is never a weakness, and weakness is never a strength. And that was Mark Bell. And even a broken clock can be right twice a day. But I used, that was my measure. And again, I'll get back to my example, but that has been my measure and probably your measure for

decades. If it wasn't making you stronger, if you went to the gym and were weaker, something happened in the last 48 to 72 hours, and we could quickly identify, did I miss the night of sleep? Did I miss a meal? Am I overtrained? Am I taking metformin? We can quickly identify, hey, this is a problem, and weakness is never a strength. And so I came up with this list of things, and this came later in years, as well, as clients started calling me, hey, Stan, I just got

really weak recently. I'm like, are you on an anti estrogen? Bingo. I didn't use anti estrogens. And the body, my bodybuilder friends would say, no, your estrogen is going to. I'm like, it's on the high side, but I feel good. I'm way stronger. Like I like. And so that was when I was way off of what everybody was telling me to do.

I talked about this in a rant 78 years ago. I mean, I measured my blood work a month out, and a couple days after every single competition, powerlifting, bodybuilding, almost on a monthly basis. I got over 100 blood tests throughout my career. And estrogen was the thing when, I mean, it was like 130, I was strong as an ox. Now, I can't say that's causal. When it was low. You crap. You feel like crap.

Okay, so I'll circle back and just say my one example. You talked about using something specific and how the blood tests, why getting the blood test can show you how that particular specific medication affects you personally. I got tired of painting years ago. After I got done competing, I was just kind of in maintenance mode. I started using the cream, the test cream, and I felt great on it. My libido was great. My energy

was great. My testosterone never got over about 750, even if I was using two pumps a day. Scrotal application, it didn't matter. I mean, I've trained one of the strongest natural athletes in the world. His testosterone was 400. When he sent me his blood test, I laughed at him. I said, is this your blood test? And I can't mention his name because I don't want to disclose his personal. But I'm just saying that where your testosterone falls in that range isn't always the best measure of

deadlifting. 800 pounds at 198 with, you know, with tests under 200. Yes, perfect example. It's symptom related. And you were feeling, there's a big. Aspect of me over training and pushing hard in life. Like, yes, I could have addressed some lifestyle factors and got up to probably 400, 500, I'm sure. Let's dive into the world of

optimizing your overall health with pushing my physical limits. I encountered significant reductions in my health, and I reached out to Merrick Health as the premier telehealth service. I loved their personalized health coaching. From the comfort of my home, they empower you with the choice of self service diagnostic labs or what? I chose the guided optimization with expert interpretations of blood work, health coaching, and with medications delivered to my door. Merrick Health

is your partner. In optimizing your health. Listeners can seize a fantastic 10% discount off their first blood work with code resilience. At Merrick Health, that's code resilience for 10% off. Yeah, your fatigue was bad, and we see that in Olympic athletes, too. Generally, on average, their testosterone is around 400. Again, over training, it's fatigue. So I was taking the cream, and then all of a sudden I started noticing symptoms of BPH, benign prostatic

hyperplasia. You know, I'm a 50 year old, 48, 49 year old man at the time because it was some. It was at least six years ago, so probably 48, 49, and that's incomplete evacuation, increased sense of urgency, waking up more throughout the night. BPH, benign prosthetic hyperplasia. That's the problems that occur. So my next blood test, sure enough, my DHT is through the roof. My dihydrotestosterone, which impacts BpH. I had to get off of the cream, and I

was frustrated at the time because I felt like. I felt great, I had great energy, testosterone was great. I'm not suggesting it happens to everyone, but I'm saying if you start to see symptoms or if you get subsequent blood tests, I could have seen the DHT prior, but I wasn't running that test until I felt the BPH. Then I added a DHT, and that's when I saw it. The solution to that, at least if you're fortunate enough to be able to benefit from it, was tadalafil cialis, five

milligram. Tadalafil is quite commonly used now for a host of things. For improving blood pressure due to vasodilation, nitric oxide increase endothelial layer function, and a reduction in symptoms of BPH. And so I got on to dallafil, and in a reasonably short period of time, the symptoms subsided. So that's just an example, a specific example of what I. I've got a. Few things I'd love to just

throw out right there. You know, I've done this video before on vasodilators and the impact on cardiovascular health, as well as the kind of amplification because of the turnover, the, uh, the improvement in tissue quality. But the, you know, driving things through the muscle and back is like you're going to improve the effects of your diet, as well as if you're on TRT, all this, you're going to get weight out of it. And that's the vaso blitz product. That I

found it, uh, buildfast formula with. Because it is just foundationally going to improve the quality of tissue and enhance anything that you're doing right now. You'll love this because we're talking about metformin. And so, based on, you know, my, quite a length of time with history researching that stuff. A number of years ago, I came across research which has really become way more prevalent in the last six

years. You'll find a ton of research around four ISO hydro ah, for Hilton, uh, which is in fenugreek. And so what you're seeing with Fenugreek and I saw in results, is it's lowering blood glucose level. And so there's a lot of diabetes. But when you start diving into the mechanisms of action and then looking at like, what standardized extracts of four h I l do, they don't work through ampk signaling.

They work like sulfa type drugs for diabetes drugs where it increases the insulin, uh, uh, release from the pancreas. As well as having an improvement on the, you know, cellular biogenesis, the, you know, the, the actual quality of what's, of, of the metabolism. So it's actually so long and short, you see an improvement in, uh, lipid values because you're using the, you know, energy better. You see an improvement in blood, in

fasting blood glucose levels. Unfortunately, with high doses of fenugreek, to get that, you've got all the tannins and the seed and everything in there, and makes you shit like, or cramp if the dose is needed. Makes you freaking cramp up in pain on the floor. Not that I know from personally experimenting, but. Well, that's how, you know, a supplement is working. We used to believe that when we'd take like gainers fuel 1000 from Joe Weider

way back in the day, with sucrose, maltose, dextrose. And next thing you know, you'd have diarrhea and you'd be like, oh, working so hot stuff and running to the toilet. So I created it. Just launched. This is a project I've been working on for like three years. Glycohack, which is the standardized extract of four AGL. It's the only one on the market because unfortunately, standardized fenugreek extract, the variance of the four Hil in it varies from

under 1%. So in the fractional percent, up to like 20 some percent. So you have no idea what you're getting. Man, it is crazy, because unlike the sofa type drugs, it only works with that insulin release. So it works via the normal mechanisms of, uh, improving, you know, energy uses. So you're getting the, the lower blood fasting, uh, uh, blood glucose levels. You're seeing an improvement in triglycerides. But when you take it in combination with a massive dose of carbs,

that kicks in. So you can't send your blood sugar too low because that property doesn't work without. But then it shuttles it. So now you can time that with like a pre workout meal that's a carb heavier and have that drive it to the muscle like one was using insulin.

But actually having something that's actually improving your health, it's fricking cool. Anyway, I had to throw that in there because it's a, it's, it's a cool product I've been working on for a number of years and misunderstood, I'm sure. Probably too much science to sell it. The more of that, the better. Well, you know, I'm a huge proponent of carbohydrates for

performance, for training, for weight gain, for a whole host of reasons. Of course, we know that, you know, the glycogen for anaerobic training, but we also see that in comparison to saturated fats, you get a greater, you get an increased accumulation of NAFLD, non alcoholic fatty liver disease from Oding on saturated fats as opposed to carbohydrates.

And so even an equivalent calorie, what they call an isocaloric comparison of saturated fats versus carbohydrates, the saturated fat intake will accelerate NAFLD at a faster rate, which, of course, leads to insulin resistance, high triglycerides, overuse of androgen and the. Androgen receptors causes your insulin resistance, too. For our people listening in that crowd.

And that is why I've always tried to keep overall fats reasonably low, and saturated fats very low, is particularly in calories and surpluses for weight gain in a calorie deficit. I'm not so concerned about it because, you know, weight loss will dramatically improve insulin resistance anyhow. But for weight gain, like I mentioned earlier, I'm working with the

current world's strongest man, Mitchell Hooper. And I'm also working with Hafthor Bjornsson right now and preparing him for the Arnold Classic. I hope everybody knows I didn't disclose anything that he hasn't already said. He's getting ready to compete in strongman again at the Arnold Classic on February 20, 28th and 9th, I believe, in Columbus, Ohio. And that is one of the

basis. I mean, these guys have to consume an enormous amount of calories, and they most certainly should be in a surplus, trying to gain weight all the way up to the day of the show. Mass moves mass, but I don't want

them to accumulate a whole lot of liver fat, which obviously is going to lead to metabolic syndrome. Even if they didn't care about short term of elevated blood pressure, etcetera, it'll affect their performance by having insulin resistance and the ability of those carbohydrates to be utilized if the saturated fats are too high. So my diet is low on butter, bacon, ribeyes, it's high

on 96. Four beef, egg, egg white blends, fat free greek yogurt, tons and tons and tons of carbohydrates, obviously high potassium carbs to begin with, potatoes, fruit, sourdough bread, oatmeal. And then, you know, we throw white rice in to cap off the calorie surplus that they need because you can eat a ton of it and it won't overfill you. So that's, that's a down and dirty on how I work with bulking. Obviously I have, you know, a different design for dieting, but that, that

is, that kind of gives you an insight. Into how the research, analysis video, just for entertainment, you'll love it. So that'd be great. Love to see it. I want to get, yeah, I kind. Of missed a little bit of the central theme of our podcast, but it's around resilience, just because I having too much fun diving into these other conversations. So central theme. This is resilience. What are your personal, like, non negotiable principles or practices that have helped you with your commitment?

Yeah, to your help. Yeah. I'm glad you asked that because it goes back to when I mentioned those 4 hours of sleep and seven day a week work and to run my business. That actually hurt me physically, physiologically, mentally. At the time, I experienced a lot of stress, anxiety and that kind of thing. And physically I was weak. And so those are my non negotiables. I did a video called stress for success. I encourage people to watch. It was named after the name of

a book written by Jim Lohr. I was hypogonadal due to varicoseal as age of 20, and that was in 87. And in 1997, I stopped competing in bodybuilding and powerlifting. I took a job with a big company and I was going to pour everything into building my career. And just a few years after that, started my own businesses. From 1997 to 2006, I went off of testosterone. I didn't take any and I thought that was a healthier option.

We know now from the research that hypogonadism increases all cause mortality as compared to having normal levels, I was absolutely miserable. And coupled with the fact that I was overworking at the time to try and run these businesses, here's the non negotiables. In addition to the testosterone, which I should have stayed on at an HRT dose, I would have felt much, much better. I had sacrificed the basics. I wasn't

sleeping well. I was eating dollar meals at McDonald's because during a significant period of this time, I was broke, running my own business and had credit cards tapped out, etcetera. And so I was just eating whatever was cheapest. Your college food, which is macaroni and cheese and one of those little ramen noodles and that kind of thing, spaghetti. And I wasn't exercising regularly. I hadn't been in the gym at one point for well over

a year and not consistently for two years. Those are my non negotiables now. When I finally went to the library, at my lowest point, when I started to suffer some pretty significant stress and waking up in the middle of the night with anxiety and panic attacks, staring at the ceiling because I thought my business was going to fold every day that I went to work, I thought I was near bankruptcy,

I just flipped the script. I'm just from sitting there in barnes and noble reading that book, I just left and I went right back to the same things that got me that I utilized throughout my bodybuilding career. And I immediately committed to. I called it paying myself first. I committed to my at least three, maybe four solid health meals with sufficient protein

at the time. It was going to be 7 hours of sleep, or at least give myself an opportunity to be in bed for 7 hours, whether I slept or not, rather than getting to bed by midnight knowing you had to be up at five. And then a portion of that was soaked up from scrolling through social media, which unfortunately I didn't have at the time. It would have been worse. And then the regular exercise at the time, I just started ten minute walks

and I joined a gym and went in and trained. Of course, the first thing that happened is I threw 315 on the bar and tried to bury a squat and I had a nerve fire all the way down. What year was this? And so this was, this must have been in 2001. About 2001, yeah. And it wasn't. So then I had back pain for damn near three months until I got some, I think it was Vioxx at the time. So I could actually sleep through a

full night. And the back pain healed, but the point of the story is those are my non negotiables and I didn't go back to competing until 2006, at which point I was back on full discipline mode. But prior to that, I had experienced a very low low as a result of not paying myself first and not taking care of the fundamentals, the foundation of everything that your health requires, ultimately, that business. That year, I had the best success ever.

When I started taking care of myself, stopped burning the candle at both ends and stopped being like shit and started exercising, I was more productive. A lot more productive. Thank you. That is really great. I only have one maybe quick question as it relates to that, and we'll wrap that. Wrap this up. Yeah. When you're talking to me, did you do anything on the mental side with being in this moment of every day? I'm going to work and I feel like I'm on the verge of bankruptcy and

how to get. Yeah. That'S why I went to the library and read that book, stress for success. I thought it was going to tell me how to manage my stress with things like meditation or what have you. It wasn't a book about that. It was a book about lifestyle. That was a book about sleep, eat and train. It was about that kind of thing. The one thing that I've done, and I talked about this, I think, in the same video, stress for success is I carry around a notepad all

the time. Here's notes of our conversation. While you and I are talking, I'm sitting here writing down to somewhat keep myself on track so I can circle back after all of my asides. Matthew Walker talked about the science behind a worry journal. When you go to bed at night, just sit down and start offloading things onto this. It could be things stressing you out or worrying you, but can also be to do list items that you don't want to sit there and

say, please don't forget, please don't forget. Please don't forget. All right, we've all done that. And so I write all these things down on the yellow pad throughout the day. It's really my to do list, but my to do list includes if I'll just sit there for if I'm stressed about something. Sometimes this happens to people and they don't really identify what the stressor is and they're just mad about something in general.

And if you take a moment to think about it, you can pinpoint it. And if you actually identify it, write it down on your piece of paper, then you can compartmentalize it. At least it's there. You can worry about it later when the time comes, if it's even something you have any control over. And I'm cautious to identify that. Is this something I'm not in control of, then why am I worried about it? Or you can have a plan of action

to remedy whatever that worry is. It works in many ways for me, for the checklist, of course, and I just cross things off throughout the day and try and prioritize them. I find that if, you know, you, obviously, I schedule phone calls or, you know, our meeting in my phone. So, you know, or the kids, you know, schedule. But for the most part, if I start putting these to do list items in my nightstand, I bring it into my bathroom. It's on my

dining room table. I carry it around with me. It goes in my car, it's sitting there in my passenger seat. And every time I'm, you know, trying to figure out, be more productive or what I have next on my list, it's right there. And I just glance over at it. And I also have a checklist,

really easy, you know, just check, check, check, check, check. Of the things I would like to accomplish every day and when I did them, and then I could quickly reference that. I asked my clients to send me some information off that checklist on a daily basis. Their morning weight, their hours of sleep, and a picture of each meal they eat. Hafthor Bjornsson send me every

meal that he eats. He takes a picture and sends it to me. So whether it's a dad bot or soccer mom, whether you're competing or not, that's just a way that you can track that which gets measured, gets improved, and see, when did I train, did I take my ten minute walks? And how many hours of sleep did I get? Because then at a glance, you can quickly quantify why or whether or not your goals are being achieved. When you look down at that piece of paper and see you've got three nights in

a row with less than 5 hours of sleep. I only took one walk yesterday. I only got one meal, or I had five. And they were, you know, my calories went way over. So I do still track things, even though I'm not competing because I have my own little mini goals, you know, so those are the, those are the two big things. That's a great assignment for the group this week, Stan. That's a really great way to end this podcast. I really appreciate covering

the fundamentals. That's probably the focus that's probably going to end up being the title of this podcast and appreciate that. For those that want to check out and learn about Stan's assignment for the week within our community, the endless evolution, though, go ahead and check that out on the discord. Also, we've got giveaways, prizes, all that good stuff, lots of free information. So, Stan, thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me, brother. Appreciate it. Good talking to you again.