Barbell Shrugged - 64- Do You Eat Enough Food To Perform At Your Best? Interview w/Paul Nobles of Eat To Perform

Episode Date: June 5, 2013

Are you wondering how you can adjust your diet to fuel performance and hit PR's?  Eating paleo is a great start, but to learn how to take your performance to the next level we interviewed Paul Nobles from Eat To Perform.  Paul shares his knowledge and experience with performance nutrition from how he structures his meals, and how you can figure out if you're eating enough.  You'll learn about the Eat To Perform calculator and the importance of knowing how much calories you're currently taking in (as it relates to performance).

This week on Barbell Shrugged, we interview Paul Nobles of Eat to Perform about how you should be eating as a competitive CrossFit athlete. Yo, this is CTP and you're listening to the Barbell Shrugged Podcast, the number one strength and conditioning podcast for CrossFitter. If you want to check out the video version, which you should, go to Fitter.TV and watch that because it's way cooler than just listening. And how do you spell Fitter.TV there, Mr. Bledsoe? F-I-T-R.TV. He's a good speller. All right, while you're there, definitely go and sign up for the newsletter. As part of signing up for the newsletter, you'll get a video that Mike made

where he shows you the top seven snatch mistakes that you're probably making that are keeping you from hitting that next PR and lifting some big weight. Yeah, look at the seminars, tune into the show, and get ready to become a more awesomer version of you. We give you the tools you need to succeed. You become a tool. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Mike Bledsoe here with Doug Larson and Chris Moore.

We're co-hosts. We're back together, gang. We're back together. The last three episodes we weren't. We have our guest Paul Nobles from Eat to Perform. He runs a website where they talk about nutrition and performance. It's going to be pretty cool to have a conversation with today. He's been hanging out this weekend. We've had

a ton of really great conversations and I can't wait for you guys to hear some of it. Real quick first, make sure to go to barbellshrug.com. Sign up for a newsletter so we can update you on all the stuff we've got going on. Quick update, have um for those

of you that haven't been paying attention we've been doing a weight gain challenge the last three months or two months now and these guys have been getting some incredible results everyone's hitting prs on their lifts snatch clean jerk squats you know back and front squat um the latest impressive lift was dude who blew up a 405 front squat. What was his name? Josh? I'm not sure. Did he just post it yesterday or something?

Yeah, he crushed it. You mean his real name? He has a fake Facebook name. Really? No, that's a different guy. Anyways, it doesn't matter. A lot of guys are really impressing the show. Everyone in the group officially knows we have no idea who anyone is now.

We're just looking at names all day long. But the results across the board are people are really realizing that Wacky would really be strong doing this. Yeah. I mean, there's 50 people in the group. I can't remember the weight for each person. God bless each one of them. They're our children. But a lot of guys are making really good results. You can go, if you go look in the shop on barbellshrug.com

and you look at the weight gain challenge, the 26 pounds in 26 weeks, you can actually see the testimonials of the guys. We had some guys just give us testimonials that have been doing it for two months, and they've got four more months to go, and they've already got really impressive results from just two months of training. I'd say on average each person has increased their snatch, clean jerk, and or front squat

between 10 and 30 pounds. Well, one guy just yesterday said, I had this goal in mind that at the end of six months, I would hit this lift, 315 squat or whatever it was, and he's already done it. I'm like, well, shit. How far can I go in another four months? Yeah. In eight weeks. So we've got that.

We're actually, it's been really successful. So we've decided that. We're actually, it's been really successful, so we've decided to launch it again. We were thinking about launching it in October, but we've had so many people

sign up for the one that's going to be coming out in October. They were like, well, we should probably just launch it this month. Yeah, we've got like over 200 people

on that waiting list. We're only letting like 50 people in the program. Yeah, so we're only letting so many people in. So that one's's gonna go on june 3rd monday so if you're listening to this uh that has been open for two days now so you better hurry up and get signed up hopefully you're on our newsletter list because if you were you would know about this uh but uh get signed if

you if you're interested in putting on 26 pounds in 26 weeks and uh increasing your lifts while not losing your cross fitness you can sign up for that class or that that challenge and that's gonna you can sign up starting now and it's gonna start on in july what's the day that's gonna july 8th yep july 8th is going to start. The sooner the better, too. I know that one of the reasons we started the weight gain challenge and it being six months long originally when we did it, it was right after the Open, was so that guys could get big and strong, and then that way they could start tapering back towards the Open. So the sooner you get on this program,

the sooner you're going to be a more competitive CrossFitter. You might be able to roll it over until next year's competitive cycle. Yeah, don't put it off. The sooner you do this, the better, for sure. Take action. Don't think. Act. Exactly.

All right, so, yeah, and don't forget, check out our Facebook page, and you can follow us on Twitter, at BarbellShrug. We do a daily BS where we answer very specific questions, and that's on the website as well. So don't forget to check all that out. So we're here with Paul Nobles, Eat to Perform. How did you get started with your website and advising people on how to eat differently and why did you do it? Because there's so many people out there already telling people how to eat, but you think that maybe you guys are giving better advice well the

emphasis of what we do is basically trying to get athletes to eat like athletes and um when we first started i'd actually been counseling people for somewhere in the neighborhood of about three years um about three years ago went to the university of of Minnesota trying to get a degree related to nutrition. I already have a four-year degree. And I was sitting there talking to the woman who, you know, great gal, but, you know, not performance-focused. Traditional academic mindset. Well, yeah, but she, you know, as we were sitting there talking and she's asking asking me why you know i want to go down this path and i was like well you know i need initials because otherwise i'm not going to really have any

credibility and she started just kind of talking to me like why do you think that and it was about three years ago yeah and so she um i said well let me give you an example of what i think you should do you know and so we started talking. The conversation probably went for about two to three hours. And she's like, dude, you do not need us. You could teach here. The long story short, you should write a book. People will recognize real will recognize real.

Wow, great advice. Yeah, and at that point, I had a group called Lean U. Right now that, you know, each forum is sort of taking over. I mean, we have 215,000 likes on Facebook, which is more than the CrossFit Games page. How did you do that? It's amazing. Well, I hope we can talk about it, Mike. Yeah, well, you asked that question

incredible parts you guys have only had that page up for a couple months we started february 12th the first uh the first uh video we put up was the video of neomatics um eating the donut every day yeah and uh the initial you know mike and i were talking about this a little bit where. So far, I like that plan, by the way. Yeah, well, kind of the vision that you have going in ends up being different as you cater to your audience. And what I was really just trying to get across to people was that you need to have some level of carbohydrate to fuel your athletic goals. And I'd say it was probably three weeks in before I realized that, like, you know, we had all the sugar-addicted people, and we'll talk about that in a little bit. But about three weeks in, like, just a light bulb went off in my head,

and I was like, everybody's under-eating. Like, everybody is under eating. Like everybody is under eating. And my background and the way that I counsel people is related to body fat testing and just kind of getting specific. Formally I was a professional poker player. And so, you know, data is really, really important, you know, as it relates to kind of finding trends. And so as I got healthy, that's how I got healthy was basically just trying to track everything.

I had been, you know, on the diet roller coaster, you know, much of my life, you know, ended up hypothyroidism, you know, all these other types of things. And I said, well, you know, what I didn't understand at that point was the whys, like, why am I fat? You know, why am, do I have no energy? You know, why, you know, what could you figure out if you started to analyze trends? You know, and one of the out if you started to analyze trends? You know, and one of the things that I see in your gym, you guys have a scale in your bathroom. You know, there's like an allergy to scales for some reason right now. And I just don't understand why you wouldn't have some level of, you know, accountability maybe is one way to say that. Yeah, I agree with that. But in general, tracking the trends started to show me, you know, I'd had some success with low carb, but, you know,

you basically just empty out your cells, and then, you know, pretty much the minute you start, you know, bringing back in the stuff that you really want to eat. Now, all of a sudden, your fat cells end up in you're on a roller coaster. And so once I started to figure out that you could actually cycle that a lot, a lot quicker, and have, you know, I know you have one question lined up, and we'll talk about that a little bit more. But, you know, if I knew that I could just occasionally do low carb and then, you know, keep my metabolism rolling, keep my muscles filled and things of that nature,

and that would allow me more energy performance and whatever, you know, it'd be pretty enlightening. I think the good majority of people, if they understood that, you know, carbohydrates come with a level of inflammation tax. And so if you just occasionally, you know, eat less carbohydrate, you know, and, and, you know, one of the things, you know, I talk a lot about carbohydrate and, um, people have a problem with that because they think that the panacea is 75 grams of carbohydrate a day or even 30 grams of carbohydrate a day.

Too many rules, too many demonized words. People are losing sight of what matters. Yeah, I don't believe that you should view foods as bad. I think that in the end, that ends up with less enlightenment and the more you can find out about the food that you have in your body and what it does for you, the better. And so we talk a lot about testing.

Chris and I were having a conversation about that. I mean, in general, you want to have some understanding of food. You want to have some understanding of tracking trends and what it does for you and how your performance... I was going to say about the trend thing, the coolest thing about the weight gain challenge is that people come in a little unsure. I'm going to be eating all this stuff.

I don't want to get fat, bro. We go, well, all that, yeah, natural emotions. We go, here's what we're going to do. Doug does it brilliantly. Like, look, you're going to plot your weight every morning. You're going to see some spikes. You're going to see some valleys. But all that shit that sways your emotion doesn't matter because you're going to see this little trend line.

Here's where you want to be. Here's where you are. And you look. Oh, two weeks into it, four weeks into it, I'm gaining weight. My snatch is up 15 pounds. I'm not getting fat. So being accountable and tracking it and seeing it for yourself is the proof. You wake up every morning seeing proof that what you're doing is the right thing.

Yeah, visual displays of information really help kind of damper the emotions. Yeah, you can do the same with your snatch or your squat or your deadlift. See what's happening. This new thing you're experimenting with, see if it's having the effect you want. Don't go on assumption and don't have the attitude where you walk into a gambling hall and say, I'm going to roll the dice. Let me see if I get lucky. Let me try this thing.

That's not what these professional gamblers are doing. They have the science in place. They're seeing what works. They're taking away what doesn't. They're keeping what's effective. This is the kind of attitude you need to have no matter what you're doing, man. It's brilliant so far. Yeah, I think that, you know, kind of, you know, calories don't matter.

You know, data doesn't matter. I just don't agree with that. I mean, I think that what you should try to do, you know, we have a calculator. I'll talk a little bit about that. And, you know, about three weeks in, you know, I started realizing that everybody was under eating and didn't. So when you say everybody, you mean specifically CrossFit, like performance athletes? You're not talking about general population. You're talking about people that are trying to compete.

Oh, 100%. I mean, at the time, I was basically working with CrossFit athletes. You're not talking about general population. You're talking about people that are trying to compete. Oh, 100%. I mean, at the time, I was basically working with CrossFit athletes. I think a lot of – I've recognized that with a lot of athletes. And, I mean, I've done it myself as well. It's like everyone gets on the paleo bandwagon. Everyone gets on the paleo bandwagon, and all of a sudden you cut out all these carbs because a lot of people associate that with being low carb. Yeah.

You know, the only carb they may be getting is that sweet potato after they train or something like that, and it's just not enough for the volume of training they're doing. And, you know, I've seen a lot of athletes in the last year switch from, hey, it's okay, you know, eat some more – eat some grains, you know, eat some rice, eat some more – you know, there's a lot of things out there you can eat. Eat that donut, you know, crush some ice cream once a week you have to exercise you have to exercise the shame you got to get the shame out of it like oh man i ate that bowl i

ate that potato too many i feel like a whore now you're not a whore man you're getting better like just let let trust this for just a second let go of this emotion but lose the guilt i've seen a lot of i've seen a lot of athletes switch over to a higher carbohydrate. You know, people who train hard and high volume, and they've seen a lot of benefits, you know, and a lot of them are like, oh, my training's going better. And a lot of times they don't even attribute it to the nutrition, but I can see that as a huge change for them.

Well, let me give you a couple examples, okay? One regional competitor I was working with, you know he's not like you know crossfit games um guy but you know he wants to be more competitive um gym owner um and you know he reached out to me early on and he was doing like a zone approach and by the way like i don't have any hate for zone or anything like it anything like that. I think it's fucking stupid, man. How many strawberries I got to eat? Like this whole fucking

tray of strawberries, how many blocks? 18? What? None of it ever makes sense. You have the zone and then you have what people have

turned the zone into. Yeah, I think. There's certain people out there that are eating. What's the difference, man? Well, there's people who read the zone and go, deli meat and strawberries.

Every fucking meal. It's zone. I mean, I've done it before. I'm like, deli meat and strawberries. Every fucking meal at Zone. I mean, I've done it before. I'm like, I'm going to eat Zone. So for every time I drink three beers, I've got to get six ounces of protein and so much fat. God, I hate that kind of way of thinking. That's how you're going to live your life is walking around every day counting blocks. But I'm pretty sure Barry Sears wasn't thinking, oh, you know what? Beer, deli meat, and almonds is going to be so good for people.

But it's what people turn zone into that's stupid. Well, that's the way they sell Weight Watchers for men, right? Is basically what they're saying is you can eat nachos. If you're a man and you listen to Weight Watchers, you've got a problem. Bigger than diet. I agree with that. Your ass needs to go ride a motorcycle or something. I mean, in the end, the only way that you're going to end up, you know, anything close to what you want with Weight Watchers is consistently eating at a really low calorie number.

Can you imagine sitting in a restaurant? You've got a beer. You've got a fucking steak in front of you, a beautiful steak. You're like, let me see here. How many points is this here steak? Your life just shot off in a wrong trajectory. Yeah, I think, you know, my actual, my blog used to be called Your Diet Sucks. And what I was trying to get across at that point before we decided, you know, maybe eat to perform

is a little bit better, less harsh way of saying that. But what was happening, like for instance, in the case of this athlete, he had his own number set. He was a 220-pound man, had his own number set at about 22 to 2,500 calories. And I just basically did some math for him. We put him, I think we were at like 4,000 calories. He went from 220 to 225 to about 212 in, I'd say, 10 days. Because he already had the muscle. He already had the metabolic functioning.

He just needed to wake it up and that's you know even you know we do a lot of work with Elizabeth Akam Wally it's kind of interesting with Elizabeth because you know no one could take credit for Elizabeth I mean Elizabeth takes credit for it for a freak in fact and you know I do want to say that. I hate before and afters where the diet author is kind of putting it out there like that person would not have

gotten there without me. I think that's total bullshit because the people are putting themselves under the weight. The people are doing the program. In a lot of cases, you know, for me, you know, where I'm telling people to eat a little bit more and then just eat less occasionally, you know, mentally it's sort of difficult, especially for, you know, women, which is the

majority of my clientele or the people that we work with. it's sort of tough to get there mentally. And, you know, but we have now somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,000 Science Lab members, 900 really active members. We get the occasional Doug's in the group. We get the occasional, oh, my God, I'm up three pounds, you know. That's me. That's you, Doug? That's me in the group.

Yeah. But we had actually That's you, Doug? That's me in the group. Yeah. But we had actually. What about my abs? We had, well, like. What is the Science Lab group? What is that? Science Lab is. Sounds cool.

So is this a membership option on your website? Is that right? Well, basically, we sell metabolic flexibility for high-intensity athletes. And so I know one of the questions was about – Sounds fancy. Yeah, it is. That sounds fancy. It is fancy.

I should have thought of that name. No, too late. That's the name for how you guys structure your way of eating? Yeah. And everyone thinks you guys do car backloading, which isn't quite the same thing. No. Maybe real quick, talk about car backloading and then talk about metabolic flexibility, how they're the same, how they're different, and then kind of why you guys choose to do it the way you do it.

And how many donuts are involved? Yeah. Well, you know, that's up to you a little bit. You should eat donuts during the show. But, like, just to kind of get back to the Science Lab part, you basically become a Science Lab member or you have the option to be in the group. And what that allows you is to talk to me, Mike, Julia. We have basically about eight team leaders in the group.

And we deal with a lot of women. And the book is you're going to load most of your carbohydrate around your workouts. We have all the various scenarios and meal planning and things of this nature. And the real nice thing about it is it's very CrossFit. We wrote the book specifically for CrossFit, Olympic lifting, and powerlifting. And so how it differs from carb backloading, it's a lot more flexible. You know, car backloading, when we, I initially started talking to Mike. Mike has done, you know, various work pretty much every weekend.

Mike is, you know, Mike Nelson. He presents at some conference with a bunch of nerds, and they all do their nerd thing. No offense, nerds, we love you. Yeah, all right. We're nerds sometimes. I'm most certainly a nerd. It's the best thing to be in life.

You run a group called the Science Lab. Yeah, for sure. So we appreciate data. We appreciate an understanding of yourself. And we appreciate testing. And results, man. That gives you the results. That's what everybody appreciates in the end, isn't it?

Let's be real here. Yeah. Get some results for yourself. I agree. I think that when we talk about car backloading, we started selling car backloading as one of our first um books i talked to mike about you know it's it's kind of difficult you know you're talking to the person that's considered to be the authority on metabolic flexibility and so i'm like hey man you know

you and i've been cool for a couple years you know i've been following your work all along i really think that you know we should try and figure out something. He's like, yeah, I don't know how much of an audience there is for what you're doing. And so, you know, we ended up touching base afterwards. But in that initial conversation, I said, well, I'm thinking that car backloading will be where I'll start. And even though it has, like, gaping holes where it's not specific for CrossFit, I mean, Kiefer talks about it in the book that it's not written for CrossFit. Yeah, he wrote it for powerlifters and strongman competitors primarily. Yeah, and so, like, if you're trying to squat 1,000 pounds um it's a real good fit for you and uh

i do think that some of the extremes that he talks about where you're having 600 grams of carbs you know um you know around your workouts um in the evenings and then 30 grams of carbs for two days that's not something that i think sets up metabolically real well for you flexibility. Too extreme on either side? Yeah. I don't think that's necessary. You know, I'd say if you looked at the way that we do it, it probably comes out to an average of about the same thing.

You know, Mike, the majority of Mike's clients weren't CrossFit, you know, type people. And it's been pretty enlightening for Mike, you know, Mike, the majority of Mike's clients weren't CrossFit, you know, type people. And it's been pretty enlightening for Mike, you know, to see. Because the way that he counsels people is to have most of their carbohydrate. Most of them are truthfully looking for, like, a deficit approach, you know. And, you know, that really isn't what we teach. We're teaching mostly, you know, you want to be eating close to your total daily energy expenditure most of the time. That's going to set up real well for muscle maintenance, muscle building. And then if you eat less occasionally, then that's going to set you up for better fat loss. And, you know, Doug, you talked about that a little bit

with your experience related to DEXA and some of the fighting stuff. And I think that that sets up real well to exactly what we're talking about. So can you talk about that a little bit? The other day I was talking about MMA and how when I was cutting for MMA, I usually go from like 200, 20 205 and then I cut down to maybe

like 187 185 and then I would water weight cut down to 170 and like in that six-week period where I go from 205 to 185 ish I'd lose body fat wise from about 13 percent down to about six and a half percent based on the DEXA scans that I got. And looking damn good when you do it, I'll tell you. That's right, keeping my abs. And you're saying that most CrossFit athletes, if they're super lean all the time, won't perform that well. Yes. And I totally agree.

If you're trying to be incredibly lean, then you're not going to perform as well as if you're just not quite that lean. You can still look good and still be a pretty trim person. If you're 10% body fat or 12% body fat, you're still going to look pretty good. You're still going to have abs. But you're not shredded. And you're going to perform better having a little bit more body fat.

And certainly for me, as an MMA fighter, I performed better when I was right around 195, 200 pounds with a little more body fat. I felt better. I was better conditioned. In my case, as an MMA fighter, it's a little bit different because I'm trying to get into a weight class where compared to the other 170s, I'm bigger and stronger. And more importantly for me, I'm actually taller.

Yeah, because if you fight guys who are cutting down from fucking 230 to get to 205, you're going to get your ass beat by that guy, right? Yeah. At 170, I'm bigger and stronger than pretty much everyone I fight. And again, for me, as a person who excels more at grappling and has more trouble with boxing, with taller athletes that can punch me from farther away, that gives me a lot of trouble. So I like being the taller athlete. At 170, I'm taller than the guys that are 185.

Right, but so at 170, as an example, what would you say is the percentage of your athleticism or performance like you're probably not a hundred percent as an example no but you're you already have a genetic advantage over your opponents and so it allows you to perform well without you know necessarily being a comfortable weight for you yeah i'm definitely like 80 or 85 percent as as strong like measurably strong like my deadlift will go from over 500 down to you know 450 or 440 for for a couple weeks while i'm while i'm cutting down and which is still way more than those dudes are deadlifting who are naturally floating around that way i mean you're still

right a surplus of benefit there yeah for at 170 there's a bigger discrepancy in in strength between me and the other guys compared to if I just stayed at 185 and then just made that cut from 205 to 185. So that's why I do it. I like having that bigger discrepancy. But being super lean, I'm not as athletic. So for CrossFit, where weight – it's not a weight class sport. It doesn't necessarily matter if you are lighter and leaner.

It's nice to look good, but you probably will perform better if you eat more carbs, you carry a little bit more body fat, and you're not super shredded all the time. The problem with that is that I have visible abs at 15%. And so I think people get it in their head that they need to be 8% or 12% or something of this nature.

And that is where actually I think some of the body fat testing sort of goes the wrong way. That's why I like your 26-day challenge, is because... Do you get a buzz? I've got a buzz, but it ain't from the machinery, man. Well, that party yesterday was pretty crazy. I'm thinking Doug's at least feeling a little bit of that yesterday. But, yeah, like as an example, you know, the one thing that I always point out, and we have an article about this and people constantly give me heat.

A lot of people really respond well to the article. It's, you know, why Crossfit athletes shouldn't aspire to be shredded and when i say shredded i mean you're not going to hit the podium at four to five percent no nobody has you know and when you look at kalipa when you look at rich froning i think i think people think that rich froning is shredded well you know if rich froning would show up at a bodybuilding competition you would know he's not shredded. But would you be happy looking like Rich Froning? I sure as hell would.

He's okay. Which, by the way, when those bodybuilders are on stage, they look great, but those guys are struggling to stand up when they're on stage. They are not at their best performance in their best performance state. The crazy thing I see about those guys is the whole story of where, if you knew the pain they were in when they're on stage, they don't even have any feet in the soles

of their feet. The natural fat padding so you can walk comfortably with these bones in your feet is gone and now they're struggling just to walk around. It's a fucking terrible existence.

They feel like shit but they look great. That's why I say bodybuilders are, for everything crazy about their lifestyle, are the most committed people I've ever seen in my life.

Oh, my God. This is torture. You're trying to kill yourself. It's absolutely a 24-hour job. And it's pretty well documented that these people are shortening their life. And when you're a chronic dieter, it's not favorable as it relates to health. You're losing your point, man. It's okay to look huge and shredded in a coffin.

This is all that matters. We've's okay to look huge and shredded in the coffin this is all it matters we gotta be fucking huge and shredded and if i die at 32 that doesn't matter because i'll live forever in the minds of these meatheads who don't give a shit about anything being huge that's that's the mentality that's crazy well julia leduski i think bodybuilding is cool as shit as long as you know what you're doing and why you're doing it and maybe hit it hard hit it hard and live it and then get out of it when you feel like your body can't tolerate it. Get the experience and get out. But Julia Ledusky is our powerlifting coach. I know her, yeah. She's actually pretty well thought of in powerlifting,

and she actually just finished two physique competitions. She sort of talks about... She's got a couple kids now too, right? Yeah, she looks great. I mean, and she does our women's classes with me. And the reason why I have her as the leader for us is because I believe in getting strong. And her coach is John Meadows.

I don't know how well you guys know john meadows but john i'm not familiar john yeah john takes a um you know the famous saying from john is that uh you know you you you keep the muscle in that you're earning around your workouts and then you use the other 22 hours a day to burn fat and that doesn't perfectly describe what what we do um because i'll just talk a little bit about how i do my workout i mean you know i for a lot of people that look at me and go well you know you're not super jacked i don't know that i want to be that guy. Well, you know, I think that you have to be realistic about what someone knows compared to,

you know, a lifetime of training. I mean, you know, I've only been lifting weights for less than two years, you know? And so, you know, what that will look like in, in five years, 10 years, I think it'll be probably. You gotta be careful anyway with like picking coaches and advice based on ability cuz I mean shit my all-time hero CTP will nod his head with this small time here was Michael Jordan saying he was your all-time hero he's my homeboy but like like when you look to some people for advice you keep mine like okay like Michael Jordan was if I

met him I would like fall my knees and like when i was a kid this guy was god like i watched the bulls play every every day man this is like this guy's the best that can ever be and he still is don't try to bring this lebron lebron james shit until he's michael the point is the point is he's the best at what he did for all time and a really shitty coach and like gm when it comes to trying to give advice about how to build a team because what he did didn't translate. So when I think about advice and who can give it, somebody has a great pearl for you, and they could be just a guy who's like, I've just been doing this, and something seems intuitive and beautiful to me.

You should listen to me. If you want to give advice from Rich about how to be rich, I don't know if that works out. You've got to keep your mind open and kind of survey everybody who can give you great advice. And somebody who is struggling in your CrossFit gym who just said, look, this clicked for me. I had this beautiful thought. They can be what gives you the greatest advice.

And they can just be a beginner who's been doing it, and they're still struggling with weight. But they have something to teach you too, man. Well, I would say that anybody looking at me and going, well, you know, I don't want to be like that dude, you know, I mean, you could also go, you know, I train or, you know, work with some of the highest CrossFitters, you know, in the sport. And, you know, most people would want to be those people, you know, and the reality is, is that you have to be able to take kind of bits and pieces. But I'm a little distracted because I want to get to two things that we've sort of skipped over. But I think a lot of people miss their potential related to trying to attain abs. And I see a lot of young people.

It's a distraction. Yeah, 21-year-old men that are missing their athletic potential because they're way too focused on the fat below their navel. And I talk about this quite a bit, is that you need to break up. This happens with a lot of women, but it happens with a lot of younger guys too. You need to break up with your dysfunctional relationship with your fat layer. And if you can do that, you'll probably end up lifting more. And you'll probably still get plenty laid, right?

Right, right. You'll be fine. Is it a riptale that says the first thing all dudes need to do is just go to 200 pounds? Yeah. That's the first thing any guy should do. If you don't weigh 200, go to 200.

Go to 200 first and then worry about everything else. Your performance will go up. I think we were talking about this earlier. I used to be much more caught up in my physique when I was younger. And I think that's started my growth on a lot of performance. But now you're married. Don't worry about that anymore.

I don't have to worry about it. No big deal. Sorry, Ashley. Sorry, Ashley. She's obligated to give you sex. We need to apologize to Ashley a lot more. I know. That's right.

Let's apologize on behalf of but let's so i feel like that's just be in the eyes of the lord of the show but once once i started focusing on performance and i kind of you know let physique take a back seat i what i found was my physique was probably better than ever yeah and then because i wasn't so caught up with it i was happy with it yeah and so i was i was much more able to just focus on my training and my performance, and I was having a much better time with life in general because I wasn't, like, focused on the physique. That ties into all this, like, just being present now on what matters.

Like, okay, what I've got to do today, this workout, this is the most important thing I can do. I know what I should be eating. These long-term aspirations of where I want to get, you need to keep that in mind, and you need to measure where you're going and how fast you're going against that, and change as you get along,

because your goals could change. Talk about this in your book. I do. It sounds like, your book's called Progress, and this sounds like a talk on progress. Yeah, but it's this idea of not forcing the path. You get an idea where you start out or where you'd like to be, and now you're here.

You know the things that will take you in a good direction. But if you say, I'm going to get abs no matter what, I'm just going to chase that, then that pulls you away from actually the direction you need to go. You're forcing yourself down a path that won't be important in the long run. But if you go where you need to go, you're going to get there anyway. But you might not get the result you want if you chase it hard. I think trying to eat for physique and then trying to eat for performance could be seen

in a lot of people's mind as two different things. In fact, if you're eating for optimal performance, it means you can train harder, more frequently, and you're going to end up with that physique you want. There's nothing more favorable to your metabolism than muscle, you know, and the amount of muscle that you have and the amount of muscle that you're able to maintain. I think that if you wake up every single morning and go, I want to be 8% body fat, that will drive you crazy. But you're deluding yourself. But if you wake up every single morning you go okay my my

you know squat is 315 i'm gonna try and get my squat to 355 that's motivating like you wake up just thrilled about that every single day i mean you know recently you know i took my deadlift from 420 to to 507 and everybody's like oh my god you know what's what was the the the programming on that you know everybody wants like a system i said you want to know what the real system was i put on 10 pounds you know i said you know maybe i'm limiting myself genetically and so you know i was 163 i think the day that i deadlifted um i was 175 i probably you know it was a little watery at that point you know um but realistically um the weight made the biggest difference and so it's the easiest most intuitive thing like i want to be stronger maybe i should put on a bunch of muscle because that makes me

stronger yeah no no bullshit program okay no bullshit telegraph program necessary man yeah but the complicated thing was not what you needed. But see, you're making an assumption there that I gained muscle. I did not gain muscle. I mean, the idea that I gained 12 pounds of muscle in three weeks, that did not happen. It was really more of an approach. I'd say that starting... Sorry, my stomach.

But – Just puke, man. Just get it out. Yeah. We'll vacuum this later. Yeah, starting the – you know, at the time, I was trying to fuel my workouts mostly at night. My workouts were pretty early. And so I kind of bumped my workouts to about 10, 11 o'clock, and then started to have a pre-workout drink and was just finding right off the bat. And

actually, Elizabeth talked about this with me about three weeks ago, where, you know, she started to add some carbohydrates to her pre-workout routine in the morning, and she's found that her workouts, and if you've seen any of the workouts that she's done, she's won four out of the five events. I'm not saying that, you know, anything that, once again, you know, I teach people to teach themselves, you know, and they deserve all the credit and you know i think that uh if you're performance focused it just allows you to get off of that deficit treadmill that everybody has been on for life you know and crossfitters are better about it in terms of the performance side of things but what we've seen is that you know just a small

introduction of you know getting specific like when laura was on your show you know you guys had talked to her many times about you know you probably need to eat more you probably need to eat more you probably need to eat more but she was way under eating man yeah justically under eating yeah and so um yeah nothing that you guys had said to her really made a connection because she's like okay i'll have a few more carrots like we're not talking about a few more carrots we're talking about 1200 more calories a day to fuel your performance and then you know shortly after that you know she squats 280 at 110 you know and i think there is this fear that you're going to get fat we had a we had a gal in our group um just post you know i'm not real big into before and after pictures because they're not real big into

shaming type of stuff plus there's also women and men and so that can get a little weird at times um but i did allow one the other day um i don't know if you saw the pictures of it or not but um the gal gained six pounds you'd have thought she lost 30 pounds um i mean literally the most dramatic because most of the people that show up at my site they they're coming from a really carb-restricted background. And, you know, there's two scenarios where you can see the biggest gains. One, you're new. You know, that's going to allow you to gain the most amount of muscle because you, you know,

hadn't been activating that muscle for a long period of time. The other biggest gain is if you're coming from a very carb-restricted background because essentially your muscle is somewhere between 60% to 90% water at any given time. So the big magic of low-carbohydrate diets is that you're just taking all the water out of your muscle, and so therefore you end up being a little weaker as a result, and you're not going to necessarily perform better from from a strength perspective there's maybe some arguments like me you start getting the crippling tendonitis in your shoulders because you're being dumb you don't realize how dehydrated you are i take a

break real quick yeah let's sneak it in there you gotta pee or something oh i know he does i almost speaking of hydration i almost jumped up i was like was like, should I cut him off or should I just leave? Like, the most important thing is to think yourself. Speaking of hydrated, let's put your hand in a glass of warm water. Hey, guys, this is Rich Vroning, and you're listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to fitter.tv. All right, we're back talking in the socks. This episode is brought to you by...

Socks. The TSA socks. Yeah, we were coming back from Florida, and those ass clowns fucking must have taken our... They went through my bag full of equipment, took everything out, supposedly put everything back in. We get back to Memphis, and we have no pop filters.

The little circular black thing that's usually in front of our face is actually very important. So now we had to get creative, and these are my dress socks. And he says they're clean. They're working perfectly well, by the way. They smell great. It's the same thing. This is how often I wear dress socks, though. Yeah, that's a good point.

Very, not ever. Never. Very kind of not ever. Yeah. Even if I i'm wearing a suit i'm usually just barefoot only when you're marrying somebody that's right that happens once every six months uh so anyways uh so we're back here with paul nobles from eat to perform we're talking about uh eating for athletic performance and maybe trying to get away from the physique mentality that a lot of people have and giving them some advice on how they can actually perform better and maybe forget about the six-pack a little bit. And Doug, you were at a little bit more where you wanted to go with some of the questions you had. Yeah, earlier we were talking about metabolic flexibility and carb backloading

and you never really touched on exactly specifically what each one of those were and how they're the same and how they're different so for everyone that doesn't know what carb backloading is and what metabolic flexibility is just give us a quick rundown of exactly like you know just a few short sentences sum it up and just tell us specifically what those two things are so basically with carb backloading you're going to um eat your carbohydrates before the day that you work out okay and so let's say that throughout the day you're going to have mostly fats proteins and fibers vegetables that's where you're going to get in a lot of your micronutrients and your vitamins. So we'll make it easy.

We'll say you're eating paleo at that time. Yep, you're eating paleo at that time. And so with carb backloading, you would then have just a shit ton of carbs. From basically any source, but yeah yeah i mean like that's actually the big appeal you know it really appeals to like 21 year old dudes sleep oreo cookies whatever just get the calories exactly so when are you doing that though when are you just crushing carbohydrates um probably in the window between let's say six and ten o'clock at

night you know which is usually pretty favorable for sleep, you know, cause you're, you're really full, um, carbohydrates make you sleepy. Um, there is there, Kiefer actually had a video up where he talked a little bit about having some fat before you go to bed. Cause a lot of times if you have that big, well, it's not going to sidetrack. So you're going to eat a bunch of carbohydrates at nighttime and healthy fats, proteins, and fibrous vegetables the rest of the day yep is that every day or is that just days you train or how does that work okay so what is what does that program recommend that we do very specifically well that program is meant for power lifters and so so very specifically what you're asking is something that isn't a great fit for CrossFit.

And so the majority of the time, you're going to be lifting three times a week, and then you're going to have four rest days. And so on those four rest days, you're going to be eating 30 grams of carbohydrate, which, once again, I mean, I'm not a proponent of carbohydrate. So on the rest days, you're not eating a bunch of carbohydrates. You're eating a bunch of carbohydrates on the training days. Yeah, and so like how many CrossFitters have four rest days? The night before the training days. The idea of carb backloading is that

you're actually, it sounds like you're eating them after you're working out, but it's actually setting up your workouts, right? So if I've got a heavy deadlift session at 11 o'clock the day after, the night before that heavy deadlift session, I'm going to crush these carbs. And then I've got a couple days off or a day off, I go back to the low carb, right? Right.

And so, like, you know, where it's similar to metabolic flexibility is we talk about loading your carbohydrates around your workouts but we're much more moderate towards the the carbohydrate like for instance for myself you know i'm probably 200 grams of carbohydrate maybe 250 grams of carbohydrate i load maybe about you know 100 150 around my workouts and then i save about 100 for the for the evening and um if you're a power lifter and you're trying to squat 1 000 pounds and things of this nature maybe you can get away with 600 grams of carbohydrate personally i've not really seen a lot of people have a lot of success with that without getting some level of fat you know but then they come back with this carb night solution some level

body fat is that what you mean yeah okay and and so they come back with this carb night solution some level of body fat is that what you mean yeah okay and and so they come back with this carb night solution because obviously at that point their metabolism and muscle is sort of fueled and so they can kind of get some real good results our approach is a little different and a little bit more gradual um in that you know we want your your um workouts to be fueled. So let me give you an example. Let's say that you load up your carbohydrates with carb backloading, and let's say that you work out at 6 p.m. the next day. Even though you had a lot of carbohydrates from the night before, you're not going to always walk into that 6 p.m. workout feeling 100%. And when I have tested carb backloading, my workouts did not always feel 100%. And they talk about that, that all your workouts aren't going to be great. Well, if you're a CrossFitter, you want almost all your workouts to be great.

And I said the other day, I put out a picture, and it said if you don't feel strong, you're doing it wrong. And where our program would differ is if you were working out at 6 p.m., you'd have, you know, probably 50 grams of carbohydrate and then 25 grams of protein right before that workout. Um, and, and you'd walk into that session fueled. And I think, you know, it's my experience. It's been an experience of the athletes that I work with that if you work out fueled, you'll end up being better. And then, you know, when I do like my heavy deadlift sessions or, you know, like tonight, I'll load up probably with white rice.

And right before your session, this will be the night before my session. I'll work out about 10, 11 o'clock. And then tomorrow morning I'll have 50 grams of carbohydrate with 25 grams of protein. And then I'll do my big deadlift session. And oftentimes, well, and then I'll do my big deadlift session. And oftentimes, well, and then I'll come back. It sort of depends on what my plan is for working out. Sometimes, you know, my wife wants to work out that evening. This is actually kind of an interesting thing that I do. Whenever I do a two-a-day or anything like that, I always do the woman's weight. Because if I deadlifted, I mean, most of my sets and reps are in the 400 range right now.

And I'm a smaller guy than every one of you. And so that's going to take something out of me. And so if I want to work out later that afternoon. Well, deadlifts always do. They take a chunk of you away when you do them. And usually I do, like, some light assistance work, whether it be, like, you know, on the hyper. Or I do a lot of three-poot kettlebell, just, like, power glute swings just to really activate my glutes um but uh so here to make to make this as specific and easy to and as easy to understand as possible say monday tuesday wednesday yep you're gonna work out

on tuesday afternoon yeah walk us through what monday looks like what tuesday looks like and what wednesday looks like for your for your diet and for your carbohydrate loading well i need to know i need to know well first of all you know what we do is we walk people through you know how they feel you know and they're testing how they feel you know yeah don't worry about them just just tell how you do it just give a specific example i know this is this is going to be perfect for everyone in every situation just give one specific example so everyone can understand okay if i'm doing CrossFit on Tuesday night, I'm not really loading all that aggressively. Because CrossFit doesn't put a demand on me quite the way that squatting 300 pounds would or deadlifting in the fours.

And so in general, I might just have like sweet potatoes that night. Which night? On Monday night. Monday night, got it. And then I have my coconut milk smoothie. That's a big recipe on Eat to Perform. Right before you go to bed? Right before I go to bed, yep.

It gives me a nice sleep. I also do cocoon sometimes. I usually don't do the coconut milk smoothie and cocoon. It's just like a bad flavor option. And so that doesn't work out really all that well. My wife works out at 6 p.m. That was an adjustment for really all that well. My wife works out at 6 p.m. That was an adjustment for me because I don't really like working out at 6 p.m. But, you know, she's my wife and I love her.

And, you know, I kind of wanted to support her journey. You're wise. Yeah. You know, and so. So Monday night you're eating sweet potatoes. You have a smoothie before you go to bed and then you're going to train on Tuesday. So what's Tuesday morning look like? What's Tuesday night look like? what's Tuesday night look like,

and what does Wednesday look like? Tuesday morning, a lot of times, well, almost every single time I'll fast. You're fasting on Tuesday morning? Yep. I won't eat until about noon, maybe 1 o'clock. Black coffee and some water when you get up, maybe nothing else. Pretty much. Yeah, I know you guys are really into bulletproof coffee,

but I just go black coffee. I do drink a lot of coffee. I will admit that. I mean, coffee is an appetite suppressant. I'm pretty good kind of testing stress levels and things of that nature, so I don't think it adversely affects things too much there. So all coffee in the morning, no real food. You're training at like 11 o'clock hour.

No, no, no. This is Tuesday night with my wife at 6 p.m oh okay so all day you didn't you didn't eat much in that morning what about during a day tuesday yeah okay so when's that first meal so that first meal is going to be it's usually hit you know it's kind of legendary on the site um i eat you know a ribeye um with a couple eggs um a lot you know uh you know grass-fed ribeyes i thought it was kind of interesting you're grass fed when when do you when do you do that that's right around noon one o'clock at noon on the tuesday before you train yep okay and so um and then around i'd say three o'clock i've just found

it really comfortable to have like a really good salad um which know, the base of the salad is usually something in the level of kale, chard, and spinach, and then various vegetables, some avocado maybe in there, but kind of far away from my training. So maybe like 2.30 to 3 o'clock, you know, something like that. And then I would say around 5 to 5 30 is when i'll have about 50 grams of carbohydrate um with 25 grams of protein i don't really need to fuel you do that with whole foods um right before you train no i do not uh shake yeah i do uh 50 grams of the targo and then uh 25 grams of progenics um uh so two-to-one ratio of carbs and protein. Yep.

Now, I do bump that a lot. You know, we can talk about my protocol for deadlifts. It's a little different. But in general, for, you know, a 15-minute WOD, you know, I don't need that much carbohydrate. You know, I certainly don't need, need you know 500 to 600 grams of carbohydrate which is kind of you know i mean keifer's pretty honest about the fact that you know he doesn't really have a lot of love for crossfitters you know he doesn't have a lot um it's not written for crossfit you know i think it's sort of interesting about

okay we're getting off track again so yep so tuesday night keep me on tuesday night yep you train at six you had your pre-workout shake what What do you do after that, and then what do you do the next day? Well, give me an example on what I'm doing. So for you, if you did 30 minutes of strength, say you did 5x5 back squats, and then you met Con for 20 minutes with whatever random movements, who cares? But you did some strength and then some conditioning. It took you roughly an hour, roughly what most people do

at any random CrossFit gym. Yeah. Some strength and some conditioning on Tuesday night at 6 o'clock. Yeah. You had pre-workout, two-to-one ratio, carbs and protein in a shake right before you train. And then what do you do afterward and what do you do the next day? Okay. So I'll set it up where it's really super favorable.

So let's say that the next day I'm going to squat pretty heavy, you know, doing like a Wendler cycle or something of that nature. No, we're not squatting the next day. You're going to squat on Tuesday night at 6 o'clock, and then what do you eat after that, and then what do you eat the next day if you're not training the next day? If I'm not training the next day, that's easy. So I will have

pretty similar Vitargo Progenix type of drink. Right after? Right after. I'll have either coconut milk smoothie or cocoon before bed. Maybe some sweet potatoes. Certainly wouldn't load aggressively because the next day is a rest day, and I don't need a lot of energy for a rest day.

And so a rest day, I'm almost certainly going to fast on that day. Today, as an example, is a rest day. I have not eaten anything. I mean, you guys made me drink this bulletproof coffee. It's got me all jittery. Forced it on them. Yeah. We like to have our guests drugged up.

But normally, you know, normally I'll use that as a eat eat less occasionally day and um you know that kind of keeps no would you still do your you still do the little meat and the ribeye at lunch or do you kind of just whatever occurs like oh a little bit of food here and then at night you're probably having a yeah i mean just paleo throughout that day i mean it's low carb i do low carb you know after you trained on tuesday night you did a post-workout shake or no yeah i did i did i always do like um either a post-workout shake or a whole food option so a whole food option let's say i was working out the next day might be you know um you know steak with sweet potatoes you know um there's not a vast difference

from what i've seen um through you know my various tests and a, you know, there's not a vast difference from what I've seen through, you know, my various tests and a lot of people in the science group, science lab group, where carb sources are going to be vastly different. I don't think that, you know, people are getting fat because they're not, you know, loading within 30 minutes. If you're having a shake within 30 minutes, it's mostly because of convenience. You know, the whole anabolic window, it's like, yeah, you know, there is some science that's favorable to that, but it's real marginal. I mean, it's not going to be the big answer to the puzzle. The big answer to the puzzle is always amount, you know, and it's always.

Getting enough calories in some form, whatever is convenient for you, so you do it. For sure. You want a meal, eat a meal. If you don't feel like eating don't eat compliance is the biggest issue yeah and so like on on wednesday i'm going to um i'm going to uh fast you know mostly through the morning eat um and that's a little bit of my my lean gains background it's just it's just what i find convenient honestly i mean it, and it just makes things a little bit more intuitive for me. But, you know, the way that evening would set up on Wednesday is largely dependent on, you know, whether I'm crossfitting or whether I'm lifting.

But usually after a rest day, I want to lift, you know, and I'm real big into a mega wave, um, HRV testing, um, and just, you know, kind of, you know, checking all that in the morning stress. So basically you're checking, this thing's giving you a reading of your, your blood pressure. It's, it's kind of trying to assess whether you're in a state of preparedness for lifting, right? How well you're reacting, if your body's ready. It is unreal. I mean, the changes that's made in my routine, I've gone from working out five to six days a week, doing a lot of two days and things of that nature, to literally going to four to five days a week.

I started using nasal strips when I sleep. I love those things, by the way. Yeah. I really do. It pairs well with your French style. That's right. I got my eye mask and my little nasal strips. Aren't you a peach when you're sleeping?

Dude, if I can't breathe, those nasal strips are the shit. They really magically make you be able to breathe. Sometimes I can't go to sleep at all because I can't fucking breathe. It keeps me up all night, those nasal strips. Let's get some Barbo Shrugged branded nasal strips. Shrug your face. Sleep with this. Okay, so I'm going to force you into one more specific example.

You just said that you do two a day. So if someone is – Very rarely. You have before, so you have experience with it. So say someone's a games athlete. They are four weeks out from the CrossFit Games. They're doing two a days, maybe three a days, multiple days a week. So back to our first example, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,

you're doing doubles each of those days. What would you suggest someone who's doing a double on Monday, a double on Tuesday, and a double on Wednesday, how would they structure their diet throughout the day? They're not trying to gain muscle. They're not trying to burn fat. They're trying to maintain weight and be as efficient as possible during the workout.

Well, some of it's going to be based on feel, you know, and, you know, I do happen to work with CrossFit Games athletes, and so it does allow me to have, we've written protocols on this. Our CrossFit intraday article was written by myself, Mike Nelson, and Elizabeth Akinwale, and, you know, there were some interesting things about that. But, you know, in the two-a-day protocol that I wrote, basically you're putting your carbs around your workouts. You're going to certainly up your energy levels for those days.

And, you know, even if the scale ends up a little bit higher on that day, you're certainly much better off, um, you know, with the workouts fueled. Now, certainly you're going to want to dial that in as you get closer to the event, because you don't want to be super heavy. Um, but I have athletes test that quite a bit where they know that their athleticism isn't being compromised by being up two to three pounds. A lot of times what they're finding is if they're up three to five pounds, it doesn't have a dramatic effect on their muscle ups. Well, especially if they were a little bit deficient before.

If you're a little too light and gain a little extra you're gonna be golden yeah i mean we you know that has been one really enlightening thing there is just such a big part of our community that believes in you know clean eating and you know i'm finding that you know with games athletes that they're not eating like like athletes should eat you know the way that um they kind of lose what you know they might have picked up in college or whatever and then end up uh end up kind of falling into you know this constant using your workouts to burn calories when you know what we're trying to do is you go into your workouts where you're performing better, and then that's going to lead to more favorable adaptation.

And in the end, you can always go back to that low-carbohydrate approach. That's the one thing that I want people to understand is that I'm a big advocate of that occasionally, and I'm a big advocate of that if you know what you're doing on the other side of things. But, you know, what happens for a lot of people, and, you know, we sort of joke about it in the group because people start eating more correctly. I mean, you know, there's a lot of different approaches that people take because they, you know, a lot of people want to do it low carb and you can't really do this super well low carb because that's not going to be favorable for protein turnover and things of this nature. Um, but pretty much no one reads the documentation, um, that we send to them. They just, you know, started carb backloading. There was no support for it. Or they just started eating more, you know. And then, you know, they sign up for the Science Lab and they're like, help, you know.

And so we talk people down from the cliff a lot, you know. I'm going to talk you down from the cliff right now. So let's go back to the original question. Perfect. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, working out twice a day, 10 a.m., 6 p.m. Specifically for you, just as an example, I know the answer is always it depends. No, no, no. What do you eat specifically for those three days?

Okay. Specifically, if I worked out at 10 p.m. or 10 a.m., I'd have probably two eggs, some bacon. You know, I kind of talk about bacon being a condiment, not a real meat. Maybe like some. It doesn't matter. It's sexy. Yeah. You must have it.

But maybe like some hazelnut butter. And usually I'm going to have that about two hours before. So I'll probably have that about 8 o'clock in the morning. And then it does sort of depend on whether or not it's a strength thing at 10 a.m., but in general it's going to be either 30 minutes before or an hour before, and this is also how I counsel my athletes, is you're going to have some carbohydrate. Usually I take creatine. We talked a little bit about you know loading you know aggressive

amount of creatine some people do it some people don't I find it works well for me but I'm not super concerned about you know um you know my gymnastic movements the way that you know uh CrossFit Games athlete might be um then they're going to almost certainly have some level of carbohydrate post-workout, and usually probably in a meal. So the best example would be chipotle with rice. So they'll have chipotle with rice after they work out, and then— That's a restaurant? Yes, chipotle.

It's like a big burrito with a lot of meat and veggies and guacamole and rice with it. It's a big, just carby, delicious meal. They want to recover from the workout that they put in earlier and then have some, you know, some energy going into their workout at 6 p.m. So where it does depend a little bit is normally you would have carbohydrate if you're feeling a little, you know, your body's a little drawn. You don't feel 100% going into that workout. But the majority of people actually got enough carbohydrate from the Chipotle where they don't actually need any carbohydrate going into that workout. And so going into the second workout of the day, going into the second workout. So so that that part is optional.

And then, you know, post-workout, you're going to have your your standard 50 grams of carbohydrate and then 25 grams of protein. And then, you know, you're going set up uh your evening meal for your your workouts um the following day a lot of it is you sort of you sort of you know what we do like with the with the calculator as an example people want to get like really super specific and counting calories and things like that and i have no hate for that but i think that you have to move you sort of like our conversation with the zone earlier. You have to move to more of an intuitive style of eating.

And so if you're, you know, if one of my athletes is sitting there feeling a little bloated, you know, from, you know, maybe excessive carbohydrate or the workouts that they did didn't stress them in the way that they thought it would there's just no reason that you would load a shit ton of carbohydrates that night going into tomorrow's sessions you know in general you know you want to be able to feel that out a little bit and so i think that you know having your carbohydrates around your workout you know and a good amount of them around your early morning workout kind of sets up the evening to where it ends up being more intuitive. Is that helpful? So basically what you're saying is if you're training, you should eat carbohydrates prior and post-workout.

And then if you're not training, you should eat low-carb. Yeah, I would say. We're drilling down to that. That's the golden rule. And you should eat protein all the time. Yeah, I would say. And then you should dial in your carbohydrates intuitively. So if you feel good, then you should eat that.

And if you don't feel good, maybe you should bump it or lower it. I mean, people want to make this super complicated. And I think one of the things that our system, I don't know that you would call it a system. An approach, a philosophy. An approach, it really is pretty flexible. Calculator is just a good place to start, kind of like zone is a good place to start, and then you should probably adjust from there.

Okay, the reason why I did the calculator is most people weren't aware of total daily energy expenditure. And so we had a lot of people. We talk about the sugar addict thing that keeps coming up. But tell the story. But the I'll tell the story right after this. But we we had a lot of people that I realized that everybody was under eating. And so I said, well, I wonder if we could just make a calculator just to kind of enlighten people on, you know, what four to five CrossFit workouts a week look like from total daily energy expenditure. Like how much fuel is going to take to actually meet that demand? know you know your average 135 pound woman you know crossfitting four to five days a week you know they're they were finding that their calories need to be 2400 2600 calories and then they knew

that instinctively they were eating 1500 calories and so what the calculator was there for is just a wake-up call it wasn't it wasn't like meant to be i'm going to meticulously eat this amount of food every single day and and you know with absolutely no direction like i did not want to do what we what what we started out the site without some level of support and you know when you read a lot of these books you don't have the ability to talk to the people who write this material. People can talk to me on a daily basis. Doug sees that in the group in the science lab. And Mike Nelson is answering questions.

Julia Ledusky is answering questions. So what's happening in these groups? So the people, they go to the website. They find the calculator. They start calculating their stuff. It's a wake-up call. They join the group. They find the calculator. They start calculating their stuff. It's a wake-up call. They join the group. They get in there.

And what's happening in the group that's, like, helping people out? Well, like I said, it's very CrossFit in that, you know, people are super supportive. One thing that I didn't, you know, when we set up the group, when we first started off, we... Are giving advice or yeah yeah for sure um when we first started off we had comments on the blog you know we had messages um you know on the facebook page and you know once we got to like 50 000 that became like super unmanageable and so i basically shut down all those avenues and I think at that point we were still just selling car backloading and then and then Mike was was um uh just finishing up the metabolic flexibility specifically for you know our sports and um and so that allowed me to

kind of direct everybody just to these people. And I put out a post because my dad and I were talking. And I said, yeah, I just find myself having to convince all these people, you know, that they need to eat adequate amounts for athletic activity. And he's like, dude, you don't have to convince anybody of anything. Your journey should speak for itself and your dad went all zen on you yeah yeah well you know and and and he said he said i saw a bumper sticker the other day those are not the droids you're looking for yeah he pulled that move on you oh shit you blew my mind but he he says, you know, I saw a bumper sticker the other day and it said,

you know, are you interested or are you committed? And that was one of those moments in the site that it changed my life, you know, because I quit talking to the interested people and I started talking to the committed people. And the committed people, to be honest with you, they either had to buy car backloading or now they have to buy car backloading or now they have to buy metabolic flexibility for high intensity athletes what do they get if they buy

that well they get to talk to paul nobles you know that's that's one of the advantages yeah it ends up being a big deal because you know what we're talking about people get the chance to talk to us yes it's real similar to that you know but just, you know, how many times do you buy a book and actually get to talk to the people that are writing this content? It's not often. And so, you know, Mike is... Those books aren't expensive either. What do those books cost?

Well, for metabolic flexibility, you know, it's $49.95. And so, you know, that's not going to be that big of a deal. I mean, Mike, he's made some video comments or content that's real specific to how you would load your carbohydrate. Like I said, the thing about Mike, I think that he works with a lot of clients that come from a deficit background. And so it's been really enlightening for him to see these super athletes and just how they work. But the big train conductor is me. How is buying the book different than the science lab? Or is that the same thing?

I'm confused. Well, you're'm confused. Okay. Well, you're easily confused. That's true. In all fairness. So are most people listening to this. Oh, yeah. As easily confused as me, I'm sure of it.

You represent the common man. That's right. The basic concept of metabolic flexibility is loaded carbohydrates around your workouts. Okay? And then Mike takes a topic that is really popular within the group, and he upstates that every single month with a lot of science. I mean, Mike's a scientist, you know what I mean? He actually pokes labs or pokes rats for a living, you know? And so he, you know, gives all the scientific references and things of this nature. The first month,

you know, we have a lot of women who, of women who believe that they're metabolically damaged. And so he did a really great chapter on metabolic damage. So if you buy the book, do you get access to the group? Yes. Yes, for sure. Which is the science lab. Is that what you're looking for? Yeah.

And that's the science lab? That is the science lab. So it's one and the same. Yes. You demonstrate commitment by buying the book. I got it. You buy it on the page. I. You demonstrate commitment by buying the book. I got it. You buy into the page. I didn't know the answer was that simple.

You buy the book. You get your education. You get into the group. You've already had the wool pulled from your eyes. Now you realize, holy shit, this calculator showed me I'm way off. So the attempt to close the gap is the 80% benefit I'm going to get initially. And you get into the group. And this guy blows your fucking mind with chapters specific to the

comments that are most relevant, and you drill down and get a deeper level of understanding, and the whole package gives you a fucking crushing deadlift. We need you for a testimonial. At 50 bucks, I get access to this group forever? Yeah. Okay.

What ends up happening is that the first... I'll stop you. I'll make this ends up happening is that, you know, the first – So I'll stop you. I'll make this point, which is great. If you're the kind of person – I'm talking to you, individual, who goes, 50 bucks for a book. If you don't think changing your body forever is worth 50 bucks, you're a piece of shit.

Well, let me just – Let me be honest with you. If you'll gladly pay 100 bucks for your iPhone every month and not fucking think two shits about that and spend all day on facebook wasting time with that device if you don't think 50 bucks to change your life is worth it you need to not be a part of this race move your fucking ass out of our country you're dragging us down seriously like get on re in his old age i'm serious but if you don't think spending some money on yourself to make yourself fucking righteous and better is worth it i have no respect for you well what people don't understand is that when i have private clients

which i can't have private clients anymore other than you know i make special exceptions for crossfit games athletes at this point but basically i charge people two thousand dollars a month you know and so having the ability to talk to and and mike's costs are similar, Julia's costs are similar. You know, we're high-level thinkers as it relates to this type of stuff. And if you want to have personal communication with those people, I mean, when somebody, you know, when I charge $2,000 a month, they're going to get my text. You know, they're going to have my cell phone. You know, they're going to be able to talk to me all the time. But usually, you know, most of those people kind of figure it out, you know they're they're going to be able to talk to me all the time and but usually you know most of those people kind of figured it out you know relatively quickly i

mean you know i was spending a lot of time working with models and bodybuilders and things like this and taking people from 12 to 5 that was not nearly as gratifying as what this has been you know and the one thing that i did not account for when we started selling metabolic flexibility was the fact that I thought people would pay to talk to Paul Nobles. They would ask me a question and they would move on their merry way. That's not what happened. It was really like a miracle. They started talking to each other, you know. And when they started talking to each other, they started mentoring each other.

We have spreadsheets that people are tracking their PRs, talking about their meal plans, things of this nature. We've got that going on in the 26 and 26 challenge where they start coaching each other. The magic starts coming. We drop in to give our insight and our coaching all the time and then that is coupled with this community like where a guy's like wow dude you just motivated me because you posted this video it looks so great i'm gonna train better uh what do you think i'm doing wrong you'd like they start going off on their on their own and yeah the value is not just in and being able to communicate with the coach the value is also in being in the community all right before we shut down the

show we asked everyone on Facebook what kind of questions that we should ask here on the show. Our buddy Dan said that he did your calculator, and he found out that he was taking in maybe 1,000 calories less than he probably should every day, 100 grams of fat less than he should every day. And for a while there, he was taking in a lot more fat, just off the recommendation of the calculator. And he was trying to put a can of coconut milk in his evening shake and eat multiple avocados a day and crushing nuts and and he

could do it for a while but he just was so full all the time and he found it really hard to keep up with that is that a common thing for people that are under eating they start eating more and it's just it's so overwhelming that they just feel like they're stuffing themselves all day every day what do they do what should they do? What should they do? Yeah. Well, first of all, you know, what happens with the calculator, especially for like bigger guys. Um, um, but this happens with women too. And we, we, we've actually really geared a lot of our, our programming. This is kind of the nice thing about being able to change with, um, you know, the group as, as people are having some difficulty, We found people actually drinking a spoonful of olive oil, trying to meet their fat.

We've got a video on that, don't we? One of our first videos ever. Gross. Shots of olive oil. And it's like, no, that really isn't the goal. We did start to... What everybody wanted to do was they wanted to put put in a real low carb number and then solve for fats that's the way a calculator works is that you you can you can put your protein either at lean

body mass you can put your protein at one gram per pound you can actually add oh we lost some lost some lighting there um but uh and then you can add protein what people wanted to do is they wanted to do our approach low carb and so uh but maybe that wasn't dan's scenario but but it will speak to that um so they would put in 100 grams of carbohydrate and they'd be like holy shit i'm supposed to be eating 268 grams of car or fats you know it's gotta come in somewhere so they're trying to add the fat yeah and mouths are crazy right and so what we we actually just put out some guidelines um within the within the calculator that said for women you probably want to try to solve for for carbs by putting in your fat numbers and so um for if you're a smaller woman, we have them, you know, start at 75 grams

and then 100 grams if, you know, you're for most women. And then for men, you know, usually comes in between 125 grams and 150 grams for fats. And then, you know, what they find is that if their protein numbers are, you know, one, you know, gram per pound, you know, their carbohydrates usually come in somewhere in the neighborhood of 250 grams, 300 grams, and it's a much more reasonable approach. And so we've, you know, we've had to coach people, we've had to put out some articles. That's the nice thing about being able to pivot as people are starting to have trouble, and that's the problem with buying a book that is a system. This is the way you're supposed to do it.

And in general, whatever you do, you should be able to have at least some level of communication with the diet author. You know, I mean, you know, that's why we tried to support carb backloading in the beginning because there was a lot of CrossFitters doing it. And we just found that the better approach was just to write our own damn book. Is this Dan from our gym? Yeah.

Oh, he's really lean. Yeah. So, I mean, you probably just want to drop your fat and up your carbs. Yeah. Don't be scared to eat lots of carbs. You'd feel a lot less full and it'll up your carbs. Yeah. Don't be scared to eat lots of carbs. You'd feel a lot less full

and it'll up your appetite. Well, it'll up your metabolism. Do we hit that one? That's acceptable answer? Yeah. Second question? Let's do the next question. Yeah, we got more questions to see.

All right. If I want to eat like a high-level competitor, how should I eat? Can you sum that up in like four sentences? Like super concise. I don't think I can do anything in four sentences. I don't think so either. I'm challenging you.

Challenges work well, you said. In your mind, you're going to write a PowerPoint slide. You get four bullets. And if you exceed the four bullets, we punch you in the dick right now. Okay. I think I got this. Eat adequate amount of calories.

I got my fucking fist clenched right now. Eat adequate amount of calories. I got my fucking fist clenched right now. Eat adequate amount of calories. That's my first bullet point. You got three more bullets. Okay. My second bullet point is load your carbohydrates around your workout. So far, so good, homie. Beautiful.

Okay. Your third is monitor your stress levels and get adequate rest. That counts. That's three. Okay. Good job. You wanted to explain more. No, no.

You put that period, the hard stop there. Good job. I'm good. I'm actually even struggling to have a fourth, but I think that... I think it's kind of two. Yeah. Four. Monitor stress levels and sleep.

Four. I just don't know that it's more difficult than that, right? Number four, slam bar. Eat adequate amounts. Have carbohydrates. If you can sum it up in three points, that's great. Let's do it. Point four.

Done. That's it. Done. Add in slam bars, crush PRs from our buddy John. That's a good fourth one. Fuck the bar up in the gym. Yeah. Yeah.

Good. Fucking high five to you, man. That's good. Put that on an actual PowerPoint slide. Sell it. $50. $50. $ that on an actual PowerPoint slide. Sell it. $50. $50.

$10. Whatever. Exclusive content. Doug can make it look fancy. He's good at making PowerPoint slides look fancy. Fiddling with the iPad, searching for that perfect question. You know who has the best PowerPoint slides in the world? It's Andy Galpin. Dr. Andy Galpin at Cal State.

They're very interactive. Yeah. Just so you know, one thing we haven't actually talked about is that in the science lab, you have the ability to conversate with all of us, but I do seminars online virtually every day. We have four to five. Webinars? Yep.

Every day? Yep. And basically, 30 to 40 people show show up and they ask me questions. What do you do it on? Do you have like content set or do you just like, or do you just let people ask questions or do you have like a topic of the day? No. I mean, you know, in general, a lot of times Julie and I will kick it about, you know,

some strength training topics or things of that nature. You just use like GoToWebinar or something? I use WebEx, which is a Cisco product. So people just log in. Yep. They log into WebEx and you hang out and answer questions. Yep. And actually we tape it on Google Hangouts.

So like right now you can go to YouTube.com. Google uses tapes? Yep. It's just the web describing it, dummy. But like slash heat to perform, and you can watch all the seminars that we've done since day one, and it's usually pretty enlightening. That's cool.

We've got to do a lot more of that shit. All right, here, last question. What supplements would you prescribe to someone who's trying to train specifically for performance in CrossFit? Well, I'm a big fan of creatine. I've written a lot about creatine. I think that that's something that's been well-researched researched and at this point if you're somebody who gives two shits about your muscle function your performance and maybe your long-term neurological health and well-being you just got to

fucking take creatine everybody should just about everybody should be taking it right yeah i think that at least a five grand scoop but maybe you want to play with these hyper doses 20 grams 30 grams i don't think 20 grams is a hyper dose to be honest with you i haven't really seen any problems with well maybe maybe hyper to the guy who's usually like well yeah i'll take the recommended dose like it's it's more than what people think they should take if you're if you're a crossfit uh athlete i don't see why you wouldn't be doing beta alanine right now that's the second one yeah yeah beta alanine is is almost like made for crossfit you know it what breaks down like if you're gonna even go to the trouble buying neon

shoes you better be taking fucking beta alanine i mean i think that i think what you're saying is sort of interesting i mean how many people in our community have a 50 jump rope um how many have 139 customized nanos and they go, Oh, I think your book's too expensive. It's like, it's bullshit. Look what you're doing.

I mean, you actually get to talk to me about it. I love, I love Mike Workington's article on CrossFit. I like Mike worked with him a little bit, but he put that article like, you know, if you're spending time about your,

your sleeves, your cap compression shit, and you're forgetting like, look, I just need to snatch and squat more. You're losing the fucking point of what you're doing.

Yeah, for sure. All right, guys, I think it's about time to wrap it up. So I'm going to let you guys do your plugs. There's probably a

lot of questions from this, and we should maybe like throw out a click to slink. We'll do like an afterglow, like ask us some more questions. We'll dig back into

this one or something. We won't do that. I'm just saying maybe we will. I mean, people want to make it more complicated, but remember, it's pretty simple. Doug will set the example for how to plug. He's running out of battery life, I think.

So we just opened up the next round of the six-month muscle gain challenge that started two days ago. So that only has 50 spots available. Like I said said we have about 200 people on that waiting list right now so it last time it filled up very quickly and we had to shut it down before the actual scheduled end date so if you want to get into that program go sign up as soon as possible you can sign up go to barbellstruck.com click on the shop go to online coaching and then click on the six month muscle gain challenge as part of that course you

get access to the factionaction Foods Nutrition course and to Maximum Mobility, which the value of those courses is over half the cost of that total program, plus you'll get access to me, Mike, and Chris in that Facebook group on a daily basis to watch videos of your lifts. We watch that shit. We do. We watch all the videos on there. We make comments. We help people with their weightlifting technique. We help people with their nutrition.

Really, any other questions you have, you have full access to us. Really, it's $100 a month for six months, and that's ridiculously cheap for the value that you get through that program. Everyone that's doing it right now is just thrilled with it, and they're making fantastic progress. We're excited to start the next one. Like I said, that opened two days ago. If you're watching this on Wednesday when this episode comes out.

So if you're watching this right now and you want to get into that program, go ahead and go over there, get signed up ASAP. That way you get in without it being filled up, and you don't have to wait until the next one. All right, Paul. Super. Well, we don't really have a whole lot of – we plugged it the whole show, is metabolic flexibility for high intensity athletes um we have

you know a challenge each month where athletes try and you know make a decent size gains focusing specifically on one lift um and then you know on august 1st we're actually going to start our version of what is the paleo challenge um option because i feel like you know paleo challenges as they exist where you know people are going for super calorie deficits for 30 days and just sucking it up is sort of broken and we're trying to come up with an answer for that and so that'll happen on august 1st so what website do we go to for that uh just eat to perform you know i've already put out.com yep i've already put out a couple posts. We're actually using Fitocracy for the one-month challenges where you're just trying to PR.

Cool. Yeah. Fitocracy. All right, Chris, what do you got? Well, I'm going to go ahead and request everybody go on iTunes, go on Amazon, either of those two places, type in Progress and Chris Moore, and you're going to see my book come up. Take a look at the free previews. Check it out.

The book is out. If you like it, download a copy. And please, please, please leave your commentary as a review. I'm confident that you'll probably want to offer a five-star review because everybody who's read this really, really has. A guy last night told me it was an exquisite read. And he wasn't bullshitting. If you don't leave five stars, don't bother.

Yeah, I mean, I think you will want to. I think you'll like it. So please, check it out. Leave a good review if you want. It's like $4.99 on Amazon and iTunes. It's a low barrier entry. I think it'll really help you get through some issues in terms of deciding what you want at a training.

It just made the iBooks, so I'll be downloading it. Yeah, it's available on the iPad for iBooks. And then anything that'll play, you can have your Kindle app on your iPhone, your iPad, or Kindle. That Amazon app will allow you to download from Amazon. We don't have an iPhone option yet, but if you just download the

Kindle free app, download the book, you're good to go. You're going to love it. Cool. Check it out. I want you guys to make sure to go to barbellshrug.com, sign up for the newsletter. That way we can inform you of all the stuff we have going on. We have some workshops, some training camps going on at different gyms.

If you sign up for those newsletters, we'll send you information on how you can get signed up for those. We've got one coming up in Atlanta and another one in the Miami, Fort Lauderdale area there in Miramar. CrossFit Bound and then CrossFit Siege. CrossFit Siege and CrossFit Bound, yep. So if you're interested in seeing us live and letting us coach you on weightlifting, nutrition, mobility, all the stuff that we like to try to specialize in. You should show up to one of those. Also go to iTunes.

Leave us five stars if you like this podcast. See you next time. Thanks, guys. Live sexy.