Barbell Shrugged - Barbell Shrugged  — Nutrition for CrossFit Athletes w/ Adee Zukier Cazayoux  — 327

Episode Date: August 1, 2018

Adee Zukier Cazayoux is founder and CEO of Working Against Gravity, who is also known as the “Barbell Gypsy”. You can find Adee weightlifting, bobsledding, powerlifting, or competing in the NPGL or the CrossFit open. In 2016, she took a Bronze Medal at the Canadian National Weightlifting Championships. Adee has a BAH Psychology, and Masters in Teaching. She is also a Precision Nutrition Level 1 coach, and is currently completing her Masters in Nutrition and Human Performance. As an athlete Adee has studied/trained under many renowned coaches, most notably Aimee Everett, national champion, Travis Mash, world champion powerlifter, and Steve Sandor, Hungarian national champion. In this episode, we go over nutrition for CrossFit Athletes. We dive into understanding macros, simplifying the nutrition process, nutrition for all levels of athletes, the first steps to creating long term success, behavior change to reach your goals, and more.   Enjoy! – Doug and Anders   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------Show notes at: http://www.shruggedcollective.com/bbs_zukiercazayoux ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Please support our partners! @organifi - www.organifi.com/shrugged to save 20% @thrivemarket - www.thrivemarket.com/shrugged for a free 30 days trial and $60 in free groceries @OMAX - www.tryomax.com/shrugged and receive a free box of Omega 3 Fish Oils @Onnit - www.onnit.com/shrugged for a free 14 pill bottle of the leading nootropic Alpha Brain and 10% savings on all purchases. @foursigmatic - www.foursigmatic.com/shrugged  to save 15% on your first purchase   ► Subscribe to Barbell Shrugged's Channel Here ► Subscribe to Shrugged Collective's Channel Here http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe 📲 🎧 Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher Shrugged Collective is a network of fitness, health and performance shows that help people achieve their physical and mental health goals.  Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first Barbell Shrugged podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini. We're also dedicated to helping affiliate gym owners grow their businesses and better serve their members by providing owners tools and resources like the Barbell Business Podcast. Find Shrugged Collective and their flagship show Barbell Shrugged here: SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES ► http://bit.ly/ShruggedCollectiveiTunes WEBSITE ► https://www.ShruggedCollective.com INSTAGRAM ► https://instagram.com/shruggedcollective FACEBOOK ► https://facebook.com/barbellshruggedpodcast TWITTER ► http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged  

Truck family, we're going to the CrossFit Games. Come hang out with us. Doug and I are flying out tomorrow. We're super stoked. We're going to hang out with people. We are going to be taking selfies all over the place. It's going to be the most fun ever. I'm really stoked to get out there. This is my first trip to Madison. On top of that, we are doing some of the coolest stuff we got hooked up with um fit aid and they are putting together one of the coolest fan experiences ever we are going to be co-hosting some of the fit aid morning show with kenny santucci um we are going to be doing shows, interview.

Christmas Abbott's going to be there. I just saw Christmas Abbott's outline for the show she's going to be doing on the Shrug Collective, which you should be really stoked about. Um, man, it's just going to be a really good time. I've never been to Madison. I went to the very first ever CrossFit Games in LA at the stadium and there was like nine people there. So to see how far it's come in what like the last 11 years I'm just like really really stoked about. I don't even know how many CrossFit Games there have been now but yeah when I was at the very

first one the big stadium event when Rich Froning fell off the rope and almost killed himself. There was like 12 people in the stands. Now this thing's sold out and it is just an epic weekend of fitness and a whole bunch of people rolling around with abs and very little clothes and all kinds of good stuff. Get over to the FitAid booth. I'm really stoked to hang out with Kenny in the mornings, the whole FitAid crew. I'm going to be slamming FitAids all weekend. If you'd like to shotgun a FitAid with me, make sure you come see me. I don't have a lot of hair.

It's going to be sunny, so I'm going to have a big straw party hat on. So if you see big straw party hat, that's me in a barbell shrug shirt. Come and hang out. I'd love to meet you love to give you a high five and uh tell me all about your training and everything you got going on in your life um just really stoked to get out there and see just the progression of the crossfit games since this thing has has been around um just such a cool event so cool to meet all of you so make sure you get out there we have adi cashew on the show this

weekend if you want to talk about the crossfit games she basically does nutrition for every single one of them it's incredible how many people she is doing nutrition for in the show she actually like goes through just off the top of her head and i feel like she is doing nutrition for like the top 20 athletes, especially on the female side. So it is really baller what she's got going on over and working against gravity. Wag. Want to give a shout out to our sponsors this week.

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to Thrive. ThriveMarket.com backslash shrug. Also want to thank Four Sigmatic. Had an awesome conversation with Taro a couple weeks back just scroll down your iTunes if you'd like to hear the importance of all

mushrooms, I've been on a deep dive in the world of mushrooms I've read Taro's book and it's super cool how he just took his life as a foraging farmer and from Finland I think that's a lot of Fs. I think I may have even said that in the show. But his mission is to bring the mushrooms to the mainstream

and how he's able to create Four Sigmatic, getting really healthy products. I love, I love and my wife love the matcha tea that he has created. I knew nothing about mushrooms until, well, I knew a little bit, but I feel like I have a very good grasp on mushrooms now, understanding after reading Taro's book, interviewing Taro, and then really just doing a lot of work and understanding what goes on at Four Sigmatic and the products they're creating. Love the matcha tea, the cordyceps, the lion's mane, all of them.

There's so many cool little names. Chaga, chaga's a mushroom. Do that one. Make sure you get in there. Mushrooms are important. They are kind of like the communicators of the entire world when it comes to our ecosystem that we live in, which is less important to your performance,

but incredibly important to your health because the DNA mixes really well with our DNA and you can create these things called adaptogens in your life. And adaptogens are like having a savings bank of boosted immunity in your body. So whenever you are attacked by viruses, germs, the adaptogens, you have a savings bank of them. Cordyceps have been used in the past by many of the long-distance aerobic communities. So there's a lot of benefits, and you can get into that episode. But make sure you get over to foursigmatic.com backslash shrug.

You're going to save 15% on your first order. Shrugged listeners, listen up. Foursigmatic, F-O-U-R-S-I-G-M-A-T-I-C.com backslash shrug. You're going to save 15% on your first order. Hope you guys love hanging out with our girl Adi. She's awesome. Working against gravity. Make sure you go check them out.

And time for the show. See you guys at the break. Better keep listening. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. Bag it on it. We're hanging out here in Texas. Our boy, Douglas E. Larson, hanging out. Strong Coffee in the house.

Mr. Von Rothfelder. Yo, today, Adi Kaju is in the house. And it's super exciting because you're one of those people that I just have known for so long without ever actually meeting you. I feel like we just, through the internet, through the interwebs, I'm so excited to be here and talk about all the things. Just pre-show, you gave us relationships, nutrition. I don't even know where we're going with this thing. Right.

But I'm excited to just, you have so much experience working with such high-level athletes and just the regular Joe. The lens that you view success through is super cool to me, and I'm really excited to hear kind of your thoughts on what separates people from success and failure and how we can start to implement these things into people's lives. Cool. I mean, I am so excited to be here. Barbell Shrugged is like, you know, part of my life forever. I love this show. I love all the people involved in this show.

So it's definitely like my pleasure to be here. Yeah, well, it this like your fourth time coming on the show, something like that? Well, actually, technically, I think it's my fifth, but one of the Barbell Business episodes didn't air. Ooh. Ooh. Ooh. Don't worry. Shots fired. Shots fired.

I don't know who's in charge here, but... To make it worse, we posted Michael's show. I know. But not your show. we posted Michael's show. I know. But not your show. Look, there's a level of quality content that we need to actually post. So a lot of pressure here today. Bring the heat. That was exactly a year ago.

And Michael is up next. So maybe this year we won't post his show. No, post his. Don't tell him. Post his. You guys have been on a little bit of an adventure moving from Vancouver. Oh, my gosh. All the way down to Austin over the last two years, three years.

Well, we started in Salt Lake City. Salt Lake City. Living in a van down by the river. Yeah, living in a van. There it is. Find a river. There you go. Different mountain every day.

Oh, that's solid. Really? That's what we did, yeah. That's killer. And you made it all the way up to Vancouver? We went from Salt Lake City through Yellowstone, Tetons, to Vancouver, then down to Seattle. Yeah. And once we got to Seattle, it was like, wow, it's really hard to run an online business from a trailer.

I have no signal. Where are we? I need to find a coffee shop. Where's the library? For real. That's what it started being. Yeah. You're like stalking outside of the local library that has free Wi-Fi.

You're like, I've got to get inside somehow. Siri. Let's zoom back out for a minute. So for the people that don't know who you are and haven't seen the past episodes you've been on, who are you? How did you get here? How do we all know each other? So my name is Adi Kaju, and I am the CEO and founder of a company called Working Against Gravity, an online nutrition coaching company that basically attempts to help transform your life through nutrition. We do that in many different ways, most primarily by finding a nutrition program that fits your lifestyle.

So that's what we do. It's like a mix of nutrition coaching and life coaching kind of at the same time um and how do we know each other well we met for the first time at the barbell mastermind in 2015 i think it was the first no we probably we met the year before that in miami at the soul open at a weightlifting meet um i mean you're hanging out travis mash he was a good buddy of ours right and then we became friends through him right exactly so i was training with travis mash um summer of 2014 which is like where working against gravity started and that's how it all that's how i got here yeah and then you and michael met at the barbell mastermind yes we call you guys the barbell matchmakers oh look at that love connection chuck woolery over here last night we had bledsoe and mark england and a couple people over for dinner, and we were laughing about how, you know, you go to a mastermind,

and they're like, you're going to 10X your return. And I look at Michael, and I'm like, we definitely 10X our return. We did it. Success. Yes. We're like a great testimonial for you guys, for sure. For sure. Yeah, I mean, actually, for the people that do know about Working Against Gravity

and how fucking phenomenal that success has been for you, we did Barbell Businesses with you two or three maybe, where the first one was probably within the first six months, and the next one was maybe a year later. So you can go back and listen to those early episodes and hear what it was like for you to actually start that company in that moment. Not like your recap of what it was like, but what it was like in the moment of like okay we don't know what's going to happen here's where we are right now and then listen to one a year later and then you can hear how you're doing right now it's cool to be able to actually go back and listen to that to that whole progression yeah i mean i've listened to it a couple times before just like interested to like to see how far you've come i'm listening

to myself being like wow i had no idea what i was doing yeah so so how has it evolved for people that haven't listened to those past episodes oh Oh man. I mean, it started just completely by accident. I had a blog. I was training with Travis mash in North Carolina. I really wanted to be a competitive Olympic weightlifter and compete internationally for Canada. And I, that was like all I was focused on. I had just finished my master's degree in teaching. I wanted to be a kindergarten teacher when all that was said and done. Um, I still might be a kindergarten teacher when all that was said and done. I still might be a kindergarten teacher one day. It's like not totally ruling that option out. I love kids.

And I had a blog called workingagainstgravity.com. And I was documenting cutting away class. And people asked me how I was doing it and getting stronger at the same time. And then from there, a couple people started emailing me asking me to help them. And I just did that, like through email paypal account um all that kind of stuff and i realized you know after a couple people this is taking up some of my time so i'm gonna start charging people for it and travis mash then offered it on his online weightlifting programming and we got i think it was like 80 people in one night oh and that just

like what was the at what? Like what were you guys charging at the time? I think it was 50 bucks a month at the time. Okay, yeah. That's awesome. What a great start. So on day two, you raised

your rates. Like shit, we're not able to, yeah. If they said 50 was too easy, it's like, damn, I should have asked for 100. Yeah. What is it?

The saying is they're not complaining about your price and you're not charging enough. Yeah, yeah, totally. Yep. But since then, it's kind of grown, and now there's a bunch of CrossFit Games athletes that,

so starting out in the Olympic weightlifting world and now the CrossFit, the piece has kind of taken off. Yeah, yeah. So I currently coach 20 either team or individual CrossFit Games athletes. Damn, that's a high level of fitness. You want to name drop a few? Do it. Do it.

We're telling you to do it. Katrin Davis, Brooke Entz, Brooke Wells, Tia Clare Toomey, Kara Webb, Cole Sager. Yeah, we got one and two last year. Cole Sager, Cody Anderson, Christian Lucero, Molly Vollmer, Emily Abbott, Jennifer Smith, Alessandra Pacelli, Becca Voigt. Damn. I'm missing somebody for sure. That's aigt. Damn. I'm missing somebody for sure.

I'm missing somebody. That one person is listening right now. She mentioned 20 other people. I'm proud about me. I'm missing some people. We're discrediting her now. We just had Emily on the show. She's awesome.

She's killing it. She's so cool. Her psychedelic gypsy fitness. She's so cool. Great name. Yeah, what a great name. So getting into just kind of the, the basics of your approach in this clearly working with such high level athletes,

what, what is, what is, what does it look like when you start to structure this thing? How individualized is it for somebody at that level? And, um, and then, you know, how do we kind of back that down moving forward to just the regular person that's trying to live healthy life, learn about this nutrition piece. Yeah. I think something that, like, most people are generally surprised by is, like, the way that I would approach the nutrition for any of these athletes. It's super similar to the way that I would approach it to any normal person is really just starting with something and monitoring things over time and getting to know them and their lifestyle. Each and every single one of those games athletes has different nutrition programs like they're eating different things

some of them are tracking their macros every single day some of them are doing it a couple days a week some of them are they have different numbers for different days or they have the same numbers for every day it's really totally different where you have an athlete like Brooke Wells who's a senior in university and you know, still wants to party with her friends sometimes. And we have to, like, manage nutrition around that and how, you know, she's not going to look back on her senior year of college and be like, I missed out. And then you have somebody like Katrin Davidsdottir, who's two-time fittest woman on earth. She's got opportunities up to here. And she has a lot of flights to go on.

She wants to go back to Iceland to visit her family. She wants to spend time with her family. We're managing nutrition around that. So it's got to look different for each of them. It's similar in some ways, but it really just is about finding a way for them to feel amazing, be consistent, and being conscious about the food choices that they're making instead of just being stressed out by it.

I'm trying to take the stress off of them. I'm worrying about it so that they can just focus on training and recovery and what they're responsible for. You mentioned the consistency, and we talked a little bit pre-show of how that really is just the secret sauce to all of it. Can you show up and do it every single day? And people miss that so much because, I mean, Brooke Wells, she's in college. You know, there's a lot of things going on in college that are not fitness based, to say the least. But what I often notice

with these people is their ability to eliminate the variables and, you know, how success really is created by creating this like streamlined approach to it. And how are you showing people, you know, or how do we eliminate kind of the questions and the variables that they face in their daily life? Like what do you do with Brooke where she needs to be able to go out and party and have a good time, but show up at the gym tomorrow morning and probably be able to work out for four hours or whatever the hell's going on.

Incredible amount. It's simpler than people want to believe. Like it's not this like magic magic secret that's, you know, something that you've never heard before. It's really just failing a bunch of times, making a bunch of mistakes, reflecting back on maybe why that happened, how you were feeling about it. And then for her, it might be, you know, before you go to the bar, deciding how many drinks you're going to have beforehand

and what kind of drinks they're going to be. How do I know how many drinks I'm going to have? I don't understand. they're going to be. How do I know how many drinks I'm going to have? I don't understand. It's impossible to know. You only bring $30. Right. In college, that'll take you three days to get rid of. Oh, true.

Beer is like two bucks. So it's like decisions like that or deciding, you know, it depends on what the hang-up for you is. So, like, if your hang-up is after the bar, my inhibitions are lowered, and I'm going to be – my friends are going to crush a whole pizza, and I'm going to want to crush a whole pizza, maybe it's deciding – How did you know that? That's totally not me for the record.

It's just deciding, like, what – maybe deciding beforehand what you're going to eat. And if that works out, cool. If it doesn't and you end up going over or not following the plan, being open and honest about it and talking about it, and then, you know, we can move on and learn from it. It's really – I think people want it to be so complicated, but it's just not that complicated. It's a long-term approach to something that you have to do three,

four times a day or whatever it is. And all the people think that that one meal matters. It's like how about we talk about the next thousand meals that you have. There's something I love about the zone diet. There's a saying, it only takes one more meal to be back in the zone. Yeah, yeah. And it's like so true. Like it's so true.

It only really takes one more meal to get back on your program. You don't have to like starve yourself because you overate. It just takes one more meal to be back on your program or back on track or feeling amazing. It just takes one more meal to be back where you want to be. I feel like a lot of people are trying to fix the past instead of just forgetting about it and just starting clean right now in the moment. Yeah. That's a great mindset, you know, one meal away from eating perfect again,

in a sense, or, you know, whatever, the exact way it's stated. It's cool to hear, you know, how you're, you know, actually taking someone's life. And it's like, hey, this chick wants to go out and drink. Well, it's like if you're going to do that, you have to like count the calories, the car, you know, like whatever it is like prior and like make room for that. Right. So do you find that, you know, somebody like her has a hard time doing that? I mean, is that. Well, Brooke Wells is kind of an that. I mean, is that.

Well, Brooke Wells is kind of an exception. Right, right, right. Yeah. She's also 21. Right. She gets a pass. You can recover so quickly. Even across games athletes, though, her in particular, she's really even keeled,

like not super emotional about food. She's super dedicated, really disciplined, and she really works very hard. So she takes any of my advice really seriously and really tries to actually implement it. Um, so I think she's probably an exception to the rule, but, uh, sometimes it is difficult for people. Yeah. They're human. Like that's the biggest thing I've learned from working with, um, elite level athletes is like, sometimes I'm reading their check-ins I'm like you're so human this is so awesome like this is so great like we're the same you know and it's just a lot of people want to believe that they're this uh this other breed or this they have something different than me and it kind of puts yourself off the hook like oh I couldn't possibly be like them because they're different than me like it's easier for them somehow right right like i'm just not her or i just could never be her it's like

really just letting yourself off the hook of being like the most amazing version of yourself when you really can be just like that maybe you won't achieve the exact same things as them but you can improve in every single area of your life there's nothing that you do that you can't get better at from working hard. You're not like – there's no limit to how much you can get better. It's just, yeah, they work really hard. That's awesome. By the way, I'm not sure I've told you this yet, but my mom –

you know my mom started doing your program maybe like eight months ago, and she's lost like 30 pounds. She's like a few pounds off of what she weighed when I moved – when I was like nine years old from Arizona to the Northwest. She's like almost at that same weight. She looks fantastic. That's my favorite thing in the world. Like Brookwells or Brookends are great examples.

Their mothers are also on the program. So it's like this is, it's the same. It's really a similar approach for everybody. It's the simplest things are the, those are the hardest things. Like that's, if you were already doing the simplest things, you wouldn't be looking for like the magic secret. You'd be like, oh, I'm crushing it. I already like know what else to do.

But that is super, super awesome. So that being said, what's the average age of someone that you're coaching right now? I mean with nutrition. Do you find obviously there's complexities in the age ranges, right? Yes. So we go from 16, won't go any lower than 16. And 16, we have people in their 70s. So the average age is like 35 to 45.

Wow. That's cool. So that's health and longevity. They're not super freaks. Do you find that someone older has a hard time taking up new concepts versus someone younger who the concepts aren't as like ingrained so somebody who has this pattern that's been developing for 70 years like i eat bread at the with every dinner and i have dessert after every you know i mean like growing up in my midwest

family it was like roast beef mashed potatoes twice a week everything else in between was blts and spaghetti but there was always like chocolate cake at the end you know and like breaking that you know at at 18 19 you know whatever it was sometimes like you're gonna have a give and take with all those different kinds of people so maybe younger people will think they know better and they're not less likely to actually listen to advice or like i don't actually want to i know i signed up for your program and i really want you to help me but i don't actually really want you to help me i just kind of want to think that I'm doing everything. A checklist. Yeah. Like, I'm doing the thing. Yeah.

Yeah. And sometimes with older people, it's actually easier because they're in such a routine already. Like, they're not traveling all over the place. They're not necessarily, like, they're in a job. They're in a routine. They're doing the same things all the time. And they love, like, being in routine. And they really thrive in that.

Like, my mom is a perfect example of that. Like, she just, like, does the same thing every day. So it's super easy for her to be consistent versus um someone younger uh but i mean we get all all the kinds of people you could possibly imagine that's cool yeah it's crazy what are you learning and coaching i feel like we get we all get to this point where it's like movement we kind of get the basics of it we've been doing it so long that's easy to coach movement nutrition okay let's count some macros we get the basics we understand how We've been doing it so long that it's easy to coach movement. Nutrition, okay, let's count some macros. We get the basics. We understand how carbs are going to affect our body.

But where in your coaching kind of path are you, and what are you developing as a coach right now? Right. I'm currently, I guess, four-sixths of my way through a master's in nutrition and human performance. So I'm almost done. I've got two more semesters left. Super academic, or are you doing this through like a private through online school

okay it's called logan university it's really really interesting so right now where that's taking me is i'm learning a lot about obesity and sugar and different like compositions of your diet and how that affects um like more i guess like medical issues hormonal issues that kind of stuff so that i'm learning nutrition yeah a little bit of clinical stuff i'm i'm like super fascinated by the obesity and like the different causes of obesity how many different things could potentially cause it from viruses to um you know there's like some research out there on if obesity is like a pathological thing or it's just really i find it really really interesting considering the rates of diabetes have are increasing and all that

cardiovascular disease and all that do they dig into like the psychological factors that go into obesity and things like that i feel like that that whole area of research it's been studied and clearly people understand kind of the nutritional side of it but there's so many pieces to it do they cover that not past the nutritional stuff not in our school i mean in the sense of there's always a mention no matter what of lifestyle factors and you know exercise and like emotional eating habits but not in depth which i think there are there's probably schools out there for that kind of thing do you go to those do you find yourself like um being someone who's in the trenches right now like and has been for a while right and you have a like a progressive you know we have access to progressive information where like universities sometimes are a little delayed in information

do you feel like sometimes when you're sitting in your master's program that you're like, wrong, right? Like somebody I know, her father founded the American Heart Association diet, but he died of heart disease. Oh, gosh. You know, I mean, so I mean, so it's like she now preaches keto, you know, and has been for like 20 plus years. So it's interesting. And I'm not like, you you know advocating any diet here but you just find that there's like this information that you're being fed sometimes where you're like oh my god like this is what i'm here for right now like this is not good information right

sometimes i sit there and i'm like i could learn this like four times faster if i just did it by myself right and not necessarily through like the schedule that they have me on um sometimes i feel that way i i don't think i would like learn some of the schedule that they have me on. Sometimes I feel that way. I don't think I would, like, learn some of the things that they're teaching me. I don't think I would actually research that kind of thing on my own. So in that way, I'm actually appreciative. And then a lot of ways it's actually, like, reaffirming. I'm like, oh, okay, we're, like, not hurting people.

Like, this is great. Like, what we're talking about is great. Like, we're on the right track. We're really, really actually genuinely helping people. It's not – yeah, I don't – i haven't read anything that i'm like woo that's like super wrong right right right not not yet at one time in a private previous life i was in nursing school and i just remember going through basic nutrition and pharmacology and just being like this is what we're telling people you know and i was, I don't think I could be a part of this, you know?

And it was just like the type of nutrition that I'm like feeding people as a nursing assistant at, you know, the hospital I'm working at where I'm like, this is the food I'm giving to a guy who just had a kidney transplant. Oh, you know? And it was kind of like, I'm confused. Like this isn't real food. Yeah.

Yeah. You know? So I just, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I mean, I just, sometimes, you know, it's's I think that it's amazing what universities have access to with like information like Dr. Andy Galpin and like being able to research. But then I feel like sometimes the textbook and the curriculum doesn't match the current current studies. Yeah. And then you're like delayed information. Yeah.

There are a lot of great resources out there. I mean, Alan Aragon has a monthly membership where he posts a newsletter with all of, like, the most recent nutritional research out there. And you can read that. There are resources out there that have that kind of information, which I look at on my own. Yeah. But it is helping me look at things that I would never – I don't think I would ever look at obesity as in-depth as I'm doing it right now in this current course. If you're mostly dealing with people that are in kind of the functional fitness, CrossFit space, like most of them don't come to you like obese. Right.

They might be a little overweight. A very small fraction of them. But it's probably not most of them. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, like in your estimation, like how many obese people out of like the thousands of people you trained you have? Like it's like 1% or 2%? Yes, less probably.

Even less. Maybe like half a percent. Yeah. So if you're learning more about obesity and you already have this in-depth knowledge with more of an athletic crowd, do you have plans to create a division specifically for obese people in the future? Is that something you're that interested in or is it just something you think is kind of fun to learn about? I think it's kind of fun to learn about. You gave me this great advice one time.

You're like, you're amazing at one thing. Just keep doing the one thing and just do that one thing really well so i think you're like i'm gonna do everything and i was like hey that's a damn good i killed it it was i was sitting in a hot seat and everybody was like throwing these ideas out at me of like what i could possibly do and you were just sitting there you know just like doing your thing where you like move around and you're like going. And then you're waiting. It's always impressive. Not to yell at everyone.

He's like not saying anything. No. But then it ended and you're like, can I talk to you for a second? And you pulled me aside. Come on over. And you're like, I know they're all giving you these great ideas, but like trust me, just do this.

You're already doing something amazing. Keep doing this one thing. Only do that. Sage advice. If you're smashing it, just do like 10 exit in a year. Yeah. You'll be fine. Step into my office.

And then you did. And I think we still have a ton of room to grow. Like there's still so much opportunity for us to continue to grow and make change and impact a lot of people in the space that we're already in. So I'm really happy with where we're at. That space, though, is super crowded, especially now. I feel like this macro thing just kind of took over, and everywhere I go there's somebody telling me I need a macro plan for my life.

What has kind of separated? What is that one thing that Doug sees in you and now you're 10Xing your life on? Ooh, what is that one thing? Oh. You didn't even tell her? She has to figure it out for herself. The same wisdom. That's the journey. That's the journey, figuring out what you got. Yeah. That has to figure it out for herself. The same wisdom. That's the journey.

That's the journey, figuring out what you got. Yeah. That's part of it. If I told you, you would not learn it. I think, well, a lot of those people are our members, which is pretty cool. Yeah. Like, that have created their own companies and are now so impacted by it that they want to inflict change for other people.

I think what we do is, like, i'm not totally parked in any particular camp for certain like even macros you know like maybe two years from now we won't be tracking macros like maybe we'll be doing something a little bit different i think it's really working for the population of people that we're with right now and and it's a really great way to monitor things but maybe we'll do something completely different and like right now we just uh we have we can import people's like my fitness pal logs into our software. So we can actually look at the food that they're eating. We can provide different kinds of advice. Maybe we'll completely take tracking your food out of the equation and we'll just work on the behavior and habit side of things. Uh, I think what we, we operate from the lens of just trying to transform

your life in some way. and if we bend the rules that's okay like we like we really believe a diet that doesn't bend is going to break so i think that's what we do maybe differently we really go like above and beyond to get to know you and what is actually hanging you up instead of you know you check in with your coach and they're like you just need to hit your macros better it's like that's just not enough like can't, just because if they're not hitting their macros, like, why? Or what can we do that's different than that? Like, let's try something completely different. We are out to just create some type of transformation.

And sometimes it's, like, not nutrition-related at all. I've had my favorite testimonials are somebody that's left their job and moved across the country and had the courage to go for their dream job just because of being part of this program or salvaged marriages or saved relationships with their parents or seen something that's going on with their mom and be like, hey, I now see what issues that you're having with food. I can help you.

And that helped add 10 years to their parents' life. So that is amazing. We're just allowed to, whatever that piece is, it could be fitness, it think that's amazing we're just allowed to whatever that piece is it could be fitness it could be nutrition but people just need to find like some little thing that they have some control over that's going to build a step forward to who they want to be and realize that that is a catalyst and it's just one step if you did that one step in your relationship it actually gets the same 10 X result. Um, but giving somebody just a little bit of a tool to move them forward and whatever that journey is. Yeah. And just having you build

confidence, you build like integrity with yourself. Like I'm actually doing what I said I was going to do. And that is like a keystone habit. It just trickles out. Like it goes, yeah, it ripples into every aspect of your life. We just happened to start with nutrition, but it doesn't necessarily have to be that way. Like it could be any area of your life. It's it. That's not the important piece to me. It's more you. You come thinking like, oh, I want abs, but maybe you leave realizing I just wanted to do something because I love myself, not do something because I wanted to. Yeah, people do things because they want to fix themselves. You don't like help yourself because you love yourself. Like, oh, I love myself and I just want to make myself better. It's, oh, like there's something wrong with me, so I want to fix it. We just like want to take away the barriers to stop you from, that are stopping you from seeing how amazing you already are.

That's awesome. I mean, I think that a lot of people think that there's like a, like it ends in the kitchen or it ends in the gym, but it's like, if you truly apply yourself to nutrition and as you were saying, it like translates into everything and you have the ability just to push that much harder and persevere and have that dedication of, you know, like the 10,000 hour rule or whatever it is. And you just keep on making yourself and taking on more responsibility of, uh actions in a sense it's just more responsibility for what you're doing yeah and we're we're the experts on what we do but you're also the expert on you like every single

one of us is different genetics we come from different places like my parents are from israel and i'm like 100 israeli like first generation canadian so my genetics and what works well for me is going to be different than what works well for you. So we're like a team that's working together. Not, I'm not trying to tell you or convince you or persuade you to do something a specific kind of way. Like we're working together to make you happier.

That's all we want. We're going to come back. I want to talk about how you kind of, I think so much of what as a coach, the baseline that we try and do is just build trust with people so we can break down those barriers and really start to see kind of, I think so much of what as a coach, the baseline that we try and do is just build trust with people so we can break down those barriers and really start to see kind of the vulnerabilities that people are dealing with that are actually holding them back.

I want to know how you get into that next level with people. Let's do it. Hope you guys are loving the show with Adi. Yo, Adi is super cool. This is the first time I've ever met her. Let me tell you something. Some humans are just impressive.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say she's one of them. What an awesome girl. Super knowledgeable. I love just all the things she's working on with her clients and how she takes these nutrition. But it's really just this big practice in behavioral health and getting people doing the right things and creating healthy habits. And man, she's awesome. I want to thank

Organifi. Make sure you get over to Organifi.com backslash shrugged. When you get there, there's going to be a sweet picture of me and Doug and Mike. And the reason is because if there are three gangsters of organifi we are them i just made that up right now that was awesome gangsters of organifi if the people that organifi steal that from me i want royalties um i take this stuff every single morning i tell you guys every week if you're not listening to me you're screwing up it's no longer fault. Every week I tell you to wake up and get your green juice because the green juice has the vitamins and the minerals that you need to be healthy. Listen to me. You need vitamins and minerals to be healthy and you do not eat enough vegetables. Nobody eats enough vegetables. You need to eat big salads.

You need to have a lot of variety. You don't. I already know your life. You love to eat the meat. That's why you like being strong. You love to eat the starches because they give you a lot of energy. You're not getting all the veggies you need.

I know it. I've been there. I know what it's like. That's why I take Organifi because I'm like you. I don't get enough of the veggies. Get i know it i've been there i know what it's like that's why i take organifi because i'm like you i don't get enough of the veggies get over to organifi.com backslash shrug you're gonna save 20 using the coupon code shrug organifi.com backslash shrug use the coupon code shrug to save 20 get into the Man, the vault is crushing. I feel like I have hundreds of new friends.

I get to watch you all lift weights. Let me tell you something. I love lifting weights. I love watching the people lift weights. Right now, you can go to MuscleGainChallenge.com and download the free e-book on getting huge. Literally, it's called How to Gain Muscle and Get Super Yolked and Put on 26 Pounds in 26 Weeks. That's not the actual name of the ebook, but let me tell you something.

The people that have signed up, downloaded this ebook, got into the Muscle Gain Challenge, you people are getting huge, and you need to be on their team with them getting huge is awesome getting shredded awesome muscle gain challenge awesome get over to musclegainchallenge.com download the free ebook and you will succeed back to the show tomorrow we are here at Onnit in Austin, Texas, hanging out with Adi Kaju. God, I love that nice name. So good.

It's like cashew, but not. Close, but not at all. And we're talking nutrition. Before we left, I want to get into this idea. I feel like one of the hardest battles we all have as coaches and educators is building trust with people right and we all have this cool little opportunity in our onboarding processes to break through some of those levels and some of the insecurities that people carry with them all the time that are really holding them back from their goals um what does that

process look for you guys at working against Gravity? And specifically you, what have you learned that allows you to, you know, dig a little deeper, a little bit quicker, so you can get the results a little bit faster for the people that are looking for them? Oh, I don't know if I have, like, the best answer in the world for this, but I'll try. You're relatable, just saying. Our onboarding process, basically you give us, like, a whole bunch of information about yourself and send half naked pictures of yourself over to us which is a key yeah critical not in the dm

or on snapchat right right right please don't do that i actually only accept before and afters on snapchat so find me i I only accept afters. Yeah. So I think that immediately puts somebody in the more vulnerable position. You're like, oh, I just gave all this information about myself. I just like really like kind of exposed myself to these people. And it's all digitally. We try and really do as good of a job as possible of reminding people that this is another like a human on the other side of the screen, like an actual human being. Yeah. Tell you about your coach just like there's you can get information about them.

We have a little video of us interviewing them so you can like see their face and hear their voice. We have a whole YouTube channel that we link them to with all the different Facebook lives that the coaches do every Friday. So you can really get to know them just the same way that they're getting to know you. I think also every single one of our coaches has been through the program themselves. So naturally you are like, oh, they've been there before. Like they totally get where I'm coming from. And we do a much better job than we've ever done before of pairing new people with a coach that's most appropriate for that particular person.

So we have a profile for each coach of who they work best with who they prefer to work with what types of clients they have the most success with and then pair clients with those particular coaches on purpose um and yeah i we encourage all of our coaches to be vulnerable back with the clients and remind them you know we actually care like this is not this is not um we're taking your money we're hoping you don't succeed and it's a three-month commitment so we're hoping that you actually don't keep checking in with your coach you know our average membership is almost six months like we want people to continue staying on the program um if they need it uh and i think we do a good job of probably just letting people know that we we actually care about you like we really do give a shit so how's how's the

progress of your services change i mean are you still you're not still 50 a month for the services right so where what are what's the average cost now for uh you only offer one thing doug told me to only offer one thing hey we only offer one thing at one price and it's 160 a month that's awesome and it as you as you know as the value increased there there was like a, now you were saying like, Oh my fitness pal, people can load in this information.

What, what else have you been able to add to like, uh, create that experience to people? Oh yeah. I mean, it's so dramatically different from if you go back to that barbell business episode and you listen to the first one,

we did everything through Gmail. And at the first, the first, the first like way we started this, it was literally like oh we have this problem how do I fix this problem so we had one inbox that the coaches would just like we had three

coaches and we would just answer whoever could answer the first one was there like no clients didn't get assigned to a coach it was like all the coaches would work with all the clients and then we did like different folders in one Gmail. It was workingagainstgravityatgmail.com.

Like in the Google Drive or whatever? So we had like different folders for each coach. And then we would filter the emails to go to those folders. And then we're like, oh, wait, each coach can have their own email at workingagainstgravity.com. So then we went there. And now we actually, one of our original members was a software developer and he built an entire software for us that all of our coaching happens in this software called Seismic. And it's changed everything, not just changed how our clients interact with our coaches and how much data our coach can actually see in one shot. So like when someone checks in, they can see their MyFitnessPal logs.

They can see how consistent they were with their macronutrients they can see their body weights they can see their mood energy stress hunger photos check-in summaries notes for each day like you can see so much information as well as their questionnaire like the original questionnaire um that's pretty amazing but it also allows us to do quality control significantly better so we've always had a rule of every communication has to be answered within 24 hours so if any of the coaches miss that pops up on my dashboard there's like this big thing being like this person has one overdue and like we can go and look and make sure that we're maintaining the quality across we have 28 coaches now so it's like a lot harder to manage that many coaches than it was to manage two of us all in the same inbox. With 28 coaches, how many people are within your system at this time?

I promised I would never say it on a podcast ever again. Got it. Okay. Ever again. That's all right. You mentioned that you break your coaches into kind of what they're best at so they can better serve the clients. How do you break that down?

Is it based off like some sort of like keto thing and paleo thing or is this like a personality driven system that you've created all of it the only thing we actually don't do is we won't take somebody through um like a legitimate keto diet just because there's a lot that needs to be monitored at the same time and we just don't have the ability to actually take that information so whether it's like the ketones in your urine or different like biomarkers, like we just don't have anywhere to store that or monitor it. So we just don't do that. So then do you guys look at like food sensitivities with,

with individuals as well? We don't like get those tests. Right. And, but we can like keep notes on that information. Elimination kind of type stuff. Yeah. So we'll do elimination diets. We'll like, that's the amazing thing about being consistent with your nutrition and having the software to look at everyone's information. It's like, oh, they're eating the same things. I can look at their food logs.

They're, you know, looking at these things. Oh, wait, we're seeing these changes on this day. Like what was different in the past couple of days? Maybe we'll try cutting out dairy and see how that changes, or we're monitoring their mood and their energy and their stress and their hunger. And keeping as many variables consistent as possible, you can start to draw a little, I guess, like causation or try and make some connections between what's causing what and therefore try different things, like an elimination diet

or cutting out gluten. Correlation or causality, kind of like which one is which. Yeah, that's cool. That's awesome. I know with a lot of gym owners, they're super passionate about training and working out. Then they start a gym, then they get really busy, and then their own training kind of falls off after a while.

Did that happen to you at all, like going from not having a business to not having a thriving business and being really busy? Yeah. I've been – I was just talking about this the other day. So this is like I have been, I was just talking about this the other day. So this is like, I have been through this like journey of, I think I started a little bit naive and a little ignorant of, I was like, oh, I'm always going to be fit and I'm always going to be on top of my nutrition and I'm always going to like look amazing. There's no way I'm ever going to have to worry about that. And then I'm like, oh wait, like that doesn doesn't actually that's like not real. You work with all these different people and you see all these different things that people go through. And there are certain things are in your control and outside of your control. I was still competing when I started working against gravity.

So until 2016, I was definitely really on top of my nutrition, really on top of my training, like managing everything at the same time. And then I stopped competing in 2016. And I went all the way to like i'm not exercising to train like why do i exercise at all it's like oh i just don't want to exercise like this i was so burnt out on all of it and i just needed like a total break and had to like learn through like the skills that i've developed of how to like still be in control and have confidence in my food choices so i don't think working against gravity would be where it is today if I didn't take that break from, you know,

being super diligent with my training and my nutrition. But it's definitely been like a learning process and a perspective for me. You know, like this, you're never done when it comes to nutrition and fitness. Like you don't reach this like end point and you're done. Like life changes, you have kids or you start breastfeeding or, you know, you're a man and your testosterone is going lower every year. You get older, you know, like things change about your body. It's not like this. There's no end game.

Like the game is just to do this just because you want to be healthy and live a long and happy, high quality life. Longevity. Yeah. It's crazy. What what actually has that? What does it look like now compared to what it did when you were competing? What is my like fitness and nutrition? Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. What, what actually has that, what, what does it look like now compared to what it did when you were competing? What does my like fitness and nutrition? Yeah. Yeah. I, I, right now I'm on like a solid role. So I'm in like probably the best routine I've ever been in my life. I am super dialed in with my nutrition in terms, not just like tracking everything I eat,

but I can make like super confident confident conscious decisions about knowing like how much I've eaten in the day and you know when it's appropriate for me to eat this and that and just never like even on my birthday I made this conscious decision of here's the opportunity for me to eat like a complete asshole just because it's my birthday because that's what a lot of people do right

and just being like no I'm not gonna just eat like an asshole I'm gonna have a piece of cake with a candle on it so I can make a birthday wish and eat it in a social situation so I use it for the opportunity to connect with others because there are certain pieces of nutrition that I think are underrated where it brings joy to a lot of people's life. And I think people – there's a difference between eating cake alone

in your basement and watching TV and eating cake in your house. Especially in your basement. That sounds hardcore. Well, that's like everything. It's like the voice of experience. Having a drink isn't that bad unless you're in the basement by yourself watching TV. It's just like there's different times and places. The level of depression that comes with it is scary.

I feel like so many people, you mentioned the confidence and the consistency. How long does it take for being in the fitness industry, whether it's on the training side, the nutrition side, but everybody walks up to you and they're like, here's my diet. What do you think of it? And you're like, oh, dude, I don't really know. I don't want to answer this question. I don't know what you're telling me right now,

but how long does it take a lot of your clients or like, is there a process in which you watch them kind of gain system. But how long are you are people? Does it take them to really get to a point where they're confident in their decisions and then they're able to just implement this as a longevity approach? Yeah, I think on average, probably three months, like three months of people are coming with like a lot of, um, emotional baggage around food or a lot of things in their life are out of control. So it's a lot harder for them to get in control with their nutrition. And then you have people who are like super confident already, just like, don't have a lot of like issues and just are like, Oh, got it. Get it. That totally makes sense. Going to implement it in my life. I'm good. Like you get different ends of the spectrum. And I think like 12 weeks of being really consistent with your nutrition gives or like at least trying to be.

It doesn't matter if you're 100 percent perfect or you're not. Just the effort is really all that matters. You'll get a tremendous education about what you're putting into your body. You're going to put something into my fitness pal or whatever app you use to track and you're gonna be like oh like that's what that is like whoa because you get people on all levels of the spectrum like we take it for granted so much where it's like i can look at a four ounce piece of chicken you're like here's kind of what i'm getting yeah and people don't you're not born with that knowledge so you find people that are literally at the bottom they're like like, I'm healthy, right?

I eat pasta every night. Like, where did we learn that one? Because you've got a basketball game tomorrow. Yeah. Yeah, I remember my dad would make, like, the most gigantic pot of spaghetti. He'd be like, do you have a game tomorrow? And I'd be like, I don't know. I don't know if this is right.

Like, do I really need all this? Like, if I eat it now, it it's gonna be ready tomorrow for me um but like there's there's so much bad education in there that you know people just don't have the confidence when they're not getting the results but they're doing what everyone's telling them to do yeah but like yeah three months i i could probably learn some things in that amount of time i mean even me like even me this has, I've been really focusing on my nutrition since I was 16 years old. So it's been 12 years, 12 years of like doing different things with my nutrition. Like really, like it's been a main focus of my life. And I dial something in for 12 weeks right now.

At this point in my life, it's different than it was two years ago. And I learned something new. I'm like, oh, wait, in this particular situation, I tend to want to eat more. Or when I eat eat this it like actually makes me feel like bloated or gassy or whatever and it's i'm learning things every single day what are you battling that's going on in the are you battling the keto thing are you pro like all these new little fads pop up and you have to battle these questions every single day don't you i get the questions for sure but i really try and take like the dogma out of nutrition yeah i don't want to park in any

particular camp so i really believe that what works for you is what works for you so the best nutrition program in the world is the one that you can stick to in the harshest of circumstances so when your girlfriend breaks up with you or when you're traveling all the time and if that means that you have to eat a higher fat because it changes up the types of food choices you can make then that is great and if that makes you feel amazing and you're performing really well in the gym then that's great like that's awesome for you if you're using certain fads or diets to eat like an asshole then i think that that's a different story i don't think that that's a great thing but i don't think there is like much out there that's like a hundred percent right or a hundred percent wrong i think like i'm pretty convinced that sugar is probably bad for you like

refined sugar is probably something you want to limit in your life you want to limit your calorie consumption in some capacity like just not eat like so much or so little, like have some type of balance there, exercise and eat as much whole food as possible. And I think that that's like solid. Totally. Your average client is somewhere around six months, right? That's what we said earlier. Six months is going to get you, if you start at zero, you're understanding macros, you're understanding like what a portion size actually looks like and some sort of confidence and consistency and implementation over that six months. But I think that's also when like the real battle and the real journey kind of kicks off.

I mean, it took me probably 10 years before I even started to learn about like gut health. Right. And now it's like the only thing I really focus on because everything else is pretty dialed in on like the quality of food that i'm eating maybe the timing of it is is pretty solid now and i don't have to worry about too many things but are you building that relationship with people and kind of hinting at hey once this is over in six months like there's still a massive process to understanding what's going on and the relationship that you have with food and your body and your performance yeah it's like an ongoing process of like building a business and progressing i really believe two years from now we'll be doing much more than we're doing right now

um it's something i am super interested in i like my favorite people to listen to or like people like chris kresser who are really you know functional medicine is up and coming or i don't know necessarily how new sometimes you think something's new and it has it's not actually really new yeah it's like it's becoming mainstream it's becoming mainstream so there's been internists and functional medicine people for a while right yeah now it's like yeah it's on social media so it's like yeah this is cool this is the thing now guys like chris really are are pushing that whole model forward people in raising the awareness around it right and it's like encouraging everybody to be like oh okay i do want to learn about this kind of thing oh this kind of does make a lot of sense

and i think the more i stay engaged and learning about nutrition and health and all that kind of thing the more it's going to leak into the business itself. I really believe it will be in a completely different place in a couple years. It's so interesting because when I think about nutrition now, it's never on understanding macros. I get that. But that process, if somebody – I wonder if I was an actual nutrition coach, where I would start that process. There is the base level of we need to understand macros.

We need to understand some hormone levels but i wonder how quickly it'd be like oh let's talk about this gut health thing we need to really dig into because this is like a big conversation that has a lot of benefit and i may not know all the answers but it's something that we need to talk about a little bit i do think that sometimes a trap that people that are really educated and informed in fitness and nutrition get into is like you assume people know something that like you're like, oh, this is so basic to me. Like I don't need to teach this. Like it's so basic. Like I don't need to learn about macros.

But it's like 90% of the population like kind of does. Yeah. So you really like you think what you're saying is like, oh, this is so basic. I can't believe I have to say this. But you do have to say it. Like it really, I think, um, going more on the basic side of things and not making assumption that this person already knows what you think they know,

like actually just teaching it to them anyways, even though like we stand from a different perspective, like, Oh, I get that already. Like, but you don't remember what it was like for you before you understood all of that.

The thing I like about macros is that it doesn't require as much teaching from the coach because there's so much feedback built into the system of the day-to-day life of the person that's counting the macros that they have to figure out what their numbers are and then look at a food. And if they don't know what's in it, they have to look it up and look and see what's in it and then weigh it. And there's a constant process of refiguring out, does this fit my macros? Am I getting enough carbs, fats, proteins, et cetera.

And you're getting the feedback all day long on, on every meal, every piece of food, every day, that constant process of getting the feedback inspires so much learning that you don't have to sit there and like tell the person what, what to do. Yeah. And you don't have to wait. It's like I was saying all wrong i was like what no no totally and the the amazing thing too is like if i was just to tell you what you're supposed to do there's like 800 million things i could teach you like it's literally like shooting

fish in a barrel like i don't know what it is that you need to learn but the fact that you're going out there and you're getting this education for yourself you can now come to me with a more educated question of hey i don't really get this this is what i'm encountering in my actual life and then it can provide more informed education from the coach to the client instead of just like teaching rant like going through random things that are totally irrelevant to that person and may not even be like it's really more specific well it's almost like back back to your assumption of knowledge thing like Like, with my mom as an example. I don't think she said this specifically, but she says things like, like, I had no idea there was so much fat in nuts.

Right. And I'm like, really? Yeah. Like, how the fuck? In my head, I'm like, how the fuck does anyone not know that? But to them, it's brand new information. A hundred percent. I just went to the grocery store on my birthday like a couple weeks ago, a month ago.

And we got like a tub of ice cream, right? So we get a tub of ice cream and then Michael got this like a cinnamony special case cereal. Okay. So we're like checking out. And then the guy at the checkout goes, oh, you're making your ice cream healthy. And I was like, huh. You're putting cereal on it? Right, right, right, right.

I was like, I'm just like adding calories to my cereal my ice cream i was like i don't really know but that's like you know that's like really what's out there so you i think we are just privileged where we're around people that are having these conversations all the time and we're listening to these podcasts and we're learning from these amazing people and we get to um spread that but i think if you go too high too fast, you lose people, like, right away. And they're just like, I don't get it. It's hard to understand where, yeah, the bubble is so interesting. Like, in this little bubble in the conversation, we have 15, probably 50-plus years of knowledge and education just in strength and conditioning and nutrition.

And then all of a sudden it's like, here's what a protein does. Like, this is the building block of your cell. If you eat this, you will be a lot healthier and be like, here's what a protein does. Like this is the building block of your cell. If you eat this, you will be a lot healthier and be like, oh, whoa. Some people really don't understand that they're like not eating that much protein. They'll like look at their first day of tracking their food. They're like, wow, I only have like 35 grams of protein today. Like I thought I was eating tons of protein. It's like that's really what's happening.

Well, it's like you get the people who know just enough to think that they know something that makes your job that much more difficult. For sure. Right. And it's like in today's of the social stratosphere, we're like information, information, but it's not all good information. And we get turned on to these trends and then you're constantly combating that. I mean, every day I get a client asking me like, Hey, I was looking at this thing. And I'm like, oh, my God, just keep doing what we talked about.

Like stop telling me something new that you just read about that you were thinking you want to apply to your life. I think that's like one of the biggest issues that you see is that people, we learn about this in the landmark. Like the difference between making a choice and making a decision. And like a decision is based on pros and cons. Like, oh, this is good for this reason and that reason. And this is bad for that reason and that reason. Like you're for that reason that reason like you're making a decision between two things but sometimes there's no difference so there's no difference between doing this thing and doing that thing so sometimes you just have to make a choice and a choice is void of reason like there's there's i'm just choosing because i'm choosing like that's just it and once i've chosen i don't

get to go back and choose the other choice i've already chosen like you choose this because you for all it is and for all it's not and don't be convinced that the other choice is better because that's not what making a choice is like you just have to choose just to choose and actually stick to it to even see if it works for you it's when you hop from thing to thing to thing you're just like turning around in circles not going anywhere yeah i see that with like a vegan diets people will like jump from uh like a more conventional diet and then they'll that with like a vegan diets people will like jump from uh like a more conventional diet and then they'll jump into like a vegan diet and they'll be like i feel so good you know and it's like after like you know two weeks and it's like well you're eating vegetables

and you're doing this and then they don't really understand like at week five why they feel like they're gonna die you know and they really didn't do all the the factors of the pros and cons to their lifestyle going into that direction. And then there's that huge fall off and then they jump into another thing. So it's just that information complex. I think that could be good. As long as the person is making progress, like the more and more I get into the world of coaching people in any category, my biggest concern is are they going to make progress with what I'm telling them?

And if they're going to make progress and that's going to increase their motivation to take the next step and to knock over the next domino along the way, like that's the most important thing. You just need to be on a path. It doesn't matter if it's the right path or the wrong path for you. But if you're on a path, you're going to be moving in a specific direction. And you might find another path while you're going there. But staying in the same spot, doing the same shit, and like turning around and trying a bunch of different things you're not moving anywhere so it's really just about like picking one and just like committing it's I use an

example of I Drive a Honda Civic and like no one can convince me that there's a better car than a Honda Civic like my car is the best car. It's also the number one stolen car. Number one stolen car. I was going to say. But it's the best car. That's why it's the best. Free. People wouldn't steal them if they weren't the best. But it's the best car because it's the one I have and it's the one I chose. Like, that's just the one. And until it's not the best car, like, that is the one it is.

Like, you choose it because that's your choice. That's it. Quick question. Have you found that the process of quantifying somebody's food, uh, takes the burden off the coach to convince somebody that they need more of something. So as an example, if I'm the, if I'm your coach and I look at your food log and there's no numbers attached to it, I'm just like kind of just looking like, Oh, you had, you had salmon in, in a salad and then you had hamburgers. And then I'm just looking at what you ate and I go, uh, I think you need need more protein if there's no numbers attached to it then the person on the other side of the table might be

like in their head they might be like i don't know about that i feel like i eat a lot of protein right but if you're constantly measuring what you're eating and you're you're supposed to get 120 grams of protein or whatever it is and you got 60 you go whoa like i only got 60 out of 120 like no one has to convince you at that point that you're not getting enough protein because the numbers right there are telling you like you're telling yourself you need more protein right just kind of like a like like business people will be like oh I can't do that my lawyer says I can't do it I'm sorry it's out of my hands not my fault no big deal like you're taking the burden off the coach and the person has the realization themselves for sure for sure and giving all that information it's not even just about like the protein, carbs and fat that we we have 14 different markers of progress.

I think a lot of mistakes somebody makes when they're doing some type of fitness or nutrition journeys, they only pick like one or two markers of progress that they're like latched on to. And generally those and generally they're outside of your control. So it's not really inside your control how much you weigh other than on a specific meat day. And you kind of sometimes have to do some weird shit to like actually weigh that particular amount on that specific day. But it's either how much you weigh or how much you look, how you look and or even how much you lift. Those things are kind of outside of your control. Like on a certain day, it depends. Like you can't really control it.

There's so many different things you can look at, like just hitting your protein every single day and just seeing it. And, oh, I'm making progress on eating more protein. I'm making progress on actually being consistent or my mindset or my mood, my energy, my stress, my hunger, my habits. Like I went into work and there was donuts on the table and I didn't eat one. Like that's progress you know so just having like clear those clear markers in front of you to be like oh i'm actually it gives it's motivating and educational at the same time you mentioned the scale it's an actually really interesting thing to me because after i stopped competing in weightlifting and crossfit i had no idea what an actual sustainable weight was in my life and it was a two-year process of me fighting to try to stay at my competitive weight right when my body was like absolutely not

we are not training this way anymore we're not eating the same like just everything right and it took me literally two years to be okay and somewhat comfortable realizing that sustainable weight is 10 pounds more, 12 pounds more than competition weight. And stepping on the scale at a weightlifting competition is a very different thing than stepping on a scale on a Tuesday morning because I have to go to work and actually be happy. Right. It's very different. And it might be different for you five years from now. I hope not. I'm pretty good right now. I don't need to go up we hit the 200 pound mark we're going anorexic it's gonna be terrible i'm gonna be so depressed i don't need to be there go straight into keto i'm going keto it has to be the answer yes it's anytime we eat a meal like where michael uh doesn't have like a carb in that particular meal he's like i'm in ketosis

it just happened. I felt the shift. Test me, test me. This is super cool. Where can people find you? Oh, people can find me at workingagainstgravity.com, at workingagainstgravity on Instagram and all the social medias.

We don't do Twitter. I mean, I'm not really good at Twitter, but we don't do that. You just have to show up. You just got to show up. We do Pinterest, though. I really like Pinterest. Oh, really?

Yeah, we have a really cool Pinterest board with tons of hacks and recipes and all sorts of different articles. Our audience is huge on Pinterest. Yeah. News love Pinterest. A lot of DIY. A lot of DIY. A lot of DIY fitness tips, you know.

I made this out of a, what is it? A palette. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Popsicle sticks. That's pretty much it. I mean, you can find me personally on Instagram at dkaju. I post once a month. There you go.

A blue moon. Usually it's like, if I post, it's like some type of motivational lesson or something that I've learned. So follow me if you want to know what I've learned. That's awesome. And you can spell that probably in the show notes of this. I'm going to need that spelling right after this. I remember it was like C-A-Z, and I'm like, I don't know what the hell the rest of it says. My maiden name is Zooker, Z-U-K-I-E-R.

And when I married Michael and I took his last name, I was emailing with a lawyer, and he wrote me back being like, you're the only person I know that went from a confusing last name to a morgue. Mr. Strong Coffee, the fuel of this show. Tell us about it. Strong Coffee is an absolutely delicious instant. He told you to do the thing right. Now he's got Adam doing the thing right.

Do the one thing. Tell him it's delicious. It's absolutely fucking delicious. It's 100% instant nutritional energy. We're using cold brew coffee, getting a good balance of macronutrients starting the day with 15 grams of protein, 5 grams of fat. We have our L-theanine for anybody who experiences any type of anxiety

and jitter with coffee. And there's a lot of other great things in it. Hyaluronic acid, coconut water extract, and it's fucking delicious. And it's delicious. And it fucking mixes well. Oh, it does. That's the key. You just go like this a couple times, a little stir, and it's fucking mix as well. Oh, it does the key. Yeah

Yeah, just go like this a couple times little stir and it's done. Yeah, no dogs nothing What are you doing? You can do it in the the little water cooler over there the hot water and drink right away We'll show you an exercise guide for the wrist action. No not at all. It's really impressive Yeah, I was shocked because the first time he gave it to me, he had a single serving packet, tore it off, put it into some hot water, rolled the packet up, and then stirred it with the packet a couple times, handed it to me. No chunk, no pumps, no anything. Rolled the packet up?

Crisp. That's a ninja meal right there. It was gangster. I was like, no fucking way. That mixed all the way like that? Just dissolved instantly. It was great. Really impressive. Thank you, guys. It was great. Yeah. Really impressive.

Thank you, guys. I appreciate it. Yeah, I mean, it's been awesome. You just keep fueling us with the energy. Yeah. Yeah, and it's cool because, you know, a lot of people, coffee is interesting because the reason that we're consuming coffee is generally because we're not recovering. And I really wanted to make sure that there were things in there that actually helped you recover. So maybe, you know, it's not always like, oh, I'm tired.

Right. So you can find me at Strong Coffee Company or at Von Rothfelder on Instagram. We're on I'm on Twitter as well. And yeah, at Strong Coffee Company dot com. Solid name. Yeah. Strong Coffee. Yeah.

I mean, that is gangster for sure. And anybody that's listening gets 20 percent off with the code BBS20. That's capital BBS20. Yeah, Barbell Shrug. Yeah. All right. Douglas E. Larson on Instagram. And, of course, everything Barbell Shrug and Shrug Collective.

Right on. Follow the Shrug Collective on all the things. Get into iTunes. Get into YouTube. Like, subscribe. Leave us a comment. We're going to read it. If you want to come hang out with me, I'm at Anders Varner.

More importantly, come hang out with us at the Shrug Collective. That's where all the cool stuff happens. That's where all the crew photos are, cool training stuff, coolest people in the game. This new little launch has been such an exciting thing, really important conversations happening every day inside the Shrug Collective. We'll be back next Wednesday. See you guys soon.

Shrug family, hope you enjoyed hanging out with the Dekaju working against gravity. Want to give a final shout out to our sponsors. Make sure you get into the program vault. Get over to MuscleGainChallenge.com. Free e-books on mass gain, strength gains, getting super strong, being super strong, with a side note of awesome. MuscleGainChallenge.com, free e-book, How to Gain a Whole Lot of Strength. Get over to Organifi.com backslash shrug to save 20% on your first order

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