Barbell Shrugged - Eliminating Dogma in Nutrition w/ Dr. John Berardi, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Travis Mash - Barbell Shrugged #502

Episode Date: September 9, 2020

John Berardi, PhD is a founder of Precision Nutrition, the world’s largest online nutrition coaching company. He's an advisor to Apple, Equinox, Nike, and Titleist. Was recently selected as one of the 20 smartest coaches in the world by Livestrong.com. And, in the last 5 years, his team has helped over 30,000 people get in the best shape of their lives through their renowned Precision Nutrition Personal Coaching program.   In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged:   A coaches responsibility in coaching nutrition. Why you have to work with clients even if they fail. Fighting the ecosystems that is bad health. Building the largest nutrition company on the internet. Nutrition practices for kids and families.   Buy Dr. John Berardi’s new book "Change Maker": The health and fitness industry is huge, highly competitive, and often confusing to navigate. This one-of-a-kind book helps you make sense of the chaos, laying out a clear roadmap for career success—for both established professionals and anyone just getting started.   Dr. John Berardi on Instagram Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram   ————————————————   Training Programs to Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/34zcGVw   Nutrition Programs to Lose Fat and Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/3eiW8FF   Nutrition and Training Bundles to Save 67%: https://bit.ly/2yaxQxa ———————————————— Please Support Our Sponsors   Legion Athletics Whey Protein, Creatine, and Pre-Workout - Save 20% using code “SHRUGGED”   Fittogether - Fitness ONLY Social Media App   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   www.masszymes.com/shruggedfree  - for FREE bottle of BiOptimizers Masszymes   Garage Gym Equipment and Accessories: https://bit.ly/3b6GZFj Save 5% using the coupon code “Shrugged”

This week on Barbell Strugged, the greatest nutrition coach of all time, Dr. John Berardi. He is the go-to resource for every single nutrition coach that has walked on this planet. If you've seen a boom in nutrition coaches online lately, it is because Dr. John Berardi started it. His brain is different than everyone else's. He's so freaking smart. It was super cool to sit down with him. At the very end, we get to talk about families and kids and nutrition. On top of that, just the way that he goes about his business, eliminating the dogma, not really being super attached to any specific way of doing things and being able to get results for people and understanding really the psychology of how to work with clients because

you may be their only resource for health and fitness, nutrition and lifestyle. Everything else in their life may be terrible. It's really easy for us to see online all these before and after transformation pictures and assume everyone's life is so great, but that's not the reality of the majority of people that are looking for better practices in nutrition. And John Berardi has helped thousands and thousands of people live a stronger, healthier life. And the way that he goes about it is incredibly cool. He's super well-spoken and it was a pleasure to actually be able to meet him. It wasn't for this damn COVID thing. I would have loved to have been able to do it in person.

It's actually one of my lifetime goals to sit down and hang out with him in person, but we did it on zoom. Um, I hope you enjoy the show before we get rolling. I want to thank our sponsors over at Organifi, Organifi.com forward slash drug. That's where the green, the red and the gold juices are hanging out. So you can get all the micronutrients you need to stay healthy and make sure all the systems in your body are green light go. That's what I'm going to call it now. Green light go.

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Friends, we got to talk about Legion at the break. And we've got a big sale coming up next Monday on an Olympic lifting bundle. I'm going to run through all of it at the break. Let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Adam Schwarter, Doug Larson, Travis Mash. The only difference is if you were to offend an entire state in the U.S., there would be loads of hate now.

But offending a Canadian province, people are like, he really made us upset there's no better place to spend your 18th through 20th birthday as a United States citizen than going to Montreal and doing it during the NHL draft which was the first time that I went to Montreal. And it was like Montreal's a phenomenal time without the NHL draft being there. But then you take like the nation's biggest sport and you bring the biggest 18-year-old group of celebrities that exists and put them all in one place.

And you just happen to be there for their first weekend in Montreal. Oh, Lord. I never need to go back. That's great. Are you from Montreal? Is that where you're at? No, no. I grew up in the States.

I grew up in Philadelphia. But I came to Canada in 2000 for education. And then I met all these people, including my wife, my business partner. Where did you go to school? I went to a place called, it was called at the time, University of Western Ontario. So it's in London, Ontario, Canada. And it's considered like whatever, the Ivy League of Canada. Oh, cool.

And so it's where I did my PhD work. And so it was a really cool opportunity, right? Because I had been in the U.S. all my life. And so to be an international student, and they give you these cool international student scholarships and stuff like that. So I came to Canada to get a free education, a free PhD, which was amazing. What actually is your PhD in? So it's exercise and nutritional biochemistry.

There you go. I was a pre-med undergrad and applied to all the med schools and stuff i was going to go that route i come from italian immigrant parents and uh you know when you come from immigrants if you become a doctor or a lawyer that's the holy grail right right so they always say oh you go to school you get your education and nobody can ever take that away from you and i always wondered like why do immigrants all the time say nobody can take that away from you. And I always wondered, like, why do immigrants all the time say nobody can take that away from you? And then as I grew up and I learned more about the history and I realized, oh, that's because people took shit away from them. And so, you know, my parents grew up in the tail end of the World War, my grandmother.

And so people did. They just came through the village and took whatever. So that's why these people value education so highly. So anyway, that was going to be my path. I thought I was going to be a good Italian first-generation son. But I realized I didn't like that enough. I thought it would be a great challenge, but I didn't like it. So I went and did a master's in exercise science. I went and got my CSCS, you know, then I went on and did my,

my PhD looking at the nutrition side. And it was, it was mostly because I looked around the industry at the time and everybody wanted to be a strength coach and everybody was becoming a strength coach. And I was like, that's cool. That's a lot of competition, you know? And also I love the nutrition stuff just as much and supplementation. So let me, let me like complete the picture. Right. And then I realized once I got this, uh, PhD and looking at supplements and food and how they interact, uh, then, then basically every strength coach was my market rather than my competitor. And it made things really cool, really fast. Brilliant.

Yeah. I think what's super cool. I feel like the nutrition side of things is so much more scalable as well. It's like everyone eats a couple meals a day. Everyone eats every day, but not everyone trains every day. There's only a small percentage of the population that wants to lift heavy and needs a strength coach on a day-to-day basis. That's like a single-dig digit percentage versus everyone on the planet. And you know, I think also it has to do with like, just whatever like gravitational pull pulls you to different knowledge sets, right? Because

I was chatting with Ben Bruno recently, and I don't know if you guys know Ben. Love that guy. One of my favorite humans. Awesome. So Ben and I are like on the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of what we're attracted to strength training versus nutrition stuff. You know, he's like, I just, he's like, I think nutrition should just be really simple. You just do these couple of things and then you're good. Right. And I'm like, that's cool. It really is a more complicated subject than that. See, I feel the same about strength, right? Like I'm a pretty strong guy. I'm a pretty fit guy. And that's how I want the weight room to be for me. I want it to be as simple as Ben sees nutrition. That's how I want training to be. And I'll do the complicated on

nutrition side and he can do the complicated on the training side, you know? So I sometimes think it's just who knows why particular little interests in our lives, you know, pull us. But they do, right? And for me, I was like, hey, I know enough about strength training. I know how to build muscle. I know how to get strong. I know how to do that with other people.

Done. I'm not really interested in learning any more about that. Going deeper into, you know, whatever hypertrophy science isn't as interesting to me as going deeper in to, you know, how the biochemistry of the body works. As I say, at the end of the day, they all go together. Like you can't get hypertrophy unless you eat. So you can work out all you want. If you don't put anything in your mouth, it'll just shrivel up, man. So people do the old, like what, like what percentage of fat loss or muscle gain is nutrition and what percentage of fat loss or muscle gain

is nutrition and what percentage is training and all this kind of stuff and you know it's it's a silly argument really right it's not 80 percent diet and 20 it's 100 100 right what's more important and your heart or your 80 20 yeah what's more important heart or lungs which one you know 80 percent heart it no it's 100 100 without either you're done right so those are super important 20. What's more important, heart or lungs? Which one? You know, 80% heart? No, it's 100-100. Without either, you're done, right? So both are super important. Yes.

I actually – You ever go down the bodybuilding route at all for yourself? Killing me. This internet thing is killing me. If we were in the same room, no way. A lot of competition here. I know. Usually I'm the loudestest so i get to go

go doug well i'm kind of wondering how you got into just lifting weights in general like did you want to be a physique athlete at any point or were you a football player you're just lifting with the team like how did you get into weights originally um so for me i was i was born preemie so i was really small growing up and my mom you mom was a nervous Italian lady, kept me out of sports and stuff. And so that was kind of annoying to me because I saw the guys who played sports attracted more women and were just around women more. And I was like, oh, man, I got to do something about this. The secret, not so secret reason guys start to lift weights.

That's right. We have never interviewed anyone on Barbell Shrug that doesn't say, I started lifting because of girls. Right. And they're all here for one reason. We just had to make it professional one day. Yes. Sometimes men and women say the same thing.

So for me, no, it was just like, so while I was being kept home, you know, away from sports, I started reading. And I had allergies and asthma and I had a puffer and I got my allergy shots every Friday. And, and so I just started reading about this stuff. I'm like, hey, if she's not gonna let me do it, I'm gonna read about it. So I read about training, I read about nutrition, and I started applying it. I remember I bought like, I started like outfitting my family's kitchen so that I could cook healthy for myself when I was like 16. And, and then finally, when I got my own car, I could actually sneak out and go lift weights. So that's, that's how it all started for me. And then, so I didn't play a lot of sports in high school, but towards the tail end, I started to get healthier and fitter. And I started running track it turns out I was pretty fast. So, and then I went on and I ran track and I played football in university after only playing one year in high school. And then, but, you know, and that was all fun, you know, playing sports in university was fun, but I really did love,

like you said, just being in the weight room as part of the team. I started finding myself doing more of that. I remember my track coach coming in one day and just being like, Berardi, why are you in the weight room and not on the track? You know, I'm like, cause I like this better coach. And that was really the moment where I realized that was it and so then i went on to and then i started competing in powerlifting and bodybuilding i won uh the mr junior usa contest in 1995 embarrassingly long time ago and uh so then it's just been part of my life ever since uh you mentioned a couple times this italian background anytime somebody does that and as a nutritionist i just assumed there was a battle in the household where like plates of pasta were

being brought out on the dinner table every night and you were like this can't be right well there has to be protein somewhere that's right food was a huge part of my life i mean that my dad was the cook in our house uh and then it was always his dream to open a restaurant one day, which he did when I was in like seventh grade. He, again, came from Italy, had no education, became sort of a self taught guy, he worked in blue collar jobs and stuff. But what ended up happening was he, he got hired by this tile manufacturer who had offices in the US and in Italy. And because he was bilingual, he progressed through the company pretty quickly. So he did pretty well there. And then they were starting to close down the American factories. And so then they offered him a job in Italy.

And he said, No, thanks, you know, just give me a payout. And that's what he opened the restaurant. So then basically, I grew up in my dad's restaurant. I cooked in his restaurant. And then again, I got a deeper interest in sort of the healthy aspects of food. So yeah, growing up at the, you know, growing up with Italian grandparents, dad owning a restaurant, and then, you know, wanting, I thought I wanted to go to school to be a chef when I was a teenager. So yeah, food has just been super interesting and just super big part of my life. I would lose that battle every time. I mean, I'm powerless to Italian.

Look at all this pasta. You know what we would do? Like here's how we would balance this. I lived in Pittsburgh for a couple of years. When I finished undergrad, I worked in a research lab before I went and did my master's at the University of Pittsburgh. And I trained at this old, awesome dungeon gym. Yes, that, you know, back in the day, Arnold and all those guys used to whenever they'd be in Pittsburgh, they'd they'd come train there and you guys know who uh jim manion is right yeah of course mpc he's still good friends with arnold yeah yeah there you go right so jim's from pittsburgh right so um this is where he would

bring all the pros when they'd come do the pittsburgh pro show this little dungeon gym right so i trained there with a group of italian guys because it was his gym is in this place called bloomfield which is like little Italy of Pittsburgh. So what we would do is my friend Mike, his mom would have us over every Sunday for big pasta meatball dinners. And there were like eight big dudes coming over. So she would cook pounds of pasta. So that's what we would do. We'd go Sunday morning.

We'd have a big, huge squat workout. And then we'd go to Mike's mom's house and eat all the pasta i love mike's mom right now heck with covid let's go it's worth it whatever i get it's worth it once in a while like our girlfriends or whatever want to come, right? I want to see what this thing you do on Sunday is. And we're like, no, no. You're not allowed. No one's allowed. The only women that were allowed there were Mike's mom and Mike's sister.

And you have to go squat first. You can't just show up. That's right. Man, when you leave your PhD, how long was it before you started taking on clients and actually coaching nutrition? Well, I started before. I started when I was in my master's program. I mean, I was a personal trainer from when I was 17, 18 years old.

I wrote about this in my recent book, but as a high school student, I was on the wrong path for sure. And so I had a car accident, a pretty serious life event for me that sort of turned turned my my, my life around. And so I got really serious, really fast, you know. And so then, you know, when I was in, and basically, you know, I had this accident, left all my friends behind, left the drugs and alcohol I was doing behind. Hold on. Let's tell that story.

Yeah. Yeah. We got time. Tell, where were you? I didn't know this part. Yeah. I mean, for a good chunk of my high school experience, I was just drunk and high every day and skipping school.

And, you know, I was just drunk and high every day and skipping school. And, you know, I was a C minus D plus student. And, you know, one night we were out, a group of us, my buddy was driving and this was, you know, I think this is a point in my life where I had probably been high for four months every day straight. Are we talking marijuana? Are we talking like really serious things? Marijuana was the baseline. Yeah. So that cool. So you do that every day for four months. Anything upgraded from there? Other things on top of that were, you know, uh, recreational. Yeah. Um, and, uh, so yeah, we were out one night i think we were uh high cosmic bowling or something and uh and my buddy was driving and we like we were kind of riding country roads and as he's you know we're starting to get to town that's when stuff starts getting paved and then you know sidewalks appear

and you know those curbs pop up and he was doing the swerving across the road hey isn't this fun doing 80 miles an hour swerving across the road and we hit one of the curbs started 360ing across the road and i know this area and on the on the left hand side is a wooded area so we're spiraling across the road gonna shoot off an embankment into the woods so i'm 100 certain we're dead, you know, and so I was in the backseat of the car with my best friend, Chris. And so I kind of grab him, push him down, I climb over and just prepare for impact. And, and it I mean, it was like a cinematic kind of experience for me. You know, I still remember it like it was yesterday. I remember life flashing before your eyes thing, it happened to me like I remember seeing scenes from my eyes thing. It happened to me. Like I remember

seeing scenes from my childhood. I have one younger brother. So I saw us like playing when we were little kids at my grandma's house and just scenes from my life. And then the last scene of this little montage was me being lowered into the ground with my parents standing over the grave site watching. And I i remember like you know because i was out on my body like looking back at them and seeing like their faces with this mixture of like obvious grief and then shame for how i was living my life and how difficult i was for them and then car hit we went right between two trees knocked off the side views but that was it and you know he'd come up and i'm like whoa we're alive you're alive i'm alive holy crap

um get out of the car and i'm like my life has to change you know and i and i'm like looking at the guys and i'm like trying to see if they had any epiphany also and they didn't they were just like hey let's get this car back on the road before we get in trouble you know and i was like well i'm already in trouble man so so the four of us pushed the car back up out of the embankment up onto the road and it you know its axle was bent and so they're like, so I'm like, Hey guys, I'm just going to walk home from here. And they kind of lumped down the road with this broken car. And I walk and they got arrested later that night, driving that car, trying to get home. And, uh, and that, and that was it for me. You know, I was like sober,

you know, that crash sobered me. And so I stopped hanging out with those guys is stop drinking, stop using drugs. And, you know, it really was a turning point. There was my life before. And then there's my life after now, which is sort of now as a continuation of that. But that's really where the gym took root for me because I, I, um, was lonely. You know what I mean? Like I didn't have my coping mechanisms, didn't have drugs and alcohol anymore. I didn't have any friends, right? Because I knew that's where I'd find the drugs and alcohol. So I just got up at four every morning, went to my dad's restaurant, opened up the restaurant, you know, and then I started going to the gym after it closed and that's where i found a mentor there was a guy in our town who was 5'7 235 10 body fat he ran a couple of gyms and one day i was you know whatever just doing what i was doing as a beginner in the gym and he

comes over gives me some advice and he invites me to the gym the next day. So I was training legs, and I'm sure I was doing it badly. And he gave me some tips. And he said, hey, you want to learn how to do this for real? Meet me here tomorrow at five. You know, that's when I train before the gym opens. And so I showed up. He, you know, let me work out with him and we ended up training together for two years he became my physique mentor since he owned the gym he hired me to work there so all this is long story to say you know i've been i've been working in gyms and training people since i was like 17 years old yeah and uh and that guy his name's craig he saved my life you know he put me on the right path he would give me books to read he crushed me in the gym Like I'm, I'm a beginner and he's putting me through these

serious workouts. Um, and then he's giving me books to read and he's like, Hey, read this before you come back tomorrow. You know, he is. Yes. And we're still in touch. You know, I, I, uh, I've made it a point and he's actually featured in my book prominently for, you know, and so I sent that to him and he was really touched. But yeah, I mean, it's just, it was such a huge impact, you know, and it's for sure what set the path for what I do today. I think that a lot of people will never understand like what gyms really mean to people. They don't know the stories like that like i bet everyone of the four of us could tell a story that's much deeper than just like adding

up purchase fee or you know trying to shred girls yeah getting girls girls being stronger but like for so many of us it literally led us you know down a path that could have been much worse like you know with me i have a brother in prison like I was definitely on that path of going one way or the other. If I'd be over the gym, you know, I don't even know if I'd be alive, but if I were alive, I'd be in prison right beside my brother, you know, like, so that's what people need to understand that when you can't, you know, I don't turn this political, but like when you can't go to a gym, like right now for some people, it's a lot worse than just not being able to get a pump on. Right. So, yeah, I totally agree, you know, and people are often surprised to hear this story for me. Cause you know,

I, I have the degree, you know, I have a nice family now and all that stuff. And it's like, yeah, man, but there's, there's another path that I was actually on. It wasn't like, you know, I could have been on, I was actually on it. Like it took a crash, you know, and me, uh, evaluating my life in a very particular way to jump off that path. And like you said, I mean, that, that was it, the gym. So, you know, so Craig gave me this job, mentored me for a couple of years. He made me promise him I'd go to school and get an education. And, uh, and I made good on all those things. And so, yeah, I mean, that's, that's where I started training people. And then when it, you know, when it got to, you know, elite, you know, working with elite athletes and stuff that came probably two years into my master's program.

I was, I started writing for T Nation, you know, which was the only game in town. I don't know if you guys remember this. It was like 1998. I used to print out all the – I would print them. Yes, that's right. I had all of them stapled together because there was no cell phone. I mean, this is like – The only way to keep them with you was to print them. That's right.

Well, this is like talking about a horse and buggies. But honestly, I didn't have i didn't have high speed internet it was dial-up right so you would you would open up your you know ibm computer and you'd connect to the internet and make those sounds and then i would type in uh it was like testosterone.net. Yeah. And I mean, this wasn't graphically heavy website. It was just HTML words. And it would take 15 minutes to load, right?

And then you've got three articles. There were three writers at the time. It was TC, Tim Patterson, the owner, and Charles Poliquin. Those were the first three writers. And then you'd see the articles. And then when you click one, it's going to take 15 minutes to serve it, right? You got to really want it. Yeah, you have to. And you're praying it's good, right? If it's just an advertisement for a product, you're so pissed. I got a lot of learning done because I would have a textbook in one hand while I'm waiting for the page to load.

But that's what, you know, that was it. So two years later, I started writing for them. And then that's where sort of people started to hear about me. And, you know, and my whole thing was, you know, I was a PhD student or I was a master student transitioning into PhD. And I would spend one day a week in the basement of the library where all the research journals were. Again, you didn't get access to journals like people have now, right? You're not reading the abstracts online. You would go to the stacks, which is the basement of the library and the latest journals, which, you know, were a month or two old, would be bound together in these thick

bound books. And then, so you'd go look at the Journal of Applied Physiology and the Journal of Exercise Physiology, and you'd see what the latest studies were saying. And I was just so interested in how to apply that to myself and to the people that I was coaching that, you know, it just became this little game of mine. How could I take every piece of information, every new piece of science, every piece of data and pervert it into these twisted hypertrophy or performance goals? Right. So that became my thing. So I'm like, hey, if I'm doing this for fun, if I'm doing this for my PhD work, might as well write about it in the lay literature. That's exactly what I'm doing. Right. Yeah, totally. You know, here's something funny. I was in 1998, I was at the Olympic training center,

which was, you know, I don't know if you know, but like Tim Patterson started, yeah, started T nation inside of champion health, which is Dr. Leahy's, you know, the guy who invented ART or patented who, depending on who you ask, but like, so inside of champion health, there was – I might have already told this story on Barbell Shrug, so I'll make it quick. But upstairs was T Nation. And so every day you could go there for free if you're an Olympic athlete.

You could go and Dr. Leahy would do ARTs. I'd go every day. Mainly because Charles Pulligan was downstairs. Upstairs was T Nation. And then Dr. Leahy was in this other corner. And like, it was just like, it was like heaven for me. I was like, what about this? Every day I'd come and say, you know, Charles, what about this?

Or I would say, you know, Tim Patterson, you know. So we, to make a long story short, I was also running a world gym out there. It was kind of the way I was making money. And I've said, you know, we were the first place in all the world to introduce their products you know t-nation there's bio tests yeah and so we started carrying their products in this gym and then i became friends and then charles poligan and i became friends and anyway so like it's so and i remember reading all your articles for sure yeah it's it's it was so cool because again i mean we just seem like old guys reminiscing about the glory days here we are yeah but that's when like all of this stuff became

when you could go to t-nation and read or like bodybuilding.com showed up like there was actually a place for people that if you weren't on the the chat rooms and the forums to begin with that you could go and actually learn about strength training. It was either that or books, the magazines, I guess, but the books where people were actually writing, but finding one of those, it's not like Barnes & Noble was carrying Iron Mind books. No, that's right.

Prior to that, it was literally inherited wisdom. We use wisdom in quotes because it wasn't always wise. It's like if you happen to go into a gym in your hometown, like in your geographical area, maybe there's someone there who knows something. But even if there isn't, there's someone there who's going to tell you something. And maybe you learn the right stuff and maybe you don't. And you're right. The internet, like lots of people complain about the internet now. One of the biggest complaints is, oh, there's just such a proliferation of bad information on the internet, right? It's true. But I'll take that trade every day because the benefit

is that we can actually get access to the right information, right? It just is a new skill you have to learn how to sort through the difference. Because-internet the chances like the probability of someone in a random town finding good information it's way too low you know you make a good point this is why i tell all strength conditioning coaches like you need to have at least some basic knowledge of physiology of biomechanics of physics so you can go online and you know weed between this is garbage this is not if you don't have just like that basic grounded bit of knowledge i mean you're at the mercy of whoever you're reading how do you how do you know how to discern between good and bad you don't it's sort of like just having that basic that's why like i wish strength coaches i wish they would mandate it you know especially if you're

going to go to a university and work for a division one team you know you know you're i think you need to have people are going to get mad at this but i believe you need a degree in exercise science just so it assures me you have that basic bit of knowledge it doesn't mean you're good at all it just means now you have this base to build from. But if you don't, it's hard to say. Yeah, you can learn a lot being under the bar and all that, but how do you know what you're learning isn't garbage? And so then you're just passing on garbage.

And everyone here right now, all four of us knows good and well, there's people in Division I schools, they're passing garbage in D1 schools. Yeah. Ah, sub box. I used to be such a big fan of T Nation. I haven't read much from T Nation in years, but for that period of 2005 to 2008 for me, kind of when I first started graduate school

and had a work-study job where I was mostly at a desk, I would spend probably 70% of my working hours yeah and i learned more practical advice from reading t-nation articles than i read in my whole master's exercise sports science totally agree yeah like totally different information but i feel like having the practical side first, it helps you understand all the scientific details and vice versa. They play together very well. Yeah. Or it just makes them interesting. You know,

I think it's really, really tough to read theoretical scientific knowledge in the absence of something that makes you want to apply it. You know, I always joke, like when I was in school, you know, as I learned about physiology, the only thing I cared about was me, right? Like, how do I learn this to do better for myself? And so I had a big weakness coming out of school, with female physiology. I had it in all the classes. I just never learned it because I

wasn't a woman, you know what I mean? And it had no relevance to me. So I had to go back and learn it later when I started coaching females. And again, no offense to any female listeners. It was just my whole education path was how do I take this and apply it to me, right? So I'm like, oh, this applies to ovary people. That doesn't apply to me. I don't have the ovaries, you know? So it's, I think you're right. I think having some dual kind of track, you know, theoretical and practical is really, really helpful just for interest sake, you know? To add to that, and I feel like you do a very good job of this. A lot of people, it seems like they learn the physiology first because they're trying to get better for themselves, as you said. And then once they start coaching, they realize,

oh, okay, it's obvious I need to know the basics of nutrition and how to train and what to do, et cetera. But really the psychological game becomes a very large portion of the game. How do I get someone to actually take my advice and utilize it and take it in and have it actually work? You can spit information on somebody all day long, but if they don't actually follow through with any of the advice that you gave them, then you're either delivering it wrong or it's not what they need to hear at that time or whatever it is. Uh, and I feel like, I feel like everything I've seen for you over the years, you do a very good job of balancing the physiological basics with the, the, uh, all the aspects of psychology needed to actually get somebody to make a change.

Well, thanks. You know, it became a really important point for me when I actually went full-time into coaching, right? Like when you're just part-time into coaching and like, whatever, you're going to school like I was, and you're picking and choosing clients, maybe not so important, right? Because, you know, at the time I was attracting highly, highly motivated, high achievers, right? And I can only take a few of them because my day job was something totally different. And so you get this biased sample, right? You end up getting people like you, like if someone is reading Teenation, super committed to athletic performance or physique goal, right? They're basically me, you know, just a few years later, right? And so you start coaching them and you can do the

physiology thing without worrying about the coaching thing very much, right? But then when you make this your full-time job, coaching people, there's, you realize, oh, I got all the 10 percenters before, you know, now everything else more than that is the rest of the 90%. And it's not that they're, they have less discipline. It's that maybe their lives are completely different. You know, maybe they have a family, maybe they have a job that's equally as important, maybe even more important than their physique goals, you know? Okay, cool. How do we bring what we know and this transformative physical kind of endeavor to a life like that i call it sort of health and fitness in the context of a real human life you know not this life that i had when i was single uh a student uh super simple lifestyle

you know that whole thing changes so much. It does. You know, and I think, I think you, like, I think of life in terms of these like evolutions, right? Like we were all into, we talked about teenation, so we'll stick with that for a minute. We were into that for a minute, you know, or a year or three years or whatever. And then what our brains tend to do is go, Hey, I moved on from that because they

started sucking or something, but it's not actually true. They didn't start sucking. There's a whole group of young us is reading them right now, getting as much out of it as we did. You know, we've evolved though, right? As people we've grown up, we have different interests. Our lives are different. The context of our lives is different, right? So then we have to think about, okay, cool. That's happening for everyone else too. You know, like the people who've been following me since I started writing in 2000, which is 20 years ago now, are 20 years older. They can't possibly be stuck in the time warp and think the same things, do the same things, want the same things, right? They've evolved just like I have, which is cool because I've sort of had a following and they've grown up with me, right? Like I've grown up too and my interests have changed and

so theirs and they've paralleled, right? So when we talk about the coaching thing, which is what you brought up, you know, the, I mean, we grow, right? right we evolve that's the next thing i i learned as much as i needed to know about physiology now i'm really interested in this other space and i often think of it like this you know uh you know i i compete in master's level track now i'm a sprinter i run the 100 and the 200 um i love that that's awesome you never hear anybody that runs track I'm not letting that go that's awesome I tried to run track for a summer when they told me where they run track and I got scared and I wasn't gonna go race those fast ass people they're so fast I thought I was fast because I played CrossFit all you need to do is get old. It's great when you get old because everyone's just getting slower,

and you just have to be the one getting slower the least fast. I just suck at a slower pace than you. What do you run out of it in? What do you run? I 11.8, so high school girl, basically. Do you want to know something super cool? I raced Johan in the 60. He did? These two guys these two guys yeah like i'll show i'll i'll send you the video i'll send you the

video of johan blake eating my lunch he gave me a 15 meter head start in the 60 and was talking shit and barking at me from step one and just swallowed me it looked like a cheetah hunting down a rabbit with a broken leg it's so it's so sad because you were trying like i bet you were really working on yeah i was talking smack to him so much on instagram stories that he actually started writing back to me without knowing who i was because every day I was out training and we all went down there for a camp called Stronger Experts. They're awesome people. They're actually out of Canada too. And we all went down there and the big selling point was that Johan was going to show up. And as soon as I found that out, I was just on Instagram

stories every day calling him out like, I'm going to, I'm coming after you. I'm coming down. This is the moment I was at the track. I was filming training and then we got there and he was like, you ready? And I was like, Oh no, that's actually going to happen. Let's go. And then I had to, I had to actually plead with him because he beat me so bad on the first 60 that we ran that I was like, look, dude, I'm here for an Instagram picture. Slow down. Make it look like this is a real race. Even though I'm doing, you know, 60% of the distance that you're doing, I still need you to slow down so that there's at least a picture. It's embarrassing when you need to use like the panoramic feature on the phone

to take a picture of a 60 meter race. The slow-mo video of it is so good because I'm just like, I look like, I feel like I'm a decently athletic human. And I'm like, and then you can see somebody that's the best in the world running. And then you look at somebody that's like a pretty good runner, like an athletic person, but not the best in the world at anything. And he flies he he touches the ground for like that amount of time like the smallest amount of time and i remember my whole foot's hitting the ground it's like quicksand i'm swimming through and you feel like you're going pretty good for a second and then you're like oh he just was he you hear it coming was he eating lunch while he passed i remember i i had an endurance moment like that like um because you know i used to think about this a lot with respect to weight

training right like let's say you have a 400 pound bench press right a beginner can't come in and touch that so there's no like so they don't have a perspective on how heavy that actually is because you wouldn't put it on them because it would possibly kill them right but i'm like we used to do this thing called uh lab olympics when i was in grad a grad student because all the grad students in our lab were in into sports also but just different things so um we would create all these physical challenges with laboratory equipment and compete against each other. Right. So like, like you have these, um, like isokinetic dynamometers, which are like, they have leg extension, they have an arm curl and it controls the speed.

Like isokinetic means same speed. Right. So, um, so we would have like isokinetic strength feeds and, but one of the, one of the tests was, um, uh, tour de France stage, right, where you're climbing Alpe d'Huez, which is one of the notorious climbs in the Tour de France. And at the time, it was when Lance Armstrong was winning everything. So we set, we had this bike that we would attach to a projector and we would project the course on the wall of the lab, right? We turn off all the lights. So it was like you're there, right? That sounds awesome. So we would set the wattage at what Lance Armstrong would climb for this mountain. And he would climb it for like, he would maintain

this watt output for like two hours, right? So then, so then we would get on and see how long we would last, right? And so I remember lasting 45 seconds, right? And what he could do two hours. And I remember like when you're working at that work capacity, like your legs start failing, right? So it feels heavy to push the pedals. So you're thinking like how could little Lance Armstrong, you know, I was 200 pounds at the time, push, even push the pedals. I'm like standing and cranking down and I can't even move it. Right. Cause there's so much

fatigue. And I just remember like, Oh my God, this is the difference between me and an elite endurance athlete. Right. So it's kind of like your Johan Blake moment. Like we don't always get the chance to see what it's like to try and move the pounds or the wattage or at the speed of a real elite athlete. And then when you get these little tastes, you're like, oh, this is freakishly impressive. We're going to take a quick break to thank our sponsors over at Legion Athletics. Friends, Legion Athletics is the number one brand of all natural supplements in the world that's a big place the world's large and they are the number one brand of all natural supplements naturally

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as well as Nutrition for Weightlifters, which is the course that you need to get strong, lean, jacked, fast, and improve your Olympic lifts. That is going to be coming out on Monday, and you need to be paying attention so that you can come and get swole with us. Back to the show. Yeah. The best part about that whole trip was when I walked up and he was, he was just sitting on a bench waiting for us and you could hear him talking to his other friends that were

there. He's like, I was just sitting on my couch watching TV and all of a sudden my phone, a ding, a ding, ding. This guy, this guy's saying he's going to beat me. I'm laughing so hard. He's literally the nicest guy in the world. Yeah. We pulled up that day, too, because we've been racing all those high school kids the day before. And we pulled up, and you were like, oh, that's not a high school kid.

That guy's a real man. Look, when you pull into the parking lot and Johan Blake gets out of the car, you go, I don't know what you're the best at the world at, but you sure are the best at the world at something. Something. He just looks aerodynamic. It could be archery. I just know you're the best.

Yeah. No doubt. Well, then he told us he grew up in a single room with like seven or eight people. Ten. No, ten brothers and and sisters a mom and a dad a mom a dad and 10 brothers and sisters in a single room not a bedroom a single room right yeah in in jamaica i mean and he said he says he said uh my mom my mother said you know johan, you must run fast. And he said, so I climbed a mountain and I fasted for two days. And I said, father God, you must make me fast.

I mean, it was – And there he is. He's fast. Yeah. So great. It's so great. We did an old show with him. He killed it.

Yeah, he killed it. He lives in a big mansion now. You always bad though for the other nine right because you're like because people always want to tell this story right oh it's the it's the fact that i grew up with nine brothers and sisters and uh in this one room that made me hungry to win and then you're like what happened to your other brothers and sisters it's just, we don't talk about that. They're not broke anymore. That's the thing. Presumably he's still helping them. His whole family.

Well, why aren't they fast? Being fast in Jamaica is a different ball game. I was going to make an analogy. I'm like, why are we talking about this? I was going to make an analogy. I was going to say like, okay, so you need strong legs to be fast in the hundred, let's say, but after a certain point, right, you don't need to squat more than 400, right? There's a strong enough. And then anything like past that is overkill. And that's how I feel about learning about physiology, right? That was the original question, like moving from physiology to coaching. Like there's a point where you're knowledgeable enough about physiology than anything past that

is overkill. It's like trying to squat 600 as a 100 meter runner. Now I need to work on a different skill. And that's when I got really passionate about the coaching aspect. Like how do we bring this into the context of a real human life? And that this, I mean, most of my career at Precision Nutrition was that. Yeah. I'm actually really interested in kind of your evolution in it because, you know, we're all subject to, especially younger in life. And when we don't have the experience or enough research or however it is in that progression that we do end up going down rabbit holes and we get sucked into like the paleo world or sucked into the keto world. I never, that one showed up after me or like after that stage of life.

But, you know, you coming from an academia background and being in the lab, did, did you ever kind of get sucked into some of those things and have to like realize you've gone too far, pull yourself back out, bring in the pieces. Because at some point in, in building precision, part of your job is really going, okay, we're going to take all of these people in, but then we have to teach them principles and why stuff works. What was a little bit of like just your evolution in becoming the teacher and the educator for so many coaches? Yeah. I mean, I think, like if I look back to my early writings and thinkings, let's say there were there were two problems uh one was i

was too personally interested in supplementation like you can talk about research all you want and that kind of thing but honestly when i got my supplement care package know it was it was like a magic box you know with uh yes potions and elixirs and this this you know and i and i'm intellectual i'm a smart guy i know better but like on a deep emotional level i was too interested in um this edge you know what i mean that they were going to kiss me you know when the bsn stack showed up with no explode leading it off nitrix right next to it and then you know and then some of these like you know you feel something when you take it and you're like oh there it is that's the magic working you know what i mean so that's probably problem number one right were you fortunate to know that

beta alanine makes you tingle before you took it i was not didn't know that was not see this was all at well after my time what i learned it with ephedrine because there were literally when i started really you know there were there were like i started before creatine came out i remember when creatine came out i remember when creatine came out you know me too there's this new stuff creatine and you're like i'm gonna take it yeah this is great because you go to gnc and there's basically vitamins and protein powder that was it you know what i mean you're like how did you have a business back then all they had was vitamins and yeah and cybergenics right um and cybergenics, right?

Cybergenics. That's a blast, Pat. Yeah. And they didn't sell ephedrine yet. Like you had to get ephedrine where the truckers would stop. Gas stations. Exactly. And so anyway, I remember, you know, I was a late teenager.

I had this buddy, Matt. And Matt was like, hey, man, there's this new stuff I got truckers take it to stay awake at night and it's really great for get like a good workout and I'm like cool all right yeah sure I'll try it how many are you supposed to take and I'm reading the bottle it says take like one half serving right they were like the 25 milligram ephedrons right yeah so they were good dose and uh and he goes nah man you need to take six oh and i was like are you sure he's like yeah this is just for like the half is for keeping you awake at night like we're trying to crush the weights you need to take six oh my god so i remember like halfway through i was freezing cold but sweating and i was like dude six was a bad idea yeah so i learned that

with ephedrine yeah yeah man i i never threw up or anything like that but i i just remember like after that i stayed with half i had a i loved ephedrine and mean, I still do if it's around me. It's the best. I remember – On my high school – Oh, sorry, go ahead. I'll just say I took it to study. You know, that was like a miracle in college. You know, I was like – I was trying to stay awake to study for exams.

And I'm like, oh, wait, let me try this ephedrine. It works where I work out. Man, I was like – Like, I've never been so focused. I'm like, A's everywhere. My mom was like, man, you're really working hard at school. And you're burning a lot of fat. Why did you lose 20 pounds?

Don't worry about it. It's true. So supplements, I was just too irrationally attached to those. And the other thing was, I actually did a podcast with Eric Cressy a while back. And he he was great. He pulled up this thing that I wrote like so many years ago called like the seven habit or 10 habits of highly effective nutrition programs, right? It was probably one of my like, keystone articles from back in the day. And he was like, Great, I'm gonna read these to you. And I'm like, No, please don't. I wrote that like 20 years ago. And he's like, no, I want to read it to you

to remind you so that we can talk about what you would change if you had to do this over again. Right. And I was like, all right, fine, fine. I'll take the dose of my own medicine here. And, and it was terrible because that guy was a black and white thinker, right? He, that guy was pre coaching philosophy. You know, that guy was pre psychology. Yeah. It was, Hey, if you, if you do this stuff, you'll get results. And if you don't, that's too bad for you. It's a shame that your life sucks and you have no discipline, you know? So I think, you know, people weren't so, uh so religiously attached to training programs and diets early in my career. But the industry was in this totally other place where it was really attached to this idea of personal discipline. This idea of you deserve results only when you're willing to pay a tremendously higher price than everyone else.

And if you're not willing to pay that price, then you don't deserve health, fitness, any of the benefits that we get. Oh, so be a world champion or you suck. That's right. Fundamentally, yes. And so those were my two problems you come back after that at one point and write some article along those lines where you're talking about don't be a fitness snob basically yeah you're not better than anybody just because you like to lift weights yeah i wanted to share this perspective on the other side of that thing which is is basically hey there there is a

life after you know uh i'm so smart i'm'm so committed, I'm so disciplined, I'm so the best. And if you if you want results, you got to be like me. And, and, you know, I mean, that's, that's the curse of the young person, really, I mean, yeah, who here among us didn't at least feel some portion of that. And it shows up in different ways with different generations, right? Like, we're all born in the current context. So right now, the way we express that is my diet's better than yours. My training is better than yours. My guru is better than yours, but it played out differently before. And I've also been really lucky like to have some great mentors along the way. You know, I've known Dan John for a really long time and I remember sitting with him and he's, you know, another 10 years older than I am.

And like, so you mentioned keto earlier, right? So I've seen keto come up three waves in my career, right? And so in 30 years of doing this, I've seen keto come up and get popular three different times and then fade away as something else took its place. And I remember Dan talking to Dan, he's like, like oh I've seen it like five times and I'm like oh it's so interesting right like to look at the cycles of history not only like what history books talk about with political movements and economic movements but the cycles within fitness and training and nutrition and sport right and so you talk to someone who's seen, you know, I'm like, you know,

this current wave of interest in keto. Everyone who's into it now feels like they invented it. And I'm like, dude, I've seen, this is the third time I've seen people feel this way. You know what I mean? And it's fine. I'm not anti it. But A, you didn't invent it. B, it's not new science, right? And C, it's going to fade in interest. And your interest in it will wane.

And then another thing will come. And it's all okay, you know? So how much personal development goes into your life in order for somebody on the third wave when they walk up to you and they're like i found keto and my life has never been the same and you go okay and you don't say all right well here's what's going on you're reducing your calories like you're not eating carbohydrates. It's great. Like how long does it take before you feel like you don't have to answer the question for them and you let them go on the journey? Well, there's two things that get you there. One is, you know, for most of

my career, I was financially incentivized to not do that. Right. Like as when I owned and ran Precision Nutrition, right? We wanted to coach everyone, whether they love keto or not, whether they were vegan or not, they I know I can help you. And I know if I send you out there into the world to someone else, you'll probably get worse advice than what I can give you. So I I'm financially incentivized to be an agnostic, right? To embrace all people of all different philosophies and eating styles and help them, right? I feel morally obligated to as well, right? Because for years we had this thing at PN, which was just like, you know, if they don't find us, God help what they find.

You know what I mean? And it's not that we're the only one giving good advice. That's not what they find. You know what I mean? Like, and it's not that we're the only one giving good advice. That's, that's, that's not what it means. It just means that, you know, for every one good one, there's going to be 25, 50, a hundred bad ones. Right. So the odds of finding another good source of information in the haystack are really, really, really slim, right? So there's financial incentive and then, you know, moral incentive to not turn those people away, to not stick my finger in their face and go, yeah, but you're stupid, you know? So, and that leads you to practice the art of being with people, right? I often say coaching, parenting, leadership, it's all just the art of being with other humans,

you know, and addressing them in non-inflammatory ways, non-adversarial ways. And so then you get this practice because again, you're incentivized to do it. And then you get really good at saying, hey, this is where they are today. I don't know if you guys like in the last couple years there's been this resurgence of interest in mr rogers right have you have you guys seen the mr rogers documentary and then yeah if you saw the one i'm aware of i mean there have been two right there's the there's the documentary then there's the one that tom hanks was in right yeah uh i mean what what a phenomenal human but like i it reminds me of that approach right that approach where he says like the first thing is you have to remember that you were a kid too

you know and and this is this is the approach here remember that you were a beginner too like what stupid shit did each of you think and say when you were 19 and 20? Right. So when a 19 or 20 year old comes over and says stupid shit to you, you can be like, Oh, I'm going to give him the intellectual smack down. Or you can empathize and go,

shit. Now this guy doesn't need an ass kicking. Can you just need some mentorship? Like I did. Cause he's me, right? That guy is me. So again, being incentivized to learn this and then you actually see through what's happening

and you go, oh, he's so confident. He's so arrogant. You know, he's not a piece of shit. He's just me. And I turned out okay. I see that so much. You can turn out okay too, you know? Yes.

You see that with strength coaches all the time. And like, they're just in this phase. And that's like the same guy that used to get on the chat boards and argue with Boyle. Named me. You can't win that argument. Boyle just looks at you and goes, I totally understand what you're saying. And you'll learn. And then you learn

yeah um it's it's just part of like the part of the the journey i guess if you stay on it long enough you kind of start to find the truth and i'm sure whatever i'm doing right now we all kind of keep learning and hope it gets better i hope the coach is listening really grasp what he just said about like i think a big deciding factor and who's going to be a great coach and who's not going to be is some people have the ability to empathize with people. So they can see that 19 year old kid, instead of like, you know, needing to make them feel dumb to make me feel better that I listened. I realized he's 19. I remember how I was at 19 and meeting this, you know, boy or girl where they are.

If you can do that, you can be a great coach. If you cannot empathize and like put yourself in their shoes, I don't think you can be a great coach. I think you can have all the knowledge in the world, but you will never, ever reach enough lives because you're an asshole, to put it simply. Thanks for capturing that. And I'll tell's, and, and I, I'll tell you, I've, I've shared this with coaches and when they have the opportunity to rebut, you know, they'll say something like,

yeah, but kids these days are different and they're not, it's, they, they may say different words and they may have grown up in a different cultural context, but the principles are the same. If you split your eyes and just look at the shapes, the shapes are the same exact shapes. The words are just different, you know? So they're not different. They're not worse. They're not generation, whatever it is. And that's, and they're X entitled or, you know, why, whatever it's, it's the same thing, you know? Our kids are awesome. I don't know what they're talking about, but i coach which is i mainly coach youth you know i coach mainly i guess from

16 all the way to whatever but my young kids are awesome so i don't know what they're talking yeah and and you said you know the asshole thing and you mentioned mike boyle and so my they came together in my head because one of my favorite things from Mike was at an event, there was a coach and just talking to Mike about, he was just griping about why do some coaches who are way less knowledgeable than us or me or people in this room have way more business than us? You know, like basically the, the age old, I'm a unheralded genius and I'm unrecognized in my genius. And why is that guy over there who's dumb and worse than me? And I'm way more elite getting all the clients. And Mike was like, he paused and he was like,

have you ever considered even for a moment that you might be an asshole? And I was just like, I mean, yes. When all you're talking about is yourself, I am this and I am that probably you. That's the one thing you really are. Is that so funny? Cause boils like biggest thing is being a certified nice person.

And then the opposite side of that is you're just an asshole. If you is being a certified nice person. And then the opposite side of that is you're just an asshole if you're not a certified nice person. That's right. And I don't think he said it to be offensive. It was really just a drilling down into, hey, you might be chasing business away because you're not empathic. You're not cool. You think you're better than everyone else and you carry yourself with this elitism that doesn't exist.

And you might know a little bit more and that's not enough to overcompensate for the fact that people don't want to be around you. Well, I think that you have to practice that even more in the nutrition world because maybe, I don't know, maybe in the strength world, I feel like if you say,

hey, this is going to make you stronger. That person interested in getting stronger is definitely going to go try that thing for a month. Yeah. Like you don't have to really twist their arm to be like, Hey, if you, uh, if you do this little secret and you put this band around the bar, you're going to experience something wildly new and you'll get stronger. And for a month, that person is going to wrap the band around the bar and believe you. Yeah. you. And then they'll see if they got stronger. But in nutrition, it's like, look, if you just, you know, six months and we're going to eat a little bit less and it's going to be really hard. But people are like religiously like fanatic about the way they

eat. There's something so emotional and deeply driven about the decisions that you've been, their entire life. It's like you've been telling them like, okay, well, in the past, you've done it completely wrong. Going forward, we're going to try this. And that, that's really tough. That's a really tough pill to swallow for a lot of people. Yeah, yeah, there is. And you bring up the idea of emotion, and there is so much more emotion involved with it, but partly because the chemicals in your food drive emotional responses, right? I mean, with training, the emotions are pretty straightforward. You know what I mean? There's how you feel when you're straining against the load, right? That's a pretty straightforward emotion. And when you're successful with a lift, that feels a certain

way. And when you're not successful, that feels a certain way. And they're pretty blunt instruments, you know, the emotion around, but the subtlety of attachment to certain foods or of rituals around food or how you feel when you eat certain foods, when you're sad or how you feel when you're happy and how it brings you back to restrictions that were in your life when you were six years old or things that your favorite ever uncle would do with you to reward you for good behavior. You know, all of that is emotional, you know? And so we like to think we make rational decisions about our food choices, but there's so much emotion packed in with it on such a deep level that the biases are like, they're tricking, they're outsmarting us every term, you know? And then, you know, there's all these other issues that have become conflated with food, right?

Because food is a way bigger business than training, not nutrition, but food, global food is bigger, right? So we have ideas about what it means to eat animal flesh or certain things you know uh certain things when they're in season and farmers mean something to us so there's all this other context around this then food decisions become global they become environmental they become moral right like are you making a good choice for the planet for your grandchildren for the farmer up the road you know for the grocer uh so then it just becomes i i think of it like a just a tangled ball of yarn it's it's well impossible for most people to untangle each thread and go here i'm making a health choice here i'm making a environmental choice here i'm making a health choice. Here I'm making a environmental choice. Here I'm making a personal muscle choice. You know, here I'm making a fat loss choice. It just becomes too tangled

that they can't possibly unweave them all. So then you just have this ball. And when you have a big tangled ball of yarn that you don't quite fully understand, it's really impossible to help someone else understand it. And then when they tell you about their ball of yarn, and it's all twisted and tangled, there's almost no way to have discourse. You know what I mean? It's too complicated. I mean, I have this moment sometimes, like, let's say with my wife, right? Like, there'll be an issue that's a little bit triggering for both of us. And, you know, like it's a common issue that we've talked about before. And it's been emotionally laden before. And my position, I think, is well-reasoned.

But it's based on this whole, like, under the tip of the iceberg set of assumptions and beliefs about life. And hers is, too. How do you have that dialogue in an hour or a day or even a week right like this is take a multi-year you got married to figure it out that's right you got your whole life you know so now imagine trying to do that with someone you don't know on the internet this is i mean there's there's going to be no mutual respect there's going to be no reason to understand their point of view and their commitment on either one's side. Yeah. So that's how we get what we get, you know?

How do you kind of transition all of this into, you know, the morality and the environmental and macronutrients at that point almost seems so stupid to even talk about because the conversation is so deep, but then you build precision to a place where like if you're a nutrition coach and you don't check the precision nutrition level one box, I don't even know if I know a nutritionist that doesn't have that box checked. And you have to go and then teach coaches about people's decision making. And you're kind of like removing yourself one level and giving them the tools to break down. Okay. Well, someone's going to come at you with the environmental angle. Here's how we handle that. Here's the moral side of things. Here's their

emotional side of things. Here's the family history side of things. How do we start to like get coaches the tools to be able to have that conversation in a very respectful manner where you're not immediately just squashing people's life and their ideas. Yeah. Because that's really tricky. It can be or can be the easiest thing in the world. And here's how to make it the easiest thing in the world. Talk less, listen more, right? Like ascertain what is in the other person's mind first and foremost, and make that the center of the conversation. Coaching becomes really easy if I know what

moral choices are important to you, what environmental choices are important to you, what physical goals you have. Like if I just take myself out of the picture, we call this client-centered coaching, right? Put the client's whole self and belief systems at the center of this coaching interaction. Coach-centered coaching is when I try and impose my own set of beliefs on your life. Client-centered is, tell me more. And I often give this example because it's so simple and relatable to probably anyone listening. So someone comes up to me at the gym and is like, hey, you're in pretty good shape. Can I ask you

what I should have post-workout? Like what's the best post-workout thing to have for building muscle, right? Now, a coach-centered coach says, well, you know what? After you've trained, you've used up some muscle glycogen and you've caused a negative protein balance. So what you want is a fast digesting protein source to get yourself in a positive protein status. You want to replenish some of that muscle glycogen, right? So a post-workout drink with X, Y, and Z would be perfect. Now, none of that is necessarily inaccurate, but it's coach-centered. It's focused on my knowledge. I have no idea what you like to eat after workouts. You know what I mean? I have no idea if you have any restrictions or food allergies when I answer that way. So a better way to respond is what do you like to eat after a workout? What do you do right now? I make your experience the

center of the interaction. So I can try and learn about every, you know, impact on the body and on the environment that food can have, and then try and make you want the same things that I believe about that as a coach. Or I can just try and discover what you have, what you believe, what you think, and then just slowly introduce ways of adding more helpful choices or more environmentally friendly choices into the context of what you already do. It makes the whole thing markedly more simple, you know, and easier to teach and more effective, right? Because if it's already, you know, we often have the saying, ride the horses in the direction they're already going, right? That's what good coaching is. Ride the horses in the direction. Don't try and turn them around and make them go the way you want them to go. They're going that

way. Great. How do we keep that momentum for now? And people will undoubtedly bring it up, but what if the horses are running in the wrong direction? They're doing stupid things, right? And it's a great rebuttal, right? It's so easy for me to just preach on a podcast and not have anyone questioning my thinking, but plenty of people do, don't worry. But here, if the horses are riding in the wrong direction, get on them anyway, ride them for a while, build trust, and then you start nudging them in the right direction, right? The other horse analogy I've always used was, you know, the health and fitness industry used to be, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink, right? Which is what we were talking about earlier, right? I'm responsible as the coach

for giving you information. You're responsible for doing it. And if you don't do it, you suck, you're lazy, whatever, right? The sort of corollary to that is, you know, yes, you can't make the horse drink, but you can make them very, very thirsty. And that's your role as a coach, you know, not just here. No, you make them thirsty, you make them want to drink, you know, you give them all the tools to put them in a place where they're likely to do the thing, right? And that's extra work. And that's why most coaches don't do it, right? As it related to that, I think I've heard you say before, when you're doing goal setting with people, asking them after you've set a goal, like scale of one to 10, how confident are you that you

can accomplish this goal? And if they don't give you a nine or 10, then you, then you, you revamp the goal to make it where it's actually logistically and emotionally and motivationally doable for that person. Yeah. I mean, it's such an easy thing. And, and when you start using it, it lays bare how badly you were doing it before. Right? So, so the idea is let's say, um, client comes in for a particular goal. You talk about an exercise program or something related to sleep or something related to stress management or something related to food right and then you're like okay cool and you you know my vision here is that you've co-created it with the person not just you told them what to do right but you've

talked about it you've said hey well what do you think would solve this problem we're discussing oh that's a really great idea let's let's try, oh, I'm not sure I'd tackle it that way. Does something like this seem doable for you? And then you keep negotiating. So you co-create the next action with the person's input, right? I mean, it only takes an extra few minutes and now they feel some agency and some contribution to the process, right? And then once you've said, okay, cool. So it seems like we've agreed you're wanting to try this next thing for the next two weeks. Before we try it, though, on a scale of zero to 10,

zero being there's no way in hell, and 10 being, of course, a trained monkey could do that. How confident do you feel that you could do this thing every day for the next two weeks, right? And you let them rate it, right? If they say two, which is really close to no way in hell. Yeah. And you give it to them anyway. Who's the moron? You are. You know what I mean? Yes. Brilliant. If they say eight or nine, now we can proceed. Right. And, you know,

I remember, I remember wondering when I first started learning this and applying it, how come physicians don't do this? Have you ever gone to the doctor and they prescribe medication and asked you if you feel 0 to 10 capable of doing this every day? The biggest problem in the pharmaceutical meets physician world is medical compliance, like taking your prescription medication, right? There's conferences devoted to how to get people to take their life-saving medications because they only do it 40 to 50% of the time. And that's the magic pill that you just need to take in the

morning, right? So I was like, why don't they just have like an app that asks them how confident they feel that they, you know what I mean? And then like an app that they, that asks them how confident they feel that they, you know what I mean? And then if they say no confidence, then we come up with a different prescription, you know? But anyway, I think it's the simplest thing you can do. And it gives you so much insight into whether what you're about to tell the person is going to have any impact in their life or not, you know? And then if, if if they say two out of ten then you make the thing smaller right okay it seems like maybe then this isn't something you feel like you could have success with yeah let's shrink it down a little bit then until we can get you to like an eight

and let's say let's say our first thing is like eating five servings of fruits and vegetables a day and you scale it down until they're like okay okay, one serving every other day. And they're like, yeah, I can do that nine out of 10. Right. That's not about me. If you're the old school, if you're that coach who's like, wants to be cynical of this advice, it's like, yeah, but one serving of vegetable isn't going to do anything every other day. It's a step in the right direction though. That's right.

Because some of these folks will have had zero success doing anything they've ever been asked from a health and fitness perspective. And if they can do this every day, every other day for two weeks, right? And then they come in, they feel proud of their accomplishment. Then the next thing we do can be a little more. I love this. Brilliant. So you, you basically, you, uh, before you build their physical strength, you know, you're building their mental, emotional strength. And then you build it up to the point where they can do the five servings, you know. Or if not, that's some other thing that will be really beneficial to them. And again, a lot of the challenge for a lot of coaches comes in. All of this just takes longer than you think you should do. You know, you think you

should be like, get out your paper. Here's the thing. Go. You know what I mean? You think it should be that fast. It's not. That's not what coaching is. Real coaches know this, right? Sometimes, you know, you talked about working with young athletes. These are decades long projects. Yeah. You know, what do you do when you, you know, you see somebody to just come full circle in it. That's, that's in the same car as you,

maybe not the drugs and the alcohol, but the food is their drug or alcohol. And you recognize that, you know, we may not ever see the change unless you have that car wreck or you eliminate those friends. And to me, I always start to, one of my very first things is looking at the friends and the social circles, because it's way harder. I would even call it impossible. It's impossible to say no to your friends over and over and over again until

you just come to the conclusion that i gotta get new friends right yep that and that seems to be to me the crux of so much of the bad habits is that your friends don't allow you to change or they don't change with you and they don't want to improve so we all all just stay stuck. What do you think about that? Or people that are harder to get away from, like your family. Like if you're a high school kid and your parents eat really, really poorly and they only buy poor, you know, they make poor food decisions so that you only have junk food in your house, like you're in a tough spot. Which actually now that I just said that, I definitely want to get to, before we close up shop here, to any advice you have for parents out there. Travis has three kids. I definitely want to get to before we before we close up shop here. To any advice you have for

parents out there. Travis has three kids. I got three kids. Anders has a kid. How have you over the years with your kids? You know, influence their nutrition choices and, you know, that's got compliance, so to speak. It might be the same answer for the two things that the first one it's a great question it really it begins with a philosophical shift right uh if you believe that it's your job to change the person your effectiveness is going to go way down right and you'll feel super frustrated when they don't change and when their friends and their you know environment or whatever keeps pulling them back into this dark place, right? One of the first things we teach is you have to accept the possibility of non-change and still be there anyway, right? Accept the possibility of non-change. Accept the possibility that this person doesn't

change at all. And you have to be okay with that, right? Because we all start getting emotional about someone else's life, right? You're like, ah, it makes me so mad when they don't. Wait a second. Why are you personalizing this? So begin with this possibility of non-change. The second thing is, I liken this to when a good friend comes to you for advice and you give it and they don't take it.

And then they come back for the same problem later this to when a good friend comes to you for advice and you give it and they don't take it. And then they come back for the same problem later and you give them advice again and they don't take it. And you get so frustrated and you think, why am I wasting my breath? Well, you may not be wasting your breath because it may take 11 times for them to change, to do it, to take, to hear it, for it to make sense to them you know they say in marketing sometimes you don't hear a marketing message until around seven times right so when people are like why are you saying why are you sending these these ads out so much well because you didn't hear the first six you know what i mean so yeah did you buy it you didn't oh that's why yeah it's not that's. It's not annoying yet.

So we have to accept that it's not a waste of time if someone doesn't take our advice the first time. Because it may be working on them subconsciously, right? It may just, like, on the scale of zero to ten, wanting to change, they may be at a zero. And after you told them they went to one, but they still need nine climbs up the ladder, right? And they may need to hear it from someone else. And they may need to read something or see something on TV. And they may need a car crash, because the car crash may not have been taking me from zero to 10. I was probably at six or seven already, kind of sick of the shit that I was doing. The crash took me the extra couple of notches. So I think as a coach, we have to be present for that. We may be the only correcting force in their lives, right?

So when you're like, it's impossible when all their friends and their environment keeps pushing them back into this place, right? You're right. It may be, but if you withdraw, then there may be zero other correction forces in their lives, right? So now they'll be further away for you not trying. So it's just that, but again, this is your own work now. Can you be okay being present in the life of a partner or a family member or a friend or a client, and there being a possibility that they never take your advice, that they never change?

And can you be cool saying, that's all right, because I might be the only person voicing the other side of this in their lives. And it may help them eventually, and it may not, but I'm going to keep doing this gentle pressure. You know what I mean? And they might hear one other thing from someone else. And that may be the thing that tips them because we've all had that experience. We keep telling people this advice and then some random person that they don't even know very well gives them the same advice. I'm like, I'm going to try this thing. Someone told, I've been telling you that for 10 years. And again, it's because we get so emotionally

connected to it. And guess what? You've been telling them it for 10 years. That person isn't the one who got them to do it. It was your 10 years plus that one extra, like putting a chip on the scale. You gave them the first six and someone else gave them number seven. That's right. That's how I think about that. And again, this approach may not be for everyone. I understand it's like a patient, more gentle approach.

And that's not how everyone wants to be in the world. But for me, I found it paid tremendous dividends, both for my own mental, emotional health and around those people in my life and the clients that I have. But it also tends to work out. Again, if you take the other approach and you're always guilting them and you're always hammering them in a non-gentle way, then you're just going

to be one more person who makes them feel bad about themselves. Right. And if their client will eventually fire you. And if there's someone closer to you, they'll eventually find ways to spend less time with you. You know what I mean? So that's the alternative outcome. You so busy trying to change them that you've done the exact opposite. Rather than help them and be a deeper part of their life and experience, you've pushed yourself right out of their life. And that's not what you want. So anyway, that's the first answer.

The second one for kids, you know, our kids do a great job. We have four. Their ages are 10, 8 and 4 and why do i feel like i'm so far behind with a single child yeah where you at no one on this podcast respects me might be the smartest of the four of us actually for sure i'm right um we're just over here greedily collecting children and polluting the earth with all these extra people great footprint guys great footprint that's right you say four six eight and ten so ten yeah ten eight six and four yep wow yeah so that's consistent and and they that's right we did that on purpose uh and and they they do really great with food. And it's not because we

are nutrition people or whatever. And we're always pushing a foodie kind of agenda. It's just because we're really, really simple and straightforward with how we eat as a family. And we are just consistent and relentless about it, right? Like there is just this is what we eat here. You know what I mean? This is what dinner is. Oh, you don't want to eat? That's cool. When our kids, like early on in parenting, we came up with this idea, like we're going to put like a butcher's block low counter in the kitchen, right? With little kid chairs. And that's where we'll serve their dinner. And we'll leave the food there as

long as they want it to be there and they can get up as many times as they want and go away from the food you know so it's not like sit down this is dinner time you will eat all your food you're not allowed to leave the table until you're done uh i'm sorry you don't like it you're not getting anything else it's not authoritarian and disciplinarian as you can imagine from all the things i've said today that's not my style um what we do is just set out the food on this low butcher block and we let them eat and we let them wander away and we let them come back and eventually they'll eat it all. Right. And there's just very little pressure about it. And our way of feeding is very straightforward for breakfast, lunch and dinner, they get protein, vegetables,

and fruit. That's what they get, right? Now, are we low carbers? No. It's just anyone with kids knows kids are like carb-seeking missiles. They will find carbs and junk and whatever. And so we don't prohibit that. We just don't serve extra of it. You know what I mean? So when we know for sure at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, they're going to get proteins, fruits, and vegetables. And the rest of the day they might have ice cream. I remember this one time, like I think we had just two and we pulled up in like the grocery store next to a family that we knew and like the minivan sliding doors were open right so the kids were all yapping and so we were chatting with this family and i remember we went to drive away

and uh our kids had goldfish crackers in the car i'm like terrifying how did you even get goldfish like when did this transaction happen and i'm like this is just this is just how it happens right people give kids lollipops everywhere they go. So they're going to get plenty of carbs, right? So we'll just take care of the fruits, vegetables, proteins, healthy fats, whatever you want to say. And then they'll get the carbs wherever they get the carbs, you know? And so that's been our philosophy and it's worked really, really great. Now, some people say, well, my kids don't eat vegetables or whatever. Now we don't serve them all the same vegetables and fruits.

Our 10 year old has braces now. So there's a bunch of stuff that gets caught in her braces. So I give her different ones and the other kids get. Our eight year old, he prefers certain ones and our six and four year olds prefer different fruits and vegetables. So usually the fruits and vegetables are a little different per kid. You know, generally the protein's the same. So again, it's, we find the ones that they like, and we've tried a big wide range of variety. So we know the ones that they like, you know, our, our six-year-old loves this, what's in season right now, this combination of plum and apricot called plumicots. And he just, he'll just eat those, you know, as his fruit for every meal right now while they're in season. I don't know how we discovered that, but we know it. And so now he gets plumicots,

you know what I mean? And our youngest one really loves blueberries and raspberries. You know, our eight-year-old really loves apples and mango so that might be the fruits on their plates you know and so we have a wide variety but you know the when someone says ah but my kid doesn't like vegetables i think you haven't tried enough of them and you haven't done this gentle, consistent presentation where just every meal gets vegetables. You know, you're going to, oh, you didn't like those? We'll try a different one tomorrow. Oh, you didn't like those?

We'll try a different one tomorrow. Oh, you didn't like those? Try a different one tomorrow. Same theme as what we said earlier. This approach takes longer. You know what I mean? It's more challenging. It takes more patience. It takes some belief that maybe this won't work out and that's okay. I'm not going to

judge it. Right. But what ends up happening is when you do that and you're not so, meal times aren't so emotionally charged, just makes it free for everyone to just, oh, maybe I'll try that thing today that I wouldn't try last week. And then eventually they have a stable of foods that they like that are fruits, vegetables, and proteins, you know? So that's how we do it. And again, it's just, it's just gentle, non-emotionally Latin, very consistent presentation of how, who we are in this family. And, and again, around what it means to eat a meal, super flexible, you know, what that meal consists of, try loads of different things, as long as it's protein, vegetables, and fruits. Yeah. I really like when I, when I hear you talk

and you think about people's nutrition, so many people's identity is wrapped into like who they are what diet they follow and your identity in the way that you kind of like have it as a very like let's just play this game out and try and make make it a little bit better every day without kind of the dogma that is attached to it yeah and i handed my daughter uh chocolate ice cream for the first time like two months ago. How old is she? Two years old. Okay. She ate it as if like she'd been eating it for like eight years already.

She just attacked it. It's like, look, I don't know if there's a gene for chocolate ice cream, but I may have passed that one on. That hasn't changed for me to this day. I have lactose and milk allergy problem so i'm allergic to the milk protein and i can't have the lactose so i eat dairy free but i eat ice cream every single day dairy free ice cream every single day so it hasn't changed for me i'm 46 years old my wife's gonna love that you said that she's gonna use that against me for so long. JB does it. He said it was okay.

Yo, I need to be out of here in about five minutes or so, but real quick before we wrap up, I'd love to hear more about your book. You mentioned it a couple of times. I'm aware of it, but I haven't read it yet, but I'd love to hear about it because it's on my list. Yeah. So I published a new book last November called Changemaker. The subtitle is Turn Your Passion for Health and Fitness into a Powerful Purpose and a Wildly Successful Career. The idea is that, you know, I've spent my, like I told you guys earlier, I've spent my whole life in this field

since I was like 17 years old. So I've seen people my whole life super passionate about health and fitness. And then like, hey, maybe I should do this for a living. And then all these harsh realities set in and they don't, they can't quite figure out how to do it. It's like, uh, one of my relatives told me when I decided I was going to go do a master's in exercise science instead of med school. Well, that's great because I heard the exercise science factory is hiring, you know, and there is no like straightforward job path, you know, when you want to come into health and fitness. And that is challenging for a lot of people. So, you know, I've done pretty

well in the field. So I decided to capture everything that I think I've learned over the last 30 years, you know, as a coach, as a business owner, you know, as a competitor, and distill it into a set of sort of principles and activities that can help people discover their own unique abilities, their values and their purpose, and then turn that into a sustainable career for themselves. Now, most people immediately when they hear all this are going to think, coach, how do I become a coach in the industry? And part of the book is to convince a lot of you not to be coaches in the industry, right? That's not for everyone. And that's not the only path. There are all kinds of ways. And I'll just give you like two simple examples.

When I and my partner Phil sold Precision Nutrition and transitioned out, we had to hire people to fill the roles that we're performing. And one of my roles was editor in chief. So running all the content and one of Phil's was directing our products, which is our software tools that we had developed for professionals. So we went out to seek people who could take over those roles. And so he found a bunch of people who run product for health and fitness companies who are as into training and exercise as we are, but also like software development, right? Those people make between five and 700 grand a year doing that. You know, I found a guy to take over. I found a number of candidates who are making

about the same, you know, writing about and leading content teams. So there are great paying jobs that bring together your passion for health and fitness and other aspects of your personality that you don't have to subjugate just so you can go become a coach. So anyway, that for me is part of this whole thing. How can we help people discover, you know, who they are and who the people are out there that need them and put them together so they can have well-paying, really rewarding, meaningful careers. So there's sections on education and sections on marketing and business and sections on coaching and sections on self-discovery and sections on learning about your clients. And it's going

really well. You know, we released it in November. I think we've sold 60,000 copies so far, over 300 five-star reviews on Amazon. And, you. And for me, this isn't about the money. When I sold Precision Nutrition, I got a life-changing, huge payday. Every dollar I spend either gets donated, or every dollar I make either gets donated or put right back into helping more people get the book who can't afford afford it and it's only 20 bucks. So it's not about money for me, but it really is about sharing everything I think I've learned in the industry. So I'm really excited about the book.

You know, it's beautiful. It's got all the lessons I've learned and people are saying really nice things about it. So I love telling more people about it and hoping that lots of people who are beginning in the field or thinking about beginning in the field can get their hands on it. And even people who have been in the field for a while and been floundering, not quite sure what to do for the next step.

I hope they get it too so that it can help guide their path. Yeah. Where can people find the book? Where can people find you? They can get it everywhere. Amazon, all the Amazons, all the places online where people buy books. It's super easy to find. Just type in change maker, John Berardi. You'll find it. Beautiful. Doug Larson. You bet. Excuse me. You bet. Uh, Travis dropped off just a few minutes ago. He wanted to say, uh, thank you for coming on the show and he appreciated meeting you. Uh, and I echo that as well. I really appreciate you being here. I've wanted to do this for a long time and I really enjoyed it.

Thanks, John. That's awesome. Thanks. Yeah. Thanks to all of you. I really appreciate you guys having me and, and everyone who listened,

you know, we've been at it for an hour and a half plus. Thanks for your time spending with us today. Hopefully you got some value out of it and a little entertainment along the way. We laughed. I like it. You bet. You can find me on Instagram at Douglas C.

Larson. Yeah. I just want to say thanks as well. I always kind of assumed bet. You can find me on Instagram at Douglas C. Larson. Yeah. I just want to say thanks as well. I always kind of assumed we would do this in person. And anytime I meet somebody that I believe has created what is the gold standard in the industry, I do want to do that. I will not be on Instagram talking smack to you. Equal levels of respect. But it's really cool.

And a number of times I've been to your website and just downloaded eBooks and everything. I get all the emails. I have to be on every drip that you have possibly ever been a part of.

So it's very cool to actually meet you. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. We're Barbell Shrugged at barbell underscore shrug. Make sure you go to barbellshrug.com forward slash store.

Training programs, e-books, online nutrition courses. If you already aren't hanging out on Precedent Nutrition. And we will see you guys next week. That's a wrap, friends. Make sure you get over to our friends at Legion Athletics. By Legion.com forward slash Shrugged. That's where you save 20% on all of your supplements. Highest quality, most transparent, scientifically backed supplements in the whole game.

Also, head over to bioptimizers.com. That's where magnesium breakthrough. You can save 10% using the code shrugged. Organifi.com. Green, red, gold, and the pumpkin spice coming out right now. If you order it now, you'll have it by the time the weather drops. Um, you can save 20% at Organifi.com forward slash shrugged.

And then the weight lift Olympic weightlifting bundle coming out next week. Stoked, stoked on it. Uh, five programs, nutrition course, course on teaching the lifts as well as nutrition friends. We're going to see you guys next week.