Barbell Shrugged - Sex Drive, Adrenal Fatigue & Under Eating with Jason Phillips - 232

Episode Date: October 26, 2016

This week on Barbell Shrug, we interview Jason Phillips and we talk about metabolic adrenal damage derangement. Derangement? Wow. That's an interesting topic. This week on Barbell Shrug, we interview Jason Phillips and we talk about why you don't have a boner. That's probably what it is. Or adrenal fatigue. Dried up. Let's keep it fair for the ladies. Don't ever use that.

Oh, yeah. What does happen in ladies? Do they have the boner effect? I don't think so. I don't know. Clearly. I mean, like. The boner effect.

The boner effect for. This week on Barbell Shrug, we talk about the boner effect. For women. Opposite. Well, I just. Yeah, whatever. You know what I mean. Hey, this is Rich Froning. You're listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version effect. For women, opposite. Well, I just, yeah, whatever. You know what I mean. Hey, this is Rich Froning.

You're listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbellshrugged.com. Watch, cupping is about to blow up. Oh, yeah. I even had people messaging me. Oh, my gosh. You've experienced cupping before, and I'm like, here we go. You should have put a cup in your mobility kit.

I know. Mobility kit's now featuring cupping. Mobility cups. When they saw that and everybody was talking about it, I just, my Facebook feed blew up with, because we have a lot of people who are like physical therapists and all this kind of stuff. And they were like, it was just, it was like a war.

It was almost like it's the bandit clean thing. It's like a war going on, like anti-cupping versus pro-cupping. I had some people that asked if it was for fat loss. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. I was like, I mean. Yeah, dude.

Phelps is as shredded as he is strictly because of cupping. Yeah. He sucked the fat right out. It has nothing to do with the volume of swimming. It's the new lipo. Non-invasive lipo. What did they remember the EIY lipo? 10,000 calories or something a day, he's saying.

I think it was like 13 or 14. It was absurd. It depended if he was high or not. Yeah. Well, that probably helps a lot. That probably helps him a lot that probably helps if i needed to eat that much i would be smoking weed all the time like all day and that's training i would be i would be eating it and then eating more food oh yeah eating it i'd be all about those edibles yeah oh yeah oh dude edibles edibles are the way to go all right yeah what's up, guys? Welcome to Barbells Drug.

Just say no. Or if you're Phelps, just say yes. I'll start over again. What's up, guys? Welcome to Barbells Drug. I'm your host, Mike McGoldrick, here with Alex Macklin, CTP behind the camera. I think he's going to get miked up here in a minute, but for right now, there's the fingers. Oh, shit. Our very special guest today, Jason Phillips.

What's going on? We are here, downtown Memphis, at CrossFit Hit and Run. Jason, thanks for coming out. I picked you up from the airport earlier. We drove around a little bit. Jason, you took the red eye. Yeah, man, took the red eye last night. You were proud of it, too?

Dude, I'm the king of the red eye. So I am the ultimate efficiency whore. And anybody that knows me knows I do 10 million things, and I work endless amounts of hours. So the idea of flying West to East and losing three hours in my day and not being able to work like fucking drives me crazy. So I went to the airport like 11 o'clock last night and connected in Charlotte and was here this morning and I'm ready to go, man. I mean, yeah, Starbucks, you could sponsor me.

Anytime I book a flight, I look online and I see the red eye, especially if I'm coming back from the West. And I'm like, man, that would be perfect. I could leave at 10, get back at 8 in the morning and have a good day. And every time I do it, it's the worst decision I've ever made. I don't sleep. I just get thrown around for eight hours straight. It just pisses me off for eight hours.

I'm doing a crazier trip this Saturday. I'm doing a seminar at CrossFit BYOB in Dallas. And I leave. What a great name. Bring your own barbell? I think that's what it stands for, actually. So shout out to CrossFit BYOB. But I'm bringing,

I think I'm leaving Phoenix at like midnight. I think I get in at like 3.30 a.m. to Dallas. I'm going to meet some clients for breakfast. We're going to do the seminar, and then I'll be home Saturday night. Oh, wow. Be back in Phoenix Saturday night. And you were saying earlier you were on your 13th week or something? 13th straight week traveling.

Traveling. How do you even keep up with that shit? Man, I was in Manchester. I've been to Iceland. Fuck, I don't know where I haven't been, but, uh, I don't know, man. It's like, uh, people ask me all the time, like, aren't you tired or, or, you know, whatever. And it's, it's literally just what I want to be doing. Like I, there's nothing else I want to do. So tell us what it is you do, because this is the first time you've

been on a show right yeah um i've known jason for a couple years now he's helped me out with nutrition um he does a lot of nutrition coaching so give us the background how you got started in this and some of your athletes now and where the you know what it is you do now and all this traveling that you're doing yeah so uh short answer to what i do now is i am a nutrition coach um i do work with i work with everybody but i work with a lot of CrossFitters, obviously. Higher level, games level athletes to people that just want to lose weight or gain weight. To pro wrestlers. Yeah, pro wrestlers.

What's the pro wrestler? Who's that? Becky Lynch. Becky Lynch. Smackdown Women's Champion. Yeah, she was here a couple weeks ago. Actually, we just had breakfast at the restaurant that she recommended. Bedrock Eats and Sweets.

What's up? Or Bedrock Market Cafe. That's what it is, right yeah oh dude dale meitzler just messaged me and was like bedrock eats and sweets too so okay maybe that's like that's the same thing that's the og name yeah yeah i think so okay yeah um but anyway yeah so i'm a nutrition coach um my my background is different though you know i got into the fitness and nutrition space i had an eating disorder disorder. I was, uh, I was 19 years old. Um, I was kind of lost in my life, man. I actually played high school golf, um, was a top rank amateur, um, thought I was going to play professionally. And then I got hurt and gotten

like the rehab setting. And I didn't know what the hell I wanted to do, man. I didn't want to go to school. I didn't, I didn't want to be normal. Like in high school, dude, I didn't, I didn't go to school on Monday or Friday. I went to school Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. I would leave Friday, go to a tournament, come home Monday. Like I was that kid. And so I was just like in this downward spiral. And, you know, I'm working out. I was kind of liking the gym.

I was liking what I was seeing. And all of a sudden I got this opportunity to do some modeling. And at 19 years old, the company was – That goes to your head, I'm sure. Well, it was Abercrombie & Fitch. Oh, that's funny. I mean, every 19-year-old's wet dream is like, dude, I want to be a fucking Abercrombie model. I used to work at Hollister.

The competitor. 19 years old, dude, picking up females as an Abercrombie model. I don't know anything about clothes. You were probably like on one of the fucking posters that were in the store. Eventually, I think I was. But at the time, Alex had your poster in his bedroom.

I know, with probably the low-cut thing. Super low-rise jeans. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Top part of your crotch, all that stuff.

But when they hit me up, they were like, man, make sure you send us some pictures of your abs. And as a golfer, I hate that company. You're like, you eat Taco Bell and you eat burgers and you eat chicken fingers. Think like country club food. Yeah.

Right? Like you definitely don't eat healthy. And, you know, I wasn't genetically gifted with abs. So I started doing everything I could. And before I knew it, I was literally doing two hours of cardio a day. And like a meal for me was two rice cakes. Like that was a meal when I was anorexic yeah i was eating fucking nothing yeah um you know so went into that whole downward spiral came out of it uh decided at that moment that i needed to pay

it forward because there's so many people that were living with what i was living with that have been in a negative place with food um i switched my major in school, moved to Florida, went to Florida State, and instantly started working with people. And I've been doing it for 11 years. I want to touch on that a little bit. Like, you say you came out of it. Yep. But, like, I know that's not an easy thing, especially with food,

because food is extremely powerful. Yeah. But what were some things that maybe that you did to get you out of that? So I got really lucky, man. Like, me coming out of it was a huge lie. Like, there was a – so at the time, because I was so affected and my hormone profile was so fucked up, like, I literally was not able to function after, like, 1 or 2 o'clock.

And so the only job I could get and hold was opening up Gold's Gym at 5.30 a.m. And so I would, like like open from 5 30 to 11 every day and it was great because I had energy in the morning I could get off I could work out I could go home and sleep on my fucked up hormone schedule yeah and uh there was this trainer there that kind of saw what I was doing to myself and there was this bodybuilder that would come in every day and I was like man like I want to look like that dude because he was lean like he was getting ready for a show but he was big yeah and I was like I want to look like that dude she's like oh well I trained him and I write his diet and I was like okay well do you want to train me

and do my diet and she's like yeah absolutely and she was like go home and make a meal plan that's 4,000 calories and start eating 4,000 calories tomorrow and for someone who didn't for somebody that was eating, I can't afford that. Dude, I probably couldn't at the time, thankful for my parents. But, you know, I went in and it was scary, but I remember, for whatever reason,

putting blind trust in this woman. And going to Barnes & Noble, because this was before the days of MyFitnessPal. I went to Barnes & Noble and bought a calorie counting book. And I sat down and I wrote a 4,000 calorie meal plan and I fucking implemented it the next day. And I remember looking in the mirror three, four weeks later and I wasn't fat and I'm like, Hey, maybe this food thing is not so bad. Yeah. Um, and that was really like the beginning. Um,

you know, I think that a lot of people would be like, Oh, that's where you overcame it. I mean, I could go super deep into the mental demons that came with it i mean when i went to school you know trying to be a normal 21 year old and drink with your friends yeah um to going to fucking chipotle with your friends right like i mean i still do to accepting those things that they're okay yeah like accepting that like hey i can i can have a piece of pizza yeah right like i knew 4000 calories was okay but i like still in my head i'm like one piece of pizza can can fuck me up yeah um so you know i think it was a much longer process than that but i think like that was the defining moment that helped me at least move in the right direction but you

definitely had some you know you had some help getting absolutely oh yeah man huge so like i never i was a week away from going to like a clinic like my like my doctor and my mom finally told me they were like hey we were a week away from having an like a clinic like my like my doctor and my mom finally told me they were like hey we were a week away from having an intervention what you were like i mean how tall are you at five five nine yeah you said you were like 118 pounds yeah whoa so yeah yeah yeah and what was your 10 rep max back squat back then uh because now it's like training 15 is the training bar maybe yeah uh body like air squats maybe? Oh, man.

Man, you just totally undercut my 10 rep max at 415. Whoa, whoa, whoa. You think it's that light? I have no idea. I just see you posting back squat videos and it's crazy high numbers. I don't know. I haven't done a 10 rep. Okay.

How long? 20 rep is 405. 20 rep is 405. Yeah. So if I do the math right, they should have an 800-pound 10 rep max. That's crazy. So that was when you were 19. How old are you now?

I'm 32. Okay. Yeah. So almost 20. So this led into obviously a passion into helping others and maybe sharing your experience with some of those that are going through the same battles. And that's kind of what sparked the business nowadays that you're doing.

But you're not only, I mean, how much of it is, you know, people that have maybe some eating disorder, do you help with that? Or is yours more performance-based now, the consulting that you do? I would say I work with pretty much anybody that's willing to work. Sure. I think that I would never say that having an eating disorder is a good thing, but I do think that all things in life happen for a reason. I think it was placed in my life for me to have an understanding of the mental side of dieting. You know, one of the foundations of me working with clients can corroborate or like we communicate very frequently. Like we text message all the time. We'll talk on the phone. I mean, you don't have any mental relationships with food that are negative. So it wasn't hard for you, but I have a lot of clients and unfortunately because of the media and everything that's out

there, there is a lot of negative relationships with food. Yeah. If you've heard me mention it in past shows, sorry, one sec. Uh, if you've heard me mention it in past shows, uh, this summer I did an Olympic weightlifting meet and wanted to cut weight for it very slowly and also not lose any strength. Jason was the guy that I went to for help to help me with that. And he was, like, very attentive and made it very easy where all I had to do was just follow directions. Yeah. I was going to say, I think a big chunk of people do have some mental issues with food, like more so than we would probably think. Because, you know, when you give somebody a nutrition plan and there's resistance there,

that's probably a lot to do with the fact that they that they are afraid or there's some there's some issues with. Well, I'm not sure what you're doing here. And I would say 80 to 90 percent of dietary change and dietary compliance is mental. Mental, yeah. Like, I don't think that, you know, if put in front of you, like a chicken breast or, you know, a Big Mac, like, it's not hard to physically pick up the chicken breast and consume it. Like, that's not a physical thing that's difficult to do. Oh, making the choices. Yeah, going to a restaurant, same thing. Yeah, I mean, like, when you walk in and you're around, you know, 10 friends on a Friday night and your friends are drinking beer and pizza and you're like, I know this isn't in my diet and I know this is going to set me back. But you're afraid of that perception of you.

So there is always a mental component to it. Or in that you start to become maybe a little bit obsessive about food in general. Yeah, it can absolutely go the wrong way as it did with me. Like you can go – you can take something that's meant to be healthy and it can become something too extreme. Yeah. Which we see with some CrossFitters right now. I will say that it may not be – it may be physically hard to –

it may not be physically hard to pick up the chicken breast or the Whopper, whatever, but it definitely is hard to chew that chicken breast sometimes when you don't want to eat it. That's what that is. That is definitely physically harder. Cause I'm chewing that shit sometimes with greens. I'm like, and you're like,

you're like, man, that big Mac would be way easier to chew. It'd be so much easier to go down. Sorry. I had to say. Whatever that meat really is, like it would be way easier to chew.

I think that just, that just becomes then, uh, and we were talking about this earlier is is that it becomes habit at this point. Like you're making a habit of choosing the chicken breast rather than the Whopper. And that takes a lot of work and time. And that people don't really think about that when they're thinking about, okay, well, I'm going to start this nutrition plan or whatever. But they don't have any of those habits that are developed.

So you have to work to develop those habits. And that's a really hard thing to do. One of the first things I do when I give a client like a plan is I, I asked them to start planning and, you know, because if let's just, you know, we all know like the whole macros world and we know that like flexible dieting exists and the, you know, I work on macros and whatever, you know, if I give you a set of macros and you wake up tomorrow and you start going about your day, the same way you've gone about every day for the last four months, why are you going to be at any different of a macro count than you were previously? Like, you're not. Your decisions are going to be the exact same.

And so what I try to do is get them to plan out what that day looks like. And they're like, holy shit. Like, if I would have eaten the way I normally eat, I'd be so far off of this plan. Yeah. I really need to focus and identify what these changes are. Are you talking about like planning out, like saying like, okay, plan out your ideal day or a day that you normally would? Well, like for instance, let's say I gave you a prescription today

and 200 protein, 300 carb, 100 fat. Yeah. And you're used to eating 150 protein, 500 carb, and 200 fat. And you go about your day tomorrow and you look at your food log at 3 p.m and you're like holy fuck like i have 100 grams of protein to eat but i only have two grams of fat left yeah and you're like what the fuck do i do right you're gonna text me and i'm probably gonna be like we'll start tomorrow yeah right but go home and plan tonight so that you can get into tomorrow and actually not make those mistakes early in the day because it is it's demoralizing too like you know we talked about the psychology side if you get into

if you start you fuck up three days in a row as a client yeah they're like oh this shit just doesn't work for me yeah i just i can't make these changes yes how many people have been like for you just like they do it a couple of days and like i just can't do this yeah yeah and it's because they never made a concerted effort to change they thought that living in the same habits that they've been living in for the last six months years however long yeah is going to get them where they're going to go yeah clearly clearly you came with you had a problem so doing the things that you weren't doing before it's clearly not going to work so you're gonna have to make some changes yeah we mentioned that at breakfast about how sometimes um and I've even been guilty of it when I've hired coaches,

is like I assumed that the work would be done when I hired you, and it's not really the case. I pay the money, and I'm like, all right, the change is done now. It's like, no, that's just the start of it. So not necessarily true. Going back to you mentioned some of your hormonal issues when you were basically starving yourself for a while. Let's let's lead into a little bit about some of the common terms, the very popular terms that were that you hear a lot about nowadays with adrenal fatigue.

And basically, basically a lot of people doing very high intense exercise that are under eating. Like what things look like under the hood and what's going on there. Yeah. So so first of all, for me, when I had hormone issues, it was sex hormone issues. It was a mild extension of what we would see in the CrossFit world today. You're talking about testosterone. Yeah, testosterone. The sex hormones. Like testosterone, estrogen is way off.

I mean, I started hormone replacement at 20 years old because my body basically stopped producing testosterone. Like it was just it was gone it had no fuel no recovery no and i was training you know not intensely but two hours of steady state cardio a day and we know from research like the effects of aerobic exercise on sex hormones and on the adrenals um right that's it's pretty harsh and so i was i mean i was a mess dude and 20 years old can't get a boner. And like, you know, that's no fun. No, dude. I mean, I work on me model or not. It ain't helping.

Right. Exactly. Um, no, you know, it was, uh, it was a pretty miserable time and I distinctly remember what it was like when, when I got on the hormone replacement, cause it was such a change. Um, and so, you know, again, I, I talk about how like the past shapes where we are today. I mean, maybe that was put in my life for me to understand what these CrossFitters do go through. And, you know, one of the terms you threw out is adrenal fatigue. And that's like, that's such a buzzword right now, man. I'm like, you know, we could go down so many different rabbit holes with it. I mean, first of all, we're going to have like a little bell.

We ring adrenal fatigue. Word of the day. Um, you know, clinically, I think that what we were looking at, right. If we're looking at blood work or lab values, we're looking at DHEA to cortisol ratio. Okay. Um, so for the people that don't understand what's DHEA. It's a precursor to testosterone. Okay.

And you know, obviously so, but the problem is, and this is something you and I talked about before we got on, right? Like medicine, people have to understand medicine is also marketing and it's also a way that physicians get paid. Yeah. And it's become very sexy to talk about adrenal fatigue and it's become very sexy to look at a cortisol number. But if you go and you get blood work, you're getting a cortisol sum and a cortisol sum does not paint the full picture. You know, we could give you a cortisol sum of 26 and that could mean that you start the day with really high cortisol and it tapers off throughout the day like it's supposed to. Right. Or that could mean that you're starting the day with really low cortisol and it spikes throughout the day like it's not supposed to. One of those would be indicative of adrenal fatigue. But that same number at the end, it's the exact same number.

So how do we know? It's like stepping on the scale, you know, like you could be 180 pounds and look terrible or you'd be 180 pounds and look awesome. Right. Yeah. Right. So, um, you know, I think that's, it's really important to understand, but you know, I think we got to take a step back and understand, well, why is that even important? Um, and one of the things you mentioned is people under recovering and it all stems from, I think this vision of CrossFit being about performance and cosmetics and not really understanding where the two sit and that they're two very independent things. You know, I start every seminar I do and I really try to explain the continuum of results that you can desire and go for and then expect. And, you know, I think that performance is over here on the far right, and cosmetics is over here on the far left.

For sure. And, of course, there's some interplay, and, of course, you can walk a middle road, but Matt Frazier didn't win the CrossFit Games and didn't stand on the podium on Sunday because he had the best abs. Yeah. You know, and the guy that wins Mr. Olympia, Phil Heath, doesn't stand there because he has the best back squat.

Yeah, right. Right? Like, I mean, at the end of the day, those are the absolute extremes of performance and cosmetics. But, you know, we look at that and we laugh and we're like, oh, of course not. But yet you're telling me you want to go in the gym and you want to PR every workout you do. Yet it doesn't matter to you unless you have the abs. And that's kind of crazy. Well, I mean, it's crazy, but that's how most – I feel like most people, that's how they want to do.

Their general population, they see all the stuff out there. They want the performance, and they want to look good too because they don't feel like they look fit, and then they don't have the numbers back behind because also CrossFit is a very, very performance-based sport. But then you also have CrossFit athletes who look like bodybuilders. Well, it's weird, right? Because it is performance-based for the one hour you're in the gym.

Because you're with your bros or you're with your housewives, right? And it's all cool for them to be like, yeah, I PR'd this, and it's sexy to talk about whatever PRs they get. But then the minute they step foot outside of the CrossFit gym and they're talking to normal people in their life and they're talking to people that don't drink the CrossFit Kool-Aid they're like

you know all of a sudden those PRs don't matter what matters is how they look so now they are being judged two ways so and then the other fucked up thing is

when you do step foot into CrossFit you know your first eight months you kind of can have the best of both worlds and so because you're walking in and you're making neurological adaptations, right?

Newbie gains, you're getting strong really fast. You're losing body fat really quickly. You're just getting in shape. Put on muscle. You can make gains in CrossFit in the beginning, in that neurological adaptation phase, in a calorie deficit. Yeah. You could literally, and this is a really extreme example, but it's the truth. You could eat 500 calories and you could pr your back squat probably weekly especially

yeah especially if you weren't doing anything prior exactly because your brain is just learning how to do the movement efficiently right it's not really sensing overload yet yeah now when you hit that point obviously you'll go backwards right because then you're under recovering then you are going into the negative hormone states right but but like we kind of give you this taste of well fuck you can have the best of both worlds yeah and people are like why can't i have that forever yeah because they don't realize well they don't realize it takes periodization like absolutely absolutely yeah you've got you've definitely got to uh take into account that it's going to change what works right now is not going to work in a year from now it's not going to work in a year from now you got to just like it's going to change. What works right now is not going to work in a year from now. It's not going to work in a year from now. You got to just like, it's going to change over time.

And even performance as an athlete is going to change. We talked about the neurological issues that you might have on the nervous system when it comes to like maybe getting run down and having, you know, really traumatic events. And your body not allowing you to kind of dig deep in certain times. Like let's go into that a little bit that conversation we had earlier so it kind of started like basically talking about the point i have on and how things change and how you've got to tweak and adjust to that as time goes on yeah you just have to understand that everything that's happening is having an effect currently but will also have an effect in the future right right and i mean to to make a really like large-scale example of that i think that a lot of what we're seeing today in terms of hormone issues and dietary issues is actually a result of the popularity of paleo and a performance crowd in the generation before us.

Right. Because we're just now coming out of that generation. I would say we're more in like a flexible dieting or or quantity based. It definitely has shifted. Yeah, it absolutely has shifted. But what we have to remember is what we're experiencing currently is not exactly a result of what we're implementing currently. What we see currently is a result of the previous generation. It's lagging. Yeah, there's always a lagging, right? It's kind of like research. Yeah, so there's always a little bit of a lag.

So when they were implementing paleo or a quality-controlled-based diet that lacked overall, you know, like adequate quantity or adequate starch or recovery, now we're seeing the results of that, right? So that's number one. And then, you know, number two, we talked about, you know, this concept of what we started talking about, nervous system adaptation this morning. You know, we keep hearing about metabolic damage, right? That's a buzzword. It's another buzzword, kind of like adrenal fatigue explain that um well so first of all metabolic damage is the wrong word um it really should be metabolic adaptation um i think lyle mcdonald pointed that out and probably made an ass of himself and called a few people names and stuff

like that he just like like lyle really likes to like make himself like well known and he's a super fucking smart guy like if anyone's ever listened to the himself well-known. And he's a super fucking smart guy. If anyone's ever listened to the guy talk, you should. He's a genius. So he pointed out we should be calling it metabolic adaptation. I think that's the accepted word. But basically, our bodies are super smart. They know how to survive.

Remember, they're meant for survival. That's what they're meant to do. And so if we all sat here today, we had never tried dieting, and dieting and we were like fuck it we're gonna go on this really quick cut we're gonna get ripped and we're like let's get on 800 calories like the reality is we would get super shredded because it's the very first time you've done it and your body doesn't know better yeah right and and females especially they're like oh i got super ripped on like zero calories dope right then they let themselves gain weight. They have their winter.

Right. Their non bikini season. And in the next summer, they're like, well, 800 calories worked last year. Let's just do 600 this year. And all of a sudden they gain weight or they can't lose weight. That's that adaptation. Right. Your their body learned to live and create homeostasis at 800 calories.

So there's no longer a deficit that's going to work. So we now have to basically reset and rebuild that metabolism. Got it. So what we started talking about was nervous system adaptation. You're getting all these athletes that are performing at a high level in a huge calorie deficit, essentially leveraging all of their hormones to even perform at that level and fucking themselves up, right? Going into adrenal fatigue. The problem is your body

remembers what the stimulus was that took you into that adrenal fatigue. It's not going to try to get back there for sure. So then you're like, all right, I took the steps. I recovered from my adrenal fatigue. I ate the carbs. I rested. I didn't work out. You know, I did everything I was supposed to do and I fully recovered. My blood work looks good. I feel good. I'm sleeping good. Like I got my sex drive back. And then you get back into training and you're like, but man, like I just don't have that fifth gear. Yeah. That's that nervous system adaptation. Your body's like, fuck you. Like I'm not going back to the place that you took me before yeah so what do you do you typically dig harder yeah and that just takes a deeper hole you know

and people are like well i must need more volume i must need more load well that's just asking for injury yeah right and and a lot of times when you see injury in competitive times you know i i look at certain athletes and you know we can actually talk talk about Sarah. And her and I have had this discussion. Sarah who? Sarah Sigma's daughter. Okay. And, you know, not to use her as this example, but, like, you look in competition and you see people get injured. I think that a lot of times if you see freak injuries happen in the middle of competition, like, coming down off of a box and popping your Achilles or just running and, like, randomly, like, rolling an an ankle or like, you know, whatever.

I think that's a lot of times indicative that you've been walking that fine line of really under recovering and your body was so close to breaking down because, you know, injuries are going to happen. Like it's sport, but they shouldn't happen sometimes at the rate that they do or in the freak manner that they do. Yeah. We talked about that in another episode about how it's usually a breaking point, something that led up to that breaking point. Rarely is it a freak, complete freak accident. Yeah. Like a, like a barbell falls on your head and it's not like that. It's,

it's all accumulation effect of what you've been doing prior. Yep. Yeah. Your body just hasn't had the recovery. You haven't provided the recovery and your hormones are basically gone. And, and, you know, there's a very clear direction that, you know, when you get into – Oh, the pups are joining us. Hey, dogs. You know, like when you get into performing, you know, you start with fuel. But when the fuel is gone, you start leveraging your hormone.

Sure. And in some cases, that's dope. Yeah, because you've got to turn your body onto burning what it's got. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, if you can absolutely put yourself in a position where you've got to turn your body onto burning what it's got yeah yeah you've got i mean if you can absolutely put yourself in a position where you're leveraging cortisol as your fuel and you know how to do that repeatedly and safely like you have an advantage yeah because that's fucking powerful like like we hear about these these stories right and there's like it's

like it's like mythology but like we we can all cite examples right like the dude like his his kid gets trapped under a car right and all of a sudden he can run up and fucking pick up and that's cortisol and that's adrenaline you're not yeah you're not bro he drank his car like you're talking more like you the hormones causing uh gene expression and you or utilizing utilizing certain metabolic pathways rather than burning the hormones. Well, yes and no. It's an immediate hormonal response that allowed him to go to this place of essentially superhuman strength. He went so deep into his sympathetic nervous system or like that fight or flight type response that he was like, no matter what it takes, I'm going to basically elicit every ounce of strength in me.

Yeah. And I'm going to find a way to make this happen. Right. Right. You can do little bits of that in CrossFit and in sport, if you know how to periodize properly. And it goes back to that period as like the periodization that you and I were talking about earlier.

Um, so that's kind of like the, the nervous system adaptation. It was like people will, they'll run themselves in the ground, and they'll perform and they'll crush it one time. But we know this sport's about longevity. And we talked about Ben Smith earlier.

It's crazy to think he's 26, 27, and his training age is almost 10 years in this sport. He's been competing almost fucking 10 years at the highest level. You know what I think? I don't see him competing a lot outside of the game. Yeah, he's been doing it a long time. In this sport. Yeah. Like, he's been competing almost fucking 10 years at the highest level. Yeah. You know what I think? I think it's – I don't see him competing a lot outside of the game. So he's never going hormonal. Right.

So I think that might – I mean, he's obviously very, you know, blessed genetically as well. Like, he's just really, really good. But also, like, yeah, you don't see him doing consistent competitions every other weekend. And if he does, it's a team. He's periodizing it. Even though he may not call it that, I don't know much about his training, but he's definitely taking a downtime to give himself that break and recover.

Right. I mean, to use a specific example, like Travis and I, right? Like, I mean, Travis Mayer. Like, when he went into the games. I just got his haircut. Oh, yeah? Yeah, it's a Travis Mayer haircut. Okay.

That's close. I thought it was the McG haircut. I don't know. Yeah, I thought maybe he was trying to. I've had a Noah Olsen haircut once, too. I got it in Miami, yeah? Yeah, it's the Travis Mayer haircut. Okay, that's close. I thought it was the McG haircut. I don't know. Yeah, I thought maybe he was trying to – I've had a Noah Olsen haircut once, too. I got it in Miami, yeah. I thought it was Owls from Minnesota, or is that – This is a new one.

This is a new one. I thought Travis was going after the McG. We'll have to ask him. It's probably that way. We'll have to ask him. It's that way. Sorry to cut you off. No, no, that's cool.

But, like, when we went to the games this year, he was eating – you know, in Carson, he was routinely eating 700-ish grams of carbs a day going in. Wow. And that sounds like a considerable amount of food for somebody, but, like, when you look at his training volume and his output. Oh, yeah. He was doing three, four, five sessions a day. I mean, he was training his ass off.

I've been around him while he's done a lot of the training, and it is a ton of volume. Yeah. The guy trains like a full-time job. Yeah. He gets up early. He eats a big breakfast and it doesn't really eat all day long other than it all being liquid calories and so because he just trains all day long for not recommending this to everyone but for people to understand that that is his prescription

like that's exactly what he and i talk about doing and his carbohydrate and protein shakes are 100 grams of carbs and 25 grams i saw his macros one day after he put he posted he posted it for one day in training and it was like this is what 4500 calories looks like in a day and and you know two-thirds of that was carbohydrates it's insane yeah and that was and I think when he posted that it was around regionals or the games and I think we actually kept going up from there wow um but like you talked about coming out of the games, he took downtime. There was also a period in that downtime where I got him to take the mental side off of food, and I got him focusing just strictly on quantity and getting adequate food intake that he deemed to be adequate.

Yeah. You know, so today, here we are. What is it? We're October. He's only eating like high 400s. We're not to that same threshold that we were at. 400 grams of carbs 40 calories he's in a shred phase right now he's on my anorexic diet um so no but you know and people have to understand

that periodization he's also on more fats now um and there's a reason for that hormonal recovery right like we know that that's a precursor to a lot of hormones cholesterol being the first yeah cholesterol is the first stage in a four-stage conversion to testosterone. Exactly. And, you know, so for him, it's like, okay, let's make sure sex hormone profiles are peaked and let's put you on a good platform. You know, realistically, an athlete like him

does not peak for the Open, so we're not looking at peaking him until regionals. And that's a small peak because really this year, our goal after being 10th fittest man in the world is podium at the games. Yeah. You know, and I think a lot of people may not know his name really, right? He's kind of under the radar.

The guy's been there three times. Three times, and he's 10th fittest man in the world. I think that it's not hyperbole. I really think that he can get there this year. It's not just because he's a client. He's that good. Yeah. I've seen him do some crazy things.

So what are some steps that people, I guess, can take to assess whether or not they – because I feel like a lot of people in our community do fall into this crowd of, like, under-eating. Yeah. It's just because of the fact that they're trying to chase this aesthetic, but they also want the performance. Right. And then they think, well, I don't need to eat as much because I want want to lose weight and so i i gather people all the time i get in touch with people all the time they're like you are not eating enough and it's hard to fight that and

they they fight it all the time but how what kind of steps would you take like i guess maybe getting a person to get on board with that and then maybe even seeing for themselves like am i am i under eating am i under covering do i have adrenal fatigue or anything like that? So the first step in knowing if you're under eating is knowing what you're taking in. Right. Like, I mean, I think that everyone out there, it's, it's not like a secret anymore. It's not like, it's almost not even uncommon, but if you haven't tracked your food intake and you have zero awareness as to what you're currently taking in, like just track your

food for three days. Yeah. If, even if you don't plan to ever use it again, just for an awareness piece. Yeah. Because, like, I get dudes that come to me all the time, and they're like, man, I can't gain weight, and I'm eating so much.

And I'm like, really, dude? Like, how much are you eating? Yeah. Well, it's a lot. Oh, yeah. And then I'm like, well, track. Yeah, sorry. When you look at it, it's like less than probably,

like, a 12-year-old girl would eat. Yeah, I ask them to track, and they end up at like fucking eating like a squirrel 1800 calories is not very much i used to always think uh and this is just what i thought i'm like man i'm not eating enough protein you know like i hear all these numbers you need to eat like gram per pound of body weight like all this like i definitely don't need enough i measured it one day i was eating way too much protein yeah all right i wasn't eating enough fat yep and then i went for a while where i didn't measure my fats and when i went back and tracked again i was eating way too much protein. Yeah. All right? I wasn't eating enough fat. Yep. And then I went for a while where I didn't measure my fats. And when I went back and tracked it again, I was eating way too much fat. In a typical Western diet, protein is not hard to get.

No. Like, it's not hard to get a whole lot. I was eating way too much protein. I almost cut it in half. If you go to any restaurant and get a standard serving of, like, steak or chicken, it is way more than you actually think that you think it is. And it's way more than, I think what standards, if you go to a restaurant, it's like six ounces, which can be like 30 grams of protein.

Yeah. Yeah. So, so you're talking about the, the, the entrance question about the steps. Yeah. Well, I mean, the first step is just awareness, right? I mean, I think if, if you don't know where you sit and this is, I'll kind of go into like the whole coaching aspect and like what I think a

client should expect in a coach, right? I think's all these quote-unquote calculators out there and I'm going to kind of put those myths to bed really quickly I think anyone that's heard me talk knows I'm not short to to put some shit to rest but uh you know the the problem is this right I mean if if you don't know where you're starting you don't really know how you can move forward and I'll give two really good examples you know one would be the metabolic adaptation we talked about there's a female um you know she's only eating 800 calories a day she goes to like one of these online calculators and they recommend like 1800 calories a day for fat loss but she's now going over 200 of her current calorie intake and she's expecting fat

loss yeah especially if she's been in that 800 calorie deficit for a while, she's going to fucking gain weight. Yeah. Right. And, and what if she'd been in 800 calories for like two years and she's super metabolically adapted and non-resilient. Right.

She's going to fucking gain weight for a long time. Yeah. So the reality is we've got to slowly move her out of that. Yeah. And if we didn't know that she was currently at 800. Right. Well then like we're guessing. Yeah.

You know, let's, let's use a another example i met a guy at the cascade classic this last weekend and uh i talked there on this you know the nutrition thing and i look at him and college football player and i'm like i guarantee you like if we ran your numbers on this online calculator it'll tell you to eat like 2600 calories for maintenance sure i mean i got the dude's intake and he's eating like high 3000s and he's fucking maintaining so but what's more accurate like like the reflection of his current intake and his body

weight or that calculator yeah right obviously it's him and his unique physiology for sure there's just no calculator out there there's no formula out there that can accurately take it to account. Preach, bro, preach. Yeah, yeah. He just made a video talking about this for 20 minutes. Yeah, it's all a guess. It's an educated point. It's a starting point, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is right. In fact, it's not right. Right. We don't know that it's right. Well, and I've told, I mean, I tell people this, you know,

number one, take away from this whole episode. Like if you do nothing else, track your food for three days. Create awareness, right? Number two, if you are looking to hire a diet coach, if, if somebody says to you, great, like I can help you, but they don't talk to you about your current diet, your metabolic history, your training volume, your training program, like any, uh, experiences you've had with food. Like if they don't really dig deep into you, the person in your life, like fucking run the other way. Yeah. Because they're not, they're going to

give you some templated bullshit. Yeah. And you know, at the end of the day, like you said, even the initial prescription is the best educated guess relative to the information we have available. Right. It may work for like 80% of the people. Yeah. It could work. It could work for a little while. In theory, it should work. Right. It should work. But it doesn't mean it will. And it doesn't mean it's going to work very long. Right. It could work for two weeks and then you could plateau out. So the real magic comes in, okay, what happened after the first 10 to 12 days?

Right, right, right. Did you gain weight, lose weight? Did you increase, decrease energy? Did you have better sex drive, less sex drive? Were you more tired? Were you hungry? Right. And that's what I call biofeedback.

And so I always work with clients on physical data, meaning like the body weight, the measurements, the, you know, their, their image in the mirror. But then we're also talking a lot about biofeedback. So whenever I get on clients on calls with clients, one of the first things I'm asking, how's your hunger? How's your sleep? How's your energy? How was your workouts? Like, I want to fucking know everything. Yeah. Because, you know, conventional wisdom would say, well, in a cut, we're going to just decrease calories. But in a, uh, you know, what if the person's super hungry, eliciting like a

massive hunger response and we actually had brought their calories up. Yeah. Well, that biofeedback tells me we need to raise your calories to continue this fat loss. So, but. So, but without asking that, and you're just looking at a number, how the hell do you know? Yeah, I think that's the coach and the client's responsibility. So you can't just blame the coach. Like, you're the one that's also not accepting that they're not asking you those questions. You're the one that needs to, you know, maybe put them up and be like,

hey, why aren't you asking about this? Like, why would you not ask about that? I also think, too, if you do decide to use a calculator, be aware of the caveats of that. This is not something like a coach where it's going to ask you questions. You're going to get numbers. They probably won't be right. You're going to have to figure out yourself.

But you have to take that responsibility of understanding that right and so don't sit there and if you're going to take a base set of numbers that was randomly given to you on a formula that a calculator built like on an algorithm right fine so so be it i wouldn't suggest it but if that's what you're going to do then you need to also understand the biofeedback measures that you're looking for exactly to move forward so that you know how to make changes because you can't get a group of macros. You can't get a protein, carb, fat number and be like, okay, if I do this for 12 weeks,

I'm going to be exactly where I want to be. Like, what if you got injured next week? Or what if you got sick for four days? Or what if, I mean, a host of other things. Like the gym was closed because the hurricane's coming, right? Like there's a hurricane coming to South Florida. Like you had to fucking evacuate for a day.

Like there's just so many variables you can't predict. And unless you truly understand the application, you're just – you're not going to go there. And I think that goes along with the fact that we talked about this earlier, the lack of education in – especially with nutrition. You know, people oftentimes are just like, well, I just want the result. I don't care about learning about this. I want the result. I don't care about learning about this. I want the result. But the fact is that if you don't understand how nutrition works, how your body works, how it responds, you don't know to look for those things. You don't know to ask those questions.

One of my favorite things is I get clients all the time. They'll get hurt, right? And they'll be like, oh, my God, I'm hurt today. Do I need to drop, like, all my carbs? Yeah. And, like, it's,'s like i hate that they got hurt obviously but it's a great time for them to learn and so i'll actually walk them through the exact process of what's happening the fact that they don't have to do that yeah and why actually i

won't drop their calories for seven to ten days yeah because really like i mean you know on that front like we're always operating mildly glycogen deficient right you're really not going to top off your glycogen source for seven to ten days, so the scale's not going to change. If anything, you might lose a little bit of weight because you're going to lose some inflammation. But, you know, you're not going to see anything negative for 7 to 10 days. Now, if it's going to be extended beyond that and activity truly is going to be decreased, okay, now we'll make some adjustments.

But we don't need to have these crazy fucking knee-jerk reactions. Because your body doesn't work like that. If you understand how your body works, like we said earlier, your body is trying to keep homeostasis. So it's not going to make super small changes in 24 hours. So changing your diet just because something random happened is not going to do anything long term. Well, that's like another one of my favorite things in the performance setting

is this concept of training day macros and non-training day macros. Ah, yeah. Please touch on that. Well, in the physique world, man, it absolutely has an application, right? And you look at some of the top dogs like Alan Aragon and Eric Helms, and they're absolutely preaching it, and I 100% agree with it. But in a sport like CrossFit, right, let's just look at the simple physiology. Glycogen synthesis and resynthesis happens on a 24 to 36-hour window.

Okay. Right? Meaning it actually takes the food you're taking in to be stored as fuel, readily available for fuel for that day to day and a half. Right? Well, if I tell you on Wednesday, your off day, to bring your carbs down by 50 to 60 grams. Yep. And you're now going into Thursday with less glycogen, how do you think your performance is going to be? Yeah.

Yeah. Right? going into Thursday with less glycogen, how do you think your performance is going to be? Yeah, yeah. Right. So if people are wanting an application to account for off days, like, and let's use that same scenario, Wednesday and Sunday being your off days, the days you would bring your carbs down would be Tuesday and Saturday. Right. Because you're going to go into your off day with slightly less fuel, which is fine. You don't need the fuel. But now your off days, you have to start looking at as refueling days.

Got it. Right. They're no longer non-training days in a performance setting. I think it's just one of those that if I'm expending less energy, I feel like I need less calories. And when it comes to performance, it's not always the case. And again, right, we have to really draw the distinguishment. Now, a lot of people are listening and they're like,

well, what about if I want the cosmetic benefits of performance? That's what I was going to jump in with that. The problem is, though, you don't ever walk into CrossFit wanting to perform worse. So you absolutely can get the cosmetic benefits of the increased performance by doing it the second way I said. For sure. Decrease your calories the day before your off day. And, again, that's going to go down to do you have your timing principles? Are you having your post-workout carbohydrates?

Are you getting that nervous system recovery that you should be getting? And as long as you have those things in play, you're going to be great. Yeah. I think a lot of that, too, is when we're talking about this stuff, too. We talked about, I don't know, we brought up intermittent fasting and all that kind of other stuff. But if you think about things like on a totem pole, what's the most important thing, right?

Getting enough food. Absolutely. If you don most important thing, right? Getting enough food. Absolutely. If you don't even have that down. Getting enough sleep. Yeah. If you're not even eating enough to fuel your body for what it's trying to do, none of this playing around with, so I eat carbs this day or eat carbs this day less.

That's the fine details. That's just going to matter. Well, it goes back to what we said about the whole medicine thing and the marketing thing, right? If we take a step back and we look at all this shit that's marketed, right? Like car backloading. I mean, let's be real. Kiefer probably made a million dollars from that book, right?

Because it was a sexy tactic. But 99% of people don't need to be thinking about backloading their fucking carbs. They need eight hours of sleep. They're not even eating 50 fucking carbs in a day. Why the fuck would you think about backloading those 50 when the reality is you probably need 200? You're eating 500 calories. I don't give a fuck if you eat them first thing in the morning, midday, or night. Backloading them ain't going to help.

You're still metabolically adapted. And that's the part about not being educated, I think, about what's the important parts of nutrition. You mentioned some nutrition experts earlier. Alan Aragon's got great stuff. He's a genius. That dude's blog's amazing. He's a fucking genius. There's a lot of

really good information out there, but really look closely at what its application is written for because the way you exercise may not be why that application's written and what it's applied to.

I'll throw in a cheap plug. I'm building a certification for nutritionists in the CrossFit space and it'll be launched next year. Right. Because there's no, to my knowledge, and anybody can correct me, there's no CrossFit or mixed modal specific application of nutrition out there.

It's either physique or bodybuilding and then all performance. Well, we've had several people on the show talk about intermittent fasting, anabolic fasting, all these things, and we immediately get flooded with questions. Can I use this for CrossFit? Right. And immediately the answer is every time is, I mean, it depends. You're going to have to change what it is. And now it's not the same thing they said. You're going to have to reduce your amount of Metcon, right?

You're going to have to reduce that nervous system response because a lot of these diets are like, you know, I'm sorry, like hypocaloric, right? And a lot of them, and being in that hypocaloric state does not lend itself. Yeah, lower calorie. Does not lend itself to recovery. And we know that recovery is paramount no matter what your goal is. If it's fat loss, if it's health, if it's performance. Like, if you're not recovering.

You can't get in the gym and train. Yeah. I don't operate well hypocaloric. No. I like happy caloric. That's a good term. We should call it happyocaloric. No. I like happy caloric. That's a good term. We should call it happy caloric. Happy caloric.

Happy caloric. Instead of – eucaloric is the – if you're equal. So, yeah, fuck eucaloric. Happy caloric. Happy caloric. There it is. There it is. New term.

Just coined. So number one was – what was the first point? We went deep into number two. I don't know. That was selecting nutrition coaching and what to look for. Yeah. Number one was, I don't remember what it was. I don't even remember what the question was at this point.

I wanted to get to number three. What was number three? Oh, what are some kind of tests or things? You were talking about blood work. Oh, yeah, yeah. So we were talking about a cortisol sum and how that's not really applicable um really if you want to accurately know what your adrenals are doing you need to kind of look at like those four critical times which would be morning mid-morning mid-afternoon and night um and so you're gonna do a saliva test uh and so

you're gonna obviously spit into a vial four times um Where can you get that done? There's various, like, biohealth labs around. I mean, obviously. They'll mail you, and you can do the swab and then mail it back. Yeah. I mean, you just label, like, this was a.m. Have you done this? This time, this time, this time. I've never had my wife has.

Okay. What was her? Do you remember? Basically, sorry, I cut off Jason. But I think basically what they're monitoring is, like, what the cortisol does throughout the day. So I think ideally you want cortisol high in the morning, and then you want it to raise again during or near training. You want it to taper does throughout the day. So I think ideally you want cortisol high in the morning and then you want it to raise again during or near training.

You want it to taper off throughout the day. Right, taper off throughout the day and obviously lower at bedtime. You don't want it like super low at training though. So I think it kind of depends. Well, and again, like you're supposed to take the cortisol, the saliva test on a non-training day. So we're not looking for that peak. Okay, so exclude training.

You want it tapering throughout the day, lower at night, helps you go to sleep, et cetera. Right. And then high in the mornings. If you're someone who wakes up and is, like, ready to get it and, you know, crush the day. If you're somebody that, like, instantly can roll out of bed, you know, not snooze the alarm. That's a good sign. Not go for, like, ten shots of espresso and, like, you know, roll out of bed and get after your day.

That's good. Like, I wouldn't be like, hey, go get your saliva tested. Sure. Conversely, if you're able to get in bed and, you know, five minutes in, you're fast asleep, you know, you stay asleep all night, like don't go do this shit. But if you're someone that's like, man, I'm getting into bed at night, I just no matter what I do, I can't sleep.

Like I'm thinking about my muscle-up technique or I'm thinking about just stupid shit. I wish I had more carbs. Right. And then the first thing that I always do with people, though, is let's look at your nutrition. Yeah.

I was going to say, yeah, look what you're eating. Before we even go to the fucking test. You know, we talk about all this adrenal stuff and everyone's like, everyone immediately wants to go to that.

Everybody's looking for a scapegoat, you know? Yes. The one thing you want control over is your fucking, yeah, exactly, dude. Why doesn't my DNA look like Bronings?

Yeah. I mean, I must be broken. What's your nutrition? Exactly. So, you know, why did I pass the bar exam? don't know what's your nutrition dude it's the single solution yeah single solution for everything um but you know it's one of those things where i think if uh you know if we don't start at the bottom though with like the simple shit that we can control right you know are you over training are you under recovering um then why are we jumping to the hormone side of things first and you know i have an example of a kid i worked

with and you know we looked at everything we did try to get his nutrition under control we kept feeding him more and more there was no response we pulled back on the training volume still no response okay at that point let's get your labs right because everything we're trying is there's it's zero response right and that's when we move to the labs but you don't go to the labs first okay so yeah interesting um so i think the biggest issue obviously is like people i feel like we need to be reminded of these things because i'll even fall into that trap sometimes like i want to do the fancy stuff i want to do the cool stuff because i feel like i'll get this secret answer yeah like it's it's almost like supplements like you get like this magic trick over here is going

to help get you what you want but instead of looking at the the simple things first but obviously always not so simple like getting two more hours of sleep each night is one of the hardest things to do for some people absolutely like why is that and i think maybe that's where a good coach comes in yeah and i mean i think that's you know when i get into when i talk about helping people with nutrition i've become very careful over the course of the last two years to categorize myself as a nutrition coach. Yeah. Right. Like you'll only ever hear me refer to it as nutrition coaching, not nutritionist, not nutrition expert or whatever. Right. Like, because I really don't think that the magic is in the numbers. I don't really think the magic is in

the foods. I think the magic is in the application. I don't really think the magic is in the foods. I think the magic is in the application. And I think that if you aren't building a relationship with your client, if you don't understand why they can or cannot get the sleep, and perhaps, dude, some people are shift workers. They can't get the sleep. Well, then you have to know how you can actually help them, and you also have to be able to advise them, hey, listen, because you can't get that recovery,

you should also talk to your training coach about your volume and inform them that, hey, we've identified this is the maximum amount of recovery we can get and see what your training coach says. Because if they're smart, they're probably going to back off. Yeah, for sure. I've had clients that are shift workers that they're weekend warriors, basically. They work a lot during the week and then Weekends they have off and typically you would think i'm going to overload that volume on the weekend But we really just do a little bit just because like that is their time to recover

So it's like I talked about non-training days recovery days. Yeah, that's not when you need to fucking go crazy It's when you got to recover. Yeah, good points. So yeah, I think that That's that's where i go with the whole like nutrition coaching thing gotcha yeah silence that awkward moment well so what are the maybe we've touched on already but what are some of the biggest problems or issues that clients come to you for um what are some of the most common ones i mean i think everybody's seeing this right now i could take away everybody comes to me for relatively the same things, but I think that what they have going on previously is really the root of their problem.

So everybody comes to me, cosmetics, performance, stomach issues, whatever else. But I think that the underlying problems are where it differs. If I wanted to look a certain way and you wanted to look the exact same way, we're coming from two very different backgrounds. Um, and, and that's where the unique application is going to come into play. So I don't think that like the goals are very different across the board. I think that everyone that is seeking us out is relatively similar. Obviously you're going to have your unique exception, like super big GI issues, adrenal adrenal issues like whatever else but i think that across the board the goals are relatively similar um so is there anything

that shows up more commonly like uh under eating under eating is one of the biggest ones but that's not a secret right and the biggest thing is like under eating with high level yeah i was gonna say do you find that more with high level athletes i find it with everybody. But I find it a lot with high-level athletes. And I know that this podcast is listened to by some really high-level athletes. Which other people see and they try to emulate. And that's the problem I'm seeing. I think that – so one of the things that – there was a really good – I posted on Facebook that I was coming on here.

And a kid named Frankie asked a really good question. He said, how patient do you really have to be? And like he's wise beyond his years. Like he came to like one of my one day events. Like I know the kid personally, really, really smart. Like he's learning a ton. But that patience thing, man, like I know that it's sexy to talk about 10 week transformation, 12 week transformation. You and I were talking about this this morning.

You know, you were like, we're not selling this fucking, you're going to get ripped in six weeks bullshit. Right. Like, cause it just doesn't happen. And I think that the one thing people have to understand when they're getting into an endeavor with a nutrition coach is it's going to take time. And the reality is if you're coming from a place of under eating and, and having damaged yourself or taking yourself to metabolic or nervous system adaptation, you know, just because I can fix you doesn't mean I can fix you in three months. Um, I'll give a super extreme example. I worked with a woman that was in metabolic adaptation and it literally took us 18 months to get her fixed right now. All the experts

out there that know about metabolic adaptation and you can cite like the Minnesota starvation study as proof that you can repair metabolic adaptation. Mike Nelson, Mike T. Nelson brought that up.

He talks about that, right? Yeah. Like that's a super well-known, you know, study and it's cited, it's cited all the time. And basically, they fucking starve these people.

Yeah, yeah. Like legit, like classified as starvation. Right. But when they like took them back to a normal calorie intake and they looked at all the metabolic markers everything came back right but here's the thing that is not discussed is there's two ways you can go about that you can take somebody and immediately just jump their calories up and and take them back to maintenance and we know there's going to be weight gain involved with that and and in some cases a very significant amount of weight gain. Or we can bump them up slowly and minimize that.

What I have found over time is both are equally successful long-term in terms of the ability to lose fat. However, clients are more likely to stick with the slower long-term approach because it's mentally a little bit easier. They only have to see scale jumps of a half pound, a pound. They're not looking at the scale one week and they gain six pounds. That's fucking hard. Could you imagine if you hired a coach to lose fat

and they're like, oh, fine, fuck you. You've got to gain 10 pounds first. Yeah, I'd say that probably all starts with that initial conversation. It might be some of the hardest things to say as a coach. It is the hardest thing to do with a guy. Because, for one, you want to be real with them and be honest. But, two, you don't want to set yourself up for failure. Right.

You don't want to give them expectations that you can't deliver. Right. You know? Right. No. And I think that's the, you know, so patience, though, is huge. Yeah. Right?

I think that when you get into, you know, when you get into any endeavor, and Brent Fikowski is an amazing example of this as an athlete. Um, I had a conversation with him last year at Wadapalooza and he said to me, he said, you know, I don't think I'm going to make the games this year. He said, I think 2017 is my year. Um, and, and he just talked about like, it's, it's not that he doubted his abilities. He's just looking at his training progression over the course of several years where he's going to peak. And he's like, I really think 2017 is where everything we're working on will come together.

And he was totally at peace with that. He wasn't. Right. So obviously it all came together a little earlier than he thought. Yeah. You know, he still sees that that built in progression. Yeah. That's like that's the epitome of patience.

You know what? The long term vision just shows maturity. Absolutely. Like he's looking long term and doesn't just want to like people. People do things now in training and nutrition as if they're going to die in three months. Right. Like, that it's all over in a couple of months. It's true.

And, like, are you doing, is what you're doing sustainable? And, like, how long do you want to stay in? You just fucking nailed it, right? Like, is what you're doing sustainable? Ah! Yeah, because if it's short-term, like, it may not be something that you can do long-term but you can develop the habits to keep it long-term. Because if it's short term, it may not be something that you can do long term. You can develop the habits to keep it long term.

Because if it's short, you didn't. So think about when we did your weight cut, though. What we did there, you could have sustained for a super long time. For sure. You weren't in a huge deficit. We brought you down super slowly. In fact, by the time your meet was there, we didn't have to do shit the final week. That was the goal.

The goal was for me to not take on too much for a first meet. You stepped onto the platform lifting the same way you've been lifting every single day in training and the results were great so yeah um if it's if it's too if it's short if it's long that's when you can get you have the time to develop absolutely that you need to develop to keep it long term absolutely yeah great point so we're running short on time so i want to give you a few minutes to talk about what it is you're doing now. Sure. Some of the things, your business and things you want to plug. As well, when we get done with this, guys, stick around. We are doing a live Q&A with Jason.

We got a lot of questions today when we told everyone that he was coming on the show and even from his account as well. So stick around for that video. What's up, man? What's going on with you? What's going on? So the easiest way to reach me is just through my website, Jason Phillips, nutrition.com. Um, you know, you can see everything I'm doing there. My blogs, uh, speaking engagement, um, like, you know,

we mentioned seminars and whatnot. If you're a gym owner, um, there's a seminar request form on there. Um, you know, if you have, if you can't get to one of my seminars, uh, we have one for sale in the store there that we recorded. Um, I think there's a lot of amazing information. We really go deep into it there. Um, obviously our primary thing that we do is coaching. Um, you know, we do have lab services available. We can do the saliva test we talked about earlier. Um, so, you know, if that's something you're interested in and reach out, would love to have a conversation with anybody that heard this. All of the coaches that work for me are homegrown. And they had to study under me for six to eight months.

You know me. I'm a fucking type A, ADD person. If I see something, I'm a control freak, man. So for my coaches to actually be set out into the wild and work with clients, they had to really earn my trust. And so I'm very confident in saying we have an amazing staff. Yeah. You know, on the other end, obviously, I am the CEO of Mission 6. And there seems to be a little bit of a buzz, which is cool, going on about that.

Tell us about Mission 6. Yeah. So up until tomorrow or maybe today, it's a secret. But it's not so much of a secret anymore. It won't be a secret when the show comes out. Yeah, no, it won't be because it's coming out today or tomorrow. So we are a supplement company, but we're a supplement company that's being built. So we signed our athletes first, and we had an idea of where we wanted to go, but we wanted athlete input.

I built this company predicated on the fact of giving back. And one of the things I identified in athlete sponsorship was it's really more about the company and it's not about the athlete. And I talked to several athletes, um, and I wasn't seeing that they're truly getting what they need to, to do what they need to do to perform at the level they want to perform at, which is work, you know, work out full time. Yeah full time. So I built this company with the athletes in mind first. We have a very small group of sponsored athletes. We're not the company that's taking on 60, 70 athletes. Each of our athletes, they have a vision that's aligned with our vision,

which is something super pure and aligned with giving back and helping. And we're pretty excited to really take care of them, show that the sponsorship game is going to a new level. But we've also asked for their input on products. So the first four products that are coming out, we've got an adrenal slash nootropic product. It's obviously we talked about the need for adrenal support today. You know, the nootropic side is like your focus side. Yeah.

Very cool. We have a pre-workout stimulropic side is like your focus side. Yeah. Um, very cool. We have a pre-workout stimulant and non-stimulant based, um, for people that like caffeine. Yeah. Yeah. Dude,

most people in the CrossFit setting don't like the stimulant. Yeah. I just, I just, I'm already high strong and I don't sleep. You never dude. Um, and then post-workout,

um, yeah, I've never tried. I think we're going to try it today before we train. Okay. Um, so, and then post-workout we have a, um, a highly branched cyclic dextrin carbohydrate powder.

If anyone's ever worked with me, they know I'm huge on that. With two added ingredients for what's called neural inflammation. So the guys at Training Think Tank, good friends of ours, they have a researcher, Evan. I won't bastardize his last name, but he is digging deep into the research of neural inflammation and how it's affecting your training moving forward. And so we have actually helped offset that via these ingredients. And then the final is a protein powder. And we believe it's the best tasting powder, but it's also super clean, super low carb. Like this isn't a good tasting powder with 10 grams of carbs.

This is a super good tasting powder with no carbs. I feel like every supplement company can have all the other really good supplements and have a really big product line, but if your protein don't taste good, you're doomed. When we got into formulation, the first thing was like protein has to taste good. Yeah, for sure. Cool, man.

Anything else you want to tell us about? No, man. I mean, you know, you asked some of the athletes I've worked with. I don't want to be that guy that, like, name drops. Who are the athletes in Mission 6? So, Mission 6 athletes, we've got Sarah Sigmund's daughter. She's good. She's pretty good.

It's okay. Carleen Matthews. She's good. Cassidy Duffield, who a lot of people don't know yet but is up and coming, former USA national champion. On the male side, we've got Brent Fikowski, John Pera, Travis Mayer, and Nick Hecht out of Las Vegas that a lot of people are going to learn about very soon. Very cool.

I'm a John Pera fan. John Pera is such a good dude, man. I like what he stands for. Yeah. And so, you know, when we talk about choosing athletes that are for like what we're for, John Pera totally fits that. Very cool. So again, guys, go check out after the show, live Q&A that we're doing with Jason.

Alex, anything else you want to mention before we close it up? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to talk about the eating for strength video. I made a video talking all about how to eat for strength, strength training, and just general performance. I'm going to talk a lot about macros. I'm going to talk about nutrient timing, how much to eat, a lot of stuff. I'm going to basically break it down very simply how to eat for strength.

So that video you can go to... Where can they get that video? You're making the link. Where is it? The link will be in the description. We'll put it in the description. And yeah, you can go get that video um and there's be also some cool stuff we're gonna be able to you're gonna be able to get some recipes from us and then also some uh audio so you can listen on the road cool be a great video it's definitely

all about eating for strength and eating for performance so go check it out word all right man jason thank you so much for coming out dude my pleasure yeah love the conversation yeah thanks for listening guys