Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Dr. John Berardi, Precision Nutrition Co-Founder

Episode Date: February 13, 2019

Dr. John Berardi is an entrepreneur and co-founder of Precision Nutrition, the largest private nutrition coaching, education, and software company in the world.John has advised top organizations like Apple, Equinox, Nike, Titleist, the San Antonio Spurs (as NBA champions), Sloane Stephens (as US Open Champion), George St. Pierre (as 2-division UFC Champion), and numerous Olympic teams.His work and research has been widely cited in the media, from the New York Times to the Harvard Business Review and he's been named one of the 20 smartest coaches in the world and 100 most influential people in health and fitness.In addition, Fast Company named Precision Nutrition one of the most innovative companies in the world.The focus of this conversation extends beyond nutrition.It’s about the process by which people get better at anything.It’s about what motivates people to change._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Finding Mastery is brought to you by Remarkable. In a world that's full of distractions, focused thinking is becoming a rare skill and a massive competitive advantage. That's why I've been using the Remarkable Paper Pro, a digital notebook designed to help you think clearly and work deliberately. It's not another device filled with notifications or apps.

It's intentionally built for deep work. So there's no social media, no email, no noise. The writing experience, it feels just like pen on paper. I love it. And it has the intelligence of digital tools like converting your handwriting to text, organizing your notes, tagging files, and using productivity templates

to help you be more effective. It is sleek, minimal. It's incredibly lightweight. It feels really good. I take it with me anywhere from meetings to travel without missing a beat. What I love most is that it doesn't try to do everything. It just helps me do one very important thing really well,

stay present and engaged with my thinking and writing. If you wanna slow down, if you wanna work smarter, I highly encourage you to check them out. Visit remarkable.com to learn more and grab your paper pro today. If someone wants to, it comes to us for, for coaching. Generally, the reason that they'll give us, they want to lose weight or they want to look and feel better. Right? So then we try and unpack that, but because that's not really an actionable thing. So usually it comes down to a couple of buckets. They want to eat better foods regularly. They want to have a regular exercise practice.

They want to have a stress management, a way of managing stress. And they want to sleep better. All right, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm Michael Gervais. I love this podcast. I really do. I love what it's turned into. I love what we've co-created together. And it's been a joy to be able to do this. So quick little background. I'm a trade and training. I'm a sport and performance psychologist. And the whole idea behind this podcast is to learn. It's to learn from people who have committed their life efforts to mastery. And we want to understand their psychological framework, how they make sense of themselves

and the world and events. What is the framework that they explain how things work? We want to dig to understand the mental skills that they've used to build and refine their craft. And we want to know deeper, like really deep stuff, like what are they searching for? And then along the way, we get to learn all of the insights that they've come to understand relative to their craft. And if we can be smart, we can extrapolate that in our own lives for the things that matter most to us. Finding Mastery is brought to you by LinkedIn Sales Solutions. In any high-performing environment that I've been part of, from elite teams to executive boardrooms, one thing holds true. Meaningful relationships are at the center

of sustained success. And building those relationships, it takes more than effort. It takes a real caring about your people. It takes the right tools, the right information at the right time. And that's where LinkedIn Sales Navigator can come in. It's a tool designed specifically for thoughtful sales professionals, helping you find the right people that are ready to engage, track key account changes, and connect with key decision makers more effectively. It surfaces real-time signals, like when someone changes jobs or when an account becomes high priority,

so that you can reach out at exactly the right moment with context and thoroughness that builds trust. It also helps tap into your own network more strategically, showing you who you already know that can help you open doors or make a warm introduction. In other words, it's not about more outreach. It's about smarter, more human outreach. And that's something here at Finding Mastery that our team lives and breathes by.

If you're ready to start building stronger relationships that actually convert, try LinkedIn Sales Navigator for free for 60 days at linkedin.com slash deal. That's linkedin.com slash deal for two full months for free. Terms and conditions apply. Finding Mastery is brought to you by David Protein. I'm pretty intentional about what I eat. And the majority of my nutrition comes from whole foods. And when I'm traveling or in between meals on a demanding day, certainly I need something quick that will support the way that I feel and think and perform. And that's why I've

been leaning on David protein bars. And so has the team here at Finding Mastery. In fact, our GM Stuart, he loves them so much. I just want to kind of quickly put them on the spot. Stuart, I know you're listening. I think you might be the reason that we're running out of these bars so quickly. They're incredible, Mike. I love them. One a day, one a day. What do you mean one a day? There's way more than that happening here. Don't tell. Okay. All right. Look, they're incredibly simple. They're effective. 28 grams of protein, just 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. It's rare to find something that fits so conveniently into a performance-based lifestyle and actually tastes good. Dr. Peter

Atiyah, someone who's been on the show, it's a great episode by the way, is also their chief science officer. So I know they've done their due diligence in that category. My favorite flavor right now is the chocolate chip cookie dough. And a few of our teammates here at Finding Mastery have been loving the fudge brownie and peanut butter. I know Stuart, you're still listening here. So getting enough protein matters. And that can't be understated, not just for strength, but for energy and focus, recovery for longevity. And I love that David is making that easier. So if you're tryingI-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. All right, this week's conversation is with Dr. John Berardi, co-founder of Precision Nutrition, and that's the largest private nutrition coaching education software

company in the world. I first met John back at a project that we were doing together. And immediately I was like, wow, he's really on it. He's really got a clarity about his craft. And he also has a beautiful framework about how to do that at scale. And when I say scale, I mean, John's advised organizations like Apple, Equinox, Nike, Titleist, the San Antonio Spurs, the NBA champions when they actually won the thing, Sloan Stevens as USA Open champion, George St. Pierre, one of the legendary cage fighters as a two-time division UFC champion, and scores of other numerous Olympic teams. He's worked with research that has been widely cited in the media from New York Times to Harvard Business Review, and he's been named one of the 20 smartest coaches in the world and top

100 most influential people in health and fitness. In addition, Fast Company named Precision Nutrition one of the most innovative companies in the world. And that's what we're going to talk about, not only his insights about nutrition, but about building frames to help people at scale. The focus of this conversation, it extends beyond nutrition. And it's about the process by which people get better at anything. And so if you're listening, you're obviously going to learn gems about nutrition, but you might find the conversation more meaningful and more applied in nature if you take a quick beat right now to think about

what you're wanting to get better at in your life. And then listen from that point of view as well. So with that, let's jump right into this conversation with Dr. John Berardi. John, how are you? I'm doing great, man. So, so good to catch up after so much time. You know, that was a really wonderful time in my career that when we first met and it was through i can't remember the exact title but nike's global council or something about you know do you remember the title of it yeah we were yeah we were like that yeah it was nike's high performance council that's right and it was great it was like i looked around the room.

This was, I don't know how many years ago, maybe it feels like 10 years ago or something, but I looked around the room and I was like, oh, I know his work. I know his work. Oh, I know his work. Oh my God. Look at that. And his work and her work and wow. And so I remember going around the room being like, I feel lucky to be in this room. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've, I've been on a host of boards and advisory groups like that. And some have been better experiences, and some have been worse experiences. But there's never been a group of heavy hitters, like, assembled in that team we were part of. It was awesome. I think there was like 12 or 14 folks. And your work preceded yourself. And then so I was stoked to get to know you,

get to learn about what you were doing. And I think it's also like, we should probably pause and say, thank you, Paul Winsper, you know, for putting us together. Yeah, for sure. And so he's on a really great things right now, but that was just an intellectual, you know, applied workhorse that was an amazing part of I think both of ours, you know, our growth communities.horse that was an amazing part of, I think, both of our growth communities. So that was really cool. Now, okay, so let's get into your business, right? And so the mechanics of your business, and then we'll get into more of how you got to where you are. But can you describe the mechanics of your business? Yeah. So I mean, 12 years ago now, I started a company called Precision Nutrition with my business partner, Phil Caravaggio.

We were students at the time and we were passionate about health, fitness, nutrition and lifestyle. And we started publishing free information on the Internet. Go figure. But it was rare at the time because there were no sort of individual expert blogs. I mean, we really, really started a preliminary version of it in like 2001. So having a website was a big undertaking. You had to like HTML code, hard code a website at the time. And what that thing grew on to be was right now, you know, we're the world's largest online nutrition coaching, education, and software company. So we basically do three things, if you boil it down, is one, we coach a lot of people virtually

through nutrition and lifestyle changes. Number two is we certify professionals. So it's everything from personal trainers to dieticians to functional medicine doctors to chiropractors, you name it, in coaching nutrition. And then the third is we provide software for those certified professionals to deliver our research proven curriculum to their clients with them as the coach. And, you know, to date through our own coaching program, we've coached a couple hundred thousand people through our certification education program, 100,000 professionals. And through our software, which has really been the big growth opportunity for us, you know, our coaches in the last two years, so our certified professionals using our software have coached another 200,000 people. So you can see it's sort of this exponential thing happening.

It took us 10 years to get to a couple hundred thousand clients coached. And then the last two years with this new thing, you know, really impacting the industry, 200,000 clients in that brief period of time. So it's super exciting stuff and really industry changing stuff, I think, without being too self-aggrandizing. It's going to be hard for you to self-aggrandize. So I'm going to have to pull the good stuff out of you. Okay. Now, okay. So what I love about what you did is that let's say we line up a hundred people and 99 out of the hundred people know that if there's two options on a table and one is an apple and another one's an apple pie, which one is healthy, right? And so we all know the apple is likely to be much more healthier

than the apple pie. Then, then what percentage of people actually choose the apple as a regular choice is low, right? Because there's something about us and we can, you and I can get into the nerdy weeds about why we're compelled for quick, quick hits of pleasure and dopamine and serotonin and all that good stuff that we're craving and how food can supply some of those empty spots. But you've done something, you went past education because certainly I'm going to say something that you're going to go, no kidding, is that education alone does not change behavior. And so you've gone past education into a process to help people change. And that's not, that is no easy task. That's why when we first met, I was like, he's on it, he's doing it, you know, okay. And I've watched

what you've done and you've really figured out a thoughtful and efficient way to help people change their relationship with food. Yeah. Well, I appreciate you saying that. This is, you know, what I consider my life's work expands just a little bit beyond nutrition, maybe a lot beyond nutrition. But it's this idea that people don't want to learn how to X. So people don't want to learn how to become an entrepreneur. People don't want to learn how to eat better. People don't want to learn how to play the piano. They want to be someone who is an entrepreneur, someone who does eat better, someone who can play the piano. So for me, it's about the process of becoming, not this other thing about learning. And again, like you say, duh, everyone listening has heard this mantra a million times. Books don't change your behavior. Learning doesn't change your behavior. Yet we still seek

out books when it's time to figure out the next step in our careers, rather than the different thing, which I'm really passionate about. And the way that I often envision it is get a blank piece of paper out, write a box in the center at the top, and write down whatever goal you want to achieve. Underneath it, you start thinking about the skills that would be required to achieve that goal, because goals are meaningless unless they help you build the skills that are required to be the person who can have that goal. If you have a goal and you haven't achieved it yet, it's because you don't have the skills to achieve it. But then you go one step further and you say, but what builds skills, right? And the thing that builds skills is practice, daily, purposeful, patient practice.

So I kind of have this belief now that anything in my life that I want to achieve, I have to get out a piece of paper. I have to write the goal at the top. I have to talk to someone who knows what skills are required to achieve that goal. And then I have to talk to someone who knows what to practice on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday so that each of those skills can be compounded on the next so that one day I wake up and I become the person who lives that goal. So what we've done at Precision Nutrition, which really no one had done before, is create a progression model for helping someone become someone who can eat well and live a healthy lifestyle and exercise regularly. And it's through the daily practices that map to the skills that map to the goal. And as my career has progressed and I became a business person, entrepreneur, and as I've worked with other entrepreneurs, it's been the magic. And what

I get so excited about is figuring out what that piece of paper looks like for each individual, you know, whatever their goal might be. I have a friend who is a sleep professional, and she's really brilliant and talented at what she does. And but she works with people one on one. And I'm like, what if I could help you build a map to work with 10,000 people to help become someone who can sleep better, assuming there's no clinical pathologies there? You know, how could you teach someone the skills or the practices that build the skills? And, you know, we don't have to look too far for exemplars for this.

Think about how someone would learn to play the piano or learn a new language. We all know that that's the case, but we somehow forget that when we take that to other skills that people haven't mapped particular practices to. So that's I could probably talk in unbroken soliloquy on this for like two hours. So I'll stop there. And, but it, but it's what I'm so passionate about. Okay. And I want to rewind into figuring out how and why you're passionate about this. That's really important to me. And then I also want to stay on this for a moment, which is if we make it really concrete and you call up somebody in your mind that is an end user of your product or your experience. Yeah. And what would they what is a typical person put in the box? Right. Well, so let's talk about this, this, this idea.

So if someone wants it comes to us for for coaching coaching, generally the reason that they'll give is they want to lose weight or they want to look and feel better, right? So then we try and unpack that, but because that's not really an actionable thing, right? So usually it comes down to a couple of buckets. They want to eat better foods regularly. They want to have a regular exercise practice. They want to have a stress management, a way of managing stress, and they want to sleep better. So usually those are the four buckets that our coaching program would help with. It's that whole lifestyle thing and if you call them pillars or whatever, it's the food

you eat regularly, the exercise you do regularly, how you manage your stress, and whether you sleep enough. And then let's zoom into one of those buckets, nutrition. You know, the thing that, you know, a lot of the press and the media and the online discussion is around what foods you eat, proteins, carbs, and fats, and what percentages and stuff. But the truth of the matter is, if you don't do something before you think about the food that you eat, the protein, carbs, and fats, it doesn't matter whether you have the perfect diet written on your piece of paper, you just can't follow it. So for us, the first step is always being able to pay better attention to what you're eating. And I think paying attention to what you're eating

is a particular kind of skill, but it's not yet drilled down enough. You know how nowadays there's so much talk about mindfulness and you as a psychologist have probably had a fun journey with this because this is the stuff you've studied for decades and now it's becoming sort of popular and it's got to feel weird. You know, you're like, yeah, yeah, I've been talking about this. This was the thing that I showed up in the room and was either wacky for bringing up or a genius for bringing up, you know, and now you can get an app for free to work on this. But for me, telling people to pay better attention to their life is just finger wagging because you're not telling them how. Very much like paying attention to your

food. So what we do is break it down even further. So we have two fundamental practices that help build the skill of paying better attention to your food. The first one is slow down your eating. So for two weeks, we give people little exercises and assignments to do that help them slow down their eating. Well, why would we want them to slow down? Because when you go slower and more deliberately, you pay better attention, one. Two, you tend to eat less naturally when you slow down your eating because your brain has a chance to receive the satiety signals that have been sent out by your gut. It takes a few minutes to communicate between parts of the body. And when you slow down, you feel the signals, and then you stop eating when you're satisfied rather than going overboard. And so there's a

whole host of benefits to that. And we teach people how to do that over a series of lessons and assignments and practices. And then we stack on top do that over a series of lessons and assignments and practices. And then we stack on top of that, once they've gotten that down, eating till satisfied instead of stuffed. It's the second practice or daily action that they'll take. So we teach them how to tune in, and it starts out very deliberately and eventually becomes autopilot to their hunger so that instead of eating till their stuff, they eat till about 80% full. And those two practices done over a series of weeks, for example, gives you the skill of paying better attention. So you see how we're actually doing real things at meals to build up the skills that we know will map the goals. And we have similar things for exercise practices, lifestyle practices like stress management and sleep. So the idea is

how granular can we make it so that there's a particular thing you do on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday that almost too easily allows you to have the skill of the thing that you need to consistently eat better or exercise or whatever the case may be. Brilliant. And do you walk them through like the actual academic part of filling out a form or answering some questions to get to the goals, the skills and the practices? We do actually. We do. And sometimes, I mean, that actually requires a bit of individualization, right? Where the individual, based on the particular goals and skills that they need, may require some different practices along the way. But generally, I find it interesting in that skills are skills and

practices are practices. In nutrition, we talk a lot about the need for individualization. And again, we do some of it. But if you go and learn piano, we have my wife Amanda and I have four children, and two of them are in piano right now. It doesn't matter what part of the globe you're from or what your particular preferences are. You generally start with the same kind of piano books and do the same kind of piano progressions. No one's sitting there with their teacher being like, I need a more individualized approach. Don't you see my fingers? They're a little bit longer than that person who was here just before.

Have you genetically tested my fingers to determine the optimal progression for piano? No, you get a progression because we know there's a neuromuscular component, there's a reading music component, and that generally people who progress through this achieve certain proficiencies at certain milestones. And the same is true in elite athletic performance, which I've coached for years. My wife's a high level, Olympic level figure skating coach. And on the Skate Canada, for example, because I live in Canada now, website, there's a progression model for figure skating that takes little skaters from four years of age, all the way up to Olympic level, like they haven't mapped out in advance, there's a progression, it's practices that build skills that lead to goals. And so it's often fascinating to me whether it's becoming a better parent or personal

development projects or anything like that. So for me, it's kind of like this beautiful art of demystifying all this stuff so we can map it back to what we see all around us in other fields. We just don't think to bring them into our specific one. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentus. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be better today than you were yesterday, what you put in your body matters. And that's why I trust Momentous. From the moment I sat down with Jeff Byers, their co-founder and CEO, I could tell this was not your average supplement company. And I was immediately drawn to their mission, helping people achieve performance for life. And to do that, they developed what they call the Momentus Standard.

Every product is formulated with top experts and every batch is third-party tested, NSF certified for sport or informed sport. So you know exactly what you're getting. Personally, I'm anchored by what they call the Momentus 3, protein, creatine, and omega-3. And together, these foundational nutrients support muscle recovery, brain function, and long-term energy. They're part of my daily routine.

And if you're ready to fuel your brain and body with the best, Momentus has a great new offer just for our community right here. Use the code FindingMastery for 35% off your first subscription order at LiveMomentous.com. Again, that's L-I-V-E Momentous, M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S, LiveMomentous.com, and use the code code finding mastery for 35% off your first subscription order. Finding mastery is brought to you by Felix gray. I spent a lot of time thinking about how we can create the conditions for high performance. How do we protect our ability

to focus, to recover, to be present. And one of the biggest challenges we face today is our sheer amount of screen time. It messes with our sleep, our clarity, even our mood. And that's why I've been using Felix Grey glasses. What I appreciate most about Felix Grey is that they're just not another wellness product. They're rooted in real science. Developed alongside leading researchers and ophthalmologists, they've demonstrated these types of glasses boost melatonin, help you fall asleep faster, and hit deeper stages of rest. When I'm on the road and bouncing around between time zones, slipping on my Felix Grays in

the evening, it's a simple way to cue my body just to wind down. And when I'm locked into deep work, they also help me stay focused for longer without digital fatigue creeping in. Plus, they look great. Clean, clear, no funky color distortion. Just good design, great science. And if you're ready to feel the difference for yourself, Felix Gray is offering all Finding Mastery listeners 20% off. Just head to FelixGray.com and use the code FINDINGMASTERY20 at checkout. Again, that's Felix Gray. You spell it F-E-L-I-X-G-R-A-Y.com and use the code FindingMastery20

at FelixGray.com for 20% off. Were you more interested in nutrition or growth, human growth? I think it started out in nutrition in the early days, right? I mean, I was born a preemie. And so I spent a lot of time as an infant in the hospital and sick growing up. I had asthma and allergies and was allergic to all kinds of foods and had intolerances and was skinny and sickly. And so this interest in, let's say, health and fitness and lifestyle came about probably when I got to high school and I was really skinny and couldn't do sports and stuff like that. And I just started reading on this stuff as a way to heal myself, if you will. And the stuff I was doing was kind of working and I started building muscles and I stopped getting allergy shots and I didn't use my puffer anymore, any of that kind of stuff. And so I just became

super passionate about that. And then the deeper I got into it, the more I wanted to teach others it. So I went and did my master's in the area and my PhD in the area. So it started out as a very physiological thing, but then reality, you know, you get done and you start coaching, teaches you a new lesson, right? Which is the no matter how beautiful the plan, people have to be able to follow it. And then that sort of became chapter two of my professional career, where I started studying change psychology, behavioral psychology as a means to figure out, well, how do I get this fantastic biochemical

knowledge into a form that people can actually do? So that really was chapter two in my life. You know, how do I sort of twist and change and pervert all the psychological learnings into stuff that can help with lifestyle change? Because no one was really studying that. And then stage three here is great. I learned some fascinating things in that space. How can I teach people outside of that space the same process? Because I think you learn everything the same way. Really cool. And the reason I say I take pause there is because you're onto something really important, which is people have a desire to grow. And the stronger need for most people is the need to belong and to be safe. And avoidance of pain is one of our primary movers, unfortunately. Unfortunately. And so, you know, you and I, in many respects are in the same business,

different crafts, which is working with people at varied stages of desire to change and seeing, you know, okay, well, what's that journey look like? And I don't know if you're familiar, remember, uh, uh, the trans theoretical model of change. Yeah, of course. Yeah. And so, you know, it's great when you get people at stage five, when they're like, listen, I've already made the changes. I'm just working on maintaining it. It's like, that's easy. Okay.

But it's the folks that are early days, like pre-contemplation stage one, contemplation stage two. It's like, you know, do you really want to change? I don't, God bless you. I don't have the tolerance. I don't know. I don't have that patience to do the work with those folks and they need help. You know, I'm just not the right fit for it. Where are people on that scale for you or on that model for you? You know, and just as a reminder for folks that maybe don't know it, it's pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, maintenance. Yeah, I mean, I think we're certainly not getting the kind of people who are repeatedly winning Olympic championships, but we're not getting pre-contemplation either.

For someone to join our coaching program, as an example, they have to have said in their mind, I want to change. They have to have sought us out. Oftentimes, they've tried four or five things previously. There's even a point in our company's trajectory where we realized that someone was most likely to sign up for coaching with us if they had repeatedly tried things like P90X, Body for Life, Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig. So we would advertise that. Jenny Craig stopped working, try something different. So all to illustrate the idea that people aren't at the very beginning phase with us, but they're somewhere in the middle. Okay, brilliant. And then what have you come to learn about people? Are you blown away that if they have the right mechanism for support that they make the change? Or are you a place like, God, I don't, I'm still trying to figure out like, why do 70% of people drop out within three months? Is that the number? Or is it more like 50% of dropout? Do you

know? Well, I mean, our ours is I mean, we have phenomenal rates. I mean, we like 70% of the people. So it's 74% of the people or sorry, over the course of a year. So we have a year long coaching program, we ask people to do things virtually every day of that year. They do the exercise things about 74% of the time and the lifestyle things about 72% of the time. And that includes people who drop out of the program or whatever the case. So ours is really high. Industry standard is like 40%. People will do 40% of the things that they're asked to do. And when I say industry standard, I mean the stuff that's been researched. So there's published research on, you know, let's say weight loss interventions and things like that. And so you can expect people who sign up for a weight loss intervention

to do about 40% of the things or complete about 40% of the time. So we have nearly double the rate of success of that. And this is all published. We have four or five peer-reviewed papers on this. So yeah, I mean, that's what you can expect, a fairly low rate without the right kind of intervention. But what I've learned about people, as you asked, is actually, I don't know, I find it beautiful. I feel like you have to have a certain mindset to see it that way. But when you put people at the center of their own story, they tend to thrive. When you put them as a bit player in your story, they tend not to. So what I mean by that is the health and fitness field in general, the coaches themselves have had a very coach-centric kind of training plan

imposed upon them historically. So it's about the coach and what I know, and I'm going to get you to do what I know is good for you. That doesn't work. When you take a coach and you help them learn to be client-centered and put the person, the person who's hoping to change at the center of the story. You take them on their own hero's journey. You give them compassion and care, and you walk them through at the pace that's comfortable for them, pushing them a little bit further each time, but never pushing them further than they feel capable of doing. I mean, one of the simplest things I've learned that makes all the difference here is confidence testing. Instead of giving someone a prescription and hoping they can do it, is you co-create a prescription together,

and then you ask them before they leave, okay, I have to just confirm this before you leave today. On a scale of zero to 10, zero being no chance you could ever do this, and 10 being, oh, a trained monkey could do that. Of course I can do that. Where do you rank this new thing we're going to practice? And if they don't say nine or 10 out of 10, you can't give them the thing. How often are we doing that as coaches in health and fitness or anywhere else? Almost never. Has the doctor ever asked you that when they gave you a prescription? But I find that that is such an important, like pivotal piece of coaching that we teach our coaches and our coaches do with our clients. That's almost universally missing. And for me, that really speaks to this client-centered aspect of what I'm talking about here. How can you just double check and make sure that

someone has the confidence to do what you're going to recommend? And if they don't, just scale it back until they give you that nine or 10 out of 10. And sometimes, yes, you'll have to scale it back to the point where something inside you will say, there's no way this will ever work. It's too easy, but it doesn't matter because if they could do it for five or seven days, their confidence will increase and then they'll get to the harder stuff eventually. And is most of your work digitally meaning automated or is it in person? It's digital. So it's all through the web or through app or whatever the case may be. So people are doing practices, lessons, assignments, and check-ins all digitally. They have a coach who's overseeing their process.

But, I mean, what you can do with technology now is amazing, right? I mean, there are specific interventions. If you figure we've had a couple hundred thousand clients, and each one of those clients has done 70% of 360 lessons, we got a lot of data points. So we're using machine learning now to alert coaches. For example, our algorithm can predict when someone is likely to drop out within the next two weeks just based on programmatic behaviors. And then alert the coach to, hey, you've got a high-risk client over here. Some combination of checking in, plus their body weight changes,

plus their answers to assignments can trigger the idea that, hey, this person's having a difficult time. So it's gotten to the point where our coaches can coach 400 clients without any drop-off in success rate versus 50 clients. And we've tested that. So it's pretty phenomenal. But like you said, it's all online. Mm-hmm. Brilliant. And then are you finding that you're really crisp on a macro recommendation? Or is your business really more about making the small incremental changes and maybe this is not either or maybe they're on different axioms but in my

head it's like it feels like you're asking people to make small changes yeah or are you saying okay listen uh it's a x percent you know fat carbohydrates as a beginning state, and then we're going to work backwards into it. And maybe they're orthogonal, maybe not. Yeah, there's, it's a, it's a bit of a mix of the two, you know, I mean, what happens is there are, you know, practices where we work on carbohydrate intake and protein intake and fat intake. But if we were only vegan, or we were only keto, or we were only low carb, we wouldn't be able to help the number of people that we help. It's absurd. I mean, we consider ourselves dietary agnostics. In other words, if you want to eat vegan, you can do this coaching program and it will be

effective for you. If you want to eat no vegetables, you can do this coaching program and it'll be effective for you. Because we have a thing that's really interesting and it feels counterintuitive when you when you're hearing the words machine learning and digital and stuff. But the personalization comes in what we call the owner's manual. So at the end of each lesson, there are questions. They're kind of like Socratic questions that are designed to provoke sort of gentle self-discovery, if you will. But there's other questions, too, where you're literally writing your own owner's manual as the program progresses. And those questions get at the heart of, you know, whether you prefer to eat more animal protein or no animal protein or how carbohydrates make you feel. And the questions provoke those discoveries because for some people who are really into nutrition, they already know how they respond to different foods.

But for a lot of people, they don't. They have no idea. So these questions help them ascertain that. And then as the program continues, they can make the decisions that are right for them based on their individual responses to food. So we can help them shape up a very particular macronutrient ratio of proteins, fats, and carbs. For a lot of people though,

I would say 80% of the 200,000 people that have come to see us, that's not even what's required to see the kind of progress that they're looking for. And that's awesome because if I could be in the kind of shape that I wanted and exercising the way I want and sleeping the way I want without counting my calories and my proteins and my fats and my carbs, why wouldn't I prefer that? The rest is just extra work. I love it. And if somebody is listening and they're like, okay, I'm pretty healthy. I just don't quite know how to make all the great choices for nutrition, but I know the difference between apple and apple pie and I exercise four times a day or four times

a week. I sit all day long. I travel a bit too much. And, um, you know, I, I'd like some basic help. What would you say to them? You know, and maybe they're a good fit for your company, maybe not, but let's just speak directly to 90% of the global corporate workforce. I mean, you described a mostly sedentary person. Mm-hmm. So the first thing I would look at is movement. We know what kind of impact movement has on metabolism, body composition, mental outlook, cognitive capabilities. I just feel like exercise is way too powerful a drug to not spend some time looking at. So for that, I would say, are you getting purposeful movement every day?

Now, that doesn't mean you have to exercise every day. If you went to the gym every day, I'd say that was an imbalance problem there. It's just like, are you getting some purposeful movement daily? That could be a 20-minute walk. That could be a trip to the gym. That could be playing tennis or basketball or doing sprints up the hill, down the street from your house. But are you doing something daily? And that's something,

are you doing a mix of things? Is some of it high intensity where your heart rate gets really high and you sweat and you pant? Is some of it low intensity where it's very recovery based? I call it parasympathetic activating. Usually the best things for that are gentle walks in the woods. And we know the benefits of nature. So there's another thing to just tack on there. So for someone like that, the first step is usually a better movement practice. Then we start thinking about food. And one of the great things about a better movement practice is that it helps regulate appetite and metabolism better. One thing I've come to believe is that when you don't exercise enough, your body doesn't

know how to regulate intake and expenditure appropriately. I think people who really have to count their calories down to the point whatever grams are probably having to do that because their body isn't regulating intake and output. Generally, we're very dynamic organisms. You know, there's some interesting studies where one of my favorites is where they overfed a couple dozen college students. So they gave them like a thousand calories more than they needed for maintenance. And there's a thing called NEAT, non-exercise activity

thermogenesis. And it's the amount of calories you burn sort of unintentionally, right? It's through fidgeting and through just movement you're not counting as exercise. And there's a subset of those college students who, when they were overfed a thousand calories, they found a way to burn all extra thousand. And there were others who burned only 500 of 1,000, and there were others who burned no additional calories. And it's really interesting to think of, but most of them burn more calories when they're overfed. Often not enough to compensate for all the extra calories, but the point is how dynamic our metabolisms and systems are, right? When you overfeed, your system ramps up

to try and catch that overfeeding. When you underfeed, same thing happens. Your metabolism slows down. And I think that balancing act isn't as effective when you're not really active. So that's really my first lever. And then the second thing we'll look at is nutrition there. And we're like, hey, when you're moving enough, you can do a better job of regulating body weight and food intake and tuning into your appetite simply because you're exercising regularly. But then the next thing there is you look for sources of extra calories that are sneaking their way in. You know, if weight management is an issue for you or just eating healthy in general, you know, there's all kinds of places where refined processed foods are creeping in. So then we look for those different places.

You know, one of the reasons why I think things like more extreme ways of eating get so popular is because they put such a big prohibition on so many foods. And you feel like the magic is that you avoided that food, which is evil because it affects your insulin or because it does whatever, when really all it's done is given you a hard and fast rule to avoid things that pack in more calories than you're required for your day. You know, so I don't have a lot of people in my position have a really strong bias against quote-unquote fad diets, and then they even put things like keto and low-carb and veganism into fad diet. I don't. I just say that most of those things are rarely things that you'll follow for the rest of your life.

If you want to follow them now as a means to sort of getting better nutrition education, that's fine, but don't develop superstitions around them. Carbs are not universally bad. If for now, eliminating carbs helps you avoid a lot of calorie-dense foods and eat more within the range that is healthy and appropriate for you, awesome. Eventually, you will eat bread again. I promise you that. If you're 30 years old and you're like, I'm keto for life, you're not. I promise.

You will eventually eat some carb again. And that's when it becomes really difficult for people because they relied on these rules, which demonized the food. And then to sort of reintegrate with normal society becomes really emotionally challenging. And the best examples of this are bodybuilders. You know, I used to compete as a bodybuilder. I won the 1995, as scary as that sounds, long ago, Mr. USA contest. I was a national champion. And I used to diet really hard for these competitions. And this weird psychology would happen in me where foods that are healthy, that are normal, that I was eating right before I started my 16-week contest diet, by the end, I would develop such a negative association

with them, because they were foods that wouldn't help me get ripped for the stage, that I would have emotional trauma when trying to eat them again. My mind would tell me, that food is really bad for you, when literally 14 weeks ago, that was a health food to me. And so this is the kind of thing I see when people follow these kinds of diets. Although, like I said, sometimes in the short term, they can really help with some metabolic challenges, like intermittent fasting is a great example, or low-carb eating. They can really turn around some metabolic problems if you do them for the short term. And then you have some help in coaching, transitioning back to what we might call more balanced intake. So really, I mean, I know I've

sort of rambled and sprawled across the landscape of this, but getting back to our hypothetical person who's like, what do I do? Step one, you've got to move. And we got to get your movement practice fixed up. Step two, when it comes to nutrition, we got to find a way to get less crappy calories in your diet. And in some cases, that means maybe eat one less meal a day. In other cases, that means maybe go low carb. In other cases, that may mean eliminate a certain type of animal food. Whatever the case may be, all of them do the same thing. They lower your caloric intake. And then if we stop there, we're making a huge mistake because if you're not doing stress management and if you're not sleeping well enough, it'll be impossible to follow your new exercise and nutrition practices. A great example is when we become sleep deprived, our cravings for

simple carbohydrates go through the roof. People just can't say no to them. And everyone who knows what I'm, who's experienced this knows what I'm talking about. So you can't separate them. I think they all play together. So that's when we look at stress management practice. Do you have one? If not, we should, we should do something, you know, some minutes of mindfulness is, is a good start. And then sleep. We have to look at sleep and make sure you're sleep routine. Do you have a good sleep ritual at night? And some other practices around that. So I just think you have to slowly work your way towards all four if you really want to have this part of your life handled.

I love the integrated approach that you've taken putting the person at the center. I also would love a little bit of dispelling a couple myths. And maybe you can like intermittent fasting as well as keto, and they're all the craze. And I'm going to put my hand up and say, yeah, like the idea I was a vegan for like, don't know six six plus years and it was in 1980 something and it was it was before like magical places like whole foods or trader joe's or you had to work hard to be a vegan and i was not yeah i did it out of compassion eating and whatever whatever and all the health advantages but i was not healthier like flat like and i took a deep dive in the education that's where i was first fascinated in in nutrition and so i didn't do it right and so i started reintegrating and i

know that thing that you're talking about where you reintegrate back into eating the normal food that most people eat and it's it's it, it is a little crazy making. I love, I've never heard anyone talk about like having that strong of a version as you with their bodybuilding. So can you dispel a bit of a myth around keto? And I know that it, um, there's been some really glaring contrasting evidence around it. It's a game changer for health. And then recently there's been some stuff about how bad it is for heart. And so can you take a quick dive on it and then maybe take a point of view on it, you know, and same with intermittent fasting, if I can ask you to do both. Yeah, I'll start with intermittent fasting. I mean, I wrote a book on intermittent

fasting that we published for free on the internet. People can find it by just typing in my name, John Berardi, Intermittent Fasting. You were early on that. That was long ago. When I think we first met, I think you wouldn't eat until, I don't know, I can't remember. It was like 2 o'clock or something like that. Yeah, that's right. I was doing the daily fasting. You know, what ended up happening was that as excited people are about keto now is how excited they were about intermittent fasting then. It was this growing movement

that people thought was going to cure all the diseases and was the healthiest thing. And, you know, I mean, generally the early adopters of things like this are people who really feel like a little counterculture, right? They really, really want the old guard to be wrong, right? So the doctors lied to us. The system lied to us. You know, I have to believe strong early adoption of these kinds of things is really correlated with this inherent desire to express a bit of counterculture belief systems. And intermittent fasting was that at the time. Keto was that a little while ago. Now it's way more mainstream. But for me, I was just so fascinated by the reports on intermittent fasting

that there were just so many of the kind of very glowingly positive reports, and then such a visceral reaction against it without any experience from the other camps. So I was like, I want to try this thing. And it sort of dovetailed with a period in my life where I was transitioning from bodybuilding and powerlifting to running master's level track. So I had to lose a bunch of weight and muscle mass to get smaller so I could be faster as a track athlete again. And so I was like, hey, maybe I could use this time where I have to get smaller anyway to experiment with intermittent fasting. So I did about six months of really well-documented intermittent fasting trials where I tried fasting for a full day once a week, fasting for a full day twice a week, fasting for full day twice a week fasting for

half days multiple times fasting for 20 hours in a day and eating within a four hour window fasting for 18 hours in a day and eating within a six so all these different protocols and i did my blood work and i measured my body composition and i did self-reported mood scores and stuff like that and i just published a free book about it because I thought it would be really interesting. And it was, I mean, people loved it. I think we've had 4 million people read it so far. And for me, intermittent fasting is a really fascinating thing that I think can be very valuable for a lot of people if you have some help. You know, you remember when self-experimentation was a really popular term and buzzing thing six years ago. And I really liked that movement, but the problem was it

was missing something. I don't think the average person who doesn't have scientific training is equipped to do self-experimentation. You don't know how to control variables, unless you've studied this. You don't know how to control variables unless you've studied this. You don't know how to tease out correlation from causation, and you don't know how to not develop superstition. So my favorite thing is guided experimentation. Yes, experiment. Yes, try things. Yes, figure out how it works. But have someone helping you who knows how to tease apart correlation from causation, cause and effect. So I think intermittent fasting is that. I think that it is a great experiment to try for people.

To restrict your eating window, to make sure that when you are eating, you're making good food choices, to also have a stress management practice and a good sleep practice and a good exercise practice in conjunction with that, that's where people are going to find the real change your life benefits. But have someone help you through it. Have someone help you recognize the warning signs. There are times when the dashboard indicator goes off, and if you don't know what that is, it's bad. If you do know, no problem. You just correct course. We wrote a companion piece, which was an article on intermittent fasting for women, where we talked about how I was a 37-year-old guy at the time. It's a different physiology for women. It may be more stressful on the body to do intermittent fasting. It may affect reproductive hormones and

menstrual health and all these other things in a way that it wouldn't affect my system. So I think that, you know, people can read more about it. They can read the results of all my trials. They can see my blood work and how my body changed and all that. I thought intermittent fasting was very, very interesting. I think that it can work really, really well for people who either don't have a ton of lifestyle stressors and a big allostatic stress load. And it can be very difficult and possibly even dangerous for people who do have a lot of stressors and who don't know how to tune into those early warning signs that intermittent fasting is being a problem for them. And turning out really well means things like putting women into premature menopause. It means like reproductive health and all the non-essential functions, thyroid health and stuff like that, really taking a nosedive and triggering some real hormonal and metabolic problems down the line. But again, it can work really, really well if you

know how to look for early signs of that and then just make adjustments, which might mean eating more calories or expanding your eating window a little bit or changing your exercise. Maybe you might need to exercise a bit less. So things like that, you know, I think that I had personally phenomenal experiences with intermittent fasting. But then I had two more children putting us in a household with four young children under six. And I couldn't do it anymore. It was too much stuff going on. And it was actually negatively impacting my physiology and my mindset. So I stopped doing intermittent fasting at that point. And again, it's not just looking at diet, it's looking at the whole picture of your health.

Now when we look at keto, I think some of the same things about it because what ends up happening with keto is very much like what happens with intermittent fasting, which is when you just take a whole bunch of foods and food groups and throw them out the window, you automatically eat less. So of course, if you've never paid attention to food and nutrition in your life and you try keto, you're going to probably lose some weight. It's probably due to calorie restriction, not because carbs were bad for you. And at a certain point, that could become really, really bad. You know, we know that, you know, in a host of situations, under eating, so we call it just a negative energy balance, which means that you're eating way less than you're exercising or exercising way more than you're eating, causes all kinds of problems in men and women, declining testosterone

levels in men, bone density problems, and menstrual problems in women. And so I just think people need to be careful with some of these things, and they need to know what to look for. And declining energy levels, declining hormonal levels, these kinds of things are, the energy stuff is early warning sign, the hormonal stuff is mid-level warning sign. Late warning signs you don't want to get to. And generally, this kind of stuff happens with an overly unchecked negative energy balance. It's where we see it all the time. You've seen female athlete triad, which is kind of being renamed and rebranded now. What is it being renamed?

I didn't know that. There's been a couple different iterations of what people want toranded now. What is it being renamed? I didn't know that. There's been a couple different iterations of what people want to call this now, but it's just this idea that we've often seen women stop menstruating. Female athletes have trouble with fractures and joint and tendon problems. And then when we look a little bit deeper, we see, oh wow this is this is the female athlete triad they're stopping menstruation and they're having health problems and things like that and uh and essentially the the idea is that uh these women are just in too negative an energy balance for their own set point and then all these bad things happen and i see it in the intermittent

fasting community and i see it in the keto community, where you just end up being in such a negative energy balance, your body complex are really great for a while, get the abs and the whole deal, you know, and it's really easy to become a big vocal advocate of them early on. And then this other stuff comes in the mid range and long range stuff. So it's just, you know, I'm not anti either. I am pro whatever way you want to eat. As long as you have someone in your corner who can help you make sense of what's healthy and what's not, whether your body's responding appropriately, whether it's not, and what to change, whether it's responding inappropriately. That's really the art and the magic of it. And it doesn't have to be a coach. I'm not just trying to sell coaching

services here. It could be a mentor. It could be a coach. I'm not just trying to sell coaching services here. It could be a mentor. It could be a friend. It could be someone who's a little more experienced or knows a little bit more. But doing it on your own, it's a scary proposition when you do something like chop out whole food groups or just decide not to eat for three quarters of the day. How bad are french fries and fried food? Seriously, how bad is that? I see my son, he's 10, and he's like, Dad, can I get some French fries? And I'm like, he's 10. And then sometimes French fries anymore. Yeah, right. You want to know how we kind of manage that at our house. What we do at home is we basically eat proteins, vegetables, and some fruit.

Now, that doesn't mean we're low-carb lifers or whatever. It means that when we're together for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, we're going to eat proteins, which we know are so essential, and vegetables and fruits fruits it's essentially the things that they're not going to get enough of out in the world so our you know kids will find carbs you know that's like their faces are like those metal detectors that you see people walking on the beach trying to find like lost treasures for carbs you know they're to find them. It was hilarious. One day, we're in our minivan. We pulled up at the grocery store.

Just so happened the people in the minivan next to us were friends of ours, so the adults stopped to talk for a minute. When we drove away, our kids all had fishy crackers. How did this transaction even happen? Classic. They're just going to find carbs and French fries and things like that. So my take is I'm not going to ever prohibit that or cookies or ice cream, any of that. What's going to happen at our meals, though, when we're together three times a day is I'm going to give them proteins, vegetables, and fruits.

And then whatever else they get will be fine. And that's how we'll create a balanced, moderated diet. Because if I give them cookies and french fries and all that stuff at home, they're going to find it elsewhere too. And now it's out of balance. And this is always my take on working with pro athletes. We've worked with a lot of professional sports teams over the years. You know, one part of Precision Nutrition's arm is a high performance coaching arm. And we've worked with tons of national champions and world

champions and teams. And my whole take was the same for those organizations. If we get, you know, with a pro football team, for example, we might get two meals a day. We might be able to feed them at the training center two meals a day. We're going to make sure those meals are great because when they leave, they're going to find all the other stuff. That's really clever. That's super applied. That's really good. Okay. And then I didn't think to ask you about this, but you brought it up.

I don't think there's enough information that at least I'm aware of. Like, what are some of the strategies and recommendations for menopause for women, like premenopausal in that 40, 50 year old range that are saying, man, my hormones are kicking up or, or fading away. And I'm struggling. Like, what are some of the recommendations you make there? Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting. That often requires a conversation with someone about their, quite frankly, their life philosophy. And I'll give you an example, a personal example, and then we'll talk about women. physiological manipulation who are at my age you know mid 40s late 40s early 50s who are doing hormone replacement therapy right so they get injections of testosterone or growth hormone or whatever else anti-aging and people are always asking me if i'm interested or if i'm doing it or whatever and i i'm not and i don't judge anyone who is, but I have this different life philosophy, which is I actually enjoy what's happening physiologically with me and how it's helping

me mentally and emotionally and how I am socially with people. I will not mind as my testosterone declines if it still stays at least at the low end of normal, because it makes me a much more chilled out, socially minded, community minded, relationship centered person. And I feel like if I was high testosterone, it wouldn't be like that. I almost feel like there's an advantage. And I don't think you could say there's an evolutionary advantage. And this is a positive thing. But I feel like if I want to come into this next part of my life as a wise elder, taking growth hormone and testosterone is probably not the way to do it. Again, it's a life philosophy thing. No judgment for anyone who's done the opposite here.

But I actually like the feeling that I have now of being in shape. I mean, I have low body fat. I'm strong. I can sprint. I compete in master's level track. So I can still do the things. It's just that I think lower testosterone and growth hormone and the youth hormones gives me an advantage for how I want to be as a parent and as a mentor, because that's what I'm called to be now more than an achiever. So this is the kind of conversation I want to have with women, because you can go to a situation where someone is in their menopausal change of life, and they can take all kinds of bioidentical hormones, and they can work with naturopaths or physicians or whatever, and they can try and make their hormones what they were when they were younger.

Or we can begin a program of acceptance where we exercise, where we eat well, where we do most of the things we already know, where we do stress management, where we do mindfulness practice, where we do good practices around sleep hygiene, and accept that our physiology is changing and how can we maximize the stage of life and what's happening to us through these hormonal changes now i know women listening who have been through menopause are like yeah that's easy for this guy to talk or whatever you know give me the hormones and that's fine all i'm saying is that's your choice about your philosophy so for me that not a lot changes during that period of life. I think the biggest change that has to happen is a mental emotional one. How you orient to the body that's changing before you and how you orient to the person that you'll become as

that body changes. You can accept that graciously and graciously and do your best with all the other modifiable things, or you can try and fight it the whole way, that's up to you. And that's a personal philosophy thing. So I know that's not one secret hack to avoiding hot flashes and sleeping better during menopause. But really, I think you can do the hormonal route, and that'll help with some of those symptoms. But the question is, are you trying to just continue to replay your youth physiologically and biochemistry-wise? Or are you ready to accept who you are becoming, who you are inevitably becoming and will inevitably be? So it's a bit more philosophy than physiology there. Is there a phrase that guides your life?

Is there a philosophy that guides your life? I mean, a phrase seems less intimidating, but really what I'm asking about is, you know, what is a philosophy that guides your life? I really, I don't know. I mean, it really, guys, my life really resonates with what you're doing here with your podcast and this idea of finding mastery. I think about this a lot. Mastery is so intriguing to me, and it's really what's important to me. This idea that none of this is an outcome, but it's a process. You know, I really believe that every day I want to wake up and I want to patiently practice things intentionally,

whatever that thing is that I want to be working on. I want to carry it out with precision. You know, I want to use like negative feedback, pain and loss and embarrassment to correct course. And I just want to get better, better at the things, you know, whatever the things are at each chapter of my life. And I always have a, it's a lead athlete story that really centers me on this. I worked with George St. Pierre for a lot of years when he was, uh, coming up and winning championships. And in,

I remember it was 2011 or 2010 or something like that. He fought a guy from the UK named Dan Hardy in New Jersey. And for those not familiar, he's a legend in the ultimate fighting championship. That's right. Yes. UFC, the cage fighting. That's right. Yes. Two division champion and yeah, absolute hall of famer legend. Uh, so I brought Amanda, this is when we were pregnant with our first child, uh, down to see it. And we were, uh, so George dominated the flight. I mean, during his run as a champion, he, he almost never lost a

round. And so he told same as usual. I mean, he fought from 11 p.m. till 12 or something like that. He won every minute of every round, but he failed to submit his opponent. He had his opponent in a couple of submission holds, arm bar, whatever. This is just technical jargon. But, you know, the idea is to put someone's body in a position where it's so painful they have to just give up. They have to tap out and but his opponent never tapped out and so george won this fight he defended his title for the fifth time or whatever it was and was pissed at the end like visibly upset at his performance right he won

every minute of every round in a championship fight and he was upset with his performance and so a group of us were waiting for him in a room after the after the fight and he was upset with his performance and so a group of us were waiting for him in a room after the after the fight and we were just going to go have a party in his honor and stuff like that and george didn't show up for about an hour so now it's like one in the morning george hasn't turned up yet and so when he finally shows up everyone's like where you been what's up is everything cool and he decided to spend that hour drilling arm bars with his grappling coach. Like he wanted to master this thing so that when he was in that situation again, he wouldn't fail to submit his opponent from an arm bar submission. Right. And to me, that was just this maybe obsessive,

but this real commitment. That is what it takes. It doesn't surprise me. I've seen it so many times. Yeah. That people say like, oh, they're just special. They're different. They're born that way. No. No. You know, yes, they've got some physical genetic predispositions, but they've maximized them.

Most of them. Oh, and you think about this guy's been up all day. He fought at midnight. There are people waiting for him. He's exhausted. He just had a 25-minute fight with another man. Dominated. And he was just like that one thing, though, that one thing.

I can't move on until I get that one thing. And that was such a powerful mastery story for me. And, and, and, uh, I often, I often think if there's a, if there's a phrase that goes along with this for me, it's that people often overestimate how difficult things will be and they just underestimate how long they'll take, you know? And that just seems to be true for everything. Are you familiar with the Zen cone, the taste of Banzo's sword? No. Okay. So the story is about this young man, Matajiro, whose father's a famous swordsman. And he wants him to teach him to be a great swordsman too. And his father says, no, you don't have what it takes. I'm not going to teach you. So Matajor goes on this journey and he hears about this master swordsman who lives on Mount Futara, Banzo, and he goes to be his disciple. And so he shows up and he tells Banzo, I want to be a great swordsman. I'm so passionate about it. You know, he's just really adamant that this guy has to teach him. And he goes, no, no, I'm not going to train you. He's like, no, no, no. What if I devote myself to it? I'll be your servant.

How long would it take? And Banzo's like, well, probably 10 years. And Mataduro's like, no, no, that's way too long. That's way too long. I'll double my efforts. I will work twice as hard. How long will it take then? And Banzo says, well, 30 years then.

And Matajoros is like, wait, wait, first you tell me 10. Now you tell me 30. What's going on? And his next line is great. He's like, a person in such a hurry seldom gets good results. And so then it goes on to tell the story of how he ended up training him in a very non-conventional way. And the guy becomes a master swordsman. And I always love that story again, it's another example of mastery really. And this idea of overestimating the difficulty. Matadro is like, I'll work so hard, you know, and the real master says, it's not how hard you work. It's how long you're willing to commit to the craft. Do you remember when we worked as part of the Nike Council? When the NFL guys came in, there was an athlete named Javid Best.

I do. Okay, so he was a running back for the Lions. Great talent. And he left the NFL by choice early after a few concussions. He was like, I don't like the road this is going down. I don't know if you've heard much about him since, but I came across him again with an elite group of sprinters that I work with. So he competed at the 2016 Olympics in 100 meter. So he retired from football, took up sprinting,

and I read an interview with him, and it's just another example of the same thing where he was talking about, you know, people were prodding him for what's your goal? What's your goal as a track athlete? And he's like, I'm just new to this. I just want to show up every day, have a good practice, and master the art of sprinting. And I was like, oh, man,

either he's got a great sports psychologist or this guy's figured it out. You know what I mean? Like, it was just the right thing, you know? And so I don't know, this is kind of what I think about all the time. You know, I'm always working with my kids. You know, I'm at the stage of life again where my ambitions aren't as great for myself anymore as they are for the people that I'm coaching. You know, I really want to see them thrive and succeed from my kids to people come to me for mentorship. And so this is the thing I think about a lot now is my role has become being more of a mentor than a mentee, or at least more of my time spent as a mentor than a mentee, is this idea like, it's not going to be that hard as you think. It's going to take longer. And your orientation has to be to this very thing, this kind of idea of patient

practice done intentionally with precision, using pain as a way to correct course you know there's um i have a real dramatic aversion to the idea of hacking there are no shortcuts there's no tips tricks like it's a fundamental orientation of your life towards figuring it out you know like whatever thing you want to figure out and then so it's mastery of art or mastery of craft through self i I'm sorry. Right. You know what I'm saying? Mastery of self through craft. Like we're using the craft to figure out, you know, the nuances of what it means to be oneself. And so inside of that, you know, there's this phrase that captures me, which is that any given moment in time, I'm a standing civil war within myself.

Yeah. And we're talking about self-talk there, right? Like that inner battle sometimes. And sometimes it's eloquent and it's wonderful and it's fun. And other times it's like, hold on, what are you doing? And it's like, you're blowing it. And so how do you manage that critic? How do you manage that civil war? What do you do?

I have thought about this question a lot. I mean, I have pretty good guardrails in my life. The way that I think about myself and my, let's say myself applied to career, is that I have to start with my priorities. And they're really super well defined in my life. As of a year ago, I would have said my priorities in no particular order are my family, my relationship with my wife and my role as a parent, my own self-care, my health, my fitness, and then my work at Precision Nutrition and that mission that we're trying to achieve.

So those are my three priorities. Everything else is a no. Nothing else is even considered. Next is my unique abilities, which I consider the things that I am or have the ability to be the best in the world at, that I also enjoy doing, and that have a chance to make a real impact on what I'm working on. So those are my unique abilities, the things that fall into those that match all three of those. So how can I put my unique abilities in the service of my priorities? And then last is my values, right? Those are my guardrails, the things that the ideals that I think are important, right? So oftentimes I could

have priorities and my unique abilities applied to them, but my values may say, no, you're not going to do that. For example, travel has long been one of those that I just say no to because it means time away from my family, time away from my work at Precision Nutrition, and stress on my health and fitness. So often the rubric that I use is, that is a phenomenal idea. Can I do it from this chair that I'm sitting in right now? If I can't do it from this chair, then it's probably going to be a no. It's not to say that everyone else has to adopt the same. But so this that I outline are

my guardrails, my priorities, unique abilities, and my values. It takes a long time to figure them out and a lot of work and coaching as well and therapy as well. So don't overestimate the difficulty and underestimate how long it takes. It takes a while. But when it comes to the self-talk part, beyond that, I don't know if what I just shared with you sets me up for not having the Civil War. But for a long time, I've really considered one of my maybe genetic superpowers as not having a lot of self-doubt. When people talk about imposter syndrome, I'm fascinated by it because I don't understand it and don't think I've ever felt it. Yeah. I was thinking you were going to go there. Most people that have been in these conversations on Finding Mastery have said, oh yeah, I get over my skis all the time and I worry and, you know, I have this thing that I'm going to get me found out. And then there's this kind of phase in their life where they're like, no, no, no, I actually really do now finally understand it.

And so I don't know if there's there was any phasing in it for you or. Yeah. Well, you know, I've I'm writing a book right now, which is sort of the summation of everything I think I've learned working in the field and working in business and as an entrepreneur. And I really explore this idea of reputation in there. And, you know, one of the keys to my personal reputation is I just have a big, long list of credentials that are really, really good, you know, as you do. Like I have a couple undergrad degrees, I have master's, I have PhD, I've worked with Apple, I work with Nike, I work. So, I mean, I've worked with professional sports teams, I've grown a big company, I've sold a company for a couple hundred million dollars. Kind of at the point in my career now, like I have unimpeachable credentials, right? So

but I didn't earlier. So that speaks to your phasing approach. However, what I did have earlier was always working on my credentials. You know, so I feel like there was never a point where I was sitting there going, am I good enough? The answer was always, I'm working on being good enough. You know, I'm busy getting my PhD. I'm busy learning everything I can about change psychology and talking to the world's leading experts on it. Now I'm busy getting mentorship on business and entrepreneurial efforts. You know, is that to say I was confident in every micro decision that I made along the way. No. But what I did feel like was, hey, if I make the wrong decision here, I can just fix it later. Like, nothing is permanent. Nothing is irreversible. Almost nothing. You know, anything that I do, I can reevaluate and

fix later. And I'm confident enough to ask for help and get advice from the smartest people in the world. So I feel like, again, I've often wondered, is this actually my DNA-born superpower? That everything else is window dressing. It's cool. We don't really know that the, the true interface between genetic environment and skills, you know, none of us do in any field. I think I can be bold enough to say that. And I think most people will say, Oh, all three are involved. Yeah. Environment, you know, amplification of skill and then, you know, predisposition to neurochemicals and neuro electricity, you know, all of them, all of those matter. Okay. How about this? If we spin it just a little bit, and I'd like to see if I could understand your explanatory model when something doesn't go well.

And if you can think about a time where you, you really screwed up and it was kind of a mess. And I don't know, it could be with your kid. It could be with, you know, coaching somebody. It could be, you know, a business strategy that you, that was a mess. But when you think of something big or small, that was, didn't work out the way that you hoped, do you explain that event to yourself from an internal perspective or external? Meaning that is it something you did, or is it more aligned with the way that the external world lined up? External circumstances or internal? It's really interesting. So I'm going to answer this a little bit sideways and then I'll answer the real thing. One of my

greatest challenges that therapy, mindfulness, meditation has helped with tremendously, is that my entire life, when something didn't go my way, I looked for something else or someone else to blame. Right? So even if it was a small annoyance, right, I would just look around and the person closest to me was the one whose fault it was. I'm not particularly proud of this. Again, I spent probably my whole life trying to figure out how to get an extra beat. So I don't say anything to that person. I don't think I've ever cured it or fixed it. I don't know if I ever will. But what I have now is the ability to say something didn't go my way. That microsecond happens and I start looking for her to blame. And I go, wait a second, there's no one to blame here. And I'm not going to blame anyone here. And now I can move on to the next act of this little self-dialogue, which is figuring

out what I can learn from this. So there was, again, for a split second in my life when something didn't go my way, looking outward, blaming others. And that didn't work for a good first portion of my life. That's why I sought out a lot of help. And where I live now is that still happens, but it lasts less than a second and I do nothing about it. And then I move on to the productive stuff. Really cool because there's not a right and a wrong, but there's limitations certainly to external. So when you blame your external environment for the state or condition that you're in, it can be a self-esteem saving mechanism. That's right. Yes. And it can also allow somebody to stay intact. So let's say a batter is in the box, pitches flying at 90 miles an hour, you know,

it's up and tight in the head. Um, and let's say he takes a crack at it. It's in the strike zone and, um, you whiffs three, three of those in a row, something like that, that it's, it's a self-esteem saving mechanism to say, you know what this bat is bad as slow. I can't get my arms around it. You know, I can't rotate properly. I'm not seeing it quite right. I think it's the bat in my glasses. I need to change my lenses and I'm going to get a new bat. And okay. You know, like that'll be a strategy, a tactic, whatever, but it's really not until we go, wait a minute, hold on a minute. You know, what's happening inside. That's not allowing me to express the

external. And so there's a, there's a healthy balance to move towards the internal. And then you just nailed it, which is hold on. Why don't I see life events that aren't going well? Why don't I go upstream conceptually for a minute and say, isn't, aren't we just trying to learn, you know, and like, how can I learn from this? As opposed to it's my fault or it's their fault, right? External, internal. And so you did go upstream on it, but I wanted to try to pin like if you had a tendency on internal, external. And if we think of a different lever, do you see them as global or specific? I'm imagining specific. That you see them as specific units of time and interaction.

And it's not some pervasive global thing. That's right. Yeah. The world is not out to get me, but this person screwed me over in that moment. Yeah. You know what I mean? That's, that's, that's the very specific. Yeah.

Very specific and very temporary. It sounds like. So internal you're now towards internal specific temporary for the three levers. Yeah. There you go. Okay. And then can I ask you like some kind of one to 10 questions? Yeah. like so internal you're now towards internal specific temporary for the three levers yeah there you go okay and then can i ask you like some kind of one to ten questions yeah yeah let's do it okay all right your ability to switch on be about it beyond engaged one to ten 8.5 to 10, depending on the circumstance. Okay, to be able to switch it off.

And I'm talking about decompressing at night. Or in the quiet moments throughout the day when you need to just settle in, in a different way. High, 8.5 to 10. Same. Okay, your ability to manage internal distractions. High. How about a score? Let's give it eight.

Eight. Okay. How about to lock in when it's boring? Moderate. Five to six. When it's dangerous? Lower. Lower. Okay.

Three or four. Three or four. Okay. And then when there's emotional risk at play. Six or seven. Okay. Motivated by external rewards. Money, fame, attention, whatever, whatever.

Six. And motivated by internal rewards, the way it feels to grow, figure things out, unlock things. That's high. That's nine or 10. I feel like I, the number one thing I look for is, am I proud of myself for having done this? Hmm. Okay. And then what is your level of openness to ideas and experiences? Um, high that we actually assess that at precision nutrition on all of our staff. We have tons of assessments that we do and openness is one of the domains. Mine ranks very high. Usually I remember you experimented with early days.

You were experimenting with omega, like ridiculously high doses of omega. And I remember we talked about it and I was like, wow, like I've never heard of anyone taking that much omega. So I was going to guess that yours was really high. Yes. What were you dosing? Yeah. What were you using for like, I think it was omega threes. Yeah. for like i think it was omega-3s yeah yeah we were using fish oil experimenting with uh short phases

of one gram per pound of body weight so oh my god that's so high yeah yeah are you still up there because that's so much oh no no no i'm sorry it's yeah i'm sorry it's not one gram per pound that would be ridiculous it was like one gram per every 10 pounds of body weight so if you're 180 pounds you would get 18 grams or whatever and still i think recommended is somewhere like one to two like one to three grams yeah exactly right yeah yeah and i i wouldn't we don't recommend that anymore again that was something we were just sort of playing around with and and measuring omega-3 levels and measuring a balance of omegas and, and different saturated fats in the body.

You know, all I, I used to be a way, way more experimental. I mean, there's a new wave of self experimenters who take it to like the next level. And I, I wasn't that hardcore,

but yeah, I, I like playing around with stuff and measuring stuff. It's always been super fun to me. Okay. A couple more quick hits. Fear hits fear failure so let's talk about fear fear of success and fear of failure right like what are your toggles on that one to ten super low on both that's just just not things that occur to me what's a number that you would link them to? Are they exactly the same? I'd say fear of success never occurs to me. Zero.

What is that? Isn't that what we kind of want? And then the fear of failure, maybe like a two or a three. Is that looking bad or is that losing something? Is it coming up short? I think earlier in my career it would have been a bit higher, like looking bad, not matching the unimpeachable credentials. You know what I mean? When I'm younger, I just get out of school.

I have a PhD. I've worked with these professional teams. teams what if i mess something up then my uh the rubber where the rubber meets the road it's embarrassing right because people think i'm supposed to be able to do all the things and i couldn't do the thing but any more that it doesn't matter i just again i sort of adopted that philosophy of um there's there's almost nothing except for dying and ending your time on this earth or at least that's all we know about that isn't reversible to some degree or deal withable or modifiable or whatever the case may be you know so a virtual framework that you work from hmm I'd say nothing super well dogmatically characterized you know like a particular

religious practice or anything like that how important is science one to ten yeah that's where my head went to um i have been heavily influenced by like the works of carl sagan and other thinkers uh who really really love science uh for me science is uh you know what I hate more than anything? The fetishization of concepts, right? So science, as a lot of people think of it, has a bunch of baggage and it's a fetish. What I think of is like what I said with Carl Sagan, sort of the beauty of this method of testing things and knowing, you know? Very important. This idea of trials, of of hypothesis start with a guess the science it out that basically yes the method the birth of the method yeah yes yeah yeah you look very very important

hi hi I think about it a lot eight or nine out of ten I just as a way of being in the world as a way of testing and experiencing and experimenting and knowing what we know. Brilliant. Okay. You know, I mean, I could go on and on with you because I think you've got a really beautiful handle on your approach to life and your understanding of your craft. And, but I also want to honor our time here and just really quickly, I've got just got a couple more here.

What, what, what is your experience with therapy? Because you talked about it a handful of times. Yes. And so, like, how much work have you done internally with a trained professional? Lots. Years. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. My orientation of therapy is I do it before I need it. You know, it's a way of speaking. But the idea is, you know, uh, I'm about to get married. I'm going to go, uh, and invite my partner to, uh, participate in marriage counseling. Why? Cause we don't know what we're doing. And I want to talk to someone who has a lot of experience with people. Um, I'm going to have children. Uh, let's see a family counselor before it starts so I can enter into it with strategies and somewhat prepare. So I started seeing counselors when I was a teenager because I was actually in trouble as a teenager. And so I had a kind of a profound event that changed my life when I was 19. Whoa, whoa, whoa. you can't bury that.

So, I mean, prior to this, I was drunk and high constantly and skipping school and, you know, on track to do none of the things I've done. And so one night, some friends and I were out. We were drinking. We were doing drugs. Not proud of this, and listeners can judge me if they want, but the driver ended up, we were on a road out in the country. They were going to take me home.

And he was doing the funny swerve back and forth across the road gimmick. And as we started to get a little bit closer into town, where the curbs in the sidewalk started, he hit a curb. And it started the car doing 360s across the road. And I knew this area really well. And where we were headed was a heavily wooded area. So I was convinced, like, this car is going to shoot off the embankment we're going to go right into a tree we're all dead this is the end and it was really like this isn't just for like storytelling effect it was a cinematic kind of life before your eyes moment i remember grabbing my best friend who was sitting next to me we were in the back seat and I kind of pushed him down. Then I jumped on top of him. And then it was so slow. It seemed to take forever. Just

the car, I don't know how many times it went around or whatever, but I was just like, man, this is still happening, you know? And then I remember like thinking about my life, seeing scenes of like my brother and I have one brother as kids. And then the last scene I saw after I replayed this whole life sequence was myself being lowered into my grave site in the casket and my parents looking down on me with this mixture of like grief and shame. And it, that's just like, I wasn't at the time big fan of my parents you know what i mean like we had a lot of challenges obviously generated by me but i

remember like that moment feeling empathy for them like holy shit i i'm not only going to do that to them tonight, but I've been doing that to them all this time. Ended up landing between two trees, such that both of the rearview mirrors or the sideview mirrors were knocked off, but we didn't smash into the tree, so we were all fine. That night, my buddy is freaking out. He's like, oh my gosh, we scraped the car. My

dad's going to kill me. Let's get this back on the road and get this home. Uh, and I had a totally different reaction. You know, that was, that was the end. And in some ways that was sort of the end of V1 of me that closed that chapter. I decided to walk home that night. Um, those guys decided to drive home and they all got arrested later on that evening. And that kicked off, we'll just say like JB 2.0. That was a real defining demarcation point in my life. I was really lucky after that because I found some mentorship. I got some coaching. I got some counseling, really helped me turn my life around but was really interesting about the time that sticks out just as much as this sort of fundamental shift in my life

was how lonely the next year was because I I stopped hanging out with every friend that I had um school was over I wasn't getting into university i was working at my dad's restaurant and i had no friends and i was fundamentally alone for that whole time and i didn't have any coping mechanisms i wasn't doing alcohol and drugs anymore so it was while the greatest sort of turnaround that i've seen it was also just embedded in that was like the loneliness and the aloneness of what happens when you change. So anyway, that's, you know, again, counseling and therapy helped me there and has helped me at every stage. There's even a thing that we do at Precision Nutrition now where we, new people come onto the team,

we give them a counseling budget and highly encourage them to use it uh the idea being we think it's very valuable obviously your whole story makes sense you know from premature to a recklessness risk-taking thrill-seeking be part of something you know into uh you know a moment that changed everything to a career of wanting to understand like it it makes great sense so i'm stoked you shared that last thing and then as you're sharing that last let's call it traumatic experience for you is it still alive in your body or is it um quite a down like as? Like as you just described it, was it still in there? Um, the, uh, it feels like a magic trick, you know, it feels like, uh, either I w I was in on someone else's trick or something kind of magical happened there because, um, you know, the next

thing that happened was I found the gym, like in my aloneness, I was like, I got to do something with my free time because I'm not hanging out with anyone. So that's when I started working out. And when I started working out, I met my first mentor. He was the owner of the gym. He was a bodybuilder and powerlifter. And he was sort of like this guy that everyone looked up to in our community. And he took me under his wing and coached me. And he gave me books

to read. Like he gave me philosophy books and he gave me self-help books. Uh, he turned me on to like Zig Ziglar and Steven Covey and Tony Robbins. And, uh, he ran the gyms. Uh, he had a chain of gyms in our communities. Uh, so he taught me about business. He taught me about working out. So I really look back on that whole time very fondly because of that relationship that I built in the wake of that experience, which I probably wouldn't have had any other way. And he was really my first and my greatest mentor. And I sort of attribute everything that's happened after that to him because he really turned me on to exercise, nutrition, sleep, stress management, fitness, business, philosophy, learning. He made me promise him I'd go to school. So I just feel a lot of gratitude and happiness about what came in the

wake of that experience. Golly, lucky bastard that you almost died and then was, were lonely for a year. Yes. Yeah. Good job. Yeah. And there is, um, that is part of the process. You know, I just, I just went through a ultra event myself where I was needing to go into some dark places to figure some stuff out.

And so, you know, if we, if we don't go into the cave and figure out like that dark stuff, it's really hard to come out and really understand, I don't know, what it means to be human. And so running away is very different than running toward. And so, yeah, awesome insight. So thank you for sharing. And then last question really is, well, there's one about like where can people find you, but what would be the one or two habits that you would hope people could cultivate to like fitness and nutrition, I'm like, I have no problem being prescriptive, but when it comes to this, I always have a challenge because I'm like, I, I don't know. I only know what I do, you know? Yeah. We'll stick with that. Like what has been

really crisp and helpful for you that you'd say, listen, I had my unique life, but if somebody would do a and B or A, B, C, and D or A, I think that they'd find some great value in it. Yeah. So one would be get good at transitions, transitions in your day, transitions in your life. So I'll give you a practical example that'll give it some legs. You know, I work from home and like I said, we have four kids. And if I don't find a way to transition in the morning from helping them get off to school and driving them to school to getting into work mode, or when they come home from school to turn from work mode to family mode, then my life's miserable. The kids come in and I'm not quite ready for them

mentally or emotionally. I'm still thinking about work all night. I need a way to pay attention to and govern the transitions in my day. For me, it's often taking the five minutes where I know when they're going to be coming in, five minutes to transition from work mode to family mode. And I think that can be extracted out to transitional periods in your life as well. I mean, I'm going through one right now. Before we started recording, we talked about selling a big portion of Precision Nutrition. Just about a year ago, my partner and I sold about 80% of our company to some new partners. And that was a big transition. And this transition doesn't take five minutes, but probably about a year or two to figure out the next thing and prepare myself for that.

So that's really one. I see people really struggling with how to be the different things they need to be in their life, uh, because they don't find the time to transition, um, between them. Cool insight. Um, so, so that's one that I found, um, really, really valuable. Um, and, um, I don't know, maybe we'll leave it there. Brilliant. John, you're the man. You're a legend. And I really appreciate your approach in life. I appreciate the delicateness of the way you choose words. And then also, world leading in creating structures for nutrition and life change. So congrats. Love to have this conversation with you. It's been long overdue since, you know, I've wanted to have you on here.

And so I really appreciate that. And where can people, you know, follow along? And I know you're writing a book. So where can people go if they're wanting to get on a pre-list or just at least wait until you drop, you know, when that's going to happen, where can people find you? Yeah. I mean, um, you know, all the work we do around food and fitness and lifestyle stuff, people can come visit us at precision nutrition.com. Uh, we've published over a thousand articles there. We have free courses on virtually every topic you can think about, like for those people who were like, I hate what you said about keto, but we have a course for you that teaches you how to keto better. And if you're just trying to figure out the best diet for you, we have a free course on that.

So if you're interested in those kind of things that we talked about, come check us out there. If you want to hear my random musings on business and entrepreneurship and stuff like that, I keep a pretty active Facebook page. And so I do that. And I really narrow it down to those two avenues. I know people tell me I'm supposed to have Twitter and Instagram and all that stuff. And I'm like, I don't think so. I also have four kids and I'm trying to, um, win national championships in track. So I'll just post on Facebook for now. So you can come see me there at Dr. John Berardi or come see us at precision nutrition and those are the places but i love it i love it yeah before you go cbd oh yeah what do you think what do you think non-thc hemp derived cbd is it something to pay attention to or is this like

yes we're doing a big huge research piece on that right now it'll probably drop in the next month or two on our site. We sent someone to the Middle East and all over talking to the people who've been doing the research on this stuff for years and years when they weren't even allowed to talk about the research they were doing. So yeah, I mean, for those who follow Precision Nutrition, we do very, very deep authoritative treatments of hot topics and important issues. And this is definitely one of them. This is one we're going to be writing about, but we're not going to constrain it to CBD because, you know, to be honest, I feel like people's interest in cannabis is always an apologetic one. So they say things like, yeah, I want to talk about CBD, you know, not the stuff that gets you high. That's like the apologetic side. Right. And I'm like, yeah, I want to talk about CBD, you know, not the stuff that gets you

high. That's like the apologetic side. Right. Um, and I'm like, Oh, why don't we talk about that too? I mean, that's very interesting. I live in Canada, so it's legalized now. So you can, you can literally order any kind of cannabis that you want to your house and it's delivered by the post just like anything else you would order. So the stigma is being lifted there. I mean, obviously, in the US, it's changing and things are happening. I think it's something to pay attention to. I think it's fascinating. I'll give you an athlete story before we wrap.

Years ago, when I started coaching athletes, I noticed that in high, high level strength and power athletes, a lot of them smoked marijuana. You know, they would play Xbox back in the day when that was the dominant game system and they would smoke weed. And I remember in my very early days of coaching, you know, people in health and fitness bucketed alcohol and marijuana and junk food all into this big unhealthy bucket. Without any real logic or science behind it, you just kind of did that, right? And I remember one day sitting there thinking to myself, like, what if I undid that thinking for myself?

What if I actually investigated? Like, could alcohol be valuable to an athletic regimen or not? Could marijuana be valuable to an athletic regimen or not? Could marijuana be? And when I went down this path and asked new questions, I realized that, you know, one of the things in strength and power, let's say professional football players, track and field, whatever, is that they are sympathetically dominant, right? All their activities, sympathetic dominant. Their fast twitch muscle fibers, all this stuff. And they don't have a lot of parasympathetic

recovery type activities in their lives. Now, they might not be the kind of people who are taking warm baths and candlelight and soft music to get their parasympathetic recovery or meditating or doing yoga. So perhaps, you know, cannabis was their way to activate their parasympathetic nervous systems, rest, digest, and recover. And it became, you know, whatever, this is just me talking now. This isn't me putting my scientist hat on. But it became a very interesting topic of exploration for me that I've thought about and researched for quite a long time. And now you hear all kinds of conversation about cannabis and CBD as athletic recovery tools.

And again, 10 years ago, if an athlete told you that, you would have said, stop doing that, right? It's bad for you. How could smoking marijuana, which gives you the munchies and ruins your lungs, help you recover. It doesn't make any sense. But now we're seeing, hey, there might be some anti-inflammatory benefits, some recovery benefits for certain type of athletics, and then all the medical benefits as well. So I'm fascinated with it. I think it's going to be super interesting over the next little while, both recreational use, athletic use, and medical use.

And I'm not recommending athletes start doing cannabis if they haven't. So I just want to put that qualifier in there. But yeah, I'm glad you brought it up because it's something that I'm really, really intrigued by. And I think that beyond the THC and CBD, there's all these other things, the terpenes, for example, that are in there that we're going to discover have all kinds of effects, physiological, psychological effects. And our understanding today of what cannabis is and what does what is going to be seen as very, very primitive in the next little while. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think the problem right now with sport and elite sport is that if you can't get the THC out, they can pop for a dirty test.

That's right. And so THC free is a rare thing still, right? So hemp derived CBD is something that I'm, I'm trying to pay attention to, but the, the research is like, it's hard to figure it out. It's not good enough, you know. And so anyways, maybe we'll have a part two as you get a little bit more clear. I'd love to learn from you there too. Yeah, absolutely. That'd be exciting. That'd be exciting because I'm very interested in this story right now. And, you know, everything from,

you know, I envision a not too distant future when cannabis is legalized, where very much like there's a sommelier at a restaurant, there's that for cannabis. And there'll be all different kinds of strains that are used in different kinds of performances, not just athletics, whether it's music, whether it's any high performance. I know you study high performance and extreme performance yourself. You know, where does this play in? When we can sort of destigmatize it and we can separate out what does what, I think it's going to be pretty fascinating. Okay, brilliant.

Check out John, Precision Nutrition. Check out all the research and even the change management and the nutrition expertise that he's developed with his partnerships there. And then also find him on Facebook. And then I just want to appreciate everyone for being part of the tribe. If you're not part of the Finding Mastery tribe, punch over to our Facebook page and you can find that findingmastery.net forward slash tribe. And there's thousands and thousands and thousands of you supporting and challenging each other, you know, on our unique paths to mastery.

So, and if you haven't written a little blurb, a little thank you note on iTunes, we appreciate that. It helps with listenership and viewership and exposure as well. So with that, John, thank you again. Thank you. Thanks to all the listeners too. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're enjoying the show,

the easiest no-cost way to support is to hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you're listening. Also, if you haven't already, please consider dropping us a review on Apple or Spotify. We are incredibly grateful for the support and feedback. If you're looking for even more making sure we love and endorse every product you hear on the show. If you want to check out any of our sponsor offers you heard about in this episode, you can find those deals at findingmastery.com slash sponsors. And remember, no one does it alone. The door here at Finding Mastery is always open to those looking to explore the edges and the reaches of their potential so that they can help others do the same. So join our community,

share your favorite episode with a friend and let us know how we can continue to show up for you. Lastly, as a quick reminder, information in this podcast and from any material on the Finding Mastery website and social channels is for information purposes only. If you're looking for meaningful support,

which we all need, one of the best things you can do is to talk to a licensed professional. So seek assistance from your healthcare providers. Again, a sincere thank you for listening. Until next episode, be well, think well, keep exploring.