Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 251 - John Berardi

Episode Date: September 22, 2019

John Berardi, PhD, CSCS, and Co-Founder of Precision Nutrition is an author, speaker, coach, Professor and researcher. He is currently listed as one of the 20 best coaches by Livestrong.com and with the help of his company Precision Nutrition, he has coached over 200,000 clients. Precision Nutrition started in John's basement and is now the largest nutrition coaching company in the world. John has been an advisor for companies such as Apple, Equinox, Nike and Titleist. Subscribe to the Podcast on all platforms: ➢https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Visit our sponsors: ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Perfect Keto: http://perfectketo.com/powerproject Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 15% off your order! ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell Follow The Power Project Podcast ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MarkBellsPowerProject Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/  Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz

So we're just watching a video on the sheer force value of meat because the Piedmontese meat is so tender. We're trying to figure out, you know, how are they able to, you know, make the meat like this. And the video we just watched basically just explains that, you know, by kind of slicing through the meat, they end up with what they call a sheer force value. And apparently the certified Piedmontese, they do a great job of keeping that meat super tender. So very easy to cut through, which makes it easier to chew. Yeah. I've had a lot of different types of steaks. A lot of steaks I paid good money for that just were not tender at all. Also most disappointing thing ever, right? Yes. Because you're paying good money for steak. You

want it to taste good. You want it to be tender. So it's impressive that they're doing all this with their meat. Yeah, it's great. They're putting the information out there too. And again, they have information on how to cook, which I think is great. Having a cook guide is really important. And on top of it, we don't want the meat to be hard and dry. There's really nothing worse than having a steak that's like that. And so they have tender meat that has tons of protein in it.

And it's very lean, much leaner than a lot of the other meats that are out there. And I think they're just doing it with those jacked Nebraska cows. Andrew, where can they find out more information about Piedmontese beef? Certified Piedmontese has a crazy deal exclusively for our listeners. Head over to piedmontese.com. That's P-I-E-D-M-O-N-T-E-S-E dot com. Enter promo code POWERPROJECT. That'll get you 25% off your order along with free two-day shipping on all orders of $100 or more. All right. I can't imagine somebody writing a better book

than myself. I wrote The War on Carbs. I can't imagine anybody doing a better job than me when it comes to writing a ketogenic diet. However, Anthony Gustin is an actual doctor, so there's a possibility that he did a better job with writing a book, and I'm excited to announce it to all of you. It's a killer book on a ketogenic diet. I know on this podcast, we talk so much about how to lose fat.

We've talked a lot about low-carb dieting, but a lot of times when you go on a low-carb diet, you don't realize that it's really important that you produce ketones. Otherwise, you're going to feel like crap. This book is going to help explain a lot about ketosis. It's going to give you a lot of the answers that you need on ketosis. And Anthony Gustin wrote this book with Chris Irvin as well, a nutritionist, scientist, and researcher. So you're going to want to check this book out for sure.

This book was created to simplify the world's most confusing diets by answering over 250 of the most common questions people have about the ketogenic diet. It's in a Q&A format. You'll be able to read and understand this book easily. Be sure to add this book as one of your nutrition resources by going to perfect keto.com slash keto answers book you know we love to read so go check this out all righty then all righty mark who do we got on today we got my boy and sema oh really we couldn't afford we were trying to get john berardi but uh it just looked like it was going to be a little too expensive. Yeah.

No, I'm better than John anyway. Yeah. I got this figured out for you guys. Yeah. Oh, I found a discount. I can actually send John Berardi an email to get him on the podcast right now. For free? Well, it's a promo code I found.

Yeah. I think it's Code Power Project. That's great. So I was just going to ask Nsema if he thought pizza was bad. It's bad. Oh. That's just it. It Power Project. That's great. So I was just going to ask Nsema if he thought pizza was bad. It's bad. Oh. That's just it. It's bad.

It's bad. I shouldn't eat it. But we love it. Me and Andrew love it. Yeah, but it's bad. Cereal? Bad. But why?

Ice cream? Because it's bad. You haven't heard what everybody just says. It's bad. Carbs. Carbs are bad. No carbs. Bad carbs.

No carbs. So hold on. I want to write this down. No carbs for how long no carbs forever okay four forever with the number four and then ever oh oh the number four yes but why are why are they around if they're so bad and we shouldn't have them because temptation god put that on the planet to tempt us just like the apple the apple The apple was a carb in the Garden of Eden. My phone is a carb? Hold on.

In the Garden of Eden. Hold on a second. The Apple Store? I got a question. God exists? I want to write this all down. Make sure I have all this correct. He does.

Okay. He exists. God said no carbs. And then in the Garden of Eden he put an apple there which he told us not to eat. The snake. Devil.

Told us to eat the apple. And boom. We eat carbs bad. Boom. See? So that means carbs are bad. The devil created the apple or God did? God created the apple as temptation and the devil made us eat the apple, but we weren't supposed to eat the carb.

So carbs equals devil equals bad. But did the male or female eat the apple? Oh, you see, see, I was, I was trying to see which one of you guys would catch on. The female ate the apple oh you see see i was i was trying to see which one of you guys would catch on the female ate the apple oh so as men we can eat the carbs well we shouldn't eat the carbs females are deceitful is that what we're saying but no that's what in sema saying i am now speaking no more what about protein oh protein is Okay. Eat as much protein as you like. Protein, no carbs, no carbs and no fat, no fat at all. All right. Well, we're going to try to get lean here today. We got, uh, John Berardi and hopefully he can answer some questions for us.

You know, a lot of times when you go, what I've learned is that when you go like two or three questions deep on somebody, a lot of times you're not coming up with a whole lot of great answers. And I think it's it would be great if more people took on the responsibility of trying to get good answers. And the way that you get good answers is through questioning. So don't don't just don't allow people to, you know, sprinkle their beliefs all over you as if they're fact. You know, I don't think that's a good way to, you don't have to get in an argument with people. You don't have to be rude.

But at the same time, when somebody says, hey man, you shouldn't be eating that, that's bad. Then it'd be great to say, well, why do you think it's bad? Like what's wrong with it? And then you kind of see how many questions deep you can get with them before you probably realize they're probably sharing a belief and not a fact. Yeah. Did we mention all this dude's accolades just yet? I don't think so. So he's got a lot of them. Yep. PhD, CSCS. I think, uh, precision nutrition has apparently

helped over 70,000 coaches and clients. That's a lot of people. It's a lot of people. Yeah. I know, uh, Juliette Sturette, uh, took his courses and she was a huge fan. She was like, oh, my God. And I think, you know, for a lot of a lot of coaches, it'd be great because that's the kind of spot where there might be some weakness is the nutrition side of it. And, you know, without being a full on like nutritionist, you can take these courses and you can really learn a lot. He's been teaching it for for a very long time. So it'd be really cool. And I've been a huge fan of his. He's been writing on T Nation for many, many years.

And then just years ago, he just like kind of dropped the mic and he bounced out. I think it was probably a smart move. And I'd love to ask him that question as well on kind of why he decided to move on. But I think what he was trying to do, I think he was trying to make people aware of what he was doing and make people aware of some of his beliefs and some of his findings. And then from there, I think he was just like, I got to monetize this. I got to turn this into a business. And he probably thought about it in these terms too. He probably thought I should, I should go out and get this now because no one else is really doing it. And now you see,

there's a lot of people that are, that are kind of in that space, but he was one of the first to kind of go out in front. Oh, here he is. Hey now. Hey. Hey gentlemen. How are you? We're doing great. How are you? Awesome. Awesome. Doing really well. We're, uh, we're excited and I've been a huge fan for a long time. I've been following a lot of your, uh, writings over the years, a lot of your articles and, uh, just wanted to tell you how much I appreciate it, man. It's, um, you know, learning about nutrition sometimes can be, can be kind of tough and you're someone that did a great job, uh, simplifying it. And I was, you know, reading your stuff probably 10 or 15 years ago. No, that's awesome, man. It makes me feel a tad, tad bit old maybe, but no, and I'm a huge fan too.

I even mentioned the guys, my brother actually used to work out at your gym, my younger brother. Right. You know, he, he, uh, he loved it when he was living out in California and able to train with some really strong guys. Yeah. Very, very cool. So, you know, I I'm familiar with some of your writings from years ago, and I'm not as familiar with some of your

work, uh, of, of, as of late, but my question for you to kind of kick things off here is, um, you know, what, what are some of your beliefs towards what we're seeing with some of these trends towards like a carnivore diet, a ketogenic diet. Do you think these things have value? Are these things that you sometimes occasionally will utilize with some of your athletes, some of your coaches? Yeah. I mean, for anyone who follows my work and our work at Precision Nutrition kind of closely, they know we sort of have this phrase that we use, nutrition agnosticism, right? So we consider ourselves agnostic to all the different belief systems around food and eating. In other words, if you want a keto, that's great. I'm happy to help you do that. I just want to help you do that well. If you want to do a carnivore diet,

if you want to be plant-based, if you want to eat a high carb diet, it doesn't matter. There are ways to do each of these very, very well. And depending on your belief systems, your unique physiology, your athletic or recreational exercise goals, we can help you do any of those well. So when I see the debates that are happening in the field and a lot of finger pointing and this person's right and that person's wrong and which camp are you part of? It makes me a little bit sad because the truth is, if you have enough experience and all you have to do is look around, meet some people maybe who aren't like you, you'll know that carnivore can work for a period of time in a type of person if they're really conscientious about what they're putting into their bodies,

as can plant-based. So you have these people on one side who are like, only plants, no meat. And then you have the only meat, no plants people. And they somehow get so insulated from the reality of the world that they actually believe you couldn't possibly be healthy, lean, fit on the opposite. And, you know, at Precision Nutrition, we've coached over 200,000 people now. That would be impossible if you were just like, we teach people to eat one way and that's it. So I think there's merit to all of them. But again, like not unqualified merit. You know, if you're just like, I'm going to eat lean red meat for my entire diet and do carnivore, that's kind of a mistake. You'll end up with nutritional deficiencies. It's not a long term healthy approach. However, you know, if we varied that and we included organ meats and we,

so you see what I mean? There's caveats, right? Anything done really well is probably going to produce some kind of effect and probably beneficial if you've got a coach looking after you. Even a great plan in theory executed poorly isn't going to be very, very looking after you. Even a great plan, in theory, executed poorly isn't going to be very, very good for you. So that's kind of my take, you know, how do we, and this extends beyond nutrition, this extends to training, it extends to every aspect of health and fitness. The people who are going to win in the long run are the people who have this sort of curiosity, who look across the broad range of the field and say, hey, what's happening in all these spaces? Okay, what are the commonalities rather than the differences? Because there are a lot of commonalities.

For example, if you say you want to eat, let's say, low carb versus high carb, and you do both of them well, you are paying attention to what you're eating, which is a huge factor. Research shows just simply paying attention, regardless of which diet you're trying, helps you do better. And then you're probably exercising. So there's a commonality, right? So we can actually find probably 10 things that those groups have in common. And maybe those things that make all the difference rather than your choice of whether you eat more potatoes or no potatoes at all. You know what I mean? That is really fascinating. So they could have 10 things in common, but they could be on totally different diets. Yes, totally. And that's, I mean, if the most interesting people and the

most effective people are the people who look for commonalities across what seem to be divergent ways of thinking. Say, hey, if this group is actually getting some result and this group is getting some result, but they both think they're doing the opposite thing, good, clear thinking says they're probably doing some things similarly. What are they? It might not be the macronutrients, but it may be something else. And if we look to those things, we can find the truth, if you want to say, of what works. As a coach yourself and as somebody that is teaching people, how do you avoid the trap of getting overly excited and sharing kind of new information with people? You know, because I

think that's what we're seeing is people are on a vegan diet. They lost 50 pounds. They couldn't be more excited. It changed their life. And now they're so pumped about it. They want to share that information with a lot of other people or the reverse of that. They're on a carnivore diet. Same thing happened. And they want to share that. And they're super excited. How do you as a leader and somebody in the space that's coaching people, how do you avoid, you know, coming off too excited? Yeah, I mean, it's a trap, but I think there's an easy way out of it. And I'll share a personal anecdote. So about a year ago, I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. So I was diagnosed with psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis, which when the diagnosis came,

I'm like, oh, this explains a bunch of things. Like for the last few years in the weight room, doing any heavy knee extension work or higher volume of knee extension work would just blow up my knees and it'd be super painful. So I had to really be very cautious about both volume and load. And, you know, I like to squat. I like to deadlift. So I'm getting them in, but it's like a fraction of what I want to be doing. And then I got this diagnosis. I'm like, oh, there's actually arthritis in my knees. That's what it is, you know.

And so I went on this sort of journey of discovery of, okay, how do I treat this? How do I, you know, so I went to conventional medicine, and I worked with naturopaths and then I worked with all kinds of practitioners. And so I sort of came up with a treatment plan that ended up getting rid of all the skin lesions and they haven't come back that very quickly within a month resolved all my knee and joint pain. So, I mean, I went nuts for like 21 days in a row. I trained legs because I was like, I can't, this is amazing. Like training doesn't suck. It just sucks when your knees feel like people are stabbing them with knives. So, you know, it was, okay, I want to share this because I've discovered a few cool things. So some of it was dietary. So,

you know, I followed what is basically called an autoimmune protocol diet. And so you cut out a bunch of things, it ends up being basically high protein and vegetables, and you avoid a host of vegetables that may be pro inflammatory. So it's fairly restrictive. But again, within a month, I was like, I can move my knees properly. this is phenomenal right and then there's some other things some nutritional supplements that help with gut recovery some things that help shift the balance of my immune system and then um also light therapy so i bought this uvb light device right so uv so sunlight is basically uva and UVB. UVA is what tans you. UVB is what burns you.

But when it comes to eczema and psoriasis and a host of skin conditions, UVB is therapeutic. So you just have to get very small doses so it doesn't burn your skin, but then it produces vitamin D. It's the primary light range that produces vitamin D. So, I mean, it's something ridiculous. One minute a day of UVB light doubles your vitamin D. So, I mean, it's something ridiculous, like one minute a day of UVB light, like doubles your vitamin D levels of your body. It's crazy. So anyway, I'm obviously excited about these things, fully knowing this isn't going to work for everyone. So be excited. It's human nature to be like, I discovered something that cured an illness or helped me

lose 50 pounds. Be excited. But then always put the caveats in. So, you know, I did, you know, 10 follow-up, you know, Facebook posts, and I have a pretty big Facebook following on all the things I was trying. And every one of them comes with the caveat, this may not work for you. Work with someone who knows how to do experiments. Self-experimentation is interesting, but few people are capable of doing it effectively because they're not trained as experimenters. And then the last thing is we can't discount the fact that sometimes symptoms and illnesses resolve naturally.

In other words, maybe it wasn't the UV light at all. Maybe it was this was going to go away and it just so happened to go away the same time I tried the UVB stuff. You know what I mean? So it's just being self-aware enough to know that this might not work for others. It may not work. It may not have worked the way that I thought it would. And I often call it a sort of superstitions. We develop a lot of superstitions. I don't know if either of you guys have been exposed to David Epstein's new book called Range. Have either of you read it? I have not. No.

Okay. It's fascinating. For me, I think it's sort of a seminal book that proposes a totally new hypothesis about what's going to be required from thinkers and knowledge workers in the future. And the idea is we kind of live in this era of hyper-specialization. So we try and do it to kids with sport. We try and do it to adults with their area of expertise. But the people who seem to be doing the best are people who have range, a broad, diverse skill set where they can sort of transcend, we'll call them like field-related

boundaries and think very laterally. And so anyway, you know, it's in the book, he talks about how there are some things that hyper-specialization is really good for, and they're called like kind learning environments. So chess is a sport or golf is a sport or that it's a kind learning environment. You have instant feedback. The rules don't change. And so, you know, you know, the playing field, learning environments where the rules are always changing and feedback comes late. So what happens is you can develop superstitions. You can learn the wrong things and not know it. And that's how fitness is. That's how training is. That's how diet is. It's a wicked learning environment because you have to diet for a month before you really see any effect. And a lot could have changed in that month. You know what I mean? So I think a lot of times people are getting super

excited. They draw false conclusions, what I call superstitions, but it's totally understandable because it's a wicked learning environment. It's not easy to draw accurate conclusions. You know, John, what I really like about, like, first off, the approach that you have to all of this is that you mentioned that like, no diet is really wrong. Like we know that a lot of different diets work for different people. But a lot of people in certain sectors are demonizing others in other sectors that it just, it's just back and forth. So I love that. Now, my question to you off of that is like, people that are listening here, Mark and I,

we talk a lot about habits or nutritional habits. I used to count calories a lot, which helped me understand certain things towards my nutrition. Mark never counted calories and we kind of ended up even at the same place. So do you count them still? I don't count them anymore. I don't count them anymore. You sort of built the skill set and then you're able to set it down. Exactly. Like I don't need to carry around it. Like I can just eat what I want and I inherently kind of know how much I need to eat to maintain. Yeah. So you're like, that's about this amount of protein and carbs and fats.

I kind of know. Yeah. And like, there's like all like anxiety and all that type of stuff. I don't even deal with that anymore in terms of counting food and it's great. But now my question to you is, you know, someone who's listening in, in terms of nutritional habits and things you think that people should learn to be able, and I know this may be such a convoluted question because like everyone's a different, everyone's coming from a different place. But if there was like a top five or top habits that everyone should have nutritionally to be able to get, you know, from out of shape to in shape,

whether it be not snacking, et cetera, et cetera. What do you think those would be? So I can come up with them easily and I put them in two buckets. One is what we eat and two is how we eat. And I think you can't divorce the two. What you eat is the macronutrients, right? So what are the best macronutrients or what you're eating habits? Well, I mean, I would start with getting an adequate amount of protein, you know, inadequate, inadequate amount of protein isn't going to support your training, it isn't going to support your body composition goals, none of that. So you know, we look for, you know, enough protein. And, you know, for people who are training, it's somewhere around a gram per pound of body weight. And that's probably meaningless for people who don't want to do math.

So usually what we start with is like, so hold out your hand and you look at the thickness and diameter of your palm. And that's a portion of protein. That's about 20 to 30 grams. And so then you say, OK, cool. For men, hard training, 200 pounds, let's say, you want to get two of those, two palm-sized portions of protein three times a day. And that'll meet your needs, right? So it's a good, pun intended, like rule of thumb for how to, you know, determine your protein requirement. And if you get that, you just set that, right? You want to do plant-based you want to do you know meat based doesn't matter um so we start with protein uh and then we go to vegetables and fruits right

so you know very nutrient rich um not calorie dense and so we look for you know here we use our fists so we say three fists full of vegetables and fruits a few times a day. You know, so now you've got your protein and your vegetables. Now that's essentially my diet right there. Like having done this autoimmune protocol and finding some really great results with the particular disease that I have. But then you start thinking about, okay, what other macronutrients, your fats and your carbs. And there we just look at sort of an inverse relationship.

So let's say you love carbs and you want to eat a bunch of them. Great. Okay. Set your protein, eat lots of fruits and vegetables. Now you can throw in your carbs, but make sure your fats are low. And then if you want to eat lots of fats and you like that type of eating, cool, no problem. Set your fats high and then carbs low. Um, and then it's just, those two have to be inverse, uh, unless you're like on a massive weight gain thing and then you just eat everything. You guys have probably experienced that in your life. And you're like, don't think about anything. Just keep chewing. If you're not chewing, you're not growing. Right. Um, I remember when I was, when I first got introduced to, uh, bodybuilding and powerlifting and I was a

natural ectomorph, I was like 135 pounds. That was my motto. So I would, I would literally walk around with a gallon jug of protein powder and, uh, a sleeve of bagels with peanut butter in it. And that was, that was what I had to be eating between meals throughout the day. If I'm not chewing, I'm not growing. So there I wasn't thinking about proteins, carbs, fats. I got a lot of everything. I was probably getting 8,000, 9,000 calories a day. But then I got older. My goals changed.

So we look at setting protein, fruits and vegetable intake. Now we do fats and carbs in sort of a reciprocal way. And then if body comp or weight is what you want to change, then you just have to pay attention to volume, right? How much you're eating and obviously eat less. So, I mean, that's pretty straightforward. The eating part is so easy. It's, it's like laughably boring, you know, like you can learn that in two weeks of internet research and be done, you know. But now it's how you eat. That's the interesting part because each of us has a whole set of rituals around how we eat, you know, throughout the day.

And that's what ends up governing our choices. So I usually start with this idea of paying attention to what you eat. So that's sort of a how you eat, pay attention. this idea of paying attention to what you eat. So that's sort of a, how you eat, pay attention. Now, um, I find that it's kind of like how meditation is, is real popular nowadays, right? People, everyone's talking about mindfulness, but when they talk about it, it's more like finger wagging, like pay attention to your life, you know, but how, if I knew how I'd be doing it, but I don't know how. It's the same with paying attention to your food, right? So what we do is we give people practices.

I have this schema. You can almost imagine it like a flow chart. And at the top, there's a box and you put your goal in it. And then underneath that goal, there's a bunch of boxes that are basically the skills required to achieve that goal. And then underneath each skill, you need some stuff to practice, right? So it's like, I want to, you know, be a master guitar player. Well, there's a set of skills I need to learn to do that. And then I need to practice. So I need to put my fingers on the guitar every day. And, you know, and I meet with a coach, music teacher, who every week

gives me new stuff to practice until the next week, right? So we know that with language, like you want to learn to speak a foreign language, same thing. You know that with music, but when it comes to health and fitness, we don't even apply that very basic set of learning. So that's how I think about it. If you were one of my coaching clients, I would need to give you skills, but there need to be things you need to do every day. So how do you build the skill of paying attention? One is we start by eating slowly, okay? And you only have to do that for a short period of time, right? And so we say, you know, how long does a typical meal take you?

Let's double it. For the next two weeks, let's double it. And by slowing down, not only do you better cue into hunger and appetite signals, but you end up naturally eating less. And I even do this with weight gain clients because even though they might eat less for two weeks, it still helps them better pay attention. I want to chime in on this just for a second. You know, when it comes to sushi, people are like, man, I'm so hungry 30 minutes after I eat sushi. But if we just think about it logically, what happens when you get sushi, you eat it really

fast. Yes. Like the design of it and it's delicious. It's just so easy to eat quickly. And so I think that's why we're so hungry, you know, shortly after we have sushi. Totally. Yeah. And this, I mean, this is well known, like it takes something like 20 minutes for the signal of fullness, you know,

at the gut level to reach the brain, and then start to change the neurotransmitter makeup to say, now, okay, I'm satisfied. So that's what we actually do the second practice after eat slowly, once we teach people to do that, is we call it satisfied instead of stuff. So then we work on for two weeks eating till satisfied instead of stuff. And then we work on for two weeks eating till satisfied instead of stuffed. And you know, if you're a numerical person, we have people rate it like 100% would be full, 110 would be stuffed, 90% would be satisfied. And so then we have people work on this skill. So now you have these practices, I eat slowly for two weeks, most people find it quite annoying. But again,

I'm like, this isn't a life practice. This is something that's going to build a skill you don't have. And then we work on eating until satisfied instead of stuffed. And then after those four weeks, we basically have people who know how to pay attention to their fullness cues, their hunger signals, and you know, this overall idea of how they're eating. So then we think, so that, so that's part one, you know, paying attention to your food. And again, I just think this model of skills, practices, goals is so critical because, you know, and I think it's what most people are missing, you know, and I always give the example, like, I'm super annoying about this, by the way. I have, we have four children, my wife and I. And so we're always going to stuff like athletic things, you know what I mean? And so our oldest

has been doing gymnastics since she was like one year old, and she's nine now. And very quickly, I realized, like, I'm going to be sitting watching kids do physical activity for a really huge portion of my life unless I figure out a way to get involved. So very early on, I was like, you know, whatever gym we'd go to, I'd be like, hey, can you teach an adult class the same time as my daughter's in class? And if other adults join, great. And if it's just me, I guess I get a private. But I want to be doing stuff while the kids are doing stuff. Right. So fortunately at every gym, they've been cool with that. And so I'll go to a coach, a gymnastics coach and be like, Hey, all right. I've set some goals for myself, you know, during

this next term or semester, whatever. I'd like to figure out how to do a competent backflip and whatever walking handstands or whatever it is. Okay. So now we need to fill out how to do a competent backflip and whatever walking handstands or whatever it is. Okay. So now we need to fill out this sheet. It's the goals, skills, and then practices. Cause I want to know how we're going to create a curriculum that's going to lead to that. You know what I mean? Yeah. And, um, so again, I think with any skill, like any listener can apply this to any skill they want to build. It's the first thing I do. So that's my tangent about learning, but getting back to food and fitness, you know, we talked about the macronutrient things. Now we can talk about the how you eat stuff, you know, and so we talked about slowly,

you know, until 80% full as a way to build this habit of paying attention. The next thing we look for is eating environment. Do you guys remember when Google tried to come out with Google Glass? Yes. Okay. So for those who don't, who are younger, it's basically a set of glasses that Google was creating that had a built-in camera. And so you could like record your life. So we actually were part of a group that was doing technology experiments in health and fitness using Google Glass before it was available to the public.

And so what we were trying to do was figure out a way to basically use this camera to see people's lives and then correlate their actions in the world with how they would choose to eat. So for example, some people are going to eat more when they're with people. Others are going to eat less when they're with people. So can we actually create a smart coaching program that figures out which person you are, right? And then give coaching cues around those environments. Like, hey, it looks like you're out to dinner with people. Typically you blank. So here's what you would do in this scenario. So this is kind of

the next thing about how you eat, right? It's understand who you are when you're in environments, like do you come home from stress from work and not eat or eat, right? So this is where like hard and fast rules are meaningless, because people respond so differently to their environment. rules are meaningless because people respond so differently to their environment. So here we actually have people do like some journaling, some food related journaling. So we have them take a couple of weeks and write down not only like what they ate, but what the conditions were leading up to that, right? Was stressed, got home from late, didn't feel like cooking dinner, bam, this happened. After you see that four or five times, you're like, okay, this is my limiting factor. And then we try and fix that. So it becomes not only like meal and food choice awareness, but then environmental awareness around that. And again,

this is work, right? It usually happens best for the first little bit with a coach. But the idea is eventually you can sort of build your own algorithm for how to make good choices in the context of your life and this is like he had a big slogan like good nutritional choices in the context of a human life rather than the context of a piece of paper where i just wrote down what i think a good diet looks like i really i really love what you're saying because this is like people just need strategy. People need tools. What led you to overeat? What led you to go home and just annihilate everything in your pantry and eat all your kids' cookies and stuff like that,

whatever treats you have in the house? And I think that if we can find tools that allow us to avoid that, then we'll be that much closer to being healthy and having the bodies that we want. The strategy that I've been preaching to people for quite some time is, you know, try not to shop hungry, you know, try to, you know, get some, get something in your stomach. Maybe just, maybe it's just a protein shake on your way out the door, but at least, you know, as you're shopping, that 20 minute rule that you mentioned, that protein shake will kind of hit you and you'll probably feel a little more satisfied. Maybe you don't end up with a shopping cart full of peanut butter cups. And also like

you're mentioning, like coming home from work and getting home from work, maybe a little late, maybe you had a stressful day. Why not eat something before you leave work if you recognize this to be a problem for yourself you can kind of arm yourself another thing that i do that works really well for me i have to figure out ways sometimes to kind of curb my appetite sometimes my appetite gets the best of me and but i know that about myself so before i go out to eat i actually eat you know my wife you know at first first when we were first dating and stuff like that, she's like, we're going to eat. What are you doing? I'm like, I just know like this restaurant takes a while and I could get frustrated, you know, waiting for the food. Fasting, by the way, has helped a lot with, with all this situation, but

you can get to be irritable. And then all you're thinking about is the food. And then sure enough, you know, you're getting dessert and everything else. Maybe even stop somewhere on the way home from like a fancy restaurant and get some In-N-Out burger. I've done all these different things. So I'm like, how do I kind of slow down some of this chaotic behavior? And one way to do it is just to eat a little bit of food before I leave to go for dinner. to go for dinner. It's a great set of examples, actually. And the one thing I want to highlight is what we started this whole conversation with, right? There's actually two approaches here that seem completely opposite. So approach one, and this is research based, you know, there's a whole bunch of studies showing if you feed someone an apple and then give them access to a buffet, like one hour later, they end up eating, you know, markedly less food at the buffet, right? So that's the protein shake or have a bite to eat on the way out of work before you get home or whatever the case is, right? But then you mentioned the opposite too. You're like fasting

has helped with this, right? So eating something can help with it and so can fasting and they're both great tools. So then we just have to figure out which one resonates with your philosophy, your life philosophy best, or how do we do them effectively, right? Because I think fasting is another great way to build a skill. So for me, I wrote a book called Experiments with Intermittent Fasting. We made it available free on the internet. Five million people downloaded it now. And it was basically when intermittent

fasting was first starting to get popular. It was like over a decade ago. I was like, cool, it's making a lot of noise. I'm going to try every type of fasting there is and document everything. I'm going to fill out psychometric profiles. I'm going to do my blood work. I'm going to do performance. I'm going to tell you how I train. I'm going to show you every meal. I'll show you my body comp, the whole deal. And so it was just a way to basically sort of document one person's N equals one experience with this and then talk about bigger lessons that the research kind of has shown. And so my favorite aspect of fasting was that it basically as a practice, like a thing you do for two weeks or one day even, really helps teach you that hunger is not an emergency. So I used to be

exactly like you described, I would start to feel hungry. And like, that's just a feeling your body has, right? But I would interpret it as an emergency. And then I get angry and frustrated and impatient, right? Like everyone has had this in their life, right? But the anger, frustration, impatience, we think that's the physiological response. We're like, oh, this is just hormones and chemicals making me do this. But it's actually not true. That's our interpretation. I'm sure you've had people in the podcast who talk about like cold showers, right? And so cold showers are like, there's a physiological response, but it's probably like way too small for it to be something you suffer through cold shower through every day of your life. But what it does is it teaches you that, oh yeah, cold water just creates a feeling. And I can interpret that

in a whole bunch of ways. One is emergency. And then I clench or just try and jump out of the shower. The other is, oh, this is what cold water feels like and breathe and relax into it. Right? So the interpretation is anger, frustration, impatience, but hunger is just a simple feeling. And I think what fasting does is it teaches you that you'll be okay. In the middle of this experiment, I did something like a 72-hour fast before flying to the UK to give a talk on intermittent fasting. And so that was the whole shtick, right? I'm going to do a talk on fasting, and I'm going to be fasted for a couple of days and cross time zones, and I'm going to deliver it. And if I pass out, then I showed you this fasting wasn't so good. And if I

make it and do a great job, you're like, wow, this guy's meeting in days. It's maybe at my thoughts on fasting are all wrong. So really, as you mentioned, you know, for me, a couple of, and we do this with clients too, we'll give them a one day fast to do. And we're not, we're not like, this is a good thing you always should do. It's, but this will build you the skill of realizing that hunger kind of ramps up after you've last eaten to a certain point. And you think it's going to keep going. And that's when you start freaking out. You're like, it's only going to get worse from here, but actually it plateaus and then comes down and you're like, Whoa, look at that. I didn't eat and I feel fine now. Oh wait, hunger isn't an emergency. So I don't have to be an asshole and hungry. You know, I can just relax into it, have some deep breaths and realize,

Oh, that's just the feeling of hunger. And it tends to go away. So to your point, you know, there's snack before or there there's fast, we have to know what situations each one would be worthwhile in. And that's where like, I think, you know, the key to all of the nutrition stuff, and actually training in a lot of respects, like around recovery and adaptation is self knowledge, right? You have to get some reps and pay close attention to what's happening. Maybe you can keep a journal about what's happening and then you sort of discover things about yourself and then you can become your own coach and you can make better decisions rather than blindly following someone's

rules that you read on the internet or in some book or something. For yourself right now, since we're still on the top of your fasting, how do you utilize that in your lifestyle? Because it seems like you're very, you're pretty nutritionally, I guess, fluid. You could do a lot of different things. Um, when do you yourself utilize it now? Was it mainly to, I guess, get in touch with your hunger and become friends with that? Or do you still, you know, do you still experiment with it a bit here and there? So when I wrote the book years ago, I used it for a very specific reason. So I, you know, I have competed in bodybuilding and many, many moons ago. It almost feels disingenuous to talk about it because it's so long ago, but I won a national championship

at bodybuilding. I've competed in powerlifting. So, you know, I was always around, you know, 200 pounds, you know, and fairly lean. But I wanted to start sprinting again, because I was a track and field runner, 100 meter runner, 200 meter runner in high school and in early university. So I had heard like, they have old man races and like old guys can show up and sprint and compete against like age match peers. And I went to a couple of meets and thought it looked super fun. So I wanted to do that, but I was way too heavy. Like whenever I would start training, like my legs would blow apart, my shins, you know, all of it was no good. So I was like, I need to be like closer to 170 if I'm going to start sprinting again. So my first foray into fasting was this

cool experiment. But I also had a goal like I wanted to lose about 30 pounds. And some of that had to be muscle, right? Like I wasn't, I wasn't going to lose 30 pounds of fat and be able to do anything athletic, you know. So that was the goal then. Now, fast forward to today, I've still continued training for track, still have been competing. It's something that's super fun in my life. The kids come to the track with me. So it's actually a great family thing we do as well. And so for me, I utilize fasting sometimes. So often, you know, the one thing that I learned through my first set of fasting practices was that um you can i don't know would either of you two consider yourself breakfast people it doesn't really

matter much anymore for me because i do a lot of fasting as well so yeah okay cool yeah i mean i i was about a breakfast person you know like i'm like yeah i used to love it for sure yeah stands between me and my breakfast. They may die. So, you know, but you meet people who don't like breakfast at all. And I'm like, yeah, there's something wrong with them, obviously. There's something wrong with their physiology. But what I realized that I could take any breakfast person and turn them into a non-breakfast person and vice versa in 14 days. There's this hormone called ghrelin. and vice versa in 14 days. There's this hormone called ghrelin. That's basically a meal anticipatory hormone does a bunch of other stuff, but that's a potent role that it plays. And so

ghrelin is released 20 to 30 minutes before your typical meal time. And it's what gets your stomach starting to rumble. It's what gets you starting to feel like, okay, we should eat soon. Right. And so ghrelin is trainable. It's more trainable in your muscles, really. So within 14 days, you can totally reprogram ghrelin by changing all your meal times. And if you start skipping breakfast, the first, let's say, seven days are absolutely miserable because ghrelin is screaming at you until lunch. But then it just stops.

It starts being trained. Oh, yeah, lunch is when food comes, like, I don't need to be released. What a waste, you know. And so what I learned was I can make myself a breakfast eater or not, you know. So if my goals are around sort of recovery, hypertrophy, stuff like that, I'll eat breakfast, lunch, dinner, typically. And if my goals are sort of weight maintenance, or even a bit of weight loss, I'll do fasting. And my fast will basically be, I'm really fortunate I have super flexible schedule. So I'll just skip breakfast. I'll help get our family out the door into school. Then I'll train after that. And then I'll usually eat after that. So I'll usually be eating like

11, 12 o'clock, something like that. That'll be my lunch, but that'll be my first meal of the day. So again, it's kind of dependent on my goals. Okay. Yeah. And that, I mean, in terms of a hunger, one of the greatest appetite suppressants ever is to go and exercise. You work out and like, you kind of totally forgot that you didn't eat.

I was just looking something up as you were talking about sprinting because I've heard it mentioned several times now on this podcast and people are talking about, you know, how important it can be to continue to be explosive as you get older. And it's really not anything that people talk about that often. But if you think about it, having the ability to go out and run, you know, 95, 100% of your max is actually could be a really important thing for your health. There's a guy that I just looked up. He's 105 years old and he has a world record in 100 meters, like 40 seconds or something like that. But I just think that's really cool when you talk about like, you know, bone density and some of

these things we're always thinking about like lifting, but I think it could easily be applied to running, jumping, you know, anything physical where you got, you know, a full out exertion going on, probably going to be pretty beneficial to your health. That hundred year old guy, I think comes to my meets by the way. Like it's, it's awesome. They're literally like a master's track and field is, is anything over 30, right? And they have competitions with each five-year age bracket. So they're a hundred year old guys who come out. I remember one of my first track meets, it was hilarious. So I walked in the locker room cause it was an indoor meet at York university up in Toronto.

And, um, and there were like three 70 year old guys guys standing at the door of the locker room, right? And they were asking guys how old they were as they came in. And people were like, oh, why, right? And they were like, oh, okay, so we're going to do the 4x400 today, and we're going to set the world record, but we need another body. We need one more guy, right? We have three of the four. So it was hilarious but um yeah i agree like this this has been my favorite addition to my training in the last several years

and it's not just the explosiveness which is really important too because fast twitch muscle fibers the type 2b fibers actually start like converting into slower twitch more like like fibers as we get older and we think that causes a lot of the problems muscle physiology problems as we get older but the other thing with track training is that you can't just go out and sprint without getting hurt so you need to do a lot of drills and warm-ups and all that kind of stuff you know flexibility so that was like the sneaky benefit that i got from track training. Like all of a sudden I started doing all this stuff because in the beginning, like you spend an hour warming up to sprint for

15 minutes. Um, all of a sudden my body was moving better than it had quite possibly since I was 18 years old. So I think that, you know, I love, and I'm a huge advocate for, for track training for this reason, because it forces you to do what is essentially dynamic warmups, mobility drills, you know, soft tissue work, and then you actually are doing max effort stuff after that. So it's a pretty incredible kind of, you know, sort of physical response that you get. And, uh, uh, it's like a way of doing all the things that feel really disjointed if you try and do them as just part of your program, but work seamlessly together when you're training for track. I really like what you're saying there, because it's not something that

you can really just go and do. It kind of seems like it is. Seems like you could tie up your shoes kind of tight, have a pair of shorts, t-shirt on and, and you're kind of off and, you know, running. Right. But you can really know how that goes yeah you really can't and in the weight room you know the weight room it like it just doesn't really make a lot of sense to start out your deadlift training with like five or six plates so you would you probably under most circumstances would never even think of doing that you would do a plate and so on and you'd have this natural progression towards your max lift. But in sprinting, you could potentially just go outside and like try to go full blast. But like you said, you'll probably injure yourself because you didn't get your body prepared for what you're about to do.

The thing I find interesting and really fascinating about training is that the higher the intensity, the harder that something is to do and it has kind of a short duration to it, the longer the warmup needs to be. So you might think kind of opposite is like, oh, if this is going to take me a really long time, I better warm up for a really long time. But the longer something lasts and the lower the intensity, the less warmup, like you don't need a warmup. You don't need to be stretching and doing lots of stuff if you're just going to go out for a walk. Oh yeah. People who want to come train track with me, they're like, um, you know, 55 minutes has gone by and we're like, uh, is the workout over?

Has it started? I'm not quite sure what we're doing, man. Like, no, no, no. We're just being prepared so that when we run a hundred meters, uh, we don't need to be wheeled home. Yeah. I don't blow something out. Yeah. Yeah. How have you, uh, you know, utilize this chart, um, in sprinting? Cause sprinting, I recognize that you said it was something you did when you were younger and you wanted to get back into it. Did you utilize your gold chart on, you know, how to get back into sprinting and how to become more efficient at it? Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, this, this was, I'm like, I'm so glad I had children when I decided to start doing track and field again. How are these, how are these related? Right. It was actually watching our oldest two sort of ramp up into sport that made me realize that the progression models that

we use in the weight room, for example, basically have to be used with anything we do physical, mental, you know, any skill development we have. And, you know, again, like you start a one year old in gymnastics, and this is like a little group of kids running around their heads are too big for their bodies they've got no proprioception balance coordination they're just wobbling around the weight or the gymnastics gym and then just like right over there there's a bunch of six-year-olds flipping over you know bars that are nine feet in the air like how do you go from here to there and if you are a parent, you're watching it happen and you watch this idea of slow progression, right?

So there's like, here's all you can do today. So we'll just do that. And we'll probably do a little bit less than you're capable of. And then next week, we're gonna do pretty much the same thing and maybe just add one thing. And it feels like no progress progress but then all of a sudden they're six and they're doing this crazy thing so for me you know when i was younger if i

would have stepped back into track i would have been the idiot who was like oh yeah i'm just going to do what i used to do right like not realizing 30 years has an impact also 30 years of strength and power lifting and bodybuilding has an impact like my body doesn't work anything like it did back then um so i was like okay if i'm an idiot here's how i start this if i'm smart how do i start this and i have to decide that in a moment of like reflection and clarity because when you're standing trackside you're just ready to run fast so I needed to like have clear self coach dumb self when he got to the track and that was exactly what you know I'm talking about here my first track workout back was like six minutes you know it was like barely worth the drive, but I realized like, it's going to take

me three months probably to get to the point where I can do like an 80% effort sprint. And, um, of course I could do it on day one, but I'd probably get hurt and I would never even make progress, right. It would be all sloppy form. And so, you know, I don't know if you know, the folks at Altus down in Scottsdale, Arizona, but they are running the best track and field training facility in the world. Dan Path, Stu McMillan, group of really talented coaches and some of the best sprinters in the world trained on there. And so they're friends of mine. So I just reach out to them like, how would I progress this thing? You know, so we started out with drills and we're doing zero sprints in the beginning.

But, you know, I sent a video to Stu, who's the head speed coach. You guys probably familiar with like Degrassi from the last Olympics, 100 meter sprinter from Canada. He's one of his clients. And so we just looked at what my limiting factors were, like what's in the way of you having good sprint technique. What's the biggest problem. Okay. We'll just address that with drills. Um, and then we build from there. Right. And this, this is how we do nutrition called a limiting factor analysis. So if you imagine like a log jam, what's the log

that's, or the few logs that started the jam, if we move those, everything gets flowing. And so like a good example is young female athlete comes, let's say they're a middle distance runner. And I'm coaching really struggling with energy, like I just feel bad, I can't make it through workouts, my times are decreasing. Cool, what have you been doing differently? Nothing really. Okay. Tell me about your diet. Oh, well, you know, I decided to eat a little bit less red meat. So I'm mostly doing chicken instead. And you're like, oh, okay, bam, iron deficiency, anemia. Let's test for that. So let's say you discover that and you're like, okay, cool. This girl's diet needs fixing. Let's put her on the

paleo diet. Well, to me, that's like trying to shoot a mosquito with a bazooka, right? Like there's a hundred things she's going to have to learn when all I needed to do was give her iron and then she would have been fixed. So I think about that with everything. Like how do we find the one thing that's in the way of progress right this minute and then get that flowing. And then we can figure out the next rather than try and shoot the mosquito with the bazooka and change a hundred things. And maybe none of them are actually going to get the thing flow. You know, I'm curious about this. Um, and you have such a large sample size, I guess, of clients that you've worked with through the years. So this is kind of, um, there's two things I want to get out here. And the first thing is in terms of like percentage of clients that work well on

higher carb, lower fat or higher fat, lower carb, or yeah, in terms of that trend, do you see anything in terms of the majority of people tend to trend towards this when they get in shape and maintain it. And then secondly, is there an age factor there? Because a lot of individuals, you know, they say, oh, when I was younger, I used to eat so much carbs and now I can't. Is there an age related factor to diets that work for individuals over 30, 40, 50? Yeah. I mean, the things that I've noticed, the first one I get a lot of flack for in the evidence-based community, because there's really no research on this. But I share it anyway, because I've just seen it so, so often. It's the idea of sort of generally grouping people into body types. And we won't say like somatotypes and things like that. But it's because that's really not a somatotyping is not a good science it's hard to figure out what type someone really is yeah but if someone walks in and they're tall lean and skinny

okay versus someone who walks in who's like just classic muscular right versus someone who walks in and they're shorter and round you know what i mean like you're like there's a difference in type and there's probably some physiological differences between those folks and the activities they gravitate towards are probably different as well so there's like this soup right like a tall skinny lean person who wants to work out is going to be weak in the weight room so they're probably going to go for a run instead you know the person in the middle is if they get exposed to exercise, they may do team sports or they may, you know, and then the bigger person, if they get you on to exercise, running is going to be freaking terrible for them, right? So they're going to end up doing strength training. They're going to be strong.

They can pick up heavy things, right? So it's kind of body type, but it's also the activities that they're naturally going to gravitate for or towards. And then we think about, okay, well, how do you, like what diets tend to work best for them? So I've seen with the rounder, stronger, do pick heavy things up people, they seem to benefit more from a higher fat, lower carb intake. You know, the people who are on the just tall, skinny, like to go for runs, weak in the weight room,

they tend to do better on higher carb and lower fat intake. And the people in the middle, they're the ones you've grown up, you want to punch in the face, they can eat whatever they want, and they build muscle and gain no fat, you know what I mean? So that like, usually a mixed diet works really great for them. So again, this isn't some kind of magical somatotyping kind of thing. But it's this reality, right? You're like, where does that person go when they go to exercise? Well, they go to the things they're good at. And the things they're good at, if you're tall and skinny, burn a lot of calories.

And so we're going to gravitate towards like foods that give them more calories and also carbohydrate in this case, because they're doing stuff that has a high carb demand, right? And then the opposite side. So that's how we break it down in terms of is, and also carbohydrate in this case, because they're doing stuff that has a high carb demand, right? And then the opposite side. So that's how we break it down in terms of sort of body types, activity, sort of predilections, and then macronutrient splits. As people get older, that's a great follow up, right? Because the presupposition that who you are when you were 30 is somehow how you'll be for the rest of your life is absurd, right? Like, it's absurd, like, cognitively, emotionally, it's absurd physically, like we, you know, I'm in my mid to late 40s now. And, you know, so much is different, right? So I

used to be a high carb diet guy, like I really thrived. And I need, like I said, when I started, be a high carb diet guy. Like I really thrived. And I need, like I said, when I started, I was trying to gain muscle and I had to eat 8,000 calories a day. You know, now it has to be more of a mixed intake for me, you know, so your, your own self is going to change over time. But I think one of the reasons that it changes over time is that we just become more sedentary as time goes on. Right. So as you get older, you're like, I used to be able to eat carbs like crazy. And you used to move around way more. You know what I mean? It doesn't take a scientist to figure this out. Now you sit a lot less, you know, and so therefore lowering carbs is a sure way to get fewer calories. We know that sort of higher protein and fat intakes are very satiating. It's really, it's possible. I've seen it, but it's harder to

overeat when you're eating fatty foods than carby foods for some people. And, you know, I think some of it has to do with your neurotransmitter makeup as well. Like I wrote a book many moons ago for skinny guys called scrawny to brawny, right? And you take that population, these, you know, young men who seem to not gain muscle, no matter how much they eat or whatever, I think there's something really unique physiologically going on, you know, when they eat more, their metabolism ramps up, you know, it's called sort of spendthrift metabolism in the literature, right? So, you you know there's been some really cool studies done where they take big group of people they overfeed them all a thousand calories a day

you get this one group that shakes out from that that gains like one pound in three months of that and you get this other group that gained 50 pounds in three months of that and you measure their metabolic response to that extra thousand a day. And this group just burns tons of calories. Their metabolism ramps up. And this other group, metabolism stays the same. So all the extra calories are just packed on where this group just burns them off through additional physical activity and also metabolic upregulation.

And this, this is like leans right back on what we talked about. Wicked world conditions, right? You're like, wicked world conditions, right? You're like, not only does, you know, fitness, training, nutrition, give you results in a delayed manner where it's really hard to learn lessons, but you're actually changing in the midst of it too. So the rules are changing. So anyway, to your question, I think as we get older, we tend to get more sedentary on

average. And that's why we think, oh, hey, it's probably better to lower carbs and raise fats. And it's generally because it's a little bit harder to overeat when we do it that way. I'm not sure that's a really compelling argument for a low carb diet because I freaking love the taste of carbs. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, wouldn't it be great if I realized that carbs were a little bit harder for me because I tend to overeat them. And then I constructed an intake such that I can still have some bread from time to time because it's really tasty without making it like the demon food. It's actually the extra calories I got because it was hard to not eat so much bread, not the carbs themselves, you know? Yeah. It sounds like what we're after is

just control, right? We're trying to figure out how do we, how do we manage ourselves? How do we conduct ourselves on a daily basis in a reasonable way that allows us to have the physique or health that we're seeking, right? That's right. And as we talked about earlier, one way of control is to do it with like food and physiology tricks, right? Eat an apple before you leave the house, eat higher fat diet. So you trick yourself into eating less, but there's a whole nother way to do it as self-management, cognitive self-management, right? The other way is to learn that hunger is not an emergency or to learn that carbs can sometimes be trigger foods for me. So I have to create the conditions where I don't eat too much of them

using cognitive strategies rather than physiological strategies. And so you get to pick. And the one thing that I love to preach is that people in various camps, food camps, training camps, whatever, they're trying to convince you there's one right way only, you know, and I love the idea of like this sort of beautiful range of options that I get to pick from and decide, you know, and that's really kind of my message about nutrition. Generally, there's a beautiful range of options for you to decide from, don't get so sort of narrow thinking and black and white

in your thinking that leads you to believe there's only one way to do this because there's not. And the danger of that is you're really pinning yourself in. And we've seen this, like a person who's like really convinced themselves that a particular type of diet is the only way to eat. And then they follow and it works for a while. And then as most things do, stops working, right? Either because they've changed or their body's adapted in some way. And you guys have seen this. You only need to be in this field for a few years to watch, you know, oh wait, the people who are most excited at month one, their enthusiasm is waning by month five. And by one year, they're not doing that thing again that they were so excited about.

So, you know, but if you pin yourself in and you start to convince yourself, well, the science suggests everything over here is dumb and only this is right. And then that thing stops working for you. Where do you go from there? You know what I mean? You're screwed. Like your mind won't let you try a different thing, but the thing your mind has convinced you to do is the only thing laid before you. And that's not working. We used to, in the paleo world, it was, it was called like paleo harder, right? So folks would go on paleo. It would work for a bit. It might stop working because of a host of conditions, training changed, they changed their diet change somehow,

but they didn't realize it. And then they would just start paleoing harder, stricter and more restrictive. And then their physiology would actually break, you know? So sometimes it's not leaning harder into the paradigm that helps, right? It's actually stepping out of the paradigm that helps right it's actually stepping out of the paradigm that helps and that's why i like to lay out that range for people yeah you can't always just eat less you have to have other other strategies because after a while uh like you said you're going to kind of break down and be like f this and just go back to your old ways oh yeah i mean i i know a woman who was a real big intermittent fasting advocate

and was telling everyone about it and was having great initial results and then didn't work as well after a while and then went harder and harder and harder. And then like at 35, put herself into premature menopause, reproductive shutdown, leaning in harder and being more strict isn't always the answer. On that note, actually, I'm curious about that because you have a video on YouTube where you did a whole, you talked about it, you did a whole seminar on fasting. I believe you had a section in there for women or considerations that they need to think about with that. Because I mean, obviously Mark and I utilize that, but do you, what considerations do women need to think about with that? Because I mean, obviously Mark and I utilize that, but do you, what considerations do women need to think about when maybe picking up that type

of lifestyle or implementing that into what they do nutritionally? Yeah, I think women's like reproductive systems are much more sort of exquisitely tuned than men's. You know what I mean? They're just so responsive to environmental cues where ours need like a big perturbation to change, uh, you know, our testosterone or our hormone production with women, it's little tiny things. Uh, and that's great. I mean, they're ensures the survival of the species. If we want to think in those terms, you know, um, if, if a woman's primary biological role is to reproduce, then we need to make sure that her reproductive machinery is always good, no matter what the

conditions are. So for women, generally, lower carb diets and fasting tend to tweak the reproductive machinery pretty quickly and pretty dramatically. So for a lot of women, fasting will downregulate sex hormone production and eventually, you know, essentially reproductive health. And then that causes a whole bunch of things that lead to sort of like either rebound fat gain or, you know, the inability to lose body fat. You know, I remember back when, you know, back in the day when Survivor was new, the show Survivor, and you'd watch it. It'd be really interesting because like all the guys would just get skinny, but super lean on Survivor, but not all the women would get super lean.

You know, in particular, like middle-aged women, for example, they'd be walking around, you're like, they haven't had anything to eat in a week. They still have body fat. Like what the heck's going on? Right. And it's just, it's this exact thing playing out. Right. In, in a, like a real time example that you can watch. Real quick question on that, just to, to cause I'm curious. So when you're talking about fasting, are you talking about like your typical little 14, 16 or whatever? Are you talking about prolonged 24, 48, 72? Both. Both.

You know, I think with women, they just simply need to pay better attention. Like it's not don't try fasting. It's just the margin of error is really slim for women, right? You can go from like, hey, I'm in a calorie deficit. I'm not that hungry. It's working really great to, wow, my periods are really weird all of a sudden. And oh my gosh, I'm not losing any weight all of a sudden, or now I feel bad, or even like clumps of hair falling out of my head all of a sudden. You know what I mean? Like it can go from this seems to be working great to really bad very quickly. And it doesn't happen quite so bad in men.

And that's why it's just pay attention. You know, I wrote this article called the Dr. Oz Diet. And it was basically about this idea. Like what do you do when a client comes in and has some cockamamie ideas about what they want to try, you know, in their program, training, nutrition, supplementation, whatever, that empowers their autonomy? Because you're their coach, right? If you're like that stupid, you might as well say, and you're stupid and a bad thinker. And I disagree with all of your being, you know, how do you do that? How do you navigate that? And so this, the answer is, you know,

to your question is the same answer as this here, which is essentially, the short version is, Hey, listen, I'm really excited that you're out in the world trying to figure out new learnings for yourself. Like I remember when you first came to me and you didn't think about health at all. So you going to Dr. Oz or some intermittent fasting website is a step forward. It means you're curious to grow and learn. And that's awesome. Now this particular protocol, it wouldn't be my first recommendation for you. However, you are a grown ass adult and I'm not going to tell you

what to do like a little kid. So if you want to do this, there's a couple of options. One, we figure out how to integrate it in your current plan to, um, we just try it. But if we try it, we need to monitor you very, very closely, right? And make sure if things go wrong, we can just write the ship right away. Or three, I can hire a coach who specializes in this and is really, really good. And you can work with them instead of me, you know, and those are, those are the options. The idea being I'm here for you, you can give this a shot, but we're going to need to pay closer attention because there's not a lot of margin of error on this one, you know? And so that's how I look at fasting for women. You know,

I think probably there are 10 other ways I would try, you know, cracking the body composition nut before we went in this direction with women. But if a client really wanted to do it, again, I'm agnostic. I just help you do it right. And we're just going to pay really close attention to make sure nothing goes off the rails. Do you feel similar to a ketogenic diet for women? Because I've noticed just in helping a lot of people, it's had a enormous impact on men. And a lot of men have lost, you know, 30 pounds, 50 pounds, a hundred pounds. And then some women just, you know, maybe have dropped a little bit in the beginning and then it just the results seem to subside. And it's just maybe also for some women that I've dealt with, it seemed a little bit in the beginning and then it just, the results seem to subside. And it's just maybe also for some women that I've dealt with, it seemed a little bit harder for them to follow.

Like they just, they don't want to commit to, you know, I guess just like eating that amount of fat. Yeah, totally. Yes. Yes, I do. And, you know, and so I apologize in advance to the hardcore keto people. And it's not saying that I don't like keto for women. It's just saying that I think the margin of error is a bit slimmer, not for every single woman on the planet. In fact, the women and men that it tends to work best with are people who I say already have a lot of food on their bodies. You know what I mean?

Like when you have extra body fat, you have loads of meals already right there. You know what I mean? Like when you have extra body fat, you have loads of meals already right there. You know what I mean? So this is the, you change over time thing, right? When you have a lot of stored meals on your body and you start doing fasting or keto, it's like magic for the first little bit because you're just eating the food that's already on you. Right. But then once that food on you starts going down, right. And you have to rely on the food that's already on you, right? But then once that food on you starts going down, right? And you have to rely on the food that's coming in from the external environment, things change. You know, that's when deficiencies can crop up. That's when physiological conditions change. That's when hormones and neurotransmitters change.

So it's, you know, we have to look at like the life cycle of our interaction with a way of eating as having an actual life cycle, as interaction with a way of eating as having an actual life cycle as being a thing that can change over time. And then we just be adaptive to that, um, rather than just fixed mind and be like that worked before. How come it's not working now? Maybe I'm doing it wrong. No, this may be some conditions changed. And usually like a big loss of body fat is a huge condition change, you know? Yeah. There's some huge crossover going on here from the language that you have. I'm recognizing that you're saying a lot of things that I've learned over the years in business.

And you're saying a lot of things that you have learned, obviously, like just in flat out, like medical practice, being a longtime nutritionist that's worked with hundreds of thousands of people. How has this ability to be able to kind of crack this code in nutrition and be able to reach out to a lot of people, how has it benefited you just as a person in general? Like we see George St. Pierre picture in the background there, and we know some of your credentials working with big companies like Apple and things like that. How has that kind of raised the entire level of what Precision Nutrition has been able to do? Yeah, I mean. And just even yourself, what you're able to do.

Yeah, I mean, as a person, this idea, like I loved Epstein's book that I mentioned earlier, this idea of range. Because if you just looked at my career on a surface level, you'd be like, oh, here's a specialist, right? He's got a PhD in exercise and nutritional biochemistry. So will you come to our seminar and talk about carbs? You know what I mean? But for me, I'm just interested in so many divergent areas. And rather than just like a character flaw or a weird sort of, I don't know, intellectual ADHD or whatever, I think the best ideas come from crossing boundaries and saying, hey, over there, something interesting is happening. How do I port that over to over here? So like when I think about coaching, I think about the skills that I learned there are relevant to running a business, leading a team, you know, Precision Nutrition has 160 people on the team now, being a parent. So I often think like the one thing everyone who knows me knows is I hate

the fetishization of ideas, right? So learning a thing and then calling it a name then slots it in this space only. But like great coaching isn't just for coaches to learn. Really great coaching is how to be with people. You know what I mean? How do you be with people successfully and effectively? So you build a relationship of trust and respect and you help them reach their goals and they help you reach yours. Being with people is super important. And guess what? It also helps you be an effective coach, an effective leader and manager, an effective parent, and on down the line. So all of this stuff really, I mean, is personally like a quest for wisdom.

You know, how do I understand the rules of the world? You know, use the least amount of interventions to try and get what I want out of the world and contribute, right? And learn the fundamental basic few principles that govern how to be in the world versus thinking of everything as sort of isolated knowledge. So I know it's a little bit abstract and sort of philosophical, but it's really important to me, right? How can I learn the few skills that I can apply to everything I want to accomplish in the world, rather than seeing each thing as an independent entity? Nutrition is different from business, is different from parenting, is different from sprinting, is different from weightlifting. No, no, no. The same

fundamental rules, I think there's a few that are meta principles that I can use in every endeavor to have some success, quote unquote, which maybe is measured by income, or maybe it's measured by relationship, or maybe it's measured by happiness. What, go ahead. What kind of helped you come across, I guess, this way of thinking about things, you know, in terms of nutrition, you, you have a, like a vast knowledge of, you know, multiple ranges of different types of diets. You use the same type of through lines with different aspects of your life. Did you, were you ever like, I guess, a specialist or did you ever, were you ever a purist in some ways or did you always kind of have this outlook? Um, I think always, I think it was, uh, so

probably like I was a terrible high school student. So I skipped class all the time. I was always drunk and high. I was heading into a lot of trouble. I was arrested a lot of times before I was 18 years old. And, um, and, uh, I write about this in my new book, but I got into a car crash and, um, that was a humongous wake up call for me. car crash. And that was a humongous wake up call for me. And I wasn't strength training or doing training regularly prior to this. And I realized with that crash, like I'm going to have to like reboot my friendship circle. And so the next year, my life was incredibly lonely. I lived in the same town, but I wasn't using alcohol or drugs anymore as like coping strategies, nor was I hanging out with the same people that I was hanging. It's like I had literally zero coping strategies.

And that's when I found my way to the gym. So I walked into the gym and I decided I was going to start building some muscles. Did you come to that conclusion yourself or did you have someone aid you through that? Assist you through that? I kind of, I kind of always wanted to be strong and like I was real skinny, right? So I was like,

it would be cool to be strong and muscular and girls would like me and whatever, right? And then I had all this free time all of a sudden. So I'm like, all right, let me stumble into the gym. And that's when I met my first and probably still to this day, my greatest mentor. I remember I was on a leg press machine, right? And I was just probably flailing around badly. And the guy who owned the gym was probably 5'8", 240, competitive bodybuilder, handsome dude who drove a cool car, you know, like a young guy, you're like, that guy is the man, right? So he came, he talked to me, like he came over and he gave me some tips on how to do a

better leg press and then suggested, Hey, I might even want to do squats instead. And he was like, Hey, why don't you, you know what, if you really want to do some stuff here, why don't you come join me tomorrow? I'm doing a leg workout at a five 30 in the morning before the gym opens. Cause I could open the gym at six, come on by. And, you know, and I've since come to realize that was his test, right? He'd invited many young men to come work out with him at 530 and few would ever join. And so really, he took me under his wing, he gave me books to read, he made me, he's like, I'm going to help you for free. But you've got to prompt, you're a smart dude, you got to go to college, you got to get your life together. And so that was, that was like my sort of big turnaround.

But then, then I went to school, and I'm trying to figure out like, I'm like, okay, how do I study, like building muscles and being healthy and strong? Like, there's no degree program for that at the time. So I'm like, okay, well, maybe I'll take some classes in medicine. So I became a pre med major. And maybe I'll take some classes in medicine. So I became a pre-med major. And like every class was me just looking for the few nuggets I could use to get bigger and stronger. And then I'm like going to take some psychology classes to see if I can like turn that into like sports psychology in my head. And I remember like my, my greatest weakness now in terms of physiological knowledge is female physiology. I don't know it

because when I went to school, I gave zero shits about it. I was just like, when they taught that, I'm like, that has no bearing on me. So it was around then, like when I started university, which started at a community college, that I started doing this weird thing where I'm like, that I started doing this weird thing where I'm like, oh, I'm going to try and milk all the knowledge out there for my weird, specific, odd purposes. And then it's just continued, right? Because then, you know, our work at Precision Nutrition and, you know, in nutrition and strength training and fit, like, there's never been a great fit. There was never a straight narrow career path. So I was always like, okay, this is just going to be life, you know? And I remember like being a grad student and I was like, okay, cool. I'll, I'll teach a bunch of classes, but I don't want to be a

professor. I didn't get into any of this to do that. So I'm just going to sort of borrow and twist and pervert this knowledge into the things that I'm most interested in. And, and for a long time, I felt like that was a bug rather than a feature. You know what I mean? Like I'm just weird. And I guess I'm doing well, despite all these kind of tidbits that I'm trying to draw together. And then again, I read Epstein's book and he was like, no, no, no, man, that's a feature. That's not a bug. The most successful people are doing this thing. They're like, they're not easy to categorize in a sentence. Oh, this is my friend. He's a businessman. You know what I mean? Oh, this is my friend. He's a nutritionist. Rather all these interesting things are happening at the

same time. So you can be effective in multiple domains. You should look up the description that they have on iTunes for Johnny Cash. You would dig that. It goes on forever and they can't categorize like the kind of music that he had. It was really, really cool. When I saw that, I was like, I just thought that was so cool on how they couldn't categorize him. Yes. Another guy like that, that people have talked about over the years is Ernest Hemingway. They call it like a T-shaped man, right? So if you imagine a T, the horizontal bar of the T is like your broad range of things you're interested in and competent in. And then the vertical T is the one area that you're like a master, right? And the most interesting people you'll ever meet have that, right? There's an area where like you want to learn from them and then there's an area where they can talk about nearly anything you know like you look at Hemingway he was like a boxer and a fisherman and spoke all these languages and a war correspondent and a journalist and a writer and so people would just say like folks would meet even famous people would meet this guy and they'd

be like falling into fits of admiration because he was so broad. He had range, you know? So, uh, I love the Johnny Cash example too. And, and I think some, it's something we can all aspire to. But why do you think the guy in the gym, uh, like reached out to you? Like what, like, what do you think? Like, did he see something in you in particular or, or, and then why did he continue to help you? Do you think? I think, I don't know the first thing that's still a mystery to me at what, because he's, he's kind of an introverted guy. Like once you get to know him,

so he wasn't like just Mr. Gregarious helping everyone out. I don't know if just that one day he saw me working hard, but not very effective. You know, I was like, and he was like, Hey, here's some tips. And then I was really keen, but I know why he kept helping. And he kept helping because anytime he'd say, meet me at 530, or meet me here, I'd just be there. Like, there was never a time when I would, you know, he asked me to do something, you know, ridiculous, and I wouldn't just show up and be keen to learn. If he was like, Hey, I want you to read this book. I'd come back three days later with notes and be like, Hey man, I read that book. Let's,

let's go out to lunch and talk about it. You know what I mean? And so I think it was that, and you know now it's 30 ish years later and we're still in touch. And so we think about like the good old days. cause we ended up then becoming training partners for about four years. And we'd both competed in the 1995 Mr. USA contest together. So it became a friendship as well, eventually, but, you know, still he's in the, he's in the intro to my book because he's the reason I'm in this field. You know, there's, I find it fascinating why people choose to do what they do like i have this one friend who's like a stage strongman right so he bends metal bars and rips phone books in half and lifts up women in each hand or whatever but by day he's like a phd fellow at a university he does a bunch of sort of stats and technology work and uh like, you know, and we've talked about this with them. And sometimes there's

no reason. It's just because it's cool. And somewhere along the way, it got embedded in me that that was cool. Like how many young guys watched pumping iron for the first time in like the 70s, 80s, or whatever. And this now they, they spend all their free time lifting weights, like, imagine all the things you could have done with your life if you got all those weight room hours back. You know what I mean? But it's the thing, right? So, I don't, this is my only explanation. This dude helped me.

And now I'm in this field for life. Did you not maybe have a father figure or parents that were involved? I had parents, but I come from an immigrant family. So both my parents were born in Italy. They came to the U.S. on that proverbial boat people talk about, you know. And so, you know, my parents are awesome and they did their best. And like that, like that whole thing of coming from another country on this boat was for the next generation for us, for my brother and I. Right. So I just have a tremendous amount of respect for them. Also, like I learned some of my biggest lessons from them. They're the hardest working people I've ever known. And the people around us in that immigrant circle are, which is like one of the things I teach in business now. Everyone's like, oh, you have to work hard. It's really crucial to work hard and take action. I'm like, no, time out. You have to do those things. But I grew up around a group of people who worked harder than any 10 of you combined. And they didn't get any of the rewards you're talking about, right? So it has to be strategic. And it has to be good choices. If you're going to work hard anyway, you might as well work on things that will produce the outcome that you want and the rewards that you want,

whether they're money or happiness or whatever. So, you know, so there was it. So there was all that, but also a bit of a disconnect, right? Like a cultural difference between my brother and I growing up and our parents. So, you know, I think that left the space for a whole new suite of lessons to be learned. Right. Yeah. You know, I'm curious. I want to shift a little bit because when you were talking about like the body types thing and the evidence-based community, whenever they do look at that, they think that's actually like wacko stuff. What other ideas or I guess things do you implement with your clients that the evidence-based community would be like, Oh no, that, that, that doesn't make any sense.

Yeah. I mean, there's not a ton of them, you know, at, at PN, we try and really straddle that line between like deep into the research and then sort of feathering that in with all this practice, you know, I mean, we have millions, millions of data points. Like you coach 200,000 people for a year online. Like literally we know every time they log in every activity that they do, every progress report that comes in. We even used to do psychometric and genetic profiles on subsets of our groups. So we can look for traits that are correlated with success, right? So like, is there a mental makeup that's correlated with success? Is there genetic? So a lot of it's like knowledge discovery, you know what I mean? Like we're actually trying to create new knowledge.

So a lot of this is sort of that hybrid combination of the two, but I'd say I often get heat for the talking about body types at all, right? They're like, oh, that was disproven. Like Sheldon's somatotyping was disproven. Yeah, as a way of like determining cognitive makeup, but you can't have spend your time in a gym and not look around and see obvious differences in body types yeah right and we and then if you've been around that gym for long enough you see like if that person i'm looking at right now overeats they end up just a bigger version of the same body type and if they diet they end up just a smaller version of that body type. It doesn't fundamentally change their overall shape, you know? And so anyway, there's that one, you know, we've often used things like amino acids, essential amino acids during training, for example.

And so the evidence-based community often like comes on attack there as well. They're like, Oh no, just eat enough protein or whatever. But you know, me personally, like I have a sensitivity to lactose and to any milk protein. So I just, I simply can't have anything that anything dairy, it's not a moral judgment. It's just like when I have anything that comes from dairy, blows up my up my gut and then I have a big immune system reaction. So I get stuff and congest and all that. So I use essential amino acids, um, around training and then the rest of my food, my protein comes from food sources, non-dairy, you know, so it's little things like that, but I'd say generally, you know, often supplements, you know, we'll use supplements from time to time in this sort of limiting factor type of way. Like, Hey, what's the thing that's in the way of your progress? Okay. Can we get that with

a supplement that you wouldn't have gotten any, any other way? Um, also I did a pretty comprehensive piece on essential oils, um, which is a big evidence-based no, no nowadays. Um, which is always fascinating me. The evidence-based community comes down on experimentation about things they don't like. You know what I mean? You're like, but wait, evidence is based on experimentation. What the heck are we talking about here? Right? What you're just saying is I don't like essential oils. You're not saying it's not evidence-based. You're saying I don't like it because there's like 10,000 studies on essential oils. So I actually did a series of experiments looking at, I had seen a bunch of patent papers

on two types of essential oils and their impact on testosterone and growth hormone production. So I was like, oh, this is pretty interesting. So I saw these case reports. So then I'm like, oh, I'm going to try this on myself. So I did a big write-up on it, but I found like a pretty powerful effect on IGF production and on testosterone production with just like four drops of two different essential oils over the course of, you know, a couple of weeks. And I repeated that with two other subjects as well. So I'm like, there's some interesting things happening here. But again, when I talk about it, the people are like, Berardi's not evidence-based. I don't pay any attention. You know, didn't I just give you some kind of evidence? Like, I don't get it. Was it motor oil? Yeah, no, it was, it's, it's hilarious. It's a blue spruce oil and balsam fir. And they come

from what you would expect. they come from like evergreens um it's the essential oil from evergreen trees and um it's it's it's not a pleasant experience i mean you really eat these oils right and then you're like burping like oh you know winter winter evergreen you're like am i like skiing in the alps in the winter right now what's going on here um but yeah i mean there's they they uh i think they influence like pituitary production of precursor hormones that then trigger like you know gonadal production of testosterone and on down the line without being too physiological but i think there's there's all these little interesting nooks and crannies of of that I think can make a difference.

And, you know, I was, I don't know if you guys know JL Holdsworth, but I was just with him in an event. And, you know, he's doing this, these cool sort of like neuronal manipulation techniques right now. I don't know if he's ever put those meat hooks on you to do his wake up drills. I'm familiar. I'm familiar with some of the stuff that he does. And it's, uh, it's pretty amazing. I've never experienced it personally, but I know like he'll, you know, work on some spot on someone's foot or something. And then like a red rash or something might appear on their thigh because they had an old injury through their leg or something crazy. And people were like, what the hell's going on? But yeah, he's got a good understanding of all that kind of stuff. I'm still wearing a

bunch of bruises. I mean, that guy like touches you with this thumb, you know, it's like the death touch, right? He was insanely strong for two weeks. Yeah. So, uh, so anyway, I mean, I bring that up because this is just another area where there, there is literally no one in the evidence-based community. He's going to take what he's doing seriously today. Right. Because he's like, he's, he's doing these things that he's proposing or like manipulating your entire nervous system and, you know, unlocking years of sort of what I would consider like stored muscle,

neuronal memory. And there's, there's like probably not even tools to measure that. Right. So no one's going to take it seriously. But, you know, I saw him treat a guy this past weekend. Guy literally couldn't touch his toes. He touched him in a couple of places for 10 seconds. And that puts his hands under his feet. Right. Full bent, you know, and I'm like, all right, cool. I don't know anything about this, but there's like some things out there that's, you know. Yeah, I've experienced that from Charles Poliquin. He took a pen cap and drove it into the bed nail of my thumb.

And I was able to. So normally when I squat, my hands are all the way out, you know, at the end of the bar. And then when he did that, I was able to lock my arms in a normal squat position for the first time since I was a kid. It was wild. I was like, what the hell did you do? You know, and then to get more range of motion, he had me lay on the ground. He just pulled on my ears for a little bit. Kind of painful, you know, like, but I mean, like you said, he was worked on me for 15 seconds or something like that. It's insane.

There's so many things that we just don't know anything about. That's right. You know, and, and, uh, charlatans will lean into that and try and sell you some, some shit that, you know, it doesn't do anything. Right. Um, and so it's, it's, it's, I don't know, the best thing I can say is it's hard to navigate this world as a person. You know what I mean? It really is. Right. Like, cause to navigate the world effectively, you have to like be cool with uncertainty, right? So like we don't have evidence for things, but okay, cool.

And some people are going to try and play me for a sucker because of that. And other people are going to have meaningful things that there's not evidence for. How do I walk in that world? You know, and you just have to be super curious, some kind of mix between openness and skepticism, you know, and, and look for different kinds of evidence because it comes in different

forms, you know? Yeah. Last, I guess I'm curious about this too, because I want to get your thoughts on it. You talked a little bit about light earlier. So what type of experimentation do you think you're doing at that? And then after that, I know that you probably take, you know, sleep pretty seriously. So how do you navigate those waters, like with your clients, especially like, I mean, individuals that I guess don't take it as seriously as they should. Yeah. So light's kind of a new thing for me. And the way I got into it was, um, we, uh, you know, I was diagnosed with this autoimmune condition. So part of it, I talked about the needs. The other

part was skin lesions. I was getting skin lesions, like on my face, on my hips, on my legs, on my glutes. And, uh, it was just big, like raised rashes that would get like dry dead skin on them. And, um, and so, um, you know, I have been reading about how to deal with these things. And so like, you know, conventional medicine just prescribes topical, you know, corticosteroids plus vitamin D analogs, because vitamin D tends to help. But vitamin D alone doesn't fix the problem, because there's like an inflammatory response. So you do the two, but the problem is there's all kinds of side effects with like, lifelong corticosteroid use. So you do the two, but the problem is there's all kinds of side effects with like lifelong corticosteroid use.

So I didn't want to be on that for life. So I'm like, but the vitamin D thing is really interesting. So I first started out with making like a soluble-like vitamin D in like a carrier oil, and I was putting that on, and it wasn't having any effect. So then I was like, okay, cool. Well, we know like the most effective way to get a big dose of vitamin d that's like bioavailable is the sunlight right and it just so happened that right after my

diagnosis we were planning on spending spending the winter in Arizona as a family so it's cool because I can train with my track friends down there get somewhere warm and escape the Canadian winter. So within a couple of weeks, all my lesions were gone, right from just being outside every day. So I was like, Oh, this is really interesting. Okay, so it seems to be effective. Then when we moved back to Canada, I started going to tanning bed. So I'm like, Alright, I want to see if like a couple minutes of a regular tanning bed a week, you know, fixes this. So like when we moved back, the lesion started to come back. So then I went to tanning bed and that fixed it. So it's like, that's cool. So I know UVB light works. And then the, you know, this treatment,

this, this sort of UV light works. And so then the treatment is UVB. So that's when I was like, okay, cool. I'm going to go get exposed to one of these. You can go to like clinics and expose like yourself to them. And then that seemed to work really well. So then I just bought one for my house. So it basically is a flat panel that sticks on the wall. It looks like an unfinished tanning bed, right? And then what you do is you just get minimal light exposures. Like for me, again, different people require different exposures. I just stand in front of it, Again, different people require different exposures. I just stand in front of it with my hands up for 40 seconds, and I turn around, do 40 seconds on the back. I don't have to supplement with vitamin D anymore.

My vitamin D levels are high normal range from just those 80 seconds a day. And then the lesions have never come back since I've been doing this daily. So I mean, that's really fascinating. I think UVB is a very targeted therapy for this kind of thing. It raises what vitamin D levels. And I think that's the primary effect of this. But now I've been really interested in sort of red light therapy as an adjunct for this, because one of the things is like UVB doesn't come without side effects, you know, because one of the things is like UVB doesn't come without side effects.

You know, like UVA and UVB both can cause like, you know, genetic material breakages in the cell. And, you know, that's what eventually leads to cancer. So skin cancers and things like that. So for me, I'm like kind of concerned about that. But there's a bunch of data showing like red light therapy may actually, you know, counterbalance some of those effects. So I'm like, Oh, maybe I'll expose myself to red light as well. So it's like the next thing I'm, I'm playing around with. Okay, cool. What were some of the biggest things that you've learned in the last few years from a business perspective? Because

you've done a great job with precision nutrition. I actually mentioned these guys before we hopped on here. I'm like, John Berardi was kind of all over the internet back before the internet was cool. And then he just like disappeared. And obviously he didn't disappear. He probably, you know, dove into, uh, working harder than ever. But like, from my perspective, I just didn't see, uh, as many articles and stuff, uh, from you. I didn't see you floating around the internet more. I was like, he probably went and decided, look, I, I need to, uh, monetize this. So how, how is it, how is it that you were able to build precision nutrition, uh, to being the biggest, uh, nutrition, um, company that helps people with nutrition, uh, to, uh, the tune of $200 million, I believe is the last, last number I saw.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, the, the disappearance was part like a personality lifestyle choice and then also part like a real focus on the business. You know, I had watched the previous generation of quote unquote guys like me mentioned one of them, you know, the late Charles Poliquin, Paul Cech was like guys who were like a little bit, even a few years ahead of me. And I noticed like a couple things happening. One is for them to get their message out and be successful as well. They had to travel all the time. You know, these guys were gone 50 out of 52 weeks a year. I don't have it in me to do that. I'm introverted. I like being home. Like now we have a family. I like being with my family a lot. So that wasn't in the cards for me. And

then I didn't really like the attention either. You know, like I'm not someone who's like in public space and people are like, Oh, John Berardi, I'm a big fan, whatever. And I'm like, Oh, this is great. This really fills my cup. No, I mean, I appreciate the fact that, you know, people are willing to come say hi, but I would prefer not to be recognized at all. So part of it was like a business strategy. And then part of it was this personality stuff. Cause on the business side, I'm like, you don't ever sell a company. That's the John Berardi company, you know? And if you look at Paula Quinn's career, for example, you noticed? And if you look at Poliquin's career, for example, you noticed him reinvent himself like four or five times to stay relevant.

He was the strength coach. Then he became sort of like a functional medicine guy. You know, then he became a manual. He's a pulling your ears and event. You're like, this guy was teaching me how to build biceps 15 years ago. Now he's pulling my ears. What's going on? And that's what happens when it's the cult of you. You know what I mean? When it's an individual who's at the forefront of this thing. And so one is you can't sell that company, but even if you never want to sell it, you have to like disappear and come out with something new because people are hearing sick of hearing the same old stuff from you, you know? And so for me, it was all sort of all came together with this idea, like, hey, I need to bring on some people who are young and want to and like to travel,

you know, some great educators, so that there can be 10 of me out speaking, rather than just one. I need to bring on some help who can do all the other things that I'm not skilled or capable and competent at. I need to fade into the background. And, and that, that was sort of the project. Right. So it was, I just remember it was amazing.

You know, after a few years on this project where I'm like, people aren't asking for me anymore. They're asking for Brian St. Pierre or Adam fight or this team that I, you know, I grabbed, you know,

who were like basically grad students. And I'm like, these folks have some potential. I'm going to teach them how to get up in front of an audience and they're going to bring all the skills they have. And then I'm going to send them out in my place. And now people are asking for them over me. It was amazing.

And then the other thing with PN was we also had that beautiful confluence of great timing with the right thing at the right time. had that beautiful confluence of great timing with the right thing at the right time. You know, people have written ad nauseum about like, you know, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. They, they're wildly successful and they're smart guys, but they were also born at the exact right time and had the exact right interests at that time. Right. So that when things exploded, they could pursue their interest in computers and technology. It was the same. Like, I wanted to educate professionals on fitness and nutrition long before it was allowed. You know, when we published the first ever precision nutrition certification, which we've had 100,000

students go through it now, every personal training organization in the world was telling their trainers, don't do a nutrition certification. You're not allowed to do it. So like at that time, it was looking really stupid what we did, you know what I mean? But I knew it was right around the corner. And I don't know if you guys ever had Gray Cook on the show, but Gray is the guy found in the functional movement screen. And so Gray was a guy who was teaching like physical therapy techniques to strength coaches and personal trainers before that was popular. And I knew Gray really well. And all this happened maybe five, eight years before PN really took off. And so I was able to sit down and be like, Gray, this is what's going on for me. And he's going, oh yeah, that happened to me

like six years ago. It's going to be fine, you know? And I'm like, okay, cool. So like our physical therapy association is writing you like legal letters saying that you're breaking the law by teaching your stuff to trainers. Oh, yeah, totally. Like, oh, great, because that's what's happening to me now, nutrition. So it was the same exact historical pattern repeating just like eight years later. And we knew this is going to be required.

Like coaches, we're going to have to talk nutrition. So we just so happened to have it before anyone else even thought it was a reasonable, sensible thing to do. So then when everyone was ready for it, we had it. We were the only game in town. We had so much of a head start on everyone else that it's been hard for anyone to catch up. So as you mentioned, in 2017, I sold 80% of my stake in Precision Nutrition. And so now I'm just a very small percentage owner of the company and I'm working on some other projects. But yeah, the valuation was close to $200 million. PN's continuing to grow fantastically, you know, and we'll probably sell in the next

few years again, bring another investment partner in for $500 million. So it's a super cool business venture that has been pointed in the right direction and is really sort of, I guess, fulfilling its potential now. Yeah. The hardest part of that for some business owners, I think is, uh, doing what you said in the beginning, which was, uh, you know, passing things over to other people. And I think a lot of times people have so much trouble with that, but something to recognize and something that if you're skilled at teaching people or

being like a mentor is that you can help people, um, You can help people to kind of overcome some of their fears, like you said, like public speaking and things like that. You can give them some of the tools, you can put some spotlight on them, and you can also recognize the fact that you have to be humble enough to understand that they might do a better job than you. And ultimately, that's really what you want because you need a really good team around you in order to function the way that you've been functioning. It's true. You know, I think this particular skill of being able to hand off and, you know, loosen the reins a little bit of your grip on your thing, you know, is part of this thing that I think is the universal truth. Generally with new things, we think they're going to be harder than they actually are.

But they're always going to take longer than we think they're going to be harder than they actually are, but they're always going to take longer than we think they're going to take. That happens with fitness and nutrition and changing your body. It also happens with any skill in your business, right? So people are like intimidated by how hard it seems to be able to do what you just mentioned. But it's actually not that hard at all. It just takes really freaking long. It takes way longer than you expect. And I think people tap out before the logical, normal timeline has run its course. You know what I mean? So if it's going to take five years to train someone to take your place, that feels slightly unpalatable. Except it's amazing that you're five and six months because it's done now. You know what I mean? It's done right. So that's, that's, and again, this is one of these things I'm looking always

for universal principles. I'm like, Oh, is this true when it comes to fitness? Yes. Everyone thinks it's going to be hard, but they're never willing to take the time that it's going to take. And is it true with business? Yeah, pretty much true. It's almost, is it true with parenting and relationship? Yeah, pretty well. You know, some of these big companies that you had opportunities to work with, were they pretty open, um, in terms of like maybe sharing information? Is that, um, did that help grow the company? Like if you rub elbows with Apple or some of these other companies, uh, did you ask questions and stuff like that to these people? Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, my, that, that's kind of my style.

You know, I'm someone who like questions everything and not in a combative way, but in a like deeply curious way. Like whenever I hear people saying something too much, I'm like, let me unpack that. Like it seems too cliched to me. Like it can't be that simple. And so in these, and also like, I really like to give a lot of value. So if I'm working with Equinox or Nike or Apple or whatever, I'm just going to give, give, give. I'm going to give them an extra. I'm going to share data from our side.

And if they reciprocate, great. And if not, then they just think I'm a really super cool guy who's great to work with. You know what I mean? So it's always win-win for me. They either think I'm really awesome and my reputation grows, but I don't get any reciprocity in terms of like knowledge sharing or they share knowledge and they have, and I've learned some of the biggest lessons and I put them in the new book about this. Like my most powerful lesson

from Apple, for example, you know, when PN was a small company, I mean, compared to Apple, it's still a small company. But, you know, when we were a small company, and then throughout the middle years, I used to always have a tremendous amount of anxiety about resource constraints. You know, I'd always be like, oh, we're not doing this. And I see these people crushing it with this. And we're not always anxious and always waiting for like that beautiful day in the future where we have enough money to do all the things, you know? And then I went for a trip out to Apple and we were working on a project with them. And I'm in the room at the wealthiest company in the world. And someone said the same exact thing I was saying to our team, like, oh,

in the future when we have enough resources. And I was like, okay, this is the most liberating moment of my life, right? If the richest company in the world is still saying this, then everyone needs to stop saying it. Like, then it's simply not true, right? You can't wish for that day where we all have more resources because I'm at the very top and they don't feel like they have enough resources. So this is a perception problem, not a resource problem. I can go back and fix that, you know? And so it's things like that have really been profound and shaped my whole trajectory. What you got over there, Andrew? I know you're brewing up some questions. What's going on, John? We were texting each other. Hey, before the show, uh, I wanted to go back to, um, when you were talking

about like the three different body types, because right here on this podcast, I believe we have all three, uh, Mark, Mark, Mark gravitates towards the weights and he can run really well off of a low carb diet. I'm I've been skinny. Um, I have a runner's body, even though I can't run for anything. Um, I do feel more comfortable on carbs. And then you have in SEMA, who's the other guy that we all hate because he's so jacked and he's had abs and 16 and he's insanely strong and good looking and whatnot. Um, but I feel like it might be a little bit just too easy for, for myself or somebody like me to just say like, oh, I run good on carbs. I'm skinny.

I can eat whatever I want. But I feel like that's one, irresponsible. But I do feel better, but not 100% better, meaning I still get inflammation in my back. 100% better, meaning like I still get inflammation in my back, but like this week I've been eating a really high fat diet and truth be told, midway through the podcast just now I had to run to the bathroom because the bathroom was calling me. So what's, I mean, I guess what I'm asking is like, how do we know exactly what we thrive on? And I know we can experiment with diets and feel a certain way, but is there maybe something a little bit more precise in deciding on what diet we want to follow? That's a great question,

man. I appreciate you asking it. So, two things come up for me. One is the idea that eating a higher carb diet is somehow synonymous with eating whatever I want. You said it was the same breath, right? And so we need to really unpack that for starters, because that's not true. Because usually when people are like, oh, I can eat a high carb diet, eat whatever I want, what they're eating are foods that are high in carbs and fat at the same time, right? And so that's what we talked about. Like, we have to look at the inverse, right? Like, there's very few people who are like, oh, really, I'm having a lot of problems with my high carb diet. Well, what carbs do you eat? Apples and potatoes? You know what I mean? Like, that's not really where the problem's coming in. So I think,

you know, I'm not saying this is what's happening with you, Andrew. I'm just saying like, for all the listeners out there. So that's, that's number one. But I love the second part of the question too, which is how do I know, like, how do I figure out what works for you? This is, this is one of those things we talked about a minute ago when people start saying things too often, I'm like, Hey, timeout for this gets to be a little cliche. Uh, so how should I eat coach? Well, you got to find out what works for you. If I had a nickel for every time I've heard someone say that in the last five years, Had a nickel for every time I've heard someone say that in the last five years. I'd be able to buy precision nutrition back.

It's a difficult thing to say because how many people know how to do that experiment? You know what I mean? Like how many people are like research trained and know how different variables have to be controlled, right? So like to find out what works for you, you have to keep certain things constant and change only one or two things. It's kind of tough to do. Like, you can't be like, I tried a new training program and I'm taking new supplements and I went keto. Man, keto is good for me. Well, wait, like 16 things just changed there. You know what I mean? And that's, that's a really hard proposition. So, I mean, there are things you can measure. If you want

to talk about laboratory type tools, like that's my background. You know, I come from a PhD lab where we had cool tools to measure stuff. You know, a few people have access to that. You know, simple set of things you can look at though, is if you want to figure out what looks for you, you have to set up a good experiment, right? So if you want to, like, let's say keep your training the same, keep your sleep the same, keep your stress management the same, and you want to change your macronutrient profile, that's close. Okay. But then you have to make sure when you change your macronutrient profile, you're doing that right. And not the perfect macronutrients, but that you're not like lowering carbs, increasing fat, but also accidentally changing protein, you know? And then from there, like,

there's a few things you can measure. My favorite thing to measure is just a simple set of like body composition, some performance metrics, blood work, and then keep a journal of how you feel. Like if you want to be really robust, that's good enough for most people. And then you'll figure things out. And then always like underline your whole like, and I learned with the idea that this may not always apply to me. You know what I mean? This may not always apply to me. You know what I mean?

Like in one year's time, some other things could have changed in my life, my sleep, my stress, my work, whatever. And this learning may not apply anymore. So I have to do some more experiments. You know, I think if you're going to have some longevity in this game, you have to become experiment minded. I think, you know, I watched the West Side documentary

on Netflix the other day, you know, and I was like, you know, that's not a gym of scientists, let's be honest, but they are, right? There's a different kind of science happening there, a different kind of experimentation that's like sort of lifelong, you know? And the, you know, I think that like you mentioned earlier about calorie counting, the same thing applies. The first

little while of figuring out how to do your own experiments on yourself will feel like calorie counting, a lot of work, a lot of bullshit, a lot of effort. But now you don't have to calorie count for the rest of your life because you can just eyeball things. So it's like a lot of other things in life. When you try it for the first time, it's really thoughtful and intentional and takes a lot of cognitive real estate. But then if you put in the reps, it becomes second nature. So for me now, it's super easy for me to figure out what works for me in this present time and do these experiments. I barely have to think about it. I don't have to journal everything, but I have a lot of reps. You know, there's a lot of sort of skill, like under the

tip of that iceberg, all that stuff under the water, skill I built a long time ago. So Andrew, I don't know if that well answers your question, but the idea being controlling variables, testing only one thing at a time, trying not to draw false conclusions, underlining it with like, and this is what works for now, maybe for me, you know, and then building that skillset though, of figuring out what works for you so that for the rest of your life, you can figure out the next stage of it. Yeah, no, that absolutely answered it. I mean, it's, it's kind of what, um, it's one of those things where like, uh, when somebody asks a, asks you a question and you just stare at them and they're like, oh, okay. Yeah. I, I guess I

do know what I have to do. Um, but when you're coming from being a skinny guy and I do, um, selfishly use this podcast to try to get answers for myself. Um, is there a better reason to use it? Yeah. Right. Um, you know, I'm still, I'm climbing my way out of being the skinny guy. Um, was there anything like in particular that like clicked or it was like, Oh, once I started doing X, Y, and Z, that's when I was able to maintain like a certain body weight or a certain physique or that sort of thing. I think, and you know, this is so many moons ago for me, but I remember it so well, you know, I had basically two philosophies. One in the weight room was if I can do six, I'm going to do 10. And when it came to outside the weight room, if I'm not chewing, I'm not growing.

So I was like, I used to work out at this boys and girls club in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, where I grew up. And, and we, like me and my training partner, we're just obnoxious. You know, we, we terrorize that place. We just go in there and we're doing curls. You know, we put we terrorize that place. We just go in there and we're doing curls. You know, we put on a weight we can do six times and we'd scream our way to 10 and bend our backs and all, you know, swing our hips, you know, and that's what we did with everything. So the idea was we were going to get stronger. You know, thankfully we had like Gumby joints and we didn't

hurt ourselves too badly and we weren't that strong yet. So there wasn't enough weight to really cause a big injury, but that was part one. Like if we're not, you know, if we're not overextending ourselves in the weight room, we're not going to be growing. And then, like I said, I mean, I, you know, this isn't what I necessarily always advocate, but I would throw up after many meals, You know, my, my breakfast was usually like half a loaf of rye bread, you know, 12 whole eggs, a bunch of packets of instant oatmeal. You know, I'd be chewing bagels and drinking like whey protein and water. This sounds amazing. It sounds great.

Try and get back to me in a week. Tell me how it feels. Yeah. Half a level. You know, and my post-workout meal was the worst, right? Like I'd get done training. I would cook a pound of pasta and a pound of ground Turkey and, uh, and a bunch of, and a bag of frozen broccoli. I put all that together and I would, and I would try and eat it all. Now it's a lot of food, right? And if I threw up halfway through it, that was good in my mind, because then I had room to get the rest down. Like I remember many times, like I would come home, I'd make that thing. I'd be, Oh, I'd be eating it. It takes so long, you know, and not like I want my shower. So I like bring it in the shower

with me. And I would often, it was convenient because when I threw up, I just put it right down the shower drain. Right. So, I mean, it's absurd. It's ridiculous, but you know, I, I could have been worse. You could have been sitting on the toilet, right? That's right. I went from 135 pounds to like 205 in 18 months of doing this. So, I mean, that was my journey. I don't know if we have two boys. If when my sons are 17, that would be the exact approach I would give them. You know what I mean? But I mean, that was my path.

I just got to say, I am fully inspired right now. but uh but it's i mean it's it that that was my path you know what i'm i just gotta say i am fully inspired right now so thank you for all the encouragement that sounds amazing man uh you know the fallout though is that like i never eat i never ate ground turkey like once that phase of my life is over i can't even look at it it's 30 years later it's like hard throwing up on tequila one time you're like I can't even look at it. He's 30 years later, it's like throwing up on tequila one time. You're like, I can't even smell that stuff. You know, how can some people, uh, heal their gut? Cause I know a lot of people have like, you know, stomach issues, especially like with someone like Andrew, he's trying to gain weight. Um, it seems like even small changes in his diet end up leading to catastrophes and poop stories. So what are some

ways that people can kind of investigate that and learn more about their gut permeability? Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, a lot of it kind of depends on what's going on. There's a bunch of different things that can be happening, right? One could be like a response to a food at the gut level. So lactose intolerance is a perfect example, right? So there's a nutrient that you can't fully digest. So once it hits like the large intestine or colon, it just basically starts being broken down there and turns into gas. And then there's that issue. And then there's other gut issues, like you said, permeability issues where stuff maybe shouldn't be getting into your bloodstream, but is and it's sneaking through like, maybe non tight gap junctions in your intestinal cell walls. And that's causing problems. But then we know like this, this sort

of emergent science on the relationship, like your gut is like a second brain and like produces a lot of the same like neurotransmitters that your brain produces and has like a pretty intricate cellular signaling system between brain and gut. So like the complicated answer is like, I don't think anyone really knows yet. Like you'll have people come on the podcast and they'll talk about probiotics and digestive enzymes and gut protocols and stuff. But I think they're often a little bit ahead of the science, which isn't always a bad thing, you know, but I always say like, uh, it's fascinating to me that we are willing to believe in the upside that we don't know about of a supplement. believe in the upside that we don't know about of a supplement and we never think about the downside so we're like okay if that supplement is that powerful physiologically that you're saying it is

in terms of producing a really positive effect and we've never tried to measure negative effects with it like why don't we believe there could be a negative thing happening to somewhere else? Probably a cost. Yeah. There's probably a cost to it. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Right.

So, you know, whether that's a negative feedback system or just a different receptor on a different cell type that it can bind. So, but I mean, the simple answer when it comes to gut health is often the least sexy is, you know,

common practice and like alternative medicine environments is, is basically like, you know, an elimination diet, right? So the idea that you're going to remove a bunch of the most common, you know, reactants, the common foods that cause either gut inflammation, or systemic inflammation, or an immune response. And you would just take them out and then you systematically reintroduce them and see what's really causing the problem. And the thing is, it's difficult because the targets are moving because when you remove those foods, your gut does begin to heal as well. So you're not introducing foods back into the old environment and being like oh I was always

allergic to that food you're actually like maybe allergic to it now or not so you're not sure what you know what I mean so it becomes this weird thing but it's kind of like training sometimes where you don't need to know why you got stronger from that new intervention you just need to know that you got stronger from it. A lot of people get better from doing one of these sort of elimination diet type experiments. And we don't quite know why all the way. But like, I even experienced it firsthand with the autoimmune protocol stuff. It's essentially like an elimination diet. And so then for me, I was like, I can't just eat protein and veggies for the rest of my life, every meal until I die.

Like this would be sad existence for me. So then I started introducing some things back in. And I'm like, if I'm like 80% AIP is what I was calling it, 80% on the autoimmune protocol, and it's still working, that's great. So for me, the big two are anything dairy. Like I have to go zero dairy diet. And then soy is a problem for me. I'm really happy that both from gluten sensitivity tests and from just this experimentation, I'm not like I don't have a gluten problem. It's like that was my worst fear.

I'm like, if I figure out I have a gluten problem, I'm going to be so pissed at the universe. You know, like I grew up on like crusty bread and an Italian household. Like, man, if I, so I was super happy about that. But for me, it was like soy and dairy. If I avoid those two, my autoimmune stuff stays in check. I never get stuffy. I mean, there was a, there was like a five-year period in my life where every night I'd go to bed and I mouth breathe the whole night and I wake up in the morning

with a super sore throat. And like every day, I'm like, I think I'm getting the flu. After like a year, I'm like, okay, I don't think I have the flu. Something else is going on. And just the elimination of those two foods allows me to sleep through the night, breathe through my nose, not be stuffy, not have that immune response. And again, like I'm talking about immune system, but this is so intimately related with your question, and again, like you're, I'm talking about immune system, but this is so intimately related with your question, the gut, right? Because if some of these things either sneak through a permeable gut, or like a lot of the immune response is initiated at the gut level. So, you know, this is, this is where I think, you know, the most

reliable tool for sort of an improvement or nudging your way towards gut improvements is, is what we're talking about here, like an elimination diet with a careful reintroduction of foods. It sucks to do, it takes a lot of time, but if the pain is great enough, people will, will, will do this because they want to feel better. And with your autoimmune diet that you said you did, where you, you know, you took out, I think you said you were eating many vegetables and meat. Have you reintroduced more dense carbohydrates, like maybe potatoes or rice? Yes. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I have. I mean, my, my diet nowadays is really, really straightforward and simple.

So right before we talked, I did a strength training workout. And then we're doing, you know, we're doing our podcast, I'm going to eat lunch after, right? So this is kind of my normal schedule, maybe I would have eaten a bit sooner. But I'll cook a pound of some kind of protein. So fish, poultry, red meat, whatever it is, and I mix it up quite a lot. And when I started eating this way i i really started varying my protein intake a lot because i'm like the only fun i get to have is with protein right so i'm like i'm going to eat like steelhead trout i'm going to eat atlantic salmon i'm going to eat scallops i'm going to eat shrimp i'm going to eat different kinds of meat i'm going to eat different

kinds of pork so i'll go cook a pound of protein and then i'll have two ginormous bowls of vegetables so like a serving bowl size you know that usually serves the family will be like that'll be one bowl of vegetables so i might make a huge salad in there and then in another i i do these mashes uh where i'll steam like an entire head of cauliflower or a couple stalks of broccoli or a bag of carrots or a bunch of parsnips or list goes on of stuff that I'll steam. And then I'll put it through the Vitamix with some salt and some truffle oil. And it makes like mash. So I'll have like mashed carrots, mashed cauliflower, mashed whatever, right? Broccoli. And you make it like a really nice consistency. So I'll have a bowl of that, a huge salad and a pound of protein. So

that'll be meal one. And then I'll do the same thing again at night, right around eight or 9pm. And then after that, I usually have a pint of this ice cream called So Delicious. It's like a dairy-free ice cream. And I'll put like a dairy-free ice cream and i'll put like a banana nuts uh cashew butter almond butter something like that and some dark chocolate i'll mix that in so that's pretty much like training days right there pretty much every day so big like two pounds of protein load of vegetables and then i i call that my recovery bowl. It's kind of tongue in cheek, but like that big ice cream with nuts and bananas and all that stuff in there. And that intake right there is like a maintenance intake for me. If I was trying to gain weight,

I would probably just add another meal, another big protein meal. But, um, when we were living in Arizona, I was hiking a lot and going mountain biking with the kids a lot. And so that's when I started adding in more starchy carbs. Like, so I would have sweet potatoes with a meal or two on top of what I just described. Gotcha. Do you look forward to those foods each day? I do actually. Yeah. Like I'm trying, you know, again, it actually, this, this way of eating, I thought would be sucky, but then I started just playing around with that. Like, so like I have a very specific salad recipe that I like, you know, and I think it's delicious.

And then those mashes I talked about are phenomenal. Like talk about sitting down to an entire cauliflower with a meal sounds miserable, But when you mash it and put truffle oil in and sea salt, it's awesome. Like you can't get enough of it. So yeah, this, I love this way of eating right now. It's, it's pretty incredible. And again, obviously has a positive effect on my disease progression and body comp as well. I think it's really important.

You know, sometimes we maybe lose sight of that. We're trying to help someone with a diet. You know, we sometimes forget that this person may not be looking forward to the foods we just suggested to them because maybe they, maybe they're just like, just not used to dieting at all. So, you know, ground turkey and chicken and some of these things might not sound good to them at all. How do we give people something they can look forward to in some of your planning? Does it allow for cheats? Does it allow people to kind of audible, you know, they have an anniversary, they have something to go to and they want to enjoy

something. How do you factor that in? Yeah, it's, you know, the, there's, there's another cliche in the space right now, right? Around this idea of like not cheating or whatever, you know, I don't call it a cheat, but really people are just playing semantics because they think of it as a cheat. You know what I mean? But really after enough years, you don't think like people will look at my diet and be like, oh, you put that ice cream in there so you can have a little cheat each day. Right. I'm like, no, no, no. It's like meeting my caloric needs. day, right? I'm like, no, no, no. It's like meeting my caloric needs. It's food that I like the taste of. There isn't a minute of any day that I help myself to a pint of that ice, that dairy free ice cream and that big recovery bowl where I feel like, oh man, I hope nobody sees me eating

this. Nutrition guy, I'll get a lot of flack. No, I put it on Facebook and I share it because this is like, this is a path to healthy nutrition. And then people always like awful eyes in the future where they'll be like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, uh, you're going to burn out your, uh, pancreatic cells and your insulin. And yeah, they just make up a bunch of stuff they heard from books, you know? And I'm like, I don't know, I've been doing this for a while. I get regular blood work done. You know, like you can see all my abs and I'm in my late forties and like my training's good. You know, I just did 20 sets of deadlifts. Blood works perfect. You know, like maybe one day I'll get hit by this asteroid you're talking about

insulin health or whatever, but right now it's trending pretty good, you know? But what we, you know, what we do with clients around this is try and eradicate this sort of cheap, whatever mentality. And I think about it as like co-creating a plan, right? Like with four children, I've learned I'm bigger and stronger than them. So I can force them to do things, but it's not the way to build a good relationship with my family. You know what I mean? And that's what a lot of parents do. Like they, they're just like get frustrated. They want it to happen their way. And they do a little bit

of bullying, even if it's well-intended. And so I think about that. I learned that with our kids, even a little four-year-old, like how can I get her to wear a coat in the winter when she doesn't want to wear a coat? You know, I can either bully her, like I can physically put a coat on her against her will, or I can try and take away something she likes if she doesn't put the coat on, or I can present her a menu of two or three coats and let her choose the one that she wants to wear. Which one goes best for the relationship for that five minutes in the mudroom. You know what I mean? So think about this with grownups, right? How do you get someone, you know, to work collaboratively in a co-creation process

so that they're bought in, invested, feel like they have some input, autonomy, like these are grown ass people you're working with, right? And you're like, eat this they have some input, autonomy. Like these are grown ass people you're working with. Right. And you're like, eat this way, you know, without even a question of, do you think you can do that? You know? So what we do is we, we do co-creation, you know, we sit down, we talk about goals. We say, Hey, if you were the coach, how would you fix this? And oftentimes people say, I have no idea. That's why I hired you. I say, okay, cool. I'm going to answer this in like 30 seconds. Don't worry. I'll tell you what I think, but I want to know what you think first. And then it takes the pressure off and they're like, okay, cool. I'll

tell you some ideas. Right. And if I hear anything that's valuable or that we can build into the process, we do, you know, if not, I say, oh, those are okay. Thanks for sharing those suggestions. It might not be the direction I go. They might say they love ice cream, right not, I say, oh, those are okay. Thanks for sharing those suggestions. It might not be the direction I go. They might say they love ice cream, right? They might say, I love ice cream. I'd love to have some room for ice cream in my diet and say, that's great. I got room for ice cream in my diet. Maybe we can figure out how you can do it.

That's exactly it. Well, I had this chat with Eric Cressy recently. I don't know if you've ever had him on the show, but Eric's amazing. And, you know, Eric's a specialist in baseball. He works with tons of major league baseball players. And, you know, he was talking about the problem of like dip right like chewing tobacco in major league baseball and um and i was like why is it a problem right i'm like i can show up with my like virtue signaling moral judgment self and be like that's a nasty habit and, you know, can't be good for you or whatever. But do you actually think it reduces baseball performance? You know, like why, why are you

their strength coach, their movement coach interfering in that domain? We had a really interesting conversation about it, but for me, I really do feel if someone's like, hey, I like cannabis, I want to smoke every day or vaporize or edible every day. You know, it's not my job to judge that. Like if I think it would negatively impact their health or contravene their goals, we need to talk about that. But what if there's a way to create a program that allows for that? That's what I think would be beautiful because it'll probably lead to the highest consistency in the long run. That's what I think would be beautiful because it'll probably lead to the highest consistency in the long run. So whether it's ice cream, whether it's your bread, you know, whatever your favorite foods

are, like for me, it's about co-creating a process and then confidence testing it. So before a client ever walks away, I go, okay, cool. So the thing we agreed that you might try for the next two weeks is this. Now, before you roll, I have a question. On a scale of zero to 10, zero being there's no way in hell I can do this, and 10 being a trained monkey can do that, how confident are you that you can do this every day for the next two weeks? And then you let them rank it. And if they say a five and you give it to them anyway, you're the idiot. You know what I mean? Bad coaching. The

person just told you there's like 50% chance that I can even consider doing this, right? If they give you an eight or a nine, probability is way higher. And I often think about a lot of things in life. If we just like doctors, right? One of the biggest problems in medicine is people not taking their prescription medication. They take it less than half the time, right? And often this is like life-saving medicine. How often do doctors ask this? Hey, how confident do you feel you can take this every day, right? And if a patient said two out of 10, that'd be really intriguing.

Well, wait, why don't you think you could take this pill every day? Oh, these problems come up for me. Oh, well, we can fix those easy. Bam, now you're in a real coaching relationship, you know? So for me, that's how we build this right we build it on co-creation understanding we're two grown adults who both have autonomy and then we just test it before you walk out into the world and try and do this thing find out if i think you have any confidence that you can do it and then if you don't i just keep shrinking the ask until you have confidence and even if if the ask gets so small, I don't think it'll have any impact physiologically.

What ends up happening is you build up the confidence to do health behaviors. And then maybe after a month you're able to do hard stuff, you know? So maybe the first month was just building your confidence and do anything health related, you know? Awesome. Appreciate your time. Thank you so much. Where can people find it? And you have anything new about to hit? Yeah, I mean, people can find me. I just launched a brand new website for myself, johnberati.com, which has like a nickel tour of all these various weird things that I'm that I'm up to. And the new thing about to hit is my new book called Changemaker. So after years in the field, you know, and then having the financial transaction with Precision Nutrition, you know, I've been thinking about for years, like all these people who are passionate about health and fitness and want to make a career out of it, but are doing so badly at it. You know, like half of the people who enter this field are out in one year's time.

And it's generally because there's not really good blueprint for how to take this thing, whether it's you love sports, you want to do something there, or you love movement, or you love training people, you love nutrition. There's no blueprint for how to turn that into a purpose and a meaningful career with some longevity. And, you know, I think I've learned a lot about how to do that. I think I've created spaces for people to do that in various businesses over the years. So for me, it was about sort of capturing 30 years of experience and knowledge and practice, having a career in this field and then translating that for people. So I'm really excited about this book. It's took me two years to write. It's the most difficult thing I've ever written. Like writing about nutrition is easy compared to this

because I'm trying to capture like what I think I've learned truthfully over 30 years. So it was, it was a pretty agonizing project, but I'm like super proud of the results. So for anyone who's like, is considering working in the field or is now, if they want to see sort of, you know, how to think about career, how to think about business, how to think about reputation and education and building yourself into that T shaped person we talked about earlier, uh, they can come check it out at changemakeracademy.com. Uh, so the book's called change maker and, uh, the business we started around is called Changemaker Academy. Awesome, man. Thank you so much for being on the show and thanks for all your work over the years. Really appreciate it.

Thank you. Same to you, honestly. Everyone at PN is a big fan of the podcast and just giving me sort of the platform and the vehicle to talk about things I'm excited about. Um, I had a lot of fun and I hope people who listened and spend all this time with us, uh, get something out of it. That'd be awesome. Very cool. Have a great rest of your day. Okay. Thanks. You too. Wow. And he's a super smart. Yeah is he's awesome uh we're not

i like that goal skill practice thing man yeah like there's oh god there's so much there's so much that i love from that that episode but especially like just i love how he outlines every little aspect he makes things as detailed as possible so that, you know, an individual has a blueprint to be able to make it out successfully. It's yeah, that yeah, his methodology is awesome. And also just like having a breadth of understanding that whole concept. I love that, you know, so I sometimes feel like I sometimes feel like we like from an audience perspective, if they're listening to multiple episodes, they're like, Oh, they called this guy. Like they called John and they were like, dude, like I want you to say a, B and C to back up, you know, confirm,

confirm what we've heard, you know, like, like because you kind of right off the bat, he was jumping into a lot of that stuff about, uh, control and about, you know, um, we, we've talked about it often on this show, you know, uh, not just what you eat, but how you eat, maybe how you eat might even, I mean, obviously they're, they're both so important. Uh, but the how is, is, is a huge one because you can simply utilize, uh utilize some intermittent fasting and eat two or three times a day and really not follow anything real strict. You don't have to get rid of a macronutrient. You don't have to have maybe as many rules if you shorten your eating window.

And maybe for somebody else, maybe that just doesn't work. Maybe not eating is just not a great option. And they can utilize some of the other things that he mentioned. But yeah, I sometimes feel like we'll have someone who's confirming something that you and I maybe just, or all three of us were just talking about kind of recently. And I'm like, Oh my God, they're spitting out this information. And the cool thing is, is that, you know, he's super intelligent. So he is able to put it into some really good words. And it's great that he has all those, like all those clients, all those data points to

reference, you know, you know, so it's, it's, it's great that he has all of that to be able to reinforce his understanding of these things. He's not just someone who's worked with a few people and this works, you know, he's worked with hundreds of thousands of people or his team has, and they've come to a place where obviously they can understand that all types of diets work and that's like you know there's a lot of people that come on that are like oh this works or this works but like we we've talked about this you can make any diet work some are maybe a little bit better than others in terms of certain people but like as long as you just have good habits in line with whatever your eating pattern is you're going to be golden.

Sometimes people ask me, they're like, how do you not eat carbs? It's like, well, I don't, I'm not on this forever. Like I don't do it that way all the time. Like I eat carbs here and there. You go off of your diet here and there. You just introduce other, like I introduce other foods sometimes. There'll be parts of the year where there's some fruit in there. There's parts of the year where I'm not on a ketogenic diet.

I'm more on almost like a vertical diet. I just, I'm always kind of switching it up and seeing how I feel and seeing like what I want to do. That's the main thing. Like, what do I, what do I feel like doing? You know, what do I, and then if I struggle with something, if I, if the fat guy pops back out, then I have to kind of evaluate like, what's the next move? What's the next, uh, what's the next strategy? How am I going to, you know, control some of this? And I think, you know, we talk about it, uh, endlessly on this podcast, how are you going to, you know, get some control into your life. And I think when you start to implement that for anything, your workouts, your, uh, financial planning, you start to implement that for anything, your workouts, your, uh,

financial planning, you start to incorporate it anywhere, the more that you can have some, uh, at least what appears to be some control, probably the better. Yeah. That, that's not the space. That's the biggest thing, getting control over this. But, um, one cool thing, did you notice, I didn't even realize I said this nutritionally fluid, not like how people say, uh, gender fluid gender fluid well we want to be nutritionally fluid yeah we want to be able to you know just yeah because he said they were you know agnostic yeah yeah nutritionally fluid yeah that's just that's a better way for that i got man i got a trademark all this just put it on your ig profile but you already said it live. Someone's going to go to LegalZoom and do that.

Shit, I lost my train of thought with that. Oh, the ghrelin thing. I like that he said it's pretty, not easy, but it's trainable. That was really cool. Yeah. Yeah. I never really thought of it that way. But I mean, you know, we kind of just think of like, oh, lean against something that's

difficult and then you'll break through. But he's like, no, you train it. I was like, oh, that's that. How much easier is that to tell somebody like, hey, you can something that's difficult and then you'll break through. But he's like, no, you train it. I was like, oh, how much easier is that to tell somebody, like, hey, you can train yourself to not be hungry at 10 a.m. I think that's really powerful. Yeah. How great was the one out of 10 stuff? Coming to conclusions together

when you're trying to coach somebody. Somebody comes in, they want a power lift, they want to get their deadlift, uh, to be a lot, a lot better. And they come in and, and me and, and Seema are like, dude, we think you got a deadlift four days a week. And the person's coming from only going, you know, deadlifting, uh, twice a month. Well, that plan is probably not going to work great. And we asked the person, how do you think you you'll do, you know, a deadlifted four times a week. And we're going to have you do this crazy amount of volume and all these things, just throwing

everything at them just because we want to kill the guy or, or, uh, you know, have it work or have the guy die is like the only, the only results. Right. And, um, you know, if the person's like, well, I, you know, I, I, man, I, I work like 60 hours a week, man. So I can really only probably get here like twice, you know? And so it's like, why even bother to try to force something on someone that's not even going to be able to comply with it. And when it comes to nutrition, you know, maybe you have a conversation with somebody and you're like, no, I don't think I could do that. Then you try to throw them something else. No. And then you start to say, okay, well, well just put in your hands,

you know, what, what are some things that you would like to do? And they start to kind of, you know, relay the message of the types of foods that they like. And you learn that they like things other than just pizza and ice cream. Maybe they like yogurt.

Maybe they like cottage cheese and say, okay, those are some good foods to focus on because eventually in this diet, we're going to need you to work on eating more protein. On a scale of one to 10, how hard will it be for you to incorporate more protein into your diet? You know, it's like,

and maybe they say, I don't think that'd be that hard. Could you, could you have cottage cheese twice a day? Could you, could you eat a chicken breast at lunch instead of a, you know, sandwich,

just little things. And they're like, yeah, I think I can do it. It's negotiating. Yeah, that was amazing. He was fantastic. I hope we can have him here at Super Training at some point because I think he would kill us all with knowledge. That'd be amazing. Yeah, it'd be really cool. You doing some red light? Yeah, I am. I, uh, yeah, I did it yesterday. Did it, uh, I'm going to do it today.

Cover your ears. All right. Well, okay. Well, this is the end of the podcast. She did. She never listens to the end of the podcast. So nobody is listening right now. Nobody's listening. Oh, we're off. No, no. I i mean you know the i'll i'll tell the story so y'all know i've been doing red light therapy for about maybe three and a half four weeks now and i have no why are you using that voice i'm not using a voice this is just my voice just came off and i didn't even touch him no i i have been noticing i guess uh uh, uh, a, uh, let's just say, um, uh, yeah, I'm just more like, I'm generally, you know, very, uh, I have a girlfriend by the way, I have a, I have a girlfriend, but I have a very strong sexual urge, um, because I'm, you know, I have a lot of energy.

I've felt that before, which is, which is, which is great, which is great. But you know, some of the things you hear from red light therapies, it helps us sleep. And you know, I think what's his name? Ben Greenfield was, you know, talking about how like, you know, he was just like, right. You know, just, just you know, it like it was very strong for him. So anyway, it puts the blood flow somewhere else. Now, what happened?

Makes you plump. Last night, last night was I, you know, you know, you guys know how big I am on my sleep and getting enough hours of sleep. It's a big deal to me. Oh, we know how big you are. Oh, we know how big you are. Okay. I don't like being underslept.

It's like the worst thing. So we go to sleep. Eleven thirty. Eleven forty. I'm good. You know, she has a little bit of a stomach ache. So, you know, I just let her sleep. And I'm trying to fall asleep. But like, I'm just my it will not go anywhere.

It's just chilling. Just pitch the tent. Just pitched, bro. And I'm just like, come on. OK, well, an hour rolls by. I'm like, OK, let's just let's just turn the tent just pitched bro and i'm just like come on okay well an hour rolls by i'm like uh okay let's just let's just turn the other way let's turn the other way face the window and it's going another hour rolls by i wake up go to the bathroom like this is ridiculous come on bro this is like two hours in another hour rolls by i literally can't sleep

three hours i'm like okay well let's just bathroom that way. It's not easy. I go to the floor and I just try to sleep on the floor. Cause maybe I'm just like, okay, maybe I just need to like, just sleep on the floor. This will go away. Two and a half more hours go by. I'm still out of sleep. I'm just frustrated. And then, um, yeah, I just, uh, it's, uh, yeah, I just had to wake her up. And then I came here with like, I think like 50 minutes of sleep.

Oh my God. And I was like, this has never happened to me before. Like I literally, this is like some stuff you hear on the Viagra commercial. Please consult a doctor. If, uh,

you have four hours more or a direction that lasts four more hours. I'm just like, what the fuck? It's ridiculous. But, um, that was my night. You could have called Andrew.

I could have called Andrew. Could call you, you know, we could have talked it out. Could have talked it out. But, um, yeah,

man, that was just new and definitely interesting. So, yeah. What about a fleshlight? Let's not open that door. I feel like, I feel like that's one of those dark things where like you try

it once you're like this is great it might be too it might be too good to be true it might be too good to be true do not buy that y'all might like it too much and then that becomes your new little toys don't don't do it don't do it you couldn't just like couldn't just whack off or whatever i just i didn't i didn't i just whack off or whatever. I just, I did. I didn't, I just wanted to go to sleep. I just wanted to like, not,

not, I, I try not to, I know. I try not to test those waters anymore. I had a dark teenage years with a, you're not allowed to do that anymore. I,

I, let's not say I'm not, I don't know. Like, it's not like I'm not allowed to do it. I just stray away from doing that. Let's say that all the way away from doing it. Yeah. Yeah. It's been a bit, it's been a bit. do it i just stray away from doing that let's say that all the way away from doing it yeah

yeah it's been a bit it's been a bit i'm part of that nofap crew under masturbated yeah it can happen right now well i guess you hit another pr then right uh how so just like five hour erection bro oh my god yeah still so wild to me like that's that's red light man did you wake her up in the morning so you missed it no like she'd probably just be like whatever i did wake her up like i did wake her up oh there we go did you just look down and like hey i need help i need help somebody please help me andrew do not power bite this okay just i this cannot be its own content this has to be at the end of this i might send it to

juve do not do that they'll do whatever they want with it oh god yeah let's let's please keep this end of episode you know little i think what's it called um at the end of a video game an easter egg this little end of episode easter egg if you listen to this whole episode a cliffhanger maybe yeah yeah yeah I'm not gonna get pregnant from all this am I I hope not okay I don't think actually you know nowadays we should shut down

that red light you know she told me too she's like you need to stop using that red light she's like you need to stop using that red light. She's like, you need to stop using that red light machine. That was so funny. Oh my God. Oh man.

All right, Andrew. Yeah. Well, instead of red lights, we have to go shoot with, I guess, white lights because we have a photo shoot right now. Red light district. There you go. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch y'all later.

Bye.