The Nick Bare Podcast - 011: Make Your Diet Easy Again with Jacob Zemer

Episode Date: May 8, 2023

In this episode, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jacob Zemer, a performance coach whose approach to nutrition and fitness is both clear and sustainable. We delved into several topics, including taking the first steps toward fat loss, eating out while dieting, and the importance of fiber in our diets. We also unpack common mistakes people make when trying to make a significant change or build lasting health. Whether you're just starting your health journey or looking for new ideas to stay on track, this episode is full of great insights and practical advice. Save 10% at BPN Supps: https://bit.ly/nickbare10audio Follow for more:  IG: https://www.instagram.com/nickbarefitness/ YT: https://www.youtube.com/@nickbarefitness Keep up with Jacob here: IG: https://www.instagram.com/jacobzemer/  YT: https://youtube.com/@jacobzemer1  Topics: (00:00) Intro (1:45) Jacob’s background (9:47) Benefit of lifting weights (17:47) Extremes in nutrition (24:31) First steps for fat loss (31:31) Fat consumption (39:27) Eating out while dieting (46:20) Intentional decisions (52:29) Caloric intake strategies (54:36) Importance of fiber (1:05:21) Getting started with nutrition (1:20:06) Choosing a sustainable diet

Welcome to the Nick Bear podcast. I've spent the past decade as a CEO building an industry leading supplement brand. There's a story. There's a mission. Serving in the U.S. Army. First video in Korea. And creating a community of inspiring leaders. The mission isn't changing, but it's evolving.

So I'm excited for this next chapter. It's out of you, man. Through powerful, unfiltered conversations. You have to be careful with entrepreneurship. You can get hurt. My mission is to help you unlock your full potential and create the life you desire. This is it. I'm a different person now.

Camera's rolling, and we're on. I'm your host, Nick Bear. Enjoy the episode. Before jumping into this episode, I want to thank you for tuning in and spending your time with me. Every watch and listen truly does matter. Now, we've decided to not take on any sponsors for this podcast

because we don't want to interrupt your listening experience. But if you do want to support me, you can head over to bPNsups.com for all of your performance, endurance, and wellness supplement needs. We offer a wide range of products from amazing tasting protein powders, effective pre-workouts, green superfoods, multivitamins, sleep support, and much more. I've spent the last decade building this brand community and product offering,

and I'm extremely thankful that it has helped so many people. So if you are in need of a new supplement routine, head over to BPNSups.com and use code Nick Bear 10 to save 10% off your order. Now let's jump right into this episode. All right, today on the podcast, we have Jacob Zemer coming in from New York. What's up, dude? How are you? Good.

How are you? Everyone is so nice here. At BPN or Texas? In general, but specifically Texas. Like, people are so kind and like wonderful of having to like acclimate it to it. Yeah, well, I'm from like more north. I'm from Pennsylvania originally. Okay.

Spent some time in New York. Where in Pennsylvania? Central. Okay. So right outside of Hershey, Pennsylvania? Yeah, I'm from Western New York. So, like Bradford, PA is about 45 minutes for me. Okay.

Just south of Buffalo. Yeah, I know the people in New York, I was in New York from my last marathon. The people in New York are very different from the people here in Texas. Yes. And even though, but even the people from New York are very different from the people in Pennsylvania and even Western New York where I'm from. like Western New York, Pennsylvania, much more blue collar. New York is very much like, hey, I've got things to do.

They're not mean. They just have a lot going on and things are expensive. Yeah. So they're moving. Well, as I was explaining to you before we start recording, my overarching theme that I think we can address in this episode is making nutrition easy again. Yeah.

That's kind of the message that I've taken from a lot of your content. Yep. The speeches you've done, the media and press that you've been kind of exposed to. Yeah. But I really want to dive into your background prior to talking about some of these topics. And I know you started a background in finance. Yeah. And you went to finance route because you were chasing, let's say, a paycheck. Yeah, for sure. But not a passion. Yeah, for sure. I think there's a lot to unpack that there's a lot to take away where so many people chase a paycheck rather than a passion. And at some point in their life, they realize, I'm doing the wrong thing. Yeah. I had a pretty

hardfall. Yeah, I kind of want to know, you know, what was it that made the transition from finance to fitness and what that looked like in your background and your story. So let me just start with just one simple thing, like kind of what I do, like my life's work and my business is helping people like reconnect with themselves. So like maybe you were an athlete or maybe you were very into fitness and then you had kids in a career and all this and you kind of watched to touch with that. You like deprioritized yourself for the sake of your family and your career. And so that is really like my life's work is like making that very obtainable for people who have a career and a family and those are their priorities. And then and the back burner is like fitness.

For me, myself, like I grew up in a very small town, 959 people, Portville, New York. My dad was an alcoholic. Mom was 15 years old when she became pregnant with me. And so a lot of my life starting out was kind of, it was like, okay, I'm going to be the first college graduate. I'm like being poor is really terrible. I'm not going to be poor when I grow up. I'm going to have a cool car. I'm going to be jacked.

I'm going to be somebody. And I really had that pervasive urge to like prove to everybody that like I'm going to get out of the small town, not that it's bad, but I just want something more for myself. And so I really like pushed that. And my mom who was, is an incredible woman and really did help me reach my dreams. but the way that she propelled me forward was to encourage those things. Like she had me go to community college when I was 16 years old on top of my normal coursework and take like a public speaking class,

which was probably one of the best things that ever happened to me, taking that public speaking class now with my career. But she really pushed me of like, hey, you're going to be different. Your life's going to be really different than mine. And so I think a lot of what's happened in my life has been like kind of how you deal with seeing yourself differently from that kid who had to like ride a bike to McDonald's first first job who like kid who had to ride a bike to Dale Tile in in only

in New York as this like college job to a guy who has an extremely successful business in like Westchester, New York, which is Westchester and Portville are very, very different places. Yeah. And so I pursued that. I went to college, first college graduate with my family. I went on. I got an MBA degree in finance. And I kind of went into finance career and was just not for me.

I just really had like a hard realization. And it was funny, I had people along the way were like, Jake, this isn't you. But I was just determined. I was so afraid of being poor. I just was like irrational level fear of it. And as I started in that career, I just am not meant to sit at a desk and be on a computer all day. I remember I was working a city group, and in the afternoon, I would go to the gym in the morning, I would go to the gym in the afternoon, I would be sitting there eating like my bison

and sweet potatoes, and I just did not fit in. And at that point, I was like, all right, we got to do a hard reset here. And I went and I started a job actually at Equinox as a trainer. And I went through all the certifications. I wasn't making any money. I was putting most of the money that I was making into additional certifications. I got like over a dozen certifications and tons of education and I did that for about two years and at that point I left Equinox with a lot of valuable tools and especially kind of understanding both sides of it because I always trained myself and worked out so there's that side of fitness but then you have to understand how to apply it to like my demographic and the clientele I worked with and that was kind of where I bridged the two at Equinox. Me always having a

deep passion for training. Because even as that young kid who was back in Portville, New York, the one thing that I could say that I took a lot of pride in was going to the gym. I fell in love with the gym at the YMCA locally. And that brought me like a lot of sense of like value and purpose. And I felt very good about myself and how I looked. I got a lot of compliments on how I was built or my size and things like that, my strength. And so I stuck with that all the way from high school, all the way to college working out. And that passion is what showed me to leave finance and go pursue a career

in helping people get in the best shape of the life. That's kind of what I found the gym too. It was middle to late high school. And up until that point in my life, I played sports, but I wasn't the stud athlete. Yeah, same thing. And I never had like this true passion for team sports.

Same thing. And I told myself, well, I wanted to play collegiate baseball and then professional baseball. Yeah. I don't know if I actually wanted that or if I just thought that's where I was supposed to want as a young man in central Pennsylvania.

And then I found the gym and it was like this new love and passion. Because it wasn't the same when you and I were growing up. Like people really didn't go to college and lift weights all the time. Like this generation, people are going to the gym strictly to lift weights. Like back then you played a sport and on top of you lifted. Like most people at the gym were the jocks in college. I was like fringe where I was like, oh, I just go to the gym. I'm not playing a sport.

I'm just there to hit the. The weight's hard. So it was a different mentality people had. But I, at 16 years old, I remember my mom was like, you know, I was pretty skinny. And I always had a big frame. So I had, you know, wide clavicles. And I was tall. So I had long arms.

So mom's like, why don't you go to the gym? And I was already, like, taking a couple community college classes on top of, like, my workload. So I would go to the YMCA in between. Dude, that summer I fell in love with it. I just, it was like the first thing that really, like, ignited me. And I felt very good about myself. and then, you know, about a year later, people started giving me compliments.

And from where I had come from, like, with my situation, like my dad was always overly harsh with me, my biological father. My stepdad came into my life, and he was like just a wonderful, wonderful human being. But I didn't have a real strong sense of self, and the weight room really did that. And it gave me a strong sense of direction.

I felt like a sense of progression and a sense of like self-improvement from it and fulfillment that I just had not experienced up to that point in my life. That's almost for me, too. It was this new level. of confidence. Yeah. Which makes me,

as we're having this conversation, it makes me think how weightlifting, weight training is being incorporated into school programs because it is this massive confidence booster. If anyone in their age needs a confidence booster, it's high school for a lot of people. Yeah. I remember walking through a room being afraid to do with my hands.

You know, you're preoccupied with, you know, your own thoughts and things like that. And being able to fill out like a T-shirt just made me feel really good about it. And also, too, just again, the progression of like,

hey, I think that's why people get so into lifting and like the outside world's like, why are you so into this? But there's something about lifting a 40 pound dumbbell and then a 50 pound dumbbell and a 60 pound dumbbell. And just having that like kind of locus of control, feeling like there's something in your life that you kind of have some passion and drive for. Yeah.

You know, definitely. But I will say I do see more high schoolers than I ever have before at the gym training. And I think that's one of the few like really positive things about Instagram. I think Instagram is amazing for business. And I do think Instagram has got people to go work out. I'm curious growing up small town, poor, you know, to parents who really don't prioritize

nutrition, like, what was your diet like growing up? I mean, that's so funny because I look back, and you never want to look back with this mentality of if I knew this stuff back then, but I was like, I remember when I was first lifting and I was still eating like, you know, like those chocolate pies, like those cheap chocolate pies and stuff like the gas station? Exactly. Oh, yeah. I mean, we're talking like real, like, you know, there wasn't like, you know, there wasn't

Like, there was a TV in the house, but there were five of us, and it was pretty tight. I had been to the dentist once in my life as a child. So there was health insurance. There wasn't any abuse with my biological father, but it was pretty like, you know, things were tight. And I think when I was first eating, I had no idea what to do. I would, didn't even really, I understood that I had to get protein. But I think the biggest misconception I didn't understand was number one, it's consistency. with training, because even though I love doing it, would sometimes get sporadic, like, meaning

I would do it for like three months and then like take a couple months off and then get back to it. And then number two, just a lack of understanding of like really what you need to do. But also, two, there just wasn't the information. And that's what's so amazing. Again, one of the few really positive things about social media is like, it might be hard to see the forest from the trees, but at least now we have access to information. Like most people understand creatine and things like that, that back then you'd have to really search for. I remember a friend of mine, he pulled up some bodybuilding magazine. It wasn't, maybe it was muscle and fitness.

It was something, no, it was more hardcore than that, was muscle mag or something. They showed me Ronnie Coleman's leg routine. And I looked at it and it was like 23, 25 sets. And I was like, I was like, cool dude, but we're not Ronnie Coleman. I was like, this doesn't make sense for us, you know? And so I started doing a deeper dive because, you know, the internet was coming out and things like this. And like, I remember I spent like, I think my parents like, tie to sit down, talk with me. And they're like, you spent $400 on CompuServe this month.

Like you got to chill out. But I was really searching and starting to look in the internet. And I remember I found T-Nation. And that was my first real, like, oh, there's actual intelligent literature out there. Do you remember T-Nation? Oh, yeah. It's still there. Yeah.

So that was my first, like, oh, and then I discovered a guy, I believe the first guy I would give credit to is John Meadows. I found him. And I actually, like, was an early subscriber to him on the forums. He was called Mountain Dog. And I was, like, reading his stuff. And then later on, I found out about Ben Bikolsky. and these guys I was like, oh my gosh. And I started watching YouTube and stuff like that to learn how to train.

Like when you're getting into like early college high school, was like when YouTube was coming out. And I would follow like Ben Bukolsky in his early videos and watch that stuff. And that's really where I got like my first formal education on training from. So I ended up going to school for nutrition. Yeah. Studying nutrition. And it was between my junior and senior year of college,

I decided to do my first bodybuilding show. Okay. So I'm thinking, okay, I need to lose all this body fat. I need to get on a diet. I don't know where to get started. Yeah. Because from what we were learning in school about nutrition, it was centered around disease intervention. Yeah.

cardiovascular disease, diabetes. Yeah. So much of it was diabetes back in the day. That was the primary. Oh, it was a primary. Even endocrinologies, like was so, even now with like TRT and hormone optimization coming out, the majority of what they still learn in school is surrounding diabetes. Yeah, that was our only focused, disease intervention.

And I went to my professor, and it was interesting because my professor was this woman who was incredibly overweight to be a nutrition professor. And I asked her if she could write me a meal plan to get the 6% body fat to step on stage in 16 weeks. And she said, I don't even know where to start for that. So I went to the internet. And I found these YouTubers, and I don't know if you remember Matt Ogus. Yeah. So Matt Ogus was like practicing and preaching flexible dieting. Yep.

If it's your macros. Yeah. Albertton Nunez and 3DMJ and Eric Helms were like becoming popular. Eric Helms. I still follow like your helms. Like 3DMJ is a great organization and a group of coaches. So I found flexible dieting and if it's your macros. So I started tracking my macros and I lost all this body fat to step on stage.

That's how I found fitness was, you know, originally it was, okay, I know I had to have to prioritize protein. Yep. And I had to get calories in. Yep. And then it was, okay, well, let's manipulate. macronutrients and calories to achieve a certain body composition. And then since then, obviously, I've learned and studied more, and I've placed more emphasis on quality and nutrition and nutrients as opposed to just

quantity and macros. But, I mean, probably just like you, we've seen this fitness industry from a nutrition perspective and lens and training have all been changed so much. I think even like now, even like if it's your macros versus flexible dieting, like now those mean two different things even, right? even like how much that's even changed. And remember when if it fits your macros first came out and everybody was like doing Pop-Tarts and being like, yeah, and they're like, oh, I hit it.

And like, then they had to eat like, I forget what they tried to do originally. They tried to like give like a sugar limitation or something like that to prevent people from just eating junk food. Yeah. And then it's like what you see now and like I preach still flexible dieting, but I preach it around like what the literature says, which is that 70 to 80 percent and I want to be very clear to the literature. So what we know is that if the majority of your diet like 20 to 30 percent of your diet comes

from non-whole foods, you're fine. And that means even you could have room like where you could have weight protein, which is like very lightly processed all the way to something like fitting in a burger, you know, that you get from a fast food place, as long as it's a small portion of your total calories, like in that 20% range, right?

And when you look at it like back then, they were literally like, oh yeah, you can eat whatever you want and fit it into your macros. It was like grossly difference. But now I'm still preaching flexible dieting and like, hey, but let's do the 80-20 rule with that. I'm the same way.

I know loosely what I'm eating every single day, maconutrient-wise and calorie-wise. Yep. I always prioritize protein. Yep. And then, you know, I know you've talked about this as well, but like I don't track carbs and fats very strictly, but I'm very aware and conscious of the amount of calories I'm consuming on a daily basis. And that was my point earlier about how if it fits your macros, which is like people still do like, here's my protein today, here's my carbs, here's my fat. I just do flexible where it's like, here's my calories, here's my protein. And like my fat carb intake is very little consideration for me, like a day-to-day.

There might be moments like when you got ready for like a race or you're getting ready to get on stage where you'll carve up. But in general, for me, I'm just mostly concerned about calories and then protein. And then I actually have additional, what I work with my coaching clients is I do calories, I do protein, and then I do fiber. And the reason for that being is fiber is so filling. And we have so much data to indicate how good fiber is for your health. I eventually do want to talk about fiber in this episode.

Yeah. But the first thing I want to dive into, I would love to hear your opinion on when and why food and nutrition has become this political and religious commitment. It's so funny you said that because that's kind of where my head is right now on nutrition. Because I reluctantly got on Instagram like two and a half years ago. And it took me like two years to get 10,000 followers. and then in the last like six months it's gone to like 200,000 followers. And I'll put up stuff where I'll go to the grocery store and talk about what I'm picking up or things like that.

And people have such extremely strong feelings on stuff. And I'm so surprised because, you know, most of America, 72% is overweight. And so to have such extreme views on food, I almost find that it's like self-defeating. You know, people just choose these extremely exclusionary. diets and then they end up where they, you know, they sustain this binge, sustain, sustain, they binge because they're adhering to just impossible standards that, like, I only know a handful of people in my life that can do, you know, like I have a couple people I knew, I knew a police officer became an IFBB pro, Joe, and Joe literally could go

to a party and have Tupperware, right? But like, I've met like three, three Joe's of my life. Most people, they're going to want to like enjoy social time with their family. They're going to want to go out with their friends. And so people have gotten so extreme where there can't be any seed oil whatsoever. All you can eat is fruit and this. And on the flip side, people are still like carbohydrates are bad. Or, hey, there's two grams of sucralose or this. Or crazy stuff like even arrhythmatol.

Rhythmatol was recently published in a study. And the study and it came on on things like New York Post and stuff like that, like news media's picked it up because they love a headline. and it was saying that arrhythmatol caused heart disease. Well, it turns out the patients that they were looking at were people who had already previous cardiovascular disease, right? So they're looking at people who already had a heart attack and then evaluating how much arithmeticutals in their diet.

So people have gotten very extreme about it. My favorite thing about when these media outlets and news articles pick up these headlines is that it goes wild. Yeah. And I always look to people that I trust, like Dr. Lane Norton. Yes. I always know Lane Norton's going to cover it. Yep.

Like, hey, what's Lane saying? Yep. What's P.D.R.T.A. saying. Yes. What's Heberman saying? Yes. And the issue is that these media outlets, some influencers, people online, they will cherry pick pieces of information to guide a narrative for their content or their business. Yeah.

And that is exactly the right. So let's look at like two parts of that, right? So when we talk, for example, like Lane Norton, who's a guy, I knew he was. instantly, people sent me the study about arithmetic tall. And when I looked at, I looked at the subject group. So you look at the methodology and then you look at who they're testing. And it said evaluating people for ongoing cardiovascular disease. The second I saw that, I said, oh, look, I can't delve into this study right now.

But I'm like looking at this study. I already know that these people have previous cardiovascular disease. Because the study literally said, looked at a series of subjects with ongoing cardiovascular disease. That means these people already are at risk for cardiovascular. So then two days later, because Lane had to get on top of it because it's huge for him. he was like, hey, this is the study, and by the way, 60% of these people have had previous heart attacks and X amount have diabetes.

So I knew right there, but general population is not going to click the hyperlink for the study in it and see where it's coming from, you know, like what's actually going on. And what people need to understand is like things like seed oil or things like that, listen, whenever you take any sort of oil and you heat it, whether that's olive oil, something where you take it past its smoke point,

it becomes a carcinogen, right? And that happens at a restaurant as well. When you order a steak and they pour olive oil on it and they heat it, that's carcinogenic. It happens. But the reality is this context of like how much of that is present in your diet. And I think for any of those things, there's a market where they can now come up with, oh, here's my product and it doesn't have any seed oil. And by the way, it's three times the cost of this other product that has two grams of seed oil from it.

Like something that has three grams of fat total. Well, that's one-fourth of a tablespoon of sesame seed oil. You're really concerned about one fourth of a tablespoon. That was interesting because, you know, I have a daughter right now. She's almost 10 months old. Yeah. And we give her these things. They're called teethers.

Yeah. Like organic, just like vegetables that are baked and dehydrated. And you can give it to her. And if her teeth are bothering her, she can just teeth on them. Yeah. Like very limited ingredients. And we were on Instagram last night and me, my wife, and someone shared this post about these teetters with us saying, it was just leak.

They have arsenic and lead in them. I was like, I know exactly where this is going. I don't have to ask the question. I guarantee that on the packaging, there's a Prop 65 warning because in California, you have to have Prop 65 warning on everything.

So someone read that. Which is great. I love that about California, by the way. It gets a little extreme in certain situations. So someone took a photo of that, shared it. Now they're like, oh my gosh, there's heavy metals in what I'm giving my baby.

It's like, yeah, well, if you're pulling vegetables down on the ground in organic soil, you're also pulling up some heavy metals that are naturally occurring. Yes. You know, going back to the California, why I said I like it, it's not because they don't get extreme about things like, for example, that. But there are, if you have a product in California and you're saying the calories are X, they will come after you. So like a lot of times when like the FDA allows a 20% margin of error on calories. Right. Right. California doesn't play. California will go and look and be like, uh, this actually has this many calories. So I like them because they're highly aggressive about actually getting down to it.

But like some of the stuff like you said, it's a little bit much. They enforce regulations pretty well. Which is great because most of the other states aren't paying attention, right? Like if you have a business and it's in California and you're saying this many calories or on something or this much protein, I feel like you've actually been vetted. Whereas in other places I'm like, I look at it and I'm like, all right, this might be off by 20%. And that's usually what I do. Like I had some tacos this morning, a breakfast taco. So I saw this.

Delicious. So I had like my normal breakfast with some protein and some veggies and some fruit. And then my next meal I knew was going to be like something I was going to enjoy. But I just, when I ran the math on those tacos, I thought, okay, it's probably like $4.50. And then I just was like, okay, let's add 20% to that because what are they using to cook and white might be off on that? And then I always opt and say, okay, when I looked online, they said they're 22 grams of protein. I'm going to assume that they're both 15 grams of protein. So I only had 30 grams of protein that meal.

So I actually look at it as less favorable whether they're saying a protein, assuming it's a little less and I always assume it's a little bit more calories. So assuming people are listening this episode and they're like, okay, so I shouldn't follow a diet that is like this religious and political commitment. I don't have to go to the extremes. When you start working with a new client or you start having a conversation with someone, say that they want to get ready for summer. And right now it's early May. Summer's coming up. People are going to go on the beach. what are some of the steps you provide people to start making progress towards improving body

composition, losing some body fat, just regaining nutrition and training in their life? So what happens primarily is people either a referral and I always been referral, or it's something like this podcast, or it's something like my Instagram. And someone reaches out to me, they usually sign up. And then from there, I need to get very quantitative data about the person, age, weight, height, level of activity, what do you have prior experience with? And so I have a pretty built out automation and like where I can gather all the information

I need about them. And then from there I want to ask what they like to eat. Give me three examples of breakfast. Give me three examples of lunch. Give me three examples of dinner. And then give me three examples of snacks. And like let me know. Is it kosher?

Like do you have any intolerances? Is there anything you just don't like to eat? What kind of condiments? Like very detailed. Like what are vegetables you actually enjoy eating? If lunchtime you have to order out, like for example, you go to sweet greens or you go to one of these spots,

Tell me, is that where, like, when you're working Monday through Friday, like, do you eat those spots? And it lets me then put together like a template basis of their diet based around what they do. Because the thing is, is that if you hate eggs and I tell you to have eggs every morning, that's not going to work, right? Like, I want to know what do you actually eat. And then I'll just improve it. I'll optimize it around you. And then I give them very much a calorie goal and then talk to them about where their protein floor should be. And that's how I see.

I see calories as a ceiling. and I see protein as a floor. So this is your caloric ceiling. You don't want to go above this ceiling, right? If you want to try to be like losing weight, that's our ceiling, but I have like a protein floor. So my protein floor for me,

I try to hit 220 grams of protein every day. If I hit more, it's fine. It's just going to convert to glycogen, right? It's going to go through a process of gluconeogenesis, and it's just going to become glycogen. It's not a problem. So I really have like a minimum requirement of protein that I want to have every day

and a maximum amount of calories. And then I talk to him about what's your fiber intake. And that's really like where we start the conversation. And then I want to get labs. People are just not getting blood work done. And it's just so vital that annually you get your labs looked at. Um, I get blood work done like monthly. Oh, dude. I, I do it four times a month or four times a year at a minimum on top of like there might be other things. But I have a quarterly appointment for it. Um, you know, for you, because you've looked at like with your training and stuff like

that where you've dropped down at testosterone and you've had other stuff going on or, you know, you're running the way you are, you want to make sure you're hydrated, situations like that. For me, I want to see it at least quarterly what's going on with me. And for clients, I usually have them do it biannual. I mean, look, I don't think anybody thinks HMOs are good guys, the insurance companies, and they'll pay for you to get blood work done twice a year. It's not because they're altruistic. It's because they're trying to mitigate their costs. It's like if, you know, like an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. If they can find out what's going wrong with you quicker, they can save themselves a lot of money. Do you get a lot of push,

back in regards to protein with some new clients? Are they afraid of consuming too much protein? So that's an interesting question. So I think the more and more we're seeing, actually it's so funny. So my girlfriend, two of her friends are doctors and one of them gave was like, Jake gets too much protein. And I was like, oh my gosh. And I was like, all right, so you've never had a biology or a nutrition class in your life. You have no certification. You probably didn't. I'm not being disrespectful, but physical therapists aren't doctors. Doctors aren't physical therapist, nutritionists aren't doctors, nutritionists aren't physical therapists. These all have, they're all practitioners and they all have value, but they're not the same thing.

That's a real thing. It's a real issue of people trying to use their certifications and credibility to operate in different lengths. Even personal trainers who talk about nutrition. Do you have any certification? Do you have any education? Then why are you discussing this? It's past your scope. It's a real issue.

For a doctor, like if you're a homeopathic doctor or you're a doctor or you're a, you're an orthopedic surgeon, like, great, you know way more about a lot of things than I do, but you probably don't know about protein consumption. And more and more of the research we see with protein consumption, like you have to have an absurd amount or have having prior issues with your kidneys. Right. So I don't really get too much pushback on the amount of protein, but I do sometimes get pushback on how you achieve that goal.

It's surprising there are a lot of people who are still concerned about weight protein and stuff like this, like taking a protein. powder. And I just, it's hard for me to take it seriously, Nick, because so many people drink. Like, how are you going to tell me that you can have a tequila, but you're worried about a scoop of protein? It's just, it's very hard to take seriously. So those clients, like, I just have a gentle conversation with them. And if there's real pushback, I then have a less gentle conversation with them about you had two glasses of wine last night and you're really going to tell me that you can't have a scoop of protein to help hit your goals. Like, what are we doing here?

Do you find that a lot of people through trying to consume more protein naturally choose sources that are more flavorful and fatier so that they start increasing protein and then dietary fat shoots up as well? Yeah, and that's a real conversation you have to have with people about lean protein and understanding that. And I think there's two components to that like right now with like the carnivore diet being in so fat and stuff like that. Like it's just very clear for people like, yes, dietary fat slows digestion.

so it will cause you to be satiated more. But I like to view it as almost like add-ons. So, you know, like the classic, I'm not talking about McDonald's here. Okay, I don't want you to go to McDonald's. It's not part of nutrition. But when you go to McDonald's, you say, hey, I'd like a Big Mac and they go,

would you like fries with that? That's how you should view your diet. Okay, so here's what I mean. You have lean protein, you have fruit and vegetables. That is your template. That's where you start. Get lean protein, get your fruit or vegetables. The add fries with that are potatoes or rice or rice

or a high fiber bread, right? Or the add-on is olive oil or avocado or things like that. So I always tell people like foundation is lean protein and stuff like that. And then if you choose to have a fattier steak, that's excellent. Have a fattier steak, that's fine, but just realize that you added something onto that. You've added calories on, and so you're going to have to cut other things back. So if I had like a very fatty piece of meat and then I had like my fruit, like maybe one cup of fruit with it or I had two cup of vegetables with it, I'm probably going to be.

to hold off on having a couple rice with that or I'm going to lessen that portion. And that's really where like context comes into play so much and why like this political or religious notion of nutrition just doesn't work. Because it's not that rice is bad and it's not that, you know, fatier like a rib eye is bad. It's just how much are you having of either of those? It's all context. I mean, fat makes everything taste better. Yes. One of the things I have been doing, because I love, like in the morning, I have eggs. Yeah. But I'll add some, egg whites in to get more protein and some less fat. Yep. And then for my lunch,

I love ground beef. I love like an 8515 grass fed, grass finish ground beef. You know, you mix it with some rice and like that you heated up, that fat cooks out. Yeah. But I mean, if you're doing eight ounces of 8515, you're getting like 34 grams of fat in there. Yeah. So I'll cut

that in half. I'll do about four ounces of ground beef. I'll do four ounces of elk or four ounces of bison. But I find that a lot of people, they don't realize how much fat they're consuming in a day, especially, you know, say you're cooking dinner at home at night and you're salting some vegetables, there's some olive oil on there. You're making chicken.

You marinate olive oil. People add olive oil to everything, and they don't realize it. Olive oil, salad dressing, these things, these are things in people's diets. They don't really, you just take that and you just pour on, especially I grew up Italian, you have that heavy hand with the olive oil. There's 400 calories. Like, I tell people all the time, broccoli, Rob is not a vegetable, it's a fat. Right?

Like it's just, it's dosed in it. And so I think actually, believe it or not, fat is the surprising thing. Because we grew up in a generation you and I at least did where carbs were so demonized

and people don't realize like how much fat attributes to their weight gain because you think about olive oil. You can't really see it. Right? You think about butter and oil how much it's used on cooking

when you order out, right? Like a potato, you can see a potato. It's right there. You can see how much butter they put on your steak, right? And then on top of it, when people talk about things like, oh my gosh, chips,

chips have so many carbs. Go look at the back of the nutrition label. It's almost as much fat as it is carbs in it, right? Same thing with pizza. Pizza is not just a carbohydrate. Pizza is a carb and a fat. Ice cream isn't just a carb. Ice cream is a carb and a fat. And so fats are such an integral part of it that people just don't see. And then when you start selecting protein options, oftentimes people don't understand the difference between a protein and a lean protein. Like lean proteins are like egg whites, elk, venison, certain cuts like lay, of top sirloin of steak. And then what people also get very confused about is just because it's turkey or chicken

does not necessarily mean it's lean. So like you can get 8515 ground turkey and that's the same thing as 8515 ground beef. So now you just had the turkey. So you got like, oh, the turkey bacon instead of pork bacon, it might just have just as much fat. And people don't realize that all the time. So I think fat is one of those things that people grossly underestimate and they just need to have some education about it.

I do want to dive deeper into that because, you know, I recently helped a friend lose some weight in preparation for a marathon. Yeah. And he wanted to lose about 10 pounds. So we just did a quick look at his diet. So he didn't think he was consuming that many calories. Yeah. As we took a look, I mean, he added olive oil to everything. And he didn't realize it.

There's a great client of mine. She's amazing. Melissa, she worked with me. And she was crushing her diet. I just knew her. I knew she wasn't lying to me about anything. And I had a conversation with her, and she's a trainer. And I said, Mel, are you counting the olive oil she's using?

She said, no. And we got her to drop down to goal in like four weeks after that because she just did realize how much olive oil she's using. And that's all the time. I think between olive oil and not realizing how much preparation goes into food, like when people go to Italy, I have clients, and I know they're misbehaving. They're in Italy, and they should. They should enjoy the moment.

But they come back, like, up one pound. And I know that if they had ate that same amount of food in America, they would have been up like five pounds, six pounds, right? Easily. And it's because when they're cooking food in Italy, it's just a single ingredient, right? There's not butter on everything. They didn't throw cream in every single thing. And that's another big thing that people misunderstand.

And even people don't understand, like a Caesar salad, it's got approximately seven to 800 calories. You know what else has to 800 calories? A classic American cheeseburger. So if you go look at the menu at Houston or an applebee's or something like that, Caesar salad and the cheeseburger are very similar in calories. So most people are just simply underestimating what they're eating out. They don't realize that that healthy lunch, how many calories they just had.

Yeah, I was at Maggreens. Do you what Maggreens is? No. Mad Greens is essentially like a Chipotle style, but they make salads for you. Okay. It's actually really good. Yeah. And I was traveling last week, so I stopped at a Maggreens really quick.

And I asked them if they can make a custom bowl for me. Because they make custom bowls. This one restaurant, this one Mag Greens couldn't make a custom bowl. I would go in, I'd get rice, chicken, maybe some avocado. And I was looking at the dressings you can add at the end. And they have the calories listed. All the dressings range from 150 to 180 calories. So you can take something that was 500 calories and turn to 1,000 really quickly.

I bet you that's 180 calories per tablespoon. Yeah, per serving. Per serving, exactly. There's heavy hands. Maybe it's two tablespoons, whatever it is. but that's like something like blue cheese, those things, 180 calories are serving. So if you go on top of it, it's exactly that.

You just added 450 calories, 500 calories to it. So Max Lugavir, he had this Instagram post last week, and I shared it because I thought it was very applicable, especially as we head into summer, people were wanting to lose weight, and more people are traveling, eating out. And his post said, restaurant food is always drenched in oil, steamed veggies, oil, roasted veggies, oil,

grilled protein, oil. Literally any sauce, oil and sugar. Yeah. And I went into the comments and it was actually all these people that work in the industry, the food industry, the restaurant saying this is 100% correct. It is. On the griddle, we're adding oil. Veggies, oil.

There's oil and butter added to all the stuff. You don't realize that when you're trying to eat healthy while traveling. I have a client who was a chef at Ketch, so it's a very popular restaurant in New York City. And I helped them lose 110 pounds. and he walked me back and he wanted me to come in and cook for me and I came back and he showed me what they do with the steak. They'll cook the steak and by the way, the food there is phenomenal.

Out of sight. But they cooked the steak. They opened up a sheet pan of butter, took it, dip it in the butter, put it on top. They garnished it with butter and that's after they've cooked it. Oh, of course. It's going to taste good. Of course. It's going to taste amazing.

That's just realistic though. Like you can't get a piece of meat to be that tender without what. One, it being a fatty piece of meat. And then two, if you want to get it really tender, you have to add butter to it. So it's funny. We were traveling in February. And I was on prep while we were traveling. And we ate at this restaurant for breakfast, a really good restaurant.

And I ordered egg whites. And they came out. And I was like, oh, my God, these are the best egg whites. Yeah, too good to be true. I don't know. I've wanted so hard to believe. I know. It's got to be the way they cooked it.

It's got to be the way they cooked it. So the next day, we went back at the same restaurant. And I said, can I get egg whites with no oil or butter added? Totally different. Completely different. Totally different. But dude, those egg plates were so good. Oftentimes, it's the problem is it's like, that's like going out and partying and then you

go to study for the test the next day and you didn't get a good grade. Well, you didn't get a good grade because you didn't study for the test. But what about the person who stayed up all night has been cramming for the last two weeks and they get a bad grade on the test? That's horrific. And that's what happens when you're really working hard and you just don't understand what you're missing. And that's really what I seek to try to help people understand is like, hey, here's

what you're missing because there's nothing worse than truly trying to do something and not achieving it, right? Like if I go to Whataburger and I see it's 800 calories and I make that decision and it's a conscious decision that I'm going to have that in my life versus if I go to lunch and I get a Caesar salad and I'm like, oh, I'm making the right decision. I'm making the healthy decision and they're pretty equivalent in calories. That's terrible because person A who went to Wadaberger. He's the guy who's going out and partying instead of studying and the person getting the Caesar salad, that the person who studied hard and they still got to see in the test. So how do you guide people in making the right decisions while eating out when they're trying to reach these fitness goals?

Clients of mine, they send me the menus and I vet them. So I get back to my business is very much based on. I reach out, I talk to clients every single day. And so Monday through Sunday, clients are in communication with me. Any question they need answered, get answered within 24 hours. So what I'll tell a client is when you sign up, like if you send me a text on Thursday with the menu, I will have it vetted for you. You say you're going on a dinner Friday night. You send me the menu Thursday?

I'll bet it for you. Send me the menu Friday morning. I'll get the venue vet the menu vetted for you. Say you send me the menu for a 7 o'clock dinner at 5.55. Good luck. Right. But if you said it to me in reasonable time, I'll go through the menu and I'll be like, here's what you need to know about these items and here you all.

And here's four items you can order off this menu and that you can stay on track. And sometimes it might be like, hey, you can get that steak, but we got to remove like the fritz. Right. And just give them a couple, like, really simple things. And I think the biggest thing is also just getting people understand, like, most people respect you if you're following a diet. Some people will still judge you a little bit if you don't drink. Like I understand when you're to work dinner, you're going to have to have a cocktail.

But most people, if you order the salmon, good for you, dude. I have a client who's on television NFL network, and he was at a event, and everybody was eating this dessert afterwards and just like overindulging, like all these dad bods. And Kyle was like, somebody was like, Kyle, you're not going to have any. And he's like, no. And the guy was like, good for you. you. Most people respect if you're following a diet in the year 2023. What about for people who don't have a coach who aren't working with someone?

How do you guide them on making the right decision? Okay. Grilled, steamed, always good words. Crispy, fried, always bad words. Sauce on the side, always. Don't ever put a glaze. Don't ever put a sauce. Don't ever put a salad dressing on it.

Just ask for it on the side. And those are simple things you can do. People get very soft countess. Remember I was talking about myself and I saw myself as a kid and I was walking through the room like worried about to know. Nobody was looking at me. I was so worried about like walking through the room and the way I was paying attention to me. Everybody has their own thing going on. Same thing when you're at the dinner table. Nobody is paying attention to you.

If you got ordered something and you said, if you don't like tomatoes and you said, I don't want any tomatoes in this dish, nobody would judge you for that. Nobody's going to know that you said, I don't want the cheese on it for any other reason that you just didn't want to enjoy the cheese on it. So take it off the dish. It's the simplest thing to do. And the same thing. sauce, ask for that sauce on the side and try to think of protein options that are grilled. So always good choices, fish, usually always delicious. Chicken, usually leaner.

And anytime you can get those things with the sauce and the side. And if you're going to order steak out, just order a reasonable portion. You do not need a 20 ounce steak. And if you do, it should be three meals. I kind of, I've seen it in two like different buckets. Like, there's times when I go out for dinner and I know I'm like, I'm going to eat something good. Yes. I'm getting, I'm getting that 22-ounce cowboy rabbi. Yes. Like this weekend, we're going to Steiner Ranch Steakhouse. Yep. On my favorite steakhouses in Austin. Yep.

And I know I'm getting the 22-ounce cowboy, medium rare. I'll probably throw some lobster butter on top, side of mushrooms. So you've been thinking about this for weeks. I've been thinking about it. Yeah. But like I also know that I'm not going to eat until I'm so stuffed because I'm going to feel this next three days afterwards. But I'm going to really enjoy it. But then there's times I'm traveling and this is not like a celebratory meal. we're not like going out on this big occasion. I just need food. That's what I'm being super conscious of what I'm ordering.

It's funny, we were, or I was in the airport this past weekend. I was in LAX. Yeah. And I was looking for some quality protein, some vegetables, and some good food. So I went to this one restaurant in the terminal and I ordered the salmon with like the dressings on the side. it was the smallest piece of salmon ever. Okay.

And then I ordered a, I got an heirloom mauserella salad too. Okay. So I ordered two meals to get like some vegetables and some protein. It ended up being $95.

Oh my God. Like you can make it happen. So I just get the piecemeal things together. And then afterwards, you know, I was thinking, okay, this piece of salmon was probably 25 grams of protein. So then I left the restaurant.

I stopped in, got one of those fair life high protein kind of shakes, to get another 26 grams of protein in, hit about 50 grams of protein. But that's kind of the way I piecemeal my food choices, especially while I'm traveling. I'm trying to stay on track is,

okay, let's start with protein. I want to hit 50 grams of protein. I want to keep it leaner. I'm assuming there's probably giving me some fats, add in there through a sauce or oil or just how it was cooked. Yeah. And I want to get some veggies in.

I don't get some quality carbs. Yeah. And you can build your plate accordingly, and you can make a lot of modifications with a restaurant, and they'll work with you a lot of the time. but it's having that discipline and that intention when you order. Okay, so can I backtrack for one second and then go to what you just said?

Yeah. So when you talk about when you're going at dinner, is this a special occasion or is it just a Tuesday? And that's vital because when I'm saying to you like, oh, do this, that, look, I went to Weta Burger last night. I'm never going to be able to go to that. There's none of them in the Northeast. So that to me constitutes like, hey, this is a rare occasion. And then I'm going to go to, what is it, Terry Blacks here in Terry Blacks.

We're going to hit that up at 2 o'clock today. Like there's a once in a, but the rest of my week is really on point and I'm making very conscious decisions. And even when I go to Terry Blacks, I'm not going to eat enough that my scale is going to be, I'm going to be bloated for the next three days. My scale is going to be up significantly. I'm going to enjoy the meal and move on. And there are moments in life that you should cherish.

I always tell people like, look, if it's Friday night and it's just a Friday night, it's another Friday night and your kids want to get pizza, you could have a slice of pizza. It's 300-something calories. You can't have three slices of pizza. You can't go down in the middle of the night and house the rest of the box, okay? The cardinal sin to me is eating the cookie off the counter when nobody's around. You're not enjoying an experience. There's nothing unique about that.

But there are moments in life where food is part of the celebration. And you should have it. Even the other day, where I was at a, my girlfriend made a cake. And everybody was enjoying the cake. And I knew it was very important to her because she loves to bake. And I don't usually fully appreciate that, sadly. And I had a slice of the cake. And it was delicious.

And like, that's fine. You can make it work. And then there are other moments in life where you're just like, again, it's context. It doesn't matter. I'm eating this for protein. And then to the second thing you said about how you can piece together a meal, that's what I was trying to say earlier about like,

do you want to add fries to that? Like when I go out, I look, where's my lean protein? Where's my fruit or my vegetables? And then from there, you can add on or add not add on, right? And if you're ordering out or you're on travel and going,

I would suggest to you like look for your lean protein, look for your fruit or vegetables, and that's it. Because the rest of the calories are going to probably come from the oil that's on it or the other things that have been added on. You don't need to have anything else with that. Do you find that with clients, it is the choice through of discipline of what they're eating or is it sometimes the binge in the quantity of?

Because I know from personal experience, I'll go through periods of time where I'm super restrictive, especially when I'm in a prep. And I mean, that cake story, it's taken me back to so many preps I've been through where there's been a special occasion. and I'm like, no, I'm not touching it. I'm not even like, I'm not even licking the icing. I will not touch it. And I've done that before.

And then there's this finally like this big celebratory event and you go all in. You have the cake plus more. This is really good and this is something I've been thinking about because it takes an extreme amount of discipline to order a doctor pepper shake and have four sips and then throw it out. Extreme. Extreme. And most people are not that. And I do realize that over the, it's any other muscle. Like it's any of their muscle.

You know how your biceps have gotten bigger? Right? You trained it. And discipline is the same thing. You train it. So I'm at the point now where I've got pretty big discipline so I can do those things. For most people, I would just say, just don't touch it. And there are certain things that I still have.

Like if it was an ice cream cake, I love ice cream cake. Right. So if there was an ice cream cake, I probably wouldn't have any because it probably would set me off. Right. I love chip witches. I love ice cream cakes. If I have one of those, very hard not to have three of those. but with most things now at this point I have built up a pretty big level of discipline.

If you're new, stick with set rules. Like a rule might be, I don't eat any sugar or I always put sauce on the side. And by having those rules, it kind of like, that's your line in the sand. Because I think you said it earlier. Remember you said intention? I think it is all about attention. I think even hiring me, you're getting a ton of experience. I'm a ton of experience doing this.

You're getting a strong education on the subject. You're getting a firm hand. I've done this over and over and over again. We have like 23 transformation posts in Q. That means a person that hit their weight loss goal. The normal success rate on diet is 3%. I have closer to a 60% success rate, which is bonkers when you're talking about weight loss

with especially like executive level or just everyday people losing like lifestyle clients. But at the same time, like intention, buy-in is everything. If I can get somebody's buy-in, if I can get them to buy-in to our process, they're going to succeed. If I can get people to be intentional about what they're doing, that's all it is.

Like when you train, like you've trained in the past, we've gone to the gym and you haven't had a program, right? Versus when you have a program and you're like, today I'm going to hit 315 on squats for 12 reps. Last week I hit 11. Like that intention is powerful, dude. It is.

When you say I'm going to get one more rep or even your tag, like we'll go one more mile like that, like that's powerful. And it's the same thing with dieting. When you sit down and you say, hey, I'm at Bear Burger or I'm at Shake Shack with my kids and I'm going to enjoy the moment with them, but that moment doesn't have to involve me eating everything in sight. That intention is very powerful.

And I think that's the most important thing about dieting is just being intentional, being in your thoughts, being in the process, looking at it. Because if you are, and I meet people like this and they're not a get done kind of person or if that's your mentality, if you just want to quit any time, you go on and want to get sucked away with the current, I can't help you. but if you want to be intentional and you actually want to do this, we can do it. I've met a lot of people who struggle with their weight, and a lot of times it's related to a binge issue. Yes.

I think people who struggle with binging that you need to set boundaries to make sure that you don't. Like you don't snack after eight. Right. Or like for example, you know, say like you and the family are making dinner at home at night and you load that plate,

and you load that plate properly where it's your protein, your vegetables and then some carbs. Yep. And like whatever's on that plate you eat, but you don't go back for seconds and thirds. Just setting that one boundary there can be super powerful. Makes you think back to, you know,

you mentioned ShakeShack. After my bodybuilding show, we ended up going to Shake Shack. And, you know, I took that first bite of that burger. I got a double cheeseburger. I got truffle fries, a chocolate shake,

and chicken nuggets. I was like, I'm going to eat this, and I'll be, satisfied. And it wasn't like a lot of food, but like it was, it was some good food for being done with prep. I was like that first bite of the burger. And as soon as I took that first bite of the burger, it's almost like all self-control was gone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was one of the weirdest moments of my life because I finished my food and I was full. I wasn't hungry,

but I couldn't stop. Yeah. So I finished my daughter's food. I finished my wife's food. Everyone else who wasn't finishing their food. That happens all the time with people in competition, all the time. It was wild. They go off. like 13 pounds on a weekend. Like I was very aware of what I was doing in the moment. I was like, I need to stop this or I'm not, I'm not ever going to stop. But I didn't stop until I ate all the food.

Now I got that one binge out of the way post show, I got back on track. I've only gained, you know, now we're almost six weeks after the show. I've only gained four and a half pounds. Yeah, that's great. I'm very happy with that.

That's really the guideline, like stay five pounds, but then stage weight. But so many people, like you said, they gain 15 to 30 pounds in seven to 10 days post show. One of the things I think about even in terms of like I always use the analogy of a bear, right? So a bear really eats a lot of food for a set period of time. And then the bear doesn't eat any food for a set period of time.

And that's what people do with their diets. They'll eat right for five days. The weekend comes and they're like that bear and they'll go into like a 6,000 calories surplus. And then they'll go through their week and they'll be like, why am I not losing weight? And I'm like, well, weigh yourself on a Monday, then weigh yourself on a Friday. and make sure your Friday's week over week are going down. Because if they're not, your problem's probably your weekends. Like if every Monday you're up three pounds

and every Friday you're back down three pounds, it's because you're eating too much on the weekends. And that's what people do all the time. They have these periods where they just eat way too much. They have a binge and they have the surplus and then they whittle it down for a few days and they go back to it. Would you rather have a client keep their clork intake the same seven days a week,

or do you ever allocate more calories in the weekends and less calories during the week? Great question. And I do. I do. And I have some clients that have even done that in the extreme and had success. Like I've had some clients where it'll be like they're in a 1,200 calorie deficit for like five days. And then for two days, they're like at a like 1,000 or 1,500 above average calories. Have seen people have a lot of success with that?

It depends because sometimes you're always trying to play catch up for the bad mistakes you did. So it just depends. Like it's also like the same thing. Like I've had clients where they've had a rough weekend and on Monday I'll allow them to only eat like protein and vegetables. But in general, the ones who are reasonable where I'm like, hey, I'm going to give you 700 extra calories for like your Friday and Saturday. I'm going to give you a thousand extra calories for those days. Yeah, they've had success with that.

That's what I do. Like say, for example, we have a big celebratory meal like this weekend. We're going to Steinner Ranch. I know I'm going to have this massive steak. It's going to be loaded in calories. Sunday, maybe even Monday. I'll just prioritize lean proteins and some vegetables and I'll keep carbs and fat pretty low. That's all I do even like today.

Like even today, if you looked at my meals, like I had like a very light calorie meal, my first meal, my second meal wasn't that bad, but it was a little over what I would look for. And then my next meal will probably have like, I'll ask you for a protein shake before we trade. And that will be kind of, and then my next meal is going to be Terry Blacks. And then I'm just going to have like two protein bars on the way home. And that will be my meals for the day as I travel back to New York. and most of my calories came from Terry Blacks. I prioritize protein throughout the day.

Like people ask me all the time, should you have your calories throughout the day? It does not matter. But what does matter is that you break up protein because your body doesn't have a mechanism to store protein. Our body has a mechanism to store fat. We all unfortunately know that. Our body has a mechanism to store carbohydrates,

glucose, sucrose, fructose, whatever. It's then stored as glycogen, whether it's in our liver or muscle cell. It's then utilized. When it comes to protein, it's broken down to amino acids, and then it's either helps repair or converts to glucose or it's done away with.

I know we were talking about previously, before we started recording, you consume about 90 grams of fiber a day. Let's dive into fiber. The importance of how people should start incorporating more fiber into their diet. Yeah. Kind of like I mentioned, there's so many people that goes zero to 100. So they'll be consuming maybe 10 grams of fiber a day, and they realize they need to add more fiber in.

So they start consuming 100 grams of fiber a day. Do not do that. And a lot of them are like these from bars, you know, so they're going from zero to 60, 80, 100 grams, and they have stomach discomfort, and they're gassy and they're bloated. So, like, how do you incorporate fiber into your client's diets? And how do you ramp that up to mitigate some of this gastrointestinal distress?

Okay, so number one, first and foremost, when we look at fiber, and this is a meta-analysis, every 10 grams of fiber daily decreases all symptoms of mortality by 10%. So let me break that down. The number one leading cause in the United States of America is heart disease. The number two cause is all symptoms of cancer. And then we start getting into other factors, diabetes, things like this. When you look at it, most of those are preventable.

It doesn't mean that you're, if along enough timeline, someone's going to die from heart disease, right? It's just a question of when. So how do we push that back as long as possible? How do we make it to be 80, 90, and age well, right? Things like fiber, every 10 grams, decreases it. And the reason for is because the effects it has a cholesterol, the effects it has on blood pressure, and this is a meta-analysis study,

meaning they looked at a series of studies and found the benefits of fiber to be that substantial. So if you can get fiber in significantly, like having 50 grams of fiber a day, that's going to reduce your risk of heart disease by 50% if done consistently. So it's extremely, extremely important. In terms of like where I would start somebody,

most Americans are getting 15 grams of fiber a day. All right. That's like three apples. It's actually like three and a half. apples, but that's like three and a half apples, or like three and a half cups of berries. So the old, you know, five fruits, five vegetables thing, it's still a great place to start. If you could have five cups of fruit and five cups of vegetables a day, let's say three grams each, there's 15, 15, you're at 30 grams, right?

And you can mix or match how much fruit. You could have seven cups of vegetables and three cups of fruit. Point is that if you do that, you're probably going to get around 30 grams of fiber, and that's an amazing place to start. It's probably 30 grams of fiber for most people. can then start to ramp up as your tolerance for increases. I sometimes give dieting clients higher amounts of fiber. Like I might give them, depending on how many calories they eat 40 grams or 50 grams of fiber if they're a larger person and as I ramp them up over time. But 30 grams of fiber is a

excellent place to start and you're probably not going to have any digestive issues with it unless unfortunately your diet's been horrible. One of the easiest hacks to achieve that is selenium husk. Originally selenium husk, people were like, oh, it's not going to have any effects on health markers, it does. We've seen studies where people who have 20 grams of selenium husk a day decrease in cholesterol by 25%. So selenium husk is a seed. You can get in capsules. There's probably about three grams, depending on the brand, but about three grams of fiber in these capsules. You have three of them. They've got nine grams of fiber to start your day and then try to hit the rest of it with fruit and vegetables. What are some of your favorite sources of fiber?

Other than fruits and vegetables, like what's your go-to? Can I give you a couple of fruits? and vegetables that are really high in it and then give you my other ones. Okay, so really high ones, broccoli is very high, Brussels spouts is very high, carrots is very high, artichokes is very high. Those are really high vegetables. So I really try to prioritize broccoli in my diet because it's just so high. Also asparagus. So like if I'm having like a steak or poultry, a lot of times I'll have broccoli. If I'm having like fish, a lot of times I'll have it. Fish or shellfish, I'll have it with asparagus because very high in it. When it comes to fruit, berries are just so good for you, dude.

And so many loves me, the antioxidants, the amount of fiber, just unbelievable. I don't seem so many berries. Dude, so many. So many. Wildly good. I mean, if you just, I mean, just they taste amazing. I mean, who doesn't like a raspberry, you know? Like, who doesn't like a blackberry, you know?

So though berries, incredibly high in fiber, bananas, I love bananas because they're very easy. They're a little bit more caloric, but they're great. If you're getting weight from fruit, if you, like, hit that point, let me know. But I don't know too many people are overweight from eating fruit. I can probably eat a dozen bananas a day. No problem. That's, like, the one fruit that I have to hold back on. Same thing.

That's why I even mentioned it's caloric. But again, like, context matters. For most Americans, they're not suffering from eating too many bananas. But I love bananas, too, because it's a sweetening agent. You can put in your shake, and your shake instantly gets sweeter. You can bake with it, and it makes everything sweeter. And it's a nice, healthy alternative to other sweetenings agents. but apples, oranges, and I like apples and oranges and bananas and kiwis because they're easy to take on the go with you.

Like I almost every morning will grab an orange and throw it in my bag. I'll grab a banana every day and I'll throw it in my bag when I'm leaving because very, very easy to carry with you. So those are some fruits and vegetables. And then in terms of outside of that, selenium husk would probably be my go-to because it's so simple. Go on Amazon, it's dirt cheap, very, very effective. And then there are products and people have all sorts of perspective on this, but like high-fiber breads, are amazing. There's some really good options. We'll talk about the second. Black beans. Add black beans. One couple black beans is about 14 grams of fiber. It's also 15 grams of protein. So people are

always like, oh, here's my traditional like rice and whatever. Look, skip the traditional and have your piece of protein, have your vegetables, and then have a couple black beans instead of rice, because you're going to get, instead of four grams of fiber, you're going to get 15 grams of fiber, right? When you talk about, like, high fiber breads, mission carb wraps are amazing. You can see them all the time. They call them like carb counter or like high fiber wraps. Those are excellent.

Six, four, seven bread or some sort of keto bread. Look on the back and look if it has at least four grams of fiber per slice, something like that, something like seven grams of fiber per slice. That's what you're looking for. Something of like upwards of four grams per slice in some sort of keto bread. What's being added to those breads, do you know, that increases fiber? So that's the question is like what actually causes these to be higher in fiber? Sometimes xanthum gum, things like that can cause the fiber to increase.

And then there are things and this is where people get very cut up. Like there might be like seed oil. So I posted about Mission Carbraps that's got like, I'm not even kidding. They always get like over a half a million views. I'm probably doing it partly for clickbait because I just know I'm going to get ripped on. But then people are going to follow me. But every time I mentioned it, people like, this has seed oil. And I'm like, dude, it has three grams of fat in the entire wrap.

We'll be all right. Yeah, you'll be all right. It's one-fourth a tablespoon of oil on this thing. It's going to be okay. Are you never going to go out to dinner again? Because they're going to cook your food in oil and they're going to put it at high temp points. So, like, I think when you look at that, like, my way of looking at food is first and foremost, calories is king. And you might say, well, Jake, that's such a simplification.

Okay. Everything we know, number one correlation to heart disease, obesity. number one correlation to all symptoms cancer, right? Obesity. Number one symptom to diabetes. Obesity. Number one correlation to erectile dysfunction. Obesity.

So at a very basic level, and this is basic, like you said, when you started out, you know, you learned more about like getting quality calories and quality foods, right? But the first part, and again, 72% of America is overweight. So most of us, I know there's some of us and probably many of us who are listening to this podcast, we kind of have this part down or we're working on it, but like calories is still king and most of America could benefit from eating less calories. And then I look at again like macros and that being really more about protein and then the nutrient selection that I'm having. And if I choose something like a high fiber bread and that's my option, I'm only using as a tool.

I'm not telling you that this is quote unquote healthier. What I am telling you is if this allows me to get 15 grams of fiber and I know 15 grams of fiber decreases all symptoms of mortality or my risk of all forms of death by 15%, I'm going to have that. Now, you should look at the same way as you do weight protein. Like you have a supplement company, but you know that you don't have to take weight protein in order to build muscle.

But it's a helpful tool because most of us will never hit our protein unless we do. It's the same thing with that carbrap. If you can do it through fruit and vegetables, go ahead and do so. But even like these smart sweets you see out, the bag. Listen, those fish taste great to me. I know there are a lot to chew through,

but I mean, man, 15 grams of fiber in one of those bags. So a lot of days what I'm doing is I'm getting like somewhere around like 10 cups of vegetables. I'm having like five cups of fruit. So right there and especially the vegetables I'm picking, maybe we're at 35 and then another like 20 from the fruits. So now I'm somewhere around probably a little less, maybe like 15, let's say. So I'm at 50 grams of fire from that.

Then I'm going to have my selenium husk. Now I'm at 65. Then I'm going to have my smart sweets. Now I'm at 80. And then I usually have, I know, you guys are going to. Judge me a little bit of here, but I usually have a pint of halo top. I'm a big boy. My resting metabolic rate is 4,400 calories.

So most days, I know, dude. Even when I'm diet. Fuck of you. I know, dude. Even when I'm dieting. That's an actual real RMR. That's wild. I had an RMR done and I was like, I went in and I got it retested like two or three

weeks ago. So I got my V-O-2 max retested and I got my RM test, RMR tested, my resting metabolic rate. And I was like, I was like, last time I did this, my calories were 4,030. and I've gotten a little bit more muscular since then and the guy's like, okay, he's did it, he goes, dude, your calories are 4,400 right now for your RMR. That's money. I diet, like right now I'm dying and I'm getting leaner

and I keep saying I'm going to get lighter, lower, in body size, I have 6% body fat. That's not true. I probably have like around like the 10-ish spot and I'm like, I'm going to keep dying until I get to 8% body fat and just stay there because like it's not hard for me to do it because of where my calories are at.

And so, any else. What are your dieting calories right now? I eat 4,200 calories a day. And you're losing weight on that. Yeah, I mean, I honestly think, I know it's going to sound ridiculous, but I honestly think on a long enough time frame, I could get stage weight eating 4,200 calories a day. I also, too, though, same as you, like I took my passion,

and I made it my career. So it's very easy for me to lift weight six days a week. And I do. And it's very easy for me to get 150 minutes of cardio. I do zone two. I do 150 minutes of zone. two cardio a week on top of it. So my life is so built around this,

that it makes it a little easier. Where do you think most people are missing the mark in terms of nutrition? Because if I'm thinking about it, I know there's so many people who might be listening this podcast, and if they're being honest with their self, they probably haven't consumed a fruit or a vegetable

in the last 72 hours. No. Yeah. A quality source of protein. They haven't hit their protein goals. You know, there's so many people who, and I can't relate to this, but they'll go through the whole day and they'll be like, I forgot to eat.

You forgot to eat. That's amazing, right? How did you forget to eat? Because when I wake up, I'm thinking, okay, the first thing that goes to my head is I need to start eating now because I need to get this amount of protein in spaced out. Yep. So I'm like, okay, 7 a.m. I need to get 50 grams in, like 10.30 a.m.

I'm getting my next meal in. Like, I'm a very routine person with my food. Same thing. I'm making sure I'm hitting my goals down in the day. So that it's not 11 p.m. And I realize I have 200 grams of protein to consume still. Is it easy, though, for you at the point to do this? It's, it's, and this is the hard part is, it's so easy for me at this point to do this,

that it is sometimes hard to relate, relate or put myself in a position mentally to think back to when I first got started where someone else might be. Yeah. And that's what I'm trying to kind of pull in a lot of my content now is, if I were just getting started, how would I be thinking and what would I want to know to reach success in fitness? Yeah, and I think that's one of the messages why I said that, where I brought that point up, because I want to give like a little bit of message of hope that this becomes more autopilot.

You have to take the time to learn the language of nutrition, but once you learn it, you can speak it fluently, and it becomes just another ball that you're easily juggling. It just becomes inherent, right? And so you have to exercise it, and the best way to do it is starting somewhere, Nick, because most people, they just don't start. They get so caught up in perfection.

And I just, one of the things that's my personal pet peeve, we were talking before the podcast about, like, pet peeves we have. Like you said, you don't like when people put words in your mouth. I hate when I see this ridiculously unobtainable, like, Instagram posts about nutrition, where it's like some dude of, like, I don't work a job and I surf for three hours. And then I sit in front of the sunlight. And I'm like, dude, like, this is not. Who is this person?

Like none of the people in America have this life. Like, okay, great. I'm glad the secret to nutrition is being independently wealthy. Amazing. Right. Cool. Why don't you just, why don't you make this as your post?

My personal chef comes over and he cooks me five perfectly balanced meals and that's what I eat. And then my trainer comes over and trains me for one hour and I don't know a single one of my weights on any single. Like, okay, if that's relatable, like, so I think start somewhere. Whether that is like I tell people all the time when it comes to fitness, date. Get out there. Go try out the field. Like fall in love with fitness. Like maybe you like running. Maybe you like lifting weights. Maybe you like soul cycle. Maybe you like rumble boxing.

Maybe you like Zumba. Maybe you like Pilates. You don't know because you haven't tried out all these things. Maybe you love. Go fall in love with something that involves fitness. Go find it. Because I think if you do that, remember how we were talking when we were younger and you're like, hey, the only people in the gym are like the guys who are playing baseball. I guess I want to play baseball, but that was really not what you wanted to do. You wanted to lift weights, but everybody you knew was doing that. Well, why did you start caring about your nutrition?

Probably because you started caring about lifting weights, right? And I think for most people, if you can find something that you actually enjoy physically doing, if you find that thing, then you will fall in love with news, or you will start the journey of nutrition. So my first step for you would be go do something physicalable. The question is, does action but get thought

or does thought be get action, right? And if you actually take a step forward and a very easy step forward is to go try out a fitness class or go get a gym membership and go start to attempt that, that might actually, you might actually fall in love with something that's active and that might actually help you start moving with dieting. Yeah, I keep thinking back to like races. You know, so many people I know that are getting into fitness, they set a goal. Yeah. And that might be I'm going to run my first five. or my first half marathon, my full marathon, they take the first step, they start running.

Yes. And they quickly realize, okay, I need different shoes. Yes. I need to sleep. I need to sleep. I need to hydrate. I need to start consuming more electrolytes around my training. How can I now recover better?

How can I start eating to fuel these runs and this performance? And it naturally becomes part of this evolution of just learning through practice. You remember why I said I like Halo Top almost every night because I have the calories for it. So I'll literally have it. I used to as a high, before I fell in love with weight training, I would eat ice cream every single night before bed. I stopped doing that because I fell in love with weight training. So it's the same thing.

If you find something and you fall in love with it or you get more passionate about it, it's probably going to help you sort out your diet. And that's just as the first step, I would say to people is start there. And then the second thing is I think sublimination really works, which is like, okay, I like Haagenas, but I like Yaso ice cream bars a lot. So starts switching out things.

Yeah. Start switching them out for like a healthy, the alternative. And it's never going to be 100%, but just understand your taste bud shed. So over the course of like a couple months, remember the first time, like, you drank a glass of wine and you were like, oh, this is horrible. And somebody's like, it's your palate. Your palate isn't refined. Okay, well, you can refine your palate about getting away from highly processed, like sugary stuff and get it to where you can eat stuff that is healthier. So, like, for me, if you have berries, you probably think berries are sweet. And I find berries to be

very sweet. Well, if you're used to eating, Dunkin' Donuts or Krispy Kreme donuts, you probably don't think berries are sweet, but you can transition that by doing it. True, right? I've seen my palate change tremendously, and it still does year over a year.

And I start thinking about food differently too, where, yes, I'm craving like a hop-dottie double bacon jam burger and truffle fries and a frozen margarita. But I also know, like, there's this there's this connection between the foods that I'm craving and I want

and how I'm going to feel afterwards and the next day. For sure, dude. Like even, you know, say we're at a party and I'm having a cocktail and I have a second cocktail, I'm not usually going back for that third because I'm already thinking I'm going to feel this tonight and tomorrow morning and I want to train tomorrow morning. Yeah.

And I want to feel good tomorrow morning. So I'm going to start making choices now in preparation for the next couple days ahead. So I now have this connection with food and the way this food fuels me and how I feel afterwards and not just living in that one specific moment. Well, that's what it is, right? It's delayed gratification because if I have that second glass of wine, I'm not going to sleep well. And the next morning, I'm going to have not slept well.

I'm going to wake up and I'm going to feel foggy. And so it's getting away from like, yes, this tastes good or this feels fun at the moment and like what is the effect from that that continues on. and so I think that's really pertinent is understanding like the nutrition decisions that I'm making like it's a phase and you will continuously progress it and that's why I think most people

what they're missing the mark is is that they immediately go to strive for perfection and you need to walk yourself through that journey like I remember I had a I got a Wegman sub I got it with one slice of cheese I got deli meat on it and I got no mayo I got spicy mustard a ton of vegetables

taste absolutely delicious about 600 calories and I was like, you know, I was like, this is kind of a little off the grid, but totally, totally on plan. I can fit this into my day. I was like, I haven't had a diet soda and forever. And I used to love Dr. Pepper as a kid, like love it. Before I got really into weight training, Dr. Pepper and ice cream were like, you know, my jam. And I went over and I got a diet Dr. Pepper and I had a sip of it.

And I was like, this is disgusting. I was like, this is just, this is so sweet. I dumped it out. I didn't even have the thing. Because like you said, your taste blood year over year, they shed and they change. It's actually pretty amazing the way it naturally just works. And I think what's harder for a lot of people to really comprehend as they might be listening to this is, if you're not there, it's hard to relate. Or it's hard to think that you'll ever be there.

Take a step. But I think there's so much power in this delayed gratification in all aspects of life. But especially if you're just getting started in your fitness. your fat loss, your body composition changed journey, like just go into it expecting delayed gratification. Yeah. And because it will come. And when it comes, it starts, it compounds.

That consistency compounds is one of my favorite words or favorite phrases. Yeah. Consistency compounds because when it does, it does snowball effect and like you're just making this fast progress before you know it. It's the same thing even if you think about like when you wait train, right? Like think about weight training. It's maybe you're doing 10 reps. what is that 40 seconds that's that and I was training legs the other day and I remember I

I did my third rep and I was getting 10 I was that was my intention I was getting 10 and I went through and then I got to seven really and I got all 10 and I got done and I stood up and I was like I think two years ago my third rep would have been like oh like in terms of intensity like how hard it was, I would have been like, oh, this is what I've got. You know, because your concept of like perceived rate of exertion or like how many reps you have in reserve constantly expands. You realize like you can do two more and you do. You take yourself there.

And that's ever changing. Like how hard you push yourself realizing like, oh, I really could have done two more if I pushed myself a little bit harder or just even realizing like at the plate at dinner like, you know, like, okay, I don't need to eat all of this right now. Like it's okay. I'm out to dinner and I enjoyed my meal and this was a good meal. and I'm good and I can walk away from this because in my life and I think

this is like the kind of like what we talked about even the beginning like for me I have experienced where I've been on the very opposite side of leverage and I know like how I feel and how I look at my life like how much more rewarding it is than just finishing out that plate

right and that's all it is just slowly over time like cutting back in areas and how much again that does compound. Yeah I mean there's been so many times when especially immediately post show, you know, immediately post bodybuilding show, your mind and body is doing crazy things. And that for me is that required more discipline than almost when I was in prep itself. Yeah.

When I was in prep, that switches on. Yeah. Like I don't need motivation or even discipline to stay on track. Like when I decide I'm going to do something and that switch is flipped, nothing will break me. Yeah. Nothing. But post show, when I'm able to eat all these things again, that was actually when I had to control and hold back.

And it is very satisfying. It is very rewarding when you make the right decision, when you don't go back up for seconds when you don't need it, when you don't overload your plate, when you don't binge, when you make the better choice over the worst choice, it's very rewarding. And you start to learn that this reward feels good

and you start making better choices. But it is like you said, it's his muscle that needs to be trained. Yes. So I think for a lot of people, will just try making the right choice. And you'll feel good, and then you'll make that again, you'll feel good, and it builds his confidence

and your ability to make the right decision time over time. So we talked about a lot of positive things today, and we also talked about some sad things, like the reality of only 3% people succeed at diets, only 3% of people succeed at diets. But along with that, 80% of people lose weight will regain it. And I think that's because they have missions accomplished, and they're like that after the show feeling.

They're like, I did it. It's over. And you have to understand it's never over. It's the long game, right? It's the same way if you have an argument with somebody you truly love. Like, you can't get caught up in the moment. Like, or if you have to miss an event with somebody you care about. Like, it's one moment.

Like, we have a long road ahead of us to continue on. And I think it's very important when you understand, like, eating and nutrition. Like, you're going to be doing this, hopefully, for 80 or 90 years of your life. So the decision, you're making, like, don't get so caught up. Like, I tell clients sometimes, like, you suffer from having a nice life, right? Because you've had to go out to dinner four times this week. Or you've got so many fun things going out.

Like, look, you've got to tone it back. Because you've got to understand, like, yes, it's cool that you're out to dinner tonight, but you're going to be out to dinner on Friday, too. And then next week you're going to be out to dinner two times. And so just having that long-term perspective of, like, really down and long-term is very important. I'm understanding. Like, even after the bodybuilding show is done.

Like, it's never over. Like, and I think so many people walk into whether it's a bodybuilding show on the extreme end of things or on the more of like toned down like, hey, I just had a diet and I needed to lose 30 pounds because my doctor said this is we're in crisis mode here. Like either one of those, you've got to understand like after it's over, it's not over. It's going to keep going. It's like you're married. Once you got married, the journey wasn't over. Just got started. You just got started.

You just got started. You just got started. And like it's the same thing. like after the competition, it's not over. Like what you've done this round is what you're supposed to do. Like,

you're supposed to stay. Like, my goal for like dropping down even now is to be within five pounds of stage weight. And like that's, you can really live your life. And this is for the, the cyborgs, the fitness people.

But you can really live five pounds from stage weight and stay there. Right? And like, it never ends and it's going to just keep continue. So think about sustainability. Don't get caught up in one moment. And again,

delayed gratification. Think about how good. you're going to feel. I know from my background again, like I know how people treat you when you don't have money versus when you have money. It's way different. I know it's very different how people treat you. And that's what made me fall in love with this whole thing. And I'm just being honest here, but like as that kid who just didn't have a lot of self-esteem and had didn't have very nice things being said to him by even his father and things like that. Like I knew the way people started treating me when my shoulders started sticking out or when I was squatting, you know, heavy weight. And

those things kind of pushed me in the beginning. And so those things, still propel me is not so much the external reinforcements, but my internal reinforcement of how I feel when I can take a doctor paper milkshake, have four sips of it and go, all right, you know, there you go, down the trash, let's walk out the door. That's powerful. You see it was 80% of people regain weight? 80% of people will regain the weight. And it's tough, dude.

Even people who do liposuction, regain it. OZempic, you're going to see it with OZempic. Like they're already talking about it, like regain, and all the way to people who actually die. and I think the reason why people who diet, because those other two aren't lifestyle, the reason why people who diet regain it is because it's not lifestyle, Nick.

They're like, I'm not eating any carbs. Okay, dude, go do that for 16 years. Don't not have a carb for 16 years. Remember the scene from Step Brothers when he pulls up this show? I haven't had a carbs since 2004. Like, you're not going to do that. Or these people are like,

I'm never going to have seed oil again. Okay, you go do that. But you're probably going to go out to dinner. You're probably at some point going to open something up in a package. Like, I'm not deterring you from having some involvement of that, like following it so much, like cutting your carbs or doing it.

Those systems work, but when you do think that's the only way you achieve the goal, it's not going to be sustainable long term. I think it also creates, and I could be wrong, it's just my opinion, but I do think it creates some sort of unhealthy relationship with food when you start looking at these extremes and extremely restrictive. And I've personally been there. Yeah. You know, like I had an eating disorder when I was younger.

So there are things in my life now that get re-triggered based off of things that I do. And because I'm really good at controlling and manipulating variables to achieve an outcome. Yeah. I could easily say, like, I'm going to cut out carbs for the rest of my life. And I can probably confidently say I could stick to that. It would ruin relationships in my life. Yes. It would be no fun.

Yes. And I would be so focused on just finding things with no carbs. I could do that. But I'd have a very unhealthy relationship with food, which would destroy. a lot of my other relationships in my life. I definitely had, I didn't have so much an eating disorder, but I definitely had bi dysmorphia. I definitely, the way I would look at itself in the mirror,

because this was like, that was my positive reinforcement. I went down that road where I was like, let's get bigger, let's keep going, let's do that. You have to look at what the long-term consequences of those things are, and they're not good. And so any of these things, like even when you talk about removing a macronutrient in long-term, it's not healthy. When you totally cut out carbs for a prolonged,

it's fine for a short period of time when doing it, But long term, you need at least 10% of any macronutrient. And long term, like, being like, I'm going to get as jacked as possible. If that's your end in itself, I mean, at the very end, like, at some point you're going to age and your muscle is going to start to deteriorate, like, it's a very lonely path. And when you start talking about, I don't eat any of this and, like, you've got somebody who just paked a cake. And if I said to my girlfriend, I'm not going to have a slice of cake of that.

She would have legitimately been her. And, like, what am I going to do? I'm going to deal with that. I'd much rather have a slice of cake, a small slice of cake, and tell her how great it is. and like deal with her being happy than like being on this crazy restringent diet that, you know, that for me isn't even effective. I agree with all that.

Well, Jacob, brother, I appreciate it, man. You're doing great things. Thanks. I love following the content. And, you know, all the restaurants you go into, all the grocery stores you go into and giving really good recommendations of how people can sub certain items, no matter where they're at or what they're eating. It's like I said in the beginning of this podcast,

you're making nutrition easy again. I see there's a lot of people in the industry that are leading that charge and it's really great to see. Yeah, dude. As opposed to these extremes that are this, like I said, political and religious commitment

that aren't necessarily sustainable. So I appreciate you and what you're doing and it's really good stuff. Thank you. I really appreciate being here and I love all your stuff, man. It's motivating. The post you put up the other day

with your runs and lifting. I always find them highly inspiring. Thanks, man. You're welcome. That's a wrap.