Weights and Plates Podcast - 107 From Pinterest Cleanses To Evidence Based Practice A Dietitians Journey Through Diet Culture With Zoe Schroeder Rd

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

In this candid conversation, host Robert Santana sits down with Zoe Schroeder, RD—owner of Zoe Schroeder Nutrition and known as Fat Loss RD—to explore the messy reality behind becoming a nutrition professional. After connecting at a wellness event in Scottsdale, they dive deep into Zoe's transformation from a college student doing three-a-day workouts and dangerous Pinterest cleanses to becoming the evidence-based coach she needed during those struggles.Zoe opens up about her freshman 15 experience, the toxic cycle of restriction and over-exercise, and even wrapping herself in saran wrap with coffee grounds (yes, really). But more importantly, she shares how hitting rock bottom with disordered eating led her to switch from nursing to nutrition—using herself as a case study to understand metabolism, proper fueling, and sustainable body composition changes.This episode tackles the gap between clinical dietetics and real-world coaching, why telling people to "eat less, move more" fails spectacularly, and how both hosts learned that helping clients means addressing the emotional and psychological relationship with food—not just handing out meal plans. If you've ever felt like you were doing "everything right" but still stuck, or wondered why nutrition advice seems so contradictory, this honest discussion offers practical insights on building habits that actually last beyond the honeymoon phase.

Welcome to the weights and plates podcast. I am Robert Santana. I am your host. And today I have a special guest. She is the owner of Zoe Schroeder nutrition. I had to think for a second. Early in the day. Not really, but I'm going to say that.

And also known as Fat Loss RD. Welcome, Zoe. Thank you. Thanks for having me. You're welcome. So I met you at an event in Scottsdale. Mm-hmm. And you have a...

an online business and you are local to the Phoenix area. And I wanted to learn more about you and what you do and different things that you've encountered and share it with our audience. Yeah, absolutely. It was so funny. At the event, that was my third year going to the what she said event, kind of like a fun networking event here in Scottsdale. And there were a few people that I had just randomly struck up conversations with, you

being one of them. And then happened to be like, oh. we're also on the wellness panel together. And that happened two other times throughout the day. So it was really fun to have already kind of connected and had a conversation and then to then continue the conversation on the wellness panel at the event. It was a really cool experience. I had a good time. They just kind of found me. It was my first time there. So yeah, because mostly women. So how did you feel like kind of was it a little like out of place a little bit? So it's interesting. I got an email. I never heard of, so the company was modern day wife.

The event was what she said. And it was in Scottsdale at the W Hotel. So I get an email in my inbox one day. And I get all these spam emails about, hey, do you want to go do this event with the school district? And then it's like, you know, you get those. And then it's nothing, right? So I thought it was one of those deals. But I always check because you never want to assume.

Right. So I'm scrolling. And then I see that, oh, wait, this is local. Okay. I saw like a local address in there somewhere. that turns out they're not from here, but that caught my attention. Like, oh, I could just walk across the streets. Yeah, exactly.

And I've been trying to broaden my audience. So, like, I think I told you at the event, we tend to skew more male. And we tend to skew older. A lot of the guys that have hired me throughout the years are typically over 35, have some sort of ache or ailment, or they're just feeling age catching up. And they want to learn how to lift heavy weights and not get hurt. And that's where I come in. And I teach them how to do that. I also happen to be an R.D.

I think that's kind of where you and I kind of like, oh, cool. Yeah, you don't mean many dietitians. No, you don't, especially male. Right. So when I first got into the business, I worked under a personal trainer in Beverly Hills, California. And the first thing he told me was a large percentage of this market is female. If you want to succeed in this market long term, you have to appeal to women. And I kind of nod at my head.

And in the beginning, I was working with another company that was not a lot of my head. more general fitness oriented. Didn't exactly do what I do, but I was a lone coach that did it that way. And I trained lots and lots of women over the years. And then as I kind of step back from that and they slowed down, I started picking up, then it started skewing more male. So over the last couple of years, I've been just kind of asking myself, okay, where do I want to go with this, right?

And I was kind of doing more of the same for a while. But then I remembered what that guy said. And I'm like, okay, I need to start appealing to women, more get women on my show, include them in my reels, maybe do some interesting. like I did at the event. That was cool. It was the first time I did that. And when I saw the email and I read what they were doing, I'm like, all right. Well, you know, I'm a dietitian. So I was in school with all girls that of my entire college career as an RD. And then when I went to my PhD, it was similar. So yeah, let's do it. I'm game. You're like, I'm in. I know how to talk to women.

Yeah. So I got a booth, set it up, did some street interviews. My partner forgot the mic adapter. So our audio sounds like shit. But it was a learning experience. I've since bought a handheld mic. You know, we're going to do it right next time. But I left feeling excited for next year.

Yeah, I'm a lot of cool people. And it was just a nice break from what I'm used to. And it was across the street, too, as you can see. Yeah. Yeah, that worked out. I find it to be a really, like you said, like you leave feeling excited.

It's uplifting. And also, why I really like it is the opportunity to connect with other, you know, local business owners. And, you know, we, we got to connect and, you know, have the opportunity to network and then promote each other's businesses and just kind of propel our mission. You know, we all kind of have a similar mission when we're working in the wellness space. And I think also being more so with that science background because of being registered dietitians, there's a huge difference between, as you know, you know, nutritionists and dietitians.

And so really for me, and I'm sure you can relate, breaking through the doctor, Google, and the fitness influencer by my meal plans. Yeah. And really helping clients and helping people, even through the free content that we do, is how can we show the science-backed research, evidence-based recommendations,

but also something that I'm really big on is applying it to real life. So, yeah, we can have the perfect science-based answer, but how do we connect that bridge with what's actually happening in real life? Right. So making it more practical. That's always been my thing. And what I didn't like about academia was it was very academic in a sense. I don't like to use the same word twice.

Clinical, yeah. Very clinical, very academic. And I'm assuming you did some clinical work too as well, right? Yes. of, yep, I worked my first couple years as a dietitian in the hospital setting, as a clinical dietitian. And, you know, we're, I don't know if you were told the same thing, but it was hammered into us as dietetic interns that if you want to get a job doing anything, you need to have that clinical experience first. And so I was like, okay, I do what I'm told. So that's what I

went and did. And, you know, of course, good, good experience, good opportunity, but I knew that it wasn't what I wanted to do. Same. I used to have this joke with a friend of mine. I met her in my PhD. She was a professor and she wanted to teach biochemistry. But to work there at ASU, she had to have a PhD and she had to be an RD to teach in that department. So the joke was, we're RDs. It didn't want to be RDs. Just doing it for the letters. Yeah, yeah. We have a more open approach to nutrition. My audience knows that. I'm sure yours does as well. But kind of walk me through. you know, how did you kind of start on this journey? Yeah.

Well, as mentioned, you know, I became a dietitian. I didn't always think I wanted, funny enough, you know, working as a clinical dietitian and knowing I wanted to get out of the hospital setting as soon as possible, I actually started my, you know, academic career in college thinking I wanted to be a nurse. And so started college as, you know, pre-nursing, did all the volunteer work, was in all the clubs, were in all the clubs I needed to be in, got really good grades. And then like two years in a row, I kept getting denied from nursing school. And my advisor was like, I'm so sorry, I just don't know what to tell you. Like, there's nothing else that you can do. So that for me was that opportunity,

you know, I'm a really big believer in that everything happens for a reason exactly as it's supposed to. So thank goodness I didn't get in because it gave me that opportunity to really think card if is that something I actually want to do? And it wasn't. It was just something that I knew was going to be a good job, make good money. I could go anywhere I wanted to. And it felt like the right thing to do. And my heart wasn't in it. At that same time, I was struggling with my own nutrition journey and disordered eating and, you know, struggled with weight loss and that whole thing. And I had taken a nutrition class just as a gen ed for my own personal interest. And then going through the whole experience of, you know, the nursing debacle, I then was like,

but could I do something in this field that I am now so interested in? And so I did some more research, even learned what a dietitian was because I didn't even know that that was a thing and ultimately switched my major. And for me, it was really groundbreaking, not only, you know, to now have this new career path that I was really excited about, but to be able to apply. what it was that I was learning in the nutrition classes to myself to kind of use myself as a case study as I was learning these different things to, you know, see my own body composition change, you know, recognize how I can use these tools to heal my own relationship with food and kind of get out of that disorder eating spiral that I was going down.

And then that's when I also kind of combined that interest in weightlifting and became a personal trainer. So it all kind of my own journey. And I feel like most dietitians have something similar that they have had their own journey in a way that helped guide them to becoming a dietitian. And now I feel like I have the honor to help people who are going through a very similar thing. Maybe not the same life stage. but I like to say I became, you know, the coach that I needed at that time. So became a dietitian, was working as a personal trainer. And then as I mentioned, became a clinical dietician after the internship.

Did all sorts of different things. I got my master's in sports nutrition. Was contracting with the Air Force for a while, which was my first experience in really applying the sports nutrition side of things with, you know, just actual real life people. in counseling besides myself. So that was really cool. And then let's see, it was right around the end of 2020 that I decided to start my own online business. I had no social media before that. And, you know, there are so many wonderful blessings that have come from starting my business. But one thing that I do miss is not having social media. It's a bit of a big learning curve.

Same. To have to start from scratch. And then it's like, well, you can't have an online business if you're not doing social media. And when I choose to do something, I go all in. So I was like, all right, what do I have to do? I have to do this. Okay, let's do it. And so actually the first week of December, which is basically now, but in a couple days, I'm celebrating my fifth year in business. Congratulations. Which is, thank you so much. It's been really great. It's been challenging. As you know, as a business owner, like there are ups and downs. But ultimately, ever since I decided that I was going to start the online business, I did everything that I could to help it be successful. And there have been great years and there have been harder years. And I've done all sorts of different things, such as the one-on-one nutrition coaching. I've done group programs. I've done courses. And, you know, just kind of feeling out what people actually want. And I find that nutrition is a really personal. and vulnerable field to help people in because we don't just eat to fuel, which is a huge part of it. But for so many people, food and, you know, emotional eating and coping and trauma response and like all of these things are so deeply rooted, not to mention cultural and celebrations and just everything is rooted. And so it's so much deeper than just telling people what to eat. So in my experience and something that as my coaching business has evolved and myself as a coach

has evolved over the years, I love the mindset work, the relationship with food piece while helping people see their body composition goals because that's what I experienced. You know, when I was like taking this other approach versus what we're, we're told, just eat less and exercise more and bounce around from these different fad diets and, you know, all this crazy stuff that we know doesn't work. But, you know, the big marketing machines, like just, you know, multi-billion dollar entity of diet industry needs to keep people on the hook. But it's like, look at how liberating it can be when we do it this way. not only are you feeling more toned and confident and like good in your skin and confident in

your fueling abilities as well, but also, wow, now I'm feeling finally free from my toxic dieting habits, that poor relationship with food I was having. Like, I can be around Thanksgiving, you know, dinner and not feel like, you know, X, Y, and Z. So that for me has been a nice transformation of my coaching business and myself as a coach to take it so much deeper because that's where people see that, that transformation in themselves. Right. It's a really deep thing for sure. Yeah. A lot of behaviors are driven by things you can't really see that you're not going to get on the surface. Yeah. And we see in the weight room too. It's always interesting hearing it from the female perspective,

because I'm always talking about the stuff we were fed back in the day, this bodybuilding magazines and forums and guys on a bunch of drugs. I'm always making fun of guys for being on a bunch of drugs and telling people how to eat and train. And that's pretty much how it was told to us as young men. You know, we get these movies and these huge jacked guys like, you know, blowing shit up. And then they put a workout out in a magazine and we're like, oh, we have to do that. Why don't you tell us more about that, like your experience and kind of how you moved into it and some of the things you've worked through whatever you're comfortable with, of course. And, you know, share that with the audience. Yeah.

So, you know, I went through kind of that freshman 15 experience. Back up. Where did you go to school? We need a little bit of a flex here. Where are you from? Where did you go to school? Yes. Well, I'm an Arizona girl.

Okay. Cool. I was, I grew up in northern Arizona near Flagstaff. Verdi Valley area. Even more rare. Yeah. Yeah. Very small town that I grew up in my graduating class of my entire high school actually was smaller

than my first class at U of A. Your first class. My first class. My first class, my first day of college, there were more people in that room for that lecture than my entire high school. So that was a big cold. And I went to the University of Arizona in Tucson. Cool.

So I lived there in Tucson for, gosh, over 12 years. Okay. And then just a couple years ago moved up to the Phoenix area. Really? So you're new to this area as far as living here. Yeah. Yeah. I always envisioned eventually finding my way to the Phoenix area.

You know, Tucson's funny. People either love Tucson or they love to hate on Tucson. And when I was going to school in Tucson, you know, I was like, I can't wait to get out of here and blah, blah, blah. And I ended up, you know, my senior year of college buying my house down there. Look at that. And I was like, well, you know, why am I going to be spending this much money in rent when I could be spending this much money on a mortgage and then get something out of it?

So thank goodness that happened. But also it turned me into like having a really soft spot for Tucson. And I go down there periodically still. Actually, my half marathon a couple weekends ago was in Tucson right around. like the old apartment complex I used to live at for college and like this old hiking hill. And I was like, well, it's so nostalgic. So it was like kind of this like fun's full circle moment for me. But regardless, I'm trying to remember where this was coming from.

So yeah, I went to the University of Arizona in Tucson. Grew up in a really small town. But going to, you know, that was a big culture shock. Sure. Yeah. And it's interesting because my, you know, freshman 15 wasn't due to. to like really necessarily overeating. But I think a lot of it could have be contributed to a lot of drinking, a lot of partying, as a lot of college kids do.

But it was like that was happening. But then it was also like during the day I was like not eating very much. And I was afraid to eat protein because I thought it was going to make me bulky. I remember my grandparents gave, they were like, you need to be eating more. and they gave me a container of protein powder because I was making smoothies in the morning. I would bring, and I was living in the dorms, and I had one of those little personal blenders.

We had completely different sleeping schedules from my roommate. So I'd take all my smoothie stuff and my blender and bring it into the communal bathroom where everyone's showering and brushing their teeth and I'm making my smoothie. Oh, man. Taking me back.

Yeah, right? It's so funny. And so anyway, they like gave me this protein powder to put in there. And I like didn't use it because I, you know, so much misinformation, misconception. So, you know, I think that's kind of where it started. And then it just kind of progressively got worse with trying the different cleanses. I remember, you know, the famous Pinterest, like what was it called? The master cleanse with the cayenne pepper and the honey and the lemon juice. And like, I was, I was just drinking that all day. Like, I'm cleansing.

You know, and then at night, this is, I'm really outing myself, but making, like I made this, again, on Pinterest, found this mixture. You like do lotion and coffee grounds and cayenne pepper and you like make this little concoction and you put it on your belly and you wrap yourself with saran wrap. I think I vaguely heard something about saran wrap. It seems like a thing. And then you go to sleep and you, you know, burning all your belly fat. I was like trying to go to sleep with this saran wrap and my skin was burning because of the cayenne pepper.

And I was like, I can't do this. I have to get up and like wash it off. So, you know, there. And then, you know, also Pinterest, Pinterest was really toxic to me. I have to say. Pinterest, I did not know Pinterest was toxic. Well, for me at the time, maybe. Because then there was this other one called the military diet.

And it was like, you're going to have two hard boiled eggs for breakfast. and then for lunch you get five saltine crackers, a half a grapefruit, and two more hard boiled eggs. And it was just like, I don't even know, like probably not even 800 calories for the whole day. And so here I am being fed all these different things, you know, being in a college setting, you know, going through self-discovery but also self-image issues and not feeling super confident and like those different types of things. And then you remember insanity, the work out videos. Yes. Wow. Yeah. I forgot about that. I would do insanity like on in my bedroom in the morning and then go to class and then I would go and um go to the gym during my lunch break and do an hour on the

stair stepper and then go to like a crossfit class with my friend at night. And so I was doing all this over exercise. Not no like intentional strength training like you know. Just all of this, a lot of over-exercising and under-eating. And I was like, why can't I lose a what? Like, you know, like, I'm doing everything I can't be doing, right? So that just like really perpetuated itself and, you know, struggled with binging and purging. And then I actually did do a bodybuilding show after I had kind of gotten into weightlifting more and down that a bit. And that was good because I was able to push myself and, like, see the value of weight training.

I had a really kind of detrimental aftermath because I didn't have the support to, like, make sure I came out of that prep properly. So I think I set myself back even further there. So, you know, there's just, like, a lot. And I think a lot of the clients that we work with and that I work with specifically, like maybe not everything to the same extreme. but because of these experiences that I had gone through, like, it sucked, but I'm so glad I did because now I can really relate to the people that I'm trying to help. And it's like, I'm not judging you. I've been there. Like, I get how hard it is. I get how frustrating it is. And thank God I did because now I'm on the other side of it and I can, you know, kind of help

pull people through it too. It's funny. I always tell people that I mean. measure intelligence by curiosity. I determine whether somebody's smart based on how curious they are. So where I'm going with that is smart people tend to seek out information. And like you said, you had your freshman 15. I had my thing. We're not talking about me today, but I've talked about it on the show, right? You start looking for things. And in the age of the internet, which didn't exist before, you start finding all these things that people are telling you. And you start trying it. a lot of it's just crazy shit. Some of it doesn't work at all.

And some of it works in a very specific context. So like I always, the reason I bash drugs so much is because a lot of the information you get on the lifting side, and that includes the dietary information, it comes from an experience of lifting weights on a bunch of drugs. And by drugs, I mean, anabolic steroids. So that changes your physiology. It's, you know, stimulus for muscle growth by itself. And what happens is these people get high in their own fumes because of what they did and what they accomplished.

And they say, well, it was this variable or this variable. And then you get sucked into it. You end up killing yourself in the weight room or with your diet. You know, I've done both. And then you're kind of stuck, burnt out and wondering, hey, shit, what do I do with this, you know? Yeah. Where do I go from here? Yeah.

Yeah. As you're saying this stuff, it's like reminding me of a lot of things that, like, I forgot about. So you mentioned insanity. I remember my brother was doing P90X and like on the slow carb diet. Remember that one? That was Tim Ferriss, I think. I'm familiar. I don't know if I remember exactly.

He was just hungry and getting so skinny. And yeah, there was that. I did a ketogenic diet when I was 20. And I wanted to go to zero because we're achievers, right? Most dietitians are achievers. Yeah, type A. Yeah. So I'm like, it has to be zero.

And man, I have like a picture I put up. It was so skinny and like just like body wasn't functioning right. And thankfully I was 20 when I did it. I have to like work through people that are older and it has a lot more consequences when you do that at an older age. But that's the whole thing, right? You're a smart person. You're seeking out information and then you're getting fed a bunch of shit and you don't know how to sift through it yet. And then you take it another step and you go to school for it.

Right. And then you learn a bunch of things there. So kind of talk me through that, what you learned in school and through clinical practice versus what you learned through your own search. Yeah. So with being in these human nutrition classes, you're learning metabolism, you're learning, you're learning how your body is processing the different macronutrients. And I was like, huh.

So, you know, like just kind of having this like total lightballed moment. Of course it happened over the course of years or semesters or whatever. But just thinking about like, oh, you know, this is how I should be eating. And knowing that each of these things have a role and what they do in the body. And then also what happens when you don't eat enough and how detrimental that can be. And so I was able to, like, I think that for me was a big turnaround point of, okay, so what happens if I, I know how I've been doing it hasn't been working? Let me just see how it goes. If I am eating enough protein, if I am eating enough carbohydrates, if I am, you know, doing these different things and then combining that with, okay, so three hours of cardio a day isn't going to do what I wanted to do. Right. Huh. Let's try something else. Let's try. You know, obviously it takes many years to feel comfortable.

At least it did for me and a lot of, you know, people that I work with like to kind of, oops, get in comfortable in the gym, know what you're doing, doing it safely. But I had a friend who was into lifting and she showed, you know, brought me to the gym. And it was intimidating, right? the U of A rec center is gorgeous gym. If there weren't college kids there, I'd love to go back and work out there. But it was intimidating, right? Like not knowing what I'm doing and being around all these, you know, big scary guys and whatever. But those things together. And then just for my own like curiosity, wanting to learn more about the lifting.

And so that's why I did the personal training certification because I was like, okay, how can I just like be better at this thing that I now want to do? So that was pretty great in school specifically. Working in clinical practice as a dietitian, I can't say that there's anything that really stuck out in terms of like the nutrition side of things that I do now or that like helped shape that. But what it did shape was I don't want to be working with people who are pretending to be asleep. I don't want to be working with people who, oh, oh, man, I have so many clinical stories. We're not going to go down that. Oh, man, there was this, oh, there was this one couple who came in.

This man was severely malnourished because they were convinced that he could only tolerate breast milk. So they were buying breast milk on Craigslist and feeding it through his G-tube. And we were in the hospital and the doctor was like, no. Like what is happening in the dietitian? You know, I was new and I was like, I do not feel well enough equipped to handle with this because it wasn't just the nutrition thing. Like this was like a mental illness thing that was going on. But it just taught me like there are people that I want to work with and there are people that aren't ready for the help. And having that understanding of the readiness of change and maybe to help propel people along that.

But like, I'm not going to, we're not the food police. I'm not going to tell you what I think of what you're eating unless you want me to. I have had to have a couple hard conversations with people about like, oh, I want to buy this for my spouse for Christmas or I want to gift this to my mom, meet this as in my coaching. And although I would, you know, be happy to have a client from that opportunity, it's very important to me that it's the client who wants this and that's the client who is ready for this because I can't want something for somebody more than they want it for them. as I'm sure that you have experienced. And so working in the clinical setting, it got me, you know, more comfortable with talking to people. It got me really good at certain calculations, you know, can I do, you know, all these tube feeding recommendations now, be a bit rusty. Don't really care. Don't want to do it. But, you know, it was good for kind of creating those skills.

Yeah, it gives you the reps. But it was. When I transitioned actually into the wellness dietitian role at the same hospital where I was then working with employees and supporting them versus being more inpatient, that was when my world really opened up to what kind of ongoing nutrition counseling can look like and creating that relationship with people and having that level of connection and care for them in their life. like having the time to get to know them. So that was what I say would really like what I learned from the nutrition side of things of the clinical experience is like, yeah, I got the reps in, got more experience.

But it really helped shape who it is that I love to work with. And when people are ready to change, that's when I want to help them. It's totally different when people seek you out versus being thrown in front of you. Yeah. So I always say nobody goes. of the hospital and up in the hospital and we're the last person they want to see. Right. Because why does somebody want to be told how they need to change their eating when they are given a tray of food from the hospital that may or may not even be aligned with what

you're trying to talk to them about? Right. Oh, that's so layered, man. I know. There's so much, so much depth to that whole thing. Like tube feeding TPNs have a lot of respect for that part of the profession because you're saving lives, you know? Right. Legitimately. You have a lot of variables under control. So one of the things I hammer on on this show and when I talk to people about this is the fact that a lot of the guidelines and information we've been given is based on what

people say they eat, not what they actually eat. And when we're talking about clinical, you're dealing with an acute situation in many cases. But the problem is chronic. they got there through habits that were repeated for decades. And now we're being asked to educate them on these habits that's going to take them a long time to form. And they have to have the motivation for. So I never really felt like I was doing much with my, they used to call them at the long-term acute, my walkie-talkies. Did you ever hear that term?

Yes. Yeah. So for the audience, there's people that are, you know, comatose or nonfunctional, disabled. There's lots of different words for it, but they can't talk to you. You know, they're getting two feedings or getting TPNs. Maybe they're nonverbal because they're old. But then you have the people that are like her and I that. The walkie talkies. The walkie talkies. Yeah. They're alert. They call them walkie talkies. And, you know, the majority of people in acute hospital, it's what cardiac and diabetes are the top two. Yeah. That's what I got most of you two. Then you'd get some other stuff. You're like, oh, cool. Renal. know. Right. And when somebody has a heart attack, that's years, decades of habits that took them there. And it may not just be diet either. They might be smoking. They might be drinking. They might be using drugs, et cetera. And now you're being asked to educate this person on something that's going to require motivation, interest, and years of their life to address. Am I really going to do anything there? Are they really going to restrict themselves in that moment? So that was always my problem with it. I liked the tube feedings, the TPNs when I do that. So I went,

I was more on the long-term care side. I made sure that I got acute experience because you're not a dietitian unless you do that. As you kind of alluded to earlier, that's kind of like the whole pecking order in dietetics. If you don't do clinical in a hospital and an acute hospital, you're not really a dietitian. Right. So I made sure I did that per diem on the weekends and I split my time between dialysis and nursing homes. That's when I really got to see habits. And I really got to see what somebody tells me versus what they're doing. Learned a lot about people that way. But it really hammered that point home.

I'm like these diets, I'm not even sure that they're necessarily the best for these patients under these conditions because they're based on flimsy evidence when you kind of look at it. So when somebody comes and floats a diet in front of me and says, well, what about this? I have to remind them before I make any comment on it. And I'm not saying everything is bullshit. You know, we're in an age in history now where a lot of things are. and you don't know what's real and what's not. But I always try to explain that there are so many variables that you can't measure. So when you're looking at the chronic effects of a nutrition intervention, you know, you put somebody on a diet, you give somebody a supplement, you're making assumptions about their lifestyle.

And that's the one thing you cannot measure. And even if you could, let's say you put them in a lab and you have an impatient study. I learned this when I was writing my dissertation. there's actual intake and habitual intake. So you can get an actual intake with an impatient feeding study, but then that's not their habitual intake that they eat at home. So there's always tradeoffs. And then you get into the research design of it.

And any study on humans, you're getting a convenience sample. I'm taking you back to research methods now. Well, yeah. It just makes me think of like why nutrition is such a young but also evolving science, because it's so hard to have, we can't have super sound studies because it's humans and because it's about what's happening at home and 90% of the time, what are they doing versus what are they saying? Exactly. And you're dealing with volunteers too. So you stopped at a master's, smart girl. So at the master's level, they introduce you to research methods.

whether you're doing a thesis or not. At the PhD level, you have to apply this stuff. And what I learned, the biggest thing I learned, I learned a lot of things there was about sampling. If you want to detect if something works, you assign people with groups randomly. You hear about these randomized control trials. My good friend Lane Norton, he always says,

human randomized control trials in his videos. Do you follow him? No. He's a big influencer online. He's been around forever. He was probably the first to popularize this, concept of I have a PhD, but I lift and I, you know, diet coach and do all these things. I think he started his business in 09.

And he's, his, his content is very much based on this is the claim that this grifter is making. Here's what the data says. And then he always brings up human randomized control trials. So if you want to see if something works, you randomly assign treatment control. We all kind of know this. Now, the second question is, can you generalize your findings to a broader population? Nobody ever thinks about that question. Randomized control trials allow you to see if something works within that sample.

Now, how you sample those humans, or let's say you're doing it with animals, animals, you get better data for this reason I'm about to get to. That determines whether you can generalize it, whether you can say that it happened here, it's going to happen everywhere. So if my sample is women, and I sample a group of women, depending on how I do that, that allows me. me to say whether all women can benefit from this or all women from this population of women can benefit from this. Well, the thing that's missing is you can't flip a coin and decide that people from a group are going to join a study or not. There's ethical and logistical problems with that, right? So you end up recruiting people. So a volunteer is not the same as somebody who doesn't volunteer, right? So if you get volunteers from this neighborhood that we're in, right,

well, what about the people that didn't volunteer? So you can't really say that, okay, we had an effect with this group, it's going to affect everybody in the neighborhood. And this gets missed. You know, this is the biggest hole in studying humans with anything is that you can't randomly sample humans. And the rebuttal that I get from researchers is, well, if you get enough people, well, what's enough people, you know, or a country of 360 million? So is 1,000 enough? Is 1,000 enough? Right. It's still a fraction of a percent, right? Yeah. So why is this important? Well, because, like you said, it's evolving. You may get one person today where the textbook answer works. And, you know, some of the stuff works most of the time. That's how I kind of like to measure it.

There's most of the time and there's none of the time and there's some of the time. Or with drugs, they say you've got responders, non-responders, and adverse responders. So this concept of it depends. You hear that a lot now. But it's true. Yeah. People hate it. Yeah. They hate it. But that's what I'm hearing from you. Oh, yeah. And I think that's something too. You know, working with people, it's like, yeah, we can do these things. And, you know, we can both put in all of our effort. But that's also why we have to give it time and allow us that process of making adjustments and making it individualized to you as the person because it can't be cookie cutter for everyone. Yeah, we maybe have these generalized recommendations and, you know, a blueprint that I generally follow steps, most of the time.

You know, I have people sometimes when I'm doing like a consult. a consultation call with them. It's like, well, how much weight will I lose in those six months? Because I always start with new clients with six months because, you know, we live in the instant gratification. We're conditioned to, you know, all of the headlines from the tap, you know, the lose 10 pounds in six, you know, six days or I don't know, you know, whatever. Six days now?

Then it's shortened. Yeah. You know, we've been conditioned with Amazon Prime. Same day delivery now. I used to say two day delivery, but now it's same day delivery. We need to take time. And going back to what you're mentioning with being inpatient with the cardiac events, let's say, that's years of habits. Guess what? It's going to take time to change those habits. And yeah, we can do something in the short term, but I don't really care how much weight you can lose in the short term. I care about building the habits so that you don't.

need me anymore. And that takes time. And I have to explain that to people. But thinking back to, okay, this is a good place to start, I can't guarantee that you'll lose any weight because it depends. Yes. I had to land the plane. I was like, where was I going with that? It depends. And we got it. That was a smooth landing. Thank you. It depends. That's it. So we always have a model. And we talk about this with lifting. and I'm going to ask you some questions there too. We have a model that we know works most of the time. You know, I'm a minimalist when I train people because on the lifting side, we were fed that we need to train two hours a day, six days a week and do 15 exercises per body part.

And that's how it has to be done because that's what Arnold did or whoever your Mr. Olympia was depending on your generation. For me, it was Arnold. I mean, I'm not that old, but that's, she was in all the movies when I was growing up. So that's the guy who kind of, we kind of, kind of be. ignored the modern ones and we were all like Arnold said, you know. Right. But over the years, especially when you do this drug-free and you're lifting weights drug-free, you kind of figure out that the body gets trashed a lot easier than you think.

And the method that I kind of fell into was we're going to take a handful of key exercises and make them heavier. And I don't know if you remember from the panel, I said lifting weights needs to become more about lifting weights again because now it's just become about going in there. chasing a feeling, beating yourself up. Like if I think from what you were telling me that you experience, if it doesn't hurt, you don't feel trash, it ain't working. Yeah.

Or if you're not drenched in sweat and dying at the end of it. Yeah. And that's kind of what we've been pushing against here is, hey, move your body in a functional way and make it heavier and do that. And if you find that things are weak, address those things. But, you know, you get a lot of people that come in and they're reading about some minutia or what now they're watching because it's mostly on Instagram before it was reading forums and magazines yeah but uh somebody's telling them about some exercise that works some individual muscle

and the guy's whole body's weak same with the I don't deal with this as much on the female side more on the male side on the female side what I've seen is what you said you have to be drenched and sweat it has to feel really hard it has to burn or I didn't do anything you know and that's just not necessarily true we've been marketed the extremes because it just sounds cool. Because it's sexy and it sells. Exactly. And you have the most attractive person on the ad who was born that way in many cases,

enhanced it with drugs and look even better. And then enhanced it with Photoshop after. And, yeah, airbrush and all sorts of other shit that I don't know a whole lot about. But it's been a challenge when you deal with the lay public and you're having to dial it down because of the instant gratification. They come in, they're learning how to move. So they didn't necessarily get a good workout the first day. Right.

You know, just getting past that. Yeah. Well, and I remember, you know, what sparked this memory from you is I was, before I came over here, had a client call with somebody who the last time we talked, she was like, you know, I'd only lost one pound since our last call. And I was like, but you lost a pound. Like, that's amazing. And then today she sent me over her updated body analysis.

She has like one of those smart scales. Cool. You know, her weight was about the same, but she had gone up and muscle and down in body fat. And I was, you know, like, it's so much of that expectation management and also helping people have that reframe of like, no, this is what we want. I don't care what the scale says. Like, aren't you excited? Like, I'm so excited. This is so great.

Yeah, this is what we want. So, you know, it kind of goes back to that. It's going to take longer than you think. and having the expectation management around, can we do this in a safe way? Going back to what you're saying about lifting heavier, but keeping it safe and making sure you're functional and that you're balanced,

that's, I mean, I think something's so important. Well, it's the same thing with diet. They want to come in, they want to cut out entire food groups or go on very low-calorie diets. And we know where that road leads to. It's stressful in the short term and leads to rebound,

behaviors in the long term. And more self-confidence issues because why can't I stick to anything? Why? Like, I give up again. And then it just beats on you. You reminded me of something that I think you'll like to speak on here. It's diet related. So I have, in lifting, I have big five.

There's five lifts I want people to do. The squat, the overhead press, the deadlift, the bench press, and the chin up or the pull down if they can't do a chin up. Okay. And diet, I have a big three. water, fiber, and protein. Love it. Right?

And I think of this client, and like every time she messages me when she runs into this problem, like how the big three. And then she gets it now. You know, she knows right away what she did. So I'm thinking of people that have dieted a lot, crash dieted a lot. And by the time they get to me willingly, you know, they want to make a change. Their expectations are lowered. Their standards are lower.

Usually they're starting to get a little older and it's just not practical to go that hard anymore. So this gal will fall into binges. You know, she lifts weights with me. She does well. She pushes heavy. He doesn't complain that it's minimalistic. You know, she's on board. But then she also does karate. So she's very active in martial arts, which also adds a stressor to the system. Well, you can imagine what your appetite's like when you're doing that, right? So I'm like, yeah, I got into the pantry. I ate all this crap, you know, blah, blah, blah. And she's like, kind of stressed out about it. She's super chill about it compared to some other people. And I'm like, water protein fiber, how are we doing?

Oh yeah, I'm low on all three. I'm like, well, there you go. So we saw this tight correlation. She learned a lot about her habits with this, that whenever she would binge one or multiple of those were low. So I have found that a lot of these people aren't eating enough of the right things and then too much of the wrong things. Right.

Or they're trying to be good during the day. Oh, I'm trying to lose weight. So I'm just going to, I've got my little bird meals planned out throughout the day. and then evening time hits. She's done her karate. She's done her heavy lifting. She's not maybe eaten enough calories throughout the day. And also your big three.

And then that catches up in the evening time. And I see that all the time. And, you know, it's kind of like this whole cascade of events that we can always reverse engineer and say, okay, what happened? So you, okay, you binged at night because you were so hungry. Okay, what happened? Oh, well, I skipped breakfast. Okay, why didn't you skip breakfast?

Why did you skip first? Okay, because I was so busy in the morning. Oh, because I forgot to meal prep my breakfast the night before. So it's like, it's not about I can't control my nighttime habits. Exactly, yeah. It's not I can't control my nighttime snacking. It's let's rewind the tape and see what tweaks we can make to your habits and your day. That will help that from not happening.

What do you find to be the most challenging with your demographic? Most challenging. That's a hard question because a couple things come to mind. One being people who feel like they're doing everything right and we're still stuck, right? And so that's a challenge, you know, especially if we've been working together for a while. Right. And then we were experiencing this like standstill a little bit because then it's so easy. for them to get frustrated or feel like it's not working.

And it's more so about can we push through these hard times? Because the reality is we want to spend the most of life in maintenance. We don't want to be always chasing, you know, of fat loss. We can't always be in one of the, so learning how to be consistent with your habits, even when you're in a season that feels like you're just in maintenance, which that's a power. That's a win. That's something we need to celebrate, right? I've had many client calls that are like, recently, especially with like the kind of ramping up of the holidays where they're like, yeah, I didn't lose any weight this week. And we talk about what they had, you know, like, oh, and I went here and we went out to dinner here and it was my birthday or whatever. And I'm like, can we celebrate the fact that your weight is the same, that your body composite is the same despite life happening? Because guess what? The rest of life is going to continue to happen. So we need to, like, change that mindset around not losing weight because obviously we know that there are so many fluctuations in the way anyway.

However, let's find the gratitude. Let's find the win in being where we're at right there. So that's one kind of hurdle that I do see that I think is important to address. but also just that re-learning old toxic diet culture behaviors, right? people automatically, like you said, want to eliminate whole food groups or people want to they think that they're not losing weight fast enough or they, what we're doing isn't working but they haven't given enough time. And then they want to revert back to, well, I'm just going to do this or, you know,

whatever. So I think that's something. And then also just helping people find the time to make what they say they want to be a priority, actually a priority. So we get people coming to us saying they want these things. They want this body composition change. They want these things. But then when it comes down to, okay, let's put these habits in place, we can be bad with a lot of excuses. And I'm, I'm all. about working together. Let's find those small baby step changes. Okay, that feels like too much. Let's bring it down to the next step. But it's also like we have to meet in the middle. Again, I can't want this more for you than you want it for yourself. So we got to find, we've got to find a way somehow because people do it. That doesn't mean that some people have a

harder time and have more going on than others. But I think it's pretty fair to us say that everybody nowadays have a lot going on. And so let's find a way to make, for example, working out or getting your steps in or whatever, work for you rather than you feeling like you don't have the time for it. We can find the time, but it might just be a little bit unconventional. Right. Do you find that people tend to struggle with dialing down the task that they're responsible for in the moment? Yes, I would say they, I think that they feel a bit relieved, but then also kind of a little bit of, I guess I'll say guilt sets in of like, I feel like I should be doing more or I feel like

I should be doing this. But then we have like data to support that you can't do it yet. And that's okay. Let's find something that you can do. I always like to say success is the biggest motivator. So if you are feeling successful and in successful meaning, oh, you're getting 5,000 steps every day instead of 10,000 because 10,000 you weren't hitting. And so you're feeling bad and you were beating yourself up.

Why can't I do this? So let's back it down. I would never go from 10 to 5,000, but that's just for whatever. So but when you're hitting your 5,000 steps every day and you're like, oh, yeah, I'm doing this. I feel good. I'm proud of myself using that feeling of success as a. momentum to reinforce the positive behavior and getting that positive feedback that continues

to set that. Given that momentum, putting in the reps to then turn it from a goal into a habit so that then we don't have to think about it as hard. So I'd say a lot of people are relieved and are like, yes, I can do that. But then also we have to work through a little bit of that guilt around the should, the shoulding on yourself. Right. shitting on yourself.

Yeah. Yeah. So it's interesting. This is one of the things that I learned myself and that I try to pass on. It's probably I would say it's the most challenging thing that I have to deal with, both with nutrition and with lifting. The lifting analogy that I like to use is sometimes the weight's just too heavy that day, especially once you're no longer a novice. So I think this is, this applies to anything in life. You get the honeymoon phase when you do something new.

Things are easy. Progress is rapid. Things are predictable. Once you get past that, I don't know, three to nine month mark, depending on the person, then things become less predictable, more individualized. And you start to get to see those individual problems that they have to overcome. And what I find is that the ladder is not as smooth. It's more of a zigzag, right?

And in those moments where they're seeing those troughs, you know, you get those peaks and valleys. when they're in those valleys, it's like, well, I just don't want to do it at all now. And then I've had to learn how to think critically about, okay, well, you can't do 5,000. How about 5,000 and one? And just that little tweak tends to help when they actually do it. And I'm always kind of hitting, hey, you got to show up and do something because doing nothing reinforces doing nothing. You know, at the end of the day, we're very similar to other animals with that. You can reinforce bad behavior just by, oh, you know, I'm just not going to go today.

Right. And then the next time you might go, then the time after that, I'm just not going to go today. Then before you know what you stop going. Or I'm going to skip breakfast today. Then before you know, I've fallen into this. Get busy. I skip breakfast.

Then it's like a month of skipping breakfast. And I'm like, I like breakfast. What the hell happened? Why am I like skipping breakfast? Why am I getting crap at Starbucks, you know? And I have to like reel it back in and start over. And I think it's a very important tool, you know, this concept of, hey, sometimes you got to reset, back it down, set the goal lower for today.

Because it's going to contribute. to that long-term accumulation. Have you kind of found the same? Yeah, absolutely. Kind of going through those periods of like, let's just get back to the basics. You're feeling overwhelmed. We have had months now of building up different goals and maybe now you feel like, you know, you were in a good groove, but now it feels like too much. Let's just get back to the basics, focus on the things or, you know, talk a lot about different seasons of life. So like this season of life right now, you know, being on top of your nutrition 100% isn't in the cards. How can we just scale it back to having those baseline habits that we worked on at the beginning, but now are like default that you don't even have to

think about, but it feels almost like too basic, but like this is carrying you. So let's just ride it out, focus on these other things that we need to focus on, whether it's, you know, like a family situation or work situation or travel or whatever. But like we still have a these things that will help you feel so much better than when we started. But it just like is a bit of a giving yourself a little bit of grace. Let's go back to just focusing on those baseline habits. Okay. Well, tell us more about that. Give us some examples of how you, how you've helped people kind of dial it down and work through so that they keep moving. Because that's, I think that's the most important thing is that the ball keeps rolling forward. And that often gets missed because they get

focus on the outcome, which is important. I think it's important to focus on the thing that you want. It's easy to stray away and look at the next shiny object. We call it program hopping in the weight room and diet hopping too. There's a lot of that that goes on. It gets hard. They're stuck and it's something that could be worked through, but then they want that, I guess, dopamine rush of trying something new. They're chasing that novice effect all over again. So can you give some specific examples of how you kind of work through that? So, you know, in terms of like navigating different seasons of life and then getting back to basic habits. I'm thinking of one one client that, you know, when we started out, we work through those foundational habits that I work with

with most clients, you know, the hydration, the, you know, working on maybe it's not skipping breakfast or getting enough protein in whatever to individualize to them that we need to work on just to kind of get up to a good baseline. And then I like to trickle in the macro counting. So at first we'll hit a protein goal and then we'll hit a protein and a calorie goal and kind of like ease on to it like that. And this client, we had gotten all the way up. We were tracking macros. We were in a caloric deficit. She was seeing progress. And then she had a health situation come up. And then, you know, she had to take a step back from tracking her food and these body composition goals that she was having. And going through a lot of medical appointments and all these different types of things.

And, you know, that was frustrating for her. She was like, I was just getting so much momentum. But then we were able to think about, okay, well, you're still planning out your dinners for the week. So you're not getting takeout most nights. You know, you still have your breakfast that you're enjoying every day. We've already worked on making sure you get protein and fiber with each meal. So, like, these things are in place. And right now we just have to prioritize your health in another way.

And so we just now have kind of gotten back to. we're back up to calories and protein because she kind of got through that, that difficult health season of life. And then we've been ramping back up, working towards our body composition goals. But, you know, just kind of ebbing and flowing with what the person needs. For me, it's about being that source of accountability, but also empathy that they might not be giving themselves or that grace that they might need permission to show themselves while still holding them accountable. in a kind of loving and supportive way. Right.

So a lot of it's just kind of redefining what a success and a failure is. And that moves depending on where you are in the process, right? Yep. Yeah, I found that. I find that to be probably the most creative part of our job. Because when it gets hard, that's when you start to really learn about people. Mm-hmm. And that's also when a lot of people tend to drop off.

Yeah. And I was like to say, you know, it's easy to struggle alone. It'd be so much easier. And that's something I celebrate. If someone comes to a call and they're like, I really wanted to cancel our call today, like the last two weeks I've been really struggling. And again, a reframe of celebrating that. You showed up. That's huge because it's so much easier to cancel the call, struggle by yourself and then let those months go by and then you end up feeling worse. I'm going, you know, come to me with these challenges. That's what I'm here to do. You know, you don't have to figure it out on your own. That's what I'm here for. So let's, let's navigate it and troubleshoot it together so that, yeah, it might be a step down from what we were doing before, but like we can still move forward. Right. The ball is still moving. A centimeter is a centimeter forward from where you were. You know, that's why I always try to tell people. I had a question and I lost it. what shit had a brain fart. That's all right.

That's all right. So tell me a little bit about how you, I remember now. Okay, great. Cut that shit out. Tell me a little bit about how you navigate when I navigate situations where somebody comes to you and they have preconceived notions about what's supposed to work and they think they know more than you do. because we all deal with this. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And what does that look like with your audience?

You know, I find that by the time somebody comes to me and we have that initial consultation call, just like, is this a good fit? If someone's kind of like showing me that that is a potential conversation or issue, There's a lot of expectation management on that first call. Like, this is a lifestyle change. This is not another quick fix. This is not another diet.

And so being able to hammer that in of like, if that's what you're looking for, then don't do, please don't give me your money. Right. You know? Like, I'm here to support you. I'm here to help you be successful. But my definition for success for you is not just seeing a number on. the scale. It's like all these other things. And so, you know, let's say I've been working with somebody for a while and then they come to me with, oh, I saw this online or whatever. I always

like to ask more questions, right? Like, okay, where did this come from? Like, you know, details. But then I try to put it back on them in terms of like, okay, this sounds like something that you had told me about when we first started working together that you, that doesn't work, that you like saw this rebound from. So a good example is keto, right? Yeah. Keto. Like, oh, I'm just going to go back on keto because I lost so much weight. I'm like, okay, but what happened after you went off? Remember, like, we had this conversation, you know? And so I think bringing it back to them being the root of the shift and helping guide them to see, you know, is this actually valuable? Is this actually helpful?

And then if it is something. So a good example is intermittent fasting. So most, if not all of the research around intermittent fasting is with men who are on a 24-hour hormonal cycle as opposed to women, right? And so, yeah, there can be many benefits for men with intermittent fasting. But for women, it's not something that I generally recommend. It's not something I generally recommend for men either because of what. we were talking about before of that nighttime snacking thing. So like, but there are people who are really, really passionate about doing their intermittent fasting.

And it's like, okay, if that's something you really want to do, then I can help you do it in a safe and, you know, well-balanced way, let's say. But reminding them that is this something that you can sustain? Because that's why all fad diets fail, right? because it's not sustainable. Maybe it gets you to a result, but are you going to eat like that for the rest of your life? No.

So I try to help, you know, guide the conversation to, we're here because we want to make a sustainable change. And the habits that we're focusing on now, there are going to be habits you're going to keep doing to maintain where we're at.

It's not that you're just going to be there one day and say, okay, I'm done. It doesn't work like that. We know that doesn't work like that. So just like helping people get to that point I think is really important. You reminded me of something. So what about when they reach that inevitable point of diminishing returns? Because, and I'll specify, because that varies from one person to the next. There's this concept I learned somewhere in school, but I've seen it play

out of biological variability. I said it earlier. You got with drugs, you have responders, non-responders, adverse responders. Well, with diet, people are going to get stuck at different places and there eventually reaches a point of impracticality. And the same thing happens with training to, it becomes more demanding. And I've had to tell several people, not several, probably hundreds, if not thousands at this point, that their goal is not compatible with their lifestyle. Yep. And I want to hear how you navigate that. Yeah. Yeah. That was a great question because there is that point where it's like, okay, maybe we have made a lot of progress. body composition wise, you know, training wise, whatever it is.

And then it's like, oh, but I want to get like, but I want to see my abs or whatever. It's like, okay, let's have that conversation of, are you willing to do these changes? Because my approach is very sustainable. I want to help you, you know, navigate real life and enjoy your ice cream. And if you want to a cocktail or whatever it is. But being realistic about. what that will look like in terms of how much more progress we can make. And so are you willing to give up these things and how worth it is it to you for this, you know, external validation

or this maybe surface deep why? Can we get deeper with the why? How important is it to you and why? Can we go five deep? Right. Like, I want to see my app. Why? Well, because I think they're cool and hot. Okay, why? Well, because I see a lot of cool and hot people on Instagram with abs. Okay, what, why is that, why does that matter to you? Right? So like trying to get deep and it's like if you get stuck versus people who are getting to the why of, well, because my dad died of a heart attack and I don't want to, you know, do that, be that same example. For my kids, I want to be able to play on the playground with my grandkids and do all these things. Or I want to feel confident in my skin because I never have. Or just getting really deep when your Y is powerful enough, the how unfolds itself. You're willing to do the work to get to there. And don't get me wrong.

Like I have plenty of clients who are like, I want to see my ad. And we get there. And that's great. But is it for everybody's sustainable? No. Right. Right. And so there's this one client that I've had, God bless her. I've been working with her since the first year I started my business. So we've been working together for four years. She does not need me anymore. And she knows that. But at this point, it's the accountability. Right. And I'm so proud of her because when she is a doctor. And when we first started working together, she was, you know, getting pizza in the cafeteria every day. She was, you know, eating whatever it was. was, you know, not hydrating, whatever.

So in that first year, we worked on those baseline foundational habits, got into the macro track and got so really good on her habits, dialed in those body composition, you know, dials. Yeah. And, you know, like unfolded a fantastic physique that she was super proud of. And, you know, is she there now? No. But that's because there have been so many different seasons of life. and like she has so many other things going on now,

but like all of these foundational habits are still there and she's still rocking it. And like knowing that it's okay to have different goals during different seasons of life is something that's really, you know, important too. And like that's something that I have, I'm sure you have too, of like helped clients realize,

okay, maybe right now, given what we know about your life, it's not realistic to work on visible apps. Okay, but what can, we work towards. So now with her, we're working towards, she's like, I'm lifting heavier than ever. I'm getting compliments on how muscular. I'm like, okay. So that's still a win. We're just working towards something different. And, you know, to keep it interesting, I know for myself, like, I like to keep it interesting by working toward different goals. I mentioned earlier, I just ran my first half marathon. Congrats. Thank you. I'm really proud of myself. It was hard and it was great. And, you know,

I'm really proud of my finish. But, like, that's something. thing I've done all throughout my life, right? Like, I just wanted to do a bodybuilding competition, so I did it. I did, I wanted to do a triathlon, so I did it. Wanted to do the half marathon. So it's like, it's okay to have different goals through different seasons of life to keep it interesting and to push yourself. So, you know, normalizing that with clients too. Like maybe what you signed up to work with me on is different than where we're at now. And that's a beautiful thing. It evolves. Right. Now you need to do a lifting competition. You know, I almost did.

I was, because, you know, being a, like, a power lifter at my weight, I was like doing, I was like pretty, doing pretty good. But it scares me. I was freaked out about the training, like one rep training with. Really? That's the fun part. Yeah, I don't know. It, like, freaked me out to have that much weight on my frame.

Like, I got up to deadlifting 270. Okay. So then. And then I was like, okay, well, I'm good. We need to talk. Do you remember what I said about that at the panel? Yes. Got to do heavier, right?

I was talking about the difference between a hard, long running race versus a heavy lift. Oh, right. Yep. Fear. Yeah. Remember what I said about a heavy lift of one rep max versus a marathon? I do remember. Why don't you remind us?

I was talking about how when you. running marathon or a triathlon or you swim and you're going these long distances, it really teaches you to deal with pain. You know, your pain tolerance goes up. When you lift something heavy, it teaches you to fear. And you just said it. You just set it on my show. It's the truth, you know, especially in the squat, you have hundreds of pounds on your back.

It just even to this day, like it doesn't even have to be a max for me. If it's over 300 pounds, you know, I can do somewhere in the mid fours. I've been tested in a long time. Once it's over a certain threshold, I'm like, you have to, like, cite yourself up. Yeah. And there's, like, this whole thing that goes into it. Right.

With a run, it gets hard at the end. Yeah. I mean, the whole thing's hard in different ways. But at the end, you have to, like, dig deep and push and get through that pain to finish, right? When it's a heavy lift, you have to work through the jitters. You're like, well, shit. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, you got to do it. Yeah. So talk to me about that, then. What's your lifting? So back up ahead. There was a way I wanted to ask you this.

So you help people with body composition. And a lot of the time when people come to me because they want to improve their body composition, they're focused on the fat on their body. And I have found that for a lot of run-of-the-mill humans, they're undermuscled in a lot of cases. Sometimes they're legitimately overweight or obese, but then you can just take a look at them and you know there's not a whole lot of muscle under there either and two things need to happen. But in a lot of cases, I get people that are just mildly chubby and they're under muscle. And I have to explain to them that their lifting program is actually more important than the diet.

And getting that across is a challenge in it of its own. So two-part question there. How do you navigate that? And what has your lifting journey been like? Maybe answer the second one first. Second one first. So, you know, over the past, how long has it been seven months or so? So what happened was at the beginning of this year, I had a six.

ski accident. And I fell and injured my shoulder. So I had to take a break from lifting upper body as that healed. So I was like, I can do legs every day. So I started running more. And there have been different periods of time that I've like intermittently ran. But it was, you know, because of that injury that I decided to do the half marathon. But I've still maintained lifting, you know, four to five days a week during, well, five at the beginning, closer to. And then, you know, to four, three and four towards the end of the training block. But regardless, for the past over a decade, I would say I lift at least four to seven days a week, you know? And that's just something that I really enjoy to do.

I wasn't athletic growing up, didn't really play sports all that much, didn't have much hand-eye coordination. But it was when I discovered weightlifting that I was like, oh, this is something I can be good at. And I really enjoyed it. And I also love the control aspect of like, oh, you want to work on your shoulders. Like we can work on your shoulders and, you know, being able to. A type A thing. Oh, yeah. Yep.

And so that for me has been really fun and cool. And, you know, this past year has been a bit more of a challenge because of different injuries. that I have come up as a result of that ski accident. I also had a herniated disc and I sprained my ankle. It was a whole thing. That wasn't all at once, but it was like over the past several months, I'm like, I've never experienced so many injuries in my life. And so that has been a whole new lesson of patience.

And also listening to my body, even when I don't want to, of like, you need to take a chill pill and like maybe focus. on your recovery a little bit more, which is hard when it's such a big part of my life. So anyway, that's kind of where I'm at right now. So now I am ramping back up in terms of lifting more, I'd say, you know, closer to that five, six days a week, adding in some cardio. I haven't really ran too much since the race, mostly because I bonged my knee and bruised my kneecap. And so my knee hurts so bad. Like I hit it on the cap in it.

And it hurts so bad. I like it, I can't run actually because of, but whatever. That doesn't matter. So that's kind of what I would say for my own lifting journey. And of course, there have been other seasons of that as well. But for with people and clients that I'm working with, I would definitely say that helping them get to the point of seeing the importance of lifting, you know, most people hire me as their dietitian.

And I tell them, we're not only going to be working on nutrition. You know, we need to be working on these other things. And so it's definitely, for some people, can be a little bit longer of a road to help them see that. For example, a lot of my girls, a few women clients, especially with the rise of Pilates, it's like, okay, can we like, apologies is great. Don't get me wrong. But like, we still need to do progressive overload.

We still need to have some intentional weight training in here because you will see the change in your body composition that you're wanting if we add this into. So, yeah, it's like for me, a bit of managing, well, we need to do something you enjoy because then you're going to be more likely to be concerned. with it, but we also need to do something that we know is going to move the needle. Right. And what kind of feedback do you get? Usually, like, okay, if you say I need to. Or, like, you know, I think a lot of it, too, is like that fear and that hesitation of, like, not knowing what to do or not being comfortable in the gym outside of group fitness classes.

So, you know, there's a whole other host of work that gets to be done on that side of things. too. Have you found, so you mentioned earlier that when you were in college, the weight room was beautiful. And if there were than college kids in there, you'd spend more time in there. When I was in college, I remember I had a female dietitian teaching the class. She's like, I'm not going anywhere near that free weight area. There's a bunch of weird shit going on in there. And that was kind of like the theme years ago. And then I've noticed a shift when I go to these big commercial gyms now where it's a lot more co-ed by the dumbbells and especially in the power racks. And I think a lot of that has to do with CrossFit.

I think that CrossFit probably got more people in general under a barbell than any other fad, fitness fad that has hit. I have my issues with it, of course. Yeah, they'd be one of the benefits of CrossFit. But I can't take that away from them. And I was talking to somebody earlier about women in particular. Are you familiar with Brett Contreras? No. Oh, yes.

Yeah. So I was talking to a fellow coach, and she trains people to get strong. So she's just, she detests mainstream fitness. And I was explaining that, you know, love them or hate him, that guy has got more women under a loaded barbell than anybody else in our business. And it's just, I like the way that he kind of introduced it. So I met him in person. He trained here at a gym in Tempe when I first moved here. And I noticed that he had him squatting, he had him deadlifting, benching and doing all the other things.

But if you were to go on his page, it's all about hip thrust. It's all about the booty. Yep. And it was, you know, that was kind of the lure that he would use. I mean, it's good marketing. He knows how to get them. Yeah. Yeah.

And I can't hate on that, you know. Right. I think that a lot of people in general, not just, you know, we're talking, we're using women as an example, but they have these ideas of what happens in a weight room. Like, oh, I can't lift heavy. I'm going to get hurt. I'm like, well, yeah, if you do it on your own, you're probably going to get hurt. These movements are very specific when you introduce free weights.

But if you learn how to do it correctly, there's tremendous. amount of benefit. And I find that it's hard to communicate that because people associate a loaded barbell with either a fat bald guy with a beard lifting a bunch of weight or a guy on a bunch of steroids, you know, with veins and his fingers, you know. And having to dial that down and say, hey, look, hold on. You know, I got an 80-year-old lady at my gym right now. And she's never misses a workout. Three times a week, she's squatting and dead lifting. And still trying her damnedness to get a pull-up. But that's so cool. Diet's a limiting factor there.

You know, it's hard to eat when you're 80. Yeah. So I think it's a very important part of the equation that gets missed in our education as nutritionists or dietitians. I guess it's RDN now, right? They talk about muscle mass. They don't really talk about how that's built. Right. And would you say that, like, I know that I have people eat way more protein than the, like,

like recommended amount, which is so when we're in school and they're saying, oh, you know, 0.8 grams per kilogram. Like, that's not enough. It's for function. Right, exactly. So, you know, just kind of that's a good example of a question you asked earlier of like what you learned in school versus what we do in practice and what we learn over the years of experience and working with people and seeing things in real life versus.

is academia. Right. Because a lot of research is based on controlled groups, and there's different levels of control. Like if you go way back, they had prisoners that they would study. Like the Vermont prison study is my favorite because I say there are some things we are pretty confident about. Do you remember that one?

You'll have to refresh my memory. It sounds familiar. They restricted calories. They overfed. And then they looked at all sorts of things. So obviously, if they overfed, they gained weight. If they underfed, they lost weight. Then they looked at thyroid and saw some correlations there between thyroid function

and carbohydrate intake, and there's a whole list of other things they found there. But, you know, it was a prison study, so they controlled what they ate. Yeah. You know, it kind of checks out with things you and I see. So I always tell people, I'm like, you know, some of what's being reported isn't totally bullshit, but check it against the smell test, you know, is it actually playing out. Like recently, the new one that I keep hearing is, you know, there's studies saying creatine, high dose creatine helps with cognitive function. So I can buy into that. You know, the theory makes sense.

But what I've been asking is, what are the anecdotes? Do you know anybody who's tried this? Like, what are you hearing? I'm not, you know, there's no real risk to doing that unless you have bad GI problems with creatine. So I'm all for giving it a shot. It's safe enough to risk on, you know? But that's how my mind's been programmed now after being in the research side of it.

Right. Okay, hold on. It sounds good. It makes sense. But are there anecdotes? I want to know what are people doing. What are people seeing? And the protein thing was a classic one.

Like, yeah, for basic function, if you're a sedentary. human. Sure, at point of grams per kilograms, probably fine. But once you start applying stress to the system, that changes everything. Right. And also, anecdotally, when we take it from, you know, whatever that, that, you know, starting number is, let's just call it a total 50 grams of protein for the day. And then we bring it up to something that we might recommend on that for that individual client, you know, oh, I'm not feeling as hungry. I'm not feeling as many cravings. I'm feeling more energy. Like all of these things like yeah, it's pretty great, right? Look at what happens. Small tweak. It's funny. Do you find that most people don't realize

their body burns calories being alive? Yeah. They feel like they need to focus only on burning as many calories as they can during their workout. Yeah. Let's focus on just daily living. Mm-hmm. That, what is it, that RMR? That's like most of your energy expenditure. Yeah. I saw this in action at the nursing home and you probably saw it in Acutes, there was a lady with Huntington's, so she was not a walkie-talkie, you know, and she would just lay there and I had to adjust her tube feeding. And I had around 3,000 calories a day, and she just laying there all day. Right.

And she was withering away, like 97 pounds. I'm like, man, I think she got down to 76 pounds. Wow. And when I got it up, that was about it, about 3,000 calories. I got her back up over 100 pounds. But I was like making these conservative jumps. I'm like, these numbers look pretty big for somebody who's laying there. You know, I was a young dietitian.

Yeah. But she just kept dropping the weight. And I'm like, is the feeding working? Because I think they had a bullus feeder. So I'm like, I started spying on the nurses. Right. Are you doing this? Right.

And they were doing their job. And we just, yeah, we had to push calories. So I find with a lot of my nutrition focused clients, I have to explain that and hammer that over and over again. Because like I get these guys that are 300 pounds and women too. So yeah, they've got some 300 pounders. It's usually lighter than that. But they'll think, oh, I got to eat 1,200 calories. I just, you know, I need to eat nothing to lose weight.

And I'm like, do you understand what it takes? I mean, even with a slow metabolism, what it takes is a stain a 300-pound body, you know? Yeah. And then eventually they disclose what's happening. They're drinking a two-liter of Coke every day or something like that. Right. And there's- You're getting them calories.

Just not in the way that we should be. I had a guy. He wasn't an extreme case, but he was overweight for him. He was uncomfortable. And he's like, dude, just last time I had to eat like 1,200 calories. I'm like, you did what? He didn't tell me because he was, I had to get him on calls. So we were doing this online.

I'm like, you have to call me once a week because you are like a one. sentence guy or a no sentence guy. And then I'm learning information later. Have you found this happens too sometimes? Like there's stuff going on and you just find it like a year later. Yeah, you're like, uh, you didn't tell me about this. It's like a smoking gun. Yeah. The earliest one that comes to mind was I was working in dialysis and this guy had like uncontrolled phosphorus and he was, it was funny. They'd tell the technicians everything. They'd try to hide it from the dietitians. One day the technician's like, oh, he pours bean juice on his food. And then I go up to him and I'm like, and he starts laughing.

He's like, yeah, I'm like, that's why you're freaking phosphorus is high, dude. Like, stop with the bean juice and he came right down and cut his binders down. But I, that guy that I was talking to, he was like, oh, does the oil or the butter or whatever fat he was using to cook? Does that how? And I'm like, bro, that's like several hundred calories that you're adding. Right. And then he starts losing weight. And that's something I say to clients, too, of like, tracking your food isn't the end all.

be all. It's not our end goal, but it's a tool to build awareness. Can we just build awareness around what it is that you're currently doing? And even just don't change. That's what I have for new clients do. Don't change anything about what you're eating right now. Just track your food. And then I had a new client one week into that. We had one call. She was like, I haven't seen below 180 in since like in a year, even just slowing down and tracking my food, I have to be so much more conscientious. I'm like, pretty amazing while a little, you know, slowing down and having that awareness around what we're putting in our bodies. Because think about all those little extra nibbles. If you're not being conscious of it, especially for the parents out there, you know, grabbing stuff off of their kids

played or, you know, you go into the pantry and you grab some snacks. And it's like, if you have to put all of that in the tracker, you might think twice about actually. You know, if you want to have that snack or if is it going to be mindless or a mindful snack? You discover all sorts of stuff. Yeah. A lot of underreporting is under reporting is not always intentional. That's what I have to explain. Sometimes you're just doing things like I'm guilty of it.

Yeah. It's like self-report bias comes in many forms. There's this biostatistician that spoke to us at ASU and he was going over self-reported physical activity and self-reported diet intake. And he was coming at it from the stats perspective, but then also a little bit from the behavioral perspective. By the end of it, he's like, yeah, he's like, this is an example of when something is not better than nothing. He was like, until we could, you know, find a way to meaningfully measure what's going in, we probably shouldn't even bother with this. Not good data. No, it's junk.

It's garbage in, garbage out. But they require that you report diet intake, you know you can't measure it. Yeah. So, yeah, I think we hammered a lot of stuff there. We covered a lot of topics. Do you feel like you've talked enough? Yeah, I mean, I think we covered a whole lot of different topics. And I, you know, it's great to have a conversation with a fellow dietitian because I feel like it's not something that on many podcasts.

You know, we kind of get into that. So, yeah, it's been great. I'm really glad that you had me on. Yeah, that was the perked me up at that event. I was just kind of sitting there like, oh, I'm an RD. And I'm like, fuck, yeah. I'm like, we're doing a podcast. Yeah, I love it.

I'm so glad that you. And quick turnaround time too, so that was great. Yeah, I didn't think I'd get you in this fast. I didn't either. I was like, I'm going on Monday. Okay, great. Here I am. Very cool.

So, you know, I have a couple others that I'm friends with, longtime friends. I have one that I brought on the show once, and I think it'd be great to have you both on at the same time. She worked in inpatient eating disorders. Now she's an outpatient weight management. And I want to kind of do a panel show and get a few of us on there. I think that would be cool.

Yeah, you let me know. And I've got to figure out the room. So this is the first time. If you haven't noticed, something's different. about this episode. Yes, great. Well, thanks so much for having me.

You're welcome. Thanks for coming. Yes. And can you tell the audience where to find you? Oh, absolutely. So on Instagram, I'm Fat Loss R.D. Zoe. And then if you want to just look me up online, my website is zoyshrotrouternutrition.com. But, you know, social media is fine.

I'm there. I'm on TikTok. But Instagram is probably the best place. Same here. I can't do the other ones. I try. You know, I put in the effort because, again, I can't have fat. anything. But it's hard. It is hard. And I also feel like just so much so much changes,

you know, everything's changing. But it's, it's all good. We keep persevering. Yes, that's right. You can find me at weights and plates.com or on Instagram at the underscore Robert underscore Santana or the underscore Robert underscore Santana. I've learned that when I say the people think I say something else sometimes. So the underscore Robert underscore. Santana or on YouTube at YouTube.com slash at weights underscore and underscore plates. Thanks for tuning in and we'd like to have you back. Sounds great. Thanks.