Well with Arielle Lorre - 418: The Victoria’s Secret Model Workout and The Dose Mentality: The Smarter Way to Get Strong and Lean with Joe Holder

Episode Date: October 22, 2025

This week I’m joined by Joe Holder: performance specialist, Nike Master Trainer, and wellness educator who’s worked with everyone from Victoria’s Secret models to elite athletes, for a conversation that will completely reframe how you think about health and fitness. We get into why workouts don’t always need to be so hard (and how training too intensely can actually make you look and feel worse), the real reason women sometimes get “puffy” from exercise, and how applying a “dose mentality” can optimize results without obsession. Joe breaks down the importance of recovery, why the HIIT revolution did more harm than good, and how physical resiliency builds mental toughness. We also dive into the psychology of wellness including orthorexia, body dysmorphia, and how to pursue health without letting it consume you—plus intuitive eating, carb cycling, and his simple, grounded hacks for starting the day with presence and balance.This episode is brought to you by Bellami Hair, Boncharge, Field of Greens, Just Thrive, Fatty15, Ro Body, and Quo.Go to BellamiHair.com and use code WELL to get 25% off your first clip-in order and book a free consultation. Save 15% off my favorite Red Light Face Mask by using code BLONDE at www.boncharge.com.Visit fieldofgreens.com and use promo code WELL for 20% off.Go to justthrivehealth.com and use code WELL for 20% off your first 90 day bottle of Just Thrive probiotic.Visit fatty15.com/WELL and use code WELL at checkout for an additional 15% off their Starter Kit.Go to ro.co/BLONDE to see if your insurance covers GLP-1s for free.Visit quo.com/BLONDE for 20% off 6 months. Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to in this episode.Produced by Dear Media.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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I'm calling it right now. This is one of my absolute favorite episodes I have recorded in six and a half years, which is saying a lot. And probably one of my favorite conversations that I have had around physical health, training, nutrition, and wellness and everything basically under that umbrella. I'm talking to Joe Holder, who is somebody that I have wanted to have on my podcast for so long. And he is just incredible. So he is a performance specialist. He's a Nike master trainer. He's a wellness educator. He's the creator of the Ocho system. He's a columnist at GQ and he holds so many other job titles as well. He's a jack of all trades. He has trained

some of the most recognizable names in the world, which we discuss in this episode from Victoria's secret models to elite athletes. He's an athlete himself. He played football at University of Pennsylvania. But after sitting down and talking to him for this hour, I came away from this conversation feeling like he really is kind of a philosopher at heart. And this conversation is really going to reframe how you think about health and fitness in the best possible way. So we get into things like why workouts don't always need to be hard and how training intensely can actually make you look and feel worse. We talk about the real reason why women sometimes get puffy from exercise, which is something that you guys ask about all the time whenever I have a fitness professional on my. show and he really is sensitive to the female experience, which I know you guys will appreciate.

We talk about how applying a dose mentality will optimize results without obsession. We break down the importance of recovery. We talk about that hit revolution of the early 2000s and why that ended up doing more harm than good. We talk about why physical resiliency builds mental toughness. And then we dive into the psychology of wellness. We talk orthorexia, body dysmorphia, how to take. pursue health and wellness without letting it consume you. We talk carb cycling, so much more. He

really has such an incredible mind. He sees life as art, and that includes health and fitness and how we take care of ourselves. So it's really a perspective, shifting conversation. We had so much fun recording this. I know you guys are going to love it. So please enjoy Joe Holder. I feel like we should have been recording five minutes ago when we were talking about our histamine stuff. Yeah, we're talking about our diet. Yeah. I have to say, I feel validated because as I've been talking about the histamine stuff,

I have gotten some pushback online from people who think that it's just a form of like orthorexia, disordered eating. The internet can be brutal, as I'm sure you know. But it's interesting to hear that it's something that you've been experimenting with as well. Yeah, my dad is an integrative MD. So he's been doing all the stuff that like, you know, the big shot time and all of them. He's been doing it for like 20, 30 years. So I grew up around it.

So for me, it's always been like exploration also of the edges grounded in like what's actually real. So I think it's a little bit different when I talk about it because no offense. Like wellness is like a white women's game. You know what I mean? Like coming off a poucho and everybody else. But when I like in the men's space is more of just fitness. So when I kind of experiment with the wellness stuff, at least as relates to the diet, basically, I got food poisoning real bad like eight months ago. So I kind of looked at the foundation of elimination diet and then explore some of the things that are actually valid on top of that.

So that might be phodmap. That might be histamine. It might be whatever. And just, you know, even some anti-nutrient stuff. And then looking at how that might impact me. So it's like that. It's like not just doing it because you think there might be a problem, but because you actually have an issue. and then figure out what's health promoting for you, grounded in testing, which you've done,

which I've done. So I really think that's where the industry is going. It's not just doing things for the sake of trying it. It's figuring out I'm having some symptoms, what's going on, let me use some legitimate tests that might help diagnose that. And then from there, keep figuring out, you know, what might be next. So, you know, you said you were diagnosed by somebody at Sinai. Like, that's not a woo-woo place.

It's Sinai. No. You know. Yeah, she's like the anti-woo-woo. Forget the haters. Yes, at this point I do. But you said something interesting. I mean, I think that there is this tendency in the wellness world to always be looking for something to fix.

And I think that that's a cycle that a lot of people get caught up in. And I think that it does really heavily burden women, you know, primarily. And it's like if you're always looking for something to fix, you're always going to find something broken. So it's kind of this delicate balance of like, okay, what is like good enough? And what do I actually need to try to optimize? Yeah, I think you look at it. You raise an interesting point. One, like women have been introduced to kind of dysmorphia at a very much younger age than men.

Like men do get dysmorphia, but it's more so in a sense of like muscle size and things like that. Women are kind of nitpicked from very early on, both figuratively literally. So I guess, yeah, I mean, you see it now with full body scans that are going on. the MRIs, the constant wearables. I mean, I do wear oral ring. You see with function health, how big that's getting the valuations and various blood testing. But I think you look at a few different things. Like, what's your goal? How are you actually feeling? What's your gender? What's your age? And how much time am I willing to focus on a few things to see if it actually works? Because intense optimization doesn't really make that much sense. I think a lot of people get

thrown off by it. But my foundational question is, do you deserve to feel good? And then if you don't feel good, figure out how much of that is mental versus somatic, and then sit down and just kind of objectively look at it and then go from there. But I've seen in a lot of my women friends, and I have a lot of female friends like, the stuff y'all hit with is crazy. It's just like from the skincare to the anti-aging to the cosmetics to then the body and it's tough. So I definitely, I don't know. I'm not in your shoes, but I feel it. Yeah. I had somebody on earlier this morning and we were talking about something about dieting, and we were talking about the cabbage soup diet.

Oh. And do you remember that? It was like the 90s. So I was born in 85, and I was like, yeah, the cabbage soup diet was my first foray into disordered eating. And I was probably like 12 and weighed 85 pounds. But in the magazines, you know, they were talking about the cabbage soup diet. That was also around the time that like Atkins was huge.

For us, guys, it's a supplement industry. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. creatine early light. Interesting. Any guys out there who play sports, probably remember Jack 3D, which was banned as a pre-workout that everybody took.

It's fascinating. Like, if you compare the male supplement industry with the women beauty industry, they're both very similar in that they pray in that way on shortcomings and that can lead to dysmorphia. So I will say, I am not to sound weird, but I am glad from like the social world. There is a little bit of pushback that then says, hey, orthorexia is a real thing. getting into the nomenclature, but the other side of that is don't try to like subjugate somebody's lived experience if they're actually going through a difficulty. So I think because the pendulum swung so far the other way, which was like people essentially have been doing crazy things

for a very long time trying to sell something and make people feel worse. It's kind of going back the other way a little bit too much. But my hope is how everything's kind of getting more like legitimized and foundational in science that we find a center. Yeah, it's kind of refreshing to hear you talk about like that from the male perspective, though, because you never really hear men talk about their experience with being on the receiving end of that. Yeah. And especially with the dysmorphia stuff. I've talked about with my brothers. I've talked about some of my clients. I've talked about some of my friends. It's a real thing, but it's just not discussed in the same manner. There have been some outlets that have covered it slightly. But this is why the kind of the fitness, wellness industry needs

to change because it is trying to essentially prey on shame. And we have to take a statement. And we have to take a step back, which it really is, and that's an easy way to sell products, right? But you have to take a step back and be like, what is the actual goal here? I do imagine if people want to feel good and as being able to strategically utilize that for goal orientation or best results. But that doesn't necessarily sell. Belief doesn't sell until, I guess, you kind of make some sort of system that people can buy into. But, you know, maybe it is changing. Weight watchers just kind of went under, but the other side of it is also, you know, the rise of GOPs and OZMPIC and all these other things. So I don't know.

I can only try. And that's kind of my aim is like, I think you deserve to feel good. Wellness is the actual thing we can apply. I'd love to talk about wellness also from a male oriented perspective, which I don't think it's talked about in a culturally forward way, but also just a general psychographic. So I could kind of relate to the lived female experience too. Yeah. And yeah, that's important to me. What is wellness to you?

I mean, from like a straight kind of more academic answer, I guess, like wellness are the lived actions that you do every day to promote health. And then I look at that. That's what the ultra system is in eight different ways, right? So it's not just the physical, which is diet and sleep and working out, but it's also the mental side, which I think you need to be tough. The emotional side, which is a little bit more softer, emotional IQ might have a spiritual component to it. And then you also look at things like work, like occupational, financial, your friend group, social, the environment around you and all that. So that to me is like wellness is a lived philosophy and it should promote your individual health, but it should it feel overbearing. Like it has to have some sort of like overall vigor. It is like a vitality based living that we all can utilize to promote our individual health and hopefully societal health too.

I love that because I think that a lot of people have probably, experienced wellness. I keep doing air quotes for anybody who's not watching on YouTube as like a punitive thing. And I think that historically we look at the things like the things that are tangible and easy to control. Like wellness is like diet and exercise. And I love that your system really looks at it holistically because you can't have wellness if you don't have financial wellness. That kind of stress will erode every other area of your life. Same thing with relationships. There has to be a balance among all of those things. And yet we put so much stock and weight into these one or two areas and then let everything else

fall by the wayside. Yeah. I mean, you know, I would depend. And one thing that we did was in my minor or whatever, because I had a minor in Wharton or partially in Wharton was like they had something called like a multi-utility attribute analysis, which was basically you would wait as a business practice. The important things will be necessary for your business to thrive. So then, then through those areas that are important to you in your life as it relates to wellness, you weight them. So for me, the workouts are relatively simple for me, as is the diet and I can figure out sleep.

But more important for me, early in my career was a financial wellness. So I just sit down and really learn to improve my health and that outcome or building the environment around me or relationships. Like guys would like to talk about it, but relationships weigh on this too. Women have more friends than men. Women typically, in my opinion, take the lead in romantic relationships, at least for mind and then it's just like something that is important. So that's what I think. It's, I believe health and wellness is the most important cultural force of the moment right now. And it is within everything.

And early in my career would throw people off because I'd be like, yo, every company is a health and wellness company. They'd be like, what? They're like, why are you working with Dyson? Why are you working with this? Why are you working with that? I'm like literally every company in some facet internally or externally is a health and wellness company. And then in the same way, it's like as a person, Every person implicitly is a lived vessel, a lived vessel for their wellness practices. So can we make them believe that health is important? And I think the onboard ramp, if you look at this within a Western standpoint or an Eastern standpoint, root chakra type stuff, is that it's grounded in the physical. So that's why diet, exercise, and sleep is very important because once you see that change within you, I think then you can start to realize how it branches off into these other areas.

Where is the best place to start? It's a big three. I call it the big three. Physical, mental, or emotional? Okay. Right. So that physical, as we know, diet, exercise, sleep. Mm-hmm.

You do that every day. So you could probably work on that or just enjoy it in some way. Then the mental practice is like, you know how life is. Like you got to be tough. So there's two things that happen there. It's like the mental side, which I call kind of performance mindset, which is simply you need to be resilient to deal with distresses of the world. So let's not. not act like they don't exist and find ways to kind of bulletproof your cup, I like to say.

And then emotional is the purpose driven, right? It's a little bit more of the spiritual side if you're into that. It's kind of that qualitative lived experience that gives you a little bit more purpose to your life. So if you want to go, whatever, stoicism is so big right now, if you want to go within a loki of control or whatever. So you typically have three dimensions completely under your control, somewhat under your control, and not really under your control. So I think you start with the things that are relatively under your control. and that teaches you agency.

You start to get the ball rolling, right? So you think of, can I create a big glass cup? Can I bulletproof it through mental wellness so it's less likely to shatter? And then can I fill that cup up through emotional well-being? And the foundations of that cup, that's your physical, diet, sleep, exercise. That's how you build, right? You make it tougher through your mental practices, and then emotional you fill that cup with your water. So I think if you focus on those three areas first, then you can start.

start to get the energy to figure out the rest. I've heard you talk about when it comes to workouts that it's more important to be consistent than for it to be difficult. Yes. So let's take a step back. It's like consistency is simply important because we are slightly creatures of habit, right? So when something is ingrained in your life, like it was with me, like my parents, and I was one of seven, my parents definitely used physical activity as sports because not only

wasn't important in our town, but like they just wanted a break. So we put these kids and so they could go do something. But the other side of that, once you do it consistently, like one, your body remembers, but it becomes part of the schedule in the same way the morning coffee is, same way the walk is, and the same way you might pick up your phone, whatever, ingrained habits. So if you do it consistently, you don't have to really overcome inertia or you can jump back in if you fall off. Once it's consistent, really what we think is, then we just build a work capacity. So we have a decent level baseline. It doesn't even have to be hard all the time, right?

So then you have those smaller moments of those more difficult workouts or difficult phases. If anybody who's like a personal trainer knows, like you typically do things in cycles, that then at the right time can have you peek just like an athlete. An athlete isn't in tip-top shape in the off season. They could pick back up, get their general prep, the season hits, they're still getting in shape. And then if say if you do want to peak for beach season or whatever that's like, that's totally fine. So I think most people get overwhelmed if workouts are always hard. And especially women, women don't respond to the stress the same way men do.

And I think that's something that needs to be talked about more and more honest with. And how long it takes the body to recover from really difficult workouts and to a lot of people that could be dejecting, especially if they're just starting out. Yeah, I feel like that's what gets me every time. Because I'm like a zero to a hundred person and I tend to be like kind of perfectionist. And I mean, even I was telling you before we started recording that I'm like getting back into working out. it's been a few months now. It feels really good. But I want to do that zero to 100. I want to do really hard workouts every time. Why? I know. I don't know. I have a honest question. Why? I guess coming from my world, but like I played college football, I did all that. Like I've done really hard workouts.

Why do you want to do a really hard workout? How do you think you get fit? So if you think you did a hard workout every day? Yeah. Like five days a week. If you think you did five hard workouts in a span of seven days. Yeah. You think that would, that's beneficial to get to your goal fat is because you want to get there faster. Yes. Yeah. So I guess really what it comes down to is like understanding frameworks for how adaptations of fitness occur. Right. So it's like if you're physically trying to improve, you also got to look at how long you'll take to recover and how basically how it'll impact your body, but also the things that help you make energy with your mitochondria. If you look at research around mitochondria, sometimes doing

hard workouts all the time hinders them, right? And eventually they'll bounce back, but it'll take a little bit of time. So the thought process is, and a lot of this comes from the running world, is that you look at the duration of time that will probably take your body to recover, but still from hard workouts, but still in between those doing things that will consistently improve your fitness, right? So to make it concrete, I'll give you an example. One of my friends, lover, she's on SNL, Heidi. She came to me one time because you had to get, this was years ago, when I was in the gym more. She came to me one time

because she was training, she had to walk a carpet. And she was frustrated, she was dejected. She was sad. She's like, I've been working out so hard. And it just seemed to be getting worse.

I don't know what's going on. I'm like, well, what have you been doing? And basically she had been doing like 45 minutes a day of insanity-style workouts. So always hard.

But she's like, I'm not getting the progress of where I need to be. Basically, it's because that's not how the body works. So especially for women, if you're constantly going back to back to back to back, what ends up happening?

You've probably seen it. You look a little bit puffier. You're not sleeping as well. Those things aren't working. Yeah. So the key really is it to intermittently introduce those hard workouts. So what we have called a super compensation effect, which is basically those hard workouts in the short term will make you get worse.

And then you've got to give your body enough time to bounce back so you get better because essentially it'll adapt. So the thought process there is let me stagger the hard workout strategically. So what we did was basically we had a hard workout once, probably every four sessions. The rest were improving recovery. So that's like aerobic base. So that's why zone two is so big right now because really it just helps improve recovery. Make sure we do strength, right?

So strength, lifting weights, those types of things. They make you sore, but don't really overwhelm you too much. And then more so those really hard workouts, probably, you know, two to three every 10 days. And then you see how you particularly recover. So really, I think a lot of it is understanding there are not even non-conventional, Because within the literature, it's relatively conventional. It's understanding how the body actually adapts to stress. And then understanding that doesn't happen that fast.

So just because you work out on Monday, go to sleep, and then work out again on Tuesday, doesn't mean that's given the body enough time. So to make it succinct, for every person, just experiment with it. I probably need two to three days really to recover from a hard workout. But in between that, you can still be active. You're eating well. You're making sure you sleep, more lower intensity workouts. And we've seen the impact that like the hit revolution or whatever in the 2010's early 2000s had on women.

There's a lot of pop-ups of thyroid issues that people now had, a lot of pop-ups of, you know, adrenal fatigue, all that. And it's because people were going too hard. That's how I started my career, by the way. I don't know if you were familiar with Kayla Atzina's BBG. So back in 2016, I had been sober for two years. So that was like a big turning point in my life. And I felt like I had a strong foundation in sobriety, mental health. I had overcome a lot of things.

And I was like, I'm going to get in shape. I'm going to do BBG. And you were encouraged to start an Instagram account for accountability. And so I did that. And I was posting like before and after. You got you at the Mary Kate affiliate. I didn't show my face. I didn't say my name.

I was showing what I was eating and, you know, communicating with other women. who were doing this program. And that's how my Instagram account kind of like took off. And that's how I fell into doing this. And it's funny because I talk about it now and like I look back on that. And I drove my body into the ground. I mean, it was six days a week of high intensity,

plyometric workouts, you know, never miss a Monday. Like there was no emphasis on rest, really. And I just didn't know what I didn't know at that time. And so many of us, like I still talk to women, you know, who also have careers as a result of that. And we joke about, you know, being victimized by P.G. Everyone kind of like hit a wall, you know, and that's what happened to me. And I got to a point where like I was just so burnt out that I couldn't work out anymore.

And I like actually ironically turned to meditation. I started TM. I learned how to slow down, go within. I started walking. Then I started Pilates and I, you know, adopted a much more gentler approach to fitness. I love that. Yeah. I mean, from an athlete lifestyle, like my buddies, I've,

buddies in the league and all that. Everybody thinks they're always working out hard. Yeah. They have a lot of periods of rests where they're sometimes they're not even doing anything. And then they have ramp up periods. And then they just have short durations where it's like, all right, I know I got to go hard because I need my body to be able to put up with the rigors of the season. And that's kind of the go, go, go mentality that's detrimental. It's that thought process of always having to go and not understanding the phases. I'll never forget what time I used to train Naomi Campbell when she lived in New York. And, you know, when my buddies came in a gym and one of the days it was more of a chill session. He was like, oh, I thought Naomi would always be working out hard.

You got her in here doing blah, blah, blah, blah. And in my head, I'm like, yo, you just don't get it. Like, you just don't understand how this thing work. It's more of a cohesive recipe and rest and recovery and things like that are very much a part of it because that's how the body adapts. And if we don't give it time to do that, and I'm glad you found TM and all that. And really what it is, it builds your response to stress. And that's what the point of workouts are. The workouts in objectivity are a neutral stress. stress, right? But it should build your body's ability to bounce back from that and increase its fitness, right? So that's why you have doses, strategic doses. And one of my favorite studies

was basically looked at this. They got sedentary individuals. And basically, the people were tired. And he wanted to lower their fatigue and increase their energy. And one group do more so medium to maybe slightly higher intense. And another group do lower intensity when you were just starting up. The lower intensity group better improved their energy and their fatigue. And the medium intensity still did, but it was interesting to see and it was surprising to researchers that, oh, wow, the lower intensity actually for this sedentary group made them feel better. So that's how you start to look at kind of the progressive ramp up instead of the always aggressive shocks. And you could utilize those aggressive shocks at the right time, but if you do it too much,

even if at the end of the day, like, it's going to rear its head in a negative way. It'll catch up with you. We all know that we have our actual age, but we also have our body's internal biological age, which is something that you can actually modify through lifestyle. And I have likely lowered my biological age without even knowing. So here's the thing. Because Americans eat so many processed foods and not enough fruits and veggies, many, perhaps most, are 10 plus years older on the inside than their actual biological age. A major university study suggests how to slow aging and diffuse that biological time bomb, and participants slowed their aging by drinking Field of Greens.

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You said something that was also really validating that people ask me about all the time. Anytime I have like a trainer on or anything and I do a Q&A on Instagram, I'm women always ask, why do I get puffy when I work out? All right, you want to hear this? Yeah. I call it the bloat phase. But it's also a de-bloat thing if you know to do it, right? Everybody's afraid, and I've seen it happen.

And this is just my theory on it. I'm not going to say it's completely like validated. But basically it's that you want that bloat short term, right? Especially if you're like starting out and going hard. Because a few things that I've noticed that happen with women is like, you guys often don't drink enough water. So if you don't drink enough water, for whatever reason, the body holds on to it. You could look at vasopressin or whatever. Like, I'm not sure the complete hormonal cycle that's happening there, but you hold on the water.

So the first step is like, just drink a bunch of water. But that water and that working out is essentially going to cause a slight inflammatory response, which is fine because that's how the body then re-signals, signals the right things and gets the positive responses from fitness. But that slight bloat that we see when you start working out is really like the body and muscles holding onto a little bit of water and other things for nutrient delivery. Because your body needs nutrients delivered through the blood and it cleans itself up through the lymph and all that to be able to then get back stronger and recover better. So at first, this is a mistake that women often make. They see that blow and they go harder instead of being patient because it disappears. I've had I've had women lose almost eight. It sounds crazy, but four to eight pounds overnight.

After a period of about three to four to five weeks that gives that body the time to recover while they're still eating well, making sure they hydrate. But I've had to talk them off the ledge. I'm like, believe me, I know the skill hasn't moved yet, but I promise you in about three to five weeks, if you keep doing what I tell you to do, you're going to drop weight if that's their needed goal. And that's what we've been working towards. So essentially, it's a short-term inflammatory response, that puffiness, especially that

we've seen women that's just a result of the body reacclamating itself. And then it's like, oh, I get it. I'm fine. I don't have to stress. And then, whoop. But if you keep trying to push, push, push, push, push, you fall too deep in a hole. And the alarm reaction stays elevated in the body. And especially we see that more with women.

And that's where it kind of that cascade and it never goes away. And are they training during that time or no? They're training. Like during that three to five week? Yeah. Yeah. So basically that's why they're puffy because they're just, It's just like a little bit of alarm reaction due to the new stimulus of the weights, the cardio, that type of thing.

And her body's just kind of reacclamating itself. But that's why the lower intensity, more stress reduction, focus workouts are important. Making sure to nourish the body because you want to be in a caloric deficit if weight loss is your goal, but you don't want to be in such a stark caloric deficit where the amount of energy that you're burning versus how much you're consuming is too large. because lower energy availability, especially in female athletes, it's a bad thing. So, yeah, it's just like in three to five weeks and it typically goes away and the body realizes it could deal with the stress that was presented. And, you know, then the sanity is all restored in the kingdom of the women's mind. Yeah, that's me right now. I'm puffy and Jenna actually said

something very similar. She's like, no, no, we're going to keep doing it. And she doesn't push me super hard. You know, we were talking before about this balance of not pushing me, you know, over the edge and then it's counterproductive and then I can't work out. We've really been gradually building up and I'm feeling a lot stronger and I'm feeling muscles like in places I didn't have muscles before and she's like just weight's all going to like melt away and you're going to see all of your hard work beneath that and I'm like all right I will I'll stick with it but yeah it's interesting that you said like I think a lot of women do and myself in the past as well feel like oh I have to go harder like this is it's weight I have to go harder and lose the weight and

I was weight lost I was weight lost You expend more energy than you take in. But where does the weight go? If matter's not created or destroyed. And this is actually a very recent thing. Like people are trying to figure it out. So when you lose weight, where does it go? You breathe it out.

Okay. Right. So that's the respiration is essentially the thought process right now, right? So if energy is usually created through our metabolism, through specific cycles and generates ATP, one of those being aerobic respiration, you need oxygen. So you're breathing it out, right? So the thought process then there is two things. One, you need to be able to essentially have a good respiratory system.

So that's why those aerobic conditioning workouts are very good. And the other side of it is once you stimulate muscle, muscle, what? A pound of muscle, a pound of fat, they both weigh the same, but you gotta look at which one takes up more space. Muscle takes up less space than fat. So the thought process then eventually becomes there from a body composition standpoint. When you want that aesthetic, you just basically, it's not really always about weight, it's about body composition.

So that's something also to take into account. So this thought process with like just caloric restriction, that's why it doesn't always hold up. But also just making sure like you aren't overly stressed because that essentially messes up your kind of nervous system in a way that just makes everything harder. So it's being able to stay calm and kind of go through those motions in the proper way are often beneficial. You've talked about exercise as an art form before. And I'm hearing that as you're. talking. It's like a design practice, right?

It's like you're in a studio of self. Like life is a lived design in the world's your studio. Yeah. And there's inputs, there's outputs, there's some things that are quantitative, like calories, there's some things that are more qualitative, like how you feel and how you're moving through. And there's some things that we can measure and others that we can. And science is something that's malleable in the way that it's a process of constant

discovery. So if you realize that through the research literature that we might have, which is hopefully robust studies, but then also in the personal experience of n of one, okay, how does the research apply to me, but also how are some ways where I might be outliers to do this and do that. But it really is, it's not even just problem solving. It's like self exploration. It's like, how when I eat food does that make me feel, right? It's like when I work out, what's actually occurring here? What is the thing it is that I'm after? And then it's like looking at certain things that you could tweak for your personal well-being. And as I relates to

sleep or that relates to how you interact with your friends or that relates to how you view money or how you start to learn about the stock market you learn about how the algorithms of life and yourself work so to me it's just yeah it's an art practice and then from there your personal canvas right is like you can paint the life that you want because I'm very aware of death like it's not even in a like a dark way it's it's like I was a premature kid I was two months premature my mom basically tells me a lot I'm not even supposed to be here, it's like a gift to me. So I think on my head, that's always been relevant. But I just want people to have the full lived human experience in that there is the ability for you to feel good. And that's

what health and wellness should be about. As you were talking, I was thinking about like just with my own experience, you know, I'm very open about my sobriety and the fact that I nearly died from drug and alcohol abuse. I mean, it was like seizures nonstop, like very, I was intervened on. And had I not been intervened on when I did, I would have died. And that gave me, I think, that appreciation and that perspective, yeah, a little bit of perspective, where I'm like, that's the best thing that ever happened to me because it has informed the way that I live my life and my like curiosity and like exploration and openness and desire to be where I am and not be in the future and not be in the past. And so it's such a gift and not.

everybody experiences things like that. You had your own version, right? So you are aware of mortality and you've done so much work and you are such a curious person, I can tell. And so you have that perspective. But for people who don't, like, do you have any recommendations on how they can, like, begin to cultivate that? I've gone through my own therapeutic kind of thought processes and I've realized, like,

somatic mindfulness is very important to me. I think the body has an innate knowledge. I think the mind-body dualism, you know, I think therefore I am type thought process is short-sighted. Like the body has its own innate intelligence. So to kind of get back into the present form to make it practical, you know, everybody's always like, you know, just stay off your phones. I get it.

And but that's hard. But the thing is, is like I think the first hour of the day is very important, right? And with two things, you know, I'm a little bit of a Buddhist, I guess. Like I was growing up in an esoteric household. I just study various religions. But one of the things in Buddhism is like gratitude for the human body, like the body self. So I think in the morning, like an easy way to kind of get back into the body is just lay in your bed. Don't do anything. Take five deep breaths. Roll your ankles. Roll your wrists.

Feel the energy and the vitality start to fill you up. Is it say something that you're grateful for? Thank you, eyes, for your ability to see. Thank you spine for holding me erect. As you put your feet on the ground, hey, thank you feet for another day, another chance. That's one of my favorite sayings. Roll the shoulders back. Let detention out. Go in a shower. Pay attention to what you're doing putting a soap on whatever don't just rush through it pay attention to what you're doing and for me i like to say i wash off the bullshit of yesterday and i rub in the gratefulness of today and i'm off my phone and then even in that first 10 minutes right is like i'm grounded in myself i'm not paying attention to how things are feeling the signals that my body is telling me so instead of being disassociated

and going for a digital stimulus it's not saying just stay off your phone it's really saying what are the other things that i could do that'll naturally keep me off my phone and then that comes kind of keeps going throughout the day. So sometimes when you're walking, don't use music. Just walk. Just walk. Look around. Pay attention how you're feeling. You know, if you get a five minute break in a day, just three deep breath. Check in with yourself. Like, hey, you know, hey, heart, why are you feeling that? Like, why is there a little bit of pressure in my stomach? Or why is there a nervousness in my chest? Hey, I hear you. Let me breathe in, think what I may have come from. There's something to happen to me earlier. Is there something that I'm not looking forward to later? It's okay.

And I've been going through like some stressful situations in my own personal life. One of the things that I've been on planes and, you know, whatever, romantic stuff, all this thing. And I've just been breathing. It was just like, I feel anxiety coming on. I'm like, hey, I know. You're just processing some things. It's okay. And then you start to notice over the course of the days the signals that your body is giving you. So easy way. You have that in the morning. Every time before you eat, just take five minutes, not even five minutes. Take 60 seconds. Take a few deep breaths. Because you don't even have to say grace. Just be like, yo, you know what? This food's about to nourish me. I'm happy about this. And then you know what that also does? It

creates a sense of intuitive eating and logic without making you feel like shit for lack of a better turn. Because if you're grateful for the food that's about to nourish you, if you keep putting food in front of you that you know is not nourishing you, you don't start to look at, I'm disrespecting myself. Not in a sense of that I should just be eating healthy all the time, but like, yo, if you put something in your mouth,

I'm telling my body that's one of the safest things I could do. And if I'm time after time, I'm putting stuff in my mouth that isn't, quote, unquote, good for me for lack of better time. term, or let's say health promoting, there comes a time where eventually it clicks from a logic standpoint. It's like, this honestly doesn't make any sense. Let me figure out a better way. So there's those small moments throughout the day that go a long way. And of course, in night, just take like five minutes, try to reflect through your day, not just from a mindset standpoint,

but also in your body. Let the tension out of your body. Examine what it is that you're feeling. And through that emotion, think how amazing your body is, where it has an innate intelligence that it can take all the stimuli in the world like that and turn into a feeling, excitement, nervousness, anxiety, hunger. All that is the proper decoding of so many interactions that we both are aware and unaware of. And to take that for granted, it isn't fair. So give your body some love.

Working out is nourishment for the body. It's a little bit of sometimes when the low-intensity workouts, hey, I know you need a break. I'm going to nourish you. The high-intensity workouts, like, hey, I know you can handle this and I'm going to push you. And then afterwards, just say thank you. That's all.

And those little moments, I know it sounds cheesy, but you will see how much your body responds and it'll create a whole different world for you. I love that. I love it. And I think that it's such a manageable way for people to try and approach this. Because, you know, it's like back to what I was saying in the beginning. It tends to be punitive. And it's like, oh, I have to eat clean because people look at it as like a punishment.

or as a chore, not something that they get to be doing. Sure. And then when you eat whatever, like, I'm a sweet tooth guy. Everybody knows who knows me I have a sweet tooth. You know, give me some apple pie, vanilla ice cream, you know? But then when you eat that, it would throw my friends off. It would be out sometime, like, oh, I can't believe Joe is eating that. But when you're in a whatever, a healthier state, your body could always handle that.

But the other side of it is that kind of indulgence is also a nourishment. When you have those key moments where it's like, I am enjoying this. There's no guilt here. I'm with my friends or doing my thing or maybe at a tough week. And letting that kind of self-control be lost for a second. Because maybe your body is letting you know that, hey, I need a little bit of something else right now. And then once you give it that, you feel how easy it is to click back in instead of getting the cycle of guilt or late night eating by yourself and those difficult type of thing. So realize kind of everything has this place.

And I don't know, man. Like, I just think you've got to leave with love and especially with yourself. like my late, you know, friend, like Virgil, like, that's the biggest lesson I learned from him. It's just like, lead with love. And we should do that in everything that we do. And to me, that's big, even if sometimes it means, you know, people don't always treat you right. That's fine. Do we need to talk about it?

I'm always leading with love. It don't matter. You can't keep me down. I love it. Okay. So a lot of people did have specific questions. everyone's trying to like get mechanistic. Yeah, let's get a little mechanistic. Yeah, let's get a little

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boxed warning and full safety information about gLP1 medications. So how do you prep someone for like a Victoria's Secret Show? Yeah. I mean, I'm not going to act like it was just me. Like you got like women have your whole beauty team. Like they know what they're doing. But basically, Basically, you kind of get them in shape, then you figure in the sense of phases. So it's like a general prep phase where you just want to, it's just increasing work capacity. The workouts don't even always have to be hard, but you have to get people used to doing work for a longer duration of time. So what that typically means is what's called concurrent training, which is just mixing in strength training at the right times because you want to make them stronger. And then also like aerobic and anaerobic conditioning is basically you want to make sure they're able to recover, but you also just want to make sure they can still do high intensity work.

So you don't really have to be perfect really in this phase. Then once you start, then a lot of it is like then true strength because they will be in a caloric deficit, right? So then you just want to make stronger to preserve muscle mass because muscle mass is what looks good on camera. Like as you lose weight, you don't want to be essentially what they call skinny fat. Like you want to have muscle mass. You guys got to have muscle.

It's so easy. It's like when you think of building strength, you just really think of for women typically, you know, you could go as low as three, but I usually like to go five to eight. reps and heavier and heavier weight. Probably think they can't move it, but you can. And just really heavy sets and then have longer rest in between sets, really. It's like almost three minutes sometimes. It's interesting because I think a lot of women think lower weight, higher rep.

No, because when you're doing more, you'll get to that maybe in the last phase, but it's not even really necessarily higher reps. It's more so, quote unquote, and I don't really like the term and we'll talk about it in the second. but it's more so like distinctly toning exercises. But when we say toning, we mean using lighter weights to go weighted through full ranges of motion. So you like floss the tissues. So the muscles just essentially look more even because you're using them in a more dynamic fashion instead of strictly one plane.

But when we really talk about tone, really talking about two things. There's neurogenic tone and myogenic tone. Neurogenic tone is how can the brain essentially activate the muscle to then create tone in the muscle. Myogenic tone is how the muscle looks at rest. So you want to be able to do two things. Miogenic tone, really for the most part, again, is the strength training, slight muscle building, right? And then just making sure they have a better body composition as they start to maybe

lose a little bit of weight or that goes through that where we talked about respiration, right? But we're not losing muscle mass. So you lose a little bit of weight. Muscle mass stays the same. The myogenic tone will improve because we did strength training and enough muscle building, if even necessary, which is already going to be hard. because they're in a caloric deficit, but we just want to keep it there. But it's still possible.

Now, tone looks pretty good at rest, not really stressed out, right? You talked about going through that deep bloat period, drinking water, making sure they sleep, utilizing, you know, other things at the right times, like saunas. I usually typically like that more for women warmth than cold, but you can't use cold if in crunch period, but more so just saunas is like low, more intensity stuff to kind of keep that blood flowing and feeling good. Now, then the key is, is once you're in a show, your muscles are activated, right? So in a sense of as I'm moving and I'm dynamic, I'm turning for the camera,

I need my muscles to look essentially good without, quote, they're not bulky, I just need them to look good. So that's why power training is very important because a lot of women aren't used to moving fast. Not used to the jumping. You're not used to the med ball throwing, all that. And what that does is it helps create neurogenic tone. So now a woman is now strong, has enough muscle,

And I'm like, all right, for this last phase, it's not even going to be that hard. We're already here. We're just going to make sure we're eating good, nourishing the body, making sure you recover. But I need some power work. I just need you to stay primed. Because now that the brain knows that to activate the muscles and we're doing stuff that's more incorporative of the whole body, then we're on the catwalk.

It's very easy as they're moving. Their body naturally, the stabilizes are firing. The bigger muscles are there. The tone is there. The camera captures that of that versus a lot of people. don't have that ability actually to then have their muscles be firing and then creates that dynamic kind of holistic good look. So it's just really all it is is just what I did at least was interesting at the time because nobody was doing this 10 years ago really. I just took standard sports science

performance athlete training and applied that to them in the right phases and it worked and just made sure that we did what we needed to do. But those women were locked in, you know, Georgia, Bella, Boreome, Sarah, Sadie, Megan, probably missing a couple others. Please forgive me. But at that time, it was so fun because they would come to me and be like, I want my glutes to get bigger or I want to be a little bit more tight around my core or I need to do this and do that. And yeah, it was just like, I was just like, she's figuring it out.

And to me, that was really fun for me at the time. It's got to be really gratifying, too, especially when you have people who are locked in like that and who are like really wanting to get that. same outcome that's like a real partnership. Yeah, it was their Super Bowl. So to me, it was like getting athletes ready. And that's what made the space interesting for me early in my career was like, I didn't want to do the group class training stuff because like there's no standard output goal attainment here. I'm like a sports guy. I'm like, what's the match? What's the race? Yeah. The VS show to them was the race. Yeah. So then I would sit down and create phases for each

person and be able to get there. Also strategic nutrition and all and all that stuff. And what's the nutrition like? The nutrition essentially, I mean, I wish the industry was where it is now, where it would have been a lot easier to get them, the blood testing and all that. Then it was a little bit harder. But nutrition is fairly simple. The two things that I typically would suggest are carb cycling. Carb cycling is essentially timing your carbohydrates according to the intensity of your

workouts. So on your higher intensity days or recovering from a higher intensity day, you would typically eat a little bit more carbohydrate, right? Because you also need glycogen stores and make the muscles look a little bit fuller if that was wanted. And then the other days, you would typically eat lower carb, right? Some people consider low carb, 100 grams or less. But you can just research it. Carb cycling is super easy to apply.

And I think also it gives you metabolic flexibility, which essentially the ability to utilize both fat and carbs as fuel sources, which become important when you time them up. Because in the low intensity workouts, you don't really need like high octane fuel, which basically was what carbohydrates are. So it was carb cycling. it was circadian rhythm eating. It's a little bit different than intermittent fasting, although some people consider it that.

It was just like utilizing light as a guide for when you want to eat. So typically you would eat first meal an hour or two after you would wake up. Last meal, for most of that would be, say, try to do two hours before bed. But it's really just when you're awake and that timing sets the body up. I'm still a believer if you use appropriately, relatively what we call fasted cardio. But that's just really going for a walk before you eat. I'm a big believer in stimulating digestion before you eat. before you eat a real meal.

So maybe like a cup of tea in a morning, stimulate digestion, chew a little bit of an apple or something. And just go for a little bit of walk. Like get that morning sunlight, that type of thing. And then the other way to go about it, if you know they're going to be in a caloric deficit, you do want to increase protein slightly. I know like protein is having a huge craze right now.

And everybody's a little bit different about how they view the amount of kilograms per body weight for protein. So I won't be prescriptive here. In those phases where you want to keep lean mass, but you're in a caloric deficit, which is having me a little bit more protein. But carb cycling.

I think carb cycling is like the open secret in the industry. It should be at least in the industry. If you know how to utilize it, it's one of the easiest ways of getting shape. You generally just want energy availability. Yeah. Right. And a lot of women just will not eat. Like, I'm sitting here right now on this couch.

How many calories do you think I would burn if I just sat here all day? All day? All day. 3,500. Yeah, just about because you're probably familiar with BMR. Yeah. Bays and metabolic rate. A lot of people are.

So they think they've got to earn their food. Yeah. So that thought process is like, nah, you do got to eat. But, you know, Stacey Sims is big on that now. Like, you know, tell the people to have energy availability. It's been, you know, Reds has been huge in sport for a little bit, which has relative energy deficiency. And they've kind of changed the name to it now about lower energy availability.

But you need that, especially for women. But yeah, circadian rhythm eating, general framework of carb cycling. And you'll be good. The circadian rhythm eating is interesting, too, because I think that like intermittent fasting was such a thing for a long time. And I know so many women, myself included up until very recently, I would wake up, have my macha, do my workout, not eat until like 10 or 11. By that point, I'm like anxious from the caffeine, hungry. My cortisol is probably through the root. My blood sugar's dropping. For some women, maybe it works. You know, I've done everything.

with other people who have talked about eating within an hour of waking up, you know, for women and for hormones and blood sugar stability and all of that and eating before caffeine. And of course, inevitably there are people who push back and say, you know, that fasting is better and all of that. But for me, implementing that change and eating at least something before caffeine. So I wake up, I hydrate, I get the sunlight. I do some movement. I eat a little something at least, if not a full meal within like an hour or two. Those big three right there are basically zeitgebbers or whatever. So those are called time givers.

So those basically are the big three cues as it relates to your circadian rhythm. Got it. So circadian rhythm isn't just like sleep. It's essentially like a 24-hour relative cycle that various processes are on in your body, sleep being the biggest one. So really what you're speaking to there is, and it goes back to the global question, it's what would be the best thing for my overall circadian rhythms, not is fasting what I should be doing?

Right? So at the end of the day, really what you did you do is that, and you're doing it consistently. So you're stimulating your digestion. Does it really matter if you eat an hour or within two hours of waking up? Probably for most people, right, or delaying it. You could get away with it. But it matters about consistency. So for you, you know eating earlier is probably a little bit better, but you probably end up eating something light, correct? Yeah. So what are you just doing? You're stimulating your digestion earlier because nobody ever wants to talk about it. But you really need to do light, movement, and then a little bit of bite. You need to go to the bathroom. There's a lot of people aren't regular. So think about that for a second. If you just slept for eight hours, your body delayed all signals that are related to releasing waste. And most people either have this coffee, don't eat it all, they haven't gone to the bathroom for a very long time. Your body's confused. So they're asking the wrong questions is like, of course you're going to do a hard workout. You should consume something. But it's not also, the other side of it is if it's just a light stroll, which at the end of the day, low intensity, steady state. That's what your walk was. You had a low intensity, steady state kind of stimulus for

your well-being. You probably don't have to say if I'm going for a walk and eat a whole bunch of food. But really what you're doing is giving the specific cues to your body to promote regularity, which will promote flourishing and well-being versus the fasting can be a little bit more intense because then you have that elongated stressor. But if you were to fast before bed, research tends to hint that might be a little bit easy. easier on a system or it's just naturally what you'll do if you wake up early and go to bed early. Yeah. So nobody was defining fasting.

Yeah. Because Long ago came out and God bless him, his research was very important. The long ago came out, was talking about fasting. And then people took that and applied that to a whole bunch of different frameworks without explaining what it was. So what are you talking about? Are you talking about a four hour eating window, an eight hour eating window, a 12? Are we talking about a five-day eating two-day not?

Are we just talking about 24 hours of not eating? And then people would just be like, oh, I'm. intermittent fasting. Yeah. Like, well, what are you doing? Yeah. Very nebulous. Yeah.

And then are you a man? Are you a woman? What are your goals? Do you have any underlying health conditions? And this is a new phase, I think, of like wellness philosophy that we're entering is like, we're going away from the nondescript, just kind of try everything to entering now of a little bit more strategic and pinpointed prescriptive approaches that must be clearly defined. because also people who are listening to this probably are just fed up with everything under a blanket term.

And there's no longer the need to convince people that they should be doing things to take care of their health. It now is, what should I be doing and why? And how do I know it's the best thing for me? Or at least it'll do, you know, very hypocritic oath will do minimal to no harm. Yeah. And that's the key question you should be asking when you try these things. Yeah. And it comes back to what we've been talking about, you know, about really,

knowing yourself. And I think when you do that work and you are trying to kind of look inward and find out who you are and what you want and how you think and all of that, then you can take the information and take what applies to you and leave the rest. That's it. Yeah. And I think that, you know, we're in an information overload now. So that's a critical skill for people to have. God bless them. I mean, yeah, I think that's what people do need and the more, yeah, the more work you're doing and the more that we could just apply this into like, okay, how do we think about, how do we think about this? And how do we kind of get data on ourselves in a not overly intense way? It's like, go get that blood work once or twice a year. You know what I mean? Sit down once a week

and really write down how you're feeling. Sit down and pay attention after you eat something, how it makes you feel. And then you start to think of like, okay, why I did? It's not that lentils are maybe unhealthy or bright, but it's like, okay, when I ate that, why did I feel that way? I feel a little bit bloated? Why does that work for me? Why doesn't the salad possibly work for me? But why does this fruit technically make me feel better? But this fruit doesn't when they're both supposed to be healthy.

Then you're like, what actually is health? You're like, well, health is a state of being, right? It's how I feel so that then there's no such thing as a healthy food. It's just that a food just can be health promoting. So what are the foods that will promote health in me? So I really just think it's like you have to start to ask the right questions. Instead of just finally saying, oh, I'm going to drink apple cider vinegar because I was told it was going to make my blood sugar be more better or whatever.

You're in a constant state of becoming. The body is in a constant state of becoming. And it's accepting that and realizing what you can do to help your body for the long haul, but also in the right now. Because again, you deserve to feel good. You don't deserve to work yourself to the bone every day. Yeah. And like all this stuff is, you know, fun and get your money up, have fun. But like, this thing that you're in, your body and your mind.

They're more connected than you think. But sorry, let's get to some other questions they have before it's too late. Well, let's see. For the listeners. This is why we do it. Okay. I'll just ask you a question that I like to ask my guest to close it out. What is one thing you wish people would stop doing and one thing you wish they would start doing?

I wish people, damn, it's a good question. I wish people would kind of, a few things. Like call things guilty pleasures if there's just kind of like food or stop some of the like what I eat in a day type of things because I think that can be a little bit overwhelming, especially for women. What's your guilty pleasure, though? You know. What's your death row meal?

I was about to make a really bad off-color joke. I mean, if I'm... We can go there. You know, it's definitely about to say women, but we'll stay away. You said it. I did. Death row meal is a roti. I'm West Indian.

So I went like a West Indian. and roti, a side of sweet plantains, baked mac and cheese, and then apple pie with vanilla ice cream and my mom's, like, vanilla strawberry cream cheesecake. Yum. So that's what I wish people start doing instead is, like, just really connect with each other and not do it through the lens of self, but do it through interconnectedness. And I think that's missing. I hope we really do get back to that.

And even I see that sometimes with, like, for exercise snacks, I have this, like, Athletics Club when we put on events. And I always make sure people meet each other, see someone new. We do partner drills. And people time after time come up to me after and say, oh, my God, this was so fun. Thanks for doing a partner drill. I had a really good time. I met somebody new.

It's like wellness and health should drive some interconnectedness. It should not just drive you back to yourself. So I just hope people take more time to connect. Love it. Well, where can everybody find you? Oh, I'm working on a book. So design yourself. Dot world.

Log on. Join the newsletter. And also just like, about kind of an expose on how I'm doing on the book. And then at Joe Holder on Instagram and at Joe Holder underscore on Twitter. Thank you so much. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed that episode.

If you liked the episode and if you like the show in general, please take a second to rate, review, and subscribe. It goes such a long way in supporting the show. Follow the show over on Instagram at well.pod. You can also follow my personal Instagram at Ariel Lorry. I'm always sharing great clips from the episodes, and we also have full episodes on YouTube as well if you want to watch in entirety. Thanks for listening. Hi, I'm Pia Barangini, the creative director of LPA, an entrepreneur, a wife, and a dog mom based in Los Angeles.

This is my new podcast, Everything is the Best, where we basically ask interesting people, how did you go from zero to yacht? I'm always curious how to help people became successful, and I figured you would be too. Get on the internet with me. Let's laugh, let's cry, let's overshare. and let's get inspired to live our best lives. Check out new episodes every Wednesday. It's all for you, baby. Thanks for listening. Love You Mean It.

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