WHOOP Podcast - Crosslifter Obi Vincent discusses mental health, overcoming an eating disorder, and becoming one of the most recognizable fitness figures in the world.

Episode Date: July 15, 2020

Crosslifter Obi Vincent talks about his remarkable transformation from an overweight teenager to one of the most recognizable fitness figures in the world today. Obi candidly details his struggles with anxiety and an eating disorder, and shares what he’s learned from those experiences. He discusses what got him into fitness (4:37), his eating disorder (6:28), how his bad relationship with food began (7:37), overcoming his struggles (8:28), the negative side of bodybuilding culture (11:48), how he’s learned to express vulnerability (15:21), adjusting to the COVID-19 lockdown (17:28), why people should try as many workouts as possible (23:47), how WHOOP has helped him (25:00), his recovery techniques (28:08), an unhealthy obsession with counting macros (32:16), patience and fitness goals (38:45), learning to listen to your body (43:17), and how WHOOP changed his approach to sleep (47:23).Support the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

Hello, folks. Welcome to the Woop Podcast. I'm your host, Will Ahmed, the founder and CEO of Whoop, where we are on a mission to unlock human performance. We build technology across hardware and software and analytics that's designed to really understand you. So we measure things like strain and recovery and sleep and try to help you improve your performance. You can get 15% off a WOOP membership. If you use the code Will Ahmed, that's W-I-L-L-A-H-M-E-D, at checkout. And you may also be interested in all the research we've done around COVID-19 and respiratory rate. So you can check out all of our research on that. We've recorded earlier podcasts on that. And I would encourage you to look that up. Okay, our guest this week is the big, the powerful, the

strong. Obie Vincent. Obie is a bodybuilder, all things mobility, fitness instructor. He's got a huge following on the internet. And what's powerful about this conversation is just how transparent Obie is about everything he had to overcome to become this super ripped fit looking human being. You know, I think a lot of times when people are scrolling through Instagram or YouTube and they see these shredded people, these fitness influencers, they just assume that these people have some kind of gift and it comes so naturally to them and they put in the hard work, but they're just, it's inevitable that they're going to be that fit. And, you know, in listening to Obie talk about it, it's a real struggle. And he's very honest about that. He talks

about his relationship with food over time and how complicated it was and various forms of eating disorders and in turn how all of us can have a more healthy relationship with food. I found that quite powerful. We talk about some of his habits, some of his training routines, where fitness and health are headed today, and his whoop data. So look, fascinating conversation. I think Obie's a good follow too out there on social media, so I recommend to check him out. Without further ado, here is Obie.

Obie, welcome to the Woop Podcast. How's it going? Thank you for having me. You're super fit, man. Really fit. I've been following you on Instagram and I've followed some of your content on YouTube. Like, did you always know that you were going to be a bodybuilder and someone who's just totally fitness obsessed? That's a good question. The answer is no, actually.

I was not, I was never, never into sports, apart from, about from WW wrestling when it was about eight to nine, but I didn't do any sports in school. So if you had asked me when I was about 16, if I would be doing this now, there's no way. Like, I was more into video games that I was into fitness. And especially not as like a full-time job versus even just being, you know, an enthusiast, it seems like it's crazy to think that you know in i don't know in the space of two years have gone from being a personal trainer to doing this as a job it's not something that i thought would be i don't know you know like when you're your parents and your friends are like you know when are you going to get

a real job and i'm like this is actually a job you know it's a four-time job i got that a little bit when I first started whoop actually, but that's a whole separate story. So you're a teenager and you're literally addicted to television. Is that right? Right. Yeah. So what were you watching? I mean, you don't strike me as a guy who was addicted to television. It's just, I still am. Oh, man, I watch a lot of television. You know, so yeah, I grew up on, I love cartoons. I used to watch a lot of wrestling. I used to watch a lot of TV shows. I love anime, I still do in my 30s, but yeah, TV was my escape. So I, you know, I watched everything, everything, anything.

I've watched so much Nickelodeon and, you know, cartoon network. And as an introvert, a television and a video game is your best friend. And this, which is what I was. When did you start making the shift towards fitness? Like, it doesn't seem like an obvious transition. No, it's not. It's, I started when I was about 19, I felt like I needed to lose some weight. I started off running as a jogger, actually, before I even entered the gym.

I didn't even know a gym existed. So up to age 19, you had never even really gone to the gym? No, no. Wow, so this is a real transformation. And it sounds like you felt like you needed to lose weight. So were you overweight at the time? I was overweight, but I always say I was. I was chubby in the right places.

So I was a double Excel at 16, 17. I have this hoodie that fits me now and that shows you how big I was at 16. Wow. And I've kept it because it's kind of like a memory thing for me. So I wasn't obviously big, but I was chunky. It wasn't muscles. And, you know, I remember the time when

obviously, you know, someone will say something because, you know, this was a time when I was in college, which is like after high school. And, um, when I started to lose weight, changed where I used to eat and, you know, the only time I realized that I was losing weight was when, obviously, clothes stopped, my old clothes stopped fitting. And I lived with my aunt's and she was like, she was worried because she was like, you know, your neck is so thin and, because I'm Nigerian. So the bigger you are, the chubby you are, that just means you're healthy, you know, because that means you're living a good life, you're eating well. So for someone to, for me to start losing weight was kind of a shocker to them.

And they actually thought something was wrong with me. I was not eating a lot. It sounds like you went from not having a particularly healthy diet to all of a sudden just not really eating. It was more of like an eating disorder and unhealthy relationship with food. I didn't think it was a problem until I realized. It was a problem where I would, so if I had a slice of bread, I would cut out the corners and just have the middle bits.

I bought a small bowl of, a small bowl that a kid would use, and I used that as my portion control. And obviously being a teenager, that wasn't enough. So, and I wouldn't eat after six o'clock because I used to think that I had the whole, after six o'clock you put on the weight. So I was probably eating twice a day, if that, sometimes once. today. I didn't think there was anything wrong with that because I had no guidance. I didn't have a magazine. I didn't have, you know, we didn't have social media back then. I just did it

all on my own instinct. Do you look back on that period of time, not favorably? I mean, you lost all this weight. You're super fit now. Like, would you, if you could go back in time knowing everything you know now, how would you change your approach to weight? loss? I think the first thing I would have done I would do is research, which is probably what I didn't do enough or, well, I didn't do any. And also not have the mindset that food is the enemy, because that's what I had to tell myself, food was the enemy. So I wouldn't eat the foods that I liked for a whole year. I just wouldn't touch certain foods. And if I did, So, for example, if I had a burger and then I'll feel bad for the whole week and then I wouldn't

eat the next day and I'll, you know, go and run two, three hours just to, you know, get rid of that guilt. So you had a pretty unhealthy relationship with food. It's fair to say. Yeah. Yeah, it was bad. Now, how did you shift out of that? I mean, I'm sure there's people listening to this who have gone through periods of time where

they've had bad relationships with food and their diets. What shift was able to happen for you to become this incredibly strong, incredibly healthy person. It was, I think when I finally decided to become a personal trainer, so I studied to become a fitness instructor and then a personal trainer, that helps massively because we have to do nutrition. And that was probably the first time I learned about macros and calories. I had no idea what those meant. So it doesn't surprise me when I get a lot of people that say, what's a macro, what are calories. I was exactly the same. And that was the only way I learned what those were and how to calculate things like your BMR, your total daily expenditure, that was when

I learned what those meant, calories in versus calories out and things like that. So I think that time period was when I realized that there was more to diet and nutrition than just restricting foods to lose weight. I feel like though your transformation out of this was faster than what other people may experience who have gone through a similar challenge. You know, you describe it in such a rational way. Oh, well, once I understood what macros were and calories were, it was easy for me to re-understand what my diet was. Well, to be honest, it's the irony is when I learned all of that, then, you know, there

was a stage, a point in my life when I did do stage competitions, purely because, you know, one of the PTs I works with said, you have so much potential, you should do this. And then all the bad habits started again. So a lot of the things people don't understand is a lot of people in my industry, we all look great, but I guarantee you some of us don't have a great relationship with food. This is bodybuilding. Yes. So it's the extreme end where we restrict so much.

And we see certain foods as bad or the enemy. And that relationship with food, that cycle comes back again. So now, it's, we do know what we're doing to ourselves, but in a way, because we want to attain a certain look, we have to restrict and we have to, and it affects our lifestyle, affects our moods, you can wake up, you being a bad mood because you're shredding, quote, unquote, and which means you are on a huge deficit. So, you know, I was eating at one point, 1,600 calories closer to my comp day, which for someone who's six foot two and 100 kilos and training six days a week and doing two

training sessions a day that was ridiculous yeah that's like no calories yeah exactly those calories what did they consist of it's exactly what you think it literally it was broccoli rice and chicken tuna i'm so i can't touch tuna anymore purely because i'm i actually took me years to start eating broccoli again because of that. I did broccoli rice and tuna for years. Because you had such a monotonous diet. Yeah. And you just saw it as a means to an end. I saw food. I looked great. And on Instagram, my pictures looked incredible. But the food-wise, I was just eating food because of necessity. I wasn't enjoying it. It just took me back to that point of when I... when I was losing weights in the, you know, when I was 18, 19,

and then I'm doing the same thing again. However, the difference is nobody would say it was unhealthy because, you know, all you would get is, oh, you look shredded, you look amazing, you look incredible. Actually, you're hungry. You know, so. And unhappy, it sounds like you were hungry and unhappy. Yeah, I mean, it can get to you at sometimes. You know, some people are very good at dealing with it.

But, you know, you can just imagine if, you know, you're starving yourself and your training, you're at a deficit. You know, I remember saying to people, like, the smallest things can annoy you. So someone could, you know, pick up your pen and you can just get really annoyed for no reason. But it's not that action. It's just because of your body is screaming for some energy, for some, to be fed, really. You don't strike me as someone who would get angry at these little things. You've got a very calm way about you.

Maybe it's the English accent, but you know. Yeah, I mean, I get annoyed just like everyone else, but I'm very good at not, well, actually, have had to be able to manage that because from years of experience and being an introvert as well, you learn to internalize a lot of things and then you're very hard on yourself at the same time. So obviously I've learned now to, if something's bothering me, to say it rather than keep it in because that's another thing of growing up. another lesson that I've learned, you know, so not to internalize a lot of emotions, especially, which, yeah, it's taken a lot of while to get to this point anyway. Now, how do you not internalize emotions? So for me, it's, if something's wrong, I have close friends now that before I wouldn't say, I wouldn't tell them that I'm unhappy with certain things.

Not with them, but in general, in life, you know, in terms of my job or just life in general. So now it's a case of if I feel like I need to talk to someone, I have people that I can talk to. I think before, you know, in my life, I didn't have that. So I've gotten to the point where I am lucky to have a handful of people that I can say, look, I'm not happy. I am not okay. And also I think I've got to that point where I don't put myself in certain situations.

So, you know, I was one of the. those that will give it to peer pressure, you know, let's go out till like five o'clock in the morning. I don't drink. So that was, you know, you can imagine how hard that was growing up. Now, I think it also comes with age where I am comfortable saying, you know what, no, I don't want to do something and I don't think about it twice. But it's taken a while to get there.

Yeah, it's funny. I mean, you're talking about how effectively becoming more vulnerable has made you more happy and more in touch with with the people in your life i think most most people you know think vulnerability or demonstrating signs of vulnerability is a sign of weakness yeah but it actually i think can be quite empowering i this is something i've learned over the years uh it's it doesn't make you less of a you know it doesn't make you less of a man if you are willing to share how you feel and I think a lot of people are, a lot of guys, especially guys my age, are just worried about how they'll be perceived. And hence why, you know, on my social media, you know, if I'm having a

bad day, I, you know, I write it, I tell me when I'm having a bad day. If I wasn't, you know, when this whole lockdown happened, I, it took me a week to actually, you know, you, you know, you see everyone on social media, you know, every influencer and every fitness influences like, right home workouts home workouts it's you know it's not that bad and it took me a week or two um to even adapt and to think okay this is the this is life now for a while you know i was not getting out of bed because i just didn't have the motivation to for about a good week you know plus so and i shared that with people i don't um pretend that everything's great and everything's you know um sunshine and rainbows because it's not yeah i mean i think what you even just described with with how you approached

the the workouts at home and and you know admitting that you kind of weren't ready for it and admitting that this was something that you too were trying to overcome i bet that built even more loyalty with the people who do listen to your workout classes and who themselves were struggling you know and there's this there's this leadership principle of of pacing and then leading and pacing's effectively where you establish a rapport and then leading is where you use that rapport to then advance the ball. So all of a sudden, if you went to your followers and said, hey, we're going to crank up our at-home workouts because now we're going to beat this thing, you'd have, you actually would have built more rapport with your, with your audience or your clients than the person

who just from the very beginning said, let's go beat this thing. Because you demonstrated in a lot of ways that you too were affected by it. Yeah. I think a lot of us will be lying to ourselves if we didn't feel in some type of way that this affected us. Some people just handle things better.

Some people handle pressure a lot better. I like my routine. I like to plan my day, my week. I like to do things in a certain way all the time. And when all of a sudden that has to change, I do panic a bit. That

that did throw me off and it was like you know I have a living room space and I came upstairs to do a workout for the first time you know during the lockdown I was just like

this is weird I just am not I don't even think I had a good workout for the first three four days purely because I just couldn't grab you know grasp the concept of training especially the way I train

in the living room for me it did take me a while while to kind of say to myself, right, this is the situation you're in. You're just going to have to roll with it. Okay, so what do you say to the person who says to you, I'm really into fitness and I've got a few thousand followers and I want to create an audience. I want to be a creator. I want to be just like you.

The number one thing is you have to be unique. You have to be different. You have to have that mindset of, A, what do you bring to the table that another 5,000 other people can't. What makes you unique? What makes you stand out? Like I said to you in the beginning, having a great body is probably about 30, 40% of, you know, of that. What's your plan? A lot of people want to do this, but they don't have a plan. And it's not just putting your camera on and filming. That works, but again, what value does this content have? Why would anybody watch it, that wouldn't go and watch it somewhere else.

What makes you unique? I think for me is the whole crosslifting thing does stand out to a lot of people. And really describe that because I'm not sure everyone knows what you're talking about. Yeah, so being a cross-sift, so I did bodybuilding for years. I did my first ever cross-fit workout with Craig Ritchie. This was about two years ago. And I was like, whoa, CrossFit's hard. I used to think CrossFit

I used to troll CrossFit too I was one of those and I decided that I don't just want to be the big aesthetic guy I want to be the big aesthetic guy who can do some endurance and do some conditioning

and then I wanted to be the big aesthetic guys who can do CrossFit and also do some strength and conditioning and be extremely mobile at the same time so a cross lift there is, you know, and, you know, break the mold is also my, it's kind of my mantra. It's the slogan I always use. So if you see a lot of my videos, I have it on my headband.

Probably the headband is also another thing. That's part of my USB but. It's, I'm not just one thing. So if you came onto my page, I'll probably do some bodybuilding, but then I'll do some crossfit, or I'll do some strength and conditioning, or I'll do some mobility. I've done my post mostly this week has just been mobility stuff and you don't expect that from someone who is six for two and a hundred and ten kilos so someone following you what kind of results would they expect to get if i if i start religiously doing your your workouts am i expected to get much stronger much leaner is it going to help me lose weight is it uh going to make me more mobile more flexible yeah so i think it's so there's two ways about it so my youtube there's a lot more

detailed um info on training on the different types of training i do if you wanted to do purely bodybuilding i have detailed videos on that if you wanted to do some more conditioning stuff i have detailed info on that what i want my page to be is i want you to be able to learn something so if you come onto my page you thought i'm i'm a really decent CrossFit, I don't need help with CrossFit, where you have no idea what bodybuilding, how to do any, how to do any form of bodybuilding workouts. I want you to be able to take something from that. At the same time, I want someone who is stuck in a rut with training to come onto my page and think, actually, this is something different. This is something I've

never thought of trying, but because there's another guy who's just as big as me doing it, maybe this is something I want to do. And in terms of mobility, before I started, it posed in a lot of mobility. Mobility was purely a lot of CrossFit athletes and crossfaces that did mobility. In my industry and fitness side, a lot of us neglect mobility. And I'm trying to make it call. I'm trying to make it call that you can be mobile and be jacked or, you know, go to the gym and train and be mobile and take care of yourself. Take care of your joint. Being mobile, that means that just because I'm really strong and I've got five, percent body fat uh i can also move nimbly i can i can run i can uh jump things like that

is that the road to think my body is you you can touch your toes you can okay so flexibility is a you can do you can yeah you can do things like um yeah you can jump you can if i said you do a cosac squats you can do that you'd be surprised how many people can't if i said you do a pistol squat for example you'd be surprised how many people can't do that but with CrossFit, it's a standard. But that has to do mobility because a lot of us, we have bad ankle mobility. Even holding a barbell in the front rack position, in the bodybuilding one, a lot of us, we did it the other way where, you know, it's like arms crisscrossed over your chest. I couldn't front rack when I started crossfit because of poor mobility. So I use an excuse of I was too big to be

to front rank, but that's not true. So I want to encourage people to also be more open-minded when it comes to fitness, because I feel like a lot of people just pick one thing and feel like I'm very territorial. Like I was with bodybuilding, and I thought bodywomen was the only way to train, and I've realized that there's so many other ways out there than just body-builded. So it's, for me, my main goal is if I get you to try something new, try something different, that is something I would want you to be able to take away from my vision. I mean, if you go on my YouTube, I do stuff that are also entertaining. So I do get bodybuilders who, or people in my, in my industry who never done CrossFit before to try CrossFit. I mean, they probably never do

it ever again, but it's entertaining to watch. And that's also part of what I want to do. I like to entertain as well as give out serious information, as well as train and show off some of the training I do. Really cool. Now, where does Woop fit into the picture? And how long you've been on Woop? So, Woop, actually, I think it was April last year. So a little over a year. Yeah. So I was introduced to Woop. I did some stuff. And I thought it was a great idea because I wasn't using anything to track my training and we've changed the way I approached my training and the number one thing was sleep. I mean, I suffer from insomnia anyway. I've tried almost everything. With whoop, it made me realize how bad my sleep was. I didn't know it was bad. But when I was

seeing three hours sleep when I was thinking I've had more than that. So that was I think the number one thing and recovery was another thing that it's helped me to realize that sometimes I was just simply just burning out rather than training smart you know so yeah that that must have been super empowering data for a guy like you I mean yeah to see that you're getting three hours of sleep after all the stuff that you're doing to your body yeah you know you don't need to work on that bench press man you need to work on the sleep yeah because because that's where you're going to get all the unlock. Yeah.

So, I mean, that was, that was the number one thing. You know, I used to do a lot of tweed day training with little sleep, loads of injuries. And now I'm the opposite, purely because I have the data to show that I need to recover better. And it was, it's also with training when, you know, tracking your training. You know, when after a session, you think, oh, that was really hard. I trained really hard.

And you check the data. And it's like, actually. you didn't push as hard as you think you could have, you know, so, and sometimes you can go too hard. So if you're running, if you're 90% or doing a 5K run, something's wrong. So it's, it's a great way to see if you're over-training and over-exerting yourself in things that you shouldn't. And also, you know, if you're doing a workout that you should be going close to 90% and your heart rates, nowhere near. And that is a, that's probably the biggest change also for me in terms of how I plan my training and training smart using my recovery to plan the session that I'm,

or what I'm going to do for the day. So that's, you know, for me, number one is sleep. That has made a huge difference for me. Now, what are some things you've done that you think have helped you improve your sleep? Uh, going to bed earlier. Earlier to bed earlier? Earlier to be. bed yeah a little bed uh blue light glasses nice yeah no more um screen time after 9 pm so before it was like to 11 literally before right before i go to bed i'm on my laptop um winding down you know so just doing things that would just calm me down so reading a book um usually that would help to almost put me to sleep. So these are a few things that I've been doing now to really help. And it's made a difference like my recovery is so much better compared to where it was last year for sure. Now on the recovery

side, I mean, you're obviously putting an enormous amount of stress on your body. What are certain recovery tools or techniques that you believe in? Naps. I mean, I know not everyone has the luxury to have a nap, but I have a nap when I can now and every day, even if it's just 10 minutes. I also, like I said, I do mobility. I do a lot of mobility and this lockdown has made me do even more. So there's different type of mobility. So the dynamic mobility and then you have the stretching and flexibility. And I've been doing a lot more meditation. So breathing meditation, meditation in general um what kind of breathing meditation do you do so it's literally a three minute lying flat on the floor and just breathe so a lot of the times i have a problem is when i

breathe in when training i'm a mouth breather yeah yeah yeah nose breather yeah so it's changing that and also you know diaphragm breathing as well because a lot of the times that apparently a lot of us do it It's purely through the chest. We forget to, we can expand the diaphragm as well when breathing. So the meditation tries to help you to really focus on that. And will you do that a couple times a day or just once? Just once a day.

And when do you do it? So for me, the best time for me to do that is in the mornings, especially after. So I try and do a mobility and a stretch session in a, the mornings before I train. If I feel like I have more time and what I tend to do now is do I breathe in after I train because that's a great way to just calm me down and just bringing a heart rate down. So I'll literally lay down on the mat and just focus on my breathing technique. And it can be longer than three minutes. Sometimes it's long. It's 10 minutes.

If sometimes if you're really deep into meditation, you probably fall asleep, which happens to me a lot and that's nap and meditation in one so uh yeah now when you finish your workout are you someone who believes that you should try to eat in that first 30 minutes or you don't think it matters no i i we've had this you know in bodybuilding we have that the anabolic window um which is turned out that you it's not you don't need to you don't have to i eat when i get home which probably be another 40 minutes. And what kind of a meal is that going to look like? It's this weird fiber bread thing that we have in England.

And then I have some egg whites, loads of different type of vegetables. That's a new thing. So my food has a lot of veggies in it. But the funny thing is I actually don't like vegetables. But I eat them because I know they're good for me. So I always try and make sure there's vegetables in every meal. there's egg whites I have I'm sponsored by a supplemental company so I do have a protein bar as well

which I do have and I drink this is very very even though I'm not British but I drink a lot of tea different type of tea so that's like that's like part of my routine so I have different type of tea throughout the day and that's usually my meals because I don't count macros I just I just eat how I feel so if I wanted five egg whites six, sometimes three, depends on the vegetables I have. Explain philosophically what it means to count macros, and what's the philosophy of doing that versus what you do? Actually, I feel like if you're new to nutrition, you should actually know what your

macros should look like. You should have a grasp of how to calculate your macros and your calories to know exactly what someone your body type should be aiming to consume. Because I did that for years, I have a pretty good idea of what my meals would look like. I have a good idea of what a hundred grams of rice will look like, you know, chicken breasts and things like that. But for me, because I got too obsessive over counting, I used to weigh absolutely everything. And I'm talking, even if it was a half a teaspoon of peanut butter, I would weigh it. If I, I had like a small pack of sweets, I would weigh that. I would measure that into my macros

tracker. And it just became obsessive. So if I went out to a restaurant, I would sometimes take my Tupperware with me to the restaurant because I didn't know what the macros of meals they were serving, which obviously is not a good look. It's bad. It's funny though because yes, it did get my body to where it looks now. So in a way, it did help. But, you know, my relationship with food was not them healthier. So for me now, it's just so much nicer, just not to be able to be like, right, I want to have pizza this afternoon and I'll have it. The funny thing is, actually, because I know I can have it, I rarely do.

When I couldn't have certain foods, I craved it so much. Right. And that I have the freedom to eat pretty much. how I like because of my output is a lot. I eat probably, I am my healthiest with my foods. My meals look so, they're so varied, but they're not, nothing compared to what it looks like when I was diet and when I was restricting a lot of things.

Like a whole sweet potato, I would cut that in half because they didn't fit my macros. But now I, I wouldn't do that. In listening to you talk about this, it feels like you have a healthy, and effective relationship with food today. I don't know. I mean, do you feel like you could go back and do all of this over again and not have gotten that obsessed with macros?

I think that there's, well, the main thing is if I didn't do a bodybuilding show, then I think my, the way I saw food and counted macros would not have been as bad. But I think when you do shows, bodybuilding shows,

because you have to get your body fat to a very, very low. What percentage are we talking? I didn't measure it, but, I mean, the way I can describe it. It's like less than 5% isn't it? I mean, close to. I mean, I always, you always have to just look at our faces. We all look like, we're very gaunt, and I didn't have a beardless back then, so it was not a bit.

But, yeah, it was like vascular. vascularity all over my abs my chest my legs and it's I think yes you have to be kind of obsessive with food to get to that level absolutely but you couldn't sustain it if you look at a lot of people that do body video shows they don't look like that after the show you know after two weeks um when they step off stage they're back to bulking quote unquote which is basically just normal yeah but you're right you do have like I said, everybody should count macros at some point. I feel like I would have still counted macros.

I still would if I was starting out again. I just wouldn't be as extreme as, you know, I can't go out to eat because I have to watch what I eat. I can't go to a certain restaurant because they don't serve certain foods and or take a top away with me to a restaurant. Those, those things were what, you know, you lose friends. That's too far. Yeah, that's too far.

especially if you're if you're casual like if the person listening to this who wants to be casually healthier yes yeah you know they don't want to be a bodybuilder but they want to be healthier maybe it's a little bit of weight loss or maybe it's just better understanding how the food they put in their body affects their body it sounds like you recommend counting macros so what is the process that someone should follow to do that very simple like you know what are the sort of steps that someone needs to follow for that the you know the you know luckily for us now with the internet there is so many free resources out there to help you calculate your macros for your body time i go i always use when i had clients i use uh total daily expenditure

and that calculates that's your bmr plus how much you expand so if you train how many hours but it takes into into your account your age you know high your job what you do how active you are. And that usually will give you a pretty good idea of what your maintenance calories will be. And then from there, you will break down your macros. Again, there's loads of websites nowadays, which people are lucky enough that you can get access to this for free. If you're bulking or you're cutting, it's either you're a surplus or you're a deficit. Deficit is when you're trying to cut some body fat, a surplus is when you mean you mean calorie surplus, calorie deficit. exactly. So I think

the point where people have to now be careful is not going to one extreme to the other. So, you know, I would probably like, if I was trying to cut up some body fat, yeah, a deficit of, let's say, 500 calorie from my maintenance calorie. But unfortunately, a lot of people, they cut their calories down too quickly. And that's the one thing I would always say to people is do not cut your calories down too quickly because that is kind of. of where things start to go wrong because yes you're losing that weight again but you'll get to

a sticking point where you can't go any lower and your body is not going to be happy for it and it's the same with you know guys who are trying to add some muscle who are trying to bog again you know there's a difference with trying to add lean muscle mass and just eating out of gluttony and you know Yeah, right. When your surplus is supposed to be, let's say, 3,500, but everyone's like, oh, no, no, it should be 4,500. That's just gluttony. That's just, you know, I've seen people do that.

And we, it's just finding a healthy balance and not going too crazy. Either you're trying to gain some lean muscle mass or you're trying to cut. I think the number one thing I always say to people is patience. Everybody wants to look like that in 12 weeks because they see their favorite body really does it in 12 weeks, but they've been training for years. Everyone you see that has a great body has been doing it for years. It didn't happen in a year. I've been training for 10 years. It didn't happen for me all of a sudden. And I think that same patience is a virtue does apply even to training. You don't become the best in the world from training for a year.

Why would you expect muscle mass and be as big as your favorite. influencer in a year. It doesn't work like that. Everything takes time. It's the same with losing some body fat. It's taking people years to not be at the point that they are happy and then all of a sudden they feel like, oh wow, I can change my body in six weeks because they've seen someone posted six weeks to shred diets. It doesn't work like that. Yeah. Well, there's another problem with the six weeks to shred diet, which is even if you do it perfectly and you pull it off and you do look shredded in six weeks yeah it's it's virtually impossible to sustain because your body isn't used to being at that weight absolutely and so that's why you see these people you know

people who kind of get stuck on a yo-yo and it's and it doesn't feel sustainable right yeah it's it's it's it's like well where do you go from here after the six weeks what's the plan after and a lot of people don't think that far ahead it's they it's like well for me I always say well can you eat the same way you do now for the rest of your life? Can you sustain this diet for the rest of your life? Even after you've done, you know, some of us sometimes might need to do in eight weeks. You know, if you have a competition, if you're going on holiday, fine. But what's the plan after that?

And a lot of people don't have a plan after that. And that, unfortunately, is the problem. You know, what would your diet look like for two years? And would you be happy to eat the same way for two years? The answer is no, then you need to change that. How many times in a week do you like to do a workout? So how many workouts will you do in a week? Funny enough, before COVID, I was training sometimes twice a day, six days a week.

So twice a day for, let's say, three days a week. I'll do two sessions a day. And then, but I'll train six days a week. Now, if you're someone who's working out, let's say, two or three times a week, and you're committed to now trying to get that, to increase that. Can someone just all of a sudden jump to 10 or 12 workouts a week? Or would you not recommend that? Oh, no way.

Yeah, I mean, they will burn out real quick. And I think they'll probably learn the left. You know, sometimes I know this is harsh. We do this with kids. You know, sometimes some people need to learn a lesson to move on and progress. I feel like sometimes you can tell people not to do that. They will listen. And then they learn the hard way.

But I would never advise anyone to do that. I've done that before, and I learned it a lot of the hard way. Your body just burns out. You just burn out, and you would not have the energy to do that. And then also the question of your diets, how have they changed their diets to meet the requirement of training, you know, from going from one extreme to the other? So I would never encourage anyone to do that.

Do you try to get more sleep on the days before doing two workouts? Yeah, so more sleep, and if I know that I haven't had enough sleep, so again, if my recovery or if my sleep was not enough, I actually just changed the training day. So if I feel like I didn't recover enough, I would change that to a, I'll swap the sessions around now. So again, this is why the group has helped massively for me to learn when I have done silly things where I am tired

and I still go for the second session. And you know, there's a difference within pushing mentally. However, if your body is broken, if your body is tired, mentally you can be like, yeah, I want to do this. But if your body is broken, that session is a wasted session. I know, actually, that is one of the most overrated saying, actually. That's a great way. There's no such thing as a bad session. You know, when people just say, oh, even if you don't feel like you show up, but sometimes there is something.

such a thing as a bad session. Sometimes if you don't feel like it, your body doesn't feel like it, your body's tired, your body is telling you something. Yes, it could be mentally, you need to get over that mental barrier. That's saying you don't need to go to the gym. However, if your body's tired,

you go to the gym and you train and you actually steal the workout was not as effective as it should have been, that is a bad session. So when people's, I've seen this saying a lot where they say there's no such thing as a bad session, there is. You know, when you're sick and people go, oh, you know, going to the gym is the best cure.

No, it's not. You know, rest is the best cure. Rest, you know, rather than trying to overexert yourself. Well, I mean, what you just described is in a lot of ways was inspiration for me in starting Woop. I mean, what you just described was really my mindset as a college athlete where it was like, there's no such thing as a bad training session. and you just got to keep doing training sessions. And in fact, it's only a good training session if you're exhausted afterwards.

That was my like, you know, 20-year-old mindset as a college athlete. And so I used to over-train. And, you know, fundamentally, it seemed random to me when I was peeking physically and when I wasn't, in part because I was just pushing my body very, very hard. And so the way you described that and the way you described to rest and the way you said, You know, you've even described getting more sleep and thinking about recovery. You know, that's a lot of what we're trying to do with WOOP is to help people understand that balance in their lives. Yeah, I mean, that's, as someone who's never been an athlete, but when I was training to look, you know, my absolute best, I used to do two sessions a day, six days a week.

When I was prepping to do a show, I was training twice a day. and some days I really did not want to be there and it felt like a wasted session but the young mentality in me was like no you have to go you have to train you have to train you have to do it so I think as I've gotten older I realize that you know

some days you do need to have that that extra day off you know like there is another day even the best athletes in the world you know talk about recovery and you know I that's a lot of what I also try and show with my Instagram page. So some training sessions, I just post a mobility session. And I would just do

a mobility session and an accessory work. So I think that the more people talk about this, the better, especially from people who are athletes who do know what they're talking about. It does, it will help. I think the great thing about social media and about podcasts is we can now listen to guys like yourself with experience who can say to us, you know, you need to slow down. Yeah. And by the way, not even just athletes. I mean, a lot of society at large is on overdrive. It's a lot of travel. It's a lot of time zone differences. It's a lack of sleep. It's a lack of sleep. It's a lack of sleep. It's a badge of honor. We just believed eight years ago when we started whoop that there would be a cultural shift over time, that people would actually recognize they could be even more effective if they rested more, not less effective. And I think we're now seeing that play out across society where it's just, you know, I couldn't tell you how many WOOP members are mostly on WOOP to optimize their sleep, right?

And they're very focused now all of a sudden on what are all these different things in their life that affect them that they can, you know, change or introduce to help improve how they sleep and how they rest and so I think it goes it goes back to a lot of what you've been saying obi I agree like I said to you that was probably the number one thing for me as well was was was sleep it shocks you into realizing that well okay I actually need a lot more sleep than I thought I need it so which is which has been awesome I think I would have still been doing the same thing and burning out because I wasn't sleeping enough and I wouldn't have done anything about my sleep funny enough if I didn't know about this so I would have just got you know when you see

everyone goes oh sleep I'll sleep when I'm dead yeah yeah I think we're all trying to change that mindset now that yeah and for me as an entrepreneur so it's it's critical well look obi it's been a real pleasure talking to you I really appreciate by the way you're you know your transparency and just how candid you are about the things you've overcome to become where you are I think you've got a very inspiring message where can people find you if they want to do your workouts or learn more about training or fitness or health from you um it's just my name at you know obi vincent on instagram at obi underscore but usually that comes up straight away there's not a lot of obi vincent which is a good thing um and on youtube it's again it's just my

name it's oby vincent so uh yeah check those out all right well we'll include those in the show notes obi proud to have you on whoop and uh we'll talk soon man thank you thank you thank you Thank you for having me. If you do not have a WOOP membership, a reminder you can get 15% off using the code Will Ahmed, W-I-L-L-L-A-H-M-E-D, and if you're a W-W-P-W-W-P-W-P listener and you're interested in joining the WOOP team, we are growing rapidly and we're hiring talented people in particular for our membership services organization. That's right. That's the important group of representatives that work directly with our members.

They work directly with our customers. They work directly with our professional athletes. We're growing fast and we need talented people to help us boost membership services. We ultimately want this to be something that people find is world class about the WOOP experience and we need really great people to do that. Check out Woop.com slash careers and keep in mind it's a remote job. These are remote jobs. You do not need to be located in Boston where our headquarters is located.

If you are great, but we are looking really for anyone across the United States, talented membership services. That's all for now. Thank you, everyone, for listening. Stay healthy. Stay green and keep your respiratory rate flat. Thank you. Thank you.