 A lot of people know cortisol to be the stress hormone, but a lot of people don't know is that cortisol often feels good And this is probably why many people over train. Oh, yeah Remember we call those cortisol cortisol junkies. Yeah, you know, it's funny I you know, I first heard that was actually from a doctor that I trained. Oh really? Yeah I had a client that was a doctor and we would talk about the You know how a lot of people just get addicted to exercise and I'd say yeah A lot of people they just feel terrible But they still go and train themselves super hard and they get that short window of feeling good afterwards and he goes Oh, it's the cortisol and I said what he goes. Yeah cortisol I mean, it's it's a stress hormone because what it does is it gets your body to release energy right away now Too much cortisol over time cause muscle breakdown can cause fat storage obviously is a stress adaptation But in the short term it causes this energy release and he said yeah These people over time their body probably becomes not unlike insulin insensitivity, right? When you start to lose sensitivity insulin or develop insulin resistance Lots of cortisol over time probably starts to lose its effect And so you're overtrained all the time overwork the same people, right? They don't sleep very good a lot of coffee high stress They tend to be late often to appointments They also train their butts off and they love the workouts because they're like But I just love the way it makes me feel even though they're obviously overdoing it well This is why to like you'll find it's usually higher in the morning, right? And that's something that's more advantageous get you up get you going that stress hormone kicks in and then it's not Advantages for you. No, like especially when you get towards, you know sundown and starting to calm down But yeah, it becomes it comes one of those feelings you seek out Once you get into these high-intensity type of exercises Did you guys find like a common theme with the clients that like what are some of the things I felt the same thing too? I'm just curious if you guys are on the same. Oh, it's the avatars like this, right? They they over train. That's obvious We're talking about that super demanding job. Yes, high high performing high-stress job or like five kids That's a demanding job. I mean I mean that that's a job. You don't get time off, right? So you got that they don't sleep very well Lots of caffeine typically and oftentimes to help them at night wine Something to bring them down which yeah would typically be and they navigate they tend to gravitate I should say towards Orange theory or CrossFit or hit training or circuit training They have 15 pounds of body fat that's stubborn. They can't figure out why won't come off They cut their calories. Why isn't this working? Oh, I know I just need to work out Explain this a little bit. So so what is going on here? Correct me if I'm wrong that you have somebody who is those are all the things you're listing These are all like, you know, some lower level some higher level stresses on the body And so what's happening is and many times. I don't know if you said it But many times this is also low calorie people right people are trying to restrict or cut back That they're taking on all these insults that the body has just gotten used to just constantly being on the defense And so it starts to lower its cortisol production. Is that what is happening? And so in extreme cases now that when that happens now, you're in really big trouble But but what might happen is and this can happen with Many hormones, right? If the hormones are if a hormone is really high all the time your body starts to become Somewhat for lack of a better term desensitized to it So receptors will either down regulate or it's not as effective. This is kind of what happens with insulin resistance You know before you get diabetes or pre diabetes You can track and see insulin levels going up and up with the consumption of sugars or carbohydrates and People don't realize what's going on until oh, I have full-blown insulin resistance And then they go into you know type 2 diabetes with this cortisol It's just this high cortisol all the time and at first you're kind of get that and we've all been there, right? We're stressed, but we have kind of this wired energy So maybe lack of sleep, but there's stressful stuff going on and we feel kind of energized But it's this wired kind of energy that can come from cortisol along with catecholamine production and other stress chemicals And over time your body starts to lose sensitivity So then you want to push out more of this and you tend to seek out things that make you produce more cortisol And one of those is these super high-intense workouts Another one that I find is very interesting is oftentimes the same people will find themselves Chronically be rushing or late to appointments, which I love bringing that up because people will look at me like I'm some kind of Conscious. Yeah, it's almost like it's a self-sabotaging kind of a mechanism where it you do get a rush from Being late and all of a sudden you have to figure everything out You know on the spot and I feel like that you do get a bit of that same kind of a rush That you get from something high-intensity exercise. So now what I found with these clients These are actually some of the hardest clients to get through to 100% Because they're already up the everything that they've accomplished in their life. Usually was from hard grinding work Right when they probably got there, you know initially like they lost weight and they they saw some result from doing high-intensity Workouts, but they have never left. Well, and they also it's hard to tell somebody who Honestly feels better Feels good right from these types of workouts immediately after that. It's not good for them Like that that I always found that that one of the most challenging things like and this this was really common Right when I was coaching at Orange Theory And this was really common when the the rise of CrossFit right when more and more people are doing that type of training And even when hit was popularized But what happens is you get somebody who does these things and they they truly do like it Because they get this sense of accomplishment They sweat really hard it was really and they got through it and they get that spike of cortisol So they get the spike of energy afterwards And so they're very certain that they like this way of training because it makes them feel good It was really hard as a coach to get through to that person and be like no, this is not what's good for you And they're going no yes, it is I can tell it's good. I mean it gives me more energy I get that I'm I kicked I kicked the you know the day and it's you know I do great, you know, I kick off the day and I have a great day because of it It has a couple for that that was what was going through my head. There's a more appropriate way for me to say that That's what these people that it's really hard to get them out of it because they've either had success Through training this way or they feel a certain way from it and it makes them feel good The challenge is they do feel good or better Temporarily in the context of how crappy they usually feel right? So what tends to happen is you start to feel bad over time And that's how you always feel and then you have a new definition of what feels good The reality is is if they could feel the contrast of what real good feels like They would see that what they're getting is a nervous anxious wired kind of energy not unlike again Like we've all experienced this lack of sleep like, you know, how about like when you first had your son? I'm gonna first had your son and you weren't sleeping, but you were you were energized and you're like, oh, no I got plenty energy really what it was. It was this high. Yeah, you know, so it's hard It's really hard to reverse them out of it And I think the only winning formula that I had for that was when they would finally get fed up With lack of results when they got to the point where they're like, I don't understand why I can't lose 15 pounds I'm doing everything and I'm eating so little what the hell's going on That's the only way that I could get through to this person. Yep was what I'd explained to them is that okay? You if you're certain you love it is where you want to be And if you're completely happy where you're at energy strength muscle your body shape body fat percentage What if you're happy where it's at then by all means let's keep doing it Yeah, but if you come to me and you say Adam, I want to change this if I want to build some muscle I want to be stronger. I want to have more energy I want to lose body fat and you're struggling to hit any of those goals Then I'm gonna tell you what you're doing is not what we should be doing so that and that would be the only way That I could break through to them is it obviously it's not working. You have this goal. You have not achieved It's not that you need to do it more and longer or harder to get there You don't need you can we there's a way to work with your body instead We're working against it right now Whether you believe it or not you are and if you want to make changes Then we have to change the way you're going about it. That would be my only way to break through Yeah, do you guys remember in your early days of training when you started to really see this or notice this as a thing? Like I remember distinctly this was I mean I was an early trainer This was the 24 fitness on Hillsdale before they redid it right? So it's a while ago and I remember there were obviously there was a room for the aerobics classes And I remember there was this class and it was a you know quote-unquote resistance training class But really it wasn't what it was was high-intensity circuit training for an hour classes Yeah, it was like an hour of Intense you know squats and push-ups and dumbbell laterals and you know donkey kick man It was just non-stop intense and I remember when I first became a trainer I saw this class and I saw this room full of 40 people doing it and most of them were middle-aged women Who were taking this class and I remember thinking like wow? These women are gonna get great result like this is when I was an early trainer So I really understand this and then I watched this class because it was during a time when I had a client And it was the same women coming in coming in coming in and I remember seeing them sweat and work hard And nobody was progressing. I remember thinking could they just be eating a ton of food and have a really bad diet? Like what's going on here and I'd see them not change not change well eventually I Figured you know, I would I would find ways of getting into these classes so I could potentially talk to new get new clients So obviously as a trainer, I was trying to get a new trainer I was trying to get new clients and I go in to start talking to people and I'd find out some of these women were taking this class For a year yeah two years, and then I'd say you know, is it your diet? You must be eating a lot of calories like oh no I count my cow had one woman pull out she had a in her workout bag She had this is back in the day when people would write you know things on paper And she had a notebook. She was no I'm eating 1200 calories a day And she was showing me the food and I remember being totally confused. How is this even possible with mind-boggling? The had the same experience, but it was with like the group X instructor Yeah, and I saw them in there with multiple classes sweating profusely and Then would come in and like work out and I would see them like putting so much work in and this is back when I Was in the mentality of just if you keep putting work in you get return for that and It was just like I didn't even know how to explain it because even one of my clients asked me why they weren't you know in Phenomenal shape, and I'm like I don't know at the same thing like maybe they're sneaking in a bunch of cupcakes or something I have no idea. No, that was so I trained that was my experience was training actually group X instructors They're hard. Yeah, no, they were really hard And I mean and that was the first time that it kind of they're the first like aha moment There was something else going on here, you know because it wasn't a calorie thing I mean shit. They were they should have been burning, you know, 10,000 plus calories a base I mean I had group X instructors that were teaching three plus classes in a day Uh-huh, you know, so three hours or four hours of intense, you know, cardio like training every single day And they were just stuck their body would not change and they you know And their thought was you know, I picked up the body pump class too, so I'm lifting the weights, you know Yeah, so they're lifting the weights. They're doing the cardio classes like crazy I started holding dumbbells when I go running. Yeah, totally everything fast Literally these those those were things that they were doing as a strategy and and then I look at their food log And they were they're eating nowhere near a high amount of calories. So that was kind of I was so confused I had an experienced trainer that I looked up to that worked with me and I asked them I said what's going on? Do people just lie and he said well, sometimes they do he goes but usually they don't and he says, you know If your body doesn't want to do something You're not going to be able to force it to do what you think you want it to do and I said, what do you mean? He goes well, the body has this incredible ability. This is totally true Has this incredible ability to Change and manipulate its metabolism and hormones and even drivers of behavior. So Cravings or energy or lack of energy or drive or lack of drive In order to get in order to do what it thinks it needs to do in order to survive, right? So here you are beating yourself up like crazy Probably not getting good sleep do all the stuff that we talked about Low calories and your body's like we need to survive. We are we're moving like crazy. We're not eating much There's a lot of stress So what it does is it organizes its hormones and it organizes how it operates And it can literally there's a huge swing of how many calories your body could decide to burn On its own depending on what's going on and some of that is directed through hormones And there's a lot of stuff that we don't fully understand and it's pretty remarkable I mean later on in my career when I really figured this out. I would get clients like this and so long as they compliant I remember I had one lady and I've talked about her before She was working out all the time running daily Dropping your calories had another 10 pounds of lose. I mean it was it was a ridiculous amount of activity and low Cal it was 1200 calories a day if i'm not mistaken She was working out seven days a week which included some resistance training mostly lots of running pilates yoga So she was doing all kinds of crazy stuff She hired me Over the course of a year She went down to three days a week of resistance training with one day a week of running So she got down to four days a week of exercise probably one third Of the total amount of activity and she was eating over 2,300 calories So we got her to burn More than a thousand more calories a day And working out one third of the amount of time because we had got her body to want to Be leaner and this is the thing and the other thing that'll happen if you keep pushing your body is eventually it'll shut down or become injured As a way to get you to stop and you see this quite often Well, I think the important part of this conversation is to understand too that there there's a spectrum here That and we're kind of highlighting like the extreme right low calorie And so there's people going like oh, well, that's not me. I mean i'm not i'm not doing you know 800 calories and i'm not doing seven days a week, you know four hours a day I'm not that person. Yeah, that's the extreme right right or oh, I don't have five kids Or I don't have a crazy stressful job So this can't be me But that we're highlighting the extreme version of that but it's a spectrum And there's a lot of people that are on that side and the middle is a sweet spot You know because then you can be the other extreme you don't do enough right you eat too much You don't do enough movement. You don't do enough training You don't put enough stress in your life So you're seeing minimal to no results So there's that into the spectrum then they have this this crazy in and they have everybody in the middle of that And where we really want to be is right in that kind of middle balance But there's a lot of people that are to the right of that still that They're they're taking on a lot of stress and simply by just scaling back on the stress Or maybe increasing calories and feeding the body or changing the adaptation So this high intensity type of training maybe do something more like strength sets where i'm You know straight sets and long rest periods and you know Maybe focus on recovery more a little bit like so there's a lot of people that would see more results Just simply by modifying or changing the way they're going about it. Oh, yeah And a lot of times they're just they just got good at it. It's something that they that's why they enjoy it It's like their body adapted to this way of training and they they associate all these benefits to it You know energy-wise and whatnot, but they're not progressing their bodies like fully adapted in this way of training to where it's starting to kind of have negative Differences going yeah Well, I mean look think about it this way right all the hormones that people You know want to improve or increase right testosterone Growth hormone like these are the the the youth hormones right balance of estrogen or progesterone and women You want to have good insulin sensitivity? That's very good for you All of that stuff Leads the body towards more Energy expenditure so all of that In combination with the right at time to exercise adds active tissue to your body Aka muscle, which means now you have a higher caloric requirement Okay, so if your body organizes its hormones in this way the way that most of us want we want to feel younger Rejuvenated we want to burn body fat build muscle recover faster all that stuff But in order for that to happen because remember that results in higher caloric expenditure all the time It results in more lean body mass in order for that to happen Your body has to think it's safe to do so Otherwise why the hell would it why if you were the manager of your body if you're like in this Imagine this like like star trek right you're like in this room operating all these machines And then you're having a meeting with your other operators of the body and you're like hey We want to increase the size of the engine. We can't do that. We're not we don't have enough energy We're expending way too much. We need to conserve organize everything in a way to continue to conserve We can't do that or if they come you say hey, we need Let's make the engine bigger. He's like well, let's look at the losters. Yeah, let's look at the logs Okay, no, we got plenty of energy Looks like we're cool Looks like there's more energy coming in or in the future because we don't have this history of no energy Everything looks cool. It's not stressful. Let's do it. Let's throw a bigger engine on let's make this happen I mean while romulans are shooting lasers Fingers on taking on slots of stress everywhere. I love that so good Hey, if you enjoyed that clip you can find the full episode here or you can find other clips over here and be sure to subscribe