 and anyway hey guys we're recording right now I have Alex on I'm super excited he he is we were chatting back and forth a messenger and he's like I want to go to another level I want to make some shifts and changes and so I'm like let's do some coaching so basically we're gonna take and Alex has lost 30 pounds when he started maybe more maybe less we don't know he doesn't weigh himself which is a big props to you Alex but you've been doing some physical activity but you're just looking for that kind of like what's the next step what's the where do I go from here and how do I make some changes and then what I'd like to do too is maybe why are you plateaued and so I think it's sometimes good to understand why we're at we're at and then how do we what's our expectation to go forward so thanks for coming on I appreciate it yeah I'm excited too so no rush but first off I know you said you started at 340 you went down to around 310 you haven't weighed yourself in a few months but you kind of feel like you're in this limbo land is that correct just so we're on the same page right that's correct cool when you got started what was your initial goal like what's the one thing you wanted to achieve well the whole initial goal was just getting 30 minutes of movement every day okay cool why why why why was that so important well the big thing was drop pounds okay did you have a certain number of weight you're looking to achieving just you wanted to really because you know you read various things online and people say well you're this tall you should wear this you this tall like I just want to be a healthy weight to where like you know I could play an hour basketball with my son and just keep going and you know as I get up there in age a little bit like I kind of get these aches and pains and stuff right you know I you know my job is I sent from a computer all day so I needed to incorporate activity in my life perfect so one of things that I think is important for us to kind of recognize and you and you and you had success right you started moving in this direction and what's what can happen though if we don't have and it doesn't have to be this huge monster goal like I like big goals right but I always like to have a step to go after the reason why it it gives us something tangible to measure right because one day you go play basketball with your son you're like I felt pretty good then the next day you're sore and you're like do I feel as good as I did yesterday and it's not a way to like assess it that well so if you think about this if you have a goal I just did alive about this if you if kind of the weight loss is your only goal which yours isn't which I'm glad to we're just going to quantify a little bit I'm going to give you some steps to take if weight loss is your only goal I've never seen anybody achieve it and maintain it ever they always have to be there's got to be something else tangible that we can assess because you ultimately you're creating a new life for yourself right your old life didn't serve you the way you want it to you're creating a new one so we have to go out and design what that looks like so Karen so also so Karen I want you to listen to this um now what kind of fit you said you want to be working out more um what kind of physical activity have you been doing currently and how long you've been doing it for uh so my main probably 99 percent of my activity has been walking I uh uh today was day 155 in a row walking it's huge yeah it's funny that you mentioned the old basketball thing that feeling well because Monday I think it was I played basketball with my son and that day I woke up my knee was killing me so I'm like man but I still get out there and you know not as quick as other days but it all initially started like hey we're 100 days from Christmas who wants to jump in and start moving our bodies and getting ready for the holidays and all that kind of jazz and so Christmas came and went and I was like you know what I'm gonna keep this going because I feel good you know whenever I go out and walk and so do you celebrate that yeah have you done a huge celebration I mean like that's awesome yeah I mean I'm just thankful every day I get to do it okay cool so let me ask this question how far do you walk each day and how so how far is it and do you change it up at all uh usually I do it uh like where we live there's a lot of neighborhoods around schools and stuff so I just alter my route and then um if I'm not gonna be around home you know I'll go walk somewhere else or sometimes I'll drive down to each area and I'll walk along the beach and um it's usually at least two miles up to four miles it just kind of depends on how much time I have okay so this is going to be I'm going to get some more in depth here so if you're watching this right now um basically Alex had lost him weight plateaued he's been very active about 180 days 158 days uh consistently 155 155 consistently walking days but his body's kind of plateaued so there I'm gonna give you two things now the other thing a lot of you don't know is you've been doing OMAD OMAD one meal a day is that majority of the time how long you've been doing that for I I officially haven't started that I've been doing it yet you're just you're just doing the last thing so I think I need to shift that around so because my evening meal I think is kind of affecting results everyone I'm eating too late in the evening okay but say like by nine o'clock I'm done eating I typically don't eat until noon the next day okay is that almost every day you do that I've done that ever since I started walking I've been doing it and I think there was one day I had breakfast okay so I have some good ideas for you I think this is going to work really really well for you um are you open for some shifts and changes heck yeah I am all right here we go number one is when you start a physical activity and this is anybody that's plateaued if you start working out or become a physical active when you start your walking when you if I was to tell you to go walk four miles how did you feel was it hard to do did you feel tired maybe fatigued sore from walking four miles yeah if I asked you this week going for a walk for four miles do you feel tired fatigued or sore at all from walking four miles no so what happened was is when you first started it was an exercise and then it turned into an activity so this is really important for people to realize is that when you're trying to make a transformation you're trying to change your body you have to apply an external force that's greater than what your body's capable of doing not all the time but you still have to apply that once or twice a week twice a week probably is not optimal so what happened was is you're you went to a maintenance phase you're basically in the maintenance of of where you want to be because the walking has just become consistent right which is good don't stop that because obviously it's helping you maintain everything you've accomplished at the same time it's not going to help you get further ahead so all you have to do is something simple um and let me ask you this question how fast can you walk one mile um like 18 minutes 18 minutes now do you have you have you created a template to be competitive to get to 17 minutes I have yes okay so you have so you want to get it to 17 minutes what are you doing to try to get to 17 minutes uh nothing all right so let's do that I set out my pace and then like I've noticed some of the times when I pushed myself I do have that pain like I started developing shin splints okay and I'm like well I always dial it back because I don't want to stop walking every day right and I don't want shin splints to put me out let me ask this question have you always been pretty stocky guy yeah I was asking you what would you rather do run for 20 feet or run for two miles what would you say 20 feet 20 feet so you're training and I'm not against walking four miles or two miles honestly I probably wouldn't I mean you can walk like a long walk maybe once a week like on a Saturday's kind of like your long walk but I would move you more into some interval trainings now if you were more of a stick figure and you're more endurance-based I would probably push you to run a little bit more like do a run walk I don't think you're going to get a better result of walking further I think you're going to get a better result of doing something more intense shorter so this is what I'm going to recommend I want you to do it twice a week and it's going to be a you can go up to three times a week but for right now I'm going to do twice a week you're going to go for a two mile walk the other day I want you to walk every day by the way and I don't really care maybe one day a week you go to four miles you do your long walk and then the other days you're going to shoot for the two miles three of those days you're going to do two miles what I want you to do is I want you to go do like a 10 minute warm-up you're going to then go sprint and the sprint doesn't have to be a hundred percent it could be a 65 percent sprint something that gasses you but I don't want you to stress your joints I don't want you to beat yourself up you might choose to do this on more of a hill because it's a little harder and I want you to go for about a 20 second sprint okay 20 seconds not very far okay and then what I want you to do is I want you to take at least a minute and 40 seconds rest walk slow okay minute and 40 I'm trying to time it out so you go 20 seconds hard a minute 40 off so every two minutes you're basically running for 20 seconds okay got you're gonna you're gonna start you're gonna you want to work up to eight to ten rounds of that so the first week first first time you do it you might only do it four times you're like I'm smoked then good because you're gonna do it you're on the consistent path so you're gonna stay consistent on this so you don't have to rush to the end once you can do that eight to ten times three times a week right now you're speeding up your walk does that make sense you're speeding up your time because you'll be running for you know four or five minutes of the mile two mile walk okay so you're gonna speed up the time so you're making yourself more fast right once you get better at that what we're gonna do is we're gonna we're gonna keep the 20 seconds but just bring down the recovery a little bit and then add more two to the end or we can run 10 seconds longer right and keep the recovery back 10 seconds right so you just make slight adjustments to it okay also two times a week if you feel good do three don't rush the goal is get the three eight to ten reps once you can accomplish that and you feel comfortable doing that then we got to change it again we're gonna modify because eventually it'll just become normal again right that's number one number two what I want you to do is just start working on when you do your walks at the end probably at the end of your walks I want you to do something simple like maybe it's 10 lunges each side and just work on range of motion if you do a squat work on your full squats right let's start working on joint mobility you said talking about the knees and shins and stuff like that I can send you over if you want me to I can send you over the lunge routine it'd be more of like a split squat lunge do you have any knee surgeries or anything like that no I haven't had any surgeries so yeah so I want you to I want you to get stronger around the legs and around the knees um and right more range of motion so I would do maybe it's 10 it's it's it's more like an active range of motion rather than it's like a workout but I just want you to kind of start putting a standard in there I want you to add five or ten push-ups okay okay just those two things for now we can always throw some burpees in there we can add more stuff but I just want you to kind of work on just range of motion and just working through those the depth of your joints because you sit a lot and you're not using those muscles when you're sitting on them so this is a way for us to use them so that's going to be your physical activity change just something subtle now I don't want you to go to the point where you hate walking when you stop your routine because keep that going okay keep that going okay yeah because we only do one sprint for the first week I'm cool but then let's let's just add a little bit to it if you have to go 20 seconds and then walk for five minutes before you do your next 20 seconds if that's your starting point I don't care I just want to start challenging your body differently okay that's number one number two eating this is really important so if you guys are watching this and you've been doing intermittent fasting which I'm a huge fan of fasting at the same time I know I didn't ask your calories but can you just give me an idea of what you eat per day so you drink your ketones in the morning right yep I have actually when I get up I have water and then I usually have a coffee with some keto cream then I go for my walk typically okay and then when I get back I'll have my ketones and then for lunch is usually you know a lot of times it's just like today for example was a like sirloin steak and some broccoli how big it was probably six inches by three and a half okay it was pretty thin okay um so then I have just drink water and then I have ketones at around three o'clock in the afternoon and then dinner is typically like it usually is like has some type of dairy ball cheese usually and then some sort of protein but I think part of the problem is that nine times out of ten there's no green vegetables involved um sometimes it's like the protein the cheese and crackers okay not the most ideal right right right is it so it's relatively low-carb but it's not like you're not crazy keto crazy low-carb restricted correct correct and then calories overall I mean I would think I'm probably like around 1800 so based on what you just told me I would be surprised if you're over 1500 yeah yeah well I mean that lunch is not typically the steak and broccoli you know a lot of times it sometimes it's white rice that I've cooked earlier in the week just because it doesn't spike my my insulin okay and then um it's usually that with like some sort of protein things of that nature but I you know you you could be right on point as far as calorie-wise well that's what my concern is right so so you're kind of you're eating more intermittent fasting more controlled glucose control is what you're focused on that necessarily low carb it's lower carb than you know probably used to be your average the average person my big concern is your long-term low calorie so I wouldn't measure your calories for the day how tall are you five seven so five seven and you're active too it's not like you're not walking right if you're I mean I know you sit a lot too but you are out moving your body also um I think if we looked at your calorie component of it and just so you all know I'm not a huge fan of counting calories although it does there's a couple factors you want to keep in mind one to lose body fat you have to be less calories than you currently burn on the flip side of that if you're on the low end for a long period of time you can slow down your metabolism especially if it's long-term so calorie confusion is what I'm going to actually recommend for you um now Wednesday last time you went kind of more like full low carb without using any type of cracker or rice do you have you done that at all um no I think either one of the two meals had some sort of type of carb involved okay so that's something that we can play with I think a little bit later I wouldn't do that right now but I think we play with that down the road um I think maybe you go like hey listen I'm gonna do 10 days or maybe five days I'm gonna go more low carb during the week and then maybe give yourself a you know as long as you don't binge eat on it in the afternoon in the weekends I'm fine with that but I want something that something we'll just put on pause for now but this is what I'm gonna recommend I want you to kind of just give yourself an idea of how many calories you're consuming today hit me back on that if it's under 2,000 calories a day and it's been you're pretty consistent over the last you know 100 days or longer that does concern me so what I'd want you to do is find two days a week where you basically I call it a refeed this happens a lot y'all this is something that people are getting competitive low calorie and and the reality is we want people to be less food than they're normally eating but the thing is you don't want to be competitive at it you also got to feed the warrior inside right so when I when you do the refeed days and I might tell you what that is I want you to kind of assess how your performance is the next day how was your how would how did you sleep how were your cravings at night you might find that you're getting less hungry late at night because you fed more earlier so what we're going to change some things up so two days a week sorry two days a week you're going to do refeed days now I still want you to keep those I want you to keep them healthy it's not not eat what you want that's not the idea of these but they're the idea is for you to eat more on those days is to create calorie confusion for your human for the body it doesn't have to be back to back if people that the weekend that's fine if that's just the easiest for you to do but it could be a Wednesday Saturday it could be a Monday Monday Thursday it whatever works best for you but two days can be back to back and you're going to eat at least three meals on those two days or two very larger meals but I recommend three meals I recommend spreading that a little bit and I you can intermittent fast still but you don't have to necessarily go long you might if you get hungry at 8 a.m eat at 8 like let's not make it so rigid okay yeah and give yourself the ability to do a refeed this is something that I see chronic is a problem for people is that they're competitively trying not to eat and that's not like ancestrally think about it this way we would have went days without food right we would have found little bits of food time to time but then we would have feasted also so we're trying to recreate that just a little bit within the the normal world that we live in and so we got to find some of that in there and some of those factors in there so so that's one of the one of the things I would like for you to do let's up Liam and I think that's going to help then what I would do is after about two weeks I want you to really look at how is your performance and test your mile walk again okay and see if that's gotten better that mile walk time if you see that improve that tells you your body is an enhancing performance and that tells you that your body is going to be way better at fat metabolism okay it's going to be easier to go for another challenge and then I would say in maybe two to three weeks we go and do maybe a few cycles of low carb at least five days in a row if not maybe go 14 days in a row if you're willing to commit to that and try a little bit more aggressive low carb for just to kind of accelerate the fat burning effect okay cool yeah I'm all in man awesome I'm going to give you one more a couple more little tips um if you want them yeah cool so this is a couple other tips I want you to do on your long walk days when you wake up in the morning you pretty refreshed are you pretty ready to go or you kind of like I need my coffee to get going uh usually it takes me a while to get going but you know I like to get outside right away get some fresh air if I told you to go for a walk without coffee would that be not no bueno that'd be no good no I can do it I can do it so I want you to try something on your days that you're not doing your intervals your sprint intervals I want you to go and just have your water and walk without the coffee okay okay have your coffee when you get back on your days that you do maybe on the long day if you go for the four hours you know maybe you can do that um you can play around with it but on your day that you're going to go for your sprint intervals I want you to have your ketones first and save your coffee for after all right we're just gonna flop some things around so we're not taking anything out we're just changing the order a little bit um so we'll use the ketones for performance and then I want you to be more fasted on your morning walks on the days you're just going for the long walks okay and then we'll start fueling your body after that you got it okay so then hit me back I'd like to see an update you know within two weeks an update just kind of give me fill in fill me in um we'll come back and we'll tell everybody uh you know how things are going and then we can talk about maybe doing a little low carb challenge um for for you because sometimes we need to go a little bit a little bit more aggressive towards to get the metabolic health dialed in so that you can be metabolically flexible what it means to be metabolically flexible means that you can take some days off and you don't just pack on the weight right and your body you can go back and forth a little bit more efficiently um right now your body is prone to storing body fat and we need to make that turn completely and we just don't know where that's gonna come from so but I think changing your exercises changing refeeding a couple times um and focus on performance is gonna get you there fast and you're gonna feel better your energy level should go up probably by 20 or 30 percent yes all right any questions for me um as far as like the eating stuff is it kind of stick to what I was kind of eating already yeah I don't I don't want to change a lot at the moment I really just want you to you know try not to eat too late at night you know try to stop before eight o'clock um that does make a difference um you make 8 p.m kind of that late night done um prioritized protein which is what you're doing um I wouldn't change a ton at the moment just add the refeed days and the refeed days I want you to prioritize protein on those refeed days so I wouldn't I wouldn't change a lot I don't think it's as much about the food as is just some of the other factors um if it's about the food then we're gonna have to go more to the the keto or the low carb living where it's a little bit more like clean or strict um let's not jump to that conclusion because you're elevating your keto levels you're eating your eating while you're moving while you're like you're doing all the other these other things maybe we don't need to go so far that way in a couple weeks we should kind of know and then we can test it from there at least now you get an awareness you're like okay listen my body did really well by not going so extreme to the low carb side of it and I still'm getting where I want to go or you're like listen I'm doing all these things and I'm not getting there the next thing I have to do is go to the low carb side of it so then we know when you can make a decision otherwise you're just going back and forth and then people never truly know right cool yeah awesome um you sit all day long do you go out in the middle of the day at all do you go outside in the middle of the day at all here and there but okay added bonus you live in Florida added bonus the most important time to go outside is between 10 and 2 p.m 10 a.m. or 2 p.m so if you can take your lunch and go outside and eat it outside I'm okay with you taking your socks off putting your feet in the grass all that will just make things better they only it'll only help you it will not hurt you at all okay 20 minutes of good sunlight in the middle of the day is huge very important I will do that okay and your darker skin you have darker eyes that's even gonna be more important for you than for the fair skin individuals awesome Dustin thank you you're welcome you're welcome oh we got this question so is fasting okay I don't get hungry until about 3 p.m and then I feel so hungry by that time I drink tea things at the end of the day um yeah so it's really important when you're fasting um there's a level that the competitive fasting thing is what I'm talking about is like like people are setting benchmarks and goals um and I've done that too I mean I've done long fast before but it's really important you feed the warrior and the more stress you're under the more you physically are active the more you still have to feed your body and that's why I like to focus on performance I would never take an athlete and not feed them right I'm going to feed them perfectly so they can perform the best but think about it we want to perform the best weekend too so it just made me different so I think fasting regularly is important right so you might do a long fast you might do some short passes you might do some intermittent fasting but I think it's the cycle of all of it that really is where you people find the sweet spot it's going to look differently if you find that you're not eating and then you get super hungry and you're binge eating basically that's a tipping point um you're you're either not listening to your body so you need to you need to start preparing for that so I would tell you two two hours before um you got hungry start eating um meaning feel your body with something high quality food so you don't just go binge because if you don't have your ketones available what happens you grab whatever crap you can't because your body just it's like your body's going into survival mode and if all it has to do is go hunt in the pantry it's gonna go hunt the pantry if that so you don't want to push it to that far at the same time you want to understand the psychological side of it some people are fasting and they're hungry for the wrong reasons it's not because of their hungries because of their mood and it's because of it's because of their habits and these are all things that we have to take into consideration but we start looking at the basic biochemistry and basic survival mechanisms of the human body um which is the people that like you're got now right you're at a different phase than you were when we started so that's things that we have to keep in mind that we we don't want to try to beat survival because you'll lose all this if you're trying to beat survival that's why we that's why I encourage Feed the Warrior Dr. Jacob Wilson we talk extensively about this I'm a big fan of cycling calories not carbohydrates I don't think people need to really cycle much carbohydrates either you eat them or you don't but you do need to cycle calories where you don't want to necessarily be for most people they don't want to be on the same thing every single day their whole life right they typically that they they set themselves up to fail especially if they're on a health transformation so um for people that like to meal prep that is a great idea um that's not my style though so all right Alex man I appreciate it any other questions for me no I'm set right now you gave me a gave me a boat load man I appreciate it hey any time and stay in that dude's group we throw challenges out there all the time and just go for them you know I don't always hit all the challenges and stuff um but just go for them because it it's we know that you're creating a new life right you are creating a new future for yourself and we know that your future will not be the one you're existing in today when you're when you're healthy when you get to the ideal health that you want to be in and your body you want to be in for your kids and your family and your activity levels you're going to be in a whole different place that means your whole day will look different you know um right now I'm working with like I don't know five or six 50 year old women 50 year old plus women that are doing crossfit and high high intensity training these women never touched a weight in their life but they grew into that because they've great got momentum to get stronger now they're experimenting with other things that are enhancing their life we didn't start them there but their life got different so just be okay with designing a new life for yourself you know be okay to say okay what is gonna like and I'm you're probably not built to run five miles or a marathon so maybe don't think that way think about what you naturally like to do you know you might enjoy doing strong stronger competitions like where you about strength of your body because you're a stronger guy you're not a person that wants to run miles you want to run 20 feet so be okay with thinking your brains more that way because you're built more that way okay awesome yeah all right y'all hope this was helpful um thanks for letting me do this uh I truly appreciate it because it just hopefully helps other people live better and feel better because we all go through different things and we just need to hear from different voices so Alex I appreciate you so much thank you Justin all right can I take a picture send it to Christy perfect thank you cheers y'all