 In this episode of MimePump, we wanted to talk all about nutrition in regards to fat loss, muscle building, nutrition for performance, and athletes, and so we brought on our good friend Jason Phillips. He's actually one of our favorite people to talk about when it comes to nutrition and macros. He's the founder of the Nutritional Coaching Institute. This dude really knows his stuff. His certification course is one of the best for online fitness coaches that we've found ever. And this guy communicates it very, very well. He knows because of his experience working with lots of people now when he was younger. He himself suffered from body image issues like anorexia recovered, and then really that drove him to really learn how to apply nutrition the right way. And he personally has worked with big time athletes, UFC fighters, WWE wrestlers, fitness celebrities, and a lot of everyday people. And of course I told you he is the founder of NCI. They are what we consider to be one of the premier online nutrition court coaching courses that you can find anywhere. Now, in this episode we talked about a few different things. We talked about refeeding, what that means, yo-yo dieting, fat hyperplasia. This is when you actually add fat cells. We talked about the value and the bad side of cheat meals. We talked about training fighters, fat versus carbs. Two main ways people like to diet, either lowering fat or lowering carbs. We talked about the pluses and minuses there. Talk about protein. When is it appropriate to lower protein? Is high protein always a good thing? Ideal carb sources, we talked about that. We mentioned even ideal protein sources. So we think you're going to love this episode. Now I also want to let you know that March 21 of this year, Mind Pump Headquarters will be hosting a level one nutrition coaching specialist certification from NCI. So it's going to be here in our headquarters. And you're going to love this. So before we started the episode, we were talking to Jason, and we convinced him to give us a phenomenal discounted hookup for Mind Pump listeners only. And we went back and forth and I think we might have pushed him a little bit, but we got what we wanted. So check this out. If you go to ncimindpump.com, you're going to get a full 70% off. All of the certifications, some massive, massive discount. Again, if you're a fitness trainer, a coach, especially if you work with people online, we find this certification to be one of the most valuable ones you can get for nutrition. Now before the episode starts, I also want to let you know that MAPS HIT is 50% off. Now HIT stands for High Intensity Interval Training. That's H-I-I-T. Now this style of training has had a lot of press in the last 10 years because studies show HIT style training to burn more body fat in shorter periods of time. So they'll have studies that will compare like a 20 minute HIT session to a 60 minute traditional workout session. And the HIT workout will burn as much or more body fat. So it's pretty crazy, got popular really, really fast. Now unfortunately when things get popular in the fitness space, you start to get a lot of bad information as well. So there's a lot of HIT workouts out there that are terrible. Terribly written, programmed, high risks of injury. The workouts aren't programmed with trying to preserve muscle as one of the number one goals. So we set out to create a HIT program that was done the right way. We wrote MAPS HIT. It's a phenomenal workout. It utilizes the concept of high intensity level training, but it's done the right way. We've included three levels in this program. So you can be a beginner, intermediate, or advanced. Of course, every exercise is shown on video. We tell you how to do it the right way. We write everything out in a blueprint for you. So you get everything that you need to follow the most effective HIT style workout you'll find anywhere for maximum fat loss in the shortest period of time. That program's 50% off. Here's how you get the discount. Go to mapshit.com. That's M-A-P-S-H-I-I-T.com. And use the code HIT50. That's H-I-I-T-5-0. No space for the discount. What do you want to get into today? What do you want to talk about? Well, I was thinking we cover that topic up there. How to lose fat and build muscle. I think most of the questions we get surrounding nutrition are around those two things right there. And maybe we can kind of break down how somebody can figure this out for themselves. Everything from macros, calories, and... Programming. Programming. Low carb versus low fat. What are the differences between the two? That kind of stuff. Would you say this is one of the number one things you get at Asteroid? I definitely think so. I mean, I think it's... Fat losses, I think it's a multi-billion dollar industry for a reason, right? I mean, when you look at the stats, I actually had them on a webinar I did recently. It was like a $6 billion... There's like 6 billion overweight people in the world. And then there's several million that are classified as obese. I mean, when we look at stats in the country, it's fucking... In the US, I think we've already hit a majority overweight and 40% obese. So you're looking at almost half of the whole country is considered obese. Yeah, I share that graph that by 2030, they predict that if we stay on the same trend, that over 50% will be considered obese. Yeah. Now, first thing I'd like to maybe tackle with this, Jason, is the whole changing, losing fat and building muscle at the same time. This is like the super goal, like the ultimate goal, right? How possible is this? What does this look like? What is a diet that does this look like? How many people do you know that have done this? I know we're going to get flamed, right? And there's going to be all the marketers in the world that are going to come to me and they're going to be like, Jason's wrong, but if you can show me peer reviewed studies that I'm wrong, I'll gladly admit that I am. But just simple science. To lose weight or to lose body fat, you need to be in a calorie deficit. To gain lean tissue, you need to be in a calorie surplus. Physiology hasn't changed. The only exception that I really ever see to the rule is a really low training age. And I'll even tack on to that like a completely like off the wall training stimulus, like a low training age in a new stimulus. So like somebody that is an experienced body voter or they've done like hypertrophy style or global gym style training for quite some time, right? And all of a sudden they go to CrossFit. Like the volume completely changes, like the metabolic stimulus changes. They've actually seen some recomp there. Well, they're getting the same benefits that we talk about a lot on the show. And the debate or the argument that I'd have with you is that where I think you're alluding to right now is kind of that beginner lucky results that everybody kind of gets. The new begins. Exactly, the new begins. You could be, if you come in, you've never really weight trained before in your life and you come in the gym and your goal too is fat loss. So let's say your main goal, I want to lose 30 pounds of fat, you know, method of doing so. You've listened to Mind Pump. You know that building muscle or lifting weights is the most ideal way. So you start lifting weights. What happens a lot of times, even in a caloric deficit, is because this person's never touched any weights. They also build a little bit of muscle along the way. I think you have to have a really, really loud muscle building signal and a very, very responsive adaptation process at the same time. And so that usually happens with beginners, with a lot of novelty, right? You know, you can do new stimulus and or hormonal stimulus like anabolic steroids. Otherwise it's really hard because building muscle is hard to begin with. Try building muscle while eating low enough calories to also lose body fat. It's just, it seems to be kind of competing. So I don't want to use the word like optimized, but like what you just described, I also think comes back to, I would say like for a client having them at like a homeostatic balance or having them at homeostasis, right? And I think that when we look at this, when we look at fat loss, when we look at muscle building in general, so many people are already doing it from a compromise state, right? Like think of all the different things they've tried and all the potential metabolic adaptations from the things that they've tried. So they've tried keto. They've tried carnivore. They've tried fasting. And they've gone like extreme calorie deficit, extreme calorie deficit, extreme calorie deficit. And now, you know, even if they got on like an appropriate macro plan, they're so metabolically adapted, like they're not going to adapt the same way as somebody who has tried nothing, who has no hormonal issues, has no internal physiological issues, right? They're working closer from homeostatic balance and therefore the results are going to happen faster. But you know, to your point, Salek, I used to get so hated on in the CrossFit world in the beginning before I got loved by the CrossFit world, right? But I was one of the ones that came in in the beginning and I said, fuck Paleo. And I was like, this is ridiculous that you guys think Paleo is actually going to work long-term in this extreme setting. Or it's ideal, right? Yeah. And it's just because it works. Just because it works for some people doesn't necessarily mean this. Well, but it didn't work. And that's the, like, so what Sal's saying is 100% true. Like, people were seeing results despite what they were doing, not because of what they were doing. And so, like you said, when you go in the CrossFit gym, and the first time I went to a CrossFit gym, I had never barbell snatched. I had never clean and jerked, right? I had never front squatted. Like I didn't even have the fucking mobility to get in the front rack. And so, surely, you know, two and a half, three months in, I can front squat 400 pounds because I could back squat 500 at that time, right? So, like, ratio-wise it worked out. I could all of a sudden power clean, aka reverse curl, you know, 255. I could somehow heave 150 pounds over my head and try to, you know, overhead squat it. And those weren't because of anything I was doing, nutrition-wise or recovery-wise or performance-wise. That's just exposure to the movements. So, when I used to give seminars, I would say, you could achieve the same results in your first eight to nine months of CrossFit on paleo, on fasting, on keto, on high carb, on low carb. But I would also go so far as to say you could achieve the same results on 500 calories or 5,000 calories. And I always reference that as a neurological adaptation phase. You're just creating neurological adaptations. You're learning the movements, right? It's all brain. It's all connection in your brain. But at some point, you have to begin physically adapting. And when you start physically adapting, you require fuel and recovery. Like, you have to have the proper fuel substrates for the stimulus that you're providing to your body. Well, when you're trying to add tissue, that requires a certain amount of energy. Now, I'll argue that neurological adaptations also require energy, but not nearly. Exactly. To the same extent. I don't think you could go in with zero calories, but I think that your average on, I mean, we live in an obese world, but your average detrained person, I really like, I see people that don't eat until dinner and they're like, I'm fucking PRing everything. And they would be like, it's gotta be paleo. Well, no, actually you started eating whole foods. Like you have less inflammation and you have exposure to new movements. Yeah, you just started working out. Exactly. Yeah. So, okay, so let's say someone says, I want to build muscle and burn body fat. And you're saying, look, under most circumstances in most situations, probably not going to happen. It's not going to happen at the same time. What should they focus on first? If I want to lose fat and build muscle, which one should I aim for first? So, I'm a big believer in, like your body's most efficient in like the 8% to 12% body fat range, right? So, if you're coming to me and you're shredded and you're 6%, right? Hey, I hope you don't want to lose fat, but listen, like anyone that heard our first podcast, I started as an anorexic, so I get it. But like your average person that's coming to you, if they're in that like 8% to 12% and they're actually like tracking macros, I'd say, hey, like assuming you don't want to look a certain way on a beach or you don't have any physical things coming up, cool, like we could jump into that. Most people are going to be outside of that scope. They're going to be in the 13, 14, 15, probably 20% and higher. I'm going to advise that you actually get healthy and get your body fat under control and carrying around excess body fat. There's a host of health issues coming with that. I mean, increased inflammation, then we start looking at the quality of your sleep, then we look at gut health, and then we just start going down the rabbit hole of all the things that that's causing in the body. So now I know what that looks like for me. I'm curious to what, how you do it. So I'll share how I would do that, because I agree it's like the first week I'm having them track all their foods and I can see what it looks like. And so, and I actually don't reduce calories right there. I think a lot of people think you're... You have to be careful and not to, in fact. Especially when you start getting ready to shitty food, that's super calorie dense. Like now I want to make sure I replace it with a food that is also nutritious, but then I know that that's probably going to be a lot less calories too. So yeah, my goal is actually to kind of keep them the same calorically and just start to make healthier, better choices that's going to serve their body more health wise. I think we have to look at it too from a... So one of the things we were talking about off the air before we started is, I always live inside of nutritional periodization. So that's my big thing. And I think 99.9% of people that come to me want to lose fat first, but a lot of people have done such extreme things that they've almost... I don't want to say this in like the wrong way, but I want to say in a way that it comes across. They've almost lost the right to lose fat. They've become so metabolically adapted. They... Their mental issues with food, like their relationship with food, the way that they handle dieting the process in general, if I allow them to undertake those things, I'm only going to do them more harm than good. Now, Sal, to go to your point, we could look at the physique and we could say, hey, maybe it is proper for them to lose fat first and then gain muscle. But if I get to know the person and I see where this is going and I know I'm setting them up for a disaster, I can't ethically as a coach do that. I talk in the certifications, I talk that my results with a client are defined 10 years from now, not 10 weeks from now. And if I didn't give you the tools to be successful for the next decade, I failed you as a coach. And so really, like, the legacy in everything of Jason Phillips will be written 10 years from now. It won't be written in 10 weeks or 10 months, right? It's going to be written in 10 years. Did I have the impact on the industry that I want to have? And did I have the impact on the 10,000 people that I've helped? Did I really actually help them? Or did I give them a Band-Aid, like the rest of the assholes in the industry? What are some of those questions that you're going to ask from a client coming in first in terms of, like, being able to evaluate what needs to be addressed in finding that homeostasis where you can even get there? I think everybody in our space looks at nutrition and training in general purely physical. And I always say that the physical follows the physiological. So you're not going to create physical change without physiology being super dialed in. And so I love to look at things like biofeedback. We could start with just a simple list of questions. How's your sleep? How's your energy? How's your mood? How's your focus? How's your sex drive? And we could start there, right? And all of a sudden, you know, you're talking to a male. He's 27. He's got no sex drive. Like clearly that's a problem. You know, that's a sign testosterone levels are probably low. Like we can't 100% create correlation, but we can draw some clinical correlation and at least go down the rabbit hole of investigating testosterone. So if testosterone levels are sub-adequate, well, good luck losing fat and good luck gaining muscle. And you also could probably assume that he may be on the end of not getting very good quality sleep also because we know how much that affects that. Or it could just like, you know, let's be honest, as a 27-year-old male if your testosterone levels are sub-adequate, you know, are sub-optimal. Something happened, right? Either you've got a pituitary issue, either you were born like hypogonadal, or you did something to trigger like hypogonadism, right? And so now I need to do like a lifestyle investigation. Is there anorexia in your past? Is there depression in your past? Is there overtraining in your past? Is there a lack of sleep? Are you abusing your body? Are you constant on alcohol and drugs? Like what are the things that you didn't put in your intake that you actually need to tell me so that we can have a real working relationship? Like I'm not here to judge. I'm not on you. I'm not going to recommend it. I don't think it's great. But I need to know it. But I need to fucking know it. If I'm going to put together a diet and a program for you. It's like when you worked with competitors. If they were on steroids, you got to fucking know they're on steroids. Like it kind of changes how you prescribe. And how important are these conversations in training successful or working with clients successfully? Because I noticed through the people that you coach, the trainers that take your courses, they come out and they place more of an emphasis on communicating these things than other courses. How important do you think that is versus what's your goal? Let's find what your metabolic rate is. Here's your calories. Let's figure out proteins, fats, carbs. What works best for you? How important is the other stuff that you were just talking about? I would say it's probably the most important. I mean, listen, when looking at fat loss and muscle gain, the diet itself is most important. You also can't have a perfect diet and not implement it and expect results. Right? And unfortunately what I saw when I came to the space was there's a lot of people not getting results but there was a lot of really intelligent people in the world. A lot of really good they knew biology. They knew metabolism. They knew physiology. They knew strength training. Yet their clients still weren't getting results. And so what you referenced like the coaches that go through our stuff is what I call a connection-based model. And I came in and I was like, man, like it has nothing to do with the fact that your macros are wrong. Because when's the last time you actually fucking hit them? And they're like, oh, it's probably been a week or two because stress or I stress eight or I missed my macros or I got caught out. And it's like, cool. So a really good coach doesn't just prescribe macros. A really good coach has to understand these things. And it all goes back to like, okay, well, what's first? Well, are you even in the lifestyle position to start losing fat? Like, do you know what it takes to get to super low levels of body fat? I think a lot of people underestimate, you know, there's so much sexy marketing right now around and actually I saw a really good post on Instagram yesterday. I forget who it was. It was like Jeremy Mullins or something. And he talked, like he got this dude who was pretty overweight. I mean, he was at least 260, 270 and he got him shredded to the bone. And he was like, this shit's hard. Like anybody that tells you it's not is completely full of shit. And I think that a lot of people have to be ready for a journey where there is some sacrifice and there is... But to get there can take a while. I noticed that I'd say probably eight or nine out of 10 clients that I'd work with the easier strategy. And when I say easier, I mean that the strategy was most successful. The most successful strategy was rather than restricting food was actually add food. So they'd come see me and they'd say, okay, you're not eating vegetables. Let's have you start eating more vegetables. Okay, your protein intake is low. Don't change anything else about your diet but I want you to hit this protein goal. And then through that, they would naturally change the other parts of their diet as well. By proxy, what are you doing? You're increasing satiety and now of sudden they want less of the shit. So it makes sense and that all goes back to you're a good coach. We could all sit here at the same level of intelligence and we all see the industry at the same way. And we all understand how to build the right diet and the proper diet and we could all come to that same conclusion. But the reason our clients are successful isn't because we came to that conclusion. It's what you just said. It's how do you walk them there. I always say in physique transformation it's like a Mount Everest analogy. The pinnacle of Everest is macros. It has to be. Quantity matters the end anybody that says otherwise is completely full of shit. That doesn't mean that you can't. If you're trying to achieve optimal physique transformation you'd better know what your quantity of intake is. That being said when you look at Mount Everest in the real world you don't go to the pinnacle of Mount Everest and stay there. I don't really believe that every single person should be tracking macros the rest of their life or should be held to that extreme the rest of their life. What happens when you go summit Everest? You get a Sherpa. They lead you up and they also lead you down. There's checkpoints on the way up. When you get there, cool. You take your picture, you plant your flag, you do the damn thing but they're not like hey motherfucker see you later. There's a way down from this that's not going to kill you. I think so many coaches are getting people they're like well I'm going to live at the pinnacle. I'm going to just talk about the pinnacle. I'm going to be controlled and now I'm going to get sexy because the industry is changing and I'm going to talk about quality too but I'm still going to live inside this pinnacle and what most people need is they need the journey to the pinnacle they need to experience the pinnacle and then they also need to experience the journey down and there might be multiple journeys inside of this fat loss and muscle gain kind of like paradigm that we're talking about. And that's lifelong. You're talking about lifelong success within this rather than short term intense I think there's an application to short term too. I think that if you know we could use physique competition but we could use any kind of fat loss. I think that I'm a big believer every dose of stress requires a dose of recovery and if you're putting somebody in a prolonged calorie deficit 10, 12, 18 weeks that's a large dose of stress. There has to be a large dose of recovery that comes on the back end of that and so you know I talk about a periodized model that large dose of stress that we're going to see in the post season or active pursuit of goals. You have to bring yourself back to a homeostatic balance. If we did blood work after an 18 week diet we're going to see suboptimal thyroid function. It might be subclinical, it might not be clinically deficient but we are absolutely going to see a change. We're going to see changes in the HPA axis. So in that post season phase we need to bring people back to a homeostatic balance. Now what are your next set of goals? We can have an off season, we can talk about whatever and then whatever that next pursuit is we can jump into that active pursuit of goals. Now what does that look like? You did 10 weeks of being in a calorie deficit you want to come out of it, you just come out of it? I think that there's two really big schools of thought right now and they're clashing hard and I'm not taking sides man because I go back to the individual there's the reverse diets of the world and it's pretty standard protocol come out of your diet add 20-ish percent calories and then add small increments and then there's the recovery diet crowd where it's like fuck that that's too slow you're spending way too much time suboptimal hormone, suboptimal thyroid you need to add a significant amount of calories you need to get over the mental shit of looking in the mirror and you just need to accept the fact that you're going to add some body fat pretty quickly and get it back up now there's some people that are well equipped with that and from physiology I can understand sure I can make the case for both people I think it would depend on the person it has to depend on the individual that's why I said I'm not going to take sides the wrong person on either side like for example the slow backing out the wrong person for that would be the person that's obsessed with their body they're so obsessed with looking a certain way and they're afraid that could be a problem in the reverse diet I would argue that I chose one way out of bodybuilding I would not guide another client the same way I did that's because I had the discipline because I surged right back so I gave myself a good solid week of very high calorie post being deprived for so long because I knew I needed it but I also had the mental awareness and discipline to know what the fuck I was doing and then go switch back down to a more my calorie maintenance currently was the wrong person to go into the other option which is the strong recovery would be the person that has a tendency to binge that has a tendency to just go off the rails where it's on or off type of deal now there are studies that show that really really high amounts of calories post being in a calorie deficit improves or increases your body's ability to store body fat if your body is trying to capture or improve its ability to capture you know it's funny in bodybuilding for something that's happened for as long as I can remember bodybuilders that would diet and bulk, diet and bulk, diet and bulk they started to come into shows softer and softer it was harder and harder to get lean and it may be because they were adding fat cells that's what I was going to say it becomes hyperplasia you're no longer just getting bigger fat cells you're getting more fat cells because of this yo-yo I remember do you guys remember Scott Abel so Scott Abel like one of the he used to say you can starve yourself the worst things you can do but the single worst thing you can do is yo-yo diet he's like that will lead to more long term disaster and when he said it I didn't understand context like I mean I was young in the game but I always thought he was pretty ahead of the bodybuilding world with his knowledge and so I studied a lot of his stuff and as I've really understood more and like exactly like you were talking about adding more fat cells I always go back to that statement from him and really if you want to mimic evolution I'm sure humans went through periods of famine but it wasn't famine that was 12 weeks and then feast that was 12 weeks well it wasn't famine and then feast for like extreme and then sustain it was probably like one day we got to hunt let's eat all this food so they overfed for a day or two and they were right back down which by the way when we look at physiology it's actually a good thing when we start looking at refeeds or periodic overfeeding or periodic diet breaks we live in a world where it's very easy to go find that feast and this is the reason why for most clients I never recommended that come out of a calorie deficit all at once it was mainly because of the psychological piece because you're already in a deficit you start to come out soon as you start eating extra calories your appetite it's ramped the hell up you already feel like you've been restricting yourself so psychologically speaking you feel like the chains are off of you and then you just go overboard and then it's this heavy boulder going down a hill it's very very now where do you stand Jason on cheat meals like define a cheat meal right because I have a polyamorous diet there is no cheating define it I think that the industry connotation of a cheat meal is like hey on Sunday night you're gonna go just completely gorge yourself and eat whatever you want and I just think that's irresponsible to ever tell a client like hey there's no limitations and you can do whatever you want and I think that if you're setting someone else if you're setting someone up for that like you're irresponsible with the rest of your approach honestly the emphasis on the cheat meal is indifferent it's what you're doing the other six and a half days that completely needs to be changed I'll reference Scott again right he had a diet called the cycle diet and it was basically starve your ass off for six days and literally eat whatever you want for a day like and he would he had like a forum and I was like active on it and he would like have like crazy people gaining like 18 pounds in a day and so I did the diet so you know what it takes to get to like shredded glute status I walked around with shredded glutes like day to day like I was fucking peeled just scratching chairs with your shredded glutes but I mean I had no sex drive and it was like the emotional part was what fucked me up I didn't care about training anymore I really had no interest in life all I thought about was like man what am I going to eat on set man it's a psychological piece because when you have an all out day and you ever observe of course you have you've trained you've worked with tons of clients when you observe somebody who's going through that period of like like oh it's an all out day I can eat whatever I want the binge mentality is not about the food actually the behavior of what that promotes you're not even enjoying the food that's where I'm getting now it hasn't even gotten your mouth yet and that's where I was trying to get like when you say like define a cheat meal like do I think that the act of allowing somebody to eat without any sort of mindfulness or restriction is a bad thing inherently I don't like honestly I don't think it's the end of the world but I think if somebody's really desiring that you need to take a step back and look at like what is the overall protocol that you're giving them that's are you asking me in a competition prep setting or are you asking me in like real life setting because if it's a comp prep setting listen you're the one that decided to get on a stage in very little clothing and you need to look a certain way and by the way you're telling the world that I'm the one doing your diet so sorry you're going to be a little bit restricted but if you're just here and you're saying I want to lose some weight and this is a lifelong thing and we're genuinely trying to create transformation and again I'll reference the ten years versus ten weeks like if I'm setting you up to where you feel like you need that I'm fucking up not you well the name itself cheat day implies you're doing something wrong yeah exactly like it but like to your point do I think that having a surplus day of calories no it's actually a great and smart thing to do yeah and I do that with any clients that I have in a caloric deficit especially when I'm running them on a caloric deficit for weeks at a time I will insert a high calorie day I'll say hey Friday you know because we've been running now for four days in a row of you know 1700 calories I want you to have between 22 and 2500 calories so and I'll give that as a as a goal you know I think I'm and I'm super neurotic like when I work with clients and I only work with a handful of clients anymore I'll literally when they're six to eight weeks out from whatever their peak is like if it's a physique show like dude I'm looking at pictures and weight every day and I'm calling these audibles like what you're just describing like I'm looking and I'm like alright you're a little flat we can push a little harder and like so I'm working with a WWE guy right now and for the first time I can't say who because what I'm going to tell you but like for the first time it looks like he's going to make the main card on WrestleMania which is a huge accomplishment for him right cool I was just going to say grave digger but that's the Undertaker I did work with his wife this year oh no way really I love that guy so it looks like he's actually Bailey from WWE lives up here and we were going to connect later today I just started working with her but yeah like I mean but like with him same deal like as it gets closer we're looking every day and I'm calling that audible right but I mean that's such a it's such a neurosis and and so then we got to take a step back and it's like alright what is the personality of this individual that's taking on this endeavor well here along those lines I think this is a good question to ask and we all we know that one thing that all diets that cause you to lose weight having common is that they're all lower calories than you're burning that's what they all have to be now there's always been this debate it's been around for a long time what's better for fat loss low carb or low fat now both same calories not stuff ultimately up to the individual my question is this how do you determine or how do you help the client determine if they're doing if they're going to do better with a lower calorie low fat diet versus a low low carb low calorie diet so there's a lot to be considered here and I think this is where in my opinion the industry is still fucking up but from a science perspective right peer reviewed research it says assuming calories are controlled for properly and assuming proteins controlled for properly the ratio of carbs of fat is indifferent when it comes to fat doesn't matter like that's what science tells on a physiological level doesn't matter correct now that's assuming and I have to look at like what the control variables were and assume like there's no nutrition there's no histories like I don't know what the training stressor or life stressor was but that to me is what's overlooked is like we're looking so myopically at the diet that we're now taking out all the other things that go into building a diet what is life stress like what is previous dietary attempts and stressors look like what is your training stimulus you know we could look at just a an everyday person and draw two extreme examples we could have a stay at home house mom very low stress right she doesn't even have kids stay at home wife and she's like I just get to chill I get to go run up my my husband's credit card and life is fucking gold right zero stress she would be just fine on a low carb diet right there's no need for that carbohydrate there's no extreme sympathetic response she's probably not doing super intense weight training and even if she is that dose of intensity that sympathetic response that you're gonna get it's really not that it's like negligible in the grand scheme of things now we look at that completely different we say okay that same person is a fortune 500 CEO and they go to work every day and they're in the fucking fire from six in the morning until 11 p.m. and they're putting out fires and they're responsible for all sorts of money and there's they're basically living in their sympathetic nervous system all day well I would argue they should be a slightly higher carbohydrate diet right because what's gonna happen like we know and this goes back to when I'm gonna say the words carb back loading but like when that whole thing was completely bastardized right and the whole premise of it was well you wake up with elevated cortisol and elevated growth hormone and so if you don't eat carbohydrates and you don't create an insulin spike you're gonna keep carbohydrates you're gonna keep that cortisol high right cortisol is a catabolic hormone it's non-selective so it will break down some fat tissue in conjunction with muscle tissue well so if you eat your protein it'll offset that muscle breakdown and now I've said you've got this environment for fat loss like that was the premise of it but if we look at that and we apply it to this like super high like sympathetic nervous system state and cortisol is already through the roof and now you're not have any carbs to create that insulin spike to potentially shut off that cortisol in the morning then you walk in an environment cortisol continues to shoot up all day then you go in a training environment you train with an extreme amount of stress right and you go like balls to the wall you fucking do crossfit or some stupid shit right all of a sudden now you're creating an environment where if you don't have carbohydrates you are asking even in an adequate caloric state to start messing with the HPA axis because you don't have because carbohydrates will raise insulin a little bit and that insulin is inversely related or with cortisol right so insulin goes up cortisol goes down yes so if you're a high so what you're saying is you have clients that want to burn body fat the high stress ones typically do better with more carbs the low stress ones typically do better with low carb I also think there's value too to assessing stool, hair hormones and then knowing what foods correlate with that the most right what does that come back to though exactly that's what I'm saying so stress and or knowing that okay I know that this person based off of these things that I'm getting from feedback from them may be deficient and I know that this is a fat I need to get more fat in their diet but that person I would definitely not recommend a lower fat higher carbohydrate diet because of those reasons so I think that gets brought into account also right and sometimes too you know I've noticed this and I've noticed this with clients I've also noticed this with myself when I am stressed I do tend to crave more carbohydrates sure now the problem is when I eat them I tend to want more of them and so then there's that factor too what are your trigger foods and the low carb works better for you because carbohydrates make you want to eat I mean maybe it's not maybe it's not low carb maybe now you're messing with carb timing so now maybe we're optimizing carb intake so if you're 200 grams you might have to have 50 grams pre-workout, 50 intro, 50 post and then 50 before bed so you don't have the option you're not going to get up in the middle of the night and if you do that's a whole other set of problems that you have to address so I do think there's ways to circumvent that but when I start looking at the physiological adaptations because again I believe the physical follows the physiological and so if I'm setting you up to physiologically fail then physically we're not going to be able to create what you want and we can use an extreme example too like a UFC fighter I worked with I had three knockouts last year which was awesome three people that I work with and ultimately when they're in their hydration it's going to matter most like the ability to rehydrate the ability to make weight on the scale is that whole industry is fucking it up it's absurd the shit that would come my way isn't a real game trying to be able to maintain whatever weight that they're at going into the weight or so I worked with Luke Sanders when he knocked out Hennan Burrow last year and that was a big deal because he had just come off a cut those are our third camp together and right before that he had worked with wrestling athletes who is the ones that Yoana hates because that's when she got knocked out by Rose and I remember actually Andy Galpin was texting me as Luke was going through because I've been friends with him for a long time he's like your boy's getting fucked over he's hurting and then the next night he fought whatever they do in terms of rehydration it was terrible because he got clipped with a looping punch that probably wouldn't have knocked any of us out and it fucking sent him down to the ref called the fight and it was a shitty loss for him he shouldn't have lost that guy I'm sure that guy's probably lost his contract by now Luke's way better than that so we did it and so this last one it was great right you met Josh Cuthbert Josh did the strength and conditioning for him I did the weight and then Neuroforce 1 and Scott Stale did some of his conditioning and it was beautiful but Neuroforce came to me like three weeks out and they're like hey don't you think his weight's a little high and I'm like no he's training at the same weight he's going to be in the cage and like if he likes to fight at 54 he has to weigh in at 35 and so I keep him as close to like 52 to 54 as I can and then the last three weeks I'll start bringing him down but this was the first time I was able to go to his strength coaches and his conditioning people and say hey listen I'm going to bring his carbohydrates down for two to three days I need you to back the fuck off the training intensity because if they're ready to put their foot on the gas and I'm ready to pull my foot off in terms of fuel that's a bad combination it's a recipe for disaster but these fighters they don't know any better they're trained to fucking run through a brick wall so all of a sudden their strength coach is like more more like getting the sweatsuit like run run and it's like no like go fucking sleep now they took the rehydrating with the IVs they took that out, thank god so yeah I mean it's made weight cutting a little safer you still nature the industry man like somebody gets knocked out of a fight like two weeks out and they're like they call someone they're like hey can you make weight well yeah you can make weight like you can suffer it people saw some of the shit that happens they'd be blown away I've seen guys lose 20 pounds I've seen people lose 20 pounds in one day one day? no way you could probably do it it would kill you but you could lose 20 pounds yeah you could do it easy you're not drinking I mean you're talking to somebody who's manipulated weight like crazy and know that I could gain 20 in a day but the problem with it is like a lot of these idiot people that come into the space that think oh weight cutting is super simple they look at like water myopathy like water in water out not what I'm doing long-term for this person yeah but there's four ways to manipulate water in the body too like you don't have to just go start sweating there's four different like I mean there's four pathways I use total intake I use carbohydrate I use total water intake I use electrolytes and then I use sweat and if you do it right like this last camp dude we cut in 90 minutes we cut 7 pounds the night before the fight in 90 minutes wow that's great I mean the fucking week you figure for every carbohydrate for every 3 grams of carbs your body holds on to 3 ounces of water every gram of carbs is 2.7 water so if you've actually done a really good job of keeping his water up high and his carbohydrate intake real good I used to be able to move my weight like that because I would keep it really good and healthy all the way so then when I wanted to throttle down that last week I could make just a few adjustments and make moves like that for sure we're starting 10 days out right like we're water loading we're shutting off aldosterone we're shutting off ADH right then we're moving carbs like we pull the carbs out because when aldosterone ADH are shut off you're not reabsorbing water so now you then you pull the carbs out right you pull the carbs out there's no water reabsorption so when the carbs are out any water they were holding moves with it that's the initial drop right then you still got the super high water now we remove the electrolytes right so any sodium that was holding the water now more waters out then like last like the day before we bring the water out like aldosterone ADH are still out so you're not reabsorbing but nothing's coming in so now you're dropping more water and then finally because you're fucking hydrated right like your body you know you're you still had water coming in so you still have water to sweat out you'll crack instantly in the sauna so if you ever watch those guys like they're they're rubbing sweet sweat everywhere they can't they can't crack and it's because they cut their fucking water 40 48 to 72 hours out it's like you ain't got no fucking water in you to move like like you've sent signals to your body not to sweat for natural survival you know how dangerous that is to you go into a sauna and not sweat I don't care how much abalone you got the shit ain't coming out now what does that stuff do by the way what is that man I wish I knew the I wish I knew the mecca it can't be good I know that like you rub it on and especially when you're you're sitting a conflicting signal internally to your body saying don't fucking sweat exactly you're trying to rub the shit well I mean ask the bikini girls they fucking rub it on their abs like every day and then they put the little waist trainer on and they're like look how much water it came off and it's like is my pump not helping are we not we haven't made it getting better at all they're not listening they're there they obviously think you guys are bullshit now the one macro nutrient that seems to be consistent regardless of fat loss or muscle gain is protein studies show high protein levels for fat loss diets it's better for satiety so you're full it's it preserves more muscle it seems to reduce the metabolic adaptation that happens when you reduce calories when you're bulking high protein builds more muscle are there ever cases where that's not good is there ever situations where you're working with clients and like look I know typically we want high protein but for you I think we should probably cut it down I think I think that you always have a goal of where you want protein and then you got to look at how life gets in the way or you got to look at where they're coming from like I'm not going to take someone that comes to me and you'd be shocked well maybe you wouldn't be but like some of the intakes I get it's 30 grams of protein people are like they 30 grams that's actually way more we still have this debate on mind pump a lot because we talked about the bodybuilding space which I think is way different mentality than the average consumer and I most my female clients were grossly under eating protein this reminds me too of a another point that we were talking about being able to burn fat and build muscle and how rare it is this is another case where sometimes you see this if somebody was grossly under eating protein for a long period of time and just simply by bumping their protein intake and the fact that you're adding weights in their routine you see this kind of bump of muscle and I mean you know then we could go down that rabbit hole deeper and obviously we're living in the game changers time right now where you know veganism and vegetarianism is being really promoted right so a lot of people are really if they're following that and unfortunately I have seen a lot of people in the space jump on that bandwagon and I don't I think it might have been you guys like they're the one benefit that was like at least people are eating plants again I think Sal you said there was a there's a benefit right I mean at the end of the day like we can say here and we can all get on our high horse and be like we know veganism is not the way but like at the end of the day there's there's more emphasis on people eating quality foods I don't think it's that bad right but like we look at these people and it's like if I could get you to consume 15 to 20 grams of essential Aminos and maybe like 5 to 10 grams of branch chains with that diet I bet you'd start to see even a small calorie that's it I think you'd start to see some that is the one population that benefits from branching amino acids and essential amino acid exactly people who are in the low protein exactly diet community so if you're a vegan vegetarian if your protein intake is not you know maybe you know half a gram per pound of body weight at least that's when you see the benefit in fact the only time that I really prescribe it and studies actually show it studies show you give BCAA's to somebody as low protein intake and they get great results you give it to a guy with high protein intake it doesn't it doesn't do shit does nothing at all yeah and I mean anytime I've ever prescribed it before it's been more on like the performance continuum because there were some studies that came out with like with leucine that showed like a reduction in rate of perceived exertion and an increase in time to exhaustion and had nothing to do with muscle right like it was never about lean tissue acquisition it was just like hey there may be a small performance benefit so like that's like when I used to dose leucine like via just BCAA is like I never have people do leucine alone but you know what your question was like on on the protein intake yeah like is it ever do you ever have people taking less I don't intentionally yeah I mean if your guts fucked up yeah we're gonna have to back off also I mean if I've got somebody that's and this is a rare population but really purse like pursuing a lot of muscle gain and they're like you know in an extended off season and they've just got a super fast metabolism I mean I just I can't give a 200 pounder 600 700 grams of protein now ironically like I just like I literally just landed before this podcast and on the way over here I was listening to Ben Pax podcast with Milos and they were talking about Milos his training journals and Milos was talking about how he never like he's got it documented in journals never one day in his competitive career did he consume less than 450 grams of protein and and he was sitting down with Nasser and the late Nasser yeah the late Nasser right and Nasser was like yeah right you're crazy but he's like if you're doing 450 I better do 550 and actually like he thought Milos was bullshitting him so Nasser only ended up eating like 250 grams for like a while and he's like all Milos telling me all the wrong stuff to screw me over but yeah I mean I've you know high protein got vilified for a little while and I it's just the nature of our industry so I think it's going to be really difficult you know right now I think you're finally starting to see keto fade a little bit like it's finally moving through there's an understanding around it so you know what are we in 2020 in 2030 it's going to get hot again right it'll go away high carbohydrate diets will get popular everyone's like I can eat my fucking carbs again we also have to look at context because a high protein diet in the context of a lot of inflammation and high calorie high protein could be a cancer driver it could contribute to other health problems but so could carbohydrates in the same context or excess fats in the same context so sometimes I look at studies and I read them and it's like people with high you know fat intake have this this and that but then you notice that oh they're all high calorie consumers and none of them are exercising and they have a poor diet and I could look at any macronutrient in the sense that anytime we bring up a dietary protocol right anytime we talk about proteins carbs fats calories there's automatically this assumption that it applies to body composition right everybody like you hear the word diet you instantly think body composition body fat loss muscle gain and there's a whole continuum of things that we need to be looking at relative to our diets how we feel our health status or you know our longevity like all of these things that don't relate to just how you look and so you know and the guy I mean you asked about protein I mean immediately my assumption went to lean tissue right and then you bring that up and it's like no you're a hundred percent right you know somebody that's that potentially that has cancer is going through treatments like no I'd probably be backing off to be honest and then you start looking at like the types of protein inside of a specified situation right like there's you know most common source of protein in a lot of people is chicken breast right and you start looking at okay well that's predominantly omega-6 fats so now we're creating a pro-inflammatory effect and someone that's got cancer and well that's a pretty shitty way to prescribe to somebody sure right so there's there's a lot of areas that have to be considered that I just again it's a it's a much deeper investigation well I think we're somewhere where we all strongly agree is no matter what your goal is whether fat loss or muscle building the first thing and it's probably weeks maybe months which that's my question for you is how long you think it normally is you should be focused mainly on getting healthy yeah and figuring all that out yeah before you go any direction or try to go any direction and that should be your main focus now to that point and we all agree on that what what do you think is most common and how long do you do you normally spend with somebody like this with from taking them and I know of course this depends on you know how fucked up they were when you got them you know but what's kind of a range look like normally yeah I mean that's I would love to give you like a typical range unfortunately for a long time like I was you know you guys like around the time I was talking about it and you guys there's a couple other people in the industry that were brave enough to actually say this shit there's a marketing component that comes into this where trainers don't want to go to their clients that are overweight and say hey I can't help you lose weight yet because I need to fix you and they're afraid they're gonna lose money right and new coaches can't afford to lose money they got it they got to take money so I think it takes a coach that's really secure and who they are and really secure in like the big picture of business first off right like that has to be acknowledged in in this space you know second a person knows how fucked up they are right so if it's like if you really didn't know you were doing shit wrong by being an extreme calorie deficit and you really haven't seen the effects a lot of times it's pretty quick man couple weeks four six weeks max a lot of times there's no adaptation that's even been created and by actually providing like what you said Sal earlier by providing the right amount of calories which is an increase in calories you actually start seeing results I wrote a blog one time on reverse dieting and I was like there's three there's three responses you know you either gain weight because you're adding in calories and you've adapted to low calorie state you don't gain weight but your biofeedback gets better that's not terrible or you're like you're the lucky one that makes your coach look really good you're a hyper responder and you start losing weight right away the law like that was written two three years ago the longer I've been around that I realize it really comes down to two factors duration and like the degree of the adaptation so like how long have you been in a metabolically adapted space in the adapted state and what was the like the degree of what you were doing that got you to that adapted state and really those are the two factors that are going to mitigate the process of creating health status before we begin to diet and that goes into the whole like losing fat and building muscle it's like in an ideal scenario if you came to me today and you're at ground zero like we could probably get a significant amount of fat off in 12 weeks and then we could probably reverse you out pretty quick and then focus on building muscle I want to get back into like the muscle building component this whole conversation and like talk about so you do bring somebody back to this home you'll stasis you they're in a healthy place but now like you're taking them through like the bulking phase sure what does that look like in terms of the amount of calories like something a typical client you have like trying to guide them through that and whether or not it's it's you know consistently throughout or you're doing intermittently like what's that look like so I think this is again it has to you got to look at what is the personality of the person so initially when you came out of a competition prep and you're going in the off season like you're you're very strong mentally but the average person they're like oh it's off season time I get to fucking eat everything and you give them a protocol and let's say it's a protocol that's like pretty calorically in a surplus but you also have to know that this person is probably going to have a propensity to eat off that plan so let's just say you're estimating you know daily energy expenditure to be 3,000 you decide to put them in a calorie surplus of a thousand so you're giving them 4,000 you often know that inherently this person's probably going to be consuming closer to 5,000 right adjusted for weekly average intake based on how many times they're going to deviate I don't think that's advisable at all right that's a recipe for a lot of fat gain not a lot of muscle gain and remember your your body has a certain range where it's most efficient right where once you step outside of that you're gaining more fat than you're gaining muscle so I I'm a little bit of a slower approach guy myself but I'm I don't even want to necessarily speak to speed as much as it is sustainability like I don't want if your goal is to build muscle and then you're going to look in the mirror two weeks later and be like oh my god I'm fat and now you feel like you want to cut that's a problem in and of itself so you know I guess the questions I would then turn around and ask or why why are we building muscle right is it for a stage is it just for life is it for strength like like what is the purpose is is there a time that like we need to have this muscle built say it's just this person that wants to just wants to get bigger right at the same time right so then we're going to put you on a super small super small surplus which by the way like longevity says you should be in a super small deficit but from a super small surplus and then accounting for life like I'm talking like 200 to 300 calories very small surplus right or so so yeah very small surplus but then you factor in life date night happens couple drinks happen and now look at like the weekly adjusted surplus but you're going in there as a coach knowing that I'm going in there knowing that that's not a prescription based on what's physiologically correct now is this something that you teach your coaches also a hundred percent so this is part of the this is all part of the conversation so that's why we like you guys because yeah that makes perfect sense because if you don't don't account for what's probably going to happen then your recommendation plus you know life is going to add up to too big yeah of a surplus you don't get to live in a fantasy world right I mean like we can live in the lab all day the lab isn't where life takes place right like we step out of here and fucking life hits us and you never know what's going to happen well that's ready to account for that's the problem of the the coaches and trainers and people that that purely speak from the the scientific studies that that are with these small control groups and then they they get their their direction purely from that it's like there's so many other things that you have to account for that nothing to do with that I mean part of its experience but luckily again like you guys are teaching people the right way it's like hey look here's what it says on paper you want them at a 400 to 500 calorie surplus but here's what happens in real life you put them on a 200 calorie surplus because they're going to mess up a few times during the week which is going to come out to about a 500 calorie surplus when you start creating that weekly adjustment it does and yeah it is experienced man I mean I you know again like we can't expect the general population to act with the you know like the level of being strict as like a competitor would or as somebody of like a lab right you can't expect the general population to have their actions align with lab controlled settings it's just it's not going to ever happen now I want to talk to you about some of the athletes you've worked with because this gets real fun. Athletes are much more controlled, much more specific they have I mean they have to or they're going to get their butts kicked or whatever what have you noticed you've worked with quite a few at some very high levels what have you noticed tend to be like better sources of carbs in terms of performance because you can get carbohydrates for example from a lot of different sources but are there sources that you find seem to just work better for most of your your athletes so here's the crazy part that maybe a lot of people would never have considered the answer is yes there are like they're all whole foods right so sweet potatoes white rice or staples right like I live in those and but that being said as the season wears on I get a lot looser in terms of my like what I'll allow for carbs so let's use like let's use like George Kittle right he's NSC championship this weekend yeah like when him and I first talked right before the season it was like I wanted high molecular weight carbs post-workout he's an athlete like I understand there's no like benefits a muscle in that window like we could let's just end that debate it's a nervous system response what is high molecular weight carbohydrates so like uh like some like rapidly absorbed carbs right so I'm talking about like I use highly branched cyclic dextrin okay and that's a hundred percent a CNS issue right like you're coming out of a sympathetic training session I'm trying to create that parasympathetic shift and get you into that as fast as possible it has absolutely nothing to do with the anabolic window like like we could end that right so before people are like oh Jason talked about the anabolic window no I didn't say shit no what you're saying makes perfect sense and these are these are carbs that just fast gastric emptying absorbed in the system very quickly and especially for a guy like him where he struggles to eat anyway and most athletes you'd be surprised yeah struggle to eat enough maybe wouldn't rate it's uh especially like their their needs we're talking with 1000 calories sometimes more what is a guy like him like a pre like what is he eating like before his main competition so my advice with somebody like him is three hours out of the competition I'm getting in like what I what I say to him is a complete meal a protein source a carbohydrate source and like a vegetable and a fat source right that's what I want everything right um now I don't want like extreme hunger going in but I want a little bit of hunger right and so uh now why do you want a little bit of hunger going into the so when when hunger starts to rise it's a physiological signal that cortisol is starting to rise right I want that slight cortisol elevation why it triggers sympathetic nervous system it gives you energy I want that fight or flight right and then this goes back to the whole dietary like nutritional periodization I know 100% that I'm intentionally leveraging cortisol in a season that shouldn't happen in like real life real health scenario totally you don't want that right but I fucking want it like you're playing in the Super Bowl I want you on a cortisol drip I want every ounce of nervous system strength and physical strength that you have for those three hours that you're playing the damn game I like it now I got it now I got three months Super Bowl so like yeah he is going to Super Bowl yeah they're going to destroy green base I'm betting that way yeah I don't even think it's close so why do you get looser with so I get looser because quantity becomes even more important right so we've done such a good job in the off season of making sure that you're at that homeostatic balance they're in a position to perform early in the season but let's be honest athletes are a little lazy right like when it comes to nutrition they'll fucking train their asses off they'll play their ass off yeah and they think that they can get by without maximizing this and so towards the end it's like hey you need a bowl of cereal at night like go ahead and have three and you need some carbs in the morning like you need to throw some honey in there you need to throw like a little extra sugar in there like go do what you got to do and so as it gets on like it's not health right, inflammation is already happening like those things are already present of course we want to control them but they're doing a lot of physical recovery modalities my whole goal at that point is performance and recovery nothing else I don't give a fuck about your body fat levels I don't give a fuck about your biomarkers like I don't give a shit about that and that's what people don't understand like when I'm in season and I'm working with an athlete an NFL player on the field a UFC fighter in the cage whatever your sport is you paid me at the beginning to make sure that you perform your best, the end you didn't tell me you want to get on the podium with abs right you paid me to win and that's what we do now afterwards it's my obligation to say to you hey we made some health sacrifices along the way we need to get healthy so that next year we can do the shit again perfect so you said the sweet potatoes white rice you noticed seemed to be very very good those are my staples man and honestly like steel cutouts in the morning I love cream of rice honestly like I like oat brand and cream of rice a little bit better what about grits I mean I'll use them in a dietary thing or like in a dietary protocol but I'm not a fan of grits myself and I worked with clients and some athletes and I find it's just easier to digest that makes them better sources what about sources of protein bodybuilders for a long time have said how red meat is a phenomenal source of protein especially in the off season because on a gram for cram basis they still get more strength gains I think it has to do with the creatine content of red meat or cholesterol have you noticed any differences between protein sources for athletes when we start looking at the old school bodybuilders that said they get more strength from red meat I think calorie for calorie is higher and back in the day like how are diets set up well in the beginning of the diet you eat more red meat you eat more carbohydrate and then over the course of the diet will you remove carbs from meal 5 or you switch your red meats to white meats or you switch your white meats to white fish that's how they drop their calories so I really think it was just a calorie for calorie thing or a gram of fat per gram of fat thing I'm definitely a big fan of red meat and honestly like when you start looking at the ratio of fats the fats in red meat are healthier we see less inflammation from red meat better amino acid profile from red meat and again when we're looking at caloric density of a person who doesn't like to eat a lot I'd love to use red meat do you ever use organ meats with your athletes? I don't only because and not because it wouldn't work and it wouldn't be a great source of protein but I'm also talking to people who either are hiring a chef or who are literally what is the minimal amount of time I can spend getting my shit together and they're not going to want to eat liver they don't give a fuck I worked with Solomon Hill who I don't fucking know what team he's playing for now but I worked with him when he was with the pelicans and he had a chef and his chef would be like tell me exactly what's going to be best and I'll put it together now he happened to be vegan so we were always trying to do that actually do you guys know Dan Henry the internet marketer he's a big time internet marketer guy he just reached out to me last week and he's like I'll hire a chef and you tell that chef the best possible thing he's like all I want to be is jacked and ripped and I'm like cool dude and he's got the money to be able to do it that's great that's fun I loved it I get really excited on ones like that but you know it's I don't know how you guys feel about this as you guys were in the industry in the trenches for a long time now you're going to get to observe the industry every now and then I really get this itch to get back in the industry and to do it with a small number of people well I think that we all do that I've got two people I'm talking to that are family friends I always train one client I just reopened a coaching funnel to take on 20 to 30 clients I do everything through text message I work super closely with my people if you work with me you're getting 100% of me but I get these itches for me too it's about because I do nothing I love more than doing what we're doing now I love the podcast and what it does but getting to train clients reminds me of the questions they ask so that just makes better content here it's your pulse on the industry it keeps you grounded if I'm not working with people working out in gyms or managing gyms or working with trainers I start to feel like I float off the ground I'm speaking on this podcast out to the internet it's not the same thing I think it's an important thing that you should do especially if you're communicating it how do you know what the industry trends are you could read the media how do you know how clients are responding how they're experiencing it because again we go back to the scientific studies and the academia world I love how you came out and you had issues with the academia world I know you got so much shit for that but I loved when you came out because you're one of the most intelligent actually you came to the event and everyone's like Sal is really wise that was the word everyone used for you but it's true you can interpret scientific studies you can interpret what you need but you're also able to look at real life and say okay we don't live in a fucking incubator we don't live in a lab we live in this beautiful thing called a world where great things take place that are not always in line with scientific studies and I think you have to have the scientific knowledge you have to know what's happening but more importantly you gotta understand the human being that you're trying to help at the end of the day we could talk about any topic millions of people will download this episode of the podcast but each one is going to be in a car in the gym their headphones on on a plane and they're one person and they're listening to it with one application and they're living their unique life and their unique circumstances and they want their unique result and if you don't know how to take all this information in your head and you don't know how to apply it to that situation or you can't help them apply it to that situation like you as a coach you suck if you go back a hundred years and you ask scientists then and you said hey what do you think would happen if all of us all of a sudden had access to all of recorded human history they would have said oh it would have been a utopia all of our problems would have been solved well here we are and the problems are still here and what we're realizing is it's not an information problem it's a wisdom problem and being able to communicate fitness and nutrition and health is extremely important and nine out of ten times it's not your ability to recite factual information nine out of ten times be able to relate and be able to communicate the right information and communicate it the right way and that took me ten years took me ten years as a personal trainer figure out took me a long time and I knew these guys echoed the same thing well it's funny I had a conversation with a girl one of my the guy that does my email blast he sent one out yesterday and was like hey like what are you doing with me and all these people responded and this one girl was like I need to know how to get clients and do this and I like I wrote her back and I told her about like how we help businesses and I'm like I'll be happy to get on the call and help you out she's like yeah I just like I just invested in this other like mentorship which is all information and I'm like and there's this these coaches like listen everyone needs a certification everyone needs to get certified and have their shit right the problem with you helping either you're not confident enough in yourself or you haven't figured out how to connect with a person understand what they truly need and those are things that you have to get the trenches for and you have to learn to live and you gotta start looking at human beings and stop trying to look for like cases and that's where that's where I just that's the separation between great coaches and good coaches that's why we chose to work with you there's a lot of nutritional courses and certifications out there for us they would leave they would you know they would leave us thinking like this is just not this is not really giving people coaches the tools that they really need to be successful and I think you guys focus on that make it a priority I mean I shared with you guys how the whole thing came to be right how I built the Nutritional Coaching Institute so I was at an event in Southern California as a mastermind I gotta get you guys to like wear those shirts out I thought about wearing mine here and I was like that's gonna look weird going through the airport but yeah no so it's I was at an event and this really well known internet marketer was like dude you're helping so many people but like it's your method that's really good right it's not just you and he's like you need to you need to build a certification I was like it's the nutrition industry the old standard nutrition certification I'm like I can't compete with them and he's like no like you have something special you need to find it and you need to do it and he was like adamant and somebody I really respected and I was like okay so I got my car and I was driving from SoCal at the time I was living in Arizona and I got halfway home and it hit me it was like a ton of bricks hit me right in the face and I was like it's like you're really good at connection and application and like everything got so clear I left my shit in my car ran to my desk opened up a journal wrote out the whole outline of what the course was it was like part one science all the topics part two application all the topics and I never deviated like that was the shit we put in version one of the course and like that's the shit that we continue to teach and like I knew right then that's why I was successful that's why we had built what we had built but also how literally millions of people can become successful with it and how many coaches have you guys certified man we've put over 3,000 through at this point we'll be three years old in July wow that's great so we we're pretty young in the space but I think that you're starting my favorite part is we're getting a lot of people from our competitor and they're coming and they're saying you filled in the gap and that was exactly what we aimed to do like you said people finish the certification and they feel like they don't have exactly what they need and we said no like we're going to give you what you need to go out our models evolved like in the beginning it was like I have a level one course and then I'm like cool like if you want you can take these other courses now I look at what we do a little more as a trade school if you don't need to go to college and pay for extra science degree and you certainly don't need to become an RD but you don't need to be 50, 60, 70,000 dollars in debt we have an institute it is designed to take you from zero knowledge to like scaling a business because we do have a business course as well right like I'm sorry coaches out there if you don't understand business you're not going to have impact on this world oh my gosh you could be the best trainer coach in the world if you don't understand how to run your business you're screwed so we have all those man it's literally designed to take you from from that startup to ultimately scaling your business and man like we've got some dope stories like I'm doing a webinar tonight and like one of the testimonials I use she sat in the very first cert ever in Chicago her second year like so last year was the second year that we were live she made a quarter million dollars as a coach she had no fucking traditional knowledge wow good for her that's exceptional it was it was unreal man and like those are the stories that just get me super hyped what do you think about I know some countries are talking about regulating coaches and trainers through the government and I know there's been some talk about that here in the US which I think would be a complete disaster that's my own opinion what do you think about that about a federal you kind of nationalize standards for coaches and trainers I mean I guess we kind of have one in the R.D. sense like you can't write a diet I'm sure an R.D. yet I've had R.D. come through my course and say they learned more in 48 hours about really helping people than they did in four years of an internship I think it would give a lot it would there's obviously benefits to it and I understand why but in typical like bureaucratic protection they're gonna fuck up the application right and they're gonna end up hurting a lot more people than they are helping people so I don't welcome it that being said I mean if we're looking at it you know do you really need to be certified to give advice and at the end of the day as a coach we can't put a gun to a client's head we're just giving our best advice as coaches we're becoming advocates for our clients and we're looking out for their best interest and laying out what we believe to be the best route to success the end of the day they have to follow it and I don't think that the government is ever gonna be able to regulate that now you're hooking up our listeners special right now with this episode I'm gonna put you on the spot here so what are they getting this is not our normal NCI no so what we've done before for your listeners is we've done you know we did a scholarship we selected somebody we gave away all of our courses which is a $10,000 value and we've given away some of our master classes which are $600 a piece but I wanted to do something special to me and like you know I came here like two years ago and I was early in like the evolution of my career and you like you guys supported me and like you know I'm still fortunate enough to like text you guys you just came to the event and like that's super cool it means more to me than you guys know and so now I want to pay that forward to the millions of people that listen to you guys and so like I said all of our courses if somebody wants to do the institute it's a $10,000 investment I'm just gonna wipe 70% for your followers and your listeners and so I don't want to misquote the link so I won't say it but I'll let you guys put it in the show notes because I need to check with my team but it's literally there's one link you have to go like if you go to my normal site NCIcertifications.com everything's full price on there but if you guys go through the mind pump link which you guys can post alright yeah do it in the intro that'd be dope but if you guys go through that link there's a video where you apply you tell me like hey I heard this on mind pump within a day my team will reach out to you and instantly give you 70% off and they'll do a payment plan like they'll work with you like we treat it like college like if you need to pay it over time pay it over time like we really believe that this is the key to if you want to create help and you really want to increase your knowledge but really have that application to actually go out and create impact like we say impact over everything if you really want to go out and have that impact man like we know we have the resources and so I'm super humbled to do that for you guys excellent thank you man appreciate it thanks for coming on the show brother did absolutely appreciate you guys having a great day