The Science Of Fueling Peak Performance: Kyla Channell

Everything alcohol touches as it goes through your body increases the cancer risk of that thing. Oral cancer, esophageal cancer, stomach cancer, colon cancer, liver cancer.

What do people need to know about caloric intake?

Small little changes progressively over time. The things that you want to change, like make those as easy as possible with as little barriers to implement them. And then the things you don't want to be doing, make them as difficult as possible. McDonald's is very easy. They're making it very easy for you. They're putting low barriers there. It's a low cost. It's you can drive right through and you need to make it even easier for you with what your goals are.

There are just moments where it's like we're ready to make a change.

There are absolutely solutions. A lot of times we don't want to see them because we're so comfortable in what we're doing and it's uncomfortable to make these changes and a lot of people aren't willing to do that. As much as they say they want this end goal, they're not willing to make that change.

Kyla Channell, welcome to the Pathway to Peak Performance. It's so great to have you in. Thank you for making the time to come see us. I'm delighted to have this opportunity to speak with you. You are in high demand and I appreciate you taking time out of your busy day to come here and uh speak with us about something that's super important that people need to cover. So,

thank you for having me. I'm excited.

Yes, me, too. Um, all right. So, uh first things first, what's your charity?

Marin Humane Society.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah. Great organization. You know, it's interesting to see that as two Marin County, older kid, younger kid. Um it's interesting to see how over the years that organization has really been challenged. Yeah. And I think it's great. You volunteer there, right? Um that's super. And they need all the help they can get. And I I I hope that we're going to see a better day when they're going to they're going to have the full staff that they once had, etc. Uh and more space.

Yeah, they definitely need it. Arab phenomena.

Yeah, it's a great great like I said before we hit record, it's like the it is it needs a lot of help, but it is the best right now. Like when you compare it to other shelters for dogs that do get a lot of love um and lots of walks and stuff, but yeah, they need more support for sure and funding and space and yeah, better living situations and all that stuff there. So

yeah, you know, it's like if you ever want to have a heartbreaking moment

Oh gosh.

All you need to do is just go there on a Saturday or Sunday and take the tour and see these dogs that are just dying to go home with you. Okay. And the cats, too.

Yes.

I'm not a cat person, admittedly, but you know, hey.

Yeah.

I'm sure they have feelings also.

Yes. Yeah. Do you have a dog?

I do. We have two. And that's, you know, that's that's the reason. There are dog people and cat people. I totally

I'm definitely a dog person.

Yeah. I we have both. We have a cat and a dog. So, yeah. But I walk the dogs, not the cats. They are they have their own like mood and

Yeah.

patterns.

Yeah. They're they're different.

They are they are very different.

Yeah. It's not not my thing.

Um all right. So, the show is sponsored by KetoneAid. You're well familiar with dietary ketosis. You also know about ketone products, although you've said you've never tried these before.

Correct.

These are the true Veech ketone ester. Uh so, Dr. Richard Veech funded by DARPA at the NIH and conjunction with Oxford University did the studies. Uh the data came out uh 10 years ago, August of 2016. It's just phenomenal stuff. It really is like the highest quality that you can possibly get and I'm super excited for you to try it and see how you feel. Uh so for today, it's more going to be more of a cognitive type of thing.

Yeah.

So you have a choice.

Okay.

The blue or the red?

Yeah, the blue or the red pill. You can go to the moon on the rocket fuel or you can try the uh less less uh

I would probably try the less intense route.

Okay.

So, do you mix it in the water or

So, yeah. Here's what you're going to do. Um and what you do is you just take these two cups of water and you take yours there and just pour them in the capfuls in for us.

How many?

Uh I well, I would do four of those. I'll do four for you. Okay. You're gonna do two. Me, too.

Yeah. Hey,

scared.

Yeah.

What? Okay. What?

Cheers. Bottoms up.

Oh, that's okay.

You just chug it.

What?

I do.

What does that taste like?

It kind of tastes like aminos, actually.

Right. It's like a green apple, maple syrup with some sort of other something in it. You know, the funny thing is once you get used to taking it, it's like one of those things where I I mean, I can't imagine a day where I wouldn't um where I wouldn't want it. Um because it's it's that good.

It takes how many minutes?

Um well, I think like let's just plan on timing for 30 minutes. So, it's 10:31. So, we'll look at like 11:01.

Okay.

I mean, we'll we'll check in and see if you feel a little more dialed in, a little more toned in. So, Kyla, before we get started, tell us about how you got into the whole nutrition world.

Oh, goodness. Yeah, we can go back a little bit. Um, when I was in high school, we'll go back that far. I played basketball, 5'10". So, my dad immediately was like, "You're playing basketball." And, uh, got diagnosed with anemia. I started like I would I was fainting. Um, and I so low iron anemia. I got put on an iron supplement. Then fast forward like four or five years, end of high school, early college. Um, I got diagnosed with celiac, which oftentimes those two are tied together.

Um, and so that made sense maybe why my iron was low because celiac or gluten when you're eating it, if you have celiac, it's going to damage that intestinal lining. So, it was a lot of at the time too, like there was not a lot of gluten-free products on the market. Now, it's oh my goodness, it's amazing. There's like so much available. But then it was very hard to work around.

And I remember trying to like figure out how how am I going to get like high iron foods in my diet. And like if you're familiar with iron at all, like it is so sensitive to other things inhibiting its absorption. And it's like you have to time it at this like the perfect time when you know heme is low, so that's not going to interfere with it. And calcium's not going to interfere with it. And um and so absorbing it and getting my levels back up was difficult. And then of course avoiding gluten containing foods was also challenging. And so it was a lot of um messing around with my diet to try and figure out how to to get that.

And so I knew I wanted to study nutrition to learn more. At the time sports nutrition didn't exist. It was not a major that existed. Um so I ended up doing clinical dietetics at UC Davis, which is all hospital-based nutrition. So, you're learning how to calculate tube feed requirements for somebody whose jaw got shot off and they're on a tube and how much protein do they need and you know minerals and you're required to do three internships uh community food service and clinical.

And so I did an internship in typically anyone with that degree is going to go work in a hospital in most cases after but um I did the Yolo County food bank, I did the food service management, and I did the clinical dietetic internship in the UC Davis med um medical center. It was in their basement, no windows, and you're working with like patients that don't want the food. Like they do they do a really good job trying to get like of the local farms around them high-quality foods and they're putting them together, but the people there don't want to eat it. Like they don't want the good healthy stuff to help through healing. Um, and it was just a very depressing quite honestly for me personally like I was I couldn't I was like I could never do this for the rest of my life.

And there was a fourth internship opportunity that I applied for and got accepted which was not required um with Dr. Liz Applegate and she ran the whole D1 sports nutrition for all the athletes. And I got in that and I just like absolutely fell in love. I was like we are taking nutrition and utilizing it to like help these athletes do such amazing stuff, recover faster, support their immune system, support their tendon ligament health like and like push hard in their sessions. And it just was like to me so inspiring. And also I was like I want that like I want these the tips to be able to like apply this to me.

Um and then after that uh actually while I was at Davis I was a CrossFit coach at the same time. I was doing CrossFit coaching and um I coached at my gym Dr. Stacy Sims was one of my uh she would come into the gym and I would coach her and she's like oh you're studying nutrition like come here like let me show you this stuff. And she's one of the women who's like spearheaded research in women um in the last decade. Um, and I they didn't teach me anything about that at Davis, like women's specific research and um effects of menstrual cycle like hormones on different training adaptations and um and so I was just like, "Oh my gosh, what is like this?" Like this is a whole area I've never even became aware of.

And so dove into that a bit and then ended up going to grad school and getting my uh graduate degree with honors in uh nutrition and human performance. I was not good at school so when I found something I really liked, I actually was good at it. So, I'm like proud of my honors.

That's pretty cool. Like, you know what? Yeah. I think that's awesome because like you you tapped into something you're passionate about.

Yeah.

Right out. That's awesome.

Yeah. So, yeah. And then I started my private practice and um and that's just grown and um I work with athletes all over the world and uh yeah professional Olympians recreational like I have a handful of like high performing like CEOs that again like do their cyclocross races on the weekend and um yeah stuff like that. So it's been fun.

Yeah, I bet I bet the CEOs are the most fun team or whoever.

They are fun. It's like I mean everybody's like a honestly like a fun puzzle to solve for me. I got to work with a surfer, a professional surfer, which was really like a whole different challenge for my brain. It's like how do you fuel and support somebody that can't bring any of that with them in the water, right? And they're out there for hours, like sometimes six hours a day surfing. It's like how do you fuel that?

No. Yeah, that's that's um that is wild. That is wild. So you get your masters uh and with honors.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I also actually I didn't mention I also got a second essentially masters with the International Olympic Committee did their sports nutrition diploma with uh which I loved that that was really incredible because I got to work like right underneath um like Louise Burke and Asker Jeukendrup and uh I think Trent Stellingwerff a part was part of it. Like all these top researchers in sports nutrition in the world were all involved in that which was so cool.

That is that is really really cool.

Yeah.

Yeah. So you've had about like and and then how long has your private practice been around?

Like 15 years.

Yeah. So I mean you're you're you're pretty young. You're pretty new.

I do honestly feel like I don't know enough. Like I go to conference like multiple conferences every year and it's there's always something where it's like oh.

But is it always that way?

Yeah. I mean, if you have that mind where you've really tapped in and you're really you're really passionate about what you do, you're going to find new stuff all the time, right? Isn't that cool?

Yeah. Oh, that's I love it.

Yeah. It's like where the juice is.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, like for me in my work, it's like every day I am learning something new multiple times a day.

Yeah. Ever evolving.

Yeah. So you have an incredible CV and you run an amazing company and it's super important. I think this is the area of health care that is that does not get enough attention paid to it. It is absolutely critical and if we were to tap into this as a nation or around the world uh we could be making tremendous progress. Uh, and so I just want to thank you number one for pursuing that career because I think that's just so valuable and uh I appreciate you and I want to uh you know I mean you work with all sorts of Olympic athletes and high you know endurance athletes and all this. I mean you're at the top of the of the game. So um knowing what we know today, why is it that 73% of Americans are overweight?

Yeah. Um there's so much food availability I think um and food access and again like my athlete population is um very highly focused determined dedicated high performing athletes and so the audience I get exposed to is a little bit different than gen pop, right? But even in those athletes like when we do nutrient analysis assessments of diet quality oftentimes many of them are unintentionally over consuming fats in their diet. Um under consuming protein, under consuming carbohydrates and I think that I have theories around that.

I think um one it's just fats are just so easily available in our diet. They're in everything and uh manufacturers know that fats light up those chemicals in our brain. I think primally our primal brains know that there's more than twice the calories per gram in that fat. And so that helps for survival. The more of that thing we can eat to store more body fat, the more likely we're able to survive a famine. Um, and so I think we just naturally are inclined to eat those things and they are more bioavailable.

And they it's a bit deceiving, right? With the fat being so condensed calorically when you look at 100 calories of fat on your plate and 100 calories of of carbohydrates and vegetables, it looks like you're really getting any calories, but it's the same amount of calories. It's just so condensed into this smaller portion. And um so people oftentime or clients will be like well I just had a little bit of blue cheese on my salad or I just had a little bit of avocado and it's like that was 200 calories of avocado. So um I think that is a a big component of it. And then we don't move enough I think either. And I think there's lack of I think there's lack of education around nutrition and um and and movement quite honestly.

And we're not getting those things. And we're also coming through a period of time where that was really like people just weren't aware. There wasn't any real awareness. If you go through like the 80s, 90s, 2000s, I mean fast food is still big thing, right? I mean, all that kind of stuff is going on. We're coming to a point in time where people becoming really aware uh when you live where we live, we have access to all this amazing. You can go to Paluma and you can get eggs that were, you know, right out of the pasture. Or you can go to, you know, the coast and get oysters from, you know, the list goes on, right?

I feel bad for the people that are really in food deserts where it's like Dollar General is going to be the best that you can possibly get. Um, and there are people who are also economically challenged in a way that are just not going to get access to the things that are going to be truly nutritional. I think the hyperpalatable food thing is crazy. Yeah. And that the food engineers have really figured out how, like you said, the fat, salt, fat, sugar. Hey, I got that dopamine rolling. I feel good. It gets you trapped in emotional eating.

Mhm.

Seems to dampen the desire to move.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And it's just that yeah. You want to go back in for more because it's lights that chemical up.

Yeah. So, you know, if you can break that cycle uh with movement, um then over time you can start to get to a place where it's like, hey, you know, gosh, I I don't want to do that. If I eat that, you know, you get to a point in time you get enough distance from ice cream or something like that, you go that didn't feel you can feel it immediately.

Totally. It's a big noticeable difference, right? When you get you start cleaning things up and then you go back to that one thing, you're like, "Oh my god, I slept awful." Like I like feel sick or you know it does hit you hard.

Yeah. I had to go to a really big dinner and his dinner uh you know was a great restaurant.

Food's phenomenal.

Yeah. I slept like crap all night. Next day in the gym I'm like oh

right it's just not worth it.

So now everything that I eat is so measuring you're talking about the calories within the the oil or the cheese the avocado fatwise. You know, my macros are like 235 on protein, 275 on carbs, um, and about 60 grams of fat. Fat coming really from uh, the olive oil. And I'm trying to just take that super high quality. Take that raw so it doesn't get heated. I get all the polyphenols, all that sort of stuff. I'm going to show you. I brought some meals.

Perfect.

So that you could you could tear you could tear me apart. Tell me tell me where I'm doing it wrong.

Okay.

So I think all those things are great points and you know we get when we talk about education why do you think it's such a big education issue? Has the food pyramid been off? What's the story?

That's a good question. I I don't know the answer to that. I when I was going through my undergrad at UC Davis, one of the internships I did was at the Yolo County Food Bank and um it was a bit of that like trying you're working with the like dietitians on staff at the Yolo County Food Bank as an intern in your undergrad trying to come up with ways to make the food that you were supplying to like the kids' schools exciting and educating them about that and and they're they're trying to do stuff and I'm sure they're probably trying to figure out like which approach is effective really. Um and also the like you're saying the food pyramid. So like the the education and research has evolved so much from that that we need to I guess take the the latest updated stuff but that latest updated literature needs to trickle down to those who are actually working with those kids and educating them properly.

Yeah. And I think the pendulum swings both ways now. You know, we see this originally this heavy-duty sort of like, hey, fat's the enemy with this high carb um you know, replace fat with sugar type stuff. Um

way out of whack

and um then all of a sudden we have, you know, sort of like this big swing towards protein and it's very pretty deceptive, right? I mean, it's almost like the supplement industry in some ways where you just see like stuff where it's like not regulated by the FDA, so there's no NSF or GMP. You have no idea what's in that product,

right?

If it's even the product itself, it's not a counterfeit.

Right. Yeah. That's a that's a big issue in I mean all of the nutrition and supplements too, right? Um

it's why I buy them direct from the manufacturer.

Yeah.

Right. I used to buy a bunch of stuff from Amazon. I don't want to be reckless. I just want to say like, hey, that's what I heard.

Yes.

That there were counterfeits of like, you know, Pure,

right,

and Thorne.

Yep.

And all these high quality brands where they just there's nothing in the product,

right?

Yeah. There was a study, an actual study performed on creatine supplement, creatine chewables that were purchased on Amazon and I think like 95% of them came back with no creatine in them. So, there's an actual study on that. Um, yeah,

it's funny. I I don't know why anybody wants to take creatine in a gummy. I don't get it. You know what I mean? I take I take a fair amount of creatine every day.

Yeah.

I mean, it just depends on kind of what's going on. Okay. So, um minimum is five, usually running about 10.

Yeah.

But I'm just taking pure creatine monohydrate. I think that's one of the things you have to be really careful for careful about.

Mhm.

Is this non-stop marketing hype around supplementation. I'm I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I'm gonna venture to guess that you're gonna say foundationally you should be looking at your diet first, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The the supplements are that like 1%. And I think I get it. They're easy. They they like are an easy go-to. I can just eat this thing or take this pill and I don't have to eat the pounds of broccoli or, you know, prep the broccoli and do all this thing and do all the prep steps. And I get that. But um yeah, we're we're missing the what is they there's a saying like we're not looking at the forest or the something like that. Do you know what I'm saying?

Yeah. You're missing the forest for the trees. Yeah. Or we're looking at the second floor bathroom before you put the foundation in. Right.

Yes.

Yeah. No, it's makes perfect sense.

Yeah.

I think it's interesting how how much this is changing. Like dietitian nutritionist is now a part of your team. If you're really trying to take it seriously, you're consulting all of those things. You're doing a lot of research to spend a lot of time on that kind of stuff. You know, I want to maximize, I want to optimize my training and I want to achieve certain results. Seems like we also live in a culture where a lot of people want to just have a good time.

Mhm.

Right. They want to drink alcohol. They want to do other stuff or whatever it is that they do. And um they're not as focused on health. Uh and that also seems to be a societal norm in many in many ways. Life. There was a big culture where it's like just doing whatever I want to do. It is what it is.

Yeah.

Um and I think if you grew up in Marin County, you probably lived that at some point in time. Maybe not you. Definitely my my generation did, right?

Yeah.

Um okay. The other question I wanted to ask you is when you take a look at working with a client, where do you start? How do you work up an assessment on somebody? That's I think important for people to understand.

Yeah, we have to qualify them first. Not everybody gets in.

Right.

Right. The gate is open. Only a few.

Yeah. Um and then there's quite a lengthy intake form I make my clients fill out um to get a lot of background information. I want to know injury history. I want to know medications. I want to know supplements. I want to know timing of those things, doses, brands, um if there's been any surgery, when were those surgeries, what came from those surgeries. Do you have a plate in your foot? Do you did they just, you know, do an arthroscopic surgery? How long ago was that? Are there any lingering effects from that? Is that impacting your sleep, your training? Are you modifying anything because of that?

Um, and then food allergies, food aversions, um, all of that. I want to know. I want to know what their life is like. Do they have two kids that they need to get off to school and then drive to soccer practice and or are they a high performing CEO that wants to do cyclocross competitive events on the weekend and podium in those, but they're in an office all day in meetings from, you know, 8:00 a.m. to 6 p.m. or something like that.

So, um, I need to know what that's like. Who's prepping the food? Is it you? Is it your partner? Um, do you have a chef? Um, how are we navigating that? What about your travel? How often are you traveling? Like there are so many components that we need to understand about the individual to help make them successful in the implementation for their nutrition and what their goals are.

Yeah. You know what that's, so I mean think about how much data that is to actually take that and intake process it to really evaluate it to really do it the right way. That's not easy. And to personalize it to somebody at that level. That's where you see that special specialization really start to shine.

Yeah.

Because you know, you're not talking about broad strokes on the canvas. You're down to like the fine details of this and also tracking the changes. I'm curious along the way the tech that you use, what, uh, consumer apps do you have your clients using?

I mean, I mean there's certain things that like I need to be able to make sure there's an interface where I can see. So if there's not an interface where it can be shared with me, then there's no way for a coach to see that unless someone shares their like login and password.

You're going to love my son's new app.

Oh,

Actually you've got to be a beta tester of it.

Okay. What is it?

It's, it's, he wrote it and you know he was an athlete, right? So, uh, they broke the 4x100 record at Redwood's house since 1978. Yeah.

Yeah.

And he's like, he looked at this stuff. He's like, "This stuff is garbage."

Oh,

None of these apps really do what it, what you really need. And especially for a coach or provider type.

That's the thing that, that he's trying to do. So, I don't want to mention the product on the, on this show because like then it's, I'm promoting my son's like, you know, it's like, uh, we've talked about Cronometer. Um, so MyFitnessPal, I never like that app, right? It's really hard to work with.

Yeah.

Uh, it just is like it's so laborious to actually put anything in. Cronometer I feel is the same and it's really rigid.

Yeah.

Uh, but I don't know that there's anything better. Uh, so then when we get over on the training side of things, there's Hevy and Strong. Uh, and Strong seems to have these weird things. All of a sudden you're like your slates change and all of a sudden you're training and it's like, what's this in here? How, how'd that happen? Like it doesn't make any sense.

Yeah.

But at the end of the day, if you're diligent about it, you can get enough out of those. And um, and then I just poured everything into Apple Health Kit, poured it over into Quad, and then I work it that way.

Yeah. Nice. We have most of our athletes are endurance athletes, so they're already working with a coach that is programming for them through TrainingPeaks oftentimes is the software that pulls in like their...

Yeah.

...their power and their FTP and their TSS and all of these metrics that I can see to build their nutrition plan around their programming.

That's really cool.

Yeah,

That next level where you're really seeing, I mean you can see like, um, HRV and all these things that are like what, how long would... Okay, he did that and how long did it take to get the HRV to come back up or you know all that kind. It's interesting.

Yeah.

Um, do you also incorporate like labs into the work that, so you'll take a look at like somebody's and you say, "Hey, you just did a major event and your C-reactive protein is through the roof because of it or something like that."

Yeah. Yeah. It's all, I mean all athlete, um, specific and timing is crucial with labs with the type of training they do. Like your example right there is like if they just did a Ironman event or a 100 mile bike race we typically don't want them testing labs within like seven to 10 days, um, after because of that we'll see kind of, uh, acute inflammatory markers elevated that can tell us what, how the body responded to the race.

But, um, we also oftentimes want to see how did their body respond at the end of this season and what do we need to correct for before next season and, um, and so that's helpful to see. I do know, actually, there's, uh, talks of some, uh, like finger prick labs coming out for athletes like for kind of quicker turnaround time and not to take as much blood and um...

The Theranos, the next generation of Theranos, right? Maybe this time it'll work.

Yes.

Uh, yeah, that's really interesting. I've heard that too. So ketones and then also be able to do, uh, the continuous glucose monitor monitor. Um, all right. So, you know, this is interesting time because we're kind of into this spot and I said to you, "Hey, you want me to bring in what I..." and he said, "Do it." Yeah. All right. So, let's do this. I want to talk to you about sort of how I start my day, my morning. So, I want to get into this, okay? Because I think this is, I mean, I use this product every single day, three times a day.

Mhm.

You know, from a training standpoint that you can hit your le- leucine threshold, but if you don't have the other amino acids present, you're not getting mTOR and it's not converting. So like this whole hype around BCAAs, people just don't understand how this all the mechanism actually really works. They don't know the science behind it.

So these guys make a claim that this is more bioavailable. But there's a mathematical equation around mass. They say that five of these is equivalent to like 25 or 30 grams of protein or I guess it's 25 grams of protein. Uh, and it's more bioavailable. So you can just, it's predigested. It just goes in and it's more, you know, readily available.

Yeah.

I'm curious what your thoughts are on this because, you know, number one, I want to believe that's true and I don't want to say anything negative about them, but there seems to be some real marketing hype around this. I'm not saying the product isn't great. I use it every day.

Right.

I'm hoping that you're going to tell me there's some sort of value here.

Yeah. Yeah. Kind of back to what we talked about earlier is like anytime you can get real food in, great. And it's also probably going to be more satiating, right? If you, uh, if you calorically have the energy within your energy budget for the day to have a chicken breast versus, um, you know, Perfect Amino or something like that. Or if you're vegetarian or vegan, I do think those can be super helpful because you're really missing the mark on a lot of opportunities for leucine.

Definitely if you're vegan because it's really only in animals and small amounts in fish. Um, if you're vegetarian, you're hopefully getting some dairy products and that's a great source of, of leucine to stimulate the muscle protein synthesis response. But, um, yeah, the literature around this, I'm trying to remember who, um, we had on our podcast.

I remember him breaking down a study for us where he was, uh, it was around essential amino acid consumption and they were comparing it to protein and it was, I think it was like three or four doses a day of 15 gram of essential amino acids and he was saying it was roughly equivalent to drinking a gallon of milk like from a protein stimula- stimulating response.

How many grams of protein are in a gallon of milk?

That's something we'll have to Google it, you know, because I guess it would depend, right? I might be wrong, but I bet you skim, 2% and whole are actually have different protein values.

Yeah,

I don't know why that you would think that the fat cutting out would have a different value, but...

I feel like there's like eight grams of protein per 8 ounces or something, but I don't know how many ounces are in a gallon. Um, but yeah, that was an example he had given. And, um, yeah, I think there's like use cases that was just, was a specific study, right, where they're looking at that instead of consuming real food proteins, they're utilizing essential aminos to see what effect it can have and there was a beneficial effect, um, from a lean mass pres-, I believe it was a lean mass preservation.

I think there can be use cases for it. I think, uh, oftentimes again when we're looking at clients, uh, diets is we'll look at leucine too within their meals. So, we're looking at, yeah, are we hitting our daily protein? How is that protein structured throughout the day? But again, kind of like back to the, the vegan or vegetarian examples, like maybe they'll have a meal and calorically they're getting, you know, 20 to 30 grams of protein, but the leucine content is like, I don't know, 0.5, one, like it's not enough to stimulate that response.

And so, especially if their goal is to, um, improve body composition or support lean muscle tissue, we do want to make sure they're getting enough leucine to do that. And so oftentimes I, I lean towards more often an essential aminos versus a BCAA. Um, but every one has their use case.

Yeah. I mean just from my experience I just feel like, okay, there was this big wave on BCAAs but everybody was taking in like 3, 400 grams of protein so it didn't even matter. I mean, you know, you're already past your leucine threshold which is kind of where I wanted to go after this. But I think this is interesting. I use this in supplementation, right? So my, I have, I meet my protein requirement. I use this, you know, and I think there's this sort of notion that each one of these is worth X amount of to make sure that you've topped off every amino acid that you need.

Yeah.

There may be some waste associated with it, but it's so low, low calorie, right?

It's not going to have some huge effect, right?

So I start my day with, um, this guy. Yeah. And then, uh, take these with about, I would say on average 24 to 32 ounces of just straight water.

Okay.

Then I'm moving into my hydration formula and I use a product, uh, from a company called New Bioge. Uh, it's called Isel.

Okay.

So it's osmolytes, right? Uh, so we've got creatine, glycine, L-glutamine, L-alanine, and taurine. Okay. So those five osmolytes to pull water into the cell to, so that the mitochondria can really function at the highest level and produce ATP. Um, and I find that that plus these daily minerals. So we've all seen these electrolyte packets now that, you know, but I like the daily minerals because they have more than just the sodium, potassium and magnesium.

Yeah.

So it's, s- I think it's Salty.

Oh yeah, I've heard of that one. Yeah.

So, I take a little bit of a higher dose of that because we're going to the sauna after.

Oh, yes.

So, we're sweating out. So, like to give you an example, this is a 40 oz bottle of water. That's where the hydration formula starts. So, yeah. All right. I put a little alpha-ketoglutarate in it also.

Um, and I'm drinking. Okay. So, this is the fourth one. And we're at 10:59 in the morning.

Okay.

So, we train early in the morning. Yes.

Right. Yeah.

And then I, I cap my days with a 45-minute ride at night. By, I'm trying to make sure that I'm not drinking too much water by the end and, you know what I mean.

Yeah.

Okay. So, post sauna shake.

Mhm.

50 grams, uh, whey protein isolate.

Mhm.

Unflavored.

Okay.

It's got a scoop of Fortetropin. So, MYOS MD for, as a myostatin inhibitor. Um, it's got black forest cocoa, some more creatine, uh, black forest for the epicatechins and creatine. Uh, just to kind of once again start putting, you know, more back in after that sauna. Um, and I think the other amino acids, you just don't want to put that many. This is going to be too much taurine. You're putting more of that in.

Uh, and then, uh, what else is in there? Oh, chia seeds. So, two tablespoons of chia seeds, right? So you get a nice little buffer on it. So it's able to kind of like, you know, slow down the, you get the rapid kind of hit of the whey.

Mhm.

But it's also slowing it down a little bit. So that's going to make it over too. So normally by now I would have had meal one. So meal one would have been one of these. And typically I try to eat them cold.

Okay.

'Cause the, I, I don't want to heat the olive oil.

Mm.

So, um, you can see here...

What's, what's the red stuff in the bottom?

Uh, that's kimchi.

Oh, yum.

Chicken, rice, kimchi. So,

Smells good.

7 ounces of chicken, 1 cup white rice, 3.5 oz of kimchi, one tablespoon of olive oil.

Okay.

Right.

Nice.

All right. So, that's going to be meal one. Just I guess whichever one I back grab for the bag. I'm not...

Okay.

I'm not trying to figure...

How soon after you finish your workout are you getting this?

So, after I finish my workout, so we're in the gym at about 6:30 in the morning. We're training fasted, drinking massive amounts of water, heading to the sauna, getting there about 8:30. Uh, in the sauna for 15, 20 minutes, coming out, hitting that shake. So, the shake back down here.

Mhm.

You've got about an hour.

Okay.

Right. And then I'm going to hit the first meal.

Okay.

I'm going to hit that about 10:30 and then I'm going to pick one up at 2:30. This meal, um,

This is great, by the way. This is so cool.

Yeah. Uh, glass, no plastic. So, here we've got ground turkey. It's 99% lean ground turkey.

Okay.

Just, I mean, it's just cooked.

Yep.

Uh, it's pretty basic. Uh, broccoli, sweet potato. So, the sweet potato is three oz. The broccoli is 3.5, tablespoon of olive oil. Last meal of the day, this is how, this is how we're like, you and I are like, um, so last meal of the day is going to be, um, five oz of fish, chicken breast or, um, lean ground turkey.

Okay.

So that's where I, I'm in a, I'm in an evolution right now where it's like kind of red meat's off the table trying to actually control some iron and ferritin type stuff to figure that out.

Oh, okay. Um, are you elevated?

Yeah.

Okay. Yeah.

I've got, it's under control.

Yeah.

But there was a point in time where I was eating a lot of, you know, red meat and I just, my provider was like, "Hey, dude."

Yeah,

"We got to, got to make a different change here."

Yeah.

So, most recently, as of last night, took it down to five because I, I needed to make up, I needed to actually cut for my cut being a 500 deficit. I'm not going to say what the percentage is 'cause that's a little secret that's coming out in this thing I'm doing.

Okay.

But I'm in the top like two, three percentile trying to go to the one. So, you've seen the data, right? So, you know where I am, where I'm going, right?

Yeah.

And so, so I'm trying to maintain that and, uh, so I had to take out two grams of protein. I was over, I was over the protein. I'm, you know, I'm trying to beat anabolic resistance, all that stuff. And then from there I had to cut out the olive oil. At the end of the night I have a cup of Greek yogurt and a cup of wild berries frozen.

Yep.

Kind of makes it nice. It's like, hey, I'm cool. Yeah. Um, these are going to hit a little bit during the midday. Some aminos, some aminos at night supplementation. Um, so DHEA is just low on some labs. So just got it from compounding pharmacy through my provider. Um, there's some be-, uh, butyrate, uh, gut tides just to keep everything moving the right way. I think with all the fiber and the, uh, chia seeds.

Oh yeah. Yeah.

And hydration.

Yep.

Perfect.

Yeah. Good. Um, then there's krill oil which, switching over to a different thing now. Uh, my provider wants me on a different fish oil.

Oh, okay. Um, does it have to do with heavy metals or he just, just feels that this, the, the stuff that is just better? Okay. So how many milligrams are you taking a day?

Uh, 4 to 5,000.

Okay.

And then so there's vitamin D3 with K2.

Mhm. Right.

Um, there would be rithol A in here normally. There's some ubiquinol. Um, occasionally I think there's some co- CoQ10 and other stuff in there, but you know, this is sort of the general idea of supplementation and it's always moving around with based on the blood work.

Okay.

I'm a big Function Health fan.

Oh yeah.

So like I think a lot of providers feel like it's overkill. I'd rather have smoke signals, right?

Yeah.

Hey, I want to go back and I want to see what it was at this particular time. Right. I'm a big believer in that.

Yeah.

So, for me, that works and I just go that route. So, a lot of it has to do with like looking at the blood work with my provider, understanding, trying to work with it. I think the next evolution for me is probably to work with someone like you, although I probably wouldn't qualify, but... Okay. So, Kyla, I want the hardcore unvarnished truth. Tell me where I'm going wrong.

Okay.

On my nutrition.

Okay. Well, I'll tell you a lot of things I like. I like that every meal is mixed back with nutrient. So, you have a protein, a carbohydrate, color, and some fats. So, it's going to be great just for blood sugar stability and hunger, um, like satiety, right? And then I love you were doing the Greek yogurt before bed because now we're getting slow and fast digesting, uh, casein and, um, whey from that, right? So, we're providing like that slow amino acid drip, um, to the muscle tissue through the night when we're not consuming aminos.

Um, you have your goals that you're working on right now. So when I look at like your numbers and then your meal structure, the only kind of things that come to my brain, and mind you I primarily work with endurance athletes that are requiring, I mean sometimes like six to 7,000 calories a day, um, to fuel their sport, recover and adapt. You have a very... some of them are, have body composition goals through different phases of the season and we will certainly work through that too.

But, um, I would, what I'm looking at your numbers is like total daily protein. I wonder if your total daily protein could come down a little bit to allocate actually for a little bit more carbs and that those carbs go actually immediately post your workout to replenish muscle glycogen while glycogen synthase enzyme is elevated. So you can make sure you're basically putting that away or do it be- get what you can, kind of most bang for your buck out of your workouts by having carbohydrates on board to push those efforts to get that physiological adaptation.

Yeah. Let me give you, uh, every night eat the last meal postprandial ride most of the time 5 days a week on the Peloton for 45 minutes. So, we're in the gym training hour and a half to two hours and then 45 minutes every night on the bike. Zone one, zone two.

Yeah.

And then I do have an interval day on Sunday where we're doing stairs and we're really hitting it, right? Um, but with everything that I've got going on from a central nervous system standpoint, I've got to keep my training within a range, right? You know, I'm not capable of training at beyond that, right? So, I got to keep it down.

So, this carbohydrate thing is really interesting. What I'm trying to do is start to burn some of the glucose, pull the, the glycogen into the muscle, um, while it's burning it, store it in the muscle. Hopefully, that helps in the fasted portion. What you're suggesting is, hey, a little more carbohydrate postworkout would be good because then you could replace that glycogen almost immediately while that, that receptor is up.

Yeah.

Am I a good student or?

Yeah. No, you're a great student. I mean, you're doing all the things, right? You're like already tracking. You're very invested in it. Um, so I mean I, I give you like the nine, 9.5 out of 10.

Wow.

Yeah. That's, I think, I haven't seen your micros.

I think that's... Hey, I think that's an A minus.

Yeah.

And that's good. That's a good place to start. I mean, I, I'll take the A minus. Um, that's good.

Yeah.

You haven't seen the what?

Micros. Like I can, I, I see obviously all the things you're getting, but we'd want to look at that on paper and what are we getting from supplements and diet? Are we making sure we're covering all our bases? Are we hitting zinc and selenium and copper and, you know, are we hitting all of these things or do we need to some things or bring in a supplement because we don't have the energy availability to get it from food.

So the Salty has all, that's why those daily minerals are in there. The one thing I do worry about sometimes is the, is the vitamin profile, right?

Yeah.

You know, am I actually getting enough of, of the stuff? I mean, I know the eggs give me the choline. Uh, too much choline is not a great thing. Oh, on the weekends. So, that's going to be, you may... This is maybe one of those ones where you're going to say you're, you're crazy. Six poached eggs, cup of white rice, uh, three and a half, uh, cooked weight spinach...

Or chard.

Awesome. That sounds del-, that sounds good.

It's so good with some salt. Some real salt. I mean, like seriously, like I, I love that breakfast better than anything. I, I look forward to it all. So that's, you know, those are on the days where I'm going to be at home.

Yeah. And then um and then I'm going to have that shake and then two other meals during that day because that's what balances out.

Nice. Um, I think this is one thing that people don't understand, that notion of needing less protein, and somebody once said that your body becomes better at utilizing that protein, is recognizes that, able maximize use of it so you can use less of it. Is this true?

I mean your body is so smart. Like if you go very high-fat diet, right? Like your body gets more efficient at absorbing, oxidizing, utilizing fats as a fuel source. If you go very low fat and higher carb, your body's going to put more uh GLUT4 receptors along the small intestine, you're going to get better at absorbing and pulling the carbohydrates out of the intestine into the bloodstream and potentially, hopefully stocking those away in muscle glycogen and liver glycogen. So, your body is very smart to adapt to these things.

Around the protein and like kind of like adapting to higher consumption, and I would imagine just from like a digestion standpoint, certainly your digestive system has to learn how to move that through and absorb that. And yeah, are we being efficient with the utilization of that? I I am actually not sure. I I do know that there's literature that suggests that there's uh lean mass sparing when we have adequate carbohydrate availability in the diet too, which is another thing.

Yeah, you wouldn't think that, right? But carbohydrate,

right, pulling water into the muscle makes perfect sense.

Yeah. Um, and you know, we have all these people that are sort of like advocates of the low carb diet, heavy carnivore. I mean, I've tried everything. I've gone keto. I've done carnivore. I've done all that. And at the end of the day, I kind of feel like in some way, shape, or form, mine's kind of close to a Mediterranean diet in some way. First of all, it it's satisfying.

Mhm. But it's you keep it simple and it works with your life to implement, right? I think people kind of can overcomplicate it and maybe that like that to some people might look really boring or they might get bored of that, but it allows you to start just nailing the basics in a simple, realistic, like batch cook a bunch of ground turkey and like portion it out in a couple Tupperwares and like grab it to go. It like just makes your life a little bit easier when these things are available and in sight and in mind instead of being like, oh my goodness, I I'm starving, and like what is there to eat, and you're opening up your pantry and now you're eating your kids' Cheez-Its and goldfish and it's like, there you go, like, you know, we didn't have it available.

You you just described my life. I mean

I talked to I have lots of clients. Trust me.

Yeah. Yeah. You know what, it's so funny too because you're trying with these kids to like, you're like, all right, you know, you want to be a kid. I get it, but man, can you not have this stuff? Like it's like every time I turn around. But I've also gotten to a point in time where I'm so dialed in on this particular goal, and that's kind of how I am. I'm just a person that's like, "Okay, we're making this. This is happening and that's the way it's going to go,"

right?

And I like it.

Yeah,

I like it. And I feel like, you know, every DEXA, I go, "Okay, hey, I'm doing this in a reasonable way." Although I will say none of these, none of the tech I think is accurate enough to really tell you what you're really dealing with on any given day. You can kind of feel it more in your body, become sensitive, than you can see it accurate. This is a good diet.

Yeah.

Oh. So, so now is a good time to check in on the ketones. We're 45 minutes into it. Did you feel any difference? You didn't?

No.

Okay. Oh, man. I

I ran coffee before I came here.

You did?

I drink one cup of coffee every morning.

You do?

Yeah. Well, two espresso shots. Maybe it'll kick in later. I don't

We'll see. All right. Um, well, it is what it is. Maybe we should try some more.

Okay.

Okay.

I'll finish my I'll finish my cup and see if it hits me.

Um, all right. So, what what do people need to know about um caloric intake? Because we just talked about how I'm trimming out like a tablespoon of olive oil and 2 ounces of protein. Uh, and now maybe there's some thought that I could trim the protein back a little bit more, add a little more carbs in. The hardest part for people is to make a decision. We know scientifically that that decision window lasts about 72 hours if you're lucky. I want to make a change. That change you want to make, you got to make it. You got to start moving stuff around. Move your furniture around.

Change, get rid of everything out of your refrigerator. Do the stuff. You know what I mean? Change your environment. Because if you kind of just fall back into it, then you're back into the rut. What are the things that people can do when they want to make a change and they decide, hey, I want to live a healthy lifestyle. I'm sick of this. I don't want to I don't want to feel this way. I want to head in the right direction.

Yeah, that's a great question. Uh, I mean, a lot of what I've seen with my clients and then also in the literature in terms of like sustaining those habits is actually small little changes progressively over time. Oftentimes like the "on Monday I'm cutting all of this out and I'm," you know, that doesn't stick um oftentimes for a lot of people, maybe for a short period of time. Atomic Habits is a great book. I really love that book, and um a lot of that comes down to like the things that you want to change, like make those as easy as possible with as little barriers to implement them, and then the things you don't want to be doing, make them as difficult as possible to do.

So, like with your meals, right, it's like they're prepped, they're there, they're pre-portioned, like all I have to do is grab them. Well, it would be a lot harder if they weren't prepped in there. And now we're like, it's lunch time. Like, what are we going to eat? And, oh, well, there's a McDonald's down the street and that's easy. And I'll just go there cuz like I don't have enough time to do this. And and so now you've made McDonald's is very easy. They're making it very easy for you. They're putting low barriers there. It's a low cost. It's you can drive right through. Like they're doing all those things to make it easily accessible, and you need to make it even easier for you with what your goals are.

And then he gives a great example in his book. I think he was trying to stop watching TV. So he unplugged his TV. He's like, "That'll make it a little bit harder cuz like I have to plug in my TV now and watch it." And he's like, "Well, I kept watching TV. I just plugged it in." So he's like, "Then I took my TV off the wall and put it in the closet in the house." And it's like, okay, well, now that's a lot more effort to like got to get the TV out of the closet and like put it up and plug it in. It's like, so you're trying to make these things a little bit harder.

And when it comes to diet, it's like the pantry, right? Like filled with the like Cheez-Its and the whatever uh goldfish and all that stuff. It's like what about something healthier for you that's like you put in front of those things, or or you put these things that you don't want out in front of you, like in behind like a solid panel cabinet, and the things you want available are in the front of the refrigerator or on the counter so you can easily grab them and you have them in stock on hand.

Um, same thing with movement, right, is like if you are having a difficult time like getting out. Like I have a client and he's like, well, the weather's not right nice so I didn't go outside. It's like, treadmill desk. Like we are getting you a treadmill desk and we are going to like, you're on your computer, you're sitting all day, like we're getting you a treadmill desk so we can get some movement in, because if like the outside weather is like a barrier to you, like we have to find some way to get that movement in. And so there are absolutely solutions. It's just you. A lot of times we don't want to see them because we're so comfortable in what we're doing and it's uncomfortable to make these changes, and a lot of people aren't willing to do that. As much as they say they want this end goal, they're not willing to make that change.

I think there are just moments where it's like we're ready to make a change, and when you in that moment, you got to make it.

Got to make a decision. You have to just do it.

Yeah. Um, and I think that's where, you know, the country really is. We're at this point in time where just care in general, right? End of life for people these days is is super expensive. It's where we spend all the money. People could have, you know, we look at all of the chronic diseases, all the things that are really problematic. Some of it certainly is genetic, but come on.

Yeah.

Heart disease is a disease of decades. Neurocognitive things are diseases or are diseases of decades. All these things are all things that could be managed, I think, a huge portion of it, if you just ate the right foods, dieted and hydrated properly.

Yeah.

You're probably in pretty good shape.

Yeah. Yeah.

And you can probably afford yourself a little bit of fun every once in a while.

Mhm.

Right.

Yeah. Or people call a cheat meal. Is that what you mean by fun or

just going out to dinner? You know, something like that. I mean, I don't know that you're going to feel right afterwards. I mean, I, it's sort of interesting. Like, I used to have to entertain people all the time.

Mhm.

That, look at that food. I go, "Yeah."

Yeah.

Yeah. Man, that's not

alcohol that surrounds like a lot of like the work dinners and

Yeah. That, I mean, to me, that is really, I mean, I don't know. Do you think that um, do you think most alcohol tastes great?

No. I actually have not drankenness of alcohol in

16 years.

There you go.

Yeah.

I mean, some people really love it. It's part of their life. Totally. You want to do it, go for it.

Yeah.

Um, I think the consequences are pretty clear. Disrupts the uh, you know, gut microbiome, dysregulates a nervous system. Um, I mean, you would know again a lot more than I would.

Yeah.

Tell me some benefits of alcohol. What, what are they?

Yeah. Well, I I talk to tons of my clients about alcohol because it is like, it is very prominent and it's a social thing or it's a work trip thing. So, I always talk to my clients about that, especially if they have body composition change goals. Like, if my athletes don't even change their caloric intake, but they just stop drinking alcohol, we see the weight just drop off. Like, it's pretty incredible.

And um yeah, I remember one of the conferences I went to, there was a researcher presenting on alcohol and he was basically saying like everything alcohol touches as it goes through your body increases the cancer risk of that thing. Oral cancer, cancer, esophageal cancer, stomach cancer, like colon cancer, liver cancer. Um, and yeah, so after like after that and then everything else I've learned about alcohol, like there doesn't appear to be any physiological benefit, maybe outside of like some people report a mental benefit, but from what I understand from even that literature is like you're um suppressing your ability to handle stressors outside of alcohol consumption.

It's really true. I mean like I think the more, again it comes back to awareness, right? People are becoming just more and more aware and the studies are there, right? It's like I think it's harder and harder for people like today ego, like how could a, like people smoke cigarettes?

I know.

Is that real? Did they really do that today? I mean I could see there wasn't that long ago people were smoking cigarettes, but like today, really?

It's back. It's back.

Is, why is that?

Probably some celebrity or something. I don't know. And and Zyn nicotine pouches.

Yeah.

Mhm. The vape pens and yeah, it's just

Yeah. I mean, all that stuff is is pretty crazy. And that's an interesting mental trick that you just brought up, like, hey, it's still there,

right?

Is it incremental? It's like you said, just little little changes over time.

Yeah.

How do you plan that out for a client? Is it individualized? You

It's definitely individualized and it's uh, yeah, how they're how they're moving through that process. To like the alcohol example, um, I'll have a client like maybe we try and do a non-alcohol variation. Like they still want something to be social, to hold, to sip on, like, and but if we can switch it to non-alcohol. I might even just start with instead of four drinks in a night, you're doing two. Like we're just cutting it in half and you're still getting some alcohol, but we're trying to reduce that and we're just trying to inch our way over time away from alcohol as much as we can. Uh, depending on their goals, right?

And then yeah, maybe then it becomes a non-alcoholic thing. Maybe it's a sparkling water with some electrolytes in it and a slice of a lime on the top. You know, it just makes it feel like a little something special. Um, and then and that's zero calorie. Like, so, you know, now we're not getting the alcohol that's going to disrupt our sleep, that's going to affect our how we're metabolizing fats. It's not going to affect our muscle uh recovery, and we can sleep good, and we can get into our deep sleep and repair muscle tissue, and then we got no calories from it either. So, it's just like this progression over time.

Yeah. I mean that's, I think that's really great. That's kind of a Kaizen sort of approach, right? Incremental progress. Dr. Richard Lewis Miller, who was on the podcast, said that's what how he would treat his patients.

Oh yeah.

They say with exercise, it's like, I can't exercise. Oh, well, could you just walk for five minutes?

Yeah.

They come back and, I walked for five minutes. Terrific.

Yes. Got to get this, the wins, the small little wins. People need to feel that even if it's five minutes of walking.

Yeah. And then he goes, "And then I I was like, 'So, what did you increase it by?' Like, you know, 10 minutes or something. No, no, no. 1 minute. Okay. Next week, can they walk for 6 minutes?"

Yes.

You would get them to a point in time they're walking an entire hour.

Amazing.

You know what I mean? And the same thing with food.

Yeah. Was it, it might have been in Atomic Habits, like you, or maybe it was just like SMART goals too, where you just like want to make something like so stupidly easy where it's like, obviously I would be able to do that, right? It's like one more minute. Okay. And then yeah, over time, over 6 months, now you're walking an hour. Um, it needs to seem so easy that like, of course, I would, I could do that.

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All right. So now let's get into the thing that we didn't talk about before, which is hydration. Nutrition is oftentimes just thought of as just the food side of things. I think most nutritionists don't, they look at hydration as a big part of the

Definitely. Yeah. For sport. For sure. We, yeah, we'll measure hydration status in the body via different ways. We can do urine analysis testing. We can do uh sweat testing, sensor testing. So, we can know, you know, how are you losing water at 8,000 ft elevation and 63° versus sea level and it's humid and it's 85°. What are your different sweat rates or sodium losses? In women too, we'll look at menstrual cycle phase; seems to differentiate between sodium loss in the body.

Um, and then we'll use that to apply it to racing scenarios certainly, um, or training scenarios to make sure that they're meeting their body's needs and we have adequate blood plasma volume, because one of the biggest performance detriments is dehydration. And so the more dehydrated we are, the harder our heart has to work, the higher the perceived exertion, um, the the more likely we are to like quit or feel like we're bonking or hitting a wall and and and tap out of that session or the event. Um, we risk muscle cramps, GI issues. Um, so there's a whole host of stuff we want to make sure someone's like properly hydrated for, for training, racing, and then, um, that's just all on top of like day-to-day, which oftentimes should be, like we say, like a minimum half of your body weight in ounces per day, um, of fluids.

Yeah. What is it? 5.5 or something like that. It was like 5.5 for women, 6.5 for men or some sort of stat that I saw

for liter, like liters per day.

Yeah. Something like that. I mean, I drink about 160 fluid ounces of water, but I'm in the sauna for like 15, 20 minutes. So, I mean, you're going to sweat out for at least 40, like I don't know, 40 ounces of that is

You could weigh yourself right before and right after the sauna. And then every pound of fluid, well, every pound of weight you lose technically is 16 ounces. But to replace that, you actually want to do a one and a half to two times replacement because your kidneys are going to diurese and pee out excess. So, you want to do 24 to 32 additional fluid ounces on top of every, for every pound you lost, in addition to your daily fluid goal.

Kyla, you are my new hero. I was so stunned. That is so cool. Wow. You know what? I've never, no one's ever told me that before.

Yeah.

So, you can literally just go in, get on the scale, go back out, look at it, and then do the equation.

Yeah. Ideally, you want as little clothing on as possible because obviously the post-weight, you're going to have sweat in your gear or in your clothing. Um, but yeah, if you can.

Yeah, there's like a lot of naked guys hanging out around the scale. It's a little weird times. I don't know. You know, it's like I'm just trying to get in and get out. I usually don't use that scale, but you know, I guess. Yeah, I have to.

Yeah.

Yeah. I think like the sauna uh is super important. Um, let's talk about cold plunging with your clients, the athletes that you're working with. Uh, so we know, you know, there's been, the studies have come out that talk about uh aerobic cold exposure good,

right,

anaerobic, um, not so good.

What do you mean when you say that? Like is this like

So somebody's riding a bike, good, right? Somebody's weight training, not so. You're blunt, blunting the the the actual inflammation that comes that you want for a hypertrophy standpoint,

right,

and I think the first person that brought that out was like Andrew Huberman or something, that he found something that said that, and you know how the musical chairs travels. But uh, I always think about, immediately think of like swimming in the lake, you know, at Tahoe and just being like, those, you always see those people swimming early in the morning. Um, yeah, I think, I think it's really interesting about this cold plunging thing and I'm just curious where you come out on it.

Yeah. I mean, in our, with our audience, an athlete audience, it's like if we're trying, there's a, we look at their year of training, right? And there's this kind of like preseason base building and then there's like prep for the first race and then we're like in season with, you know, multiple races, maybe two races even in a weekend depending on what their sport is. Maybe they're stage racing, so they're doing, you know, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, they're riding a 100 miles every single day and it's time segments.

Um, and in that preseason, that base uh season, we don't want to do oftentimes anything that would blunt the training adaptations that we're trying to drive as much as we can, even with supplements. Like, we don't want to layer in the bicarb, the beta alanine, the anything that can um

slow down.

Yeah. We just want to get as much as we can from their body physiologically and then we're going to tap on these additional things. When it comes to the cold plunging, we absolutely see like, yeah, it'll blunt training adaptation, also an endurance athlete, but if I have an athlete that is doing multi-day stage races, well, we've built up our training adaptation already to that point. So, if you want to jump from the cold plunge to help, actually like it will speed up recovery after day one and two and three in preparation for day four, sure, yeah, you can do that. It'll help from a recovery standpoint. You're going to blunt whatever you've got from that day, but

you already tapering out anyway, right?

Yep. So, that's kind of the use case with that. And I think um uh Cass Fuches, I think he's out of, is he uh Florida, Australia. He does some research in that area, too. The cold plunge for recovery or not and like use cases and what is happening physiologically. Um, he's a great researcher on that too, and I, that's where I pulled my information from oftentimes.

I have never really liked cold plunging. I did it back in the day when I was younger. Uh, there was a club in in Marin that had a cold plunge.

Oh yeah.

I was like, "This is cool." And it's kind of nice, you know, every once in a while. My thing has always been the lake. It's like to get in the lake, I like to swim for an hour, like, you know what I mean? That's my thing.

Yeah.

Swim for an hour and, you know, get a good workout in. Um, and you really feel, I mean you just come out and you feel like so amazing in that it's like endorphins or dopamine or whatever it is are just kicking in. It's an amazing thing. Uh, but I've never like that. I like the idea of like sitting in cold water that for like five minutes or 3 minutes or whatever.

Yeah.

I think it's like it feels almost like, look at me, you know, look at all the, like look what I'm doing, and I don't know. I just don't know if it's, you know, what, I don't know that much about it. Um, and then fasting. Let's get into fasting. I had to ask you because I've got, I got the top of the top. So, let's let's go right to the the heart of it.

All right. So, there's been so much talk about fasting 16:8. Now, a lot of people are kind of like looking at 16:8. Uh, you've heard about these long fasts, right? Where you got these people that are going out for a while. Um, so I think some of that's medically supervised around certain uh conditions. Somebody has cancer, they're trying to starve out the cancer or whatever.

And then there's this 5 to 7 day window for autophagy type thing. And now there's some new stuff coming out where people are trying to do these sequencing of uh eating and training a certain way to get the benefits of the five to seven days but in a day. And I've done them, like 16:8. I've done shorter windows, feeding windows, and I've done OMAD, which just, OMAD just didn't work for me from a training perspective. It just is like, doesn't make sense.

Yeah. The question I wanted to ask you is like, okay, well, muscle protein synthesis, right? Shouldn't it be spread out over this period of time? Because you can only absorb so much of it at any one given point in time. Wouldn't that be true with all food?

Oh, that's a good question. Like with carbohydrates and fats, too.

Yeah.

I actually can't say that I've like seen any literature on that. I mean, what comes to mind is obviously like the glycemic response and what's happening to your blood sugar throughout the course of the day, right? If you eat all your protein, 275 grams of protein in one meal, but then you have like carbohydrates and fats here and carbohydrates and fats here and carbohydrates and fats here. And now it's like carbohydrates and fats and 275 grams of protein. Well, now these like meals are probably like shooting your blood sugar up and you're coming down. You're shooting your blood sugar up and coming down and then we eat this meal and it's like more stable, right? And so, um, yeah. So, I think there's that to think about too with that.

I know what study you're talking about that came out around the can we just compartmentalize our protein into our daily needs of of protein requirement into one meal a day versus spread through multiple meals of the day. And from and they were looking at I believe muscle protein synthesis. Um, and I believe they saw the same rates, but I think there's that's there's other things to think about of like what about the blood sugar response throughout the course of the day if we're not putting protein in with those meals or what about the individual's satiety throughout the course of the day? Now, they're not satiated. So, maybe now they're eating more calories because they have protein until the very end of the day or wherever you put it, right? Um, so I think there's other pieces that need to be considered when we look at a study like that. Where do we break it up? Do we put it into one?

And then I do know that there have been studies where um they split them into two groups. They both did the exact same resistance training program. They calculated their protein requirements and they did have one group, I believe, consume all their protein, I think between two meals a day. And then the other group consumed their protein spread between three to five meals per day. And they measured lean mass, like actual DEXA scan, not protein synthesis. And what they saw is that the group with that had the greater distribution spread saw greater improvements in their body composition than the group that did the lesser meals but still recommended protein intake for their their body weight. So there's something there.

And I know um uh José Areta, Areta, he did a study looking at um also muscle protein synthesis, not body composition or lean mass, but he had uh casein protein, 80 grams of casein protein, and he broke it into three groups. It was either eight feeds of 10 gram of casein protein, four feeds of 20 gram of casein protein or um two 40 g. So it's 40, 20 or 10 grams of c- casein spread throughout the day. The 4 by 20 performed best with muscle protein synthesis. So 20 gram feeds seem to be more effective.

Yeah. And that's interesting because you you're going to get an insulin response, right? And you need the insulin to to shuttle that into the muscle. So there's all this talk about insulin is the enemy and like all this kind of stuff, but at the same time really you can't build muscle without it, right?

Yes.

So I mean there's so much, you know, the funniest thing is like if you just spend enough time on YouTube, you can just get super educated in really bad information so quickly, right? You know what I mean?

Oh, for sure.

Because people will come up to me and they'll say, "Hey, I want to know like, hey, what so what supplements are you taking?" And I'm like, "Look, Ben, that's not the cheat code." I'm like, first of all, I'm an N of one. You are N of one. You need to have the whole workup done to understand what works for you. And then you also have to track it over time because body changes. Um, and it's amazing to see how people are just not, you know, they're just not seeking the the counsel of a professional.

I always say everything that I do, what's really terrible that's out there right now is a lot of people trying to bypass true professionals and try to figure it out on their own, especially with AI, which I think is super dangerous. And as a guy that develops AI technology, I can say there's a lot of bad information floating around out there and that's where AI gets it. That's how the model gets trained.

Totally.

Yeah. So, it's really coming to a professional like you and I love your entire approach of kind of like you can evaluate over time.

Yeah. And like you're you brought up the fasting thing, right, to um and I do think that is also very individual. Like I have had clients where they were doing one 24-hour fast a week. We were nailing their protein during the week. They were doing resistance training. They dropped muscle so fast. They lost their lean mass when they were doing fasting. So, I think it is really important to test your like see how you respond if that's something you want to do. Um, and see are you losing muscle or you supporting it like...

All right. So, here we go.

Yeah.

This is the other area that I'm wanting to go to which is uh you know so I'm a huge DEXA's, DEXA.

Right.

Right. And you know, for what I'm doing in my goals right now, I I need to do DEXAs more frequently to understand. So, I was in the severe caloric deficit. I've got to figure out, hey, am I holding lean mass? Scale's not going to tell me, right?

Scale will lie, right?

Even the scales that say that they're within range of DEXA. And my business partner just bought a Hume scale, sent it back. He's like, "This is so far off."

Yeah. Yeah, bioimpedance compared to uh you know the low low low exposure X-ray, right?

Is I think where you just really figure it out. It's really exciting because you get to see like hey I actually did okay so that was brutal.

You know a thousand calorie deficit. You got to be talking to people...

Yeah.

...and telling them what you're thinking cuz I think that's dangerous.

Yeah. I mean, I guess if you have massive amount of body fat on you, it maybe doesn't...

Or what your training demand is. Like I'll have athletes where they're burning 4,000 calories just in a ride. And so it's like to take away 1,000 calories on that day. That's um it it is very dependent. Like if you're doing a 45-minute strength training session, that's all you do for the day and that's your movement, you get 10,000 steps, taking away 1,000 calories can be that can be a lot of your intake.

Yeah. I mean like I think our our workouts are somewhere in the neighborhood of you know let's just call it like if we were to straight line the numbers it's like 700, right? And then that bike ride you know get some walking in uh walk out to the point back that sort of thing walk around the island then a Peloton ride at night for 45 minutes I'm going to hit my number. I feel like that's the threshold on exercise for me.

Mhm.

And so the way just recently that I decided to do it was to drop out. Okay. Where where would I take it out?

Mhm.

I'm going to take it out of the I'm going to take the olive oil out of the evening meal. I'm going to increase the greens. I'm going to take the protein out because I felt like I had enough.

Yeah.

All right. So, the great debate.

Yeah. Uh lean mass or total body weight for protein recommendations. There's literature around both. The highest protein recommendation I've ever seen in the literature, which was on calorie restriction, lean individuals. So, I think it was men sub 25% body fat, women sub 35% body fat. Um, they were doing 3.1 gram per kilo of fat-free mass. So, not total body weight. So, lean body mass and fat mass are different just for reference. So, fat-free mass will always read higher than lean body mass because it's counting your bone, right? Um, so just keep that.

That's how DEXA does it, right?

Uh, DEXA will give you they uh there are three compartment models. So they give you lean.

Okay.

So actually your fat-free mass value would be more if you include your bone into the lean body mass value. Then you would multiply the 3.1 by that. So it actually might be a little bit more than that. Um, and then Bill Campbell and Brad Schoenfeld are two of like the top protein researchers. Bill Campbell primarily works like physique athletes. So, a lot of like the bodybuilding, weight cutting, stuff like that. And uh his recommendation lands like somewhere in the I think like a max of 2.5 grams per kilo uh body weight.

Yeah. I mean, it's really high threshold.

Yeah. And then outside of that, the protein recommendations that are like 2.6 or greater grams per kilogram of body weight are all injured like burn victim situations where they like have no skin on their body and they like have high protein requirement demand to replenish that. Obviously not an athlete, not looking at leanness of the individual, but like that's where I've seen very high protein requirements when we're injured or like severe burn situations.

Okay. So, I'm at the top.

Mhm. You're at the top of the highest I've ever seen in the literature.

I'm I'm hitting all of the I'm hitting all the bells on the protein.

Yes.

Right. Carbs seem low.

I mean, yes, I think a little bit, but again, with your caloric restriction, it's playing that game of like where do we what do we keep and what do we take away from, right? And...

Yeah, can't take too much fat out. I think that the for me the variable where it changes isn't in the carbohydrate. And you know what I'm trying to do obviously is for a guy my age to go into that territory of, you know, body fat percentage. I mean, I want to cut visceral fat down into that, you know.

Non-existent.

Yeah. You know, was I mean...

Right.

...if that's ever really possible.

Yeah.

Um and it's pretty low now.

Yeah.

It's really low. You know, I'm trying to go into a zone that few people travel and be in that top percentile um that top 1 percentile um is my goal.

Yeah.

You know, to go from where I am right now into that is a just a really, you know, you're breathing rarefied air there. They're very I mean the people that you work with for sure they're doing that all the time, right? They're down, they're getting down there, right?

Um, we have to watch like for body fat percentage because and when we're weight cutting it's a very we're watching for a lot of things: immune system functioning, we're checking thyroid health, sex hormone production, cortisol, because all of these things are going to get suppressed. We want to make sure we come out of that properly and that those lab markers come back up and so there's a whole process we need to move through and watch for those things. Um, we're watching injury risk, um, you know, thoughts around food, food motivation, cravings, um, irritability. So, you know, how extreme are those things and can they manage the numbers or do we need to do um a week at maintenance or um do a refeed day or take them out of it faster?

That's so cool. That notion of I've been in a deficit for a period of time. Maybe just eating for a week at m- maintenance or doing a refeed day where you just pound like ton of carbs.

Yeah.

Yeah. But yeah, you're able to like top off that muscle glycogen when that muscle glycogen is replenished. That's going to downregulate that ghrelin, your hunger hormone, and keep you satiated. So that signaling to the brain is not as loud for a short period of time. So you can sustain oftentimes that diet a little bit longer.

I got to tell you, the diet that I'm on right now, I feel like it could stay on forever.

Oh, that's good. You want it to be sustainable.

Yeah. I, you know, when I eat it on time, I feel like I'm just completely dialed in.

Yeah.

Um, hey, one thing we didn't talk about, creatine.

Mhm.

Uh I talked about my use.

Mhm.

There's a lot of data now that's come out that creatine is great for women and yet women seem to be adverse to using creatine because it's I don't want to get all bulky and puffy and all that kind of stuff. What are your thoughts?

I mean there yes there's a lot of great use or great studies starting to come out around creatine um in women. There's a more literature I think looking actually at um like perimenopause and postmenopausal women and potentially creatine around that that group also doing resistance training and pairing it with creatine and potentially seeing benefits in bone health. Um Darren Candow is a great researcher in the creatine space. I think probably one of the best in the world and he um when he when I chatted with him last he was talking about how there might actually be well one less creatine phosphate in women for sure. And then he gets into the concept around the creatine phosphate levels in the brain under fatigue and um and helping with cognition which that applies to men and women. But then he also was bringing up um that the I think the he was saying the uterus has creatine stores and so they're starting to look into research in that area which I'm curious to find out what they find out from that.

Um, yeah. So, there's stuff starting to come out around it, but in terms of it um causing someone to feel bulky, creatine can pull in water. There are some people that maybe respond that way. What I have experienced in my practice is that if someone retains water from creatine, they actually need to increase their fluid intake.

Yeah. Got it.

To help um flush some of that out. And um yeah, that's usually kind of the solution to that. And but yeah, very much in the endurance space, there's this whole power-to-weight ratio, right? Or lighter is faster. And so there's oftentimes a fear in male cyclists and female cyclists of I don't want to gain weight because there's a bunch of hills that I have to climb in this race. Um and so maybe they're adjusting their creatine dosing leading into an event, but honestly doesn't move the scale that much because it didn't move it up that much in the first place.

So, um, yeah, I think there's certainly benefits to it and and preferably consuming a creatine monohydrate form because that's what I mean so much of the literature has looked at that form. Um, and that's, yeah, we have a lot of literature to back that form. So, that's kind of the space I fall in if someone's asking about creatine and wanting to utilize it.

I think the good news is like a lot of the women that I talked to are starting to take creatine and they feel more and I think I'm getting like in touch with all sorts of stuff that you know like things are changing.

Yeah.

All right. DEXA scan definite fan, right?

Yeah. I think with any device like we know that there's a slight influence of uh body water status even in DEXAs and um it's minor. I also always recommend like choose the same machine if you can. I know BodySpec they have different rooms or mobile vans and stuff like that and each one's calibrated a little bit differently. So trying to choose and get into the same same time of day so similar hydration status of the body and then ideally similar machine um and not comparing like an a Bod Pod to calipers to InBody to um DEXA because they can be like five to I've even seen 10% different body fat reading. Um, oftentimes DEXAs read higher than the other modalities. However, DEXAs are more accurate.

It's funny because like so on the InBody my um percentage is way lower.

Yeah. If you do calipers like you're probably like 3% body fat.

Yeah. DEXA's is definitely I think the the thing I think that's interesting. I thought about that too. I was like, you know, you're driving these vans around. How much does that actually, you know, just the road throw off the uh, you know, the calibration of that? You would think that it's wherever you got to, there'd have to be a recalibration phase almost like a CBCT or any kind of CT scanner where you're going to recalibrate.

Yeah, that would make sense. I would wonder if BodySpec would actually disclose that or DEXA would disclose that.

Yeah, that would be interesting.

Yeah. Well, you know, BodySpec, the one thing I would hand it to them is they've done a great job of growing.

Mhm.

They're massively taking off. They started off in Culver City. They've spread all over the place. They're in like I think eight states or more now.

Yeah.

They're they seem to be the ones that who use...

Yeah. Well, we used uh BodySpec for sure. And then I have clients all over the world. So depending on what we have access to. Um sometimes it's a university has access, sometimes we only have access to an InBody. And if if they can get to that same InBody and a similar time of day, like that's the device we'll use because we just don't have access to a DEXA. But yeah, if we can do a DEXA, I definitely lean towards that.

My provider uses InBody and he gets a really good way to figure out with in conjunction with a PNOE.

Oh yeah. Mhm.

So yeah. What are your thoughts on PNOE?

I don't know how much they've changed. I first heard about them I think when they first came out, which was probably like 10 years ago.

Yeah. Big changes.

Yes. Okay. Go ahead. Because yeah, at the time I remember I don't think it was super accurate representation of what someone was actually expending, but I the concept of rounded I think is awesome. So we can start to see in practice what's happening versus like um I think BodySpec offers the RMR test where you go and you lay down, they do the gas exchange which is not the gold standard. Gold standard is going to be uh doubly labeled water but um which like it's not available to the public.

No.

Um, but that oftentimes when I've even had athletes do the RMR test uh with the RMR cart and hopefully this has been fixed too, but it reads higher. If I put an athlete on that reported um resting metabolic rate value, they gain weight and then if you look at DEXA, they give you an RMR, right, based off of lean body mass. So, which oftentimes is lower and then that value or that calculation when I use that can help the athlete maintain. So I and this has been many years so maybe that has changed too but the athletes that I've had do the RMR testing they gain weight when we use that value.

Yeah. It's so weird isn't it?

Yeah.

It just goes to show that the data can just throw things off so quickly but you need it in one way shape or form. And that's why I want to track everything as much as I possibly can and try to narrow it down.

Well, you need to make sure too like you have a trained professional like doing the test the same way the you know it's...

Yeah. I just don't know how anybody else I don't know how somebody really does it.

Yeah.

I mean I guess you can just train really hard, eat appropriately and you're going to get great results, right? Drink enough water, hydrate, whatever. Um and eat, you know, a whole food meal, stand out in the middle of the grocery store, you're probably going to be okay.

Yeah. Right. The average individual, right? Elite athletes. No.

Right. Right. It's not normal. Nobody goes around at, you know, sub 10, right?

Well, you think about like bodybuilders like uh on a DEXA, stage day ready, like show day ready. They're probably 10% on a DEXA.

Yeah.

Calipers are probably like 3%. Um but that's not sustainable. They're not walking around all year at that.

And which I think is totally unhealthy, right? Usually this this notion of uh off season loading up, you know what I mean? And then cutting, cutting, cutting.

Yeah.

My goal right now is to get to something that is down that allows for lean mass to gain uh I got a plan that's going to slingshot out of this thing. When I say slingshot over a 24-month period, you know what I mean? It's a slow game, right? Long game and you know slow increments of caloric surplus. Um, and then maintenance. Trying to come up with a really great plan for how to do that because I mean at the end of the day, maintaining skeletal muscle mass, we now know, is absolutely critical.

Yeah.

Like, and if you're not doing core training, we did a core training yesterday. I'm going to tell you something. Today, we were supposed to do legs. There was no way. I could not squat today for the life of me.

Yeah.

We were I was so sore.

Mhm.

So, you know, the bottom line is it's like...

Yeah.

...train periodization, training programming, nutrition, sleep, it all hydration, all plays into it. It's crazy.

Yeah.

I feel like I could talk to you all day forever. You know what I mean? And I'm sure you're like, "How quickly can I get out of here? This guy is driving me nuts."

There's nutrition is like so there's so much. Yeah. So many rabbit holes.

Why is it so underutilized for anybody that other than the people that are trying to achieve some sort of goal? Why is this not mainstream? Like you look at allopathic medicine just misses it. Like I've talked to a primary care I'm not going to say who it is. Um but I mean it's just like oh you're going to have you're going to have high blood pressure, you're going to have prostate cancer. You're going to have this. You're going to have that. It just comes with the territory. Does it really?

Oh gosh. Yeah.

Kind of have to be that way, right? You know what I mean?

That's Yeah, that's their training and what they were exposed to.

Yeah. They have no nutrition training, right?

Yeah.

Well, I got to tell you, it has been an absolute push. Hey, will you come back? Will you come back and review your diet again?

Yeah. No, you know, I think I think at this point in time, I need to pay for that. But, um, keep us up to date on um on things.

I think that's like in the pathway to peak performance. What I've come to realize and really truly believe in is if you want to achieve anything, the foundation has to be there and it's got to be solid. You put a sound foundation in on sand, you're not achieving anything, right?

Yeah. Yeah. I like that.

So, write a book.

Hey, maybe that'll happen. Yeah.

Where's your book?

Oh gosh. I I have people who have told me to write a book and they're like, I have I have the people if you want to write a book. And I'll put my wheels together. I got to, you know, spin it together a little bit. Maybe one day.

Then it straight avenue.

Thank you for having me.

Thank you.