EP98 Rebroadcast - Dr. John Berardi

This is episode 98 of the Empowered Athlete Podcast. Hi everyone. Today's episode is a rebroadcast of a guest that we brought you back before COVID started and all the craziness hit. It's Dr. John Berardi. This was recorded back in January of 2020 and we thought we would share this interview one more time as there's so much that can be gained on your mindset, your health and wellness from the guru of health and wellness, the Dr. John Berati. We hope you enjoy. Dr. John Berardi is the co founder of Precision Nutrition, the largest private nutrition coaching company in the world. And in my mind, he's the godfather of modern nutrition. It's John's practical, research based, common sense approach as well as a keen desire to continually improve techniques and methods that saw Precision Nutrition help tens of thousands of clients reach their goals. John has been sought after by the best of the best. Apple, Equinox, Nike, Titleist, the Spurs, Sloane Stephens, US Open Champion, Georges St. Pierre and numerous Olympic teams. His work and research is everywhere, from the pages of Men's Health to the Harvard Business Review, and He's been named one of the 20 smartest coaches in the world and one of the hundred most influential people in health and fitness. John's new book, Turn youn Passion for Health and Fitness Into a Powerful Purpose and a Wildly Successful Career is the ultimate guide to anyone looking to make an impact as a coach. The Empowered Athlete Podcast is honored to welcome Dr. John Berardi to the show.

Welcome to the Empowered Athlete Podcast. Podcast created to support athletes in their pursuit of excellence and inspire others toward their best lives. Hosted by Kari Schneider, coach to top performers in sport and life, and Paul Durden, former national and professional volleyball player.

All right, everyone, let's go. It's the Empowered Athlete Podcast. Paul and Kari, back with you. And we are joined by the Dr. John Berardi of Precision Nutrition. Author, lecturer, speaker all around. Great guy, family man, dad, very busy. So, Dr. John Berardi, thank you so much for making the time to chat with us today.

Thank you, Paul and Kari. It's great to reconnect with you both and I've been excited about our conversation.

It's been a long time. I've been really excited to reconnect, especially because you've got so many different things going on right now. But I know our audience is going to be just chomping at the bit to know more about your expertise when it comes to nutrition, because you are in the forefront of nutrition and more specifically, what we would call in the field, I guess change psychology because that's the thing that usually stops people from getting to their goals when it comes to nutrition. So on that note, what were some of the early aha moments for you in being able to get so many people to their either fitness or body composition or nutrition goals?

Mm, well, you know, probably right around the time you and I first met, major epiphany in this area. You know, I was, you know, super passionate in nutrition and I was doing my PhD work at the time. The first time I really started working with, you know, I was, I was brought out to Calgary, work with the US national bobsled team. My good for a really long time now Stu McMillan was there sort of time. And I remember, you know, I was a grad student, I was so passionate, I was like journals, you know, every Thursday was my day to go into the basement of the library, figure out all the latest in terms of findings around you get with nutrition to either improve our recovery or game day nutrition performance. So I had put together this talk for the bobsled athletes that I was really excited about. I think it might have been a four hour presentation. This is lesson number one coming up. The next thing was the science gift for translating the science into actionable things. But you know, it was actually performance, right? So in other words, if you are eating your vegetables and your protein, right Caloric amount and you're taking care of sort of the foundation of the these sort of these marginal things that you could do that would get you the extra one or two, the difference between winning and placing last, you know. And so I was so up at the front of the room to do my presentation to this group of bobsledders. And because out in Calgary, not bobsledders, there were speed athletes there, multiple time, you know, Olympic medalist and stuff. So I was like, I'm really gonna knock these people. And so about half them walk in late bags of McDonald's. I had made the wrong choice of presentation, you know, and this story, I mean, it feels like a particular moment, but it kind of sums up this feeling I was having for and probably a year of my development where I. It's just dawning on me these kinds of things when most of the people I'm talking to the foundations of the pyramids nailed down, you know, and the misconception in my head, and it is in most people's head, that if someone's at the elite level, sort of advanced in their training and recovery practices, their nutrition practices, and as I've come to learn, you know, with elite athletes in particular, they have some real challenges with stress management. All the things that we already know and are ratcheted up in their lives and they're often young and don't have and haven't ever been taught the tool. So that was the beginning of my like, okay, in the way it's not this, you know, special nutritional supplement or this caloric intake and that's going to be overcoming their limiting factor. It's different. It's what I call the content normal human that they're working two part time jobs to be able to ed or you know, whatever the costs are associated with their sport. All these kind of things spiraling around, you know, how to get the good nutrition in you or how to sleep routine down or how to deal with circadian rhythms. So that's when I started realizing like, oh man, for 100 million years here learning biochemistry, I need to spend a little bit of time learning about psych. We can help people do better in these areas within the context of their real human life. And you know, you guys have five children, we have four in our house. That's they're a great example of the context of a real human life. Right. It's like how do you get some of these things done when you have children and aging parents and financial responsibilities and all the things that come packed with looked at in a 360 degree way. And historically in the field of high performance or nutrition, what we would do is ignore all those things and just give people a training program or a diet and say follow this diet. If you do it, you'll get better. Then you're maybe lazy, you don't want it badly enough or whatever. And that was the coach's sort of orientation. Like you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. Right. Here's the plan. That's what I'm responsible for now. You're responsible for doing it.

Yeah.

And that's, that's what I'm hoping to change. You know, that's what a lot of my work in the field has been designed to change. How can I help? Coaches see that? Yeah, maybe you can't make the horse drink, but you can make it very, very thirsty and choose to drink on its own. You know.

It'S the conundrum of knowing what needs to be done and, and no one's ever going to want to be made to do something. And it's the exact same thing that I found as well, but from the, from the strength and conditioning and biomechanics side of things. It didn't matter how much exercise physiology or biomechanics I learned. The more I knew, the more I realized that it wasn't about knowing more and getting more detailed with the athlete or client. It was about having understanding their psychology from their end, from their thinking, from what drives them. And you've been able to take this understanding of people and what they're going through and be with them and then at the same time take very complex information and break it down to something that's really digestible for people to understand and feel good about taking steps toward. So those, I mean, that early aha moment, especially when so many people want to work with high performance athletes or athletes because they figure that's the, that's the epitome of the most amazing work in the physical world. Whereas the reality is that they're just like everybody else in terms of how they think with their fears or their concerns or their body image or any same things. They're all there for athletes just like they would be for someone who's struggling with excessive weight loss.

Yeah, we have a new, we have, we're working on a new series. There's a group out in California that we're working with to convey this exact thing. And so we're doing a series of conversations with LeBron James and with Arnold Schwarzenegger and with Gabby Reese and a host of other like super, super famous entertainment athlete people to talk about this exact concept. Because we tend to separate ourselves from elite athletes and presume that there's almost no overlap in the day to day rituals, routines and demands. You know, and so we wrote an article about this recently and the crux of it was like, you know, 15 things we've learned coaching elite athletes and how that applies to non athletes or recreational exercisers. And really what it comes down to is. The non athlete or the recreational exerciser thinks that their life demands must be more strenuous than the athlete's. You know what I mean? And the athlete knows like they're on a plane every other day and they have training and they have this humongous volume of stress in their lives. Training stress plus potentially other stressors that their demands are super high. And so we have two people kind of looking past each other's realities when you know, what we found with elite athletes is you don't make it more complex, you have to make it simpler. Their lives are already complex with all the demands of travel and competition and whether it's competition for a Spot on your own team or competition for, you know, in the actual event. So that's, you know, it's been a lot of fun going through this journey and realizing what people need versus what we think they need. And to your point of young coaches, you know, not only do they think it's going to be amazing working with these elite athletes, they have this preconceived notion that, oh, it's going to be easy, right? Like, because they're so disciplined, all I have to do is tell them what to do and they'll go do it, you know, And I'm like, gosh, I hate to break that little bubble because it's such a, you know, it's such a wonderful fantasy to have, you know, but it's not true. It's simply not true. I've met very, very, very, very few athletes at the, at the highest levels who you're just like, go do this. And they're like, yes, I will. And then they don't deviate, you know, and the other thing is, you know, again, it's not about whether they're disciplined or not. It's also about your advice, right? As you say, how are you delivering it in a way that makes them motivated to want to do some of it? And then how are you looking at the 360 degree picture of their environment and their life and all their life demands so you can slide your advice into it so it fits, rather than just grafting something that, you know, would be rejected by the immune system of their life, if you will, you know.

Yeah, that, that's a really important point. I had a coach, an amazing coach who actually would profile all of us on the team in that way that you're Talking about the 360 degree view of, you know, he wanted to be keenly aware of what was going on in everyone's private lives. How's their relationships, how is, you know, is there a family member who's dealing with something that they are feeling stress from and getting in touch with all those different things that play into what's going on in the mind of that athlete and potentially affect their performance or their ability to receive information or execute on a given plan?

Yeah, that's paramount. Or recover from the training. Right. Like the training may have to adapt to some of these things. You know, I, I talk about this in the dietary context all the time. Especially now with a lot of documentaries being made on, you know, that, that are hyper polarizing, you know, you know, when, when there's, when there are these kinds of Drastic dietary changes a person may go through, I think it's fine. But training may have to change. You know what I mean? Other lifestyle factors may have to change to go in conjunction with that. And this is what coaching gets you. It gets you someone who can look at that big picture and not look at things in a very siloed way. And incidentally, this is again, true for elite athletes. But this is how I coach people to coach their recreational exercisers as well. What's going on in your life, you know, and beyond, like, what are your goals? But we get really, really deep at what their motivating factors are for doing what they do, you know, and now we can start to construct a plan that again, isn't going to be rejected by the rest of their life, one that will actually maybe. And this is like when you're really playing at a high level as a coach, feels like it enhances the other things in their life and vice versa, you know, so their own skills and tools and lifestyle, their advantages that they already have, prop up what we're doing with training, nutrition supplementation, sleep, stress management, whatever. And those things I just mentioned, prop up the rest of their lives, too. And again, this is playing at a very high level as a coach.

It's the concept of if your life were a wheel, but divided into all of the different pie pieces, and there's three pie pieces in there that simply are down at a low level. And that wheel is just, you know, clunking along because it can't roll smoothly. Then as soon as those areas are addressed or those areas are given some tlc, some attention some time, then all of a sudden everything else is running smoothly or more so than it was before because of that exponential effect. That coach that Paul was talking about, I was fortunate enough to work with him, too. And it was such a. It's that effect right there. Because of that coach doing that with all of the players, it allowed the other coaches working with the team or the other service providers to be able to have a greater effect on the team as well. Because everybody was understanding what was going on in a way that could. That each professional could serve that person or those individuals and adjust and adapt instead of treating the team like one big glob of a unit, that everybody does the same thing, which is completely ridiculous in terms of who they are as individuals or athletes or getting the results that everybody needs individually in order to create the team chemistry in the team.

Yeah. And, you know, the thing that comes up in my mind as you guys share this Is, okay, great, what happens if I'm an athlete and I've never had a coach like that and quite frankly might never. And we all know athletes who have never like that, you know, and for me, then it just, it comes down to, okay, cool, so now you have to have some agency in your own life. Performance orientation, exercise, food, stress management and sleep. And you look at yourself as a 360 degree entity because we see athletes and clients doing this all the time. Give me a diet that will help me lose weight. Give me a diet that will help me improve game day performance. Right. And that exact ask ignores what we're talking about. Right. It presupposes that you can just graft a whole new routine and schedule and whatever onto your current life as if it has no relevance. And you know, we're not thinking about how to place it in the context of the current life. So again, as an athlete it becomes really paramount to say, oh, all these things matter. These things have to fit together. Cool, okay, so I'm not going to make an ask that's unreasonable, that doesn't have a high probability of working from providers and coaches. And then when I do work with coaches, I'm going to have to advocate on my own behalf for this kind of balance we're talking about, you know, so again, you may never have a great coach who works with you on this, but that's where you at least have some agency where you can say, all right, cool, how's this going to fit in my life? I have these stressors over here. Is this training program going to be suitable for that? And okay, how does nutrition fit into that? And then you start asking those kinds of questions. It becomes a much better experience as you plan out your long term training year.

It's one of those things that with the demand from a client or an athlete for an eating plan, that demand, it's hard to resist as a coach. And at the same time, I mean, I know that, sure it might work, but it's a short term fix that's not going to be sustainable. And it's the kind of thing that they're going to either be starting over again as you address in your coaching, you know, what round is this? Is this the. How many times have you been at this? Is this, is this the last shot you're going for here or what is it? And that's when people are so down on themselves for failing. How many times? And they think it's about them. And it's just simply that, that band aid effect of Handing over an eating plan or just follow this diet or follow this fix isn't going to be the thing that's right for that particular individual.

And I have a question that runs along that line for you, John, about, you know, through Kari, we followed Precision nutrition almost from day one. And seeing the articles that you're putting out and painting with a really broad brush here, I had the impression that in the early years, it was a ton of nutritional information and a ton of, let's look at cholesterol, let's look at eggs, let's examine, you know, on a monthly or weekly basis, something new, a new topic that's come up. But then there was a shift where you started to include more information, more articles, more research on the coaching side and, you know, add the sense there must have been some kind of epiphany that you realized that you had to get to the coaches to be delivering the information in a better way, and that the information itself, like we're talking about with these athletes, is not enough. What, was there a moment that you were like, I've got to shift here. I want to have more impact. I need to power these coaches with the techniques and skills to teach. And, you know, even leading into the book that you've just written, how did that play out for you?

Yeah, it's. It's a nice observation, and it's very true. You know, I think a couple things happened. You know, first of all, we got experience, like, way more experience than anyone else has ever had in this field. I mean, at this point, We've coached over 200,000 clients, and these kind of numbers, like, can feel meaningless when they get big. But, I mean, we've worked with over 200,000 people daily for at least a year, which is our coaching program. And so as you start to accumulate those experiences, you can. I call it my squint the eyes strategy. It's where when we look at the fine details of particular things, we can get bogged down in looking at their differences, and we don't notice patterns very easily. When we can squint our eyes and look at the shapes of things, if you want to use that kind of an analogy, you can look for patterns much more easily. So there's two ways to do it. One is to always be intentional about squinting your eyes. You see a thing and you sit back and you go, okay, cool. How is this like other things I've seen before? Okay, cool. Rather than think about the differences between this and those other things, what do they share in common? So let's not look at this and look for the details. Let's look at the broad truths, the shapes, the, you know, the principles and patterns. And this happens in nutrition all the time, right? Like where, oh, someone's following a keto diet, someone's following a plant based. They could never be friends because they're doing nothing similar.

Holy cow.

Yeah. But then you look at it and you go, okay, wait, you're arguing in a very philosophical way about lunch, which is strange first of all. But second of all, if we look at what's common between the lifestyle of someone who's regularly exercising, thinking about, you know, improving their sleep, thinking about how to supplement when they're not getting enough food from or nutrients from certain foods, when they're trying to eat mostly whole foods, when they're eating in a very intentional way and thinking about these things on a daily basis, when they're eating mostly, you know, vegetables, trying to get a certain amount of protein, regardless of whether they do it from keto or plant based, you start to see that they actually share everything in common except for one puts more meat on their plate and one puts more plant protein on their plate. And you're like, oh, when I squint my eyes, I see that these folks need not be fighting that they're trying to do the same exact thing and that there's only one difference, not many differences. And so, you know, when, and I bring this up as like a micro example of what happens when you end up coaching 100 or 200,000 people. You don't think about each individual case so specifically. And now you start to see the shapes of what happens in large groups of people when they get this kind of coaching. And we also have tons of data, right? If you imagine, you know, people log into our platform daily for 365 days, times 200,000 people. We asked them to do a couple things each day. We've got more data than anyone's ever collected on body transformation in the world. And now we can look for patterns both from our intuitive coaching perspective and from a data perspective. And we can see what people are really struggling with. So we recently published an infographic which was based on a report we did looking at tons and tons and tons of data. And the infographic talked about what people's biggest eating challenges were. And the idea of I don't know what to eat or I need a meal plan to stick to isn't even in the top 15. It's a whole host of other things. So when faced with those, you either stuff your head in the sand and pretend it doesn't exist and keep operating the way you always did. Let's talk about protein. Let's talk about carbs. Let's talk about food. Okay, caffeine. Now should I drink diet soda? You know, all these things that we get obsessed about when we talk, when we think we're talking about nutrition, quote, unquote. So stick your head in the sand, keep doing that. You know, keep telling people it's just calories in versus calories out. Or you start thinking more about coaching, start thinking more about, okay, if their challenges aren't these other things, then let's talk about the real challenges that are coming up in hundreds of thousands of people. And then, you know, when you start doing that, then you start looking to your own impact and you are like, okay, we have been doing this a long time. We have touched 200,000 lives. That is amazing. But there are a bunch of coaches out there following us that are going to touch 200 million lives. All right? We need to start teaching them this stuff. So that's the two pronged kind of reasoning for the transition.

It's one of those drives to see the need and be able to, and want to be able to make a difference, but the painful process of figuring out how along the way. And you've done just such an amazing job of not only collecting the information, but taking the time to try and understand what's going on and it's. And then simplifying it to get the message out so people can see it in front of them and recognize themselves. And, and I see you do that over and over again with really simple infographics. People don't understand how much X grams of protein, what it looks like. People don't understand what you have to actually do in order to create lean and muscle mass, type of body composition. So when you create your infographics, you basically take in all this complex information and put it into a simple visual that people can not only understand, but then start to look at it in a way that identifies themselves or identifies their want, then puts the pieces together like a simple puzzle to understand, okay, well, what do I need to do? If that's what I want or if I'm there, how do I get to there? When did you kind of start to adapt or really adopt and continue with those infographics? Or what was the light bulb moment? I said, okay, a picture's worth a thousand words. Or these infographics are the way to go because they are fantastic and they're such an amazing tool for us as coaches to be able to say, okay, like, just take a look at this, and then we'll. We'll have a chat kind of thing. So what's there for you that way?

Well, a couple things happen there, too, you know. One, the first part is, as you said, you have to be curious enough to try and figure out what the. What, like, people are really experiencing when they experience your things. You know what I mean? And I mean, this is partly what a project I've been working on for a really long time. I call it sort of this cultivating of wisdom, right? I'm like, I'm getting older now, and with age doesn't inevitably come wisdom, right? I mean, all you have to do is look around. But I want to be wise and old. Like, if I can't do the athletic feats I used to do and I'm not as attractive as I used to be or whatever, I might as well be wise. I might as well have people come to me because I can offer really valuable insights into their experience as a human. So it's something I've spent a lot of time working on and practicing this idea of cultivating, developing wisdom, and part of that is this idea of stepping out of your own experience, right? So, I mean, if we think about it in. In this field, you know, the examples are easy, but I think about it in all kinds of domains. It's. It's one of the reasons why people say travel, if done a very specific way, is so enlightening, wisdom making, you know, because if you're actually going out of your own comfortable experience, and it may not be comfortable in the sense that you have a cushy couch to sit on, but it's comfortable because you understand it and there's no new patterns shaking things up. And you go to another country and you make sure to enmesh yourself in that experience. You go, whoa. All these things I thought and believed are not shared by these people. And these are some smart people in some ways, maybe living a better life than me on a different context. What do I have to learn here? You know, what. What did I always assume as true that isn't necessarily true or at least useful? And you think about it with culture, you think about it with religion, you can think about it with politics. One of my favorite books in the history of all the books I've ever read is called Lessons from History by Will and Ariel Durant. And they're historians who wrote this epic, epic series of covering all of history. But they summarize it in this short book called Lessons from History. And it's such a beautiful example of this exact thing of people saying like, okay, let's talk about politics in history, let's talk about economics in history. Everyone has opinions on whether, I don't know capitalism versus communism is good or bad. But if you actually look at it from a historical perspective and you and just count up all the societies who've done capitalism, count up all the societies who've done a version of communism, look at the actual pros and cons as they played out in real societies. You can get a more robust understanding of the two things independent of any judgment. You can eventually pick which one you like best, but it'd be great to understand them. So that's part A of this. It's how can you be so open and curious to other people's experience in your own field? And, and it's really hard to do, particularly in your own field. Right. Because you have all this history. Like for me it's 30 years in the field of things that I think I've learned, I think are true. So it began with just saying, let me show this to people. In the book I talk about the talking aloud strategy, which is something that I've adopted in a whole bunch of ways. But it originally came from web usability World. Say you're building a website and you want to make sure it's good and people can use it. Well, you bring 10 people in, you have them use it, but you give them specific tasks to do. So I want you to go read an article that we wrote called this, and then you land them on the homepage and you have them try and find it, but you have them narrate their experience out loud. So I'm on the homepage now and I'm looking for where the article section is. Usually articles are in the upper right hand portion of the site. I don't see it on this one. Okay, I'm going to scroll down and I'm looking for articles now. Oh geez. I'm having a really hard time finding the articles. I thought they should just be here. Right. So through that experience, you as the site creator get deep insight into the problems with your design. But then we do that at PN with everything. Like with articles, I did that with the book that you're holding right now. With Changemaker, I gave it to 15 people. I gave them each their own unique Google Google Drive document. And I asked them to do the equivalent of that just by dropping comments in the side. So I'm like, I want you to just say out loud what you're experiencing while you read this book. I don't need you to fix it. Please don't find typos. I've got editors for that. What I want you to do is say, that joke made me laugh. This should be removed. I don't get this.

Is that where you got the questions at the end of each chapter?

Yes. Yeah, absolutely. You know, this is all part and parcel of this, like, what I would call sort of internally consistent system, which is I'm not going to make up the frequently asked questions. I'm going to put the material in front of people and get the questions that they would have asked and then answer those. So that's where the idea for this evolving content machine of pn, you know, we still do long form content, but then when we put certain things in front of people, they would say things like, oh, yeah, this here though, about the protein. I'm not sure I get that though, you know, because like, for a long time we talked about sort of palm, fist and, you know, cupped hand and thumb sized portions. We're like, that should be easy. You got hand in front of you, just look at it, right? And I'm like, you know, but what if. But what if my protein isn't like a solid mass that I could shape in the shape of a palm or whatever? Like, all right, cool. People just need more pictures of this. All right, let's do an infographic on it, right? So that's part a, right? This deep curiosity about how people are experiencing your stuff. And if you're a business, that's so critical, if you're a coach, so critical. But if you're a human, right, like you have relationships with your partner and your family, like, how are they experiencing your stuff? Whatever your stuff is, your words, your actions, the things you produce. I talk about this in the context of parenting. You know, I want to be a better dad. So it's something I actively work on. I think it's absurd when you're like, I'm going to be a better dad. So I'm going to do these five things independent of the context of asking your children what five things they want you to do. You know what I mean? So quarterly, basically every few months, I sit down with each of the kids and I tell them I want to be a better dad. Here's what is really important to me. Can you tell me the ways that you think I can be a better dad for you? What can I do less of what can I do more of? Like, I integrate them into the process. So that's part a of it. You know, I think you just need to be so curious about how people are experiencing your stuff. And when you are, you see all these new avenues for new behaviors and new content and new products and new services. And then the second thing is, and this is a very functional, practical one, I met an amazing illustrator, right, who just got it right. Like, I remember someone introduced me to her and her husband, so their team. And I was like, I'm thinking of trying to do pictures and you know, here's what I'm seeing from our readers and our clients. And she's like, oh, you mean like this? And she bangs one out like, yes, exactly like that. So I mean, she's, you know, they now have an infographic company and we probably represent 50 to 60, 70 at any point in time, percent of their business. But yeah, I mean, it was, it was partly knowing that there's new problems to solve and then partly finding someone who can express themselves visually. I don't know if you've ever seen the animated videos that we do, but the same thing happened there. We had a student, a certification student who went through our early certification instructional videos. And she was like, these are nice and everything, but I could do better. And I was like, yeah, people tell me they can do better all the time. Why don't you show me? And then she showed me and I was like, oh my God, seriously? So now we have this, you know, you know, it's both on our site and, you know, so we share some animated videos this way. And then all of our course materials have these wonderful, fun, interesting animated videos. And again, we couldn't have just done them with anyone. This person was like finding this unicorn, right? Where we're like, she, she actually is passionate about food and nutrition. She did our certification. She's also an award winning animator who's done a bunch of animated films. Oh my God, this is, this is the person, right?

And those things would never have fallen into your realm if you weren't openly aware and openly looking for what was needed at the same time. And I can hear this and just knowing a little bit about, you know, that being that representation of an entrepreneur, of being very progress and growth driven and at the same time very in touch with yourself and your family. You've been, you've mentioned in fine print that you regularly seek out counseling and that you, you know, you've just mentioned as well how connected you aim to Be with your. With your children and your family. Those practices, how has that filtered over or spilled over into your business, your other relationships, who you are, and also your happiness? Because you've also gone through either phases of time or a specific phase of time where you have fallen into depression. Not. Not doing what you love, but finding overwhelm everywhere. So maybe speak to those things in what practices help you stay on your best path, maybe your happiest path, and how that affects everything else. Mm.

One thing. One thing is, I think sometimes cliches are very true, but they kill learning. So, you know, life is a journey, not a destination, right? I mean, we all hear this, right? But it. It actually kills the utility of the. The truth of this, you know, like, I am not good at any of the things you just said I might be good at. What I do is just every day wake up realizing I'm not good at them and practice doing better, you know, And I think of it like, you know, brushing your teeth or having a shower or whatever the case may be, right? Like mental health is like that, you know, like, I need consistent counseling and practice or else I'll get very dirty and the equivalent of cavities, you know what I mean? You don't like, brush your teeth once and it's good every day, every meal, they get dirty again. And you have to regularly, on some cadence, check in with the floss and the brush, you know what I mean? And fix it, right? And so the same is true. I have a great decision making apparatus now, but not really. Every day I wake up and my head is muddled and I need a way to get clear again. So for me, over the years, that had been a lot of counseling, and that was triggered for me because at a certain point in my career, I looked around and I was like, who are the evolved people? Or just who are the people I look up to, who I'm like, whenever I talk to this person, they seem to have like this calm understanding and wisdom and just graceful way of being in the world. And I'm like, feel like I'm just thrashing around. What's different, you know? And to a person. They'd all had had significant experiences with counseling. So I'm like, all right, I don't need a better rationale than that. I'm just gonna go do it. So then I started doing it, and not as a when things are broken, but when in advance of things breaking. So about to get married. I'm gonna go see marriage counselor, gonna have kids, gonna go see family Counselor like, what is coming up that a person who has lots of experience helping people through situations that are going right and have gone wrong can give me an advance? Like, how can I set my mindset in advance of a problem? And I mean, it became so important that when Phil and I owned Precision Nutrition, we had a budget for all of our new team members for counseling. It was part of your package. People get vacation and they get whatever. Ours was a counseling budget. And it may feel weird or whatever, but we would explain it to people and, and we're just like, anyone who comes to work at PN is going to be a certain kind of person with a certain kind of purpose and a certain kind of values. And you're going to believe in this kind of growth mindedness and proactiveness and daily practice. So we're just going to make so super available, it's almost forced the ability to get counseling in our coaching circles. So the people who actually work as coaches at pn, it's almost a requirement for everyone else. It's optional, but it's available. Just the idea being, it's just such an impactful and important way of getting coaching and help. You know, we're talking about athletes a lot in this conversation. And I mean, it's no different, right? It's just coaching for like not throwing things far or moving your body quickly over space, but the more difficult things that need coaching, you know, which is the space between your ears. So for me, like, there's just, you know, there's, there's regularly touching base with counselors and counseling. There's spending time with, with wise people. So people usually, for me, it's people like, I usually say 20 years older than me. That's a big thing for me because, you know, people ask me now like, hey, what, what would you tell your younger self when you were like 20 or whatever. I'm like, oh God, let's stay away from that guy. I'm embarrassed by almost everything he said and did. And the challenge, though, becomes the extension of that statement if it comes right? Which is I'm embarrassed by almost everything that guy said and did. But now I've got it figured out, right? That's the danger, right? Yeah. So I'm like, all right, cool. So I'm just going to find people in their 60s who can tell me what I don't got figured out, you know, and then the third thing is I have, I have like thinking Friday. So usually half of every Friday I just have for thinking this is what I have on my Calendar blocked out. But the goal is to get clear on stuff, right? So I have half a day. It's not just me sitting in a meditative pose or whatever. Like, I, you know, I have these notebooks all over my office and I just write, you know, so I'll write a lot on those days, but also call people who I think can help me through any challenges I'm having or help me see new opportunities I like to go after in my professional and personal lives. And so half a day, Friday is basically the chance for me to get to be my most lucid terms of thinking, get to clarity, get to as clean a space in my brain as possible so that when I'm confused the rest of the week, which I often am, I can look back on my best self from Friday and get coaching from him, you know, so I don't always need coaches. I can just get coaching from clear thinking self. So. And again, it has to happen every week. And obviously there come times where I, quote, unquote, get busy and I don't do it for a while. And I can tell the difference, right? I'm like, oh, something's amiss.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah, that's right. I haven't done my Friday thinking in a while. Well, duh. It's like being like, your breath really stinks lately. I don't know. I don't know what's going on. Oh, I haven't brushed for two weeks.

You know, I have to tell you that Kari has the biggest smile in the world on her face right now. And when I get home, it's gonna be I told you so. Because we continually, you know, are working on ourselves. But the thing that you said, the humility that you have to recognize that it's a continual work in progress is something that I struggle with. I want to be good. I want to be a good communicator. I want to just have it. And it's not something you can have. It's something you have to continually work on. So we're going to date with destiny, with Tony Robbins next week to keep working. And, you know, just. It's something that we have to keep doing. Like you said, like brushing your teeth and.

Yeah. And everyone has to do it, like, on their own terms, in their own way. You know what I mean? Like, going to seminars is probably phenomenal for some people. Going to counseling is probably phenomenal for some people. I just think you. Everyone has to come to it in. In their own way and do it in their own way. And as long as they're doing it. But, you know, the doing it is like the actions, the tactics. Step one is the admission that you just made, right? And that's difficult for us all to make because I think I'm a pretty groovy guy if I do podcasts. People tell me nice things all day about how great I am. You know what I mean? But it's also true that the only way I've been able to have any insights or accomplish anything as a person, as a dad, as a partner, as a professional is because every day I wake up and go, geez, I gotta shake the cobwebs out. The human brain isn't designed to be that clear. It's just looking for threats, right? And trying to respond adaptively to threats of insecurity, discomfort, lack of food, you know, I mean, that's what we're fundamentally wired for. So of course we shouldn't be good at any of the things, right? It's only when. And I won't even say, like, a mastery of self, because that even implies exactly what you said, Paul. Like, all right, now I've got myself.

Now I've got it.

Yeah. You know, it really is just this idea of coming back to practice. And that's why, I mean, I have things posted all over my office to remind myself of things I already think and know about myself, like my purpose, my unique abilities, my values, the thing that I'm working on currently. So the unique ability, purpose, and values are posted, like, on a wall. The thing that I'm working on currently is posted on my monitor of my computer. So it's like the thing I think right now. And sometimes it's a family thing, sometimes it's a relationship thing, sometimes it's a work thing. It's just hanging from my computer monitor, just reminding me every single day, like, this is the thing you're thinking about now. This is the intention you have right now. And again, it's posted visibly for me because I won't remember, you know, like, my purpose I've had for 10 years and I'll sit in this desk on Tuesday and forget it.

Yeah, yeah. And that's the thing, too, in using, say, the fresh breath analogy, sometimes we don't realize how amazing it is when we have fresh breath because we're walking around with crappy breath. We just haven't experienced what fresh breath is like. So Paul has caught me saying recently, because I have been meditating, I would say, for the past year or more, just a few minutes a day, maybe 15 minutes a day, and I'll say to him, and I can tell now when my mind is getting really cloudy or I feel the overwhelm or I don't have as much clarity. I'll say, paul, I didn't get to meditate on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, because of say the kids or the things we had going on or whatever. And I said, I'm feeling it like I'm feeling the difference. I don't have the same energy or clarity. And, but I never, you know, if you'd asked me that five years ago or 10 years ago, I would have thought that was insane. Like, you just know until you start to have the courage or curiosity to go through those steps and try different things to foster that growth or foster that experience that could allow the fresh breath or allow the clarity or allow the focus. You have had the clarity and had the drive to dive into an entirely new project. And I love the name of it. I love the academy that changemaker.com and the book is called Changemaker that you've written. And honestly, if all of the painful, painful lessons I've had to learn over the last 25 years, being in the health and fitness industry with clients and athletes and whatnot, it's like you've culminated it all into this book. The heartbreaking blood, sweat and tears, the things you have to learn and go through and grow through, you have put into a simple step by step, but in a deep and meaningful way. But like I mentioned earlier, each chapter of this book has questions at the end of the chapter that you can go and see more in depth answers to. But not only that, a fillable workbook almost or sheets that you can use to do the practices in here. So you've mentioned a couple times on this interview about people's unique abilities and finding their purpose and understanding their values as their guardrails in life and that being the initial foundation to be able to take the next step, steps for maybe creating a more impactful or purposeful life. And this book really starts that way and then dives more into for fitness professionals or for health professionals, the steps that can be taken to really impact more people, to really create success as a career. From business practices to reputation to finding your values and even coaching and having conversations with people knowing a little bit about you. This must have just been this thing that was, that was at you knowing there was such a need for this type of tool, this type of book. Is that how it came about? Just seeing needed a step by step?

Well, for me, you know, I mean. Well, I guess part of the genesis of it was, you know, in 2017, Phil and I sold our. The majority of our ownership in Precision Nutrition, which is. It was a good thing. It was wonderful. It was good for everyone, really. But that left a space for me and a very natural transition point for me. Right? It's like, okay, cool. I'm no longer the owner of the company. I, um. So. And quite frankly, like, no one wants you around after that, which is fine. Like, it's not. That's not a bad thing. It's. It's for the best. And, you know, we hired out all our operational roles, so basically any of the work I was doing in the company was hired out. So I got a chance to sit back and have just some time and breathing room, if you will, and say, okay, cool. What do I want to do? You know? You know, and again, I have this purpose statement on my wall, and it's. I start them all with the way that I start inside the dust jacket of the book. You know, when you take that little floppy piece of paper cover off of it, it has when I die or retire. And that's how I start all my purpose statements. So a long time ago, I really discovered mine, as, when I die or retire, I want to know that my work has helped shape coaches into folks who can see their clients differently than we have historically in the field, coaches who can see themselves and the point of their work differently. And then through these changes, these intellectual, mental, emotional changes that the coaches make a maturation of a field, you know, because we're a very young field. So that's my purpose. Right? So I'm like. I've been saying that for a really long time. I was doing it through the vehicle of Precision Nutrition and the coaches we trained and the people we worked with there. Now, quite frankly, I don't have to work again, and I'm not doing that particular work. What am I going to do? And I just kept finding myself drawn to capturing everything I think I've learned in the last 30 years in the field. And there was, like, this interesting moment where I'm like, oh, that purpose statement isn't bullshit. You know, like, it's true. Like, I. I don't have to do anything now. And I find myself writing these lessons down so that I can share with others. So I'm like, that wasn't just for the purpose of Precision nutrition. This is for real. I mean, I'm doing it when I don't have to do anything. So it just became this very obvious for me. Next step of what have I learned authentically in the last 30 years? Not surface level lessons, because it's very. One of the hardest parts with writing the book and why it took me so long. Was everything that I said in the book I had to vet against the criteria of, am I just spouting out cliches? Am I just saying things I think I want, that I think people want to hear? Am I just saying things that maybe feel like surface level explanations? Or am I saying real things? Like the things that actually matter, the things that I actually think are true, independent of whether they're popular or not? And that took a really long time. It was really difficult. But the goal for the whole project wasn't to sell books. It was to capture what I think I've learned in the last 30 years in the most authentic, painful way that I can, and then hand that off. And. And if people love it, great. If it helps them with their careers, fantastic. If they hate it, that's fine too, because the goal was to create a book that's authentic, that says what I think people will need to have a sustainable career in this field. If it's not what people want to hear, that's okay. Thankfully, the book came out in early November and we printed 40,000 copies, and they're all gone, and we're printing more now. So I guess people are digging it. But that's quite apart from why I set out to write this. I started in this field when I was 17, and I started working in a gym, and then I became a trainer, and I paid my whole way through school training people, and then I broadened that to what I would consider. I became a coach, and then I started coaching lifestyle, so health, all aspects of deep health. So for me, this was just like, as you see, there's tons of personal stories in there, sort of capturing the history of my experience, but then turning them into what I learned from that, how I transformed those experiences into things that I could do and that others could do to be successful. And as you know from reading the book, I really defined success as this mix of, like, personal fulfillment and meaning plus financial reward, because I think we ought to be financially rewarded for doing the meaningful work that we do as well. And I don't think they have to be mutually exclusive. I remember I had a friend. I have a friend, and this is a very impressive woman. She has a PhD. She has an MD in a specialized field. So she did MD school after PhD school forever. You know, she's been to the Olympics multiple times, has a Host of Olympic medals. She's just the definition of like ass kicking human, you know, And I remember having lunch with her and talking about her career choice. And you know, she's, she, she, her thing is like exercise as medicine, right? So she wants to bring the things we already know are important into the medical community and give them a way to prescribe it and to share it and to do it in a much less surface way than it's being done now. And you know, as we were sitting there, this question occurred to me and this is where my, where, you know, when you die or retire comes from. And I was like, okay, cool. My guess is you'll spend the rest of your life until you die or retire working on this mission and it won't be accomplished. Now that's not to say it's meaningless, right? Like maybe your work will get the snowball moving a little bit and then future generations will reap the benefit of this effort. But I don't see the medical system in the next 40 years changing based on this. It's too big and clunky of a machine. Change doesn't happen this way in big indoctrinated industries. So are you okay with that? And she's like totally fine with it, you know, and that's the kind of questions we have to ask our, ask ourselves. And I think that's what this book sets people up to do, you know, to begin with those kinds. When I die or retire, will I know that I've worked and put all this human energy that I'm going to expend before I die into something worthwhile and meaningful. And okay, if you figure out what that is through the exercises we do together, then I can teach you how to go out and get those things. But we have to begin with when you die or retire, will it have been worth it? So for me, this is my long winded way of saying that I learned some things. I really want to share them. I think they'll be very valuable. I think they'll be valuable in ways you hadn't expected. And I think there'll be some things that you never thought to think about. And so that was the point. And then just put it out in the world and then say, my work is done. Now it's up to the world and the people consuming the book and using it to take it from there.

It also, it speaks to, from an individual level, from professional to professional, and them being able to have a greater likelihood and more tools to be able to step into their own potential and See more come to fruition based on putting it all together. And that typically most health professionals or fitness professionals anyway, they don't come from a business background, they don't come from a marketing background, they don't come from a changed psychology background. And this is that tool that allows people to go, hey, like, now, if I. If I knew I had that passion and that love and that drive for helping people, for serving people, for making a difference in their health or their performance or reaching their personal best, are my business tagline is, is this the best I can be continue for that? Moving target. It's a moving target. If people can keep that passion by not becoming completely disillusioned by the things they don't know how to do, like the marketing or the. And this becomes a tool that allows them to take those steps more. More fluidly, then. Then they can. I see this as a tool for people to keep their passion.

Yeah. And that's. That's what I hope for that. That's kind of the crux of it, you know, like the book, for example, it's. It's super designed. Right? Like, so visually. So the. That cover is the 70th iteration of book covers. The title, I mean, just coming up with a change maker. Turn your passion for health and fitness into a powerful purpose, wildly successful career. Literally no one in the publishing world would, Would. Would sign off on that.

No.

There was not one person on the publishing side of this who was like, that's a good title. And I was like, and I'm okay, I'm a pretty confident person and a confident decision maker. I'm like, this is the title. Like, this is. This is money, you know, And. But after like a hundred people who publish books for a living tell you, no, that's the wrong title, you start to wonder, like, am I just being, like, totally irrational here? But I ended up going with it once I tested it out on our people, you know what I mean? Book people aren't ever gonna get this. Our people get it.

Yes. Because people are passionate people.

Yes. I mean, you don't do this as a one. I got one of three careers I'm gonna pull it out of, pull names out of a hat and decide. This is like, no one tells you you're gonna have an easy road here. It's gonna be a great career for you. You choose it anyway. You know what I mean? So I'm like, I got this group of people out there who are so passionate about this, who want to do this. Like, gosh, it would be A travesty if they're not here in a year. And that's what's happening right now. Four out of 10 aren't here in a year. And that sucks, right? This wasn't like, should I go into sales or fitness? No, I want to do this above anything else. So I'm like, all right, cool. We got to help these people. We got to give them a blueprint. And, you know, you bring up the idea of the topics that we don't have experience or exposure to, marketing, sales change, psychology, even communication in some cases. And, you know, I think it's come up for my 30 years in the field, I'm not good at that. You know, the thing just becomes, and this is what I hope to do in the book, is people in this field are passionate learners. Though how do you reconcile the fact that there's a group of people going, gosh, I might have to quit the field because I don't know marketing yet? They did 16 continuing education classes this year. You know what I mean? It's just that they've never been given permission or an understanding of how to build future self. You know, they've never been sat down to and said, here's how you build that future version of you. Here's a path, here's a curriculum, here's. And here's how you can do it for you, rather than you follow mine. Here's how you build your own. And so it's just. I just think it's, in this case, a knowledge gap. You know, we just haven't ever been taught how to take this burning passion for continuing education and self development and just put it in the direction that will actually help us develop self. You know, we're just taking the same courses over and over again with a different teacher. We need to change that, you know, and so I think the book goes a long way in helping people see that as well.

Well, I want to acknowledge you for writing the book, and it's just striking me as you're speaking, that there's a continuing or a common thread in everything you're saying, that you're coming from a place of empathy, that you're coming from a place of understanding what is occurring for the person you are speaking to or trying to help. And the title of the book, knowing your people, that you can get away with a title like that when everyone in the industry is saying that you can't, speaks exactly to that point. That you, you know, your audience, you're one of them, you care about them, and you understand them. And it's really incredible to just kind of be a part of this journey, watching what you're doing over the years, helping so many people with that overarching goal that Kari and I are so passionate about, of just helping people live healthier, active lives. And it's truly amazing.

Thank you. I appreciate it.

Is there if we dive into just a couple last questions to wrap up here? John, on a little deeper level, is there a fear that you have at this stage in your life that comes up for you on occasion?

Well, that's a good question. So I've done. See, I'm going to talk now to give by myself some time to think about the answer to this question. I'm on a podcast mission lately, so I'm doing 90 days of podcasts. So every day, except for weekends, I'm doing a podcast a day. And I've not been asked this question yet. It's a great one, I think. I think the answer is no. I'm, like, trying to mine all the little recesses of my insecurities and things and think about, is there anything that I'm fundamentally afraid of right now or scared about or uncertain about? And I'd say there's only one. And it just has to do with family, basically has nothing to do with self or career. You know, it's just, you know, like, will, like, doing my best as a dad be enough to help our children not even live successful lives, but just mentally healthy lives? You know, I really care a lot about this. You know, I come from a deep academic experience, and I find it really hilarious that I'm not particularly excited or passionate to steer them towards big academic achievement. You know, I'm an entrepreneur, but I don't feel particularly passionate or excited to be like, entrepreneurship is the good life. You need to do this. Children, you know, I just want them to have mentally healthy lives, whatever they choose to do. And I just, you know, I don't have enough experience. I don't have enough tools yet, I presume to be sure. And of course, I don't have any control, you know, over whether that's going to happen for them or not. And so I guess that's the one thing that sometimes I lay in bed at night thinking about, how can I find the places in my life to learn a little bit more and be a little better, to increase the probability that I give them the tools to be successful in that way? That's probably my biggest one. And it's actually what's spurring my next project to be Honest. I'm working right now on a series of children's books which came out of this exact thing. I have this document on my desktop of my computer, which is called, like, Lessons from dad or whatever. And I had this idea I was going to write this book that they would read when they're like teenagers or whatever the case may be. And then I'm like, damn it, I'm doing this thing I always tell people not to do, which is dream about the perfect future to do X, Y or Z. Right? Like, oh, I'll write down all my lessons and I'll share it with my kids in the future. Like, I got them here right now and they're listening to me right now. So how. How can I do this now? So that. So I'm like, all right, let me turn these lessons into children's book material. So I'm listening to tons of children's book podcasts and getting connected to children's book authors and illustrators to learn from them. And so I think probably, you know, this connects it all right. Like, my fear, you know, I want them to have these tools. And I don't know if I know enough, if I'm helping them enough. Okay, cool. Maybe I can get to them this way through long car rides or time spent one on one with trips or daily lessons, or maybe I can get to them in the form of these books. So that's kind of where my thoughts are with that.

That resonates with me. Probably Paul too. Just with children and trying to do the best you can, but then wondering if that was your best. And yeah, I know how that goes on a more kind of fun and upbeat note when it comes to the day to day. Do you have some favorite music to get you into, say, a best state or best workout? Do you have some favorite music that's go to?

Yeah, so it kind of depends on what part of my day. Right. Like, so our oldest is nine and she is a singer and a piano player and she's really kind of just gifted musically. And so she and I do a lot of music together. And so when I'm with her, we listen to tons of musical theater stuff. So that's like, that's our fun daddy daughter time together, right? We go car rides and, you know, we're list like everything from like Grease to Wicked Story or anything. Yes. I mean hairspray. Like we run the full gamut and so that's that. When it comes to like my training, I'm like a classic rock guy. So I have a Led Zeppelin radio on Spotify that I listen to when I train. And then usually after training, unless it's like minus 40 here in Canada, I just go for a walk, just outdoors. And then usually I'll put something much more chill on. So it might be just instrumental, like chill out music, things like that. So there's like. And then, and then when I work and I want music on, which is a good portion of the time, I'll listen to classical symphonic music. So Beethoven, Bach, stuff like that. So it just depends on what I, what I want. But music's just a huge part of our life at home. When we moved into this house, we wired everything for music. So literally there's no way, nowhere you can go in our house where you can't put on music. So when we're playing in the backyard in the summer, you know, we've got fun music listening out there. We have a Ninja warrior course in the backyard for kids and so we got speakers out there. So we're definitely a music family.

Yeah. And it anchors for them the experiences like those songs are gonna come back, they'll hear it again in 10 years and it'll bring them back to that memory of, you know, the, the game in the backyard or the whatever, you.

Know, when we used to like each other.

Do you have a favorite, a favorite movie or genre?

You know, I used to, but do parents of four little kids watch any movies? I mean, it's been 10 years, I think since I've actually watched a movie.

But.

But what I will say is this, you know how all these Netflix documentaries are coming out on food, which people always expect that I'll watch and I never do because I mean, how many minutes of discretionary entertainment time do I get a day? You know, you think I'm going to watch a food documentary with that? No, thank you. I watch a ton of stand up comedy when I have some minutes at the end of the day. So that I guess that would be the only adult kind of thing that I actually watch nowadays. And the rest is kids movies.

I love some of JP Sears stuff on YouTube if you ever see that.

Awesome. I'll check it out. Yeah.

And then do you have, in terms of, you mentioned a couple little hobby type things when it, you know, if you've got some free time. But do you have a favorite hobby that's unrelated to your other things like your work, your family, your things that dominate the major rocks in your life?

Yeah, not really. I hope to one day, but I mean, the truth is.

We'Re Looking for ideas.

That's all that's right. No, I think. I mean, right now it's intentional, right? Like, I have another thing I've written and posted visibly in my office is my values. And so it's. It's be a present parent and partner. It's self care, and then it's any whatever project I'm working on at the time. Those are the three things that are going to be what I say yes to. And then everything else, literally everything is no, like, socializing with friends. Any of that's. No. Like, for example, my good friend of many years is coming here today to have a workout with me. He's like, hey, man, I want to catch up. And I'm like, okay, cool. The only way for that to happen is if you come have a workout with me and then we'll have lunch afterwards. Okay, cool. So that's really where my life's at right now. You know, I just do those three things, and that's it. Like, I mean, I play guitar and I really enjoy that, but I don't ever do it without my family. You know, usually my daughter sings and I play, so we do these little duets all the time. And so that, like. But that's still part of the family thing. But, you know, there's, you know, but our youngest is starting school full time soon, so I'm like, there's gonna be a little opening there, you know, and then I think I get. You guys have two in university now, so I suspect there's. There's another time coming before we know it, where more time will open up and then there will be time for hobbies and things, you know, and. And that's when I'll start reading books again, you know, doing some of the other things I used to enjoy.

Do you. And lastly, I just need to ask a couple food questions. Do you have a favorite food or dessert or what are some of your.

I do. I've had to adopt a new one lately because I was diagnosed with this autoimmune disease just over a year ago. And so I discovered that I have to cut out all dairy and all soy. And I wasn't a big dairy eater before because I've always been lactose intolerant. But if you eat dairy and it just gives you gas, you're like, okay, I'm going to do the trade off and then decide whether I want to eat pizza. If it causes your body to attack itself, you're like, all right, I'm not eating pizza ever again. So now that I have this autoimmune disease. Pizza can't be my favorite food. So I haven't had pizza in a year and a half. But I've replaced it with dairy free ice cream, which I have almost every single day. And so my brand is so delicious. It's called so delicious. It's either made out of cashew or coconut milk. And it's awesome. I mean, I like.

You're not missing ice cream because of it.

Yeah, I mean, I'm doing an autoimmune diet, which is basically you eat protein and vegetables for your main meals. So I'm like, okay, cool. If I'm gonna have one not protein and vegetable thing a day, I'm gonna make sure I love it. And so this ice cream thing is my favorite. So what I do is I use like half a pint of so delicious and I put mixed nuts in and I put dark chocolate and I put usually almond butter and banana and I mix it all up and it's delicious. And so. But I had to try every single kind of dairy free ice cream on the planet to see which one was going to be the one. Right? I'm like, if I can't eat all these other things, baked goods, I literally have zero lactose now, so there's none of those fun treats on the menu for me. So I'm like, if it's only going to be this dairy free ice cream, I'm going to enjoy the hell out of this. I have done all the due diligence required to figure out the right one.

That is fantastic. Well, on that note, I can't tell you how grateful we are to have you on and, you know, I hope your 90 days of podcasts is going wonderfully and you're getting through well. And we just, we really appreciate you. We really appreciate you for the years of dedication that you've provided not only us personally, but so many of my clients and my athletes and, and people in general. Because just starting with your original stuff, whether it's scrawny to brawny or gourmet nutrition, and then getting into precision nutrition, it's all been an amazing contribution for people and what they really, really need. So we appreciate that and we appreciate you here with us and we're so grateful to catch up.

Awesome. Well, thank you for allowing me to be part of your journeys as well in the field. That means a lot to me. You know, I know who the people are who've been following me since the early days and they put up with stupid 28 year old me or whatever. So I'm indebted. And also, thanks for having me, you know, and thanks for everyone listening who spent close to 90 minutes with us. Now, I hope that. I hope that you found some value in our conversation and that if you did, you know, maybe you'll come check out some of my other work in the book and stuff like that, and.

The new books, the children's books, too. Coming.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. For you parents, I've got some stuff for you, too, eventually.

Thank goodness. Awesome. Well, thank you, John.

Thank you.

Thank you, John.

Hey, everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you're wanting to connect with Kari and I for online training, public speaking events, or more, simply send your request to infompowerconditioning.com and hey, we need your help to keep growing this show. So please share it with coaches, athletes, trainers, parents, anyone who you think might be interested. Get them to smash that subscribe button and follow the Empowered Athlete podcast. We can't do it without you. Thanks again for listening.