Flat-Tyre Syndrome: How to Start Your Day Right

Before we get rolling with today's episode, I have a very small favor to ask. If you get any value whatsoever from our episodes of the Enterprise Fitness Podcast, please share it with a friend or leave us a review. You see, our mission here at Enterprise Fitness is to empower as many people as possible with their health, fitness, and training, and we believe the best way to do that is with education. That's why week after week we continue to put these episodes on and try and jam-pack them with as much valuable information as possible. So hope you enjoy today's show so much so that you want to leave us a review. Now let's get into it. This presentation is called Where Do We Begin? And it's where to begin with a client, where to begin your health and fitness plan, how to start it, how to make things real. So the first principle is keep shit simple. Any intellectual fool can take something that's simple and make it more complicated, but it takes a touch of courage to take things that are complicated and make them simple. And always when we're relating to things, we will make these things as simple as possible because the simpler it is, the easier it comes to implement. The easier that we implement, the better we're going to action it, the better we're going to action it, the faster we're going to get results. Yes or yes? Yes. Right. So let's make shit simple. I've already said this story before about the client who basically was eating kebabs all the time. And the reason why he was eating kebabs all the time was because he didn't know how to cook. So we could sit down with this client, we could talk to him about macros, we could talk about meal timing, talk about supplements, but really all he needed to do was learn how to cook. And through teaching him the skills of teaching him how to cook, he's gonna— it's gonna change, it's gonna, it's gonna make a significant change. So we're looking for the linchpin. So for this client, teach client how to cook. You want to look at effective things, they're going to have the biggest bang for buck. And sometimes it can be as simple as Teach people how to cook. Teach people how to meal prep. I don't mean to say you have to take them to a kitchen and teach them how to cook, but explain it to them. Buy a kilo of chicken from your butcher. Buy another kilo of mince. Freeze it. Put it in 500-gram bags. Defrost this much. Cook this much. Put it in this container. Get a rice cooker. Do this. This is how much. And then you can start to explain these things and introduce it over time. The simpler, the better. So in psychology, there's what's known as the what the hell effect. I like to call it flat tire syndrome. Flat tire syndrome is where you're driving in your car and you get a flat tire, and then you get out of your car and you puncture the other 3. Makes no sense, but people do this all the time. And how do they do it with nutrition? How do they do it toward their goals? Is you're sticking to your plan, right? You're 6 weeks into your diet, your meal plan, your stretching, your whatever, and You have a moment, and in that moment, the brownies come out and you go nuts. You eat like 5 of them and you're like, fuck it, I've had, you know, I've had 1 now and I've had 5. I'm just gonna eat ice cream for the rest of the day and pizza. And that, that moment turns into a whole week. It turns into a day, and that day turns into a week, and that week turns into a month, and that month turns into, you know, you're completely off the plan now. And now you have to course correct quite significantly. So we need to catch ourselves in this. It logically doesn't make sense, but again, this is a symptom of the all-or-none mentality, because when we put the pressure of ourselves on the all-or-none mentality, if we make one slip-up, then we undo all of our results, which again, it just doesn't have to be the case. We focus on process and focus on ways to deal with and cope with these things, we're going to be a hell of a lot better off. So the problem is both psychology and physiology. It's not just I'm not going to chalk it up and say it's only a problem of our mental state and psychology, although it can be. But physiologically, physiologically, there are things that do propel us to eat more of the wrong foods. Food manufacturers do have and have manufactured the perfect ratio of salt, sugar, and fat to override our appetite control signals. So to make it feel really good from a neurochemical point of view that when we eat, that a lot of people aren't eating for satiation of, say, nourishment. Their eating association to calm down their brain. The same way, like, people use alcohol, people use drugs to medicate and kind of calm down their brain, people will use food to kind of rub on their head, if that makes sense. Think of people are eating not for the nourishment of their body, but to soothe what's going on in here, to, to de-stress. Well, we understand that, and I say that again, the psychology and the physiology is closely wired. Pringles said it best, is once you pop, you can't stop. Again, it does take a grip on us from a physiological level as well as a psychological level. The physiology of things— the stricter the diet, the stronger the chemical slingshot. In other words, if you deprive for a long period of time and you give a little bit, you'll feel really, really good when you have that little bit, right? If you are able to include it somewhat regularly, you know, malnourished, let's say in this case, like if you malnourish someone and give them food, anything's going to taste really, really awesome. I speak to a comp person who they haven't had any sugar whatsoever. You give them sugar, they just want to eat more and more and more. So we don't want to put ourselves in a deficit for too long. And we also don't want to deprive ourselves and have malnourishment because the malnourishment is going to create a slingshot. From a physiological point of view, the all-or-none mindset, when we have the all-or-none, we have that cheat day. Again, all that cheat meal, it turns into a free-for-all where people try and eat as much as they possibly can because it's all or none. So I'm either going to be completely strict to the plan, and if I'm not strict to the plan, I'm going to eat anything that isn't nailed down. And again, that can be very, very damaging. And a lot of time people will make up calories that they were going to lose, like they need to maintain a calorie deficit. They'll just simply eat the amount. You don't want to look at calories in, calories out from the aspect of just a day. You want to look at over the course of a week. And people can certainly undo their results in that day by eating just shit. So I don't believe in the cheat day. I don't even believe in the cheat meal. I think it's extra meals that you plan, you include, because it's not healthy just to go, I'm going to just gorge and feast on as much as I can because I've deprived myself. Again, that sets us up for the reward and punishment cycle. We don't want to be talking in reward and punishment. I banish those words when people talk about food as look at it as reward and punishment. Now let's look at it as nourishment, not reward and punishment, because they're illusions. When we look at this from the perspective of how to start our day, if we look at our blood glucose level, so our blood glucose. So when you think about like this, in your bloodstream circulating at any one time is about, I say about a teaspoon because visually everyone can visualize a teaspoon, right? So there's about a teaspoon of glucose in your bloodstream at any one time. So if you did your bloods right now, healthy is going to be anywhere from 4.2 to, you know, 4.85, right? So diabetic is going to be up at around 7.8, or pre-diabetic 7.8. A full-blown diabetic is going to be up around 8 to 11. So that's 2 teaspoons of essentially sugar or blood glucose. Anything that goes above that— so if this is— let's just call this 4.5. So when we eat, let's say we wake up, we eat something. This is where a balanced meal is going to drive us a little bit. If we eat something, let's say we eat— well, most of our clients, what they eat, they eat like Weet-Bix with juice and skim milk, right? And if we look at this purely from a biochemical point of view, there's a lot of refined carbs in there that it's going to break down into glucose. It's going to spike our blood glucose. Now, blood glucose just can't stay in our body, can't stay high. It results in basically— I forget the word— but, oh, diabetic acidosis, whatever it's called. But essentially, the blood thickens and caramelizes. So we need a hormone called insulin, which gets secreted from the pancreas, to wrangle that blood glucose down and put it where it's not going to stay inside of our bloodstream. It's going to be put to use. Now, the 3 places where it can go, essentially 3 main places where it's going to go, is preferably it's going to go into the muscle. So it's going to knock on the door of the muscle and say, hey, I've got this delivery of glucose, do you need to use glucose to everyday activity? Do you want to fill muscle glycogen? Now, if the muscle glycogen is full, it's going to say no thank you. So it's going to go to the liver, it's going to say, liver, I've got this delivery of muscle, of this glycogen, would you like some? Livers probably doesn't need that much glycogen to run. It's probably going to say no. So this— think of insulin as a nutrient taxi, drives around hours and hours, or not hours, a couple of moments, and goes, oh, there's free parking. There's heaps of free parking. There's actually infinite free parking. Where do you think infinite free parking is in the body? Fat cell. So it parks the glucose at the fat cell and As a result, insulin will always overshoot the mark of glycogen, right? So insulin is always going to overshoot the mark, which then causes blood sugar to crash. And then what do our clients do? Or most people who eat shitty diets, right? Not necessarily our clients, but a lot of people who need to get in shape. They reach for a coffee, they reach for something sugary, they reach for a juice, they reach for a muffin. Again, blood glucose peaks, insulin overshoots the mark. And crashes them. And then they're like, oh, I'm tired. I'm going to have something else, a chocolate bar and a coffee. And boom, blood glucose, insulin overshoots the mark, causes them to crash. And this kind of energetic exchange for a lot of people, it's how they spend their day is they don't energize their day. They're reactive with their energy levels. And if you look at people's food logs, this can tell quite a bit of a story. And not necessarily all clients, but again, some people, this is how they— the modern Australian diet. And often when people are coming to us as clients, they're kind of on some type of path, but we want to be aware of this. And I'm obviously using an extreme example. So instead, when we start our day, I definitely believe in a high protein breakfast. In fact, the first 30 grams of protein that you eat is going to go towards the immune system and just towards basically maintenance function of the body. Not even— we're not even talking about muscle building, just like, you know, hair, skin, nails, immune system. Protein's involved in so many things— neurotransmitters, detoxification. There's so many functions that protein has in the body, so we definitely want to get a head start on that with breakfast. The other thing is protein's going to have very minimal effect on blood— well, almost no effect on blood glucose. Everything we eat has somewhat a little bit of an effect on blood glucose, but fat and protein, very, very minimal. Carbohydrates obviously going to be the big one. I say you want to have a breakfast, you want to instruct to have a breakfast that is High in protein, moderate in fat, and dependent upon activity is what's going to be your carbohydrate. So in other words, if you're in a fat loss phase, then carbohydrates are probably going to be low to moderate. But if you also train in the morning, I might put your carbs first thing in the morning. So depends on where you train, your activity levels. Carbohydrates is really dependent upon how we structure the whole plan. But generally speaking, it's not going to be— unless you're super lean and you're training as well and you really respond well to carbs. It's not going to be a high-carb breakfast usually. And again, for fat loss clients, almost always it's going to be high protein, moderate fat, some carbohydrate, just depending on how we make that up. So the other question that I wanted to cover that we get as well is about caffeine. So this is our blood glucose chart because people talk about, oh, you know, coffee Cortisol, stress, all these things, right? So what you should know about cortisol— I'm going to tie this into coffee as well. So look at this as blood glucose. So not to conflate things or confuse things, but we have blood glucose, we have cortisol, we have insulin. When we have caffeine, caffeine can elevate cortisol. Cortisol is a blood glucose immobilizing hormone. It's a stress hormone. Cortisol's function in the body is to mobilize blood glucose so we can do something with glucose to essentially respond to the stress. Yeah. Meaning if I exist off caffeine, I'm having caffeine constantly, but I'm not actually having any activity with it, then that is creating an improper mechanism of releasing blood glucose without it actually being utilized, which is going to also cause you to crash. So how does that work? And again, also the other mechanism— so that's one mechanism. The other mechanism of caffeine is to block the adenosine receptor sites. So sleep— if I talk about this, when you sleep, there's this concept called sleep tension. So at the start of the day, if I measure this on a chart, melatonin and adenosine. So your melatonin should be— say the start of that should be zero. I don't know exactly what it is, but let's say it's zero, right, when you wake up. Over time, that melatonin is going to start to say like at 8 PM, 10 PM, your melatonin starts going to increase. So melatonin is the hormone that's going to be responsible for making you start to feel tired, make you feel fall asleep, right? Your adenosine, let's say the start of day is zero. Adenosine over the day is going to start to build up. So if this is your adenosine receptor, what caffeine does is it sits on top of it. So if adenosine starts to Adenosine will start building up, but caffeine is essentially sitting on top of it, which is preventing the adenosine from being absorbed, which is helping you stay awake and focused. The problem is when caffeine starts to fade is that adenosine that was sitting there gets absorbed and people crash. The other problem with caffeine is that caffeine has a half-life of 4 to 6 hours, which means it also has a quarter-life of 8 to 10 hours. This is why in my book, when I give my coffee rules, you want to cut out coffee at 1:37 PM. I say it as an odd number because people remember odd numbers, right? But the point that I'm getting at with this, to tie it back to cortisol is, and blood glucose, is what people do is they exist off caffeine. So cortisol is a blood glucose mobilizing hormone. If cortisol goes up, it is going to trigger a glucose response. Right? Insulin can be, may be secreted for some people from this, which can cause it to wrangle the blood glucose down and then cause that same spike of, how do you say, crashing. Because in terms of using caffeine, you want to use caffeine when you're going to go do something physically, like, or in the morning, because it is going to mobilize blood glucose. That's the optimal way to use it. So people are using it just to sit at their computer and read emails because it's having an effect adrenally, not just neurally. It does have an effect neurally. There are two mechanisms, but you're better off if you want to have an effect neurally is to use something like lion's mane. Lion's mane is good. Tyrosine, L-carnitine, alpha-GPC, things that are going to have an effect from a neural point of view on dopamine. And focus rather than an adrenal point of view like caffeine. Makes sense. So we bypass the energetic dumping of cortisol. I interrupt this podcast to give you a very special message. December, we are running an Elite Results Bootcamp. What is the Elite Results Bootcamp? It is a 3-day bootcamp where we teach our systems around strength, hypertrophy, and fat loss. It is intense. There are 6 workouts over the 3 days, and our trainers not only spill the beans on all the techniques, methods, systems that we use to get next-level results, we take you through actual workouts so you can experience in real time. If you're a client, if you're someone who's interested in Enterprise Fitness, or if you're a trainer looking to level up, check out our course, Enterprise Fitness Academy, and click on Elite Results. There's a healthy halo effect And to many trainers and people in the fitness industry, it's obvious, right? When things are labeled low fat, low sugar, organic, natural, low carb, low gluten, high in protein, high in fiber, low in salt, low in sugar, low in cholesterol. These are all marketing buzzwords that create a healthy halo effect on food. The example I use is like blueberry muffins, low fat blueberry muffins. The general person would probably think a low fat blueberry muffin is healthy. But if you look underneath the hood of a low-fat blueberry muffin, it's like 56 grams of carbs, 50 of which are coming from sugar. And the blueberries aren't even blueberries. The blueberries are made— you know this, right? Who knows this? Like, often in blueberry muffins, there's not actually blueberries in it. So they make the blueberries out of sugar. And they say blueberry muffin, but it's like a blueberry— if you read the ingredients, it's like avocadonectar and food coloring and Because if they put real blueberries in there, that'd go off, right? How are they gonna put real blueberry muffins in a thing that you open and— Yeah, often even in blueberry muffins, it's not even blueberries, it's sugar. Something to definitely be aware of, of the healthy halo effect. And the point being on this is don't assume clients know. Don't assume, oh yeah, this is, 'cause often you have to recreate it for clients. Starting a plan. Look for a ripple effect. What I like to do before starting a plan on making changes is to really understand the client. Understand when they wake up, when they go to bed, when they eat, when they go to work, when they can have breaks before I give any advice. The more context I can understand of the day, the more, and the more I can look at their day, the more, kind of think of it as like Jenga. Everyone knows Jenga, the things that you pull out. I want to put, this is kind of like reverse Jenga, is the goal of Jenga is to keep pulling out blocks. I just want to pull out one block where the whole thing falls. That's how I kind of look at the client. What's the one thing I can do, the linchpin, that's going to make the whole thing topple over? Look at these things to have the biggest impact that you can on, on the client. Routine behaviors, habits, drinks that they have, replacing. The way I like to start with almost every single client is with their first meal, breakfast. Why? Because it sets the tone for the day. Again, because of flat tire syndrome, which I link back to, which I I said at the start, if people start the day well with a win, they're more likely and more motivated to continue those wins. And because it's like, oh, I'm asking you to do this thing at the start of the day, you do this thing at the start of the day, it sets up good habits for the whole day. And also, your words are powerful. You know, spelling— people talk about the etymology of spelling, it's like casting spells with words. So I don't call it breakfast. Clients. I like to phrase it as meal 1 because breakfast has connotations with it. So if I say eat breakfast, what does everyone think of when I say breakfast? What's the first thing that comes to your head? Cereal. Who else thinks of cereal when I say breakfast? Yeah, how many of your clients do you think if you said breakfast, the first thing that's going to come to their head is cereal? So instead of saying cereal, because I want to snap them out of that, you just say meal 1. So what can I have for meal 1? Anything that you'd have for meal 2 or meal 3 or meal 4 or meal 5. There's nothing special about it. There's no special combination of foods. So I do away with the word breakfast purposely so people have a different reference point. The other thing that's going to be crucial to helping clients is helping them create a routine. And if you— the only thing you helped clients with was creating a routine, they'll get exceptional results. Most people, I'd say, don't get results is because they don't have a routine. The minute you can put a box around what people do and keep them with structure and keep them accountable to that structure, it becomes very easy to manipulate, right? Because you could be eating shit. And if you're eating shit at the same time every day, then it becomes very easy to say, hey, instead of eating this, eat that at this time because you're eating it anyway at that time. The changeover becomes very simple because there's a routine. Where people get undone is where they have randomness. You don't want there to be randomness. You want there to be a certain routine and structure where they can interchange foods. You can pay for indulgence with either discipline or guilt. Choose one. As in, you can still indulge in food, you can still have the things that you want to enjoy, but if you want to enjoy them, then be disciplined to enjoy them. Because we have lots of clients who eat out and they stay in shape, or they get leaner, or they have a burger on the weekend, or they have that ice cream, and it does not affect their results whatsoever. That's because they're doing the discipline throughout the week. If you don't do the discipline throughout the week, you're going to pay for it with guilt. Oh shit, I shouldn't have eaten that. Oh, it's because you probably didn't do the discipline and the plan during the week, right? So these are normal breakfast foods. Meats, vegetables, avocado, all different types of carbs. There's nothing special about breakfast food. There's no combination of food that is special. Shake. So yeah, eat, eat as you would. I like eating meat in the morning. I often have mince, I have eggs, I have bacon. I chop up bacon, put it in my mince. I'll have steak, I'll have bacon and eggs, I'll have toast, I'll have rice. I have all different types of foods depending where— if I'm traveling, if I'm traveling, usually I'll try and get a steak in the morning because it's pretty good, or 3 eggs and 2 pieces of bacon depending what's available. Salmon's good. But again, there's no particular combination. Lamb's awesome. I love lamb for breakfast. Nice and fatty. Shakes for breakfast. Look, shakes for breakfast isn't my ideal choice. It's not my ideal choice for clients, but you're always working with clients in context of what they're willing to commit to. So is it the worst thing in the world? Absolutely not. Is it a huge step up from cereal? Yes. So how could you do a shake? What I'd recommend if clients are going to have shakes for breakfast, is 1 scoop of whey protein, 100-150 grams of frozen berries. The reason why I recommend frozen berries is to create more texture. Chop up some celery, put a tablespoon of fat or a handful of nuts. So you could weigh 20 grams of nuts like almonds or a tablespoon of almond butter, put it in the blender, blend it up. So very seldomly do I recommend shakes just by themselves. I like to fortify the shakes with other things in it. Becomes more enjoyable for the client. As well and something that they can satisfy them for longer. And again, as a routine break, it's great. Like, this could be a massive step up for people. So it's— in no way do you want to just go, oh yeah, no shakes whatsoever. But again, ideally I want real food. Where I use protein powder is to make up— I mean, it's a macronutrient, right? In the fifth presentation we'll go through today, at the end of the day, I'll talk about how to set goals for your protein intake. But if your goal is, let's say, 200 grams of macro protein a day, or 150 grams of macro protein a day, and appetite-wise you're only able to eat 100, that's where protein shakes become very handy, right, to make up that difference and to fortify and get— hit your protein macro target. So that's how I look at protein shakes. Usually around 2 shakes a day is like the upper limit is what I like to set for most clients. But again, everything in context. Clients might say, but I'm not hungry first thing in the morning. I always like to ask clients, what do they mean by first thing in the morning? So I define first thing in the morning or first meal As within the first 2 hours, usually appetite for breakfast, it's always synonymous with late night eating. As in, if someone doesn't have an appetite for breakfast, it's because of late night eating or simply not moving enough, right? So I'll go through some research here. So late night eating and skipping breakfast are synonymous. So late night eating also, by the way, and the reason why I really don't like— I really do put a big emphasis on breakfast because it helps mitigate the effect of late night eating. And late night eating generally is not calorie controlled. Yeah. In fact, who goes out late night, I'm really hungry, I'm going to make myself broccoli and rice and steak. No, it's not what fucking people do. People go late night eating, I only get what's in the cupboard. Chips. Yeah, they look good. I'm still hungry. Cookies. Still hungry. Ice cream. Still hungry. What else do I have? That's most of the time when people are doing late night eating. It's not calorie controlled. Late-night eating as a habit, as a behavior, is something that I want to mitigate as best as I can. That's why I do put an emphasis on setting up a routine for breakfast. In actual fact, late-night eating, if you do measure your sleep, for sure it's going to have an impact on your sleep, which then also has a waterfall impact on mental health, physical health, insulin regulation, focus, discipline, everything else. So I actually recommend not eating around 3 hours before going to bed. If you go to bed at 11, your last meal's around like 9 o'clock, pushing it, 8 PM. The earlier the better in many instances. So this is a published study. I've got a heap of studies in my book. I don't know, I think I counted like 300-odd references. So late night eating and skipping breakfast are associated with negative impacts of sleep quality and prevents you getting into REM, your rapid eye movement sleep. So again, sleep is super, super, super important for physiological health and psychological health. It's associated with increased risk of diabetes and obesity. It decreased reaction times in sports and performance, increased risks of metabolic syndrome, and also interferes with glucose pathways. Cardio increases risk of cardiovascular disease, increases incidence of depression and distress linked to making poor dietary choices and energy levels. Now it's like a chicken and the egg scenario. All these things consequently because people just make poor choices through not sleeping because they're late night eating, which then affects their sleep, which then affects the poor dietary choices and this cascading negative feedback loop that happens. So again, this is why I'm pretty big on I'm very big on eating breakfast, do away with late night eating. So this is where I think like people talk in the biohacking communities about fasting. And there's a big push on fasting and how healthy it is for you. I think it's ass backwards, personally. I think based on the research, I think fasting in the morning really only serves a very small sec of the population. I think that sec of the population is males in their 40s and 50s. Who are very skinny and work a lot, and they do it out of convenience to justify them not to eat because they actually see eating as an inhibitor to work, and all they want to do is work. But they're not the most healthiest of individuals. That's my observation, because if you look at the biohacking community, that's what it's filled with. It's not filled with people who are jacked, uh, generally. It's filled with skinny, skinny white guys who make a lot of money and just want to work all the time. And then they find, again, Theory, fact, conviction. And I had one, I had this kind of argument with a client a fair while ago. And I'm like, oh, I just want to fast, I want to fast. I'm like, alright, if fasting's working so well for you, go do your blood. He got his bloods done. Your blood glucose should be around that 4.2 to 4.8. His blood glucose was like 5.8. I'm like, dude, fucking fasting's not working for you. He's like, I hate it when you're right. I'm like, trying to tell you, like. Get your bloods done. You can get objective data on this. And I think if you are going to implement any plan, get objective data and it tells you, yes, it's working, no, it's not working. But again, for most people, intermittent fasting, especially going without food first thing in the morning, is just going to push those— and there's multiple studies that have showed this as well— it just pushes those same calories to later in the day, which isn't— from multiple studies shows you there are much more— just duck hemming Multiple studies that show that it's more, it's much more beneficial from health outcomes to eat at the start of the day. So the kings of late night eating and skipping breakfast are sumo wrestlers. One of the interesting studies, I think it was in like, I can't remember, I think it was Time magazine. I've got it in my book, but they studied sumo wrestlers because they wanted to know like kind of the reverse of how do you get lean rather how do people get fat? And who are the fattest people who get purposely fat? Sumo wrestlers. So let's study sumo wrestlers and figure out what they do, because then that should extrapolate things not to do if you want to be in great shape. So one of the things that sumo wrestlers do is they wake up and they don't eat. They train, then they have a massive meal. They have about— in this article, it said they have 2 meals a day where they have most of their calories in those 2 meals, and their big meals are usually followed by sleep and naps. I found that interesting as a kind of a side point. But yeah, obviously they eat excess calories, but eating excess calories, they're skipping, they're just most of their food and the calories are in very small portions, in very big portions over only 2 meals. So late night eating and poor eating behaviors, emotional triggers, boredom, fatigue, anger, loneliness. I point these ones out because these are things that you can point out to clients that if you're bored, if you're fatigued, if you're angry, if you're lonely, These are the emotions that you want to be aware of as an individual. These are the emotions you want to be aware of as a coach and point out that these are the things that may cause you to eat things that otherwise and cause you to go off your plan. So it's a case of like when you become aware of these things, oh, I'm feeling angry. The way I deal with anger is to eat, or the way I deal with anger is to drink, or the way I deal with boredom is to eat, or the way I deal with fatigue is to eat, or the way I deal with loneliness is to eat and to drink or to do drugs, whatever it may be. So then it's understanding, okay, if this is the way I deal with things, what other options that when you're calm and conscious— again, the analogy of the rider and the elephant, the rational brain and the emotional brain— when you feel these emotions, having that detour plan, that default plan of, oh, this is what I normally do, I'm gonna go for a walk, I'm gonna call a friend, I'm gonna call my mom, I'm gonna call my dad who's going to talk me off the ledge of whatever it may be. So thinking about these things when you're at peace, when you're not emotional, other strategies that you could do when you're feeling these things. Being aware of these emotional triggers can certainly go a long way, but think of strategies when you're calm and rational, not when you're emotional. Because when you're emotional, it's the elephant driving, it's not the rider driving. And you want to have that conscious brain of when you feel these emotions, what are things that are actually constructive rather than destructive that you can do? Make sense? As a coach, you want to bring these— make it aware to clients that they have these options. Because often, like, it's easy for me to say this now, it's all conscious, oh yeah, that makes so much sense. But when we feel those emotions, when we feel angry, we feel bored, we default to that maladaptive child of how do we deal with this. But again, we're adults now, we don't have to be maladaptive. So psychological triggers— sorry, physiological triggers rather. Physiological triggers that will trigger overeating and getting off the plan. Hunger. Easy, right? If you're hungry, you're feeling hungry, I just got to eat. It's going to take you off the plan. Not hitting macro targets, particularly protein. Not hitting meal targets. Purposely skipping meals to burn more fat. Sudden increases in energy expenditure. I've seen this a lot. People like, oh, I need to burn fat. And they do a lot of exercise. And then what happens? They get super hungry and then they overeat, which just mitigates the exercise. So again, we don't want to be in this loop of— yeah, we don't want to be in this transient loop where we're always overcompensating. Sudden decreases in energy intake, being in a calorie deficit too long, calorie deficit too long, and micro and macronutrient deficiencies. Again, the two big ones often— carbs, sorry, fats and protein— definitely If we're not hitting those as a minimum target, definitely can throw people off course. Okay, any questions on what I've covered so far? So my coffee rules. My coffee does rule also. It's like a pun. My coffee rules. And these are also my coffee rules. Drink black coffee, no sugar, no milk. Nothing artificial. The reason for this one is what do people add to coffee? In short, what do people add to coffee? Calories. The answer is calories, right? What do people add to coffee? They add calories. And if you're doing that 6 times a day, 8 times a day, you're adding 8 times the amount of calories. I think the average short black has, what, 4 calories in it? It's nothing. But most people, just whether it's sugar, it's milk, whatever, they're adding calories. Now, if I'm trying to put someone on a calorie control plan, and again, because these are two things that I want to address individually, I want to address their food and then their caffeine habits, right? Some people might be on 6 to 8 cups of coffee a day and multiple times a day, and they're having a lot of crap in their coffee. I want to draw that back. It's an easy, it's an easy win. It's an easy victory. To cut those calories without sacrificing the caffeine that they're having. Because if I just cut caffeine out straight away, they're going to get withdrawals because caffeine is a drug. So if people are putting sugar in and they're having it, firstly, it depends on how many coffees a day they're having, right? And how far they are from their weight loss. If people are having constant sugar at every coffee, they are desensitizing their taste buds to constantly have that sweet hit. So I do want to resensitize people's taste buds. To tasting the bitterness of coffee, because coffee is supposed to be bitter. It's not, it's not a sugar, it's not a dessert. It's two things at once. It's— will I negotiate almond milk? Yeah, look, it's not— yes, if someone is, if someone's in maintenance and they want to have an almond latte, more power to you. It's not an issue, right? It's not that it's— I'm not— it's less about, say, it's about an easy win of controlling calories without people having to calculate. If that makes sense. But for the sugar aspect, it's more on the side of behavioral, is that I don't want to be reinforcing you having 6 hits of coffee a day and getting that constant reminder of sweetness so that when you eat normal food, it tastes like shit because you're thinking that everything should taste really sweet because you're getting this feedback loop that things should be sweet when they shouldn't. Like, most food isn't sweet, right? If that makes sense. Well, can't cut out— they can cut it out. That's a limiting belief. But again, in context of their day, is it a problem? Is it the thing they need to focus on? Probably not. Could you create a macro-friendly meal plan that includes an almond latte? Of course you can. Sure, they're going to need to calculate that. That's fine. If you want to do that for them, absolutely. This is just my easy win rules. If that makes sense. These are easier in rules. Yes. Buy organic. Coffee is one of the most heavily sprayed, the most heavily sprayed crop in the world by and large. And again, if you're having it multiple times a day, it is worth investing in organic. It is one of the products. So strawberries and coffee are the two most sprayed pesticide crops that that pretty much are produced anyway. Definitely buy organic to mitigate the effects of pesticides exposure. Pesticide exposure— most pesticides are endocrine disrupting, which means they're going to have an impact on testosterone and excess of estrogen. The xenoestrogens are basically estrogen-mimicking compounds. If you look at— I wrote an article back in 2012 which basically discussed It's called Fighting the T-Killing Toxins. It was published on T Nation and basically discussed the effects of environmental toxins that it's had on testosterone and sperm count. And sperm counts in the 1960s were like 113 deciliters per milliliter, or however it's measured. And like the stats that I got in 2013 was 66. So it's been— and I don't know what they are today because there's even more pesticides that have been dumped in our environment today. So people are like, oh, it's not a problem. There's a lot of evidence there is a problem, right? So I would, male or female, by the way, because it's not just, oh, I have testosterone, I need to avoid this. No, zytoestrogen and excessive estrogen for females is as problematic as it is for males, except the effects are more prominent with males. I would say, sorry, the effects are probably more obvious with males, although the effects are probably more insidious with females, as in effects on period, effects on reproductive health, effects on polycystic ovary syndrome and all these other things that can happen. From that. Never consume coffee post-workout. Quick 101 about our nervous system. We have our parasympathetic and our sympathetic nervous system. Parasympathetic is our rest and digest. Our sympathetic is our fight and flight. Coffee, which one is playing on with? Rest and digest or fight or flight? Fight or flight, right? So we do a workout, which is fight or flight, right? After a workout, what do we want to do? You're going to rest and digest. So having a coffee post-workout makes no sense because we're triggering that fight or flight again. We want to be relaxing post-workout. We want to be breathing, calming down the nervous system so that we can recover, perpetuate our recovery. Don't have coffee directly post-workout. No coffee after 1:37 PM. And I spoke about this before, and it's simply because coffee has a half-life of 4 to 6 hours, which also means it has a quarter-life of 8 to 10 hours. I explained before about how it sits on top of that adenosine receptor site. So if you have 100mg of caffeine at 2 o'clock, 6 hours later, like, hey, whatever it is, 8 o'clock, you're going to have 50mg in your system. And then 10 hours later, you're going to have 25mg in your system. So you want to allow enough time to make sure that those effects are mitigated. The ideal time for coffee is meal 1 and pre-training. They get it again, not after 1:37. So we're talking about concepts Tyrone said it the other month, uh, front-loading caffeine. Yeah, so here's 6 cups before 1 o'clock. He just front-loads his caffeine. It's not the greatest thing in the world, but look, it's better than having it after that period, right? Certainly for sleep. So don't do double shots. So a lot of folks get in the habit of doing double shots, which then— so the average cup of the short black would have 65 milligrams, so it means a double has 130 milligrams. So people often have doubles, they go, I have one coffee, except they're not having one coffee, they're having two coffees. So if you're having doubles, they count as two coffees. If you're having long blacks, that's two coffees, which is my next rule. Count long blacks as two coffees. If you're having doubles, it's two coffees. When I look at someone's food log and they're like, I have a double black four times a day, I'm like, you have eight coffees a day. You don't have one, because one coffee is defined as 65 milligrams. And we do want to be conscious of how much coffee. The reason why CODIAF is, for lack of a better word, insidious or benign in our culture Caffeine is— have you ever noticed how caffeine in our culture is celebrated and marijuana and cannabis is demonized? Does anyone know why? Because caffeine is the drug of productivity. It makes people work harder. In actual fact, caffeine, if you look at like, you know, the coffee break, where the coffee break comes from, I think it was like 1920, there was a factory in America where this was a time where there was a huge wage disparity between male and females. Where you could pay like a female like a quarter of the price of what you could pay a male. And what the factory workers, the owners of the factory realized is if they gave women caffeine, they would work 3 times, they would do 3 times more work than paying a man. So they basically got women to do the work and gave them caffeine, which produced far more and made it cheaper. So that invented the coffee, but then they gave the caffeine for free because it made their workforce more productive. And then people caught on and go, wow, this coffee stuff really works. And they just started giving all their employees caffeine. So if you go to any corporate jobs and notice they have the coffee break, and generally speaking, caffeine in workplaces is free because companies know it improves productivity. It is the drug of productivity. Now whether people are conscious of that or not, I know the direct, Michael Pollan wrote a very short book on this, which is quite fascinating. But essentially, and the reason why again, I say cannabis is demonized is because it's the drug of being lazy. It's the drug of being a stoner. It's the drug of being unproductive. In the West, unproductivity and laziness and sitting down, it's not celebrated at all. What is celebrated is how much work and output you have. Short blacks only. Limit coffee to 2 cups per day and respect each cup. It is a drug after all. Yeah, it is a drug after all. It doesn't and it shouldn't get a free pass. And it can definitely have an impact. And there is a portion of the population where it will raise blood pressure on. There is a portion where people are very sensitive to it. People are having any like gastrointestinal issues as well. Caffeine is something that I'd look at to completely mitigate or reduce or completely avoid. Where to begin? With a high protein breakfast. Meal 1. Routine and easy wins. These are the 3 things. All right, in summary, where to begin? Start your clients with a high protein breakfast. What could that look like? Any form of meat, any form of fish, eggs, protein shake. Establish a routine for the client. Help them establish routine. What time do you wake up? What time do you go to bed? When can you eat? When do you go to work? What time do you come home? When do you have time to cook? Routine, right? Think of yourself as a routine coach, a routine trainer. If you just did that, your clients would get better results for sure. It would change their life. And look at the easy wins. If someone's drinking, you know, they're having 8 cups of coffee and they're putting 2 sugars in every coffee, that's 16 cups of sugar over the day. It's quite a lot of calories that's just coming from sugar. Isn't it just easy? Just cut the sugar. You've slashed— No, I don't like sweetness in coffee because again, of that, the fact that they're gonna— it triggers the— and it's not a calorie thing, it's a coaching thing is they're constantly getting that trigger of things are supposed to be sweet. No, your taste buds are desensitized. Sweet should taste sweet. Coffee is not meant to be sweet. You're adding it because it's bitter, and you've— if you have to add 2 cups of coffee to sugar, it's a lot of— that's— if I had that, I'd be like, wow, this is like a dessert, right? I want to desensitize those taste buds because otherwise vegetables, fruits, proteins they're not going to taste nice in comparison because you're used to being overstimulated. I want to reduce that overstimulation. And again, it can be progressive. It doesn't have to be all or none. So it might be like from, from 2, 2 sugars, have 1 sugar. And generally, if someone does have a caffeine overdose, like having 8 cups, I'll slowly bring that back to 7.5. Do that for 3 days. 7. Do that for 3 days. 6.5. Do that for 3 days. 6. Do that for 3 days. You don't want to go cold turkey because people get withdrawals and they get massive migraines, headaches. And that kind of thing. And you also want to bring the electrolytes that we sell. You want to bring electrolytes in, specifically sodium. So you want to bring sodium and potassium back up as you're bringing people's caffeine down because the adrenal system is run on sodium and potassium. It's often like first thing in the morning, if you give electrolytes first thing in the morning, people will feel really good because that adrenal axis. All right. Oh, hi there. I hope you enjoyed the podcast while I've still got you. 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