S1:E11 - High Performance Nutrition with Dan Garner on the Enterprise Fitness Podcast

This is the show where we let you inside the doors of a world-renowned personal training studio. Welcome to the Enterprise Fitness Podcast. I'm Mark Ottobre, owner and director, here to introduce today's show with master enterprise trainer Reece Adams and today's guest, Dan "The Nutrition Man" Gardner. This show is absolutely epic. Reece, as always, Reece did an exceptional job on this podcast, picking Dan's brain, really getting into the minutiae of nutrition, talking about calories, macros. Reece talks about his 1,000 grams of carbs day that he does sometimes. They spoke candidly about how Reece dropped his macros to 20% protein and getting things from more carbs and fats. A lot of information in this podcast, and I also want to take this chance just to say, this is not nutritional advice for you. This is not something for you to implement. We use this as education/entertainment purposes as these podcasts. So don't try and attempt anything that Dan and Reece talk about unless you're under the care of a medical provider or healthcare practitioner and someone who really understands nutrition and what they're doing. And obviously Reece's experiments are not to be done on yourself without a care provider. So with that said, just a couple announcements. We had the Enterprise Fitness Ball just recently. It was a smash success with 142 enterprise-ites in the room. It was an amazing event. We had Dan Iliac behind the lens taking photos. All of those photos, by the way, are on our Facebook page. So if you haven't already, like us on Facebook, check out those photos. It was a glamorous event. It was actually glam, glam, and more glam. Some beautiful women and beautiful men in the room. So it was a very attractive event. Check out the photos, like them, share them. And if you're in one of the photos, you might even make it as your profile picture. And I'm certainly not suggesting If you're not in a photo and you make it your profile picture, that would just be weird. Also, big shout out to MNK, Matthew Frinkle from Nutrition Kitchen, Matthew's Nutrition Kitchen for catering our, not the event, but catering our seminars, providing us with tasty, tasty food. What MNK is, in case you don't know, it's a food preparation service that, you know, you put your order in, you send Matt an email or go online and put your order in and Matt delivers healthy, nutritious food which can be gluten, catered gluten and dairy free right to your door. So if you've got a comp, if you've got a busy life, whatever it is, I always say there's two categories of people. There's people, and regardless of how much money you make, there's two categories of people. There's people who have more time than money, and there's people who have more money than time. If you're in the category of more money than time, then I would highly suggest you look at MNK and take the heartache and hard work out of your food preps food prep and trying to eat healthy and being caught out. M&K are exceptional what they do in providing healthy and tasty, tasty meals right to your door.

So that's it.

You didn't listen to this podcast to hear me speak. So I like to get these formalities out the way rather quickly. I'm gonna pass it over to Rhys and Dan. See you on the other side of this, or should I say you'll hear me on the other side of this.

Welcome, Dan, and thank you for coming on the show today.

Thank you for having me.

Pleasure. For everyone listening, are you able to tell us about how you got into the fitness industry and how you basically got to the point where you're kicking ass in nutrition that you are today?

Yeah, kicking ass for sure. So how I got in the industry, I mean, that could be a podcast all by itself. I've had some ups and I've had some downs. I'm sure any trainer who's dedicated their life to this can empathize with me in that sense. But I mean, long story short, I got started in this industry way back when I was 14 years old. My dad got me one of those old-school weightlifting sets with the plastic— the concrete surrounded by plastic, the York barbell, old-school ones. He got it at a garage sale and brought it back, and I've been absolutely in love with the industry ever since. I couldn't imagine doing anything else. So what initially drew my attention was just kind of getting in the gym and and seeing results. And then, you know, when you do something and you see results strictly because of you, it wasn't because of anything of your environment. No one gave you anything. So it was just, it was so intriguing that I got what I put into it. And then helping other people has been a huge facet for continuing in this as well.

Yeah, no, I totally agree with, once you see results, it just keeps you going. Like I remember back when I was a kid, like you said, running around laps around the oval and thinking to myself, there's got to be an easier way than doing all this cardio to get the results that I want. And obviously that's where, that's where nutrition comes in.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, I mean, I think like, I think most people start in training and then I kind of just sort of gravitated to nutrition over time just because I was absolutely fascinated by it through, through all my schooling, through the different jobs I had, and through And even when I started in the health industry officially, I always separated myself from other trainers by applying nutrition properly. The other trainers were doing good programming, but I was getting better results than them simply through good nutrition. So it's just— it's a real fascinating area for me that I dove into and haven't looked back since.

Yeah, awesome. So now let's dig deeper into that knowledge of yours, huh?

Yeah, for sure. Shoot.

So what type of clients do you deal with mostly?

Um, at this point in my career, I deal with mainly professional athletes, but then also a lot of trainers who are just looking to get the absolute best result. So I work with Olympic, UFC, NFL, NHL, MLB, all these world-class athletes and get them to their world-class performance and body composition. But then there's also plenty of trainers that contact me just simply because they've hit a plateau or they want to learn more or whatever it's going to be. So I would say it's a good split between higher-level trainers and the higher-level athletes.

Awesome. So it's basically a lot of high-level stuff.

Yeah.

You don't really deal with general population or you deal with them as well?

Well, actually I'm kind of glad you brought that up because I deal with the general population that can be kind of hard. So if somebody's broken and no one's been able to fix them yet, I get a few of those people as well. So if somebody's had a gut issue for a long time and they've seen a few people and they don't know what's going on. I'll see a lot of those people, but in terms of just general, healthy general population, I don't generally work with them. It's generally higher-level trainers, higher-level athletes looking for the most scientifically-based best result, or the general population who's just kind of in a bit of a metabolic storm and needs help getting out of it in order to restore function.

[Speaker:MARK] Yeah. With those clients that come to you, you've had a— hard time getting the results they say should be— should have been getting doing what they're doing. Do you do like functional health testing or anything like that?

Yeah, absolutely. I— a lot of my practice and what I do is based around functional medicine and looking at, you know, the body from the inside out. A lot of people take an outside-in approach to where they'll set calories, set macronutrients, and then that's kind of it. And that's kinda— I call that the outside-in approach because, you know, that's calculations and then just throwing it at somebody. Whereas an inside-out approach, you know, I wanna— how is their thyroid working? How is their adrenals? How is their gut functioning? What's their mitochondria and energy production like? What's their neurotransmitter status and immune function like? All these things lead to more of an inside-out approach. And something I like to say to these types of clients and these kind of coaches who work with these clients is a lot of people feel that you need to lose weight in order to be healthy, but in many cases you need to be healthy in order to lose weight. So with those kind of people, I will go through an assessment process through questionnaires, a series of questionnaires and a series of lab analysis, and then I'm looking at that inside-out approach. Okay, what is the, the missing link here? What— where's the squeaky wheel? What do I have to fix in order to get this person to function so that they can get to their goals without spinning their tires in the mud?

Yeah, absolutely. That's, um, probably the best way I've explained that, uh, heard that explained in terms of, um, looking at the whole picture. Because that's right, we do tend to look through a straw at times, and we sort of don't take into account, like, even how someone's sleep is, is going to affect how they're utilizing their nutrients for the day. So just—

oh yeah, absolutely. How they utilize their nutrition for the day, what their blood sugar is like, what their immune system status is going to be, what hormone status is gonna be. I mean, this is just sleep, and I mean, sleep will affect adherence too. So this is just like one thing that can affect the entire roller coaster. So I actually have a questionnaire that's only about sleep that I send out to my clients on their assessment.

Yeah, and I've actually found sometimes like you get a client come to you, they wanna put on size, so therefore you progressively increasing their food, but then it gets to a point where increasing their food anymore, and it actually has the opposite effect. They start getting weaker, their sleep starts getting poorer, they're not digesting their food as well. So that's where I guess a lot of people get stuck.

So yeah, that's a perfect analogy for the limitation of the outside-in approach.

Yeah, we're on the right track here, getting some content.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Okay, with Michael Bisping, he's the middleweight champ at the moment. Is that Is that right?

Yeah, absolutely. Me and him, we've had a hell of a journey together so far. Right now he's the middleweight champion of the world in the UFC, number 1 ranked UFC middleweight fighter and in the world. So it's been a fantastic process coaching him.

Yeah, how long have you been working with him?

He first hired me for his fight against Anderson Silva. Which was just this past February. So I got him ready for the Anderson Silva fight, which is of course massive, and then also the short-notice Luke Rockhold title fight, which we won by knockout, and then most recently the first title defense against Dan Henderson. So 3 fights all in 2016. He's also filmed 2 movies in 2016 as well, so he's had an amazing year. I personally think he should be Fighter of the Year, but it's been, it's been It's been a cool, definitely a cool process working with him and living that experience with him. I love when my clients do well because I just feel like I'm living it with them.

Yeah. Did you change his nutrition from when he was doing the fights versus the movies? Or did you keep it pretty constant because he's always in good shape?

Yeah, he stays in pretty good shape. So in between fights, the guy, he's always in shape. He's been doing martial arts for 30 years. Forever, so, and he enjoys working out and training. So even when he went to Thailand on vacation with his family, he was with the Muay Thai national team training there. So he was on vacation, he's still training. So a guy with his energy expenditure in between fights, you don't have to be so rigid with your nutrition. His energy expenditure is so high that we're not gonna run into big issues. So the guidelines in between fights are kept basic. And consistent, something that's easy that he can follow, his weight will go back up, which is what we want. And then come close to fight camp, that's when everything starts dialing in because you always, you always want to leave yourself cards, right? It's just like getting somebody ready for, say, a bodybuilding show. You don't want to play all your cards 16 weeks out because then when there's a plateau on fat loss, well then what card are you going to pull after that? You've kind of run out of options. During the offseason, you want to keep it fairly basic, and his own genetics and energy expenditure are going to keep him in fantastic shape. Then once the fight camp comes around, then we start pulling out our aces one at a time, one at a time, one at a time at 8 weeks out, 6 weeks out, 4 weeks out, 2 weeks out to make sure that he's always getting results and that we are dialing in and that we always have another card to play.

Yeah. How often would you be checking in with him?

I like to check in with him in between fights. It's, it's few and far between, say once a month or so, because I trust him. I know he's rocking it out. I know he's doing his thing. And when he starts camp, and then I like to talk to him once a week. So, well, he does typically an 8-week camp, but his last 2 camps have been shorter. One was cut short just simply due to him filming the movie in England, but when everything's going our way, I like to talk to him once a week and the camp starts 8 weeks out.

Awesome. What would be the biggest thing that you learned working with someone of his level?

So his level, but I mean also my other clients. I mean the NFL, NHL, Olympians, they're, they're all on that genetic supreme high-level person as well. So when you're working with people at this high of a level, The first thing that you wake up to is someone is trying to take my job every day. Every single day there's someone out there who wants my job because everybody, a lot of people want to work with these athletes and then not only that, there are people that would be like, "Oh, hey man, I'll work with you. I'll work for free if you promote me." Or a supplement company will come along and say, "Hey, we'll give you all this free stuff if you follow our meal plan and supplements." All this kind of stuff. These guys, all my athletes, they get all this crap thrown at them all the time. So first and foremost, someone's trying to take my job every day. So that is motivating for me to get out of bed and make sure I'm always on the cutting edge, not just from a research perspective and theory perspective, but from an application perspective. So that's one thing you learn very quickly working with the guys at the top is that you got to stay in your game or your game's going to be over. Another thing that you're gonna learn with working with these top guys is you have to work with their psychology and not against it. There is no way you're gonna come in and say, "Okay, drop everything that you're doing right now and run my meal plan." They're gonna say, "Hell no," because they know their body, they're a pro athlete, they've been doing this for 20 years. They also have their own psychological routines and rituals and things that they do. It could involve a food that you and I may consider suboptimal in a, in a current scenario, but for them it's not because it gets their, they're in the zone. It's their mentality, it's their ritual, it's something that they do. So in many cases you're working with their psychology and not against it. You gotta change smaller things less often, or, and unless they're super, super, super ready to change everything, and then you have the ability to change everything, but it's up to myself as the coach or any other coach listening to this to have the proper antenna that's going to be able to gauge how ready the client is or how ready the athlete is. Because one thing that's important in nutrition is you have to meet the client where they want to be met. You can't just come in and force all this change because adherence is going to drop and probably their results are going to suffer as well. So I would say Someone taking my job every day, something you learn, and then working with them and not imposing your strategy on them is something you have to do.

Yeah, the psychology is definitely a massively overlooked area that I find a lot of people don't really pay enough attention to.

Oh, for sure. That's something that I actually wish that I focused more on earlier in my career. I mean, and the industry is somewhat kind of broken in a sense that You can go to university or college for 4 years to become a car mechanic, but the most complex organism on the planet is a human being and I can get a training certification in a weekend. That's obscene. And I believe that a lot of things in the industry are towards anatomy and physiology and pharmacology and biochemistry where all of those things are absolutely crucial to understand and be familiar with. But if you can't get the client to execute the plan, then that stuff doesn't matter because they're not doing it, and that's when psychology comes in. And if you don't understand psychology, then none of the other stuff matters.

I couldn't have said it better. So let's go back to basics. When you have a client come to you for, say, optimal body composition, they want to say you have the most amount of lean muscle possible and be at their leanest possible, where do you start with their nutrition and what would the main factors that you take into account when establishing their baseline be?

What factors I take into?

Yeah, so like, I mean, like might be lifestyle factors or timeframes, things like that.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Okay, so when someone comes to me for the goal of, you know, optimal body composition, position, then they're still gonna go through the assessment that if somebody came through the goal for me with optimal health. So the assessment is the assessment and it doesn't matter if you're general population or pro athlete, I'm gonna put you through my assessment. And that involves a series of questionnaires, it involves a series of lab analysis and it involves a phone call. So they're gonna go through my comprehensive questionnaire assessment. Where I'm looking at a lot of things. You know, there's a lot of things that you can extrapolate based on biofeedback. So based on what somebody's saying to you instead of looking at a lab. So if you don't have access to labs, then it's important to get good at your interview skills and your questionnaire designing skills so that you can extrapolate the data towards certain things to where you're positioning certain questions to reveal gut health issues or adrenal issues or thyroid issues or whatever it's gonna be. So I have people I have people go through my comprehensive questionnaire assessment. I have people go through my sleep questionnaire like we already talked about. I go through a lab analysis assessment and the phone call. A big thing I'm looking for is stress. And you know, I'd be happy to kind of fatigue— I mean, myth bust adrenal fatigue if that's something you think your audience would be interested in.

Yeah, 100%. Go for it.

Yeah. Okay, sure. Adrenal fatigue. Okay. This is something that I kind of wanted to get out on a podcast because this gets talked about a lot, but I just simply think it's misguided. Whenever something's misguided, it doesn't make them bad people because they're trying to help somebody. That's something I always admire. But when you put all your eggs in one basket without taking a step back and looking at the body as a whole, then I believe that you're making a mistake when it comes to the application of what you're doing to the client. So to catch people up to speed, if they're unfamiliar with the physiology of stress response, what happens is it begins with the hypothalamus. And the hypothalamus and pituitary are two different little organs that hang out in the brain. And the hypothalamus secretes something that's known as corticotropin-releasing hormone to the pituitary. And this just signals the pituitary, it wakes it up, and And then the pituitary then receiving that signal sends another hormone down the chain to the adrenal glands known as adrenocorticotropic hormone. And then once that hormone hits the adrenal glands, then the adrenal glands secrete cortisol, which a lot of people, you know, of course they're connecting it to stress because it is a stress hormone and that it is connected to what is this like kind of blanket umbrella statement people use to say adrenal fatigue. So we have the hypothalamus signaling the pituitary, and then the pituitary signals the adrenal glands, and then it's ultimately the adrenal glands that secrete cortisol. Now, something important to take into consideration right away is that the adrenal glands at the very end of this system, they're simply being told what to do. So if they don't receive a lot of adrenocorticotropic hormone, then they're just not gonna secrete a lot. Or if they get— receive a lot of adrenocorticotropic hormone, then they're gonna secrete a lot of cortisol. Remember, we're talking about the end man here. He's on the end of the line. And if the body is at a low or high cortisol, it's because of the sequence of events. It's not just because of the adrenal glands. And, you know, first and foremost, outright, nothing just fatigues. You know, you don't have liver fatigue, you don't have pancreatic fatigue, you don't have small intestine fatigue. So the fact that we're Claiming that an organ gets tired is kind of silly because every organ only adapts to its environment. So it's gonna adapt to the adrenocorticotropic hormone coming into it, or it's not. It's an adaptation. It's not a question of fatigue. So the reason why I think that it's misguided— that's kind of just the basic physiology of how it works, but really short, because that could be a long conversation. But Why I think it's misguided is, you know, multifactorial. You could have low cortisol due to the signals on the hypothalamus. So I said that the hypothalamus begins the sequence, but it begins the sequence based on feedback loops. So neurotransmitters, the immune system, and hormones, they all talk to the hypothalamus before it even secretes corticotropin-releasing hormone to the pituitary. So your neurotransmitters, immune system, and hormone health and its balance between all those can affect the hypothalamus before the chain even begins. And that would have nothing to do with adrenal fatigue. Another one, another example would be you can have low cortisol because the pituitary is not functioning properly. So that's just another, another point of the chain. It could totally be the pituitary not functioning properly, so it's not gonna secrete adrenocorticotropic hormone. So that the adrenal glands still never even receive the signal. And then if, if we keep moving down, inflamed, they're gonna secrete a thing known as TNF-alpha. And this is tumor necrosis factor alpha. It's an inflammatory molecule of the immune system. And this TNF-alpha can bind on adrenal gland receptor sites for adrenocorticotropic hormone, So even if the hypothalamus and the pituitary are working, TNF-alpha can block the receptor sites on the actual adrenals from even receiving the signal from the pituitary. So again, it's not necessarily an adrenal medulla or adrenal cortex problem, it's an adrenal receptor problem, and it's not a hypothalamus or pituitary problem, it's a receptor problem. So you gotta step back and look at the whole chain, and then, and then that— I mean, it even gets bigger than that because That's still only the chain. You know, food sensitivities can increase cortisol over time. So can leaky gut. So can a parasite or pathogen infection. All of these things can have an impact on the chain without actually being the chain itself. But then when you look at the chain, there's still at least 4 different or 5, 6 different components if you consider neurotransmitter, immune system, and hormone health. All those components are still their own moving parts. So we're looking at— we're looking at an endless amount of things that people are just slapping a label on and calling adrenal fatigue and it's not necessarily true. The root cause of the problem could be from all of these different sources. So it's something that I think is just— it's lazy coaching if your client says, "Yeah, I'm really tired in the morning." Oh, and then someone says, "Oh, you must have adrenal fatigue." You know, "Do you drink a lot of coffee every day?" And the guy's like, "Yeah." "Oh, you probably have adrenal fatigue." fatigue then. That's not necessarily the case. You can't just give somebody adrenal glandular and Rhodiola rosea and call it a day. You sh— you have to kind of— you have to look into it and look back at the entire physiology and assess where the root cause is and confirm where— instead of ever using adrenal fatigue, people should call it cortisol dysregulation. And when you determine where cortisol dysregulation lies, then you move forward with your application on the client to actually solve the problem. Because if you give somebody adrenal glandular, they're gonna feel better, but they're gonna have to take it forever because you're not actually solving the problem.

Absolutely.

But if you solve the problem, then you won't need the glandular because you're gonna solve it. You know what I'm saying here?

It's just a band-aid. Yes.

Yeah, exactly. It's just a band-aid. And then yes, you should— you need to take a step back and look at the physiology, and that's where the inside-out approach comes from. To actually find the root cause and eliminate it so your client can move forward without supplements.

Yeah, for sure. Look for the signs, but then you've got to do your own research. You can't just blanket it, so to speak, because how you're explaining is if you sort of just go, now you've got adrenal fatigue, it's like, like you said, it's you're looking at the body from the outside in rather than the inside out.

Yeah, exactly. And it's kind of a case of Someone's done a course or read a blog or— and then one thing— okay, so here's another way to put it. If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

Yes.

So you're gonna try and use the same protocol for everything, but not everything in the low energy category is adrenal fatigue. It can come from very different sources, which is very different protocols.

And sometimes you might have to reach out and get someone else to get those bloods done for you. Because as personal trainers sometimes obviously that's beyond our scope and there's no shame in that.

Yeah, oh no, absolutely. That actually makes you look more professional because you're saying, hey, I don't know but I know somebody who can and then that client, it will ultimately make you both look better because you're going to get that person help and your client's going to be grateful that you gave that— you referred that person to the right person and that you're not trying to be some guru who wants to know everything.

Yeah. So, with establishing a baseline, what kind of formula do you use? Do you use the Katch-McArdle or the Harris-Benedict? What do you use?

So, the baseline for calories?

Yeah.

The baseline for calories, I use 3 different methods and they all have their time and place. I'm going to be teaching this in my upcoming seminar. But the 3 different methods that I use are a 2-week food log to establish their maintenance. And this is actually my favorite method to use, but it's my favorite method to use if you can believe them. The food log in many cases is fabricated. I've had people who've come to me before who've been very, very, very overweight and then I'll look at their food log and it's like chicken breast and salad. Chicken breast and salad. Chicken breast. I'm like, "Bullshit! There's no way that this food log is any way, shape, or form legitimate." So if you're using a food log, that's my absolute best and most favorite way to determine maintenance. I'll use actually a 2-week food log and then have somebody track their weight every single day, so 7 days a week, and then we get the average of 2 weights. So days 1 to 7, get that average. And then days 8 to 14, we'll get that average and we'll see what the total average is. So what did week 1 versus week 2 look like? Did you gain weight or did you lose weight or did you stay the same? So we get an excellent maintenance there. But the reason why I like the food log the most is because it's the most specific if it's legitimate. So it's gonna be exact because it is going to be very, very close to exactly what they're doing. But then it also gives you two other things. It gives you a, when they like to eat. You can look at their food log and say, "Hey, okay, this guy has a breakfast and lunch, but then he has a snack, and then he has dinner, and then he has another snack." So you can kind of see how you're gonna make your meal plan to maximize their adherence to match their schedule. But another thing that you can extrapolate from the food log is what foods they like to eat. So you can actually look at the food log and say, "Hey, this guy eats a lot of chicken, and he loves his quinoa and eggs." So I'm gonna use this in the plan because he'll just be more adherent to it. It'll be less of a shock to his system. So the food log can give you a ton of great data, and that's what I prefer to use. And then beyond that, I use calorie estimations or maintenance calculators. And my specific one that I like is Katch-McArdle because within the research, Katch-McArdle is more accurate towards the active population. So it's gonna be more accurate towards the trainers and athletes that I work with.

Yeah, do you use a different formula for general population then or do you just based off experience adjust based on the number that you get?

So the catch per mcdonald's plus an activity multiplier as well and it's my own activity multiplier, it's not anybody else's. So it's— and I use my own activity multiplier on the catch so that can be extrapolated towards general pop or athletes. It's more accurate for athletes, but if you adjust the activity multiplier, you can make it work. I have estimations that I use, that I use in many cases as well if the food log is really bad. And the catch, so like for example, this is why I kind of have different uses for different calculators. The 2-week food log is the best, but if it's not accurate, then it's kind of useless to me. And then Katch-McArdle. Katch-McArdle is fantastic as well, and so is the Harris-Benedict, and so are a lot of these other things. But if the client's body fat assessment was incorrect, then these can be hard to use as well. If somebody had skinfold done or a bioelectrical impedance or an estimate, a heaven-forbidden estimate on their body fat percentage, then those formulas aren't going to work either. So, if their food log's off and their body fat percentage measurement's off, then I use caloric estimations because those are very, very close anyways, the ones that I use. And I have estimations for cutting, recomposition, and lean mass phases. But yeah, so that's kind of how I break it up. What information I have available is gonna depend what calculator that I use.

And ultimately you're just trying to find a baseline anyway, so then you can go from there depending on how they respond.

Yeah, yeah. I do a mentorship online for trainers who want to learn more, and I drill into their head over the course of 10 weeks, adjust accordingly. This is just a baseline. This is just a baseline. If you adjust accordingly, you can't lose. It's an experienced coach comment, you saying that you're just forming a baseline anyways, and it's exactly right because after week 1, I'm going to adjust if it didn't work. So you don't— don't get paralyzed by analysis with everything that you set up. It's important that you set it up intelligently, but you're going to adjust anyways.

Yeah. With protein, how much would you typically allocate for a client? I want to dig a little bit deeper into this, if that's okay. Some people say anywhere from, like, from what I've heard, 1.8 per kilo to as much as, say, 3.3 if you're training twice a day, grams per kilo of body weight. But, um, just recently I've started playing with my nutrition, and, um, I started doing keto during the week and I do carb refeeds on the weekend. And I've been consuming the least amount of protein I've ever consumed, and I'm maintaining and slowly gaining muscle eating the way I am. So just to give you an overview, the protein is 20% of my caloric intake. So at the moment, my caloric intake is like 3,200, and it's 20% of that. So it's like It's like 100 and something. It's not much at all. And I'm like 90, 90 kilos. So it is by far the least amount of protein I've ever consumed, but yet I'm gaining muscle, which I found astounding.

Yeah, yeah. So I mean, 20% of that caloric intake is 160 grams of protein. So you add 90 kilos, that's definitely, uh, lower than what most people would have you at. It's a very cool experiment that you're doing. I think a lot of people underestimate how big of an impact, how big of a protein-sparing impact fat and carbohydrates have, to where protein synthesis can be elevated with lower levels of protein and the protein breakdown can very effectively be fought off by high levels of carbohydrates and fat. So what you're probably doing is entering the state of ketosis or a small state of ketosis during the week with your fats and your protein and then on the weekends creating a big surplus. So I assume then if you're gaining muscle mass, I assume the surplus on the weekend is pretty big, right?

Yeah, it goes up to about 6,000 calories.

Yeah, yeah, there she is. How did I know that? Yeah, so that must be a fun weekend, A, and B, it's very, very, very effective at fighting protein breakdown to completely top off your glycogen stores like that as well with plenty of carbohydrates and even low to moderate fats depending on how you're programming your refeeds. But from a protein perspective, I generally err on the moderate side of protein intake. It, it, when it comes to protein, it's not so much a difference of gender. So it's not so much differences in female and male. What separates people more than gender is if they're novice trainees, if they're anabolic steroid users, if they're vegetarians, if they're dairy sensitive, or if they have preexisting digestive and kidney issues. Within the research, you really can't make an argument that anybody needs any more than 1.8 grams of kilos per pound— 1.8 grams of protein per pound of— per kilo of body weight. 1.8 grams of protein per kilo of body weight. It's hard to spit out the metric system here. But yeah, so within the research, you really can't make an argument that anybody needs more than that. But within my practice, I utilize 1.8 to 2.2 grams per kilo of body weight. And that range is evident based on some of the things that I just said, but also body fat percentage. So if somebody comes to me at 90 kilos at 30% body fat, they're gonna need a lot less protein than you at 90 kilos and very, very low percentage body fat. So if somebody's at a higher percentage body fat, I'll err more to 1.8. If somebody's at a lower percentage body fat, I'll err more towards 2.2. But here's the thing is novice trainees, research lacks in this area, but I think it's very easy to hypothesize that novice trainees actually need more protein than advanced trainees because novice trainees' rates of protein synthesis are so much higher than advanced trainees. Novice trainees, if you get somebody who's new to weightlifting and has good genetics and is willing to follow your diet, Man, can they build muscle fast. People miss those newbie gains. And I am in the school of thought that supply and demand. If his protein synthesis rates are higher than everyone else's, why are we giving him the same amount of protein as everyone else? Let's give him more. So in that, in the novice, in the excellent genetic scenario of a novice trainee who's got good genetics, following the meal plan, doing everything, I'll do more towards 2.2 to 2.3. 6. So it's not a big increase, but it's an increase nonetheless because his protein synthesis rates are simply higher than everyone else's. Anabolic steroid users, they're kind of in the same category. So I will increase their protein in that scenario anywhere from 2.2 to 2.6, very similar to the novice trainee. And some people would be like, well, hey, hold on a second, anabolic steroid users, they can take— their protein synthesis rates are high, they can take 4.4 grams per kilo. And the anabolic steroid scenario is a double-edged sword in that yes, their protein synthesis rates are higher, but you know what, the protein breakdown rates are much lower. Anabolic steroids are fantastic at preserving muscle tissue and decreasing protein breakdown. So it's gonna— you have less of a need for protein because the anabolic steroid use alone is helping you decrease your protein breakdown rates. But then also anabolic steroids help increase protein digestive efficiency. So, you're getting more bang for your buck out of the protein that you are eating anyways. So, yes, you have more protein synthesis, but you also have less breakdown. So, it ultimately ends up being pretty close, and I would never recommend going above a 2.2 to 2.6 area. Vegetarians need a little bit more as well simply because their protein is not as anabolic as meat eaters. So, they get less leucine in per serving, so they're creating less protein synthesis. Per meal. So vegetarians, if they're— I guess I should say vegan. Vegans need a lot more. If vegetarians are still having whey and eggs, then they don't need more. But anybody who's only getting plant proteins and not dairy, they definitely need more. And preexisting digestive or kidney issues, I mean, that's pretty straightforward. I'll go lower with them simply because they can't handle it. So it's kind of like the spectrum of protein intake and my take on it.

Do you find that titrating it up, so say you might start them at the lower end of wherever they fall in what category they are, and then titrating it up, say week to week or fortnightly, has a better effect on, say, gaining muscle? Like not pulling out your ace card straight away in terms of like—

No, I actually look at the other way. So I haven't found it. To have a better effect on gaining muscle, I found it at having a better effect on preserving muscle. So starting on the lower end and slowly titrating up as someone gets closer to a photo shoot or closer to a show or closer to where, you know, the leaner they are, titrating their protein up going down in weight is very effective for preserving muscle mass more effectively. But in a hypercaloric state, I don't touch people's protein at all because they have so many calories and so much anabolism going on already that they don't need to further further amino acid intake. They're getting plenty from their diet that they need in order to grow. So I'll titrate up when someone's losing weight instead of gaining from a protein perspective.

Okay, that's cool. So once you've allocated protein, in your opinion, what do you allocate next, fats or carbs? Because some people allocate fats, some people allocate carbs. My understanding is that if the, the ultimate goal is health, you'd use fat first and then allocate the carbs. But I've heard some people talk about when their, their goal is performance, they allocate the carbs and then the remainder being the fats. How do you go about this?

Yeah, so it's a combination of understanding the theory and looking at your client. So what I would do is exactly what you just said. It depends on their goal. You have to look at the client. So if a client has a health-first goal, I am going to set protein and fats first. If a client has a body composition and performance goal, then I am going to set protein and carbohydrates first. So it's really just where you're prioritizing. Carbohydrates will benefit performance and recovery more effectively over the long term, especially within my clientele. And If someone is looking for a purely health-based goal, then I'm looking towards fats because carbohydrates, it's true, they really aren't essential towards optimal health. And in a health-based client, I'm really looking at a 40% caloric intake of healthy fats coming in each and every day. So I'm making sure that the 40% comes in before I'm adding carbohydrates.

Awesome.

Most people say 20%, so I like the fact that you, you're up there with 40%.

Yeah, yeah, the fats, they do a lot of excellent, excellent things for the body. They're hormone and chemical messengers. They increase testosterone. They're good for your— they're the number one thing that's actually gonna affect your inflammation status or not. A lot of people look towards different things for regulating inflammation such as curcumin and stuff like that, but if your fats fats aren't in check and they aren't where they need to be. They've gotta be there. So, when you— when you're talking about your fats, we're helping our hormones, we're helping our inflammation, we're helping our chemical messaging. We're gonna be more anabolic as well. Research has proven tons of times the higher you go up with fats in natural athletes, the higher their testosterone is gonna be. So, this is all healthy things for people looking just to optimize health overall. So I, I keep it right there. I'll set protein anywhere from 1.8 to 2.2 grams per pound and then set fats around 40% of intake and let the carbs just make up the rest of what the equation calorie ended up being.

Easy. I've heard you give a really good explanation on fats before, like, uh, basically the different types being the monounsaturated, polyunsaturated, and saturated fats. Are you able to go into that?

Yeah, I can't— which one was that? I can't remember offering up too fancy of a fat description here, but I can conjure up what I can think I can.

You were just talking about how the monounsaturated fats are awesome for inflammation and then the saturated fats being good for like, they tend like coconut oil, MCT oil, it has MCT oil in it, so it's great for energy production and different fats like that.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

And the different food sources that are high— so say nuts are high in monounsaturated fats, typically in olive oil, and then saturated being coconut oil and butter, things like that.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. So I'll run through a quick one on fats here. So fats— I mean, when it comes to fat intake, I'm looking at prioritizing a few things. I'm looking at prioritizing causing inflammation. And from a timing perspective, I do like more fats with breakfast and more fats with the last meal of the day. Last meal of the day specifically, I think it's better to get it in that category definitely. And on non-training days, it really just even spread throughout the day. But when it comes to fat sources like what you're talking about, monounsaturated fats should make up the bulk of people's diets. The research is very clear on that, that monounsaturated fats are currently the king of providing health benefits for the body in an unhealthy or healthy state. So providing these fats to, say, type 2 diabetics provides excellent health, but then also to the normal healthy population, it provides further benefits. So monounsaturated fats, time and time again, with high-quality research such as systematic reviews from randomized controlled trials, they're the king right now. And the bulk of your diet should be coming from monounsaturated fats, which are raw nuts. So your pecans, your cashews, your macadamia nuts, your walnuts, natural nut butters. So macadamia nut butter, almond butter, cashew butter. There's nothing wrong with natural peanut butter. That's okay. A lot of people think peanut butter is for some reason really bad. It's almost as silly as the argument that fruit is bad, but I digress. Monounsaturated other sources include avocado and extra virgin olive oil. So I mean, these fats are— should make up the bulk of one's diet. I use them as prime examples because the research definitely suggests that this is where your dietary fatty intake should come from. But I mean, having said that, polyunsaturates, you know, such as salmon, fish oil, and walnuts and saturated fats such as dairy and animal meats. They need to be in there as well because it's always a balance. If there's one thing I would get across in this, in this podcast is that balance is critical. We can't have an extremist mindset towards anything in health and fitness. The body doesn't operate on extremes. Biology isn't— is never static. You need to, you need to work with the body and not force it into anything. So polyunsaturates and saturates still need to be there. They just need to be there in smaller quantity. Of important note towards polyunsaturates and omega-3s, yes, things like walnuts and other non-fish contain omega-3, but the conversion of omega-3 from plants to, to usable EPA and DHA inside the body is wildly poor. So it is omega-3 in structure within the food, but by the time it hits the body, it's very, very not omega-3 EPA/DHA. It's not providing any of the benefits close to the degree that fish oil and salmon are. So don't get your omega-3 from plants. You should get it from a fish oil source, a salmon source, or if you're a vegetarian, get it from algae because that is comparable EPA/DHA to these. Sources. So those fats need to be in there as well, but they can't be in there in as high of a ratio as monounsaturated fats because saturated fat in particular generally shouldn't make up the entire day's worth of fat because even in a healthy and lean state, saturated fat still has been shown to decrease insulin sensitivity. So that's really not something that we want to happen as people who are coming to us or for ourselves. We want to be insulin sensitive. We want to be healthy. Healthy, and we want to have a low inflammation status. So getting back to balance and having the saturated fat intake where it should be is important towards this balance. So that's really breaking down the different kinds of fats and where I place them in the day and some of their importance as far as, you know, positive adaptations and negative adaptations. If fats are dropped too low for too long, decreases in testosterone will be seen. And amenorrhea can be seen as well. So men see decreases in testosterone, but women can start losing their regular cycle. So, and that, that's really important too, because a woman has lost her cycle, it means her estrogen is low. And if her estrogen is low, it means her bone density is going down. So this is, this is a bad problem for health and for performance. So you don't want to drop fats too low for too long. They're, they're very, very important to sustain both performance and health because they do go hand in hand. Like I said previously as well, high fats have shown linear increases in testosterone levels within the research, and high cholesterol diets have actually shown linear increases in multiple anabolic hormones in muscle tissue growth as well. The research wasn't repeated, but I can see that it makes sense from a biochemistry standpoint due to cholesterol's role in bile acid synthesis. Cholesterol, it's required for healthy muscle cell membrane structure and being a precursor to all steroid hormones. Cholesterol is required for DHEA, testosterone, the estrogens. It's required for all of those. So that's— I can totally get it. And not to mention, kind of on the flip side, you know, yes, these higher cholesterol diets have shown to increase anabolic hormone synthesis, But on the flip side, statin drugs have been shown to inhibit muscle growth, and muscle weakness is actually a very common and noted side effect within the pharmacology. So we kind of see things on both ends. Higher cholesterol does increase anabolic hormone response in this study I'm talking about, but we also know that statins, which lower cholesterol— pharmaceutical drug to lower cholesterol— kind of has the opposite effect on muscle growth and causes muscle weakness. It just points more directions towards— it's important towards anabolism and getting an optimal result from the gym. And all this stuff I'm talking about for anabolic hormones and testosterone levels, ladies, this is you too. Testosterone is not just for men. You need to have healthy levels of this as well. And women with higher testosterone levels perform better in sport and get better results within the gym. So it's something that's not just for the men right now.

That's an exceptional explanation, Dan. Well done.

Okay, did that meet the standard? You're looking for something fancy for fat, so I wanted to throw something out there off the top of my head.

We started small and escalated quickly. I loved it.

Yeah. So, I guess, I mean, one last little cool thing that I just thought of right now for fats would be that fish oil is actually anabolic to muscle tissue. It's been shown in research more than once. I actually did a little post on this as well. A lot of people don't notice fish oils anabolism to muscle tissue, but it's because it's not an acute effect. You're not gonna take fish oil and have an effect such as you would caffeine. Caffeine is gonna light you up and you're gonna feel great, whereas fish oil is anabolic to muscle tissue but over a longer period of time because it's actually changing the cell wall. It's increasing cell permeability and And fish oil permeability just means that things can, for those unfamiliar, that things can enter into the muscle cell more efficiently than a more rigid muscle cell where, say, amino acids and glucose would have more difficulty getting in. Fish oil improves the permeability so things can enter a little easier into a muscle cell, but one cool study that I can recall offhand is that fish oil actually improved the muscle cell's sensitivity to amino acids. So that was a very, very cool study done that the amino acid effect was more pronounced after fish oil use. So pretty, pretty cool, more cool stuff there on fats.

Yeah, I've also heard fish oil can help with insulin sensitivity also.

Yeah, yeah, fish oil, it's like one of those supplements where like I almost don't like talking about it because I sound like a multi-level marketing salesman. It's got so many benefits to it, but they're actually legitimate. But like, you almost sound silly talking about it because it's like, it affects the immune system and inflammation and testosterone and muscle growth. It's like, it actually does. I'm serious.

What kind of dose do you like on fish oil? And do you find you cycle it like through periods of the year, or do you just keep it in?

No, people don't get used to fish oil. I've heard that, and that, that just doesn't make sense from a physiology perspective. People can stay within EPA/DHA, the dose at which they want to use— it doesn't make much sense at all to go above 3 to 5 grams of EPA/DHA per day. So that's not 3 to 5 grams of fish oil, that's 3 to 5 grams of the combined EPA/DHA concentration within your fish oil. So make sure anybody listen to this, you look at the label and get 3 to 5 grams of the actual active ingredient. In your product per day. Going above this is not only unnecessary, but it actually can become negative. We have— I can think of 3 studies offhand which do a repeated effect that high doses of fish oil lower immunity within the body. So it's decreased immune function. Your, your immune system actually decreases in overall function with high-dose fish oil. And this is a problem because it's our immune system's job to recover and repair our muscles after exercise. It's not anything— it's not all— it's a combined effort from the body, but it's not just food that's just going in there and recovering us. It's the immune system that's the construction workers that is both removing the fatigue-produced byproduct in the muscle cell, but then also restoring the inflammation response to create the actual adaptation in the body, but then also helping rebuild that muscle as well. So when we're taking fish oil, we're taking too much of it and we're decreasing our immune function. That's kind of silly because we're taking immune— we're taking fish oil for a potential anabolic effect, but then when we're taking too much, we're lowering the immune system. So it's a— it's another case of outside in, you know. It's let me— let me throw this protocol at somebody, but then when you don't look at the physiology, then you can spin your tires in the mud. So I'm not a fan of high dose. Not only does it not create a bigger benefit, but it can reduce immune function.

It's one of those simple things of enough to cause the effect, any more is going to have the opposite effect, like you said.

Yeah, for sure. And man, have we ever learned this a lot. How many times in nutrition do people need to be told that more isn't better? How many times like people—

Or is less better? Something less is better as well and that sometimes, that often it has the same effect as too much.

Yeah, yeah, good point. The minimum effective dose, right? So how about we just know what's within the research and what we know? Because like it's very, very— so many times we've learned that more is not better and then people do wild things and then it turns out later on within the research that, "Oh, shit, maybe I shouldn't have done that." It was fashionable to do high-dose fish oil for a while and then we just find out that it decreases immune function. Okay, that probably wasn't smart. And now you see people going super, super high on leucine, but the leucine threshold is far below that high, high dose, so there's definitely a diminishing returns on that point as well. And, you know, D-aspartic acid falls in this category as well. People just taking a bunch of stuff and not being patient enough to see what the data has to say. You know, I think it was in 2008 when that first D-aspartic acid study came out that showed increases in testosterone at 3.2 grams per day, and everyone was like, "Oh man, I'm gonna take that. That sounds awesome." And then another study came out a few years later Because the study on D-aspartic acid actually came out and it was only on testosterone, so it didn't measure performance or body composition. And then the study that came out 3 years later found that it had no effect on body composition in a full month of training. So placebo versus D-aspartic acid is zero, zero difference. But then on top of that, a few years later after that, D-aspartic acid was actually found to decrease testosterone production within a study. So, we have one where it increased it, but that meant nothing because it wasn't tied to performance or body composition. Then we had a second one where they measured D-aspartic acid on body composition and absolutely nothing happened. Then we had a third one where D-aspartic acid actually lowered testosterone function. So, it's like you have to learn to be patient to what the data has to say. It's important to stay within the data because if you are giving your client a massive dose of something that's never been researched, then you don't know what biofeedback you should be looking for because you really don't know what's going on.

Yes, that's very important to take into consideration.

For sure.

What are your thoughts on refeeds, Dan?

Refeeds, refeeds. I like them. Of course, it's always context-driven as well. So I'm a little bit more of a fan of diet breaks. Maintenance. So let's say somebody wanted to get ready for a photo shoot in 20 weeks or so. Then I would give them a diet break for 1 to 3 weeks back up at maintenance. So they would go completely not in a hypocaloric state anymore. They're going to go back up to maintenance for 1 to 3 weeks depending on how in good shape they are and what their genetics is like. And I'm also going to reduce their cardio during this time as well. So we're generally looking for an increase of like say 500 calories from the deficit days back up to maintenance. And the goal here is to eat as much as you can without gaining weight or gaining very minimal weight. And any weight that you do gain is really predominantly gonna be water and glycogen anyways. And the reason why I like diet breaks better than refeeds is because a diet break will have a greater effect on leptin and ghrelin and thyroid and other metabolic-based hormones. Because it's over a longer time period. So refeeds are very, very acute in their effect on metabolism, and diet breaks are gonna have a longer effect on your metabolism. So you're gonna be able to reap the reward of the refeed for a longer time. Plus, if you're dieting for a show for, say, 20 weeks, having a 1- to 2-week break in the middle can be excellent for psychology and adherence. So you've gone underwater, you're swimming, and you're in the deep waters, you're training hard, you're in a hypochloric state, but then you can come up for air after 8 weeks and take a 2-week break, but you still don't gain fat during this time. We just go back up to maintenance. So we're putting on water and glycogen. We're not getting any fatter. We're not getting any leaner though either. Our training quality will definitely go up and our psychology is better. We feel better and we're gonna have a greater effect on our metabolic hormone milieu. So the leptin and testosterone, if you're natural, and all these other things are all gonna have they're all gonna be in a better state. But if it comes down to refeeds on, say, a single basis, an acute refeed instead of a diet break, then I'm still doing a similar approach, just kind of on a micro as opposed to macro scale. One day a week or 1 to 3 days a week, depending on how lean they are and how well they respond, I'll raise it up just to maintenance. So, I don't do— I don't do the very, very high refeeds. I do just raised up to maintenance for 1 to 3 days a week using predominantly carbohydrates, so not fat. I'll use like proteins and fats will stay the same every day and then the refeed days will utilize primarily carbohydrates to get them back up to maintenance 1 to 3 days a week. And I'll only ever do that in dieting phases. So I'll never cycle calories for gaining, but I will cycle the carbohydrates for losing. But when it comes to refeeds, like, I only ever use this as a type of plateau buster, and I really only use refeeds often. There's so many times that I don't use them because the standard linear approach works so well in the way that I set it up. So I think that a lot of times people who do refeeds simply dieted too low to begin with. So like they kind of like our analogy earlier, they pulled all their aces too soon and they now they can't lower calories anymore because they're gonna die. So they kind of, they pulled all their aces too soon. So they're like, "Oh shit, what am I gonna do?" And to me, that's somebody who started too low and now they have to use the refeed. Whereas if you properly set it up and you properly do the linear process, then you're not gonna need a refeed. And this is especially true if you did a diet break. So I'm, I'm not against them and I do use them, but kind of in a different way to where I prefer the diet break and then I'll only break out the refeed if absolutely necessary, which honestly isn't very often.

Yeah. So it's like an ace card for you.

Exactly. It's just, it's just another ace that I have a tool and it's up to me and the client whether or not we need to use that tool or not.

So we're coming up to, we've done an hour now, Dan. I'm happy to continue if you are, no stress if you're not. Would you like to continue?

I can't believe it's already been an hour.

Yes.

Yeah, that's, that's really quick, dude. Sure. I mean, yeah, if you think the content's rolling the way that you wanted it to and you think your audience will like it, then I'm happy to talk.

Sweet. 100%. You're overdelivering, if anything.

Okay, awesome.

With carb loading, because you deal with athletes, how do you structure that for them? Like, do you do smaller amounts throughout the day and then big dose at night, or do you spread it evenly throughout the day?

The carb loading, I definitely, I spread it even, but I do a big lunch actually. So you're right, with the athletes, they do need higher carbohydrate intakes before certain days. So like, say if there's a hockey tournament going on and somebody plays 3 games tomorrow, then they're gonna want to carb load tonight because they, that's very likely that they're gonna be on the ice for 6 hours tomorrow, and that's not including their travel and their warm-up and all of that. So that's a lot of energy being expended in a day. So carb loading is a viable strategy to super-load them, their energy, so they can perform effectively. And when it comes to carb loading, I like lower glycemic options in smaller intakes throughout the day but ultimately leading to a large intake. But here's a mistake. So here's something that people can take heed when listening to this. Is when it comes to carb loading, there's such a thing as the ileal break, okay? And it comes down to stomach physiology. So when it comes to your meal transit time, the average meal, the average meal, so not a big-ass carb loading meal, the average meal is gonna go from the mouth to the anus in about 12 to 16 hours. That should be standard transit time from mouth to toilet. And what's gonna happen is it's first gonna go in the stomach and this can take 2 to 3 hours and then it's gonna go into the small intestine and the small intestine is gonna take anywhere from 6 to 8 hours. So what we get between the stomach and the small intestine is an average transit time of about 10 to 11 hours between those two. But the problem here is a lot of people won't think about carb loading and they'll actually have a huge meal as their last meal of the day. And I think that this is a defeating strategy because of the ileal break. So this is very well known in physiology. And for those unfamiliar with what the heck I'm talking about, the small intestine is broken up in 3 different areas, okay? The first area that food enters is the duodenum. The second area that food enters is the jejunum, and the third area that food enters is the ileal break— I mean, the, the ileum. And the— within the ileum is where the ileal break can happen. So when you have that huge meal the day before an event, this meal can easily take up to 10, 11, even 12, 13, 14 hours, because the timeframe that I provided you earlier was just for the average meal. Meal. This isn't for the big carb-loading meal. So if you're having a big meal, we're talking anywhere from 12-14 hours that it's gonna take just to get through the stomach and small intestine, not even including the large intestine. And the problem with this big meal is if you have undigested food in the stomach and food in the ileum, this is what triggers the ileal break. So the ileal break will actually stop all gastric motility. So altogether, you know, your stomach is gonna stop digesting and everything's gonna slow down 'cause the body's saying, "Hey, you've put a lot of food in me. I wanna slow everything down so that I can actually absorb this meal." So not only do we have a long transit time with the big meal, but now you've also hit the ileal break. Why I did that huge description? Is because your last meal of the day could have easily been around 8 PM where you're gonna do your carb load. And then this meal could still be in your stomach by 8 AM tomorrow morning. But the problem is the ileal break had hit. So this meal is still in your stomach and now you're gonna try and have breakfast. So you have undigested food in your gut due to the ileal break and now you're trying to have breakfast which is a potential cause of further ileal break activity, but then also gastric distress, gastric discomfort, and bloating and gas, which are all terrible things to take with you if you're running or skating or competing, or hell, even trying to get ready for a photo shoot if you're trying to carve up before then. So you have to make sure that your meal makes sense with the rate of transit time, especially for carb loading, so that you don't create any gastric distress in the morning because then it's gonna be a defeat feeding tactic. Does that all make sense?

Yeah, yeah, definitely. I'd say that that's a huge important thing to take into consideration for athletes so that they can obviously peak. And even if it's a competitor, because you want them to be not distended or anything like that.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, you want the tight waist, right? So that's something— anything that's going to affect that tight waist or that tightness look or even your ability to contract. You know, I'm sure everybody can know what I'm talking about if you're bloated and then you try to flex your abs. It's not the same. So you really want to have that empty, light feel in there and this is what's going to accomplish that.

Yeah, when the daily carb intake gets super high, say like 1,000 grams of carbs, what kind of— how would you spread— and when you said you do lots of small meals, how many meals What else have you done in the past? I guess the simplest way to put this would be, what's the highest amount of carbohydrates you've ever given to someone in a day and how did you spread it?

It depends on their body weight. So there's no limit to carbs because my carb load's gonna be different than Andrei Milanichev's, you know. So it's highly dependent on the warehouse that they have. Mussels are a warehouse for carbs. If you're bigger, you can take in a lot more. Your digestive tract is going to be able to handle more, and you're going to be able to just carb load with a lot more. So it's more advantageous to utilize, say, body weight multipliers based on their diet and based on what's worked for them before and carb load them based on their size instead of based on a number so I'm going on by size and not by number. The types of carbs— the carbs that have been easiest on people's guts are generally sugary carbs and the, the rices. So like rice, white rice, and any of these are very easy on people's stomach. Rice cakes are actually super easy on people's stomach, very gastric-friendly. Cream of rice, I'm not sure if you guys have that in Australia, but it's It's basically a really broken down form of rice that's very super high carb that's easy on people's stomachs. So those are excellent options. Even though sweet potato has fiber in it, it seems weirdly good on people's stomach and that they can carb load very efficiently with them even on higher doses. So I mean, not a lot of it, but it can be thrown in there and not have a bad effect. So it's based, you know, on the size of the person. Those are the base kinds of carbs that I typically like to use. For the purpose of meal frequency, meal frequency and carb load day isn't about protein synthesis. So I don't give a shit what the leucine threshold or anything is on that day. So I'll give the person 8 to 10 meals because we're carb loading. We're not trying to stimulate protein synthesis. So I don't really care. So I'll go up to anywhere from 8 to 10 meals, whatever it's gonna be, have the person eat every even one to 2 hours. It's whatever is gonna work in that sense, that's what I'm gonna do. But that's kind of like the brief lowdown on it. But something that's important to emphasize here and for people to hear is that when choosing carbs for somebody's carb load day, choose adherence carbs— what they want to eat and what they feel good on. Because if there's one thing that nutritional individuality really shines out on is how people respond to different carbohydrates. Some people feel like crap on oats. Some people feel great. So I'm going to ask them, "Hey, what carbs do you feel great on and what don't you feel great on?" and use more of those. So that can really answer the question a lot as well. Don't necessarily look so much at the research. Look at— ask your client what they feel great on.

Yup. Again, the psychology, awesome. The reason I brought that up was the first time I did 1,000 grams of carbs, the next day I just woke up with like a throbbing headache and my stomach was killing and I was just like, it's gotta be—

Oh, I wonder why. That's so weird, Reece, that somebody would have 1,000 carbs and your stomach was throbbing. I could have never guessed.

So I was like, there's gotta be an easier way.

Yeah, I'll ask Dan how I can have 1,000 carbs.

But I like the fact of breaking it up into, I did over 6 meals. I should probably do it over more meals meals.

Yeah, exactly. Don't worry about protein synthesis, man. You're carb loading, and we already talked about how huge the protein— that you— how effectively you're preventing protein breakdown anyways. You have no worries about anything muscle mass when you're having 1,000 grams of carbs. So you're, you're in a good state there. So that— for it to be easier on your gut, I would absolutely go up to 8 to 10 depending on what your schedule is like, of course, and then use adherence carbs. Carbs. They're their own category.

And another reason I brought that up is, um, I've experimented before with a larger amount of carbs for the day spread over the day versus a slightly smaller amount, more sort of like bunched at the end of the day. And I found that like a bigger hit, like a bolus dose, as opposed to sprinkled amounts throughout the day, actually I responded better to limit. Like, it could be my body type, but it's just something that I've found worked for me. Do you have anything to say on that?

It's just an excellent representation of why you have to ask your clients and not just set a protocol. It's essentially what really I just said. Work with their adherence and ask them what's worked for them before. If somebody's brand new to the game or they're pretty new to the of carb loading and getting ready for photo shoots and shows, or an athlete, then we're gonna do things my way. They're gonna do what I tell them to do. But somebody like you who's probably carb loaded 1,000 times and done a bunch of shows and looks great and does all these things, then your opinion is within the equation. So it's like I said earlier, individuation within nutrition. A lot of that comes down to how people respond to carbs, and you can get, you can get around that in a couple ways. You can A, ask them A, ask them. Ask them what gives them gas, what gives them bloating, how— if they feel fuller or better and you track that with progress pictures and DEXA scans. Or B, do food sensitivity paneling. It's a very good way to find out good carbs for them is to run an effective food sensitivity panel to eliminate anything that's pro-inflammatory because inflammation by itself holds water and the last thing you wanna do when you're trying to look good or perform is hold a bunch of water. So using both of those would be optimal.

Yeah, what's the two biggest things that you've learned this year, Dan?

Oh man, that's a good one. Two biggest things I've learned this year, dang. Okay, okay, let me give it a shot. I know later on I'm going to be like, oh, why didn't I say that? This is It's such a big question. But I think, okay, so something that's coming to mind right now is the inside-out approach. Health is one of the biggest plateau busters you'll ever come across in your entire career, period. A lot of people are looking towards periodization and looking towards calories and macros and looking towards many, many, many things that are outside in. This year, more than any year in my life, I've found that health is the fastest way to get through a plateau, whether it's muscle building, whether it's strength, whether it's fat loss. Improving somebody's function at the root level in combination with the outside in is what's getting the best results. I found that you don't need to tweak so much of these loading parameters and all these things and that one of the best plateau busters in existence is health, is really just looking at the situation, finding the weak link, attacking it, getting your crosshairs on it, having a well-rounded protocol that looks at the whole picture and not at it through a straw. And that is what's going to get them through a plateau. So I would say from experience, that is a— the I found out huge this year is, is function and physiology and getting that right before tweaking the program. Number 2 kind of ties in the next thing that's coming to my mind, kind of ties in actually with the first one is how big of an impact proper lab analysis can have on the speed of somebody's results, but then also just the impact you have on somebody's life. I'm doing way more labs this year than I have in my entire career. And at this point in time I've looked at hundreds of labs. I've— there's one company I work for in addition to, you know, I have my own companies and then I work for another one as well where I'm just a lab analyst. So that's all I do for them is I go through all the labs that they do and I create a plan for them and I optimize their results. So I have looked at tons of labs at this point and people's lives are changing. Like the speed of results that I'm getting and the impact that I'm having on somebody is actually a life quality is so much different with labs than it is without labs. So I would say probably those two things are the biggest I've learned this year is effective lab analysis and the lab analysis application towards the program design and then health being the biggest plateau buster.

Where did you learn how to do labs and things like that, Dan?

So I'm— definitely a weirdo that hangs out in his dark office and reads research all day and is antisocial. A lot of that comes from me having a relentless curiosity towards this industry. I have also— I'm also an honors graduate of the Functional Medicine University. I'm a functional medicine practitioner and I'm a functional diagnostic nutritionist. So I've gone through a lot of those those different certification processes as well to get my practitioner status, but there's just absolutely something to be said for just the absolute volume of reading I've done on the topic in addition to those on-paper titles that I, I need to have in order to even say this stuff.

Is there a particular place that you would recommend to the functional medicine course, or are they all pretty standard?

So it kind of depends, right? A lot of people ask me what education I recommend, so it depends on what they want to learn. Functional Medicine University, I think, is an excellent place if you are already good at nutrition and if you are very interested in the physiology of the whole body and labs. Labs, because if you go into the Functional Medicine University, in my opinion, with a low level of nutrition knowledge, then it's gonna be rough because on day 1 they get into it. So it's not— there's no like fun introduction to where this is what we're talking about. No, they get into some pretty deep stuff pretty quickly, but it's one that I think is excellent. So if you are good at nutrition and you are wanting to further your knowledge towards labs labs and physiology and looking at the whole picture, I think the Functional Medicine University is a good place to start and then after that you can look into different functional courses as well and definitely read more, but it's— there's something to be said too about mentorships. So like having a mentorship say with me or with somebody else that's not me who's good at labs and anybody, someone in your— because what you'll learn— and I mean, Rhys, you know what I'm talking about— a lot of times as coaches, we're not practicing the way we read it in a textbook. It changes very much once you get into the field. So I would say those certifications are good, but then do a mentorship after with somebody who's worked with the population that you want to work with.

Yeah, that's a good explanation because I've always thought I'd love to do like a degree but then I'm like, I'd rather just learn from someone who's done it and just, it's a faster way to do it, I guess. Because, yeah, did you find that along the way in the course that there was some stuff that you didn't really learn much from? Or did you learn a lot from all of it? Because I know this to be true more in nutrition than functional medicine. Like, you know, like for a nutritionist, a lot of them argue with like the current stance that the government has around certain foods, do you know what I mean? Like grains and things like that.

Yeah. It depends who's the teacher, right? And it depends if you're choosing to learn. I think some people go into some things with a bad attitude. I think some people will be like, oh, I read that book and I learned nothing. And then I'm like, no, you chose to learn nothing. There's a difference. It's like if somebody has a bad attitude, you'll learn something from everything. You'll learn a different analogy to use, a different way to word something to relate or empathize or sympathize with the client. You're going to get something out of the deal. It's just optimism versus pessimism in that sense. Yeah?

What you look for is what you get.

Yeah, exactly. Your attitude and what you look for is what you're going to get. So that's definitely something to take into consideration when talking about what you're going to learn out of an experience. You need to be present in the experience and get everything that you can out of it. That's very, very important. One reason why people like to listen to me, some feedback that I've got from my page and from other podcasts I've done, is because they feel like they understand what I'm talking about. I use examples that they can understand and that I'm not just talking jargon all the And I think a reason why I'm able to communicate in this way is because I've read the same things a million times. So when you read about calories 1,000 times, you read about protein, carbs, and fats 1,000 times, you come across so many different ways to explain the content that you're reaching the ears and learning styles of so many different people. So you just— I'd recommend it's never a bad thing to rehash the basics if you're going over a category that you think you already know. Go over it again anyways. And then if it's something that you feel like you could move forward in your progression, then ask a mentor or ask somebody more advanced what the next step is. And then you're gonna find out a course where you're gonna learn more things instead of rehash basics.

Awesome. With, um, ketogenic diets, have you used them before with clients?

No, I don't. I typically do not use ketogenic diets because of the population that I work with. The sports— hockey, MMA, football, baseball— these sports are far too glycolytic in order for me to try and toy around with a ketogenic diet on that stage. Yeah, you really can't play with a diet when somebody has has $10 million on the line. So the ketogenic diets— sports are simply too glycolytic for ketogenic diets. The research is quite confirmed in that as well in that carbohydrates perform exceptionally well in sports settings and within resistance training settings. So no, it's not something I do a lot. It's something that I would do though with general population. But my extrapolation on the data of ketogenic diets is that ketogenic diets are effective, but a lot of their benefits come through therapeutic use as opposed to body composition and performance-based use. So ketogenic diets absolutely are excellent for inflammation balance. They're, they're very anti-inflammatory. Beta-hydroxybutyrate is a ketone that's created that's neuroprotective for the brain, so it's excellent for neuroprotection. It's excellent for blood sugar control. It's excellent for fasting glucose. A lot, a lot of things it's good for, but everything I just said isn't really body composition and performance-based. So I— and that's one of the reasons why I set fat so high, like our previous conversation, for health, because a lot of those things are super important. But it would have to be a specific scenario to where I would use a ketogenic diet. It's not a go-to for for me.

Well, it's a good explanation as well because sometimes we just try to use something for everyone and it definitely isn't that simple.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, we've got research on ketogenic versus carbohydrate diets that's very available for people to check out, but then also observational data on populations on Blue Zones that live the longest in the entire world, that the longest longevity and 0 of the Blue Zones out of all of them are low carbohydrate diet based. So there's definitely other factors in there including stress and community and other things as well, but it's worth noting. So there's just plenty of data out there to suggest that a lot of people can do really well on carbohydrates, but even more just from a common sense perspective to not be a hammer and treat everything like a nail. People, you can use carbohydrates very well with many, many, many populations and in my practice working with general population, even excluding the athletes, even just general population, it's very rare I pull out the card of the ketogenic diet.

Yeah, it's one of those ones that most people have a hard time following.

Yeah, absolutely. The adherence is pretty tough out of the gates and then you run into a funny thing because the thing with the ketogenic diet is you got to be all in, man. Because you have to go all in because if you half-ass it, then you're the worst of both worlds. Because here's what I mean. The ketogenic diet, the benefits that I listed previously come from ketosis. So if you're not all in and you cheat with carbs sometimes, well, now you're getting the worst of both worlds because you're not getting the benefits of ketosis because you're eating carbs, but you're also not getting the benefit of a moderate carbohydrate diet because you're not eating enough carbs. Carbs. You're only cheating when you feel like it. You're not getting the benefit from a carb diet. You're not getting the benefit from ketosis by screwing around in the middle. If you're going to do a— I'm not sugarcoating it here. If you're going to do a ketogenic diet, go all in. Don't screw around with it and then assess your body and see how you feel.

With fruits then, you're a big fan. I just want to get your take on fruit. Do you, how do you go about using fruit with clients? Like you said, particular time of the day or certain fruits that you like to use?

All fruits are fine. Only the health and fitness industry would be ridiculous enough to demonize something like a banana. It's a fruit for God's sakes. It's a fruit is an innocent victim in, fitness industry alarmism. So we always like to pick a bad guy. Fat, fat makes you fat. Oh wait, no, it was saturated fat. Okay, no way, never mind, it wasn't saturated fat, it was cholesterol. Okay, forget fats altogether, carbs are bad for you. Okay, never mind, carbs aren't bad, it's sugar. Okay, well never mind, it's not sugar, it's the fructose that's bad. It's like the target is always moving. And it's so ridiculous. And it's so ridiculous when you understand physiology and then you see the industry shifts where people always pick a new bad guy and it's just really, really, really, really, really silly. And fructose is an innocent bystander in industry alarmism. It's a naturally occurring sugar in fruit and it's been repeatedly wrongly accused as a bad guy mostly in body composition management. People go as far to say it's fat fattening even before mentioning energy balance. So, like, they'll just say fructose is fattening and then they're not even talking about calories, which is a mind-blowing scenario to begin with, but let's continue. The— really the most often argument though that fructose is fattening is because the body processes it much differently than other sugars and it's in this physiology where the misunderstanding begins. Fructose restores liver glycogen preferentially over muscle glycogen. And the liver has a pretty limited storage capacity. So once you're at about the 50-gram-per-mark-day and daily fructose intake, fructose only has a one-step process in order to be converted into fatty tissue. So a lot of people are like, "Well, holy crap! Fructose, it's only a one-step chemical process to get converted to fat. It converts to fat so easily." Well, let's just back up one second. The liver can hold 50 grams of this stuff and the average fruit contains 5 grams of fructose. So unless you're eating a bucket of apples every day, we're probably not running into this problem at any large measurable degree to any of these conversion issues to where somebody would begin to notice fructose wildly being converted into fat and making you fat overnight. And even still, even still, weight follows energy balance. It's not following fructose. For those unfamiliar, calories in versus calories out is the undisputed body weight regulator in the history of nutrition. So your body weight isn't gonna follow fructose to its size. Your body weight is going to follow calorie balance to its size. These are the laws of thermodynamics. They're not my laws. But here's like the funny thing, and I'm really happy that you brought this up because I've got a lot of these studies just lodged in my brain for rants such as this. There's research out of the University of Navarra, I think it was called. Right after I said it was lodged in my brain, I kind of forget the university. I'm pretty sure it was Navarra. But so what they looked at though, it was perfect. It was fruit, health, and weight loss. Perfect. Okay. Subjects were divided into 2 groups and both groups were put in a hypocaloric state. So they were dieting. One group ate 5% of fructose from fruit, while the second group had a diet that had 15% fructose from fruit. What were the results? Well, there were no differences at all in weight loss. So 15% fructose versus 5% fructose had no difference at all in weight loss, so further confirming energy balance dictates body weight regulation and not fructose. But what was even funnier is the higher fruit diet group actually retained more lean mass, and they had lower LDL levels, so they had lower bad cholesterol levels, and they had less oxidative stress levels due to the antioxidant content that the fruit contained. So we have no difference in weight loss, and then we have more lean mass, lower LDL, and less oxidative stress with the higher fruit group. So you tell me, why the heck are we sounding the alarm on fructose when there's research available that is in our population of being healthy and dieting and looking at lean mass that says otherwise? And this is especially taking into consideration that the liver and muscles can handle more glycogen than you're going to eat in fruit per day and that energy balance dictates body weight regulation. So it's really a moot argument that that can be destroyed with common sense.

I love that. That was perfect.

I get emotional during that one.

I've also heard you mention before about insulin resistance after muscles are basically— after you've trained a muscle and it's sore and damaged. Can you explain anything about this?

Yeah, yeah. So there's two studies that I'm aware of now where that DOMS created insulin resistance. So everybody knows that if you are very sore after training, that, that is delayed onset muscle soreness. So you do 10 sets of 10 of squats today, the old-school German volume training method, that your legs are going to hurt tomorrow. That is predictable. And what we know from these two studies is that delayed onset muscle soreness is gonna run linear with insulin resistance. So the sore your legs get, the more insulin resistant they're gonna become as well due to inflammation. So it brings more light to the idea of nutrient timing, intra and post-workout for carbohydrate intake, because this is when we're gonna be maximally restoring glycogen and supporting recovery. Recovery because the more insulin resistant and sore those legs become, the lower the rate of glycogen replenishment that you're gonna get into those legs after training. So it's something I do with my athletes. I program a lot of their carbs in and around training and this is— and one of the reasons is because of this insulin resistance due to muscle soreness.

So if you wanna try and get the muscles to grow as well, you're gonna have to The best time is to get it in before you become sore, basically.

Yeah, exactly. You want to— and that's the best time to maximally speed up the recovery process, is that is one of the best ways to put it. If you want to recover fast, something that I say to my athletes is that you can only make progress based on what you can recover from. And another thing that I say to them that really makes them stick stick, that really makes it stick is pre-workout nutrition begins when the last workout ends. So we need to start that pre-workout nutrition immediately after the most recent workout because that's what's ultimately gonna determine how recovered you are before you get to the gym for your next session. So when we're looking at the window for insulin sensitivity versus insulin resistance, it makes much more sense both in theory and application to utilize carbohydrate timing in that window for people looking for quick recovery.

Do you like carbs before training as well?

Yes, absolutely. I'm not a subscriber at all to the fact that they're going to make you sleepy and that there's a neurotransmitter imbalance. Carbohydrates pre-training improve performance, period.

Would you probably just go for a slightly smaller amount or however much that person can tolerate without getting sleepy?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So there's a tolerance to it for sure. I use intra-workout nutrition, so I don't need a ton of carbs pre anyways. So I'm, you know, I'm typically looking at like a 1:1 ratio of protein to carbs pre-workout. You don't need a huge ratio other than that, and that's predicated on that, what your tolerance is too. But a 1:1 ratio is ideal. So let's say if you had, you know, let's say you had 45 grams of protein per meal meal, then we're going to get 45 grams of protein with 45 grams of carbs. It's going to be a 1:1 ratio. That in real life looks like 6 ounces of chicken breast and 1 cup of rice.

Easy.

I saw you coming out to Australia, Dan, next year.

Yes, sir. Yeah. I'm coming out to Australia to TTC Strength. I'm coming out January 14th and 15th, the weekend, to TTC Strength in Brisbane to talk all sorts nutrition and application of both nutrition and functional medicine for the purposes of improving body composition and performance. So the methods that I utilize, you know, to what we talked about today is scratching the surface. The, the application of everything that I do, we're going to be diving right into it in this weekend seminar.

Looking forward to it. Are you going to come out again later in the year? Is this going to be an ongoing thing, or will Or just playing it by ear at the moment, see how we go?

Yeah, well, I mean, I'd like to. If the demand is there for people to want me to go deeper into all this nutrition and functional medicine stuff towards body composition and performance, then yeah, I mean, I'll come back. One thing I feel that I'm bringing there for sure is that my methods aren't just research and jargon. I use these exact techniques and protocols on the best athletes in the world and get results. And I've got the portfolio for it. So I mean, something that I've said before too is just because somebody does seminars, it doesn't mean that they're the best in the world. It means that they do seminars. There's a lot of people out there that talk a lot and talk a lot about research but don't actually apply it in the real world. So that's something that I'm going to bring to Brisbane come January is I'm going to be talking about all the research and theory behind this stuff, you know, like some of the stuff we talked about about today, but then actually how to apply that and then the real reality of who I've applied it on as well and the results that they've got.

And that's what it's all about, the in the trenches experience. That's where the information really is.

Yeah, for sure, because you can get so much information from research and from theory and all of that. Somebody doesn't walk the walk and they don't get the results with their clients or they don't have a background in it or— there's a lot of people on social media who bark really loud but haven't done a lot. So it's something to take into consideration when considering who you're following.

Yes, thanks again for coming on the show today, Dan. Put together a massive podcast here, an hour and 50 minutes, pretty crazy. Is this the longest one that you've done?

Time flies, man. I could talk shop all day, that just flew by.

Is this the longest one you've done?

Probably, yeah, I probably think so.

Awesome, we're breaking some milestones.

That's right, we just made a PR podcast here, I love it.

So for all the guys that want to stay up to date with Dan the Nutrition Man Garner, how can they find you or follow you?

Well, I'm pretty basic. Just Facebook. So I post all my updates on Facebook. I post videos and informative posts and all kinds of stuff there. So on Facebook You can follow Dan Garner, strength coach and nutrition specialist. I should pop right up and that's where I post all kinds of free content every single week.

Perfect.

Or you guys can catch up with me in Brisbane this January. I'll be rolling down there.

I think it'll definitely be worth the drive or the flight. Those interstate people, Yeah, for sure. Alrighty, thanks, Dan.

Yeah, you're very welcome. Thank you for having me.

There it is, folks, the podcast with Dan the Nutrition Man Gardner and Enterprise Master Trainer Reece Adams. Once I'm done talking, I would recommend that you just hit repeat and listen to this podcast again because there was that many pearls of wisdom and good nutritional conversation discussion that happened between Rhys and Dan on this show. So give it another listen, see if you get out some more pearls of wisdom. I reckon you just might because there's a lot of information they discussed. So that's it for this show. Make sure you like us on Facebook at Enterprise Fitness. Check out Dan as well, add him as a friend. Follow us on Twitter, follow us on Instagram, subscribe to us on YouTube. We're constantly putting out more and more stuff. Now, if you're listening to this on iTunes, please, please, please do us a favor and leave us a review. I mean, we're not charging for these podcasts, but if you can leave a review, share our podcast, let people know where they can get the good information. And you know, if you enjoyed the podcast, please let us know by leaving us a review on iTunes. If you hated the podcast, please tell us on iTunes. Anyway, till the next for the next show, which will be a lot of fun. I hope you're training hard, supplementing smart, and eating well. I just did a PB at a 240-kilo deadlift, so very happy about that. Currently, the Enterprise Board, I have 8 entries. I hold 6 of them myself, and Janet Kane, a client of mine, which you may know as the 4-time Miss Australia herself, holds 2 of those. Reece was beating me at some stage on the board, He wasn't on the board himself, but he had a few clients who were on the board. So I've been able to knock off all of Reece's, almost all of Reece's entries. I think he's only got 1 or 2 left. So I'm pretty happy with that. So if you leave a comment on Reece's page, make sure you ask for an update about the board. That always gets him going. Anyway, I shall see you on next, I keep saying see me. You're not going to see me because you're listening to me. I will hear you— you'll hear me, rather, because I'm not going to hear you because it's a one-way channel. You will hear me on the next podcast. Speak to you then.