180 Brian St. Pierre: The 5 Must Have Nutrition Fundamentals

Talking about keto, we're talking about gluten free or talking about lectins. And so often they get so concerned about, like, you know, this certain preservative in this product. Like that might make a difference, but it might make a difference, Right. Whereas something like eating adequate protein or adequate vegetables we know will make a difference. That's part of the key piece. There is understanding, like, what's most likely to cause benefit, 20 what's least likely to cause benefit. And you work from most likely to least likely. But so often you see people get caught up in like, you know, some cool new study comes out and it's. They just kind of drop other things they've been working on, man. Now everyone's eating low sugar or low this or cutting this out, and those things might be helpful, but that's not going to apply to everybody. What if I like having some sugar or I like eating some carbs? Now you want to fit all your clients into a low carb intake. Well, now you're going to lose me as a client. There are specific skills you can teach that are going to apply whether you're vegan, whether you're keto, whether you're low carb. You can just help people do those dietary strategies better if that's their personal preference.

That's Brian St. Pierre, and this is episode 180 of Wellness Force Radio. What's up, my friend? It's your host, Josh Trent. And welcome back to another episode for your weekly access to global experts in all things wellness as we discover the physical and emotional intelligence we need to live life well. In this episode, we're talking with Brian St. Pierre, a registered dietitian who received his bachelor's in Human Nutrition and Dietetics from the University of Maine. And Brian is the director of performance nutrition at Precision Nutrition, which is a company I've been following for years and I personally trust for their no BS approach to giving men and women the most ironclad information in this ever evolving world of personalized nutrition, which a lot of people get wrong right off the bat. Now, if you're just tuning into the show, welcome. We are so stoked you're here. Welcome to the Wellness Force family. This is, of course, where we discover the physical and emotional intelligence that we're all in the process of mastering. And in this podcast today, we're diving deep into this physical intelligence, the eating category specifically, but notice I didn't say diet. You know, the first three letters of the word diet is die. This is what it makes people feel like when they hear the word diet, it's so chastising to our soul. And when people hear it, it makes them feel stressed. We're gonna give you a little more ease, a little more clarity, and a lot more pragmatic steps on how you can integrate through five fundamentals. Brian believes that over 20 years of research and working with clients on a professional and clinical setting have taught him. And honestly, we're really just returning to what's real in our wellness journey at this point. We're all deeply connected across social media. These new programs that come up with keto and low fat and high fat and brain foods and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Really, this is just repackaging ancient wisdom into new ideas. But these five fundamentals, Brian knows these work with athletes and everyday weekend warriors. This is why we're so fortunate to learn from Brian St. Pierre on the podcast today as we dive into these fundamentals when it comes to eating clean and healthy foods for your whole life. So coming up with Brian, we're going to cover calories in, calories out. Why this model does not always work and typically it doesn't work for the most part of the time, 8 and 9 times out of 10. Why science tends to be so reductionistic when it comes to energy in versus energy out. The importance of building fundamental skills around nutrition when it comes to busy lives, lives that are full. Why the all or nothing mindset is the biggest roadblock Brian sees that keeps people from eating healthy for a sustainable lifestyle. How Brian integrates emotional intelligence, one of my favorite things, into each of these five fundamentals. And how Brian's own coaching style evolved once he became a parent. How busy working pros, especially those with families, can begin to focus on applying these easier, simple strategies to implement these fundamentals to live their life well. We also talk about the neat factor that can a people and letting go of old weight. What that is. How neat factor and moving about throughout the day can help you when it comes to letting go of the old stuff that you've been carrying for years and some strategies that you can implement from decades of Brian's work into your life right when you're done with this podcast. So no matter if you're an advanced nutrition pro or you're literally just starting the journey today of letting go of your old weight, congratulations. This is gonna be different. You're listening to this podcast and when you're done, you are going to take inspired action. And you know why? Because you say so. And that's as EAS as it can Be it doesn't have to be so challenging. As I mentioned before, returning back to the basics, these core fundamentals, not getting lost in the forest so you can't even see the blue sky through the trees. This is what you're going to get from today's podcast. As Brian says, sleep, stress, nutrition, movement, our environment and even our microbiome are really key pieces that we can modify. There are only so many domains that we can impact, but you can't focus on the minor details without knowing the fundamentals. Lets drop in with Brian St. Pierre. Brian St. Pierre is the director of performance Nutrition at Precision Nutrition. He's globally known for his expertise in performance nutrition as a registered dietitian with a master's in food science and human nutrition. Also a long list of credentials and publications, including five books under his belt. Pro sports organizations like the San Antonio spurs and Cleveland Browns trust him for his nutritional consultation. But first and foremost, Brian is a precision nutrition coach. He helps men and women and fitness pros of all ages and backgrounds achieve their goals and feel great. Brian St. Pierre, welcome to Wellness Force Radio.

Yeah, thanks for having me, Josh. I think that's the best introduction I've ever gotten. So that was, that was pretty awesome. I should like record that and just use it for all my presentations that I give and just have you be my voice.

You can fly me out the next time you go to a big conference, man.

Sounds like a plan.

I've been really excited, looking forward to this conversation. You know, I was at a coffee shop three months ago when you and I first touched base. And I think everyone knows they've heard of precision nutrition. But your work, this direction of performance nutrition, I think we all can relate to the eating, moving, sleeping components of our physical intelligence. I mean, we contrast this on the show so much, this physical and emotional. But Brian, you know, nutrition, it's a kind of marketing term out there. The best nutrition, the 10 steps for nutrition. We're going to talk about the five fundamentals today, which I think is a unique spin, a unique, interesting angle when we understand how powerful nutrition can be. How would you personally, though, define nutrition? It's a word that gets heard a lot. What is your definition of nutrition?

That's actually really interesting. I'm not sure I've truly ever defined nutrition for myself in that capacity. I think the simplest explanation or simplest definition of nutrition would be the foods and drinks you put in your body. Right? I mean, that's like the simplest way of looking at it. The food and drinks you consume.

And we Know that food is medicine, food. It's such an intimate thing. I mean, food and religion. Sometimes in conversations, I'm sure, sure everyone listening can relate. What are you seeing? You know, your fingers really close to the pulse. In regards to the old adage of calories in, calories out, what's top of mind for you as we dive into this conversation around current events and news media for nutrition? What's something out there that you don't like hearing that you think is false right now?

Well, I think it perfectly relates to the calories in, calories out idea. Like, it's. What I don't like hearing is people trying to claim like calories in and calories out is old and flawed and no longer valid. That's actually not true. The research doesn't support that. I think the problem is the concept has been simplified to the point of not being correct. It's often conflated with eat less, move more. But movement, physical activity is only one actually relatively small component of your total energy expenditure. The actual food you consume impacts your energy output. So calories in, calories out, I think is. Is not treated appropriately in the field or in the industry. It's an easy scapegoat. Oh, it's all about hormones. Oh, it's all about X, Y and Z, whatever the flavor of the day is. But the reality is all those things simply impact energy in and energy out. Right. So if I'm changing your nutrition to improve your hormonal profile and it's causing you to eat more food but still lose weight, that's not because calories in, calories out isn't true. It's because we've impacted it in direct and indirect ways that have caused your energy balance to change. You might be taking in more calories, but that's now helped you expend more energy to still put you in a positive or negative energy balance. Whatever we're trying to achieve, there is.

Some piece to this. Calories in, calories out, then we can't just completely throw it out the window.

Honestly, you can't throw out the window at all because it is a fundamental law of thermodynamics. Not everybody knows this about my background, but I was actually an engineering student for three years prior to actually switching over to nutrition. So I took more math and more science than I ever care to remember. Right. But I took thermodynamics with the driest professor you could possibly imagine. But I mean, the whole premise of the class was about solving problems and using the fundamental laws of physics and thermodynamics to do so. And that is a law, not a theory, not a hypothesis. You know, and people like to pretend like the human body doesn't fit under those constraints, but it does. It just. I think we often overlook how many inputs and outputs there really are. Right. It gets boiled down to like this really simple, eat less and move more or well, I ate more, I didn't change my movement and I'm losing weight. So that must mean calories in, calories out. Doesn't work. No, what it actually means is however you changed your input impacted your output. They're not mutually exclusive. Right. They actually work together in concert to either maintain a certain stable weight or to cause adjustments up or down, depending on what you're doing.

I want to dig into your story too, because it's fascinating that your road to get where you are, I mean, this is like a global force, this precision nutrition. It brings up something for me. I, I love Bruce Lee, I love history. Bruce Lee said, absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, add what is essentially your own. And I think that relates to what you were saying, Brian, about the calories in, calories out. We know that there's other factors, hormonal factors, stress load, sleep, and honestly genetics that play into this. Calories in, calories out. But what do you depend on as far as your ethos? What about your upbringing and. Or your education is a tried and true methodology that hasn't really changed that much.

I mean, I think there are just some fundamental principles that apply across any dietary approach or there are just fundamental pieces I think that we need to tackle to make change. And regardless of whether you're an elite athlete or a stay at home mom or anything in between, there are key domains that we all need to tackle to impact how we look, how we feel, how we perform. And those things don't really change now. How exactly we go about tackling them changes because we learn more. But I mean, you look at sleep stress, you kind of alluded to some of these, right? Like your nutrition and there's things like your microbiome that we're learning so much about, but we still, we know just enough to be dangerous at this point in many ways, you know, so there are some of the key pieces, movement, you know, those are like your four things, maybe environment, things that you can modify in your environment to improve your health. Right. There's only so many domains you can impact, but those are the big rocks. And then how can you tackle them? Well, there's lots of different ways to go about that. But too often, I see people kind of going down the road of minutia and skipping over some of the big rocks of those domains, right? Missing out on protein or vegetables, whatever the case might be. And they're focused on nutrient timing or some of the fun details that can really only be helpful when the big rocks are already in place. So for me, my ethos is, like, fundamentals first, always.

This is a refreshing conversation, man, and I'm so stoked. This is why I was so pumped to have you on the show, because we have run the gamut on hormonal balance and diet types. You know, whether it's ketosis or Dr. David Perlmutter's work or having on, you know, Drew fit to fat to fit. A lot of people use a lot of tools, but they don't work for everyone. And so we see everyone on this journey that's either letting go of old weight or trying to get more energy. What do you see in your work as the top roadblocks for most people when they begin to change this relationship with food?

The fundamental, biggest roadblock I see is mindset like this. All or none mindset. I'm either all in on keto or I'm all in on whole 30, or I'm all in on XYZ. You plop anything in there. And then, because things are going out, working perfectly in their life right now, right? Their job's lined up, their kids are kind of on cruise control. Whatever the case might be, whenever shit goes sideways, things change. All of a sudden it's like, well, you know, that was working really well for me, and I've kind of got stuff going on right now. When I have time, I'll get back to doing X. Because it worked, right? Well, it worked only under these really specific circumstances. So too often you see it's either all on or all off. As opposed to trying to find an approach or build certain skills, fundamental skills that can be utilized, maybe dialed up and dialed down in intensity, but can be utilized through all circumstances of life. And I think that's a key piece that people really struggle with. Is that all or none mindset? Either I'm in it and I'm crushing it and I'm making awesome progress, or they had a bad day, they made one poor choice, and it becomes, I'm just going to eat my face off, and that happens. It's no big deal. It's part of everybody's journey. I think normalizing some of that stuff is really key because people feel very alone in A lot of these weight loss programs or approaches, whatever you want to consider it. So I think the all or none mindset is by far the biggest roadblock I see for most folks.

I really appreciate that you said a lot of people feel alone. I want that to sink in because so many emails we've gotten are around, hey, you know, Josh, I've listened to 50 shows and I've gotten this information, but I'm still having a problem between the knowledge and the doing. It's that trust piece, Brian. And I know that this is big for precision, the community, the continuous education and touch points. As digital grows, it's going to become even more important for human beings to trust one another, to connect. It's funny though. You used to wear this T shirt that said scary coach. What is that all about?

That was back from my days when I worked at Krusty Sports Performance. I definitely was like, maybe not, no, nonsense, but basically, people knew not to, like, you weren't going to bulldoze me. If I was walking around the gym and I was observing you training and I was giving you feedback, you just weren't going to fluster me. You weren't going to scare me, you weren't going to push me off my mark trying to sweet talk me or whatever the case might be. And so people just learned to respect that. Right? So I kind of got this adage of people would see me coming and it was like, oh, yeah, they stopped talking. They would get back to work. They would really make sure they're doing their. They're not just kind of going through the motions. They're like doing it legit, working hard, whatever the case might be. So I just, before I left, a few clients pitched in together to print off that shirt for me as like a nice gag gift. But it was, it was funny. It was all meant in, you know, tongue in cheek. I wasn't actually scary, but I was scary in the sense of like, no, just keeping them on their toes, like coming in, they're here to work. I mean, obviously they're to have a good time. We would joke, we would laugh, but when it was time to work, it was time to work. So that was really kind of where it came from. And it's always kind of stuck a little bit as like a, you know, a nice, fun tongue in cheek joke.

This is so fascinating because when I was coaching people on the floor, I was 10 years as a trainer and people would try to befriend me because they knew that if they were my friend, then I Wouldn't have to be as accountable or as powerful as a coach. And that goes for every, you know, wellness or fitness pro or just anyone who's helping somebody in their life. From a professional standpoint. People aren't paying you to be their friend. People are paying you for accountability, trust and education. So thank you for that reminder, Brian. I want to dig into these five fundamentals. There's so many things I want to talk to you about, but we only have a little slice of time here. So the five fundamentals, what are these? In our modern world, so many things change so quickly. But what are these tried and true blocks? We can dig into each one.

Yeah, I mean, I think I kind of touched on them a little bit earlier. Right. And there are subsets of each, but there's obviously nutrition, sleep, stress, movement, and your environment. Environment would kind of be like a distant fifth. That would include things like plastic exposure or air quality.

Right.

Like using a HEPA filter or plants or some of those kind of things in my opinion, like the five levers. As a coach or as an individual you can kind of play with to see what's helping you look, feel and move your best.

Which one do you dig into first out of these five typically?

Honestly, I don't know if there is a typical, probably nutrition in movement just because they go hand in hand so nicely, but quite often, I mean, movement's usually pretty stable because most people are ready, willing and able to start doing some movement. Now, my training might be different from your training than from some of the pro teams I work with versus some 75 year old grandmas we work with, but they're still moving in some capacity. And then we pair that with whatever seems to be either their biggest limiting factor or their biggest strength that they already have that we can leverage in that certain skill set. So, for example, it might be nutrition, but it might also be sleep because maybe improving their sleep will have a huge impact on their nutrition. Right. So they're not mutually exclusive. They all impact each other. We all know stress and sleep impact nutrition, and nutrition impacts sleep and stress. So they're not like separate entities. And so you kind of determine based on a good initial assessment and doing like a triage, where you have a system, like a grading system, your own rubric, we have our own internal one. But there's lots of different ways to do it, where you determine what's going to be the most fundamentally impactful step for them right now, what is doable within this person's life that will help them move forward or be the most just achievable. Sometimes it's not even the biggest rock. Like I might know. Getting this person to stop drinking 12 sodas a day might be the biggest piece. But if that's way too daunting of a task for them, we might start somewhere else entirely just to build confidence and momentum. But we do have that in our back pocket. We are going to tackle that. So there's no one right way. But those are your big things. And too often I just see folks tackling really small subsets of those domains and not starting with big fundamental pieces.

This is where the fads come, right? So somebody's like, oh, I need to, I need to pay attention to my neat factor and I need to only eat keto. And if I don't do the whole thing, avoid sugar, you know, like a Nazi, then I'm a failure at life. And guys, this is just simply not true. Like these fundamentals, Brian, you've seen these really be tried and true over the course of time. Is this something that you've seen change at all? Or have these fundamentals been in place since your collegiate years?

The fundamental principle. Principles are in many ways they're principles because they're unchanging, right? I mean, they're not just cool ideas, they're things that are consistent that we see are important regardless of who you are and where you live and what you do. So whether you're an athlete, those things are all important. Whether you're a stay at home mom, whether you're just a weekend warrior, if you're a washed up athlete like myself who just plays in men's league, but just wants to be healthy and play with my kids. And you know, those are still the important things. Now how you go about them might be a little bit different, right? Like I don't need to live Tom Brady's lifestyle because I'm not performing at the highest end of one of the hardest sports on earth. So I think there are gradations within that, but those principles remain the same. And you look at people talking about keto or talking about gluten free or talking about lectins and people so often they get so concerned about this certain preservative in this product that might make a difference, but it might make a difference. Whereas something like eating adequate protein or adequate vegetables we know will make a difference. So I think that's part of the key piece there is understanding what's most likely to cause benefit to what's least likely to cause benefit. And you work from most Likely to, least likely. But so often you see people get caught up in like some cool new study comes out or some cool new theory comes out and they just kind of drop other things they've been working on. And, man, now everyone's eating low sugar or low this or cutting this out. Those things might be helpful, but that's not going to apply to everybody. What if I like having some sugar or I like eating some carbs? Now you want to fit all your clients into a low carb intake. Well, now you're going to lose me as a client. Right. So how can you teach specific principles that can apply across different dietary strategies? Even within the principle of nutrition, there are specific skills you can teach that are going to apply whether you're vegan, whether you're keto, whether you're low carb. You can just help people do those dietary strategies better if that's their personal preference.

Man, this is fascinating to me because sleep, stress, movement, nutrients, environment. I do want to add in what I believe I'm seeing too, and that is emotional health, the role of emotional intelligence. It's why we dive into so many things on the show. And going back to the email from so many people, Brian, I have the knowledge. I can't walk the bridge. I'm not trusting in myself to walk the bridge. That's where human connection comes in. Do you see this as the missing factor, this emotional piece, almost a six pillar?

Oh, absolutely. And the reason I don't even count it as a pillar, I find I can't separate it from any of the other ones. So it's kind of like integrated, at least in how I coach it. Maybe that's why I don't count it as its own pillar, because it's just built into how I coach nutrition and how I coach sleep and how I coach stress. You know, that mental, emotional piece is a huge aspect. Like it kind of speaks back to what I talked about as the biggest roadblock. Right. That all or none mindset or. And it's different, but similar to kind of what you're referencing, Right? That fear of taking that step. What if I do it and it doesn't work? Right. So one of the things we really try to get people to look to do is to look at these things as small experiments or you're just kind of playing with it just to see what happens. If it doesn't work, you can go back to doing something else and it's just giving you data. Right? Oh, this worked or this didn't work. Why? Let's look at it and see what's going on. Why were you able to have more vegetables here but not here? You kind of unpack some of those things and make it less daunting and seem less random to people. And then we can find clues as to why something's working or not working. But I think that mindset of that emotional health is massive in our own coaching practice at pn that's, you know, whenever people graduate, it's like a year long program. The number one thing we hear over and over and over again from people who complete it and do it successfully is it wasn't about the food. It was about my mindset. Right. It changed how I thought about nutrition, how I thought about movement, and in many ways how they thought about relationships. And because it's not, honestly, it's all interconnected, right? These aren't all these separate systems. How you think about food relates to how you think about stress, relates to how you think about coping. You name it. So that's the number one thing they end up taking out of it. And then it as a byproduct, in many ways substantially improves their nutrition and then their movement and stress and sleep and everything else that kind of goes along from there.

I'm so appreciative that you brought up that component of the emotional part. And I know that PN does focus on that a lot because what I've seen, and so many people reverberate this message across the hallways in health and wellness. And that is you start adjusting the food, you start adjusting the movement. Like you said, those are typically, not always, but typically the first two rocks that people get to move. And you know, what's one of those rocks? Old stories, old beliefs, identity. Is this something that you see when people take that first kind of trepidatious step into the relationship with food?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, it's. It is, then that's why it's such a key part of what we do in PN coaching, where we have, we specifically have questions. At the end, people get like daily lessons. If you're not familiar with how we, how we coach, they get habits to practice to build particular skills, and they have daily lessons to help reinforce or teach more about that habit or that skill. And then at the end of them, we have like little questions, little thought exercises that are used, like the Socratic method to get people to think these things through and to kind of address those mindset or emotional health concerns bit by bit, piece by piece. And then they can look back at the end of A year, because it kind of collates them all into an actual. We call owner's manual. And they can look back and reflect and see how much they've changed, grown. And so much of it's just small little bits here and there, obviously with the help of an actual coach that makes a huge difference. And mentors and other people going through it with you. There's a lot going on there, but it is a key, key, key component. I would say, in many ways the most important component. I think when I started out in this field, I was very focused on the physiology. I came from a very heavy math and science background, obviously as an engineering student, and I didn't have a problem just focusing on the numbers. That was what interested me. And I was good at it. I was very, very physiologically focused. Then you start coaching real people and you realize most people don't eat this way. They're not thinking about, oh, I gotta have 30 grams of protein here and 60 grams of carbs there and this and that. That's just not. They eat meals, they eat food and they eat with other people. And it's a social component and it's a. An emotional wellness component. I mean, think of why most of our parties and most of our holidays revolve around food. I mean, obviously it's because food's delicious, but it's also because it's one way we communicate together and we connect with each other. So to break food down into just its macro constituents or just have a meal plan doesn't respect how people actually interact with food. And I think that's a really big missing component in a lot of what you see online today with coaching is, oh, this will spit out a meal plan for me. Cool. Now let's see how long you can follow it, right?

Yeah.

I used to write meal plans for people when I was 22, and they would follow it for, like, not at all. Not even a full day, because it's like, oh, well, this came up. And then I had to go here instead of my normal routine. Always, always, every time. What was typically normal never ends up happening because that's a quote unquote average day. But most days don't end up working out that way because something comes up and then I have to adjust. And this would then fill out this and like. But that's okay. But that's where meal plans fall short, and that's where we're much more about teaching people to fish rather than giving them to fish.

Wow. I love the fact that you brought up the parties and the holidays and how so much of our culture just centers around food, because we get this hormonal kind of deep breath at parties from food and alcohol and things like this. But a lot of people, they. Even if they have the meal plan or they've worked with coaches, their example, the first 10, 15, 20 years of their life, their parents. That is a big angle on how their dietary habits shape as an adult. What was it like for you when you were a kid and in your teens? Did you have a healthy relationship with food then? What was your model for food when you were growing up?

I've been very fortunate. I've always had a very healthy relationship with food. I think so much of it was because of the environment I grew up in. You know, my parents tried to eat well, tried to eat healthy, but they weren't, you know, over the top about it or constantly talking about it. They didn't constantly talk about their weight or other people's weight or they weren't not allowing this, but only allowing that in hardcore ways. I mean, we didn't have soda in my house, but it wasn't because they were talking about my weight. They just talked about. We just didn't have soda. That was their reason. We just don't have soda.

They knew something was wrong with sodas. They just didn't have it in the house.

Right. I mean, we'd have it once in a while, I'd go out to dinner and be like, I'd have a soda with dinner as a kid. That's normal, and that's okay because the dose makes the poison, right? It's not. Not going to kill you one at a time. But it was when I was little, I go to the gym with my dad then, as he had more kids, that kind of. And they had two businesses. Going to the gym fell by the wayside, as it does for a lot of people in their late 20s and 30s. And then when I was in about eighth grade, I distinctly remember this because I was old enough to kind of notice my dad had slowly accumulated weight up to that point. Right. And he's not a tall man. My dad's like, he claims he's five' eight. He's more like five' six, maybe five' seven. So he had put on maybe 25 extra pounds that he didn't want to carry. And so he didn't say anything about it. He just slowly, my parents together slowly started changing how we ate so that it became health. In hindsight, I look at it now, it was healthier and healthier based on what we knew in the 90s. This was when I was in eighth grade, so it wasn't quite how I would eat today, but it had some good underlying thought behind it, it had some good intention behind it. And he lost those 25 pounds and has kept it off to this day, 20 plus years later. And my parents are very health oriented, so it was that. I think in hindsight that was probably my springboard into getting very interested in exercise and nutrition. I was kind of entering high school, getting into, and I was always into athletics, but now it's like, okay, to compete at athletics in high school, had to start lifting, paying more attention to that stuff. And I was a very average athlete. So training and nutrition were an edge for me to compete with guys who were more gifted athletics than I was.

You saw your dad's health journey, his transformation, and it kind of planted a seed early on for you. Now that was kind of a stroke of luck, right? We're all here, we won the genetic lottery, we're here on the planet. Right. But you had something unique that happened for you. Do you see that as an angle where when you're working with parents, do you work with parents differently than single people because of just their daily stress load, their kids and everything else?

Oh, for sure. You have to take that into account. And I think my coaching changed significantly as I became a parent, you know, because it's suddenly, I think when you are coaching people who have kids and you don't have kids, you cannot fully grasp the day to day challenges that having children presents when you don't have them. You just can't fundamentally appreciate it until you're going through it yourself. You know, I think that's. Not that you can't understand it too on some intellectual level, but I think there's a, especially when you have young children who, you know, might get up in the middle of the night or emotionally not fully well rounded yet because their brains just don't have that capacity yet. I think there's a lot more. It's like, okay. And that goes back to that kind of dial concept I talked about earlier. You might have been able to crank up that intensity to 9, 8, 9 or 10 when you were 22 and you didn't have kids. Now that you're 32, that might have to be at a 5 or a 6 or a 7, where you're still able to do more than you're doing now might be at a zero. It's either that all or none, that 10 or that zero. But if we can just get it to a four or five or a six, you're going to make really solid progress in a way that fits your current life circumstances. And I think that's a key piece. So often it's like, well, this is what worked for me in high school, this is what worked for me in college. You're not in high school or in college anymore. When you were then, you didn't have a full time job, you didn't have a mortgage, you didn't have car payments, you didn't have. You can go on and on and on. So I think life circumstances really dictate what you're able to do. But there's still always something that you can do. It might be a little slower than you might like, might be differently than you had dreamed of or hoped for, but it's usually in a way that you can sustain versus not sustain.

Let's go to a takeaway then. Cause I love this topic of parenting. My brother has three children. People that listen to the show always say, well, Josh, you don't know what it is because you don't have kids. And I'm like, I don't have kids. But I've worked with clients like yourselves and I understand that this stress load can be so much that all the PDFs and meal plans and templates, those things go out the window when your child wakes you up at 3am with a green snot bubble on the shoulder, like, it doesn't matter.

It was at 4:15 this morning for me.

So yeah, so you know what we're talking about here. So what's one takeaway then? When people dive into this nuance of applying these five fundamentals for nutrition in this crazy modern world that have kids, what's kind of a starting point for them to take a breath and assess where they're actually at?

That's where I go back to. Like I mentioned before, that's where the fundamentals first really come into play. Don't go down that rabbit hole of worrying about the type of salsa that you're eating. I once had a client that was super stressed about, oh, should I get this salsa or that? So he's like texting me from the grocery store and it's like, dude, that's missing the forest for the trees, man. It's salsa. It's not going to make any real difference. So for parents like that or people who are in that kind of life circumstance right now, this is where you just got to hammer the fundamentals, because those are the biggest rocks they're going to give you the biggest bang for your buck. Maybe it's if you can't train for 60 minutes, whatever, train for 30 minutes, train for 20 minutes, train in three blocks of 15 minutes, it doesn't matter. So long as you're able to tackle that kind of, that principle, that key domain of movement. It might not be the perfect training program, but it's still going to be a training program. It's going to give you a training effect. And so I think that's a key piece. And it doesn't mean just go, just run, or just do any one thing. I think it's good to have a balanced overall approach or whatever that might mean for your particular goals. But I think what's key is when you're in that position, that's where focusing on that dial concept is huge. Maybe you can't get in all the perfect nutrition that you want, but let's say you put meals on a scale from one to four, with four being your ideal. Pie in the sky, eating slowly and with serene music, nice glass of wine, a good conversation. That's going to happen rarely with your partner or whomever. But when you have young kids, it's going to be more like you're managing what they're willing to eat, what you guys want to eat, trying to keep everyone at the dinner table. So maybe you just accept two or three. It's not perfect, but it's certainly pretty good. It's good enough to keep you moving. So it's kind of, I think, many ways, just readjusting the perception of what's good enough to keep you progressing. Or sometimes it's just about maintenance. Maybe this is just a time in your life where you are just treading water, you're in okay shape, you feel pretty good, nothing's super bothering you. Maintenance is a really important skill that I think is often overlooked because ultimately that's where most people want to end up. You might want to gain weight or lose fat, whatever the case might be, then you kind of just want to maintain it for a long time. And I think that skill of maintenance is unfortunately strongly overlooked. And that can be a really powerful thing to work on, especially if you're a new parent, you have a really young child, like an infant, forget it, man. That's not a time to be focusing on, like getting on stage, your underwear. That is a time to how can we do good enough? Where I feel good, I'm able to recover as much as possible without overly stressing about this stuff, Right? So that's where I think those big rocks come in. Focusing on protein, focusing on veggies. Right. What's the minimum effective dose of stress management I can do? Can I meditate? Five minutes a day. Perfect. Maybe it's not 20 that you might want to do, but if I can get in five minutes, it's a big enough dose where it's going to help me feel better. What sleep can I get? Right? It's kind of finding. What kind of movement can I get? Can I do sprints while pushing the stroller? Hell yeah, I can. Right? There's always little things like that you can do. So I think it's finding those big rocks and being okay with good enough.

Man. The imperfection kind of walking this perfectly imperfect journey. No template is going to apply. I mean, these templates fly out the window or the car when you're taking your kids to school or when we're just running about in this stressful world. And it brings up something from Harvard. There was multiple studies, but this One was from 2015, January, using the neat factor, non exercise activity thermogenesis. This is where people are moving throughout the day. This is different than resting metabolic rate. Can you tell us what these are? This resting metabolic rate and the neat factor? What we can actually garner from these two scientific pieces?

It's an interesting thing. So basically there are four main components, right? To like your metabolism to your energy. Out there's your resting metabolic rate, which is your biggest contributor. Usually about 60 to 70% of all the energy that you burn in the day is from your. What's called your resting metabolic rate. The amount of energy that you would burn if you just laid on the couch and watched Friends reruns all day long. Just to power your liver, to power your brain, to power your breathing, to power digestion. You name all of those things. It's such a huge contributor. Especially your internal organs, your big organs. They're chewing up massive amounts of calories. Calories, that's pretty static, right? I mean, it'll change if you. Because obviously your skeletal muscle, your bone, your fat mass, all impact that as well. So if you're heavier or lighter, it will adjust based on your body weight. Pretty much based. Mostly based on like your lean mass. But fat mass does contribute to it as well.

And I've done this test too. This is where you breathe at rest for 30 minutes. I went to the UCSD exercise fizz lab. I breathed into a mask and My number, my RMR, was 2,100 calories, give.

Or take 50mm right. So that would be. That's how much you'd have to consume if you didn't do anything all day just to maintain your current body weight. Right. Which sometimes astounds some people. Wow, 2,100 calories. And that's doing nothing. That's no walking, no lifting, no picking your kids up. I mean, nothing. Right. That's just to maintain. If you were on bed rest, which is a pretty astounding number when you really think about it. What's interesting though is you could, let's say you and I were the same age, height, weight and body composition. Our resting metabolic rate can vary by 15% between each other. Even with all of those key things that we know are the drivers of resting metabolic rate, there are still things we don't quite understand. Whether it's the bacteria in our GI tract, whether it's our genetic differences, there are some elements that we haven't quite fully elucidated yet that impact resting metabolic rate by a somewhat significant margin. Right. If, if 2000 calories is your RMR, 15% difference is 300 calories. So if a 300 calorie difference every day, well, that can add up. So resting metabolic rate is a key piece. And then neat. So neat is your non exercise activity thermogenesis, like you said, this is all movement. That's not like purposeful exercise. It's like right now I'm sitting in a chair and I'm kind of unconsciously swinging my leg side to side because I'm a fidgeter, I'm a pacer. I'm constantly shaking my legs, maintaining posture. Make sure you're not laying in bed. Those are all things that contribute to NEAT output. Tapping your fingers, pacing.

That's why I'm at the standing desk, Brian. I love the standing desk man.

Right. I got one too. Although I'm sitting right now, mine adjusts up and down, so. Absolutely, those are all things that contribute to neat. And what's really interesting, neat is like the, maybe the number one correlation to why people do or do not change weight when they under or overeat. Research has shown that NEAT can vary by up to like 2000 calories a day between people, which is an enormous. I mean, that's like at the.

Holy schnap.

That's super extreme ends. That's like the standard, you know, three standard deviations in each direction. Yeah, but even for an average person, you know, in the middle, in that middle of the standard, you know, in that first standard deviation on either direction, it can vary pretty Significantly, it kind of highlights one of my favorite all time studies. So they had this overfeeding study where they gave people 1,000 calories a day over their basic needs, their baseline needs, to maintain their body weight, which took into account their normal movement and physical activity and whatnot. I think it was 16 weeks. They measured how much weight they gained. It was somewhat controlled. So it was a pretty solid study in terms of its methodology. Amazingly, there was a couple guys, one guy in particular who gained less than a pound, gained 0.79 pounds. And there was one poor woman at the very other end of the spectrum who gained 9.3 pounds. If we use traditional calorie math of, you know, 500 extra pounds as a.500 extra calories a day is an extra pound a week. I mean, in reality they should have gained substantially more than that, right? They should have been gaining 2 pounds a week. It was an 8 week study. As an 8 week study. So they should have gained 16 pounds, but the person at the top gained 9.3. Person at the bottom gained 0.79. When they looked at changes in resting metabolic rate and changes in thermic effect of eating, which is how many calories you burn just from the act of eating and digestion, those went up a tiny bit because people ate more and gained a little bit of weight, but not enough to make any real significant difference. The only thing that was a consistent correlation was meat output. So the average person in that study, or on average neat output, went up by 336 calories a day. So people paced and fidgeted and stood upright more and just moved more around the house or whatever the case might be, and burned off 33% of those extra calories. But that was the average. That poor woman who actually gained 9.3 pounds burned, I think it was almost 79 or 97, almost 100 calories less per day through NEAT. All that extra food made her feel lethargic. She actually moved less. And that guy that gained almost no weight at all, and there was another individual up there with him, burned something like 670, 690, I don't remember off the top of my head, right in that ballpark, extra calories a day just through neat. So almost 70% of the excess calories consumed, they burned off through fidgeting, pacing, extra unconscious, unintentional movement.

This is why it applies so much, Brian, to the Bruce Lee quote. I mean, yes, these fundamentals that we're talking about, the first two, you know, movement, and also the food that we eat if we're not taking into account neat, though, and we're just sitting for 13, 14 hours. Some of the people I know that listen to the show, you know, have a job where they either at a computer. So there are many ways to increase neat. It just blew me away, though, when you mentioned 2000 calories can be the variance. And like you had said, that's special cases across the gamut. But for neat Factor, how do we do this then? What's a couple things we can do to increase our neat factor in alignment with these five nutrition fundamentals?

Some of the things you've heard a long time, people have always laughed at or written off. Taking the stairs, parking further away. But honestly, there's lots of new little things. Using a standing desk like you talked about. They have really cool treadmill desks now where you walk super slow and are able to work. I have a little upright bike desk in addition to my standing desk where I just sit on my little bike and look out my window and work on my laptop. And I can just pedal at a slow, a slow pace where I'm expending more energy. I'm sitting upright, I'm moving my legs rather than just sitting slouched in an ergonomically correct chair, not moving for hours and hours at a time. There's lots of little things you can do. Like when you're on the phone, make sure there's lots of little tactics you can use. You have a phone call at work. That's where you get up and you walk while you're on the phone. Often helps people think. I think better when I pace. It's like my thinking bat. Have you ever seen A Few Good Men with Tom Cruise?

That's right.

When I present, I get to walk around the stage. I don't stand behind a lectern. That's not how my brain works. I gotta be moving.

You know, what I've been doing too, is I've been using and with clients for a long time is wearable technology. I'm curious for Neat Factor, how does precision nutrition see Neat factor and wearable tech in combining the, you know, actionable data from someone's walking and their exercise, how much time they're sedentary versus active is a key component we see with Fitbit's interface. You know, there's little dots on the screen that notify people. And I get this every day for myself that I still have so many steps per hour to walk. It literally helps me every single day increase my neat factor. How does Precision. See this?

Yeah. I mean, it's not something we've incorporated yet, but it's certainly something. I know our tech team and our development team is considering, like, the best. The best way to try and integrate wearables into our platform, into our technology. The fitness professionals involved, those of us in my end of it understand the tremendous value in increasing neat output. It's not always about, like, okay, well, now it's helped me burn 500 calories, so I have to eat this. I think too often people use it to, like, just for the numbers. That means I can eat that versus burn this. And like, the actual calorie estimations are just that, they're estimations. Right. That's not in my mind. What's more valuable is it's just reminding you to move. Right. So you're just being more active throughout the day, regardless of the actual, like, the measured calories burned. I'm way more concerned about maybe even the steps you took or just being more active throughout the day. So just, if it's pacing, it's moving, it's just encouraging you, hey, you gotta take a few more steps. So it's just getting you to not be so sedentary so consistently, which I think really is such a nice adjunct to purposeful exercise. Right. Like, I have a basement gym. I work out at home. I might train for 35, 40 minutes in the morning, but if I just did that and then sat on my duff all day, that would be a relatively low amount of movement over the course of a week if we added it all up.

This is a big take home, man. This is a big take home that you're mentioning here. Because a lot of people, let's be honest, Brian, they don't love exercise. Like, some people have literally commented on shows and said, I hate the gym, I don't want to go to the gym. And so they don't have to give up. It's just like you're saying, instill these little tactics throughout the day. Kind of find what you love. Like, find the joy in this movement thing. Are there people that you've worked with that don't go to the gym at all, but yet still get great results? Still can find the joy in the process?

Absolutely. And that's one of the things that we even have. When you sign up for our programming or our coaching program, you get assigned a particular workout based on how you answer a series of questions. And one of them is really, it's called our get moving program, or something along those lines. There's no gym involved, it's about walking. It's about any type of small movement like that that you find enjoyable. Now, are you going to progress as quickly as someone who's hitting the gym hard four times a week and getting another movement? No. But if you're okay with that, if you're making that informed choice, like, hey, I don't want to go to the gym, I want to just do some yoga, go for some walks with my kids or walk my dog, I'm okay with that, then there's nothing fundamentally wrong with that. I think where people struggle is they want to do it that way, but then want to see like rapid, tremendous progress and those two things don't really line up. So then we kind of have to have a conversation about expectations and reality. Right. And if you want to exercise that way, that's great. I mean, that's still going to get you where you want to go. It's just going to take a little bit longer because your energy outside is not going to be as significant. Right. But I think it is important to recognize how much, and I think it goes back to our initial part of this call or this podcast when you're talking about the calories in, calories out, and again, why I think it really does come back to that because physical activity is just a part of that. Neat can be just as big, if not a bigger part of your total energy expenditure than your actual gym time for 45 minutes. So I think that's where people kind of get lost in the weeds of, well, this isn't working. Our calories don't matter, of course they do. But how we calculate them is messy and challenging and we don't have great at home data to be able to do that on an individual basis. They're based on averages. So what's more important is to find an approach like you just said, that you love, that you find enjoyable, that you can do consistently and then apply it with, or add it with, or do it concomitantly with sleep stuff and stress stuff and nutrition and focus on those big rocks in a way that you enjoy and find and you can fit into the context of your real life. Now these have to know what's realistic in terms of progress from that. That's where a good coach comes in who can explain that in a client oriented way.

Yes. And I'll think about, you know, Dr. J. Teeta's work. I mentioned him quite a bit. And you know, the metabolic effect and just understanding that it is to a degree somewhat of a huge factor when we look at calories in, calories out. But as you and I have touched on, it's not the only piece. There's so many other things that go in here. And I want to play devil's advocate because we have a lot of people in health and wellness, you know, people like Marianne Williamson, even from the personal development industry, that talk about existential stress, that talk about kind of just this drip of stress that we encounter all throughout the day, that raises our cortisol. If we're constantly in the sympathetic branch of our nervous system, do these five fundamentals even apply anymore? Do we have to fix the emotional part first?

I mean, it's a great question and I'm not sure there's a true answer because I don't think there's one set way that's going to work for everybody, right? There's never a one size fits all system. So that's where I think a good. If you have a coach, like a good assessment and a good triage and then a good open communication where you can adjust things if it is or is not working is so key. But in my mind, they're not separate. What I find or what we find works best is when it's integrated, right? Like I talked about how we have those Socratic questions at the end of our lessons and getting people to work on their emotional health while also making good, solid changes to their stress or their sleep or their nutrition. Because it's your feelings, your emotions are not separate from your body. Your emotions impact your physical world and vice versa. So I think that's really, really important. You look at people, just have thoughts about food and it can change hormonal levels in the body. There's so many fascinating things about how the body works. And I think too often we separate emotional health from physical health when it's really one giant box, right? They may be separate systems, but they're fully integrated with each other and impacting one impacts the other. So to me, I mean, maybe if someone has severe psychological concerns that are outside the scope of my skill set, sure, they should go to a psychiatrist or a psychologist and work on some of that first before I'm able to really work with them. Of course, there are clients like that. There is no question. You have to know when things are outside your scope of practice. But for most people, most people have some kind of emotional issue or health concern because we're human, right? We're all flawed. We all have stuff, we all have baggage. And so I think as a coach, you're going to need to help people work through that. Granted, we're not therapists, but you can use coaching techniques, therapy techniques, motivational interviewing, things like that, to help people improve their emotional health, while also at the same time using it to help their relationship with food, which is going to help their nutrition. Using it to help develop more coping strategies or build more stress resilience, which is going to help, obviously their stress levels. So they're not these separate entities. And I think that's a key piece. As much as I listed them as like five big levers, they all interact with one another. There's like arrows going up and down between each one because they're not distinct from each other in that sense. Sense.

Buckminster Fuller talks about this with tensegrity. And you and I have gone so many fascinating places in this conversation, man. From emotional health to neat factor to the five levers to maybe taking somebody through an inventory. And maybe they're not even a fit for a coach. They have to see a therapist first. Let's just be honest here. Like, let's paint the reality of truth. And the reality of truth is that our physical and emotional is connected. You've reminded us about that so much, Brian. And people are going to check out the show notes. There's probably gonna be like 37 links from all the stuff that we've talked about on the podcast today. Your work with precision nutrition. It's precisionnutrition.com how would you define wellness for us? There is a freneticism out there. I think right now a lot of us are feeling just an incredible case of overwhelm. If you could leave people listening today with just a voice of truth to cut through the bs, give them some clarity, allow them to take a deep breath when it comes to nutrition and their relationship with food. What's a narrative that they can take some action on today or tomorrow when they're done with our conversation?

The best way I could define wellness, I think the way we kind of define deep health, we call it deep health at PM is probably how I would call it. That would probably be the best definition I can give. And I would say it kind of means thriving in all domains of life, physical, mental, emotional, social, all these big areas. And so deeper than that, it kind of means we're physically robust and resilient. We're able to move and act effectively in the world and enjoy a high level of physical function, whether that's playing sports or playing with their kids or going for hikes or whatever that means to you. Right. Maybe You're a competitive athlete. There's no one answer. It's whatever fits your particular needs of physical function. In terms of our mental health, our minds are agile and we're able to solve problems and feel like we're able to kind of combine rational thought with emotional thought, what we call the wise mind. You're kind of combining those two things, right? Able to solve things creatively and align our actions with our deeper principles. Right. In terms of, like, emotional health, you're talking, you know, we're able to look at our emotions and use them for good in the sense that we can take action or we recognize that our emotion is signaling something that needs attention. Right. If I'm suffering from pain or anxiety, I can take a step back and look at it and ask myself, like, you know, what's actually causing this? What's making me feel this way rather than letting my emotions run amok and make my choices. For me, emotions are valid, powerful things, but they often are telling us something about our lives. I would say it's also about the social component. Enjoying healthy, strong, affirming relationships with a variety of people, having a variety of social connections, high quality social connections, and then finally having a growth mindset, constantly growing and developing, learning new things, stepping outside of our comfort zone, learning to strengthen and develop and flourish and have a beginner's mind and be willing to try new things that we're not yet good at. But we build skills and we become good at it. Just like with nutrition or with sleep or with stress, learn a new language, whatever the case might be. We're willing to, I guess, just have a deep connection in all those areas that physical, the mental, the emotional, and the social.

Man, Brian, just a great conversation. And I'm thinking about when I first started my journey. I was £280. I was 21 years old. I was so just incredibly unhappy in my body and my mind. And it's been a journey since then. So, you guys, this is a journey. There's no end to this. Well, there is when we leave the planet, but Brian's reminded us that we get to enjoy this process. Brian, thank you so much, man, for what you do in fitness and wellness and health and nutrition. We appreciate you and we're going to dive into your work in an upcoming Facebook Live. Actually, this is definitely a conversation that deserves more nuance. Maybe we can get some Q and A with you on a Facebook Live at some point in the future. But thanks for coming on the show. We so appreciate your work, man.

Yeah, that'd be awesome. Josh, thanks for having me. This was a good time. Got to talk about some stuff that I don't normally talk about on podcasts, so this was fun and I was glad to do this with you.

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