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The Treatment Room
170. Fitness + health after disordered eating: Macros, metabolism + mindset with Jason Phillips.
00:55:52
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- [00:01]
Tessa Zolli
I think you're on mute.
- [00:03]
Jason Phillips
Workday starting to sound the same.
- [00:06]
Narrator
I think you're on mute.
- [00:07]
Jason Phillips
Find something that sounds better for your career on LinkedIn. With LinkedIn job collections you can browse curated collections by relevant industries and benefits like Flexpto or Hybrid Workplaces so you can find the right job for you. Get started@LinkedIn.com jobs finding where you fit. LinkedIn knows how to savor every last.
- [00:32]
Tessa Zolli
Drop of summer with Starbucks. From bold refreshers to rich cold brews.
- [00:36]
Narrator
The sunniest season only gets better with a handcrafted ice beverage in your hand.
- [00:41]
Tessa Zolli
Available for a limited time, your summer.
- [00:43]
Narrator
Favorites are ready at Starbucks.
- [00:55]
Tessa Zolli
Welcome back to the Treatment Room. I am so glad you are here. I'm your host Tessa Zolli, licensed stuff, esthetician, acne specialist and nutrition coach. My two areas of expertise and my two passions are skin and nutrition and I know so many of you message me saying I want to learn more about nutrition but I don't know where to start. This episode is for you. I cannot think of a better way to approach the topic than to share with you the person who has most influenced me. He's literally my Alex Earl, the person who has most shaped how I view nutrition and maintaining a connection based model with my clients. Today we have Jason Phillips joining us. Cannot believe it, sent him a dm. Didn't think he'd ever see it or respond. And he's here with us for today's episode. He is the founder of the Nutritional Coaching Institute nci. He is one of the top names in the nutrition space, top coaches for some of the best athletes in the game and he is one of the leading voices in evidence based client centered nutrition. So today we dive deep into what it really takes to reach your fitness and health goals after struggling with food. Especially if you've experienced disordered eating, chronic dieting or fear. Around tracking macros, Jason shares how to rebuild trust with your body, understand your metabolism and create sustainable change without obsession. Jason gets very vulnerable with us from the get go from the beginning of the episode and I really want to thank him for that. I think he is going to free and help so many people just by being so comfortable sharing his story. His story does start with disordered eating and anorexia. I want to say that in case it's a topic you're currently sensitive to. But but the point of this episode and what I am hoping for is that we can create a space for those who struggle with disordered eating which is so many people. How can we Create a space where those people can still learn about nutrition and food and heal their relationship with it and still have goals they want to achieve. Whether you are a client trying to heal your relationship with food or a coach who wants to serve your clients better, this conversation is so important to me and it's packed with tools, truths and perspective shifts that matter. I know you guys are going to ask, how can we find the school that Jason started? Nci. That will be linked in the show notes for you. I will also link Jason's socials. I hope you love this episode. Please share it with a friend if you do. And let's get into the conversation with Jason. Well, thanks for being here. I know this isn't your typical audience. I'm an esthetician, so a lot of my audience, yeah, they're, they're estheticians. Acne specialists. I am a nutrition coach, but I use it in the context of like, acne clearing, not physique goals.
- [04:22]
Narrator
Oh, yeah.
- [04:23]
Tessa Zolli
But I use your framework all the time, so we're just so excited to have you. Jason, welcome to the treatment room podcast. Would love to hear a little bit about your story and how you got into nutrition.
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Narrator
Yeah, so I'm probably like the. I'm not the typical nutrition coach story. You know, I started well, I guess, like my whole life, I was like the most anti nutrition thing you could, like, ever imagine. Like in high school, I ate nothing that was green. I ate no fruit. Like, every day. After school, I worked at a golf course and like, we had a cafeteria where I would get like a burger and fries on the way home. Like, me and my friends would stop at like Red Robin, get another burger, get like a milkshake. Like, that was literally like my diet. Like, I was like the all American kid. And then, you know, after high school, I had my first injury ever. I found myself in a rehab setting and it was the first time where I ever thought about my body. Not, not even like, oh, I want to get jacked or anything like that. It was just like, it was the. Literally the first time I even noticed, like, oh, I have body composition. Like, it was never even a thought. I was always like, skinny, fat. Then it was like I went. And as I had that injury, this is 2002, I. I got asked to model for Abercrombie and Fitch. And I'll never forget, they, they. They basically said to me on my way out, they said, make sure when you send us pictures, you send us pictures of your abs. And I was like, oh, shit. Like, I don't I don't have those things you call abs. So I was like on a mission, you know, I was asking everybody, how do I get abs? And ultimately like my, you know, a family friend of ours was my pediatrician and he was like, oh, it's all nutrition. Just, just read the magazines, it'll tell you what to eat. And, and so I did and unfortunately for me, all I read was like, don't eat this, don't eat that, don't eat this, don't eat that. But it never said like what to do. And so I had this like long list of like fear mongering. It was like I thought everything was out there to kill me or to make me fat. And so I basically stopped eating and I developed a full blown eating disorder. And so at 19 I was anorexic, I was 118 pounds. I had the testosterone levels of a 90 year old male and I was in such a decline that I would basically spend every evening on the floor of my bedroom, my parents house contemplating suicide. Because I basically was like, if this is, if this is what life is, I don't, I don't want to live.
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Tessa Zolli
And so you're 19 years old. Was it kind of like an overnight thing where you get this information and you're like, okay, this is what I need to do to be lean and get abs?
- [07:18]
Narrator
Yeah, it was, it was like twofold, right? So I, I dipped my toe in and you know, I went to the gym and then I was like, I kept, I don't know, my parents probably thought something was wrong with me because I was bringing home like every bodybuilding magazine under the sun, like Muscle and fitness and Flex and Muscle Mag and Iron Man. So it's like a bunch of dudes and like no clothes. And my parents, like, there's something we don't know about our son. But like, you know, I would, I would read all of these things and you know, there's actually like one moment that I can pinpoint that I think really changed everything for me. And so I was at a high school football game. We had gone back to arrival high school with some of my friends. And as we're walking, I'll never forget a kid that I knew was with his dad. And his dad looked at me and he said, hey man, he said, you're looking good. He said, you're losing some of that fat. And, and I'll like, I'll never forget the words like pierced me. Yeah. At 19 years old I had never considered the notion that I was fat. Or had fat or anything relating to fat. And, and so now I had this complex, right? So now I was trying to get abs, but I also had this complex that maybe I was fat. And, and that's when it just like went into overdrive and, and shit went crazy.
- [08:35]
Tessa Zolli
I feel like so many people can relate to that story because you go from being a kid where you just have no awareness, like you don't know what a calorie is, like you don't have any kind of physique goal. And then for a lot of us, and it can be so young, you have that moment where somebody kind of changes your reality. And so I'm really glad you're talking about it, especially as, as a guy. I don't feel like we hear that many male voices talking about anorexia or struggles with body image.
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Narrator
I look at it and I'm like, you know, virtually every male that I've met that's in the health and fitness space started with some level of, I don't want to call it body dysmorphia. I don't want to call it an eating disorder, but I do say that there was some level of body insecurity. Right. And that's like what I've kind of distilled it down to. And so it's, it's one of those things where I don't know why don't, why guys don't want to talk about it. Like I don't think it makes us any less of a man. But it certainly is not as prevalent. It is more prevalent than it is talked about. And I just think that we all need to be a little more open about it.
- [09:50]
Tessa Zolli
Yeah, I think even you just talking about it and being so comfortable sharing your story is going to help so many people. You've come a long way now. You're somebody who helps others and is able to educate, talk about food. But how did you get to a place where you were able to overcome this fear of food?
- [10:12]
Narrator
So I kind of got lucky. Somebody told me a big fat lie and I believed it. And so when, when I told you I had my eating disorder, I had the testosterone level of a 90 year old male, which meant the only energy I had in the day was like right when I woke up. And so I had to get a job opening up Gold's gym from 5am to 11am because it was really the only job I could keep. Like I had gotten fired from Best Buy, I had gotten fired from restaurants. Like I had gotten fired from anything that required me to be awake after like 1pm I could not fulfill. And so I got this job opening, golds 5 to 11. And one of the trainers saw what I was doing to myself. Like, she saw me doing like two to three hour workouts a day. She saw me like constantly, like trying to like, look in the mirror, like, you know, seeing how lean I was getting. And so finally this like, this bodybuilder walks in one day and he was like a bantamweight. He's like 145 pounds. He wasn't like some big like roided out dude, but he was like, he comes in, he's getting ready for a show. And I remember saying to her, I was like, that's what I want to look like. Like, he's got muscle, he's ripped. I'm like, that's like, that's my ideal position. And so she looks at me and she's like, well, I do his training in nutrition. And I was like, oh, well, you think you could help me? And she was like, sure. She's like, you need to eat 4,000 calories. And like right there in that moment, she just ran. Like, horrible advice, by the way. Like, knowing what I know today, awful advice. But I was like, okay, I'll take it. And so this is 2002. So I went home, I went to Barnes and Noble, I got a calorie counting book because my fitness pal didn't exist. And I wrote out 4,000 calorie meal plans. And I would go grocery shopping each night and I would cook the food each night and I would eat it the next day. And I'll never forget, like two or three weeks later, I looked in the mirror. I think I had gained almost 20 pounds. And I was like, holy shit, I'm not fat. And I was like, this food thing is not so bad. And so I always call that the first stage of trust. Like, oh, you weren't anorexic anymore? No, no, no, I was still wildly anorexic. And so, but I trusted that food in general wasn't the enemy. So, you know, I did that. I actually became a personal trainer. I was living at home. And then I was like, okay, well, I'm going to, I'm going to change my major in college. I'm going to go major in exercise science. I'm going to get a degree in this. And my boss at the time had graduated from Florida State, so I went to Florida State. And when you move away to college, it's a significantly different setting than when you're living at home. And the peer pressure of being a college student means you're not eating home cooked food for every meal, most certainly when you're drunk at 1:30 in the morning. And so I'll never forget that there was like, there were multiple times my first week away at college where I had to learn to trust different foods. Like the very first night we went out, we had subway at like 1:30 in the morning. And I'll never forget, I woke up in the morning, I'm like, oh, I'm probably fat. And I like ran to the mirror and like I wasn't fat. So it was like, okay, I trust Subway late at night. And then another night my friends want a pizza. So I ate pizza. I don't think I had pizza in over a year. And I was like, well, woke up the next morning probably fat, ran to the mirror, wasn't fat. I'm like, oh, pizza is not the enemy. And I literally had to learn to trust each and every food, right? People are like, oh, you must not be anorexic. No, no, no. Like I'm still anorexic because in my head, and I think what people fail to understand is anorexia, clinically is anorexia nervosa. Right? It's a nervous system disorder. It's, it's not just like something that you come in and out of. Like your brain is wired a certain way towards now seeing food in your body relative to one another. And so I never fully overcame it. I go so far as to say at 40 years old, owner of the nutritional coaching Institute, you know, father. And it's like, I still think today I am, I don't know, I'm 185 pounds at 8% body fat. I still think I'm anorexic. I still actually believe I have anorexic tendencies. And so I don't think that you ever fully overcome it. I actually think that you learn to channel the thoughts and the behaviors and in a slightly more positive manner.
- [14:36]
Tessa Zolli
Do you think it's possible for people to, to have a, you know, a specific goal they want to attain, like weight loss and work with a coach if they have a history of disordered eating?
- [14:52]
Narrator
I do. And so, you know, I've obviously been successful at multiple times in my career at achieving physique goals? You know, I, I've been very blessed. I, I caught, I was on the COVID of some magazines. I was a sponsored athlete with optimal nutrition and bodybuilding dot com. You know, I've, I've, I competed in A bodybuilding show. I did some infomercial shoots. Like, I was very blessed throughout the course of my fitness modeling career. And obviously there was a lot of emphasis on my physique at the time. You know, I would say I have way more balance today. But I'll give a great example. You know, at 40 years old, my goals today are completely different. You know, I have no desire to be a fitness model anymore. And I want to. I want to play golf at a really high level. Like, that's my current goal. Well, a year and a half ago, I was 195 pounds at 8% body fat. And I don't think that you see very many pro golfers that are like, you know, filling out of extra large shirts because they're so jacked or like, it doesn't bode well on the golf course. So everyone's like, why don't you do more golf specific training? Just get smaller? Well, my brain was like, no, no, no. I've spent the better part of almost 20 years working on getting bigger. I can't now just go let my physique go to shit. So, like, the body dysmorphia is very real. To directly answer the question, do I think it's possible? I do, but I'll tell you, it's a very slippery slope every time. Like right now, if I were to go undertake a calorie deficit, I can tell you that my brain knows that the appropriate calorie deficit is like 500 to 750. That being said, my brain is also going to push me towards like a 1500 calorie deficit because some is good, more is better, and let's just trigger anorexia. It's where we don't eat at all. You know, I microdose GLPs right now and those destroy my appetite. I'm wildly comfortable not eating all day. Right. I have to assume some of my anorexic brain comes into that. So I think it's possible, but I think it's a very slippery slope. And I think that we have to acknowledge that. And I think it needs to be. I think there needs to be a lot of very open communication between coach and client. And I think it needs to be acknowledged on day one and continuously acknowledged throughout the process.
- [17:11]
Jason Phillips
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- [18:08]
Tessa Zolli
Yeah, it's something, I mean, I think about a lot because I work with a lot of young women. I know they're already exposed to so many pressures in society. And so, yeah, my question for you because personally I'm coaching clients and sometimes they do have to address specific foods. Like it might be gluten, it might be dairy. It can't always be this flexible diet that you would have for a weight loss goal. Are there any, like, specific strategies that you recommend for coaches to implement so they can work on specific goals with clients while just keeping in mind like, we're not trying to trigger an eating disorder?
- [18:56]
Narrator
I think it's, I think it's really important, number one. So when I built nci, the Nutritional Coaching Institute, right, it was a, it was a certification in 2017 that in my opinion, really changed the face of coaching. Like, you know, prior to 2017, all coaching was based on knowledge. Post 2017, most coaching has been based on connection. And so I've always been a big proponent that the most important thing in any endeavor is the relationship and the connection between coach and client. And so I think that first and foremost, open dialogue is essential. And I think truth is essential. And so I think that, you know, an anorexic needs to feel very safe, they need to feel very protected, but they also need to be encouraged to open up about everything. That being said, I also think education is really big. And so then when anorexics will typically make decisions, and I'm going to speak personally and anecdotally, I'm not going to speak professionally. So anybody that's like, oh my God, let me fact check this guy, I'm not classically trained in psychology, I'm not classically trained in eating disorders. Let me just preface all of that. So I'm giving you a firsthand account. So in my journey with anorexia, you know, if I understood what's, what should or should not happen, it was significantly easier for me to make a decision. If you told me, well, you need to do this to lose weight. Well, my expected response is that I lose weight and then I'm going to let my brain come in and I'm going to force that weight loss. Right. Whereas if we're having open dialogue, if you're educating me the whole time, then I'm significantly more likely to be compliant. Right. Like, we have 100%, like coined the phrase education drives compliance. And I think that that definitely stems from body dysmorphic and or eating disordered clients, more so than it does any other population.
- [20:51]
Tessa Zolli
As long as you feel the dialogue is open, you're educating, you're trying to maintain a safe space.
- [20:59]
Narrator
I think that the general consensus is that you shouldn't do it for fear of like going overboard. And I think that that's largely bullshit. Yeah, that's like saying like, I was anorexic, I gained 100 pounds, and because I was once anorexic, I don't deserve to be healthy. It's kind of crazy to me.
- [21:19]
Tessa Zolli
And it's interesting because I have a lot of, you know, female clients who express, so they're, so they want to clear their skin holistically. They don't do Accutane prescriptions, but they might have come from a place where they've been told you can't have any rules around food. So they, they almost question, like, how, how can I have a specific goal while not getting back to where I was?
- [21:47]
Narrator
It's interesting because, you know, so we, when I teach coaches to coach, I teach what's called a four dimensional operating system. And you know, you know, today more like what most people come to me for is actually business development. Right. So I was an interesting coach that got more results in the world and now I teach, you know, I make coaches really rich. And so, but it's, it's the same principle in the physique side because at the end of the day, the four dimensional operating system is around an individual's physicality, their personal development, their connections and their ability to make money. Right? And those are the four dimensions in life. Like, we're all physical and physiological beings. We all need to personally evolve and have some level of spiritual connection. We all need to be connected to our significant others and our children and our family and our friends. And then we all need the ability to make money. Right? And so what I ask people is like, okay, if we're not allowed to have any rules, explain to me the facts that live inside of that statement. Right? Because to me, that's a very emotional statement. We are trying to protect your emotional state. Well, emotions are okay, but the problem is they're very subjective. And so your rule for yourself might be like, well, no alcohol. But then all of a sudden, Saturday night, on date night, you're like, but I want to drink, and it's date night, and so you make the exception. And so emotionally. Right, subjectively, we are now altering the rules. Well, why don't we just unpack what the facts are? Well, the facts are that an abundance of restriction will undoubtedly trigger previous behavior. Okay, great. Like, that's actually factual. Okay. Another fact is that there are certain foods inside of your body that will trigger an outbreak. That's factual. Like, we can't deny that. Another fact would be that, physiologically speaking, decreasing inflammation will likely decrease outbreaks. Okay, so when all of a sudden we start lining up the facts, where does that point us in terms of informed decisions? Well, it points us to low inflammatory foods. It points us to avoiding the foods that will trigger outbreaks. Right. It points us to a place where restriction is not necessary. However, guidelines are likely a good idea. Well, don't shoot the messenger, right? That's not your fault. That's not my fault. That's just the truth. And so what I find is most of these fucking zealots, pardon my French, but most of these zealots, right, they want to go out there and they want their opinions to be seen as facts, and that's just flawed thinking. And 90% of the time, that's what's wrong with our industry. We see so many opinions being presented as facts, when in reality it's just one individual's viewpoint and. Or their experience and. Or their belief system. I'm not discrediting it, but I am discrediting the way it's presented. And so when we're talking about something like acne or gut health or any specialized autoimmune condition, we should be looking at the facts, not the emotions.
- [25:03]
Tessa Zolli
Do you feel like food is emotional?
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Narrator
Oh, I mean, that's a whole nother. I think every human has an emotional connection to food. Yeah, I think we have emotional connections to everything. Like, undoubtedly, there are foods that I eat that take me back to times in my life where they were great, like Kraft Mac and Cheese. Undeniably takes me back to, like, 10:30, 11pm Every school night. My, like, My senior year of high school, all right, it would be late at night, I'd finish studying, I'd be like, mom, I'm hungry. Make me a box of Mac and cheese. And she would. Right. Like, at the same time, like, Cheesecake Factory always takes me back to, like, my days in the physique industry. And so I, I think that, yeah, like, we can condition emotions around food. You know, I. I participated one time in what was called a cycle diet. You know, the guy that created, his name was Scott Abel, probably one of the most intelligent men I've ever spoken with in my entire life. He was a great coach of mine for quite some time, but he had this diet where for six days I lived in a pretty significant calorie deficit, right? And, and like, when I tell you I was hungry, like, there were some nights I was so hungry it kept me up. And on the seventh day, I could eat whatever I wanted. And I was encouraged to eat, like, everything. And so on my. So, like, the way I would start my day, every single Saturday or Sunday, I think I did it on Saturdays. The way I would start my day is I would go to Dunkin Donuts, I'd have a dozen donuts on my way to ihop, I would have an omelet, three stacks of pancakes, and then on the way home, I'd wash it down with a Frappuccino. Like, that was how I started my Saturdays. And then I would go home, I would take a nap, I would have like some breakfast sandwiches from Panera. I'd get like Chipotle for lunch. I'd have some other, like, disgusting sugar shit around the house. Then I would go, you know, have pizza or Cheesecake Factory at night. And what it started to do is it conditioned me that food was kind of like, scarce, right? I only got one day to consume it. And so it's really funny, if you and I were like, hey, we're going to have pizza right now, And I said to you, like, what kind of pizza do you want? You would get your own pizza. Because if you looked at my pizza and you thought you were going to eat any, I would tell you, you're crazy. Because I measure, I measure pizz from that time in my life by the pie. I don't measure it by the slice, right? It actually taught me that I need to be hyper aggressive with hyper palatable foods and consume a lot of them to get the dose response of it that I wanted. And so I think that emotionally I had created these connections based on how I was living I don't know if I've ever changed that. Like, I have a hard time even today, 40 years old, knowing what I know. If we sat down and had Cheesecake Factory, I don't want two bites. I want the whole damn slice. Right. And it's. It's very difficult. I couldn't tell you why. I don't know what's going on in my brain, but I can tell you there's something going on there that compels me to want it.
- [28:06]
Tessa Zolli
I did want to touch on, on macros because it's something that's a little unfamiliar to. Might be unfamiliar to my audience. Could you break down just basics of macros? And are you a proponent of tracking them?
- [28:24]
Narrator
So I'll start with the first thing, breaking it down. So, obviously, everything that we eat is comprised of calories. Calories are just a unit of energy. Right. And so if we want to gain weight, we consume more energy than we expend. If we want to lose weight, we expend more energy than we consume. Right. Basically meaning if you want to gain weight, you eat more calories than you, you know, than you burn. You want to lose weight, you burn more calories than you consume. Like, relatively simple understanding. So I've always said calories in, calories out determines weight loss. The composition of those calories determines the body composition change during that weight loss. Right. So nobody ever said, I want to lose weight and get fatter. I've never heard, like, I've coached people for almost two decades at this point. I've never heard somebody come to me and say, hey, I want to lose weight and get fatter. Well, and if that's the reality, then in your weight loss journey, there probably should be some amount of resistance training. Doesn't have to be a lot. Like, you don't need to be going to the gym every single day. Even two to three sessions a week is plenty. Right. And you should eat adequate amounts of protein to preserve your lean tissue so that the weight you're losing is primarily body fat. That's really what people want when they say I want to lose weight. So do I think macros matter? I absolutely think they matter. Do I think people need to count them? It really depends. Right. I think that so many factors come into play. I think your, you know, your current eating style. Like, what if you're somebody that likes high protein? But do I need to reinforce to you that you need more protein? Probably not. Right? Am I willing to go on a calories and protein base early? Probably. But if you're somebody like my 7 year old daughter that likes nothing but carbohydrates and we're trying to put her on a meal plan, then, yeah, like we're probably going to look at macros. And I'm not talking about 7 year olds, I'm talking about somebody with that behavior. Right, but somebody that primarily eats carbohydrates. We probably do need to look at macronutrients because what I find is most people under index on protein and we know the significance of protein in dietary settings. So I think it's a great idea that everybody counts at least one day, if not one week, if not one month. I think it is such a fantastic learning tool. I also think that we live in a world that swings like a pendulum and it goes from one extreme to the next extreme. And we as an industry struggle so hard to find the middle ground and the balance. And so you've got proponents of, like, when I got my claim to fame was in 2012, 2013, when I spoke out against Paleo in the CrossFit world and everybody was like, no, no, no, you don't need to count anything. And I'm like, I don't give a shit who you are. I understand almond butter is Paleo. If you eat a whole damn jar of almond butter every day, you're going to get fat. Like it is what it is. I don't care that it's Paleo, you're going to get fat. If you eat 10 pounds of bacon every day, you're probably going to get fat. And so like at some point macros do matter, right? But do I think that, like you have to count macros every day the rest of your life to have a physique that you say, no, I haven't counted a macro in a decade and I'm able to maintain 8% body fat. So I think that there's, I think that macros are best served as a learning tool. And I think that like, the intuition you, you learn or you receive from that period of time is really the most important thing that, that you can kind of take from it.
- [32:00]
Tessa Zolli
Yeah, I've had a lot of female clients who are really nervous about the idea of tracking their food or just like being aware. They're almost like predicting it will lead to disordered eating. But what we've found usually is that they have a more positive experience with it and it kind of just becomes data, you know?
- [32:26]
Narrator
Yeah, absolutely. And, and I think that that's how it should be done. I think that's like the Proper use. I'll also comment on people that have that quote, unquote, fear. A lot of people really resist change. A lot of people love to say they want change. But, you know, and again, I teach this in the business world a lot, too. Most people have gotten comfortable of a lifestyle of desiring change, not a lifestyle of achieving change. And so how many people do we know that have tried diet after diet after diet? It was never the diet like, it was not. Because the very first diet you undertook, it probably worked. All diets work if they're creating a calorie deficit. And so for us to sit here and say the diet didn't work is largely bullshit. It was the individual that didn't work. And so what we understand is that individuals, we get very comfortable in our own head of saying, we want to change, we want to change, we want to change. And that becomes the narrative of our life. Whereas the individuals that execute and they implement and they come out on the other side positively, the narrative of their life is I did change. And so it becomes a very difficult situation to navigate, to shift that narrative, to go from I want change to I did change. It's a whole new set of rules, whole new set of circumstances, whole new lifestyle. And individuals really struggle facilitating that. And so when someone comes to you and they're immediately doubting the efficacy of macros or the ability to implement macros, it's more a function of their mindset than it is their ability to believe in the macros.
- [33:53]
Tessa Zolli
Yeah. So something that's been, like, such a huge blessing and detriment to my business is I have a really popular influencer I've worked with and cleared her skin. And so that's been amazing. But I've had a lot. A lot of clients come from that who see that transformation, but they're just like. They just see the before and after, you know, and then day one, they're like, oh, I'm gonna have to, like, write down what I'm eating. And there's, like, work involved here, you know?
- [34:24]
Narrator
Yeah.
- [34:24]
Tessa Zolli
And changing a lifestyle. I was used to just, like, you know, doing whatever I want without that structure.
- [34:30]
Narrator
Well, I think we all have comforts, Right? We all have comforts in our lives. So for some of us, that's sleeping in, for some of us that's not going to the gym, for some of us that's going to the gym and doing a routine that no longer produces change, for some of us, that certain foods that we consume, the social environments we consume them in. Right. There are endless Amounts of comforts that we have created in our lives. And so for us to truly change, most of the time, we have to step out of those comfort zones. And that can be difficult. It can be extremely difficult. Back to the notion of eating disorders. Eating disorders become a comfort zone. We have kind of guarded ourselves against what we perceive to be negativity in the world. Negativity for an anorexic is oftentimes gaining body fat or gaining weight. So we've set up these safeguards in our life. Well, not eating, exercising, these are our anchors. These are the things that protect us. And so asking us to give those up is a very, very difficult proposition. And we have to recognize that. Right. Obviously, that's the extreme example. But I think every single diet or every single person that undertakes change has those comforts that they slowly have to move out of. And it can be very difficult.
- [35:36]
Tessa Zolli
Yeah, I know you've talked about compliance with your clients. Can you touch on that and how, how we can help our clients stay compliant?
- [35:48]
Narrator
I think compliance is the single most important thing in any, you know, coach client relationship. I think that, like, there are. When I came into the space, you know, and I really committed that I was going to build a practice, it was 2014, and I remember thinking like, man, there are people that have forgotten more about nutrition than I'll ever know. And yet I looked around and the results they created for their clients were like, very average and sometimes subpart. And I always wondered, like, what is it? Like, you're so smart, like, you know, physiology way more than me, you know, metabolism way more than me, you know, biology way more than me. Yet for some reason, whenever I work with a client, I get a better result. And I quickly distilled it down to the notion, like, my clients don't fuck up. And when they do fuck up, like, I don't allow them to label it as a fuck up. And so I think the real magic of coaching is in building protocols that meet an individual where they are. I forget. I know you said that you've gone through some of my stuff. Like, did you do our certification? Have you been through our level one?
- [36:52]
Tessa Zolli
I think I'm going to after this call. I've done nasm.
- [36:56]
Narrator
Okay. I'm sorry to hear that. But so it's a dollar right now. So it'd be like the best dollar you've ever spent in your life.
- [37:03]
Tessa Zolli
We're doing it. Yeah, absolutely. No brainer.
- [37:06]
Narrator
So we, like, in the certification, like when we used to do it before, I talked about this client that I had, she worked at Google. And no matter what she did, like, no matter what we did, we built protocol after protocol. Friday and Saturday night, she would get blackout drunk and she would go on like, food vendors. And so we would have this amazing weight loss throughout the week. And then come Monday, like, we were right back at square one. No, I did everything I knew how. I'm like, I, you know, I got mad at her, I yelled at her, I made her cry. I was like her best friend. Like, I, I tried all the things, right?
- [37:43]
Tessa Zolli
Yeah, I've been there.
- [37:44]
Narrator
And finally I just, like, I just sat with her and I was like, okay, like, can we just commit to the notion that right now you're not going to change? Like, can we just accept that this is your life? And she's like, okay. And so we built a protocol that accounted for that number of calories. And so I actually said to her, I'm like, can you estimate to me what you're drinking and what you're eating on those nights? We built that in. And the end reality is, as coaches, we're looking at seven day windows, not 24 hour windows. And so we just deducted it from the seven day window we accounted on the other days and she adjusted accordingly. And holy shit, over time, she started losing weight. Here's the crazy part. She started losing weight, then she stopped going on blackout vendors.
- [38:28]
Tessa Zolli
I was gonna ask, I bet, because part of it is like rebellion, right?
- [38:32]
Narrator
100%. And so I didn't ever, I didn't ever tell her she couldn't do it. And then as she started losing weight, some momentum yielded, you know, more behavioral momentum. And so then she started shifting other behaviors, which then obviously necessitated a caloric increase. Right. Because I didn't want her in an excessive deficit. So, yeah, I tell that story all the time. You have to be malleable. Like, you have to be able to sync up to the coach or to the client. And I think that was my genius. I think that, listen, nobody's been through more than me. I mean, I openly say, I don't know if you're a spiritual person or not. I think that anorexia was given to me by God. And I think he said, you know, I've created you as such a strong person, I've created you as such a resilient person that you'll bounce back from this and you'll use this as the vehicle to teach other people. And so the journey I went on near death has now become the single biggest journey that I've used to pay forward over the last 15, 20 years, and obviously to change tens of thousands of lives in the process. I think we're up over 100,000 lives. And as a company, we're on the pursuit to change a billion lives. But it all comes down to those core fundamentals of connection. Right. Connection. Education. So critical to me.
- [39:49]
Tessa Zolli
Yeah. I mean, because of that experience, you have a different empathy that not all coaches might have, Right?
- [39:58]
Narrator
Absolutely. Absolutely.
- [40:02]
Tessa Zolli
Yeah. And I feel the same with. With my clients. I went through, like, a terrible experience with acne. So when I meet somebody who's in that low mental place, like, I can remember exactly what that feels like.
- [40:17]
Narrator
Yep. 100. And. And I think that, you know, any of us that have been through that, we certainly know that firsthand.
- [40:24]
Tessa Zolli
I did want to make sure we touched on metabolic adaptation because it's like, one of the most interesting things I have heard you talk about in this space. And I feel like it's really counterculture to a lot of the messaging that my female audience is hearing on a daily basis. There's so many influencers right now that just really preach a calorie deficit, but it's kind of one long continuous deficit. And you're the first person I heard that challenged that. So what is metabolic adaptation, and is it something we need to think about?
- [41:04]
Narrator
It's a very real phenomenon, and it's been proven in several studies. You know, we all have different rates of adaptation. So some people have highly adaptive metabolism. Some people have, you know, some people are resistant to adaptation. I happen to have a very highly adaptive metabolism. So what. What happens is we understand that, like, if we look at a continuum, right. Like very low to very high, our bodies always want to stay right in the middle. Right. We always want to live at homeostasis. So if you today, if you went on a food bender tonight, right. What's gonna happen tomorrow? What is, like, the natural physiological reaction? What's gonna happen tomorrow? You feel full, Right. So when you feel full, what happens? I'll eat as much. If you went on a food vendor tonight and you're driving around the mall parking lot and there's no spots open, are you more willing to park really far away? More inclined to do so because your body wants to exp. Right. These are just natural things. You didn't just wake up and psychologically decide those things. Like, you didn't wake up and psychologically say, I want to be more full. Your body sent signals of being full.
- [42:17]
Tessa Zolli
Yeah.
- [42:17]
Narrator
Now let's look on the other side of the Coin. Let's say you skip dinner tonight, you skip breakfast tomorrow. What happens by lunchtime tomorrow?
- [42:26]
Tessa Zolli
Starving.
- [42:27]
Narrator
You're hangry. Yeah, right. Did you choose to be hangry or was that a natural physiological response? So when we start to observe that when we overeat, we're full, causing us to under eat, and when we under eat, we're starving, causing us to overeat, that is our body's natural adaptation mechanisms to send us back to set point. Our bodies will fight to do everything to get us to stay at set point. So what happens is the further we navigate from set point, the more our bodies perceive that we're going to stay there. And we need to begin building protective mechanisms against not being at set point, right? So let's just say on average, you're burning 2,000 calories a day. Over time, if you don't eat, what happens? You physically erode, right? At some point, you burn all of what's stored. Your body has this unique ability to turn muscle into fuel, right? It will break down all of its body fat before you know you have nothing insulating your organs and you die. So your body's natural mechanism of defense is to adapt. It slows down its metabolic rate, it slows down the rate by which you process food. And so if all of a sudden we prolong a calorie deficit or we continue calorie deficits, your body does what? It begins to adapt. And so you can actually create new set points, right? So whereby somebody, we've all heard the statement, you need to eat more to lose weight. Everybody has heard that statement. That's the worst statement on the planet. It is not factually true that you need to eat more to lose weight. You need to eat more to restore metabolic function. And with proper metabolic function, you can lose weight. Like that's the truth of the statement that people are trying to make. And so the way that I've always looked at it is like this four phase approach. Every time we lose weight and every time we achieve a result, we are inherently creating some level of physiological adaptation, whether we want to or not. It's happening when you get close to 6% body fat, 8% body fat, you know, 10 to 14 body fat as a female, all very lean areas, right? When you get down to those levels, your body is 100% adaptive, which means if we take you back up the maintenance calories, that temporary feeling to your body is a surplus. Which is why you actually put body fat back on, right? That's why you actually put body fat back on because your body's like, oh, survival, holy shit, I'm going to store some of this. I can insulate my organs again. I can function properly. Okay. And so for us, what proper diets should look like is there should be an active pursuit of goals followed by a recovery phase. If you live in a calorie deficit and you try to live at super lean body fats your whole life, you're going to have negative repercussions, most of which especially women have experienced. So there should always be a recovery phase, there should always be a metabolic improvement phase where we're actually, you can build metabolic capacity. And then I'm a very big believer in the pre diet phase because I think dietary, like, I think diets are equal parts mental as they are physical. And I think that you should get your clients ready for like the mental rigors ahead as well. And so this is really a four phase model that I built to offset what we know to be adaptations that will inevitably happen.
- [45:54]
Tessa Zolli
And you've talked about kind of losing the ability to lose fat for somebody who's never heard that, and they just think they can do diet after diet. Why is that?
- [46:06]
Narrator
So it's really interesting. Um, it's. I will openly say that when I say you've lost the ability to burn body fat, that is somewhat of a marketing term. But what I'm trying to get is like at, at set point, right, the longer you diet, the more you adapt, it becomes very difficult to lose weight. So if, if your set point is 2000 calories, we know by definition if you consume 1500 calories a day, 500 calorie deficit for 7 days, you should lose 1 pound. That's what laws of thermodynamics or physiology states. If you've been dieting for quite some time and that adaptation begins to set in around that 1500 calorie mark, 1500 calories is no longer perceived as a deficit to your body. And so you're not going to lose weight at 1500. Well, you can eat a thousand. Well, the longer and the deeper that you perpetuate the deficit, the faster the rate and the higher the rate of adaptation. So you still might not lose weight. So now what are we going to eat? 800, 700, 600 calories? Well, now we're starting to get towards the survival mechanisms. And so I don't want to say you've lost the ability to lose weight. I genuinely believe every ability on the, every person has the ability to lose weight. But I do think that now we're starting to see things discussed like weight loss resistance, obviously metabolic adaptation. You know, we're starting to see obviously hormonal ramification happen. And really these are the things that we have to be addressing because without proper hormonal profile, without proper metabolic profiles, we're not going to see the ability to make the change as rapidly, consistently or predictably as we desire.
- [47:41]
Tessa Zolli
And what do you think are some of the most damaging things we can be doing to our hormones?
- [47:51]
Narrator
Oh my goodness. This is a deep rabbit hole. And I'm going to openly say I'm not the hormonal expert. Even in nci, we have a hormone course, we have a male hormone course, female hormone course, and we have a level two where it's deep in the blood work. I do not teach any of those, so this is not my area of expertise. That being said, I think that what I always distill it down to, and this is gonna be a very general answer for what I think is a specific question. So I'll apologize in, you know, I think that most people have an abundance of stress with, without facilitating the ability to adapt. And so one of the worst hormonal environments I ever created for myself was when I was trying to compete in CrossFit. And so I was training twice a day and I was probably eating 2,000 calories a day. And like imagine two CrossFit workouts per day. Like, my morning workout was like, go in, do some gymnastics skills and do 15 repeats of 500 meter rows, getting progressively faster with only 90 seconds, right? Like it was intense. Then I would go home, I would rest, I'd go back to the gym and I would do like some heavy lifting and I would do a metcon. And that's a lot of stress. Like, physiologically, the reason that we train is we intentionally impose a stressor to just to create or to facilitate a desired adaptation. Like, that's why we train. And so what happens is I'm now imposing more stressors. Well, now my body's given the response, I'm not sleeping well, I wasn't eating enough, wasn't taking care of the inflammation in my body. Well, now it's like stress, stress, stress, stress, stress. My body's no longer creating the ability to adapt. Well, what does it do? Like there's this whole hormonal cascade that starts in the HPA axis, right? It cascades, it affects my cortisol levels, obviously. Now I've got an inverse cortisol curve to where I'm not producing cortisol throughout the day. I'm only Producing it at night. So I'm exhausted all day, I can't sleep at night. And it's only perpetuating, excuse me, like the current cycle.
- [50:03]
Tessa Zolli
I feel like a lot of people don't think of workouts as stress on the body because they think of it as their stress relief.
- [50:11]
Narrator
Yeah.
- [50:11]
Tessa Zolli
So they kind of underestimate the recovery and the sleep and the nutrition.
- [50:16]
Narrator
It's fascinating. So when I first got into CrossFit, I always tell the story. The first year that I became the Nutrition guy in CrossFit, everybody hated me and everything I said was counterculture. And then the second year, everybody loved me because I had like eight of the top 10 athletes in the world. And so I went in there and I just said, like, we're stressing our bodies too much and we're not facilitating the adaptations that we desire. And a lot of times I would make people pull back on their overall volume. Well, I took that to mainstream and I said, well, a lot of people that can't lose weight with CrossFit is because they're constantly stressing their bodies, their bodies can't adapt. And so what we'd see is we'd see these puffy bodies. We see extremely inflamed. We'd see an abundance of stress. Obviously, to lose weight you need to be in a calorie deficit. Right. So here's the crazy part. We've got this high intensity maximal stress stimulus and we're trying to intentionally under recover and not facilitate adaptation to stress. So we've got max stress, minimal recovery. Max stress, minimal recovery. Like what do you think that results in? Long term, it results in problems. It doesn't result in optimal body composition. And, and so when I would go into these CrossFit gyms, I'm like, you need to stop doing so much damn CrossFit. I feel like you need to be doing two to three days of CrossFit max, and then you need to be going for like a 60 minute walk on the other days. And they're like, you're crazy. I could never lose weight like that. The people that trusted me, they got shredded, that didn't trust me, they got up.
- [51:43]
Tessa Zolli
I'm so glad that is becoming more common knowledge. Just like acknowledging recovery days and rest for growth. Because I feel like for the longest time it was just like, you know, no days off type of mentality.
- [51:58]
Narrator
Yeah, it's hustle. Yeah, that's never gonna work.
- [52:01]
Tessa Zolli
Yeah. More is not always more. Did you notice your, your female clients were more sensitive and kind of needed more recovery? Than the guys.
- [52:12]
Narrator
Yeah. So it's interesting, I had this conversation with, with somebody very early on. Anecdotally I noticed that females had much higher, they were, have much higher rates of adaptive, of adaptation than males. They are also less resilient. Right. And, and less resilient in terms of metabolism. And so you could take a male that's been metabolically adapted for eight to nine months and the rebound, like going back to maintenance, it won't be great, but it won't be terrible. You take a woman that's been metabolically adapted for eight to nine months and we take her back to maintenance calories, she could put on 20, 30 pounds. And, and I've witnessed it and, and it might take two years to get the body functioning normally, whereas it might take a male two months. And, and so this comes down obviously the sex hormones, right? The more testosterone you have, right, the, the more resilient you can be. And so women just don't have the hormone profile to begin with. And, and so yeah, like I, I think it's extremely difficult for women here and I think that it's really seen in the physique industry. I don't know how much of the physique industry paid attention to, but you look at like bikini competitors or former figure competitors, they struggle to maintain their body when they get out of competing. And it's because they lived in such massive deficits for so long, they were forced to look a certain way. They never had, you know, be at the competition stage. The sponsors or whatever, they always had to have that. They never had an off season so they never gave their chance to recover. So now they've got four, five, six years of no recovery. How long do you recover? Probably four or five, six years.
- [53:47]
Tessa Zolli
I developed an autoimmune condition really young, like in high school. And I relate, I, I wish I knew this now because I was in sports year round as a kid, like cross country to soccer, basketball, track, like no, no recovery ever. And then you add like AP classes, like high stress load, all that stuff on a kid and doesn't work out.
- [54:13]
Narrator
It doesn't work out well at all.
- [54:15]
Tessa Zolli
No. I actually love watching like prep videos and bodybuilding. I'm fascinated by it, but I would never do it for that reason. I mean, also probably don't have the discipline, but I love watching it as a sport, but I know it just wouldn't be sustainable for me.
- [54:29]
Narrator
So funny. I mean when I prepped for my one bodybuilding show and I was in my twenties, all I did was watch People eat and train. Like, that was. I'm pretty sure, again, I was living at home. My parents were like, what are you doing? You're watching really, really over, you know, jacked men lift weights. Like, how is this in any way entertaining? But, yeah, like, it. It becomes an obsession, and I don't think a very healthy one.
- [54:51]
Tessa Zolli
No, no. So the last question I do just want to ask is, is for somebody who wants to undertake, you know, a fitness and nutrition journey, do you have any advice for where they should start to have a sustainable and healthy relationship with it?
- [55:10]
Narrator
There's so many. I think that the best piece of advice I can give is, like, surround yourself with the right people. I think that if it feels like you're making a massive overhaul right away, it's probably not the right thing. I don't think anybody ever got to anywhere that they were going. And here's the punchline is they didn't sustain it if it was a massive overhaul. And so anybody can create any change in the body. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to starve somebody for 10 weeks or 12 weeks and get them lean. It takes a really good coach, the ability to work with somebody over a period of time, not only create the change, but sustain the change. And so at nci, what I used to tell all the coaches is, I said, you know, I'm not going to judge your ability to coach an individual on what you create in the next six months. I want to see your clients six years from today, and I want to see have they still maintained the results that you worked on, because if they did, it means that you really fundamentally taught them principles and a lifestyle. And if they didn't, then you taught them band aids and tactics. And as coaches, we're not here to provide band aids and tactics. We're here to provide real life changes, change. And so I think that that's probably my biggest piece of advice. It shouldn't feel excessive. It shouldn't feel like a massive overhaul. It should feel, you know, it should feel definitely like change, but it shouldn't feel overly intrusive.
- [56:40]
Tessa Zolli
Amazing. That's something I think about a lot too. You know, in my everyday conversations with clients. I want it. I want them to look back on the experience and. And, you know, not have this hateful relationship with food or their skin or their body. So.
- [56:59]
Narrator
Absolutely. Nor should they.
- [57:01]
Tessa Zolli
No, no. Well, Jason, thank you so, so much. I know your time is super valuable. I know you have a young daughter. You just got engaged, so you have a lot going on. Congratulations. But I'm just so thankful to have you here and to be able to talk to you as a dream come true. So thank you so much.
- [57:20]
Narrator
Absolutely. It's truly my pleasure. Thank you for having me on, and I look forward to watching all of your continued success.
- [57:27]
Tessa Zolli
Thanks, guys, for listening. I will catch you in the next episode.