A Refreshing Approach To Nutrition - EC Synkowski

Hey everybody, welcome to the Future of Fitness, where we talk with entrepreneurs, researchers, and practitioners in fitness, wellness, and the health sciences. I'd like to give a big thanks to our sponsors, Level 5 Mentors, helping entrepreneurs achieve the highest levels of freedom in time, money, relationships, health, and purpose. Also, Certified Course Creation, helping entrepreneurs create accredited online certifications that are not only lucrative but highly scalable. Go to level5mentors.com or certifiedcoursecreation.com and learn more. I am your host, Eric Malzone. And once again, welcome to the future of fitness. Boom. We're live. EC Sinkowski, my friend, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me on.

Yeah, I'm excited to have you. So where do we start? I I know, you know, first of all, you're the founder of Optimize Me Nutrition. You are extremely knowledgeable on nutrition and yet someone who constantly seeks to simplify things, which I I can't wait to get into. Um, you know, I've uh I think the first time I met you when I was taking my CrossFit level two, somewhere in Southern California, and uh very knowledgeable, amazing control of the group in the room. And yeah, I just I you left an impression. And I was so glad when we reconnected over you know LinkedIn uh months ago. And now, you know, we have you as part of the level five family, which we're very proud of. It's just really great to get you on the show. I think it's long overdue, and you have so much knowledge to share with the fitness and health industry. So thank you for taking the time to come on. It's it's really good to have you here.

Definitely. I'm excited to reconnect as well and and be on.

Yeah. So, EC, you do a lot of things, you've done a lot of things within the fitness and health industry. Maybe it gave us some background into your story within entrepreneurship and fitness and health. How did you how did you get to where you are now?

Yeah, I mean, I think I can't really talk too much about the entrepreneurship part without mentioning kind of where I started um professionally in fitness and health. And ultimately I didn't start professionally in fitness and health. I started in environmental engineering with doing some CrossFit seminars on the side. That was like circa 2006. So working the CrossFit seminar gig, training the trainers wasn't really a full-time proposition. Um so I worked environmental consulting for years, CrossFit on the side. And then as you know, CrossFit grew quite rapidly through that 2010 era. And that's when I was brought on full-time to work for CrossFit. And so I continued the weekend training gig, meeting people like yourself, but then also behind the scenes designing CrossFit's programs, courses, and implementing that and scaling that, and what did that look like? So a lot of years in the fitness and health space because I worked for them for over 10 years, but it was, I don't know, 2016. I um needed to do some continuing education for CrossFit. And I actually just started a second master's degree to qualify for that because why not? Um, I actually started not with necessarily the intent to finish it, but just because I was interested in it. But of course, uh it was very interesting, and that's what led me to resigning from CrossFit as I finished up my degree in nutrition and functional medicine. And that's what finally took me to uh starting my own company.

Yeah. So, you know, it's interesting. I just had Jason Ackerman on the show as well, um, which I think he was part of the you you should you two know each other, obviously, right? Yeah.

Oh yeah.

What do you think? I mean, now we don't have to talk about CrossFit a whole lot, but where where do you see the changes in in you know today's recording being September 1st, 2020? How do you see the crossover world changing? I love asking this question.

Yeah, that's an interesting one. I don't think I've thought about it too much past, I think, what their short-term needs are. I I hope with the change in the CEO and the structure that, you know, some of their, I guess, kind of strength comes back. I think the community's kind of been a little bit lost for direction with the games kind of changing and stuff. And I I love that CrossFit can be scalable for everybody, but I do think the games was this kind of demonstration of community and ultimate kind of pinnacle of the sport, you know, and to get people motivated and inspired. So I think short term, that can just be a big win for the new CEO, but also for the community. You know, they're under a lot of stress, obviously, with COVID and shutdowns, and to have something that's so motivated motivating and so community building. I um I think it can be a really great short-term win if they can pull it off. Yeah.

Awesome. I love the optimism. I I hope so too. Um so tell me, you know, now what are what are the qualities of what you do? I mean, Optimize Mean Nutrition, you do a lot of stuff, you do a lot of education. Um, you work with gym owners, you've even been on the TEDx stage, you got a podcast called the Consistency Project, you have the 800 Gram Challenge, you have all these things. Tell us about everything that you do within within your business and and what that looks like.

Yeah, I'm still trying to figure that one out. But I think it's aren't we all? Yeah, exactly. It's it's though ultimately with just wanting to get more people to eat better in a very basic, simplified way. And it's so it's coming up with different resources to allow people to do that, whether or not that's direct-to-consumer or business to business or just education via podcasts. You know, if if somebody is motivated to make a change, I want to work with them. And that's about kind of full stop end of my you know, dream customer or whatever. It's like, hey, we've got so many issues out there because of chronic disease, and our and our healthcare system is just facing the strain of that. If somebody is ready to make a change, I want to work with them. And so it's coming up with different resources that can can help people do that.

And that's the trick. How do you write, how do you motivate people to want to change? And it's uh there's so many reasons why people do come to that critical point and want to change, and and nutrition just seems, you know, the thing that's fascinating to me, and and I've had so many people on the show, we talk about it, is nutrition, and you and I have talked about this many times. If if someone walks into your facility or somebody comes to you for your service, and they are, they do want change, right? And this is from a purely a fitness professional standpoint, and they say, you know, hey, I have these goals, I want to feel better, I want to look better, I want to perform better, whatever it is. We we always start with fitness, but very few times are we starting with the thing that can almost guarantee results, which is nutrition. Right. Why, why is that? Why do you think the industry happened to end that way?

Yeah, I mean, I think part of it is because it's easier to work on fitness. When you think about the relative proportion of your life, you know, it's one hour a day, potentially five days a week, you know, or something on that scale. Eating, well, shoot, we already triple that each day, you know. Um, and then just various things that make that hard, logistics of life, holidays, socials, social events, whatever it is. And so it's just such a bigger um part of your life that changing it across the board can be harder for sure. Um, and you can't have somebody with you all the time for all of those decisions. I think that's where it's very much unlike personal training or group training in that you can outsource group training forever. You can keep showing up to a gym for an hour and a day. You cannot keep asking for help for every single meal that you eat for the rest of your life unless you have enough funds to have a personal chef. So I think there's some big differences in terms of scale and and the ultimate time investment or part of the part of your time in your day, you know?

Yeah, yeah, that's a really interesting outlook on it. When you get a motivated person or population and people, what is what is your process? What do you what do you have them how how do you start with them?

Yeah. Typically it's with the 800 gram challenge, and briefly that's just eat 800 grams by weight of fruits and vegetables each day, and then they continue to eat whatever else they want. And it's whatever fruits and veggies they want. There's no, you know, it has to be these 17 different things. But my first step is that for a few different reasons, but one of which is I need them to be able to do it. And this is where that coaching process comes into play. And it's the same thing if you were to have that athlete come in and they can't do a muscle up. You know, you don't just send them to the high rings and tell them to keep kipping, right? Like, you know, if they don't have the muscle up, you're gonna start with some sort of scaled variation of a pull-up. And so it's the same sort of idea with nutrition. I need them to be able to do it. And so adding fruits to the veget vegetables to the diet without telling them it needs to all be, you know, kale or broccoli is something that most people can do. Now, depending how far they are along their nutrition journey or maybe not even start it, I might even have to scale that. Like if somebody's coming from a truly standard American diet, it might be the 200 gram challenge and that we're gonna work our way up. But the initial step has to be something that they can do. And it and definitely when you focus on adding versus eliminating, you're gonna you're gonna get a better success rate.

Yeah, that's a critical piece of psychology right there, right? Is you want to add to the plate, not take away. Because as soon as people think about nutrition, they think, well, it it's always the whatabouts, right? My favorite question. Well, what about alcohol? What about peanut butter? What about this, right? And we get so stuck in, you know, what what do I have to give up? And it's it then it seems like, well, this is painful, this is something that I don't need in my life right now. I can't be giving this up. I love it so much. But if you start thinking about adding, is it it's a different mindset, right? I mean, it's you you've done the work. What do you think about that component of it?

Yeah, I mean, when I came up with the 800 gram challenge, I I knew that it wasn't going to be this restrictive focus diet, but I don't think I totally thought through all of the psychological aspects of it. And and it was more so the feedback that I got from people that were like, wow, this is such a refreshing approach to dieting. Wow, you know, this makes this is actually fun. You know, heaven forbid somebody described nutrition as fun. Um and so that was that's when it became really more clear to me. I mean, I certainly liked the idea from a coaching standpoint of not restricting and not giving people all these rules, but it was really validated by the people who tr who tried it and let me know that that was one of the best aspects of it, you know, besides weight loss or health improvements.

So you've you've run a lot of people through this. I mean, I know at least 700 gyms, right? And all their members. Um, how many what's what's some of the numbers you you've got running through this now?

Yeah, I mean, I would probably put it, you know, over 10,000, but I I don't totally know. It's hard to know, you know, with Instagram and stuff like that. People will hashtag, I think we're at like 10,000 hashtags, but there's different spellings out there and stuff. So it's really hard to know um and who's following and doing it without necessarily telling you that they're doing it. But yeah, kind of just some basis off the the gym numbers and populations like that and Instagram. That's that's kind of my guess.

Yeah, yeah, that's a lot of impact, you see. Do you ever stop and think about that? I mean, there's gonna be a lot more, but I mean 10,000 lives. It's kind of crazy.

Yeah, it's awesome. I mean, I would love to know that that would have a small impact on that number. That's awesome. So, and I just want it to keep keep going because I just sort of, you know, trying to think about our health system and and that just is a massive stress. I feel like we're just we have an answer and we're not doing it. And so I just want that number to keep growing.

Yeah. Yeah, our health system, that's a whole nother conversation. Yeah, it's a whole nother podcast. I mean, it does, you know, if if there is, if there's ever going to be an impetus for change or a catalyst within how people treat their health, you would hope that corona, you know, COVID-19 is is is part of it, right? I mean, if they're of the pain, the suffering from both the economic and personal and health standpoint of everything that this virus is doing, you would hope that it's gonna change some things permanently for the better. You know, I I guess the the elephant in the room when it comes to nutrition is that humans have been around for hundreds of millions of years. Yet to this day, no one can seem to agree upon what is the optimal nutritional program for humans. And there's so much variation. I mean, hey, I'm I've I've tried it all. I've done keto, I've done paleo, I've done juice fasting. Um, my wife and I are now shifting, have shifted to a mostly plant-based diet, which I love, by the way. And it seems to be working for us currently. But I've tried it all, man. Like there's so much, right? Why? Why is nutrition so confusing? Why do we make it so complicated?

Yeah. Yeah, I actually think it's these diets that you've described are actually less different than people think. I think that's some of the confusion is that we get lost in this, in the details. We get lost in, oh my gosh, this diet's so different because now I'm eating salmon instead of chicken. Or now I'm not eating tomatoes, but I'm eating more strawberries. These are very minor details. What all of those diets have in common is that we're eating not that much of processed foods. We're not eating a lot of the chips, we're not eating a lot of the popcorn, the pizza, the ice cream, you name it. And so that is why all of those diets can work for people. And what is optimal? Gosh, you know, there's going to be other factors besides diet that makes things optimal. In fact, I did a post the other day about blue zones and the people that routinely live to over 100. And six of their nine habits have nothing to do with nutrition. They're about purpose in life and family and community. And so there are other influences besides nutrition and determining a kind of optimal health and lifespan. And so I think the body is very resilient to small shifts of choices between salmon and chicken and whether or not you have slightly more fat to slightly low carbs. So long as we're all in the genre of eating at the appropriate caloric load for our needs, and it's coming mostly from whole foods. And once you're in that realm, we can slice and dice to paleo and keto and all of these different kinds of rifts onto that, and we're going to get some great outcomes.

Yeah. And that's that's that's the key, is I think we agree on more than than we think. And when you look at all the dogmatic nutrition out there, I've never seen anything quite as dogmatic as the world of nutrition. And I was I was recently re-listening to a podcast with my wife when we were on a road trip. It was Joe Rogan, and he had the guy, um, the guy who came up with that, the game changers, right? The producer of that show versus you know, someone else. I can't remember his name, Chris. I think maybe Kessler.

Oh, Cressler, yeah, yeah.

You know, and it was really interesting because so many times it came back and Kessler would be like, What are we arguing about again? Right. Like, I think we're on the same page here. Are we on the same page? Yet the you know, the other guy was so he wanted to argue. Right. And that that happened so much. Like I was even pointing out to my wife, I'm like, you know, paleo and what we're doing now, a plant-based, really is not that different. It's very, very similar. You know, it's just a little shift in how you get your protein. Why is there so much passion behind this?

Well, it certainly helps with marketing. Um, but I think the other thing there is discussions about the physiology. That is where people kind of have these discussions. I mean, there's very big debates about the role of insulin and fat gain, right? And there's the two camps that insulin's driving it, and then it's calories driving it. I sometimes think we also get a little bit lost there too. Like that's interesting, and we need the scientists to fight it out. And great, someday somebody will actually figure out all the mechanisms for this stuff. But we already know what works. And so sometimes I think a lot of these debates are about kind of what's happening under the hood when really, while that's interesting, what we know to do in life, we already have that proven time and time again. Like I said, you have to eat at the appropriate caloric load and make sure most of it's from whole unprocessed foods. Um, and so that's I think again where we get a little too complicated is people want to know exactly what insulin's doing or exactly what, you know, how that affects your thyroid hormone production. But at the end of the day, it's gonna come back to you have to do the same things in the kitchen, you know?

Yeah. Well, I I look at it too. It's like if you look at both sides of the spectrum, it's like this 3% on either side, right? 3% are very sick with a something diagnosable that really needs specialized nutrition. And then you get the 3% on the other end, which are super high performing athletes who are trying to just really push to the the peak of performance, right? Really optimizing every little ounce of you know nutrition on their plate. But the 90, what does that leave? 94% in the middle, it's not that complicated.

Totally, totally. Yeah. I mean, and that's really my voice in the space is actually telling people they don't need all these bells and whistles and that they aren't that unique and that their, you know, their individual diet plans that they're buying from all these coaches are going to tell them to eat mostly whole unprocessed foods. You know, um, and and that's it. It's it's sort of like we see it time and time again shake out that way. And unfortunately, um, yeah, that's just their layer of confusion that's out there in the marketing.

Yeah. Well, there's no money in that.

Yeah, it was funny. I mean, one of the things when I started out kind of with my own company, it's like, what do I sell? I just tell people to eat fruits and vegetables. I was like, well, that's a farmer, you know. I was like, I don't have anything to sell. I mean, I it's kind of funny coming out of CrossFit where I worked on educational programs and it took me probably close to two years to be like, oh, I sell education, you know. Um, but yeah, I mean it there isn't because when you sell something like, oh, you eat mostly whole on processed foods, there's nothing to trademark, there's no brands to make, there's no 27-set step diet plan that you have to outline, it becomes kind of this remarkably simple thing. So yeah, you're kind of limited in what you can sell with from it.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's it's uh it's interesting. Like when I, you know, James Fitzgerald, right? Oh yeah. When I hired him as a coach back in like 2014, and I remember him saying, My goal, Eric, is in one to two years, is that you don't need me anymore. It's like, well, that's a shitty business model, right? Like, but it's honest and you know, it's it's necessary. Like we we don't need all these supplements, we don't, and that's that's the challenge is truly people are truly looking to make an impact, you know, where are they where is the dollar? And you know, unfortunately, we need both things. And, you know, I think how do you make something like that sticky? I know it's you know, you you do such a good job of being honest and forthright and helping people be like over, you know, simplify this thing that the challenge is like, well, how do you keep people with you for one to three to four to five years, right? Like how do you keep that tribe going? Yeah. Uh is is there anybody out there beside yourself who's who do you emulate who you think is doing it really well?

I do, you know, I haven't checked in on his community lately, besides the fact that I know that he sold um his company and he's crushing it. But um, I've always liked John Barardi's approach to nutrition. I mean, I took his precision nutrition course, gosh, I don't know, 2010 or 2011. But I think especially in his earlier days, and maybe it was just because social media wasn't as big then, um, but I think same sort of thing that he might have gotten overlooked by some people because he wasn't so zealous, you know, about one point. He's very much like, hey, you're gonna have to eat whole foods in the right quantities, right? And so I've always appreciated that about him and to see him be wildly successful, it is it is certainly motivating.

And how did he do it? I mean, if you look at his story, like when did he start?

You know, I don't know. I have his book that I just started, but um, I think it was at least 20 years ago in the sense of working with clients when he was going under when he was doing his PhD. And then how long he had precision nutrition and building that platform. I think that was a full 10 years plus-ish, if I have it right. Yeah. But he didn't start, he started out with ebooks, you know, and again, I'm kind of in the early part of the book, but he started out with ebooks and but grew it such that you know he was coaching coaches and putting people through kind of a certification program for health coaches. Yeah.

Yeah, that seems to be a pretty um pretty common model, right? I know uh Matt Wallrath at Beyond Macros, you know, very similar. You know, it's it's it's funny to me that you know I've I have good friends who are very successful digital marketers, and um, people like Gary Vee will admit that marketers ruin everything.

Right.

They ruin everything. Like I look at the fitness industry and I look at, you know, even it happen it's been around for a long time, but even I can remember kind of almost to the the year when it happened to the CrossFit industry of like we started running these challenges, these transformation challenges, right? And how this started putting these these really counterproductive thoughts and biases into our potential clients' heads, like, hey, I can change your life in six weeks. Um, meanwhile, we knew, and this, and this is just totally from Eric's perspective, and I think I speak for a lot of people who are in the same situations. Like, I knew it wasn't, I I could get them in the door with that, but then I had to re-educate them on the process. But it seems so unnecessary. But then when you talk honestly, right, like, hey, um, you know, I can help you change your habits over time so that you're, you know, maybe not in the next six weeks, but in the next one to two years your life, you hit your goals and then you could sustain them for a long term. That's not marketable.

No.

But it's true.

Yeah.

Right? It's honest. And and marketing really seems to come in and screw everything up because then you got to keep up with the Joneses, right? If I didn't start doing these nutrition challenges, then a lot of the people who could be coming in my door who I could be helping authentically and genuinely are going next door. So what do you right? It's it's the paradox.

Yeah. And I mean, I think maybe I've found some of my niche in the people that have been through six other things, right? Like some of the people who have taken my master class, you know, they've taken every course out there already. And it's then when they're sick of that kind of, I keep describing it as like a washing machine cycle, they're still in the washing machine going round and round. You know, it's it's when they've done that enough is when they're ready, right? And I also don't want to put down some of those iterations and challenges. Like in the sense of I do think nutrition is an iterative process because our just because of our food environment makes it so tough. Our habits we have to change, it is a long process. That even if you do some extreme 30 day thing, you know, the no Sugars and that eliminates all the things. I still think you end up better than where you started, at least from a knowledge standpoint, right? Maybe you don't retain any of the weight loss, but you at least know that you can do it or have done it or have changed something, right? You can go back to it. So some of that stuff doesn't frustrate me as much because I because I also know that you know it is going to take a while. And so even if they do something that's not perfectly optimal, that, you know, it's still going to make probably some good change somewhere, you know?

Yeah. Oh, totally. I mean, I look back when I did some of our um paleo challenges uh across the Pacific Coast. That, you know, my wife for is a perfect example. She used to drink a Coca-Cola every day. Right. And uh she didn't after the first challenge, she she just gave up Coca-Cola. She was like, and imagine the impact of one Coca-Cola every day. Totally five to six days a week for the rest of your life, and that's now gone. That's just one tiny little habit that changed that has a huge impact. And I think you're right. I I think it's um there is a ton of good that can come through these things. And it's always been, you know, uh, I think an argument or a discussion rather within the fitness and health industry is you know, what is the effect of challenges? And it's really in how you communicate during the challenge. I think that's the biggest thing, right?

Yeah. And I was just gonna say too, I do, you know, 800 gram challenge or whatever. I I do would love that if challenges were not so dogmatic in their approach to nutrition, but just being end result driven, it's like even if somebody does, you know, the no sugar thing, it's like that's still an okay thing to do. Um, but yeah, I think they would be stronger overall and be more sustainable overall if they did it weren't so extreme for you know the most part.

Yeah. Well, I mean, you look at uh this is this is I I love what's going on right now. So vegan is now plant-based, right? Which makes sense because you know, and this is all going for I used to see ton of meat. Like when I was training in CrossFit, it was like, well, I gotta shoot for 150 to 200 grams of protein. And as you know, we used to say, like, no, it used to have it has to have used to have uh, you know, face and a soul, right? For me to to be acceptable protein. But just by the sh like when I think of vegan, right, and whatever people want to shoot me hate mail after I say this, I think about what uh you know, the jihadist of nutrition, right? Right? Like they they want to be up in your face about it. You're always gonna be wrong until you adopt their pure methodology or ideology, right? Sure. Now I hear like a shift to plant-based and starting to thinking, like, oh, so it's just you just base your nutrition on plants, and then you can maybe have freedom to eat, you know, proteins of of whatever you want. And it's it's a really interesting psychological shift. Nothing has really changed, right? But a tagline.

Yeah. Explain that. Yeah, I mean, I think too that is also where some confusion comes, is that we can't describe a diet that needs, you know, a certain caloric load with a certain macronutrient distribution, with a proper representation of over 28, you know, micronutrients and fiber amounts and all these other things. We can't describe that accurately with one word. And so this is where we have some confusion is people will say paleo or people will say vegan, but it doesn't necessarily mean that we really know all of those variables I just mentioned. You know, your caloric intake can vary quite dramatically on a paleo diet. Your, you know, micronutrient intake can vary quite dramatically on a vegan diet because if you do it all, let's say, um, not on plant-based, but you do it all on vegan candy, right? So some of these one-word descriptors, of course, they're great for conversation because every time I talk about my nutrition, I'm not going to give you a nutrition label and talk about it. But they also come with some confusion because there's no way that a single word can, you know, define all of the variables that we need in our diet. Um, but yeah, I do see the plant-based movement as, I don't know, an improvement on vegan, partially because I don't think that only plant-based foods is necessary for optimal health. And I also think what I mentioned too, where there's like vegan candy and vegan cookies, that that type of label doesn't really describe the types of food you're eating quite as accurately as something that's plant-based, which then typically means actually fruits and vegetables.

Right, right. Yeah, it's just it's a better iteration of it. And I like it. You know, I really do. So protein sources. You know, now I want to get a little granular because it's and this is totally selfish. But you know, you look at like every protein source has a downside, right? I mean, you have we're talking about my wife and I were talking about, well, let's let's eat more fish. Well, no, no, we have to worry about mercury content, right? You know, with most poultry and and beef and pork, you're gonna have factory farming unless you can really afford, you know, great sources of it. You know, there's just so much but where where do you where do you land with protein taking way religious beliefs, right? Where where do you think is the best quality protein that people can get?

I thought you were gonna say, what is my opinion on protein? Best quality. Um, I still definitely go for animal sources because of you get more protein per calorie than let's say bean or tofu. And so ultimately on plant-based sources, people end up getting too many carbs and fat to reach protein levels that also are helpful for either weight loss or strength gains, et cetera. But once we're within the meat genre, you know, I'm actually not that picky. Um I was listening to a really interesting podcast with an environmentalist who was talking about kind of different meat sources. And I was surprised with some of the data that he was saying. And I don't want to pretend that I'm an environmental expert by any stretch of the imagination, but he was actually presenting a case for more of like condensed factory farms for animals because it actually saves the land overall. And so looking at food production as a way that we have to maximize what we get. And then I also am aware of like Joel Soliton, who, you know, has this beautiful farm where it's all perfectly rotated and we get plenty of meat production, all that stuff. So I don't know. I don't know that we have the best knowledge yet on exactly what are all the environmental impacts and also how to then feed our growing population, right? I think it's a really difficult challenge. So I don't try to tell people where to get their meat in terms of quality. I, you know, if they want to do the pasture-based, okay. If they want to do it, just whatever chickens at their supermarket, okay. You know, I think I think there's wins there too, also from the standpoint of that's better than them eating, let's say, popcorn and chips, which I can argue has an impact on sustainability by being better healthy people overall, right? And not having as much stress on the medical system. So though I think some of these questions are hard to kind of piece out individually and just say, oh yes, oh only buy pastured beef, if that makes sense at all.

Yeah, makes total sense. I mean, it's uh I was actually a couple of weeks or last weekend, we were out in Hamilton, Montana, and I was visiting uh ABC Acres, which is run by Tim Southwell of who also has yonder.com, which is a whole other business that we'll talk about today. But, you know, seeing how he's developed a permaculture farm, ton of work, right? Also 80 acres. Right. So you're right. I mean, that ultimately I think, and not to get too much in the weeds here, is that we we keep talking about all these issues with how do we the big problem is how do we feed almost 8 billion people sustainably. That's the one.

And I also think about it from the standpoint of, you know, if we have, I think the estimates are like gonna be 30 million diabetics by 2050. Yeah, it's 10% of the population in the US potentially by 2050. Think about the environmental damage because of all of the increase in hospitalization buildings and diabetic supplies and things like that, where we have to do more production for health and chronic diseases that we wouldn't have to do if people weren't sick. So sometimes it's like, well, maybe pastured beef is better, in quotes, but if people are ultimately staying slimmer overall and not demanding as much from the health system, are we saving something environmentally there? And so that's where I think these questions are a little bit tough to tease out and just say, always buy this thing. It's like if you're a healthier person, I think in some ways you're saving an environmental cost elsewhere.

How dare you? It is, and that's I love it because this is the kind of conversation that could take hours to suss out, if not days, if not weeks, you know, months of research. Like, okay, well, what really is the problem? It's so easy for us to jump to the most obvious conclusion, right? When it's usually not that one. And that's uh I see everything in trends, right? Paleo is a huge trend, plant-based is coming as a huge trend now, and you're starting to see, you know, movies like the Game Changers, and and then you got, you know, Matt Frazier, the CrossFit Games Champion, started his No Meat Athlete podcast. And you're starting to see all these celebrities come out, say that they're plant-based. I just have to wonder like a year from now, are they still going to be touting this two years from now, or is it just a trend because it's you know it's cool because someone said this is the best way to do it, but no one actually looked at the research. Like that's a huge problem in nutrition, right?

Yeah, yeah. But then it comes back to this point of the body is remarkably resilient. And I think people actually don't appreciate that much. And then I can go with this in a couple different ways. But like from a diet standpoint, again, if we're at an appropriate caloric load, I mean, already right there we have a ton of wins. We already have a ton of wins if we're not eating too much. And then if we want to slant that towards more meat or more plant-based, I mean, I think the body is resilient enough that it's gonna handle that quite well. And I also think that most people don't live very well in extremes. So let's say that they are keto this year. I just don't see many people sticking with that for this long period of their life where it's actually gonna really be the factor that drives their long-term health over, let's say, keeping up with exercise, sleeping, not eating too much overall, not smoking, you know? So I sometimes think these cycles, it's like it, I don't want to say it doesn't matter, but it's just a lot of hullabaloo when it's like we don't need to take these like extreme slants on anything. We just have to have a appropriate cool workload with mostly whole foods, and the body will do very, very well. And we can keep kind of making extreme examples of that, but you know, it doesn't necessarily negative hurt negatively hurt us, nor does it positively hurt us or help us.

Yeah. It's really interesting too. I reflect on uh, you know, back in 2016, 17, I had some gut issues, right? And you know, got a bunch of the testing done, which is not cheap, right? Found out I have a candida overgrowth. And so then I was laid out some options of some very strict diets, and I chose keto so I would just starve it of sugar, right? And you know, did it make me healthier? No, no, it didn't. What made me healthier eventually, I removed a huge stressor in my life. Yep. And then within like 30 days, I was noticeably better within six months, you know. But that process, like healing your gut, too, that's a whole that takes a long time to do it properly. I mean, you can feel relief immediately when you remove stressors, but um that that's the thing is like we always want to look at nutrition because it seems like it's within our control when stress and like you talked about the blue zones. I mean, there's so many more things that go to it. And if we just build our body up to be resilient, then we can do a lot, we have a lot more freedom.

Yeah. Yeah, the life stress and um some of those more psychosocial factors, I think, are as important as nutrition. And that was sort of one of my points with the blue zones. It's like when you start asking questions about like which protein powder is best, it's just like laughable when six out of the nine factors that these people use to reach over a hundred have nothing to do with nutrition, right? And so this is like, hey, we just have some really big picture concepts that we gotta do. And as long as you stay within those rails, we're gonna be fine, you know? Um, and to take that time and that I think that's the other thing that I really want with nutrition is like take all that obsessive time about nutrition, about like, oh my gosh, does this meat have any additive in it? Or I don't know, if I was taking my BCAAs at the right time pre- and post-work. Take all of that time and stress about nutrition and put it elsewhere. Go to bed, you know, or take up a sport or play a game or something. It's just to me, it's like a lot of time spinning our wheels. Um, when I think that time can be really productively used elsewhere.

You uh you mentioned a minute ago psychosocial factors. What do you explain that? Extrapolate that a little bit.

Yeah, so you know, these blue zones, and again, this is just association. We can't say that this is why they live to 100, but these are these habits that they adhere to and they routinely have these clusters of people over 100 more so than, let's say, a US population. And six of the five of the nine, I'm sorry, because the sixth one is moderate exercise, I'm thinking of, but five of them, it's like community one, they have a faith-based, something something faith-based, and then they also have a strong social network. And then they also have like a purpose in life. They feel like they know where they're going. Um, and then they're also really well connected to family and they have a strong sense of belonging. And they tease these out as different factors and different habits in their lifestyle. And it's like they haven't even said anything about nutrition yet, you know, like they're just focused about having a strong social network. And again, it's an association thing, but I think it's just really interesting to kind of take a step back. And with all of our research and all of our studies and all of this level of science, it's it's just kind of um makes it a little bit, you just puts it in perspective, I guess. You know, it's like, guys, we we don't know as much as we think we know at all.

Yeah. Yeah, there's this really I can't remember where I heard it. Um, but this really interesting story is like, you know, every holiday, this family would serve um ham, right? With the with the tips cut off. And uh, you know, the the son asks the the father, like, hey, dad, why do you why do you cook it like that? It's like, well, that's that's the way, you know, your grandma used to cook it. So he goes to the grandma and she said, Well, you know, why did you why did you do that? Why do you cut the tips off of the ham all the time? She's like, Well, you know, that that's the way your great-grandma made it. And so he finds a great grandma and is like, Hey, why did you cut the tips off the ham, you know, every Christmas? Like, well, so we could fit it in the pan. And we we lose we lose sight along the way of like, why are we doing this again? Like, are we even looking at the right thing? Are we questioning any of this? Because we're so hyper focused on this little echo chamber of nutrition when you're right, like all the other factors that go into life, if we just allow our ourselves to, you know, have these, like you said, strong social networks and all these other things that go into health enough, sunshine, activity, movement, great, clean water, it all kind of seems to work out on its own, right?

It does. It does. I mean, gosh. And the more I study about nutrition, you know, and I'll go back and you know, go back into the Krebs cycle and look at on a molecular level all the time and just our different metabolic pathways and get really into it. It's just like the body is, I don't even know how many steps ahead of our mind and our ability to synthesize what's going on in the body. And so it's what we can kind of understand, our best guess of what is happening is still steps behind what biology is doing. And I think we have to have a little bit of that humility when we talk about nutrition. Um, and I know I didn't earlier when I had these really strong zealous opinions about nutrition and um like years and years ago. But you know, the more you learn, the more you're like, wow, we actually don't know much. We know a fraction, and we're describing a fraction of what's going on.

Isn't that the interesting journey of a fitness and health professional too? Is we come out, right? We we're armed with a little bit of information that we are so maybe our mentors or people who look up to have taught us from a very service layer, and we're confident. It's like, like, hey, that was me. CrossFit Paleo can solve any problem you have in your life. Guaranteed, right? That's it. And then you start diving in, and then you like you start to learn more. You're like, oh my God, I don't know shit. And then, like, and then you start to lose confidence as a coach. And then it actually, it's funny, it actually goes in line with how your business grows too. Like, yeah, first couple of years, I was so confident, like I said, CrossFit Paleo, everything's solved. This is how we get world peace. And then I started to learn more. I'm like, well, maybe this what we're doing here isn't as good for people as I thought. Maybe there's other variations in nutrition that we should be considering. And then I lost confidence, and then I wasn't as good of a salesperson in the process that we had in my business for it. And then I started learning more and starting to see more and having a more authentic approach, and the business grew again. It's a really interesting journey of the fitness and health professional because I think that everyone knows it. I've seen graphs of this whole thing of how people do it.

Right. The good news is even with some of these dogmatic fitness and nutrition approaches, and I think we touched on this briefly before, but compared to where so many people are with standard American, you know, 80% of people aren't eating enough fruits and vegetables. I think it's 70% of people aren't working out enough. It's still better. It's still an improvement. And so sometimes I think we can get down on kind of our earlier iterations, but still appreciating that you were driving really great change, you know?

Yeah. And that's it, right? I mean, it kind of circles back to the beginning of our conversation is that we we agree far more than we disagree. Um we just get stuck in this minutiae of what's optimal when most people don't need optimal. Yep. And uh, it's pretty wild. Um it's insane. It really is. Like I um I'm I'm so I'm so grateful for the conversations we have at EC because you really do bring, you know, like you said earlier, a refreshing approach to nutrition. And I I hear, you know, so in the podcast, my wife listened to Dr. Jamie something, and she's like, hey, just eat 40 different vegetables and fruits every week, right? And it's it's very similar to what you do with your 800 gram nutrition challenges, like just focus on this simple thing. Yeah and it could it could change your life. And then we'll start getting into the intricacies if you need more. I mean, isn't that isn't that kind of what your educational process looks like?

Totally. And I think what people find is that the idea isn't necessarily hard. What makes it hard is the consistency of it, because we're talking about forever. And so, you know, you mentioned my podcast, The Consistency Project, but I also kind of have a leaderboard where people just check in on four things every day. Yes or no, did they hit a protein target? Did they hit fruits and vegetables? Did they exercise and did they sleep enough? And that's it. And what you find is that none of them are independently difficult, but once you hit a month out, you know, the drop-off rate of being able to hit them all comes down significantly, let alone at a year. And so I think that's also where we could just spend more time. It's like you actually need less precision overall on all these little factors, but you need to do them over the long term. And and that's really where where the challenge is revealed.

Yeah, it really is. And it's I uh one of my favorite strength and and fitness guys is Dan John. Um I've seen him speak multiple times. He's been on this podcast numerous times, and his he takes, you know, 30, 40 years of experience and tries to simplify it down. And I think that's kind of the other end of the spectrum is once you get that much experience under your belt, is you just seek to simplify, you know, as much as possible. And he really talks about three ways to create change. You know, there's there's jail, right, where you put someone in, you know, to like, you know, fat camp, right? And like all you get is water and vegetables, right? And that's it. And then you also have like, you know, the epiphany and the critical diagnosis or you know, um a divorce or something that happens in your life where you're like so motivated to change, and then you get what most people do, which is a little bit consistently over a long haul. And that's generally where most people file in. Because you can't force the other two. I mean, you can, right? But that's just it's it's complicated, but I like that you're making it simple. So thank you for doing that. Yeah. So you you see you got a lot of stuff to for people to follow you. I mean, um, let's let's start with like if I'm if I still own a gym, by the way, we'd be working together hands down. For a gym owner, where do they go if they want to find more information on what you do?

Yeah, I'm probably gonna send them all to the same place, just optimize me nutrition.com. And it's the same handles on the socials.

Right. And then your podcast, the consistency project, what what's the format? Um what do you talk about?

Yeah, it's uh it's pretty early. I think we just released our 10th episode this morning. So uh it's pretty early on. The format may change, mean is what the purpose of me saying that. But uh right now it's just about 20 minutes-ish on a single topic. Typically it's a topic that's coming from my Instagram post, but really those posts are driven by community questions. So ultimately they're kind of just taking a question that somebody had and expanding on it, providing some nuance that social media doesn't allow for. And uh, I'm just interviewed by a longtime friend and podcast host as we kind of go through each topic.

Oh, that's great. And then you're also uh you did a TEDx talk. What was that about? Where do people find that?

Yeah, uh it's called an elegant diet, but it's just about the 800 gram challenge. But uh my subtitle, which I didn't post it as, but I would like it to be, is Nutrition in 8 minutes. I tried my best to kind of clarify all the different confusion in different diets and how to simplify nutrition and all of the positive effects of something so simple as the 800 gram challenge. So that's out there on the interwebs.

Awesome. Well, EC, I I appreciate you coming on, sharing your thoughts. I'd love to have you back on um, you know, sometime within the next year and just talk about this more in depth because I have a feeling uh as we just barrel our way through this pandemic that there's gonna be a lot of changes in health and we're gonna learn a lot about the human condition. Um so it'd be interesting. And I know you're always pouring over the research, which I I truly respect and appreciate. So it'd be great to have you back on. You are fighting the good fight, my friend. So keep it up. You're honest about what things are. You simply keep things simple and you're not out there to, you know, just purely for the dollar. But I I I really appreciate what you're doing. So thank you so much. Yeah, thanks for being part of the show. And uh, ladies and gentlemen, East East and Council. Hey, it's your host, Eric Malzone. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of Future of Fitness. If you enjoyed it, please do me a huge favor by going to the website and signing up for our newsletter. The website is futureoffitness.co. Again, that's futureoffitness.co. We've got some big, big announcements coming down the pipe, and we want you to make sure that you are on top of it. Thank you again. Signing off