Episode 209: How to achieve your fat loss goals while not overly restrictive: an interview with the author of “You Can’t Screw This Up,” Adam Bornstein

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[00:00:00] Welcome back to the Flex Diet Podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Mike T. Nelson. We’re gonna talk about all things to increase muscle and strength and performance, better body composition, all without destroying your health and in a flexible framework. And what fits in perfectly with this is Adam Bornstein, who is our guest today.

[00:00:24] He has a great new book called You Can’t Screw This Up. You can get it over at the website at cantscrewthisup.com. We’ll put a link down to it below and it’s awesome. I followed Adam for years. He’s worked with a lot of top people in the industry such as Arnold Schwartzenegger. LeBron James, many others that he lists out here, although he generally doesn’t talk about his work with people in the industry.

[00:00:54] He’s worked at Men’s Health as an editor for many years, and what’s great about this book is it’s using a flexible framework, though people can actually get to their fat loss goals without being horribly overs restrictive. And he would argue, and I would agree, That if you are extremely restrictive at best, that is a temporary solution with most likely huge ramifications.

[00:01:21] You can only white knuckle your way so long. Before all the wheels are gonna fall off. So great interview here. And if you enjoy a very flexible approach and you want something that gives you a complete system of how to do this, I’m biased because I created the flex Diet Cert based on those exact principles.

[00:01:43] The Flex diet cert is a mix mash of the concept of metabolic flexibility. How well from a dietary standpoint can your body use two of the main fuels, which are fats and carbohydrates? And this is related to body comp and performance. This is done within a flexible framework. So one of the analogies I’ve used is when you’re working with clients, It’s almost like bumper bowling instead of having them bowl strikes.

[00:02:13] So most of the time, and I’m a hundred percent guilty of doing this with clients in the past, that your nutritional coaching revolves around getting the client who’s never gone bowling in this example, to just start bowling strikes from day one. And the reality is it’s just not gonna happen. Yes, you’ll run into a few freaks here and there who can make it happen, but for the most part, it’s gonna be frustrating for you, the coach, and it’s gonna be extremely frustrating for the client.

[00:02:41] Instead, if you’ve ever been to a bowling alley where they have those little bumpers they inflate in the gutter, use those to be, have the constraint upon the system. But allow the client to weave their way down and just knock over a few pins. Like your job is actually to allow some variability, some quote, unquote, off plan bad foods, whatever words you want to use with it.

[00:03:07] But at the end of the day, you wanna make sure that they’re still having some success that they can build upon. And then over time they will build that skillset better and better. And then at some point they are bowling strikes and you can remove the bumpers from the side. But at first, Your goal is literally put up the bumpers to have some constraints within the system.

[00:03:31] Make it wide enough to allow them some variability, and for God’s sakes, keep them in that lane and make sure they’re not three lanes down, because that happens all the time. Clients starts X diet, two weeks goes by, and they’re on a different diet entirely. So that is the basis of the Flex Diet certification which is open now, still depending when you’re listening to this, through the end of the day, June 12th, 2023.

[00:04:01] So go to flexdiet.com. If you’re listening outside of that time period, you can still go there and get on the wait list for the next time that it opens. But the key with it is it’s a complete system for you as a coach to. Help clients in a flexible manner, both from the systems that you’re going to apply with them, and as we talk about in this interview, also making them more physiologic resistance, i e, more metabolically flexible so that if they do go off plan and end up face down in a birthday cake, the ramifications of that are not nearly as bad, which then allows them to shocker, get back on the plan and within the system sooner.

[00:04:44] So they have more success. So go to flexdiet.com, all of the info there and enjoy this great interview here with author Adam Bornstein.

[00:04:59] [00:05:02] Dr Mike T Nelson: Welcome back to the Flex Diet Podcast. I’m here with the great Adam Bornstein. How are you today, sir?

[00:05:08] Adam Borstein: I didn’t know I was the great Adam Bornstein, but I’m now Yes, use that and I’m going to quote you on it so that I don’t sound self-indulgent, but I am. I’m good. Thanks for having me today.

[00:05:18] Dr Mike T Nelson: Perfect. To continue down the self-indulgent route, why don’t you, I give you permission cause I know you don’t like talking about yourself a lot to, I do hate it. Name-drop the people you have worked with because you’re one of those people I’ve known for a long time in the fitness industry, but you tend to stay a little bit more in the background, but you’ve done all sorts of things and worked with a lot of really top people.

[00:05:41] Adam Borstein: Yeah. I hate the gratuitous name dropping. I’ll give the I’ll give four that I get associated probably with the most and that won’t be enough. But I have worked with Arnold Schwartzenegger. I’ve worked with LeBron James, worked with Cindy Crawford. I’ve worked with Lindsay Vaughn, and that’s about as much name dropping as I can do for right now.

[00:06:00] I’ve been very fortunate to work with a lot of cool people, interview a lot of brilliant people. Learn from so many wise people. And then I think my goal is to, one, celebrate those people. Make sure that their content and information gets out to the world, and then synthesize it in a way that hopefully it is helpful for others.

[00:06:19] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Thank you so much. I know you worked at Men’s Health for many years and I. Love the newsletters on Arnold’s newsletter. So it was very cool to see the combination of, his stories and some of the research blurbs and trying to make it actionable for people. And I thought that was actually really well done.

[00:06:35] Adam Borstein: Yeah, that is the current passion project. Arnold’s Pump Club, as we call. Trying to build the positive corner of the internet, which sometimes can feel like an uphill battle in a very negative storm, but the only way you make it happen is by trying to do it. So that is yeah, it’s fun, right?

[00:06:52] As well as I do, research is great, but if you do not distill it in a way that people can put it to use, oftentimes some really good information just falls into an echo chamber. And I think what I’m trying to do is interact with really smart people who can help me understand it in a way that is useful by people.

[00:07:08] And then my job is to just break it down in a way that people can then make it practical and applicable and ideally useful.

[00:07:17] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, I love that. Like one of my little phrases I like is physiology is complex, but your actions are simple, right? And you’ve done this where you’ve read countless research studies and you’re like, okay, so some are not really actionable, but some that are actionable.

[00:07:31] It’s like how do I translate that into a way that still respects the study and the limitations? Because all studies have limits. But most people aren’t gonna read the study, so how do we, translate that into something that is useful, that they can actually apply in their life then too.

[00:07:46] Adam Borstein: And how likely is it to have a benefit even if we can’t claim it with complete veracity? That’s the thing. Yeah. Is difficult for people cuz like research never ends. And it can frustrate with people. With people when we learn new things, which is a good thing. Like changing your mind. Is not a bad thing, right?

[00:08:06] Dr Mike T Nelson: It not changing your mind, especially in the existence of new evidence, is just called stubbornness, right? I say all the time that, my job is not to be right. My job is to get it right. Which means being flexible and open-minded and never stop learning, constantly keep questioning, right? Science is built on hypotheses.

[00:08:28] It is built on questions. If you don’t like questions, you don’t like science. So as time goes on, we ask new questions. So it’s not, can we say something with a hundred percent certainty because we can’t. It is, what can we say with the most certainty at the moment, and. Is there a high or low upside of providing help or doing harm?

[00:08:51] Cause when you write a daily newsletter, which is what to do with Arnold, right? Only so many things are changing, but one patterns of behavior habits are built by reinforcement. People need to hear the same thing from different angles in order for them to change it. If it was as simple as telling someone something that they need to do for themselves, we would all be.

[00:09:11] Healthier, happier, and better off. Yeah. I wouldn’t have a job. Neither would you?

[00:09:14] Adam Borstein: Probably, right? No. It takes a while for things to stick, which is why it’s important to repeat those messages. It’s, important to repeat it from different angles and then it’s important to ask yourself, if someone were to do this, what is the likelihood that it will help or do harm?

[00:09:29] And if the index of that there is a high likelihood of harm. Especially, it doesn’t go well. That’s the stuff that you don’t share. It’s not that it isn’t cool, it’s not that it isn’t interesting, if I share a study on mindfulness or gratitude or the type of things that you know, if you do it, is it necessarily going to completely change your life?

[00:09:50] Maybe, but maybe not. Is it likely to do any harm? If I share a study about how much you should sleep and you try and sleep more, is it likely to do any harm? Probably not. And and that’s a great way, I think to, for me, it’s the moral compass of how do you share information in a field that fundamentally on the principle of what it is always gonna be a little fluid.

[00:10:14] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. That’s one thing I look at to try to evaluate new things. And air quotes, exactly what you said, like what? The first thing I wanna know is what is a potential downside? And if we’ve got pretty good data showing, like I did a whole program on the use of ketones and ketosis for concussion and T B I, there’s not a ton of really nice randomized controlled trials in humans looking at ketones.

[00:10:37] For that thing. However, we’ve got tons of data showing that within certain parameters it’s probably relatively safe. So your downside. Probably pretty well protected upside. Don’t really know exactly what it is, but I felt confident enough to be like, Hey, this is something, worth trying so that you’re right.

[00:10:57] Yeah. And it same reason why I don’t write articles about fat loss using D M P. Does it work? Yes. Could there be things that go horribly wrong with it, like death? Yes.

[00:11:09] Adam Borstein: Yeah. If there’s a possibility of death outside normal circumstances, usually it’s low on the confidence interval of making a recommendation.

[00:11:20] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Also reminds me the Tim Nokes quote of, all the stuff I’m gonna teach you now. 50% of it will probably be later shown to be wrong. The hard part is, I don’t know what, 50%.

[00:11:34] Adam Borstein: And then it’s, and then that’s what I think makes our job, my job so difficult is that in a sea of social media, which don’t get me wrong, it’s not all bad. It’s beautiful that everyone has the ability to distribute and share information. There are fewer gatekeepers, but. It opens the floodgates for all of the fear and sensationalizing of information that gets people to react because fear and greater are to emotions that drive behavior action more than anything.

[00:12:06] But they are not the foundation of behavioral change. So you can see people on social media and everyone jokes now, but it is the cliche is everyone who’s like walking into the grocery store and being like, if you buy this food you’ll buy. And that gets a lot of likes. Oh yeah. That creates a lot of fear.

[00:12:25] And that can get people to buy a supplement or buy a program, but that is not how people actually change their behavior. Like you, the behavioral change is not built on a foundation of negativity and fear and uncertainty. All that does is create these like short-term temporary swings, and I feel like people are now caught up in this tidal wave of.

[00:12:52] Being afraid of one thing after another. And it’s so easy to get us to react because like you will identify the things that fundamentally you think are healthy, right? Being counterintuitive is great. Kale is going to kill you and come. Coffee, kale. The coffee has the mycotoxins. There’s toxins in it. You’re going to die and it’s just, It’s so crazy, and I talk about this in my book. Our brains are incredibly smart, but they’re also incredibly stupid because our brains react to novel things. Part of our brain that lights up, that helps trigger and release dopamine to get us all excited and believe this might make a change.

[00:13:34] We are more likely to react to a novel, different new stimulus. Than we are to something that we are more familiar with or seems boring, or the proverbial like, oh, that’s so simple. How could it possibly work? Yeah. But the things that work most effectively, and even by science itself, right? Science is based on reliability and validity, which is basically the shit that we test over and over again.

[00:14:00] There’s not another study on this so that with a greater degree of certainty that it works, but. We almost glossed that over the stuff that could help us most. We gloss over the stuff that is least likely to help us is the stuff that gets our attention and we’re willing to buy into.

[00:14:16] Because of the way that the circuitry of our brain is wired of what we are likely to respond to. And that part just isn’t fair. But knowing that can help you understand, like when you react so strongly to something that you’re like, this is too good to be true. Why am I even listening to it? Because it’s novel, it’s new, it’s different.

[00:14:35] It’s counterintuitive. It’s designed to grab your attention. It’s the same principles that. Make social media so popular or so addictive, the same thing that can easily suck you into something that probably isn’t so good for you, but it’s hard to resist.

[00:14:52] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And to me it’s ironic that even how academics is done, Is based on finding the new and novel thing, like repetitive studies are not highly rewarded.

[00:15:06] Like I spent almost two years at the epidemiologic department doing a study. Long story short, did not find anything, quote unquote new. Our intervention did not show any change. I brought up all the data, wrote it up, brought it to my investigator, and he is like, Yeah, we’re not gonna publish this. I’m like whoa.

[00:15:23] What do you mean we’re not gonna publish? This is two years of my life. This is my last study. I need this to graduate. So it’s only two years. Yeah. Like we didn’t find what we thought we were gonna find, but that’s, that’s science. He is oh, that’s just boring. And no one will really interested in it.

[00:15:36] And I argued with him and I’m just like, oh my God. Like even at the level where you’re preaching these things of this is what we do. We don’t know how stuff’s gonna work out. That’s why we do experiments. And even within all of that, it’s not set up to be the way that you think that it’s going to be either.

[00:15:53] So even the studies are sometimes even quite biased in one direction also.

[00:15:58] Adam Borstein: And that’s tough, right? People don’t realize there’s a whole side of published research that. I think a lot of people probably wish we’re a little bit cleaner and you right, you can curse the universe what it is, or you can just try and coexist with it and that’s usually the better route, right?

[00:16:13] It’s a can’t even to, the food environment. We can curse the food environment all we want. A lot of it is anchored against us or we can learn to coexist with it. I argue that the problem is that we’re trying to fight the food environment all the time, and that’s why we constantly. Lose because that’s an environment that has billions upon billions invested in it.

[00:16:30] And it’d be great if it was different. It would be great if it would change, but it’s probably not going to. So what are you gonna do to learn to not only survive, but thrive in this food environment that is stacked against you, but do it in a way that is practical so you don’t lose your mind, you don’t get overstressed, and you can still, eat some of the foods you love without thinking that you are poisoning yourself or you’re gonna become unhealthy, or something along those lines because, It’s just not true, right?

[00:16:56] Learning to coexist with confines or restrictions that are a part of life, that’s how we build grit and resilience, and that’s how we survive. That’s how we live, that’s how we do great things. But it can be easy to look at the thing that is frustrating, whether it’s publishing research, or whether it’s following a diet or a workout and get, a little bit fed up by the institution of it, but, That’s never helped anyone complaining about things that are beyond your control isn’t a good way to get where you want to go.

[00:17:26] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. That was one of the interesting premises you had in the book too, where I’ve often talked about that, or even research studies, like you see these mechanistic stuff on we put people in basically this chamber and we locked them up for 48 hours. We measured all this stuff going in and out, and we figured this out, and you’re like, cool.

[00:17:47] That’s. Great for mechanistic research, but people don’t live in a, metabolic closet. They live out in the real world. And then you’ve got the other people who argue that because the real world has all these, different options that, this isn’t a very good, it’s not a well controlled study because these were free living subjects, but they’re trying to get at different things.

[00:18:08] And I think your argument, correct me if I’m wrong, is what I’ve often said too is that. For nutrition stuff, it’s an unrealistic expectation that we’re gonna try to mimic the, like the metabolic chamber studies where you’re gonna clean out all your kitchen, you’re gonna do all this stuff, and you’re never gonna go eat, you’re never gonna have takeout.

[00:18:26] You’re, and yes, if you do all those things, would you be successful? Yes. The caveat is that’s one utterly unrealistic for most people to live their life that way. And then two, If you did that, you in my opinion, have not prepared them for actual social engagements. Like you haven’t prepared them to be released into the real world and actually have a social life, which we know is associated with.

[00:18:53] Long-term compliance, which is also one of the biggest reasons people are not leaner.

[00:18:58] Adam Borstein: It is it’s funny, right? I say that so often. If you take a lot of these concepts or constructs and remove them from diet and apply them to other things in life. You would be like, this is so stupid.

[00:19:10] Yeah. I have to be perfect with my diet all of the time. Like in what area of your life do you have to be perfect? Our survival of a species is even based on survival of the fittest. It is about adaptation Yeah. To our surroundings. And we’re telling people we can’t a adapt. We act like we can’t handle a little bit of sugar or a little bit of takeout or eat in a restaurant.

[00:19:34] We think that we’re too weak, that we can’t build the type of mindset or the type of discipline. No. And the opposite of being like, you need to have, be so strong-willed that you never order out, you never eat these things is ridiculous. There, there just is no evidence in the, it’s actually the contrary, right?

[00:19:56] The people who are most successful, With their eating, with their nutrition, with their diets. The people who lose weight and keep it off, they do not follow these restrictive plants. Now, that does not mean that there are not any examples of people who do not thrive right within that, but that is a life in decision that is chosen by people because they, as I talk about, like finding your comfort zone, they establish something that I is easily repeatable and sustainable for them.

[00:20:27] But for the majority of people, that extreme nature flies in the face of what we see in epidemiology and what we see in longevity, what we see in terms of what it actually takes to change When we look at both the psychological and the physical. There’s the National Weight Control Registry, which is got 10,000 people who have lost double digit amounts of weight and kept it off for years.

[00:20:53] And when you look at the habits in the common denominators, it is things like they don’t restrict all foods, right? They do eat carbs, they do have breakfast, like things that fly in the face of what you hear all the time. And the point is that when we put ourselves in this black and white of thinking, It’s what called dichotomous thinking.

[00:21:16] It is a mental framework that sets you up for failure, right? The psychological, social, the people that live in this world of black and white, shame and guilt, good foods, bad foods, bad ingredients are less likely to be in a position where they can build healthy habits that last, and that’s the funny thing.

[00:21:36] Evidence-based research is not just what is done in the lab. It is the intersection between what we find in these controlled studies, the metabolic clam, and what we see out in real world. And you wanna find that middle space, cuz that middle space is the stuff of what happens when everything isn’t perfect.

[00:21:56] Yes. In an ideal world, you would cook all of your meals and you could exercise all the time, but the real world means like some days you’re gonna be stressed, some days you’re gonna be overtired, you’re going to get sick, you’re going to travel, you’re going to go on vacation, you’re going to crave. Some of these foods, and there’s actually nothing wrong with those cravings.

[00:22:16] You need to learn how to eat the things that you love and be okay with it, not freak out, not think that you screwed up, realize that your body can tolerate that. And then how to get back on track. You need to know where the boundary is. There is a certain threshold of how much of this stuff you can eat, and it’s not a single cheat meal either, right?

[00:22:35] The example I give for people is not if the average person eats three meals per day. And you have seven days in a week, so you have 21 meals in a week. Let’s give a hypothetical that you have three meals that aren’t great. The proverbial three cheat meals right in the construct of an entire week in the construct of 21 meals.

[00:22:57] If you’re on point, approximately 90% of the time, you tell me a single place. Or like 90% proficiency. 90% compliance doesn’t leave to tremendous results and you won’t find it. Now what a lot of people will do is oh, I like go on the weekends and eat whatever, but that’s different, right?

[00:23:19] People might tip Saturday and Sunday and eat whatever they want. For every meal. So it really becomes like six meals suddenly are bad, and then because they’re not feeling great, Monday comes around and they don’t really go back to their behavior on Monday. And then maybe they start, of course, correcting on Tuesday, right?

[00:23:37] If there’s something we know about people is that they’re terrible about dietary recall. Oh, horrible. We are really bad and we don’t even know because we don’t even think about it, right? That we track the foods that we eat, but we don’t track the liquids that we drink. We don’t track the oils that we had.

[00:23:51] We don’t track the sauces and all those things add up. So it’s like people delude themselves and they be like, no, I’m doing that. Like only two to three meals are off, and it’s not right, it’s five or six or seven. If you are truly 18 out of 21, 17 out of 21. You’re crushing it. You’re in such good shape, you’re so healthy, everything’s gonna look great and it’s not a problem at all.

[00:24:17] But we get in these positions cuz we break people down, we put them on plans that make them miserable or they can’t wait till they off. Or we create so many restrictions that. Overeating and cravings are inevitability. It’s great study in the journal appetite that looked at when they told people to restrict all the hyper palatable, delicious food for one day.

[00:24:40] They’re like, for one day do not eat these foods, and the people ate 133% more calories. Yeah. We are the creatures of we want what we can’t have, and at what point do we just realize that A, it’s not necessary. We create this vision of what it takes to be healthy. Looks like something that is fundamentally a lie.

[00:25:03] It is a lie, but we sell it because we can sell it, right? We sell this short term vision, and I always tell people like you wanna know is something probably diluting you? Step one? Is it based on trying to help you or trying to make you fearful? People are trying to get you to buy into fear.

[00:25:19] They’re probably selling you something, and if they’re giving you this really strict. Set timeline of when you’ll see results, you’ll lose 20 pounds in four weeks, right? That is usually a red flag. And I say usually, cuz you know, people have to market, people have to push it. So there are exceptions to the rule, but the reason why I say this is good plans don’t stop working, right?

[00:25:44] So when people are selling you something, it’s very easy to get people to lose weight. That’s not the problem. Getting people to keep that weight off. Not having people slide back is the real trick because people go on diets all the time, right? And they lose weight in those first two to four weeks, and then it, it stops happening, right?

[00:26:02] Talk about, this is the, dieting circle of hell. It starts with you want to make a change. So you go on a diet, you cut out a whole bunch of stuff, progress and you get really excited. So you are more compliant, but then the progress stops. And then you have to cut down even more when you’re already at a huge deficit or have restricted an entire food group, right?

[00:26:24] Plans that cut out all of your carbs on day one. When the weight loss stops, where are you grabbing those calories from? Probably. Protein, maybe some fat, but you can only, you can’t cut out all the fat because then there’s nothing you can eat at all. You’re just eating dry chicken breasts every Sunday.

[00:26:40] Yeah. Next thing you know, you’re fasting, you’re detoxing, you’re having a tea, but the weight loss doesn’t change, right? Because you went so aggressive so fast that eventually, You a just even grind even harder until you burn out and just say, fuck it. Or you just say, fuck it right then, and you eat everything.

[00:27:00] You go off a plan for two to three times as long as you were on it, you end up worse than you started, and then you jump back onto a new diet and repeat the cycle all over again. So it’s a mistake to be like this thing helped me lose weight. And what’s so messed up about it is that. When people go and enter into this dieting circle of hell, they associate the success with the hell they put themselves through.

[00:27:27] Yes. And they don’t realize that, the aftermath of it was the success wasn’t a byproduct of the diet. The failure, the long-term frustration is where you should be like, wait, why was I so much worse off after that period where I was completely. Miserable, but this is now what diets are built upon, right?

[00:27:48] Short-term wins for long-term failures, and we need to flip that, right? It should, you should be able to quote, unquote fail. What I would say is just a planned normal experience of, I had to eat takeout. I couldn’t cook my meal tonight, I had to skip a workout, those short-term aberrations. I call, life should be mixed in with a long-term plan that feels doable, feels sustainable, and that does not mean that those changes aren’t difficult.

[00:28:17] Do not get that confused. Change is hard, but change should not be so painful and miserable that that’s just a matter of time before you’re gonna end and quit and then fall apart.

[00:28:31] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, no I love all that. And I, the 90% thing is something I’ve used a lot. I remember John Bardi talking about that back in the day.

[00:28:39] And I even get nervous if I see someone hitting it at a hundred percent for one or two weeks. And it’s not like they’re gonna step on stage in their underwear in a couple days or something, right? They’re not, they don’t have any extreme goal. Because I know what’s gonna come.

[00:28:54] They’re gonna be at a social event and they’re gonna end up face down on a birthday cake and they’re gonna be all pissed off about it. And then the next week is gonna be just a living hell because they can’t moderate they’re like a hundred percent on or absolutely a hundred percent off.

[00:29:07] If the car is going off the road, we’re gonna drive it right off the cliff and take a hundred foot fall and it’s gonna be a mess.

[00:29:14] Adam Borstein: Yeah. It’s come out in the book that, the idea of the a hundred percent weak. It’s, look, you think it’s the pill, but it’s really the poison. Yes.

[00:29:23] The goal is not a hundred percent weak. I actually want you to stay away from a hundred percent weak. Yes. The goal is no 0% weeks. Yep. No 0% weeks. And it’s a fundamental shift because if you happen to be quote unquote perfect, rather than striving for perfection, that’s fine. But in, in the course of right, because we wanna be looking at seven day weeks, you’re not looking at individual days, right?

[00:29:47] The days don’t matter, it’s the weeks, it’s the months. It’s the general trend line. You don’t wanna try and be perfect because that’s putting that stress and anxiety in a construct around what it takes to be healthy. Now at the highest. Levels of performance. Do people have to make more extreme sacrifices?

[00:30:05] Yes, sure. But that’s also something you build. Up to.

[00:30:09] Dr Mike T Nelson: You don’t start there. Even with those people, that’s, they don’t start there.

[00:30:12] Adam Borstein: No. No. What the, not nobody does. I could tell he’s in the inverse where LeBron started to where he is, and it is a progression and we cheat people out of that progression because we just, we get diluted by what we do right now and forget what we had to do in order to get there. If I were to ask you what it took for you to get to where you are now, or if I had to recreate my own journey. I couldn’t get to this position where I’m in control and can eat well and exercise consistently if I didn’t build up.

[00:30:44] That capacity, and again, take it out of dieting in its ops. The example I use in the book, and there’s multiple, you can look at learning. When we teach people math, we don’t start with advanced calculus or algebra or geometry. These are complex topics that if you don’t understand the foundations in the fundamentals of basic arithmetic, it’s never gonna make sense.

[00:31:06] We start with addition and subtraction. Even before that. We start with knowing what a number is and how to count. And then we layer and build up in swimming. You don’t start someone in the deep end, they will drown. They will drown. No, we teach ’em to put their foot in the water in lifting weights we don’t throw.

[00:31:26] Some people do and that’s the problem. But we don’t throw a son under 300 pounds on a barbell the first time they’re in there and say, squat this. Yeah, that will crush them. And they’re never gonna recover

[00:31:35] Dr Mike T Nelson: from that either. And you just yell, try harder at ’em the whole time, right?

[00:31:38] Adam Borstein: You get him first. We get ’em in the gym. That’s a win. And then we get ’em, do some body weight squats, and then we like progress them up because we have to understand that someone’s comfort zone is relative to where they are. And when you build up capacity, capability, strength, resilience, knowledge, the things that used to feel hard become easier.

[00:32:02] When you know you do 10 body weight squats and your legs are fried, so you can’t even sit on the toilet for a week. You’re like, oh my goodness, how can I ever do it? But we all start there at some point, and then one day, you’re squatting hundreds of pounds, you’re deadlifting a bunch, or you’re able to walk around pain free and you’re like, man, remember when I couldn’t even do a body weight squat.

[00:32:20] Nutrition’s no different. But we don’t treat it like that. We have to teach people how to eat without guilt. In order for them to eat consistently, we have to teach them like essentially how to add a protein or a fiber to the meal, not expecting them to, that they’re gonna do it every single meal.

[00:32:38] It’s the example I talk about in the book, and I mentioned over and over again, I learned from Alan Cosgrow of probably 15 years ago when he was talking about exercises, but applies to so much. Do not shoot a cannon from a canoe, and we give people all of these cannons things that can potentially help their nutrition, but we place them on a canoe.

[00:32:59] We do not give them a stable battleship from which they can go ahead and add more complex behaviors. Add things that are fundamentally more difficult for people, right? If I meet someone who’s drinking, three sodas a day, My goal, my long-term goal is very different than the short-term goal. The short-term goal is can I get them down to one or can I sub out those three for three diets?

[00:33:22] And you can argue all day about artificial sweeteners. And I’m not here for that cause that’s just gonna burn down the internet. But there’s not a single person who’s gonna tell you that if you go from three full sugar sodas to three diet sodas, that person isn’t going to be better off. Yeah. And that might be the angle, but for most people it’s not.

[00:33:39] It’s getting out into more water and other drinks. But that has to be a progression. If you eat dessert seven days a week because that’s the guilt cycle that you’re in, or that’s how you end your day, right? You get done with dinner, then you sit down afterwards and you’re on TV and you’re mindlessly eating.

[00:33:53] And if I can take you from those seven days a week down to three or four, Do you know how much weight people are losing that situation? Do you know how much confidence it is building where they probably think that they, it’s not even possible, right? Patterns of reinforcement, success breeds success. You meet people where they are, you get them to make a positive change, and then another positive change.

[00:34:13] And at some point they feel better, they look better, and they themselves want to abandon the behaviors that no longer serve them. But if we’re constantly just telling people, try harder, do better when they’re not in a position where they can do it cuz they can’t see it or they don’t believe it, or they don’t know how to do it.

[00:34:33] Are we truly helping people? And I would say no. And that’s this book is all about like, how do we put people in a position to so they can get to that point where they have enough success that they stop, doing the things that they know are not good for them. But are hard for them to change.

[00:34:51] And I would argue that most of these programs start people in a way that they are designed to fail. It is a ticking time bomb. It is a matter of time before they fail. And the more we put people on these plans, the more we put them on these short-term diets. When you fail and fail and fail, at some point you just consider yourself a failure.

[00:35:09] At some point, you just think you’re never going to be healthy, and that is a dark, difficult, hard place to be in. And I want to get people away from that.

[00:35:19] Dr Mike T Nelson: No, that’s awesome. And that’s how I designed also the Flex diet cert was how do you make it a flexible approach? How do you increase the capacity of the person to tolerate, off plan, quote unquote bad foods, all that stuff.

[00:35:34] But you do it in a system that’s rewarding the next positive behavior. And the biggest mistake I made when I first started is similar to what you’re talking about. Had a client come in, look at his food log, he’s eating like a sleeve of Oreos a day. I’m like, this nutrition stuff, it’s so easy. Hey bro, stop eating Oreos.

[00:35:51] He’s yeah. Got it. And you can see where this is going. Like four weeks later, the guy’s eating more Oreos than he is ever eaten in his life. And he feels bad about it. He cognitively knows he’s not supposed to. I’m not helping him. I’m making him feel worse. I’ve added more guilt, more shame.

[00:36:07] And eventually I just got frustrated and I said, ah, screw it. Just, I’m not gonna worry about this and I just want you to eat more protein. Cuz what I realized was, like you were saying, the brain thinks visually, right? So I was like, don’t think of a pink elephant. Oh shit. I just thought of a pink elephant.

[00:36:23] I wasn’t supposed to, but I thought of the pink elephant. So this whole time, I’m berating him about his poor Oreo habit. He’s, his brain subconsciously is thinking Oreos. Oh, Oreos. Oreos. And so once I switched him to okay, you can eat as many Oreos as you want, but you have to eat 40 grams of protein first.

[00:36:39] Here’s what that looks like. Here’s some food options, et cetera. Shocker. He ate less Oreos. Like he didn’t go to zero automatically, right? But he ate less and then he didn’t feel bad about it. And it became not a negative thing with all this built up, shame and I’m a horrible human being and all this other stuff that, that comes with it.

[00:36:57] Just by virtue of you decided to eat a cookie, it’s. It’s not the end of the world. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. Not at all. You hate a cookie. It’s okay.

[00:37:06] Adam Borstein: And we’ve all been there, right? Yeah. If you’ve coached people long enough and coached people for 20 years, you see that and you even, you either recognize that you need to take a better approach to help people, or you’re just like, why are these people not where I’m at?

[00:37:18] And like that, it’s an ignorant way to approach things. It’s funny, but like, All of us are Homer Simpson, right? We got these homer types of brains where it’s like someone goes up to Homer, it’s like, Homer, what’d you have for breakfast? And his brain’s don’t say donut. Don’t say, yeah, donut.

[00:37:34] Don’t say donut. And then he goes, donut, is it donut? Yeah. And he’s brain. And he’s and he’s, that’s the way our brains work. Yeah. And if we can recognize that and re respect it and appreciate it, and find the humor in it, we can then help people. Change, but it is, it’s just an ignorant way to say you should just change.

[00:37:57] Change is not easy for anyone unless you are put in an environment, in an ecosystem that makes change easy, right? The idea of behavioral change is rooted in a simple concept of make it so easy that it’s hard to fail. Which fundamentally conflicts with a lot of goal setting cuz goals are these big, hairy, audacious goals, right?

[00:38:17] The be ags or it is just, and that’s great, have a vision, have a goal, but you want that process. The process itself, especially early on, should be easy so that it’s hard to fail. So again, that people build that stable foundation and that’s what needs to change. Don’t start people in the deep end. Me people were there.

[00:38:37] Don’t take away all of the Oreos, right? No, I’m gonna build other healthy habits so that you then get rid of it. We always think about restriction and subtraction and removing. We should be teaching people more of what they should add to their life. Yes. Start by helping them. Add things and then they will removed because at some point, like there’s only so much that will fit in this space.

[00:38:57] And some things make you feel better. Some things add to your life. And when you get people to want to drop things on their own cuz they see on their own when it’s doing right, it’s no different than a debate. If you’re debating with someone, one, I hope you’re always listening and learning, but two.

[00:39:14] Changing someone’s mind is not dumb by just like telling them that they’re an idiot in their own stupid, that actually gets them to dig in deeper. There has to be an emotional quotient to this, to understanding that people believe things for a certain reason. They’re not doing it to be difficult.

[00:39:31] There is something deeply rooted and you might never see eye to eye, but if you want them to get them to respect your opinion or see where you are coming from, you have to be able to get to the level where you see where they. Are coming from, and that’s the art of coaching. That’s the art of behavioral change.

[00:39:49] And that’s how you get on someone’s level, right? Just like telling them that they’re dumb or it should be easy, they’re probably gonna do it even more.

[00:39:59] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And then I think comes back to what is the problem we’re actually trying to solve, right? So one of the things I said for years, for general population, I coached a lot of general population more so in the past than currently was.

[00:40:11] The goal that they have that they’ll almost never tell you is literally how shitty can I eat and feel good and look good and have my health parameters be okay? That’s the goal for most people. And I’ve even, later on I was like asking them, okay what do you wanna enjoy? What? What are like the top, I get this from Ben House, like what is the number one food that you do not want to give up?

[00:40:37] And if they say chocolate cake, Cool. I’m not gonna write him a plan that says day one, never have chocolate cake the rest of your life. I’m gonna try to build some plan, some system that allows him to have that and maybe a controlled fashion. But the other question too was, what one habit or one exercise do you think is most responsible for your success?

[00:40:58] And even if it’s like the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard, standing on a bosu ball with one hand doing pink dumbbell curls with my right arm. I’m probably gonna program that in their program. Because if I don’t, they’re gonna look at the program and they’re gonna be like, this trainer is so stupid.

[00:41:15] Why am I paying ’em all this money? I told them the thing that works for me. And he even put it in my plan.

[00:41:20] Adam Borstein: Yeah. Where the mind goes, the body will follow. Yeah. And it’s just, it’s so interesting to watch the way that people approach this, because when you think about fat loss, cause that’s a goal for so many.

[00:41:35] Great fat loss plans are built, originally designed to help people a, eat as much as possible while still losing weight. Yes. You want to start from the position where you can eat as much as possible and still lose weight because at some point you’re going to plateau and then you’re going to have to make adjustments.

[00:41:56] And you know this as well as I do. The body’s going to adjust. As you lose weight, your body actually starts fighting against you, right? Metabolic adaptation is a real thing. Your body weight will decrease. Your hunger hormones will adjust. Leptin and growlin are going to fight against you because your body wants to get back to that weight that it was previously at.

[00:42:15] If you are away, unless your B M R is going to drop, right? Yep. So you’re metabolically burning less, which is normal in healthy because you now. Way less. So what are we doing to make adjustments to keep that weight then going down? And that’s why it’s important to start with as much food as possible, because you start them as little as possible.

[00:42:36] It’s harder to make small adjustments that are easier to sustain, right? And you can make the argument all day, right? Like rapid weight loss works, slower, weight loss can work. Research shows that both can be effective. But when you take it outside the lab and you look at the sustainability and you look at the practicality, it’s important in general, and there are going to be exceptions based on people’s personalities and other lifestyle variables in general.

[00:43:01] Start them be eating as much food as possible. They can lose weight with, like you said, things that will keep them more compliant. Whether it’s the chocolate cake or the single arm. Single leg, bozo pink dumbbell squat. Because the compliance is so key, right? That’s what’s gonna keep them going. Winning at fitness and nutrition is a game of like, how long are you actually in the game?

[00:43:28] And most people leave the game prematurely because they get burnt out or frustrated, or they’ve been given unrealistic expectations of how quickly they should change, and they think like their body’s broken or their metabolism is broken, or their hormones are broken. It’s all a bunch of bullshit. And when people think that, of course they’re gonna quit because it’s learned helplessness.

[00:43:53] It’s apathy. Like ignoring the psychology of how we act is just ignoring what it’s going to take for all of the great nutrition, science, and all of the great physiology to actually work your giant as a coach or your job as a coach. Is to be able to create a connection and a plan that gives you the longest time possible to succeed.

[00:44:17] Because the thing that no one wants to talk about is these long-term changes take time, right? Our bodies didn’t change overnight either. It’s the part, everyone talks about how clearly they want to change, but people didn’t get to their current state in one or two months. They usually did it repeatedly over years or in some cases, decades, and then they want to undo that within one or two months.

[00:44:41] Now you can create that context for people, but then that might even make them feel like you’re blaming them. Instead, if you know that reality and you know it’s going to take time, the question isn’t like, how do I trick them into giving me more time? Because it’s not about tricking them. The question is, how do I work with them?

[00:45:01] So that they will give me more time so that they can see the results that they want, and then they stick with me so they can keep on making progress.

[00:45:11] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. To me, one of my little phrases I like is it’s just the day in and day out. Violent consistency, right? Just like it. And then you’ve got the whole other part of the internet that drives me insane of it’s just calories in, calories out, and that’s all that matters.

[00:45:25] And if they were truly in a caloric deficit, I’m like, Of course that’s true. But then what do you expect someone who is, let’s say, white maintenance at 1300 calories to just what white knuckle it the rest of their life, like that’s a completely unrealistic expectation. Yeah. Yes, I agree that if they did that, would it work?

[00:45:44] Probably, yes, of course it would work, but you’re not rigging the system in their favor. You’re actually setting them up to fail, and then your only hammer you have is just to yell at ’em about calories. No wonder they quit.

[00:45:59] Adam Borstein: Someone wants to live in a prison of their own making. Yeah. And you don’t have to, you if you choose to, if that’s your like personal zone of genius, if that’s your happiness place and there are people like that, sure.

[00:46:15] Great. But for the average person, That isn’t gonna work and that’s not what we have to sell. We don’t have to tell people that this is what it takes to be healthier. And again, it’s even a lot of people have misaligned behaviors with misaligned goals. Like you said, they just want to be healthier.

[00:46:35] They want to be able to eat some of the foods that they love. They want to be able to feel strong and be capable and play with their kids or live longer. Most people aren’t looking to be stage ready, but they’re trying to follow a plan designed to make them stage ready and like when people are able to find out what they’re able to do, the type of foods that they can eat, the type of consistency that is required.

[00:47:00] Which isn’t necessarily seven days in the gym. I would argue it’s not, that is actually counterintuitive, right? It, they see things differently, but going into it, they believe that what it takes to be healthy is something very different than what they actually need to do. But that’s because of what they’ve been told repeatedly over and over again.

[00:47:22] It’s one extreme, one restriction after another that paints this picture. Of sacrifice and suffering and honestly, just a short term nature. And it’s not an easy game to win when like the majority of messages out there are like pushing one narrative, right? Like we’re the ones that sound crazy.

[00:47:43] What I can beat thin and eat chocolate. That sounds more gimmicky than cut out all carbs. Detox once every month. Intermittent fast rest of your life. Never touch sugar. Trying to avoid all inflammation. Wear a cgm so your blood glucose never fluctuates, even though blood glucose fluctuations, postprandial is completely normal.

[00:48:05] Yeah. It like we create these confines, that, that stuff sounds like healthy and normal and like eating takeout or dessert every now and then. Is the idea that it’s batshit crazy? What, how. That’s so weird. Like one seems more practical and doable. The other one seems very extreme.

[00:48:25] But the extreme is the healthy and normal and the practical. And doable is like the insane, no, like we just the industry’s just got it twisted and that’s because one is easier to sell or like eating takeout and, telling people they can have dessert every now and then isn’t even selling.

[00:48:42] There’s, I don’t have anything to sell you. I have a life that you want to live. It’s the joke that I make in the book that everyone diet want. Every diet wants to say that they’re a lifestyle, but few diets ever take the time to ask people what they want their life to look like, and that’s what it should start with.

[00:48:59] What do you want in your life to look like? Just like you said, the Ben House thing. What’s the exercise that you want in here? What’s the one dessert that you want to have in there? Let’s build around those things and then there will be other sacrifices. We can’t have everything, but if you feel you’re getting some of the stuff that you want.

[00:49:16] You’re gonna be satisfied, and when you are satisfied, you’re going to be more consistent. And when you’re going to be more consistent, you’re gonna see better results. And when you have better results, you’re gonna be more motivated. When you be, be more motivated, you’re going to make more positive change.

[00:49:28] And when you make more positive change, you’re going to be able to take on more difficult challenges. And when you take on more difficult challenges, you’re going to eventually get to the point where you are very consistent. To the point that you can tackle things that you once thought were impossible.

[00:49:41] But if you unravel that and get back to the beginning, you have to ask shuffle, where did all of that start? And it didn’t start from this place of extremes and craziness and friction and yelling at people or any of that started from some someplace much simpler, much more basic and much more likely to succeed.

[00:50:02] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And even the culture is just so weird cuz I posted pictures of. Eating two Pop-Tarts and drinking a beer after kite boarding. And the amount of emails I would get usually from people within the industry, 99% of the time people, I barely even know who they are, right? People like, what are you doing posting this?

[00:50:21] You idiot. You’re the nutrition person and you’re in the public and you’re posting this. I’m like, one. It was something I did after riding for three hours. Two, I’m not worried about it. Three, I don’t have any health issues with it. And four. Eh, if I do that on occasion, great. That’s what I like doing.

[00:50:37] Adam Borstein: It was awesome and I love, it was great and I enjoyed it, right? Yeah. Why is it that people think that you can’t do the thing that the idea that being healthy means you can’t do things you enjoy? Correct. Is broken? Oh, a hundred percent. You, your health plan, your diet, your workouts should enable you to do things that you enjoy.

[00:51:06] Yes. And that does include eating foods that have no health value. It does include going to social events, right? Being. Socially connected people. Yes, food is a shared experience. It is a social experience. People can demonize and rail against it, but it’s true. It’s a cultural experience. And if you look culturally at people who live long, they are socially connected, and it’s okay to bond over food.

[00:51:31] It doesn’t mean that you’re eating like an asshole every single meal, but it does mean that if you go out and eat with other people or you do have the occasional celebratory meal, or you do. Want to just indulge a little. That’s one of the healthiest things you can do if you enjoy it. Yeah. If you don’t enjoy it, don’t do it.

[00:51:52] Yeah. But if you enjoy it and you never do it, One, you’re probably gonna be miserable. Yes.

[00:51:58] Dr Mike T Nelson: Most people are not fun to be around. We all know them.

[00:52:01] Adam Borstein: You’re gonna find your way back to that behavior. It’s no different than people are like, oh, is keto good? And I’m like, keto can work for you, but sure.

[00:52:07] I wanna ask you a real simple question. Do you love pasta? Yeah. Do you love Brett? Are these things that like you really don’t want to let go of? If so, Don’t do keto. Yeah, do it. But I’m gonna tell you what’s happening. You’re gonna be craving these foods so much that there are so many other diets that can deliver similar outcomes.

[00:52:30] And I think the mechanistic stuff is so interesting that you were talking about before, but the mechanistic stuff should just give you an indicator of what is important. People obsess over like, how do I, get more dopamine? Or how do I increase fat loss? Or how do I boost autophagy?

[00:52:46] And then we get over obsessive about one way to do it. Yeah. Okay. You want more autophagy? You can just resistance train. You don’t need to fast. You can if you want to, but you don’t need to fast because there are other ways to create this environment that gives your body healthy outcomes.

[00:53:06] So I say if you know what type of health outcomes or what mechanisms you’re trying to trigger, Find all the options that are on the table and pick the ones that seem right for you because we need to, again, add healthy behaviors, but we don’t need to become so obsessive and act like one is so much better than the other, or one is the only way.

[00:53:26] Right? There are multiple ways to slice and dice and patch together a puzzle of health, and it doesn’t require you to buy in to one style of living.

[00:53:38] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Mind as of an article I wrote years ago called weevil Nutrition, you’re probably old enough to remember those little weevil wobbles where you push them.

[00:53:44] Yep. And they like keep coming back to neutral. My argument was same to what you’re saying is that you’re gonna have these social experiences, it’s gonna push you one direction, but if you’ve built up an intelligent system and you’re more resilient, you’ve got better, physical capacity, all the stuff we talk about in fitness.

[00:54:02] You just come back to neutral and you go about your life. It’s not really that big of a deal, but we need to build those capacities into you to make sure that you have them so that you get back to neutral faster and you just go about your life and it wasn’t really that big of a deal. And oh and shocker, you might have actually enjoyed your social dinner.

[00:54:24] Instead of worried that, oh my God, I’m not eating like organic kale for dinner tonight. What’s gonna happen to me?

[00:54:29] Adam Borstein: That’s the thing, when you get in those situations and you eat it the next day, don’t act like you did anything wrong. Yeah. Screw up that people make is thinking that there’s no freedom or flexibility to do behaviors that do not have like implicit health benefits.

[00:54:48] The screw up is thinking that you screwed up. It’s that dieting circle of hell. It’s the moment you eat dessert, it’s the moment you miss a workout where you then shift yourself into an extreme compensatory behavior, right? It is it’s the slingshot, right? I talk about the idea of you create a little bit of tension.

[00:55:06] You think you screwed up and you keep on pulling back and creating more attention until you snap. When you do these things, you should act like they are normal. You should not act like you screwed up, not mentally, not physically. You do not need to offset every behavior. Every action does not need an equal and opposite reaction because you need to zoom out and see the bigger picture.

[00:55:28] It is about what you do most consistently, not about what you do infrequently. Those f infrequent aberrations are just that. They’re an aberration. They’re a programmed part of the experience. We are trained to believe that when we eat sugar or have takeout, that we have fallen off the wagon. And I would argue that’s part of the ride.

[00:55:53] Oh, definitely. It’s on the right program. So when that happens, don’t do anything different. Eat the way you normally do the next day, get back to your normal workout. You don’t need to go to an extreme that then suddenly actually takes you on a whole new path that makes you more likely to actually crash because you’re gonna burn out.

[00:56:13] Do the small things that you can do repeatedly that are consistent. Occasionally, ever now doing things that you enjoy, and that’s the concept of balance. It’s not equal. It’s not like an equal amount of like unhealthy and healthy meals. No. You’re eating many more healthy meals. It’s not an equal amount of like inactive and inactive days.

[00:56:33] No, you’re being active much more often, but a piece of the pie is going to be those days because. That is what keeps you psychologically dialed in. That is what physiologically keeps you being consistent. And that is what sustainably allows you to do something for a long enough period that no matter what diet plan you’re on, you, no matter what workout you’re on, you’re going to see results.

[00:56:56] And we see that in the research. We’ve seen it when we did the Diet Super Bowl where they compared the low carb, low pack to vegan, to weight watchers to zone type diet. And what was the outcome? They all worked. And what mattered was like, how long could people actually stick to a plan? So instead of thinking that you need to, assign yourself a dietary tribe, find the diet that seems like it’s the best fit for you, and then put yourself within an environment that allows you to follow up for the longest period of time, cuz that’s the one that’s most likely to deliver the results you want.

[00:57:29] Dr Mike T Nelson: Awesome. Thank you so much for your book. It’s called You Can’t Screw This Up, and I know it was a nine year process to get it published and . I loved about it is you’re trying to do something that’s very positive. It’s all on, okay, do this. Not, oh, avoid this, avoid that.

[00:57:46] It’s like you’re telling people in a more positive direction what to do, which I think is something the industry as a whole definitely needs a lot more of and not the. Fear and shaming and all the short term stuff that, like you said, it works. Yeah, but not for long term gains. I, where can people find the book?

[00:58:06] Adam Borstein: You can find it anywhere. People sell books. You can also go to, cantscrewthisup.com. So you drop the U from the title. cantscrewthisup.com That’s where you can find more about the book. Any retailer, Amazon, all of that. Or you can always find me on social media at Born fitness.

[00:58:22] Dr Mike T Nelson: Awesome. Thank you so much for all your time today, and thank you for doing the book and put it out in the world, and I would highly encourage people to check it out and thank you once again. Appreciate it. Thanks, Mike. Cool. See you buddy.

[00:58:33] [00:58:36] Dr Mike T Nelson: Thank you so much for listening to the podcast today. Huge thanks to Adam for coming on the podcast. I’ve followed his work for a long time, so it was great to chat with him.

[00:58:48] Virtually highly recommend his book. You can’t screw this up as the name of the book. You can get it over at, can’t screw this up.com. We’ll definitely put a link down below and it’s really well done. And as we talked about in the podcast, I’m like that it’s based on a positive aspect of what to do within a flexible framework.

[00:59:12] It’s not the typical fear-based short-term goals only. And if you have people who. Have had some issues with dieting and not reaching their goals, I would highly recommend that you send them this book. It’s also Adam’s a great writer on top of having a solid information there, so I highly recommend you check out the book no affiliate disclosures or anything on that, just a standard link below.

[00:59:39] You can get it there and if you enjoy using a more. Flexible framework, which as you talked about in the podcast, we both agree is the best approach. Check out the Flex Diet certification. This is a complete flexible framework system to have you coach clients with nutrition and rec and recovery. We cover everything from exercise to the macronutrients, protein, carbohydrates, fats, micronutrition, fasting, some talk about keto sleep, and many more.

[01:00:10] Go to flex diet.com FL E X D I E t.com. If you’re listening to this one, this podcast went live. It is still open. Right now through Monday, June 12th, 2023. So you can still get in on this round. It won’t be open again until probably in fall 2023. If you’re listening outside of that time period, you can still go to the same website, flexive.com and get on the wait list for the next time that it opens.

[01:00:42] So Flex Diet Cert is based on the eight interventions as we talked about. Using the concepts of metabolic flexibility and flexible dining. So not only are you setting up a flexible system that is easier for clients to do, setting them up with winds to have a positive direction to go, you are literally making their physiology more metabolically flexible.

[01:01:07] So then once they’re released into the wild and have social engagements, it is going to be easier. For them to stay within the system. The other last part that’s beneficial is someone who is more metabolically healthy. They are actually more metabolically flexible. So to me, metabolic flexibility is a marker of metabolic health on topping, helping them reach their performance and body comp goals.

[01:01:33] And of course, I’m biased because I’m the one who created the flex diet cert. So go to flexdiet.com for all the information. Huge thanks to Adam for being on the podcast. Again, highly recommend you check out his book. You can’t screw this up. We’ve got links to the Flex Diet Cert and the book below.

[01:01:51] If you enjoyed this podcast and you have someone who may enjoy it, please forward it to them or you can link to it on social media. Please tag Adam and myself so we can go there and say thank you for that. Again, always appreciate your time listening to the podcast. Anything else you would like to see please contact me and let me know.

[01:02:11] Thank you so much. Talk to you next week.

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