Episode 200: How to Coach Clients From Athletes to Gen Pop Using Macros and More: An interview with Eve Guzman

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[00:00:00] Dr Mike T Nelson: Welcome back to the Flex Diet Podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Mike T. Nelson, and today on the podcast we’ve got a special guest, Eve Guzman, and we’re talking about coaching. And this is geared more towards people who have a lot of weight to lose. What should they be doing? Should they be doing something different with step count lifting, macronutrients and all of the above.

Eve has an amazing story of losing over half her body weight and just super motivating. She works with a lot of other coaches and clients right now. So we get into her story, which I think you will really enjoy. And if you know someone who has a fair amount of weight to lose, I think this will be useful.

Also, if you’re a coach, I think some of the strategies and the tips and techniques that she shares will also be super useful. And this podcast is brought to you by myself. You can just go to mike t nelson.com and you’ll be able to find ways to get onto the new. And the Fitness Insider Newsletter there that I write is where most of my content goes out right now.

And no cost to join. I’m leaving. Give you a cool little free gift there. Different opt-ins from micronutrients to learning more about items in the Flex Diet Cert and everything else. So go to miketnelson.com. Get onto the newsletter. Drop me a note there just to say hi and enjoy this podcast with Eve Guzman.

[00:01:45] Dr Mike T Nelson: Welcome back to the Flex Diet Podcast, and I’m here today with our Guest Eve and we got to meet in person at the Real Coaches Summit. Man, a couple weeks ago now, isn’t it?

It feels like a, I texted a ramen, told them that I’m still in hibernation cause I’ve been sleeping like nine plus hours a night.

[00:02:05] Eve Guzman: Yeah, it feels like it was like two sleeps ago, like a couple of blinks, but yeah, a couple of weeks and you come back, you hit the ground running, but still tired.

[00:02:16] Dr Mike T Nelson: And it was an awesome event. And what was your talk about there? Unfortunately, we both were presenting at literally the exact same time. Both times. So I sent my wife to your talk, but obviously I couldn’t make it cause I was doing my talk during yours .

[00:02:29] Eve Guzman: I know I talked to my husband about that last night.

I was like, I still didn’t get to hear a talk cause we talk at the same time. But yeah, my talk topic was about obesity and helping coaches that are working with clients that have a lot of weight to. It was called a lot to lose.

[00:02:45] Dr Mike T Nelson: Got it. And what generally do you use as a cutoff for that? Do you have one or in terms of just kind of body weight or how would you narrow

[00:02:57] Eve Guzman: down Oh, going by bmi.

Yeah, going by like the classification of 30.0 b m i above being obese. And then it breaks down into obesity levels of like severity of one, two, and three. Which myself at one point I was in the severe category with a 52 B M I.

[00:03:16] Dr Mike T Nelson: Oh, wow. That’s crazy. Do you find, and this is a almost a rhetorical question, but so I have a lot of friends who work in medical, and if you look at the medical industry in general, there’s like case reports now of, people not fitting in MRIs, not being able to get imaging and not being able to do some procedures.

Like they had to redesign some of the medical tables, like stuff that you. I would say probably don’t think about per se, a lot of times. Yeah. And I would assume this is matching what you’ve seen working with people, and I would imagine that this is another form of a stressor, added on to all the other things that they’re dealing with too.

[00:04:02] Eve Guzman: Yeah, absolutely. Like we have had clients that have had to attempt to travel to get, scans and get procedures done like that, making the cost higher for travel getting them done in facilities where the pricing of using that. Equipment is going to be maybe 20% more than those that have less than a 30.0 B m I.

And then like, how are they getting there? Is it so far that they need to drive? And then you have clients that are needing to book two seats on the plane. We’ve had a lot of clients that have started with us and they didn’t have access to a scale to even tell us they’re starting. and we’ve had some tell us that they’ve went to places to weigh themselves where they do like industrial shipping, like places that are weighing things that are 3, 4, 500 pounds so that they can get on the scale.

And being ashamed of having to find places where they can go. Just say, Hey, can I hop on your scale? Because there aren’t a lot of doctor’s offices even that can support weighing people. Of that weight. And then they have to go to obesity centers in their area sometimes to get on scales. So it’s definitely a lot of things that a lot of people, a lot of coaches don’t think about.

If you haven’t been there, that’s not your personal

[00:05:22] Dr Mike T Nelson: experience. Yeah. And last thing I would add too is just even just general risk for medical procedures. So my sister works as a nurse Anes anesthesiologist. A C rna and it’s just harder when you have, people that are larger. Cause the metabolism is different.

You’ve got some drugs can be stored in fat. You’ve got people where they may have airway compromised issues just laying down, a lot of people have sleep apnea on top of it. And so now you’re gonna put ’em in a procedure and put ’em under anesthetic. And yeah, just a lot of general other risks that I think a lot of times people probably don’t think about.

[00:06:02] Eve Guzman: Yeah, I think a lot of people, they think of things like maybe someone that is this size is a good candidate for weight loss or bariatric surgery because there’s just such an immediate need to get the weight down so they can have higher quality of life. Be able to do things like take a 10 minute walk be able to do things like take a shower, wash their hair, and not get exhausted.

Cuz it can be exhausting for people like that. , but sleep apnea is like a huge issue. So I’ve lost a lot of weight. My husband has also lost about 125 pounds. He did a sleep study where he literally died 42 times in his sleep when he did a study. Oh, yes. 42 times he stopped breathing. A lot of the times when people are thinking, oh, this surgery, this fix, we can try this again.

Like you’re saying, some of those things aren’t available to them because it’s not safe enough for them to even enter into the surgical rooms.

[00:06:59] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And tell us a little bit about your story, which is pretty crazy, where you started and where you ended up, and how you got to doing what you’re doing.

[00:07:08] Eve Guzman: Yeah, so I faced a lifetime of obesity, I would say around 20 years 20 years plus. I think when I finally got into the overweight category, I was seven or eight years old. I had no clue. I even thought about this when I talked about at the summit, we didn’t even have full length mirrors in our.

Oh wow. So seeing myself like above my waist was all I saw. And so I wasn’t like looking back at myself in a full length mirror and I don’t know how popular those were in the eighties anyway, . But I don’t remember like looking at myself and going, Hey Eve, you’re chubby. At seven, eight years old.

But kids definitely let me know. , once I got to about nine years old where, kids became more vocal kids are stepping into their personalities. You’ve got the people that are gonna be the ones that are like, come sit with us. And then you’ve got your bullies that are ex. Expressing their selves and whatever.

So I quickly found out before elementary school was over that I was overweight. By the time I got to middle school, I was about 150, 160 pounds. I’m only five one as an adult. So I was definitely short and wide and chubby and hopefully no one listening gets triggered by those words. That’s where I was.

I’m not to offend but by the time I got to high school, I was 200 pounds college, I was 225 pounds and my highest documented weight, again, because of not having a scale that could go high enough. And that’s when we didn’t have the cool digital scales. We just had the old school little spring thing in there that would, yeah, you follow the needle, you step on and it goes woo.

Right away. The large, the highest documented weight that I saw was 278 pounds. Oh. So I know I got close to 300 pounds. I was in my young twenties, I was wearing the larger size pants that you could buy, size 24 for women. I was starting to wear elastic pull on pants where all the other kids in college were wearing whatever cool jeans everybody was buying.

You know how it goes when you’re that age. Everybody’s trying to look their best and party and hang out. and I was almost 300 pounds wearing elastic waist, pull on. And it was me not being able to find clothing that I could fit. That made me say, okay, like it’s time to get over this. Stop making excuses.

I was sick and tired of being sick and tired and I was like, I gotta figure out how to lose this weight. And that’s when I entered into the world of like exercise. I was doing meal replacement, things like SlimFast, weight Watchers, all of the. Blah foods, to get that calorie control. And then over the years, it eventually led to calorie tracking and macro tracking.

But I lost 120 pounds in 16 months. And I lost a little under half my body weight, just a, I think 20 pounds under half of my body weight. And I started my first Instagram account 2013 to kinda showcase. Yep. I You’re early on . Yeah, I was like right when it started, I had no clue what I was doing.

So the following I have now did not exist. Nobody knew I was on there. And that’s when I really started switching from doing all cardio to strength training. My husband’s okay you are complaining about this skinny fat look that you have after losing weight. He’s you got no muscle, you’ve gotta lift.

And I’m like, I am lifting and I have five pound dumbbells at home. The pink, I’m doing . Yeah. Billy Blank’s workouts when you punch the weights in the air, almost jazzer size. And he’s you gotta lift some. So started

[00:10:46] Dr Mike T Nelson: my, I’ve seen your husband. He’s a big dude, man. Yeah. He, I can see him being like, yes, lift weights,

[00:10:51] Eve Guzman: Yeah. He, yeah, he’s a, yeah, he was defensive line. So he knew what he was talking about. Yeah. Yeah. The science back then of what we needed to do, he just was like, do it. So I created the Instagram account to showcase me, plugging along, trying to learn how to squad and, I went from squatting , probably 30 pounds on my back.

I got up to my highest of 245 pounds. Nice. But I ended up losing the last 20 pounds and I lost half my body weight. Officially. I tagged all of my posts on Instagram, half her size. It was hashtag half her size on everything. And it was because I was inspired to get into People Magazine. And they do an issue every year of people that have lost like incredible amounts of weight.

And that was the thing that was like the carrot dangling in front of me to wanna lose the weight. I’m like, if they can lose 1 50, 200, 2 30, I can lose half my weight. And so I tagged all my photos 2013 through 2014. And People magazine found. They were like, Hey, we want you to be in our magazine. And I was like, what the hell?

I thought was a joke. , they emailed me, they ca, they got my phone number, they called and they said, we’ve been watching you on Instagram and we’ve seen your whole journey of losing the weight and we want you to be in our magazine. Can we interview you? And that’s really how my career took off. I ended up in the magazine in 2015 and people just started DMing me, can you help me?

Can you help me? At that time I was working as a supervisor. And pharmaceutical research for a clinical pathology and genetic tox lab. And I was like, why not? So on the side I started with like meal plans and then eventually, like one time macro counts and then it progressed into full-blown coaching and here I am today.

And it was all cuz I lost a lot of weight. Wow.

[00:12:52] Dr Mike T Nelson: That’s awesome. Congratulations. That’s amazing. Thanks. What was there a. So I’m always fascinated by this, like when I worked a little bit more in the past with general population and, some of ’em were, had a fair amount of weight to lose. One guy I think the biggest client ever worked with, he had I think about 80 pounds to lose at one point.

, and I’m always fascinated. But even if you don’t have that much to lose, like what the thought pattern of, and I’ll always ask them this when they come in, this is when I did in person, I was like, so what made you come in? It’s not like you gain 80 pounds over, a couple days. It’s been a long term process, but yet there’s always usually that one thing that was like, okay, that’s it, that’s enough.

I’m gonna go do this now. My dad was a smoker for many years. Tried to quit numerous times, like same story with, people who smoke and then one day he just, He got really sick. He didn’t smoke for five days and he is that’s it, I’m done. It’s like 1987, never smoked another cigarette again.

So I’m always fascinated by this cuz it, you have the change that’s very slow and the BJ fog, the tiny habits and habit stacking and all that definitely works. There’s a tons of great data audit, but then you’ve got people who literally almost got hit by a lightning bolt overnight and it was like, that’s it, I’m done.

I’m doing this. And then they stay with it. It, they don’t fal, or, excuse me. Excuse me. Falter. So I’m curious if it was more of a tiny habits things over time or if something changed at one point or what was the

[00:14:23] Eve Guzman: turning point? For me, it was the second, it was like the lightning bolt of this has to change.

And for me it was because I didn’t feel like a regular person or an average person. , I felt like I was hiding in a body that wasn’t mine. I felt like I was smart, I was educated, I was outgoing, but I was like literally snuffing my personality like. Blowing out the candle of who I was because I was ashamed of being a bigger person.

So I didn’t apply for promotions. I didn’t try to go into leadership. I didn’t try to be the outgoing one in a friend circle. I spent like 20 years trying to just blend in. And for me it was like, damn, I’m sick of Not feeling like I’m living. Like it was almost pushing me into depression and that’s where I would’ve ultimately, been.

But it was just like, man, this is this is a very sad life to live where I’m just hiding. and I don’t want to stand out and people notice how big I am. And once I got to the point where I couldn’t find clothing that I could wear to just feel like a normal 20 something for me like that, was it Clients that we have applied to work with us, it’s in that same category.

A lot of them are more like, okay, I’m absolutely changing now, and it’s like their day one first step. They haven’t even been working on other things. So a lot of the times, I can’t find anything to wear. I’m ashamed. I cannot fill, fit in a seat on a plane, and I haven’t been on a vacation with my husband in 15 years.

Those are the ones that really get me, like they’re not even going anywhere to just celebrate and live their life. And another big one, two of the other big ones are. A relative really close to them. Typically an aunt, a uncle, a mom, dad’s sister, has died because of something related to obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, and they see that happening for them or they’ve gotten their own recent test results.

Talking about. Outcomes that may reduce the life expectancy for them and them leaving their people behind, their friends, their family. It’s usually those four things that we see the most with people that have a goal of losing, 75, 80 pounds plus. Those are their why, of why I’m going to start.

And of course they’ve probably tried some other things, but when you get the people that are like, this is it, and they just go all in and they, this is like the first day of the rest of their life of them not falling off. I see those four reasons mostly.

[00:17:06] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And I always find it fascinating that it, you can tell me if you agree with this or not, that it’s a logical thing that happens, but it’s usually associated with a profound feeling and sense.

Yes, because I think a lot of times we spent, I’m a hundred percent guilty of this, especially with early clients, of me being Mr. Engineer. Way too logical, dude, . But I think back on, one thing in particular, I, for a while I got into power lifting and I was like, ah, cardio, it’s stupid. You don’t need to do it.

You just need to eat more. And so I went up and weighed, was doing my PhD, stopped doing cardio for a year. And I remember I worked at a med tech company, this is years ago. Walking in with my cooler full of food in my backpack and going up two flights of stairs and being like completely out of breath.

And then I went and looked at all my lifts and I’m like, my lifts haven’t gotten substantially better. I’ve just gotten fatter. And now I got winded by a second flight of stairs. This is horrible. And at that point I was like, I’m never lied. My cardiovascular conditioning to get that low again, it’ll fluctuate.

Yeah, like it’ll go up and down, but if somebody told me that, I would’ve been like, yeah, whatever. That’s just a sad , I don’t buy it. But there’s something profound about the, a certain sensation that just seems to stick with you, that you remember that can be the impetus to change.

[00:18:23] Eve Guzman: Yeah, I think, I think you’ve described it perfectly, like I remember that being almost 300 pounds going up the stairs, kneeling down to play with my daughter and barely being able to get up.

I couldn’t even lunge my old body, my own body weight. I still remember that stuff.

[00:18:41] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Do you, when you’re going through the process, did you find you reflected back on that point as. A negative not to go back or was there something more positive? What I generally find is it sometimes humans do more to avoid a negative than they do to get a positive.

So remember for me, remembering that state was like, oh, this is horrible. Okay. Yeah. I hate doing cardio, but I’m definitely going to still go do it.

[00:19:11] Eve Guzman: Yeah. For me it was yes, trying to stay away from the negative feelings, the negative place, the negative physical things that I was going through. Like I get asked that all the time what keeps you from falling off?

It’s literally how I felt then. Like how small, how unimportant. How I just wasn’t seen at all. And then not being able to keep up, like the life that I have now is so amazing compared to how I felt then. And I’m so grateful that I have this life. The ability to move, the ability to be able to maintain my weight, get stronger, do fun things, not freak out when someone’s Hey, when you visit, let’s go for a hike.

I couldn’t have done any of that stuff back then. So tho Yeah, it’s definitely staying away from the negatives. .

[00:20:02] Dr Mike T Nelson: How does that work when you, cause obviously you coach lots and lots of women you have for many years. Probably guys too. , how do you phrase that when you worked with them? Because one of my biggest mistakes early on I made was.

Someone would come in and they’d say, I’m way overweight. This happened. This was the negative thing that kind of propelled them forward. I poo pooed it because I didn’t want ’em to feel bad, right? I wanted to try to be Mr. Positive, Mr. You know, cheerleader. And then later I was talking to my friend, Dr.

Lisa Lewis, and I realized oh, I might be taking away the thing that’s causing them to actually make a real change this time. I don’t wanna be the opposite and be, Mr. Like, oh, remember this time this horrible thing happened, you make him feel worse. But yet, I don’t wanna be the sort of the release valve of the pressure of change either.

Does that make sense? Like how do you work? I tried

[00:20:55] Eve Guzman: to around that, like me in the middle a little bit. I try to really focus on the like non-scale victories they’ve made. More in the way of, remember when we started this was like how much you were lifting and how much you were doing, and look how much, look how far we’ve gotten with progressive overloading.

More of what we are working on in the program versus all the things they listed on. Their application. Cuz I don’t wanna take away from them thinking about the, I’m worrying about, not making it 15 more years. I’m wondering who’s gonna take care of my parents cuz I’m taking care of them. I’m the breadwinner.

What happens if I can’t work? But I try to focus on. Where we started with the things we’re working on, water, fiber, macros, lifting, rest reducing caffeine, whatever those are. And I try to let them pick up some of the more life things that they told me initially in our discovery call, pre-start calls application.

So I do want them to really recognize how much progress they’ve made. Because you know how it is on social media. Yeah. , everybody’s watching their. Top 10 favorite people, whether you wanna call them influencers or not. And they’re comparing their progress to, what their favorite aesthetically looking people are.

And they can take for granted, like some of these changes they’re making are huge. And the person that you really are looking up to, it maybe took them eight years to put on the muscle they have. It’s not happening in. 30, not a 30 day, but like a 90 day program. It’s not going to happen. It’s going to take years.

But I try to remind them of the wins, but also leave them room to think about some of those other things and me not steal that from them.

[00:22:40] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, and I think that’s hard because you only see the wins on social media now and everything appears to be forced into. Sort of the present and then the comparison.

And I know for myself, like even with some of my clients, like the, when they made the most progress is when they actually stopped comparing themselves to everybody else. Yep. I remember having a conversation with Buddy Adam Glass, good buddy of mine. We did a group product together. I remember asking ’em, I said, Hey Adam, you’ve coached a lot of people.

You’ve done, training for years. Have you ever had a discussion with a client who has said, Hey Adam, this is great. I’m so excited about the progress I’m making. I think I’m good. It’s no, she’s it doesn’t matter how fast their progress is. Every person on an individual level believes it’s not fast enough.

Like even people who are just crazy outlier, just weirdo responders to the same thing you do with other people. Yeah. It’s just fascinating how the brain is so wired that even if you’re doing really good, You think, oh, I could just be doing just a little

[00:23:45] Eve Guzman: bit better . Yeah. And I think that is only going to get worse because.

Technology, availability of everything is changing. We can Uber eat food to our house. We can Amazon Prime, like people want their results. Amazon Prime type of status. They want it to happen overnight. They see 30 day challenges and people get an incredible result, but they don’t know. That’s probably one out of 1000 people that go through their program.

It’s nothing’s fast enough, nothing’s good enough, and. It might only get worse. Yeah, it might only get worse. . So coaches, if you’re listening it does take a lot of time and like your clients will go through a period of learning how to practice patience. It’s never fast enough . It never

[00:24:35] Dr Mike T Nelson: is. Yeah. And I think that’s so hard and I think you do a good job with that of pointing ’em back to what are the wins.

And then again, that’s one of the mistakes I made early on. Yeah. I’d ask him like, Hey, what’s your top three goals in? That’s all I measured. I didn’t measure anything else, and I realized that, oops, I goofed up. I should be measuring things that we can see progress session to session, week to week, month to month may not be necessarily body weight.

Body fats even harder to measure. If you look at body composition. , and then look at the process of what they’re doing. Cool. You made it to the gym three times this week. Great. Ah, but I didn’t make the fourth. Like the fourth session was optional last year. You didn’t make it to the gym at all.

Yeah. But it is to remind them of, like you said, the progress that they’ve made. So it pulls ’em out of, oh, but I didn’t make it to the fourth session, or I had to leave early than one day. It’s but no you’re better than what you were before. So that’s good. Like you’re you’re making progress and going in the right direction. Yep. Absolutely. You find that’s A hard sell at time. Cuz to me, I think that’s a huge benefit of having someone like yourself, having a coach who is, yes, they’re biased because they want to see you get a result, but they’re also not you. Yeah.

So they can give you objective feedback and I think it’s harder for you to argue with them that it’s not true. Where I think it’s easier to just lie to yourself.

[00:26:02] Eve Guzman: Oh yeah. I totally agree. And then again, the way fitness and nutrition programs are marketed and dieting culture, a lot of the times they don’t look at that as progress because they see other people working out five, six days in the gym they, this was like super popular.

2017 to 2020. The hashtag like no days off. Oh yeah. People start a program. I think some people. Aren’t even starting with a coach or a group coaching program because they’re fearful of all the things they think they have to be doing seven days a week. They don’t even get started. They think they’re supposed to be lifting five days a week.

I had a comment on my post yesterday and it was like saying how much weight, they said, I’m 47 and I have 80 pounds or something to lose. Is it okay for me to start with strength training? Or she said, where should I start? And I’m like, Two days of strength training and walking 5K steps.

Perfect. If you’re not doing anything, let’s just start there. Some people won’t even inquire to start a program with any kind of coach because the way fitness is being marketed online and you’ve got your like buff buffs and fitness in both asth athletic people saying I live five to six days a week, but that’s not really what general population.

Maybe doing when they start. So when they get to three consistent days per week and they start the program in their head, they’re like, it’s not enough. And I’m like, they don’t understand. I only live four days a week now. I used to lift five to six days a week when I was competing. It was horrendous how much cardio, how much training I was doing.

I’m doing an amazing job at four days per week and I love it and I’m getting stronger because I’m also more focused. I’m getting more recovery. Some days I’ll do five, but I’m not even wanting more than that. And this is like great for me for life balance. And when I tell clients that, they’re like, I don’t have to work out five days a week to start.

And I’m like, let’s get you to So to two solid days per

[00:28:16] Dr Mike T Nelson: week. Yeah. And. I probably failed to communicate in this message myself is that the people who are general population from the outside looking in, it’s easy to forget. This is like what we do as a career. Like I sit around and freaking read research for fun, like I converted my garage to a gym so I can lift more and more often because I’m a fanatic weirdo.

Yeah. Like the reality is, could I cut my lifting times by. 50% and I probably may only lose like 10% of the results. Really? And like I’m at the point where it’s incredibly non-linear, right? . Yeah. But people on the outside looking in are like, oh, they’re doing this, they’re doing that, and this professional athletes doing whatever.

I’m like, dude, that person’s a legit professional athlete. They’re getting paid millions of dollars a year. They don’t have another job. They don’t have kids. Hell, most of ’em don’t even have pets, right? . This is all they do. And they can justify it because that is their income. That is their income stream.

That doesn’t mean that’s what you have to do. Yeah. And I think that’s just like a huge disconnect because the brain just thinks it’s linear, right? It’s oh man, if I eve told me to do two days a week, and I know if I did four days a week, I’d get twice the results. It’s no, you won’t

They’re like, but that doesn’t make any sense. . .

[00:29:34] Eve Guzman: Yeah, it’s

[00:29:35] Dr Mike T Nelson: definitely. So where do you have people start? Would, do you have them start with cardio? Do you have ’em start with steps? Do you have ’em? Start with so let’s say, where would you have ’em start with exercise and where would you have ’em start on nutrition.

[00:29:47] Eve Guzman: So with exercise, I like to get a baseline where they’re at with walking. So most Americans are only walking three to 4,000 steps per day. And if you’re a coach listening, it’ll depend on are you coaching general population? Are you coaching people that have one year’s fitness experience? But the average right now is three to 4,000 steps, and sedentary is 5k.

So I’m wanting to get people to at least 5K steps per week, and I wanna shoot to make a 10 to 20% increase every couple weeks. My goal would ultimately be to get general population people. Whether they’re overweight or obese, up to eight k steps per day. Once I get them to about five to six K steps per day, then we’ll start implementing them getting to two lifting days per week.

So that may be two full body, that might be one push, one pool day depending on their experience, and then progressing up to what’s gonna fit their lifestyle. Because there’s some people that aren’t gonna be able to do four to five days per week, but we do like to get a lot of our clients to four lifting days per week and then watching their steps versus their lifting.

If am I adding more lifting? And now their steps are actually decreasing because they’re sore, they’re tired. And finding that G, that good balance in between there. But that’s where we’ll typically start. A lot of people think they’re gonna start with 10 K steps, four workout. .

[00:31:19] Dr Mike T Nelson: If you’re new, it’s 10,000 a week.

That’s a day. That’s what I’m supposed to get to. That’s what everyone tells

[00:31:23] Eve Guzman: me. . And then I know, and when I show my steps on social media, I get so many messages. How do you get 18,000 or 15,000 steps? And I’m a busy body and I’m, yeah. I have more of an your fitness maniac. Yeah. Like I, and I’m like, type A and I’m like a little energizer bunny around the.

But that’s my baseline. And I wanna get their baseline established and then make some goals from there. If they’re new to macro tracking, we start with calories. We start with calories because I wanna see their eating habits. I wanna see how many meals per day are they doing things like. Coffee only in the morning till one o’clock.

And they’re like, I had coffee for breakfast. Are they having lots of carbs in the morning? Are there lots of carbs in the afternoon? Are they changing the way they’re eating? The very first week they start coaching. You know how that goes? It’s like, all right,

[00:32:15] Dr Mike T Nelson: what? Clients never do that. Are you kidding?

[00:32:19] Eve Guzman: Am I seeing a lot of foods out? Are we seeding, re seeing restaurant meals? So depending on if they know their maintenance, we’ll just have them track calories at maintenance or start a slight deficit the first couple of weeks, and then by week two or three we’ll add the protein goal. If they’re new for macro tracking, we’ll focus on calories and protein cuz that is like enough to worry about versus juggling all of the macros.

And we’ll start it off where they’re just in a continuous restriction. Or, seven days in a deficit, calories in protein before we start adding in any carb cycling. But we’ll get them to tracking calories, protein, carbs, and fats. And then we’ll start playing around with carb cycling days where carbs are lower.

Days where carbs are higher fats, vice versa. But that’s pretty much how we go. And we also base it off of that person’s response. Their response, their biofeedback, the learning curve, their experience. We have some clients that just do calories and protein for two or three months because it’s brand new for them.

We have some clients that day one, they’re macro tracking protein, carbs. It really just depends. And then what we see because as a coach you have to understand that sometimes people will say things like, yeah, I’ve been calorie tracking, I’ve been macro tracking. But once they get behind the wheel with you, you do wanna see what they’re actually doing.

Are they weighing their food? Are they just scanning or going one chicken breast, filet? I see that a lot too. So we really focus on. Skill setting for meal prepping weighing foods, making sure their tracking is accurate before we start adding in all the other bells and whistles.

[00:34:10] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah that’s awesome.

And that’s one thing you mentioned about five to 8,500 steps per day. , that’s a number I’ve noticed over the years that if they’re dramatically under. Like stuff just gets weird. Yeah. Like it’s really hard to get stuff to work out and yes, I know calories and calories up matters and all that stuff.

It just, it seems like their body’s a very hard time regulating below that. Yeah. And I don’t know if that has to do with feedback loops with satiety or movement or whatever, but have you noticed that once they get up to that sort of threshold, which is a little bit different for everyone?

, it just seems like everything gets paradox. Easier, like their calories tend to fall a little bit more in line, like , they don. They don’t seem to go as crazy . Yeah,

[00:34:54] Eve Guzman: I see that from them. And when I’m traveling and I’m at conferences and you probably notice it when my steps drop low, I feel like crap.

Oh yeah. I’m the same way. I’m getting circulation. My gut is completely off. I can eat all my same foods and if I walk three, 4,000 steps per day I typically don’t get that low. I might see 5K cuz I’m just still very active. I feel like crap, my sleep is actually worse. But my digestive system, that gut brain tie in everything is off track.

We will meet a lot of new clients that tell me, I have huge digestive issues. One of the first things I’m looking at besides what they’re eating, are you taking a probiotic? What’s your fiber count? Per day? How much water are you drinking? I’m looking at. A lot of people aren’t even having bowel movements cuz they don’t they don’t walk.

And I talk about this, a lot of my stories, if you’re not going. If you’re not doing a number two every day, something’s probably off . Like it’s normal to go to the bathroom. Number two, every day we get many clients that aren’t walking very many steps per day under 5K steps that only have two or three bowel movements a week.

Oof. So that’s like a huge indicator of your gut health, are you going to the bathroom? But we will see a lot of success with just macro tracking. And no weight training yet, but getting their steps up, like it’s the most underrated form of exercise, cardiovascular help really helping your parasympathetic system, your gut and body composition starts changing just by getting your

[00:36:35] Dr Mike T Nelson: steps up.

Yeah. Have you noticed in. Upper limit to it, where once you get past about X amount, it doesn’t seem to have as much of a additive effect.

[00:36:49] Eve Guzman: Yeah, I have even in our like super active people , once I see people getting above 18,000 steps, that’s been like that sweet spot that we’ve noticed with people that are weight training and they’re cycling.

Yeah. And they’re hiking. . Once I see people starting to get above 18 K per steps, 18 k steps per day we start noticing a difference in those that are losing weight. They’re not gonna be losing any faster. We also see their recovery drop. They’re not getting more gains in the gym. People always think, more is better, but there’s a lot of clients we have to just say, chill out.

We need you to actually not walk as much. and they’re like, but I love it. And we have to find that balance of do you really love it or are you also and this is not to be mean to anybody, but are you also trying to speed up your efforts? , but it’s actually working against you by trying to do more steps.

And I see the same for myself. I’m not always shooting the hit 20 k on very active days, but if we’re traveling and we’re walking around in different cities and just seeing the sites, it happens. But when I see people inching above 18 K steps, it’s really not becoming more beneficial.

[00:38:08] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, that’s kinda what I’ve seen. 15 to 18,000 is where I’ve seen is the upper limit and , you feel like it’s some of Herman ponder stuff with the constrained energy hypothesis, like that’s the same number as they come up, up against too. And again, it goes back to your metabolism and everything is just not linear.

Going from 3000 steps a day to 6,000 where you’ve doubled your step count. Cool. Like I see huge differences with. 6,000 to 12,000. Yeah, definitely better. I think you’re probably going in the right direction. I don’t see it as big of a change though, from going from, three to six, right?

Yeah. 12 to 24,000. Me, ,

[00:38:46] Eve Guzman: get more weights and get more sleep.

[00:38:48] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yes. Yeah, but people get it in their head that I just do more. That’s gonna be the solution to everything. It’s like it is until it isn’t, which is hard to, yeah. . It’s a hard story. . Awesome. And then on the macro side, how do you determine when to change somebody’s macros?

So they might be just doing calories, they might do doing protein, they might be doing everything. Do you have any sort of rules of thumb? When you would change it?

[00:39:17] Eve Guzman: Yeah. Do you mean for deficit phase or all of them?

[00:39:22] Dr Mike T Nelson: Just all the above. Okay. Because one of the mistakes I made early on was I think I was way too aggressive changing people’s stuff.

Like I was rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Because I thought that they were, I thought they hired me. I gotta be doing some shit. Oh my gosh. I’ve done posts about that most of the time I found. No. Like I just need to keep them on course. Yeah. Because without somebody by their side of being like, Hey buddy, that’s a horrible idea.

Don’t do that. That was great. Do that again. Like they, they just put the car in the ditch all the time. That’s what they’ve done, like their whole life. Yeah. But I felt like I had to be like the hyper neurotic assistant driver, like telling ’em what to do all the time. . I think those poor bastards I started with early on.

I made a mo .

[00:40:05] Eve Guzman: Yeah. I’m actually glad that you brought this up cuz I usually do a post about this a couple times of year where I’m gearing it towards, Clients and coaches all in one messaging because there are some clients that sign up for coaching, thinking their macros get adjusted every week.

And there are coaches like you were saying, feeling like, I feel like I have to be doing something, let me be changing them all the time. So typically I’ll walk through what I do, but if a client is in maintenance or surplus, that’s going to end up being the. With maintenance, if their goals are really just body comp, they’re trying to get some muscle gains you’re really just watching most of the time to see are they truly at maintenance?

The macros, the calories have you set, are they actually losing over time? That means that you’ve probably under. Estimated their total daily energy expenditure and we can actually bump those calories up. Also I do like to push maintenance a little bit, and if someone’s been maintaining for quite some time, let’s say at 2100 calories, let’s say it’s been two months.

We’ll make a push from 2100 to 2200 to see if we can get them to push their calories up so we can have more strength in the gym, more food for recovery, things like that, and push their maintenance up a little bit. Surplus. You may see people losing as well because if their metabolism is upregulating in response to more food and things coming in total daily energy expenditure is changing, maybe they’re training harder.

Maybe we’ve underestimated it. If you see people in a surplus that are really wanting to gain. And they’re losing or maintaining. That means you’ve set the calories too low and you’re gonna definitely wanna bump those up. Your protein will probably stay the same relative to their body weight, but we want those carbs and fats and whatever type of carb cycling, fat cycling you’re doing to go up.

And that’s pretty easy. So a lot of adjustments for maintenance are not being. Surplus is are we getting to the goal and raising the calories maybe every two weeks if there’s someone that was just definitely underestimated with the calorie intake. But you might, with surplus people, make one adjustment or none for the time of their bulk because it may be appropriate for the amount of mask they’re wanting to gain.

But the harder ones are always the deficit people because the goal. It’s that dangling carrot of, I signed up to work with Eve, I signed up to work with Mike, and I wanna lose the weight. And can we make it happen? So when I set the initial macros, I typically do not change them for the first two to three weeks.

And that’s because I wanna see are they a good fit? How do they track are they changing food habits and because they’re like, Eve’s watching, let me eat a little bit better. Are they going over? But typically I see with newer, with people newer to a coach, they end up undereating because they’re eating more satiating foods.

They’re higher volume. No one, says, I’m not hungry eating broccoli, rice, chicken, whatever it is they’re eating when they’re trying to eat a little bit cleaner. But I’ll see people actually undereating, and if they’re already undereating their macros, there’s no need to change them because they’re in a bigger deficit than I created.

And so the goal is let’s get the accuracy and precision up and let’s hit these numbers. So initially when I set macros for deficit, I’m probably not changing them for the first two to three weeks. And after those two to three weeks pass, and we really see what their tracking habits are, how close are they accuracy and precision.

If they’re not losing weight, it could be that the deficit wasn’t big enough and then we’ll make an adjust. If they are losing weight, I’m gonna leave them there. And not trying to like micromanage and I should be doing something , but they’re losing. We may let those macros ride for five or six weeks and if they’re losing at a steady rate or too fast, I may actually increase the food.

I will make adjustments at about 50 to 100 calorie changes at a time, and that’s. So if they start, initially we’re two to three weeks into the deficit and they haven’t lost anything, then we’ll try about a 50 calorie decrease and go from there. But typically when I make an adjustment, I do two weeks minimum before I would change anything and then end up going a little bit deeper.

And The biggest thing for me is trying to get those initial numbers set really well, so there’s not a lot of finagling of changing the calories because it has an impact on the mindset of the client. And so we do a really good job of setting them up initially with good starting macros, because I’ve learned on the flip side of being a client, When they see us changing and going lower and lower, sometimes clients go, I’m doing something wrong.

I don’t want them compensating and me not knowing about it cuz they’re thinking, oh my god, ease lower in my calories. I’m not losing weight. Something’s wrong with me. Maybe I’ll do more cardio, more steps, or trim up on the back end. And I’ve seen that over the years also from coaching coaches and getting that feedback.

But sometimes in a 12 week deficit run, we might only make two adjustments the whole time. Sometimes maybe three. And if we’re lucky from start to finish, we don’t end up dropping 150 calories per day. That would be ideal for people to lose the most amount of weight possible, eating the most amount of food so that when we get back up to maintenance.

It’s not this huge gap that we’re end ending up going from deficit up to the new total daily energy expenditure. And you know how that goes when you get them back up, there is gonna be a little bit of weight regain, but we wanna minimize that. I also think people. Or I just wanna lose so much weight, I wanna lose this much.

Can I lose 20 pounds in, eight weeks? Can I lose 30 pounds in 12 weeks? And they don’t understand. The faster you go the higher the potential of weight regain. Because our body is always trying to achieve homeostasis. And you can get to that point where your body is trying to regain fat to get it back into that safe place.

So I do try to shoot for an average weight loss of about 0.5 to 0.7% of their body weight per week. . If they’re losing faster, we’ll try to slow it down. For our clients that are obese and they’re above like 30.0 B m I up to 1% is safer. So if you’re smaller, you’re gonna lose less weight per week.

That’s average. If you’re heavier, you’re gonna lose a little bit more. I know a lot of people always just default to one to two pounds per week, but as we get smaller, those numbers will shift a little. Yeah, that was .

[00:47:06] Dr Mike T Nelson: No, that’s good. That’s good. It’s similar to what I ended up changing two years ago, is that it’s a processed outcome based thing.

Yeah. You’re looking at, okay, how is your progress? How is your performance? How do you feel? What did you do? . I remember something John Broadie said years ago was like, it’s basically only two things, like they gave you the plan. If you’re not compliant with the plan, I have no idea. So to step one, then be compliant with the plan.

Yes. If it didn’t work or it did work, great. Now we have data and we can make a change to what went on. , I was like, oh yeah. So I’ve had to like, take some clients and explain that to him that I don’t know, like you were like at best, maybe 50% compliant with what we said, , I don’t know if I gave you the perfect plan or if I gave you a shit plan. I don’t know. So I don’t know what to change. So do me a favor, take the next one or two weeks, just, yes. You might not have to white knuckle it through. Yes. You might have to wear your chicken breasts. Yes.

You might have to get more extreme and then we can change things. And I promise that it’s not. Always gonna be that extreme. , but we need some data and we need an accurate starting point. Otherwise, I’m just, throwing darts at a wall and Yeah. You pay me way too much to be throwing darts,

[00:48:15] Eve Guzman: Yeah. We’re right in line with how we think about that. I think some clients are like I didn’t lose weight. Are you gonna change anything? Nope. Back to the plan. Yeah. Have to have a baseline with data. I’m very data driven and the other thing I didn’t say is like biofeedback over everything.

, I, if you’re losing and your biofeedback is sucking we’re not going to be cutting more. It also determine like the length of our cut and things like that. But yeah, first thing we need is baseline data to be able to make educated and logical decisions of what step is.

[00:48:49] Dr Mike T Nelson: And I think one client I have now, he’s been doing great.

Like he did six months, lost the 30 pounds, hit his goal. , I honestly, and I had worked with him years ago when I first started, and he had a fair amount of stress going on. I didn’t change his macros once, like over the six months. Is that’s pretty rare. That doesn’t typically happen.

But he was, on average losing about a pound a week. He’d have us a few times where it would, go up, but I would see his stress would be just sky high. So I’m like, cool. We’re just gonna hold here for a week. Let’s change your training a little bit. Let’s get your H R V, your stress under control.

And then he is like back on track the next week. Now of course he, was probably fluctuating a little bit in there, but I’m like, he’s hitting exactly the goal. His performance is good, like when his stress wasn’t crazy. So it was hard for me not to change it because I felt like I’m supposed to be doing something, but he was hitting everything that we needed to and we just changed what we needed to.

But that was also, I still have that intrinsic thing. Yeah. That’s

[00:49:42] Eve Guzman: a sign of two things. A good coach and a good client. So

[00:49:46] Dr Mike T Nelson: Oh yeah, he was great . Yeah. He was crushing it. Yeah. As we wrap up here, my crazy question is I’ve asked is to researchers and they generally have poo-pooed the idea, but if you have someone, let’s say that in your case, right at your peak weight and now at your current.

I’m always curious as to why most people in general, if you look at the data, do regain the data, right? And obviously there’s a big database it looks at, what habits and all sorts of things that they look at. Exercise is important. Calories all that stuff matters. A hundred percent agree. But I’ve often wondered about just how the brain is physically mapping their body, because you’ll get some clients who report back that, yeah. I look in the mirror, I’ve lost, 80 pounds. But I still see the person who is 80 pounds heavier and it just seems like that is an impetu for their brain to try to drive them back to where they were. So I’m curious why they don’t see what is actually literally representative of them now.

And my hypothesis is that they didn’t remap their body where it’s at now, meaning the proprioception, like where their limbs and stuff are in space. I think is a little bit skewed. It’s like you’re looking at a map, but somebody made the map like super fuzzy and you can’t quite see it. So what I’ve done with them is I’ve encouraged them to do recreation.

Go play a ball sport, play catch, play, Frisbee. Do something where you have to interact with your physical body in a semi unpredictable. Because I think that’s gonna force your brain to remap exactly where you are in physical space and make you feel like you are literally more in your body, if that makes any sense at

[00:51:34] Eve Guzman: all.

Yeah. I think you’re actually onto something, cuz as you describe that, I have thought about myself even now, and I am definitely in tune with what my size is cuz what you mentioned, there were times where I still felt 50 pounds heavier and instead of grabbing the smaller medium shirt, I would still grab the extra large, right?

And you see

[00:51:56] Dr Mike T Nelson: this a lot of times in clothing that they pick too. Oh my gosh.

[00:51:59] Eve Guzman: Yeah. and they’ll go and wear it. And like I used to do that. I would bring it home after trying it on in the mirror and my husband’s that’s too big, like nice pair of pants, but are you? He’s yeah, it’s probably two sizes too big.

But as you describe that, it reminded me of times where, I felt like I was still big. And people were like at a picnic let’s play kickball as adults. And I’m like, I don’t know. And I went back to my childhood, the chubby kid that can’t keep up in kickball, right? I don’t know. And then, everybody’s just do it.

It’s fun. Don’t be a Dr. You know, and then I do it. And then afterwards I felt damn, I. And it took me doing it to realize I am this new different person. And it was like that reconnection of my fitness and how I could actually keep up. And I wasn’t running around in the, this body that I thought was big, slow unathletic, however you wanna describe it.

But I think you’re actually onto something. I don’t think there’s enough research about.

[00:53:03] Dr Mike T Nelson: I can’t find how any research and the handful of research people I’ve talked to are just like, no, that sounds insane. I’m like, but it would be an interesting hypothesis to test, right? Because if you look at like the Biggest Loser, right?

You’ve seen the study they published on that. Mostly people regain their weight and yeah, you could argue about the methods they did. It’s extreme people yelling at you, all that kind of stuff. Agree . However, I think the missing component was they never made them feel athletic. They never made them feel like the new body they have is something that they can go and perform and do all these different novel things.

They tended to default to the same exercise as just harder intensity. Yeah. And yeah, there’s a time and place to do cardio and lift weight. It’s a hundred percent. I just wonder if you encourage people to do other things that are outside of it. Not only are you having them seek movement for the sake of enjoying movement, which may be a completely brand new thing for them.

I literally think there’s just so much real estate in our brain that’s dictated to integrating these high level movements. If you took a robot, like how hard is it to teach a robot to catch a ball flying at it? That it’s incredibly difficult, but humans do it all the time with relative. So I just think if we do more of that thing, it just gets that person to feel like this is the shape of your body and this is where you’re actually at.

[00:54:23] Eve Guzman: . Yeah. Cause it, it creates that positive reinforcement of I can do this. I have not done that with clients, but I think you make a really good

[00:54:32] Dr Mike T Nelson: point. Yeah. So I’d be interested in what you find with that . Yeah. Yeah.

[00:54:37] Eve Guzman: I can try that with some clients and let you know.

[00:54:41] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And a real simple task.

You can get crazy down this rabbit hole of looking at their appropriate reception, but you can have ’em do close your eyes, touch your nose. There’s other things you can do where I’ll have, I’ve done this with some clients where close your eyes and I touch them on a certain spot and so they have to then touch where I touch them.

And what areas are off. So if you find in pain, like the right arm is always painful. Like they’ll miss where I touched by sometimes several inches. Cuz their own interpretation of that spot is not where it actually is. So their map gets just warped and skewed. So anyway. Yeah, this sounds like

[00:55:16] Eve Guzman: some cool

[00:55:16] Dr Mike T Nelson: stuff.

I will. Yeah. That one . Awesome. So where can people find more about you? And if they wanna work with you, give us all the great info. I really appreciate your time.

[00:55:26] Eve Guzman: Yeah, so I’m on Instagram every day. I know some people hate social media, but I actually love it. It’s a great way to connect when you work from home.

So you guys at Eve underscore Fit Chick, we also have a page for coaches. It’s called Macro Mentorship, and our website is g transformation academy.com. That always has tons of freebies. We even have some free workouts, a free macro tracking course, all kinds of goodies.

[00:55:55] Dr Mike T Nelson: Awesome. I would highly encourage people to check you out and it was great to meet you in person and your husband and thank you so much for all your time and just all the wonderful stuff you’ve done for man over decades coming up now.

And thank you again for sharing your personal journey. I’m sure that’s extremely motivational for a lot of people to see. What they can do and if they need help, they can highly recommend they reach out to you. Cool. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. Huge thanks to Eve for coming on the podcast here and sharing her amazing transformation story and just all the wonderful stuff she’s doing with clients and other coaches. As I mentioned in the podcast was epic to meet her at the Real Coaches summit.

I think the recordings for that still might be available. If they are, I will put a link down below. I don’t know how long he’ll make them available. But if you find a link there, then you can still purchase them. So you could see my talk, you can see Eve’s talk, you can see a whole bunch of other presenters.

It was an amazing event. Last I heard. It’ll probably happen again for next year. So mark that on your calendar. As soon as I have information, I’ll let everyone know. Huge thanks to Eve for coming down the program. Be sure to check out all of her stuff. We have links below. She’s got great information on her Instagram as always, and anything else I can do for you.

Best place to reach me is through the newsletter. Just go to miketnelson.com and there’ll be ways you can opt into the newsletter there. Just hit reply and do whatever I can to help you out. That’s probably the best place to reach me, and you get lots of great free information delivered right to your inbox, so go to mike t nelson.com for all the info there.

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