Flex Diet Podcast — Episode 412

Stop Overcomplicating Fat Loss: Short Workouts & Simple Habits — Harley Pasternak — #412

Release target: Monday 11/9/2026 at 12:00 noon CT. Draft only.

Guest information is web-sourced, not guest-confirmed; the bio was approved by Mike. Harley has not submitted the guest form, and his requested topics are unknown. Episode topics below come only from this interview.

Timeline B timestamps include the 02:13.12 intro. Interview begins at raw Zoom 09:00. Intro/outro/ending audio is not transcribed here. The cut intersects the 08:59 host acknowledgment; this transcript begins at the next complete paragraph (09:03).

[02:16] Harley Pasternak: Of course.

[02:17] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Um, my first question is, since you work in Hollywood, what is one of the, you don’t have to say any names, but the craziest diet somebody came to you that they wanted to do, and what did you say to them?

[02:35] Harley Pasternak: I’ve seen it all. This is my, almost my 36th year doing this, so-

[02:38] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah …

[02:39] Harley Pasternak: I’ve had a client do a pizza only diet for a few weeks. I’ve had a- Pizza

[02:43] Dr. Mike T Nelson: only?

[02:44] Harley Pasternak: The cabbage soup diet, the lemon drop diet, the Beverly Hills, uh, chocolate chip- … cookie diet, the paleo diet. I think one of the craziest diets of all time is, is honestly keto or Atkins.

[02:54] Harley Pasternak: I think that’s up there. Oh,

[02:55] Dr. Mike T Nelson: yeah.

[02:56] Harley Pasternak: Um, so yeah, I, I… It ceases to amaze me. I think, honestly, the other one is raw vegan. Um- Oof,

[03:04] Dr. Mike T Nelson: that’s harsh …

[03:05] Harley Pasternak: s- you know, I, I don’t… All of them are out there.

[03:10] Dr. Mike T Nelson: And what do you say when someone comes to you with a crazy diet? Because it, I’m sure you get this question of, you know, they never ask you what they think of the diet.

[03:19] Dr. Mike T Nelson: They’re like, “Um, yeah, what do you think of keto?” Which really means, I do keto all the time. I want you to approve of my diet. But yet, you’re working with them and you’re responsible for, you know, helping them get a result, too.

[03:32] Harley Pasternak: The younger me was very direct and, and very binary. Like it was either good or bad, and I think as I’ve gotten older, you really have to in- you have to create a level of trust with the people you’re working with.

[03:44] Harley Pasternak: You never wanna make them feel bad about their decisions or about their goals. You try and find a common space th- that you can both live in. Um so if I think of a Venn diagram, you know, what they wanna do, what I wanna do, and sort of where we live in the middle, and then gradually over time, let them kind of hopefully move more and more towards what you want them to do, but try not to force them there.

[04:10] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. I made the same mistake early on too. I, I would just be like, “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of,” and they’re like, “Oh,” and then you realize, like, uh-oh, that was probably not not the best thing to, to, to say.

[04:24] Harley Pasternak: Exactly.

[04:26] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Do you sort of let them run with it for a while, and then try to educate them a- along the way?

[04:33] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Or any thoughts? Like, I

[04:34] Harley Pasternak: guess this- I think, I think the simplest thing is, is I give them a certain macro outline, and whether they want to achieve that through, uh, through being plant-based or through being animal-based or, or, or, um, you know, a certain color scheme that they want to achieve. A certain biblical era that they want it to fit within.

[04:53] Harley Pasternak: Yeah, like pizza is like- Whatever it is, I’m like, “Look, as, as long as you’re eating this many calories, and you’re getting this many grams of fiber, this many grams of protein, and trying to limit this amount of sugar and this kind of fat, then let’s go to town.”

[05:06] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. A tip I got from John Brady years ago, another fellow Canadian, was just kinda similar to you, like doing a controlled experiment.

[05:14] Dr. Mike T Nelson: So I would be like, “Okay, let’s, I kinda want you to go this direction, but let’s, you know, give me your input. Okay, here’s what we agree on.” I may think it’s kind of stupid, but just let’s, let’s see how that goes for- … you know, two to three weeks, and then we’d have, like, a set outcome of what we would look at it, and then we would adjust at that point.

[05:33] Dr. Mike T Nelson: And a lot of times people would come back and they’re like, “Oh, you mean when I’m really trying to train hard? Like, I, my energy is so low on keto, I can’t quite figure it out.” I’m like, “Oh, well, I, I have an idea of what we could change.” “Oh, really? Oh, okay.” You know, versus, “Ah, keto’s stupid. Just do it my way.”

[05:50] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Then the, you just have this res- it’s like the, um, you’ve cornered the little animal, and everybody gets super defensive, which is understandable.

[06:00] Harley Pasternak: Yeah. Th- there’s not one way to do things. You can achieve a goal multiple different ways. How sustainable that is, um, and, and how healthy that is, that’s up for debate.

[06:10] Harley Pasternak: But, um, you really wanna find that common ground and just ensure trust and, and, and make sure you don’t feel… You, you don’t make them feel bad or that you’re talking down to them or, or making them do something that doesn’t feel right to them.

[06:23] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Because it’s also then harder for them to be honest, because if you just lambast them for everything they did wrong, what…

[06:31] Dr. Mike T Nelson: And I’ve, again, I’ve made all these mistakes myself, is that- … they just do the weird shit, and then they don’t tell you. That’s what I found out. Exactly. Which was worse, because now I’m pulling my hair out going, “I, I don’t know what’s going on. This is even worse than before.”

[06:45] Harley Pasternak: Exactly. Yep

[06:48] Dr. Mike T Nelson: How did you end up being a trainer in, in Hollywood of all places, especially being from Canada?

[06:54] Harley Pasternak: Yeah. I started this journey many years ago. Um, I was a- an aspiring hockey player. Got hurt early on, tore my adductor, and, um, and, and stayed in academia. Spent almost 10 years in university doing degrees in exercise science, nutrition. I was working towards my PhD, and I got recruited by the military as an exercise and nutrition scientist, where I spent three and a half years, um, doing some really cool studies on the impacts of nutraceuticals and pharmaceuticals on human performance.

[07:25] Harley Pasternak: Started a personal training business at that time that catered to all the Hollywood films that came to shot in Canada. Most Hollywood films are actually not shot in Hollywood, they’re shot in Canada.

[07:34] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah.

[07:35] Harley Pasternak: And, um, and that bu- that business was, was great. It was exciting. We expanded from Toronto to Montreal to Vancouver.

[07:43] Harley Pasternak: I built the largest mobile gym in the world, an 18-wheeler, 53 f- th- 53-foot tractor trailer that would go to different film sets for X-Men and Catwoman and I, Robot, and, um, uh, Spider-Man. Uh, it, it was a really cool experience. Ended up in the United States getting Halle Berry ready for Catwoman, and Milla Jovovich ready for Resident Evil, and Orlando Bloom ready for a film.

[08:06] Harley Pasternak: And next thing you know, I went on Oprah, started writing books. Eight books later and, um, uh, a lot of clients. I started designing fitness facilities for clients’ homes and then for multifamily hotels. We do most of the Four Seasons hotels around the world. Hmm. A lot of the Aman hotels, Discovery Lands, so it’s been an amazing ride.

[08:28] Dr. Mike T Nelson: I could never figure out like who was, and it’s gotten significantly better in the last, eh, 5, 10 years. But especially like 10 years ago, who was the wizard who decided to put together the hotel gym? Because it feels like up until a few years ago, most of the ones I went to made no sense whatsoever. It was like, let’s just throw a couple random machines that don’t really do anything quite well and some dumbbells in a closet, and hey, we’ve got a gym.

[08:57] Harley Pasternak: Yeah. I think there was a time where having a, a, a gym in a hotel was a, “Oh, you know, we’ll take a p- a space that’s not prime. It’s a basement space, or it’s an after-thought. It’s just some odd space.” Yeah, it used to be the laundry room.

[09:06] Dr. Mike T Nelson: We’ll just throw some dumbbells in there.

[09:09] Harley Pasternak: Even the George V in Paris, which is one of the most famous hotels in the world, we built the gym there, and it was, you know, multiple floors below the ground.

[09:17] Harley Pasternak: It was an old bowling alley from the turn of the century. Hmm. Very long and narrow. And so there was a time when the gym was just something you, you have. Now it’s a focal point. Now it’s a, it’s a, an, a, uh, an attraction. People will decide not to stay at a hotel if they don’t have a great gym. Yeah.

[09:32] Harley Pasternak: Conversely, if there’s a great gym, they’ll make a point to stay at that hotel. Sometimes people will travel just for wellness purposes to a hotel that has a great, um, fitness amenity, not even to leave the hotel. So it’s become a, a real center point.

[09:47] Dr. Mike T Nelson: What are some things if you’re designing a gym for a hotel that you look at?

[09:52] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Like, what do you have as your, kinda your priority list for it?

[09:57] Harley Pasternak: Uh, we l- we start with the, with flooring. We use multiple flooring solutions, whether it be turf, uh, rubber for free weights, non-porous flooring for cardio, um, antimicrobial soft flooring for stretching. And then we, we move up to the cardio. We have mechanical cardio, things with motors and electronics like treadmills and step mills, and non-motorized treadmill…

[10:17] Harley Pasternak: uh, uh, cardio, like non-motorized treadmills and ski ergs and upper body ergometers, to selectorized strength equipment circuits, to, uh, free weights, dumbbells, kettlebells, barbells, accessories. Um, and then we try and make things look beautiful. So depending on where the property is, depending on the size of it, is there a membership base there as well, are there professional sports teams that stay there, all of these would contribute to the decision of what goes in those four walls.

[10:48] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. That’s one thing I’ve noticed with some of the nicer gyms lately is that not only is the equipment pretty good, you can tell someone actually spent time on the aesthetic. Like, you walk in and you’re like, “Oh, this just looks cool,” right? Where, you know, some older gyms, you walk in, you’re like, “Well, there’s no rhyme or reason to any of this.”

[11:08] Dr. Mike T Nelson: It was just like somebody just vomited equipment that ended up on the floor, and that’s kinda what you got.

[11:14] Harley Pasternak: Yeah. I think, um, historically it was an afterthought. The hotel manager or the hotel owner would pick up the phone, they would call one of the equipment companies. Mm-hmm. We won’t say which one, but one of the Italian ones and-

[11:26] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah

[11:27] Harley Pasternak: and just say, “Fill up the room with pretty stuff.” Might be black and

[11:29] Dr. Mike T Nelson: yellow possibly colors.

[11:31] Harley Pasternak: Fill up the room with- Not saying any names … exactly, with, with pretty stuff and, and so there wasn’t any innovation. There wasn’t any differentiation then, and it was, um, a cookie cutter. And so I think when we came in, we broke the mold and we started with the Four Seasons in Anguilla- We put in Hoist strength equipment and Woodway treadmills and, you know, e- every aspect of that was really about if I was to be there, what would I wanna work out on?

[11:54] Harley Pasternak: You know, what’s the best in class for each category? And it, it worked well for us.

[11:59] Dr. Mike T Nelson: That’s awesome. Tell me about how did you design a gym on a, a semi? That sounds amazing.

[12:05] Harley Pasternak: Yeah, I mean, on, on a film set, especially in Quebec when we, we shot some films and, um, a lunch break’s only 30 minutes, so the, the- Mm

[12:13] Harley Pasternak: actors, you know, they’re 12, 14 hours a day, hair and makeup, on set, lighting setups, and they have a 30-minute lunch break. And so we have 30 minutes to get them from the last cut to our workout to finishing back into hair and makeup, and having something on set is great. Being in their trailer is really not a great solution.

[12:33] Harley Pasternak: There’s no room for stuff. So I bought an old 53-foot, uh, trailer, and I had- Oh, so you purchased it

[12:39] Dr. Mike T Nelson: yourself?

[12:40] Harley Pasternak: Yep. Had it- Nice … insulated, customized, put in skylights. This was in the days when TVs were still tube TVs. They weren’t screens. So I had a massive tube, a Sony Trinitron TV at the front with a VHS and I think a DVD player at some point, and I had in a Precor treadmill, a Precor elliptical, a Precor recumbent bike up on the elevated nose of the front of the trailer.

[13:04] Harley Pasternak: Mm-hmm. Then I had a functional trainer, like a dual adjustable pulley. I had, I had everything in there. I even had a, a plate loaded Icarian leg press. We really- Really? … had all the, yeah, the greatest hits. Wow. ’Cause back then, this was before Precor bought Icarian.

[13:17] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Mm. Okay.

[13:18] Harley Pasternak: Um, and I was designing strength equipment for Icarian at the time.

[13:21] Harley Pasternak: So that’s the, those are the pieces that I brought in.

[13:25] Dr. Mike T Nelson: How do you decide what pieces to put in there? Because obviously your real estate is very limited, so I would imagine you have to make a pretty good argument to take up, especially something like a, like a leg press that historically has a big footprint to it.

[13:40] Harley Pasternak: Yeah, that’s a great question. I, um, I would triage things. So first and foremost, we need dumbbells. I have a dumbbell rack. We put a full eight-foot long, three-tier, uh, dumbbell rack for commercial dumbbells, and then we have, um, uh, an adjustable bench, and then we had a cable machine, so we have cables, dumbbells, a bench.

[13:58] Harley Pasternak: That- that’s the key. Then there was a company in Canada called Northern Lights that was trying to do business with Icarian, and they did a prototype of a, of a seated cable row lat pull down. Hmm. There was one of one. We put that in there. We put in a prone hamstring curl, ’cause hamstrings, there’s not as many exercises for hamstrings without a machine as there are with one.

[14:19] Harley Pasternak: True. And at the back, I took a, a, an Icarian leg press, uh, but I modified it. So I took off the long, um, pegs that you put the weight plates on, and I only kept the pegs that went above the sled that were- Ah … higher up and shorter, so-

[14:38] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah, yeah … the

[14:38] Harley Pasternak: machine itself was only 30 inches wide at the most, and it fit perfectly at the very back of the trailer.

[14:45] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Oh, that’s pretty cool. Have you played with, um… I’m a big fan of the Beyond Power, like the Vultra 1, the kind of motorized cable attachments. Now I know there’s a Odd Come Bob, probably a bunch of other companies now, but I haven’t used any of the other ones. But I’ve used it for about a year, and it’s amazing, especially for travel, and you can just mount it anywhere, and you can, you know, go up to, like, 230 pounds and do concentrics and eccentrics and reverse chains and all sorts of crazy stuff in just a little, tiny package, which has been pretty fun.

[15:19] Harley Pasternak: Yeah, I think it’s, you know, pound for pound it’s a great option. Like you said, if you’re traveling or you have a limited amount of space, uh, budget, all those things, it can really fill a void. I’m an equipment junkie. I love equipment. You know, I’ve been designing equipment for Icarian and Cybex and Precor and Life Fitness and Hoist- Hmm

[15:34] Harley Pasternak: and all these companies for many, many years. Um, I was on the, the original team that invented the dual adjustable pulley. Really? Um, yeah. That’s wild. 29 years ago. Um, so, uh, I helped as, you know, Bravo, when Cybex came out with the Bravo. Um, uh, a lot of, a lot of that I love. So if you ever see in a Los Angeles, I have about 240 pieces of strength equipment, including the original Arthur Jones Gen One line, the next Gen line.

[16:02] Harley Pasternak: Really? Like the old school, like the pullover and all that stuff? All that. The original ones. Oh, wow. Um, I even have the chrome pieces, the original chrome chain link pieces. Then I became very close with Roy Simonson, who invented Cybex. He’s an amazing guy. We, we geek out over this stuff. I have the original Cybex classic line from the late ’70s, almost the-

[16:22] Harley Pasternak: the original line, entire line. So I, I love this stuff. You know, some old Body Masters pieces and Camstar pieces. And the stuff that we made back then or that people made back then is so much better than anything out today. It’s all made by hand. It’s all hand welded. It was all made in the United States for the most part.

[16:41] Harley Pasternak: Um, and, and it’s special. Uh, and so at some point the fitness industry blew up, exploded, got really big, and people needed more equipment. They needed it cheaper, and so they made it overseas, and they would cost engineer things and make things screw together and smaller and lightweight and easier to move.

[16:58] Harley Pasternak: But I like the old stuff that’s tough to move.

[17:01] Dr. Mike T Nelson: There was something about… And I feel bad I can’t remember the guy’s name, but I was teaching in, uh, Sweden. There was a guy there who had a great gym. I’ll, I’ll remember the name of it, but I’ll put it in the show notes. And he had sort of collected a lot of the old school equipment from some of the lat pull-downs to the, the seated row that had like the angled seat where like it was, like you, your feet were higher than the rest of you- Yeah

[17:27] Dr. Mike T Nelson: and just like an old school pullover machine. And-

[17:30] Harley Pasternak: Sure …

[17:31] Dr. Mike T Nelson: it was just amazing because he had like some newer stuff, but he had like what I felt like was the sort of the best in class of each sort of category. And a lot of the machines- … were, were super old. But there’s just something about being on a well-defined machine like that that just It feels different.

[17:49] Dr. Mike T Nelson: It’s like this intuitive thing where some of the newer machines, I feel like some of them are great, but some of them, you get on them and you’re just like, “Ah, I don’t know. It just doesn’t feel the same.” Like, I feel it more in my joints. I don’t feel it as much in the muscle. There’s … I don’t know, it just feels different, I guess.

[18:05] Harley Pasternak: Yeah. A- and that’s a big part of it, the feel is j- definitely different, and the feeling’s such a big part of a machine. Does it feel right? Do you connect with the muscles? Does it pinch your shoulder? Does it hurt your lower back? Um, I feel there was a time when gym equipment was made by people who worked out.

[18:20] Harley Pasternak: Yeah. You know, these are, these are people who want to make something for themselves. Arthur Jones’, uh, duo squat, which is just an incredible piece of equipment from 50-something years ago, you only use one leg at a time. Mm. And when you use one leg at a time, um, A, your dominant side doesn’t take over, but more importantly, your hips don’t roll into your chest if you b- like you do with two knees at a time.

[18:43] Harley Pasternak: Oh, yeah, yeah. And Arthur Jones had a bad back, and he said, “If I do a traditional leg press- Mm … my knees will roll in, my back will round. It hurts my back.” So, you know, he came up with that 50-something years ago. I didn’t know that until two, three years ago. Whenever I do a leg press, I always do one leg at a time.

[19:00] Harley Pasternak: And so, uh, when I discovered that there was a piece designed for that over half a century ago, I said, “Why don’t they do that anymore?”

[19:09] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah, that is interesting. I’ve seen a couple newer pieces where they are split now, but it’s definitely not the norm, for sure.

[19:16] Harley Pasternak: Yeah, exactly.

[19:18] Dr. Mike T Nelson: What are your favorite kind of pieces of equipment to use?

[19:22] Harley Pasternak: Um, well, f- uh, boy, the Nautilus 2ST Seated Chest Press from the ’80s, it doesn’t get better from chest ever, ever.

[19:32] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Um- Was that the seated

[19:33] Dr. Mike T Nelson: one or was

[19:33] Dr. Mike T Nelson: that a standing one?

[19:35] Harley Pasternak: Se- seated one. Seated,

[19:36] Dr. Mike T Nelson: okay.

[19:36] Harley Pasternak: Um, I like, uh, Hoist did a, a, a CL line in the late ’80s, early ’90s that was the most overbuilt s- uh, line ever, ever made, Kevlar belt line.

[19:49] Harley Pasternak: And it was so expensive and so heavy, the only customer was the US military.

[19:53] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Oh, wow.

[19:53] Harley Pasternak: And the US military would, they would, they would put it in their bases, you know, in Afghanistan and Iraq, and once the deployment was done and they’d pack up the base, they’d put them on the ships and they’d bring them out to sea and, um, and they were so heavy, uh, to move, and so expensive to move that they would dump them overboard, and they would create these- What?

[20:12] Harley Pasternak: natural reefs. Yeah. Oh. So most of the CL line’s actually at the bottom of the ocean. I have a couple of the only pieces not at the bottom of the ocean.

[20:19] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Oh, wow.

[20:20] Harley Pasternak: And they’re, they’re, they’re just so great. So the, I love there’s a seated back row I love for rhomboids. There’s a, a Cybex classic back row. Uh, y- I love that one.

[20:29] Harley Pasternak: There’s, um, um, you know, the, the Nebula Plate Loaded Leg Press. People love that one. It’s a little bulky for me. I love the Cybex Pendulum Leg Pr- uh, I mean, um, uh, Squat Press. I love the, um, Body Masters does an incredible bicep curl. Universal, I mean, uh, Universal does an amazing pullover. I love that per square foot.

[20:48] Harley Pasternak: That’s an amazing piece. Pyramid does a great pullover. There’s so many great pieces from over the years that I really, really love. I just bought a, a, a late ’70s Nautilus low friction chest press. Hmm. That just feels fantastic. So there’s a lot of good stuff out there I really love. Oh, and, and, and Hoist does a great rocket prone curl, prone leg curl, where you can’t cheat with your lower back ’cause the front dips down.

[21:12] Harley Pasternak: I could talk gym equipment all day.

[21:15] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Is that the one where it’s got, like, this big angle to the pad, kind of? Is that what I’m thinking of or is it a little different than that?

[21:22] Harley Pasternak: No. No, no, there’s not a big angle to the pad, but the whole Rocket line, as you contract the muscle, as the joint moves that you’re working, the whole machine rocks.

[21:32] Harley Pasternak: Yep. And it rocks, so the- No, I’ve seen those. I’ve

[21:33] Dr. Mike T Nelson: used them,

[21:33] Harley Pasternak: actually. Right? Yeah. So the, the leg curl one is really especially great ’cause you get this active insufficiency, so your hamstring super contracts as you get mid contraction because as your, as your, uh, shins come up and your heels come towards your butt, normally what happens is people stick their butt up to cheat- Mm-hmm

[21:50] Harley Pasternak: a little bit. Well, this doesn’t allow you to ’cause as your legs come up it forces your chest and head to go down, so you actually can’t cheat.

[21:57] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Oh,

[21:57] Harley Pasternak: yeah, yeah. It’s fantastic. Yeah, yeah.

[21:59] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Oh, very cool. Yeah. Awesome. Related to training people on, on set, I think people forget that it’s… You don’t have a ton of time per se, and it can be pretty chaotic.

[22:17] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Like for training, obviously it’s gonna be different per person per role, but do you tend to do more, in that case, like full body stuff? Do you tend to do more specialization or is it just kind of really depend on the person, the role, what they like, especially if you’re limited to just like 30 minutes?

[22:35] Harley Pasternak: Yeah, I, I would say, uh, I don’t even consider that limited. That’s what most of our strength workouts are. It’s really less about a strength workout or strength workouts. It’s diet first and foremost is gonna make them look different the fastest. And then, you know, strength training’s gonna make sure they don’t lose lean muscle mass and can help them tone, tighten posture.

[22:54] Harley Pasternak: If we’re trying to put muscle mass on for a role, obviously that’s really important. Um, steps are important, uh, to, to keep their metabolism moving and for mental health and heart health, and all that stuff’s really important. Sleep is important. Uh, so we look at everything. It’s not about one factor, but short strength training workouts are always…

[23:12] Harley Pasternak: I’m always about that.

[23:14] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Do you tend to do more shorter rest period, kind of more full body then or is it kind of variable?

[23:20] Harley Pasternak: No, I, I generally pick up different body parts. Um, we, we don’t train whole body at once. Um, look, if you’re only working out one day a week, then possibly, but- Sure … if you’re doing twice a week, we’ll split it into two.

[23:32] Harley Pasternak: If you’re doing three days a week, we’ll split it into three. Four days a week, then potentially we can go A, B, A, B or split it into four, really depending on the client and their goals and their ability to recover

[23:45] Dr. Mike T Nelson: A little bit about nutrition. Do you… I think people underestimate h- if you’re on film, like, just getting significantly leaner, you can appear much bigger, as opposed to taking a prolonged period of time to add a significant amount of muscle mass.

[24:04] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Would you agree with that statement?

[24:07] Harley Pasternak: Yeah, it takes a, a lot longer to put on muscle than to lose weight. Yeah, we, we just did a project, um, where the character was playing someone who had a severe, uh, health issue, uh, who was dying, and was in a wheelchair, and similar to ALS, and we had to get them to lose 55, 60 pounds to look like they were dying.

[24:29] Harley Pasternak: Oof. And so we shot that for a few months, and then shut down production, helped them gain the weight back, and then had to put muscle on them to shoot the second half of the movie, where they were playing a superhero.

[24:38] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Oh, that’s crazy. S-

[24:39] Harley Pasternak: so that was a really… That had its own challenges, but that was really interesting.

[24:44] Dr. Mike T Nelson: What did you… Tell us more about that. What did… And I assume they couldn’t, I’m thinking in my head, like, c- you probably can’t do it in reverse, where you could try to gain more weight, add more muscle, and then lose the weight on the back end. It sounds like you had to do it the opposite, correct?

[25:00] Harley Pasternak: Yeah, you have to do it this way, um, because you don’t wanna put o- i- it’s, it’s just much easier this way.

[25:07] Harley Pasternak: It’s a lot easier to get them to lose the weight and then, yeah.

[25:09] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Mm-hmm.

[25:10] Harley Pasternak: Exactly.

[25:11] Dr. Mike T Nelson: What did you do in that particular case? Can you give us any details?

[25:16] Harley Pasternak: Yeah, I, I had them on a severe caloric restriction. Um, I had them supplementing their calories with a multivitamin, protein supplements, and fiber supplements because they were missing a lot of the important nutrients they should be getting from their diet.

[25:30] Harley Pasternak: Uh, I had their blood checked regularly, their vitals checked regularly, making sure they weren’t lightheaded or passing out or dehydrated, uh, had a physician involved, had a physician on set, a nurse on set to make sure that they weren’t faint or lightheaded and they, they were, felt safe at all times. And then we gradually had to re-feed them slowly but surely and, um, and it, it’s, it’s gonna be fantastic.

[25:52] Harley Pasternak: And we’ve done almost 200 feature films, from Spider-Man and Catwoman and Green Hornet, X-Men and Iron Man and Ant-Man, and all kinds of fun stuff.

[26:01] Dr. Mike T Nelson: How long did it take to lose about the 60 pounds?

[26:05] Harley Pasternak: We did it over four months, I wanna say. Ooh, okay. So we did it over, you know, 12, let’s see, 16 weeks that we were…

[26:13] Harley Pasternak: We lost probably three pounds a week- Yeah … for the most part. Yeah.

[26:20] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Were they just, like John Meadows used to call it, like lettuce mode? Like you’re just eating protein and, like vegetables with a little bit of fiber.

[26:30] Harley Pasternak: Basically, yeah. Yeah.

[26:33] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Was the weight loss linear or did it kind of-

[26:36] Harley Pasternak: No, it’s never linear

[26:37] Harley Pasternak: plateau at first and then drop off? Y- you l- ’Cause I think people think that it’s linear, but- You lo- you lose a lot of water. No, at the beginning you lose mainly water, and the most rapid weight loss is water loss. I mean, I can get anybody to lose tons of weight in 48 hours just by cutting out their carbs and sodium, and they’ll, they can lose a massive amount of weight, but they haven’t lost any body fat.

[26:55] Harley Pasternak: And so we needed him to lose body fat and to look like just you could see the sinews of his muscle fibers, um, and his bones just bulging through his ribcage. It needed to look like he was dying ’cause that’s the c- that’s the role he was playing. Um, but, but it, it went really well. It, which is very different than, let’s say, a Catwoman or a- You know, uh, Ben Foster in X-Men, he’s playing Angel.

[27:18] Harley Pasternak: We had to, you know, shirts off the whole movie, he had to be more muscular. Or Gabriel Macht in The Spirit, muscular. Uh, Downey Jr. in Iron Man, muscular. Very different roles.

[27:29] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah, with that much weight loss, I think of, like, the Minnesota Starvation Study, where a lot of it, they did a lot of metabolic measurements, but the thing that was super interesting was the, the psychology of the people doing, you know, rapid weight loss, where I think there was, like, one guy, like, broke out of the center and went to the nearest place and was trying to eat as many rutabagas as he possibly could because that was, like, the only food he could find.

[27:56] Dr. Mike T Nelson: And people were hoarding, like, pictures of cookbooks, and, uh, there was a couple people who were at the end and, you know, admitted to a psych ward, you know, just from the, the, the psychology and the stress. And in the study, as you know, they still had them do movement and work and things like that, too, so they couldn’t just sit around all day.

[28:14] Dr. Mike T Nelson: That, the psychological component at that, it gets to be very tough.

[28:19] Harley Pasternak: Yeah, absolutely, without a doubt.

[28:22] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Is there any sort of, I guess you could say, tips for handling the, the psychology side that you’ve used with people?

[28:30] Harley Pasternak: I’m really lucky, ’cause when you’re on camera and you make your whole living, your existence based on how you look and how you look for your role, they’re so motivated, so I- Yeah.

[28:37] Harley Pasternak: I don’t have to motivate people. My goal is how do you, you know, how do you create the shortest distance between you got the role, you need to look a certain way, and looking that certain way, and making it less painful, making it simple, not too complicated. And I think shortening these two distances is what I’ve spent almost four decades doing.

[28:56] Harley Pasternak: Um, but motivating people, I, I don’t think, I don’t think is, I don’t think is necessary for the clientele I work with, but in general, I don’t think it’s necessary for anybody. Everybody wants to look good and feel good. It’s human nature. Everyone wants to improve upon themselves. It’s, it’s natural human nature to want to improve.

[29:15] Harley Pasternak: Uh, I think what gets in the way is life. What gets in the way is time. What gets in the way is, is cost. What gets in the way is education. So if I can provide them solutions for those, you know, simple short recipes, simple short workouts, um, tools that, that make the, the process easier and, and, and quicker, then I think that’s, that’s what I need to do.

[29:36] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Do you find a lot of it at that point is obviously you have to be knowledgeable, you have to make sure you’re giving them the correct things to do, but I find the, I guess you could say for lack of a better word, the higher level person I’m working with, it’s more of doing this almost as a profession. I spend more of my time figuring out systems and logistics than I do anything else.

[29:55] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Where on the other c- side, sometimes it’s more if people are newer, it’s a little bit more on the, the education side and kind of gaining a little bit more trust- Mm-hmm … and going a little bit slower. I don’t know if you found anything that’s similar.

[30:09] Harley Pasternak: No, I think that’s well said. I completely concur with that.

[30:12] Harley Pasternak: That’s spot on.

[30:14] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah, ’cause with, you know, higher level athletes and people, they’re, they’re motivated. They’ll do whatever you tell them. Like, they’re bought in, like they already did their homework before they hire you, and a lot of it is just figuring out, okay, how do we make this happen? And like the, the easiest way for you to execute the things that you want, because schedule’s busy, they’ve got a bunch of other stuff going on, and just figuring out those, those things is, I find, the most useful.

[30:40] Dr. Mike T Nelson: ’Cause they’re already bought into what you’re doing, and assuming you’re doing stuff that’s, that’s good, then they’re fine with that.

[30:47] Harley Pasternak: I, uh, I don’t work with a lot of athletes, um, anymore. I find it a lot of work.

[30:54] Dr. Mike T Nelson: It

[30:55] Harley Pasternak: is. I find you’re looking at, you’re looking at just improving someone by half a percentage.

[31:00] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Mm-hmm.

[31:01] Harley Pasternak: M- m- that can be the d- as you know, the difference in them win- winning or losing, uh, an event. Um, I also think it takes so much time to make an improvement in an athlete. Athletes are always injured. You’re dealing with injury, you’re dealing with travel. So I really love the little niche that I found about transforming the physiques and making people look a certain way for a role, ’cause we can do that faster.

[31:24] Harley Pasternak: You can do that, um, uh, you can do it in a significant way over a short period of time, whereas athletics, like, you know, to get someone to go from a, from running a 9.999 to a, a 9.89, gosh, how long does that take? And that’s just such a, a 10th of a second off of their time.

[31:44] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And it’s weird too, because you’ll…

[31:47] Dr. Mike T Nelson: I don’t know if you see this in the population you work with, but the first kind of high level athletes I did a nutrition consult with, I was going into it, I was like so nervous going, “Oh my God, what if this, they’re gonna have everything so dialed in, like, what am I gonna do with these people?” And you see their actual logs of like what they eat and you’re like, “Is this a prank?

[32:06] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Is like somebody filming? Is this a joke?” Like, you’re, in this case it was a track athlete, you’re running that fast on chronically undereating, and one of your meals is fast food, and you eat maybe two meals a day. Like, so the variability in a lot of the freaks that you see, it’s, it’s just wild. And again, everybody responds to physiology.

[32:27] Dr. Mike T Nelson: There’s things you can do. You can definitely make improvements, but that was kind of shocking to me how a lot of people do very well. And I’m sure it happens with training. Like you see some of the training some people do and you’re like, you, you’re able to do that level of output with that kind of training?

[32:43] Dr. Mike T Nelson: That’s mind-boggling. So a lot of it is success in, in spite of what they’re doing sometimes also.

[32:50] Harley Pasternak: And what, what, what area was your academic background in?

[32:53] Dr. Mike T Nelson: So I did a master’s in mechanical engineering, and then I, before that I did a Bachelor of Arts in Natural Science, chemistry. Decided to go back to school for biomedical engineering, so I did a PhD courses for that for five years, and then ended up going over to exercise physiology.

[33:08] Dr. Mike T Nelson: So I did metabolic flexibility and heart rate- Sure … uh, variability, so more on the metabolism side.

[33:15] Harley Pasternak: Sure. Great. Good, w- very cool stuff.

[33:20] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Um, but what do you think are some things from training the population you do that if someone’s listening to this, they’re like, “Well, I’m not an athlete. I’m not getting ready for a role.

[33:32] Dr. Mike T Nelson: I’m not gonna be in film.” But what would you say are kinda like your top three things that you found in your experience that would help someone else listening to this?

[33:44] Harley Pasternak: Boy, um, I think cutting out alcohol first and foremost. You know- Mm … there was a time when people thought, “Oh, I have a glass of red wine a night, it’s heart healthy.”

[33:52] Harley Pasternak: It’s not healthy. It’s, it’s one of the worst thing you can possibly do for your health, one of the most carcinogenic things you can do. It- things that’ll ruin your sleep more than anything else, which that in and of itself- I’ve seen that … has a lot of, you know, impact. Um, your metabolism, weight gain, water retention, so on and so forth.

[34:09] Harley Pasternak: Cut out booze. That’s just a non-negotiable. If I’m trying to get someone ready for something, there’s just no room for booze. Um, don’t make too many changes too quickly. You know, add some h- some, some, um, behavioral changes gradually over time. I think that’s really important. I think, um, you know, if you do too much too quickly, you’re gonna burn out.

[34:31] Harley Pasternak: So little things like add an extra 1,000 steps per day, per week. So don’t, don’t… You know, if you’re doing 5,000 steps a day now, don’t go straight up to 10. Slowly get there. Uh, don’t perfect all the meals right away. I think if you can start off and say, “I’m gonna do an amazing breakfast this week. I’m gonna nail breakfast.

[34:49] Harley Pasternak: Next week, I’ve got breakfast nailed, I’m gonna nail lunch. Week after, I got breakfast and lunch na- nailed, let’s, let’s nail dinner.” So I think gradually adding these behaviors in. Strength training workouts should be short. Mm. Simple. You know, I, I, even myself, uh, I, when I strength train, I do two strength moves a day.

[35:09] Harley Pasternak: Mm. Never more. Um, I do two body parts a day. I do one move for each body part. I go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, and get out. Next day, two different body parts, one move for each, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and, and get out. The idea that you need to train for an hour, I don’t know where that number came from.

[35:29] Harley Pasternak: Even if you look at the, the greats like the, the Mentzers, uh, from Heavy Duty and, um- Um, you know, the, the schools of, of Ellington, Darden, uh, all those guys- Yeah … back in the day, they’re sh- very short workouts. Dorian Yates, very short workouts.

[35:44] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Mm-hmm.

[35:44] Harley Pasternak: It’s all about intensity. So start off slow, gradually add things, gradually add good meals, gradually add more workouts, gradually add steps, and be gradual and consistent.

[35:55] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And I think that’s an underappreciated fact that if someone is just getting into this, they, they probably don’t have to appear on a film in three or four months, right? So they have the luxury of taking their time and, like you said, doing it step by step. I mean, that’s what I’ve noticed with clients who, on one hand I love that they’re super motivated and I don’t wanna have them be a little bit less motivated, but they tend to wanna do, like, 1,700 things on day one, right?

[36:23] Dr. Mike T Nelson: And you’re like, “Okay, let’s just try to figure out what are the top things you can do. Let’s work on that this week, and then, like you said, we’ll expand that a little bit more next week.” Like, we don’t have to get to, you know, the magical 10,000 steps per day or whatever your number is. Like, we don’t have to do that in, in record time.

[36:42] Harley Pasternak: Exactly. Yep. No need. It’s not a sprint. It l- it, this is a, a marathon that never ends. There’s no beg- there’s no end to this.

[36:49] Dr. Mike T Nelson: No, and that’s… And people with, like, we’ve been doing this for a long time, it’s, the older I get the more I’ve often thought, I’m like, “Huh, I probably would still be training even if I couldn’t really see a lot of change,” just because it’s, I’m, I’m so used to doing it now.

[37:09] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Um- Mm-hmm … and then after you’ve been doing it longer, it just takes so much more effort to get, eh, you know, just a couple more reps here or there, or just, you know, decrease your time by this amount. It’s those small little changes that you just keep doing that over and over and over and over.

[37:26] Harley Pasternak: Exactly.

[37:26] Harley Pasternak: Absolutely.

[37:28] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Related to sleep, do you use trackers with people? Do you have anything? Do you just do, like, a questionnaire, or what do you do regarding sleep?

[37:36] Harley Pasternak: Yeah. Um, I helped launch Fitbit. I helped bring- Oh, okay … Fitbit to the world. Geez, you’ve done everything. And, um, yeah, this was many, many years ago, and so, uh, I’ve been an advocate of, of trackers and biometrics for a very long time.

[37:51] Harley Pasternak: In a very simple way, I think today we’re, we’re collecting too much data- Mm-hmm … that’s overwhelming people, confusing people. People don’t know what data means. You know, I hate when I hear people talk about zone 2s and HRVs, and- … uh, these are a lot of physiology terms that, that, that don’t really apply to the average person, and so, um, and that includes VO2 max measures.

[38:12] Harley Pasternak: Uh, I think knowing how much did I move today, knowing how well did I sleep today, knowing what time it is, I think are the most important things your tracker should tell you. So I- I’m, I’m a big fan of those.

[38:24] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Do you have people look at any particular metrics towards sleep, or do you just kinda keep it pretty simple of, you know, what time did you go to bed, what time did you get up, how do you feel in the morning type thing?

[38:35] Harley Pasternak: Yeah, for the most part it’s, uh, the, the two things I’m most interested in is how much rapid eye movement and how much deep sleep did I get. Those are the- Mm … two most important. If those things don’t look right, then I take a step back. I say, “Okay, well, let’s look else. What else is going on? What time did you wake up?

[38:50] Harley Pasternak: What time did you go to bed? And let me look further than that. You know, did you have alcohol? W- were you on your phone before bed? What was the temperature of the bedroom? Did you have blackout curtains? Was there any ambient noises? Are you stressed? Are you in pain? Are you fighting an infection? What’s your heart rate throughout the night?”

[39:04] Harley Pasternak: Those things I look at are more secondary and tertiary, but for me it’s how much rapid eye movement, how much deep sleep. ’Cause if you’re getting two hours of each, I don’t really care how much you slept, and I don’t really care that you drank alcohol. I don’t care about anything else because your sleep is perfect, so let’s not mess with it

[39:21] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Awesome.

[39:22] Dr. Mike T Nelson: And then I assume that’s per tracking device, so you’re kinda looking for relative changes, ’cause as you know, the accuracy of some of these c- looking at REM and deep and different markers of sleep is kinda all over the place.

[39:37] Harley Pasternak: Yeah. Uh, I know recently Oura, I think, was facing a lawsuit for, um, uh, poor accuracy on collecting, uh, uh- Yeah, that was-

[39:46] Harley Pasternak: measurement for sleep …

[39:46] Dr. Mike T Nelson: that was kind of a weird accusation too, but yeah, I, I agree.

[39:52] Harley Pasternak: Um, but I, I can tell you that, uh, y- you know, JAMA did a study a few years ago looking at the accuracy of all the trackers in the market, and I think Fitbit was far above and beyond number one-

[40:03] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Hmm …

[40:03] Harley Pasternak: from steps and for sleep.

[40:04] Harley Pasternak: So nothing’s perfect, but it’s about as good as it gets.

[40:09] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Awesome. So judging by your comment, you’re not a big fan of zone 2? You don’t think people need two to three hours of zone 2 a week? I don’t

[40:17] Harley Pasternak: at all- This guy- … but I’m

[40:18] Dr. Mike T Nelson: just asking.

[40:19] Harley Pasternak: This zone 2, people talk about it because of one podcaster who, smart guy, nothing, no knocks against him, has no training in the field of exercise physiology, has never worked with a client, uh, you know, has, has n- has never, you know, probably heard it as a soundbite and he said, “Here’s something I can talk about on my podcast, zone 2.”

[40:37] Harley Pasternak: He’s talking about athletes. When you’re talking about athletes, it’s a, as you know- Mm-hmm … it’s a very different world. And we’re talking about elite, elite athletes, it’s a very different world. The average American does not need to know their VO2 max. Not only that, but where are they going to test for their VO2 max?

[40:52] Harley Pasternak: You know, it’s not such a, a, an available test that’s easily accessible, nor is it essential, um, unless you’re talking about elite athletics at the high end, um, for performance parameters. But, um, zone 2, irrelevant. VO2 max, irrelevant. Your HRV, everyone needs to chill. Everyone needs to just chill- … with all the biometrics and all the data and just say, “Hey, how many steps did I take today?

[41:15] Harley Pasternak: Did I move or not? Did I strength train today? Did I get them what I… Great. How many calories did I get today?” That number is important. And within that, how many grams of protein, fiber, uh, a- and sugar and healthy fat did I get? Those, those numbers are important. Um, how many times did I laugh today? I love that.

[41:32] Harley Pasternak: That, hey, if there’s any way to keep t- if there’s a tracker on smiling and laughter- Ooh, that’d be a good one … I’d love to know. That- Yeah, yeah … that would be a great number. And I’m sure there is some way, there’s probably some measure of a sticker you could- Mm-hmm … put by your jaw that measures every time you smile.

[41:48] Harley Pasternak: I mean, that would be a good data. But as far as your, your VO2 max and your HRV and, and your LTL and your QBR and your J- I mean- Irrelev- irrelevant for 99% of the population.

[42:01] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. I mean, as an exercise physiologist, I love a lot of those metrics, but I agree that the context for vast majority of people is lost.

[42:11] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Like, the amount of rando questions I get from people I’ve never met who wanna know, “Well, what is my VT1 versus VT2?” And I’m like, “What do you do for cardio?” They’re like, “Well, you know, I haven’t started doing cardio yet.” I’m like, “Well, how about you start doing some of that? Like, do you have a big race coming up?

[42:29] Dr. Mike T Nelson: What are you trying to do?” They’re like, “Well, not really. I’m thinking about it.” And it’s, then you ask them like, “Well, how much sleep did you get last night?” “I don’t know, maybe six hours.” You know, it’s just like… Uh, but the, I feel like especially with social media, the basics just are not sexy, and everybody wants to appear to be the, you know, super secret squirrel program designed by, like, Biohacker Bob with the new latest, greatest peptide instead of eating protein, going to bed, training hard, and doing some cardio, I guess, but

[43:01] Harley Pasternak: Biohacker Bob.

[43:02] Harley Pasternak: Yes, I love that. Well done.

[43:06] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Uh, last couple questions here. How do you, speaking of social media, how do you view, I guess you could say social media in terms of, of fitness? Like, my view is that we’re… It feels like there’s this huge push to be unique for the sake of you being unique, and, like, the basics that have worked for centuries just get lost because they’re, they’re not sexy.

[43:33] Dr. Mike T Nelson: But you talk to someone like you who, you know, gets paid to get celebrities, you know, ready. Like, I’m good friends with Dom, uh, Don Saladino. You know, it- you talk to all these people, and people who work with high-level athletes, et cetera, they’re all just really good at the logistics and doing the basic stuff, and making sure they can do it day in and day out.

[43:54] Dr. Mike T Nelson: And then you go to social media, and it just feels like, oh, well, if you just, you know, put a red light on your ball sack, then everything’ll be fine. And it just drives me nuts, I guess.

[44:04] Harley Pasternak: Yeah, I, I, uh, but we live in this attention economy, and you need to keep coming up with new stories, and-

[44:11] Dr. Mike T Nelson: True …

[44:11] Harley Pasternak: the fact is human evolution, physical human evolution happens over tens of thousands of years, thousands and thousands of years.

[44:21] Harley Pasternak: So we are no different. Our muscularity, our bone structure, our physiology is no different than our parents, our grandparents, our great-grandparents, our great-great-grandparents. And so what worked for, you know, someone in 1901 physically is the exact same thing that’s gonna work for somebody today physically.

[44:37] Harley Pasternak: Um, that’s why when I talk about my favorite gym equipment, it, it was made over half a century ago.

[44:42] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Mm-hmm.

[44:43] Harley Pasternak: Because what worked for the human body then, you know, it was… There’s no electronics or motors involved.

[44:48] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Nope.

[44:49] Harley Pasternak: What worked for the human body then is exactly what still works for the human body today.

[44:54] Harley Pasternak: A leg extension is still a leg extension. Maybe the new one today has a comfortable cup holder, a towel hanger, um- … but, but the principles of physiology, biomechanics, all of these things still hold true. A calorie is still a calorie. Fat still has nine grams. Ca- carbohydrates and proteins still have four.

[45:13] Harley Pasternak: Alcohol still has seven. These things haven’t changed since I was an undergraduate many, many years ago, but it’s just boring. It’s, we, we’ve heard that story, so what’s the new story? And, um, and so people have made whole careers on, in social media and, uh, by coming up with some, you know, bullshit baffles brains new story.

[45:31] Harley Pasternak: And if you look closely, which I’m sure you, you have because you have great, uh, academic background and credentials, n-99.999999999% of the people who are giving out health or fitness or nutrition information today on the internet and in social media do not have credentials or education or training or experience- Wow

[45:52] Harley Pasternak: practicing in the fields that they are espousing. And Huberman’s a smart guy. I’m sure he knows a lot about, I think it’s ocular neurology.

[46:01] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Mm-hmm.

[46:01] Harley Pasternak: Yeah, I think so too. He’s never been trained in, in all of the other stuff, and he spends most of his time talking about exercise, nutrition, and, and, and, and I’m sure he has personal experience in it.

[46:10] Harley Pasternak: I’m sure he’s read, read books and talked to people about it, and he’s not saying things that are definitively wrong, but he’s giving out so much information that’s just superfluous. It’s superfluous, it’s confusing, it’s overwhelming to people. Um, and it’s, it’s not necessary, but, you know, you have an entertainment platform, and you need to come up with stuff to talk about.

[46:29] Harley Pasternak: And when you hear Attia talk about, you know, phase two, he’s a cyclist. Yeah. He’s a massive Tour de France cyclist, and he’s talking about Tour de France cycling. Nobody gives a shit about Tour de France cycling. I’m so sorry. You, you go to the average American, go to Marge in Wisconsin at Walmart a- and ask her who finished first, second, and third in the Tour de France last year.

[46:47] Harley Pasternak: Uh-huh. She won’t know what Tour de France is, you know? And, and I don’t… m- It’s not a knock on Marge. It’s just not something that any of us really need to think about or worry about, the exercise physiology protocols of Tour de France cyclists. If you really wanna talk about high-end cyclists, you can talk about all of the ones that died in their sleep.

[47:04] Harley Pasternak: When I was an undergraduate-

[47:06] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Oh, yeah …

[47:06] Harley Pasternak: um, you know, they were, they were taking- EPO … um, EPO, and, and they just als- died in their sleep. Um, you wanna talk about Tour de France cyclists, talk about the, the caffeine suppositories, ca- Mm-hmm … the ephedrine suppositories that, that they took. You w- you know? Um, that’s interesting to me.

[47:23] Harley Pasternak: The zone two, I could take it or leave it.

[47:26] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah, I’ve heard multiple stories of people from back in that day of cyclists waking up at 3:00 in the morning and just going for a ride. And you’re like, “What are, what are you doing?” They’re like, “I just feel like my blood is too thick.” And they would literally get on their bike and go, you know, do some form of exercise for, like, 60 minutes, and you would look at their hematocrit and you’re like, “Holy shit, this is this is not gonna end well.”

[47:55] Dr. Mike T Nelson: It’s ’cause, as you know, most of them- But, but- … passed away

[47:58] Harley Pasternak: when they were asleep … but the same, same thing in Ho- in Hollywood with hematocrit. You have a lot of, you know, y- how, may I ask how old you are, ballpark?

[48:04] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Oh, sure, 52.

[48:06] Harley Pasternak: Okay. So you and I are the exact same age.

[48:08] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Oh, okay. Oh, nice.

[48:09] Harley Pasternak: You, you have more hair- I would never

[48:10] Dr. Mike T Nelson: guess you’re 52

[48:11] Harley Pasternak: than I do. Yeah. So, uh, you and I grew up in the Reagan era, watching movies- Oh, yeah … with Stallone and Schwarzenegger and Van Damme- Yep … and, and I’m sure all of those guys had really high hematocrit and needed to dump and pump their blood every 90 days. Oh, I’m sure. And, and so when you see today Thor or whatever other superhero, you know, they’re not Tour de France cyclists, but I am willing to bet that whatever protocol they are using is leading to high hematocrit and the need to, to, to donate blood on a regular basis, uh, or there’s a lot of health risks.

[48:41] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Oh, yeah. I’m sure.

[48:43] Harley Pasternak: I’m sure the listeners are missing the in-between of what we’re talking about, but, um- … just Google why would a movie actor playing a superhero have high hematocrit. Maybe that’ll give you an answer.

[48:56] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yep. And you look at enough blood work, you can tell pretty fast, right? There’s some giveaways of looking at certain markers if they get a full panel of, okay, yeah, I kinda know what’s go- what’s going on here, so.

[49:10] Harley Pasternak: Yeah.

[49:11] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Awesome. Well, anything else I didn’t ask you that I should have asked you, or is that, like, the big takeaway

[49:16] Harley Pasternak: for the listeners? No, I, I feel like if you wanna ask me about, you know, supplements, what supplements do I use or take or advise people, I can talk about that.

[49:22] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah, that is a good question. We kinda skipped over that.

[49:25] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Like, what do you recommend? And then it feels like everyone and their brother is using some type of peptide now. I got, I think I got four requests to be an affiliate for some rando peptide manufacturer in my inbox today again, and it, I, I don’t know. It just seems like it’s such a- We’re not putting the genie back in the bottle, but at the same place, it’s almost impossible to verify where these are actually made.

[49:53] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Are they legit? Nevertheless, the, the research on them is very scant and everything else.

[49:58] Harley Pasternak: I, I mean, scant means there’s a little bit of it.

[50:01] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah, some of them there’s none.

[50:03] Harley Pasternak: Zero means there’s zero. I, I, you know, if I was an alien and I came down to this country or to this planet and someone said, “Hey, I have this, uh, drug that I don’t know where it’s made.

[50:15] Harley Pasternak: Uh, it’s never been tested on humans, and if it has been tested on humans, the studies either showed no benefit or showed health problems to the point that they weren’t finished, the studies.”

[50:24] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Bunch of rabbits from Croatia. It’s okay.

[50:26] Harley Pasternak: Uh, yeah, exactly. Rabbits from Croatia. I like that. “And I’m just gonna stick the needle and shoot you with this drug we know nothing about.

[50:33] Harley Pasternak: Can I do that?” They’re like, “No, of course not.” Well, what if your favorite influencer is selling it for 20% off right now? Oh, well then maybe… Or what if you’re a biohacking longevity doctor, which I don’t even know what those things mean. Or, or what’s the dude calls himself? The human biologist. He, I think he bombed at a chiropractice school.

[50:53] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah.

[50:54] Harley Pasternak: He’s the worst. Um, all of these people are just charlatans. So no, I, I don’t touch peptides. And when I say peptides, obviously I’m not talking about insulin that Type 1 diabetics-

[51:02] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah, like FDA-approved ones, GLPs, et

[51:04] Harley Pasternak: cetera. FDA-approved ones, GLP-1s.

[51:06] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah.

[51:06] Harley Pasternak: If you’re, if you’re someone taking a GLP-1, and I do have clients that take GLP-1s, for those ones who are taking GLP-1s, you know, the Holy Trinity that they need from a supplement perspective, so number one is they need to have a, a protein powder.

[51:18] Harley Pasternak: Um, it’s not that they need to have a protein powder, but they ain’t eating enough dietary protein- Mm-hmm … to maintain their only muscle mass. So that’s the first thing. The second thing is, and this is a big one, is fiber. Yeah. And this is not only a big one for people on a GLP-1, it’s a big one for everybody.

[51:32] Harley Pasternak: Nobody’s getting enough fiber in their diet. I used to tell people to take Metamucil, but boy, that is gritty and tough, and it’s like liquid Drano- Yeah. … and it’s a lot. I just started using, um- I just started using Wonder Biotics Daily Fiber Mix. Hmm. It’s a blend of different fibers. It’s got, uh, no taste, no color, no flavor, so I can, I put it in my coffee in the morning- Oh, cool

[51:55] Harley Pasternak: and then it, it’s… Yeah, that’s a good one. Um, and a multivitamin if you’re taking a GLP-1. It, that’s a good insurance policy ’cause you’re probably not getting enough produce in your body to get your minerals and vitamins and the things you need. So I would say a protein supplement, probably a whey, um, i- if, you know, if, if you’re okay with having whey.

[52:14] Harley Pasternak: Um, uh, most people are okay with having whey. There’s no lactose in whey. Uh, if you’re vegan, find something else that you can stomach. Most vegan sources to me I find gritty and tough to digest, and-

[52:24] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah … it’s better. They’ve gotten better, but they’re still, mm, if

[52:28] Harley Pasternak: I had a choice. They’ve, they’ve gotten better.

[52:29] Harley Pasternak: Yeah. A f- a friend of mine started Vega, um- Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah … out of British Columbia. Gr- a great guy. Uh, we golf, uh, together and, um, he, he kinda made the company, uh, uh, the first, I believe, to source their pea protein domestically. Most of it, almost all of it comes from China. Mm-hmm. It’s not really great quality.

[52:49] Harley Pasternak: Mm-hmm. It’s hard to digest. Uh, that was another one. Vega was, was pretty good for, for vegan protein. Um, fiber, as I mentioned, you know, I, the one I use, the Wonder Biotics, and then the multivitamin. I use whatever big brand you can find out there. I find the bigger brand the better, because they tend to have a lot more to lose- Oh, definitely

[53:04] Harley Pasternak: and they’ve invested- For quality, right … in it, right? So I, I don’t know. What are the big… Like, like Centrum and Jamieson and all those big brands out there are pretty good. And that’s really it, you know? If you wanna take creatine, you do you. I’m, I’m not gonna live longer from taking creatine. I’m not gonna be smarter.

[53:19] Harley Pasternak: I, I don’t wanna hold water, so I, I just personally don’t like it. I feel puffy and swollen on creatine. And that’s it.

[53:25] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Do you use the fish oil?

[53:27] Harley Pasternak: No, I eat fish. I eat a lot of fish.

[53:29] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Oh, okay. There you go then. Then you’re covered.

[53:31] Harley Pasternak: Yeah. I, I, I eat fish. I probably eat fish five, six days a week.

[53:37] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Oh, nice.

[53:38] Harley Pasternak: Yeah. Yeah.

[53:40] Dr. Mike T Nelson: That’s the downside of living in the Midwest. You can get fish now, but it’s just a little bit more expensive and it’s just, you gotta know where to go to get it, for sure.

[53:49] Harley Pasternak: Well, you know, the, the tricky thing about fish is I only buy frozen fish. And so what’s great about frozen fish is you can get it anywhere in the world, ’cause it’s frozen, Midwest included.

[54:01] Harley Pasternak: And so, um, what I love about frozen fish is, first of all, it kills any parasites that would be in it, the freezing process. Y- you know it’s fresh because it’s… You know, when you’re buying fresh fish, you know, they say, “Flown in fresh daily.” I don’t, I don’t know- Yeah. Yeah. … if anyone’s gonna tell you

[54:16] Dr. Mike T Nelson: that.

[54:17] Harley Pasternak: I know, I know my stuff’s frozen until the day I take it out and thaw it out, and so that’s, that’s what I like to do.

[54:23] Dr. Mike T Nelson: What are your favorite types of fish?

[54:25] Harley Pasternak: I’m a big salmon guy. Coming from Canada, my wife’s from Vancouver, we go up there- Oh, yeah … quite a bit, and there’s like eight or nine different salmons, chinook, sockeye, coho, all, you know, king- Yep … all these great salmons. King salmon, yeah. I love salmon. I love it’s, see, really easy to cook ’cause it’s really, it’s kinda oily, so it’s hard to dry out.

[54:41] Harley Pasternak: I love salmon. I love, um, uh, I don’t have it that often, but I love Chilean sea bass, which- Oh, that’s great … again, the, the oiliness, the flakiness. It’s really easy to cook. I actually like smaller cold water fish as well, so sometimes I’ll have herring. Um, and not everyone loves herring, I know, but talk about an amazing healthy fat profile.

[55:00] Harley Pasternak: Um, I like shellfish of every kind. I lo- I love seafood.

[55:04] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Awesome.

[55:06] Harley Pasternak: Yeah.

[55:06] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Well, thank you so much for all your time and sharing everything today. I really appreciate it. We covered a, a whole lot of ground, and where can people find out more about you?

[55:15] Harley Pasternak: Uh, you can go to my Instagram, which is just @harleypasternak, H-A-R-L-E-Y P-A-S-T-E-R-N-A-K, um, and my website’s the same, harleypasternak.com.

[55:26] Harley Pasternak: Um, or you, if you bump into my mother, I’m sure she’ll tell you everything about me. She’s good at

[55:30] Dr. Mike T Nelson: that,

[55:31] Harley Pasternak: so. Yeah.

[55:32] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Awesome. Great. Well, I’d highly encourage everyone to check that out, and thank you so much for all your time today. I really appreciate it. That was great.

[55:38] Harley Pasternak: Thank, thanks Mike. I appreciate it.

[55:40] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Thank you.

[55:41] Harley Pasternak: Take

[55:41] Harley Pasternak: care.