The Burnout Loop

We share the most frustrating stretch of our lives: high performance on paper while waking up exhausted, living on caffeine, and feeling wired at night. We name the burnout loop, explain why “normal labs” can still mean you are far from optimal, and lay out the markers that help you stop guessing and start fixing the root cause.

 TOPICS:
• our real-world burnout story from the restaurant grind and no-days-off mindset
• the tired-and-wired pattern: morning crashes, brain fog, nighttime buzzing
• why more caffeine, harder training, and more supplements stop working
• “normal isn’t optimal” and the gap where performance problems hide
• the burnout loop: flipped cortisol rhythm and the sleep-stress cycle
• why primary care often misses optimization: screening for disease, shifting reference ranges, time and insurance limits
• five testing categories to consider: adrenal and stress markers, full thyroid panel, sex hormones, metabolic and inflammatory markers, nutrients and raw materials
• why interpretation matters more than the lab report and generic ranges 
• why order matters with TRT and other interventions: fix the system before adding tools 

I’m actually running a free live training masterclass called Tired Soft and Totally Normal this is on June 24th 6:30 p.m Eastern Standard Time I’m going to put the registration link below again it’s totally free and it’ll be in the show notes Just opt in and show up that’s all you got to do If you are somebody that’s actually listening to this past June 24th 2026 you can actually DM me on Instagram at Coach_Kak webinar DM me webinar and I will send you the full replay.

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Transcript

Welcome And Why This Matters

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to Unmasking Greatness. I'm your host, Chris McCoris, a lifestyle fitness coach and mentor. This podcast is about unmasking your greatest potential, finding your purpose, and crafting a life worth living. Health and fitness has been the gateway drug to all of my success. My continuous drive to keep learning and surround myself with other high achievers forces me to level up, which has developed my mind to something I never thought was possible. This podcast is here to share what I've learned and continue to learn with all of you. This is your time to take back control of your health, mindset, and personal environment. Strap in as we are recharged and always find value in the show. Please subscribe and share as we can all get better together. Let's go.

A High Performer Still Crashes

SPEAKER_00 0:44

What's up, guys? Hope everyone's having a blessed day today. Now, I have a story that I want to share. Some of you that are listening have listened to the podcast before, so you've heard my story before. But today I want to talk about something that's a little more specific, and I'm going to explain why towards the end of this episode. So this is going to be, and I would say one of the most frustrating stretches of my life. I've had a handful of those, but like we all do. Um, but this one specifically, um I'm telling you up front because I've got a feeling you might be living your own version of it right now. So about 10 years ago, on paper, on my resume, uh, I really had no business feeling the way that I was feeling. I got my IFBB pro card. I was competing at the highest level of physical performance that there is. Uh I've got a degree in exercise science, so I just finished my college experience getting through that. I I knew training, I knew nutrition. I was the guy other people came to for this sort of thing. And I was completely exhausted every single day. And to give a little bit of context, after turning pro and graduate graduating, I did this literally within a couple months of each other. I ended up going into the restaurant business with my family. As my my degree that I got, a bachelor's in exercise science and doing the personal training, couldn't I couldn't get a job that even paid my bills. That's really sad to say. I finished four years in college and uh it was it was actually really depressing at that time. But I needed to find a way to make means and and pay off student debt. And I wanted security. And I made the decision and sat down with my father and I said, hey, I I want to come full time uh and and work at the restaurant. And he he definitely questioned me as you know, the lifestyle in the restaurant business is is not normal. Uh, if you know anybody that owns a restaurant or you have run a restaurant, like it is it's a grind for sure, uh, depending on how and who who runs it. But needless to say, I I convinced my dad, and it wasn't that hard to convince him. I'm sure he wanted me there. He just realized that, you know, my dad being an immigrant, that was the only option he had was to do the restaurant. And and I had options, but I also didn't have options that was going to pay me enough to live on my own. So uh this restaurant that we had, it was open seven days per week. And my dad liked to do breakfast, lunch, and dinner. So we were open 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. every single day. And that was my schedule. I opened up at 5:30 to start prepping, getting things ready to start at 6. Uh, I would take a break around 12, 1 o'clock-ish, and that was my gym time. I would go to the gym during my break, and then I was back, came straight back to the restaurant and finished out my day. And I would get off close to around like 10 p.m. I did that seven days a week uh for a couple of years, nonetheless. So I wasn't just tired, I was physically, emotionally, and socially exhausted. Uh, I'd sleep a full night and wake up just feeling like I was still dreaming. Uh, it was it was kind of wild. It kind of felt like my I don't know if you guys ever have like this tunnel view where it's like your eyes are in the back of your head, but you can still see. It's really, really weird. Um, you know, and and the first thing I would do right when I wake up at 6 a.m. was crack an energy drink. I had to get some caffeine to like just let's get this thing rolling, let's start throttling in. And uh that would last to around lunchtime, if that. But, you know, like I said, I would go to the gym, so it's time to take my pre-workout drink, which was another hit of, you know, two to three hundred milligrams of caffeine. And later in the day, there was a very high possibility that I would drink another one, or maybe even just a cup of coffee, depending on how I was feeling. And so you could say I was just, you know, I was I was redlining it every single day, all day long. And I was young at that time, you know, I'm I'm still young, by the way. Uh, but but back then I was I was uh 20, 25 years old, don't do the math, and I thought I was unstoppable. You know, I was I had muscle, I was strong, I was young, I was hungry, and I wore the tag of no days off as a badge of honor. Like that was like something that was I was prideful of in a weird way, like kind of boosted my ego that I didn't take a day off. I didn't want to feel like anyone could outwork me. And honestly, nobody did until I myself hit that glass ceiling. And there was no caffeine at this point that was going to fix what I was going through at this time. So now I'd be hitting the afternoon, and all this extra like brain fog would start rolling in. There was, I was even reading things at the same time three times in a row, and it just wouldn't land. I mean, we had reps coming in trying to talk about food orders and things like that. And uh I would have I would have them repeat themselves because I just normally I'd catch it on the first try. And uh after that, I was like, what'd you say? And so that started to be like a little bit embarrassing because I just wasn't in the right headspace. And at nighttime, of course, you know, I was I was bombed, I was

The Restaurant Grind And Redlining

SPEAKER_00 6:16

wrecked, and I'd lie down and my brain would just flip on like a light switch with all the things that I had to do the next day. And that comes with, you know, running a business or managing, you know, 30 plus employees. The reality is, is like there's always something going on, there's always something to do, and it's hard to just turn it off. Uh, it's not like something you can clock in and clock out of. So I was I was pretty, pretty tired all day. And uh what made it worse is then I was wired at night. So I wasn't even getting a full night's of sleep for the most part. And also, by the way, you know, during this time, my my current wife was living with me. And so you can imagine how that would affect our our sex life, you know. I was I was I was just tired. And uh, you know, that again, luckily for for me, she understood the lifestyle as her family owns the restaurants too. But uh again, as as a male, that's uh it's a little bit of an ego hit. You're like, yo, what's what's wrong with me? This is not good. So outside of you know the caffeine, I was I was doing everything else right, you know, I was still training, I was eating healthy, on my diet, staying hydrated. Uh hell, I was I was actually still even trying to compete at this time. So like I knew the playbook better than almost anyone, but my body was not responding like it used to. That was that was what really got me too. Because I've I've already been competing, I turned pro, I know what it takes. And for whatever reason, the things I was doing this time just the body just wasn't clicking like it used to. So at this point, I even decided to go to a doctor. Uh, I just felt off, not necessarily bad, uh, just not right. And so the best answer that I would get from them is that I was working too much, uh, which, you know, I didn't need them to tell me that. And they wanted me to take some time off. And uh, we did do some labs, got some blood work done, just basic panel, and you know, everything for the most part came back good. I mean, keep in mind I was in good condition, body fat was super healthy, had good muscle, I worked out. They told me to eat some, you know, add a little more healthy fats to the diet, but but that was about it. Um, that was that was all I got. And, you know, I think the part that really messed with my head is I was supposed to be an expert in my field, right? Like the professional, I was supposed to have the answers and I couldn't even fix myself. Uh this, I don't know if you guys ever feel like almost like a little bit of an imposter, you know, like you're helping other people. Because during this time, I was also coaching clients on the side online, and I'm helping them get in shape, but I still like in my own mind, I felt like I wasn't that person. So I did what most people will do. I'll just start pushing harder, right? I started dieting a little bit harder, training a little bit harder, um, started spending money on different supplements, uh, things that I thought might help. Uh, and I tried the stuff that was was trending at the time. There's all different kinds of things that were going on, but nothing, not not much really moved the needle for me. And it took me way too long to admit why. I had spent my entire life and career optimizing in the wrong order. I was chasing intervention before I'd even actually measured the system underneath them, right? So if you ever felt like that, like you're doing everything right and you still feel stuck and still tired, maybe foggy headed, like I was talking about, uh, this is for you. Like I'm talking to you today because I've been exactly where you are, and I want you to stay with me because there's a name for what's happening, it's measurable, and it is definitely fixable. All right. Now, for the new listeners that are tuning into the podcast, my name is Chris Kakoris. This is Unmasking Greatness Podcast. I'm a board certified functional medicine practitioner, and these days I work with a lot of business owners, entrepreneurs, uh, corporate professionals who've worked and are building something very real and significant, and somewhere along the way, they feel like their body's quitting on them. There's then now they're starting to hit the glass ceiling. But I want you to hear my story as a whole point, not necessarily the credentials, you know, the the pro thing, the extra science background. You know, that's not me bragging. It's it's evidence because if a guy who does this for a living who competed at the top of his sport could still fall into this trap, then this was never about discipline or knowledge. It was about looking at the right things in the right order. That's the lesson I learned the hard way, and it's the entire reason this episode is going to exist. I gave this a lot of thought, and here's the phrase I want you to hang on to because it's everything in three words. Normal isn't optimal. Normal isn't optimal.

Brain Fog And Tired But Wired

SPEAKER_00 11:20

The gap between your labs are normal and you feel like yourself again. That gap is where I lived for years. It might be where you're living right now, and today we're gonna map it out. So tune in. So let's name what was happening back then. Let's put it let's put a title on it. I call this the burnout loop. Here's the mechanism, and I promise to keep this human and not like this biochemistry, you know, lecture, but you have a hormone called cortisol. You know, most people think of it as a stress hormone, and and it is, but it's also your wake-up hormone. In a healthy system, cortisol is high in the morning, that's what pulls you out of your sleep. It gives you that natural get up and go, and it's lower at night, so you can actually wind down and sleep and get some good deep sleep. High in the morning, low at night, clean rhythm. This is good energy, good sleep. All right, now run hard for years, all right. Long days, high stakes, a brain that never fully clocks out, even on vacation. All right, that's the worst. Do that long enough, and the rhythm doesn't just weaken, it flips. Okay, cortisol crashes in the morning, right when you need it, so you wake up feeling like you got hit by a Mac truck, and then it climbs at night, right when you don't want it to. So you're lying in bed exhausted, but you're buzzing. That mind is is twirling round and round of all the things you got to do. That's the tired and wired thing. Okay, that's not a personality flaw, that's not you being weak, that's a measurable hormone pattern, and it has a direction it's moving in. Here's the part that makes it the loop, and this is the part that traps people. Bad sleep makes your cortisol worse, and bad cortisol makes your sleep worse. Okay, round and round. Here we go. This is the loop. Every single day that loop runs, the hole gets a little bit deeper, and it doesn't stay in its lane, it starts dragging other systems down with it. Your thyroid, which controls the whole metabolism thing, right? Your testosterone, your drive, your recovery, your blood sugar, even your gut. This is why I couldn't out train it. This is why I couldn't out-supplement all the things that I was taking, and neither can you. You cannot willpower your way out of this loop. You have to find where the thing is anchored, and then you have to interrupt it at the source. And here's the only way you find the anchor. You look at the right markers, which brings us up to the obvious question is if this is so common, I just, you know, what I don't I don't understand why doctors don't catch it, but I do, and I'm gonna talk about that too. All right. And and I want to be really clear about something, okay? I'm I'm never I'm I'm not, and I never will be bashing doctors. You know, I have a primary care physician that I go see. Um, there are doctors that that are out there, of course, there's good ones and and not so good ones, but again, your primary care physician is trained to do one thing exceptionally well, and that's to detect and treat diseases, you know, find a tumor, catch the heart condition, manage diabetes. Uh, even like when you're just sick, you just go there and they need to give you a ZPAC or some medication because uh you have a sore throat, you know, that that that is there. It's there for that reason, okay? And I'm grateful for that. But here's the thing that's a different job than helping you perform at your best. Okay. And there are three reasons the markers I'm about to walk you through almost never get run. Okay. So the first one, they're gonna be screening for sickness, not optimization. If you're not sick, you get discharged. Feeling like a shadow of your best self. I know, okay. Uh it doesn't show up on a chart, so nobody really chases anything. Okay. Number two, and this is the one that should make you a little bit upset. Uh, those quote unquote normal ranges. Yeah, let's talk about that. Uh, they're built on a sick population. All right. Lab references ranges are basically a statistical average of people who

Normal Labs But Not Optimal

SPEAKER_00 15:44

get tested, and that group is increasingly overweight, increasingly metabolically struggling, increasingly unhealthy. As that population has gotten worse over the years, that again, that normal bar has quietly dropped to match. Wonder why? Yeah, you see where I'm going with this. So, when your doctor says you're normal, what that actually means is you're not usual or unusual compared to a sick population. Okay, and that's a very difficult thing, right? And you're trying to be optimal. So, the third one, time and money. Okay, let's get real with it. Uh, the average appointment is a few minutes long. Insurance won't cover a full hormonal or even a metabolic workup for someone who looks fine. So the comprehensive panel uh just it just doesn't get ordered, in all honesty. So when you add all of those three up, you get exactly what happened to myself and and tons of clients that we work with. They're told everything's fine while they still feel like something is not right. And that gap between not sick and optimal, that's the entire neighborhood the burnout loop lives in. So now you guys understand where I'm going with this. But then you're probably asking Chris, like, what's what are these markers that I should be looking for? Okay, so what should you test? If you wanted to actually find the anchor instead of guessing, I'm gonna give you five categories you don't need to memorize. Okay, so you know I'm not quizzing you or anything. Uh, you can actually screenshot this in the show notes later after you listen to this, and this will give you a little bit of a idea of what to look for. Now, these are just a few. I just kind of pulled like some top fives. There's a lot more that I would be testing for, but this will give you a good insight. So, category one is gonna be the stress and adrenal function. Okay, this is ground zero. This is where the tired and wired is gonna be showing up. Uh, we're gonna be looking at cortisol, not just whether it's there, but we want to see the rhythm across the day. And DHEA, which is the counterbalance, it tells me how much gas you've got left in the adrenal tank. This is the loop on paper, okay. Category two, your full thyroid panel. And I mean full. And most doctors, they're just gonna run one marker, which is your TSH, and call it a thyroid test. That's like checking one warning light and saying the whole engine is is fine. I want the storage form of thyroid hormone and especially the active form, the one that actually drives your metabolism and energy, which almost never gets tested and is hugely revealing. Category three is going to be your sex hormones, which uh this is just wild to me. But this is for men and women, by the way, but chronic stress literally steals from your sex hormones. So, low drive, garbage recovery, the stubborn body composition, it often starts right here. For guys, we're looking at total and free testosterone and a few markers around it that tell me how much of your body can actually use it. It's not enough to know the number. I need to know if it's actually available. I have seen so many people have good testosterone numbers, okay. Uh, some of them are even on TRT and they still feel horrible. Well, this could be why. Category four, metabolic and inflammatory. This is where burnout quietly turns into real long-term disease risks, okay? And it's where the midsection that won't budge comes from. The single most important one here is your fasting insulin because it shifts year before your blood sugar does. It's the early warning marker, and almost nobody's ever like looking at these things, plus a marker for hidden inflammation. So the smoke behind a lot of these symptoms comes from this. And category five is going to be your nutrient and raw materials. Vitamin D, which is really more of a hormone than a vitamin, iron and ferritin, huge for energy and massive blind spot, especially in women. B12 and folate, uh, these are the raw materials your body uses to make energy and hormones in the first place. If you're empty here, everything upstream is going to start sabotaging itself. All right. So now, here's what I want you to take from all of that. It's not that any single one of these is the magic answer, it's that they interact. Everything works together in the body. Most business owners or these high-level corporate workers, fatigue isn't just from like one broken thing, it's four or five systems pulling on each other down in a specific sequence. And until you can see the whole board, you're just moving pieces in the dark. Which brings me to the most important thing I'll say, all episode. All right. This is the thing nobody is telling you. Getting the markers run. Like, how do you do that? People, I get these messages ever since I got certified in functional medicine. I get DMs all the time about like, where do I go get labs drawn? Like, you know, where should I go? Who do you suggest? And and we can get them. We can order them for you, right? It's easy, right? It's it's easy to order labs. You guys can go, actually, I think you guys could probably just go on like lab core or quest and order your own labs. Uh, the reality is, do you know what you're ordering? That's a that's debatable, right? And nobody's really going to be looking it over with you. So you can get it, you can get the numbers. Uh, you could even run it through ChatGPT, but again, ChatGPT is probably, if I had to guess, going off those quote unquote normal ranges. So what really changes this whole thing is the interpretation. I can show you two people with the exact same normal lab results who need completely and opposite protocols because your numbers only mean something in the context of your symptoms, your goals, and how those markers are talking to each other. A free range you found online can't do that. All right. A six-minute appointment can't do that. Right? And this is the real reason your supplement drawer isn't working anymore. Okay. I know so many people that are pushing peptides. I want to fix my gut. I want to, you know, increase my mitochondria. Okay. Does that stuff help? Sure. Is it going to fix what you got going on? Definitely not. All right. Uh we we gotta we gotta get down to the real cause of what's going on, right? So let me give you the cleanest example I've got because I I live this one personally. All right. Testosterone, my guys, all right. Guys come to me already on TRT or sometimes they just want to jump straight on it. And look I'm I'm not anti-TRT. I'm on it myself currently. But here's my entire philosophy in one sentence order matters. Okay. If your testosterone is in the tank because your cortisol is inverted and your sleep is shredded and your nutrients are empty and you skip all of that

The Burnout Loop Explained

SPEAKER_00 23:17

and just add testosterone you didn't fix anything. You did not get into the engine and start fixing what you need to do. You just bolted on turbos onto a motor that's misfiring the smart move is to fix the system first. Then use the TRT or the peptides as a precision instrument. When the data actually says you need them then you can do that and you're not guessing anymore. You've been optimizing in the dark the labs are the flashlight but somebody has to know how to read the map for you. All right so let me bring this back to where I started the thing that finally turned it around wasn't a new supplement. It wasn't more discipline I had plenty of those plenty of both remember I had that badge of honor. It wasn't that I finally stopped guessing and I got the actual data from working with a functional medicine practitioner. I saw my own loop I saw exactly where it was anchored and for the first time in my career I was working from a map instead of a hunch. That changed everything and it's the same thing I now do with every client who walks through my door. No more guessing that's the whole game that's the difference between spinning your wheels for another year and actually getting your energy and focus and your drive back. So here's here's my next steps for you at this point in time. All right I'm actually running a free live training masterclass called Tired Soft and Totally Normal this is on June 24th 630 p.m Eastern Standard Time I'm going to take everything we covered today and go even deeper. I'll walk you through the exact system I use to break this loop in the right order so you stop wasting money on things that don't apply to you. If you saw yourself in my story and you could relate anywhere inside of this episode this is definitely for you. So I want you to save your seat. I'm going to put the registration link below again it's totally free and it'll be in the show notes. Just opt in and show up that's all you got to do I have a special gift for you guys at the end as well. And if you are somebody that's actually listening to this past June 24th 2026 you can actually DM me on Instagram at coachcak webinar DM me webinar and I will send you the full replay so thank you guys for tuning in and look most people are going to spend their years guessing you don't have to be one of them stop guessing start optimizing because normal isn't optimal and neither are you I'll see you on the next one. Peace