Why FAT LOSS is so confusing PART 4 HORMONES & STRESS | Become A Nutrition Coach

Blaming hormones is comforting because it gives us a villain and a shortcut. We go the other direction and build the real foundation: calories in versus calories out, plus the three forces that quietly drive the whole system, stress, sleep, and daily movement. From cortisol to insulin to thyroid hormones, we explain what these signals actually do, where they come from, and why “too much” and “too little” are both problems. No fear mongering, no miracle cocktails, just physiology you can use.

We also unpack how nutrition misinformation spreads. “Sugar is bad” sells, “insulin is the bad guy” sells, and “fix your adrenal fatigue” sells, but simplification is not the same as truth. We talk about why sugar feels addictive in combination foods, how cortisol can be anti-inflammatory, why insulin is essential, and what to do in real-world scenarios like low blood sugar. Then we connect appetite hormones like leptin and ghrelin to sleep loss, chronic dieting, and the difference between psychological hunger and actual physiological hunger.

Finally, we zoom out to the big picture: life stages. As we move from school to work to family life, NEAT drops, stress rises, sleep gets crushed, alcohol and caffeine creep in, and processed convenience foods become the default. That shift looks like “a slow metabolism,” but it is usually a predictable pattern we can measure and change. We share the coaching tools we rely on, sleep logs, stress questionnaires, measured food tracking, and meal photos, so progress is based on awareness, not guesses.

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Transcript

Calories, Context, And The Real Levers

SPEAKER_00 0:00

And so, you know, I'm gonna start today's class by getting into just a review of the body mass equation, not confused with the body mass index, BMI, but you know, the foundation we've gone over with behavior, environmental factors, mindset habits, but ultimately calories in, calories out dictate the organism's being. There are other things that play a huge role, such as stress, hormones, and sleep, and that's what we're gonna take a look at. Just giving you a brief overview. I

Handling Gym Mansplaining With Facts

SPEAKER_00 0:29

did a tweet the other day talking about, like, you know, ladies, this is for you. Here are some things that you can armor yourself with in the gym to combat uh mansplaining because you know women are typically targeted in the gym, and I think there's nothing uh more powerful than to be equipped with little quips to make people feel dumb. So you have a dude who comes up to you and you're doing a leg workout and he's trying to correct your form. He's oh totally thank you for your advice, sir. Before we get into this, can you just tell me the name of the four quad muscles? Oh, you don't know the fucking names? You've the vastus lateralis, vastus medialis, vastus intermedius, erectus femoris. So you're gonna tell me the the right way to do this, but you can't even tell me the basic anatomy. Yeah, go fuck off, get out of here. And like that would be a powerful situation because you you are showcasing that you in fact know and you are doing it right. The guy's just a fucking idiot and wants to give you their two uh two cents. I will put this into the platform and it's just a simple breakdown.

Hormone Basics And Fear Marketing

SPEAKER_00 1:31

But when people talk about stress, when they talk about hormones and their metabolism, I think we owe it to ourselves as qualified nutrition coaches to know the basics. And these are the basic hormones that we cover in class. We are not endocrinologists who are experts of studying hormones in a laboratory and doctors, but just having a general overview of you know, the main hormones being cortisol, insulin, leptin, ghrelin, the thyroid hormones T3 and T4, and then testosterone and estrogen. You know, where are they produced by? I love asking that question because it gives me uh imagine there's a professor up here doing the quadratic formula, a very, very complex equation. And you raise your hand and you say, Hey uh professor, could you just tell me real quickly what is two plus two? And he looks at you confidently and says, 37. Okay, let me get back to this. You'll be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Why am I going to listen to you talk to me about the this crazy equation when you can't tell me simple, simple stuff? Two plus two. It's four. We should know that. And we're not going to agree to disagree. Well, you know, we're going to agree to disagree on this one. I'm right just because of my followers or whatever, it's my platform. No, no, cortisol is a stress hormone. Cortisol is not a bad hormone. Hormones all go along the Goldilocks theory, which is too much, not good. Not enough, not good. We want to be balanced. How do we balance these things? Sometimes and a lot of times, we need medical intervention. But we can't just simplify it by saying you are stressed, you need to take this cortisol cocktail. It's going to relieve all your problems because of some herbal remedies that are in there. Okay, where is cortisol produced? Let's just start there. Uh uh in the body. It's a stress hormone. Where is it produced? Imagine going back to that analogy I was saying earlier, being in the gym and I'm bench pressing, and a trainer comes up to me and says, Hey, bro, let me tell you how to do this right. And I say, Oh, yeah, just what muscles am I working right now? Oh, dude, you're working your quads. Excuse me? I'm working my quads when I'm doing a bench press. You sure it's not pushing muscles, the chest and the triceps, anterior deltoid, rotator cuff? No, we're going, we're still going with the quads. Okay, everything you say, I'm muting you because you don't know the foundation. So when it comes to hormones, if you know the foundation, just where the hormones are at, what's the class? Are they more catabolic, breaking down, are they more anabolic, building up? Anabolic doesn't mean it's bad. It has a negative connotation because we think steroids, bad, giant bodybuilder. And I'm speaking in a tone because there's this guy on Instagram. He's a uh, I believe he's a professor, he has a background in dietetics, and he has like a half a million followers, and his page just grew significantly. And the way that he delivers his message is this as if he were to have a traumatic brain injury, TBI. So he says, like he breaks it down, he goes, Hormones, good, cortisol, good, cortisol, adrenal glands. And he speaks like in this way, and it's like, holy shit, like he's he's really simplifying this, and it makes sense. And you know, people watch him, and he's just uh is a good character. And I think that's you know, we need more good people like him versus people who create a fear, and then they sell you on that fear. And you know, Dr. Feng, he's uh a fear-mongering uh doctor who tells you that, oh, it's it's because of insulin, and insulin is the bad guy, therefore buy my product and let me make a ton of money on this. You know, there's a Stanford professor, maybe it's San Francisco professor, um Ludwig, I believe, and he's like the anti-sugar guy. Sugar is why we are fat. Everything sugar is bad, sugar, sugar, sugar, sugar is bad, bad, bad. But it's simplifying it. And I was even listening to a podcast. I like uh Mike Rowe. He lives in our building, his penthouse is up there, and he does his his um uh his podcast. Apparently, um uh JD was uh uh Vice President Vance was here. And like on the when you listen to the podcast, he says, like, Mike is like, this is crazy right now. Like, there's literally hundreds of secret service all throughout the stairwell. I'm like, ah, that's my spot. I should have been there. It was on a Sunday, like the stairwell's right there. And so it's just it was neat to hear him you know talking with in our same building. But, anyways, Mike yesterday on a podcast was talking about sugar, and he was like, Yeah, sugar is bad. So he starts going off and just simplifying. At no point would a nutrition expert say sugar's bad. What we're thinking about is maybe high fructose corn syrup that's put into a lot of products that are very calorically dense. And when you mix sugar with something that's you know salty or fatty, it's good. And if you, and this is one of my favorite things, is like if you think sugar is super, super addictive, here's my challenge for you: take out all the food in your house, go to your pantry, literally nothing in your house. And I want you to get a bunch of red solo cups or cups like this, and just fill it up with pure white sugar and put it throughout your house. So when you have a sugar craving, take a spoonful, put that sugar in your mouth, and just get after it. Because if it was really addictive, you would be just going through that. But you'd be like, this is disgusting. I don't like it. Like, that's not good. It's good with other things. If you put milk and sugar in your coffee, now you have a morning milkshake. It tastes amazing. It's the combination. But what we like to do is simplify it because when we simplify it and then we provide a solution, usually of some type of monetary value of which is going to benefit myself, cause fear, and then provide a solution. You look at bulletproof coffee. Coffee's bad for you. Uh it's the myotox mold, it's killing this. Western beans are bad. You need to have my special coffee, which has a thousand calories and MCT oil and all these magical ingredients by my product. My product's gonna save you. But when you take a step back and you go, well, let's let's look at how much we're consuming, let's look at how much we're sleeping, let's look at how we manage our stress. When was the last time you went to a psychologist and got a checkup? Hey, Doc, I just want to see how I'm doing upstairs. Let's have a couple questions. And then you report at the end is you are fucked up. You need to come back a lot more because you got a lot of issues that we need to address. I don't think that's gonna happen. And so we can't simplify it. We need to really dive into the fundamentals of this stuff.

Cortisol Explained Without The Myths

SPEAKER_00 8:20

So cortisol is a stress hormone, it's catabolic, it's produced in the adrenal glands. The adrenal glands are on top of the kidneys, two kidneys, one's a little higher than the other. And you have these little, like, kind of like if I were to have a cap on this. This would be my kidney, the cap would be the adrenal glands, and that is where we produce cortisol. It's a stress hormone, it regulates your blood sugar, helps with energy in stressful situations. Well, people don't realize it's anti-inflammatory. If you go to the doc and they give you a cortisone shot, cortisone is the family, it's an anti-inflammatory. If you've ever had shin splints and you run that first mile, what happens after that first mile a lot of times is the pain is gone. It's masked. Why? Stress response from exercise. Your heart rate goes up. When our heart rate goes up, we're gonna produce more cortisol. Cortisol is gonna blunt that pain response. It's a beautiful hormone. There's nothing wrong with cortisol. If you have too much of it, it can be bad. If you don't have enough, it can be bad. You can have certain diseases on both ends of that spectrum. When it's out of balance, too high, such as chronic, your sleep is gonna be affected. Fat gain, especially in your midsection, and that's what you were asking previously, Paul. Muscle breakdown because it's gonna degrade muscle. It is, you know, it will break down, degradate your muscles, specifically your amino um branching amino acids, which will be leucine, isoleucine, and valine. Irritability, anxiety. When it's too low, you'll have fatigue, low blood pressure, poor stress tolerance, misconceptions, cortisol makes you fat, cortisol cocktails fix adrenal fatigue. Adrenal fatigue is one of those things that we just latch on to. You know, I'm I'm tired all the time. I have adrenal fatigue. When was the last time you had a heart fatigue? When was the last time you had lung fatigue? Now, those things aren't real, but you're stressed out, and so therefore your kidneys are fatigued. Sorry, your adrenals are fatigued. It's just a term that we like to latch on to, and it's a it's a hard one to address because people come in with that label and they're very dogmatic about it. And oh, I have adrenal fatigue. No, you don't. There's literally no such thing as adrenal fatigue, but if you were to say that to a client, they're gonna lose their shit. How to support and balance it. You're gonna see a common denominator with these things. Prioritize sleep, manage stress, strength train, walk. Work on things that help you provide a sustained system. And when you stress a lot and cortisol is high, typically you're gonna deplete a lot of your carbs. So consuming carbs. Did you know one of the best things that you could consume before you go to sleep? Carbohydrates. Because carbohydrates, when they're broken down, they're broken down into glucose. Where is glucose stored? It's stored as glycogen. Where is glycogen stored in our liver, in our muscle? What is depleted and what is what is happening when we sleep? We use the glycogen from our liver to optimize the recovery. So if we're not eating enough carbs and we're not sleeping well, your system isn't even given the chance to repair and optimize its functioning.

Insulin, Diabetes, And Practical Safety

SPEAKER_00 11:26

Insulin, that's another bad hormone. Insulin's bad. And why is it bad? Because sugar, glucose. That's bad for those that are type 2 diabetic. Type 1 diabetics don't produce insulin. They need to take a shot. Insulin is produced by the pancreas. Pancreas is on the left side of the body. It's a wonderful anabolic hormone. You'll even have bodybuilders that will get in the crazy cocktails and they'll take insulin because it's an anabolic hormone and it can allow for more uptake of sugar, which can get them even more jacked. But then you can have deadly responses to it. So it's like we like to play around with this stuff in ways that you shouldn't be dabbling in. If you have metabolic disease, which would be type 1 or type 2 diabetes, type 2 can be reversed, type 1 cannot. Type 1 is onset genetic, typically less than 10 years of age. Usually you'd be a little smaller size-wise. There was a basketball player back in the day for Gonzaga, who I loved, Adam Morrison. He was a type 1 diabetic, very, very frail dude. But they would show videos of him, like during breaks, he'd be taking shots because he needed the insulin to take the sugar out of his system. Whereas type 2, they're referred to as insulin resistant. So that means that the body doesn't recognize what insulin's job is to do. So insulin is released by the pancreas to take the sugar molecule and get it out of the blood. But if we are resistant to insulin, the brain is constantly taking a toll and our blood sugar levels are elevated. So we keep on producing more insulin, but insulin can't do its job. The easiest way to get those receptor cells to be able to do their job, pharmaceuticals. That's why they are working with a doctor. They have medications for that. Second best is going to be resistance training because when you resistance training, you break down that muscle, those cells are now more receptive. I like to use an analogy of sitting down in this room, and when I consume carbohydrates or broken down into monosaccharides, glucose, fructose, galactose, when glucose is in the blood, I'm in this room, a balloon comes down, my seatbelt comes off, I take the balloon and I get it out of this room. That would be like the physiology of what's happening with an optimal organism. But when your organism is not optimal due to a lack of sleep, due to excess calories and a surplus for long periods of time, and you have excess adiposity and our stress levels are high. So the body still takes a toll and it says, Oh, there's sugar in the system. We need to release more insulin. So I have Johnny get up and try to do it, but Johnny's also drunk. And then I have Sarah and Tori, and it's just a bunch of drunk people hitting into each other. We can't get the molecules out. So insulin isn't bad for those that are type 2 diabetic. You need to monitor it. And when you come to me, I get medical release, I talk to the doctor, I have glucose tablets ready to go. Maybe I have a soda or apple juice, something that is a quick, simple sugar that gets into the system. I like those glucose tablets because you can twirl it around in your mouth when you chew them up and it gets into your blood very quickly via your sublingual gland, which is under your tongue. So having that will bring people back to life if they were to go into one of those states. I was talking to a kid who is training a type 2 diabetic, and he said that she was getting a little woozy. And I said, that's the best thing you can do is rest longer. But water, protein, apple, fiber, that's not going to help get them that sugar that they need. They need quick, simple sugars, not diet soda, soda. If you like soda, great. Cherry soda, crush that can. You need it in your system. Otherwise, there's going to be an emergency situation there. It's it moves glucose into your cells, stores energy, inhibits muscle breakdown. When it's high, you are insulin resistant. Fat storage, blood sugar increases, low energy, increased cravings, misconceptions, insulin makes you fat. Carbs always cause fat gain. How to support and balance it, maintain a healthy body weight, lift weights, walk after meals, eat fiber-rich foods, get enough sleep, and manage your stress.

Leptin And Ghrelin Hunger Signals

SPEAKER_00 15:47

Leptin, it's produced from the fat cells or adipose cells, adipocytes, signals fullness to the brain, regulates energy and balance, low leptin sensitivity would increase hunger. Overall, eating more and weight gain. Misconceptions, I have bad leptin. It's all about willpower. How would you support this for optimal balance, improve your sleep, adequate protein, manage body fat, avoid chronic dieting, and reduce your stress? On the opposite of leptin, we have ghrelin. Think of your stomach as growling. Ghrelin is a hormone that is produced from the stomach, stimulates hunger, increases before meals. That's where your stomach will start growling. High ghrelin is going to increase hunger, cravings, difficulties with fat loss. Hunger means I'm weak. I should never feel hungry. Big misconceptions. But I think it is important also to distinguish between psychological hunger and physiological hunger. Physiological hunger, don't eat for three days. You will know what it's like to actually be hungry. Psychological hunger, I've been eating for 43 years on this planet. Every two hours I need to eat. I'm uncomfortable. I'm hangry. I need food. No, you're just uncomfortable, and you've programmed yourself to eat every couple hours. Breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, dessert. And so we've programmed ourselves for that. High ghrelin, like I said, will increase hunger and cravings, difficulties for fat loss. How to balance it. Eat enough calories, protein and fiber, get good sleep, manage stress, and don't skip meals excessively.

Thyroid Reality Checks For Weight Loss

SPEAKER_00 17:19

Your thyroid hormones, teen three T4, you also have your parathyroid, you have four of them on the thyroid. It's on the thyroid gland itself. Regulates metabolism, energy production, body temperature, and recovery. Too low, which is hypothyroid, fatigue, weight gain, cold intolerance, and constipation. Too high, which is hyperthyroidism, anxiety, weight loss, heat intolerance, and rapid heart rate. My thyroid is why I can't lose weight. Thyroid issues can't improve. I have this issue or this metabolic disease. I can't lose weight. In actuality, metabolic disease is very low impact on weight loss, maybe like 5% increases or decreases in your overall metabolism, not nearly as much as people claim. Really hard one to have that conversation with a client because they're attached to that label. No, you're wrong. You've never had this, you've never battled obesity. The reason I can't lose weight is because my metabolism, it's because of this. It takes some work to provide the support and have the team to have your client better manage their caloric intake and be aware of what they're consuming. Inadequate iodine, sorry, adequate iodine and selenium and zinc, those are micronutrients. Obviously, we're not going to be telling our clients to consume those if they have thyroid issues. They're working with their doctors, but that's just for your own awareness. Manage your stress, get enough sleep, eat enough calories, refer to an MD and RD for concerns. And

Testosterone, Estrogen, And TRT Temptations

SPEAKER_00 18:48

the last two, testosterone and estrogen. For males, it's going to be testes, obviously, and your adrenal glands. Females don't have testes, but we do have adrenal glands, that's where it's going to be produced, as well as fat tissue. And then we have our muscle growth for testosterone, bone health, libido, mood and energy, menstrual health and energy, metabolism. When you have low testosterone, low energy, low libido muscle loss, low is kind of relative because the spectrum is pretty uh all over the place. 200 is considered low, 1200 is considered high, not in a bad way, but that's the range that we see. For ladies, 30 would be considered low, 90 would be considered uh on the upper end. A lot of people are just quickly going to TRT or hormone replacement therapy, but we're not addressing our sleep, we're not addressing our excess adiposity. We just like to take that quick fix. And yes, you, you know, I've talked to a lot of dudes who are on TRT, and all they say are wonderful things. Oh my god, my energy is great. I wake up every morning, I'm super horny, everything's just awesome. I had this go go get a mentality. Uh that's not necessarily bad, but you're going to need to take this for the rest of your life. Did you take the necessary steps that are more uh you know chronic in a positive way that it takes time? You're looking just for a simple solution. Uh, high estrogen levels will contribute to bloating, mood swings, menstruational menstruation uh issues. Low T is why I'm overweight. Estrogen makes women fat. These are misconceptions. And how to support and balance, lift weights, sleep, manage stress, healthy fats, maintain healthy body fat, limit excessive amounts of alcohol. So

Lifestyle Optimization Beats Quick Fixes

SPEAKER_00 20:28

when you look at optimization, what were the things that we constantly heard? Sleep, manage stress, walk, be active. But like Sheep said earlier, I thought that was really great is having a purpose. I think a lot of people just go throughout life and there's nothing that they're really focused on to better their well-being, but also others. There's a great post today from Dr. Farnsworth, and he said, it's interesting that you know, 20 years ago, everyone was talking about I wanted to get into this field to help people. And he's a therapist, but he sees so much online of he'll make $100,000 a month. I had some dipshit, it was a business coach reach out to me, yo man, I want to see how your business is going, Chris. I've helped coaches generate more than $200,000 a month. I'm like, fuck off. Like, really? Like I've known coaches that have been in the industry for 20 years and they're doing well, making $20,000, $25,000, and you have the magical pill to make $200,000 per month. Doctors don't even make that. All of a sudden, the personal training industry, by reading a book, you're now making more than doctors. It's probably a little too good to be true. But we are, you know, cogs in the system and we're simpletons. We see that that flashy lure and we go after it. I see someone driving a Ferrari. I want to drive a Ferrari. Oh, I want to be cool like that. I want to be like Andrew Tate or whoever it is. I need to act that same way and be a douchebag. It's just unfortunate. So hormones, I'm not simplifying it with this chart by saying hormones are just this easy. Hormones are super complex. And I think you should take the initiative as a nutrition coach to learn more about this stuff. You know, if you get a great exercise physiology book like the CSES, now they have the fifth edition, they got a whole chapter on hormones. And there's more a lot more than just these ones. You're looking at epinephrine and norepinephrine and what is happening with exercise. Great stuff to learn about. I think hormones, I don't think I know. Hormones are very, very complex. And when things are complex, we typically like to find easy solutions. I love the analogy with, you know, we're flying on a plane right now, and all of a sudden the pilot says, Hey, ladies and gentlemen, we are going down. Are we going to take a vote on who's going to fly the plane? Nope, the expert does it. This fucker better do some, you know, captain, whatever, the guy who landed in the Hudson. Like, I want that shit to land. I want to be safe. I want him to do it. But because everyone eats, everyone's an expert with hormones. Everyone is now an expert with nutrition. Here's what works for me. This is going to work for everyone. Let's we don't even need to take a vote. I'm the new expert. What's your background? Oh, I got my PN1. You read a book, and now you're an expert on nutrition and hormones. What about dietitians? Do you work with professors? Do you are you going to the actual horse's mouth and learning from those individuals and asking questions? Sarah was talking about a client who she has that has cancer. Link up with a doc. Doc, would there be an opportunity to maybe take someone under your wing? Maybe you have a little pro bono project that you would like just to educate me. And you know, I'll show up, I'll be your best student ever. Once a week, I'll bring you coffee, I'll bring it, I'll pay for lunches, whatever. And I just want to learn more about the sciences. Obviously, not med school sciences, but I would love for you to teach me about hormones. You know, these are the hormones that my clients are talking a lot about. Could you better educate me on what leptin is and what ghrelin is and what is happening with the physiology? Because this simplifies it by just thinking that cortisol is the only thing released when we exercise or when we're stressed. It's a combination. Like I was saying earlier, the cocktail of coffee with milk and sugar, the concoction is what makes it taste good. Hormones work in juxtaposition with others. Testosterone may increase and be higher in the morning, but so is cortisol, and that's not a bad thing. Cortisol should actually be higher in the morning. It should be lower at night when we look at our systems of what's happening throughout the day. So

Hormones Shift Across Life Stages

SPEAKER_00 24:33

I want to draw a little chart right here because I think this is an important chart to look at when we address stress. But when we're born, and I'm sorry to offend anyone in here, but I'm sorry, but we everyone is going to die. That is death, and you're dead over there. But we go through, you know, seven, ten, and we get this nice little increase in hormones, which is called puberty, and then we're going to ultimately come down. People are offended by this and they look at it as oh, I don't want my hormones to go down. I uh testosterone's the best, and I want it to be as high as possible all the time. Do you think the organism just wants us to be inferior and weak as we get older? No, there's an actual physiological reasoning behind why our testosterone comes down. It is an anabolic hormone. And as we age, we're going to produce more free radicals and we're going to have tumors that are going to grow and assist that are going to grow. My uh grandfather was an oncologist and a doctor, and he always says, if you live long enough as a guy, you're going to get prostate cancer and die. That's just how it happens. It's like, oh, that's going to happen. But if you are taking anabolics when you should have lower testosterone for a reason, well, now those which would have been benign tumor or assist growths, now they can become malignant. Malignant being bad, benign being it's it's harmless. So it's like there's a reason for a lot of this, but what we have to understand is can we optimize? And that's where things that we can work on can optimize our hormones. And you hear you saw a lot of stuff with deficiencies with those hormones, low energy, not feeling well. Sleep is gonna mask all that. Are we getting six and a half hours minimum per night? Not just last night, the last week. Have you done a sleep log? I want to see what your sleep looks like for seven solid days. And that's why we charge for nutrition coaching, is because I'm not just simplifying this stuff. And when my client comes in, how'd you sleep last night? Oh, great eight hours, and just take it for fact value right there. Because as we know, our clients don't know shit about calories. How many calories did you have yesterday? Uh, about 2,000. Oh, the average American's getting 3,500. For people who are getting 1,200 calories, they're actually getting 2,000, 2,200 because they're not measuring little snacks that they're having throughout the day. A little, you know, a half of a cheese stick from your son or your daughter, some goldfish. Oh, on Friday night, I, you know, I didn't I didn't count that day. It was my cheat day. But she had 5,000 calories on Friday. So we don't know how many calories that we're consuming through the week. We sure as hell don't know how many hours we're getting consistently. So I want to track them. And when you sign up for nutrition coaching, you're gonna get a blood lipid panel poll, which has a hundred biomarkers with uh biomarkers with Vitality Blueprint. We're gonna check that on day one, and then we're gonna check it again on day 180. And we're gonna see this stuff change and we're going to focus on creating better sleeping habits, and we're gonna focus on having outlets for our stress. When you're stressed out, what are you currently doing? In last week's call, we went over the assessment with Tori, and she has a great stress sheet, and we also have one. And I'm gonna go over those questions here and how important they are because you have a sit-down and you now provide solutions, not blanket solutions either. Oh, just don't stress as much. Oh, I know Johnny, I know you're stressed out. Just you know, stop stressing. We can't say stuff like that. You can, but that's like telling someone, oh, you want to get stronger, you just got to lift more. What does that mean? How much do I need to lift? What is my volume at? What was it at last week? Where's my periodized plan? Is it undulating? Is it linear? Do I have a plan of attack for my programming? Is every Monday chest day? Did last week I hit 10 sets and this week I'm gonna hit 12? Is there progressive overload? What's the tension look like on the muscle? Are we missing weeks? Are we missing workouts? So there's so much that goes into the sleep and the stress side of stuff. But

Sleep, Stress, And NEAT In Adulthood

SPEAKER_00 28:36

I also looking at this chart right here, I want to break it up into three parts. Let's do some pretty colors here. So let's say this is zero to twelve, meaning twelfth grade. And this is gonna be like college era to pre-family. And this is gonna be family era. All right, so let's reflect and use our anecdotes. If we can go back to high school, elementary school, how active was everyone in here? Were you sitting at a computer most of the day? Or were you out there fucking around and doing stuff?

SPEAKER_01 29:28

You were outside playing and meeting your friends, doing everything you can outside. Nobody wants to be inside.

SPEAKER_00 29:36

And the irony behind that, that's how we learn, right? Okay, you're gonna be at a you're gonna learn for eight hours at a desk. I remember I was in Mammoth uh maybe about three or four years ago. It was right on the that latter part of COVID. And it's college football, Saturdays, my days, 9 a.m., 9 p.m. I sit on the couch, I watch football, I drink a lot. That's my thing. I plan for the whole day of the week. I gotta make sure I get my workout in the morning, I'm getting all my steps. I do not get any steps on college football. When Texas is playing Ohio State week two, I'm not doing shit. The game is at 4:30. I'm prepping the whole entire day, pregame and having a great time. That's what I enjoy. But I was watching these games at like 10 o'clock in the morning, having some champagne, and there were three high schoolers there, and they're 11th grade and 12th grade. And these fuckers, their energy was out of this room. You look at where they're at on this chart, their testosterone's peaking. They are, they've been through puberty and they are just grab ass and smacking each other in the balls, slapping each other's faces, throwing stuff, running outside, jumping on cars, jumping over. They're like the Tasmanian devils. If you look at that quote unquote neat non-exercise activity thermogenesis, my fat ass is just sitting on the couch, drinking a mimosa, watching the game, zero output. These kids were still inside, but they probably burned 500 calories in a couple hours just grab ass and around. They're playing ping pong and then they're going outside and they're climbing trees and they're making fun of each other. The energy output was significantly higher. And we graduate this and we get to that college pre-family where let's actually take a step back. Where do you think so? The activity level is high when we're younger. How's our sleep? When you're in high school, is your sleep better, closer to eight, nine, ten hours? Or are we super stressed out and is it you know significantly lower? What can you all recall?

SPEAKER_01 31:35

More sleep. Yeah, I used to like to sleep.

SPEAKER_00 31:38

High school are sleeping all the time, all the damn time. They may go to bed at 12 or 1, but they're waking up at 10 or 11. What about stress? Yeah, you have stress, maybe you you like a girl or you got a game coming up. Like stress is relative, right? But when you compare it to other stages in life, finances, kids, rent, none of that stuff. Your stress is extremely low. But then when you enter that next phase, maybe you're doing applications for college, or maybe you you go right into a trade and you start working. When you look at your activity level here, it starts to come down. I'll put it like right there. It's not necessarily higher. I wouldn't say it's significantly lower, but it's starting to come down. You're more sitting at a desk more, you're not as active as you were in high school. What about your sleep? It's definitely starting to be affected. It's if you're in college, you're starting to study late and you're not sleeping as well as you were in high school. What about our stress? Now we got our first job, and now we have debt that we've accumulated from college or uh our you know, just our our livelihoods. So these things are starting to creep up. But then when you hit those 30s and 40s and you start having kids, what's your activity level like now? Significantly lower. I drive on average three hours a day. I could easily say it's because of my metabolism. It's you know, it's I just age, I got gray hair on my beard, I'm getting old, I just need to accept that. I wasn't driving three hours a day when I was in high school, but now I am. So my neat non-exercise activity thermogenesis, which is part of that T D E E equation, total daily energy expenditure, your BMR activity factor, your thermal effective food or diet-induced thermogenesis, and your neat, that equation alters in the different phases in our life. How do you think your sleep is when you have your first kid? Paul, can you remember when you had your kids how was sleep?

SPEAKER_01 33:45

That's the beginning and the end of sleep.

SPEAKER_00 33:48

I love that right there. The beginning and end of sleep. So now it's like the new normal is four hours, five hours. How does that impact your insulin sensitivity? How does that impact your stress? So all that stuff is now being altered. And now you have a mortgage. And now you have medical bills, and now you have, oh, you gotta start saving for your kids. So your stress is through the roof, your sleep sucks, your activity levels suck, and we want to blame it on our metabolism. It's just age. But look at these phases of life. We don't have as much stress, still have the same hormones. Hey, your testosterone as I have right here, it's going to come down. But stress, if I use this analogy with this cup, if this was full and I have a little BB, the BB here is significantly smaller. The BB here gets bigger. The BB here is now a full size 30 out six round. It's a giant hole. So now your stress is being depleted. And what do we need? We need nutrient-dense foods that are high in fiber. But we're eating processed foods and we're blaming sugar. But when I'm stressed out at work and I go to the break room, my brother just told me on a freaking Tuesday, he's the principal of the school, and for whatever reason, the secretary ordered a bunch of pizza. And he sent me all the responses from the emails. Oh, I'm so excited, I feel better. We're eating pizza as a snack. It wasn't even lunch, it was a snack. Muffins from Costco, bags of chips. And the bags of chips are creatively designed. It's not just one flavor, it's five different flavors in that box. So if you have the barbecue, you're curious about what the ranch tastes like. And you want to see what that other one tastes like. So you take three of them back to your desk and you're doing your work and your boss is walking by and you're stressed out from that. So you eat those three boxes or those three bags of chips, it's 500 calories. And now you go home.

Tracking Sleep And Food Like A Coach

SPEAKER_00 35:45

We're not drinking as much in high school. Maybe you do it on a night or two, but now you're drinking all the time. You come home, you've had a stressful day, that one glass of wine turns into a bottle. That one shot of whiskey turns into four Manhattans. What does alcohol do? It elevates your heart rate, it makes your body warmer. What don't we want before we go to bed? Elevated temperature. We don't want our cortisol levels to be high. Alcohol is a stressor. So we release more cortisol. So now we can't get into deep sleep. We haven't been eating the right carbohydrates to replenish our liver glycogen. So we can't replenish everything when we are getting into deep sleep or SMR, sleeping metabolic rate. So we wake up and because we're dehydrated, when you're dehydrated, your testosterone is significantly lower. So we wake up and we're not replenished. Our cortisol should be high, our testosterone should be high, but it's not, it's the opposite. So our energy is low. So now we just over-caffeinate. We have energy drinks, we have nicotine, we have all these things that are stimulating us to try to get that level of energy. And then we have a cup of coffee at 2 p.m., the half-life of coffee, eight to 10 hours. So it's still in your system. Melatonin is released, which is another hormone, when the sun comes down. It's our drowsy hormone. The penal gland is a very small gland that produces melatonin. When it's produced, we get tired, we go to sleep. Back in the day when we were cave folk, sun went down, fire went out, we slept, we woke up when the sun came up. Now, when we're stressed out, we're looking up what's wrong with us. I have a rapid heart rate and I have no energy. What's the matter with me, Chat GPT? Oh, you're dying of cancer. You go, holy shit, I have this metabolic disease. I have all the self-diagnosing tools. We don't exercise. We don't have outlets for our sleep. We don't have a sleep routine. We don't have outlets for our stress. So that's why we have a stress questionnaire. I go, I have my clients do those 30, 15 questions, sorry, but then I sit down and review them with my clients. We're gonna do this every month, part of nutrition coaching. We're gonna look at your sleep for 30 days. We're gonna look at your food consumption. I want you to, here's a scale. You're gonna measure out your food for the next 30 days. You're gonna take photos. Because it would be easy just to have someone give you a food log, like we've shown before, and your client tells you from the food log that they're getting 1400 calories. What does wings and fries look like? Because I know a lot of meals of just wings and fries, that would be more than 1,400 calories. What do you mean that you are having fish fillets of broccoli? How big are those fish fillets? Was it boxed? Was it fried? What's going on there? Spicy chicken sandwich, small fries, that sounds like something you would get from fast food. Right there, that's a thousand calories. Small fry is a thousand calories today. That's maybe a little over-exaggerated, but it's easily 500 calories. So I want you to do a food log to bring awareness, but on top of it, I want you to take photos. Because what you're gonna find is this is actually a decent food log. I love food logs like this. Most of our clients are gonna give you Monday, no snack, no lunch, and dinner. Tuesday, they didn't do anything. Wednesday is really detailed. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, nothing. How am I supposed to give it a general ballpark of how much you're consuming? If you're struggling with weight loss, it's not your hormones. I'm sorry. You do not know how much you're putting into your system. Let's spend 8% of the year, that's one month, and get really proficient at knowing what we're putting into our pie hole. And if you can give me 8% of your year, that will change the rest of your life. I guarantee it. We're gonna talk about sleep, we're gonna talk about stress, all of this goes hand in hand, but that's why you need to pay me for this. Because you, prior to this shitty food log that you just sent me, you thought that you were eating healthy and clean. And you're just you have stubborn fat. It's a baby weight. You had a baby three years ago. This is excess calories that we're consuming, and you're not a bad person. You're not a bad person if your hormones are out of whack, or if you're going through menopause or pre-menopause or whatever it is. I'm not saying you're bad. I'm empathetic, but we're not aware of what we're putting into our system. That's my job is to cause awareness, but then to have the solutions with an RD, with a psychologist, with a physical therapist if we're getting injured a lot.

Complexity, Next Steps, And Q&A

SPEAKER_00 40:39

So this is barely 45 minutes of endocrinology. We talked about stress and sleep a little bit, but this stuff is complex, and you can see it's it can be very overwhelming. What are some questions that y'all have?