Run Eat Drink Podcast
Welcome to the Run Eat Drink Podcast! This is the podcast where we embark on exciting adventures, combining our love for running, delicious food, and tasty beverages. Whether you’re an elite runner aiming for victory or just starting your “Couch to 5K” journey, we’ve got something for you. Let’s dive into the three pillars of our show:
Accomplish (Run): Accomplishment is deeply personal. Are you eyeing a race series win, planning your next “run-cation,” or hoping to set a personal record in your next half-marathon? Each week, we feature fantastic destination races from around the country. Discover scenic courses, learn about the charities they support, and get inspired to lace up those running shoes. And when we’re not on the road, we share interviews, training tips, and insights from our own running journey.
Explore (Eat): Running and traveling go hand in hand. As we explore new places, we also explore local cuisine. We seek out hidden gems—the eateries that locals rave about. Bold flavors, interesting dishes, and passion for food—that’s what we’re after. After each race, join us as we wander the city streets, discovering post-race refueling spots. Whether it’s a gastropub, a food truck, or a cozy café, we’ve got dining options to satisfy your cravings.
Indulge (Drink): When the running is done, it’s time to unwind. We raise our glasses to celebrate our accomplishments. Local breweries, coffee shops, speakeasies, and watering holes—these are our destinations. From craft beers to artisanal cocktails, we explore the beverage scene. Cheers to a well-deserved drink after crossing the finish line!
Join us on this journey of accomplishment, exploration, and indulgence. Whether you’re a seasoned runner or a curious foodie, there’s a place for you at the Run Eat Drink Podcast.
Run Eat Drink Podcast
RED Episode 310 Fit Responder Founder Ted Stern
RED Episode 310 Fit Responder Founder Ted Stern
SHOUTOUTS
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RUN EAT DRINK PODCAST Celebrates Police Week with Fit Responder Founder Ted Stern
This week we hear Ted’s story as we celebrate Police Week and our appreciation for law enforcement officers.
Fit Responder Website
https://www.instagram.com/fitresponder/?hl=en
https://www.facebook.com/fit.responderpt/
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THAT’S A WRAP!
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Hi everyone. It's Mefka Flezgahi, the Boston Marathon, new York City Marathon champion and Olympic silver medalist. You are listening to the Run Eat Drink podcast.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Run Eat Drink podcast. We feature destination races from across the country and after the race, we take you on a tour of the best local food and beverage to celebrate. So whether you are an elite runner or a back of the packer like us, you'll know the best places to accomplish, explore and indulge on your next Runcation, dana. The members of the Runcation Nation know that you and I hold your profession in a very special light, and this week, during Police Week in May, we have the honor of welcoming a very special guest, ted Stern, founder of FitRespondercom. Welcome to our show.
Speaker 3:Hey, thanks, Amy, Appreciate you guys having me for sure.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Fitness is important for everybody. I personally think that it's especially important for first responders, whether it's police, fire, ems, whatever the case may be, and there are specific challenges that are unique to people in the first responder professions. Very much so in the first responder professions, ted, if you could tell the Runcation Nation who you are, where you're from, what you're drinking, if anything, and a little bit about yourself and about Fit Responder.
Speaker 3:Yes, thank you, dana. It is coffee, I'm drinking coffee.
Speaker 2:We love it.
Speaker 3:Gotta have some kind of caffeine. So the question was who I am, where I come from. Right, yeah, I'm Ted Stern, originally from Southernifornia. I grew up in a small town called ohai and I didn't always want to be a cop, I wanted to be a lawyer. But in college I saw some cops handling business. They handled this crazy fight in this party area and I loved watching them tell people where to go, what to do, and be the calm sort of protectors during a chaotic, crazy situation, and that actually sparked my interest. I'm like I would love to be that badass that comes in and handles things when everyone's screaming and freaking out. There was a couch on fire, kids fighting in the street and all these cops came, told everyone what to do in a really professional way, and so that got me interested.
Speaker 3:And then the thought of continuing on paying more school, going to law school I'm like man, that sounds bad. I kind of want to just start working and making money right now. So I applied to a few different agencies. My dad and mom were devastated that I wanted to be a cop. Oh, you're going to get killed. Oh, you should be a smart lawyer. Why do you want to go be a cop, whatever? So I did it anyways, and then they came around.
Speaker 3:Eventually I got hired with Ventura County, which is a great sheriff's office in Southern California. I worked there for 11 years. I did a bunch of awesome different assignments, grew up a lot, learned a lot, met a lot of cool people. That's where I started the Fit Responder program as a side gig, an online fitness program mostly for first responders. We serve anybody, but we mostly market toward first responders and that blew up. It got so big, so successful. I said I need to quit my career. This is just too amazing, which was very difficult for me to do, but I did. There's several things in between that story. I had my own fitness comeback story that helped inspire Fit Responder, and we live in Utah now. I have four kids, my wife and I. We both quit the law enforcement career to do Fit Responder full time. It's been amazing. We have over 20 people on my team now behind the scenes. It's been cool. Happy to elaborate on any of that.
Speaker 1:I have to laugh the way you backed into law enforcement is very similar to me.
Speaker 1:I was pre-law at college. I had every intention of going from undergraduate to law school. I had a friend who was a police officer or sheriff's deputy in the metro Atlanta area said come on out with me and do a ride along. And I saw what they did and I'm like, wait a minute, this is way better than three more years of law school and I could get paid to do this. I got the bug back then Disappointed my mom. Same thing I was academically inclined but I did not have the passion to do three more years of school. So right there with you. Very similar.
Speaker 3:Very similar. That's funny.
Speaker 2:Yes, Are we listening to your story? I know it's just like. Yeah, I have to tell you as a spouse, when he started his career on nights, you just don't know what to expect. But I am so proud of him and of everyone who supports the community in the way that all law enforcement officers do, and their families that burden that is taken on inside the family as well.
Speaker 3:So I say thank you to both of you. I'm more appreciative of guys like your husband, everyone else who's still in the service, still doing the thing. I still like to think I'm helping, help my partners, I'm helping first responders get fit and healthy, so I feel like I'm still contributing in a way to that mission, because a lot of my clients talk about how much better they are at their job after getting fit and all the things they're capable of doing. But I miss it. It's a cool camaraderie that cops have with each other and the teamwork. I've talked to so many cops around the country with how crazy their jobs are and the things they have to do.
Speaker 3:I feel like I had it easy. I got into some dangerous situations and obviously it can be hard. I'm sure, as Dana, like, the career can vary so much across the country depending on your assignment. You could be responding to grandma's smashed flower pot from a week ago, or five gang shootings in a single shift and everything in between. So I'm very thankful and grateful to first responders still on the job, for sure.
Speaker 2:You touched on it a little bit when you were talking about your background and how you got to the idea for Fit Responder. Can you talk about that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. I was a personal trainer part-time before I became a cop. It wasn't a huge passion of mine, but it was enough to make me feel like I knew everything there was to know about fitness. I became a cop and I was working nights working in the jail, as deputies where I worked do when you start the career and I started to get significantly overweight and my interest at the time was mostly like powerlifting, like being super strong and big, so I thought that meant I can eat anything I want and as much as I want.
Speaker 2:So I gained a lot of weight and I think I was around 250 pounds or so.
Speaker 3:I noticed problems like my blood pressure was out of control. The nurse at the jail checked it. She's like, wow, 160 over a hundred. You probably should look at that. I had no stamina, no cardio. I felt like crap, didn't like the way I looked. I saw some pictures of me in uniform and I hated how that looked. So I'm like I need to change this and it was a big struggle for me. I really struggled staying consistent. I would get super serious and get on some strict diet and then fall off within a week or two.
Speaker 3:I got a coach who was helpful in some ways but also sucked in a lot of ways. My wife, who was my girlfriend at the time and I don't know how she stuck with me even though I was progressively getting in worse shape said let me help you. Why don't you actually listen to some tips I have for your nutrition, for your training? And I started copying what you did and listening and it started changing my body very fast and made great progress. And people at work were like man dude, you got in great shape. And how are you able to eat burritos and tacos and get in good shape, ted and I realized people need help with diet. They need to realize it's not all or nothing. You don't have to get so restrictive. You don't have to do some fad diet or cut out major food groups.
Speaker 3:Through my own fitness journey and people seeing how fit, a lot of people were looking for help. Hey, ted, what did you do? So I started helping people at work. We got great transformations out of that A lot of people getting fit and healthy, losing weight. That ends up being like walking billboards for our business. People like how did you get fit? Oh, talk to Ted and Emily. They have this great program. Go chat with them. So that's how it got started. It got so popular While we were both working full-time, we had full client loads like 30 clients each to manage and I'm like this is crazy.
Speaker 3:I got promoted in my career. I snapped my ankle at work. I was jump roping, warming up for an arrest and control class, snapped my ankle so bad and I was so depressed. My ankle swelling was so bad. The doctor said go home, lay on the couch, put your foot up and don't put it down. I couldn't work light duty with my foot up in the air like that. So while at home, depressed on my couch with my foot swollen up in the air, I was like why don't I just focus on Fit Responder, as if this is my job? I'm going to focus full-time on my laptop, on my phone.
Speaker 3:That showed me how big things could get if I worked on it full-time, if it was my full passion. So that gave me some insight, gave me some thoughts. Maybe what if I quit my job as a cop? And I did this like? I'm making more money doing this, I'm having more fun, the people I deal with are all happy, instead of a lot of jerks that you might deal with as a cop. So I'm like, babe, should I even go back to work now that I'm healed up? Maybe I should just quit. And thankfully she had enough faith in me and was proving it with how much money we were making. She's like you know what? Fine, let's do it, let's go. So yeah, I quit. She quit. Very scary to do after investing 11 years in that career. I had a good reputation and I promoted Lots of great opportunities. I was passing up, but I know it was for a better one. So I've been doing Fit Responder full-time since 2021 and it's been amazing.
Speaker 1:So it's interesting to hear you talk about how you were working out. You're packing on muscle, but you're also packing on fat, and I think that happens quite a lot. I know some of the challenges that first responders have are not unique, but they're magnified. Everybody's busy, everybody's looking for convenience. If you're wanting to work out, you're trying to get in your workout where you can, but you're also trying to eat where you're able, particularly for first responders. Because of shift work, sometimes your options are very limited unless you're going to meal prep and you end up getting stuck with the only thing open. My first three years on the job, the only thing open during my shift was waffle house and crystal, the little hamburger joint that has the tiny hamburger sliders. That was it, unless I wanted to eat from the shelves of a 7-eleven or a circle k.
Speaker 1:That was it for night shift in the stores or some of the worst possible junk food you could get. Although I learned, I did learn how to eat healthy at a Waffle House. That's a whole different story. They can steam your hash browns and they're just as horrible as you think they are. Steamed potatoes and dry grilled chicken breasts. If you've got to eat at Waffle House, you can eat something relatively clean, but you can only do that so many times.
Speaker 1:So, trying to get the workout and trying to get the diet dialed in. It's hard for everybody in the modern world, but I think that I think it's magnified for first responders. And then throw in the atrocious sleep schedule, the deleterious effects of shift work on the body, it's just magnified for them. Has that been your experience?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I like that because I've often said look, these challenges are similar to what a lot of careers have, like odd hours and long hours and shift work and stress, and you're sedentary most of the time and your options for food are crap and you're exhausted after your shift and you want to get home to your family and the last thing you want to do is go to a gym for two hours.
Speaker 3:I get it. I've lived that life. I totally understand those challenges A hundred percent. First responders are some of the most obese professions in America. You look at the statistics and it obviously is a problem for performance, for safety on the job, for health, long-term success and the quality of life in the meantime. But yeah, I dealt with those same challenges as well, especially with having kids. It's tough to juggle it all. So I think what I've been able to do with overcoming my own struggles, those same challenges now I've learned sort of the hacks, if you will, are the best ways to approach those challenges, and that's how Fit Responder really became successful. You're going to a gas station here's the options to grab there. Or you are working nights for the next five days in a row. Let's strategize our workouts so they're quicker and more efficient. All these little tweaks have really added up to success. It's hard to be perfect, but it is possible to optimize and have a better approach.
Speaker 2:So if somebody is interested in Fit Responder, can you talk a bit about how that works and what people get out of it?
Speaker 3:Yeah, sure, there's a lot of ways to find me or program fitrespondercom. If you search Fit Responder on Google, you can go to my Instagram. Some people might not like what I say. I'm pretty outspoken and sometimes I just a little cutthroat, cut to the chase. But if you want to learn more about Fit Responder, you can check out any of those avenues. The program includes a one-on-one coaching, a custom nutrition plan, custom training plan and a high amount of accountability. There's an internal community as well. I have a team of coaches. I actually found that I was able to help people better online coaching than I could as an in-person trainer.
Speaker 1:It's a great phone or mobile device optimized site at fitrespondercom. It looks great Okay.
Speaker 3:Let me know if you see any problems.
Speaker 2:You were talking about what people get out of Fit Responder, how it works.
Speaker 3:I've been able to do better online coaching than as an in-person trainer helping people, because, let's say, I worked at a gym and as a personal trainer, I might be able to meet with a client once, maybe twice a week. We're going over the workout, any nutrition advice is off the cuff and then the rest of the week they're gone. There's no accountability, no support. With online coaching, not only do we have training, but we have the nutrition aspect. There's accountability every single day. There's coaching and communication available every single day. I'm not meeting with a client on a Tuesday after I saw them last Thursday and saying how did the weekend go? And they're barely able to really recap accurately what's happening. So, online coaching, there's just more support and more accountability. Which I think is probably the biggest factor and why coaching matters is accountability. And yeah, I was honestly able to get better results online coaching. I could work with more clients. So I'm like this is just a win-win. This is what we're doing.
Speaker 2:I think also you can touch more lives and something positive that came out of the pandemic is being able to touch more or impact more virtually. You probably have clients all over the country or internationally.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yes, I've had clients in Italy, britain, australia, but mostly US, and all over the US Clients from New York to California and everything in between.
Speaker 2:And so of those clients, do you have any stories that come to mind like really great inspirational transformation stories that would say, yeah, this is why you do this, this is what gets you going.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh, yeah, there's too many to count. I've been moved to tears many times with clients when they talk about how much their lives have changed. When I started this program, my thought was I'm going to help some people look better in a bikini and make some money. That was my thought. I didn't realize how much fitness can impact a life. I saw how it changed mine. I got more confident. I felt better, looked better, blood pressure is better, more safe and physically capable on the job. But I did not think about how it could potentially change other lives, and there's been many amazing stories. I'll just throw some out there.
Speaker 3:I remember a particular woman in law enforcement who responded to a house exploding. Some gas issue blew up. She got there first, before anyone else, and like a movie, there was a woman trapped under burning rubble like literally a movie. And she ran up and deadlifted the freaking objects off of this woman like a movie and dragged her away from the fire. And she said afterwards there's no chance I could have done this four or five months ago before I got into the program. I would have failed. It took every ounce of my strength to get her out of there and I did it. So she saved a life thanks to my program, thanks to her. I want to give her the credit. She took what we taught her and did it and got in great shape. I think about a woman who was over 90 pounds, overweight, hated working out, absolutely depressed on a fistful of medications. She's lost now 90 pounds. She moves better, feels better, enjoys working out. Her medications have been cut down to just a couple and she's loving life.
Speaker 3:So many examples of people have reclaimed abilities they haven't had in many years. They're doing things they haven't done in years. They're checking off bucket list items that they wanted to. They're putting on outfits they haven't worn in years. They're taking photos and they're proud of themselves. Fitness is and I might be biased, but I think it's maybe the most impactful way you can change your own life. If you're struggling there, obviously, if you're already doing well in the fitness category, you might have other things to work on. I'd say for most people it's almost the lowest hanging fruit, not in the sense of that it's easy to get in shape, but that it's the most clear and powerful way to change lives, to change mindsets like people's moods, their energy productivity. The list goes on and on. So those are a couple of stories, but honestly, I have many more of people who got promoted because they were able to pass certain physical requirements. They saved lives, they got compliments, they got new dates, they got new partners. The opportunities that fitness opens up is endless.
Speaker 2:I'm sure that you've heard from their family members too, because as a family member of a first responder, I can tell you you're not only afraid, but when the stressors impact that family member that you love to the point of sending them to the ER or having them on a fistful of medication, you're scared and then you see that transformation. I'm sure that you've heard from family members about how moving and important and just such an impact right.
Speaker 3:Yes, I can recall a text from a proud wife who said something to the effect of Ted, you turn my husband from depressed, distant, unmotivated, lazy all the bad attributes to happy, excited, energetic, loving patient. I got my husband back and he literally just lost 60 pounds. Or the way that people are impacted mentally is often understated, because I think we think of the body and brain as almost being two separate entities, whereas this is a machine. This whole thing we're in as a machine, and if a major part of it is sick and not being treated well, it's inevitably going to impact the brain's ability to process information, produce the right amount of hormones and produce the right amount of happy chemicals. That puts you in a good mood. So, yeah, like I said, I didn't think much about how much you could affect people mentally when I first started, but yes, it does, and I have had grateful spouses and partners.
Speaker 3:You know one guy who's joined my program. His final straw was his son came to him crying, his six-year-old son. He's like what's up, son, why are you crying? And he's like dad, I'm worried, you're too fat and the bad guys are going to chase you and they'll catch you and get you. That broke him down. He was so sad to see his son. His son was just like obviously I want to be strong like daddy, I want to be like daddy and work out with daddy. And then the same client sending me pictures of him working out with his son and how proud his son was at the end when he's looks on, I got rid of my big belly, like the bad guys aren't going to get me, and he's like giving his dad a hug. What more motivation could you need?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's interesting everything you were describing. We just went through something at my police department where we are committing to a robust employee wellness program and it's not just for police officers, center personnel, our civilian support staff because we recognize that we're not the only ones exposed to the daily micro doses of trauma that come with being a first responder. We are trying to approach wellness from a holistic point of view. We're committing to allowing people to work out on duty and to provide a well-appointed gym in the building for them to work out in. It's not only allowing it, it's encouraging it. Also giving them some downtime or recovery time between calls so that they're not just going from the next trauma to the next trauma, because you can have nights like that. Depending on if it's a Friday night and a full moon, it can get a little nuts. The idea that physical fitness impacts mental fitness, which impacts professional performance as well as home life, is so simple it seems like a no-brainer, but we forget that the brain and the body are a part of one integrated system.
Speaker 2:Yes, yep, absolutely so what is it? What's the cost involved, and do you actually have family members who come and maybe do together?
Speaker 3:Yeah, good question. So the cost kind of depends on what the client's going to do. We have different lengths of programs, different levels of support. I got anything from $47 programs to multiple hundreds per month, depending on the goals, how much support and accountability and the length of program. Some people have a lot of weight to lose. It's not going to happen in three months. But for us we're realistic. We like to go over it with people and say, hey, for your goals to be achieved we're going to need this and this and here's your options. We'll go over the pricing with people and give them some options there. Family members join all the time, like I do. Spousal discounts it's half off if your spouse joins. Typically one person joins, they start getting in great shape and then their partner goes. All right, I better do this too.
Speaker 3:I'm going to join together because they've already become familiar with us, they've seen enough of our testimonials and our reviews, so they go, let's do this together and they join together. We love helping couples because inevitably you're going to be doing similar stuff. You live in the same house, probably you're eating together a lot, you're going to have similar kind of lifestyles and trips, and it's nice to teach them principles that they can execute on together and there is some accountability that you can have with each other. Okay, we're both in this, we're paying for this. Let's do a good job. I won't influence you to go eat a large pizza with me and have 10 beers. I love to help couples and spouses. In the program I've had families join, the kids too. It just depends on what kind of they want to do and what the length of program is, and all that as far as pricing goes.
Speaker 2:Now we are the Runny Drink Podcast. Did you have anybody join and set a goal to complete a race or a run of any kind that you can recall?
Speaker 3:All the time, and I love that when somebody sets a goal that's in the future to prepare for, whether it's a bodybuilding show or a 5K or a 10K or a half marathon or a-.
Speaker 2:All the way up to an ultra, yeah.
Speaker 3:Exactly An ultra marathon, right. I love that goal because it also adds another layer of accountability.
Speaker 3:There's another thing I've announced to the world that I want to do and I'm going to do and I don't want to fail at it. So it's a little bit of extra motivation there. Many times people have set goals and I've gotten many pictures of them at the finish lines with their medals saying thanks, I couldn't have done this without you and your program. That's so rewarding. I've had many people who look for a race to complete. That's one of their major goals to do and to overcome and they do it. It's pretty cool. It's pretty fun.
Speaker 2:And do you address nutrition, fitness and how do you handle food and beverage? How do you customize for different goals or clients?
Speaker 1:Are you focusing on, like, calorie restriction, or are you doing macros? What's your approach?
Speaker 3:focusing on, like calorie restriction, or are you doing macros? What's your approach? Great question. I'm going to say this right now. This is a true belief I have. If anyone tells you I have the one method for nutrition and working out that is the best for everyone, they are lying or mistaken. It has to be custom for the person, and here's what I mean by that. I think there's general principles that make sense. Let's gravitate more toward whole food as opposed to ultra processed food. Let's eliminate sugar as much as we can in the diet. We already consume too much sugar. There's principles that make sense across the board. But at the same time, when we get a client, this describes a process.
Speaker 3:First, we learn about the foods you love and gravitate towards. Often, what are the foods you and your family like? What are the things you don't like? What are the restaurants in your area that you have available at two in the morning? We customize a meal plan that gives them options. We tell them everything like grocery lists, what to buy, what to get, what options are better than others.
Speaker 3:Portion sizes is big, so it is going to inevitably impact how many calories they eat, because bottom line that matters a lot. We're not so big on macros. For me, it's about total calories and total protein. The distribution of fats and carbohydrates doesn't really matter at all. It's just the total calories and total protein that someone consumes, and then we try to give them the right types of foods and nutrients that'll make them feel better and have more energy and fuel their workouts. So how that looks is our client will get a meal plan generally based on their age, gender, activity level, blah, blah, blah. All of that gives us what we need as far as meal sizes and everything.
Speaker 3:And then if it's like hey, I have no time to meal prep Great, here's 10 options you can run out the door with. Just grab from your pantry. I have five minutes to meal prep. Cool, here's 10 other meals. That takes five minutes. Or my wife and I love to cook Great, here's 20 meals that might take 30 minutes. What about when I'm running on the go and I have no time to meal prep? Based on the restaurants in your area, there's 20 options you can get from those restaurants. This helps a lot because it eliminates excuses. There's an option, no matter what your circumstances are. The food is geared toward the food you like and gravitate towards. We eliminate the foods you don't like, and we take out all the guesswork. We make it very simple. There's no nutrient timing, no fasting windows. The specificity in a lot of nutrition plans really discourages people. Because I come from bodybuilding, where it's you have to eat on schedule, yeah, you have a watch?
Speaker 3:I had a watch that beeped and told me it was time to eat my seventh meal of the day.
Speaker 1:Not practical for a cop it's funny you'd say that I did a very popular workout program back in the very early part of my career when I was with my first department and I was eating five meals a day that I had to prep and take with me. I made it through the program, but to sustain that was just absolutely not something that I could do as a 22, 23 year old cop that was trying to get in shape and stay in shape. I just couldn't eat like that. That was nuts.
Speaker 3:What you're saying there, dana. It was an unsustainable diet, as you said, and there's so many fad diets that may work in the short term and I'm going to pick on some keto or paleo or Weight Watchers or Octavia or even frozen meal prep plans. They can work, but will that person use those principles taught to them via that process for the next 20 years? Probably not. So. With my program, I really stress an emphasis on teaching routines that you can do for the next 50 years that are simple, straightforward. So at the end of it, you're not weighing or measuring any food, you're eyeballing everything you eat, you're not cutting out the foods you love, you're just learning how to manage it and balance those things within your diet.
Speaker 3:It's a very realistic approach, and that was always important for me because I know how often people gain weight back after they lose it. It's all too common, right? They stick to something for a few months, they're very motivated, they get progress, but that's not a sustainable method and they gain the weight back and then, unfortunately, they don't know any better. They believe this. I already know what I'm doing. I've done it before. Did you do it in a way that lasted, though? No, and there's also important methods to consider after you lose the weight. There's something called a reverse diet, which a lot of people haven't even heard of. They don't know what it is, and the reverse diet helps improve your metabolism after fat loss. Most coaches don't know about it or even teach it, but it's a big part of the puzzle to get people long-term success.
Speaker 1:I've never heard the term.
Speaker 3:Yes. So a reverse diet is popularized by bodybuilders. Bodybuilders lose a lot of fat for the show. They get very lean. But what happens? We're almost biologically set up to gain the weight back after a weight loss period.
Speaker 3:If you think about what body fat is, it's the body's emergency calorie story. Our ancestors were designed and incentivized by nature to eat as much as you can when you find the food, because our ancestors had food scarcity. So it's built in our biology to be like there's food right here. Eat all of it, eat as much as you possibly can to add to your storage of calories. That bank, if you will. That's a survival bank. So everyone who's overweight nowadays that you've been set up, unfortunately, by thousands of years of your ancestors, who were incentivized in every way to eat as much food as possible. But now we're in an environment where there's an infinite amount of food. There's ultra processed food, ultra calorie dense food. We do way less work than ever before, we're more sedentary, so all these things add up to the obesity crisis.
Speaker 3:But what happens when you lose body fat? You are in a calorie deficit, right? Let's pretend your calorie needs to maintain your current weight is 2,500 calories. Let's say you consume 2,000 calories. So you're at a 500 calorie deficit. You lose weight over time with this diet. What the body does is it tries to adjust your metabolic needs to that new calorie count. So let's say the body was accustomed to maintain weight at 2,500 calories. Now, after time, the body has adapted the metabolism to strictly need 2,000 calories. Because if you're at a calorie deficit forever, you die. You eventually run out of that fat source.
Speaker 3:So this is typically when people hit plateaus they lose 40 pounds and they're like I'm not losing any more weight. That's a problem. Also, when they stop the diet they go back to eating 2,500 calories. Now they're in a surplus because the adjusted calorie needs are now 2,000. Eating 2,500 calories is no longer maintenance, it's now a surplus. So people often describe wow, now that I've lost the weight, I feel like I'm not eating a lot more, I'm just going back to some normalcy and I'm gaining weight back at a rapid pace.
Speaker 3:The reverse diet is you need to coax the metabolism to burn a higher amount of calories and to need more calories. It's through incrementally eating more. Over time it's slowly adding in calories. It's shifting workouts more toward muscle building. Muscle and resistance training in general improves the metabolism. More muscle requires more calories. Right Over time we coax the calorie needs back up to as high as we can. I've had clients. Let's say they are eating 3000 calories. You start them at 2500 calories. They lose weight After a period of time. We do the reverse diet. At the end, let's say a year later, they're leaner, lighter, stronger, but eating more than they ever did before. Maybe they're eating 3000 calories as a fat guy. Now they're eating 4,000 calories and staying lean and strong because we've helped them improve their metabolism through the process. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:That's really pretty cool. And again, that was a term I'd never heard before.
Speaker 2:It's like tempering eggs and baking yeah, that's what I mean or in cooking, so that you don't have scrambled eggs where you're supposed to have a different sauce. So it makes sense to me the whole explanation about when you're at the end and your body's gone through all of this change. But you think you can go back to the same amount of calories. This makes sense.
Speaker 1:That's a trap A lot of runners get into. When you're in training mode and you're doing a lot of training runs and distance or burning those calories and eating to make up the energy need. When the race is over, if you're still eating like you were when you were training, you're going to pack weight on runners, but just athletes in general.
Speaker 3:Right, if you're not doing the activity that's burning a thousand calories a day you can start gaining weight back. You can start getting a lot of weight very quickly.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, Ted, you have talked about that you take on family members of first responders. You take on first responders themselves. You've talked about some inspirational stories. You've talked a little bit about how your program works and the different opportunities in terms of cost. How can people find out more about the program and connect with you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would say the easiest thing you can do. If you're in research mode and you're like I don't know if Ted's legit yet and he might be a scam artist, fine, go to Google type Fit Responder Reviews. We have over 360 five-star reviews five-star average rating on Google. That's unheard of, because usually when people leave reviews it's because they're upset. Think about it. People expect things to be good, like you go buy something and it's good. Most people aren't ready to leave a review and tell everyone that it was good, like I wanted it to be. Usually you want to tell everyone if it sucks. But look at my reviews on Google it's five stars.
Speaker 3:You go to our website. You can watch our client testimonials. Listen to what they have to say. Once you've done enough research which tons of people do my clients usually go, man, I've been looking at your stuff for the last three weeks and now I'm ready. Go to fitrespondercom. You can click the apply button. It leads you to a little questionnaire and a free call the free calls with either me or somebody on the team. We assess your goals, what you want and need, and then we go over some options. You can decide if you want to join or not.
Speaker 3:You can also email me if you have specific questions. Like Ted, I have this injury. Can I still do this? Email me, ted at fitrespondercom and it will be me. I'm happy to reply.
Speaker 2:So, ted, thank you for coming on our show today and sharing this wonderful resource with our community, the Runcation Nation, and we'll put links to everything in our show notes.
Speaker 1:So you're going to be able to find Ted and Fit Responder.
Speaker 2:We hope to accomplish, explore and indulge with you really soon.
Speaker 3:Likewise, it was a pleasure being on here. It was an easy and fun conversation. Hopefully we do get a chance to do this in the future.
