As athletes, we understand the need for training plans, but have you ever considered applying the same principles to your nutrition? This episode discusses how it’s done.
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Chris Case: Hey everyone, and welcome to Fast Talk, your source for the science of endurance performance. I’m your host Chris Case here with Coach Trevor Connor and our guest Angela Polley. There are a lot of opinions on how to best build an effective training plan, but there’s one approach that we can all agree doesn’t work.
[00:00:22] If you never plan and simply wait until the moment you feel like working out to grab whatever equipment is available to do whatever training that time and gear allows, then there’s a good shot you’ll never get in a productive week of training. But here’s the thing. That’s the approach many of us take with nutrition.
[00:00:38] We wait until the moment we’re hungry to decide what we want, and when we discover we have nothing to make a salad, we walk to the pizza place around the corner. Then at the end of the day, we track our calories with hope that we didn’t overeat. We all know that effective training means mapping out our plan for the week, scheduling out the time ahead so we know we’ll have it, and making sure we have the equipment we need.
[00:00:59] In many ways, effective training is about time management more than anything else. Effective nutrition is no different. After working with over 20,000 nutrition clients, this is exactly what met Pro founder Angela Poey has learned about coaching nutrition. He builds nutritional training plans the same way a good cycling coach builds workout plans and walks his athletes through the plan.
[00:01:21] Today we talk with Poey about nutritional planning. He reveals many of the tricks he’s learned to effectively train nutrition Every day. He starts with metabolic profiling to figure out how to best feed the client. And then he talks with us, the clients about how to plan out and efficiently prepare nutrition every day, how to approach the week, including having a baseline diet and what sort of fueling, modifications, endurance athletes need to make.
[00:01:47] If you’re someone who believes in the power of training plans and understands how to execute workouts every day, but constantly struggles with your nutrition, and listen on this episode will help you turn your nutrition into training. So let’s start planning your nutrition and let’s make you fast.
[00:02:04] Trevor Connor: Well, Angela, welcome to the episode.
[00:02:07] Been looking forward to this because there’s a little bit of a backstory here. When I was working at Velo News, I was asked to write an article reviewing your product, met Pro and I used it for an entire summer. And I will tell you, I got down to my race weight. I was performing really well that summer.
[00:02:26] Really enjoyed it and I, I will say, I wrote a very positive review for Velo News and have always wanted to get you on the show ever since then.
[00:02:35] Angelo Poli: Very kind of you to say, Trevor, thank you, and I am thrilled to be here with you, gentlemen talking. We’re gonna have some fun today. This is fantastic.
[00:02:43] Trevor Connor: Well, I’m sorry it’s taken so long to finally reach out and get you on the show, but what I really liked about your product is there are so many nutrition products out there that just track calories.
[00:02:55] So it’s kind of an after the fact. You eat what you eat through the day and then you track and at the end of the day you go, oh, I overate or ate too much of this, or I made too much of that. And it’s just really leads to athletes beating up on themselves. And that’s not what you do. You don’t actually track what the athlete is eating.
[00:03:13] You plan. That’s right.
[00:03:15] Yeah.
[00:03:15] You have the athlete work on, here’s what I’m going to eat through the week, here’s what I’m gonna eat tomorrow, here’s what I’m going to eat Tuesday. And I really like that because athletes. Understand planning. We build training plans, we map out the week. Doing that with nutrition, I think puts them in a much more positive space.
[00:03:34] But I wanted to throw that to you and ask your thoughts on the difference between planning versus just tracking calories.
[00:03:40] Angelo Poli: So I used to give, I guess I still do give regular seminars on behavioral modifications and the real world actions of what actually will create change for someone, what sticks and what doesn’t.
[00:03:54] And what I’ll sometimes do is I’ll split the room into two and I’ll say, okay, on this side of the room, pick a diet, any diet, any strategy, any science that has worked for you in the past. And I’ll get people to raise their hand and they’ll say, well, they’ve done this strategy or that, and here’s what’s been effective.
[00:04:11] I said, great. Now on the left side of the room, you can eat anything you want, whenever you want. One rule, you have to prepare it the day before. Which side of the room do you think is gonna have a better outcome? And everybody chuckles, because we all know it really is preparation is key. And in fact, if you were a fly on the wall for one of our initial onboarding coaching calls, when we work with an athlete, what you would be hearing me say is, I’m not grading you on outcomes in the first week, 10 days.
[00:04:43] I’m grading you on habits established. Because if we create habits, I can parlay that into massive outcomes optimization, but we have to have a foundation first. So you are absolutely on the right, uh, wavelength there when you’re saying that planning is critical versus just saying, oh, we’re gonna hit a calorie intake.
[00:05:04] Calories matter. Of course we gotta talk numbers, we gotta talk to science. I’m sure we’ll dive into all that, but it all starts with a foundation. We have to have a game.
[00:05:13] Trevor Connor: Yep. And you know, that’s one of the things that I saw when I was using your product. I spent time every morning sitting down and actually making my lunch and putting it in a container to bring to work and putting together my snacks.
[00:05:26] I’d actually kind of put together all the food for the day and bring it to work. It took a little bit of time, not that much. It was less than 10 minutes. But then I had the day planned out and ready and I kind of enjoyed that and I don’t know why I didn’t keep that up.
[00:05:41] Chris Case: Yeah,
[00:05:41] Trevor Connor: because I, I can’t tell you how many times I’m sitting at work.
[00:05:45] I go down to make a salad and go, oh, I don’t have lettuce, I don’t have this, I don’t have that. And hey, there’s this really greasy piece of place about a block away. And then you go over there and go, well, that was awful.
[00:05:56] Angelo Poli: So what we end up doing, Trevor, so I have had the privilege in my career of dieting about 20,000 people.
[00:06:06] So I’ve done this a time or two. Now I’m saying that to just share the things that end up actually creating friction are not necessarily the things most people would guess when first embarking on a strategy of planning and preparing. Most people, it is not contrary to popular belief, a matter of willpower.
[00:06:29] It is not a matter of, oh, I can’t be on a nutrition plan or a diet ’cause I like chocolate too much. That’s not a thing. I mean, that is a thing, but that’s not the thing. The thing is time management. So if I were to scrape our CRM with literally hundreds and thousands of messages where client wrote to coach, Hey, I’m struggling.
[00:06:53] I didn’t follow my meal plan yesterday. You know what the next line would be? It wasn’t I was craving apple pie. The next line would be. I got busy and yep, do, do, do. So what we do, mepr, we just end up being a bunch of nerds that sit around preemptively figuring out how to come up with strategies that are gonna enable someone to overcome that friction.
[00:07:21] So I joke when people say, what do you do for a living? I tell people, they say, are you a nutritionist? They say, no, I’m a time management specialist. Because that’s really what it boils down to, learning how to manage your time optimally.
[00:07:35] Trevor Connor: And I think athletes can understand this because if you plan out your week and say, I’m gonna do an hour with intervals on Tuesday and I’m gonna do a recovery ride on Wednesday, most of the time you figure out how to find that hour to do that ride if you don’t plan out your week at all.
[00:07:52] I hear athletes say this all the time, like, I wanna train, what’d you do the last three days? It’s like, oh, work got busy and this happened and that happened and I didn’t train the last three days. If it’s planned, you tend to find the time for it. If you don’t have a plan, days go by and you realize, I didn’t even get on my bike.
[00:08:10] I didn’t go out for a run. Yep.
[00:08:12] Angelo Poli: We talk a lot with our, not just athletes, but anyone about anchoring, and there’s actually a lot of studies that can give you statistically the most statistically high probability, time of day exercise, you know, so we’re big believers in exercising early. Not everybody has a circumstance to do that, but statistically, every hour later in the day, you know your odds of staying consistent with that diminish, guess what?
[00:08:37] Same exact principle for meal prep and for food planning. If you can’t or exercise early, then anchor it to something that doesn’t move. In other words, I’m dropping off Johnny at two o’clock, picking him up from school. Hey, let’s exercise on the way to or from same exact strategy, anchor it to something in your day that doesn’t move.
[00:08:57] Make it a fixture in your regimen, and you will become addicted to the time savings once you get it into a habit.
[00:09:05] Chris Case: I wonder too, how much. Mindset plays a role here because I feel like those people who prioritize getting their training in have this mindset that they will find a way to do it. Mm-hmm.
[00:09:19] They’ll find that sliver of time to fit it in, whether it’s a busy week or not, and it’s that athlete mentality that carries them through a week, navigating pockets of time when they can fit it in, and if they applied that same mindset to nutrition and meal prep and meal planning and consuming good food, if that also would help, I’ve gotta assume it does help with this process quite a bit.
[00:09:45] Angelo Poli: Well, Chris, what you just brought up is one of the fundamental things we coach on that is a very strong priority hierarchy. And most people don’t understand, really understand where things line up. Now the pros do they have to ’cause their career depends on it. So what are the three most absolutely wildly relevant things you have to do that are the priorities?
[00:10:12] But when we kind of trickle down to the average individual, the enthusiasts, et cetera, it’s really easy for that to become a gray area. Now, I’m gonna give you a dramatic illustration here, but I think it fits. So, you know, when I developed my program, that was for the absolute min max in human performance, I was working with the N-F-L-M-V-P.
[00:10:34] At the time I’m working with Olympic athletes. You know the best of the best, as you could imagine. 95 plus percent of our clients are just like you and I, regular guys, regular gals, trying to, you know, just live our best life. So what happens is, I think the stat, don’t quote me on this, but it’s right around 83% of clients we coach tell me that body composition or fat loss is part of their goals.
[00:11:06] Now, not everyone, some people are coming to us needing to put on 10 pounds of muscle or whatever they’re trying to do, but when we evaluate where they’re investing their time, if weight loss is one of the goals, I have a lot of folks that say, well, here, I get up in the morning and then I go to the gym and I do this, and I get up Tuesday and I do that, and I get up Wednesday and I do this.
[00:11:26] They are shocked when I tell them the number one and most important thing you can do is stay home. Like really? Stay home. Yes. Stay home and prepare your food because if your goal is to change your body composition, then the number one influencer. To make that happen is going to be your diet, your nutrition quality, consistency.
[00:11:51] And so most people have no problem committing an hour and a half out of their day. But when I talk to some of these Fortune 500 executives that are go, go, go mindset mentality, I say, look, I just need 15 minutes, twice a week to do meal prep. It’s hard to wrap their head around how important that is on the priority hierarchy.
[00:12:12] So yes, Chris, you hit the nail on the head. By recognizing that is one of the most wildly relevant things you can do to optimize your results, you’re gonna be way ahead of the game.
[00:12:23] Trevor Connor: Yep. I believe that a hundred percent. This is the first year I never hit my race weight. And also this year, more than any year that I can ever remember, I was eating dinner out multiple, multiple nights a week.
[00:12:34] Chris Case: Does that have something to do with a girlfriend? To do with a girlfriend. Just, you know. But don’t
[00:12:41] Angelo Poli: tell her I said that. Wild guess. Wild guess. Well then that’s forgivable. Yes. Yeah.
[00:12:46] Trevor Connor: Things you gotta do. So I think it’s probably pretty clear here, but the purpose of this episode and what we’re gonna talk about for the rest of it is how to plan your nutrition.
[00:12:57] We’ve done a ton of episodes on what should you eat, what shouldn’t you eat, what helps performance, what doesn’t help performance. But I was surprised to look back and all the episodes we’ve done on nutrition, we never did one on.
[00:13:09] Mm-hmm.
[00:13:10] Here’s the way to plan your week, here’s the way to plan your day.
[00:13:13] And I think that’s really valuable. So I’m kind of excited about this episode and just making it a good practical, here’s the suggestions, here’s the things you should do, here’s the things you shouldn’t do. But before we get there, the last thing I do need to ask you is just some of the basics of planning.
[00:13:29] What things do they need to know? For example, should you be focusing completely on carbohydrates, protein, and fat ratios? Is it all about timing? What are the, just some of the basics that we need to understand before we can have this conversation about planning.
[00:13:45] Angelo Poli: Okay. I’m gonna take you for a little bit of a left turn here if you’ll allow me to set the foundation.
[00:13:51] So the answer to all of those questions may surprise you. In fact, I built a business, a system, a company, a nutrition coaching model, off of the answer to that particular question. And that is, you asked me, you know, how much protein, carbs, fats, what should I be emphasizing? And the answer to that question is.
[00:14:15] I don’t know.
[00:14:17] Trevor Connor: Good answer.
[00:14:18] Angelo Poli: And I would further, and maybe this is a little salacious, but I would further posture, but if I don’t know, nobody knows. And the reason nobody knows is because you have to answer prerequisite questions before you can give an intelligent, calculated answer to how much calories, protein, carbs, fat, macronutrient ratios, mealtime and glycemic load.
[00:14:43] We can go on and on. What’s optimal for you. I have to first know, who are you? What are you trying to accomplish? Here’s the really important one. What is currently maintaining you in homeostasis? In other words, what are you currently doing? So how much protein, carbs, fats, and the timing, all that is heavily predicated on what your body is currently used to.
[00:15:06] You know, somebody says, well, you should do a high fat, no, you should do a high carb, but you should do moderate protein. No high. None of that can really be settled on until we know what you’re currently doing. That’s maintaining your body comp, your body weight, your performance, your energy, your digestion.
[00:15:23] Once we establish those things, then we can actually mathematically and systematically make best practice recommendations in each of those categories. To start with, what do you guys think? If we kind of chop down some basic tenets of sports nutrition, would you guys be up for that?
[00:15:41] Trevor Connor: Yeah, please do. Yeah, I
[00:15:43] Angelo Poli: wanna hear your take on this.
[00:15:44] So please. So here’s the rules. You gotta call me out if I’m saying something doesn’t sound right. Okay? Because I’m gonna introduce some new ideas. So there’s basic beliefs in sports nutrition. This is across the athletic industry, the fitness industry in both and the medical industry. There are beliefs that they’re not wrong.
[00:16:04] But how to best put this, there’s kind of a shadow government running in the background when it comes to our biology. A subtle influencer that’s undermining, right? That’s pulling the strings behind the scenes in addition to our core beliefs. So let me ask you this question. When we talk about metabolism
[00:16:26] Trevor Connor: mm-hmm.
[00:16:26] Angelo Poli: What are the major influencers when it comes to discerning where somebody’s metabolic rate would be? What are some of the first questions you would ask someone to help determine metabolically what their needs are? What are some of the things that we look at?
[00:16:40] Trevor Connor: Well start with daily activity. How many calories are you expending?
[00:16:44] Angelo Poli: Yeah, absolutely. So when I ask people, when I talk with people about this, the most common responses I’ll get is gender. Mass muscle mass in particular. Mm-hmm. And activity. Those are kind of our, the three things that we look at. How big are you? Are you a male or female? And what’s your energy expenditure?
[00:17:06] So we’re all in agreement there, right? Mm-hmm. Now we have a little bit of a problem. Remember that shadow government I mentioned. So those are all true things. Absolutely true. Nothing has changed about the accuracy of what we just discussed there. However, there’s another factor that we have to establish.
[00:17:25] Research now exposes something called adaptive thermogenesis. Sometimes it’s referred to as metabolic drift. Now, I’ll tell you where I learned about this stuff was after the show, the biggest loser went off the air. I was one of the guys that inherited a bunch of the contestants to try and rehab their metabolism.
[00:17:45] Trevor Connor: Hmm.
[00:17:45] Angelo Poli: You know, because the American public was watching this all play out, A bunch of funding got dumped into research. So they finally had all these research papers saying, oh, you know, maybe having someone exercise 12 hours a day and eating 1100 calories isn’t a great idea for someone’s metabolism long term.
[00:18:04] The old answer that doctors and personal trainers like myself used to give people right, was, well, yeah, of course your metabolism is slower. A small person requires less calories than a big person. The only problem is that’s rubbish. We knew it then. We know it now. It’s just rubbish. You can think of often the smallest person in the room has like a hollow leg.
[00:18:26] You know, they can eat and eat and eat and never gain weight, and sometimes the biggest people in the room are the ones always, you know, eating like a bird because their metabolic rate is running slower. So we knew that wasn’t right, but we still kept saying it for years and years. Now we have the research explaining that there’s a lot more biologically taking place.
[00:18:46] Now remember when I said we’re gonna chop down those core tenets of sports nutrition, so gender mass, activity level, big influencers. But I would argue that there is an influencer even more relevant and I can prove it. So let’s say a father and a daughter, they’re taking a plane ride together. He just got his pilot’s license.
[00:19:09] They’re going over the Pacific. They crash land. They’re on a deserted island for a year. They’re living off of rations they brought with them.
[00:19:17] Trevor Connor: Oh,
[00:19:17] Angelo Poli: father’s a big boy. 300 pounds, get daughter’s eight years old, 75 pounds, low calorie rations. How many calories? What would you guys say? What’s a really, really low calorie intake for a day?
[00:19:28] Trevor Connor: Uh, around a thousand, if not less sure. I mean, survival. It’s gonna be different for the two of them. I’m glad you said that. Hold that thought,
[00:19:36] Angelo Poli: Trevor. Mm-hmm. Hold that thought, Uhhuh. Okay. So let’s say these ration packs are a thousand calories each. Yep. Okay. So is the father gonna say, well, I’m a bigger person than you, so my daughter’s gonna just have half a ration.
[00:19:48] Is he gonna do that? No. No, no. Of course not. That’s his little princess. He’s gonna make her eat every ounce of that. Right? So he’s gonna eat a thousand calories. She’s going to eat a thousand calories, he’s 300 pounds, she’s 75 pounds. Here’s a question, will they die on a thousand calories? No.
[00:20:07] Trevor Connor: There are a lot of factors to consider here.
[00:20:09] She’s growing. So she has higher nutritional needs. You said he’s 300 pounds? Mm-hmm. But a lot of that weight is adipose tissue, which is metabolically inactive tissue. So the question is how much metabolically active tissue does he have? Plus he can survive a lot, basically categorizing a lot of that adipose tissue.
[00:20:29] So, yeah, let’s hear your answer, but it’s not as black and white as it might sound.
[00:20:34] Angelo Poli: I’ll give you something that is black and white. Mm-hmm. There are entire countries in this world where the inhabitants exist on barely over a thousand calories a day. Yep. So, no, they will not die on a thousand Cal. Now, assuming there weren’t secondary medical concerns, right, just from a thousand calories a day, neither one of them would die.
[00:20:55] Certainly will not thrive.
[00:20:57] Trevor Connor: No.
[00:20:57] Angelo Poli: But they wouldn’t die. Are we in agreement on that point? Yeah,
[00:21:01] Trevor Connor: sure. You know my background, you know, I love the Thrifty Gene hypothesis. Our bodies are highly adapted to deal with low caloric availability. You’re
[00:21:10] Angelo Poli: right. So here’s the question. A year later, 18 months later, they’re rescued.
[00:21:16] Okay. Now he’s obviously gonna lose a bunch of weight. Yes. But at some point. He’s going to stop losing weight. Correct? Correct. Because if he doesn’t stop losing weight, he’s dead. Yep. So now we have a 75 pound 8-year-old girl and a, maybe he loses a hundred pounds. 120 pounds. Right now, 180 pound or a 200 pound male, they are both eating a thousand calories a day.
[00:21:48] They’re neither gaining nor losing weight. That’s homeostasis. That is the state that has to occur. If they don’t die, they’re both burning Exactly. A thousand calories a day. Which one has a faster metabolic rate? It’s gonna be the same. Exactly. But we never talked about gender muscle mass or activity level.
[00:22:07] Did we
[00:22:09] Trevor Connor: look, so I gotta throw this in. My major when I was getting my master’s was exercise bioenergetics. It was the study of metabolism. And right in one of my first classes, our professor defined metabolism. And you hear, you know, particularly you get on social media and people talk about metabolism.
[00:22:28] Metabolism speeding up and slowing down, and they make it sound really complex and this extraordinary thing and how much it dramatically changes when you age. The definition of metabolism is incredibly simple. It, it is the net of energy consumed versus energy expended through the day. That’s it. That’s right.
[00:22:47] That’s metabolism. So when you’re saying metabolism slows down, all you’re saying is. I burn fewer calories through the day. That’s it. Right? Go out for a six hour bike ride. You just sped up your metabolism. It’s that simple. Sure. That’s it. And that’s what you were getting at with the analogy your metabolism
[00:23:03] Angelo Poli: adapts.
[00:23:04] It does. It has to adapt to your intake. And the reason that it’s hard to put our finger on is because it’s not death by a single bullet. It’s death by a thousand cuts.
[00:23:15] Trevor Connor: Yes.
[00:23:15] Angelo Poli: Everything from, you know, mitochondrial enzymes to the hypothalamus and the brainstem to powerful hormones, you know, leptin and ghrelin and appetite and insulin, of course, all.
[00:23:27] Influence energy expenditure throughout the day. And they can all tune just a little bit and that shouldn’t surprise us, right? Our bodies are highly adaptive. We spend time in the sun, the pigment of our skin changes. We lift heavy weights, our muscles hypertrophy and grow. We do a lot of endurance training.
[00:23:47] Our heart muscle becomes more competent, and our VO two max goes up right across the board. Our bodies acclimate to our environment. So what happens is our metabolic rates acclimate to our environment as well, and that has to be the starting question when we define now. Now applying this to athletics, if your metabolism can be changed.
[00:24:14] It can be controlled and metabolism people think is just something that individuals looking for, weight loss, uh, need to be concerned with. That is absolutely not the case. So with all of my high, high performing athletes, what we do is we find ways to condition their metabolism so we can push more fuel through them.
[00:24:35] More fuel. The right fuel, of course, means greater recovery capacity. It means being able to get back and train harder, train more frequently, and it gives you leverage if you do need to body recomp or change your body weight. All of these things are such critical factors. And there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot out there that’s tracking that component, which is why the foundation is we have to establish where an individual is entering at, where homeostasis is for them.
[00:25:07] So we can help plan out a path to enhance performance once we know where we’re starting from. It’s really a, I’m not gonna say simple, but it’s a doable mathematical calculation and so that’s the foundation. There is good news though, ’cause everybody’s like, well, duh, Angelo, of course if I eat less, my metabolic rate slows down.
[00:25:28] I can tell you that happens to me all the time. Guess what? We have a problem with a law of thermodynamics here. If you eat more, your metabolic rate speeds up and we can prove that also. So, Trevor, do you mind me asking approximately what your body weight is? You look ultrafit to me.
[00:25:46] Trevor Connor: Uh, well, so my race weight is 158 right now.
[00:25:49] I’m 170.
[00:25:51] Angelo Poli: Okay. So here’s a quick question. Now again, I’m using dramatic illustrations here. Mm-hmm. Right? The starvation illustration on the island.
[00:26:00] Trevor Connor: And by the way, I don’t want to go on a tangent, but I was expecting to bring up brand adipose tissue when you were talking about that, but you didn’t. We’ll circle back.
[00:26:07] We’ll circle back.
[00:26:08] Angelo Poli: Okay. So what would happen, just curious, ’cause I’ve asked thousands of people this. I’m curious what you would say, what would happen. You change, nothing about your training. You change nothing about your typical daily diet and intake, but you add a pint of. What’s your favorite ice cream flavor?
[00:26:25] Trevor Connor: I don’t eat ice cream. Couple times a year. I have it. Oh God, what’s it called? It’s an ice cream shop here. Uh, it’s like, I think Glac G birthday cake. Oh my goodness. Yeah. Okay. If I’m gonna have ice cream, I will go there and get their birthday cake ’cause it’s amazing. There you go.
[00:26:41] Angelo Poli: Okay. So that this, just for illustration purposes, so pretend that because your body’s probably not used to getting a whole bunch of lactose and, you know, pretend you didn’t have a gap bomb.
[00:26:51] Just from a pure energy perspective, a pint of Ben and Jerry’s or Haagen-Dazs ice cream is approximately a thousand calories a day. Yep. What would happen to you in a month if you had a pint every night? Would you gain weight?
[00:27:07] Trevor Connor: Oh, of course.
[00:27:07] Angelo Poli: How much ballpark?
[00:27:09] Trevor Connor: So I’m gonna qualify that with. Nothing else about my diet changes.
[00:27:13] I just add the Ben and Jerry’s,
[00:27:15] Angelo Poli: correct? Yep.
[00:27:17] Trevor Connor: So the simple answer, which I know you’re gonna say is wrong, but I know where you’re going with this. So 3000 calories is approximately one pound of fat. So theoretically I would put on about 10 pounds of fat because over 30 days I would consume 30,000 calories.
[00:27:35] That’d be 10 pounds of fat. But I don’t think it would be quite that much. I think there would be some adaptation in the body. You’ve got it.
[00:27:41] Angelo Poli: And so in the first month, and I, like I said, I’ve asked thousands of thousands of people this, and the first month, most people tell me they’d gain between five and 10 pounds is what they say.
[00:27:50] Just intuitively not knowing the math. So 3,500 calories and one pound of body fat. It doesn’t work exactly that way. But yes, that would be two pounds a week based on the math. Except, here’s the problem, that breaks down after about three weeks to 30 days. Because then when I ask, now, let’s just say you really like that birthday cake, ice cream.
[00:28:10] Do you keep eating that every night for a year? Is there any chance you would gain 104 pounds because that’s two pounds a week? 52 weeks in a year. Is there any chance you would gain 104 pounds?
[00:28:25] Trevor Connor: No. No.
[00:28:25] Angelo Poli: No. Absolutely not. So for all of our listeners, here’s what Trevor just said. Trevor just said, birthday cake, ice cream speeds your metabolism.
[00:28:35] Trevor Connor: Now what I said is birthday cake, ice cream is amazing. You’re the one saying only about calories fair. That is the only statement I’m making here. That’s fair. Okay.
[00:28:46] Angelo Poli: People are gonna write it saying, wait a second, I’m trying, this isn’t working. This is a dramatic illustration. Of course, don’t try this at home.
[00:28:53] You are not gonna be happy with the results. No. But unless there was something metabolically broken, there is no chance you would gain by the numbers 104 pounds. Why? Exactly what Trevor just said. That’s that adaptive response. So of course we, we don’t do it that way, but what it proves is you can speed your metabolic rate.
[00:29:16] Based on intake levels, because we didn’t change anything else. The body is adaptive. So here’s the take home message. We can control our metabolism. And I find that for athletes by tracking where their metabolic rate is, and that’s not that hard to do, but tracking where that metabolic rate is, is we can vastly enhance the optimization process and individualize it for each person so that way they actually can answer those questions of what’s the optimal protein, carbs, fats, timing, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, that everyone asks.
[00:29:53] Trevor Connor: So that whole conversation we were talking about weight gain and weight loss. The one thing we didn’t cover, and it’s important just to mention, is the unbelievably negative health consequences. Eating a pint of birthday cake ice cream would have on you every single day, and that is important
[00:30:10] Angelo Poli: of course,
[00:30:10] Trevor Connor: but I, I get completely what you’re talking about and this is why people get frustrated.
[00:30:15] Again, I look at evolutionary biology and we became incredibly well adapted at dealing with caloric scarcity so that we survive. So yes, when you have caloric scarcity, your body is really good at shutting down processes. That’s part of why I mentioned the brand adipose tissue, so that when you’re eating less calories, you don’t keep losing weight and your body can find homeostasis.
[00:30:40] The issue that we have is we didn’t involve a lot of systems to deal with caloric excess. Our body doesn’t want to put on excess weight. It likes to actually put on some, because you never know when you’re gonna get your next meal. But it just doesn’t know how to deal with extreme caloric excess because that never happened during evolutionary times.
[00:31:00] So we don’t have good systems to deal with that. It can adapt a little, and that’s what you’re saying. It’ll speed up your metabolic rate, but not to the point that it can keep you at the ideal. Body composition that you would want.
[00:31:12] Angelo Poli: Correct. Yeah. And so I’ll give you another extreme and exactly as you just said, Trevor.
[00:31:17] Yeah. These are just, I use these dramatic illustrations so people, it’ll stick out in their mind.
[00:31:22] Trevor Connor: Mm-hmm.
[00:31:22] Angelo Poli: In application, these aren’t the foods that we use.
[00:31:26] Trevor Connor: Yeah.
[00:31:26] Angelo Poli: So I’ll share with you the secrets to having a structured approach to speeding your metabolic rate, therefore, being able to, for the athletes push more fuel and an integrated approach in a way that’s going to drive performance versus body fat gains.
[00:31:40] You guys have probably seen those shows. The, you know, the 900 pound man get on Discovery Health getting taken out of his house and the crane and the whole mm-hmm. You know, it’s, mm-hmm. You know, these, you know, bummer situations, but you know, for the dramatic effect, they show what these people are eating, you know, and the camera will pan across and, you know, the two cheese pizzas, the three things of the two liter bottles of Pepsi, and on and on and on and on.
[00:32:05] The way most people think about this is, okay, that poor man, he has a really slow metabolism, but that’s not technically accurate.
[00:32:13] Trevor Connor: No.
[00:32:13] Angelo Poli: He has the metabolism that can outpace Michael Phelps. He has an Olympian metabolism, right? The dieticians that work with this guy, they’re gonna put him, you know, on 4,000 calories a day and the weight is going to melt off of him in the first, you know, few months.
[00:32:32] Right. And that’s just sitting there. That’s because the body has tried to compensate for that over consumption. But to your point, Trevor, it’s not able to do so fully.
[00:32:43] Trevor Connor: It’s really important to understand. Our bodies are always trying to find homeostasis. And if you reach a weight where your weight is not changing, you are in homeostasis, you are consuming the same amount of calories as you are burning.
[00:32:56] Angelo Poli: That is exactly right. Yep. And when I’m dealing with weight loss clients or recomp clients. People wanna know what’s happening here. You know, if I’ve stopped losing weight, am I doing something wrong? Nope. It just means your body, your metabolism is doing its job. It is recreating homeostasis. Now we need to adjust something so that way your body will further adapt in the direction that we wanted.
[00:33:23] Trevor Connor: Mm-hmm.
[00:33:23] Angelo Poli: Really interesting things to think about, but the takeaway here is for the athlete, or for anyone struggling to optimize and see how they can reach their goals, is this, if your metabolic rate can change, it can be controlled. And
[00:33:41] Trevor Connor: that’s
[00:33:41] Angelo Poli: good news.
[00:33:42] Trevor Connor: Hmm. On the hunt for your next great cycling destination, let me tell you about Fayetteville, Arkansas.
[00:33:49] There are so many reasons to visit, not Lisa, which is the Cycl Cross National Championships on December 10th, the 14th. What’s better than Cycl Cross at a venue that hosted worlds in 2022? There’s also the purpose-built bike packing network created by bike packing route. The only nonprofit devoted to expansion of bike packing in the us Overnighters multiple day trips.
[00:34:11] This suite of roots has something for everyone. And then there’s Fayetteville itself, which is the only UCI recognized bike city in America. Once you’re riding is done, the fun continues with restaurants and breweries and bike friendly hotels that cater to cyclists of all kinds. Fayetteville, your new favorite v.
[00:34:27] Head to favorite v.com to explore one of America’s top rated bike cities where world-class cycling is just the beginning. So with that, I said we were gonna do an episode mostly on planning. So I think we’re 30 minutes in here. Let’s, uh, jump over to planning ’cause I really wanna hear your thoughts. As I said, I really enjoyed.
[00:34:48] Using Met Pro and having it kind of help me map out my days. So let’s start with the individual day. What are your thoughts to our listeners about mapping out a day? Should you do three square meals? Should you snack? Should you eat before bed? Should you fast in the morning? What are your various thoughts and how should they approach this?
[00:35:09] And I get the sense you’re gonna go very principle based on this, so I have to chuckle. Yep.
[00:35:15] Angelo Poli: A lot of it, there’s art and science. When I’m working with my athletes in particular, there’s a lot of the numbers, but then there’s a lot of the art as well, what a person can do effectively.
[00:35:27] Trevor Connor: Mm-hmm.
[00:35:27] Angelo Poli: At Net Pro, we apply a lot of different sciences, but we lean into the most practical ones, the most heavily because ones that we are able to execute on tend to yield the best results versus having something highly complex that’s hard to execute.
[00:35:46] So. Three square meals. There’s nothing wrong with it. If you’re working with me and if I’m your coach, you’re going to eat snacks and it’s for none of the reasons that you’d think. ’cause I can show you the research that shows the benefit of small meals frequently, the research that seems to indicate that there’s no difference.
[00:36:04] It’s all total intake. But if you’re working with me, you’re gonna have snacks and you’ll be surprised the reason. You ready? Yes, please. We don’t eat snacks socially so I can control them. That’s the reason. So in other words, you are gonna have lunches with your business partners. You’re gonna have dinners with at grandma’s house and the family.
[00:36:23] There are going to be a statistical percentage of times that we’re not gonna be able to control consumption at major meals. But nobody calls up Eddie and says, Hey Eddie, meet me at the water cooler. We’re gonna have an apple and 12 almonds. It’s not a social event. So I can more heavily control what we’re consuming at those times.
[00:36:48] So it gives me a stronger anchor to create a habit throughout the day. That’s why I use snacks. Now, there is also a metabolic benefit. The research is very conclusive. If you’re eating X amount of calories, macronutrient ratios, being roughly equivocal, whether you’re eating that over six meals a day versus two or three meals a day, the outcome is roughly the same.
[00:37:10] However, here’s the little asterisk. I can tell you from practical experience, that is not the case when it comes to increasing your intake. If I’m trying to increase someone’s intake and I only have two or three meals to spread it across versus increasing intake and I have five or six meals to spread it across, I as a coach have a lot more leverage and can add much quicker than if I had to put it all in one or two places.
[00:37:40] So there’s a little bit of the art and a little bit of the science that goes with that.
[00:37:43] Trevor Connor: Yep. It was interesting. I was getting ready for this episode. I found a study from 2019 called Snacking and Nutrition and Health, and it was from a, a more standard journal. So I was expecting ’em to say, no, eat your three square meals and snacks are bad for you.
[00:37:59] And this review was the exact opposite. Said that it can actually be healthier to have several snacks through the day. Now they do qualify, eat fruits, nuts, healthy things if you’re eating Cheetos for your snacks. No,
[00:38:12] Chris Case: right.
[00:38:13] Trevor Connor: But they talked a lot about just the heavy impact on your body of having three really big meals.
[00:38:20] That it can be easier on your body to, to spread it out a little more and you can actually get a little better nutrient density that way.
[00:38:25] Angelo Poli: We’ll consider the implications for endurance athletes. So right now I have two gentlemen. One just competed in Nice a few weeks back, and then the previous year in Kona, right?
[00:38:37] I mean, we’re talking about the top of the top. Could you imagine if I was trying to squeeze all of the nutrition they needed for recovery and optimization into three meals a day? Those would be massive meals. Now everyone’s different. I have elite performing that aren’t on massively high calories, but the average is at a very high caloric intake.
[00:38:58] And in order to consume that, that would be such a gut bomb to try and digest that many just over three meals. So I would say at the elite level, you are almost forced into a more frequent fueling if you wanna really optimize. But there are no hard, fast rules around that.
[00:39:15] Trevor Connor: Yep. So I gotta a laugh. I did a, uh, a ride a couple months ago where I did one of my six hour rides.
[00:39:22] I went up in the mountains, did not take enough food with me. It was not near any stores. So I dramatically under ate on the ride, pretty much didn’t eat the whole day, and then tried to cram all those calories into my dinner and just said to my girlfriend, I’m ordering a pizza. Mm-hmm. Screw it. I’m just having a pizza.
[00:39:41] And we’re, we’re eating together. And she just kind of starts watching me. When I’m basically done eating a whole pizza by myself, she just looks at me and goes, that was gross.
[00:39:55] Angelo Poli: That’s happened more than once. Not the words you want to hear from your girlfriend, Trevor.
[00:40:01] Trevor Connor: No. Oh, that’s funny. But I bring that up because there is that point of, I agree with you. If you are having to eat a lot of calories through the day and you’re trying to cram it into one or two meals, you end up going the gross route.
[00:40:16] I wasn’t gonna try to eat a giant piece of salmon and enough vegetables to replace 4,000 calories. It was ordered the pizza. I love that Trevor. Don’t go the gross routes.
[00:40:26] Angelo Poli: So let’s give a little bit of the science and just practical experience on this. So the opposite is true. Okay. So I’ve worked with some individuals who are athletic training, but they’re not exactly competing in in Ironman competitions.
[00:40:40] Right. Their primary goal is to recomp or lose weight and they’re on a lower intake. You try and spread a low caloric intake across five or six meals and no one meal ever hits bottom. You end up just hungry all day and you can even establish low blood sugar, things like that, versus if you actually just had three or four meals that were substantial enough to hit bottom.
[00:41:09] So again, I’m not really helping anyone out ’cause people are scratching their head going, so what do I do? It really is individualized. It depends on what your goal is, where you’re starting and where you wanna move to. And that kind of dovetails into the should I eat fat, low fat, high fat? To answer a question like that, it really comes down to do we need it?
[00:41:28] So I wanna establish adequate protein. I wanna establish adequate carbs, how much fats does somebody need? Because if I have someone who requires 3,600 calories. There’s no chance I’m getting there with chicken breast and brown rice.
[00:41:42] Trevor Connor: Right.
[00:41:42] Angelo Poli: Just no chance. So in that case, we are actually forced to increase fats beyond a certain point if we want to hit.
[00:41:51] But if somebody isn’t, doesn’t have those needs, then we really have options. And there’s more than one way to skin a cat. There’s lots of approaches that can work. The key is they should be systematic. They should be tracked and calculated and planned.
[00:42:05] Trevor Connor: Yep. And you know, to your point, I think it’s important to point out that a lot of athletes really do focus on getting enough carbohydrates through the day.
[00:42:14] Carbohydrates, particularly high glycemic carbohydrates, spike insulin. The thing to know about insulin is insulin actually increases hunger signals. So it is a bit of a vicious cycle where if you start eating those carbohydrates, you spike insulin, then you’re hungrier and you want to eat more. So if you’re trying to get little bits of high glycemic carbohydrates through the day, you’re gonna be miserable.
[00:42:35] You’re gonna be hungry all the time.
[00:42:37] Angelo Poli: That’s exactly right. Yeah. And so you could point to the bodybuilding industry, right? The physique sports, what are they? Their goal is to drive body fat percentage as low as possible. What types of food are they eating? They’re eating really low glycemic carbs. They’re eating proteins.
[00:42:54] Why are they doing that? Well, exactly what you just said. Also, those lower glycemic foods tend to fall under the more satiating categories
[00:43:03] Trevor Connor: and, and this is what I tell athletes. If you’re going to eat the high glycemic carbohydrates, do it around your workout, either during your workout right before or right after the rest of the day, you should really be focusing on the low glycemic carbohydrates.
[00:43:15] Angelo Poli: Yep. Spot on.
[00:43:17] Trevor Connor: So what else should we know about the day? How do you feel about eating before bed or not eating when you wake up in the morning? So I don’t
[00:43:25] Angelo Poli: have a strong, you have to do it one way or the other, but it really should be justifiable. So why would we not eat at night? So here’s some reasons that we would not eat at night.
[00:43:36] If you’re going to increase the fasting window, everybody fasts every day when we sleep at night. If you want to increase that fasting window, I’m a much bigger fan of doing it at night versus in the morning. And so if. Recomp. Reducing CLO intake is a goal of yours. Then it would make sense to thin out CLO intake right before you’re preparing to go to sleep.
[00:44:00] It doesn’t make as much sense to thin out clerk intake right before you start your most active part of the day. For athletic performance, I would argue this is more of a behavioral thing. Digestively and just appetite wise, people find it easier. We wake up, hit the ground running. You know, culturally, socially, with our lifestyles, it’s easy to skip meals in the morning.
[00:44:21] So a lot of people like to do a morning fasted. Is that the end of the world if you do that? No, it’s not the end of the world. Some people with ravenous appetites do find that starting their day a little bit later is one means of lowering total caloric intake. So there is no right or wrong here, but given a perfect circumstance, if I had an athlete that I was trying to optimize their.
[00:44:43] Nutrition for, I would probably opt to have them at least try to start having breakfast within an hour of waking up, fuel their body properly and eat in reasonably small increments throughout the day. And even getting some additional protein before bed at night in combination with some slow burning carbohydrates and slower digesting proteins as well.
[00:45:07] That aren’t going to be the immediate, uh, that’s min maxing a little bit, but that is good practice. None of those things, Trevor, none of those things end up being the make or break. What ends up being the make or break is the day before Johnny did you prepare your meals, and here are the meals I want you to prepare.
[00:45:30] I want you to prepare your lunches and your snacks. I don’t care about breakfast, I don’t care about dinner. Here’s why. Watching thousands and thousands of people. Behaviors, tracking, engaging with them. What I find is very few people struggle with a consistent breakfast once they’re on board. Once they’re like, okay, I’m doing this.
[00:45:49] I’m trying to improve my health, or I’m trying to improve my performance, or I’m trying to recomp, breakfast is not where I have troubles with that, you’re gonna do fine with breakfast. You wake up in the morning in the same spot. As long as you have the ingredients in your house, you can have breakfast.
[00:46:01] What happens is between 9:00 AM and about 3:30 PM there is nothing planned. We hit the ground running, we gotta drop off, Johnny, we gotta meet this deadline for the boss. We’re just running and food becomes the afterthought. So if you are one of my clients, you are going to send me a picture. Of your lunches for three days and your snacks for three days prepared in advance.
[00:46:28] And that’s what I’m grading you on because I know if I can get you into a pattern of preparing lunches and snacks in advance, I am going to work magic with you if I can’t get you into that pattern. Anything else? It’s just temporary. And that doesn’t mean you have to be a martyr. I fully believe in cheat meals.
[00:46:48] I fully believe in having pizza with your girlfriend once in a while, right? Not as your day to day routine. It’s Tuesday morning, nothing’s going on. Don’t eat pizza. So here’s what that looks like and why it’s actually not that hard. Cook in bulk. Cook macros in bulk. Okay? So figure out what proteins you like.
[00:47:13] There’s lots of quality proteins out there. You know, figure out what, uh, animal protein or if you’re a vegetarian or vegan, what plant forward, plant-based protein you like and do not cook one or two meals worth. So my wife and I, if you open our refrigerator, you’ll see a two giant tins. I keep two different proteins cooked at all times.
[00:47:35] So right now I’ve got a cooked thing with chicken breast in one, which by the way, I grill it. I season it’s delicious. I like to make it taste good. So I have all these cooked chicken breasts. And then in another, I usually have some sort of red meat ’cause that’s what I like to eat and I go back and forth between those for my protein in another tin I will have for me.
[00:47:56] I like sweet potatoes. My wife likes brown rice. I’m not a big fan of brown rice. You’ll find something you like, cook it in bulk, have those two major ingredients ready. Then all you have to do is add to it your vegetables because that you can’t really prep in advance. You just have to have vegetables handy in the house.
[00:48:15] Whatever vegetables are salad you’re gonna do and you have to have a fat, and that’s easy. It can be an oil, it can be avocado, it can be any simple fat source and eat whole foods. If you’re trying to do this with complex recipes or foods that have a paragraph of ingredients, it’s just not gonna work out for you.
[00:48:34] And if you feel like that’s too restrictive, just think of it in these terms. Eat whatever your grandparents ate growing up. If you stick to those foods, they didn’t have access to boxed foods with three paragraphs of synthetic ingredients and preservatives and nonsense, right? That’s all there from food manufacturers to have shelf stable food that lasts on a shelf longer, that’s not there for your fuel or your health or your optimization, right?
[00:49:04] Just stick to Whole Foods. Make a list of the proteins you want. Make a list of complex, slow burning to Trevor’s point carbs you want and have a few good vegetables on hand. I like my clients to eat fruits as part of their snacks because if you keep that as a routine, then I know we’re not missing those vital micronutrients and it’s cliche, but shop the perimeter, right?
[00:49:31] What they say there, there is a reason for that. Uh, and if you eat these Whole Foods building food, then meals becomes easy. Now, again, I’m not saying you can’t ever go out and have a, have some lasagna. You can absolutely do that, but that shouldn’t be your base meal plan.
[00:49:49] Trevor Connor: That’s kind of what I was hinting at earlier on.
[00:49:51] I was asking you what are the foundations of this? Because the issue I have is you see so many people in the nutrition world who just focus on carbohydrates, protein, fat, and you know, is a high carbohydrate diet good or bad for you? And I always say. You can’t say one way or the other because broccoli is a carbohydrate.
[00:50:11] Candy is a carbohydrate. You can have a high carbohydrate diet that’s horrible for you. You can have a high carbohydrate diet that’s good for you, but you need to factor in the sources. I’m very glad to hear you say, and I know this is my soap box. Eat more natural foods. Eat nutrient-dense foods,
[00:50:28] Angelo Poli: and labels don’t work.
[00:50:29] Right, right. So, uh, french fries and beer is vegan. So yes. You know, it’s just common sense
[00:50:36] Chris Case: guys, common sense. All of this sounds very simple. My next question, and putting myself in the mindset of busy American humans is, God, I have to go to the grocery store and think about a whole week’s worth of food, and when am I gonna find the time to do that, and when am I gonna shop?
[00:50:56] So what’s their answer? When people come to you with that problem, how do you overcome that? Chris, now you sound like one of my actual
[00:51:02] Angelo Poli: clients. This is it. This is exactly how we work with our clients, is helping them navigate precisely, verbatim what Chris just said. So, yes, you do need to learn the skill of shopping and prepping, but the reality is there is 101 life hacks that we can use to make this simpler.
[00:51:25] So I’ll, I’ll give you two right outta the gate that I use, like for my busy executives. So one. When you need a meal, don’t think restaurant. Think grocery store. If you go to a good quality grocery store that has a good quality deli counter, you can get everything we just talked about pre-made. You’ll spend a small premium to have someone else cook it for you, but you can get a vegetable med, you can get grilled protein, lean protein.
[00:51:52] You can get slow digesting carbohydrates prepared, seasoned, delicious already made, and buy it in bulk. When you live a lifestyle that requires you to eat out often, which by the way, lots of my clients eat out often. If you were my client, what I would do is I would say, I want you to give me three restaurants that are nearby your work or your house, or wherever you frequent.
[00:52:15] What are your three favorite restaurants? I have them send that to me based on the macro profiles of the meal plan I currently have them on. What I will do is I will look at the menus for each of those three restaurants, and I’ll come up with two or three menu items from each restaurant and I will copy and paste and put them on a little sheet, a little quick one sheet for reference.
[00:52:37] That will be your personal ordering menu. And I have ’em put it on their refrigerator or their desk at work. And when they think I want to eat out or I need something to eat, or I need to call and order out something, you go to this one sheet and you don’t have to think about it. You don’t have to peruse a menu.
[00:52:55] You already know your three favorite restaurants, two or three meals from each place that you can swap through that are gonna be close to your ideal macros and your values for lunch. And you don’t even have to think about it. And then the third strategy, which is a little less precise, but it works for the busy on the go person, is you almost can’t screw up protein and vegetables at any restaurant.
[00:53:20] You can go and order protein and vegetables and then you can bring your own carbs like, oh, that sounds complicated. Oh, it’s not complicated. Keep an apple with you. Eat it on the way to the restaurant. Go and get protein and vegetables because if there’s a problem at a restaurant where you can’t get a meal that’s precise to your goals, it typically is that they don’t have the right carbs.
[00:53:43] Not all restaurants more and more today have great options, but if that’s the problem, go and get your protein and vegetables and just pack some fruit or something to a banana. Right. Eat a banana on the way to your restaurant and then you can just order a chicken salad and there it’s not the end of the world.
[00:54:00] Trevor Connor: The one quick thing I’m gonna add to this and, and you might argue with me on this one, if you are eating out a lot, remember that restaurants want you to like their food. The quickest way to make food taste better is to add salt to it. If you are eating out a lot, you are getting a lot of salt in your diet and I know you’re, as athletes probably all reading about how important salt is to you and then trying to get all these drinks that are high on sodium, you’re probably already getting enough salt in your diet.
[00:54:28] Probably getting too much
[00:54:30] Angelo Poli: Trevor speaks the truth. Absolutely. You’re spot on. You know, I will say this in general. The movement is more and more restaurants popping up that really do support people health conscious.
[00:54:42] Trevor Connor: Mm-hmm.
[00:54:42] Angelo Poli: But that what you just said is absolutely the case. They don’t care about your fitness goals.
[00:54:47] They care about, they make the food taste good. Yep. Yep.
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[00:55:24] Trevor Connor: So we’ve kind of gotten into the week. What other thoughts and suggestions do you have about planning the week? So I agree with you a hundred percent. Do your cooking ahead of time. I’ve already talked about that on the show.
[00:55:35] But should you then be consistent through the week? Should you be trying to eat basically the same way, the same thing every day? Or do you have some days that are lower calories, some days that are higher calories. Some days where you’re higher protein. Where you’re higher carbohydrate, and obviously you know my bias there.
[00:55:53] Again, just focus on foods. But I want to hear your thoughts on all this.
[00:55:57] Angelo Poli: Yeah, that’s a great question, Trevor. I’m glad you asked that. So by the science, optimal would be a varied intake level based on your activity. That is what research and the science says. After dieting thousands and thousands of people, I want you to just have a base meal plan and adjust your into training fuel based on your activity.
[00:56:19] Now, maybe for your long, if you have a weekend ride that’s particularly long, maybe you alter your diet that one day of the week. But I would strongly recommend heavy bias towards a consistent meal plan. That doesn’t change day to day. The accessories change day to day based on, okay, if you’re doing a longer ride or a longer run or a longer training session, maybe you have a post-workout, something that you add in that’s premeditated or during your into training fuel, you increase that represents the major shift in your intake.
[00:56:53] And again, this is where we blend the art and the science. I have built protocols that are to the umpteenth for people, and what I get pretty much across the board is poor adherence. So what I want is something reproducible. We’re gonna be able to get amazing results if we’re consistent. Consistency trumps all those other factors.
[00:57:18] So we’re gonna figure out what your base meal plan needs to be, and it’s not that hard. All you’re doing is prepping lunches and a couple snacks, and these snacks are gonna be super easy, right? I’m talking fruit nuts stuff here. You know, it doesn’t have to be that, but super easy. By the way, I recommend doing a similar snack for mid-morning and mid-afternoon just so that way you don’t have to prepare two things just so it’s super simple.
[00:57:44] So that takes care of more than 60% of your daily nutrition. Now we add breakfast to that and you’re not gonna mess up breakfast because people just don’t. They get breakfast right now. All you gotta do is get through dinners. You just gotta get through dinners and you’re dialed. So yeah, I’m a real big believer in having a base meal plan.
[00:58:05] And that is, there’s another reason why that’s fundamental because when I work with someone, for example, and anybody can apply this on their own by the way, but if I work with someone, I take them through a process called baseline testing, where based on what they’re currently eating, their activity level, all the homeostasis and all those metabolic factors we mused about earlier, I am going to take a guess.
[00:58:30] An educated guess, it would be a pretty good guess, but it’s still a guess at what intake is going to meet someone’s needs and create that homeostasis. And I’m gonna put you on a meal plan that’s boring. There’s nothing special about it. The only thing special about it is that, alright, Trevor, the meal plan I put you on, I’ve had about.
[00:58:52] 1400 other guys, roughly your size, roughly your activity level follow, and I have statistics and data and outcomes from them. So I can see where you fall on a sliding scale. I want you to follow that meal plan for 72 hours. That’s it. Be real strict for 72 hours, and at the end of that 72 hours, there is a finite amount of possible outcomes, right?
[00:59:19] Assuming energy and digestion are good, we have to make sure energy, performance and digestion are healthy. Otherwise we gotta modify, assuming those are all good, did you gain weight, lose weight, or stay the same way That gives us our metabolic indicators for where your metabolism is and where your homeostasis is.
[00:59:37] Based on that, we can build from there. We can increase, decrease, whatever we need to do, and we can do so with precision. If you are eating something different every day, if you don’t have a base meal plan. We don’t have the control to be able to manipulate that. I’m going to guess what you might be thinking.
[00:59:56] You might be thinking 72 hours. That’s not long enough. He’s smiling. He’s
[01:00:01] Chris Case: smiling a lot. Well,
[01:00:02] Trevor Connor: sort of, uh, actually tell you what I’m thinking because, so as I mentioned to you earlier, I also own a nutrition company and I’m only bringing this up because you, you made me think about something that has happened multiple times at that nutrition company where we promote a particular approach.
[01:00:19] And I’ve had people come and join the company who don’t actually follow that approach and said, oh, I want to try this. And they tried it for seven days or they tried it for 28 days and actually wrote an article about their experience. And every time afterwards, you know, I’ve asked ’em, be honest with me, how did you feel?
[01:00:38] And they go, well, I felt better. I lost weight, I had more energy. And I went, so are you gonna stick with this? No. And that’s what he made me think about. So, yeah, my, my question to you is, you give ’em 72 hours, they’re probably at the end of this, gonna go, oh, you know, this is working. I feel better. And 72 hours is hard to really lose any weight.
[01:00:59] But they might see some positive signs. What’s gonna stop them from saying the same thing and just go, you know, I saw all these positive things, I’m not gonna stick to it.
[01:01:07] Angelo Poli: So what we do is we customize to the individual. Well, I mean, within reason. If someone’s like, well, I’ll do it as long as I can have pizza and beer every night.
[01:01:15] You know, my program’s not for you. Right. So you’re looking for a different plan, sir. But in 72 hours, this is kind of an interesting story. I think you’ll appreciate this. What we used to do years ago, so we’ve been doing this years and years, is I would have somebody baseline test for seven days and we really collect a lot of data.
[01:01:35] I mean even right down to the timing of those meals, everything during just that baseline testing period, being that an intensive, ongoing would be a little rigorous, right? But during that baseline testing period, what I’m trying to do is really establish someone’s metabolic baseline. So the coaches and I, we conducted, uh, some research and experiment.
[01:01:56] So what we did was we used the retrospective data from our clients and we would show the coaches, here’s the recommendation we made at the end of seven days. Okay, up 6%, down 6% intake, an adjustment of 10% macronutrients one way or the other. Right? Okay. So small minor adjustments. We took actual client data and we just showed the coaches the data from five days, what adjustment would you have made?
[01:02:25] And it turned out the data from five days and the data from seven days almost identical. It was the same recommendation, like 96, 90 7% of the time. Then we went from five days to three days of data. Now how would that compare against what you said recommended at seven days it was the same, and this might shock you.
[01:02:49] It was the same 85% of the time. So while it’s not a hundred percent guarantee, 85% of the time, if someone is. Strict for 72 hours, we can at least collect enough data to make an 85% accurate recommendation. Keep in mind, we’re making small adjustments. We’re not throwing the baby out with the bath water each time.
[01:03:13] And even if we got it wrong, we would still catch it in another 72 hours, which would still be less than seven days. Now we got cocky and we said, okay, I’m gonna try at just 48 hours of data. It was complete disaster. There’s just no accuracy whatsoever. So 72 hours is the just, we have found the smallest common denominator of data that we can action.
[01:03:39] And so that’s why, that’s our current protocol and every year we reevaluate and we try and find ways to find tune. That seems to be the best science that we have found to date.
[01:03:48] Trevor Connor: So as we’re getting towards the end of this episode, let’s shift gears here and just talk specifically about endurance athletes.
[01:03:56] Are there any changes, modifications you make for them? And you had mentioned this ahead of the episode, you really wanna touch on this sweet spot between light, lean, and powerful. So let’s finish up with those couple thoughts.
[01:04:10] Angelo Poli: So that’s probably when I’m working with my endurance athletes, and that’s cyclists, runners, et cetera, they’re typically coming not only to improve their performance, of course, but they’re coming with the fundamental question, what’s my optimal body weight and how do I get there?
[01:04:25] And that is very nuanced. So there’s a lot of common mistakes and pitfalls that have to be avoided. It’s not as cut and dry as well. In your off season. You adjust your body comp and your on season. You just focus on performance, though that is true. A lot of it has to do with how much leverage you have in your off season if you don’t have a lot of leverage.
[01:04:49] In other words, if you’re eating, you know, 1900 calories a day in your off season, that’s not your cutting time, right? Then depending on where you are, you know who you are, et cetera, et cetera. But if we have leverage, we look at leverage and time to race or your event, and we can actually calculate how to map out.
[01:05:10] Revving cycles, revving slash performance cycles ’cause they really are the same thing. And then cutting cycles to find your optimal and be honest about your performance. So if we’re being brutally honest, most athletes actually perform their best a couple pounds heavier than the weight they tell me they wanna be at.
[01:05:35] Not 15 pounds heavier, mind you, right? Not 15 pounds heavier, a couple pounds heavier with just that little bit extra for fuel. But that’s where the human brain and our psychology and the aesthetic drive kind of biases us from time to time. And by the way, if that’s your goal, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.
[01:05:56] We can tune it for aesthetics if that’s your thing. But know this, that for optimizing your performance. We want to give your body not just what it needs, when it needs it for your races and training and high intensity training, but we want to give it plus a little extra. A little extra because the performance you’re gonna get out of that versus the performance, you’re gonna get a out of taking half a pound to a pound off of your body.
[01:06:25] It’s not a good trade, it’s not a good trade. So we can deal with major body comp shifts when we’re, we have a little bit of space out from your race. And then there’s a lot of people that want to use their endurance sports as a vehicle in service of recomp. There’s nothing wrong with that either. If that’s your passion, that’s what, hey, your doctor said you need to lose 40 pounds and you wanna start getting on a bike and riding and, but it’s in service of the weight loss and you’re gonna modify the intensity and duration of your ride so that way you can stick to your nutrition plan.
[01:06:59] There’s nothing wrong with that. Just go into it with open eyes and understand the implications of that. And those are the conversations that that we have with our clients and we help them to navigate and really time out over the next 90 days. What’s our body comp goals? What’s our body weight goals?
[01:07:17] And when do we have our next race? So we can really put together an intelligent approach to mapping that out and hitting those objectives.
[01:07:23] Trevor Connor: Finally, what are your thoughts about fueling before and after a workout?
[01:07:27] Angelo Poli: Uh, my thoughts are yes, please. Let’s do that. It’s a good idea, Trevor. I like that. Definitely fuel before and after and during, right?
[01:07:38] If you’re an endurance athlete, not if you’re going to the gym and doing a 45 minute strength program, right. You don’t have to do that. But if you’re an endurance athlete, especially if you’re doing any activities over, so this is individual, do not take this as gospel, but I find that if somebody’s training, cycling or running for irrelevant of distance, but a duration that based on their ability level and pace exceeds about an hour and 15 minutes, that’s when I typically find they need to start really looking at their intra training fuel.
[01:08:10] Versus if somebody’s just going out and doing a ride for 45 minutes, they probably don’t need to worry about it too much. What do you think about that?
[01:08:17] Trevor Connor: I’m trying to form my own thought here because I did read this review last night, which was the International Society of Sports Attrition Position Stand and Nutrient Timing, and they said in there below 70 minutes, you don’t need to fuel on the ride.
[01:08:31] Above 70 minutes you do. So they’re in agreement with you.
[01:08:34] Angelo Poli: There you go. Mm-hmm. Five minute difference between what I have come to anecdotally, I will tell you I have some clients that if they’re running from more than 30 minutes, they need something. But that is the rare exception or cycling. Yeah. So that’s an individualized thing, but your intra training fuel, that’s out of the scope of what we’ll have time to talk about today, but is important to definitely fuel before and some recovery fuel after if you want to be optimal.
[01:08:58] What if you
[01:08:59] Chris Case: reverse engineer it and you say, if. By the end of your activity, you want to take the gross root and eat an entire pizza, then you’ve under fueled during your workout. Is that appropriate?
[01:09:13] Angelo Poli: So we, we have this saying over here at Met Pro Calories you have not yet consumed, can’t help you. I ate 2,800 calories.
[01:09:22] See, I ate 3,200 calories today. Yeah. But not when you were training, you didn’t, calories you have not yet consumed can’t help you. So if you’re an athlete, and especially if you’re also recomp, you better get those calories in early in the day and work on getting them under your belt, especially if there’s gonna be high volume training on that day.
[01:09:43] That’s basically, I think what you were saying there. Chris doesn’t work if you just don’t eat a whole lot and then after your training you go and overconsume, right? You’re mostly just gonna give yourself a tummy ache.
[01:09:56] Trevor Connor: My experience has been with athletes say, okay, I wanna lose some weight, so what am I gonna do is go out for a workout and dramatically under consume on the workout.
[01:10:04] Mm-hmm. They end up overcompensating afterwards rightly and end that gaining weight where when you have the athlete eat through the workout, they can finish the workout, get back to regular eating, and actually then they’re gonna have a better chance of getting down to the weight they wanna get down to.
[01:10:19] Mm-hmm.
[01:10:20] Angelo Poli: Absolutely. And a couple things on safety here. If you happen to be a beginner, just starting out and testing, you know where you are at and your limits and how your body feels is, I would rather you have something with you. You can always not eat it, not consume it, right? You don’t have to have it, just have it with you in case blood, sugar, things like that.
[01:10:43] And if you’re really just starting out with bike rides or runs, I tell my clients, if you’re new to it, I want you to run in a circle or ride in a circle, not a straight line, go in a circle. So that way at any point you can stop and you’re just a few feet from home. If you go in a straight line and you realize you overdid it, you still have to ride or run all the way back.
[01:11:04] Mm-hmm. So, you know, start slow, build gradually. You’ll get there in no time.
[01:11:09] Trevor Connor: I hate to say it, but we need to wrap up here before we do though. I would just love for you to take a couple minutes and talk about Met Pro. ’cause like I said, I really wanted to get you on this show ’cause I did that review. I tried your product for four months and I personally love this idea of taking nutrition.
[01:11:27] Treating it like something that we as athletes understand it’s a plan, this is coaching. ’cause we really understand that and kind of gravitate to that and really work with that. And I love that idea of, let’s do the same thing with nutrition. Let’s plan out ahead and treat it the way an athlete treats a training plan.
[01:11:44] So, I’m sorry I’m kind of repeating myself, but please tell us a little more about the product.
[01:11:48] Angelo Poli: Yeah, thank you so much Trevor. And I’m really grateful that you experienced it and had a good experience with it. We are just, we’re passionate about what we do. We’re a team of coaches. We love the nerdy science of the performance, nutrition, and tracking people’s metabolic rate.
[01:12:05] Now that’s the piece a lot of people are missing is they’ve never actually tracked their metabolic rate during the process and really optimized with that as a foundation. And then also just the day-to-day piece of, okay, what’s gonna work for me? So no two people are alike. We have protocols for four meals a day, five meals a day, six meals a day.
[01:12:25] Seven meals a day, though that’s getting a little extreme right? And based around all kinds of different lifestyles and schedules, what we like to start with and we invite people to come and do a free session with us, a consultation where, write down for a day or so. Just think back, what do you typically eat?
[01:12:42] Write it down. Think about your training and diet history, and come and talk to one of us and we’ll share with you what we’ve done with others in a similar circumstance based on whatever your goals are, we’ll share what’s worked and what your options are and what the science says and what we think would work for you.
[01:12:59] And we’ll give you options. And if you like what you hear, we’d be happy to work with you if you. If you’re not ready to pull the trigger yet, still come, how do a free consult, do a free conversation with us. We’re still happy to visit with you because down the road you’ll think of us when it’s time.
[01:13:12] Trevor Connor: And if one of our listeners is interested in coming and checking Met Pro Out, how do they find you?
[01:13:18] You know, I know we hadn’t talked about
[01:13:21] Angelo Poli: this, but we’ve made a special link for the Fast Talkers. So if any of the audience wanna visit with us, we would be happy to chat. You know, tell us your experience and we’ll share with you what metabolic profiling could look like for you. If you go to Met pro.co/fast Talk, and that’s met pro.co/fast Talk and that’s just for your audience.
[01:13:47] Well that’s appreciated and we hope people check that out. Thanks so much you guys.
[01:13:51] Trevor Connor: So with that, we have a question for the forum. Do you plan out your nutrition or do you figure it out as you go? And if you plan it out, what are some of the tricks you’ve learned? So go to forums.fast, do labs.com to engage in that conversation.
[01:14:05] And with that, Angelo, first time on the show, we finish out with what we call our take homes, which is you have one minute and we will cut you off at 59 seconds, even though we don’t have a clock.
[01:14:19] Chris Case: He’s lying. Don’t believe him.
[01:14:20] Trevor Connor: You have one minute to kind of summarize what you think is the most important takeaway message from this whole episode for our listeners.
[01:14:30] And I will throw to you to say, do you wanna go first or do you want to go last?
[01:14:34] Angelo Poli: Oh, okay. Well then I’m gonna be, uh, reactive. I’ll go last. I’ll let you guys go first.
[01:14:39] Trevor Connor: So, you know, my take home would be the value of planning, but I think I’ve kind of beaten that to death throughout the episode. So a second take home I would like to give.
[01:14:51] I know a lot of athletes really focus on those carbohydrate protein, fat ratios, making sure you’re getting enough carbohydrates. The message I really want to give is that’s a starting point. It’s not the end point. You have to go to the next step and to truly be healthy and truly perform at your best, you need to start talking and thinking about what are the sources of those carbohydrates?
[01:15:13] What are the sources of those fats and proteins? And I’m really glad you brought this up in the episode, thinking about Whole Foods, more natural foods, more nutrient dense foods, because we also need to be getting all those micronutrients and you only get those through Whole Foods. So, Chris, what’s your take home?
[01:15:31] Chris Case: I think it probably goes back to my original question, which has to do with mindset, and this goes to maybe your point about planning, and I’m speaking more from the athlete point of view than the other populations we might be speaking to. But it’s somewhat easy for them to think ahead, to plan out when they’re gonna do their intervals, when they’re gonna do their long ride, and so on and so forth.
[01:15:55] To take the next step. You have to do the same with your food. You have to plan it out ahead of time. You can’t be reactive. You can’t say, oh, sh it’s Tuesday. I forgot to bring anything to, I gotta go walk to Pearl Street in Boulder, and I gotta find something that’s gonna satisfy me. And the options aren’t great and it’s expensive, and, you know, all that sort of stuff.
[01:16:16] And you go through that rigmarole every day if you’re not thinking ahead. So comes to Angela’s, I, I don’t wanna steal his thunder, but it’s a time management thing more so than anything else. So, Angela, before I say anything more, I’ll turn it over to you for your final thoughts. My final thoughts. I let the guys
[01:16:33] Angelo Poli: at Fast Talk or some rad dudes.
[01:16:36] So you, this is, this has been a, a blast, gentlemen. I’ve really enjoyed getting to exchange ideas and share some thoughts. I am really passionate about helping educate people on the topic of metabolism and how metabolism, especially you athletes out. Just because you’re not trying to lose weight doesn’t mean knowing your metabolic rate isn’t part of the equation when it comes to optimizing performance and you can control your metabolism.
[01:17:05] It is a big key to unlocking your athletic performance potential. And this has just been a blast getting to visit with you guys today.
[01:17:13] Trevor Connor: It’s been a pleasure having you, and we never did get back to brown adipose tissue, so now we’re gonna have to have you back on the show. Exactly.
[01:17:21] Chris Case: Vegas. There we go.
[01:17:22] Entire episode on it. Alright, Angela, thank you. Thank you. That was another episode of Fast Talk. The thoughts and opinions expressed on Fast Talk are those of the individual. Subscribe to Fast Talk wherever you prefer to find your favorite podcasts. And don’t forget, we’re now on YouTube, so be sure to leave us a rating and a review.
[01:17:41] To learn more about this episode from show Notes to references, visit us@fasttalklabs.com and to join the conversation on our forum, go to forums.fast talk labs.com. For Angelo Poey and Trevor Connor. I’m Chris Case. Thanks for listening.
