Victoria’s Secret Trainer Reveals the Workout Women Should Actually Do

I was training all the VS girls, but like I was making them do like real athlete stuff and everybody was like, "Who is this kid?"

The biggest people, Naomi, Bella, Hadid, right? When my buddies came in the gym and one of the days it was more of a chill session. He was like, "Oh, I thought Naomi would always be working out hard." And that's kind of the go-go mentality that's detrimental. We've seen the impact the HIT revolution in the 2010s, early 2000s had on women. A lot of popups of thyroid issues, adrenal fatigue, all that. And it's because people were going too hard.

Women always ask, "Why do I get puffy when I work out?"

For women, if you're constantly going back to back to back to back, what ends up happening? You look a little bit puffier. You're not sleeping as well. Those things aren't working. You got to give your body enough time to bounce back. Just because you work out on Monday, go to sleep, and then work out again on Tuesday doesn't mean that's giving the body enough time.

Where is the best place to start?

Carb cycling is like the open secret in the industry. If you know how to utilize it, it's one of the easiest ways to get in shape fast.

What is one thing you wish people would stop doing?

All right, you want to hear this? I wish people

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I feel like we should have been recording five minutes ago when we were talking about our. Yeah, we talking about our diet. Histamine, low FODMAP elimination diet. Yeah.

Could yap for days.

I have to say I feel validated because as I've been talking about the histamine stuff, I have gotten some push back online from people who think that it's just a form of like orthorexia, disordered eating. The internet can be brutal as I'm sure you know. Um, but it's interesting to hear that it's something that you've been experimenting with as well.

Yeah, my dad is an integrative MD, so he's been doing all the stuff that like, you know, the big shots, highman, all them. He's been doing that for like 20, 30 years. So, I grew up around it. So, for me, it's always been like exploration also of the edges, grounding it, grounded in like what's actually real. So, I think it's a little bit different when I talk about it because, no offense, like wellness is like a white women's game, you know what I mean? Like coming off of Poutro and everybody else, but when I like in the men's space, it's more of just fitness. So, when I kind of experiment with the wellness stuff as at least as it relates to the diet, basically I got food poisoning real bad like 8 months ago. So, I kind of looked at the foundation elimination diet and then explore some of the things that are actually valid on top of that. So that might be FODMAP, that might be histamine, it might be whatever and just, you know, even some anti-nutrient stuff and then looking at how that might impact me. So it's like that. It's like not just doing it because you think there might be a problem, but because you actually have an issue and then figure out what's health-promoting for you, grounded in testing, which you've done, which I've done. So I really think that's where the industry is going. It's not just doing things for the sake of trying it. It's figuring out I'm having some symptoms. What's going on? Let me use some legitimate tests that might help diagnose that and then from there, um, keep figuring out, you know, what might be next. So, you know, you said you were diagnosed by somebody at Sinai. Like that's not a it's not a woowoo place. It's Sinai. So.

You know, is what it is.

She's like the anti-woo woo.

Forget the haters.

Yeah.

Yes. At this point, I do. But you said something interesting. I mean, I think that there is this tendency in the wellness world to always be looking for something to fix. And I think that that's a cycle that a lot of people get caught up in. And I think that it does really heavily burden women.

Yes.

You know, primarily.

Um, and it's like if you're always looking for something to fix, you're always going to find something broken. And so it's kind of this delicate.

Balance of like okay what is like good enough and what do I actually need to.

Try to optimize.

Yeah, I think you look at it, you raised an interesting point. One, like women have been introduced to kind of dysmorphia at a very much younger age than men. Like men do get dysmorphia, but it's more so in the sense of in in the sense of like muscle size and things like that. Women are kind of nitpicked from very early on, both figuratively and literally. So I guess, yeah, I mean, you see it now, full body scans that are going on, the MRIs, uh, the constant wearables. I mean, I do wear Aura Ring, you see with Function Health how big that's getting, the valuations and various blood testing. But I think you look at a few different things, like what's your goal, how are you actually feeling, what's your gender, what's your age, and how much time am I willing to focus on a few things to see if it actually works? Because intense optimization doesn't really make that much sense. I think a lot of people get thrown off by it. But my foundational question is, do you deserve to feel good? And then if you don't feel good, figure out how much of that is is mental versus somatic. Um, and then sit down and just kind of objectively look at it and then and then go from there. But I've seen in a lot of my, uh, women friends, and I have a lot of female friends, like the stuff y'all are hit with is crazy. It's just like from the from the skincare to the anti-aging to the cosmetics to then the body. And it's it's tough. So, I definitely, I don't know. I'm I'm not in your shoes, but I I feel it.

Yeah. I had somebody on earlier this morning and we were talking about something about dieting and we were talking about the cabbage soup diet.

And do you remember that?

I, uh, faintly.

It was like the '90s. So, I was born in '85 and I was like, "Yeah, the cabbage soup diet was my first foray into disordered eating." And I was probably like 12 and weighed 85 lbs. But in the magazines, you know, they were talking about the cabbage soup diet. That was also around the time that like Atkins was huge.

For us guys, it's a supplement industry.

So, you get hit with the creatine early, like any guys out there who play sports probably remember Jack 3D, which was banned as a pre-workout that everybody took. Um, so it's it's fascinating like if you see the r the if you compare the male supplement industry with the women beauty industry, they're both very similar in that they prey in that way on, uh, on shortcomings and that can lead to dysmorphia. So I will say, I am not to sound weird, but I am glad from like the social world there is a little bit of pushback that then says, hey, orthorexia is a real thing and that's getting into the nomenclature. But the other side of that is don't try to like subjugate somebody's lived experience if they're actually going through a difficulty. So I think because the pendulum swung so far the other way, which was like people essentially have been doing crazy things for a very long time trying to sell something and make people feel worse, it's kind of gone back the other way a little bit too much. But my hope is how everything's kind of getting more like legitimized and found, uh, foundational in science that we find a center. Kind of refreshing to hear you talk about like that from the male perspective though, because you never really hear men talk about their experience with being on the receiving end of that.

Yeah.

And especially with the dysmorphia stuff.

My boys talk about. I've talked about with my brothers. I talked about with some of my clients. I talked about some of my friends. It's a real thing, but it's just not discussed in the same manner. There have been some outlets that have covered it slightly, but this is the this is why the kind of the fitness wellness industry needs to change because it it is trying to it is trying to essentially prey on shame and we have to take a step back, which it really is. And that's an easy way to sell products, right? But you have to take a step back and be like, what is the actual goal here? I do imagine that people want to feel good and then just being able to strategically utilize that for a goal orientation or best results. But that doesn't necessarily sell. Belief doesn't sell until I you kind of make some sort of system that people could buy into. But, you know, maybe it is changing. Weight Watchers just kind of went under. But the other side of it is also, you know, the rise of GOPs and OMIC and all these other things. So, I don't know. I can only try and I that's kind of my aim is like, I think you deserve to feel good. Wellness is an actual thing we can apply. I'd love to talk about wellness also from a male-oriented perspective, which I don't think gets talked about in a culturally forward way, but also just a general psychographic. So I could kind of relate to the lived female experience too, and yeah, that's that's important to me.

What is wellness to you?

Oh, I mean from like a straight kind of more academic answer, I guess like wellness are the lived actions that you do every day to promote health. And then I look at that, that's what the OOO system is in eight different ways, right? So it's not just the physical, which is diet and sleep and working out, but it's also the mental side, which I think you need to be tough. Um, the emotional side, which is a little bit more softer, emotional IQ, might have a spiritual component to it. And then you also look at things like work, like occupational, financial, your friend group, social, the environment around you, and all that. So to that, to me, it's like wellness is a lived philosophy and it should promote your individual health, but it shouldn't feel overbearing. Like it has to have some sort of like overall vigor. It is like a vitality-based living that we all can utilize to promote our individual health and hopefully societal health, too.

Yeah.

I love that because I think that a lot of people have probably experienced wellness, I keep doing air quotes for anybody who's not watching on YouTube, as like a punitive thing. And I think that historically we look at the things like the things that are tangible and easy to control. Like wellness is like diet and exercise. And I love that, you know, your system really looks at it holistically because you can't have wellness if you don't have financial wellness, right? That kind of stress will erode every other area of your life. Same thing with relationships. There has to be a balance among all of those things. And yet we put so much stock and weight into these one or two areas and then let everything else fall by the wayside.

Yeah. I mean, you know, I would depend and one thing that we did was in my minor or whatever cuz I had a minor in Wharton or partially in Wharton was like they had something called like a multi-utility attribute analysis, which was basically you would uh weight those different you would weight as a business practice the important things that would be necessary for your business to thrive. So then through those areas that are important to you in your life as it relates to wellness, you weight them. So for me the workouts are relatively simple for me as is the diet and I could figure out sleep, but more important for me early in my career was a financial wellness. So I had to sit down and and really learn to improve my health in that outcome or building the environment around me or relationships. Like guys don't like to talk about it, but relationships way on this too. Women have more friends than men. Uh, women typically in my opinion take the lead in romantic relationships, at least for mine. And then it's just like something that is important. So that's what I think it's I believe health and wellness is the most important cultural force of the moment right now and it is within everything. And early in my career would throw people off because I'll be like, yo, every company's a health and wellness company. They'd be like, what? Like, why are you working with Dyson? Why you working with this? Why you working with that? I'm like, literally every company in some facet internally or externally is a health and wellness company. And then in the same way, it's like as a person, every person implicitly is a lived vessel, a lived vessel for their wellness practices. So can we make them believe that health is important? And I think the onboard ramp, if you look at this within a western standpoint or an eastern standpoint, root chakra type stuff, is that it's grounded in the physical. So that's why diet, exercise, and sleep is very important because once you see that change within you, I think then you can start to realize how it branches off into these other areas.

Where is the best place to start?

It's the big three. I call it the big three. Physical, mental, or emotional.

Right? So the that physical as we know, diet, exercise, sleep, you do that every day. So you could probably work on that or just enjoy it in some way. Then the mental practice is like, you know how life is like, you got to be tough. So there's two things that happen there. It's like the mental side, which I call kind of performance mindset, which is simply you need to be resilient to deal with the stressors of the world. So let's not act like they don't exist and find ways to kind of bulletproof your cup, I like to say. And then emotional is the purpose-driven, right? It's more a little bit more of the spiritual side if you're into that. It's kind of that qualitative lived experience that gives you a little bit more purpose to your life. So if you want to go, whatever stoicism is so big big right now. If you want to go within a loey of control or whatever. So you typically have three dimensions completely under your control, somewhat under your control, and not really under your control. So I think you start with the things that are relatively under your control and that teaches you agency. You start to get the ball rolling, right? So you think of, can I create a big glass cup? Can I bulletproof it through mental wellness so it's less likely to shatter? And then can I fill that cup up through emotional well-being and the foundations of that cup? That's your physical diet, sleep, exercise. That's how you build, right? You make it tougher through your mental practices and then emotional, you fill that cup with your water. So I think if you focus on those three areas first, then you can start to get the energy to to figure out the rest.

I've heard you talk about when it comes to workouts that it's more important to be consistent.

Sure.

Than for it to be difficult.

Yes. So let's take a step back. It's like consistency is simply important because we are slightly creatures of habit, right? So when something is ingrained in your life, like it was with me, like my parents and I was one of seven. My parents definitely use physical activity or sports because not only was it important in our town, but like they just wanted a break. So like put these kids in some so they could go do something. But the other side of that, if once you do it consistently, like one, your body remembers, but it becomes part of the schedule. In the same way the morning coffee is, same way the walk is, same way you might pick up your phone, whatever in ingrained habits. So if you do it consistently, you don't have to really overcome inertia or you could jump back in if you fall off. Once it's consistent, really what we think is then we just build a work capacity. So we have a decent level baseline. It doesn't even have to be hard all the time, right? So then you have those smaller moments of those more difficult workouts or difficult phases. If anybody who's like a personal trainer knows, like you typically do things in cycles that then at the right time can have you peak just like an athlete. An athlete isn't in tip-top shape in the offseason, but they could pick back up, get their general prep, the season hits, they're still getting in shape, and then if say if you do want to peak for beach season or whatever, that's like, that's totally fine. So, I think most people get overwhelmed if workouts are always hard. And especially women, women don't respond to the stress the same way men do. And I think that's something that needs to be talked about more and more honest with how long it takes the body to recover from really difficult workouts. And to a lot of people, that could be dejecting, especially if they're just starting out.

Yeah. I feel like that's what gets me every time.

Cuz I'm like a zero to 100 person and I tend to be like kind of perfectionist. And I mean, even I was telling you before we started recording that I'm like getting back into working out. It's been a few months now. It feels really good, but I want to do that zero to 100. I want to do really hard workouts every time.

I know.

But like I have an honest question. Why? Like I guess coming from my world, but like I played college football. I did all that. Like I've done really hard workouts. Why do you want to do a really hard workout? How do you think you get fit? So if you think you did a hard workout every day.

Yeah.

Like five days a week. If you think you did five hard workouts in a span of seven days, yeah.

You think that would that's beneficial.

To get to your goal fast. It's because you want to get there faster.

Yes.

So, I guess really what it comes down to is like understanding frameworks for how adaptations of fitness occur, right? So, it's like if you're physically trying to improve, you also got to look at how long you'll take to recover and how basically how it'll impact your body, but also the things that help you make energy, which are mitochondria. If you look at research around mitochondria, sometimes doing hard workouts all the time hinders them, right? And eventually they'll bounce back, but it'll take a little bit of time. So the thought process is, and a lot of this comes from the running world, is that you look at the the duration of time that it would probably take your body to recover, but still from hard workouts, but still in between those doing things that will consistently improve your fitness, right? So to make it concrete, I'll give you an example. One of my friends, lover, uh, she's on SNL, uh, Heidi, she came to me one time cuz she had to get, this is years ago, and I was in the gym more. She came to me one time cuz she was training for she had to walk a carpet and she was frustrated. She was dejected. She was sad. She's like, "I've been working out so hard and it I just seem to be getting worse. I don't know what's going on." I'm like, "Well, what have you been doing?" And basically, she had been doing like 45 minutes a day of insanity style workouts. So, always hard. But she's like, "I'm not recovering. I'm not getting the progress of where I need to be." Basically, it's because that's not how the body works. So, especially for women, if you're constantly going back to back to back to back, what ends up happening, you've probably seen it. You look a little bit puffier, you're not sleeping as well, those things aren't working. So, the key really is is to intermittently introduce those hard workouts to what we have call a supercompensation effect, which is basically those hard workouts in the short term will make you get worse and then you got to give your body enough time to bounce back so you get better because essentially it'll adapt. So, the thought process there is let me stagger the hard workout strategically. So what we did was basically we had a hard workout once probably every four sessions. The rest were improving recovery. So that's like aerobic based. So that's why zone 2 is so big right now, cuz really it just helps improve recovery. Make sure we do strength, right? So strength, you know, lifting lifting weights, those types of things may make you sore but don't really overwhelm you too much. And then more so those really hard workouts, probably, you know, two to three every 10 days. And then you see how you particularly recover. So really I think a lot of it is understanding there are not even conventional, non-conventional because within the literature it's relatively conventional. It's understanding how the body actually adapts to stress and then understanding that doesn't happen that fast. So just because you work out on Monday, go to sleep, and then work out again on Tuesday doesn't mean that's giving the body enough time. So to make it succinct for every person, just experiment with it. I probably need two to three days really to recover from a hard workout. But in between that, you can still be active. You're eating well. You're making sure you sleep. More lower intensity workouts. And you we've seen the impact that like the HIT revolution or whatever in the 2010s, early 2000s had on women. There's a lot of popups of thyroid issues that people now had, a lot of popups of of, you know, adrenal fatigue, all that. And it's because people were going too hard. 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That's how I started my career. By the way, I don't know if you were familiar with Kayla Cena's BBG.

So, back in 2016, I had been sober for 2 years. So, that was like a big turning point in my life. And I felt like I had a strong foundation in sobriety, mental health. I had overcome a lot of things. And I was like, I'm going to get in shape. I'm going to do BBG. And you were encouraged to start an Instagram account for accountability. And so I did that and I was posting like before and after.

Got you at the Mary Kate affiliate.

I didn't show my face. I didn't say my name. I was showing what I was eating and, you know, communicating with other women who were doing this program. And that's how my Instagram account kind of like took off and that's how I fell into doing this. And it's funny because I talk about it now and like I look back on that and I drove my body into the ground. I mean, it was 6 days a week of high-intensity plyometric workouts, you know, never miss a Monday. Like there was no emphasis on rest really. And I just didn't know what I didn't know at that time. Um, and so many of us, like I still talk to women, you know, who also have careers as a result of that. Um, and we joke about, you know, being victimized by.

Like did they everyone kind of like hit a wall, you know, and that's what happened to me. And I got to a point where like I was just so burnt out that I couldn't work out anymore. And I like actually, ironically, turned to meditation. I started TM. I learned how to slow down, go within. I started walking. Then I started Pilates. And I, you know, adopted a much more gentler approach to um.

I love that.

Fitness. I love that. Yeah. I mean, from athlete lifestyle, like my buddies, I have buddies in the league and all that. Everybody thinks they're always working out hard. They have a lot of periods of rest where they're sometimes they're not even doing anything and then they have ramp up periods and then they just have short durations where it's like, "All right, I know I got to go hard cuz I need my body to be able to put up with the rigors of the season." And that's kind of the go-go mentality that's detrimental. It's that thought process of always having to go and not giving your and not understanding the phases. I'll never forget one time I used to train Naomi Campbell when she lived in New York and you know one of my buddies came in the gym and one of the days it was more of a chill session and she he was like, oh, I thought Naomi would always be work be working out hard. You got her in here doing blah blah blah blah. And in my head I'm like, yo, you just don't get it. Like you just don't understand how this thing works. It's it's like it's like a it's more of a cohesive recipe and rest and recovery and things like that are very much a part of it cuz that's how the body adapts and if we don't give it time to do that. And I'm glad you around TM and all that and really what it is what it is. It builds your it builds your response to stress and that's what the point of workouts are. The workouts in objectivity are neutral stress, right? But it should build your body's ability to bounce back from that and increase its fitness, right? So that's why you have doses, strategic doses. And one of my favorite studies was basically looked at this. They got sedentary individuals and they basically the people were tired and they wanted to lower their fatigue and increase their energy. And they had one and they had one group do more so medium to maybe slightly higher intense and another group do lower intensity when they were just starting up. The lower intensity group better improved their energy and their fatigue and the medium intensity still did. But it was interesting to see and it was surprising to researchers that, oh wow, the lower intensity actually for this sedentary group made them feel better. So that's how you start to look at kind of the the progressive ramp up instead of the always aggressive shocks. And you could utilize those aggressive shocks at the right time, but if you do it too much, even if for at the end of the day, like it's going to rear its head in a in a negative way, it'll catch up with you.

You said something that was also really validating that people ask me about all the time. Anytime I have like a trainer on or anything and I do a Q&A on Instagram, women always ask, "Why do I get puffy when I work out?"

All right, you want to hear this?

I call it the I call it the bloat phase, but it's called also a debloat thing if you know how to do it right. Everybody's afraid and I've seen it happen and this is just my theory on it. I'm not going to say it's completely like validated, but basically it's that you want you want that bloat short term, right? Especially if you're like starting out and going hard cuz a few things that I've noticed that happen with women is like you guys often don't drink enough water. So if you don't drink enough water, for whatever reason, the body holds on to it. You could look at vasopressin or whatever. Like I'm I'm not sure the complete hormonal cycle that's happening there, but you hold on to water. So, first step is like just drink a bunch of water. But that water and those that working out is essentially going to cause a slight inflammatory response, which is fine because that's how the body then re-signals the right things and gets and gets the positive responses from fitness. But that slight bloat that we see when you start working out is really like the body and muscles holding on to a little bit of water and other things for nutrient delivery because your body needs nutrients delivered through the blood and it cleans itself up through the lymph and all that to be able to then get back stronger and recover better. So at first this is a mistake that women often make. They see that bloat and they go harder instead of being patient because it disappears. I've had I've had women lose almost eight pounds. It sounds crazy, but four to eight pounds overnight after a period of about three to four to five weeks. That gives that body the time to recover while they're still eating well, making sure they hydrate. But I've had to talk them off the ledge. I'm like, believe me, I know the scale hasn't moved yet, but I promise you in about three to five weeks if you keep doing what I tell you to do, you're going to drop weight if that's their needed goal and that's what we've been working towards. So essentially, it's a short-term inflammatory response, that puffiness, especially that we see in women, that's just the result of the body reaclimating itself, and then it's like, "Oh, I get it. I'm fine. I don't have to stress." And then, but if you keep trying to push, push, push, push, push, you fall too deep in a hole and the alarm reaction stays elevated in the in the body. And especially, we see that more with women. And that's where it kind of that cascade and it never goes away.

And are they training during that time?

They're training like during that three to five week. Yeah.

Yeah. So, basically they're that that's why they're puffy because they're just it's just like a little bit of alarm reaction due to the new stimulus of the weights, the cardio, that type of thing. And their body is just kind of reaclimating itself. But that's why the lower intensity more stress reduction focus workouts are important. Making sure to nourish the body because you want to be in a caloric deficit if weight loss is your goal, but you don't want to be in such a stark caloric deficit where the amount of energy that you're burning versus how much you're consuming is too large because lower energy availability is is especially in female athletes is not is a bad thing. So yeah, it's just like in three to five weeks and it typically goes away and the body realizes it could deal with the stress that was presented and you know, then the sanity is all restored in the kingdom of the women's mind.

That's me right now. I'm puffy. And Jenna actually said something very similar. She's like, "No, no, we're going to keep doing." And she doesn't push me super hard. We were talking before about this balance of not pushing me over the edge and then it's counterproductive and then I can't work out. We've really been gradually building up and I'm feeling a lot stronger and I'm feeling muscles like in places I didn't have muscles before. And she's like, "Just wait. It's all going to like melt away and you're going to see your all of your hard work beneath that." And I'm like, "All right, I will. I'll stick with it." But yeah, it's interesting that you said like I think a lot of women do and myself in the past as well feel like, oh, I have to go harder like this is it's weight I have to go harder and lose the weight and then.

How is weight lost? How is weight lost?

You expend more energy than you take in.

Where does weight go if matter is not created or destroyed? And this is actually a very recent thing. Like people have been trying to figure it out. So when you lose weight, where does it go? You breathe it out.

Okay.

Right. So that's the respiration is essentially the thought process right now, right? So the if energy is usually created through our metabolism through specific cycles and generates ATP, one of those being aerobic respiration, you need oxygen. So you're breathing it out, right? So the thought process then there is is two things. One, you need to be able to essentially have a good respiratory system, so that's why those aerobic conditioning workouts are very good. And the other side of it is once you stimulate muscle, muscle, what a pound of muscle, a pound of fat, they both weigh the same, but you got to look at which one takes up more space. Muscle takes up less space than fat. So the thought process then eventually becomes there from a body composition standpoint. When you want that aesthetic, you just basically it's not really always about weight, it's about body composition. So that's something also to take into account. So this thought process with like just caloric restriction, that's why it doesn't always hold up. But also just just making sure like you aren't overly stressed because that essentially messes up your kind of nervous system in a way that just makes everything harder. So, it's being able to stay calm and kind of go through those motions in the proper way are often often very beneficial.

You've talked about exercise as an art form before.

And I'm hearing that as you're talking.

Yeah, it's like a design practice, right? It's like you're in a studio of self. Like life is a live design and the world's your studio. And there's inputs, there's outputs, there's some things that are quantitative like calories. There's some things that are more qualitative like how you feel and and how you're moving through. And there's some things that we can measure and others that we can't. And and science is is is something that's malleable in a way that we're it's a process of constant discovery. So if you realize that through the research literature that we might have, which is hopefully robust studies, but then also in the personal experience of N of one, and then okay, how does the research apply to me, but also how are some ways where I might be outliers to do this or do that? But it really is, it's not even just problem-solving, it's like self-exploration. It's like, how does the how how when I eat food does that make me feel, right? It's like when I work out, what's actually occurring here? What is the thing it is that I'm after? And and it's like looking at certain things that you could tweak for your personal well-being. And as that relates to sleep or that or or that relates to how you interact with your friends or that relates to how you view how you view money or how you start to learn about the stock market, you learn about how the algorithms of life and yourself work. So to me, it's just, yeah, it's a hard practice. Your personal canvas, right, is like you could paint the life that you want because I'm very aware of death. Like it and it's not even in a like a dark way. It's it's like I was a premature kid. I was two months premature. My mom basically tells me a lot. I'm not even supposed to be here. It's like a gift to me. So, I think in my head that's always been relevant. But I just want people to have the full lived human experience and that there is the ability for you to feel good and that's what health and wellness should be about. As you were talking, I was thinking about like just with my own experience. You know, I'm very open about my sobriety and the fact that I nearly died from drug and alcohol abuse. I mean, it was like seizures non-stop. Like very I was intervened on and had I not been intervened on when I did, I would have died.

And that gave me, I think, that appreciation perspective, don't you?

Yeah. A little bit of perspective where I'm like, that's the best thing that ever happened to me. Um, because it has informed the way that I live my life and my like curiosity and like exploration and openness, a desire to be where I am and not be in the future and not be in the past. And so it's such a gift and not everybody experiences things like that. You had your own version, right? So you are aware of mortality and you have done so much work and you are such a curious person, I can tell and and so you have that perspective. But for people who don't, like, do you have any recommendations on how they can like begin to cultivate that?

I've gone through my own therapeutic kind of thought processes and I I've realized like somatic mindfulness is very important to me. I think the body has an innate knowledge. I I think the like the mind-body dualism, you know, I think therefore I am type thought process is shortsighted. Like the body has its own innate intelligence. So to kind of get back into the present form, to make it practical, you know, everybody's always like, yo, just stay off your phones. I get it. And and but that's hard. But the thought pro the thing is is like I think the first hour of the day is very important, right? And two things, you know, I'm a little bit of a Buddhist, I guess, like I was growing up in an esoteric household. I just study various religions. But one of the things in Buddhism is like gratitude for the human body, like the body self. So I think in the morning, like a like an easy way to kind of get back into the body is just lay in your bed. Don't do anything. Take five deep breaths, roll your ankles, roll your wrists, feel the feel the energy and the vitality start to fill you up and just say something that you're grateful for. Say, thank you eyes for your ability to see. Thank you spine for holding me erect. As you put your feet on the ground, hey, thank you feet for another day, another chance. It's one of my favorite sayings. Roll the shoulders back. Let the tension out. Go in the shower. Pay attention to what you're doing. You're putting the soap on. Whatever. Don't just rush through it. Pay attention to what you're doing. And for me, I like to say I wash off the of yesterday and I rub in the gratefulness of today. And then in that and I'm off my phone. And then even in that first 10 minutes, right, is like I'm grounded in myself. I'm not paying attention to how things are feeling, the signals that my body is telling me. So instead of being disassociated and going for a digital stimulus, it's not saying just stay off your phone. It's really saying what are the other things that I could do that'll naturally keep me off my phone. And that kind of keeps going throughout the day. So sometimes when you're walking, don't use music. Just walk. Just walk. Look around. Pay attention how you're feeling. You know, if you get a five-minute break in a day, just three deep breaths, check in with yourself like, hey, you know, hey heart, why you feeling that? Like why is there a little bit of pressure in my stomach or or.

Why is there nervousness in my chest? Hey, I hear you. Let me breathe in. Think where that may have come from. Did something happen to me earlier? Is there something that I'm not looking forward to later? It's okay.

And I've been going through like some stressful situations in my own personal life. One of the things, you know, I've been on planes and you know, whatever romantic stuff, all these things and I've just been breathing was just like, I feel anxiety coming. I'm like, "Hey, I know you're just processing some things. It's okay." And then you start to notice over the course of the days the signals that your body is giving you.

So, an easy way you have that in the morning, every time before you eat, just take 5 minutes, not even 5 minutes, take 60 seconds, take a few deep breaths. You don't even have to say grace, just be like, "Yo, you know what? This food's about to nourish me. I'm happy about this." And then, you know what that also does? It creates a sense of intuitive eating and logic without making you feel like, for lack of a better term, because if you're grateful for the food that's about to nourish you, if you keep putting food in front of you that you know is not nourishing, you don't start to look, you start to look at, "I'm disrespecting myself." Not in a sense of that I should just be eating healthy all the time, but like, "Yo, if you put something in your mouth, I'm telling my body that's one of the safest things I could do." And if I'm, time after time, I'm putting stuff in my mouth that isn't quote unquote good for me, for lack of a better term, or let's say health-promoting, it becomes a time where eventually it clicks. Or from a logic standpoint, it's like, "This honestly doesn't make any sense. Let me figure out a better way." So, there's those small moments throughout the day that go a long way.

And of course, at night, just take like 5 minutes, try to reflect through your day. Not just, you know, from a mindset standpoint, but also in your body. Let the tension out of your body. Examine what it is that you're feeling and through that emotion, think how amazing your body is where it has an innate intelligence that it can take all the stimuli in the world like that and turn into a feeling. Excitement, nervousness, anxiety, hunger, all that is the is a proper decoding of so many interactions that we both are aware and unaware of. And to take that for granted isn't fair. So, give your body some love.

The body, the working out is nourishment for the body. >> It's a little bit of sometimes when the low-intensity workouts, "Hey, I know you need a break. I'm going to nourish you." The high-intensity workouts, "Hey, I know you can handle this and I'm going to push you." And then afterwards, just say thank you. That's all. And those little moments, I know it sounds cheesy, but you will see how much your body responds and it'll create a whole different world for you. >> I love that. I love it. And I think that it's such a manageable way for people to try and approach this because, you know, it's like back to what I was saying in the beginning. It's it tends to be punitive and it's like, "Oh, I have to eat clean." Because people look at it as like a punishment or as a chore, not something that they get to be doing. >> Sure. And then when you eat whatever, like I'm a sweet tooth guy. Everybody knows who knows me has a sweet tooth. You know, give me some apple pie and vanilla ice cream, you know. But then when you eat that, it's it would throw my friends off when we'd be out sometime like, "Oh, I can't believe Joe is eating that." But when you're in a, whatever, a healthier state, your body could always handle that. But the other side of it is that kind of indulgence is also a nourishment. When you have those key moments where it's like, "I am enjoying this. There's no guilt here. I'm with my friends or doing my thing or maybe I had a tough week." And and letting that kind of self-control be lost for a second because maybe your body is letting you know that, "Hey, I need a little bit of something else right now." And then once you give it that, you feel how easy it is to click back in instead of getting the cycle, cycle of guilt or late-night eating by yourself and and those difficult type of things. So, realize kind of everything has its place. And I don't know, man, like I just think you got to lead with love and especially with yourself. Like my late, you know, friend like Virgil, like that's the biggest lesson I I learned from him was just like, "Lead with love." And we should do that in everything that we do. >> And to me, that's big, even if sometimes it means, you know, people don't always treat you right, that's fine. >> Do you need to talk about it? >> I'm always leading with love. It don't matter. Can't keep me down. >> I love it. Okay, so a lot of people did have specific questions. Everyone's trying to like get >> you get mechanistic. You know, I made some famous bodies of my day. >> Yes, I know. I mean, some of like the biggest people who Naomi, Bella >> Hadid, Bella back in the day, all the VS girls. That's how I got big was like I was training all the VS girls. But like I was making them do like real athlete stuff and everybody was like, "Who is this kid?" So, how do you prep someone for like a Victoria's Secret show? >> Yeah. I mean, I'm not going to act like it was just me. Like, you got like women have their whole beauty team, like they know what they're doing. But basically, you kind of get them in shape. Then you figure in the sense of phases. So, it's like a general prep phase where you just want to just increasing work capacity. The workouts don't even always have to be hard, but you have to get people used to doing work for a longer duration of time. So, what that typically means is what's called concurrent training, which is just mixing in strength training at the right times because you want to make them stronger and then also like aerobic, aerobic and anaerobic conditioning because basically you want to make sure they're able to recover, but you also just want to make sure they can still do high-intensity work. So, you don't really have to be perfect, really, in this phase. Then once you start, then a lot of it is like, then true strength because they will be in a caloric deficit, right? So, then you just want to make stronger to preserve muscle mass because muscle mass is what's look is what looks good on camera. Like, as you lose weight, you don't want to be essentially what they call skinny fat. Like, you want to have muscle mass. You guys got to have muscle. And it's so easy. When you think of building strength, you just really think of for women typically, you know, you could go as low as three, but I usually like to go five to eight reps and heavier and heavier weight. Probably think they can't move it, but you can. And just really heavy sets and then have longer rest in between sets. Really? It's like almost 3 minutes sometimes. >> It's interesting because I think a lot of women think lower weight, higher rep. >> No, because because what do you actually try when you try when you're doing more? You'll get to that maybe in the last phase, but it's not even really necessarily higher reps. It's more so quote unquote, and I don't really like the term, and we'll talk about it in a second, but it's more so like distinctly toning exercises. But when we say toning, we mean using lighter weights to to go weighted through full ranges of motion. So, you like floss the tissues so the muscles just essentially look more even because you're using them in a more dynamic fashion instead of strictly one plane. But when we really talk about tone, really talking about two things. There's neurogenic tone and myiogenic tone. Neurogenic tone is how can the brain essentially activate the muscle to then create tone in the muscle. Myiogenic tone is how the muscle looks at rest. So, we want to be able to do two things. Myiogenic tone really for the most part, again, is the strength training, slight muscle building, right? And then just making sure they have a better body composition as they start to maybe lose a little bit of weight or that goes through that what we talked about respiration, right? But we're not losing muscle mass. So, you lose a little bit of weight, muscle mass stays the same, the myiogenic tone will improve because we did strength training and enough muscle building, if even necessary, which is already going to be hard because we're in a caloric deficit, but we just want to keep it there. But it's still possible. Now, tone looks pretty good at rest, not really stressed out, right? We talked about going through that deep bloat period, drinking water, making sure they sleep, utilizing, you know, other things at the right times like saunas. I usually typically like that more for women, warmth than cold. But you can use cold if in crunch period, but more so just sauna. Just like low, more intensity stuff to kind of keep that blood flowing and feeling good. Now, then the key is is once you're in a show, your muscles are activated, right? So, in a sense of as I'm moving and I'm dynamic, I'm tossing, turning for the camera, I need my muscles to look essentially good without, quote, they're not bulky. I just need them to look good. So, that's why power training is very important because a lot of women aren't used to moving fast. They're not used to the jumping. You're not used to the med ball throwing, all that. And what that does is it it helps create neurogenic tone. So, now a woman is now strong, has enough muscle, and I'm like, "All right, for this last phase, it's not even be that hard. We're already here. We're just going to make sure we're eating good, nourishing the body, doing making sure you recover, but I need some power work. I just need you to stay primed because now that the brain knows how to activate the muscles and we're doing stuff that's more incorporative of the whole body. Then we're on the they're on the catwalk. It's very easy as they're moving their body naturally, the stabilizers are firing, the bigger muscles are there, the tone is there, the camera captures all that versus a lot of people don't have that ability actually to then have their muscles be firing and then creates that dynamic kind of holistic good work, good look. So, it's just really all it is is just what I did at least was interesting at the time because nobody was doing this 10 years ago, really. I just took standard sports science performant a performance athlete training and applied that to them in the right phases and it worked and just and just made sure that that we did what we needed to do. But those women were locked in, you know, Georgia, Bella, Bella, Romy, uh, Sarah, Satie, Megan, uh, I'm probably missing a couple others. Please, please forgive me. But to to at that time, it was so fun because they would come to me and be like, "I want my glutes to get bigger or I want to be a little bit more tight around my core or I need to do this and do that." And yeah, it was just like I was just like figuring it out. And to me, that was really fun for me at the time. It's got to be really gratifying, too. Especially when you have people who are locked in like that and who are like really wanting to get that same outcome. Like that's a that's like a real partnership. >> Yeah. It was a Super Bowl. So, to me, it was like getting athletes ready. And that's what made that's what made the space interesting for me early in my career was like, I didn't want to do the group class training stuff because like there's no standard output goal attainment here. I'm like a sports guy. I'm like, "What's the match? What's the race?" And the VS show to them was the race. So, then I would sit down and create phases for each person and be able to get there. Also strategic nutrition and all and all that stuff. And >> What's the nutrition like? >> The nutrition essentially, I mean, I wish the industry was where it is now where it would have been a lot easier to get them the blood testing and all that. Then it was a little bit harder. But nutrition is fair, it's fairly simple. The two things that I typically would suggest are carb cycling. Carb cycling is essentially timing your carbohydrates according to the intensity of your workouts. So, on your higher intensity days or recovering from a higher intensity day, you would typically eat a little bit more carbohydrate, right? Because you also need glycogen stores to make the muscles look a little bit fuller if that if that was wanted. So, and then the other days you would typically eat low, lower carb, right? Some people consider low carb 100 carb grams or less, but you could just just research it. Carb cycling is super easy to apply and I think also gives you metabolic flexibility, which is essentially the ability to utilize both fat and carbs as fuel sources, which become important when you time them up because in the low-intensity workouts, you don't really need like high octane fuel, which basically was what carbohydrates are. So, it was carb cycling. Um, it was circadian rhythm eating. I'm a little bit different than intermittent fasting, although some people consider it that. It was just like utilizing light as a guide for when you want to eat. So, typically you would eat first meal an hour or two after you wake up, last meal for most for most of them would be say, try to do two hours before bed. But it's really just when you're awake and that that timing sets the body up. I'm still a believer if you appropriately, relatively, what we call fasted cardio. But that's just really going for a walk before you eat. I'm a big believer in stimulating digestion before you eat and before you eat a real meal. So, maybe like a cup of tea in the morning, stimulate digestion, chew a little bit of an apple or something, and just go for a little bit of walk, like get that morning sunlight, that type of thing. And then the other way to go about it, if you know they're going to be in a caloric deficit, uh, you do want to increase protein slightly. I know like protein is having a huge craze right now. And everybody's a little bit different about how they view the amount of uh uh kilograms per body weight for protein. So, I won't be prescriptive here, but you you in those phases where you want to keep lean mass, uh, but you're in a caloric deficit, which is to have them eat a little bit more protein, but carb cycling, I think carb cycling is like the open secret in the in it should be at least in the industry if you know how to utilize it. It's one of the easiest ways to get in shape fast. You generally just want energy availability. Yeah. Right. And a lot of women just will not eat and that's not how you like I'm sitting here right now on this couch. How many calories do you think I would burn if I just sat here all day? >> All day. >> All day. >> 3500. >> Yeah, just about because you're probably familiar with BMR, basal metabolic rate. A lot of people aren't. So, they think they got to earn their food. So, that thought process is like, nah, you you do do got to eat. But, you know, Stacy Sims is big on that now, like telling people to have energy availability. It's been, you know, RED-S has been huge in sport for a little bit, which relative energy deficiency and they've kind of changed the name to it now about lower energy availability, but you need that, especially especially for women. But yeah, carb, I'm telling you, circadian rhythm eating, general framework of carb cycling, and you'll be good. 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The circadian rhythm eating is interesting, too, because I think that like intermittent fasting was such a thing for a long time. And I know so many women, myself included, up until very recently. I would wake up, have my matcha, do my workout, not eat until like 10 or 11. And by that point, I'm like anxious from the caffeine, hungry, my cortisol is probably through the roof, my blood sugar's dropping. And for some women, maybe it works. You know, I've done episodes with other people who have talked about eating within an hour of waking up, you know, for women and for hormones and and blood sugar stability and all of that and eating before caffeine. And of course, inevitably, there are people who push back and say, you know, that fasting is better and all of that. But for me, >> implementing that change and eating at least something before caffeine. So, I wake up, I hydrate, I get the sunlight, >> I do some movement, I eat a little something at least, if not a full meal within like an hour or two. >> Those big three right there, >> what >> are basically zeitgebers or whatever. So, those are called timegivers. So, those basically are the big three cues as it relates to your circadian rhythm. So, circadian rhythm isn't just like sleep is essentially like a 24-hour relative cycle that various processes are on in your body. Sleep being the biggest one. So, really what you're speaking to there is and it goes back to the global question. It's what would be the best thing for my overall circadian rhythms? Not is fasting what I should be doing. Right? So, at the end of the day, really what did you do is that and you're doing it consistently. So, you're stimulating your digestion. Does it really matter if you eat an hour or within two hours of waking up? Probably for most people, right? Or delaying it. You could get away with it, but it matters about consistency. So, for you, you know, eating earlier is probably a little bit better, but you probably end up eating something light. Correct. Yeah. So, what are you just doing? You're stimulating your digestion earlier because nobody ever wants to talk about it. What you really need to do, light movement, and then a little bit of bite. You need to go to the bathroom. And it's a lot of people aren't regular. So, think about that for a second. If you just slept for 8 hours, your body delayed all signals that are related to releasing waste. And most people either have this coffee, don't eat at all, they haven't gone to the bathroom for a very long time, and your body's confused. So, we're asking the wrong questions is like, of course, if you're going to do a hard workout, you should consume something. But it's not. Also, the other side of it is if it's just a light stroll, which at the end of the day, low intensity, steady state, that's what your walk was. You had a low intensity, steady state kind of stimulus for your well-being. You probably what you don't have to say if I'm going for a walk and eat a whole bunch of food. But really, what you're doing is giving the specific cues to your body to promote regularity, which will promote flourishing and well-being versus the fasting can be a little bit more intense because then you have that elongated stressor. But if you were to fast before bed, research tends to hint that was it might be a little bit easier on the system or is just naturally what you'll do if you wake up early and go to bed early. >> Yeah. >> So, nobody was defining fasting because Longo came out and God bless him, his research was very important, but Longo came out was talking about fasting and then people took that and applied that to a whole bunch of different frameworks without explaining what it was. So, what are we talking about? Are we talking about a 4-hour eating window, an 8-hour eating eating window, a 12? Are we talking about a five, a 5-day eating, two-day not? Are we just talking about 24 hours of not eating? And then people just be like, "Oh, I'm intermittent fasting." It's like, "Well, what are you doing?" >> Yeah. It's very nebulous. >> Yeah. And then, are you a man? Are you a woman? What are you? What are your goals? Do you have any underlying health conditions? And this is a new phase I think of like wellness philosophy that we're entering is like we're going away from the nondescript just kind of try everything to entering now of a little bit more strategic and pinpointed uh prescriptive approaches that must be clearly defined because also people who are listening to this probably are just fed up with everything under a blanket term and there's no longer the need to convince people that they should be doing things to take care of their health. It it now is, "What should I be doing and why and how do I know it's the best thing for me or at least it'll do, you know, a very Hippocratic oath will do minimal to no harm." >> And that's the key question you should be asking when you try these things. >> Yeah. And it comes back to what we've been talking about, you know, about really knowing yourself. And I think when you do that work and you are trying to kind of look inward and find out who you are and what you want and how you think and all of that, then you can take the information and take what applies to you and leave the rest. >> That's it. >> Yeah. And I think that you know with we're in an information overload now. So, that's a critical skill for people to have. >> God bless them. I mean, yeah, I think that's what that's what people do need. And the more, yeah, and the more work you're doing and the more that we could just apply this into like, okay, how do we think about how do we think about this and how do we kind of get data on ourselves in a non-overly intense way? It's like, go get that blood work once or twice a year, you know what I mean? Sit down once a week and really write down how you're feeling. Sit down and pay attention after you eat something, how it makes you feel. And then you start to think like, okay, why did it's not that lentils are maybe unhealthy, right? But it's like, okay, when I ate that, why did I feel that way? Did I feel a little bit bloated? Why doesn't that work for me? Why doesn't the salad possibly work for me? But why does this fruit technically make me feel better, but this fruit doesn't when they're both supposed to be healthy? Then you're like, what actually is health? And you're like, well, health is a state of being, right? It's how I feel. So, that then there's no such thing as a healthy food. It's just that a food just can be health-promoting. So, what are the foods that will promote health in me? So, I really just think it's like you have to start to ask the right questions instead of just blindly saying, "Oh, I'm going to drink apple cider vinegar because I was told it was going to make my blood sugar be more better or whatever." You're in a constant state of becoming. The body is in a constant state of becoming. And it's accepting that and realizing what you can do to help your body for the long haul, but also in the right now. Cuz again, you deserve to feel good. You don't deserve to work yourself to the bone every day. And like all this stuff is, you know, fun and get your money up, have fun, but like this thing that you're in, your body and your mind, they're more connected than you think. But sorry, let's get to some other questions they have before it's too late. >> Well, let's see. >> For the listeners, this this why we do it. >> Okay, I'll just ask you a question that I like to ask my guests to close it out. What is one thing you wish people would stop doing and one thing you wish they would start doing? >> It's a good question. I wish people would kind of a few things like call things guilty pleasures if there's just kind of like food or stop some of the like what I eat in a day type things because I think they can be a little bit overwhelming, especially for women. >> What's your guilty pleasure though? >> You know >> what's your death row meal? >> I was about to make a really bad off-color joke. >> But uh I mean if I'm >> We can go there. You know, I was definitely about to say women, but we'll stay away. Um, >> You said it. >> I did. >> Death row meal is a roti. I'm West Indian, so I want like a West Indian roti, a side of sweet plantains, baked mac and cheese, and then apple pie with vanilla ice cream, and uh my mom's like vanilla strawberry cream cheesecake. So, that's what I wish people would start doing instead is like, just really connect with each other and not do it through the lens of of like self, but do it through interconnectedness. And I and I and I think that's I think that's missing. So, I hope I hope we really do get back to that. And even I see that sometimes with like for exercise snacks, I have this like athletics club and we put on events and I always make sure people meet each other, meet each other, see someone new. We do partner drills and people time after time come up to me after and say, "Oh my god, this was so fun. Thanks for doing a partner drill. I had a really good time. I met somebody new." It's like wellness and health should drive some interconnectedness. It should not just drive you back to yourself. So, I just hope people take more time to connect. >> Love it. Well, where can everybody find you? >> Oh, um, I'm working on a book. So, yeah, designyourself.world, world, log on, join the newsletter, and also just like the about kind of an expose on how I'm doing on the book. And then uh Joe Holder on Instagram and joelder on Twitter. >> Thank you so much. >> Thank you.