Hacking your health, a lifelong journey...

I try not to write in finite terms on here. Meaning I rarely say, "if you do x then y will definitely happen for you". My rationale for this is; 1.) I'm not trying to sell a book or a product and it does me no good to dig my heals in on any one particular diet or style of training. 2.) After 11+ years in the fitness I've seen first hand that everyone's muscle fiber breakdown and metabolic type is as unique to each individual as their finger prints. 3.) Anything I believe in, and have seen work in person, has thousands of articles one Google search away with evidence to the contrary. This is why it's important that each individual does a certain amount of bio hacking. I strongly encourage everyone to keep a food log or utilize an app such as myfitpal.com to keep, track of where your kcal are coming from. It also allows you monitor macronutrient breakdown - which in my opinion needs to be addressed before worrying about micronutrients. While keeping a track of your food, you should make sure to take brief notes on how you feel the 2 hours after every meal or snack. Make notes on energy,satiety need to go to the bathroom urgently, gas, bloating, heartburn etc. Within 5 days you will see patterns in high energy and low energy and also patterns in foods that cause gas, bloating ( often indicating food sensitivities ). Now, the information about diet and exercise is coming at us from a bunch of different directions at 100 miles per hour. It can be somewhat intimidating, but should in no way serve as an excuse to not try anything. There are always those people that ask me for information about diet and then when I give my answer - which usually involves me pointing out the 18 beers, pizza and bagels are going to make it difficult to achieve weight loss goals - they quickly reply with, " yeah but my dog walker said that they heard Dr. McDummy say that beer is just carbo loading and not that bad if you limit it to 4 nights a week." These are the people that want something for nothing. They are the people that use really strong, negative adjectives to describe how they feel about their current weight/looks and then melodramatically claim that all of the existing information is "overwhelming". It's only overwhelming if you want it to be. I, on the other hand, love the process of figuring out what works for me - and then what will work for each individual client. You've probably heard that gluten isn't great for you - btw, I agree. So if you really want to know if that's true, take a week to find out if it's true in regards to you. Learn what foods contain gluten (there are hundreds of apps, the information is available within seconds at any given moment), then eliminate those foods for a week. During that time monitor your energy, take notice of how your stomach reacts, do you have less mucus, has your joint pain diminished, measure yourself around the belly button before and after. Then take a week to do this with dairy, different ratios of macronutrients at all of your meals etc... You should also learn how to monitor tangible physical results while experimenting with different exercise programs. We all have different breakdowns of fast twitch and fast twitch muscle fibers. So any programs that claim their way is the only way, and will get everyone their desired results, is totally gas-bagging and probably has a bridge they'd like to sell you. Exercise programs should be given at least 4-8 weeks. This takes time. This where I think working with a professional really becomes valuable- especially if you have a time sensitive goal. This should serve as an interesting ongoing process throughout your life's journey. Figuring out what combination of food and exercise is going to result is the best version of yourself, is so incredibly exciting. You just have to want to see it that way... To really stop and realize that health is a gift and needs to be cultivated like a garden. It's now 230 in the morning, this was meant to be 2 paragraphs, but this shit excites me, and I hope that it excites even 1 person that reads this - if it does, then me falling asleep at work tomorrow will feel worth it. Keep the emails and feedback coming, it means so much to me and it's an absolute joy and honor to help you.