So that's that's what we do. Right? We talk all day. So this has been a interesting kinda shift for me anyways to get into, like, the podcasting and and fitness side of things. But it's not that far aligned when you think about work. I'm from so same for you too. I mean, you're a good speaker because, well, you got the training from being a litigator for so many years. So, okay. So we're not we're gonna go be live.

So just so you know, if you need to pause or whatever you need to call, just let me know. We can we can pause and and carry on from there. Okay. And if you wanna go back and say, you know, correct something, by all means, let me know. So no stress on that. Perfect. Awesome. 321.

Hey, folks. I'm sitting down with Kristen Rolle. Kristen Rolle is a business litigator, trial lawyer liar at home. Now let's start again, man. Let's start again. I just tripped up on 3 words, unacceptable. But did I did I pronounce your last name right, Raul?

That is a great question. It's actually Raul. It's just like Powell. It's like Colin Powell. Everyone knows how to say his name, and we did an r on mine instead of a p.

So okay. I listened to your podcast with Cynthia, and she said, Joel. So she screwed up she screwed up because she's from New Jersey. That's probably

mine. It might be.

Okay. So I'm like, okay. Point it out. Okay. So Kristen Rowell.

Yes.

That's how I was gonna pronounce it anyways. So Perfect. Okay. 321.

With talent.

Let's go again. 321. Hey, folks. Welcome to another episode of the Hardskill podcast. I'm sitting here with Kristen Rowell. She's a business litigator trial lawyer turned functional nutritional therapist and the founder CEO of energetically efficient. As a former high stress business litigator turned FNT, Kristin speaks to and serves her kind of people, high achieving, often stressed out professionals who desire to prioritize their health and wellness, but need accountability and support from an expert. She is the go to health coach for many successful executives around the country.

And, Kristen, so you're an advocate for low carb diets and increasing muscle mass for longevity. So can we start with why you're trying to destroy society as a whole with your crazy nonsense? So obviously, I'm kidding. Obviously, I'm kidding. And it's it's a pleasure to have you on the show. And point of note, folks, Kristen, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but you've done over 25 or 25 marathons and are a competitive body builder to add to the list that we just went over, which is pretty impressive if if you ask me. So welcome to the show, and, how are you doing today?

I'm great. Thank you so much, Dave, for having me. I'm super excited to be here. Yes. I'm trying to kinda ruin the world 1 person at a time with metabolic health by not letting them eat to wild abandon with their carbohydrates and telling them they need to get in the gym for a little bit. So I'm excited to talk to you about those topics and anything else you wanna cover today.

Right on. We definitely will. The joke was kinda made in not necessarily out of out of left field. I had a conversation with Kelly Starett about being healthy is kind of subversive these days. In terms of you're not really listening to the knowledge or the the wisdom that is supposed to be what we're doing which is coming from government agencies. And I find that really interesting. And and what you're doing is part of that that whole subversiveness, if you wanna call it, where you're talking about things like nutrition and adding muscle mass. So I'd like to start there.

What led you to becoming a functional nutrition practitioner?

Yeah. It seems like kind of an odd transition. Right? Here I am having this thriving business litigation practice. Loved being a lawyer. Loved being a trial lawyer. And I had done that for 16 years. So when I decided to make the whole entire lifestyle shift and career change to go back to school for nutrition and do this for a living, people were like, wait. What? You're leaving the practice of law? Why? And like anyone with a really good story of evolution, because I believe that we're all here to evolve, My story really started when I fell in December of 2013.

So this is now, you know, 10 years ago. And I broke my right leg in 10 places. I fell on ice when I was on a work trip in Williston, North Dakota. And really what that catalyzed for me, I had no awareness of it at the time, but it did catalyze for me this interest in understanding how I, someone who has, like you've mentioned, run 25 marathons. I am a natural professional bodybuilder, although I wasn't at that time. How I could have broken my bones so bad. Mhmm. And is it possible that maybe my body wasn't absorbing the nutrients I was eating? Carbo load.

Carbo load. Carbo load. So I had always been fueled with carbohydrates and come to find out as I found this amazing chiropractor slash physical therapist who I started to do work with to heal from my injury. He was a distance runner, like, distance distance.

Like, 60 miles plus?

Yeah. Like, 100 k's, 50 miles. He did that stuff. Yeah. Nutty. And I would say to him when he was working on me, I'd say, so what do you eat to get ready for those races? Or what do you eat during those races? And he said, well, mostly fat. I was like, wait. What? What? And come again? And he said, yeah.

I'm mostly fat. And then he I started to learn about that from him and then started to do a lot of my own research and really became interested in just how the foods that we eat and the balance of macronutrients that we eat can make a significant difference in our energy, in our athletic performance, in our cognitive function, and our physical bodies and the way that we look and feel just to name a few. So I started practicing what I referred to now as a well formulated low carbohydrate diet. I've certainly been ketogenic. I'd say every day I'm in and out of ketosis as when I test my ketones, I can tell. But it's really now I transitioned to do this for a living because I looked around at the practice of law, and I frankly saw a lot of professionals, colleagues, opposing counsel, people at bar events that are frankly, really, really metabolically unwell. And I thought, here's people that have a lot of money, not a lot of time, but they have a lot of money. They obviously are smart.

So why have they quote, unquote let themselves go so bad? Or why has the practice of law overtaken their desire to prioritize their metabolic health? And I thought I really can do something to help this situation. So I went into this. I went back to mental health therapy school. I decided to leave the practice of law. And I went into this thinking I'll largely help lawyers, but it's expanded so much beyond that. So I have it it's really a lot of, like, what you said in the intro, these high performing executive level people. So I have investment banking clients, lots of real estate clients, doctors, dentists, mortgage brokers, professionals of every kind, and just really busy humans who really want to figure out how to make themselves look and feel better, but don't know where to start because I don't know if you've checked Google lately. But if you were to Google something like what's the healthiest diet, good luck getting an answer that you can sort out with any sort of detail.

And so I cut through all the noise for people on that, and I really help them understand how their body works and what it needs for them to thrive.

I love that. I love that. You touched on something that really is something that I've I've talked about on the podcast before too that, you know, you're a professional. Obviously, you took your health seriously as a professional, but you saw so many that that didn't. And you came to a conclusion that, you know, an individual that's at my level should be fit, but they're not. And I had this conversation, with a with another doctor about doctors just not being healthy as well because it it makes you not as confident in an individual, especially a doctor, if you see them unhealthy. And obesity is 1 of the biggest signs of being unhealthy. And you mentioned metabolically broken.

Right? That is a sign of, as you know, metabolic disease, and you probably seen the study too that 88% of us are metabolically broken, which to me is so sad. But also somebody like yourself, you've you've kind of broken it down, like you said, and and made it easier. What does that typically look like? How do you how do you make a a topic that seems overly complex to somebody because so many of us are getting it wrong, be so much easier so that they can actually start getting a grip of their health and nutrition.

You said so many important things there, Dave. So I want to cover a lot in this answer and we'll try to get

to the

positive level. But the short answer is I really spend my time with my clients educating them about how their body works. And this is what I do on stage when I speak to massive audiences all around the country is listen. When you understand what your body actually needs for fuel, when you understand what the different substrates of energy do in your body, Meaning, what do carbohydrates do in your body? What does fat do in your body? How does protein work? Why do we need these things? Do we need these things? And then what amounts? You start to actually own, oh, so I don't have to just accept what any sort of random commercial is telling me that this is quote, unquote, heart healthy, or that this whole grain is good for my heart. You start to realize, I've actually just believed largely marketing noise about how food should work for me. And so I cut through all of that. And because my whole career prior to this was me standing in front of judges and juries, taking really complex stuff and breaking it down into small digestible pieces, that was such a good training ground for me to do this now with nutrition. So I really use my lawyering background to leverage all of my nutritional knowledge now to help people understand the why behind what they put in their bodies matter.

And then what happens is I say, you know, and this would be an example of just working with a 1 on 1 client. I'm writing them customized meal plans. And after just a week of being on my meal plan, they're like, oh my god. I feel so much better. My joints don't hurt. My inflammation's going away. I'm losing weight. I have so much more energy.

And they all of a sudden start to feel it, and I call that experiential learning. So I say, you're gonna start learning through doing, and we're gonna meet on Zoom during the course of our program every other week. So I can educate you about why I'm having you eat these foods. Why I'm combining these foods together. What is meant by the topic of blood sugar? What is insulin resistance? Why is strength training so important? So I'm really spending a lot of time in education and cutting through all of that noise and breaking it down as simple and digestible as possible. And, you know, let's be honest. There's a variety of different levels of understanding or knowledge about this stuff. So I'll just meet the person where they're at and make sure they understand it before moving on to the next topic.

Yeah. Kristen, you you sound like a teacher. Experiential learning? Wow. I heard that somewhere before.

Right?

That's really cool. The the cool thing is, obviously, you're able to create a compelling argument. I mean, that's, like, literally what you spent the majority of your younger years learning. Right? So now you just need to put the the actual knowledge module in there, and then you can break it down, like you said, in bite sized pieces. Right? And, typically, people put it, like it's supposed to be, like, at grade 4 level for people kinda clue into something to keep things at at a at a level that you can understand. Doesn't matter how smart you are. It's not like it's not like

you're dumb. It's such a good point because the average juror in our society is a 6th grade education. So that's what I learned to

speak to. Woah. What? Sorry.

Why? I know. We have a lot of uneducated jurors. So there have been situations. Like, you have to speak to that level because if you have a jury, you don't want everything that you're saying to a jury to be over their head. So you really have to break it down. And let's think of for any of us, when we're learning something new, whether it's nutrition, whether it's about a court case that you have to decide as a juror, whether you're a judge and you were just on the, you know, criminal defense block for 3 years and now you're met with your 1st civil jury trial and you don't know anything about this particular business. Like, I have to make sure I am not going too fast, too over people's heads. It has to be simple.

And I've also heard, and you may know this from our teaching background, if you can't teach it simply, you don't know it. Mhmm. So I have to know it to teach it simply. I have to use metaphors. I have to give examples. 1 of my favorite things to teach, and I do this with clients all the time, is how weight loss actually works. And I have a whole explanation with the fire trucks and the police cars and the ambulances showing up at the crime scene Nice. To clean up the mess.

And my clients are like, oh my god. I finally understand it now. And I said, sure. Because I just spoke to you at a 3rd grade level, which is, by the way, how I need to hear things when I'm learning them for the first time. And so they're smart enough to get this stuff. They've just never had anyone break it down. And that's 1 of the reasons that I feel like my clients are so grateful. And when I speak, I get really good feedback.

I love it. The best way to learn is through, song and metaphor. Like, that's Interesting. That's why we sing the alphabet. Yeah. That's why I got a master's degree, by the way, in education. So you're you're welcome folks for for getting some knowledge from a master's level teacher. That's why we sing the alphabet.

That's all I learned over 3 years of learning a master. So, but that's great. I I love the fact that you're able to to bring that to the individual in a bite sized manner. Now let's get into a bit of the the science now. You're talking about why we should have a lower carb diet. And to go back to what you mentioned about the, distance runner, you're talking about consuming more fat. And it's cool because I had a phase where I was doing marathons and I did the Ironman. And I'm a big guy.

What they used to call a Clydesdale. Right? So over £200. And so I did the math. I'm like, I'm gonna have to, like, literally bring a lot of food, like carbohydrates. If I'm going to follow the standard way that, Iron Man would typically do this race, I'm not gonna bring that much food. So what's my other alternative? And I had a conversation with another Ironman athlete on the podcast, and he's like, well, you consider it keto? I'm like, no. Not really. He's like, well, he should probably consider keto.

And as soon as I dove in, it made so much difference. I was able to make these little fat bombs for myself. That's what kept me going on the road, and I realized, like, a no gastrointestinal issues. And then even the lead up, like, I got so lean. I got so lean. I lost £30. It was amazing. And Yes.

I oscillate between both, and I just found it to allow me to have such a, like, mental acute, sorry, clarity that allowed me to work better, but also my performance, especially for endurance stuff, went way up. So could we could we discuss that a little bit more? Why is it, in your opinion, important to get a grip of a macronutrient like carbohydrates and start considering a more low carb approach?

Yeah. Fantastic question. So I was like you. For my I don't know what number marathon it was, but it was in the spring of 20 probably 12. I had run the Fargo marathon. And I had to take a goo every 45 minutes to get to that place. I was the ultimate definition of a carb fueled athlete. And guess what? When I crossed the finish line, I was in the bathroom with all sorts of gastrointestinal distress because your body doesn't want that much sugar and carbohydrate over the course of 3 hours and 20 minutes.

I mean, it was terrible for my gut. So I started to research it like you did, and I realized, wow. You mean our body can actually choose between carbohydrate and fat as a fuel source? You mean both of those are fuel and that we actually can run on 1 or the other depending on what's available? So the short answer to your question, Dave, is the goal from my perspective and what I educate people about all the time. The goal is to become metabolically flexible. And the reason for that is we want to be able to use the fuel source that's available. And when the fuel source isn't available, we need to use a different fuel source. And we wanna be able to do that and go back and forth between fuel sources with ease. So we have 4 different sources of fuel.

The first source that most Americans are running around on all day long are carbohydrates. Carbohydrates burn quick. They burn fast. They are the newspaper and the little sticks on the fire. You burn through them and you've gotta have more 3 hours later, or all of a sudden you get what everyone refers to as angry. You get irritable. You're like, lay off me. I'm starving.

Remember the Chris Farley episodes in Saturday Night Live? You get in that excuse me. You get in that mode because you're out of carbs and now you need more carbs. It's me 45 hour in on every 5 miles of the marathon. Once you actually teach your body to become metabolically flexible, your body runs out of carbs and it's like, wait, that's okay. That's okay. Dietary fat is an option. So now you're running on the macadamia nuts you're eating, the avocado, the rib eye, the heavy cream, the butter, all the things that are fat sources. And if carbs are the newspaper and the sticks on the fire, fat are the logs on the fire.

They are a lot longer lasting fuel. You can run for 2 hours on carbohydrates. You can run for 40 hours on fat. The caloric burn, it just takes longer. They it's such a longer lasting fuel, which is why you found that it was so wise to do that in your Ironman. Wait, I can bring less fuel, I'm less weighed down. It lasts longer. I'm leaner.

So now I'm way fitter for my race. And you also and this is like the nerdy part of the science. You also became more efficient metabolically and with the way that your body processed through oxygen because you were fat fueled for that race instead of carb fueled. And if people want more nerdy detail on that, I'd very much recommend the book. The art and science of low carbohydrate performance by, Steve Finney and Jeff Bullock. It's a fantastic book. Art and science of low carbohydrate performance. It's very good.

But it goes definitely into the science of what's happening to us physiologically after that switch and why fat is such a more efficient fuel source for us to do in terms of performance. I just gave you the first 2 fuel sources. 1 being carbohydrates, the second being dietary fat. The 3rd fuel source that we can rely on, and this is why I love fasting from time to time when neither of those are available. The 3rd fuel source is body fat. So body fat is a fuel source guys. And I tell clients all the time who hire me wanting to take body fat off and put on lean muscle tissue. Once we get to about 6 weeks in of me getting their blood sugar under control, I say, okay.

Now we're ready to start practicing some intermittent fasting so that I can teach you that it's not scary to go without breakfast or to go without a dinner here and there or whatever it is that they're willing to try Because you have fat on your body, that your body is just desiring to burn off. It can't wait. But the reason that it can't burn it off, and that it sits there on your butt, on your arms, on your thighs, on your tummy, wherever you carry it, the reason it keeps sitting there is because you keep shoving carbohydrates and dietary fat into your mouth. And so it never goes down to the body fat because our body will not use or burn that fat unless the other 2 sources are not available for a period of time. And then last but certainly not least, 1 of my favorite topics is the 4th source of fuel. Most people would be guessing, oh, is she gonna say protein? No. We can't store protein. Protein isn't a fuel source.

It gives us energy, of course, but you can't store it. So it's not a source of fuel. If you eat it in excess, it can in certain circumstances by demand driven basis only be converted to glucose through a process of gluconeogenesis. But the 4th fuel source is something called ketones. And this is where the term the ketogenic diet comes from. And ketones are created by our body when we get into a fat burning state, and they are created to provide a source of fuel for our brain that is alternative to carbohydrate. So our brain is either running on glucose, which are carbs, or ketones, which are their own substrate for cognitive function. And, you know, 1 of the things that I love educating people about because most people don't realize this, they think keto is a fad and a trend and it's just gonna be the next fly by night thing that people do.

But the reality is for all of you listening, you were born in ketosis. Babies are in ketosis when they're born. So it is actually our natural metabolic state, and our body wants to be in it on occasion. I'm not saying people have to be keto all the time. I'm certainly not. I go back and forth. But I strategically now use carbs around my menstrual cycle, around really intense lifting section sessions or long intense workouts. When I feel like I've just been low carb for too long and I'm noticing myself all of a sudden having these weird cravings or all of a sudden notice myself needing more calories that I can't seem to break.

I'm like, wait. Why am I so hungry? And then it's like, oh, I haven't done a carb up in a while. And hormonally, my body's asking for them. So I will, for 1 day, dramatically increase my carbs, dramatically decrease my fat, and that carb up will all of a sudden bring everything back into balance. And my hormones will feel really good, so I don't have this hunger. So I know I covered a lot there, David. I'm happy to go down any rabbit hole with all of those different angles.

We can

talk leptin and ghrelin and all of the things, but, hopefully, there's stuff in there that you wanna come back to because I just I love this stuff so much.

Yeah. Clearly, you're very passionate about it, which is which is great, and that's why I wanted to have you on the show because this this point can't be hammered home enough. You mentioned a few things that give me the impression that obviously you're not a, you know, an evangelist for any 1 modality of nutrition. Like, you're not you're not dogmatic. If it if it works, great. But, ultimately, what we're you're trying to do is ensure that you stabilize blood sugars so that you can tap into our genetic ability to provide energy to the system. And I love the fact that, you're coming at it from, you know, your you didn't get a science background, but you went and sought it out. So your passion for it and your understanding of it is is at a level that can get people to a point where they can actually become healthy again, which is really cool.

And so when it comes to the the, I guess, the application of this type of diet, what are some of the things that you typically see in terms of resistance and roadblocks? Because we said at the beginning, it's a story. Right? You have all these stories that you create and it they're largely created by either the government marketing or companies marketing towards you. Towards you. What do you typically have to work on in terms of roadblocks and and and pushbacks from from folks that are like, I don't know. Aren't I gonna run out of energy? I don't know. Isn't this gonna be bad for my heart? What do you do to to to knock those, objections down?

Yeah. That's a great question because I do feel like some days, and I just said this to a client earlier this morning. I said, I sometimes feel like I spend the majority of my time deprogramming people from everything they thought they knew about nutrition. And the reality is the programming that that so many of us have comes from commercials, advertisements, broscience, all sorts of things that really aren't valuable, real scientific information, or is based on bad science because of how much our country was duped for decades decades decades about the fat free lifestyle and how fat was fat and fat was demonized. So the short answer to your question, Dave, is I really, really work on education. So I say, okay. Tell me your concerns about eating this way. Tell me what's happened for you in the past when you've tried eating this way.

Because that's sometimes the resistance is, yeah, I tried keto. It doesn't work for me. I'm like, okay. Great. Why? Traumatic brain injury and wants to recover from that, which I've had clients with that in the past. Unless the client, of course, has something like epilepsy or concussion syndrome or Alzheimer's or is worried about Alzheimer's or dementia. I don't care if they're strict keto. I'm not telling people they have to be strict keto.

I'm working on depending on what their goals are. And like I said, most people's goals are to lose body fat and getting lean muscle tissue who IRB. Some of it's just they want more energy. I'm working on saying, okay. So what I would like you to consider is to follow this meal plan I'm gonna create for you where your carbohydrate consumption is dramatically reduced. You're still eating them. But I want you to start retraining your brain to see carbs as things like vegetables, fruits, the occasional sweet potato in a small dose at the end of the meal. But we have to stop thinking of carbs as all sorts of bread, all sorts of pasta, cookies, nachos, pizza, ice cream, donuts, cake, you name it.

Because that's where I think people give either the keto term or the low carb term a bad rap is they think, well, it means I can't have anything fun or I can't have anything fun. And I've

said, no. No. No.

That's not my goal here. I'll eat a doughnut on occasion too. I'm not and I'm I talk about it when I do. But I'm also not trying to lose £50 or £60 or even. So I tell people it we have to contextualize where you're at and where you wanna be, and I'm just gonna help you understand how to get there. So in your fat cells, in your adipose tissue, especially if you have excess adipose tissue on your body, that's your fat cells, you have something called triglycerides. And everyone's heard of triglycerides because when you get your blood work done, triglycerides is the number 1 1 of the numbers that you get on your lipid panel. I look at that number first.

That's the first thing I wanna see in terms of that. I don't care as much about cholesterol for lots of reasons I could get into. But triglycerides matter to me because they're assigned to me of how metabolically healthy you are because they're very indicative of, is your body made up of more fat or more muscle? So I typically have triglycerides anywhere in the forties or fifties. I'm lean. I'm healthy. I have a good triglyceride number. I've worked with clients who have triglycerides well into the 200 something, if not higher. And so I were I mean, I think of 1 particular client who was a female who had triglycerides in the 2/25 range.

We got her down close to a 100, if not under a 100. I reversed her PCOS, and she got pregnant for the first time after trying for years to get pregnant with her husband. And that was so rewarding for me because it literally can change your life when you start to get and understand this stuff. So to come back to your question, Dave, just in terms of, like, the resistance that people experience, it's a little bit of, I'd say, a combination of education, asking them to trust me for a very short period of time with my meal plans, and then getting them to feel different where all of a sudden they're like, okay, Kristen. There might be something to this because now I really I'm starting to feel the benefits, and that's pretty cool.

Mhmm. Okay. So really that that experience is everything because as soon as people start seeing the difference and I'm assuming that within the 1st week, people are starting to see some some changes. Maybe. If not if not just they feel better. They may not see a change on the scale, but, hey. That's weird. I feel good.

Yeah. Well and this goes back to

what you were sharing about getting ready for the Ironman. Most people so I want people to think about the term carbohydrate.

Mhmm.

Carbohydrate is carbon, the molecule carbon mixed with molecules of water. Hydrate. Carbohydrate. That's all it is. We take chains of carbon and we mix them to a bunch of chains of H20. Okay? So guess what happens when we dramatically reduce our carbohydrates? That's why people start feeling so good in the 1st week with me. I I don't let them eat more than 26 carbohydrates, 25 carbohydrates the 1st week each day. That's how much they're getting each day.

And they're like, wait. What? I still have all these calories and all these foods to eat? I said, yes. It's just really low carb, and it's all real food. And they can't believe how much water weight they lose so fast. And I said, well, sure. When you're puffed up with carbohydrates, you retain massive amounts of water. It's why when you transition to a ketogenic or low carb diet, drinking water and specifically water with electrolytes is so so important. We have to replenish those electrolytes so that we're not flushing out all of our minerals.

And when people talk about, oh, I don't wanna try keto because I get the keto flu. You got the keto flu because you weren't hydrated and you didn't have electrolytes. I assure you, if you hire me and I take you through it, you're not having the keto flu. I haven't had a single client ever tell me that that's what they've experienced even though I dramatically reduced their carbohydrates because of how much water I have them drink and why I require them to put in their water to make sure that they're, you know, doing everything right.

I love it. That brings up a whole other rabbit hole about salt consumption that we won't get into on this conversation, but a lot of people have some resistance, me included, because I come from a family of men whose hearts explode. So the idea that you would have to consume salt was, like, verboten at my house. We didn't even have salt on the table. I couldn't even go grab the salt without a dirty look. But the the food didn't food didn't taste good. I was

like, man, it's just salt.

Then I move out, and I'm like, I'm I'm salt and everything. And the funny thing is when I was getting ready for the Ironman, I have a friend of mine who's a analytical chemist, and he volunteered to analyze my pay for a month. I was like, sweet. So I gave him a whole bunch of yeah. I I gave him a whole bunch of pee filled jars. And, he came back. He's like, Dave, I got I got some questions. He's like, something's weird with your potassium.

Do you over consume? Do you have heart do you have kidney problems? No. It's like, it doesn't make sense. You're excreting potassium at a phenomenal rate, man. He's like, I've never seen this. He's like, I'm not a doctor. He's gonna I'm gonna show it to some doctors. And they're like, yeah. That doesn't seem right.

But my kidney function is fine. Everything's fine. It's just this little bit of information completely changed how I approached training because I would always bonk and crash after about 3 months of intense training. Didn't know why I'd have to recover. It would take weeks. Mhmm. Couldn't put my finger on it. As soon as I added potassium, which is an electrolyte, into my diet on the regular, I have yet to have that.

It's been 4 years since I've been doing that, which

Amazing.

Yeah. We often don't think, maybe you just don't have enough salt, man. And all this water that you're drinking, you're gonna be excreting a lot of that electrolyte out in your urine, but salt's a bad thing. Right? So therefore, you think, I'm not gonna add any. So it's there's so many different rabbit holes you can start going down because once you open 1 door, now you've got, like, 4 more to open up.

It's true. And the thing that you just raised about the electrolytes and the salt, it's like people don't realize how important these electrolytes are. And when I say electrolytes, when we're talking about that, you guys, what what another name for that would be the macrominerals. And the easiest way to remember what are our electrolytes is I call them the eons. Magnesium, calcium, potassium, sodium. They're an easy way to think of it that way. But we have to have those for 100 of different enzymatic reactions that are happening in our body, like, literally every second. So if you feel like garbage and you're like, gosh, this kinda was resonating with me in terms of what they're saying, consider adding my absolute favorite as Redmond's Relight, and I'm very loyal to that company and that brand because I absolutely love those electrolytes.

They're sweetened only with stevia, and they have a really good ratio of the calcium to sodium to potassium to magnesium in there. So I really, really like that 1. And you will notice a difference. I have clients who tell me I can't get over how much better those make me feel because they were so mineral deficient. And so it's it's a really important thing when you're especially when you're going low carb to make sure you're really focusing on your minerals. So just 1 more thing in terms of what you mentioned with that potassium. You know, I think that it's really also important for people to just pause with themselves however many times a day they wanna do it, whether it's once or a bunch of times. But, like, how do I actually feel? Like, fortunately, you kinda got curious with your bunk thing, couldn't understand it, and then connected it finally after someone gave you a tip to this potassium.

But our bodies are sending us signals all of the time about stuff that's haywire. So I tell people they may not know this, but if you trend towards depression, if you have sometimes the fear of impending doom, if you have feelings of insecurity, if your worry or apprehension are nervous, these are signs of vitamin deficiencies, you guys. You may just need vitamins, and all of a sudden you feel like a new human. So that's why I love nutritional therapy because it's so helpful in getting at the root of what the missing deficient nutrient is for helping us actually thrive.

I love it. Yeah. There's there's so many different ways that you can attack your own health. And a lot of times in terms of electrolyte balance, there's no cheaper way to improve. Salts are incredibly cheap. So definitely something that I'd love to explore, which I haven't explored yet in the podcast. So a topic of note for for future,

future episodes. Because if there there are some podcasts I've listened to and I educate clients about this all the time, just 1 moment plug on this. The smartest doctors around this topic know that if you have a patient that presents with high blood pressure, you actually are supposed to give them more salt, not less. And that is such a crazy idea for most people to hear, because we've been told the dash diet, low salt, if you have high blood pressure, that's actually wrong. It's bad advice. And so

I agree. There's no

it's yeah. It's a whole topic for a conversation.

Yeah. Absolutely. Where I wanted to shift, the conversation is to 1 of my favorite topics when I'm talking to folks is muscle and its role in longevity. Clearly, you're a professional bodybuilder. You understand the importance of muscle and you know how to pack it on. So in the context of what we're talking about here, you know, deep health, nutrition, now we're adding in muscle mass and and strength. Why is that now so important for an individual to get a grip of so that they can have a a longer healthier life?

Oh, so many reasons. I just love the topic of strength training and and building muscle, and I could talk about tongue blue in the face. So

Let's let's go. Let's go.

What I call yeah. I'll give you what I call, god, do I say my top 3, my top 5? I'll just start listing them and we'll count how many it does. So number 1, we have a tremendous amount of research that's come out that shows us that when we build lean tissue, our muscle tissue actually produces something called myokines, which are excellent for our brain health. So our cognitive function, we now know, is improved by more muscle on your body. So that would be 1 as it helps your brain. Number 2, obviously, there's the obvious consequence of you're gonna improve your metabolic health because you're gonna lose body fat and increase lean muscle tissue if you strength train. So there's this whole metabolic component. Building lean tissue makes you on the on the scale of insulin sensitive being way over here on the left and type 2 diabetic being way over here on the right.

It's gonna make you closer and closer and closer and more insulin sensitive. So we wanna become more insulin sensitive. We don't wanna be insulin resistance resistant. And insulin resistance is a spectrum from insulin sensitive all the way to type 2 diabetes. So it's gonna help your metabolic health. Number 3, Having additional muscle on your body is gonna allow you to age well because it also improves your bone density. Strength training is gonna make us, especially women, for you ladies who are listening. Like, you don't wanna be the woman in your seventies who falls and breaks a hip so that you now need help driving.

You need help getting from a to b. So that's just another issue is it's gonna allow you to live longer. I I did a story a couple weeks ago on my Instagram when I was packing my car to go home for a family weekend. And I said, you know, I want you to see this stainless steel Yeti cooler that is full that I just personally lifted up to the truck myself, the function above your body and the fact that I can do so many things on my own and not have to worry about relying on a walker or anything as I age is also like a really important component. I would say another, whether this is I think we're on number 4. Another component just from a physical standpoint of it is that it's also building muscle has shown to improve our moods. So 1 of the things I get my clients using, if they're willing to, is taking creatine, especially if they're in their forties, fifties, or sixties. There's a lot of research that's been done about creatine.

Creatine has kind of made a comeback in the last year or 2, I'd say. I tell everyone who will listen to me about it. But it's because I did a creatine experiment in May of 2021. I'd never taken it in my whole life. I'd become a natural professional bodybuilder not using creatine because I was scared of it thinking

Really?

Oh, yeah. I thought it was like steroids. I didn't know. I've

heard that too. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

A lot

of people have that fear around creatine. So here I become a natural professional bodybuilder without it. And when I did this experiment in 2021, I did a DXA before and a DXA in August, changing nothing else other than creatine, and I lost 2% body fat and put on £3 of lean muscle tissue between May August.

Wow.

Just adding creatine. And so that also improves your mood and improves your strength. What creatine does, if your listeners are interested in this, is it rephosphorylates ADP into ATP. So it adds a phosphate group to makes more energy in our body. And it it in very simple terms, if you were gonna fail on 9 reps of a bicep curl, using that as an example, you now can gut out rep 10 and rep 11 and maybe even rep 12 because you've started taking creatine. So it gives you what I always say is an extra gear in the gym, and that allows you to build more lean tissue, which also allows you to take up body fat. So those are just some of my favorites. I'm sure if we talk longer, I'll I'll think of more, but it's really the brain health, the metabolic health, and then, of course, there's just the physical you look better.

People admire, respect, and are attracted to muscles. We are humans, animals who are wired to be survival of the fittest. So we see someone with muscle and we're like, that person could save me if we were at war. And so we actually are more attracted to that type of person, and we actually see them as a human having more discipline. So there's research that shows if you're in sales and you're more fit, you're likely to be a better salesperson. So this is getting back to something you said in the very beginning of the podcast, Dave, that I wanted to touch on. I tell my clients all the time, you've got a big job. I don't care what it is that you do professionally.

You've got a big job. And if you have to sell, you need people to take you seriously, And we make up snap judgments about people within the first 7 seconds of meeting

them. 100%.

Right, wrong,

or otherwise.

So they've done studies that say attractive people are way better at sales. And by the way, guys, if we're way better at sales, we're making more money. We're doing you know, it's all related. So that's just 1 extra reason. You know?

Look good, feel good, do good. Exactly. It's my mantra, man. I've learned that

funny. It's on my website. I said the exact same thing.

Oh, really? Oh, okay.

I had it

on my website. No. No. Actually but I did I learned it when I was, I was teaching at a private school here in Montreal. So shout out to Loyola High School. They're an all boys or they were an

all boys Catholic school. And probably because the

Loyola name? Yes. You

got it.

College, Jesuit. Oh, there we go. Okay. Alright. Cool. So we're tracking. We're tracking. And that was 1 of the mantras that really stuck with me because they didn't have a uniform per se, but they had a dress code.

So you had to wear a suit and tie, but they wanted you always showing up sharp and and and showing your expression through how you look. So your hair to be, like, combed and and and, you know, you had to present yourself properly, and it was because it looked good, feel good, do good. And then they tied in also the religious aspect to it. But I like that as a as a mantra, especially for a young man growing up. This is important. You know? And so a lot of the a lot of the students do were very physically fit because we had a very good sports program, and that just sets you up, in my opinion, for success at a foundational level. Because like you said, when you when you come into a room and if you're it's your first impression with people, you're going to command respect. And that's just how we are as a species.

Right. And I'm totally I'm all in on on that whole idea that especially because I work with a lot of military members, a lot of them have gained a lot of weight. And when I was in, that always frustrated me because for me, if my leaders are out of shape, it's sending the message that they're not taking their fitness seriously, and our job is extremely physically demanding. So, therefore, I don't know if I can trust you on the battlefield. And that's kind of the the mentality for a lot of military folks, but you take that to the civilian world. You've still got similarities there. You've still got a big job, like you said, and you still gotta perform, and people need to trust you. Yes.

And I'm going to trust a lawyer. I'm gonna trust a doctor a lot more that's physically fit, because I know you have a discipline that's different than everybody else's that I'm seeing. You're able to struggle in the morning, like, do the extra few reps. Yeah. It hurts. It burns. It sucks. I don't particularly like having my arms burn, but I do it anyways.

Like, this morning my arms were on fire. Yes.

And I'm like, nah.

But then afterwards, I'm like, okay. Yeah. You know what? That was good. That was good. I feel good. I got a good pump. My vein's popping a little bit. I like that, and then I get the indoor.

But Yeah. What you're saying here is it it all makes sense. And I like the idea that, you know, muscle is important for longevity. And in in terms of strength and especially for women, I'd like you to to kind of reiterate. If a woman, especially, starts going to the gym and starts resistance training, Have you ever seen a woman almost overnight get bulky?

No. Thank you for saying that. No. Oh, here's the thing, ladies. You can't get bulky lifting unless you are eating 5 or 6000 calories a day and probably also taking steroids. Sorry.

Thank you.

Happen. The number of women who hire me, and they're like, okay. But I wanna get toned. I don't wanna get bulky. I'm like, do you know how heavy of weights I lift? Do you think I'm bulky? Yes. I'm fit, and I'm muscular. And there's some women that would say, okay. I don't wanna be as muscular as she is, but I'm not bulky because I would have to be eating a tremendous amount of food in order to get that way and literally likely probably take steroids as well.

So you're right. And and there are so many physiological benefits from strength training, especially for women to do, like, the list of things I've already went through. It is, in my opinion, now we're in 2024. It is the number 1 most important thing you can do for your metabolic health in terms of your exercise. So I tell every client

Wow.

I can get you strength training twice a week for, like, half an hour really intensely. And I go into what I mean by that with them. And walking at least 10, 000 steps a day to start, I'm happy. Because I have clients who aren't doing that, of course. So if I can get them doing that, then we can fill in if they wanna add in some other cardio or other things. But I'm gonna give you the most bang for your buck metabolically and for longevity if I can put some muscle on your body. The thing we didn't talk about also, Dave, with respect to muscle is it is a sink for carbohydrates. So where we store glucose, where we store carbs in our body, first, they go to our liver.

K. And that's a very small storage capacity for carbs. They can only store about 400 calories of carbohydrate. Once the liver is full of carbs, then it has to be stored in our muscle tissue. So I always say I'm walking around with a 20 gallon storage tank for carbs where most people are walking around with 5. I have a higher carb threshold than someone who has a lot of body fat on their body without a lot of muscle tissue. I can eat more carbs without putting fat on my body because I have a huge storage tank for them. And then once our liver is full and once our skeletal muscle is full, then all of those excess carbohydrates we're using and not burning, those go into our adipose tissue in the form of triglycerides.

And so a triglyceride, going back to what I was sharing about that before, is 3 fatty acids. 3 tri, tri like triangle, triangle means 3. 3 fatty acids tied to a molecule of glycerol. This is the glucose. So it's a sugar backbone on 3 fatty acids. It's how you make a triglyceride. So what would be the fastest way to get more triglycerides in our body and gain body fat? Well, easy. You would eat sugar or carbs and fat together.

And what has sugar and carbs together? Or sugar and fat together? Ice cream.

Oreo cookies. Oreo cookies,

pizza, nachos, brownies, all the stuff we love, guys. That is the fast train to weight gain. I say it all the time. But the mechanism of why, like, the mechanism of action there is because you're literally putting in the 2 substrates together that are required to make a triglyceride on your body. That is how you get fat. Adipose tissue is filled with triglycerides. And triglycerides, when they're high, they are a very good correlative predictor of cardiovascular risk. So we don't want them high.

That is the number you gotta worry about and ask your doctor about. And western medicine will tell you you're good if your triglycerides are under 150. I say that's way too high. Mhmm. Functional medicine and integrative. And what I would recommend they probably that they probably have a pretty decent body composition where they have more muscle, less fat than they did when they hired me.

Awesome. Okay. That's a really good snapshot. I know we're tight for time, so I wanna finish up with 2 final questions. Perfect. The first 1, if you could get somebody that's listening to this, author asses into the gym and doing some resistance work, What would be your 1st day in the gym style workout so that they can, they can start? And then lastly, where can folks find you? So let's start with the workout.

Perfect. So workout would be get yourself to the gym, and I want you to take yourself through 30 minutes of activity using machines, because that's just gonna be easier for them. Use machines if you can for about 30 minutes, and we're gonna do a full body workout. So I want you to do things like get on the leg press machine and do that for as much as you can push out. Challenge yourself a little bit to make it pretty heavy, and do that until your legs fatigue and you can't push them anymore. I'd also love for them to do something like a lat pull down. I call that the upper body leg press. You get so much muscular burn in that exercise.

And so that exercise machine, you guys, you'd likely sit down in it at most gyms, and you kinda pull the weight down over the front of you. I'd like them to do that. They could add on some, you know, holding some free weights in their hands and just walking back and forth down the gym and doing squats.

Yeah. That was their favorite.

Right? They're metabolic. I know people are gonna hate me when I say this, but I would love for you guys to do chin ups and dips. Yeah. To use the assistance, I did them this morning. I started my workout with chin ups and dips, and I was, like, eye rolling it myself to do it, but they're so so valuable. And chin ups can give you a lot of lean tissue. So those are a few. And then if you wanna add something in like a shoulder press, that'll get you some shoulder work.

I think that's another good exercise to do. But my point in giving you some of these exercises is you can go through your whole workout in a half an hour and do 1 set of everything to total failure. So I recommend 1 set to failure, and that's how I've trained for years, and that's what a lot of the science tells us. I I really don't want people to feel like they have to go to the gym for 2 hours to get a strength workout, and it's just you don't need that. It's a half an hour if you go really hard. Is that helpful?

Absolutely. Yeah. That that whole concept of you're throwing in intensity, but you're doing it smart. You're Yes. Training smarter, not harder. You don't need to do 4 sets at max capacity and then be sore for 3 weeks. That doesn't make any sense. You're gonna be sore after a workout no matter what.

But let's just make sure that you can bounce back and and actually get your next workout out maybe a few days later. I I love that. That's great. So, last question is you've dropped a ton of awesome information here. I'm sure you've got loads more. How can folks start following you and listening to your podcast or or your presentations and and get a grip of, you know, more about what you're talking about.

Yeah. Thank you so much. So my website is the name of my business, which is energetically efficient. All of my social media is linked on my website, but I'm probably the most active on Instagram, which my handle is m n golden girl, although that may be changing in the future. Trying to get my actual name back if I can steal it from someone. So energetically efficient is the website. I'm in Golden Girl on Instagram. I'm on LinkedIn.

I'm also active there. And energetically efficient does have a YouTube channel. So the YouTube channel and I'm working on adding more and more content to that all the time so I can give as much free value to people. So check out those resources, and I hope that we can connect in the future. Dave, this was so much fun.

Yeah. Absolutely. This is just part of crafting a new life for myself, and, eternally grateful to, folks like yourself and, Cynthia for allowing me to have the opportunity to talk to folks like you about really cool topics that I'm super interested in and that the, military community is definitely starting to get a grip of and and starting to apply on their end so that they can be healthier, fitter, and harder to kill human beings. So

Awesome.

So, Kristen, much appreciated for your time. And, folks, we'll be putting all the links in the show notes and description. And don't forget, train hard, fight easy. See you on the next 1. Peace.

Thank you.