201: Joey Munoz: The Truth About Nutrition, Protein, Weight Loss & Muscle

What if the biggest mistake you're making with your health isn't what you're eating - but the way you're thinking about nutrition in the first place? In this episode, I'm joined by Dr. Joey Munoz, a PhD in Nutrition Science and an evidence-based nutrition and fitness educator. We have a fascinating conversation about why so many traditional approaches to dieting fail, what actually makes a healthy diet sustainablem, and how we can thing about nutrition in a way that supports long-term health rather than short-term results. Dr. Joey also shares his own experience with body image and dieting, and how that journey ultimately led him to pursue advanced degrees in nutrition science and take a more evidence-based approach to health and fitness. We get into some of the biggest questions I hear all the time: How much protein do we really need? Does meal timing matter? What role do fiber and whole foods play? Should we be worried about carbohydrates, dietary fat, or ultra-processed foods? And what actually helps us build muscle, manage hunger, and improve metabolic health? In this episode, we learn: Why traditional dieting often leads to cycles of restriction and weight regain-and what to do instead How protein, fiber, whole foods, and muscle mass influence body composition and overall health What the research really tells us about carbohydrates, dietart fat, and ultra-processed foods Whether meal timing, resistant starch, and the gut microbiome deserve a place in your nutrition strategy Which nutrition habits and supplements are actually worth paying attention to-and which may be overhyped How to build a sustainable approach to nutrition without obsessing over having the "perfect" diet. There's a lot of nutrition advice out there, but understanding the science can help you separate what actually matters from what's simply trending. Listen in to learn how to stop chasing the perfect diet and start building a healthier, more sustainable approach to nutrition that can serve you for the long term. Learn more about Dr. Shah: Website: drshah.com https://drshah.com Clinic: next-health.com https://next-health.com Instagram: @darshanshahmd and @extend_podcast Learn more about Dr. Joey Munoz: Website: strongstandard.com https://strongstandard.com/ Instagram: @dr.joeymunoz Thank You to Our Sponsor: Momentous: Head to livemomentous.com https://livemomentous.com and use code DRSHAH for up to 35% off your first order!

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Welcome to Extend with me, Dr. Darshan Shah, a podcast dedicated to cutting-edge science, research, tools, and protocols designed to help you extend your health span. Having become one of the youngest doctors in the country at the age of 21, and trained and board certified at the Mayo Clinic, I've accumulated three decades of practice as a board-certified surgeon and longevity expert. Over that time, I've discovered that a mere 20% of health knowledge yields 80% of the results when it comes to your health span. We're living in a new era where we are creating a new healthcare system, no longer focused on disease management, but achieving optimal health and vitality. Join me as I interview world-renowned experts, offering you a step-by-step guide to proactively avoid disease, and most importantly, extend your health span.

• 0:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Welcome to Extend. Today, we're going to dive deep into the science of nutrition, body composition, and mindset with a remarkable expert, Dr. Joey Munoz. Dr. Munoz holds a PhD in nutritional science and a master's degree. He's completed a postdoctoral fellowship focusing on hardcore sports nutrition, metabolism, and pre-bedtime feeding. Working alongside industry pioneers like Dr. Lane Norton, Dr. Munoz has spent over a decade as a personal trainer, researcher, online coach, and he's translating complex metabolic science into practical, life-changing habits. In this episode, Dr. Munoz opens up about his personal journey, growing up as a first-generation Cuban-American battling childhood obesity,

• 1:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  overcoming early struggles with diet culture, and turning his passion for biochemistry and metabolism into a mission to help others. We discuss why fitness is the ultimate conduit for self-improvement, discipline, and success in everyday life. You're going to love this conversation, so let's jump right in.

• 1:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Dr. Joey, this is awesome. I've been following you on social forever. You're actually one of the first people I was following on social media to get like good information. Like, there's such a dichotomy on social on where good information comes from and where like really bad information comes from. So I really appreciate the work you're putting out there, and it's just an honor to have you on. Thanks for joining me.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  Well, thank you, Darshan. It's an honor to be here. It's always funny to hear stories like that. I think you probably experienced this too as somebody who creates content. You don't experience yourself the way people experience you.

• 2:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 2:23Speaker 01

  So hearing that, it just reinforces what I'm doing, so thank you.

• 2:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I get that a lot for the podcast when people come up to me like, I listen to your podcast all the time. I'm like, oh, good.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Like, then I feel like a little bit like, almost like embarrassed, like, I wonder, what are you hearing in the podcast? You know, but it sounds like, you know, people love good information from people that are actually credentialed and have a deeper understanding of the science like you do. Yeah, so you're a PhD in nutrition. Tell us a little bit about your journey, because, you know, I resonate and I empathize with kind of like where you came from, because it's a very similar thing for me.

• 3:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, very similar. You know, I was in a really bad place in my life and decided to get healthy. And this is as a doctor. I always say like, you know, as a physician, I did not have the tools to get healthy until I went out and learned them from people like yourself. So I would love to hear a little bit about your story and kind of how you ended up here.

• 3:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, so my story, I began, I was pretty young. So I am a first-generation Cuban-American, first in my family born in the US, so immigrant parents. And I preface that because I've always grown up with fitness being part of my life. So I grew up in the gym. My mom always cared about exercise. My dad was always doing push-ups at home. I always played sports, but...

• 3:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Part of the Cuban culture, right?

• 3:42Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 3:43Dr. Darshan Shah?

  To be fit and be outside, and yeah, it's a big deal.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  Well, if you live in Cuba, you don't really have much of an option. But I say that because one of the ways that my mom specifically showed love was through food. And so coming from a third-world country where food is scarce and you don't have like ample amounts of food available, coming to the US and having that, I was sad food. I was happy food, celebration food, right? And also not having much knowledge around nutrition and knowing what's harmful and what's not. I was pretty overweight by the time I was around 11 years old.

• 4:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  11 years old.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, so there's one instance in my story that always, I remember as like the beginning of my whole experience with dieting and fitness and all this stuff. And it was right around 11 or 12. We were at the doctor's office, and I think I was just going in for standard measurements, looking at my weight, stuff like that. And I remember the doctor whispering to my mom, saying that I was about 2% body fat away from being obese and that I had to lose weight. And so from then on, my mom just started putting me on different diets. And she didn't, she didn't mean any intentional malice, but it was, you know, I remember for years, my dinner was just like a rotisserie chicken and nothing else because carbs made you fat. And exercise was used as a reward mechanism for anything I wanted.

• 5:02Speaker 01

  And so that began my journey of having like stress and anxiety around food, and this, and then stress and anxiety with body image as well, because part of Hispanic culture is, for better or for worse, we talk a lot about people's bodies.

• 5:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  So it's either you're too skinny, you're too fat, you're too this, you're too that. And so I always had that narrative in the back of my mind. Thankfully, I also have a fairly addictive personality. And I bring that up because...

• 5:30Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It can serve you well sometimes.

• 5:31Speaker 01

  Exactly. So going on diets and this and that, naturally, I started going online and reading about stuff and watching videos on YouTube and consuming all the information under the sun around nutrition and fitness. And in many ways, it was helpful because I learned a lot, but in many ways, it was harmful because it just contributed to like the whole diet culture and hopping from one diet to the next. And most of my teenage years and early adulthood, like this went into my early twenties too, I just really struggled with having a normal, healthy relationship with food in my body. If I would go to a family party, I would try to avoid food. And then inevitably, I wouldn't avoid it. So I would eat it, and then I would feel bad the next day and punish myself with exercise and all that. And anyways, that's some of the, those are some of the challenges that I experienced.

• 6:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  But fitness, health in general has been such a catalyst for all of the positive things that have happened in my life as well. So I mentioned the addictive personality. As a byproduct of learning about this stuff, I decided I wanted to pursue this as a career. So that was a positive that came out of it. I remember during my undergraduate, and this is a segue, but I wanted to do music professionally. I played the guitar and the saxophone.

• 6:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I played sax, too.

• 6:40Speaker 01

  Yeah?

• 6:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. Yes.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:43Dr. Darshan Shah?

  But I was not good at it, so I...

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Okay, okay. So I had a conversation with my mom my freshman year of college, freshman or sophomore year, and I told her I wanted to do music professionally. And the conversation, essentially, she was like, you could do that as a hobby, you're going to be broke. Do something else. And I was like, well, nutrition, which also is not the most lucrative. But I went down that route, and the rest is kind of history. Funny enough, I also struggled a ton with school growing up. I wasn't a good student. I think a lot of my challenges in school stemmed from instability at home, where my dad was in and out of my life, and I just acted out and performed poorly in school as a byproduct of that. And I bring that up because even through college, I was a horrible student.

• 7:28Speaker 01

  I only became a quote-unquote "good student" when I started taking courses that I was actually interested in. So funny enough, my freshman and sophomore year of college, which are just general courses, my academic standing was not good. We'll leave it at that. And then when I started taking like the advanced organic chemistry classes and metabolism classes and biochem, I just acing everything because I was naturally interested in those topics.

• 7:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 7:51Speaker 01

  And so from there, decided to pursue my master's degree. After my master's degree, decided to pursue my PhD. Interestingly, I didn't really know what a PhD or research really was. I've always had an entrepreneurial spirit, and I've always also really liked cooking. I have a lot of hobbies. And so I initially wanted to pursue a PhD in food science and develop a high-protein food product, and then build a business around that. Little did I know that when you do a PhD, you do whatever sort of research your professor does.

• 8:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 8:22Speaker 01

  And the food scientists at my university studied the chemical structure of allergens in tree nuts, so almonds, peanuts, and that was just not interesting to me.

• 8:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. I mean, there was this huge, you know, nut allergy debate going on

• 8:38Speaker 01

  Yes, of course.

• 8:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  for many years. So I could see why they would go into that, but you're right. Like, I mean, there's very little like practical application of that outside of like avoiding nut allergy, right?

• 8:48Speaker 01

  Exactly. And so I decided to go down the nutrition route because, one, I've always really enjoyed nutrition as a science. The professor who I ended up working with as my mentor was somebody who I really admired, and I wanted the opportunity to work with him. And so my PhD was specifically, we did a number of studies on the disease preventative effects of specific foods, so more in the functional food space. We looked at how plums, dried plum specifically, prunes can help with the slowing of the progression of osteoporosis, specifically in post-menopausal women. We've done some work on how bean consumption can help slow down the progression of cardiovascular disease.

• 9:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Amazing, right.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  We did some work on bitter melon extract and blood sugar regulation in pre-diabetics. So that was kind of the clinical work that I was doing, which I always found fascinating. But I have just always been incredibly passionate about fitness and body composition itself.

• 9:40Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  Prior to my PhD, I worked as a personal trainer during my master's degree. So I knew I wanted to get back to that to some capacity. And so finishing my PhD, that was right around COVID, beginning of 2021. Jobs in academia were difficult to come by because research was, you know, like, can you do clinical work or not because of COVID, who knows how long? So I did a short postdoctoral fellowship with the gentleman who I was talking to you about before, Dr. Michael Armsby.

• 10:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  And his lab was just hardcore sports nutrition. So pre bedtime feeding, protein, how does that impact body composition? How does it impact metabolism? All the stuff that I've always really been passionate about. And then after finishing that, this is a long winded story, I know.

• 10:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I love it, yeah.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  I've always been big on mentorship. Even when I decided to go down the route of studying nutrition, it was less about nutrition. It was more about working with the person I wanted to work with. And I bring that up because one of the traits that I have, personality traits, that have, that has gotten me to where I am today is that I've always just found the person that I want to be like or learn from and just asked for an opportunity, even if I felt like I wasn't deserving of the opportunity. So Dr. Lane Norton is somebody who is a really reputable name in our space. He has a PhD in nutritional sciences and he was probably the pioneer of like evidence-based nutrition online. Before social media was really a thing, he was posting on online blogs, on bodybuilding forums, and I would follow all that stuff.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  So finishing up my postdoc, I was listening to one of his podcasts. This is why I'm also passionate about podcasting. And if anybody knows Dr. Lane Norton, he's very inspirational. He's very energetic. And the whole podcast was around like pursuing your dreams and asking for opportunities. It's like, I'm going to reach out to this guy.

• 11:23Speaker 01

  And I sent him an email and I'm like, listen, we've never met. I've been following you for a long time. I don't know what you do and I don't know how you got to where you got to. But I know we have the same educational background and I admire you and I want to be in the same position you're in. Is there any way I can be involved with what you're doing?

• 11:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  And he was gracious enough to give me an opportunity to work with him and his team, doing the whole online coaching thing.

• 11:44Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 11:45Speaker 01

  That was right around the end of 2021, early 2022, around there. And he has a huge social media following. That's where I started learning how to do social media and how to work with people online. Because I also had the perspective of like, if you're helping people with exercise and nutrition, it has to be in person.

• 12:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 12:01Speaker 01

  Not if you have the right sort of frameworks and structure online. So that's, that's where I got my foot in the door. And the rest is kind of history. I've been doing this as a practitioner now for the past five years on the online space, over a decade with personal training. I mentioned that fitness and health has been a huge catalyst to a lot of the success that I've had in my life because I think that a lot of the lessons that are necessary to succeed, things like discipline, consistency, delayed gratification are skills that I learned through fitness. And I've also seen going from a place where I never felt comfortable with my body and relatively unhealthy as a young kid, to how powerful it is to be in good shape and feel good, right?

• 12:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  And I bring that up because my whole purpose, what I tell people that I'm trying to help them do is not really get in better shape for the sake of being in better shape and looking better. It's certainly a plus. And I think most people start their health and fitness journey being externally motivated, wanting approval, wanting to look a little bit better. And that's fine. I think it's the gateway. But the real benefit, I think, I'm a big believer that fitness is a conduit for self-improvement and a conduit to improve every, every area of your life. I think it makes you a better parent, a better leader, a better professional. So that's my story.

• 13:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, no, that is, is so awesome. And I'm so glad you told it because, you know, I think everyone has a story that leads them to passion in their life for what they're doing. And it's always good for people to hear the reason for your passion behind this, you know? And so I'm just curious, you know, you said you're 11 and obese. How long did it take you to learn some of those, unlearn some of those behaviors and learn the behaviors to get into shape?

• 13:40Speaker 01

  Well, over a decade. I lost weight very quickly. So I started swimming competitively. My mom started putting me on diets. The weight came off quickly.

• 13:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Good.

• 13:50Speaker 01

  Within a year.

• 13:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yep, fantastic.

• 13:52Speaker 01

  But the psychological ramifications definitely lasted well over a decade.

• 13:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 13:59Speaker 01

  And it's a journey. I think, you know, the, the term health and fitness journey is cliche and overused, but it really is a journey because it's a learning experience. You might see certain physical changes in a short period of time, but the psychological changes take time. And, you know, funny enough, I think most of the people that probably struggle with their health and fitness in adulthood have a similar origin story, for lack of a better term, of challenges during childhood because those habits and behaviors stay with us long term. I'm fortunate that I decided to pursue this professionally and it's been a big emphasis and focus of mine because I could easily see how that can last a lifetime.

• 14:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  But for me, Darshan, education has been a big catalyst. I am the type of person, I am very much a logical person. Like, if you can't explain to me why, I do not believe you. It's just the, the way my brain is wired. It's always, and, and there are pros and cons. I've been trying to work on that, but the point, the point of why I bring that up is because once I actually started learning more about the science of nutrition and energy balance and the importance of muscle and how to build muscle, and I had clarity on the things that matter and the things that don't, it helped me personally not feel as confused, frustrated, or like I'm spinning my wheels. Because a lot of my frustration, Darshan, was like, you know, I'm going to a party, I can't eat carbs.

• 15:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 15:19Speaker 01

  Ridiculous. But I just didn't have the understanding of why that wasn't true.

• 15:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 15:24Speaker 01

  So education has been, been a big catalyst.

• 15:25Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  From the like, what I'm doing perspective.

• 15:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 15:29Speaker 01

  Now, in terms of like the body image stuff.

• 15:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 15:32Speaker 01

  The big change there has just been, I think, maturing and becoming an adult. Understanding that your physical appearance matters, but not to that much of an extent. I think a big part of it has been being in this industry for so long, realizing that most of the bodies that people idolize aren't even real. And another big catalyst for me has been a shift in my priorities. You know, from being so hyper fixated on your body, like you have to understand that this was my main focus, the majority of my childhood and young adulthood, right? It was like fitness, bodies, like.

• 16:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You've lived this your whole life almost, yeah.

• 16:10Speaker 01

  But now it's like, I'm married. My wife is happy with not just, I mean, the least thing she cares about is, not the least thing, she cares about how I look, but who I am as a person, who I am as a husband. Having kids, the priority shift, focusing more on my career, my business. So I think a shift in priorities has really helped me just see my body more as something that's serving me to have a greater purpose than just looking a particular way.

• 16:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, absolutely. And you know, like, I think that a lot of people, I think, have it backwards sometimes with their nutrition and health journey because they're focusing a lot on the individual tactics rather than having the mindset around where they need to start with, right? And so you and I talked a little bit earlier, is the foundation of going on a health and wellness journey or the step one of this journey should always be a mindset and the ability to form habits in a way that's healthy, that'll last you for a lifetime, right? And so you see a lot of coaching clients and I wonder, how do you, you know, I'm sure when they first come to you, they're like, okay, tell me what to eat, right? And then you probably start them a little bit different, you were telling me with,

• 17:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  how do we build a foundation, right? And, and around habits? And can you talk a little bit about that? Like, how do you have that conversation with your clients about building that mindset and the habits needed to make this a, make this a long lasting change for them?

• 17:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, so interestingly enough, a lot of the people that reach out to work with us have a decent understanding of our philosophy because they've been watching my stuff or whatnot, right? So it's actually not so much of like, tell me what to eat. It's more of, I've been trying to follow diets and I came across your content and it's so refreshing. And like, I actually want to learn how to develop habits and have a healthier lifestyle, which really tells me that the message is resonating.

• 18:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 18:01Speaker 01

  The time I struggle with that specifically is if I ever have a partnership with somebody or there are referrals that don't have a deep understanding of what we do and they'll say like, will you give me a better diet? And I'm like, I'll help you develop a better diet and learn how to eat, but I won't give you a diet. And they're like, uh, what does that mean? Because it's, it's fairly amorphous. It's hard to really explain, right? But what I always say to, to touch on that point, Darshan, is the healthiest, fittest people like are not on a diet. Right? Going on a diet, you're shooting yourself in the foot from the start. And, and I'll circle back on the foundational stuff, but I really want to emphasize this point because it, it really helps explain why you shouldn't go on a diet.

• 18:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 18:39Speaker 01

  Right? Going on a diet inherently implies that at a certain period of time, you're going to come off of a diet. And in theory, whatever you do to achieve a particular goal, you need to do for the rest of your life to be able to maintain those results. Maybe to a lesser extent or a lower intensity, but you need to do the same general behaviors. And so if you're going on a diet, hoping that when you lose the 30 pounds, you can get off of a diet, what's going to happen after? You're going to go right back to square one. That's why people stay stuck in years of yo-yo dieting, right? Another thing too is oftentimes when people go on a diet, the reason why they are so eager to get off of a diet is because what they're doing feels miserable. Cutting out all sorts of foods.

• 19:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 19:17Speaker 01

  Extremely low calorie diets. It just creates a lot of friction in terms of how you live your life and the particular dietary framework that you're trying to follow.

• 19:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 19:27Speaker 01

  My perspective is, let's not do any diets and let's figure out what works for you.

• 19:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  Because diets are all based off of rules. And there are no, there are no universal rules that everybody must follow when it comes to diet. There are simply universal principles. And the application of those principles can look different depending on who you are as a person, right? So a, a perfect example here that I like to explain is, Darshan, you're a busy professional. You travel a lot for work.

• 19:55Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yep.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  Let's say somebody like you wants to lose 20 pounds. And let's say there's another person, a woman, a stay at home mom. She also wants to lose 20 pounds. In theory, what both of you need to do to lose the 20 pounds is the same. There is no difference. In practice, it's very different. So one thing I hear often is people who are busy professionals are like, man, I don't have time to cook everything at home. Well, you probably shouldn't. You should probably learn how to eat out and make right choices at the right places to be able to reduce friction so you can stay consistent, right? So the, the, the practice of it really depends on the specific person's context. And the issue with diets is that they never take into context what your lifestyle and your preferences are. So when I work with somebody, you mentioned mindset earlier, a couple of things that are really important.

• 20:42Speaker 01

  I think having the right mindset is starting your journey off on the right foot, right? Because it's the lens through which you're going to approach this whole thing. And so I think a couple of things are important. One is being open minded and understanding that you need to do things differently. And I feel like that is so basic, but you'd be so surprised how resistant people are to taking advice or making small changes. Right? Like somebody who has been struggling for a long time and they never eat breakfast. And they struggle with hunger and cravings at night. The evidence is really clear that if you have a well-balanced breakfast, it helps with hunger regulation. It might not be the solution for everyone, but it's something to try. And so you recommend something like that, like, no, that doesn't work for me. It's like, well, let's give it a try, right? So being open-minded, trying new things is really important.

• 21:26Speaker 01

  Having a growth mindset, understanding that you are going to face adversity and seeing adversity as an opportunity to learn and improve is really important. Because one of the challenges that people also experience with health and fitness, and I love talking about these topics because I think the concepts are applicable to other areas of life as well. Professionally, personally, you're going to experience adversity and setbacks. And when people often experience setbacks specifically with their diet, they just feel like they've completely screwed up. I went on vacation, I gained five pounds. Now I'm going to eat horrible for the next couple of months. Like, that's not helpful.

• 21:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  No.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  How about you learn how to improve when you're in those particular situations? Right? So growth mindset is important. I also think the most important thing is understanding that if we zoom out, I think that the main objective for everyone can be summarized into one sentence, which is that the ultimate goal is to form habits around the behaviors that support the health and body composition that you want. Okay, I'm going to repeat that because it's an important statement. We are trying to form habits around the behaviors that support the health and body composition that you want. Why do I say it that way? Habits are something that you do automatically, a part of who you are. For something to become habitual, you need to be consistent. And you actually need to have some enjoyment or affinity for the thing, or else you're not going to do it like it's part of who you are. So if you're doing something that feels too restrictive or unsustainable, it is not ever going to become habitual.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  And if it's not going to become habitual, it is not going to help you achieve your long-term goals. Right? And another phrase that I really like using is that our health and body composition are simply a delayed reflection of our daily habits. Right? So the whole framework needs to be, we are focusing on developing behaviors and habits.

• 23:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  And then how we do that, I think there's a million different effective ways to do it. Right? Again, the practice, it can be different depending on the person.

• 23:08Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  Our general framework is we like going through a foundational phase first. Because we also want to help clients focus on the process, not the outcome. When it comes to long-term improvement or transformation with your health and fitness, I think there are many ways to lose 20 pounds. There's only one way to truly change your health and your fitness long-term, and that is by focusing on the right behaviors. So to bring it back to processes versus outcomes, the vast majority of people, and by the way, I think the statistic is over 95% of people who lose a significant amount of weight, which is defined as more than 10% of their total body weight, regain it all, if not more, within just five years. It's a bad statistic.

• 23:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 23:48Speaker 01

  But I think that that statistic is skewed based off the fact that the strategies that people use are just the wrong strategies. This is a very silly analogy, but I use this one often because it paints the picture. Darshan, if you were trying to bake a pizza and you have no idea how to bake a pizza, somebody hands you a recipe and it's for spaghetti and meatballs. It's the same fundamental ingredients, but a different outcome. Right? So you're going to try really hard and you're just going to spin your wheels. I feel like that's what people are doing with health and fitness. It's like, yes, they're kind of doing the right things. You're dieting and you're doing these things. And yes, it kind of helps you lose weight, but it's not really what you want, which is sustainable body composition improvement. Right?

• 24:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely.

• 24:24Speaker 01

  So we focus on the process, meaning your only measure of success when we start working with you is, are you doing the things you need to do on a daily basis? Because if you do that, the results will come.

• 24:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 24:36Speaker 01

  There's no way around that.

• 24:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 24:38Speaker 01

  And the issue is if you are hyper-fixating on the outcome, let's say just losing 20 pounds for simplicity, there are many ways you can lose those 20 pounds. And there are many ways where you could lose those 20 pounds really quickly, and it's never going to be sustainable. That's the issue.

• 24:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  Right? So during this foundational phase, what we do is get a clear baseline understanding of where someone is with their diet, with their habits, with their exercise, with their lifestyle. We identify the specific gaps. Essentially, we have about 12 particular habits that we like to work on that are nutrition, sleep, and lifestyle related. And then we start implementing those one at a time.

• 25:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I love this.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  Depending on where the gaps are. Like if you already eat adequate protein, we're not going to focus on protein initially because you're already doing that. Right? So it's finding the gaps and then sequencing them from most to least important and working on those behaviors. And once those feel relatively like second nature, and I say relatively because they're not going to feel like second nature after two or three months. Then we double down on whether it's fat loss, muscle growth, tracking food, depending on what the person's particular goals are. Funny enough, I was sharing with you this earlier, during that foundational phase, even though we're not hyper focusing on weight loss, people will lose significant weight. You can get eight to 10 pounds in two or three months. That's pretty good, right? And it's because it's really the behaviors that matter.

• 25:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, right, absolutely. You know, I love this whole talk track around, you know, goals versus the process. Because I think goals by definition, once you achieve it, you're done doing the things that got you there. Right?

• 26:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So if the goal is to lose 20 pounds, I always try to reframe people's mindset. And I understand that might be a goal right now, but that's not going to be your goal once you get to 20 pounds.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So then what are you going to do? Right? So it's really about what are the things that we have to do every day to get there and beyond? Because if once you go beyond, guess what? You're not just losing 20 pounds on the scale, you're also improving muscle mass, improving body composition, getting your metabolic health better, reducing inflammation. And it just keeps getting better and better over time if you do the right things every day past the goal. And so, you know, this, I think you and I have a very similar structure around that. And, you know, it's like, it's interesting being a practitioner because you see all sorts of different people. And different people approach their life very differently. They have different struggles. You know, you gave an example of me versus a stay-at-home mom.

• 27:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You know, people's day-to-day activities and what they can do and what they can't do day-to-day vary so greatly. And so you can't have just one protocol for everybody. You've got to really fit it to their lifestyle, what their particular, what drives them, what motivates them, and give them the right tools, you know? And so I think, I think that's extremely important for people out there to realize that you can't just buy a diet book and think that's going to work. It's very different.

• 27:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, especially if the diet book is rigid and rule-based.

• 27:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  Because they're-

• 27:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  South Beach Diet, for example.

• 27:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 27:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Atkins, like, all of these diet books have never been sustainable for people.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, any diet book or program that is protocol-focused is wrong.

• 27:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, right.

• 27:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, because everybody's life is different. That's really what it is.

• 27:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 27:50Speaker 01

  And I think it's the perfect example of like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. There's just, there's no congruency.

• 27:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. And so my philosophy is very similar to yours is let's give you the foundations of what a healthy nutrition program looks like. Right? And that for most humans is pretty similar. Do you agree with that?

• 28:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, the principles are the same.

• 28:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. So I'd love for you to kind of like, from your incredibly educated version of this and also, you know, your credentials as being a PhD in nutrition science and just teaching and interacting with thousands of people, I would love to kind of build that for the listeners of this podcast. What are some of the big picture rules and also some of the misconceptions people have around macros, for example?

• 28:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Supplements, like there's so many pieces of this, right?

• 28:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Maybe you can talk about some of the big picture things now.

• 28:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I will share the overall nutritional framework that I like to operate through.

• 28:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 28:45Speaker 01

  And then feel free to poke holes or ask any specific questions, whether it's macros or anything like that. So a healthy and sustainable diet is what we're trying to achieve. I think a healthy and sustainable diet has three components. One is it needs to meet your nutritional needs. We can't be deficient in anything. Two is it needs to be tailored towards your particular goal, since we're talking about the context of improving body composition and health. And three is it needs to be enjoyable and sustainable.

• 29:15Speaker 01

  A lot of people miss that third one.

• 29:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  So covering your basis. Essentially, what we want to do is make sure that we are meeting your macronutrient needs. Right? Carbohydrates, proteins, fats. Your micronutrient needs, vitamins and minerals. And we also want to ensure that it's managing your hunger and your satiety.

• 29:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  We do that through focusing on particular behaviors. Right? If we look at the literature, there are clear nutritional habits that help with hunger and satiety management and making sure you meet your nutritional needs. So some of the behaviors that we'll focus on there are things like regular meal timing. So a question that comes up quite frequently is, should I eat two meals and fast in the morning? Or should I do six small meals? It doesn't matter.

• 30:03Speaker 01

  What matters is regularity. Choose an eating schedule and pattern that fits your lifestyle that you enjoy and stick with it. Because when you are consistent with your eating pattern, timing specifically, your circadian rhythm and your hunger regulation essentially gets used to that particular eating pattern. Right? So that's number one. And not number one in terms of importance, that would be one of the habits that we want to focus on.

• 30:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Regular dietary patterns during the day.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  Correct. And interestingly enough, if we take that a step further, and I always like to focus on the simple stuff first before the more complicated things. But if we take it a step further, there's also some pretty good evidence that meal size regularity matters. Not in the sense that your breakfast, lunch and dinner should be the same size, but your breakfasts across days should be fairly consistent. It's just the theme of consistency. Just be consistent with the way you eat. Now, if we stay in the general theme of eating schedule and timing, there's also clear evidence that's skewing your food earlier in the day is very beneficial for two things, for hunger and satiety management and for energy expenditure.

• 31:08Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 31:08Speaker 01

  Because when we talk about calories in, calories out, and we can definitely dive in deeper into that, most people just think about the calories inside of things. Calories out is also really important, right? And the data do show that when people have a well-balanced breakfast, they tend to burn more calories throughout the day. Part of that could be through the thermogenic effect of food. Part of that could simply be the fact that when you fuel yourself properly, you have more energy and you move a little bit more. Right? So regularity with eating patterns, skewing food earlier in the day, those are really the easy fundamental habits around timing. Beyond that, as basic as it sounds, making sure that at least 80% of your diet is coming from whole foods. It does not matter what whole foods, just focus on whole foods first.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  In the nutrition space, there is so much controversy around which whole foods you should and shouldn't eat. Don't eat oats because the funniest one is oats are peasant food. I don't know where that came from, but like.

• 32:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I have heard that.

• 32:07Speaker 01

  It's pretty common, right? Like, don't eat oats or don't eat certain plant-based compounds because of phytates or oxalates. And don't eat red meat because of saturated fat and don't have dairy because it's inflammatory. Anybody who tells you to just blanket statement, cut out a whole food group, it's just nonsense. Okay, and I'll try to keep my language fairly civil. But I say that because all whole foods have unique health promoting benefits. And all foods when consumed in excess can be bad. So nuance matters, right? Like, would I tell you only eat red meat and follow a carnivore-based diet? No. But would I also say here and say, sit here and say that any quantity of red meat is harmful? Also, no, because the source matters.

• 32:50Speaker 01

  Red meat is rich in nutrients like iron and zinc, right? So all whole food groups have unique health promoting properties. Beans, fruits, vegetables, whole grains, dairy, eggs, meat, fish, like eat it all unless you have a particular allergy or sensitivity to it. When you focus on whole foods, it does a couple of things. I also like to think about like variables that have the biggest return on investment being your effort. Right? People will focus on like, is it organic or not? We can argue whether it matters or not, but that is very small return on your investment, right? Let's first focus on whole foods because whole foods are way more satiating. There's cool research, Darshan and Amnach, you're probably aware with this, aware about this. People talk about whole foods being satiating because of the macronutrient composition.

• 33:33Speaker 01

  Well, they have done research studies where they take two diets, like equivalent macronutrient composition. The only difference is the degree of processing. Okay, so this diet minimally processed, this diet ultra-processed. Same breakdown of protein, carbs and fats. Same amount of sodium as well, because sodium influences the palatability of food. People just feel less hungry when, or yeah, feel less hungry when they eat more whole foods.

• 33:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 34:00Speaker 01

  They also consume more calories when the food is ultra-processed, even if the caloric, even if the macronutrient breakdown is the same.

• 34:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 34:06Speaker 01

  This is why, and like, I don't ever say that any foods are off limits, but a lot of people also just consume a lot of diet foods.

• 34:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, absolutely, yeah.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  Protein bars and diet snacks and like, those are still highly processed foods. Have them in moderation, but if that is the base of your diet, there's no wonder why you're struggling with managing your hunger.

• 34:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right. I think, you know, just to dive in that a little bit more, like, I think, you know, people, people ask me about that, like, why are ultra-processed foods so bad? Why do I feel hungrier after eating ultra-processed foods? I think it's because the carbohydrate content, even if you match it one for one between a whole foods diet and a ultra-processed diet, the carbohydrates are different, right? So you have more fiber in whole foods, whereas in ultra-processed food, the fiber is by definition removed. That they do that in the processing, right?

• 34:50Speaker 01

  A big factor, Darshan, is also the fact that pretty much any ultra-processed food is almost like predigested.

• 34:57Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly, it's predigested food.

• 34:58Speaker 01

  It's isolated and then, you know, put together into a food product. Like, the food matrix is really complex. And what I mean by that is that like, when you eat a whole food, it takes a lot of work to break it down and digest it.

• 35:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 35:10Speaker 01

  So it stays in your digestive tract longer. That itself helps with hunger and satiety regulation. The flip side of that as well is that whole foods, talking about being essentially processed foods being more predigested, they require more energy to actually metabolize. People don't realize we burn calories digesting food because we need to break it down.

• 35:30Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 35:31Speaker 01

  And so you get the benefit of feeling more satiated, you also get the benefit of burning slightly more calories when you consume whole foods.

• 35:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right. I think also on the topic of satiety, I think that, you know, there's a really good indicator that's built into our bodies, which is our satiety, right? And that the satiety signals tell you when you've eaten a meal that is in general good for you versus something that's probably not going to be as healthy for you, right? Because your body feels satiated when it gets the micronutrients it needs, it gets those macronutrients you need, you're eating whole foods with fiber. Your body just feels satiated and what's critical there is how long you're satiated.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 36:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  If you find yourself reaching for a snack an hour or two after your meal, you probably did not eat something that was in general good for you. You probably ate something that was more processed, less fiber. And, you know, now ultra-processed foods are engineered to be hyper-palatable and keep you hungry, right? And so all of those things is a natural signal that's built into our body is how long are you full after a meal? How much snacking do you need? And then go back and reevaluate what you ate. In my mind, I think, I feel like, because I tell a lot of people that, they're like, I snack a lot. Well, what are you eating before you snack? And then I find out and it's usually like garbage, you know? Protein bars, to your example, like a lot of these things that keep people very hungry.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  And another component of it is just making sure you have a decently sized meal.

• 36:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly, right.

• 36:53Speaker 01

  Eat whole foods and make sure you have a meal that fills you up.

• 36:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 36:57Speaker 01

  Because oftentimes when people go on a diet, they try to have these tiny meals.

• 37:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 37:01Speaker 01

  But then you self-sabotage by snacking between your meals.

• 37:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 37:04Speaker 01

  Right? And so I always encourage people to have a nice big meal where you feel full.

• 37:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 37:09Speaker 01

  If you have a nice big meal, you will feel full for a good four to six hours.

• 37:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And I say the same thing you do, but then there's this other camp of people that are, you know, talking about, what is it? The Japanese word around feeling, only eating until you're 80% full, right? You've heard this before, right?

• 37:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And I think that's true if you're eating a highly processed, low protein, low fiber meal. Definitely don't overfill yourself on that. But I think if you're eating protein, fiber-rich vegetables, whole foods, if you fill yourself up, you're, you're going to reduce the total amount of caloric intake that you have during the day, not increase it.

• 37:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think context matters with those things because what does 80% full mean?

• 37:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, exactly.

• 37:49Speaker 01

  I think it's very, I think it's a good piece of advice for people that eat to the point where they're stuffed. Because what's the need to eat food to the point where like, you have a hard time even standing up? We all do it every once in a while, like special occasions, but there are people that eat like that on a regular basis, right? And so like, maybe being a little bit more mindful around your hunger cues and getting 80% of the way there is just like a good. With all of these phrases or sayings or recommendations, my perspective is always like, the context really matters is all.

• 38:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, right, right, right.

• 38:16Speaker 01

  So the whole, okay, so we were around whole foods and talking about meeting nutritional needs.

• 38:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  True.

• 38:21Speaker 01

  If we take it a step further, the two nutrients that I think people need to focus on, and the rest is kind of noise until you nail these two down, is protein and fiber.

• 38:30Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 38:30Speaker 01

  You've mentioned it now a number of times, right? People have all sorts of questions about protein, like protein source, one meal, five meals, timing. It just, it doesn't matter, just eat enough protein. Enough protein, if we talk about optimizing body composition, seems to be around 0.8 grams per pound of ideal body weight. I mention ideal body weight because if you have significant amount of weight to lose, you don't want to set your protein target based off your current weight because it's going to be really hard to hit that protein target. And now people debate that number, is it 0.8, one gram? General ballpark, right? Eat around 0.8 grams per pound of ideal body weight. I weigh roughly 220, I will aim for a good 170 to 180 grams of protein at the bare minimum. Okay?

• 39:09Speaker 01

  And then fiber, the typical recommendation is around 14-ish grams per thousand calories consumed. For most people, 25 to 30 grams of protein is a really good starting point.

• 39:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Fiber, pretty good fiber, right?

• 39:21Speaker 01

  Yep, yep. There is some clear evidence that more seems to be better. But I think with everything, there are specific caveats. If you're eating so much fiber that it's displacing other nutrients, not good. And the same thing I talk about with protein, because we're almost in a space right now where it seems like more protein is better. And protein isn't inherently harmful. The downside of eating too much protein is that you're displacing other nutrients from your diet. If your diet is 90% of protein, you're definitely not getting enough fiber. You're definitely not getting specific micronutrients that you're going to be getting from plants. Right? So protein, fiber, those would be the general recommendations. Five to serve, five to seven servings of fruits and veggies is a pretty safe recommendation to make sure you're hitting your micronutrient needs.

• 40:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 40:02Speaker 01

  And again, pretty cliche type of recommendation, but eat the rainbow.

• 40:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 40:06Speaker 01

  It's not a bad recommendation because

• 40:08Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Not at all.

• 40:08Speaker 01

  The, the color of food, um, the color indicates what sort of compounds that food is rich in. Right? So you're going to be getting certain vitamins and minerals and phytonutrients from red foods that you don't get from purple foods, et cetera. So just have a wide variety of, of different colored plant-based foods. I would say Darshan, that covers like 90% of it.

• 40:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I, I totally agree with you. This is exactly the talk track I have with people. I think that, um, you know, the other thing about having a diverse variety of fruits and vegetables is that it feeds different parts of your microbiome.

• 40:38Speaker 01

  Certainly, of course.

• 40:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And your microbiome needs that diversity to create more diversity, which is actually a huge part of health as we're discovering right now as well.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  My question on protein and fiber for you is how do you feel about supplementing it, um, in the form of like whey protein or fiber sources, um, insoluble and soluble? If, obviously we both know you want to try to get it from food if at all possible. However, sometimes that's not practical for people. So talk a little bit about fiber and protein supplementation.

• 41:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think they're great.

• 41:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 41:06Speaker 01

  I see protein and fiber supplements as food, not really even supplements, because they really just are isolated nutrients from food.

• 41:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 41:13Speaker 01

  And so if we consider a protein bar of food, I think a protein powder is also a food. But I think they're great. I think they're very practical. I just don't like the over reliance on them because when you consume a fiber-rich whole food, fiber isn't the only benefit you're getting from that food. So when we have a fiber supplement, yes, you're going to be benefiting from getting the fiber. It still has health benefits, but you're not getting the micronutrients, the phytonutrients that you'd be consuming from that plant-based food.

• 41:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 41:39Speaker 01

  Same with a protein supplement. It's definitely going to be equally as effective for things like muscle regrowth, uh, muscle growth and recovery and repair. But it's not going to be as satiating. One of the big benefits of protein is that it's very expensive to break down. It has the highest thermic effect of any nutrient. The thermic effect simply is how many calories or energy we burn actually metabolizing that particular macronutrient. Protein is the highest.

• 42:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Mm hmm.

• 42:02Speaker 01

  Complex proteins are the highest, right? So something like a whey protein isolate is extremely bioavailable.

• 42:08Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Mm hmm.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  It's a very high quality protein, but from a satiety standpoint, maybe not the best.

• 42:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 42:14Speaker 01

  Right? So that's my general perspective. Focus on whole foods. If you need to supplement, perfectly fine.

• 42:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. And for people that can do whey protein because of a dairy allergy or just, you know, their beliefs around veganism, for example. Pea protein is also a really good source of protein. Do you agree with that? Yep.

• 42:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. Plant-based proteins are great. Um, you know, this starts going into the topic of like incomplete versus complete proteins. So for the audience, there are 20 amino acids. All proteins are made out of those 20 amino acids. Nine of them are essential, meaning we have to get them from our diet. And the whole idea is that many plant-based proteins don't contain the adequate quantities of all of the essential amino acids. But we also like, don't just eat one food, right?

• 42:55Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 42:56Speaker 01

  We eat rice and we eat beans and we eat, so there, there's this concept of what we call complementary proteins.

• 43:02Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Mm hmm.

• 43:02Speaker 01

  That if you eat a, a, a wide array of different plant-based sources, they're essentially going to help each other out in terms of the amino acid profile.

• 43:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 43:10Speaker 01

  So even pea protein is a complete protein. It's great. But if, even if you're getting like protein from incomplete sources, the data do show that if you just focus on total adequate protein, you're going to be covering your basis in terms of amino acid profile.

• 43:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, absolutely. And so I think practically to break this down for people, you know, most of your meals should really be focused heavily on fruits and vegetables, getting your fiber in, in also a protein source. And then to me, I look at carbohydrates and, you know, multiple different categories. But if you're going to eat a starchy carbohydrate or a carbohydrate that is, uh, potentially, you know, more of a dessert type of a sugar source just for a treat for yourself. I think that, that should be at the end of your meal as far as meal timing goes. But also, you know, you want to minimize that portion of your meal and have it more focused on the protein and the vegetables. I think for most people, now, obviously that's not true for everybody because some people are much more athletic. They have a lot more, uh, uh, energy needs.

• 44:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And so it's a different situation for those. But for most of my patients, once I kind of flip the narrative to starting with vegetables and protein, and then making the carbohydrate piece a smaller part of the overall puzzle and not totally eliminating it. I think that really helps people kind of get what they need and what they want and maintain a more sustainable diet. What, what are your thoughts around carbohydrates?

• 44:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'll touch on that for sure. And I think this is why, and I know we'll definitely touch on exercise.

• 44:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Mm hmm.

• 44:36Speaker 01

  But why it's so important to really not just move your body, but make sure you have ample amounts of muscle mass on your body.

• 44:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 44:43Speaker 01

  Because it just gives you so much more flexibility with your diet. You know, one of the things that you hear often is when somebody sees someone who's in really good physical shape and sees how much flexibility they have with the way they eat. They're like, man, how does that person eat that way and stay so lean and healthy? They must have a great genetics. Uh, genetics, genetics are part of the equation, of course, but it's also the fact that they have a lot of muscle on their body.

• 45:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly, right.

• 45:05Speaker 01

  So I always try to think of health and fitness from an additive viewpoints rather than a restrictive perspective. And I think focusing on building muscle, of course, it takes time, is one of the best things you can do. So you don't have to be so restrictive with the way you eat as well, right? It's like, uh, and I think when people talk about muscle, there's also this misconception of we're talking about becoming a bodybuilder. Like, that's not what we're talking about. It's just having a healthy amount of muscle mass on your body. It just gives you so much more flexibility.

• 45:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely. Just on that point, just to highlight, just real quick is if you're struggling with your weight, the problem is not always the, what you're putting inside of your body as far as your diet is concerned. Is you also be needing to look at your body composition and your expenditure and how much muscle mass you have, right? Cause as you build more muscle, you can potentially eat more carbs, more take in more larger diets. And you're not going to affect yourself.

• 45:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, more everything.

• 45:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, exactly. More everything. So it's a really good point.

• 46:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. So many people who struggle with body fats are not necessarily overweight, but they're significantly under muscled.

• 46:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right. That's very true, right?

• 46:12Speaker 01

  And so identifying somebody's starting point and what they need to focus on initially is really important as well, right?

• 46:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  But talking about the carbohydrate point, uh, it depends on, like you mentioned, how active the person is and all that. But in general, I do see carbohydrate intake as the most flexible variable depending on the person, because we need to standardize for fiber and protein.

• 46:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 46:31Speaker 01

  Now carbohydrate source really matters because like we mentioned, fruits and vegetables, those are objectively carbohydrate sources, right? They're primarily carbs as well. But if we're talking more about starchy carbs.

• 46:43Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 46:43Speaker 01

  There are some that I like more than others.

• 46:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 46:47Speaker 01

  From the perspective of managing hunger and satiety, that they're just really hard to overconsume.

• 46:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 46:52Speaker 01

  Specifically, potatoes of any kind are really great. Obviously we're talking about like not adding a ton of butter or deep fry in them. Sweet potatoes, white potatoes, extremely hard to overconsume. A large russet potato.

• 47:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Hmm.

• 47:07Speaker 01

  They're big.

• 47:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 47:08Speaker 01

  Maybe 150, maybe 200 calories.

• 47:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 47:11Speaker 01

  They're very low calor density foods. Actually, potatoes objectively are the most satiating food on a per calorie basis.

• 47:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Mm hmm.

• 47:18Speaker 01

  I'm sure you've seen the satiety index of common foods.

• 47:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 47:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. They rate foods based off how satiating they make you feel per 100 calories. Potatoes rank the highest.

• 47:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Well, that's why it's like a wartime food back in World War I. Like you, the whole focus was growing potatoes because that you would be able to feed the masses.

• 47:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right?

• 47:35Speaker 01

  And then one food that I would love to see more people eat are beans.

• 47:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely.

• 47:40Speaker 01

  Any variety of beans. Pretty much the only, like, one of the very few whole foods that's high in both protein and fiber. So these are like higher carbohydrate foods, but if you're preparing them in a way where you're preparing them healthily, I would say, uh, there's no such thing as a free food. But when I, when I say that term, I mean, like, they're really hard to overeat. So I would definitely include them in your diet if you struggle with hunger and satiety. Because truth be told, if you're having a, a piece of fish or a piece of chicken and some salad, and you're a relatively larger person and you're active, that you're going to be hungry, right? So adding some of those carbohydrates that strategically will help you with hunger and satiety regulation can be helpful.

• 48:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 48:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

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• 48:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

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• 49:08Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Can you talk a little bit about resistant starches?

• 49:11Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 49:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Like what they are, how to get more of them in your diet? Why they're important and why they could be a nice little, I look at it as a little bit of a hack around starches and getting in some starches in your body.

• 49:21Speaker 01

  Sure, sure, sure. So resistant starches, more difficult to digest, essentially very beneficial for the gut microbiome in terms of overall health. So you mentioned gut microbiome earlier. Truthfully, I'm not super well versed on the like groundbreaking research on microbiome. But it's so cool to see how there is a link to pretty much every single chronic disease related to different types of population of microbes. So whether it's resistant starches, fibers, these foods feed the healthy bacteria in our gut. So they are extremely health promoting from that aspect. Yeah.

• 49:57Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, I think, I think, you know, some of the ways to get more resistant starches in is there's a technique where if you

• 50:03Speaker 01

  Retrograde?

• 50:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Retrograde, right, exactly. We cook something, rice or a potato, cool it down and then reheat it and it reduces the absorption.

• 50:13Speaker 01

  Essentially, it's temperature and even pH will impact the specific bonds in food. And so when you cook rice and then you cool it down, essentially the carbohydrates form bonds that are very difficult to break down. So you don't really digest them.

• 50:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 50:27Speaker 01

  That's essentially what it is. And so they just behave differently physiologically.

• 50:30Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right. I love rice and I love potatoes and I try to always do this technique to make myself feel like I'm absorbing less of the, but you know, one, I want to touch on one more macro, which is fats. Let's talk about fats and how you think about fats and getting the right kind and enough fats in your diet.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  Really good question. It's funny because nobody talks about fats.

• 50:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. It's so funny because this is all the rage back when I, I was growing up, like you know, fat, low fat, everything.

• 50:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:57Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And now it's like the topic just kind of disappeared. What happened to it? Right?

• 51:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 51:01Speaker 01

  Incredibly helpful for health, beneficial for health. You need to be eating adequate fat. Adequate fat, general recommendation is don't fall below 20% of your daily caloric intake coming from dietary fat. Now fat source matters, right? Saturated fat, we definitely don't want to overconsume because it can increase the risk of cardiovascular dysfunction, specifically plaque buildup in your arteries. But it's also so heavily demonized. What we typically see in the research literature is if you maintain it below 10% of total caloric intake, like not really many adverse health outcomes unless you have a genetic predisposition to the LDL increasing capabilities of saturated fat.

• 51:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 51:42Speaker 01

  Like some people are more genetically predisposed to increasing LDL if they consume saturated fat. But those are, those are special cases, not the, the, the average, right? Going back to facts, making sure we eat inadequate amount of omega threes, which most, most people definitely don't.

• 51:57Dr. Darshan Shah?

  No.

• 51:57Speaker 01

  If we talk about supplementation, I think that's one of the supplements that I recommend for the vast majority of people where I feel comfortable saying, hey, like everybody should probably be taking something like this. Because most people just don't eat enough seafood. So making sure you get sufficient omega threes, ton of anti-inflammatory, antioxidant properties there. And then we can also talk about unsaturated fats that are not omega threes, like seed oils, which people love talking about, right?

• 52:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You went there.

• 52:22Speaker 01

  But main, main function of fats, I mean, the cell membrane of pretty much all your cells are composed of fatty acids, right? So really important for optimal cell function, for hormone balance, they're, they're really important. Every nutrient is important. That's why I was mentioning earlier, if you cut anything out from your diet, it's not good. But the, the seed oil concept or topic, and I'm going to bring this up lightly and we can go deeper into it if necessary, there's been this huge demonization around polyunsaturated fatty acids because they can be inflammatory because they can go down inflammatory pathways. But they are also not only used for inflammatory mechanisms in our physiology, they can also be used for energy production and a number of different things.

• 53:06Speaker 01

  And when we look at the, at the research literature, there is no association between unsaturated fat intake and adverse health outcomes. If anything, we see the opposite. And the most clear evidence of this is when you substitute saturated fat intake for unsaturated fat intake, there's improvements in glycemic regulation, cardiovascular health and overall improvements in health.

• 53:25Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. And I think, you know, in general, the, the whole seed oil controversy is just, a lot of it is very overblown when you, when you look at the general population. I think there's certain populations of people that would increase the amount of inflammation they get potentially from polyunsaturated fatty acids, specifically like very sedentary individuals, people that already have a lot of cardiovascular disease anyways. So, you know, it's, it's very nuanced. And I think, you know, if you're worried about seed oils, you don't have to have seed oils. There's a lot of other oils out there, right?

• 53:53Speaker 01

  Of course, of course.

• 53:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  There's avocado oil, there's, there's coconut oil.

• 53:56Speaker 01

  Funny enough, avocado oil is a seed oil. You know, it's like, it's like there's been a classification of a couple. The issue is don't overconsume oil.

• 54:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 54:04Speaker 01

  Because it's extremely calorically dense.

• 54:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  There you go. Right.

• 54:07Speaker 01

  So a lot of the inflammation and adverse health outcomes are being driven through excess energy consumption. It's not that the unsaturation of the fatty acid itself is inherently harmful. And the thing is, we mentioned, you have to consume fat, you have to get it from some source. And in general, unsaturated fats seem to be healthier than saturated fats.

• 54:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You know, so funny for me is like some of these fast food chains that are replacing their regular oil for seed oil free, right? And it's just like, okay, but you're still a bunch of processed garbage food now being cooked in non-seed oils, right?

• 54:41Speaker 01

  It's a big part of nutritionist marketing.

• 54:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right. Yeah. So true. Right?

• 54:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It's a huge problem with the industry.

• 54:47Speaker 01

  Well, wherever there's money to be made, people are going to make money, right? And I think it's, I think it's up to people like us to inform the consumer on what's healthy and what's not. So the consumer can make informed choices.

• 55:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 55:02Speaker 01

  That's why I do what I do because there is so much confusion in our space. A lot of the content that I produce is just talking about why certain things are true or not true.

• 55:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 55:09Speaker 01

  Because again, going back to the beginning of my personal story, it really has been that clarity and education that has helped me. And I know it's helpful for a lot of people, right? Like when you understand what matters and what doesn't, it makes you feel more confident making an informed choice.

• 55:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Very true.

• 55:21Speaker 01

  I really want to get back to the framework.

• 55:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Please, yes, talk more. Yeah.

• 55:25Speaker 01

  So I think that pretty much covers the first requirement, which is nutritional needs and hunger into tidy management. Like if you focus on the primary habits there around nutrient timing, whole foods, protein and fiber, fruits and veggies, you're covering 99% of what you need to cover there.

• 55:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Fully agree. I love this.

• 55:40Speaker 01

  And then I say 99% because you can always try to optimize a little bit more. But what's the point? Right? The second requirement was tailoring your diet to your particular goals. There is no argument, like calories matter, right? I was trying to think about how to phrase that because there is so much disagreement here as well, where people talk about like, no, it's just diet quality, or no, it's just calories, or no, it's hormones, or no, it's like, it's, all of it matters. Anytime we say it's only this one thing, it's never just that one thing, right? So I like to think about, to explain a little bit of how I like to conceptualize energy balance so that the audience understands, I think it's like an umbrella term.

• 56:25Speaker 01

  It's not an objective variable. It is something we are influencing, right? So hormones obviously matter from a fat loss perspective to the extent that they affect both intake and expenditure. Certain hormones, we're seeing this with GLP-1s, have a potent impact on hunger management. So you eat less. Certain hormones influence your energy expenditure, like your thyroid, right? And if you have hypothyroidism, it's going to be a lot harder to lose weight because your energy expenditure is way lower. If you have low testosterone, you're going to have low muscle mass. So lower energy expenditure there. So hormones definitely matter to the extent to which they affect the, and we're talking about weight loss here specific, not health optimization, right? Obviously body fat is a big component of health though.

• 57:08Speaker 01

  And then our food choices also matter because they impact energy in and energy out. So when it comes to tailoring your diet to your goal, I'm really talking about energy intake. A thing I hear often is specifically from clients is I, I'm eating healthy, but I'm not losing weight. It's because eating healthy is one piece of the equation. From a dietary perspective, we also need to look at calories because you can have a very healthy diet and gain weight. And although not ideal, but theoretically you can have a very unhealthy diet and lose weight, right? Because of energy balance. So in general, we want to target a caloric intake that will help us lose weight or body fat, we should say, at a slow and consistent rate.

• 57:54Speaker 01

  What does that mean? Because that's fairly general. What I have found from working with literally hundreds of clients now is that aiming to lose around half a percent of your total body weight per week is a really good rate of progress.

• 58:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay.

• 58:04Speaker 01

  I like targeting a percentage because it standardizes for your starting size, right? The common recommendations like losing a pound a week. But for somebody who's starting at 140 pounds, that's way more significant than somebody that's starting at 250. So percentage equilibrates for that. That typically equates to 15 to 20% calories below your maintenance. Okay. So when we talk about maintenance, maintenance is just the amount of calories you need to maintain your body weight. Easiest way to figure that out is just track your food for two weeks. And if your weight is stable, that is your maintenance. And then just subtract 15 or 20% from there. The rate of weight loss significantly impacts the ratio of fat and muscle lost as well.

• 58:48Speaker 01

  So I know we throw around the term weight loss. Nobody's trying to lose weight for the sake of losing weight. Everybody's trying to lose body fat. We're trying to preserve muscle mass. Our dietary choices matter. The type of exercise we do matters. Hormone optimization matters. Sleep matters. Rates of weight loss also really matters. What we see is that when we lose weight quicker, a larger percentage of the weight loss comes from lean mass. Now, we don't want to lose weight so quickly that it takes us 10 years to get to our goal, right? So I think that half, half a percent is a sweet spot for somebody that's around 200 pounds, that would be around a pound per week.

• 59:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 59:20Speaker 01

  That would be roughly a 400 to 500 calorie deficit.

• 59:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 59:24Speaker 01

  For individuals who may be a little bit hesitant around calorie tracking, I want to touch on this for a second. Because you don't need to track your calories to lose weight or body fat. But I think if you've never tracked your food intake before, it's really hard to have the awareness around how to modify your food intake. So I really see tracking as a means to an end. It is a tool to create awareness around your own eating behaviors and help you understand what you need to modify and what you need to change.

• 59:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 59:53Speaker 01

  The, I think the analogy I really like to use here, it is the same as budgeting.

• 59:57Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 59:58Speaker 01

  If you are really bad with your money and you spend more than you make, the only way to change that is to track every dollar that comes in and every dollar that goes out. And some people will say, I don't want to do that because it causes stress. Well, what's going to happen? You're not going to have any money, right? You're going to be in trouble. So same thing with food. It's like tracking diligently for three to six months is work.

• 1:00:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:18Speaker 01

  It's tedious, but if you do it correctly, you'll never have to do it for the rest of your life.

• 1:00:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So true.

• 1:00:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You know, that rate of weight loss is so important, especially for people that are taking a GLP-1. This is where everyone, you know, has kind of like a bad perception on GLP-1s is that, you know, this whole muscle loss thing became a big deal. And it happened because people were just increasing their dose to the max dose and losing like three, four pounds a week.

• 1:00:42Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:00:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And that's why they lost so much muscle, right? And I saw that, you know, I used to do these gastric bypass surgeries for morbidly, morbidly obese people. And yeah, they lost a lot of weight really fast, but they lost half of it in their muscle mass. And so it was really terrible for these people because they would end up becoming very undermuscled and that affect their bone health and that affect their metabolic health. So they would almost like lose the weight and get more metabolically unhealthy from losing it too fast. So I think that's a really important point. A pound a week, if you're 200 pounds, most people, you know, like a lot of people are, like you said, 130, 140, 150 pounds, even that is too much. So be really smart about that.

• 1:01:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a really good point to bring out, bring up around GLPs because there's also so much demonization around the use of GLPs and muscle loss.

• 1:01:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:28Speaker 01

  Like the evidence does not point at the fact that they exacerbate muscle loss by any means. It's just that you lose weight really quickly.

• 1:01:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 1:01:35Speaker 01

  But if you lost weight really quickly by just starving yourself and not taking a GLP-1, you would lose the same amount of muscle mass.

• 1:01:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely. And they've, they've shown that in large studies that people who just eat the same number, whether you're on a GLP-1 or not, just by reducing the number of calories the same amount, you're going to lose the same muscle mass, right? I think with GLP-1s, what's really important, not getting in that trap, is don't get in a trap of just rapidly escalating your dose. Find the dose that gets you to one pound a week of weight loss or something manageable for your body weight and just stop there. And for a lot of people, that's even the slowest dose of the GLP-1 gets them there.

• 1:02:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. And strength train.

• 1:02:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And strength train, right? So let's talk about, are you done with the?

• 1:02:13Speaker 01

  The, the third point.

• 1:02:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  The third one, let's do the third point, right?

• 1:02:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. So meeting nutritional needs, tailoring your diet to your goals. And by the way, we're talking about this in the context of weight loss, but some people are undermuscled.

• 1:02:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 1:02:24Speaker 01

  And underweight, right? And so sometimes being in a caloric surplus and going above your maintenance is also really important, especially if you want to optimize muscle mass for a period of time. Because somebody who isn't overweight, like it's, let's not even say underweight, like just normal weight, but they're undermuscled, the right strategy might not be to even go into a calorie deficit. For a lot of people working on body recompositioning and just maintaining their body weight is important, but we need to make sure that we're eating sufficiently to be able to stimulate those improvements in body composition.

• 1:02:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, right.

• 1:02:53Speaker 01

  The third point, sustainability and enjoyability. This is so like, it's not talked about enough. And it's really because it's not sexy. Who wants to talk about enjoying your diet versus like optimizing your diet, right? Everybody wants to optimize. But if you really want to optimize your health long-term, you need to enjoy your diet.

• 1:03:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:11Speaker 01

  Because we don't just eat for outcomes, we eat for enjoyment.

• 1:03:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:03:15Speaker 01

  Right? We eat in social settings, we eat because we feel a certain way. Food is a really important part of being a human.

• 1:03:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Uh huh.

• 1:03:22Speaker 01

  So in terms of sustainability and enjoyability, it's really simple. I think in practice, practice the 80/20 rule, which is follow everything we talked about 80% of the time and be intentional about being flexible 20% of the time. Personally, I have a very healthy dietary pattern because I enjoy eating healthy foods. But if my son says, let's get some ice cream, we're going to get some ice cream.

• 1:03:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:46Speaker 01

  Because it's not that big of a deal. And if you stress about having the ice cream, that's what's going to cause you to derail and fall off, right? And struggle with consistency. So the sustainability piece, being intentionally flexible just allows you to stay consistent. A friend of mine, do you know or follow Stan Efforting?

• 1:04:02Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes, I do follow Stan Efforting.

• 1:04:04Speaker 01

  He has a really good saying, I'm sure a lot of people have said something along these lines of like, the best diet's the one that you can stick to.

• 1:04:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:04:10Speaker 01

  So even if we talk about low carb or this diet or that, like there are people that do low carb and they enjoy it. I don't think it's optimal, but it works for that person. Flexibility allows you to stay consistent, which is the most important thing. And then in terms of enjoyability, what I always say is we want to make sure we meet the principles that we've discussed by selecting the foods that you enjoy.

• 1:04:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Uh huh.

• 1:04:28Speaker 01

  And the foods that you enjoy, Darshan, are different than the ones that I enjoy. And we also eat differently because we have different cultural backgrounds and we have a different lifestyle and a different schedule and different taste buds, right? So notice when we talked about the dietary patterns that are necessary, never once did I say, you have to eat spinach.

• 1:04:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Uh huh.

• 1:04:46Speaker 01

  I said, you have to eat fruits and veggies.

• 1:04:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:04:48Speaker 01

  Never once did I say, you have to eat red meat. You have to eat enough protein. So we meet the variables within the context of our personal preferences that makes, that allows us to enjoy the way that we eat.

• 1:04:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:59Speaker 01

  And if you don't like vegetables, I always like cracking this joke, is I also think, talking about having a growth mindset and being open-minded at the beginning of the conversation, understanding that your taste and preferences can change through exposure and being open to exposing to yourself to things that maybe make you feel a little bit uncomfortable or you don't like, doing that consistently, you will develop an affinity for those foods.

• 1:05:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's so true. I, and my children, you know, like they, they were just eating for breakfast every morning, pancakes with syrup. And I was like, you cannot eat this every morning, especially because it was not like a protein pancake. It was just the, the worst kind of pancake. And so.

• 1:05:37Speaker 01

  Delicious ones.

• 1:05:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly. So then like just for two weeks, I just put like four different types of vegetables in front of them every day. And they're like, we don't like vegetables. And then they would try one, then they would try another one. And over the course of two weeks, they change their taste buds and now they want vegetables with every breakfast, which is like, my friends are like, how did you do that? I just said, it just took two weeks. I just gave them the options and they started using, taking them.

• 1:05:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. How old are your kids?

• 1:05:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I have a 12-year-old son and a nine-year-old daughter.

• 1:06:02Speaker 01

  Okay. You know what's been working really well for me?

• 1:06:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Tell me.

• 1:06:04Speaker 01

  My four-year-old specifically, is I've been associating eating vegetables with things he likes. So he likes superpowers because he's been watching these cartoons that have superpowers. And so I told him the other day, like, hey, if you eat your tomato, you'll be able to see at night in your room when the lights are off. And he's like, really? I was like, yeah. And he's like, and I'm like, and they're also really sweet and tasty. And I was like, okay. He tried them. He's like, oh, I love tomatoes now. And now he's just been eating them, you know?

• 1:06:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's amazing.

• 1:06:32Speaker 01

  Told him if he eats his broccoli, so every night before bed, my, my wife puts our, our daughter down and I put my son down, we'll race from my room all the way to his room. And I told him if he eats his broccoli, it makes him super fast. So he's like, oh, okay, I'll eat the broccoli. So like little things like that really help.

• 1:06:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, that's fantastic. Yeah, especially with young kids. Um, I do want to, you know, send, spend some time on body composition, specifically muscle mass. So, you know, one of the things that I always try to get my patients to stop tracking is their weight and instead start tracking their body composition. And you had mentioned that's something that you like to do as well. How does someone practically do that?

• 1:07:07Speaker 01

  It's difficult practically if you don't have the equipment at home.

• 1:07:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 1:07:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:07:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  What's the equipment?

• 1:07:11Speaker 01

  So like a DEXA scan, for example. There's a lot of like at-home tools that are just not really accurate. I think the most practical way to measure body composition, which is the way that we do it, is we do look at body weight trends because specifically depending on the person's starting weight, right? Like if we're not working on, on weight loss with a particular person, not that important, but if somebody has 40 or 50 pounds to, to, to lose or, or more, like the weight has to objectively come down, right? But it's, we don't put so much emphasis on the weight. It's just one component of what we're looking at. We look at performance. We track strength on key exercises that we keep consistent to see if there are improvements in strength. Because if your weight is staying stable or slightly coming down and your strength is improving, you're building muscle. There's no way around it.

• 1:07:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:07:54Speaker 01

  And with some clients, we'll take certain circumference-based measurements as well. And then the measure, the measurements that we really look at consistently also depend on what the person feels comfortable measuring. Like some clients rather take progress pictures or not weigh themselves or vice versa, or they rather just look at the strength. So it really depends on the person as well because we want it to be a stress-free sort of journey too. But i- if we're looking at the full picture, practicality, when we don't have equipment like a DEXA accessible, we like looking at body weight measurements and performance as the primary metrics.

• 1:08:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. I think though, you know, to your point though, DEXA is so much more available now. There's companies like BodySpec and Fitness City that can find you a DEXA within most metropolitan areas for around 50 bucks. And I'm a big believer in once a year, get a DEXA scan. Understand your bone mass, your muscle mass, your fat mass, visceral fat. Those four numbers are so critical. And I've been doing this every year now for about 15 years and I have my data for a long time. And it's, you know, it's just so validating for the choices that you make, or it tells you when something's going awry, you know? And so I think, um, I think people should just look into, you know, just Google DEXA scan near me now and you'll, you'll be able to find some.

• 1:09:01Speaker 01

  I love that you mentioned once a year or maybe even twice annually.

• 1:09:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:05Speaker 01

  Because sometimes people also get really obsessed with it.

• 1:09:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:08Speaker 01

  And they try to do it really frequently in two things. One, changing your body composition takes time.

• 1:09:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It does.

• 1:09:14Speaker 01

  And two, people don't understand that even though it's a very. Good piece of equipment, there's a margin of error, right? So like, it might be a little bit higher this time, then you take it next weekend, it's a little bit low. It's like, you wanna see sufficient change to where it's outside of the margin of error. Six months, 12 months, a good timeframe there.

• 1:09:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  For sure. You know, when you look at fitness overall, I mean, you and I both talk a lot about having adequate muscle and building strength and muscle mass, right? But people don't have a lot of time and there are other components of fitness, like, for example, cardiovascular training, right? Balance, mobility. How do you talk to your clients about putting together a fitness program that achieves the goal along all these different pillars of fitness? In the short amount of time, most people have in their lives to do this?

• 1:09:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a really good question. It really comes down to optimizing how the training program is being structured. My fundamental belief is that strength training should be at the base or the foundation of your exercise program. And strength training can be done in a way where it improves cardiovascular function and mobility as well.

• 1:10:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:10:18Speaker 01

  They don't have to be three different training regimens. Okay? So I'll share a little bit about my personal experience here because mobility is something that I have struggled with tremendously. So being 6'4" and having really flat feet, I have extremely flat feet. I, when I first started lifting weights, really struggled with being able to squat to proper depth. And then I've always really enjoyed playing basketball. I used to not be able to play basketball. If I played basketball for longer than an hour, I couldn't sit for more than 30 minutes without radiating pain down my hip and knee. And so I knew I needed to work on my mobility. Truthfully, the only thing I've done to significantly improve my mobility is squat. But I don't hyper-focus on just the weight that I'm squatting with.

• 1:11:02Speaker 01

  I focus on improving my range of motion with the exercise. So now I can squat, literally the back of my hamstring touches the entire back of my calf. So what people will call ass to grass.

• 1:11:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 1:11:14Speaker 01

  With my heels on the floor, no knee pain, I have no, and it's been a byproduct of just really focusing on improving range of motion on the specific strength movements. Because even if we look at a lot of like mobility-specific training, it is modification of the primary compound, strength movements.

• 1:11:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:11:31Speaker 01

  And so if you're limited on time, I would never say that those things are bad or you shouldn't do them. It's just what gives us the biggest bang for our buck, which is time, right? Time and effort. And so I think the strength training, when done correctly, can be incredibly powerful for improvements in mobility and strength and cardiovascular function. One of the tools that I really like to use are supersets. Supersets are when you do two exercises back to back with minimal rest in between them. When done in a higher rep range and you do two exercises back to back, it really taxes your cardiovascular system. So yes, doing additional cardio on top of that is beneficial for cardiovascular health. But you can get a lot out of the strength training when done correctly. So for me, if I think about how I structure my strength training, if we're trying to optimize those three things. From a mobility perspective is we are trying to cover our bases in terms of movement patterns.

• 1:12:16Speaker 01

  We want a squatting pattern. We want a hip-hinging pattern, which is something like a deadlift. We want pressing movements and we want pulling movements in both the horizontal and vertical plane, right? Now, some of these things are hard to describe just through audio, so I'll also demonstrate. And for those of you listening, maybe you watched this part of the video as well.

• 1:12:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 1:12:35Speaker 01

  But you'll see somebody do something like a shoulder press.

• 1:12:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:12:37Speaker 01

  Very common, you'll grab dumbbells and only do this part of the movement. Well, a true shoulder press with full range of motion is all the way down to the shoulder and all the way overhead, right? That's a much greater range of motion.

• 1:12:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:12:47Speaker 01

  And if you can't do that range of motion, you do not increase the weight. Your form to progress is to improve the range of motion. So we always standardize for maximizing range of motion and we always standardize for the right tempo as well. So all exercises have an eccentric and a concentric components, right? Eccentric, muscle is lengthening. Concentric, muscle is shortening. For ease, when you are pushing or contracting, that's the concentric. And when you are relaxing or lowering the weight, that's the eccentric, right? For the shoulder press, again, eccentric would be on the way down, concentric on the way up. We always wanna control the eccentric, a good two to three seconds, a slight pause between the eccentric and concentric, and then explode explosively through the concentric. If you focus on that style of tempo and maximizing range of motion, you will significantly improve your mobility.

• 1:13:32Speaker 01

  You'll also stay safe because you're training in a way that you can control the weights. Like, people think strength training is inherently also hurtful or damaging, and it's not. It's improper strength training, that is. We cover the basis of movement patterns so that we are improving mobility across all different joints. And then the cardiovascular function is really with the supersets and higher rep ranges. So the way that I like to structure training for somebody that has limited time would be full-body training, ideally, starting with two or three days a week. Two days, you can see decent progress. Three days, you can see really good progress. And the way I structure it is we'll have, we'll have one exercise for each, for each of the main movement patterns. We alternate which one we start with.

• 1:14:14Speaker 01

  The first one is always strength-focused, so you're resting a ton between sets, so you fully recover, lower rep ranges, heavier weights, without sacrificing tempo and range of motion. And then we'll move more towards hypertrophy-focused training, which will be higher reps, higher volume, maybe also a little bit more metabolic training in the sense that we start to superset stuff, right? And when you do it that way, like, you really get like the best of, I would say, both worlds, but all three worlds in this, in this case.

• 1:14:40Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, right. No, that's a great program and I really think that, you know, you do improve, people are talking a lot about VO2 max nowadays. You really can improve your VO2 max with strength training if you're doing things like supersetting and doing more reps, et cetera. You know, I also wanted to ask you about, if you do have more time to go beyond strength training, are you a fan of like hip training or specifically to like improve cardiovascular? If you have time to do the cardiovascular, what is your protocol there?

• 1:15:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I'm also not a big fan of like really specific protocols because there's so many ways to get to the same outcome. I think what is important is different, doing different modalities of exercise where you are pushing your limits. So with strength training to stimulate muscle mass, we are pushing the limits of the muscle itself.

• 1:15:25Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 1:15:25Speaker 01

  You don't finish a set because you're out of breath and your heart is racing. You finish a set because you reach momentary muscular failure. From a cardiovascular function, doing any form of cardiovascular exercise that reaches your cardiovascular limits is helpful, right? Like, your heart is just racing and you're out of breath. Personally, for me, I love jump roping because it's an easy way to really get there. Like, it's tough. And I like doing a minute on, a minute off. I really like interval training.

• 1:15:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Me too.

• 1:15:50Speaker 01

  But I also don't think, Darshan, there's like really objective data to say that like, intervals are way more effective than like continuous at high intensity or like, it's all beneficial. I think really high-intensity intervals seem to have some unique benefits for VO2 max specifically, but like, it's, it's all helpful.

• 1:16:08Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:08Speaker 01

  It really, when I think about exercise, it's doing exercise to an intensity that stimulates adaptation. That can be accomplished in a million different ways. And then optimizing your lifestyle between exercise bouts where you recover. And so whether that is 30-second intervals all out or two-minute intervals at like 90% intensity or 85% intensity. As long as you are tracking your performance and your performance is improving, that is what matters most.

• 1:16:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, I, I fully agree. And on the strength training piece, you mentioned there's a few critical exercises that you have people track the amount that they can do, right? So what are some of those where people can do this at home where they're tracking their strength?

• 1:16:51Speaker 01

  So any variation, and I'll give some examples, any variation of a squat, a hinge, a press and a pull.

• 1:16:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay.

• 1:16:56Speaker 01

  One main one for those. And the main one that we choose depends on the person's preference and their current mobility as well, right? Because some people do have physical limitations and so we need to work around those. If we're training at home and somebody just has dumbbells, the easiest variation of a squat would be a goblet squat, where you hold the dumbbell in your hands. And that'll get you really far. For general health purposes, for general, like, disease preventative purposes, like, that is more than enough. Now, if you wanna reach certain physique goals, that may not be enough. From a hip-hinging perspective, doing some sort of deadlift with dumbbells is fine as well, right? I really like what is called more of a like Romanian deadlift, where the main difference is like your knees are just a little bit more locked out.

• 1:17:39Speaker 01

  Because that places more of a stretch on your hamstring specifically. And so a more conventional deadlift, you bend your knee a little bit more, which places the tension more on the quads and a little less on the hamstring and the glutes. So when you keep your knee like slightly locked out, you're just gonna put more tension on the hamstring and glutes and the squats don't work the, the hamstrings nearly as well as a, as a deadlift does. And then a press can literally be any kind of press. An overhead press, a laying bench press with dumbbells, barbells, machine, it doesn't matter.

• 1:18:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Push-ups.

• 1:18:08Speaker 01

  Yep, same sort of, of philosophy there for the pull. It really doesn't matter. If, if you were to ask me which ones are my favorite ones, I love a barbell deadlift, a barbell squat, a pull-up and the bench press with a bar. Another important topic here is a lot of people are afraid to use a barbell. It's just that people have years of experience of doing things incorrectly and have hurt themselves before. Because there is no tool that is inherently hurtfully, there's nothing, nothing inherent about a barbell that is worse than a dumbbell or a machine, right? But on the flip side of that, like, machines and cables are equally as effective as free weights for strength and building muscle as well. So you don't need to shy away, like, if you want to do a leg press instead of a squat, that technically counts as a squatting movement because it's moving the same joints through the same range of motion.

• 1:18:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right. Yeah, I like to, you know, go back and forth between body weight exercises and using the machines and just kind of keep it interesting, but they they're all equally effective. I think there's some misconception around machines maybe not being as effective as, you know, the free weights, right?

• 1:19:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  But they can they can work just as well for people.

• 1:19:08Speaker 01

  The cool thing about machines, if we're talking about saving time, since they are significantly more stable, you can typically, like, get to your working sets a lot easier because you just don't need to warm up as much. Like, when I go and do squats, for example, it takes me about 20 minutes to be able to work up to where I'm going to get started. I do it because I have the time and I enjoy it.

• 1:19:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:27Speaker 01

  But if I'm tight on time, I'm not doing that.

• 1:19:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. That's awesome. So, you know, you've, we have so much more to talk about, but I don't want to make this so long of an episode that people get too much information without actually looking you up and seeing all of your incredible content. Because, you know, with anything that you're trying to learn, and this is just all such incredible information that you bring us, learn a little bit, incorporate it into your life, and then go learn something new, right? After that, don't try to do everything at once. I think that's where people fail a lot as well. So you probably agree with that, right? And so you have so much incredible content out there that we can learn from you on your Instagram, which I'm a huge fan of.

• 1:20:05Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:20:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  But that's bite-sized information. And then you also have more content that takes us further down and a coaching program and some free resources. So thank you so much for this incredible episode. I'd love for you to tell people where they're going to hear more from you.

• 1:20:19Speaker 01

  Dude, time flies when you're having fun.

• 1:20:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I know, I know. I just wanted to get so much more from you.

• 1:20:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, first off, thank you for having me on. I really appreciate it. And this was, you mentioned earlier to give you some props, that you feel like one of the reasons why you've had success with the podcast is because of having credentialed individuals? That's certainly part of it. You're a great interviewer.

• 1:20:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, thank you.

• 1:20:40Speaker 01

  You ask really good questions. That's a that's a big part of it.

• 1:20:43Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Thank you.

• 1:20:44Speaker 01

  Because sometimes you want to have deep conversations and go in specific topics, and it's it's hard when the person interviewing or the person you're speaking to doesn't have that that ability. You certainly do.

• 1:20:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Well, I get it. That's a testament to my patience, asking me a million questions. So I know what I get asked, so that I just parent those to you, pretty much.

• 1:21:01Speaker 01

  It's a skill.

• 1:21:03Speaker 01

  Where can people find me? So all major social media platforms, at Dr. Joey Munoz, just D R J O E Y M U N O Z. My podcast is The Dr. Joey Munoz Show. And that'll be the deeper information on all major platforms, YouTube as well. And then if what I've been sharing here resonates with you and you want to maybe explore what it's like to work with me and my team, and you have some health and fitness goals, need improvements in muscle mass, improving your diet, you can head over to our website, it's strongstandard.com, and submit an application. We'll reach out and see if you're a good fit. I quickly want to touch on the meaning behind Strong Standard as well.

• 1:21:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes, tell me, what does that mean?

• 1:21:43Speaker 01

  To bring the the whole thing full circle, because we we mentioned initially that I think fitness is really a conduit to self-improvement. The whole goal is to help people become stronger in all areas of life through fitness, right? So I'm a big believer that strength isn't just physical. It starts through the physical, but it's more mental than anything else. And I think the the skills that you learn through fitness and the person you become makes you stronger and more resilient in all areas of your life, more patient as a parent, a better leader, a better professional. And so my whole purpose of what we do is helping people realize that through fitness.

• 1:22:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I love that. That's a great philosophy, and just a great philosophy to live by in general.

• 1:22:26Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:22:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Thank you so much, Joey. This was a fantastic episode.

• 1:22:29Speaker 01

  Appreciate it.

• 1:22:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Looking forward to having you back on again sometime.

• 1:22:31Speaker 01

  Anytime.

• 1:22:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  All right.

• 1:22:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Thank you so much for listening to the podcast today. Please remember to subscribe if you liked this episode, and give us a good review, and share a link with your friends. It really helps to support all of our efforts. I also want to remind you that the information shared on this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not intended to replace professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Please consult with your healthcare provider or physician before making any decisions or taking any action based on what you hear today, especially if you have any underlying health conditions or on any medications. Your doctor knows your personal health situation the best, and it's always important to seek their guidance.