Welcome to the pow cost with Charlie Johnson. I'm one of the world's leading Fitness and transformation coaches only provide you with the tools to build your ultimate body and mind. Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of the podcast. I'm going to do this very very quickly cuz I have my man Charlie Johnson on the other end of this call and we were fucking 25 minutes into a podcast and this is I don't know as an advantage of living in the country. Tree or did a fucking sheep chew through an electrical cord or something, but the electricity winds 25 minutes into our recording. So now this is our take to Charlie welcome back to the forecast round two. That's a very much an Irish problem. I think like Countryside problem. You don't get so much in London. May I know it's like this never happen when I was living in the city, but you know, what instead of jumping into the questions that we covered Charlie when shit goes wrong and I love because even your attitude on this was so you're like, fuck it. Come on, we just do it again. Mostly about what you do with Seth backs and when things don't go to plan in any of your life, what's your kind of automatic go to thought process on that sexy very timed conversation to be fair because I spend a good four or five hours of my day with a friend today's head like a bit of a major life crisis to a lot of respect and like yourself as well as me are both very busy individuals and like I like to surround myself with positivity. So I sometimes find a little bit difficult to like be around negative. Tea and deal with that and but I also see the value and being a good person and helping people and offering out hand when people really need it. So I took a huge amount in that even though I just find it a little bit draining, but for me like I person like opening up and being vulnerable suffer a little bit with anxiety with having like a lot going on and the easiest way I find to deal with that is a phrase alike and that's like basically like taking action to deal with anxiety. So for me like the best way to deal with any problem, it's just make a decision and move on so like okay the It costs ballsed up and it's in recorder going to do it again. Like it's not the end of the world known as died like, okay. It was 25 minutes. Me and Brian will chat shit to each other for a bit and discuss a few things are pretty cool. But now we get to do it again to make it even better. So like ultimately all you can do is like you can't go back in time and undo things have gone wrong. You can only plan ahead and try and be positive and I think like the more positive thoughts you put out into the world the more positive things will happen to you generally love that mindset and I can't bear to go on. On the first two questions that we covered because I'm like fuck I was like we got for these questions, but we're going to make them better now or definitely gonna flip the order today's podcast. And for those of you listening Charlie was on in all this in a very popular episode about identity. It didn't Define your trigger foods and the amount of DM's and messages. I got off the back of that because there was so much value in there. It's a belter of an episode hints the round two on the Q&A Forum Ash. I'm so I'll link that in the show notes for anyone who wants to listen and but today we're jumping On a QA style format. So for those of you who didn't why aren't here because it was only me and charity for the last 25 minutes. And like now it's fucking disappeared into the world of the fucking wired Network and wherever the fuck it disappeared into it's gone, but we're doing QA so questions. I'm throwing them Charities Direction and then I'm taking them back. So these came in for my Instagram stories and for people that wanted to send in questions that for the opinion of both me and Charlie. I'm so charity instead of jumping. Being back on our first two questions. I'm curious because you're probably the best person to ask on this because you work with so many clients who have very busy Lifestyles. As you know, one of your main messages is I help people get in shape, you know, people are living busy Lifestyles and something I get asked quite a lot on is about shift work and I know they're not necessarily shift workers that you work with a lot of them are corporate a lot of people just busy lifestyle with family excetera, but when it comes to shift work high stress and that lead To weight gain. Do you have any tips for shift workers in general and then we can kind of digress into dealing with stress and dealing with weight gain because of that when it comes to shift workers, what's your kind of philosophy or thought process towards that for me first if you'd agree, but the big thing I think she just works really need to focus on is it might seem obvious is quality of sleep. So obviously their sleep pattern can be a little bit all over the place. However, what you can focus on is making sure that the the quality of sleep you are getting is optimized. So like as we discussed on version 1 of this podcast every cost caffeine like being very aware of in Terms like time to taking caffeine and you be aware of your blood pressure all these different factors that you can try and control which will optimize your health and your breathing while sleeping. So for example myself I suck like the one of the biggest Revelations my title life in terms of health sleep recovery and probably longevity for me. It sounds ridiculous something so simple is using native. Strips and that became very important in the last week or two for example, so around this time last year from now if I had very high blood pressure around a hundred and sixty just from being restricted working loads and various different reasons having a hell of a lot going on and I obviously clocked what but this is already obviously crept up as I knead sort this out if I got talking working with check with dr. Dean. So it's a fellow Irishman who is probably the most intelligent person in the fitness world out there when it comes to anything. Is related and one of the things he first recommended to me which is nasal strips. Now, why is use nasal strips is because basically being a slightly bigger individual I struggle to breathe through when I lie on my back for a start and also I don't breathe well through my like nasally to I know so in terms of nitric oxide production which causes vasodilation. So you're basically your blood vessels relaxing that mainly comes actually 70% through the nasal cavity when you breathe. So if you're not breathing properly when you're actually Sleep through your nose. Therefore, you're not getting the nodule outside coming in your blood pressure will naturally be higher and also the quality of your sleep will be poor because you're constantly waking yourself up because you can't actually breathe properly. So that in itself is mainly like literally changed my life and some I check my blood pressure every week just for Health and Longevity purposes and I had a week a week or two ago. We like I was bit crazy with work and I just got slapped with it. I didn't actually bother using the nasal strips and my blood pressure jumped up 14 points in a week. And that was the only thing that had changed a little bit more stress than usual and then the week I realized this is obviously it happened start using nasal strip skin and my blood pressure dropped back down the another 14 points the following week. So for me like a talk about anecdotal evidence that clearly makes a massive difference in terms of My overall health my recovery in the quality of my sleep. So like if you work shifts and you have a very high stress environment one thing that monitors your blood pressure and then I was also be very aware and conscious of the Quality of sleep you're getting in the environment you sleep in. So another thing I've recently implemented last month or two. My wife thinks. I'm a freak though that last is wearing a called a man to sleep mask to basically cover my eyes because I'm very sensitive to light. So particular if you're doing like when sleeping, so if you're doing shift working trying to sleep during the day at all having a perfectly black environment and like Darkness will again massively improve the quality of your sleep and then also means that you have less of an impact in terms of Of dealing with the stress from shift work if that makes sense. Yeah, that's Brittany device. I'm going to pick you back a little bit on what you said about the Sleep environment being very important and the that understanding that all the photoreceptors through obviously your eyes into your body to either cover your eyes or black out your room. So people are working night shift. I generally try and as you said focus on the quality of sleep, like there's going to be certain circadian disruptions just from your night/day side. All your melatonin production your hormone that tells you you're tired isn't going to be working as well as somebody that's on a normal day shift work. However, you can kind of mimic some of that nighttime environment by blacking out your blinds or getting blackout curtains or using face masks excetera. And this is also an area when people are talking about shift work and I'm not a massive fan of melatonin production are melatonin production, which is the supernatural thing. Melatonin supplementation. Even just because if you keep consuming it for too long, your body will stop nasty producing it. However, I think it's an amazing tool in your tool kit. So if you're traveling across time zones melatonin is always one of those supplements that I pack, you know, something we talked about on round one that people will never know about is that when you're traveling across playing when you were talking about fasting on planes and that's something similar I do if I'm going on Long Haul flights and I'm crossing several time zones. I'll always bring melatonin with me to try and get my Sleep cycle on track faster and also for shift workers. I think you can be a useful tool in your tool kit because you're not going to be producing melatonin as well as somebody that's following the normal nighttime daytime routine and stress is another thing we mentioned relieving stress briefly there. What are your personal protocols that you either use yourself Charlie or with clients for people to relieving stress and then we get into the waking around this which just kind of there any like three separate questions that overlap but when it comes to stress in general, what's your stress relieving techniques and how do you handle this and what you advise clients who are quite High stressed individuals are in high stress environments what you recommend they do so can this very much I think stress as we said on podcast number one was is like everything is very person dependent and depends on your personality. So for example to me, I have a very Type A personality which I would say you do as well Brian like being outside about hyperactive. I just want to go go go go or time where it's like if you're like that probably the best thing you can probably do is make yourself sit down for like three minutes twice a day and just do nothing like but almost like Zone off. So in that respect, I'm a big fan that I actually genuinely really struggle to make myself do it at all and that's used an app called headspace which is like a form of meditation app where you literally just sit and just breathe and just like I think it just like clear your mind that I fit find it's a very powerful tool and when you can almost make yourself take yourself extreme of slowing your mind in your body down. I find it almost gives you another gear in the other aspect about of course your black your body and your mind to the other end of spectrum and work even harder. So that's the first thing I'd probably look at the other thing I would say is like trying to like you run your day the day doesn't run you. So one thing that's a bad habit is people being reactive to example for their phone or Email so something I big fan of is like say for example, I go and train I put everything on airplane mode. No one can contact me. That's like my time to myself I think about nothing else other than what I'm doing in that like rep set or whatever and that for me is like my freedom for the day. We're like, no one can get in touch with me. Like it's just like peace and quiet almost so I think it's very important that everyone has that like a breathing space in the day because as beautiful amazing, like we're on technology now that we would be having this conversation that thousands of people can listen to me. Technology is an amazing vehicle and tool that we have at our disposal to help people. However, it does also is detrimental respect that everyone is like reach all the time and it was almost overly stimulated going through phone's constantly swiping through Instagram ticked up whatever it might be. So I think there's a lot of power and be able to control your own access to these social media platforms and messaging and vice versa that being able to access you if that makes sense. And I think that gives you control of your life. Yeah. I think that's systems having systems around whatever your we talked about trigger foods in the first podcast, but having systems around whatever triggers your stress levels as well and you made a very interesting point there and I do something very similar even though you go on airplane mode during the gym. I I never turn my phone off silent mode and some nobody's able to ring me. The only person that message has come through on my phone as my mom and I've got like dedicated times and I'm on social media and that for me is systems around, you know, you mentioned anxiety at the top of the Cast I had a lot of stuff imposed anxiety around, you know comparison syndrome, which we talked about on the very first podcast and August and these were all issues that I had that I'm like, right. There's something causing this there's something triggering me to feel this way. There's something triggering me to feel anxious or do something triggering me to feel ramped up with my stress levels. I'm like, okay, what is this and what I go through my day, I'm like, well, I'm fucking replying to every email as a comes instead of Bachelors or everyone's able to reach me at all. Moments during the day whether it's 2 a.m. Or 2 p.m. Or I'm on social media constantly flicking through randomly. I'm like write these things are causing me anxiety and stress. I need to put systems in place around them. So I think identifying as you mentioned earlier identifying the Triggers on what's causing the stressful environment now working shift work in a high-stress environment. Of course, your work is going to be your stressor, but it might be worth looking into short-term stress. To handle chronic stress one of the things that I found by proxy by pure look when I was training to run through the Sahara in 2018 and then again running through the Arctic in 2019 was I did a lot of heat exposure. So when I was training for the Sahara because I knew it was going to be 40 degrees 50 degrees. I was doing a lot of work in the sauna and as a result, I found out about heat shock proteins. I found out about your body's response to extreme heat and extreme conditions and like my mindset and my arm I Stress levels were just massively reduced after about in the sauna and the same thing happened when I was training for the article last year exposing myself to really really cold temperatures to try and prepare my body for that - 38 degrees, but I was getting something very similar with those extreme conditions cold shock proteins the opposite and understanding for me the benefits of short-term stressors, which training is a short-term stressor fasting is a short-term stress stressor cold exposure heat exposure. All short-term stressors that can help you deal with chronic stress. So they are all tools in your toolkit on top of what Charlie mentioned that are all worth considering as well. I think that like like I took a lot for that myself and Brian, so thank you and I think you probably have this pretty dialed down and is probably something I need to learn from you. I think I am probably starting to realize more now that I have control more of my life because I do very much like what you say in terms of like someone message me or apply show away email straight away because I've Got That Type A like Africa stuff that I have to get stuff done where it's like like I can do whatever I want to control things where I want replies people when I want so like you can ultimately do like an hour twice a day and that was just as effective as jumping in and out all day long and getting distracted. So I think that's like a really awesome system. You've got there. Yeah. It's pure down to the product productivity levels. Like I find myself even when I tried it and experimented with it. I'm like, I'm actually getting more done and I feel better. I'm like, this is literally a win-win. All around and which brings on to kind of the last point in this question and I'm curious if you've had any experience with this yourself more so working with clients shift work and weight. Gain, do you find those two things can be synonymous or is it a case that it's just easier for people to I don't want to say use it as an excuse because there's definitely some circadian a metabolic things going on when you're disrupting that natural circadian rhythm and not working during the day are not being out and about during the day and sleeping you're in the day. But have you any experience working with shift workers who have either came here? Because weight gain was the issue or anyone that you were working with to switched into a shift work and found that their weight started to increase because of it all. Okay. I personally don't think there is a huge issue with shift work providing you can get your quality of your sleep like nailed and down. The problem is I find that people they often end up. Greeting and they struggle to nap. Like if they have a change in start doing a shift pattern, they struggle to almost accommodate like the nutritional changes that need to be put in place when you're doing like when you move into a shift work phase which often will lead to something like phases where you might have to fast for a few hours, which also talk about come on to later just to balance things out so it like it bounces out over the week because you can't be like if you're a nurse a for example of bodybuilding style or Fitness Elite Fitness style diary every 2-3 hours if because you're on like, Some crazy shit where you can be up for 20 hours. That doesn't mean you can then eat next to two meals because then that's an extra say 800 calories. Then you're going to gain weight if that's not your goal. Obviously today with them. That's not good not can be a good idea. So again, it comes back down to the specifics of the individual and their scenario, but realistically, I don't think this is much detriment in doing shift work as I think a lot of people perceive. It's just having it set up correctly in optimized and I think one of the things to probably look at that is like the workout window and Making sure you feel yourself around that window. Ideally that for me would probably be the first thing I would say the rest of the meals you can pretty much put in as you like, but I wouldn't be too concerned the necessarily do shift work in the make again at a ton of weight realistically my opinion. I don't think that's necessarily true. I think as you said, I think there's something people might look to use as slight excuse perhaps. Yeah, I think there's a kind of have two conflicting thoughts on this because when I either work with people that are coming through shift work Factory workers nurses Etc. I understand that there's definitely some hormonal and metabolic disruptions going on from normal. As you said, it's down to the lack of quality of sleep, which is a real issue, you know, if you're working a shift work and you're not getting high quality sleep the problems are stemming from that that's the root problem. So if you do a charity mentioned that is going to have a massive benefit on your ability to lose body fat or Hani and goal that you're trying to hit because you've got the root issue which is my Sleep Quality is really poor because I'm trying to sleep during the day if you get that dialed in it's going to make everything else significantly easier. So pulling from that side. I'm like there are some disruptions things like left and ghrelin like they can all become down regulated if you're not sleeping, so it's not necessarily that it's the shift work is the problem and even now as I'm saying it out loud. I don't think it's the shift work per se that's the problem. It comes back to setting up an environment. And saying up systems with your food with your training and getting your pre and post-workout window rice getting your quality of sleep, correct, you know and if there's times when you as you know nurses and doctors are great examples when I've worked with those try and tell where they could be working the 2022 our shift. I'm like right there. You're going to have some negative effects from that but that comes down to sleep quality. So with the case of Building Systems around that and don't let it be an excuse because it is very very easy to Less shift work and working nights in particular become an excuse for not getting to the shape that you want because you're like a fucking I'm working night shift. What's the point? You know, I'm hungry all the time. I'm not sleeping. Excetera is like no you can definitely get things built around your Lifestyles to compensate for the fact that your Sleep Quality isn't as good as it would be if you were sleeping normally at night time, but you just have to make sure that you're completely taking responsibility for an on the front end getting your blackout blinds. Getting your mask to sleep at night time getting your meals and pre and post-workout meal set up and making sure that you're still training. You know, I think training works really really well here as structure for the day, you know, one of the things I generally tell my clients who work shift work. I'm not sure if your similar charity is I tell him to try and mimic what they would do on a normal day. You just flip the hours around so you might be getting up at 8 p.m. I'm like cool have your breakfast go to the gym. Go to work have your post-workout meal, you know and keep Days, you would if you were getting up at 8 a.m. You know, you just flipping it by 12 hours because you're working night shift and I find people have a lot of success with that and I'm not sure what your thoughts are on terms of what you do with your shift workers in that respect. That's exactly the same strategy. I would use the only thing there anything I would change with that potentially is if so, for example say you're like flipping their shift around and they're starting the day 8:00 p.m. But they were trained at the end of their day. So for example, it's it will be equivalent of 7 a.m. The next day what I might get them to do is maybe fast for the first few hours of their day from 8 p.m. To say 12 p.m. If that allows them to have a longer window of them being if they're going to be awake for a long window of time because I'd rather they had small window of fasting at the start of that scenario and then they could eat consecutively for every three to four hours then they had bigger gaps of like 5 hours between meals that make sense because I find Once a client if they haven't eaten and they're generally okay hunger wise Once they start a they want to like if they're training hard, they'll need they'll start craving food every three to four hours. Otherwise, one of the things we mentioned with the recording that we lost and I want to bring it up here because there's so much value because I didn't actually realize we fell bolt on. So opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to caffeine intake talk about what we were mentioning earlier about caffeine intake and your ability to have a cup of coffee late in the evening go to bed. And people's ability to metabolize caffeine. I think that's a really interesting point that I want to read bring back up on this podcast. Okay, so just so this was something that was brought to my attention funnily enough. It's always been sort of Fairly aware or to Ferry reports mentioned by Ben pakulski. I was at dinner with him for a friend's birthday and like it came up somehow and he said that people have blond-haired blue-eyed. They tend to have the enzymes of genetics that they can they hide metabolizers or caffeine so they can clear caffeine to this system very like very very quickly and as soon as he said that That makes perfect sense was like a blond hair blue eyes, but I can I can take I can go after dinner. I have a really nice coffee and I go to bed ten minutes later. It makes no difference to me actually like terms of falling asleep. The only thing it does have an effect on this in terms of the quality of sleep. And the only way I picked up is by using my aura ring, which is something I mentioned on the previous podcast. Now the aura ring what it would do it tracks your heart rate through the night and basically how Restless you are. So with your heart rate with a through the night you generally will have almost like a hammer to shape and you At your lowest heart rate generally like during the middle of the night with your heart rate will drop but what I find is if I have caffeine late at night or a meal right before in the bed. My heart rate will be elevated and be much higher than it would be normally which would have an indication which have an effect obviously in recovery, which isn't ideal. So that's the only negative. I noticed in terms of like physiologically in terms of caffeine for me, but in terms of me like we also studied in detail regards to on podcast one earlier and in regards to pre workouts, and for example, I I don't really recommend pre workouts for clients. Like if they want to use them by all means like super but I'd rather they invested their money better quality food their own education and learning to train better will be the first thing I'd look at and but as I said I use pre workouts because I'm a fortune position that I'd get provided them by a supplement company. So why hasn't my disposal so I will use them if I don't have them when I'm traveling, for example, I just have a black coffee because I love coffee and I find caffeine pre-workout works really well, but I don't get any Crash from using pre work or anything. Oh that was you yourself. Brian said that you'd literally be like curled up in the corner like few hours out laughter a pre-workout when it when it kick when it crashes in it leaves you in a bit of a mess. I like I remember as I said just you know on the First Recording like back in the days of say jack3d and craze like those supplements. Like I'm the complete opposite to you as in the highs are so high but the laws are so low like I would get the highs and I would be bouncing around the gym. Like I'll be ready to hit up a claw. Open up a rave. I'd be like fucking like life is amazing. And then three hours later. I'd be curled up on the couch and I'm like, nobody likes me. I have no friends hike it was just it was such a Polar Opposites and but like I can't take any caffeine after tweet 12 p.m. In the day or else I can't sleep. So it was such an interesting point. I'm glad we got to touch it again because everybody on this podcast listening either is like me or like you or somewhere in between and it's important to understand even though the most caffeine has they say five and a half. Half our Half-Life Etc, meaning that half of it will be in your system five and a half hours later different people have different genetic makeups in different enzymes that are going to allow the metabolize it a lot faster. Hence why Charlie can have it at 7 p.m. Or after dinner and like go straight to bed where you know, I would literally be fucking stared at the ceiling until 40. Mm. Yeah. Okay comes at everything every person on this entire planet is unique and beautiful in their own ways. And you just need to optimize whatever you do for yourself, and that's why From a coaching perspective. I'm so into my clients giving me like a very specific bio feedback on everything because the better the information they can provide you as a client the better decisions you can make as a coach because like no matter how good a coach I am. I'm not Mystic Meg. I can't feel what you feel in terms of your body. So in terms of food that's digest well with you in terms of reading that sits heavy and you that affects our sleep if caffeine makes you feel anxious all these things. You need to be aware of conscious of and pass that back to your coach to and they know okay, you can't handle Caffeine let's not have that after 12 o'clock like Brian, for example at let's not have pre workouts these don't sit well with you. This will be a bad idea and it's just providing that feedback and I think that is the key for anyone who's got a coach or a mentor their work with and then respect like success and everything in life is a lot of it comes down to communication and be able to communicate and articulate how you feel to someone else so that they can make the right decision for you going forward if you're working with them. Yeah. I know that's such an amazing point. I couldn't agree more with that Jerry. Next question. How do you determine if you work better with carbohydrates or fats? So this is an interesting question because I know that very much depends on the person per client, but talk about your thought process on what you advise people do because this is something that's been coming in very frequently on my challenge recently. People are going should I eat more carob should eat more fat, you know fat adaption versus care adoption. What are your kind of thoughts on? - and what do you apply your clients and talk about a little bit what you apply yourself and because I'm sure there's a little bit of crossover there or if there's not, you know talk me through that. Okay. So there's a lot of mixed opinions a lot of like media scaremongering in my opinion to do carbohydrates and fats to be say the general public. Now neither of which cut carbohydrates or fats will make you fat either those macronutrients in excess will make you fat and that is like the be all and end or two. Really in terms of my thoughts and how I like to optimize things. I like to have a very logical thought process in terms of like how your body would utilize food. So in terms of what's around Gaza for me during my clients are generally high level athlete or they're looking for like physique transformations to get in the best shape possible. So for me, what I'm looking to try and do is basically fuel performance in the gym to create an Adaptive response so build muscle and burn Burn body fat now. How am I going to do this? I'm going to look to try and push have like a nutrient timing approach in terms of the diet by pushing carbohydrates more heavily around the workout window. So pre-workout into worker and post-workout and then the rest of the time I would look to for lower the carbohydrates increase the fat content now, obviously this is all person-specific. There's a couple of major things in this you need to be aware of now one of those your body fat levels. Generally, I would say I noticed like anecdotally with myself the fat. I am the less carbohydrates. I can handle the leaner. I get the more my body tends to utilize nutrients are carbohydrates more efficiently so I can push up carbohydrates highest when I have a high carbohydrate day. I can ramp it up. Even Higher One leaner because my body just tends to turn through through carbohydrates the glycogen more which when I'm soft the my body doesn't tend to run a fitness officially from my own personal experience. Now this coming back to clients. I would personally say that from experience. I find that females tend to deal. Deals, not right word tend to run better and more efficiently from slightly higher fat diet and that's been proven from some studies. I've seen in terms of like the way they run in terms them from the metabolic point of view and home only that women tend to do better with a slightly higher fat diverse carbohydrate. But again, I'm a big believer as we said earlier in terms of like listening to the client and how they feel like what works terms. If you said to me look I find that I run better and higher fat diet then cool. Let's run with that will That see how we get on. If you said to me look, I love carbs like carbs of life. That's what I want to do then cool with focus more on that. But again, it comes down to the individual for myself and clients. Generally. I will have some form of cop cycling diet through the week which would basically be like and there's a sort of a nutrient timing approach where on diet days where your weight training with the carbohydrates would be higher and days where it's a rest day. The carbohydrates will be much lower like even potentially like zero but the fat and the protein will be slightly higher to offset that keep the calories. Up. Now, there's a few different caveats to that. So for example, if you were training in the fasted first thing in the morning, I would go give you more carbohydrates in the evening to saturate glycogen overnight so that you were fueled slightly for the morning because you're not gonna have a meal pre-training. So there's a few individual nuances that obviously would come into play with this but in a general consensus, that's how I find I get the best results with my clients and also from anecdotal experience with myself. I don't know what you find works best for you. Obviously Brian you're Or endurance events now, which is obviously slightly different terms demands on your body. Novice your end goal is not necessarily just pure it like aesthetic point of view, but I'd be fascinated foxy your thoughts on that. Yeah. So again, that's such a great point in terms of again goal specific to the person is always going to be the answer when it comes to any dietary advice, but what I do myself and we touched on this briefly and I'm going to retouch on it now just because I literally had this conversation with one of the guys who signed up to my program for January so you can sign up to to my beak a fine line program early and stairs, but the program to the start to January and he literally got the nutritional plan and he was like me he goes what the fuck you guys I thought we were going to be fasting on this program and I was like, why do you think we're going to be fasting he goes what you do micro fasting you do fasting, you know, you do high fat diet as it. Okay, I was like, are you training for a hundred mile ultramarathon? He's like no I was like are you trying to lose a couple of kilos to train for that Marathon? He's like no I want to build muscle. I was like, okay, that's why you're not doing what I'm doing and that answer like I was The jokey way and that answers always that's why I'm so conscious on my social media platforms on my podcast everything to let people know that this is my end goal in the way. Then I meet you in the way that I'm training is in alignment with my particular in gold at this moment in time and Charities exactly the same like if your goals are matched exactly like Charlie, you've the same training history. He was similar metabolism. I'm not doing what he does is probably going to help you but the majority of people in the world have different goals. We have different bodies. We've different training histories. We have different abilities to digest different foods and different ways. So I think it's important to understand that it's always gold depending on the person and what are you doing? What Charlie does isn't necessarily what everybody should do. That's one of the reasons why I love chatting with Charlie because he's like, well, this is what I do, but this is what I do with clients and sometimes it's the same and then a lot of times it's different. So when it comes to carobs and fats for me, I work way better off fats and Do a lot of fat based diets because of dietary High dietary fat because I'm trying to feel my body for endurance. So when I'm running ultramarathons particularly like longer run, so anything over Marathon distance the actual Ultra or a Long training day, you know, the 30 kilometer run at the end of my workout on Monday and it will be 35 kilometers next week. So they're quite long runs and I do them at the end of my weight workouts. How many calories did you eat? I haven't a clue with the miniature. I really like I don't track calories at all now and this is when I get up to that level of training. So as I get closer to an event my training tends to ramp up, you know your stuff similar to a show like your training tends to ramp up and for me, it's all about just fueling my body in recovery. You know body composition is pretty low down on my list of goals. And you know, I'm lucky in the sense that I'm quite you know short and stocky kind of built like a hobbit. Anyway, so like I'm never going to be lean and skinny like, you know, I'm not fucking short and stocky. Farmer builds. Like I saw I'm fine in the sense that I always maintain the muscle that I have regardless of how much I run or how much I train but when it comes to the way that I eat around Nash and the days that I'm hungry, I'll eat more and the days that I'm not as hungry less now, I do something similar that we're going to talk about later when we get to fasting because you made such an interesting point earlier that we're going to expand on about your thoughts on fasting intermittent fasting micro fasting excetera. I try and get all of my food in In during the time restricted window. So even if I'm eating, you know 5,000 calories a day or I'm eating 2,000 calories a day. I try and condense that all into an Asian art in our e-zine window because one it fits into my lifestyle and Suits my schedule, but to it makes me a little bit more fat adapted meaning that when I'm actually on longer runs and doing endurance work I can tap into those fat stores and I don't for anyone that's listening and you may be familiar with this charity or may not be Runners get what's called a boink and where they literally like Running and they just hit this wall. And that's normally like when people have depleted glycogen and they're trying and they're not metal but modern metabolically flexible enough to switch over to Fat stores and they get this feeling of like hitting the wall. Like I never get that because I run primarily off fat versus carbohydrates. It's carbohydrate fuel that leads to tend to get that problem. And so when it comes to what I do, that's my reason for consuming a lot more dietary fats. And again, it changes based on training seasons based on what I've done that Previous day excetera but when it comes to finding what works better for each individual person with carbs and fat. So to answer your question. I'm the fucking clue. My calorie intake is M. But answer the question on how to determine if someone works better off faster carbs. I think it as you said you made a great point there. Like if somebody has that self awareness around their own nutrition initially before they work with a coach with me with you with the personal trainer with an online coach with whoever having that information is very valuable if you know that you work very Well of carbohydrates and is you said carbs or life like if that phrase or word is ever into your mouth? Then you're like you're probably going to work well off carbs that's never I've never heard those words because I've never really cared of never apart from like chocolate like the fucking trigger food cabs from the yeah, give me more of that shit like with the exception of those carbs like I could go to the rest of my life without eating potatoes or rice and I'm like, yeah, that's fine. Like I don't really care but I do love my fats. I love almond butter. I love oils I love Of fatty foods, like my body works really well off those and has done for as long as I can remember now when I used to compete in bodybuilding I would do similar to what you did the carbohydrate cycling protocol. And that's one of my favorite methods of nutritional plans for people to follow when composition is the goal. But whether you run better off carbs or fat, it can be as simple as asking that question, you know, as you said our cabs life, like if you think that way then you're probably going to be able to adhere and In a diet that has a higher intake of carbohydrates and all you do then is manipulate your fat intake so that your calories match during goal to lose fast to build muscle to you know lose weight. Whatever you're in goal is and I think the reverse works for people that are better with fats, you know, if you work better off having fats and then just have a structured refeed every 7 10 14 21 days, whatever you want either with free foods or cheat meals or whatever it is or you know, healthy sweet potato and baked potatoes and rice Etc. And you have a structured reefy just to make sure you don't get any metabolic stalling like that's going to be really beneficial but I think coming at it from that watch your ringgold's down point and looking at carbs and fats as tools that if you have this tool in your tool kit, you know, you work better off one or the other that's going to help you or your coach determine what plan you're going to be able to stick to long-term. I think that is going to be very important or that can be very beneficial to understand for Do you like I'm sure you're the same Charlie when you get a client comes to you and goes look I do really well off carbs are do really well our fats or whatever anything in between. It's very useful as a coach to be like cool. Let's prioritize this now and then you can kind of adapt things as you go along Hobson agree with that and again, it comes down to as we said earlier every single person is unique and different. Yeah, like I think at the end of the day, that's literally what it does and I just want to kind of hammer home that point that what I do what Charlie does what any media fitness person does like always remember what somebody else does they're doing it for their specific goals. Like that's the advantage to working with the coach, you know with whoever you're working with or the advantage of researching and educating yourself on the different dietary strategies and training strategies to hit a specific in goal because following and copying somebody else. There's so many variables that haven't been considered there, you know, the training history injuries how you deal with certain foods your trigger? That we talked about the episode in August like they're all going to be different based on the person. So don't ever go with a one-size-fits-all like this is when I think of when I see it on social media and this is why I love your content Charlie because it's so clearly let's find what works best for you. And I love that message. But sometimes when you go on a social media profiles you can see ya, you know, this is what everybody should do. This is the vegan diet. Everyone should do this is the training program. Everyone should do your like that's like somebody giving you the winning lottery numbers. I'm like, you know winning lottery numbers. Is work for the person that won the lottery with them doesn't necessarily mean they're going to work for you. And that's for me. Like I miss nothing worse than having a one-trick pony and being narrow-minded with your approach and I like for me I'm a training nutrition nerd. So like I love going on training seminars and nutrition seminar. So I'm going on a seminar this weekend actually to Edinburgh with dr. Scott Stevenson who be great guest on your podcast. I see so like he's probably the most intelligent guys in the world. It comes to training nutrition. They're calling the bodybuilding physiologist. He's a cool guy, but I'm do that sometime this weekend. But I also did a seminar earlier in the year with me loss arches and one of the best things that he said at the very start that I bought in to him straight away was this is what he said. He said this deed it was information here. This is my own personal anecdotal experience. You interpret this how you feel fits best for you. I like that for me. Like when he said that I was like bang on the money, like that's my thought process as well with everything that I have learned so far and at what I say to people is like this is my knowledge now, this is What I find is worked for myself and anecdotal evidence with clients. You interpret this how you feel fits best for you because you're different than I am and no different than the clients that I've worked with in the past and like that for me was golden love that. That's a great message jelly back to the questions that we covered here here thoughts on fasting intermittent fasting. This is a very everything in Fitness tends to go in nutrition goes in Cycles. Depending what's popular in the media are now in terms of intermittent fasting. Really? I'm not a fan of this. But again, it comes down to the specifics of what your goal is and it depends as always so that's a very specific question like is a specific question. But like you can't give a specific answer without knowing all the information. So in terms of intermittent fasting, I'm a big fan of it like counter-intuitively when actually bulking looking to add muscle mass now. The reason for this is when you're looking to try and add muscle mass you're going to eat a lot of food now anyone who's be doing this for a while in fourth? 5,000 calories a day will know this gets very tedious very fast and you'll feel bloated and you'll feel in a polite way that nothing is moving through you now a great way to you reset your digestion keep hunger levels higher and generally probably for overall health is optimal and also to keep you probably a little bit leaner as well to a degree is to throw in like an intimate fast, maybe every week to ten days probably every 10 days probably optimal. Now what I would look to do with a client for example or myself is I would fast safe. From when everyone asked me was the evening nine o'clock. So maybe one o'clock a total of the next day now, that's not a huge fasting window, but it just gives your stomach a bit of a digestive break because otherwise you're constantly pounding in food is trying to digest over and over and over again. And again that's going to cause digestion digestive issues and chances are the food you're pushing in. You're not going to be up taking particularly well and like again it comes down to it's not what you eat or just throw down your gullet. It's what your body actually absorb some takes in. So if you're getting to the point where You having bad stalls? For example, you've got no hunger you feel bloated. You feel sluggish been training. I would suggest maybe giving this a try maybe every 10 days and you should find it makes a big difference other times. I'm a fan of intermittent fasting if you're in a fat loss phase and you were a client of mine who for example, so my clients who work in the city, I'm a fan of them using it if it was very busy lives and have got time to be in sit down eating four five six meals a day. I'm a work in the Train the evening. I may well get into fast the Throughout the day and then half maybe three meals later on in the day the reason generally I'm not fine and it's been fasting and I find myself and with clients is that it tends to lead to a famine Feast mentality where you don't eat until so two three o'clock in the afternoon and by that point you are so hungry and ravenous that once you start eating cannot stop and chances are that you're like cuz you're so hungry the food you want to go and eat aren't maybe to be the best choices. You can be more likely to be led astray. And therefore you're less likely to adhere to your diet. Now your results will directly like link to your adherence. Adherence is the key to achieving success providing your program is set up correctly your diet is correct it if you'd like if you'd hear to have to program a diet, that's correct. You will get results Huntington's guaranteed as possible. So that's my thoughts generally on intimate fasting the other time. I personally love intermittent fasting is when traveling so if I'm doing a long-haul flight, I will Fast for a couple of reasons. He's a pain in the ass to carry like to prep for meals that you know, 15-hour flight or 12-hour flight. Secondly, I don't eat the plane food because I've generally notice when I plain food it tends to mess up my digestion and I also find flying in like carbohydrates or salty food your stomach tends to have a bit of a meltdown anyway, and it also gives you a great way to like reset your digestive system. And also like if you're going on holiday, you're probably overeating overindulging calories and we're having a Great time it will offset some of the damage from that on the way there and the way back and also on the way back it will give your stomach in a bit of a break if you've been overeating and overdrinking perhaps so that's generally my thoughts and intermittent fasting. I don't know what you find work best for you passed in the brine or if you've tried it yourself. Yeah. The only thing I'm going to add to that because I think you nailed that the nail on the head with everything. There is the day feast or famine approach and the ravenous binging like that's something that I've experienced myself that hopefully I'll try and provide a bit of value here for People that are experimenting with it the middle fasting and I do intermittent fasting and have done for probably nearly two years now. So I started training for Marathon to sob I was intentionally trying to make myself more fat adapted because I knew I was going to be running six back-to-back my horizons in the Sahara with limited food. So I had to get my body used to running on stores that I already had as opposed to getting, you know food from the outside and I experimented with fasting and I've kept it, you know, I try and eat everything between eight and ten hour window and then sometimes I'll do longer. Fast on a Saturday or Sunday if it's a rest day, but the ravenous binging the feast or famine approach is something that I experienced in the beginning of intermittent fasting where I would skip breakfast and lunch and then come 3:00 or 4:00 p.m. I would be ravenous absolutely starving. And as you mentioned there I would eat some good food. But a lot of it wasn't I was going to all like we joked in the August episode about the trigger foods, you know chocolates might trigger food certain chocolates and but like all food becomes Trigger foods when you're starving and for me it led to kind of overeating and I found when I became a little bit more fat adapted that that's stopped happening it just when my body got better at utilizing dietary fat or fat on my body and you know to the form of ketosis just when you're that's what happens when people go into intermittent fasting and become more fat adapted that ravenous hunger went away. And generally I find that as long as I'm not easy in a massive amount of carbohydrates that ravenous hunger is Fine, I can eat just a fat based meal or a protein-based meal or a combination of that and I have no issues with them the feast or famine approach. So if anybody is experimenting with intermittent fasting and they're finding that they're massively overeating because they've skipped one or two meals or you've skipped one or two meals and now you're so hungry. You've just over consumed that gets better with time if you train fasted in the morning, which is obviously make you more fat adapted through glycogen depletion IE burning through your carbohydrates that you have and also Your body just becomes more metabolically flexible meaning that you can use fast as an alternative fuel source instead of carbohydrates, you mentioned popular media diets, and I didn't prep you on this at all. But I'm curious. Have you watched the documentary The Game Changers. Do you know what's ironic about this is that in 55 minutes. I supposed to be doing a podcast with James Wilkes who is the main guy in game changes? However, it's not be rearranged next week. So that's funny. You ask that question my thoughts on that is Is trumpets politely tread carefully the vegans are listening. Don't shoot me. Don't tell me don't tell me named pyke I think the documentary is incredibly one-sided and biased and doesn't give a true reflection of the reality and I think a lot of things to take incredibly out of context in terms of the athletes and the performance results on there. That would be my initial foot presses on the documentary. I Lightweight film to be fair and it was interesting to watch I in terms of vegan diets do I think they are again it comes down to individual. So what's your goal from an ethical standpoint? Do I think it's cool killing animals to eat them? No, do I feel slightly guilty that I hell of a lot of meat and then all these animals dying of Satan. Yes. However, like is it optimal you eat a vegan diet to for an aesthetic of performance Sport with you know in my opinion do Do would I recommend it to anyone generally know who wants to get in shape? Why because chances are if you're not in shape now you struggle stick to a diet. If you can't stick to a normal diet how you can stick to a vegan diet. We can't eat pretty 90% the food you normally anyway and something that I like is a saying that I think Mark McDonald said that I absolutely loved I was like the reason people statistically become healthier on a vegan diet. It's not because they can't meet because it's like eating vegetables and fruits. That is the that is it like that is it? Yeah, that's Like one of the anytime I get asked and I eat mostly plant-based now just because it suits My Lifestyle but one of the questions I asked absolutely everybody when they ask me about any diet vegan paleo intermittent fasting whatever it is, but particularly ones that are like specific on certain food groups. So vegans a great example because it's like eliminating me steer excetera. I'm like, oh, why are you comparing it to I'm like, you know, if you've gone from a standard American diet or standard Irish diet or eating a lot of processed food and those three times a week and then you start eating more fruits and vegetables in a plant-based vegan diet. You're going to feel fucking amazing. Like if that's what you're comparing it to like but with every diet and I'm going to offer because I haven't touched on this podcast at all about watching game changers because I didn't watch it for a long time because I'm like fuck I really struggled to watch heavily biased documentaries. Anyway, it's frustrating, isn't it? Yeah, there's a it's frustrating because and the advice that I offered on my Instagram story earlier this week. I'm like by all means watches but I'm also a big fan on Garrity and against the information you put into your mind. I'm like if you have a good background or basis and foundation in nutrition watch it because you'll see that it's very heavy like the way it's really persuasive. Like that's the like, oh, it's cleverly films - yeah, it's really really well shot documentary and one of the things I was trying to hammer home to me, but I'm like the job of a documentary is to persuade you I'm like that's literally its job. It's like whatever the message is the Entire film is I is geared towards persuading you in a given way and I think it's very good at that but my issue with that is because of that persuasiveness. If you don't have a good knowledge of nutrition going into it, you're not going to be able to you know, pick out the fact that it's very heavily cherry-picked with the evidence that they've used and by all means I'm a massive fan of plant-based diets. I'm a massive fan of vegan diets and Lifestyles for people. I'm like if that's what's working for you. I'm like, yeah if that's I've choice and that's the day tree protocol. You want to follow that won't probably one of the better ones out there but realizing that that documentary is so heavily biased in one way and it's not providing any counter argument on the other side. Like I love documentaries that provide the evidence on both sides and then let you pick which one's the most compelling. I'm like, I like those kind of documentaries, but they don't fucking hit number one on Netflix. Like it's the one that are going to give people polar opinions. You know, I think that's an important. Message and but as you said Charlie made a great Point here, I'm going to bounce it back to you. Now the issue with vegan diets isn't the fact that it's not good or bad. It's getting its comes down to the context of the person, you know, every diet out there vegan paleo keto excetera. Like they all have pros and cons the problem with the game changers are my main issue with it is cutting out. Miche and fish the foods that have the essential amino acids that your body is going to use for Recovery primarily as an athlete. It's not that you can't get those from Plants. It's just that it's way easier to eat one food source, then combining different foods so that you can get all those essential amino acids. So it's not a case that you can do it. It's just that it's probably going to be easier to build lean muscle tissue to repair muscle cells if you're an athlete in a performance. Course by consuming those Foods by all means you can do without it. But I feel that I'm not sure how you felt about this Charlie that was never given as an opinion that was never given as an alternative and that was kind of my main issue. I'm like fuck you could have totally addressed that and still made your point and you know, but they never did that and that was kind of my only like if I was to pick out apart from the cherry-picked evidence, that was my own issue. I'm like you totally could have said this and still had a good point to me. Like you can do it with a plant-based diet. This is just another alternative as opposed to ruling that out or not covering it or touching agree entirely agree entirely and I apologize if I offended you with your if you're following a vaguely plant-based diet. It's so I am I last week's episode of the podcast. I had Kim Constable on and she's the shredded vegan on Instagram and she she went she had one amazing seven minute rant given our about vegans like and it's not like heaven. His friends are just like lifetime vegan people and but it's what it represents. It's like, you know, you can be a trash and be vegan. You can be really nice to be vegan. You know, you can be a transient be a bodybuilder and you can be really nice and be a bodybuilder, you know same as Ultra Runner same as crossfitter like, you know, it's the but she went off on the 7 Minute rant. What is amazing about she's like, yeah, I'm plant-based I'm vegan and you know be nice she was like, don't be a dick. And like for me like I quite frankly give a shit anyone does like if you that makes you happy and you find that makes get you results and it works for you. Awesome. I all the power to you, but for me, it's same as like like she compared veganism to religion but like do what you like as long as you don't hurt anyone else or preach upon anyone else and like it's fine too if you like. I mean that's that's my opinion on approach every think Charlie I couldn't agree more and I think that is a perfect note to leave it on and made love this format of the podcast and You again for your patience on the second recording at mate for everybody listing that wants to get in touch with you. I'll link all of these in the show notes. Where can they contact you directly for a coaching for your programs or just to check you out on social media or your podcast the best place to check me out would be my Instagram page. So you want me to write messages Charlie Johnson Fitness my own podcast is called the power cast. I'm over on YouTube Charlie Johnson Fitness and my my coaching Iran shred an eight, which is probably nearly one of the world's biggest eight-week. Summation competitions solid hit and show notes if Ryan's have to do that and also my own coaching link. There was Charlie Johnson fitness.com. So by all means guys like I'm open to any questions and if you want me to if anyone's me to a podcast only content specifically same as Brian I could ramble on about anything for hours. So it's a pleasure and I actually love just helping to helping people and discussing these sort of things. He's my passion. I love and for everybody listening over puddles in the shaw knows everything that charity just mentioned. I'm breaking fitness.com Charlie. Thank you so much again, pleasure ma'am, and thank Q
Charlie Johnson joins me for today’s podcast Q+A. Charlie was on episode 238 talking about ‘avoiding trigger foods and building a positive mindset’. He is an online transformation coach, fitness model and social media influencer with over 215k followers on his Instagram account. In today’s podcast, we take turns answering questions sent in through Instagram. Enjoy. I work shift work, high stress and I think it’s leading to weight gain, any tips? 09:24  How to determine if you work better with carbs or fats? 32:18   Thoughts on fasting, intermittent or micro fasting? 46:06   The Game Changers documentary, what are your thoughts? 52:28   If you enjoy the podcast and find it informative, please make sure to leave a 5 star review! I will be picking one person at random who leave a review to win a FREE place on the next Shreddin8 program! If your interested in transforming your life and not just your physique, hit the link below to apply for my Elite One to One Coaching https://www.charliejohnsonfitness.com/pages/coaching-application Or join the WORLDS Biggest 8 Week Transformation Competition with Cash Prizes SHREDDIN8 and secure one of the limited EARLY BIRD places! 