June 7, 2023 • 37 mins
Introducing the inaugural episode of Stronger U Radio’s Summer Series hosted by Member Experience Specialist Branden Hazelwood. One of the characteristics that sets Stronger U apart is the personalization that goes into each member’s experience. PEOPLE, not AI, drive that personalization. Get to know the people behind the brand who’ve been where you are and are ready to help you get where you want to be. As part of this series, Branden will take you behind the scenes with some of our coaches to give you a glimpse into who they are, how they got started, and what led them to Stronger U.
The first of this series kicks off with longtime Stronger U Coach Jack Purdom. Coach Jack holds a master’s degree in nutrition with over a decade of experience in fitness. Like many of our coaches, he joined Stronger U in 2018 as a member and became a part of the team in 2019.
During this conversation, Coach Jack candidly shares his story including:
Most importantly, you'll leave with excellent tips to apply for your summer vacations, travel, and long days away from home (we’re looking at you, sports parents!)
During this episode, Branden and Coach Jack drop a lot of great wisdom. Listen to it all here, then head to the Stronger U Community to share your thoughts.
Subscribe to Stronger U Radio
Follow us on Instagram
The first of this series kicks off with longtime Stronger U Coach Jack Purdom. Coach Jack holds a master’s degree in nutrition with over a decade of experience in fitness. Like many of our coaches, he joined Stronger U in 2018 as a member and became a part of the team in 2019.
During this conversation, Coach Jack candidly shares his story including:
- The reason for his change of heart from pre-med to exercise science
- His personal nutrition journey (spoiler alert: coaches have their own struggles just like us!)
- What coaching means to him
- Why building sustainable habits is a long game
- His approach to helping members meet their goals and how each individual’s lifestyle plays an essential role in that approach.
Most importantly, you'll leave with excellent tips to apply for your summer vacations, travel, and long days away from home (we’re looking at you, sports parents!)
During this episode, Branden and Coach Jack drop a lot of great wisdom. Listen to it all here, then head to the Stronger U Community to share your thoughts.
Subscribe to Stronger U Radio
Follow us on Instagram
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Hello, Hello, Hello. Iam so honored to be here to interview
a wonderful, wonderful human being,Jack Hurdham. And this is the beginning
to jump off to the summer seriesof me having a beautiful conversation with a
lot of our wonderful coaches and Jack, you are the first of the first,
(00:23):
so I'm happy to have you here. This is Stronger You Radio.
We're nutrition is fun, diet trendsare overrated, and we help you take
the guess work again of Eden.Help join us today with Stronger You team
coaches and friends as they discuss whatit takes to become a Stronger You today.
Are you ready, Let's get toit. Jack has been with Stronger
(00:46):
You since twenty eighteen, but firstas a member and then as a coach
on twenty nineteen. Then you've beencoaching for eleven years. Oh all in
all, that's absolutely wild to hear. This is something that I just learned
about here yesterday, so shame onme. But Jack, the floor is
George is to introduce yourself, myfriend, Please please let the people know
(01:07):
about yourself. Absolutely thank you andhonored to be here for the kickoff of
it all. But yeah, asBrandon said, I am Jack. I've
been with Stronger You for you know, going on five years now here,
and I've been in the fitness ofthe nutrition world for over a decade now,
so many many various jobs and rolesand aspects of it, so seeing
(01:30):
a lot of the different angles thatwhich we can come from. But I
feel like that's all really helped developinto you know, not only working with
Stronger You members here, but gettingto really enjoy Stronger You as a special
part of that much larger world.That is awesome. I mean, just
just reading over and just the factthat you've been doing this for so long
(01:53):
is such a benefit to the membersand you just being comfortable within this world
to be able to give and providethe knowledge that you do provide. And
just to give a little background ofwhen I met Jack was when my first
Stronger You retreat, just a quietguy to me at first, didn't know
who he was, and then kindof started speaking to him, and now
(02:15):
we talk about sports and creating ourown podcasts and all this other stuff.
It's wild to get to know thisgentleman who is one of the kindest people
that I've met in my life thatI can openly, honestly say, just
in the short period of time.It's just very easy to talk to.
So when I've had the ability toassign members to Jack, it was very
(02:37):
easy when somebody needed that could relateto them or just talk to them.
You're one of the people that cometo mind, which is also one of
the reasons why I wanted people toget to know you a little bit better
and see that personality that I getto see and know about. You don't
have to give it all, butyou can give him a little taste of
it today for sure. So thankyou again for being on here. But
I'm going to ask you what madeyou become coach? Absolutely, so that's
(03:01):
a little bit of a deep dive, but I guess that's why we're here,
right. So. Yes, Ientered college way back in the day
pre med. I was going tolive out the life of being a doctor
and kind of working in the healthfield from that aspect of it. And
I made it through the first yearof college pre med, and as I
(03:22):
was kind of going a little bitdeeper and figuring out what specialty or what
aspect of the medical field I reallywanted to go into, it became more
and more apparent to me that treatingmost Western medicine is treating things after they've
already occurred. And it just wasn'tclicking with how my mind usually works what
(03:43):
I wanted to do, So Iswitched tracks a little bit. I dove
into kinesiology exercise science with not muchof a plan in mind, but I
knew it was I knew that itwas kind of the other side of that
conversation where it was addressing the beforerather than the after, the venitive side
that might stop or delay some ofthose nasty effects that we can all be
(04:04):
exposed to. So once I graduatedthere, I took two jobs right out
of school. I was a personaltrainer in a big box gym ten dollars
a month, you know, justcutting my teeth on working with my first
ever clients. And then the otherjob I did simultaneously was managing corporate fitness
centers. So companies like McDonald's orCraft Foods or some of these other big,
(04:28):
big companies that have a corporate headquartersaround the Chicago Land area had fitness
centers within them as a benefit toemployees. And in that job, I
got a ton of experience because Igot to balance the accounting books. I
got to create personal training programs.I got to teach spin class and boot
camps and group exercise. I gotto pull towels and clean bathrooms. You
(04:51):
know. I did literally everything youcould possibly do in a gym setting,
plus the corporate side. And forabout four years as I did both of
those jobs and really really enjoyed themand gained a lot of experience. However,
at that point, that was whenI kind of decided that he was
a little bit too much of acorporate gig. The corporate management was a
(05:13):
little bit too corporate for me.So, never having an entrepreneurial bone in
my body, I decided to strikeout on my own and I create my
own fitness company, essentially just doingpersonal training mostly in person at that time,
and then eventually transitioning towards a lotmore online side of things, which
I still run. So my fitnesscompany Fit them and fitness is something I
(05:34):
still do actively alongside of Stronger You. And then in twenty seventeen, as
I was continuing to grow the businessat a business Mastermind, I met Mike
Dola. We clicked right away.The next year I joined as a member
to see what it was all about. He's like, hey, come on,
must be a coach and there's nolooking back ever since. Man,
that sounds like a lot of people'sstories meeting Mike and then Mike is grooming
(05:58):
us to come on into stronger.So it's easy once you get to know
and if you had the opportunity toget to know Mike, it's it's a
very easy conversation. It's like,you know, I can ride out with
that guy, and that's pretty coolto hear all the other stuff that you
have done, especially starting folding towelsand having that feel of working with members
hands went and creating programs for themand still continuing to do that on your
(06:21):
own outside of a Stronger you.But I like to ask you, being
that was a part of your journey, what is or if you could share
with me your actual nutrition journey,because I know we all have one of
our own, whether some you gotbig, got small, got small,
got big, or just in between. Right, if you wouldn't mind sharing
(06:44):
how that relates to your fitness journey. Sure, that is the kind of
So if the fitness side of thingswas very straightforward, almost logical from what
I just described, the nutrition side, I would say was kind of the
reverse of that. I kind ofstumbled backwards into it. And by that
I mean that those first few yearsthat I was working with personal training clients,
you know, whose main goals werethe same as most people. They
(07:06):
wanted to lose a little weight,they wanted tone up, they wanted to
look better, feel better. Iquickly realized within the first two years that
just hitting the gym a couple oftimes a week was not producing the results
that they wanted. It wasn't enough. And for a while I was a
head scratcher because you could do thebest workouts there are, but that's not
going to deliver what you want.So about two years into my professional career
(07:30):
after college, I decided to goback to school while working, and that's
when I got my master's degree innutrition, just to learn more about it.
And again this is not my personalside of things. I hadn't really
worked on it on my own yet, but I was really interested. So
with the intent of bettering my clients'lives, went back to school, got
more education, eventually started dabbling andyou know, doing some initial nutrition coaching
(07:55):
before story rolled around and my ownnutrition journey was a little bit delayed.
I really started counting macros for thefirst time maybe a year or two before
Stronger You, and it didn't gowell. Like many people's nutrition first entry
into that's like, I don't Idon't want to do this, I don't
want a way food. I justwant to make it easy. And you
(08:16):
know, through doing it on yourown is really the only way you're going
to gain that kind of experience.And for me, being someone who is
always athletic my whole life, someonewho's genetically more predisposed to be a little
thinner, I could eat mostly whateverand not worry too much about it because
my body was going to burn itor I was going to burn it out
(08:37):
on the football field or in thegym or whatever. And that's kind of
led me to a lot of badhabits that I didn't realize until a little
bit later in life. And tobe honest, a little bit later in
my professional career, when you knowyou're you're working eighty ninety hours a week,
it'll start to catch up with you. After twenty five we were discussing
(08:58):
age a little bit before we goton the podcast. That thing catches up
to you real quick, that's sure. I worked with Astronomy new coach who's
no longer with us, for abouta year or so before becoming a coach,
and that's really where I got alot of the in person, firsthand
experience that you can't really get throughcoaching someone else. And from there it's
(09:20):
something that I described as I'm constantlylearning. I'm telling my members this every
single check in. I've been doingthis now professionally and personally for years,
and every week it feels like Ihave a new revelation about my own nutrition
or my own thing. And it'snot so much the physical component as much
anymore. It's more about how canI use this thing to leverage the feeling
(09:41):
better or enjoying life a little bitmore? Okay, So I mean I
have something that piggybacks right off ofthat, and I'm glad you shared that
with me, and I'm I'm curiousto you to know from you what does
nutrition coaching mean to you, whatdoes it look like to you, and
(10:03):
what are your coaching values that havecome out of that, Because you've just
explained your journey, what you learnof doing it on your own and also
then learning to do it with thecoach and then how you've now intertwined that
into training your members as well,So if you could share that with me,
I'd greatly appreciate appreciate that. Sure, it's it's a lot of kind
(10:28):
of what I said at the tailI'm there. It's it's really the way
I like to put it is thatfitness, nutrition, all this stuff is
a means to an end, andby that I mean it's it's not the
end itself. So don't get mewrong. It's great to come in with
goals. Whether it's weight loss,whether it's building muscle. All of these
things are valid, and you shouldwork for those things. But you should
(10:50):
work for those things in that everythingelse they bring. So it's not the
it's great to look great member,it's great to feel confident, go to
the beach, you know, buthow are these going to affect you feeling
good as you go throughout your life? How is this going to affect your
ability to get on the ground andplay with your kids? How is this
going to affect you at you know, fifty sixty years old. To put
(11:13):
it in my shoes, I wantto be out on that pickleball court until
I'm seventy year olds dominating some twentyyear olds. Man, that's what I
want to do. So you know, it is great, And don't get
me wrong, there is absolutely avanity a physical goal aspect that everyone has
and I think relying on ourselves that'snot true, but that is all kind
of how can we achieve those thingsbut also get the things that they bring
(11:37):
after the fact they're not the goalthemselves. I think that is extremely well
said. I know for myself,I being an athlete my whole entire life.
It's once I learned about nutrition andstarted to actually do it. Going
back to the point that you madeof, I was working out consistently at
one point working out five to sixdays a week. That is no longer
(12:00):
thing for me. It's four daysa week. I'm not doing five days.
But when I was doing that,I wasn't seeing the results. I'm
like, okay, so I'm puttingin all this work and I'm doing that,
but I was missing one key factor, which was not eating well.
And I was always a skinny kid. And talking to the point that you
made, I was going out andeating whatever I wanted at a quarter pounder,
(12:20):
nuggets, fries, large everything,and just consistently just going NonStop,
to the point that once I stoppedbeing a little bit active, it was
just like, oh okay, hey, what's what's going on here? Right?
And then learning that and being ableto lose and understand how this has
changed my life and added to mylife. I absolutely couldn't be more thankful
(12:43):
to learn about nutrition and learn abouthow to track macros and understand how this
is. This is not a sprint, It's a marathon, right, and
this is something that you can utilizefor the rest of your life, depending
on what you're working toward, whetherit be on the pickable of course,
me flag football, or just playingfantasy football. You know, you never
(13:05):
know, you never know how togo. We'll take it from there.
My question to you now is there'sa lot of members that maybe listening to
this, people contemplating tracking macros andunderstanding what you said earlier about I may
not. I don't want to doall this, you know, I don't
want to have to sit there wayall my food. So those that are
(13:26):
contemplating in are struggling. And let'sjust say I'm your member, and I'm
coming to you, and I havethat mindset, and maybe you have me.
In two weeks and I'm still struggling. What is your approach to helping
a member that is in that phaseof struggling and kind of teetering like I
want to do this, but Ithis is too much type thing? How
(13:48):
do you approach that? Sure,anytime there's struggle going on, I think
it's really important to meet the memberwhere they're at, because it gets lost
in the shuffle sometimes. But coaching, what we do here, specifically nutrition
coaching, is not just macros.It's not just numbers. It's not just
a big old pile of data andthen compiling that and saying Okay, we're
(14:11):
gonna leave those numbers or we're goingto change those numbers. There is so
much more. There are so manymore variables to life that can affect everything
and quite honestly constrain things. Sothe hard truth is that a lot of
times those conversations and questions I'll askwhen a members struggling are not so much
about Okay, well, yes,we want to look at planning, but
(14:33):
also what's realistic. That's the questionI'd like to start with, is okay,
based on what we had planned lastweek, based on how that week
went, which in this example,was well, not according to plan?
What could be realistic next week?Like based on maybe a piece that worked
well, can we start there?Can we build on that? And then
(14:54):
let's look at the other things,the other variables in life. They are
going to affect whether or not thesethings are possible. Is realistically acknowledge those
things because they're real and we havepriorities, and we have to honestly say
where our priorities are. And ifyou're working on a health goal, that
priority has to be pretty close tothe top. But sometimes there's gonna be
(15:16):
cases where we either don't recognize thereare a bunch of things actually above that
goal that we say we want,and we have to reassess and kind of
move that up higher or ask whatcan be done in this situation. I
appreciate you so much for humanizing thatI tend to in my experience of when
(15:37):
I share what strong you is andexplaining to people what is done with your
coach and I explain that the trackingportion, I can just see, you
know, the numbers flying across people'sface, number crunching, and it's just
like, oh, okay, wellthis is I don't want to have to
do extra work for some people,some are just ready to go. But
the part that you humanizing it isis huge for me. I'm sure it's
(16:00):
huge for a lot of members thathave been struggling and have done different programs
that don't necessarily work or are hardto adhere to and their experience and everybody
has a different journey. We don'tknow it is, so we accept everybody
for who they are, but justjust having that feeling, I really want
that part to be driven home isthat these are also human beings that understand,
(16:23):
have family members, they have friendsthat they may have watched go through
the same thing and understand or themselvesand want you as a member to know
that let's talk first, let's havethis conversation for let's let's, as you
said, meet you where you're at, and let's work to this through this
(16:44):
together. This is just not justhey, here's your numbers and have at
it. It's it's a relationship that'syou're building here. It's it's coaching is
a conversation, right, yes,yes, and it's it's not because you
know, sometimes whether it's whether it'smarketing or whether it's what they've seen elsewhere,
people will come in and frustrated afterthe first week not seeing a scale
(17:04):
move or whatever that is, andsay well, let's just lower my number.
It's like, well, that's that'snot always the answer, right,
Let's let's take a bigger picture look, because you know, another another thing
will have common conversations about in ourcoaching is it can't just work for this
week. It can't just work fortomorrow. Anything that we're doing has to
be a building block to what's goingto work the rest of your life.
(17:27):
You're going to continue those frustrated feelingsyou keep. Yeah, see you want
me. I want to put myarms around you and just hug you,
buddy, because it's it's just it'sso so refreshing to hear things like this
and to hear other people share that. Now, obviously I have and share
(17:47):
the same sentiment as you, it'sit's a little bit different. And I'm
sure people that are listening may thinkI'm biased in this, but I truly
I've said it on the introductory podcastwith Gianna and myself, is that it's
it's all about finding, At leastfor me, it's finding about how do
they love yourself? Right? It'sit's this is this is a stepping stone
to getting you to where you wantto be. Some people are doing this
(18:11):
because they want to be able toplay with their kids at a certain age
or their grand kids at a certainage, be able to just do some
activities, travel, get themselves outof a path that their family inherently goes
through, and understanding health issues andrisks that are are hereditary. This is.
These are things that I know severalpeople and members that I've just over
(18:33):
the years. I've reading your intakeforms and understanding what you're doing, working
towards a vacation, pregnancy, soon and so forth. Everybody comes from
different walks of life. And thisis the beautiful part about it is because
there's so many beautiful individuals here.As you're meeting one today, it just
allows you to see that we canoffer plenty of things and understand that we
(18:56):
get where you're coming from. Wecan relate to you that we again will
meet you where you're at. Sowith that said, okay, guys,
what if I told you you canfinally reach your goals without fad dieting,
deprivation, or unrealistic expectations, allwhile still enjoying the foods you love.
Yes, it's possible. In fact, we've helped over fifty thousand members do
(19:18):
just this. Now it's your turn. New members get fifty percent off your
first month with a purchase of amonthly membership plan. And what do you
get with this? You get oneon one personalized coaching, unlimited coach messaging
and weekly check ins, nutritious resourcesand tools, and access to a welcoming
community. Sign up today with thecode su Radio fifty. You've got this
(19:40):
and we've got you, So let'sreach your goals together. If I remember,
I came to strong Eno because Iunderstood from Mike and got the grasp
from it. There for it.But for somebody that is coming off the
street, got a marketing add onsocial media or wherever they're able to find
it at this point, how wouldyou address a member that is coming to
(20:02):
you that wants to gain weight orlose weight? You mentioned kind of meeting
them where they're at, not gettingthem where they're at it and showing them
that their steps to do that.So if you could paint like a picture
for me of what that potentially couldlook like. Again, I understand it
differentiates depending on the member and whatthey're working at but sure, so you
(20:25):
know whether whatever that goal is right. That's kind of what we start with
is the frame is always the goal, plus the lifestyle, like who this
person is as much knowledge as wecan possibly get. And I like to
tell all my members from beginning.Usually, you know, in I send
an intro email with just a blurbabout me, ask them to give them
some back, and then the bestconversations we have are often those ones where
(20:47):
it's about their life and I'll sendthem a little video back and hey,
you know, I appreciate this becauseconnection is a big piece what we do.
Yes, I have to understand alittle bit of your life because like
you said, you know, theymight come in from marketing and they might
they might have this aspect of bout. Well I just follow macros or I
eat this many calories and I willsee results, or you know it's easy
(21:08):
to follow me all or nothing mentalitywhere the other side of it as well,
we don't need any numbers at all. It's all about you know,
self love and feeling. It's likewe want both of those. Honestly,
it's not a either either or it'sa both. A conversation and we need
to see the whole and then figureout what tools we can use for that
specific goal in your life. Sothe first part of it is identifying those
(21:33):
those lifelong patterns and those patterns thatare currently going on. Once we have
an idea through looking at this ismy goal, this is who I am,
this is what I do, thisis what my life looks like.
And you know, the first coupleof weeks, quite honest, they are
an experiment. Okay, here's somenumbers. Let's try these out and treat
it as we're going to throw paintsthe wall, see what sticks and see
what's really hard, what is doable, and where we need to tweak things.
(21:57):
So after that first couple week period, then we can really say my
targets are pretty dial day and Ihave a good concept of what my life
looks like here. Now we canstart reprogramming those those patterns that have been
going on for that's the hard part. This isn't a month long thing,
this isn't the last years. Patternsare often ingrained in us through the last
(22:19):
decades, and we're expecting change indays and weeks and it doesn't happen like
that. So we slowly implement thecorrect tools, whether that is macro tracking
or just some simple lifestyle habits orsome combination of those to slowly reprogram the
habits, the action side of it, and along with that the coaching conversation.
(22:41):
A big piece of it is themindset component. It's just like we
talked about, because you could youcould follow exact macros, you could get
to where you want to be onthe scale, and you could still end
up very unhappy with yourself, anda lot of times that doesn't just solve
it. So having those conversations aroundwhat these goals are really trying to achieve
(23:02):
and what feelings that you want themto produce is an important part of coaching
as well. It's bringing me backto when I first started tracking it.
For me, it was it wasa little bit you give me my numbers.
I'm just gonna go and do themlike you're telling me what to do.
I'm going to do them if Ibut if I'm feeling, which I
remember at first, I was alittle hungry, let's just put it that
way. I was a little hungry. But then it was it was simple
(23:25):
hacks of drink more water, right, things things like that that helped me
propel myself to where I needed tobe and to adhere to it, and
just the conversations that I had.My first coach was Drew, my second
coach was Martin, So who areboth still here? And it was just
an easy conversation to have with bothof them. Anytime I had suggestions or
(23:48):
thoughts and wanted to know something,I would pick their brain and it was
very very easy to converse with themand be like, Okay, well you
know what I'm trying to work towards, and just them knowing that and understanding
me as a person and made itso much easier to be like, Okay,
well we're just gonna do this.Let's watch out for this or do
that, or hey, I'm goingto a party this weekend. I know
(24:11):
that I'm going to indulge and doa B and C. Okay, well
consume this, make sure you're gettingyour protein, and do do this,
do that, right. It wasjust it was always refreshing to have that
person over here helping me and saying, you know what I got you.
You're telling me what's going on.I kind of have, as you said,
I've seen what you've done over acertain amount of time. Kind of
(24:33):
I have a grasp of where thisis going to go, and I can
help you out to get to thatpoint. And I always encourage members to
be forthcoming with their coach. That'ssuper helpful for not only you as a
member, but it's helpful for yourcoach to help you as a member to
move forward to where you need tobe and where to go. Speaking of
that where to go, it's thisis the summer series, so there's a
(24:55):
lot of people going on vacation.Do you know this is the time of
year that people are are charter flightsgoing to visit families, go into the
certain islands, unless you live onan island, whatever the case may be,
wherever you're planning on going. SoI've seen over the years, Jack
that members seem to not know whatto do in their way. And I'll
(25:17):
say this with a disclaimer, isat least that what I've learned from any
of the coaches here, as weare humans again, nobody's expecting everybody to
be perfect because nobody is perfect,all right. And also at the same
time, coaches understand and want youto enjoy whatever the occasion is as well,
right, And I think that isa misconception from some people. It's
(25:40):
just like, well, I'm goingon vacation, I can't do this.
Well, you can do both,right, And that's a conversation to have
with a coach. So with thatbeing said, as we are in the
height of vacation season, what arekind of the approaches and tips and tricks
that you share with your members asthey tend to go on vacation or two
family events during this time of year, as we obviously have graduations and many
(26:03):
of other things. Sure, andI guess the best way to answer that
question because what you said is spoton with a lot of the things I'm
telling members, will start with thebig picture and then we'll look at maybe
some strategy and how you can actuallyhandle it here. So, big picture
wise, what you said rings trueand should be the number one thing you
are going on vacation. This isfor some people one of the few times
(26:26):
they're away from their job or thestresses that make life tough. This is
the thing we're working for. Thisis the thing you do so much to
achieve. It's not the time tobe for most people. Tracking Wayne yourself,
whyne your food? There are veryrare instances that I recommend someone does
(26:48):
any of that. While on vacation. So that's the big frame. I
like to start with this, Hey, this is the time to enjoy yourself,
like you will come back. Yes, the scale is going to be
up, that's a reality of waterweight and things like that, but it's
also not the folk's during that time, so we can expect that. But
then if we take it one stepfurther and say, okay, well that
being our monster going in, let'slook at everything as a whole. And
(27:08):
if you want to take maybe thenext three months and look at your calendar
and say, okay, where arethese vacations, where are these big events,
and look at what that landscape lookslike as a whole. From there,
based on the frequency of those theduration, the intensity of those kind
of events, based on importance,that'll give you a really good idea on
(27:30):
how you can approach it. Becauseif someone is only going away for one
week in the next three months,have at it, do what you want,
enjoy yourself. However, if there'ssomeone who every single weekend, two
three days a week is having eventsand meals out, we're going to need
to have more constraints, more framearound. So just kind of big picture
(27:51):
in it first, and then ifwe get into the nitty gritty of whether
it's handing a vacation or a weekendaway or whatever, I have a simple
friend work that. You know,again it is not to be applied as
an all or nothing mentality, butit's a simple way of looking at it.
I call the two one two fourmethod. So the first and that's
(28:11):
that's two halves there. The twoone ratio piece of that is that most
people are eating for your meals aday, so adjusted if you need to.
But when I'm on vacation, Ilook at two of those meals,
whether I'm eating out or eating atwherever I am as being roughly you know,
macro friendlier or healthier or closer towhat I would do. I'm not
(28:33):
tracking on vacation, but you know, for instance, to give you guys
an example, my first meal ofthe day is almost always just simple protein
shake. Keeps it really easy,It tastes good for me, It takes
two minutes to make, so youknow, milk, frozen berries, protein,
boom, You're good to go.The second meal will be something along
the lines of either a nice bigsalad with protein that I can typically get
at a restaurant or I'm at home, probably just making you know, eggs,
(28:56):
egg whites and an old meal,keep it simple. That one part
of the ratio, that's the twoThe one part of that ratio, that's
where I'm enjoying. That's my indulgencemeal. That's where I'm going to do
what I want. I'm on vacation, I'm here to do it. And
the reason I have that setup isnot just to hold myself in any kind
(29:18):
of health or scale range. It'sbecause I've recognized through years of vacationing that
I don't feel as good and Idon't enjoy my vacations as much. When
I am every single meal doing whatI want, I will be spending the
whole day feeling sick and not wantingto be out by the water or you
know, enjoying the sun. Andthat's taking away from my life and the
(29:41):
time that i want to be reallypresence and mindful and with my family and
friends. So that helps me kindof split the difference between enjoyment and really
staying within what I know helps meout. So that's the two one section
of that, and that's at youknow, how to set a day out.
The two four is within that indulgencemeal and what that means. And
(30:04):
again, you can adjust this.It could be one four, it could
be three to four. Is thatI'm picking two out of four components of
an indulgence meal to have at mostof these meals, and those four components
are your appetizer, your entree,alcohol, and dessert for most of those
meals. If I'm having one perday, I'm choosing two of those roughly
(30:25):
to really go for an indulgence.Now, again, if this is an
important event or something like that,it might be a three out of four
or a four out of four.But it's a nice framework to kind of
give yourself a view of Let's sayyou have a seven day vacation. All
seven of those days probably can't bethree wild meals with four out of four.
Otherwise you're coming back in a badspot. You're feeling terrible during that
(30:48):
vacation, most importantly, and it'snot going to be the same level of
enjoyment you might get if you wereto adjust things a little bit. So
that was very in depth, butI like it. I might have to
incorporate it myself. I like it, especially because I'm hoping to go on
vacation sometime soon, So that maybe something that I'm absolutely going to do
(31:10):
because I also don't like to I'venow that I understand what I'm eating,
and this is a part that somepeople may not be at yet but can
get there because I never thought Iwould ever be to that point because I
never thought that far ahead. Butwhen I eat certain foods or indulge in
(31:30):
certain things, like I do feellike crap sometimes. And it's not because
it's like, oh man, likeI had too much. No, it's
just like it's just generally whatever itwas like. And you know when you're
on vacation you tend to indulge more. Having some type of structure as you
laid out could absolutely help. Itwould help me feel better about it.
(31:52):
But of course I'm still going togo and enjoy myself and have a lovely
drink if I'm sitting on the beach, or indulgent whatever the cultural food is
there, because that is what Ilike to do, because I like to
learn about different foods and indulge thatway. So I want to ask this
before we get out of here,because there's a lot of parents that we
(32:12):
have in an SUH that may thisis softball baseball season, that there's there's
still there's soccer, football, whicheveryou which like to call it. A
lot of parents travel, right,What are is there any packs tips that
you would give to a parent whilethey're traveling knowing that they're going to be
(32:34):
at a tournament all day with theirchilds and may not have access to food
on a on a easy readily basis. Yeah, and that's that's a tough
one. Honestly, I might thesekind of situations tougher than than vacations or
meals out because there are more questionmark variables. There are more that you
(32:55):
don't really know. So what Ilike to encourage in these situations is really
look into your controllables versus your uncontrollables. What do you know for a fact
that you can't control. You know, you can't control where these games are,
what the time is. Often youknow what's available at the concession stand,
which most cases you know and somethingthat's gonna be gonna be working too
(33:19):
well, even if they're tasty.But there are controllables and that's going to
change based on the scenario too.So for an all day softball tournament,
it might not be realistic to sayI'm going to bring a big cooler with
everything that I need for my mealsthroughout the day. But it might be
realistic to say I'm going to bringone meal for myself here that works with
(33:44):
all the other you know gear thatI'm lugging around for myself and my kid,
and then I'm also going to youknow, within a three mile radius.
Maybe I can scope out one ofthese fast food restaurants that I know
has a reasonable option that will workfor me today. It doesn't have to
work for me every single day.But if I can go to Chick fil
A and get the twelve count realnuggets and you know, a side sell
(34:06):
it or a side of fruit,like, that's gonna work for one day,
and I can manage that that's thebetter option than if I were to
say, well, let's just seewhat they have the concession stand, knowing
you are either going to have aslice of greasy pizza or a couple of
hot dogs or whatever else is therethat ain't gonna taste good anyway it might
taste good who's cooking it? Whowe don't know. Before we get out
(34:32):
of here, A I want tosay, I appreciate you so much for
taking the time and doing this.I love you to death, my friend.
Is there anything you'd like to sharewith the listeners before we skate?
First off, the love is mutual, and I appreciate your friendship and you
have me on here, but withthe stronger you community as a whole.
(34:57):
Outside of everything we've already discussed,I think maybe a little nugget we can
add is like everything is an evolution. I think that's really something that gets
missed a lot of times. Again, going back to you don't just come
in and do things perfectly and haveit all figured out. This is a
lot of work, that's the reality, and you won't have it all figured
(35:17):
out. I'm still piecing things togetherhere, having done this for myself and
professionally for over a decade and findingout new things and things that work,
and what I'm actually working towards aredifferent than what I had initially maybe a
year or two ago. Thought aboutit, and just to be patient with
yourself, give yourself some compassion,and understand that no one I've ever worked
(35:40):
with has gotten in on the firsttry. No one comes in and licks
it for the rest of their life. It takes the effort, it takes
the failure. It takes all ofthese things over months and yes years,
to really achieve the life that youwant. But it's worth it because you
still got decades left, You gotdecades beyond this, and that that effort
(36:01):
and work is going to you knowthose times. The time's going to pass
anyway, so you might as wellput it into making the rest of that
life better. It's like you livein my brain. I appreciate that.
It's just it's it's everything is anevolution, and I will leave you all
with that. Again, I thankyou Jack for coming on. I thank
(36:23):
you as listeners for taking the timeto listen to this wonderful conversation and many
to come. We will be backsoon with our next episode and I can't
wait for you guys to see thatnext guest. But again, thank you,
Jack, thank you, thank you, thank you, Love you guys,
see you when I see you.Thank you for listening to Stronger You
(36:45):
Radio. For more information, pleasevisit www dot stronger you dot com.
Don't forget to tune in next weekfor more health and nutrition conversations with Stronger You.
Hello, Hello, Hello. Iam so honored to be here to interview
a wonderful, wonderful human being,Jack Hurdham. And this is the beginning
to jump off to the summer seriesof me having a beautiful conversation with a
lot of our wonderful coaches and Jack, you are the first of the first,
(00:23):
so I'm happy to have you here. This is Stronger You Radio.
We're nutrition is fun, diet trendsare overrated, and we help you take
the guess work again of Eden.Help join us today with Stronger You team
coaches and friends as they discuss whatit takes to become a Stronger You today.
Are you ready, Let's get toit. Jack has been with Stronger
(00:46):
You since twenty eighteen, but firstas a member and then as a coach
on twenty nineteen. Then you've beencoaching for eleven years. Oh all in
all, that's absolutely wild to hear. This is something that I just learned
about here yesterday, so shame onme. But Jack, the floor is
George is to introduce yourself, myfriend, Please please let the people know
(01:07):
about yourself. Absolutely thank you andhonored to be here for the kickoff of
it all. But yeah, asBrandon said, I am Jack. I've
been with Stronger You for you know, going on five years now here,
and I've been in the fitness ofthe nutrition world for over a decade now,
so many many various jobs and rolesand aspects of it, so seeing
(01:30):
a lot of the different angles thatwhich we can come from. But I
feel like that's all really helped developinto you know, not only working with
Stronger You members here, but gettingto really enjoy Stronger You as a special
part of that much larger world.That is awesome. I mean, just
just reading over and just the factthat you've been doing this for so long
(01:53):
is such a benefit to the membersand you just being comfortable within this world
to be able to give and providethe knowledge that you do provide. And
just to give a little background ofwhen I met Jack was when my first
Stronger You retreat, just a quietguy to me at first, didn't know
who he was, and then kindof started speaking to him, and now
(02:15):
we talk about sports and creating ourown podcasts and all this other stuff.
It's wild to get to know thisgentleman who is one of the kindest people
that I've met in my life thatI can openly, honestly say, just
in the short period of time.It's just very easy to talk to.
So when I've had the ability toassign members to Jack, it was very
(02:37):
easy when somebody needed that could relateto them or just talk to them.
You're one of the people that cometo mind, which is also one of
the reasons why I wanted people toget to know you a little bit better
and see that personality that I getto see and know about. You don't
have to give it all, butyou can give him a little taste of
it today for sure. So thankyou again for being on here. But
I'm going to ask you what madeyou become coach? Absolutely, so that's
(03:01):
a little bit of a deep dive, but I guess that's why we're here,
right. So. Yes, Ientered college way back in the day
pre med. I was going tolive out the life of being a doctor
and kind of working in the healthfield from that aspect of it. And
I made it through the first yearof college pre med, and as I
(03:22):
was kind of going a little bitdeeper and figuring out what specialty or what
aspect of the medical field I reallywanted to go into, it became more
and more apparent to me that treatingmost Western medicine is treating things after they've
already occurred. And it just wasn'tclicking with how my mind usually works what
(03:43):
I wanted to do, So Iswitched tracks a little bit. I dove
into kinesiology exercise science with not muchof a plan in mind, but I
knew it was I knew that itwas kind of the other side of that
conversation where it was addressing the beforerather than the after, the venitive side
that might stop or delay some ofthose nasty effects that we can all be
(04:04):
exposed to. So once I graduatedthere, I took two jobs right out
of school. I was a personaltrainer in a big box gym ten dollars
a month, you know, justcutting my teeth on working with my first
ever clients. And then the otherjob I did simultaneously was managing corporate fitness
centers. So companies like McDonald's orCraft Foods or some of these other big,
(04:28):
big companies that have a corporate headquartersaround the Chicago Land area had fitness
centers within them as a benefit toemployees. And in that job, I
got a ton of experience because Igot to balance the accounting books. I
got to create personal training programs.I got to teach spin class and boot
camps and group exercise. I gotto pull towels and clean bathrooms. You
(04:51):
know. I did literally everything youcould possibly do in a gym setting,
plus the corporate side. And forabout four years as I did both of
those jobs and really really enjoyed themand gained a lot of experience. However,
at that point, that was whenI kind of decided that he was
a little bit too much of acorporate gig. The corporate management was a
(05:13):
little bit too corporate for me.So, never having an entrepreneurial bone in
my body, I decided to strikeout on my own and I create my
own fitness company, essentially just doingpersonal training mostly in person at that time,
and then eventually transitioning towards a lotmore online side of things, which
I still run. So my fitnesscompany Fit them and fitness is something I
(05:34):
still do actively alongside of Stronger You. And then in twenty seventeen, as
I was continuing to grow the businessat a business Mastermind, I met Mike
Dola. We clicked right away.The next year I joined as a member
to see what it was all about. He's like, hey, come on,
must be a coach and there's nolooking back ever since. Man,
that sounds like a lot of people'sstories meeting Mike and then Mike is grooming
(05:58):
us to come on into stronger.So it's easy once you get to know
and if you had the opportunity toget to know Mike, it's it's a
very easy conversation. It's like,you know, I can ride out with
that guy, and that's pretty coolto hear all the other stuff that you
have done, especially starting folding towelsand having that feel of working with members
hands went and creating programs for themand still continuing to do that on your
(06:21):
own outside of a Stronger you.But I like to ask you, being
that was a part of your journey, what is or if you could share
with me your actual nutrition journey,because I know we all have one of
our own, whether some you gotbig, got small, got small,
got big, or just in between. Right, if you wouldn't mind sharing
(06:44):
how that relates to your fitness journey. Sure, that is the kind of
So if the fitness side of thingswas very straightforward, almost logical from what
I just described, the nutrition side, I would say was kind of the
reverse of that. I kind ofstumbled backwards into it. And by that
I mean that those first few yearsthat I was working with personal training clients,
you know, whose main goals werethe same as most people. They
(07:06):
wanted to lose a little weight,they wanted tone up, they wanted to
look better, feel better. Iquickly realized within the first two years that
just hitting the gym a couple oftimes a week was not producing the results
that they wanted. It wasn't enough. And for a while I was a
head scratcher because you could do thebest workouts there are, but that's not
going to deliver what you want.So about two years into my professional career
(07:30):
after college, I decided to goback to school while working, and that's
when I got my master's degree innutrition, just to learn more about it.
And again this is not my personalside of things. I hadn't really
worked on it on my own yet, but I was really interested. So
with the intent of bettering my clients'lives, went back to school, got
more education, eventually started dabbling andyou know, doing some initial nutrition coaching
(07:55):
before story rolled around and my ownnutrition journey was a little bit delayed.
I really started counting macros for thefirst time maybe a year or two before
Stronger You, and it didn't gowell. Like many people's nutrition first entry
into that's like, I don't Idon't want to do this, I don't
want a way food. I justwant to make it easy. And you
(08:16):
know, through doing it on yourown is really the only way you're going
to gain that kind of experience.And for me, being someone who is
always athletic my whole life, someonewho's genetically more predisposed to be a little
thinner, I could eat mostly whateverand not worry too much about it because
my body was going to burn itor I was going to burn it out
(08:37):
on the football field or in thegym or whatever. And that's kind of
led me to a lot of badhabits that I didn't realize until a little
bit later in life. And tobe honest, a little bit later in
my professional career, when you knowyou're you're working eighty ninety hours a week,
it'll start to catch up with you. After twenty five we were discussing
(08:58):
age a little bit before we goton the podcast. That thing catches up
to you real quick, that's sure. I worked with Astronomy new coach who's
no longer with us, for abouta year or so before becoming a coach,
and that's really where I got alot of the in person, firsthand
experience that you can't really get throughcoaching someone else. And from there it's
(09:20):
something that I described as I'm constantlylearning. I'm telling my members this every
single check in. I've been doingthis now professionally and personally for years,
and every week it feels like Ihave a new revelation about my own nutrition
or my own thing. And it'snot so much the physical component as much
anymore. It's more about how canI use this thing to leverage the feeling
(09:41):
better or enjoying life a little bitmore? Okay, So I mean I
have something that piggybacks right off ofthat, and I'm glad you shared that
with me, and I'm I'm curiousto you to know from you what does
nutrition coaching mean to you, whatdoes it look like to you, and
(10:03):
what are your coaching values that havecome out of that, Because you've just
explained your journey, what you learnof doing it on your own and also
then learning to do it with thecoach and then how you've now intertwined that
into training your members as well,So if you could share that with me,
I'd greatly appreciate appreciate that. Sure, it's it's a lot of kind
(10:28):
of what I said at the tailI'm there. It's it's really the way
I like to put it is thatfitness, nutrition, all this stuff is
a means to an end, andby that I mean it's it's not the
end itself. So don't get mewrong. It's great to come in with
goals. Whether it's weight loss,whether it's building muscle. All of these
things are valid, and you shouldwork for those things. But you should
(10:50):
work for those things in that everythingelse they bring. So it's not the
it's great to look great member,it's great to feel confident, go to
the beach, you know, buthow are these going to affect you feeling
good as you go throughout your life? How is this going to affect your
ability to get on the ground andplay with your kids? How is this
going to affect you at you know, fifty sixty years old. To put
(11:13):
it in my shoes, I wantto be out on that pickleball court until
I'm seventy year olds dominating some twentyyear olds. Man, that's what I
want to do. So you know, it is great, And don't get
me wrong, there is absolutely avanity a physical goal aspect that everyone has
and I think relying on ourselves that'snot true, but that is all kind
of how can we achieve those thingsbut also get the things that they bring
(11:37):
after the fact they're not the goalthemselves. I think that is extremely well
said. I know for myself,I being an athlete my whole entire life.
It's once I learned about nutrition andstarted to actually do it. Going
back to the point that you madeof, I was working out consistently at
one point working out five to sixdays a week. That is no longer
(12:00):
thing for me. It's four daysa week. I'm not doing five days.
But when I was doing that,I wasn't seeing the results. I'm
like, okay, so I'm puttingin all this work and I'm doing that,
but I was missing one key factor, which was not eating well.
And I was always a skinny kid. And talking to the point that you
made, I was going out andeating whatever I wanted at a quarter pounder,
(12:20):
nuggets, fries, large everything,and just consistently just going NonStop,
to the point that once I stoppedbeing a little bit active, it was
just like, oh okay, hey, what's what's going on here? Right?
And then learning that and being ableto lose and understand how this has
changed my life and added to mylife. I absolutely couldn't be more thankful
(12:43):
to learn about nutrition and learn abouthow to track macros and understand how this
is. This is not a sprint, It's a marathon, right, and
this is something that you can utilizefor the rest of your life, depending
on what you're working toward, whetherit be on the pickable of course,
me flag football, or just playingfantasy football. You know, you never
(13:05):
know, you never know how togo. We'll take it from there.
My question to you now is there'sa lot of members that maybe listening to
this, people contemplating tracking macros andunderstanding what you said earlier about I may
not. I don't want to doall this, you know, I don't
want to have to sit there wayall my food. So those that are
(13:26):
contemplating in are struggling. And let'sjust say I'm your member, and I'm
coming to you, and I havethat mindset, and maybe you have me.
In two weeks and I'm still struggling. What is your approach to helping
a member that is in that phaseof struggling and kind of teetering like I
want to do this, but Ithis is too much type thing? How
(13:48):
do you approach that? Sure,anytime there's struggle going on, I think
it's really important to meet the memberwhere they're at, because it gets lost
in the shuffle sometimes. But coaching, what we do here, specifically nutrition
coaching, is not just macros.It's not just numbers. It's not just
a big old pile of data andthen compiling that and saying Okay, we're
(14:11):
gonna leave those numbers or we're goingto change those numbers. There is so
much more. There are so manymore variables to life that can affect everything
and quite honestly constrain things. Sothe hard truth is that a lot of
times those conversations and questions I'll askwhen a members struggling are not so much
about Okay, well, yes,we want to look at planning, but
(14:33):
also what's realistic. That's the questionI'd like to start with, is okay,
based on what we had planned lastweek, based on how that week
went, which in this example,was well, not according to plan?
What could be realistic next week?Like based on maybe a piece that worked
well, can we start there?Can we build on that? And then
(14:54):
let's look at the other things,the other variables in life. They are
going to affect whether or not thesethings are possible. Is realistically acknowledge those
things because they're real and we havepriorities, and we have to honestly say
where our priorities are. And ifyou're working on a health goal, that
priority has to be pretty close tothe top. But sometimes there's gonna be
(15:16):
cases where we either don't recognize thereare a bunch of things actually above that
goal that we say we want,and we have to reassess and kind of
move that up higher or ask whatcan be done in this situation. I
appreciate you so much for humanizing thatI tend to in my experience of when
(15:37):
I share what strong you is andexplaining to people what is done with your
coach and I explain that the trackingportion, I can just see, you
know, the numbers flying across people'sface, number crunching, and it's just
like, oh, okay, wellthis is I don't want to have to
do extra work for some people,some are just ready to go. But
the part that you humanizing it isis huge for me. I'm sure it's
(16:00):
huge for a lot of members thathave been struggling and have done different programs
that don't necessarily work or are hardto adhere to and their experience and everybody
has a different journey. We don'tknow it is, so we accept everybody
for who they are, but justjust having that feeling, I really want
that part to be driven home isthat these are also human beings that understand,
(16:23):
have family members, they have friendsthat they may have watched go through
the same thing and understand or themselvesand want you as a member to know
that let's talk first, let's havethis conversation for let's let's, as you
said, meet you where you're at, and let's work to this through this
(16:44):
together. This is just not justhey, here's your numbers and have at
it. It's it's a relationship that'syou're building here. It's it's coaching is
a conversation, right, yes,yes, and it's it's not because you
know, sometimes whether it's whether it'smarketing or whether it's what they've seen elsewhere,
people will come in and frustrated afterthe first week not seeing a scale
(17:04):
move or whatever that is, andsay well, let's just lower my number.
It's like, well, that's that'snot always the answer, right,
Let's let's take a bigger picture look, because you know, another another thing
will have common conversations about in ourcoaching is it can't just work for this
week. It can't just work fortomorrow. Anything that we're doing has to
be a building block to what's goingto work the rest of your life.
(17:27):
You're going to continue those frustrated feelingsyou keep. Yeah, see you want
me. I want to put myarms around you and just hug you,
buddy, because it's it's just it'sso so refreshing to hear things like this
and to hear other people share that. Now, obviously I have and share
(17:47):
the same sentiment as you, it'sit's a little bit different. And I'm
sure people that are listening may thinkI'm biased in this, but I truly
I've said it on the introductory podcastwith Gianna and myself, is that it's
it's all about finding, At leastfor me, it's finding about how do
they love yourself? Right? It'sit's this is this is a stepping stone
to getting you to where you wantto be. Some people are doing this
(18:11):
because they want to be able toplay with their kids at a certain age
or their grand kids at a certainage, be able to just do some
activities, travel, get themselves outof a path that their family inherently goes
through, and understanding health issues andrisks that are are hereditary. This is.
These are things that I know severalpeople and members that I've just over
(18:33):
the years. I've reading your intakeforms and understanding what you're doing, working
towards a vacation, pregnancy, soon and so forth. Everybody comes from
different walks of life. And thisis the beautiful part about it is because
there's so many beautiful individuals here.As you're meeting one today, it just
allows you to see that we canoffer plenty of things and understand that we
(18:56):
get where you're coming from. Wecan relate to you that we again will
meet you where you're at. Sowith that said, okay, guys,
what if I told you you canfinally reach your goals without fad dieting,
deprivation, or unrealistic expectations, allwhile still enjoying the foods you love.
Yes, it's possible. In fact, we've helped over fifty thousand members do
(19:18):
just this. Now it's your turn. New members get fifty percent off your
first month with a purchase of amonthly membership plan. And what do you
get with this? You get oneon one personalized coaching, unlimited coach messaging
and weekly check ins, nutritious resourcesand tools, and access to a welcoming
community. Sign up today with thecode su Radio fifty. You've got this
(19:40):
and we've got you, So let'sreach your goals together. If I remember,
I came to strong Eno because Iunderstood from Mike and got the grasp
from it. There for it.But for somebody that is coming off the
street, got a marketing add onsocial media or wherever they're able to find
it at this point, how wouldyou address a member that is coming to
(20:02):
you that wants to gain weight orlose weight? You mentioned kind of meeting
them where they're at, not gettingthem where they're at it and showing them
that their steps to do that.So if you could paint like a picture
for me of what that potentially couldlook like. Again, I understand it
differentiates depending on the member and whatthey're working at but sure, so you
(20:25):
know whether whatever that goal is right. That's kind of what we start with
is the frame is always the goal, plus the lifestyle, like who this
person is as much knowledge as wecan possibly get. And I like to
tell all my members from beginning.Usually, you know, in I send
an intro email with just a blurbabout me, ask them to give them
some back, and then the bestconversations we have are often those ones where
(20:47):
it's about their life and I'll sendthem a little video back and hey,
you know, I appreciate this becauseconnection is a big piece what we do.
Yes, I have to understand alittle bit of your life because like
you said, you know, theymight come in from marketing and they might
they might have this aspect of bout. Well I just follow macros or I
eat this many calories and I willsee results, or you know it's easy
(21:08):
to follow me all or nothing mentalitywhere the other side of it as well,
we don't need any numbers at all. It's all about you know,
self love and feeling. It's likewe want both of those. Honestly,
it's not a either either or it'sa both. A conversation and we need
to see the whole and then figureout what tools we can use for that
specific goal in your life. Sothe first part of it is identifying those
(21:33):
those lifelong patterns and those patterns thatare currently going on. Once we have
an idea through looking at this ismy goal, this is who I am,
this is what I do, thisis what my life looks like.
And you know, the first coupleof weeks, quite honest, they are
an experiment. Okay, here's somenumbers. Let's try these out and treat
it as we're going to throw paintsthe wall, see what sticks and see
what's really hard, what is doable, and where we need to tweak things.
(21:57):
So after that first couple week period, then we can really say my
targets are pretty dial day and Ihave a good concept of what my life
looks like here. Now we canstart reprogramming those those patterns that have been
going on for that's the hard part. This isn't a month long thing,
this isn't the last years. Patternsare often ingrained in us through the last
(22:19):
decades, and we're expecting change indays and weeks and it doesn't happen like
that. So we slowly implement thecorrect tools, whether that is macro tracking
or just some simple lifestyle habits orsome combination of those to slowly reprogram the
habits, the action side of it, and along with that the coaching conversation.
(22:41):
A big piece of it is themindset component. It's just like we
talked about, because you could youcould follow exact macros, you could get
to where you want to be onthe scale, and you could still end
up very unhappy with yourself, anda lot of times that doesn't just solve
it. So having those conversations aroundwhat these goals are really trying to achieve
(23:02):
and what feelings that you want themto produce is an important part of coaching
as well. It's bringing me backto when I first started tracking it.
For me, it was it wasa little bit you give me my numbers.
I'm just gonna go and do themlike you're telling me what to do.
I'm going to do them if Ibut if I'm feeling, which I
remember at first, I was alittle hungry, let's just put it that
way. I was a little hungry. But then it was it was simple
(23:25):
hacks of drink more water, right, things things like that that helped me
propel myself to where I needed tobe and to adhere to it, and
just the conversations that I had.My first coach was Drew, my second
coach was Martin, So who areboth still here? And it was just
an easy conversation to have with bothof them. Anytime I had suggestions or
(23:48):
thoughts and wanted to know something,I would pick their brain and it was
very very easy to converse with themand be like, Okay, well you
know what I'm trying to work towards, and just them knowing that and understanding
me as a person and made itso much easier to be like, Okay,
well we're just gonna do this.Let's watch out for this or do
that, or hey, I'm goingto a party this weekend. I know
(24:11):
that I'm going to indulge and doa B and C. Okay, well
consume this, make sure you're gettingyour protein, and do do this,
do that, right. It wasjust it was always refreshing to have that
person over here helping me and saying, you know what I got you.
You're telling me what's going on.I kind of have, as you said,
I've seen what you've done over acertain amount of time. Kind of
(24:33):
I have a grasp of where thisis going to go, and I can
help you out to get to thatpoint. And I always encourage members to
be forthcoming with their coach. That'ssuper helpful for not only you as a
member, but it's helpful for yourcoach to help you as a member to
move forward to where you need tobe and where to go. Speaking of
that where to go, it's thisis the summer series, so there's a
(24:55):
lot of people going on vacation.Do you know this is the time of
year that people are are charter flightsgoing to visit families, go into the
certain islands, unless you live onan island, whatever the case may be,
wherever you're planning on going. SoI've seen over the years, Jack
that members seem to not know whatto do in their way. And I'll
(25:17):
say this with a disclaimer, isat least that what I've learned from any
of the coaches here, as weare humans again, nobody's expecting everybody to
be perfect because nobody is perfect,all right. And also at the same
time, coaches understand and want youto enjoy whatever the occasion is as well,
right, And I think that isa misconception from some people. It's
(25:40):
just like, well, I'm goingon vacation, I can't do this.
Well, you can do both,right, And that's a conversation to have
with a coach. So with thatbeing said, as we are in the
height of vacation season, what arekind of the approaches and tips and tricks
that you share with your members asthey tend to go on vacation or two
family events during this time of year, as we obviously have graduations and many
(26:03):
of other things. Sure, andI guess the best way to answer that
question because what you said is spoton with a lot of the things I'm
telling members, will start with thebig picture and then we'll look at maybe
some strategy and how you can actuallyhandle it here. So, big picture
wise, what you said rings trueand should be the number one thing you
are going on vacation. This isfor some people one of the few times
(26:26):
they're away from their job or thestresses that make life tough. This is
the thing we're working for. Thisis the thing you do so much to
achieve. It's not the time tobe for most people. Tracking Wayne yourself,
whyne your food? There are veryrare instances that I recommend someone does
(26:48):
any of that. While on vacation. So that's the big frame. I
like to start with this, Hey, this is the time to enjoy yourself,
like you will come back. Yes, the scale is going to be
up, that's a reality of waterweight and things like that, but it's
also not the folk's during that time, so we can expect that. But
then if we take it one stepfurther and say, okay, well that
being our monster going in, let'slook at everything as a whole. And
(27:08):
if you want to take maybe thenext three months and look at your calendar
and say, okay, where arethese vacations, where are these big events,
and look at what that landscape lookslike as a whole. From there,
based on the frequency of those theduration, the intensity of those kind
of events, based on importance,that'll give you a really good idea on
(27:30):
how you can approach it. Becauseif someone is only going away for one
week in the next three months,have at it, do what you want,
enjoy yourself. However, if there'ssomeone who every single weekend, two
three days a week is having eventsand meals out, we're going to need
to have more constraints, more framearound. So just kind of big picture
(27:51):
in it first, and then ifwe get into the nitty gritty of whether
it's handing a vacation or a weekendaway or whatever, I have a simple
friend work that. You know,again it is not to be applied as
an all or nothing mentality, butit's a simple way of looking at it.
I call the two one two fourmethod. So the first and that's
(28:11):
that's two halves there. The twoone ratio piece of that is that most
people are eating for your meals aday, so adjusted if you need to.
But when I'm on vacation, Ilook at two of those meals,
whether I'm eating out or eating atwherever I am as being roughly you know,
macro friendlier or healthier or closer towhat I would do. I'm not
(28:33):
tracking on vacation, but you know, for instance, to give you guys
an example, my first meal ofthe day is almost always just simple protein
shake. Keeps it really easy,It tastes good for me, It takes
two minutes to make, so youknow, milk, frozen berries, protein,
boom, You're good to go.The second meal will be something along
the lines of either a nice bigsalad with protein that I can typically get
at a restaurant or I'm at home, probably just making you know, eggs,
(28:56):
egg whites and an old meal,keep it simple. That one part
of the ratio, that's the twoThe one part of that ratio, that's
where I'm enjoying. That's my indulgencemeal. That's where I'm going to do
what I want. I'm on vacation, I'm here to do it. And
the reason I have that setup isnot just to hold myself in any kind
(29:18):
of health or scale range. It'sbecause I've recognized through years of vacationing that
I don't feel as good and Idon't enjoy my vacations as much. When
I am every single meal doing whatI want, I will be spending the
whole day feeling sick and not wantingto be out by the water or you
know, enjoying the sun. Andthat's taking away from my life and the
(29:41):
time that i want to be reallypresence and mindful and with my family and
friends. So that helps me kindof split the difference between enjoyment and really
staying within what I know helps meout. So that's the two one section
of that, and that's at youknow, how to set a day out.
The two four is within that indulgencemeal and what that means. And
(30:04):
again, you can adjust this.It could be one four, it could
be three to four. Is thatI'm picking two out of four components of
an indulgence meal to have at mostof these meals, and those four components
are your appetizer, your entree,alcohol, and dessert for most of those
meals. If I'm having one perday, I'm choosing two of those roughly
(30:25):
to really go for an indulgence.Now, again, if this is an
important event or something like that,it might be a three out of four
or a four out of four.But it's a nice framework to kind of
give yourself a view of Let's sayyou have a seven day vacation. All
seven of those days probably can't bethree wild meals with four out of four.
Otherwise you're coming back in a badspot. You're feeling terrible during that
(30:48):
vacation, most importantly, and it'snot going to be the same level of
enjoyment you might get if you wereto adjust things a little bit. So
that was very in depth, butI like it. I might have to
incorporate it myself. I like it, especially because I'm hoping to go on
vacation sometime soon, So that maybe something that I'm absolutely going to do
(31:10):
because I also don't like to I'venow that I understand what I'm eating,
and this is a part that somepeople may not be at yet but can
get there because I never thought Iwould ever be to that point because I
never thought that far ahead. Butwhen I eat certain foods or indulge in
(31:30):
certain things, like I do feellike crap sometimes. And it's not because
it's like, oh man, likeI had too much. No, it's
just like it's just generally whatever itwas like. And you know when you're
on vacation you tend to indulge more. Having some type of structure as you
laid out could absolutely help. Itwould help me feel better about it.
(31:52):
But of course I'm still going togo and enjoy myself and have a lovely
drink if I'm sitting on the beach, or indulgent whatever the cultural food is
there, because that is what Ilike to do, because I like to
learn about different foods and indulge thatway. So I want to ask this
before we get out of here,because there's a lot of parents that we
(32:12):
have in an SUH that may thisis softball baseball season, that there's there's
still there's soccer, football, whicheveryou which like to call it. A
lot of parents travel, right,What are is there any packs tips that
you would give to a parent whilethey're traveling knowing that they're going to be
(32:34):
at a tournament all day with theirchilds and may not have access to food
on a on a easy readily basis. Yeah, and that's that's a tough
one. Honestly, I might thesekind of situations tougher than than vacations or
meals out because there are more questionmark variables. There are more that you
(32:55):
don't really know. So what Ilike to encourage in these situations is really
look into your controllables versus your uncontrollables. What do you know for a fact
that you can't control. You know, you can't control where these games are,
what the time is. Often youknow what's available at the concession stand,
which most cases you know and somethingthat's gonna be gonna be working too
(33:19):
well, even if they're tasty.But there are controllables and that's going to
change based on the scenario too.So for an all day softball tournament,
it might not be realistic to sayI'm going to bring a big cooler with
everything that I need for my mealsthroughout the day. But it might be
realistic to say I'm going to bringone meal for myself here that works with
(33:44):
all the other you know gear thatI'm lugging around for myself and my kid,
and then I'm also going to youknow, within a three mile radius.
Maybe I can scope out one ofthese fast food restaurants that I know
has a reasonable option that will workfor me today. It doesn't have to
work for me every single day.But if I can go to Chick fil
A and get the twelve count realnuggets and you know, a side sell
(34:06):
it or a side of fruit,like, that's gonna work for one day,
and I can manage that that's thebetter option than if I were to
say, well, let's just seewhat they have the concession stand, knowing
you are either going to have aslice of greasy pizza or a couple of
hot dogs or whatever else is therethat ain't gonna taste good anyway it might
taste good who's cooking it? Whowe don't know. Before we get out
(34:32):
of here, A I want tosay, I appreciate you so much for
taking the time and doing this.I love you to death, my friend.
Is there anything you'd like to sharewith the listeners before we skate?
First off, the love is mutual, and I appreciate your friendship and you
have me on here, but withthe stronger you community as a whole.
(34:57):
Outside of everything we've already discussed,I think maybe a little nugget we can
add is like everything is an evolution. I think that's really something that gets
missed a lot of times. Again, going back to you don't just come
in and do things perfectly and haveit all figured out. This is a
lot of work, that's the reality, and you won't have it all figured
(35:17):
out. I'm still piecing things togetherhere, having done this for myself and
professionally for over a decade and findingout new things and things that work,
and what I'm actually working towards aredifferent than what I had initially maybe a
year or two ago. Thought aboutit, and just to be patient with
yourself, give yourself some compassion,and understand that no one I've ever worked
(35:40):
with has gotten in on the firsttry. No one comes in and licks
it for the rest of their life. It takes the effort, it takes
the failure. It takes all ofthese things over months and yes years,
to really achieve the life that youwant. But it's worth it because you
still got decades left, You gotdecades beyond this, and that that effort
(36:01):
and work is going to you knowthose times. The time's going to pass
anyway, so you might as wellput it into making the rest of that
life better. It's like you livein my brain. I appreciate that.
It's just it's it's everything is anevolution, and I will leave you all
with that. Again, I thankyou Jack for coming on. I thank
(36:23):
you as listeners for taking the timeto listen to this wonderful conversation and many
to come. We will be backsoon with our next episode and I can't
wait for you guys to see thatnext guest. But again, thank you,
Jack, thank you, thank you, thank you, Love you guys,
see you when I see you.Thank you for listening to Stronger You
(36:45):
Radio. For more information, pleasevisit www dot stronger you dot com.
Don't forget to tune in next weekfor more health and nutrition conversations with Stronger You.
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