John's Amazing Transformation

John's Amazing Transformation with John Kovaleski

Hello! My name is John Kovaleski. I am a Type 2 Diabetic and a Certified Nutrition Specialist. My health and fitness journey began the summer of 2007 when I found myself waking up from a coma brought on by extremely elevated blood glucose levels. I had been leading a life where I put no thought into what I ate or how I took care of my body. At 40 years old, 6’2, 405 lbs, I should have known better, especially with a family history that is riddled with all kinds of red flags. I simply thought those things couldn’t happen to me.

In 2008 my mother passed away from Diabetes complications. The last few years of her life she struggled through losing a leg, going partially blind, and kidney failure. In 2010 I lost my father to a stroke, which was no surprise due to years of heart related issues. In between my parent’s deaths, I also lost two dear friends who were close to my age. These reminders of my own mortality would become the catalyst that formed my mission, to reverse my Type 2 Diabetes and to help others do the same. It has become my obsession to inspire people to be better, make educated choices, develop habits that will lead to a healthier lifestyle, and to do so with a holistic approach.

T2 Nutrition, while having been inspired by one of the world’s biggest health problems, Type 2 Diabetes, is about creating lasting change in people from all walks of life with a variety of disordered eating scenarios. Our approach focuses on finding the why, as much as the how, when it comes to an individual’s eating habits. In doing so we shine a light on behaviors that can be changed to improve the fundamental quality of our client’s lives through proper nutrition.

www.t2nutritionandwellness.com

www.feedingfatty.com

Full Transcript Below

Roy - Feeding Fatty (00:02):

Hello, and welcome to another episode of feeding fatty. This is Roy I'm Terry. So, you know, we, our show that, uh, we want to bring you our journey, my journey, uh, through, uh, you know, weight loss, getting healthy, getting diabetes under control, high blood pressure, you know, all of those things that affect us. Once we start the aging process a little bit, as well as, uh, maybe not paying as close attention to our, uh, diet and exercise routine or activity, not necessarily exercise, but just being moving. So we also have guests on from time to time. And, uh, uh, the gentleman we have today is got an awesome story to tell it is John Coleville Leschi. He is with, uh, T to nutrition and wellness. And John, thanks for taking time out of your day and welcome to the show.

John (00:58):

Well, thank you for having me. It's an honor to be here.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (01:01):

You bet. And, uh, you know, usually I do a little bit longer of an introduction, but I think your story it's, uh, it's very profound and, uh, you know, we've talked a little bit pre-show, I would rather you tell it and, you know, make it more personal than me. Just kind of reading it off of a piece of paper. So with that, we'll just turn it over to you and say, um, you know, tell us a little bit about your story, how you found yourself here and we'll go from there.

John (01:28):

Absolutely. Well, um, my story is like a lot of people that I work with on a daily basis, um, started back in the summer of 2007. At that point in time, I worked as an automotive mechanic and my day started just like any other. I was just your normal average, although a little bit bigger. Um, American husband, you know, I went to work every day, got done work. I came home was so sliced with family, played. The kids did all that kind of stuff. But on this particular day, I went to work in my pickup truck, but I wound up leaving work in an ambulance. Um, I had just come back from lunch and I was doing an alignment on a vehicle and I was underneath the vehicle making adjustments and whatnot. And I fell into a diabetic coma about a half hour later. Um, my coworkers came back, found me laying back there, rushed to the hospital in an ambulance.

John (02:26):

Um, but I got there. My blood sugar was well over 500, which very easily could have killed me. Wow. Um, and I had no idea what I weighed or anything at that point in time. Um, you know, I just was one of those people that I, what I want to eat. I didn't exercise. I didn't, you know, didn't much care. And I figured, well, you know, when it's my time, it's my time. And I should have been smarter. Um, my family history is riddled with heart disease, cancer, diabetes, all these different things. And you would think that I would have been smarter, but I wasn't. It was just like a lot of people just kind of going about day-to-day life, being oblivious as to, you know, what we're putting in our bodies. And, um, I woke up from my bad, bad coma and the doctor looked at me and he said, you know, you are at the very least the type two diabetic, it's possible that you are type one.

John (03:19):

We're not sure yet. Um, but one thing I do know is if you continue down the path that you're going down, you're probably going to be dead within a year. Wow. At that point in time, it was like, um, yeah, big wake up call. And I was like, okay, well, uh, yeah, well, that's not happening. So playtime's over it's time to go to work. And immediately the next day when I got into the hospital, it was like, I started checking into going to see doctors getting on medication. But the best thing that happened to me was when I went to see an endocrinologist and I spent like 45 minutes working with a dietician in his office when she started to explain to me how different nutrients work within the body and how manipulating those macro and micro nutrients can affect our blood sugar levels. It lit a fire on me and I was absolutely fascinated.

John (04:17):

So now back in 2007, the internet, wasn't the resource that it is today. Um, you know, I had to spend a lot of time in a library, reading books and things of that nature. Whereas if it would have been fast forward to now, I would have been able to just get on the internet on YouTube and learn everything I need to learn. Right. Um, so it was a long process, but over the course of the next, well, I'm going to say six years, I changed a lot of eating habits. Um, we're still on diabetic medicine, but I had lost a fair amount of weight. I had, I had lost about 60 to 80 pounds somewhere in that area. Um, but I still wasn't as healthy as I wanted to be. I still smoke at that point in time, I smoked two packs of cigarettes a day for 30 years.

John (05:04):

Wow. Um, and I decided when I quit smoking that I was going to make a change and I was driving by a gym one day and I was like, you know what, I'm going to stop. Ms. Stopped. And I checked out the gym and I wound up joining and everything just kind of blossomed from there. I fell in love with fitness, with lifting weights. And then once I got myself to the point where I was off all my diabetic medicine and didn't need to go see a doctor on a regular basis anymore, I was like, you know what? I want to help other people do this. And I want to make things easier for them. I don't want people to have to struggle. Like I did going into all that. When once I found out I was type two diabetic. So that's pretty much the story in another nutshell, as far as my main issue.

Terry - Feeding Fatty (05:54):

So prior to you, um, being carted off by the ambulance, you hadn't been diagnosed with diabetes?

John (06:02):

No. Nope. Hadn't been diagnosed. I didn't go see the doctor. Um, you know, I just, I, to me, I felt normal. I did everything that, you know, all my friends around me did, you know, I was, I went, I worked 60, 70 hours a week. Um, you know, I had an active family life. I had an active social life. Um, I got out of doors and did things and everything else. So I didn't think there was anything wrong.

Terry - Feeding Fatty (06:28):

Wow. So that was just like a machine gun, wake up call right there. I mean, bam. Now you got it.

John (06:34):

Oh yeah, absolutely. And, and, you know, when I tell people that story, it it's, they try to connect the dots and, and try to figure out how this process happened. And what I've actually done is I've actually put together this picture that I'm going to show you guys, which actually kind of visually documents the journey. Now on the left, immediate left, I was, that was me at 405 pounds. Um, the picture in the middle was the day I joined that gym. I was like, okay, I'm going to take a before picture. And then at my leanest, uh, was that picture there in 2019, where 249 pounds. And I was running about 11% body fat at that point in time.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (07:16):

Wow. That is amazing. Well, yeah. And I think your story is not unlike so many of ours. Uh, you know, I don't know if we learn it in our teenage years or early twenties, but we have this eating pattern. And then, uh, as our activity level slows down, it's like our eating levels don't or maybe they even pick up a little bit and then, you know, um, I am very much and have walked the same path is that one day you just wake up and, uh, you know, I found myself heavy, even though looking in a mirror, it's like, well, you know, you're heavy, but you don't feel like it. But then you wake up with, uh, you know, it's a little harder to move and then you go to the doctor and, you know, you get that, uh, diabetic, diabetic diagnosis and wonder, you know, what to do, where to start. And so, um, I guess that's kinda the next question is, uh, you know, you started doing this research and, uh, where did, where did you start?

John (08:17):

The first thing I did was I, the very first thing was I cut out the glutton. I knew that it was, it didn't take a rocket scientist to see that I was just eating way too much. Once I took the time to actually examine what it is that I was eating. You know, I looked at, um, like two days after I got out of the hospital, I, I wrote down everything that I ate. Um, I started my morning stopping off at the store and I got a, a quart of chocolate milk, a little six or eight pack of chocolate donuts. Um, in six big slams of mountain dude, the one liter bottles of mountain Dew. Now I got all that and hopped in my truck, driving to work. By the time I got to work, the chocolate milk and the donuts were gone. And by lunch time, all of that mountain dude was going to wow.

John (09:06):

Then for lunch, my typical lunch was a large pizza, two big Macs and alerts, vanilla milkshake. That's what I would eat every day for lunch. Oh my gosh. And then dinner was whatever, take out my wife and I, both my wife at the time, her and I both lead, lead really hectic lifestyles. So it was like, we were never cooking. It was always take out this, that or the other. So whoever grabbed takeout, that's what we ate that night. And once I wrote it down and then I started looking at the macro and micro nutrient content, it was, it was like, okay, this is one of the biggest problems right here. I'm just eating entirely too much. I don't need to eat. So cutting out the gluttony was the first big step that I took in order to start to get my situation under control.

John (10:00):

And then it was just fine tuning things from there. Um, I cut out a lot of stuff right from the beginning, which is something that a lot of people do when they start a weight loss journey. They're like, okay, we're going to take all of this stuff out. Um, you know, and I'm just going to eat way less than I should. It's just one of the biggest problems that people have today. Um, and then I started putting things back in slowly but surely until finally I, I dialed in something that worked for me for a while up until like the, the, that middle picture there in 2013, I had had a relatively significant weight loss, but I still was not in shape. Um, I read an article that was explaining how the more lean muscle tissue you have, the better your body is situated to metabolize the nutrients that you take in. And I was already a big guy anyway, I'd always had been. So I was like, you know what? That was what that was, what prompted me to join the gym, joined the gym immediately started seeing results. At that point in time, I was, I don't know, mid forties, early to mid forties. And it's like, I could, I was seeing results that guys in their twenties and thirties seen, I was losing body fat. I was picking up muscle mass. So that became my new addiction rather than food. And I just it's been nonstop ever since.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (11:29):

Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. You know, that's important to that building that muscle mass because it's, you know, I like to walk, but when we do a little bit of weightlifting and you can speak more to that, it's like we, uh, we build that muscle mass and then we, uh, those muscles are able to help us burn fat, you know, all through the day, not just when we're actually pumping the weight.

John (11:54):

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, there's a process in the body called the adaptive thermal Genesis and long story short. The, the more muscle costs much more to maintain in fact, does that doesn't cost you a thing. You don't burn a single calorie to maintain fat. That's just thing. Yeah. But to maintain muscle mass, you have to make sure that you're getting adequate protein. You have to make sure that you're doing all these things, because if you're, if you're not getting proper nutrients, your body is actually going to break down that muscle tissue, because it is easier to break down and utilize for energy than what fat is. That's why muscle burns faster than that.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (12:41):

So you said that, you know, when you got to the hospital, they S they, your glucose was over 500. So what, how, what was the, uh, I guess the path, or how long did it take you to get that down to a manageable level? I mean, I'm still feel like, you know, there's medication involved to a certain point,

John (13:02):

Right? Right. Absolutely. I, it took me about four months to get it to where it was manageable. It still wasn't where it needed to be, but it's like I had an A1C test done, um, roughly about two weeks after I got out of the hospital. And I think that A1C came back at like 11.6, which is super hot. Right. Um, inside of four or five months, I had it down to like 8.4 and then it was just slowly but surely working, working its way down. The, the biggest catalyst to be quite honest with you was when I joined the gym, I mean, I had done well up until that point, but then it was like when I joined a gym, what it was doing to my body, the exercise that I was doing, and I didn't start off going in there and lifting a bunch of heavy weight at all. I went in there just doing machines, doing range of motion exercises and, and focusing on cardio. And the transformation that I saw happened from that point in time, it was just phenomenal. It was like, it was like dumping gasoline on that fire.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (14:15):

Oh, wow. Yeah. You know, that's kinda what our plan is. We, uh, you know, we go to the gym, we like to walk and do, uh, you know, the cardio there, but we also do the weights, not, uh, you know, on a heavy scale, but more like you said, for range of motion, it just makes me feel better to have a little resistance. And then also some of them, you know, kind of stretch me out. So it's a twofold, but it, you know, one thing I see in my struggle and, you know, I'm kind of up and down the scale with the, uh, you know, on the blood sugar, but that, uh, not only does the, just the carrying the weight, because I'm still overweight, I can eat right. Watch my carbs in my sugar and still have a high glucose reading. I just, you know, there's sometimes it's just hard to manage that, but then that little exercise component of getting out and walk in, uh, the different side it makes from before and after it's significant.

Terry - Feeding Fatty (15:15):

I can tell a huge difference whenever after you do that. I mean, if you go out and have a walk, you know, you're watching everything you eat, but if you go out and have a walk and come back, there's a huge difference. Yeah.

John (15:27):

Yeah. Let's see something else that you'll notice a lot too, is, um, people that have problems regulating their blood sugar. Um, like when they go to the gym, I still do this today. I checked my sugar a couple of times a day and my blood sugars are under control, but I still check it because I want to know as I get older, I mean, I'm two weeks from my 54th birthday right now. And, you know, as I get older, I want to monitor and pay attention to how my body's changing. So it's like I can shake, I can check my blood sugar, um, a half hour before I go to the gym and it might be one Oh eight or one Oh nine. But once I get done working out, I can check my blood sugar in the locker room. And my blood sugar is one 41 60 C.

John (16:12):

What people don't realize is when you're expending energy, when you're doing exercise, your body is breaking down glucose, breaking down glucose to get the ATP, which is the energy currency that the body uses in the muscles and everywhere else. So basically what winds up happening is all of this stored glucose, which is the storage form of glucose in your muscles is called glycogen. When it's released into the bloodstream to be used for energy, it runs your blood sugar levels. So people have a tendency to Mister through that, as it being a bad thing. And it's really not. Yeah. Um, glucose when it's broken down acts much, much differently than what fat does. And then that's what people, you know, when you're, when you're on your journey and you get to the point where you're really doing any sort of strenuous exercise in the gym and whatnot, these are all things that you need to make sure that you're clear on. Um, when you're losing body fat for every gram of stored fat, you have in your body, you store three grams of water. So if you're losing fat, it's very, very easy to become dehydrated. That's why hydration is so important. All of these little idiosyncrasies that go into the process when people are expanding on their journey.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (17:29):

Yeah. And that's interesting. I've never, um, I've never taken it before I went to the gym and after, uh, you know, a good workout, but I'm going to definitely give that a try and, and see, see what that is. That's, uh, uh, I mean, I guess when you think about it, it's a pretty intuitive, but again, you don't really, uh, put the two and two together about how it releases that glucose into your system like that.

John (17:56):

Exactly.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (17:57):

So, um, you, you know, once you've kind of, uh, dialed yourself in, or you focus in a little on reducing the carbs or, uh, I guess, you know, now that you're, you know, you've lost a lot of way you're working out a lot. It's probably not as important as it was, but let's go back in time to, um, you know, those first four or five months after you're losing, where you limiting carbs to a certain amount or kind of what was your diet like then?

John (18:31):

Um, I was, I was limiting carbs at that point in time. I was not aware of the difference between simple carbohydrates and complex carbohydrates. That part I didn't get to, to, uh, later on in my journey. So I was limiting carbs and sugar overall. Um, then actually I ran across a ketogenic protocol and I have run that off and on for a number of years, I don't do it all the time. Like some people do, um, I'll do it for maybe three months and then I'll go back to eating regularly. And the reason I do that is, um, I don't want to restrict my carbohydrates so much that as I get older, my body doesn't realize how to handle them anymore. Right. Right. So I'll run a protocol for, you know, 12 weeks of eating ketogenic, and then I'll shift gears and I'll go back to eating more of a metabolic style where I'm eating three or 400 grams of carbs a day, depending on my training load. But that's spread out over six minutes. I don't eat large amounts of carbs at any one setting. Yeah.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (19:45):

Yeah. That's another thing that I've noticed, uh, you know, with myself is it doesn't matter what the number is, but whatever your carbs, if you, you can have those over a day. But if you, if you tend to pile them all up into one meal, you know, I still get the big, uh, the big spike. Whereas if I tried to limit them and spread those out over the day, much better in managing the, uh, you know, my glucose levels, but I was going to get you to drop back for just a minute. You mentioned the simple versus the complex. Can you just give us a quick explanation of the difference?

John (20:21):

Okay. In layman's terms, think of carbohydrates as stacks of bricks. Okay. Um, if you've got it, if you're, let's say you're a karate student and you're trying to break stacks of bricks, a simple carbohydrate is like two bricks. A complex carbohydrates is like four bucks. So it takes a lot more to break apart and distribute those four bricks than it does to take the two. Okay. So what winds up happening is, and this is where a lot of people make their mistake. When they're dealing with carbohydrates and fat loss, when you spike your blood sugar, when you spike your insulin, when your insulin spikes that burning stops will not burn any sort of body fat whatsoever when your insulin has spiked. And when your carb load is high, here's the double-edged sword about that. If you have more carbohydrates floating through your body than what you need, if there's too much in your bloodstream, if your muscles can't store anymore, and then your body only has one option, it sends it to the liver.

John (21:33):

The liver puts it through a process called lipogenesis and it turns it to body fat. So not only do you have the spike of insulin, which cuts off that burden, you're actually storing more fat by spike in your cars. So that's where you have to be very, very careful about using the simple carbohydrates, that two bricks scenario versus the complex, which is more, it takes much longer to digest them. It takes longer to burn them down. And most of your complex carbohydrates are things that also come with some sort of fiber sweet potatoes, Brown rice, King wall, things like that. Those are complex carbohydrates. You still get the carbohydrate content that you need, but it doesn't have the effect on your insulin and your blood sugar overall. Yeah.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (22:22):

And that's the other thing I don't think that he, people, um, really understand in depth is just all the body functions that are affected when you have the higher glucose levels. And, you know, you mentioned the liver, but you know, people, and I, you know, I'm very surprised that, um, the recovery that you've had, especially being such a heavy smoker, because I've heard, uh, you know, I've just heard horror stories about people who had the high blood sugar and were smokers on top of that. Like, uh, you know, losing toes and all kinds of things like that. So I think just, uh, you know, it's a good reminder to everybody out there that, uh, high blood sugar is not it's, it's a very, very, uh, deadly, deadly thing. And because it affects so many parts of our body.

John (23:17):

Absolutely. You need, when you sit back and you look, yeah. I tell people all the time and the ketogenic craze and the, and the carnivores phase and all that different stuff, it has got people to the point that they're villainizing carbohydrates, carbohydrates are not bad, right? Carbohydrates are not evil. What they are is dangerous. If you don't pay attention to them, if you eat too many of them, they, they can cause you issues. If you eat too much protein, if you eat too much fat, you can eliminate that. You're going to eliminate that in store. You're going to eliminate that in urine. You cannot eliminate carbohydrates. It either gets burned for energy, or it gets stored as fat. Those are the only two options the body has. So it is the one that you need to pay the most attention to. Right.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (24:07):

Yeah. And I think it's like, anything else just, uh, coming in and saying, you know, well, let me just say our approach that we have taken has been more that balanced. And so you kind of have to be careful, as you saying about living a life where you just cut something completely out, because there can be other ramifications as

Terry - Feeding Fatty (24:25):

Well. Yeah. That doesn't work so well, if you just

John (24:27):

Try that and it

Roy - Feeding Fatty (24:30):

Makes it harder when you say you can't have any of, any of anything, all of a sudden,

Terry - Feeding Fatty (24:34):

Yeah. Just forget it. You want all of that.

John (24:37):

Yeah, exactly. As soon as you are told that you can't have something, you want it, but now here's the, here's the funny thing, 85%. And this is an accurate number because I literally just went through all my client records for the last 18 months. Okay. 85% of everybody that I work with, I've had to increase the amount of food baby when I start working with right. Because most people cut their intake so much that they slow down that adaptive thermal Genesis. And they're not even taking in enough to sustain what they're doing on a daily basis, let alone any exercise or anything. Right. Most people, I have to increase their calories anywhere from 500 to a thousand calories a day before they start burning fat. Yeah.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (25:23):

And that just goes to a great point of why we need to seek out professional help on these things, because, you know, just like, uh, you know, a lot of people get on the internet and say, Oh, carbs are bad. So we're cutting all of them out or, uh, reduce the calories, which, you know, it is calories in calories out, but we've got to have enough calories to function. I mean, brain function, body function. And then if you add some exercise in, on top of that, you know, we've got to have, and then, like you said, it's the it, and you'll have to call the name, but it like Stokes that metal metal your metabolism fire as well, whenever we do eat.

John (26:01):

Yes. Yep. And so

Terry - Feeding Fatty (26:04):

You're a nutritionist, is that correct?

John (26:08):

Yes. Yes. Yup.

Terry - Feeding Fatty (26:11):

And, and then you have a certification in fitness as well, or

John (26:17):

Yes, I have certification I'm certified in fitness and I'm a certified nutrition expert through the international sports sciences association, the ISS,

Roy - Feeding Fatty (26:28):

Another big thing that's kind of come up on the radar a lot more, um, is fasting. What's your take on intermittent fasting?

John (26:38):

The best thing about intermittent fasting is learning to your hunger. That's it? As far as the actual fasting, part of it, most people that that fast tend to fast for 24 hours or more. And there are certain benefits that you can get from that there's autophagy, which is basically new cells, eating old dead cells. And they almost becoming like super salts. Okay. Um, that effect happens when you fast it 24 hours or longer the intermittent fasting. The main thing it does in my view is it teaches discipline because you have to be disciplined to say, okay, I'm only going to eat from, from noon to eight o'clock at night or from noon to six o'clock at night. So I have to make sure if I'm eating 2,500 calories, I've gotta be able to get 2,500 calories in that window. And I have to do it in a way where I'm not eating one huge large meal and then having to deal with digestive discomfort.

John (27:41):

Yeah. Not to mention the fact of nutrient overload, you know, can you absorb 200 grams of protein on a one meal? Right. You know, there are those that say, you can, there are those that say you can't the end. The science is unclear. But one thing I know is this intermittent fasting is very good. If you are someone that is not disciplined, not good at portion control and someone who doesn't want to take the initiative, especially up front to be okay, I need to weigh out my food and I need to plan out I'm going to have six meals a day and I need to weigh everything out and portion it all out. So I'm prepared. So that's my take on intermittent fasting.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (28:25):

Yeah. And the other interesting part about that is really what is considered fasting because I've seen somewhere, you know, they talk about the 24 hours and you know, you do that every once a week or once every two or three weeks, something like that. But then I've also read information that, you know, they talk about more like a 12 hour fast, which, you know, to me is basically just kind of that old school thinking of, we just don't need to eat too much after about six o'clock at night. And then we wake up in the morning, you know, we can eat, you know, start with our breakfast and eat normal, but is a 12 hours really actually considered fasting.

John (29:08):

It is. But let me, let me back up to your point that you just said, the worst possible thing that you can do is not eat before you go to bank. And let me explain why when you're sleeping, your body is still burning calories. So let's say you go to bed at nine o'clock and you have your last meal at six by seven 30 odds are, unless you had a huge meal, that food is digested and already being processed throughout your body. Okay? Which means you have no reserves going into six to eight hours of sleep and then another six hours of fasting. Does that make sense? If you eat? I tell all my clients, make sure you eat at the very least eat a snack, something that contains protein and healthy fats about an hour or two before you go to bed. Okay. Because what happens is when you don't have any food in your system and you're sleeping, your body goes into, what's known as a catabolic state.

John (30:09):

At that point in time, your body is looking for substances to break down for energy, especially if you don't have any food in your digestive tract. And the first thing it goes to, like I said before is muscle because muscles much easier to break down for that energy. It takes the amino acids, them to the liver creates ATP and glucose from it. And then you have your energy just to sustain you throughout the night. So that's the downside of fasting. Okay. Um, it's, you're doing a, let's say, for example, you're doing a 16, eight window intermittent fasting, which is the most popular protocol that people use. Okay. And typically how they do it is they'll have their last meal about three hours before they go to bed. And then they sleep for six to eight hours. So if they're sleeping for eight hours, then they wind up getting their 11 hours from the time they get up that they've already fasted. So then all they have to do is skip breakfast late to lunch, and they're good to go. They've got their 16 hours and it wasn't that difficult because they were sleeping for the bulk of your time. Right. But your body was still breaking down muscle. Your body was still needing to find energy. And that's why that's the downside of intermittent. Okay.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (31:27):

Mm. Yeah. That's good to know. I've just, um, you know, I know it's been around for a while, but it seems like we've just heard much more about it, you know, in the last month or so. Yeah. Friends, I mean, we've been talking, we've kind of talked about it. Not specifically about what, which fast we win, think about doing, but just kind of getting into it. Um,

John (31:52):

Yeah. Well, like I say, it, it can be, it can be a useful tool. Things like intermittent fasting, he degenerate protocols, carnivores protocols, um, all these different things. They're all tools that we can bring out and we can use at different points in time. Um, you know, there are people in the fitness world that say you can't be a bodybuilder, especially a professional bodybuilder and run a ketogenic lifestyle. You have to eat four or five, 600 grams of carbs a day. And I can show you a man right now that is in his fifties and has won his last two masters competitions in bodybuilding. And he's been ketogenic for 10 years. Wow. So it can be done. You just have to be aware of what you're putting in your body. You have to be very aware of what you're doing in the gym, you know, and you need help, stuff like that, you know?

John (32:48):

And back to your point that you said earlier, right? When, when the average person doesn't have a clue, what macronutrients doing the boundary, right? The average person doesn't know how much food they should be eating in the course of the day. Shoot. Most of us in our generation, we grew up Saturday mornings was all about eating sugary cereal in front of the TV, watching cartoon. You know what I mean? And the card and the cartoons were sponsored by the cereal companies. And it was all a big thing that got to see the ton of sugar and made us all overweight.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (33:22):

It's all their fault. Gotta have somebody to blame. Yeah.

John (33:29):

So let's talk about it.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (33:31):

The other components of, uh, you know, of not only losing weight, but, you know, we just want to be healthy. Some of us need to lose weight to be healthy. And I'm sure there are people that are at the right weight that need to add more activity, exercise to, you know, help them be healthier. But the other components, uh, you know, I used to have a sign that hung over my desk. That's, you know, said get my eight hours sleep every night, drink my, um, you know, six to eight hours, six to eight bottles of water or glasses of water. Uh, and then, you know, move, do something, uh, you know, try to sweat a little bit every day. But no, you know, I think the, the water and the sleep are, how do you feel that those are, you know, big components of helping us to not only lose that way, but be healthy in general?

John (34:26):

Absolutely. Um, you know, water is King, our bodies are 80% made up of it. You know what I mean? So it's in one way in one form or another. So iteration is incredibly important. Sleep recovery is also very important. Um, if you need an active lifestyle, whether you just have an active job, or if you spend a lot of time in the gym, um, recovery is keen. Anybody will tell you that knows what they're talking about. They will tell you that, um, you know, building muscle, burning fat, all of that stuff, none of it, none of that happens in the gym. It all happens outside the gym. Okay. We go in the gym, we apply metabolic stress through our bodies, by engaging in activity. We apply, you know, micro tears and muscle tissue by, by lifting weights. Okay. That's, that's the catalyst that starts at all, but then everything that happens, happens outside, it happens in the kitchen.

John (35:27):

It happens in the bedroom sleeping. Um, so yes, hydration incredibly important. You should be aiming to get a minimum of six hours of good quality sleep at night. If you can get eight. Great. If you can get 10, even better. Yeah. But you don't want to be getting less than six because then that starts to mess with your circadian rhythms. And that throws off all kinds of metabolic processes within the body. So yeah, those components are incredibly important, but the biggest, and this is the biggest and most underrated component of anybody's health and fitness journey right here. Right now, mindset is count. Mindset is absolute key and getting all the bad knowledge, all the noise out of people's heads and getting to the truth. Yeah. Because I mean, come on, you can pick up any social media platform today and there's some fitness influencer on there and you know, you'll see these guys in there, they're like 6% body fat.

John (36:29):

And they're trying to make people think that that they're, that they're that way, year round was, they're not, they look like they literally live in the parking lot of a gym and never seen a Twinkie or a ho-ho they're like, but, but it, but they're, but they're selling, they're selling a fantasy. Okay. Yeah. These guys, you know, and girls, for that matter, most people don't realize that when they get ready for their photo shoots, they are restricting carbohydrates. They're restricting water for two or three days beforehand. And then just before they step in front of the camera, they eat a bunch of sugary stuff. So it causes cellular swelling in the muscles. So it makes them look bigger than what they actually are. They're all kind of tips and tricks that these guys use to make themselves look good. And the general public tries to buy into that.

John (37:16):

Wow. You can, you can't. No, nobody can look like that year round. Right? So find somebody that can educate you in the proper ways to do what it is that you need to do for you. But then that person has to make sure that they're helping you address your mindset issues too. Because if you're not ready to make a change, you're not going to, it doesn't matter how many coaches you hire. It doesn't matter how many, how many fitness plans you buy online? How many supplements you take? It doesn't matter if you're not mentally ready to make a change. You won't.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (37:49):

Yeah. And you know, I've had, uh, you know, people ask me before, like, have you ever thought about having the surgery? And, and usually that's why I always say no, because if you don't get it fixed between your ears, it doesn't matter what you do like that because I've known people that have had different procedures, but then they fell back off into the bad eating or drinking habits. And then all of a sudden, not only are they heavy again, but they got complications from whatever surgery that they had. So definitely write about, you know, getting yeah.

John (38:21):

Yeah. And it takes something different for everybody. Yeah, go ahead. Yup. It is. If my, my, one of the, one of the things that, that I tell a lot of people, I talked to a little background, I'm a, I'm a resident coach in a huge Facebook group called the dad Bob transformation group. We currently have over 60,000 members, which it's a huge, huge group. And I go live in there a couple of different times a week and whatnot. And, and one of the things that, um, I'm real famous for telling these guys is that if you're working with a coach and the first thing he does is takes your money. And then he says, okay, well, this is the workout plan that I have all my clients do. And this is the nutrition plan that I have. All my clients do. It works amazing for them. And it's going to work amazing for you. You're going to have good results. Let's go. If that's the pep talk, he gives you after he takes your money, get your money back and run. Right. Number one, you could use the exercise and number two, you don't need to spend that money. Right. You know, because it there's so many misconceptions in the fitness industry today. It's, it's insane. Yeah.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (39:29):

Yeah. And I think you're right. You have to find somebody, uh, you know, everybody's a little different, so everybody's going to need a little bit different plan depending on where they are, where they need to go. So if you don't get that individual attention, definitely, uh, right. That is a huge red flag to begin with. So tell us about T2, nutrition and wellness. What's that all about

John (39:53):

G2, nutrition and wellness. It's actually kind of funny how that came about. Um, in the spring of 2019, I wound up finding out that my right knee had gone bone on bone and I was going to need a full knee replacement. So I spent a significant amount of downtime that year. Um, I had to wait like three months from the surgery. Cause my insurance company wanted me to jump through all these hoops and get six injections and all this other stuff. So I was sitting around the house with nothing to do. So me being me, I'm always trying to learn something. So I was listening to a podcast with Tom bill, you who was one of the founders of quest nutrition. And he had, I believe the guests he had on the show with his name was Mark Sisson, who was the guy that started primal kitchen and the primal blueprint, which was all about ketogenic foods and all that type of stuff.

John (40:50):

And he was sitting there and he was talking to Tom and he said, you know what? He said, people have to look at it like this, you know? Cause he, cause Tom was asking him how, why he started primal kitchen at, I think he was 53 when he started that business. Okay. And it turned into a multi-million dollar business that he's since sold the crap, but, and Tom was asking him why. And he said, look, instead, it's real simple. I believe that if you find the world's biggest problem, not only are you going to find the world's biggest opportunity to help people, but you're going to find one of the best business opportunities that there is. And I immediately, because that hit me like a brick, I picked up my phone and I was like, Google. How many in the world today have type two diabetes, 280 million people.

John (41:37):

Wow. 70 million of them are undiagnosed 17 million. And mind you, this was two years ago. So these stats may not be correct now. 17 million of those 280 children. Oh, okay. So I was like, okay, that's, that's what I need to, you know, I I've, I reversed my type two diabetes. So these are the people that I need to work with. So I went to my laptop and go daddy.com and I'm like T2 nutrition. The domain was available. So I bought the domain, I built the website and started everything. And then I kind of rebranded everything about eight months in, because I realized that it was more than just nutrition and exercise, fitness wellness is everything. It's the mind, it's the mindset. It's the body, it's the spirit. It's the way you look at life. Um, so that's why I rebranded it to T2 nutrition and wellness. And I deal with people's mindsets just as much as I do what they're going to eat and how many reps they're going to do in the gym. No.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (42:47):

So how do you start? I mean, how, how do you find out where they are? How do you assess them to find out where they are in their journey and if they're ready to do what they need to do,

John (43:01):

How, how I typically start is if somebody contacts me and wants to work with me, the first thing I do is I send them intake forms. Um, the two forms combined total about nine pages and they give me a ton of information about them. I asked them questions like, um, you know, does their family support their journey as far as getting fit or do they find resistance? Um, how do you feel about counting calories, measuring food, preparing food ahead of time, stuff like that. How do you feel when you are in a situation and you find a shirt in the gym that, or find a shirt in the store that you want, but you can't find one of your size because you're too big, all these different questions that I asked them. And then after I get that information, I sit and I give them a free consultation online, over zoom or something like that. And I discuss it with them and I try to find out where they're at physically, where they're at mentally and emotionally, and then I try to address all those teachers.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (44:10):

Okay, great. Well, John, thanks so much for taking time out of your day to be with us. Uh, before we let you go. A couple of questions first off is, um, what is a tool that you use and it could be in your wellness journey and just something that adds value to your day, a tool, a habit, some kind of a ritual it business or personal professional, either one,

John (44:37):

Um, on a personal level. It is, I always take some time to be mindful and how my ritual for being mindful is I will take at least 30 minutes out of my day. And it's typically in the morning, um, I'll let an incense, I'll find a playlist that has some sort of music, preferably like binaural beats, which are very, very good. They have a very calming effect. And I just, I meditate in a and I, um, I meditate on how grateful I am to be here. I remember where I was and everything that I had to do to get to where I am now and why I want to continue to improve where I am, because I want to be around for my kids and my grandkids and my great-grandkids for many, many years to come. So that's the, that's the biggest tool that I use personally is I'm trying to be mindful every day.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (45:37):

Yeah, no, that's awesome. That is good practice. Yeah. All right. Well, uh, so tell everybody again, how they can reach out and get ahold of you if they would like to, um, you know, talk to you about working with you.

John (45:51):

Sure. Well, my website is T2nutritionandwellness.com and I'm on Facebook teaching nutrition, wellness, same thing with Instagram on Twitter. They decided my name was too long. So they redid it for me, I'm wellness, T2. Um, but other than that, I'm pretty much everywhere. I'm not hard to find. I have a podcast on YouTube and all the audio platforms called the jacked up podcast where I interview people like yourself. Um, fitness professionals. It's pretty, it, the podcast has a pretty wide berth. I talk about a lot of subjects because I believe, like I said, wellness is all encompassing. So I talked to people from all sorts of things.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (46:32):

Okay, awesome. Well, y'all check out John's podcast and reach out, take a look at the website, see how he can help you and, um, put him to work for you. You've done a fabulous transformation of yourself. I mean, it's simply amazing. And I, you know, I've, I've had some blood sugar readings in the 200 and kinda gas when that happens. So I, I just can't even imagine getting a 500. It that's, uh, congratulations. Oh my goodness. Congratulations. I know it's a lot of hard work. It takes, doesn't come easy and takes a lot of time, but it's awesome that you're going to put all that knowledge that you've gained and, uh, to work, to help others.

John (47:15):

Nope. That's my goal.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (47:16):

All right. Well, great, John, thanks so much. That's going to do it for another episode of, uh, the feeding fatty podcast. Uh, we appreciate you taking time out of your day to listen to us again, if you're a professional, if you have a great transformation story, like John's, we would certainly love to hear from you so you can reach out to either myself or Terry at, uh, I'm at Roy at, uh, I'd say it's information [email protected]. And of course you can pick us up on, uh, www.feedingfatty.com, uh, the, uh, podcast, or put up there with the player. You can also catch this, uh, over on YouTube, also Instagram, Twitter, Facebook we're on all of them. So until next time, take care of yourself and be sure and take care of each other. Um, Roy

Speaker 4 (48:07):

I'm Terry. Thank you. Thanks John. Appreciate it. Thank you.

www.feedingfatty.com