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Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast.
As always, my name is James Gearing and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome on
the show first responder, dietician, Megan Louts.
Now we discuss a host of topics from her journey into the world of nutrition, the high level
of education it takes to be a certified dietician, her immersion into the world of firefighting,
longevity versus performance, hydration, caffeine, alcohol, sleep, and so much more.
Now before we get to this incredible conversation, as I say every week, please just take a moment.
Go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback, and
leave a rating.
Every single five star rating truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making it easier for
others to find.
And this is a free library of over 1000 episodes now.
So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories so
I can get them to every single person on planet earth who needs to hear them.
So with that being said, I introduce to you Megan Louts.
Enjoy.
Well, Megan, I want to start by saying thank you so much for taking the time and coming
on the Behind the Shield podcast today.
Yeah, I'm so excited to be here.
I've been listening for a while, so I'm not as special as most of your guests, but you
know, I'm excited to talk about the vegetables.
They always say the same thing.
So trust me.
Well, where on planet earth we finding you this afternoon?
I live in a county just outside Baltimore, Maryland.
So BWI airport, if you ever fly in, you fly into my hometown of lithium.
Brilliant.
Well, I would love to start the very beginning of your journey before we progress into your
work and specialty.
Tell me where you were born and tell me a little bit about your family dynamic, what
your parents did, how many siblings?
Sure.
Yeah.
So I was born in Annapolis, Maryland.
My parents, my mom was a teacher.
My dad, well, my parents both were teachers.
They met at Loyola and my mom ended up switching over to real estate and I have three sisters,
no, two sisters.
There's three of us.
I have two younger sisters.
I'm the oldest.
I've had a really spoiled childhood.
I mean, I wouldn't say we were like super well off from a financial perspective, but
my parents were at every soccer game, every, you know, they were very involved with us,
always very supportive and have continued to be supportive.
I have a six month old daughter and they really help us out a lot with that.
Beautiful.
And what about your dad's profession?
He was a teacher.
Teacher as well.
Okay.
Yeah.
He was a middle school teacher, so it was a little rough and tumble there.
What have they said about the evolution or devolution of education in their eyes through
the last few decades?
Yeah.
Well, so my mom's been out of teaching since we were little because she went to real estate
because she was like, we both can't be teachers and have, you know, three kids.
It's just not, it's not possible, right, to watch.
But you know, my dad, he, I think he retired with 30 years of teaching and he would have
probably done longer, but the problem was there wasn't support at the top of the chain
from the principal's standpoint.
Kids were getting away with cursing at teachers, hitting teachers.
There was a 16 year old prostitute at one point.
Like these kids were just completely dysregulated and there was no support from the upper level
management and he just couldn't, couldn't deal with it anymore.
I think this is the thing is, you know, we talk about the broken homes, for example,
but there's just a multi-generational element.
I'm sure the young lady who was a sex worker, you know, one would assume that maybe there
was a fragmented element and a domino effect in her household.
So when you look at like the finished model, they invest in their communities more if they're
struggling, you know, they look at the child as a whole rather than just grades.
And, you know, listening to a lot of the people in the education world and seeing it through
my son's journey, you know, with the standardized testing, there's a lot of amazing people in
teaching, but we really don't set them up for success at all.
No, no, my sister's a teacher and it's the same thing.
I mean, she's in a Catholic school, so it's a slightly different setup, but yeah, I mean,
it definitely starts at home for sure.
And there's a lot of, a lot of kids out there kind of struggling and it just kind of shows
up at school, unfortunately.
Well, while we're on the topic of school, talk to me about school food.
Well, you know, it's based off of the USDA standards in a magical fairy tale land, but
it's still not a perfect thing.
And I am by no means the expert.
There are some really wonderful dieticians who do work in school food who are trying
to make some changes.
But I can't say I've seen it since I was in school and it was like the rectangle pizzas
and I don't know what else, I can't even remember, jello cups kind of vibes.
What's your perspective on the kind of lack of support they're getting on the physical
side?
So recess and PE and obviously the food that they're exposed to, the kind of education
really of their food, hey, I'm at school, so this must be what food is, you know, pizza
and burgers and all the things.
And that impact on the way that the fire service, especially some of these younger firefighters,
are being groomed to eat when they get in uniform.
Yeah, I mean, and I think the other problem is, especially as they get older, you know,
not cooking and the reliance of convenience foods because that's just, it's exploded
that convenience food isn't since I've been in school.
You know, you couldn't just order food to your house really other than pizza, right?
So but yeah, I mean, I think the challenge is, you know, recesses, there's a book called
Spark.
Did you ever read Spark?
I've heard of it, but I haven't read it.
It's been a long time, so don't hold me to the exact book, right?
But it basically was kind of reviewing the need for physical activity in our schools
more than just like, oh, you're just giving them a little bit of a mental break.
Like we actually see better test scores.
And then also understanding that different students come in at different fitness levels.
So if you see, you know, two of the girls just kind of walking around during the mile
instead of running like the rest of the students, I believe they put a heart rate monitor on
those two girls and their heart rates were significantly higher.
They were up there with the students running.
And I think there's a huge parallel there to the fire service, especially when we look
at firefighter recruits, especially for cadres that are a little more rough and tumble older,
maybe military background where, you know, we need our, you know, our recruits to be
coming in fit and then running them like they are fit when they're not.
And then kind of struggling with the injuries, right?
The, the shin splints, you know, or, or larger injuries from like a knee injury standpoint,
shoulder injury standpoint, because they're overdoing the fitness side to a deconditioned
group.
So like I said, I think there's a big pair of parallel there.
Sometimes the sandbaggers aren't maybe sandbagging.
I mean, there are still some, but it's an interesting book.
Yeah, I have to, I have to read that.
Definitely.
The fire service, when I was testing 20 years ago, you know, you had to walk through the
door fit.
So whatever, you know, you could have been deconditioned, but if you chose this profession,
then you had to do a lot of work to get yourself to the point where you were Academy ready.
And yes, then they would, you know, build you up even more.
What I'm seeing at the moment with this recruitment crisis, which, you know, ultimately is steeped
in poor leadership is that now they're taking everyone.
So I think that's why, what I'll do is one of the reasons why we're seeing more and more
injuries, more and more, you know, cardiac issues in the fire ground, Rabdo, that kind
of thing, because you're getting people that are being brought into civilians or, you know,
there's such a desperate need that maybe they're not able to impose the standards that they
put on us 20 years ago.
Yeah, no, the standards, they have to be softened, right?
If you truly want like, and I've seen several departments struggle with Rabdo and some of
these other conditions related to overtraining, you can't just keep overtraining them.
It's not going to magically fix the problem of them not coming in fit.
So I mean, maybe that is longer academies.
I don't really have the answer other than you've really got to progress the training
and then also pay attention to the nutrition piece because a lot of times they're also
coming in under fueled.
And that nutrition piece isn't just we'll just eat chicken and broccoli, like, and just
deal with it.
It's actually targeted carbohydrate management, protein and timing of food that that really
makes a difference.
When you were young, what sports and exercise were you doing and playing back then?
Yeah, I played, I was not very good at sports, partially because I have astigmatism and I
didn't realize I was blind until pretty much later on.
So I my hand eye coordination is not good.
But I played soccer, I played basketball, track, probably named sport, I've probably
played it.
I've always been pretty athletic, but I mostly was just really good at running into people.
Played soccer with the boys school next to my girl, all girl school, like just got used
to kind of ramming into people.
And unfortunately, that's kind of a personality defect at this point.
But that kind of got me into I'm also a personal trainer, been a personal trainer longer than
I've been a dietician.
And got into that in high school and thought I was going to be an athletic trainer and
then realized that they had to touch people and out.
I don't like touching people.
So I switched over to dietetics and then picked up personal training while I was in school.
Yeah, the fire service probably wouldn't have suited you well.
We got to touch people that are covered in poo.
So yeah, no, everybody's like, Oh, just become a firefighter.
You're you're fit enough.
You can do it.
And I'm like, No, I don't do blood.
I don't do guts.
I don't do any no touchy, no smells.
No.
Yeah, no, no, no, there's lots of touchy, lots of smells.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
All right.
Well, then let's kind of walk through your career path then.
So you had this this desire to be an athletic trainer.
Obviously, you took a turn.
How did that take you into the world of food nutrition?
Yeah, actually, I think I can attribute this.
So like when I went to an all girl school, right, and we had gym and you know, most people
remember gym as like, Oh, we played dodgeball or we played kickball.
And it was just kind of like, not superstructured.
Typically, I feel like this was like a drill sergeant.
Like we had, you know, the circuits she had us do tricep dips and like running and squats
and jump rope.
And it was like, you know, especially for us, school of all women, like you're not exposed
to weight training and that kind of thing, especially 20 years ago, right.
So you know, that kind of I just liked it.
I was like, Oh, this is kind of cool.
Like I like the fitness aspect.
And then I started kind of reading about nutrition.
And I started getting excited about that from more of a performance perspective.
I've always liked more of the performance side of things like the sports nutrition or
the fitness side.
So when I got to I went to James Madison University in Virginia, got there realized I didn't like
touching people pretty much immediately and switched over to dietetics.
Unfortunately not realizing that dietetics is like 99% community food service and clinical.
So I hated school.
But I topped it out and it worked out.
I almost switched over to exercise science.
I'm really glad that I didn't because I do feel I'm able to meet a big gap in the fire
service now.
But it was touch and go there for a minute.
What did that look like the community service side of it?
It really less community.
So there's when you go through school as a dietitian, right, it's four years undergrad,
then you do a year unpaid internship where you pay 10 grand to work 40 hour weeks.
So that's fun.
And then now we require a master's degree, then you can sit for your board.
So it's somewhere between six and eight years of education depending on how the math ends
up.
But the community side is more like WIC, women, infants and children, lifestyle, like life
stages.
So like how do you feed a baby?
How do you feed a breastfeeding mom?
How do you feel an 80 year old?
Physical nutrition and a heavy emphasis on clinical and a heavy emphasis on science.
So biochemistry, organic chemistry, biology, that's usually what knocks a lot of people
out of dietetics is not being able to get some of those tougher higher level classes.
I did the exercise physiology route and was basically was disappointed when I came out
the other end because I was hoping you know, obviously the goal is to forge a career when
you go into sports science, ex-phys, you're thinking, you know, coaching, performance.
And what I saw was a lot of kind of myopic classes and we were studying, you know, that
this would increase a jump by 2% and all this stuff and it really didn't serve us well for
actually going out into the real world and helping people.
With your education, especially with some of the nutritional advice being so backward
now when we reflect on it, was there any kind of disconnect between the educational journey
you took and the real world once you entered it?
Oh my God, yeah.
I mean it, so and you have to understand too like dietetics is like, and exercise physiology
is the same way.
Did you ever have any like classes with dietetic students or like exposure to dietetic?
Not that I remember, no.
Okay, yeah, because we're a hot mess.
I mean, not a hot mess.
Like in the sense that like we are very rigid people, like dietetics we had two men in our
class and the rest of the 30 were all females, very type A, very driven.
Actually there was a good amount of disordered eating.
I haven't seen studies but I'd probably argue that about 80% of people getting into
dietetics have some level of disordered eating.
You get into what you are obsessed with, right?
So yeah, I mean it's a very rigid personality type and that the challenge with that is when
we come out, we think textbook, right?
And they have class, like we had classes on motivational interviewing but it was motivational
interviewing.
Like, you know, it was like first this, then this, then that.
And it's like that's, and then you get into do a session and you're like, this is not
going the way I thought it would be.
Like they don't talk about like, how do I talk to someone who's 50% body fat, 400 pounds
overweight, there's emotional issues, there's potential abuse, there's access to food is
limited and they can't cook.
What do I do with that?
They don't teach you how to start from ground zero basically.
And what about the actual nutritional advice?
When you think about the food pyramid, you know, they were telling us breads and pastas
and all those kinds of things.
Sure.
And then we were looking at, you know, the US, I think they got carbs down.
I think they're doing well, you know what I mean?
It's the other macronutrients and protein and exercise and hydration, you know, the
refined starches, I think we're nailing that.
So maybe we shouldn't have that as the base anymore because it results in 70% of the country
being overweight.
So what about-
Well, you've gone away from that.
The food pyramid has been out for a while.
Like even when I was in school, we weren't talking to the food pyramid and that was 15
years ago, I think.
Wait, how old am I?
I don't know how old I am.
10 years ago, maybe.
Yeah, food, sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off, but the food pyramid is not it.
It's not really a thing anymore, right?
It's more my plate.
Have you seen my plate?
I remember that.
Yeah, I mean, I'm just thinking of, you know, the fact that the children's food is still
pizzas and they're saying, well, tomato is a vegetable.
And so I'm not seeing a change in the food, put it that way, whatever the little diagram
that they're putting out there.
Yeah, and I'm not the person to really talk to that too about that.
That's a policy issue is my understanding.
We definitely need more fruits, more veggies.
The other challenges cost, right?
But again, I can't speak to that.
We've kind of shifted more to my plate, which I think is like slightly more than a quarter
of the plate is grains.
I can't remember all of that.
I actually don't really use my plate because my first responders don't eat off of plates
half the time.
So it just doesn't really work from an educational standpoint, in my opinion, for most of the
fire service.
It works a little bit better for people out in the regular world.
Gotcha.
All right.
Well then, so as you kind of find yourself in the real world and you're trying to figure
out how do I interact with all these different types of people that aren't textbook kind
of classic examples, what was your learning curve to actually finding your own path to
communicate with these people you were trying to help?
Yeah.
So actually, you know what I think really helped me and was actually my lowest of lows
was my bodybuilding competition.
So when I was in my internship, which was a very stressful time for me because I hated
it, it felt like BS to me.
I didn't want to work in community.
I didn't want to do stuff for nutrition for aging.
I didn't want to do stuff in the hospital even though I was really good at it.
It just felt like you were having a 10-minute conversation with someone who just had a heart
attack and you're like, just don't eat bacon.
And they're like, it's so much more than that.
Right?
So I did this bodybuilding competition while I was in my internship.
I was going for a bikini level, which is the least muscular, but a very, very lean level
for a female.
I was working out, personal training, all of that, and I developed an eating disorder
while I was doing that.
I never had one before, never had issues with food before.
It was just like I felt like people were watching me because I was posting about it on social
media.
I did it to myself.
But my stress levels were causing me to overeat and I was in such a restricted state that
that just fueled it.
So what I would end up doing was if I didn't hit my macros perfectly, right?
Because if you don't hit them perfectly, you're not getting on stage lean enough.
I would purge.
So bulimia was a big issue for me.
And I felt like if I wasn't perfect, I had to purge in X, Y, Z way.
Right?
And it got pretty bad like two, three times a day.
I was really, really lean, like veins in my abs.
I mean, it was kind of sick, but I mean, other than, minus this major mental health disorder
going on.
But basically what that taught me, I never ended up getting on stage.
I actually pulled out a week before the competition because I basically forced myself to purge
and then I went to the gym to purge some more.
Right?
And I'm on the quad extension hysterically crying.
And I'm like, okay, maybe this is time to stop doing this.
And so I basically said, this wasn't for me because it pushed me into a disordered space.
And I think it parallels because there's a lot of people in the fire service who are
very binary in their thinking.
They're either on the plan or they're off the plan.
And even some of your healthy, really lean people, you'd be surprised there might be
some disordered tendencies there.
And there are several different disordered eating tendencies in the fire service that
I've seen.
So that really kind of taught me from a textbook standpoint.
You expecting someone to be perfect and to hit everything in the textbook to be perfect
all the time, isn't a fair statement.
And it can actually make their lives worse if you push it too hard.
So I had to learn from my own experience that being perfect may not be the right fit.
And we have to kind of look more at the overall picture other than just what's going in people's
mouths.
What is your perspective of performance versus longevity?
And the reason I asked this, and I've had this conversation with loads of people on
here now, but when I came to the States, and I'll give you the abbreviated version, I'd
started meeting all these men usually in their mid-20s, early 30s.
And it was always an Uncle Rico story.
And as I ended up talking to them, they were baseball players, football players until the
MCL, the shoulder, whatever it was.
I could have, should have, would have been the next NBA insert professional sports here.
And I realized that at the school and college level, they were squeezing performance out
of these young people a lot of times at the expense of their longevity and their overall
health.
There's a massive boom now.
When I was young, bodybuilding was big and then obviously it kind of died down.
And then now I think between social media and a lot of these kind of TRT clinics popping
up everywhere, we've got a lot of young people diving back into that.
And I would assume that some of those are in the fire service as well.
And so I see a combination of again, that kind of mentality from school and then in
my gender, body dysmorphia too, which should probably be more of the kind of mental health
element.
Yeah.
And I'll take that as, I think there's a misunderstanding of performance and kind of dieting and being
in a deficit for too long or too extreme of a deficit for too long, which for both men
and women forks your hormones up.
So sometimes testosterone, it's not just the sleep deprivation and maybe potentially the
lack of working out, but it's also how long have you been in a deficit?
Has it been years?
I mean, if you've seen the bottom of your abs for five years, I mean, and you've been
pushing it and you're running the bottom of the barrel, it might be time to put a little
bit of fat back on.
So that's where we're talking about extremes.
I would say that's probably fewer and far between, but yeah, being in a cut for too
long or cutting your calories for too long can actually backfire from a performance perspective
and from a longevity perspective.
So sometimes if you're looking from a black and white performance perspective, which is
usually I want gains, right?
I want to get bigger muscles and leaner.
The bodybuilders do have it right from an evidence standpoint.
They put on some weight, they put on some body fat in order to maximize muscle gain
within reason, right?
And then when they do want to get leaner, they're doing it slower and they're also keeping
their protein pretty high along with that.
So what are you seeing in the fire service as far as that element?
Because like I said, I'm seeing a lot of young people kind of being pulled back into that.
It seems to be one of the ideals just like the Schwarzenegger's and Rambo's were when
I was young, which I think is very unhealthy because we don't walk around like that.
It's not safe to walk around like that.
And you hear a lot of these young bodybuilders dropping dead because they obviously are doing
whatever it is wrong.
Oh yeah, heart attacks and a box aeroids, yeah.
So what are you seeing as far as just in general, this culture, this rise of bodybuilding again,
maybe not as you said, the measured intelligent bodybuilding, but I want to be like that guy
on Instagram bodybuilding as far as the tactical population that you're working with.
Yeah, I mean, I can tell you there's been many tech rescue stations that have asked
me what steroids I recommend.
And usually I go with whatever the liver King's on that stack that he had in that email that
was linked.
It's not on steroids, was it?
No, not at all.
It's normal to be that orange and weirdly square.
Yeah.
So the huge problem, anabolic steroids can significantly impact your heart, especially
if you are not taking that supervised by a doctor who's trained in anabolic steroids.
And of course they're illegal.
So like doctors don't want to touch that with a 10 foot pole.
They do exist though.
But in any case, there's a big issue with going based off the jack guy on TikTok, right?
Because the jack guy on TikTok half the time doesn't always look like the jacked guy on
TikTok.
And you'll notice if the jack guy on TikTok is lean longterm, they're not getting bigger
in size.
They're keeping at best.
They are maintaining their size, right?
And if they are getting bigger and they're saying that lean, what are they on?
Right?
So you just kind of have to consider that.
And a lot of times the challenges is then they're doing these like, you know, the sponsored
posts that they don't put partnership and ad and all of that on.
They're marketing these supplements that don't do anything and may actually increase the
risk for side effects or other issues from a cardiac standpoint.
I mean, do you remember jacked the original pre-workout?
Vaguely.
Yes.
Yeah.
That one was a fun one.
Back in my day when I was in school, that took out about half of the frat boys at JMU
because they would just dry scoop three scoops of it.
And it ended up having illegal substance in it.
And that's why we can't find the original formula anymore, much to many people's dismay.
So yeah, you kind of have to look at that whole picture, but of course they're not mentioning
that on social media.
You just think that if I do X, Y, and Z training program, their diet and their supplement protocol,
I will look like that.
And if A, there's a genetic factor and B, you don't know what else they're doing.
So you're better off going with a professional who can help you with your goals, but also
someone who's going to say, hey, it may or may not be possible for that, or it's going
to take you 10 years to get there.
I've had this conversation a lot with people.
What was interesting being a man about 10 years ago onwards, so maybe let's say nine
because it was right before I heard Kurt Parsi talking about this.
If you even had a testosterone test as part of your blood panel, you would be shown the
scale and it would be, I forget, I see the one or 250 to 950.
And they'd be like, oh, you're 300, you're fine.
And there'd be no understanding that that scale was, the top of the scale was the 18
year old in the, it was one of the Ivy league school towns that they studied.
And the 250 was the 80 year old that was sedentary and one foot in the grave.
And so for the longest time, a lot of our responders are walking around with their testosterone
in the ground and no one was addressing it.
Then you had all these men's clinics start popping up and now they're prescribing TR
T to these 25, 30 year old first responders, not talking to them about diet, the sleep,
stress.
And then one thing that I actually take now is peptides.
So that's a middle of the road one where you can just kind of provoke your body to make
a little bit more.
And again, as you can see, I am not gaining from it at all, but 14 years without sleep,
I knew that I wasn't quite where I needed to be as far as healing, as far as energy
levels.
So that was an excellent, they were talking about a 50 year old.
Now, not a 25 year old.
And then the TRT, I mean, that has so many side effects that you should only be on that
if that's your last resort.
You've had TBIs or you really are just unable to make your own at all.
But what really breaks my heart is the sleep deprivation that we're seeing in the fire
service, 56 hour weeks, 80 hour weeks with the mandatory overtime.
That is a reason why most of these people's hormones are completely disrupted.
And yet there's such a resistance to actually giving our men and women more rest and recovery.
Yeah, no, I 100% agree.
I mean, and the TRT clinics, it's hard because it's like, oh, well, I'm going to a doctor,
but they're not looking at you as a whole picture.
They're kind of at the end of the day, they'll be like, yep, that's kind of on the low end.
So here you go.
That's not a whole picture of what's going on there.
Now, I do think that if you can, if you're a younger recruit, a younger first responder,
20, 25, even 30, maybe get your testosterone so you have a baseline, right?
Get that earlier in your career so that if you are, maybe you do just hang out at 300
and you feel fine, your libido is good, your energy level is good-ish.
Things are fine.
That way when you're in your 40s, 45 and it's at 300, you know where you're still at your
baseline, right?
You're just on the lower end compared to someone who was always at, I don't know, 800 and then
in their 40s they're at 300.
That plus symptoms could be an issue.
And I don't want to pretend like I'm an expert, right?
There are doctors who are way smarter than me in this.
But from my understanding from a lifestyle perspective where we're working on weight
management, right?
We're reducing body fat if it's high.
High for men, we want to keep it under 25%.
High for women, we want to try and keep it under 32% for body fat percentage.
Heavy weight training, so like going to six reps and heavy weights is relative.
So that doesn't mean like, okay, I've got a bad shoulder.
I'm scared of doing heavy weights.
It's whatever you can tolerate, right?
And then what was the other one?
Sleep.
Sleep's the big one.
And it's hard.
Like you said, if you're like our shifts at the county I work at, it's horrible.
They're working the 56 hour work week, their middle days, they're barely getting any sleep
and they're commuting.
We have a lot of commuters.
So that impacts their sleep as well.
So sleep is a huge factor and usually the first place that we want to work on if we're
trying to manage testosterone without all of the medication side.
Absolutely.
Well, you talked about the higher end of body fat just while we're on it.
What's the lower end of male and female?
I mean, obviously we're all a little bit different, but roughly what percentage should we be not
going, should we not be going beneath?
Yeah.
I mean, so I'm sure you guys have heard, like there's always that really like lean guy who
could be on the count, the firefighter calendar at any point, but they just suck on the fire
ground.
Like they throw ladders terribly.
They're just not, they get winded.
They cannot tolerate it.
And I would say most of my firefighters, they come to me somewhere around 23 to 28, sometimes
higher percent body fat.
So like the higher normal higher it range.
And if we get them to around 18 to 21%, this is all anecdotal, I'm making this all up kind
of, they seem to feel pretty good.
They're leaner, their uniform pants feel good, their workouts feel good, their energy levels
pretty good.
And they don't feel like they had to give everything up.
They can have a beer at their captain's retirement.
They can have a cupcake at their kid's birthday party and they're not freaking out about it.
Now there's always that my 50th birthday is in this year.
I want to see my lower abs.
We're getting closer to that 10 to 15%, probably more to the 10 if you want to see your lower
abs.
That you're going to potentially see decrements in performance at that point.
And you're going to be restricted.
You are not potentially not having that beer at the retirement.
You are potentially eating half of a cupcake and kind of macroing it the rest of the day.
So there's a great article and infographic from Precision Nutrition called The Cost of
Getting Lean.
And I highly recommend reading that if you are trying to get lean because there's a certain
point where the return on investment from an aesthetic standpoint doesn't really land
from a performance standpoint.
For women, women I do feel like their body fat ranges can like drastically depend.
Women need to carry more body fat so that we can carry babies, right?
And that range for women is somewhere between 20 and 32%.
But I have worked with women who have been overweight for most of their lives and really
they feel best from a hormonal perspective.
They have a regular cycle closer to 34%.
So we go with that.
But there are women kind of more like me where they've always been 18, 20%.
They've had a regular cycle.
They feel pretty good.
And then when they're 25%, they're like, I feel huge.
So talking from personal experience, right?
So it kind of is a little bit more variant there from the female perspective.
I think what's interesting with women as well as you've obviously got your apples and your
pears.
And so there was one girl I worked with years ago when I worked in summer camp.
If she was sitting at this desk now, you think her body weight was perfect.
But from her hips, she just went out and I'm not, you know, talking, belittling her or
anything.
It's just a description of how she was.
That's just how she shaped.
Yeah.
So from like the navel down, it went out.
And so, you know, it's interesting that they say that's healthier because it's not around
all the vital organs.
Whereas most of us men, we're going to be the apple, we're going to have it around the
belly.
So even where that fat is seems to change a little bit for the genders.
Yeah.
And I would recommend, so our county, we're very well funded, right?
I work full time and I'm a full time dietitian, full time strength coach, all of the, all
of the perpetual professionals you could have.
We have in body scans.
Are you familiar with the in body?
Yeah, actually.
I just did one the other day, funnily enough.
Perfect.
Okay.
So did you get visceral fat and all of that?
This was the one when you say, you said a scan?
It's not a scan.
It's a body.
It's a scale.
That you stand on and hold the handles?
Technically you could call it a scan, but yeah, it's a scale.
Yeah.
But you're holding the handles.
You stand there and there's, yes.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
So I know, I mean, coming from sports science, I know how inaccurate they are.
And I also train bare feet.
So my feet were black from the rubber.
So I don't know how well it read, but I did give me a breakdown of supposedly what was
lean muscle mass and all the other things.
Sure.
Yeah.
So the in body scans, their bioelectrical impedance scales, scan scale.
I call it a scan because it's technically also bioelectrical impedance was just a, anyway,
words.
These are higher level scales.
They're like somewhere between three and $10,000, depending on which model you get.
They do use them in research.
Are they perfect relative to DEXA?
No.
No, but they're better than the scales you're getting off of Amazon.
Now with bioelectrical impedance, you don't want to typically work out prior to, and you
don't want to usually eat before.
But I do tell people, like, for example, for me, when I use the InBody at Fairfax, I have
my smoothie and my coffee and then I get on it.
So every single time I have the same thing.
So try and keep it consistent.
But those scales, actually for a lot of departments, they can get grant funding.
I can't tell you which grant, but grants will count that if you wanted to buy one for your
department.
And I think they have been integral in keeping my first responders consistent and on a plan
long term because you can get on the regular scale and it'll, like, your weight might stay
the same no matter what you're doing.
But the cool thing about the InBodies, it'll tell us muscle mass, body fat percentage,
also visceral fat.
So that's usually a motivating factor for a lot of my first responders is the visceral
fat so they can actually quantify that.
But I had a medic, she was getting her butt kicked, busy station, maybe two workouts a
week, her food, like we were kind of relying on convenience food just based off of her
schedule, just better choices, right?
And she lost 1% body fat over three months and she was kind of beating herself up about
that.
And that actually came out to about five pounds of body fat, which for someone who's not
doing backflips from a workout routine, eating everything perfect all the time, I think that's
really good progress.
So because of the additional numbers on that scale, it keeps my first responders motivated.
I can kind of talk them off the ledge before they're like, you know, ready to jump because
they feel like they haven't made any progress.
Well, I mean, especially with men, you know, if you really, if you were an athlete and
then you've become deconditioned and then you get back into it, especially if you're
a larger frame man, you are actually going to create more muscle mass.
Your muscle is going to become denser.
So a regular scale, I could see how to be demotivated because the numbers weren't moving.
But actually, like you said, the ratio of fat to muscle was.
Yeah, exactly.
And they're really reasonable.
I feel like they're relatively accurate.
Perfect, probably not, at least precise.
I've seen like I've had private clients do Renfro scales or the ones that you can get
on Amazon.
And like I had one girl who like from week to week, her muscle would jump from thirty
six to fifty six.
And I'm like, OK, like that.
That one's not right.
But it just and then it also helps my people who want to gain muscle, right?
The people who are actually actively trying to gain weight to see muscle gain.
We can see how much of that is fat and how much of that is muscle.
But also I have to tell them you're going to gain fat.
I don't care how clean your bulk is.
You're going to gain fat if you're trying to maximize muscle gain.
With goals, when you work with people again, going back to the Instagram, going back to
the infomercials, you know, going back to the television shows, The Biggest Loser, which
The Biggest Loser is usually the person who was in that show because they end up getting
it all back.
You know, that we set these ridiculous, unrealistic goals like it's a race to get to a certain
point.
The older and more, you know, I guess the wiser I've got, the more I've shifted away
from one rep maxes and all those things and realized that there's a kind of 80 percent,
80 percentile, I guess you'd say, where you can continue to do incredibly well, but also,
you know, you enjoy it.
Like you said, you can have those treats on the side and you'll still get there.
Whereas I feel like these races, you know, that's what creates this kind of roller coaster
ride of highs and lows, you know, failures and successes.
So what's your kind of philosophy when someone says they want to get to a certain endpoint
on the time that you project for them to get there?
Yeah, you're looking at five to six months for 20 pounds and that is not what they want.
They are like, I'm going on a cruise in two weeks.
Let's get 20 pounds off.
I'm like, no, you came to the wrong lady.
So with that realistic goals, we're looking at 0.5 to one pound per week, which is two
to four pounds a month.
And no first responder wants to hear that because guess what's going to happen in January?
Everybody's going on my fitness pal on lose it.
They're going to say, do you want to lose 0.5 pounds a week, one pound a week, two pounds
a week?
And guess what?
When everybody's clicking three, two, it wasn't even an option, but they're trying to find
it.
They pick two, they pick two pounds a week.
Well, guess what?
That's just your calories by a thousand.
So now I have a six foot firefighter on an 1800 calorie diet and that's not going to
be sustainable, especially if they're working out or they're at a busy station.
And the other thing I have to factor in is when I work with Genpop or like day work chiefs,
light duty personnel where they have like regular, their days from an activity standpoint
look pretty similar.
They can do the same calories every day.
So like they could do a 2000 calorie diet, whatever.
Still want to do a pound a week, but I may have to increase calories based off of shift
days because if you're running 15 calls a day, that's a big, that's, that's adding significant
amount of physical activity and work, right?
You're burning a lot more calories.
So you actually might need 2,500 on your workout days or your work days.
And then maybe, I don't know, 2000 on your off days.
We kind of have to play with it.
I'm working on creating a calculator that would maybe do that for people, but I haven't
sat down and done it yet.
Talk to me about the impact of sleep deprivation, of these shifts on the ability to even lose
weight or gain weight.
Yeah.
So, um, one night of bad sleep leads to a 24% increase in hunger due to a shift in your
hunger hormones.
So we see an 18% decrease in leptin, the hunger suppressing hormone, and a 28% increase in
ghrelin, the hunger stimulating hormone.
So the foods that you want the next day are fatty, sugary, you know, just crap foods,
right?
Now imagine doing that for years on end, right?
So it impacts your hunger, right?
It impacts your food choices the next day.
It can also, I think there's a 40% decrease in glucose tolerance, so it can start shifting
you towards, um, insulin, uh, what's the word, resistance and metabolic syndrome potentially
later in the career.
So literally the sleep deprivation is, is working against you, um, in a multi-factorial
way, not only in your metabolism and how things are working inside the body, but also from
like an environmental standpoint and like food choices standpoint.
I heard Doc Parsley talking about this years ago before I even started my podcast and,
uh, he basically described it.
He's like, you know, the cops are known for having coffee and donuts.
He goes, that's because physiologically that's what they crave because of the leptin and
the ghrelin.
And as you mentioned, the impact on their pancreas and, you know, I mean, I think a
lot, if you, if you, uh, um, I'm trying to say, if you actually test the blood sugar,
I think they literally with 24 hours, um, without sleep, you're pre-diabetic usually,
even if your blood sugar was good the day before.
Now obviously that can be reversed, but again, as you mentioned now times that by thousands
of shifts and you know, we wonder why our first responders get fatter and fatter and
fatter and you know, the, the bunk room is full of, you know, statins and hypertensive
meds and CPAPs because it does have an impact on people's health.
Mm hmm.
Well, and you kind of have to look at it overall because I feel like, have you noticed like
when you go to conferences, like wellness conferences for first responders, they have
like a fitness person and maybe a mental health and maybe a sleep person, but then it's like,
they all have a slide and it's like, you need to do nutrition and it's just one slide, you
know, and it's like, just eat better.
And it's like, but how?
Um, and I feel like when you look at, you zoom back and we look at the fire service,
you guys are often asked to get to a second story window without a ladder from a health
perspective, right?
Um, you are, I don't know if you remember the engine two diet where it was a low fat
vegan diet, which I don't know if you've read the room from a fire service perspective,
but at least on the East coast, we are a meat and potatoes kind of people.
I had rip on the show.
Yeah.
And I, listen, I respect them and I think it's a great diet and it's something that
could work very well for some people.
But I also want to say that like, we kind of have to read the room, right?
And the people we are targeting from a health perspective in the fire service are the bottom
two thirds, right?
The bottom third is struggling.
They're getting divorced.
There's mental health challenges.
Um, you know, they, they feel like they're just surviving right now.
And then the middle third is like kind of ready for change, but they still have a lot
going on.
And the top third is like, they're getting on the calendar next week.
You know, they look great.
They're in great shape.
We're not targeting those people who want the next 3%.
We are trying to get the people who are going to have that cardiac event on the fireground,
right?
Who are going to have a higher risk for cancer.
Those people are the people we're targeting.
So what that means is I like to look at the fire service as you guys are asked to perform
at 110% at every single call, right?
Which relative to the general population, that's a much higher standard.
And then you're asking to, you're starting at a lower foundation and that lower foundation
is sleep deprivation, um, exposure to trauma.
That impacts your food choices as well.
High stress, family issues, all of those things.
So again, it's almost like trying to scale to that second story window.
And if you don't give someone those rungs on the ladder to get them up towards that,
that's taking the textbook and actually breaking it down to where the person sitting in front
of you is, they're going to struggle.
So while a vegan or a vegetarian diet can be a phenomenal diet for improving the fire
services health, it's also not always meeting them where they are at currently.
See, it's interesting.
I've had this conversation so many times and I had a realization just very, very recently
that we are nearly always talking about stopping firefighters from dying.
But if you look at other professions and I had a lot of special forces people on here
and you know, a lot of high performers in the sporting side, they're looking at human
performance.
And whilst the Delta guys are talking about eating for maximal performance, endurance
and longevity and whatever the other elements are, we're just trying to stop our firefighters
from dying from heart disease and cancer and getting them so they're not morbidly obese.
And we're so far from where we should be.
And it's the same with the exercise.
Or we'll just get them walking around the station, just get them getting their steps.
Yeah, but the goal is to them to be able to climb 20 stories with a hundred pounds on
their back because that's what you need to go fight a high rise fire and then go to work.
But we're so far from nutrition for performance.
We're just talking, you know, and we're obviously going to expand into performance as well.
But the general conversation is just the bar has got lower and lower and lower.
And we even had a local kind of sports performance place when I worked in my last place and they
would come and give us talks.
The last one, and I was actually teaching and doing coaching with my peers, not as part
of this group.
And the last young lady that came, she taught them how to make oatmeal and they walked around
the fire station twice.
And I'm like, that's it.
That's what you think that firefighters need.
Another person gave us a great class on sleep and said, you need to sleep more.
And like you said, it's like the nutrition slide, you need to eat well.
Yeah, well then what are the solutions?
And then the solution in the fire service is 24 72 for the sleep side to improve it.
It's still not perfect, but it's a lot better.
And then with the conversation on exercise and nutrition, we should be thinking about
how do you make a paramedic and a firefighter be able to operate at the highest level rather
than talking about stopping them dying.
But that's where we're at.
We are literally just trying to stop our young men and women being put in the ground with
a flag around their coffin.
There's so far from where we should actually be talking, which is forging elite performance
in the tactical professions.
Right and here, and I am going to have to argue a little bit there because I'm trying
to say like the bottom rung is the starting point, but that's not the ending point.
You need to have people in place to hold your people accountable, which is why I feel like,
so I work for Fairfax County Fire and Police, right?
I am an embedded civilian dietician who specializes in first responders.
So what I start someone with, I can then get them to the next level.
But what a lot of times is happening is you get those two dichotomies.
And honestly, you'd probably be very disappointed with a lot of my presentations because they're
exactly that.
What's healthier frozen food, healthier fast food?
What do I pack in a go bag?
How do I get a little bit more water in?
Maybe it's including some sort of meal or something to get them to drink more.
That's a starting point to meet most of the people.
But if you want to get those people from the bottom to the next level, you probably need
someone embedded or bring someone on a regular basis to then, okay, we talked about X last
time, here's the next rung.
And then we talked about that and then here's the next rung.
That's how you're going to get them to that top level performance.
Because the problem is, and I do 16 to 20, and that's scaled back since I've had a baby,
but a good amount of coaching every single week, 16 to 21st responders, and they are
stuck and you don't get someone stuck by just saying, you just need to perform better because
that's how the job is.
We have to do it incrementally.
So hopefully that makes sense.
Yeah.
And you're not arguing at all.
I mean, I agree completely.
Where we are is where you have to start.
But I always tell people, look at the ocean lifeguards in Southern California.
You go there and like, oh, we're going to work on your body composition.
You look and it's all abs and deltoids.
Yeah, you have to work on that.
Yeah, exactly.
I don't need to have that conversation.
In the fire service, we do because that's where we've devolved to.
And if you look at our forefathers in the 70s and 80s, they were doing the firefighter
Olympics and they looked like they were in good shape.
Were they wearing SCBAs?
No.
And we learned from all those deaths that we should probably not be breathing the air.
But culturally, they were moving and they were playing well and they were eating a lot
better.
And so we have had this devolution and I think this is the conversation we need to have.
If our dieticians have to come in and hold our hand while we walk around a building and
then see if we have more water in our food, we're so far from where we need to be.
It's okay.
We can get back to where we should be.
But let that be what it is, a giant red flag to the ill health in our profession at the
moment.
Yeah.
But there's a huge gap too.
I mean, how many dieticians do you know that specialize in first responders?
I mean, I know like five.
It's a personality challenge.
Like I said, you can't get a clinical dietician to come out and talk to firefighters.
They don't curse enough.
They don't know how to joke around.
They're sticking the mud and they come out and tell them to chop bell peppers for three
hours to make dinner and it's not.
They don't understand the sleep deprivation, the exposure to trauma and all of that.
So it is going to be an incremental approach.
It is challenging though because like if I go out to Phoenix or Cal Fire and I go out
with the same approach that I have for the East Coast, I've learned I need to level it
up a little when I go out to that side of the country because I do feel there is certainly
a little bit of a higher level understanding about nutrition and the value of it.
Sometimes I'm actually trying to pull them back to reality a little bit.
But like I said, having an embedded professional or bringing a professional once a year, quarterly,
can really help pull your department up to where it needs to be because it does have
to be regular.
Otherwise you're going to just keep having the same conversation of I need you to take
a walk around the station every January and then they're still in the same place.
You've got to be able to pull them up and hold them accountable.
We can hold you accountable but also be empathetic.
This is another thing that I just don't understand is why we don't have fitness standards to
hold us accountable because at the front door, no one can say it's not fair.
At the front door, we are held to a certain standard in Fire Academy and it's a good standard.
I would argue it's a great standard.
But we call it minimum standards when we get our certificate here.
But then you go into the profession and like, oh yeah, no, what if they take our jobs?
That's not fair.
I mean, those guys, we're here for the people.
If you'd actually set that at the front door, that expectation, we wouldn't have the obesity
that we have now.
We wouldn't have the heart disease and some of the other things.
You'd have it but it wouldn't be anywhere near as prominent.
I saw it because culturally out west, I worked for Anaheim for a few years.
They didn't need fitness standards because most of us worked out and I can count on one
hand how many people were overweight in that department.
But we don't have that philosophy anymore.
The goal is to not have a fitness standard and have a bunch of people that are accountable
and driven and have ownership and to be very, very fair, an environment that forces that
as well, not one that breaks them down like it is at the moment.
But in the meantime, putting a fitness standard in, that obviously there would be an on ramp
to get people, give them a couple of years to get back to where they need to be.
But holding that line, because that's not just the ability for us to do our job and
protect the public, it then forges a healthy retirement.
It increases their longevity.
So we do a massive disservice to our own people with this opposition to fitness standards.
Yeah.
Well, so in Fairfax, we have them.
You should probably bring Jake Patton, our strength coach for the fireside.
He instituted the fitness standard.
It is a mandatory, non-punitive fitness standard.
Basically they, I think I want to say 2017, 2018, he had them start doing a fitness test
at the physical and it is based off of gender and age, the standards, and it's pull-ups,
push-ups, sit-ups, and a VO2-correlated step test, VO2 max correlated step test.
Is it a perfect standard?
No, I don't think we're going to get a perfect standard.
It's the best that we can do.
So they had them do it for about three years and then in 2021, which is actually when they
brought me on, they started making it mandatory, non-punitive.
So if you failed the fitness test, you would go on a light station, FIP, which you had
to pass that test again in two months.
And if you failed the fitness test plus failed the treadmill, you get pulled to light duty,
which you can, that went down like a fat kid on a seesaw, as you can imagine with the people
who got, so we had four people pulled.
And the goal was to get them back to duty and within, I think it was nine months, it
might've been 11 months.
So yeah, so it's been a mixed bag.
We are seeing improvements in body data, body composition, performance, that kind of thing.
But then you're also dealing with a department that's kind of rioting.
And there have been some very heavily charged conversations, Jake can attest to, about people
not wanting to do them.
But here's the thing, we are trying to prevent that 45% of line of duty deaths related to
a sudden cardiac event.
We're trying to prevent dying or having some sort of issue three years after retirement.
We're trying to make sure you get to maximize the county pension, right?
But at the same time, when you're asking someone to do a fitness test that should feel, it
shouldn't be that, it's not that hard of a fitness test.
I did it.
I'm a civilian, right?
But there are people who are really stuck and that fitness test is jumping through hoops
for them.
It's a hard place to be in, is what I'm saying.
Yeah.
But I mean, really it boils down to the fact that are you ready to do the job?
If you can't even do pull-ups, push-ups and do some steps, then how the hell are you going
to carry a hundred pounds up 20 floors?
I mean, that's just the reality.
So it's fine.
That's why fire prevention was invented for people who can't be firefighters anymore.
That sounds very mean, but it's true.
If I found out my son died because the person who was supposed to be rescued and tapped
out on the third floor because they were too tired because someone didn't hold them to
a standard, I would throw them out the fucking window.
You know what I mean?
It's just that simple.
So to put someone in uniform that can't do the job, that's where the line is.
And I'm sorry, I don't care about your pension or your benefits.
If you can't and you're not willing to put the effort in, then you need to go to a different
department because this job is only for people that can do it.
And that's why it should be well paid and they should be given the rest and recovery.
They deserve.
But to fight against fitness standards, I find it fucking nauseating and it's cowardice.
And we've had fit people fight against the standard, which is even more confusing.
But again, it's holding them to a standard that they signed up for.
Do I think there are maybe better ways we could have gone about it?
Sure.
But at the same time, we just had to execute it.
We had to put it in place.
And our department has so many resources in place.
Full-time dietitian, four full-time strength coaches, seven behavioral health clinicians
that you can get therapy, not just three times, as many therapies as you want.
Full occupational health clinic, an athletic trainer and a physical therapist.
Name a department that has a better wellness program.
You won't.
Yep, exactly.
Exactly.
And I think this is just it.
We just have to... It's going to be an uncomfortable conversation.
I'm finding it now with the work week.
Even the firefighters are pushing against getting more time off, getting time with their family
because they're so beaten down and brainwashed that they can't even think critically.
So it's the same with this.
If you were held to a standard at a fire academy, we went to a fire academy, oh, I don't want
to do the PT, it's hard.
Then how would that work out for you?
Why are you here?
Yeah, exactly.
It doesn't change 15, 20 years later.
I transitioned out six years ago, but I did the CPAT about three years ago, I think it
was three or four years ago because I was thinking I might have to go back because my
money was running out because I cashed out my pension just to do this full time and did
the CPAT in seven minutes, 20 seconds.
So if my old skinny ass can do it in 720, then... And you're crying because you think
the 1020 is too hard?
And I know you did the CPAT, didn't you?
It was on your list.
Yes, I did.
Now, do I think I can do it six months postpartum?
I don't think I can do it.
But you did it.
I did it.
You did the thing that people say is too hard and it's not fair.
So there we go.
And I'm a civilian.
Yes.
Well, yeah, it took me three times.
I could get through it, but I wasn't very fast, which is par for the course for me.
So yeah, and again, civilian, civilian female too.
I mean, how many civilian females do you really see pass?
Well, think about this.
So someone would say that's not fair.
So wait a second, you're saying it's not fair that you climb and Cumbered and then you use
the forcible entry prop and you carry tools and you drag a mannequin, you advance hose.
You're saying that's not fair to be tested on those things as a firefighter.
So this is the thing.
This is why I think that should be the standard.
The fire sled or the CPAT, they are operational tools, operational skills that we have to
do, male, female, black, white, gay, straight, whoever you are, we have to be able to do
those things.
So to then turn around and say, it's not fair.
It's like, yeah, it's not fair that you're in this uniform right now.
If you are whining about this.
So it's an uncomfortable, unpopular conversation.
But if you take a step back and say, it's not fair that I have to do the thing that
I'm paid for, maybe it's time to look in the mirror.
Absolutely.
I mean, I know Montgomery County, I have friends there.
They make their cadre for the Academy, their fitness cadre, redo the CPAT, I think every
year.
So they have to test into it.
So, which they're all in.
It's not that hard.
This is the thing.
It's not like you're asking someone to deadlift a thousand pounds and run a triathlon.
You're just doing some stairs, dragging some stuff around and that's it.
So yeah.
Well, I do think there needs to be resources in place, right?
Because especially I can tell you coming from a female's perspective postpartum, we used
to have it so like there was situations where we had females coming in two months postpartum
and having to do the work performance.
And I can tell you right now, nothing feels right.
Like you need people in place in order to get people who get injured back to that level
of fitness, right?
Absolutely.
So like a bit of major back surgery, major back injury, having babies.
I mean, literally your whole bottom half is just ruined.
Your core doesn't have the power anymore.
I remember doing a workout four weeks postpartum, which I probably shouldn't have done.
And I was like, oh no, something's going to...
Because your ligaments are a loser too, aren't they?
Oh God.
I was like, I think there might be organs coming out.
I don't know.
Like it's a blunt and like men don't like hearing all of that.
But like there are still counties who are requiring women to come back two months after
having a C-section.
It's insane.
It's not physically possible.
But then babying the guys who get the back injury.
So I do believe that we do need the fitness standard, but we also need the professionals
to make sure people don't keep getting injured and actually progress them appropriately to
get back to doing the things.
100%.
Yeah.
Like I said, it's ownership and it's environment.
And we have one or the other conversation.
It's not as both.
Like at the moment I do a free class every week and it's supposed to be for local first
responders and I hardly get any of them.
The problem is that the county where I live, they work 56 hours a week.
They get mandatory constantly.
So the last place I would want to go to after an 80 hour work week is go work out with James
Gearing at five o'clock on a Monday.
So I totally understand it.
You change that.
You get a department fully staffed.
You give them a 42 hour work week, 24 72.
Now you're going to see people a lot more apt to own what they eat, to attend fitness
classes, jujitsu, whatever their thing is.
So by freeing up that time and showing your men and women that you care about them and
you're given an environment for them to thrive in, that's a massive part of the ownership
conversation.
If then you're still not working out and you think the CPAT is unfair, okay, well then
we need to have a conversation, don't we?
I agree.
All right.
Well, you mentioned, well, we mentioned caffeine a lot earlier.
Talk to me about what you've observed as far as caffeine consumption.
It could even be coffee, but certainly the energy drinks that are banging around everywhere
at the moment.
Yeah, I know.
It's my favorite conversation.
And I think people think I'm anti caffeine.
I'm not anti caffeine.
I mean, I'm drinking coffee right now.
Well, I have to stop because it's two o'clock and that's going to make my bedtime weird.
But in any case, I would be a really bad first responder dietitian if I came out and told
you guys to cut out coffee and caffeine entirely, right?
You would set me on fire and not put me out.
So I go based off of the FDA recommendation of 400 milligrams for healthy individuals,
right?
It's a tool for performance.
Like caffeine, we have evidence to support that it helps with physical performance and
mental performance, right?
If done in the correct doses.
Now, on the police side, you have to be a little careful with it because from a shooting
standpoint it can mess with accuracy.
But the challenge that I'm seeing is it's like firefighters are not drinking caffeine
just for the performance and the wake up ease.
They are like living off of it.
That is the only thing that they're drinking is coffee throughout the day and energy drink
at the EMS room, especially if they're free at the EMS room, which whoever's stocking
those you're on my list.
But yeah, I mean, it comes down to the amount.
I've seen as high as 2,600 milligrams of caffeine in a day and you're going to have trouble
sleeping.
You're probably going to have issues potentially with anxiety, possibly with acid reflux because
caffeine actually lowers the pressure of that lower esophageal sphincter, which then allows
for acid to kind of come back up in the throat.
So there's a lot of issues with overdoing caffeine.
So we have to talk about like reasonable purchase to make sure that we don't overdo it.
So most of these energy drinks, they have 300 milligrams in one can.
Have I got that right?
Yep.
And I think they're starting to like the pre workouts, like I was offered a 450 milligram
pre workout when I was doing it.
In the back alley with the guy with the trench coat.
I was pregnant and it was at a station.
Like what are we doing?
Like what?
Well, I don't understand that too, because again, if you are something, because you see
it a lot with the younger guys too.
If you're 18 years old, you are tearing the hinges off doors to do anything, whether it's
see girls or whatever.
The fact that you think, or we've allowed advertising to convince these young people
that you can't go into a gym and exercise without taking, you know, sippable cocaine
basically that is such a disservice to our youth because you have it inbuilt.
You're 18.
That is your pre workout.
Right.
And also they're fueling.
They have no idea how to fuel.
I have gotten some of my firefighters off of pre workout with applesauce pouches, which
sounds like witchcraft, right?
Because what first responders think is caffeine provides energy.
Caffeine does not provide energy.
Food does.
Caffeine reduces the feeling of fatigue by pushing adenosine out of the way, which builds
up as sleep pressure builds during the day and then binds in place to those receptors
so that you feel more alert.
So what ends up happening is this is typically the story.
First responder waking up at the crack of dawn to get a workout before lineup because
they're just not going to get it during the day at their station.
Their workouts have started to suck.
They are tired.
They don't have the willpower.
They don't have the energy.
Their lips aren't fun anymore.
And you know, it just isn't working.
I get them to do one or two applesauce pouches prior to because they're light on the stomach
and they're high in carbs.
And then next thing you know, they're like, I don't need pre-workout anymore or I don't
need as much of it.
My workouts feel better.
I have something portable, non-perishable that I can take with me on calls.
So getting those quick carbs before you work out can be a game changer in your workouts.
And a lot of times if I get people eating more regular meals, which flies in the face
of intermittent fasting, they actually have more energy throughout the day and they don't
rely on caffeine nearly as much.
I've had a lot of success with a variety in the times that I eat.
It's not a deliberate fasting model I'm doing, but I've always listened to my body.
It's been one good thing that I've been able to.
I think it's growing up on a farm maybe.
And so there's times where, you know, depending on the dynamics of my weeks where I'll wake
up, I'll go to Jujitsu and my first meal isn't until 12 and I feel amazing and I've
got amazing energy in Jujitsu and this time is when I wake up, you know, seven o'clock
and I'm just ravaging.
And so I eat toast first thing or something.
So I think firstly, like not being shackled by a specific mentality is good.
The same with working out.
Some days you want to just kill it and other days you're like, I'm just going to move
today.
I'm going to listen to my body that way.
An interesting kind of philosophy though, Julien Peneau, who's a strong man coach,
talked to me about this quite a long time ago now about using glucose or carbohydrates
in the morning because you're telling your body, hey, it is time to work.
So if you think about, you know, older humans, you know, we wake up and now we've got to
go forage, hunt, farm, whatever our thing is.
And then in the evening his thing was protein and vegetables together, not carbs.
So now you're allowing your body to get ready to repair.
So back to the carbs thing, what is your kind of philosophy on kind of what type of things
to eat that will prepare the body for a day's work or for a workout?
Yeah.
I mean, so it depends on what you were talking about.
So also the things that help for workouts also work potentially between evolutions if
you are doing fire ground or fire suppression related training.
So we are looking at the applesauce pouches are really quick and portable.
I've done fig bars, cliff bars, fruit cups in juice, like the mandarin oranges in juice.
What else?
Let me think off the top of my head.
I like to make a lot of recommendations for like packaged food because I'm a realist.
Yes, I want people to eat whole foods, but I have a lot of first responders who tell
me they get the whole foods and then they get held over, they get too tired to meal
prep and the whole foods die in their fridge.
So next best bet is frozen canned packaged food that is better for you.
Not a ton of ingredients ideally, but can be packed in a go bag and you can have it
when you need it.
Other things you can do from a preparation standpoint, I love smoothies.
Those are great prior to the workout.
And honestly, and I tell these to recruits.
So when we have recruits or fire suppression related trainings, it's the same stuff you
would do first thing in the morning, but you have to keep fueling between evolutions.
So a lot of recruits struggle with recovery and pushing.
Sorry, I'm going on a tangent here.
Struggle with recovery and pushing or even the Stokers or the fire control teams as well.
They struggle with the energy on those days and primarily because they are not refueling
between each evolution.
So you need to do a car between each one.
That carb could be any of the things I just listed, like the applesauce pouches, the smoothie
pouches, like Cheerios in a bag if that's easy.
Sports drink can also work if that's all that's available.
You have to hit that between every evolution.
You're doing five evolutions that day, five snacks every single time.
You will notice a massive difference in energy level and you won't feel nearly as hung over,
in quotes, at the end of the day if you are regularly fueling between.
So now the other side is sugar is performance enhancing.
So I'm not entirely opposed to if you have five evolutions, that last evolution for razzle
dazzle, you do Sour Patch Kids, Skittles, Starbursts or Goldfish.
If you're having a high intensity day, there's a great time to use something that isn't the
healthiest but add some interest to your day towards the end of those evolutions so long
it's not every single one of them.
What about the end of the night?
This is the thing, the high carb meals in the morning really made sense to me.
So I'll do toast, I'll do oatmeal with fruit.
And the idea that you've obviously got the different digestive mechanisms within the body.
So when you have a high protein, high fat, high carb meal that they're all kind of fighting
to digest at the same time, it makes a lot of sense to me even from an evolutionary point
of view that the hunters came, they built the fire, they cooked the meat and in the
evening it probably would have been fruit, vegetables and meat.
And when I've done it that way, I feel like I get a better sleep than if I've had a high
carb meal for dinner.
So what is your philosophy on that?
Well so if you look at the evidence, because I actually have a presentation on nutrition
and sleep and recovery, there's evidence to support a high carb meal prior to bed, I believe
for REM sleep.
I might have this backwards, you're going to have to hold me to it.
For REM sleep and then a higher fat meal may improve deep sleep.
So it's actually confusing because it's like one could impact the other.
So what I take that as in practice is which one do you feel like your sleep is better
with?
Right?
And you know, do you see any, but the other side of it too is are you leaving five hours
from your last caffeinated beverage?
Are you leaving three hours from your last alcohol or your last nicotine?
Because everybody's doing the freaking zins now, which is a whole nother conversation.
And then also do you have acid reflux?
Because I feel like half the fire service has acid reflux.
So avoiding certain foods that may cause that to come back up.
So I think my understanding of nutrition when it comes to sleep specifically is an it depends,
see what works for you.
But also that I think there's also some evidence that a higher carb meal can cause some issues
from a glucose standpoint.
But typically that might be more related to someone who's already having issues with glucose
tolerance.
See, that's interesting because you know, we think of REM sleep and we always think
that's the thing that is a recovery.
That's the thing that really makes a difference, but it's deep sleep.
So if you were to choose one or the other, I would say, especially as a first responder,
if the low carb or no carb in the evening meal serves you well, that's the one that
we're chasing is the deep sleep.
That's the restorative one that's allowing us to process our traumas and thoughts and
our muscles and ligaments to repair and all the things.
Yeah.
And so another thing with the sleep is everybody overlooks the sleep, right?
But when we talk about sleep and food, it's a huge factor.
And one of my biggest indicators for a client to need a sleep study, because I'm sure you
know that like 37% of firefighters have a sleep disorder and 80% of them don't know
it.
Absolutely.
Kind of vibe.
So if I have a client come to me and they tell me, I need help with my energy levels,
I need help with my body composition and my sugar cravings, like I feel like I'm addicted
to sugar.
Ding, ding, ding, red flag.
How is your sleep?
So a lot of times I ask them, how is their sleep?
And then they go, it's less than five hours, it's interrupted, I toss and turn, I snore,
I feel fatigued throughout the day.
Then we have them go get a sleep study.
And I've had, I want to say three 29 to 32 year olds over the past year get diagnosed
with a sleep disorder, have that resolved with whatever the sleep specialist recommends.
I had one lose 2% body fat in the first month after getting that resolved.
Your sleep impacts your recovery and sleep disorders occur way earlier than a lot of
firefighters think, oh, it'll be in my forties, oh, it'll be in my fifties, oh, it'll be when
I retire.
Wrong.
Five, seven years on the job.
That's where I'm seeing it.
Yeah.
I've always made the joke that if you go to most fire station bunk rooms, it looks like
the bars in Star Wars.
It's all hoses and noises.
And it shouldn't be the case, we laugh about this and we shouldn't be.
I said to someone the other day, imagine if you went to your grocery store, your bank
for a job interview and the guy starts joking that in 10 years you'll be on your third divorce
and you'll be an alcoholic.
You'd be like, all right, I'm not going to work here.
This sounds shit.
But we do that in police and fire and we just accept it as normal, but it's not.
We shouldn't have a 35 year old firefighter on a CPAT and exogenous testosterone just
because of the conditions of their job.
It's not the job.
The job is amazing, the profession, the calling, but the conditions that never evolved with
the challenges that we have in 2024.
Again, you say about red flag, these are massive red flags that we need to make changes in
our profession.
So our first responders don't get sick and die just from simply responding to their station
every third day.
Yeah.
It's an organizational responsibility, but I think that it's starting to change.
I would say it's even in the past eight years of me working, there's been some change, but
it's slow.
Yeah, absolutely.
It's slow.
Well, from an easing philosophy, you talked about Rip Esselstyn and the Engine 2 diet.
It's really interesting.
It wasn't him.
It was James Wilkes who did the Game Changers documentary.
He's an MMA fighter.
He was on the show and the Joe Rogan, I think, I forget who, Chris Kresser, I think was on
with him and they tore his film apart.
And then he went on and he actually did an interview with me.
He asked me not to put it out yet because he didn't want to give them fodder.
So then he goes on their show or on Joe's show.
But what was so sad is each of those two conversations were three hours and all they did was kind
of like tear apart his whole thing on plant-based eating.
And what I see is whether you are the liver king, let's say remove the steroids, the liver
king, the carnivore diet, the Mediterranean diet, whatever it is, there's a common denominator.
They remove the processed foods.
That's why everyone gets healthier.
You don't have to be a vegan.
You don't have to be carnivore.
But the Venn diagram is crossed where you're removing all the shit.
So what is your philosophy on the spectrum of diets that you recommend?
And then are you seeing the same common denominators which don't shackle you to specific diets
specifically?
Yeah.
I mean, so when I was a young dietician who came into the fire – I was 24 when I started
working with firefighters, you know, like I didn't really know anything.
You know, I was kind of pushing more Mediterranean, which we actually have phenomenal evidence
for the Mediterranean diet in firefighters in the sense that they want to follow the
diet and you can execute it with fast food if it has to be a packaged food, that kind
of thing.
So I still love Mediterranean leaning towards that for the firefighters.
But the problem with firefighters is they don't like labels.
They don't like being in camps.
And if they do go in a camp, they stay in the camp for 20 minutes and then they leave
the camp.
You know what I mean?
Like they don't stay – we had keto.
We had low carb.
We have carnivore now.
All of these different types of diets.
And like you said, the trend is less processed food and I would argue more fruits and veggies.
Absolutely.
So, yes.
It's carnivore diet.
But here's the thing.
The guy who wrote the carnivore diet isn't even on the carnivore diet anymore and he
stopped doing it while he was writing the book.
Like what?
So it's not sustainable and sustainability should be like at the top of your list when
you're looking at things that you should be able to follow.
And yeah, maybe you can also be realistic and say, I'm going to do this for three months.
That's fine.
But what is going to be the goal long term?
So that's a big factor.
But the other thing that I have a challenge with is like there can be packaged foods.
You can use packaged foods.
It's just which ones are you choosing, right?
Because again, like I said, the portability, the lack of energy, the challenge with meal
prep, all of those things is you can't overlook that.
So that's a factor there too.
But yeah, so plants, I like a plant based diet, but that does not mean only plants.
Yeah.
I always tell people I try and eat plant based with meat, which sounds like an oxymoron,
but it's true.
Yeah.
I don't even think that's the right word.
Plant focused.
I think I go with plant focused because if I was going to argue what nutrient that firefighters
are most efficient in, it's actually fiber.
You know, because your lunch was delayed three hours.
You roll up to the Chick-fil-A parking lot.
We are not getting a salad.
We are blacking out and getting the biggest milkshake and the biggest fried sandwich,
right?
So it's really easy for the fiber to get thrown out the window.
So while I'm not knocking engine two by any means, it's a phenomenal diet.
It's just again, if people aren't going to follow it, it's not necessarily going to work
for the fire service.
So we have to kind of figure out what's the best thing for most people and then customize
it based on the individual or the station even sitting in front of you.
Well like I was saying with the Joe Rogan example, what would have been amazing would
be to have the two camps talking about where they agree.
You talk about where you disagree, but talk about where you agree because then Julian
Peneau talks about this.
He doesn't talk about these are the exercises you should do.
He's always talking about principles.
If you understand the nutritional principle, then one day you're doing Mediterranean, the
next day maybe you're going to do a carnival meal.
Just purely meat that day and the next day maybe you'll do a plant-based meal.
But you're understanding that what you're not putting in there is flour and white sugar
and all these other things that we know are really the elephant in the room in this nutritional
conversation.
And even with fast food, we have a restaurant here called Fresh Kitchen in Florida.
It's amazing, absolutely amazing.
I mean, super healthy food.
It's probably a little more sodium than one would recommend normally.
But again, if you're in Florida in bunker gear, you're going to blow through that sodium
anyway.
But-
Sodium is not a hill I die on with firefighters.
No.
I don't know if you've ever tried to go on a low sodium diet.
It's next to impossible.
They're sweating way more than most average bears and in fact may need more.
It's just not the first thing.
No, no.
Typically.
Exactly.
Well, that's the thing.
I mean, if you look at the science, the only people that now I think that they're worried
about high sodium is if you're already obese and dying with hypertension.
Right.
Yeah, now it's a factor.
But yeah, if you're an academy recruit that's spent eight hours in bunker gear sweating,
then you probably need pickle juice.
Yeah.
Well, it comes back to the dichotomous thinking in the fire service.
So I will always say, I can't tell you how many chiefs, canteens, rehab units, the food
trucks that come to the firefighters, however you call it in your county.
They keep coming to me saying, I want healthy options on the canteen.
And I don't think that's the right language because what you need during rehab is sodium
and potentially sugar because those are the two things that maximize rehydration.
And then the sugar is also quick fuel that gets digested fast and is utilized quickly.
Whereas protein and fiber are going to slow digestion.
We want protein and fiber and fat to slow digestion when we're sitting at the station
in the bunk room.
Right.
But we don't want that on the fire ground.
So that's kind of the challenge is like, you can't really have these black or white approaches
with the fire service because there are drastic changes even throughout the day and throughout
the shift.
Talk to me about hydration specifically.
It's interesting.
Before I started this podcast, I heard someone on, I don't know which podcast it was, but
one of the ones we're talking like eight and a half years ago.
And they were asked a very simple question, I thought, does the amount of hydration that
you need depend on the size of the firefighter?
Basically, would a larger firefighter need more water?
And the person who was supposed to be an expert said, oh, I haven't seen the research.
And I was like, okay, I need to start a podcast.
This is the information that's getting out.
So talk to me about, again, the spectrum of hydration as per, like you said, a pregnant
female, the 280 pound X, lying back at whatever it is, but also the types of hydration, water,
Gatorade, and maybe some other recommendations that you have.
Yeah.
And I meant to look this up.
I know there are standards based off of weight.
I think it's like what?
I can't remember off the top of my head.
Definitely a six foot two, 250 pound firefighter with a high muscle mass is going to need more
fluid than a five foot three female.
Right?
And actually we see a lot more issues with dehydration for women because they lose more
fluid and they have less of it to lose from a performance standpoint.
So hydration is actually super important for our female firefighters.
But I will say the female firefighters have their act together 90% of the time.
Like they have to because of the job.
But overall, I usually go with the Institute of Medicine standards, which is the baseline
for like you work out and you didn't have a fire that day.
So 90 ounces for women and 125 for men.
I don't know if you have a standard and I can't remember off the top of my head for
body weight that you keep in mind.
No, I mean, again, I'm very, you know, listen to my body-esque.
So I'm not a snatched person.
It wouldn't stay in my head even if I'd read it five minutes ago.
But yeah, but I mean, again, using that, you know, the simple things, the P chart and,
you know, your thirst or lack thereof, you know, those are pretty good indicators of
over the duration, you know, are you hydrating properly?
Do you need to go back?
My wife actually has an app on her phone that tells her to drink.
Super annoying.
Yeah, well, because some people don't remember.
And I think it's, I would argue that probably half the fire service is ADHD, right?
Yep.
So and I think numbers do help, right?
Because that means what?
90 to 125 math.
Yes.
If you, the Stanley cups, everybody was losing their minds over last Christmas, you know,
that's two to three of those.
So then that helps people who truly forget or do not like fluid to do that.
But the good news is, is coffee counts.
So caffeine is a mild diuretic.
You will pee more in the first hour after drinking it.
But the total body hydration over the course of the day stays the same because you just
replace the liquid you peed out with the liquid from the coffee.
Now does that mean you can just drink coffee all day and no water?
No.
But it's, I think that's helpful for first responders because when they hear, oh, you
can't have coffee because it's going to dehydrate you, they basically stick their middle finger
up and say, screw you lady.
I'm not doing that.
So it's a little bit more realistic.
But the other thing I wanted to mention with hydration is that having some sugar available
in an electrolyte product actually speeds rehydration.
And I don't know if you've noticed that a lot of first responders are kind of going
towards the element and the fire salts and the sugar-free options because they're healthy.
But again, healthy is not what you want in a high intensity, potential hydration compromised
situation.
Yeah.
I've tried the element and I had Rob on the show.
And again, it's application.
If you follow in keto, if you're, like you said, trying to lean up, all those kinds of
things.
And if you have to fight and fire for 30 minutes, then you need glucose.
She was the army's nutritionist, I think she was.
And they've got a product called Cera, C-E-R-A. And it's a rice-based hydration drink.
So they're putting the carbs in without a spike of just pure glucose.
And she was a long distance runner as well.
Very, very funny story is actually about her running.
But yeah, so seeing these actual true, true sports drinks versus the Gatorade when you
look on the side and it's high fructose corn syrup, having that middle gram, yeah, I'm
going to hydrate, I'm going to have my carbs, but maybe not have the one owned by Pepsi
company.
Maybe that's another thing for, like you said, the rehab to still put the things that they
need in, but maybe not from a soda company.
Well, yeah.
And the other thing too I just wanted to kind of mention is I'm looking for products that
are evidence-based, right?
And things like drip drop, liquid IV, or fluid tactical are going to be products that have
evidence behind them that they actually work as well as IV fluids for mild to moderate
dehydration.
And until I see similar evidence for the no sugar sodium only options, then I'm going
to go based off of those products because departments are buying one.
They're not buying three different ones because one guy's keto and one guy's this.
They need to buy one product, right?
So I will say some of my 40-year-olds, like 50-year-olds who are really high performers,
they just prefer those products.
Go for it.
But when we're looking at the evidence, having a little bit of glucose available, it gives
you access to the sodium glucose co-transporter, which means you have an extra access point
to pull water from the intestine into the cell.
So when you're looking for products to purchase, those are the ones that I recommend just because
they are very close to the World Health Organization's ORS standards or oral rehydration solution
standards.
Actually, that's where that rice one originated from was actually working with, I forget,
was it cholera?
I think it was.
Cholera epidemic.
Yes.
Yep.
So rehydration.
Does that help from a GI standpoint, like relating to diarrhea and stuff?
I'm assuming that was the story.
I made the assumption.
Yeah.
So some people just can't tolerate those kinds of things.
So starches may do a little bit better.
I'm assuming that's what that product is probably based in.
Yeah.
I'll send you the information when we're done here.
I've still got the magnet on my fridge so I can go look at it.
You mentioned drip drop as well.
I did a thing with a load of Navy SEALs and elite distance runners just over a year ago.
I think it was two years ago.
Anyway, it was school 7X and we went around the planet.
They did some skydives and stuff too, but the study was to do seven marathons and seven
continents in seven days.
So they ran a marathon.
We got back on the plane, slept on plane seats.
A lot of times if you're going continent to continent, you're talking about like four
or five hours sleep and then you're back out there running again.
I was support.
I wasn't one of the athletes, but drip drop was the one they kept asking for.
Some of them were skydivers.
Some of them were Delta operators.
Some of them were elite triathletes and they were all wanting drip drop by the end of it.
So again, anecdotal, all those different types of athletes, that was the one that they obviously
found helped them a lot.
Yeah.
Like I said, drip drop actually has studies using their product.
That's the hard part is I've seen the low sugar ones.
They'll come and they'll give me their pamphlets and their pamphlets are going on a tangent
about how sugar is causing the diabetes epidemic.
We're not talking about diabetes when you are fighting fire.
Sugar's impact is not relating to people who are exercising and doing hard physical labor
like that.
You know what I'm saying?
I'm not saying that we should only eat sugar.
I'm saying use it as a tool.
You're not going to use like a battering ram to force the, that's for forcing doors to
force, like open up a ceiling and I'm not doing good with firefighter terms, but there
are terms, there are tools you guys use for the job for a reason.
And it's the same thing with food.
But like I said, people want to be very black or white with it.
And drip drop, like I said, has some really good evidence that it is comparable to IV
therapy for mild to moderate dehydration, which is super important in academy settings
where you don't want to start a line on someone because paperwork.
Well, it's funny, I was just thinking about that and making sure we hit that a little
bit more.
So talk to me about Rabdo in general that you're seeing through your eyes and what are
some of the circumstances that are contributing to a young, not even young, a person in uniform
suffering Rabdo in training or on the job?
This is going to be potentially an offensive conversation.
But I'm going to be blunt.
You have the green light.
Okay, and I'm a people pleaser, so this is really hard for me.
But again, we have to look at the class sitting in front of us, right?
And the classes sitting in front of us, 90% of the time are coming in completely deconditioned.
Maybe they passed CBAT three months ago, but then the class was delayed several months
and they haven't been working out.
So you've got to use that as like potentially do some surveys, see what they are, do some
testing, see where they are standing.
If they can barely make it through a warmup, we are not going to chop till we drop the
next day, right?
Because what I have seen when I was with one county, OSHA ended up coming in because we
had two police candidates with Rabdo.
And what had happened was it was the middle of September in Maryland, which is humid and
disgusting 90 degree days.
And they were having their recruits run outside in business suits, business suits, not workout
PT gear, business suits, which let me tell you something, if I ruin one of my nice suits
with sweat, I'm going to lose it.
But in business suits, plus, you know, they weren't allowed to have electrolyte replacement
products.
They said no Gatorade, water only, only water.
And they were having them do like a lot of punishment pushups.
And that is literally your recipe for Rabdo.
Taking an untrained population, doing repetitive movements, specifically repetitive, eccentric
movements, and then not allowing them to replace with electrolyte products in the heat.
That is the recipe for Rabdo.
So I think it's important to educate your cadre if they have a tendency of being really
high intensity, military background potentially.
Just do it, just suck it up because that can be a recipe for disaster when you have a class
coming in not conditioned.
Right.
So we may need to scale back the programming and scaling back the programming, especially
from a running perspective, you don't increase mileage more than 10% per week.
If we want to prevent Rabdo shin issue, shin splints and other injuries, if you do want
to incorporate running into your program, it needs to be scaled 10% per week and no
more than that.
One of my guests made a good point, it was quite a while ago now, but they were talking
about pushups.
And I think it was a strength and conditioning coach and we were talking about what a pushup
should look like.
And he said, think about how many shit pushups are done in military bases, in fire and police
academies.
And you're just reinforcing that terrible movement pattern over and over and over again.
And he just touched on it, how many times are pushups used for punishment?
Well, what a disservice to one of the most incredible exercises ever invented by man is
to just completely screw it up by exhausting people and getting them shitty form and half
range of motion and all the things.
So going back to asking, well, why am I going to tell them and drop them do this many?
And if I am going to cut it in half and ask them to do 10 perfect pushups in a hollow
position so that when they're done, they should still be equally as tired, but they've actually
told their body, this is how I'm supposed to move and reinforce that movement pattern.
So it's interesting, just because we've done it a certain way for X amount of time, is
there an opportunity to go, you know what?
I think there's a better way of doing it.
Maybe we shouldn't do a hundred pushups of which it just looks like you're trying to
audition for Magic Mike at the end of it.
So no.
And again, in deconditioned populations, right?
I know they are supposed to not come in deconditioned.
I listen, I would love to be able to hold that standard, but that's not what recruitment's
capable of doing right now.
So again, it comes back to that organizational policies of having a periodized, uh, progressive
overload training program that pushes them to a limit, allows them to rest, but also
make sure they actually get to the level of fitness required.
And typically like if you're setting up a six month Academy, I think they do best with
EMS first, you know, and compared to doing suppression first.
I think there's more camaraderie when they do suppression first, but when you're doing
suppression first in the middle of the summer, uh, with a deconditioned population, I think
it's a recipe for a disaster, um, potentially.
So I kind of gave you my thoughts earlier on, but you've got quite an interesting lens
now because obviously you're working with departments, but you're standing on the outside
as well.
And you work with other populations prior to that.
What is the reason why you're seeing less and less conditioned candidates show up for
day one?
Yeah.
I mean, like you said, the school situation is a big one.
Um, phones probably, I mean, even for me, like I didn't get a smartphone until I passed
college, right?
So like I couldn't even imagine like growing up with my face flat in my phone and I do
a horrible job.
I'm in my phone all the time.
Um, so yeah, I mean, they're, they're not working out as much.
They, the recess and the exercise breaks are less and less and less.
Um, food choices are more and more convenient.
Like I said, the grub hub, that kind of stuff.
Um, and that also creates financial issues.
So I think it's just the environment is a big, big, big, big, big, big problem.
Um, you know, with having people come in fit.
Now I will say, um, there are departments who, for example, Montgomery County, uh, Maryland,
my friend Katie Dennison is a firefighter who runs their fitness program.
They have CPAT mentoring.
So they have like a 12 week program where they get their candidates in shape.
And typically, so long as they don't get yelled at by recruitment, which they've had issues
in the past, um, they can continue doing mentoring even after they pass CPAT.
So they actually have recruits coming in significantly better shape so they can push them right off
the bat.
But that is also a very financially, um, like that costs a lot of money and time and overtime
for your instructors to be there.
But that is a really great model for getting your recruits into better shape prior to.
There's an amazing mentorship program where I live.
And even with the diversity conversation, I've said this on here many times as well,
but they provide, I think it's three times a week, this mentoring and exactly that they
do PT, they put them in gear, they teach them skills.
So by the time they go to a fire Academy, they can already throw ladders and pull hose
and bunker up and do the, you know, the runs and all those things.
But you're also going into underserved populations because let's be honest, you know, fire Academy
down here, we pay for ourselves to go through Academy usually, and then try and get hired
who we certainly used to not now.
Um, and so, you know, money is a barrier to entry.
Some of these young people having to work, you know, and they don't have, you know, two
or three grand to spend on a fire Academy.
So now they show up all this is for free.
There's a scholarships for the fire Academy.
Obviously there's people looking to hire them on the other side.
But like you said, they're, they're not scooping up a bunch of people because of a skin color
or gender and saying, we need you all.
They're going into that group and saying, who wants to rise to the bar and be a firefighter?
And so they find the best of these people, and I think that's the big part of this recruitment
conversation.
I think the meets, uh, the mentorship model is phenomenal.
You're not babysitting someone, you're not holding their hands.
We still have to do what you ask them to do, but some people just need encouragement.
They need to be shown how they need to be shown how to eat and hydrates.
They don't fall out and never want to be a firefighter again.
So I think this is a massive part of the, you know, the overall recruitment crisis.
Um, you know, solutions is mentorship is one of the ways you'll get good, good people into
your department and that money that you're putting into that program, you'll save hand
over fist if they stay with you and, you know, last a 20, 25 year career.
Yeah, absolutely.
And then they also have mentors within the fitness cadre as well.
Um, and I think that Montgomery County also saw improvements in getting women into the
fire service.
So when you talk about those diverse populations and improving diversity, um, they do a really
good job at getting females trained because like you said, like I said, CPAT's really
hard, um, from a female perspective because strength is typically what's lacking.
So they can get their females stronger and get them through CPAT and then they're in
better shape when they come into the academy.
So I think that's a, uh, thing to factor in is can you incorporate a CPAT mentoring program
in order to get your people in shape?
And then you can push them once they're in the academy.
Absolutely.
All right.
Well, I want to go to one more topic and then we'll round off.
Um, I have tried, you know, uh, spectrum of different supplements over time, never really
been into the bodybuilding side, never, never died too deeply into creatine or anything
like that, but certainly, you know, from proteins to multivitamins to, you know, some of the
other supplementation, what are some of the things that you find are very applicable when
it comes to the tactical professions?
This is a fun one.
Um, yeah, like usually when I have presentations, they love the supplements conversation the
most.
Um, but the problem is, is the supplements is just the sprinkles on the cupcake where
the cake is actually, you know, your nutrition and then the timing is the icing and the sprinkles
are just for funsies.
Um, and as a background in bodybuilding, I thought supplements were going to fix my whole
life, you know, the way they're marketed, you're like, this thing is going to make everything
amazing and then it doesn't do anything.
So the two supplements that I like best for the fire service are tart cherry juice, which
isn't technically even a supplement and creatine monohydrate.
So tart cherry juice is a food, right?
Um, and the reason I like tart cherry juice is it because there's evidence to suggest
that it helps with sleep and muscle soreness, which for recruits ding and for firefighters
over the age of 40 ding, right?
That kills two birds with one stone for both of those populations.
Um, tart cherry juice can improve sleep quality by increasing potentially melatonin production
leading to better rapid eye movement sleep, which means you get better sleep quality when
quantity is an issue.
So now I think the evidence is kind of mixed.
Um, some of this, it might be a placebo effect, but we'll take a placebo.
You know what I mean?
Um, so tart cherry juice, the amount that's recommended is somewhere between four to 12
ounces in the morning and in the evening for muscle soreness and in the evening for sleep.
And I have had a lot of recruits cause I do a lot of Academy nutrition presentations,
um, try the tart cherry juice and say like, this was everything for me, right?
Like their sleep improved and they actually cut back on energy drinks.
So very inexpensive relative to supplements way to get people, um, to cut back on energy
drinks, improve quality of sleep when quantity is an issue.
Um, now tart cherry juice can, you can find in the grocery store in the cranberry juice
aisle, there's going to be one small little leader.
Um, I recommend trying it first because I had one firefighter by a crate of it only
to find out she hated it.
So don't do that.
Um, but that can be a great tool for improving, um, or reducing muscle soreness and potentially
improving sleep quality.
Um, any questions or thoughts on that?
Nope.
I'm not on the first one.
Okay, cool.
That's a great tool.
Um, and then, uh, creating monohydrate.
So this is a long conversation and there's some experts who are way smarter than me,
uh, in this arena, but creating monohydrate was traditionally used by the bodybuilding
population, um, because it helps with strength and power powerlifting as well.
Um, so we can see improvements in strength and power because it's providing that first
six seconds fuel source.
So we get an extra rep, we get an extra sprint.
Um, it is not a steroid, it's three amino acids, um, that can help with, uh, like I
said, strength and power, but there's more emerging evidence that it can help with mental
fatigue and sleep deprived populations.
Firefighters.
Um, so, and there was another recent study that showed that it improved occupational
performance when combined with pro-carb powder, uh, whey protein isolate and, uh, five grams
of creatine monohydrate post-workout, uh, three weeks prior to an occupational battery.
So, um, application, uh, that I love to talk to, I want recruits to consider, I don't force
them because, um, the main side effect is GI distress.
Like it's kind of a sandy substance.
It kind of sits in your tummy weird for some people.
Um, so, but overall it's a pretty safe supplement for many.
I like recruits to consider taking it about a month before fire suppression.
It doesn't hurt to take it at the beginning of the academy or leading into the academy
of suppressions at the beginning, um, so that they can get that extra edge because the reality
is, is when they get to suppression, they're, they're, they're already frazzled, right?
They're learning a new skill.
People are yelling at them.
They've already messed up, you know, the hose bed for the 50 millionth time.
Like let's just knock a little bit of that performance stress out of the way, right?
But, uh, also just the general firefighter population, I think it, it has benefits from
the brain standpoint and then also from a physical performance standpoint.
In terms of quantity, we are looking usually three to five, potentially up to 10, uh, grams
of creatine per day through a powder capsule or gummy.
And um, you take that every day for forever.
Even when you don't work out, I don't care if it's in your pre-workout, you need to have
a regular creatine as well.
Because that's basically topping off that fuel source in the muscle, um, to get that
extra rep.
This is old science, I'm sure, but I remember, um, the conversation that creatine would help
draw hydration into the muscle and therefore you had to be careful as far as dehydration,
especially, you know, if you're thinking about someone who's going to be in bunker gear,
is that still, um, uh, you know, a legitimate thought process or has that been debunked?
That's been debunked.
That mechanism is accurate.
However, they're considering it as a protective effect, um, having that additional water refuge
in the muscles.
Also my firefighters, when they start taking it and their chest starts to feel like a little
bigger and their arms start to feel a little bigger, they're like, this is awesome.
I look huge.
Um, so they like that.
Um, the other thing that's debunked is rhabdo.
So that's been like there in the nineties, everybody thought creatine would cause rhabdo.
Um, but what they didn't look into was in those case studies, uh, the, uh, anabolic
steroids that the case study was on.
So don't do anabolic steroids if you don't want to get rhabdo.
So anabolic steroids and statins are two big things that can make rhabdo happen.
Okay.
Or higher risk.
Brilliant.
All right, well, I'm going to go to some closing questions.
Just before I do, is there anything else you want to make sure that we do discuss?
No, I mean, I think we covered everything.
I just really want to say like, you know, if you're really struggling from a dietary
perspective, maybe lower the bar a little bit, but also keep yourself accountable to
continue slowly raising the bar.
Right.
Um, it's okay to start with fast food, frozen food, packaged food, but the goal is to eventually
progress to a more whole foods approach or maybe some frozen food, just to make sure
that you know, you are optimizing your performance and your energy levels and longevity overall.
Beautiful.
All right.
Well, then the first of the closing questions, is there a book or other books that you love
to recommend?
It can be related to our discussion today or completely unrelated.
Oh yeah.
I, you know, what's horrible is I've over-scheduled myself so much lately that I haven't been
reading because it hurts my brain, like books, but I'm trying to change that.
I asked for some books for Christmas.
But I do think the Spark one is a good one.
I think the Spark one is a great book.
I can't remember what it is.
It's Spark.
I can't remember the subtitle or the, but I think especially for Academy instructors,
or parents, it seems unrelated, but it really talks about the environment and the importance
of physical activity in, you know, not only our kids' brain power, but just their overall
longevity.
Beautiful.
What about films and documentaries?
Oh, you don't want to ask me about that because most of the stuff I watch is real housewives.
Which city do you find the most disgusting housewives?
Because I know they're all horrible people.
They're all horrible.
You know, when I sit there and I watch it, my six month old is like looking at the screen
and clapping and I'm like, we're learning interpersonal communication skills.
This is narcissism.
Yeah.
Narcissism.
No, I think Salt Lake's a rough one.
I really don't watch a lot of TV.
I actually really like YouTube, which sounds ridiculous because I think if you find the
right people on YouTube, there's a lot of very short videos and my attention span is
just as bad as the firefighters.
So I like Layne Norton's YouTube.
She does a really good job of putting up the evidence for muscle building, general health,
that kind of thing from a health perspective.
And then I also like looking at a lot of the business podcasts or social media podcasts
to learn how to talk to firefighters and break things down a little bit better for them.
Perfect.
All right.
Well, the next question, is there a person that you recommend to come on this podcast
as a guest to speak to the first responders, military and associated professionals of the
world?
Yeah, I have lots of recommendations.
Well, but I know you're interested in that mandatory fitness testing and I think you
need Jake Patton, who's our strength coach to come on because he can give you hours of
content.
Brilliant.
Yeah.
Katie Dennison's a firefighter who's a strength coach.
She's one of my very good friends.
She does great with the CPAT mentoring conversation.
She's brilliant on that.
And then Vanessa Frost Pedrahita from Flugerville.
She's a great strength coach for firefighters.
There's a lot of really great professionals out there.
It's just making sure that people know they exist.
Exactly.
100%.
All right.
Well, then the last question for you, make sure everyone knows where to find you and
then we'll talk about rescue ID as well.
What do you do to decompress?
Well, I just had a therapy session right before this on how I need to learn how to do that.
I really struggled with that.
I love working and I think that's part of the reason why I work well with firefighters
is I'm obsessed with my job, which is them, unfortunately.
So I'm actually working on that.
I'm working with a therapist now to kind of help teach me how to take a break because
I have a hard time with it.
So I would say right now that's been working out or going on walks with my husband or my
daughter.
Brilliant.
All right.
Well, let's talk about rescue ID then.
So tell me what made you create the company and then what are the things that you offer
everyone listening?
Yeah.
So my friend, I was working with a large department, right?
My friend Katie was like, oh, hey, like my friend wants you to maybe teach an academy.
And next thing you know, it was like, I started a rescue RD just to educate firefighters on
nutrition and I have all these places.
This department calls me and they want me to come out and do a smoothie.
This conference wants me to teach and it's just kind of exploded from there because I
feel like I said, like there are just no dietitians who can really break it down in firefighter
language.
Well, there's not no, there's a couple that are really good.
But so basically that's why I started rescue RD was to bring nutrition in firefighter language
to the fire service to potentially progress them into better eating habits, which we know
has been a struggle for years.
Now it talks to me about the cookbook.
Yeah.
So fire engineering, I just signed a contract for a recipe book.
I have a free recipe book, by the way, that is like the older sister of this recipe book
on my website rescue RD.
If you join my email list, which is the email is sends out a bunch of firefighter specific
tips and tricks.
So it's a great option.
And the recipe book is five to $6 a head, probably now five, six to eight, let's be
honest with this economy.
For shifts of six, 10 and 14 half a pound of protein per person.
And it's going to be a review of the literature in firefight, like of firefighter diets.
And that gets firefighters all clammy, like that's nerd speak, right?
But this is going to be broken down into firefighter language.
Looking at the Mediterranean diets use in firefighters.
How do I eat better when I'm on shift?
What do I pack in a go back?
All of those practical tactical with the evidence backing it.
That's going to be potentially, I mean, I guess, you know how the publishing situation
goes maybe 20, 20 to 26, 20, 27 is when that'll release.
But in the meantime, firefighter nation gave me a podcast.
So you can see me there starting January 10.
Beautiful.
What's the name of the podcast?
Fueling fire.
And that's going to be the book's name as well.
So I also have workshops that I bring to departments and as a bonus, if you sign up or book a workshop
by February 28th, I will give QuickBytes for free, which QuickBytes is 10, 12, 10 minute
videos you can put into Target or Vector Solutions on hot topics in nutrition from creatine monohydrate
to how do I sleep and what do I pack in a go bag?
So it prolongs the benefit of that workshop for your department.
Beautiful.
And that'll be free.
Excellent.
Well, I want to thank you so much.
It's been such an interesting conversation.
I tried not to hit the regular Q&A.
I've heard you on some other podcasts and so it's going to go a little bit more into
the principles again.
So I want to thank you so, so much for being so generous with your time and coming on the
Behind the Shield podcast today.
Yeah.
So excited to be here.
Thank you so much for having me.