But they’re not just physique magicians, internet sadists, and keyboard jockeys. They’re also real people with real lives, real experiences, and real world challenges of their own.

They’ve done what you’ve done. They’ve been where you are. That’s what makes them so darn good.

In this series of Lean Eating Coach profiles, you’ll get to know a little about them. Today, a profile of Georgie Fear.

Coach Georgie Fear is lying in a hospital bed. She’s pale and weak. Her big dark baby-seal eyes look huge in her delicate face. She came to Toronto to bond with the other PN coaches and ended up with a flu from hell, enjoying Canadian medical hospitality.

She can barely move. Yet when I ask how she’s doing, she expends her last bit of energy to give me a thumbs-up.

That’s Georgie.

A couple of days earlier, she’d been rambunctious and silly, fluffing out the ends of her Pippi Longstocking red braid over Coach Roland Fisher’s (ahem) “hair-challenged” pate, arranging it like a used-car-salesman combover. The camera flashes, other coaches crack up, and she grins like a fiend.

That’s Georgie.

Playful, bright, eager, and full of loving energy, she’s like a happy puppy. Well, a happy puppy with PhD-level expertise in nutrition and a conversational familiarity with the enzymatic effects of dietary anthocyanins in the human liver.

“I love coaching so much,” she squeals, in a recent phone call to me.

“It’s just great to be communicating, talking to people, getting to be a nutrition geek. I love being able to motivate people, help them over their hurdles. I love it most when I help them get through a real tough problem, ’cause then I feel like, ‘Yeah! I’m here for something!’”

“I like to help people out, and to help them solve their own problems too. It’s really my dream job. I still wake up and pinch myself and think, ‘Oh my God! This is my life!’”

Georgie’s journey

Despite her joyous demeanour, things haven’t always been happy for Georgie. “I’ve been into nutrition for what feels like my whole life, and sadly I started in a way that many other dietitians get into it, which is having eating issues.” She laughs ruefully.

As a teenager, she’d struggled with food (“I’d say I was a slow improver,” she chuckles, “which is a little embarrassing”), but gradually climbed out of the hole. Along the way she had to come to terms with managing stress, a poor body image, and a compulsive desire to exercise — problems, she says, that affect countless women in the fitness and nutrition industries.

It’s probably hard to believe, looking at her photos that now radiate good health and wellness, that Coach Georgie could ever have felt unattractive. Yet, she explains, her adolescence was challenging.

“I was a gangly, glasses-faced kid. I didn’t have a lot of friends. I was awkward as hell. I didn’t feel very good about myself.

“At some point, as a teenager, I must have received some kind of compliment about being thin, or being pretty, and I thought, ‘Oh! If I’m pretty or thin, then maybe people will like me!’ And I became absolutely obsessed with cutting calories, being thin, being attractive, just wanting so bad for other people to like what they saw in me.”

It’s an experience, she says, that is common to many of her clients as well. It helps her understand women’s struggles with body image, eating, and exercise.

“I’m grateful for this experience,” she says, “even though it was hard on my body. It built me up so much on the inside, it built me such a strong personality, and sense of security. A lot of times I think that coming through this awful fragility makes me stronger. And it’s been a tremendous asset in my counselling and coaching.

“I have gone both ways: I’ve lost weight, I’ve gained weight, and like my clients, have really struggled to find balance. For a long time I was not secure in my weight or myself. It took me a long time to get comfortable with food and in my body. So I totally get what my clients are experiencing.”

She pauses on the phone. “Wait, let me kick my dog out of the room. He’s chewing very loudly.” The dog in question is Georgie’s beloved bulldog Rupert. “He kept snoring so loudly on our last coaching conference call that I had to keep putting the phone on mute.”

Finding her power

Athletics got her in to trouble, but athletics got her out of it.

She took up running in her freshman year of high school because she wanted to be skinny. ”I figured a coach yelling at me to run mile after mile would be perfect,” she says.

To her 14-year-old eyes, “all the other girls on the team were tall and beautiful and lanky, and I was this short, freckled hobbit. I’m built like a fire hydrant, not like a runner.” (Maybe fire hydrants look different in Colorado, where Georgie now makes her home.)

She got cut from cross-country, and stubbornly went out for track, where, she reports, her coaches said, “‘Look honey, you’re really strong, but you’re not fast, so let’s have you throw this heavy metal ball instead.’ So, I became a shotputter instead.” Later, she discovered a love for discus throwing as well.

She found that hauling and tossing heavy things was a better fit for her body and spirit, and that “the less I ate, the less strong I was.” Now she had a reason to fuel her physique properly. There was a new fire in her belly.

“If I mess around with my food, then yeah, I might be a pretty face, but I’ll sit here unable to move, and that sucks.”

A kindly strength and conditioning coach found her, nurtured her, and built her — brick by iron brick — into a powerhouse of body and spirit.

“He always said, ‘C’mon, let’s put another ten pounds on there,’ or ‘C’mon, you can do this, you can squat that, you can deadlift that.’ And ‘I don’t want to hear your whining, just do it.’ He praised me so much for my efforts and performance, it really shifted my thinking away from what my body looked like to what it could do.”

In college, she added rowing to her repertoire. Then a new fling appeared.

Finding her stride

A friend suggested she try marathon running. With three weeks of training, Georgie hit her first 26-mile route.

“Not a good idea,” she recounts. “We had bets going on who could go the longest in the running portion without having to walk.” She finished the Philadelphia Marathon… “and then got sick the entire way home to New Jersey.”

Next marathon, she won her age category. (“And then I found out it was only because there were four people in my age group,” she quips.) After that, a 50-km run where she won the open category for all age groups.

“I felt like Superman. I felt like I could do anything or be anything.”

Though fun and exciting, running tweaked some of the same challenges she’d experienced as a teenager. She pushed herself to run more, do more, be more. Seven marathons came and went.

“As I kept trying harder and harder to be fast — God did not make this body to be fast — I lost some of the joy in it.”

More lessons learned about overdoing it. More coaching insights. And it didn’t get her any leaner — a fact she often shares with her clients who are pounding the asphalt hoping to melt fat.

“I don’t believe in driving people the way I used to drive myself,” she explains.

“I believe in drawing them with a carrot. Having treated myself with the whip — go to the gym, lift it, I don’t care if you’re tired, or if the room is spinning — I know it doesn’t work. You backlash against it. If you have a horse and you whip it, and it wants to walk, eventually it won’t go.

“Just let go of the reins, and the horse might decide that running is fun.”

Finding her groove

As a personal trainer, then a grad student at Rutgers in nutrition, she started a little website called AskGeorgie.com.

“There’s so much nutrition garbage on the internet that I just felt, like, I can’t criticize it if I’m not putting my own stuff out there. Shut up and do something about it! I’m going to be one small voice, giving what I feel is good advice.”

The little website grew. And grew. She loved answering questions, and the questions kept on coming.

Then she produced a cookbook, Dig In. “Compared to what I know now, the first cookbook was so simplistic,” she laughs. “I had no idea what I was doing! I was just learning to cook and bringing everyone along with me.”

Then, another cookbook, Fuel Up. And an iPhone/Android app.

She worked as Sports Nutritionist for Rutgers University Athletics, overseeing nutrition programming for 21 Division I athletic teams.

Georgie had found her groove. Almost. She yearned for wide open spaces.

Taking a leap of faith, she left her job at Rutgers, crossed the country, and bought a house in Colorado, where she could pursue her favourite outdoor activities such as climbing, hiking, and mountain biking.

And that’s when the call from Dr. Berardi came. He needed another women’s coach for the Lean Eating program. Georgie was thrilled beyond measure.

“It made me want to jump up and down and clap my hands! Oh my God! I feel like a celebrity!”

Yet she remains humble and grounded.

“I guess what matters most is feeling comfortable enough in my own knowledge to feel like I’m an authority. Not to be self-doubting, and say ‘Oh, I don’t know what I’m talking about.’ No! I do know my stuff! I have my act together! I actually know a lot!” She lives the lifestyle, like all PN coaches.

With characteristic self-deprecation, she says she’s a “wimpy coach. I imagine Coach Krista Schaus is a total badass. And Coach Cynthia has her military background. I feel like I’m the ‘nice one’, y’know, Oh, that’s OK, just try your best.” More laughs.

“I focus on the fun. This feels good. If it feels good you don’t have to tell people to come back and do it. The dentist has to remind you, like with a little appointment card. But a massage therapist? They don’t have to remind you to come in! You want to come back!”

“I keep telling people, ‘Find the joy. Find something fun, wherever that is. Even if that’s just rolling around on a foam roller! Then you won’t have to worry about motivation, because your body will naturally gravitate to whatever feels good.”

Self-criticism doesn’t work, she says. Self-love works a lot better, especially in the long term.

“Hating yourself can make you go to the gym, sure. But loving yourself can make you go to the gym too. Maybe the outside — the action — looks exactly the same. But the experience on the inside is completely different.”

Finding her dream

What drives her now, she says, is a lot different than what drove her fifteen years ago. Or even, perhaps, fifteen minutes ago. “I’ve reinvented myself more times than Madonna,” she cracks.

Of primary importance: “I want to get amazing results with my clients.” She’s thrown herself with characteristic exuberance into the job of Lean Eating women’s coach, and her Lean Eaters love her back.

“And I wouldn’t mind selling a bajillion books. Not for money, but because it’s so much fun — I feel like I’m communicating with all these people around the world. Someone from Bolivia bought my book recently… I was tickled pink! Someone’s reading my stuff in Bolivia!

“It’s all a great way to get good nutrition into people’s lives. It’s almost like I’m there with them, in their homes.”

And if you’re lucky enough to be one of Georgie’s Lean Eating clients, rest assured that she’ll be there with you for the whole rollicking, frolicking, funny, and self-lovin’ journey.

Click here to join the waiting list.

Cafe Dolce, 9 AM

I turn as two moms walk into the cafe and stand in line behind me to order. They look to be in their early 30s, but I don’t ask. It’s rude.

Each carries one of those baby baskets, the kind with the handle, and I can see two little heads poking out. The babies are three months old. (That one I did ask. Moms love to talk about their babies.)

I order my coffee and head back to my table where, coincidentally, I’ve come to write this piece about how new moms can stay healthy and fit, whether they’ve worked out all their lives or have never set foot in the gym.

On my computer screen is the interview I did with Amanda Graydon. A new mom, Amanda had the same fears most new moms have — fears the two moms at the cafe may have had too.

She was afraid of getting sick. Of not being able to stay active and eat healthy food. Of gaining a lot of unnecessary weight… and of not being able to take the weight off after she delivered her child.

Mothers she met had dire warnings. “Yeah, I looked just like you before I got pregnant,” they’d say. “But it’s all downhill from there. I hope you’re ready.” It seemed, from these reports, like motherhood involved a future of poor health and aggressive gravity.

But she didn’t let that get to her. By leaning on friends and family, Amanda turned her fears into a positive plan of action, focusing on the things she could control while letting the rest take care of itself.

Early in our interview, Amanda told me something that set the tone for the rest of the conversation.

“Before my pregnancy, I was worried,” she said. “But eventually I learned that my body wasn’t doomed. I wasn’t necessarily destined to gain excess weight or suffer negative health consequences.

“Now, I did realize that the outcome — what actually happens to me — is always beyond my control.”

Hormones, after all, can do powerful things to a woman’s body and emotions. Carrying a baby is a big job for the body, and one never knows what might happen. If new moms focus on trying to control an inherently uncontrollable situation, it’s a recipe for a lot of anxiety and worry.

This energy is better spent elsewhere, as Amanda says. She focused on what she could control — her actions and behaviours.

“These are the things I can change. I can control what I eat and how I move my body. I directed my energy toward that, instead of worrying about body processes that I can’t control.”

Amanda - 8 months pregnant - showing off her belly.

Meet Amanda and Amalynn

Amanda Graydon is eating a boiled carrot and trying to imagine what it would be like to only have two teeth. Could she actually eat this? Or would she just suck on it and spit it back out?

Her 15-month old daughter Amalynn watches her and sticks her hand out, her fingers clasping air. Amanda hands her a carrot and watches as the baby puts it in her mouth. She sucks and sucks then spits it out.

“She doesn’t want baby food anymore,” Amanda tells me. “She watches John and I eat. And I can tell she wants our chicken and sweet potatoes. She wants Big Girl food.”

But she’s not quite ready for Big Girl food just yet. So she gets something in between. Protein muffins, pureed sweet potatoes, scrambled eggs in small pieces, greens+ (for kids) mixed with natural fruit juices, organic baby food, and all kinds of soft veggies.

But Amalynn wants food with substance, something she can pick up with her hands and feed herself. Yet, even then, she still isn’t past spitting it out.

Amanda understands. She knows what it’s like to spit up food, too. Amanda got sick so often during her pregnancy, Morning Sickness should have been renamed All Day, Every Day sickness. She struggled with even basic foods like fruits and veggies.

Amanda takes another carrot and puts it in her mouth. This time she uses all her teeth. This carrot is for her.

“I was very sick during my pregnancy. I kept a diary. It shows I threw up, on average, 2 times a day for the entire pregnancy. That was a long 9 months.

“Nowadays, it just feels great to be able to chew and eat without having to run to the toilet,” she laughs, then touches her daughter’s nose with the tip of her finger.

“Let’s get you another tooth on top so you can start chewing,” she says to Amalynn.

“Tooth?” says baby Amalynn, smiling with her little two-tooth grin.

Amalynn - at 16 months - smiling her 2-toothed smile.

Conquering New Mom Fear

Let’s make this clear: Amanda was in awesome shape before she had Amalynn. A former high-level athlete with a long competitive career, Amanda had recently competed in figure shows, which meant regular, intense training. (Of course, it doesn’t hurt that she’s married to PN’s Dr. John Berardi.)

In terms of her nutrition and exercise skills and history, Amanda’s not exactly the average woman. Yet even she wasn’t immune to New Mom Fear. She wondered things like:

“Will I still feel attractive?”

“Will I gain weight too fast and not be able to take it off?”

“Will I ever be able to get back to my fit and healthy pre-baby body?”

After all, almost every woman she talked to would emphasize the inevitability of her body’s demise. And while pregnancy can be a challenge for every woman, it can be especially so for athletes who are accustomed to their bodies obeying their every command. One’s identity and capability change… a lot. It’s tough to adjust to day-long vomiting and a growing belly if you’ve gotten used to banging out a zillion tire flips and burpees.

So, after the initial rush and joy of discovering she was pregnant, Amanda was torn. She liked her body. She liked what she could do with it. She didn’t want that sense of fitness to go away.

“A lot about what women know about pregnancy is socially conditioned,” she says. “We look at what other women are doing — sometimes what they’re being told to do — and start thinking: Maybe I have to eat a lot, not work out at all, and just sit on the couch. Maybe that’s all I can do.”

Amanda tried to find examples of women who stayed healthy, fit, and exercised during pregnancy. But there were few “fit moms” for her to emulate. So, shortly after learning she was pregnant, Amanda started to ask some difficult questions.

“What if all these moms are just following socially reinforced ‘rules’? What if I did the opposite?”

True, Amanda was eating for two now. The well-being of her unborn baby was the first thing on her mind. But she just had to believe there were strategies for staying healthy and fit while pregnant. And ways to get back in shape quickly, and easily, after the baby is born.

There had to be strategies for holding true to who she was: a healthy, fit female athlete who thrived while moving her body and eating good food.

There had to be.

Amanda's progress: October (1 month pregnant - 121 lbs), January (4 months pregnant - 131 lbs), April (8 months pregnant - 151 lbs), and May (1 week after delivery - 125 lbs).

Amanda’s Solutions to New Mom Fear

New Mom Fear #1: Body Weight

I’ll gain too much weight while pregnant.

Reality:

Becoming aware of a) the type of food you eat and b) the amountof food you eat can help you minimize fat gain.

Amanda knows how easy it is for moms to gain extra fat when they’re pregnant. 30 healthy and normal pounds can turn into 50, 60, or more very quickly.

“You need to set up an environment for the baby that’s conducive to growth, love, and protection,” says Amanda. “But it doesn’t mean your body needs thousands of extra calories.”

That’s why Amanda ate enough to supply healthy nutrients to her and her baby, but not enough to gain a lot of extra fat.

She did so by eating foods that were nutrient dense instead of calorically dense. Her menu revolved around eating veggies (at least 5 fistfuls per day), lean meats (one palms’ worth with every meal) and good fats, including fish oil, mixed nuts, and avocado.

She did throw in a few extra starchy carbohydrates per day as well. But only a few as she lowered her exercise volume and intensity when she learned she was pregnant. Any additional carbs simply aren’t necessary unless you’re burning a lot during exercise.

In addition, she ate slowly, sometimes taking up to 20 minutes to finish her meal. This allowed her body enough time to signal to her brain that she was full.

And once per week she’d have ice cream or chocolate, but she always went out for dessert instead of keeping the sweets in the house. Temptation or not, you can’t eat it if it’s not around.

Of course, Amanda still got sick a few times per day. But she didn’t give up; she continued to do her best. With support and encouragement, she stuck to her eating plan.

[For specifics on what to eat- and avoid – during pregnancy, check out Dr. Berardi’s Nutrition and Pregnancy article.]

New Mom Fear #2: Exercise

I can’t work out while pregnant.

Reality:

Working out consistently and intelligently is not only safe, but it’s a great way to boost the health of both mother and baby.

Yoga’s cool. So is Pilates. And most moms who choose to work out go that route. (Many more moms don’t do any kind of exercise at all.)

Amanda showed you can still push it in the gym and cross train. She lifted weights 3 times per week, swam once per week, did weekly yoga, and just kept moving as well as she could — whatever that looked like to her on a given day.

“You can still challenge yourself as long as you do it intelligently,” she says.

That’s why well into her pregnancy, Amanda was still deadlifting 135 pounds for reps and doing squats, push-ups, and pull-ups. She even ran a 5K race a month before she gave birth. (“I didn’t go to compete,” she says. “I just wanted to run at my own pace.”)

The only thing she didn’t do was lie on her back — like, say, to do a flat bench press — since the increased weight of her uterus would have pressed on the vein that returns blood from her legs to her heart, making it quite uncomfortable (and potentially dangerous) for both her and the baby.

Instead of letting that deter her from working hard, Amanda simply switched to incline bench presses, which didn’t affect her blood supply at all.

Every morning, she’d go for a walk outside – or on the treadmill at a slight incline – for 20-30 minutes.

Interestingly, her best meals came post-exercise, when she was less frequently sick. So that provided some extra incentive for working out.

[For specifics on how to – and how not to – exercise during pregnancy, check out Dr. Berardi’s Exercise and Pregnancy article.]

Amanda - 8 months pregnant - doing front squats.

New Mom Fear #3: Stretch Marks

I’m going to have stretch marks!

Reality:

You can significantly reduce the likelihood of stretch marks by taking fish oil, rubbing almond oil on your skin, and activating your stomach muscles.

The first thing Amanda did when she found out she was pregnant — aside from getting excited and hugging her husband — was triple the amount of fish oil she was taking, to about 15 g per day.

Of course, fish oil does awesome things for the baby, including increasing brain development. But it also has wonderful benefits for Mom.

Amanda believes the increased fish oil improved her mood — it’s been shown to combat depression — and helped keep her skin elastic, making it less prone to stretching.

She also rubbed almond oil into her skin religiously – up to 5 times per day – to make it supple and smooth.

Finally, she became more aware of her stomach and how she was standing and sitting. Many women find they experience back pain as the lumbar spine is pulled forward from the baby weight.

“If I wanted to relax my stomach muscles, I could push my growing belly really far out,” she says. “But the more I activated my abs and pulled my stomach in, the more I engaged my core and kept my posture strong.”

To help remind her to keep her stomach engaged, Amanda wore a specially made pregnancy belt while she went about her daily activities. And at the end of it all – no stretch marks.

[For the Almond Oil Amanda used, check out this link. And for the Maternity Support Belt she used, check out this one.]

New Mom Fear #4: Getting Back In Shape

It will take me forever to get back in shape after my baby is born!

Reality:

Setting a goal and working toward it will help you get back in shape quicker than you imagine.

The day she gave birth, April 21, 2010, Amanda weighed 151 pounds. (And baby Amalynn weighed almost 7 pounds). That means she gained about 30 pounds during her pregnancy.

But thanks to the eating and workout habits she followed during her pregnancy, she was confident she could get back in awesome shape.

She also had another thing: a goal.

Amanda wanted to compete in a figure show exactly one year after her daughter was born. That goal gave her motivation to train and eat well while nursing.

“It doesn’t have to be a figure competition,” says Amanda. “That’s just what worked for me. I had the background to manage that. It’s definitely not for everyone!

“But I think any goal — running a 5K, reaching a certain bodyfat percentage, scheduling a mom and baby photo shoot — even just taking a class once a week to get you out of the house and have some time to yourself — can motivate you to work out and eat well to get in great shape.”

She emphasizes that each woman’s goal will be unique, and that new moms need to go at their own pace. After all, a new baby is a big responsibility, and understandably a new mother’s focus can be somewhat… distracted. (Or exhausted.)

For many women, the goals should be moderate, do-able, realistic, tailored to their own abilities, and most importantly — fun. There’s a lot of pressure on new moms already, so Amanda recommends that they find something to suit their own interests, skills, and routines instead of worrying too much about being “perfect”.

However, she also encourages women to be creative and inventive — to simply move, as well as they can, as often as they can. And baby can get in on the act.

[For ideas for short, effective, often baby-inclusive workouts, check out Two Experiments in Exercise Minimalism and No Equipment? No Time? No Excuses!]

Amanda's physique 1-year post-pregnancy.

Back in April 2010, newborn Amalynn lay on a soft blanket on the home-gym floor and watched her parents train.

It was Amanda’s first workout since giving birth.

She and JB did bench presses, air squats, and ab exercises. In between sets, she’d come over to the colourful baby blanket and nuzzle her daughter with her nose, nursing her when needed.

Thanks to a good fitness regime and a speedy recovery, it only took Amanda 4 days to get back into the gym after delivering baby Amalynn. And after only a few weeks, Amanda was back down to her normal weight of 125 pounds. (Each mother, of course, will go at her own pace.)

But she kept her goal of competing. For Amanda as a former athlete, it was hard to beat the lure of the competition stage.

About one year later — after 12 months of care-giving, working, training, and eating well — she stepped on stage at the Ontario Provincial Championships. Surprisingly to almost everyone in attendance – except Amanda and JB – she showed up in even better shape than when she competed pre-baby, in 2008. No small feat for a new mom.

She even walked away with 3rd place in the contest, qualifying for the National championships. But on the car ride back home from the figure show, Amanda decided to stop competing.

“I think I’ve achieved the best I can unless I want to make this competing thing a full time job,” she says.

“For that to happen, the focus would have to be on me, which doesn’t work for our family. I have a child and a rich, full life. I want to spend that extra time with my daughter, my family, and my friends.”

But don’t mistake Amanda’s retirement from competition for a lack of training. Amanda is currently walking around in great shape, exercising 4-5 days per week and including baby Amalynn in her workouts.

She also has a new goal: to help moms everywhere look and feel their best during and after their pregnancy.

“I know what it’s like to be fearful about your body and health once you’re pregnant,” she says. “However, I learned that you can look great and provide a healthy, safe environment for your baby.”

Of course, she says, not every woman will have the same experience she did. Women can easily struggle with a difficult pregnancy. They can do their best to eat well and exercise, and struggle with health and body weight issues anyway. Amanda feels pretty lucky.

And this is why, she says, she chose not to focus on her own outcome but rather her actions and behaviours. She also recruited lots of support from family and friends.

“I think the most important lesson is to focus on what you can control, whatever your own circumstances. By moving as much as you can, and focusing on healthy foods, you’ll create a safe environment for your baby to thrive in. Then, after the pregnancy, you can get to the task of getting healthy again, as well as you can.”

After all, motherhood demands strength, flexibility, and endurance… just like the gym.

Amanda placing 3rd at the Ontario Championships, just 1 yr after delivering her first baby.

A Snapshot of Mom and Daughter

Amanda’s in her home gym walking on the treadmill. 15-month old Amalynn walks on her little baby treadmill beside her mom, arms spread wide, tiny fingers gripping the handles, her little feet powering the belt.

It’s early morning and the sun is shining through the big plate-glass windows.

Momma blows kisses in between strides, and baby blows them right back.

Amalynn - at 10 months old - enjoying a treadmill workout with mom in the family gym.

Editor’s note. After this article ran, we got a lot of questions about breastfeeding. Specifically, readers wanted to know if Amanda nursed during her figure preparations. No; Amanda nursed Amalynn for 9 months. Then she naturally stopped producing milk. That’s when Amalynn switched to formula and food; and Amanda started dieting and training for her contest.

Also note. Some of the very same strategies Amanda used while pregnant can also help women post-pregnancy. For more, check out Kia’s story. Kia lost 61 pounds post-pregnancy in our Lean Eating Coaching Program for Women.

Click here to join the waiting list.

His name is Greg and he plays in the NFL. That’s pretty much all I know.

“You think I should get a private chef?” he asks. “With my wife and kids at home, we could really use some help to prepare for next season.”

John Berardi and I are sitting at a long table in a lavish private dining room at The Nines, a luxury hotel in Portland, Oregon.

A dozen Nike-sponsored NFL athletes and trainers sit around the table, eating, joking, and playing with their iPhones and Blackberries.

On one side of the room is a table filled with glass bottles of Voss water, loose leaf tea, and gourmet coffee. Against the opposite wall there’s a table lined with  PN-designed meals including filet mignon, wild salmon, roasted chicken, raw mixed nuts, and every type of vegetable you can think of.

All of it has been freshly prepared by a chef with a big white hat and brought out on silver trays by waiters. In other words, this ain’t no Olive Garden salad bar.

JB  looks up from his plate of veggies and meat and smiles at Greg. “Yeah, I think that’s a great idea. We’ll help you with recipes and give you some guidelines on what to look for,”  he says.

We arrived a few hours earlier by private chauffeur, a friendly guy named Darryl who picked us up at the airport in a jet-black Lincoln Town Car. After arriving at the hotel and checking in, we were welcomed by a bag of Nike shoes, shirts, and shorts on our bed.

Not a bad start.

We’re in Portland because Nike hired Precision Nutrition to coordinate and design all the meals for their Nike NFL Pro Training Camp.  They asked us to come in for a few days to mentor their athletes and answer nutrition questions.

Back in the dining room, I look around the table at each of the guys. Every one is a high-powered, well-paid machine. In the gym and on the field, they all know how to take care of business.

But they don’t really understand how to fuel their bodies.  Not yet anyway.

To be clear, they certainly don’t need better nutrition to play in the NFL.  Because, well, they’re already here. They’re doing good enough on whatever they’ve been eating all these years, and they have the paychecks and ESPN highlights to prove it.

Still, there are a few things about food they don’t know, things that can help them when the cameras are off, when they aren’t surrounded by thousands of screaming fans.

They don’t yet know how food can help them sleep better or recover from injury faster. They don’t know how to manipulate their nutrition to gain muscle in the off season, drop fat before they suit up for their first practice, or maintain their weight in season.

Those are the questions they don’t even know to ask. And we’re here to answer them.

But there’s time for that kind of talk later. For now, JB and Greg are talking about babies — Greg and his wife just had their third, and JB’s daughter is just over a year old.

They’re swapping stories about how to get the little tykes to sleep through the night.  (And JB surprises Greg with some tricks that the old pro hadn’t yet heard about.)

It’s weird. We’ve been here for a few hours — among some of the world’s best football players — and we haven’t yet talked about football.  Not once.

Another hour passes. We finish our dinner and say our good nights. Tomorrow’s our first day on the Nike campus and we need our rest.

But  before I head to bed, I have to check on something.  Since I’m not a huge football fan, I’m not really sure who most of these guys are.  To me, they’re just regular guys who happen to play football.

I open my laptop, type “Greg Jennings” into Google.  I watch the first video that pops up.

I see a huge stadium. Thousands of screaming people. And there’s Greg, number 85 of the Green Bay Packers, the dude we were just having dinner with 20 minutes ago, catching a touchdown pass in the Super Bowl.

Huh.

Greg, working hard during one of the two-a-day training sessions.

On The Nike Bus, The First Morning

It’s 8AM and JB and I are in an elevator with a couple of the NFL guys and a few people who definitely do not play in the NFL. An older gentleman and his wife slink to the back of the elevator. A lady with high heels and big hair cradles a little yapping dog in her arms.

Outside, there’s a huge black tour bus idling in front of the main lobby doors.  A guy in a nice suit stands military-straight next to the stairs leading into the bus.  We pile in and look around: hardwood floors, leather couches that wrap around both sides, two satellite TVs and a mini-fridge full of water and Gatorade.

It’s a 20-minute drive from downtown Portland to the Nike campus in neighboring Beaverton. Some guys pull the hoods of their sweatshirts over their eyes and lean back to nap. Others play with their iPads or fiddle with the TV.

But Steven Jackson sees an opportunity.

Steven, a 6’2” 240-pound running back from the St Louis Rams, sits next to JB and takes out a folded white sheet of paper from his front pocket. The dude is massive.

“Hey Doc,” he says. “Can you go over my diet with me?”

JB takes the piece of paper and looks at it.

“How closely are you following this?” asks JB after a minute.

“Uh, it’s hit or miss,” says Steven. “Some of it’s hard to do.”

JB hands me the paper.  Whoever designed it — Steven never said who helped him — is recommending he take 50 BCAA pills during his workout and two pounds of buffalo meat post-workout. Among other things.

Good ideas? Sure. Hard to follow? You bet.

“This is pretty complicated,” says JB. “When I give my talk later this week, I’ll break it down into very simple and easy-to-follow suggestions you can use. For now, don’t worry about it. Just sit back and enjoy the food we’ve got for you guys.”

Satisfied, Steven sits back and closes his eyes. “Man, that’s good news,” he says. “I don’t even know where to get buffalo.”

PN-Style post workout Super Shakes instead of buffalo meat.

The Nike Campus and the Custom Locker Room

The Nike Campus is like a small, thriving city. 17 buildings make up more than 2 million square feet — roughly 35 football fields. The landscaping is gorgeous. The practice fields are immaculate. Banners of famous athletes gently wave in the breeze. There’s even a 6-acre lake right smack in the middle of everything.

JB and I stroll along the sidewalk and get lost trying to find our way around. Everywhere we go, there are green and black skulls staring at us.  This is the new Nike NFL Pro logo and it’s plastered on every glass door.

After a quick tour of the Nike kitchen and a conversation with the head chef – who did an amazing job of putting together a week’s worth of PN-approved meals – we find the Michael Jordan building. A gigantic skull meets us, a huge decal spanning the double-door entrance.

We walk inside and are met by a line of all black mannequins equipped in the latest high-tech football uniforms, prototypes of the uniforms Nike is designing for the 2012 NFL season.

To our left is a series of rooms that have been curtained off for privacy. Inside, world-renowned coaches like Alwyn Cosgrove and former Ukranian decathlete Val Nasedkin take the NFL guys through a series of movement screens and central-nervous-system readiness tests.

In the back there’s a 52-inch interactive TV screen that tracks vision acuity, reaction time, and peripheral vision.

To our right, the locker room opens up. There are four big-screen TVs equipped with Playstations and leather couches. Lined against the wall are wood grain lockers, the last names of the athletes painted above each one.

Ndamukong Suh, a defensive tackle for the Detroit Lions, lounges on the circular leather couch in the middle of the room.

This will serve as our home base for the next couple days.

JB and I make ourselves comfortable, and spend the day following the athletes from the field to the gym to the yoga studio, answering nutrition questions, swapping stories with the guys, and eating delicious PN-designed gourmet meals in between.

This is how you know you've arrived at the right building.

Practicing What We Preach, and Post-Workout Snacks

Day 2 at Nike. While the athletes are out on the field working on sprint drills and running routes, JB and I take the opportunity to train. (We may be here to help out elite athletes, but we’re part of a company that practices what we preach.)

The Bo Jackson weight room, we learned, had recently transformed to accommodate this camp in particular.  Just last week they removed the old equipment and replaced it with custom-made power racks, deadlift platforms, dumbbells, and TRX’s.

The weight room is now officially badass.

JB and I make up a quick, on-the-fly upper body circuit consisting of weighted chin-ups, dumbbell bench presses, TRX rows, military presses, and a hard ab circuit.

During our rest periods, we watch the guys run sprints on the field below.

After our workout, we head outside just as the guys are finishing their drills. On cue, a couple Nike employees come out carrying large trays of ice. There, in perfectly straight rows, are big cups of PN-inspired Super Shakes.

“What do the colors mean?” asks Aaron Curry, a linebacker from the Seattle Seahawks. He’s referring to the blue and red flags in front of the rows of protein shakes.

JB explains that the shakes with blue flags are lower in carbohydrates and are for the guys who need to lose a little fat. The red shakes, he says, contain more carbs and are for the guys who need to gain more muscle.

Nice and easy, just as it should be. No two pounds of buffalo meat here.

The athletes grab their shakes and lounge around on the grass. “Damn, these are tasty!” someone says.

JB and I sip ours and take in the early afternoon sunshine.

The Bo Jackson weight room; custom designed for the NFL Pro Training Camp.

The Nutrition Talk No One Expected

It’s Day 3 and lunch time in the locker room. JB is standing in front of a table that’s loaded with high-quality food and watching as the athletes make their plates, some choosing from “blue” selections and some choosing from the “red.”

When everyone is settled, he begins.

“I have to apologize for the rest of my field,” he says. “Nutritionists always like to say, ‘Oh, you think you’re good now. Imagine how much better you’d be if you started eating healthy all the time.’

“Honestly, I don’t agree with them at all.”

This gets everyone’s attention.

“You guys are at the top of your game,” he says. “And you don’t need anyone to tell you what or how to eat. You’re grown men.”

“Still, I have some tips that can help you feel better.”

From there, JB talks about specific supplement cocktails that increase the speed of recovery from an injury.  He talks about nutrition strategies to get more restful sleep, a common problem for athletes when they’re on the road. He talks about how to use nutrition to minimize concussive damage, common in NFL athletes.  And he warns of the dangers associated with unregulated supplements.

“You never really know what’s in there. With multimillion dollar contracts on the line, you guys can’t afford to test positive for any banned substances that may be in your protein or recovery supplements.”

Finally, JB takes the notion of counting calories and throws it out the window. He goes over the difference between “blue” types and “red” types and how to measure protein, carbs, and veggies by looking at the palm of your hands.

After the talk, we pass around copies of the Gourmet Nutrition cookbook and spend the next few hours answering questions.

That night in the hotel dining room, we notice that every athlete spends a little more time looking over his plate of food.  We’re proud.

JB talking high-performance nutrition with a group of eager athletes and coaches.

VooDoo Doughnuts and The Portland Streets

It’s our last night at Nike, and after an intense sprint workout and hearty dinner, JB and I are craving carbs.

And what better place to get them then from the world-famous Voodoo Doughnuts?

We walk through the streets of Portland until we find the shop, a little hole in the wall with a long line of people snaking around the brick building. Once inside, we make our selections.

JB gets a banana fritter the size of his head and a Bavarian cream-filled doughnut. I get The Ol’ Dirty Bastard — made with Oreos and peanut butter — and a glazed doughnut topped with Captain Crunch cereal.

We walk back to the hotel, avoiding bums and weird street magicians who hammer nails into their nostrils. (Seriously.)

Nothing will ruin our appetite for delicious doughnuts.

Back at the hotel, we grab some hot tea from the bar, and get a waitress to bring us some knives and forks. As we dig in to our box of goodies, a couple of the NFL guys walk by.

“Whoa! What are you guys doing?” they ask.

JB and I just smile.

“We’re not always on nutritional police duty,” says JB. “Besides, we earned these carbs today.”

Our little side trip yielded some tasty donuts and a valuable lesson for the guys.

After Training Camp

It’s easy to give a talk about nutrition, but challenging to break down complex nutrition theories and put them into easy actionable steps that anyone can follow.

The ability to do that is something we at PN take great pride in.

Still, you never know how much impact you’ll make on someone.

“Will these guys take our advice?” is a question JB and I both had on the plane ride back home from Nike.

A few days later, we got our answer. In our email inbox was a short letter from Greg Jennings.

“Just wanted to say I found a personal chef who’s using the recipes in Gourmet Nutrition to cook for my family. Thanks so much for the help guys.”

JB’s Seminar: Behind The Scenes

For a short behind the scenes video, check out the following You Tube coverage of the camp.

More Video From The Nike NFL Pro Training Camp

Episode 1: Part 1

Episode 1: Part 2

Episode 2: Part 1

Episode 2: Part 2

Episode 2:  Part 3

Episode 3: Part 1

Click here to join the waiting list.

The line between enthusiasm and mania is a fine, blurry one. Right now, Scrawny to Brawny Coach Paul Valiulis is scribbling outside that line like a hyperactive kid with a pack of Crayolas.

He is practically bouncing in his seat, blond curls bobbing, an impish, manic Apollo. “We’ve written all over the windows!” he announces, with puckish glee. “And the writeboards! We almost bought blackboard paint so we could write more on the walls!”

Indeed, nearly every vertical surface in Paul’s spiffy new Vancouver apartment is covered with the kind of frenzied literary output typically reserved for padded cells.

“In this creative process,” he cackles, “no wall is safe.”

Coach Paul watching the Vancouver Canucks and enthusiastically building muscle, winter 2011.

The Word

It’s a good thing Paul has so much energy.  He’s gonna need it.  He’s 400 pages into Ayn Rand’s lumbering, 1100-page Atlas Shrugged, an iconic text of self-liberation for many young guys.

But his “number one book”, he tells me, is Wayne Dyer’s Your Erroneous Zones. Dyer, he reports, saved him from a morass of world-blaming Freudianism.

“It’s really easy to blame everyone and everything else for your problems. Oh, it’s my parents, it’s my family, it’s my genes.  It’s not my fault, this person screwed me up.

“While that approach seems useful, sometimes, it’s actually toxic. When I was young, I spent a lot of time being bitter and resentful. And that’s when I was scrawny.  Both physically and mentally.”

When younger, he says, his body was as narrow and meagre as his view of the world.

He was a physical and existential miser, pinching and skimping on his food while running his body and his soul ragged. He pounded away the miles on aching, bony joints as a long-distance runner, hoping that the physical pain and challenge would fill the hollows he relentlessly carved from his ribcage and his self-esteem.

“I felt such a lack of control growing up. That’s why I got into long-distance running. Running and restricting my eating, those were the only forms of control that I had. They were coping mechanisms for me.

“More than anything else I really wanted to take control of my destiny. To take responsibility for myself. But I didn’t know any other way to do it.”

Paul, before. Click photos for full-sized version.

Eventually, Paul was labeled with a few powerful words: Anorexic. Depressive. Screwed up.  He tells me this with admirable candour, no trace of self-consciousness.

But not many men would confess to being anorexic. It’s a label that’s typically reserved for angsty teenage girls.

It’s doubly surprising to hear it from a 205-pound guy who’s one plaid shirt away from looking like a blond Paul Bunyan.

But the evidence was there. At age 21, Paul was 6’2″ and 133 lb.

“At the time I was doing so much running and restricting my eating,” recalls Paul, “I thought, ‘No way, not me.  This is what runners do.’  Yet, as soon as I was diagnosed, I was miserable.  I was just labeled as abnormal.

“It crushed me. Really, it hurt a lot more than it helped, to have psychologists and doctors passing notes back and forth with my DSM [Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders] classification. I remember taking this letter from my Freudian psychologist to my doctor.  It said I was ‘anorexic’ and ‘depressed’.  Officially fucked up.”

Before he started down the path to physical and mental brawn, which came later, Paul recalls, “there was a ton of neuroticism in my life. Every little thing bothered me. I struggled with relationships.

“For example, I thought that everyone had to see and do things the same way I did. If I read a new book, I tried to force that on people. I thought that everyone had to know it, and live it. I got adamant about people changing. Eventually my relationships fell apart.

“I needed order and control.  I was convinced that everyone had to be the same as me.”

Yet, slowly and surely, Paul changed.  He dropped the obsessive running and food counting.  He got to the gym.  He gained muscle.  And, through his study of psychology and philosophy, he expanded his mind.

“It took me a long time to get to where I am right now in my life. Now my life is awesome.  People look at me like I’ve got everything together.  When I tell people I used to be a scrawny, anorexic, and depressed distance runner, it’s satisfying.

“It catches people off guard.  I’m always joking around, happy, eating, training, brawny.  Nobody can believe that ‘depressed’ and ‘anorexic’ were two terms that defined my life.

“All the more reason to talk about it.  Maybe I can help someone else.”

The List

In the beginning was the word: anorexic.  Then, there was the list.

One night, Paul decided to quit, figuratively speaking, writing his life story with a pencil.  No more shaky, hesitant cursive, with a big eraser on the ready.

Paul picked up a pen.

He sat in the blackness of a darkened beach and composed his personal philosophy in eight bullet points. These points became the foundation for his own Scrawny to Brawny transformation.  Since then, he has carried around the crumpled paper like a shopping list for the universe.

Coach Paul's new brawny physique - a far cry from his previous weight of 133 lbs.

It contains the following items.

1. Ego.

“I taught myself to let go of my ego. To not be afraid of my image being harmed by thoughts and things. I used to be so afraid of ‘looking bad’. Now I purposefully go out of my way to seek out difficulty, to force myself out of my head.”

He advises his Scrawny to Brawny clients likewise to develop themselves by seeking adversity.  To not be so worried about how they look to others.  To seek confidence in who they are and who they’ll become.

2. Accept where you are.

“We’re always seeking out an ideal self or image,” Paul explains. “But we need to accept the whole image. See yourself from every angle, good and bad.”

He now scrutinizes his clients’ bodies with an attitude of compassionate acceptance, helping them both improve and develop their true selves.  Muscle building is a big part of it.  Yet it’s not the only part.

3. Re-associate.

“With computers and whatnot, we live in a cognitive-based world,” says Paul, unconsciously tipping his head from side to side to stretch his neck. “My computer time is great.  But I need yoga, foam rolling, stretching, knowing where my body is too. I gotta stay connected with my body as much as possible. Otherwise we forget we have anything from the neck down.”

4. No one’s coming.

Paul loves the acceptance that comes with realizing there’s no white knight coming to save his (or your) ass. We’re on our own.  We can’t outsource the responsibility for our destiny.

“At the end of the day,” shrugs Paul, “you can take meds, go to therapists, have friends, whatever… but when it’s time to do what’s right and accept responsibility, nobody’s coming to do it for you – it’s just you. You have to be the one who changes your life.”

5. Start small.

Just like with his Scrawny to Brawny clients, who log in every day to get small tasks and daily habits that lead to muscle-building success, Paul believes in the power of tiny, concrete steps. Build one muscle cell at a time.

However, small doesn’t mean ineffectual.  Small, cumulative steps are much more effective than large, sweeping changes that are quickly abandoned.

6. Think long term.

Of course, these steps add up, says Paul. But you’ve got to be patient. “We come into every body transformation program thinking it’ll happen quickly. But it always takes longer than we expect.”

Paul knows it’s OK for changes to take longer than we expect. In fact, it’s normal.

7. Take on the identity of an athlete.

“People who consider themselves athletes treat their bodies better,” explains Paul. “If you’re an Olympic athlete, you’d probably steer clear of the bad choices some people make.”

This point is provisional, though.  “Eventually this concept kind of limited me.  I started thinking of myself as only an athlete.  So I scratched it out.”

Nevertheless, he thinks it’s a great place to start – and it’s a new way of thinking for many skinny guys who are simply used to viewing their bodies as a source of embarrassment and shame.

8. Be the Bannister.

“In 1953,” says Paul, “there was this guy in the UK, Roger Bannister. He said that it was possible to run a four-minute mile and that he’d do it.

“Everyone else said it was impossible. If he’d have taken their word for it, he’d have thought it was impossible too.”

Of course, Bannister smashed the four-minute mile. And Coach Paul is all about smashing previous identities and limitations.  In fact, people around him have become believers too.

“When I was scrawny, nobody would have called me to help them move anything, unless it was a box of cupcakes. Now, because I’m the brawniest one in my family, they get me to move everything, because I’m so much stronger. They even call me to move things that I think are immovable. They’re all like, ‘Hey, can you move grampa’s chest that’s made of 8 trees?”

The Script

Paul had a strong first draft of his script for success. His eight “rules” pointed him in the right direction.  He added nearly 75 pounds to his body.

But then, the universe’s frowny-faced schoolteacher whipped out the red clicky pen and started scrawling scathing corrections on his essay.

Despite a veneer of self-confidence and a new set of muscles, Paul was still miserable. Publicly he was living large. Privately he was disgusted with himself.

He was still using food and exercise to self-medicate, only now it was binge eating and bodybuilding instead of restriction and running. Pushing the weight up too fast, without a clear plan nor the benefit of self-compassion, he herniated a disk in his back.

A few months later, detrained, fat, bummed out, and in pain, Paul felt like he was back to square one.

Luckily the universe allows infinite revisions. And a surprise character appeared in Paul’s story, like a deus ex machina dramatic device: Dr. John Berardi, aka JB.

Coach Paul with JB (and JB's little daughter Amalynn) - all enjoying a hike, spring 2010.

JB’s Scrawny to Brawny book and guidance suggested that in fact, Paul’s tale could end happily. Inspired, Paul threw out his earlier life drafts and started anew.

He focused on 4 days a week of heavy – and careful – weight training, plus 2 to 3 days a week of gut-busting sprints. With “sheer determination and an openness to change,” Paul pursued his new narrative.

“I didn’t know if JB’s plan would work for me. In fact, I was so skeptical that I decided to do exactly what he said, just so I could prove him wrong.”

One year later, the story of Paul Volume 1 ended with him walking around weighing 200 pounds and 7% body fat — almost 67 pounds heavier than he started.

With a fresh perspective born from finally training and eating correctly — plus treating his body with respect and care — Paul was hired along with Coach Chuck Dertinger as a coach for Precision Nutrition’s Scrawny to Brawny program.

In the first cohort, Coaches Paul and Chuck helped over two hundred skinny guys build muscle, find their own voice, and start writing their own new story endings.

Writing on the wall

Paul Volume 2 opened with some exciting adventures. He traveled through Australia (“Biggest goddamned spiders I’ve ever seen!”) and has settled in Vancouver to continue his Scrawny to Brawny work.

He’s finally free. But he’s made it his mission to help other guys build muscle and pen their positive life scripts.

One such guy is tech guru Stew Houston, PN’s youngest staff member at 21. Stew is Paul’s wingman-in-training and partner in interior decorating crime. Paul tells me that Stew’s been doing some writing too.

Stew grins broadly, shyly, as he shows me his newly pierced ears. Paul beams like a proud older brother. He’s hauling Stew out of his shell, one ridiculous fraternal escapade after another.

They bubble with youthful, world-is-our-oyster male energy. I imagine their apartment smells like Vancouver’s sea air, Irish Spring soap, and steak.

The new view from Paul's desk in Vancouver, BC, winter 2011.

I ask Paul about how his life has changed, now that his body has changed. The philosophical enormity of this question temporarily stumps him. So he calls in Stew as a ringer. Like Paul, Stew has also transformed his body with PN.

Stew pokes his head into the video frame and thinks, looking off to one side.

“I’m a different physical manifestation. Now I can express my true spirit better. My spirit existed prior to that, but there was a… a bottleneck or something that concealed it.”

“Physical change releases what already exists,” confirms Paul, turning back towards me. Stew waves, and wanders off.

Even if Paul can’t fully put it into words (despite his Great Canadian Novel on the walls and windows), it’s clear that he’s shed his anxious, neurotic skin and replaced it with a confident, relaxed layer of muscle.

Now he’s even secure enough to have a female role model: Lean Eating Coach Krista Schaus. He doesn’t mind confessing that he thinks her arms are bigger than his.

“No regular guy wants to compare his arms to a woman’s if he thinks that woman’s arms are better than his. I’m neck and neck for arm size with Krista. Krista is a goddess in terms of bodybuilding.  Who better to compare myself to than her?”

In fact, he’s inspired enough to want to try a bodybuilding contest. “Everything I’m doing, including working with Krista, is dedicated to that. I want to do a show in the next year or so, however long it takes me to bring up my weak parts.”

He’s even got a Bodybuilding Bucket List. It’s literally in buckets. It cost him $1400 and it’s sitting on his balcony in plastic tubs with handles.

“Let’s see,” says Paul, when I ask him what the heck he could have spent $1400 on. “1.5 litres of fish oil, 3 containers of Greens+, 3 containers of Abs+, 2 Daily Detox, 1 pound beta-alanine, 3 pounds of creatine, 10 pounds of BCAAs, a big pack of Vitamin C, ZMA, Magnum Performance Edge, extra-virgin coconut oil, medium-chain triglycerides, 7 Metabolic Drive, 2 Superfoods, 2 curcumins, and one Anaconda Protocol.”

(I think – in my inside voice – that Anaconda Protocol would be a good porn star name.)

“This is a dream for me,” he explains. “I don’t need this stuff. I could survive without it. I did my whole transformation without it. But now, I have some extra funds and the time to explore it. So I’m interested.”

Other coaches are getting in on the arms race too. Another contender for biceps size is Lean Eating Coach Kate Kline. Again, Paul doesn’t mind. He’s proud to be part of such a dedicated group, no matter what the gender.

S2B coaches Paul and Chuck goofing around and showing their brawny biceps, Summer 2010.

“I find it hilarious that we fly in from all around the country to compare biceps. It shows a lot about the relationships between the coaches. We’re constantly having fun with our work. It’s constant fulfillment, and constant fun.”

Like his own identity and body, Paul argues that Precision Nutrition has been made, not born. “A lot of people want to work with us.  We have people from all over the world begging to be part of the PN team.

“People are looking at me thinking, ‘You have the perfect job, the essence of happiness.  Working at PN would make me happy too.’ And while PN is amazing, it wasn’t born that way.  We created it to be that way.  And anyone can create something similar where they are.”

*      *      *

Figuratively speaking, as a scrawny teenager Coach Paul tried to write his life story with an eraser. Now he’s covering the walls in magic marker. He’s living his new life, in his new body, IN ALL CAPITALS.

As Tori Amos once sang, “They say Confucius does his crossword with a pen.” Likewise confident in his philosophy, Paul is creating a similarly indelible autobiography, and helping other guys do the same by building strength, muscle, and confidence.

He’s now truly brawny, inside and out. His worldview is just as expansive and broad.

“The sooner you take responsibility for your life, no matter what shitty things people have handed you, the sooner you have power over it and you can change it.”

Learn more about Scrawny to Brawny

If you’re interested in building muscle and making a Coach Paul-like scrawny to brawny transformation, here’s some good news:

Starting May 2012, we’re relaunching the Scrawny to Brawny coaching program and taking a small group of guys through a complete 12-month body transformation — training, nutrition, supplementation, recovery . . . everything.

Coaches Paul and Chuck are at the ready.

The problem is that we can only take on so many people in a given program, otherwise it becomes unmanageable. So, like last time, we’re going to cap this group at 200 guys.

Given that last time we launched Scrawny to Brawny, we had over 20,000 guys express interest, the problem is going to be how to decide who gets in.

Our answer is always to reward the most eager, the most motivated, because in my experience they make the best clients.

So here’s how it’s going to work:

If you’re interested in being a part of the next S2B coaching group, sign-up below to join the pre-sale list. If you do so, within the next few days we’ll send you more info on the program itself, and we’ll also give you a chance to register for one of the spots 24 hours before the general public.

We hope to see you in the program!

Click here to join the waiting list.

Scrawny to Brawny coach Charles Dertinger (aka Coach Chuck) has a pet turtle named Ralph. Ralph is 20 years old.

20 is an auspicious number for Coach Chuck, for it marks the transition between his own scrawny adolescence and his new brawny adulthood.

And Ralph the turtle, who lives in the water behind Chuck’s new house, is a fitting metaphor for Chuck’s patient and steady progress to brawn and self-fulfillment.

S2B coaches Chuck and Paul goofing around and showing their brawny biceps, summer 2010.

Life in a protective shell

Like Ralph, Chuck started his life in a protective shell.

He grew up in a small town, the kind of place where people define themselves by the identities they had in high school. Folks hang out with other turtles just like them. Their universe is a few square metres of land and water. Their shells stay intact. Life moves slowly.

Also like Ralph, Chuck’s early life was defined by the constraints of his skeleton. Growing up he was so skinny that his father called him “Bones”.

“Between seventh and ninth grade, I think I grew about seven inches, but didn’t gain any weight.” By ninth grade, he was good enough to make several sports teams, but stayed scrawny. It wasn’t for lack of eating, though.

“I was always the tall skinny kid and the weakest one on the team,” he recalls. “I was lucky enough to go to a school that served breakfast, lunch, and dinner – all you could eat. I took that literally. I ate everything. My buddies would make fun of me – I’d pile four cartons of milk on my tray; I’d have two plates of food instead of one. The serving staff knew me by name.

“All I knew at that age was that I was too skinny, so I needed to eat more. I didn’t know anything about nutrition or macro-nutrients. I just knew that meat had protein, and muscles have protein, so I needed to eat meat.”

The meat in his belly did little to put meat on Bones.

Muscle building at a turtle’s pace

Despite lifting weights, playing football, and enduring the ridicule of his peers, Chuck was stuck. He was 6’2” and 160 lb. “I ate everything I could, but I never changed. My metabolism was too high.”

To an endomorphic person, this sounds like a crazy and wonderful problem to have.  They struggle with weight loss, not gain.

However most ectomorphs know this weight gain problem well.  Chuck’s early struggles with weight gain help him understand what his S2B clients have experienced all their lives.

“A lot of guys in my coaching group have this problem too, especially the younger guys. I totally get it. We had them eating 5000-6000 calories day and some of them were still struggling to put on mass.

“I could relate to that – at 17, 18, I was eating as much as I possibly could. It wasn’t till about 20 that my metabolism slowed down a bit and I figured out the best ways to train and eat for my particular body type.”

Early on, self-conscious because of his lanky frame, he avoided a lot of the “normal” social interactions most young men and women experience.

“I was always the shy kid before I put on mass.

“I always had friends, but I was never confident. I would never go to school dances and be able to ask someone to dance, or go to the movies, or even generate some kind of social event. I got invited, and people liked me, but I was just too shy to make any steps on my own.

“Plus, I never had a girlfriend. Well, I had one in grade 7.  Then nobody until the beginning of university. The guys in high school, my friends that always had the girlfriends, they were the bigger guys, the mesomorphs with the athletic bodies.”

On top of the bony frame, Chuck layered even more social protection in the form of spectacles and skin problems.  Which led to even more social inhibition.

“Yeah, I had glasses. I had braces. I had severe acne – I was the kid on Accutane in Grade 10. I was extremely skinny. Talk about the typical nerd.”

20 and change

“At 20,” says Chuck, “a lot of things changed.” He started to crawl out of his shell.

“When I graduated, I went from a small-town school of 350 kids to big university with 20,000 students.” Life was changing.  But Bones was still lifting weights – more seriously now – and learning how to eat properly.

And slowly, steadily, the mass crawled on to Bones.

From Bones to meaty: Chuck's transformation

As a result, his identity changed from the skinny kid to “the guy getting bigger and stronger, the guy in the gym. People assumed I was always like this. You could see my muscles. I had abs. I wasn’t just bony any more.”

This required foraging in unexplored territory, and sticking his neck out further and further. “I had to learn new things socially. In university, I was going to parties and pubs; I was recognized a lot more.

“I stood out a little more than I was ever used to standing out. It was a whole new culture, and a huge learning experience for me, because I went from being the popular friend to the popular ‘Oh look at that guy’.

Yet just like Ralph, Chuck stayed close to the ground despite the attention and new found self-confidence.

“I enjoyed it, but I’m always happy to remember where I came from. Some of my friends today say to me, ‘You’re very humble.’ That’s because of where I’ve come from. I realize what it is to be that skinny kid. That kid that got picked on pretty badly.

“Now, nobody picks on me. At the same time, I would never pick on anyone else, because I know what that feels like.”

Big turtle, small pond

According to Chuck, social acceptance and sameness can be just as much a shell as anything else.

“If you’re always seen by your social group as the ‘big, strong kid’, you get used to being that way.” After a few university and post-university years of being “that big guy”, he realized he needed a change.

At 25, he had a new house, a new body, a new social status… and a comfortable rut. The structure of his life, though drastically refurbished, was still too comfortable.

“I was getting into an unhealthy routine, too much of a regular routine. I was afraid I would never leave my university town.  I would never change my ways or gain new experiences.”

In addition, he worried about finding balance in his gym-oriented lifestyle.

“At certain points in my life, I was the guy that wouldn’t go out for dinners, or wouldn’t be able to have a drink with my friends, because I’d be drinking 500 mL of water at rigidly timed intervals. I would only eat particular meals, carbs only after working out… there were many things like that.  It was pretty hardcore.

“I started to lose some friends that never understood this lifestyle. On the one hand, there’s fitness, health, and nutrition.  And on the other, there’s what I consider hardcore. That hardcore line… there aren’t many people who are there.

“I love to surround myself with the hardcore people, because they push me.  But I want to make sure that my social network goes beyond that. I love being structured, but I’ve learned that too much structure isn’t always a good thing.  I wanted a balance.”

Thus, he explains, at age 25, “I needed to take some time to figure out who I was – to figure out myself. I wanted to figure out if this was really the place to be.  And the best way I figured I could do that was to make myself miss it.”

Chuck crushed a metaphysical crowbar into his meaty grip and pried off the shell for good. He packed up, left the structure behind, and set out in search of new stomping grounds.

“My new place, pretty remote, forces me to be on my own,” he says.

Of course, he still has the necessities of life: food (groceries and a GNC), shelter (a waterfront house with a turtle), meaningful work as a Scrawny to Brawny coach… and a car wash.  (Although most days he navigates the dirt roads around his new house in an oversized go-kart.)

Coach Chuck enjoying some down-time on his boat.

Slow and steady wins the brawn

Like the turtle, Chuck takes his time and expects others to do the same.

He speaks slowly and thoughtfully. He is deeply focused and unhurriedly relentless, especially when it comes to eating. “Getting big is a battle, and my weapons are a knife and fork!” he proclaims.

Indeed, he doesn’t really eat food. He engulfs it. He simply erodes the food’s will to live.

S2B Coach Paul Valiulis, who briefly roomed with Chuck, laughs as he recalls how Chuck used to talk to his food.

“Chuck would bend over his plate and have little conversations with it, like ‘You can’t hide from me, potato! I’m gonna eat you!’”

Between insidious, soul-deflating death threats to pork chops, Chuck’s enormous mandible, perched atop his thick columnar neck, grinds in a regular rhythm like the shifting of tectonic plates. Eventually, gradually, all recalcitrant food is churned into Chuck steak.

He has a sense of personal gravity that doesn’t just come from his muscular slab of a body, but also from his patient, careful emotional intelligence.

He doesn’t rush to judge. He considers things carefully from all angles. He builds relationships with people who get to know him, little by little.

“If I ask people to guess what I do, they usually think personal training or labour, construction-worker stuff. It’s a stereotype based on how I look.

“At the same time, I really enjoy it, because the people who will take the time to ask me questions about what I do or study, those are the people that I really want to get to know. It’s a good way to filter friends from acquaintances. People will always interest me, and I like meeting anyone.

“But not everyone will go past what I look like to discover who I really am.”

In other words, don’t be fooled by his huge body, lumbering baritone, or his caps-lock, Jersey-Shore-style habit of pumping S2B clients up with YEAH BUDDY followed by six exclamation points. Much of it, he says, is a persona.

“Behind a computer screen, you can be anybody. For me, I wanted to be that over-the-top, friends-with-everybody, motivating guy who grabs everyone’s attention.   Growing up, that wasn’t me.  And today I’m much more of that.  But online, I get to use it as much as I can.”

Coach Chuck pushing 250 lbs - a far cry from the 145 lb frame he started at.

Coach Chuck

As a coach, Chuck’s mind is anything but plodding. His weighty body conceals an agile intellect and a quick intuition honed by years of quiet observation. He’s working on a master’s degree in high performance exercise physiology, which he says he’ll use to become a better coach.

“I like taking what I’ve learned and being able to answer guys with confidence. The best feeling in the world is to get an email saying I affected someone’s life, or that I’m a great coach, or just that someone’s enjoying the program.

“I even like the emails with productive criticism, because if I don’t have that, I won’t become a better coach. Ongoing learning is what it’s all about.”

His virtual braggadoccio notwithstanding, Chuck even coaches turtle-style.

He guides his scrawny students gently through the long process of self-transformation, remaining eternally patient, nudging them to keep trudging along the path.

Although the Scrawny to Brawny program works outstandingly well, there’s no rabbit-running, get-huge-quick race. In the program, Chuck teaches that brawn also means resilience, developing communication skills, and focusing one’s time productively in order to pursue one’s deeper purposes.

“Guys aren’t just in the program to gain weight,” he explains. “They’re here to gain the knowledge of how to live their lives.” Such knowledge unfolds slowly.

His coaching philosophy, he says, is simple.

Stay on track. Treat everyone with the same respect. Make sure that everyone feels like they’re accomplishing something. Though he’s jovial and high-fiving, if he feels guys are slacking, he’ll be a hardass.

And results come from plain old hard work.

“Results are correlated to effort. Some guys don’t see that. They’ll message me and say, ‘I’m not seeing results.’ They’ll be at 55% compliance, or whatever. If I studied 55% of the time, I’d get 55% on the exam.”

Although clients are given clear instructions, they’re also encouraged to be self-reliant. “I want guys to feel like we give them the tools to make healthy decisions, then build on those decisions to build a healthy lifestyle.”

Keep slogging, turtle boys. Chuck promises it’ll pay off.

“Compliance gets results,” he rumbles. “If you do these principles, you’ll build muscle.  I guarantee it.  Something else will happen too.  You’ll turn into the best person you can be.”

Coach Chuck mastering the tire flip.

The power of 20

The transformation that Chuck underwent around age 20 has altered his path and perspective forever.

“Some people think that the physical and mental are separate.  But, for me, my physical journey is part of who I am.

“Today I walk around with my chest up, my head held high, proud of who I am. Not just because of my size, but because of the things I’m able to do in my life. That came from my own Scrawny to Brawny journey.

“Even little things changed when I first started getting bigger. I read faster. I enjoyed school more. I learned better.”

He’s out of his shell now, and struggling against his careful nature to stay out. “I am such a planner. I’ve been trying to stay away from planning my future. Precision Nutrition wasn’t part of my planned future, but it was one of the best things that ever happened to me.”

Funny enough, 20 comes up when speaking of PN too. Chuck is grateful to be part of PN’s roster of body transformation projects.

“It’s mind-blowing. That’s a silly term, but that’s the term that comes to mind when I think of the influence, success, and overall passion that can be created within an internet business of about 20 employees. I never saw the passion in a company of 250 people that I see in 20.”

He’s excited about tackling the next cohort of transforming turtles.

“I’m not a doctor; I don’t help people when they’re sick. But having the feeling that I can help prevent someone from being sick, and keeping them healthy and able to smile at themselves, that’s important to me.

“I love being a coach. I see myself being a coach for a long time.”

He pauses. Then chuckles.

“YEAH BUDDY!!!!!!”

Learn more about Scrawny to Brawny

If you’re interested in building muscle and making a Coach Chuck-like scrawny to brawny transformation, here’s some good news:

Starting May 2012, we’re relaunching the Scrawny to Brawny coaching program and taking a small group of guys through a complete 12-month body transformation — training, nutrition, supplementation, recovery . . . everything.

Coaches Chuck and Paul are on the ready.

The problem is that we can only take on so many people in a given program, otherwise it becomes unmanageable. So, like last time, we’re going to cap this group at 200 guys.

Given that last time we launched Scrawny to Brawny, we had over 20,000 guys express interest, the problem is going to be how to decide who gets in.

Our answer is always to reward the most eager, the most motivated, because in my experience they make the best clients.

So here’s how it’s going to work:

If you’re interested in being a part of the next S2B coaching group, sign up below to join the pre-sale list. If you do so, within the next few days we’ll send you more info on the program itself, and we’ll also give you a chance to register for one of the spots 24 hours before the general public.

We hope to see you in the program!

Click here to join the waiting list.

Check it out.  (GN appears about 40 seconds into the video).

More About Gourmet Nutrition V2

In this book, we’ve taken the healthiest ingredients and whipped them into nearly 300 pages of delicious culinary creations that you can serve with confidence to the most discerning foodie – or the most nitpicky nutritionist.  We’ve included detailed cooking instructions and ideas for improvisation.  And we’ve even photographed every recipe in beautiful color to show you just how appetizing healthy food can be.

Gourmet Nutrition is the cookbook that’s as friendly to your body as it is to your taste buds, and it’s equally at home on your kitchen counter and your coffee table.  Pick it up, read it through, and try it out – we know you’ll love it!

To pick up your copy of GN V2 today, click here.

Click here to join the waiting list.

Last month we wrapped up our 2010 S2B coaching group.  And, at that time, we posted our S2B finalists, each one in contention for the $10,000 grand prize and $5,000 in bonus prizes ($1,000 each for the next 5 runners up).

The transformations were awesome.  These guys came in all shapes and sizes, from all parts of the globe, and from all walks of life. And what they were able to accomplish in just 6 months of eating and exercising like scrawny guys should is remarkable.

During the program, over 1600 lbs of muscle were gained.  And the 11 finalists gained nearly 300 total pounds during the program; an average of 27 lbs each in just 6 months.

Remember: these aren’t professional bodybuilders.  These are real guys adding the right training and nutrition strategies into their lives one step at a time, building on each day’s successes, and learning how to maintain what they’ve accomplished for life.

After we posted the finalists, almost 1,200 PN voters weighed in on who they thought had the best transformation in the group.  And now it’s time we announced the winners.

However, before doing so, I’ve gotta say this.  Man, it was tough.

Our first-ever S2B group produced some of the most outstanding transformations – physical and lifestyle transformations – I’ve seen.  We spent weeks painstakingly going through all of our finalists’ data, listening to the PN community, and scheduling long meetings with the PN Team.

The criteria for choosing the winner was based on measurement data, participation data, client attitude, coach feedback, community voting, and in-house voting as well.  In the end, although we had dozens of potential winners, we had to choose.  There could only be one.

Our S2B $10,000 Winner

Forum name – “MPudzianowski”
Starting weight – 160
Max weight – 196
Weight gained – 36 lbs

His experience – “I needed to add muscle to my frame, and I’ve never successfully done this without looking bloated.   So I challenged my coach (Coach Chuck) to make it happen.

Now, I’ll be honest: I questioned a lot of stuff at first.   I thought I knew better about how to train.   But now I realize, looking back, that I was my own biggest hurdle.

If I had just shut up and trusted the system, and Coach Chuck, it would’ve been a lot easier and a lot less of a headache to worry about it all the time. But nevertheless, I did what the guys told me to.  All of it.

And thank god I did, because I gained the most muscle I’ve ever gained in my life.  And I’ve been training since I was 15.  In addition to the muscle, my strength shot through the roof.  I’m not a powerlifter by any means, but at the end of the program I deadlifted 500 lbs exactly.

In terms of the program, guys in my coaching group would ask a lot of good questions, and you did feel like you were going through it together.  Even though you didn’t physically meet the guys.  Really, it’s a great atmosphere for success. Everyone in the program was extremely motivated and that helped.

In the end, I think it’s awesome how so many guys made a huge change, one that they didn’t think was possible in just 6 months.  And really it was as simple as following directions – doing your habit everyday, and doing your workout everyday.”

So, congratulations to our big winner!  Over 35lbs of muscle gained, and $10K richer – all by taking a chance on our first ever Scrawny to Brawny coaching program.

Our S2B $1,000 Winners (all 10 of them!)

Originally, when we introduced the S2B program and the $10K contest for S2B clients, we planned on giving only one prize – a single $10,000 prize for the overall winner.  However, the transformations were amazing.  And the competition close.  So we decided to do something really special.

We’re giving away $1,000 to every single one of our finalists!

That’s right, instead of no runner-up prizes (as originally designed), or 5 runner-up prizes (as we considered during voting for the finalists), we’re giving away 10 x $1,000 prizes.  One to each of the finalists.  Truly, each of these guys had an amazing transformation.  And each is a deserving winner.

Here they are:

Forum name – “Amazing”
Starting weight – 169
Max weight – 189
Weight gained – 20 lbs

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Forum name – “Angry Wounds”
Starting weight – 187
Max weight – 210
Weight gained – 23 lbs

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Forum name – “TheBrandons”
Starting weight – 142
Max weight – 167
Weight gained – 25 lbs

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Forum name – “Airwave”
Starting weight – 168
Max weight – 193
Weight gained – 25 lbs

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Forum name – “Mark Christopher”
Starting weight – 160
Max weight – 190
Weight gained – 30 lbs

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Forum name – “Bkaneb”
Starting weight – 170
Max weight – 192
Weight gained – 22 lbs

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Forum name – “Tbedolla”
Starting weight – 146
Max weight – 168
Weight gained – 22 lbs

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Forum name – “Dev Chengkalath”
Starting weight – 120
Max weight – 144
Weight gained – 24 lbs

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Forum name – “deadaim”
Starting weight – 142
Max weight – 180
Weight gained – 38 lbs

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Forum name – “krh”
Starting weight – 174
Max weight – 202
Weight gained – 28 lbs

Congrats to all our finalists / prize winners.  And congrats to all the guys who participated in the S2B program and had an amazing transformation of their own.

For the rest of you skinny guys who haven’t yet participated in S2B but want to gain muscle and strength…

Are You Ready For May 2012?

As you can see from the photos and information above, the S2B program is so much more than a “bulk-up” program.  Sure, muscle was gained.  A lot of it.  But, in the process, successful habits are adopted, lives are changed, and our clients begin to realize their best selves.

If you’re one of the naturally skinny guys who has yet to participate in the S2B program, we’ve got another round coming up in May 2012.  And, truly, I’d like to see you involved.

Since the S2B program typically sells out within hours of opening up, you can be one of the first to get a chance at registration by putting your name on the pre-sale list below.  Hope to see you in the program!

Click here to join the waiting list.

His remarkable transformation — losing 50 lb and 13% body fat in 6 months — earned him a cool $10,000 as the winner of the Lean Eating men’s division.

But, do you think he stopped there?  Spent his 10K on junk food and ballooned back up to 250lbs?

Well, think again.  He enrolled in the Lean Eating program again and he’s down another 20lbs – all in all, he’s gone from 255 to 185 in 11 months with Precision Nutrition.

Was he a superstar? A keener? No, he was just a regular guy who got a second chance.

YLR, and his first round transformation – 2009

YLR, during his second round of Lean Eating – 2010

Want to know what it takes to lose 70lbs in 11 months?  Well, here’s his story:

Starting: 40% bodyfat, out of shape, “morbidly obese”

Physical and emotional pain

I’ve been struggling with my weight since college. In high school, I had typical high school body issues, but I was on the high school crew team and the daily training and my teenage boy metabolism seemed to keep my weight in check.

But, in college, I quit sports and began to gain weight. I gained, then lost a bit… and gained some more. Over and over.  I’m sure most people know the routine.

Fast forward to 2008.  I felt hopeless. I was at my heaviest weight: over 250 lb.

Sure, I didn’t like being that heavy.  But, you know what I really hated?  I couldn’t do anything physical without pain.

• I couldn’t walk a mile without getting a burning sensation on the outside of my calves.
• The specialist I went to gave me meds and special shoes for this calf pain, but nothing helped.
• I couldn’t walk three city blocks without breaking into a sweat.
• I was physically incapable of walking six city blocks.

Worse, I was really struggling with night eating. I used to raid the fridge in the evening while watching TV. It was mindless eating.  But it was causing even more weight gain.

Of course, my health was suffering too.

• I was diagnosed with gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD).
• I would wake up choking on my own vomit in the middle of the night.
• I would have to prop myself upright in a recliner and try to sleep with my head up so I wouldn’t choke.

Make no mistake, I was dying. I needed to change my life if I wanted to stick around.  So I started looking for answers.

Other programs didn’t work

I think I’ve tried every weight loss program out there: Atkins, South Beach, Zone. I would lose some weight, but gain more back.

I found and read the book Metabolism Advantage by John Berardi, and started to try the featured exercises at my gym. A trainer spotted me doing deadlifts, and started chatting to me about my form. He said he “liked Berardi’s work,” and offered to train me. I ended up doing personal training 3x a week for 6 months.

At first, you’d think this was a great accomplishment, but at the end of that 6 months, I had put on another 5 lbs of fat. I was now 40% bodyfat and “morbidly obese”.

Before starting LEP

The decision to sign up

At this point, I was really discouraged. I’d started out in bad shape. And now, I felt like I’d tried and failed so many times in the past — even with “expert” advice  — that I was hopeless case.

However, I saw the before and after pics from the prior Lean Eating Program, and that made me hopeful. (Editor’s Note: To see the before and after photos yourself, go to the Lean Eating for Men and Lean Eating for Women pages; scroll down and you’ll see them in the sidebar.)

But, to be honest, I didn’t expect real results.  Nevertheless, I signed up — desperate and skeptical, but optimistic.

Finding my motivation

The week before the Lean Eating program started, I asked my girlfriend to marry me.  That was a real turning point for me.  When she said yes, I knew I needed to commit to the  program.  I wanted to share a long, healthy, happy life with my future wife.

Trusting the process

Before any lessons started I felt some relief. I was surrendering my health to the Lean Eating program and coaches. Now it was in their hands. If I did everything the program told me, they guaranteed results. Of course, I was skeptical, but I didn’t see any other options.

I logged in every day, read all the posts and did all the lessons. I was on autopilot.  What they told me to do, I did.

Interestingly, before my body started to change, my attitude changed.  I’m sure it had to do with the pace of the program, and the lessons.  So, before I lost a single pound, I felt lighter. And hopeful.

Getting ongoing social support

The private Lean Eating support forum was good. People posted every day, and I would check in every day. It kept what I was doing in the forefront of my thinking.

Actually, that, to me, was the biggest difference between private training and what we were doing with Lean Eating.

In Lean Eating, you’re engaged with the program every day. You’re either working out, doing a lesson, or practicing habits.  But there’s something to do, no matter how small, every day.  And that keeps you “fitness minded” every day.

With my personal trainer, it was 3 x a week.  So, between sessions, I simply went back to my old habits.  I was “fitness minded” for only about 3 hours per week.  And back to my normal self for the other 165.  Not good.

How my eating changed

I used PN-style recipes and prep tools

I started making dishes from the Precision Nutrition System materials and the Gourmet Nutrition cookbooks.

I would prep all my food on Sunday and have it easy during the week. I didn’t have to think about what to eat or not to eat on the fly — it was determined by my shopping on Saturday and my prep work on Sunday. Dr. John’s Chili was a big time early favourite for me. I would freeze individual portions and be set for the week.

The “80% rule”

Initially, eating four meals a day was tough for me. I felt like I was eating too much. We then had a lesson on Hara hachi bu, or eating until you’re 80% full. This was a great habit for me.  It helped me “listen” to my body and dial in my meals as my body needed.

That was about halfway into the program. At that point, everything started to click.

How my workouts changed

• Learning to “just do it”: I had a really hard time with many of the exercises the first few months. I didn’t always finish the workouts. But I did push myself. I was really sore the first few weeks! Gradually, I was able to get closer to completing the reps and increasing weight.
• Learning to “find time”: I also found it tough initially to get to the gym for each scheduled workout. Life happens and you run out of time. You can’t get the workout in. There were a couple of lessons that helped address how to work out when your schedule suddenly changes — those helped a lot.
• Learning to push myself: Then a lesson came out about pushing yourself hard, giving 100%. The lesson coincided with watching the movie Pumping Iron with Arnold. That’s when my workout went to a new level. I really focused my workouts while I was working out and (I think) I became the slightly scary guy at my gym.
• Learning that regular activity is not “optional” but necessary: To make sure I got the Lean Eating workouts in, I put them on my calendar for six months. They were a very high priority for me. I would schedule business meetings at my gym’s cafe around my workouts. When travelling, I would pick hotels with good gym facilities.

How my outlook changed

I feel like I have been given a second chance.

Heading off for a day on the slopes, something I never could have done before

My GERD somehow disappeared around the second or third week of Lean Eating, and is long gone.

Social support

And my biggest surprise — my wife adopted many of my habits! She is and has been a source of positive reinforcement.

My wife and I on our honeymoon, after finishing the LEP

In fact, her support was probably the one thing that really helped me succeed.

She would call me “slim” even when I hadn’t dropped any weight. Even when I didn’t notice any changes, she did.

She got in on measuring my changes with the tape measure every Saturday. She learned how to use body fat calipers. The pounds continued to drop. We started going to the farmers market on Saturdays and making healthy meals together during the week. She helped me with my Sunday prep.

We picked a day to get married at the end of the program. As Lean Eating came closer to ending and my wedding date approached, I became increasingly motivated.

At the end of the Lean Eating Program, we had the wedding. It felt incredible for my friends and family to see me 50 lbs lighter.

For our honeymoon, my wife and I picked a resort with an excellent gym. We played a lot of tennis and took many walks.

Insight from daily lessons

The daily lessons were a constant source of self-reflection. Two books that were part of the lessons had a particular impact on me:

• Hungry: Lessons Learned on the Journey from Fat to Thin, by Alan Zadoff, helped me identify a lot of food issues I had as a kid
• The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan really made me question everything I thought I knew about food.

How do I eat and live now?

I now walk to work every day. Round trip is about 3 miles.

My eating

Here’s an average day of eating for me now.

Typical day:

Meal 1: Veggie-heavy frittata
Meal 2: SuperShake
Meal 3: Salad with lean protein source
Meal 4: Greens or veggies with protein source
Meal 5 (if needed): Cottage cheese plus nut butter or berries

Veggie and black bean frittata

A day's food, packed and ready to go

The haul from a shopping trip to the farmer's market

Lean Eating Round 2: Re-learning the basics

At the end of Lean Eating, I was stunned looking at my before and after pictures. The pounds on the scale were nothing compared to the impact of the before and after pictures.

Even though the program was over, I still felt I had some lessons to learn. I wasn’t ready for it to be finished. I was surprised to be a  finalist for the $10,000 prize, and did not think I would win. I decided I would sign up for the program again before I learned the results.

I’m glad I did. Some lessons needed to be taught to me twice.

Even though I’ve never met coach Ryan in person, he has had a tremendous impact on my success with the program. It’s clear that he maintains a personal interest in everyone’s individual success with the program. It’s great to have someone coaching you that loves what they do.

Final thoughts on my Lean Eating transformation

My transformation can be divided into two parts: my physical transformation and my mental transformation.

I know the physical transformation looks the most impressive. However, the pictures cannot show the mental transformation, which to me is 100 times greater than the weight I have lost. My sense of self, my relationships with my family, and who I am in the world has been dramatically improved.

With fellow LEP participant and workout buddy ChillPill, after training.

My advice to Lean Eaters

• To people just starting out: Just go along with the program. Make checking in and doing the assignments a ritual. Don’t overthink it.  Just do what’s asked of you.

• To someone a few months in, and getting discouraged: Stay with the program. It took you a long time to develop unhealthy habits (for me, about 40 years) and get the way you are. Six months is not a long time to invest to undo all that damage.
• There is no secret beyond working hard and committing fully. People ask me all the time: “What’s your secret?” They want me to say something like “cut out carbs” or “no fat” or “don’t eat after 8 PM”, but the real secret is commitment – commitment to the healthy, strong person inside you that might be weighed down by negative thinking, fad diets, and loads of unwanted blubber. The first day I signed up for LEP I was committed to the program. Even though I hadn’t yet lost a single pound, I had already succeeded.
• Accept the program at face value. Trust the coaches. This was ultimately my secret to success. I could have questioned every lesson, the exercises, why this exercise now, or this lesson then. Sure, I had doubts and questions, but committing fully to the program makes it work. And for that, I’m grateful every day.

Is the Lean Eating Coaching Program right for you? Find out more.

YLR, with his positive attitude and commitment to success, continues to inspire us here at Precision Nutrition.  If you’ve been wanting to turn your life around, or even if you just have some fat to lose and want some help from the pros, take a look at the Lean Eating Coaching Program. Our next program starts in July 2010, and spots typically sell out in hours. So to find out more and to put your name on the waiting list (it’s free and gives you a chance to register 24 hours before the general public), click the links below:

• Lean Eating Coaching Program for Men
• Lean Eating Coaching Program for Women

Click here to join the waiting list.

In case you  missed her before/after pics, check ‘em out:

In today’s article, she tells her story of losing 40 lbs and 20% body fat during the program, changing her habits and her life along the way.  If you’re interested in a body transformation of your own, there are some great words of wisdom here.

Rock Bottom

I never had a weight problem before a freak “metabolic event” at the age of 36.  Because of this, I  didn’t have a clue what healthy eating was or that I couldn’t get what I needed from TV dinners.  Sad, I know, but true.

You see, at 36, I had a pregnancy that was unsuccessful.  Unfortunately, my luteinizing hormone (LH), one of the hormones associated with pregnancy, continued to rise over the months following my miscarriage.

The result?  I gained 30 pounds in three months.  Unfortunately, once the hormones went back to normal, I was well into a metabolic syndrome that helped me continue to gain another 40 or so pounds during the following year.

Needless to say, I was in total shock.  My whole life came to a screeching halt.  Suddenly, and quite uncharacteristically, I was not capable of any kind of success.  Professionally, in relationships, or otherwise, you name it.  I was depressed and in constant pain.

For a time, I thought that maybe this is what happens to everyone and I should just accept it, give up on my dreams and expectations, and learn how to live, doped up on anti-depressants, without a whole lot of happiness.  I mean, it seemed hopeless.  I couldn’t find even a small remnant of my true self.  Not one seed of what I was!  And  I wasn’t about to believe that Jenny Craig could fix what was so broken about me at that point.

Some Hope

At some point, I started with the PN System. With the PN binder by my side, I made attempts to change my habits. I had some, albeit very limited, success.

By now I had worked myself up to nearly 220 lbs (from about 140lbs).  And I was in such a precarious ‘starvation’ mode.  So the changes I was able to make came pretty slowly.

Now, I was seeing evidence that the principles would work for me (bringing me down to the mid 190s).  But they didn’t seem to be working in that grand, astounding way I really wanted them to.  I mean, my journey to 220 lbs was spectacular and rapid.  So I guess I expected my adventure back down to my goal weight to be the same.

It wasn’t.  And, as is the case for anyone like me who suffers from high expectations, I was disappointed with reality.  However, I pressed on.

The Email From Precision Nutrition

In May of 2009, I spent an entire weekend mapping out my plan to get very serious about my goals. I decided that I would treat my transformation like it was my job – being totally committed to the measures I would need to take to achieve success.

And for me, it was a time of acceptance that ‘seeking comfort’ had no place in my plan, that pain and struggle might be a daily occurrence, but most of all, that the results would be worth every price I would pay along the way.

It was a string of moments that composed my absolute resolve to live a life that is worthy of me and stop pretending that it was ok to be something I was never meant to be.

The very next day, I received an email from PN announcing the new class of Lean Eating. It was destiny.

And this time, LE had a huge payout – $10K – so it literally became the ‘job’ I had created for myself.  I had myself a 6-month assignment to use my body as an experiment and see what it was truly capable of.  And my boss was John Berardi.  Awesome!

Baby Steps

It was painfully difficult from the beginning.

I sent my coach a personal message after completing the first workout, asking her if it was normal to fall down on the ground crying during the dynamic warm-up.  To tell you the truth, I don’t know if I burst into tears because the movements were so hard or if it was because I was watching myself in the mirror – the sight of myself, a former US Marine, attempting and failing a simple set of rear lunges.

I honestly could not recognize myself in that mirror and it scared me to death. I felt like a fraud, a criminal that had cheated myself out of a kick-ass life, and I was not sure I would ever be able to restore it.

The Moment of Choice

Then I got angry.  It’s like Dr Berardi says in this video (about 3 minutes in).  You reach the point of no return.  And you finally decide to act decisively.  To take one, purposeful, meaningful action.

For me, I was pissed off that I had sacrificed so much, living my life as an imposter.  So I proceeded to reject anything that wasn’t going to contribute to my success.  I would ask myself (100 times a day if necessary):

“Is what I am doing/thinking/feeling right now in this moment contributing to my success or my failure?”

If the answer wasn’t success-bound, I would start to feel that anger again.  But instead of it being defeating, I’d take some kind of powerful action or make some kind of decision to reject the negative thought or feeling, and I’d chose something different.

Some days, it was exhausting, not to mention completely distracting.   But I soon found that it was much easier to get through the day if I simply made success-bound decisions to begin with.

The Two Cynthias

Because of my new-found attitude – one that squashed the negative or backwards – and one that championed the positive of forwards, I found progress coming surprisingly quickly and consistently.  Personally, I think I attribute this to two personalities that emerged in me during the course of the program.

The first personality I saw in myself was a small child – stubborn, needy, and a little dense.  I found myself having tantrums and moments of immaturity.  In fact, I allowed them.

However, the second personality would right the ship.  This one was more of a parental figure.  And this parent-like Cynthia would figuratively wipe my tears, pat me on the butt, and push me back in the game.

Really, it was like growing up all over again. Certain times of the day, the caretaker would emerge and find ways to make life a little easier for the student.  Whether it was preparing food, packing gym bags, buying supplements in advance, making lists, downloading workout music, asking questions in the forum.

For the rest of the day, I could just be that misguided student, following the instructions and doing what I was told to do – but feeling supported by that other, protective part of myself that I trusted had my best interest at heart.

Then My Motivation Waned

Just like Dr Berardi said in the video I shared above, motivation always wanes.  And the best part: that’s ok.  It always does.  It certainly did for me.  I reached a point somewhere in the middle of the program when I needed to gain a “reason” to work out. It wasn’t enough to get in the gym because I wanted to lose fat.

I needed training to be about more than that – I needed to feel as though I was working toward a higher goal — competitive skills, mastery, fun.  Something meaningful.

So there was a time when getting motivated to workout in the gym became really difficult and it took some introspection to determine what my unique inner drive was going to be, what my new training identity was going to be about.

But before I figured it out, I needed some help.  And what kept me going, who kept me going, was my awesome coach, Erin Weiss-Trainor.   Oh yea, and the prospect of winning the contest helped too!

My New Motivation

At some point, everyone needs to find a new motivation beyond fat loss.  And there will be lots of valid motivations.  Mine – I wanted to be bad-ass.

Truth is, I realized that I simply want success more than I want to be comfortable.  So, during the program, I routinely asked myself, “Do you want to be badass or do you want to be comfortable?” The answer is always the same and it drives all my decisions.

Of course, every day isn’t going to be a total success.  And there are times, even now, when I really blow it. But I always come back to what I can do now to increase my bad-ass quotient.  And now that I have a taste of it, I want a big enough piece to share with everyone else.

One Important Lesson Learned

Interestingly, and this was huge for me, as my body fat came down, my carb requirements actually increased!  I know, hard to believe.  Especially with the carb phobia that most women share.

However, for me, I simply could not keep my starchy carb content low without sacrificing precious energy needed to pull me through the workouts and recovery.

So I had to deviate a little bit from the standard plan and start to add some grains and fruit back into my “Anytime” meals.  Amazingly, I was a lot happier and progress continued.  I’m glad I discovered this when I did, or I might have given up.

Folks, if you feel like your brain is melting in the first ten minutes of a workout, you don’t have enough carbs. This is my new rule.  But make sure you’re choosing the right ones, in the right amounts, at the right times.  (Another valuable lesson learned from the Lean Eating coaching program).

Before and After – A Handy Guide To My Experience

My New Routine

When I get up, I take a dose of amino acid supplements and I go straight for the coffee. I make coffee with half Italian roast and half Teeccino and a teaspoon of cinnamon. I ice it down in a shaker bottle and add a scoop of chocolate protein powder.

After my blood pressure gets into gear, I eat a small breakfast, usually a hard-boiled egg and a veggie shake (tomato, spinach, onion, greens+ and carrot juice). If I have a morning workout, I also have a piece of Ezekiel bread with nut butter (there’s that carb timing thing again!)

I love a good salad for lunch, so I grab a combination of veggies I picked up from the farmers market (spinach, cabbage, broccoli, sprouts, onions, tomatos, etc.), and some farm fresh feta. I make my own salad dressing from balsamic, olive oil and a variety of herbs/spices.

My favorite snacks are almonds, raisins, cottage cheese (sometimes mixed with dill to make a dip for bell pepper strips), yogurt with blueberries and flax, and jerky. I try to keep this stuff around at all times.

Dinner is where I get my meat, so it’s bison burgers, tuna burgers, pork chops, pizza toppings made with ground turkey, etc. and more veggies like broccoli, green beans, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower and the like.

Here are some additional notes:

• The only things I drink are coffee/tea, water, and lemonade made with organic lemon juice and stevia.
• I carry my meals and snacks around in a cooler everywhere I go… it’s part of my superhero persona now.
• I get my workouts from lifting, playing tennis and rowing.

As I’ve gotten so interested in the human body, I’ve even gone as far as signing up for the Precision Nutrition Certification Program.  Indeed, I’m studying the art of coaching and the science of nutrition!  My goal is to hep other people transform their lives the way I did through PN.

Advice For Others

There are a lot of programs out there that can help you lose weight. And, no matter which one you pick, you’re going to have to make an investment in it.  There’s no short-cutting reality.  You’re going to have to commit to learning new behaviors, and practicing the heck out of them.

So, if you are finally ready to have what you want, then all you have to do is pick the program that can deliver the best results and get started.  For what it’s worth, Lean Eating is what I chose.  The program helped me tremendously.  It consistently delivers awe-inspiring results.  So I’m a believer and a supporter.

Here’s how I benefited:

• I learned how to exercise
• I learned how to supplement
• I learned how to address my injuries and limitations
• I connected with a peer group
• I figured out how to measure my results and successes
• I finally began creating habits and routines that I could sustain
• I built a spirit of willingness
• I created an enthusiasm around your health and longevity

You probably won’t find a single program in existence that provides this kind of holistic approach to body composition change other than the Lean Eating Program.

Bonus Tips

Here are some additional lessons I learned along the way:

–Keep your expectations focused on the present and near future, because being too concerned with the end result is going to make you crazy.

–Celebrate every baby step you make, as you make them (they grow up so fast, don’t they?).

–Try everything at least once. If you feel you need to individualize after that, then go ahead. But, give yourself the opportunity to attempt every task, every exercise, every routine, every habit. Don’t be intimidated by the things you think you cannot do — do them anyway.

–Ask every question. Someone else has the same question, I promise.

–Don’t get frustrated with technology. Be happy with what works, report what doesn’t, and then go take some fish oil and get over it.

–Don’t attempt to eat fewer carbs than what is recommended – or you won’t make it through the workouts without crying (believe me, I know all about this one). Less is definitely not more, in this case.

–Six months absolutely flies by in a flash – don’t waste a single moment. Stay involved and keep up with progressing.

–If you feel like dropping out, email your coach and talk it through. Don’t disappear. You deserve (and have paid for) the extra help it takes to keep you in the game, and you’re going to get that help just by asking for it.

–Start a savings account right at the beginning of the program. Contribute to that account every week, no matter what. You are going to need new underwear, new jeans, new gym clothes, a new swimsuit and probably a new hairstyle. And, if you’re a girl, you’ll probably need new bras and maybe a new boyfriend too (but they don’t cost much).

Is the Lean Eating Coaching Program right for you? Find out more.

Cynergy continues to inspire us here at Precision Nutrition.  If you’ve been wanting to turn your life around, or even if you just have some fat to lose and want some help from the pros, take a look at the Lean Eating Coaching Program. Our next program starts in July 2010, and spots typically sell out in hours. So to find out more and to put your name on the waiting list (it’s free and gives you a chance to register 24 hours before the general public), click the links below:

• Lean Eating Coaching Program for Men
• Lean Eating Coaching Program for Women

Click here to join the waiting list.

Well, at the Precision Nutrition headquarters, we too have been caught by the MMA bug. Although most of our work is still done with recreational exercisers wanting to look great, feel better, and perform to their highest potential, recently we’ve been providing nutrition services for many of the UFC’s elite.

Heck, even some of our own team have been active in the fighting arts.  Indeed, Alaina Hardie, part of our Technology and Design team, has earned a purple belt in Brazillian jiu-jitsu and brought home a bronze medal at the 2009 Fila World Championships.

Alaina’s story is an interesting one.  In just 3 years, Alaina has gone from a sedentary, gym-shy 200+ lb woman to a 155 lb international grappling champion.  For more on her story, check out her athlete profile.

Also check out this video, highlighting her grappling success:

Here at Precision Nutrition we’re very proud of Alaina’s accomplishments.  From her humble gym beginnings to her recent success at the World Championships, Alaina’s story is one we can all learn from and be inspired by.

And her grappling…that’s pretty cool too.  Although it’s no joke.  Here’s the type of workouts that create a grappling champion, courtesy of yours truly.

Click here to join the waiting list.