Episode 396: Andrew Coates: The 3-Bucket Nutrition Hack, Mindful Eating, and TRT After 40

0:01Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits & Hustle. Crush it.

0:09Hey friends, you're listening to Fitness Friday on the Habits and Hustle podcast, where myself and my friends share quick and very actionable advice for you becoming your healthiest self. So stay tuned and let me know how you leveled up.

0:33I've got a framework that I think is helpful for people when it comes to the way they look at nutrition. Okay. And I like to think of food in three, we'll call them buckets. Okay. A lot of people tend to feel like if, well, if you take away the things that they love, then they get scared and then they don't want, they don't respond well to that. But I like to get people clear on three things. One is think about all of the food that is home cooked, healthy, whole, minimally processed, nutritious that we also really like. And there's a ton of that. I like to bake salmon. I'll bake some Brussels sprouts, some rice or whatever.

1:06And I'll make that and I'll food prep that. And I actually really like that meal or a lean ground turkey pasta that I make. Those to me, I would rather have than virtually anything I can get fast food. Right. And so I'm clear on that. So that's bucket one, the nutritious stuff we enjoy. bucket two is all of this mediocre crap this shit that we eat on a fairly regular basis you know when we were kids and like there's nothing in the house you're like eating crackers because you're hungry right and it's not because you're hungry you're bored right that's a different topic but it's getting clear on all of the things that you eat that you don't even enjoy you tend to feel guilty about you tend to feel shame about it's high calorie you feel like you're wasting the calories i always use the example of mall food court chinese food now we all know what good Chinese food is like, but you get in a mall food court.

1:49I've done this for years, years ago. I would see this stuff and it's the, you know, oh, the three combo for 11.99 back when food was cheaper and you get it and it's always garbage. It's not like the good Chinese food. It looks good. It's not. And then you feel it's a belly bomb after you feel terrible. And so remember the things that you continue to get fooled by, or you out of having it in the house, laziness. And I care for that word because that gets weaponized, but we just continue to feed ourselves. without boundaries. Get clear of that. But then there's the third bucket, the things we love, the absolute treats and treasures that we would not give up.

2:24Separate the mediocre crap from the really, really good things. And my personal thing is I like a medium Dairy Queen Blizzard, Reese's Peter Buttercup flavor, and I have it on Saturdays after I train legs. And I get to look forward to it. And because I know I get that, that is a million times better than any mediocre rubbish I could have in the cupboard. And because I enjoy my regularly cooked meals, I'm actually quite fulfilled. I know I get to look forward to this real treat and I get to enjoy it. I sit down, I turn everything off and I just like slowly eat it. I'm not rushing through while I'm driving.

2:56I'm not distracted. I literally just to savor it. And it's an experience that I treasure and no other amount of mediocre crap can compare to it. And I feel no shame and no guilt. And sure, it's maybe easier for me to say because I have a life dedicated fitness. I have a lot of muscle mass. I have a higher metabolic rate, but I still build its calories into my weekly calorie amount. and I stay active in order to be able to preserve muscle mass, burn more calories so the way I can create room for that. But I think anybody can create room for the things they love. Get clear on the things you love.

3:22And you can't love it all. You can't have chips every night. You can't have two glasses of wine every night. What's her name? Carrie from Sex and the City and their lifestyle. You know that apartment she lives in? I know there's this article somewhere on the internet that talks about all of the apartments, the places like the Friends cast live in, in New York and their salaries and how realistic or unrealistic, all these things are. Like Carrie Bradshaw, Sex and City, totally unrealistic. Just like a false sense of reality, what's possible. You can't have these martini lunches and two glasses of wine or whatever and still also look like what Carrie did in the show.

3:57Right. Impossible. I think there's a major disconnect between reality and that. Here's another one that's worth thinking about. On average, and this is key because people freak out, on average, women are smaller than men and have less muscle mass on average. So whenever we go to a restaurant or eat anywhere, there's not a women's menu and a men's menu. There's a kid's menu, but the serving sizes of everything we get in society and they're getting larger and larger. And like the men walking around in North America are metabolically healthy and obese on average. If you get women who have smaller bodies, less muscle mass, and by virtue of that lower metabolic rates, if they're eating or feeling like they're entitled, this is a tricky one, to eat the same amount of food or drink the same amount of alcohol, then they're actually getting more calories than they can handle.

4:44So it's actually a good thing just to recognize the fact that our society, because there's also the food engineering and the marketing, you have these super normal combinations of fat, sugar, salt, food that's engineered to sell. I don't think it's any more nefarious than that. It's just companies are profit-driven and there's tons of it out there and it's easily accessible via delivery or drive through or whatever in supermarkets and it's right there at display in front of you you're bombarded with it and people are tired and stressed and overwhelmed and they default to it or they're busy and they're it's convenient or the kids are crying for it and they just give it to the kids to shut them up and we're drowning in this stuff and i think you got to kind of clear all these things but when you have these super normal combinations of these foods that never existed in nature.

5:30We're living in a society that is obesogenic. So there are the people who will scream and rail that we need to change the system. Guess what? Over time, it's probably not a terrible idea, but it's not going to save you in time. And when we start talking about personal responsibility, there's a subsection, an ideological subsection of the industry that gets really mad about that. They do not like that. No. But unfortunately, if you want a better outcome for you, personal responsibility does have to become a component in it. But I want to just help people by setting them up to be successful. Shape your food environment.

6:02Recognize these things around you. And you can preserve the things you really love. You just got to cut out all this other stuff that you don't even like. Why are you eating it? It's mindless. It's mindless eating. Mindless eating. So I love that you said that because actually what I was going to say is that that's what I do. Part of my parameters is not focusing on food that is just me mindlessly eating because I'm bored or just like hungry. And that's why a part of the parameter thing is having food around me that is healthy, that I can grab, versus having stuff that's like shitty, that's just going to be empty calories that will not do my body good.

6:38So knowing your environment and then creating an environment where you won't get yourself into trouble. The other thing is having something that you actually really, really love that you look forward to. And the funny thing is I knew you're a Canadian because you said two things. You said the Chinese food, food court thing in the food court, the Chinese food, because the Manchu walks of the world, which of course, that's what I grew up looking at, knowing. And then you said the blizzard, the medium-sized blizzard, because I just came back from Montreal with my kids. And there was a million ice cream places.

7:10I'm like, no, you guys, if we're going to have ice cream, let's do it right. But let's not fuck around here and go to this place or that place. Let's go get a Smarties and score blizzard. I was, you read my mind. I was going to side quest, like all the Americans have, like we grew up as Canadian kids with Smarties and American kids, like what are those? I mean, it's like guys. Ketchup chips. And ketchup chips, of course, salt and vinegar chips. I love the old Dutch, the old Dutch salt and vinegar ketchup chips. I love them. And of course the blizzard, like I know I'll be very satisfied with that blizzard and then that will be my treat.

7:42And then I feel like I didn't deprive myself. And then I don't have to like eat 90 pounds of something else I didn't like because I know I have that to look forward to. So I love that you said the blizzard and that. And although if they are salt and vinegar chips, I mean, there's nothing better. And by the way, when I came back, the customs guy said to me, where are all your chips? Did you bring a bunch of chips? I'm like, oh, my God, you must be, you read my mind. Like, that's what everyone does. It's such a Canadian thing. It's so funny. It's very funny. Okay, so let's talk about like your 46.

8:13Are you on anything? Are you taking peptides? Are you doing testosterone? Are you doing... What are you doing? I've never messed around with what we would call peptides or whatever. So I actually don't openly talk about this. And I think it's complicated because I think sometimes there's a bit of a stigma to this. It's not an area of expertise in mind, but I mean, effectively like testosterone, you know, 46-year-old man at this stage of things, I think testosterone replacement therapy is becoming more and more common and socially acceptable. uh i very deliberately sort of i think there are things that we gravitate to in terms of knowledge base and i think there are things that we don't and maybe it was deliberate because i didn't want to attract the guys who are always asking me these kind of questions because none of my media or brand is around like competitive bodybuilding or that side of stuff and i don't know if that stuff almost didn't interest me it's just okay i'm not going to restrict what my experience in life is like because of some sort of arbitrary societal stigma over something.

9:12But it's one of those topics that I think most people don't have a good understanding of because we get the sensationalism over the baseball players who were, quote, cheating on various different compounds. That's more like HGH, though. I feel like you're talking about human growth hormone. I feel like in your 40s, people in their 50s, you do get a massive diminish. Your hormones do play tricks on you. And therefore, your energy is thrown off. You're unable to build muscle mass by doing the same things that you're doing. I talk about this all the time on my show because it's a really, A, it's a very popular topic right now.

9:51I guess because of where I am in life, that's why it's also super popular. But most men I know who are 37 and up, most of them are taking testosterone. And I think they're taking it too early, quite frankly. But I don't know what their numbers. It depends what your numbers are, right? We're getting more and more people talking more openly. Alex Hormozzi talks openly about how he uses it. I think, obviously, people are always clamoring to who's natural, who's not in Hollywood. Who gives a shit? To me, that's not being natural or unnatural. Testosterone is a major hormone in your body. It's different if you're taking HGH.

10:25I'm not talking about human growth hormone. Yeah, I mean, if you're taking super normal amounts of it or other types of steroids, then sure. But I guess what again comes to whether or not, I'm not going to say any specific actor's name because I'm not interested, but I remember growing up on wrestling. And as kids, we thought wrestling was real, right? We thought that. Who's your favorite wrestler, by the way? I mean, I grew up on Hulk Hogan. You said I love Hulk Hogan. A lot of the classic ones. Yeah. I love the, I mean, I love the Mark Maguire's and Sammy Sosa's and the home run era of baseball.

10:57That's baseball. Yeah. And I loved larger than life Hulk Hogan and Randy Macho Man Savage and Scott Steiner, Big Papa Pump and you name it, goes on and on and on. And this stuff's entertaining. I mean, there's complicated stuff there. Tons of complicated stuff. But this sort of cliche, but it would be kind of interesting to see the juiced up Olympics. And I think someone was trying to start them. But you get a whole bunch of people who are super normal. But you also really should just take a bunch of average shows and put them together and just see what it looks like. It's a nice thought experiment in theory.

11:28But I actually think it's probably something that it's hard to get accurate information about it. I think it's something that society, as people hopefully mellow out on the stigma of certain things, we'll see people having more open conversations about it. And then people can get the benefits. You mentioned all the things. Mental health, depression. And men, if you have like low testosterone, you're vulnerable to that as well. What's low? What is a normal range for a guy? So I don't have, I'm not good at these sort of things because I think there's two different ways. There's saliva and serum levels of testosterone, but testosterone also fluctuates really wildly.

12:02So I mean, I don't have the expertise in knowing what is or isn't normal. And I am of the understanding because society as a whole, we are seeing declining levels of testosterone in the environment for a variety of reasons. exposure to environmental pollutants, microplastics, you name it, all sorts of stuff. There's a long list of things and it's trending the wrong way. So I think the definition of what is normal is also going down because what's normal, I mean, like our society in terms of metabolic health, obesity, all these sort of things, what is normal is now unhealthy in most of these like health metrics.

12:43Thank you.