185: Answering Your Nutrition and Training Questions

31:30Nick Bare:And then by the time I'm done eating, because if I put it on my plate, I'm eating it. When I go to a restaurant, whatever you put on that plate, I'm eating all of it. I'm sending that plate back to the kitchen, cleared, clean. I've never been someone to leave food on a plate. And this is why this is a boundary for me. This is one of the reason I use the food scale. So I put it on my plate, I'm eating it.

32:00Nick Bare:I will overeat if I allow myself to build my plate without portion control. And maybe you struggle with the same thing, or maybe you make a plate, you eat everything that's on the plate and you go back for seconds and thirds. And then 30 minutes later, after you're done eating all the food, you are stuffed. uncomfortably full. It takes some time for your stomach and your body to tell you yourself, you are satisfied, you are no longer hungry before your mind does. So what I would encourage people to do if you have a problem or you struggle overeating at a meal, use a food scale, weigh out appropriate portions, make your plate, eat your food slow, When you're done eating all your food, wait 20 to 30 minutes after you are done eating to decide if you are still hungry.

33:04Nick Bare:Because if you're anything like me, as soon as I finish eating that plate of food, I'm typically still hungry. But if I wait 20 to 30 minutes, I allow my body to catch up with the signals that my mind is telling me, eat more, eat more, eat more. If I wait 20 to 30 minutes, I realize I'm actually not hungry anymore. I am comfortably full. And I don't want that second or third plate. So prime the habit that you are struggling with or that you want to improve or master. As a new dad, how do I find time to work out? And there's something I said a few years ago that really resonated with people, really connected with people.

33:58I said, if it matters to you, you will make time. Make time. The question was, as a new dad, how do I find time to work out?

34:14Now, this might seem insignificant, but if you try to find time, you might find this more challenging. But if you make time, you might find that this comes easier. Before I had kids,

34:35Nick Bare:I had all the time in the world, relatively, to do what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it. I could train at 5 a.m. if I wanted to, I could train at 8 a.m. if I wanted to. I could train at 4 p.m. if I wanted to. I could train at 7 p.m. if I wanted to. After having a kid, Charlie, four years ago, and then our second child, Nico, two years ago, I found out that if you wait to find the time, you're going to run out of time. You have to allocate and make the time. That's why I wake up at 5 a.m. every day. I'm running by 5.30. I'm back by 6.15. And I'm done with my morning run and my morning routine, typically before the kids wake up.

35:32Nick Bare:Unless we're in some sort of sleep regression, I'm always back from my morning run, done with my morning routine before the family is up. I make that time. I sacrifice some sleep and some rest so I can make the time to do the things that I want and need to do for myself so that it doesn't take time away from my family. And I don't have to try to find that time later in the day. But it's also important that once you become a dad and your mission in life is to serve your family to serve your children, to serve your spouse, your partner. It's really important to understand that responsibilities are prioritized over routines.

36:28I love my morning routine. I love my morning run, but I love my family.

36:33Nick Bare:I love my children. I love my wife more than that morning routine and more than that morning run. so my responsibilities will always come first. My routines will always come second. But I can still do my best to make the time for myself so that the things that I want to do don't affect the people I love. Question five, what is the purpose of incorporating the ergs into your training routine right now? Now, the ergs are the skier, the rower, the concept to bike. Why do I incorporate these into my training routine? Well, first off, I'm training for a high rocks right now. So I'm doing high rocks Dallas in November and then a high rocks Nashville in December.

37:33and the skier, the rower, these ergs are part of the movements in high rocks. If you're not familiar with high rocks is to eight stations, each station is a 1K run followed by a functional movement.

37:51Nick Bare:Some of those functional movements are the skier, rower, sandbag lunges, sled push, sled pull, burpee broad jumps, wall balls. farmer's carry. So why am I incorporating the ergs into my training routine right now? For one, they are movements in high rocks, so I want to improve on them. But they are also a great way to get additional cardiovascular and aerobic stimulus benefits without running. You might be asking yourself, well, why would I not want to run? Running itself is a very taxing movement. It's really hard on the body. It is high cortisol producing. It is just impactful.

38:44And even as much as I love running, you can overdo it. And it's easy to get overuse injuries from running.

38:54Nick Bare:And it just, it taxes the central nervous system significantly. So one of the ways to keep improving your cardiovascular conditioning, health, and get additional aerobic benefits is to adding in different movements like the ERGs, skier, rower, concept two bike, where I'm still getting my heart rate into a certain zone. I'm still getting that aerobic conditioning benefit without the taxing impact from running. I think they are extremely beneficial to incorporate into your training. Similar to triathlon training, three disciplines, swimming, cycling, running. When I was training for my Ironman, it was the best aerobic conditioning shape I've ever been in my life.

39:53And it's not just because I was running more, but I was cycling multiple hours a week. I was swimming multiple hours a week. Cycling and swimming are low impact compared to running. But all this added volume in aerobic conditioning benefit, it just builds that base, that foundation, your engine without overtaxing the body. Why are you incorporating bodybuilding style training into your high rocks prep? It seems unnecessary. Specific goals require specific training practices. and I've said this many, many times before. If you are training for an Ironman triathlon, your training practices have to reflect swimming, cycling, running.

40:59Nick Bare:Different techniques and intervals for swimming, different thresholds when it comes to cycling and distances and durations. When it comes to running, you're manipulating volume over time and speed sessions. That's how you improve. Specificity. But I also believe that you have to love the training itself. It's not just the goal that we're focused on, but it's also the process, the systems that we put in place that have to be sustainable and joy-filled.

41:43So if I wanted to be the best High Rocks athlete in the world, I would change all of my training for the next couple of months to just be focused on getting better at High Rocks.

41:58Nick Bare:sometimes I like putting these competitions and races on the schedule on my calendar as a directional goal this is what I'm working towards it's gonna force me to change my training a little bit my nutrition it gives me a target to aim for a new mission that I'm working towards but I have to be very honest with myself. If I was going to shift all of my training to just be the best at high rocks possible, I would start to hate my training. That's just like the reality of it. When it comes to training, I love running. I love traditional bodybuilding and strength training. I do. traditional bodybuilding, resistance training, being in a gym, getting a pump, that will forever be my favorite style of training.

42:57I love it. I do. I love it. And I also love these high rocks circuits I'm incorporating into my training twice a week right now. I would easily say right now, this is some of the most fun I've had training for a goal on a mission for a target in a long time.

43:23Nick Bare:It's a perfect blend. It's fun. It's engaging. There's variation. I can come in and hit bicep curls and pull-ups and lat pull-downs and barbell rows and deadlifts on a Thursday, knowing that Friday, I'm going to wake up early and log a six-mile run in the afternoon, do a nasty high rock circuit and just get cooked. And then Saturday morning, wake up and do a long run. And then after a day off Sunday, come back into the gym Monday and hit dumbbell chest press and body weight dips and tricep pushdowns and barbell overhead press. I love the training that I'm doing right now and I don't want to lose the love for it.

44:14Nick Bare:So why am I incorporating bodybuilding style training into my high rocks prep? it's because I love it. Is it optimal? Maybe not. But I'm enjoying it. It's effective. But what if that means it's going to hurt my progress in my final time in the high rocks? That's okay. I'm all right with that. But if I fall in love with the training that I'm doing in preparation for the goal, that means more to me than being optimized for the target. I thought this was a really good question. If carbohydrates take 24 plus hours to be stored as glycogen, why do you fuel with them before and during a training session?

45:08Nick Bare:So it's called assimilation. From the time that you consume carbohydrates, your body digests them, breaks them down and can then store them as glycogen primarily in the muscles, but some in the liver. It takes 24 plus hours. That's why this classic scene from The Office with Michael Scott, where he's consuming chicken pasta Alfredo at the starting line of his 5K to carb up is so wrong and funny and unrealistic. So we have glycogen, which are carbohydrates that our body stores, like I said, primarily in the muscle, but also the liver. And then we have carbohydrates in our bloodstream. So this is why you consume simple carbohydrates before a training session and during a training session.

46:19Nick Bare:Simple carbohydrates that are digested very quickly and easily. They can enter the bloodstream as glucose within 5 to 15 minutes. So when I wake up at 5 a.m. and I drink my G1M Sport, two scoops, 40 grams carbs, 700 milligrams of sodium, and I wait about 30 minutes to go run, those carbs that I consume because they are simple carbohydrate sources and they digest very quickly, they are in my bloodstream as glucose. and my body can use that glucose as fuel. And it doesn't have to tap into and break down glycogen that is stored for longer term use. So that's why I consume carbohydrates or we consume carbohydrates before a workout or a race and then during simple carbohydrates, easily fast digesting carbohydrates because our body can use them as glucose that's circulating in the bloodstream as they are digested quickly and readily available.

47:28Nick Bare:Eating simple carbohydrates replenishes blood sugar during training to maintain energy levels, mental ability capacity. It spares stored muscle glycogen and it fuels performance.

47:46Here's a good one. Is strength training or running best for weight and fat loss? I'd be curious what most people think and believe.

48:00Nick Bare:Because strength training, building muscle, is far superior for long-term fat loss and body composition improvement compared to running and cardiovascular conditioning. Why? So cardiovascular conditioning or running relies on acute calorie burn. So when I'm running or I'm on the bike, I'm swimming, I'm performing a high effort exercise. I am burning calories. I'm expending energy while I'm performing that exercise. And really only then. it acutely burns a lot of calories. Running, an hour of running versus an hour of strength training. You are burning more calories during one hour of running than you are from one hour of strength training.

49:05Typically, depends on what that strength training workout looks like,

49:09Nick Bare:but generally you are burning more calories during cardiovascular conditioning than typical traditional strength and resistance training. But, and here's the but, strength training, resistance training, it builds muscle. Muscle being lean tissue. Muscle and lean tissue is metabolically expensive. This means that the more muscle and lean tissue you have, the higher your BMR, basal metabolic rate. This is the number of calories your body burns each day to just stay alive at complete rest. So when you strength train, you resistance train, you build muscle, you build lean tissue. Your body having more lean tissue and more muscle will burn more calories at rest than the person who has less lean tissue and muscle.

50:14Nick Bare:Muscle is metabolically expensive. Your body has to work hard to maintain more mass, more muscle, more lean tissue. So if you want to lose weight and you want to lose fat for the longterm, I'm not talking 30 days, you want to drop 15 pounds and then gain it all back. Now, if you want to consistently improve your body composition over years and years in a lifetime, you're going to do this by building more muscle, more lean tissue. As opposed to having to rely on the acute calorie burn of just running and expending energy, exercising every single day. How much strength training or resistance training do you need to be doing weekly to build muscle and get stronger?

51:16There's so many nuances to this question. And the easiest, unfortunately, best answer is it depends. It depends on a lot of things.

51:32Nick Bare:It depends on your genetic potential. It depends on your experience of training, how long you've been training, what type of training you've been doing. It depends on the experience of the athlete that we're talking about. Are you training properly? You know, we lump strength training into this one bucket. there's training to get stronger there's training to get and build more muscle hypertrophy it's different approaches to training

52:16Nick Bare:a lot of people think they are strength training and they're trying to build strength but they're actually the way they're walking into the gym and training they're building muscular endurance They're not actually training hard and intense and heavy enough. So there's a difference between strength training, strength endurance, and muscular endurance. Strength training is like the one to five rep range. This is 80 to 100 % of your one rep max. And the primary adaptation with strength training, it's neural. nervous system. You get better motor unit recruitment, coordination, and rate of force production.

53:06Nick Bare:So when you get stronger, it's not necessarily that you're building more muscle. I mean, that is a byproduct of getting stronger. When you're building strength, if we're talking about getting a bigger and stronger deadlift or barbell squat or bench press, this isn't just because you're building more muscle, but your nervous system, your motor unit recruitment and coordination and rate of force production improves and gets better. You're building muscle as a byproduct of those adaptations. Strength endurance is typically, and there's no black or white to this, but it's typically like eight to 12 rep range.

53:55This is where you maintain a significant percentage

53:58Nick Bare:of your max strength across many reps for longer efforts. So think of strength endurance where it's a few more reps than that one to five rep range and it's a little bit lighter weight, but there's still a large stimulus on the muscular system. as well as essential nervous system. And then you have muscular endurance. This is 12 plus reps, much lighter weight. Lots of reps, lighter loads in submaximal force production. There's less benefit to muscular endurance for building muscle, building lean tissue, improving body composition. It's kind of like this gray area. So one, how much strength training do you need to do on a weekly basis to build muscle and get stronger?

54:59You got to ask yourself, are you training properly?

55:02Nick Bare:Are you training in the appropriate rep ranges with the appropriate loads? Is the weight you're using heavy enough to provide and facilitate the response to get stronger, to build muscle. And it depends on the experience of the athlete being trained, but I would say that anywhere from 10 to 20 hard sets per muscle group per week is an appropriate amount of training volume. 10 to 20 hard sets per muscle group per week. This doesn't include warm-up or back-off sets. So say you have, for barbell squats, programmed a 5x5. You might do eight total sets. where say you have two warmup sets and then you do your five by five and you have a back off set.

56:13You're counting those five by five hard sets as working sets. The other three sets,

56:22Nick Bare:the two warmup and the one back off, those are just to set you up for success for those movements. So 10 to 15 hard working sets per muscle group per week. I think it is an appropriate range to aim for on a weekly basis to build muscle, lean tissue, improve body composition and get stronger. And the last question I'm going to answer, how to start tracking nutrition, food and macros? And I think if you were to ask me this question years ago, I would have answered it differently. I'm excited to share this response. And I think this deserves probably a full YouTube video, which I'm going to start working on and planning.

57:14Nick Bare:Because I've just found that so many people struggle with nutrition, consistency, tracking, nowhere to start. because what generally happens is someone goes zero to 100 really quick. They go all in. Super aggressive. And this is great. But the question is, is it a sustainable approach and model? Maybe, maybe not. But I've seen a lot of people fall off just as fast and hard as they've gotten started. So how to start tracking nutrition, food, and macros. This is what I would recommend. First, buy a food scale. Before you even start thinking about tracking any of your food in an application, your phone, writing it down, buy a food scale.

58:17And start being more food conscious.

58:22Nick Bare:What this means. for the first week or two or even month, eat as you normally would. But use your food scale. Get comfortable with it. Start weighing how much you're consuming. You know, put your, as I was previously describing, when you're making your plate for dinner, put your plate on the food scale. And if you're weighing your meat, tear it, set it to ounces. Put on that plate what you normally would consume. Don't look at the food scale until you put all the meat on that plate you normally would and then look at it. I did this with someone recently where they thought they were consuming enough.

59:08This individual was under consuming

59:14Nick Bare:and we had them put a plate on a food scale and we just said, add how much protein, how much meat you normally would eat at dinner on this food scale. It was two ounces, two ounces of protein, not nearly enough. And we had them aim for four to five ounces. It was a female portion size. And they were mind blown by how little they were consuming. So you might learn in this process that you're under consuming or you're over consuming, but just become more aware of what you're eating. When you add your potatoes or your rice or your pasta to your plate, just weigh it out. Add it to the plate as you normally would and then look how much you added.

1:00:06Nick Bare:Write it down somewhere and you can reference it later but don't get caught up in all of how much should I be consuming? What should my macros be? How many calories? How much protein? How many carbs? How much fat? Just start making notes. this is how much I consumed at dinner this night of protein, of carbohydrates. Here's the extra sauces I added and condiments and all of those things. Start reading nutrition labels. As I mentioned previously, people think granola is healthy, which it can be, but maybe not when you're consuming 500 plus calories of granola in three to five to seven plus servings.

1:00:53Start looking at nutrition labels, looking at how much a serving size is. And then when you go to add that to your bowl, your plate, weigh it out. You'll learn a lot in that process. You're teaching yourself a level of self-awareness and wisdom and knowledge around portions and food labels

1:01:20Nick Bare:and learning how to use a food scale. Like before you even start tracking anything, just become more food conscious. Buy the food scale, start reading nutrition labels, weigh serving sizes, learn what portion sizes look like. You know, you don't have to use a food scale every day for the rest of your life, but I know what 40 grams of oats one serving looks like now. I know generally what eight ounces of protein looks like. I know what a cup and a half of white jasmine rice looks like. I know what 28 grams or one ounce of nuts looks like or 150 grams of blueberries. After doing this for so long, I know what portion sizes look like and then how many grams of protein or carbohydrates or fat is associated with that portion size.

1:02:20I've built this awareness around food and portions and calories and macronutrients over time to the point now where I really don't have to track anything. I'm just aware. And once you get comfortable with that,

1:02:37Nick Bare:using a food scale, reading nutrition labels, understanding portion control and sizes, then you can start logging your food into an app on your phone online. You then can set up your calorie targets and macronutrient goals. You then can start making adjustments to your calories, your proteins, your fats and carbs. And there's lots of different online calculators that can do this now. I'm sure AI can pretty accurately figure out your maintenance calories and your protein goals and carbohydrate goals and dietary fat goals. But I think that the best thing you can do to start tracking your nutrition, food, and macros is to just become more aware of what you're consuming, how much.

1:03:29Nick Bare:Certain things add up too. We typically add sauces and oils and condiments to a lot of our food, not even thinking about how much those calories can and do add up very quickly. So that's where I would start to get better at tracking your nutrition, your food, your macronutrients. I hope that these questions had strong answers that are helpful to you guys. I enjoy doing these because I know when there's a question that's asked multiple times by multiple different people, there's probably more people that will benefit from learning and understanding and hearing the way that I think about it. What I've learned over my lifetime, especially focused much of my career on health and fitness and nutrition and training.

1:04:27Nick Bare:So I hope it does help you guys. Thanks for the questions. Thank you for tuning in. And as always, go on more.