Mastering Habit Transformation with Dr. Mel Davis

Unlock the secrets to lasting habit transformation with Dr. Mel Davis, a brilliant mind in neurobiology and behavior, as we unravel the layers of willpower management and habit building. Dr. Davis guides us through the journey of self-improvement without overwhelming oneself, highlighting the significance of incremental changes and the patience required, similar to mastering an instrument or earning a degree. We delve into prioritizing habits that will most positively impact your life, offering actionable strategies to build momentum and bolster self-efficacy.

Confessing my personal struggles with syncing my nutrition with my steadfast exercise regimen, this episode offers a candid look into why it's tougher to break old habits than to form new ones. Dr. Davis shares her expertise on the psychology behind habit formation, discussing the ins and outs of a balanced diet rich in vegetables and the necessity of focusing on behavior for sustainable health. Especially as the festive season brings its share of temptations, learn how to enjoy life's indulgences in moderation and maintain a consistent approach to wellness.

Strength training myths get debunked regardless of gender, as we illuminate its benefits, from osteoporosis prevention to body composition enhancement. We discuss the right equipment for every level and the proper frequency for strength sessions to maximize benefits while managing hunger on a calorie deficit. Dr. Davis also imparts wisdom on protein and macronutrient balance tailored to individual needs, ensuring listeners leave armed with knowledge to navigate their fitness journeys with confidence. Join us for a robust conversation that marries exercise, nutrition, and the craft of developing habits that stick.

Today's Guest: Dr. Mel Davis

Dr. Melissa Davis holds a PhD in Neurobiology and Behavior and has 10 years of research experience. She has earned awards for teaching, scholarship, and research. A Brazilian Jiu Jitsu black belt and a repeat IBJJF Master World Champion, she has represented the U.S. in the Abu Dhabi World Pro twice. She currently does contract work for Renaissance Periodization, where she writes books, coaches clients, and develops nutrition and training products. In her free time she hikes, backpacks, hunts, forages, gardens, and trains her horse and mule in Montana. 

Links:

Instagram: @regressive_underload 

Habit Book: ebook: https://rpstrength.com/evidence-based-habit-building

print, kindle, audio: https://www.amazon.com/Evidence-Based-Habit-Building-Finally-Done/dp/B09HHM1NL4

RP Coaching: https://rpstrength.com/rp-coaching?selected=diet-and-training-coaching-menu_coaching


Your Host: Kimberly Beam Holmes, Expert in Self-Improvement and Relationships

Kimberly Beam Holmes has applied her master's degree in psychology for over ten years, acting as the CEO of Marriage Helper & CEO and Creator of PIES University, being a wife and mother herself, and researching how attraction affects relationships. Her videos, podcasts, and following reach over 200,000 people a month who are making changes and becoming the best they can be.

Website: www.kimberlybeamholmes.com

Thanks for listening!

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:30

How can you create habits that stick? How can you make sure that all the time and effort that you put into trying to achieve a goal will actually help you to work towards achieving that goal? That's partly what we're going to be discussing in today's episode. We're also going to be discussing the truth about dieting, whether or not you should be dieting and what is the most important thing to think about and to focus on when you're dieting, as well as some things about strength training and all of the fun stuff, with today's guest, dr Mel Davis.

Speaker 1: 1:03

Dr Mel Davis has a PhD in neurobiology and behavior and has been researching these areas of psychology and fitness and wellness for 10 years. She currently works with Renaissance periodization, which, if any of you know, dr Mike Isriatell, he is one of the people who has spearheaded its growth. It's really big in the fitness space, especially in men's fitness. They have a lot of great programming, a great app, all of those things. That's where she currently works and in her free time, she enjoys to hike, backpack, hunt and forage and trains her horse and mule in Montana. We had a great conversation. Let's dive into today's episode. Dr Mel, I'm so excited to have you on the show. Thanks for joining me today.

Speaker 2: 1:50

Thanks, I'm happy to be here.

Speaker 1: 1:52

I've done a lot of research into habits and habit building and really how people can be successful in the new habits that they're looking to implement into their life. So, of all of the research that you've done, what would you say is really the key to effective habit building?

Speaker 2: 2:10

I think I would say there are two, the first one being don't try to change too much at the same time. Don't make too many big goals at the same time. And then the second would be that you need to have patience and treat building new habit like getting a degree or learning to play an instrument or something like that. You're not going to make a decision to wake up the next day and be perfect. It's going to take a lot of time, there's going to be a lot of mistakes and failures, but you want to look at that slow, gradual progress towards what you're looking for over time.

Speaker 1: 2:45

Now, your first one was pick one. Is that what you said for the first one? Not necessarily pick one.

Speaker 2: 2:52

You could maybe do two small ones, but don't choose several life changing, behavior change goals at one time.

Speaker 1: 3:02

That's a lot of times what people do, though, isn't it Especially like at the change of the year new year, new you like it's time to just become a completely better version of myself. How do you encourage clients that you've worked with, people that you know to choose Like, when there's so many things they may want to change in their life? How do you choose the one that you want to work on first and then break it into a manageable chunk?

Speaker 2: 3:27

Yeah, I think the best thing to do is look at the impact that your various goals will have on your life and maybe choose the one that's most desirable. What is the behavior and the resulting outcome that is bothering you the most, you know? Is it not going to the gym and not feeling like you're healthy and exercising? Is it that you're drinking a lot and overeating on the weekends, like? Which change in behavior is going to have the biggest outcome impact? And I think that's a good one to start with, because when you get results it's very motivating, you build self-efficacy and it makes you more likely to succeed on the next goal.

Speaker 1: 4:05

Yeah, what about one of the things that you talk about in your book? I believe it's the third chapter of your. No, the second chapter of your book is talking about willpower and kind of the problem of willpower and one of the things that I've seen in the research is there's differentiating stances on his willpower finite or is it infinite? Do we have unlimited resources or does it kind of run out? What is your stance on that?

Speaker 2: 4:30

Yeah. So I think it's very intuitive to imagine it like a gas tank that it just runs out. But that doesn't actually seem to be the case when you kind of dig into the various confounds. So you might have someone who's like my willpower gas tank is empty, it's completely empty. But then their child needs something for their health and suddenly their willpower is completely rejuvenated because they care and they have to do it. So different things can influence whether willpower surges up or not. An excessive amount of effort does deplete it, but that doesn't mean it's gone. So the best description I've heard is willpower described as an emotion. It's something that sort of comes and goes and various external things can make it surge or drop.

Speaker 1: 5:16

What are the things that a person could do to manage their willpower? If it's like an emotion, like then, how can you preserve it for when you, when you don't need as much, and then pull on it when you do need more?

Speaker 2: 5:28

I think habits are actually one of the best ways to do that, because if you can start to make the things happen that you want to happen by behavior change and creating a habit, habits are pretty effortless. That's why they can be problematic, because you just do them automatically. So if you can make a lot of the behaviors you want effortless by turning them into habits, then you have a whole bunch of willpower for the things that you either haven't built a habit for or maybe there isn't a habit to build for because it's an acute or temporary thing.

Speaker 1: 6:00

Yeah, what are some of the common habits that you see people wanting to change? So maybe it's something they're doing, they don't want to do and they want to replace with a better habit. What are the most common ones of those?

Speaker 2: 6:13

Yeah, for me and it might just be my line of work it tends to be eating habits and exercise habits. Those tend to be the ones that come to the top of the list and in general I bet that's probably true that's some of the things people struggle the most with in terms of behavior change.

Speaker 1: 6:31

Yeah, so, when it comes to eating habits, what are people wanting to stop? What are the habits they have that they're wanting to stop doing, or what are the habits they're not doing that they want to start doing?

Speaker 2: 6:41

Yeah, so often. People want to stop binge eating, they want to stop mindlessly snacking, they want to stop drinking every night, which can be either a habit problem or an addiction problem, but in the space of habits it can be habitual and not addictive. They want to start eating more vegetables, more health promoting foods, stop eating the less health promoting foods, and I like to call them that and not healthy and not healthy because that sounded funny. I don't like to call them healthy or not healthy because even less health promoting foods are completely fine in moderation, so I don't like to label them good or bad. So that's why I'm using that funny language.

Speaker 1: 7:22

Yeah, that makes sense and it's probably part of what can keep people stuck in the habit loop of continuing to eat the less healthy, promoting foods right.

Speaker 2: 7:32

Yes, they think it either has to be a complete elimination of those foods or nothing, and then they tend to restrict for a while and then dive back in because they can't take the total lack of the fun foods in their life.

Speaker 1: 7:44

Yeah, I'll bring a personal question in here. It goes along with these exercise habits and nutrition habits. So I've probably spent the better part of 12 years really getting my exercise habits dialed in and I am good on my exercise, like even when I'm sick currently I'm sick, but I got my zone 2 workout in today but the food, on the other hand, that's the one that I feel like I know that's the one I need to focus on and I know if I did, I'd feel a lot better, I'd get closer to the health goals that I have and all of that. But I kind of feel like I'm doing so well with my exercise goal that I'm not as motivated as I want to be on the food and nutrition aspect of it. Do you see people ever in that kind of loop and, if so, what are the things that? Like? How can I break free from that and really focus on the fact that I need to dial in my nutrition a bit more?

Speaker 2: 8:50

Yeah, I think the reason that that happens very often is because it can be easier to add something to your life than to take something away, to eliminate something you're doing.

Speaker 2: 9:01

For some reason, starting to do a behavior is easier than eliminating a habitual behavior that you don't want, and I think the key is really just very slow additions of things like okay, right now I eat vegetables once a day.

Speaker 2: 9:18

I'm going to try to get vegetables in twice a day, three times a week, and then when that gets to be just the normal thing that I do, I'll add vegetables three times a day, four times a week and so on, and just sort of working up until that's just a part of your routine to throw veggies and everything you eat. And then, if it's a matter of eliminating foods you don't want, sort of one of my favorite things to tell people is to set up a ranking scale for those foods that you want to eat less of but you enjoy and rate every treat that's available on a scale of one to 10. If it's not a seven or above, forget about it. You don't eat it, it's not exciting enough, and that sort of makes the treats you do have more enjoyable and less guilt promoting, and it reduces your intake of those foods you're trying to not eat so much of.

Speaker 1: 10:07

Yeah, holidays are such a hard time for this. Yesterday I realized like, okay, all of the holiday cookies are out of the house because we're recording this right before Christmas. I was like, okay, all of them are gone. We've either eaten them or I've thrown them away. I'm going to go my first day without eating sugar. And then our neighbor delivered cookies. How can this happen? So we got rid of those. We each had like a bite of a couple of them, threw them away.

Speaker 1: 10:34

Then I walked into the office this morning and this is just like fudge and oh fudge. I don't know how to get rid of this and temptation is everywhere. So even it kind of even goes back to that will power conversation of earlier, which is like I know that I need to, like I recently have my blood work done. I know that my cholesterol is high. I already know I have heart disease in my family, so I need to really like focus on just, you know, reining things in. The earlier I can the better. But then this, and it tastes so good and just like, logically, how do we create our environments to be conducive to helping us hit the goals that we want, especially in holiday times, or like Valentine's Day will be coming up, you know, in about a month after we post this, like how do you live your life? And you answered it just a little bit, but even just going a bit further, how do we live our life and not just completely fall off the wagon?

Speaker 2: 11:42

Yeah. So I think something to think about is. So, coming back to New Year's Day, coming back to New Year's resolutions they get a bad rap sometimes because so many people are like I'm changing everything and you know, by February they're over it because it was just too much. I think what to think about is the number of days in the year and the number of days where you're having cookies and chocolate. So if you're consistent, eating lots of veggies and not eating tons of treats and indulgent foods throughout the year, then a week or two at Christmas where you're eating extra of those things is probably not going to have a significant effect on your health or your weight.

Speaker 2: 12:19

Not trying to diet during the holidays is a good idea. It's very defeating and way more difficult than any other time. So I think, looking at you know the year on average, did you eat like the holidays for six months out of the year, or just those two weeks and a couple of days dabbled throughout the year? And I think that's what people should focus on, because we shouldn't miss out on some of these like traditions and, you know, special meals with family, special dinners with loved ones, cookies that grandma made, stuff like that should be a part of our lives and if we're consistently healthy and eating lots of fresh fruits and vegetables and healthy carbs and lean meats the rest of the year, then those aren't going to have a huge impact. So I think it's more about moderating. When we do indulge, you know, don't eat the cookies you don't like, don't eat 10 of the cookies, but don't feel guilty about enjoying some of those treats around the holidays if you can manage health promoting diet the rest of the year.

Speaker 1: 13:16

Yeah, you also talking in your book about keeping your eye off the prize and on your behavior. What does that mean?

Speaker 2: 13:26

Yeah, so a lot of people. They'll have this goal in their mind. Let's say, I want to lose weight and what they're focused on is losing weight. What they're focused on is what the scale says every day. But what you want and what the scale says aren't the things that make any of your goals happen. It's the consistent adherence to you know, a temporary fat loss diet, that will make it happen. So people will tend to get you know. Weight will fluctuate up and down, even when you're losing weight. It might bump up three pounds one day because you had extra water, extra salt, your periods coming, whatever it is, and people will freak out about that what appears to be an outcome. But if you focus on behavior being your goals and not the outcome, the outcome necessarily follows right. So the only thing that will dictate what the outcome is is your behavior, and so that should be your only focus.

Speaker 1: 14:22

If you could kind of create your ideal client or your ideal human and they would be doing like all of the habits. Just in general, in your research and in your experience of working with people, like you know, if people do these things they will be healthier, happier, more satisfied in life, whatever it might be. What are those habits that you would want this like created person to do on a daily, weekly, monthly basis?

Speaker 2: 14:52

Yeah. So I would say lifting weights super undervalued element and you know, bone health, staying active and independent and, to old age, keeping your muscle mass is one of the best ways to do that. Heart health there's a million benefits to lifting weights and people often focus a ton on cardio, which is important. You want to get some cardio in, but lifting weights has many, many, many benefits and I would say it rivals cardio and its importance for your physical health. And then just that balance, like having most of your meals be lean meat, healthy carbs, fruits and veggies, healthy fats, and letting yourself have some fun sometimes so that you can be a happy human being too, because that also contributes to our health. So I think those will be, those will be the main ones.

Speaker 1: 15:47

What about? So I know people listening and they hear lifting weights and I have a mixture of men and women who listen to the show and mixtures of age groups. So when you say lifting weights, do you mean barbell? Do you mean dumbbell, kettlebell, like men as, or women as much as men, because that's going to be the question like, oh, but I don't want to get bulky, right? This is one of the things you probably have to teach and coach people on day in and day out. So what does it mean to be lifting weights, why is it important for both genders and what does it look like through your age cycle?

Speaker 2: 16:21

Yeah, your life cycle. I would say it's almost more important for women just because we tend to suffer from osteoporosis more often, and lifting weights is very preventative of osteoporosis. Women also tend to do less resistance things just in their life. We pick up less things and move less things around on average than men do, so our rate of muscle loss is probably a little bit faster than theirs over our lifetime. And you won't get bulky. You won't.

Speaker 2: 16:52

I've been trying for 12 years to get bulky and typically in order to put on muscle mass, you've got to be lifting a lot often and eating extra so that you're gaining weight, because you can't gain muscle if you're not gaining weight.

Speaker 2: 17:10

And I think women also underestimate the impact that lifting will have on their physiques. So if you lift weights, your body composition changes and proves so. If you lift weights while you're losing weight, you're going to lose more fat because you're losing less muscle, and that tends to give that toned quote, unquote look, that sort of tight, firm look that people are often looking for with cardio. And women who do a lot of cardio and lose weight often end up with that sort of skinny fat result. And they don't. They can't understand why it's not working and that's basically what's happening is muscle loss while they're losing that weight. To answer your question about what kind of weights, if you are brand new it can be as simple as body weight and resistance bands and dumbbells as we lift. The longer we lift, the more sort of insensitive our body gets to the stimulus. And then we have to kind of upgrade to barbells and machines and more, more volume of lifting.

Speaker 1: 18:16

I love, I love lifting weights and I heard recently and I'd never thought of it this way, but I heard recently that for people kind of just getting into it, that machines can actually be really helpful. And I was taught like I grew, grew up I say in quotations when I first started working out- 15 years ago.

Speaker 1: 18:33

I started in CrossFit and so the idea was like you aren't, you don't use machines, you are the machine, but the but. I heard that like using machines, especially when you're starting out like forces you into correct alignment or at least you're not going to hurt yourself as easily. So it can be a great opportunity for people who are just getting used to the movements and moving their body in that way and all of that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2: 18:57

I completely agree. It's if you mess up doing triceps, pull downs, the machine just clings. You don't. You don't get hurt. What if you mess up when you're learning to squat? You could, you know, drop the weight funny and hurt yourself. So I definitely agree If someone has access to. The reason I say bands and body weight first is because a lot of people when they start out, like joining a gym and going in and figuring everything out is super intimidating, Whereas if they can watch some videos and do some dumbbell, resistance, band movements at home is kind of less intimidating. But if they have access to an, aren't afraid, machines are an excellent option. You can get a lot of volume without a ton of fatigue and risk. So I agree.

Speaker 1: 19:40

Do you think for men or women to get the most bang for their buck out of their strength training, that they need to be progressing towards one rut maxes on a quarterly basis or at all? Or can you go heavier, but not pushing yourself to your max, and still get the benefit?

Speaker 2: 19:59

Yeah. So if you're, if you're looking just for strength and you're looking, maybe, to perform in a sport or something, those heavier weights and lower reps are great. But if you're just looking for health and body composition change, then you actually want higher reps and lower weights. So something in the like six to 15, even six to 30 range in terms of reps is the most effective for either preserving muscle or growing some muscle.

Speaker 1: 20:28

Wow, how many days a week would you encourage people to be strength training?

Speaker 2: 20:32

I would say three days a week to start as you progress. If you've been, by the time you're lifting 10 years, you might want to up that to five days a week or more. But yeah, starting out three days a week is great and even if you're if you, if you're satisfied with your muscle mass, sticking with three days a week is a totally fine option to um, when you're not trying to lose weight, when you're trying to lose weight, you bump it up a little more because you're more likely to lose muscle, if that makes sense.

Speaker 1: 21:04

Mm, hmm, because you're, because of the cutting calories, you're more likely to lose muscle, yeah, yeah, so then, increasing the amount you're working out can help you maintain the muscle mass. Even a calorie in a calorie deficit? Yes, yeah, here's a. Here's another question right in line with that. So that's the thing when you work out, like for me, I'm hungrier, and the more I work out, the hungrier I am. So how do you balance working out with being in a calorie deficit in order to lose weight? When you're just hungry, like, is there an ideal macro range or percentage to eat in that can help to curb some of those cravings, and ideal kind of diet to follow? What are your thoughts on that?

Speaker 2: 21:49

So I think the first and most important thing to keep diets from being super oppressive is don't diet for too long, don't. Eight to 12 weeks is a good amount of time to be dieting, and once you hit that eight to 12 week range, start bumping your calories back up, get back into weight maintenance and that tends to be not too bad. A lot of times people will be really hungry the first week or two. They'll write out the next six to 10 weeks with very little hunger and in the diet. I find the people who struggle the most with hunger are those who have been just trying to diet for months and months, if not years, and just sort of never letting themselves get back to a healthy weight maintenance, not stressed about food kind of zone that is the most underutilized piece of advice ever.

Speaker 1: 22:42

Yeah, and that is one thing I think that could be so helpful for people to hear and understand, because when I hear the first time I heard someone say that, or even just hearing you say that, I'm thinking the majority of the world thinks, at least in Western society, is like no, you live life on diet, right.

Speaker 1: 23:00

Right, that's what we do. We're always on a diet and always trying to lose weight. Yeah, and so this mindset of like wait, I'm only supposed to diet for like eight to 10 or 12 weeks at a time I think that's going to blow some people's minds. So can you help people understand, like, why you said that and what does it mean to be off of a diet? So how do you just trust yourself with what you eat? What does being in regular weight management look like?

Speaker 2: 23:30

Yeah, so I have an article on the topic too. If you guys have links that go with the podcast or whatever that explains it sort of in depth and shows. I had a bunch of clients who I collected their data, who were just unable to lose weight even on severe calorie restrictions, and it ended up being because they had been dieting for so long. Then I got their calories back up, left them there for a few months and then they were able to lose eight to 10 pounds across their diet without much trouble. So what basically happens is when you're dieting, you're putting your body in a state of stress. Your body's like, okay, we're starving, what can we do to stop the starvation? And it starts to develop compensation mechanisms. Your metabolism will go down and that's not a permanent thing. You're not ruining your metabolism, but your body will make little changes and decrease your calorie output daily, both by adjusting your metabolism a bit, by making you know you might fidget less, you might choose to take the shorter way to walk because you're fatigued and tired. So your body has all of these ways of making you burn less calories and making it harder and harder to lose weight across a diet. You also start to get mental fatigue. So when people have been on a diet for a long time and face some sort of stress in their life, there is a really high tendency for them to treat food in an addictive manner. So you develop these binge eating sort of compulsions that you wouldn't have had before. So the longer you diet, the more all of this sort of diet fatigue and compensation builds up and builds up and pretty soon it becomes really really difficult to lose weight because your calories have to be even lower than they would have before. Your brain is starting to give you these compulsive like binge eating urges and things like that are happening. And that's when you get a lot of people who diet really hard, have a week of binging, diet really hard, have a week of binging and they end up just they maintain weight basically for the whole year but suffer as if they're dieting for the whole year when really if they took the time to bring their calories back up, they would do much better.

Speaker 2: 25:45

And to explain that a little bit, just to make it more practically applicable, what I like to do when starting my own diet or when starting someone on a diet is sort of eat to hunger, measure those calories. What does that end up? Is my weight saying stable? And then you develop a kind of base Okay, what number of calories do I have a stable weight, and that's kind of my baseline. Then from there across the diet you decrease calories, maybe 250 a day or so.

Speaker 2: 26:17

You'll do that probably when you start the diet you'll start to lose weight. Your body will compensate, you'll stop losing weight. You might drop the calories another 250 a day and then you'll get probably with only two reductions. You'll get to that eight to 12 week point where you should end the diet. And then you just kind of reverse engineer. You add 250 calories a day back and then maybe you add only 150 back and you'll end up with your new base, which might be a little lower than before you lost the weight. And then you can kind of just hang out there until if you wanna do another diet, until the next diet.

Speaker 1: 26:54

What are your favorite tools for counting calories and kind of tracking that over the period of time that you diet?

Speaker 2: 27:02

Yeah, a lot of people like MyFitnessPal. It's super easy to use. It has so many foods in its food bank so you can kind of be a little more flexible with your eating. For me personally, I've just been doing this so long that I kind of know like, okay, I need this much protein per meal. If I'm eating four meals a day, I'll have a little extra carbs when I'm working out and I need to get at least this much fat and that ends up giving me the correct calories. But for people starting, I think MyFitnessPal is a really good option to start with.

Speaker 1: 27:39

Mm-hmm. What are your insights into carbs versus fat? Well, actually, let's start with this question, at least for a lot of the listeners. So, protein how do you encourage people to calculate how much protein they should be getting on a daily basis, and would you say that's the most important of the macronutrients for them to focus on?

Speaker 2: 28:03

I would say in some ways it's the most important, but they're all kind of important. In my opinion. Carbs might be the least important, but I don't encourage people to eliminate those. So protein you want about one gram per pound of lean body mass. So that means that let's take a super easy example. Let's say you are 200 pounds and you're 20% body fat. That means you need about 140 grams per day or sorry, 160 grams per day because you take out your fat mass and you use the lean body mass, which can be kind of difficult for people if you don't have access to some kind of body scan to check your body fat percentage. So you can just use your body weight. But I would say the more overweight you feel you are, the less. I would count on that and I would reduce protein a little. Sorry, was that over complicated? Does that make sense? So if you're like I could stand to lose 30 pounds of fat, then maybe take 30 pounds off of your body weight and have that number be your number of protein grams per day. Can you eat too much protein? No, but the problem with overeating protein is then you get less fat and less carbs and so you really need fats to keep your hormones in balance. You never wanna go. Take your body weight, divide by three and never go below that in grams of fat per day to keep yourself safe from having hormonal issues which can lead to women losing their periods on diet. It can lead to unhealthy hair and nails and actually real physical problems in the long term if you're consistently under eating.

Speaker 2: 29:52

Fat. Carbs is kind of an activity dependent one. You don't wanna eliminate them because it tends to make people get strong cravings. A lot of people can't sustain that. It's not a lifestyle. Most people can live forever. So doing it on a diet and then bringing them back after the diet can make people kind of lose their mind. So it's good to keep them in there on the diet and it supports recovery and performance. So those can range anywhere from 0.5 to five times your body weight depending on the workouts that you're doing.

Speaker 1: 30:25

Is the fat, the intake of fat, as important for men and their hormones as it is for women?

Speaker 2: 30:34

Yes and no, and that a man who's eating consistently low fat will definitely have health problems. Women might have a few more sort of earlier, less urgent problems like losing their period and stuff like that, but it's pretty important for everybody.

Speaker 1: 30:52

I'd never heard that reason before. That's fascinating and makes a ton of sense In a similar vein of talking about the tools that can help people nutrition-wise. Going back, if people are just starting, let's talk about two people the people who are just starting and they want to get into strength training where are some areas or what are some tools or apps or whatever that they could use to help them get started? And then for the person who's more experienced but is wanting programming done for them where are some places that you think have some really great programming?

Speaker 2: 31:27

Yeah, so shameless plug for RP. For the more advanced people, the hypertrophy app is awesome. I use it myself. If you have lifted your familiar with movements, you can build your own program or you can request, you know, like butt emphasis, shoulder emphasis or whatever, and it will give you a program and you will fill in your weight, your reps and stuff like that and it will adjust to continue the progression over the weeks and I think it's really really good.

Speaker 2: 31:58

I'm so happy they came out with it because writing my own programming, I just don't follow it as well, for some reason, as I do when a robot tells me what to do.

Speaker 2: 32:07

But and it's a nice sort of convenient logging system at the gym in terms of just starting out, there's a lot of stuff out there and honestly, when you're just starting out you don't need the programming to be perfect. You're basically so sensitive when you're new to lifting that almost any program is going to be awesome if you're hitting all the muscle groups and there's enough volume. You know you're not doing one rep max of body weight squats, which you know you can't because your body is your body. It will work. We do have at RP a template gym free template that's dumbbells only, and I think it's a pretty beginner friendly one in terms of programs that you know don't have a coach and don't have someone directly helping you. If you can find someone knowledgeable to help you out in person, I think that's really really valuable too, because learning to get correct form when you're starting out is super, super important and it'll serve you for the rest of your exercise life.

Speaker 1: 33:10

What are some of the things that you see people promoting or talking about on social media that you just look at, as you know a PhD trained, educated, experienced person and think, Dear goodness, I hope no one follows this advice.

Speaker 2: 33:29

Oh man, there's a lot.

Speaker 1: 33:33

I'm trying to where to begin.

Speaker 2: 33:35

My pet peeve ones, I think one of the ones on the nutrition side that drive me crazy are the like extreme elimination of big food groups. Like, don't eat any carbs, don't eat any, you know, purple vegetables or whatever. The new like only eat meat. Whatever the new fad is that just cuts out a giant food group out of your life, because that's a really we want whatever your fat loss diet to be, you want it to be similar to what your lifestyle will be, just lower calories. So you don't want to lose weight doing something really weird, because then you're just going to go back to whatever you did before. You're going to gain the weight back and it's going to be a pointless endeavor.

Speaker 2: 34:19

And cutting out whole food groups is one of those things. If you can't ever eat bread or carbs, going out to dinner with your family becomes a strain, you know, going over to someone's house for dinner becomes a strain. You just you lose so much and people can't sustain that. So I really not a big fan of any of those. In terms of exercise, over emphasis on cardio makes me, makes me mad. Let's see, oh you know the ads that pop up and they have this like woman with like this firm, defined body and she's like all you need to do are. You know wall stand, you know whatever? And you know that she's in the gym for days, a week, lifting and dieting, and it's being presented as if she did some sit ups in a room and got to look like that, so right.

Speaker 1: 35:12

I think I've seen some of those ads to this girl and she does these like Pilates, like movements, and it's like, if you want to look like me and I'm thinking there is no way, that's all you, that's not all you did. Yeah, I can totally get that one more. The go for it.

Speaker 2: 35:33

The photos are influencers who post their. I think this is one of the most damaging things to women who are getting into fitness. Are these like influencers and fitness models and Not not crapping on them at all, like they're posting these gorgeous photos and perfect light, and those are the only photos they post. And what you don't realize is they look like that for a day they did a diet and then they probably did some sort of water and salt manipulation to get the definition of their muscles really well. They covered themselves in oil, they got tan, they got the lights right and then people get this perception that, like you, should be able to look like that every day of the year and that's just completely unrealistic. Can you get to that state and take some cool photos? Absolutely, and it would be fun. But don't expect, like popping abs and perfectly to design muscles year round unless you really want to get that. You really want to suffer and give up the rest of your life and fun.

Speaker 1: 36:29

Yeah, I'm so glad you said that one because that's so true and so so prevalent. The whole man net, what was the question? Or cardio, so go. So go back to the cardio thing. Like, is there a place for cardio? How much cardio do you think people could and should be doing? What do you think about zone two training?

Speaker 2: 36:52

Yeah. So I absolutely think there's a place for cardio. I think it's super important. If you're only lifting weights, you're not going to have good cardio, and having good cardio is great for your health. I'm not sure what the current recommendations for amount of cardio per week, but whatever they are, don't start with that. Work up to that if you're not currently doing cardio. But yeah, no, I think zone two training is great.

Speaker 2: 37:16

I think getting in hard cardio is great. There's also a place for and this isn't necessarily cardio training, but just getting in low intensity study, steady state and neat, which is just like your non exercise movement. So, like, make sure you're getting 8 to 10,000 steps per day, and that can seem like a lot until you start to sort of fit in little walks and parking further away from the grocery store and then it sort of adds up and just having that much movement is actually predictive of better health and old age. So just making sure you're moving, even if you're not quite ready to, you know, do sprints or run on the treadmill like, get your steps up as a first step.

Speaker 1: 38:00

Yeah, that's a great one. What are some of the habits that you personally have in your life that have been game changers for you?

Speaker 2: 38:09

Yeah, I think one of the biggest ones is probably just eating a variety of fruits and vegetables and nuts and seeds. When I first got into fitness it was kind of like, okay, I'm going to do this diet and these are my macros and I'm really busy, so it's just going to be string cheese and sun chips for this meal or you know whatever was like quick and fast. And what actually sort of shifted my perspective on that was when that game changers documentary came out. Do you remember that? It was like a pro vegan kind of meat kills you sort of documentary and I was frustrated by it because I felt the science they were posting it was very misleading. They'd post you know here's a reference article and then they'd say something but what they'd say wasn't really reflective of the findings of the study.

Speaker 2: 39:04

So I did this like 60 page review of it, because I can be a psychopath sometimes and I was just curious and what I learned I read about 220 articles and what I learned was that the most health promoting diet change you can do is to add fresh fruits and vegetables as a regular part of your eating habits. And it kind of surprised me. I kind of was of the mindset that, oh, you know, get your macros right and keep your weight healthy and you're fine, and so that that shifted my perspective and got me just making a focus to try. Okay, I got some flax seeds in here. I got some you know nuts to put in my salad. I'm going to have these fresh vegetables and just making that a priority.

Speaker 1: 39:51

That's interesting. I wouldn't have. I don't know that. I would have guessed that that would be the best thing that you could do. I probably would have guessed protein, but I can't say that I would disagree with it or that I'd can't see why. But why do you think that adding fresh, more of a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables is one of the best things you can do?

Speaker 2: 40:13

Yeah. So the literature, the sort of like vegan, is better literature. When they dissected it they found it wasn't actually that taking away meat was better, it was the adding fruits and vegetables were better, and I think the reason is the fiber content. It's going to make you feel full, you're not going to eat as many unnecessary calories, probably going to be easier to maintain a healthy weight. You've got all kinds of micronutrients and fresh fruits and vegetables, phytochemicals and different things that are health promoting, and just getting a variety of those constantly means that you're sort of meeting all of those needs that don't seem like needs, because if you don't get all those micronutrients, you don't get those phytochemicals, you're not going to die, you're not going to get sick, but having a continuous flow of them over time is going to promote health and longevity.

Speaker 1: 41:03

So I am now craving like a bowl of mixed fruit. Yeah, I mean, just after hearing you say that last night, I mean I told you I've been eating like, literally, protein in cookies has been my diet.

Speaker 2: 41:18

Yeah, it feels like a month now.

Speaker 1: 41:19

That's holiday day, right, and I sent my husband last night like I don't remember the last time I had a vegetable I mean a vegetable or some fruit and I think, after this I'm going to the grocery store and just getting like one of those bowls of fresh cut fruit yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. Well, Dr Mel Davis, thank you so much for your time. Where can people find out more about you, follow you and find out about your book and the other things that you're doing?

Speaker 2: 41:50

Yeah, so the book is on RP's website, which is RPstrengthcom. My Instagram is regressive under regressive under load, with an underscore between the two words, and that's a silly name because the weight training we're talking about needs progressive overload, like a slow increase in volume. So regressive under load is just a silly play on those words. I post there a lot about habits and nutrition and exercise. And, yeah, the RP website. I have a number of articles there. I'll send you the link to that one about the sort of chronic dieting problems and weight maintenance stuff.

Speaker 1: 42:29

Yeah, yeah, we'll include the links to all of those in the show notes and we'll include the link to the book, the article where people can follow you on Instagram. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it so much.

Speaker 2: 42:42

Thank you, I had fun.

Speaker 1: 42:44

I had a key takeaways from today's conversation with Dr Mel Davis in thinking back to the conversation because at the time of recording my outro, it's been about a week or two since I actually spoke with her and it actually makes for maybe an even better outro for the show and key takeaways, because these are the things I actually took away and continue to think about. My biggest takeaway from today's episode is eat more fruits and vegetables. When I asked her about what is the main thing to think of or look at in any diet, I was really expecting her to say protein and prioritizing protein, and she gave some great recommendations and I absolutely think that people should prioritize protein. So focus on 75% of your lean body, of your body mass, which is probably about your lean body mass, maybe 80%. I weigh 145 pounds. I try and eat well. Honestly, I try and eat about 140 grams of protein a day, but at minimum 120 grams of protein, because I know it's important and there is a lot of research out there about it. But here's the kicker Eat more fruits and vegetables.

Speaker 1: 43:52

Oh my gosh, as I said in the episode, I had been living a month of protein and cookies, like I have many. It's like the carnivore diet plus sugar, was basically what I was doing. I don't remember the last time I ate a vegetable, but after that episode I just I was craving fruits and vegetables and literally that night I said, rob, we just have to go somewhere where I can have like broccoli and Brussels sprouts. And that's exactly what we did and I ended up getting on my app and ordering groceries and I ordered just like a ton of vegetables and I've been for the past week now. I've been prioritizing protein as well as vegetables and fruit, and it's been so good. Eat more fruits and vegetables. The other key takeaway I had from the episode was how important it is to continue training, whether that's cardiovascular training, strength training. It's important no matter how old we are. Of course, talk to a licensed professional, maybe get a trainer if you are just getting into it or getting back into it, or If you don't yet feel comfortable. There's a lot of options going to group classes or finding a personal trainer, someone that can help you through that. And, of course, you know, always talk with your doctor before starting a new Eating plan or workout plan. But there's so much evidence about how moving your body, eating foods that are good for you are incredibly helpful. As we're going into the new year, I hope that those are two things that you take into thinking of as you're putting your own goals, your own intentions, your own resolutions in place.

Speaker 1: 45:28

It doesn't always have to be doing some crazy diet. You can literally say I just want to eat more fruits and vegetables. In fact, one challenge that I did a while ago was trying to eat 30 different types of Of fruits or vegetables in a week, and that was really fun because I started focusing on getting a variety of different fruits and fruits and vegetables, and spices, interestingly, also counted. But one of the things I found total pro tip at Kroger, which is where I shop.

Speaker 1: 45:58

That's the main store that I shop at in Tennessee, but wherever your grocery store is, there's this blend of lettuce that has 16 different. It's like an organic baby spring mix with herbs, and when I actually looked at all of the different things that were in it, there were 16 different types of lettuce or herbs in there. You know radicchio all of these things and so I got half of my of my 30 in in one meal and I felt so good. I felt so good after eating it. How can you implement more fruits and vegetables into your diet, and where can you be doing more exercise that will help you to stay strong as long as you live? I hope you enjoyed today's episode, leave a review, share it with someone who may benefit from it and, until next week, stay strong and Stay healthy.