26. Chris Wissman on Maintaining Peak Performance as a Real Human

Patrick McGilvray
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, running coach and mindset expert. I believe mindset is the most powerful and most underrated tool you have as a runner. So I’ve devoted my life to helping runners like you develop the mindset you need to fuel your inner fire and become the badass runner you were meant to be. This is The Running Mind podcast.

Well, hey there, and welcome to episode number 26 of The Running Mind podcast. My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m a weight loss coach for runners. And today, I have something very special to share with you. It’s an interview I did recently with Chris Wissman.

Chris is one of the cofounders of Real Human Performance here in Cincinnati. And he’s the director of their fitness programs. Chris considers himself more of a holistic health coach than a personal trainer though. And his approach to health and fitness is a lot like mine.

So for him, it’s not just about lifting weights or eating right, there’s so much more going on, there’s so many more things to consider. You know, if you want to get to your ideal body weight, or maintain peak performance as a runner, you have to consider the whole human. And that’s what Chris does.

And I say this is an interview, but it was more just like a fun conversation that he and I have. So we work out together. And he and I have these awesome conversations while we’re working out. And one day, I was like, do we need to record these conversations, I think people would get a lot out of this. So that’s kind of what we’ve got going on here. You’re gonna dig this, promise.

And if you haven’t already, be sure to check out the Running Lean community on Facebook. This is a Facebook group that goes hand in hand with this podcast, we take a deeper dive into these topics. You get to ask questions and get answers totally free. But if you listen to the podcast, you have to come check out the Running Lean community on Facebook, and starting July 1.

So that’s coming up very soon here in a matter of days, starting July 1, we are doing a 31 day no sugar challenge for the whole month of July. The challenge is for you to stop eating sugar. Sugar is just so terrible for you. Really is the first step if you want to lose weight. If you want to become a lean running machine, you’ve got to stop eating sugar.

So all during July, we’ll be talking about sugar, you know, all the reasons why you need to get off of sugar. I’m going to be walking you through this step by step. So each week I’ll be offering support, some tips, some q&a sessions, some coaching, I’m going to be talking about it here on the podcast, I’m going to do everything I can to help you make that transition off of sugar, and into becoming a better human and lean running machine.

So grab a few friends to join us in the Running Lean community on Facebook, you can just go to Facebook and search for Running Lean community. And you can find it there but join us for the no sugar challenge. It’s going to be amazing.

Okay, so in the interview, Chris and I talked about a lot of cool stuff. So we talked about what chronic cardio is like the cycle of chronic cardio and what runners need to do to break out of it. We talked about why we should be adding in some more high intensity workouts like sprints, we talked about how running slower (sounds counterintuitive) will actually help you to run faster.

We talked about sure sugar burning versus fat burning, and the benefits of becoming a fat adapted runner. We talked about what happens when you don’t get enough sleep, the importance of managing stress as an athlete. Why you might want to rethink sucking down all those energy gels during a race. Talk about intermittent fasting and the surprising benefits of when you work out in a fasted state.

Why athletes practice periodization and why you should too and a bunch of other stuff. So this is a really, we talk about a lot of stuff in here but it’s a really fun interview. And Chris, he’s just an all around awesome human and a good friend. I think you’re really going to dig this conversation. So here it is.

Patrick McGilvray
Okay, today I’m talking with Chris Wissman. Chris is a holistic, functional health coach and movement coach. How’s that, Chris?

Chris Wissman
That sounds perfect, man.

Patrick McGilvray
We were just talking about what do I call you and Chris was like, here’s some words you can use, you know, but what Chris does is he helps people to become the best version of themselves, you know, through functional fitness through coaching. And he does it with a really cool approach, something that I try to, you know, mimic in the way that I coach people, which is taking a holistic approach, like looking at this from a bunch of different angles.

It’s not just about work. Now, it’s not just about lifting weights, it’s not just about eating right, you’ve got to like factor in all these different things. And one of the things that Chris and I are going to talk about today, I hope we get into this, I’m sure we will, is about stress and the amount of stress that we put on our body on a regular basis.

So we as runners are really notoriously bad at resting. And we’re notoriously bad at overworking ourselves, and not listening to our body and not being like aware of, you know, how we’re feeling and then adjusting. We’re just like, hammer on all the time. So I want to talk about that a little bit today. So we got a few things we’re gonna talk about. Chris, how’re you doing today?

Chris Wissman
Good, man. Good. It’s good to be here. I’m really excited and excited to see you back in the gym. And I’m stoked to talk about this stuff as this is the stuff that I I love to research all the time and just keep up with.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and Chris and I work out together. And he’s my coach, you know, when we’re at the gym, and we have these conversations about, you know, about food and stress and running and all this stuff. And, and I’m like, dude, let’s just put this, let’s just record our conversation. So that’s what we’re doing. So cool.

Chris Wissman
Yeah. I love that you mentioned the running and the chronic state of running. And I think you mentioned to me not too long ago that people jump into a running protocol to maybe lose weight, and where that it can help. But if we’re in that kind of chronic state, the black hole training model of just some people refer to it as the stage three training model, the level three, it just becomes like a chronic stressor. And like you’re saying with the stress, and it’s, it becomes really hard to if your goal is to lose weight, it becomes really hard to lose weight. While you’re chronically stressed, the body actually wants to hold weight in that state to survive. And certainly, it gets confused.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, I was just talking about this with a client yesterday about what stress does to your body. So what stress does is it releases this hormone called cortisol. And cortisol is a stress hormone. And but when you’re when your body releases cortisol, it like floods, your system with glycogen, you know what I mean?

So glucose levels go up, your insulin levels go up. And we all know that, you know, when insulin is high, you’re in this fat storage mode. So people that are chronically stressed out whether it’s because of their job or their, you know, family situation, or because of what they’re doing to their body, the way they’re running or working out, find it very difficult to lose weight because their body is constantly in that fat storage mode.

Chris Wissman
Yeah, that’s exactly when cortisol is a great thing. It’s a survival mechanism. But we can’t be chronically releasing cortisol, we kind of get, at some point in time, you can’t produce it as well. And that becomes really problematic.

It’s what you were talking about when you discovered Mark Sisson, and probably a long time ago, but recently, when we’re kind of connecting the dots, with Sisson’s approaches, what he does is a lot of sprinting, and then a lot of low level like aerobic state movements. If I’m not mistaken, I’d love to do stuff in quite a long time.

But if I, if I remember correctly, that was his approach, and then maybe strength training first. And that kind of system, which helps people not have to stand up again, and that black hole, right, and that and that. There’s no real intention. I think that’s the underlying factor to all these things.

Like, why are we running? What’s the intention? And then if the intention is to lose weight, cool, if the intention is to I want to run a marathon, that’s a different story, if the intention is, you know what I mean? So for me, it just, everyone has to know why they’re doing what they’re doing, before they just jump into it for kind of haphazard reasons.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and honestly, like marathon runners were really great at like, following a plan, you know, following a training plan. Yeah, it’s like run five miles today. And you’re like, well, I don’t really feel like it but just do it anyway, or I’m really sore. I’m really tired. Just like do it anyway, and then do it tomorrow and do it the next day and do it three days from now and like this, just that what we do, you know, and we think we’re like, really, like, we’ve got this like, amazing work ethic.

And we’re like, yeah, you know. Yeah, yeah, the problem is you’re just always, you know, in that you’re stressing your body and you never give it a chance to kind of calm down. And, you know, going back to the cortisol thing, it’s like, that’s a great thing to stress your body sometimes, but then, you know, you want to like, then not stress your body, because that’s correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that’s how we grow. You know, when we lift, we lift weights at the gym, we stress out our muscles, we break them down, we tear them apart, and then we gotta rest so that they will grow.

Chris Wissman
We can’t be catabolic all the time. Catabolic is muscle destruction, you gotta, you gotta go through that healing process. At some point. It’s a guy that I trained through, I always go back to the yin and the yang cycle with all of these things like the balance is so important. Yeah, catabolic, you’re gonna, you’re gonna start rippin’ some muscle, but then you have to rest, you have to come out of that, that a lot of these really high intensity, high functioning athletes are 80%, anaerobic, and that 20% of the time and they’re in that catabolic state.

So it’s not like a 50/50, which is very interesting, right? Yeah. Yeah, they pick very specific times with very specific movements to go tear it up. And on their other training days, their way in low there, they’re getting their mileage in if they need to. It might not be Grace mileage, but you know what I mean?

So they’re staying at that slower pace, like you and I were talking about, and all the other life elements that we experienced that make us not only like, from muscle, musculoskeletal standpoint, catabolic is stressors from every other element is, again, mimicking catabolic activity in our, in our, in our body. And so we’re really struggling to heal. So that rest process is like, dude, sleep is sacred. It is, it is free, you don’t have to pay for it. And if you set it up, right there, there is nothing. That I mean, there are some things but it affects your life so positively. But yeah.

Patrick McGilvray
Sleep is such a key factor here. Like, I just read this study where they tested people, and they like limited the amount of sleep they got, and the like, by an hour or two. And they you know, in this, you know, clinical trial that they did with these people. And all of them started gaining weight just from like reducing the amount of sleep there again, because of the cortisol.

Chris Wissman
It is. Yep. Yeah. There’s a really cool chart that I’ll send over to you. It shows the the graph on the cortisol rise in relation to the sunlight and all of this. It’s it’s a really unique sequence that has everything to do with balancing your rest and recovery cycle. European some people call it your circadian rhythm. Yeah. And so if I had any advice to people, if it was like, the freest thing you can do is to structure your sleep as best as you possibly can.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, for sure. We can get enough sleep, for sure. But going back, you mentioned something that was kind of cool, talking about the intensity of the workouts. And so one thing I’ve been doing lately, and I’ve been having some good luck with this, in fact, I just did this this morning. I did some sprinting.

So yeah, go out for and I try to do this once a week. And I go out for it’s like a 20 minute run. It’s really short, but incredibly intense. Like I do just a half mile jog, just to kind of warm up a little bit. Then I stop and get my heart rate down. And then I run as hard as I can for like 30 seconds.

And then take about a minute off until my heart rate comes back down again. And then just repeat that so I’m running full on as hard as I can for 30 seconds. resting for a minute and I do that like six times. And then through interval training. Yeah, then a short jog to finish up.

Okay, so that’s what that looks like. The rest of the week. I do a couple other runs, where I’m going really slow. So it’s almost painfully slow sometimes. Yeah. And to keep my heart rate down to stay in that aerobic zone. Yes. You know, the fat burning zone, the, the place where you were like build your aerobic engine you oh my god, this is like the best way to build endurance is to run really slow. It’s really hard for people to do that though. They freak out because they’re like, man, I can’t run that slow all the time. But if you if you can get good at running in that aerobic zone, do your endurance, it just goes through the roof,

Chris Wissman
Especially if you regulate breath during it. And the yogis figured this out a long time ago. Like really anaerobic is just like a symptom of not being aerobic don’t I mean, iit’s not like a different state. It’s just like, oh, I’ve become anaerobic now.

Like the aerobic if you can control the breath during the aerobic process, the more you’ll be able to regulate your O2. And there’s a term I’m looking for specifically, Brian McKenzie talks a lot about this. And I’m excited for you and Jen to, to talk about the breath and maintaining our aerobic zone. Because when you come out of it, that’s that 20%, right that, that more chest breathing and more needing for more oxygen. It’s really, it’s a fascinating topic. There’s a lot of really awesome experts out there in regards to in regards to that. And Brian would encourage you to if you’ve never heard of him, check out Brian Mackenzie. He’s an awesome, dude.

Patrick McGilvray
Definitely, I’ll put a link to that in the show notes for this episode, too. And, and just so people know, Chris is talking about Jen, who is your partner at human performance. And Jen and I are gonna be having a conversation about breathing soon, Jen is a breathwork expert. And she’s going to be talking about, she and I are going to have a conversation about breathing and running and how to kind of reduce stress using breath work, you know how to, you know, stay in that aerobic zone, using your breath as a tool for that. And some other things that blow she blows my mind when she started talking about breathing.

Chris Wissman
It’s really wild. Every time somebody comes out of her office, they’re like, dude, who is that? What in the hell, how does she know these things?

Patrick McGilvray
So I found that, like, the slowing down has been one of the best things that I can do to improve my endurance, you know, and, and here’s the thing that runners struggle with, they’re like, I don’t want to, I don’t want to be a slow runner, I don’t want to run that slow. But the thing is, in order to get faster, you got to start slow, or you got to really slow down, you can, as you become, you build that aerobic engine, and you become super efficient at that slower speed, and you’re incorporating some really explosive speed work. You can start ramping up your speed. Exactly, it’s going to be so much easier for you. Yep, oh my god, yeah,

Chris Wissman
Without a doubt, you know, you know, that threshold will get higher and higher and higher and higher than your, your efficiency of breath will be the same at a faster pace. And it will seem just as easy if you’re smoking be able to being able to push that envelope, which is it’s really cool.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, so one of the issues that people have when they do this, but you know, Mark Sisson calls chronic cardio, it, you know, they get just into that anaerobic zone, and they just stay there all the time, every difficult is, or every workout is like, you know, moderate to difficult intensity, like every single workout is the same, there’s not enough rest and recovery period in between there, this leads to burnout, it leads to chronic stress, it leads to inflammation…

Chris Wissman
That’s the hardest thing ever, when it comes to developing a workout program for the general population, because most people are chronically stressed, right, we go as you know, we go through at Real Human Performance, we go through cycles, right, we’ll go through a heavy phase will go through an endurance phase, we’ll go through a rotation and a power phase and, etc, etc, with and they’re very strategically placed. One after the next so we can lead in these different zones.

But the problem is the the capacity takes takes quite a bit to get if that makes any sense to have the capacity to say do a heavy set of three on like a trap bar, squat deadlift, whatever you want to call it, or a heavy set of three on a push press, or a heavy sled boy, you have to be really a balanced human being to be able to go in there and, and push it like a corporate athlete, if you will. So that’s why my passion is really helping people understand their life stressors. Like you said, it’s easy to build on that. The foundation, like we’re talking about, has to be laid. And sometimes that’s hard to convince people to take the time to do. If that makes sense.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and yeah, and it’s building the foundation. It’s like the, it’s the foundation. It’s like the most important part. It really is. And then there’s this idea of like, periodization, you know, or like, you know, you know, just, you know, following like not only listening to your body and kind of like, if you need a rest day take it but also like, like a professional athletes, for example.

They go through these training seasons, you know, so they’ll have a season where they start out really slow, and then they gradually build in intensity. And then they, you know, get to this critical point they do whatever event they’re going to do and then There’s this period of rest, you know, where they’re not doing any, hardly any training at all.

And, you know, that gives your body a chance to, like, you know, rebuild on the inflammation to come down. And you get to do other things like spend time with your family and connect with your friends and you know, do hobbies and all these other things that you like to do that make your life worth living, you know. But again, there’s like this idea in that a lot of runners follow this, which is like you’re always training. So you’re always at, like, this intensity level of like, a seven or something seven or eight, you know, and just like, that’s how you do like, 100% of the time.

Chris Wissman
There’s a reason that athletes pay coaches a lot of money to design them periodization protocols because it’s keeping them from getting injured. It’s, it’s lengthening the lifespan of their sport, and, and then making money, right. So it’s, that’s the professional, I guess my point is the professionals do it like that for a very good reason. You don’t have an option, but everything is very crucial in that world. It’s there to make a living.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and I can’t, I’m not a professional athlete. Yeah, no, right. But I can say from my own experience of years of like, just pushing it all the time, that I was stressed out, I was always I was inflamed.

I was, you know, addicted to carbs, carbs and sugar, like and glucose, like I was running on on sugar, you know, and I became, you know, I started gaining weight, and I started becoming, you know, pretty stressed out and inflamed. And just like, unhealthy as a runner, which is a crazy thing to think about, you know, because most people think, Oh, you run marathons, you’ve got to be like, the healthiest of the healthy. And it’s just not true.

There’s plenty of people out there that are just like me, like I was, which is like, just, you know, totally addicted to carbs and sugar running on glucose taking 18, you know, gels with them for a long run, whatever, right? And just like never, you know, always gaining weight, always under stress, and not understanding why they aren’t in perfect health.

Chris Wissman
Intention, man. Yeah, that’s exactly it. What is the what is your intention here? And then if it’s not, pure intention isn’t lining up. The results are lining up with the intention. There’s something wrong. And that sounds like that you’ve discovered that.

I had a similar thing. A couple years ago, on my birthday. I guess it was my 30th birthday. I started feeling really dizzy in a restaurant. I don’t know if I mentioned this in the last podcast, did I? I don’t think so. Anyway, because it was kind of a, like a eye opening experience. Got really dizzy at a restaurant on my birthday, I was under a lot of stress.

At the time, I was sleeping probably four or five hours a night, probably four coffees a day. Any element of life that I could think of I was getting stressed from I was trying to make a pretty extreme diet change. I was heavy, heavy strength training. It wasn’t like an 80/20. For me with a 20 strength. It was like probably four days a week of heavy lifting and very little aerobic activity.

So I ended up passing out in this restaurant and what looked like I wanted to anaphylactic shock. And no one was really, ever really able to give me any answers. I went to the hospital and got all the scans and the tests. And I believe that I just have had a total shutdown of my nervous system. It was the craziest thing I’ve ever experienced in my life.

But it was just from chronic stress, right? It was just without recovery. And the body perceives stress. Perception is almost all the same, whether it be physical, mental, or emotional, or nutritional, or dehydration, all these things equal kind of the same thing at the end of the road.

It’s a hormonal dysregulation. It’s an end you can’t recover without setting down, getting out of that catabolic lifestyle, getting out of a catabolic state and resting. And so once I understood that, I didn’t really I, I kind of had to make a lot of changes. And that’s kind of why I was making mentioned on my being very cognizant of my caffeine consumption because I can become addicted to that very fast and I noticed my cortisol getting jacked up.

If I break that one coffee in the morning, and I start doing two a day. I know, like a weekend I’m like, oh, your mind tries to play tricks on you. It’s like yeah, it’s alright, you’re running low. Today, you’re gonna do a X, Y and Z, you should get a little extra energy and it’s fake.

And at that point, it’s not I’m borrowing and borrowing that energy. So and everyone’s different in that regard. So it’s just that the stress element of all this is, is, is of the utmost importance, utmost importance if you’re going to be doing any kind of activity, and it’s hard, man, that’s life right now, like, people have kids, and they’ll have really intense jobs, and they have to maintain relationships at home and at work and with their family. And so that the balance, yeah.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, man, I mean, you’re talking about so many important things there, you know, and, you know, the stress that we put ourselves under. Even if we’re, quote, unquote, like, super healthy, like, you were like, I thought I was, you know, like, you can, that stress can really cause a chain reaction, and lead to all kinds of health issues, you know, you passed out in a restaurant, basically, because your body was just like, shutting down, you know, yeah.

And for a lot of people, like, I know, my experience was that I was, like, really inflamed, and just gaining weight, like crazy. And I couldn’t figure out why. And, and part of it, you know, was diet, but you know, another big part of it was, was stress and constantly putting myself under stress, whether it was from, you know, work or from relationships, or from, you know, the kind of workouts I was doing, it’s all related.

And that’s where you know, what I started talking about what you do and how you help people, Chris, you know, I mentioned, you take this approach, where we look at all these things. And that’s what I love, like working out at Real Human Performance. And I love your approach is because we talk about these things. And it’s not just about lifting the weights at the gym. Yeah.

Chris Wissman
I try to explain that to people that haven’t been in there. Like, how’s the gym? I’m like, wow, and it’s not really just a gym. I try not to get frustrated.

Patrick McGilvray
They’re like, well, you know, LA Fitness is cheaper, you know? Yeah. I’m just like, Yeah, I’m

Chris Wissman
Like, whatever. Just come in for a month and tell me what you think.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. And so like, yeah, you’ve been such a big influence on me, honestly, like, this has been really, I’ve had an amazing health journey and health transformation over the last few months, in part by, you know, some of the things that you and I have been talking about some of the things that you have taught me, you know, I mean, a few years ago, I ditched the sugar and the carbs.

And I like, kind of went more of on a like a ketogenic type of diet. And, you know, and you and I talked a lot about that at the time, and I had a lot of great results from that, you know, and I remember one of the biggest results I had was that I was training for these ultra marathons at the time, and I’d really slow down my running.

But dude, I could run all day, because I was just running on fat. I was completely fat adapted. I was fueled by fat. And I could literally run, I would do these ultra marathons in the summer 30 mile trail races, you know, and I wasn’t breaking any speed records. But dude, I could run all day. And I was just doing like, for fuel. I was drinking water. And eating almond butter.

Chris Wissman
Yeah, like that was about you gave me some of those coconut balls that you had made back in the day. Yeah.

Patrick McGilvray
And so I was doing these fat bombs and coconut oil and stuff like that. So I learned all that. But then it got I didn’t I didn’t have the whole I didn’t have the whole picture. And I went back to like, you know, doing the carbs again. And, and that’s when things started to go kind of slippery, slippery slope, you know, started going downhill for me.

I started becoming more stressed out, more chronically inflamed, and started gaining weight. And the last few years have been this low decline of my health. And I finally had to just be like, dude, what is going on here? So thinking back to what we did before I’m like that worked for me and I had amazing results. I remember feeling so good. Back then I’m like, I gotta get back into it and become fat-adapted again. So that’s where I am today. And these last few months have been amazing, you know, I’ve lost like 35 pounds, dude. Yeah, dude, I’m not inflamed anymore. Like I can see my abs again.

Chris Wissman
So happy I can be a part of that. That’s frickin cool.

Patrick McGilvray
But one of the things that I really had to wrap my head around is that, you know, running is not a really effective way to just lose weight. You know what I mean? I was trying to use running to lose weight and I kept running more and more, and it wasn’t working.

But now I understand it’s more of a hormonal issue, you know, and, and once I figured that out, and then figure it out some of the stressors that I was putting my body under the weight, you know, just started melting off. Yes, and then you know, then there’s that period of time. After adaptation, you know where as a runner running on sugar, you got to switch over to being fueled by fat. So you got to get the sugar out of your system takes a few weeks. But then once you get to that point to that’s where the magic happens. And that’s kind of where I am today. And I love it.

Chris Wissman
Yes, yeah, without a doubt I, under that that stressful state that I was in I was I was fat-adapted, and I had all these benefits from it as far as like, no brain fog. And I just didn’t get hungry all the time, like you would in a normal eating scenario. But one thing I found out about myself with that situation was that my liver was under a lot of stress, and it wasn’t able to keep up because we can produce our own glycogen, theoretically, we don’t have to have a healthy individual doesn’t have to have carbohydrates, or sugar.

We can do all of that on our own. What I found out through one of my friends, Jared Ziegler to the living proof Institute, and that dude’s on another level, but that I wasn’t, I just, he just pointed me in a couple of directions.

He didn’t tell me very much, but I intuitively discovered them that I was not producing glycogen, my liver was really stressed. So I had to back off a little bit and then then really slowly reintroduce, and find what my kind of we talked about last time and metabolic type was. And I mentioned last time that I was more of a carbo type.

And I think that I’m more of a carbo type when I’m stressed, if that makes sense. Because, and I didn’t have the availability, I don’t have, I didn’t have the full life force to have all my systems working in synchronicity, when I’m under a lot of stress. And now with this recalibration of sleep after the break, and coming back, and then having a consolidated schedule, I can really tune all these things in.

So I guess that it kind of leads back to what we were talking about the ancestral eating type, you know, is understanding that and understanding that it matters, how we evolved, in what our ancestors had availability to eat. That is literally how our genetics are made up. And now, there is epigenetics, where you can change slightly, but we still have some kind of hardwired things, if you will. So that’s where it all goes back for me. And the majority of the people have access to heavy fat dense fuel. A lot of the times, you know what I mean? So whether it be wild game, or you name it, you know what I’m saying?

Patrick McGilvray
So, and I’ve been like, really fascinated by that whole topic lately of ancestral eating, which is yeah, basically eating what your particular ancestors ate, you know, like, when you just say like, the Paleo diet or something like that, that’s kind of a one size fits all for everybody. And everybody has their own interpretation of it.

Some people it means just eat bacon all the time. Some people just like just eat cheese, or whatever now. Yeah. So but if you can, if you can look at your particular genetics and your particular ancestral eating patterns and the things that your particular ancestor did. My ancestors come from Western Great Britain, Ireland and Scotland, mostly. Yeah, and so they were eating a lot of fish. And a lot of, they eat a lot of oats, they have these like oat cakes, which is something that they’ve been eating for, you know, a couple 1000 years.

Julius Caesar actually makes note of this in a document where he you know, he ended up in, in Great Britain, you know, any any came across the Britains. And he made this note of them eating these oatcakes. And so that’s something that my ancestors used to eat. And then, but obviously, it wasn’t highly processed, like that kind of stuff is today. And then, you know, certain game animals too.

Yeah, you know, so anyways, so there was this. So those kinds of things like you can actually look to your own history. And even within the last 500 years or so, is a good way to look your great grandparents or their great grandparent, you know, somewhere in that lineage there and see what they were eating, because we have some good records of that, you know, we even have, like recipes that people have handed down, you know.

Chris Wissman
And it’s worth testing. You know what I mean, to see how you do on that there is a good old brand out there, it’s called One Degree, they actually have a barcode on their bag, and it tells you exactly what farm their oats came from. So it’s like guaranteed glyphosate free. Cool, really cool brand, just side note, but yeah. So once you gain that knowledge, then you can look back and think about what they’re eating like you did and test it out and see if it works for you. A lot of times it does and sometimes it doesn’t, but it just depends on where you’re at. And your your journey of making these these changes. So I think it’s fascinating nonetheless.

Patrick McGilvray
I mean, it’s totally worth experimenting with, you know what I mean? Yeah, like if you’re if your ancestors are from, you know, the tropics, they’re gonna they’re gonna eat a much different diet and you’re, you’re going to be predisposed to, to thrive on a much different diet, then, you know, the Inuit Eskimos and the Arctic, you know what I mean? So yeah.

Patrick McGilvray
That’s, that’s, that’s really cool. And those people are probably exposed to, they’re probably eating fat, fatty fish, and then tropical sugars. So I think one of the misconceptions with fat adaptation is that we no longer use sugar. And that’s not that’s not the case really, at all, because we’re producing our own and we’re converting proteins, and we’re really in the training zone into sugars, right.

And especially for super catabolic, even our muscle. So it’s not like it’s this direct gear shift from sugar to fat, you know what I mean, it’s a constant mesh of different types of fuel. But just having the availability, to get the most efficiency out of that fat is what I think is important to understand. Because before we didn’t, we weren’t able to use it unless we were like, in this starvation situation, and you were just out in the wilderness forever, and you would have to burn your stored body fat. So forcing yourself to start using that is really, really cool.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and that fat is, is such a great source of fuel. It’s like a, especially if you’re an endurance athlete, because, you know, it’s, you know, glycogen is great for short bursts. If you’re a sprinter. You know, if you’re Usain Bolt you want to be you want to have those glycogen stores filled up, you know, but if you’re a long distance runner, or an ultra runner, you don’t need to have that added glycogen, you can get all the energy you need for that long distance running, just from your fat, it’s such a clean burning type of fuel. And you can you know, we have hundreds of 1000s of calories of fat just on our bodies, even the leanest of us. So we don’t really need to bring all the gels and sports drinks and all that stuff for those kinds of events.

Chris Wissman
Especially if you’re not going to train right the next day, like the majority of us are not, like you said are not professional athletes, right. So after you train, a healthy body can go without fuel immediately. And we’re you mentioned fasted workouts. I know a little bit more on waiting after the workout regards to, again, a healthy body, if you do your exercise or your run, you can wait a little bit and let the body do its natural hormetic process.

When we interrupt that hormetic process with immediate fuel, or immediate cold shower to blunt inflammation, then our body gets assistance. So you’re, you’re essentially taking away from that workout or that recovery of that workout a little bit.

If you’re able to wait a little bit, you know, take a walk after you’re done exercising, or if you’re done running, and then cooled down. And maybe that 60 minute mark could start replenishing. And if you’re gonna go right back at a hard one, the next day after training or something really serious, then you might consider the glucose then.

If you’re not going to train the next day, or if it’s going to be an aerobic day, a light day, you don’t necessarily need it, you know what I mean? So that’s a really interesting thing to think about as as people progress with their training as the as someone like me might be a little different because I struggle I have the opposite of struggle where I really don’t want to put on so I might need to go replenish right after and that seems like peachy rosy but it’s it’s a pain in the butt.

Sometimes they have to worry about how much fuel to put in. Before Patrick and I just got started was talking about since we’ve opened the gym back up. I’ve lost like 12 pounds and just sheer movement and activity. And so everyone’s going to be unique with generally speaking you don’t have to refuel immediately after.

And sometimes from what a lot of these guys are saying there’s huge benefits to going into a workout. Again, I want to keep stressing a healthy body going into a workout fasted. We’re talking all sorts of anti-aging effects, and then and then being more sensitive to insulin again, and tons of things, which I think is fascinating.

Growth factor and hormone regulation and testosterone production. And it’s really wild. And to be honest, you mentioned that in our note overview. I hadn’t looked at that a lot in a long time. And I thought it was fascinating when I when I started pulling this stuff back up and I was like, dang, I wasn’t sure I didn’t know about all that at least anytime recently. I wasn’t I wasn’t up on the research there. It’s pretty cool.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, a couple of things that I love about working out in that fasted state is number one, you produce more adrenaline, which means you actually work out a little harder. Then if you are working out in a fed state, okay, so number one you can, you can intensify your workouts and do some good explosive training. And it’s good for the long distance training too.

Number two, you produce more growth hormone when you’re in that fasted state. So you could actually like, you’re gonna get better results from your from your workout, and the recovery time will be shorter, because of that growth hormone that’s being produced.

Chris Wissman
It’s kind of like that hormetic response I was talking about, right? Like you’re not assisting your body in this process that it has to do. And it gets better at it, slowly.

Patrick McGilvray
And if you’re like trying to lose weight, working on a fasted state is a great way to really access those fat stores and start to use the fat for fuel, meaning you’re burning body fat while you’re working out. So it has all these amazing advantages. And it’s almost like cheating in a way. Because like, I know that there’s some professional athletes that did train in a fasted state now because it gives them that same kind of edge as if they were taking performance enhancing drugs. Yeah, without any of those crazy side effects.

Chris Wissman
It’s, you’re exactly right. I mean, the clarity you get sometimes on a fast is like, your body’s not working, it can focus on what your task at hand, you know, you’re not digesting food. And that’s like the big thing with going to bed. Without food in your stomach, the body gets a chance to do its thing gets a chance to physically and emotionally recover.

From all the standpoints of life, we always have food in our system, then we’re just constantly having to spend a ton of energy, I forget the percentage of energy spent on digestion versus what you think like, say you had 100 calories, I think 40 of them go to digesting the food. I’m not a big calorie person.

But just to give you an example, it is a huge working process to metabolize food, and to turn it into fuel. And the body gets hot. When you’re eating a bunch of food, like my body temperature will go way up. I can just physically feel like radiating heat when I have a lot of food to process. So just think about how much work that is.

So there’s a reason that all the ancient ancient traditions and religions have incorporated fasting for it since the beginning of time. Yeah, something we had to deal with, like the feast famine cycle, and we’re out in the wild. Like there might be times when we didn’t get it, and everybody talks about that. But it’s, it’s real. Like, there’s times we went without food for a long time, and are fine. Fine, totally fine.

Patrick McGilvray
You touched on something though, that’s really important too, also for long distance runners, that when you are constantly shoving food into your stomach while you’re running, especially doing these longer events, you’re spending a lot of energy digesting that food.

So energy and blood gets pulled away from your extremities from your muscles to work in digesting, especially for the ultra runners who are actually eating a lot of food like pizza, potato chips and stuff like that out there. So instead, if you can work out and do these longer runs in a fasted state, you don’t need to constantly be fueling your body. You’re not using all this extra energy that you need for your legs to be digesting all this food. I mean, it makes sense, right?

Chris Wissman
You know, it’s, it’s right. It’s exactly right. Yeah, I noticed I would watch I watch a lot of Ultras. I’ll watch the ones in Colorado, and in Meadville, and just something that I don’t I’ve never done one I’ve always wanted to so I end up watching him and these guys are like at breaks eating big pieces of pizza. I’m like, what are you doing?

Patrick McGilvray
I mean, I will totally tell you like I was eating so much. Like when I did my 100 miler, I ate so much food. And honestly, looking back on it, it was probably a lot harder than it needed to be for that.

Chris Wissman
You think there’s a better way to fuel what these breaks for people. And I don’t, I’m not trying to be judgmental, but I just assume there’s got to be some. Why is it that we just resource to junk at the brakes might excuse the excuses that I’ve heard is that we burned it so fast that it doesn’t matter. I don’t I mean, like you get a cellular response from everything that you’re putting in. So it’s like, is there something better we can be doing for these guys and you guys and gals at these checkpoints to not have to have all the garbage?

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, like I was under a lot of GI distress during that particular race for sure. A lot of Gi issues. In fact, eating anything became extremely hard like I had to force myself to just eat like salty pretzels or was just something to get the salt in and potato chips because everything else was making me like nauseous, you know? Yeah, and a lot of that has to do with just, you know, constantly having all that blood, you know, in your stomach trying to digest all this food that and it just it really upsets your stomach. So a lot, a lot of runners have issues with GI issues.

Chris Wissman
I wouldn’t doubt it. I mean, I touched last time, that idea of the disrupt somatic inhibition, and there’s all kinds of terms around it. But all that really means is all your organs are inflamed, so as a musculature, most muscular scope, musculoskeletal system around it, sorry. So you get a stress response in your gut while you’re in the middle of 100 mile race. I struggle with that.

Patrick McGilvray
And it’s kind of self induced, right? Yeah.

Chris Wissman
Yeah. Like you want everything on your side when you’re running 100 miles. Come on.

Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. I mean, and I don’t know what they I mean, there’s a different answer for everybody. But like, one of the things I experimented with, and I kind of mentioned this earlier, which is on these Ultras, I was doing almond butter, and I would get those like little packets of Justin’s almond butter, and they would be just be almond butter with some, like, maybe some maple syrup in there or something like that.

Yeah, so there was a little bit of sugar in there, but mostly, it was just like a lot of fat. And, and your and your stomach doesn’t have to work very hard to like, metabolize that. And almonds are already ground up. Yeah, but you’re using mostly your, your fat stores for energy.

Now, the sugar packets, you know, the gels like that are just like liquid sugar, basically do the same kind of thing. But they cause an amazing amount of distress and people in people. And but what they do is they you know, it’s like liquefied sugar, basically. And so you get this glycogen hit right away, you know, it’s like, your muscles can access that right away.

But that causes a lot of stomach distress for a lot of people. And so like on an endurance event like that, you can’t do that you can’t be sucking down this sugar all the time, because it will just, you will be sick to your stomach.

Chris Wissman
Yeah, then I did an adventure. I saw my Uncle a quite a while ago. But I remember I’ve never had one of those gel packs. And I remember tasting it. And I was like, whoa. Like the sweetness and the sourness from that it’s something I’d never experienced in my life, it was probably because I’m in the middle of this excruciating race. And my body hadn’t taken any calories. So it’s just like exaggerated. But nonetheless, I, I only had one or two during that race. And it was it was wild.

Patrick McGilvray
I mean, they work to deliver that glycogen like, you know, it gets turned into glycogen right away. And so it works to like, give you that quick energy. But that only lasts for 30-40 minutes, something like that. Yeah, you know, more like, you can’t do that for 24 straight hours, if you’re in long distance races, you know, or, I don’t know, maybe some people can. Like I said, it’s kind of different for everyone, you kind of got to figure out what works for you.

But once you become once you don’t need the glucose for energy, if you’re just relying on the fat, you don’t need to be putting all this sugar and all these carbs into your body. During these kinds of races. You could do some, like, eat some strawberries, you know, you could do Yeah, some some kind of natural forms of of, you know, dense nutrient dense carbohydrates, sweet potatoes as a great thing to have and something like that, you know, easy to digest tons of great nutrient dense carbs. And, and it’s more of a long lasting type of fuel.

Chris Wissman
Yes. There’s a couple of guys that are talking about and I’ve never experienced them. But I’ve heard really good things about something called ketone esters. I only found the production of them through like one company. This has been a couple of years back, but you really just rang a bell a fuel during races and I remember something called ketone esters. So I would maybe look at that. See what you think about that.

Patrick McGilvray
I’ll have to look that up because I have not heard that before.

Chris Wissman
The only thing I remember about them other than their name was how expensive they were.

Patrick McGilvray
I didn’t know that. Like there’s a way that you can like drink ketones somehow to like, kind of get your body into ketosis faster or something like that. But I haven’t really looked into that either.

Chris Wissman
The description was rocket fuel, so

Patrick McGilvray
Awesome. Anything else you want to talk about before we wrap it up here? That’s been really awesome, by the way.

Chris Wissman
I think that’s about it, man. And I always go back to making sure that everybody is under the least amount of unnecessary load possible. And I think that’s something that anyone could just take a look at any element of their life and see where they can get rid of unnecessary load, or, or address unnecessary load. But again, whether it be food or relationship or dehydration, or lack of sleep, or lack of movement, you know, you all everyone knows what they could be doing better, you just have to sit down, ask yourself that, and just encourage people to do it, you know. So I think that’s it.

Patrick McGilvray
I love it. I love that intuitive approach to not just eating I love the intuitive approach to eating to, you know, what fuels you eat, what sounds good right now. But I also love that intuitive approach to physical exercise.

You know, if I’m feeling stressed out, or I’m feeling tired, this is not the day to go, you know, push it extra hard as a day to like, slow it down. Take it easy, or just rest. Yes. So I love that awesome man. Back Yeah, well, as always, it is so fun talking to you. And having these conversations, Chris, like I said, we just sit down, we just start talking about whatever it is, or know where it’s gonna go. But it’s fun today. So where can people like reach out to learn more about you?

Chris Wissman
Well, so we have Real Human Performance, we’re going under a little construction in the background as far as like digitally and all that because we’re just creating some new programs, the website is going to look a little different over time, or social media will look a little different.

Personally, I had to get rid of one of my social media accounts, which is drawing too much energy from me. So I went and resorted just to Facebook. And I’m gonna start jumping back on health wagon on Facebook and helping people with that. So I’m not on Instagram, but Real Human Performance is on Instagram. You can also go to our website at realhumanperformance.com. And you can check me out on Facebook, and I think it’s just Christopher Whitman. And I’m gonna start being a lot more engaging on Facebook with the information that I help people with.

Patrick McGilvray
Cool. Love it. Thank you again.

Chris Wissman
Of course, man. Thank you.

Patrick McGilvray
So good, right. Good, good stuff. I just love these conversations with Chris. Remember, we will be continuing this conversation in the Running Lean community on Facebook. So I’d love for you to join the group. Chris is a part of that group. And you can ask him questions there too. And remember, starting July 1, 31 days, no sugar challenge begins. It’s just a few short days from now. So join us in the Running Lean community on Facebook, grab a few friends, it will be fun. Just search for the Running Lean community and join us. Well, that’s all we got today. As always, lots and lots of love to each and every one of you, my friends keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.

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