Show Notes

Three diet constants continue to appear among Scott’s clients who’ve transformed their physiques, sustain those results, and even continue to improve.

General fare

• Diet and fitness trends have come and gone, even more so today, fueled by sophisticated marketing techniques.
• A few principles have remained constant among those who are able to achieve and maintain enviable physiques.
• If carbs make a person fat, Scott [and his clients] would be fat.
• “Carbs” is a widely misunderstood term today.
• The term “vegan” seems to elicit a stronger reaction than the term “plant based”.
• The food industry doesn’t seem to [genuinely] care about health.

Secret #1: A Carb*-based diet

• Scott’s been able to maintain a lean physique eating diet based mostly of carbohydrates.
• This was true even when he was still eating animal proteins, when he was competing, and afterwards.
• Hype breeds confusion. Example: fruits make you fat.
• Scott won bodybuilding contests eating mostly carbs. For one contest, he lost 54 pounds in 12 weeks while eating this way.
• Successful bodybuilders from the past ate lots of rice. Bodybuilder Jean Paul Guillaume was renown for eating chicken and rice five meals a day.

*NOTE: Carbohydrates does not mean foods from refined flours, although those foods are high in carbohydrate. Today, some do not consider vegetables to be carbs, though they are accurately classified as carbs.

Secret #2: Regular, planned re-feeds

• “Cheat” days, sometimes epic, were a constant through Scott’s bodybuilding years, and since.
• Two weeks prior to winning the Great Lakes Championship, he ate a 2-liter container of Winter White Baskin Robbins ice cream.
• Re-feeds can take any form you like. Anything goes, as long as they’re well-planned and needed.
• Well-known competition eaters aren’t overweight. They prepare for contests by using the same principles found in The Cycle Diet Course.

An optimized metabolism is a forgiving metabolism.

Secret #3: Biofeedback – Listen to your body not a device

• Reading biofeedback allows a training or diet program to be tweaked.
• Scott’s shares success stories from his clients Byron, Aaron, Melissa, JP, Ollie and Ange who transformed their physiques by eating a diet of primarily carbs (i.e., unprocessed plant foods).
• External measures like weight scales or apps aren’t helpful in gauging progress. The mirror, hunger level, and how workouts feel are better indicators.
• Tolerable hunger is the sweet spot in biofeedback to regulate eating.
• Emphasis on biofeedback may be Scott’s biggest contribution to the fitness industry.

Show Notes

Rachel Cosgrove is owner of Results Fitness located in Southern California, which recently completed its 19^th year in business. Rachel was the 2012 IDEA Personal Trainer of the Year. She’s speaks internationally at fitness conferences, is a columnist for Women’s Health Magazine, Huffington Post and Nike, and author of “The Female Body Breakthrough”  and “Drop Two Sizes”.

Results Fitness continues to expand, recently adding an educational center near their gym.

Observations on fitness today

• Rachel’s vision was walking into a gym and seeing women in the weight room instead of the treadmills or aerobics classes.
• Changes in the industry for the better: women not afraid to lift weights. A common fear was getting big and bulky.
• Changes to the fitness industry Rachel would like to see but hasn’t yet: trainers seen as professionals.
• The change Rachel would like to see for [fitness] consumers: access to better information. There’s no lack of information, but it’s overwhelming and confusing.
• The challenge used to be learning, but has now become unlearning.

“Information is not knowledge.” – Albert Einstein

Women and self-image

• Eating disorders and fitness competition seem to attract one another.
• Fitness can become part of a search for self-fulfillment.
• Plastic surgery is another manifestation of the pursuit of a physical appearance ideal.
• Social media puts unhealthy pressures on girls growing up today.
• The US Women’s Soccer team’s World Cup victory illustrates that women can be strong and independent.
• Scott turns down potential clients who come with unrealistic physique goals that are unachievable and not in the person’s best interest.

Women in fitness

• Women fitness experts seem to be held to a higher personal fitness standard than the men, many of whom are out of shape themselves. There’s a double standard.
• Results Fitness has more female coaches than male, and they all have different body types and are at different stages in their own fitness journeys. But they are in great shape and can each teach their clients something.
• Appearances don’t always tell the whole story. There may have been a past health issue that has influenced a physique.
• Compare, contrast and compete are Scott’s three “C”s of body image problems.
• Rachel is often the only female speaker at conferences she attends. She encourages more women to apply to speak at conferences.

A Positive Space

• Nutrition apps. Workout apps. How many apps do people have to have to function?
• People bounce from nutritional freestyling—eating whatever they want whenever they want—to counting calories, macros, etc.
• Improve, one habit at a time. Maybe just start small, drink more water, and see how that feels.
• Workouts can be a form of self-connection. The gym can be a place where you lose yourself and find yourself.
• The Results Fitness environment is positive, supportive and drama-free. No judgements. Where are you now? Where do you want to go? No negative discussions.
• Rachel, [Alwyn], and the coaches set the standard and the example.

Transformation experiences

• Some Results Fitness members have been there for 19 years since they opened their doors.
• Rachel, on interviewing a new client who has a particular physique goal: If you looked like that, how would you feel? Ask the “why” to get to the deeper, real “why”. It’s more about being comfortable with yourself as a person, instead of looking a certain way.
  Sometimes the client doesn’t know the “why” at the moment.
• The client’s journey can sometimes be different than originally expected.
• One Results Fitness client—a 64-year-old woman—went from being someone with bilateral knee replacements, working out because her doctor ordered, to winning a world powerlifting championship.
• You can’t give up on yourself. Look for things you can do instead of focusing on what you can’t.

>Follow Coach Rachel Cosgrove<

Instagram  |  Facebook  |  Twitter
Rachel’s Website  |  Results Fitness Website

Show Notes

Lee Boyce is a Toronto-based strength coach and internationally-published fitness writer, and speaker. He’s also a part-time college professor in Fitness and Health Promotion. Lee’s regularly featured in many of the largest platforms as a Fitness Expert, and speaks around North America at professional development conferences, helping trainers become more effective at their craft.

Lee has been featured or contributed in well-known media: Wall Street Journal, Esquire, Men’s Fitness, Men’s Health, Muscle & Fitness, Men’s Journal, Oxygen, Shape, Huffington Post, Arnold Schwarzenegger media, and ABC News Radio.

The expert personal trainer and social media

• There’s a lot of copycat training expertise in the market.
• How many trainers are dependent on social media and numbers of followers? The footprint you leave on the industry has to come from someplace else.
• There is a place and need for the social media “fits-po” type trainer. They’re just not on par with experts who try to make clients, and other trainers, better.
• If you’re going to be someone who wants to be viewed as an expert in the health industry, a trainer should try to physically evidence like they’re walking the talk.
• The role of a good coach is to put [themselves] out of business.
• When Lee speaks at conferences, his goal is to deliver information people can use, rather than furthering an agenda.
• Lee and Scott agree that experience is the greatest teacher.

Ouch!

• In April 2017, Lee suffered a bilateral patellar tendon rupture during a basketball game. Contributing to it were new shoes, concrete floor, had not played in a while, and was insufficiently warmed up.
• The injury taught him lessons on how to approach training and other things, and forced him to find different substitutes for movements he did before.
• Mobility, calisthenics and bodyweight training are important. We get into a run of performing the big, strength movements, working in the sagittal plane and overload.
• Need to address connective tissue and mobility, and other forms of resistance.
• Limitations since then: longer warm-up, sets with the bar only. Can still run, jump, sprint, and squat over 300 lbs.

Matching the client and training program

• Look at chronological (biological) age, and training age. Lee would address a first timer to the gym who’s 43 lifting weights differently than a first timer who’s 18 lifting weights.
• There may be accrued injuries, weaknesses or imbalances in the older trainee.
• Someone working a desk job for 22 years will likely have immobility and maybe lacking coordination and other basic skills.
• Some trainers put all clients through the same program, regardless of the trainee’s goal.

What does the number of chin-ups have to do with achieving a physique goal?

• Are high-impact, ballistic training styles contributing to many sports injuries we see today?
• Longer sports seasons are abbreviating careers.
• There’s something to be said for lay-offs and time away from the gym.

“It’s great to have a 600-lb deadlift but what’s your shelf life going to be…?”  – Coach Lee Boyce

Becoming a great trainer

• People who have disposable income are a “blue ocean” for trainers. Blue oceans are markets where the competition is limited.
• Lee used his writing as a way to differentiate himself from other trainers.
• Personal training fees should be set just like any other profession, like dentists or lawyers, whose fees are all within a finite range.
• Most trainers don’t put in the energy and effort to make themselves stand out as true experts. Fewer people are willing to put their heads down, be a learner, and do what it takes.
• Tips for becoming a great trainer:
  • Don’t skip steps.
  • Work with as many clients and demographics as possible.
  • Continue learning. Read the experts, like Dan John, Mark Rippetoe, JC Santana, Vern Gambetta, and others.
  • Stick with what you know.

>Follow Coach Lee Boyce<

Website  |  Instagram  |  Facebook  |  Twitter

Show Notes

Scott shares the inside scoop on his own history with steroids, what really goes on behind the scenes with those drugs in the bodybuilding world, and why he left that world.

His recent retrospective posted on his Facebook sites chronicles his journey from completely natural to what he terms “hard core” steroid use.

A brief history

• In 1986, the steroid scene was far different than it is today. The doses then were much smaller. Scott shares some examples.
• In 1987 when Scott won the Great Lakes championship, steroids were more out in the open. People became interested in how the drugs actually worked.
• Scott educated himself on the drugs, and outside sources came to recognize him as an expert on the subject.
• Steroids have anabolic and androgenic properties. Some have more anabolic effect, while others produce more androgenic effects.
• By 1988, he was visibly thicker.
• His “hard core” years began in the 90s. At his last photo shoot [as a bodybuilder], he was extremely lean and vascular, but thick at 260 lbs.

Signs and side effects

• There are visible, tell-tale physical signs of steroid use.
• The body holds onto fluids, so the face gets puffy. There is tremendous lean weight gain.
• [Cystic] acne, hair loss and gynecomastia are just three of the side effects.
• Some bodies respond more favorably to steroids, results as well as side effects.

The ugly side

• Another reason Scott exited the business was that the drugs surpassed training as the way to excel.
• Steroids are taken by men and women. Scott thinks women take more today than he did back in “the day”.
• Counterfeit and adulterated drugs have been used without the users’ knowledge. The real drug was replaced or cut with other substances like WD40.
• Supra-physiological dosages require other drugs be taken to compensate for the side effects.
• The cottage steroid industry is almost like multi-level marketing, where a steroid-taking competitor resells steroids to their own clients.
• The abuse of steroids—as well as other drugs—in the bodybuilding world was what drove Scott out of the sport.
• Health scares Scott’s witnessed from steroid use: death, heart attack, cancer, sepsis, abscesses, near-amputations, and others.
• Scott doesn’t like to call bodybuilding a sport anymore. He viewed bodybuilding as movable sculpture and got out of it when it ceased to be that to him.

A Note about TRT

• Testosterone Replacement Therapy (TRT) and steroid use are completely different. TRT doses are much smaller, intended to make up the difference between what the body under-produces and a healthy level.

Training Resources

The Hardgainer Solution Course

The Abel Approach, Second Edition

Show Notes

Ryan Lum, the Happy Healthy Vegan, joins Scott for a friendly chat about fitness, diet, and the challenges of honest debate in today’s online world.

“Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.” – Mark Twain

• Scott originally came across the Happy Healthy Vegan—when Ryan was featured on the TV show The Doctors.
• Ryan loves fitness, and recently achieved his long-time goal of dunking a basketball.
• He had been a runner, and learned how to structure his training to achieve a goal.
• He applied what he learned toward his new goal of dunking. He’d played basketball when he was younger. He quit during his forties and picked basketball up again as he entered his fifties. Ryan was never a gifted leaper but can now dunk.

Seeking the truth, or defending a bias?

• Ryan says that people are more open-minded about a vegan diet now. Less so online. He rarely has haters approach him in person.
• Trying to convince someone of an idea in the era of social media is a losing proposition.
• Selling supplements is an indicator that a diet creator has an agenda.
• When someone is under the power of a belief, they [can] become closed minded.
• “Recent former vegans” often abandoned the diet because they went to extremes not central to the diet. Ryan’s never seen anyone quit veganism who approached it sensibly.
• Veganism attracts people who seek restrictive diets. This is sometimes seen in people with body dysmorphia.
• Diet mentality should be inclusive, not exclusive. We are hard-wired to seek food, not avoid food.

Being vegan is easier than ever

• Ryan’s primary goal for the Happy Healthy Vegan is to show how easy, fun and normal being vegan is.
• Being vegan these days doesn’t mean you have to give up much.
• There are vegan options for indulgence food, like ice cream and burgers, that taste great.

More about Ryan, the Happy Healthy Vegan

Website  |  YouTube  |  Instagram  |  Products, Books and Tees

Diet Resources by Scott

Lean Without Trying: The Six-Day Vegan Diet  |  Physique After 50