Healthy from the Inside Out – Nutrition Specialist Dan Garner Joins Us for Episode #95
We are all inundated with diet tips, supplements and nutrition info, but people continue to struggle with their eating habits. It’s hard for us to know what is right and what is simply marketing hype. In today’s podcast, nutrition specialist, Dan Garner gives us some insight on how he approaches nutrition with his elite clientele. Dan goes into detail about gathering information, using lab analysis and customizing each nutrition plan to match the needs of the individual.
In this Episode We Discuss:
- Using lab analysis to optimize performance.
- How does your lifestyle and stress affect your performance?
- Finding the root cause thats holding you back.
- Finding a nutrition plan that you can actually follow.
- Nutrition programming versus crash diets
- Ongoing education to learn more about nutritional guidelines.
Learn More About Dan’s Courses Below:
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Dan Garner is the owner and founder of Team Garner and is the head strength coach and nutrition specialist. Specializing and delivering consistent world class results in physique transformation and athletic performance, Dan has worked with many athletes from the youth leagues right up to the NHL, NFL, MLB and UFC. He is an international lecturer on sports nutrition and has been featured in several major media outlets. In addition to his coaching services, he has created many online products available for purchase and is a bestselling author on Amazon.
Full Transcription of Our Podcast with Dan Garner:
[00:00:00 – 00:00:19] Interviewer: Hey guys… this is Corey Beasley… I’m excited to have Dan Garner. And Dan it’s a train coach and nutrition specialist, he’s also author and developer of the food program that we have here on the website so I’m excited to talk, chat with Dan. Dan, how you doing?
[00:00:20 – 00:00:22] Dan Garner: I’m doing great man. Thank you so much for having me again.
[00:00:23 – 00:00:49] Interviewer: of course, is always good to talk to you. You got a… you’re on scheme and have all kind of fixes, methods to people to get in shape and now you help us out with the nutrition too… I know you… I heard you talk a couple of times, you’re CPA and a couple of other podcast as well so, I know you got a lot of good stuff.
[00:00:50 – 00:01:12] Dan Garner: Yeah, man… well you get kind of a lot of ideas for innovation when you live in the great way north, right? The way we just… (Unaudible)… So I just stay in my computer all the night and read, read and finding all kind of stuff like that. We got a lot to talk about, I haven’t talk to anybody in a long time, I’ve been just hanging up my (Don’t know what he says here… 00:01:11)
[00:01:13 – 00:01:48] Interviewer: So Dan, I know that in the last couple of times you talk we jump into it. I mean, I heard you say a lot of cool things about weight management, weight cut, a lot of people listen you on a weekly or monthly basis and I’m always curious, you know, for someone of your expertise. When a new fighter or athlete walks in the door, where he starts? Because there’s so much information that is out there to start, you know. Where do you start with people?
[00:01:49 – 00:03:39] Dan Garner: Well, starting with people I definitively have a battery of questions there, so when someone hires me, they come at the door and ask me to do the training program design, they want me to do the nutrition programing. We gotta go through a battery of questions there and any expert know how to get a lot of data from that. So, with the correct question within the correct context you’re able to get inside on very, very important matters in the optimization of combat or athletes like what’s the stress management like?, what’s the sleep (not sure what he says) and sleep quality like?; what is their model balance (not sure about what he said) like, what is the current life balance, schedule and how can I create a program that allows them to get all the meals in a proper way and the crazy days of dealing with kids, and then going to wrestling and then do the conditioning and then coming back and maybe go to work. All that kind of stuff. I go through a battery of assessment to make sure that I know, not only the physiology, but I know their psychology as well. Then if they are a high level athlete, then I will… well, even if they’re not a high-level athlete better put if you got the budget for it. I’m always, always a really big fan of utilizing lab announces as well to get inside on everything to do with their physiology. Because when we have their physiology we can get an exact blueprint of what they need to do in order to move forward, in the next stop I’ll be there performance (I have not listen well enough), whatever they came to me for. So, it will go through question there while we do some potential lab announces and we will move on forward from there depending on what date or how far away the next life was.
[00:03:40 – 00:04:00] Interviewer: I have a question about the lab announces. I heard people talk about doing hair sample test, blood test, urine. What are some common tests that you do and what do they use for?
[00:04:01 – 00:08:48] Dan Garner: Yeah, that’s a great question. So, I’m a guy who likes as much data as I can possible get, am a number’s guy. Because that’s one of my gifts (can’t here it well)… I wanna find whatever it is in their physiology that is currently holding them back from being the best self, from being able to express the skills that they know they have. So I have actually a full battery of tests done, where I have saliva, stool, urine and blood announces, all done. Because although one of those is insightful, you can see it kind of like a snapshot of physiology. For example blood announces. Blood announces is incredible, you can get some much from it and turn, your vitamin and mineral status, hormonal status, third information markers that maybe are impacting on your ability to recover from exercises. But it definitively is a snapshot of what your physiology looks like, at that point of time, right there. With the snapshot of my fighter, I wanna get a full movie of their physiology because you can get thing from saliva, urine and stool that you can’t get from blood, they’re all unique in their own unique way. Though, I like to utilize saliva primarily, to measure certain (I can’t hear well what he says here) which is in the body, but from saliva you can get the sector meloton enrichment, so I make sure that they sleep light and sleep quality is on point. From urine perspective, I can see if the metabolism protein properly and while the information management is kind of like, urine also allow us to get some good insights to what’s the microbial, making sure if the bacteria is the way in which they should be. The blood announces, of course I’m a big fan of it, for determine information and recovery from exercise, also hormonal status because we can get more hormonal balance in the fighter, they’re gonna perform better just for that and let alone anything else that we do to optimize the performance. And is also very good to determine things like food activity, food intolerances and food allergies, so we can take out of the diet what is not serving them and put back into the diet something that is going to be a lot more effective for the chilling and recovering. And when it comes to the stool announces, that’s something that nobody likes to do, nobody wants to get unveil and then ship it somewhere, is kind of a crazy thing to think of, but is not negotiable for me is that important. And then even if you say like “Ok Dan, I can only afford two tests, What should I get” the stool announces is going to be in there, is that important. It gives a full insight towards your ability to actually, absorb the nutrients that you’re taking in. So a lot of people would only look at calories and only look at macronutrients, but you aren’t what you eat you only are what you can eat and actually absorb. That’s the only that is going to matter because nutrients are nutrients at least the game they are absorb and stimulated with inner physiology. So in the Stool we can see certain array shows the people level of fat, people all storage. There’s a lot of things in there that they shouldn’t been in there, let me know that the stimulation is suffering and that the food you’re eating is starving you with the (not sure what he says) that you’re thinking. And with the stool we can also get in the inside the things like a parasite infection, bacterial infection, these are way more common that people think they are, underestimate that the 30% of the clients that comes to me, these are pro-athletes. When they come to me, they had some sort of parasite, bacteria, infection or functional infection that we have to get rid of. And once we get rid of that the physiology completely changes, the information goes down, you recover better from exercise, the thing that they think normal, are now gone. Things like blow in really bad gas, unexplainable loose tool, some days but not other days; constipation, a lot of these things go away and the fighter just feel a lot better. That lab announces, you can probably see I can do a full examine, I have done each one of those labs and why I use it, but yes, I’m a big fan of comprehend as possible. So saliva, urine, stool and blood, will all be included in there.
[00:08:49 – 00:09:29] Interviewer: I’m glad to hear that, because there is so many times that people get caught in diet, you know between keto and fast and all different things we’ve seen over the years. But, as I watch people go through that: 1. Is a lot difficult to follow, what they going to do next; But 2. I’ve seen temporary success and then it doesn’t get down with the root cause of what cause is people trouble and the body really don’t change dramatically. Instead of just really get down the root cause, and see what’s going on inside, and then addressing it according with the cause, is great to hear that you’re doing that.
[00:09:30 – 00:11:29] Dan Garner: Yeah, that’s a brilliant insight man. I’m really glad you brought that up, a coach that work with a lot of people usually say something like that because root causes are everything, that’s what real coaching is. You know, for example, if you were to… I mean something that I say to my students is “The symptom is never the problem, the symptom is a way that result of the problem”. So, when we have things like belching, farting, loose tools, constipation, blow ding, Stomach discomfort those are symptoms those aren’t the problem, blow ding isn’t the problem, the diarrhea isn’t the problem it was the result of the problem so, that what coach is. We have to put our coach’s lessons on and ask the right questions, do the right things to determine the root cause. Because once we’ve eliminated the root cause then the symptoms go away and the physiology can move forward to a much healthier version of themselves. And something that I’ve learned is that coaches are one of the best Plato busters in existence, is actually not looking at the most advanced concepts behind purification, involving frequency control and getting calories and macronutrients melt down to the perfect team, those things are important. But, what of the best Plato bust is the (can’t hear it well), is to get people healthier el organism of the human body won’t adapt to training and nutrition properly if it is in a current status stress, and that stress in form of psychological, emotional physiological, environmental, it doesn’t matter where it coming from, you’ll always be holding back by a stressor. And while you are focusing on purification something as simple as a parasite could be the reason why you are nor dropping weight right now or why you are no getting muscle the way that you hope you would or the way that your friends are. You can’t determine why you are not getting the same results that they are.
[00:11:30 – 00:12:01] Interviewer: That’s cool. That’s really… I mean… yeah, you’re right we can talk about this for an hour. I got a lot of questions kid. But it’s cool, I mean you really dig in (audio problem)… people from the inside out. And then you get that and it’s like “Ok, cool. Now what?” we have all this data, all this information from the assessment lab announce and that kid of stuff. What’s next?
[00:12:02 – 00:15:18] Dan Garner: When we get all data. We get the labs, we get the questionnaire and get everything. That’s when my coaching approach comes in the plate, my coaching approach is 20% of the insight O, that’s one term that I constantly use and a part of the entire corrective into (unaudible)… So, I actually have 2 branches for my coaching the outside in and the inside out. The Outside in, is everything we know from the scientific research, the organic impact on our clients from the outside in. So, how we are going to set their calories for either muscle gain, fat loss, maintenance or re-composition? Where we gonna set their proteins and the carbohydrates in fats?, what type of nutrients timing strategy we are going to utilize pre, during and post work out and how much of these nutrients are they going to need base on their activity and on their size?. These things are calculated from the science from the outside in. But we also need to look at certain parameter from de inside out from restroom costs perspectives. So, inside out. Inside of the equation includes if you’re a dream or glam function. How well are you managing you strap? how effective is your sleep quality?, are you entering deep areas, stages of sleep?, what is your current information status within the body?, what’s your current hormonal status within the body. We have all these things that we need to look at in terms of Corey Beasley and not in terms of the science of the outside in. That’s something where a lot of coaches… some coaches use to call themselves macro coaches, you’re not a coach, you’re a calculator, you can find those things anywhere online, that’s not what coaches do, it’s what calculators do. So, we need to actually combine both, when you combine both you get the science and the art of coaching. The outside in is applied with precision in order to get the desire result for the athlete, but in the inside out is the really Plato buster, you know, if you got health problems them I’m gonna be able to determine that and get rid of so that the outside in approach works. Because a lot of people have the outside in correct, the absolutely set their protein properly, the protein, carbs and fats are good, the pre and post strategy is pretty good. And I going to tell you something, the food are not going to create the impact on the body that you think, at least that your physiology is ready for it. I’ll put it in another way, just because two foods are isocolorc, doesn’t mean that those food are Isometabolic. Depending upon the physiology that they’re into they are going to get a different adapt or response from the body. So, is our job to look after the organism, determine where it needs optimization, optimize it and then allow that athlete to get the results. So, that assessments process allow us to see those things, and then we put our coaching lands on and we make sure all the right moves not just from the outside in, also from the inside out. And then based on those parameter create a meal plan, the training and the purification (Audio problems)… time.
[00:15:19 – 00:16:08] Interviewer: So that’s the next step, developing the meal plan and you said progression of work out. So, when we start with the meal plan, without getting the details, you know, calories and all the step by step specific. I know that there is a big psychological challenge for a lot of people to stay with the diet. So when you’re kind of developing the meal plan for people and you want it to become in long term, success. How you organize that with that person?
[00:16:09 – 00:19:22] Dan Garner: Well, we talk with the person. This is a people industry, no matter how… you know, with the advance of the science becoming very popular online. Internet is making evidence in coaching very popular, internet is making science incredibly popular and this is an incredible thing but we can’t forget that we are in a people industry we are not just at the data industry. So, I really like that you’re pointing this out because a lot of things is so hard to follow independent of what the data said. So we have to sit down with the client, looking the pass through, look what has work with them before, looking what hasn’t work with them before and create a plan that he can follow. Because I can create the most scientific meal possible for you, but if you can’t follow, what good it does to you? Is going to be as worth it as a piece of paper that it’s magneted to your fridge that you’re never look at cause’ you don’t follow. Consistency beats intensity every single time, no one become a great fighter attending to a one week of fighting, nobody get down to their weight class by having a one great week of dieting, things don’t work in terms of intensity when it comes to athletes, things work in terms of consistency when it comes to athletes. That means that we need to do meals plans, training plans that fit the client and we can’t make training plans where we force the client to fit them. I’ll put it other way, you make plans fits the client and not clients fits the plants, that what gonna determine real consistency, it’s kind of like what I talked in the initial question that we were talk about here, when you ask me, what’s the first thing that happen. I go through the questionnaire so I can see what the life style and schedule like, so I can build a plan around that so they can follow it. Because again, consistency beats intensity every single time. And when it comes to life style and schedule we got to build a plan around that, but when it comes to who they are and perhaps their cultural background we have to utilize certain food that they’re going to be able to stick with. There’s a lot of different approaches that we have there, you know, we’ve got people following polio, you got people following keto, you got people following vegan and then you got people who are intensity macros because they love pop tarts, you know, we got a lot of different people making a lot of different approaches here and kind of all work is the consistency that is in place. But I’m a person who never liked to make a square into a circle, so I look into those dietary approaches as tools in my tool kit. And I’m never a coach who puts everybody on one approach. Because that’s the first sign that somebody doesn’t understand the human metabolism cause’ not all squares fits into a circle. So, we understand what those diets do for people and we only applied them where it’s absolutely appropriate for example, in the scientific context.
[00:19:23 – 00:20:08] Interviewer: That’s really important to hear, that is one thing that I do know, is upon online, especially in our social media and software. There is no context but is one exercise, the diet, the result, you know. I’m not as guilty as anybody but I’m just sharing content that the people put out around the world. And as soon as I see some exercise that people say “Oh, I want to try that”. They tag in the body “I will try this tomorrow” which is fine, I appreciate that they are excited about maybe a new “we can test something”. But to truly understand what you’re using, why is important. I imagine that too with the nutrition part as well.
[00:20:09 – 00:21:11] Dan Garner: For sure! The nutrition and training side. I mean, you got ways of the context to take into consideration, and when it comes to those, single exercises or even single workouts. Those are tools only ever as good as the application, and the application is always in reference to the program and not the work out, the program as a whole it’s what is going to determine the adaptation of the body. Because biology respond to approaches, it doesn’t respond to acute measures. Biology is not going to care if you did one workout today, biology only is going to care if you did 4 work outs for the last 4 month, until we gonna adapt to approaches. So, yeah, those things online, those exercises, those work outs I think they’re a positive thing because they get people firing up, get people educated. But what I would like people to know is that tools is only as good as applied and that’s always in reference of the big picture of what you’re doing in a consistent basis and not what you’re doing tomorrow.
[00:21:12 – 00:21:45] Interviewer: That’s a great way to say it. So you did a lot to it, we talked about questionnaires, we talked about assessments lab announces, the outside in, the inside out, all these things that you’re taking into account as well as the meal plan, which is person focus… individual focus on what work for them or hasn’t worked, and the develop of that consistency over time. When we do get the training and program design, Have you kind of synchronize about the meal plan that you develop?
[00:21:46 – 00:25:25] Dan Garner: I synchronize the way that is best for the client. So it kind of depend on a lot of factors. You gotta to consider, you know, you got your constant training program design and you have your variable. The constants are the principal, the principal program design that you have to adhere to no matter what, cause’ they are the principals the most deeply rude into the scientific principles of actual training program design. Things like necessity, overload, fitting management, individualization and variation, these are all principles of program design that we got to understand to determine the actual outcome of programs. Now those are constants in program design, but the variant of the program design are the things that we can manipulate based on who’s in front of us. And the variants are volume, intensity and frequency. So, volume is the total amount of work you do per workout or program. The intensity is the amount of work you’re doing in reference to (I didn’t understand)… so a 85% set of five raps it means more intense that an 80% set of five raps. The intensity it is essentially, what you’re working at in reference to one red mark. Then your frequency it’s how many times you training per week. So, knowing our constants and knowing the variants that are volume, intensity and frequency, we can build that appropriately based upon how many calories the client is allowed. With somebody who is in a severe weight cutting diet or fat losses then we have to decrease volume and we have to decrease intensity. Because these things will just over train the fighter and if not applied properly, any fighter will be able to tell you that, his lifting is too heavy or train with too much volume, way too late and the fight camp became that fire, and it actually cause them not to make weight are supposed to help them in the process. It’s gotta be a good balance. So, it’s essentially understanding what you have to work with, are they building muscle? are they maintaining? Are they in fat loss? Then when we answer those questions then we are able to manipulate the set raps and weight that they’re using in order for them to get the best result. But it gets even bigger than that because, for example, if somebody is incredible stress out, if you can’t afford this tax season, if you just gotta divorce these things impact your ability to recover from exercise, even outside, how many calories that I gave you, we’ve seen that in the research. That those who report greater light stressors it is actually seem in college athletes. The college athletes who report grater light stressors, not only that they literally take twice long to recover from a leg work out that their none stress tone parts, but they also experience more muscle. So graters levels of muscles tones you literally takes 200% recover every time in comparison to the none stress counterpart. So it’s kind of this point towards… it’s crazy, and it allows more examples of that as well. And it’s just another reason to take also the inside out and not just the outside in, the coaches that focus online on the outside in they’ll never be able to match the training to meet the physiology to help them to get the best result. That’s all kind of make sense?
[00:25:26 – 00:25:51] Interviewer: That’s make complete sense cause’ we both been in stress in different ways. It could be a pretty severe hangover and it could be a fight with your wife, I mean… both maybe their level is different but stress is stress, right? Or maybe we no sleep the night or maybe a new baby of two weeks, those are both that can happen.
[00:25:52 – 00:26:28] Dan Garner: Exactly and then you have your dormant stressors too, right? Cause the stressors could be only physiological and not just psychological. If you have something like a parasite, you’re under stress and decrease your recovery whether you know it or not, something is holding you back and you don’t even know what you could performed, something that I call dormant performance. People have this performance that they are able to express but they don’t know it yet because there is a stressor under the surface that is holding him back. So stress come in many forms, and then we just gotta adapt to it and make the right program for the right person at the right time.
[00:26:29 – 00:26:46] Interviewer: I’m curious and there could be more. How common, when you do the lab announces, How common are these kind of hidden stressors that people have and they might not even know?
[00:26:47 – 00:28:15] Dan Garner: Very common. Very, very common and to the degree of the severity that’s something that vary. But people don’t come to me with the perfect physiology, they don’t. My clients now, I work with athletes of UFC, NFL, NHL, MLB; I work with celebrities, I work with top level (I do not understand). These are people who come to me with some form of stressor under the surface simply due to the nature of the life style, it’s as simple as that. As an example, I work with the president of Pepsi, that’s a stress up guy somebody who is in charge of a lot of different people and a lot of money, but you see the same type of Physiology that you see on the UFC fighters. (unaudible) in many ways they’re the same, so when somebody comes to me and we do the lab announces I always find something, cause there’s always a difference between good and optimal. There’s always a difference between that, but a lot of people are good, but a lot of people don’t just want good results, a lot of people want optimal results… (audio problems)… and to optimize somebody’s physiology and gain optimal adaptation from exercise that’s why they come to me for. So, attending to your question, there’s a 100% of the people that come my way, I am able to find something to take him to the next level.
[00:28:16 – 00:28:36] Interviewer: cool. Now Dan, for everyone that is listening and they want to do… implement something this week, they wanna improve, they wanna change, they wanna make something better and it’s listening this podcast of 20 minutes, 30 minutes and that people can apply today, this week?
[00:28:37 – 00:30:17] Dan Garner: Continue in education, that’s definitively something that I want people to keep going on, this world never ends and any master or any artist will be able to tell you that they aren’t the masters but they’re constantly students of what they’re doing. You should always be learning new things and constantly educating yourself and I actually a couple of courses online that I recommend people check out. If I said anything today that speaks the ways that your coaching main things and speaks the way in which you like to work with clients. So, if you’re somebody who lacks the confidence in order to build a training program designs or apply certain nutritional guideline to get optimal result all that for yourself or for your clients. If anything of what I spoke today, I want you to go check out my two courses. I have two online courses that both 4 moths in duration, one is The Ultimate Training Mentorship and the other one is The Ultimate Nutrition Mentorship, those 100% online for 4 months in duration and the way which I will fill them it’s to teach you how they work outside in and the inside out. Both for training perspectives and nutrition perspective, so you can start gaining confidence in building not just nutritional guidelines completely from scratch but being able to training programs completely form scratch, and have the confidence to stick on and anybody who comes your way. So definitively check out those two training mentorships and nutrition mentorships if your coaching mind work the same way as mine.
[00:30:18 – 00:30:25] Interviewer: ok Dan cool, cool. And Dan, for people that don’t understand, to contact you online, what’s the best way to find you?
[00:30:26 – 00:00:00] Dan Garner: Definitively, find me out on Instagram at DanGarnerNutrition. On Facebook Dan garner Strength Coach & Nutrition Specialist. And for somebody who wants to learn more and create an online business as personal trainer 100% online, I got a new resource available for everybody at createfreedom.com and at Create Freedom on Instagram.
