Adam Bornstein On Testosterone, Intermittent Fasting & The Online Fitness Industry [Podcast]

Items mentioned in this post:

• Born Fitness – Adam’s website
• Adam’s book – Man 2.0 Engineering the Alpha: A Real World Guide to an Unreal Life: Build More Muscle. Burn More Fat. Have More Sex
• Jason Ferruggia – Adam’s training partner
• Athletic Greens – greens supplement that Adam recommends

If you enjoyed this episode with Adam Bornstein or any other Healthynomics Podcast episode, please leave a review on iTunes. Reviews go a long way in helping the podcast reach more listeners.

Mark: Hey, everyone. It’s Mark Kennedy here again. Welcome to another Healthynomics podcast. Today, I’m extremely excited to have Adam Bornstein as my guest. Adam, welcome, and thanks for joining us.

Adam: Thank you for having me, excited to be here.

Mark: That’s great. I know you’re battling some other prior responsibilities in job and traffic in LA there, so anyways, glad we could catch up. I’ve been following your work for about a year now, and with the launch of your recent book, anyone that reads fitness and nutrition information online will likely have seen your name somewhere. With that said, however, Adam, if you don’t mind giving the listeners a bit of a background on you, maybe where you grew up and what you studied in college, and then maybe transition into what you’re up to now.

Adam: Yeah, It’s funny you mention that, because I think some people will be familiar with my name. I always appreciate that. At the same time, I think a lot of my career by design has been through people not to see my name. Only recently have I decided, I guess, to be a little bit more aggressive in pursuing a little bit more attention. Some of it is done on purpose, to try and shake things up in this industry a little bit and really help give a voice to the people who need to have a voice. I’ll kind of dovetail into that discussion.

Mark: Cool.

Adam: Really, I’ve had somewhat of a circuitous journey, if you will. A lot of people will know me from working at Men’s Health. I was the Fitness Senator there for several years. Other people might know me from livestrong.com, where I was the Editorial Director for several years. Other people might know me for books. I’ve written five now where you would actually see my name. The most recent being “Man 2.0 : Engineering the Alpha”, which I’m happy to say was a New York Times bestseller. That’s the one that I think has the most attention on it.

Mark: Congrats on that, by the way. Sorry to interrupt.

Adam: Oh, thank you. It’s great. It is always very humbling, and I guess very rewarding, when you put a lot of effort and time into something. In many aspects which we’ll touch on, this book, it was a bit of a risk in the approach we took towards writing it. It was definitely by design in order to try and break through some of the myths. We had to write the book a certain way in order to grasp the attention of people. It’s great when you put a lot of work into this, and this goes for anyone in any walk of life. To see it do well, it’s very rewarding but humbling at the same time. In order to read a book, people have to take time out of their day, they have to take the money that they earn and spend it on something you create. I’m very, very appreciative of that.

Getting back to me, my job has been to help create the content that people read. Since I’ve left livestrong.com, I’ve really been involved on the freelancer, consultant, contributor side where I’ve been writing for everyone and anyone under the sun, whether it’s teaming up with other fitness brands, whether it’s things from greatest to Men’s Fitness to Shape, really hitting across all genders, to even sports like ESPN. I like trying to spread and hit different audiences and find different ways to speak to them. It’s kind of like being a method actor,

Mark: Yup.

Adam: Where you want to create content that reaches them, but in a way that you can draw their attention to topics that maybe they wouldn’t be interested in, and then you can pull them in. Because I love health and fitness, I feel it’s my responsibility and job to make people aware of what they can do to live a healthier life. In order to get into this field, it’s not the traditional model. I did train people in a while for gyms, learned from a lot of different people, so I always read that as more of a hobby. My undergraduate degree was in psychology. I have a Master’s Degree in journalism, but I’ve worked in exercise, phys, and kinesiology labs. I was a researcher for several years at the University of Colorado, where I was the guy who would publish studies. I was the one who was putting together test batteries, running the tests, and then getting it published. I kind of had that “aha moment” at one point that I really enjoyed writing much more than just doing research. For a while, I felt kind of down on the fact that I went in the wrong direction, or so I felt at the time.

Mark: Yup.

Adam: When I first wanted to go full time into writing, I thought it was going to be sports writing. I’ve always been a huge sports junkie, and that’s what I did for a while. It didn’t occur to me for a while that I could take my background in exercise, phys, and as well as in nutrition, and then combine it with this writing skill and combine it with this really strong research background. I am classically trained in research. It became very beneficial, because at Men’s Health, there’s a lot. People will never understand, really, how much time goes into reading through studies and trying to not just take what’s in an abstract or not just take what’s in a headline, but try and boil down the science to what’s really there. I was able to walk into that situation and really understand how to break apart science, because I was the one who used to create those studies.

Mark: Wow. Yeah, I feel like that’s huge. You read a lot of the research, and like you said, you’ve got to determine what’s there and what’s not there. We’ll touch upon that later. That’s a huge skill to have, and it obviously helps you writing the articles and the stuff you do.

Adam: I don’t make it a huge difference. I wouldn’t trade that for anything now, because now I have this skill set that is extremely valuable. A lot of times, I don’t like to refer to myself as an expert, because I know so many people who are so much smarter than me, and I get to work from them and learn from them every single day. I like to view myself as the translator, and that is that some of these people are so smart, that oftentimes it’s difficult to boil down those messages into something that anyone can digest. When you get a bunch of smart people in the room, they could be talking what sounds like a different language. That’s great, we need those people, because those are the people who are going to push forward this industry and help the most in terms of whether it’s fighting against obesity or helping people just live healthier lives, or just really making change. Those people are the ones who are the pioneers and paving the way. At the same time, when you have to disseminate that information to people who don’t know anything, you need someone who can translate that, and that’s where I come in. I’ve got enough of a background where I feel that I can take that information, find the smartest people to give them a platform and give them the love and attention that they deserve, and then get that information out there. That’s really the key. We need to get information out to not just fitness populations, but to the general population. That’s what’s going to create the most change.

Mark: Yeah, that’s cool. That’s sort of one of the same things I’m trying to do with Healthynomics, my site. I’m a kinesiologist by education, and I worked as an exercise physiologist, exercise therapist for a while. I work in the finance industry now. How I got into the finance industry, that’s another story, but I like your analogy there. It’s how I look at it as well. I have this background and expertise, but I look at it as I’m translating information that I know, translating all those crazy terms like iliotibial band, and explaining it in a way where the readers can understand, and hopefully help them get healthier and fitter.

Adam: Yeah. Once people actually feel their IT band, they hate you for introducing them.

Mark: Yeah, exactly. Did you go to CU at Boulder?

Adam: I did go to the University of Colorado. I am a huge Colorado Buffalos fan, at some points, painstakingly, as their football team has really fallen to deep, dark times over the last five, six years. I am as passionate of a Colorado Buffalo as you will find.

Mark: That’s cool. Small world, I’ve got a very good friend from back home in Victoria that did his undergrad and Masters in kinesiology at CU as well, so we’ll talk about it offline, but perhaps you might even know him.

Adam: Boulder is a great draw for pretty much anyone. That is my favorite place in the world. I love that city.

Mark: Oh, so do I. It’s great. Let’s move into your book. As you mentioned earlier, the title of the book is “Man 2.0 : Engineering the Alpha, A Real World Guide to an Unreal Life, Build More Muscle, Burn More Fat, Have More Sex”. I bought a copy of the book and I’ve read it. Actually, I should mention now, I bought a couple extra copies to give away to listeners of the podcast. A little bit further on, I’ll give some details as to how two people can win a copy of the book. The book takes a different approach to fitness nutrition than most that I’ve read. Where did the idea for the book come from?

Adam: I’ve got to give a lot of credit to my coauthor, John Romaniello. Some people know him as Roman. He’s really been working on this for more than ten years, if you will, but it was about two, three years ago that he came to me with an idea of wanting to do a mainstream book that really tried to put out health information in a way that normally isn’t disseminated. What I mean by that is that we have people in the fitness community who are extremely knowledgeable, and it’s very hard to find information that’s going to leave them satiated, if you will, because they’re always going to be craving something more, or some of it might feel repetitive because they read everything under the sun. You need to create information for those people all the time, but at the same time, a lot of the information is just catered towards the fitness population. It’s not necessarily catered towards the mainstream population. We wanted to take these philosophies that John had been working on for more than ten years and find a way to strike a chord that would appeal to the very fitness savvy, but just as importantly, maybe more importantly, really strike a nerve with the non-fitness savvy, the people who have an interest in health and fitness, but the same people who have been doing the same routine in the gym for the last five years. The same people, whether they’re still afraid of eating fat or saturated fat, or think that eating at night will make them fatter, thinking that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. We really wanted to shake things up, and not shake things up just for the sake of shaking it up, but because there’s a lot of great science out there that just never gets out there to the mainstream. What has happened is that people have been paralyzed by these myths and concepts that have been perpetuated over time. They get all these ideas put out in the mainstream, and then they get reinforced because they get supported so many times, such as the idea that you have to eat every two to three hours. This is something going into the book. There’s nothing wrong with eating every two to three hours, eating these small meals, but this concept that if you don’t go ahead and eat like this, you’re going to get fat just isn’t true. This isn’t anecdotal, this is scientific. It becomes this domino effect, this snowball where so many people start saying these things that if anyone stands in the way of it, it’s almost like it’s blasphemy, this is crazy. What we had to really go ahead and create a book that, in ways, would touch on some things that were a little bit controversial. We talk about intermittent fasting, for instance, in that book, but really at the same time, try and put our feet in the ground and try and debunk some of these myths that make it really hard for people to get fit, make it hard for them to really understand how to eat well. They hear all of this information from every which way, and they ended up feeling like oh, there’s all these rules, there’s too much to do. And then, they end up doing nothing. It is, it’s paralysis by analysis.

Mark: Yeah.

Adam: Let’s kind of simplify the approach, take away these rules,

Mark: I was going to..

Adam: And give them a little bit more freedom to eat and live the way they want, and then see that there is a much more sustainable way to go about it. That was really the backbone of the book, and then we just had to put in a lot of colorful language, because let’s be honest, when you put out a fitness book, a lot of people will go through it and be like, “All right, where’s the fitness program? Where’s the diet program?” That’s fine. We really wanted to oversell on this. We put in 16 weeks to program in here, because there’s nothing more frustrating. I can tell you, I have been in some books that have done it where you get four weeks of program and then it’s like, “All right, where do we go from here?” We wanted to make sure that if you got this book just for that, it’s fine, but at the same time we really wanted people to read and we wanted them to be engaged. We used some colorful language, if you will, because it’s important stuff that we’re talking about here, and we want you to read. If we have to throw in the occasional f-bomb to grab your attention or to accentuate a point, I understand that it might offend a few people, but at the same time, if it gets you to read this stuff, it’s almost worth the sacrifice.

Mark: Yeah no, I agree. How has the feedback been? From dropping the odd f-bomb to taking sort of the contrarian point of view on many points, or many myths, as research may approve a contrarian view to what most people think and what most fitness, websites and books write about?

Adam: I’ll be completely honest. I’m as a transparent of a person as it comes. A lot of the backlash for the book has been about the language, and in all honesty, I understand it. Everyone has different tastes, if you will, for what you want to read and what you want to digest. Part of the book is also, like I said, I’m a writer, and I do kind of take the persona, especially if I’m working with someone of the project, it’s almost that method type of writing. Roman has a very specific type of language, but it’s a language that resonates with a lot of people, and with other people, it doesn’t. I’m never going to be upset at someone. I obviously feel bad if they can’t see beyond certain language. The language was really done to accentuate points and also to speak to a certain audience. In that aspect, there have been several people who don’t like the profanity. I wish it wasn’t the case, but I completely understand that. We all have our preferences. What has been nice is that there hasn’t been too much pushback on a lot of the theories. That’s really where we’ve been able to make a difference, if you will. We’re not necessarily telling people you have to do X, Y, and Z. It’s more that we’re telling people you don’t have to do A through Z, because there is all of this information out there, and most of it just isn’t true, or most of it is more about preference rather than a hard rule. I do think that’s very liberating. It has opened a lot of people’s eyes that whether they decide to eat three meals a day or six, whether they decide to eat breakfast at 8 am or push it back for later in the day, whether they decide to do intermittent fasting or go ahead and eat carbs at night, they now understand, in a more clarified way, what actually is a hard rule and what isn’t. There are always going to be some people that just want to debate for the sake of debating. They don’t want to let go of their hard-held beliefs, and we talk about that. Oftentimes, the hardest thing to do when making change is to accept the idea of making change. That’s really, really difficult, because you have to break down those psychological barriers, and oftentimes, those psychological barriers are a bigger issue than the physical ones. That’s where I think a lot of the process is difficult, if you will. Overall, the feedback from the book has been great. A lot of people have read it, and I’m very pleased with what we put out there. In all honesty, I just hope it helps a lot of people and if there’s things that we could do to continue helping out, I’d love the feedback on the book. It’s great because this is fluid process. The book is just a start and there’s a lot more to be done to help people out.

Mark: Cool. Let’s dive a bit into the book. The overarching theme appears to be hormones and ensuring men have the proper sort of hormone balance to ensure optimal health. Testosterone is the hormone that makes a man a man. I’ve been reading a lot about testosterone lately. It seems to be in the news quite a bit. Our testosterone level is on the decline. I read a recent New York Times article about middle aged men and how the prescriptions for testosterone are climbing rapidly. Talk to me a bit about the whole hormonal balance approach to the book and testosterone, more specifically.

Adam: The book itself is really a call to action, if you want. This was really our public service announcement that if you’re looking at numbers, over the last 20 years, the median testosterone for guys has dropped about 20%, which is pretty staggering when you think about it. Within that general drop, on average, of testosterone, you also have about a fourth of guys who are below average. The general man now has lower testosterone than he did 20 years ago.

Mark: Why is that? Does research-

Adam: It’s lifestyle factors. The problem is, the only people who really picked up on this is pharmaceutical companies. Guys are dropping in testosterone, they’re feeling worse, they’re aging, and pharmaceutical companies, in our instant gratification society, we are a microwave society. Why put our food in the oven for 60 minutes when we can pop it in a microwave and eat it in 60 seconds? This is everyone’s approach. Pharmaceutical companies are like, “Hey, you want to improve your testosterone, it’s really important. We got a pill or we got an injection for that.” For some people, that might be a last case resort. The problem here is that a lot of people think that testosterone is failing, and when you get in your 50’s or 60s, you’re just going to lose it with time and it’s an inevitability. For one thing, it’s not an inevitability. You got to work hard, but there was a study that they did in Australia that found that guys who were active and fit were able to have testosterone levels that were comparable to guys in their 30’s. So one point is not necessarily that you lose it. On the other [behalf] it’s that guys in as low as their 20’s and 30’s are now suffering from very low testosterone. Our call to action was for people to go and get their testosterone measured. The feedback was that guys’ levels were extremely low, staggeringly low, and it is because of these lifestyle factors. People aren’t exercising the right way; they’re not eating the right way. In a big way, they are sleeping terribly. It makes sense that oh, we need to tell you to sleep, but a lot of people don’t necessarily really understand what’s at stake when they don’t sleep enough. We quote a study in there that was at the University of Chicago where they found that two weeks of sleep deprivation, and sleep deprivation being less than six hours a night, dropped testosterone more than 15%, and this is just within two weeks. There are some correlational studies here. You can’t necessarily say, “Oh, if you don’t sleep, this is 100% going to happen.” Obviously, not everything is cause and effect. It’s important to mention that from the beginning. But, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t important stuff here, because we delve into all the different ways that a lack of sleep is really messing up your body. Here’s what’s important to take away. Whether the 15% is a hard number or not, here’s what we do know on average. The typical man, after the age of 30, his testosterone lowers about 1% per year. Let’s just use it as a rule of thumb, saying that hypothetically, two weeks of sleep deprivation could, in theory, drop your testosterone 15%. That might not seem like that much, but that is the equivalent of 15 years of aging.

Mark: Wow.

Adam: When you put it in that context, suddenly it’s like, wow. This is really important. Then, when you start understanding all the different ways that your testosterone levels are really important to your aging and to your health, and then on the more aesthetic side of things, how important it is to your appearance, your ability to build muscle and lose fat, or even have a sex drive. You start seeing how all of this is connected. If we just start taking a smarter approach to how we eat, how we live, how we sleep, how we take care of ourselves, we can really fix this engine that makes our body work really well. That’s what I think. Tying this stuff to hormones, a lot of people get this message a little bit misunderstood. There’s information that will look at oh, doing a heavy set of squats will increase your testosterone, and then there will be a whole bunch of debate over well, does that mean doing those heavy sets of squats is going to raise testosterone so that you build more muscle with it in that individual session? That’s not what we’re saying. There has been a lot of recent research on that that’s very interesting in terms of acute, so within a session, the increase of testosterone from certain weight training sessions. Brad Schoenfeld has done some great research in that area recently. It’s not that it’s going to help you build more muscle from this one session. Just to pound out some squats and then suddenly you become He-Man would be awesome. It’s more about fixing the overall system, and consistently doing it. If you want to view your hormonal system as anything, view it as the engine of your car. This is basic endocrinology. We’ve known this for a long period of time. Our hormones are essential to our health, and if you have a hormonal system that has broken down, it’s no different than having a broken engine. You could be putting great fuel into it, you could be taking care of everything else, you could be washing the car, but when it comes time to turn on the car, if the engine is broken, it’s not going to work the way you want it to. That’s really, I’m sorry. If your hormones are broken or your cortisol and insulin levels are all over the place, your testosterone levels are shot, you’re going to feel pretty bad, and the efforts you’re taking to take care of yourself just aren’t going to yield the type of benefits that you want. It’s more about fixing that system, so that everything else you’re doing to try and be healthy and try and live a good life actually has the impact that it’s supposed to.

Mark: Yeah, those are some great points. I think it’s important for people. They don’t have to make drastic changes. Ensure you’re getting some sleep, eating properly, and exercising. I’m sure if people just looked at those three things there, their testosterone levels would get back to where they should be or even increase.

Adam: Right. It’s not rocket science. The science is really in more of those components. What is eating healthy? Then you have all of these rules that you’ve got to get through. What is training correctly? What is good sleep? Once you start kind of removing some of those barriers and deciding which ones really fit your lifestyle, that’s what works. This is what we have to get beyond. In this industry, too many people are arguing for and beating their chest that it has to be done this way. Everyone’s really dogmatic. I don’t care if people follow health information exactly the way that I live my life. That’s not what it’s about. It’s about giving people options so they can find what works for them. It’s great if you go ahead and you follow a program for six to eight weeks and you look and feel great, but then you can only do it for six to eight weeks, and then you fall off the wagon and you’re back at the drawing board. It’s fun to get in great shape. It’s fun to do that, but it’s much more fun to have an option where you really feel you can do this for a long period of time. It’s really feeling you can do this for life, or you have enough information that if you want to adjust or tweak something, you can do it where you don’t feel everything is going to fall apart and you’re going to suddenly start feeling like crap, or what you need to do to feel good is so restrictive that it’s terrible.

There are a lot of people who live a very healthy lifestyle, but they’re prisoners within their own lifestyle, because they hate what they’re doing. If they can pull that off, that’s great, but it’s much more important for me to find ways where you can train, you can eat, you can sleep, and you can live in a way that’s great, that’s enjoyable. That’s really my life’s quest. I’m not here to tell you how to live, I’m just here to tell you that here are the options that might make living the way you want a little bit easier and a little bit more enjoyable. Then, kind of pick the path. Choose your own adventure and take that and run with it. Sometimes, we’ve just got to break through these barriers, because if we’re so frustrated by all these options and none of the options feel like they fit our lifestyle, that’s no good. We talk about cheat meals in here. If you want to eat some bad food, great. If you don’t want to, that’s fine. We talk about intermittent fasting. Hey, if you don’t want to intermittent fast, I’m not going to chase you down and give you a reason to do it, but what I am going to do is I’m going to explain how we are eating for too many hours during the course of the day, and by eating so frequently, it’s putting a lot of stress on your body in ways that could be detrimental to your health. The idea of fasting doesn’t have all these backlashes, and there are many different ways to fast. I think that’s really what it comes down to.

Mark: Yeah, I know, exactly. So many people take such extreme approaches if they want to get fit or eat better. They take such extreme measures, and all of a sudden they’ve gone from eating a lot of fat and steak, and all of a sudden they’re a vegan. It’s not sustainable. You want to build healthy habits, I think it all comes down to starting with little changes. If some little changes help you get your hormones in balance, then start there and work from that, and feel benefit from that progress you’re making. I kind of agree with you. The extreme changes, it’s not the way for sustainable habits, healthy habits to be built.

Adam: Life is meant to be enjoyed. Let’s just be honest about it. If you enjoy your life doing those extreme habits, do it. I’m someone, I enjoy training really hard. It’s enjoyable to me. I talked to my wife about it. Training hard is like going to a playground for me. It’s great, but that kind of training might not work for everyone. Some people want to eat or they want to go out, or they want to drink, and they want to do these things, and this is part of living. It doesn’t mean if you want to be healthy, you can’t just approach life with reckless abandon. What I can tell you is that some of these things are just going to make you feel a lot better than you would otherwise. It does open up the freedom to do other things, but it is finding that happy balance that works for you, because not all health goals are about having a six pack. I know that might be blasphemy coming from a guy who works for all of these magazines that, whether directly or indirectly, promote this, but listen. Having a six pack is pretty awesome, I won’t lie. It builds a lot of confidence, but it is far from the end all be all, and you can be very, very healthy and very, very happy without it. It’s an important message. This isn’t like your feel good stance right here, because I want people to be happy and fit. Your goals should be your goals. If you want to go ahead and you want to get lean and ripped, that’s fine. If you want to train in a way that allows you to eat the foods that you want, that’s fine. If you want to live to 120, let’s find ways to do that. If you just want to exercise but never really want to be in a gym, we can do that, too.

This is when we really start making progress, when we’re able to get this message, break down those barriers, and share these sustainable approaches in a way that we can speak to every different type of person who knows they need to be healthy. There’s no lack of knowledge here. People know they need to be healthy, people know they need to take care of themselves. To many people, it’s almost too intimidating or too complex or too frustrating to take that on. We need to just find new ways to communicate how to take it on, how to help them troubleshoot, how to prepare them for the different hurdles that will stand in their way, so when they come, it won’t be too much to overcome. One of the best things that you can do for anyone is prepare them. Hey, this won’t necessarily be easy, because change sometimes is hard, but it doesn’t mean it has to be complex. It doesn’t mean that it has to be frustrating. I do think that a lot of the messaging needs to be around that. It’s more about preparation than it is about getting in people’s face and making them feel bad if they find something difficult. I don’t really find that that helps anyone.

Mark: Yeah. That’s a good transition, actually. I’d love to talk a little bit about the messaging in the fitness industry a bit later. Right now, can you give us sort of a current state of the fitness and nutrition industry? What trends are you seeing that you like, and maybe some stuff that you don’t like?

Adam: What do I like? I like a lot of things. It’s just that the trends that I’m enjoying really has to just do kind of more with the free flow of information that is online. At the same time, it’s also what I hate the most. I love that we have a lot of different people talking about health and fitness. I love that it’s so strongly on the conscience of so many people. That’s just powerful, it’s good. Everything from Michelle Obama trying to talk about it in Let’s Move campaign, to your bloggers making this an important part of what they’re trying to do to make their difference on society. At the same time, with great power comes great downside. The Internet is a space that creates a lot of confusion. We need to find a better way to drown out the voices that are either spreading bad information, misinformation, not well-sourced research information, and just find a way to simplify this. I think the wealth of information confuses people, and that confusion oftentimes causes them to run away from habits that they need. It’s tough. I know that I probably just sounded like a crazy person saying that the thing that I love is the thing that I hate, but it’s true. The analogy that I would use is, I know a lot of people that will walk into a gym and see a crowded gym and be like, “Ugh, I wish all these people would leave. Why are you on the equipment? Why are you in here?” I walk in there, and I’m just like, “This is great.” I don’t like a crowded gym, I’m no different than anyone else, but I’m like, “Look at all these people trying to get healthy. This is awesome.” It fires me up, it gets me excited. Then, I see all the people, you can go a million different ways, who just don’t know what they’re doing or are doing the wrong thing, or could be making better use of their time. I know that they’re going to go to the gym for a certain amount of time and then eventually, they’re going to look in the mirror, they’re going to look on the scale, or they’re going to look at themselves and just be like, “I don’t see any benefit from this,” and they’ll probably stop going. It’s the same thing that speaks to the information on there. If they’re going to go in and put in the time, let’s make sure that they’re yielding a return on their investment. Our time is the most valuable thing. We know that the biggest complaint about exercise is, “I don’t have enough time. I don’t have enough time.” Yes, it’s true, we need to make time. It’s a realistic excuse, but it’s still an excuse. All of us have a limited amount of time, because we have a million things pulling us every which way. The reality is, it’s our health, it’s our lifestyle. We have to make time or else time will catch up with us. If we get it to the point where we can see all these people in the gym and they’re all doing something, anything, that will really directly benefit them so that at the end of the day, they know that they’re getting a return on their time spent, that’s what we need to try and accomplish.

Mark: Oh, yeah. Exactly. I read an interesting post by a physio, Jay Dicharry, who’s sort of a running expert. I had a podcast with him a couple months ago. He wrote a great post that if people, one day they miss a workout and maybe they decide, oh, I’m going to walk to the subway or you do some push-ups at home. If you just think of it in a way, sort of every heartbeat you throw in there and every muscle contraction, if you’re moving towards some sort of an end goal, you’re moving in the right direction. Look at that as a positive. You’re going to miss workouts. You’re not going to have time some days, some weeks, but look at it from a long-term perspective. I think a lot of people sort of jump off the wagon. If they miss a couple workouts, they’re like, “Yeah. It’s not worth it. I’m just going to quit.” Sort of that long-term perspective, this is your life you’re talking about, so you want to take a long-term approach. Even if you get in a walk and you do 20 push-ups or something in an evening, that’s great. Look at it as a positive and move on.

Adam: I think something else that I love about this right now is that, like you said, it’s tough for people to get in, but what’s happening within fitness, both in the physical sense and in the app space, the digital world, is this community-based approach to fitness, which is great. Whether you’re looking at a site or an app, something like Fitocracy, where you really have this gamification of fitness and you get hundreds of thousands of people supporting and talk about fitness. There’s a lot of positive and negative things that can be said about something like CrossFit, and that could be an entire conversation in and of itself. The one thing that CrossFit has really figured out and does a wonderful job with is the community building and the support around it. A lot of people go to a box because they want to train along people who are more competitive internally than they are competitive with other people. It does create that sense of fitness community. You see it in those CrossFit boxes, you see it at the CrossFit games. I’m not a CrossFit person myself, but I’ve been to plenty of different CrossFit places and gone through the workouts, and I do love seeing the support. There’s a lot of positive reinforcement there that gets people active. I think one of my favorite things, it’s something that I really think the digital space is helping to enhance, is social fitness and building people together. You see some sites moving in that direction. I do think that’s important, because people want to fight towards something together. They want to have support and accountability. Oftentimes, like I said, it’s these psychological barriers that hold people back. I can’t tell you whether it’s men or women who will look at a weight room and just be intimidated by it. It can be intimidating, especially if you’re starting. If you’re able to create an environment that has the same exact equipment, arguably even more intimidating. CrossFit Box is a whole bunch of barbells, and a lot of times, pull-up bars. You’ve got people doing handstand push-ups, and

Mark: Tires and stuff.

Adam: Tires, and ugh. If anyone’s ever seen my avatar, I love the tires.

Mark: Oh, yeah. I love that photo, by the way.

Adam: That one will last me forever. I’m going to be 50 years old and I’m still going to be pointing to that. People are going to meet me in person and be like, “Wow. False advertising.”

Mark: Yeah. What happened there?

Adam: “What happened to you?” And I was like, “I was young.” It’s a thing that’s important. I think we need to find more ways like that to engage people and make it fun, and make it more supportive. Just as the old saying, “misery loves company”, I think enjoyment and motivation and inspiration loves company too, and that’s oftentimes that catalyst that gets people going. If you can make it social, whether it’s in a digital space or whether it’s in a physical space, it’s important. It’s the same thing you see with boot camps. People get together, they go and sweat and laugh and feel great, and they want to do it again because they want to be around their friends or they want to be able to push people. I know what happens when I go and train with people. I was just in New York the other day, and Sean Hyson, who is the Fitness Director for Men’s Fitness and Muscle and Fitness, tried to pull me out of a weekend work session where I was just crammed up, and really did a great job of talking me into it. We had an amazing training session. He was pushing me, I was pushing him, we were laughing, we were having fun, we were lifting heavy weights, and it’s great. When people see that fitness doesn’t have to be this boring kind of static activity that some people think it is, it makes it more of a lifestyle activity.

Mark: Yeah, no, I totally agree. Another thing, too, I just ran a marathon here in Toronto about four weeks-

Adam: Congratulations.

Mark: Thank you very much. Still recovering. About four weeks ago, and the one thing I did differently, I’d run one previous other marathon, but I got a coach. That coach, it was all online based. His name is Greg Strosaker. One thing I found, that whole sort of accountability and guidance thing. I could have done it without a coach. There are lots of marathon plans online and Runner’s World, etcetera. It’s one thing, too, if people can afford it, having a trainer or having a coach or any sort of support and community, all that stuff helps, no matter even if you’re super fit or you’re just starting out. I’ve been running for 20 years, and it’s the first time I had a coach. I must say it really helped me focus and kept me accountable. I would recommend it to everyone, whether they’re running or they want to get into weights, whatever they’re doing, whatever their activity is.

Adam: I couldn’t agree more. It’s funny you mentioned that. I offer a coaching service on my website, bournefitness.com. This is not a plug, it’s to say that the reason why I did that is because I get coached myself. I’m someone who has been doing this for 14 years. Jason Ferruggia, who is one of the smartest strength coaches I’ve ever come across, was my training partner. It’s important that it’s not just beginners who get coached. Coaches get coached. I have numerous mentors. It’s great, because it gives you that social aspect. It gives the accountability. It allows people to see the flaws that you can’t see yourself, and it became that dawning moment. If I have a service that I can provide to people, I’m doing a disservice if I’m not coaching others and passing down the knowledge that I have learned. The way you change a lot of this is to educate. I’m a teacher at heart. I love educating people on every which way, whether it’s stuff on the editorial side and creating content and building brands, which is what I do for my business, or whether it’s on the fitness side, which is really where I cut my teeth and where I get to interact with people. It’s our job to share that information whether we are being coached or whether we are coaching others, because then you pass down that information and your hope is that they learn it well enough that they can pass it down to someone else. Maybe they can’t pass it down the same way that you can. This isn’t a license to go and learn from people and then decide that you are a coach. It takes years to learn things and be able to pass it down. The sign of a really good teacher is someone who can educate another individual and then that individual can go ahead and take some of that information and pass it down to someone, so that they understand it in a way that they can help themselves. That’s what we need to do. We just need to spread information. This idea, obviously is an expense for people, and it’s an investment, but it’s one of the best investments. It’s an investment in your education, it’s an investment in your health, it’s an investment in your body. At the end of the day, those are never going to be investments that you really regret.

Mark: I totally agree. Adam, can you take us through a typical day for you with regards to diet, eating schedule, and sort of what a typical workout looks like for you?

Adam: I’m glad you didn’t want me to reveal my entire day, so that people can be like, “Really? That guy has the most boring life ever.”

Mark: No.

Adam: My reality show would be entertaining and maddening at the same time. We should just turn on Bourne TV over here so that people can see me slogging around at 5 am, and yeah, that’s usually when the day begins. From an eating and fitness standpoint, I am an intermittent faster. There are many different ways to practice intermittent fasting, and a lot of these beliefs have been learned and adjusted from other people far smarter than me. I do a modified version of Martin Berkhan’s 16-8 fasting, which he created. You fast for 16 hours a day and then you eat for eight. There’s also different elements from Brad Pilon’s, “Eat Stop Eat”. Brad is also very, very smart. You kind of take these things and synthesize, and like I said, find ways that work for you. I don’t eat until about anywhere between 12 and 2 pm every day. As we discuss in the book, this whole idea of not eating breakfast, trust me, my metabolism isn’t slowing down. I’m not suffering from low blood sugar or falling apart at the seams. I actually feel great. The reason I do this is because it’s much more sustainable for my life. It really works well with my schedule, and when I get my pick me ups from boost of energy, because by fasting in the morning, I will tell you I’m sharper than I’ve ever been. I am on my game. When I would hit that afternoon lull, I go and train, and I get my pick me up. I usually like to train middle of the day, which is a huge departure from what I used to do. I will say that I can do this now because I work for myself. When I still worked for a corporation, I switched to lunchtime workouts, and this is for ten years, used to get up as early as 4:30 in the morning so I could have a huge breakfast, and then I’d go head out and train. You could kind of see the evolution in how I live my lifestyle now. It has been an adjustment in finding really what works for me and my schedule. I will fast until about 12 or 2, I will then hit my workout. Depending on what I’m doing for the day, sometimes I will eat before training, sometimes I won’t. We’ll go, and I’ll will train. After training, I eat. I always eat after training. That’s one of my most enjoyable meals of the day. Usually, it will be a combination of protein and carbohydrates, and it might be a protein shake and some fruit. I’m a huge fan of white rice. I eat it all the time, I absolutely love white rice. It might be a little white rice bowl with some chicken in there, maybe some eggs. Throw veggies in there. I love cooking, but at all times, I’m a simple cook. Then, I will have dinner, which will usually be my biggest meal of the day. About an hour or two later, I make what I’ve become known for many people, my protein ice cream. It’s just a combination of protein powder, almond milk, and almond butter, and then you freeze it. I have the recipe on my website. It’s absolutely delicious.

Mark: That sounds good.

Adam: It’s so good. I know it’s good when my wonderful wife, who has much better taste buds than me, actually enjoys it and asks me to make it for her. It’s something that I do, and it is a way to pretty much kick any sweet tooth that you have. It tastes like you’re eating cake batter or ice cream, depending on how you prepare it and how thick you want it. In terms of how I train right now, I’m pretty much just following Jay, Jason Ferruggia, his approach. He tends to go with pull push legs rotations. One day being primarily pulling, so that being row type exercises, if you will, one day being pushes, so your typical one will be say, like a bench press or an overhead press with accessory exercises, and then a lower body day. We love crushing the prowler all the time. We got our conditioning by pushing around a sled until our legs hate us and we don’t want to move anymore. It’s training hard, it’s training smart. I’ve had a lot of injuries over the years, so we’ve learned how to train smarter so that we don’t have those injuries, and then rest up, heal up, get the appropriate amount of sleep, and repeat.

Mark: That’s great. What about supplements? You mentioned protein powder, there. Do you take anything else on a regular basis? A multivitamin or greens or anything?

Adam: I’m a minimalist, for the most part. I think that, again, if we’re using the car analogy that you can put really premium gas in your car, and it’s going to make you feel a little bit better. I do believe that the majority of your nutrition should come from real food that it only makes sense that that would be the way it is. Supplements are meant to be supplemental to your diet. That’s where they get their name from.

Mark: Sure.

Adam: I do take fish oil. I’m a big believer in fish oil, it’s actually the higher DHA concentration. I love vitamin D. I think it’s really important, something we’re deficient in. I live in beautiful Santa Monica, but most of the light I get is from the fluorescent lights above me, and they don’t give you vitamin D and they don’t give you a nice tan, either. I am one of the more pale people in southern California. I’m trying to work on that.

Mark: I’m one of the more pale people in Canada, so actually, even up here, even more important to take a vitamin.

Adam: That actually works for some people, though. They see me, like, “Don’t you live by the beach?” Yes, I do, and I hope to see the beach one of these days. I do take vitamin D. Very, very important from a hormonal standpoint as well. I take Athletic Greens, I believe it’s the best greens product out there. It’s one that I love, and I buy and take on my own. I think we covered it, actually. We had the vitamin D, fish oil, Athletic Greens, and then occasionally, I will take a Creatine product, depending on training or how I’m feeling. Creatine isn’t something you need to cycle off. A lot of misnomers about that, and there are a lot of benefits to Creatine that go beyond even muscle building, for instance, being good for brain health or sometimes, you’re recovering from injuries and sometimes it just a matter of whether I feel like being on it or not. That’s not a consistent one, but it’s one of the most researched supplements, and there are still a lot of people who associate Creatine with illegal anabolics, like steroids, and that is just the biggest bunch of nonsense you could imagine. Unless you have a pre-existing kidney problem, for instance, Creatine is completely healthy, has a variety of benefits, and is something for the average person, especially who trains with weights. I definitely recommend.

Mark: Well, that’s great. Thanks for the run down, there. I mentioned earlier that I wanted to give away a couple copies of your book,

Adam: Let’s do that.

Mark: And Roman’s book as well. I should mention his name, as well, because he’s the co-author.

Adam: He is a huge part of it. He was the programmer behind the workouts and diets. If anyone has ever seen pictures of Roman, the proof is oftentimes in the pudding. That guy is in phenomenal shape.

Mark: Yeah, he is.

Adam: Yeah. He keeps me working hard. It’s a good thing. Sometimes, if you have somebody who is setting the bar high, it keeps you pushing hard. Like I said, whether it’s your goal or not, it’s always good to know that people who put in the sweat equity, if you will, there is a yield on that investment.

Mark: Exactly. For people listening, if you want to be eligible to win a copy of the book, head over to healthynomics.com/alpha. I’ll set up that link. Just enter a comment at the bottom with what you struggle with the most from a fitness or nutrition perspective, as long or as short as you want. I’ll pick a couple winners at random and send you over a copy of the book. Head over to healthynomics.com/alpha.

Adam: Let’s even up the ante.

Mark: Oh!

Adam: Let’s give away signed copies.

Mark: That will be amazing.

Adam: Let’s give some signed copies. We can even have first place, second place. I will send you, Mark, a couple signed copies, and I will even personalize them to the winners. Mark will let me know who wins, and we will do that, because I’m obviously appreciative of you taking the time to speak to me, and people listening. The point of writing this book is to share this information and hope people can read it, and like I said, pass on that information. We should all be wanting to be learners, but also wanting to be teachers at the same point. Anything that helps people want to engage and learn a little bit more, I’m going to be behind that at all times.

Mark: Hey, well that’s awesome, Adam. Thanks very much. Yeah, head over the website. We’re going to give away four copies, and a couple signed copies by Adam, there. Adam, I don’t want to take any more of your time. You’ve been super generous. Thanks so much for chatting and your expertise. Whereabouts can people stay in touch with you and connect with you if they want?

Adam: You can always reach out to me at bournefitness.com. I have a blog over there where I post information, and also any services, whether it is from coaching to business consulting or brand building I offer on there. If you want to pick up the book and read it yourself, if you’re not one of the winners of the contest, you can find it at any retailer like Barnes and Noble. You can go on Amazon and find it, and if you just want to simplify the whole process, you can go to engineeringthealpha.com. If you ever want to engage with me, you can find me on all the different social media outlets whether it’s bornfitness, on Facebook, or I am a lover of the Twitterverse. I love engaging with people doing Q and A’s, it’s the same thing, it’s @bornfitness over there. I love that because it’s a great way to interact with people, and create conversations. Please do reach out, and I will do my best to always answer questions and talk shop.

Mark: Yeah, that’s cool. I’ve seen you do a few, it looks like you’re in a taxi with some time to kill, doing Q and A, so that’s pretty cool.

Adam: Whenever I’m in New York, I do. It’s my version of Cash Cab. I’m like all right, I know how slowly traffic moves over here. I could sit here and just grumble about it, or I can answer some people’s questions. It’s kind of a fun, lightning style way to answer anything, health, fitness, nutrition. Sometimes I get even random questions. Last time I was in a cab, someone asked me what music was playing on the radio station. It happened to be Usher at the time, to which point I just decided to start dancing in the cab, which is a good thing no one saw. I guess there’s enough weird things going on in New York that no one would have an issue with me dancing in the back of the cab.

Mark: No one would even notice.

Adam: Yeah.

Mark: That’s cool. So anyways, Adam, thanks again, and hopefully we’ll talk to you again soon.

Adam: Yeah, Mark. Thank you, and keep up with the great work. I really appreciate the time. Thanks for having me on.

Mark: No problem. All the best.