Doug LarsonJason Phillips has been everywhere and done everything from cover model to professional athlete to founder of iN³ Nutrition. Jason has written for several publications including Men’s Fitness and his own book, Macros Explained: Your ultimate guide to macronutrient prescription for health, performance, and aesthetics, and has been a sponsored athlete in the fitness industry for over 6 years.
Jason’s journey began in a battle with anorexia and has landed him in a position today where he has helped thousands of people achieve their goals. His formal background comes from Florida State University where he majored in exercise science with a concentration in fitness and nutrition. He has consulted for reality weight loss shows, traveled with the PGA tour, and has helped several functional fitness athletes improve performance.
In this episode, Jason talks about his path in the health and fitness industry, and how he went from being a high level golfer to battling anorexia, and how the journey has helped in his growth and development. He also talks about why it’s important for a coach to connect with and have a genuine understanding of his clients, why it’s important to not just pay attention to macronutrients or micronutrients, but also understand there needs to be a synergy between quality and quantity, and much more.
Enjoy!
– Mike, Doug and Anders
Chasing maximal impact
Coaches in the fitness industry need to think beyond macros and a one-size fits all approach. They need to develop a personal prescription for their clients, after understanding their client’s goals in the first place, as nutrition will be vastly different depending on what the individual is hoping to achieve.
Once Jason Phillips realized the importance of nutrition, based on a 4000 calorie recommendation he received, he transferred to Florida State to “pay it forward”, and help others achieve their nutritional goals. In this episode, Jason helps us debunk some myths that surround eating during training, and talks about the benefits of timing carbohydrate intake. Jason’s goals go beyond the client, targeting to impact the lives millions of people in his career.
“People think nutrition is the problem and it likely is the problem. It’s just the fifth problem.” — Jason Phillips
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Avoid extreme nutrition: There needs to be a balance of quality and quantity — There was a trend where we started thinking that as long as we ate micronutrient dense foods, we’d be able to eat as much as we want without getting fat. We learned that even if you eat 5000 calories of salmon and broccoli, you will gain weight. We then shifted to the macro perspective, as long as you meet certain macronutrient ratios, you can get anything you want.
- The triangle of awareness — There are three types of goals out there: do you have performance goals, do you have aesthetic goals, or do you have longevity goals? If you are chasing performance, you need to be at minimum, maintaining calories, if not at a small surplus. If you want aesthetics and you want body fat loss, you have to be in a calorie deficit. It is important to get clear on what the goal of the training and eating is.
- Before, during, and post training nutrition — For CrossFitters, some intra-workout insulin spike is enough to calm nervous system and can be beneficial. Even when you are drinking the nutrients, there is question around whether or not they can actually get into the muscle. In terms of aesthetics, it is really important to keep your carbs right around your training sessions. Nutrient timing helps recovery, which boosts performance rather than being a tool for boosting performance.
- The biggest part of aesthetics is stress and adaptation — Most athletes have an abundance of stress in their life: Lack of sleep, CrossFit, western culture, business, etc. When you have so much stress that you can’t recover, your body turns to survival, which is fat storage. We aren’t meant to live at 6% body fat. If you don’t give your body the opportunity to adapt to the stressor, you won’t lose body fat.
- A lot of female physique competitors are “ruined” because of the HPA and hormone dysfunction — According to Jason, a female cannot stay close to stage shape more than two times each year with a minimum of 1 year between shows. Females are not designed to be 8% body fat and its not healthy for them to be that level.
- Getting started on your nutrition plan — The first thing an athlete will get when they go to Jason is 50 questions so he can learn about them and what their goals are. What have you tried? What has worked? Where are you at and what is realistic? From there he builds a program and constantly tweaks it.
“We prescribe quantity with a heavy emphasis on quality.” — Jason Phillips
Connect with Jason Phillips
Connect on social: Instagram, Facebook, YouTube
Resources: iN³ Nutrition
Doug Larson Fitness
Doug’s new website is live! Check it out at DougLarsonFitness.com
The Bledsoe Show
The Bledsoe Show (Mike’s personal show) is back! Check out new episodes and the new website at TheBledsoeShow.com
Check out our FREE 50+ page OLYMPIC WEIGHTLIFTING GUIDE! Includes: The Basics, Sample Programming, Links to Technique Videos, and more!
Train smart,
Mike, Doug and Anders
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