In our Bulletproof Your Back Series (follow along on our Instagram page!), we're bringing our clients 4 videos to help them improve back pain. We go through

• Stretch exercises for back pain
• Skill Drills for a strong back
• How to hinge properly
• Breathing work to improve back pain

If you are suffering from a form of low back pain, work your way through these videos and see how you can improve your back pain. 

Our July Series on Instagram brought you these 4 videos to help runners improve 4 key areas:

• Strength
• Mobility
• Skill
• Nutrition

If you are struggling with one of these areas, watch our videos and give these exercises a shot to improve your run times, performance or overall attitude about your run game. 

Good luck hitting the road (or Beltline or treadmill!)

​So here's the question, how do active people in the Atlanta area, stay pain-free and live the active fulfilled life that they deserve at any age. This is the question. And this podcast is the answer. I'm Danny Matta and welcome to the Active Atlanta Podcast.

Active Atlanta Podcast is sponsored by Athletes' Potential. And at Potential we help active adults stay that way. Pain-free and active during the sports and activities that they do. For life. We do this by working on four different areas. That's movement, nutrition, stress management, and sleep. When we optimize these four areas, you feel better, move better, you live better for life. Head over to athletespotential.com to learn how we can help you stay active for life today.

What is up everyone and welcome back to the Active Atlanta Podcast. I'm your host Doctor Jake Swart. And with me, I have the head trainer of Fit Wit Ethan Duff guys. This dude is super knowledgeable when it comes to the world of health, wellness, fitness training, and all the above. He's doing some really incredible things for a company called FitWit and I'm super excited to get him on the podcast today.

So Ethan, welcome to the show. 

Thanks, Jake. Thanks for having me, man. 

Yeah, yeah, dude, you guys are we'll just briefly touch this because I'm sure our listeners are tired of hearing about it too, but man, what's, COVID coming around and, and just the impact it's had on an industry, like, like a gymnasiums or like fitness facilities.

Sure. You guys are, I'm not, I'm not shy to say it. You guys are. Far better than a lot of the gyms that we work with or that we've seen in the Atlanta area, I should say from both a value add standpoint to the patients and your communication the leadership has been very clear, concise, and I mean, and people will notice that.

So what are some of the, what are some of the ways that you are, what are some tactics, I guess, that you've used to just try to stay steady throughout all this and maintain a good relationship with the community that you guys worked so hard to. Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think the big thing for us, and I've seen it throughout just following other gyms in town and just, you know, around the country and the world.

I think the gyms have had a really good way of just hitting the ground running, you know, and I think the fact that community is such a big part of gym culture now. It's easy to be able to reach out, talk to you, the members, and have a game plan that allows you to kind of just flow and keep going. And these, and these really weird and trying times, and, you know, kind of unprecedented waters that we're, that we're all in.

And I think for us as a company, the fact that community is one of our main staples. You know, it's really kind of the foundation of what we are as a, as a gym and as a couple. It was easy for us to just flow into this. And, you know some of the big things we did right off the bat is we shifted everything to online into that online true coach platform, which has been really cool and really helpful.

It's a really in depth. I don't know if you've ever gone untrue coach, but you can, you can program and you can have video links and you can really not only customize, but personalized workouts for people in there. We jumped right on that. And we also did a really good job dividing up our entire gym. You know, we do a big group fitness program, and we took all the staff members of the gym and basically divvied up all of our members to the different coaches throughout the gym.

And everybody now had their group of people that they were responsible for. And we went right to doing a live. Facebook live workouts immediately. I mean, the first week of shutting everything down, we went right to Facebook, live workouts, transitioned that into zoom live workouts. We posted all the workouts into replay.

So people would have access to all these things. And I definitely think one of the big things that we always try to provide at FitWit is this idea of value. And sometimes, sometimes it can be, you know, making sure that we are always over-delivering, you know, how do we continue to over-deliver? So, you know, nothing was changed as far as membership dues or fees.

It was, hey, let's see what we can do. How are we going to roll through this? And how can we just set up an awesome online platform that will allow people to not only have live opportunities to work out, but also the ability to access, replay videos, and then have a coach that they can access through a, program and a platform that has all kinds of content in it.

So really just kind of hitting the ball, running on those, those three phases. Yeah. Yeah. And maybe you guys do over deliver a ton. I love it. You guys do over there from a, from a programming standpoint because you guys really tend, tend to take like a mobilly and to play a, you guys are trying to make sure that people are able to move well, and then move often.

That's something we talked about all the time in our clinic. I think you guys kind of like really internalize that at your guys' facility as well. What do you think is, so for our listeners who may not be familiar with who fit with is what, what is fit and what do you think is some of you guys.

Key contributing factors to your identity. And this may be a loaded question, but, and then what kind of separates you from other gyms in the area? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, as I was saying before, our community is really big. I know a lot of gyms kind of tout having a great community, but you know, fit with, start it in 2006 and I don't have all the facts about the Atlanta fitness community, but I would definitely say we're probably one of the longest running.

Gyms and brands in the city, which is just a testament to not only the company, but also the community that supports its its company. Right? So you know, 14 years doing this and we've evolved over those years. And we still have members who have been here from day one. We have lots of members who have been here for over 10 years, and I think they really set the foundation of, of what it is that we do.

And we almost like to call ourselves the cheers of fitness. You know, we're the place where everybody, everybody goes, right? Like everybody goes and everybody knows your name. And, you know, so for me, I, I run all the morning classes at the gym and I can tell you every single person's name that comes into that room.

And I mean, every morning class we had today, there was over 20 people in every class. I can tell you all their names and that's kind of rooted in the culture. Yeah, how we train our staff that, hey, you're expected to know these people's names to address them by their names, to get to know them, to kind of set this relationship and understanding that relationships is really the foundation of what we do as a business.

You know, like having cool programs and, and understanding, you know, functional anatomy and understanding fitness. You know, that's paramount. We need to know that to do this job, but really understanding people and building relationships is what sets the foundation. So. I think that is what sets us apart.

And we just also continue to evolve. You know, this idea of 1% better is, is really at the foundation of us as a community and us as a staff. And we've seen, we've seen lots of iterations over the 14 years of business. Yeah. Do I love it? Yeah, I think one of the things that I think is really interesting or that I love about you guys is, is the intelligence of the programming.

I mean, you, you guys are trying to just. Healthier and like the healthy, healthier, fitter, and stronger to kill human beings, man. And it really shows like very diverse in the programming that you guys have. You guys have all kinds of stuff that really transfers over into some of the stuff that we do in the PE and PT land or physical therapy land where you guys are doing about you know, like functional range, conditioning drills, you guys are doing like controlled articular rotations.

You guys are doing all these things that are not just going to make people stronger and fitter, but make them feel better as a, throughout their everyday life. And just, yeah. Better husband, better wife, better parent, better, better worker at their job, whatever the case may be that they're trying to improve.

Like fitness can definitely be a piece of that. And you guys go above and beyond in terms of just more it's more than just how much weight can you lift or how much of an athlete can you be? It's it's a, how well can you move as a human being? Which I think is really cool. Is that something that like, you've kind of really brought to the gym because.

Because we'll go like we've, we've put on some, like symposiums. Do you guys, and man, I got to say like, you guys are way more attentive than any other gym that we go to. Like your, your trainers are in there taking notes. Like you can tell, like, learning is definitely a part of that culture for you guys.

It's big, you know, for sure. I think it goes back to the 1% better, every everyday thing. And yeah. You know, well, before my time at fitness, the, at my time at fit with the main principle of our programming is, is do no harm, you know, and, and this idea that, you know, it's no, no one day is more important than your ability to come back to.

So, like you said, I mean, I need to be making sure I'm doing things that are, are a little bit more low risk, high reward. Like I don't need to be crushing people. You know, they need to be able to go to work after they leave the gym because, you know, that's what we train. Like you said, we, we train general the general population.

We train, you know, mothers and wives and husbands and we train fathers and we train, you know, people who work nine to five jobs. And, you know, at the end of the day, their, their goal is really just to move and feel better. And, you know, Yeah, we're just trying to check those buckets first. And I also think, you know, like most people who've been doing this for awhile.

We've all walked away with our own nicks and bruises and different overuse injuries. And I think we've all realized how can we be smarter because longevity you know, is really the name of the game. If I think about it, I don't know if you've watched it. It was, it was very popular a couple of months ago, but the last dance with Michael Jordan, I mean the ability to be great for a long period of time is really what it's about.

You know, it's rare and it's, you know, anyone can sprint, you know, one time, but can I keep doing it 10 years, 20 years, 30 years. Right. And yeah, that's kind of the base of, of what we want to provide them. 

I love it, man. Yeah. And that's so true. Like I would say we get, we get a lot of people in the clinic where it's like, you know, they went like real hard on a weekend and like what above that capacity level that they typically have.

I was just cause they don't train at those levels and that's fine. You don't have to go. You don't have to go that hard all the time. But yeah. I love the idea of being able to get people back into the gym the next day, make her so that you can work out over and over and over again, and just be physically active and not be crushed for the next week, you know be able to go on a hike up Stone Mountain and not be able to not sit down on the toilet because your legs are so sore the next day, you know?

And those are, those are arguably way more important than like some of these, like objective goals, I guess you can say where I want to be able to bench press 300 pounds or I'll be able to squat 500 pounds. It was like, well, why, why do you want to do that? And you have those goals too. Like, those are also important that not trying to pull through those by any means.

If you, if you have athletic goals, like there's a way that you can hit those and still be in, still enjoy like 80 or your everyday life as well. So what do you, what do you do, man? Like from a training perspective? Head trainer, the world of training is a grind, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. What has, how do you kind of maintain your fitness levels on top of everything that you do for.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, for me, it's I don't know if you've read atomic habit. I don't know if you've read it all and I've, you've probably read other books that kind of talk about just habit and discipline and stuff like that. And for me, it's just become it's part of the day. It's, it's almost like the brushing of the teeth.

I mean, yeah, it's a, it's part of my life, you know, it's, it's something that's going to get done no matter what, there's kind of not a negotiable and. And also understanding that that means I don't have to be in the gym for two hours to get a good workout or, you know, I, I try to set a clock. I give myself an hour in the morning, as soon as I finished kind of going through all my morning classes.

I take care of myself for an hour, and then it's back to getting everything else done in the day that needs to be done all the backend stuff that is part of, you know, running a gym program that people don't kind of realize and see. And you know, that takes place after I take care of myself and yep. Yeah.

Yeah. So do you write all the programming? We'll wrap it with them. Yeah, for sure. So what we do at fit, which is really cool is we always do kind of a peer review of programming. So we have a basic outline of this is our tenements. This is what we believe. This is what we're going to try to achieve. And it's structured in a way that we're trying to hit those main goals.

Like you talked about like a strength, conditioning and mobility. How can I touch on all of these three pieces? And then I write it out. It's based on a four week program each week as a staff, we go through at our staff meeting of the workouts. We peer review and we kind of check down, Hey, just what? That way I'm not getting stuck in and stuff that I think is cool.

And maybe I missed, maybe I'm missing a whole other thing out there, you know? And sure. Yeah. And so we peer review as a group, we make those changes and then we go from there, you know, right now, so many of those things are not in our. Wheelhouse because we don't have access to being able to share a lot of the equipment that we have.

So this idea of, of kiss, I don't know if you're familiar with keep it simple, stupid, keep it simple, stupid, right? Like that's how I, that's how I kind of live my life and my training. And that's what we try to do, bring into the gym as well. Keep it simple, stupid, you know, and yeah. How do I keep this as simple as possible and get the.

Yeah, I think that's awesome, man. Cause like there there's a lot and Instagram can be at fault at this to some level, but it's been around in the world of fitness, wherever people are always trying to look for like the real cute, sexy exercise that that just looks really cool. Right. And really like you look at any foundational program of any ad.

Professional athlete, rather, that's a fueled in quarter barbell athlete. Like  90% of what they do. 99% of what they do is foundational based movements. And then they get into the acute stuff. Once they've earned the rights. Do those movements, you know it's not a staple of what they do and they're not doing it every day by any means either.

And dude, you gotta be, you guys have to be chomping at the bit to, to get back into your facility. So on top of, I know I said, I only mentioned COVID once, but on top of COVID happening and kind of shutting you guys down, it happened right. As you guys were moving into a new facility, a new law.

Beautiful facility that is like, I know your members are excited to get there and your trainers and yourself, and to be just as excited to get in there as well. Yeah, absolutely man. And I mean, the people at home can't see it, but I'm wearing our new logo and our new brand man. And like I said, kind of ever evolving.

I mean, I came on at FitWit in 2015 and that was right when we moved from being a four location outdoor boot camp. Brand two, a two outdoor one indoor location. And that was our old College Avenue Kirkwood location, which, which you've been to before. Yeah, that was, that was about 3,000 square feet, I think.

And, you know, we get so much done in the, in that, in that space. And basically got to get to a point over the last five years where we realized there's all these other things we would love to expand into expanding into a kid's program, expanding into a youth athletic development program, expanding into a lower impact 55 plus program.

And, and how can we offer all of them? On top of our, you know, 28 person, large group training class, that's really been the foundation of FitWit for 14 years. And we realized, we realized we needed to expand. So we moved into a, about a 10,000 square foot facility. And I mean, it's we, me and Josh joke around that.

It's called the Fantasy Factory. We put a basketball, the goal in there and it's got field and oh yeah, man. Yeah. I mean, we did some hoops over there, man. Absolutely. We didn't spare expense. We got turf lanes and you know, it's, it's gorgeous. One of my big pushes was for the water fountain with the water bottle refiller and yeah.

Going from our gritty past of being in fields and being in the dirt to being in this more lush environment. But what's interesting is right now we're in the parking lot in front of this 10,000 square. Facility and we're doing it outdoors people, man. Oh, well, we're back to our roots, you know, Jake, we're back to our roots, which I think is really cool, man.

And it, you know, if anything, maybe it's helping a lot of our members members like get a little bit of that gritty feeling back, you know that yeah, we haven't had over the past five years and Hey man, when the time's right, we'll be inside that beautiful facility, they see what they can see, what they, you know, are, are looking forward to.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, dude. Yeah. And then and then on top of that, like, dude, first of all, I've, I've heard probably about half of what you just said after you said you had a basketball hoop in there because I'm I I've been begging to get a basketball hoop over at a athlete's potential and they kind of suffice it with like a little mini hoop.

Yeah. I only worked for a week and then I'm like, all right, now I need a real hoop in here. But no, I'm just kidding, but like also on your guys' wall, I love what you guys have on there. You have in like big block letters, you have stronger together. And that's awesome. I think that that's like a mantra that you guys live by it.

And and, and the people that we work with do come from your gym. That's exactly how they kind of talk, man. Like it's it's I know it's cliche to say it too. Like it's a little cliche or overuse the term, trying to build a community within a gym, but you guys do a really good job at that. What do you think in something like outside of like good programming from the head trans perspective, what, and knowing people's names and everything, what is like, is there one thing or one big thing you can can attribute to.

Just that overall community vibe. I mean, you have to earn the right to have that community. So like, you guys have been in business for 14 years, it sounds like. So I mean, you have, it's been building over a process, but what is, what is a glue to kinda kind of keeps that together? Would you say? Yeah, that's a great question.

You know, I think, I think a big part of it is, is really just. Wanting to be a part of these people's lives, you know, like, yeah. Even for myself, you can't fake it, you know, within this, within this current climate that we're in. One of the big things I was saying is, man, I miss these conversation conversations I have with my community, you know, for the first three to four hours of my day.

I'm in there with, you know, 20 plus people. And we're talking about all kinds of stuff. We're talking about their lives. We're talking about their kids, we're talking about their jobs, you know, and we're just kind of, you know, getting to know each other and building those relationships. And that's really it.

You know, if you're going to be in this business, if you're going to be in this career and you're going to be successful, you have to understand that relationships come from. Learning to communicate. I see that conscious coach sitting behind you, you on bread, good stuff to say, but yeah, learning to communicate and building those foundational relationships is really what makes it a difference, you know, and some gyms talk about it.

And we really try to walk in those shoes, you know, at our staff meeting last year, I started a practice where everybody had to give. Something, they learned about a member that week. So we call it an open open-ended questions. Yeah. I set this up where basically every week you had to go up to a member, ask them an open-ended question, get to know something about them and then bring it to the staff.

And we talked about it as a staff at the staff meeting and, you know, just getting to know these people more than, oh, that Steve, he comes to the jail. Yeah. Yeah, no, sorry, go ahead. No, that's yeah, yeah. I was just saying that's that's it's crucial. And, and, and like, and like you said, like you can't fake it.

And, and oftentimes like when you have those deeper conversations and, and you, it's just natural to develop those deeper relationships The gym now, it's not like this other net, the gym doesn't become the siloed part of their life, where they, like, it becomes like an I part of their identity and it starts trickling into the other aspects of their life.

And it's the same thing, like what we do in the clinic. And, and so like, you know, like when somebody comes into a clinic for example, and say they have, you know, back pain or whatever, they've had back pain for 20 years, right. And you guys see this in a gym probably way more than I see it in a clinic.

Cause like a lot of people don't realize is like gyms are oftentimes like first responders to injuries. Right. Or chronic pain in particular too. Definitely like the, the that first step for a lot of people and correcting that. But people coming like, yeah, my back pain has been hurting me for like, you know, kind of 20 years.

I'm like, oh man, that sucks. What's going on? And and then, yeah, and then, but then my big by big question is like, why, why are you in here? Like, what, what is it over the past 20 years? Like, what is it stopping you from doing, you know? And then it's like, oh, well, you know, I'm a, I'm a about to have my third kid and I'm afraid that I'm not going to be able to get on the floor and play and play with my daughter as much as I want to, you know, or you know, I have this goal I'm about to retire soon.

And you know, I busted my ass, my entire life to be able to have these, be able to go on these trips, my wife, and I'm nervous not going to be able to. Dude. I just have these conversations with people all the time. And once you find out like, oh, that's your motivation to come in here? It's not, it's not your back pain.

It's the same thing at the gym. Like those are your motivations for coming in. It's not for becoming a member or sticking with the gym. It's not a, you want to get fit or you want to look good in front of a mirror. Like, yeah. I mean, those are always nice perks for sure, but that's not going to be this.

That's not going to be a lifelong habit or lifelong habit for me. Reason that gets you through the tough times, or you had to wake up at four 30 in the morning to get to the gym. You don't want to, after the third bond, you know, and being able to develop and have those conversations and develop those relationships like they're not going to like people aren't going to want to go anywhere else.

What they've had those conversations, because you realize. Oh, this is more than a year, more than just a trainer to them. And they're more than just the client to you. It it's truly, it truly is a community at that point where you guys care about each other on a much deeper level than just, oh, you come here and pay money to go to the gym and I trained you because you pay money.

So I love that. I think that's a really cool idea. We might have to steal that. Start implementing that into our, into our weekly staff meetings as well. Because I think that's awesome. Just holds everyone accountable. It makes everyone try to have, because I'm sure just now it may have been like forced at first for your trainers to do that.

In terms of like, you know, they feel like, oh, we have this meeting coming up. I gotta ask, I gotta ask somebody a question. But I'm sure it's now is just a natural part of their day. And it's just like, they can't, they probably have too many like examples to give now they're searching for which one do they just want to give that week?

Oh, absolutely. And then it becomes like, okay, Now let's find a new person. I haven't built that great relationship with, you know, it's like I can talk to, I can talk to this person all day in class. Now let's find the new, the new member or the person I haven't been able to, you know, Get a little bit deeper into the relationship with, and I think, you know, I, I actually, it might've been Danny who said this to us one time when you guys came into the gym to do an in-service with us and he called it the tip of the spear.

Yeah. And just talking about how coaches and trainers really are the people who are around these people more than anything. And that's something I always try to remind our staff and I try to remember remind people when I'm talking to them, which is, you know, For most of our members, I see them 3, 4, 5 times a week.

Yeah. That's more than they see their best friend probably or their family or like their family or yeah, besides their spouse and their coworkers. Like I see them 3, 4, 5 times a week. And the better, it also goes back to this idea of, you know, people don't care about what, you know, they care about how you make them.

And if you can make them feel welcomed and want it, I mean, you're going to have a better, yeah. For sure. For sure. Yeah. I mean, and this is, and this is how you talk about the conscious coaching book. And I think it's becoming more and more prevalent, but like, man's like just good programming is it's just the base.

It's just, that's like the price to play. Yeah. That's like the price of entry, you know, good programming is just the beginning of what you need to be able to do. And then communication community development. Being able to care about it somewhat, but it sounds silly, but that's a, that's a skill to be able to like truly care about someone that may, that, that doesn't have any positive, like a net positive influence, but may not directly like gives you something for having that relationship, you know, like that that's a skill and that's when you truly start caring about people.

So, yeah, I love that you guys do that and I'm super interested too, by the way of all these like exhilarate programs that you're having off of your main foundational program or programming. So you're having, you said like a kid's camp and, or a kid's program and a athletic development program. Yeah, absolutely.

Those are two separate things. Those are two separate things. So we run, we run a kids program, which I actually started. Which if you know me well, you know, you would think that's funny, but we started a kids program at the gym about four years ago and I started heading that up and that soon grew and, you know, you know, the community we live in and, and yeah.

Where the gym is located everywhere. Oh, families and kids everywhere that that's grown over the years to where that gets separated into three different time slots for ages, we were able to separate into three different time slots. 

And then we realized last year that it would be something to really touch this community, you know, you see, you guys have all the time, you have all these kids that come in that play, they play basketball. And you know, they're, they're getting really involved in sports and we realized like, yeah, how can we help do this the right way? 

How can we have some kind of athletic development program that's going to help teach kids kind of foundational training, strength, training, and also foundational conditioning and plyometrics and things that athletes need.

So a little bit more structured and just also helping and in this world, that's, you know, continuing to become more specialized. You know, more, more soccer year round, and how can we help kids have these periods of time that are, Hey, maybe for six weeks you do this. You'd have to like development program instead of doing another soccer camp.

And this way you can get, you know, learn to get strong and, and focus on these other things. So, yeah, we started that last year and that was basically little six week blocks where you would sign up. We were limited limiting it to 14 people, 14 kids. Starting at age 12. So realizing that kids really just need to play at first, you know, they can learn some foundational things like here's how to squat and here's how to do a pushup, but, but really, you know, around 12, hey, let's start.

If you're interested to focus on getting a little bit deeper into training. So a lot more focused, a lot more like how we train adults and we limited the classes. And that was something we were trying to expand. We're still running it right now. We do zoom and we do some in-person outdoor. We call it shorthand yet.

Yeah. Okay. Nice. Do I love it? So at the at the Fun Factory, you guys you guys also have the so the turf strip, I think that's awesome. And then, so you guys will be getting to a lot of agility work. I think that that's, I think that's an important piece, that's this, and a lot of like adult training programs as well.

And I know you guys implement that as well. So just again, another feature of like how you guys are going above and beyond and really trying to get that 1% better. But so clearly a jelly program is going to be part of it. You guys have do you guys have like all the rowers as well? Like all the, all the equipment you can be like C2, rowers you guys have skier, assault, bikes, all that fun stuff.

Yeah. We don't have skier. We, we do have, you know, the concept two ERGs and we row, and we like to to focus on, you know, a lot of rowing stuff. We usually take a group of people to the Atlanta Earth Sprints every year. And we have the airbikes, which is really just I think probably bang for your buck.

One of the best pieces of conditioning equipment, they're the best torture devices of all time, man, absolutely low, low impact, low stress on the, on the joints in the back. And I mean, bang for your buck. I would say low risk, high reward, man. You can click on that thing, build a strong engine. And if you're, if you're wanting to leave out of the gym, feeling like someone, you know, Kicked your butt.

I mean, there's nothing worse than getting on that bike. So we had those and we got sleds and we do a lot of heavy sled pushing and some lighter sled sprinting. And then classic kettlebells. We do most of our strength training and external loading with kettlebells and yup. Pull up bars, pull up rigs.

We use med balls to do med ball, throwing to kind of get some plyometric power work in some light and borrowing. Yeah. Yeah. And one of our big focuses really is a lot of tempo work today. In fact, was it today, today in fact, was at tempo training shrink day in which we kind of focused on slowing movements down and putting them on Timbo clocks.

So we can focus a little bit more time under tension. And that's that's been a big staple in our program for the past couple of years. Yeah, man, we do the most of what we can do. And you guys are doing incredible things. If it's somebody wanted to find out more about Fit Wit or rather that's on the, on a website or a social media account or email, like what would be the best way for them to kind of get in touch with them?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, our website is extremely thorough. We have a blog on there and there's lots of great information, including some of our different programs that we're currently running right now and all of the online offerings that we're also offering right now. So that's just fitwit.com and then from a social media standpoint, we're on Facebook.

If you look up Fit Wit, and then also our Instagram tag, I believe is @fitwitnation, if I'm not mistaken, so @fitwitnation is a good place to find it. Those social media posts. 

Cool. Yeah. Yeah. 

You can get some sneak peaks of the gin as well in there, man. 

That's a, that's what I've been. That's why I haven't taken, taken, taking my looks at, so we'll do Ethan.

I really appreciate your time this evening, man. It's been great to have you on the show. You guys are doing awesome things over there and I can't wait for that space to get open. Cause it's going to be, it's going to be great for the ochres and just Atlanta area. 

Yeah. Thanks Jacob. Good talking to you, man.

Hey, thanks so much for listening to the podcast today. If you want to find out more about our guests or about Athletes' Potential and how we can help you continue to be active and pain-free in life, head over to athletespotential.com to learn more.

​So here's the question, how do active people in the Atlanta area, stay pain-free and live the active fulfilled life that they deserve at any age. This is the question. And this podcast is the answer. I'm Danny Matta and welcome to the Active Atlanta Podcast.

Active Atlanta Podcast is sponsored by Athletes' Potential. And at Potential we help active adults stay that way. Pain-free and active during the sports and activities that they do, for life. We do this by working on four different areas. That's movement, nutrition, stress management, and sleep. When we optimize these four areas, you feel better, move better, you live better for life. At athletespotential.com, learn how we can help you stay active for life today.

What is up everyone and welcome back to the Active Atlanta Podcast. I'm your host, Doc Jake Swart. And I'm here with just a straight up bad-ass. Her name is Megan Kober. She is the founder of The Nutrition Addiction, the founder of the 30 Day Metabolism Makeover. And she is you probably also know her as the vodka loving dietician.

She's got an awesome brand in the digital media space and she's doing some incredible things in that area. So Megan, how are you doing?

 I'm great. Thanks for having me on today. 

Yeah. Yeah, of course. I'm super excited. I know we've been trying to coordinate this back and forth for a little while now, so it's awesome to finally get you on the show and to kind of pick your brain a little bit and kind of expose our audience to some of the stuff that you're doing.

So let's get into it. So Metabolism Makeover, what's what's the deal behind that? How did they get started? What are some of the, because if you go onto your website, if you have a pretty interesting story laid out in terms of how this kind of came about. So if you don't mind getting into some of the details, like what's kind of the motivation behind what this PR company is for you.

Yeah. So really what happened was I started blogging, you know, probably six years ago when I was in between jobs and I, my whole motivation behind starting was I wanted to show people that healthy eating didn't have to be that hard. Now this was, gosh, yeah, probably six or seven years ago at this point.

This was when a lot of food blogs were coming out, they were really popular. And the main purpose behind these food blogs were having these beautiful pictures of food, these complicated recipes, you know, and it was really about the story behind the food. It wasn't so much around it. And I was looking, you know, and I would sit and read these blogs for hours.

And I was like, wouldn't it be so cool to actually be able to cook all this stuff? And I'm like, you know, who really has time for that? And I think it made a lot of my friends and family that I talked to you know, it was intimidating and they said like healthy eating. It's just so hard.

It's, it's, you've got to buy a million ingredients. You've got to buy a million expensive ingredients. I'm like, well, no, not really. I mean, it really doesn't have to be that hard. So that was my whole purpose was to create a blog where I'm making really easy recipes that aren't super fancy, that you don't have to go to the farmer's market for that sort of, you know, developed into.

Then I started seeing one-on-one clients. A lot of the clients that I was getting were weight loss clients, and they, I started to notice a pattern between them that they had kind of been on a yo-yo dieting cycle for years. 

These women weren't eating-it didn't seem like they were overeating-it didn't seem like, you know, I wasn't able to look at what they were doing and say easily okay, well, you just got to cut out soda. You just got to quit eating junk food all the time. Like they were eating pretty healthy, so I'm like what's going on. And. I realized that really it was their past with dieting and you know, this yo-yo dieting cycle that they had been on, their metabolisms were just shot.

So I knew from my background you know, I'm a registered dietician and so I had studied the human metabolism quite a bit, and I started to really, instead of focus on weight loss and like, okay, this is what you need to do to lose weight. I'm like, let's just kind of work with your metabolism first and like figure out not here because clearly if you're eating 1400 calories a day and you're not losing weight, there's a problem when you're working out.

You know? So I started taking these women through certain steps to help them start to repair their metabolism. They started losing weight. Eating more really you know, helping them work out less, eat more food. And I know that kind of sounds kind of cliche, like, okay, yeah. Eat less food and lose weight, but if you do it as a slow process, it's not like you can just start doing this tomorrow, but you can, and yeah.

After I did this with several women, I said, okay, you know, more people need to know about this. I need to make this on a grander scale. So that's where the 30 Day Metabolism Makeover came in. And I created a program that people, you know, hundreds of people can go through at once. And I really just take them through the same steps that I did with those women in the beginning.

So yes, I started out as a food blog and now this major program that we've had, I think like around 1500 or 1600 people. 

Awesome. It's awesome. I mean, that's 15, 16, thousand impacts that you've made. I really liked how you kind of take a look at the metabolism instead of like the calories or kind of like the problem areas that people associate with.

It's kind of like how we address stuff in the clinic. Like people come in with like, oh, my shoulder hurts. So I must be a strengthening issue. Well, maybe, but let's get into like, why, like let's let's I remember I used to be when I was a young clinician and get really focused in on what's the exact diagnosis with somebody like it's gotta be a torn label, or it's gotta be a rotator cuff sprain strain, or it's gotta be whatever.

And what I've found out is if I started like trying to improve the deficits that people have, or the deficiencies that people have, those problems typically go away. And it sounds like that's kind of an, a different lens, kind of at the same philosophy you kind of take in terms of, all right, you've got all these different steps that you're trying to take, but let's, let's get to the root cause of why these steps aren't working to begin.

Yeah. Like to me, it's, it's similar to, you know, functional medicine versus Western medicine. It's not just slapping a diagnosis, not just slapping. Okay. Eat less, exercise more. Yeah. Let's look at the root cause let's see what's going on beneath the surface because that's not honestly nine times out of 10.

That's what it is. Everybody's tried a weight loss time. Everybody's tried to exercise more. If that worked, we have a lot of skinny people out there. Right? Exactly. Yeah, no, I totally agree. I like, and I see this all the time, like at the gym in particular people are coming in with super restricted diets and then also trying to perform.

And you can't do that. It's, it's, it's just not feasible especially in that for a long-term best solution by any means. What are some of the, this may be a loaded question, but like from a metabolism standpoint, cause I think that's a really succinct take that maybe I'm just a neophyte in the area of nutrition and diet.

But it's just not something that, like, I see a lot of other people really trying to take a hard look at in terms of people's metabolism, what are some like low hanging fruit areas that you see consistently with people like, man, this is more people just knew this, like my job would be way easier. Yeah. I think that a really good place to start is just educating yourself.

What is protein? What are good protein sources? Obviously there's a lot of good animal protein sources. But plant sources like nuts seeds lentils beans, things like that. Protein getting protein at every single meal would be my number one. So figuring out what protein is, making sure that you just have it on your plate.

Why is this? Because protein actually. First of all, it actually runs up your metabolism. Like eating protein actually increases your metabolism when you're eating enough of it. You know, at least 2025 grams at a meal and protein also of course maintains lean muscle. So when you are trying to lose weight, it is really important to get enough protein. 

It's also really satiating. So. Do you know, I understand some people are going to hear this and say like, well, you know, you don't need as much protein as people say, you know, that's true. You don't, it is really filling. And you can't deny that, you know, there's studies that show getting at least 20 grams of protein at breakfast actually makes you eat less food throughout the day or prevents you from overeating, I guess is what I should say, because it just keeps you full.

And so just that number one, the protein making sure you're including fat at your meals. I do. We're getting much better at being comfortable with fat now than we were even just five years ago, but it still surprises me. The women that come into my program now that say like, man, this is just like really hard for me to wrap my head around that I should be eating fat at every meal.

So it is still. Sure. Yeah. Especially women who think that that makes them fat and it, it doesn't, it obviously overeating anything will cause you to gain weight, but fat, you know, keeps you full again, it also really lowers the blood sugar response. So anytime you eat, really, anytime you eat almost any. You your, your blood sugar raises.

Now that's not a bad thing necessarily, but you don't want it to spike. You don't want it shooting through the roof because you're gonna flood your body with insulin, which is a hormone that comes out and scoops up blood sugar and stores it. Now, of course, that can be a good thing. We need to. We need to store energy is stored in our liver and our muscles.

But when we get too much, where is it going to go? It's going to go to our fat cells, right? So you have these big blood sugar spikes and you have this flood of insulin in your body. You're going to go into a fat storing mode for hours. So how do you prevent that real fat, fat and fiber, but fat is a really big one.

So it's really just a matter of slowing down your digestion. Honestly, amazing for your brain, for your hormones, it makes you happy. And you're like, man, I want to eat more because I'm not full enough. Yeah. It's quite as good either. Yeah, no, no. Yeah. So yes, protein. Fiber is the last one that you really want to make sure you're including it.

Every meal fiber is just really good for you. I mean, I could go on off fiber it moves through our system. We don't really digest it. It just sort of goes through our system. It picks up toxins along the way. It's great. Prebiotic fiber is great for your gut health. Yeah, it goes through your system, you poop it out, it keeps you full and also does it what fat does.

And it really lessens that blood sugar response. So it's gonna raise you. It will, you know, like I said, when you eat your blood sugar raises, but that's fine. You just want to keep it steady. You don't want it to spike. So including the protein, the healthy, fat, and fiber at your meals, you're going to keep blood sugar steady.

And that really is the, that's the easiest way to boost your metabolism because. You're going when your body, when you're, when your blood sugar is steady, your body starts releasing a hormone called glucagon and glucagon is your fabric. So it's kind of like the opposite of insulin, you know, when your blood sugar is spiking all the time, you're releasing insulin and you're in sort of a storage mode.

So those are the two I'm not going to get like super science-y, but those are really the hormones that you want to pay attention to simplifying it, of course, but that's, that's the easiest way to really explain it. Hmm. You want to keep your blood sugar as steady as possible and, and doing that too, not only is that going to help you burn more fat, but it's going to keep your energy levels steady, you know, can you imagine if your blood sugar is like spiking and crashing all day, you feel like crap.

Yeah. It's like my dad, he's a classic, like Midwestern, like old school mentality. He's got diabetes, but diabetes is like this made up disease in his mind. Right? Like yeah, I mean, he's got, his wife is a nurse, you know, I'm a physical therapist, his daughter's a nurse. Like he gets hit on, on, on all cores.

And it's like it's like telling a girl not to date a guy, you know, like she's going to date that guy even harder. You know, it's kind of this kind of same thing with my dad. And I could totally tell when his insulin is like, just. Just skyrocketing and dipping. And like, he gets like, so pissy when it lists, when his blood sugar is like sky high and like, does it feel good?

Right. So no, I could definitely like when you're going through and you're describing that like, you're right, like your body, you don't want to, like, you're not trying to stunt or inhibit your body's natural response to eating food. You're just trying to get it like the the, the optimization that it needs to be able to make you feel the best.

So that's awesome. You can totally see that. Like when, if, if anybody follows Megan on social media, well, if you don't, we'll definitely give you some routes on how you can hear at the end. 

But I mean, you do a, such a great job of cultivating a community where people have fun with their nutrition and they have fun eating and they have fun knowing that like they're taking the right steps that they can have their drink on the weekends where they can eat what they want you in to a certain level, and they don't feel bad about it. And they also have the ability to kind of absorb some of those like heavier days, if you will. Then then, then versus like being in this like starvation mode all the day, and then really putting yourself in a bad psyche, when you let yourself cut yourself some slack or try to enjoy a meal with friends.

Cause a food is very much a social interaction. Yeah. And it's, I call it like, it's metabolic flexibility. It's in, you know, if you're someone who is always in this state of like you know, tracking everything, you're eating and you're eating low calorie. The second you go second, you just go out and have pizza with friends.

You're bloated, you're up five pounds the next day you feel like. That isn't normal like that to go absorb those calories. Fine. Not have this like horrible response afterwards. And so that's another thing that just kind of paint into your blood sugar and paying attention to, you know, like I said, increasing your metabolism.

It's really it's it's how do we increase your metabolism instead of decrease your calories? Which I also think is mentally a lot more satisfying than thought, too. 

Calories. Yeah. Yeah. Heck yeah, I know. I went through this nutrition course. So, and, and all of my, this is wild to me and like all of us, I was an exercise physiologist and undergrad.

And then that was my, what my degree was. And then I would often get my doctorate in PT school. So seven years of schooling, I had like one nutrition class, maybe two, but the second one wasn't I don't really count that one. One like hardcore nutrition class. Yeah. And I remember being blown away at some of the things that we were learning in particular.

I was, I was blown away at like one, like the importance of protein. I always kind of knew, but then like you can over consume protein as well to a degree. Right. And then like I, and I remember being just like blown away at that fact, and then just blown away, blown away at like the idea of you need to like our professor and maybe you have a better input on this than, than what I would.

Being able to, if you're going to track calories, like it's better to take an average over a week's time period than it is to try to do like a daily cap caloric intake, because you're going to have these peaks and valleys. It's just like, it's just like anything in the world you're going to, you can equate it to the stock market, right?

Like you're gonna have ups and downs like throughout the day, but, or just a week, but as long as like your overall goal is trending up and to the right. You're going to be at a good spot from a court standpoint, but if you can then take that threshold and give yourself even more wiggle room by optimizing your metabolism, how awesome is that?

Yeah. Yeah. And I think too, what people don't understand is that. Our bodies were meant. Our bodies were not meant to be controlled by an app. You know, you were born. Yeah. We have hormones that actually control our appetite and our weight. We have our hormones say like, hey, you've had enough calories for today.

Your stomach's not going to grumble anymore. Like you're going to feel it, or it's gonna say you haven't eaten quite enough today. I'm gonna make you hungry so that you go eat something. And we've just gotten so out of touch with that. And you know, so when you have those days where you eat more, you go out with friends, whatever the next day or two days later, or whatever, you're going to have a day where you're not that hungry.

And that's, you're like, no, I'm just not that hungry today. And like I said, we've just gotten so out of touch with that. And we're like, what. Why am I not that hungry yet? You know, my, my calorie opsis is that I can have 700 more calories today. So I'm going to have that. Well we've maybe you didn't need it because you had two days ago.

So I think that's why it's really important to, I'm not saying, you know, I don't like to poop out too much on the apps because I know they do help. Some people who have certain macronutrient goals that maybe, you know, maybe they're really trying to put on muscle. I've used them before, like when I've been trying to put on muscle and I want to make sure I'm eating enough carbs and I want to make sure I'm eating enough protein.

But I also have a really good relationship with food at this point. And I understand it. I think when you don't and you're not quite there yet, and you don't understand that your body should be self-regulating your appetite, it can be really dangerous. And I've just, I've just seen it cause so many poor people with poor relationships with food.

Yeah. Yeah. I think, yeah, you're spot on. I think that those apps are just in any type of like diet that's out there really. I mean, it's just like a training modality, like you know, maybe Cross Fits not the best form of fitness for you, or maybe, you know, going to Orange Theory fitness isn't, or maybe you shouldn't be running as much as you are.

Maybe you should be lifting more like, or maybe you know, there's a million different ways you can train. Maybe you should do more. Just like, there's a million different ways that you can optimize your nutrition, but it all comes down to like he's like optimizing the body and how it's going to handle whatever you're putting into into it.

So I think no matter which route you want to take or what route works best for you. Like I know for me personally, like trying to do some trying to do a an app that count your calories doesn't work well for me, like it is, it's just, it's just too much detail in my day that I just don't respond very well to being that strict with just about anything in my life.

Yeah. Right. So like those just, it's just, it wasn't feasible for me, but like but then having this idea of like, well, how about you just give me some guidelines, like what should, what should be like a healthy thing? So like, or healthy diet plans. Protein, making sure I'm getting enough protein and then it's all comes with experience, right?

Like you know, like what chicken breast typically would have from its macro nutrient standpoint, you know, what a cup of broccoli would have, or like just eyeballing how much broccoli or whatever, you know to make sure that you're getting what you need and what you kind of respond well with.

But yeah, they talk about like gaining muscle. 

Do you have anybody that enters your program?

 I need to gain weight. I would like to figure out how I can cause I'm struggling with it. It's very rare. I have a couple of men actually, I will say it's primarily women. Although men in theory. Well on the program.

Yeah. It's because they have so much more muscle mass. And so it's so much easier for them to lose weight. But I have had a couple men that have come in and have, who have said, you know, I wanna, you know, maybe lose a little fat, but I want to increase muscle. And of course that gets very complicated, but usually we'll just tell them, you know, they need to increase their carbs. 

So my sort of my little rule of thumb for the vast majority of the people that go through the program is one starchy carbs a day. Now that again, it's not going to be, it's not going to work for everybody, but I would say most of the people going through my program, like they're not hardcore athletes.

They're not like, you know, pumping iron every day. They're just. Woman that maybe goes to the gym a few times a week and they're not necessarily going to feel good. Massive amounts of weight. 

Yeah. So one starchy carb a day does really well for most people, but of course we would increase that if you're really trying to put on muscle, I think the protein guidelines, eating protein at every meal that can remain the same, but we would just sandwich the workouts with more carbs.

So depending on what that workout looked like, or if it was a male or female, I might say. 25 grams of carbs, a serving of carbs before and after your workout. For sure. And then, yeah, you want to know how you feel maybe even a third, additional carbs later in the day?

Honestly, what I'll say to, so one man that I'm thinking about in particular that I had do this, he did great.

He actually and I had told him like, it's, it's difficult to lose fat and gain muscle. You know, I'm not, I can't guarantee you're gonna be able to do that. And he had measurements taken and everything and came back to me after 30 days and said that. Body fat percentage had gone down and lean muscle mass had gone up.

So, I mean, he was doing something right. I would say, you know, for someone who's like, who has like real body composition goals, I don't know that I'm the best person to help with that. I, you know, I think there's really good physique coaches out there that could probably help you. Figure it out, but you know, if it was just a general hand kind of trying to put on some muscle like that, that would be my general advice, but again, it's probably not my area.

Yeah. Perfect. And then I saw one of the things I thought that you said was really interesting and was that if you like, have a big meal one day, you know, like say like on a Sunday cookout or whatever, which I just had last night, I'm like, you're not gonna to, you may not be as hungry the next day or the next two days.

And that's okay. That's something that like, I had never really put it. I mean, it makes total sense. Right. But like, in some that never really put in the concept, cause I wasn't really all that hungry today. And that's that like freaked out, like, oh my God, I got to eat or why am I not hungry? But like, I just noticed like, like I have a very, like, not strict by any means, but like I eat the same thing pretty much every day.

Right. But then I had this cookout last night and ate a ton of food and I just wasn't hungry. Like I typically was. You know, instead of having like instead of having like my typical breakfast, I just took like a protein shake with me. And then and like, I was fine for like most of the day to day with that, but that's, that's a really interesting concept that I had thought about, that's your leptin saying, like, Hey, you don't really need that many calories today, so I'm not gonna, you know. 

Well actually ghrelin, which is actually what makes you feel hunger. They work together and, you know, just let you kind of balance that out. Also a fun fact is that leptin and ghrelin are actually produced, or regenerated, I guess maybe is the right word while you're asleep. So sleep is vitally important to maintain your appetite or to, to regulate your appetite.

And that's why you're, you know, you hear a lot that sleep. You know, it affects your metabolism, it affects your weight. And I don't think people take it very seriously because they're like, yeah. Okay. You're just trying to get me to sleep more, but it's absolutely true. I mean, that's where you produce those, those two appetite regulators. And so if you're not producing enough, It's going to be off. 

Yeah, for sure. Oh my gosh. You're you're, you're, you're going right down my alley here. Like, so in our clinic, we look at like four main pillars of, of health care is what we look at. We look at your movement, quality. We look at your your nutrition on a very like on a very surface level, making sure that just like you're doing the things you should be doing and not just like eating junk food all day.

We, we look at your stress management and and that sleep is a big one and search sleep, stress management kind of go hand in hand. And it's really funny. There, there is a sleep expert on a podcast I was listening to, but like he said something that like resonated so well that I've, I've used time and time again, because it really sticks with people.

Like nothing makes you feel better than sleep other than sex. Right. And like, it's not hard to convince people to have sex, but it's really hard to convince people to sleep. Which is really odd because, and I think it's just a culture or I think it's just a result of like our society pressures and societal pressures of you gotta grind.

You gotta be grounded. You got to work hard. Early bird gets a worm, which. You know, I, I have a hard time, like disagreeing with, if you, if you there's a saying, that's like, ah, man, if you send this out to find it, according to the show notes, but like there's been plenty of people who have wasted years of their life because they won't waste hours, you know?

They won't like they won't let themselves just enjoy life a little bit and get the appropriate sleep that they need or kind of have some better stress management techniques or strategies. And that really affects if that one pillar or those two pillars kind of start crumbling. The whole house is going to come down and that's true with nutrition as well.

Like, so it sounds like, I mean, if you could be, you could be doing all the right things, but if you're just simply not sleeping, like that could be a huge piece of the puzzle. That's really easy to fix that. You're just not hitting. And you know, what's so funny. I just kind of thought about this while I was sitting here.

I recently very recently, I'd say maybe in the last month or two have been really focused on sleep and stress management much more than I had been previously. And I displayed more. I had an eight month old. So like, you know, that's in a place now where she's sleeping through the night. I couldn't fully help it, but, and just today I was thinking about how I didn't really have a lot to do to end for a Monday. 

That's so weird. I'm just so busy, but I really I'm so much more productive. I went and took a long walk in the middle of the day today, which was stupid by the way. It's hot, it's super hot outside. It's so hot, but I really let me think. It's like, my time is now expanding because I'm spending a lot more time getting rest and you know, managing my stress and doing all these things that somehow are adding hours to my day. 

So I really experienced that firsthand the last couple of months and can attest to it's your, when you're burning the candle on both ends, you just, your brain just doesn't work like, and you can keep working and working and get to a point where you're like, man, what am I even doing today?

I worked all day and I just didn't really get anything done. Yeah, no, I totally hear you like and that's, that's you definitely your mindset. You'd like, you're definitely an entrepreneur at at spirit and at heart. And I think I think a lot of people have a really hard time with just being able to kind of calm down and let themselves relax a little bit.

Cause it's go, go, go all the time. I'm sure you've got a thousand ideas swirling around your head all the time. As a business owner, like you're probably, you're always in growth mode. You're always trying to grow up. So if you not, then, then you're, then you're dying. Right? Like so yeah, I can, I can totally understand, but you can only hold that pace for so long, right?

You can, you can only grind for so long before your body will break down and some form and it's gonna, and that's gonna result in either weight gain injuries at increased injury rates poor relationships with your significant others. I mean a lot of other things that can come about, so.

Yeah. I mean, it sounds like you're hitting the, it on all its owners from like a nutrition standpoint, stress management sleep. I know you've been crushing in the gym recently as well. So that's awesome. Megan I do want to be respectful of your time this evening. Cause I know you are a very busy person, so I really appreciate our conversation if there's, what are some good ways that people want to know more about the 30 or the the 30 Day Metabolism Makeover, or if they want to learn more about who you are, how they can reach out to you? What are some good resources for them? 

Instagram is probably the best. I have a website too, but the best place to reach me is on Instagram. I'm on there all the time, and I'm just my name. My handle is @thenutritionaddiction. That was the name of my blog I also have: the Metabolism Makeover, but you can find either, and then you can find the other easily by just following one of them, because I'm constantly reposting stuff from The Metabolism Makeover.

Nice. Awesome. Well, Megan, again, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. This conversation has been super insightful for me and I'm sure it will for our listeners as well. So thanks again. I appreciate it. 

Hey, thanks so much for listening to the podcast today. If you want to find out more about our guests or about Athletes' Potential and how we can help you continue to be active and pain-free in life, head over to athletespotential.com.