Back in 2010, Nick and I were put in touch by a mutual friend. We had both just left finance to focus on sharing our passion for health & fitness.
Since then we’ve had many conversations and I’ve visited Nick and his now wife Julie in Costa Rica where they have resided for over a decade.
Nick has written over 20 articles on BuiltLean that have received tens of thousands of visitors.
In this podcast, Nick & I talk about how to get & stay lean while maximizing your energy levels. It’s a comprehensive interview that covers exercise, nutrition, lifestyle, & mindset.
What You’ll Learn
- Why getting lean & staying lean are completely different
- What role genetics play in getting lean
- The mobility exercises Nick does to stay limber
- Why knowing your north star is critical for your health
- Nick’s daily stress management routine
Listen Now
Listen on Spotify, Google Podcasts, and Apple Podcasts.
Links
Website Links
Links Mentioned
About Nick Holt
Nick is the founder of Nick Holt Fitness & co-founder SaltwaterFit. He helps men over 40 feel, move, and look better. As a personal trainer and nutrition coach, he has created an easy to follow framework to simplify what it takes to get fit as we get older. He lives on the beach in Costa Rica and has numerous exercise & nutrition certifications. And he has also been a contributing writer for BuiltLean and has written over 20 articles.
Transcript
Marc Perry:
Hey guys, welcome to the BuiltLean Podcast. I’m Marc Perry the creator of BuiltLean, which helps men with demanding careers get lean, strong and functionally fit with exceptional vitality. And today, I have Nick Holt with me. And so Nick is the founder of Nick Holt Fitness and co-founder of Saltwater Fit, and he helps men over 40 feel, move and just look better. And as a personal trainer and nutrition coach, he’s created an easy to follow framework to simplify what it takes to get fit as we get older. He lives in on the beach in Costa Rica, and he lives on the beach in Costa Rica and has numerous exercise and nutrition certifications, and he has also been a contributing writer to BuiltLean and has written over 20 articles. And so Nick and I were put in touch by a mutual friend back in 2010, and we had just both left finance to focus on sharing our passion and enthusiasm for health and fitness. And since then, we’ve had a bunch of conversations, and I’ve even visited Nick and his now wife, Julie, in Costa Rica. And so with that said, thank you so much for joining Nick. I know it was really short notice and it’s just great to see you, man.
Nick Holt:
Yeah, absolutely, Marc, it’s good to be here. Always a pleasure to talk to you, so I’m excited to dive into all this stuff.
Marc Perry:
Nice, man. So I guess to start off, I’d love to talk a little bit about your background. You were an investment analyst like myself, kind of working long hours behind a desk in an office, and then you decided to peace out and work form a surf camp in Costa Rica. And it’s like one of those fantasies that a lot of people have when they’re working in an office like, oh, it’d be cool to be near a beach, but you actually did it. And so I guess what happened, what led you to become a fitness professional and leave the corporate world behind?
Nick Holt:
Yeah. So I think even during my time as an investment analyst, I felt this desire. First of all, my body was starting to fall apart, and I think you sort of shared that similar sort of journey where as an athlete you’re used to your identity being wrapped up in what you can do and how you look, and just that identity of being an athlete, and that was completely falling apart after six, seven years of sitting in at a desk. And so I felt this sort of urge, I had to do something because I didn’t wanna get to my 30s, resigned to a life of being behind a desk and sedentary, so I had to do something. And it just so happened that this was around 2008, 2009 when the whole market was falling apart, and I sort of looked at this as like this is a great opportunity to do something, but the downside was it… I had a limited downside because everybody was going to the office, there was a lot of… Office morale was pretty low. My boss had just got let go. So it was one of these times where I just had to make the change.
It was talking with people, doing some self-development work and looking at other options, and it just felt like this was the right time. I was about to turn 30, so there’s all these sort of things that kind of came together. But it really started as a desire to change the way I felt in my body and how I felt just on a day-to-day basis, I felt that kind of deteriorating, so I had to do something, so I did something pretty drastic. Yeah, for sure.
Marc Perry:
And then obviously, you became a fitness professional.
Nick Holt:
Yeah, and I started doing a little bit of that stuff on the side just to dip my toe in the water to see how… I was training some friends and families still. This is how I was living in San Francisco at the time, and then when I got to Costa Rica, it just happened that I’d been a surfer for a few years, started working in a surf camp and realized how demanding the sport was. I always thought I was fit, I was lifting weights, I was doing cardio, I was doing all that stuff that most of us do on a daily basis, but surfing really transformed my understanding of what it really is to be fit and to be flexible and to be mobile. And so I help people at this surf camp, which is Rock Surf Camp here in Costa Rica. I help them prepare and we did stretching classes, we did some strength training, and we did some technique stuff to help people last for two weeks, ’cause you go on a surf trip for two weeks, I mean, I think you came down and you settle for a few days and after a couple of days…
Marc Perry:
It’s intense.
Nick Holt:
Right? So people come down for two weeks and two days in and they’re completely out of energy. Their arms are sore, they have a tweak lower back, so I was able to help people just stay in the water longer and then help people on their next trips train for surfing, ’cause that’s the big thing, if you just do a little preparation work, it just makes your experience so much different ’cause you can spend more time in the water.
Marc Perry:
Cool, so I think that’s actually a great segue to what I want us to talk about, which is active passion, and I know this is an idea that you’ve talked about, you’ve ever written on BuiltLean. And if you search active passion in Google, I think the building article comes up on the first page, but the point is, it’s like, this is something that you’ve introduced and so I guess the question is, what is active passion and why is it important for your long-term health and well-being?
Nick Holt:
So active passion is something that you do physically, that just lights you up, that you don’t have to be motivated to do. So for me, I think it’s all… We’re all different. So for me it’s surfing and tennis, you don’t have to get me, pull me out of bed at 5:00 AM to go and go surf. There’s that intrinsic motivation, which I think is really powerful. I think that really is the key to long-term health, and just finding that movement practice, I think another way to put it is meaningful movement, something that you enjoy, that just keeps you going because let’s be honest, even myself as a health coach, you, I’m sure we all deal with days where we don’t wanna train and we don’t wanna do things, but having these active passions in our lives can really set us up for success in the long run, and then it’s like you’re training the stuff that you do in the gym can help to facilitate these active passions that you have. So for me, a lot of my training revolves around mobility training, making sure that I’m staying flexible, I have the endurance, the paddle to play tennis, and I think it’s gonna be different for everybody else, but it’s really just about what lights you up, and I think that article that I wrote for BuiltLean has a bunch of different resources for people if they wanna look into that deeper.
It’s generally like a sport you played when you were 10 years old that you couldn’t stop playing because you just had that passion. So I think we lose that as we get older. There’s this whole… We play less and we exercise more, and I think if we turn that equation around, I think people can at least stay in the fitness game longer because there’s not that that “I have to,” or “You should do something.” It’s more sort of internal as far as the motivation goes.
Marc Perry:
Right. And I think one interesting thing about what we’re talking about is like a mindset shift where the exercise supports the active passion, and because it’s your passion and you’re intrinsically motivated, you’re like, “Okay, the exercise is supporting it.” It’s part of it. It’s not necessarily something that like, “Oh man, I really don’t wanna do it.” It’s because it’s just gonna help me improve and enjoy my passion more, right?
Nick Holt:
Yeah, 100%. And I think also, having said that, I think there is… And you know this, and I’m sure anybody who’s looked at this. It is important to have and train and make sure you’re maintaining muscle mass as we get older. We both work with guys as they get older, and it is really important to maintain that lean tissue for metabolic health, for physical capacity. So I don’t wanna discount the importance of training…
Marc Perry:
Of training.
Nick Holt:
But it’s almost like that’s additive, that’s not the main focus. And for some people, maybe weightlifting is their active passion, and that’s awesome, and that’s awesome.
Marc Perry:
Cool, cool. And so let’s talk about exercise. So we’ve obviously talked about this stuff ad nauseam over the years, and we’re always evolving, we’re always improving. I’m curious. What is your exercise routine like right now?
Nick Holt:
So right now I’m really… I just had knee surgery actually, and I don’t think you know…
Marc Perry:
Oh my goodness, I didn’t even know that, dude.
Nick Holt:
Yeah. So I had just like a meniscus clean up, so like a basic scope to clean up some tissue in my meniscus, my medial meniscus, that an old basketball injury playing tennis and trying to surfing [0:09:00.6] 41-year-old now. These parts tend to wear out, but I really think that injury was because I lacked a lot of the hip mobility and a certain [0:09:19.8] of stress. So I’ve really been focused on doing a lot of the FRC stuff… I’m sure you’re familiar… Functional range conditioning. I just actually did a kin stretch certification, so I’m gonna be doing some… It’s basically the FRC, functional range conditioning, in a group setting. So for those of you who don’t know, it’s basically just using… It’s functional mobility. It’s not only being flexible, but it’s having the strength to control those ranges of motion, and for a sport like surfing, you really need to be mobile.
So I spend a lot of my times doing… It’s a lot of isometric stuff, a lot of stuff that looks like yoga. I would say I do some of that stuff every day, and then I lift heavy. Maybe once or twice a week, I’ll do some basic squats and deadlift holds and presses, and then I’m lucky enough to live on the beach, so I just love the ocean. I call it the salt water medicine, and so I try to get in the ocean as much as I can, whether that’s just swimming or surfing obviously, or even just walking on the beach. I think that’s one thing that I’ve implemented more lately is just walks. It’s so underrated. It’s an easy way to get steps up, listen to a podcast, do some kind of guided meditation, whatever it is, but you’re just able to be in nature and to reduce some of those stress hormones, and there’s just so many benefits. So that’s kind of my overall training, a lot of mobility training and then some little strength training in there with the beach stuff.
Marc Perry:
Cool, and so it sounds like you’re doing… And by the way, your knee is… Like what’s the status with your knee? Are you’re gonna be able to train?
Nick Holt:
Yeah. Four weeks out, and it was like… I think with meniscus stuff, they try to repair it, but in this case, they just removed some of the junky tissue, so there’s no rehab. So I’m four weeks out. I’m probably a week out from surfing. I’m still able to squat and deadlift. So it’s been a pretty good recovery. It’s a pretty straightforward procedure.
Marc Perry:
And so are you still… Are you lifting a few days a week? What does the frequency look like?
Nick Holt:
Yeah, I’m probably lifting… I have a buddy of mine that’s a neighbor who’s doing a lot of strong man stuff. He just lifts an ungodly amount of weight. And he’s a big dude. He’s probably 6’2″, 240, and pretty lean. So he put a squat rack and he’s got a bunch of equipment in our gym, so I haven’t been going to the local gym here, but in our basement, we created a little gym with a squat rack and some barbels and plates. So I’ve been doing… Probably two or three days a week, I’ll do some proper strength training, so I would say on an average month, I’m getting about 12 solid workouts in per month.
Marc Perry:
And are you doing… And so I remember that actually I visited you when you were briefly in San Diego and at Sunita’s, and I went to a hot yoga, which I don’t think I’d really done before, and ever since then, I’ve been doing it pretty religiously. Obviously with COVID, it hasn’t been as much at all, but I know that you were big on yoga before COVID. Are you still doing yoga or what’s the deal?
Nick Holt:
Yeah, I’m not doing… I think to your point with COVID, it’s hard. Actually, Costa Rica’s been relatively open. I haven’t… There’s a yoga studio here that I have gone through in the past, but I’m doing a lot of my stuff on my own. I’ve actually replaced a lot of that yoga with some of these FRC drills, and it actually looks like a lot of yoga. So it is a lot of passive stretching, so if you look at me, I do a lot of stuff on the beach, if you walk by, you’d probably think, “Oh, that guy is doing yoga.” So it is… I still think yoga, especially for a lot of the guys that I work with who are sitting at a desk, and if anybody’s listening to this and they’re sitting a lot, I think yoga is amazing to just reduce some of that tension in the body.
I just think that yoga does a great job at the passive flexibility, but it doesn’t necessarily hit on the active ranges, and also it depends on what type of yoga too, we’re talking about… There could be hundreds of different protocols or variations, but I still use some form of yoga, like stretching, and I think just the time I did spend yoga, just spending time in that sort of present grounded space, I think has been really, really powerful just to down-regulate the nervous system and get into a more relaxed state, especially before bed, or if I feel like I’m getting too charged up and I need to sort of down-regulate the system.
Marc Perry:
And so by the way, with the FRC, which is essentially like a mobility, are you doing that? Do you have a daily mobility routine, ’cause I know we’ve talked about how, especially as athletes, we were both athletes in college, how we’re pretty obsessed with just getting more and more mobile, and of course it’s like I think when you first get into fitness, you’re really focused on, “Okay, I just wanna get as muscular and strong as possible,” and then you make that shift and be like, “Oh wow, mobility can help me so much.” And so are you doing… Do you have a daily mobility routine that you’re doing?
Nick Holt:
Yeah, pretty much. So I do a mobility routine, it’s a lot of the CARs stuff, which is Controlled Articular Rotations. So for anybody listening, that’s just like a joint circle. So the idea is getting your joints through those ranges of motion, so I do those many times throughout the day, and then depending on what I’m doing the day, I might do a five or 10-minute mobility routine a lot of the stuff, I think you’ve been doing some squatting and some lunging, basically just activating a lot of the big joints, the hips and the shoulders, and making sure that the spine is moving and all that good stuff.
Marc Perry:
Right, and so, by the way, for people listening, we’ll definitely have an example on the article on BuiltLean of like what a CARs looks like, what an FRC looks like. I’ve actually done the FRC certification in New York City, and what that looks like. But the idea is like if you can just pretend you’re keeping your arms straight at your side and then you lift it forward and lift it all the way around in a circle, as far a range of motion as you can while controlling it, that’s kind of what it looks like. It’s definitely… I think it’s a really… I think it’s challenging, it’s definitely hard, but it also has a huge reward, but anyways, I’ll include what that looks like, so you can actually see it, ’cause it’s hard to describe it, it’s like actually it’s really difficult to describe it.
Nick Holt:
Some parts are like, there’s different levels you can do it. So if you just, like a basic arm circle, that’s one level, but if you do what they call level three or more intense variation where you’re really… You’re packing tension into your arms and you’re trying to squeeze out every bit of rotation in that joint, it can be really, really intense, it can be super gnarly. A lot of that stuff actually is not very enjoyable, but it’s very beneficial, it kinda sucks, but it does… You’re giving those tissues the inputs that they need to adapt and change, which unfortunately, the way you have to just create that intensity for the body to adapt.
Marc Perry:
Right, right. And actually, I have a quick question, which I think is probably relevant to a lot of guys, is how’s your ankle mobility doing? I know that after many years of basketball, that ankle mobility was definitely a challenge. I’ve made progress, I wanna hear, how’s that ankle mobility? I remember that’s something we’ve talked about a long time.
Nick Holt:
Yeah, we could probably spend hours talking about the ankle. I think it actually is really important for most people, they don’t realize if they can’t squat well, it actually might be their ankles that are holding them back, it might not be, but… Yeah, it’s getting better. I think I’ve worked on more footwork, making sure that my foot can evert and invert, I think I just had a really stiff foot and I think I was trying to work on the ankle dorsiflexion without… I didn’t really have this the space in that it was getting stuck, so I’m working on more of my foot mobility and that’s opened up a little bit space for my ankle.
Marc Perry:
Interesting, cool.
Nick Holt:
I think that’s something I learned from the FRC guys is in order for that lower part of the leg to drive forward, you need to have a little bit of rotation in the foot, and so it’s something… I think you had a lot of success just stretching the hell out of your calves, right?
Marc Perry:
I’ve done it all with the band, the distraction and all this other stuff, which is a little tricky, and I think it’s a little dicey when you work on your own body, ’cause if you break it, you can’t just get a new part, right? [chuckle] So I’ve definitely pushed it a little too far more than a few times, but for me, doing the weighted calf stretch, just rolling it out, weighted calf stretch, doing the goblet squat, but holding it at the bottom… Like a prime goblet squat kinda thing. And then the last thing, which I recently learned from a buddy who actually was on this, it was on the podcast, Nerijus, I don’t know if you know Nerijus Bagdonas, but he’s become super high level movement, he’s super flexible, and he basically will just stand up and then just push his knee forward and on one, so he stands up on one leg, pushes his knee forward and then just like chills and just lets it go forward, it’s almost like an active stretch. Anyways a combination of all those is what’s worked for me, and as we both know, it’s an evolution, man, you’re constantly working on it, but it has such a… But no seriously, this has had a significant impact on my overall mobility and how my body moves, which is wild.
Nick Holt:
Yeah, I think it’s vital. If anybody wants to be athletic and be able to play sports or to be able run and jump, you need to have some decent level of ankle mobility and yeah, I think a lot of people struggle with just having stiff feet and the big toe being stiff. So it’s all related, but yeah, if you wanna do some fun stuff with your body, you gotta make sure that that ankle joint has that range, and I’m sure you’ve provided a quick test. There’s some easy tests you can do to make sure that you’re not deficient. I don’t think you need to be world class, I don’t think I’m ever gonna be world class, but just to make sure that it’s not deficient, I have adequate range of motion for what I’m trying to do, I think that’s important for… Depending on what you’re trying to do, it might require different ranges.
Marc Perry:
Cool, cool. So let’s talk about nutrition, by the way is there anything else you wanna mention about exercise in general, before we move on to some nutrition stuff?
Nick Holt:
No. That’s it, man. I think, yeah, that active passion is just for me and the guys I work with, it’s just such a vital piece that’s at the center of what we do, and I think it’s really important for people to discover that, and it really can be anything, and it might take a little time to find it for maybe those who haven’t played sports or it doesn’t come to the top of the mind, it definitely is worth spending the time to find that because it just… It’s gonna make everything easier. And you’re gonna be able to play the long game. You’re gonna have a lot more success that way.
Marc Perry:
Cool, cool. I appreciate that, and I was just thinking about my dad who plays golf, that’s his active passion, and to do a proper golf swing and hit a ball far, that’s a very athletic move. In other words, he’s not a huge fan of training and working out, like back in the day, people didn’t even do it. You played sports, if you wanna get in better shape, you played more sports, but anyways, I think that’s definitely helpful to… If you have that active passion, it makes the training a little bit easier for some people, and so let’s talk about nutrition. So what does your diet look like right now?
Nick Holt:
So right now, I do some form of fasting, I’d say pretty much every day, and it mostly looks like some kind of intermittent fast just skipping breakfast, and I do this more from… And I have most of the guys that I work with still do this, and I think there is some high, whether it’s longevity benefits autophagy stuff, which I’m sure some of your readers are familiar with, which is basically that cellular clean up, I think there’s something there. I do it really for simplicity factor, it’s just easier for my busy life if I’m training, if I’m working, I just… I eat mostly my first meal around 10:00 or 11:00, maybe 12:00, and it’ll look like some kind of… Usually it’s maybe a Greek yogurt with some protein powder, maybe with some fruits, sometimes it might be a shake. I’ll do a coconut water, some berries, maybe banana, some green powder in a shake, just like a big hearty shake, and then sometimes I won’t even eat. And then for lunch, it’s generally salad and protein, and dinner is a lot of salad and protein, so it’s just a lot of salads, it’s a lot of protein, but I think if you have a few skills in the kitchen, you can make a salad taste really good.
I think that’s one thing that some of the guys I’ve worked with, they’re like, “Holy shit. I actually… This tastes good.” I think that a lot of the mentalities are on like, okay, I have to eat iceberg lettuce, bland salad that taste like crap, that sucks, but I think you can make it taste good. You can use whatever you can find what you like, but that’s the heart of my diet, it’s basically mostly plant-based, but I do eat a fair amount of chicken breast and red meat occasionally and fish. I live in Costa Rica, so we have pretty good local fish, we have Mahi, which is Dorado. We have tuna, we have red snapper, so I try to eat as much of that stuff as possible, and then I like my sweets and I’ll have some chocolate and popcorn and stuff from time to time. So that’s kind of my high level of nutrition as it is right now.
Marc Perry:
Okay, and so you’ll have… You said breakfast around 10:00 or 11:00 or 12:00, in other words, are you doing two meals or are you doing three meals? It sounds like you’re doing three meals, you’re just kind of like… Instead of doing it like 8:00, 12:00 and 7:00 or something like most people you’re doing it, it sounds kind of like 10:00, 11:00, 12:00, 2:00, 3:00 and then 6:00, 7:00. I’m kinda curious, is that what you’re doing?
Nick Holt:
Yeah. It depends on the day. I’d say most days is actually two meals, it’s like two meals with snacks, so it’ll be like, I call a yogurt with some protein powder is like a little bit of a snack, and then… Or a shake.
Marc Perry:
Right. It’s like a light lunch. It’s like a light lunch or a shake, whatever you wanna call it.
Nick Holt:
Yeah, and then my salads and my meals are pretty big, so I don’t really track. I think it is really helpful for people to log their food at least once, or at least for a couple of days, and I think you’ve maybe talked about this too, just to get the awareness, because if you’re trying to stay in a calorie deficit, if the goal is getting leaner, which a lot of people listening to this that’s probably their goal. A lot of guys I work with, that’s their number one goal is fat loss, you need to stay in that deficit, and a lot of times there are certain foods that you might think are healthy, but are just really caloric, like avocados and nuts come to mind.
Super healthy, but I don’t know about you, I can’t just eat a handful of nuts. I usually eat a fair amount of nuts, you could be looking at 400 or 500 calories right there, and I just think having the awareness to log your food is really helpful, so I will do that time to time just to check in to see where my calories are at, but I’m not really counting calories or anything like that, so I think that you’ll get a sense of where vitamins or minerals are too. It gives you a better picture if your diet is crossing all of the… Checking off all the boxes for a lot of these vitamins and minerals. It might be hard to get potassium and magnesium and choline, a lot of these vital pieces of the puzzle that vitamin D stuff that we need for health, for longevity, for immunity that unfortunately, the Western diet is very deficient in. I think that’s almost just as powerful as the calories, like the macros of carbs, proteins and fats is seeing where your micro nutrients are, seeing how much fiber you’re getting, seeing where your omega 3 and your omega 6 balance comes through. That’s a really important thing to just have awareness on, and I think tracking it with these apps can drive that awareness.
Marc Perry:
Cool, cool, by the way, on that note, I’m just kinda talking out loud here, you’ve actually shared for free a lot of awesome recipes and I’ve visited you, of course, in Costa Rica, like Nick is the real deal, man. He eats super healthy, super unprocessed foods, we’ll talk about that in a second. And he’s written great articles like How to Prepare 16 Healthy Meals in 40 Minutes on BuiltLean, that’s done really well. We’ve had tens of thousands of readers read that one, and so I guess the next question, Nick, is, do you drink alcohol?
Nick Holt:
Yeah, for sure. I do. My wife comes from… She used to work in biotech sales, and she actually worked in Napa Valley was her region. So she got accustomed to drinking some good wine and so yeah, I’ll have a few glasses of wine throughout the week. I definitely am not drinking heavily like I did in college or thereafter, but I would say yeah. I would say I’m drinking between maybe five drinks a week, keeping it under 10. I think to me, and I don’t know what your perspective on this is, Marc, but the literature that I’ve seen, it’s like, no amount of alcohol is good for you, full stop. Let’s just… But I think if a couple of drinks can make you more social and you can connect with other humans and it allows you to laugh and be with people, especially now where we’re so deprived of human connection, if having a beer or two with a buddy, if that helps you connect, I think that’s really powerful. But yeah, I think the problem lies when you get north of 10 or 15 drinks a week. I think metabolically speaking, it’s hard to do a lot of the things that we’re trying to do, burn fat, build muscle when you have that much booze in the system. So I think there’s a certain point, like anything, I think you can get away with a little bit, and I don’t see a huge amount of downside, and I enjoy it too. I think it’s… When you’re having less of it you tend to enjoy it more. You can savor it.
Marc Perry:
Cool. No, I definitely appreciate that. And do you drink coffee?
Nick Holt:
I do drink coffee. I have experimented going a month, six weeks without coffee, which was pretty brutal. I think caffeine addiction is pretty intense. I think it’s… I don’t know, I think maybe nicotine is the only thing that’s more addictive. I forget reading the study, but I remember seeing caffeine is a highly addictive substance, so I’m aware of it. I just love everything about the smell, the taste, the ritual. I live in Costa Rica, we get some pretty awesome…
Marc Perry:
Oh, I imagine.
Nick Holt:
Local beans, that I do a French Press, I usually drink one in the morning and then I’ll have a cup maybe in the afternoon, but I’ve also gone without it and have felt better after getting through five or seven days, ’cause there is a pretty hard core withdrawal phase that you have to go through. You can titrate down, I just went cold turkey. I wouldn’t necessarily advise that. It was really rough.
Marc Perry:
[chuckle]
That’s so funny, man. So you give advice, and we actually give a similar advice. I think if you’ve been doing this a long time, you kind of… You start to see the kind of parallels here, or you start to find the principles, it’s like you find the truth. And so one kind of advice you gave or recommendation is you focus 80% of your nutrition on real food, I call it unprocessed food, but real food. Can you just talk more about what that means.
Nick Holt:
Yeah, so I think it’s that 80/20 principle that I’m sure many people are familiar. I think you can even go to 90/20. The whole idea is that I think when you’re obsessing about everything that you put in your body, you just create a lot more psychological stress, and I think stress is a big thing for, especially for high performers, entrepreneurs and a lot of people listening to this, like the stress of exercise, the stress of family relationships, the stress of worrying about food, those are all stressors, so it’s like, I think if you just… To me, spending 80% of my time on eating or 80% of food that I eat is whole foods, most of the [0:31:47.2] ____ don’t get enough fiber, and then the other 10, 15%, 20%, I just kinda eat what I want.
And as long as you’re moving your body, and as long as you’re at a healthy body fat percentage, I think to me, that’s a really successful equation. I think that’s the key to long term health and longevity is not over-analyzing and stressing about being perfect, I think it’s about finding what works for you. And mostly eating whole foods. I think Michael Pollan, I always go back to the Michael Pollan quote from Omnivore’s Dilemma. It’s like something like, it’s seven words, mostly plants and not a lot. So just like you’re eating mostly plants, you’re not eating a ton of calories, but if you’re eating mostly whole Foods, it’s actually… It can be a challenge to get to your calorie needs because you’re eating so much fiber and you’re eating so much volume of food, and then it’s an occasional chocolate. I had some… A couple of days ago was our anniversary, so I made a chocolate lava cake.
Marc Perry:
Congratulations. [chuckle]
Nick Holt:
So I think it’s… Again, like the booze thing it’s most of the time I’m drinking water, but I’ll have some booze. I think with the diet thing it’s most of the time I’m eating vegetables and plants and protein, but I’ll certainly have foods that I enjoy ’cause I think life is meant to be enjoyed, and if you’re moving enough you’re getting up steps and you got some muscle mass on board, and you’ve talked about this a lot, muscle mass is really protective, you can get away with more calories ’cause you got more of a sugar sink. You got all that glycogen stored up, so you can literally get away with a higher carbohydrate diet, which is probably a topic for another time, but I think that’s a huge factor, is having some muscle mass on board, you can literally get away with more sugar intake.
Marc Perry:
Right, right. And so, next up, regarding the kind of carbs we were just talking about. You talk about earn your carbs, you’ve said that in one of your articles, so what do you mean by that, can you talk about that?
Nick Holt:
Yeah, I think just to piggyback on that, what I just said, I think it’s just basic physiology, when you have more muscle mass, you have more storage space for carbohydrates, so when I say earn your carbs, generally, if someone’s looking to lose weight, when people are losing to lose weight, it’s mostly lose body fat. And so generally, if you earn your carbs and you eat your higher carbohydrate meals around your workouts, you’re basically gonna absorb those carbohydrates into your muscle cells versus spilling over into adipose tissue, so obviously, it’s more complex than that. You need to be at a calorie surplus to put on fat, but earning your carbs just means of having those higher carbohydrate meals around the workout time, and it doesn’t have to be… I think a lot of people talk about the anaerobic window within two hours you see the bros running around sipping on their protein shakes, that tastes like… You don’t have to get too obsessive about it, I think just timing higher carbohydrate meals around workouts either before or probably, ideally after.
Marc Perry:
Right. Yeah, I was gonna say, those days of walking around with Muscle Milk and having like an IV of Muscle Milk, those are long gone for me, man. And by the way, so for people listening, one thing I wanna mention or ask you is, I think one thing that confuses guys a lot is the idea of achieving a goal and getting lean and then staying lean, and it’s like they’re not necessarily exactly the same thing. In my opinion, I don’t know, again, I wanna hear your thoughts, getting lean and staying lean are actually different and out there in the Internet and the webs, it’s like, oh, it’s the same thing, it’s like, oh, you do one thing and then you’re just like, you’re fit lean forever. But from my perspective, it’s… They’re just different. One is more of, okay let’s get focused. It’s not gonna be amazing, we’re gonna have to sacrifice a little bit, but once you get there, then it’s like you can kind of cruise control. I wanna hear your thoughts on that kind of difference between getting lean and staying lean.
Nick Holt:
Yeah, no, I love that question, ’cause I think people are so confused and I think they’re two totally separate things, I think people… I think nowadays it’s really popular to kind of crap on diets like, oh, you don’t need to diet it and you don’t need to count calories, but if your goal is getting lean, I am 100% on board with doing a short-term diet, of calorie deficit to get to that goal. It makes a ton of sense. And then once you achieve that goal to your point, if you have… It’s building the foundations, and it’s the other piece is building a foundation of muscle and movement, so that you can start eating a lot more calories. It’s this high-flux diet, which maybe some of your listeners are familiar with, but it’s like you’re eating more and you’re moving more and you’re just getting more energy through this system, that’s kind of the way I look at that maintenance mode, but to get lean, it’s a very specific equation of make sure you stay in that calorie deficit, make sure you’re strength training, so you preserve your muscle mass, make sure you’re getting enough protein so you’re not breaking down that muscle mass so you maintain that lean tissue.
It’s two totally different things. I think the other thing I mentioned too, Marc, you’re super lean. I’m probably not as lean as you, I think it depends, if you’re trying to walk around at 10% body fat and you don’t necessarily have the genetics for that, I think that’s another thing that people don’t talk about, it’s like, in this culture here in Costa Rica, you have the Ticos is what the Costa Ricans are called, and they’re just generally a lean, just genetically lean. A lot of these guys are walking around, just ripped up, and that’s just… And they have never done a sit-up in their life.
[laughter]They’re just fitted. So for me, I have more of that mesomorph-endomorph body type, which is that sort of athletic or bigger-boned frame, and there’s tests online, you can check your body type, but it depends on how lean you wanna get. I think that’s the other thing, getting sub… I think a good goal of getting a between 12 and 16%, I think, based on the literature, based on the research, I think that to me seems like a good range. I think getting under… If you’re living under 12%, I think the reality of that is just gonna be a huge trade-off to your life, so it’s like, you know what I’m saying?
Marc Perry:
Right. That’s very fair.
Nick Holt:
And I think that you’re probably not going out and having drinks with your friends, you’re probably having to sleep eight, nine hours, especially at our age. If you’re in your 40s, you’re older, unfortunately…
You have to do things a little differently, and it is a little bit harder to get leaner as we get older, but not impossible. I’ve worked with guys in their 50s and 60s who have gone from 25% to 15% to 12%. So not impossible, but yeah, sorry for being so long winded, but…
Marc Perry:
No, I think that’s, dude, it’s great info, man, I really appreciate it. I appreciate you mentioning genetics ’cause everyone has different genetics, and one thing I’ve noticed is that some guys, like they just fight their genetics or they just… Especially the kind of “skinny-fat guy,” it’s like he always, it’s like, “Oh, I wanna build muscle and lose fat at the same time.” And it’s like, and I’ll get an image, I’m like, “Dude, your body’s nothing like that guy. His bone structure is completely different than yours.” So anyways, I appreciate you, any thoughts on what I just said there?
Nick Holt:
Yeah, no, 100%. I don’t think that can be emphasized enough, I think genetics play a huge role, but I think genetics play a role. To me, if it’s 30%, if it’s 50%, who knows? It’s, you have, you’ve been dealt a certain card, you can thank your parents for that. And then it’s a lifestyle and it’s choices, but the reality is, if you’re wired genetically to be more of an ectomorph, which is that skinny body type, it’s gonna be easier to get leaner. But I don’t think… The flip side is also true, that ectomorph, it’s gonna be harder for them to put on body mass.
Marc Perry:
To build muscle.
Nick Holt:
So everybody, it was like, “Oh, I wish I was that ectomorph body type.” But actually, if you look at the research, it’s the ectomorph body types that actually don’t have muscle, that get what you’d call skinny-fat where they’re over fat. They can really get in trouble metabolically because they might not look huge and they might be walking around thinking that they’re relatively healthy, but they might have a fasting glucose, they might be pre-diabetic, they might have all these metabolisms that are dysfunctional, so yeah. I think your genetics are your genetics, but obviously it’s gonna be harder if you have a bigger body type to get leaner. And then the last thing I’d say is, I think it’s really important to have, to be internally motivated to know why you’re doing it, because a lot of times people get to a certain body-fat percentage, and then the goalposts move and you’re at 12%, you’re at 10%, but you’re not satisfied. There’s always something next, there’s that human kind of desire for more. So I think we gotta be careful around being attached to a certain body-fat percentage. I think for women, it’s probably way more complicated because of our cultural standards, but I think for men too, we’re so attached to having this, “Once I get to 10%, I’m gonna be thin, I’m gonna be happy, then I’m gonna get the girl, then… ”
Nick Holt:
I think that’s just, I think it’s just a flawed way to think of things. It’s a mindset thing, like you talk about all the time, you talked about upfront at the onset of this call, it’s like changing that mindset and getting clear around what you’re doing.
Marc Perry:
Right. No, I appreciate that. And that’s one big reason why at BuiltLean, it’s been a complete shift. When I first started, I was really emphasizing that like, “Oh, you gotta get to this percentage of body fat,” now I’m like, “No, no, no. If you really focus on vitality and you take it seriously, a lean body is the after effect, 100%.” If you really take your energy seriously and your vitality seriously, and your focus, it’s like you’re gonna get leaner. You’re not gonna wanna crush that burger with fries and beers after if you really care about vitality. And so anyways, that’s kind of how I’ve shifted and I think we’re on the same page with that. And that’s a more sustainable outlook, right?
Nick Holt:
Yeah, it’s focusing more on the… It’s like the process versus the outcome. I think Bill Walsh, the football coach was like, “Everybody just do your job and the scoreboard will take care of itself.” It’s just like, it’s focus on process, not outcome, but yeah. 100%, I’m on board with you.
Marc Perry:
Cool, and so for a guy who is inconsistent with his eating, what advice would you give?
Nick Holt:
Man, that’s tough, I think… So the biggest thing that I see is this like weekend, weekend-itis, they’re really good through the week and then they kind of throw down or binge on the weekends. And that’s the big one that I see, and I would, my advice would be, I think tracking, get awareness of what’s going on, just get a baseline is… Because some people are, they’re eating great for five days of the week, and then they’re just eating just enough, they’re so close, but that extra order of fries and that extra beer is just putting them over the top. And if they just eliminated a little bit, they would be at a deficit and making progress, but they’re just not aware of that. So I think tracking, I think tracking, I think fasting too. I think just creating some arbitrary rules, some eating times, if it’s 12:00 to 8:00, if it’s 10:00 to 6:00, whatever it is, to just shorten up the window, I think that can help. And finding someone, I think finding a coach, finding someone to hold you accountable. Finding, it doesn’t have to be a coach, but it can be a partner, a friend, I think. Yeah, having somebody hold your feet to the fire, I think is important.
Marc Perry:
Cool, cool, and I appreciate that. And so I wanted to talk a little bit more about some of the lifestyle and mindset aspects, which are obviously one of the three pillars of your approach. And so the three pillars of Nick Holt Fitness are smart individualized nutrition, daily movement and clear mindset/stress management. So what do you mean by clear mindset?
Nick Holt:
Yeah. Clear mindset to me is just having that clarity around what you’re trying to do around, what’s that North Star? So for me it’s, I wanna be able to surf and play tennis and live a bad ass, vital, healthy lifestyle for the next 30 years, and so to me, that keeps me… I’ll still eat a donut from time to time, but that keeps me on the path, that keeps me making good decisions because I have… It’s basically like having that powerful, “Why?” Is how I think about that mindset. It’s having clarity of what you’re trying to do, because I think when we have that clarity, then… A lot of people come to me and I’m sure you get this all the time, I need to be more disciplined.
Marc Perry:
[chuckle]
I’ve never heard that.
Nick Holt:
Never heard of that. I think a lot of times, the discipline is actually just a mask for lack of clarity. They wanna lose weight, but there’s not a powerful reason behind that because you know just as much as I do, the nebulous vague sort of goal of losing weight is just not that helpful. When you have, “I wanna be there and I don’t wanna have diabetes like my father does,” “I wanna be able to dance at my daughter’s wedding,” or stuff like that, is what I’m really talking about when I’m talking about clear mindset, having that big, what they call a high hard goal. And then I think it’s building in those practices, those behavior goals, like we talked about a few minutes ago around, what does it take to get there? You know, it’s not complicated, it’s pretty simple to achieve it, how we help guys. It’s hard, but it’s very simple, and I think that’s a good distinction. But when we have that clear goal and that clarity, I think it just makes a lot of the daily suffering and struggles, it allows you to get through those, it allows you to get through those obstacles a little bit easier.
Marc Perry:
By the way I love the word North Star or the words North Star or the idea, that’s really what it’s about. And one thing we’ve talked about with the BuiltLean program is like the North Star is energy. If you really keep that, and as you’re saying, it’s like there’s challenges in your daily life, things happen. But if you really focus on that North Star, it can help you get through it, and you’re like, “Oh, it’s okay.” And I really appreciate that, Nick. And so you’ve discussed the importance of a trained mind, and this is actually pretty cool. You wrote the following: “An untrained mind will always be lost in thought, an untrained mind will be easily distracted, an untrained mind will be easily emotionally hijacked, and an untrained mind will give up when the going gets tough.” And so what are some mindset training exercises to build a stronger and more resilient mindset?
Nick Holt:
Yeah, I think the big thing that I’ve discovered now for the last five or six years is some kind of meditation practice, I think. And it doesn’t have to be… I look at meditation as, it could be a stretching routine you do, it can be a walk on the beach, it doesn’t have to be a spiritual quest. I think that’s a beautiful thing too, but just some kind of practice where you’re tuning into the present moment, you’re practicing what’s called mindfulness, you’re aware of your setting, you’re aware of thoughts coming into your mind, most of them are gonna be negative and self-doubt and telling that you’re not good enough, and it’s having that awareness and it’s training that and it’s being okay with that. I personally use an app called Waking Up with Sam Harris. I find that to be so useful. I generally do about 10 minutes a day. But it’s basically, yeah, it’s a mindfulness practice. And I think it can look different for different people. A lot of people think of this meditation as this, “I can never meditate. I’m too busy,” and I think that there’s a Zen quote saying something like, “If you’re too busy to meditate, you just need to actually spend time more meditating.”
If you think you’re too busy, you probably have to spend more time doing it, but the point is, even five minutes a day can be pretty powerful of just grounding yourself, bringing yourself into more parasympathetic, more of that rest-and-digest part of the nervous system. I think a lot of the people listening to this, myself, probably you, entrepreneurs, business owners, people are trying to achieve a lot, they’re just running, they’re running their system in that sympathetic drive, they’re always up. And I think meditation, mindfulness can be a really powerful tool, and there’s some amazing apps out there. We’re living in sort of a golden era of access to these things, to these resources that have been around for, the yogis have known this for thousands of years, ancient cultures have known this for thousands of years. For whatever reason, it hasn’t been in our culture, and probably for a good reason, which is a separate topic. But yeah, just a simple meditation practice can be really powerful.
Marc Perry:
Cool, cool, and this ties into the… It’s all related, the… What you just talked about and stress management, and can you talk maybe a little bit more about how stress can sometimes negatively affect someone in terms of their ability to improve their health and wellbeing, get lean, and then conversely, are there any other tips that other than what you just mentioned that you’d wanna talk about?
Nick Holt:
Yeah, I think that’s a good question. I think the stress thing’s really interesting because a lot of times people say, “Oh, I’m so stressed out. I need to reduce my stress. I need to be less stressed.” And I actually look at it differently, and if you look at some of the research and literature around stress, you know this, the way you get stronger is you stress the system, it’s the difference between acute stress, which is a short-term stressor, which is what exercise is, and you recover and you build and you get stronger from it. I think what most people are talking about is chronic stress, so they’re just feeling like they’re overwhelmed and they just, they’re spread thin, kids at home, the work stress, talking about COVID, COVID stress just upending people’s lives, spending more time with their partners at home, all that stuff. I think it’s about understanding that stress, like the mindset stuff we’ve talked about, it’s framing it a little differently. There’s some good books on this, but the growth mindset, like Carol Dweck’s work who’s a researcher out of Stanford, it’s like looking at this stuff as an opportunity versus like a victim.
And I think you definitely need to have the resources. So I think I wanna be sensitive to, for some people, if you’ve been through a lot and you’ve had trauma or suffering, you just might not have the resources to be able to deal with stressors, but I think for most of us, it’s just framing it a little differently. And it’s looking at stress as something that can make us better, it’s something that can make us… To me, it’s not about reducing stress, it’s becoming more resilient. It’s that idea of the anti-fragile, it’s like, “How can I make this system more resilient?” And I think a lot of that is doing some hard shit from time to time. I think this is like the Wim Hof stuff with the cold showers, or doing some hard stuff. It’s training that stress response and it’s the body and the mind can do a lot more than I think we give it credit for sometimes. So it’s just framing it a little differently. And yeah, as far as a specific tool, I think meditation, I think taking a hot shower, I think doing some foam rolling, I think doing things to down-regulate the system. If you feel like you’re one of these people who is stressed out and you’re struggling with chronic stress, you just probably need to down-regulate the system, you need to… What’s your resting heart rate? That’s a good proxy.
There’s things like HRV, which is heart-rate variability that I’m sure you’re familiar with that can actually give you a measurement of your, what’s going on in your nervous system. But I think just get your resting pulse, if your resting pulse is north of 70, you’re probably in more of that sympathetic, that fight-or-flight state, and so doing some basic five minutes of stretching before you go to bed can be really, really powerful.
Marc Perry:
Right, awesome. Well, listen, I think we’re getting up on time, Nick, and I really appreciate all of that, I think there are some nuggets of gold for sure in there. And so the last two questions, anything else we haven’t discussed that you would like to mention?
Nick Holt:
I think we’ve covered it, man. Yeah, we’re a little over an hour, so it’s just been great, man. It’s been fun. Yeah, I think we’re good for now. I think [0:55:35.3] ____, yeah.
Marc Perry:
Cool cool. Okay. And how can people follow you or learn more about you?
Nick Holt:
The easiest way is just Nick Holt Fitness. So yeah, my name, Nick Holt, H-O-L-T Fitness, that’ll give more information about my [0:55:54.4], you can learn a little bit about my story and all that good stuff.
Marc Perry:
Awesome, and again, I’m gonna include links on the article to all your stuff, and I think that’s it. So I think that’s it, Nick. I really, really appreciate you coming on, and I appreciate the listeners listening to this point, and enjoy the rest of the day, man.
Nick Holt:
Thanks, Marc. Yeah, it was a pleasure, dude. I really enjoyed that. Alright, take care man.
Marc Perry:
Alright. Bye bye.
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