This transcript was produced automatically by speech-recognition software (AssemblyAI) and has not been checked by a person. Expect mistakes, especially in names, numbers and technical terms. The recap above is the edited version.
Peptides. We've all heard of them by now. And in today's podcast, I want to discuss when we should add them to what we're doing and which one is actually best for you. I want to cover this because the topic of peptides has been coming up with my clients increasingly more and more and more over the last couple of years. So much so that I went and got certified— certification in peptides and GLPs.
It's understandable that as technology improves, as increasingly more supplements become available to us, we're going to want to consider, you know, is that best for me? If so, when should I use it? What situations and which variant? It is completely reasonable. I know sometimes people will talk about, like, the purists in different sports will say, oh, you know, back when I competed, we didn't have that, or, oh, those are shortcuts.
Well, It depends on how you want to define that. If you look at protein powder, that in a sense is a shortcut to eating whole food protein. You can think of multivitamins as a shortcut to a well-rounded diet. So I don't really get into that. My opinion is, if a client is considering it and they ask me questions, I'm going to look into it.
I'm going to answer the questions. And as we're approaching their programming, if we're looking at nutrition, exercise, stress management, sleep management, supplements, supplements, we're also going to be factoring in supplements such as GLPs, peptides, and other aids. It just makes sense that when we are considering everything and anything that can help us reach our results, why would we not include everything and anything? In today's podcast, I want to share an example of a client who's going through that struggle right now, and we can kind of relate to some of the aspects of that story and then extrapolate from that story what might best relate for you. This client is a female in their 40s.
They're top 1% athlete in the world in what— in their chosen sport. They're freaking awesome, amazing badass, and they've been doing it for a lot of years. So at this point, I actually don't even know. I'd say 15, 20 years probably. And they're awesome.
Love it. Love working with them. Now the issue that they've been running into is, is as they're getting into their mid-40s, their body is changing. And one of the changes that is happening is the hormones. We have been doing semi-regular blood work over the years, so we were able to see in one of the recent blood works about 6 months to a year ago to where we started to see a little bit of shift in testosterone, estrogen, progesterone.
And we were like, oh, you know, that's interesting to see. You know, is that impacting our thyroid? Is that impacting our performance in the gym, the way she feels, the way she's processing protein, the way she's processing body fat. And when we went and got another test and another test, we started to see that there was a continuing kind of degradation of the hormone profile. She was also experiencing more achy joints, more variability in her performance, a little bit more mood swings.
And it just kind of made sense. Oh, okay, you know, we're coming into that age where the female body does start to change. There can be a kind of like a swift— if you would think of the span of a lifetime, you know, your hormones changing over the span of 1 to 2 years is pretty quick. So we can understand that that's reasonable. It's, it's part of nature.
How do we address that? So they've been working with a doctor local to them, and we've been having them get hormonal supplements to help keep them in more of the normal physiological ranges, but more of the optimal ranges, especially since they're a 1% athlete and what they do for a living, and essentially part of who they feel they are as a human, is dependent on their performance, the way they look, the way they feel, So this is a ridiculously high priority, you know, highest of priorities. So we're definitely going to get the hormonal support that we have there. Then we started looking into, okay, what about peptides? Do we add peptides?
And if we do, which ones? You know, let's start kind of processing that. If we're getting the hormonal support, what else can we do? So we doubled down on nutrition. They are a business owner as well as an athlete, and they coach others themselves.
So they have many hats to aware they're a little overextended in a lot of areas in life. So we wanted to double down on self-care, on prioritizing themselves. They've done a great job prioritizing themselves to this point with the way in which their body was— like what their body was demanding of them. And then within the space after that demand, they were taking care of other people and building a business. Well, unfortunately, the demand that their body is placing on them now is a little higher.
And if that gets unmet, their performance is going to downgrade, their body composition is going to downgrade. That's very quickly going to associate with mental and emotional health. And just kind of overall, in general, the part of them as an athlete is going to suffer. So we had to look at them as an entrepreneur. And when they have their entrepreneur hat on, and in their entrepreneurial roles, what can we be more efficient with?
So we went through, you know, what can we delegate? What can we defer? What can we delete? And of what we do, how can we do it more efficiently? Then we looked at coaching.
We went through and kind of compared a little bit about, you know, how do you manage your clients? This is how I do it. Like, let's see if there's ways that maybe this method might be a little bit faster, more frequent. You can kind of get through check-ins a little faster. How can we just be more efficient with the other areas so that way we can build up the capacity to give more to ourselves as the athlete?
So we went through that stuff, and that was very important because now it opened up a capacity that we can now double down on the nutrition? Can we have our calories— like, maybe give a little more attention to tracking the calories? So previously they were eating healthy foods and eating what allowed them to feel best, but with their body operating before kind of efficiently and optimally, it didn't really— they didn't really need to track calories because eating consistently and eating how they felt based on performance and recovery was sufficient enough. It got him to the top 1% of the world. Now though, we do need to start tracking.
We need to ensure our low days aren't so low, our high days— and that's not her problem— aren't so high. It's just she typically undereats. So we have to make sure we're eating enough. And then not only with calories, we have to make sure we're eating enough protein to help with recovery, satiety, which isn't going to be much of a concern for her in the sense that she wasn't struggling with overeating. However, if we take care of satiety during the day, that lessens some of the cravings at night.
And then we also looking at daytime carbohydrate intake. Is she eating enough carbohydrates to fuel the demand she has as an athlete, the demand she has as an active trainer/coach? She does a lot of in-person work and being active, running around and doing chores and doing all the crazy crap you do as a business owner. So we wanted to make sure that with nutrition, we're doubling down, making sure that we're accounting for our calories, protein, and carbohydrates. Then we also looked at, okay, let's add some hydration focus.
Are we consuming enough fluid throughout the day? That can be part of the reason why we maybe aren't feeling our best. Maybe we have a little extra water retention around the waistline, and that's kind of making us unmotivated. And then we're showing up to training feeling like, you know, what the hell is the point of this? And falling behind no matter what I do, and it can really cascade very quickly.
So that was another component we added along with calories, protein, and carbohydrates was the hydration component. And then we look at just making sure that we're consistent day to day. For them, we are implementing some carb cycling, which is going to in turn create caloric cycling because we do— we don't make up for the change of carbs with increased fats or protein. So they're having a little bit of calorie cycling via carb manipulation. On the training days, they're gonna have a little bit more.
Non-training days or less type of demanding training, they're gonna have a little less. That is helping with body composition, and it also helps them with a sense of having a greater depth of control. They like feeling like, okay, I don't have to worry if I'm overeating on a non-training day and gaining unwanted body fat, since they already struggle with feeling emotionally okay with eating enough food, I definitely don't want them to have to battle that extra feeling on off days of saying, you know, am I just eating and making myself fat? So those are the things we've done with nutrition. Then with training, we had to pay attention to our training volume.
Can we like reduce some of the general, like just general, like activity and movement? Make, make sure that we're more efficient with our baseline foundational elements. So for example, if we're doing something that we want to work our core but we also want to work on hip stability, can we do a Copenhagen plank, which does kind of both of those together, rather than doing a separate ab exercise and a separate hip exercise? Can we just be more efficient with our exercise selections, and that way it brings down our total training volume? We want to be more mindful of our heavy lifts because that's going to have a huge demand on our CNS And we do still want to lift heavy because that does promote happy, optimal hormone production.
Even though we're getting some exogenous help, we still want to make sure the baseline natural production is as high as possible. So the big heavy lifts help towards that, but there's an intensity component to the heavy lifts that we want to manage. We want to manage it feeling heavy, but still technique is safe and sound, and we're still giving ourselves a sense of an accomplishment that can be challenging but accomplished rather than going in and feeling like we have to hit, you know, oh, what's the 1-rep max I could hit 6 months ago when I felt great? And I'm going to force my body to do that today so that way I can stay strong. No, you're not coming into the workout with the same body.
You're not going to get that same performance. So we want to get the same feel, which was a max effort of what we were capable of that day. But it might have to be a little bit lower weight loads. It might have to be less total working sets. Maybe it's less frequency.
Maybe we start alternating between heavy squats and heavy deadlifts. Rather than having both of those in the same week. Instead of heavy double, 2 times a week bench press, maybe we swap one of those out for overhead presses. It's still a very challenging exercise, but it is less taxing on the body. So we would just play around with our heavy lifts to see, OK, what is the right volume, intensity, weight load, frequency, blah, blah, blah, that matches the body that we're showing up with now?
And then our accessory exercises. Can we choose exercises that are maybe a little bit friendlier on the joints? And connective tissues, but still maximally push our muscle-based intensities. So that's the thing we look for for training, is to make those type of adjustments. Then we're going to look at other recovery metrics, which would be sleep.
Can we help ourselves with, you know, some magnesium glycinate, maybe some melatonin for stretch of time or in certain situations? Can we just help ourselves with sleep supplement? Can we help ourselves with the sleep environment? Can I get into a regimented time of getting into bed? And it doesn't mean necessarily I'm going to fall asleep every day at like, say, 10 PM.
But can I get into bed every day at 10 PM and start to get my body into that rhythm? And that's really important as well. Can I create the right environment? Do I have a cool temperature? Can I have, you know, kind of like dark in the room, that consistent sound?
Maybe you want no sound at all. Maybe there's some ambient sounds. You're going to use a white noise machine to make it more consistent. So you want to take care of sleep quality. We can't always sleep more.
But hopefully we can sleep better. Then we look at stress. For this client, we're doing some journaling. We want to wake up in the morning, plan our big 3 for the day. What's the big 3 things we want to get done?
At the end of the day, we kind of review, did we get them done? If we didn't, write it on paper that, you know, tomorrow this thing needs to be number 1. These are the times and the ways in which I'm going to address that tomorrow. And then I'm going to leave it on paper. I don't need to keep it in my mind overnight.
I'm going to leave it on paper. I can reread that in the morning so I can let that go. Mentally and go to bed without thinking of it because it's on paper. I will remember it tomorrow because I'm going to read it tomorrow. Then we have a gratitude component where like, what was a big win for the day?
What was something that made you smile that day? What was something that made you happy that day? And then we also do some square breathing to get them out of fight-or-flight mode. And we'll do that in the morning, midday, and evening. And that helps them as well to manage stress.
So these are the things we look at outside of supplements is nutrition, training, sleep, stress. And again, nutrition has that hydration component, which sometimes people forget, but that's really important as well. Then we're looking at supplements. We just want to make sure we're taking our baseline supplements. If we're having some joint pain, are we taking fish oil?
Sometimes that has a positive impact on joints. You can also just take like a joint-based supplement, which might have combined different elements. If you're struggling with emotional, mental burnout, some stress, maybe you respond well to something like ashwagandha. So you would kind of throw that in. Rhodiola, I believe, is another really good one that's kind of more like quote unquote natural, and sometimes people have good responses with that.
If you're having digestive stress, we want to make sure that we take care of that with the digestive enzyme, maybe some probiotic, prebiotics. So we want to just make sure our health-based baseline of supplements are met. That is the first step, in my opinion, of what we would do before we would add a peptide. Now, can everybody always optimize perfectly nutrition, training, sleep, stress, and baseline like general health supplements? No.
You know, you're going to do your best, but that's what we're looking to make sure is just, can we, can we take a look back through these elements? And even if you think you're doing your best now, let's just take a second and let's analyze them a little bit. And like, are we really being consistent with calories as we could be? Are we really being consistent with protein as we could be? So we're just going to go back through those elements and make sure that where we are now, are we optimizing what's available to us within a realistic expectation?
Then and only then when we consider adding a peptide. And the reason why is supplements are supplemental to the foundational elements of what you're doing. So nutrition, training is kind of like, um, I would consider a foundational element. Training is like the, the stimulus for the change that you want to create. So if you want to create fat loss, if you want to create muscle building, if you want to create strength, if you want to create better endurance, Whatever it might be, training is how you're stimulating that change.
How we're meeting that change is nutrition, stress management, so we have the resources available, and sleep quality, so we actually can use our nutrition to actually put it to work. So those elements, if they're not optimized, whatever peptide or supplement you would add isn't going to be optimized either. Supplements are just an aid to the outcome that the supplement is designed for. So if the supplement is supposed to help with stress, but you're not doing any other stress management components, it's probably not going to help much. You know, if we're taking a supplement for muscle growth but you're not tracking your calories or your daily protein or you're not optimizing training, it's not going to just grow muscle separate from the support that you're giving in nutrition and the stimulus you're giving in training.
Supplements are supplemental to these foundational elements. So it's not me being a stickler and a traditionist or just kind of a stick in the mud. Like, I know people aren't— it's not sexy to say, hey, before you add a supplement, go back through your nutrition, training, sleep, and stress. I know that, I know that. But what I also know is if you don't do those things, you're throwing money away, and that supplement is never going to get what you think it's going to get because it doesn't have the support.
It's like you're trying to run a race with both your legs tied together. You know, like, you think of, like, if you ever saw, like, a potato sack race, you're trying to run a marathon in a potato sack. It just— it's not going to work. Can you get there? Eventually, but you're going to be destroyed.
You might not actually make it all the way. It's just not optimal. So we don't want to put in the supplement and have that supplement be hindered by a missing foundational element. So it's important to consider those components first, address those components first, and then we would add the peptide or the supplement, the super supper, whatever it might be, whatever you want to call them. So that addresses kind of like the when do we take these things.
After we've already addressed and gotten the best that we can get currently for nutrition, training, sleep, and stress. And you could definitely— I mean, people might argue some other components in there that might relate, I'm sure, totally fine with that. But these are the big ones that I take my clients through. And then just like we said, health supplements as well. Now we're gonna revisit that maybe every 4 weeks.
It's just a nice little, hey, once a month, let's check in. How are we doing on nutrition? Can we tighten that up a little bit? How are we doing on training? Can we modify that a little bit, get that a little more precise, a little more customized to what we might need?
So we're going to re-look through those elements every month and just see, okay, how am I doing on this? Am I doing well? If I'm not doing well, why not? Can I address that? If I am doing well, is there anything I could do maybe a little bit better?
And any changes we make there, any improvements we make there, are only going to improve the outcome of the peptide.
Now the second component is how do we know what peptide or what type of super supplement is best for us? In general, my overall approach is to look at holistic support first and then get specific. So the example we're talking about with this client is one of the peptides that we're looking into and considering is tesamorelin, which is kind of a growth hormone support. And the reason why we're looking at that is growth hormone will impact sleep quality, stress, the metabolism. It will impact basically how well we are processing our calories or protein.
It will impact— oh my gosh, literally everything. So now all of a sudden I'm blanking on naming everything, but it impacts recovery. If we're processing our food better, we're gonna recover better. If we're sleeping better, we're gonna recover better. So it's like one of those things where it kind of helps everything.
So Tesamorelin, or some type of growth hormone support, is a really cool option considering that she's already on the supplements specific to the hormonal component. So if she wasn't taking care— like taking that, that would be where I would start, is the hormone profile. Try to make sure our testosterone is kind of like optimized to where we would want it for the outcome we want. And then the other supports, which would be estrogen, progesterone, we might look at TSH and like FSH, some other things. So we're going to look at the blood work and see if there's anything that's, you know, out of normal range or just in a shitty part of normal range.
We're going to want to optimize that. So those are usually the areas that we would look to address first. And then of course, if there's any components out of that that are off, you know, hematocrit being off or some other things, we'd want to address those things too. If their cholesterol is crazy high, like, that's just good to address for blood health and long-term health. So we're going to want to address that as well.
So those are the things we look at is blood work components, and then something like growth hormone support, which would be really good. And that would be a cool thing for her because it relates to so many of the struggles that she's facing. So if we can improve her body's natural ability to produce growth hormone, that's gonna make a big difference. Now whether you get into something that improves your natural ability versus just exogenous growth hormone, That's case-by-case basis, and that would be individual client specific. So peptides, we're looking at— we're gonna be looking at trying to boost natural production to the best of its ability.
And that's something where like tesamorelin is really good for that. There's— oh my gosh, there's so many other ones like ipamorelin. They're infinite. So that's where talking with somebody who is familiar with peptides is very, very, very helpful. Because if you go to a place where you can buy peptides, every single one of the things like that you see is going to look like it's great.
And you're like, man, like, I wish I could take like all of these. And it helps to have somebody with an educated like viewpoint on the products themselves and then also experience using those products with clients and patients or whatever. It's going to be helpful then because they can help you differentiate between which might be best for you. And another like an analogy for that would be similar to like a diet. You know, we're all aware of multiple diets that are out there in the world.
How do you know which diet is best for you? It helps to talk with somebody who understands nutrition, and they can kind of say, hey, you know, given your lifestyle, given your food preferences, given your history, given your current situation, this one probably would be the best one for us to start with, and then we'll modify and customize it to you as we go. Same thing with training programs. You know, should you follow a powerlifting program, a strongman program, Olympic lifting program? Hybrid training program.
Well, what outcome do you want? What type of exercise do you enjoy? Maybe you're not going to do any of those. Maybe you just like to swim and go for hikes. Cool.
Okay. Swim and go for hikes. It's just kind of— you're going to need to personalize it. And it helps to have somebody who has the knowledge of what the options are that are available, but then the specific content knowledge and education and then experiential education with clients and themselves to kind of say, hey, you know, given you, this is what might be best for you. Let's start there and let's see how it goes.
So it's really helpful to talk to somebody who does have a good background if you're considering using a peptide or super sup. Uh, it's going to be very confusing, very overwhelming to try to do it on your own, and you could potentially have health risks and waste a lot of money and waste a lot of time. So to save yourself from those issues and worries and concerns, it would be good to talk with somebody. Now, the other thing is I'll throw in there is it's probably good to talk to somebody who isn't financially rewarded for a specific answer. So if, you know, if they're, you know, sponsored by X company and X company only sells one thing and that happens to be the thing they recommend to you, it doesn't mean they're full of crap or that they're taking advantage of you, but it does raise a little bit of a concern as to like, well, it's kind of like, of course you're going to recommend that because you get 20% commission or you get X amount of kickback every time somebody buys that.
Whereas if somebody has access to, say, maybe they're sponsored by like a peptide site and really any of the peptides would be fine, uh, and they would get maybe a little bit of a financial kickback, they might be associated with the peptide, uh, hope— like site, hopefully because they're educated in it. So you'd want to make sure that's true. If they're just a sponsored athlete, I don't know if I would take their opinion. Uh, you know, you might want to talk to a physician assistant or somebody who actually knows the content, not just sponsored by the site. But it would be good to have a situation in which the person isn't financially rewarded for a singular choice.
So there's just a little bit of a heads up on that. And that is the general approach, as I said, as to which one is best for you, like which super supplement, which peptide is best for you, is I try to think of like, what's the best bang for our buck? What are all the issues that we're having What is 1 or 2 or the fewest or the least amount of things that would cover all of those needs? So for this client, tesamorelin is great. Now she is struggling with a little bit of joint stress, a little bit of recovery fatigue.
So you might say like, oh, what about, you know, BPC-157 and TB-500, like the Wolverine stack? That's gonna, you know, be awesome for recovery. True. But she also has sleep concerns. She also has fat loss concerns.
She also has all like hormonal concerns. So it's like, okay, that would only cover one component component, can we maybe choose something that covers more? And that's where Tesla Morelin would be great because it does have a recovery capacity, like recovery component to it. That's not the only thing it does, and it might not do it as, as effectively specifically as something like BBC and TB would do. But it has more bang for a buck.
It at least is going to let us know, hey, if this makes any bit of difference, then maybe adding the BPC-157 and TB500 afterwards or later might be a good choice. But it's better for us to start with something that's more holistic, that's going to get us more bang for our buck, cover more of our concerns and issues, rather than getting, you know, this individual thing, this individual thing, this individual thing, this individual thing, and now all of a sudden we're, you know, taking 4 or 5 supplements when maybe only 1 or 2 would have been fine to cover the bulk of our needs. So that is the advice that I give to clients. That's the process that we go through with our clients when we're considering should we add a peptide or super supplement, and if so, which one? Is we want to go through and make sure we cover the foundational elements first, so that way whatever we add has the best chance of having maximum effect.
And then when we choose what we choose, can we choose the fewest amount of things to cover all of our needs? Start there, see the impact that we get. And then if, like, say the person taking tesamorlin, maybe they get a good enough recovery component But there's still some like body composition issues that we're facing. So maybe then we want to look into something that maybe might, might help like fat loss a little bit more and cycle through that for a phase just to build up some motivation and confidence. And, you know, so maybe we'll add in that direction.
So that's one of the benefits to having something that's more holistic is you get a little bit of benefit everywhere, but there might be one area that falls like behind. And then that like now highlights that as the area that maybe you want to pick as the next place to focus. On. Cool. Okay, well, that's it.
Hopefully that was helpful, gave you some ideas and some things to consider. If you have any questions, let me know in the comment section below of whatever platform you're on. You can also visit our website, which is www.c3method.com.
The 3 is spelled out T-H-R-E-E, so it's C-T-H-R-E-E method.com. You can contact us there with any questions. You can see the different services that we have and whatnot. I just hope that if you took the time to listen to this that you get everything and anything you needed out of it. If you didn't, if you still have any questions, please reach out and please let us know.
Okay, that's it. Hopefully this was helpful, and thank you for watching, and thank you for listening.