Breaking Down The Truth Behind Metabolism With Angelo Poli

 

Many know the word “metabolism,” but only a few understand what it is. Joining Rodney Flowers this episode to shed some truth and share his understanding about metabolism is Angelo Poli. Angelo is the founder and instructor at MetPro and has coached more than 20,000 people to achieve their fitness goals. Learn how metabolism behaves uniquely per individual and the factors you need to look into when setting your own fitness and nutrition goals. Know the math and principles behind the metabolic process and reach your goals faster and efficiently.

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Breaking Down The Truth Behind Metabolism With Angelo Poli

As always, I am excited about our show. I have the Founder of MetPro, Mr. Angelo Poli, with me. He is globally recognized as a fitness and nutrition expert, and I’m always excited to bring nutritional and fitness experts on the show. I don’t care what you’re trying to accomplish. Whether you’re trying to reach a goal, overcome an obstacle, be the best version of yourself, your nutrition, and your fitness, it is one of the most important things. It’s above emotional development, intellectual and spiritual. It is the foundation. You have a strong body. You know what foods to put into your body, how to take care of your body, to put your body in the most optimal position. You put yourself in the best position to achieve anything. It helps you build those other areas, your emotional, intellectual and spiritual side, but when you don’t have your help, all you can focus on is your pain, suffering, and disease. I’m excited to have Angelo join us here.

We’re going to talk about your metabolism. He’s developed something that we’re going to get into about that. We’re going to talk about health and nutrition in general. A little bit about Angelo, he is an internationally respected expert in fitness and nutrition. He’s the Founder of MetPro, an evaluation-based health coaching program specializing in transformations using a process called Metabolic Profiling. MetPro analyzes your metabolism and provides an individualized approach to obtaining your health goals. Angelo has spent much of his career as a motivational speaker and was featured at TEDxChicago, where he discussed his own achievement in overcoming obstacles. We’re going to talk about that as well. At the recovery from a crippling injury himself, Angelo brought to light a whole new way of thinking about health, fitness, and weight loss. Without further ado, Mr. Angelo Poli. Welcome to the show. 

It’s a pleasure to be here, Rodney. Thank you for having me.

Thank you for coming and thank you for what you do. I’m big into health and nutrition. I myself have a high metabolism. I’m not ashamed at 41 years old, I still feel like I’m in good shape. I had a spinal cord injury for almost 30 years. I spent eighteen years in a wheelchair and I’m in the best shape of my life. I get up and go to the gym at least at a minimum of five days a week. I’m doing about a half a mile on the elliptical. Every single day I’m bench pressing. I’m doing everything, I have a trainer who comes in. I feel good in my body. 

It helps everything.

It does. If you don’t have that, as I said, then you’re truly at a disadvantage with trying to accomplish anything. Tell us about MetPro. What is MetPro and how did you get involved with it?

I’m still trying to figure out how I got involved as well. Some people are that intentional entrepreneurs like, “Here’s what I’m going to do. This is the course I’m taking.” I’m one of those accidental guys where I ended up falling into this unique niche. I feel blessed, honored, and privileged to get to do what I do these days and that is, I help people with makeovers. A lot of people are health, fitness, and weight loss coaches. At MetPro, we wrap all of that into one and we’re able to help people with high-end transformations. When I say high end, it’s for anyone, but we have the privilege of working with it. The range from the pro athletes, this is their career to people in the entertainment and business field. The common denominator is it’s generally for people who are a little bit more serious about it and they don’t want to waste time. They want to learn the science of how to get their body to transform, change, or improve whatever the specifics may be. That’s what Metabolic Profiling is all about.

Let’s break it down to the fundamentals here. Maybe there are some people that are reading that may not understand metabolism and how it works. Let’s start with some fundamentals. First of all, what is metabolism? Let’s start with that. 

In fitness, the most important thing is that there is no most important thing. You need the whole package. Click To Tweet

If you ask most people, it’s the root of all evil. This is what I spend most of my time teaching about is metabolism. I get asked, “What’s the most important thing?” There is no most important thing. You need the whole package. The reason I teach on metabolism more than any other topic is that it’s simply the most misunderstood. There’s so much information out there and it’s confusing. I will break it down right here and I’m going to tell you the truth and there’s no end to that. There’s no angle for this. You’ve heard a million programs that say, “This is the best way to eat.” Somebody else out there says, “No, that’s the best way to eat.” If you type in weight loss, muscle building, or performance in Google, you’ll get 100 different doctors and gurus that all say, “This is it.” They all disagree and you know which one is right. All of them are right. It’s not some snake oil salesman trying to sell. These are people that genuinely believe in this because it has worked for them or worked for a subset of people.

The problem is in real life, you’re listening at home or in your car ride or wherever you may be and you’re thinking, “My neighbor talked to me about this program they did and they had this great result. He lost 50 pounds. He did this, that. I tried it for three weeks and got nothing out of it.” You’re not crazy if you had that experience. That’s the way metabolism works. It’s not fair, but it can be understood in you and we can do something about it. Maybe you’ve had this experience. Maybe you’ve had the experience where you’ve done a diet or a program that you’ve experienced great results from. You figure, “I’m going to go back to that one more time. I’m going to do that again.” You do it a 2nd or 3rd time and you didn’t get the same results. What I say is, “I’m the same person. I did the exact same thing as I did last time. How come it’s not working the same way?” That’s all tied up into this mystery that is understanding the metabolism.

I’m going to talk a lot about weight loss. Not that it’s the most important thing. Not that we don’t focus on physique, muscularity, and performance. It’s the most requests. Eighty-five percent of people who call me up, they’re like, “Angelo, I know who you are. I know who your clients are. I know what you do. I need to lose 15 pounds. I need to lose 50 pounds.” I’m talking with people who are on the TV, weight loss shows after the fact. They’re like, “I lost 180 pounds on this show, but I need to fix my metabolism. Help me with that.” That’s the toughest spot. How do we figure out how your metabolism is working? The answer is we have to evaluate the pace of your metabolism and date and base our strategy on real-time data from you not theoretical or group data. In other words, 500 people on average, this is how they respond. That’s great. You’re not 500 people. You’re you. Either you are making progress or you aren’t. We need to understand the pieces going into that. That’s what profiling does.

What is the definition of metabolism by your standard?

Metabolism is a combination of all the different biological and hormonal processes simultaneously taking place to regulate your energy. People think of functional metabolism as one that’s fast or working and a healthy metabolism that’s a media marketing produced theory because we talk about it a lot. Nothing’s wrong with that. That’s what we want. We want a fast metabolism, but the truth is a functional metabolism has the ability to adapt to your environment. When you stop losing weight, when you hit a plateau, that is fundamentally the definition of your metabolism working. It’s doing its job. It’s keeping you alive. That’s why there’s so much confusion over what works, what doesn’t work.

Somebody says, “This weight loss program always works. I always lose weight on it.” No, it doesn’t because if that was the case, you lost 3 pounds. That’s great. Does that mean that three months from now, you’re going to end up in the hospital, hooked up to IV because you’re wasting away and dying because you have continued to lose 3 pounds every week? No, your metabolism is going to do its job. It’s going to adapt and go, “I see what’s going on here. I’m going to find a way to adjust my hormones, my metabolic processes, my energy regulation intake and outtake like a carburetor does for a vehicle to match your circumstance, to do my real job, which is to keep you alive.”

We come in all shapes, sizes, and different tones. Everyone’s unique. Metabolism works differently so we can’t compare ourselves to the guy next door. What was looking over and go, “That guy, he looks good,” or “That gal, she’s in shape. What is she doing?” The truth is it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t necessarily mean that’s how your body is going to respond. What we need to know is how is your body responding? There has to be a way to track it. We have the technology, we have enough science and understanding of how the human biology works in this department to marry it with some technology that allows getting a much more responsive, a much quicker feedback loop to assess exactly how someone is responding and to adapt to what they need to see more progress.

Are you essentially changing the metabolic rate of a human being or the individual with this data? 

 

We are helping them.

How do you do that? 

Let me give you an example. Like you, I do a lot of seminars but with everything going on in the world, it’s getting better. Things are going to be back to normal. I’m an optimist at heart. One of my favorite conversations that I like to have with my audience when I do seminars is I’ll ask one of the gals in the front of the audience that’s somebody who’s not embarrassed and they’re willing to share. I’ll say, “You look like you’re into health, fitness, and exercise. How much do you weigh?” She’ll say, “I weigh 130 pounds.” I say, “You’re 40 years old. You know your body well. What would happen if you changed nothing about your diet, your exercise, except you eat a pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream every night before bed?” The entire audience will chuckle. Usually, she’ll say, “I’d be happy because I get that.” She said, “I gain weight.” I said, “Perfect. How much weight will you gain when you’re the expert on your body, you’ve lived in your body for 40 years?” Invariably, she’ll tell me, “I gained a few pounds in a month. I gained maybe 5 to 15 pounds in a month.” It’s the most common response.

This is what I do every day. I’ve had the privilege to diet over 20,000 people in my career. The sum total of what I’ve learned from that is that you’re right. That’s what would happen. You gained 5, 10, maybe 15 pounds if you had a pint that’s 1,000 calories a day of Ben & Jerry’s right before you went to bed at night. Here’s the question, “How much weight would you gain if you continue to do that for the rest of the year?” She’ll stop, pause, and think about it. I will get past this question hundreds of times, I’ll get an answer that ranges from 15 to 30 pounds. We have a mathematical problem, don’t we? Except she’s not wrong. She’s right on average. That’s what’s going to happen. Let’s go and do some math and are there understanding of how the metabolism works? We do the math that doesn’t add up 1,000 calories a night that’s 7,000 calories a week. There are 3,500 calories in a pound of fat. That’d be 2 pounds a week, 52 weeks in a year. How many people think she’s going to gain 104 pounds? There’s not a single taker. Our life experience has told us that mathematically, it doesn’t work that way.

Functionally, it doesn’t work that way. There is nothing she could eat that would enable her to effectively double her body weight in one year. It’s not going to happen. Why? That’s the metabolism doing its job. Only in this case, it’s speeding up. We notice metabolism when it’s slowing down to keep us in homeostasis. We don’t catch it when it’s speeding up to keep us in that homeostasis, because we’re still irritated that we gained 5, 10 or 15 pounds. The truth is by the math, we should have gained double or triple of that, but because it’s doing its job and it knows we can’t survive in a state of perpetual weight gain or weight loss, it’s fluctuating. If it can slow down and speed up, it can be controlled. That’s where we’re going with this. If we can control it, lead it, and manipulate it. I didn’t invent this stuff off the physique industry bodybuilders. They’ve been doing this stuff for years. They’re doing it on a level that isn’t practical for most people, but the principles behind what they’re doing can be applied to executives, CEOs, parents, grandparents, you name it. It takes a little bit of coaching, strategy, and focus and it can be applied and people could get a great result.

From my experience with people wanting to lose weight, there’s always the mental factor that comes into play. There’s an identity issue and believe in as you can lose weight and then there’s this discipline thing. Does this take the place of that? Some people do have genuine problems with their metabolism, converting the food into energy and burning the calories and the excess that they put on. Some people have slow metabolisms. It seems like they look at food and they put weight on. Give me maybe your philosophy on where your program links between the psychological aspects of losing weight and then the actual discipline. 

It lands somewhere between important and critical. It’s huge. I’m glad that you brought that up because I do have some thoughts on that. I’ve been a coach for over two decades. There’s this belief that tends to permeate the fitness industry, especially with the higher end of athletics, where it’s like, “This person wasn’t willing to put in the work. That’s why they don’t get the results.” Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen it. I can call it out. There’s someone that was not willing to put in the work. I’m not saying it’s not a thing. What I’m saying is overall, that is not why people don’t get results. Generally speaking, people are willing. Maybe my experience is unique I have found people are willing to put forth an effort and do what it takes to get the result.

It’s when it’s met with little results that motivation wanes. I find people willing to do, but the greatest human motivator is progress. You’ve got to see some progress. What I find is, if those efforts are met with progress, then it’s a self-perpetuating thing and that boils down to having the right strategy and the right level of accountability. Maybe we could dive in. I’ve got five brief bullets that when somebody reaches out to us, our coaches are going to go over five things with them that we have found are the most relevant goal, lifestyle, strategy, or metabolism. That’s exactly what you brought up because for some people it’s not a metabolic issue, it’s behavioral or a lifestyle, strategy, baseline testing, and then psychology. Those are the five things.

Everyone's unique metabolism works differently. Click To Tweet

This is something you can apply at home. This is a snapshot if you’ve ever wondered what a consultation looks like for the Hollywood people who are like, “I need to be this way, wear this outfit on this day.” This is what it looks like at least from our perspective when we’re working with someone. The first thing we want to do is goal setting. In my opinion, goal setting is not what you think. If you do a goal-setting session with me, we are going to spend about 30 minutes to figure out what you are not going to focus on. That’s what we’re doing with goal setting because results are all about specificity. Most people you see them all the time, they go to the gym, get on the treadmill or the elliptical. They do their same routine and they’re in decent shape, but nothing changes month after month, year after year for some people. Why?

It’s not that they don’t have the work ethic. It’s not that they’re not investing time, energy or effort. It’s that at this point, their body is no longer viewing their efforts as enough new input to force change. If they simply redirected those efforts into something more specific and guided, then all of a sudden they would start to see results again. I know what most people want. There are always outliers. Most people want to lean up, tone up, lose a few pounds, have more energy, get stronger, be faster, and perform better. That’s what we all want. When I get on the phone, I’ll have a hotshot executive who’s a type-A personality and he’s into the game of competition and he’s used to winning. He says, “Angelo, I know who you are. I know who you trained. Here’s what I want. I want to run a sub-six-minute mile. I want less than 10% body fat. I want it to bench 300 pounds. Can you get me there?”

“You got it. I’ll get you there. That’s what I do. Here’s what you have to decide. Which of those three goals do you want to accomplish first? If I try and get you to do all three, we’re not going to accomplish any of that.” Even fitness enthusiasts sometimes need to hear that. It’s the greater level you are. The farther along you are in your progression and fitness or whatever your goal is in weight loss, the more of a requirement there is to be specific. Goal setting is all about figuring out, what are we going to focus our efforts on? It doesn’t mean we’re going to ignore the other things. It means we’re going to check these off the box first and then move on to the next. How do we do that? That’s the second piece, which is the lifestyle.

I get asked this all the time, “How come, Angelo, your coaches are asking me instead of my age, height, weight, they’re asking me if I’m married. If I have kids, how much I travel?” It’s like, “What does that matter?” To your point, Rodney, that’s huge. Where you are, your mindset, your headspace and your actual circumstance, all of those are contributing factors. You made a good point about strategic versus metabolic. That’s how many people have a hard time losing weight because of their routine versus it’s being someone who has a slow metabolism. Trust me, I’ve seen both. If you had to guess because I can only give you data based on my company. If you had to guess what the population is, behavioral, what percentage is metabolic? What do you think, 50/50?

It’s 60/40. There’s a deficit in understanding what foods to eat to boost your metabolism. If that was more prevalent for a lot of people, they would make those choices. There’s a lack of education out there in the fitness world. They’re overshadowed by the diets. A diet takes the science out of it. “Do what I asked you to do and then you’ll lose weight,” instead of educating them on what foods to eat. There are some foods that are healthy for you that may be a part of the diet plan that doesn’t agree with your body because like you said, you haven’t had this analysis that you’re talking about and it bloats you. It helps you retain water. Your body doesn’t break it down as efficiently as other foods. You’re thinking the diet doesn’t work. The diet works. It’s the foods and the diet your body doesn’t agree with it.

I was on a show with I can’t remember her name and this is what she does as well. She helps you understand not only foods that are good for your metabolism, but foods that are more beneficial to others than others for your body. There are some foods that your body doesn’t agree with and most of these are healthy foods. She’s eliminating the fact that it’s not even a thought, you have to eat bad foods. It’s all healthy foods that your body could be in disagreement with. Knowing that broccoli, for example, is healthy food in general, but for some people, broccoli is going to cause a lot of gas. It’s going to cause a lot of bloating and it’s not good food for you to eat. It’s healthy, but don’t put it on your salad because if you’re going to look at your stomach after you eat, that salad, you’re going to think, “My belly is poked out.” It’s because you ate that broccoli and it’s the way that your body is relating to the broccoli.

I love that you always break it down to being real. That’s what I’m all about. At the end of the day, that’s practical, “You have some broccoli. Cook it first.” You’ll notice a little difference in how you can digest it. Big picture, that’s fair 60/40. Here’s what our experts have learned that everyone falls into both categories at different times. If you haven’t hit a plateau, you haven’t progressed far enough. You will hit a plateau and it will be metabolic. Maybe you aren’t at the point where you’ve reached that level of fitness or that level of progress that you need that first plateau, but you will.

It’s scary. To be vulnerable and open with you, that is a fear of mine. It is because all my life I’ve had a high metabolism. I can eat a pizza tomorrow and it wouldn’t bother me. I eat several times a day. I eat six times a day every day. That day is going to come where my metabolism plateaus and I can’t do that anymore. I notice a change in my metabolism. I don’t know what that’s going to look like for me. I’ve seen people that were fit and healthy through their 20s and even in their 30s and 40s, but then somewhere, you see them one minute, they’re slim and fit. The next minute it’s like, “What happened? Are you depressed? Are you okay?” Something changed. I don’t know if that’s the plateau. If you don’t recognize that if you’re not on top of it, you can gain 10, 15 pounds seemingly overnight. It’s like, “How do you get that off if your metabolism isn’t burning at that rate anymore? You’ve got to work extra hard but you’re older.” That sounds like a whole lot of extra effort and you’re not motivated to do it at that point because you’re older so you feel stuck. That’s why I removed the behavior side out of it because that’s not behavior. That’s somebody’s change. You’re like, “There’s nothing I can do. My metabolism is shut.” A lot of people go through that.

 

I get asked this all the time. They say, “Does age affect my metabolism?” Do you know what I do? I lied through my teeth and say no. Here’s why, because it doesn’t matter. It’s the one thing you can’t control. If it’s going to impact, what are you going to do? You don’t have to worry about a thing, Rodney. Why? Are you going to stop fighting? Are you going to stop making health a priority? Are you going to stop working for the life you want to live in? Absolutely not. There are no worries because you have the most valuable ingredient. You have the motivation, drive, and passion. If at any point along the way you also need a little optimization and the strategy, how to make sure that you are directing that drive, that passion, that desire to stay on top of your game, we can help you with that. That’s the easy part. You already have the major pieces in place. I’m glad that you said that, Rodney, because there are some people and gurus out there who stand up, they’ve never been overweight a day in their life. They don’t know what it’s like. I don’t know what it’s like to be in your circumstance. I walked through a cane for ten years though. You and I had mirroring stories. Yours was more dramatic.

I’m waiting to hear that story.

There are people out there that they don’t know what it’s like to have a slow metabolism. They assume that what they are doing is the solution for people who do have a slow metabolism and it’s not. That doesn’t mean anything they’re doing is wrong, but you have a faster metabolism. Let me tell you, I’ve got people that deal with that also. I have a gal and she was going on one of those reality survival TV shows. She hired me to slow her metabolism because she was afraid she’d eat every two hours. Her metabolic rate, if she went more than three hours without eating, she’d get a headache. She hired me to slow her metabolism. I had another guy came in and sat with me in my office and introduced me to his son because I’ve had the privilege of working with a number of higher-profile quarterbacks. He said, “My son, he’s got talent. He’s going to go to the next level. He’s already being discounted for the D-I level of college. We need to put a few pounds on him.” I’m looking across the table and here’s the 6’3″, 158-pound kid.

He was 15, 16. He’s got an arm like a cannon. I said, “Your metabolism being as fast as it is, is not going to work in your favor. This is going to be hard.” You’ve heard people complain about losing weight. What we’re going to do is going to be just as hard. I said, “Do you like food?” The young boy said, “Yeah.” He laughs. I said, “Not anymore, you don’t. You’re going to hate food. You’re going to have a stomachache for three months because all the food I’m going to be asking you to eat.” He was like, “Is that good for him? Is that good for your stomach?” I’m like, “No, it’s not.” Here’s what I’m doing. I’m a math guy. At the end of the day, I’ve weighed your son’s digestive health against his spinal health when a 240-pound defensive sits on his head. We’re going to go with a mild stomachache. Here’s what you’re going to be eating. We put 35 pounds on that kid in a season.” That’s a lot. That’s not a recommendation, don’t do that. That was the case, and he’s growing at that age. We made sure it was a good weight. That didn’t happen because that took a little nudge and the right nutrition. There’s a strategy for everything, but I love that you shared that, Rodney.

I have another question for you from the topic because I was in a conversation with someone. We were talking about vegan diets and I was talking to a fitness guy. I’m a fitness guy and I’ve been doing the vegan thing for a little while, not 100%. I have fallen off. I will say I’ve broken down, but I’m trying. I say 90% of the foods I eat are all vegan foods. We were talking about going to the next level or looking at other professional athletes that are bodybuilders or heavy lifters, and being on a vegan diet, how it’s seemingly impossible to be one of those guys and solely do vegan, or it has to be miserable because you’re eating all the time. Am I getting enough protein? All the protein you need from eating plants or plant-based foods 100% of the time. What are your thoughts about that as a nutritional expert?

First of all, you can do it. Second of all, you are signing up for an uphill battle. If those more aggressive goals are, “I want to be a garage bodybuilder.” If you want to be in the physique sports and more of a professional way. I have friends, I have guys that do it, but it is the exception and there’s a reason for that. It’s the exact reason that you stated. It’s going to limit your options because your body at the end of the day will still need a certain amount of protein to fuel and recover from this damage to the trauma you put your body through when you’re lifting and training at that intensity. We haven’t grown any new protein sources.

On one hand, you can count if you’re the type of person that’s all right with that. They talk a lot about protein efficiency and the nice thing is there are some great vegan products out there, but talking more to the masses, people thinking about, “Is vegan healthy?” Vegan can be healthy. French fries and beer vegan. It’s all implementation but people will ask me, “Why and how come you haven’t recommended it for me?” My answer is, “You haven’t asked for it.” I’m interested in what is the most direct line to see somebody improve. If you hire me as your coach, I’d tell you, I’m going to ask you to do some tough stuff but I’m not going to ask you to do it without results.

Going to that next level doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to have a better result, but it does mean that’s an additional path. That falls right in line with the 4th out of the 5th bullets. That’s baseline testing. I get asked, “Should I go more plant-based? Should I go more low carbs? Should I control calories? What’s the best approach?” We can find out through a process called baseline testing. Rodney, if I was working with you and you say, “Here’s my goal. I want to put on 5 pounds of muscle. I’m good, but I want to strip down and be 8 pounds lighter. I want to hit my first this or that.” Instead of guessing, I’m not going to slide a piece of paper across the room or email you a meal plan because that’s a guess. Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to put you on a meal plan based on male, your average age, your body types, basic demos scenario.

Goal setting is all about figuring out what we are going to focus our efforts on now. Click To Tweet

I’m going to put you on a meal plan that’s boring, not special that I’ve had thousands of other guys like you do before because I have it rehearsed or I have studied. It’s a tool in my toolkit that fits me like a glove. The reason I’m going to have you do that meal plan is that I’m baseline testing to see what your metabolism is at and here’s, what’s going to happen. I’m going to get raw, unfiltered truth from your data because I’m going to put you on this boring meal plan. That’s going to be breakfast, lunch, dinner, a couple of snacks where I know what you’re eating. I know how many calories, what the macronutrient breakdowns of every meal are, the glycemic load and calories of every meal, the timing of every meal. I have had thousands of guys your age and activity level do the same meal plan. I can tell you based off of X thousand people on average, I see 0.08 of a pound lost in 72 hours with thousands of people doing it. That’s what I do.

Can I challenge that a little bit? 

Yeah, please.

My heartburn with that statement is the fact that everyone’s body is different. We started the show stating that everyone’s metabolism is different. You stated it midway. You said, “Everybody is going to reach a plateau. Everyone is going to get to this place where their metabolism breaks down.” My heartburn is, how can you experience the same results?

That’s the point. It should be heartburn over that because the body’s going to respond differently. What I’m going to get is raw unfiltered data. Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to lose 2 pounds or you’re going to gain 2 pounds or you’re going to stay the same weight. I can no more control how you respond to that baseline meal plan and I can’t control the color of your eyes. Now that I have that data, I’m going to build you a custom meal plan. That’s why it’s only 72 hours of baseline testing. What people do is they try and say, “I can do some blood work to tell me.” That’s cool. I’m into that. We’re still a few years away from being able to take a blood test and be able to say, “You need to eat this to lose weight.”

What we can do is we can say, “Here are your inflammation markers. Here are the things that you may be allergic to.” Translating that into macronutrients and calories, it’s still a little bit of a stretch. While I’m into it, and I’m passionate about where it’s going in the next few years with that, what gives me the most data is a retrospective review and using technology to expedite that process. “Here’s what Rodney ate. He ate 2,800 calories keep spread it out over five meals. He had these many grams of protein, carbs, and fats and this was his result.” I have a starting point to adjust your diet and say, “We’ve got too many carbs for you. You need to go more plant-based. We need more protein and easy sources. We need to do this, that or the other.” We’re not going to throw it all out and make sweeping changes. We’re going to turn one knob because we’re going to reevaluate every 2 to 3 days. That’s it.

One knob noticing, “How was your energy? When you logged your meal, I’m going to get a timestamp.” We got an app. We have a whole CRM that we use. That’s not what’s doing this. The coach, the program, and the strategy are doing it. What we’re using as a tool to expedite. I get people that call me up all the time and they say, “Angelo, I know what I’ve got to do. I’ve got food prep. I’ve got to get regular at the gym. I’ve got to quit eating junk.” I say, “Johnny, I know you know my job is to help you execute on those things faster, speed. If you spend all day doing those things that you know you need to do, it’s not sustainable.” If you get good at those things, people say to me all the time, “Getting in shape is discipline.” I say, “It takes discipline. It’s a skill.” You don’t say, “I have the drive. I have a passion. I want to be a doctor.” You don’t wake up tomorrow morning and be a doctor.

You have to learn those skills. It’s a fact because I’ve had close to 80 coaches that I’ve worked with over my career and there are good coaches and there are fewer good coaches. Why? Some are skilled and some are less skilled. That is an industry-wide issue, which is why what we’ve done with metabolic profiling is to bring it all under one roof and one strategy of raw untainted data. That way, while personal expression, that’s up to a coach for how they want to feel they can motivate you the best. As far as what recommendation someone should get for their diet and their training, that needs to be data-driven. It can’t be someone else’s data. It has to be your data. That’s what makes it work.

 

What does this look like in terms of this exercise that you take people through? It sounds like there are multiple weigh-ins. I don’t want to guess. Give me an idea of working with you and what that would look like.

That dovetails perfectly into the fifth, the last one on bullet points and that’s the psychology. The first thing that happens is we want to get to know you. You’re not a number. We don’t work with millions of people at once. I’m going to say this is an intimate relationship. We have a smaller, more exclusive team of experts that are going to walk hand in hand with those they’re working with day in and day out. You’re going to be weighing in and there are extenuating circumstances. There are some clients we don’t want them focusing on that and we’ll tell you, but generally speaking, we’re going to weigh in first thing in the morning. You’re going to have your meal plan. It’s not going to be vague. It’s not going to be principled. It’s going to be, “We’ve talked about it, discussed it and we’ve landed on what we know is going to work for you. Here’s what we’re going to do and we want to see this result by this day. Otherwise, we’re going to adjust our strategy and we’re going to nudge you along the way.”

You’re going to give us feedback along the way. It’s going to be specific. How we engage in those interactions is going to be based on how you respond best. We find people psychologically, some people need that support, accountability, and encouragement. Other people need to know why. That’s how I am. I like the I’m the instructor type. When I’m working with someone who teaches me and says, “I want you to do this,” and then explain, “Here’s why.” There’s the other type, which is the type-A personality, the personality that responds best to a challenge. That’s where they’re going to perform their best. It doesn’t matter which category you fall under. Everyone falls under all three categories at different times, but you might have a leaning.

I’m going to call you up, Rodney, and I’m going to tell you, “I saw you checked off that meal I assigned to you. You had that for lunch now, as we talked about, and I am proud of you because I knew you could do it. You were willing to take the practical steps to save you times you could get to that meal and then now you did it. I want you to know that I noticed.” That’s given that support and accountability. My next client, “Johnny, you got that meal we talked about, isn’t that great? Remember we talked about how that particular macronutrient combo was going to control your blood sugar so you didn’t have those cravings we were running into and see how, when you paired this protein with that carbohydrate, you felt good?” That client wants to know why.

There’s the third client. I’m going to call them up and I’m going to say, “Billy, here’s what I ate for lunch. Did you do any better?” Did it give them a little challenge? That’s what coaching is all about. Those knowing who you’re talking to, knowing the person, knowing how to work best with them. The process that we’re going to take you through is, if someone were to come on board with us, the first thing is they’re going to talk with a dietician who’s going to take their health history. They’re going to be given their baseline meal plan that’s for testing purposes so that way we can develop a custom meal plan for them. They’ll be introduced to a coach who’s going to reach out and is going to say, “I am here every step of the way. You are not in this alone. I’m going to support you. You’re going to fall down and I’m going to be here to pick you up.

Sometimes I’m going to remind you why we did this is because of the fire and the motivation you have to complete your journey. It’s going to be a struggle three months from now. Maybe you’re halfway there, but it’s not going to be new. It’s not going to be as exciting, but I want you to keep this fire that you have.” That’s what that coach is going to be there to do for you. The most important piece is they’re going to make sure you’re seeing the progress because they’re going to have the tough conversations that say, “I know this is the routine and the strategy that you like and you’ve been doing and you’re comfortable with, but your data is suggesting that if we continue to do this, you’re going to plateau. You’re not going to see a lot of change beyond where we’re at. If you’re happy with where you’re at, then this is the routine for you. If not, I’d like to share with you what some of our other clients are doing that has made the difference.” That’s what our coach is going to be there to do.

I love it, Rodney. I’m passionate about this. I love working with every single client and I’ve had the privilege of being there with clients that have set world records, athletes. I’ve been with clients, who’ve dropped tremendous amounts of weights, done amazing things, but the ones that are most memorable are shedding the tears with the people who’ve gotten their health and life back, playing with the grandkids. They feel like life’s worth living again because maybe they have less pain or maybe they’re more mobile. One of the most touching experiences I ever had was a father had me work with his son. He was uncoordinated. He had trouble with his alignment and posture and his son was only 13, 14 years old. The first time he saw his son go for a jog, he was in tears. He said, “I didn’t even think that could happen. That’s how in bad shape my son was.” Things like that they stick with you and that’s what makes it all worth it. We have a blast doing it.

How can people connect with you if they want to learn more about this?

There is no right. There is no wrong. There is only purposeful. Click To Tweet

Thanks to you and your people, Rodney. If you go to MetPro.co/gamechanger, I’ll know it’s your audience. We can do some little extra special. They can have a free consultation or evaluation. If you’re worried, “I don’t know if it’s for me. I want to get some general information or some pointers,” call us up. I know a lot of people are at home dealing with stuff that’s going on in the world. Talk with one of our experts. Talk to someone who will get to know you and give you practical advice based on the real-world lessons that we’ve learned. Please take advantage of that. Rodney, thank you for letting us do that.

You’re welcome. Thank you for doing it. A couple more questions here about this and maybe I missed it at the beginning when you’re setting goals and objectives for those are individualized, I’m assuming. Are these plans built based on the objectives that the client sets right in the beginning? It could be weight loss, muscle gain, and endurance. Are the meal plans based on a specific outcome?

It has to be specific in order to work and it has to be honest. The illustration is I had a gal who said, “I want to be able to improve my marathon time. I want to lose 10 pounds.” These are two things that are important to me. I said, “We’re going to do both, but you have to understand and hear.” I’m being honest about, “Here’s everything that I’ve learned. I am sharing with you the truth, despite what you may have heard elsewhere with somebody else may have told you the truth. The meal plan and the training plan that’s going to get 10 pounds off of you the quickest, it’s not going to be the same meal plan and training plan. That’s going to hit you PRs in your marathon time. There is no right and wrong. There’s only purposeful. Let’s make a purposeful decision. Here’s my promise to you. We’re going to hit both of those goals. Here’s what you have to tell me. Which one do you want to hit first?”

My next question is, do you take into consideration variables, such as environment, background or makeup, gender, body composition, all of those things play a role in fitness?

That’s the crux of what I teach about on an industry level is how specificity ties in. You can’t assume that what works for one person is going to work for another. Here’s the interesting part because we’re constantly learning. The data teaches us. We have learned that the things that you might think are the most relevant aren’t. Things that you thought were maybe a sidebar are super relevant. It’s something that people are shocked to hear. The truth is your nutritional history is a stronger indicator of how fast or slow you will lose weight. I’m not saying gender doesn’t make a difference. It does. I’ve had a husband and wife and she’s got this blazing metabolism. She’s slapping him and he’s this puffy face like, “I’m trying to eat good, but what you’re putting in front of me.” They’re going back and forth. It is not always a one size fits all. The unfairness that is the metabolism is an equal opportunity let me tell you.

Angelo, thank you for coming on the show and sharing this amazing program with us. You have knowledge about the subject of metabolism. We need more of this. It would be nice if you would publish something, in my opinion. It’s a personal request about how the metabolism works and things that you can do to speed it up or slow it down. This has been amazing. As we do in all shows, we’d like to ask you, what is the Game Changer Mentality message you would like to leave with us?

Keep learning, never stop learning. That’s the game-changer to me. If you are always in the mindset of, “There is more that I don’t know,” you will never stop learning.

Thanks for coming on the show. I certainly appreciate it. 

The honor was mine, Rodney.

—

There you have it people, another successful episode. This is no different than the other show I did about understanding what foods to eat for your body like meat. It’s one thing to eat healthily. It’s another to be specific about the healthy foods that you eat because you know how they affect your body. Your metabolism is no different. Understanding how that works and how you can regulate it. We have Angelo with his program that could help you reach those goals a lot quicker. You’ll be in the company of experts to help you and support you along the way. I encourage you to check it out and see if it’s the right fit for you. It doesn’t hurt you to go to the website. Find out how this may help you. Your health is pivotal. It is the cornerstone of any and everything that you do. I’ve heard people say, “Healthy wife, healthy life.” I believe a healthy body, a healthy and a happy life. Until next time, peace and love.

Important Links:

• MetPro
• TEDxChicago – Angelo Poli
• http://MetPro.co/gamechanger
• http://RodneyFlowers.com/get-up-book/
• http://RodneyFlowers.com/essential-assertions-book/
• https://RodneyFlowers.us9.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=01f76a038256f77a6fbc93590&id=307d726734
• Is Life Knocking You Down? Read Rodney’s inspiring story – Get Up! I Can’t. I Will. I Did… Here’s How! https://rodneyflowers.com/get-up-book/
• Recognize Your Positive Potential – Essential Assertions by Rodney Flowers https://rodneyflowers.com/essential-assertions-book/
• Get Access to Rodney’s Daily Inspiration in your Inbox Today https://rodneyflowers.us9.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=01f76a038256f77a6fbc93590&id=307d726734

About Angelo Poli

Angelo Poli is an internationally recognized expert in fitness and nutrition. He’s the founder of MetPro, an evaluation-based health coaching program specializing in transformations. Using a process called “Metabolic Profiling,” MetPro analyzes your metabolism and provides an individualized approach to obtaining your health goals. Angelo has spent much of his career as a motivational speaker, and was featured at TEDxChico, where he discussed his own achievement in overcoming obstacles. After recovering from a crippling injury himself, Angelo brought to light a whole new way of thinking about health, fitness, and weight loss. In his 20 years of educating the masses and challenging generalized health guidance, Angelo has become one of the most celebrated and desired body transformation experts in the world. His high-profile client list ranges in scope from Olympic athletes, NFL MVPs, physique models, and business leaders. Those who have been fortunate enough to gain coaching from Angelo have consistently achieved exceptional results regardless of their demanding schedules, significant injuries, and crippled metabolisms. Angelo is a writer and featured speaker at conferences, as well as a consultant for corporations, universities, and hospitals around the country. He has been featured in major media outlets such as Men’s Health, Sports Illustrated, and The Wall Street Journal for his specialty in coaching athletes and weight loss sciences.

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