J.L.D.: Kaboom, shake the room fire nation. J.L.D. here with an audio master class that is truly near and dear to my heart and if you’ve been following me for any length of time, you know that it’s true. It’s your health, it’s your wellness, it is self-care. So, I am bringing Angelo Poli to talk about unlocking your metabolism and transforming into the best version of yourself. Now who is Angelo? He’s an internationally recognized expert in fitness and nutrition, he’s the founder of MetPro, the world’s first algorithm based transformation engine.

MetPro specializes in developing customized nutrition and training programs that are specific to an individual’s metabolism goals and lifestyle needs. Their cliental range from Olympic athletes, NFL MVPs, to physique models, business leaders, and your very own J.L.D. That’s right, I utilize MetPro and love it. Angelo has been featured in Men’s Health, Sports Illustrated, and The Wall Street Journal and he’s a wellness consultant for universities and hospitals around the country. So, fire nation let’s unlock your metabolism and transform into the best version of yourself, as soon as we get back from thankin’ our sponsor.

So, Angelo say what’s up to fire nation and share something interesting about yourself that most people don’t know.

Angelo: Hey, fire nation. Okay, something most people don’t know about me, I actually have been entrepreneurial since I was a little kid. And my first job was actually selling shoes, I learned – oh man I was probably 16 or 17, when I learned really early on that you have to approach different people in different ways because everybody has different values and things that they’re passionate about. But most people don’t know that I got my start as a shoe salesman.

J.L.D.: Now I’m not trying to date you, but I have seen some video. I mean you were actually selling shoes, this is pre-internet stuff right?

Angelo: This is pre-internet stuff. Easy, easy there, but yeah.

J.L.D.: No, that’s cool and I will say this, is that has become a huge marker right now. I mean somebody that I’m good friends with, Gary Vaynerchuk, always talks about flippin’ shoes and doing this and doing that. But, back in the day fire nation, before the internet, we actually had to approach people and read their vibe that’s where we can develop some really cool skills. And I think that’s really served Angelo well over the years. And as I told you, in the intro fire nation, this is a special master class for me for a number of reasons.

Number one, after a few years running my business, it was obvious to me that you can have all the financial success in the world but if you don’t have your health, if you don’t have your wellness, if you’re not energized and feeling good it means so little. So, I wanted to combine that so I’ve been on a health journey for now over three years and I’ve done so much for my health, so much for my wellness, and I’ve been utilizing MetPro’s amazing services now for well over a month, Natalie is my personal MetPro concierge and she is just amazing and we are connecting literally every single day via text. But we talk on the phone once a week.

They just have an amazing service that I’ve been benefiting from and again, it’s not even just nutrition stuff. Like Angelo and I are gonna get on a call little bit later next week to talk about some posture issues that I’m having, that’s a really big deal if you don’t focus on it fire nation. But if you catch these things early, you can crush it, nip it in the bud, and have a great pain-free, healthy life.

So, again our audio master class today is Unlocking Your Metabolism and Transforming into the Best Version of Yourself and of course Angelo is a great person to talk to about this. So, first and foremost Angelo, who the heck are you? And again, we’re not looking for this long-winded version because we’re looking to really get into the meat of the content. But give us a real quick synopsis about you.

Angelo: I have been in the fitness/training/coaching scene for quite some time. So, when I was a kid I always wanted to be a trainer so that’s the path I went down, only I wasn’t a very good one. That’s because I just didn’t have the life experience yet. But, early into my career I, unfortunately, suffered a number of pretty debilitating injuries, forced me to actually walk with a cane for almost a decade. So, at least in my local community I was known as the coach/the trainer that walked with a cane. And that’s not a great look in your 20s –

J.L.D.: No.

[Crosstalk]

Angelo: – but I was determined. And what it did, is force me to really focus on the things that matter most, the strategy. And that ended up drawing a straight line to nutrition and metabolism. Because everybody comes to me and has fitness goals, but for, I’m gonna say, 85 percent of the phone calls that I’ll get, weight-loss or fat-loss is the first step in that progression of goals to fitness, to health. And it’s not that that’s the most important thing, it’s it’s the most elusive thing for so many people. And so, that ended up being my focus after years of working with the physique community, body builders, physique/fitness/bikini models, the whole nine yards.

Then transitioning into working with pro-athletes and the performance community, and then now most of our attention – we still do all of that – is in helping the executive athletes. Right, professionals who are – they have careers, they have family, they have responsibility, and now what they’re looking for is a R.O.I. on the time that they can invest. Because you can go to 100 different experts out there – now, I’ll tell you something you probably aren’t gonna hear every day, there’s 100 different fitness gurus out there, and I have seen every one of their programs – work.

That’s the issue, it’s that they don’t all work for everyone every time, so it’s – since there’s so many good strategies out there, how do you really cut through the noise and identify what strategy nutritionally, what strategy for your fitness and exercise is right for you today? And even more importantly, how do we fit it into your lifestyle? Because your lifestyle’s different from the next person and so that’s how my company MetPro, which by the way is short for Metabolic Profiling, was born. And so here we are a few years later, working with CEOs, and executives, and anyone that just wants to know what is the best possible way to optimize their strategy. And here we are.

J.L.D.: And fire nation as I mentioned, J.L.D./yours truly/myself, I am one of those people that MetPro’s working with and I love it. And again, I know this posture thing’s been something that I’ve been dealing with for a while now, I have this acupuncture mat and all these things. But, it starts with the core, like, you’ve got to fix it at the core, these are just one of the many, many things when you can identify through having actual concierge, one on one, independent work with somebody that really knows what they’re talking about, can make all the difference in the world.

And now Angelo, I personally like many of my listeners, I’m a step by step guy, I love starting at step one and moving forward in a progressive order. So where does someone even begin when they have actually made that decision in their mind, that they want to transform. Where do we start?

Angelo: That’s a great question. So, I’m gonna give you five broad categories and the truth be told we could take anyone of these five and talk about it for an hour, but hitting the high level on each one. Our coaches are going to do very in-tune to your specifics, that’s what enable us to really get the results. And so unlike, you know you hear out there these very highly general questions and then a template strategy. No, how you respond to specific questions and how your body responds is going to incredibly impact how your particular strategy is crafted.

We start with body type. Now again, that’s another trendy term, body types ectomorph, mesomorph, endomorph, there’s more to it than that. Instead of thinking of body types as you’re either this or you’re that, think of it as a spectrum where you’re going to have some genetic traits from all body types, however you’re going to have certain traits that make you more dominate in one versus the other. Now in collecting data, watching thousands and thousands of people diet, across the board different strategies with diet, and train, across the board thousands of strategies in training, we’re able to actually parse and compare and say, “Okay, here are some correlations.” There’s no one diet or one exercise –

J.L.D.: Right.

[Crosstalk]

Angelo: – that always works best. We are able to say if this is your goal, and this is your body type or genetic predisposition, than we can create a very justifiable and practical priority hierarchy, where we can say, “If you’re not spending the majority of your time in these practices and these strategies, you’re probably not optimal.” And that’s what we seek to do by starting with learning your goal and your body type.

The second thing, and this is really – this’ll resonate with some people that have struggled in the past, we have to identify if you are what we call, I’m telling all my secrets here, a behavioral or a metabolic client. Now, behavioral isn’t a bad term, by the way 85 percent of people fall into this category and I do too. So, it’s not a dirty word, but it means is there’s two types of people.

Say you want to lose weight, that’s just one example, so you want to lose weight some people can lose weight if they find the right strategy that they can truly implement and adopt into their lifestyle. A lot of people struggle to do that, it’s like, “Oh, I got this program it works great, but sticking on it is nearly impossible.” That’s behavioral, that’s strategic, that’s where having a coach help you implement the most time saving strategies and really integrate into your lifestyle will make all the difference in the world. Again, that’s 85 percent of the people I work with.

Now, the other percentage are people we deem metabolic and we don’t just guess we actually test to find out where somebody lands. Metabolic is if your one of those people it’s like, “Hey Angelo, I’ve been eating good, I’ve been watching what I eat, I exercise regular, I am doing everything all the gurus say to do within reason and my weight or my body isn’t budging.” You’re metabolic, just – if you’re already reducing calories or watching what you eat, continuing to simply do more of that is probably not going to move the dial very much. In fact, that’s kind of – what is it the – that’s what insanity means, doing the same thing and expecting a different result.

So, the way that we’re going to coach, train, diet, program for someone who is behavioral versus actually has a broken metabolic rate are two completely different things. So, that’s the second thing we have to identify. And then that dovetails into your past and current dieting strategy and how it affects your metabolism. And so there’s good news here and there’s bad news.

So, the bad news is, yes your previous diet attempts will impact how your body is likely to respond on your next diet attempt. And if ever you’ve had the experience of, “Oh, I did a diet and I lost 20 pounds it was really easy and now I’ve done the same program, the same diet, same strategy, yet I’m not getting the same result.” If you’ve ever experienced that, that’s a direct correlation to how your body and your metabolism over time will acclimate to what you do to it, to the environment that it’s in.

Now the good news is that, it’s not a death sentence, you can actually speed up your metabolism. None of this take this magic pill or gimmicks like that, it’s not that there aren’t good supplements out there on the market, but it’s going to take time, work, and strategy. But you can reboot where your metabolism is at, with the right strategy.

So, what – the way that we identify where your metabolic profile is at is we’ll use a base-line meal plan. So, a lot of people say, “I can’t follow a manuscript diet.” That’s true a lot of people can’t, but I bet you could for just a few days, other words if I gave you a very specific set of breakfast, lunch, just a couple snacks, things that you like, I bet you could follow it for just a few days, so that way I could see how your body responds to it, compared to literally thousands of others of similar age, body type, et cetera, et cetera.

Based on the results that I’m gonna get from that, now I can actually make a justifiable recommendation or justifiably modify your meal plan strategy based on how your actually – your actual results in real time. So, we use a process called base-line testing and then we continue to base-line test in smaller ways to make sure that we’re heading done the right path. So just recapping the first three: We look at your body type, we identify whether you are a metabolic or behavioral type, we look at your past and current diet history to give us an inkling of where you may be metabolically today, and then we test that hypothesis using a base-line meal plan to see how you actually respond.

And then the next thing we look at is actually gonna be psychology. Now this isn’t – I don’t, you know, own the market on this, it’s a well-known fact that when you’re working with athletes, you almost always are training in some sort of group forum. There’s a competitive nature that drives people to reach beyond where they typically would, that’s just one example. So, I work with everything from – the privilege of working with everything from some of the highest paid athletes in the world all the way down to grandma and grandpa who just want to feel better and have energy to play with the grandkids.

And so the psychology involved in that can’t be a one size fits all. If you have somebody who really gets to know you and understands your values and where you are in life, we can really align that psychological draw and lure to the practical, to the fitness, to the nutrition, to the lifestyle. And so, that’s really what encompasses MetPro, we work with people to try to figure out the basics of who they are, where their body is at, so we can meet them with really the perfect strategy for them and evolve from there. So, that’s the basics of how we start. I threw a lot at you, sorry.

J.L.D.: I love it all and fire nation, this is how I operate, I love these types of steps. I mean you start your specifics, what is your goal? What is your body type? Then you figure it out, are you behavioral or are metabolic? Like what are the two – which of the two are you? And then you’re gonna go through the current and past diet history. So, you can get that base line meal to actually test. And of course there’s so much psychology involved with this fire nation, that’s the thing that I’ve realized.

There’s been a couple times that I’ve been like, “You know what? I think today I may just like skip this meal, I don’t feel supper hungry right now.” Or I may not do this or do that and then Natalie is like texting me and she’s like, you will eat right now or will do this. And I’m like you know what I am, there’s my accountability, my psychology slipped for a second, but I’m gonna make it happen.

So, I love it, it just works fire nation and that’s the thing, look in the mirror, seriously, and I love to ask myself this question, “How’s that working out for you?” And the answer to your question of whatever’s reflecting in the mirror how’s that working out for you, maybe you look exactly how you want to look and you feel exactly how you want to feel, guess what, the answer is that’s working great for you.

But if you’re one of the many people, like myself, who look in the mirror and like, “You know what, I look okay, I feel okay, but I know it could be a lot better.” Then how’s that past working out for you? It’s time to make a shift, it’s time to invest in yourself, not just financially this is a time thing and you have to invest the time and you have to invest the energy to make this work. Like Angelo said, lot of great supplements out there, I take a lot of great supplements, but there’s no magic pill. It comes down to work.

So, we’re gonna talk about a few other amazing things right now Angelo, but right before we do fire nation needs to know something from you. We’re gonna get into a little more – actually probably a lot more detail at the end of this entire interview, which is still a ways away, about how fire nation can learn more about MetPro and how we can work with you on a higher level. But just right now give us a real quick, what if we wanted to pause the episode right now and just go figure out exactly how we can maybe take the first step with MetPro, what would we do?

Angelo: The internet’s a great place, metpro.co and then do /fire because it will have some – we’ll have something special for your listeners. So, metpro.co/fire will have – we’ll have something special for you guys and you guys can learn more about it. And you can actually get on the phone with someone. –

J.L.D.: Ooh, love that.

[Crosstalk]

Angelo: – and that – and it’s worth just taking a second to explain. When you get on the phone with one of our experts, we don’t have 500 people in a call center, these are actual genuine experts, talk with them, share a little bit about yourself. I joke with people I say, “If you don’t cringe a little bit when you answer some of the questions, you probably didn’t open up enough.” But these are people who genuinely care about you and have experience really working closely with people. Get – let them get to know you and get to know them. So, metpro.co/fire.

J.L.D.: And it’s so true fire nation, I mean literally I’ve become friends with Natalie. Like her and my girlfriend, Kate, they go back and forth different meal plan ideas and stuff, I follow her on Instagram now, so I’m seeing when she’s going on a run and stuff, I’m like, “Ooh, I need to go on a run too,” like I need to make it happen. Like there’s just no excuse and like that kind of stuff is what it takes fire nation. So, again we’ll go into a little more detail about everything at the end, but just for those people who are just like, “You know what? It’s time, I can press pause because this is a podcast and I can head over to metpro.co/fire.”

So, Angelo there’s a lot of obstacles, there’s a lot of challenges, there’s a lot of pain points for entrepreneurs who are trying to make this transformation. Talk to us about the biggest.

Angelo: This is one of my favorite questions. The biggest obstacle that people will face, that biggest secret to success – time management, time management, time management. I get invited to do these retreats and executive coaching and seminars, the first – everybody raises their hands, “Angelo I’ve heard of MetPro, I know who you are, I know who you coach and you train, what is the best exercise?” Or, “What’s the best thing to eat?” And I tell everyone, “You’re asking the wrong question. Those are all important, but it starts even simpler than that. It’s time management.”

Identifying how much time is needed for each piece of your strategy and having an absolute, rock-solid priority hierarchy. And that is where most people go wrong and it’s not your fault. It isn’t. Here’s the mistake that we make, we all make this, it’s we think about our health, we think about fitness, we think about getting in shape, we think about weight – whatever the goal is, we think about it as a decision. It’s not a decision. Of course everybody goes, “Yeah, okay. Do you wanna get fit? Do you wanna get in shape? Yeah of course I want to, it’s an easy decision.”

It’s not a decision, it’s a skill. It’s a skill that we suck at if we haven’t had formal training. It’s like saying, “I wanna be a professional car mechanic,” you don’t just decide it and then all the sudden you know how the engine works, the transmission works, and how – it doesn’t work that way, you have to study and learn. Without somebody to teach you the ins and outs, our lifestyle is all about multi-tasking, go, go, go, getting as much done as you can.

We have – in America, we have very specific cultures around the work day and how and when we eat. And all of those things will create obstacles to consistent success if we don’t know how to transverse them. There are absolute ways of winning, but spending three hours a day trying to figure out, “Okay, I gotta get exactly this, I gotta get exactly that, and I gotta go to the gym, and I gotta do this and do that,” you will run out of time.

So, it’s all about learning how to say, “Okay, here are the most – the three most, absolute, relevant things that I need to do to get from point A to point B. Here is the most time-managed, cost-effective, efficient way of getting them done that will work with my schedule.” If you can dial that in, you can transform. And that is whether or not you’re a – you get paid millions of dollars to play in the NFL or whether or not you have a 9-5 job down the corner. We all have 24 hours in a day, we all have finite ability to recover from exercise, and so whatever time we spend, we need to be absolute certainly certain that it is going to directly drive the result that we want.

So, where – diving a little bit to what that means, circles back to why it’s so important to know your genetic profile, your body type, and really honestly have goals laid out. Because a lot of people will do great programing, great nutrition strategy, great exercise, that doesn’t necessarily line up to their goal. Let me give you an example with like some pro-athletes. I’ll have pro-athletes who will hire me to consult with them on their programing and they’ll go through a whole list of, “Okay here, I’m training 14-16 hours a day for my sport and I’m doing this, this, this, this.”

I’m looking at that and I’m not – I mean this is gorgeous, beautiful, fantastic, there’s I nothing wrong here, until I get to the point where I ask, “Now what do you want to accomplish? What are you trying to get better at?” and they give me a highly, specific goal. And I say, “Well, here’s the problem, I’m looking at this 15 hours a week that you’re training and I can only say 2 or 3 of these hours are directly correlative to the goal you are trying to accomplish. Doesn’t mean that any of the other exercises or any of other the activity is wrong or bad, but it’s not harmonizing with your goal.

So, here’s what we’re gonna change, we need to shift how you’re allocating your time until we reach these specific objectives, and then we’re gonna move your programing back towards the center, back towards a balance. That’s where the magic is at.” A common area that people make this mistake, and myself included, is underestimating the impact of strategic nutrition on your body, weight, aesthetics, composition, and performance. And overestimating, and yes, I realize the implications of this, overestimating what exercise will do. Now keep in mind, I am a fitness trainer. Exercise is my business, yet I’m telling you most people underestimate the contribution.

So, you heard the whole concept of abs are made in the kitchen, et cetera, et cetera. That is all correct, but in practical application I tell people you have to be willing to kind of ignore your gut instinct. So I asked someone, “Hey, Billy how many hours a week can you dedicate to getting the body you want, or achieving this health objective, or performance objective?” The answer he gives me will almost invariably be how many hours he can exercise and that’s not what I asked.

What I asked is how many hours can you dedicate to transforming your body. And if he says to me, “Well, I can do five hours a week,” great, that means that we have two or three hours a week for exercise. Because 1-2 hours I have spoken for in other areas that are frankly, more directly correlated to them reaching the goal that they want. “Well what is your goal?”

“Well, really I want this, this, this, but I want to lose 10 pounds first.”

“Beautiful. I’m in.” That means that the number one goal has to be some level of strategy and preparation around food, so there can be some level of consistency. Now, that’s a huge topic, and it can be everything from a blueprint diet to just life hacks and nutrition hacks that hopefully we’ll have a little time to talk about at the end. But we have to allocate the time for that. Then, if we’re gonna go to the gym or we’re gonna spend time on exercise, I need to make sure, since you only have a finite amount of time, that every second is spent in activities that are gonna directly correlate to achieving your objectives. And once we check that off, that objective, then we reevaluate and move you on to another hierarchy of priorities.

So, it’s time management, time management, time management with just a dash of really well set priorities.

J.L.D.: Fire nation, are you asking the right question in the first place? How is your time management? Think about that, I love that phase. What is your priority hierarchy? Do you have that? And I’m telling you, you need to be raising your hand if you’re just like me and you say, “How many hours a week do you have to get more healthy or accomplish your health goals?” And you’re just gonna name the amount of hours that you have to actually quote/unquote exercise, or hit the gym, or work out. That’s not it, it is much more important that you’re allocating the proper time across all of the areas that you need to.

And guess what, you might not be the best person to do that, fire nation. Which is why we need to rely on the pros, on the experts, on the MetPros. And we have so much more we’re going to be talking about with Angelo when we get back from thankin’ our sponsor.

So, Angelo we’re back and I’ve never personally loved the word busy, but the reality is so many people consider themselves super busy all the time. It’s just a reality of the world, so let’s talk right now, you and me and of course fire nation. What are the most critical life hacks that we should be doing if we’re only able to change a few things to get this ball rolling?

Angelo: You actually alluded to this earlier, but it is critical that you’re able to define your strategy. So, this is more from a knowledge base, you have to be able to define – and I may even go one step further, I’m gonna say articulate your strategy. So, if you can’t put into words what you’re doing or what you’re changing with your nutrition to improve your body, then it’s not a well formulated strategy. If you can’t put into words, exactly what’s different about your exercise and your training, then it’s not a well formulated strategy. So, define that first.
The next thing, I think we’ve already covered, and that is optimize your time. If you don’t know how to optimize your time, start with writing out, okay what’s priority number one, priority number two, priority number three. Now if you have a day where everything blows up, well you’re only going to be able to check off the first box, priority number one. If you have a day where things go your way, hey maybe we’ll get to multiple things. But have a solid strategy for optimization.

And the third is just being honest and being able to look back and say, you alluded to this, how is your body responding. Is this working? Don’t be overzealous, if you’re seeing some gradual progress, that’s right. Let me tell you, everybody makes progress at a little bit different pace, but almost everyone asks me the same thing, “It feels so slow, I want to see faster progress.” I had that asked to me by a guy who lost 60 pounds in a month, he said, “It seems like I should be losing faster.” Now, full discloser, he was over 500 pounds when we started. But he even said, “It seems like it should be going a little faster.” So, no matter who you are, yeah, it always feels like it should going a little faster.

But if you’re seeing gradual improvements, that’s a good indication you’re on the right track. But here’s the deal, if you’re not seeing progress it’s unlikely that continuing to do the same thing is going to change that. So, we have to be willing to say, “Okay, I need to adjust something,” whether it’s nutrition, whether it’s training, whether it’s lifestyle, and it’s almost a combination of all three of those things. Here’s the secret, the secret I’d like – I’d love to teach you and your listeners, is the secret of contrast, leverage.

So, if there is something that gives you leverage that is a strategy of choice. So, if we really boil it down, we’re just trying to really simplify this, you have exercise, that’s a lever. You have your diet, we can get a little bit more granular, there are calories, there are carbohydrates, there’s a lot more than that but those are two of the kind of grandfather techniques to manipulate, to change your body, which of those levers is right for you? Well the answer is it’s the one that you have the most room. So, people ask me all the time, “What’s the best way? Do I do a low-carb or a ketogenic, or do I just watch my calories, or do more of a sports macro breakdown? What’s right?”

Well the answer is, “What are you currently doing?” If you’re used to eating very few carbs a day, then doing more of that probably is not gonna create enough contrast. If you’re used to eating very few calories, you’re really conscious of that, you’re counting calories, continuing to do that probably is not gonna create enough contrast for dramatic change. So, we have to figure out how to create, how to build that contrast in.

Every year when I take some of my physique athletes to competition someone will come to me at one of the shows and say, “Mr. Poli, your athletes look great. What do you have them eating?” I give them the same tongue and cheek answer, boiled chicken, broccoli, brown rice, you know. Invariably the question, “Well if I eat that, will I look like them?” Nope, you won’t. And the reason is because it’s not about the food per say, it’s about the contrast, the leverage.

So, that athlete who is standing on stage just shredded at 190 pounds, or for a fitness guy right? It’s because the six/nine months before that, he spent time in the gym conditioning his body to higher and higher carbohydrates, higher and higher calories, greater workload, for with that extra energy coming in, a greater capacity for recovery. And so now he’s used to eating all these calories, and all these carbs, then he goes into what we call the on-season, and now he slashes himself down to 2000/1900 calories of boiled chicken and broccoli. And guess what, the fat just incinerates off of his body because of contrast.

So, it’s the old story that I tell the three neighbors – the tree women, they all get together and they’re having coffee and they’re talking about the different nutrition plans they’re trying, different diets they’re trying, they decide they’re all gonna go on the same diet, but it’s 1500 calories. So, they come back 30 days later, one lost weight, one gained weight, and one stayed the same weight.

Well, with just that knowledge we can determine what those three women were used to prior to starting that particular diet. They all went on 1500 calories, the woman who lost weight was used to eating more than 1500 calories before beginning. The woman who gained weight was used to eating less than 1500 calories before beginning. And the one who stayed about the same weight was used to about 1500 calories before beginning.

So, you see how it’s not the calorie intake – or that’s what I’m saying, it’s not per say the food that you eat that is triggering that adaptive response in your body, it’s the contrast, the leverage. So, it all starts with, know thy self. Know where you’re beginning, you have to put a pin in the map, before you start traveling, so you can figure out where you’ve been and where you’re going, that’s the importance of metabolic profiling.

So, that dovetails into yeah, yeah, yeah that’s all great, but just give me one thing. Right? What if I do one thing tomorrow? So, if you can do one thing tomorrow, here’s what I want you to do, I want you to wake up, and it’s critical that first thing in the morning, I want you to prepare a healthy afternoon snack and bring it with you. But you have to prepare it in the morning, you have to bring it with you, and actually eat it in the afternoon.

Now if you say, “Oh, that’s too much. I can’t do that,” then you’re probably not ready to transform your body. But if you can do that one thing, you just do that one thing, you’re gonna be on track to – it’s a hidden disruptive behavior. It disrupts your entire day, in a good way. And here’s why, if you’re willing to prepare a healthy afternoon – I mean simple, fruit and nuts, basic, don’t over think it, clean, lean, healthy quality food that is portable, don’t forget about portable. If you’re willing to prepare that in the morning, that means that you’re willing to wake up in time to deal with food first thing in the morning.

That means you’re probably gonna eat breakfast, no sense in slicing up an apple and putting some nuts into a bag and not grabbing a little bit for breakfast. So, I know you’re probably gonna be able to get breakfast and because you’ve had breakfast, your blood sugar is I gonna be a lot more stable, appetite is gonna be under control, you’re more likely to order well or eat well at lunch. Also, you know you have a snack coming, which you’ve promised me you’re gonna get. So, you’ll probably start to, over time, improve lunch habits. Then when you have that snack in the afternoon, it’s magic.

Afternoon is critical, see because breakfast and lunch most people go between four and five hours, but often it’s easy, especially for busy professionals, to go six, seven, eight, nine, sometimes, hours between lunch and dinner, it just happens, we’re late at the office, whatever the case might be. So, that afternoon snack is critical and what it does is it’ll curb cravings, it’ll keep your metabolic rate running faster, it’ll stabilize blood sugar, and it’ll help you to stay more in control when it comes to dinner.

So, now what’s happened is with just one single hack, you’ve disrupted, positively, the entire flow of your nutritional day because you’re getting breakfast, you are not killing yourself at lunch, you’re having an afternoon snack that we already know is healthy, and that sets you up for success in the evenings. Because everyone says, “Oh, I have no problem with food during the day, at night time everything goes out the window and that’s where it’s disaster.” I know, I can be the same way. Well guess what, the night time eating is a symptom not a cause, it’s a symptom of not having a cadence that sets you up for success earlier in the day.

So – can you make an afternoon snack for me? That’s all I’m asking, if you just want that one thing. I’m gonna give you something as simple – a single life hack related to your exercise – stop exercising for as long, start exercising more frequently. I know everyone’s gasped, before you send hate mail, okay like, “Well Mr. Poli told me not to exercise as much.” That’s not what I said. I would rather you build a cadence around frequency over all else, more than intensity, more than duration, more than any of those other things.

Because I can build off of frequency, I can’t build off of intensity, I can’t build off of duration. What you’ll do you’ll train for two hours today, can you go to two and a half? No, that’s not what I’m looking for. But if you say, “Hey, I can do 15 minutes and I can do it Monday-Friday.” You know what, with that small amount of time, with a good priority hierarchy, I’m going back to what we talked about earlier, we can do a lot of damage. With 15 minutes we can get in and out and actually get something done. And when we’re no longer moving the dial, we can add five minutes, we can bump that up, I can build onto it.

There’s nothing for me to build onto if I don’t have you in the routine of exercising in the first place. And that’s really what it all boils down to, is having a daily routine in place. The best way to build a routine is to anchor it to something critical in your schedule. One of my favorite illustrations for this is, some of the moms that I work with, like, “What’s the best time I should exercise, before Johnny wakes up in the morning or when this, or when that?”

And there are no wrong answers here, but I’ll often ask you, “Do you pick Johnny up from school?” And if she says yes, “Perfect. Your workout slot is right before that, because I’m pretty sure you’re not gonna forget your son at school, you’re gonna do that.” So, there’s something in your schedule I can anchor to. So, that goes for everyone, if there’s something in your schedule that doesn’t move, that we can anchor that exercise to, it’s much more likely to get done.

So – prepare an afternoon snack for me first thing in the morning and start doing short workouts on a more daily cadence that’s anchored to something that you know isn’t moving. And if you just do just those two things, we’re off to a good start.

J.L.D.: Fire nation, that 15 minute workout has been a game changer for me, because you know how many times I’ve been standing here and I’ve been like, “I don’t have time for a 45 minute workout. I don’t have an hour, then I have to shower, and –” Fire nation, get over yourself and I had to get over myself. What do I do now?

Thanks to Natalie hammering it home, I do these great 15 minute burst workouts every single day. And guess what, sometimes I down there – I’m only down there because I’m gonna be there for 15 minutes and I can psychologically get myself down to the gym. And now I’m like, “Well you know I can stretch this to 20 or 25 minutes.” I don’t always do that but sometimes I do, and then now I’ve just had an incredible workout, whether it be 15 or 20 or 25 minutes, opposed to 0 minutes because I have this silly little thought in my head that I had to have this burner of a 45, 1 hour, 1 hour 15 workout, like get over that fire nation.

And one more thing I want to make sure to sum up from what Angelo just broke down, the secret of contrast is leverage. Where do you have the most room to improve? Period, end of story. Now, there’s a lot of listeners right now Angelo that have been hearing you talk and me speaking about my experience with Natalie and MetPro in general, and they want to learn more about their metabolism or just talk with your team of experts, which are awesome, real human beings. So, breakdown that process for us.

Angelo: Go to metpro.co/fire and schedule to talk to someone, there’s no commitment, just talk to find out where you’re at. A lot of people call us up and say I have done this, this, this, and that –

J.L.D.: Somebody’s calling right now! Is this a live show? Fire nation are you calling in right now? That’s amazing!

Angelo: – they have legitimate question of I’ve done this, this, this, and this and they want to know why has x, y, z worked, why is it not working now, or what is my best odds of finding something that will work for me. And that can be anything from – ranging from, “Hey, Angelo I want to bench 300 pounds, I want to run a sub-6 minute mile, and I want to have less than 10 percent body fat.” And what our coaches are gonna tell you is, “We can do that. You have to pick which one you wanna do first, you can’t do all three things at the same time, not with specificity. So, let’s break it down.”

So, they’ll just walk you through kind of a mental exercise of what is working for you, what a good strategy would be, and then talk to you about how, you know, if it’s a good fit, who a great coach would be to help you achieve those objectives. So, reach out to us, talk to us, at the very worst, you’ll just learn something new. So, it’s awesome getting to visit with everyone today.

J.L.D.: Well I know they’ve loved it as well, Angelo. And fire nation, you owe it to yourself, you owe it to your significant other, you owe it to your loved ones, you owe it to your kids, let’s extend your life in a healthy way, 5, 10, 20 in exponential years by doing the things right today that you know you can and should be doing, if you just had somebody there telling you the step by step process.

So, head over to metpro.co/fire, you owe it to yourself, have that no obligation conversation. And even if you walk away and say, “You know what, I just can’t do it right now,” for any number of reasons, that conversation will have helped you. So, have that convo, make that link with yourself and MetPro, and if now’s not the right time, the future might be the right time but have that phone call now, make it happen. Because you, fire nation, are the average five people you spend the most time with, and you have been hanging out with A.P. and J.L.D. today.

So, keep up the heat and as always head over to eofire.com, type Angelo, that’s A-N-G-E-L-O, Angelo in the search bar, his show notes page will pop up with everything that we talked about today, links to everything. But the only call to action link you need to remember fire nation is, metpro.co/fire. Angelo, thank you for sharing your truth, your genius, your valuables to the fire nation today, for that brother we salute you and we will catch you on the flip side.

Angelo: Thanks so much.