A nutrition challenge doesn’t have to become a perfection test. Amy Hudson helps Dr. James Fisher prepare with practical strategies for changing default habits, planning meals, building accountability, and recognizing daily wins.
Knowing what you want to change is only part of the preparation. Amy Hudson asks Dr. James Fisher three questions before his first 30-Day Metabolic Comeback Challenge: What motivates him, what obstacles does he anticipate, and how will he stay accountable? His answers bring the discussion into everyday life, from modeling healthy habits for his son to changing his diet soda routine and managing easy access to snacks while working from home.
Amy shares ways to reduce last-minute food decisions, including bringing leftovers, cooking protein ahead of time, and keeping meal components available. They also discuss family encouragement and community support. Fisher’s daily Sudoku habit illustrates the larger mindset: focus on today’s achievable action, let those successes accumulate, and recognize that an imperfect month can still represent meaningful progress.
Increased strength, increased stamina, more energy. There’s so many things like this that are going to happen along the way. You know, we can’t be perfect every day, but we can be consistent. And that consistency is what helps us achieve anything, whether it’s weight loss, whether it’s health. Welcome to the Strength Changes everything podcast, where we introduce you to the information, latest research, and tools that will enable you to live a strong, healthy life. On this podcast, we will also answer your questions about strength, health, and well being. I’m Amy Hudson. I own and operate three exercise coach studios.
My co hosts are Brian Sagan, co founder and CEO of The Exercise Coach, and Dr. James Fisher, leading researcher in evidence based strength training. And now for today’s episode. So, Dr. Fisher, you are doing a 30 day metabolic comeback challenge with us coming up soon. I am indeed. I’m very excited, actually. I’m also quite apprehensive, but I’m very excited. Well, let’s talk a little bit about this. So, we’re going to talk in this episode about some tips for success. How does that sound? And maybe some mindset questions that I have for you before you get started. So, hopefully, these will be beneficial, but I think this will be helpful to put your mind at ease, hopefully. Yeah, I’m excited to talk through mindset, obviously, for myself and for other people as well. I might be more clued in on some of those than maybe some other listeners might be, but I’m definitely keen to hear the tips for success. Okay, perfect. Yeah, if you’re listening today and you’re going to be participating in a 30 day metabolic comeback challenge, I want you to think about these questions too as we talk through today, and I hope you glean some helpful tips for your own success out of it.
But let’s start with mindset. I think it’s very important when you go into any type of health effort to go in with a good mindset or as strong of one as possible. And so the way we get into a healthy mindset is to really take ownership over some important points. And to get to those answers, I have a few questions for you. So Dr. Fish, I’m gonna ask you a couple questions here. So the first question I have for you is what is your motivation for doing this challenge. Okay. This is a really important question for me because I know that the stronger the motivation, the more likely people are to stick to a challenge. There’s a lot of research around that. And this is where I kind of fall down a little bit because to some extent, I’m doing the challenge for the sake of doing the challenge. I know we have a lot of listeners that engage in this. And obviously, this is delivered at studios across the US. And I’ve never done the challenge before. So I’m doing it almost like a, okay, I should do this. I should take part, but without any other really big motives.
Now, as a side note to that, I have a young son. He’s nine years old. And I think it’s good modeling for him to see, you know, engagement in a healthy lifestyle. And obviously, he already does, and we already do as a family to some extent. So, I’m hoping to kind of demonstrate that as well. And there are side notes. Obviously, I would like to drink less tea diet soda. I know I should and maybe sleep better and things like that, but they’re not such big motives. So there we go. I love some of those points. A lot of coaches at studios do challenges alongside clients to kind of walk the talk and be a leader and be a model do this challenge in order to role model to their children. And I think that’s a really powerful one. Show your Children that mom or dad is trying to be healthy and I take this seriously and I’m caring for myself. I think that’s really powerful, you know, to model to other people. So I love that one. And I think, you know, from there’s all kinds of perspectives somebody could take when answering this question.
A lot of people do it for some of the benefits. And as a reminder, you know, some of the benefits of doing this challenge. That you should expect if you’re going into it, aside from maybe anything related to the scale, better sleep, better mood, better focus, reduce joint pain, watch for these things to happen, increase strength, increase stamina, more energy, less depression, less seasonal allergies. So there’s so many things, this. This that are going to happen along the way when doing something like this. And those can be also reasons why people do this, you know, just to feel better, to do something for themselves.
You know, all of these are reasons that we also hear, like for that motivation as to why people do the challenge. Yeah, definitely. And I think, you know, I’ve spoke to GerriAnn about this. And one of the things we talked about is kind of almost resetting our palate to be able to really taste foods that are naturally sweet rather than sweetened foods. So I’m kind of almost excited for that, as well as a lot of the things that you said, you know, the sleep and the, you know, feeling better and not having states of fatigue and sugar rushes and crashes and so forth.
So there’s a lot of things that I’m really looking forward to that they’re just not primary motives, I guess. So, but yeah, I’m really keen to experience some of these. Good. And I’m going to do a I’m gonna do it because it’s a reset. So like I now have done enough challenges that I look at every opportunity, a 30day challenge as a reset to get back to the cleanest possible eating and the best I can feel. And I love the feeling of that. And it is a little bit harder than average default, but over time I learn more and I feel better and better each day time I do it and I also expand my recipes that I try. So I’m looking forward to just that reset like you said. Thank you. Okay, perfect. Second question. This is an important one. What obstacles can you foresee with sticking to the nutrition game plan? I know you have your strength training routine dialed in already, but the nutrition piece is something new for people that, you know, they’re adding on top of it. So, what are the obstacles you can foresee with sticking to the nutrition game plan?
And, you know tell me what your thoughts are about that. So, probably the most obvious obstacle is that I have a routine over certain things that I eat at certain times of the day or certain days of the week or when I’m, you know, when I’m engaging in certain activities. So, I’ll need to change those. And so, my default will have to change. And I’m sure that’s true of many people. They maybe have a default breakfast or such, and they need to. To shift that to something else. So, but that’s probably going to be the biggest barrier that I don’t just reach for. You know, in my case, it’s actually in my case, it’s actually a protein bar. It’s not overly unhealthy, but it certainly has grain in it. It’s certainly relatively high in carbohydrates and definitely some of the contents that aren’t permitted on the metabolic comeback. So I’ll need to omit those from my diet for this 30 days. So those things that you’re used to reaching for, and do you have any beverages in that category that you’re used to reaching for that are approved? Well, I think everybody who’s heard the show at some point or another knows that I love my diet soda.
So, in the UK, it’s Pepsi Max, which is a, I don’t know if it’s called the same thing in the US, but it’s basically a, you know, it’s a sugar free. Obviously, it has other sweeteners added, Pepsi product, but, or Diet Coke or similar. So, I, you know, I’ll probably have one to two of those a day. So, that will definitely be a big challenge, but less of a challenge in that I’ve actually got my wife on board with this as well. So, we’re just going to not buy any in and not have any in the house. So, as long as I’m not tempted when I’m out and about, then it should be fine. Tara, who has done this challenge before Said when I feel a craving coming on, I get a glass of water or iced tea and redirect my energy into busy work like a puzzle, a game on my phone, knitting, running, vacuum, anything to take my mind off my brain and my stomach.
So, yeah, I think recognizing that you’ll have these like default patterns of things that you want to grab, having a plan in place to do something else. Like, so what is your strategy for? Are you just going to have water then, or what are you going to? Drink instead. So, my son will drink, he has a dairy, a mild dairy intolerance. So, he drinks oat milk and He drinks water and that’s all he drinks. He’s never ever drunk a soda, he’s never drunk juice or anything like that. And it’s incredible to see. So it’s actually, in the house we don’t have a huge amount of things like that. I tend to drink coffee and water, but I do occasionally reach for the soda. So it’s effectively, I’m going to cut the soda and be a coffee and water guy for 30 days. Excellent. And you can do coffee black. You can do some almond milk or full fat coconut milk or certain unsweetened creamers in coffee. Just if you’re listening today, I don’t know if you do Dr. Fisher in your coffee or if you just do it black, but that’s a common question as well that comes up.
Yeah, I normally have some kind of creamer. So I’m going to try some of the different ones that I can have. I’ve never had almond milk before. So I’m going to try that and try some of the other ways. But I don’t mind black coffee either. So let’s. Yeah. Well, and if, you know, those. If you, if you’re a diet soda drinker listening to this, you kind of know it’s, it’s, they’re, they can be addictive because they’re, you know, they’re just, they’ve got that addictive property to it. And, and you do reach, reach for it over and over because you’re used to it, right? You have those cravings. Brenda, who’s taken the challenge before, was also in that boat. And she, her advice today is be strong. The first three days are crucial to avoid that tasty chocolate or diet soda. But by the fourth, Day, you won’t miss them as much. Plenty of other satisfying options. So, those cravings for things that you’re used to having that aren’t part of the plan will be pretty strong the first week, and that’s normal, but they do subside. And that’s part of the win is once we can get rid of those cravings, that sets us up for being able to choose better more easily in the future.
And so, just a word of encouragement on that one. As far as other obstacles, the other thing that’s worth clarifying you know, I work from home, so I have cupboards of food or a refrigerator of food available any time of day. So now sometimes that means I get so engrossed in work that I don’t think about it. But other times, if work is a bit stopstart or if I’m up and around, then I might be tempted to open the cupboard or reach for something. So that’s definitely an obstacle that I have in my mind as a possibility. And it’s something that I’ve given a lot of thought to over just making sure that I have healthy. Snacks in whether that’s nuts or that’s a protein shake, always kind of at hand if I want that available, as well as plenty of fruit like apples, bananas, pears, which we’re big on in this household. Okay, so you’re going to have like ingredient based items around that you can grab fruits, you just mentioned nuts. And one tip on this is sometimes people cook up the meat ahead of time. So if they are in a hurry, even if they’re at home, they can grab a cook.
And make a salad out of it or make a meal around that. And that will help them to assemble the meal quickly if they are really hungry already. So is that kind of what you’re saying there? Do you think you can cook up some meat ahead of time or to have some protein available? Yeah. And I’m already a big fan of cooking meat ahead of time. That’s what I’m all about, if I’m in my office and then. Somebody knocks on the front door to deliver a parcel or whatever it might be, and I go downstairs, then if I go into the kitchen to grab a drink, I might also open a cupboard and grab a given snack.
So, knowing that we’ve got plenty of fruit in there or healthy snack foods like nuts, like walnuts, Brazil nuts, things like that, almonds, then I always have those things available. So, if I do want to grab a snack, it’s something that is acceptable. Okay, cool. Yeah. A lot of people identify the obstacle of eating on the go. So it’s not the same thing as eating in a hurry, but it’s like, I travel for work, so I need to have things available. ” And that’s an obstacle. The easiest tip is leftovers. So cook a dinner and then bring your leftovers. It’s so easy because the dinner was already approved and then make extra especially if you have a smaller family and you make a normal recipe amount. Sometimes those recipes yield four to six servings. And so there you go. You have a lunch for the next day. That’s a really You know, for the next day. That’s a really easy one. A lot of people do meal prep containers where they can, again, assemble the things together that they love roasted sweet potatoes, avocado, chopped up peppers. And high quality ground beef that’s been cooked and just bring that with them. So sometimes it can be easy if you have the components at home to just kind of bring your own container of those components to work too. So those are also really doable. The third question I have for you then is.
How do you plan to hold yourself accountable and stick with the challenge? Okay. So as I mentioned, you know, so we’re a small household. I’ve talked about this challenge with my wife and she thinks it’s a great idea. So she wants to kind of embark on this challenge as well. She’s always big on this kind of thing. So every kind of new year. She will set a new year’s resolution and stick to it really, really impressively. I’m not so good at that kind of thing, but I’ve had that Discussion, so I know that she’s going to quiz me every day, at the end of every day. So say, Hey, have you had a diet soda today? Have you been good? Have you followed the plan?” And I think, again my son will ask those questions as well. He’ll probably make me feel even more guilty if I’ve had anything that I shouldn’t have. And I think that’s really good. And I joke about that guilt. Obviously, they don’t make me feel guilty per se, but it’s great to have somebody there to be able to say, have you had this? Are you going to do this?
And provide reinforcement and provide encouragement and so forth. And then, of course, A big part of this for me is to be able to do this for the listeners of the podcast and the clients of the exercise coach to experience, like you said at the start, to experience what they’re experiencing, to go through this, to engage with the chat on the Facebook group and so forth. I think as far as accountability goes, my diet is already pretty good. So I hope it’s pretty good. And I already plan my meals mostly around protein. So I don’t foresee problems with kind of food shopping or things like that. So yeah, I’m hopeful that I should be able to be accountable to myself first and foremost. I’m big on kind of personal challenges and just accruing days in sequence of doing something good, of healthy habits. So, having that additional accountability of family and yourself and the podcast listeners will hopefully spur me on.
Oh, yeah. I mean, it’s really public there, Dr. Professor. So, you definitely have a lot of accountability because of. The fact you’ve chosen to put it out there that you’re doing this, and so, um, you really can’t really. You really can’t, give up. But I think that that is so powerful. If you have the support of your family, it really goes a long way. It’s harder when you have people wanting you to cook other meals for them that aren’t on the plan, and then you have to feed them pizza or things like that when you’re supposed to be eating, whatever. So if your family is on board, that’s great. If you have a spouse on board, that’s fabulous. And even if not, if you can just verbalize this is important to me. I’m doing this for myself. You know Hopefully they’ll be supportive of you just taking this and doing it for yourself.
And then if you’re a client, you know, your coaches at your studio will hold you accountable as well. So that we do better when we let other people in, especially with anything like this. So let as many people in as you can. And actually, sometimes people just find themselves feeling so great as they start to eat better that they just naturally end up talking about it with their friends. I feel great. I’m doing this. And this is what I’m eating, especially. I don’t know if maybe it’s more of a woman thing, but hey, it’s great to let other people in and know what you’re doing. So, a couple more tips I have for success if you’re doing this for the first time, too. We have a huge Facebook group. Join the Facebook group, the National 30 Day Metabolic Comeback Challenge Facebook group. It includes clients all across the country.
Dr. Fisher, you’re already in it, I think. And it’s led by Jerry Ann and myself. And during challenges, as well as some other admin support coaching in there who every day of a 30 day challenge, we’re going to be posting encouragement questions. And we find that people who engage by asking questions, if they have one in the group, tend to be more successful. I’m wondering this, who has ideas? I was struggling with this today. And the more you can engage and ask and answer questions, the better off you tend to do with the challenge. Join the group if you’re not in there and participate every day is a huge one. There’s so much activity too. So don’t get overwhelmed with that. Another tip, and Dr. Fisher, I’m curious how you do this because I think you mentioned that you already do this in some ways, is like with challenges, start small and celebrate your wins.
Do you have a, how do you celebrate wins if you are doing a challenge? Well, it’s silly. We’ve talked historically about, you know, me tracking. Historically, about me tracking my sleep. There were silly things. I play a game of Sudoku every day. I’ve done 100 and something days in sequence of Sudoku. So every day is just its own little victory. It’s not about, I don’t think about things as a big picture about doing something for a year. I think about getting through that day or not even getting through that day, but just having that day as the goal.
And then they accumulate. And we can’t be perfect every day, but we can be consistent. And that consistency is what… That’s what helps us achieve anything, whether it’s weight loss, whether it’s health, whether it’s engagement in strength training, it’s that consistency that will kind of add up over time. So, even if somebody gets through 28 out of 30 days, with a perfect diet, that’s still incredible, right? That’s 28 days that they’ve done better than they would have. And there’s a lot of research around that, actually. The idea of taking small steps rather than facing a big goal is linked to our psychology. If we have a big goal then often it’s perceived as a threat, or there’s a fear component that stimulates our amygdala. And there’s a cortisol and adrenaline response to that, which obviously isn’t good and certainly isn’t good when we’re trying to control our nutrition.
So the idea of just celebrating small victories and just focusing on maybe one meal at a time or one day at a time is that’s certainly how I’m going to approach this. Yeah. If you don’t Get, if you don’t, if it doesn’t count until you reach the 30 days perfectly, it’s so much harder to succeed, right? But yet, if you count each meal as a success, it’s going to probably build your motivation, you know, because you’re like, okay, I did that. And those small wins adding up that you can recognize as wins do increase your motivation to keep going, right? I like that a lot. And as much immediacy As we can do, I think it’s easier to stay on track. Another really good tip is I don’t know if you’re on Pinterest, Dr. Fisher, or not, but it’s really popular here. And it is a really, it’s like a visual food diary or visual recipe collection. Exercise Coach has really extensive recipe collections on Pinterest. And basically, it’s photos of meals that are good to go for the challenge. So, one tip is to create a Pinterest account and make your own board. You could make a board that’s called, and a board is just a place that you pin kind of like a bulletin board ideas.
So, you can make your own board, 30 day metabolic comeback challenge, Amy’s board or something, and then copy and paste any of the recipes that you want to make from our ideas into your own. So, you have that to look back on. It’s just, I like. It because it’s visual. So you can say, that looks good. And I’ll make this and that. ” And then store those yourself. Or for recipes, use the Exercise Coach Whole Food Recipes recipe booklet, which is really nice. A lot of people love that. And it’s on our nutrition webpage at exercisecoachcom and that is all Wonderful recipes as well with notes on how to modify the recipe to be challenge approved.
They’re sorted by breakfast, dinners, salads. So it’s a great resource. You can just pick and choose items from there when you’re meal planning ahead for the next few days, what you want to make, and then you’ll have all of those ready to go. So planning ahead your meals is huge. So I just mentioned, you know, planning a few days ahead the exact recipes, or you could do what Dr. Fisher does which is have components of meals ready to go. I have my proteins, I have vegetables, and I have healthy fats on hand and I could kind of mix and match each day or you can follow a whole recipe 30 days Sample menu that is in the playbook. And some people follow that to a T. So whatever works best for you. And you can switch that over time as well. If one thing is working well, you want to try something else, you can always try something else.
Awesome. Awesome. And then one final tip is, you know, not to let yourself get too hungry or sometimes it’s nice to sort of redefine what a meal looks like. You know, it’s okay to grab an orange or an apple and have a protein shake instead of a full meal of every time. Have you ever heard the phrase, Dr. Fisher, don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good? Yeah, absolutely. What a great phrase. Yeah. And so, can you see yourself grabbing a protein shake and an apple if you do have to be out of the house? This is exactly my process. And I’m a really big believer in, first of all, I love fruit, I love the taste there. It, the palatability of it, the textures of it, apples especially. But I’m big on protein shakes as well, but especially when I’m kind of running around, if I’m traveling or if I’m out for the day, I’ll always have a protein shake with me, typically with a little bit of creatine in it, kind of preprepared ready to go, and then some fruit with it.
And I really like the addition of fruit because it gives it that fiber content as well in that part of the meal and it also Increases our satiety because we’ve kind of gone through the act of chewing. If you have a protein shake, obviously you don’t chew it. So you don’t send the same signals to your brain and to your digestive system to prepare your body for food and for digestion. Whereas if you chew, and especially because of the way you have to masticate an apple, then we kind of signal to our body that we are eating and all that kind of thing. You know, all that kind of thing. So, yeah, absolutely, big believer in that. That’s definitely a go to for me protein shakes and fruits. Yeah, and it’s so convenient, especially after a workout, too. So, high quality supplemental protein is in the nutrition playbook as something to focus on building meals around. You know, meats, protein from high quality meats is important and huge in the whole food component is very, very important. But then also, you know, when you’re out on the go, high quality supplemental protein, like you can get from an exercise coach studio, is very helpful during a challenge.
And smoothies can be your very best friend because they’re so easy to get your dietary protein in to be satisfied. And it’s a great way to incorporate extra fruits and vegetables into your diet as well in a smoothie format if you’re not into a big variety of vegetables normally, cooked or raw, it’s a great way to mix those in. So I love that idea as well. Yeah. And I really love the way you phrased that as this idea of redefining meals. We often think that a meal is only a meal if you sit and you have a big plate of food, or if you’re going through this pomp and ceremony of this activity. Whereas actually, a meal is about the nutritional intake, and I’m not suggesting that everybody should eat on the go, but if you have to eat on the go, that’s still a meal, but it can be a meal that you can be prepared for.
So, but even accepting that that’s a meal, you know, having a protein shake and then thinking, now I need to have something else or now I need to add more food is, you know, it’s not necessary that that protein shake has provided, you know, has hopefully provided adequate nutrition. Absolutely. And speaking of like things you can grab quickly, you know, snacks. I mean, we’re going to be eating we’re going to try to eat three whole food meals a day and prioritize the protein in those meals. So we really shouldn’t have a lot of hunger outside of it, but sometimes we will. And so the ideas that we give people for good quality snacks as well are, you know, hard boiled eggs or like a guacamole with vegetables, you know, dip a carrot stick into guacamole is a wonderful choice. Chomps Meatsticks sticks don’t have any added sugars, and those are a nice, highquality protein snack as well. A handful of highquality nuts, a protein shake, fruits and veggies. So it’s good to know sort of what you can choose from when you are, you know, piecemealing it together or on the go, so to speak, because you will have those times during 30 days, and we can’t put our whole life on pause.
So make sure you choose a selection of items like that that you can always have on your person. That way you don’t get too hangry and make a bad choice. That’s when you’re going to be the most likely to do that. So we don’t want to do that. All right, Dr. Fisher, how do you feel about the challenge after kind of hearing all this? Do you feel better? Do you feel the same? How do you feel? I definitely feel better. I actually feel better that I’ve voiced a Of this into a podcast and added that layer of accountability. But I definitely appreciate the tips that you’ve given me from previous people who have done the metabolic comeback challenge. So if they’ve been through it, then these tips are, I’m sure, going to be really useful. So yeah, that was really helpful. Thank you. Great. If you’re doing this challenge, make sure you hop into that Facebook group because there’s even more tips in there from previous challengers. But if you’re doing the challenge with Us, we are super excited to get started. We wish you the very best success. You got this. We will see you next week on the podcast.
Until then, we hope you remember strength changes everything. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please share it with a friend. You can submit a question or connect with the show at strengthchangeseverythingcom Join us next week for another episode and be sure to follow the show on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts so that you never miss another episode. Here’s to you and your best health.
CLAIM YOUR TWO FREE SESSIONS
