Karina Inkster: You're listening to the No Bullshit Vegan podcast episode 113. Daniel Weiss joins me to delve into how body composition and athletic performance intersect, how veganism affects athletic performance, how to improve your body composition and energy with your nutrition and training, and much more.

Hey, welcome to the show, and thank you for joining me. I'm Karina, your go-to, no BS vegan fitness and nutrition coach. Hope you've been doing well. It is definitely still a strange and stressful, to say the least, time in the world. I've basically just been sticking to my home, my town's music academy for accordion lessons and concert rehearsals, and the aquatic centre. And that is pretty much it, except for a really quick trip to Vancouver last week. A friend and I flew down there to see a show and our secondary objective was to gorge ourselves on as much vegan food as humanly possible. We don't have a lot of access to all-vegan options in Powell. We have no restaurants that are a hundred percent vegan, nor do we have access to vegan donuts by the way, which is a damn travesty. So in Vancouver, we had amazing Afghan and Thai food, really good sushi, incredible pizza from Virtuous Pie, which is all vegan, vegan ramen from Jinya, and of course a shit ton of vegan donuts.

So now I'm back donut-less, vegan restaurant-less Powell River, but it's so nice and quiet. There's no traffic or construction. The forest is a hundred feet from my house. I don't really miss the city at all, except for the vegan food options. And of course, my friends who live there.

Anyway, today on the podcast I'm joined by my coach colleague, Daniel Weiss. Daniel turned his passion for nutrition, food, exercising, and human behaviour into helping active people overcome mindset blocks, lose excuses, and develop healthy relationships with food while pursuing health, body composition, and performance goals. Daniel writes on topics of nutrition for Spartan Race Slovakia, his personal blog, and a podcast. His favourite vegan meal is anything that involves legumes, especially different styles of buddha bowls. Here's our conversation.

Hey, Daniel, happy to have you here. Thank you so much for joining me on the show today.

Daniel Weiss: Hello. Thank you for having me.

Karina Inkster: Well, let's start with a quick origin story. So I'm sure our listeners are curious. We're gonna talk about veganism and also what you do with your business and how that came to be. So why don't we get your veganism origin story because everyone who is plant-based who comes on the show has one, and they're all different. And I'm just curious how you came to veganism, and when.

Daniel Weiss: That was approximately six years ago to start it. And that was at the time I was trying to solve my health issues at that time specifically speaking. And I was also starting with running and I found out like when I was eating animal-based foods you know, it took a longer time to digest. And usually, it was like, let's say I came from work and then going for a run, having some quick snack in between, you know if I used to have like meat or whatever, which doesn't digest very well. So that was my first I would say thought of going into veganism. And I found out, you know, like vegetables, fruits, fruits specifically, these kinds of sources of foods sit well with my stomach, that I can have them before the run. So I started thinking more about the nutrition. And just to bring it back to my health issues, just story told short, I was battling with it for several years and it was getting worse and worse and worse until the point like it was unbearable.

Like I would have outbreaks all over my body. I couldn't figure out why. Nobody could figure out why. They just said like, you know, you have allergies, but these allergies were more and more severe. So to more foods and not even like allergies, but really just reacting to food, not a food developed allergy. So I found that eating predominantly plant foods really helps with that. And over time I managed to treat it in that way. I'm not saying everybody will have the same success, but this was a success for me. So that stuck with me for the health reasons. And because I always love vegetables I was just eating more of that. And then the ethical part came into play. I started being more interested in nutrition also from that perspective and that’s what basically kept me going or being vegan.

Karina Inkster: That's amazing. I feel like we all have the one thing that brought us to it, whether it's health or ethics or environment or something else entirely. And then we branch out. The longer we're vegan, the more we branch out, the more we learn, the more reasons we have for staying vegan. It's kind of a common approach I think, and health reasons are one of the major ones that bring people to it. And, you know, as ethical vegans, now, both of us, I assume, we don't really care why people come veganism. We just care that they do at some point. And then eventually their reasoning and their motivations will expand beyond just one that brought them there.

Daniel Weiss: Certainly. And I see that. I mean, people who stay on the vegan lifestyle for a longer period of time, there is this ethical concern. That's what keeps you there, right? Because you can be healthy on any kind of diet.

Karina Inkster: That's very true. Yep. It's the ethics that keep us vegan super long term.

Daniel Weiss: Yeah.

Karina Inkster:Mm-hmm. So how does this factor in then to what you do with your business? So your coaching clients, presumably on a plant-based diet. So the, tell us a little bit about that.

Daniel Weiss: You know what? It's like, there are not many people who are like specifically vegan who I coach. It's like a very small part actually, but I also like it because I'm constantly trying to figure out different approaches right? I'm not just following one specific approach in that sense. So that's one thing. But many of them are let's say plant-curious. And what was really interesting for me was like one of my athletes who I coach when she said eating more plant foods really made her feel better. She feels like she performs better. Like her recovery is better and that also her husband tried it now and he also is starting feeling better you know? So I’m really amazed with that.

Karina Inkster: Well that's an interesting place to be actually because as you probably know, and as our listeners know, we work with clients who are vegan already for the most part, unless they're currently making the transition to veganism, but everybody on our team is plant-based. So we're not working with folks where we're kind of wondering how to approach telling them about being plant-based and like, hey, maybe you should try eating fewer animal products. Like we don't have that at all in our business. So it must be kind of different for you to play around with different approaches and have people on your team who are not in the vegan world at all. It's kind of interesting.

Daniel Weiss: Yeah, certainly. But like from an athletic perspective, it's like you know, these people, if they want to perform better and specifically endurance athletes and I'll see athletes like from Sparta Race or CrossFit or whatever, these athletes require carbohydrates. So I mean, animal products are not rich in carbohydrates, so they need to include more plant foods in their diet. And usually, they are heavy on meat, on dairy. So we are actually cutting back from those because they just may, they take longer to digest because they are full of proteins. They are full of fat. And if you eat a lot of those, then you are just hindering your performance. Like I said, in the beginning when I started running, I was eating these products, but I could not eat them at the time, like around training because I would feel bloated. I would feel bad.

It sits longer in the stomach. It takes longer to digest. So I had to play with that and try to figure it out. So I'm actually proposing or nudging let's say, these people to where it’s like eating more say fruit, rice, like carbohydrates at least around their training. And over time, if they see like, ah, that makes me feel good. They discover that their digestion is better. They often see like, even if they continue eating animal products, they cut their intake like drastically. And I think that is amazing.

Karina Inkster: That is amazing. That's great. I mean, any movement toward eating fewer animal products and more plant-based products, you know, in humans in general, across the population, is a positive trend for many reasons. Not just the animals, but also our environment and personal health and athletic performance, et cetera. So yeah, I think, you know, you don't have to go and convert your clients to a hundred percent vegan overnight, or even at all, as long as they're making some changes there. And as you mentioned, it's kind of athletic-performance-related anyways. And if that's why people are coming to you and the first place, it just makes sense.

Daniel Weiss: Yes certainly. And as I said, there are these cases when it also affects people around them. And I really love to work with people who have goals or their vision is to improve themselves. Not only from the athletic perspective, because they are not like pro-athletes. They are usually like amateur athletes who also have families. Usually, they have a business or they're managers or whatever they, so they care about the energy they have throughout the day because they are juggling many things. So they want to stay energetic. They are very active. And for them having that stable energy throughout the day is crucial.

Karina Inkster: That makes complete sense.

Daniel Weiss: When they see these positive changes, they are also inspiring others around them to make these positive changes. So it has like a ripple effect in the end.

Karina Inkster: Yes. That's such a good point. And it doesn't need to be obvious. Like these people don't even need to be shouting it from the rooftops. They just need to be doing their own thing. And people will notice. People notice this kind of stuff. People in their work life, people in their families. That's a good point.

Daniel Weiss: Yes certainly. It is a good way how to share the inspiration.

Karina Inkster: Absolutely. Yeah. Well, let's talk about our topic du jour, which is body composition. So we're gonna talk about a couple of different points around body composition. How being leaner is not always necessarily better and why that might be, but why don't we start from the very beginning? So what is body composition anyways? what's body composition? Let's give it a definition and then we'll jump into how it relates to athletic performance.

Daniel Weiss: So when we generally speak about body composition, we think about carrying or building or having muscle mass. That is for the body composition, right? You have your lean body mass, which consists of your water weight, consists of your muscle mass, your bones, right? And other tissues. And then there is fat mass. So, everybody who wants to lose weight, they want to lose fat. They don't want to be losing muscle mass or maybe water or bone density or these other things.

Karina Inkster: They don't wanna lose their liver or their spleen or their pancreas. Haha!

Daniel Weiss: Haha! Yeah, certainly. Although that happens, like during the weight loss phase, right? Anyway, maybe just some interesting facts. And so when we want to improve athletic performance, we want to have a body composition that is more muscular because muscles move our body, right? And having unnecessary or excess fat in that case just means more weight you need to carry around. This is especially important for endurance athletes because you are repeatedly going through an effort that takes a long period of time. And every kilogram or every pound of extra weight is just extra energy that you need to expend. So that is why it is important from the athletic performance perspective.

Karina Inkster: Right. Mm-hmm.

Daniel Weiss: But we also know that when we look at sports and also when we look at the individuals within certain sports, we have a wide variety of bodies. So a basketball player looks different than a CrossFit athlete. And even when we have CrossFit athletes, they are kind of different. They are not all the same. Also, they are within some let's say narrower range between the sports.

Karina Inkster: Right. So the “supposed ideal,” and I'm using air quotes here, body composition will for sure differ between sports. And we're talking about higher-level athletes here who are competing, who really care about athletic performance versus like about general health or weekend warriors or folks who are, you know, going to the gym twice a week. So, you know, there's sports like powerlifting, for example, that are weight-based. They have weight classes. There's a lot of sports like this, you know, boxing, powerlifting, Olympic lifting, where it makes sense because there's different sizes of bodies and you can't standardize weight that each person is gonna lift.

 I have a friend, Melody Schoenefeld, who's been on the podcast multiple times, who weighs 105 pounds. She's a small human. So, you know, if she's gonna compete in a strong man competition, which she does, she's competing against folks who have, you know, 30 to 50 pounds on her, and she's competing with similar implements and it's kind of a disadvantage.

But if you were a powerlifter, which she also is, just to use her as an example, she would be broken into weight classes. And this is how she has national records in all three power lifts because she's competing against folks who are in the same range of body weight as her. And this is bodyweight, not composition, of course, but so what's the deal with like optimizing body composition? Why would leaner not always be better?

Daniel Weiss: Well, so coming from the perspective of athletes that I usually end up working with, or whether like runners or these hybrid athletes that do like a mixture of endurance and strength, they usually want to look like they do that kind of sport. You know so they want to look ripped. So it's not often, it is not about the performance for them. It is about how they look, about the aesthetics. And these can be very misleading because they are not like fat athletes. They are usually thinking about maybe losing up to five pounds, you know, just to look more ripped or they think that by losing that extra five pounds, they will be able to run better and be stronger or have better let's say power to weight ratio, which can be true, of course. So that is why it is important. And why this is important to mention is that everybody is different. So let's say somebody who is like 10% body fat can look very different than somebody who is like 12% body fat. Even if that body fat percentage, there is another huge difference, it can visually be a huge difference. And if these athletes make their goal aesthetics they often make a huge mistake because they're not competing in aesthetic sports.

Karina Inkster: Mmm-hmm. Well, that's a really good point. And actually something I've been thinking while you've been talking about body composition and like aesthetics really, is in aesthetic sports - so you know, your bikini competition, your physique competition, your bodybuilding competition - where you're judged on your physique, they are the most ripped athletes on the face of the planet, but they are not strong. Like the folks you see with like seven layers of tan onstage are depleted and weak and not training at their peak at that point, because they have such low body fat percentage and they're in a deficit for so long.

Daniel Weiss: that's a great point.

Karina Inkster: So if it were judged on performance, they would all fail miserably, even though they're looking ripped.

Daniel Weiss: Yeah, certainly. And we hold these athletes with like really great, great physiques and are very lean, we hold them as our like heroes or role models. And I mean, I myself would like to look like that, but I know that my nature or the body fat percentage that I perform the best is higher than what I can get to, or how I would like to look like. So if I wanted to go to the beach or if my goal was aesthetics, I would go for a little bit lower body fat percentage than I am right now, but I know that I would not perform as well as I do now because the extra fat is for me, like easy to maintain all year round. I don't need to pay super special attention to how I eat, because it's already ingrained in me, practiced over the years. And it's literally is like automatic. So like no stress around food from that perspective.

And I also know that like in season, when the training gets harder, there is more intensity I lean out even more without even trying. It might not be the case for everybody, but it is the case for many athletes actually. So going also into that season, like now we have offseason it's good to have maybe some buffer in terms of like, body fat.

Karina Inkster: That’s a good point. Well, just to use myself as an example, I mean, yeah, sure. Of course. I would love to just buy an eight-pack on Amazon and just be ripped, but I would not be performing at my best. I know that for a fact. I actually just came out of a three-week flu. Today is day 21. And I had no appetite at all, like seriously, worst flu of my life. And I lost four pounds in two weeks because I didn't eat anything. And so now I'm coming out of it. You know, I'm still very slowly building up back to where I was before with swimming and weightlifting and jump rope and all this stuff. I'm doing like literally 30% volume right now, probably less of swimming, which is what I did this morning. And I felt like absolute shit. 

I feel so depleted. I feel like I have no energy, you know, it's because I'm not where I normally am. This is me in a depleted state and my performance is suffering because of it. So I’m with you on this. Like we all have to balance aesthetic goals, which we're allowed to have. We're all humans. We wanna look great. That's fine. But if we also have performance goals, how do we balance those? Because they're not always in line.

Daniel Weiss: Yeah Exactly. And that's a great question. And there are like several layers to that and there is like things to consider. So we can, for example, from the short term period, lower our body fat percentage, like before a race, to perform better. So to have that better power to weight ratio without affecting the performance. And that's perfectly fine if it's like a short-term thing, but what athletes, unfortunately, fall for, or I'm not speaking about professional athletes only, but anybody who has some like performance goals, they see that, okay, I lost this two, three kilo. I feel lighter. I perform better. But then when they stay at that weight for a prolonged period of time and they continue training as hard, their body starts breaking down.

Karina Inkster: Mm. That’s a good point.

Daniel Weiss: But because it is a gradual thing, they don't notice it. So it's like you know, like cooking the frog.

Karina Inkster: Yeah, Right!

Daniel Weiss: If you put it in the boiling water, it will jump out, but if you put it in the cold water and start warming it up, it'll die there, right? There is this analogy. So it's the same thing that happens with us. If the change happens gradually, we don't notice it unless we pay really close attention to it. And this is like, for example, what we can do is track the performance. So for example cover stats with just like the distance covered in 12 minutes running, or maybe some strength performance, like number of pull-ups or whatever in a relation to the weight. So we are focusing on the performance metrics. And you can see when you collect this data, that how your performance develops in relation to your weight, for example, or to your body composition, which is even better.

And so if that person stays there for a prolonged period of time and their body starts breaking down, you know, the recovery starts being worse. They get or start getting injured more. Their sleep is getting worse. They get more irritable. They get more colds. Women start losing their periods. It is called RED-S or energy deficiency syndrome. Maybe you’ve heard of it. And this is basically a chronic deficit of energy. So your body can perform, but it will borrow that energy from somewhere else. And usually, it's like from the reproduction system and from other non-essential systems in your body. Because if you are putting your body into that stress, the training, your body doesn't know like if you are running away from a lion or whatever. It is creating that energy that you need in that time for you. So something that is important and there is like more and more research coming out about this, and it seems to be like a big issue, not only for women but also for men.

Karina Inkster: Mm-hmm. So what you're saying is one of the ways that we can balance the aesthetic goals with the performance goals is to make sure that we're tracking some kind of a performance-based metric, whatever that might be for each person.

Daniel Weiss: Mm-hmm, yes. That would depend on the sport. That would depend also on the goals because maybe you don't have the performance goals all year round, right? Maybe you have just some race let's say in summer, but you can focus more on your body composition, like now in winter to lose some fat, to develop these good habits and, yeah, do it in a healthy way. Not just try cutting that weight, like suddenly two weeks before the race or something. Because I have people that come - I have a race in two, three weeks. Like I need to lose two kilos because I know that at that weight I would do much better. But I mean, if you do that incorrectly, if you don't have the skills to do that in that timeframe, because you can lose weight in one week, like two, three kilos, which is five to six pounds. But then if you are like a high-level athlete, you are also risking losing performance.

And maybe even if you have these skills, maybe your life is currently not allowing you to do that because it takes a lot of focus for you and you will be irritable. And if you don't have previous experience doing this, you might just not be in the mindset or don't have that experience. So it's a little, like, I would not say suitable goal to do it like the first time, two, three weeks before your goal race or season.

Karina Inkster: Definitely not. Also, the flu is not recommended either as a weight loss mechanism. Haha!

Daniel Weiss: Yeah.

Karina Inkster: So what if someone does want to improve or change their body composition? Like, let's say there's someone who's already active to some degree. Maybe they are an endurance-type trainee. Maybe they're a strength trainee. What if someone has a goal of losing fat and gaining muscle? How do we start to think about habits they can create, you know, things that they can do lifestyle-wise that will affect their body composition?

Daniel Weiss: Well, so I think that there are many things, many approaches on how we can do that. And that would definitely be based on the individual level because we need to consider like what their skills are because not all athletes, for example, know how to count macros or even know anything about nutrition, which might be surprising for some people, but many athletes just don't do it. If they even know like what calories are, they haven't ever tracked that in their life. So it's like the normal fitness people know usually more about it, at least from my experience. But just to give the general idea, the good approach is of course you want to have enough protein. So let's say even up to two grams per kilogram of lean body mass, and that is to prevent losing muscle when you are on a diet or when you are cutting that fat. And here carbohydrates again are very important because carbohydrates are essential for performance. At least you want to make sure that even when you are losing weight, you have that energy for the training.

Karina Inkster: Right. And we're not talking about losing two to three kilos in a week here. We're talking about like a sustainable approach.

Daniel Weiss: Even if we were to speak about losing these two, three kilos, even then you want to have carbohydrates. Around the training, you would cut them through the other time of the day. So we would play more with the timing here, but still, you want to have them. But yeah, from the more sustainable approach, you want to have these carbohydrates because it's about that energy that you require for the training. 

So you are fuelling, as we call it, for the work required. So you have, let's say more training, you eat more carbs. So you are manipulating the carbs. Usually, the fat is like the first thing that we reduce, because it doesn't contribute to, let's say performance, to building muscle, to anything. And one interesting thing is also when we speak about a lot of energy deficiency, some research is already showing that for example, when you have the same energy intake, but you have low carbohydrates or you have like high carbohydrates, these carbohydrates contribute to, at least to some extent, offset the negative effects of the energy deficiency.

Karina Inkster: Mm interesting. So the higher carbohydrate content presumably would contribute positively to overall energy?

Daniel Weiss: Mm-hmm, yes. And especially women are really sensitive to that. So even if you have, let's say, 2000 calories and that is a deficit for you, for a training athlete if you have the 2000 calories, let's say for dinner only, it's different if you have it spread along the day. So if you have that deficit around your training, so that's also why it's called relative energy efficiency, then it'll negatively impact your recovery, your performance, even your muscle mass. And then when we look at it from the perspective of micronutrients, that is also when you want to have those carbohydrates. So if you just put fat, let's say 500 calories of fat, around your training, you have enough energy, but it's not the same as having 500 calories of carbohydrates. So the carbohydrates are protective in that sense.

Karina Inkster: Right. So they're protective, and also they're preferred as a fuel source for how our bodies work.

Daniel Weiss: So that's interesting.

Karina Inkster: That’s very interesting. Yeah. I would love to see if you have a link to that study that showed the same calorie amount, but a higher level of carbs versus a lower level of carbohydrates and how that affects energy and output when people are in calorie deficits. That's super interesting.

Daniel Weiss: Yeah, that is. I will provide it to you.

Karina Inkster: That would be awesome. Very cool. So other than thinking about carbohydrates, and you also mentioned protein, because for sure you want to make sure that you are at least maintaining muscle mass and not also losing muscle mass along with fat mass when you're in a calorie deficit, what else are some points that folks who wanna work on body composition should think about?

Daniel Weiss: Sure. So actually what I see in some people is that even when they don't feel like it, they might be just stressing too much about nutrition. And I really think that like energy, let's say it, around the stressful energy, we can hold a lot. And so for example, it might even mean counting calories or macros. For some people, it can be stressful, even if they don't really realize it. So if you now listening to it is like, if you've been struggling with that, like maybe you have been counting calories for the past few years and you are just stuck - I have had good experience for people when they change their tracking method from like counting calories to maybe like taking photos of food or having another way that is not well, that is different to that tracking. So basically reducing that kind of stress really helps a lot.

Karina Inkster: Hey, that's a really important point. This is why in our business, we have various methods of food tracking. There's a whole number of reasons why clients might not be well suited to tracking macros and calories, even if they have super high-level athletic goals. People with eating disorders in the past, people who feel like they're kind of adjacent and it might send them into a negative mental space. Those are all very legitimate reasons to never track your macros and your calories.

 But that doesn't mean you can't track anything. Our clients can still be accountable to us and to themselves by tracking things like meal photos, which are a great option that you just mentioned, or even just writing down what you eat in a day, or we have some clients who literally just focus on protein. So they focus on getting the protein they need in the day, which honestly usually means that their carbohydrates and fats are well within range, if they're hitting their protein goal on mostly whole plant-based foods.

But it's a really important point I think. We have this assumption, at least a lot of us do in the fitness industry, that like in order to get those next-level results, you have to track your macros, you have to track every single calorie you eat. And first of all, those things are not super accurate, anyways. I mean, there's a huge margin of error there, even if you're using an app, even if you're weighing your food. And second, it's not necessary. You can still get body composition goals, body composition differences without obsessing over tracking everything in an app.

Daniel Weiss: Yeah, definitely. So what I really love to use and, you know, like tying it back to performance, is like really using these other methods of tracking. I really love to use the plate method if you are aware of it.

Karina Inkster: Oh, the plate method. Yes. Can you explain that to us?

Daniel Weiss: So basically you just divide your plate into some parts and this will be different based on the activity levels. So for example, for a very basic plate for your general meal would be like half a plate vegetables, quarter plate protein, and quarter plate would be your smart carbohydrates. That would be like whole grains, legumes, these kinds of foods. And we have different proportions based on the activity levels. But like you said, it doesn't need to be like, perfect. It doesn't need to be super precise because also calorie tracking is not super precise, although it's the most precise way. But when we look at it from the long perspective, I mean, if you are constantly eating pretty much the same food, which we do -

Karina Inkster: Of course, we're creatures of habit!

Daniel Weiss: Yeah. So maybe you have like seven different meals that you rotate throughout the week. I rotate maybe three, four, haha.

Karina Inkster: Yeah, same! Same. Haha.

Daniel Weiss: And so when you put these proportions, even if they are not perfectly the same every day, or each meal, when you use these methods, it allows you to have consistency and consistency is key from the long term perspective. And if you don't have any stress with it, you don't need to weigh your food before putting it on your plate or whatever, or box it into small boxes, you know, like for the meal preparation or whatever. It's super easy to adhere to that even when life gets stressful. And then it allows you to have more energy to focus on, let's say the big rocks or things like paying attention to like how full you are after these meals, how energetic you are, when you are full, when you are hungry. Because if you like are these people who are really obsessed with counting calories, they can just get stuck with the numbers and they let the numbers in the application or whatever they use, dictate how they feel about the food.

Karina Inkster: Mmm! Such a good point!

Daniel Weiss: So they stop like listening to their body completely. And they just look at these numbers and maybe they feel bloated and maybe they feel like they're drained or whatever, but they just make their decision based on these numbers. And that's not a good place to be.

Karina Inkster: Oh, totally. That's that is another excellent point. So not only do we not have to track in order to get results, at all, although some form of accountability to one's self is probably useful, but there's lots of ways of doing that. But you also are adding this kind of added stress factor almost, by relying on fairly arbitrary numbers, and not how your body feels.

Daniel Weiss: Yeah. So how I also like to say that is like, how would you eat if you didn't know about calories and macros? And it's not like, well, for some people, it can be hard to imagine this, but just look back, like, how were you eating before that? Before you go to know about all those things? 

And when I look for example, at my family they eat until they are, let's say, satisfied with their meal and that's it. Maybe they have a dessert after that, or maybe some cookie or whatever, like that is over the top, let's say. But I mean, if you focus on eating whole foods and then listening to your hunger signals, then you can really develop a good relationship, not only with your food, but also improve your digestion as a result, not feel bloated, and you just play with the amount of food and how you feel around it. That is a pretty good guide.

Karina Inkster: Mm-Hmm. Very important point.

Daniel Weiss: Of course, if you want to, for example, gain weight, then you might eat maybe a little bit more than you are used to because your body or your body signals want to keep you in homeostasis. So where you are at it doesn't want you to do lose weight or to gain weight excessively, but you can still play with that, but you can include let's say, a post-workout snack, or pre-workout if you want to gain weight. Or if you want to lose weight, then you eat to 80% full instead of 100% full. You can still play with these hunger cues.

Karina Inkster: Yeah, absolutely. I've mentioned this on the show multiple times before, but I feel like it's, a good illustration of what we're talking about here. And it was a study that asked people from different cultures: how do you know that you're done eating? And so people in Canada and the US would say, well, when my plate is empty, when my friends stop eating, when my show was over on TV. These are all external cues, right? And then folks in other cultures, I think it was Europe in the study, were saying things like, when I feel like I've had enough to eat, when my stomach feels full, when I'm 80%, you know, satiated. All of these internal cues. And there were huge cultural differences in reasonings or whatever the right word is, for eating until you're past full, versus eating until 80% full. It's quite interesting.

Daniel Weiss: Interesting. Yes, it is. It totally is.

Karina Inkster: And it kind of illustrates the point that we all probably should be more in touch with these cues versus like, you know, if you ask that question now, I bet you a good percentage of the population would say, well, when my fitness pal tells me that I've eaten enough for today, haha.

Daniel Weiss: Yeah.

Karina Inkster: Right? Versus any sort of internal queue.

Daniel Weiss: Yeah. And I think it's a big mistake that I also see often, like for example, if people have, let's say 2,400 calories, they want to have that 2,400 every day, or they are trying to reach that daily, but maybe one day you are more hungry, for whatever reason, the other day you might be less hungry. So why not work with that, and why stuff yourself when you are not hungry? I mean, that allows you to have also that body composition in the end and builds good habits, a good relationship with yourself. It allows you to be in the game for the long term. And well, don't think about it from the perspective of one week or three months, or even one year, but really from the long-term perspective. Because even if one of person's goal is to have physical performance, they want to look great, whatever it is, having these habits will always allow them to even go into these periods when they maybe need to track or be more strict with their diet, maybe more strict with their exercise, but they have a good solid base that they can always fall back to.

Karina Inkster: Mm. Yes. Another one of so many important points from Daniel Weiss today. I love it! So where can our listeners go to connect with you? What's the best method?

Daniel Weiss: Well, I think the best method is Performance Optimized on Instagram.

Karina Inkster: Okay, perfect.

Daniel Weiss: I post very often, but I also have a website which is danweiss.eu.

Karina Inkster: Perfect.

Daniel Weiss: Yeah. I mean, as we mentioned today, there are a lot of things that a person can do to look better, feel better, or even perform better right? And everybody is different. Everybody's journey is different, how to reach that goal. And I really love to help people, so to give them the best advice that I can do and not some like general recommendations, then I would like to invite people to give them a 15-minute strategical advice pilot, where we go deeper into this, like where they are at, what their skill level is, what their goal is, so I can give them that best advice. And for that, they can book that call at my website, which is again danweiss.eu/call.

Karina Inkster: Love it. What a cool idea to just, you know, jump on with someone one on one, get some intel on where they're at, and then you can customize their action plan. It's brilliant.

Daniel Weiss: Yeah, I think that's the best way, how to do that.

Karina Inkster: Mm-Hmm. That’s awesome. Well Daniel, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Awesome speaking with you. And I really appreciate the time that you took to share your awesome ideas. And we will have show notes with links to all of your socials and your website. Maybe we'll highlight those goals or the booking page as well. That would be awesome. But thank you so much for coming on the show. It was great speaking with you.

Daniel Weiss: Oh, thank you very much for having me once again.

Karina Inkster: Daniel, thanks again for joining me. Much appreciated. Head to nobullshitvegan.com/113 for our show notes and all the links you need to connect with Daniel. Thank you so much for tuning in.