EFR 852: The #1 Thing Women Do WRONG in Fitness, Why Females Are More Coachable Than Males and How Prioritizing Spirituality and Productivity Habits Can Improve Your Life with Emily Duncan

00:00 - Chase (Host) The following is an operation podcast production. What is the number one thing you think most people are struggling with in their health and fitness journey today?

00:09 - Emily (Guest) What's happening between their ears. We work primarily with women, but I guarantee this is a problem for men too. The beliefs that people, especially women, have about their bodies, about nutrition, about exercise, about how all of those things work together, about what's even possible for them in their lives, with their health, all of these things. So many of us are walking around with, these unconscious but just devastating, limiting beliefs about ourselves. And thoughts don't become things. Beliefs do so like this. You copy paste that into different environments for different women. It's like an epidemic. So then women are taught and they ingrain this and they don't even realize that the less I eat, the smaller I am, the less hunger I have for anything food, life, success, all of the things. I'm falling in line and I'll be safe. So it's this much bigger conversation than just food, calories, health. What is going on you guys? Welcome back to Ever Forward Radio. My name is Emily Duncan, I am the owner and CEO of Phoenix Athletica, I am a personal and business development coach, and I will see you in the episode.

01:22 - Chase (Host) Welcome back to Ever Forward Radio. I'm so stoked to have one of my personal homies and most repeat guests back on the show the one, the only Emily Duncan. She is an online health and fitness coach, business coach, branding expert and, just honestly, badass human being. She's the founder behind Phoenix Athletica and she is here to unpack the hidden beliefs that shape most of our health's journeys, especially women. She's going to be sharing a lot of her own personal experiences, but in this conversation today, emily offers a really unique lens on how these unconscious beliefs impact perceptions of things like body image, our nutritional choices, exercise. Of things like body image, our nutritional choices, exercise things that often lead to self-sabotage and derailing us from the life that we want, derail us from moving ever forward. Specifically, she's going to be sharing a lot of nutrition and fitness optimization tips for women but guys definitely don't tune out on this one. Emily is going to be addressing the balance of caloric intake and energy expenditure in relation to things like hormonal cycles and overall wellbeing, addressing myths in the fitness industry and even diving into some nuances Once you kind of nail down these daily baseline habits. She's getting into things like beliefs and misconceptions of fasting and how traditional and holistic practices can really help us bridge the gap between foundational health approaches and optimization.

02:48 Emily was in studio with me. If you want to check out the video, you can always find it at everforwardradiocom Search for us on YouTube. Make sure to subscribe to the channel there, linked for you as always again in the show notes today under episode resources. If you like what Emily is putting down, you're going to love her past episodes. I'll make sure to link those for you in the show notes as well. She's got quite a few to pick from. Thank you so much for tuning in here today. Thank you for subscribing on your podcast platform of choice. Just tapping that button, whether it's a subscribe or follow on Apple or Spotify, wherever you're tuning in here today, doing that, taking just literally three seconds out of your day, does immense things for the show. It supports us, it helps us grow, it helps the show get recommended out to other people that might be interested in what I or Emily have to talk about, and supports my overall goal of helping as many people as possible learn how to move forward in these key areas of their wellness. Thank you everyone. Here's Emily Duncan and ever forward.

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05:28 - Emily (Guest) Trying to keep my sneakers clean.

05:30 - Chase (Host) I want to preface this podcast first and foremost by saying Emily chose danger and my FOMO could not resist. It is 2, 41 PM and I'm caffeinating Cheers. We caffeinated and we ketoned. We did Ketones I'm cool with, really at any time. Yeah, there's no caffeine, no crash, none of that. But this is I'm YOLOing Friday. This is living life dangerously at 38, everybody.

05:54 - Emily (Guest) Caffeine afternoon. This is consciously choosing violence for the greater good.

06:00 - Chase (Host) But it's strong coffee, so you know it's a little better.

06:02 - Emily (Guest) I'm just justifying.

06:03 - Chase (Host) It's a little better so when I can't go to sleep tonight, I'm going to send you a text.

06:06 - Emily (Guest) I like to think I'm a positive influence. You're never coming on the show again you are back on the show, welcome third time, I think maybe fourth because it was your fourth on mine. I think this is three great long term relationship we're developing here we're lasting way more than any LA marriage. Sorry, you're married in LA. That was you know, but we did get married here. We got married before LA. You're accepted, yeah, east.

06:32 - Chase (Host) Coasters at heart, for sure, but yeah, I mean. So. Anybody who likes what we're about to dive into and likes you, go back and check out her last two to three episodes. I'll link it for you in the show notes. My last one with you. We were in Austin when you were laying there.

06:49 - Emily (Guest) Crazy to think about.

06:50 - Chase (Host) That was two years, almost exactly. Yeah, here we are. You're here, like at Mercury's and Gatorade too, mercury sipped on some.

06:58 - Emily (Guest) Gatorade. She's not having a good time.

07:06 - Chase (Host) She's not living her best life in any way, shape or form. I'm really tired of her doing this, because it apparently fucks everything up, so it's not our fault if anybody doesn't like the show yeah, that's a personal problem.

07:10 - Emily (Guest) Mercury, yeah, it's an astrological problem.

07:12 - Chase (Host) So, emily, for someone who just tuned in, and they've never heard of you, never heard of the show. What do you think is one thing they're gonna walk away with, like why should they keep listening?

07:21 - Emily (Guest) oh my gosh, they should keep listening because you're great, you put on a great show, so hopefully, hopefully, anybody that you bring on the show is fantastic as well. I like to think I am really good at helping people genuinely want to live up to their potential and actually develop frameworks for how to do it, whether that's with your physical fitness, whether that's with your personal development, your mindset, mind state, all of the things. One of my favorite things that clients and friends tell me is like, when I'm around you, it makes me want to kick ass. So you're going to, you're going to want to kick ass after this, from a really healthy, like happy place, I like to say, I like want to run through a brick wall all the time.

07:59 Well, that's because you chose caffeine after two o', not I think it's the fourth one, I think it's the fourth, for those of you who may be wondering like okay, emily, what does she do?

08:08 - Chase (Host) How does she do it? You are a women's health and fitness coach. How would you describe yourself professionally?

08:14 - Emily (Guest) right now? Yeah, oh, my God, what a loaded question. So I run a health and wellness coaching company focused primarily on women for the last almost nine years. So Phoenix Athletica started off as and we don't get finished, I know we're turning nine this year, like the fuck Um, I've been a content creator for over 10 years at this point, so I started in 2014, kind of more formally. Uh, I also am a personal development business mentor. So I've worked one-on-one in the personal development and business mentorship space since around 2021, a little bit more quietly and then getting a little bit more loud about that here in the next like month or so.

08:45 Really kind of formulating my first official offer in branding and business development. Because, as I think it's funny, like as a a business owner, I started because I wanted to run a fitness coaching company, because that's what I loved doing, but along the way, I learned that I love branding. Because I think branding is kind of like fitness, where there's so much. It's like this umbrella, there's so much under it. That is like the personal development, the inner stuff, like the because I also view everybody as a brand. Like it kind of started as a joke of like I would tell my friends like you're really on brand right now and that's just authenticity. So I I am one of those people that I do kind of dabble in a lot of things and I love the whole. Like coming around to the phrase Jack of all trades, master of none, but always better than a master of none, like I think there's so many people.

09:29 - Chase (Host) You're a Jill of all trades, hell yeah. Or Jacqueline, jacqueline, jacqueline of all trades. She feels a little spicier. I like Jacqueline, yeah.

09:37 - Emily (Guest) Jackie, jackie, jackie.

09:41 - Chase (Host) But I want to divide this conversation into a couple of different categories that when I think you and your brand brilliant, I kind of these come to me. So health and fitness, business productivity I kind of like combine that a little bit with business. And then my personal favorite, spiritual gangster. So what is the number one thing you think most people are struggling with in their health and fitness journey today?

10:05 - Emily (Guest) Oh my gosh, information overload. Information overload from social media, because what's happening is people are getting inundated with don't eat animal products, eat only animal products. Eat sticks of butter. Avoid saturated fat at all costs. The air is toxic. Don't go outside. There's mold in your house, don't be inside. Like there's so much information out there that people are trying to process and apply to themselves, and there's so much that it's gotten to a point where people do nothing. They either do nothing or they do too much of the wrong things and they never actually establish a baseline of the right things, and then they hop from thing to thing to thing to thing and wonder why they're not getting anywhere. It's because the things that they're doing it's like they're. Have you ever heard like the big rock, little rock?

10:53 - Chase (Host) analogy yeah, yeah, yeah.

10:54 - Emily (Guest) They're filling the thing, they're filling the container with all these little, teeny, tiny rocks. Never put the big rock in there. And now there's not room for it because they're trying to tongue, scrape, ice roll, cold plunge, infrared sauna uh, fucking like apple cider vinegar before every meal. And they've not yet figured out that you should maybe like take a walk and you know, focus on your breathing and eat some more protein and fiber. But there's not room for that now because they're so overwhelmed with all the other things that they're doing.

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12:55 So if you'd like to learn more about one of my favorite longevity nutrients C15 essential fatty acid, the only ingredient in fatty 15, today's sponsor make sure to click the link in the show notes or head to fatty15.com. Slash ever forward to save an additional 15 off of their already discounted 90 day starter kit. Fatty15.com slash ever forward code ever forward at checkout to save an additional 15 off of their already discounted 90 day starter kit. It's like, uh, we're getting caught up in the minutia, yes, and like that's. I recently had Cynthia Thurlow on the show and she drove that point home in such an amazing way. About those things work and there's a time and a place. But honestly, like literally everything you just described, that should really be years, years down the road of like the icing on the cake, the fine tuning that's so well said.

13:49 - Emily (Guest) Well, even with like and this is actually something that Kira and I talked about when we had her on the show yesterday is there are a lot of people with functional health issues and that's becoming, you know, really, really popular for professionals quote, unquote to talk about now. But even people that are having, say, maybe, gut issues, hormone issues, all this stuff, they're jumping into these really intense protocols without the big rocks. They have not learned how to manage their stress or sleep or eat kind of balanced meals and then they're getting put on this super intense SIBO protocol or elimination diet or hormone balancing supplements, and it actually makes the problem worse than if they focused on some baseline stuff.

14:25 We see this with our clients all the time focus on some baseline health stuff for like three months. That deeper stuff starts to resolve itself more, and then if we need to go in with some targeted support, great we do that. But we solved 50% of the problem with just the big rocks. But it's not sexy. You can't sell the big rocks.

14:43 - Chase (Host) What is the number one thing you see most people struggling with, and they don't even know it. What I mean by that is what area of their wellness, health, fitness, nutrition do you think is turning into a future problem because it is not being prioritized enough now?

15:00 - Emily (Guest) What's happening between their ears? Uh, for we work primarily with women, but I guarantee this is a problem for men too the beliefs that people, especially women, have about their bodies, about nutrition, about exercise, about how all of those things work together, about what's even possible for them in their lives, with their health, all of these things. So many of us are walking around with these unconscious but just devastating, limiting beliefs about ourselves, and thoughts don't become things. Beliefs do so. When you believe I will never be a healthy person or one of our kind of common client, things is, I will never live in a body that I love while living a life that I love.

15:43 - Chase (Host) Whoa, whoa, whoa. Please go back and say that again.

15:45 - Emily (Guest) I will never live in a body that I love while living a life that I love. Whoa, please go back and say that again. I will never live in a body that I love while living a life that I love. Yeah, deep shit, right. When you walk around with that belief, or whatever belief it is that you have, you will act on that belief and you will find things that confirm that belief. Even if we just talk about your reticular activating system, it's looking for similarity in your environment to confirm what it already knows. So if all you believe, and have been taught to believe, is bad things always happen to me, I always fail, I always mess up, I can't rely on myself, I'll never be healthy, I'll never be this, I'll never have that. You will find confirmation of that, 100%, and so you find what you're looking for 100%, and so you find what you're looking for a hundred percent.

16:25 So the actually the majority of the work that we do with clients. It's also it's almost become like a yeah, the fact that we're really fucking good at nutrition and training is like this nice icing on the cake, but what we're really going to do is deconstruct your entire belief system around you. Congrats, have fun, like here we go.

16:39 - Chase (Host) I didn't see that in the brochure. Right, sure, right. It's very hard to market.

16:44 - Emily (Guest) I don't really know how to say this. You're going to get what you need. Yeah, we don't know what that is yet, but we'll find out.

16:51 - Chase (Host) That's a really great approach.

16:52 - Emily (Guest) Yeah, it's fun.

16:53 - Chase (Host) I bet you get really good results.

17:00 - Emily (Guest) We get when I tell you and it's been one of the most like humbling experiences of my life, especially now that I have coaches that work for me, and it's not just me when they send me, I kid you not we have received, like, saved as PDF or word document, multi-page reviews from our clients about how their coach has changed their life, about how every step of working with us from their, you know, enrollment call with one of our enrollment coaches to, you know, being onboarded by our admin team to working with their coach has changed everything for them. And I would take five of those, over a hundred of like. I lost 20 pounds, like they lose 20 pounds too. Fantastic, cool, but just the deep.

17:35 Our, our actual like missing mission statement is fusing science and soul for lifelong transformation, and so it. But it's a full inside out. Everything about you changes. You go from feeling stuck to self-aware, self-trusting, all the things. But yeah, fucking pages, pages on pages, on pages. I am also like the luckiest business owner to have the coaches that I have because they are fucking phenomenal at their jobs.

17:59 - Chase (Host) But just we'll save the business talk yes, we're getting there um who is more coachable in your opinion, men or women?

18:08 - Emily (Guest) I actually think women. So I think women are and I think women make some of the best athletes. When we look at how women have, some of the women are some of the toughest motherfuckers you will ever meet. I firmly believe that a lot of that is because, like, we go through monthly periods from the time we're like 13 or 14, childbirth all of the things women have when you can really get them to tap into it, especially just like a bite they have, like a kind of thing, and they're also generally very open, very open and receptive to feedback.

18:41 So, as long as you establish trust with a client and somebody that you're working with versus, I think, especially in like health and fitness, men often think they know it all and not in like an arrogant way, but they're just like, oh, I don't need anybody to help me, kind of a thing, and actually my, my boyfriend also kind of does this same work and he's like, yeah, women are much more coachable than men because they are not like, oh, I know everything. But I think women have this beautiful combination of drive of also like and this is something that you have to be really careful of as a coach but like women, and I've experienced this as a client. Like want to please their coach. They want to make you proud.

19:18 - Chase (Host) They want to. I can see that.

19:19 - Emily (Guest) Yeah, I've had clients be like if they've had a week where they messed up like I'm so sorry, Like I don't want to let you down and I'm like dude, you can't do that. That's not possible. But women also will push through, for better, for worse, and this is how we get ourselves into like deep internal health problems. But like women will fucking push through anything for something they want.

19:37 - Chase (Host) That's a really interesting point, you think. Is that more because women are more? Is that like empathy, or is it kind of like I want to put myself in my coach's shoes and I don't want them to be disappointed with what they're doing, or is there something else?

19:49 - Emily (Guest) You know, I think and this is something that we actually really try and repattern with clients, I think women are, have often have habits of people pleasing and also we get a lot of like our kind of core client archetype high performing women also often have highly perfectionistic tendencies.

20:06 So they've often also come from, you know, athletic environments when they were growing up, when they did want to be perfect, be the star student, be the star athlete, make their coach proud, never let anybody down, and that's all like an internal thing, right, it's like you're more scared of letting yourself down and showing to yourself that you're imperfect. So when we can, you know, identify that and flip that on its head and make it a little bit more of a healthy kind of drive and motivator, um, but I do think a lot of that like coachability comes from a deep desire to please and, for some people, perform. Um, so it's not always from like the healthiest place, but when we can create awareness around it and create kind of a, a healthier framing of that same kind of core desire and core thing, we can now make progress from a much healthier place. But yeah, I think it comes a lot from like really wanting to perform, please prove which is deep cultural shit.

20:56 - Chase (Host) Perform, please prove. I like that. I feel like that's. That's landing on a lot of people right now yeah. Um. What is a more female specific approach to fitness? You have seen work for most women and same question for men.

21:10 - Emily (Guest) Yeah, absolutely so I I joke, and I was actually talking with, like my Uber driver from the airport about this.

21:15 She's asking me you know what I do all the things and I was like men are so much easier to work with physiologically, um, because, and and obviously everyone is going to have their own like bio-individual problems, right, but when it comes to purely like fat loss, muscle building, but especially the fat loss component, because men don't have the same kind of environmental safety sensitivity, if we want to call it that, which I'll kind of talk on more when I talk about women, their bodies can be pushed a lot harder, a lot longer, especially when they're younger, without the same repercussions. Like men can pull their calories lower, and it's like the, the age old joke right Of like, oh, my boyfriend has literally said this. He's like, yeah, I didn't eat pizza for you know, three weeks and I lost eight pounds. And women everywhere are like fuck you man. Like I looked at a pizza and gained 10. Like, and so for men, I think really successful approaches for men come more from and actually this applies to women too but I think when you can give men especially a lot of men that come from athletic backgrounds like a similar kind of framework to follow, so having something that's really fun, really engaging game plan where they can feel directed, where they can feel like, hey, I've got a rabbit to chase. Um, I have something that mimics the athletics that I grew up in, that kind of thing. And then you know the diet stuff. It's really easy balance of protein, balance of carbs, balance of fats finding what works, you know individually for them. I think they're they're much, much easier. You know, get enough sleep, lift some weights, you're going to be good, um, so men, I think, are generally like a lot easier, um, they're going to have more kind of hard gainers, I feel like. I feel like actually women sometimes build muscle a little bit easier, just depending, but, um, for men a lot easier for women.

22:55 I think there has to be on the coaching side and this is where the dominance of my experience comes from the last nine, 10 years is with women.

23:04 You have to be a lot more mindful of their, their total environment, because the female body, it the, the menstrual cycle and being able to carry a child, whether you want it or not, it's a vital sign.

23:16 So your body is constantly scanning for feedback of am I safe, am I in a position where my female physiology would be safe to do what my female physiology is built to do, and that's grow and birth a kid. So if we're talking about environmental influence, the female body is super sensitive to stress. Whether that is just stress stress, whether that's training stress, whether that's nutrition stress, all of those things any one of those things in a high enough dose for that woman could make it impossible for her to have a cycle and have a baby, or not impossible, but the body's like nope, don't want to do it. I'm getting feedback that if we birth a child into this world, this is kind of like if your body could talk, I think is what it would be saying this is not a good condition for a child to come into the world, so I'm going to make sure that we don't do that.

24:06 - Chase (Host) We saw it all the time in basic training. Yeah, like, I think like after just a couple of weeks it was like a disclaimer that all the drill sergeants had to say to like the female soldiers was hey, if you don't get your cycle, it's because of all the extra stress and crazy physical demands. And yeah, it would be like three months no cycle.

24:19 - Emily (Guest) Absolutely. And so there's this concept called energy availability, which is that's what largely what's going to drive whether or not you have a cycle. So energy availability is, if you take the energy you consume in a day minus the energy you expend through exercise, energy availability is what's left over for every physiological process. So that's digestion, your brain, your menstrual cycle, those kinds of things. And so then if we are in a situation where energy availability is too low, which most women energy availability is too low, which most women energy availability is too low because they are training a lot, they're not eating very much. The average client that comes to us and I kid you not, this has been 98 plus percent I would put money on that of women in the last nine, 10 years 1200 calories or less per day with a high training volume.

24:59 Adult women Wow, yeah, and it's often worse. I've had average 1100,000, like fully grown adult women. Women that are doing CrossFit four times a week, like CrossFitters, are some of the worst, if we're honest. Like that I've worked with, yeah, in terms of just like not fueling appropriately. But if that energy availability gets too low, your body's then like, okay, what is a nice to have and what's a need to have Menstrual cycle. Reproduction is a nice to have, but then, as soon as that goes, I always explain to clients. I'm like hey, if your physiology is not working the way that it's meant to be working, everything else is going to be harder Building muscle, losing fat, feeling good digesting.

25:37 - Chase (Host) Keeping muscle.

25:38 - Emily (Guest) Yeah, keeping muscle 100%. So when we're in a position where those factors aren't optimized for and everybody wants to yell about, like calories in, calories out, if you're in a deficit you're going to lose fat, we actively see that not work because there are different things at play. So, like when your hormones downregulate if you have been in a low energy availability state for a long time, different metabolic processes are going to just kind of go down. Thyroid hormone is going to decrease, digestive function decreases. So even if your digestion is not functioning the way that it's meant to, you're not assimilating nutrients the way that it's meant to, you're not absorbing nutrients the way that you're meant to.

26:12 So there's all of these things that like you could be like yeah, my watch says I'm burning X amount of calories and I'm eating X amount of calories, but like that's not actually what's happening. You could be actually your actual internal metabolism is burning even less. So a lot of women come to us. They're like I it's like the harder I try the worse it gets, and so it's like well, I know exactly why that's happening.

26:34 It's because you're putting your body, you're digging it further down in this hole, when actually the answer is to feed you up a little bit to decrease that systemic stress. So let let you know. I know everybody wants to talk about cortisol. It's not the demon that everybody thinks it is, but if it's super high or if it's even super low, that's equally problematic. But let stress kind of balance out. You're going to feel a lot less inflamed because you're probably holding a ton of water because of the stress that you're under.

27:00 Let thyroid hormone come back to normal. Have a consistent menstrual cycle for at least three months, if that's something that's been not present. Digestion should be great. Sleep should be great. Sex drive should be great. If you don't have a sex drive as a woman, that's like check engine light kind of a thing. Same thing with your cycle, but we spend some time bringing calories back up to where they should be and also just getting you eating consistently. Most women are not eating a consistent amount of food, protein or like total calories, protein or fiber on a day-to-day basis and they're constantly doing this. It's like the weekend warrior thing where throughout the week you know you're barely eating anything. Then on the weekend it's like alcohol, brunch dinner, like all these things, and your body's like bro, could we like? Oh, water, like they're like. You gave me iced coffee and a one leaf throughout the week and then on the weekend you're saying tater tots and nachos and pancakes and bloody fucking marys are you kidding me?

27:54 - Chase (Host) my emotions and my metabolism, and everything.

27:58 - Emily (Guest) So as far as like best strategies that work for women time and time again getting them to eat enough total calories, enough protein, enough fiber, strong, solid resistance training stimulus there's. I am so sad to see and I predicted it like two years ago seeing kind of the fear around women getting bulky and training come back. I predicted that that would happen. In here we are like it's gotten worse, um, and we see more creators making content about you know, here's how I went from like muscle or from bulky, to like lean and tone and I'm like you mean how you got skinny, like I only worked my toning muscles.

28:33 - Chase (Host) Yeah, just my tone. I don't know why I only want to do this when I see toning muscles, just like flex my tricep, just my toning muscles. This is really good. I'm actually gonna have you do an ad for this, I think this is great. I don't need to do anything anymore I don't want to look like toning right, right, but yes, like getting women to lift fucking heavy consistently.

28:53 - Emily (Guest) Like it's funny because the the resistance around resistance training, people think they're gonna, you know, lift some weights moderately and look like a women's physique competitor. And I'm like that's an arrogant thought for you, because do you know if you knew how much cause I grew up in bodybuilding?

29:12 - Chase (Host) right. Like guys, would love to look like a women's physique competitor. I mean, and that takes frigging work it takes.

29:17 - Emily (Guest) You have to be so on point 95 plus percent of the time with your training, with your nutrition, with your recovery, with any substances that you may or may not be using, Like it's very common at that level, because it women just don't get that way on accident. So what tends to actually happen when women get really, really strong and that's individual, like what strong means is, you know, subjective for everybody but when they can train three, four times a week, it doesn't even have to be anything crazy Progressive overload, balanced nutrition, sleep, focusing on some even five minutes of breath work a day to help with that parasympathetic regulation, Like all of those little like very unsexy but helpful things. What tends to happen is you get tighter, you have a little bit more tone, Uh, that's, you have a little bit more tone.

30:05 You have a little bit more just muscular density, but still have a really really nice feminine shape. You don't just look like a CrossFitter or a women's physique competitor overnight, so it's really honestly just like simple shit. I think something else that is kind of undervalued in the kind of female body composition performance space is kind of treating yourself more like an athlete. So instead of just doing you know oh, cardio for fat loss, like do some fucking sprints. Have you ever seen a sprinter's ass like oh yeah, the juiciest the juiciest glutes in the whole world.

30:36 - Chase (Host) Fast twitch fibers.

30:37 - Emily (Guest) They do wonders, yeah so learning how to be fast and explosive, one of the best things you can do for body composition. And like you don't really even need to like reduce your food that much because you're just performing at a level. So you get a lot of really good recomp that way.

30:52 - Chase (Host) Yeah, I love everything you said. One thing I'll highlight, or kind of cap, is when I was working with clients in this capacity, that was probably the number one thing that was most mind blowing to everyone, man or woman, was you are inconsistently under consuming calories.

31:09 - Emily (Guest) Yes.

31:10 - Chase (Host) Did I say that correctly?

31:11 - Emily (Guest) Yeah.

31:11 - Chase (Host) You're not eating enough calories consistently and we would use an in-body body scan to measure muscle mass, body fat mass, all of that and I would show them. This is your basic metabolic rate, meaning at rest. If you just laid on this table for 24 hours, your body would burn, for most men about 1800 ish calories, for most women between 1400 and 1600 and same thing. We would kind of do like a just a recap of like about how much food they think they're eating way less, especially the women and what I would tell them. We need to get you up to 1600 calories at least a day to lose weight. They were just like does not compute, what do you mean?

31:50 - Emily (Guest) Yes, it's crazy, it's the biggest does not compute. Because also, when we're talking about that and like this is where I try and handle these conversations with just like so much care is asking a woman to do that, asking a woman to eat more food and not focus strictly on weight loss for X amount of time, you're now going against everything. She's been taught probably since she was four. You know, and that's a huge part of my background. Like growing up in dance, our dance teacher wouldn't keep certain snacks at the front desk because they contained too many calories and so she didn't want to sell them to us. She would routinely go and like pinch at girls, fat in front of everybody. Yeah, she told me when I was eight that I would never be a professional dancer because of how my body looked. I was eight.

32:33 So like this, you copy paste that into different environments for different women, especially in white culture, like white beauty, all of that Like it's like an epidemic. So then women are taught and they ingrain this and they don't even realize that the less I eat, the smaller I am, the less hunger I have for anything food, life, success, all of the things. I'm falling in line and I'll be safe. So it's this much bigger conversation than just food, calories, health. It's your entire concept of what being a woman is in the world well, I didn't prepare enough for that so I'm gonna have to go on to the next question anyway.

33:12 All right, so kind of derailing, but still in the health and fitness space.

33:16 - Chase (Host) What are your, what's your thoughts on fasting is it overhyped or actually a secret weapon?

33:20 - Emily (Guest) oh see, I love this question. I love this question because and this is something that again uh kira she's one of our coaches at phoenix did a podcast yesterday, and this is one of the things that I'm like we're talking about this because she's a functional medicine clinician, uh, and we're bringing in fully functional offers for our clients.

33:33 But the fitness industry like as like the bro fitness industry, right, or what we think of as the, you know, lift weights, eat protein fitness industry, and then the wellness industry. So like the functional, the people that lean really heavy into Eastern all of that stuff. They butt heads like this all the time. They're like at odds with each other. There's so much to learn and so stereotypical fitness bros are like it doesn't matter if you fast, if it's a calorie deficit, if you're fasting and you're in a calorie deficit, it's the deficit and not the fasting.

34:01 - Chase (Host) And what an accurate um not the fasting, and what an accurate um reenactment. That sounds wow. Right, I'm signed through you know.

34:07 - Emily (Guest) So watch what unzips my skin, it's me. But the I don't think necessarily ubiquitously right Cause I'll give you an example Um, but ubiquitously, just having somebody fast for fat loss, it's not like the best approach, it's not what you need to do to lose fat. If it helps you stick to a deficit more consistently, fantastic. And also there are so many things that fasting can do for you that will make the rest of your life better and, in doing so, might make fat loss easier. So one really core example digestion. So when we think about how the average American eats, we're surrounded by food all the time, right, and so the analogy that I give to my clients is I'm like hey, when you are consistently eating, you are consistently asking your digestive system to do a job. So if I'm your boss, I love where you're going.

35:00 Oh yeah, so if I'm your boss, I walk into your office and I'm like, hey, um, I need you to do this and have it to me in 30 minutes. And then I leave and then, 30 minutes later, I'm like, oh, by the way, need this in an hour, come back in. Hey, by the way, um, do you have that thing that I already needed from you? But also, here's another thing that I need from you in 15 minutes, you're going to be stressed out of your work done and it's going to be chaos for you, right? Digestive system is kind of similar. We need an average of three hours between meals for our digestive system to actually do what it needs to do, right? So when we think about people that are just kind of constantly pounding food every hour and obviously like performance athletes, it's even tougher for them, because they do need that consistent influx.

35:40 Yeah, you got to keep stirring the fire, right, right, right. But for people that are eating, you know, just kind of mindlessly picking every like one to two hours, you're actually probably actively making your digestion worse and kind of like we just touched on a little bit when we're not appropriately digesting our nutrients, we're not appropriately using, assimilating, you know, sending them all out to do their jobs, right. So even just something like a very low effort. Like I like to make things as easy as possible we don't get extra points for things being unnecessarily difficult. But like I unintentionally intermittent fast, right, like I'll have my last meal at like six o'clock, cause I like to have several hours before I sleep to digest, so I sleep the best. And then if I have breakfast at like eight or nine, that's a 14, 12 to 14, you know maybe even 15 faster.

36:21 Yes, exactly, and my digestion functions so much better when I do that versus when I have my last meal, you know, 30 minutes before bed and eat right when I wake up. So even just like low level things like that, because when there there are cellular benefits to fasting right Like we don't get in like typical Western culture, like regular apoptosis or autophagy, but we imagine if you never took your trash out right Like it would pile up and pile, up and pile up.

36:47 - Chase (Host) You're killing the analogy game today. I love it, thank you.

36:50 - Emily (Guest) It's like she knows her shit everybody.

36:52 It's like I have, like you know, science, but when you're never cleaning stuff up, at some point you're going to run into problems. So even just having, like other cultures do this, naturally they have like spiritual fasting practices and you know, because it's, you know, been more spiritual and less sciencey, like the science community is like, ah, well, that's just like bullshit, but like there's a lot of other cultures that are a lot healthier than us. But even just from again, like a giving your body a chance to do the cleanup that it needs to do, there's huge utility in that. And you know we've.

37:21 Even I was actually talking with Kira about this yesterday.

37:23 She, from a fat loss perspective, she, we were trying, you know she was trying everything with a client to get her to lose body fat.

37:29 You know she was working through some gut stuff, had a lot of really like emotionally heavy stuff going on, so fat loss wasn't responsive. She got her up in her calories and then they were like, okay, we've been here long enough, let's try fat loss again. And so Kira was like, okay, she's very one of the most intelligent functional medicine clinicians I've ever met in my entire life. She's like you know what I'm going to try having you do a fasting protocol and this is something that you know you should do under the guidance of somebody that is, you know, intelligent and you know is credentialed in this. But she's like, we're going to have a modest calorie deficit for the majority of the week, so it's 1700 calories a day for this individual, and then one day we're going to have a fasting mimicking day where you're going to have 600 calories on that day, like daily intermittent fasting Nope, just normal eating, okay, and then like choosing a fasting day.

38:12 Yep, a fasting mimicking day, yeah, and so on that day, 600 calorie day again. This is something that you should do under the supervision of a professional. Automatically started responding again.

38:22 - Chase (Host) How so Like?

38:22 - Emily (Guest) what did that look like? So, finally, could lose fat. She mentioned, you know, in this client's check-in photo she's like and you could just see the inflammation drop in her face, especially faces. Are we're going to see a lot for just like faces and skin quality? Um, not just in facial skin, but like body skins, where you're going to see a lot of like cellular health, Um, but just really really swift drop to inflammation was actually responsive to fat loss. Again, and you know we don't. This is stuff that we don't necessarily have data on because people don't care about like fat loss and healthy people that much.

38:50 - Chase (Host) Right, that's such a good point. Nobody's ever going to care. No one wants to do a study on fat loss and already like guys with like 13% body fat yeah, not happening.

38:59 - Emily (Guest) But the kind of thought process there is is like, because this is somebody that's maybe not practicing any kind of like daily mild fasting, having this one dedicated day easier to fit into her schedule, but we get the benefits of your body having that time and space for cleanup, and so it's something that I really I one of my predictions is that the fitness community will maybe start embracing some of this here, because there are benefits.

39:25 And I kind of asked her I was like you know, you think there's any benefits for people that are just like at maintenance or in a surplus for doing something like this? And she's like, absolutely Like, when you treat your body like a full unit we call it the mind, body, spirit triangle in like how we work with our clients when you treat it as a full unit in terms of all of your systems, all of your different organs, and then also like that mind, body, soul part, it's going to function better when you treat it as a holistic thing versus trying to separate yourself from all of its different parts. So I think a lot of these modalities like fasting, I think trying to polarize like this is good. This is bad, is a poor use of any tool. It's a red flag for me when somebody is like automatically no, unless it's something that we have overwhelming research on, like trans fats, um, but yeah, anytime we try and kind of blanket like this, even stuff like Ozempic, I'm not against it, like I think it's life-saving for some people.

40:15 - Chase (Host) And also news alert Ozempic is not new.

40:18 - Emily (Guest) No, it's been around for what Like 20 years.

40:19 - Chase (Host) Decades, yeah, decades yeah.

40:21 - Emily (Guest) And so it's just like saying at any time of health it's my number one red flag in any health professional. When it's like always bad, all of the time I'm like you don't know shit.

40:30 - Chase (Host) Yep, which brings me to my next question what do you, right here right now, want to call bullshit on the most in the fitness and nutrition space? And also, have you ever called BS on something and been wrong? Yeah, it's time to heat up your winter. Available for a limited time only, the Element Chocolate Medley is back. This is a tasty trio of flavors featuring chocolate mint, chocolate chai and chocolate raspberry, designed to be enjoyed hot on its own or swirled into your favorite recipes. It's a tasty and healthy way to heat up your winter. See, element helps anyone stay hydrated without the sugar and other dodgy ingredients found in other popular electrolyte and sports drinks. And that's because each serving delivers a meaningful dose of electrolytes, free of sugar, artificial colors or other dodgy ingredients. And you're gonna get a free sample pack with your purchase. No questions asked, refund policy. Free shipping on all US orders. Check the show notes for the link or head to drinkelementcom. Slash ever forward.

41:35 - Emily (Guest) Oh, let me think about the wrong one, because that might take me a second. Not because I'm always right, oh fuck. I'm sure there's things I've been wrong about.

41:44 - Chase (Host) Oh, I've been wrong about not calling bullshit on. Enough things, yeah.

41:48 - Emily (Guest) Yeah, well, okay. So this is one that I'll actually kind of like bullshit, call bullshit on my younger self.

41:52 So, this is actually something that a lot of fitness coaches did when we were trying to kind of calculate for fat loss. And you may have run into this because of like when you were a fitness coach, but like the teaching is one pound of fat equals 3,500 calories. So if you want someone to lose one pound of fat per week, they need to be in a 3,500 calorie per week deficit, so their daily deficit needs to be 500 calories per day. So as a coach I was like, okay, well, if I want my client to lose a pound of fat per week, then I got to cut their calories down by 500 calories per day to even start, and so we can see where maybe for like a guy that's consuming you know, 3000 plus calories per day, that 500 calorie drop is probably, you know, a little bit more doable. Still going to kind of suck, but like doable.

42:33 - Chase (Host) Yeah.

42:33 - Emily (Guest) But you get a woman who's eating 1800 calories a day and I'm like bro, I got to take you down to 1300 right off the bat. It works sometimes but, it doesn't work, but that's how I tried to do it.

42:44 - Chase (Host) That's like shaving, almost like a third of someone's total daily calories.

42:46 - Emily (Guest) Well, and then it's like when that stops working, what am I going to do? Bring it down to 1200, 1100. And so, like earlier on in my coaching career, I would try and do that and I'm like this isn't the way, like this isn't it. And so then, after you know time of trying that and doing that, I'm like there has there has to be something different, especially too with women and how sensitive they are to their kind of like food and stress environment. So then I was like I'm going to call Bush on myself and try doing something different. And so now I will average maybe a 10 to 15% starting deficit with any of my clients.

43:17 - Chase (Host) much better response starting deficit with any of my clients. Much better response, really much better response. Do you say that from like the um kind of uh like body composition number on the scale perspective, or more qualitative in terms of it's more, they're able to be more adherent to something like that. So therefore, long-term they reach their goals and they keep it.

43:35 - Emily (Guest) I would say it's both. You know, because you could write that, because, actually, to something that's come out more recently I forget who put this out but the extreme deficit protocol for, like, rapid fat loss and you know, under controlled conditions, you know, we cut your calories down. I want to say they did it by like 50%, so a lot. So cutting your calories in half, basically, and you're only supposed to do it for like two weeks, and it worked really really well for people that could be adherent to it, right. So it's like one of those things where if you're a seasoned fitness professional and you kind of know what you're doing and can keep your wits about you that way, cool, go for it.

44:05 Most people can't do that. Most people are. They're going to have poor cognition, poor focus, they're not going to be able to execute on their jobs, they're not going to be able to show up for their families, much less themselves, and so I could give someone the most, I could give someone the what I think is the best macro split, the fucking best training program I've ever written. But if they can't do it, what does it?

44:28 mean it doesn't mean anything. So giving somebody the most adherent protocol or the most easily adhered to protocol that I could. But also I do believe in the kind of opportunity. This is a really interesting thing that I've seen with women. A lot is in taking, especially that more like moderate approach in entering fat loss. We'll get before just purely fat loss recomp for like the first four to eight weeks, honestly, and clients will get really confused.

44:54 They're like why is this scale not look going down? And I'm like look at your pictures, you look completely different.

44:59 - Chase (Host) But Look at you.

45:00 - Emily (Guest) Yes, I've seen like your numbers in the gym are going up, like something is happening here, so we'll see kind of this weird like.

45:07 - Chase (Host) I bet, if you got diagnostic labs too, yeah, the body like if there was like a DEXA scan, right.

45:12 - Emily (Guest) It would be night and day difference. So we little bit of recomp in women first and that's like gold standard. If I could take advantage of my newbie gains phase 12 years ago all over again like it would be game over everybody, like I would do so many things differently, right?

45:26 You're like it's like youth is wasted on the young, like recomp is wasted on the fitness. Newbies Like, oh man, if you're listening to this and you're just starting out in fitness, like take advantage of this time, eat more than you think you probably should for fat loss and train really hard. But getting that like sweet spot of recomp before fat loss is just pure fat loss. Right, it's not really pure fat loss, but like more kind of devoted fat loss. That to me is a coach Gold standard. Gold standard.

45:51 So preserving metabolism, preserving muscle, keeping people in it for longer, that kind of thing. When we're not as extreme, especially right off the bat, all of that stuff is going to be able to kind of keep going for a longer period of time versus, we know, in more extreme deficits. You know, the the more weight that you're losing, the faster. If you get above like uh, I think want to say like one and a half, two pounds per week, you're probably losing more muscle than you would want to be losing unless you're like an extreme obesity situation where you can lose larger amounts and it's not, as you know, quote unquote bad body composition wise, but yeah, for an average person, more than one and a half, two pounds a week on average.

46:26 You're probably losing more muscle than you want. Science.

46:29 - Chase (Host) Yeah, love it.

46:30 - Emily (Guest) I love when I actually get to use my degree Like.

46:34 - Chase (Host) I'm like man I haven't done this yet.

46:35 - Emily (Guest) Like, and it's the thing you keep it, it's in the library but you're talking about so many other things. So no, I appreciate this.

46:39 - Chase (Host) So much I love it. Um, speaking of adherence, what makes people adherent to their health and fitness goals and what have you seen derail the most people Is?

46:48 - Emily (Guest) it the workout? Is it the diet? Yeah, I think what keeps people in it the most is learning how to deconstruct how you're thinking about what you're doing. So I think one of the biggest things that people think they lack is discipline, and people try and rely on motivation and they quote, unquote, don't have discipline. That's true for some people, but when we actually take and we break discipline down for example, I actually had a behavior change analyst like reflect this back to me about me, and she's like when you're being disciplined, so you get up in the morning, you put on your gym clothes, you walk out the door, you drive to the gym almost without a second thought, right, she's like there's so many mental overrides that are happening for you that you know you had to go through the you. You don't listen to the part of your brain. That's like.

47:39 - Chase (Host) I'm tired.

47:40 - Emily (Guest) You don't listen to the part of your brain that's like I don't want to, but it doesn't mean it's not there.

47:43 Yeah, it doesn't mean it's not there, it's just a lot more. It's a lot quieter now because I also now have the knowledge of I feel better when I do this kind of a thing. So I have those overrides versus and like cultivating this in yourself, but kind of learning, like people think of discipline as this kind of you know, hard ass, kind of like you either want it or you don't, kind of a thing, and in reality it's actually much more like um systemy structury of all of the different things that your brain is scanning for before it does a thing, and so having those processes become more automatic and learning how to create Kira actually called them bumper lanes for yourself in like your fitness and your life.

48:25 So that way it's a little easier for you to execute on those things. While it's becoming more automatic because there is like the that kind of like liminal space when things are you're learning how to do them, but they're not automatic yet, but they're kind of getting there kind of thing. So kind of learning how to hack yourself, hack your day, hack your schedule. One of my favorite kind of things to work on with clients is, very like James clear atomic habits. You know how do we remove or create friction in in your health and fitness stuff? So we want to. We want to.

48:52 If you're not familiar with atomic habits, one of the concepts he talks about is friction, and so you want to remove friction from the behaviors that you want to encourage. So, for example, if you want to make it easier for yourself to go to the gym, aka remove friction from that behavior, something like setting your gym clothes out the night before, something like choosing a gym that's closer to your house or closer to where you work versus farther away, like those kinds of things. It's going to make it easier to execute on that habit. It's going to make it harder to not execute on that habit versus. We want to create friction with the habits, behaviors, thoughts, beliefs that we want to reduce or remove. So if you keep, you know, if you're trying to eat quote unquote healthier and you keep a bowl of candy on your counter, we want to create friction by taking that bowl of candy, putting it on a top shelf in a cabinet, behind a door.

49:36 So, yes, you have to go through it because essentially, what you're doing is you're booby trapping yourself and you're creating more opportunity for your kind of observer awareness mind to kick in and be like hey, do you really want to do that? Cause so much of our behavior is automatic. So when we're trying to kind of shift an automatic behavior that we don't really like that much, then we want to make sure that we create plenty of opportunities for kind of the not lizard to kick in and be like hey, remember, we don't want to do this thing, You're just used to doing it.

50:03 - Chase (Host) So let's think and if you want to get really heady about this stuff, I mean just like a great practice for anybody is, just spend an hour and, before you do anything anything, ask why am I doing this? How is this so easy? How is this so difficult? Just question everything you do in a process and you will learn so much about what is automatic, what are your habits, what has friction, what is frictionless, and then just take that concept and apply it to whatever the thing you're actually there to work on. Yes, like you already do it.

50:32 You can do it, it's just already built into a system or you have to create it.

50:36 - Emily (Guest) Yeah. So I think people struggle the most with trying to like unpack their, their drivers, behind what they're doing and what they're not doing, uh, and to like just in a very kind of practical, less kind of heady way. It's like life is hard right now, like being a fucking human, what are we doing? What are we, especially in America? Like what's going on? So people are stressed from fucking every different direction, right, and so figuring out how to even start doing all of this stuff, like so many people, it's like you know, oh, it's not the right time. It's not the right time. It's not the right time because they have all these other things going on so they just never start to begin with.

51:12 So, finding the the lowest barriers to entry, I think people probably look at, you know, health coaches like me and like you and like, oh, you want me to just do the hardest thing. You want me to, you know. You know, get to, you know, the gym three to four times a week. You know, do all the things, check all the boxes, right, and I'm like, no, I want you to do the thing first that you will do the most. Like I, if that's going for a 20 minute walk outside fan fucking tastic. I would love if you took a 20 minute side out outside walk every day. If it's going to like a dance class, great, you're moving Fantastic. If it's, hey, we're not going to track all of your food, but we're going to track your protein, great, okay. Um, we maybe aren't tracking fiber all the way, but like you're having like a little chia seed concoction every day to help, just, you know, take a little chia seed shot One of my favorite fiber hacks just soak some cheese and some water for five minutes, and hydration hack too.

51:58 - Chase (Host) Yeah, a hundred percent. They hold, like what like 10 times their mass or weight or whatever in water they get like a little gelled up Like yeah, do that Great, whatever the lowest barrier to entry is, because that foot in the door right, the.

52:12 - Emily (Guest) We talk about friction. We want to use another kind of like physics analogy inertia. The hard, one of the hardest things for people is overcoming the inertia of starting a new thing. So and then once you get it going, the thing in motion stays in motion kind of a thing. But that initial just like, or it doesn't feel natural, just doing something. Well, okay, we're moving a little bit. We're moving a little bit.

52:32 - Chase (Host) It doesn't feel natural yet.

52:34 - Emily (Guest) Right. And then you start doing it and you're like, hmm, you get like the positive feedback. You're like, hmm, I feel good. I feel a little bit more like emotionally regulated. Oh, I can feel a little less bloated, oh, I can poop every day. Oh, I'm sleeping seven hours instead of six. I am happy. And then you're like I want to keep doing that, so whatever, that little like thing is where. You're like okay, that's how I start, that's how I start and start consistently versus start, stop.

53:00 I think that's the biggest thing. And what was the second part of the question? I forget.

53:03 - Chase (Host) I think you kind of hit it. It was um, what is the most? What makes people adherent to the health and fitness goals, and what have you seen derail the most people from adherence?

53:11 - Emily (Guest) Yeah, and I think another thing with adherence is being realistic, because there's also so much conversation around what's optimal right and what is purely scientifically optimal might not be best for everybody. And even in like the stereotypical health and fitness space right, like most people are like, yeah, 0.8 to 1 gram per pound of body weight, of protein, and I'm like cool, most of my clients are probably at like 0.7-ish because that's still plenty. If we're talking purely about lean mass, like 0.8 to 1 gram is probably like more rigid for like athletes, especially like higher end one gram per pound, and like, yeah, we have kind of seen that people that do have those higher end protein intakes tend to stay a little bit leaner. But like, is that staying, you know, two percent leaner worth it to the mom? That's the recreation, the lawyer in new york that's worried about client dinners.

53:58 - Chase (Host) The whole thing Exactly.

54:05 - Emily (Guest) Versus we can, you know, be 90, 95% of the way there with a protein intake. That is much more doable for them that then they don't feel defeated all the time because they're not hitting it. I've seen coaches try and get women to eat to lifestyle clients to eat 200 grams of protein a day and I'm like for fucking what Like this woman is 160 pounds.

54:21 No, they're just training. But they go to people that have been bodybuilding coaches and are primarily bodybuilding coaches because they see the transformations that bodybuilding clients get or even with, like, the level of, you know, adherence that's expected. We've had people come to us from bodybuilding companies and they're like, yeah, my coach made me hit my macros within you know plus or minus three grams and I was never allowed to have, you know, an untracked meal and I'm just a general fitness person?

54:45 - Chase (Host) Yeah, for general.

54:45 - Emily (Guest) No, absolutely not Right, that's I'm like.

54:48 - Chase (Host) I mean why?

54:49 - Emily (Guest) Literally. Why? Literally why? Unless you're competing in bodybuilding like that, it's not good for anybody, because that's actually not teaching you anything about how to live. Yeah.

54:58 - Chase (Host) Another thing I see going on in the health and fitness space now that's, in my opinion, kind of just getting some notoriety. It's nothing new for anybody in the space VO2 max. I see VO2 max rising in terms of popularity. Um, it's kind of on the front runner of the strongest indicator of longevity because we see that correlated to an even causation for decrease in all cause mortality. Last year it was cold plunge and sauna and it was this and that. Have you heard anything of VO2max? Do you think this is a trend? What is true in your opinion? What weight do you kind of hold to VO2max?

55:33 - Emily (Guest) I've never measured it in a client and I would probably never measure it in a client unless I was working with somebody, that is, if I decided to go into the like, yeah, I want to work with Ironman athletes or triathletes or whatever. And you know, one of my clients does triathlete or triathlons now, but I'm just her nutrition coach, her performance coach, worries about that, and so if we had and like I, even kind of like that's great schooled her performance coach a little bit because he was having her stay lower carbon.

56:05 I'm like your training is carb dependent. We need more for that for you, and then it helped her. So it's like I think I think, with all like the fitness trend stuff because would be a two max, is it a good measurement for sure, probably best done in a lab setting, which most people don't have access to and they're not going to like as a recreational fitness person. Right, if we're talking about like trying to optimize longevity, something I would be more curious about seeing is like waist to hip ratio, because that's going to tell you more about somebody's visceral fat ratio versus they're more like gynoid fat, which visceral fat is a much stronger predictor of mortality. Then it's a more accessible one too, because anybody can get a $3 tape measure and tell me their waist to hip ratio any day, any time, versus having to go and do this test, right? I think what's more of a concern for me as a fitness coach is you want to talk to me about VO two max testing. Most people aren't meeting the bare minimum for aerobic exercise recommendations per week.

56:50 Like why are we starting up here?

56:54 when we're not down here Like, so it's getting it's again. It's getting people to focus on the apple cider vinegar, the fucking ice rolling, Like we're trying to use these, really these detailed detail metrics that are probably only the they're the most applicable for really just like sport focused athletes. I'm not saying it has no utility, but I'm saying there's things that should be getting way more airtime, that we're not giving the airtime because they're not as sexy or as scary. Like you can tell somebody like, oh, if your VO two max isn't this, you're going to die sooner. And somebody is like, oh, my God, like terrified.

57:28 - Chase (Host) Yeah, the statistics around it can be pretty alarming but yeah, but like know your population.

57:33 - Emily (Guest) Well, and also like, if you want a better VO two max, you're going to have to do aerobic and anaerobic training. So if you're not already doing that, why the fuck are you testing your view? Like I also think you have no business most for most people trying to test your body composition and getting a DEXA scan If you're not already consistently doing the the little like the training, the nutrition, all this stuff. Because what are those metrics going to do? They're going to discourage you because you haven't given yourself a chance to work up to any of that Right. So like, if somebody goes and they've never done fitness before and they get a Dexa and you know you're a female and your body fat percentage is 40, you're going to feel so defeated and most likely so ashamed of your body that you don't even want to go to the gym.

58:11 - Chase (Host) It's like finally admitting out loud and to yourself that I'm thirsty. And instead of going to the water fountain, you go straight to the fire hose department.

58:21 - Emily (Guest) Yes, that's it, you got the analogy why?

58:24 Right, why, why? And I also think like there's probably some like weird human kink where we're like I want something to feel bad about myself for, and so I'm going to latch onto this metric, or I again like the scare thing, like the more the people are already in such a state of fear around their health and around their fitness and around their relationship to their bodies and all of that stuff. I would rather us focus on the things that maybe aren't as like laser focused from a purely quantitative data perspective, but they get us doing the things that improve that quantitative data. I would put my if I'm going to talk about something and I'm going to give voice to something, it's the things that we know we need to be doing but we're not doing.

59:02 - Chase (Host) I found back in my coaching days, um the, the clinic that I ran we also did a lot of. It was concierge medicine, so it was already a different type of um population and inside of that population was like executives, high performers, and we would offer I would do. We did sub VO2 max testing and also like a Cooper test and so I found that worked better in terms of a motivator and adherence tool. We could offer it as like a package, but I would also only recommend it when I could pick up on like a personality type client. So if it was like a really, if it was an executive, a C-suite type A, if that's what I picked up on after working with them for a while to go. They need that extremity, that high, that number up on the board.

59:48 - Emily (Guest) They need a rabbit, Exactly OK cool, let's do the VO2 max.

59:51 - Chase (Host) Hey, let's do the DEXA. Hey, let's do any and every test. I can give you it was more like that quantification aspect coupled with personality type. But, give you to, it was more like that quantification aspect coupled with personality type. But again, you have to be very cognizant of who are they, their labs, like you know, all these other determining factors that go into being a good coach and making a recommendation. Yeah, I found that to be really the only main time I would ever recommend it or even want to like do it repeatedly as if it was that kind of personality type, not necessarily even like what they, what they wanted.

01:00:21 - Emily (Guest) Yes, there is such a nuance to coaching, which is why I do get really frustrated and like even really intelligent professionals will do this. Like Huberman, like we'll talk way outside of his scope of with this stuff, right, Like there's Huberman protocols now apparently for like cardiovascular stuff and whatever. And I'm like, yeah, sure, you're in the science space, you know you've done a lot of conversating with other professionals that this is their niche. But I'm just like, even when it is your niche and you are a professional like one of my friends her name is Alyssa DocListFitness on Instagram, she has her fucking PhD in this and she still places more emphasis on just getting people to do the basic things that we're supposed to be doing.

01:01:00 So, I think, for you know professionals sometimes, especially you know the people that are like super deep in the research, right, you love it, You're excited about it, you're passionate about it. That passion can, I think, get misplaced sometimes when we laser focus on this thing that we're just really excited about as professionals but not think about, like how disseminating that information is going to affect the larger population. Now, if you're just talking amongst you know your professional friends or colleagues, or like your audience is primarily like other coaches, other professionals, those high performing people, different population, but a level of care and just awareness around who you're talking to and that nuance there I think is really important in just opening up those doors.

01:01:39 - Chase (Host) Yeah, all right. My last question, and kind of the health and fitness category here, is clearly you've dropped a lot of knowledge, some science, a lot of experience. What is your process for continuing education? What resources or practices help you the most to stay up to date in the health and fitness space?

01:01:53 - Emily (Guest) Yeah, so I, the way I've hired people has actually been very intentional, um, and some business coaches would disagree with this, but I have purposefully hired women that are smarter than me in different areas. Um so, kira obviously incredible in the functional medicine clinician space. Our other coach, emily she is getting a PhD. She is studying the interplay between resistance training and gut health and how those two things affect each other. So just being for one around other really smart women, uh, we all ask each other questions and we all kind of contribute to the knowledge pool. And then, when it comes to continuing education, I think it's about finding a.

01:02:25 you know and I've spent tens of thousands of dollars on continuing education that I'm like that's kind of a waste of my money, um, but finding a box yes, 100%, but finding things that for me, I feel are of interest not just to me but to our community, and not just of interest to our community but of needs.

01:02:43 So for our community, that's more of the continuing education resources in, like the functional health and nutrition space, because we are getting more people that they, you know, I, I have a little bit more advanced education on, like you know, biomechanics and stuff like that through N1, fantastic resource for coaches, fantastic, especially in the training and training specificity realm.

01:03:02 Our population doesn't need that as much. Our population needs more of the like hey, what happens when your blood sugar is dysregulated? What happens when? Yeah, what happens? How do we know if we should test liver, gut hormones, all of those kinds of things. So, knowing my population and then I've been really, really blessed to know people in those spaces that are like hey, I have this resource, you know, I have this course, I have this module, whatever, and then putting my focus there. So, knowing our community, knowing the people that are going to come to us and what they need, that's been the best path for continuing education, because I do think there have been times when I was like, well, I find this interesting, of course, you're going to like the biomechanics stuff.

01:03:37 I think that stuff is fascinating, Like oh, lengthen position, shorten position, like amazing. And then our clients are like I haven't trained ever and I'm like, oh well, you just need a basic thing. I don't really get to use this that much, so it's just for kind of like my own fun. But knowing the population and like the population that we're working with and what they need the most, that's such a savvy, savvy point.

01:04:00 - Chase (Host) That is the perfect transition into, kind of when you get into like the business aspect of you, that I really think anyone who's in the health and fitness space that does this as a profession should really go back and pay close attention to that, because that's kind of as you were describing, that I was thinking about myself and anytime I would go to a seminar or a conference or, you know, buy a course, whatever the CEC was that I needed to meet that requirement. I was pretty much only ever pursuing the things that were of interest to me, yeah, predominantly speaking, like getting into advanced biomechanics, you know, advanced metabolism, neuroscience, behavior change.

01:04:32 Right, yeah, but then but then you know you would get. I would get frustrated and go when I would talk about this stuff with a client, why don't they get as excited or why aren't they applying it? And then it's like this is where you need to know your population, you need to know your client, you need to know your avatar. There's a time and a place for you to keep advancing that stuff personally, but when it comes to profession and especially the business, you need to be advancing the things that your population need and want now and need and want in, like the next one to three steps.

01:05:02 - Emily (Guest) Yes.

01:05:03 - Chase (Host) Whatever that periodization is, because that's how you're going to keep going in business. Absolutely Speaking of, how would you describe your current business model and what are the products or services that you offer?

01:05:15 - Emily (Guest) So this is fun because this is a very diverse question. So, you know, core thing that I've done for the last nine years now is health and fitness coaching. I actually have decreased my health and fitness roster a lot so that I can focus on not only running and growing the company but like doing other things. But as far as health and fitness coaching, our model is very high level. Well, actually, we have two within the fitness so and I did this very much so on purpose but we have very high level, high touch one-on-one offer. So you are working directly with a coach. You check in with them every single week. We are doing your nutrition and training protocols. You can choose to just do the nutrition protocols, but most people choose both nutrition and training. So very high touch. You know weekly check-in model. We place a heavy emphasis on biofeedback. You learning your biofeedback, speaking the language of your body. So, and also, too, it's just so that we have the information that we need right Like describe biofeedback.

01:06:01 - Chase (Host) Yeah, of course.

01:06:02 - Emily (Guest) So biofeedback is just a big fancy word for, like, what is your body saying? It's literally the body language. So how's your sleep, how's your hunger, how's your digestion, how's your energy, how's your libido, how is your mood? How is your? These ones I think a lot of fitness coaches miss How's your quality of life? How is your just emotional regulation? Because those things, while they can be impacted environmentally, can also be indicator of hormonal things, right. So just something is going on. So for somebody, if they've, you know, been in a deficit or in a really heavy training block, they're like emotional volatility might be like a little more up and down, or they're kind of like zest for life might be decreased a little bit. Um, so those things can all impact it. Right, but really getting people in touch with the, the mind, body, spirit triangle, and then people come to us with, you know, the typical fat loss, muscle building, goals, performance, all of that jazz. So the, the high level one-on-one coaching offer. And then, because I noticed a gap in my audience, it felt like a really big split, almost like a fucking Fisher in in the land of my people, if you will is there were the people that were like super easy, hell yes to a higher cost one-on-one fitness coaching offer. They're like yeah, I have a few hundred extra dollars a month that I can put into this. Sure, take my money. And then there's other people where. They're like I don't got it, I don't got it, and so I was like I still want to serve these people in some way.

01:07:26 So this last April actually, we launched our first subscription app called Vera. So we run it through a platform called Everfit. But it is a training habit lifestyle overhaul app. We have, you know, a full 60 page nutrition guide in there as well, so you can do some self-guided nutrition stuff. But the app is your one-stop place for getting all of your training programming. We have options for at home, gym, apartment gym, three, four, five days a week. There's habit tracking in there, so water, sleep, breath, work, mindfulness, fucking, eating, vegetables, whatever it is. So just kind of like your pocket wellness companion. And also there's a really, really fucking awesome community in there. So we did that in April so that we could have a lower cost offer $22 a month, $200 for the year.

01:07:59 So I was like I and like I wanted to make it something like to be full, like I profit a little bit off of it, but it's not like the most profitable offer that we have, but it's one that serves the people that it needs to serve, and I can do that because we have this more profitable offer over here it's a higher, higher touch point.

01:08:13 - Chase (Host) You can bring them in.

01:08:15 - Emily (Guest) Exactly so, kind of running those two offers. So the, the app is all mine. That was my kind of baby, that was my project, especially with me doing a little bit less of the one-on-one coaching within fitness so that I can, you know, run the company. Our coaches, their sole responsibility is their clients. Um, but yeah, having those two offers in the fitness space. And then, as far as I started working in the I still don't know how to describe it right Like the, the personal development I hate the word life coaching so I just avoid it but personal, spiritual development, business development, basically, like it's been a really cool thing because almost every single one of my high level, just one-on-one with me, mentorship clients has come to me for something different.

01:08:49 There's people that have come to me for business development. Most people come for personal development, but everybody's had kind of like a different thing that they need or want to work on with me. For a lot of women it does come down to like self-confidence, intuitive development, self-awareness, all this stuff. But then I've had people come to me for like hey, I need you to help me with branding and brand development, and I'm like, fuck, yeah, let's do it all that kind of cause. It's all connected Right. So I've had a high level one-on-one, much higher ticket mentorship options since 2021.

01:09:16 It's one that I've kind of just like you know, I've let that, let the people come and I've not really pushed it a ton in marketing.

01:09:21 - Chase (Host) We talked about this before I doing the same thing. I've been running a mentorship for like five years five, six years Um and same thing. I like really never advertise it. It's just kind of one of those things like the people come to youth.

01:09:35 - Emily (Guest) Yeah, yeah and it and it's worked and it is something that I love doing. So I'm going to try and be a little bit more out there about it. But then, for the first time ever here, within the next like month ish or so, I am launching my first group mentorship program all around branding. So not business development, but brand development, because I think those are two very, very different things.

01:09:53 A business is, you know, a business. A brand is a vibe. A brand is an energy. A brand is a magnetic thing, and so I uh the gap that I saw there, because it's another one kind of like when I started fitness coaching, people just asked me like hey, do you do this? I've been getting more and more people that are like hey, do you help people with this? And I'm like you see so many business coaches out there, right, and they're teaching you, you know, create content like this, do lead gen like this, do sales like this.

01:10:25 But nobody is talking about like, why do people want to work with your brand?

01:10:31 Because it's not a brand and I think because of how saturated things have become, whether you are a solopreneur, whether you run a team, things have become, whether you are a solopreneur, whether you run a team, like there has to be something standout about not just your product but the whole energy behind it.

01:10:44 Because I do think people want to be part of something right. They want to be some part of something bigger than themselves, and so when we actually rebranded from Emily Duncan fitness to Phoenix Athletica, our community was so excited. They were like this feels like me and I'm like that's good branding because now it's speaking even more to you, the person that it's supposed to speak to. So just seeing how many people out there and like since I've talked about the offer, I've gotten so much diversity there of like fitness coaches, people that work in pharmacy, people that work in real estate yeah, like wanting to get into more like virtual pharmacy, consulting kind of thing but like so many people that are like within my niche, there's people that like kind of lack brand and personality and like I think that's a thing that could differentiate me. So I want to learn and I'm like it absolutely can.

01:11:26 - Chase (Host) That's fantastic, amazing. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, I'm super excited.

01:11:29 - Emily (Guest) It's been fun to to even just think about doing right and so to have it received well and with excitement. It just makes me pumped and also like you know the standard like personal development things, of identity shifting where I'm like imposter syndrome who am.

01:11:40 - Chase (Host) I to do this.

01:11:41 - Emily (Guest) It's going to everybody's going to hate it.

01:11:43 - Chase (Host) Well, no, it's so true. I mean, I think about natural human tendency is we want to do business? We want to do business with somebody because of their brand before? We know anything about their business. Yes, yes, and we connect with their vibe. We connect with who they are and how they do it long Like I will give somebody my money. Based on that long before, most of the time I'm like okay, so this is how you work and it's this and then it's that, and then it's like this is the value exchange and this is the timeline.

01:12:08 I mean, personally I don't work that way, but yeah, yeah, no, people want to.

01:12:13 - Emily (Guest) and this is also, I think, too, where it's really important that the brand and the business should be cohesive, right, like you shouldn't just have like this shiny, like wizard of Oz curtain that once it's, you know, peeled behind, there's a lack of cohesion there. Like that, how, how I will be teaching branding and how you know I've spoken on it to like clients that I worked with on this is like there should be a through line between your content, the way that you're responding to people in the comments in that content, the way if you're doing anything you know, like enrollment calls or sales calls, like how that communication happens, how your clients are onboarded, how you talk to each other as a team. Like all of that should should blend together. Nothing should be jarring.

01:12:50 - Chase (Host) Yeah. So with all this growth and your coaching business and the new branding business, where does delegation fall? What does delegation look like for you and how do you navigate trusting your team to deliver your business and your brand?

01:13:05 - Emily (Guest) Absolutely so. Delegation, we were actually talking about this when you were on my show earlier today, but I was so resistant to it for I ran everything myself, everything YouTube, podcast, business all of it by myself for five years, didn't?

01:13:18 I hired somebody to edit the podcast for maybe like six months? Um, but outside of that, all me, solo woman, one woman show, the whole thing. And then I hit a point where I was like I can't scale anything by myself anymore, like we've re, we've reached that ceiling. Everybody kind of had, or like you know, with my knowledge and my you know, things that I thought to do, I'd reach that ceiling for my own capacity. So I was like the most logical next step, it seems, is to hire. What do I want to do? So I was like what would be most useful? And I was like what are the problems that I'm having?

01:13:47 And it was like, well, I can't take any more clients on myself, so there needs to be some other kind of coach here. So I need to kind of delegate in that way. And then it would be really really nice if I could just focus more on what I'm really good at. So the coaching, the content creation, all that stuff I hate admin work. No, I don't want to do that Like ew. So I was like, okay, if I can find some kind of like admin assistant, great. So those were the first two positions that I hired for, and especially when it comes to admin, that was one where we got maybe like two, three months in of me just delegating admin work and I was like I'm fucking delegating everything.

01:14:22 - Chase (Host) Oh my, I told you, I was like, I am now the personality hire.

01:14:26 - Emily (Guest) I am the vibe master and nothing else anymore. Like this is great. Now with that, and you're asking you know, hey, how do I, how do I trust people to kind of represent the brand and continue to build?

01:14:38 - Chase (Host) it Because delegation is more than like hey, here's a role that.

01:14:40 - Emily (Guest) I need filled.

01:14:41 - Chase (Host) Here are the requirements for it. It's a lot of trust.

01:14:44 - Emily (Guest) So much trust and trust when something you you have to, in my opinion trust people enough to not micromanage them, but you still have to have enough of a lens on what's happening to be able to identify if something is a miss or something is, you know, not going the way that it should be going.

01:15:00 And so for me, there have definitely been times when I didn't have enough of that touch and then things got a little clunky, a little messy and I'm like I got to go back and fix some shit. So with that, I think something and something about the culture I've created that I'm really really proud of is I've created a culture where and this is, I think, something really important for leaders where there is so much trust that and there's so much love, like genuine, felt love and support, that it is like a sports team where it's like hey, we're on the field together. If you fuck up, I'm going to look you in the eyes, tell you that you're fucking up and I need you to step up, and it's all love afterward, like and that's something that I think not a ton, and I didn't grow up in like traditional sports, I grew up in dance but very much similar culture, like when you were on a dance team together. Like dance is one of the most cutthroat places you could ever be Right.

01:15:44 - Chase (Host) I hear yeah.

01:15:56 - Emily (Guest) Oh, it's another like cutthroat environment. But you know, pretty much everyone on I think everyone on our team grew up in like a sporting environment. But everyone on that team, sporting environment or not, there is a, there is an energy there, a collective energy where I can freely give feedback. I I try to make sure that I give feedback in. I like the phrase loving, but firm, or loving and firm, so that people know like, hey, this is serious.

01:16:15 You know, if we had like a client complaint or if you know, admin messed something up with tracking financials, like you've got to know, or like the content team, if they fucked something up, I'm like I have straight up told people like, hey, this is not okay for X, y, z reason, it's all love, but like this can't happen again, kind of a thing. And being able to have a culture where you can give that pointed feedback, I think something that women do a lot and I definitely did this, you know, earlier on in. You know being a coach and even running a team is trying to soften like and not soften in like a nice way, but just like a hey girl. You know, like this was kind of it was good, it was good, but you know, just like this one little thing, when really it's this fucking huge thing.

01:16:52 - Chase (Host) You're like, oh my God, this was such a big deal, like why did you, why did this happen?

01:16:56 - Emily (Guest) Yes.

01:16:56 So delivering the feedback with the gravity and this is actually something Chris has even helped me with you know, just as we've been together, like staying in my firmness and like the the gravity of what it is that I'm delivering, and then afterwards like how's your fucking day, how's your dog, how's you know what's going on, like you know just kiki, a little bit right, like having that both and kind of culture that is where.

01:17:17 And then like people, I think too, if you have a team and there there's delegating happening, it should be clear what consequences are If KPIs aren't met, if standards aren't met, all of that stuff. So even you know, for us like so having clarity on like consequences. But I think something too that's been really really helpful for us is it's and I this is something that I teach as well as you know every single person on your team should know what the company core values are. You should review them regularly, quarterly, if not monthly, um, so every quarterly meeting we will review core values, mission statement, all that stuff. And it should be known to your team that these are things, because I can't watch you all the time. I'm not with you there's going to be, on the fly, decisions that you have to make.

01:17:57 - Chase (Host) Or will.

01:17:58 - Emily (Guest) I no. That's why I delegated, so that I don't have to do that Right. And so your core values as a team should guide that person's behavior all the time, but especially when you're not around. And then if maybe they didn't handle it correctly but you're like, hey, why did you do this this way? And they're like, oh well, you know, we have this core value of this. I'm like you know what Good job. Here's how I maybe would have done it differently, but having clear core values, clear, you know, just if X, then Y, expectations, consequences, all of that stuff, so that everybody's on the same page.

01:18:27 - Chase (Host) I, I love that. Thank you. Yeah, one thing that kind of rings true for me and what you just said was explanation, or I should say explanation of why. Not just because, and when I kind of think back to you know, this year of growth in my business, maybe this is just like old habits and you know, going from like a one man show for so many years to growing the team and also I think a lot of like old military habits is, this is, these are the rules, this is the SOP and you just do it and me, my approach is okay, like you tell me what to do, I do it and then only if I come up like a hard wall am I going to go. But why? Explaining of like this is why we do it. You know, this is how we set up this, because if we don't, then it translates this way to the client, or if we, you know, whatever explanation beyond just a list of things to do, I think helps immensely with delegation.

01:19:25 - Emily (Guest) Yeah, and kind of what you're talking about as well is like, as leaders, I think there's like a misconception that, like as a leader, so many things have to be like mysterious, right, like you know, your team should know very little, I think there's there's some things where it's like, yeah, they don't need to know like every single thing, but the and especially too, when you have a team, where it really is like team this is you know how, when you do this, it affects this and this is why this thing is this way.

01:19:49 The more you can loop people into like how your brain works as the leader and like the mechanics behind that, I think that also builds a lot of trust and understanding, because I think, naturally, people, when they have a deeper understanding behind the way something works, it's easier for them to show up and do that thing versus it being like this Well, I don't know why I'm doing this thing, you know, I think that's a very natural human thing. So, leaders being a little bit more open and like, just you know, hey, cluing you into my process I think there's so much value in that, absolutely.

01:20:19 - Chase (Host) Oh, all right, my last question. In our biz category here earlier this year we connected on a, an area of your ecosystem, your content, your business, and you wanted to I think I'm getting a direct quote here push, push season, particularly like in your podcast. How did you know and how do you know, when it comes to business, that you are ready to push, ready to amp things up, and what does pushing look like in your business?

01:20:43 - Emily (Guest) Yeah, ooh, I love this question. This is so good Cause there's like a practical side and then just like an energetic side. So, on the practical side, I think something that a lot of business owners should do, if they're not doing, is not just tracking your financials, but tracking the trends in your financials so that you know here's my high season, here's my low season. We experienced kind of the same fluctuations every year. Like you know, black Friday biggest time, slight drop off. After that spring picks up a little bit again summer, everybody's fucked off.

01:21:16 So like knowing what yeah, nope, everybody's like I don't know I'm on a boat but like knowing where your ups and your downs are, because then you, you push in different ways, right. So it's like in maybe a down season in sales. That's when you're working on, like project development, you're working on offer development, all of that stuff. And then, if I know, hey, black Friday's coming, that's a push season. So we're really pumping out like the, the heavy content, the, the, the offers, that, this, that that kind of knowing the trends that your business typically follows. And you can kind of flip that on its head too If you're like, hey, I know we're entering a low season, I'm going to go into a push there to try and bring that low a little bit higher. You can do that, um, but for me, just like energetically so on, like the less logical, more felt felt side of things, uh, I am somebody that I am energetically.

01:21:55 I'm like a horse in a stable. I'm like let me out like, let me like as a natural energy, right, but every more like a like a fucking wolf hunting. I like describe myself as just like a person but like I went through kind of like a three year, honestly like very much so like internal personal development place. I would think I was out of it and then I was right back in it, kind of a thing. And I've kind of started arriving at this place where I'm like I feel like the lessons are kind of crystallizing and I just could feel that kind of if you vision like, envision like the horse, like the, when they're doing this with their hoof if you're listening to this you can't see, but I'm awkwardly like swiping my hand on the table like a hoof, like getting ready to go, like I could just feel that kind of buzz, that hum in my own just kind of inner space. And so I'm very much so like. Uh, I like feel sometimes kind of like weirdly split between logic and intuition and like I feel like that's a a weird thing sometimes because people kind of sit both or like more towards one than the other, but I feel very like equal in both. But when that feeling happens, I'm like it's go time. It's go time. I don't always know what go time means, but then I kind of like tune in. I'm like, okay, what feels goey?

01:23:01 And you know, the podcast was one of those things. I was like this is also too. Just thinking about like hey, what is not just good for my business, cause it's good for my business to, you know, come on here and like talk and be visible, right, but what's not just good for my business? But like what do I have a lot of fun, what I get really fired up about, and that's really good conversations, right, and so there's a huge opportunity there. It's something that I enjoy, it's something that I have gotten feedback on. That I'm, you know, you're.

01:23:26 - Chase (Host) I love having you keep coming back here, right? Thank you.

01:23:29 - Emily (Guest) Thank you. And so, literally, my brain I was just. Like you know, I'm turning 30 in May. Like I, I I love a temporal landmark. So I'm like bro we got to finish senior year of adulthood strong before we turn 30.

01:23:41 - Chase (Host) Like let's fucking check some boxes Like your year never happened. It's senioritis forever After 30, it's like forever senioritis.

01:23:49 - Emily (Guest) Yeah, but for me it really is like and this sounds so like I sound like I could be from LA in this but like tuning into the feedback of my soul and like what, what feels like? What are? What archetype are we embodying? What is the felt energy of this season? And also to like kind of tuning into my team as well, and for them they're a lot of, them are in like personal growth, kind of not finalization, but like we all kind of feel this energy of hey, I feel a next level, self-loading, and so now that I have had that happen multiple times in my life and I'm aware of what it's like biofeedback right, it's like I'm aware of what those little pings are, for me, let me be really intentional about this space and blow it the fuck up. I love it, thank you, I love it, thank you. And now that I've said it, I have to follow through on it. So that's another good thing right, yeah, that's.

01:24:37 - Chase (Host) That's the part about push in. Business is like, okay, I've, I've learned to pay attention to this thing. I might not know the exact application of it yet but, I, know that I can't keep that horse in the stable, because if I do that I'm leaving, quite literally, money on the table.

01:24:54 - Emily (Guest) Yes, opportunity, yes, 100%. And something, too, that I had to really warm myself up to and come to appreciate. I had this moment this was back before I'd hired a team, um, and I was like so it was just me, just me doing my thing, Like I obviously had my obligations to my clients, but you know, I didn't have team meetings or like other kind of like time-locked obligations, which anybody that works in an office is like fuck you, you literally work from home, no matter what you're doing, and I'm like understood.

01:25:20 - Chase (Host) Um but.

01:25:21 - Emily (Guest) I just like taken my time with my morning routine one day and I was like, getting to the gym later and I was just, you know, being a little bit lackadaisical about my day, Cause I could and I was like I just it hit me at a red light. I was like what if it's not always like this? What if you have more time-based obligations and you have a little bit less freedom because you've grown so much that you have more obligation? Like what? What happens when that happens? And it was kind of a light bulb moment for me of like, oh, there may have been times when you kept yourself smaller and kept yourself in the stable as that horse, even though you were brushing your foot on the ground because you didn't want to give up the life that you have now, even if the life that you were making was more exciting and more in the direction that you wanted to go Right.

01:26:04 So, accepting and really embracing that I will in, in any season of push, whether that's with like a fitness push or a business push or a personal development push you're going to brush up against change. That's uncomfortable and that's different, and you're going to want to resist that different because, again, brain is scanning for similar all the time and so meeting that resistance. And maybe it does mean I'm working longer days and I'm working harder days and I'm working more just in general. Maybe it means I'm working harder days and I'm working more just in general. Maybe it means I'm coming up against new problems. Maybe it means, as somebody that's been in establishing business for nine years, I have to embrace a beginner's mindset again.

01:26:39 - Chase (Host) Oh my God, that helps tremendously. Like anyone listening, if you feel stuck in your business, if you feel like this uncertain push, I don't know where, where to push any of those areas, try going back to the beginner's mentality, like the way that I have leveled up in business and in life, but definitely in business, by just going what if I don't know shit on your show earlier, like what, what if my model of business while it's been working, what if I completely scrapped it? Yeah, what if there's a better one?

01:27:10 - Emily (Guest) What would that look?

01:27:10 - Chase (Host) like. What would it look like to rebuild everything right now as an established business owner?

01:27:15 - Emily (Guest) And like, oh, all of again the ego, the personal development lessons, that like that comes up when you do that, yeah, yeah, most people will just never do it because it's like too much I'm going to even old ways, not really working, but I'm going to keep doing it Right. And like, how many times have we kept ourselves in painful but familiar places because the perceived potential pain of unfamiliar environments or things was too much for us to grapple with? Right, and I'm like I've done that enough times as, like a younger person and kept myself small enough that I'm like, bro, fuck it, fuck it. Like what do I have to lose? Kind of a thing. And granted, like we all have a lot to lose, quote unquote. But it's like I have this deep seated fear of like getting to the end of my life and being like I wish I had done that thing or bet on myself more, put myself out there more.

01:28:01 - Chase (Host) That's the number I'm going to regret. Anyone has Right.

01:28:03 - Emily (Guest) And so I'm like when I catch myself doing that, it's I got to talk myself out of my hey, you're doing the thing again where you're keeping yourself small, like let's kind of explore that, and also, don't you fucking dare, don't do it.

01:28:17 - Chase (Host) All right, we're going to go straight into the end here. Brilliant, the spiritual gangster portion of the show. Um, for anyone curious about like, why am I talking about spirituality with Emily Duncan? Go back and look at any of her brand, any of her content. Also like especially our last podcast it was a spiritual like ice cream Sunday. It was so good, I'm so glad, and so I want to ask you what does your spiritual life have now, in 2024, that it didn't a year ago?

01:28:50 - Emily (Guest) Oh, so I would say I had it a year. There's a couple of things actually, but I had these things a year ago, but they've definitely deepened. So one of the big ones has been breathwork. So I fell so much in love with breathwork that I decided, as one does, I'm going to get a breathwork certification so I can do this with some qualification, yeah, so in 2022, I got a breathwork certification and I was like, sweet, let's do this.

01:29:07 So 2022, I got a breathwork certification and I was like, sweet, let's do this, um. So I've been doing a lot more, just personally, especially with um, more kind of like somatic, like holotropic, like a lot more like breath holds, like almost like psychedelic, inducing state type breathwork. So that's been really really cool and fun to just deepen as a practice. But I think something that's it's even more is and something that's I'm really passionate about talking about right now, is arriving at a place in spirituality where it's it feels a lot more grounded. And this is not me saying that anybody that's like heavily, you know, into astrology or human design or this or that, is not grounded.

01:29:43 But I think there is a level of and I've experienced this right, like when I was kind of earlier in my spiritual journey where I would essentially attach myself to certain spiritual tools like astrology, like human design, to try and understand myself and understand the world almost in a similar way to like religion, which makes sense. I grew up in religion and then kind of left that. So it's like you want something similar, right, but I found that I was holding myself back so much because I was giving these tools so much power, like I was checking, you know, transit charts every day to, like you know, explain the energy or like, if my you know, when I met Chris, I'm like let me run our like compatibility, like in our astrological charts, and, granted, it was great.

01:30:24 But like I just kind of realized, I've become kind of like um, not jaded, but like a little bit jaded by different like spiritual presenting people too, because you kind of see behind the curtain and you're like when you are, you know talking with them and you know seeing all these kinds of different things happen and you're like I've seen you. I've actually experienced you screaming at me because of a conflict that we're in and then the next day on your Instagram story talking about how you process so much energy yesterday and you're feeling so much better and I think we have the same friends and I'm like very similar experiences.

01:30:59 I'm like you got me all the way fucked up and so just taking that and trying to then be like, okay, what feels like really good and really grounded and really practical for me, cause I am a very practical person. If it's, if I'm sitting too much up here in the ether and not enough in my real life, then what am I doing it for? Kind of thing, right? Uh, I can't actually physically ascend to 5d, I am in 3d until I'm dead, like, so we gotta, we gotta focus on the 3d a little bit more so. So it's been more so a uh, really leaning into the spiritual tools that feel the most impactful for me. So, whether that's, you know, plant medicine, that's one that I still really connect with, just microdosing again on a daily basis. Honestly, you inspired me with your whoop data.

01:31:44 - Chase (Host) I was like, let me get the performance from this as well. Increase my HRV 44% in like three months by microdosing.

01:31:50 - Emily (Guest) So I'm like, yeah, let's do that again. But breathwork I am somebody that I've connected a lot with just using like different decks of cards that like resonate with me to just kind of help me make sense of things, and it's never. I'm not taking this as predictive. I'm not taking this as like, oh, this is what's going to happen. It's more so like a what can this like symbolism and imagery help me identify about this experience that I kind of already understand but maybe don't have language for kind of a thing, right?

01:32:16 - Chase (Host) So it's more like a clarifier than a predictor kind of a thing, and it kind of sounds like you're in a position now to your point earlier of coming from religion and looking into these other protocols and systems for meaning, to just accepting things that are and what interests you to create your own meaning. Yes, 100 percent to just accepting things that are and what interests you to create your own meaning.

01:32:31 - Emily (Guest) Yes, 100%. So like one of my old friends would joke like, yeah, jesus was my starter deity, and that's kind of how I feel. Yeah, yeah. And I was like, oh, this is good. And now I'm like, oh, this is how I feel about every spiritual tool.

01:32:43 - Chase (Host) Jesus was my starter pack too.

01:32:45 - Emily (Guest) And you're like oh great, we learned from him, we, we learned from him, we don't need to like latch on to all of that.

01:32:49 Right and so like same thing, like if there is something about you know astrology where I'm like, ooh, that really hits like, let me explore this. It's all invitations to explore, not things to latch onto. And so really, I think one of the most kind of spiritual things that I have turned to more in this year and that I really encourage everyone especially with how popular spirituality is right now is never let anything become more trusted to you than your own inner authority. Never let anything trump that, because this will always guide you, and the more you try and outsource authority to something outside of yourself, it's going to lead you astray, right, and your own inner authority and being really, really tapped into that, that will never lead you wrong.

01:33:33 - Chase (Host) Spoken like a true psychonaut that I mean. It's hard to really say anything on top of that, but the the more I have gone in search of and the more that I sit across the table from other people that I admire and that I look up to and then I absorb and that propel my life forward, it really is that we, we go reaching for the stars, thinking that the answers are up there or in someone else's protocol or deity or dogma or whatever, and I think the few um select ones of us that kind of question things along the way, not in a like questioning authority, well, maybe, but like questioning, like like checking in. Yeah, also like questioning, like checking in and making sure that I'm on the right path. It's that you know. Okay, the further I got away from myself looking for answers, the more I come back to myself and you know, I think that's where real truth lies and real deity, personally speaking, lies is coming home yes, yeah, that's how you like embody your life.

01:34:34 Yeah, beautiful uh, well, we could go like two more hours, but, um, you have been on a podcast rampage over the last two days I could run through a brick wall.

01:34:45 Oh, man well I don't have enough renter's insurance to cover that but, uh, my last question, m and this is the third or third or fourth time now, and which I love asking this question, going back to the theme of the show, but also people have been on a few times I need to make it a better practice of kind of refreshing myself and going back to these, because I think it's a great kind of testament, through my lens and through the lens of the show, of growth, of evolution, of embodiment, of coming home ever forward. What does that mean to you today?

01:35:15 - Emily (Guest) Ooh, ever forward means continually facing your own shit, you know, because I think we can get in this place and I know I've been there when you get to this level of success or achievement or accomplishment and you try and like use that to distract yourself from all of the other things that you're still processing or still working through, that you're still not great at, because we all have stuff that we're not great at, right, we all have, whether it's finances and budgeting, or communication or tuning into ourselves versus other people's feedback all of the things.

01:35:47 If I am to continually move forward and if I'm going to live a life ever forward, I have to be willing, not just for myself but for everybody that I love, to be able to acknowledge and face my weaknesses, right and what the people that I love being like my immediate people and then also like my community at large, right Like there's. I have an obligation to all of the people that have chosen to love me and trust me, at whatever degree, and so continually facing the things that are really hard to look at and loving myself through them and growing through them.

01:36:16 - Chase (Host) I think that's a big one. I'm curious, I'm really curious. I think later I'm going to go back and pick up on your last.

01:36:22 - Emily (Guest) I know I want to like go listen to them.

01:36:24 - Chase (Host) I had this idea for um. I had this. One idea for a book is I want to take a lot of the EF answers at the end and kind of make like a little like coffee table book. You know that's brilliant. Especially now for the past, like four years doing this in person. I feel like I have some like great photos to attach to it, but also as a as a gift I want to like kind of just like, take and package it up and send it to people, so maybe you'll be my first.

01:36:47 - Emily (Guest) I don't know.

01:36:55 - Chase (Host) Run with this idea. I love and I love a coffee table book. I love, I'll design it, I'll, literally, I'll be, I'll be your vibes person like you're in branding now.

01:36:58 - Emily (Guest) Hey, that's what I'm here for, here we go, that's what I'm here for. But no, that's a beautiful idea. Like I've thought of different coffee table book ideas of my own. So anytime anybody's like this, I'm like yes, because also, too, it's like when you have the little um, like calendar, like the daily calendars that people have, like I think anything where, or like daily stoic, that kind of thing, oh yeah.

01:37:12 Anytime you can give somebody just like a quick bite, that's something that anybody can fuse. You could literally do a daily stoic of ever forward.

01:37:20 - Chase (Host) Like I might need to cut this and make it before anybody still has this idea. That's so good. Wait, that's so good.

01:37:33 - Emily (Guest) All right, I want you to check back in with me. I'm gonna give myself six months if I don't have wait.

01:37:36 - Chase (Host) I love this idea. That's that's so good.

01:37:39 - Emily (Guest) Thank you, of course okay this is why we collaborate on things. This is my brain, my idea. I'll fucking fight.

01:37:45 - Chase (Host) I have this trademark, so no one can or I'll sue your ass, all right and I'll fight you.

01:37:49 - Emily (Guest) I'm here with the bite.

01:37:52 - Chase (Host) Emily, I'm going to have everything linked for everybody in the podcast show notes, the description box on YouTube. Where can they go to connect with you and learn more?

01:37:59 - Emily (Guest) Absolutely so. The main hub is Instagram. So Instagram is just at EM underscore D-U-N-C, so M underscore dunk. If you're interested in fitness and wellness coaching, that is phoenixathletica with an fe. So f-e-n-i-x-a-t-h-l-e-t-i-c-a. That's a long one to spell, uh, website is phoenixathleticacom. But instagram is truly the main hub. And body radio wherever you listen to podcasts. I, I genuinely mean this. If you, you know, decide to come over on instagram, join the party, please send me a message. I will probably send you a message if I see you come in. I try and do that with every single person that comes into the community. But truly say hey, say I came from the show, like tell me what you're here for, kind of a thing. I got into social media on accident for one, but also because I love connecting with people.

01:38:40 - Chase (Host) So when I get to yeah yeah, so I truly mean it.

01:38:43 - Emily (Guest) Come say hi, ask a question. If you have it like, I'm available, so I would love to have you.

01:38:48 - Chase (Host) Love it. Well, it's great to have you back and I can't wait to do this again soon, right, I?

01:38:53 - Emily (Guest) feel like we've got like a good cadence.

01:38:55 - Chase (Host) Good cycle, absolutely All right. Well, thank you so much For more information on everything you just heard. Make sure to check this episode, show notes or head to everforwardradio.com