How to Fuel for Performance (and life)

Ever hit that point in a workout where it feels like the lights just went out? That’s “the wall” — and it’s what happens when your body runs out of glycogen. In this Garage Gym Athlete episode, Jerred, Joe, and Dave break down how to fuel for performance, stay energized, and eat smarter both in training and in daily life.

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Hitting the Wall: What It Really Means

Jerred explains it best — “the wall” is when your stored carbs (glycogen) are gone.
You’ve got about 2,000 calories of stored carbs in your body. Once they’re gone, your performance drops fast, and recovery takes time. It’s not as easy as taking a gel pack and bouncing back.

Key takeaway:
Fueling before and during endurance or high-volume work matters more than you think. Under-fueling in training leads to sluggish sessions, poor recovery, and lack of focus.

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Fuel Sources: Carbs vs. Fat

Your body has two main energy tanks:

• Carbs (glycogen) – quick energy for hard, fast efforts.

• Fat – slower energy, used mostly in low-intensity or Zone 2 work.

Think of it like a hybrid car:

• Electric = Fat burning (steady, long-term).

• Gas = Carb burning (power, speed, intensity).

Even though you’ve got over 100,000 calories stored in fat, your body can’t use it fast enough for high-intensity workouts. That’s why proper fueling is key.

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Dave’s 100-Mile Lesson: Overprepare, Don’t Overdo

During his ultra, Dave made it 100 miles without crashing. His secret?

• Carb fueling every six miles.

• Real food (PB & honey sandwiches, coconut water).

• Staying in a manageable heart rate zone.

He wasn’t racing for speed — just survival and smart pacing. That mindset made the difference.

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Match Your Fuel to Your Day

Not every day calls for the same intake.
Dave calls it “periodized nutrition” — shift calories and carbs based on your activity.

• Hard training days: More carbs, more total calories.

• Rest or easy days: Fewer carbs, more fats, moderate protein.

• Back-to-back hard sessions: Refuel glycogen to stay sharp.

Think of your food as fuel, not just calories.

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Fueling for Everyday Life Performance

You don’t need a race to think like an athlete.
Jerred’s simple truth: under-eating wrecks your energy, focus, and mood — even if you’re not chasing a PR.

If you’re training hard but skipping meals or eating light because you’re busy, you’re setting yourself up to crash later. And yes, that can affect how you show up for your family, your job, and your life.

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The Four Pillars of Daily Nutrition

Jerred shared his simple pillars (and an online tool to calculate yours at garagegymathlete.com/tools):

1. Protein – 0.7g per pound of bodyweight

   • Helps build and preserve muscle.

   • Example: 190 lbs → ~130g/day.

2. Calories – Bodyweight (kg) × 40

   • For 190 lbs → ~3,400 calories/day on active days.

3. Healthy Fats – 0.5–1.5g per kg

   • Supports hormones, energy, and recovery.

4. Fiber – 25–30g per day

   • Aids digestion, helps with fullness, and supports gut health.

   • Increase slowly — too much, too fast = regret (and stomach pain).

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Quick Wins for Fueling Smarter

Dave’s Tips

• Palm-sized protein with every meal.

• Eat real food, not just numbers.

• Track your intake for a few days to learn where you’re at.

Joe’s Tips

• Focus on nutrition concepts, not perfection.

• Build habits one pillar at a time — start with protein, then add more.

Jerred’s 3-Point Game Plan

1. Think like an athlete — even if you’re just living your life.

2. Adjust food intake to your training intensity.

3. Follow the “350 Micro Rule”: 3 meals, 50g of protein each, plus micronutrients.

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Bottom Line

Fueling for performance isn’t about race day — it’s about every day.
Whether you’re training hard in your garage gym or chasing kids around the house, eating like an athlete keeps your energy high, your recovery strong, and your mindset sharp.

Remember: If you don’t kill comfort, comfort will kill you.

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Garage Gym Athlete Workout of the Week

Podcast Transcript

Jerred (00:00.684)
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Garage Gym Athlete Podcast, Jared with Joe and Dave. Gentlemen, how are you doing?

Dave (00:07.711)
Doing good.

Joe (00:09.344)
Not too bad. Over.

Jerred (00:09.39)
Joe is doing fantastic. So here's the deal. I got a question for you. Today we're talking about fueling for performance. And I wanna know if either one of you have ever hit the wall. So the wall is that area where you just feel like you can't go on anymore, you're sluggish, you don't have the energy to continue. Have you ever hit the wall? Dave, I'll start with you. You ever hit that wall?

Dave (00:35.472)
Never hit the wall. I've done, I with some hard training I've felt like empty, like running on low, but never where like I couldn't go any further, like there was this wall that I just couldn't get past.

Jerred (00:45.432)
So we'll discuss it more. You have done a hundred mile ultra marathon and you didn't hit the wall, but we'll talk about that more. I'm very interested in how you made that possible. I mean, I know we've done an entire podcast on it, but maybe we didn't tackle it from this angle as much. Joe, have you hit the wall before?

Joe (01:02.302)
Not that I've been physically incapable of going further, but I have basically trained until it's been done in training till I was like, had to kind of lay down cause I was going to pass out like literally lightheaded really got really flush white. having an embarrane cause it was like, I was working out what it was. 115 degrees outside and probably just didn't have enough fuel in me. And it was just completely depleted. I think it happened the first time I did broken arrow, like the last calisthenics. was like, it was like over the hour mark. And I just remember being incredibly nauseous trying to do

Jerred (01:19.96)
Mmm.

Jerred (01:26.669)
Hehe.

Joe (01:32.226)
pull-ups and just trying to eat those out but not the fact that I just like had to completely stop. Closest thing would be Bahrain. I had to like go inside to the little little gas station sit on the floor in the gas station and drink something.

Jerred (01:46.847)
I've been in that situation before. I've walked into the back side of a gas station or like the back side of the, where they put the drinks, you know, like where they would fill it up from the back and just sat there and drank a Gatorade before, because I was so overheated from a track workout. but, going back to the wall. the wall is what happens when your body basically runs out of glycogen. So glycogen is stored, card carbohydrates, and you can only store about 2000 calories worth of carbohydrates in your body. You store it in your muscles and you store it in your liver. And then once they're gone, they're gone.

And it's really hard to recover from. so that's why it's so important to fuel for performance because going back to that, when it's gone, it's gone. If you really hit that wall in a race or in a workout training session, it's not like, okay, we'll just have a gel pack and you're good to go. Your body has, has hit an all time low and it's going to take quite a bit of recovery. And it doesn't really want to utilize those carbs right away. It wants to also.

Restored the glycogen, even though it will utilize those carbs. So you're just in this weird state where you don't feel very well. and so you have to try and stay away from that. The only place I've ever hit it, I've never actually hit it in races before because I probably. Overdo it in a race. maybe, maybe what you did as well, Dave, but like I kind of overdo it to where I'm, I don't want to hit that wall. So I'm making sure that I'm really well hydrated electrolytes, you know, carbohydrates. know Joe and I, don't know this happened to you too, Joe, but we ran that Spartan race together, like the half marathon version.

I overdid it with electrolytes to where like my fingers were like swelling up because I had too much salt, even though I, you know, was doing this, race, but it wasn't overly hot. So anyway, I tend to overdo it when we are in a race, but in training, I, it's the opposite. I. Underdo it. I don't, I don't do it enough. And so I've hit the wall multiple times and it's predominantly, it's always been in cycling where I'm doing like a.

Like a hard or longer ride and I'm probably burning too high of a heart rate, too many calories. And then I've just, I've hit this wall multiple times to where it's just not happening. Like I could keep moving. It's not a wall where you're like unable to move. It's just basically like the power went out, but you know, you're, you're still able to, keep going. And so, let's talk about fueling for performance today for all the garage gym athletes out there. And this is helpful whether you.

Jerred (04:11.457)
Have a race, don't have a race, you know, so on and so forth. So the quick other highlights I'll hit on before we kind of talk about this a little bit more is there are two main sources for your body to utilize as fuel. I already mentioned the first one, carbohydrates, glycogen, right? Stored glycogen. What a lot of people don't know is that you have over 100,000 calories typically on average stored in fat within your body that your body could utilize as fuel. Unfortunately,

Fat is not very easily converted to energy in a fast way. And so if you're like, well, if I just run out of glycogen, I'll start using fat. It doesn't really work that way. And fat is typically used at pretty low intensities. We're talking about zone two or lower. You're going to be utilizing fat as energy. So like me sitting here now doing this podcast, my body is probably burning predominantly fat and you know, some carbohydrates for the brain or whatever.

All these things are always working at all times, but just so you kind of understand, know, everyone listening understands that you have fat as fuel for very low intensity, and then eventually as the intensity increases, your body clicks over and when it clicks over, starts to burn carbohydrates, glycogen. And once it starts doing that, you know, you're running against how many carbohydrates your body actually has stored and can use.

Now what I need people to know is that most training sessions, even if it's the hardest 20 minute CrossFit workout you've ever done in your entire life, the chance of you running out of glycogen in a regular training session, pretty low. Unless you're really experimenting with trying a very low carb diet, something like that, it's not really going to happen to you. And so when you are thinking about utilizing these different energy sources, just think about it kind of like a car. So a hybrid car.

So if you've ever been in one, those like they switch from like electricity to gas, right? Typically it's electric when it is lower powered. So we're driving around the city, we're going 15, 20 miles per hour. It's relying predominantly on electric. But then we start going 50, 60, 70 miles per hour down the highway, it's switching over to gas. And so same situation with your body, the electricity in the hybrid car is the fat burning.

Jerred (06:30.197)
And then the gas is the carbohydrate burning. So big picture, that's kind of what it's like for your body to utilize these different buckets of fuel.

Jerred (06:43.079)
Dave, what did you experience in the 100-mile race when you were not running out of energy? How did you maintain that level of performance for 100 miles?

Dave (06:55.846)
I think like you, there's probably a little bit of overdoing it. So for background, my goal, got, for those that weren't familiar with the couple of podcasts that came out on it, that we did on it, it was sort of a, I say last minute thing, it was a few months of training and I had done even a, that's last minute 400 miles for someone who's only run a 5K before. But my goal was simply just to finish. So for context, I wasn't.

Jerred (07:10.903)
That's last minute for 100 miles. Yeah.

Dave (07:20.25)
I had a stretch goal in mind of wanting to get sub 24 hours, it wasn't like I was going out there to, mean, PR was anything finishing. So I was definitely conservative with resting and fueling and all those things. I wouldn't say over fueling, obviously I felt appropriately fueled, but doing some of easier digest carbs every six miles is when I would take a longer stop and every six miles actually sitting down resting, having some real food.

a lot of PB and J's, lot of PB's and honey's. But yeah, just a lot of PBH for the, it's definitely an ultra marathon staple right there. The guys had real coconuts there, so a lot of coconut waters from real coconuts. But yeah, I'd say probably overdoing it a little bit. And pace wasn't, like you and I talked about before doing it, I didn't keep it in zone two the whole time by any means, but was definitely erring on the side of not letting heart rate get too high. So trying to stay proactively in that.

Jerred (07:52.045)
Hmm

Jerred (07:55.726)
PB &H's, yeah.

Dave (08:19.997)
that I say fat burning heart rate zone even though I was probably primarily burning carbs still even at that at the heart rates I was at and just with how I was feeling by giving my body plenty of opportunity to use the fuel that I was eating versus having to run out of like a gin and then start pulling from muscle stores so a lot of proactive carb feeding with that.

Jerred (08:40.449)
Yeah, Joe, did you have any of that electrolyte issue I was talking about? I can't remember if that happened to you as well or if that was just me when we did that Spartan race. Like I consumed way too many of those. What were they? Electrolytes were not as big of a thing back then. And I it sounds weird to say, but it wasn't this whatever billion dollar market opportunity with like all these different forms of electrolytes you have now. You had to be like an endurance athlete to know where to get them. So I think it was salt stick the pills. That's what I was taking.

I'm not sure if they were very well balanced, maybe too much salt, but anyway, I was like, wow, I've actually consumed too many electrolytes in an endurance race, which is insane.

Joe (09:19.37)
Yeah, no, all remember from that one is we would always see people like eating mustard packets. And I thought that was really weird. Even now, like really weird just to like sucking down mustard packets. I don't think I had.

Jerred (09:29.005)
Is it like sodium in mustard? don't know. I don't know a whole lot about mustard. I know it has basically like no calories in it.

Joe (09:35.383)
Yeah, I have no idea. I don't think I ran into that there. I know I've had like the really swollen hands and fingers and stuff. Listen, I've gone on hikes because I probably over I probably overdo it on on lecture right sometimes some days, but not on really any events. That was like our beast that we did was probably the only event where I even had to think about intra like race fueling because it was just so long. I probably should have done it on my Cirque series because I totally sort of crashed on that one. But

Yeah, that was I don't think I really was worried.

Jerred (10:04.791)
So you have hit the wall.

Joe (10:08.222)
Not really. just know I was basically depleted. Like I was was pretty I was pretty tired and I didn't have much going for me, but it was it was all downhill. So was like, it's fine. I'm almost there. It's all downhill. I just kept on going. Yeah, that's fine. It's still just downhill because Cirque Series. don't know if you heard of them. It's like a mountain race. You're basically running up ski slopes. And the one I did was in Colorado. So when you get up the mountains like, OK, that was the hard part. I basically just it was basically like a fast hike up. And then we just meandered and jogged down. after I was going down, I was like, OK, I'm pretty dead. But it's all downhill from here. But the downhill just like.

Jerred (10:09.1)
haha

Jerred (10:25.591)
Mm-hmm.

Joe (10:38.256)
never ended because there's a lot of switchbacks. That was not really any fueling issues. haven't done too many long events but my brother recently asked me, he gave me a year advance to run the Baltimore Marathon with him and I told him to never talk to me again.

Jerred (10:57.933)
You said Boston Marathon Baltimore I was about to say I was about to say don't you need to you're gonna have to run a pre marathon to even be able to race in that marathon and it has to be fast right so yeah

Joe (11:01.386)
Baltimore Boston. have to qualify for, yeah. Cause I'm from Baltimore. Yeah.

Yeah, no, I Baltimore is not a pretty place. I don't need to go run around it. Yeah.

Jerred (11:14.293)
Yeah, I don't know. My marathon days may be behind me. have no idea. you know, with all of this knowledge on fueling for performance. So I think getting next into what we could talk about is like matching your fuel to your day and like how you can can utilize this. Like, what are your thoughts on that day?

Dave (11:31.667)
I think the interesting thing is, circling back kind of on why this is important for people is for the race, I mean, I think we know like, okay, I have a marathon coming up or half marathon, but how do we get the most out of our training daily is an important thing too. I think knowing, I think there's a time to be, know, challenge yourself mentally or not always be perfectly fueled. I think some people get caught in that of like,

okay, I need to have this pre-workout meal in this amount to get my workout done. like, no, sometimes you should be able to train fasted and see how your body adapts to that. from a day-to-day standpoint, even for someone who's not training for anything, if your goals are just body composition and strength.

the more you can get out of each workout, the more progress you're gonna see over time. And nutrition is one of the best ways to do that. And that's where this concept of periodized nutrition of treating calories like more of a budget can be helpful because you can use your shift higher calorie days around training, around times where you have, especially when you're talking like interval type workouts, heavy conditioning type things.

shift more calories leading up to those workouts and even following to replenish glycogen if you know you have like a couple back to back workouts, hard workouts coming up. But on days if you have a rest day and you're just hanging with your family, you don't need to be loading a bunch of carbs up. So use those days to strategically throttle down calories and ramp up fats maybe a little bit. dial back on carbs, have a little more fats on your days where you're doing easy zone two work, where you're doing some of the like days you might just be taking a walk or hanging with your family. But on the days where you have a hard

track workout or interval session, or even like heavy volume lifting session, shift a little more carbs and calories to those days will help you get more out of both those workouts while still staying within body composition goals and some of those things that you may have too.

Jerred (13:18.283)
Yeah. And I think this is where we can just talk about regular everyday life stuff. So I know we, this is fueling for performance and a lot of what we've been talking about so far is like a race or an event or whatever. But I know for a fact, if I don't fuel properly, cause I train almost every day. If I don't feel properly at the base level, just like the basics. And I'm not talking about making sure I get, you know, X amount of carbohydrates 24 hours before my training session. And then three hours before. And then what, like I'm

I'm just talking about regular everyday nutrition. If I'm not on top of that, my days don't go as well. You know, like my energy is just off and it can it can throw a lot of different things off. Like I honestly just have a worse day. I don't know how else to describe it. If I'm not like, let's say I go into a I'm busy. like the day is hectic. I go into a training session, fasted. I hit it. Then my post workout is like

just kind of a joke, right? Like it's like, it's not what it should be. Not as meaningful as it should be. Then my energy is off for the rest of the day. And what that affects that affects me showing up as a husband showing up as a father doing all the stuff that I have to do at night because either I'm out of energy or my blood sugar is unbalanced. Like whatever's happening there, like I'm just not doing well. And so

These things are important even at a very base level when you're just trying to live your life. So when we're talking about fueling for performance, we're talking about fueling for everyday life performance as well. So there are a lot of like basic pillars that I'll get into here in a minute that you can kind of utilize as check marks for protein and carbohydrates and fat and fiber. I'll talk about all those things, but I wanted to ask you guys if, you notice that, because I honestly, I'm either more self-aware now or it just didn't happen in the past, but it's

So obvious to me now when my nutrition is off in a day and I'm not talking about like I ate a bunch of fast food and I feel like crap. I'm just talking about I didn't I I'm basically under eating, you know, I'm under eating that's it's more and more common than people realize Especially for you know, I'd say like guys like us, know, it's very easy to under eat If we get busy we focus on other things, but we're still training. have you either one of you ran into that? dave you ever you run into any under eating issues and it dealing with your

Jerred (15:36.255)
everyday life performance.

Dave (15:38.003)
Yeah, absolutely. That's a, cause you think about, you know, back to the ultra marathon, like peanut butter and honey is a good idea there. Or like a banana and honey before a hard track workout 30 minutes before is in context, a good thing. But if you just have some banana and honey first thing in the morning of like, just need something in my stomach and then I'm going to go work for three hours or four hours. I have this time to spend with my family. It's like, you're going to quickly get this big spike and crash for energy that you're not, you're not utilizing. And that's, you know, I found that with under eating too is not, not forgetting to eat, but sometimes

like I don't just the stress of the day like I notice my digestion isn't always as good during the day if like I'm working at higher stress things I'm moving from thing to thing

I can't always get away with these like big meals. So in the past I've saved it for like dinner time, like eat big at dinner and I eat pretty light during the day, which yes, according to calories in calories out, like if you're getting the same amount in a day is, is good from an energy standpoint. But if that's all shifted to a time of the day when I'm not really doing much physically and then I'm under eating during the times where I'm working and working out and doing all these things, then I get, I find myself getting moody or hormonal things. Like I noticed some of these things that

I'm not showing up as good in those areas and I think that's less than optimal and something I've actually been trying to shift is like, okay, how do I get more calories in proactively during the day? Because my tendency is just to save them for night and do a big dinner and eat pretty light during the day. But I found that doesn't support work life or.

Jerred (16:59.502)
Does that affect your sleep at all? Like a really big dinner? I know that's something I've noticed as well. Not as much like I'm not like tossing and turning. I just noticed like from a sleep tracker standpoint, if I eat like a big meal kind of late, I don't get as much deep sleep. I'm a little bit more restless. Has that happened with you?

Dave (17:16.491)
Yeah, definitely does, especially if it's like a higher fat, higher fat, higher carb meal. But we tend to eat a little earlier, but if that shifts within a couple hours of bedtime, it'll absolutely tank my sleep a little bit.

Jerred (17:27.308)
Yeah. And to your point about like timing something that makes sense, but does it make sense in the context of your day? I like to have a shake post workout and I would say this shake is relatively heavy carbohydrate. It's like higher carbohydrate, nothing crazy, but probably the highest, you know, pop of carbohydrates I get in a day. And it, maybe I put a banana in it. Maybe I don't, but what I noticed is post workout, if I have this shake, which is just like,

It's got like blueberries, um, sometimes frozen strawberries, a banana if the workout was really crazy. And then like greens and protein. I mean, fairly basic peanut butter. think that's, that's about it. That goes into this thing. If I have that post-workout, whether strength training or anything, I don't notice that thing. That's like, my body just like gobbles it up. It's like, yeah, thank you. We needed that. If I just, if I'm skipping the workout for that day, like just say it's a legitimate rest day. And I'm like, okay, I'm not working out today. And I still try and have that shake.

I'm like, okay, well it's 11, 11 AM. This is normally when I have the shake and I have that same shake. Things are off for the next couple of hours because my body did not need it. My body did not need this like huge pop of carbohydrates. So now I make a huge adjustment. If it's a non-training day, I'll basically just put a little bit of blueberries and that's it. There's no additional carbohydrate source because my body can do just fine with that. But if I have all these extra carbohydrates, it's like,

My body's like, what the hell do you want me do with this? You're just sitting on your ass. Like there's no reason for us to have any of this. so that's something that a major adjustment I make like on a daily basis or weekly basis, depending on training and what I'm consuming. Joe, how about you? You notice any daily nutrition stuff and messing with your, your day to day.

Joe (19:09.334)
So I try and I've always really been like creature of habit or whatever, like regiment that I do, I try and keep every day. So like, I'll have the same electrolytes and bar in the morning before my workout. but there was a time when I used to always work out fasted. Like I'd never worked out pre-fuel because I work out first thing in the day. Like your first thing, I don't wake up early and do it. It's like eight 30 in the morning. So like, if I'm going to eat, I have to eat something small and right. And far enough apart that it's not going to mess up with my, my, my stomach.

There's, there's definitely been times where, um, it, depending on the workout, like if I'm hitting an intensity and I do it fasted, then I'm, I feel like I have to, maybe I might feel like I have to overcompensate later on in what I'm eating or on the reverse. If I eat before a workout and I didn't, it was just like strength. I'll have a protein shake and then maybe I won't eat for a couple of hours after that, because after that, like in the middle of my days is always pretty ambiguous. Cause that's like, okay, now I'm going to get into work. Now I'm going to get chores on. Now I'm to do other stuff. And.

food might get pushed to the side. And if I wait too long to have that first real meal, then I noticed that I might be snacking later on. I might be making less good choices. I might get a little bit lazier with like, I'm hungry, but I really don't feel like making an actual thing. And then that just kind of has a ripple effect and affects the rest of my day. And it may even leave me like not even hungry for dinner. But then I choked on a dinner and then after dinner, I'm like, hey, you know, I actually needed

that meal and now I'm still hungry but now it's almost bedtime so I can't really eat more. So I've definitely noticed that I have to sort of make sure I attack and have a plan early on in the day and that sets the tone for the rest of the day and then on non-training days if I know I'm not training that's usually when I will go for a longer fast and I'll still have my electrolytes in the morning coffee but I'll still try and make that first nutritional choice like protein heavy just to make sure I get protein.

Even if I know I don't need that much fuel for the day, but I still will focus on the protein for the those non training days.

Jerred (21:16.981)
Yeah, I think protein tends to balance everything out. If you can remember to have that protein. and I still do intermittent fasting. I've just, what I've, what I do now is I'm just not militant about it because our kids have practices or something almost every single night. So the, the dinner times can shift and sometimes we're not all eating together. Like last night it was just Graham and I, I cooked dinner and it was just me and him who had dinner. and then, rest of the family came home later and they ate the dinner that I, that I had cooked and

So anyway, things change quite a bit on a day to day basis, but I have an alarm on my watch. goes off at 7 p.m. every single day. And I just know that that's my alert to stop eating. And so I've either already eaten dinner, and so I'm like, 7 p.m. alarm goes off, and I'm like, okay, cool, you're fasting until tomorrow. Or it's my cue that you need to go frickin' eat something. And I try to be done by 7.30, because it's like.

What's a 30 minute gap really going to do at the end of the day? Right. And so it alerts me both ways, either like, okay, be done or Hey, you better go eat something before your window closes. Right. And so that's something that's really helped me stay on track with like being able to fast, but I want to jump into these quick pillars that I think people should know. And before we get into it any further, I kind of don't like it when people tell me, yeah, have this many grams per kilogram of body weight and like all this kind of junk.

It's just, it's a, yeah, what am I, I'm gonna have you convert all this stuff and do it or whatever. So we did it for you. That's what I'm trying to say. So if you go to garagegymathlete.com slash tools, you can utilize this specific tool that I'm talking about. All you do is enter in your body weight and it'll tell you the rest of everything else. And I'm gonna give an example. I'm gonna, as I go through this, weigh 190 pounds. And so I will, I'll kind of give you what these.

these mean for me. maybe if you're close to my body weight or whatever, you you'll know. So anyway, Joe mentioned it. Got to start with protein. Protein is super important, right? So this is pillar number one. And you want to get at least 1.5 grams per kilogram or 0.7 grams per pound of your body weight. And protein is critical for maintaining a building muscle, which is essential for strength and healthy aging. And ultimately, I look at protein consumption as like muscle preservation and also muscle building.

Jerred (23:40.814)
And so you want it. That's why you're those are the two main reasons you're consuming protein. Like you don't always like you're not always trying to build muscle, right? Like that's not always the goal, but you want to preserve as much muscle as you possibly can because that's very important as you age. And so going back to this calculator, which I pulled up on my screen for me at 190 pounds, that is 129 grams of protein per day as my baseline.

Okay, it's definitely okay to get more than that. And like, if you go around the the interwebs, I'm sure people will be telling you at least one gram per pound, all this kind of stuff. But I like realistic baselines, like what's probably okay. And so my base should be around 130 grams of protein a day as 190 pound male. Now, I'm actually trying to get more than that most of the time. But I'm also I've talked about this a lot on the podcast, I'm not trying to get 190 grams of protein every single day. If for me,

Hating my body weight, one gram per pound has always been unrealistic unless I'm really trying. And then when I do really try, my digestive system never agrees with that. So to me, that tells me you probably, I probably don't need that much protein. The second one is total calories. Now this is getting more into like the performance. This isn't like just a, you know, basic baseline stuff. This is like you are looking to perform and fuel yourself well. You get a rough estimate of your daily needs by multiplying your body weight in kilograms by 40.

Okay. So for me, that is 3,450 calories per day as 190 pound dude. So ultimately I kind of agree with that number for me on a very active day. I could probably go down to 3000 and be fine, but I also wouldn't really want to go more than that. I wouldn't need to be going up to 4,000 unless I was my training volume significantly increased. Um, or if I had something coming up to a race, whatever, maybe I would adjust that, but

3,400 calories per day. It's probably about what I hit. I'd say I'm in that 3,000 to 3,400 calorie every single day. And so that's another rough estimate for you. Now, as far as healthy fats, you're gonna aim for 0.5 grams to 1.5 grams per kilogram of body weight. And that comes out for me, 43 to 129 grams of fat per day. I'm probably, in all honesty, on the higher end of this. There's something about me trying to be

Jerred (25:58.862)
Paleo like 10-15 years ago that like I I'm okay eating fats healthy fats like I could I could consume I prefer eating healthy fats over almost anything else and so that's very easy for me to hit because my Pantry is pretty much loaded up with with healthy fats most of the time and then lastly This is probably not talked about as much as it should be is just fiber. I think fiber is really important

And really the baseline has nothing to do with your body weight. It's just 25 to 30 grams of fiber per day is like kind of the recommended. I think it's, they, they do have different recommendations for men and women. but I think this is probably safe for everybody. And honestly, there's not really a huge downside to having too much fiber, especially if you're getting it from the actual food, you're not taking a fiber supplement or whatever. Like, like I was looking at, we occasionally buy Ollie pops. Are you guys ever had Ollie pops? They got like,

It's like eight to 12 grams of fiber. I don't even know where it comes from. And then I'm like, does this count? I don't if this actually counts, you know, because I'm drinking it. It's like fiber is normally like a thing, right? Like a fiber is in the vegetable, fiber is in the fruit. So it's a little bit weird with the Ollie Pop, but how do you guys, do you track fiber and are you getting enough? I'll start with you, Dave. Do you track it and do you get enough?

Dave (27:16.839)
Yeah, I say probably get too much. I know you say there's no such thing as too much, but I think the concern is too much too fast. And that's something that I know people that you can kind of train your body up to higher limits on it, but you want to go slow with it. Because I know people that have just like doubled their fiber overnight and it just wrecks their digestion either.

Jerred (27:36.972)
Yes.

Dave (27:37.009)
too much or too little. that's the main concern with fiber. But I think also, from the paleo background, I've always prioritized whole foods. So for me, it's really easy to get 25 to 30 is like by lunchtime. I'm usually there just with lot of veggies and whole foods. And when I have carbs, it's like oats or quinoa or stuff that has sweet potatoes have higher fiber type stuff anyway. So for me, that's not really a problem. I'm probably like.

double that on a given day. If I had to guess, I haven't tracked it recently, but when I was tracking more, I'm probably well above that, but just don't go too fast with it. That's the biggest thing with fiber, but it does help so much with satiety and gut health and a lot of those things. So it's something if you're not good enough, you'll notice a lot of improvements if you can gradually build it up over time.

Jerred (28:24.609)
Yeah, my mother-in-law, she, I don't think she is anymore. She was vegan at one point, but she's an amazing cook. And so she made this lentil, I don't know if it was like a soup. I mean, I was so skeptical when she was like making it. She was visiting and she was making this lentil soup and I was like, okay, like whatever. And then I had it I was like, my gosh, this is amazing. And so I had like three bowls of it and,

There's lot of fiber in lentils. I was in a lot of pain for the rest of that night and into the next day. I do need to correct myself and I appreciate you saying that. There is too much fiber too fast that your body might not, because I probably consumed like 60 grams of fiber in like one sitting because of all those lentils. And so yeah, there are definitely.

side effects to too much fiber too fast. So yeah, there are ways that it can be uncomfortable. Probably still not bad for you, but uncomfortable for sure. Joe, do you track fiber?

Joe (29:30.218)
I do not, I never have, but we've definitely had the approach to set ourself up for success that whatever stuff we bring into the house, we have that in mind fiber wise. And so we have a lot of like higher fiber like granola or.

certain certain cereals and stuff that I'll put with yogurt bowls and like Greek yogurt and some of the vegetables that we have so I've never really tracked it mostly whenever I think some of the the nutrition apps will track it some but even that I've never really cared to look at the number I've just make sure that during some part of the day I will look at make sure I'm giving something some sort of fiber bomb I guess you could say not I'm not that great about vegetables lately I haven't been that all that great because you know when I'm making something hot

Jerred (29:59.928)
Mm-hmm.

Joe (30:16.44)
I of just throw stuff in a bowl. Certain things I've changed to like doing brown rice over white, even though I absolutely love white rice. It hurts my heart to have to go to brown rice, but I'm gonna brown rice more. I'll throw cabbage more into like scrambles and just stuff like that. And know, after I've gotten into the habit and learned more about fiber, now it's just sort of ingrained to what I do. And I couldn't tell you how much I have, but it's a part of the diet.

Jerred (30:43.831)
So why brown rice over white rice?

Joe (30:46.506)
pretty sure it has more fiber. It has a better nutritional profile than white rice I believe. Maybe it's the starch in the white rice I'm not completely sure. Again that's one of those things where I learned about it one time and then I filed it away and then that's just the choice. It's brown rice over white rice and that's all I really remember.

Jerred (31:03.309)
I might have to do an episode on rice. whatever I file the way disagrees with you, but I don't know, I can't come up with a why. I can't come up with a why. It's like a...

Joe (31:10.358)
Please, please give me an argument to face to Liz. be like, no, look, see, white rice is better than brown rice because I absolutely love white rice.

Jerred (31:19.233)
Dave, what do you got on rice, man? what's, without, what about us pulling up AI? You got any rice? Rice? Yeah.

Dave (31:22.042)
I'll...

I love me some white rice. Yeah, I know it's a it's one of those things It's kind of like I see it like white potatoes and sweet potatoes for like sweet potatoes got a big Everyone's like sweet potatoes are so much better It's like white potatoes are actually you pretty comparable and all the things that the claims were like this is better because of More fun. It's like it's not that much more fiber and it's not that much more like some sweet potatoes have more carbs I think it's similar with rice where I don't remember exactly on fiber, but Again, it's probably more quantity and timing back to that too like I wouldn't do a big bowl of white rice at

at the start of my day, but like around a training session or for dinner, having some, I think I'm team white rice a little bit over brown rice, but I don't know all the signs behind it for sure.

Jerred (32:01.944)
yeah. Well, I think Emily moved us from brown rice to white rice, long grain white rice that has to be washed before you cook it. like there's, that's a thing. I'll come back next week and we'll talk more about rice.

Joe (32:16.618)
Let's well, I just you know, chat you beat it really quick. I would wash my white rice, but apparently just what they came up with brown rice serving has one point eight grams of fiber and white rice only has point four brown rice has more magnesium more manganese. I don't know what that figure is for fully not fully, but everything else is pretty close carbs protein a little bit more fat.

Jerred (32:42.476)
Well, can, I can guarantee the reason Emily has made this decision has nothing to do with it. Anything you're talking about. It's probably like brown rice has some sort of like poison on it. Yeah. She's, she's not worried about the Magnus and like, no. okay. All right. Well, let's, let's distill this down to some daily takeaways. what do you have for the athletes? You know, we've talked a lot about performance nutrition, fueling.

Dave (32:50.754)
or something. Yeah.

Joe (32:51.791)
yeah, I'm, yeah, that's what I was going to say. There's microplastics in brown rice or something. Some, yeah.

Jerred (33:11.928)
for your day, fueling in general. Again, you can go to garagedomeathlete.com slash tools, entering your body weight and kind of get this stuff calculated for you. But Dave, what are some practical takeaways you have for garage athletes out there with fueling for performance?

Dave (33:25.19)
Yeah, for someone who's just starting someone who's more in the ham and everyday mom or dad, I'm just looking to like, I want my workouts to be pretty good. I have other stuff aside from working out all day. I think use the, you know, use the calculator as a, as a baseline. if, if you need to, like there, there's always a, I like recommending people to track for at least a day or a couple of days. Like it's not a bad idea. The apps are free out there to get a gauge of what you're doing, but if that even seems like too much and you're just starting out, get a, you know, pump.

size of protein at every meal. And if you're having three to four meals, that'll probably hit you in the protein target. Eat more. If you're eating your veggies and fruits and prioritizing those carb sources, you're probably already doing a lot of the right things. this can be so, people can get really neurotic about this. And I think that's the concern for someone who's looking to really track meticulously or those things too is timing can be important, but it doesn't matter as much as you.

may think if you're not hitting those pillars that we're talking about. just in that order, make sure you're getting protein, palm with every meal. Make sure you're some kind of grain, veggie, fruit with every meal to hit the fiber goal. And then if your goal isn't weight loss, make sure you're eating enough. A lot of people under eat. And they under eat for the course of the week. And the weekend comes around, everyone's hungry. And they get this binge in a time where they're not.

as active usually and that's where some of these yo-yos over time can happen where your performance in your workouts isn't as good and you're actually setting yourself up possibly for adding more fat and not getting the benefits of building muscle and performance during the week when you're doing that. So try and fuel like an athlete during the week even if you're a busy dad that's not doing it. Think more about, how do I fuel around my workouts and then just dial it back a little bit around times where you're not as active.

Jerred (35:05.955)
Mm-hmm.

Jerred (35:15.502)
Joe, what do you have for the athletes? What do want them to know?

Joe (35:18.422)
So for nutrition, I, what I've always liked about like refer nutrition advice and how you have four pillars. And it really reminded me of the book, deep nutrition, who she also had four pillars is four, four kind of different pillars, but

Thinking of nutrition in a conceptual way instead of like a hard rules divide like clear lines way of You got to think of them in the concept and fulfilling the concept and not being just like completely Dogmatic about one specific finite thing or trying to be nailing down to this the most finite thing. It's better just to concentrate on the concepts or the pillars

then to really harp on the like super nitty-pitty nitpicky details that you'll see a lot of influencers kind of harp over and If you're gonna have the changes focus on one pillar at a time instead of if you're not doing like any of them then just focus on one at a time until you can add the second one and then the third one and then eventually it'll just be a way of life instead of like I'm gonna change everything I do right now and We'll see what happens

Jerred (36:28.758)
Awesome. Well, I've got three specific things for all the garage gym athletes out there. So first is it going to be a mindset thing? Don't think that just because you are running an average everyday life that you don't need to be thinking like an athlete and thinking about fueling for performance. So get that out of your head and start thinking like an athlete all the time. The second thing is making sure that you are actually adjusting your diet based off of what you're doing in your activity. So I mentioned not having a shake.

or changing my shake up if I'm not working out versus if it's actually post workout. You really need to start thinking about what you're doing in changing your diet based off of those activities. It can really change your everyday life performance. And then the last thing is what I've been recommending for the last year, 350 micro. If you just need something simple in your head, so that's three meals a day, try to get 50 grams of protein per meal and then getting micronutrients in that meal, which are typically gonna cover the carbohydrates, the fiber and everything else. If you can do those three things,

You're going to be well on your way to fueling for performance in everyday life. And then also as an actual athlete, if you ever have any of these events that you want to tackle. So those are the big three things that I have for all the athletes. Again, if you want to see this calculator in use, go to garage gym, athlete.com slash tools, and you can utilize our free resource. We're actually building more of these for athletes to be a little bit more autonomous and for them to be able to build up, you know,

their own knowledge base and what they have and how they can utilize these things. So we built that for you guys and we're going to be adding more and more to it for all of our athletes out there. We appreciate each and every single one of you doing the training each and every single day. Really do appreciate you being a part of the community. Now, if you are new around here or maybe you just aren't, you haven't been doing the training lately, go to garage gym athlete.com, sign up for a free trial. We would love to have you in our training, in our app. We can interact with you and you can get some really solid training in.

But that's it for this one. Remember, if you don't kill comfort, comfort will kill you.