Written by Christopher Kelly
March 11, 2016
[0:00:00]
Christopher: Hello and welcome to the Nourish Balance Thrive Podcast. My name is Christopher Kelly and today I'm joined by my wife, food scientist, Julie Kelly. Hi, Julie.
Julie: I'm glad you introduced me as your wife first this time instead of a food scientist.
Christopher: I remembered. Yes. So I thought this podcast we'd do something a little bit different. Rather than being an expert interview, although you are expert of sorts, I thought it would be nice to recap on some of what we'd been doing particularly over the last year. I know that a lot of people listening to this podcast are interested in becoming a different type of practitioner, maybe a practitioner that doesn't run a bricks and mortar presence or maybe a health coach that's looking into maybe starting a business.
Julie: Or they're just curious about what we do.
Christopher: Or they're just curious what we do. So it's one of my most frequently asked questions. I get people that phone up for free consultations and what they really want to do is find out how I started the business. So maybe I just need to record a podcast and talk a little bit about what we did to start the business and maybe people will find that interesting. So, I guess, the first question is: Was it fun? So, I quit my job at hedge fund. That was a pretty cushy job and we started a new business.
Julie: Had a new baby.
Christopher: We had a new baby. So, do you think it was fun? That's my first question for you. Was it like more fun running a business than it was when I was working at a hedge fund earning a salary and had health insurance?
Julie: I'd say that it's getting more fun. I think in hindsight it was kind of just a shock to the system. I think when you start a business I think you don't know what to expect.
Christopher: You don't know what you're getting into.
Julie: You don't know what you're getting into and you kind of just have to put your head down and keep going until you can come up for air. I think we're by no means have we gotten to a place where like, "Oh, we made it. We can just chillax and hang out and watch this thing go." But I think we've learned so much that we're now in a very different place than when we didn't know anything.
Christopher: Yeah. I think it is the sudden changes that are quite stressful. Like the first time you find out that health insurance is going to cost you a minimum of $1000 a month.
Julie: Right. Well, and we were learning. We also did a lot of other things at the same time. We had a baby. We moved. Then the following year we've sold our house and now we're buying another one. So it's just like--
Christopher: Yeah, so let's talk about that. That is fun. Back when I was working for the hedge fund, I worked in Walnut Creek in California. And there's no way that we could afford to live there and I don't think we really wanted to live there either. It's kind of very posh la-di-da, everybody drives a Tesla or a Bugatti type.
Julie: We were living in Oakland and I did -- Oakland is kind of on the border of Berkeley. And I did really love that area. But, yeah, I mean, I'm not sure we could have afforded to live there even when you were working at the hedge fun.
Christopher: Right. So, we lived in the hood. We lived on 59th in MLK in the hood. And it was noisy and it was dirty and me quitting my job and starting this business has enabled us to move to a little town called Scotts Valley, which is just outside of Santa Cruz. That's where Julie's family lives. So that's been huge, like having her people to help us with our baby has been incredible. And then I'm not going to lie, the mountain biking here is world class and that was kind of why I really wanted to live here. It's absolutely fantastic.
The trails of the moment are just phenomenal. The weather is amazing. The trails are tacky. Life is pretty good. So starting a business has enabled us to do that. And now more recently -- We've been renting up until now since we started this business and now we've just -- we're not quite out of the woods yet but we're nearly there closing on home that we bought in a little town called Bonny Doon, which is again just outside of Santa Cruz. And it's cooler place actually. It's kind of the back of beyond really. It's not really that much there.
The main appeal to me was the fact that you could -- You pull out your phone and you go into the settings and you look at the Wi-Fi and yours is the only Wi-Fi. So, yeah, if there's any truth in what Jack Cruz says then this is a really good home for us. And there's a creek that comes out the ground a mile away that passes through the property. It's 1.5 acres. It's a pretty crappy house but the location is fantastic.
Julie: I think it's a good house. It just needs some direction and some love and some creativity.
Christopher: It's like 1980s original.
Julie: Yeah. But I'm looking forward to that because I think we have an opportunity to make it our own. What I really love is where it is and I love that we can grow some of our own foods. I mean, I guess, to relate this back to what we're getting at here is that, yeah, I mean, I think starting a business provides you opportunities.
Christopher: It's a double-edged sword.
Julie: It's a total double-edged sword, for sure.
Christopher: If what we want to do is not think about work after 5:00 p.m. and not worry about shopping for health insurance then go get salary and work for someone else.
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Julie: Definitely. And there's been times, there's been plenty of times where I've wanted to tell you to just chuck it in and go get a job because it's hard. It's difficult in the evening especially if I've been with Ivy all day long and I just really want a break and I can't catch one because there's a lot to be done. And I get that. And I think it's a process that we're continuously moving through.
Christopher: Yeah. I'm not going to be the sucker that's still working 100 hours a week even after the business is really successful. So I will scale it back. But I have to say I have enjoyed spending -- This is kind of like cheating maybe at parenting. But I spend like very short period, like a few minutes.
Julie: "Parenting."
Christopher: A few minutes with Ivy every hour. So it's like not very much very often, which is kind of cool. And if I was commuting to Google in Silicon Valley then I would maybe see her before I left for work and then I would see her like -- She goes to bed very late. She goes to bed at the same time as us. So I would maybe see her when I got home from work. And that will kind of suck, wouldn't it? At the moment, like she's there all the time and I'm kicking her out my office all the time, which is kind of -- It's fine.
Julie: Yeah, you're present and that's what she knows. And I think, yeah, I think if we were to have to change that now, I think that would be a very difficult transition for her.
Christopher: Right. So, yeah, there's two things for you. It's enabled us to move to a place that we really want to live and as a father I'd been able to see my daughter very frequently even though I'd been working a lot of hours. And, yeah, I mean, it's tempting for me. I hear about -- So, Julie's dad is a recruiter at Apple and I can't help to talk to him and he tells me about what's going on and, obviously, Silicon Valley is pretty hot right now. I have a degree in computer science so it would be pretty straightforward for me to go get another job as a programmer.
And I don't dislike programming. In fact, I really enjoy programming still. And so it's enormously tempting for me to just say, "You know what, screw this. I'm just going to go get a job at Google." And decent money, get health insurance and not have to think about any of this crap ever again. I think part of what motivates me, I'm actually still slightly angry about -- not just for myself but the people that I speak to all the time on the phone.
So I don't do free consultations anymore. If you want to speak to me, you're going to have to pay me to talk to me now. But in the beginning, I did about a thousand free consultations. So I've talked to a lot of people and I continue to speak to a lot of people now that pay me for my time to look at their test results. And, yeah, I get pretty angry. So a typical case, I spoke to a woman recently and her main complaints are weight gain, fatigue, anxiety and depression.
And she's seen every doctor, every type of doctor you could possibly imagine. None of them are willing to admit there's anything wrong with her apart from an endocrinologist who's the only guy that's willing to treat aggressively. And what they do is they run a blood test. Run a blood test, you look at testosterone, "Hey guess what? Your testosterone is low. Here's some testosterone." And then, "Okay, so that helped me a little bit." And then two weeks later you're like, "Well, I'm still gaining weight. Is there something you can do about that?"
And so he checks your thyroid, "Oh look at that. Thyroid is low. Here's some thyroid medication." And then you rinse and repeat for type of hormone commercially available and nobody is doing the investigation. Nobody is sitting down and saying, "What the hell is going on here?" I mean, as a scientist, as an engineer especially, as a computer scientist, if I wanted to like take that program apart and debug it and set some watch points and find out what's going on for this person, and it seems like none of the doctors that accept insurance -- I think is the best way to classify them -- are doing this type of investigation.
And some of them are not even running tests. They're just prescribing purely based on symptoms and that's totally useless because everybody is tired. And nearly everybody has GI complaints. I think that's the common root cause. So for this particular person I'm thinking of constipation. But nobody is asking about constipation. They're just treating the low testosterone or the low progesterone or the low estrogen or the low melatonin or the low cortisol.
These are the symptoms. The symptoms you could measure with labs but they're still symptoms. This is what gets me really angry. And there was something funny came up while I was away snowboarding recently and that was my friend had some ski boots that were not his normal boots. Like he'd have to rent those. So he had like $1000 dollar custom ski boots. And they were really, his new temporary boots were really hurting his feet. And one of my friends said, "Do you want some paracetamol?"
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And we all laughed because it was kind of half a joke even though the paracetamol probably would help with his feet that hurt. But when you think about it that's exactly how medicine works. You go to a doctor and you say my feet hurt and he gives you some paracetamol. And the real solution is for Christoff [Phonetic] to go get his boots, his $1000 hand crafted boots. But for some reason, in medicine, nobody thinks like that. They just go to this, "Okay, whack-a-mole, let's just treat the symptoms thing."
And it still makes me angry. And maybe I'll stop doing this when I start hearing from these people that I talk to on the phone, "Oh yeah, my endocrinologist ran an organic acids test, two stool tests and the DUTCH test and he figured out that this pathway sluggish and I have giardia infection and I'm deficient in B6 and I have this genetic thing that means that I'm really fast metabolizer of some neurotransmitter." Then maybe I'll just say, "Okay, that job at Google is starting to look a little bit more tempting now."
Julie: Right. It would be lovely for us to be replaced. I feel the same way. When I have to stop telling people that fat is, they're a friend and it's something that they should consider adding back to their diet or maybe they might not want to live on refined carbohydrates to fuel their performance, when we have to stop having those conversations and I will think that, yeah, maybe we're not needed anymore and we can go do something else like I can open up a sewing shop or something.
Christopher: By proxy, I'm still working on that. So Tommy Woods, Dr. Tommy Woods, he's a traditionally trained medical doctor, so he's one of those people that I slag off all the time. But just because you're traditionally trained medical doctor doesn't mean you don't know what you're doing. That is like definitely not true. Tommy does amazing work. He has an undergraduate degree in biochemistry. He is now working on his Ph.D. in neonatal brain metabolism which he plans to finish very soon. And then he's going to move to the US and do another residency here in the US.
I think he's bonkers but he's also extremely brave and admirable and altruistic. So his plan is through the peer review process and through his credentials, he plans to change the system. He plans to change the guidelines that are currently so broken. And so Tommy is now our chief medical officer. We actually signed the paper work. Yeah, this Nourish Balance Thrive is going to be a business that we're going to be working on together in the future. Yeah, that's exciting. We are kind of trying to make some in roads at least in trying to change the way things work.
Julie: Well, I mean I think it's important to point out that it's just like what we do. Everything is important. All of the pieces are important. So you and I alone are not going to change the system but you, me and Tommy have a better chance. And every person that we help who goes on to point some of these things out to other people, it all kind of adds on itself. Our system of helping people, our system of functional medicine should serve kind of, I think, as a model for all of these problems whether they're philosophical or the pathologies that we see.
I think the application of this model is looking at the whole person, looking at the whole system and using all of our tools to solve the problem as opposed to just getting out the prescription pad and throwing prescriptions at something without stepping back and saying what is the root? Where did this come from? What's actually causing the problem and how do we solve it with all of our tools as opposed to just a hammer?
Christopher: Right. Yeah. And Tommy has been really, really good at helping me resist the temptation to get drawn in to one particular area. And so when you look at all these problems, they're all extremely complex. They're multivariate. There's lots of things going on at the same time. So a really good example that we talked about in the podcast before and it's becoming Tommy's speciality -- I say speciality. It's not really speciality, is it?
Is understanding the insulin resistance and problems with people's blood sugar and type II diabetes and not really just about carbohydrates. We've talked a lot about carbohydrate restriction on the podcast and that has been a very useful tool especially to me. But if you have insulin resistance then restricting carbohydrate, whilst it might be a useful intervention, is not necessary the cause. And the cause is likely to be multi-factorial.
And with everybody that we test, we find they've got a problem in their gut. And I think a lot of people are kind of missing the trick there by being drawn too much into just one particular thing like, oh, it's the carb, stupid or it's the insulin, stupid.
Julie: Right. I think those are traps. It's very easy to see how people fall into them because you just want an answer. When you're feeling like death you want an answer.
Christopher: Yeah. You want a simple answer. I've got brain fog. Just tell me what's causing this. And usually there is no simple answer.
[0:15:04]
Julie: No. I think this is important because I have this conversation a lot when I get people on the phone for their nutrition consult. A lot of the times, it usually starts at the same question: Give me snapshot of where you are right now. What are you eating? How are you feeling? What's going on? And I've already had a chance to look at their notes. I've already had the chance to look through their health plan. So I know about where we stand with this person but I want to hear it from them. And a lot of times the story that I get back is one of they're relieved to be -- they think that I'm going to give them the answer, that I'm going to say, "Oh, well, you just need to stop eating XYZ and eat this macronutrient."
Christopher: They think you're going to send you a diet plan?
Julie: Exactly. And so I'm very quick to point out this is not how I work because I can't move in with you.
Christopher: Right. I can't always be there.
Julie: Right. But it's interesting to see their perspective.
Christopher: You don't want me to always be there.
Julie: No, you don't.
Christopher: You pay me $250 an hour to give this information. You don't want me to be there all the time.
Julie: Exactly. No. But it's funny to see their perspective shift when you just point out a few things to them. When I point out to them that the blood glucose meter is going to be a really useful tool for them to start assessing for themselves what's going on with them. Because these are people who, just like you and I, their whole lives are basically dealt with health care practitioners or doctors who hold the cards very close to their chest and don't want to involve the person in solving their own problems.
And so we all feel powerless in some level over our own health. And I think that's one of my favorite parts of my job is giving back some of those tools to these people. And they're like, "You mean, I can check my own blood glucose? I can do that? You can buy those meters yourself?"
Christopher: Yeah. Every single time I ask someone that question, have you ever checked your blood glucose, there's almost this kind of delay as they start ruffling through some paperwork or maybe they're on Dropbox or something looking for previous test results. And I'm like, "No, that's not what I mean at all. I mean, you can do this for yourself at home." And maybe one day I'll get into trouble for this but, I mean, if I have to just choose one word that encapsulated what we do, it would be educator.
Like I want you to go -- by now, you should have Googled 8-Hydroxy-2-deoxyguanosine and find out and know what it means. That's my goal as an educator to empower people to find out what's going on inside their bodies so that they can make the right choices for themselves.
Julie: Right. So, yeah, when I give them that kind of outline of, okay, this is how we're going to solve this problem and it's not this is my solution to your problem. It's a different conversation. And I think that in and of itself is so empowering that sometimes is the motivation to really kind of kick it in to high gear and, oh, I have the ability to change some of these things. I don't just have to take this pill. I don't just have to follow this diet. I don't have to do anything but I want to understand why I feel the way I feel and I want to feel better. It changes everything.
Christopher: Right. And so the question is: Is this working? Do you think this is really helping people? I'm going to interrupt you there and say, actually, yes it is. We now have -- So, Julie is actually been following up with our clients and we have like just as set, just six questions that we ask them and then Julie records that call and I transcribe it and then I publish it. And at the moment I have more of those calls than I have time to get transcribed and like polish up and publish.
Sometimes I can just tell ahead of time. Like I see a set of test results, somebody will send me an organic acids test or a stool test result and they wouldn't know what it means. And I look at it, just take one look at it, like literally ten seconds and I get really get excited for that person because I know that this is an easy fix and you're going to feel fucking awesome when you fix this thing. I think the answer is, yes, it is helping people, which is kind of fun.
Julie: Yeah. Well, I think just by judging by the number of people that I get, that want to follow-up. There's been very few people who have come back to me and since having talked to a lot of them and gotten feedback that I've gone out and retrieved the feedback from and it's been overwhelmingly positive and overwhelmingly inspiring. I know that there's a lot of people out there that are successful that just aren't coming back and telling us that they've been successful with it. That's exciting.
Christopher: It's funny, that whole scenario. Like you kind of track someone down and say, "Did it work?" And they're like, "Why are you asking me that? Of course, it worked." Like when you go get your car serviced and the clutch doesn't work when you bring it in and then you drive off and the clutch works, you don't go back a week later and say, "Hey, that clutch is still working."
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Julie: Yeah.
Christopher: I guess, the same is true for what we do even though the solution maybe isn't more complicated than that. I'm not really sure. Like I don't know mechanics well enough to be able to.
Julie: Yeah. I don't think we're far quite enough in. I mean, we've worked with a ton of people at this point and I think we've had far, far more successes than failures. But I'm not sure we're there at that part where we have enough hindsight to look back and really outline exactly the formula that's carried people through. And I'm looking forward to that, to having more understanding of what it is that really clicks for each and every person.
Christopher: Yeah. I mean, I would love nothing more than to spend the next two years studying the data from the 600 odd athletes that we've tested now. I'm sure it's more than 600. It was about that the last time I looked. But, yeah, just spend two years just looking at all that data, maybe transcribing some stuff, finding out what we said, finding out, like see if we can find some correlation between -- I mean, the general message has not changed much but certainly we found out about more diet and lifestyle hacks as we've gone along. And if anything, the programs have gotten more sophisticated.
Julie: We've simplified too in a lot of ways. I mean, I think when we first started, we had a very specific method that we were trying to emulate and trying to follow because it's what we were trained in and it's what we knew.
Christopher: Right. But it's morphed and so I don't know what it is now.
Julie: Yeah. I think we've learned a lot. I think it's important though because we've taken the time to really listen to the people that we're working with.
Christopher: I mean, there's some things that, like some doctors I interviewed on the podcast just turned up and blew me away. Like Bryan Walsh talking about social isolation. And I'm like just finding out about it two weeks before the interview. And you see that there's 30, 40, 50, 60 years worth of very careful work that's been done that shows that this social isolation thing has profound implications for all of our health. And it w as the first time I've heard anybody talk about it.
And so what do you do? I mean, you've got to act on that information and you have to ask the people the relevant questions and then point it out to them when they don't give the right answer. But, yeah, let's talk about how much money we make because I'm sure that people who are interested in being a health coach would want to know this. The good news is our gross revenue for 2015 was nearly $500,000. That sounds fantastic.
Julie: It does sound fantastic.
Christopher: I would be very happy with $500,000. The problem is--
Julie: We didn't get to keep any of them.
Christopher: We didn't really get to keep much of it. So, the lab test that we do, at the moment we're doing the urinary hormone testing. So this looks at cortisol and testosterone and melatonin and progesterone and estrogen. And by the time this podcast goes out, there will be an interview out with the analytic chemist that started Precision Analytical. So I'll link to that in the show notes for this podcast. And then we did the urinary organic acid, which I've talked about a lot. We do a lot of stool testing.
And basically, when someone pays a lot of money, say someone will pay between $1000 and $2000 to do between one and at the very most four tests, most of that money goes to the lab that performs the test. And so I only really -- When you look at my website, you look at the price of these tests, there's a tiny amount of markup. And I think that you'll find that it's such a cheaper. You can go to companies like Direct Labs and because I haven't bothered to really look like adjust my prices, as the wholesale price goes up, you'll see that I'm much cheaper even than Direct Labs.
And so we're definitely not making any money selling lab tests. And the only way that we make money is by selling our time. And then we do make some money through selling supplements. If I found a problem, if I found a yeast overgrowth and there's a particular short chain fatty acid that I know works well to get rid of that yeast, I can sell you that supplement and make a small profit.
All said and done, so every time you order supplements from us, that supplement is being put into a box by my colleague and registered nurse Amelia who many of you will know quite well. She's been on the podcast before. It's about time I got her back on again actually. Amelia is doing all the same work that I'm doing, all the same diet and lifestyle coaching that I'm doing. She's on all the same calls with Tommy Wood. She talks to Julie all the time. We work as a team even though we're all remote. And it's her that's putting those supplements into boxes. So this is not Amazon.com Fulfillment or any of that kind. It's like hand chosen stuff based on the studies that Tommy sends me.
[0:25:00]
And then we pack each and every supplement into a box and off it goes. And so by the time I pay for all that, the profit that's made on the supplements just about covers the cost. It's not really a profit technically because, yes, the cost of good sold is about what I sell it for. There's really no money. And I realize now with supplements, like it's all economies of scale. So basically, what you need to do is buy an enormous palette of something and then make quite a large investment upfront and then sell it, lots of it through Amazon Fulfillment.
Julie: We don't have any interest of doing that.
Christopher: Yeah. We really don't have any interest in doing that. And I'm not sure that, certainly for some supplements, like it's kind of questionable whether you really want to [0:25:41] [Indiscernible] in Reno for two years before you get your hands on it. It changes as well. We find out about any new things like nicotinamide riboside was one of the things that Bob Rountree talked about in my interview with him and I'd been taking that personally. Yeah, I mean, I couldn't, I guess, invest $20,000 and bought a palette of it and send it off to Amazon. But, yeah, it doesn't really interest me that much.
So, yeah, $500,000 was the gross revenue. And in the end, we took home about $90,000 of that. So my, before tax gross income for the year with two of us working--
Julie: Our gross income.
Christopher: Yes. I mean, the hourly rate is just surly at this point. But I love what I do and it's not really -- I mean, in a way, it is the four hour workweek because I only spend about four hours a week doing things I truly hate like QuickBooks. Now, I'm ready to kill QuickBooks like every time it reminds me that I need to file a form and I don't understand what the form even is. That to me is work. But spending time watching presentations by various doctors and reading the research studies that Tommy sends me--
Julie: You should at least have two or three masters degrees by now with all of the courses and everything that you--
Christopher: I've certainly did. I've certainly put in a lot more work in the last couple of years than I ever did for my undergraduate degree in computer science. That's for certain. No question.
Julie: Yeah. I think that's important. I mean, because people should understand the dedication that you put into this stuff. I mean, it's not that you just--
Christopher: But it's effortless though.
Julie: Yeah, it is. It is. But, I mean, I think your passion for it is clear and that's something that I think -- I mean, obviously, it comes through in your podcast and in what you do and I know it comes through to the clients that you work with. But behind the scenes, it's really an amazing thing to watch as much as sometimes I want to wring your neck for sitting on the computer watching Khan Academy until the wee hours.
Christopher: On stuff that doesn't even matter.
Julie: Yeah, on stuff that doesn't even matter. But it matters to you and you're trying, you've bettered yourself by learning these things that I'm sure a lot of practitioners haven't even thought to look up or understand. A lot of people think you can go and do a training course and then you buy this education in a box and then you start your business and then the money starts rolling in. Well, yeah, that's true.
But if you really want to get better and you really want to continue to help people and you really want to make a dent in the larger problem, which is our healthcare system, and help a lot people, I think you owe it to yourself and you owe it to them to understand all of it a little bit better. I mean, you've spent countless hours learning physiology, learning sports medicine, learning, god, what else?
Christopher: I mean, it's all stuff that--
Julie: I think biochemistry. You've taught yourself biochemistry.
Christopher: There's no syllabus. So it's not like with the standard education like some professor someway sets out a syllabus and this is what you're going to learn. So it's very much problem driven. I just registered again. So this year, we're racing as a pro mountain biker again. I have my license. I'll be racing Elite cyclocross. My goal is exercise performance. It's sports performance. So let me tell you something about computer scientists. They're really, really lazy. They really don't like doing things that take a long time, that are tedious and repetitive.
So a good lazy computer programmer will write a computer program to do very quickly what would be very tedious and time consuming to do by hands. So, let's say for example, you give you a stack of invoices and say how much profit, how much money did I make? Well, I could go through those one by hand, write down, type into a calculator and six hours later I could tell you the answer. Or I could spend four hours writing a computer program that gives you the answer in 200 milliseconds.
I have to save myself a little bit of time even in the first instance. And then probably what's going to happen is I'll use that computer program again. But for this reason, computer programmers they call themselves lazy. And I would say the same is true with me and my sports performance. So I could just go out there and just graph the old fashioned way and do 30 yards a week riding my bike. I probably -- I mean, I've done that before and it did make me very fast. But now I find that I can do a lot less volume, maybe ten hours a week and then we cyclocross. I've been doing even less than that, like six hours a week.
[0:30:06]
And then working on other things like, okay, how can I improve my biochemistry like this yeast overgrowth. That doesn't look like it's going to help me. Let's just treat that and see what happens. This is a folate deficiency, let's take some more folate and see what happens to my red blood cell markers, see how much more hemoglobin I can make and see what that difference makes to my sports performance.
So, in a way, that's kind of lazy when you think about it in this similar sort of analogy that with a computer scientist being lazy. And so that does motivate me but -- Yeah, so that's how much money we made. Why don't you ask me about cyclocross?
Julie: I was going to say one of the things, like the reason we got into this in the very first place was your health and your performance.
Christopher: Yeah, of course. Of course.
Julie: It's kind of, it's changed a lot and people might be--
Christopher: Necessity is a fantastic teacher.
Julie: Fantastic teacher. But, yeah, how has -- what have you observed this cyclocross?
Christopher: Well, I'm glad you asked. Yes, cyclocross has been really great this year. I ended up winning the series points competition in the elite man.
Julie: You got a really fancy plaque.
Christopher: A really fancy plaque, very fancy.
Julie: And a very fancy tee-shirt, which you happen to be wearing.
Christopher: I'm wearing it now. It's a shame this is not a video because I am wearing the fancy tee-shirt right now. And, yeah, that was great. And the thing that was different from previous seasons was I used to explode. I would crash and I would burn and I would like be fatigued and I have insomnia and pretty depressed.
Julie: Be a pretty big jerk.
Christopher: And it wasn't fun. Like I just kind of -- It dominated my life. I let it rule me and it just wasn't fun. And this year, I put a lot less effort into training, like I say, six hours a week on the bike and then turned it up and just being incredibly consistent. And I had my best race is the final race where I came second behind the 16-year old national champion. And that was my best ever result. And it's been eating what it was like -- What was it like in the Colnago days? Do you remember when I used to ride the Colnago?
Julie: That's right. The jerk comment. That was horrible.
Christopher: So, I used to do stuff like warm up on a turbo trainer and--
Julie: Shout at me if I got in his way when he's trying to fix his wheel. So many mechanicals and you're so stressed out all the time.
Christopher: So many mechanicals. So many -- Yeah, exactly. Because I'm so stressed out I wasn't thinking properly. And I wasn't able to assess which things were important and which things weren't. And some of that is experience, just kind of learning by the Colnago. I had this -- what was it? I think it was [0:32:45] [Indiscernible] that used to ride that, the world championship Colnaga bike. It wasn't actually mine. It was loaned to me by the guy that runs my team and I still have that bike. And it's totally unsuitable for North Cal cyclocross. It's like so bumpy here. It's the most awful bike to ride.
But, yeah, it just kind of demarcates those days when I didn't really understand what was important. But in improving my biochemistry, it just totally changed my personality and allowed me to take a step back and to see what's important. And it's allowed me to sleep. That's been a big difference.
Julie: That's been a huge difference. If anything, I think, that's the difference.
Christopher: Yeah. So, being able to sleep after bike race is a beautiful thing. And before I couldn't sleep for two days almost after bike race. And when you're racing every weekend that's kind of a big problem.
Julie: And you also are no longer victim of the sugar monster, which is -- I mean, that was like your alter ego for a very, very, very -- I mean, when I met you through few years ago.
Christopher: Right. Yeah. And, I think, it may be is important to mention that. Isn't that funny when your brain gets ahead of the words? Anyway, I'll cut that out later. So Tommy, Dr. Tommy Wood is a very big fan of carb cycling. So overall he eats a low carbohydrate diet himself. And my diet has been even lower in carbohydrate still and I'm measuring ketones typically about 1.5 millimole is normall for me in the afternoon. So technically that's ketosis. So I'm eating a ketogenic diet.
Some people have argued that a ketogenic diet is not suitable for any type of glycolytic activity. You're not going to do very well as a sprinter. But when you look at cyclocross, on paper, it looks like a time trial, a 50, 60 minute time trial. But in practice, there's so many corners. It's actually a series of short sprints. So when you look at my power data it's like 0, 450, 0, 450, 700, 450, 450, 0. It's like there's no average. The average power is completely meaningless because never once did I sit for any amount of time at my power threshold or anything like that. So, on paper, you'd think the ketogenic diet would be useless for this. And like I said, it's been my best season ever. Like I'd been just incredibly consistent.
[0:35:00]
And I have been supplementing with exogenous ketones and if you want to know more about that I'll link to the interview I did with Patrick Arnold who is the chemist that developed the exogenous ketones I'd been using. Who knows how much difference that has really made? It's pretty impossible to do that test. The other thing that Tommy has encouraged me to do is carb cycle. So a couple of days before the event, eat some carbs, replenish glycogen maybe.
So there's a study I will link to in the show notes that showed that there wasn't really any difference between the glycogen levels in high fats and high carbohydrate athletes. So maybe I was replenishing my glycogen, probably not. And it made absolutely no difference, absolutely none at all. I didn't feel any different. I didn't get a different result. It really didn't make any difference.
Julie: But you have to eat some sweet potatoes for dinner.
Christopher: I did, yes. So what I do now is I just kind of let you decide. Like before, I was a bit of a Nazi about what I'd eat. And now I'm just like it's just very, whatever, if you fancy sweets, I'm just going to eat them. And that seems to work pretty well. I'm sure it knocks me off ketosis but I don't feel any different. So, yeah, that's been great. So, I think that's about it. Did we miss anything?
Julie: I don't think so.
Christopher: I hope this has been helpful. I know it's a lot of us talking about ourselves but my goal with this was by talking about ourselves that it might help other people who are listening especially if you are thinking of becoming a health coach. Because that is definitely -- It's a thing. It's a becoming a thing. Like people, they do the test. They understand their results. They're like, "Well, shit, how did I not know about this ten years ago?" And part of the reason is it didn't exist ten years ago. Some of the tests that we take for granted now like the DUTCH test, for example, the hormone test, just didn't exist ten years ago.
And I'm sure that will continue to be the case when the tests just get better and better and better. But, yeah, if you're listening to this and you're wondering about maybe a change of career and doing some of the testing and having a life changing experience and feeling a million times better than you were before is definitely a powerful motivator for change. So maybe this will be helpful for you.
Julie: Yeah, I hope so. I guess, the biggest piece of advice that we've learned that has helped us the most is really to know who it is you want to help and who it is you want to work with.
Christopher: Oh, yes. So we must talk about that before I forget. There's a training course I did. I will link to this in the show notes. It's called The Practitioner Liberation Project which is not very catchy name for an amazing piece of training. The two guys that run it are Jordan Reasoner and Steve Wright who are the guys from SCD Lifestyle. And it's a training course that's designed specifically for people like me and you, if you are a health coach or a doctor that wants to get into functional medicine. Yeah, those guys just basically teach you what you need to do in order to get clients.
I haven't done all of it. It would be a lie to say I've executed that training course in its entirety. But the most important lesson that I've learned is that you need to be specific. So in theory, functional medicine could help anyone. And I don't disagree with that. It really could. It could help everyone from an autistic baby right the way through to a 70-year old with fibromyalgia. Those are two very different use cases where functional medicine would surely excel.
And it just doesn't work like that. You can't speak to the parent of an autistic child at the same time you speak to a 70-year old with fibromyalgia. So you have to be specific. And I realize with hindsight that I was being specific from the beginning. I just didn't know what I was doing. So, I'm a computer scientist. I'm a mountain biker. I'm about to turn 40. I had a lot of problems with fatigue. I had problems with bloating. I have problems with my sex drive. I have problems with brain fog. And a ton of other things that I can't remember now because of my brain fog.
And those are the things that I talk about. And now when I sit down and do calls with people, it's like, it's eerie. It's spooky. Like you've got someone who is basically the same as you, literally a computer scientist mountain biker who's interested to know more about organic acid testing. And that's not an accident. So when you do your speaking and any other way that you communicate with the public then you have to be specific and know who it is that you're talking to.
Julie: And who you want to talk to.
Christopher: And who you want to talk to. And that's the beautiful thing about this. Like when I do a call now, it's like a first date. I get that same kind of butterflies in my tummy type feeling.
Julie: Yeah, this is going to be awesome.
Christopher: This is going great. I love this guy. I hope like he calls me back eight more times. Why is that guy, Steve, why has he not called me back? I love Steve. He's the best. And the reason that Steve hasn't called you back is because Steve is just like basically who read all of the knowledge out of your brain and now Steve is on his own mission to figure out everything there is to know about organic acid testing.
[0:40:03]
Which is great. So maybe that part of my business model is floored. But certainly in the short term it's really fun. So, yeah, the Practitioner Liberation Project. I think I'm going to get Jordan onto the podcast at some stage to talk some more about that but it's been tremendously helpful for me. It is quite a large investment in terms of how much money. I don't know how much it is now, the training course. It's probably gone up.
But, yeah, on the grand scheme of things it's pretty amazing what we've done, right? So, we've started a business that's almost big enough or almost lucrative enough for us to live in California. Not quite but almost. And we've done that in 18 months. That's pretty amazing.
Julie: I think it's important to point out to people that we also didn't -- We haven't taken on any debt to start this business.
Christopher: No, didn't borrow anything.
Julie: No. Yeah.
Christopher: Didn't borrow anything. So, yeah, I mean, it was all just -- I kind of got golden handshake when I left the hedge fund and that was my float, $30,000 float. And that's what we launched this thing with. And definitely not getting rich but definitely having a lot of fun too.
Julie: Eating well.
Christopher: Eating really well, yeah. Definitely not starving to death. That's for sure. So, yeah, I would recommend it to anyone. And then, finally, another thing that you may be interested in, and we talked about this before in the podcast but we're going to talk about again, especially if you're some sort of practitioner, Dr. Tommy Woods is literally a fountain of knowledge. And he is the pub med pro. So if you have a question and you want an evidence-drive answer, Tommy is your man. And then his particular area of expertise is biochemistry, metabolism, ketosis, athletic performance.
Julie: Is there a way that people can work with us and get access to Tommy?
Christopher: Well, I'm glad you asked. Yes. So we now have our Concierge Clinical Coaching private membership group that you can access Tommy through Facebook. Basically, what I've done is I've opened up my learning experience to anyone who is willing to pay for it. It's $100 a month. But the awesome thing about this is that I can now spend a lot more of my time answering people's questions and not get bankrupt.
In the beginning, I've got this big inbox full of questions and I'd love to answer them all. But I don't get paid for that so I can't do it. I have to get the person on the phone and then bill them for my time. And there's a lot of repetition in the questions, a lot of frequently asked questions. So I think this model is working better. Tommy and I are constantly thinking about supplements, constantly thinking about diet and lifestyle hacks.
Tommy will see something interesting, a study that's relevant for us. Before he would just email it to me and then there'd be a backwards and forwards conversation and maybe he'd send me some more studies on the other work that was done previously that was important. And now all of that lives in Facebook. And so you can just have that same education that I'd been receiving very gratefully through this private membership group. I think it's a really great way. So if you did like a blood test and an organic acids test and you really want to get into it and you want to understand what alpha-Ketoglutarate is, then Tommy is your man. You post that on Facebook, what does alpha-Ketoglutarate do?
Yeah, the questions so far have been really fantastic, a lot of stuff on supplements seem to be something that people really love to talk about. There's more and more science coming out to describe why the supplements work the way that they do. And, yeah, Tommy is the gatekeeper of that information. So that's fun. Concierge clinical coaching is the URL. And I will, of course, link to that in the show notes.
Yeah, hopefully you find this helpful, interesting. Please do let me know. There's a comment section on the show notes page that's linked in iTunes and in Stitcher. Let me know if you found this interesting. I'd be very grateful to hear about that.
[0:44:00] End of Audio
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