Brian (0s):
This week I interviewed Alex Feinberg. Alex is a former professional baseball player, hedge fund analyst, Google exec, and an early cryptocurrency investor. Now he excels at a high performance coach, helping executives, founders, and entrepreneurs enhance their performance and streamline their lives. We discussed Alex code to eating, along with His training protocol for 40 plus the Importance of high intensity interval training routines for high performers, and his one tip to get your body back to what it once was. Really enjoyed my interview with Alex. I know you will too. Thanks so much for listening and enjoy the show. All right. Welcome to the Gitlin EATCLEAN podcast.
Brian (41s):
My name is Brian Gryn and I have Alex Feinberg out and welcome to the show.
Alex (44s):
Thank you. Glad to be here Brian.
Brian (47s):
Glad to have ya on. And ex-professional baseball player, ex Google, right? Used to work for Google back in the day. And And now you have the insanely addictive, is that right? Website?
Alex (1m 0s):
Yeah. Insanely addictive training. Yeah.
Brian (1m 2s):
Yeah. Well, maybe explain, give people maybe a little backstory just So they have an idea where you're coming from.
Alex (1m 7s):
Yeah. So I've always wanted to do something different than regular people. So as a, a young child, I didn't realize that there were avenues outside of professional sports or entertainment to not do a conventional job. But the last thing I wanted to do was drive and sit in an office, you know, nine to 10 hours a day, five days a week, and, you know, have the same degree of apathy or same degree of depression that the typical American worker has. And so I decided at a young age that I wanted to be a, a major league baseball player. I was decent at baseball, but I thought that with enough hard work, I too would be able to fulfill my dream.
Alex (1m 48s):
And so I grinded away In high school, I ended up getting scholarship offer to Vanderbilt University among others. Took the offer to Vanderbilt, wanting to play in the SEC. Started there for four years, got drafted by the Rockies, majored in economics when I was at Vanderbilt, which really helped underpin the views that I have on diet and exercise and how to make everything as easy as possible because there really was a, a very substantial behavioral economics influence in the way that I perceived the world. Played with the Rockies for a couple years, saw the writing on the wall, wasn't really gonna progress through their system. So I ended up taking a job actually at a global macro hedge fund prior to Google, working for a, a Vanderbilt alum who'd enjoyed watching me play for four years.
Alex (2m 32s):
He had some pretty interesting and conspiratorial and correct views about how financial markets worked, worked for him in Hong Kong for a little over a year before deciding that the tech sector was gonna do very well. So I moved back to Silicon Valley where I actually grew up and elevator pitched my way into Google using some of the shortcuts that I realized when I was a Vanderbilt baseball player. Namely that if you were good looking, if you wear a suit that fits you and if you speak well, people will give you many opportunities in life. And I got a job at Google that I was unqualified to get. I got a job in sales even though I had done no sales, and it was very, a very poor salesman my first six months there.
Alex (3m 12s):
But because everybody knew that I worked hard and because everybody knew that I was fit and everybody knew that I was a successful athlete, they kept giving me chance after chance until I eventually got it right. I continued my commitment to fitness while I was at Google because I realized that it was one of the best career hedges that I could possibly have given the uncertainty of corporate employment. I always wanted to be in a position where if I was ever interviewing externally and had to explain why I didn't have a job, that my physical appearance would supplement my resume in convincing anybody who is assessing me that I was in fact a intelligent, capable person. Because people do make heuristic assessments And you know, the, the healthier, more vibrant you look, the more likely they are to believe any story that you tell them.
Alex (4m 1s):
And so, you know, I ended up working at Google for six years. I learned a lot about how corporations are structured and a lot of the pitfalls that people unfortunately get stuck in that make them depressed. I learned how to, you know, use training to, you know, moderate my, my mood and, and effectively act as an antidepressant and, and allow me to succeed in corporate America. And then when I eventually left Google, I secured myself a, a nice pay increase using some of the negotiation frameworks that I taught myself working at Google, but also realized that I needed to start, start a social media following if I wanted to be successful in my next field, which was the cryptocurrency space.
Alex (4m 42s):
And so I ended up creating a lot of content. I had a lot of success around the diet and exercise program that I had come up with on my own. I had no intention of monetizing it or creating any sort of offering around it. When I got started, I just wanted a framework that I enjoyed that I looked forward to doing and that I thought tasted excellent. And that's actually what I did. I figured out how to eat pizza, burgers, fried chicken and tacos without counting calories, without going hungry for most of my meals. Never eating bad tasting food, only eating delicious food, really figuring out a program that maximized my enjoyment for food. That was the primary goal ahead of getting shredded abs, but also figuring out a training program that I looked forward to doing that would never be so hard that I didn't want to go to the gym the next day.
Alex (5m 28s):
Surprise, surprise. That ended up being a pretty enticing offer for a lot of people who are reading about it online, particularly as they found out that it was actually true and that I wasn't making anything up. And so I had a lot of success evangelizing that, showcasing that program over a few years. And a lot of the clients who have had success in that program actually, like the mental models, the behavioral economic frameworks that I use to, to underpin it and have come to me for executive coaching, you know, to basically understand these models a little bit better and apply them to how they run their businesses and lives. So that takes us to today.
Brian (6m 5s):
Wow. A lot. And have you, like, since you came up with that framework around eating, have you changed your mind on any of that? Or like, does that something that you still follow? 'cause I mean, I've been in nutrition and health for like 20 years now, and we always find some things that maybe we change our minds on. Is there anything that you've changed since then
Alex (6m 25s):
Around eating? No. Okay. I may start experimenting having a little bit more carbs and maybe a little bit less dietary fat, But it's, it would be an experiment. I wouldn't have changed my mind around it. I, I just wanted to like manipulate and play with some things. But no, I mean, the, the program that I developed from a dietary standpoint about 11 years ago has been the exact way that I've eaten for 11 years, which is eat as much as I can when I'm hungry until I am full. And there is no caloric restriction whatsoever. I guess the only thing that I have changed has been how late I'm willing to eat at night because this last year and a half, I really wanted to prioritize sleep.
Alex (7m 6s):
And so what I've tried to do to get my sleep better is to try to front load my meals meal portion sizes so that for lunchtime I'm actually eating a little bit beyond my sense of satiety so that I'm not quite as hungry at dinner. Hmm. That's a very minor tweak compared to just eating when I'm hungry, until I'm full every single meal, just so I can get my food in my, in my digestive system a little bit earlier in the day so I can get a little bit better deep sleep. But that's really about it. I mean, the, the only thing that I've realized over the last 11 years is I can actually get away with training even less than I thought i, I needed to before. And so, you know, ideally the way you approach life should be, you know, some form of Jenga where you can figure out how to, how to get the same results with lesser and lesser effort while you reinvest the effort that you're saving into something new and exciting.
Brian (7m 57s):
Yeah. I think nowadays being the most efficient person is, you know, it comes with like something that has a lot of value, right? Like I talk, we talk a lot about like micro workouts and you can get a lot done in 20, 30 minutes. I think some people get intimidated by thinking they have to go to the gym for an hour, an hour and a half to get results. But, you know, I think like doing small little workouts throughout the day or even just once a day can, can make an, a big impact on in individual's health,
Alex (8m 27s):
Particularly if they're not doing anything as the alternative. Sure. Right. It's a little bit more challenging when you become a more advanced trained athlete because of the warmup process that's necessary to, to do a set close to failure where if I tried to do that at the level that I trained, I would get injured because, you know, it's gonna take me 30 minutes, 20, 30 minutes to get warmed up to do something. Yeah. And so, you know, I, I don't really have the time to get warmed up several times in a day, but if I was a less advanced athlete whose body was, you know, less adept at harnessing the full spectrum of his skeleton, then yes, that would be a little bit more feasible.
Brian (9m 6s):
And, and around your eating and you talk about just eating to your satisfied, that could probably look a lot different for different people. How do you go about negotiating or not negotiate, but how do you go about like, you know, helping different clients who have, you know, sort of different needs as far as calorically And, you know, there are different, obviously body types and sizes and things like that. Yeah,
Alex (9m 29s):
So I don't work with alcoholics and I, I don't really work with sugar addicts because my method doesn't really work for people who have difficulty, you know, managing, drinking, or managing sugar consumption. The cheat code that I have found for moderating your eating is restricting the amount of foods that you eat that make you hungrier and focusing on foods that make you less hungry. Surprise, surprise, when you eat food that makes you less hungry, your appetite tends to align with what your body actually needs and foods that make you less hung or protein dominant, real food. And so, you know, I've worked with people of all sizes and have had success with people of all sizes, but I have not had a tremendous amount of success with actual addicts.
Alex (10m 16s):
And so people who like savory foods, people who enjoy their, their steaks, people who enjoy, you know, ribs, people who enjoy protein dominant real food tend to have a big amount of success with my program. And men in particular because men will carry more muscle mass. Men will be able to have in, in most cases, more intense workouts. I have had success with women, but the women who are successful with my system tend to have, you know, a, a reasonable high level of athleticism. Or maybe they played a college sport even at a small school, but they were like reasonably athletic and have a good, good training foundation. Women like that can have success with my program.
Alex (10m 58s):
Men who've played a sport at the varsity level or above in high school tend to have success with my program if they don't have addictions coming into place. And so how do you know if you're hungry? Well, how do you know if you need to pee? Like, you know, if you don't know that you're hungry, you're not hungry, what do we need to do to manage our hunger signals? We need to make sure that we're training rigorously. If you train at a moderate intensity, you're gonna get hungrier. But if you train at a rigorous intensity, there's a good chance that your appetite is gonna be moderated. We wanna make sure that we're sufficiently hydrated, particularly if we're traveling a lot for work. If you spend several hours in a plane, a lot of times you get hungry and it's not because you need food, it's because you actually just need water. And some electrolytes, we gotta make sure that we're getting enough sleep or we're managing our stress.
Alex (11m 39s):
Those can be very challenging things for, you know, high performing executives who I work with. But we wanna make sure that we get our training done ideally in the morning because that helps moderate stress for a longer portion of the day and helps circadian rhythm stay intact, helps us with energy management, and helps us get ready for bed at a reasonable hour. And so there's a lot of things that can go wrong if you're trying to lean on your intuition to tell ya what to eat. But realistically, most people overeat because they eat when they're bored. They eat when, when it's mealtime they eat because there's food in front of them. And if you simply ask yourself, don't eat, am I hungry? You know, do I really crave this dessert? Or is it just in front of me?
Alex (12m 20s):
You can probably eat 70% less than you otherwise would have simply by asking yourself those two questions, do I really crave it? Am I really hungry?
Brian (12m 31s):
Yeah. And you touched on it earlier, what was sounds like go gearing more towards like just nutrient-dense foods And you know, this way you're not like just filling yourself up with things that have just no, no nutritional value. I know it's gone a little bit, I talked about this with Mike Fave. I don't know if you know Mike Fave proud, sort of the pro metabolic approach of eating, but he, we talked about this sugar diet that sort of went viral for, for a bit here. And that was the one thing that came to my mind is, is the fact that, I mean, if you're just eating gummy bears or sour patch kids after a while, like what are you really getting from that other than maybe a quick energy boost?
Brian (13m 14s):
Right. You know, so I think, you know, having that sort of balanced approach where you're making sure that you know what you're putting in your body actually has some type of nutritional value, I think is like a good place to just start.
Alex (13m 26s):
Yeah. And it can taste great. You know, when, when people think of nutritious food, they don't typically think of good tasting food. And that that's really unfortunate. It's really shows that the beef lobby did a really bad job and the, the meat and dairy industries in general have done a very bad job of positioning themselves as healthy. Right. When people think of healthy, they think of vegetables, but like the healthiest people I know don't really eat that many vegetables. And people who eat a lot of vegetables are typically not that healthy.
Brian (13m 56s):
Yeah. So it sounds like you're gearing more towards a more of a protein dominant meals. Yeah. Pri prioritizing protein. Do you add in some, I know you talked about adding in some type of carbohydrates. Do you add in like fruit from time to time? Oh, I, I
Alex (14m 11s):
Eat carbs. I mean, yeah. Okay. I, I, I don't eat as many carbs as a proportion of my overall meals compared to, you know, the average American, but you know, I'm, I'm probably eating more carbohydrate grams than any other macronutrient, you know, so I don't eat according to a strict macro count, but week by week I eat roughly the same amount. And it's probably gonna average. I don't, again, I don't track this closely, but I can tell ya at the end of the day, this is what I've eaten and this is approximately how much is in everything. You know, I'm probably eating 230, 240 grams of carbs a day, maybe 190 grams of protein, 180 grams of fat. And so, you know, that's more fat than the average person who's eating this much would eat.
Alex (14m 52s):
And it's a little bit less carbs, but it's not a low carb diet by any means.
Brian (14m 56s):
Gotcha. Okay. And those carbs are typically coming from fruit and maybe some starches
Alex (15m 2s):
Fruit oats. I'm trying my best to reduce my gluten intake. I didn't realize this for 20 years while I had dandruff, but the more bread I eat, the more dandruff I get. Oh. And that doesn't mean that I'm not eating bagels here and there eating some sourdough bread here and there, but I've, I've kind of cut it down to where, you know, maybe I'm having, you know, a bagel and a few pieces of, of gluten containing bread per week or a slice of a pizza that has gluten in it or something per week. And so, you know, skin irritants are, are much more under control when, when I reduce my gluten consumption. But that does make it a little bit more challenging to get carbohydrates.
Alex (15m 44s):
And so beans rice are, are a couple carbs. Basmati rice has lower arsenic, lower glycemic index than a a Jasmine rice. You know, avocados have a, a little bit of carbs in them and oats and, and fruits.
Brian (15m 59s):
Hey everyone, quick interruption here. If you are looking to gain energy, lose inches around your waist and build strength, well look no further than my book, the Step Ladder System, six Steps to Lifelong Health and Vitality. What you get with the book is my full step-by-step plan and blueprint that I've worked with all my clients with packed into one book with part one, you're gonna lay the foundation, tackle any common challenges that might come in your way. Part two is my six pillar blueprint, how to set you yourself up with a solid plan and know exactly what to do when life throws any curve balls. And lastly, step three are learning to implementation a plan for getting results over the next week's and beyond.
Brian (16m 42s):
So there you have it. I'll leave a link in the show notes for my stepladder system book now back to the podcast. Okay. And I know you went on Robert Sykes podcast. I've had him on, it's been a bit, but you talked about your 4,000 do $4,000, 4,000 calorie day. Is that something you, you, do you, is that what you aim for? I know you don't really like to track a ton. No, I
Alex (17m 6s):
Don't, I don't aim for a number. Okay. I, I just, I'm aware of what I'm eating and on the high end it tends to be around there sometimes more on the low end, probably 2,800, 3000 And, you know, probably averages 35, 36, 3, 700 calories a day. I, I just don't, I don't know, actually nobody knows how many calories they're eating Sure. Unless they're burning their food as they're eating it, you know, all we can do is it's an estimate, trust the labels that are given to us and hope that the averages are in fact representative of reality. So I don't know exactly, but I, I do know that on my hungrier days I'm gonna exceed 4,000 calories for sure.
Brian (17m 47s):
And have you changed your training regimen? Obviously, I don't know Alex, how old you are now, but back in when you were an athlete. Has, has it changed since then?
Alex (17m 57s):
Yeah, yeah. You know, I think I'm 39 years old right now, and I trained very hard. I still train very hard, but I trained very hard. You know, through my early thirties, I found out that a shoulder injury that I had from baseball was really degenerating much more rapidly than I had hoped by my early thirties. And so I actually stopped pressing entirely Hmm. From my early thirties on Yeah. And focused a lot on lower body movements because, you know, my lower body is fine And, you know, frankly, most of your metabolic engine is in your legs because your legs carry most of your muscle mass. And so I would do heavy deadlifts, heavy squats.
Alex (18m 36s):
And then, you know, as I got older and paid more attention to what chiropractors would say and realized that a conventional deadlift doesn't really train your body any better than a a hex bar deadlift, I started, I switched at the age of 37 from conventional deadlifts to hex bar deadlifts with a low handle just to put less unnecessary stress on my back. And then I switched from barbell squats to, to zercher squats where I'm holding the weight in my elbows instead of on my back. Hmm. Again, just to reduce axial loading because I'm not gonna be a power lifter. So there really doesn't have a purpose for me, you know, throwing 315 pounds on my back and doing back squats with it like I used to and or more frankly.
Alex (19m 18s):
And so I'm limiting my axial loading. And then I'm also just cognizant of baseball injuries that I've had over the years. So if my shoulder's not feeling good, you know, I, I can't be lifting as heavy as even for pulling exercises because, you know, as, as you know, I, my shoulder, if it doesn't feel good and I lift heavier than I should be, you know, it's gonna feel worse. And so, you know, you wanna make sure that your workouts are making you stronger, not breaking your body down. And, and so that's going to necessitate some degree of adjustments as you get older. Now, the one thing that hasn't changed is the intensity that I take to my interval training. I think that I carry enough muscle mass to where even if I'm not lifting as heavy and you know, I lost 10 pounds of muscle mass, 15 pounds of muscle mass, I'd still look good with my shirt off.
Alex (20m 3s):
If I can maintain my intensity doing intervals on the assault bike, that is the metabolic driver that I've experienced. That is what leads to appetite moderation. That is what leads to a rapid resting metabolic rate in my experience, because most lifters are not lean, but most people who can do high intensity interval training, most sprinters, most elite runners, they are lean and it's not because of the calories that they're burning in their training. Elite sprinters are not training with as high of a volume as you would expect them to. Right. And they're not fast because they are lean. They're lean because they're fast. And so a lot of misconceptions exist around what is necessary from a calorie burning standpoint.
Alex (20m 48s):
During your training, in order to get lean, you need to have a body that has an engine that is capable of moving you fast. If you have an engine that's capable of propelling you at a fast velocity, it will burn a lot of calories at rest. And the key to being lean is burning calories at rest, not necessarily burning calories while you're training.
Brian (21m 9s):
Yeah. And it's interesting, you bring up high intensity interval training, I think, do you do that like once a week, would you say? Or what's your, what's sort of the cadence of that?
Alex (21m 19s):
So the other thing that I've changed with my training, excuse me as I've gotten older, is I only train three days a week. Now, I used to train four and or four or five, frankly, and I used to do high intensity interval training four days a week. Oh wow. And Now I do it three days a week and I don't do it as long as I used to because I'm playing Jenga with my workouts to try to figure out how I can do less and less and still get the same or better results. And so I used to do 16 minutes of intervals before my lifts, and I used to do that four days a week, and Now I do 10 minutes of intervals and I do it three days a week and my body's feeling better doing less. And so that's what I'm doing. I do 10 minutes of interval training three days a week prior to my lifts as both a exercise and a warmup to get the blood flowing prior to my lifts.
Alex (22m 5s):
And then on my four non lifting days, I'm still doing mobility work. And then I'm either walking or doing some sort of light biking to get my zone two exercise in just to be, you know, healthy from a cardiovascular standpoint.
Brian (22m 16s):
Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. So you use it almost as a warmup for your lifts? Yeah, yeah. Three days a week Makes sense. Yeah. 10 minutes. I mean, I'm that assault if it's, I I have, I have a rogue echo bike in my basement. Yeah. That thing is no joke. Right. You could
Alex (22m 31s):
And you track it. 'cause you gotta, you gotta make sure that you're getting better if you, you know, if you just, oh, I went hard. Like you don't actually know you, you gotta make a game out of it. And so if you know what, what your output was last week, you know, what your peak output was, generally speaking, like I know on a Schwinn dyne that it's gonna say on a PR day that I'm gonna do 185 calories, that's Schwinn dyne calories. Those are not the same as echo byte calories. There's probably a 70% premium that you get on the Schwinn dyne calories, and they're fake calories. It's just a, an output measurement. Right. But I'm doing 185 calories on a, a Schwinn dyne on five intervals each lasting one minute with a one minute rest in between Oh wow.
Alex (23m 12s):
On a PR day. And that's gonna be about the equivalent of 110 calories on an assault bike, maybe a little bit more because the assault bike accrues more calories at rest than the Schwinn INE does. So maybe it's closer to 115 on the, the assault bike. But I want to get within five or 10% of that every time I'm doing my interval sprints. If I'm below 10%, it means my body isn't recovered. I don't wear a whoop, I don't, I don't need a device to tell me if I'm recovered. I can use both how I feel and then my output on the assault bike to know how I'm feeling. High output means I'm recovered. Low output means I'm not, and I can adjust my lifts accordingly. Because also as I've gotten older, I don't go as hard as I can every training session in my twenties, every training session.
Alex (23m 55s):
I just go as hard as I could for an hour and I can't recover from that anymore. And so I need to be more strategic in waving my intensities And, you know, take a strategic 90% day so that when I do go a hundred percent, I actually have fuel in my tank. So I might go a hundred percent on my lifts, you know, one lift per month per muscle group. And the other lifts are 90%. And that's okay because I have enough of a foundation to where I'm gonna maintain my muscle mass. I have more muscle mass now than I did when I would go a hundred percent every workout. And so I've gotten more intelligent about how I'm structuring my workouts. It's easier, I do have to spend more time doing mobility work as I've gotten older. That's the one unfortunate thing.
Alex (24m 35s):
But the actual time that I'm spending doing training is, is less painful, less, less emotionally challenging than it was, you know, at any point in my competitive athletic career or in my early twenties or late twenties.
Brian (24m 49s):
Yeah, no, that makes sense. I mean, finding that fine line, the balance between, you know, growth or even maintenance and just making sure that like, you know, you stay, like you don't, you're not getting injured. Right. Yeah. I think like you have a client, that's the last thing you want to happen, right. Because then you're on, then you're on the shelf for who knows how long. Right, right. Having to recover and get better. Right. What are some of the, we're a big, I'm a big routine guy. I know you talk a lot about it with, with perhaps your, your athletes or your high performers. Like what are some, you know, sort of of your routines or routines that you work with clients on to making sure that you know, they're set up for a great day?
Alex (25m 28s):
I like starting the day with a workout as much for mental reasons as physical reasons. Because high performing people don't have dopamine every day from their work. There's a lot of bad days that actually go with a few good days. If you're doing anything that's complex more, you're gonna have more negative signals and you're gonna have positive signals and it's gonna be very easy to convince yourself that everything's going to hell and why am I doing this? Working out is a little bit different where if you get up early, you get a workout done, you're gonna feel like you accomplished something. So even if the rest of your day doesn't go as well as you would've liked, by the end of the day, the, the balance of your self-assessment is gonna lean positive.
Alex (26m 9s):
Whereas if you're working out at the end of the day and you have a bunch of bad things going on and maybe you have a fire to put out, you may not even get your workout in. Right. And then you finish the day feeling like you're a failure. And one of the keys to succeeding that I've noticed with myself and others is not quitting. And the key to not quitting is to thinking that you're going to eventually win. And the key to thinking that you're going to eventually win is to win small every day. And you can win small every day by starting your days with a intense training session. So I wanna get that training session done at the beginning of the day. So we've checked it off. We know, know that we know that we're a winner, our brain is turned on, we're gonna be more charismatic, we're going to be more magnetic, we're gonna get more yeses by having more energy when we're interacting with the world.
Alex (26m 57s):
And you get that first domino to fall and other dominoes fall. One of the, one of the ways that I help people get better output with less input is identifying kingpins within their days. What are things that I can do where the downstream effect has me doing things that otherwise would require effort? Oh, it would require effort for me to show high energy and be in a good mood, except if I wake up early and do my training, then it's not as hard. So I actually just have to do one thing. I just have to train and my mood and my energy are gonna take care of itself rather than wor worrying about three things and have to checking three have to check three boxes.
Brian (27m 33s):
Right. That makes a ton of sense. I mean, doing those things that sort of create that snowball effect.
Alex (27m 37s):
That's right. Yeah.
Brian (27m 39s):
Absolutely. Yeah. And, and I agree. I mean, morning workouts, I think prioritizing those, especially if it's something that's new. Because if, if you wait, the longer you wait, the more excuses can come up and things can get in the way. So Yeah. Yeah, that makes a ton of sense, especially for someone who's just starting out. Right, right,
Alex (27m 55s):
Right.
Brian (27m 57s):
And then as far as like building that, you know, building your workouts around your day, I totally get that. What about like other things that could help routine wise with stress and sleep?
Alex (28m 11s):
Well, I guess before we get there, from a, from a planning standpoint, we always wanna make sure that we know where our protein is. And so, you know, busy people they go to, they go travel a lot, they get caught up with work. And a lot of times we eat bad meals. You know, we wanna make sure that our cheap meals taste great. We don't wanna have cheap meals out of convenience because we didn't plan ahead. So we always wanna make sure that we're not in a place where there isn't good tasting protein nearby. Hopefully you're a refrigerator, but if you're not at home then you know, a restaurant or you've, you know, ideally done meal prep. But I don't expect most of the people that I work with to do that. So we wanna make sure that we know where our protein is from a stress management standpoint, that's actually really interesting because, you know, if I'm writing a program for somebody who wants to manage stress, that's actually gonna be a little bit different from somebody who wants to be lean.
Alex (28m 57s):
I'm gonna include more zone two, zone three conditioning, because even though that's not gonna make you leaner, it's gonna help you regulate your anxiety a little bit better, regulate your cortisol a little bit better. We want to have morning exposure to sunlight. So I took a call earlier this morning and I took it outside because I didn't want the first light that I saw in the morning to be a computer screen while I was bathing in blue light for the first hour of my day. And so I took the first 45 minutes of the call outside so that my eyes were absorbing natural light, which is going to, you know, help my circadian rhythm. We wanna be off screens an hour before bed. Ideally we wanna limit our alcohol consumption and not drink as many days as possible.
Alex (29m 42s):
Caffeine is a big one. Caffeine has a six to seven hour halflife. And so if you drink a cup of co, if you drink two cups of coffee in the morning, you have a half cup of coffee and you by the time you go to bed and then you're just always repeating the cycle of poor sleep, followed by excessive caffeination leaving to poor sleep. And So we want to get outta that. I actually went to decaf myself about a year and a half ago as I worked on getting my sleep better right now. You know, I'll have a diet Coke, I'll have an iced tea, but I'm never having fully caffeinated coffee except one day when I accidentally forgot to give Dunkin Donuts my decaf offer. And was wondering why I felt so damn amazing during my workout. And I realized it was because they shoved 380 milligrams of caffeine into my mouth because I forgot to tell them not to.
Alex (30m 27s):
Mm. But outside of that single day, I've not had regular coffee in like a year and a half. And actually to my surprise, I slept fine that night. You know, even though I put so much caffeine in my body, I guess my body ended up metabolizing it well because I was able to sweat it out during my workout. But we wanna be very cognizant of overloading on caffeine. So I would ideally tell people, you know, a hundred milligrams or less of coffee if it's impacting your sleep. If it's not, you know, you don't have an issue with it. But, you know, for a lot of people, if we start having coffee in the afternoon, we start having more than, you know, 150 milligrams in the morning, you know, that that can, that can definitely weigh on us by the time you go to sleep. And it also increases anxiety, you know, if you, if you put a stimulant in your body, it's gonna get you going.
Alex (31m 9s):
Anxiety comes from us going too fast and worrying about too many things.
Brian (31m 14s):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, c coffee, I'm not a big coffee drinker. Yeah, I do, I do use it strategically as a pre-workout sometimes. 'cause not that I necessarily need a pre-workout, but sometimes it's nice every once in a while, so I'll Oh, for sure. I'll, I'll use it from time to time. Yeah. Yeah. Being off screens is huge. I have, well I have day, day glasses which are here and then I have some night ones that I use probably about after eight o'clock. And I know you talked about earlier how you wanted to make sure you didn't clo too close to bed. That's something that's like a hard rule for myself and a lot of my clients. It's like, I like to give myself three hours. Some days it, maybe it's two, but at least two to three hours, you know, done, done eating before.
Brian (32m 1s):
But I find that I have better quality sleep.
Alex (32m 3s):
Yeah. You and most people.
Brian (32m 5s):
Yeah. And then what about like staying consistent? I always say, people ask me, I mean like how do you, like what do you attribute a lot of your success, you know, in and out of the weight room? It's like, I think it's all about just being consistent. What, what type of tips or habits are like ways that you help your clients maybe become more consistent with their routines?
Alex (32m 27s):
It just depends what's important to you. You know, do you brush your teeth every day? Like most people who I know brush their teeth every day, no matter how busy they're, they brush their teeth. And for me, you know, I'm gonna get my workouts in to the point where I will, I, I schedule my days around my workouts. That may not be possible for people a hundred percent of the time, but if you approach your workout the way you would approach brushing your teeth and know that I have to get this done at least a certain amount of times, if I wanna be healthy, you'll get it done. If you've gotten in the habit of thinking that this is a, a luxury item that can be crossed off of my list, you're gonna figure out a way to cross it off your list when times get tough and, and your schedule gets tight.
Alex (33m 15s):
But that's always a, a short-term, short-term fix that creates long-term problems because your energy ends up getting lower. You end up repelling people instead of attracting them because your energy's lower, you don't look as good, which does the same thing. And so, you know, maybe if you're able to, you know, cut your workouts down one week, one day even, it may be worth it. But for me, if I don't work out, I don't sleep that well. And so, you know, I end up paying the price for it for with diminished productivity the next day. So, you know, a lot of, a lot of time-based decisions are very similar to, to finance-based decisions. If you get an hour back by skipping your workout, you're effectively borrowing that time at interest.
Alex (33m 59s):
You're gonna have to pay it back, spending a couple hours doing something else later in your life. Whether it is hustling harder to get the same amount of clients, whether it is hustling harder to recruit the same caliber employee around you, or whether it is recovering from an injury that you wouldn't have had, had you done an additional hour of prep work, you know, consistently in your thirties that, you know, by the time you're in your fifties, something is broken because of it. Hmm.
Brian (34m 29s):
Yeah. And also around consistency, I think for a lot of people, having a coach can really help as well because they have someone that's holding them accountable. And some people just need that.
Alex (34m 39s):
Some people need that. Some people need to spend money on problems to fix them. You know, some people you can, they could have exactly the right thing to do from a, a chat GPT, which is actually really hard to do 'cause you need to prompt it correctly. And most people who don't have experience prompting, you know, prompting these AI mechanisms are not actually going to get themselves a well-structured plan that caters to their exact needs. And, and a lot of the models are actually based on faulty or fraudulent assumptions about how the, the human metabolism works that might be resolved within three years, but it's not really resolved right now.
Alex (35m 19s):
But the, the crazy thing that I noticed, a guy on my group call last night was saying he stayed much more consistent with this program compared to previous attempts that he's tried to stay fit because he paid for it this time. Okay. And other times when he didn't pay for it, he thought, oh well I can like deviate and I could skip this and I can modify that. And it just didn't end up working as well for him then when somebody wrote a program custom for him that he paid for.
Brian (35m 43s):
Yeah. Yeah. Now that makes a lot of sense. I always, I always taught like never give anything away for free. 'cause people, people won't value that and they won't do it. Right.
Alex (35m 52s):
They
Brian (35m 52s):
Don't. So, you know, well this was great. What's, I like to ask this question to most guests that come on. Like, what's one tip you'd give someone if, you know, maybe they've fallen off the wagon a little bit, they just wanted to get their body and, and maybe their minds back to what it once was maybe five, 10 years ago. Like what one tip would you give them?
Alex (36m 11s):
Surround yourself with people who are where you want to be and can help you be the best version of yourself.
Brian (36m 18s):
Love that. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. I always say like, you know when CrossFit made like the big push and they, and there was like a big thing and obviously people are still doing it, But it was that community that really, that brought people to it. That really was the big success behind it. Yeah,
Alex (36m 33s):
Absolutely.
Brian (36m 34s):
Absolutely. Great. Well where's the best place for people to find you?
Alex (36m 38s):
You can go to my website, feinberg systems.com, which will cover everything that I do, both from an executive standpoint as well as a, a training standpoint. So, and then you could do, you could find me on social media, Alex Feinberg, one on X on LinkedIn. Excuse me. Yeah, you can, you can also find me that find me there on LinkedIn. Alex Feinberg one, YouTube, Alex Feinberg one. So Alex Feinberg won across all social media. You're
Brian (37m 8s):
The first. You're the first. Alex Feinberg,
Alex (37m 10s):
I'm the first Alex Feinberg, despite how challenging it was for me to articulate that Alex Feinberg won across all social media channels is is a great bet. I keep my dms open, but if you wanna find me on my website, feinberg systems.com, if you got questions, you know, hit me up through social media And you know, keep my dms open, we can figure out, you know, what you're looking to do. And you know, maybe I'm in a position to help, maybe somebody in my network is in a better position to help, but I'm always happy to chat. And so find me where you are and we'll see if we can help each other out.
Brian (37m 46s):
All right, Alex, well I appreciate you coming on and I'll definitely put links in the show notes so if people can find you. So thank you. Thanks so much. Yeah,
Alex (37m 54s):
Sounds good Brian. Thank you.
Brian (37m 55s):
Thanks for listening to the show. I know there's thousands of podcasts out there and you chose to listen to mine. I will put a link in the show notes if you want to connect with my guest. And if you are looking for one-on-one consulting with me, I will put a free 15 minute link so you can set up a call to see if you're fit for my six month health breakthrough program. So thanks again, feel free to rate and subscribe. I would love that to help support the podcast. And till next time, have a great rest of the day and I'll see you on my next podcast. Thanks so much.
