How I got Started Working as a Nutrition and Strength Coach

I guess a little background on myself. So I grew up playing sports my whole life very physically active. That's what kind of propelled me into the fitness nutrition world. I went to undergrad at the University of Miami University of Miami and got my undergrad degree in athletic training and sports medicine. And while I was there, I thought that was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life has been an athletic trainer. And I quickly realized that as I got more into the nutrition side of things, took a few classes throughout my junior year, I really started to get really interested in nutrition really into strength conditioning, at the time, I was doing triathlon, so I was a do triathlons for the club team at Miami. And then I decided that I wanted to pursue nutrition a little bit further. So I went on, got my master's degree at James Madison University, and actually completely switched my training from triathlons to CrossFit. And I that was a two year program. And within that program, we had to do a thesis study. And so I did. My thesis study was looking at the ketogenic diet and non elite CrossFit athletes.

My professor, really, he basically, when we, when we were looking to research something, he said, Hey, find a subject that you're interested in, that has to do with nutrition and training that will interest you for the next two years, because you're going to be spending a lot of time on this. A lot of my classmates were doing a lot of survey studies and things like that. And I realized that I that wouldn't keep me super interested for two years. So I wanted to challenge myself a little bit, and I wanted to do more of a human clinical trial. So that's what I did. And at that point, I was just getting into CrossFit. There wasn't really that much out there in the literature on CrossFit training itself. And then let alone nothing in literature at that point on CrossFit and keto.

And this was back in 2014, when I started this research, yeah, so a few years ago. And so that's, that's what I did. So the study was a six week study. And we looked at the body composition changes of implementing a ketogenic diet and non elite CrossFitters. And we can go over the results of that, but that's what really just propelled me into the low carb keto space. And it actually happened by accident that that I was doing all this research, right? When keto was starting to kind of get popular, popular again, I guess, you could say, or just within this generation popular, we know with nutrition things ebb and flow right throughout the years.

And at that point, keto was starting to just take off.And so I kind of got lucky in that sense. And after I graduated, the study got published. So that was in 2016. And then I just really dove into sorry, the low carb space, started implementing, you know, a lower carb lifestyle for myself working with clients, you know, getting more into CrossFit training and then getting a little bit away from it. And over that time period, um, throughout those years, learned a lot made a lot of made a lot of mistakes, you know, as we do throughout our own journeys, worked with a lot of clients, made some mistakes with them learned a lot ended up writing that the book, the 21 day ketogenic diet weight loss challenge, and eventually got to a point where I realized that keto was a great tool.

But I kind of went down the rabbit hole a little bit too far, and realize that I needed some carbs in my life, and I kind of got this card phobic mindsets, was like ingrained in me and I need to get out of that. And so that's what brought me more towards this metabolic flexibility side of things. And really, over the past three to four years it's really what I'm passionate about, because I've worked from worked with myself and with a lot of clients to help them realize that we don't have to be, especially with women being strict keto for a long period of time, might not be the best choice especially like within their particular goals.