Men's Nutrition Playbook for Midlife: How to Lose Belly Fat Without TRT or GLP-1s

MELISSA All right. A multivitamin will cover most of my deficiencies.

JOE Good luck.

MELISSA Health and wellness is confusing. There's a new trend every week. Everyone's got an opinion, and half the time, you can't tell what's legit and what's just good marketing. And we get it. We're in it too. Welcome to Dialed In Health. I'm Melissa Goodwin. Every episode, we bring in the people who actually do this work, providers, practitioners, the experts who see clients and patients every day. We ask the questions you'd ask if you were sitting across from them so you can find the right people, make better decisions, and feel confident about what's out there, whether it's peptides, gut health, water quality, ADHD, biohacking, or something you've never heard of, we're covering it. So let's get into it. Let's get Dialed In.

MELISSA Welcome to Dialed In Health. Today, we're going to be talking about the Men's Nutrition Playbook for midlife guys. You might be feeling tired, carrying a little belly fat, maybe wondering if peptides or TRT is the answer. So I'm sitting here with Dr. Joe Moen. He's going to walk us through the foundation that many men skip, and frankly, most women, do, which is kind of the protein, real food, sleep, strength, all those foundational things. So you're going to learn a little bit about how much protein every guy should be eating every week, if you're over 40. What to eat for breakfast, how to lose some of that belly fat, when TRT actually makes sense, when to incorporate those GLP-1s, if they even belong in the conversation. And the single thing you can do if you want to start on Monday, what you can do to help feel better by Friday. So I want to welcome Dr. Joe Moen. You're a certified chiropractor and sports physician, certified sports physician expert with extra training in movement and nutrition. You run Origin Health, Origin Strength, Origin Nutrition. I'm sure there'll be something coming up soon to add to that list. Here in Sioux Falls, your whole practice is built on the idea of fix the foundation before the fancy stuff. So thank you for being on the show today.

JOE Yeah, no problem. Happy to be here.

MELISSA So tell us a little bit about your, you know, how you started Origin Health, where this idea came from. Now you've got three entities. Give us a little bit of the background.

JOE Yeah, we started Origin Health. My wife and I, the idea had kind of been in our heads for a long time. We had always been talking to patients, you know, she was in the functional medicine world as a nurse, and then myself in the chiropractic world about patients getting back to the basics and doing the stuff that's always worked, right? Eat real food, move, sleep, have community, have some sort of faith, right? And a lot of things get better. So it was like, get back to the origin of things. Like, oh, origin, like, that's pretty cool. And we started this clinic, Origin Health, January of 2020, right before COVID. So that was a fun experience, but we made it. Has did a lot of other businesses and we were proud to make it through that. And then through that, through just some organic relationships, met some, our current partners in the gym who were doing a bunch of nutrition stuff on the side. And they had stepped out of the gym that they were previously involved in. And had all these nutrition clients and said, well, I don't even want to do all these. And he said, well, I got an extra room. Why don't we just bring them over here and call it Origin Nutrition? And that grew into, wouldn't it be cool to not only help people with the food they're intaking, but also be able to help them with their movement? Yeah. All right. Well, two years later here we are with the gym, right? And so now we have Origin Health for the clinic stuff, Origin Strength, which is our gym, which is focused on strength training and functional movement that everybody can do. And then we have Origin Nutrition, which helps people learn how to eat and how much to eat and when and what kind of foods to eat based on their own specific body, their activity, how much they're sitting, how much they're on their feet all day, how much are they working out, how much are they sleeping? And we can really hyper-individualize their plan based on them. So with those three companies, we have a lot of touch points on kind of that, I don't know, that stool, if you will, of health that we kind of alluded to where we're helping people move, we're helping people eat real food. The clinic stuff, we're helping people get out of pain so that they can move, you know, and then they feel good. And you go home and you start stacking some of those habits and those tend to start creating some momentum for a person, which can lead to, you know, a better health span down the road.

MELISSA Right. So tell me a little bit, you know, the average person that comes in to meet you at one of your entities, what does that guy look like? What is he coming in saying to you symptom-wise or what is he describing?

JOE On the clinic side, everyone's in pain. That's always the joke. Like patient walks in, how are you? Good. I'm like, no, you're not. You wouldn't be good if you're here, you know. And so if they're coming to the clinic side, there's usually something that's affecting the way that they want to live their life. And you know, whether it be headaches or back pain or neck pain or hips or whatever it is. Right. And oftentimes getting them out of pain is the simple part, keeping them out of pain and then getting them to the point where they're staying out of pain. That's where the gym stuff comes in and personal training. And like, you know, you sit all day and your body's just craving movement. Right. Well, now we can help with that. Right. And if you're gonna be doing that, we need to be fueling your body so that you can recover so that you're not back in here in a month from overtraining or whatever it is. So the average person is kind of that mid 30s to 40s to 50s dad or mom who's trying to balance having a career plus a couple of kids, plus running around every night being a taxi driver, plus trying to find ways to take care of their own health, plus trying to find ways to get some sleep in every now and then. Right. And they just feel like they just need somebody to hold them accountable and be, just show them simple things that they can do that in the long term can make big strides as far as what they want to accomplish, whether it is losing weight or just getting rid of some headaches so that they can be the dad they want to be at night. Right. Like, yeah, everyone has their own goals. Maybe it's just getting to be able to play golf again. Right. It's whatever they come in with. That's the reason they're here. And that's our responsibility to help them along that path.

MELISSA What do guys say to you that they maybe don't want to say out loud? What do you hear a lot that maybe is something that you wish that more men were talking about when it comes to nutrition or feeling good?

JOE That's a great question because especially in the Midwest, us guys are tough. You know what I mean? Like everything's fine. They come in. What's going on? Oh, I'm fine. I just can't feel my right leg and I'm not, you know, it's like, well, you're not fine then, you know, right? So I think a guy especially being able to sit down and say, this isn't going how I hoped it was going to go. My body's failing me and it's affecting my life in X, Y and Z. That's a really hard emotional conversation a lot of times. But if we can get the guy to that point or maybe they're already ready, you know, that happens too sometimes. It's my job to expose that to them in a sense like, you're here because your back hurts or your headaches or whatever. What is that keeping you from doing or maybe your energy sucks. And you give your whole day to this job that going to move on without you at some point. Right. Then you go home and you can't give to your wife and your kids anymore or you get to the weekend and you're just burned out. Right. That's a lot of what we see. Right. This is affecting my life and it's affecting my life more than how I thought it should. And you hear, guys will come in and say, I hear you. You just get 40. Everything's downhill and that's true. And I say, well, that's bullshit. Sorry.

MELISSA It doesn't have to be.

JOE It doesn't have to be right. There's things we can do and you can have energy and you shouldn't go home and feel like junk all the time. Like you should get to Saturday have you ready to rock the weekend? Right.

MELISSA That sounds good. I just had to take a big breath because that's not always how I feel on Saturday.

JOE Yeah. And to be honest, that's not me either. Yeah. I'll get to Saturday afternoon sometimes and all I'm gonna do is lay on the floor. And sometimes that's the way it goes when you're running businesses and you have young kids who decide they're not sleeping, you know, and there's those weeks. But what am I doing? What are the little habits I'm doing during that day, during those weeks that's going to impact me once I get back to sleep, you know, and get some stress out of my life? Am I creating a base and a foundation that's going to be able to carry me through this or am I falling apart?

MELISSA So what would you say, you talk about the simple, hard things. What are the simple, hard things that help you protect your energy, protect your nutrition or your health?

JOE I think the simplest, and I like how you say that, the simple, hard things, right? Like a lot of this stuff is simple on paper and it's hard to implement because a lot of times we live in a world where it's pushing back and pulling you away from eating real food or getting real sleep or finding an hour to lift some weights or go on a walk or whatever. Right. And I think the most overlooked thing that is the cheapest and the simplest to implement is focusing on your sleep and you don't have to wait for an MD to help you with this. You know, it's largely up to you when you decide you're going to let your body go to sleep. But if you could focus on your sleep, you're going to have more energy, which means you're going to make better decisions during that day, which is going to impact how you eat because you're going to be thinking more clearly, right? And if you're thinking more clearly and you're eating better, you're going to have more energy, which means you're going to go to the gym, right? And we live in a world where you go lay in bed, turn the TV on, and we're going to binge watch whatever, right? Whatever Netflix show is popular right now, or you're going to be on your iPhone, just kind of laying there absorbing all this blue light and scrolling, doom scrolling. And again, I'm right there with you on a lot of nights, but I've done a couple of experiments where I've decided like, I'm going to put my phone away after eight o'clock. And for the first couple of nights, I remember standing in my living room, looking around like, what am I supposed to do? You know, there's my one son reading a book, my other kids upstairs. And I was like, I guess I'll sit by him now.

MELISSA Yeah. Book, what's that?

JOE Books. Over the course of, I track a lot of stuff in my watch and my recovery over the course of that month increased, got better by 30%. And all I was doing was sleeping.

MELISSA Sleeping. That's amazing. So if you could educate people about one thing with men's health, what would you want guys out there to know outside of sleep?

JOE Outside of sleep. I'm really passionate about food, nutrition. Just because I have a history of stomach issues, kind of what got me into chiropractic in this whole field in the first place. But I'm pretty passionate about the power that food has on you in a negative way and a positive way. You know, if you're eating junk food, your body is just slowly draining over time. So eventually that's going to hit a wall. Everyone says, ah, it doesn't affect me. You're a human and you have human biology and eventually, right, this is going to catch up to you. And for me, it was sickness for the first 22 years of my life and pretty significant. And everything changed when I went on Dr. Google and cut out a bunch of stuff, sugar, dairy, grains, alcohol as a senior at USF, living with four other dudes, and drastically changed how I felt. Right. And so I always hammer on with my patients, at the gym we're always touching on that. Like, what are you putting into your body? And are you creating an environment of your body where it can thrive or are you putting stuff in your body where your body is just hanging on, trying to deal with the crap that you just put into it. And if you just make those changes, eat real food. If it's got an ingredient label that you don't understand, it looks like a science experiment. Probably don't eat it.

MELISSA Yeah. It's so much, you have to work so hard to eat real food anymore.

JOE It feels like it, it does take work and it's not convenient all the time. Right.

MELISSA You can't drive through and get an apple. No, you cannot. Like Panera, but it's always that little smooshy one. They're terrible.

JOE Yep. Or it looks fake because it's covered in so much junk, right?

MELISSA And like, is this like wax or something all over it?

JOE Yeah. To really move the dial for a lot of patients, men and women, you just start with that. Just try to eat real food. If it comes off an animal, off a tree, or out of the ground, eat it. If it doesn't, maybe don't, and see what happens because I guarantee you're going to notice changes.

MELISSA Maybe you should start a new one. I always think of like, you can have a drive-through apple service or drive-through health service.

JOE Sounds good. I'm, I got enough on my plate.

MELISSA You don't want me to give you another business idea. Okay. Well, so on that nutrition, because you know, we were talking a little bit earlier, everybody's so different. Food is cultural. It's comfort. It's emotional. It's time. And you know, I'm guilty as a mom. And I'm sure men are, I mean, what does it tell me? How do you help people change the way that they eat? That's a big thing.

JOE That's a big thing. It's the simple but hard thing. Right. It's easy to write on paper, eat real food.

MELISSA Right. I see it everywhere. That's great. More protein, drink water. Okay.

JOE All the things, but implementing it into your daily life when you're trying to balance a job plus kids plus activities plus working out plus all these things, right? You can create a mountain of, and that's something we try to avoid too. Like I don't want to overwhelm people to where trying to do all the healthy stuff is creating more stress than doing the healthy stuff. That's not a good place to be either. Right. So that's where coaching helps having our origin nutrition team where someone can sit down and say like, all right, what works for you? And then let's work with that. Meal prepping. YouTube's a great resource because there's a million people on there. Like here's a five-minute recipe that gives you five meals throughout the rest of the week. That takes you 30 minutes on a Sunday. Right.

MELISSA Yeah. So let's get into it a little bit with men's health, because that's a great jumping off point. I probably have 200 recipes saved on my Instagram that, you know, and I've tried some of them, but it was the right one for me. Right. So how do you help a man in his forties thinking like, I want to get rid of this gut. I don't know what to eat. How do you tell them like how much protein and what that looks like on a plate?

JOE Well, again, you know, we're talking like 30,000-foot views, a lot of this stuff. And the reason for Origin Nutrition is because a lot of this gets hyper-individualized per person. Your history, your DNA, your microbiome, everything is different than mine, which is different than the next person, which is going to affect everything. Right. But on average, if a guy's just like, tell me what I'm supposed to eat three times a day, a really good place to start is shoot for like 30 grams minimum protein per meal. So like, I don't know, a third of your plate is going to be some sort of protein, whether it's chicken, fish, beef, steak, you know, Greek yogurt, like there's all kinds of options today, and then fill in the rest with fruits and veggies. And you're probably going to be really like, that's pretty simple. You know what I mean? Like, and the fact of the matter is most people eat 80% of the same thing every week, you know, and that's routine and habits and all that stuff. So part of our job is to figure out what makes sense in your world. What do you like? What do you hate? Well, there's no sense in trying to force this down your throat. You know what I mean? Because that's not going to work in the long run. What do you have time for? How can we give you a handful of recipes that are simple and easy and you can tailor them to you, but you're still hitting somewhere around those macro goals. So I was talking to a guy yesterday, you know, breakfast, an easy breakfast, five eggs and two pieces of sourdough.

MELISSA Five eggs for breakfast. That's a lot.

JOE Is it though? Cause like, if an egg has like four to six grams of protein in it and we're trying to hit 30,

MELISSA but isn't each egg like 180 calories or 200 calories?

JOE This is true. Like there's calories and there's fat in eggs and those types of things. And that's where the hyper-specific thing comes in. Right? And for a guy who is trying to hit a certain weight loss goal, we have to monitor the calories and fat because it's important to be eating real food. But if we're shooting for fat loss and weight loss specifically, caloric deficits are important. You know, like that's the thing. So we have to monitor that thing. But for the average dude, you eat five eggs, you're not going to be super hungry and you're not going to have a bagel and a Pop-Tart too. Cause you're full of protein and fat, which is going to keep your blood sugars more level throughout the morning, which is going to impact everything else and make it just easier for you. So something simple like that, maybe a handful of blueberries, you know, and then for lunch, a bunch of greens, throw a chicken, you know, you can get a pre-cooked chicken at Costco, right? And throw a handful of that on top with some nuts and blueberries, get a healthy dressing. And there you got 30, 40 grams of protein and you're probably pretty full again. Right? So now you're not going through these spikes. And then for supper, it's, you know, go get yourself a steak or, you know, another chicken breast or salmon or something, you know, there's ways to do it where you break it down like that. And a person's like, oh, like that actually doesn't seem so hard. All right. Let's do it for a week and let's see where we're at at the end of the week.

MELISSA Quick break, this episode is brought to you by Vitality Growth Labs. If you're a health or wellness practice and you're wondering why your phone isn't ringing the way it should be, Vitality Growth Labs builds the systems to fix that. Get found, build trust, fill your calendar. AI authority stacking, videos that connect with your clients, real tools, strategy, and execution that results in real revenue. Visit VitalityGrowthLabs.com or check the provider directory at VitalityGrowthLabs.com slash the directory to find a trusted wellness provider near you. All right, back to the show. What if you're like working construction or you're in an executive role and you're like, you know, morning to the end of the day, just meeting, meeting, meeting, meeting, meeting. What do you tell those folks?

JOE What do you want? That's the question. Okay. Like, how important is this to you? Like you could fill your day and at the end of the day not have eaten anything. Yeah. That's fine too. And we could go down a whole roll of like fasting if you wanted to, but everyone that we talked to, oh, there's always stuff. Everyone has their stuff, right? But at a certain point, your own health and the one body you got is up to you. So if I'm that guy and I have meeting, meeting, meeting, meeting, meeting, well, at a certain point you're going to have to put your foot down and say, I need 15 minutes here to eat or to whatever. You know what I mean? Like, there's nobody coming to help us with our health and our bodies. It's not, it's up to you. And you got that body and I got this one and we got one shot. So you can either make sacrifices because everything that you're going to add is going to take a subtraction of something else. Right. And so the subtraction of the thing has to be less important to you than the thing that we're implementing, which is trying to make strides to having a better health. Right. Like, how do you want to live this life? And for the people, I mean, we've had those clients where it's, we're pulling you along and it's not worth it to us. I'm not going to handhold you. You got to want it more than me. And if that's you, great. Like we're along for the long ride, you know? If that's not you, that's fine. Here's a few things you can try, but until it becomes so real to you, and that's the unfortunate thing. I want to get people before they have the heart attack and are like, oh crap, I almost died. Right. You get to the point where you're taking care of yourself before your heart gives out, right? Before that rock bottom. But unfortunately some people need to hit the rock bottom before they're willing to make the sacrifices to take care of their body. And that's just the way it is.

MELISSA Well, how do you stand on the whole GLP-1, peptides, hormone replacement therapy? Because, you know, I've seen it with many people right now where, you know, it's like it's so much easier to inject something. And I'm not trying to shame anybody who needs to do that or for whatever reason, but I'm curious what your stance is on that.

JOE Well, it's a loaded question because there's GLP-1s, which is like a whole thing. Yeah. Peptides is the whole thing. Hormone replacement therapy is like a whole thing.

MELISSA Yeah. Unfair question set, but I'm going to ask you anyway.

JOE Well, okay. We're in it for the long haul. I, you know, if we're just looking broadly at all those things, I encourage people, look at it. It's a tool. It's not going to save you. Certainly like just taking GLP-1s, like if you're a diabetic and you're obese, this is a great therapy for you. If we're somebody who has struggled with weight loss in the past and we just need something to create some momentum, it's a great therapy for you. If you're 29 and we're just trying to lose 20 pounds because we have a wedding in three weeks, it's not a great therapy for you. So it's kind of case-dependent, but use those tools. Like I don't think they're bad things at all. If you're using them in the right context, right? There is, as far as I can see, very little to be gained by anything where it's just, here's the easy button. I don't think it exists in anything. For short periods, probably, right? But in the long term it's going to fall apart. And I've actually been thinking about this for the past couple of days. Like, I can't think of one thing where it's like, here's the easy button. Everything gets better. Eventually it's going to fall apart. The long-term game, the reward is doing those simple hard things over and over and over and over because now you're setting yourself up for long-term success versus crashing your metabolism so that we fit in a dress in three weeks in Mexico. You know what I mean? So all those things are great if used in conjunction, you know, it's part of baking the cake, right? Used in conjunction with the basics that we talked about. So we minimize those side effects and we're setting ourselves up for a future where we're not super reliant on just this one thing to carry me through. That's not a healthy place to be either.

MELISSA You incorporate faith a lot into your work. I see even with your posts, you talk about that. Tell me how that has set you apart. Tell me how that, how you feel that weaves into the work that you do with nutrition and pain management and all of those things.

JOE That's a loaded question.

MELISSA I like to roll with just the big punches.

JOE It wasn't, it was always in the background for my wife and I with all the Origin stuff. But we weren't very overt with it until this last year. My wife was pregnant with our fourth child. Everything was going great. Went in for our 20-week ultrasound and it's always a fun visit. You get to see the baby and it's a fun day. We have three older kids, so we've always looked forward to that. And we were told at that visit that he had a bunch of issues. So he had brain issues, lung issues, heart issues. We were kind of like, okay, well, you know, this can't be that bad. And our OB said, you're going to go see this specialist at Avera who deals with stuff. And I was like, okay, when's that appointment? And she goes, oh, it's now.

MELISSA Oh, and you realize it's serious.

JOE And so we went through all this testing. Turns out our son had a genetic condition called trisomy 13. So he had an extra chromosome at the 13th position. And those babies don't live. 80% of them don't make it to birth. The 20-ish percent that do make it to birth, the lifespan is days to minutes, you know? And so we left that appointment and things started to shift in our world, obviously. And we went the next handful of months, basically just waiting for our baby to die. And that was really hard. We were fortunate enough. We prayed really, really, really, really hard. And we had an army of people praying for us, just praying bold prayers for a miracle. And Kelsey's kidneys started to fail a little bit. And we made the election just to let God do God things. You know, we weren't going to do any interventions and all this stuff. And so the decision was made to like, let's induce labor. And our son Judah was born on December 18th. He lived for 21 minutes. We got 21 minutes of the most amazing time with him. I got to baptize him, which was an amazing experience. He made one cry the whole time and it was right after I baptized him. He just cried out and then he just snuggled my wife and his heart slowly stopped. And that experience changed us for the better. It was very, very hard, but there was a lot of miracles along the way that we've seen. And we stopped caring about trying to preach, you know, like, I don't want to offend anybody. It's like, no, we're wearing it on our sleeve now. We're, I'm going all out, right? And this is important to us. We believe it's important to everyone else too. And it's been a guide for how we've lived certainly the past six months. There's a new energy between the two of us. There's like an urgency almost, just having that, losing something that close and seeing the, how finite life is. It's like, all right, let's go. And you know, that started our conversation with the podcast. My wife started Origin Yoga that started this week today, actually. We're just going, because we owe it to Judah. We owe it to our kids. I want to get up to heaven tired and see my son and have him give me a big old hug. You know what I mean? I don't want to get there and know that I left stuff off the table. And he was a big catalyst for that. So we've worn it on our shoulders. All of our, most of our branding now, we've made a bunch of hoodies. We had people from Rochester, Minnesota messaging us, hey, I saw this line of Judah hoodie. Where can I buy that? Here's a link, you know, and it's blown up.

MELISSA That's amazing. Yeah. I mean, that's, I was not expecting that story. It's amazing though. I mean, what a transformation for you. And I mean, obviously a really hard, hard thing to go through. Life changing, I'm sure. How does that, you know, when somebody shows up in your clinic and they're, you know, struggling in some way, has that changed the way that you approach your work or your clients?

JOE A little bit. It just reminded me that there's a lot of suffering in this world and everybody's going through it in their own version, you know, and I might look at our situation and be like, that was really hard. And then I'll run into, I had a patient come in and he lost his four-year-old son to a random illness the year prior. And it's like, well, man, that's a whole different level, right? There's always, and the hardest thing someone has ever been through is the hardest thing they've ever been through. Right. And so my perspective now is like, we just need to serve and love on everybody that comes through either the clinic or the gym or the nutrition stuff, because everybody is going through this together, right? And we're all wounded, we're all broken. And so for me to sit here and judge somebody who's cranky or doesn't

MELISSA want to eat their protein, I'll judge them all day.

JOE No, it's just love and empathy to meeting people where they're at. Not everyone's ready to go head first and do all this stuff, right? Maybe someone, all they can handle is one extra bottle of water a day and that's okay. Like we're going to meet them where they're at in that moment. And just be right by them because we know what it feels like to go through really hard stuff now. And one of the lessons we took away is how important it is to have people who are willing to, you know, when you just feel like falling apart, come on bud, like stand up. Yeah, we're getting through today. All right.

MELISSA So if somebody comes to you and they're really overweight, not sure what to do, they've never picked up a barbell or they're like, not sure how to train. Like they're like, I've been playing a lot of PlayStation. Is PlayStation still a thing? I don't know if people do anymore. I'm not sure on the gaming thing, but you know, how do you help them get through those first steps? How do you get through that first week? What do you do to say like, okay, this week we're just going to start here. What would you tell that guy?

JOE Yeah, I think that's the hard part. And I think it's getting to know that guy and seeing what the personality is. There certainly are people like, we're going a hundred miles an hour. Like let's go all in. Let's do all this stuff. Then there's guys who it's like, I'm at capacity and I don't know what I can handle, but I know something needs to change. Like, okay, let's find one or two things that we can start implementing. Just again, create some momentum and just get you to see like, oh, I can do this. You know, and for a lot of people, it's somewhere in the middle. Like, I know I need to work out. Great. We have a whole team at Origin Strength of people who have been in your shoes and know what it's like and have been in positions where they didn't know how to work out either. Right. And one of our goals with the gym specifically is to break down as many barriers as we can that would keep people from walking into the space. Cause it's scary. Like I get it and it's intimidating and all these things, but if you can get there and then talk to somebody who's like, yeah, here's what we're going to do. Here's how we do it. You could hop into a class today because all of our coaches are going to handhold you as much as you need. And then there's going to be a point where we don't have to handhold you anymore. That train is rolling now. Right. So a lot of it comes down to that initial encounter. Like, what do you want?

MELISSA Yeah. What's interesting is, especially for men, I'm curious, because there's, you know, guys going to the gym, they've lifted weights. I throw three things around. I'm kind of not being fair here. Probably throw a few things around, you know, they leave and they're like, I'm still not gaining muscle. I'm not getting bigger. How do you help each person? You have a scan, right? You have an InBody scanner. How do you help, you know, especially midlife, all of a sudden this isn't working anymore. Right. I used to bulk up pretty quick. It's just not happening. Can't get rid of my belly fat, whatever that might look like. How do you help them?

JOE Yeah. It's diving into like, what are they doing? And is what they're doing enough? Are they doing anything? Are they lying about what they're doing? Yeah. We see that quite a bit, right? I'm eating all this and I'm doing all this. Like, well, you don't have to lie. Like it's fine. Like we're going to help you get to this point. And that's the hard part with all this stuff. And to have 30,000-foot views and blanket statements, well, everyone should be on, here's the peptide. That's like this magic thing. It's like, well, maybe for some people potentially, but not everybody. Again, every person is different. There's different stressors, there's different history. There's different chemistry or a DNA to each person. And so just trying to hone in on their goal is. What are they doing right now? Is it working and we're just not seeing it the way we should and what are some small things we can change to help that, to gain some traction in the direction they need to head. And sometimes that's just through us, like just doing the way we train or doing some simple nutrition switches. Maybe we're just cutting carbs back a little bit and adding more protein, like not a ton. Maybe we're just telling them, hey, you need to sleep eight hours a night. Like you got to focus on your sleep. And if we get there and we're still plateaued, Sioux Falls is flush with really good providers who can go way deeper than I can go. And maybe I'm not willing to go and that's fine. Like we're good at what we do and they're really good at what they do. So let's refer out and see if we're missing something on the hormone side or the micronutrient side, or that is an easy fix, right? We just have this block in this pathway inside the body that just isn't connecting. Well, there's people in town who can help with that.

MELISSA Yeah. So how do you feel about intermittent fasting? Is that important? Does it help you?

JOE I think it does. Again, it's person-specific. Intermittent fasting, it is trendy. It's very clickbaity and all these types of things. It is good at what it's good at, which is two things specifically. One, it's really good at lowering calories. Okay. If you're not eating for an extra eight hours a day, there's a really good chance you're just not going to be eating as much as you were the day prior. Right. And so for the average person who isn't maybe working out super hard or lifting a bunch of weights, a really easy, simple way to get them in a caloric deficit. Right. The other thing it does that I think is maybe, I wouldn't say more important, but can affect a lot of systems. It creates metabolic flexibility. So now we're not relying on eating every two hours to avoid a crash. Right. We're asking your body to start using a different fuel rather than what I'm eating, specifically like simple carbs and sugars and quick snack things. Right. You're asking your body, like your body's going to be like, oh, there's nothing coming down the pipe, but I still need to not die. Right. And so it starts tapping into some different pathways, specifically using stored body fat, breaking that down into what we call ketones that your body can run off of. And that system, if it hasn't been used for 30, 40 years because we can get food at any point of the day, you know, that system can be rusty. Right. And so intermittent fasting is a really nice way to start to kick that system back into operation. And when that happens, there's a whole host of health benefits that come from that. So I'm not, either way, I'm not saying intermittent fasting doesn't do anything because it does do a lot of things. And I also wouldn't say intermittent fasting is going to cure everything. It's this cure-all for all this stuff. Like it helps. But it's also just, again, it's one piece of the pie that we're trying to build for a person. So it's great for the person that we're trying it with. Right. But if you're going to be in the gym an hour and a half every day and working out really hard and you have a stressful job plus all these other things, that might not be what we want you to do because your body is going to get worn out. Right. But if your stress is fairly low and you're not working out a lot and we have some metabolic goals or some weight loss goals, that's a great tool. Like, all right. Yeah, you're not going to eat till noon today. See how that goes. And a lot of those people over the course of their bodies starting to switch into that mode will notice like, man, my energy is great in the afternoon. Right. I'm sleeping better. Like those types of things. But again, it comes down to the person in front of us. Right.

MELISSA Yeah. And I think what's interesting, I mean, I think there's all kinds of information about fasting and the amount of protein you should eat. And you know, it's very hard as a general consumer to know what you should do because you see all these influencers tell you to do this. Then another influencer will tell you to do that. And then your doctor will tell you to do something totally different. Right. So it can be very confusing. Yeah. Even, you know, I mentioned that, you know, from a science degree, and I think nutrition is confusing, which is silly. Yeah. It shouldn't be. Right. Just to try to help, you know, regular people eat well. So I'm curious, if you had a billboard that you could put up in the middle of Sioux Falls for men about nutrition, what would it say?

JOE Eat real food.

MELISSA Okay.

JOE You do that, 80 percent of things are going to get better over time. Right. You give your body a break from the candy bars and the soda drinks and all the processed stuff that our lives are flooded with because it's quick, it's cheap, it's convenient. But your body, which has evolved into what it is today, has never been exposed to any of this stuff. So we have very few ways internally of dealing with all this stuff. And your body can. That's the other cool part. Your body can deal with it for a while until it can't. And then we start to see all these symptoms. Right. And that's where we're trying to get people before those heavy symptoms start coming. But if you revert back to how your great-grandmother ate, most likely a lot of things are going to get better. But the hard part is, like you were saying earlier, there's no drive-through with apples and organic beef sticks. Right. I mean, it is getting easier. More convenience stores.

MELISSA You know, they make one of those.

JOE Yeah, you should do that. It's a great project for you. But there are ways. Right. I mean, I was just in Circle K and they got a whole section of Greek yogurt and apples and fruits and local beef sticks and nuts. Right. I think it doesn't have to be, you know, I have to have this pre-thought-out whole meal plan. And sometimes it's like we're making it up as we go. But a lot of times if you can just focus on eating real food, you kind of don't have to track all these. I don't need to be eating, well, I only got 27 grams in this meal or whatever. The real food is probably going to be okay, because now your inflammation is coming down. Your body is going to be in a happier place and it's going to carry you through the next four to six hours.

MELISSA Right. So I have a few myths, myth busters. I'm going to let you read a statement. You can tell me if it's true or false and why. Okay. More protein is better.

JOE Oh, generally true because most people aren't eating near enough, like near enough.

MELISSA So how much should a guy have a day? A general guy.

JOE Rule of thumb, one gram per pound of lean body mass. I've also seen, again, we just try to keep things simple. Right. You could even shoot for one gram of protein per pound of ideal weight. So if I'm trying to get to 160 pounds and I'm at 200, really simple ways to shoot for 160 in a day.

MELISSA That's an insane amount of protein, it seems like.

JOE Is it though?

MELISSA I don't know. It seems like it.

JOE That's part of our coaching, right? We show people how you can hit those numbers without it becoming a chore. For the average person, I just say shoot for 100. Right. Again, it was like that 30 to 40 per meal. And if you're doing that, you're probably doing pretty good. We can overcomplicate things really easily and we can get into the nitty gritty and trying to shoot for these higher protein numbers based on the person in front of us, based on their individualized, how much muscle do they have? How much fat do they have? And again, how much are they working out? Like, what do we need to sustain this and to help them hit their goals? But if a person is just like, I just feel like junk and I just need one thing and I know I should be eating better. Well, just shoot for 30 a meal. You'll be right around 100. And that's probably going to be way more than what you're used to eating. And your body is going to be able to recover. Protein's a recovery macro. Right. It's helping fix the stuff that we broke all day. And so if you're chronically under-eating protein, you are not recovering. And that's a slow drip over time. Right.

MELISSA Okay. Fat makes you fat.

JOE Like dietary fat.

MELISSA Just a statement.

JOE Just a statement. You know, that's a highly contested one. Okay. The past 30, 40 years, in the 70s and 80s, you know, there was a war on saturated fat.

MELISSA Oh, yeah. I remember all the sugar-free fat. Oh, yeah. 80s.

JOE And had that been the case, we wouldn't have seen increasing obesity, increasing cardiovascular events. I mean, we've gotten worse since then. There was kind of a turning point, an author named Gary Taubes. He wrote, I think it was New York Times, but it was titled The Big Fat Lie. Right. Maybe we were missing the mark. Maybe fat wasn't the issue. And turns out a lot of that was sugar industry manipulating the message of we should go after saturated fat. We should go after animal products. And that's what's killing people. Don't look at sugar. Right. There's a lot of money on that side. Right. So in my humble opinion, fat does not make you fat. Now that can be nuanced, right? If you're eating a bunch of trans fats and processed stuff, that's probably going to make you fat. But if you're eating avocados and eggs and these other fattier foods, I would highly encourage that. That's typically not going to keep you fat. And in my opinion, if you're doing it right, that's going to help you burn fat.

MELISSA Okay. All right. A multivitamin will cover most of my deficiencies.

JOE Good luck. Multivitamins are great. Okay. They aren't going to fix anything. Right. If you are just eating a multivitamin, but we're still eating like crap all day, we're not sleeping, we're not exercising. You're wasting your money, in my opinion. Okay. If you are adding that to a good foundation, now we're addressing some of these vitamin and nutrient levels that are low. Now we're gaining real momentum. Now, that being said, if you're taking a multivitamin, take the multivitamin because it's still doing stuff, right? You're just making it way harder on your body by not addressing these other things to help support the multivitamin and what it's trying to do.

MELISSA Yeah. So tell me about peptides. This one, peptides and TRT are the fastest way to feel better in midlife.

JOE Man. Yeah, they're fast and you will feel better. But is it sustainable? Right. TRT is great. And again, it's great at creating momentum, giving you energy and helping you sleep better so you wake up in the morning, you feel better. So now you can go do things that are going to be beneficial for your health. If I'm not doing any of the things that are beneficial for my health and I'm taking TRT, we probably feel better, right? Because my energy is up. But now we're in this tug of war. I just put my body in a tug of war of like, I'm hanging on for dear life. But now I have all this energy and it's like, you know, that's creating the stress in there. And again, this is brought, not saying don't take TRT. Peptides are great too. I think that's where a lot of this is heading is peptides. They've been used for a long time. And they can really, really help people in a number of ways, whether it's cardiovascular or recovering from muscle injuries or losing weight or one of those things. But as long as we're using those to create the long-term success, just doing the peptide isn't going to, it'll be fast. And you'll probably feel better initially, but eventually it's going to come crashing back down to where you were initially and maybe even worse. Right.

MELISSA Yeah, I'm curious in your opinion, how many people, what percentage of people do you think are doing peptides and GLP-1s right?

JOE Oh, boy.

MELISSA This will be on the internet forever.

JOE I wouldn't be able to give you a percentage. I would say I think it's getting better because GLP-1 specifically obviously went nuts for probably a couple of years now. And what they found is, oh, I don't remember the numbers. Some crazy, I want to say like around 80 percent of people end up stopping the GLP-1 and then gaining all the weight back. However, when they do that, they now have less muscle mass and their bone density is worse. So now they're in the worst spot. Their metabolism is crashed. So of course, your body's going to gain fat even faster. Right. So now they're in this cycle. So I think because of that research that came out maybe a year ago, physicians and health coaches and all these things are starting to do a way better job of encouraging their, if you're going to be taking this, like you need to be doing these other things so that you're setting yourself up. So I think it's a great tool. I think it was abused. And that's human.

MELISSA That's all you want to say for right now on the internet.

JOE That's right.

MELISSA All right. Couple more. So carbs are the enemy for men trying to lose belly fat.

JOE Oh, boy. You're just getting me all these.

MELISSA Like, yeah, just hitting you with them.

JOE Again, it depends on the person in front of you. If you aren't exercising, you could cut out carbs quite a bit and you're going to see some great results. If you are exercising a lot, you probably are going to fall apart because you're not eating enough carbs in general. Certainly there are people who have been on keto or like a carnivore type diet where the carbs are nothing that have thrived. But they've also done the hard work over time of getting their body into this metabolic flexibility we talked about earlier, where they can utilize these other ketones. For the average person, I would want you to still eat some carbs so that you have the energy to get through your day, get through your workout, recover nice, and you're not wrecked the next day. There are those people who, again, we want to go 100 miles an hour or we have some sort of metabolic issue or some insulin issue, like a diabetes or something. Well, the fastest way is to cut down the carbs, bring your blood sugars down to baseline, still be able to fuel your body. And then your body can finally start to heal a little bit. So carbs aren't bad. If we're eating a bunch of simple, crappy carbs, that's probably bad.

MELISSA But what about Triscuits with cheese on them in the microwave? How would you rate that snack?

JOE I can't endorse that.

MELISSA I'm asking for a friend.

JOE I can't endorse that. I'm sorry.

MELISSA Really? It feels like it could be healthy.

JOE It's tasty. My question would be, how great do you feel for you?

MELISSA I don't know, better than if I eat a cookie.

JOE Well, then go for it. Maybe try to put a little meat on there, too. Get a little protein on that.

MELISSA All right. Fair enough. Okay, so say a guy is listening right now. He's in midlife. Feels like garbage. You know, hasn't touched the basics in a decade. Where would you tell him to start?

JOE I think if you can start moving your body, you are going to start creating a mental state and a physical state that is more capable and more willing to start adding more things. Right. Mental health is a big topic and rightfully so. And so, you know, someone could just try to work on that. But if I'm going to sit here and think about why I'm feeling the way I feel, but you know, nothing's happening really. Right. Versus if I can get you to go do a workout, you're going to feel different after. And it's generally, yes, every time. Right. It's generally clearer. You generally have more energy. There's a self-confidence about you. Right. I forget who said it, but if you could take the benefits you get from working out and put in a pill, you'd be the richest man in the world tomorrow. Right. And certainly there is all kinds of research that shows that exercising beats medication over and over and over again. So I think that if you can get yourself to get help with exercising or getting some good movement in and start to feel the difference, now you're going to be more likely to eat better. You're going to be more likely to, your brain is calmed down. There's a sense of ease about you. Now you're going to be more, and talk about things, which is great for mental health, too. You're going to be tired. So you're going to go to sleep. Right. So now these things are stacking on top of each other. Right. So I think the easiest, best place to start is just move.

MELISSA So last question here, if someone in Sioux Falls wants to come see you, what is their first visit look like?

JOE Well, you'll call and then we'll ridicule you and guilt you into doing all these things. Just kidding. We just want to meet you and see where you're at. Right. So it's usually a one-on-one, whether it's in the clinic, we're dealing with some sort of pain or some sort of musculoskeletal issue or whatever, whether it's at the gym, like that person usually knows if they're seeking us out there, there's already an impetus there. There's already a push. Or on the nutrition side. But generally, we just want to meet you and see who you are. See why are you here? What are your goals? Is this a good fit for you? Because we're not a good fit for everybody. And that's okay, too. Can we check some boxes for you? And are we going to be able to help you along your way to meet the goal that you set? Right. We're not imposing anything on anybody.

MELISSA Except for no Triscuits and cheese, which I'm still upset about.

JOE Well, you're going to have to get over it, my friend. But if we can just meet you and have a real conversation and show you what we can do and if this is a good fit, then let's go. If we're not, that's okay. There's other providers, there's other services around town that don't do things quite the way we do. And that's great because everybody's different.

MELISSA Yeah. All right, Joe. Dr. Joe. Joe is fine.

JOE Joe's fine.

MELISSA How do people find you? Where do they, if they're looking on the internet? I'm assuming you're on socials.

JOE Yeah, we're on all the things. We have a website, originhealthsf.com. Everything's on there. We're on Instagram. We're on Facebook. We have the gym website. You just type in Origin Health or Origin Strength on any of the social media. Like we'll pop up. And we're very responsive. We have wonderful partners. And if you reach out on any of those things, someone's going to get back to you real quick because if a person is reaching out, we don't want that momentum lost. Yeah, right. Because maybe a Thursday like, oh, I'm struggling. I'm reaching out. And then by Monday, like, I'm fine. I made it. Yeah, I don't need you anymore. Well, you probably do because something fell apart there real quick. So on any of the socials, I have my own personal page, Dr. Joe Moen on Facebook and Instagram or our website. Great place to reach out.

MELISSA Sounds great. Well, thank you again for being on the show today. We'll make sure to include all of those links in the show notes. So if you're wanting to reach out to Dr. Joe and his team, feel free to look in the description on YouTube or any of our channels. And we'll see you soon on the next one. Thank you.

JOE Pleasure.

MELISSA Hey, that's our show. If someone came to mind while you were listening to this, if you thought, "Hey, my sister needs to hear this," or, "I should send this to my mom," or, "My buddy would get a lot out of this," please share it with them. Just hit the share button and send it their way. You never know what one conversation, one episode, or one piece of information can do for someone who's been looking for answers. If you haven't subscribed yet, please do it now. It takes two seconds. It's free and it means you won't miss an episode. We've got incredible stuff coming up and I don't want you to miss any of it. If you're a health or wellness provider and you want to be on the show, we'd love to hear from you. There's a link in the show notes to get in touch. We're always looking for people doing interesting work who want to share what they know. One last thing, I get asked all the time about the products and brands I actually use, so I've put together a list of sponsors and favorite products that have worked for me and my family. If you're curious, that link is in the show notes too. Thank you for being here and I really mean that. I'm Melissa Goodwin. The line is open. See you next time.