Weight loss or weight gain can be an issue for many people and, more importantly, healthy eating/eating habits can be an even bigger issue. We have been told so many things over the years, given dieting “solutions”, been shamed, lied to about healthy ingredients and ways of eating, and just plain misled. When you watch TV, listen to the radio, or even while you are driving, you are hit with advertisements for the most appealing looking foods that are not all that appealing to your waistline, or your overall physical health. I completely empathize with anyone going through this because I have yo-yo dieted for years.

Fast forward to 2020 in March when we were hit with a pandemic and stay at home orders where I just had these visions of sitting on the couch all day working, watching TV and of course eating. I had been following Jake Kocherhans for a while on Instagram so I was familiar with his advice and what he was accomplishing with his clients so I already had a feeling it would be a good fit for me. I am so glad I reached out to schedule our initial phone call to assess what I needed, what he advised, and how we would handle it all (and yes, with a good coach like Jake, it is totally a WE situation),

The entire time we worked together, which was about three months, we had weekly phone calls that kept me accountable while also providing encouragement, tips, and adjustments. I particularly loved the first call to set up my meal plans where Jake accessed what foods I could keep and the macros I would need to fulfill in order to reach my caloric intake in a healthy way. If you know me, you know I was excited to be able to keep my Orgain organic protein and my daily cup of decaf coffee with almond milk creamer. We also developed a plan to work out without the gym, since everything was closed and incorporated my daily steps into it all. In that three months I lost over 30 pounds, plus improved my overall health both physically and mentally.

I don’t think I would have been able to accomplish that on my own, especially in the middle of a pandemic, plus, I have learned so many things I now keep with me to try my best to maintain it all. I don’t think there are enough ways to thank Jake for helping me get to this place or the proper words to express how amazing I feel and feel about myself. I am positive I want to share him with all of you so if there are others out there who are struggling, you can see if his methods and thoughts align with something you feel can help you. I like that Jake is a bit holistic, believes in mediation, offers sensible ways of handling any backsliding, and is basically a great cheerleader! Add to that his knowledge of nutrition, macros, healthy food, exercise and health, and I think you have a perfect recipe for success.

I want to send Jake tremendous thanks for his guidance and also for doing this interview with me. I am excited to share him with you.

Q: Tell us a little about you and how you got interested in health, nutrition, and being a coach.

Jake Kocherhans: I got into the fitness space about 6 years ago. Being fairly involved with sports growing up, I got introduced to weight training early on, which ultimately led me down the path of competing in Men’s Physique shows shortly after graduating high school.

It was during that three year period of my life where I actually developed some pretty unhealthy relationships towards food, as well as my own body image.

After a few years of feeling totally out of control, constantly stressing about food & my body, I knew it was time to make a change.

It was at that moment where I realized that you can check all the boxes of what someone would deem a “healthy” individual from a physical standpoint… but that doesn’t mean you have TRUE health and wellness.

If you don’t address what’s going on mentally, then you may end up reaching your physical goals, thinking that it’s going to solve all your problems, and realize that you feel just the same as you did before.

This is the realization I had years ago, and the philosophy I continue to teach each one of my clients today.

Q: One of the things that made me want to work with you when I was choosing my own coach to partner with (and you have totally made me feel like I am a partner in this, not just a project or client) for my fitness was your holistic approach and how you incorporate meditation, journaling, overall wellness into your plans. Have you always been someone who was into those sort of things or did you learn them as part of your own journey?

Jake Kocherhans: Yeah.. One might call me a Holistic Bro haha but I wasn’t always like that. Many people believe that when it comes to your physical health, mental health, spiritual health, etc.. that these are all separate entities.

What I’ve come to have a deep understanding of is that each one of these pieces are interconnected, and you have to work on each of them to achieve true balance in your life.

I believe anyone who gives these daily habits and practices a chance will also come to the realization that they’re some of the most important things we could do on a daily basis.

Q: People are all different, so our struggles with weight, health, wellness will be different too; but we are also all human so I’m sure there are similarities in people. What are some common things you find are struggles and also what are some common ways we tend to sabotage or set ourselves up for failure?

Jake Kocherhans: I would say the biggest struggle most people have when it comes to their fitness goals is they operate out of a place of HATE rather than a place of LOVE.

What I mean by that is most people, when they come to me looking to lose weight, do so because they’ve reached a point where they’re totally disgusted with themselves and how they look.

They tell me how they hate how their body looks, how they’re embarrassed to be seen in public, how they can’t stand to look at themselves in the mirror..

And unfortunately these are the types of people who succumb to the extreme fad diets, and other unsustainable approaches to their workouts and nutrition.

The problem with this is that the vast majority of these people either quit before they ever reach their goals, or they reach their goals and end up right back where they were a few months down the road.

Operating out of a place of LOVE means learning to accept and appreciate your body at ANY STAGE.

It means learning how to separate your BODY IMAGE from your SELF IMAGE, and have the understanding that you CAN still love and respect yourself, while at the same time know you have additional body fat that you are working to lose.

This mindset leads to a COMPLETELY different set of behaviors, typically ones that are a lot more sustainable, enjoyable, and healthier for the long term.

Q: When I started working with you I thought I was pretty good when it came to knowing healthy vs unhealthy, good habits vs bad, and I thought I just needed more willpower or motivation to do the right things and make the right choices. What I learned is that there are many ways that we are misled. For example, people may think something like Almonds are a healthy snack (and they are!) and we think our only issue with that would be portion control. You taught me that we have to be very careful about other ingredients used even in certain healthy food. I was shocked at how many brands of almond, peanuts, or peanut butter I shouldn’t be consuming because of added oils and preservatives. What other healthy foods are on that list? How can we avoid falling into the trap of eating things that we think are great for us but may be harming us more than helping?

Jake Kocherhans: I think it’s important to understand some of the most common offenders and things to be looking out for and I would say industrial oils are probably the biggest culprit. You’ll find this in so many processed foods, what I’m talking about are vegetable oil, corn, soybean, safflower oil. I think there’s a few others I’m trying to think of off the top of my head: canola oil. Those oils specifically, and you’ll find these in almost any packaged good that you buy at the store; whether that’s granola or cereal or any dressings or marinades. I mean you obviously saw this in a lot of peanut butter then in a lot of mixed nuts, especially if they are coated. Things like mayonnaise, all of these things are going to contain these oils. It’s the reason why they’re not the most optimal for us is because of how much they contain of these condensed forms of omega-6 fatty acids.

Now our body needs both omega-3 and omega-6 essential fatty acids, however it’s also important that the body maintains a specific ratio, a pretty balanced ratio, of each otherwise you can start to throw your body out of balance. Many people nowadays tend to be quite deficient in Omega threes while at the same time consuming a lot of these packaged and processed foods that contain high high amounts of omega sixes. What tends to happen, specifically because your omega-6 controls the inflammatory pathways in your body, what happens when this ratio starts to get skewed because typically in nature when you look at foods you’ll find a ratio somewhere closer to 4. However, most Americans in a standard American diet nowadays, what you’re finding is people consuming this at about the ratio of 20 to 1.

So massively skewed if not higher and when this happens it creates a more inflammatory environment in your body. One thing we can do to mitigate inflammation, which we all know is one of the major drivers of all disease and sickness, is to try to reduce the amount of those oils we are consuming. Try to find ones that contain other healthier more natural sources, like extra virgin olive oil or avocado oil so there’s the two oils that I look for and even Coconut Oil would be a good substitute. A lot of these are cold press, they don’t go through the high heat extraction process and are not chemically altered like a lot of these other oils. So my suggestion would be to look at any packaged and processed goods, that’s a habit you should get into. I think dressings and marinade, like I said, are a common culprit. Even in hummus, you’ll find a lot of these. Look for hummus with extra virgin olive oil. You already mentioned peanut butter and a lot of different mixed nuts especially if they’re coated. They probably contain these heavily processed oils and so you want to find nuts that specifically say dry roasted or raw.

Now aside from that, I would just look out for buzzwords because you see a lot of things like fat free or organic or gluten-free or whatever these things that make you think that things are healthy. Just because a salad dressing is fat free, typically you go look and it’s loaded with sugar okay so you need to be aware of sugar content, just because something’s fat free or organic, gluten-free, vegan – none of that stuff means that things are healthy. So I would look for sugar content and I would look for those oils first and foremost.

Q: One of my favorite videos I’ve seen of yours was the grocery shopping tips. So since we are talking about looking at labels, what are some other grocery shopping tips we can follow to make our trips easier and more successful?

Jake Kocherhans: To me my tips are to shop around the perimeter. Typically if you stay around the perimeter that’s where the more natural Wholesome foods are going to be. It’s in the aisles where you’re going to start to find a lot of the processed goods, so that’s probably my first tip. And honestly, just look and be aware of the different oils that the foods contain, if you just use that as your guiding Compass, say I’m going to find foods that do not contain any of these industrial vegetable seed or grain oils, then you are going to be elevating the quality of your nutrition massively. So those would be the things that I would do. Then, obviously, grocery shopping tip: don’t go grocery shopping on an empty stomach. I think that’s kind of like an old one, but many times we go when we’re hungry and everything looks so appealing and enticing. So just something as simple as having a big meal before you go grocery shopping and allow you to think with a little bit more clarity and make better judgments.

Q: As far as working out, there are also so many different ways of thinking. Some think more is more and are proud of their second and third gym “sesh” of the day but you have said we can be more efficient and still get results. What are some tips for making our workouts work for us without consuming our whole day?

Jake Kocherhans: Yeah, this is a great question, and my personal philosophy and there’s many reasons behind this is that the core (regardless what your goal is regardless of gender, age, whatever) you should always have a foundation of strength training in your program. Strength training, and having a focus on building muscle and getting stronger is really the only known activity that can actually in a sense, speed your metabolism up. It sends a signal to the body to burn more calories on autopilot because the more muscle that you build on your body, the more energy is required because muscles are a very energy expensive tissue. In order to maintain that muscle you’re telling your body “hey there’s a lot of physical demands out there, we need this muscle’, we’re sending the signal that this muscle is important to our body because of the stress being placed on it. So as a result, your body is going to add more, build more muscle which requires more calories to to maintain. So, in a sense, you want to (especially in today’s day and age) you want to be in a position where your body is burning lots of calories, it’s just more conducive to our modern lifestyle where so many events and things are centered around food.

You want it to be able to burn more calories without actually having to manually burn them off, which is what a lot of people try to do by just going and spending hours a day running on the treadmill and doing tons of cardio. So I think doing straight training and focusing on these heavy compound movements: squats, deadlifts, heavy presses, heavy rows, dips, pull-ups – multi muscular movements that are going to send a loud muscle building signal. If you focus more on those as opposed to trying to tone and sculpt the body like a lot of influencers will teach you – doing all these banded exercises and light movements, isolated exercises you’re going to get a lot more bang for your buck. So that would be my suggestion.

Q: With gyms slowly opening, some still closed, and since we were forced to stay home for a while, do you have any tips for at home workouts that still get us results or at least prevent us from sliding too far backward?

Jake Kocherhans: My suggestion would be to focus on frequency. So if you don’t have a lot of equipment, then maybe doing a bunch of mini workouts multiple times throughout the day, if time allows for it. That could be effective, but there’s a lot of body weight exercises that you can do to challenge yourself even just like close-grip push-ups, doing dips off the couch, doing Bulgarian split squats on the couch. You can do shoulder presses with your feet elevated on the couch. I mean there’s so many different things, if you have a pull up bar – that alone can give you a great full-body workout. You can do single-leg glute bridges or single leg hip thrust, so these are all exercises that you could definitely do to give yourself a good workout. My suggestion would be full body routines if you can add more frequency that’s great. Even if you picked up some resistance bands, a pair of resistance bands and some dumbbells, you don’t need a lot of resistance to challenge yourself. There are other ways you can challenge yourself by manipulating rep ranges, so increase the rep ranges and also tempo- just really slowing down and being a lot more intentional with every single rep, so that’s what I would say.

Q: When it comes to nutrition, are there foods we should definitely add to our list or to our meal/snack rotation?

Jake Kocherhans: Everybody is so different, I don’t want to give just like a blanket prescription for foods to definitely eat. I mean there’s food that I personally am a huge fan of, food I enjoy. I’m a big fan of avocados, I’m a big fan of extra virgin olive oil, there’s tons of benefits, a lot of benefits of beneficial polyphenols which are antioxidants in the body. One specifically is great for reducing inflammation in your body. I’m a big fan of healthy fats, wild salmon to get those Omega-3s in, some mixed nuts like almonds and macadamia nuts can be really beneficial as well. A lot of those are ones that I’m a fan of and I’m naming these because I think many people have demonized fat. But, the reality is, there’s a lot of incredibly beneficial and important fats that we should be consuming. Seeking those out, I’ve noticed tremendous benefit from helping me feel more satiated when I eat, reducing inflammation, balancing and regulating hormones, helping to improve mental clarity. There’s so many benefits of those, so these are few that I would encourage.

Q: Are there any foods we should absolutely avoid or eliminate from our lives?

Jake Kocherhans: Once again, I’m not a big one to demonize specific foods. I think that there are certainly foods that are more nutritionally dense and foods that are void, but if I was going to categorize them, I would just say heavily processed foods. The reason for that is just because of what it does to our mind set and our psychology around food. These foods have been designed and chemically altered to be hyper palatable and hyper addictive. They’re specifically designed to make you want to eat more. They want you to eat more that way you will continue buying a product. So, my suggestion, if you want to become more intuitive with your body, if you want to be able to pay attention and honor your body’s internal hunger and satiety signals, and not be at the mercy of these chemical addictions that you’ve created due to different foods you’re consuming; then I would try to mitigate – that doesn’t mean you have to completely eliminate it – but I would try to mitigate these products and processed food, it’s just going to help you with your nutrition.

Q: Ok, summer is here and we all want those cold beers or cocktails. How horrible results or at least prevent us from sliding too far backward?