Adee Cazayoux: What Athletes Get Wrong About Nutrition (Podcast)

It’s really hard to train hard when you have to be full pretty much all the time. The feeling of fullness, we can all relate to, feeling like, “I want to go take a nap” or “I want to sit down as I’m full” and “I don’t want to go train my ass off when I’ve just eaten a huge meal.”

Welcome to the BarBend Podcast, where we talk to the smartest athletes, coaches, and minds from around the world of strength. I’m your host David Thomas Tao and this podcast is presented by barbend.com.

Today, I’m talking to Adee Cazayoux, the founder and CEO of Working Against Gravity. Adee is one of the most trusted names in nutrition among strength and fitness athletes. In today’s episode, we dive deep on the differences in nutritional programming between men and women, what most elite athletes still get wrong about eating, and which athletes and athlete types are the toughest to program for.

We also talked about how Adee’s time as an elite weightlifter has influenced her work and ability to connect with athletes of all levels. Also, I want to take a second to say we’re incredibly thankful that you listen to this podcast. If you haven’t already, be sure to leave a rating and review of the BarBend podcast in your app of choice. Now, let’s get to it.

Today I’m very pleased to have with me, Adee Cazayoux. Adee, it’s been a couple of years since we’ve chatted and I’ve seen you in just about every capacity there is in fitness. I’ve seen you as an Olympic lifter. I’ve seen you when you were competing in the National Grid league. You remember that? Years and years ago.

Now you’re probably best known as the CEO and founder of Working Against Gravity. What is your elevator pitch when you describe to people what you do?

The typical answer right now they’d say, what do you do? I say I do three things. I do one on one nutrition coaching and help individuals achieve whatever nutrition goals they have. I help people become nutrition coaches, if that’s a career choice that they’d like to have.

I help people build nutrition businesses for themselves so that they can have either a side hustle or turn this into a sustainable career.

I am curious, Working Against Gravity that is the name of your business and that’s kind of the focal point around the nutritional coaching you’re doing. How many clients over the past…How old is it? How many clients have you worked with over the course of that period?

We have been around for almost six years. In November, it’ll be six. It’s currently February, so five-and-a-half years. We’ve worked with over 25,000 people.

That’s an immense number of people. That’s like a mid-size Midwestern town of people. What kind of spread is that as far as men versus women athletes, competitive athletes versus maybe just more of the weekend warriors, people just trying to make lifestyle changes? How did the demographics break down there?

It’s 70 percent female, 30 percent male. In general, women seek nutrition coaching or things like that more than men. This might be surprising to people. Our typical person is not always somebody who’s a competitive athlete. We do have probably 15 to 20 percent of people are trying to be competitive in some type of sport, one or another.

We have the craziest sports. We have bobsledders and javelin throwers and Spartan Racers and CrossFitters and weightlifters, all sorts of different kinds of things, ultramarathoners, Ironman people, all different kinds of sports.

A lot of them are trying to be competitive. When I say competitive, they’re trying to qualify for something. They’re not just trying to compete and enjoy the…They’re trying to win things.

The average person on our program is somebody who loves challenging themselves and would definitely participate in local competitions or run a marathon or do something like that, but they’re not trying to be a national-level athlete or make the Olympics or something like that.

Why do you think that more women seek out nutritional coaching than men?

I can guess.

Yeah, let’s guess. You’ve been in this for a while. What are your hypotheses?

My hypotheses would be, one, in general society and marketing and media hacks a little bit harder on women to change their bodies than it does on man. I don’t think it’s non-existent for men, but just a little bit stronger for women, like look this way, lose weight, all the marketing.

When you go to the grocery store, the person on the cover of that magazine that you see that’s like “Lose 10 Pounds in 10 Days,” It’s usually a woman who looks a certain way. I think that’s a huge part of it, of diet culture has been stronger for females in general. Society makes it that way.

I also think that women are more open to direction, generally, than men. I often find men, like the stereotype of a guy doesn’t want to stop and get directions.

Yeah, I fulfill that stereotype. I’m there with you.

I don’t think it’s true for everybody but I think in this case, a lot of people will be like, “No, I’ve got it. I know where we’re going. I don’t need directions.” Whereas women are generally more open to being like, “Hey, let’s stop and ask somebody. What was the path to get to where we’re going?”

When clients come to you and they’re saying, “Hey, I’m training for this,” or “This is my ultimate goal.” I’m really talking about that competitive sector, that 10 to 15 percent. What are some of the most difficult sports, when it comes to building customized dietary templates that help people stay competitive? What are the toughest sports to actually do that for?

I don’t know that there’s any sport that’s tougher than another. I think weightlifting or anything where you have to make weight is challenging. Something where how much you weigh doesn’t really factor is a little bit easier because the number on the scale just doesn’t carry as much significance.

I’ve worked with Jessica Lucero for five years and she has been attempting to make in Olympic team in weightlifting. She’s a really amazing weightlifter and for her to maintain her performance and also weigh a certain amount on a specific day, at a specific time, that is little bit lighter than she probably would be normally, in any capacity, is the most challenging.

Any sport that requires, some type of weigh-in, especially in weightlifting or powerlifting, where it’s like a two-hour before, anything that’s a 24-hour before is a little bit easier. Something where if really you have to lose weight specifically in a specific amount.

You, yourself, were a competitive weightlifter for a number of years. That two-hour period beforehand, you need to make weigh-in, then you have two-hours to rehydrate, refuel, whatever it is, you don’t want to go too crazy because you actually have to perform you don’t want to feel bloated and heavy and overly full.

What are some of your favorite meals, foods, techniques, to rehydrate and refuel during that weigh-in period, things that you might advise your clients on?

It depends a little bit on how much weight you’ve lost. Generally, if you’ve lost a pretty significant amount of weight, I always have some type of electrolyte afterwards. There’s some things, the food that I’m choosing to eat is salty, and it’s going to help me get water back into my system. Something really salty has always worked.

Generally something with carbohydrates, my favorite was oatmeal. Oatmeal with some type of fruit mixed-in, sometimes a little bit of peanut-butter, not too much fat, right after. Just because for most people fat puts heavy in the belly and it takes a long time to digest and just doesn’t feel great.

I try and eat as much as I can without eating something, nothing really greasy or gross or like…not gross, I mean greasy stuff is delicious sometimes.

Nothing really is going to make you feel gross or like do you want to take a nap afterwards.

You’re not just pounding in and out cheeseburgers, right after.

Right. I mean, some people do. There’s always exceptions to the rule. I would never recommend eating something after weigh-in that you’ve never eaten before training before. Often with some athletes will test out their meal that they’re going to have after weigh-in before a training session.

A lot of weightlifters will do a test session, where they’ll hit their openers the week before or they’ll have a test mock-me in training and we’ll test out…Jessica is a great example. She loves eating a meatball sub right after she weighs-in, that’s just like her thing.

She loves meatballs subs. She feels great. She has all the American records in weightlifting. She’s chewing something right for sure. It’s just finding what works for you. For me it was oatmeal fruit, some type of drink with electrolytes and I didn’t really eat too much right after.

What do you think are some of the common misconceptions when it comes to cutting weight for strength athletes? A lot of our listener base, and a lot of our readers at BarBend, they’re strength athletes. Maybe they’re in that 10 to 15 percent of people who are competing, or maybe they’re thinking about competing.

Maybe they’re not quite in that percentage but they’re considering it, or they’re following along with competition and they want to potentially get into that mindset. What are some things that when people come to you, or the first time you’re working with someone when they’re cutting weight — maybe they’ve never worked with a nutritional coach before — that you think people are getting wrong?

The first thing that people are getting wrong is that people choose the option of cutting weight to be competitive too often. There’s a way undervalued option of being within a weight-class. Most people try and cut weight to be more competitive when they’re not seasoned athletes, or they don’t have enough experience.

I’m not saying that it’s less valuable to do it when you’re just doing local meets, or you’re trying to make a national competition. It’s different stakes when you’re trying to make The Olympics, or you’re trying to make world teams. There’s different stakes in that situation, where they’re talking about stipends from USA Weightlifting or sponsorship deals. This is really their career and full-time thing.

There’s some damage that can be done when not cutting weight for the right reasons, or when you’re cutting too much weight and you’re not giving yourself the opportunity to perform your best when you get on the competition floor. Sometimes people cut too early in their career, especially younger athletes.

People who are teenagers, I definitely don’t think they should be cutting weight. Whatever you weigh, that should be your weight class. If you’re two kilos over, or a kilo over, and even if it feels like you could easily make weight, it’s sometimes more worth it to get a couple competitions under your belt.

Then consider some people do it to be a higher ranking when they’re going from, “I’m coming eighth in the American Open to sixth.” I wonder how much that’s worth the struggle and the stress and restriction that comes with making weight. That’s sometimes undervalued and people don’t consider that a lot of times.

That’s probably the biggest one. The other thing is that people underestimate how much it’s going to affect their performance on the platform. That can be really frustrating. Like, “Why can’t I hit PRs?” Some people do really well. I was somebody who…It didn’t affect me that much to cut weight. I actually preferred being lighter and I felt faster.

For some people the restriction is really hard. You have to be hungry and you might not be able to eat the things you want to eat. It requires a lot of discipline to be able to make weight consistently over time.

Let’s talk about the opposite end of the spectrum. Especially in the sport of weightlifting, but this can be true in any weight-class sport, and even in non-weight-class sports, bulking. We saw the weightlifting body weight class restructuring a couple years ago.

A lot of athletes in the US, and really internationally, had this decision especially on the women’s side, where there are these big gaps between Olympic weight-classes now. A lot of these elite athletes have decided, “OK. Do I do a significant cut or do I do a significant bulk?”

Maybe that weight class in between where I’m sitting right now isn’t going to be one that’s contested at The Olympics or it’s not going to be one where I am competitive. We see a lot of elite athletes having to make that decision in their head. A lot of them choosing to go up one or two weight classes, sometimes even three.

There are a couple of examples out there. What are some of the common misconceptions about bulking that you think a lot of strength athletes have?

You’re talking about Mattie Rogers, for instance. She almost didn’t have a choice. Nobody could’ve anticipated Katie Nye and how amazing that she did. They’re in the same weight-class and if she wanted to go to The Olympics she had to make a decision to go up a weight-class and to qualify.

The biggest misconception that people make when gaining weight, this one’s a little bit easier, is…two of them actually. One, you’re not going to gain weight without gaining fat. That’s just not going to happen. There’s going to be a certain percentage of the weight that you gain that will be body fat especially if you’re not an absolute beginner.

There is absolute beginners that have lots of gains to make, meaning that you’re putting multiple kilos on your lifts consistently. That means you’re a beginner. When you get to intermediate or advanced weightlifting, you’re putting like a kilo, maybe three kilos a year sometimes on your lifts. You’re hoping for one kilo more.

That means that you’re not going to be building muscle mass at the same rate. If you’re gaining, you’re also going to be gaining a certain percentage of body fat. I think people don’t value how that’s going to affect you psychologically. People gain weight in that scenario before…They’re already in a body composition that they’re not happy with and then they choose to gain weight. Now they feel worse.

You underestimate how that actually can impact your weightlifting — how you feel, how you’re pants are cutting you off, how your belt feels on you when you’re squatting or cleaning. People also underestimate how hard it is to be full all the time versus being hungry sometimes.

It is significantly easier, from experience working with lots of elite-level athletes like Cody Anderson, who is a small CrossFit Games athlete. He needed to try and gain weight to be competitive at The CrossFit Games. It is really hard to train. I feel for Mattie Rogers because it’s really hard to train hard when you have to be full pretty much all the time.

The feeling of fullness, we can all relate to feeling like, “I want to go take a nap” or, “I want to go sit down” or, “I’m full.” I don’t want to go train my ass of when I’ve just eaten a huge meal. It’s really hard to be full all the time.

Sometimes people underestimate how hard it is to gain weight. Whereas it’s a little bit easier to deal with some hunger versus being full all the time.

What about macronutrient breakdown when it comes to bulking? This is where I hear a lot of different things. I’ve heard in the past and I’m not saying any of these necessarily are correct, “Oh, if you want to gain weight if you’re bulking, you don’t need to up your protein consumption. You just need to up your carbohydrate consumption.”

“You just need to up your fat consumption or you just need to update your general caloric consumption.” Which, as we know, will generally lead to weight gain if you’re in a caloric surplus for long enough.

When you advise athletes, particularly strength athletes, but it could be anyone who’s in a bulk, are you modifying their macronutrient breakdown at all? Are you trying to get them in a particular range? Or is really, at the end of the day, is it all about consuming more calories?

The most important is consuming more calories, and that is simplifying things a lot. Like you’re saying, in a general sense you need to be consuming more calories than you’re expending. There’s a lot of variables that come into play there. It can get confusing in the nitty gritty, but yes, calories matter.

When I’m working with somebody. I’m also considering their food preferences, so if they need to have enough protein, especially in resistance training to be able to sustain like their recovery and muscle gain and all that type of stuff.

I think carbs and fat is significantly more variable. I definitely take into consideration their food preferences. If I give somebody a significant amount of carbs and they don’t love eating rice and sweet potato or oats, or that type of food, they’re probably going to resort to sweets like Sour Patch Kids and ice cream and some more high-sugar, processed foods.

Their food options go down because they won’t have any more fat left and when you think of carb options that have no fat or protein, it’s generally not the more whole options. If people prefer fat over carbs, I’ll definitely swing the ratio that way.

I do think it’s easier to play around with carbs and fats. It’s always going to be individual to the person of how they feel how training’s going. It also depends, for women, different times of their cycle, it might be impacted on what they’re feeling and how training’s going and what they need.

I wish it was super clear like, “You need this and you need that.” If it was that simple, I think there would be a lot more people out there that have tremendous results that we’re just not seeing so consistently.

You’ve been an athlete and involved in training sports for…It’s over a decade now, right? Do I have that correct?

I’ve been involved in sports since I was 2, but in strength sports since I was 18. So over a decade, yeah.

WAG, Working Its Gravity, is almost six years old. Over the period of…It could be your strength athletics career or your company’s existence, what are some of the mindset changes or how is the perception of nutrition among strength athletes and a role nutrition plays change if it all?

I think that people…I don’t know. It’s hard to know what’s actually change and what is one entrenched in its world if I know this more, and around it more. Just to be honest about that [laughs] I’d love to be like, “I think people are caring about it more. They’re paying attention to it more.”

I do think that people working attention to it before. Before I was doing this, people are doing its own and people were paying attention to what they eaten for a really long time. There’s been a intensive programs.

I think that more in my environment and the people that I’m around, there is more emphasis on this actually fits your lifestyle and how can I perform in an elite level. Also not feel like I’m completely restricted in my social life, that it mentally impacts me so much that I can’t report.

Gotcha. I mean that certainly make a lot of sense, and look, the best diet is one you adhere to, or that’s kind of conducive for your lifestyle instead of appending everything else that’s what added in here quite often.

I do want to talk a little bit about the genesis of Working Against Gravity, and you say women make up about 70 percent of your clientele, the acronym WAG, most people hear that if they’re unfamiliar with your company and they think, “Wives and Girlfriends,” which you’ll hear…

Where they think the company that you would babysit the dog are like take your dog for a walk.

Oh, that’s right. I don’t know. Is your WAG older than that WAG though, because that one’s likes a new tech platform startup kind of thing, right?

Yeah, I think ours might be little bit older. You’re right. Good.

Yeah, you are the original WAG, but when I first heard of your company WAG, I actually thought it was and I also remember one of your first rehire profile clients was Katherine David’s daughter and I remember thinking, “Oh, this is nutritional couching for women, WAG working its gravity but also like wives and girlfriends, ha-ha.”

It’s like a play on the acronym, which I’m not sure was that intentional ever or was that something just like?

The truth is at the name was intentional. If I can go back and I knew that this was going to become what it did, I wouldn’t have name it Working Against Gravity. I probably would have put something with the word nutrition in the title…

Oh, OK.

…or…You don’t know what we do from that title. I had a project at school to create an e-portfolio. I made a blog instead and I called it Working Against Gravity. That just became what it is.

What are some other names that in hindsight…I’m sure you’ve thought about this. Every entrepreneur who started a company has thought about this. I just thought about it for BarBend, like if I didn’t name it BarBend, what would I have named it?

What are some of the names that you’ve tossed around in your head? If you can think of any, where you’re like, “I would go back in time and I would change it.”

BarBend is a sweet name, though.

 Well, thank you.

[laughs] BarBend is a sweet name. You get what it’s about. The people who know, know it sounds good, it’s short. Working Against Gravity is a mouthful and the acronym is not clear. The meaning behind it, I think is nice. People create a lot of meaning behind what Working Against Gravity means. Gravity is the force that we’re always working against.

I like that, but I would definitely have had either coach, or nutrition, or food, or something, in the title that is more clear, what we actually do.

When did you realize you were locked into the name? When were you like, “Oh, God, the ship sailed. We have to keep it like this and we’re just going to have to make the rest of our branding speak for itself”?

I think at the beginning, it was just so overwhelming that I had like, “OK, this is a problem in front of me. I need to figure out how to solve it.” It was one problem after another, just solving problems until we’re two years in and we have employees. I’m like, “How can we change the name now?”

We have a website that…our website changed and it’s just too much.

Yeah, when…

People are already calling us team WAG. Once people were using the #teamwag. I’m like, “It’s just too much.”

Yeah, once people are using it spontaneously and they’re not paid influencers, or you’re not asking your friends to use it, it’s got a life of its own and you’re hitched along for the ride. That makes a lot of sense. What has WAG not accomplished that you would like to see it do as a company?

 I would like to see WAG help 100 individuals have enough of a sustainable nutrition coaching business, that’s what they do full-time. That would be epic. 100 people that are super passionate about health and fitness and nutrition, and we help support them to create a full-time job for themselves.

That’s exactly what our coaches do. It’s online, freedom of place and time. They can make such a bigger impact. If we can impact them and they impact their people, our impact spreads wider. We haven’t done that.

How many coaches do you support right now?

We’re going to manage Gravity proper, we call it. We have 30 coaches that work with us. Then we have helped over 150 gyms, like CrossFit affiliates, start nutrition businesses in their gym.

Then, we’ve put just over 500 people through our coach certification but those people have yet to be able to use our software to start their own businesses, which is going to happen this year. We’ve been had five of those people so far that are outside of gyms and our people, our staff.

You’re five percent of the way there, 5 out of 100.

Yeah, we’re in the beta testing stage of the software. It’s very exciting. I like it.

You’ve got to work with a lot of very big-name athletes in the strength community. Is there anyone who you would like to work with maybe who you haven’t had the opportunity to interact with that directly?

Oh, that’s a good question. It’s a good opportunity. Maybe they’ll hear it and they’ll reach out and I’ll be like, “Work with me.”

You got to put it out there. You got to put it out into the universe. This is your chance.

One person, who is not an athlete, but I’ll put it out in the universe because this is my chance. Oprah would be super cool. [laughs] Although she’s with Weight Watchers, I get it. I would love to coach Oprah. I would even do it and she doesn’t even have to promote it. I just want to coach Opera.

I will say, I don’t think this is the first time that Oprah’s come up on the BarBend podcast, which tells you how influential Oprah is. This is a strength-sports podcast and this is the third time we’ve talked about Oprah, so just take that for what it is.

Yeah, I love Oprah. An athlete that I would love to work with? I really had an amazing opportunity to work with a lot of my favorites. I do think that that’s cool. I really wanted to work with Ronda Rousey for a long time when she was fighting. She’s not fighting anymore, so I don’t know if that counts, but that would have been very cool. Ronda Rousey is cool.

She’s a pro wrestler, that’s still very athletic. That’s still a performance sport, even though it’s a bit more skewing entertainment, I guess.

When she was in the UFC…I would totally love to work with her now, I think she’s cool. At the time, I would have loved to work with Ronda Rousey.

OK. I’m going to just go in a completely different direction here. This is the last serious question I have. Nutritional fad or trend that you would love to see die? You can snap your fingers, you can Thanos this and you can wipe this one off the map completely. You can pick one, what is it? It could be a trend or a diet or a fad.

Generally, I don’t know if you know this about me. You might know this about me. I don’t really speak poorly on anything, on any type of diet or any type of trend or anything like that.

I have most of the time believed that if nobody comes up with a nutrition program, it doesn’t work for anyone, so it must have worked for someone. They’re just trying to help out and they’re just trying to do a good thing. I just don’t think it works for everyone that they’re getting results, and it probably worked for somebody.

That’s how I generally feel about things. That’s why at WAG, we offer all sorts of nutrition programs. If you want to do keto, we can support you in that. If you want to do flexible dieting, if you just want to work on your relationship with food, we do all sorts of things.

That’s just the caveat of this. If I had to choose something that I want it to be gone, I wish that wasn’t out there, I’d probably choose diet pills.

That’s probably the fad. I’m going to take a diet pill and that’s going to get me all my results that I want, those pills. People buy packs of pills, and that’s what they think is going to get them all the results that they need. There’s no particular diet program that I’m like, “Hey…” even I don’t know.

I think detoxes are worth it. Sometimes fasting is great. Sometimes, those are extreme things. Even the carnivore diet, people are getting results with that. Yeah, I’m generally not great at telling people that…I’m very neutral, OK? [laughs]

You’re Canadian, right?

Yeah, I am.

There you go. You’re just too polite to tell anyone off or even any concept. You’re too polite.

The diet pills are a pretty legit thing, I feel like that should go.

We’ve actually done some content on BarBend and about this. People assume diet pills do the work.

Diet pills might help with an extra 50 to 100 calories, maybe of caloric usage or burn or helping you feel fuller but you can’t just eat like a pig or eat what you’ve been eating and assume significantly different results on that. It’s the last one percent thing, if you’re utilizing them at all and even then, that’s kind of a maybe.

Think about how much food is 50 calories, it’s very little.

Yeah. You’re not just going to take a diet pill and be like, “Oh, I’m on a diet.” [laughs] It doesn’t do the diet for you. It’s not doing most of the work. Adee, what’s the best place for people to stay up to date with what you’re doing?

The best place would be at Working Against Gravity or workingagainstgravity.com, that is the absolute best place.

Signing up for our newsletter there, we’ll give you all the updates on what we have going on. Then I am @adeecazayoux on Instagram and is really the only social media that I use, but that’s where I’m at.

Awesome. Thanks so much for joining us. Really appreciate it and always a pleasure to chat with you.

Yeah. Thanks for having me.