A healthy lifestyle can’t be only about nutrition; it’s also about your mindset, sleep, and environment. Alex Wisch is a successful athlete, coach, and investor who owns and operates Wisch Fit near Boston, Massachusetts. He suggests good sleep, mindset, and setting goals as the best path to achieve the ideal diet.
Joey Thurman: You're a performance coach, you do a bunch of different things, but you work with higher-level athletes, correct?
Alex Wisch: Yeah, so I work with, I do everything from biology to psychology. First it's like, "How do we optimize your biology?" Everywhere from sleep, nutrition, fitness, who you surround your people with the environment. Same idea if you're planting seed, it's got to be rich soil, it's got to have good sunlight, it's got to have optimal environment for it grow.
Alex Wisch: And then we kind of dive into the psychology aspect where it's like mindset, goals, find those intrinsic motivators, and jumping on those larger transformative purposes that you're shooting for. And working with athletes anywhere from athletes, entrepreneurs, CEO, executives, or just passionate individuals looking to change the world.
Joey Thurman: When you're working with athletes, what's a typical kind of day and lifestyle that you're helping set up for them. Cause you're getting them prepared for professional event or Olympics, how do you go about that process? Getting them honed in on every aspect of their life.
Alex Wisch: Yeah. I mean, well, that's a very big question you ask.
Joey Thurman: Sure.
Alex Wisch: Specifically, with looking, when I work with someone, I look at them as an individual. I might take a larger concept that has scientific backing, but I kind of figure out what really works for that person. But, we really pick upon everything. I mean, number one thing I always start off with is the sleep, you got to have good sleep. Sleep is where hormones are important, sleep for recovery.
Alex Wisch: So, from that area, we kind of build out to work with these people, the other thing is like over training. I mean, a lot of we're looking at athletes, individual. I mean a big thing is, especially in the top ones, it's not a matter of motivating them. It's really a matter of getting them to understand the importance of recovery and the essential piece of that. And maybe stepping away from training or there's a concept called minimal effective dose, which is actually finding what's the minimal amount of training you can do to get the right adaptation you need in order to perform, to reduce injury. And then having the right building blocks. Nutrition is essential, reducing inflammation, making sure the athletes have everything they need in order to recover, feel good and build strong muscles.
Joey Thurman: You have a lot of athletes that are moving more towards plant based or plant for eating and you yourself are making that transition to eating more plants. Why is that?
Alex Wisch: Well, something I start off with a lot of people, especially my athletes, cause I really try to strip the diet down to the basics. And I actually have them switch to a plant based diet originally. And then once they've been there for about three months. We might start reintroducing different things back into their diet to see what really, what has an effect, whether it's positive or negative. But, the reason is like plant-based for me, particularly, one it's the reduction of inflammation. They've shown that like individual to plant based diets, like especially ones who have a lot of variety, not just eating plants. But, variety of colors, darkness of color, but the more variety, the better. In your gut having those different bacteria, it just really helps inflammation.
Alex Wisch: And for me as an athlete, I do mention how I have struggled major depression and I still deal with aspects of depression. And I also still take medication. I'm really trying to personally minimize some of that medication I'm still taking, because it really hinders athletic performance or affects your heart rate. So, the more I can focus, some holistic means that can help reduce inflammation both in the body and the brain that has, there's been a great correlation that helping and also overall performance recovery. So, I think it's a win win.
Joey Thurman: Yeah. Is there any typical, food that you're having people eat right away? Like you, you must have whatever handful of spinach, kale, nuts, seeds, whatever, there's those, those staples, and then you kind, you work out from there or you're literally looking at everybody individually.
Alex Wisch: Well, I mean the biggest thing I push is really, I wouldn't say there's anything specific.
Joey Thurman: Mm-hmm (affirmative)
Alex Wisch: I would say I really just push variety. There's a lot of these different things you could do, in the Boston area or different places where you can actually, have local farms send you what's seasonal, although send you kind of different things that are being grown. Which is great support local farms. And they end up sending you unique vegetables and different plants that you've never kind of had before.
Joey Thurman: Yeah.
Alex Wisch: And that tends to kind of spice up variety. My biggest thing is just having like a rainbow of colors, making sure you're having those vegetables multiple times a day and really just emphasizing variety throughout the week.
Joey Thurman: Alex, man, you are inspirational. I appreciate you taking the time. Thank you for sharing your story. Thank you for coming...
Alex Wisch: My pleasure.
Joey Thurman: ...on talking plant protein. Where can people find you at?
Alex Wisch: You can check out some Instagram, it's wisch W I S C H dot fit F I T and my website's also wish.fit.com.
Joey Thurman: Perfect. All right, brother. Appreciate you.
Alex Wisch: All right. Thank you very much.
Joey Thurman: Take care.