Victoria Audele: Thanks so much for speaking with NewYorkGossipGal! How did you jump into your journey of nutrition and fitness?
Mark Macdonald: Thank you for creating the time, I really appreciate it. My background is in athletics. I played soccer growing up, and I always loved fitness and I always loved nutrition. Initially fitness was my focus, being an athlete. I played soccer at Cal State Northridge and my background in undergrad was nutrition and kinesiology. And playing soccer I always used exercise to stay lean. So even though I was learning nutrition and what healthy food was, I really could not find cutting edge information to take my skills to another level with food and take my body to another level. So I didn’t eat great in college. I ate whatever I wanted and I trained really hard, so I just stayed lean. So the moment I stopped playing ball, I put on 60lbs in a six-month period.
VA: Wow, that’s a drastic change!
MM: Yeah, I call it my pizza diet! And right after, I did what a lot of people do after they put a lot of weight on. ‘Cause you know a lot of people use exercise to stay lean and when you stop doing that amount of cardio and you keep eating poorly then its inevitable that you put that weight on. So I went on a diet. I went on a high fat/high protein diet. I cut out my carbohydrates and I cut my calories to 1500 a day. Brought back my exercise and in four months dropped all the weight. Dropped down to four percent body fat. I looked amazing, but I felt horrible. And I lived that way for four years as a fitness model in L.A., and as a nutritionist and a trainer. I just hit a point where I wasn’t enjoying my life. I wasn’t enjoying my food. I felt like it was a chore. I felt like I had to keep chasing my body. And there wasn’t any peace for me. So I just thought that there should be a better way. So I took all my anatomy and physiology from school and really understood it. I took all my years from the fitness industry and that’s what led me to create the program. I thought there should be a way that you could look and feel your best. And rather use food to lose weight, I thought you could control and balance blood sugar.
VA: Explain your fitness plan and how it works.
MM: In 1999, we launched our first services in Venice Beach. When you look at diets, people are focused on deprivation because they give an immediate result. Unfortunately, life pushes back and your body pushes back and that’s what causes that rebound. The core of the program is stabilizing your blood sugar. Think of a baby, from the first breath they take, they feed every three to four hours. They eat breast milk, which is protein, fat and carbohydrates. They stop when they’re satisfied and they eat about five to six times a day. And the reason we eat like that from our first breath is to stabilize our blood sugar because our blood sugar is what controls our energy source. After that first year of life though, we start adopting the philosophies of our parents, we start shifting the feeding throughout the day. Our body will do that, but there’s a cost every time we miss a meal. Every time we miss a meal, our blood sugar drops and our body has to use muscle for energy, which slows down your metabolism. And when we go into lunch too hungry, we overeat which makes our blood sugar go high. So by simply eating the right amount of calories, eating the right amount of protein, fats ad carbohydrate every meal, and eating within an hour from waking, every three to four hours and within an hour of our bedtime, you can stabilize your blood sugar. This prevents your body from every burning muscle or storing fat.
VA: People struggle keeping up 5-6 meals a day, how do you suggest they keep up that regimen?
MM: A lot of time people will eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner and have snacks. People think an apple is a healthy food, but it’s still just sugar. So a lot of time people struggle to eat 5 times a day and end up craving food. The first step is to realize that there’s no difference between a meal and a snack. Everything needs to be balanced. So the next question is, we live a busy life, so how do we eat 5-6 times in a day? Let’s look at breakfast; it may be as simple as cottage cheese nuts and fruit. They’re quick easy foods that are available to us in the morning. If they’re running low in time they can do a protein bar or a protein shake. Then one of the hardest meals is that mid-morning meal. That’s where a lot of times people will do a protein bar, they’ll do edamame, string cheese with an apple, Greek yogurt with nuts and fruit, something quick and easy that they can keep in the fridge at work. For lunch you can have a turkey sandwich, a wrap, a tuna salad, something that has proteins and carbohydrates. And then the mid-afternoon meal could be something simple as turkey fruit and nuts, a protein bar, a hard boiled egg with a piece of fruit and a lot of people use the staple, string cheese. Then at dinner, you can have a normal dinner with the right amount of protein, fat and carbohydrates. And if you’re up late you can have a 6th meal, one of those ready to go meals.
VA: How did Chelsea Handler become one of your clients?
MM: We started in 1999, and we built a good reputation. One of Chelsea’s friends referred her to me and that was in 2003. Our first meeting, she was like all of us, she was doing everything she could to stay lean. She was eating low calories, low carbohydrates, she was dieting consistently, she was dieting as hard as she could, she just didn’t understand food. She didn’t have enough education on how food worked for her and her body. We started talking, and she wanted to make alcohol fit into her plan. The first couple of weeks we took the alcohol out, and she almost dropped out of the program, then we brought it back in! With Chelsea it was very simple because she was willing to do the work. I just needed her to understand what’s a protein, fat and carbohydrate and how she could make 5-6 meals work into her world. We also looked into what she needed exercise wise and really fine-tune that. Then we had to really teach her how to work alcohol, restaurants and travel into her plan.
VA: Has she been consistent with the plan?
MM: It has been working consistently for the past eight years for Chelsea. It’s a big shift in your lifestyle. People are willing to do the work; they just don’t really know what to do. People know they need to eat healthy and they need to exercise, they just don’t know how to put it all together. So what we did for Chelsea was teach her how it all worked together, nutrition plus exercise, all while having alcohol in her plan and keeping her physique.
VA: A lot of people lose weight, but mentally and emotionally they’re still in their old body. How do you suggest they gain confidence after they’ve lost the weight and are maintaining that smaller/healthier figure?
MM: Great question. I wrote the book in a way that I coach. The first thing most people say is, “I want to lose 50lbs,” and they go after the food. They never really ask themselves the right questions; they never really understand their body. I wrote the book in three sections, the first is “Why Diets Fail.” You need to get a good understanding of your goals. They need to be clear on their body type and their type of metabolism and what controls your metabolism and actually how to reprogram it. There are a lot of successes stories and how other people have done it. I think when you look at the mind and how people look at themselves, it’s just the uncertainty. The next section is focusing on a plan. We need to focus on six things, sleep, nutrition, exercise, supplementation, and water and stress management. And what I’ve seen is when we have those six pieces in place; it really balances out your hormones. The last section is learning how to take the program and work it consistently into your world, so you can include your work, family and friends. When you learn all of this, you really let go of what was holding you back before.
VA: Anything else you’d like to say about being Chelsea’s fitness guru and nutritionist?
MM: I laugh when people call me a fitness guru, I understand it, but it always makes me laugh. It’s all about the adjustments people make. When Chelsea drinks, she makes a few adjustments. Say you’re eating out; you want to make sure you always are eating healthy even days up until you eat out. A lot of people want to save their calories and that works against you. When Chelsea drinks, we take out the starchy carbohydrates. It’s not an even exchange, alcohol for carbs, but we want to minimize the damage. Say she has salmon and vegetables, instead of adding rice or potatoes; she’s going to have vodka with that. So you want to take out the starch and replace it with an alcohol. Same thing with dessert, exchange the alcohol for just dessert. And then four hours later, instead of just going to bed, have a small snack, a protein or fat. That helps get your metabolism going again and helps waste the energy of the food you took in earlier.
VA: Thank you so much for all your tips and learning how Chelsea stays so fit!
MM: My pleasure!