A podcast about health, aging, fitness, recovery, nutrition, parenting, and living well, featuring conversations with leading experts, coaches, and thought leaders. Each episode brings warmth, humor, and real-world perspective to the conversation, turning expert insight into practical tools for building a stronger, more durable life — and living in your Ready State.
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How much of your life have you spent thinking about food, only to wonder whether you're actually getting nutrition right?
EC Synkowski is back for her third appearance on The Ready State Podcast, and this time she's celebrating the release of her new book, A Good Nutrition Book. Kelly and Juliet have followed EC's 800-Gram Challenge approach for nearly eight years, and they credit it with fundamentally changing their relationship with food.
Together, they revisit the science behind eating 800 grams of fruits and vegetables daily, unpack the current obsession with fiber and protein, and tackle some surprisingly persistent nutrition myths. Does fruit really have too much sugar? Is organic produce worth the premium? Could chasing higher protein targets actually work against your body-composition goals?
They also explore nutrition considerations for GLP-1 users, raising healthy eaters, and why the endless pursuit of dietary perfection can eventually become its own problem.
EC's larger mission is refreshingly practical: give people enough knowledge to make good decisions about food, enjoy what they're eating, and get on with living their lives.
What You'll Learn in This Episode
Why 800 grams? The research behind EC's daily fruit-and-vegetable target, how it supports fiber intake and satiety, & why potatoes, beans, & frozen produce all count.
Which nutrition rules deserve a second look: The truth about fruit sugar, organic versus conventional produce, food-ordering advice, & why nutritional quality matters more than many popular food rules suggest.
How much protein is enough: Why EC recommends approximately 0.7 grams per pound of body weight, how excessive protein targets can increase calorie intake, & where total calories fit into her Three Pillars Method.
How to apply good nutrition across different stages of life: Fueling adequately while using GLP-1 medications, helping picky kids develop healthy eating habits, & supporting performance & body composition.
When to stop optimizing: Why EC believes diminishing returns matter in nutrition, & how building sustainable habits can free up time & attention for the rest of life.
Key Highlights:
(00:00) Introduction to EC Synkowski and A Good Nutrition Book
(02:33) Why Kelly and Juliet have followed the 800-Gram Challenge for eight years
(04:54) How the 800-Gram Challenge works
(06:14) Fibermaxxing, gut health, & satiety
(09:15) Why 800 grams can feel like so much food
(12:23) The research behind the 800-gram target
(15:52) Nutrition myths: food order, fruit sugar, and insulin
(19:53) Organic versus conventional produce and the case for frozen vegetables
(23:42) Making nutritious eating affordable and accessible
(26:57) Measuring 800 grams without obsessing over a food scale
(28:57) EC's Three Pillars: produce, protein, and calories
(31:29) Why more protein can mean unnecessary calories
(33:58) The inspiration behind A Good Nutrition Book
(36:05) Nutrition and GLP-1 medications
(39:31) Knowing when enough optimization is enough
Juliet and I are back from a long stretch of travel with a lot to get into. I was inducted into the Best Hour of Their Day Hall of Fame at Affiliate Con in Dallas, but the bigger honor is being in a class that includes our late friend Rob Orlando, who brought strongman training into the modern gym.
Juliet wants everyone to run, not walk, to the theater for the new Elizabeth Holmes documentary, You Can See Everything. She's not wrong.
This week's actual science: we met Rob Leon at The Assembly, whose father is a neurobiologist at UC Irvine, and they're building a product around the connection between smell and brain health. The research on smell loss as a dementia predictor is genuinely surprising.
We also break down the first real study out of California's later school start time law. The results are clear, and the math on what it means for how much sleep kids get is worth knowing.
Plus Weird Longevity Shit, BFR recovery shorts, and some book sequels I've been waiting for.
What You'll Learn in This Episode
Why smell loss may be one of the most undervalued brain health indicators
What a new study found when they measured California's later school start time law
The math on how much extra sleep teenagers gained (and why it adds up fast)
The strongman training legacy of Rob Orlando
Bryan Johnson's "GLP Brian" and what our crew thinks of it
How BFR recovery shorts work as a travel-friendly recovery tool
Key Highlights:
(00:00) Intro + Kelly's Hall of Fame induction
Dr. Kate Ackerman: RED-S, Bone Health & What Female Athletes Need to Know
Women have always trained hard. The science surrounding how they fuel, recover, build bone, and respond to training has had a lot of catching up to do.
In this episode of The Ready State Podcast, Kelly and Juliet sit down with Dr. Kate Ackerman, a triple-boarded physician, former elite lightweight rower, and co-founder and president of the Women’s Health, Sports & Performance Institute (WHSP), to explore what changes when female physiology becomes part of the research question from the beginning.
Kate traces her work back to her own experience making weight as an athlete, then unpacks the evolution from the Female Athlete Triad to Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S), including how underfueling can affect hormones, bone, cardiovascular health, injury risk, and performance. She explains why bone health begins much earlier than most people realize, how iron status should be evaluated in athletes, and why RED-S deserves attention in postmenopausal women, too.
They also dig into menopause research, strength training, GLP-1s, and WHSP’s mission to answer the questions women themselves say matter to their health and performance.
What You'll Learn in This Episode
How low energy availability and RED-S can affect bone, hormones, cardiovascular health, injury risk, and athletic performance and why RED-S can occur in both men and women.
Key Highlights:
RECESS: Romania's Black Card for Youth Sports, Diet Drink Research, and Outplay Is Finally Done
Juliet and I just got back from Vancouver and 27 straight days of back-to-back conferences. The shift at the YPO Health Summit from two years ago was striking. The conversation has moved from mitochondrial supplements to something more basic: are you doing the fundamentals? We call this third wave fitness, and it finally feels like we are cresting into it.
Romania's football federation just introduced a Black Card for youth soccer, and it is unlike anything we have seen before. Referees can now permanently end games because of how parents and spectators are behaving. No rematch, no restart, just over. There are also silent game days where adults cannot cheer or coach at all. The whole platform is built around joy, respect, and optimism in youth sports. With Outplay finished and heading to shelves next fall, we are paying close attention.
EC Synkowski's A Good Nutrition Book dropped October 1st. We wrote the foreword to the book because her work and thinking around nutrition have been genuinely transformational for us.
And finally, the University of Liverpool just published the longest randomized trial ever run on diet drinks. The results are going to surprise you, or at least give you permission to enjoy your crispy Diet Coke in peace. We have opinions, a bedazzled can, and an unhinged passion that we can't totally explain.
What You'll Learn in This Episode
Why the YPO Health Summit felt fundamentally different this year and what the return to basics actually looks like in high-level wellness spaces
What first, second, and third wave fitness means and why the shift matters now
What's in EC Synkowski's A Good Nutrition Book and why the 800-gram challenge changed how Kelly and Juliet think about nutrition
How Romania's Black Card system works for youth soccer sidelines and whether something like it could take hold in the US
Key Highlights
Joel Jamieson: How to Use HRV, Zone 2, & VO2 Max to Train Smarter
What if the fitness metrics you’re obsessing over aren’t telling you what you think they are? HRV. VO2 max. Resting heart rate. Zone 2. Wearables have given us more data than ever… but do you know how to use it to inform your training?
In this episode of the Ready State Podcast, Kelly and Juliet Starrett sit down with renowned strength and conditioning coach Joel Jamieson to cut through the noise around cardiovascular fitness, recovery, and resilience. Drawing on more than 25 years of experience coaching UFC champions, Olympic athletes, special operators, and professional sports teams, Joel explains why a higher HRV isn’t always “better,” what Zone 2 training is really trying to accomplish, and why your aerobic engine matters even if endurance sports aren’t your thing.
They also explore how to balance low, moderate, and high-intensity training, practical ways to measure whether your conditioning is actually improving, and why stress outside the gym has to factor into how you train. The takeaway? Better fitness isn’t about chasing a perfect score – but about understanding what your body can handle, how well it recovers, and how to train accordingly.
What You'll Learn in This Episode
Why a higher HRV doesn’t always mean you’re better recovered
What Zone 2 training is actually trying to accomplish
Why cardiovascular fitness is important for improving resilience
How to balance low, moderate, & high-intensity conditioning
Key Highlights:
RECESS: New Ferritin Thresholds, CTE Research & the Outplay Book
This one's a first: Juliet and I are recording from different states. I'm up in Evergreen, Colorado, fresh off the Farren Summit in Boulder, where Juliet and I ended up in the same room as Robb Wolf, John Welbourn, and Andy Stumpf. Felt like CrossFit 2.0.
The American Society of Hematology just raised the diagnostic floor for ferritin from 15 to 30 ng/mL, and if you've ever been told your iron levels are fine while running on empty, this is a massive deal. Juliet shares her 30-year story here, including what finally worked.
Two landmark CTE studies dropped the same week: one out of Australia showing 61% of examined rugby league brains had CTE, and one from the US putting it at 1 in 4 NFL players. We get into what that means for families and youth athletes thinking about contact sports.
Plus a real update on Outplay, our book on youth sports performance for parents, which we are nearly ready to turn in.
What You'll Learn in This Episode
Why the American Society of Hematology raised the ferritin diagnostic floor from 15 to 30 ng/mL, and what the thresholds are for different populations
How to tell if iron deficiency may be affecting you, low ferritin symptoms, and which tests to ask your doctor about (ferritin, TIBC, CBC)
Why standard iron treatments so often fail, and what finally worked for Juliet after three decades of trying
How CTE differs from a concussion, and what two new studies on rugby league and NFL brains actually found
How families and coaches should think about youth contact sports in light of the new CTE research
What the Outplay book covers and where it stands in the writing process
Key Highlights:
(00:00) Intro: first time recording apart, Kelly in Colorado
From Combat Zones to the White House: The Physical Therapist Behind Two U.S. Presidents | Drew Contreras
What does it take to keep someone performing when their job leaves almost no room for downtime? In this episode of the Ready State Podcast, Kelly and Juliet Starrett sit down with longtime friend Dr. Drew Contreras, a retired Army physical therapist who went from supporting soldiers in combat to becoming the first full-time physical therapist embedded in the White House Medical Unit.
Drew shares what he learned caring for everyone from White House staff to Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden – and why the fundamentals of human performance matter even more when time is your most valuable resource. From encouraging naps during relentless work schedules to introducing walking meetings at the White House, Drew explains how small changes can help people stay functional under extraordinary pressure.
The conversation also explores the changing role of physical therapy, why PTs should be doing more than treating injuries one patient at a time, and how technology such as digital health and AI could reshape the profession.
What You'll Learn in This Episode
What working with two sitting U.S. presidents taught Drew about keeping people functional under extreme pressure
Why naps, walking meetings, and other simple interventions can make a major difference during sustained periods of high-stress work
How physical therapists became a “force multiplier” for keeping soldiers healthy and operational during deployment
Juliet and I have been saying yes to everything this fall. We're calling it the Fall Travel Junket, and it's stacked with events from Phoenix to Vail to Antarctica. Follow our Instagram or subscribe to The Ambush for details. And spoiler: you can join us in ANTARCTICA! For real!
We've been watching the new season of Ted Lasso, which is putting women's sports on mainstream television in a way that's hard to ignore. We get into what that means culturally, including who we'd want to see make a cameo.
Private equity is moving into youth sports with the "stay-to-play" model and it's terrible for players and parents. We dig into that, the "pay-to-play" model, what's happening at the policy level, and what parents can actually do.
We close with two Instagram trends that gave us pause: men in the longevity space calling facelifts "aesthetic wellness," and a dating site for people who didn't get the COVID vaccine.
New episodes of The Ready State Podcast drop every Thursday. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss a thing!
What You'll Learn in This Episode
Why Ted Lasso's new season is putting women's sports inequities on mainstream display
What the WNBA surge and Copa 71 reveal about the growing appetite for women's sports
How private equity operates in youth sports through the stay-to-play model
What New York Magazine and the Denver Post found when they investigated the pay-to-play childhood
What parents can actually do right now, from supporting Senator Murphy's bill to keeping rec leagues alive
Why calling facelifts "aesthetic wellness" is a branding problem worth naming
Key Highlights:
The Science of Women’s Health: Strength, Creatine, Body Composition, & Aging | Dr. Abbie Smith-Ryan
What if the biggest breakthrough in women’s health isn’t a brand-new protocol… but learning how to better apply the fundamentals to the person in front of you?
Kelly and Juliet Starrett sit down with Dr. Abbie Smith-Ryan, professor of exercise physiology and nutrition at UNC Chapel Hill, to explore what the latest research can teach us about training, body composition, creatine, and women’s health across the lifespan. Drawing from more than 15 years in the lab – and her experience as a collegiate runner who suffered 9 stress fractures – Abbie explains how our understanding of female physiology has evolved.
They unpack how women can use body composition data without becoming ruled by the numbers, why creatine may become even more valuable as we age, whether women really need female-specific strength programs, and how to approach HIIT and recovery during perimenopause and menopause.
The takeaway? Human bodies aren’t black and white. And now that we have more tools than ever, the focus should be on finding the ones that work best for you.
What You'll Learn in This Episode
How Abbie’s experience with 9 stress fractures shaped her approach to training, fueling, and women’s health
Why body composition data can be a valuable tool for tracking muscle, bone, fat, and long-term health
Key Highlights:
RECESS: Empty Nesting, Women's Pain Tolerance, a Youth Sports Myth & Two Years Inside the Starrett System
Juliet and I are officially empty nesters. Both girls are launched, the bathroom is clean every morning, and we're figuring out what the next phase looks like. It rhymes with dusk bike rides, protein shakes for dinner, and a cereal bar in Marin we somehow didn't know existed until now.
We also revisited one of our longest-running household debates: women's pain tolerance. An Instagram infographic claiming childbirth equals breaking 20 bones made the rounds and reignited everything. We cover what the McGill pain scale actually says, why medical research has failed women on pain, and the full story of my eardrum, which ends with blood in the ER and a pain scale I have never quite recovered from.
From there we got into our book Outplay and the data shaping every youth sports conversation right now. The number everyone cites is that 70% of kids drop out of sport by age 13. A researcher on LinkedIn tried to find the primary source and came up empty. So did researchers at the Aspen Institute. So did everyone else. We unpack what the CDC data actually shows and why citation drift doesn't mean youth sports is fine.
The biggest chunk of this episode is something I wanted to make sure we gave real time to: what two years of running the Starrett System has actually taught us. Most people coming into the program weren't working a coherent physical practice at all. They might have been doing some weight training or riding a Peloton, but nobody was hitting all three legs of the longevity triangle: strength, conditioning, and mobility. Nobody was sprinting. And a lot of people believed that the moment they felt discomfort, they should stop.
Watching that shift has been one of the most rewarding things we've done. Member Lily gained 5.4 pounds of lean mass in eight months. Cole said he's craving training every day for the first time. The fall cohort starts September 8th. Early bird: $200 off at starrettsystem.com.
What You'll Learn in This EpisodeKey Highlights
(00:58) RIP Rob Orlando + strongman legacy
(01:55) Elizabeth Holmes documentary, You Can See Everything
(04:23) Caroline at Cal Water Polo + Eszter Varró story
(06:30) Book recommendations: Elder Race sequel + Thricebound Fool
(07:23) Weird Longevity Shit: Bryan Johnson's GLP Brian
(09:09) BFR recovery shorts (HYTRO)
(09:51) The Assembly + Aescape robot massage
(12:28) Memory Air: smell, brain health, and dementia research
Why adolescence represents such an important window for building bone density, with roughly 90% of peak bone mass accrued by age 18.
What athletes, parents, and coaches should understand about iron and ferritin, including why one lab value rarely tells the whole story.
Why RED-S can matter after menopause, even when menstrual-cycle changes can no longer serve as a warning sign.
How WHSP is approaching unanswered questions around female athletes across the lifespan, from adolescent health and pregnancy to menopause, strength training, hormone therapy, and performance.
(00:00) Intro: Dr. Kate Ackerman & the Future of Female Athlete Health
(04:35) Kate’s journey from collegiate rowing to lightweight competition
(06:04) Making weight, underfueling & Crystal Light cereal
(09:30) Extreme weight-cutting tactics in lightweight rowing
(12:05) When losing your menstrual cycle was a “badge of honor”
(12:44) The Female Athlete Triad & Kate’s experience with menstrual loss
(15:43) Kate’s unconventional path into sports medicine
(16:33) Becoming triple-boarded in internal medicine, sports medicine & endocrinology
(20:50) Understanding the Female Athlete Triad & RED-S
(21:10) Why Kate calls osteoporosis a “childhood disease”
(23:01) How low energy availability affects health & performance
(24:49) RED-S warning signs for parents, coaches & athletes
(29:16) Why WHSP was created & the research gap in female athletes
(30:26) Building a one-stop medical model around the female athlete
(33:33) Moving from reactive healthcare toward prevention & performance
(39:06) Iron deficiency, ferritin & what athletes should know about their labs
(41:26) Why ferritin alone doesn’t tell the whole story
(43:53) WHSP’s research across the female lifespan
(44:51) Menopause, hormone therapy & the questions we still need to answer
(47:16) Strength training, bone health & better markers for RED-S recovery
(48:47) What the Boston Marathon study revealed about underfueling & performance
(53:06) What female athletes say they actually want researchers to study
(55:10) RED-S in postmenopausal women
(56:43) What RED-S can look like without a menstrual cycle as a marker
(58:26) GLP-1s, underfueling & muscle loss
(1:01:02) Strength training research for postmenopausal women
(1:02:16) Kate’s vision for the future of female athlete health
(1:05:34) Infinite Shelf: Ted Lasso & The Nightingale
What the longest randomized trial on diet drinks found about weight loss and potential harm
(00:00) Intro
(00:24) Empty nesting and an overbooked fall
(01:43) YPO Health Summit Vancouver: the back-to-basics shift
(05:01) First, second, and third wave fitness
(06:32) Rope flow for 100 CEOs, forgotten anniversaries, and 16 years of Mobility WOD
(08:21) Outplay: manuscript submitted
(11:06) EC Synkowski's [A Good Nutrition Book](https://a.co/d/0519vMrI) and the [800-gram challenge](https://thereadystate.com/trs_podcast/ec-synkowski-sustainable-nutrition/)
(13:38) Romania's [Black Card](https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7586821/2026/09/12/football-black-card-referee/) for youth sports sidelines
(19:15) The diet drink study and the Diet Coke debate
(25:21) Wrap
Why stress outside the gym should influence how you train
(00:00) Intro: Joel Jamieson on HRV & Conditioning
Why the "70% of kids drop out of sports by age 13" statistic cited by the American Academy of Pediatrics and major sports governing bodies may have no verifiable primary source, and what the CDC and Aspen Institute data actually shows
Why the claim that childbirth equals breaking 20 bones is a myth, and what the McGill pain scale says is actually more painful
Why medical research has historically underserved women on pain, and how self-reporting skews the picture
What two years of running the Starrett System revealed about what most people were actually missing in their physical practice
Why having a strength practice, a conditioning practice, and mobility work are three separate things, and why most people were only doing one of them
What the "longevity triangle" is and why most wellness and longevity conferences have almost no conversation about it
How teaching people to train around injuries and physical limitations, rather than stop, has been one of the biggest shifts for Starrett System members
Why the program's nutrition approach centers on abundance and eliminating nothing, and what happens when people who have been chronically underfueling start eating enough
(00:00) Welcome to RECESS / Kelly and Juliet go officially empty nest
(00:31) The bathroom story and Byron Katie's towel wisdom via Gabby Reese
(03:19) Life as empty nesters: bike rides at dusk, protein shakes, cereal for dessert
(04:43) Listener ask: send your best recipes for two
(05:18) Women vs. men pain tolerance: the debate renewed
(06:44) Kelly's eardrum story
(08:57) McGill pain scale and Juliet's finger
(11:11) Outplay: preparing families for youth sports
(13:32) Pay-to-play, private equity, and the Norwegian youth sports model
(16:26) The 70% dropout stat and its missing primary source
(19:12) Starrett System: origin story from the YPO conference
(26:48) Starrett System: member results and the September 8th fall cohort
(30:41) Cereal bar in Marin and the great Raisin Bran debate
(34:07) Wrap and early bird CTA
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