Part 2: Nutritional Scientist Chris Talley on The Mechanics of Nutrition

Chris Talley (0:00)

The difference between first place and second place in most events is less than 1%. You know, that's the difference between the champion and the person that's wishing that they were there.

And so if you could find those couple little missing links that are gonna put that person over the top, because there's a lot of people who are second place all the time, and they just haven't explored the nutritional territory enough to find those things that are gonna put them there.

Michael Gervais (0:34)

All right, welcome back. This is part two with Chris Talley. And for those of you who care deeply about what you're putting into your body, this will be a great conversation for you. If you haven't had a chance to listen to part one, I highly recommend it because it gives a framework for how Chris came to develop the insights that he's gonna share with you.

And he's just really good at what he does. So the journey to get this good, I think is well worth the time to explore. And I also wanna thank our partners, Athletic Greens, for supporting this podcast and all of our podcasts right now and allowing us to keep growing. So it's certainly timely that we're talking to Chris Talley about nutrition and our partner is Athletic Greens. So I just wanna thank them for the support. And if you hadn't had a chance yet, punch over to athleticgreens.com forward slash findingmastery, you'll see what we're doing, you'll see about their company and learn a little bit more about their product. I love it, I use it every day, I really enjoy it.

And they've got an amazing offer right now that maybe you can take advantage of before it's gone. And so with that, let's jump right into part two with Chris Talley.

What is the one thing or the one or two or three things that you are exceptional at? And it's like I'm saying brag, I don't mean it that way. I mean like, what are your crown jewels? What are the things that you know that have come easy but you've put a lot of work on to take it as far as you can go?

Chris Talley (2:04)

It would be nutritional science. That's the territory that I'm in that if you're looking at, and a very specific portion of nutritional science. Nutritional science is a huge territory. I tend not to get involved in the disease state related things. It's fascinating but it's just, again, if you're going to do something exceptional, you can't be good at all of them.

And so anything performance oriented where even if it's going to make that half a percent difference, if you get a couple of those put together, the difference between first place and second place in most events is less than 1%. You know, that's the difference between the champion and the person that's wishing that they were there. And so if you could find those couple of little missing links that are going to put that person over the top because there's a lot of people who are second place all the time.

And they just haven't explored the nutritional territory enough to find those things that are going to put them there.

Michael Gervais (3:04)

And then when you think about, you narrow down or gate out all of the different parts of your life efforts and say, okay, it's nutrition science. And then if you were to take that same swath again around your strengths inside of nutrition science, what are the strengths there?

Chris Talley (3:24)

It would be in the nutritional blood test side of things.

So that's pretty specific territory, but I know when people go back to really basic nutrition questions, a lot of times I'm dumbfounded by the simplest thing. If someone, you know, my own mom asked me what she should eat for breakfast, I'm, you know, it's pretty difficult to answer that when you're dealing with a whole lot of technical information and that, you know, looking at someone's nutritional blood test and trying to come up with what's ideal for breakfast. And then someone just asks you general, you know, I actually have to put more answer or more effort into answering that.

Michael Gervais (3:59)

So how, okay, so you take a, we'll get to the blood analysis in a minute, but let's make this, because that's super, what's the right word? It's very bespoke, it's very customized information that you're pulling from somebody and feeding back to them so that they can make sometimes significant, sometimes marginal gains. But let's go broad stroke for just a minute.

How do you answer when people say, what should I be eating?