#173 | Optimizing Body Composition | Michael Ormsbee, PhD

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Michael J. Ormsbee, PhD

• Michael J. Ormsbee is a professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food & Exercise Sciences at FSU.
• He serves as the Graduate Program Director and is the Director for the FSU Institute of Sports Sciences & Medicine (ISSM).
• He holds the Margaret A. Sitton Endowed Professorship at FSU.

Professor Ormsbee’s work focuses on how exercise, nutrition, and supplementation interact to influence:

• Body composition, metabolism, and performance
• Pre-sleep (nighttime) feeding strategies and their effects on recovery, metabolism, and body composition
• The role of macronutrients (especially protein and types of carbohydrates) in fat metabolism, hormonal responses, and performance across both healthy and clinical populations
• Applications in athlete populations, as well as in metabolic disease, obesity, and clinical scenarios

Today I have the exact right person to talk about targeting optimal body composition. Mike Ormsbee PhD. Mike is a scientist athlete, researching health, body comp and human performance as the Director of the Florida State University’s Institute of Sports Sciences and Medicine. Dr Ormsbee agreed to join me to help us Wise Athletes to understand how exercise, nutrition, and supplementation can be used to optimize metabolism, body composition and performance

Principals 

1. Speed of adaptation reflects health status and resilience:  fuel switching speed, sugar tolerance, temperature tolerance, HR capacity (max vs. resting), endurance, mobility and strength provides headroom to recover from problems.
2. Benefit stacking:  getting multiple benefits from our actions and food
3. Health maintenance is the real goal.  Achieving goals is nice, but sustaining fitness and health is the real achievement.   The key is fuel matching and non-linear calorie imbalance. (Practice maintenance)
4. No suffering; stay within yourself but push a little most days. 
5. “Better is better”.  Optimal is elusive but will slowly be achieved for each person 
6. Little things add up.   Start with easy to gain momentum and motivation for harder change.
7. Exercise doesn’t have to dominate your life; you just need to do enough of cardio/ endurance and HIIT/ strength work. 
8. More variability = better resilience
9. Consistency of effort (we are forming new habits, need time to obtain positive feedback)
10. Progressive overload (change is painful, but only a little and only some of the time, if done right)
11. Modulated workload (for recovery, adaptation, mental health, and practice for maintenance mode)

Episode Resources

• Mike's Body Composition training course ---Link to Amazon or Great Courses

Related episodes & links:

• Episode 172 | Levers of (Food) Satiety | Ted Naiman MD
• Episode 142 | Fasting Mimicking Diet | Joseph Antoun MD PhD
• Episode 137 | The #1 Secret to Healthy Fat Loss | Vyvyane Loh MD
• Episode 135 | What's Your Healthy Fat %? | Vyvyane Loh MD

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