From Touchdowns to Tofu: Former NFL Player Chris Manderino wants us to get rid of dieting dogma and go back to whole foods

I'm so thrilled you're here today . Let's get started . Welcome to the show Plant-Centered Listener . My name is Ashley and I am your host today , and we have an exciting conversation for you that I'm pumped to get into Before we do that . Last week I went and saw the Barbie movie , so I'm not sure if you've seen Barbie or Oppenheimer yet .

I won't give you any spoilers whatsoever , but I'm going to tell you one of my favorite things about going to see Barbie and obviously Oppenheimer is very big now too is the very distinct groups . It was a . If you've been to the theater recently , you know what I'm talking about .

It was a flood of pink going into the Barbie movie and even when I went to use the restroom before the movie , even during the movie , packed with pink and it just made my day . I think both of my favorite part was just everyone wearing pink and going to watch the movie together .

So if you want to let me know your thoughts on the movie or if you've seen either of them , definitely feel free to DM me on Instagram . I think I'm going to wait and watch Oppenheimer in the comfort of my own home so I can pause it and kind of just take some time with it .

I know it's like a three hour commitment , so that's what my thoughts are , but I'm also excited to watch that movie because I love reading historical fiction . So I'm going to have to do a little bit more research before that show , but I'm excited to watch it as well . So let's dive in to today's guest .

I have Chris Mandarino , who is a former NFL athlete turned entrepreneur , and he is incredibly passionate about transforming the lives of others through a holistic approach to wellness , and this was inspired by his own personal health journey , which he talks all about , and it was very fascinating .

Chris talks about his life experiences and just his desire to help others unlock their true potential . We talked about how we see these athletes , who are already really great athletes , but we know if they took their nutrition maybe a bit more seriously , they could be even better , and that goes for really anybody .

Nutrition plays such a pivotal role in our lives , and so we talk a lot about that . Chris talks about how he embarked on a new chapter of his own life after retiring from professional football .

He founded a company called Life Fuel , which we talk about at the end of our conversation , which is a cutting edge wellness brand that combines science-backed nutrition with a holistic approach to health , and at Life Fuel , chris talks about how he really aims to empower individuals to enhance their performance , improve vitality and achieve optimal well-being .

We also talk about his time living in a blue zone , which was incredible . He had some really great tips that came from his experience there , one of which I challenge you to do tonight or tomorrow , whatever it works out best for you .

And we also just talk about his time in the NFL what nutrition was like , what the emphasis was like there , and Chris just really is transparent about his own story , which I appreciate . So , without further ado , let's jump into our conversation , my conversation with Chris , and welcome him to the show .

I am really curious I know our audience will be really curious to learn just more about what life was like in the NFL , and I definitely want to talk about the nutrition aspect while you were in there as well .

So if you wouldn't mind , just kind of giving us , like , maybe , a behind the scenes look of what life was like , maybe leading up to it or even during it .

But as a professional athlete , your body , how you train , what you eat , it's all extremely important , not only for performance but longevity as a player as well . So yes , looking back now , I know there's a ton more focus and resources , even more so than what I had available to me as an athlete .

But you're always looking for ways to improve , ways to kind of gain the competitive advantage , and nutrition for me was always something that I paid close attention to , the way that I was feeling my body , but probably even more so now after being an athlete , than the time when I was playing .

So I was like a quarterback , a linebacker , running back in high school Because I walked on . They threw me in at full back , which is the position I hadn't played similar to running back but I was extremely undersized for that . It was probably 200 pounds as a red shirt freshman , ok , and it was tiny basically .

So putting on weight was a big challenge and struggle for me and what I would have to do is as a non-scholarship athlete , we weren't given training to the table , which is like the one meal a day that the university essentially paid for us , and oftentimes we'd end practice after the dorm closed the kitchen so we'd be stuck basically without a meal .

So that was really challenging and you're just kind of scramming a lot of times . And as a college student , especially in California , once I did an honors scholarship after my first year and get a starting position , I got to sit at the training table and all that good stuff , but throughout the day , just kind of trying to get by with what you can .

So we'd find deals on campus to get a sandwich and a drink for like three bucks or something and that would be our meal throughout the day , and then a protein shake and a protein bar or something after training In the NFL . Obviously you've got food is always available because you're at the facility pretty much all day long .

You're not off at campus and study all different things , and so there's a lot of that taken care of for you or at least more readily available . And I know like college has definitely changed in that regard too . So when I go back to Cal they've got like fueling stations at the facility and then down on campus and stuff .

So they've really become more knowledgeable about nutrition and how important it is to keep athletes filled up throughout the course of the day and not just like the training table post practice type thing .

huge impact on your performance , and so I'm curious , when you were in the NFL especially like what was your connection at that time ? So I'm sure it's a little bit different than maybe it is now to nutrition and maybe just fueling and performance and everything there .

It's like a lot of times if you were overweight and you had weight to lose , just to kind of get in like better shape and conditioning or whatever , those guys would more so work with the nutritionists . Other than that , it was just like you got to eat more .

So it's just like your cosplay stuff in your face full of food , and that's where , like eating became a chore just to get enough calories right to gradually put on the right kind of weight over time .

And so you know that's changed a lot and in terms of both like how people are recovering , just like how they're optimizing diet for performance and all these different tool sets , and I think you know that component has been just better integrated for all athletes .

You know , and one thing that I thought should be the case and I don't know if it is now , but you should almost have like a nutritional game plan , the same way that you have like a playbook , or we had our academic game plan .

You know the student ads leads to kind of just keep you on task , to all these different facets that are important to focus on .

But you know that , I think , catches up to us all over time . Right , the body will eventually break down if fueled with the wrong type of fuel sources over time . But it was just .

You know , when you're younger you can get away with a lot more of it , or so it seems , because you don't feel or see the impact right away , but it's like the deleterious effect of that over time that starts to wear us down .

If you're not , you know , mindful about that , that's maybe 1% , 2% , 6% , better than you could be just by , you know , having a plan around nutrition . It's impossible to ignore nutrition and be a chief peak performance .

Obviously you know was on the track to be a future health aimer . All that stuff , and you know he was following a more I don't know if he was following like a vegan diet or just kind of a more plant-centric diet and kind of you know , sparked a lot of curiosity in me because you know one , his physique was just like you know , he looked super human .

Obviously , to be able to play that long in the NFL was also testament to some of the stuff that he was doing , and so that really sparked my curiosity .

And then for me that became more profound in my post football transition .

I had the opportunity to go play abroad , in Italy after the NFL and I think the stark contrast between kind of their approach to nutrition and really where their food comes from , being so prideful about like growing the ingredients and having it be , you know native to Italian soil , and just like the care in which they're , you know , crafting all those meals and

also kind of the social aspect around . You know the dinner table being so important to them culturally , taking a couple hours out of the day to really just be present during all the meals , and how it was a little bit more plant-centric than you know the standard American diet that we've largely adopted here .

So I started to kind of pinker with a lot of different dietary approaches . You know I no longer needed to be 240 plus pounds anymore and so I was really looking to lose some of the , that plain weight , you know , reduce the body fat that I accumulated , as you know , trying to bulk up to 240 pounds and I was still training at a really high level .

But when I dowed in the diet and started exploring these different nutrition regimens , that's when I saw a massive shift and it was really kind of the obviously the physique , but also just a reduction in inflammation , like when I was in the NFL , because I was consuming so many calories and more , you know , animal-based food and a lot of whey protein , which is

highly inflammatory and different things . I felt it throughout my body , you know , joints , bones like eight way more . Add constant heartburn and digestive issues and all that stuff , energy levels would kind of be up and down . You know you eat a massive meal and you just want to go to bed afterwards .

You know you blame it on the training , but it's really , it's the fuel more , so you should have kind of more stable energy throughout the day . And so that's kind of really what enlightened me and opened my eyes to it .

So it's kind of like an N and 1 experimentation and then starting to do like a deeper dive into kind of plant-based nutrition and the benefits and really just kind of uncovering a lot of the research and knowing that a lot of these things that I had always been , you know , told as an athlete weren't necessarily true and so you know that just made me kind of

seek that out further and kind of look towards cleaner fuel sources .

You moved overseas and sort of started embarking more , taking maybe plant-based eating a little bit more seriously or diving deeper into nutrition and the evidence behind it , and it sounds like you were noticing some changes in your own body as you were eating more plant-based .

And then it was also during that time where I'd come home after playing abroad in Italy , my dad he'd always struggled with whey personally and he kind of was in a place where he wasn't , you know , really that healthy , didn't look great . He was having like some kidney issues and other things .

And you know , I kind of sat down with my mom and said , hey , we need to , you know , kind of intervene here and get this dialed in , and so started to educate her with a lot of the stuff that I learned .

And then she kind of took a more vested interest in , you know , cooking more plant-based meals , really reducing the total meat consumption down and a lot of the other things too . I think is the cooperative , the ultra-processed foods and , like all the refined oils and , you know , excess sugars and all that stuff .

So getting that out of the diet I think is probably the most profound thing . And then being really mindful about , you know , if you are keeping any types of animal foods in the diet , being really mindful about the sourcing and quality . And that goes for you know plant-based foods too .

Right , if you're eating much of plant-based foods that are sprayed with pesticides and herbicides and stuff , that's not going to be great either . Right , it gets really tricky . But I think that's where you know , the closer you can get to the source and really do your due diligence and understand you know where your ingredients , where your foods come from .

That's you know how you really take back control over you know diet , nutrition and health .

You know there's certain things that you know , we , you know maybe they're family traditions or comfort foods or whatever you know , and so , like those patterns are tough to break .

But I think it was very clear that something needed to change and so it started slowly , and usually the first step was like getting rid of the junk in the home environment and maybe getting into the cabinets and refrigerator and throwing like 95% of the stuff in the trash can .

And you know , even that process alone , you know , it's going to be very challenging for some of us , like because it feels wasteful almost .

And then you know setting up the shopping list to know what to look for , and so it's really that educational foundation around food what is real food , what is not , and kind of like you know getting them up to speed on that . And then you know the results were profound . You know a lot of like the conditions that he was struggling with slowly faded away .

You know he came off a lot of medications he had to take and you know just overall looked , felt way better and so it was like really exciting to see and I feel like the education or why behind it is usually the most powerful thing and in really teaching people that skill set that they can carry forward and in understanding that's not Any like dogmatic approach

to dieting , it's really getting back to understanding what you know Nutritious foods are , why nutrition is so important and how to get that you know in foods that you really enjoy as well , right and kind of catering to , like , different tastes and preference and all those types of things . It's really food is meant to be enjoyed .

It needs to be full of flavor . It's not about like just eating salads all day , understanding you know the style and cultural impacts of food and that really is a powerful way of bringing people together and it's not something that should be take taken away .

It's just reteaching how to kind of keep the states and flavors and just kind of reposition on them in Healthier ways .

that , you know , for as long as we did . And you know , I think it really affirms kind of these principles . But I just spoke about a lot of the stuff in Sardinia comes from Sardinia . They're not really importing a lot of food from Elsewhere . They have the ability to produce a lot of this Farence .

Sardinian and Italians are very prideful on a regional basis of like hey , this is Sardo cheese or this is Sardo this ,

you know . I think the other thing too In most Europeans cities they're just a lot more walkable . So you're getting , you know that . You know passive exercise constantly . You're able to move around the city a lot more easily , whereas a lot of , you know , american cities can be more spread out .

We're going from one box to another right , so from home to car to office and in that will cycle , and we're not getting , you know , exposure to nature and walking and it's like really sedentary . So you know it's not just nutrition .

Nutrition is obviously a massive part of it , but there's all the other aspects of what you know and they did the blue zone study . You really see that Kind of playing out when you have the time to really live in that culture for quite some time .

It's funny that you kind of touched on ultra processed foods again too , because I was reading something where it kind of talked about the real popular diets Today or with the past 10 years being , you know , keto , paleo , plant-based , and they talked about these diets and that the people who go on them or live that lifestyle , they feel amazing , they're very

passionate about them . You know , there's keto enthusiasts out there , there's paleo enthusiasts , there's plant-based enthusiasts . But what a lot of these quote diets have in common is that they don't have a lot of ultra processed foods as part of them Exactly and I found that fact because I'm very , very pro plant-based .

But when I heard that , oh , that is a really good point to kind of open my eyes , to kind of looking at nutrition Just like a little bit differently .

You know , and you don't necessarily need to go to these dietary Extremes . And at the end of the day , there's no one-size-fits-all approach to diet and nutrition . Anybody that's trying to kind of push a narrative around Keto or carnivore , vegan , just like you , should run the other way , because they don't know anything about your bio individuality .

They don't know enough about , like , what's going on in your genetics or gut microbiome , your socio-economic conditions , what your personal health goals are . You know it's so much more complex to that and it really you know .

I think that's where personalized nutrition and really understanding that entire picture is really important Fascinating to see kind of the growth and development along that spectrum and starting to use some of these diagnostic tools and other just kind of core principles Around .

You know , health and nutrition when applied , you're gonna feel and look better and you don't have to go to these extremes necessarily to get the results that you're seeking .

But it's neat , I think , that research is just gonna continue to grow and continue to hopefully kind of Veer us in a better direction when it comes to our food choices . Was there anything else while you're in Italy , especially like anything else that you learned from the blue zones that you that kind of shaped ?

You know your experience or your outlook on health , aside from what you already mentioned ?

I have that kind of like pause , mental reset , take a nap if you want to , and then kind of go back to its work . And then the other Key thing that I saw was what's known as the Pasadjata . So it's just a leisurely , casual stroll After dinner .

You go out and you'll see Hundreds , if not thousands , of people just walking around , and so that's like it's really important for digestion . It's . It's extremely impactful for kind of unwinding from the day and kind of like mentally , physically , can kind of get you in the proper Mindset for then going to rest and get more quality sleep .

Sleep is off , obviously massive for it's sleep is the best form of recovery . So if you're not sleeping well , everything else is going to go awire . So I think those two things Were really remarkable . I was like blown away , you know , the first time that we saw , it is like holy cow .

There's literally Thousands of people just out walking , and this is , you know , 10 o'clock , 11 o'clock in the evening , just going out for a casual stroll , the Pasadjata Wow .

I mean , I think that's something you know , if you're able to do that you listening , I think that's something if you , if you're able to get outside and go for a leisurely stroll , whether it's to your mailbox and back , or out in your backyard or even around your neighborhood , if that's accessible , I think that's a great idea , especially after dinner like you

said because that's great for digestion totally and leave the phone at home or , like you know , put it on you know airplane mode or something .

I think it is really , really important for mental health and just all the other you know wellness benefits alongside it are Profound , more than you would think . I mean here it's always like , okay , let's go hard , let's go fast , let's get our workout in our hit , our straight training and all that .

But just like you know , casually stroll has amazing benefits and like the immersion in nature , get into natural landscapes , Go sit in a park somewhere or just get into like nature whenever possible , and that really Will do wonders for your wellness and mental health as well .

. I'd love to hear about what you're doing now as well .

I always admired and looked up to him because he's able to chase that dream and it's definitely something that I wanted to do as well . And you know I try to be proactive in preparing for life after football . But no matter how much you do or how you know prepared you think you are , it's never an easy transition and I definitely struggled with it .

I know a lot of guys do , because it's kind of like the loss of an identity you know a lot of , especially once you've made it to that high of a level .

You know a lot of your friends and family get to know you as Chris the football player , chris the professional athlete , right , and so now that's over , now you kind of have to step into the next chapter and redefine . You know who you are .

You know Chris the businessman , chris the entrepreneur or whatever , and kind of prove yourself on a new stage and just kind of , I think , searching for what that life's purpose is going to be was a big part of the challenge and trying to go through that . So that was tough .

But what helped for me is just trying to apply the same things that work for me as an athlete , so the self-discipline , the work ethic , you know , trying to kind of keep a daily schedule and routine around certain things .

That started to pay off and I was able to kind of get my feet wet kind of on the corporate side of things , I was working in the medical side of nutrition as my first role when I was done playing football and so that helped me kind of build like an additional knowledge and expertise in the specific field of nutrition is actually working in bariatrics

specifically and people who are undergoing weight loss surgery or medical weight loss , and so you know really unique patient population , obviously a really big problem in the US and Western world more broadly , and that really opened my eyes to kind of the role of nutrition and how important it is not just for that patient population but like the greater population as

a whole . And you know , after doing that for almost five years , you know I kind of had this , you know entrepreneurial kind of drive to want to go out and do my own thing .

But it was also a lot of fear and kind of taking that leap and being able to do that , you know , because , like once you've got that like nice job , salary is good , I had a lot of kind of autonomy in terms of time and location and stuff . You know I was challenging to kind of give that up and then go chase something new .

But I took the leap of faith and , you know , very happy I did . And you know that I guess journey of entrepreneurship is definitely not easy . Lots of ups and downs , lots of , you know , kind of looking yourself in the mirror and wondering if you made the right decision or not , or , like you know , if all this is ever going to pay off .

And a lot of sacrifices too . But you know , I think you know , just as an entrepreneur , just keep going .

Obviously , if you've got something that you're confident in and you've got some sort of like feedback that there is , like you know , slowly making progress , like even a little bit of progress is still progress and like that culminates in big things over time .

And I think the same as to be said on like anybody's like personal wellness journey right , it might seem insignificant in the moment . I , like you know big deal . I got up and I did whatever 10 minutes of meditation or I did like a 10 minute workout or whatever , it doesn't matter .

Right , you started somewhere , we all start somewhere and just like keep putting one foot in front of the other and just keep going .

And then you know , look back in times like , oh well , I'm so happy that I just got started , because that's more than half the battle is just getting started , because getting out of our own heads and just having the belief to be able to do that , and then also kind of like making sure you have the proper support system around you , you're spending your time

with friends , family and interests , where that's going to kind of support those endeavors and not kind of deter you from trying to reach your goals . But it's definitely been a challenging transition , but extremely rewarding and so happy that you know I had the right people around me and really confidence in myself to have a go at it and walk this journey .

So when I was there , you know I was educating both doctors and their patients around nutrition , because I don't know if you're listening to know , but most physicians don't get , you know , hardly any education in nutrition and that's kind of why when you go see your GPP or anything with any specific like ailments , they're probably not talking to you about lifestyle

diet or anything like that . Right , it's not an education that they received . So in bariatrics I was hearing kind of the struggles and challenges you know of that patient group .

Even though that they had this kind of new tool which was the surgery itself , it was still a lot of like really challenging for people to sustain the weight loss if they didn't make that behavioral switch . So like there's this control mechanism but it's like the behavior .

I mean you see that now it's like a septic and some like weight loss drugs or whatever right , like they can work temporarily . You know we can get into side effects and all that stuff , but if you like stop and go off that medication and you haven't made that behavioral change .

Your expectation should be that you're going to put on you know that weight again , because that's the greatest shift .

But part of it , the challenge to with that , was like all the complexity in kind of like that daily routine of all the different supplements that they would have to take , you know , different times of the day . They couldn't take calcium and iron at the same time because they share the same binding sites in the body and so you have to .

It's almost like taking eight different types of medicines , even though it's like nutritional supplements , because based off that you know surgery they weren't getting . You know they . You bypass the upper third of the small intestine . You're not getting all the nutrients you need from food .

So at that time we're really pushing upper management to kind of make a more on one solution . That would basically make it way simpler for patients to get all their nutrients in a singular solution or at least like reduce the number of products from like eight down to two or three .

They were a bit resistance to that because it would kind of cannibalize a lot of the you know existing products and you know unsure what that would outcome of that would be on profitability and all that stuff .

We , as like sales reps in the team , just felt like it was like the obvious thing to do , because that's what , like you know , it would make people's lives so much easier and so much better and compliance would be better .

So , you know , I started to get a taste for kind of like the bureaucracy of like the corporate side of wellness and wanted to be a bit more agile .

Like we'd start as kind of a small , medium sized business that ended up getting acquired by a much larger enterprise based business and things just got , you know , took so much longer to get done and had to go through all these checks and balances and it's like , uh , you know , I don't really see myself , you know , chasing this guy's my boss's job .

I don't want his life to be mine in 10 years . So I need to like pivot . I need to do something else .

You know , and you know I think that's always a good inflection point Like if you're in that corporate environment , if you don't like desire , you know , the person's job above you , or even two roles about whatever that might be , maybe it's time for you know to try something else .

And that's that's what it was for me , and so you know this again , as I mentioned , it's like very scary to get started , but I felt like there was enough market demand , based off kind of the conversations that I was seeing and hearing kind of in the space .

And then through the research , I started to see , okay , well , the same series of like nutrient challenges , deficiencies , insufficiencies that exist in this unique patient population actually exists in the broader consumer population as well .

Like we look at it , 95% of Americans are not getting one or more of the data requirements for vitamins and minerals , you know and so like .

Okay , this complete solution to nutrition can be applied to pretty much everyone , and that's largely due to you know how much our food landscape has changed over the past few decades the loss of nutrient density of the soil , so even our fruits and vegetables are less nutrient rich than they were , you know , a few decades ago , and so that was the origination of

life fuel . We started with an RLN1 Essentials Nutrition Shake , and that was really the first product on the market designed to kind of replace what's missing from food .

So it's going to give you your protein , all your core vitamins , minerals , greens pretty much everything you would expect to get in a whole food plant based meal but really aren't because of the lack of micro nutrients , and so that's , you know it's resonated really well in the marketplace .

Obviously , there's other people kind of in this space of all in one solution , but still very few that actually combined the protein and the micro nutrients and the greens and everything and all in one solution , using more functional nutrition standards and not just like a generic like 20% or 10% across the board . It's like a meal replacement shake .

So that was really our unique approach is really looking at nutrient density first , looking at the science and what people are largely lacking or missing in modern diets .

Not just okay , you're probably getting enough B vitamins , vitamin C and some other things , but not enough vitamin D3 , k2 , choline , boron you know some of these harder to get nutrients , and so that was really our core focus and from there we've continued to like build the business . We've got a digital wellness aspect to it .

My wife's a certified health coach , so really leaning into that More . So we've always had our life transformation program , because that was really our goal . Beyond just being a physical products company , we're a transformation company . You know .

It's really giving the people tools and resources that they need to empower them to make the decisions they need around their health and really see meaningful results . And a lot of times that's more than you know just what you're putting in your body . It's you know all the other things that you're doing on a daily basis .

One thing that I thought was pretty profound , that my wife learned through her education , was the food . That is actually secondary nutrition . Everything else is primary nutrition so relationships , sleep , content . We're consuming all that stuff which shapes our psychology , our daily rituals and habits and behaviors and influences our decisions around food .

So it's really making sure we've got a proper and mindful approach to that first , and then obviously , understanding fuel and nutrition as well as an important cornerstone . So really excited about some of the things that are coming down the pipeline with the rebuild of that program Got a lot of really exciting things in the product development pipeline .

I've actually been reformulating our hero product , the essential shake , for the past three years now to do some really yeah , some things that are extremely unique to the industry . So we're taking a 100% whole food approach to nutrition , meaning no synthetics , no synthetic inputs , no chemicals , no , nothing . I haven't seen anybody else doing that .

We launched that in our bars , our essential bars , about a year ago , and so that's the first bar that I've seen on the market that's exclusively made for 100% real plant-based whole foods .

So our vitamins and minerals there's 27 different vitamins and minerals that give you 25% of the daily value , but that's derived from sweet potato and cranberry and mushroom , instead of long list of chemicals that you can't pronounce . I think so .

Some of this stuff now Didn't exist when we first started the business , and so we're constantly trying to stay on the cutting edge of that stuff and really leaning into the science and kind of innovation around the ingredients and then building transparency into that entire value chain so that people can understand who the growers are , where these ingredients are coming

from and all that stuff . So it's been a long project , a ton of work behind the scenes , but it'll be cool when it's set and done and we can finally launch that .

So there we've got all of our products , the transformation program that I alluded to , and , yeah , we'll be offering kind of a more guided approach , which will either be like small group coaching or one-on-one personal coaching with the support of health coach , dietitian , all that fun stuff .

I don't really post much frequently , but I can check messages and also I'm LinkedIn as well . But , yeah , that's the best place .

And then I'm rolling out kind of personal newsletter here soon , so just chrismandorinocom , where people can kind of get more of like behind the scenes , like conversations like this and just like additional kind of like insights into like philosophy on health , wellness and current event type stuff . So that's probably the best place to stay up to date .

Until next time , keep thriving .