Dr. Clay Ardoin is a physical therapist who uses his manual therapy skills, teachings in physical therapy, continued studies in functional movement diagnostics, as well as strength and conditioning, to bridge the gap between rehabilitation and returning to performance training.

Moe Schlachter is a registered nutritionist and dietician who obtained his Masters of Nutrition degree at Texas Woman’s University. He is a Certified Diabetes Care and Education Specialist (CDCES formerly known as CDE).

Today, Dr. Clay Ardoin and Moe Schlachter join the show to discuss New Year’s Resolutions, strategies to maintain those resolutions throughout the year, the importance of nutrition and exercise and how to differentiate between pain and soreness when working out.

Key Takeaways

01:31 – Dr. Clay Ardoin & Moe Schlachter join the show to share motivational techniques to maintain New Year’s Resolutions

10:58 – Moe provides his thoughts on nutrition and dieting during the New Year

15:04 – Advice Dr. Clay & Moe would give to those looking to lose 10-15 pounds

17:56 – Dr. Clay and Moe share their approaches to addressing low-back pain and other chronic pain

22:06 – Differentiating between pain and soreness while working out

25:25 – Dr. Flowers thanks Dr. Clay Ardoin & Moe Schlachter for joining today’s show and lets listeners know where they can connect with them

Resources Mentioned

JFlowers Health Institute – https://jflowershealth.com/

JFlowers Health Institute Contact – (713) 783-6655

Subscribe on your favorite player: https://understanding-the-human-condition.captivate.fm/listen

Dr. Clay’s LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/clay-ardoin-981925157/

Dr. Clay’s Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/clay.ardoin.37/

Dr. Clay’s Website – https://sculptupt.com/

Call Dr. Clay’s Office – (713) 489-8182

Moe’s LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/moe-schlachter/

Moe’s Email – info@houstonfamilynutrition.com

Houston Family Nutrition – https://houstonfamilynutrition.com/

**The views and opinions expressed by our guests are those of the individual and do not necessarily reflect those of J. Flowers Health Institute. Any content provided by our co-host(s) or guests are of their opinion and are not intended to reflect the philosophy and policies of J. Flowers Health Institute itself. Nor is it intended to malign any recovery method, religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual, or anyone or anything.

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Dr. Clay Ardoin And Moe Schlachter – Understanding Your ‘Why’ To Sustain Healthy Habits [Episode 74]

Maintain New Year’s Resolutions

Everybody, excited to have you all, happy new year. It’s January, 2023. I have two really good friends with me, both of whom I work with almost every single day here at J. Flowers Health Institute. First of all, we have Moe Schlachter of Houston Family Nutrition. Welcome Moe.

Thank you doc. It’s good to be here as always.

Happy New Year. It’s good to see you. We have Dr. Clay Ardoin. Tell everybody about yourself, Clay, and your practice, because I want everyone to know what an amazing physical therapist you are. A little bit about your background and how you work with our patients.

I’m a physical therapist by trade. I own seven locations here in Houston. Really what sets us apart from typical physical therapy is everything we do is all one-on-one. We give our full undivided attention to our patients, which is really necessary to see the type of results that we’re trying to drive. The healthcare system has driven just these patient mills where there are just 2 or 3 patients per therapist. Each therapist is seeing 20 or 30 patients a day. My therapist sees like say one-on-one and it really helps to drive that quality of care. That’s what we stand by is just giving that type of attention to our patients and they really appreciate it.

Having that concierge level of care. People always ask me, “What is concierge care and what does it mean?” I often talk about the silos and healthcare where people are in typical medical communities, people go to a physical therapist over here and a nutritionist on this street and a therapist over here and an orthopedic surgeon over here, or a pain doctor on this street, but none of them really talk to each other. The other thing that both of you do really well is collaborate with other people. Collaborate with our team, collaborate on our patients and collaborate with your referents but also giving that one-on-one care. If you need to spend 1 hour or 1.5 hours or 2 hours with a patient, you’ll dedicate that time with your patients.

Just like you said, I think building that team of just the network of referral sources around you, where that patient is just totally taken care of them on every aspect and not being afraid to refer out and knowing exactly where your lane is and knowing the skills and the people around you that can also facilitate better quality of care for that patient. At the end of the day, they’re just getting everything they need on every single level. We all communicate together very well. It really makes a fun working environment.

It does. It’s really great having working with complex individuals and oftentimes, Moe, who’s a nutritionist by education and training, but I think should be and could be a psychologist because often Moe has some amazing insights, as do you, Clay, on our patients and you’ll come back. Even though we spend a tremendous amount of time, our clinical team, with each and every single patient, really uncovering the complexities of every individual. You guys also help uncover complexities and come back because they’re in a different setting with you than with a therapist or a psychologist and they tell you things they often feel more comfortable telling you than they do us. Tell us a little bit about your practice and how you work with our patients as well.

I’m a president of Houston Family Nutrition and our sister clinic Nutrition Behavior Therapy, and we have locations here in Houston and the location in Austin as well, soon to be Dallas too. Like you said, I mean, the work that we do is like therapy in some ways. There’s a lot of talking, goal setting, and just assessing barriers and I do find that in the topic of conversation is food. There’s a little bit of ease and comfort coming in. I find that people do pretty well. When I train my staff on is just gathering information, assessing, and passing it on to the clinical team. They’ll know what matters.

They’ll know what’s significant. We’re just part nutrition provider and part information gatherer and in that we can build really deep relationships with clients. That’s something that I love that we do here as a whole team. You talk about being able to spend the time, but also just being able to connect human to human. And that’s a big part of what we’re, how we’re successful here. Absolutely. Yeah. And you guys are great at motivating people.

You guys are great at motivating people and we’re talking about being January, talking about New Year’s resolution, it’s January, 2023. Clay, you’re based out of one of your offices is based out of the Houstonian right here on the grounds of the Houstonian where we office. The gym is dead at the end of December. I was in there every day at the end of December and no one was in there. Just a few people a day and then January 1st hits and it’s packed all of a sudden. What do you see in the fitness world? I know you’re a physical therapist, but you’re obviously a fitness expert as well. Fitness is a huge part of your daily living. What are you seeing in the fitness industry in January and what are you seeing with New Year’s resolutions and are they really resolutions?

I have a different take than most. A lot of people that go to the gym frequently. They really despise January because of all of the new people coming and there are no machines open, people that don’t know what they’re doing and all that. Honestly, I like seeing that because people are taking action and part of their resolution and maybe it’s getting fit and maybe it’s just being more consistent. That type of thing.

Just getting there is half the battle. Just showing up is half the battle. Now maintaining that consistency is another story and having a plan for that. It was really important, but it’s hard. It’s hard to change habits. It’s hard to change behaviors. That’s one thing to make sure people understand is like, not many people can see this through. The fact that you’re willing to get this started, at least as a step in the right direction.

“It’s hard to change habits and behaviors. Not many people can see this through. The fact that you’re willing to get this started is at least a step in the right direction.”

What do you do when you’re working individually with people getting back into the routine of working out in January? Give us some motivation techniques that you use to get people into fitness, and into the gym.

I always like to have people break down their goals. Not that everyone has an end goal of what they want, but a lot of times it’s just setting realistic expectations and setting realistic goals and making sure that if you haven’t been working out at all, and your goal is to get to five. Let’s shoot for two. Let’s shoot for two days a week. Let’s not try to knock all this out. Like if you’re not sleeping eight hours a night and you’re only sleeping four, let’s try to sleep six. Let’s try to sleep five. Let’s go to bed a little, just a little bit earlier. We’ll slowly start to get you back into regulation and homeostasis. A lot of people they write on all these goals and have all these big aspirations and sometimes just becomes overwhelming and it turns into inaction.

I cannot do that. I cannot possibly go five days a week and they quit.

They quit and before they know it, it’s 2024 and we’re having the same conversation or they’re even further away from their goals from where they were before and they have more responsibilities. Just trying to help people map that out and show them that there’s a different way to do it so that they can feel satisfied at nighttime where they can get a good night’s sleep and they feel like they’re stepping in the right direction.

It reminds me of training for a marathon. I’ve run 28 marathons and I have not run one in about five years or so. When I was running marathons for most of my adult life, talking to people and educating people about marathon training is similar, I think, to going back to the gym. That if you’re training for 26.2 miles or you’re training for a hundred miles or you’re training for ten miles, whatever it is, don’t get out there and start running three miles, five days a week or six days a week.

Get out there and walk three miles a day. The first week or two. Just get up and walk for 30 minutes and then you do it for 45 minutes and then you do it for an hour. You may go jog a mile or a half a mile, but don’t get out and start and say, “I’m going to the gym five days a week, every day.” They’re going to wake up and stay home every other year.

I like to tell people to just remember why you got started. The why is really important because motivation will fade at the end of the day. What’s your why? Weeks go by, months go by, and like that starts to become a little faded. It’s a little gray and you can almost forget why you started. If you’re relying on other people, if your people are telling you to do this and you’re doing it for them, you really have to do it for yourself.

“Remember why you got started. The ‘why’ is really important, because motivation will fade at the end of the day.”

Those changes have to come within. When that does get hard and it’s hard, it does get hard to stay with your goals. You just have to go back and be like, “This is why I’m doing this.” That helps you to get back on track because we’re all going to fall off at some point and it’s just trying to get back on the next day, the next meal. We don’t have a huge bender or a huge binge. You just get back on the next track. Moe can speak to that.

Nutrition And Dieting

I was going to just say speaking of meals, Moe, another next to fitness is nutrition. Everyone wants to go on a diet in January. I’m going to eat in December and then in January, I’m going to go on this new diet. It’s somewhat similar or just as similar to going to the gym in January. People start these new diets and they do dry January or they do salads in January and then they fall off the wagon and they’re back to their same eating habits. Tell us a little bit about your experience with the new year and what people tend to do and what maybe they should do instead.

it is interesting being in these fields around the time of year because it is so notorious for the new year’s resolution goals. There’s a basic split between the goals that someone can set. They can set an action-oriented goal or an approach-oriented goal. I will go to the gym, I will do something that is action-oriented, and maybe a diet goal, which is avoidance-oriented, or I will not eat X, Y, and Z, or I will not drink this. There’s research on it. There’s a 2020 study that will say an action-oriented goal or a process-oriented goal has a higher statistical chance of being sticking than an avoidance-oriented goal.

“An action-oriented goal or a process-oriented goal has a higher statistical chance of sticking than an avoidance-oriented goal.”

There’s also statistics on goals that are set with support baked in versus goal that are set where someone just I’ll do this on my own and white knuckle it. We find it very interesting in the clinic. We’ll see. A lot of folks come in and they’ll talk about I want to avoid X, Y, and Z and we’ll try to get them in touch with the Y just like Clay does, and we’ll also try to get them thinking about the action-oriented or the positive things that will be done instead of what we’re avoiding. It could be changing the conversation from I want to have less sugar to I want to eat more fruits and vegetables. Something that’s a little bit more action-oriented.

Speaking of sugar, another huge thing that we’re seeing in our society over the last few months. It seems like every week I hear more and more about this on the news. Every time you open up my iPhone, there’s something about Ozempic or Wegovy out there and it’s the new medication of the stars. Wealthy people who are wanting to go on diets and spend a thousand dollars a month on Ozempic or Wygovy about a thousand dollars a month. What’s your thought on this new weight loss technique that people are using the injection, once a week injection, either Wygovy or Ozempic and give us some of your advice on that?

The injection has a lot of good research behind it. I think the medication is not necessarily a first-line medication but when either first-time medications fail or if a person’s system cannot really tolerate the first line or the max dose of a first line, it’s a medication that is brought on board and it does have a weight loss side effect. It’s something that is effective.

I think when considering interventions for weight loss or for diabetes, it’s about risk management. It’s knowing that the medication is going to present some risk, but then it’s offset by the decreased risk of resolving the primary condition. I think it’s everyone definitely got to talk to their own doctor

and make their own decision about it but when we work with clients who either might do surgery for weight loss, medication for weight loss, or a crash diet for weight loss.

We focus as a team on what the day after that intervention is going to look like. Regardless of what it was that got the person from point A weight to point B weight, we want to help them know that their lifestyle is going to sustain the progress that they’ve made. Whether they haven’t started their journey yet, or they’re somewhere in the middle, we’re going to help them build a lifestyle that surpasses the effects of the medication, the injection, the pill, the surgery, or whatever it might be.

On Losing 10-15 Pounds

Great. What advice? I’m going to ask you both the same question and I’d love some feedback on that. What do you say to someone who’s reading and wants to lose 15 to 20 pounds? They’re living their life. They’re functional. They’re working. They do a little bit of exercise and they want to shed about 15 to 20 pounds. What’s your thought on the best way in 2023 to lose 10 to 15 pounds?

That’s a deep question. I think going back to what Clay said earlier, I think it’s getting in touch with the why first. It’s assessing how important it really is to the person and what they expect for it to do for them, whether or not it’s well-informed.

Even writing it down. Why is this important to me? It could be step number one. Why do I want to lose 10, 15, 20 pounds?

At least for us, along with that assessment is knowing what their history with losing weight is. Have they lost a pound before? Are they very experienced? Does their history give us clues as to what works for them? I think maybe the best way to approach it is the way that we can assess in the clinic either has worked for them or has the best shot at working for them. I know I’m dancing around it, but I can get more into strategies, but I’m curious. Clay, what do you think?

I think it’s very important to find out how important that 10 to 15 pounds is because I hear a lot of people say that and they don’t really want to do that. That’s what I hear all the time is, “I want to lose 10 pounds.”

Where does that fall on the importance in your life at this time, also setting like, “Are you doing this to get ready for a certain date? Do you have something coming up where you need to lose this, or is this something that we can push out a little bit longer? I would take it in a different path depending on the timeframe there.” Also, just looking at the person’s ability to sacrifice. Like, what are you willing to sacrifice to do this?

These are the things that are restricting you, and we’ll lay those out and say, “You eat out three times a day. Are you willing to meal prep a little bit? Alcoholic beverages at nighttime, are you willing to cut that down to one or maybe two nights a week.” If they won’t sacrifice any of that, then it’s like it’s probably not that important to them. You got to see how willing they are to do that. Also their timeframe.

A lot of people are busy. People are parents and they’re working and all that stuff. A lot of people don’t have an extra couple of hours during the week to work out. Just trying to see what they do have available to them. You can try to utilize that time for them and teach them that. Maybe you cannot get away for an hour, but 20 minutes is better than nothing. Can you get up 10 minutes earlier and do something? You don’t need to block out two hours in the middle of your day. Maybe it’s 20 minutes before your day starts and 20 minutes when you go to bed. That can make a huge difference over the course of weeks and months.

“Can you get up 10 minutes earlier and do something? You don’t need to block out 2 hours in the middle of your day. Maybe 20 minutes before your day starts and 20 minutes before you go to bed; that can make a huge difference over the course of weeks and months.”

Low-Back Pain And Chronic Pain

It sure can. Let’s talk about chronic pain for just a minute. Really for both of you, all three of us work in chronic pain with a lot of chronic pain patients. You work with them and inflammatory conditions. You work with sciatica and all types of spine pain. Tell us a little bit about your approach to low back pain and how to help someone and from a physical therapy standpoint and overcoming something like either sciatica, pinched nerve, or any type of spine pain that someone may be having.

I’d say that’s a good question because I treat a lot of back pain. 80% of the population will have back pain at some time, at some point in their life. Sometimes it does become chronic and a lot of what we do is getting people focused on again, their why and their goals and trying to get them more focused on function rather than what is their pain score when they come in. I want them to, “What are you trying to do?

Are you trying to play with your grandkids? Are you trying to get out and swing the golf club? Are you trying to get to the gym? Were we able to do that during the week rather than every time when they come in, someone asking them what their pain is? What’s your pain?” Their brain immediately just goes into pain. A lot of what we do is we try to unravel that and try to get them to focus more on the functionality of what their life could look like.

Also, I mean, we treat their pain, of course, and come up with a plan for them. We set that out for them in a realistic timeline. We make sure that they understand what their process is and have a team that also understands pain science and how to deal with that. Having those referral sources is huge. From a musculoskeletal standpoint and what we can do in the clinic and what you guys can do here in the office and therapy sessions just like we’ve seen so many patients just go from night and day. It’s really amazing to see what that combination of therapy can do.

It really is. There are not very many places in the country that have an interdisciplinary team to really work with chronic pain, because if you don’t approach it from a multifaceted and interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary way. The patient will do well in physical therapy, but then they leave and their depression hits again, or they’re eating improper foods and the pain comes back up and they don’t know how to manage it. From a nutritional standpoint, what’s your best advice for chronic pain patients and anti-inflammatory foods and things like that?

I think inflammation is the big one that we look after. First is looking at the obvious contributors to inflammation, whether it’s smoking or alcohol. It could be poor sleep as well. Just getting those things wrapped up and then being very proactive. Going back to what I said earlier about proactive goals versus avoidance-oriented goals, regardless of where a person’s diet is at a given moment, there’s always this opportunity to increase anti-inflammatory foods.

“Regardless of where a person’s diet is at a given moment, there’s always this opportunity to increase anti-inflammatory foods.”

There’s increased fruit and vegetable intake. Even if there’s all this stuff that a person’s distressed about, “I do this late night eating. I eat the wrong things or my cheat meals get away from me.” You could always add more greens. You can always add more berries and nuts, and then you can get into some of the healthy fats with more fish and salmon. I think it’s helping a person understand how important these nutrients are to keeping inflammation low.

We can measure that. Something I love that we do here is we have all the testing that we do, the diagnostics. We can show to a client what where their inflammation levels are at and then with a diet intervention and see how that makes an impact. I think it’s really just being more proactive, understanding that there are lots of different anti-inflammatory nutrient groups, and helping a person go from baseline to increasing them up to adequate levels.

Pain Vs. Soreness

Something I like to talk about with chronic pain patients is the way in which we perceive pain, and it’s all through our nervous system. When the nervous system is activated, the pain level increases. The more anxious we are, we have higher the levels of pain. When we eat fried foods, it activates the nervous system and it increases our pain. When we’re not working out right, it’s going to increase our pain. Talk about the difference in working out between pain and soreness because so many patients we send to physical therapy with chronic pain, come back and say, “It hurt. I’m in so much pain.” It’s not necessarily pain. It’s soreness from working out and adjusting.

That can be hard to distinguish when you have chronic pain and you’re starting to feel these changes and things here and there. We try to get them to understand that is a normal thing in the process of retraining the body and getting yourself in your nervous system to adapt. To desensitize the area, you always almost have to sensitize it a little bit so the body can change and feel these things and adapt.

There’s definitely a challenge when it comes to that and just trying to keep the load and the type of exercise that you do at a level that they can tolerate so as to not over-excite the nervous system and also get them to buy in. That relationship between the therapist and the client is very important. They need to be able to trust that relationship and that you’re not going to hurt them because they’ve been in pain their whole lives for most of it. If they feel like you’re going to hurt them, it goes out the window. A lot of it’s just having conversations and building that rapport with patients or even more important than the exercise itself. It’s just like, you have to be able to build that trust.

“A lot of it is just having conversations and building that rapport with the patients. It’s even more important than the exercise itself. You have to be able to build that trust.”

I completely agree. I think the greatest way to build that trust again, is working one-on-one, not in a big group setting, not working with 30 patients a day, but working with a small group of patients individually, like you guys do and what your experts add and what we do here. What we’re talking about really is your total life and total wellness in a collaborative multidisciplinary setting. The best way to attack a complex issue is not just with one individual, but really working with a team of experts in each area of healthcare, really. Any closing thoughts, Moe?

I think that really comes into play, especially around this time of year, we’ll have folks come into the clinic with the goal of I want to eat healthier or I want to lose some weight or I want to be more physically fit. They might have an idea that I’m going to the nutrition guy to accomplish these goals. When we orient a client to the idea that it takes activity and food and sleep and managing your stress and emotion, hydration, and getting your medical stuff in order.

That’s where the rubber meets the road, I think folks come in and they say, “I want to do these things. I want to lose this amount of weight or I want to get this much healthier.” When we have the conversation, working 60 hours a week and bottling up all your stress really isn’t working for you. Maybe you might want to find someone to talk to about that. Sometimes people are all for it. Sometimes that’s where they have to make a choice.

“I didn’t really sign up for that. I’m not really sure that’s going to be part of the process.” I think where the motivation to like get these things done comes up against what needs to happen. My closing thought is just really orienting the reader here to the idea that anything in the realm of health or nutrition or physical activity goal, there’s all these other elements that need to be considered and a 360 approach really is going to be the best way to get it done.

Connect With Dr. Ardoin And Moe

Moe, if someone wants to get ahold of you and talk about a nutritional consult, how do they do that?

On HoustonFamilyNutrition.Com. Easiest way. We have a lot of contact forms on there and we’ll get back here real quick.

Dr. Clay, you’re all over the city now. I know that. How do people get ahold of you guys?

Pretty similar to him. We have a really easy accessible website. It’s SculptuPT.com or you can give us a call at (713) 489 – 8182 and we’ll be happy to chat with you about whatever you have going on.

I can tell you guys that are listening that these two individuals have helped countless number of our patients over the last several years and have had huge successes with our patients. I enjoy working with both of you and happy 2023. It’s going to be a great year. You can reach them or me at JFlowersHealth.com or (713) 783 – 6655 at J. Flowers Health Institute or individually you’re welcome to reach out to either one of these two experts. Again, thank you guys, and happy new year.

Thank you. Happy New Year.

Thanks.

I’d like to remind everyone watching or listening to us that there are numerous platforms to find our podcasts, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartRadio. Please share this episode on social media or with someone that you think could help. We remind you also that a clear diagnosis is key to the most effective treatment possible.

Yes, it is. See you next week.

Thanks again, Robin.

Thank you.

Dr. Clay Ardoin And Moe Schlachter – Understanding Your ‘Why’ To Sustain Healthy Habits [Episode 74]

Listen to the podcast here

Dr. Clay Ardoin And Moe Schlachter – Understanding Your ‘Why’ To Sustain Healthy Habits [Episode 74]

Maintain New Year’s Resolutions

Nutrition And Dieting

On Losing 10-15 Pounds

Low-Back Pain And Chronic Pain

Pain Vs. Soreness

Connect With Dr. Ardoin And Moe

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