Jan 5, 2026 · 1 hr 33 min · 17 segments
In this episode, Robert “Bob” Pizzini is joined by Cheryl Zonkowski, founder and owner of Catalyzt Nutrition, LLC. Cheryl shares her extensive experience ranging from her role as a performance…
So you have basic health care where you go and you get your cholesterol tested, which is a lipid panel, or your glucose tested to see what your blood sugar levels are.
Then when you get into performance, so whether it's athletic and or tactical, there are performance metrics that can be measured, tracked periodically to... establish trends, track trends, recommend interventions from a dietary and supplement standpoint.
And within Naval Special Warfare, the majority, predominantly all of the biomarkers were more standard medical care based initially.
So this was the interest in growing the current capability that they had to draw blood, which every military installation has that capability from a health care standpoint.
start to look at markers that are relevant to performance and how do you keep someone who has 15 10 15 years of experience in the fight to then help train the newer guys coming through because you have so much time and monetary investment in the individuals as they age you want to encourage that longevity and personal longevity health and wellness but also career longevity So we took a broad picture look of biomarkers and what is helpful in tracking health, performance, longevity, mitigating injury, optimally recovering when injured, things that are reflective of how well people are sleeping, the trend in hormone changes as athletes, they age.
So we took a look at all of those things and created a package and started testing once a year, once every 18 months.
And then if things come back out of the ordinary, we do more frequent retests, but we basically, I just help stand that up.
There is now a current, absolutely fabulous diet performance, dietitian still embedded with the damn net group who continues that program and has kind of teased out the metrics that maybe are not as valuable.
put in new ones based on the latest scientific literature, which is why I genuinely enjoy my field as much as I do.
Like you could know 70% of the information and three days later it's different because a new study comes out.
What motivates them, the way that they eat, the schedule with which they eat, their desires and cravings.
You know, my cholesterol runs a little bit high, I think primarily due to my Italian heritage.
So you have basic health care where you go and you get your cholesterol tested, which is a lipid panel, or your glucose tested to see what your blood sugar levels are.
Then when you get into performance, so whether it's athletic and or tactical, there are performance metrics that can be measured, tracked periodically to... establish trends, track trends, recommend interventions from a dietary and supplement standpoint.
And within Naval Special Warfare, the majority, predominantly all of the biomarkers were more standard medical care based initially.
So this was the interest in growing the current capability that they had to draw blood, which every military installation has that capability from a health care standpoint.
start to look at markers that are relevant to performance and how do you keep someone who has 15 10 15 years of experience in the fight to then help train the newer guys coming through because you have so much time and monetary investment in the individuals as they age you want to encourage that longevity and personal longevity health and wellness but also career longevity So we took a broad picture look of biomarkers and what is helpful in tracking health, performance, longevity, mitigating injury, optimally recovering when injured, things that are reflective of how well people are sleeping, the trend in hormone changes as athletes, they age.
So we took a look at all of those things and created a package and started testing once a year, once every 18 months.
And then if things come back out of the ordinary, we do more frequent retests, but we basically, I just help stand that up.
There is now a current, absolutely fabulous diet performance, dietitian still embedded with the damn net group who continues that program and has kind of teased out the metrics that maybe are not as valuable.
put in new ones based on the latest scientific literature, which is why I genuinely enjoy my field as much as I do.
Like you could know 70% of the information and three days later it's different because a new study comes out.
What motivates them, the way that they eat, the schedule with which they eat, their desires and cravings.
You know, my cholesterol runs a little bit high, I think primarily due to my Italian heritage.
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