You wouldn’t know it from looking at him, but the 35-year-old Massachusetts-born Nick Dompierre can stomach 20,000 calories in a single day – in fact, it’s one reason why his YouTube channel has a quarter of a million subscribers and why his videos have hit tens of millions of views. The other reason? He used to be a professional skateboarder.
In this interview, Nick walks us through his diet, why he stopped being a professional skater, how he deals with Hashimoto’s Disease as well as how he got into CrossFit. Enjoy.
So when did you get into skating?
I started skating at the age of 12 years old. I was sponsored by around fourteen years old. It was my dream to be a pro skater. After working my way up the ladder and putting the time in, I ended up turning pro for a brand called Real Skateboards.
Why did you stop skateboarding professionally?
The thing that really changed my career path was when I broke my neck in 2011. I broke my C6 and T1 in an accident while rafting. I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to be able to skate again in my life. So then I started doing physical therapy, where they had me using resistance bands, and each week I’d have to challenge myself to get stronger.
I kind of liked it and then I ended up getting a gym membership. Once I started going to the gym, it was like a whole new world opened up. It was like going to the skatepark for the first time, except with all of these machines and a whole different crowd of people. I fell in love with it. Eventually, I began skating again, but the fitness stuff started taking over. I was really enjoying training more, progressing in the gym, and getting stronger. Then, if I did heavy squats or heavy deadlifts, my body wouldn’t be able to skate as well the next day, so I began to focus more on the training and started skating less and less.
And how did you then make the transition into being a personal trainer?
So it started because I had a lot of people that were asking me questions about diet, and things like “How do you get abs?”
I was already researching about fitness constantly, so I got my personal trainer certificate and began to train people online. Quitting skating wasn’t that scary in a sense because after breaking my neck, I basically lost all my sponsors and I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to fully skate the way I was before. And then, because I was constantly on YouTube looking into people’s diets and workout routines, I began to make videos myself, and people were asking me if I’d ever considered modeling.
So, I started working with an agency in Boston doing modeling, and then I had my YouTube channel and I was coaching people online, and all of these pieces came together to form a career. None of it was planned.
Can you tell me a bit about living with Hashimoto’s Disease and how you manage it?
Sure. So basically, I got diagnosed in 2015 with Hashimotos because I always felt tired. I always felt sluggish, like the handbrake was always slightly turned on and I was dragging my way through life. I had felt that way since around 2011. In fact, I truly believe that it was because I broke my neck and had quit skating all at once that I became really depressed, and all of that mental stress turned into an autoimmune condition.
Hashimoto’s is an autoimmune condition where your body attacks the thyroid, thinking that it’s foreign. With this comes a lot of fatigue, joint pain, food sensitivities…the list goes on and it really sucks.
And when it comes to managing it, it wasn’t until just recently that I really started to dial in my nutrition. Before I was just trying to hit my macros, but now I’m getting a lot more precise. For example, gluten and dairy are two main triggers that cause a lot of inflammation in the body, especially with Hashimoto. So, I took them both out of my diet, and just recently I took out grains as well. That was tough. Rice was a staple carbohydrate in my diet. Now for carbs, I mainly consume fruits, sweet potatoes, yucca, and Malanga which is a Latin root.
Okay and on that note, the most popular videos you make are your cheat day videos in which you’ll eat 10,15 and 20,000 calories in a day. How do you balance growing your channel with these videos, while also staying fit and managing your Hashimoto’s?
So when I started the YouTube channel in 2015, I was filming like, three videos per week just because I loved doing it. It kept me busy, kept me occupied. And then at the very beginning of 2018, I filmed a cheat day with one of my friends my friend Nate Figgs who has a pretty big YouTube channel. We had doughnuts, we had pizza, we ate all kinds of stuff. And then I edited the video and posted it… it brought in traffic like I’ve never seen before. The comments section was just flooded with, “this is amazing. You need to do more of these.”
So I was like, alright, this is what you guys want. From here on out, I’m gonna film one every single weekend. And back then I was experimenting with fasting as well. So I would do a big crazy cheat day, and then the following day, I’d either do either a 24-hour or 36-hour fast. The bigger the cheat day, the longer I’d fast. Initially, it was really difficult, because you’re so used to snacking and eating throughout the day. But, once you’ve cleared the glucose out of your system, you switch over to ketosis. Then you’re kind of chilling.
So what is your day-to-day like? What kind of workouts are you doing and what foods are you eating?
I’ll usually wake up around 730-ish to take my pup out for a nice walk. And then I’ll make a smoothie because I can’t eat a big meal first thing in the morning. So I’ll have a bunch of fruits, veggies, some collagen and mix it up in the smoothie. Then I have a hot tub and ice bath, so I’ll usually do maybe 10 minutes in the hot tub and 10 in the ice bath. The rest of my diet depends on what training I’m doing for the day.
For a workout, I’ll either be doing purely CrossFit or Olympic weightlifting stuff. I can’t do both in a day. I have found that when it comes to doing CrossFit, I can do multiple workouts in a row, but the Olympic stuff like moving like heavy barbells definitely takes a toll on the body. Then, post-training, I’ll have a post-workout shake with a fast-digesting carbohydrate made by 1st Phorm, and I was taking a plant-based protein, which is like rice and pea. But now that I’m avoiding gluten, they also have these meat sticks, which are about 20 grams of protein and are so convenient to grab on the go. So I usually just have two of those sticks with a shake for roughly 40 grams of protein and 40 grams of carbs post-training.
And then for my meals throughout the day, I’ll usually have a meat source which could be chicken thighs or beef… I don’t do too much fish. And then I’ll do like yuca or sweet potatoes on the side with veggies. Those are the two main starches that I’ve been having. I typically have a container that’s full of meat and then a container full of veggies, so when I get home I can just throw a meal together.
And you also own a CrossFit gym, tell me a little bit about that and how you became a gym owner.
When the pandemic hit, my buddy Mike had a little garage gym, and he had like a CrossFit background. Pretty quickly he had me doing tire flips, and wall balls and medball carries and all that and I’m just like, what’s the whole point of all of this?
Then eventually, Mike brought me to this proper CrossFit gym called CrossFit Bradenton.
Almost immediately I wondered, where have I been? This is what true fitness is. Sure, I’m strong and I feel like I look decent, but what can I do with my body?
I came into these CrossFit workouts, and I was getting my ass beat because I had no cardio. The only cardio that I would do was walking after my workouts, you know, just to get an extra calorie burn to stay leaner. I was always chasing aesthetics. But then when I got into CrossFit, it was a huge eye-opener.
Then my two buddies ended up taking over the gym, and they asked me if I wanted to be a partner in it. I said hell yeah, let’s do this. And then it just kind of fell into my lap. And now I own it with two of my friends. It’s been a super fun experience to watch all the members progress and really push themselves.
Awesome man, and what’s next for you?
The CrossFit open is starting in two weeks, and that’s the biggest online CrossFit competition out there. So that’s in two weeks, and then in three weeks, I have an Olympic weightlifting competition. That’s my focus now is to get as fit as possible and grow the gym, grow my youtube channel, grow my online training and nutrition coaching, and just try to help people and inspire them.
You can find Nick Dompierre on Instagram @Nickdompierre and his CrossFit gym at @Crossfitbradenton.
