Mark Bell's Power Project - Mark Bell's Power Project EP. 219 Live - Kyle Kingsbury

Episode Date: June 11, 2019

Kyle Kinsbury is a retired American professional mixed martial artist and professionally competed from 2006-2014. He is the Director of Human Optimization at Onnit, a supplement company providing supplements for total human optimization and the host of the Kyle Kingsbury Podcast. ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Find the Podcast on all platforms: ➢Subscribe Rate & Review on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-bells-power-project/id1341346059?mt=2 ➢Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4YQE02jPOboQrltVoAD8bp ➢Listen on Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/mark-bells-power-project?refid=stpr ➢Listen on Google Play: https://play.google.com/music/m/Izf6a3gudzyn66kf364qx34cctq?t=Mark_Bells_Power_Project ➢Listen on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/markbellspowerproject  FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell Follow The Power Project Podcast ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MarkBellsPowerProject Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/  Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz

Yeah. And, yeah, it was good. It was the right amount. But two at once, and I was like, uh-oh. That's crazy that it hits you that much because I thought I was sensitive. I can manage like three or four. But, yeah, just the one is interesting. I don't feel anything if I only take one.

I get like a little giddy, you know, slight euphoria, and I feel warm. I feel the warm flush. The warm. And I get energy. You know, I definitely get energy from one, and I'm like, I'm really good there. Puts you in a good mood. That's what I feel like. Let feel the warm flush. The warm. And I get energy. I definitely get energy from one, and I'm like, I'm really good there. Puts you in a good mood. That's what I feel like.

Let me try a little bit more, and then I'll, oh, okay. Maybe not. Does it compare to anything else you've taken? No, it's really, I think that's the beauty of it, that it's in a league of its own. That's what makes it special.

And also the fact that, just like with anything that I've talked about before with you, talk about something like lsd the lsd experience on 10 micrograms is way different than 100 which is way different than a thousand you know like that that scale is so wide ranging and the same can be said for kratom i find all of it interesting because it can you know sometimes there's negative stigma you know to all these different things um but then there's other things that are kind of socially acceptable you know like alcohol or something and really in the grand scheme of things um even even steroids or something like that all these things are really doing is maybe just taking you to a spot that you otherwise

can't really get to on your own. And I mean, everything that people do, we're always trying to alter our consciousness, whether we're aware of it or not. You think about this fucking caffeine right here. Like coffee is the number one drug in the world. Don't judge me, bro. Alcohol might be second to that. So there's socially acceptable drugs,

but nobody's going to say caffeine's a drug. Yeah, it alters your consciousness. Well, even if you get up and go for a walk, right? You're trying to change your mood. You're trying to get a little exercise in. You're doing breath work. Like that's a state change, right? Brian McKenzie, these guys talk about that, that state change. So you can have tools that are net positive, that leave you more whole than when you started and have very little side effects like kratom, or you can have a tool that's going to run you into the fucking ground.

So it's really what you're choosing to put in your body and what you're choosing to do to alter that state that really makes a difference. You've been on both sides of the spectrum when it comes to that kind of stuff, right? Oh, yeah. You've been on the spectrum of abusing. Plenty of the bad drugs. Yeah. Many, many nights I watched the sunrise from coke and alcohol and ecstasy. I watched the sunrise from Coke and alcohol and ecstasy.

And thankfully never, you know, as we talked about before the show started, never got hooked on pain pills because my body would just eject. I would throw up violently and get really nauseated from it. Did any of the other things become a problem? I mean, I'd imagine they're hard to. Xanax, Valium for sure became a problem for sure because I had a lot of anxiety and I had a lot of shit to work through. And I was just leaning on pills to make me feel better. And the beauty of those pills is they fucking work. You know, I had no anxiety.

I felt all the euphoria. I was high as fuck. And I was getting a boatload from my doctor. He was great, giving me whatever I wanted. Was that during fighting or during football? No, no, no. This was during football. I had a naturopathic doctor in Arizona who went to jail, not surprisingly. And so, you know, I'd get 60 Xanax, the two milligrams of any bars that are four squares, big time, 60 in a prescription with five refills, 60 for ecstasy and keep the other half for myself and pretty consistently.

And those would be the ways that I'd sleep or just feel good throughout the day when shit was hitting the fan. And when that runs out, what's left is the root cause of all that anxiety. What's left is all the fucking pain and the shit that you haven't faced right and so we do that with everything whether that's tv shopping uh constantly inundating ourselves with social media or anything that we use as a distraction to take us away from really being able to sit and have comfort within our own skin that was a huge issue for me and really finding that as we talked about before through fighting breath work visualization meditation all these things happen from fighting and then plant medicines really reinstilling that like, Hey, you got to have a meditation practice. That's, that was a consistent message with, with ayahuasca. I got to meditate. And this isn't,

I've said this a million times before, but I think it's worth saying it's like in the matrix, the Oracle tells you whatever the Oracle tells you, that's for you and you alone. It's not for anyone else. So a lot of people beat the drum. We need to use less paper. We need to stop eating meat. Like it's no, it's, that's the message for you, right? So this message was for me to meditate and to do yoga, to be mobile. And, um, something I've been working on for the last year is, is that if I feel stiff physically, that makes me stiff in my mind. That makes me rigid in the way that I respond to the world and anything that's external. I have a rigidity and a seriousness to it. Whereas if I can flow and move better, I'm actually more open internally as well. That makes a lot of sense.

You see somebody, um, maybe, uh, like a military, uh, you know, sergeant or something like that, standing real straight and real stiff. A lot of times they have, you know, very like stiff rules, right? They got might be a hard ass. Yeah. Yeah. It might be a hard ass. Right. So it actually makes that actually, that actually makes a lot of sense. How did you eventually, you know, work your way, you know, through and pass some of these things? Well, I think, you know, that's, that's, that's another misconception is that you take something like ayahuasca or a heroic dose of mushrooms, then it fixes stuff. It really doesn't.

And it might point something out for you to fix, but it takes doing the work in between. And really that's where the work starts is after the ceremony, in between the ceremonies. And it's the implementation of whatever the download is. It's actually making it, embodying whatever that tool is to make it a day-to-day practice. And if I do that, then I'm doing the work, right? If I don't do that and I refuse and I cycle back into the things that were leading me to my issues in the first place, you know, then I'm not facing the challenge. I'm not showing up. So if I can show up and do the work, that's when I'll actually level up

and start to implement things that actually move the needle as far as living a better life and having more quality of life. You call these like ceremonies. So like, what exactly do you do? Or is it a group of you guys that do it? Is there someone that's not on it?

Get a couple rabbits and sacrifice a goat or something? There's blood involved. No, you know, ayahuasca is typically what they would call an ayahuasca ceremony if done, you know, in the traditional sense. Um, we were just out at Sultara in Costa Rica, which is a beautiful place. Um, very well facilitated and they fly in Shipibo shaman from Peru. And, uh, you know, the medicine is strong, but really it's, it's their integration, which is so critical. You know, there's a lot of, a lot of people doing ceremonies or ayahuasca work stateside. And as I've said in the past, you've got white belts

teaching all the way to black belts. So oftentimes you don't know what you're getting, you know, and my first several ceremonies were not with black belts. So I think, you know, I saw a lot of first timers at Sultara and I just had total gratitude because I was like, man, I would have been so much better off if I had these tools going into this and learning how to work with the medicine or learning how to work with that tool better and more appropriately and then how to integrate that. Right. So they have a whole workbook. after the fact to keep you on your toes, like keep you doing the work that's necessary so that you can take whatever you download in the ceremony and actually put it into practice in real life and make real change.

Because it's not, I mean, habits are hard to break. And you read a book like The Power of Habit and it's like you can never really remove a habit with the way the brain works, but you can replace it, you can shift it. You know, if you're used to, I think the example they use in that book, it's a great book, but the example they use is if, if you're an overworked mom who doesn't

always get dinner ready in time and you've got to pick up your kids and you're frazzled getting home, you might take those screaming kids who are starving to McDonald's one night a week. And pretty soon that becomes a night, a weekly thing, like every Tuesday night, for example, then maybe that becomes twice a week. Then maybe that becomes three days a week. And you're leaning pretty heavily on shit food for your kids and yourself. You might not be able to, to change that completely. You might not get your shit together and have food ready seven nights a week, but you could change that to a different thing. Like maybe you take them to Chipotle or someplace that has grass fed beef. And it's not as damaging or,

you know, like I go to your, I go to hop dot. He's your brother. Turn me on a hop. Daddy's place is great. It's amazing. Matt Schweitzer,

my homie, he's, he's one of the meat managers for them. They have grass fed Kobe beef. They fucking cook their fries and avocado oil. Like it's, it's insane. Like the quality of food is insane.

So it's like, if I need fast food, I can order that to go or we can sit down and it's a treat for my son. It's a treat for myself and I'm not putting garbage in his body. So finding a replacement for these things that we lean on, I think that's really where we can make significant change in our life for the better. Yeah, I think you've got a tendency to let your guard down. You know, like you're fighting every day. You're putting up a good fight and you're working hard at it. And and then you're like oh you know i could use a cheat meal and then

a cheat meal turns into a cheat day which turns into a cheat weekend which could turn into a whole cheat week or maybe you're on schedule and you're you're doing some cardiovascular training for a while and then you kind of lose sight of of that because you let it go for one day or maybe you're training early in the morning and you let that go. And it's like that's why some of the people that we meet on this podcast and some of the people you've had on your own podcast, when you talk to them, you're like, when's the last time you had a cheat meal?

They're like, seven years ago. And you're like, no, like when's the last time you had like ice cream or pizza? They're like, yeah, seven years ago. It's because they get to a point where they're like, yeah, seven years ago. It's because they just, they get to a point where they're like, it ain't worth it anymore. Not going to let my guard down for nothing because maybe they kind of view it as like that could lead to a downward spiral

and maybe the result they're getting makes them feel better than the opposite of that and throwing garbage. Yeah, I'd rather feel good than eat good, you know, with in air quotes for those that are just listening like that idea and rogan talks about this and aubrey talks about this like people live for mouth pleasure but you can still eat really good fucking food that tastes great and something i like from the guys at quest is cheat clean like if i want to have a fucking pizza it'll be gluten

free or maybe once a year when i'm in LA, I'll go to Vito's because it's my favorite pizza on earth. And I'll throw caution in the wind and eat the gluten loaded pizza, but that's a one-time deal. And I don't have access to that in Austin. Right. And even if I did, I probably would eat there less, you know, but we're going to LA and we're going to eat at Vito's, you know, a few days from now. So I think having that, and then also knowing that I'm not the type of person that falls off the wagon, you know, if I days from now. So I think having that, and then also knowing that I'm not the type of person that falls off the wagon. You know, if I've been keto for three months and I eat one carb day or one carb meal, I'm not going to be like, oh shit, you know, it's all gone to waste. You

know, now I'm doomed. Like, no, I'm fine to intermittent fast for 16 hours the next day and eat clean from there on. But, um, I think people generally, because we live in a world of convenience, they get lazy with prep. You know, like I really enjoy making delicious grass fed cheeseburgers, you know, with maybe some, some beef bacon or something like that to throw on top and homemade guac. And we wrap it in charred or Swiss, you know, Swiss charred or collard greens. And we eat that. It actually fucking tastes really good too. I mean, it tastes better, right? And it tastes better because I fucking made it. It tastes better because I put in the work and I provide that meal for my family and they appreciate that. There's love put into that.

You know, I think that salad that we had at your house, I talk about it all the time, dude. Yeah. Did she make some different, some different carrots and shit in there? Yeah. They call that, Mark Sisson calls that a big ass salad, right? She calls that the man salad. It's funny because Jesse Burdick wouldn't eat it. That's rabbit food to Burdick. So he was like, I'm not fucking.

I was like, oh no, it's great, it's great. And I'm like, sure, come on, Jesse. I know you fucking eat more than that. I think there was like potatoes. And I think there was, there may be chicken, right? Like I said, there was like potatoes and i think there was uh there may be chicken right i don't like i said like there was uh there was like a carrot but i i was like what i picked it up and i showed tosha and i'm like what what is this this tastes amazing and she's like um that that's a carrot i was like i've never seen a purple carrot before but this is amazing yeah we'll cook up you know we'll cook up cruciferous and different things like that

and toss it in aaron alexander actually taught me that because he makes ridiculous salads, but we'll cook up broccolini and sometimes rainbow baby carrots and we'll, we'll shave them down and just toss that all in there. And you have a nice warm salad that has got some girth to it. There's girth. Yeah. You want some substance. Yeah.

We all, we all had like a big old like Tupperware size bowl of it. It was like, hell yeah, this is great. You got to sit in this primal kitchen. Hell of a time getting down to the floor too. Cause we, that was like, hell yeah, this is great. You got Susan's Primal Kitchen. Hell of a time getting down to the floor, too.

That was tough. There's no chairs in this household for some reason. I've been told it's a little bit better to sit on the floor, but I haven't kept everyone in mind. Those that are injured

and those that are jacked and tanned, maybe you can't sit at the table. So, it was a verdict. We just sat on the couch to eat. That was cool, too. It was homestyle. It was casual dining. Yeah, and it's great. Kyle just bust on the couch to eat. That was cool too. You know, it was, it was homestyle. It was casual dining. Yeah.

And then it's great. Kyle just bust out the trampoline to start jumping on it as he's having a conversation with us. Oh yeah. The rebounder. Yeah. Tony Robbins rebounder. Yeah.

I was like, dude, if I did that, I'd probably like twisted an ankle or something trying to have a conversation. You're just like, no, it's normal. You got to do it enough. But that's the cool thing. I think that like going back to convenience, put enough shit in your house. That's good for you. And it's always there. Like you're going to use it. You know, I spent 500 bucks on that trampoline. It's not a cheap thing for me, at least I'm going to use the damn thing. I have like a hypervolt right on my,

right next to my couch. I use the thing all the time. I get my shoulders, my elbows and stuff like that because it's there, right? We have 100 square feet of MMA mats that are two inches thick in our living room. And how often do we stretch and do yoga and wrestle? Every fucking day because it's right there. It's accessible. That's something I tell people that are like, oh, the gym's too far, this and that. It's like, get a fucking kettlebell. If that kettlebell's there, you can do anything with it.

You can use it just for mobility. You're injured? Cool. Do some mobility. Just warm up the body. Get loose. A kettlebell, there, you can do anything with it. You can use it just for mobility. You're injured? Cool. Do some mobility. Just warm up the body. Get loose. It's a kettlebell, like 50 bucks or something? I mean, it's not...

Yeah, if you're buying it in store, it doesn't... My favorite kettlebell is a 20 kilo. It's 44 pounds. And I can do halos with it. I can do windmills. I can do bootstrap squats. I can open up my body. If I want to grind, I can do a 10-minute snatch test with it.

I can do whatever. It's fine. It covers all the bases. And I can travel with it too and throw it in the trunk and go, you know, like there there's, you really just, you need to think of things that, and I do, I'm speaking for myself again, not we, I like to think of things for me that make the things that move the bar in life a little easier to access. And if I have that, then I know I can do it. Like I don't, I never liked buying a ton of ice for an ice bath, but now that I have a standalone chest freezer full of water, that's, you know, it's got some food grade hydrogen peroxide and Epsom salt in it. And I only have to change the water out every

three months. I also made changing that water out easier by buying a little above ground redneck water pump to pump it out. So every three months, I change the water. I always have an ice bath ready for me. I get in the ice bath more because I have access to it because it's right in my garage, right? So I think thinking that way has really helped me level up because the fact that I just have access to all these things that matter. How do you do that with food? Well, I think you read any book like Wired to Eat or Keto Reset Diet or any of these books. I mean, the first thing they tell you is to clean out your pantry. Don't have a bunch of garbage on site because good diets are hard enough to stick to without having something tempting you right there. But it is, you know, you do like treats, you know, and like I was talking about with you

before we were doing video, I don't want to deprive my son of good stuff. There's a company called Mammoth, and I have no affiliation with them. There's a company called Mammoth out in Austin. They make keto ice cream. And it's with grass-fed butter, free-range egg yolk. It's high-quality ingredients. And it's low-carb.

So when I want to have that, it's really good fat. It's good protein. And I give it to my son. And if he wants to eat that for dinner some nights, I'll let him like, it's all good stuff, man. You want to put that in your body? You're good. The other thing is, so like you're talking about like two different things here. Number one, you're talking about trying to create convenience for yourself. And in this case, the viewers could be trying to create that convenience as well. Uh, but additionally, you know, you're low, you're lowering kind of the barrier of entry into these things.

You have a trampoline in front of your TV. So boom, you bounce around the trampoline. No TV anymore, but yeah. You got the mats. And even when you did have a TV, all it was on was like wildlife stuff. I remember that. That's true. And then, but on the opposite side of the spectrum here, you're talking about almost

like the things that are a treat, making them harder because how often do you have that ice cream in the freezer? Like probably not fully stocked on it all the time, right? No, it's 10 bucks a pop too. So there is a barrier to entry. It's kind of, it's kind of nice too. Like, Hey bear, like, dude, you only got like that little bucket of it. So how about we eat half tonight?

You can have half tomorrow night too. Like, you know or and it's easy like if i'm gonna bribe them let me bribe them with something good right like you know what you got to finish all your chicken if you want to have some ice cream tonight and then knowing the ice cream isn't hurting him right somebody i forget who i learned this from but somebody was i think it was paul check your reward should not hurt your gains it shouldn't hurt whatever you're working towards right so if you reward yourself with losing 20 pounds, it shouldn't be to eat like shit and gain five of it back. It should be a massage or a trip to the ocean or whatever thing that's going to fill you maybe up a little further

overeat for one meal, but with maybe healthy food. Yeah. Yeah. Clean. Yeah. You want to overeat, do it right. Or if you have a gluten intolerance, get against the grain pizza, you know, do something that's going to be grain free. And then you have less of an issue rebounding from that. How'd you find out you had a gluten intolerance anyway? Cause you've mentioned that a lot. Yeah. Uh, for me, I did an elimination diet. And the thing is there's, there's an issue with food tests. Cause if you have leaky gut syndrome, everything will show up as an allergen because your body's not fully able to break food down and it's getting through the cracks in your gut wall. Um, a lot of people argue with the science behind that, but I would lean towards, you know, your body's not fully able to break food down and it's getting through the cracks in your gut wall.

A lot of people argue with the science behind that, but I would lean towards, you know, everyone I respect in health and wellness knows that's a factor. Guys like Dr. Michael Ruscio, Dr. Jerome McCullough, a lot of people in this space that I really value what they're talking about. You can heal that with products like Restore, with bone broth, with fasting. A lot of things will help heal that. And then also cutting out, eliminating, finding out what is an intolerance and eliminating that from the diet. So I went off gluten and dairy and anything problematic. It was basically paleo for about a month. And when I circled back to dairy, not a big issue. I think milk fucked me up, but, you know, heavy cream, not that big of an issue. Cheese, no issue at all.

When I added in any type of bread product or pasta, I farted like crazy and I couldn't breathe. Like my nose would literally seal up and I could feel the inflammation happen quickly. And so that was, it became very real. It was like I had a weight vest on my whole life. And obviously I grew up poor. Mac and cheese with kielbasa was the special treat of the week. We get a four kielbasa, you know, a lot of canned beans, you know, a lot of a hamburger helper and a lot of cereal. So, I mean, I was loaded up every,

every meal had wheat in it, you know, and I just never knew the wiser until I cut it out. And then doing that, it was like, all right, now I know at least if I'm going to do that, it comes at a cost. So it might be once or twice a year that I actually knowingly eat gluten. Uh, outside of that, you know, if I want to eat pizza, I can do the gluten free. It's not like you break out in hives or anything. It's nothing crazy noticeable, but some people have some real issues. You know, you have celiac, something like that. Like you, Rob Wolf, you know, he says he, he better be by a bathroom if he eats gluten, he's going to shit himself. Right. So like, thankfully I don't have that, you know, but I get enough complaints from my wife when I fart. So gluten, gluten gives me some fucking serious firepower. So try to keep it to a minimum.

How about vegetables or anything like that? Is it fair game for you on vegetables that none of them really tend to bother you or what's your deal with that? None of them really do. If I get too much into cruciferous then uh then that'll be an issue you know but um yeah and i have to cook my cruciferous i'm not a guy that's going to eat raw kale or or you know raw uh is that like brussels sprouts and stuff yeah brussels sprouts broccoli cauliflower three days a week that'll be in but then i i make sure that i'm i'm not having that on the other three days you know it'll be in, but then I make sure that I'm not having that on the other three days. You know, it'll be.

What do you think about some of the science that's been coming out or some of the information about, you know, you know, I find some of this to be just kind of ridiculous and I think it ends up fighting the wrong fight. But you really have a great knowledge and great understanding of nutrition. And, you know, what do you think about, you know, some people are kind of saying that vegetables might be negative and even fruit might be negative and they're pointing like oxalates and things like that. What's some of your thoughts on that? Yeah, I think, I think there's, there's no doubt. I agree with that. I mean, how much I, I factor that into my diet, I would say it's less now. I spent about six months eating, you know, based on the plant paradox. Dr. Stephen Gundry has a great book on that. If you don't do well eating certain vegetables, it's worth reading

and worth trying. I think a fair amount of people don't have an issue with that stuff, but you know, plants don't want to be eaten. Like nature's designed to survive and it will create things that within itself to prevent it's a natural herbicide or pesticide, so it doesn't get eaten by other animals or insects. That's pretty well understood now. Not everyone knows that, but I mean, it is something that I would consider valid information. With that, I don't know that I need to be on a low oxalate diet or low FODMAP diet. If people have autoimmune issues, again, going back to Dr. Michael Ruscio, he has a great book. I think it's called Healthy Gut, Healthy You.

And he gives a systematic approach to really go about healing the gut and then being able to return to those foods. Because the goal isn't to say, like, I can never fucking eat that again. The goal is like, no, I don't want to have a limited life. Yeah, so Andy Galpin talks about that. Like, hey, you know, be careful on these elimination diets because you could have worked your way out of that food, maybe forever. It might be hard to get it back in. You're going to have to figure out ways of, you know, putting it back in and small dosages, I guess. Yeah. And I mean, I don't think the goal for

anybody trying to lose weight is how can I figure out a way to get more gluten into my diet? It's like, no, but I mean, yeah, if you don't have an intolerance, a little sourdough bread at dinner is not going to kill you. Right. You know what I'm saying? But I mean, the vast majority of people like piling heaps of fettuccine Alfredo with fucking loaves of bread next to them.

Like, yeah, you're going to have trouble losing weight if you're eating that stuff. And then there's the glyphosate issue, right? Like we think of how food has changed through big agriculture and our chemical industry. There's no doubt that is a factor. And it's a factor for people's health that might even be worse than the gluten itself.

A lot of this stuff comes from genetically modified food. And the argument, as Rob Wolf puts it, is not against the GMOs. It's that every GMO is just laden with glyphosate. So that's the real issue is that we have, I think 80,000 chemicals have been added in the last 100 years. Is that from like pesticides or something? What's that from? Yeah, it's a pesticide herbicide and it's in Roundup.

It's in a lot of pet food and stuff. I've heard people say it's in like 95% of pet food. If it's not organic food, it's in your food. Let me put it that way. I mean, it's pretty simple. I mean, it doesn't even have to be genetically modified. It's being used on pretty much anything that's not organic. So that's a factor. It doesn't mean that I eat organic 100% of the time. If I'm out to eat, I'm not like, oh, is this chicken grass-fed and free-range? No. I mean, I'll eat when I'm out and then not fucking worry about it.

But for the majority of time when I'm buying food, I am paying attention to that. I like what you said about, you know, the kind of fettuccine Alfredo. Like, that's my fight. Like, that's the thing that I try to, I try to teach and I try to coach people on is like, let's kind of have that be the fight. Let's have, let's get some stuff that's agreeable. That's easy to say. Like, I know there's some people will say, oh, well, it's not really bad. It's just what you make of it. Well, yeah, I understand the idea, but for someone who's 350 pounds, they kind of need to know what's quote unquote good and what's quote unquote bad. Sugar isn't necessarily bad and sugar doesn't necessarily make you fat.

And gluten might not even necessarily be bad and might not necessarily make you fat. But a lot of times the things that have gluten in them, the things that have sugar in them, they just taste really good. And we tend to overeat them, right? Yeah. in them, the things that have sugar in them, they just taste really good. And we tend to overeat them, right? Yeah, and I think that's where Rob really hits the nail on the head in Wired to Eat. It's like some of the smartest people on earth, these food scientists, are actually designing foods in a lab that are going to hit every part of the palate. And it is, like he used the example of Pringles, one pop, you can't stop. People can't stop eating it for a reason.

It's designed to be that good. Oh, I can stop after I finish these next couple of lessons. I mean, it just comes down to that. And I think you look at things like Whole30 or Vertical Diet, right? It's very simple. Like you're eating real whole foods. And even grains are in that. Like white rice is in that.

That's a non-problematic grain. There's many cultures on this fucking planet that live. They're in blue zones and they live on white rice and they're fine to eat it some people don't do well with i did the the carb test from rob wolf's book for a while though the blood sugar test and i found white rice blocks spikes my blood sugar greater than anything else so i'm gonna eat it i had better been fasted all day and i should have a workout prior and then I'm okay to eat it. And even with other food, I would imagine like chicken and rice.

It's still going to jack me through the roof, you know, like pre-diabetic levels, blood sugar. Whereas I can have a plate of yams or sweet potatoes and there's no problem. So, you know, doing a little homework is probably more than most people are willing to do. But if you're going with very basic stuff that that's not processed, um, it's hard to eat a plate of yams that you don't have honey and butter and sea salt on, right? If you're keeping it basic to what that, whatever that is, whether it's a vegetable or a grain, it's hard to overeat that thing. If that's the only thing on your plate, or if there's just something plain next to it, like maybe a salted steak or something like that, a dry baked potato. And It's like, you know. Yeah, you're not going to overeat that.

Good luck eating the whole thing. Yeah, really not. So I think simplifying what we put in our body, having, and that makes cooking a lot easier too. You know, you start doing simple meals that are, you know, five, ten ingredients tops with the spices included. It's pretty easy to put that down and not overeat. But, you know, who was the guy you just had on the show, just released?

Dr. Lee? He sounds like he's from Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Seamland, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. He was great, dude. He was great. He's so good. That's the whole thing.

Like how do you – I think for people that are losing weight or whether it's for performance or longevity purposes, if you can condense your food into a feeding window, that gives you great power. And it's a hell of a lot easier to do if you come from the keto stance. Like if you've at least spent a couple of weeks in ketosis or working your way to a lower carb diet, it's maybe too high in protein or whatever. It's a lot easier to do intermittent fasting, but eating in a condensed window, I wanted to get, I was listening to that on the drive up here and I was like, man, I got a story to tell these guys. My good buddy, Levent Niazi, the guy I grew up with. And right as I was reading this, I was reading Dr. Jason Fung's book, The Complete Guide to Fasting.

And he was talking about how easy it is to lose weight and do better in all things from eating in an intermittent fasting window. And he even said that the science is showing you can still eat poorly in the fasting window. So I tell him this, and he's like, all right, Kingsbury, I'm going to do it. And I'm going to eat one moon pie every hour on the hour for the eight-hour feeding window that I have, and I'm going to see if I lose weight. I'm going to put this to the test.

So he fasted every day for 16 hours. He only ate for eight, and he had eight fucking moon pies every hour on the hour. And the dude lost over a pound a day for three weeks did he have like moon pies and something else or just moon pies no he was he's still eating like all of his food in addition to the moon pies and he was eating like clockwork like he was diligent every hour on the hour he did a fucking moon pie he ordered them in bulk like he was a distributor he bought him a wholesale 50 at a time or 100 at a time even and he'd eat eight a day and he still lost over 50 at a time or 100 at a time even,

and he'd eat eight a day, and he still lost over a pound a day. So for three weeks, you know, I mean, it does work, and I'm not telling people that so they can, you know, well, this is how I'll have my cake and eat it too. Do you think that you could have maybe a small surplus of calories? Is that maybe what some of the science is showing with some fasting like that, intermittent fasting? I think so, and I don't know.

I mean, I really think the calories in, calories out doesn't necessarily apply to what type of calories. And this goes back to something I read. There was a study in the 4-Hour Body by Tim Ferriss that he quoted where they had group A, B, and C all on 2,000-calorie diets. One was a 2,000-calorie diet, 90% carbohydrates. One was 90% protein, calorie diet, 90% carbohydrates. One was 90% protein and one was 90% fat, 90% carbohydrates gained weight every day. 90% protein lost a little bit of weight every day and 90% fat lost over a pound a day. So you, and that's the same amount of calories each day, right? So you can see the vast difference between what we put in our body.

It's not to demonize carbs. They certainly have a time and a place, but if every waking meal and moment you've had included carbohydrates from birth on, and you're in your thirties or forties, you don't have metabolic flexibility. You haven't spent time in ketosis. Your body hasn't spent time away from food. And that's, you know, in any of these things, if we look back, we wind the clock back a hundred years, we wind it back a thousand years. How did our ancestors live? You don't have to go to paleolithic area to figure this out. You just say like, oh, what was life like before refrigeration? What was life like before shipping? And we could get bananas year around. Like, yeah, there was certain pockets of people that didn't live next to the equator. They didn't have access to food year round. They didn't have access to carbohydrates year round. There were cold

periods where carbohydrates were, were null. They just didn't exist. Right. And they probably ate larger game because they were closer to the poles and lived in colder environments. And I think when you look at things that way and you think, consider your ancestry, like, sure, there's a lot of groups that live close to the equator that do well on a higher carbohydrate diet and maybe smaller prey like fish and fowl. Um, and then there's a lot of groups that live close to the equator that do well on a higher carbohydrate diet and maybe smaller prey like fish and fowl. And then there's other groups of people that do better with red meat and less carbohydrate. So I think spending periods of time where we go without is really beneficial because it doesn't matter where you're from. Everybody went without food, you know, before religion, people went without food, like that was guaranteed.

So we have the genetics to do well with some form of fasting here and there. You know, when you talk about your family, first off, is your whole family keto? No, not at all. Not at all. And for the record, like unless your kid has epilepsy or some disorder, there's no reason for them to be keto. Kids actually grew up. I think Dominic D'Agostino talked about this when he looked back through the research. Kids grew up fine mentally on a ketogenic diet, but they grew up smaller. So if you want your

kid to maximize his growth potential, they need carbohydrates. They also do just fine eating good carbohydrates. You just want to limit the garbage. Outside of that, my wife, she eats fairly keto most of the time, but you know, we're trying to get pregnant and when you're pregnant and certainly after that, when you have milk, if she dropped carbohydrates too far, her milk supply would go away. So like, yeah, you need to have all things on deck. And I think that's one of the reasons when you look at intermittent fasting research, women should not do really long fasts if they're trying to get pregnant or if they're trying to have a normal monthly cycle. That's because their body likes

to know that all things are on hand to create life, right? And carbohydrates are a useful fuel for that. So I think that it doesn't mean they can't do intermittent fasting. Plenty of people do well. Some can do the 16-8, some do better on 12 hours off, 12 hours on. But having carbohydrates is usually a good thing within reason. And the reason why I asked is because a lot of people, I hear this a lot. They make excuses for like things they have in the house because of their kid. They're like, well, my kid likes to eat this and my kid likes to eat that. But when you were talking about bear with Mark earlier, you were saying how he has such great habits and he can go out to places

and say, Oh, that's not good. And that's not good. Has he had that like, because of you and what you've fed him or? Yeah, we don't, we don't keep, you know, we don't keep garbage in our house. We have snacks, we have things and, and, you know, really what it comes down, both my wife and our gluten intolerant. So he is for sure. And I knew this from when he was super young. My, I had my mom babysitting him one night and we left and against the grain pizza there because he liked it against the grain gluten free pizza. We knew it didn't cause an issue. They ordered dominoes and they were too lazy to bake the fucking pizza, the frozen pizza in the oven. So we come back and I'm like, I see you didn't need any against you guys didn't cook the against the grain.

They're like, oh, no, we order dominoes. And I fucking I was livid and I was like, all right, well, we'll see. And I kind of kept quiet to myself. And he had like yellow mustard blowout shit, that shit all over my arm. I was covered in it. It smelled fucking foul. And he was crying and it hurt for him to shit because he was so bloated and had a lot of discomfort. And I was like, well, that takes the guesswork out of this.

Right. Right. Because he's not shitting like that from against the grain pizza or gluten free toast. So I think from there it was, it was pretty simple. Like he knows the order that when he walks into the cafe, he's like, I'll have the gluten-free butter toast, please. He says that to the cafe lady, you know, every time he comes in and gives him a big hug. Um, but yeah, he has a general idea that, you know, and I tell him flat out, I'm like,

you know, if you want to have an organic lollipop, it's still sugar. It's still not great, but that's like, that's kind of where we compromise on certain things. So if he's doing a good job and his cousins are eating absolute trash, you know, we let him have that organic lollipop. And I think that's, that's kind of where you have the happy medium because we don't want to create some type of weird food issue where he grows up and he's like, he goes the opposite way. Yeah. Yeah. He gets out of the up and he's like, he goes the opposite way. Yeah. Yeah. He gets out of the house and he's like, Oh, I'm fucking eating everything, you know? But I think he generally now because he's, he's eaten clean for so long. Um, he does feel a difference. And I think Kelly

Strett was talking about that. Like his seven year old daughter at one point went and had cake at a birthday party and she came back and she was like, I don't think I like gluten. He's like, really? Why is that? She's like, like, my tummy hurts and I have a headache. So I think the next time I go to a birthday party, I'm just going to have the frosting. And he was like, oh, that's cool. And it was really cool to see that. Like she could figure it out for herself, right?

And I think that's the goal with him is you give them good enough stuff and you try to bridge the gap with pizzas that aren't harmful or if your kid has a cheese intolerance, you figure out a workaround for that. But whatever the case is, you limit what is actually going to be harmful to them. And you still give them options so they can actually live life and not feel like, you know, I'm, I'm deprived of all the things of childhood. When you were fighting, how important were carbs? And, and did you know some of this stuff then? You know, a lot of the stuff on keto is first

being introduced in, in my final year when I was getting ready to retire. And I heard, you know, I was listening to Tim Ferriss podcast. That's when I heard Dominic D'Agostino and Peter Attia, who I'm going to podcast with later this week, come on and really push ketosis. And once I had retired, I was like, all right, now I'm ready to try this. Maybe it'll help heal some of the cognitive issues that I've had. And it has, um, with that, you know, I've, I mean, just in competing in jujitsu, if I try to stay in ketosis, I find like I need to do like targeted keto where I have a bit of carbs before I train. Um, it doesn't have to be a lot. It could be 20, 30 grams or do some form of carbohydrate backloading. You know, if I'm training two or three times in a day leading up

to a competition, yeah, I can eat a hundred grams of carbohydrates and I might not be, you know, in that 0.5 millimole or higher and ketones the next day, but who gives a fuck? Like it's, it's still a net gain. I'm still reloading glycogen to the liver and the muscles. And if you're training glycolytically, I think it's important. You know, you have a lot of guys that burn out doing CrossFit and keto at the same time. And it's like, there is a happy medium, either do cyclical keto or have some type of targeted keto where you have a little bit of carbohydrates right before you train. And it won't kick you out of ketosis. You're not going to have three millimole ketones. But what's the point?

You have to understand what you're doing and what is the reason behind it. And if you want to have some level of longevity while you're working for performance, you can. But you have to alter things a bit. It can't just be a one size fits all approach to anything in life. It does seem like too, when you, if you're on a real ketogenic diet and you're trying to consume a lot of fat for a fighter, CrossFitter, um, maybe even some, a couple other sports, they might train multiple times a day. And it's just, you know, it's just kind of gross to eat like a real fatty meal and then have to train. You have a pint of heavy cream right before you go in and spar. Yeah, like it would just kind of make you slow and make you sluggish.

And that's where the carbs can be really beneficial. Having a mild fat meal with some protein and some carbohydrates is way easier to eat before a training session. Even if it's, you know, two hours before a training session, it will kind of fuel you up and, uh, and make you feel good. That's some of the stuff I've noticed, you know, with bodybuilding and powerlifting, um, was, uh, that kind of transition into like getting into your training session. You know, if I ate like an omelet or something, it just was too heavy and kind of gross. And that's where all the blood, the blood, all the blood's in your stomach and it takes a long time to break that shit down. Yeah. I mean, I think think for fighters like i know matt brown and a

few other guys have played with keto and they're still fighting or or he may be retired now but um you know they were doing that in their career towards the end of it and there can be something there can be some benefits to that but generally that should be done like out of out of fight camp you know or like lebron james did a ketogenic diet but he did it in the off season. And then when he went back into season, he went back to gaining carbohydrates. And that's funny. He probably created some metabolic flexibility there. His body probably utilize those carbohydrates better. So he could, he could have the benefits of both worlds, but you know, know the why, you know, if you're, if you're done with, with being a professional athlete, you're done pushing yourself to the upper limits of performance. That's a good time to entertain, like really extended fasts and things like that. But

if you're still in the game, like, no, you don't need to do a seven day water fast, like in prep for your next competition. That's not going to help you. It might help you live longer, but it's not going to help you perform better. You think there's maybe like three or four things you could just tell people that's super simple to keep, you know, to help them lose weight. Like, uh, you're mentioning these kinds of like low amounts of carbs, um, even towards the end of your career, um, 20 or 30 carbs before a session, a hundred grams of carbs here and there still probably like under 200 grams a day is, do you think there's like, um, almost like a little bit of a blueprint you can just kind of

like tell someone like you should have maybe a gram of carbohydrates per pound of body weight and a gram of protein per pound of body weight. And, you know, something so simple that you just, you know, say, or you just say don't eat any carbs or whatever it might be. I think I just mentioned there's no one-size-fits-all approach. But, you know, play with the things and see what makes you feel good. And like I said, you know, the issue I think when we look at genetics and where you come from, where your ancestors from is that you could have five brothers and sisters and every one

of you took different genes from your parents. So there is no one size fits all. And really, I mean that. So it takes playing and fine tuning and seeing what works best for you and really monitoring how you feel when you do things. Are you losing weight? Do you feel good? Do you have lower inflammation? And then where can you get away with a little bit more? Those kind of things. But it takes trying it on for size

and giving it an honest go. If you want to try ketosis, don't fuck with it for two weeks and then say, ah, I didn't like that. It's like, no, you didn't give it an honest go. Give it a real go. And then after you've spent some time and you've become keto adapted,

if you want to circle back to carbs a few days a week or twice a week or once a week, that's cool, you know, but know where you feel good. And I think that just takes effort, you know, it takes diligence and consistency. And then from there, you're okay. As far as helping people lose weight, intermittent fasting without a doubt is a big one. Limiting. So, you know, like I said, having these, these meals made at the home that are fairly low in ingredients helps quite a bit. Um, and then, you know, spend some time in ketosis, spend some time doing carnivore. I mean, all these things work, right? And it's very hard to overeat on a carnivore diet. That's the first thing I figured out. I was like, I'm fucking sick of meat right now.

This is the only thing I was putting in my body. Even your jaw, your jaw gets tired of it. The weight flew off. It absolutely flew off. But there are things like that that you don't have to sign up for for the rest of your life, but they're worth giving an honest go.

And then from there, once you can tackle your ability to consume food within reason, then it makes it easier to kind of go back and have a little bit more moderation with what you put in your body. Just to kind of add to what you're saying. So quite possibly you get everyone to lose weight the same way. You know, you're saying there's no one size fits all, but if we were to regulate and say, you know what, America, you get three chicken breasts a day and that's all we're doing, right?

Everyone would lose weight. They would clearly lose weight. There might be a few outliers that don't lose weight, but for the most part, all the population would probably lose some weight. The problem is it's not a sustainable thing because it doesn't make them feel good. And I really like that you threw that in there because I think that is the important thing. If I can make you feel good, even if it's jujitsu practice, if you're like, Hey man, let's, let's roll. Let's try some of these things out. And I do it and I get a euphoria from it. I feel pumped about it or excited about it. Cause it was

fun for me that I'm going to come back, you know, maybe I'll come back a couple of days a week and maybe I'll do it for the next, for the rest of my life. But somebody eating three chicken breasts, you know, a day is not going to be anything sustainable because it's not going to make them feel good. They're going to feel like shit. So they may have lost weight, which is easy, very easy for anybody to do. But trying to find something

that you can actually do for a long period of time is hard. Yeah, and then it comes back. You mentioned that to me. That's something I learned from you. Like, what's the best form of training? It's the one- Stealing shit from me. It's the thing you're not doing, right?

It's whatever the fuck you're not doing. And all the people that come to you and say, should I do CrossFit? Should I do bodybuilding? Should I do bodybuilding? Should I do powerlifting? What do you love to do? Do you love picking up heavy weight off the ground? Do you love the pump and looking at yourself in the mirror?

Like, what is the thing that actually makes you want to show up? That's the thing you should do for a while. And then every now and then, sprinkle in the thing you don't like doing. You know, when I retired from fighting, I hated high-intensity interval training because I had spent so many years doing it. I was like, fuck that. I'll never do it again. I'll do long, slow nose breathing jogs and I'll lift heavy weight. And then at a certain

point in time, I was like, eh, I should probably run that back a little bit, you know, and being able to, to get back on an airdyne and do 30 seconds all out, 90 seconds active recovery for eight rounds, it's a 20-minute workout, and it's gnarly. But getting through that, yeah, there's a huge benefit there. There's a huge benefit scientifically, but there's a huge benefit that I feel not only in my cardio but in my looks. It's a great way to burn fat, and it takes me fucking 20 minutes. All I've got to do is show up and actually do the damn thing.

Like, all right, I'll keep that once a week. I'll throw that in there. So, you know, I think being consistent with the thing you enjoy that gets you to come back to it, that's really important. And then also saying yes to the thing that's really challenging. Like, I got a good friend of mine who hates temperature change. He hates the cold. But I got that ice bath. And every time he comes over

to work out, I'm like, get your ass in the ice bath. He's like, fuck, how long do I got to go? I'm like, just get in. We'll see. You know? So he gets in and I'm like, all right, I got it for one minute, you know, and he'll get to that minute. And more often than not, he'll stay in longer, you know, because he's already fucking, he's already in the damn thing. He's already made it a minute. Now I'll go three, that kind of thing. Right. So I think, um, I forget, I think it was Dan John who said that the greatest coaching tip he ever had was just show up. 90% of it is just showing up. So you're, you, you gotta make some dietary changes, just show up, go to the grocery store,

pick out good food, have that in your, in your pantry, in your fridge. You know, you, you're worried about how hard you can push in the gym. I'm not feeling great. I only slept five hours last night. Just show up to the gym. It's not feeling great. I only slept five hours last night. Just show up to the gym. It's going to be better than not going, right? Even if all you do is mobility and a little bit of kettlebell work, just show up. No matter what it is in life, just show up.

It doesn't sound like, I mean, it's a good thing, but it doesn't sound like you have too much structure when it comes to exercise anymore. It seems like you do a little bit of everything. Kettlebells, trampoline. How does it look for you nowadays? You're exactly right. I wouldn't say I have any structure at all. And I know guys like Justin Burdick.

I got no goals. I know Burdick would cringe. I'd probably deadlift like once a month or squat like two or three days a month. You used to be able to deadlift some good weights back in the day, right? Well, for a fighter, not for a powerlifter. I think you were moving some good weight, right? What were you doing?

I never got to 600. I was at like 555, 575 in there. I mean, I pulled 555. It felt like I could have done more. Yeah, somebody says anything, though you can kick their head right off their shoulders. That's true. I still have my flexibility.

Maybe a little bit less then. But, you know, I really do check in with how I feel, and that goes to, it even goes into my meditation practice. It's not often that I want to sit quietly in the, in a room and half Lotus and fucking just be quiet. A lot of times I want to walk, you know, that's my 10 minute walk. Sometimes I'll do, sometimes I'll walk 10 miles listening to audible. Sometimes I'll walk and I'll just listen to nature. Sometimes I'll listen to binaural beats, you know, sometimes I'll do Tai Chi or Qigong. It really is how I feel. If I can't sit still,

if I've got too much stress and shit, sitting still doesn't make me feel better. Moving that out, doing breath work, that'll make me feel better, right? And same thing with getting in the gym and figuring out what I need that day. There's a template of what I want to do. Obviously, I want to look good. So there's going to be something that has to do with hypertrophy at least once a week, there's going to be different forms of cardio a couple of days a week. One's going to be the long, slow, and one's going to be the short, hard. I'm going to pick up something heavy or lift something heavy. And that might mean, you know, if I'm, if I'm feeling kind of tight and not mobile, I might not deadlift that day. I might just do a shitload of swings, you know, but some type of hip hinge, some type of squat, some time of press, some type of pull,

all those things are still a factor. And then is what keeps it fresh is not knowing what I'm going to do. I don't have a, you know, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I'm in for this, this, and this. It's like, no, I'm going to show up and I'm going to see what feels good. And then I'll push myself as I get going. And that goes back to the, just show up. Like I might not feel like going through a hard ass workout. I might tell myself like, dude, just 20 minutes, you know? And then an hour and a half later, I've had a good warmup. I've hit some heavy lifting. I've hit some concept two rower and a skier and I've hit 20 minutes in the sauna to finish it. And that's a pretty well-rounded workout for the day, you know? So just

kind of piecing things together like that and having people that I really enjoy working out with. Like if you're in town, we're going to lift weights. If I'm there with Aubrey, we might do some mace. We might do some bag work. He loves doing bag work with me. So workouts vary. But having people that I enjoy working out with,

that really makes a difference because then I'm not just doing it by myself. I can actually enjoy. And I don't have to think or figure out the workout by myself either. It can be like, you know what, today I really want to do a hinge, but what else do you want to do? Like, I want to do some plyos. All right, we're going to have box jumps with the hinge, you know, those kinds of things. So you can kind of piece it together with your buddy. And if they know what they're doing, then you're in good hands. I think you were mentioning to me that, uh paul check was doing like walking lunges with like 315 or something like that right he was

some fucking madman he was like he he hit uh i mean he's not a he's a smaller guy here's what he did he was 165 he's 50 he was 56 when we had this workout he He's 57 now. And we did a dumbbell overhead press. I had 70s. He had 80s in his hand and we hit walking lunges with that. This was all part of the warmup, by the way. I only got two reps. He was doing like sets of eight. Then we got to barbell. Walking. It was a standing, standing lunge. So he did a standing lunge, come back to the same place, then walk forward, come back to the same place. He worked up to 275, and he hit six reps each leg. My God.

I hit two reps each leg with two and a quarter, and that was a PR, right, all beltless, barefoot. And he's like, son, when I was your age, I was doing 365. And he's like, a couple years ago, I was doing 315 for six. And watching a 56-year-old man hit six reps, a 275, perfect form, his knee would kiss the ground. It was the gentlest knee touch to the ground, so he'd have full range of motion.

And it was like, yeah, man, that's a lifelong practice. It's because of all the inner peace. But that's a lifelong practice. He moved it with his mind. That's balance, though, too. He didn't have to slap himself in the face. He's not jumping up and down like Kevin Randleman to get himself going. He just knows how to lock his shit in and get ready to go.

And because he's been doing it for so long, there's a level of mastery with his body awareness. But also, a dude can move some heavy fucking weight, even at that age. And I was like, man, Paul, I want to be like you when I grow up. And he's like, just keep working on the weaknesses keep working on the strengths and you'll be there yeah he makes it sound so simple he makes you feel dumb you're like i'm an idiot compared to this guy what are some things you've learned from some of these people you have an opportunity to get around some really great people i know that you were uh coached by uh by jesse burdick and power lifting and stuff and jesse has a unique style to his training.

And he's like more, he's some weird, you know, he's a lot more than a coach, you know. I think people don't recognize that. What's something you learned from Jesse Burdick? Yeah, Jesse's a really close friend. I love that guy. You know, one of the workouts that he was showing, that template, you know, the conjugate method,

was like you can pick up something heavy and work your way up to like a max double or a max triple and then hit an AMRAP after five minutes of rest. And you've tackled two different avenues, right? All in one workout, you've worked maximum effort, low rep, and you've had this burnout that leaves you with a pump so bad you can barely sit down to shit like all in the same day. And I think, you know, seeing that, that you can really sit down to shit like all in all in the same day and i think you know seeing that that you can really bridge the gap with different things and then also i mean shit something i learned from him was just how to pull like how to get in a position to get really tight whether i'm beltless or not and just pick up something without ever being hurt you know and also how to train through injuries like that was something I had never done before. I pulled a, I pulled an adductor cause I, you know, I was like doing

sumos, sumo deadlift and I, and I pulled and I was like, man, I'm a lot stronger here. Let me widen this out a little bit. And you see a guy like Jeremy, it's like doing the splits, picking shit up, yanking it off the ground. Jeremy Avila, who deadlifts like 900 pounds. Yeah. So I'm like, all right, all right, this kid's got, there's something to that. So let me widen a little bit more. Let me widen a little bit more. And then one day I widened a little too far and felt a nice pull in the groin. And I was like, oh shit, man, I think I'm hurt. And, uh, you know, Jesse, he was like, all right, let's see what you can do. So I came back the next day. I was, I was hurting way worse. You know, two days later I come in, he's like, let's get your feet really close and see

if you can conventional deadlift. And I could, it was like two and a quarter. It's like let's get your feet really close and see if you can conventional deadlift and i could it was like two and a quarter it's like all right cool we can work with that it's like let's do um some safety bar squats to the box with your feet in real close can you do that and i was like yeah i don't feel any pain at all and he's like good we're gonna build on this while you recover right and i got stronger with a fucking injury. And then when I came back to the sumo deadlift, which was not super wide anymore, it was a moderate sumo stance, I was stronger for it.

Like my sumo had gone up because I was able to work through it the whole time. So like seeing things like that, it's like you can always do something, you know? You really can. I've met guys in the military with no more, they don't have legs and their upper body is just fucking chiseled out of granite.

Yeah. Because they never said like, oh, I can't do anything anymore. Like, no, they're fucking doing rope all the way to a giant ceiling. Yeah. What can I do? You know? So I think that's kind of the mindset to have. There's some things that are so debilitating, you know, spinal injury, whatever.

Like, yeah, maybe you can't work through that. but there's a lot of things you can work through. So Jesse's taught me a lot there. Yeah. What you said earlier about like the cold tub, right? Like that's the way I view fitness. And that's the way I view nutrition is like, we should always pull people in and make it sound, uh, we should lie to them a little bit about how smooth and easy everything's going to be. And then, you know, pour it on thick once they, once we get them through the door and once we get them locked in in then that's when you can dump everything on them as much as you can i remember having uh jeremy avila here and this doesn't happen very often where we have like a mutant in the house and usually when we do have a mutant in the house the

mutant is known everybody's like okay there's stan efforting he's a mutant clearly he's got like 22 inch arms he's a freak you know and then we've had uh eric spoto here who broke an all-time world record in the bench press and he had like a he had like 20 inch forearms you know so it's very obvious and you see him move 405 and like all right mutant right you can spot him but jeremy's not very big you know he's not he's jacked but he's just doesn't he doesn't really look intimidating and i'll never forget forget in SEMA's face when Jeremy came through the door and started lifting with us, we're all just going through our warm-ups and we're lifting two plates and three plates and four plates.

And once you start to lift like around four plates, when you start kind of looking around and you're like, you know, the way Jeremy moves four plates, Sumo, I've never really seen anybody lift any faster. Maybe Taylor Woolham, they're about the same. He looks like he's going to snatch four plates. Yeah. That's how fast he moves up. Yeah, like yeah he's gonna chuck it right up over

his head it's it's unbelievable uh but i remember you know as we went to like five plates then and sema's kind of looking around the room like the hell's going on here and then and then we went to six and he went he ended went seven and eight plates and whatever the hell he ended up doing that for that day but i remember and sema coming over to me like who fucks this guy and uh it's rare to hear that from him and i said well now you know how it feels when we're watching you lift because he always makes everything look really easy so it's interesting in uh in power lifting how we have some of those mutants that are they don't really look they don't have they don't look the part they don't look like they can lift the world like they can and you you get that a lot in MMA.

You get these guys that Nsema was mentioning in jiu-jitsu. These dorky little jiu-jitsu guys that look like they're a comic book nerd, and they actually are. And then, like, all right, you weigh 130 pounds. I'll play with you. And then, holy shit, I'm getting fucking submitted by this kid. I should not have thought that way about you. I'm sorry for that.

Jeremy's an interesting guy. I remember him. We were talking about Coach House before this. House was in town, and we're all deadlifting, and he had eight plates on. Jeremy's warm-up, he grabs the bar, and he yanks the bar. This is before he does his pull. He'll yank it, and he kind of pulls it

into place so rather than you know having a couple guys slide the bar over to even it out after the last guy's deadlifted he just comes over and just fucking yanks this thing and ragdolls the bar with all eight plates to shake the weight into the position he wants and then stands up gathers himself goes down and yanks it off the ground and And like that, to me, like that never got old, ever. And I trained with him for a long time. I watched him move up. And, yeah, when you witness specialness, it's a pretty cool thing to be a part of.

Yeah, he was just unbelievable strength. I wonder, you know, how that would transfer over, you know, for him, like in terms of like Olympic lifting or even something like jiu-jitsu or wrestling. You know, if somebody of that kind of grip was to grab ahold of you. If he had the technique of jujitsu, I mean, he could get literally yank limbs off your body. Yeah. Chimp man's e-strength.

He does have the mindset for it. Probably. Yeah. Most definitely. He's pretty, he's pretty fired up, you know? Yeah. As far as mindfulness is concerned, because you talk about mindfulness a lot, like meditation, et cetera. First off, did you have a lot of that when you were a fighter? And

then nowadays, how do you implement that like daily? Yeah. And fighting, it kind of came out of necessity because I didn't really have a way to quiet my monkey mind. And I would, you know, like I said, like I would have pure panic sometimes when the door shut. And that's one of those things where I didn't really have an avenue of knowing where to tackle it. A lot of people, that word gets tossed around quite a bit these days. Breathwork was really the first entry point I had into having a focal point outside of my thoughts and really feeling a difference. Like it's palpable. And I mentioned that before on the podcast. I've said it a thousand times, Wim Hof, when he says feeling is believing,

there's no doubt that statement is a hundred percent true. When you feel different and you start to get high on your own supply of oxygen, you know, it works. So it doesn't matter what double blind studies have been done to verify it. Like, you know, that shit works and you feel it for yourself and it's accessible anywhere you go. So taking a deeper dive into the breath work, that's been a very easy hack to shift my state of mind. Um, where'd you say that someone starts with breath work, by the way, I would, the, the place I send people now is art of breath. You know, I've had Brian McKenzie and Rob Wilson on a couple of times. Um, they do online courses. If you can make it to one of their seminars, you know, you just look, go to their website. I think it's prepare to perform or powerspeedendurance.com, but, but sorry, I'm blanking on that. Oh,

we'll figure it out and link to it in the show notes. There we go. There we go. So power, power, speed, endurance, and then you look up art of breath and they have an app now called state. And so like, it'll guide you through all the various forms of breath based on what your need is. You want to quiet your mind before you go to bed. There's, there's an app for that. You want to go to get, get, get your gas tank going before you have a hard workout. They got you covered. You want to recover in between sets because you got another big lift coming up. They got you there. You got, you got your 90 seconds off in between your 30 second sprints they got you there so like having that full from morning to evening way different ways of breathing they've been the most um the most thorough breath work i've ever been a part of and they've learned from wim hof buchinko. McKeown. Yeah, Patrick McKeown.

Taking information from various people. They're taking it from everyone, and they're working hand-in-hand with them to really make this their own. I love watching people blow up these tiny balloons. Always like, give me a fucking break. What are they doing? It looks so stupid, right? Well, they want you to use your diaphragm, and they're teaching people how to breathe through their bellies for the first time. And obviously, if you're in powerlifting, you understand that.

You understand how to brace and get that TVA activated. Not many people do, right? You got a lot of chest breathers, lifelong chest breathers, people who have lived in sympathetic their entire lives, are gassed up on caffeine, and they're constantly breathing with their neck muscles and all these accessory muscles, and you teach people how to breathe for the first time.

It's really incredible because it helps with performance but it also helps with mindfulness mindset how to quiet the mind how to get into that rest and digest state i remember i made fun of coach house because he was like blowing you know because it was a long ass warm-ups that he does you know i was making fun of him for blowing up a balloon he's like bell in about five years you're going to be doing the same goddamn thing you'd be blowing up a balloon just like me i was like i'm not blowing up any balloon before my workout trust me but it works you mess with it for yeah yeah it does work um it's just a is it more of a tool or or it's just activation you know and like mckenzie got a lot of shit because he was into the training mask and he's like look it's not it's not altitude training but what it forces you to do is it forces you to use your diaphragm. It forces you to belly breathe. It

forces you to warm up. And that's something that he's big into is how do you get the pulmonary? How do you get your lungs to be activated prior to engaging in some type of aerobic activity? It's oftentimes it takes you a mile into a run to feel like your lungs have caught up to your legs. Well, that's, that's for a reason. So there's a way you can activate that before during your warmup, you can do nose breathing the whole time. It's super easy. So you don't need to buy any equipment, do your entire warmup, only breathing through your nose. And it's hard to do, but as you get used to that, now when you need to start breathing through your mouth, because you've picked it up, it's everything's

turned on. Like it's working properly and you're using the muscles in your abdomen and your diaphragm properly. So you're actually taking full quality breaths and you'll find like you can find that happy medium of working out and still having, not having to catch up to your breath where you're like, fuck, I overdid it. You know, I've outpaced myself on the run or outpaced myself in sprints. Like, no, you got it. You're good to go. Have you messed around with taping your mouth shut for either workouts or sleep or anything like that? No, and I read that in the Oxygen Advantage. I think it's a great tool for mouth breathers

or people that have an issue with that. I think I only mouth breathe when I lay on my back, but I'm a side sleeper, so I'm pretty good with that. And I don't think it's, it's never been an issue for me. I like that as a tip for people who have a problem really getting to that point where they can force themselves to work through their nose. Um, but yeah, you know, like there, there's, uh, I think in the military they do that. They hold, you have to hold a certain amount of water in your mouth and finish a run. Damn. And if, when you spit it back out afterwards, if you, if you have less

water in your mouth by the end you gotta run more or do whatever you gotta keep going so there's ways you can get around that without tape but yeah tape works too um often times like when I do that long slow it'll be all nose breathing I'll do a 10,000 meter row on the concept 2

rower only breathing through my nose and I'll get that done in 38-40 minutes it's not record pace or anything like that. I'm listening to audible and not like pump me up music. Um, but then I got, you know, good solid 40 minutes and,

and, and he golfing's into that too. You know, like a lot of these guys are buddies and they all, they all see the science behind it. It works. That's it. You know,

it really works. And I'll do long, long runs long for me being like two to three miles, not a long run by, by a endurance standpoint, but two or three miles breathing through my nose the whole time that pays dividends. When I go back to my high intensity intervals, it pays dividends. When I'm on the heavy bag pays dividends. And when I'm on the mat doing jujitsu, like all that shit matters. If I can control my breathing. No, it's crazy. Especially like when you're on the mat doing jujitsu, I see, I know this is a lot in tournaments and at like when sparring, you'll be rolling with your partner and then you'll see them and you're still just breathing through your

nose. You just know you got them, you know, it's crazy. And you know, when you've been got, like I was rolling with Robert Drysdale out in Vegas and I was fucked. Like he's so good. And, uh, I saw him breathing through his nose the whole time. He wasn't sweating either. And it was really hot in the gym. They didn't have AC going in Vegas, and I had to take two rounds off,

full Wim Hof status, up against the wall for fucking five minutes just to be able to get back on the mat. That's how waxed I was. He comfortably tapped me six times in a round without overexerting, just going smooth, taking what I gave him, and I was toast. That was no Gi or Gi? Gi. Gi?

Yeah. Just crushing you. Yeah. It's demoralizing. It is. It is because we're both black belts. I find it fascinating, you know, like in fighting. You know, in football, you know, the guy across from you kicks your ass

or whatever, and I don't know, there's different plays and different schemes, and like you can, even though you're on the field and you're against each other, there's ways around it, you know, the guy across from you kicks your ass or whatever. And I don't know, there's different plays and different schemes. And like, you can, even though you're on the field and you're against each other, you can, there's ways around it, you know? Um, and you don't always go against the same guy. Maybe they switched, you know, maybe switch sides because you have a strength that the other guy doesn't possess or whatever, or a weakness or whatever it might be. But in fighting, there's like, there's, there's, there's kind of not a way to like hide, hide away from it, shy away from it. When you get in there, what I always think is so crazy is somebody's gotten whooped up by someone in sparring for years,

and then they end up fighting them in the UFC or end up fighting them in a tournament or whatever it is. Or they've just faced a guy previously, and they lost and gotten knocked out, you know, bad, you know, and then they come back and they still fight that guy. How does, how does that happen? How does someone do that?

I don't know. Kind of like re strategize, reload against someone to just kick the shit out of you. I don't know. I mean, there's, there's definitely, there's a lot of people who are very successful in MMA who have a concrete

belief in themselves. You look at John Jones, Anderson Silva, you know, when Anderson spot chael the first time he didn't think he was a better wrestler than chael but he knew he was better than chael and he didn't have he had an unwavering confidence and belief in himself and that's why all the way up until the end of that fight he still knew he was going to win he never threw in the towel he never thought he was going to lose get his ass beat for four and a half minutes into the fifth round you know like he was going to win. He never threw in the towel. He never thought he was going to lose. Get his ass beat for four and a half minutes into the fifth round.

You know, like he was losing every round decisively and still pulled off the submission because he never gave up and he always believed himself. If I was losing a fight, it didn't it didn't necessarily go that way. You know, like and I think that that's the difference between good, good guys and great guys, you know, is that unwavering confidence and belief in themselves. So, you know, maybe they've, they've lost a certain people in training, but they still believe like I'm the fucking best in the world. I'm going to beat this guy's ass and he doesn't see it coming. And whether they win or not, they have that going for them. Do you think that's like, can you learn something like that? Or do you just have that? I think you have that. And obviously it comes across as arrogance or cockiness in certain people,

but there's a difference between that being true and that being a facade. Right. And you can tell, you can usually tell like whether they're arrogant, like Conor McGregor, you know, comes across as brash and arrogant and all that shit. But up until Khabib,

like you didn't question if that guy believed in himself or not. And he kept showing up with what he did with Aldo, what he did with everybody he went against. He always showed up and he always performed well. And then Khabib's just a whole different guy. That's a complete mismatch. So I don't know that he's able to regain that coming back. It'll be interesting to see.

But I think up until that point, you weren't looking at him like, oh, that's just fake. That's just a, you know, that's all for show. Like, yeah, maybe there's some antics to hype a fight. That's for show. But that dude knows he's going to whoop your ass now going forward. We'll see if that continues. You know, I wonder if you need to build a little bit of arrogance because, uh, the other like a few weeks ago, my jujitsu instructor was talking about how all the, like maybe most of the world champions he's met and some of the famous jujitsu guys he's rolled with. He said that they always seemed a little bit arrogant, not confident, literally like arrogant. When I heard that, I'm like, should I develop a little bit of arrogance? Like, I don't want to be arrogant.

Well, that's, you bring up a good point because people always say like. Just asking the question. Check means you're already there. People always say like, check your ego at the door. Yeah. And it's like, no, no. Ego is what makes you want to be better. Ego is when you go home and you're like, fuck that.

I'm not going to get fucking tapped again. That's what makes you show up. That's what makes you want to desire to get better. Ego is what makes you say like, I'm not quitting until I get to 600. And then I'm not quitting until I get to 800 and so on and so forth. Like that is ego. That's the thing that makes you want to be better. Right. So it's, how do you wrangle that, um, with some balance? But yeah, I would say, I don't know that I would use the word arrogant with, with, uh, everyone I've met in jujitsu, but I've trained with a lot of great guys. We're on world champions like Lucas Leitch, who's small.

I mean, he's 170 and he's gone up multiple weight classes. And I was rolling with him. I did a private lesson with him and my dad and a couple other guys. And I was rolling with him and he kept looking over my coach. And he's like, oh, he's so strong. So strong. And I was like, fuck you. And of course I'm stronger than him, right? But he just kept fucking with me. And he knew, you know i was like fuck you and of course i'm stronger than him right but he just

kept fucking with me and he knew you know and he'd smile and then baron bolo to my back and choked me out and you know he slapped hands and go again and like you know the whole time he just kept talking shit and i was like this guy's he's a legend you know and i love the guy but yeah he had he had a little bit of that you know know, and that's okay, too, because he fucking backed it up. There's no doubt about it. He is one of the best ever. No doubt about it. Does everyone in fighting have a story? You know, like the gym that you trained at?

Does each person have kind of their own unique story that, you know, when you dig a little deeper, you kind of maybe find out you're all in it for a similar reason? I wouldn't say that and even looking at aka you know like kane velasquez is a different story his parents were immigrants he has a huge family he's the only one that's a real athlete i think in his family he's got a different story dc losing his daughter uh you know being captain of the u.s o. Olympic wrestling team, he's got a different story.

There's everybody who has gone through something that's brought them to where they are, and then there's guys that, whether it's honest or not, they really haven't been through a lot. They just are really good at that, and that's something they love to do. Maybe some of them don't have scars. Maybe they just were collegiate wrestlers. something like that it's not like you have like oh the tail where was your trauma why'd you no no it doesn't have anything to do with that the vast majority of people i think that's something that surprises people when they meet

a lot of people in mma is that they're like you know a common thing that i got when i was on i always think fighters are batshit crazy. Yeah. Crazy motherfuckers. That's what I always think. You get, you get somebody in like, he was really, really highly educated. You know,

he spoke to me and it's like, yeah, motherfucker. A lot of us went to college, you know, like, like we're all pretty smart. You know,

I read books and stuff. Yeah. So I think, uh, there's a misconception that maybe happened from boxing in being looped in because I'm amazing combat sport, but it doesn't really exist now. You know,

you hear people talk outside of the octagon when they're extremely tired and either gloating over the victory or hyping the next fight or whatever. And you, you get a chance to talk, you hear them on a podcast, you hear them on Rogan's and you're like, damn dude, that guy's really cool.

You know, Matt Brown, he's an animal and the ultimate fighter. Like he was like, fuck dude, that guy's got a short fuse. He got a hot head. And then, you know, I got to meet him on a tour for the fighter. Like he was like, fuck dude, that guy's got a short fuse. He got a hot head. And then, you know, I got to meet him on a tour for the troops. And I was like, this guy is awesome. He's, he's incredibly intelligent. He's soaking up knowledge.

He, you know, and all those things. And you listen to him on Rogas, you're like, damn, this guy's fucking awesome. So I think, um, you know, even, even people that you wouldn't necessarily, you know, from seeing them on a TV show or listen to them in the Octagon after a fight, like there there's more to them. Even Conor McGregor, you know, like you looked at that, that little mini series they did for him. And he's sitting there in full Lotus doing meditation and, and mindfulness practices and really getting a quiet space. It's like, yeah, man, there's balance to these guys at the top. They figured out ways to, to not always be turned on. Like you got to have an off switch here and there. Was fighting mainly just like fighting for you or did it help you deal with anything? Well, you know, football, I started playing football when I was 10 years old and that

for me was my outlet. It was a way that I was, I could blow off some steam by button heads with people and, and, uh, just getting that angst out, you know? And so fighting started for me is that it was therapeutic, punching people in the face for sure for a while. And then as I gained more tools along the way from breath work to meditation to plant medicines, all those things gave me different avenues that did the same thing. They helped me to have peace inside. And fighting still,

you know, maybe with exception of the UFC, but up until that point, cause there's just so much on the line in the UFC, you know, like whether I was winning on a four fight win streak coming off two fight of the nights and a 32nd knockout, like I would have to ride that so I can move up the ranks. There's pressure there. If I'm on a losing streak, which I finished with four losses in a row, I have pressure there to end that losing streak. Not even thinking about all the people watching, just feeling that pressure of where my career path is headed. There was always more to it there. Whereas in King of the Cage and some of these lower level shows, it was like, nothing mattered. Like if I lose lose, so what I'm doing well here. And I didn't think I was going to lose. I had that unwavering belief in myself. So,

you know, there was definitely a transition at different points in my career where things got easier and things got harder. Um, in my mind, it was, it was having these other practices that really started to take care of what fighting was filling the void in my life and really giving me that outlet for, I no longer needed it to be the outlet for that. Okay. So what managed to maybe fill the, what took the place of fighting for you? Good drugs. I mean, you know, uh, I give credit, a lot of credit to ayahuasca, a lot of credit psilocybin mushrooms. Um, we're just sorting my shit and also, you know, giving me confidence and moving on past that, you know, knowing that there is more to life, um, allowing me to see things from a bird's

eye view with what's going on in my life and really being able to factor in everything that was happening with fighting. I could have gratitude for it and then also know, like, this is not something I'm going to do for the rest of my life. And something I had always said going into it was, like, if I'm ever a 500 fighter, I'm out. It's not baseball. Like, I'm taking damage here, especially at light heavyweight. So once I was 4-4 in the UFC, I said, if I lose again, I'm out.

And then I lost again, and I was out. So I stuck to that and never really returned to it. You know, I think it's important to have that. And even Tim Ferris talks about that in the four hour work week, like know your number and know you're out. Don't keep gravitating towards the thing, you know? So I had my number, if it was 500 or less, I'm out. And I think plant medicines gave me the perspective to know that it was okay to put that in my rear view and to look towards the future, not knowing what that was going to be still working in the titty bar, living in my mom's garage, but trusting in that whatever it was going to be, it would work out for the better. And it totally has, you know, it took a while

to manifest. It took a while to bring in the ability to podcast with awesome guys like yourselves and continuing to learn and just continuing to grow as a person and then share whatever that is, whatever's working, you know, that's it. Like, let me, let me figure some shit out through trial and error and trying things on for size for myself and then share that with the world and talk about my fuck ups and my pitfalls and talk about my successes and where my wins are. And that's just been it. And it's been great. Made a career out of it, continuing to learn every day,

continuing to be a student as much as I can, and still relying heavily on those tools that got me here. Two weeks ago, I was in Costa Rica doing four sessions of ayahuasca, and that's because I learn something new every time I go. It's because there's no staleness there. It's brand new. Each ceremony is different. And I think that giving it space, it had been two years since I had done it.

So giving it space to actually work with whatever those lessons and downloads are makes a big difference too. It's not just something I lean on and go to every day. I might lean on going for my walk every day or something that's a little less hard on the body. Um, some form of breath work, things like that, eating clean, whatever the case is, it's going to help me level up and have a little bit cleaner lifestyle.

And then from there I can, you know, dip into the hard work once in a while and see what comes up for me. And that's, that's paid dividends. What are the habits that have led you to go from retired UFC fighter to working at a titty bar, living in your mom's garage, uh, to, you know, you're one of the higher ups pretty much at, at on it. Right. I mean, you have a very important role there. How, how in the hell has that happened? It's, I mean, it's, it's's it's uh you think about them there's a great book called mastery but you think about things that that help you move in a direction acquiring knowledge is one thing putting that into practice is a totally different thing the more you can

accumulate that just makes you more valuable you know and i didn't realize this as a fighter that i was acquiring things that would help me in life and in my career. And even, you know, I know a lot of people that went to college and they don't use their fucking degree for anything they're doing now. I studied communication and sociology. And a lot of what I talk about now on a podcast using communication is what makes people tick and the differences that we have and that they're fucking both avenues are coming up in my career. You know, so everything that I've done, thankfully has somehow factored into what I do now. But, you know, I think a lot of people, a lot of people get to a point where they think like, I'm done with school. I, you know, I don't, they don't, they might not say it or think it,

but they have this idea that they're not, they don't need to learn anything else. Right? Like I'm good now. I got my career. I got my job. I know what to do. I've mastered my craft and they stop learning. They stop wanting to read. They're happy just going on the fucking rabbit wheel or the hamster wheel where they're going to just watch keeping up with the Kardashians and pound a beer and just call that life. And that's never been the case for me. Um, you can also go to the opposite end of the extreme where you just constantly want to learn as much as you can and you're never really doing shit. And Paul chick talked about that. So, I mean, there has to be balanced. There has to be the doing, and that's what, you know, I'm rocking the Bruce Lee shirt. As you said earlier, it's not enough to be, we must do,

I'm rocking the Bruce Lee shirt. As you said earlier, it's not enough to be, we must do. Too much consuming. Yeah, yeah. You can come to a place where you're chasing constantly. And that's something that plant medicines have taught me too, is the idea of having gratitude for what is and acceptance of what is. And if I can get to that place where I really have,

like, sure, I have goals, but fuck, life is pretty damn good where it is right now. And having appreciation for that really paints things from a different lens. So I can come from that place of gratitude moving forward and appreciate everything that I have right now. And then as I continue to level up, it's bonus material. It's not what I don't have that's driving me. It's everything that I have and everything that I've done and everything that I'm around, my family, the people that I get to talk to. And then I move forward and level up and continue on.

You just don't worry about it. It comes right back to you. It comes to you rather than you trying to always like overreach for it. Yeah. You don't have to force it or constantly be in the state of wanting, right? That's it. You know, like, like, yeah, man, I want more, but I don't have to live in that state of wanting. I can live in a state of appreciation, you know, it's hard and then move towards the goal. Yeah. It's hard. You want it all and you want it yesterday, right? Yep.

Want everything to come, come at you a hundred miles an hour. I feel like we've come back to like ayahuasca multiple times, but I'm curious cause you call them plant medicines now other than ayahuasca. Is there anything else that you think could help expand someone's like idea of themselves or help them like lead them down that path? Yeah. Something I want to give. And I mean, I could, I could mention every other drug that I like. Uh, there's certainly plenty, uh, mushrooms, MDMA, things like that. But I think giving people a lot of people that aren't ready for that, a lot of people that don't want to do that. There's a good book called the science of mindfulness by Dr. Ronald Siegel. And it's one of the great courses on audible. I recommend it to a

lot of people, many different tools for people that have no idea what the fuck mindfulness is on where to get started, where the science backs it. So if you think it's woo woo, or think it's a little out there, like it kind of bridges the gap for the left and the right brain people. Outside of that, one of the greatest tools ever is a float tank. Like, can you sit in complete darkness with nothing coming in without your cell phone, without social media, without keeping up with the Kardashians, without any input, without loud music? Can you just be in silence in darkness and float and if you can get to quiet mind there it's much easier that's a trainable skill and that's something that ronald siegel talks about who's a professor at harvard like the dude's highly intelligent um you can

train your brain like you would a muscle and the ability to shift from fight or flight into rest and digest that's trainable so the more often you can do that, the easier it becomes in the day to day. So shit hits the fan life comes at you as it does for everyone. If you've worked on that part of yourself, it's a lot easier to deal with that stuff. And I think the float tank is, it's one of the most underrated things on the planet. I mean, it has a seat at the table among every teacher, every plant medicine, every form of meditation, float tanks are, are, they're in a category of their own and they have a seat at the table for that reason. Like you there, there's nowhere else where you can deprive yourself of all sensation. And when you do that, it's amazing what bandwidth is freed up in the brain. You know, I've, I've gone in

for creativity purposes and contemplated different things. And I've gotten a shitload of downloads as far as different ways to problem solve, you know, thinking outside the box. I've gone in there and just focused on quiet mind. And I've had some of the deepest meditations I've ever had in my life. I've also gone in there on a little LSD and had some of the best visionary experiences of my life. And, you know, even on a microdose just because nothing else is coming in. and had some of the best visionary experiences of my life. And even on a microdose, just because nothing else is coming in.

So what gets freed up with that? There's really nothing like that. Even sitting in a dark room, you're still sitting. You're still focusing on, oh, my fucking hips are a little tight. Or man, my spine doesn't feel good. I should have done more mobility before I got here. My nose is itchy. Yeah, yeah. But you get in there, you get in the float. Like soon enough,, doesn't feel good. I should have done more mobility. My nose is itchy. Yeah. Yeah. But you get in there, you get in the float, like soon enough, you don't feel your hands anymore. Um,

the temperature is the same as your skin, you know, and it might be a little hot at first, but eventually it normalizes. And then boom, you're gone. You know, and that, that could be 30 minutes. It could be 90 minutes. I've floated for six hours at one point. I mean, like all of it's, it's challenging, but it gets easier the more often you do it as with anything else. And it can be a very, very powerful tool. You've got to buy one for the gym, Mark. 30 grand.

Pony up. Let's go. I'm coming back. The floating for six hours, I'd imagine that's when you took the LSD. That was mushrooms that night. Oh, there you go. There's some sort of performance enhancing drug in there. It's still, I mean,

there's been times where I've just felt full and I had to get out, you know, like I even on a 90 minute float at 75 ish minutes, I was out and I just showered and I, and I sat and just, just reviewed everything that I got because you know, with the enhancement of LSD, like, uh, time doesn't really matter at that point. You know, like I, in, in however long I was in there, I had, you were in there for four days, bro. Any intention that I had going in was, it came back tenfold. You know, I got everything I wanted and needed and more. And I think in those experiences, it wasn't necessary to stay in the additional time.

What's kind of the weirdest thing that's ever happened from, you know, doing some of these psychedelic drugs and these various forms of meditation and stuff? Like you ever like just get done with it and just start crying or? Yeah, but that wouldn't be weird. That's just a well, yeah, you know, yeah. Just like uncontrollable emotion or something. That's yeah.

I shit. I mean, you could take that anywhere. What's the weirdest thing? Um, well, not to necessarily be weird, but I guess the question is,

yeah, have some of these things made you super emotional and like dug really deep into something that you didn't maybe just had no idea it was even there. Oh, no doubt. No doubt. I mean, I, and a lot of the first ceremonies i worked through childhood stuff with ayahuasca and you know being out in in costa rica recently my 25th ceremony and i've done a lot of other plant medicine experiences with psilocybin that have been really transformative um i just i was feeling kind of tight and i had uh i had the the healers work on my neck physically and so physical healing was a part of tight and I had, uh, I had the, the healers work on my neck

physically. And so physical healing was a part of that. And as I went for my second cup, I brought in maybe, maybe we'll work on some of the mental, emotional healing. And if there's anything left from childhood, well, you can work through that. And I didn't sleep for one minute that night. I stayed up the whole night, uh, extremely nauseated. It was very hard physically. And for sure, one of the most challenging nights of my life, reliving a lot of the shit that I went through. And that in the end was incredibly healing because it gave me space to process it, but it would still blew me away. Like, you know, I've now done 26 times and there was still more to go. So, so revisiting that, it sounds like, why the fuck would you ever want to do that?

But, you know, in that experience, I was able to pull out of that with gratitude, with a new lens of, okay, I'm still affected by some of this stuff. And that's creating different patterns in the way I respond to my son and the different ways that I respond to my wife and how I am with my parents, you know, if I'm short or I don't want to hear it, like rather than just starting fresh, you know, and having a fresh lens that's not altered through my own shit and baggage, you know, how can I just be fresh and be new and be the best version of myself for my, my family that I've created now and my family that I grew up with. So it's called a ceremony probably because it's somewhat ritualistic, but it's really like a treatment almost. Yeah. I mean, we see this now even with

MDMA, like you can take MDMA in the club and dance and have an amazing time, or you can do, use it like maps is doing with PTSD and it is a treatment. And the crazy thing is you only need three treatments in their protocol and they're healing some serious drug resistant people that have post-traumatic stress lifelong, you know, or decades long. Rape and things like that, right? Like really brutal things. Military guys, you know, people who can't really be in public, you know, a year after the fact are, are they're okay now, you know, and then that, that just goes against the entire model of our healthcare system. You know, the fact that they're okay now you know and then that that just goes against the entire model of our health care system you know the fact that they're they're not given a prescription until they go home with

it and take one a day like no you come in once every three months we're going to give you a dose you're going to have assisted therapy throughout the process and after in between and a year later you're going to be good that's it's pretty remarkable mushrooms uh decriminalized in colorado right and uh and now in oak town in oakland yeah is that why is that why you're here That's pretty remarkable. Mushrooms decriminalized in Colorado, right? And now in Oak Town. In Oakland, yeah. Is that why you're here in NorCal? And so I'm back.

What do you think of that? I think that's really, really important. And that's not to say, you know, this should be a free-for-all. And that's something like people, conservative people will often say like, what the fuck? I don't want some kid going to Walgreens to grab ecstasy. And it's like, that'll never be the case. You know, that's not what maps is pushing for.

But for people to have the opportunity to have access to these things and for therapists to have that in their toolkit, not for everyone, but for the people where they know it's going to be applicable and that it can help. You know, they didn't decriminalize meth. They decriminalize shit that actually can help people right and when you think about this like i think the initiative that helped move that was legalized nature and it's like you guys know with kratom and here in cali with cannabis like sure i know a lot of people that just smoke themselves into a into a stupor each day and they don't get

shit done it's like dude on the couch with the beanie living with his mom still it's not hurting anyone that's what he wants to fucking do so be it right um can you die on psychedelics probably not from the psychedelic but yeah people jump out of fucking windows and do stupid shit so it isn't to say like yeah you can go down to the corner store and pick up a bag of mushrooms. That's not it. But should you go to jail for possessing that and doing it in the comfort of your own home? No. If you break the law while you're on it, you try to get behind the wheel, you hurt somebody. Yeah. You're going to be punished for that still. But this idea that you shouldn't be allowed to responsibly use these things is it's bananas that that is criminal, that people go to jail for possession

of things like that. And so I think that is a move in the right direction. And I think it's really important, especially, you know, they didn't just do mushrooms. It was, I think most cactus like peyote, wachuma or San Pedro, ayahuasca, a lot of things are on that bill in Oakland. So they took it a step further actually than Denver did. And I think that's really cool to see that. Time to make a trip, Andrew. I'm down. We're going together.

Yeah. But you mentioned, you've said this multiple times, people need to know when they're ready. So this is going to sound super broad, but if somebody does want to try some of this stuff, how can they know they're ready to give it a shot? So there is a term for that and they say there's a calling, right? And the calling is you hear about it, maybe you read about it, you have a friend that does it, and you might think,

oh, I want to try that. Kind of similar to the same calling I got for steroids probably. You need to be stronger. You know, my friends are talking about Trenbolone quite a bit. I think I'm ready. I think I'm ready. I'm going to make a trip to Mexico. It's going down. I'm going to go to about Trenbolone quite a bit. I think I'm ready. I think I'm ready. I'm going to make a trip to Mexico. It's going down.

I'm going to go to that Trenbolone ceremony. Yeah, the Trenbolone ceremony. Yeah, I think you, it's not something that you just wake up one day and you're like, I'm going to do it. I mean, it's something that lasts. And that's the way, you know, as you check in and it's not done on a whim. You know, the beauty of going all the way to the Amazon, it's not fucking easy to get there. It's, there's a flight, you're taking off work. A lot of times you have a 10 day trip just to get there and do the medicine for the week. Cause you

have to have time in front of the trip and time at the end of the trip. Uh, oftentimes it's two days travel. It was two days travel. Even in Costa Rica, we flew in, we stayed in San Jose overnight. Then we had a drive to a ferry, a ferry boat ride, and then an additional drive to get to the healing center. And we're there for a week. We drive, we ferry, and we drive to the hotel. We stay overnight and then we fly home the next day. So, I mean, having that space around 10 days, A, there's a financial piece there that goes into that commitment. B, you have to take time away from your family, time away from your job or whatever commitments you have. But if you're able to do that, rather than just go to the homie down the street,

who's doing ceremonies out of his house, like it's a lot easier to unplug and be involved in that experience. You know, it's a lot harder when you do things stateside and you got to show up for work on Monday, right? There's very less time to integrate and process what's happened. But in terms of that, knowing when you're ready, you know, doing your research, listening to podcasts like this, myself, Aubrey, Rogan, reading a bit about it. You know, the psychedelic explorers guide is a great book for people that are trying to get their feet wet in the shallow end. Maybe not with Aya, but, but microdosing something like LSD or psilocybin. I think there's, there's great tips

and tools. Dr. Jim Fadiman wrote that book. I think it's incredible. You know, and then if you feel really called to that and you know, you have a reason to be there, you know, no matter what you're doing, whether it's a microdose or a macro dose in the Amazon, it's having an intention, having a reason to go like, what, what stuff do I want to work on while I'm here? And you may not have any trauma to work through. It might just be any direction in life. I want to sort out what, what I'm going to do now. You know? And I think that, uh, I mean, certainly that was something I brought to the table after fighting. And then one of those answers was podcasting. It was health and wellness. It was being a part of something that makes me feel good and helps me live a little bit better each day than I did previously.

Do you think that like if like just a person that has their life together, got a good job, family, everything's going real positive. Would someone like that benefit from taking you know an ayahuasca trip or something like that or is it just really like a certain demographic of people that no no doubt no doubt and i think that's important an important piece and that's something rick doblin who's the head of maps is working on with mdma therapy is that there's not i forget what it is uh how they're wording it to the FDA. But when this becomes legal for assisted guided sessions, they don't want to have it only be for people with PTSD. Only be for people.

They want it to be for people who are healthy, of good conscious, good mind, good body, who just want a different perspective. And they want to be put through this and have the ability to level up in any way, shape, or form. And that'll first be done with MDMA. I think they're estimating a 2022 that'll be completely legal throughout the U S supervised, of course, you know, with the right, right people. But, you know, with these other things, obviously you can go to the Amazon right now. It is just about, um, do you have a reason to be there and whatever your intention is and life can be fucking perfect. You don't have to come from, you know, uh, a horrific childhood or, and that wasn't me either. My, my childhood wasn't horrific. There was just, you know,

I had some shit like, like most people do, you know? And I think, um, you know, even outside of that, as I've worked through a lot of that, the downloads I get that are work-related or direction-related or family-related, like how do I be a better fucking dad? I mean, that's never going to not be at the forefront of what I'm working on. develop because I'm doing it for the first time as we all are, as our parents were, you know, I'm going to have new things to tackle, new obstacles, and I'm going to need new perspective on that. And so having those tools periodically to work with, I think is, it's incredible. It's made me a better dad. It's made me a better partner to my wife. And, um, I couldn't ask for much more when it comes to that. You're working on child number two yeah right heavily damn another bear i think it'll be a wolf oh okay what's uh what's with the animals so bear came to us in an eye vision um

when we were dating he was uh we you know they have closing circle at a lot of the ceremonies where they talk about what you saw what came up up for you, what are the things you worked on. Tosh started speaking about how she saw me holding a baby and she was holding the two of us. And I was like, hold on, I don't mean to interrupt, but I had the exact same vision. And a month later when we were doing it again, we saw the same vision, but this time it was a boy. And all the fear that I had of being a dad came up. I live in my mom's garage. I don't have family medical and dental. I don't have a 401k. I don't have a savings. I work in a titty bar,

you name it. Everything came and it ballooned up and I could feel my heart racing like fuck. And it just felt icky. And I took a deep breath and it kind of moved away from me. And I realized that's what everyone else tells you. You need to have nobody. None of us would be here. If you waited for the fucking perfect time to have nobody none of us would be here if you waited for the fucking perfect time to have a kid it just wouldn't happen that way right that's not the way

it goes down in reality so once that moved away from me i realized like okay i can do this and a month after that we were pregnant and bear the name came to us um through really through a multitude of ceremonies you know, my wife had experienced interacting with her father who's gone, um, as bears and I had had visions of bears and, um, I just felt that energy from, which sounds fucking weird and woo woo, but that's what I felt, you know, and he certainly is bear. Um, he's very bear. Like I saw this little animal. He's a beast. Yeah. And, and to get weirder, I've, I've talked to who will take our daughter's body and her name's going to be wolf. So I'm pretty sure we're going to have a daughter next and, uh, we'll give bear a little sister. So,

you know, I mean, it's, it's, there's no doubt it's out there, but experiencing things firsthand, it paints a different lens, you know, and that's really what it is. It's not, it's funny because like Graham, Graham Hancock has been on Rogan's. I'm a huge fan of them, you know, and he'll often talk shit about guys like Richard Dawkins because Dawkins wants to paint it from the atheist point of view that anything that's happening in that ceremony and that drug interaction is within your own mind. And it's just the chemical interaction. And Graham says, fine, if you look, you can't die from this. There's no reason you shouldn't take it, but you don't get a seat at the table in the conversation of what ayahuasca is until you do it with me. You can't tell me what that experience is until you've experienced it for yourself. And that's one of the main takeaways that I see with plant medicine. Most people see with it is that when they do it, it feels like it's from outside of you.

It doesn't feel like it's from within you. And even though what you're seeing oftentimes isn't something that is actually happening in the real world, in air quotes, it's the realest experience you've ever had. And that to me is, is pretty amazing. You know, it is very real and it's very powerful and profound and whatever you're seeing, it's for you. It's so personal. You know, it's not like, uh, what's that fear and loathing in Las Vegas where it's like bats, bats everywhere. You know, it's like, no, like if I see a fucking bat or a dragon or anything, it's going to tell me something that pertains to me. And if I'm listening and I, and I'm paying attention, it's going to matter what it has to say to me.

I think you told me one time that you were your mom, I think, uh, in one of the ceremonies and another one, you told me that you were your wife that was my very first ceremony i became my wife and i relived every argument we had ever had up until that point and it was fucking brutal so i was down i had tits i had the long curly hair and i was yelling i'm shaking my finger looking up yelling at kyle and every word that came out of my mouth as natasha was a way that kyle could understand it and as i snapped out of that it was just fucking floodgates i mean i cried like a little girl i was i was done i cried for a very long time you're like i'm a shitty husband i just i realized before we were married and i just realized like everything she was saying was with love she wasn't being

nagging she wasn't trying to fucking prevent me from having fun she was looking out for me and uh to this day, that's one of the most powerful ceremonies I've ever had. The second vision, that very first ceremony was, you know, it was while I was living in my mom's garage, butting heads with her constantly as a 30 something year old, um, not seeing eye to eye on a lot of things, uh, not, you know, being in a space of allowing everybody to walk their own path, like wanting her to take care of herself and not seeing her do that and judging her for it. Um, I became her when she was pregnant with me and I watched my belly grow in time-lapse

very quickly. And as it was growing, I could feel her nervousness of being a mom for the first time. And as my, my father, her husband walked over and put his hands on the belly and kissed my belly, I could feel his love for Kyle, for his son radiate through the belly to Kyle growing. And I could feel my mom's love and nervousness radiate into me while I was in the belly. And it was the most real thing I fucking ever experienced, you know? So like, was I my mom in that? No. But did I live it through her lens? For sure. No doubt. And it gave me the perspective to realize like, no matter what, my mom loves me. I could be a fucking ax murderer in jail, you know, without

parole and she would still love me. That's so much. My mom loves me. So to feel that as her is really powerful because it puts all that other noise to rest. Did you go there with the intention of working out stuff with your mom or did that just come to you? No, that just came up. And that's the other thing, you know, like my buddy Tate Fletcher, you know, he, he'll, I've done a couple of mushroom ceremonies with him and he always laughs. Cause he's like, yeah, you have your fucking intention, whatever. This shit's going to go wherever, which way you're not in control of it you know say what you fucking want it doesn't matter and there's some truth to that you know like it is gonna go um i do feel like these things

are directable to a degree and then there's a level of surrender where you're not in control and you just gotta fucking let go and go with it as with life right like we can we can choose what we want to work on and we can have focus points, but there's a lot of shit that's outside of our control. And the more accepting we are of what is the better off we are, you know? So I think having that, that kind of give and take of intention and surrender is really important, you know, but, but Tate, yeah, Tate often laughs at that. So no, that was not on my radar going into that ceremony at all. I didn't know what to expect.

It was more like I'm here, I'm going to do the work, and whatever you show me I'm willing to see. And that was to this day one of the most powerful ceremonies I've ever had. I think last time I was in Austin and we were hanging out, I don't think this was going on. I think this is a newer thing. Uh, the open marriage, that's a newer thing. And, and where did that, uh, where'd that come? How long you've been married for first of all, and then like where and when did that, uh, happen? We're coming up on four years now of marriage and we've been open since October last year. So not, you know, not

super long. Um, the conversation started right when we got married, I told her, I was like, listen, if you ever, excuse me, if you ever want to have sex with another man, that's okay. Just tell me it's okay. Like we're going to be married hopefully until the day we die. And I realized there, you may have interested, you know, be interested in someone else. Um, it's funny cause all the psychedelic talk doesn't rub people the wrong way. This fucking definitely triggers people. This is fucking rubbles of feathers. But, um, you know, it's funny cause like, I thought I was being kind and saying that like, yo, you got a hall pass. Just keep me involved. Don't do it behind my back. And she was like, what the fuck? You wouldn't be mad. And she just blew up. Right. She's like,

you wouldn't be fucking jealous. And I was like, no, I didn't say that. I just said, you know, I just want to know. I didn't say I wouldn't be jealous and I wouldn't have shit to work through. And, and, uh, that started the conversation. And then, you know, I read Chris Ryan's book, sex at dawn. And it's funny because when I bought it, I didn't know what it was about. I thought it was like, I knew he was in an open relationship. I'd heard him on Rogan's and I figured it was like a self-help, like how to fuck better,

how to eat pussy better, that kind of thing. And so that's what I bought it for. And my wife read the reviews on Amazon. She was like, just smacked me in the fucking chest, like, like a hardcore Holly,

you know, just a fucking brutal backhand. What the fuck? You want to have sex with other people? And I was like, Oh no, no. She's like, what's up with the book? And I people and i was like oh no no she's like what's up with the book and i was like i thought what do you mean what's up with the book and she just read the review and i was like oh man i really didn't know that but i'm gonna read it you're like but yeah so i read it and i was like it's it brings

up a lot of good points and i had her read it and she's like yeah it brings up a lot of good points but a lot of has to do with with tribal setting know, we don't live in that type of environment anymore. Shit's completely different, you know. And she was right. But that opened a doorway to a conversation. And obviously the conversation furthered being around Aubrey, who has been in an open relationship for a while. Seeing him kind of on the front lines, learning from his mistakes so we wouldn't make the same mistakes. And also, you know, in plant medicines, you know, like that that's come up for us at different points of time as a tool for growth.

So why do you want to do this? Do you want to do it to fuck other people? That's that's fair to say that. Like something my wife and I always had in common because we were friends before we got together and I was in a relationship. I mean, it does bring up a good question. Is there anyone who's married who, you know, doesn't have desires like that? Yeah. And that's, that's the whole thing. Like we, yes, there's probably a huge percentage, right? Yeah. And we were, we were in a place where we'd,

we had full disclosure as friends. We'd talk about all the relationships we'd been in. I knew people she had had sex with, you know, and I, I knew details about that sex and it never bothered me as friends. And so when we were together, that conversation didn't stop. Like all of, like, that's the thing that always makes me laugh is like anybody you're with, whether you're, you know, monogamous or not, if they're good or bad, that is a direct correlation to who they've been with prior to you. Right.

It really is. So to have gratitude, like if, yeah, if your wife can suck good dick, she didn been with prior to you. Right. It really is. So to have gratitude, like if, yeah, if your wife can suck good dick, she didn't learn it from you. Odds are she learned that from somebody else. It was four years of college trial and error with other people. Right. So do you have gratitude or does that gross you out? Right. Like that's a good conversation. I know a lot of dudes that, that I know married men that will not take direction on eating pussy from their wives because it hurts their ego. You're, you don't like the way that I do it, honey. That hurts me now. I don't want to do it anymore, you know? And I fucking swear

to God, this is the case. And it's more than, it's more than a few, right? So, so there's an issue there, right? I think, um, and there's an issue with like, hey, I know you've had sex before me, but I don't want to know about it. I don't want to hear about it. And it's like, oh, like, why not have that conversation, you know? And there's different ways to introduce the other, you know, like Esther Perel talks about that,

you know, and that's, some people watch porn while they have sex. Like you don't have to introduce a different person. Like you can just have role-playing or you can have something on TV. don't have to introduce a different person. Like you can just have role playing or you can have something on TV. You just can maybe introduce a lot of truths and maybe you can talk about what you prefer and what you don't prefer,

just as you would with how you would discuss how you like to be treated in general, right? I'm like, I don't like when you do that. It's a conversation that should be on the table. It's a conversation that should be had. And I'm not saying the monogamy versus non-monogamy should be had. I'm not saying that at allogamy versus non-monogamy should be had. I'm not saying that at all.

What I am saying is that no matter which relationship you're in, yeah, talk about sex. Talk about the people you've been with. Talk about the things that you enjoy. Talk about things you want to explore that you haven't tried before. Like all those things matter. But I think as we learned about this more and more and understood things differently in terms of love, like when you think about your kids, this example that gets used often in these communities is, do you love your second kid less than your first? No.

So do you have less love for a different partner? Do you have less love for your wife if you have a different partner? That's never been the case with the people I've talked to. Polyamory, just to get the lingo down, literally translates to more than one love. So that's a different thing than being a swinger where you're just having sex outside of the marriage and it's all okay. It's all up on the up and maybe you have group sex with your wife included or your husband included. That's a different thing. Polyamory is literally having a meaningful relationship with somebody outside of your main partner. And that comes with its own challenges,

no doubt. And I understood all this on paper before we started, but fucked, I had no idea how hard the onboarding process would be. Going through that, I've really have grown in ways that I didn't think possible. I've released a lot of jealousies. I'm still working on jealousies. I'm still working on things to this day. And I'll probably always have work. And I don't, you know, as with plant medicines, it sure as hell, it's not for everyone. But again, as with plant medicines, if this is something you choose to do in the comfort of your own home and it's not hurting anybody, it doesn't fucking matter. It shouldn't bother, you know, like you may not agree with it, but, um, you know, some people really get triggered by that because we've all been

force fed an idea of what love looks like and what's appropriate. And, you know, like, just go back to the thing we were talking about too it's fucking pride month like a lot of people are triggered by homosexuals like bro who the fuck cares like really who the fuck cares yeah what's it really doing to you it does nothing you know and then no i'm sorry to fucking i'm sorry spoiler alert they're not going to hell sorry that it doesn't work that way that's not it so i don't think, um, what people do in their own homes and even outside of that really matters if it's not hurting people, you know, and, and to that point, you know, it, it isn't for everyone, but you know, if you, that's a conversation to be had, if it's something that interests you or you have feel,

you know, feelings around that, like maybe it's not with somebody you've been married to for 10 years and have this thing locked in the way that it is. But you know, if it's something that you're starting out with, or a lot of people who start open to, that's another thing. Another thing I should bring up is I have total gratitude for being monogamous with my wife for the first seven years of our relationship. I think we built a very solid foundation of trust and communication that we now can lean on when we experience challenges like open. And without that, I don't know that we would have survived it, you know? So I, what are the, what are the rules like, like, uh, you know, somebody, uh, might be really, you know, upset if someone else goes through someone

else's phone and like, you know, what, what what what is there you know it must be a whole different set of rules right like who are you texting right like that kind of stuff yeah yeah i mean because we because we've had other partners like we know who we're texting with and that's what i think one of the rules that we have is if we do want to build this as tribe we need to have relationships with our partner's partner. You know, I'm friends with my wife's boyfriend, good friends, and I want it to be that way. And as parents, that's the other thing people always ask, what about the children?

As parents, I want to give to our children just as much, right, from our partners. Like our partners have to be on board with being a great auntie or great uncle and if they're good with kids that's a prerequisite right if they're not you're fucking out you got no business being here you got to be good with kids and you got to enjoy being around you got to be a part of the family and he's amazing with bear so with that he's added value not only to Natasha's life, but to my life and to Bear's life. And that's really, it's a really special thing to have that, you know, and really

when I, when I boil it down and look at it, he's not taking anything away from me. He's only adding to my life. You know, even if Tosh spends the night at his house once or twice a week, life. You know, even if Tosh spends the night at his house once or twice a week, he's only adding to my life, you know? And so I think another rule because we have kids is, you know, there's, there's many different ways I recommend people if they have an interest, obviously sex at dawn's a great book. Untrue. If you're a female, great book by Wednesday Martin is a good buddy. It's going to mention one more book, more Than Two, An Ethical Guide to Polyamory. There's a great book on this. And they talk about all the different ways that you can model this

because there's no one size fits all, as in anything in life, right? There's many ways to do it. With that, they tell you the pitfalls and different things like that. But with having kids, if I'm gone more than a night or two a week, I'm not dad more than a night or two a week. That's an issue from our, for our children. Same with my wife. Right? So those things have to be taken into consideration and it can't look like some other polyamorous relationships where maybe it's equally an equal split of time, or you have more than one partner outside of your main partner, you know, and you have two nights a week with each of them or whatever the case is. It can't look that way with kids. So,

you know, really putting our children at the forefront of how we model this and who we bring into our lives, I think is really where we build that around that, you know, it is with them in mind. And I think having people that add value to their lives, it makes it all the more worthwhile. Right. I think that people are always concerned about kids. They're always concerned about like how damaging it is, but there's a lot of people that are with people that they should probably no longer be with as well. You know, there's people that are like, you know, fighting and hiding things from each other. And there's a lot of secrets. And, you know, as you get older, you kind of find out there's kind of all these family secrets, you know, this happened with this

uncle, and this happened over here with this person, and you're like, oh man, like, I know, because you're a kid, you didn't know all these things were happening, and maybe just even just people just, you know, I've talked before on this podcast, my wife and I have had many hard conversations before, like, and you have to figure out a way to get there. You've got to figure out a way to talk about it. And it doesn't have to be necessarily, you know, finding another person or anything like that. But you do have to communicate a lot. And it can't just always be about, you know, the dishes or the, you know, taking the garbage out or those different things.

It sometimes has to be a hard conversation that neither one of you wants to really go through. But if there's absolutely no fighting in a relationship that, that could be problematic as you know, fighting a lot, probably not great. Uh, maybe a blowout here and there, probably, probably a good thing is maybe you, uh, let some steam off and maybe you communicate to that person what it is that you want because you're trying to be together forever, basically. Yeah, forever is a long time. I'm curious how you, because I've had a discussion with this with my girlfriend, and we both are not the greatest fans of it, just being honest. But how did you come to the, I guess you probably wrestled the idea that if she has a love or a deep love for someone else that she's with, how did you wrestle with the idea that she might not love that or a deep love for someone else that she's with how

did how did you wrestle with the idea that she might not love that person over time more than she potentially loves you or is that not even something that comes to mind oh no that fucking for sure comes up it for sure comes up or the uh you know like like then there's that question too like if i allow this will she leave me right will she find someone better and ultimately you think of the reverse of that if i don't allow it she can't leave me right well what is that that's possessive love which is total bullshit total bullshit right like i don't nobody possesses anybody whether the fucking contract you signed on wedding day says so or not yes it doesn't work that way right everybody can leave anybody can get a divorce people cheat. You can do it behind your back. Right. So it's, it's, it's a, it's the wrong idea

to think like that can't happen if I don't allow it. It fucking most certainly can and does happen even if you don't allow it in air quotes. So, all right, I'm going to allow that. What happens then if she does find somebody better or somebody that she connects with more? Ultimately, it's my job to say yes to that. And if I truly love her to say, that's okay. Would it be fucking hard? Yeah. Would have some shit to work through if that happened a hundred percent. But if it did happen to say, that's okay. And I love you anyways. You know, that's, that's the ultimate love. That is the love where you hold no record of wrong. That is unconditional, right? To say, like, I still love you anyways, and I'm still in support of you. And I'm still going to show up as

dad. And I'm still a part of this family. And even if you no longer want to be with me physically, you know, I'm going to remain in that love and remember all the reasons I love you, you know, and let and allow that that type of flexibility. Right. Now, when you actually look at it way. And it doesn't detract from all the ways that you're amazing. And one of the side effects that I found out firsthand, cause I was the first one to lead the way with a second partner was everything from the physical, from the sex to the emotional, to how we talk with one another or communication. It's strengthened what I thought of my wife. It highlighted everything about Natasha because it had contrast now. I didn't take it for granted.

It wasn't the same old song and dance. You talked about this once. I think it was Andy Golf and I was like, yeah, you wouldn't eat the same food the rest of your life every day. But here we go. We're the same person every day for the rest of our life, right?

You eat pizza three times a day for the rest of your life every day. But here we go. We're the same person every day for the rest of our life. Right. You pizza three times a day for the rest of your life. It might be your favorite food. Eventually going to be like, fuck man, I need something else, you know? But if you add it in a bacon cheeseburger and then you ate that for a few days and then you circled back to pizza,

you'd be like, Oh fucking pizza is great again. I fucking love, Holy shit. How did I forget about pizza? Right. So like, that's kind of the thing.

Like over time, things, not, not's kind of the thing, like over time things, not, not on her end per se, but on my end, like without realizing it, I was okay with having sex a couple of days a week. I was okay with that, you know? And that's, it's not something I'm proud of. I just thought like, Oh, this is 36, you know, like I'm a dad now I got work, I got other priorities and you know sex a couple days a week is fine will i have sex twice in the same day with my wife probably not but that's probably you know early in relationship and then having something to compare and contrast that with in a positive way not like who's better just like something that's different when i circle back to tosh it's

like oh my god you're the goddess i signed up for you're fucking are all the things we've worked through all the plant medicine ceremonies we've done all the hard conversations there's a level of mastery that we have with each other physically mentally and emotionally in the way we communicate in the way we love one another in the way we have sex with one another you know, and I can push all her buttons physically in a way that only I know how, because I have seven years of doing it and same with her for me. Right. And that gets highlighted with having the contrast. So that was a very interesting side effect that I was talking to Aubrey about. And he was like, yeah, man, yeah, he knew,

he knew, you know, but you don't know that until you go through it. And that's not to say that can't be done in monogamy, but you have to get creative, you know, and I think that it doesn't necessarily mean like pulling out leather and fucking plastics and shit like that. And, you know, bring out the gimp. I don't mean any of that shit, but I mean like, yeah, maybe, maybe that is the case, whatever the case is, you know, working towards being creative and not letting shit get stale. And that was something we had done that I didn't really realize. We had our favorite positions. We'd circle back to that 90% of the time. It's like we're never trying anything new. And then, hey, there's another dude in the mix. Yeah, I'm going to mix it up. I'm not going to go to the same old song and dance.

I'm not going to be a fucking dry guy over in the corner just doing the same song and dance every time we get together. Like, yeah, I got to treat it like I would a new relationship. And that's really cool, too, because I don't think there would have been a catalyst for me to want to fix a lot of things that were wrong in our relationship. Maybe when you go out, like, you wear your best clothes, shit like that, like the little thing. Like, you wouldn't show up on the first date, like in the tank top probably. Yeah, no doubt. No doubt. I want, I want to court her in a way that I haven't since like the first two years we were dating. And that's really cool. You know, it's, it's really cool to have that. It's really cool to, to take my wife on dates again. When for the longest time,

I said, we can't do that because of a, B and C, you know, like, gosh, it's too busy at work or we don't have enough money or whatever the case is. It's like, no, it's a fucking priority now. And yes, you can do that in monogamous relationships. You don't have to go down this road to get there. But the pressure, um, from that puts a lot of pressure on the cracks, not only in our relationship, but in our own selves, you know, like my feeling of self on the cracks, not only in our relationship, but in our own selves, you know, like my feeling of self-worthiness, my feeling of, am I valued or not by other people really was exposed through that, you know, and then, oh, this shit's coming up for me. Let me

work on that. And knowing that whatever trigger comes up, it's not the other person it's in me. So let me solve that and then circle back. And two, like we talked about with fighting and I'm getting long winded here in fighting. There was this catalyst to learn more about how I could be better, how I could recover faster, all these things like in open relationship, there's a catalyst to how do I communicate better? How do I learn about what this is? What are the right ways and wrong ways to do it? So that, that was the fire that lit under my ass to learn more about communication.

So I read Nonviolent Communication. I think it's an amazing book, monogamous or not, any relationship. Nonviolent Communication is amazing. Conscious Loving, another great book, monogamous or not, amazing. And then More Than Two, if you are thinking about some form of polyamory, like that's the book to read. It's a really good one. So all those came from the fires of open relationship

and I have gratitude for that too. You read a lot of books, man. Try. Yeah, you have like a book list somewhere, right? No, you shouldn't. Yes, sir. That would help us a lot of people. Make an Instagram post for God's sakes.

I'd really have to go through the library. Yeah, it's called library, by the library. Yeah. It's called a library, by the way. Library. Library. Kingberry. Are you, uh,

you know, there's always some concern and it's easy for people to just say, I don't have any concern, but like some concerns that people are just think you're an asshole or might, like you have a lot of great information to share. Do you think, uh, this might kind of blunt that and might kind of put you in a different category and have people view you a different way? Like, is there any concern about any of that?

Yeah, I mean, the same can be said for plant medicines. If I'm talking about fasting and ketogenic diets and hot and cold therapy and anything. Butt plugs. Oh, we're not supposed to talk about that. We're not talking about that yet. not talking about that yet. If I'm talking about all these things and then you hear me talk about a vision that I've had and somebody has never experienced any sort of plant medicines or visionary experiences, it's going to seem pretty fucking far out there. I realize that, you know, does that discredit what I'm saying? That's, that's your opinion if it does, right? But try a

cold bath and tell me if it works. It fucking works. Do Wim Hof breathing. Tell me if it works. It works. I know it does. And I know it because the people that have taught me it, there's science that backs it. But even besides that, like I said, feelings believing. You can feel it work. You can feel it move the bar and help you live a little bit better.

That's not to say that starting an open relationship works for everyone. It certainly doesn't. And that's not to say ayahuasca works for everyone. That's why I try to give caveats to those things because they can be powerful tools, but they're, they really aren't for everyone. They're really difficult. And, um, and you know, you just, it may not be something that you're interested in and that's okay. But in that, in that facet, like if, if you're not down to do plant medicines, that's cool, but get in a flip tank. Do some form of meditation.

Be comfortable in your own skin. Have some reflection time. That's important for everyone. So there is something for everyone in terms of when you tackle these things of optimizing physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. I guess being a fighter too, you're used to being different, right? You're kind of accustomed to being judged a certain way and you're used to being different, right? You're, you're kind of accustomed to being judged a certain way and you're, you're used to those kinds of things. So maybe this comes with some of the territory of trying some of the different things you're mentioning. Yeah. You know, and I mean, uh, fucking online is, is a great place for people to troll you no

matter what, you know, I mean, when I first got to on it, I was doing videos for them and, uh, obviously they have a quite, quite a large following, much larger than mine. So it was my first real taste of like, Oh shit, dude, people are coming out the woodwork here to talk shit about whatever. Yeah. And it's like,

all right, from that point of view, when I'm doing stuff, we're on it. Like, yeah, you have to be a little PC. You can't,

you can't really come out the, you know, you can't like a, or a Jane Silent Bob strike back. Like, fuck you. I'm coming to your house. You know, I got shit. But I like, uh, what did Jay and Silent Bob strike back? Like, fuck you. I'm coming to your house. You know, but I mean, on, on my own accounts, like most of the time I'll block people.

And then other times I've given out my work address and I'm like, yo man, you can come see me on the mats. Like I'm good with it. Um, no response. It's still none to date. Um, I think my whole point with any of these things that are a little out there is just that, and even, you know, like I'm not gay. Um, at least I don't think so. Maybe not yet. I think my whole point with any of these things that are a little out there is just that. And even, you know, like I'm not gay.

I don't think so. Maybe not yet. You might change my mind, Mark. I've tried to tell myself that all the time. I say it in the mirror five times a day. My point is that it's not, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if somebody's into that. It's okay.

Right? So like it's not going to ruffle't matter if somebody's into that. It's okay. Right. So like it's, it's not going to ruffle my feathers. If some guy likes cock, it's not going to ruffle my feathers. If a girl likes other, other women, like that doesn't, it shouldn't bother me. And it doesn't right. So it shouldn't bother me if somebody is in a marriage and wants to explore open relationship. It shouldn't bother me. If somebody wants to put a plant in their body and see if they can sort through some of their shit. I think that's the takeaway that I want people to have. There's 90% of this you might not say yes to. Whatever that 10% is, if you're still listening,

try that out and tell me how it works. Tell me how the cold death is. Tell me how intermittent fasting works for you. You could have the eight moon pies in your eight hours and see if you still lose weight, whatever the case is, you know, really it's not, if there's something that's working for me, I got to share it. And I can't silence myself because it's not cool with the masses. Right. And that's something Paul checked about people who blaze trails, take a lot of arrows in the back. Right. So I can't have fear around what the masses

will think when I talk about things like this, sharing that and not withholding that information. It's important to me and I don't need to give every detail. You know, Aubrey's big on giving a lot of details. Chris Ryan, not so much. Wednesday Martin, not so much. So just taking a page from both of them, where do I strike balance? You know, I don't need to tell the world every detail in my relationship. There's a lot of things that are just for us, right? There's a lot of visions that are just for me, whatever the Oracle says to me, it is just for me, but there are some things I can share, you know, and I think that's important that I do that. Fucking awesome. Very cool.

Anything else? Yeah. I'm curious, uh, back to the book thing, to be honest. Um, so you're all about like obviously lifelong learning, you know, not just going to college and stopping there, but continuing on. How often do you like, like how often, how many books do you maybe try and read a month? Do you have anything for that? Or are you just like what you're interested in? You just go towards that? Because you've, on this podcast, you mentioned probably over 13 or 14 books. Probably more. I mean, I'm a huge fan of audible, especially now with travel, you know,

like on this road trip, I'm listening to audible and listen to podcasts as well as I gear up for different, different people. Um, I mean, I probably, I had a goal that I started with when I was in fighting to finish one book a month and very quickly, especially with audible, I went to three or four, you know, and there's times too, where I take a break. Like I feel full and notebooks calling to me. So going back to that calling, if I feel like I've got some shit to work on and maybe I want to implement some of the stuff that I've learned, I might go through a period of not reading for, for two or three months. And then some shit will start to pile up on my desk and people like Aubrey or people, other Ben Greenfield,

different people that I really respect to be like, man, you got to read Mark Manson's new book. Everything is fucked. A story of hope, which I just finished. And it's awesome. Right? So like shit like that, like, all right, man, I'll check that out. And then you get it on audible and you're like, Oh cool. It's a short book. It's only seven hours. Right. And then somebody has been telling me about Mastery by Robert Green. And I get that on Audible.

I'm like, 16 hours. So for six months, I sat on that and didn't didn't listen to fucking one minute of it. And then finally, on this last trip, because I've been traveling so much out of the country, I started it and it's amazing. Right. I haven't finished it yet. How do you absorb some of this? Do you sometimes make a note or something? Like when you hear

something, you know, that really listening on audible, I'll take notes. And that's one of the things I've done with one more book for people is I will teach you to be rich by Ramit Sethi, who's a, it was just on Tim Ferriss's podcast. So check him out there. I'm going to have him on the show at the end of July. Fucking awesome. And I never, I mean, a lot of us that weren't taught how to do well with finances and I'm an entrepreneur. Now the podcast is in my name. I got to stand on my own two feet with sponsorship and things like that. And in a lot of ways it applies to what I'm doing right now, but it applies to a lot of people, whether you're having LLC or whether you work for a company, it doesn't matter. Like there's ways you can optimize your spending and optimize. The thing about money is it always applies to everything.

Same with the training that we do. They all kind of, they work together. Yeah, no doubt. So I listened to that book. I mean, I have a physical copy, but quite a bit of it I've listened to on audible and I just have notes, you know, that's something I don't journal. I don't write cause I have shitty handwriting and it's hard for me to reread it even a day later. It's really hard. And then I have to fucking really try to remember what I was, what I was saying. So I just type in notes on my iPhone. And if I get a really long notes, I'll just print it. I'll email it to myself and print it. And out it comes. It doesn't, it's not fancy. It's not double space and all this shit. And there's typos here and there, but it, um, it's a great way for me to take notes without

highlighting. So, you know, I learned auditorily in college very well. And if I was reading something and had to highlight and try to regurgitate that, I wouldn't do very well with it. But if I had a great teacher who was a good lecturer, I would listen and take notes while they were talking. And I could fucking, I could regurgitate all of that come test day. I knew exactly what they were talking about and when, because I could hear it in my head as I was reading the question in the test. So now I listen to audible and I take notes on my iPhone and I'll print them out here and there and review them. And that's a great way for me to digest and really process the information I'm getting. Have you ever had an IQ test before? Uh, I think I did when I was really young. My first,

uh, I had my first therapist when I was seven, my parents sent me to Dr. Kenneth Perlmutter because I was getting a lot of fights at school. And, um, and we did an IQ test. I don't remember what it was. It was good. It wasn't, I don't remember the number. It wasn't. Yeah, it was good. It was good. No, I don't know. It definitely wasn't astronomical. Yeah. All right. We got to head out of here cause we got to eat we gotta get some grub brother thank you so much for coming on the show good luck with baby number two wolf wolf might be on the way we'll see what happens

whether it's a boy or a girl strength is never a weakness weakness is never a strength catch you guys later