Mark Bell's Power Project - Mark Bell's Power Project EP. 232 - Shawn Stevenson

Episode Date: August 5, 2019

Shawn Stevenson is a Best Selling author of the book Sleep Smarter, host of The Model Health show, one of the top nutrition experts in the country, founder of Advanced Integrative Health Alliance, a functional medicine clinic. He’s been featured in Entrepreneur magazine, Men’s Health magazine, and other media platforms like ESPN. And on top of all that, he’s cured his own disease, degenerative bone disease, when all the doctors he’s seen have told him that it was a condition he’d have to live with for the rest of his life. ➢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

Just coming here was just an obvious. We would have moved sooner if my son, he was in high school though. So I just like let him finish. So you just moved from St. Louis to Los Angeles. That's a big, that's a big culture shock. Are you enjoying the food? Because I know like in St. Louis, it's way different because I used to live on the East Coast. I'm from New York originally.

And even when I go back home and visit family, you know, it's a big deal about like ordering food at restaurants and stuff like that because i'm from a kind of smaller area upstate new york and if you try to order like egg whites or you try to get something different yeah they kind of look at you twice but here in la it's easy to get good food right oh my gosh the access is incredible man so is this rolling okay sweet but yeah man i grew up on a lot of people say that they ate shitty growing up. But I mean, I'm like, you got a world record. You know, I didn't eat a salad until I was in my 20s was the first time I ate a salad. You know, and fortunately, my grandma snuck some broccoli in, like put some Velveeta cheese on it, you know, and got that in my body.

But like I had my birthday party at McDonald's, you know, just like, you know you know when you're younger your parents just want you to eat something a lot of times too and especially like grandparents because i live with my grandma until i was about seven you know it's like food is like a communication of love in a sense you know and so she just wanted me to eat eat stuff i like so i had a lot of fish sticks and macaroni and cheese and just you know kind of had that whole thing. And when I think about going to a restaurant, I think about pole folks. I don't know if you know that restaurant. So they might not have had one on the East Coast, but it was just like, you know, fried fish. It sounds like good eating to me. Yeah. Oh, my God, man. But they had all

you can eat shrimp. And I was just shoveling it into my mouth, man. Like I remember the waitress coming by the table and, you know, I had gobbled up all the shrimp and then she thought we were stealing it and it's just like pointing his little kid he's like no it's this little he's like a little garbage can yeah what do you think of uh like you know there's a lot being made and i've heard you mention this a bunch of times but i've heard you mention being like neurotic you know towards like what kind of water you're drinking and what kind of food you're eating. And you're a parent of three. I'm a parent of two.

And man, I got a hard time. I don't say anything. I bite my tongue, you know, because I've taught my kids since they were very young about nutrition. And now they're teenagers and we're getting into their teenage years. And I'm kind of like, I'm just going to like let them. They should be able to make their own decisions now, you know? So I'm trying to let it go, but I hear them order Coke and I'm like, I don't, I can barely hear it. You know, I could barely stand it. How do you, how do you handle it for yourself and for your family? Sure. You know, what's so awesome, man. And I would, I'm so grateful for my older self, my older version of

me, because I was neurotic. Like I went all the way to the other extreme from like eating the shittiest food possible to, you know, everything had to be a certain way. Even my water, like you mentioned, like I was going to a spring and gathering water, like some kind of, you know, what is that? Michael Landon. What does that show? The Prairie Little House on the Prairie. You know what I'm saying? So i was going to a pond and stuff i always think about that intro to that show do you remember that and me turning the tv off but anyways um no disrespect to anybody who loved that show but yeah man i got so neurotic i did um but that's a great thing too is that i'm willing to experiment so i did like five years vegan, three years raw food. Just I didn't eat anything cooked, not a cooked morsel of food past my lips. And I live in Missouri. We get hardcore

winters too, you know, and just like, and, you know, I did keto for a year. I did paleo for three years or two years. I did like Mediterranean diet for two years. Like I'll get in and experiment and do it for a long run. And I found that like we mentioned before we started recording, like there's this happy medium, you know, because there's so much wonderful food to experience. There's a lot of new stuff too, that we don't really know what it does yet as far as the food is concerned, but not all that stuff is bad bad like even a twinkie in the right context can be supportive of life like if it's a straight up like zombie apocalypse type situation give me that fucking twinkie i'm a believer too and like you know a little bit of harm can sometimes do

you some good and then plus you know i hear you talk a lot about the uh the hormones in the body and uh i'm talking about um you know, kind of satisfying these, these needs and urges and Instagram kind of playing into being addictive and things like that. Well, these foods are addictive, too. And it's like, well, shit, is it okay to hit these pleasure sensors every every once in a while? Like, I'm sure it's probably, probably somewhat beneficial. I mean, we have that ice cream Chuck mentality from the time we're a kid, we hear that noise, we hear that music and that plays in our head and it gets excited. People have kind of the same feeling towards like a hot dog at a ball game or these different things, right? There's certain

foods at Christmas, certain foods at Thanksgiving. And it's like, man, if we pull all those away, are we doing too much to ourselves? Right. That's taking away life. You know what I'm saying? And, you know, we all have those things. And if you, if you, if you really want to be honest about it, if we are looking at what our ancestors were doing, they were driven by pleasure as well. They were looking for it. It just wasn't as accessible, you know, because we have those parts of our brain and that dopamine pathways. It's not about, because it's in the media. Now it's like about, it's just pleasure related neurotransmitter hormone that would, that we've been talking about, but it's really about,

it drives us to seek for things to give us pleasure. And so, um, get, that's what's really helped us to evolve too, is constantly seeking for better, seeking for more. So it's not a bad thing. But I do really, I think the most successful people that I've met, and I've met some really, really crazy successful people, they do have that delayed gratification kind of built in. 99% of them. You know, because we do know that there's a time and place for that stuff. Because even the Twinkie example, I don't want to feel like shit, but if it's like survival and Twinkie can last for 200 years,

you know, like that's an option. But on a day-to-day basis, I enjoy feeling good too. And we can have that marriage of like stuff that tastes incredible but also is good for you too. And I think that's one of the biggest problems in nutrition too is that we're led to believe that food that's good for you too. And I think that's one of the biggest problems in nutrition too, is that we're led to believe that food that's good for you tastes shitty. And so like, even I remember when I

made some of the initial changes in my nutrition and we were having a barbecue at my little brother's place. He was like, I heard you were eating organic. And I was like, yeah, like, what's the problem? He's like, I don't want none of that organic shit and i was like oh you don't want the foods with the pesticides herbicides rodenticides and fungicides and like the artificial sweeteners and you know i was like that's all it is it's just

food it's not it's just the label you know and so but now today my brother's like eating a lot of organic food and like paying more attention to what he's eating. And he's doing great. Like physically, he's a lot healthier than he was at that time, too. You know, and so even with my kids, it's it's the environment. And I heard you talk about this, too, on your show. The environment really sets up your performance and your habits. And so he's got he knows what it's like when he eats something and he doesn't feel well as a result. Like he's got that direct monitor, you know, because he had so much good food infused into his system. He knows and he's going to go out and kick it like his whole thing was like I hop. I think, you know, he knows that there's a balance.

So like the next day he'll like make himself a green drink or something to try to, you know, get get a little bit cleaner inside. But, yeah, you've got to get just instill the habits as best as you can. And then just understand, like, there's going to be these different things that we could take advantage of and experiment with. But when that becomes the rule and not the exception, that's when we can get into trouble. It's so hard, you know, because some of the people that are speaking and some of the people that have great books out there have come from a background where they have suffered, you know, have great books out there have come from a background where they have suffered, you know, they ate poorly and then it somehow showed up medically somewhere to where it was almost like they reached bottom or something like that. You know, they reached this point where they're like,

okay, this doesn't make any sense. I need to research this. I know that's true with like Rob Wolf and Dave Asprey and the list goes on and on yourself, right? Yeah. This goes on and on. But for some people, some people are like myself. Like I could go, we could go to like Brazil and I could eat like out of a trash can and probably be totally fine. I could eat like donuts and pizza. Yeah, I don't know.

Like, I mean, every once in a while, something will rattle me or bother my stomach or something. But for the most part, I can handle it. And so the only thing that food ever really led to was just me being heavier. And then me being heavier also caused sleep problems. And then once the sleep problems started to hit, that's when things started to slide downhill. So how do you kind of maybe instill some of these disciplines in somebody who, let's say you have a guy that comes to you and he's six foot 175.

He's not fat, but he does want want to make change doesn't want to feel better and he doesn't really notice a difference from he eats ice cream you know one night he eats uh a salad the next night he doesn't notice the difference between the two how do you kind of get them to buy in on this yeah yeah yeah that's the thing it's always looking for leverage you know so it might be he wants to have more energy to you know perform better in his job or you or, you know, maybe he wants to get a little bit leaner, whatever the case might be. And so in my practice, I would always find that leverage point, you know, because people are not going to ask questions or be researching this stuff if they're not interested in becoming better. You know, and so once I find that leverage point, I'll just like use that angle, you know.

And so for me, a lot of people come into my office and they're the main thing. The number one thing was like, what can I take to have more energy? What can I take? What can I take? What can I take? And it just fascinated me how little people understood or respected their sleep, you know, because that is the thing that kind of jacks us into the, you know, the recharging station. And it's probably the biggest driver of our hormone functions of everything. I like what you said right there, recharging station. That's real clear demonstration of like powering up. Yeah. And you know what?

And I'm very analytical about this stuff and I'm very open. But I just think if it wasn't a necessity, we would have evolved out of it a long time ago. But I just think if it wasn't a necessity, we would have evolved out of it a long time ago. It's just something that cannot be replaced by any kind of supplement or any type of activity. You know, when I was sleep depriving myself, when I would exercise, I'd feel better. It's a temporary thing. Then I feel like shit the next day. And I got to try to drag myself into the gym to get that boost of, you know, adrenaline and cortisol so that I can just feel up and ready to go again. And I just should have took my ass to sleep. But I was under this impression that because I was eating so clean, I didn't need as much sleep because that's what these experts were saying. And so with the different people coming into my office, whether it was for weight loss, whether it's for, you know, heart disease, diabetes, we had about 80% reversal rate for type two diabetes. And the biggest thing over time and time again, when I couldn't get people nutritionally and through exercise to

get their blood sugar normalized, they might've been on metformin or even insulin. Sometimes the biggest thing that I found was like the hole in people's game. And it took me five years in my practice before I asked what was up with their sleep. And so just to give you an example. So during sleep is when we, let's just keep this on track of just like body composition. So the University of Chicago did a study and they put test subjects on a calorie restricted diet, which is, you know, run of the mill stuff, but they wanted to find out how much sleep affected their body composition. And so one phase of the study, they allowed them to get eight and a half hours of sleep and tracked all their metrics.

Another phase of the study, they sleep deprived them and took away three hours of their sleep. So now they're getting five and a half hours of sleep. Same exact diet, no more exercise on either one of the different sleep metrics. They compiled all the data and they found when they were getting adequate sleep, they lost 55% more body fat. Wow. Not weight. Actual body fat.

Simply from sleeping. And that just like, I couldn't believe that this wasn't like front page news. Like this doesn't make sense. Because we believe in our culture, in order to get something, we have to do something. And sleep is like the opposite. You don't do anything. So it's kind of hard to wrap our minds around. But especially today, it is one of the most difficult things. You actually do

have to proactively do it because you got to shut down the social media. You got to stop talking shit to whoever you're talking shit to. You got to put down whatever, you know, your TV show, you know, we can binge all this stuff and you got to go to sleep, you know, and then you get all these benefits. And so people are like working so hard in the gym and missing out on this incredible leverage point. And so my question is always how, why does that work? Number one, this is when you get the, the biggest by far amount, the secretion of human growth hormone. And especially in that first kind of phase of your initial sleep, you get a big, like your brain, you're kind of skeeting it out throughout the day

at different, why did I say skeeting? Because you're from St. Louis, right? Different spots throughout the day. But when you go to sleep, you get the biggest secretion of human growth hormone. And also melatonin. So we know it's this glorified sleep hormone. Man, it is powerful, man.

It's a powerful anti-cancer hormone if you just google um uh melatonin and cancer and just like go down that rabbit hole but as far as fat loss and this was in the international journal of obesity it might be international journal of obesity research uh if people want to go back and look at any of this stuff but they found that melatonin triggers the activation and production of more brown fat, right? The brown adipose tissue. You probably talked about it on your show at some point. So this is the type of fat that burns fat.

And white adipose tissue is the stuff we're usually trying to get rid of. But adults, we typically don't have that much brown fat. It's mostly like by our collarbones, a little bit throughout our back, kind of down our spine. But melatonin, when you're getting adequate sleep and you need darkness to produce adequate melatonin, by the way,

it gives you a huge advantage because your metabolic rate is just going to go up. You're going to burn more calories just sitting around doing nothing if you have more brown. Correct. Room temperature can affect the brown fat as well, right? Exactly.

Yeah. So you want it to be a little bit cooler. And so one more and i'll i could just talk about every single freaking hormone but another one that's really fascinating is and a lot of people are talking about this now is leptin and so that's heavily influenced by your sleep and leptin is a big satiety hormone it's kind of what it's attributed to but it's also involved in regulating your metabolism and fat loss too and so stanford university researchers found that just one night of sleep deprivation attributed to, but it's also involved in regulating your metabolism and fat loss too. And so Stanford University researchers found that just one night of sleep deprivation can make your leptin levels tank and increase your levels of ghrelin, which is this kind of glorified hunger hormone. And so I know this to be true. When I don't sleep well, I tend to be

a little bit hungrier and I tend to want more snacky kind of foods. I want more sugar, you know? And so we're putting ourselves at a metabolic disadvantage and also behavioral disadvantage when we're sleep deprived. When if we just get enough sleep. And that's another thing that I could talk about. It's like it's bullshit to say everybody needs to get eight hours of sleep. That's just not true. You know, that's a it's part of your unique metabolic fingerprint, how much sleep you need. Probably not a bad idea to tell people to try to lay down for about eight hours.

Yeah. But they still may not be getting the quality sleep because they might not be following some of the other principles like shutting down their phone at the right time and some of those things. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Because for me. And so when my book Sleep Smarter came out, and this has been about three years now, it's international bestseller. It's like 20 different languages translated.

It was a conversation that needed to be had, right? And I didn't, well, I kind of knew, but my publisher didn't. I was like, I don't know. We should do a fitness book or whatever. And I think that the reason that it became so pervasive in our culture and just spurred all these different conversations is because of the impact that it has on hormones. And also at not one point did I say you need to sleep more. I said you need to sleep better. And so what does that look like? You just mentioned like our tech devices. That's probably the biggest reason that people are sleep deprived today. And it's not just because of the activity of being on your phone. I talked earlier about that dopamine pathway. So being on your phone and dopamine is like an antithesis of melatonin. Like if you're kind of hopped up on driving and

seeking, like why would you want to go to sleep? Right. It's kind of like a slot machine in your pocket in a sense, because when you're on, so dopamine drives us to look for stuff. Social media is perfect for that because there's always something to find, right? Every time you scroll, you find something and your brain keeps saying keep looking keep looking and you'd go crazy if you just like how many girls butts can you look at on instagram butts and food you know that's pretty much the so here's the thing is that you go crazy if you just kept searching and you didn't find anything and so we get a reward from our opioid system when we find something, right? So you scroll and you find, scroll, find, scroll, find, every single time

you get hooked. And so that's, yes, that's one reason. But the other reason that probably everybody listening has heard something about now, and I've been talking about this for about five years, is the impact that the light just coming from our phone has on suppressing melatonin. So Harvard researchers found that, and this is an approximation. I'm getting confused sometimes on the different colors of light. So what light is this coming from our phone? So when we see our phones or our televisions, it looks like this spectrum of all these different colors,

but the predominant kind of, and a great example is like if you're in the dark and then you walk by somebody who's on their phone, it's kind of like a great example is like if you're in the dark and then you walk by somebody who's on their phone it's kind of like this white yeah like an airplane right it's like right like some alien shit right and they're like that's what that that's the strongest light and that light is very similar to daytime light so basically it's sending a signal to our brain telling our brains that it's effectively daytime so telling your your internal organs your endocrine system produce more daytime hormones your body's kind of a machine yeah and it'll throw off that that timing of the machine right the parts working together so number one

so the research found you do in fact produce more cortisol which is another uh antithesis well it's like a inverted relationship with melatonin. If cortisol is high, melatonin is suppressed. And so what the Harvard research found was that basically every hour you're on your device at night, it doesn't affect you during the day. It suppresses melatonin for 30 minutes. And so just say you're on your device for three or four hours in the evening, you're suppressing melatonin for about two hours. So you might, you might physically go and lay down and be unconscious, but if you're not producing melatonin, you're not going to go through your sleep cycle effectively. And that's what sleep is really about is going through those sleep cycles efficiently and effectively so that you're fully recovered, right? Mind, body, the whole deal. And so what

does that look like? Basically each of your sleep cycles, um, it's about depending on the person. Is there four different sleep cycles is that right it depends on which experts you talk to but yeah basically you know right now there's still a lot of stuff that's unknown huh yeah again we're all still trying to figure this stuff out but what we know is how do we know somebody's asleep because it's really weird you know it's just a weird thing uh is we can see the changes in the brain waves and so right now we're in like a normal waking state which is beta we can get in changes in the brainwaves. And so right now we're in like a normal waking state, which is beta. We can get in a little bit of gamma. It's crazy watching

somebody fall asleep. You know, like you tease your buddy, like falls asleep, like you're on a road trip or whatever. And you tease him and you watch him and you watch the eyes and it looks crazy. They turn like a zombie. It's so weird, man. It's so weird. And so we go from that normal waking state of beta and then we transition into alpha, and then we go to theta, then delta is when we're in deep kind of, the deepest anabolic sleep is when we're in delta. And so that's known as deep sleep. I find it really cool that you have dove in and actually done a lot of the research and

combed over it, and then chewed it up and spit it out and the stuff that people can understand a lot easier. That helps all of us out so much. Have you seen much research, though, with people that are fairly healthy, that are people that are training, people that are eating? Because, you know, we get the eight hour prescription all the time, eight, nine hours. People are saying eight or nine hours, eight or nine hours. Is it maybe possible that people that are just taking better care of themselves, maybe they're getting the appropriate amount of sleep when they sleep less because maybe they're getting into deep sleep or whatever the, what is the most preferred form of sleep? Is it deep sleep or REM sleep? Are you supposed to kind of sprinkle through all of them?

There's benefits in each stage. So we'll just break it down in these two categories, REM sleep and non-REM sleep so non-REM sleep would be the deep anabolic sleep so this one you're producing the most anabolic hormones HGH I mentioned earlier but with REM sleep rapid eye movement sleep this is when you're dreaming but this is also when your brain does a process called memory processing and so this is why the stuff that people are listening to right now it gets converted into your your short-term memory. Because a lot of stuff we pick up is just like here today, gone today. But this can get converted into short-term memory, which then can get converted to your long-term memory. It just basically gets filed away in a stronger position in your brain.

But if you miss your REM sleep, you're not really going to be able to anchor in and pull in that information. A good example is if we drink too much before going to sleep, there's whole movies about this now, right? Where you don't remember what happened. And this is because your REM sleep is disrupted. And like the whole concept of a hangover. And so what we see when we drink alcohol before close to bedtime is it's called a REM rebound effect. And researchers at WashU and St. Louis kind of put out some great data on this. And so basically your REM sleep is suppressed. And then boom, it'll hit a spike and it'll try to get balanced out later as you sleep more.

This is why it's like sleep it off. But, you know, a lot of times you don't remember what happened because you're not able to process, you know, that information. And so same thing, you you know different stages of sleep with REM sleep and anabolic sleep is some different changes happen with your immune system a lot of researchers now is like the big frontier with health and nutrition is like the gut that's huge man like when you're awake it's just more and more opportunity like your your gut bacteria have a cycle as well like uh they have circadian rhythm and so there's like a changing of the guard that takes place when you go to sleep the body's so much smarter

than we're going to be able to figure out i think right yeah oh man we'll never know it's it's hard to get down to all of it have you seen much research still done on kind of healthier uh people you know where um because like i'm kind of mentioning you know maybe maybe it's possible some people just need less sleep because i i like your message of, hey, maybe it's not really just about sleeping more, maybe it's about sleeping better. Yeah, oh, there, I've seen this, absolutely, you know, some folks are getting six hours of high quality sleep, where they're going officially through their sleep cycles, can feel and perform and look so much better than somebody who's getting eight, nine hours of shitty sleep,

you know, for sure. It's absolutely a fact. But, you know, there's part of this is genetic, you know, how much sleep you need. But we also know that epigenetics is really the dominant, you know, science that we're talking about today. And so there's so much you could do in your lifestyle that can affect how much sleep you need. Have you noticed a big difference between men and women? Because most of the people I've dealt with and helping them with weight loss over the years, it seems like I mainly deal with guys and it seems like their girlfriend or wives, they conk out pretty easy. And for whatever reason, a lot of the guys, maybe it's just the men I've dealt with, have a much harder time sleeping. Have you found that to be true? Absolutely. Yeah. That's,

that's the fact. Do you have any, any research or any information on what the difference might be? Well, first of all, my close personal research, my wife, you know, it's like a superpower, you know what I'm saying? Like she, she almost fell asleep on the car over here, you know, like she could just sleep anytime, anywhere, you know, she's sleep, you know, and she could just, just sleep anytime anywhere yeah you know she's sleep you know and she could just and this a great research for people is um uh the power of when it says dr dr michael bruce i almost wonder and this is very a huge generalization but like at least in my household my wife is more task you know she's very task driven she has a task in front of her and yeah she's a task driven. She has a task in front of her and she's a task master. And then as a mother, she's that way too.

She can handle five, six, seven, eight, nine things. I know from I'm guilty of this myself saying, you know, two or three things or four things come my way. I'm kind of getting a little tired from the day and I want to kind of push that thing off to the next day. And maybe some of the men are having a hard time because they don't complete all the shit that they want to complete in a given day. Oh, I feel that too.

Yes, definitely. There's a kind of psychological aspect to it. But, you know, if we really break it down, this does have something to do with the sex hormones too. You know, estrogen tends to be more of a calmative, balanced hormone. Women have more of it than we do. We have both. All of us do. of it than we do. We have both, all of us do. And there are many times during the month where women actually have more testosterone in their system than they do estrogen, which a lot of people don't

know. But this is also kind of a call to arms. I think this is a good time to talk about testosterone, which this is the number, I'd say the number one hormone that's, it's tough to say. It's up there with dependency on sleep. Right. And so I cited a study that they had young guys, you know, they were like college age guys and they sleep deprived them, allowing them to only get five hours of sleep for an extended period, maybe like two weeks. And their testosterone dropped to levels that they were like 30, 40, 50 years older. Wow. You know, and so it's kind of like that's another thing you're jacking into, you know, like you're going to the refill station for your testosterone while you're sleeping as well. But just that imbalance with guys having more

testosterone, which is kind of get up and go aggressive, drive, stay awake and execute kind of hormone. Yeah, that's the obvious thing, you know. And so I'm not saying to have more estrogen to sleep better. I'm just saying to have a little bit more balance in that, you know. And a big part of that is just like, you know, with our nutrition and our lifestyle, training, you know, all those things can help. But even the timing of those things, if you're trying to get a good night's sleep and you're just wrapping up jujitsu class at 9 p.m.,

like you got to shift your priorities, you know, like I'm not saying to not do your jits class because that might be your passion, but maybe go to a different place or take an earlier class if you can. You know, it just depends on your priorities because that in fact is going to spike your cortisol. You're obviously going to be under some lights. Your melatonin is going to be suppressed, you know, just, and these are the crazy things, man. People come into my office and I have them switch that one thing, like be done working out at six and all their problems that they were having with their sleep or just, and then I'm like the smart guy. It's just, it's just simple stuff. You had them wake up earlier perhaps, and now they're more tired. And so they can get to bed, get to sleep a little bit easier. Plus they expended

some energy. It all sounds very, right. It sounds, it sounds pretty like cut and dry. It's, it's interesting when you start to somebody comes to you and they're like hey man i'm heavier than i want to be i need help and you write out your rx your prescription is like hey you need to sleep better and they come back and they're like i haven't lost any weight yet and you're like you need to sleep better and they come back and you need to sleep better and you keep saying it over and over again you finally start to get them to sleep better. And this is something I've been communicating with people for a long time

and not so much about sleep, and I don't know nearly the amount that you know when it comes to sleep. But what I do know is that so many people in their effort to lose weight or in their effort to feel healthier, feel better, they're going to the gym and they're really working their faces off. And they are sleep deprived. And not only are they sleep deprived and working their faces off, but they're also calorie deprived.

And so each day is a really hard battle for them. They might do pretty good for two days or three days. Then they fall off. They go out with their buddies, have a drink or whatever it might be. And they kind of keep repeating the cycle. And they really are working really, really hard. And I would say the majority of the time, they're probably putting in, you know, 70 80% of the time, they're probably pretty good. Yeah, but pretty good. Isn't enough to kind of swing all those hormones in your favor to get you going. And what I've been trying to share with people

is like, let's figure out your sleep. Let's figure out your food. I have people eat more and they come back to me and like, I cannot even understand how any of this is working because it doesn't make sense from what we hear with the calories in, calories out debate. You being a nutritionist, kind of where do you stand in terms of nutrition and what do you recommend?

Oh man, this is this is huge, man. I got into the focus on sleep out of necessity. I just didn't see anything in the market that made sense for people. But man, for me, food was my bridge to changing my life, you know, and I think it's a really powerful on ramp because it's something we all do and we interact with, you know, multiple times a day, consciously. Well, unconsciously, too, sometimes. But, you know, this is a very simple thing. When I went to a traditional university and I was taught by my overweight professor to have people expend more calories than they take in. Thermodynamics. Food pyramid. The whole thing. Like it was strong. Seven to 11 servings of whole grains a day.

And my man was following this advice. He was working hard. He didn't want to be in the state that he was in. And for me, I didn't even know that food mattered like that. I took the class because I thought that this would make me more fit. I thought food was about fitness. I didn't really get the health aspect. I just want to point out one thing, and I mention this all all the time is that people in fitness aren't even in the shape that

they want to be in so it's just something to always think about like people say oh i don't want to come to your gym because you know everybody at your gym is super strong well everybody at my gym isn't where they want to be anyway because everybody always wants to be a little bit better but there's so many people as you're mentioning your professor he had the knowledge and he was working really hard and he still wasn't where he still wasn't where he wanted to be. And I'm not even talking so much about the guy who wants to go from, you know, 8% to 5% body fat. I'm just saying like people are completely out of shape running on the treadmill every day. Yeah, absolutely, man. And I just want, the reason that I brought that up is I want us to

have a little bit more open-mindedness to because if something's not working as easy as it sounds as smart as it sounds it's very hard if especially if you're bought into something to change you know to to try something different you know like he's he's a doctor he's been indoctrinated like this is the way this is how stuff is done and so to go back on all that training and all like you spent six figures to get this education. And then now there's, you know, a carnivore diet. What? Like those are fighting words for my guy, you know. And so anyway, so that's what I was taught. And as I had people do that early on in my career, some people would get results, but the majority of people didn't. some people would get results, but the majority of people didn't. And I had to take a good look at myself, like, what am I doing wrong and not helping these people?

Because we tend to blame the person too. Like you must be lying. You're not working hard enough, whatever. When it really, it's me, because I should make this easy in a sense for them to follow because I'm making sure that they're enjoying the process. That's just my kind of belief. I believe that 100%. When somebody comes back to you,

it's actually a lot of times I find it's the people that you give advice to and you almost forgot you even said anything to them. It might have been something in passing, and they come back and they're like, hey, man, you helped me lose 20 pounds. And you're like, hey, what did I tell you? Because you want to kind of get the feedback and figure out how they jumpstarted their weight loss. But a lot of times it's, um, you know, just something quick

that you reference to them. They went and they, and they actually, they, they put it into practice. They put it into play and they, they got it done. Absolutely. Absolutely. So with the, with the calorie complex, first of all, this is a pretty new invention by the way. And when calories were discovered, it wasn't, they weren't doing this for anything related to nutrition. All right. This was something that was they were looking at in terms of like physics. And, you know, but basically it's a it's a unit of measurement that we use, but it is so inaccurate. It is so inaccurate. It's almost crazy. Right. Because now we don't even have because what you would use is bomb kilometer reader. Right. Where it's just like you put the food into this container, you see, but you burn it and then you see how much it heats the water, basically. And. First of all, food doesn't work like that. You know what I'm saying?

Like when you eat it, you're not like lighting something on fire inside of a box wrapped, surrounded by like metal, right? It's a whole different experience. It's so dynamic and complex. We can both eat the same 2000 calories and I might gain weight on that diet. You might lose weight just because of how your metabolism is set up. We all have a unique metabolic fingerprint that's going to determine what the calories do that we consume. Now, I'm not saying the calories don't matter. This is a unit of measurement that gives us a baseline. It's the only measurement we got. Right. But we cannot just like fully make it a religion. You know, that's dangerous because, again, it's going to work for some people because some people listening, there was like, I just measure my calories, count my macros and I win, you know, but that doesn't happen for everybody.

We got to understand that because, again, we blame the other person. So I just matter of fact, I'm going to pull this study up right now. It's the points that you're bringing up are really interesting. I think, you know, a great place to try to get somebody is to, you know, have them say they lost 20 pounds and it felt easy to them. You know, that's that's always the hope. That's always the goal. And I think that's why there's so much dispute going back and forth between carnivore diet. You know, if it fits your macros, there's all these different diets and people are getting excited.

But it's usually like a guy like myself who utilized a low carb diet. I used to weigh 330 pounds and I nowadays weigh in the two thirties and I feel so darn good about it. I want to share it with everybody. And then sometimes you're thinking, Hey, the only way I can like share this and get people excited about it. If I, so I bash everybody else over the head with a baseball bat while, you know, while I'm doing it, but it's, I realized too, it's, it's, uh, there's not a reason to do that because the people that are counting their calories, if they got healthier, then let it be. it's, I realized too, it's, it's, uh, there's not a reason to do that because the people that are counting their calories, if they got healthier, then let it be. That's great. They

got in better shape. That's cool. That's why you're good at what you do as well. It's just like, we go through that phase of like wanting to bash everybody else. But yeah, man, there's so many different paths to the goal. So listen to this. So this was a study, this was published in the journal Cell, peer-reviewed prestigious journal. They found that the presence of a certain type of gut bacteria actually blocked people's intestines

from absorbing as many calories from the food they ate. The bacteria in your gut determine how much is getting shuttled from your gut, which your gut in a sense is kind of like, I'm not saying it's not you,

but it's like a tube from your mouth to your butthole that with the stuff you put in there, not all of it is gonna get into your kind of cellular matrix, you know, and get into your general circulation. And so what they did was, and so, oh, by the way, so first, initially it was a study done on mice.

This is groundbreaking. And then research conducted at the Wiseman Institute of Science confirmed that there's a specific bacteria that are more prevalent in folks who are overweight and or insulin resistant. And so what they did was they took that the fat bacteria from those people and implanted it into mice and the mice became obese. Right. And then the, the mice that received bacteria from people who are not overweight, that didn't have this particular bacteria didn't gain any weight, you know? So again, we need to open our minds a little bit in the calorie conversation. And, you know, even there's a, the, the thermodynamics of food, that conversation as well, you know, the more protein you eat, probably 20% to 30% of the protein, calories are going to be burned just to digest the protein.

And maybe somewhere around 10% with carbohydrates. Mark Sisson says we shouldn't even count protein, period. He said it shouldn't even be on the caloric index at all. He says let's just count it as zero because of, you know, it's 50% bioavailable. And then he said it does require a lot for your body to break it down. So it's like, maybe he's right. Maybe it's only one calorie or something. Maybe it should be different.

Yeah. So there's two. Another one is, you know, fiber, right? So when we're using the B bomb kilometer um to measure this not taking into account the fiber that's there that's getting burnt up you know because our body doesn't burn the fiber up like that we don't receive calories from certain types of fibers as well you know like none of that stuff is being taken into consideration you know so yeah man um i'm much more on the are you on are you kind of on board with like

whatever you can get to work yeah absolutely we got to find what works for you which is going to be different from person to person but that's what takes a lot more like personal responsibility and patience you know experimenting but this can give you the tools so that you can adapt because i promise you this thing whatever you're doing now that's working, it's not going to work for you forever. You know? Another Einstein quote. You know, what got me here won't take me there kind of thing. Oh shit.

I thought it was like. He said it better than that. Okay. All right. Cause I was like, man. No, but you're, that's, that's a hundred percent correct. No, what's, what's going to get you to this next level. What's going to get your podcast in St.

Louis to a certain level. It's going to be different than what's going to get it to the next level here in Los Angeles, right? That's facts, man. But that takes us to get into that discomfort. It takes us to, you know, kind of break away from the structure that we once had. All of that stuff doesn't necessarily feel good. But what I encourage people to do and what I've done in my life, again, thanks to the old me, is I've kind of, I'm not going to say fallen in love with being uncomfortable, but I kind of enjoy it, you know. I found a way to, like, change. Because I think a lot of the things we experience in our lives

is a result of the labels we give it, the language we put in our minds. So if you slap discomfort on it, then you're going to feel it more versus me making it like, oh, this is an adventure, you know, and just kind of label it differently. You know, and like we were just talking about, I just spoke at the biohacking conference and being on stage was like a thousand people, whatever it was. I used I was scared shitless speaking in front of three people my first time speaking in public outside of like school class stuff. And but now it's just like literally it's like breathing to me you know and kind of getting into that discomfort and and and stretching yourself it's like just it's like putting in reps in a sense you know and you just build up that muscle and like i love it i look for those opportunities to put myself in other

people are listening right now they're like, they're getting nervous just thinking about it. Yeah. And so if you label it in your mind that you're scared, I've got anxiety, not to say that those things aren't real, but those are words that we give to describe sensations and feelings. And you could turn, and I'm just giving an example, you could say, you know, instead of saying that I'm nervous, you could say that I'm really, really excited, you know. And it even has a different tone to it. Like you start to just immediately feel a little bit different. And then it's just like, am I lying to myself?

I get to make it. All of we're all lying to ourselves in a sense, you know, like we're all just making stuff up and creating meaning out of things for ourselves to feel good. But you can use the power of your mind purposefully instead of just letting it happen on its own automatically by your environment. You're a great speaker. I got the opportunity to listen to some of your stuff just via YouTube. And it was very heartfelt. I thought it was great that every story that or every message that you start, you start off with a story. And that's what people people want to want that kind of personal connection. I think you start off with a story or like a stat, one out of every three people are going to, you know, and then it's like people start looking around the room or you share a personal story. You've, you've had a lot of like health complications when you were young, like your

hip basically just exploded when you were doing some sprints, right? You're doing track, right? Yeah. And I mean, well, how did, how did any of this come to be? Do you think it was hereditary or nutrition or combinations? Man, you know what's so funny is like we started off talking about what did I eat when I was a kid, you know, and I was made out of fish sticks, man. I was like, I had at least a good like 30 cc's of ketchup in my veins at all times you know what i'm saying like i was made out of that yeah so my bones like i did have um i did have a genetic predisposition like yours was for becoming overweight it wasn't necessarily like people having all these other issues that was what your genetic predisposition was right but you can kind of flip that thing on and off right in a sense and so for me it was my bones and 16 years old

track practice 200 meter sprint as i'm this is just a time trial right it's just my coach is on the other side i'm coming off the curve into the straightaway like you're leaning a little bit and then boom you know my the iliac crest broke and i didn't know i'd never been injured before and i just thought maybe i pulled a muscle but i couldn't get my legs to turn over like it was really annoying and i was just like trying to like fix it or and i came to practice like two more days before actually man got checked out typical guy yeah yeah oh i got this and so i got the x-ray done and there it was my the tip of my hip bone was just like floating off his face. And I had about half a dozen more injuries that just like, you know, I just thought for sure I'm going to play at the next level and all this stuff.

And but that just squashed my whole ambition. And but it was like the best thing that happened to me. It wasn't until four years later, I was 20 when I got the diagnosis, degenerative bone disease, which is basically kind of like a form of arthritis. When you're 20, it doesn't make sense. And degenerative disc disease. So my introvertible discs were rapidly deteriorated. So much so.

The doctor told you this when you went to the doctor and they found the results? So I got an MRI done. I went in because I was having leg pain. And I was like, he was having leg pain. I didn't. And I was like, he was like testing, doing different tests. And then he told me he's going to send me in for an MRI of my spine. I literally am like, but my leg hurts. Like, what the, what do you mean?

Yeah. Because I didn't get it there. Any of this was connected. And so he put the MRI out for me to see. And he showed me my, I had two ruptured discs as well because of they were so degenerated l4 l5 s1 and he told me that i had the spine of an 80 year old man when i was 20 not a healthy 80 year old man because i think mark citizen's like maybe 10 years from that his disc gonna look fantastic but anyway so um yeah i i was happy because i was like okay now

i know what's wrong. But when I asked him what can we do to fix it, he looked at me like I was from another planet. He was like, there's nothing to do about this. This is just something that happens. And I'm sorry it happened to you. And it was one of the biggest miracles of my life because I don't know where the question came from because I had no idea that it mattered. But I asked him, does this have anything to do with what I'm eating? And I mean, he looked at me like I literally just came from, you know, another from Uranus. Area 51.

And so he looked at me like, just like this has, and he told me this has nothing to do with what you're eating. And little did I know it had everything to do with what I was eating because I was made out of just the worst stuff possible, you know. And so bottom line, long story short, for me, it took two years before I started asking different questions. Because all I did from that point, from 20 to 22, was ask why me? Why won't they help me? I've been to this doctor. I went to four different doctors total and they all gave me the same story. And they were telling me,

there's nothing you can do about this. I'm sorry. You know, this is just something that happens. And it took me two years before I took responsibility for myself and just like, let me find out about my body because I live here and I didn't know a thing about myself. because I live here and I didn't know a thing about myself and so I just like went to Dr. Google you know and the internet was kind of just popping at the time you know and I just was like looking at like what what are bones made of what are your discs made of just asking these different questions and I found out my introvertible discs that were so degenerated they're most you know it's water a big portion of it but here's what what was so interesting is that they're most, you know, it's water, a big portion of it. But here's what was so interesting is that they're called, they're non-vascular. So that means that water and

nutrients don't get there directly. It's a process called remote diffusion. So bottom line is your body puts a lower priority on the health of your disc versus other things in your body, like your brain. If you bring in any water, it's got to go there first for your blood. And I came across some research that found that when your body is deficient in these key nutrients, it will literally leach from your bones and from your spine. One of the first places that your body will go and take those minerals to aid in processes like clotting your blood. Maybe that's what happens when you're sick. Like your back kind of hurts when you're sick.

Your back gets stiff, you know? I never thought about that. Stiff neck, that type of thing. Yeah, never thought about that. But, you know, it could be related to stem cells and things like that. And so for me, I realized that, wow, like I've been doing this to myself. Like this is my fault. It's not just something that happens.

And there are things that do happen in our lives, absolutely. something that happens or, and there are things that do happen in our lives. Absolutely. But I realized that I had put the responsibility of myself and caring for myself off on all these other people external to me who, even if they meant well, they don't, they don't do this stuff for me. They can't, they're not like spoon feeding me. And so once I started to find out all these different nutrients and I found out like my bones, all I knew about was calcium because of marketing. And then I found out like, there's like 25 knew about was calcium because of marketing. And then I found out like there's like 25 other things. Many of them might be more important than calcium for aiding in the development of my bones. And so.

Calcium is somewhat complicated to even. Metabolize. Right. Yeah. You need like vitamin K and other things with it, right? Yeah. Magnesium. Right.

You know, vitamin D. And I really like, I wasn't getting none of that. I was drinking Sunny Delight, you know what d and i really like i wasn't getting none of that i was drinking sunny delight you know what i'm saying and like hot cakes and sausage if i got up in time to get to mcdonald's does lifting do some stuff for our bones absolutely so i came across a study that was done on racehorses and it was the best one that i could find at the time that had something to do with taking supplements break their legs a lot yeah and it's a that's a billion dollar industry you know i don't

i'm my experience with race horses was like my stepfather that was quality time he'd take me to the the shitty track racehorse track and there was like a couple video games there but i just spent a lot of my hours like not wanting to be there and then he'd get totally trashed and then drive us home which is this is that that's the 80s in a nutshell um but anyways you're studying some racehorses yeah so having that experience uh of like asking these questions with and looking at this study that came across my desk um being that it's a billion dollar industry that's like a lot of money you'll lose if you if your horse does break a leg so they wanted to find a way to increase their bone density and so they had a control group that

did nothing the horses they they didn't do anything different with their diet and their activities they had another group of horses they gave supplements to including things like calcium and magnesium and you know phosphorus all what all the stuff and they did find that increased their bone density but they had another study group of horses where they gave them supplements and regularly walked the horses. And they had a radical increase in their bone density greater than the other two.

So that's the combination. It's the nutrition plus the movement. Because food really, to put it simply, exercise isn't about getting a six pack. That's a side effect. The real reason we need exercise is for assimilation of nutrients and elimination of waste. Right. And so that like struck me that because at the time I just changed the way that I was eating and I was like doing a little bit of movement, but I wasn't, I didn't pick up the weights again yet since like high school. Right. And so I started to do a little bit more lifting, some load bearing exercises, man, I got better so fast, you know, incorporating the right nutrition

because your body's always wanting to get better. I was in fear too. And I don't share this very often, but I was scared. I was just like, it's been two years. I can't get better. It's been too long. My body's been trained to be messed up, you know. But, man, when you start stacking conditions and doing the right stuff, you can get better really quick. What made you not give up? Is it something in your upbringing, something from your parents, or something from your childhood or something like that? Yeah.

I was close. I was close to giving up. My brother's in a ton of pain as well, so he's wanted to kind of, you know, he wanted to just kind of give up a bunch of different times he ended up being a drug addicted alcohol addicted things like that and he's he's kicking ass now and he's training he trains with me every day but yeah what made you not give up that's a great question man um because i think people like you know you're talking about pain and it's like you know way in the rear view yeah but people they sometimes don't understand like oh absolutely haven't really been in that pain

you know like you might have a friend he's like oh i got a you know my ankle hurts so i'm not training yeah and in your head you might be thinking dude you're kind of lazy but you have the experience other people don't have the experience sometimes and sometimes that pain like it hurts so bad makes you depressed it makes tough, man. It makes you depressed. It makes you upset. It makes you emotional. There's all kinds of stuff to you. I was literally in so much pain, I was afraid to stand up. Because for me, my sciatic shock that would happen, would happen after I sit down. For even just five seconds. Once I stand up, I have to get it before I can walk.

In your 20s? Yeah. So I was terrified. So I just sat as much as I possibly could or laid down and I got incredible at video games you know what I'm saying but that was about it you know and so I was in fear of standing up and what did it for me man why I because there were different times for sure throughout that process where I was just like man you know just like I don't care anymore you know But what did it, and this is the same thing for your brother or anybody else, is like finding this light, you know.

And so for me, it was my grandmother. And she, and it all goes back to the beginning, you know. Like she always instilled in me while she was giving my fish sticks and macaroni and cheese and copias and miles of ketchup was that I was going to do something special, you know, like that I was special. And some people listening might not have gotten that affirmation. Oh man, that upsets me to hear, you know, to, to know that. Like, I hate that. This is why we're doing, we're doing too, man. It's bigger. Like if people start feeling better, they stop treating their kids like shit. You know what I'm saying? Like it all goes together, man. And so, but there is somebody who you've come across who has believed in you and just to kind of tune into that

because through this process of that two years my grandma kept calling me and she was just it honestly was annoying like it's because she knew that i wasn't okay but i'm just i'm fine grandma like you know get back this knitting or whatever you. And so I didn't really want to talk to her. But after I got that, last doctor told me that I couldn't do anything about it. And I realized like, man, like there is nothing I can do. Like I kind of like started to accept it. And I would have did anything. I would have done surgery.

I would have done whatever it took just to feel better. And so I was sitting there and she had just called me earlier that day and just like hit me like a ton of bricks. And she said that I was going to do something special in my life. And everybody was just kind of in my family, just even just like kind of counting on me. And here I was, my mattress was on the floor at my shitty college apartment. And I had just given given up man like i was just like about to just down this bottle of pills just to knock me out for the night you know because the pain was so bad it would wake me up and i realized that i've been giving my power away and i wasn't being the person that i knew that i could be and it wasn't about like i'm about to transform my life it was more

like no i can i can be better than this. I can feel better. I can think better. I could do better than what I'm doing right now. If someone walked in right then and said, you know, we're going to transform your life, it probably would have been too much. Yeah, absolutely. So just being better the next day than you were on that particular day.

Exactly. That's all you needed. And I had power to affect change change even if it was just changing my activity level you know like i couldn't get to the gym and run or anything like but if i just go for a walk i didn't do shit for two years like i didn't i didn't exercise i didn't do anything i like walked to my car walked to some of my college classes i almost dropped out of school because i was so embarrassed and just the process of walking was so difficult. So I went from like a 12-credit load to like three, three credits.

And that's why it took me like seven years to get my four-year degree or whatever it was. It's just like I kept just dropping out of everything. But the thing was I still held on for some reason. It was because of my grandma. Just like that belief deep down that I am great. the thing was, I still held on for some reason. It's because of my grandma, you know, just like that belief deep down that I am great. I can do something positive with my life. And I can also bring some other people along with me, but I got to get my shit together first. So you understand what it's like to kind of really be behind the eight ball and like,

you know, we're here preaching fitness all the time. And one thing that kind of frustrates me is that we end up talking to other people in fitness. So it's just this giant circle of people in fitness. But, you know, we're trying to reach outside of that. We're trying to get outside that circle. You know, if we were in the perfect world, it would look like the Olympic rings. It would all be kind of linked together, right? And I'm thinking about, you know, those people that are, you know, sitting on the couch right now that aren't motivated that if we tell them, hey, you know, I'd be great if you went for a few walks.

And they're like, F that, man. Like, you don't even understand. Like, my feet hurt or this hurts, that hurts. How do you you know, how do you get that person, you know, since you went through it? How do you get that person to to move? Does it start maybe with just one small step in nutrition or like, where did you start exactly? Oh man, it's all about exposure. It's all about exposure. I didn't know it was possible. Like for me, it is bordering on miraculous, but it was from that exposure earlier on in life.

And those little pieces that I picked up along the way, the lowest hanging fruit in me changing was fitness because, you know, my high school um you know football you know like that's what i knew can like let me at least my first one of my first thoughts in getting better was okay because oh i didn't mention this over the course of that two years in my two for 99 cent honey bun uh for breakfast habit you know what i'm saying like i gained about 40 pounds and not moving and i was i was like the skinny kid in my family and you know my family a lot of the folks are you know overweight or obese and uh but my fat gene kicked on man like because we all have you know one of them is the fto gene for for example. But it flipped on. And I was like. Can't wait. It's not a problem.

And what's so crazy is I didn't see it because I saw myself as this fit guy. Right. And then it just like a girlfriend of mine pointed it out. That's always nice. Man, like I was like trash mentally. Like sometimes you need somebody to say that, though. Yeah, for sure. You need those scars sometimes.

And that happened within that same week of me making that decision to get well. Right. And so it was just those initial steps in gaining all that weight. So I just was like, I need to get this weight off my frame. Let me go and do exercise. Right. like, I need to get this weight off my frame. Let me go and do exercise. Right. I just saw my coach who was my son's coach, who my son is 18. He just graduated from high school. Uh, 25 years ago, I just saw him, uh, football coach or something. Yes. He looks the same, right. It was amazing to

see him coach boss, other coach boss. And, uh, you know, he's just doing those things, man. He's active. He eats pretty good. He's got community, you know, Coach Voss. And, you know, he's just doing those things, man. He's active. He eats pretty good. He's got community, you know, those basic things. And so I just started pulling from those examples and those people that I did get exposure from, but some people never get that exposure. If I didn't live with my grandma, those first seven years of my life, I saw safety, certainty, significance, right? A sense of like values and discipline and routine. These things were not really apparent when I moved in with my mom,

who the reason I was living with my grandma, I was like, I was just trying to give me a better opportunity, right? You know, to live in a better neighborhood, go to a better school. But my grandma, my grandfather got sick. And so they had to move back to the country as a country boy.

And so they had to move back to Piedmont, Missouri, where he grew up. And I was stuck out like a sore thumb. But so I moved in with my mom. And it was a lot. It was not certain, very unsafe. You know, the neighborhood itself. Like, I went from, like, a suburban, quiet neighborhood to, like, we live next door to a crack house you know um we moved like probably i think about 12 times in about six years just because my mom like the credit and all this stuff and just not paying stuff and you know just

hustling you know to get by and that taught me something too like that taught me how to make something out of nothing and to survive but i don't want to just survive you know so but i got that exposure and my brother i'm a little brother of mine who like i mentioned earlier he was like talking shit about the organic which he's doing incredible now and he's working on it yeah he's working on it but he didn't have that exposure to the degree that i did he didn't live in it but we all both like you know he would go and we'd spend summers in the country and stuff like that. But he would, like, carry that chip on his shoulder, like, you got an advantage, right?

But I asked him this, what if you had the advantage and it was taken away from you? Versus never knowing what it was. Like, which one is going to hurt worse? I was messed up, man. I was messed up for a long time. Because my life was so sweet, you know? And now it's just like but for my brother he is right to a degree because i had that i had that exposure yeah but at any

point in my story anything we talked about i could have hung up my cleats and given up and nobody would ever blame me but that's the thing i still had to decide that's a huge thing that people don't want to talk about that much is that your zip code it matters you know where you came from matters absolutely does and you know the exposure to having someone positive in your life is is huge and I always say like I like I've I've had really good parents so I don't know you know what things would look like without that I don't even even understand how I would function at all. So it's, it's a testament to the people that don't have that, that we're able to fight through. For you, when you were, when you look back, what did it start with? Did it start with nutrition or did it start with fitness? Because it usually starts with kind of one or the other. What I usually try

to share with people is like, yes, it would be great if you actually did start your diet on Monday, as you're always saying, I'm going to start on Monday, I'm going to start on Monday. And it would be great if you embarked on a fitness plan. But a lot of times, trying to do a bunch of things at one time is going to be too hard recipe for failure, for sure. You know, so I tried to do both. I tried to do the diet because I like I said, I was googling Rocky montage, you're hitting the sweatpants got the sweatpants on. So I started off on a stationary bike because I really couldn't like walk that well. And then I did that for, I think maybe two weeks, maybe about a week. And then I started to walk around the track and then I started to jog a little bit. Then I got

back to picking the weights up. That was my, definitely my biggest on-ramp because the diet thing was just all kinds of messed up because once i started finding out about those nutrients i was just like i'll just take supplements and so i just got this stuff through synthetic form and i wasn't really changing giving myself the real kind of nutrition still this building blocks supplements are all over my house yeah yeah i fall for supplements all the time so and, and they're great, but they're a supplement. Yeah. Right. You know what I'm saying? That's that 5%, right? But that 95%. And so, but, and so what I did was slim fast shakes. I was doing, cause the commercials, shake for breakfast, shake for lunch and a sensible dinner, man, after about two weeks,

man, I've never been so angry, you know, like I was just so angry and just irritated because I was just like depriving myself of all pleasure and just nutrition period, you know like i was just so angry and just irritated because i was just like depriving myself of all pleasure and just nutrition period you know and plus i read it had all these nutrients but there were synthetic nutrients fortified in the in this stuff and so man so again exposure there was a girl some of my stories start like this oh my wife doesn't watch this but it's so long ago you know but she doesn't give a shit um but it was a girl that i was you know uh talking to she was a chiropractor she was in chiropractic school i don't know why she was messing with me um but she took me to uh wild oats right like and at first like just having that exposure of her being in my life

and like me telling her about my problems. She took me to like their friends and stuff and they would do adjustments and all this weird stuff. And I just thought it was really too weird for me

at the time until I got interested. Holistic approach kind of thing, right? And so we went into wild oats and I just was like, what? What is all this stuff?

And for people who don't know, like wild oats was like bought up by whole foods they were like uh i guess they're a little bit more wild a little more oaty you know but um like they made fresh juices and stuff and like i said i hadn't eaten a salad yet in my life so i started to juice like get the juice that had like the celery and the parsley things i would never eat and start to get that intelligence in my body and start to change my palate and so and i learned like okay we do have these supplements but the

food is really the biggest thing because of like this bioavailable more bioavailable nutrients like i really kind of started to click these things together me being my best subject was really like math and science you know but not like biology because i hated it i didn't understand like why are we dissecting a fucking worm you know and because it didn't it wasn't relevant to me and so by my analytical nature i start to ask questions and i just realized like oh wait this this supplement was just invented like last week you know like versus this food like people have been eating this you know, grass fed beef for thousands of years. So I started to just go and eat more of the foods that had the nutrients in it and not still doing some supplements, but that's when really things shifted. So it was both,

but the nutrition took longer. Like I kind of like fiddled with it a while. The exercise part was the thing that I really went into. What do you see the biggest excuse people make when you're trying to help them? Like the, the person that you're dealing with that is really struggling, they're not making progress yet. That's such a good question, man. You know, it's, and this is the first thing that jumps to mind was it's their, their, they blame other people, you know, they, they don't have the support. Other people are making it too difficult for them. You know, it's their their they blame other people you know they don't have to support other people are making it too difficult for them you know it's their kids i would do that but i don't have a fridge at work yeah i do that but my wife she's not gonna help she's not gonna cook yeah cook different for me you don't understand like my husband you know he's always frying

whatever you know like and um so that's what it is man it's nice to just do that just take all the blame and just shut it off on some other people and that's what goes back to what changed my life was like taking responsibility but i understand how easy it is to point fingers yeah you know and the crazy and this is why i even got to a point in my practice whenever i could i wouldn't just talk to the patient i would have like their significant other come along too so we can all talk about this shit together so we can get onto, you know, because a lot of times it's just that comfort, the same thing in a relationship. It's not that they're trying to sabotage, you know, your success, but they're comfortable with who you are and where you are right now themselves,

you know, even though they want you to get better, but that's going to push up against them as well. And their, their belief about who they are, maybe they need to improve. And of course there's like fear and envy involved as well. Like people leaving you and these kinds of crazy things. Your spouse loses 50 pounds. Where does that leave you? Right?

Yeah. So, you know, just getting people in the household together on the same accord and then pointing out the excuses that we give. Like you said, like I don't have a refrigerator at work there's like a thousand reasons why you're 100 pounds overweight it's just a little excessive right and you know it's like literally we can go from like here i'll bring a mini fridge to your job you know see if that solves a problem or we can just find another

way you know because i think one of the biggest challenges that we have that we put ourselves in is that there's only one solution. And there's a statement where there's a will, there's a way. I'm like, where there's a will, there's like 10,000 ways. There's so many different possibilities of solving this problem. But we tend to get so stuck that we just think that we keep hitting our head against the same wall. And just like, there's actually like a door over here that you can go through or you can climb over the wall it's not that high or like you know what you can actually if you really want to do it you can dig through or whatever like there's always a way you know starting to think differently and part of that i just came across a study uh a few weeks back

that simply going for a walk it was uh i think it was 10 to 20 minute walk was the minimum effective dose. Um, and this was in a peer reviewed journal. And what they discovered was that simply going for a walk increases a problem solving ability. And what they saw was that there was a specific peak in something that's referred to as this um it's kind of like um dynamic thinking so being able to think outside of the box was increased by like 60 or something you know and so just basic stuff like to solve a problem instead of just hammering your head standing on the computer just get up and go for a walk and that can kind of help to get your brain working differently so just a little tiny thing there's so many ways to get there but they say

it's a great way to talk to your children too go out and shoot some baskets with them play some volleyball like do something go on a walk go on a walk and especially if your kids are like my age or my kids age 11 and 15 they might not be so open but what i find is at the end of the 10 minute walk they're going talking the whole time telling me all about school and everything that happened. And so it's so funny how that happens, man. It's a good it's a good weapon for stuff like that. Yeah, that's dope. Last question here, just kind of wrapping everything up. It just seems to me like all this is so simple. And thank you so much for uncovering all this for us, because it's it's simple, but no one else

is really pointing it out. So I appreciate that you're pointing this out and making it such a big deal because it is important that people sleep. It just seems like your message, if I'm to really narrow it down, is just the better off your just well-being is in general. So if you have better sleep and you have better relationships in your life and your life is just not clogged up with as much junk and you're honest with people and all these different things,

then it makes a lot of the other decisions that you make in life easier. It might make the nutrition piece easier because maybe you have a lot of clutter in your life and then it's just you get home from a long day at work you're really really hungry you had your heart dead set on eating properly and everything you ate you ate good all day ate healthy all day you did everything you even got some training in in the morning but now it's you know seven o'clock and the day really has worn on you and you reach for that ice cream or reach for something that's in your cupboard,

is that kind of the message is like, let's figure out a way to attack like wellbeing and health from all angles so that you have a good, strong foundation to be able to execute at a high level? Yeah, man, that's right on the money. And so what I was saying earlier about going for a walk, it was divergent thinking

is the flavor of thinking that gets increased by just walking for example but we've talked this whole show and i threw in something about walking right and if you were to tell me that walking had value back when i was you know a teenager and in my 20s and people are telling me they're trying to get fit by walking i mean just i would have been would have been like, you need to fuck, you need to hurry up. Like the walking is going to, you're not going to get there. Right. It's going to take you a lot longer. You're going to have to walk a lot further, but there's so many benefits from walking. And of all the stuff that the human body can do. I mean, man, like we can do some amazing stuff. You've set freaking records. like you squat a thousand pounds

like that's incredible were you designed to do that you can and we can get some incredible benefits from it uh from squatting but the thing we know for certain that humans are designed to do we're designed to walk so my argument and you can look at you know some of the epigenetics involved but and i talked to the person who like she won the nobel prize or like the discovery of telomerase which you know gets added back on to your dna and um but effectively you know this process of of aging is related to this loss of telomeres at the end of our chromosomes. And so one of the things that it helps to protect our chromosomes and our telomeres from fraying early is walking, right? It has this

huge impact on our genetics and our DNA. And so it's one of those things that's like your genes expect you to walk, but I wasn't doing that or giving it any credit. So there's so many different things in our lives that add to our overall health. And it's difficult because we think we need to be balanced and get equal parts of all these things. And this is another problem I think we have is that we're looking for this work-life balance or whatever that is. I'm sorry, that'll never happen, right? It is kind of like a seesaw. If it's just level'm sorry, that'll never happen, right? Like, it is kind of like a seesaw. If it's just level and balance, it's boring, actually, right? You want some movement there. And so there's always going to be areas of your life that you're putting more into at

different times. And so what I'm encouraging people to do is just to pay attention to the things that might need a little bit more attention at sometimes, you know, like right now with our move and all this different stuff going on. And I need a little bit more attention at sometimes, you know, like right now with our move and all this different stuff going on. And I need a little bit more time with my family, even though I'm working on a book right now, you know, and I don't recommend writing a book while you move across the country. It's really stupid. But the book is awesome. But, you know, and so I know that this was a time that's more important for my family.

So I'm not writing as much as I need to, even with a book deadline looming. But I know that I'm going to circle back to it. And my kids probably won't see me very much for a couple of days. And just being, but also within that, being able to communicate that with my family, with my wife, so we can all work together to support each other. So I'm going to say this. all work together to support each other. So I'm going to say this. I think the thing that makes all of it easiest, your nutrition, your sleep, your exercise and movement practices, your enjoyment, you know, your entertainment, just having fun is focusing on the quality of your relationships because your relationships control all that stuff. And so I think it's the biggest influence on our

health is our, is the quality of our relationships. Because I know that, man, it's really difficult to, to, to focus and be creative if there's a problem with a family member, for example, or it's difficult for you to eat, you know, quote, good food. If everybody around you is eating all you can eat pizza hut, you know what I'm saying? Which is like, that's like, I said that when we first met too, I was in that mood. Me and my little brother would go there, you know, with our little $5 and crush it.

So, but it's very difficult to do those things if your relationships and your environment are not conducive to you doing those things. And so I would focus on high quality relationships first, you know, especially the people closest to you, your friends, making sure that you are having some standards and communication there so that they can support the other things. And so, yeah, so that's what I say, man. Yeah, we want a sprinkling of all that stuff.

But the biggest thing for personally for me is the focus on is good relationships. Keto, carnivore, counting your calories, vertical diet. What are your thoughts on some of those? You know know there's a lot of different ways to to lose weight all of it just whatever all of it's good all of it's good all of it i love the frameworks you know because a lot of us need the frameworks the thing is i don't want people to make it a religion because chances are that diet won't work for you forever i I want people to have the basic tools to understand their unique metabolic fingerprint, you know, and being able to have some flexibility, right? I think that within the construct of all those frameworks to be able to personalize things

for you because you're a little bit different is super important. But in general, the research clearly shows that easing back on the carbohydrates for most people and upping their ratio of proteins and or fat is going to be helpful. Just from the perspective of what's going on with your endocrine system. You know, if insulin is always getting called into action, you're going to have a higher incidence of insulin resistance taking place. And the classic sign of that is carrying more belly fat. And then that's going to lead to increased risk of heart disease and cancer. And the list goes on and on. You know what I'm saying? So but that doesn't mean you can't have carbs. Right. You know what I'm saying? So if especially if you really enjoy donuts, you you got like a Homer Simpson

DNA kind of thing like that's stupid to just like go full, you know, keto and you can't have a donut, you know, and you're like pissed off because you can't have a donut. Right. And so I love, you mentioned Mark Sisson earlier. Yeah. He's got a great message. In talking with Mark, he, he wrote a book on keto, but he doesn't do it all the time. No.

His thing is like making yourself metabolically flexible so that if you do have the donut, like your body can get back adjusted to burning fat for fuel, burning carbs for fuel, or burning body fat for fuel because it's flexible to be able to do those jobs. But if we're just addicted, our bodies are just not addicted, but just hardwired to just burn carbs because that's the main fuel source. Yeah, man, it's going to be a lot more difficult. And so, yeah. Where can people get your book?

Where can people find out more about you? I know we're here in your own studio recording for my show. Tell us about your show and about your books and stuff like that. Awesome. Yeah, man. Well, people are listening to this podcast, your awesome podcast. They can find my show. It's called The Model Health Show.

podcast they can find my show it's called the model health show and uh man it's crazy to say but it's just like it's it's been the biggest passion outside of my family and um you know it's been regularly featured as number one health podcast in the country which is nuts and i was doing this out of the midwest you know for all those years and so we do master classes on different subject matters so if we're talking about fat loss like we're really digging into the science and we break down, how does your body actually do the process? We're not just going to get so hyper calorie focused. We're going to talk about the enzymes related, the different hormones, those kind of things, but in a way that's fun and like makes sense to you. you know, for reversing type of diabetes, natural treatments for depression, things like that. But also I bring on the very best people in the world in their respective fields. And also we do a lot on personal development too. And so we were just talking earlier, like Tim Grover, right? Michael Jordan's trainer, man, I love him so much, man. But just like you get to hear from him, but in a different way, because it's my, my platform and I really kind of bring different things out

of people. And so you get to hear his insights, like what does he have to say about training, but what does he have to say about life, right? And how you can really optimize what you're doing to take your life to another level, because you can be as fit as shit, but, you know, be unhappy, you know, and then what's the point, you know, so we really bring together a really powerful mosaic of different topics, all related to health and wellness, even financial health. Like I'll bring on the top people to talk about that too. And so it's called the model health show. And my book is called sleep smarter. And you can pick that up anywhere books are sold. And yeah, thanks, man, for having me on this has been fun some credible questions man thank you i appreciate it guys make sure you follow sean uh you're at

at sean model s-h-a-w-n model sean sean model on instagram he's got amazing information it's not you know nowadays i think there's a lot of podcasts that are kind of like mine where it's free form where we just kind of flow and those are great. But he's digging in. He's digging in deep and he's getting the research. He's getting the information. You want to learn the X's and O's about diet and sleep and all the things he just mentioned. Make sure you go check out what he's got. Strength is never weakness.

Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later. Done. Awesome, man. Sweet. That was good, man. Man, you were ripping through that. That was awesome.