Intake: The Fourth Pillar of THRIVE of Health and Wellness

In this episode of The Erik and Matt Show, Dr. Erik Axene and Matt Ball dive into the fourth pillar of THRIVE: Intake. They explore how choices around food, drink, and even mental stimuli impact overall health and wellness. With insights into the benefits of a balanced diet, tips for choosing whole foods, and the dangers of processed foods, this discussion equips EMS professionals with practical advice for a healthier lifestyle.

Transcript

Erik: [00:00:00] But there are so many other dimensions to our health that are more important than the food we eat 

Matt: An easy way to think about your diet Is when you go to the grocery store stay on the outside of the aisles

Narrator: You are listening to EMS with your hosts Erik Axene and Matt Ball 

Erik: good thing about zipper to worry about That's why I [00:00:30] went into medicine. 

Matt: What do you want to do for a living? I just want a job that I don't require a zipper on my pants. 

Erik: I want to close with no zipper. 

Matt: And I want to feel like I'm wearing my pajamas all day.

Erik: So what are we talking about today, Matt? 

Matt: Well, we're talking about intake, the continuation of our thrive series, um, health and wellness. 

Erik: Yeah. 

Matt: Um, not just really for first responders, but for everybody. Health and wellness is certainly an important factor. As a physician and as a nurse and a firefighter, [00:01:00] you know, health and wellness is something that we should take seriously.

Um, it's kind of hard to listen to a doctor when he walks in and he weighs 400 pounds and he's 200 pounds overweight. 

Erik: I oftentimes tell people, like, do as I say, not as I do. Right. But you know what, Matt, a year ago, I was almost 300 pounds, 290 pounds. And you're how tall? Just so everybody, about six one or so.

Yeah. You're a big guy. And, uh, yeah, I played football. You know, I do, I work out. I, I am a bigger guy. [00:01:30] Um, I'm a, um, a mesomorph. It's my, yeah. Body type. I, I, um, uh, anyway, so I'm a bigger guy and I thought. When people would tell me that I was obese, that I was like, Oh, come on, NFL athletes are obese. Yeah. And I would rationalize it.

But then I started, I realized I'm not an NFL athlete. And, and, uh, anyway, at 290 pounds, I used to say that I can't run because of my knees, which was true. [00:02:00] Right. But it really wasn't my knees. Right. It was my weight. So affecting your knees. And so now I jog after I've lost 50 pounds. Yeah. You know. 50 pounds, a lot of weight.

That's a lot of weight. And, uh, and I've got some more to lose still. So, uh, but I guess my point is with obesity, it's, uh, the definition, like we talked about before we recorded it was the based on BMI, right? And that's a good. general thing for most body types is to try to get down [00:02:30] to your, you know, BMI, you know, around 20 or so.

Matt: And just so everybody understands if they're not familiar, BMI is body mass index. It's basically a calculation of your height and your weight, 

Erik: right? Yeah. And for me, it doesn't, cause I'm still obese right now. Um, 

Matt: yeah. Per that scale. Yeah. Like we were saying, that's a little subjective cause I'm the same way.

I'm obviously not as tall as you. I'm only about five, five. And I think my BMI is, or my, my ideal body weight is no more than like [00:03:00] 135 pounds. 

Erik: You can't get there. Cut your legs off, maybe. 

Matt: Yeah, I mean, well, I've been down to like 135. Um, but I mean, that's, really thin for me. I think a lot of it, like we were talking about, you're muscular, you know, I mean, I lift weights, I have to have a certain amount of strength, you know, to be a firefighter.

So I think, you know, based on your muscle over fat, if you have some muscle on you, you're probably, your BMI is going to be higher. So it's a little subjective. 

Erik: And this is, you know, I think [00:03:30] there was like a disconnect in my mind with my, um, weight problem and my intake. I rationalized this, like, I'm just a bigger guy, you know, I'm working out and, and I was able to mountain bike with the best of them and like, I didn't slow me down, you know, and I would muscle through and, and I was carrying all this extra weight.

But the bottom line for intake and what we're talking about today is that the reason I had gained all that weight, it doesn't come on magically. I had been [00:04:00] eating more than I had been burning and it accumulated in my fat, in my muscle deposition in my body. And there are two types of fat depositions in the body.

Subcutaneous fat the type of you know the type of fat under your skin you can feel yeah, and then there's mesenteric fat Which is the core it's inside of your abdominal cavity around your organs, right? Which is a much more dangerous and and unhealthy fat none of them are Necessarily good if you [00:04:30] have too much of it, right and we need some fat sure insulation and thermal regulation And it's good to have some stored energy Yep.

Right? It's a survival mechanism for our body. Yep. The problem in America is that we have so much food, and drive throughs, I mean, we don't have to walk anywhere. We have, we have now, what percent? We talked about this before. Forty? Forty percent. 42 percent of Americans are obese. Yeah. And a BMI isn't the most accurate way, but it's a good way.

[00:05:00] But the point is, look at yourself. I mean, you carry on too much weight. 

Matt: Yeah. You can tell if you have more muscle than fat. So if you're a bodybuilder, you know, and you're going into like my daughter's boyfriend, he's a firefighter and he is a bodybuilder and he's a big guy. He's probably only five, eight.

And I bet he's, I don't know, 220 pounds, but he's I mean he's obviously got more muscle than fat. You know, but you can, you know when you're carrying around 50 pounds of fat around your stomach. 

Erik: And when you're carrying around [00:05:30] even an unnatural amount of muscle mass, whether you're doing steroids or you, you know, you know, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're.

You're juicing with testosterone or whatever it might be those You know your body can't handle it's not meant to handle that kind of extra burden and and muscle mass joints And the joints and he talked to schwarzenegger. He talked to bodybuilders. 

Matt: Yeah 

Erik: You know, what's 

Matt: uh, what's ronnie coleman ronnie coleman?

Yeah down here in arlington Yeah, I [00:06:00] mean and I don't know if that's directly related to um I would imagine that that has to do with the fact that he was squatting 800 pounds or whatever it was, but that's why his back and his joints 

Erik: are shot. But the, but those large, um, I guess those, the, the exaggerated muscle mass or fat mask is hard on the heart.

And that's what kills people. More people that have cardiovascular disease than cancer. Car accidents combined. So cardiovascular disease is what kills Americans, which kills people, especially with the American diet. [00:06:30] So by stressing our body with obesity or whatever it is, the heart's what takes the hit.

And so the intake, and we back to intake. So that's the fuel that we use to, to function, right? 

Matt: Yeah. And it's more than, I mean, it's anything that is put into your body, put onto or into your body. So it's not just necessarily food. 

Erik: It's what you drink. It's what you eat, what you listen to. It's what you watch.

It's what you breathe, your 

Matt: skin, 

Erik: largest organ 

Matt: in the body. 

Erik: Yep. There, you know, there are a lot of, of [00:07:00] complicated, Intake issues that can affect your longevity and the focus is on on intake. Yeah, uh, and I would say to that the focus is on intake. The one aspect of intake on food intake, which is just a part of intake.

There's more of a focus on that than I think any other dimension of health and wellness is what you eat. Yeah. A lot of people talking about the carnivore diet, the plant based diet, keto, [00:07:30] Mediterranean, you fill in the blank, or even like. Kanga Terrians out there that only eat kangaroo meat. I mean, they're seriously, I know it's true.

I mean, it's like, there's a lot of weird eating styles out there. A lot of people that think they have found, and I hate to be cynical about it, but honestly, a lot of these things are just moneymakers. It's just like, okay, what's the next fad diet. Right. So we wanted to kind of boil it down into the low hanging fruit on this [00:08:00] very, very, uh, popular way of getting more healthy.

If this is the most popular way, if you want to get more healthy, most people like change what they eat, right? Right. Or exercise. Maybe it might be number two, but this definitely number one, you know, and through the thrive acronym we've gone through, I would say that, you know, some of the other letters are more important and they're talked about less.

Sure. So there's definitely a great health message that you and I have here. Uh, but intake definitely probably the most popular one to talk about for sure. Um, [00:08:30] and, um, so. But, you know, we're not going to get into the details on like, I'm not going to tell people, um, do the, uh, the, the Boletarian diet that we've developed through years of research.

If you look at all the literature in medical literature, anything in within the, uh, the health and wellness industry, There is just a robust amount of data showing how vegetables are healthy and [00:09:00] eating more vegetables are healthy. And we, I think we all know that. Um, a lot of, I hate to insult people who are doing the carnivore diet, but I was just having a little debate with a firefighter who's doing the carnivore diet.

And, uh, there's just no evidence out there. Well, you gotta be careful what you read, but when you compare the evidence for vegetables and the health of the micronutrients they give our body and the fiber and all that stuff, and compare it to the literature out there that would say that animal products are more [00:09:30] healthy, to me it's a no brainer.

I, listen, I prefer steak over broccoli. I really do. Um, but if you want to eat healthy. I mean, that's, that, that would be, uh, whether it's the Mediterranean diet, a plant based diet, a whole kind of foods diet, natural diet, uh, you know, that to me, if you're going to choose something, the, the benefits you get from eating foods from plants is, uh, the healthiest way to eat.

It's not [00:10:00] all perfect. Pesticides. I mean, there's a lot of ways you could hurt yourself with foods. Right. Um, but, uh, overall, I think the medical literature is really clear. 

Matt: I think there's a lot of people that are, you know, they're confused. They don't do the deep dive into how to have a healthy diet. They don't have the money to spend on, you know, expensive organic food.

They can't hire a nutritionist or, you know, whatever. I think one of the things that I've always heard [00:10:30] is an easy way to think about your diet. is when you go to the grocery store, stay on the outside of the aisles. If you do the bulk of your shopping on the outside of the aisles, typically that's where you're going to find your fruits, your vegetables, your meats, and your dairy, right?

All the processed. Food, the food that's high in sugar content and all that is on the aisles, is down the aisles for the most part, right? And so if you just simply started with saying, [00:11:00] okay, I'm going to do the bulk of my grocery shopping on the outskirts of the aisles and buy mainly, Real food, not processed cereals and chips and that kind of stuff.

That's a great start. Yep. It's a great place to start and then kind of work from there, right? 

Erik: I'm glad you said that because that's, I think, even lower hanging fruit than choosing vegetables. Right. Because if you chose to eat the carnivore diet, for example, Um, I know the, my friend I was talking [00:11:30] to felt great.

He felt never, never felt better. Lost some weight. He did. Energetic. Lost weight. You know, his cholesterol was off the charts. Like it didn't even register. It was just really high and, uh, but anyway, he, I believe that diet is more healthy than a diet of fast food and processed foods, you know, sodas with all the high fructose corn syrup, refined sugars.

What he was eating with that carnivore [00:12:00] diet, um, will probably, um, I believe anyway, be more healthy than a processed food diet with none of that stuff in it. Even if you ate vegan and ate Oreos and Diet Coke and vegan 

Matt: crackers. 

Erik: Yeah, right. Tater 

Matt: tots and french fries and potato chips, which are all vegan.

Right. Yeah. Not healthy for you. That's not healthy. No. 

Erik: Now, plant based is different than vegan. Yeah. Plant based, there's no oils, there's no refined sugar or flour. [00:12:30] Right. You are literally eating just plants. Yeah. And it can be really good. It can be. 

Matt: And there's a lot of confusing things out there. A good friend of ours, we both know, that I work with, he has been a very strict vegan for years.

Very healthy. He read the Engine 2 diet book and really took that to heart. He was heavy and his health has improved tremendously by living this lifestyle, this vegan lifestyle. But, one of the things that he said is that you gotta be careful because [00:13:00] now, you know, Back to your point of it's all about money for these companies Is that you can go down especially in the frozen food aisle, right?

You can go down and buy all these things that say that they're vegan Like vegan burgers or vegan, whatever it is, but they're full of chemicals. It's not real food. It's chemical food So yeah, you might be eating quote unquote something that's vegan But you're pumping a ton of bad chemicals in your body that are not good for you in other ways.

I think a lot of people base their health, like you [00:13:30] said at the beginning, off of how they look. It's off aesthetics, right? And so they think, well, I'm thin, I'm healthy. Well, I know a lot of thin, fat people, if you know what I mean. Like, they're skinny on the outside, but they're, I should probably say, some thin, unhealthy people.

They're very thin. They aesthetically look good. Yeah. But they're not healthy on the inside. Like you talked about, their arteries are clogged with all this fat buildup and all this kind of stuff. And that's the kind of stuff that causes you to have heart attacks and cardiovascular disease and things of that nature.[00:14:00] 

Erik: Well, I think you bring up another good point. So if you were to ask me, the most healthy way to eat is going to be a diet predominantly with vegetables. If you wanted to pick a diet, uh, try to eat, you, If you wanted to pick the best optimal fuel, I really believe it's a plant based diet, okay? I don't live that way.

It's very difficult. But a Mediterranean diet is pretty, pretty good too. Yeah, it's a good balance. It's a good, it's a good goal to shoot for. And that's, that's my goal right now. Eventually, maybe plant based. 

Matt: Which is what, what [00:14:30] is the Mediterranean diet? 

Erik: A Mediterranean diet would be a diet with a ton of vegetables, fruits and vegetables, grains, whole grains.

Um, and within the traditional Mediterranean diet, you might have a lot of olive oil and And, uh, a lot of, um, foods that, uh, uh, even, even meat, they eat meat, but, but instead of it being a course on your plate, it's a flavor in your plate, you know, they don't eat a lot of meat, but they do have meat fish and, and, and all types of meat.[00:15:00] 

But the main staple of Mediterranean diet would be vegetables, fruits and vegetables and, and, uh, whole grains. Uh, and it's a great diet. It's, it's a great diet. Um, but. Um, you know, one thing you said that I think, you know, again, we're trying to stick with the low hanging fruit here, right? Like if you can, like you said, not eat the processed foods, stick to the outskirts of stick to the walls, not the not the aisles, right?

I love it that you said that perfectly. And then we also [00:15:30] talked about eating more plants. Um, uh, it was my birthday recently and guess what I ate? It made steak, that's what I wanted and it was good. Um, anyway, uh, but the other thing you mentioned though, that I think we should focus on a little bit here is another low hanging fruit.

And that's the ingredients list is if you're looking at an ingredients list. That's a mile long with a bunch of words you can't pronounce. It looks more like a chemistry lab than a food. Right. [00:16:00] You're eating chemicals. Now the FDA has thousands of chemicals in our food supply that we know cause cancer.

Now, that are banned in 

Matt: a lot of other 

Erik: countries, in a lot of countries, that's right. And uh, and we have them in our food supply and the FDA has allowed it. They've made this list of, they call them the, this list of food additives they call generally regarded as safe GRAS, the gross list or whatever you want to call it.

That's what I call it. Um, and I think it's, it's just [00:16:30] awful that we allow this stuff and we're feeding it to our kids. Yep. And these highly processed foods with all these chemicals in it are made to be hyper palatable. They're made to be. Trigger your present, the pleasure center in your brain, the mesolympic system, the dopamine, right?

You get a dopamine hit when you go to McDonald's and get that, that whatever you want to eat. Those processed foods are not good for you. They are not. You, have you seen the videos? I'm sure where they [00:17:00] have a happy meal is like 30 years old. Why do they call 

Matt: it 

Erik: a 

Matt: happy 

Erik: meal? 

Matt: I mean, think about it. You're, you're literally addicting your children to dopamine at a young age.

Oh, let's go to McDonald's. Get your hamburger, your chicken nuggets. You know, they get that small dopamine hit that carries off into adulthood. 

Erik: And I am not here to say, Fast food is evil because I enjoy a burger like anybody. I'll go, uh, just, just the other day when I took my son to the airport, uh, I had, we went to McDonald's for a quick breakfast on our way to the [00:17:30] airport.

Cause that's your favorite. It is. I love a McDonald's breakfast, but I don't have it every day. Right? Exactly. Balance. Balance. 

Matt: Balance is huge. 

Erik: But, but the, but you know, they, they, they had a movie that came out not too long ago about how this guy only ate McDonald's and he almost killed himself. Yeah.

Matt: Supersize me. 

Erik: Well, that was such a farce. Oh, really? Yeah. It's ridiculous. I don't know if you How How so? Well, let me tell you about a subsequent movie that was made. Okay. I can't remember the title of it. I should have researched it. I'm just thinking of it now, but there's another gentleman that [00:18:00] ate only fast food and monitored all of his vitals and everything, and he only ate fast food, and he got a lot healthier.

But didn't he Because we talked about this before. He made better choices. Exactly. See, that's my point. Yeah. You make good choices. If I go to McDonald's and get a large fry and supersize my coke Two Big Macs Yeah, because that's what I might want to eat Yeah, right If I do what my mesolimbic system tells me, I'm thinking with my amygdala The amygdala is a pleasure seeker, it's a survival seeker, we want We [00:18:30] want what we want, and it's an animal instinct kind of a thing.

Our prefrontal cortex thinks, well, well, maybe that's not a good choice, because I just had that for lunch, having it for dinner again might not be a good idea. When we use our prefrontal cortex to make good decisions, and so we go to Wendy's and get a baked potato, And instead of a soda, we get the unsweetened iced tea and instead of fries, uh, you know, we get the add ons for the baked potato and, you know, they've, they've got, I mean, they've got [00:19:00] healthy options, but who goes to Wendy's for fruit cups?

I mean, you go to Wendy's for fries and a frosty and a big burger, right? That's where I want, I guess my point though is, and I don't recommend a diet because that's Difficult environment 

Matt: to make the choices. Yeah, you can alter data however you want to alter it and make it look bad based on your 

Erik: choices.

That's what it is. It's choices. We make thousands of choices every day and a lot of them have to do with intake. [00:19:30] And specifically what we're focused on right now is food. As you make decisions for the fuel you put in your body, use your prefrontal cortex. Be smart about it. Hey, it's my birthday. So I know I'm going to have a big meal tonight.

So I'm going to eat a lighter breakfast and a lighter lunch and try to be healthy. Cause I know I'm going to have a big steak. Exactly. Like today, 

Matt: like tonight, it's my daughter's birthday. So we know that they're going to come over and we're probably, You know it's my 

Erik: birthday tomorrow, right? I 

Matt: do know that.

Okay. But we celebrated earlier. I didn't, I didn't know you celebrated it already, but [00:20:00] yeah. Well, her birthday's tomorrow. It's the same day. Yeah. Oh, 

Erik: tomorrow's 

Matt: hers. Yeah. Tomorrow. We're celebrating tonight. I was 

Erik: thinking, Oh yeah, that's 

Matt: right. Yeah. So, yeah. So she turns 21 and so we're probably going to do pizza or something.

We had talked about maybe doing pizza and that's, it's about, it's so much about balance. Like if you want to be super strict, be super strict. We could go so in depth. I mean, this could be hours long that we could talk about this. One of the things that I was thinking about as you were talking though, is that, you know, you think about the [00:20:30] government or you think about.

Big Pharma, right? Yeah. And all of this is based around money. The government tells you it's okay to eat these things, then you become fat, then you go to the hospital and they stick you on all these medications, right? They don't want to cure your disease. They want you to be on blood pressure medications and high cholesterol medications for the rest of your life because they make money on that.

Erik: And that is, by the way, not the way they train me. I would. Yeah, that's not medicine. But I mean, would you agree with that? Oh, okay. Absolutely agree with that. [00:21:00] Doctors today, my colleagues out there are managing diseases, chronic diseases by increasing the medications to help their patients, right? Yeah. Now.

Now it's not the doctor's fault. I was gonna say. They're good intention and the patient's making bad choices. Right? We are hook, line, and sinker for the American diet. Yes. And we wanna live and we want to do whatever the heck we want. And I don't care what the consequences are, doc, fix me. Yeah. And so we increase the insulin or we increase the [00:21:30] blood pressure meds.

Yep. The cure for these problems is not in a pill. The cure for these problems are in our choices. Amen. And a lot of people think that their destiny is their DNA, their genetics. Well, you know, I just, my genetics are the, screw that. That's not true. Well, I 

Matt: think there's a genetical, a genetic, a genetic component to it.

There's a genetic component. Genetical. No, there is 

Erik: a genetic component. For sure. But that's a farce though. Don't, that's a, that's a people blaming it on something else. A hundred percent. I, I think to me, the choices we make, our behavior [00:22:00] is a, is a bigger, much bigger component to our health and wellness than whatever.

DNA you have, right? Hey, my, my grandparents lived to be 105. So I'm going to live to be 105 too. Well, you may have that predisposition to maybe have a longer life because you've You've got the genetics, you know, of longevity, but, um, but your grandma can't hang her hat on that. 

Matt: Yeah. Your grandma and grandpa probably were eating real food too.

They were probably farmers eating real food, even if [00:22:30] they were eating a lot of meat and beef, it was probably farm raised chicken, beef, pork, whatever. They weren't eating McDonald's all the time, you know? So we're in a different generation than 

Erik: our parents were. And, uh, you know, One thing I'll add to what we're talking about is it's not just the food we choose the the intake we choose It's not just the fuel.

We're putting into our body, which is really important, right? But we're not going to get into the details of it now But there are so many other dimensions to [00:23:00] our health that are more important than the food we eat the food we eats big But there are other factors that actually affect the How we make choices.

If you're dealing with mental, we're going to talk, you know, obviously you can watch the podcast on vitality if you're not in a good spot and you're part of that one out of four Americans who have mental health disease and you're dealing with anxiety and depression, that makes it even harder to make a good choice when you go home after work and you're in the, looking in the refrigerator for what you [00:23:30] want to eat, you're going to be drawn to that dopamine hit.

Yep. That's, that's the amygdala talking and it's really hard to listen to the prefrontal cortex when your brain is bathed in cortisol from depression or anxiety or PTSD, fill in the blank. That is really a real, real struggle. Yeah. Sleep. We talk about that as another factor. If you're sleep deprived, you're just setting yourself up for failure for making bad choices.

Again, the choices we make in what we eat [00:24:00] are huge. And if you're. on a treadmill going in the opposite direction because of your lifestyle. Mmm. Yeah. It's not gonna end well. It's not gonna be good. No. So that, it's a complicated thing, but the purpose of us going through the acronym is to talk about each one individually.

So as far as intake goes, the food we put in our body, let's, we don't have much time left, but let's talk, you know, briefly, uh, about some of the health benefits [00:24:30] of eating well. Yeah. Yeah. It really hits everything. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Erik: It's, it's, um, if you're eating well, there's a brain, a gut brain connection. That's not talked about enough.

Our GI system is our biggest immune organ. Yep. It's huge. It literally is huge and it's really is a huge impact and we're learning more in medicine about the connection between our brain and what we eat, our gut. And by eating a, um, a real, um, [00:25:00] I guess, well, the American diet. I mean, uh, everybody eats differently, but if you're eating a lot of processed foods, uh, and you're not eating those natural, uh, foods, Foods with the micronutrients that we need.

Yep. Um, your gut biome, you're, you're the bacteria that live in you, and we talked about this before, you're, you're actually less than half human. Mm hmm. Most of the cells on your body are non human cells. Mm hmm. You have fewer human cells on your body than you have non human cells. That's weird. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Erik: But it's true.

I'm an alien. I'm half [00:25:30] alien. Isn't that weird to think 

Matt: about that? It is, it is, yeah. So, 

Erik: you know the whole adage, you are what you eat? I mean, it, it was really true because what we eat affects that, that biome of bacteria that outnumber our human cells, has an enormous effect on our body, has an enormous effect on all the dimensions of health.

Uh, whether we're talking about sleep or mental illness, um, specifically with mental illness, if you eat the American diet, you're going to proliferate a certain kind of a real hardy bacteria [00:26:00] that is known to secrete a specific toxin associated with mental illness. I'm not kidding. I mean, this is the data's out there.

Yeah. Um, this is really a big deal. And whether we're talking about sleep, uh, we're talking about, uh, you know, your, uh, your, uh, you know, not just the hours of sleep, but your, your quality of quality of life. You're, you're, you know, when you sit alone and you're looking, you're going to sleep at night, are you happy?

Yeah. Are you content with your life? Yeah. That's a big deal. You want to, we all want to feel happy and [00:26:30] thrive with our lives. How do you honestly feel? Yeah. Yeah. You know, our food has a lot to do with that. Yeah. Uh, so I, I think that this intake thing is huge. The last thing I, I mean, if you wanna bring anything up, I mean, whether we're talking about what we put on our skin, what we breathe, what we hear, what we see, what we watch.

Yeah. All that stuff. Yeah. I would say that one thing I would like to say before we close this one out here in a few minutes is, uh, the, the, the brain and it's, it ties into vitality, but. [00:27:00] When we think about things, when we, when we're watching things and hearing things and, you know, what, you know, what we choose to engage in and, and put into our brain can affect our, our self talk.

And it's interesting studies that are done on this in that negative self talk is far more detrimental to us. Then positive self talk is, is positive and helpful to us. Yeah. We are shooting ourselves in the [00:27:30] foot when we have a negative inner voice telling us things that are not positive. So making an effort, having a good hygiene, a mental hygiene of, of, you know what?

I shouldn't call myself an idiot. Even in my mind, I just said that I shouldn't think that way. I'm not an idiot. I've had a tough day today. I'm hungry. I'm tired. I just got to get control of this. I, I. Apologize to my wife or whatever and then move on and seek forgiveness or whatever it might be. But I am not an idiot.

Matt: You know, I [00:28:00] am guilty of doing that big time. You've caught me on that several times. I'm 

Erik: bad too, man. And 

Matt: I think, I know in my mind, it's, I don't do it in a realm of talking bad about myself. It's more of trying to be humble. 

Erik: Like 

Matt: I don't want to be this proud cocky guy walking around thinking I'm just the man, right?

Yeah and so I think that's really and I'm guessing that's probably the same as you is That a lot of people do it in a realm of trying to remain humble. Well, you can remain humble [00:28:30] without Degrading yourself and calling yourself an idiot and calling yourself stupid, right? And so that's definitely something that I'm trying to currently work on is Like, you can still be humble without the negative self talk.

Yep. You know, and that is very important. 

Erik: And I think what we put into our mind is a big part of that. You know, garbage in, garbage out. You eat garbage, you're gonna feel like garbage. You watch garbage, you're 

Matt: gonna, yeah, exactly. 

Erik: Yeah, you hear it, you say it, you're gonna, you're gonna think it. Yeah. So, I think all of these things.

It's so complicated, this intake portion. But it is an [00:29:00] important thing, a very important thing. One of the pillars of wellness. Yep. For 

Matt: sure. Probably the biggest one that, like you said at the beginning, a lot of people look at the most is what am I eating? Or what am I putting into my body? It's a huge, huge thing.

Erik: Comment, ask questions, we can address things. This is a great conversation to have, Matt. Absolutely. Well done. That's an important topic. Huge. Very important. See you on the next one. Be safe out there. for 

Narrator: listening to EMS, [00:29:30] the Erik and Matt Show.