Become The Person Who Waits For The Right Reward

We share how a gut detox, optimal labs, and simple whole foods lowered inflammation fast, then widen the lens to show why delayed gratification and nervous system regulation are the real engines of lasting change. Health becomes the operating system for performance, business, and purpose.

• running full labs to find root causes, not mask symptoms
• leaky gut, methylation, and hormone patterns explained
• whole food eliminations that cut inflammation
• early results vs long-term lifestyle upgrades
• delayed gratification as the key separator
• tiny repeatable choices stacking into mastery
• nervous system regulation enabling better decisions
• identity alignment over motivation hacks
• the P3 frame: performance, productivity, purpose
• weekly prompts to raise standards and build capacity

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Transcript

Mission And Host Intro

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Unmasking Greatness. I'm your host, Chris DeCorps, a lifestyle fitness coach and mentor. This podcast is about unmasking your greatest potential, finding your purpose, and crafting a life worth living. Health and fitness has been the gateway drug to all of my success. My continuous drive to keep learning and surround myself with other high achievers forces me to level up, which has developed my mind to something I never thought was possible. This podcast is here to share what I've learned and continue to learn with all of you. This is your time to take back control of your health, mindset, and personal environment. Strap in as we are recharged and always find value in the show. Please subscribe and share as we can all get better together. Let's go.

Labs, Functional Care, And Root Causes

Leaky Gut Findings And Lifestyle Stress

The Gut Detox Protocol And Early Results

From Short Diet To Lasting Habits

The Case For Delayed Gratification

Tiny Choices Compound Into Mastery

Nervous System Regulation As An Edge

Identity, Capacity, And Sustainable Change

P3: Performance, Productivity, Purpose

Weekly Prompts And Final Challenge

SPEAKER_01 0:44

What's up, guys? Welcome to another episode of Unmasking Greatness. I'm your host, Chris Kakoris, and I hope you're having a wonderful Monday. We are getting some momentum, getting this podcast rolling again. So I'm glad to be here, glad to provide you guys some value, everything from the things that are going on in my life, the things that I'm learning, and uh sometimes getting a little vulnerable with y'all. So here we are. You know, if you guys have been keeping up with me on my Instagram or on my social media in general, uh, you may have seen that I am in the process of doing a gut detox. So I ended up the beginning of the year, got my, well, I got a full metabolic panel, so a blood panel done to look at all of my markers. And this is not from a primary care physician. Um, I don't want to get too too in depth about this, but they they just don't check. I mean, they're just looking at your basic metabolic panel and they don't go in depth when they're looking at your hormones. So things like your testosterone, your estrogen, your thyroid, uh, they just it's just not something they look at. And if you ask them that you want to look at it, if you have a cool doc or a cool NP, then they they will do it. If not, they may start asking questions of why do you want to know? And a lot of times it's not their fault. You know, they have to have a reason on why they have to ask to get that tested, you know, and that could be from insurance purposes or the higher ups. Uh, there's just it's a little bit harder to get these kind of data points, which is kind of crazy, right? This is your body. You should you should know these things. But, anyways, I ended up getting a full metabolic panel done and um went through it with a functional practitioner who, you know, this is this is what they're trained to do. It's for them to go in depth and figure out the root cause for all kinds of things, everything from, you know, SIBO to leaky gut to hormonal imbalances, uh, skin issues if you're having, you know, acne breakouts or rashes or rosacea. There's a there's a whole skew of things that uh people come in and Western medicine just wants to medicate. They don't want to actually heal it at the root cause. Uh so and this could potentially be a whole topic in itself, but you know, that's how they make money. Medicine. They don't want to fix you, they want to just main maintenance you, you know, maintain what what they got going on so they can continue to give you medicant medicine and uh, you know, make a little money. So welcome to Big Pharma, right? So, but regardless, uh, we started getting into it. And and again, like I feel like I look pretty decent. Uh, most people will be like, you're incredibly healthy, but from the outside, it could show differently on the inside. I know a lot of people that are really, really healthy looking on the outside, or like an athlete, bodybuilders specifically, that are straight up chaos inside. They're their hormones, their cholesterol, their liver are just completely out of whack. Trust me, I know. And so we do this to ourselves, unfortunately. But hopefully, you know, you're careful and you're getting blood work done and you're managing these sort of things. But uh, you know, I haven't competed at a pro level since 2020, I think is the last time I competed. And so I eat fairly healthy, you know, I I have flexibility. Um, but there was different markers that were showing uh out of range and not optimal. Okay. So uh there I'm gonna do a whole podcast series on this, but to just give you guys some context, uh, I don't nobody should be average or in the normal range. You should be in optimal range if you really want to feel good and and um have your body working efficiently. And so there were signs of leaky gut. Uh, this is also why I wasn't absorbing things that I was supposed to be absorbing, like you know, my nutrients, protein intake. Uh it was also one of the reasons my estrogen was a little bit higher than normal. Uh and my my body wasn't methylating properly. So these little key markers uh needed to be optimized. And just from my my lifestyle, my work, and how I live, it's it's a little stressful, you know. Um, and last year was super stressful. So that just amplified, you know, my irregularity when it came to my cortisol levels and my sleep and everything in between. So I felt like this year I really wanted to put a lot of emphasis on really getting myself truly healthy and optimally healthy. And so I started to embark on uh a protocol, a gut detox. And it's uh there's nothing too sexy about it. So many people have been like messaging me, what are you doing for your gut detox? Because I put a two-week side-by-side picture of myself. And you can obviously see a lot of inflammation has gone down, you know, water weight retention. And so I dropped about nine pounds, uh, about uh a percent of body fat as well. And so, you know, people are like, Well, where'd all that weight come from? Well, probably a lot of inflammation, water retention. Uh, we restructured my nutrition plan um to optimize my cholesterol levels as well. So, you know, it's it's super, super simple, whole food-based. And I'll give you a rundown, like really, it's just whole foods, uh, grass-fed. If uh you we try to, we we try, we eliminated all dairy products, um, any gluten, wheat products, sugars, uh, minimized artificial sweeteners as well, uh, almost like completely took those out as well. And so trying to get the body to just get rid of some of that inflammation, uh, just from like the processed foods in America, you know, and in two weeks' time, I've already noticed a pretty significant difference. And, you know, was the diet fun? Not really. Um, is it boring? Kind of. Uh, there's just nothing sexy about it. But the reality is, like, there's an outcome that I'm trying to achieve, and this is what it's gonna take, and and I'm gonna do it. And so from somebody that has obviously dieted in the past, it it just was kind of like a rerun. Um, doesn't mean it made it any easier, but I'm used to kind of repetitively eating the same things, but it was tough because I haven't dieted like that in in, you know, five years. And so I had to have kind of like, you know, these internal dialogues with myself with, oh, I could just get a little something here, or one day doesn't matter. And uh this is the same kind of things that I talk to with my clients. And, you know, do you want do you want a fast outcome or do you want to just slowly, gradually get into it? And for me, I wanted to go all in. I didn't want to tiptoe around it. Um, I told, you know, the functional practitioner, like, let's roll, you know, like whatever you say, I'm gonna do it. I trust you. And so I I executed just like I was supposed to do, and I already see the results in it. So, and and the next thing is like, oh, Chris, well, like, is it over? Is your is your diet over, Chris? No, it's it's not over because this is slowly implementing a lifestyle change. You know, I'm going to do my best not to have any more dairy products and do a lot of artificial sweeteners and definitely sugars, and I'm gonna stay away from gluten. Does that mean I will never eat those things again? Definitely not, you know. Um, I'm I'm going to have my fair share of eating out and things like that, but on a day-to-day, I want to be healthy. I want to really live this lifestyle and have a long, healthy lifestyle as well, because I have a business to run, I have a family to support, you know, I'm seeing people every single day. My days are long. So I don't want to create what I call an invisible ceiling of, you know, you're doing things and you're growing and scaling, and all of a sudden you get stopped by something you didn't realize was in front of you, which is your health. And so this is where I kind of lean into this uh this topic of the podcast is that like, you know, when you are trying to accomplish anything that is significant to you, it really comes down to the fact that you you have to understand you will achieve your goal, but you have to practice a little bit of delaying that gratification. You know, I would say it's just, you know, when when you hear somebody say something like that, it's it's not sexy. It doesn't sell, it doesn't, you know, give you that hit of dopamine that you want. But realistically, it's probably the biggest separator between people who stay stuck and people who actually build something real or achieve something amazing, right? And so, not motivation, not talent, not even work ethic, you know, it's it's your ability to do what matters now, even when the reward feels kind of far away. And so the time is gonna pass regardless, you know. So I always try to tell people like, stay focused, stay true. It's not always how far you've gone, it's how far you've come. And so most people think, you know, when it comes to like, you know, let's I I like to correlate, you know, money with this too, is like most people they think they're broke, right? Because they don't make enough, they don't have the right opportunity, they don't have the right connections, uh, or or just no time. I love hearing that one. Um, the side note, I was at a little party the other weekend that was for like a fundraiser, and uh I was talking to some individuals, and one of them, you know, is talking about like, I really know I need to get in the gym. I just don't have any time in my day. And, you know, this is uh like 6 30 in the evening, and I'm like, well, you're here, right? Like you're it's 6 30 and you're here. I'm pretty sure this isn't on your regular everyday schedule, every weekly schedule, and you made time for this, you know. So I'm sure you could squeeze in some time somewhere. It just becomes a priority, you know. You got to find the priority and it and what it really means to you. But but more than more than often, you know, this isn't really the real issue, right? Um, most people, and especially like people that move fast and high achievers, they need to be rewarded fast too, right? They can't sit in the discomfort, they can't stay bored, they can't stay consistent when nobody's like cheering them on, you know. They they can't keep showing up when the results are just not there. It's it's very difficult. We want to see numbers, we want to see metrics, we want to see that things are working. So they trade the long-term wins for short-term comfort, future freedom for current relief, or progress for pleasure, you know, and and they don't even realize what they're doing. But the little tiny choices stack and build massive outcomes, you know, like a like a pyramid, right? It's just stone brick by brick, you know, one little stone, one little brick. I mean, it turns into this like huge masterpiece. It's the same thing. You know, your life isn't shaped by the big decisions, it's shaped by doing the the tiny, the boring, the repeatable choices. You know, asking yourself, you know, do I train today or do I skip? You know, do I eat for performance or for comfort? Do I work on hard things or the easy things? Do I scroll or do I build? How many of y'all resonate with that one? Uh so none of these decisions feel life-changing in the moment. But, you know, once you stack them for three years, five years, ten years, that's the difference. You know, that's the difference between being reactive versus being in control or being busy versus being effective, being stuck versus really being dangerous in your field and what you do. You want to be an athlete, you want to be a high performer. This is this is the difference. And outside of that, going into like that biology and where I was talking about that invisible ceiling, people don't even think about the the nervous system, right? So let's let's kind of like reel this in for a second. Delaying gratification is not just a mindset skill, it's a nervous system skill. If you're constantly stressed, if you're constantly burned out, your sleep is trash, if your energy is shot, even halfway through the day, your brain will always choose the fastest relief. Not the best decision, not the long-term play, the fastest relief. That's why high performers don't just train discipline, they train regulation because a calm nervous system can choose the harder workout, the cleaner food, the longer-term investment, the uncomfortable conversations. Delayed gratification gets easier when your biology is stable. And this takes training. This is why I'm a big component of working on personal development, working on your brain, working on your peace, your inner dialogue, right? This is your real edge. And in business, this shows up everywhere. Building systems instead of chasing the quick wins, investing instead of flexing, you know, is something that I've been, you know, working on myself too. Like, what do you what are you who are you trying to impress? You know, I want peace in my life. Um, we all like nice things, but at what expense? You know? So sometimes most people just they don't lose because they just don't make good decisions, you know. So they want the results before they built the capacity, right? We try to move too fast, right? A baby trying to run before it can even crawl. Disaster. Oh, it probably just won't even happen. They can't even stand up, right? So, same, same concept. You know, you gotta go at your own pace. Even when we're call talking about nutrition, and you know, I'm talking about this gut detox. For some people, they're just not at a capacity or experience enough to be able to follow something so rigid. So they need to work on lifestyle changes first to build a little momentum, make some dietary changes that are, you know, uh slightly take less effort, you know, maybe an elimination diet, and build confidence so then they can work up to a capacity to do a full-blown gut detox effectively and efficiently. So it's a it's a huge identity shift, you know. So the real upgrade is you got to stop asking, what do I feel like doing today? And really start asking, what would the person I'm becoming do right now? Delayed gratification isn't about suffering, it's about identity alignment. You're not depriving yourself, you're investing into your future. Okay. And these are the principles that I've been really pushing a lot harder into our P3 program, our P3 accelerator program that we started at the beginning of this year for professionals and business owners. Uh, you know, the the P3 is, you know, performance, productivity, purpose, right? Performance you can you can execute under pressure. Productivity, you choose leverage over impulse and purpose. You stop trading your future for comfort. We're not building hype machines here, you know. We're not rah-rah. You know, we want to be strategic moving forward. We're building high capacity humans who can play the long-term game without burning out. So I hope that makes sense. What I'm trying to tell you guys is this has become a lot more strategic than just impulsive. And this week I want you guys to think going into your Monday, maybe you're driving to work, maybe you're in the gym, maybe you're just listening to this on a break. Ask yourself some questions. Ask yourself, where am I choosing comfort over progress? Or where am I avoiding short-term discomfort that would create long-term freedom? Where am I leaking discipline through? Little those little decisions we were talking about. You know, pick one and then really lean into it. Place to tighten the standard. Okay? Get it, put a standard for yourself and really lean into it. Not perfectly, not forever, but just consistently. You know, as you build your confidence in doing things, you will be able to handle more, more capacity, which is really honestly what we were talking about last episode, is the capacity that you can handle on a day-to-day. So your future isn't built by b big emotions or moments. I mean, they are there, but again, this is not what's getting built upon. It's built by the boring, the discipline, the repeatable decisions made when nobody's watching. And the people who win, they're not motivated. They're just better at waiting for the right reward. Ask yourself, how long? I mean, think of think of a big goal. Like a big goal. And I want you to think about a big goal that realistically is probably something that you could do. Seems a little far-fetched, but is doable. How long would you be willing to wait or do the same thing to get what you want? A couple days, months, years, decades? That will tell me how important something is to you. And sometimes we just like the idea of growth. We actually don't want to hit the end because we know then it's over. Maybe that's you. Maybe that's me. I ask myself that all the time. So think about it, right? But delay gratification, lean into that. Don't get and something that you get overnight is just that there's no value behind it. Work towards something that's worth working towards. Earn your spot, earn your promotion, earn your budget, earn your life. Alright, you guys got this. I hope I motivated you guys this morning, and uh I'll talk to you on the next one. Peace.