The Champion Within
This is a series with fascinating and inspiring people, and what it takes to be the best you can at whatever your endeavours may be.
We will learn from others as to how they have handled themselves in their own pursuits, and so that we can apply to ourselves.
We’ll talk about the necessary support and how important it is, to have the best and appropriate systems around us, so that we can be the best possible. We’ll discuss aspects of ourselves that we can all develop.
This is a show with inspiring people, including musicians, artists, athletes, medical specialists, business entrepreneurs and more…in the pursuit of excellence.
I’m Jason Agosta, a health professional and former athlete, and I'm fascinated in people’s stories, my own involves developing certain attributes over time, but also things that were not done well or were significantly missing.
Join me on The Champion Within in discovering that everybody has a story, and everybody has a message.
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The Champion Within
Ep.15 Marc Botoulos: The Power of Exercise on Mental Health
Have you ever found yourself trapped in the shackles of your own mind? You're not alone. Our guest Mark Botoulos opens up about his courageous journey battling an eating disorder, depression, and suicidal thoughts. This heartfelt conversation illuminates the struggles of mental health, emphasizing the significance of seeking professional help and the transformative power of exercise.
Throughout this conversation, we also underline the often-overlooked aspect of physical activity on mental health. Mark provides an in-depth analysis of how his consistent exercise routine has acted as a stabilizing force, both physically and emotionally. Together, we unpack the physiological benefits of an active lifestyle such as mood augmentation and enhanced energy levels. Furthermore, we broach the subject of social connections and the dynamic role of communication in discussing mental health issues.
We contemplate body image, eating disorders, and the intense pressure of high expectations. The narrative evolves towards self-acceptance and gratitude amidst such stressors. Mark's tale is one of resilience and determination, serving as an inspiration for listeners who might be in a fragile state. We highlight the necessity for empathy, assistance, and courage to speak about one's personal struggles. So, tune into this stimulating conversation that's bound to leave you feeling hopeful and empowered.
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It's 2020,. Riding 235km and 4500m vertical in the high country of Victoria here in Australia meant 8 hours of learning, both physically and psychologically. For 4 years, I've been battling with an eating disorder. Food and body weight was all I worried about, all I cared about and all I thought about. It took over my life, my lowest point. I became suicidal. I was starting to plan how to end this misery, but there were remnants of the mark from pre-disorder, whose love and being a larrican was able to turn this around. This version of me was able to turn this life around and I sought help, reached out and spoke up. These actions saved my life. Getting the professional and medical help required brought me stability, something I was missing for 4 years. I was in some pretty dark places at times throughout this ride yesterday, but I shone through To multuous as the day was. It ended in triumph, proving to be a testament to my life, and I am unabashedly proud of myself, and I will not let this feeling date as I aspire towards even higher quality. There is so much more I could say about my rise, my fall and recurring rise from battling with an eating disorder, depression and being suicidal. Instead, I look ahead to what is to come, that being a life full of hope, perseverance and love.
Speaker 1:These are the words, post 3peak cycling challenge, for my next guest, mark Batullis. Hi there everyone. You're listening to the Champion Within show. I'm Jason Agosta and you are listening to fascinating people with inspiring stories. Today, I present to you a very special episode with Mark Batullis discussing his battle with mental health and the power of exercise on wellbeing. So, although this is deeply meaningful, helpful to others and inspirational, I still find this tough to fully understand from the outside perspective, being so positive in life and the way that I look at everything, even though I've been close to others who have had similar issues, it's still difficult. I'm not a psychologist, I'm not a physiologist and I'm not a neurologist, but I'm an allied health practitioner who has been exposed to many different mental health scenarios over 35 years of practice. Hey, thanks for tuning in for episode 15, a very special, emotional, positive and inspiring episode with Mark Batullis and the power of exercise.
Speaker 1:Let me set the scene because when I first met you, which was early 2020, we were both at Falls Creek and we were just about to take off for Three Peaks Challenge, which is one of the most iconic sort of cycling events in the country here in Australia and we'd never met before. I remember staying up probably a little bit too late, chatting to you that night before. All I thought was I just met this beautiful young guy who was an absolute powerhouse on the bike because I had seen you ride a little bit and I remember we had a really nice chat about what you were on about with your study and work and things like that and we were talking bikes a little bit. But then after the completion of that Three Peaks Challenge which I think you were finished about an hour in front of me, something like that or probably even more I was completely taken aback by your post that you put up about the effect that the bike had had on you on a personal level and I have to say that night that you and I spent a couple of hours sitting opposite each other on a table chatting. I was completely oblivious and it never would have even crossed my mind that you were dealing or had dealt with or were dealing with just an absolute hell mission within yourself as far as mental health and getting yourself centered and on the straight and narrow Since learning about that and you and I haven't had this discussion at all since then.
Speaker 1:Obviously, we've met up a couple of times. My thoughts were that this young guy clearly has a long story of darkness, but he also has an amazing, inspiring story of how exercise can gather you both mentally and physically, and that's what I loved about reading your history. It was very easy to look at and go, oh my God, this is so heavy and sure it was all heavy, but so inspiring that you can talk about this freely and tell us a story about exercise and your well-being. It's incredible. So I'm so happy to sit here and speak to you.
Speaker 2:The pleasure I mean really is all mine. I think you know it feels nice to, I suppose, have someone interested. I thought it was a really humble story and I mean I've always considered myself a bit of an average punter Just really enjoys, I suppose, testing their body physically. Yeah, yeah, I mean exercise for me is, I suppose it's been great to me since I was a little kid myself. So I'm the youngest of four boys, including my twin brother, and we've always just been, we've always been exercising, always, and I think it's been ingrained in our life. And I think as I've matured, my relationship with exercise has matured and I've understood that it's impacts on me are far reaching that of which are physical and it definitely goes into the psychological realms, definitely for me. Yeah, I think how you sort of interpreted my journey is definitely how I relate to exercise. Now it's a stabiliser. For me it's very much a sometimes it'd be love, hey, I mean, is anything itch? But for me it's definitely there's been times where I've taken it too far yeah.
Speaker 1:But we've all done that. We've all done that yeah.
Speaker 2:That ride. That ride was special and I suppose I was going into a piece. Challenge, what is it? 235 kilometres, you do three, as it says, three massive peaks, even though I don't tell you about the one coming out of Omo, but that's not Exactly I spoke about that this week.
Speaker 1:actually it's like four and a half. We should actually say, as you mentioned, just to go on, it's four and a half thousand metres vertical. Yeah, that's right, no one talks about the major peaks, but I was exactly the same. Afterwards no one told me about that other hill.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know, and but hey, isn't that that's part of the fun? But look that ride for me. I didn't intend it to be like this soul searching thing. I suppose I've always reflecting on what it did for me and I suppose there was this yeah, it's like when people finish marathons, right, they reflect on what it took to get to the start line. Arguably, that's one of the hardest things to get to the start line is all the training that goes into it and I just I was just so proud of myself because of where I'd been at that point and where I'd been prior to that point.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was. It was really special.
Speaker 1:So that what you're talking about is a bit of a culmination of a journey and has. I mean, we'll go back a little bit, you know, shortly, but since that time has everything still been, you know, relatively good for you. Um, I look.
Speaker 2:I almost put a full stop to everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean when I, when I finished that ride, I was supposed that when I finished that experience, so up until that point I had, you know it's about to have mental ill health. What this is actually for me. I had bouts of mental health, obviously having battled with an eating disorder and and all the co? Co morbidity with that comes with that Um, but I actually had um, unfortunately, you know, it's probably about two or three After that, I think, coming off that high. Actually I'm a first bout of Swiss Adelaide from that, and there were myriad of factors from then.
Speaker 2:So actually that was just one. It wasn't sort of the end of my story, if anything that was. I went through some tumultuous times between the end of the end of peaks to where I am now. And actually, arguably, where I am now I would say is, look, I never like to sort of put a finale on my mental health journey because, I mean, stress isn't always coming. No well, that's it. It's a constant challenge, isn't it To achieve?
Speaker 1:balance within ourselves and balance with a lifestyle, and that's a life. I think that's a never ending challenge in our life, there's no doubt. But you sound like you've got great perspective. I mean yeah. Look, my, that sounds like it was a turning point back then much.
Speaker 2:My father's told me everything happens for a reason. I'm not going to say that I bet it was suicidality for a good reason. It's never a good reason, but I don't look back on that and if we go into it, it's something that I think has made me who I am today. I do promise off on being a values based person now being lucky enough to be a father and to be engaged. It's broadened my perspective and I think, having gone through what I went through, it's allowed me to have this sense of I don't know what put it. I think it's more. I think it's more it's about appreciating relationships both with myself and other people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, is it a bit more gratitude with what you?
Speaker 2:have Absolutely, I think, gratitude and integrity. I've Gratitude why? Because I used to. I mean, as a young adult, you just go at life full guns, blaze, you don't really think about consequences and you have fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, go ahead, let's go back one sec One of the things you just said, though, is yeah, yeah, I see myself as a very average guy and all this sort of stuff, but your message, I mean, I think we can all say things like that I just like Bumble along, do my work, do my study, do my writing, just like everyone else, no big deal.
Speaker 1:But your story, and many people's stories, can relate to so many people that we don't know about because nobody talks. When here you are as a young man, talking about mental health being suicidal, the effective exercise on you and having gratitude and appreciation and a balance in life, now, one of the things that happens, I think, with this is that young guys particularly don't talk up like this, and this is why this episode is so important, and when you said you had the gift of the gab and wanted to speak and things like that, I was like so stoked to hear from you, and I think it's a really great, inspiring story that you have. If we go back to when a lot of this started and you said you were pensive and just probably apprehensive, it sounds like, with lots of things going on around you, although all guns blazing as a young guy, when did things start to unravel, and is it was a returning point with that, as far as you hitting the grindstone and being so hard on yourself in a negative way.
Speaker 2:I mean, I've always thought about why I am the way I am. So I think the roots of all this is definitely my approach to. Yeah, my lady is a high school, so I always wanted to get the most out of myself at school.
Speaker 1:So it was a pressure on yourself? Yeah, it was a pressure on myself High expectations, high expectations academically. Expectations from others as well pressure.
Speaker 2:You know, it started early on, probably, I think, and then I made it, I put the pressure on myself. So the pressure was, it wasn't direct, but I felt it as a directing. So what I mean by that is my eldest brother, william, is to me he was he's my epitome of academic success. He was, I mean, he had a very high ATA and scholarship and the like, and as into uni, and he had this image. You know, he was remembered. And then, a couple of years later, myself and my twin brother, andre, we went to school and went oh your Will's brother, oh your Will's brother. And so there was this. I don't know if Andre ever interpreted the same, but I definitely felt that, as in there's an image, there there's an expectation and live it up to. And so actually, the early years were yeah, I'm Will now.
Speaker 2:And slowly and slowly, as I started to take school more seriously you know I'm not sure if Will ever knew this, but you know I always tried to think is this something Will would do? You know where there was a subject that I talk or how I approached my study. You know I was only a young takah when Will was in year 12, but I can remember how fast he was and how much he worked hard at some, at things that were, at things that he achieved. And so I was the first few years when me living up to that. And then I've, as I got to about year nine or 10, breaking that mole and then kind of falling, falling my own image, stepping out of the shadow and casting my own, was what I tried to achieve. But it was not that I had transcended Will, like it, didn't feel like this. Yeah, euphoric, oh, I'm now. I'm now Mark. I'm not William's brother, mark.
Speaker 2:I became I almost became my worst enemy, in a way, because nothing was ever good enough. You know, I get, I get an A, I get an A plus, but why wasn't that full marks? It was this perspective on what I had to achieve. You know that and you know people can say you look at areas of improvement. But I thought, no, that's the fact that I didn't get full marks. And so the yeah, the antecedent, I think, was that approach, because not only was that in school, that was in everything. So, like school, high school, for me was this microcosm of, of, of, of my broader, of, my broader life. Yeah, that that personality permeated. You know, on the sporting field I was pretty. I was never I never captain, but you know, in leisure groups and I'd always be a hard taskmaster, I never had this appreciation that my own, my own expectations were my own, like I was always. I would project that outwardly.
Speaker 1:So I was looking at things negatively instead of positively.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, from the sake of that.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's a very simple way to put it literally, but you're picking the negatives out of. You know, high achieving of either sporting or academically yeah, You're always fucking something to pick on or pull out and be hard. That's right, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I mean, and the ironing and all that is my, that's not my, that's that's not my upbringing, my mother and father, they always said to me if you tried your best, that's the best you can do, like something to that avail. And why is that? Because that is and that's what I said earlier gratitude and integrity. Right, and that's where I got the integrity from. I got the integrity from my parents. My parents are always about doing things with you know, earnestly, and being steadfast in your endeavors and and doing and committing to seeing it through. Right, if I didn't get an A, they couldn't give two votes, right, that well, if I didn't get a B or whatever. But if they saw that I tried and I tried really hard and gave it everything, well, that's all we as parents.
Speaker 1:that's all you want to see, that's right, that's right. I've said the same with my children as well. I'm going to ask you though now you can speak about all this, that being so hard on yourself early on and having a better perspective. Are you still like that to some degree, or have you sort of had that acceptance and more gratitude that everything's cool if it's things aren't aligned properly? Have you got a better perspective?
Speaker 2:I'm saying, I'm saying that because there's certain times I'm like that could have been better. But having gone through therapy and just my you know, just personal growth, in general I see it as, yeah, that could have gone better. But hey, did I intend to do my best? Yeah, great, that's fine. That's the thing, is it? It's doing the best In my line of work. Now, if I'll, if I'll you know, because I work in media and communications if I'll write, if I'll write something, but it gets heavily edited, the old me would have seen, oh damn, oh damn, damn, that's that. But then I and now I'm like, I'm like I'm now actually says like, well, I don't get too attached from a work because I, I got that to a certain point where I'm happy with it and I'm, I'm, I'm like, yeah, this is going to get edited, and that's just a different perspective.
Speaker 1:This is having acceptance, isn't it?
Speaker 2:This is having acceptance Absolutely. I understand. I understand now that I'll do things. I'll do things where perhaps it's not going to be how I intended it to, but if my intentions are good and I do it.
Speaker 1:And you've tried hard.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've tried hard. I've done it with integrity. I can come back to that word, so it sounds like you've learnt that not everything has to be perfect.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that level. One thing I'll also add to that and I can see and hear this in your voice and you already know this that stress you put on yourself or that pressure is an absolute, complete waste of energy. Yeah, yeah, so stressful to be like that. It's so energy taxing. You don't realise it at the time, but until you do gain that acceptance, it's like well, I'm a bit more composed and you sound like you've come to that point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. And you know there were times where I decide myself and thought, oh, I was at a point of acceptance but I really wasn't. And now, yeah, because what does it, what does it go to? The acceptance give you, allows you the ability to detach from, from that energy zapping stress. And because that stress may be a really stressful person and that that stress often in times would actually create to a lot of indecision and that anxiety would, because I always found that my anxiety was worrying about all the negative things that could happen.
Speaker 2:So, so sometimes when I to write something that would take me a million years to write something that would be worrying about oh, but they're going to change this and they're going to change that, they're going to change this, they're going to change that.
Speaker 2:Now, you know, in my line of work now, I think that they're going to change it. Yes, you've got great clarity. Clearly, I now accept that things will happen negative things, good things but both, both will pass. Going on the subject of acceptance, I've accepted the fact that that is my life. You know what that acceptance has allowed me to own and be more responsible for my decisions. And I take I take the fact that I can't actually preempt what's going to happen after this decision. You know, it can go, google bad. I can think I'm making a great decision and then it turns out that there's this curveball that comes, and you know what I'll deal with that curveball.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and some people listen to say you know, this is the same for all of us. This is just what happens.
Speaker 1:Yeah, good days and bad days, and things go up and down and like training, there's not always perfect or things with your family or whatever it might be If we go back a bit to when, when you sort of run the slippery slope and things were dark for you, very negative, very anxious, very depressive, which leads into you know, I suppose, the worst outcome of thinking in a suicidal manner. Where did exercise come into this for you? And you did also talk about the eating disorder, which you'll touch on in a sec. But where did exercise come into this for you? Was it something that you were already doing or did you latch onto the bike and that sort of has elevated you?
Speaker 2:So the bike itself, that I've had this mixed relationship with the bike because the bike had. I'm sure anyone who starts out riding can attest to the fact that it becomes really obsessive. Yet, yeah, 20, 20 K ride turns into 30, 40, 50.
Speaker 1:And then, next thing, you know you do on a century.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the numbers game right.
Speaker 2:Exercise, look, exercise. In whatever form, exercise always been there. So, whether it's been bike running, which is most of my days now because running time efficient, any parent of a of an infant will attest to that exercise was part of the slippery slope. I would often deceive myself that it was that life was good. But now in hindsight I realized that was only good if I had exercise. My mother and father would be nodding their heads because the days that I had that particular time of my life, riding was the main form of exercise. If I had ridden or was good, yeah, I did ride. We don't know which mark we're going to get today.
Speaker 1:Okay, and why is that? And was that true, though? Was that true within yourself?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I can see that now. Why was that? Because I didn't invest on what was actually going on within. I didn't invest in well, not invest, pay attention to all the other realms of my life. I didn't realize that, that I felt connected to a lot of people, but only on a surface level. And I'll tell you right now that that really hurt me and my and my brother, andre, because we always felt on the outer. But this never occurred to me until I'd started to pay attention to it In my early twenties, when I was going through this negative space one of the earlier parts of just being so self-deprecating and I never paid attention to that.
Speaker 2:And when I started to, I started to realize how important friendships are. And I suppose why did I not pay attention to it? Because I always had Andre, I always had my twin brother. He is my best, he is my best mate. But I've started to commit to social connection and think about who are the people that I want in my life and make an effort with those people. So that started for me. So this slippery slope, it was just this. When I started to pay attention to this was probably towards the end of twenty one. Twenty twenty one and I started to talk. I started to let certain people I'll be on my family as to where my mental health was. You know, there's these good friends of mine that I ride with Juan, our mutual friend, and it started there because they were the easiest people for me to talk to, I suppose because they're a little bit older than myself, and there was that trust of maturity that they would understand. They would understand, yeah, exactly. Maybe they didn't understand, I don't know.
Speaker 1:I've never seen them, but I can tell you now I've been in the room when you have walked in, when there's been like 10 people sitting there and you have walked in and everyone has lit up. When you have walked in and I only knew you, like you know superficially, but I've seen that several times there's clearly an appreciation of who you are from the group you just mentioned.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think, I think the reason why I've been I suppose I do, I do feel that appreciation is because I suppose it's reciprocal and I started to come on this raw rise from that friendship as things that I didn't pay attention to and when I started to, that was the turning point for me, because exercise it can be an emotional regulator but the penny dropped for me that it cannot be everything and when I say too far ones, it was my only savior.
Speaker 1:Yes, but I mean go back to the social part of it, and we know that this has been spoken of a lot over a long period of time about the importance of being so social and mental health but you sound like you've sort of grasped that and you've understood that within yourself and you've really, as you said, invested in it and can see the benefits of it.
Speaker 2:One thing I do want to mention, though, is that there's this I suppose sometimes people can misconstrue the idea of social connection means you need to talk about your mental health, and I think what is really important for I suppose, if you want to think about the demographic of young adult males, right, let's not pressurize young adult males to talk and they need to put words to their emotions, like, yes, that's really important, but maybe some of them don't have that emotional literacy, and that's okay. Communication isn't always verbal, I believe. Friends for me, the way I communicate with them, or the way that they've provided a space for me, is to just be there.
Speaker 1:Well, I think it's fair to say I don't know you very well. Well, I've probably spent a little bit of time with you and we've run into each other a little bit in and out of a group setting. But for some reason something has resonated with you and I yeah, I'd say it doesn't have to be. No, I think I. It doesn't have to be literal, we don't have to have these huge conversations, but there's something has resonated. Yeah, look, there's no doubt about it. So I get what you're saying.
Speaker 2:Look, I believe that when there's those things that are unfalable, and sometimes that's values, right, you just feel that you're cut from the same cloth. And also that's how I've chosen my friends. I suppose some people turn friends as the family that you choose Right. And why do you choose them? Because I believe well, at least this has been my view that it's values, and I know that I don't necessarily have to tell people exactly how I'm feeling, and especially in sometimes the rawness of it, because sometimes that might be too confronting, but also sometimes there's just a level of understanding.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, mystery, whatever you want to call it, but there's just a depth of understanding and I think that's what I was trying, to the point I was trying to make.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, absolutely yeah. And look, yeah, understanding one another is. And understanding I mean that goes back to what I was supposed to saying is when you understand someone you don't, you don't need to expect too much or too little when you don't understand someone. And I think when you understand someone you know, you know, you know how they're going to communicate, you know that. Okay so, and so is not a big talk up. But when he says he wants to catch up and just hang out, you know it can mean this or that. I don't need to go on a depth of you know.
Speaker 2:So tell me what you feel, tell me exactly, Tell me this and tell me that because that can you know, some people, just like I said before, don't have the words and that's all.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so you might not feel like it. And you may not feel like it because, to be honest, there's been times where I'd gotten out of a psych psychologist appointment, and rightly so, because my parents are very caring people. So how did it go? How did it go? I mean spending an hour talking about my demons and then to regurgitate that to my mum and dad Look sure, like I told them in time. But then I mean right after that, my, my ability to do so was just a bit too much. I needed to recharge that battery.
Speaker 1:Energy draining. That's the thing is draining. Yeah, so that's one of the things about going back to the exercise side of things. We wrote that article about what the bike had done for you. I remember reading that. You know, you just thought it was the bike and just go for a little ride here and there. The next thing you know you're just doing this huge level of mileage and then racing around three peaks like the buddy champion. And what we do know? We do know physiologically that there's an enormous chemical release in the brain and throughout your body with exercise and that has like an enormous powerful effect on our wellbeing and just our neural pathways of our brain, without going into it heavily. But that's the big plus about exercise and you sounded like at that stage you had just grasped that and were just absolutely thriving off it.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I was thriving off it because I suppose I understood what it did for me and my emotional state. And you know, there were times where I suppose, even though I was in that slippery slope, the times where I was feeling good because of exercise, I made sure I would come home from a morning ride, those big training rides, and I'd say to mom all right, I'm going to do, you know, because she'd go off to work. Right, I'll hang out the clothes, I'll do the dishes. Oh, you want me to do some vacuuming? Yeah, great. And because I felt like I needed to pay forward something. You know, I was in such a good mood. I had this burst of energy there, on of expending energy, but you get this burst of energy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, everyone knows what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's interesting what you touched on before. You said you know it's easy to go a little bit obsessive and you had the eating disorder stuff go on as well. But if you think about what exercise did for you and I've said this countless times on this show and there's always a negative connotation to the obsessiveness and the last episode of Do With Sarah we're talking about the same thing. It's not that at all. With some of us it's a positive drive and if you put those two words together, this is where you are now. This is what it's actually done for you when you say spoken enough like go, go into whatever turns you on.
Speaker 1:go into your exercise and make yourself feel so much better and, like you just said, have the energy to get through the day doing, you know, all those other aspects of life that you know you want to do.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And you know I I tackled it head on. So I sort of I looked at, you know, this slip of soap of exercise and the high and the low, and the high and the low, and I said why? Okay, how? But why does it make me feel good? It's just drilling down. It's almost like, I think it's, I think it's similar to, like that Socratic method of questioning. You know why why why?
Speaker 2:And when I drew it right down. Why do I exercise? You know, I used to be my my why has obviously changed as I've gotten older, right yeah?
Speaker 2:Well, I do for all of us, I love seeing my mates kicking football around. But now, why do I exercise? Because I feel empowered about what my body can do and, more broadly, what I can do, and so I understood that to get the best out of myself I needed to get, I suppose I need to maximize what exercise can do for me, and I can only do that by respecting the exercise. What does that mean? By fueling my body. What's fuel, fuel's eating.
Speaker 2:So this is how I started to develop what I would believe my healthiest relationship with food to date, and now I feel very safe where I am. I feel recovered. I feel you can, I mean, if you want to use the term control debatable whether that's a good way to describe it, but what I mean by that is I feel comfortable in my food decisions and I feel in such a safe space about where I'm at because I got the help I reached. It was in conjunction with my psychologist, tanya, and my absolutely brilliant dietician, emily Cumberford, and she took a lot of the guesswork out of and not overly prescriptive too with my meal plan. It was wow, mark, you're doing all this exercise. You need to, as I just said, you need to respect that, and when I understood that I could only achieve what I wanted to achieve and feel empowered the way I wanted to, I needed to nourish myself. That's why I really enjoy my exercise because of how it makes me feel about myself.
Speaker 1:And go back to where you started this conversation with was it always never good enough?
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, and it really kickstarted in 2017.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:It was a few years before I met you and I would never report you as someone who had been down that pathway, which is, yeah, and sometimes it's that it can be a bit of a hidden, when it's not as overtly physical as in you're rather anemic and the like. Yeah, it can be rather an invisible disorder that you go through. And I started to focus on the result of how it looked rather than the process. And there was this negativity of, I suppose, food. And I got this one comment where, because it was the thing you could change, easily.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was the thing I could change you had control, I had control.
Speaker 1:You could change that, which is where the food thing comes in.
Speaker 2:And that is the most common, I suppose you feel, kind of trait of those who battle with an end disorder is the control that you can have, Absolutely how much. You do a little. And I got this one comment at a dinner saying I'd give so and so a run for their money in terms of how many snitzels and whatnot I could eat, and Penny dropped us off. Am I eating a lot? Am I eating too much? I'm trying to bulk up, but I'm a bit of a pig here and I could be here for hours to talk about how that evolved and presented and manifested over a six year. Six year well, now I mean six years later, but really the past year or so it really hasn't been that way, but it's the cycle.
Speaker 1:But I was just going to say that and again go back to what you said. You said that the exercise gave you the leverage to actually overturn this because you needed to eat. The one thing I also wanted to say with that, Mark, was these things that we're discussing are more common around us than what we think and like if I go back to when I met you, I would never even had, I had no idea, but I would never even thought there's this young, super strong powerhouse sitting opposite the table from me. There was a really cool, beautiful guy, had this ordeal as a history, but also just coming out of that in a way, you know, because you seem like so big and strong.
Speaker 1:So it is hard to imagine that the message that you have passed on here is that there is a lot that goes on behind the scenes we don't see and some of us may not appreciate the person we had sitting in front of us without knowing the whole story.
Speaker 1:But it is a little hard to conceive how to get there, because some people will be listening to this thinking you know, I'm so positive, I'm so upbeat, and how do you look at things in a negative light?
Speaker 1:How do you get to that point and that is a difficult concept or thought process to grasp, because we're like you know, you're on the pathway of trying to be the best you can be, you're trying to make the Olympic team or whatever it may be. And then we hear stories like yourself and others, and it's like sometimes it's so hard to grasp the process that the time and the things that have happened in the past to get you so down in such a dark place, it is sometimes very hard to grasp that. And then I meet you and it's like, holy shit, really, that wasn't him. No, there's no way that could be him, no way. And it's such a beautiful thing to sit here and listen to you open up and you said to me yeah, you had to give the gap and don't mind talking about it and pass on a message and all that, and it's so beautiful. I just want to jump through the screen mark and give you a big hug.
Speaker 2:Yeah, look it's. I suppose you can't look like I look all over my arms, but it's. This thing about what I've learned is the most literal sense. I don't tend to comment on how people, how people look, and even when some people might make anxious comments about themselves, I'm like I don't feel this and I don't feel good this way, good that way. I don't. I mean, I lift them up and say, hey, well, if you focus on that, I just listen how your body looks and more of what it can do. The rest will follow suit, because there might be some of my fellow cyclists and runners. Your people exercise so much and even if you don't exercise as much as you did, if you focus less on the extremes, that you focus on how you feel, it'll work itself out.
Speaker 1:You're going to be okay.
Speaker 2:You're going to be okay, you're going to be okay, Because and it was a cycle of not eating a lot, you know, I'm now I suppose, how much weight did you lose? Like, how low compared to yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean look, nowadays I don't, I don't weigh myself, and that's just me Any idea.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no idea. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I look roughly right now, just to comparison for people listening, I'm probably about 73, 74, anywhere around there. I got down to 61. How did you get that? Because what you see is not what I saw, and that's also you know, because that's the difference between your own perception of reality.
Speaker 1:Yeah well, that is also something that's not spoken of or forgotten, that you are so powerful in making decisions, the right decisions, taking control, but you're also really powerful of letting it all unravel and losing control and making the worst decisions, and we often get that. You have, you know you're a strong person, but you have to use that power positively, which is what you've learned. That's what's sort of resonating here. That's what I've learned.
Speaker 2:I've always been someone who's a tackle things with a lot of zest and that obviously into parts of my life as manifest negatively. But now I'm in a space where I'm always focused on what can I do and I suppose that the prospect of betterment not for a sake of I'm not good enough now. I'm good enough now I am who I am and I'm proud of who I am and I'm excited by the farther I can be in time, but for me, for me now, I don't focus on I made that mistake. Oh yeah, sure, you learn from your stakes, but it's this sense of ownership and I love the sense of being responsible for my own decisions, Because if I've made a bad decision, it's not good.
Speaker 2:Okay, how can I do better? Isn't there shouldn't be morality attached to food? And I'd encourage anyone listening that if they ever catch themselves saying I've had too much bad food or I must do good, food, Like food is not a moral decision, I think you're going to go down a really slippery slope If you think about it. Good foods and bad foods. Some are more nutritionally dense than others. But you're not a bad because what you're saying, if you have bad food and there's morality, then you're a bad person.
Speaker 1:Like you're not a bad.
Speaker 2:I mean enjoy yourself Like yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:Well, this is a balance we were talking about.
Speaker 2:This is a balance, and at the core of what I'm trying to say is is that I've understood that this is me and I, no matter how hard I try, I can never look like, like I said before that yardstick, my twin brother, andre.
Speaker 2:I mean if I can't look like my identical twin, I can't look like anyone. So that in itself, when that penny dropped, I started to just reflect on myself and who did I want to be? Yeah, yeah, yeah To you. And what I can say to people is the power of exercise. Now that I look back on it, it's I looked at it as what you know? What kind of cyclist are now? What kind of runner do I want to be? Right, and then use, use your exercise and your pursuits. Like, don't, don't leave it in exercise, take it more broadly.
Speaker 1:And and I suppose the important thing with that is having that acceptance, as you mentioned earlier about it. None of that's going to be perfect, none of it. None of it will be perfect, no, no, and accept that and it will be up and down. As long as you have the gratitude and acceptance, you'll be, you'll be fine. Can I ask you, are you a much stronger person now?
Speaker 2:Yes, and you know, if I may drill down on that stronger part, it's because I am more confident. No, I understand what I mean by that is, I'm more confident because I'm more self-assured, I'm more connected with who I am and who I want to be. And you know, there's this pursuit of the best version, best version of me, best version of me, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm, I'm, I'm a stronger person because I've extrapolated what I've achieved through exercise to to all, all parts of my life and and, yeah, that's, that's what that's the exercise has done for me, because you can use it. You know, if I got that euphoria from you know, achieving, yeah, three peaks, or running a half marathon, a marathon, you know, whatever, whatever your achievement is, how did you achieve that? Because you approached something with commitment, you approached it with integrity, because you want to do the best you could. You made acceptances here and there. I missed that training session. That's OK, that's, that's all right, I'll pick it up next time. So if I was to injure myself, injure my foot, I couldn't run, couldn't ride. Right now I wouldn't be as self-deprecating as I once was.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thinking oh that's it.
Speaker 2:Oh, my life is terrible. Sure, I might be slightly less happy, because you know, less satisfied, but that would even out over time because I'm so focused on a broader perspective on life.
Speaker 1:Beautiful. Yeah, that's great perspective and amazing messages. I really appreciate your time joining me Insanely good. The pleasure is all mine. Just when we had that brief chat a couple of weeks ago, it just resonated. I've been thinking about it until today I thought.
Speaker 1:I didn't know how to you know because I'm not an expert on this and I don't know how and what it's like to be where you've been, but I love the fact that you want to talk and anyone listening who knows somebody or has been in a similar situation, I'm sure will have great understanding from this. So thank you immensely. It's amazing and you are an amazing guy and I've seen you light up the room champ every time.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. The pleasure is all mine and anyone listening that may have heard things about me that they weren't aware of. Come chat, I'm going to open book because the conversation could be powerful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Welcome to life. Hey exactly.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Jason.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, and it is a little bit up and down and I suppose our challenge again is to maintain that balance, isn't it? And? And having acceptance and, I suppose, learning and growing and, as you said, becoming stronger. Yeah, well done, mate. And, like I said, I'm going to smash through the screen and give you a big hug.
Speaker 2:Oh, bring it in.
Speaker 1:Thanks for joining me. All right, pleasure, speak soon. If you are dealing with issues yourself or know someone that is struggling, speak up, get help and advice. There are many people and organizations that may help you. Check the show notes for more details. Mr Mark for his openness, honesty and inspiration, and I hope that this touches at least one person that may feel vulnerable. Remember, speak up, seek help, see the positives. Thanks for listening. You can follow the show on Instagram at the underscore. Champion within. You can also follow and support this show on the show notes and please share with others. Thank you. Thank you again soon.
