webe Parents

EP. 47: Stop Waiting for “After the Rush” ⏳🔥 Chef Marcos’ Hard Truth on Hustle & Health

• Matt Lederman & Alona Pulde • Season 1 • Episode 47

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Challenging highlights you’ll want to hear:

🌍 From dishwasher with no English to executive chef in 3 months, Marcos cooked for presidents, celebrities, and sports legends. He starred on TV, lost his restaurant to betrayal, then clawed it back stronger.

💪 A 30-day plant-based reset gave him energy, weight loss, and freedom from pain… until the grind pulled him back into 16-hour days, junk food, and dangerous health scares.

⚡ This episode is a wake-up call for anyone telling themselves, “I’ll take care of me later.”

Stories that might sting (in a good way):

• 🚨 Marcos shares how ignoring warning signs nearly killed him—and why no career win is worth the hospital bed.

• 🌀 The trap of “later” — the lie that peace and health come only after the chaos is done.

• 🌱 How to ride the wave of transformation without crashing back into old habits when life gets messy.

To learn more about what Alona & Matt are up to check us out at webeparents.com, or follow us on our socials at Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, or YouTube. Be sure to subscribe to webe Pärents wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Alona:

Hey there. We'd love for you to hit that subscribe button. By subscribing, you're helping us spread the word and connect with more amazing people like you.

Producer:

Welcome to We Be Parents, where parent doctors Matthew Letterman and Alona Polday explore current parenting topics, share stories, and help bring families closer together.

Alona:

All right. Welcome to We Be Parents, where we help families grow closer together across generations. Whether you're raised Dr. Alona Polday a major personal transformation through a 30-day challenge with Beyond Meat.

Matt:

And we just really like Marcos. So there's just, you see this guy, you meet him. Thank you, guys. And he just warms your heart and you just want to give him a big hug. And he's like, he's so authentic. And anyway, maybe you could tell, maybe Marcos, could you tell us?

Alona:

Let's welcome him. Hello, Marcos, and welcome.

Marcos:

Hi, guys. How you doing? Thank you so much for this invitation. Actually, because Believe it or not, this is my second podcast in my life.

Alona:

Oh,

Marcos:

wow. Normally, I don't do podcasts. Normally, I don't because maybe I don't have time. But I love to talk, as you know. So I'm very grateful to be here. This is very different, and I'm very blessed just to share my story with you guys. I hope you guys enjoy it.

Alona:

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Matt:

Maybe you can tell us a little bit about his background. You have such an interesting background. It's so fun. to just listen to you and hear about what got you to where you are today and your experience and all the cool things that you do.

Marcos:

Well, definitely. My family is from Italy and Venezuela, so I was born in Venezuela. Definitely, we grew up cooking. I put my mom as a pastry chef and a baker. So as a kid, I have that smell every single day of cookies bread you know so also I see my mom hard you know working hard every day so I think I have that in my mind as a kid like a work ethic you know some people don't see their parents what they do for work so they don't know the struggles I saw it as a kid and that's a very key if as a person to see actually your parents working hard to put a plate of food on the table so that's one That's the reason why I work so hard and I respect schedules, you know, or just never give up, for example. Yeah, I know that. That's pretty much my childhood. Kind of strong, yeah. I didn't realize

Matt:

that. And you bring food to so many different people from somebody, like you said, just walking by during these challenging times and trying to give food away to help people out. to working with sports teams and actors and all sorts. So you, the whole range

Marcos:

there. That thing, that was my childhood. But then I become a chef. I was one of the, I was the youngest chef in my city 20-something years ago. I'm 46 right now. And I see myself in the magazine, the youngest chef of Caracas, you know?

Alona:

Wow.

Marcos:

I was already a five-star chef on a hotel. I was 20 when that happened. And after I moved to United States, you know, I had to start from zero. They didn't know that I can cook. I didn't have the language. So I had to start as a dishwasher. And I'm like, oh my God, like, okay, let's do it, you know? But because I have so much knowledge, I think they notice this. And this is a true story in Orlando, Florida. Sorry, South Carolina, Greenville. I was a dishwasher. Three months later, I was the executive chef of the whole restaurant. and no English. And I have a translator that helped me to run the kitchen. That's how much I flipped the restaurant with my cooking. I realized that you don't have to know the language to share love with food or passion or delicious food. Doesn't matter where you come from. You know how to do any things. your hands, your talent can do it. That was a really major success I have six months later that I arrived to the country.

Alona:

That's not only fast, but I love that description. And I imagine that people felt that, you know, you sharing a love around making food and sharing it with other people. And that is so felt.

Marcos:

It was great. And that's I realized, God, I want to do more. So I start cooking. I want to cook in my mind. I start manifesting. I want to cook for a president. I want to be in a magazine. I want to cook for celebrities. I saw myself, and I did it. I cook for the Clintons. I cook for Obama. I cook for the Prime Minister of England. I cook for the King of Spain. I cook for Michael Jordan, Dennis Godman, Scottie Pippen, Beckham, Shakira, JC, JLo, Marc Anthony, Pavarotti, Hank Aaron, the major. It's like I can keep going. And I was like literally checking my list because I put the names. And I did it. And after I did it, I said, okay, I want to move on. I want to be a sailor. I want to cook around the world in a superyacht. And I did it. I did it for 12 years. I saw the whole world. I have a crazy rich life. When you live on boats, you are in that bubble. You're not rich, but you have to be in that bubble because they bring you to all those places. And it was tough to leave the job. When you leave that industry, you realize you're not part of that bubble. The salaries are different. You have to pay your food. You have to pay for everything. So it was kind of like a little bit hard for me to understand to come back to normal life.

Alona:

I imagine.

Marcos:

But the traveling, the traveling was amazing. And then that's it. I did a TV show that they put me on the map, which the name is Below Deck. And then I started opening restaurants. Right now, this is more crazy. The restaurant I am right now, I don't know if you want me to move a little bit, this restaurant right now, it used to be my restaurant three years ago. When I did the TV show, it was a very successful restaurant, but one of my business partners took all the money and ran away. I was pretty much broke. I couldn't pay rent. I was broke. Three years later, I get it back and it's only mine. I have no business partners. I changed the name. I changed the name, you know, and I get it back. It's crazy. Wow.

Alona:

What an incredible story. I love your ambition. I love your persistence. Like you don't give up. You just, you have a vision and you go for it and you make it happen.

Matt:

And you don't get any, also what I like about you, you lead with love. Like you just, you put your heart out there. You care. and you trust that the universe is going to meet you and it's all going to work out.

Marcos:

You have to. You have to. Even if somebody betrays you 10 times, you have to trust 11 times. You have to keep trusting the new person.

Alona:

I love it.

Marcos:

Otherwise, you're going to be stuck in that spot forever. And I applied boxing in my life. I got knocked down, Matt, multiple times. And I get up and I say, should I keep fighting or should I never box again? If you say I will never box again, you can put that in life. When you have a failure in a restaurant, it's pretty much like you're getting knocked down. Two, one thing is you're never going to open a restaurant again or you keep trying. That's the same strategy for boxing. And that's what I do. And it works.

Alona:

Was that part of your upbringing or is that something that kind of you developed on your own, that notion of trusting and of ambition? And I know you mentioned seeing your mom working really hard.

Marcos:

Yeah, I think I trust people as Marcos, you know, from day one. But at one point, I think I started not trusting people. A lot of people took advantage of me because I like to help people too. But you know that sometimes happens where you're too good. People take advantage of you. So I changed a little bit. No, I don't say that much as before, but still I trust people. What I developed is I know how to read people. I know I have questions to ask. I know I can tell your body language. You know, in the past, I didn't have that, the dialogue in my brain. I was like, it can be bad. It can be good. I don't know. I say yes to both. Now it's like I can, it's like me watching a TV and I hate horror movies. I don't like it. So I can't sleep for some reason. So if I see a horror movie, I just change. the channel until I see a comedy movie. That's pretty much what I do in life. I always change the remote control and I keep the channel where I feel comfortable.

Matt:

I love that. So some people, you meet them and they look like a horror movie and you just flip the channel and you find the comedy people.

Marcos:

Yeah. And sometimes, sometimes I'm wrong because, you know, that's the first impression. So then, you know, when you come back and you do the whole circle, The channels, do you ever did that before? And your people, well, sometimes you're going back to the same channel and say, oh, I think this movie is actually good. Same with people. So you can't judge that. You know, you have to like, oh, I don't like it too much. I come back, you know, I develop that myself, actually. I

Alona:

love that. I love that that you didn't. And I like how you related to boxing. You related to a whole, you know, like the completeness of your life experience. Yeah. but also the flexibility to keep exploring, discovering, learning new things.

Marcos:

100%. I think when you give that, when you stop giving chances to people or learning, I think that's when you pretty much stop developing yourself and you're going to be stuck there. We know a lot of people do that. I'm okay here. I don't like this type of person. It's like a square. You know, it's sadly, you know, the world, it is the way that it is. And there are people out there that think that way. But not me. Me, I'm always learning. I learned from even from my dishwasher a couple of days ago. But like, it's like, wow, I didn't know this. So when I have new ideas, I actually put it on paper because it's that much you can put in your brain. So when I have good, good ideas coming from anybody, I just put it on paper, add my notes, and then I come back, you know, and I apply it in life.

Alona:

For a while, you know, we get a lot of questions about what to do in tricky parenting or relationship moments. Yeah, and

Matt:

if I'm being real, I'm asking Alona those same questions all the time. I get into those same tricky moments as everybody else does. As much as we wish we could be there for each other in those exact moments, we just can't always be.

Alona:

Yeah, that's why we partnered with the amazing team at ConnectIn to create something we truly believe in, an AI coach called Amari. And we didn't just lend our name. We help build it and train it and brought in everything we've learned about emotional healing, connection and communication. Yeah,

Matt:

we spent years training and learning and we've created Amari who is so calm and grounded, listens, sturdy and compassionate. There's no judgment activity. In fact, we tasked our children with trying to get Amari reactive and they still haven't succeeded. It's just steady support when you need it most. We

Alona:

use it ourselves all the time, especially when we feel stuck or overwhelmed. And Amari's really helped us pause, reflect, given us insight that helps us come back to each other.

Matt:

We designed Amari to help you strengthen the relationships that matter most, starting with the one you have

Alona:

with yourself. And we are so excited that you can try it now at WeBeParents.com and click on We Be Connecting with a And when you have your Amari moment, please let us know as we'd love to hear about it. So you want to tell us a little bit about the transformation that you kind of went through with Beyond Meat?

Marcos:

Yeah, well, that was unexpected. I always been eating meat in my life. I've been eating bad pretty much my whole life as a chef. People probably say, you're a chef, you probably eat amazing. Wrong. We don't eat our own food. We don't eat that fancy food. We want just... hot dogs, you know, burgers, pizza, whatever, meat, steak and eggs. Obviously, back in the day, it was a lot of alcohol. You know, I think we talk about it every kitchen, you know, you see a lot of alcohol, bad food, you know, a lot of drugs, too. You see that. But even that, whatever I've been telling you about all my experience in life, it was one thing that it never was good, which is my the way I was treating my body, you know, and that's for the first time in my life when I did Beyond Meat, it was, I was scared. I knew it was going to work. I never was a spectacle. I knew it was going to work. I knew it's a fact. You know, it's been out there for so many years. And people, the crazy people know how good if the results they just don't apply it you know besides beyond meat it's just i mean the plant-based the healthy life the inputs out there and everyone knows yeah the ginger is good oh yes this is good do you do it no so that's the thing not just to know the knowledge but to apply it and the results are crazy i really have crazy results like a really good results and and and It was like two or three days, maybe the first week that I felt kind of like an adjustment, but I think that's normal for everyone. But then when I took off, I didn't want to stop. And I lost a lot of weight. I lost a lot of weight, which I gained back, by the way. We're going to talk about it.

Alona:

We'll talk about that,

Marcos:

yeah. Yeah, it's like, oh, my God. I lost so much weight. I have a lot of energy. better flexibility and everything even my vision it was better so so yeah the transformation with beyond me it was great i think that besides beyond me it was all the nutrients i was eating from the vegetable from the lentils from there even the potatoes i remember that tip you gave me this which i did it i did it a couple days ago for three days in a row and And he changed my life a lot. And I was telling you guys that I want to keep doing it.

Alona:

I'm just going to tell the audience because they're not aware. So Marcus did a 30-day challenge where he went 100% plant-based, really introduced a lot of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and substituted Beyond Meat for any meat that he had been eating previously. And that's the transformation that he's naming and talking about.

Matt:

And it was very, when we talk about whole foods, it's avoiding processed foods, you know, like sugars and oils and heavily processed and trying to get them back into their whole plant form. So instead of eating, you know, sunflower seed oil, you might eat the sunflower seeds or make a sunflower seed paste or something like that, just to give an example.

Alona:

And I remember one of the things that was so cool was, Marcos, you kept sharing the recipes that you were coming up with maybe you can name a few for the audience your imagination was just limitless and the stuff that you were making looked so delicious and it was nutritious and it helped you achieve these incredible results that you're talking about

Marcos:

yeah that was like for me cooking it's I don't think it's just like I don't know you do that in your careers but for me I don't open books. I don't do research. I already know the flavors in my brain, and it's easy for me to put it together. So, you know, I was making like Asian stuff. I was making the burgers, but without the bread. I was putting the onions, you know. I make the lomo saltado, you know, with a Peruvian dish. You know, I can share all this recipe with you guys. Actually, I should do, you know what you should do? You can share that file with them. I don't mind. I think I give you a file with all the recipes. Oh,

Alona:

that would be incredible to share with the listeners. Yes.

Marcos:

Yeah, it's endless. It's endless, you know, how much you can change. Diet food is used to be recognized as a boring food. That's a myth. It's a myth for me. It's just because the way they sell it in the market. So you buy the trash food. That's the way I see it. They put that food, boring, eh, and they put the bad one, juicy, creamy. You can do the same thing with plant-based or vegan or beyond meat. You can make crazy, crazy recipe. Just about your imagination. But

Matt:

again, you need that help. You even said you learned to cook differently. You said that You were sauteing vegetables differently and even the cooking process, you would come up with different ways of not having to use processed ingredients.

Marcos:

Yeah, like the caramelized. First thing people think about caramelized is butter, oil, sugar. I caramelize the potatoes with just water. We talk about it. You just water, you put a little bit of some paprika just to give that color, garlic color. and you just cover that process of condensation is going to always keep raining in the pad and caramelize from the same sugars from the legumes or vegetables you're cooking. But many people don't know that. And the more you cook that way, the more you develop things that probably many people don't know. I learned so many things and I keep applying it in my life, which I'm doing that a lot in my restaurant believe it or not my new restaurant is the it's uh it's the most healthy restaurant i ever have in my life wow it is it is it is and i actually dedicate one dish on you guys which is the lighted way that's the name of the dish it's a lighter way to eat i put the name of the dish a lighter way which is a cauliflower with Parmesan puree, like pico, beets, delicious. One that you probably have to come and

Alona:

try. I love it. I love it. I love it. And I, yeah, I remember your creativity and we'll definitely share those recipes because you were not eating steamed rice and broccoli. You were not eating just

Marcos:

plain

Alona:

oatmeal.

Marcos:

No, no, no, no. Yeah. I tried to change the most possible, you know, so I can keep the journey.

Alona:

Yeah.

Marcos:

You know, I can keep going with I think when you eat the same thing all over and over and over, it's a point that you say, that's when you break. Yes. And you go back to the bad habits.

Alona:

And when it's not tasty or delicious. That was the thing. You made it really delicious, not just nutritious, but something that somebody would really whet the appetite to see that and say, oh, I'm not going to have any deprivation doing it this way. And I feel better. I remember you mentioned... This episode of We Be Parents is brought to

Matt:

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Marcos:

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Alona:

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Alona:

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Marcos:

We

Alona:

be

Marcos:

calm because we be in this together. Drink water. A lot of people do pre-workouts. A lot of people do like a protein shake in between. I was doing nothing. I just drink. Make a couple phone calls. Okay, keep going. And that change was quick. That was in my second week.

Alona:

Yeah. Yeah, the change can happen very quickly when you jump in fully. That's a big surprise to a lot of people that try jumping in.

Matt:

Your body really wants to heal. And when you keep eating unhealthy foods and living in an unhealthy way, you hold the the body back. But as soon as you get out of its way, it heals relatively quickly. So I think that's what's pretty cool.

Marcos:

That's one thing that I miss. That's why I like... Somehow I need to come back to the habits. That's the part I want to try to share with people. I guess a lot of people out there, they're busy in different ways, not just as a chef, entrepreneurs, or they just have daily work. It's how we can live healthy with surrounded to so much stress and heavy hours of work. That's the challenge. my challenge right now. And I think you need to talk about it. We need to talk about this. I think a lot of people don't talk about it. They just pretend nothing is happening until it's too late. Until you have a disease and now you want to heal. And now you miss your job. And now it's like... I think the more you talk about it, people are going to be more aware of that.

Matt:

Yeah, it's interesting. The cancer and diabetes and heart disease, a lot of times when people get diagnosed, it's been around for a long time before our tools can pick up the signs and symptoms. So cancer on average is 10 years old from when it started as one mutant cell to the time it's detected. So early detection is actually late detection. The same thing with heart disease and stress tests. It's got to be 70% blockage before you really pick up changes on stress tests, for example, or diabetes. Your insulin has got to be, your resistance has to be really high before you start pouring enough glucose into the bloodstream that you start getting symptoms of high blood sugar. So if people know that, then the time to treat these diseases is well before we pick them up on our tests. And to assume that if you're following the American diet and lifestyle, you're probably getting one or more of the chronic American diseases and to jump in sooner than later. Because like you said, it's easier to reverse the earlier you catch it.

Marcos:

Yeah. I see more awareness out there. I'm not sure how many actually people is applying this.

Alona:

Well, I think you named, and I'd love for you to talk about your own personal challenges, but before we start a recording you named something that i think is absolutely crucial and i think that most people resonate with which is we know what to do we have the information we have the knowledge but it's hard it's hard when life hits us with so many different things and i think that's that was something that came up for you yes

Matt:

right you were hit pretty hard by a couple of things that people know about and you want to talk about that a little bit

Marcos:

yeah well uh You talk after they did the challenge? Yeah, that's how it is. Again, I was traveling before I did the challenge. I was in Indonesia. I actually left the country. I closed my business before I met you guys. I realized that my partnership wasn't the right one. I closed everything. And I went to Indonesia with my girlfriend. have a friend that he have a catamaran he's like he's saving the world and as a i'm a satyr so we went there i was surfing i was trying to lose some weight that was before i met you guys it already was okay i need to do something with me and i spent a month there And when I was in the Philippines, I got the email from beyond me. They found me somehow. And that's when we started the conversation as I was in the Philippines. When I come back to the States, I met you guys. We did all this. And I said, great. I'm going to keep doing this. I know I can do it. And then I got the chance to get my old restaurant back. And from having the time to do my breakfast, you know, to do my exercise, to prepare my meals. I got hit with a bat of baseball in my head. In a good way, but in my personal life, it flips. Like, imagine me, they give you a restaurant, which was already done, but they told you, you need to open in a month.

Alona:

So

Marcos:

you have to LLC, insurance, workers comp, menu, hiring, you know, just putting that in one month. Bought myself with another guy that I hired. I was working 16 hours a day on a laptop or developing or testing, trying my food. And it was a month. And after that, you open the business. So now you work more hours. This is no days off. So I'm not resting. Wow. Which is one of the most important things. I was sleeping four to five hours per day, okay? And I was eating whatever, all because we have no food in the beginning. And you're doing all this paperwork, lawyers, you can imagine. So what we do, we eat around the area, whatever. Pizza, burgers, this. So I felt it like a week. And then the two weeks, I started getting weight again. And then the third week, and then the fourth week, and then back on the same stage. But when I opened the restaurant, which I have food, okay, let me just try to come back. I tried. I'm not going to lie to you. It didn't work out well. At one point, my girlfriend said, what if we order food? You know, the milk crepes, you know, come frozen. Yeah, we should do that. And I did it, but it tastes so bad. I'm sorry. I tried two companies. I'm not going to mention the companies, but I tried two companies, and I order gluten-free, dairy-free, and I do all my selections, you know, it was unedible. So I have to pretty much heat it up a bit and trying to re-season or redo it. And I said, I'm pretty much, I'm cooking. So I stopped that. But yeah, it was... made the story kind of short, I came all the way back. And I have my pains coming back the same, which is like... I'm kind of upset, but I know at the same time I'm achieving a huge thing in my life. But if I'm not healthy, who's going

Matt:

to enjoy

Marcos:

this? It's like, okay, I'm going to make money, and who's going to take it? The hospital? Or the pills? That's the picture I see. Some people say, yes, but I'm building my empire. For what? For the hospitals. Or for somebody else after you die. Right.

Matt:

Like you're aware of the, like you said, like you felt so good, your energy was great, all these aches and pains went away, and then they come rushing back when you go back to the old way of eating. And there's a part of you that knows, hey, this is, you know, this is killing me. And then there's another part that's trying to get a restaurant open and deal with the pressures of running a business and a life the way it was presented to you. And now what's happening, and this is what I think is important, is to realize that, yeah, sometimes we sort of get off the path. And it's not about staying on the path perfectly all the time. It's about knowing when you're off and then knowing how to get back on. And that life comes at all of us. And it can be really hard sometimes. And it's about the humility to say, you know what? I'm not showing up the way I want to. And I'm going to do something about it. And it doesn't have to be perfect. But what does that look like? And I think that would be helpful

Alona:

to talk about. are living that life that you just expressed. Long hours, little sleep, living in survival mode, trying to make it happen. And at the same time, there's such a cost to your personal present self that will then impact how you experience all of that in the future. And at the end of the day, it robs you of joy. Well,

Matt:

there's an illusion that, believe me, I've bought in That once you get all of this work done, then you'll take care of yourself. Once you just get past this hurdle, then I'll find inner peace and then I will, you know, things will be better. And I think that that's just an illusion. So the question is, how do we experience peace even when there's the chaos of life? And how do we experience health even when there's the chaos of what's going on in your world? And is it possible to have, like we talk about there's boundaries, outer boundaries with other people, but can we have inner boundaries with the parts of us that are telling us there's not time to take care of ourselves?

Alona:

And I think you named the illusion. The illusion is twofold. One is the illusion that things will never stop happening in life. You know, at some point in life, it'll just be peaceful and nothing else will be coming at you. That's one of the illusions. And the other illusion is that, you know, When I get there, all will be good versus Marcos, you know, you shared, you end up there with diabetes or after a heart attack or with, you know, aches and pains that are debilitating or autoimmune diseases that really impact how you, your quality of life moving forward. And those are harder to reverse than to prevent in the first place. So kind of keeping an eye on all of that is so important. So valuable. And I think it's really valuable that you are able to see that and to say, hey, I want to I want to come back to that a healthier way of living. And the beauty about it is you can always bounce right back in.

Marcos:

I think that's one of the biggest ones. Besides, I was watching a video a couple of days ago, the kids from the 90s and the 80s versus the kids from today. Back in the day, we were outside. We didn't want to be at home. Now it's the opposite. So it's a lot of stuff that now, even as adults, we start staying more at home because we have all these distractions that you can stay at home and you forget that it's a beautiful world out there. So that's another thing that I've been observing, including me. Sometimes I'm tired, but I stay at home watching Netflix all day. Before, we didn't have Netflix. So you see four, five, six channels? No, let me go out. I want to get out of this house.

Matt:

Well, also, people sometimes feel tired, Marcos. It's called sort of like immobilization where your body shuts down because it's been mobilized and running in that fight or flight mode for so long. And then it says, hey, we can't do that anymore. Let's shut down, shut systems down. And it's not just a tired, like a sleep tired. It's actually a protective sort of getting the system. We can't fight the threat by fighting and fleeing anymore. So let's try and just shut the system down and hope the threat passes. And I think that's where people lay on it. I

Marcos:

do

Matt:

that. What?

Marcos:

I do that a lot. I stay in my bed watching the wall for three hours and my body's not moving. Yeah,

Alona:

our body says enough. I can't take any more.

Matt:

And that's what's important is to give the way to get out of that is to give your body messages of safety again. And you do that by things like you said. It's connection with people, connection to nature, the type of food we put in our bodies, how much time we protect for And that's where I think there's a part of us that always tells us, you know, sort of like it's an urgency, scarcity, there's not enough, you got to move fast. If we don't do this, all these problems are going to happen. And it's keeping us mobilized. And that's one part of us. And there's another part of us that's more grounded and peaceful and knows what it's like to live in that sort of grassy meadow with the sunlight and says, hey, you know, we can enjoy life too. And if we can have, we can both those parts serve us. But if one part is really loud and the other part gets drowned out, that's where we get into trouble. And that's why I like these inner boundaries where we can acknowledge both parts. And like there's a part of you that says, I got to work 16 hours a day or my whole restaurant's going to fail. And then, hey, well, that's probably that scarcity urgency part that's talking. But from a grounded place, if we said, hey, you you know, you can work, if you have 10 hours today to make your restaurant successful, how are we going to best use those 10 hours? And then let's make sure we're going to hold a boundary around those 10 hours. And then I'm going to make sure I get my sleep and my connection and some of that other self-care stuff in, because when I do that, I'm actually more effective in those 10 hours that I'm holding. So I think that there's a lot of like inner dialogue work. It's not, I mean, like you said, you know what to eat, you know, Yeah. It's more of sort of resetting that inner dialogue and that term of inner boundaries. What's your reaction to

Alona:

that, Eleanor? Even if you're there for that many hours, because that's what needs to happen right now. So I think there are a lot of different ways that you can kind of enter this. And I actually think

Matt:

that it's pretty hard.

Marcos:

I lower it. I lower it now for 13. It's not, in the beginning it was 16. Now we are, I am in between 12 to 13.

Alona:

Nice. Already taking it

Marcos:

down. You know, it's At one point, it's going to be, I want to be six, eight hours, you know. I did it before, but it takes some time.

Matt:

Yeah, and I think that... Go ahead.

Marcos:

No, I just want to do it differently this time because back in the day, they took me to the hospital at one point.

Alona:

Oh,

Marcos:

wow. I have a hernia, L4, L5 in between my disc. When I have too much stress, too much tension, inflammation, I can't walk, for example. That's because too many hours, not resting, overweight, and stuff like that. So I don't want to get to that point. I've already been in the hospital three times in my career because of the excess of work. And

Matt:

once, I almost died. very clear our systems function differently and so knowing that then the question is hey if I'm going to continue working let's say 16 hours what can I put in there to sort of like at least a safety net and like you said you're working now towards 12 hours so okay well I'm going to be doing 12 what can I do you know I want to sleep 7 or 8 that gives me another 4 hours what can I do to really optimize my body to be most successful and then like you said it's going to continue to You're going to continue to titrate and fine tune. Yeah. So to me, it's that stepping back and saying, how can I show up differently here?

Alona:

Yeah. And then it's not an all or nothing, that there is a continuum. So, okay, for the next three months, it's going to be 16 hours. But then I have a plan to decrease and do things differently. And I think what would be really awesome if you guys are game is Oh, we'd love to. So almost like one

Matt:

of our coaching sessions with Marcos through some of his challenges so people can hear how to navigate that.

Alona:

Yeah. That's

Matt:

right. That sounds good. Does that work for

Marcos:

you? I would love to. I would love to. First of all, because it's my health. And second, you know, you guys are amazing. That's going to be amazing if we do this together. And also, if we can share this to hundreds of thousands of people, it can change people's life, like health. And if I have the chance... to share this with people, with a living proof person, you know, why not? You know, it's like, I'm more than happy to do it. And I have to. I already have it in the back of my head. I need to give it a change now. I can't wait anymore. Not because it's more like a personal thing. And also it's like, I know it can, I know the consequence. I know the consequence. One day you're here and then you just, that happens to me. That happens. I was cooking. I was the restaurant full. I, pass out, boom. And I realized that I have a strangled hernia umbilical. My whole organs, they were shutting down 20%. I let go. I knew I have the hernia in my umbilical, and I push it back all the time. It's okay, it's okay, it's okay. He gets strangled, and I almost died. Because I thought the restaurant was more important than anything else. And this is what I'm trying to tell people right now. It's not. No matter what kind of job or career you have. And then I found myself in a hospital by myself. The doctor told me, if you don't come today, you die in your sleep. That

Alona:

is intense and scary and quite the awakening.

Matt:

Yeah, it wakes you up, though.

Alona:

One beautiful thing I know about you, Marcos, is when you decide something, it seems it happens. So I have absolute faith that you will head into that healthy

Matt:

state. Great. So we're going to... wrap up this first part with Marcos now, and then we're going to make sure they tune into the second part where we start the beginning process of coaching him through some of his obstacles, and then we'll continue to check in with Marcos over time, and we can see his transformation, how he gets back on the horse, and is as successful as we know he can be.

Alona:

Well, thank you so much, Marcos, for being with us in this first part, and I'm excited to continue the conversation. Your experiences and feedback are invaluable to us.

Matt:

Please email us at parents at webetogether.com with your own cheers and tears as well as any questions or stories you'd like to share. And

Alona:

we'd love for you to hit that subscribe button. Bye for now.