Fueling the Machine: Nutrition, Discipline, and What Actually Works

Everyone eats. Almost no one agrees on how. In a world full of conflicting advice, nutrition has become more confusing than ever.

In this episode of Cruz Control, Aaron Cruz breaks down what actually matters, cutting through diet trends, misinformation, and extremes to focus on the fundamentals of fueling your body. From consistency and discipline to mindset and performance, this conversation explores how nutrition impacts not just how you look, but how you live.

This isn’t about perfection; it’s about building something sustainable.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to Cruise Control, navigating the chaos. One conversation at a time. This is an ongoing conversation with Aaron Cruz, a competitive bodybuilder, mixed martial artist, ironworker, business owner, researcher, philosopher, spiritual explorer, and much more. Each episode explores where physical discipline meets inner work, where strength, belief, ancestry, and purpose intersect. No scripts, no personas, just an honest conversation about the many layers that shape how to move through the world. Let's get into it.

SPEAKER_03 0:40

Calories. Macro, keto, fasting, carnivore. Depends on who you ask. The answers completely change. So today, we're cutting through the noise. Welcome to Cruise Control, Navigating the Chaos One Conversation at a Time. I'm your co-host, Errington Williams, and as always, I am joined by Aaron Cruz. Hello, Aaron. Hello, everybody. Well, today we're talking about something that affects every single person listening. Nutrition. We're not talking about trends, hype, whatever's popular on social media, but what actually works, according to Aaron. So today's episode, we're calling it fueling the machine, nutrition, discipline, and what actually works. So, Aaron, let's jump into it. Let's cut through some noise. Nutrition, I would say, is one of the most confusing topics right now. Everywhere you look, someone's telling you something different. Why do you think nutrition has become so complicated?

SPEAKER_02 1:48

I think it's become so complicated because we're becoming so much more disconnected to actually understanding what food is, what the body needs, how to use it, how to grow it, how to raise it, how to farm it, how to hunt it. And we're accepting the crap that gets labeled as food that's on the on the counters and you know in the in the irres in the aisles and you know what the butchers give you. It's it's not really food. So I think we're we're suffering from that in general. So there's all these pop-up ideas and mentalities of how to make it better, how to fix it, how to fix your health, how to be healthier, how to be stronger, how to be faster, how to be younger, how to to live longer, live better. We're constantly searching for the cure all, and it starts with food. Ironically, you know how I am with food. I I actually am a chef for people, I cook, I feed people. It's that's a second second part of my occupation that I do. I'm very involved with nutrition, and I and I I went down that rabbit hole searching for my spirituality, and and and when I when I went out as a young person trying to figure out who I was. The rabbit hole of nutrition and food was a big one that I dove into. And ironically, this is gonna sound crazy because you know me, and everybody knows how I eat that knows me personally. I eat very clean, I cook everything. I was rushing around the other day, man. To be honest, I broke my own rule. I went to a drive-thru, stopped off at a drive-thru. I had barely any time in between what I had to get done next. So I pulled into a drive-thru and got a cheeseburger. Ate a cheeseburger in the car when I was picking up rain from school, didn't even make it home. 45 minutes later, I was sick as a dog, man. I went into my room, closed the door, started sweating profusely. And an hour, hour and a half after I ate this cheeseburger, I was near dead. It was some form of E. coli or something, man. I just had nasty bacteria going crazy running rampant in my stomach and intestines. My stomach ballooned out. I looked like a pregnant woman. And I spent literally, this might be too much information for people, but just keeping it real, at least 15 hours straight in the bathroom. I was scared to leave the house. I thought I was dying. My lady's a nurse, she thought I was dying. She's, you want to go to the ER? Do you want to go get an IV to get rehydrated? I was so dehydrated and emaciated after 15 hours of doing my business, trying to get this bacteria out of my body. I literally thought I was dying. And that I that breaks every rule that I've set and every standard I've set for myself. We have no understanding of what we're consuming anymore. So we're trying to find all these diets and the next solution to make us better. And it starts very, very, very simply. It's it's what we're putting into our bodies, and it's scary what we accept as food these days.

SPEAKER_03 4:56

Yeah, I I, you know, in thinking about this episode for a couple of months now, had you told me that we were going to kick it off with Carl Jr., I would not have believed it. And I am here to testify that having known you for the better part of a year now, you always cook. It's always clean. I'm pretty much eating your cooking these days. You never eat out, you never cancel us a training session, and I got the text.

SPEAKER_02 5:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:24

It was over.

SPEAKER_02 5:25

So I mean horrible situation.

SPEAKER_03 5:28

Yeah, it's it's so I I think that it's the root of all problems. Well, especially now more than ever. I mean, you are what you eat.

SPEAKER_02 5:39

100%.

SPEAKER_03 5:40

And not just from like a visual, but like how it affects you emotionally, and and I think people have just sort of we're seeing a lot of people lose their minds, and I I'm convinced it's you know two decades now of eating shit. So, you know, for me, uh I it's hard to know where to begin when it comes to proper nutrition. I mean, you feel like you see words like organic or you shop at certain markets that you're, you know, you're in the clear. Nothing could be further from the truth. Let me back up. How would you define the word nutrition?

SPEAKER_02 6:17

Well, nutrition to me would be a measurable value of what you consume in your body for function and purpose. So whatever you digest or ingest or consume, it's supposed to be fuel for development, for repair, for recovery, for it's it's it's like going, taking your car to the mechanic, you know. What what we put into our body directly correlates to with how we function. And like you, you you just tapped into it, you know. If you understand like microbiomes and mitochondrial systems in your body, everything starts from your gut health. Everything does, everything does. Disease, happiness, health, depression, inflammation, everything stems from your gut health. And when something's off and we're putting in crap into our body, those headaches, those inflammations, the moments of inflammation and chronic fatigue, all of that is a byproduct and a warning symbol for us. It's a red flag for us to change our microbiome and our gut health. It all comes from that. Disease, sickness, all of that stuff comes from what we eat. Lots of data now that that's referenceable that supports what I'm talking about. This isn't something that I made up. This is something that I've researched and another rabbit hole that I went down. Mitochondrial dysfunction creates and adds irritable bowel syndrome. How many people did you know as a kid that had IBS? Everybody has IBS. Bad acne, depression, energy production, inflammation, neuronal function, which means your neurons that send all the important information to our organs and muscles get affected, stress response, chronic pain, sinus infections, migraines, hearing loss, autoimmune diseases and conditions, infertility, and fatigue are all direct red flags coming up that our microbiome, our gut health is off. So it's all starting with the tummy. It all starts with the tummy. And everything that we put in our tummy, this is this is the stickler for me. We're not eating food. We don't eat proper nutrition, we eat science projects. And somebody had to create the science projects, right? Scientists do. Our food's not grown, it's not raised. Food, fruits, vegetables, grains, animals that we're supposed to eat at protein, they're supposed to be fed by the sun and the earth. That's it. The energy from the sun and the vibration from the earth and the minerals from the earth, we're supposed to eat that. We're not. We eat science projects. So if we're not eating that happy, healthy energy from the sun and the earth that the animals consume, we're eating animals that are raised in stressful environments. We're we're eating abuse, we're eating anxiety, we're consuming and saturating ourselves at a cellular level with negativity. That's how it works. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:24

What's the biggest misconception people are being sold right now?

SPEAKER_02 9:28

Organic. Organic.

SPEAKER_03 9:30

Okay, so what when they put that stamp on there, we're all looking for it, we're all paying a little extra for it. What's the reality of something being identified?

SPEAKER_02 9:40

Have you ever have you ever seen a chicken farm, like a commercial production chicken farm?

SPEAKER_03 9:45

I can't say that I have.

SPEAKER_02 9:46

They're like big, big barns or big warehouses, no windows. You can't see in them. You can barely hear the chickens, they're so buttoned up. And inside of these like Tyson and Zackey farms, big commercial, big chicken production farms, there's probably up to a million birds in in this space in one building, and there's no room for them to walk from from hatchling to to full grown production, couple pound birds that they that they slaughter and package. They never walk. They don't exercise. Do you know what open-range chicken means?

SPEAKER_03 10:21

Lay it on me.

SPEAKER_02 10:22

What do you what what comes to your mind when you when you think you're paying extra for open-range chicken?

SPEAKER_03 10:27

What do you think? You think they're running around in some beautiful pasture with like all the room in the world, but I'm guessing it's inches.

SPEAKER_02 10:35

It's inches, literally.

SPEAKER_03 10:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:38

So it's the same production chicken farm. All they have to do is open up one door into like a little, really small patio size for a million chickens. This patio size is maybe the space that two or three human beings can can stand in without bumping into each other. But because they have that access, they they're allowed to by the FDA to put open range grown chickens. And those chickens are so terrified to move or go outside, none of them ever do. But you're paying extra because it's open-range chicken. But they're still locked up in the building, not even moving. They're force-fed such chemicals and and and things that expedite their growth into final products so quickly they stand up too often, their legs break because their bones can't support the expedited weight gain that they've they they've been forced to carry.

SPEAKER_03 11:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:33

So they don't even move. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:35

Well, and we're eating that. That's depressing.

SPEAKER_02 11:38

So we're consuming that depression.

SPEAKER_03 11:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:40

We're we're we're ingesting and digesting another animal's horrible experience. Yeah. Now, for all energy, you can't tell me that's healthy for us to eat a terrified animal. You know, people that's never hunted, they're disconnected from that. They think, oh, I'm hungry, I'm just gonna go to the store and buy food. You're not buying food, you're buying a science project.

SPEAKER_00 12:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:01

And that's why everybody's sick and and falling apart these days, because we're eating that kind of stuff. We're not getting real nutrition.

SPEAKER_03 12:08

Well, and I don't mean in a vanity way, and no one, the you know, no one here is shaming anyone by all means, but you do look around. I see, you know, we live in California, we live in Palm Springs, you know, it's a what claims to be a healthy lifestyle. People work out, they do things outside. But if you take a look at everyone, and I have been looking at everyone, first and foremost, I'm looking at myself. I mean, the reality is, is everyone has a gut. Every man I see, you can tell great shoulders, arms, legs, boom, gut. I was pool side at a very popular hotel looking around, guts, guts, guts, guts, guts. Women all have that extra layer underneath their legs. I mean, so from a visual standpoint, you look around and you go, do people look healthy?

SPEAKER_02 13:02

No. No, I don't, I don't know. In general, no way.

SPEAKER_03 13:04

I don't think they do, and I think it comes back to our food, hormones, right?

SPEAKER_02 13:10

And I'm in the business as an occupation to make people healthy.

SPEAKER_03 13:14

That's what I that's what I deal with every day. We pay you, honestly, when you think about it, it's kind of crazy that people pay you, myself included, to move. To move, yep. You have to pay to move nowadays. What I've noticed is, and some of this could be my age, but you know, working out five times a day, getting up and walking anywhere from three and a half to six miles every morning, cut drinking down to nothing, and you still, you know, getting your body to change in the right places is so hard. Like it is down to I'm what I'm guessing is a science, and this is something we're doing now where we're exploring.

SPEAKER_02 13:54

It's very scientific.

SPEAKER_03 13:56

Yeah, yeah. What I mean, what okay, it's we're all overwhelmed.

SPEAKER_02 13:59

But that goes back into what I just said. When we're eating those, those those animals and proteins that that we think is food, we're we're eating that that that process that makes those chickens grow exponentially in 20 days from egg to finished product. So they're fat and they can't move. Now, if that's all we're consuming, then we're fat and we can't move. We're eating the same chemicals and the same negative energy that's fed to them. So how are we going to look any different than those cows and those chickens that we buy?

SPEAKER_03 14:29

Yeah, I don't I mean, think about like education and the food that's being fed to kids and then expect them to attention spans and any semblance of the case.

SPEAKER_02 14:39

It's absolutely horrible. The neurological, the neurological diseases and and and sicknesses and and kids today have have like crazy. Yeah. Like exponentially. It's it's it's way up. Hormones, absolutely identity. The hormones is a whole thing.

SPEAKER_03 14:57

Anger, all of that. Nuts. Yeah. If you had to simplify nutrition to its core, what actually matters?

SPEAKER_02 15:06

Having real food. And that's the hardest part to obtain. It's not tangible, it's not accessible, it's not convenient. Convenience is the science projects. Start a garden in your backyard, you know. Try to get most of what you can yourself by by growing it. You know, we we have chickens at at our house, and they they make it even hard for that. Like uh zoning laws and this, that, and HOAs and state laws and city ordinances. They want it to where you can't even have chickens in your backyard to give yourself healthy eggs because they want you to buy their unhealthy science projects. So they make it illegal for you to even raise chickens in your own yard now.

SPEAKER_03 15:47

I've had those eggs from the chickens in the yard.

SPEAKER_02 15:49

They're absolutely the best. They're absolutely the best. But they put them in the refrigerator. No, the eggs that I get, they're happy chickens. They're they're there's happy vibration. They they they get fed from the sun and the earth and and and us, and and they give us amazing eggs.

SPEAKER_03 16:03

And it's hard to get away from that. Is there a country that, you know, for whatever reason, perhaps economic, still eats real food, or is it all everywhere but America, I I think.

SPEAKER_02 16:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:14

I think most countries Mexico, eggs are not in the refrigerator.

SPEAKER_02 16:18

There's so much shit in our food that the FDA and the EPA allows in our water and our food here in America that is 100% banned in other countries for human consumption. 100%. Yeah. Have you ever heard of atrazine? Oh boy. Atrazine is horrible.

SPEAKER_03 16:34

It's in everything, and it it basically is, you know, mutating. I don't know. Is that the right word? No. So what is it?

SPEAKER_02 16:44

Atrazine, it's wild, but atrazine is in food. It's in our water, it's an herbicide, and it's widely used herbicide, and it's got an endocrine disruptor that causes severe reproductive issues. University of California Berkeley did a study. This is referenceable material. This isn't me just going down the rabbit hole and gossiping about something that I think is happening. This is, you can Google this, people. Whoever's listening, Google atrazine and Google the study that happened at UC Berkeley. They got approved to test atrazine on frogs. And what they did in their studies, this is wild. Try to try to follow what I'm saying, people. They were authorized to give 0.001 parts per billion of atrazine. It's an herbicide that's sprayed on all of our food. 0.001 parts per billion to a controlled environment to frogs. And this 100% happened. These frogs drank it in their water, ate it in their food, they stood in water that atrazine was in. Healthy, reproductive male frogs, like 98% of them lost their testicles. This is truth. Now, understand what I'm saying, people. Listen, listen closely, Google this, look it up yourself. Now, out of that big number of frogs that lost their testicles, the majority of those male frogs, after they lost their testicles, grew female reproductive organs. Okay, it gets deeper. Did you hear what I just said? There was a healthy male frogs that lost their testicles, grew ovaries, and a fully functional reproductive female system that then later on reproduced with other male frogs and produce babies. Born a male, changed into a female, had babies from atrazine. 0.001 parts per billion. What do you think the EPA allows in human consumption? 30 times that amount.003% of atrazine in all the water and food.

SPEAKER_03 19:06

What what is the benefit of atrazine? It's an herbicide. But what is the why would they use it in everything?

SPEAKER_02 19:13

I can't answer that question. I I also know is we're consuming it.

SPEAKER_03 19:16

Yeah. Surmise, what is the benefit of atrazine? Can they produce more food? Can they, you know, clean water fast? I mean, what would be the reason? Control?

SPEAKER_02 19:26

I don't know. Maybe it's to take our testicles away.

SPEAKER_03 19:28

Good heavens. I don't know. And it's in everything.

SPEAKER_02 19:31

It's in all of our water and it's in all of our food. Atrazine is here in America and it's what we're feeding to our kids. God almighty. And it's proven to have reproductive issues in frogs. Yeah. Not just issues. It didn't just castrate them. It changed from male to a functional birth-giving female. Wow.

SPEAKER_03 19:53

Well.

SPEAKER_02 19:53

And we're allowed to have 30% more.

SPEAKER_03 19:55

They identify as something to think about. That is something to think about. Well, okay, so what I mean, what is I mean, someone comes to you and says, look, I want to, you know, outside of growing their own food, is there a way to, you know, be knowledgeable about what you're eating? You know, I mean, is it you talk about micro and macro and you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:20

In in general, people's relationships with food is is kind of just diminished in general. And most people that come to me and ask me, hey, I need to lose weight, okay, I can help you lose weight. Give me a couple days of of kind of cliff notes of what you're consuming in a day, and we'll make some adjustments and start from there. And 99% of the time people come to me and have questions about food, it's because they think they're too heavy. They think they're too fat. And primarily it's because we're eating, eating science projects and it's making us unhealthy and fat. But we can we can lose body fat, and 99% of the time, like I said, that these people come and they show me what they're eating in a couple days to a week, you're eating nowhere near the amount of food that you should be eating. And everybody has the misconception that I'm eating too much. If I starve myself a little bit more, I'll lose weight. That's not true. Your body, your body goes into a state where it wants to store everything. And when your body gets into that state where it wants to store everything, the less you eat, the more it wants to store. So anything that gets stored in in your body, the majority of what your body stores and tucks away for later is gonna be body fat. So a lot of people have low muscle density and high body fat ratio in their bodies. So my job at that level, without, okay, you gotta grow your own chickens and you gotta have your own garden, we'll we'll start by actually eating more food. And we'll we'll get you into a routine where you're not just having one, two, or three meals a day. You'll be eating every few hours, and that's going to up your metabolism. Your your metabolic rates are suffering because you're you're eating bad nutrition, anyways, already. So we're already depleting ourselves. Even if you eat five times a day, and if it's all bad food, we're still not getting the nutrition out of five meals that we need. So it's about cleaning it up as much as possible. I like to cook for people when they're when they have have problems trying to figure it out. I enjoy it. And I show people like it really can happen, but most of the time you have to eat more frequency through the day just to stimulate your metabolism.

SPEAKER_03 22:39

The thing now, speaking of trends and fads, is Ozempic or some version of, and it's everywhere. I mean, it's advertised everywhere. If you have not paid for the upgrade on some of the premium channels, or even when you go to the movies, and it's the it's just so blatant and awful. And I I, you know, want to talk about that because a lot of people will say, okay, I'm gonna skip breakfast. What does breakfast mean?

SPEAKER_02 23:10

Breakfast is a compound word. You know, I like compound words, and I love terms and words. Breakfast, you're breaking your fast.

unknown 23:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:18

So to skip that, you're just fasting longer. And the and the longer you go without eating, the the more your body's gonna store.

SPEAKER_03 23:23

Yeah, and I just see people, myself included, you know, skipping breakfast and this, you know, finding a four-hour window to eat or whatever these trends are. But once I started to eat more and eat uh in the beginning of the day, and you know, eating what I can put in two hands and not eating until I feel full. That's the key. That's that was a huge That's the key.

SPEAKER_02 23:46

You should never feel full.

SPEAKER_03 23:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:48

When you feel full, that's your body's sensors going off saying, whoa, slow down, dude. Way too much to go on here.

SPEAKER_03 23:53

We're all overeating, yeah. Not eating often enough.

SPEAKER_02 23:56

You should never take your last bite in a meal and go, oh my gosh, I'm so uncomfortable. I need to sit down and unsnap my pants.

SPEAKER_03 24:02

Shh, been there. Yeah. What uh, Aaron, what is your take on Ozempic?

SPEAKER_02 24:08

It's another it's another science project. Yeah. So they're just mitigating problems from one science project with another science project, and they monetize and capitalize on both ends. So they're feeding us the shit, and then they give us the chemical solution to deal with the shit that we're eating. And to me, food is nutrition. Like I said, I've been down many rabbit holes in my lifetime. Food is nutrition, food is life. It's the core of everything that we are comes from our microbiome and our gut health. Food is nutrition. So if you take a drug or a chemical that makes your brain tell the rest of your body you don't need any food, that's controlled death to me. Now, there's all these new GLP1, like peptides coming out, like all the other Redatrue tides and all the other tides. I see they're gonna do lots of good for people. But I think we need to stop looking for the instant answer and the the magic pill and the magic magic injection of this, that, or the other, and just realize we actually just need to look at the food we're eating, our relationship with food, our timing with food, what we consider to be a meal. Your body needs proteins, it needs healthy fats, it needs carbohydrates and fibers, that's it. Everything else is designed to tempt us and and uh attack our taste buds. We don't necessarily need to eat something that we're craving or that we just think tastes amazing and that's it's horrible for us. You you need to feel your body for its function and its purpose first. And don't get me wrong, I love chocolate, I like pizza, I have all that stuff, you know, when the time's right, but I don't live on it. And I see people live at McDonald's, I see people living at Carl's Jr. I see you know, it's horrible.

SPEAKER_03 26:00

Let's talk about the well, hey, you know, the best analogy I ever heard about Ozympic is that's like finding out the water is you know poisonous and taking a pill that will make you not thirsty. That's right. And I thought, well that puts things in perspective. What uh let's talk about the C word. The word that, you know, was a positive in the 80s and then the 90s in the last, let's say, 25 years has turned into a negative, and that's carb. Explain what a carb is and why, especially when it comes to weight management, people are so focused on carbs.

SPEAKER_02 26:42

What is the reality? Well, your your body needs carbs. So to deny yourself of carbohydrates, and carbohydrates are going to be more from natural sources of sugar, grains, anything that's not protein heavy. So, protein, you have your tissues, your flesh, your steaks, your chickens, your fish, eggs, and carbs are, you know, potatoes, rice, bread. I'm not a huge fan of bread as a carb because it's processed. And most bread, unless you make your own sourdough starter and your own bread at home, you know, a lot of that ultra-processed food is just a bucket list of things we can't pronounce and have no reason why we're putting it in our body. So I'm not a huge fan of bread, but carbs you have to have it. It's it's you know, fruits and rice and potatoes. Quinoa's excellent. You you need it for brain function, you need it for health, you need it to transfer water into your cells in your body. That's why it's called carbohydrate. That's another compound word. It has the word hydrate in it, and our bodies are 70-something percent water. So a lot of our function is hydration, and carbs, carbs help processing the the water and the nutrients into your cells. You have to have it.

SPEAKER_03 27:58

Why do you think people gravitate towards these extremes? I mean, are they choosing diets for health or are they choosing them for identity?

SPEAKER_02 28:07

I think I think they're just really trying to find the model that we're supposed to be. Like we're designed to be healthy. We're designed to be fit, and none of us are. So we're constantly searching for whatever that might look like in an uneducated, misinformed person. So they're they're always gonna try the trend because they see it works for people for a couple weeks, and so they give it a go, and then they fall back off that, and then they go on to the next trend, and now Ozempic's everywhere. It's just another trend. It's not fixing the problem.

unknown 28:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:39

Not at all.

SPEAKER_03 28:40

The problem's still there. Yeah, we went to the movies the other night, and as we were coming in, there was an ad for some sort of, you know, uh generic Ozempic or whatever. And as I was walking up the steps to our row, I mean, it was just everyone huge popcorn, gallon of coke, chocolate. And I looked up at the screen, and oh, if you take this shot, you're smiling and you fit back in your clothes. And I thought, geez, this ought to be illegal.

SPEAKER_02 29:14

It's a quick solution.

SPEAKER_00 29:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:17

And in today's society, we want everything now. Yeah. You know, if we want the best shoes, we go get them right now. And if we can't go get them right now, we're gonna get on Amazon and have it delivered by tomorrow. And that's that's that's even better. Now we don't even have to go, we're too lazy to go out and get stuff. So we just have everything delivered conveniently to our door. All these trends and fads and Ozempic and all this stuff, it's it's it's the now relief that that's that's that's getting the response out of people.

SPEAKER_03 29:45

Well, and by Nobody wants to do the work. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:48

Nobody wants to put in the effort. Everybody wants to be in the best shape tomorrow. So they'll go and have surgery down in Mexico or something. They'll, you know, they'll go they'll go to another country, get hair implants done, come back, a br a brand new person, they go and inject this in their body, they go and have, you know, fat reduction surgery here and cut off a bunch of skin. It's not that extreme, people. Like, you know, there's there's people out there that really do need kind of medical help to to feel good about themselves, but not not as accessible as it is today. It's way too easy to have that instant relief. Nobody wants to do the work anymore, and I don't understand that.

SPEAKER_03 30:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:26

And it does, it's really not hard. It's not hard to be healthy.

SPEAKER_03 30:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:30

You just gotta it takes a little work.

SPEAKER_03 30:32

Is diet in itself just a bad word or yeah, I don't I don't I don't quite know what that means.

SPEAKER_02 30:38

In the big picture, I don't know what that means. And in the big picture, I think the word diet means everything that's calculated in what you consume in your body food, nutrition, vitamins, that's all part of your diet. Where does that stop? Is it like things that give you peace of mind? Should that be considered part of your diet? Like a good good music that that that affects the way you function. So where where do we stop with it? I don't think it's necessarily a food trend. And I think the word diet is way too trendy for for fat loss. It's way too trendy. There should just be healthy eating options for human beings on the planet, and there's really not.

SPEAKER_00 31:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:19

To me, I'm I'm terrified of that.

SPEAKER_03 31:21

You go to any airport, you've been stuck in an airport. We were stuck in Dallas Fort Worth, and I was like, there isn't one healthy option anywhere. And even if you saw something that was identifiable, it tasted different than it normally tastes in other locations. It was it was criminal.

SPEAKER_02 31:42

And if you look at the ingredient list on anything that you purchase out there in the world, it doesn't say food. It's it's a laundry list of chemicals and stuff that we have no idea what we're doing, putting that into our body. We have no idea of the repercussions. And we say, why do we feel like shit? Why, yeah, why do I have all these diseases? Why am I on all these medications? Why did my father pass away from this? Why did my mother get sick from this? Why do my grandparents have a heart attack and stroke? And why why is Alzheimer's in our family? All that stuff is avoidable with good health and nutrition.

SPEAKER_03 32:16

Well, let's go a little deeper here because nutrition isn't just physical. How much of nutrition would you say is actually psychological?

SPEAKER_02 32:25

Well, I think everything's connected, all the systems, psychological, spiritual, physical, I think they all kind of intertwine and overlap drastically. And that's what led me down a bunch of these rabbit holes. I think psychological, it's it's more our connection to food. And I think a lot of that's chemical. I think the psychological effects and relationships that we have with food is just a direct effect of the chemicals that we're eating and drinking. So if you look at chemicals that we're adding into our body, that's gotta have an effect, just like taking drugs. So there's lots of things added into our food just to get that dopamine release and that excitability, and oh my gosh, I have to have that again. It's marketing tools, basically. So the psychological part turns into that. And then people develop all these other complexes, like, oh my gosh, I'm too fat, now I'm gonna starve myself. I think there's psychological and emotional effects on the opposite end of the spectrum, too, because now people are scared to eat, right? So it it works both ways. But I think psychological, spiritual, and physical in anything we do in life is directly connected to all of it. Got it.

SPEAKER_03 33:35

You know, speaking for the human race, why do you think that people use food emotionally more than I feel like emotional and eating is, you know, they're they're inherently linked.

SPEAKER_02 33:51

In our generation, I agree. Yeah. And I think it goes back to the same. It's the additives and the chemicals that that are attacking those receptors in the brain. I think it's a chemical, it's a chemical reaction to direct things that we're not supposed to be eating. You can't tell me, and I'm assuming, you can't tell me if we went back in time to like pre-contact days, early civilization, you can't tell me that there was somebody sitting under a tree trying to pick all the grapes, grapes off the vine or all the apples off the tree, just crying, going, oh my gosh, I feel so bad about myself. I need another apple. Like, I'm just gonna sit here until I feel better. People ate because they needed to eat. It was just a part of daily life. Now you soak those things and all these things that we can't pronounce, and it's of course it's gonna affect our our brain, our neurology, our emotions, our response that we get from other people around us. We want to be validated, and oh my gosh, you're so beautiful. Oh my gosh, you look, you look so amazing. So there's emotional attachments to food, secondary and tertiary, just from that, just from response that we get from other people. And we want to look like the people on TV, we want to look like the people on ad campaigns. So there's an emotional response to when you look at yourself in the mirror, depression sets in. So it's it's it's highly emotional and psychological in that that aspect.

SPEAKER_03 35:14

Got it. When does being quote healthy actually become unhealthy, to your point?

SPEAKER_02 35:20

Oh, I don't even know. I mean, what's too healthy, you know?

unknown 35:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:25

In today's time, what's too healthy? How how far are you going to be the healthiest possible? I think anything can be in excess, but I think we're far away from that. And you look at like competitive bodybuilders, they're the strongest, most chiseled people on the planet, but it's not healthy. They're they're very extreme. So somewhere in between that and a normal fit person, I I think would probably be the perfect scenario. As long as you can function, as long as you can jump, run, you know, lift lift things over your head, pick up your kids, throw a ball, and not be out of breath. You can climb a mountain with your kids. Like that's what we're supposed to be able to do. We're supposed to be hunters and warriors, and we're supposed to be out running around on the earth until our last days here, and and unfortunately, none of us get that opportunity anymore. We walk up the staircase and we're out of breath and sweat and grease.

SPEAKER_03 36:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:15

That's not very optimal.

SPEAKER_03 36:17

No.

SPEAKER_02 36:18

That's horrible. So as a species, as an animal on the planet, we're probably the most unhealthy representation of what nature wants us to be. Every other animal is perfect physically, except for the human, the human animal. We're the exact opposite.

SPEAKER_00 36:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:38

We're killing ourselves. And again, it all goes back to the micro micro gut health.

SPEAKER_03 36:43

What is what are some things that people can do to promote gut health?

SPEAKER_02 36:47

Start eating the cleanest food you can find. You know?

SPEAKER_03 36:51

Is there anything in particular though that promotes health?

SPEAKER_02 36:53

No, not not in a general manner because everybody's different. Everybody's system's different, everybody's lifestyle is different. Start eating really green vegetables. Start start eating the cleanest meats that you can get. If you can't raise your own livestock, obviously that's not convenient for everybody. Go to your farmer's market and get things that are raised by small family farms, man. It's an amazingly different experience when you eat at least at that level. So if you can't grow, you can't raise your own animals and grow your own garden, go to your farmer's market. Every town in America has a farmer's market on the weekend somewhere close by. You don't have to go to Walmart or a big box grocery store and just get the packaged crap that they're they're serving you. Now, why is it more expensive to go to a farmer's market and eat super clean? It's really not. That's the price that it costs to raise that food. The big box stuff that we get is reduced to make it inconvenient and cheaper. So they're capitalizing on if we offer it cheaper and put it everywhere, it's it's much easier for them to come buy our cheap crap that's gonna make them sick, buck you up, than it is to go spend a couple more dollars at the farmer's market once a week.

SPEAKER_00 38:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:09

So you can start with that. There's l every farmer's market that I've ever been to has some sort of a healthy protein supply too. Fresh ranchers, you know, there's bison and there's there's beef and there's fish and there's chicken. And that's a good way to start. And well, it costs more. Well, how much do your doctor's visits cost a year? How much does your prescription co-paste cost in the year? If you can reduce that, then you're winning. Yeah. You're gonna feel better.

SPEAKER_03 38:39

Um just going, you know, what's going on here? Well, as someone who's trained seriously bodybuilding and fighting, how for you did the nutrition change when you were in that mode?

SPEAKER_02 38:52

Oh, drastically. So that's when I really began to look at my body as a machine. And starting wherever I started, you know, I I I was framed and built a certain way. And I realized when I started researching and educating myself, it doesn't matter how many push-ups or or or jumping jacks or sit-ups I do or how many miles I run, I could physically change my body with what I'm eating. And I can change it so much that the appearance of my body will change the rest of the world. If I wanted to be bigger, I can eat this or that at a certain time of the day. And my my physical presence would would visibly change dramatically. And like I said, you need protein, you need carbs, you need fiber, and you need healthy fats. And somewhere between those four elements, everybody has a perfect formula of what they need to be exactly how they want to feel. You just have to manipulate those four things. If you want to gain weight, you manipulate those and find your formula. If you want to lose weight, you manipulate those four and find your formula. If you want to be a performance athlete, you manipulate those four things only and the formulas within those four four elements.

SPEAKER_03 40:08

You always now hear protein is a big term used, a word is used often. What what is the importance of protein and and in a diet? Well, protein diet, but in eating.

SPEAKER_02 40:21

Protein becomes the building block in the sustainability of your muscle tissue. So if you exercise a lot, which a lot of people that I I interact with as clients, like yourself, you come and see me at the gym multiple days a week, there's lots of exercise. So to help regenerate those tissues that you damage. And exercise, let's get this under under under understanding. When you exercise, you're consciously systematically damaging your muscles for a reason because you want them to grow back stronger. It's gonna push the threshold of the performance in that muscle. If we're doing bicep curls, the only way your bicep is gonna adapt is if you tear it down. So you have to tear it down, you have to separate the tissues, you have to kind of systematically do damage to your bicep. Now, just because you did that doesn't mean your your muscle is gonna grow back stronger. You have to go home and rest and feed it what it needs to grow back stronger because your body's not gonna want to feel that again. It's gonna want to outperform what it did last time. That soreness in your muscle is your body's mechanism to tell your brain, hey, hold on a second. There's some damage here. Not only do we need to fix the damage, we need to make it better so it doesn't damage again. That's when the growth in the muscle happens. That's when you become harder, bigger, stronger, faster. So it's through that controlled damage and then feeding your body what it needs to repair. And what it needs to repair, a lot of times, is the proteins. The proteins are the building blocks. And that's that's like if you're in construction and you have a complete remodel and you knock down a wall that separates your kitchen from your living room, right? And now every time the crew comes back and and to rebuild that wall, they don't quite get it done again. There's not the the proteins aren't there, and you knock it down again. It never gets recovered. So proteins are those building blocks. How much of our body is composed and made up of protein? Ooh, I don't know the answer to that exactly. But I know, I I do know that your body needs about one gram of protein per pound that you weigh to maintain a stable muscular system.

SPEAKER_00 42:32

That's a lot of protein.

SPEAKER_02 42:33

It is. So if you're I mean, this is a small number, if you're a 100-pound person, you need 100 grams of protein a day if you're moving around the world to maintain the muscle that you have, not to build more, just to sustain it. So if you're 200 pounds, you need about 200 grams of protein. And to put that in perspective, a chicken breast is like 20, 22 grams of protein per breast. An egg is like six grams of protein. So you do the math.

SPEAKER_03 42:59

Good God.

SPEAKER_02 43:00

So nutrition is obviously important. We need that fuel. Now, if if the fuel and nutrition that we're getting off the shelves is is dead calories, a lot of it's not very nutritional at all. Then we need more than that 200 because we're actually, out of those 200 numbers on the on the labels we're getting, we're getting much less nutritional value from it because it's already dead food. There's there's there's nothing in there that our body needs. It's just all waste product and chemicals.

SPEAKER_03 43:26

Damn.

SPEAKER_02 43:27

So we think we're eating 200 grams of protein when we're really not.

SPEAKER_03 43:30

So let me ask you this what does balanced nutritional eating look like to you?

SPEAKER_02 43:38

On average, for everybody, at least four meals a day, and you have to have some form per meal, some form of proteins, fats, carbohydrates, and fiber. So you can pick and choose what you want those elements to be, but on average, that's what you need. Got it. And small controlled portions is is wonderful. Small controlled portions to where, like we said earlier, you don't want to feel full or like, oh my God, I shouldn't have had that last bite. I typically try to avoid dairy. That's been the hardest one for me because I love a good cheese and I love good ice cream.

SPEAKER_03 44:14

We're talking bread over the road.

SPEAKER_02 44:15

Yeah. Like how how can you go through life without fantastic cheese or ice cream, right? Yeah. But earlier on in my lifetime, I visited a couple dairy farms and I seen the amount of pus and blood that floats on top of the vats of the milk that make it into our bottles of milk. Now there's all these processes, they say, you know, whatever terms they use in milk, pasteurize and all this stuff. But I seen just hundreds of pounds in these commercial vats of pus and blood. And this pus and blood was coming out of the chemical and and the mechanical production of how they extract the milk from the cow's udders. And then it came to my mind, well, this is gonna sound messed up. We're not supposed to suck on cow tits. Baby calves are. So cow milk isn't even for us to drink. That's for a baby cow. So leave that for the baby cow. I can't get rid of cheese and ice cream, though. I've tried, but I'm stuck, I'm stuck there. But I haven't had a glass of milk since.

SPEAKER_03 45:17

Yeah. And that was and remember in the 80s, that was like the whole thing, you know, for bone density or whatever it was. Well, okay, in closing here, what is the most underrated food? Ooh.

SPEAKER_02 45:30

Home cooked, I think. I mean, I'm I'm I'm I'm looking I'm looking for the answer, and I think nobody eats that, so it's gotta be the most underrated. Nobody cooks, nobody goes, Harley in America, buys fresh ingredients or the best ingredients that they can, goes home and cooks it for every meal. And you know me, I try I try to cook all my meals at home every day. You love to cook. I do. I I love to cook. I think the most underrated food is just old-fashioned home cooking. Everybody wants microwaveable, I know, delivered in a bag, in a box. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 46:06

What is the over most overrated supplement?

SPEAKER_02 46:11

Hmm.

SPEAKER_03 46:12

For like working out? I mean, could be. I mean, what's the supplement everyone takes?

SPEAKER_02 46:19

Well, in the gym, probably protein shakes. And I don't know if it's overrated, but I think it's it's misunderstood. And protein shakes, to put it into perspective, like we just said, if you're 200 pounds, you need 200 grams of protein to maintain and sustain the muscle in your body. That's not even to grow. But like you pointed out, that's a that's a big number. It's hard to eat that much. And I think a lot of people, they start their day, they make a protein shake, and they go, Oh, I'm good till lunchtime. I had a protein shake. It's engineered, it's it's got everything I need in it. Protein shakes would only be taken after you know you can't hit your target number of grams of protein that you can digest in a day, and then you use it as a decimal point. So if you're missing 50 grams, take two scoops of 25 gram protein, put it in a shake, and drink it down, you're good. People depend on it too much, and I think they they give up the idea of eating whole food. I love whole food. Like all of my calculations come from whole food, and I take protein shakes as an extra incentive if I want if I want to go grow a little bit extra muscle, if I want to put on a little bit of weight, I'll maintain how I eat my whole food, and then I'll add a protein shake either in the morning or at the end of the day. What's the one thing people should stop eating? Fast food. Drive-through burgers. I learned that I I I relearned that two days ago. Fast food is horrible.

SPEAKER_03 47:47

I know, it is so bad.

SPEAKER_02 47:49

It's horrible.

SPEAKER_03 47:50

What's the one thing people should eat more of?

SPEAKER_02 47:53

Whole food. Like I don't even know how to generalize that. You gotta eat.

SPEAKER_03 47:58

Whole food. Whole food. Got it. Yeah, real food. Well, ending here, if someone listening wants to change their body in turn, change their life, what's the first thing they should do tomorrow?

SPEAKER_02 48:14

Something different than they did yesterday. For example. Change the way that you you eat, change your schedule. You probably need to eat more. You probably need to get moving a little bit more, get a little active, push yourself, don't be afraid, don't be afraid to fail. But you need to eat a small amount of food with proteins, carbs, and fats and fiber every three or four hours if you can. And if you can't, your body's gonna keep storing as as body fat. You have to eat more, you have to eat cleaner, and you have to move your body.

SPEAKER_03 48:48

Got it. Well, folks, that's it for today's episode of Cruise Control. This was a real one, cutting through the noise and getting back to what actually matters when it comes to nutrition, discipline, and taking care of your body. If you got something out of this episode, please share it with someone who needs to hear it. We will be back soon with another conversation. Until then, stay grounded, stay disciplined, and keep navigating the chaos. One conversation at a time. Thanks, Aaron. Google Atrazine. Bye guys.

SPEAKER_01 49:22

That's it for this conversation on cruise control. Thank you for spending time with us, listening, thinking, and navigating the chaos. These conversations don't end here. So take what resonates, question what doesn't, and carry it in your own work. Physical, mental, and spiritual. If you enjoyed the show, subscribe, follow, and share it. We'll be back soon with another conversation. Until next time, stay grounded, stay carriage, and keep your cruise control steady.