Unlocking Performance and Personal Growth with Hayden Dean | Binge Eating, Meditation, and Mindset

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🎓 ABOUT THIS VIDEO 
Discover the unfiltered truths behind building a high-performance life, body, and mind in this episode. Hayden Dean shares his journey from identity struggles to coaching with honesty, emphasizing the importance of mindset, gut health, and mental resilience.

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🧠 TIMESTAMPS 
00:00 - The link between binge behaviors and structural discipline
00:11 - The illusion of control in dieting and life
00:20 - Tracking food and control in recovery from binge eating
00:33 - Introducing Hayden Dean: honest coaching that integrates body, mind, and identity
01:23 - Hayden's personal journey from youth to military to coaching success
02:24 - The power of habit and routine for mental clarity and ADHD management
04:09 - The importance of structured mornings to conserve mental energy
05:10 - How routine setups can make dieting and training effortless for ADHD
06:22 - The misconception that programs are just about plans—lifestyle design is key
07:10 - Balancing rewarding activities and responsible moderation using protocols
08:12 - Lessons from an international trip: letting go and the value of moderation
09:08 - Recognizing the physiological debt from alcohol and binge drinking
10:46 - Alcohol's impact on recovery, fat loss, and mental health
12:07 - Coaching clients with low readiness: gradual vs. aggressive approaches
13:17 - The importance of meeting clients where they are mentally and physiologically
14:10 - How overloading clients too early can cause failure and burnout
15:55 - Differing client behaviors between genders and personal ego lessons
17:53 - The potential toxicity of chronic talk therapy and how to gain true healing
18:44 - The benefit of shifting focus from past issues to future possibilities
22:08 - How to choose therapists and the importance of guiding vs. enabling
23:23 - The transparency about diet, mindset, and the impact of a growth-oriented approach
27:04 - The relationship between caffeine, productivity, and self-worth
28:44 - Exploring nootropics and alternative cognitive enhancers over stimulants
31:04 - Tracking digestion's role in overall health and physique
34:13 - The critical importance of gut health for immune, brain, and thyroid function
35:56 - Honesty about binge episodes and overcoming shame through simple re-commitment
40:39 - Recognizing trigger foods and creating boundaries for mental and physical health
44:44 - How structure and discipline lead to freedom in dieting and lifestyle
50:39 - Practicing presence through meditation and improving mental clarity
54:37 - The loneliness of growth seasons and balancing building and relationships
56:49 - The importance of community for sustained growth and well-being
58:07 - Final thoughts on honesty, effort, and sharing lessons to inspire others

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I feel like a lot of people that struggle with binge-like behavior kind of gravitate towards the structure of bodybuilding. Like, oh, if I if I have this, then that's gonna prevent me from going off and doing that. Yeah. No, it's true. So that's right, it's really interesting. I would be scared to let myself do that right now.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

I was to let myself very scared. I was terrified, bro, because I was like, okay, let me try this. And then I just tracked what I was eating. I just wrote it down and then I just on the next day checked and I was like, okay, I ate like a hundred grams of protein. This cannot happen. To another episode of the Opticast with me, Nathan, where today we're pulling back the curtain of what it actually takes to build a high-performance body in a life that is ego killing, gut health obsessing, vendor taking, and sometimes the lonely reality of it all. Like we're talking mindset, digestion, caffeine abuse, binge eating, therapy, and the lies we tell ourselves about balance. And also the most important thing that a coach can do sometimes is just to stop your training entirely, maybe. So to have that conversation, I brought someone who has lived every single one of these topics out loud on camera without apology. Hayden Dean is an online fitness coach, a competitive bodybuilder, and one of the most refreshingly honest voices in this space on Instagram. What sets Hayden apart isn't his knowledge. It's that he refuses to separate the body from the person running it. So he coaches digestion and bioflow in the same breath as identity and ego. He'll tell a brand new client to ditch their training program entirely if their nervous system isn't ready for it. He'll post a microdosing meditation exercise in SpongeBob buff pants. He'll build a coaching practice around one simple but rare idea that if you're listening at home, you're familiar with. The real results require someone who understands not just what to prescribe, but when, why, and whether your system is even capable of handling it. He doesn't sell motivation, he doesn't sell balance, he sells clarity, and today you're getting a lot of it. Hayden, welcome to the Opticast, brother.

SPEAKER_01 1:53

Hey man, I do appreciate that intro. I appreciate having me on. I'm excited, man.

SPEAKER_00 1:58

Awesome. I appreciate it, bro. So you're you're prepping your gut health drink the night before, right? Your supplements are staged, your pre-workout meal is ready, your kitchen is clean, and then you're doing all of it in SpongeBob buff pants that your mom got you. So that detail to me tells me more about you than any of your other reels do. So I'm interested in knowing like who is Hayden Dean when no one's watching? And like, how did the boring, repetitive, unglamorous version of this life actually become something that you fell in love with?

SPEAKER_01 2:24

Yeah, man. Um I'd say it goes back to like before I joined the Marine Corps. I was just really not being who I think I was meant to be. You know, I was breaking promises to myself. I was not doing the things that I said I was going to do. It just didn't feel like I was living up to my potential and hanging around hanging out around the wrong crowds, trying to, you know, fit what I thought I should have been doing at the time, which was being a dumb kid. And I was very young, but you know, I was really just kind of felt like I was wasting my life away, and I didn't really realize it for a minute, but after high school I had plans to go play college football, and I decided not to. And I was kind of just lost, didn't really know what I wanted to do. I worked four jobs in four months between the time I graduated high school and actually leaving to go to boot camp. I was just bounced around, didn't really know what what the what the plan was gonna be. I wanted to I decided I was gonna join the Marine Corps. I was like, that's gonna build me into the person that I know I should be. And once I made that decision that I'm gonna go be a United States Marine, that's when I started changing my internal processes, the way that I carry myself, and doing things like the boring stuff that nobody talks about, like laying your clothes out the night before, downloading an alarm clock app that you cannot beat so that you're forced to wake up in the morning. I've been using the same alarm clock app since I was 16. It's called Alarming. It's a great one.

SPEAKER_00 4:08

What does it do?

SPEAKER_01 4:10

Yeah, so you set missions for it. So, mine, for example, in order to turn off the alarm, I have to take a photo of something. And the photo that I have set is the cabinet where my gut health stuff, like all my supplements, are lying. So I wake up in the morning, I go scan my camera right above my Spongebob buff pants hydration gut health drink in the morning. That's how I turn off my alarm. My phone's brick, and I have my gut health laid out, or I've got all my my morning stuff laid out, my supplements and whatnot. I've got my clothes on top of my dresser in my room, and I've got my pre-workout meal ready to go, or my post-workout meal ready to go, depending on when I'm training, and I'm ready to get after it. Just uh cutting all of the decision making in the morning because I also have ADHD, so that's a lot of mental energy for me to do first thing in the morning. I know it doesn't sound like it, but for me, I'd rather just take care of that stuff the night before and just have it all laid out and ready to go. And what was your question?

SPEAKER_00 5:10

No, no, no. That those that was really good. This tangent is good. I I have ADHD and I found that like the way that bodybuilding is set up for me right now, it's so fucking easy. It's almost hard for me not to do it because I've set it up like with these like pre-planning and and all this stuff. It's so easy that I just it's impossible to fail. But it started in the same way. Like I uh when I was in college, I had to start waking up at 4 a.m. to be able to do all of my studies by the time that I had to go to class. So I had this alarm that would not stop. And I was babysitting kids at the time, so I was living like as a nanny. So I could not wake the kids up, but this thing just rings, and you I had to run all the way downstairs to the kitchen to take a picture of my whey protein, and that would be the picture that like starts my day. So this just made me go back in time. But it's a it's a great strategy. Like, this is one thing we're we're gonna talk a little bit about this later. I want to go to the next topic here, but this is one thing that I feel like people don't understand when they're just saying, like, no, I have a plan, I know what I'm doing. I'm like, you you missed the point. That's not what coaching's about. Like, this is there's there's so much more than just the program. And if you have worked with someone and it it was only a program, man, I'm sorry, but that's really not representative of what you know a lot of us are doing, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:22

Yeah, it's like, okay, you have the program, you have the plan, but do you have the structure and do you have the lifestyle design? Because that's like the little these are like these little niche things that somebody like has to actually teach you or you have to develop on your own, that it's not something you can put it's not a tangible item. It's like it's almost it's almost like just a skill that you develop as you go. Like, how can I make this as easy as possible for myself?

SPEAKER_00 6:47

Yeah, yeah. And that comes a lot from the mindset of ADHD, like just the phenotype, it's how our brain work uh works like because we are not going to just follow the rules blindly, so to speak. Our brain is always trying to find the most efficient and fast and most rewarding way of doing something, which actually ends up working in our favor. But uh speaking of rewarding things, I want to touch on this next topic because I have built protocols for this. I'm very big on this. I have told my clients to do this and to not do what you told them not to do as well. You don't drink on weekends, right? You go on these full four to five-day vendors once or twice a year, and then you come black, come back like completely reset. There's like zero stress, you're just locked in, there's no shame about it. And that's a that's a very unpopular opinion from like a fitness coach. And I think the video blew up for a reason, right? Like, I want to know where does the philosophy actually come from? What and was there a period in your life that you realized that doing it in the responsible way of just microdosing poison was costing you more than the bender ever could?

SPEAKER_01 7:44

So to answer your first question, just about like why I think it works for me. And this this is why, okay. For I'll use an example. I went to Vegas in December for my last Marine Corps ball, and I just completely let go, man. I just let go. Like I've been working really hard this year, it's the end of the year. I'm just gonna let go. I'm with a lot of people I grew up with, and I'm with Marines that I know, and because my brother was there, and you know, there's other family there. I was just like, I'm just gonna let go completely. Because what is realistically the worst thing that's gonna happen if I don't work for two days and I'm just drunk for two days? I mean, what is really the worst thing that's gonna happen? And I think it's really hard to allow yourself to do that, but for the fact when you realize, like, oh wow, I actually just really enjoyed myself for the first time in a while. Like, obviously, what we do is enjoyable and we love doing it, but having that separation from for me, the military and from coaching for just two days of just doing whatever the hell I want, drinking what I want, and hanging out with the with the buddies, hanging out with my brothers and all that good stuff, like it was just such a relief or a release rather, um, to just get away from everything. Like just um just turning your brain off for a little bit, you know. But as far as like, I think you asked, like, what did I do in the or how did I learn about this?

SPEAKER_00 9:08

Yeah, wasn't it was there like something, yeah. Was there something that made you go like, okay, maybe the the like low and steady approach isn't really the best option here?

SPEAKER_01 9:17

Yeah. So when I was at my last unit, like I'm at a different unit now, but my last unit, we'd go on like detachments where we would just go to like a city and we would, you know, it was called a debt, right? And it's basically like the rules don't really apply to the the same way where you're on base just doing the day-to-day stuff. It's kind of like we're gonna go out and we're gonna drink and it's gonna be a multi-night thing. But the thing about the Marine Corps is there is such a culture of drinking so consistently all the time. So it's natural that me being a young Marine, I kind of fell into that a little bit, right? Just going out and drinking pretty frequently, or you know, coming home on leave and going out and drinking with my friends like pretty frequently. And I just felt like those re those repeated bouts of recovery that are required after an even just one night of drinking, doing that consistently over a long period of time is just so derailing for your progress and your growth because you just get thrown off every single week. You just get thrown off. But whereas if you spend months and months of lock being locked in and not doing dumb shit, like going out and binge drinking, you spend months not doing that, and then you have two days, three days where you do, it's one recovery day, right? You gotta recover for one day and then you're back on track. But when it's just these frequent times over and over and over again, it's like you're breaking that momentum in a sense.

SPEAKER_00 10:45

Yeah, and f physiologically speaking, I feel like it's um, you know, you're going to have to pay that debt either way. So whether you're gonna have to pay a dollar back or pay a hundred back, that's even a poor analogy because the debt that you're accumulating is irrespective of dose, it's also going to come at a set point in time. So you're going to have like three days of impaired fat loss, of impaired muscle growth, of impaired recovery, of impaired sleep. You know, the cortisol is going to rebound on day two. That's going to be higher, like glutathione depletes are going to be depleted, NAD plus storages are going to be depleted. All of this is going to affect like your memory, your memory consolidation, emotional regulation, like all of these things. It's uh if you're going to do all of that anyway, might as well get some positive mindset benefit out of it and uh not do it consistently enough that you're like having this derail three out of seven days of your week every single time, you know. So that's uh that's the the physiological side of it. Another interesting thing that I saw on your page was you, you, you took on this new client and you gave her a zero training program. So you just had a morning routine, an evening routine, and a walk. I have done that. I I in fact just onboarded someone that their training program is just two days a week of like two exercises and that's it. Now, like most coaches, you you hop on and you get like a five-day split and you call that coaching, right? Like, what what made you stop and say, this is like this person is not in a state to train? And how do you think, like, how many coaches do you think are right now are having their situation with their clients made worse by skipping that type of conversation and inner dialogue before the deciding what their training should be?

SPEAKER_01 12:22

Yeah, so like full transparency, I've done this multiple times with different people, and I feel like it's a phenotype of person that you want to do it with. So I don't recall which specific person you're talking about because I have done it multiple times, but in general, this is the way that I see it, and this is something I learned from Dom. Is there's ready, there's stages of readiness to change, and you have to be able to actually dissect somebody where they're at right now. They may say that they want these things, they may say that they're ready to make these changes and they want to start working out, they want to start eating better, and they want to start doing all these things, but they haven't proved to you yet that they can do even one of those things. And then you add maybe some sort of actual long-term issue on top of it. Maybe they have chronic digestive issues, maybe they have some sort of hormonal disruption or just something along the lines of that chronic stress, adrenal issues, whatever, right? That's a whole other piece to this. It adds a whole nother layer. So to take this person that has all these goals and aspirations, but there's a huge block that's holding them back, not just with whatever's happening physiologically, but also mentally. They're in this state where they think they want the change and they think they're ready to make all these changes, but they're just not. And what happens if if we as coaches give people all these things when they're not ready for it, that's where you're gonna get people that are gonna quit. That's where you're gonna get people that are gonna think that they're broken and they can't do it. But the reality is, as coaches, it's our responsibility to assess where somebody is at and give them what they actually need right now. And sometimes, depending on where a person is at mentally and physically, it might just be as simple as, hey, you're not sleeping consistently, you're not going to bed and waking up around the same times, you don't have any kind of routine, you don't have any kind of mindfulness or gratitude habits, your diet is bad, you hit you're hitting two K-steps a day. Why would I tell you, okay, let's start hitting 10K steps a day, let's start meditating three times a day, let's start eating this meal plan. I want you to hit the gym five times a week. For somebody that is ready to change, like they think they're ready to change, and then they get all that just dumped on them, and now they're like, oh shit, this is real. That is like such a huge block and barrier for some people to even start on the most simple thing. So if we just skip all, if we just don't even do all that and just start like, hey, let's just start off with trying to hit 10k steps a day or 7k steps a day, even. And just let's just see how we do with that, and then we can progress. There's no rush, there's truly no rush based off of you know these types of people's situation. If you do rush it, then you're you're gonna end up in a worse spot than what you start. That's kind of my Yeah, I like that.

SPEAKER_00 15:09

You also mentioned that same logic one time when you were talking about prep and rushing the prep timeline. But on a on a on a separate note here, you said something that I relate a lot with with regards to your clients. You said that like objectively speaking, just female clients are better clients. So like they just put their head down, they uh you know, follow the plan, they send you the videos and they communicate very clearly. Whereas male clients, they tend to ghost, they ignore advice, they they fight for the coaching. You've been there yourself as well, right? Like, walk me through like where like situations where your ego has gotten like the best of you, and you have to learn that. And like that's why today you can be a better communicator of a person who actually communicates with their coach and uh does the work that is required. So I'm almost like, what made Hayden act like a woman?

SPEAKER_01 15:55

That's a good question. Because I know I'm not I'm not a you know, I'm not a perfect client. None none of us are perfect, right? Trying to think back to the first coach I worked with because I've only worked with two coaches. Actually, I yeah, yeah. So the first coach that I worked with, his original plan, I wanted to get big. I was like, all right, let's get let's get jacked. And I was I was 20 and I wanted to get jacked, but I was also like skinny fat essentially. And he said, We're gonna start a cut. And I was like, cutting? Like I'm not even that fat. Absolutely was. And I just like there was just like this mental resistance to like doing what he said. Um and I, you know, eventually I I came through and I was like, okay, let's just listen to what he says and let's just do it. But yeah, I mean I've definitely had my ego get in the way before. And I can see it. I can see it when somebody is like being a little bit resistant, you know. And I feel like with guys specifically, it really is like an ego, it's an ego thing first, I feel like. I feel like that's like the biggest thing is an ego thing. But yeah, my first coach, I remember first plan he gave me, I was like, why are we in a deficit? Like, I want it, I told you I want to get big, but I didn't understand anything at that point, you know. I didn't understand that, like, hey, we need to get you to a good spot to actually grow. We gotta take off some of this body fat. We gotta make sure digestion's in a good spot, we gotta make sure your insulin sensitive, all that stuff I didn't understand at the moment. I just had like a goal in mind, but you know, I didn't know the steps that were needed to get there.

SPEAKER_00 17:28

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You also said something that I think most people in the wellness space wouldn't really say publicly. You said chronic talk therapy can actually be toxic. So people start getting their dopamine from their own suffering and they they kind of become addicted to it. You clearly had your own story that you were working through, right? Like without going somewhere you don't want to go, obviously. Like, what was the shift that made you realize that you were feeding the wound instead of closing it? And like what actually worked instead?

SPEAKER_01 17:53

Yeah. So I went through multiple different bouts of talk therapy for many different issues, but I kind of started to realize what is the word called when you're just hyper-vigilant on thinking about something? Rumination. Rumination. Yes. I think that tox therapy can make the rumination worse because you're still thinking about it, you're focusing on it more and you're talking about it more. When sometimes there's just nothing you can do about a situation. Like there's nothing that you can do to change somebody else's decisions or change that something that happened in the past. So my my main thing is just like I don't have a relationship with my dad. Like not a good relationship. For the longest time, I just like sat in this period of I've sat in this mindset of like poor me, like this is my fault that I don't have a relationship with my dad, and you know, I don't want to go too in the in the weeds here, but you know, that was kind of like my story, like my personal story about like why my life is so fucked up and why there's so many bad things there's nothing to be happy about, is because of this this story I told myself and kept telling myself and kept talking about and trying to figure out an answer to it and figure out the solution when there was there was no solution. It was I needed to make a decision. And I don't even know how I came to that conclusion, but it was just like, okay, like I can either continue ruminating on this and thinking about it and making it my life story, or I can decide. I either want this person in my life or I don't. And it's just as simple as that. So I feel like that's why talk therapy can be so bad, is because it can just make you ruminate on something more that you probably don't have control over. But what you do have control over is whether or not you want to continue giving your energy to it. So I think uh that's why I'm not I think talk therapy can be great for acute situations, working through, you know, some kind of life event that happened, and you need to figure out some tools to help you manage the stress or psychological damage that you're experiencing from that, but to just keep going back to it over and over and over, you're just pouring salt on them.

SPEAKER_00 20:16

Yeah, and I I I'm someone who who has had his life changed by therapy. Like I believe very deeply in therapy. I I did therapy when I was in every phase of my life, and right now I've been doing therapy for a few years nonstop. Like I've my therapist has said, you're good, bro, just fucking leave. And I said, Nope, I will continue coming back. The like the the approach is very different. It's uh we're we're not really focusing so much on the problems, we're more focusing more on like some bottleneck, like specific bottlenecks, right? It's almost like a life coach can be just thinking through like, hey, I'm dealing with uh this particular issue here. I don't know why this thing keeps coming back, but I want to get rid of it, right? Or I notice something in my character that I'm like, I don't really like the idea of someone like me or who I want to be having this emotion or this feeling. So like let's address this thing. So it's uh it's more of a like building of your own mindset and identity than it is so much about the problems with regards to to that. There are like several therapists and and big names in uh especially in depression world that have uh made similar comments about talk therapy on how actually you revisiting these things and and talking about that is one of the main problems with leaving depression because you are still mentally living in that same environment. So you're still in that same spot. Uh you're you're never allowed to leave because you're always touching on it. So, like for me, what changed my life was when I was in rehab in this one clinic uh and we we were always like trying to find why I was a drug addict, what is it that made me do it? What is it that appealed to me, and just always focusing on the drugs and this type of stuff. Whereas the other one said, Yeah, you're a drug addict, but dude, you're young. What are you gonna do with the rest of your life? Like, let's focus on that. Do you want to be a doctor? You've been studying. This shit. Like, why don't you just become a fucking doctor? You know, you can become one. Like in five years, you can be an actual doctor. Like, and it changed my mentality entirely. Like, I literally like changed my clothes, my my music, my movies, like it changed everything because I'm like, oh, I'm not this guy anymore. Like, fuck that, you know? So it was it was still within therapy, but it was very much like elucidating what you're mentioning, which is that, you know, leaving this space, you know.

SPEAKER_01 22:24

Yeah, and you know, I think it also depends on like just like with coaching, like who is the person that's guiding you through this process? Is this somebody that is going to feed into your bullshit? Or is this somebody that's gonna tell you how it really is? And I actually had a therapist, the last therapist I worked with, probably six months ago at this point. She told me, like, our sessions are over. It's like free therapy resources that are provided by the military to like our sessions that we have together are over. Like the issue that you were having was an acute thing. That's what therapy is for. You're gonna be fine, you're doing good, you don't need to keep coming back and keep talking about the thing. I was like, Yeah, exactly. Right? And that that maybe that was like the person that I needed was a therapist that would stop feeding into it and be like, Well, what's what can we focus on next? What's gonna happen next with your life? You're about to get out in the rings, you have your business, etc. You know? Yeah. So just like with coaching, like there's gonna be coaches that will feed into somebody's bullshit that they're telling themselves, like like uh body positivity coaches, for example. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:35

Yeah, I want to transform my body, but I don't really have a reason for it because I love it. Um so you went you went after my people, bro, and and then and after after I heard that like 600 milligrams to a thousand milligrams of caffeine a day is considered abuse, I was like, damn, bro. Um, that's uh I'm I'm fucked here. Um six to a hundred to a thousand milligrams a day, fucked up sleep, fucked up digestion, chronic anxiety, can't recover from training, right? Um, I think the way you said it felt like very personal. So I'm wondering like, have you been that person yourself that just needs to be on caffeine to be able to function and just self-medicating for ADHD with that? And when you look at someone who's running that much caffeine just to be able to function, what are you actually seeing underneath the stimulant use that has actually nothing to do with caffeine is about a deeper problem.

SPEAKER_01 24:23

That's me. Um, yeah. So I was having a conversation with uh a bit, dude, my headphones keep falling out. I'm sorry. I know I keep fidgeting, but these are the shittiest headphones I've ever had. But this was I was having a conversation with a business mentor of mine. He works with Nick from Alchemist Academy. His name's Jason, hell of a dude, but just having a conversation with him about Zins. I was like, he challenged me to quit Zins, and I was like, I don't want to. Like, I don't want to quit Zins. I love him. And he was like, Well, what's actually behind that? Like, what is behind you thinking that you need the Zins? And what would happen if you just stopped? Like, what would actually happen? So my my issue with stimulants, it's still something that I like struggle with is like staying away from the caffeine, staying away from the machine. I'm very much a stim junkie. But I think for me personally, it's so much of my worth and my value I put on my productivity. So when I have these tools that I associate with productivity, and I associate me using these tools to be more productive, I'm almost kind of lying to myself at times, like that I need that stuff to be productive. I need two white monsters, or I need a can of zins, or I need another coffee so I can go do this work and just relying on stimulants in general from a place of almost like from a place of whack. It's like I don't have everything I need because I'm not doing enough. So maybe if I grab onto this thing over here, maybe it can help me do more. Right. But I've had issues with caffeine in the past. Like when I was in my first prep, I was really using a lot of caffeine and and nicotine. I actually had to kind of take a pause in the middle of my prep because we got the blower done and I was kind of sitting in like that stage two adrenal fatigue and had to like pull back a little bit, you know. Um yeah, I've learned a lot about just abstaining from things and like trying to come up with your own internal energy, your own internal motivation, and not leaning on outside sources. It's a really good experience. I love caffeine. I'm never gonna stop drinking it. I love zins. I don't know if I'm ever gonna stop zins. But I think it's good to kind of experiment with like who am I without these things? And can I still achieve my goals without being attached to something outside of me?

SPEAKER_00 26:55

I like that, and I think that's valid. I mean, I'm I'm someone who struggles with this balance as well. You know, being ADHD, I do require a higher degree of zappy in my brain to be to be able to actually function. And honestly speaking, I just absolutely fucking love the high of a super productive day. Like, just you know, when you just murder everything and you're feeling on top of the world, like I don't even want to go to sleep, I don't want to eat, I don't want to train, I just want to continue working. It feels so fucking good. So, like when when you were talking about the alarm, I was like, bro, I need to set up an alarm like that for my meals because I've been skipping my meals to work. Like, I need to get back to like actually doing my shit. I still hit all of my macros and everything, but I like I get to the end of the day and I'm like, fuck, I need to compress two meals into one. But the the the caffeine addiction is real. I just I think caffeine is a very like outdated tool, so to speak, for like cognitive work. You know, we have so many good things with Racetamas, nootropics, nupep, dihexa, cerebralysin, fucking, you know, like everything. You can even microdose Adderall. Like, I I think microdosing Adderall is like probably less detrimental than like high dose caffeine use, and it's a much better effect, you know, something like two milligrams or something like that on the ways that you have like high cognitive load demands. I think it's a good idea, like some methylene blue, like some max, celang. Like, why would you get anxiety to get focus when you can actually just get the focus side of things? So I would encourage people who are, you know, interested in trying the focus approach to take a look at some of the protocols that I have in my community for cognitive enhancement. Um, but also primarily, like if you need a very high dose of caffeine, it may just be that you're in the 85% of people who don't convert caffeine to perizentine very well in your system. So you can supplement parazenthine directly and just get all of the focus side of the equation without the stimulation side of the equation. And the half-life is also shorter. So you can even have your morning coffee and then in the afternoon you can take perzentine with, say, some methylene blue instead, and you have a perfect combo that's not gonna mess up with your sleep. It's not gonna mess up with your digestion. Methylene blue is actually helpful for digestion. You know, it's an intermicrobial. So yeah, I feel like that's a little bit of a better approach than just hammering caffeine non-stop. But I'm I'm guilty. I love energy drinks. I always have. My favorite alcohol drink is mixing vodka with Red Bull. I just love doing that. You know, like I it's it's part of me. I drink pre-workouts to work because I just don't want to spend the money on the fancy drinks. So I just take a pre-workout, drink it, and then get to work. So I I'm not judging the people who do it. I have one client that uh, well, he's German, but so it doesn't really count. But he did like 4.6 grams of of caffeine in one go. And and I can't even imagine, bro. I did 1.5 grams and I was like, this is pretty, pretty decent already. I'm good. Like I don't need to go any further.

SPEAKER_01 29:39

Oh my gosh. That is insane. You said parazenthine. Is that what you're doing? Parazenthine, yeah. Yeah. I've never heard of that. That's interesting. Yeah, I keep it on mypassing a conversion essentially. Yep, exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:52

I keep it on my desk.

SPEAKER_01 29:54

I'm gonna I'm gonna take my headphones out and just use my MacBook audio because this is this is getting annoying. You say something, let's see if I can hear you. Never mind. It says that I can't switch mics in the middle of the code.

SPEAKER_00 30:05

You can't switch the audio after it starts recording. I forgot about that. Yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_01 30:08

That's okay. That's okay.

SPEAKER_00 30:10

We're all good. So you you gave a breakdown, a caveman breakdown of bad digestion, killing your bulk, your growth season. And I just uh started my growth phase. And uh one of the things that I did before, which I've never done before in uh in a health phase, uh, was I actually supported my digestion. So I went through a 42-day protocol, the old Thompson protocol that I modified a little bit for you know just treat eating everything that's possible, right? If you if there is SIBO, if there's Candida, if there's H. Pallora, like whatever it is, it's gonna get fucking hit with that. So it's a very intense protocol that you're hitting multiple times a day. I don't know how much I recommend people doing that because it's just I had to have a timer every two hours of my day to be able to do the whole protocol. But my digestion is fucking insane. Like I've had IBS, so to speak, my like for the past decade, and I ate onions the other day and I had no issues. And I was like, what the fuck is going on? Like, how is this how is this a thing? Because I've I already was able to basically fix about half of the list of low FODMAPs, like you can't eat these high FODMAPs, and essentially like just eating good food, I was eventually able to eat a good deal of them, with like onions and garlic being the main ones that I couldn't eat even then. But it seems like now I'm able to tolerate a little bit of them, which is another big improvement. So I did all of this because I'm like, hey, I'm eating 4,400 calories a day, but I'm like 180 pounds lean. There's no need for me to eat 4,400 calories a day, probably. Plus, I'm bloated all the time. I'm bloated when I wake up, I'm bloated when I go to sleep, my appetite is kind of shot, and like I have urges, but I don't have appetite. Super weird, right? So there's a lot of dysregulation going on. And I wanted to have an actual productive off season where like I'm going to continue eating good foods and then grow more because my digestive system is optimized. Now, a lot of guys, they just don't focus on the digestion at all, right? Especially when it comes to what you mentioned in the video, bile, right? So bile flow, you know, things like ox bile, HCl, digestive enzyme, some intra intra-workout carbs to bypass the digestion during training. Like I I've seen people talk about these things as if, like, yeah, it's kind of like not that big of a deal. I've talked to coaches who have their gut fucked up and they still don't fix it because they're like, eh, it's not that bad. What do you think that people are missing out on by not actually taking care of their gut health?

SPEAKER_01 32:29

Yeah, well, it's it's really simple. It's like if you have bad digestion, maybe you have leaky gut or you have some kind of underlying bigger issue, like an overgrowth of some kind, you know, you aren't the food is going in. Maybe you're pooping it out. But is that food actually getting absorbed? Are those nutrients actually getting absorbed and are you actually using them? And you can pound as much food as you want, but if you're not using it, what is the what is the purpose? What is the point of just continuing to slam food down? And I feel like it's like really self-explanatory. Like you're eating the food, so you can use the food. But if you're not digesting the food, then you're not making the food usable. So why try to just shove that down when you can do some very simple things? I mean, troubleshooting digestion, unless there's like something crazy happening that requires like further testing, I feel like it really is a simple process of just one, figuring out if there's specific foods that are causing that agitation. Maybe it's gluten, dairy, artificial sweeteners, stuff like that. So maybe it's like an actual you have a sensitivity to something or FODMAPS, or maybe you just don't have the actual tools that you need to digest specific foods, whether that's bile or not having enough enzymes or not having enough stomach acid. And it can be really easy to troubleshoot. But yeah, I mean, I feel like it's something that people just kind of push to the wayside when there's so much benefit to just having a clean digestive system, and you're gonna make your it's you're it's gonna make the job easier if you're trying to bulk and that's what you're trying to do. It's gonna make the process easier if you just take care of the the upstream issues first and fix fix that first.

SPEAKER_00 34:13

Yeah, and and gut health is essential for thyroid health. It is also essential for brain health, it's also essential for immune system. Like 80% of your immune system is actually GALT, uh gut mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue. Like, that is like responsible for 80% of your immune system, like of your entire body. That shit's in your gut. You gotta think about that. We have nerves that literally travel from your brain all the way down through all of these blood vessels, all the way down your spine that go directly to your gut. We have the same that happens with your pituitary and your hypothalamus, the same thing going to your thyroid, the same thing going to your adrenals. Like it's it's all very much connected in the body. And um, I feel like the people who are, you know, like pushing the gut to the side. Sometimes these people without realizing are the same people who shit on doctors for not correcting the real issue and just patching symptoms. And I'm like, motherfuck, are you doing the same thing? You're you're literally just like patching the issue because you don't want to fix the actual problem because you know this for the same reasons that other people give. Oh, it's gonna cost money, oh, it's gonna cost time, oh, I'm not a hundred percent sure it will work. And I'm like, come on, you're a coach. You can't you can't hide behind the same bullshit excuses that you're trying to fucking hit down, you know? But um, to continue on the topic of food, I I've I've talked about binge eating a lot. It's something that I've struggled with a whole fucking lot. And uh there's there's the the next topic that I want to discuss, it's was one of the solutions that I found like to get out of it. Um, but you said like when someone binge, don't do more cardio, don't eat less the day after, just get back on track. Like there's no need for a punishment. You also said like you're a bodybuilder and a coach and you still struggle with it. And I find that kind of honesty to be very rare. Like, what does your personal version of that struggle actually look like? And is there a pattern that you notice in the type of person who's more likely to spiral into shame after they go off plan?

SPEAKER_01 36:09

Yeah, so I was somewhat of a bigger kid growing up. I was always insecure about my body, like as a kid, and I had a lot of body fat that I didn't like, and I love I still love food. Like there's like this feeling of comfort that comes from it that maybe a lot some people don't understand, but that was like a big comfort for me growing up was leaning on food. And it's still, you know, these urges still come up. I've I'm so much better with it now. But yeah, there's there's been times before I can't, I'm not allowed to eat peanut butter. I just can't, I can't have it. Like if I have peanut butter, I will get triggered and I will eat the whole jar. Like I just can't eat it, which is like embarrassing to say, in a sense, because it's like, damn, you're a bodybuilder, you're a marine, you're a coach, like you're supposed to have all this discipline. But it almost feels like something that was like very deep rooted through my childhood growing up, just loving food and loving like the comfort that it brought me. And there's something about peanut butter where it just like snaps me back into that into that mode like real quick. But if you punish yourself or you do more cardio, or you restrict food the next day, I think there's two two things that happen. One is chances are a person that does that is probably underfeeding most of the time. Like they're probably restricting a lot, and that's part of the reason that they go on these binges, is because they're truly hungry, and their body is giving them the signals to eat and to eat food that is gonna get them lots of calories quickly. Because I mean, just think about somebody that just got them with a with a show, you know, they're they're post-show and they're trying to reverse, and they have all of these urges because they've been chronic they've been chronically under-eating through dieting for such a long period of time. So I think that's part of it. But then the the punishment part, or like the you know, trying to to break it by doing extra cardio restricting food, it almost like reaffirms that it's an action that you can take because you can fix. Like, oh, it's fine. If I binge, I'll just go do extra cardio tomorrow, or like I had a bunch of food off plan, well, I'll just not eat a meal tomorrow. But you're just kind of reinforcing that behavior because you're creating a solution for it in your head. Like, oh, it's fine if I do this, I can just do this instead. So that's why I think that it's bad to restrict one just from the bad to like restrict the next day, one just from the place of this might be caused because you're restricting in the first place, and then two, just the behavior aspect.

SPEAKER_00 38:41

It's really good, man. When when you are like looking into binge eating and um identifying trigger foods, I I look at it from the same perspective of we're doing a like a GI cleanse or we are creating your training program. There are certain exercises that I just won't fucking do. I won't do those pullover machines because I always tear something right here every fucking time I do it. Doesn't matter how light it is, it just puts me in a bad spot that my body doesn't like it. I will not do like fucking pronated grip stuff for my back because my elbows just cannot fucking take it. It's a physical limitation. I'm not ashamed of it. It's just there's nothing I can do about that. There's there's nothing I can do about the fact that if I don't have the lactase enzyme provided exogenously, I will shit myself after drinking a glass of milk. It's just there's just nothing I can do about that, you know? Now, on the same way, there's nothing I can do about the fact that if I eat one fucking cookie, I'm done. Like that is it. My day is fucked. You know, like there's it's it, I'm I'm not gonna be able to stop eating. And it's the same way that like I can't have uh fuck, there's so many foods that are trigger foods. I remember this one time my my wife asked me because I was asking for help with this, and she asked me, like, okay, what are the foods that you go for? And I was like, honestly, right now, any of them. Because I was just in that deep hunger state where I'm like, I will binge eat any fucking thing that's in this house. So we can only keep like chicken, rice, and oats. Like, that's it, because I will fuck this up, you know? And I found one of the strategies that worked very well for me was actually to do two things. So I noticed that whenever I was um just out and about, just doing nothing, right? Just fucking chilling and not worrying about my food and stuff like that, I never got fat. I never really got fat. I got to like 20 some percent, 21, 22 percent. Well, I did get fatter when I was in rehab, but that's a different situation. But like all the other times in my life, it was just very, very manageable. So I don't really get fat naturally, but I do get fat when I'm trying to track all of my shit. So I also noticed that when I don't track my stuff, I just naturally gravitate towards good foods. Like, what do I feel like eating? Rice and chicken. Like I grew up Brazilian, man. Like in school, in the middle of the morning, we have rice and chicken to eat with beans and stuff, right? Like we I grew up used to eating this stuff. So those are the foods that I naturally gravitate towards. But when I'm trying to like look into my Tetris of my macro tracking app, I start being like, ooh, but I also have tortillas, ooh, but I also have like, oh, there's some Oreos that were left over. Ooh, and then I can try to like fit this in. And then I, because I don't want to miss out on any experience ever, like I've said this before on a podcast, I want to die knowing that I've done absolutely everything that I wanted. This momentary want sometimes is so fucking strong that it's very hard to like override. So I have eliminated tracking from me. Like I'm not tracking on a daily basis at all. Every now and then I'll just look to ballpark like where I'm at. And uh my weight is consistently good. I'm recomping very fucking well. I'm still in the way that I was when I finished my diet. Like it's it's pretty, it's it's working pretty freaking decently. I know exactly how many grams of like each thing I need to eat to hit my calories, and I'm also in a deficit right now. So, like, whereas I was struggling not to eat 8,000 calories a day, right now I'm eating 2,300 calories a day and I'm chilling. Like, I literally have no trouble with that. I'm not on different drugs or anything. It wasn't the drugs, it was just taking this load off my head. So you you talked about like trying to fit Chipotle into your own macros, right? Just trying to fit as much garbage in with the if it fits your macros approach and stuff. Is there what what what was the moment for you that you realized that like flexibility? I thought flexibility was freedom, but flexibility is actually what was keeping me stuck. And what do what do you think that happened with your physique and your relationship with food when you switched to strictured like whole food eating more?

SPEAKER_01 42:24

Yeah. So that's first off, that's really interesting because I feel like a lot of people that struggle with binge-like behavior kind of gravitate towards the structure of bodybuilding. Like, oh, if I if I have this, then that's gonna prevent me from going off and putting that. Yeah, no, it's true. So that's really interesting. I would be scared to let myself do that right now.

SPEAKER_00 42:47

I was to let myself very scared. I was terrified, bro, because I was like, okay, let me try this. And then I just tracked what I was eating. I just wrote it down and then I just on the next day checked and I was like, okay, I ate like a hundred grams of protein. This cannot happen. So I just like I have certain anchors, right? So I know that I need to hit 200 grams of actual protein three times a day, and that hits me, that gets me my goal. So as long as I have that, I'll just add in carbs and then some fats if I'm feeling like it. If I'm not feeling like it, I'm good. But just like I had intentional days for like high and low days, I will like now if I'm just have a day that I'm super fucking hungry and I can't concentrate and work because I'm hungry, I will just add some nuts and some olive oil or like an extra egg to my food and that's it. Like I don't I don't have to think about this stuff anymore. It's just I'm making food-based decisions, not like an app made-based decision, you know.

SPEAKER_01 43:39

Yeah, and honestly, dude, I feel like that's something that comes with time. Like you've been bodybuilding longer than I have. So for me to to make those those autonomous food decisions, I I just feel like it would be really hard for me personally to do that. That's why I I love the structure so much. I don't know. I mean at some point, at some point, I'm not gonna be a competitive bodybuilder anymore. And I'm gonna just try to be healthy and like I'm gonna have to learn that balance at some point. So very interesting. Yeah. I think you asked about the toy and like yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:19

Yeah, like when when was it that you realized that, like, oh, like freedom actually, like for for me, the way that I explained true freedom is not the ability to just do whatever the fuck you want in the moment, it's the ability to let yourself override those momentary wants because of a goal that you want that supersedes the level of want of this lower want. So, like that's the that's the idea, right? Like, so for you, what was it that changed your mind with regards to like flexibility and freedom and like realizing that like maybe this is the stuff that's actually keeping me stuck?

SPEAKER_01 44:51

Yeah, so I actually had a girlfriend that I lived with for like a year, and she was like very much a foodie person. This was like at the very beginning stages of me actually like trying to do bodybuilding and like when I first hired my coach, and I was a little bit flexible with things, if you know what I mean. Like this is what's on my meal plan, but I can also track the macros for this. So if she wants to go get Chipotle or she wants to go get this, so like I'll just do that, you know. But we broke up, she left, and I was like, oh shit. Well, I'm just gonna follow my plan now because I don't have this little food gremlin around me all the time. Yeah. So I just was like started walking in and actually just started making way better progress. Like, were was there a chance that maybe my macros weren't accurate when I was doing like the if if that fits your macros? Yeah, probably there was probably a little bit of inaccuracy there. But at the same time, I think just cutting out these like processed foods or or foods that are not whole foods and just going straight to that, I just feel like I started making much better progress. And I was like, oh, I actually really enjoy just doing what's on the plan more than trying to fit this into my macros, right? And I think it was just kind of something that just naturally happened. Um, like I said, the the girl left, and I was just like, oh, let's just follow the plan now, and then I just started making better progress. I was like gaining size, I was getting leaner at the same time, and I was like, huh. Following the plan works, right?

SPEAKER_00 46:16

Yeah, yeah, it does. It's wild, it's wild. Yeah. You posted a lot about meditation, man. You talked a lot about that. You said it it looks very goofy, but it changed your life. And uh you called yourself an energy guy, and basically like you dared people to think it's like mumbo jumbo. So, like the the kind of conf the the the kind of like content takes like confidence to post on a fitness space, I think, because we still pretty much like have an overarching like way of mocking things that aren't just specifically macros or sets or reps, you know? So what what made you be like, I need to give this a try? Like, and and what was the experience do you think, or combination of experiences that cracked you open enough for you to be able to consider something like meditation into your life?

SPEAKER_01 47:01

Yeah. So first off, I'm gonna remember your question, I'll get back to it. But I really am a big fan of just kind of posting, you know, stuff that isn't related to fitness as well. Because it's like, dude, I love the gym, it's made me who I am, but I'm also like a multidimensional person. And there's other things that I enjoy, like I've posted videos about reading, I've posted videos about meditating and videos about Spongebob buff pants and whatnot, right? And uh I just I don't know, I just kind of like posting content in general as well as the fitness stuff. Um yeah, I feel like it's something that is kind of like taboo in the fitness space, but I don't really care. But to answer your question, like what what got me into meditation? Nick Comodino, I'm in his Alchemist Academy uh Impact Industries group, and one of the things that they have you do is when you first join the program, you gotta do a 30-day dopamine detox. So you're cutting out caffeine, your phone is on grayscale mode, you're not listening to any music with lyrics, only like energetic music. You're abstaining from all things that are creating any sort of artificial dopamine. And one of the things on there was that you're supposed to meditate, you're supposed to do the meditation 20 minutes twice a day. And I didn't I yeah, and I didn't do it. I did I did the first time, so when I first signed the program, I did the dopamine detox, but I didn't do the meditation. But then in December, he had like an end-of-year call, like, hey, what are you guys gonna actually do this year? Who are you guys gonna become this year? And I was like, I lied to myself. I said I was gonna do this program, I said I was gonna do the things that Nick said and that Nick talked about, and I didn't do it. And I think that you know, I'm about to exit this program soon. Everybody's doing the dopamine detox again. Let's just do the meditation soon. I had never really gotten into it. It's a very, very recent development for me. But I started to realize that I was like I wasn't living in reality almost. Like I I was just like living in a space that I had created where I was just like not in the present moment at all. Like I just wasn't there fully. And I started I started doing this meditation, and just like the clear headedness that I felt when I was doing it, where I was like just focusing on right now, what it like what am I doing right now? I'm meditating, I'm breathing, I'm experiencing these sensations that I'm feeling in my feet, I'm feeling the breath coming in my lungs, and my mind is not thinking about things outside of this moment right now. And the crazy part about it is that same sort of like ability to be present started to leak into every area of my life when I was working or doing a check-in with the client. This is one, this is a huge one for me. Started to notice that I was just so much more present with the client check-in once I started like meditating. Like I was just able to be so locked into the current moment, like, okay, what is this person telling me? What does the data look like? Like I'm just so in the moment, not even thinking about the future, like just thinking about this week, how did this person do this week? What does this person need right now? So I just think that like forcing myself to actually learn to be present, which is something I'm not good at, helped me be more present in other areas of my life. And like just my enjoyment overall was just enhanced. Just my enjoyment for just doing what I'm doing right now. Like in the past, we're on this podcast talk right now. I'd probably be thinking about like shit, I got chicken to cook sitting in the fridge. But and I guess I'm thinking about it right now by making an example, but just an example. Like, I'm just enjoying this conversation right now, I'm in the present moment, and this is not something that I'm I used to be very good at. I was very much always outside of myself and outside of my current sensation of this moment right now.

SPEAKER_00 50:50

Did you start with 20 minutes twice a day?

SPEAKER_01 50:53

Nope, I didn't. I did the um Sam Harris Wake Me Up app. I don't know if you've heard of it. Um, it was actually Tom Schuster that posted it on his story one day, like, hey, this is the meditation app I've been using. So I just downloaded it, um, didn't touch it for a while, and then when the meditation challenge started, I just got up that pulled up the app, and it's a 28-day, like the first part of it is a 28-day introduction course with like an actual class talking about the actual structure and history and idea behind meditation and why it's important and why we do it. So not only was it like a very easy way to ease into it, but you also learning in the process. And it like makes you so bought into it and it makes you understand. I'm a person where if I understand something, if I understand why I'm doing something, what the benefits are, like I'm way more locked into it. And like that's what Sam Harris's meditation app does a great job at is teaching you this is why we meditate. Try it here, do it for 10 minutes. Here you go. And then doing it, it's like, oh wow, this is actually really enjoyable.

SPEAKER_00 51:57

Yeah, yeah, dude, that's nice. I'm gonna have to check it out. I literally just told my wife this week, and I said, because I I said that I've been struggling with anxiety a lot yesterday. Literally, I had an anxiety attack, and then I literally just wiped the tears off my eyes and started recording another podcast. And I'm like, I need to slow the fuck down. I I am going way too fast, and I'm like, there's there's no combo of nootropics that works on me currently. So it's time for a reset. And I think it's part of it is because I can't live in the moment. Like I'm not ever present. I'm always like constantly in this like uh observing state of, oh, don't forget this. Oh, you also have to do left. Like, don't slip here. Like, make sure you like have this step here in place. And like just having these, I have very high standards for myself, but they're not, they're not, I don't want this to sound good at all. I mean like that in a in a bad way, less in like you put so many restrictions because of perfectionism, and perfectionism is just you're just don't you just don't want to look like a fool, right? So you're just a defensive mechanism, and it's something that you know I struggle with a lot, and I think meditation can help. I just absolutely fucking hate doing it. So I uh, you know, it's something that I'm gonna have to, I feel like I'm gonna have to learn. I started doing breathing exercises because of the science behind breathing is just so good, but I know that the science behind meditation is also really fucking good. I just hate it. Um, so I'm just gonna have to find a way. And this, this, the the app that you mentioned sounds interesting. It sounds like the an approach that would probably work for me because it's explaining things a little bit better. So and I like Sam Harris a lot, too.

SPEAKER_01 53:20

So don't, dude. I think I think it would be great for you. Like for me personally, I always had a hard time with meditation as well. But the way that they work you up is like perfect. Very it's baby steps, it's like a crawl, walk, run approach with the Sam Harris app, where it's like, okay, today we're just gonna focus on like what are you feeling in your hands right now? Like, just think about that. Don't even think about it, yeah, yeah. What do your hands feel like? Yeah, you know, it just like very slowly moves you up. But it's hard, man. It's hard to be in the present moment, especially for like eye achievers and people like us with the entrepreneurial mindset. Like, we're there's always something to do, there's always something we have to get done, and it's so hard to just like stop and sit down and just be present. It's tough.

SPEAKER_00 54:03

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, man. A hundred percent. Now, you also said like growth seasons are lonely seasons, right? That when you're when you're locked in and you're building the other areas of your life, they sort of atrophy. So dating, relationships, like being present, like these are some foreign concepts was the the phrase that you use, right? You weren't just talking about vulnerability here. Uh, I think that that was that was very real. Like, how how long have you actually been living in that season? And do you think there's a version of this life where like building and the living happen at the same time, or do you think like one is always gonna cost the other?

SPEAKER_01 54:37

I love this question, man. This is something I've been heavily thinking about lately because of like some life shifts that are happening here pretty soon. I would say I've been in this season of growth and honestly like loneliness for probably close to three years now. Basically, when I started my coaching business, that was when my my ex-girlfriend had left me. We had dated when I was back home, like before I joined the Marine Corps. But like she went back home and I was like here by myself and like had one thing to do, and that was build my coaching business. And that also, like being in the Marine Corps, being away from my family back home, and having to like or wanting rather to just build this business and and do something great and help people. I had I had no choice. It was like, do I want a social life or do I want a business? And do I want to coach people? Like, what do I actually want? And I just kind of had to I had to make a choice and I've just kind of maintained that choice this whole time. Like the business is what I'm building right now. Having friends is great. I love going out with people when I can, but it's just a very rare occurrence for me in my life right now. But I think that's gonna shift soon. I really do. So I went to Dallas probably two or three weeks ago for uh Great Matter Academy's event with AR Funnel, and I was like, wow, this is what I've been missing. People, people that are like me, people that have the same the same goals as me. And you know, being away from family, being in the Marine Corps, I didn't feel like I was surrounded by anybody that understood, I guess. And then this last week and I went to Charleston and it was like, wow, like I'm with people that understand this and they're in the same mindset, but we're having fun, we're enjoying life, we're being present, we're not even talking about business, we're not even talking about coaching, we're just having a good time. And I'm getting out of the Marine Corps very soon. It's looking like pretty much in May, I'll be like wrapping up. So I think that I think things are about to shift here. Um I'm gonna have a whole you know 40, 40 or so hours during the week free of my time to just focus on coaching. And then all that time, like I'm just gonna have so much more time to like be a person again, man, you know? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 56:51

Dude, sorry, I got fucking sweat in my eyes and and it's burning the shit out of my eyes right now. It feels like I have pepper sprayed in my eyes. But that's really that's really good to hear, man. I, you know, like someone has been putting in the work and and coming out of their lonely season, I'm in their lonely season myself now. It's something that I I called my dad today to talk about this specifically. And the very interesting that like you took that route on the answer to the question because I'm like, dad, like I'm not in the university. Like, I don't feel like I'm thriving. Like when I was producing papers and research, which right now I do produce courses for my platform and I coach people, like I had a lot of people to bounce ideas off of. I had like a community of people, and I still do. I have people that I can text message, I have people that I can call and I do this every single week. But I still don't have anyone that I like see at the gym or like just go grab some coffee and just talk about random shit. It's it's something that I'm very much looking forward to. And like my wife said, it's like, hey, we're probably just gonna have to move at some point, you know, or like to go to where this these people actually are, because uh otherwise you're not you're not gonna you're not gonna find them here, you know, where you are. It's a very, very tight community. But man, I that's gonna be a wrap for us for this episode of the Opticast. I didn't come in and I give us the real version here, the boring nights before routines, the clients who needed less, not more, the ego that has to die before the growth can start, the gut health that nobody wants to talk about, the therapy that makes some people uncomfortable, and the honest truth about what it actually costs to build something real with your body and your life. Um, if this episode hits something specific for you, whether it was the binge eating conversation or the caffeine wake-up call, the balance, like or or or the growth, like season loneliness, like share with someone who needs to hear it. Don't just let it sit in your own ears. Let it actually be a change, a positive change for other people. And if you haven't already, subscribe, follow us, leave a review, whatever platform you're on, just do that one thing. It takes 30 seconds and uh helps more people find conversations like this one instead of recycled garbage that's literally everywhere else. So now that uh what I want you to know, every single Friday we're dropping brand new episodes every week with no breaks, no fillers, just high level conversations with people who are operating at the edge of what's possible in performance, mindset, physiology, and life. The guests we have lined up are going to make your jaw drop. And I genuinely mean that Friday's about to become one of your favorite days of the week if for a completely different reason. So lock it in, set a reminder, tell a friend, and come back hungry. I'm Nathan. This is the Opticast, and I will see you Friday. Peace out.