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Health & Fitness Redefined
Health and Fitness Redefined with Anthony Amen. Take a dive into the health world as we learn how to overcome adversity, depict fact vs fiction and see health & fitness in a whole new light.Fitness Is Medicine
Health & Fitness Redefined
From Dad Bod to Proud Bod
Successful entrepreneur Dane opens up about his remarkable transformation from a busy business owner with a "dad bod" to a health-conscious founder of DadBot Sculptors. He shares how his dedication to building two headhunting firms initially caused his health to decline, and how he turned his life around through sustainable lifestyle changes, not fad diets. This transformation not only boosted his self-confidence but also fueled his passion to help other men over 35 achieve similar results.
Listeners will gain insights into the power of personal accountability and the establishment of positive habits. Dane emphasizes how taking charge of one's health can start with small, manageable changes. By waking up early, reading uplifting literature, exercising regularly, following a disciplined meal plan, and steering clear of detrimental habits like pornography, alcohol, and weed, listeners can achieve daily micro-wins that lead to a healthier, more fulfilling life.
The episode also tackles the often-overlooked issue of self-improvement within marriages. Dane discusses how focusing on fitness and eliminating vices can strengthen relationships and set positive examples for children. By prioritizing personal growth and discipline, couples can foster deeper connections and instill healthy habits in their kids, ensuring the next generation grows up with a solid understanding of nutrition and exercise. Join us for an inspiring conversation on transforming not just bodies, but entire lifestyles for the better.
Learn More at: www.Redefine-Fitness.com
Hello and welcome to Help the Fitness Redefine. I'm your host, anthony Amen, and today we have a great episode for all of our fabulous listeners. So, without further ado, let's welcome to the show, dane. Dane, it's a pleasure to have you on today.
Speaker 2:You too, brother, Thanks for having me so.
Speaker 1:Dane, it's a pleasure to have you on today. You too, brother. Thanks for having me. Yeah, thank you for taking the time to come on, like I ask everyone. First question tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into the health and fitness world.
Speaker 2:Yeah, great question. So I have always been, you know, somewhat of an athlete or training in and around the gym, just kind of just for personal reasons. But the last 14 years I've run one of the leading headhunting firms for software companies, and so the first seven years I built one firm and then I built the second firm and that second firm took me three years to get to a seven-figure business. The first firm took me eight years. So in the course of building that second one it took a lot of my time, my energy, my resources and at the same time I was new in a marriage, we had a three-year-old, we had a newborn child under one years old and I had been training just an hour a day, right.
Speaker 2:So for me I was doing something called Orange Theory Fitness and that was kind of like, hey, I'm checking the box, I'd go after work, I'd fast all day and go to the office and then fast and then shoot over to Orange Theory and then I would come home and kind of eat my way into 3,000 calories. I didn't realize it was 3,000 calories, but I was consuming a ton of food and slowly but surely I was noticing in Orange Theory I was getting better at the classes. My conditioning seemed to get better because they track your metrics and your data and your strain and all that stuff. So they, you know, turn of the year they were going to do like a transformation contest and for me I was like, all right, cool, I'm going to do this because I think I'm like striking distance away from winning this thing. And so the two young trainers who were super fit and like 23, 24 years old, they were like hey, man, come on upstairs, we're going to take that before picture. And I was like, all right, you're going to take it, you know. All right, you know.
Speaker 2:And I was like got up there and they took the picture and they showed it to me and it was probably one of the most uncomfortable moments of my life. I just didn't see that version of me and it was like, damn, that's what I really look like. And I like to describe it as I was a really refined pair, that's kind of what I look like. I had accumulated a really world-class dad bod and I did not know that, but I had recognized damn, this is the body I'm carrying around.
Speaker 2:And then I started to observe like a lot of my standards in my discipline had just kind of fallen by the wayside when it came to nutrition and training. Yes, I was checking the box, but that was about the only piece of the puzzle that I had right. My nutrition was out of whack. My sleeping was out of whack. My eating habits were just all over the place. I was consuming alcohol. I just had a lot of other bad habits other than a high standard for running a business and making that successful.
Speaker 2:So there was this realization, anthony, where I kind of said I exchanged my success for my health, and that's an issue, right. I've got a three-year-old and a one-year-old and I've got a wife that I still should be kind of in honeymoon stages of, and I had recognized like maybe that's why I'm not desiring her as much and maybe that's why I'm having a lot of these insecure moments, you know. And then I started to evaluate like I haven't taken a picture with my family. Every time somebody whips out a camera I kind of shy away from it. I don't even take selfies, like I had no photos.
Speaker 2:I started to like kind of play back the last couple of years and I realized like damn, I'm really insecure, I'm in a body that I'm not comfortable in and I had always been training and doing certain things like fad diets, like keto and fasting and paleo and all these different things like being health conscious, but my body wasn't reflecting it. And so I was 41 years old, about to be 42. And that's when I said like I got to figure this out and so I went deep into, you know, the information around nutrition and training and recovery and making it a lifestyle as opposed to a short-term fad, and how that was going to be permanent for me. And that led me into a lot of research around what was the proper style of training for men over 35, what type of eating complemented that and what would allow me to sustain this as a lifestyle, as opposed to dropping 15, gaining it back, dropping 10, gaining it back and kind of always in this cycle that I had been in the last probably 10 years of my life. So that information I consumed because my other business became a success At night.
Speaker 2:I spent a lot of time diving into information that was relevant for me and I started to incorporate that. Over three years I took my body from over 30% all the way down to 6%. Now I kind of stay around 9, 10%, but I've added a significant amount of muscle, like I was 170 at the time, 30% body fat, and now I hang around 165, 167, around 9% body fat. So I did what most guys want to do, which was I reduced my body fat while building muscle, and so that was the premise of my journey and passion for understanding how important nutrition and training was for men, and I incorporated it into my lifestyle. So I ran that business, and it also allowed me to launch DadBot Sculptors, which is an online coaching platform that we're talking about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love the story and the realization of it where he said you were upstairs in a 23 year old, I was like let's take a picture of you. Yeah, that pivotal moment of oh shit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was like dude. I mean you guys are like two GQ models. And I got to go upstairs Like I'm playing, all confident, you know. And then I'm like damn, I got to go upstairs and take my shirt off and there were girls down there too and I'm like please tell me they're not going to be up there. You know, like all these 23, like all these good looking college kids, you know, that are out of college and super in shape. So I was like all right, let's go quick before some of these girls make it up there. And then they took it and I was like you guys aren't going to be putting this on the wall and shit downstairs, right, like this is my file. And yeah, needless to say, I didn't win the transformation contest. I kind of went into a negative slump for a couple of months.
Speaker 1:You and everybody else. So very interesting. I have one just apparent question, which I've seen a lot, so I'm curious in your standpoint, did you notice that when you started taking your habits for health and fitness more seriously and you started seeing improvements in that, that you also noticed it as effects on your business in the positive aspect?
Speaker 2:Yeah, dude, it was all about the habits. I knew that I couldn't chase a quantifiable goal because I wasn't going to be in the body of my dreams overnight. I knew it was going to take me some time. I created a vision of who I wanted to become and I knew, okay, that guy's probably two, three years away. So I'm going to focus. I'm not going to focus on what I see every day, I'm going to focus on what I can control, and that was for me five daily habits that I slowly incorporated into my routine, that I knew this is controlling the controllable. And if I could win each day with these habits, I'll be a happier, more pleasant person to be around.
Speaker 2:Because I was not in my other body. That was one of the things I noticed. I'm short with my wife, I'm aggressive at times, I'm I'm curt with my children, I'm very impatient. In all of it, like when it hit me, it was like bam, like dude, this is because you are not happy with you, it is not them. I was the common denominator in every argument and conflict in my house. So, yeah, I focused on things I can control and for me that was daily habits and those daily habits stacked into weekly habits and monthly habits, and every day I found that if I executed on those, I was a happy person at the end of the day.
Speaker 1:You said so many good things in there I don't even know where to start. I absolutely love you. Control the controllables, and the second component of being that being you blamed yourself for everything going on in your household. That's a big component of things I've talked about a lot. Yeah, you blame yourself, because then things become controllable that you can control. Yes, as opposed to blaming your partner, blaming your kids, blaming whatever People just find every excuse to blame why they're not healthy and fit. It's their X, y, z. No, it's your fault because you didn't start. I loved the five habits you mentioned. I'm very curious about what those are, so, if you mind, just list it out what those five habits are for us, yeah, so for me, I think I.
Speaker 2:I, when I really observed and I came outside my body and I started to look at, like what is my day look like and why am I so miserable? And how did I get here? I noticed I had a lot of bad habits right, like, yes, I showed up for work, I put my pants on the same way I produced, I provided I did those things Right, and so in that aspect I was winning, but in the other aspects I was not. And so I recognized like, ok, I'm going to work all day, and then I'm coming home and I'm releasing. I'm releasing how I'm eating bad food, I'm rewarding myself with a high calorie, high fat food that had inflammatory ingredients in it and that wasn't responding well to my body because I had inflammation going on all throughout my body. I had autoimmune disease that was starting to accumulate with my skin, and so I started to recognize well, this has to be from the food. And then I would throw in alcohol and then I'd finish it off with some good sugar. So I woke up like literally in this coma every day without realizing it for a long time. So the first thing was like I need to set a better routine at night, because I need to be a person that gets up early, because at the time I was waking up alongside them or after them and it was like, hey, keep it down, daddy's sleeping, or I'd get up alongside. Hey, quiet down, honey. I need like two cups of coffee before I'm ready to receive any of you guys, you know. And so it was always on my heels. So for me it was like all right. Habit. Number one unwind earlier. So number one was get up earlier, get up before your family, whether it's an hour or 30 minutes. And slowly but surely it was five o'clock, then it went to 445. And then now it's 334 o'clock. So I've got two hours, almost three hours sometimes, by myself to get ready with Dane and deal with Dane. And so that was one.
Speaker 2:The second habit was I knew that when I woke up I was generally in a lower vibration and I had negative thoughts, even if I won the day before. It was just a place that I kind of had been so accustomed to, those emotions that I had to undo that. So for me it was putting the right information in between my ears and picking up a book that was positive, that gave me the right way to think about things and reframe things. So I always spent 10 minutes a day in a book that allowed me to reframe and rewire my brain to the way that I saw the world and a Wayne Dyer quote that he had that really changed the way I perceive things was when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. And so that became really big and ingrained in me that every day I had to kind of get to a place of controlling the controllable and reframing the things that made me aggravated and understanding I can control how I respond to those things.
Speaker 2:So number one was waking up early before my family. Number two was getting the right information in my brain and number three was I needed to go use that energy. So I needed to raise my vibration and I knew the gym and the training was a component of that. I never walked out of a gym session a worse person than I went in. I was always a more positive, more uplifting person and more vibrant person to be around. So I was like I got to sweat. I'm not worried about overtraining. Every single day I got to get up and use this time to go put this aggression, put this anger, put this frustration whatever I was dealing with at the time into the weights. And so I did that.
Speaker 2:And then number four was I knew, okay, I can raise my vibration, like through habits, anthony, I would catch the four or five hours later. Here come the grumpy old son of a bitch again and it was like, okay, you know, I need to figure out ways to sustain this. So number four was I implemented a meal plan that was sustainable and that required my body to have discipline every four or five hours. And so for me, I incorporated a macro-based meal plan that allowed my body in my day to be set up with these micro goals and guardrails that every four hours I had a chance to pat myself on the back and say, hey, man, you did a good job right, you won this meal. Like an alcohol wins a day, I won each meal. That was a W that I needed.
Speaker 2:And then the fifth one was sustaining from vices like pornography, alcohol, weed. I had to pull those things out. I knew when I did those things it unwound all the other work that I did in my day. And so those were. Those were the daily habits waking up early, reading something positive training, uh, some form of physical activity to get my sweat on eating and following a meal plan for foods that actually supported my goals and gave me the right thoughts. And then five, removing all neurotoxins and vices that poisoned my mind.
Speaker 2:And so those five daily things became micro wins. Every day I didn't have to worry about did I lose the 10 pounds or do I look like I want to look? It was like no man. You won the day and now do it again tomorrow. And so I started to stack days and weeks and months and within 90 days I didn't look the way I look now, or I wanted to, but I felt like a completely different human being, and it was mainly because every day, I looked at myself in the mirror and said you're fucking doing it. You know you're doing what you said you wanted to do for so long, and that that impacted how I showed up for my wife and for my kids, how I led my employees, how I showed up at work, everywhere. So those habits became my winning secret sauce.
Speaker 1:How did you come up with those habits? Just?
Speaker 2:out of curiosity. I looked at the things I wasn't doing and I said I got to do the opposite. I was sleeping in late, I was not training in the morning, I was watching TV and dramas and murder mysteries and just all things that were negative politics. So all these things. I realized that that stuff is impacting how I'm showing up the next day and it's impacting how I'm thinking about things. And so when I looked at the things that I was unhappy with, it was like I was sleeping in late. So I did the opposite. Right, I was watching politics and a lot of information stuff that just wasn't positive. So that was controlling how my thoughts were wired.
Speaker 2:Three I was training but I was doing somebody else's plan and I didn't really believe in it because I wasn't seeing the results. So I knew I need to put a plan in place that I know will actually get me where I want it to go. And so I studied bodybuilders. They were masters at sculpting the body. So I said, if they're doing it, that's what I'm doing. And then, four, I supported it with a meal plan that said, if I'm training this way, then I can set myself up with control and the things that go on my body, because at the time it was like, hey, what do you want for lunch today? Yeah, chick-fil-a sounds good, shake, throw it in. You know whatever it was like I was I was eating for flavor, not for fuel. So I got it. I got to have guardrails there and then the last one was ending the day with alcohol and weed.
Speaker 2:I recognized like I waited my. I spent over 10 years to build the business that I built. I waited my whole life for the woman that had arrived. I waited my whole life to have been given such a wonderful family. Yet I was escaping and I'm like what are you escaping? You know what I mean? Like wake up, like you don't need these vices, because you actually have everything that you wanted, but you're not grateful for it. And you're not grateful for it because you're putting in things that are altering your thoughts, altering your vibration, and then, therefore, you're showing up as just a below average person for the people you really love and care about and I knew they may have grace with me, but it's not going to last forever about.
Speaker 1:And I knew they may have grace with me, but it's not going to last forever. There's so much to unpack in that I just think the best place to start is just something some commonalities that you were saying, that I hear around me because I'm getting, I'm in my mid thirties already, so I'm starting to hang out with people that are having kids and older, older kids, and this is what I've noticed and please, if you've noticed the same thing or I've noticed something different, please correct me. Guys and guys and girls, if they get married, they feel great about each other. They go through this honeymoon stage. After marriage, they everything's great, awesome. Kids come they, their habits for themselves fall out the window, yes. And then they start blending each other for the way they look and the way they feel, yeah. So eventually that starts compounding on themselves and they start falling out of this love with their spouse, where they stop finding them attractive, etc. Etc. Because both of them start have been neglecting themselves for so long. That's right.
Speaker 1:Eventually it comes to a point where and I just hang out with more men. So this is what I hear from the guy point is no, did you see that hot chick that's over in this place over here that's doing this. Oh yo, did you see that hot? Isn't she hot over there? That's right, just like what. About your wife? Yeah, that's always like my first question. And they go well, you know, she's put on so much weight, blah, blah, blah. And then I look at them and I go and this, I say this, and maybe this is why I don't have friends, but I'm always just. You know what if you just worked out with your wife? What if you started doing a nutrition plan with your wife and you took better care of yourself? Yeah Well, I don't need to take better care of myself, I like the way I look. Ha ha, ha, ha. Yeah, it just spirals and they end up just miserable.
Speaker 2:That's right. It's so true, dude, it's so true. I don't know where guys think that they get a free pass on having a below average or average body, right, like, and their wife should have this eight, nine, 10 figure body where it's admirable all the time because they're just there to serve them and and allow the man to lust them all the time. It's like you need to lead from the front Right, and that that was a big thing for me. My wife was always in shape, but I was like I wasn't desiring her right Because I didn't feel good in my own skin. But I didn't see that at the point. I was like why isn't she coming on to me? Why isn't she going to have sex with me every day, you know? And I was like she should be wanting to have sex and it was like I'm putting it on her because I didn't feel good in myself. And so it was like I knew nobody's going to fix you. You're the common denominator here. In almost every single fight and every single scuffle, every single insecure moment We'd go out. I'm like who's she looking at? Is she looking at somebody else? Why is she looking at them? And I'm like why am I not the center of her universe. It's like because I don't deserve to be, I haven't shown up, I haven't played the part, I'm not the hero right now, right. And so all of her friends and all of my friends did the exact same thing. Like I had to tell my friends bro, don't send me pictures. I'm not interested in that behavior. I'm not interested in looking at pictures of other women. I'm not interested about the hot girl at your office. Like you need to be pouring that into your wife, and the reason your marriage is in shambles or on its way out is because of the shit that you're doing. Right, and so that was a thing with porn as well. Like I had a porn problem in the beginning and I was like this is, this is just disgusting, right, I'm not desiring my wife and I'm doing it all in a private room behind closed doors. And then I'm expecting, like this wonderful marriage and it's like that needs to be poured into your wife and you poured into your wife.
Speaker 2:When you feel good about yourself, when you feel like you're a man deserving of what she has to offer and you feel like desiring her, and when you lead from the front, your wife has no other option but to start following. Sometimes in the first 30 days the wives are a little bit pissed off because they're still uncomfortable. They've got some insecurities that they're dealing with and you've said you're going to do a lot of shit and you haven't done a lot of shit. So it's another one of these things that, oh, here he goes on another fad diet, you know like you know, now we got all right because Dane wants to eat, right. But when you stay the course 30 days, 60 days, 90 days and she realizes damn, he's really doing, he's staying the course. That's who she wants. She wants somebody that's disciplined. Women find discipline sexy as fuck, right, they love a disciplined man.
Speaker 2:And when you're head of household and you lead from the front, your wife will follow, she will take that interest in you and you will watch. If you remove the porn, you remove the alcohol, you remove the vices, you tell your friends I don't engage in pictures like that, I don't want to hear about these comments, about with the women at your pool, like I just tell, like, hey, I don't want to hear about that stuff, that's not serving me, it's not serving you. Then you slowly start to only have eyes for that woman and you slowly realize this is a game of personal development. I'm in my journey of developing me and she'll go on her journey of developing herself, and we will use health and fitness as two pieces of the puzzle to do that. Yeah, that's it right in the head.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's, it's so true, and you can't be blaming your wife for things that you're not doing. It's so unfair. It's so unfair, so screwed up. It's the same thing as she did it to you as a guy. Yeah, it's right. Focus on yourself, get yourself controlled, get your own priorities in a row. And I tell my wife and she thinks I'm kidding, but I'm not I say I work out all the time for you. Yeah, the one thing I want in life is if I take my shirt off and like we're at the beach or something, you look at me and you're like, damn, that's my husband, mine. Yeah, that's right, that's what I want out of it. I want you staring at me that's right, dude.
Speaker 2:I can't, you can't. Literally, the pain of my the, the pain that I was in, was oh, that was the initial desire. It was like I just want her to look at me and me only. And it was like I just want her to look at me and me only. And it was like I don't want her behind closed doors with her friends talking about one of our neighbors who's a good looking guy, or one of the guys on TV, like all this shit that her friends are doing. It was like I need to be that person for her and I'm going to chase and try to build that best version for her every day, so that this is just not an issue anymore. You know cause I was insecure with that? Because the world has become, you know, the next shiny red apple and she even has friends that are engaged in that talk and she's just like these girls are still doing the same thing and it's like so disrespectful for the to the husband as well.
Speaker 2:You know, when you're like doing that shit, it's like it's because you're not doing the work within yourself. If you were doing the work within yourself and you truly loved your partner, you would only want those eyes gazed at you and that when you get that I lost my wife, we engage in sexual activity every single day of the week, every single day of the week. Like not to be too personal about it, but it wasn't always that way. It was like once a week and I was putting it out Like I'm a pretty horny guy right, like I was putting it in porn and I was other places. But when I finally directed that to my wife and invested in myself, every day we have an intimate intimacy or some sort of intimate moment and it's like for a guy, that's all you need. You don't need a million other women, you need one person that you can pour everything into and vice versa. And when you call me your best version, embarrassing moments of my life.
Speaker 1:I was 23 years old, so before I even met my wife, I walked into an office and there was four women there, all in the like their late fifties, early sixties, having a verbal competition to see who went the longest without being with their wife. And it started I mean, husband, sorry, it went with, oh man, we haven't had sex in six months. Six months, ha ha. We only, we haven't done it in three years. You've gone three years. I'm at five years. Isn't that cool? I'm like the fuck. Are you going to sit here and expect me to be happy? You want your husband to? Uh, you think your husband staring at you like the way he used to when he first got married? Yeah, it says it's been five years. That's right.
Speaker 2:And then you wonder why there are some of those guys that we're talking about. It's because their wives, you know, engage in that type of dialogue with their friends and it's like men or women shouldn't be engaging in that. If If you're married and it's not working, you need to. You need to do the work, you need to do the hard work and sometimes that's a lot of uncomfortable conversations, like my wife and I had a ton of uncomfortable conversations to get to this point, because I had a lot of those like I need to unpack this, I need to unpack this and vice versa.
Speaker 2:But we finally got to a place where it was like that transparency yeah, there was three years of choppiness, but we have a lifetime now of transparency and communication that is unparalleled. It's unmatched, you know. So it's worth doing the work, but a lot of people don't realize that the worth comes from the work and you don't feel the worth if you're not doing the work. So you know, if your marriage is at all important to you and keeping the marriage to the top of the pyramid for the kids and for the foundation you're building, like you need to do that work.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And I think this is a great segue into the kind of next component of it, which is your kids, right? So, as everyone here knows, I'm having my first kid, but you have two kids. So, as everyone here knows, I'm having my first kid, but you have two kids, yeah. And I got to say, a huge pet peeve of mine is something I've talked about for a long time is we as adults say oh, you know, I can't have too many potato chips, I can't do this, I need to eat healthier. And you struggle with your own weight. But then we're feeding your kids absolute dog shit. And then we get annoyed that our kids start gaining a lot of weight. We get annoyed our kids aren't active. We get annoyed that when our kids get older and they start being independent, they end up in the same boat. The parents are because they don't know where to look, they don't know what healthy habits are, they don't know how to exercise properly, they don't know how to eat properly, because the parents neglected that.
Speaker 1:And they don't even get me started with how you have to fucking fight against the school districts because they're feeding your kids shit. They're not teaching your kids healthy habits. For a physical education it's all paperwork at this point. Yeah, so it's the compound effect that we're just teaching the younger generation how to be unhealthier, and this is just going to keep getting worse and worse and worse and worse and worse and worse. So how do you, as parents, because you have two kids, teach your kids healthy habits? And when did that wake up call ever come, like we need to do this for them? Bar none.
Speaker 2:For sure. Yeah, I think my kids were a huge part of it. One because, like, even when I would drink alcohol, it was like he's going to see me doing this every night and like then this is going to be like habits aren't taught, they're caught. This is going to be one that he's going to adopt and he's going to not, it's going to be his like passage into manhood and I'm like I don't want that for him. And it same goes with the eating habits. Like I go to Costco, to bulk shop sometimes to get like chicken and veggie, but you look around, you look at the carts of the shit people are putting in these carts and then you look at the father or the mother and then you look at the kids and you're like disaster, like absolute disaster, like this is child abuse. What's going on here? Like the shit that's going in the cart and the kids don't know any better between the sugar and the inflammatory oil, all the fried food that they're getting and the cheeses and all this crap, and it's like they just lack the awareness.
Speaker 2:So for me, I made an association of my kids a long time ago, because they would see me consuming content, they would see me going to the gym, they would see me eating a little bit differently. Like daddy's, working wants to be like a bodybuilder. And to be a bodybuilder, to shape your body and to be able to get muscles, you have to eat certain types of food. There's good food and there's bad food, right, and I would kind of categorize it. And now they're five and eight, so they understand the difference between good food and bad food. It wasn't always that way. They have sugar, but it's minimal. They know like sugar impacts how you show up, sugar impacts your attitude. You become aggressive, you become impatient, you become a tyrant, like you notice, when you have the sugar, these things happen. So I give them these associations and then the positive side is I will teach them like what protein do you want for dinner? Right, we want to build muscle, strong muscle, because now they want to have daddy like muscles, like dad, and they want to have abs. So they consciously have made the association that these foods produce this outcome and we have to watch them sometimes because they'd be like yeah, you should have came to the pool, there was a bunch of dad bods there and they're like, so you didn't have to worry about anything with mommy, because there was just a bunch of them. And so it's funny, you know.
Speaker 2:But my wife will have to correct them. Like we don't call people fat, right, like daddy helps people get in shape, but we don't use the word fat and all. Like we try to correct them, like to not have this, this judgmental lens on, but we do try to teach them like, hey, what protein do you want here? What this is a carbohydrate, this is the fat, these are good ones and sugar is a reward. You can have it in small increments. And then the chips and everything said those are bad calories, those aren't going to make you grow, those aren't going to give you muscles. So we have these like teachable moments with them and obviously we control what goes in the house. So we, we we obviously eat differently than them. They still get some chips and things that, but they're always a little bit on the healthier side. Like we don't just say like, have at it, kids, you know unleash. So there's still kids, but it's in a controlled manner, for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and even introducing things. I'm going to have a little bit of a benefit when I'm going to get to bring my kids to the gym with me every day Cause he had to, but just introducing them to those kinds of environments at a young age so they're not uncomfortable walking into a place like that, yeah.
Speaker 2:Like how uncomfortable?
Speaker 1:was it for you to your first take your first step into a gym?
Speaker 2:Oh dude, it was really hard. That was a big I. I no joke. So a year before this crunch, fitness opened up and it was like this $10 million facility like 8,000 square feet, big beautiful lights everywhere. I was like all right you, big, beautiful lights everywhere. I was like all right, you know what? There's a new gym. No excuse. I signed up for the membership. A whole year went by. I didn't walk into it once. A whole year I paid the membership. My wife's like well, you canceled. I was like it's only 34 bucks. Eventually I'm going to go to it. And so then I decided to get fit.
Speaker 2:After that competition thing, covid hit. So I was forced to train at home. I only had 25 pound dumbbells. So I said I went to go pick them up and I remember thinking like damn, these are a lot heavier than I thought you know. It was like only 25 pound dumbbells but it was all I had. But I spent like two months doing all different body weight exercises with these dumbbells, like curls and and presses and leg presses. So I built a little bit of a foundation to where I lost some weight.
Speaker 2:And then the gyms opened up again and I was like, well, I've been in the house.
Speaker 2:I got to go. So it was like I leaned into that discomfort. But I remember still walking in there like wanting to go in off hours Cause I was like everyone's going to know, like I'm the new guy, like I just assumed it was this click and everybody knew each other and I was going to be the new guy that was out of shape and didn't know what he was doing. So I was super uncomfortable at first. But a couple of sessions in, you know, then you just start feeling good about the habits and it's like all right, you stop looking around Is anybody looking at me? And you just get through it. You have to if you want to create a better version of yourself, which is ultimately the journey. Right Is to kill the guy that you're trying to beat like to get better, to create a bigger, better, stronger version of yourself. You got to lean into that discomfort, you got to lean into that fear a little bit and the more you do it, the more comfortable you'll get with it.
Speaker 1:You know you get comfortable with the uncomfortable uh, I like to say on the journey and so going into the gym, about that habit of teaching your kids that right, oh yeah, your kids, of getting over the uncomfortability that you went through. And they won't even have that uncomfortability if you start bringing them with you at a young age and you just introduce them to the environment, not to say they're sitting there dead lifting at five years old, but come with me, come see where daddy hangs out.
Speaker 1:That's right, they love it used to just walking through that threshold into the gym. And now, all of a sudden, the exposure to the loud clanging and banging they get used to and desensitized to, so when they get older it's a lot easier for them to hop into that setting 100 like every summer the last couple of summers they have a kids club.
Speaker 2:So during the summer that's our thing we go as a family around nine o'clock when the kids close open. My wife and I was we. I built a home gym so they're coming, they've got a home gym and all the neighborhood kids come in it and it's like our thing. You know, everybody knows us for this home gym and you know Mr Dane, the muscle guy and all that, so it's like it's. It's it's this exciting part where my identity is now that for them, but every summer we take them when they're out of school, we take them, they go in the kids club and they, they sit there and they'll watch us in the gym. You know. So they love going and seeing that. They always want to go out in the gym but they can't until they're 12. But so, yeah, we've kind of walked them through that the last couple of summers where this is where we go and he's always asking can I come with you? And unfortunately, like the gym won't let them on the floor unless they're 12.
Speaker 1:But we take them to the kids kids club and they understand what it is. Yeah, my kids training as young as they possibly can. I have the exception of that rule. Yeah, I love it. I'm going to sort of ask you to, just to wrap this up, the final two questions I ask everybody. The first question is if you were to summarize this episode in one or two sentences, what would be your take home message?
Speaker 2:In this episode, a take-home message would be self-awareness. Number one you've got to have the tough conversation with yourself. You've got to look yourself in the mirror and really have the tough conversation. Am I waking up happy every day? Am I happy with the guy that is showing up in this world? Are there problems in my life that I've complained about or bitched and moaned about that might be within my control to fix? Like, am I the common denominator? And if you are, then you have to start unpacking that ability to start self-developing. And that self-developing comes from the ability of controlling the controllable. Like you can't put a ton of money in your bank account tomorrow, you can't be in your ideal physique tomorrow, but you can change the way you think tomorrow and you can change the actions that you take tomorrow. And if you start stacking those on a daily basis, hour by hour, day by day, week by week, you'll slowly become the better version of yourself that you've been wanting and then you start waking up, really loving the life that you have.
Speaker 1:I love that. And the second question, the easiest of all how can people find you get ahold?
Speaker 2:of you and learn more. The best way to find me is if you're on Instagram it's dad bod underscore sculptors. Or if you have a website, the website it's dad bod sculptorscom, and that'll take you to all my social channels my YouTube, which is dad bod sculptors, or on LinkedIn, which is a big platform for me because I run a headhunting firm and I've been on that one since 2010. It's just Dane Pallarino and message me. Just message me with the word podcast and I'll respond. Figure out which podcast and enjoy my own messaging. So I deal. You're not dealing with anybody else with me.
Speaker 1:I love it. Thank you for coming on. Thank you, guys, for listening to this week's episode of Health and Fitness Redefined. Don't forget, hit that subscribe button and join us next week as we dive deeper into this ever-changing field. And remember fitness is medicine. Until next time, thank you. Outro Music.
