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Welcome to The Figuring It Out Podcast.
At 22, I took the plunge to go on the entrepreneurial journey and start a fitness business, 7 years later I’d been the nutritionist for 2 elite sports clubs and private coach to some of the worlds best sportsmen and women.
Now it’s my mission to show fitness coaches how you can put yourself in a league of their own, become the go to coach, and finally eliminate the self-doubt and imposter syndrome that's holding you back from building the business of your dreams.
This podcast will help you figure out how to thrive and conquer the fear that comes with the lonely entrepreneurial journey.
If fear is the only thing stopping us from achieving our dreams and we only fear what we don't understand, then the antidote to fear is knowledge. All we have to do is find out who has the knowledge that we need to conquer our fears and achieve our entrepreneurial dreams. My name is Callum Walker, and welcome to the podcast that will help you figure it out and conquer this lonely entrepreneurial journey.
Speaker 2:Callum Walker.
Speaker 1:Michael.
Speaker 2:What does my audience need to know about your good self that would frame the conversation that we're about to have?
Speaker 1:Oh, great question. I think I've been running a business for a while. I've made a lot of mistakes. And off the back of that, stumbled across a lot of solutions that allowed me to overcome those specific problems and see the lessons within those mistakes. And I kind of found a lot of those solutions in physical exercise, nutrition and other physical and mental tools that have allowed me to be able to do that.
Speaker 1:And I can share. Yeah. Share those lessons with your audience.
Speaker 2:What does high performance mean to you?
Speaker 1:Oh, that is a great question. That is a great question that I think not a lot of people ever actually ask and legitimately ask. I think that if you ask most people what high performance is, it's just doing the best that you possibly can, which I think a lot of that, yeah, would be true in terms of doing the best that I can with what I have. Absolutely. But I think high performance is about, for me, getting super clear on what is it that I'm actually trying to achieve, what do I legitimately want to achieve, and how can I do that to the best of my ability that also aligns with my own personal values and doesn't skimp on those values?
Speaker 1:So, yeah, so I think it's about being able to do what it is that I truly want to do at the best of my ability while enjoying it at the same time.
Speaker 2:What tools do you use personally from a nutrition standpoint, from a sleep standpoint, from an energy standpoint to optimise your own performance. How long have got? We've got ninety minutes.
Speaker 1:Right. I think the first thing, everything for me starts with my sleep. Everything starts with sleep because without sleeping well, life is just harder and more challenging. And I think that if I kind of look at almost like from a business point of view, what all of these sort of physiological tools allow me to do allows me to make better decisions. And I think that fundamentally your decisions drive your actions and then your actions drive your results.
Speaker 1:So if you've got crap results, it means you've taken crap actions off the back of poor decisions. So I think that the decisions that you make naturally are, yeah, significantly harder to make a high quality decision when you're in a sleep deprived state. Now that doesn't necessarily just have to be kind of in terms of your business. But it can also be in terms of like, let's say you're trying to level up your overall health and fitness. It's far easier to fall victim to the trap of netting some shit food when you're tired.
Speaker 1:It's easier to skip on the gym when you're tired. It's easier to kind of skip on doing that one specific task when I'm tired. So I think with everything, my sleep is my primary foundation. And I've really had to kind of change up my relationship with sleep over the past few years because I guess in like society, it's very much almost put on you that you are lazy if you stay in bed for a longer period of time. And again, there's this culture of like sleep is for the week.
Speaker 1:You're again, almost like, you know, I'm an early riser. That means that naturally because I'm an early riser, I'm committed to the grind and committed to this whole thing. I'm like, okay, that's fine. And I fell into that trap myself. But you know what I found?
Speaker 1:I was waking up at 04:30 in the morning, five in the morning, and I was fucked. I'd sit there trying to do my work, and absolutely nothing would come. So I think as well, like you then tie this into high performance. I'm not actually performing particularly well when I'm in a sleep deprived state because what I'm actually trying to execute and what I'm trying to do, I don't have the ability to do that at the best level that I possibly can. So I think with everything to start with, it all starts with my sleep.
Speaker 1:And all of these other tools in terms of the kind of foods that I eat, the time in which I eat, the way in which I train, all of these things all kind of add in to the quality of sleep. Because, again, you look at like, you know, I find that, you know, I've been running a business for a while now. It has just become more and more and more clear, like for me, that it literally kind of the success of my business comes down to what is going on between my ears. And if you look at part of the purpose of sleep, specifically, you look at like your REM sleep, so rapid eye movement sleep, that's where the brain is processing all the information that I've taken in for the day. And it's actually kind of determining whether it's going to sink in or not.
Speaker 1:So in terms of almost kind of learning leveling up the same as from a training point of view, your muscles don't grow when you're in the gym, they grow when you're in bed. So again, like, you know, prioritizing that period of time to actually instill all of the new information that I've collected throughout the day, whether that's been an experience I've just had with a client, whether it's a new idea that I've been mulling over or whether it's like a new piece of information in terms of like a new skill set that I'm trying to develop, it sinks in when I'm sleeping. So, yeah, so and again, like I kind of mentioned that for me, the way in which I train, when I train, the way in which I eat, when I eat, the quality of foods that I eat, kind of tie into this almost like pre sleep and post sleep sort of cycle. So that's my primary foundation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I heard Matthew Walker, you know the term sleep on it, even from a problem solving standpoint, like not just absorbing information, trying to digest information, trying to create new information, but also trying to resolve a problem that you're stuck on because he actually said this thing. Think it was Matthew Walker where he said, If you think about even dreams and how dreams manifest, it's almost like you're looking through a telescope back the other direction. So in the direction that you're not supposed to look, so the other way around. And that's pretty much how he views or explains dreams to people. It's like you're trying to solve a problem through a telescope, except you're looking through it the other way.
Speaker 2:And so I know that it's a huge part of high performance. From a purely tactical standpoint, like nutrition aside, what should people be doing in terms of optimizing their sleep?
Speaker 1:Yeah, your main thing is you like exposure more than anything to start with. Actually, do you know what? I think the first thing is actually getting to grips with prioritizing it. Okay. I think, first of all, you've got to go like, Okay, right.
Speaker 1:I need to understand the value of this thing. And I think the first thing is just to kind of notice how much different you feel when you're well rested versus when you're sleep deprived. So I think the first thing is getting clear on like, right, okay, I'm legitimately going to be invested in optimizing this. Yeah. But the problem can be, I find, and I definitely got sucked into this, that you become so focused on optimizing your sleep, you then can stress yourself out by going, I haven't done that, I haven't done that, I haven't done that, I haven't done that.
Speaker 1:And then off the back of that, then your heart rate is kind of racing and then you struggle to get to sleep. And then when you're struggling to sleep, you then get pissed off with yourself that I'm not sleeping very well. And then when you get pissed off with yourself you're not sleeping very well, you're just lying awake. Then you're like
Speaker 2:It's like you need conditions to be perfect in order to go to sleep.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Lavender on the pillow. And it can You need light exposure for a certain period of time. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. But that, like, but I think that that can tie into so many other things. Like, you know, with my training, like, you know, I learned that, you know, I push that if I do some form of, like, you know, palm cooling, for example, I can then do more work. Now, if my palms aren't cooled, then I can't train now. So again, I think you've got to get be careful on this perfectionism sort of mindset
Speaker 2:What's around the lowest hanging fruit? Yeah. Use that.
Speaker 1:So I think first of all, like, you know, just first of all, coming to the realization that I really need to actually focus on this, and then chilling out about it. And then just kind of chilling out and going like, Okay, right, what are the core principles that I can do in order to drive me to go to sleep? And your primary one really is almost kind of getting it's hard, but you've almost kind of got to get out of the timeframe that society has kind of put in the way for us. So it's almost that like, you know, right now through the winter, if you look at the timeframe that we've actually got in terms of, let's call it, like nine to five, that continues, but it's not in line with the seasons. So right now we're recording this.
Speaker 1:It's like the November, early December. It's not really kind of getting light until maybe 08:00 in the morning. But the problem is that we have this expectation that we should still be up at 05:00 in the morning. So I think the first thing is harmonizing with almost like what's actually happening in terms of like the time in which we're going to sleep and the time in which we're waking up. And that's really kind of governed by light.
Speaker 1:So the best things that you can do, like specifically, if there's one thing, if there was only one thing that you focused on in terms of increasing the quality of your sleep, it would be your light exposure. Now, the obvious one has been light exposure in the evening, because effectively, if you look at your eyes, your eyes are basically just the brain on the outside of your skull. So your eyes are effectively connected to the brain and what they are like they're receptors. So they're picking up what is happening on the outside world and relaying that information back to the inside world, basically saying, hey, here's the external circumstances that are going on right now. This is how we need to change the internal environment to be able to deal with this situation.
Speaker 1:So again, like you look at the human body, it is there to adapt to the situation, adapt to the environment that we're exposed to. But the problem is we have a bit of a strange sort of environment and the messages can be really kind of mixed. So if we kind of look at light specifically, when it's bright, the eyes pick up and detect the amount of light that is available to us that sends a signal to the brain effectively saying it's daytime. And when it's daytime as human beings, what do we need to do? We are not nocturnal animals.
Speaker 1:So during the day, we need to be awake, alert and aware. But when it's pitch black and it's dark, the eyes pick up the presence of a lack of light, sending that signal to the brain to say, Hey, it ain't sunny anymore. Time to go to bed. Now, is a potential problem that we can experience with that in modern society? Artificial light.
Speaker 1:Artificial light. It's a light when it shouldn't be light. So even right now, like, again, it's it's twenty past four at the time of recording this. It's starting to get dark. So if we were out in the Arctic, the wild, the jungle, and I was outside, like right now, started to be getting dark.
Speaker 1:But we've got the lights on. So naturally, that is the brain almost kind of being exposed to this light saying, hey, it's daytime, it's daytime, it's daytime. So the problem that we can have with like artificial light is that when it is when it is dark outside, the eyes pick up the presence of that light that sends a signal to the brain to say, hey, it's time to go to bed. That then results in the production of the hormone called melatonin. Melatonin is it doesn't necessarily kind of send us to sleep.
Speaker 1:What it almost kind of like acts as is almost kind of like a light switch in a room. So melatonin, when it's present, doesn't send you to sleep. But what it does is it effectively kind of turns off all of the wake promoting activities within the body. So it's the same as when you go into your bedroom. When you turn the light off, you don't immediately go to sleep, But you are far more likely and far more ready to go to sleep when the lights are off and you're in your bed than when the lights are on and you're not in your bed.
Speaker 1:So that's kind of how melatonin sort of acts. So the problem can be that when we're almost kind of like within society, we're exposing ourselves to a high amount of light in the evening when it should actually be dark. We should be picking up the presence of darkness and increasing the production of melatonin. The body's chilling itself out and ready to go to sleep. But the problem is that we're still exposed to all of the lights, either we've got all of the lights on, we're watching telly, I've got my phone here and I'm flicking through TikTok looking at dogs for about three hours, and that is sending a signal to the brain saying it's daytime, it's daytime, it's daytime, it's daytime, which then suppresses the production of melatonin.
Speaker 1:And that makes it harder to get to sleep and the quality of sleep that we experience decreases. So first thing I always kind of say, real simple thing, lights off, lamps on. Really simple. When it gets dark, when you're in, you know, kind of around the sort of time that you, you know, want to start going to bed, like, you know, whether it's like you're to wind down, you know, between six, seven, 8PM, like have the lights off and the lamps on and decrease your overall exposure to light. But on the flip side, what you also want to do is expose yourself to as much daytime light and as much daylight as you possibly can in the early parts of the morning.
Speaker 1:Because, again, like kind of see it as that that light serves as a signal to the brain to say, hey, it's time to be awake or hey, it's time to be asleep. So the problem is that like, again, if we look at within society, when we wake up in the morning, we'll probably just stay inside. So right now, for example, it seems like it's really quite bright in here. Okay, it seems like it's quite bright. And light is measured in lux.
Speaker 1:Okay? So l u x. So I've got an app on my phone. It's called Lightmeter. It's completely free if you just go on Google the app store and just download Lightmeter.
Speaker 1:It's got like a little camera on there. And if I kind of like showed you all of the lights in here right now, it would come up with almost like about two to 300 lux. Okay? So two to 300 lux worth of light. Now that might seem like, okay, it's really quite bright in here.
Speaker 1:But if I actually went outside first thing in the morning, it wouldn't feel like it is that much lighter at all, but you'll find that you'll probably have about 10,000 lux when you go outside. So you look at that, that's like, what, 50 times the amount of light exposure.
Speaker 2:And is that the photons that basically So it's kind of
Speaker 1:like the dispersion of light So across the
Speaker 2:is this wider spread?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So effectively, what happens is that if you're not being exposed to that light, that light sends a signal to say, hey. It's daytime. It's daytime. Time to be awake.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. So the problem can be that we fall out of this, like, natural circadian rhythm. So to kind of start off with, like, the the two primary things that I would really focus on is get outside. As soon as you wake up in the morning, get outside and expose yourself to as much light as you possibly can. And then what will happen is that naturally that sends a signal to the brain to say, okay, right, we've been exposed to this light.
Speaker 1:But specifically, if you can get out as close to sunrise as you possibly can, what's really interesting is if you look at sunrise, it has a very unique array of colors. So you experience a very unique array of colors at sunrise as you would in comparison to the daytime. So you have this, like, hue of, like, oranges and yellows and blues and all of this sort of stuff. And the body knows that that only happens twice a day. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:I've just woken up. I'm exposing myself to that type of light in that amount. That then sends a signal to the brain saying, okay, well, we've only been up for, like, half an hour, which means the sun must be coming up, which means the day must be starting. So what happens is that that ramps up almost like the activity in the body. Our circadian rhythm effectively goes into activation mode.
Speaker 1:And if you look at your circadian rhythm as to what it actually is, it's simply a change in temperature of the body. K? So if you look at temperature, temperature is effectively almost like the speed at which things move. So when something is hotter, it is moving faster. When something is colder, it is moving slower.
Speaker 1:So what happens is that when your circadian rhythm is in a place where we are more activated, more alert, our body is hotter, which also kind of ties into other things that we can do in the morning to make sure that we are more activated, and we want to do it through controlling temperature. Light exposure is one way. It tells the body that, hey, we need to be alert and awake. That then starts to ramp up the body's temperature. But then secondly, another thing that I do.
Speaker 1:First thing in the morning, I'll have either an ice bath or a cold shower. And I do that for multiple sort of reasons. The the first one is that I was procrastinating like hell with my business at one point. And I think again, what did you say? Was it procrastination is the
Speaker 2:Assassination is the destination.
Speaker 1:Destination. Like that has stuck with me. Like, because it is. Because if you look at it like you want to have your, you know, success within your business, you have to do more. You have to produce.
Speaker 1:You have to actually make something happen. And if you're procrastinating, it means that something is not being executed, something is not being created and something is not being done. So for me, I always kind of see like, you know, my exercise, nutrition, sleep as a metaphor for how I also want to live my life. So for me, you know, there are multiple sort of like physiological and psychological benefits that come with cold water therapy. But the big reason as to why I did it was really around and why I still do it first thing in the morning, one from a sleep point of view, which I'll touch on in a second.
Speaker 1:But secondly, I was procrastinating like hell. Okay, if I look at kind of procrastination, procrastination is me knowing that there's something that I need to do. And if I do that specific task, it will improve the quality of life that I will particularly that I will most likely experience. So if I go and do this specific thing, then naturally it will get me one step closer to where I want to be. But the price of doing that is conscious effort.
Speaker 1:Okay. So for me, when I was procrastinating like hell within my business, like I knew what I needed to do, but I couldn't do what needed to be done. I started doing cold water therapy properly. So we were actually talking about this the other day, actually. But I was kind of cheating on my cold showers.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Because what would happen would be like I'd have like a really hot shower, it'd be all nice and rosy and warm, and then I'd turn it freezing cold. But the thing was that was kind of easy to do. It wasn't particularly hard and it wasn't particularly challenging. See, what I decided to do was actually change it up.
Speaker 1:And I was like, right. Okay. First thing in the morning, the first thing I'm going to expose myself to is a freezing cold shower. So I'm going to get outside first thing, go and get my light, and then come back in and then expose myself to a freezing cold shower. Because the one thing I did not want to do, I knew that if I do this specific thing, it will make me feel better.
Speaker 1:Okay? It will make me feel better. But that voice in my head was starting to kind of say, like, have a break today. You know, you work really, really hard. Just have a nice, like, rosy, toasty, warm shower.
Speaker 1:It's freezing cold out there. Make sure that you're nice and warm. And the minute that I take a breath and go, no, I'm in charge. Turn it freezing cold and step in. From a mental perspective, I'm saying, I'm in charge.
Speaker 1:I'm in charge in terms of the direction in which I'm taking this specific thing. And that naturally started to kind of manifest itself into all of the other work that I was doing within my business. So like when that voice, you know, it's interesting. So I've been using that production pivot that you've kind of spoken about in terms of like the minute that that kind of crops up and there's something that you need to do, my mind starts to immediately go to all of these, oh, I'll do it later. Oh, I'll do it then and then.
Speaker 1:But again, like, I go back to almost like how you do one thing is how you do everything because I've all like, I'm I'm relentlessly kind of like grooving it into me that this is what we do. I know I need to do this specific thing, but I'm going to take a breath. I'm going to step in and do that. That then translated into overcoming procrastination with other things, but also kind of tying in with the circadian rhythm. What's really interesting, again, we kind of look at like circadian rhythm in terms of being activated and aware.
Speaker 1:We have like a higher temperature of your body temperature. Okay? That puts us in more of an alert state. So one of the best things that you can do is do cold water therapy first things in the morning for that. Okay?
Speaker 1:Now that might sound counterintuitive because it's like, well, surely if I do cold wash therapy, it's gonna make me cold, and that's gonna decrease my body temperature. But what's interesting is what happens immediately after you come out of an ice bath or a cold shower? What does your body start to do?
Speaker 2:You start to shake if you've stayed in there for long enough, but it's trying to basically generate heat. Yeah. You start
Speaker 1:to shiver, that's the body's way of heating itself up. So although on the outside you're cooling down, what happens is you get a rebound of an increase in body temperature, that then increases the alertness. You get a spike in adrenaline, you get a spike in dopamine, and that naturally activates you but ties in with if you do it consistently at that specific time in the day, the body starts to learn that, oh, okay. This is when we're awake and this is when we're alert. But then on the flip side, if you kinda like take that same principle and do the opposite of decreasing the amount of light that you can expose yourself to, And instead of doing a cold shower, have a hot shower, you you do the flip side.
Speaker 1:They do it on the flip side. Yeah. So, again, it's like, you know, kind of with I found that, again, with anything in life, there are there are polar opposites. You know, you have your law of polarity. So it's almost like when I want to be awake, I do this.
Speaker 1:And when I want to be asleep, I do the opposite. So, and again, that kind of ties in with your food side of things. So again, I kind of look at like towards the back end of the day. We've already kind of gone outside and exposed ourselves to the light, ideally as close to sunrise as possible. Now what's really interesting is there's a really cool phenomenon that you can do around sunset.
Speaker 1:So when you go out at sunset, when the sun is going down, you get a very similar kind of like array of colors as to what was going on around the sunrise. Now, when you go outside for a walk or you go and expose yourself to the light around sunset, what's interesting is the body goes, hold on, I've been awake for about ten to twelve hours here, and I'm exposed to this very unique array of light again, these oranges, these pinks, these blues, all this sort of stuff. That only happens two times in the day. It happens at sunrise, and it can't be sunrise because I've been awake for ten to twelve hours. So it also happens at sunset.
Speaker 1:This means it must be sunset. So what does that mean in terms of where we are in the day? It means the day must be coming to an end, which means that I'm getting closer to nighttime and it starts to ramp things down and starts to prepare you to get ready to go to sleep. But then the other thing which is really cool about this, if you can kind of master it, that when we kind of like, you know, when you're when you're out in when it's supposed to be dark and you're exposing yourself to light. So one of the problems can be that, like, later on in the evening, you might be going out for dinner with a friend, you might be doing something, you get a little bit of anxiety around your light exposure.
Speaker 1:What's really cool is that if you expose yourself to the light around sunset, that the sensitivity of the eyes to light actually starts to decrease. So because I got out around the sunset period, it's interesting because the sensitivity of your eyes go down and the impact of that evening light isn't anywhere near as potent and doesn't disrupt your circadian rhythm as much.
Speaker 2:Okay. So artificial light is not as heavy if you get some natural sunset. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Nice. Which is pretty cool. That is cool. So yeah, so from a sleep point of view, there's loads of things that you can do.
Speaker 2:What's your thoughts on I know it seems to be quite popular in the biohacking world now. I know sight is your nervous system's first connection with the outside world but what about then second connection, soles of the feet, people talking about grounding. Does it play an impact in terms of circadian cycle or high performance in general? What are your thoughts on it? I
Speaker 1:think the way that I see it is, I think for me, in terms of, like, high performance, the thing that has helped me the most has been getting out of my head and getting into the world. So almost kind of like, you know, we can have this relentless, incessant addiction to thinking and relentlessly be thinking and consciously in our own mind. And I think one thing that's really kind of stuck with me in terms of growing a business or in life in general was a quote that I heard in a song, which was the goal isn't to be to show how creative you are, it's to see how much you can notice. And I think the problem can be that if you're constantly in your own head, you're actually missing everything that's actually going on, which is where all of your ideas actually kind of are. So in terms of like seeing the data of what is actually going on in your business.
Speaker 1:So things like grounding, I think that the way that I kind of see it and I see getting outside is more of kind of like a meditative sort of activity that I'm actually feeling my feet, for example, on the floor. I'm actually feeling the sensation of that, and I'm getting out of my mind and I'm getting into my body, so to speak. So it's why as well, like, you know, if I look at kind of my routine in the morning, I could go outside, get my sunlight. I have no music or anything like that. I go for a little walk, and then I go back into my garden.
Speaker 1:And I'm doing that while consuming an electrolyte tablet, so I'm making sure that I'm adequately hydrated. And then I'll go and do my cold shower. And then I'll immediately go into a really kind of like a ten, fifteen minute little yoga slow flow, which is really about for me, kind of getting out of my own head and just almost kind of like being able to start the day from a place of stability as opposed to almost kind of allowing life to kind of sweep me up. I'm going like, right, no, actually, do you know what? I'm coming from a place of stability.
Speaker 1:I'm giving myself that space and I'm allowing myself to actually get clear on what am I actually trying to do today. Because otherwise, life will have other plans for how this day is going to go versus and, you know, I've learned so many things within my life from stories, from films. And there's one passage in Alice in Wonderland that has really kind of like cemented itself a bit with me. And I think that when you're looking at high performance, is probably the most important thing because if you don't know what you're actually trying to do, then how do you know if what you're actually doing is any good? So it's like, within Alice in Wonderland So have you ever read the book?
Speaker 2:I actually haven't, no, but I've seen the film years ago. I haven't seen it since now, but The book is fucking weird.
Speaker 1:Right. Like, can tell that he wrote it, like, under some form of psychedelic sort of influence. It is weird, and it doesn't really make sense. But there is a part in there, there's two parts that have really stuck with me, which again, like, you know, I kind of tie in with whenever I'd have someone come to me and be like, is this good for me? I'm like, well, what are trying to do with it?
Speaker 1:Like, you know, what are actually trying to achieve? And basically, there's a scene in Alice in Wonderland. She's walking around and she's lost. And she comes across the Cheshire cat. And she comes to the cat.
Speaker 1:This cat's got this massive grin on its face. And she's like, oh, Mr. Cat, which way do I need to go? And the cat goes, well, where are you looking to go? And she goes, oh, I don't really care.
Speaker 1:And the cat goes, well, it doesn't matter which way that you're going then, does it? And there's another scene where she's eating these cakes. I don't know if you can kind of remember in the film. She's eating these cakes. One's making it really big.
Speaker 1:One's making it really small. And she's having a real nightmare. She's having a real pickle. You know, she's eating wine. It's making it really big.
Speaker 1:And the other's making it really small. She comes across this caterpillar. And the caterpillar goes she goes to the caterpillar. She's like, Mr. Caterpillar?
Speaker 1:Like, which cake do I need to eat? And the caterpillar goes, Well, how big do you want to be? She goes, I don't really care. Doesn't really matter which cake that you're trying to eat then, does it? So I think kind of coming back to this whole thing, like, you have to get super clear on what am I actually trying to achieve?
Speaker 1:Because then I know, one, what to actually do. And then also I can measure as to whether the action that I've just taken was any good or not. So again, kind of coming back to, you know, why I like to, you know, kind of have that morning to begin with, it allows me to kind of set myself up for the day, but also it's my time to get clear on am I trying to achieve today because otherwise the day can just become a Groundhog Day. And it can just very easily just fall into a pattern of habit of I'm just going do this, I'm to do this and this. And then before I know it, I'm not actually moving one step closer to where I want to get to.
Speaker 1:And I learned this from the Olympic rowing team, the Team GB Olympic rowing team. It's a mantra that stuck with me immensely. And again, this is how I think it needs to kind of like high performance needs to kind of tie in with this whole thing of when they were training for the two thousand Olympics, the Sydney Olympics, they had this mantra of will it make the boat go faster? So effectively, whenever they were presented with any form of situation, they would ask themselves the question of, is what I'm about to do right now going to make us grow faster in two years' time? If the answer is no, I won't do it.
Speaker 1:If the answer is yes, I'll do it. But before you can adopt that mentality, you have to define, well, what is my boat? What am I actually trying to achieve here? Where am I actually trying to go? What am I trying to achieve?
Speaker 1:And then specifically, what are the tools and the actions that I need to take in order to get myself there? So again, if I kind of look at like high performance, there's so many different exercise protocols that you can do, but they result in different outcomes. So if you're doing strength sessions, you're going to get stronger. But if you want to get bigger, you need to do hypertrophy sessions. If you want to improve your anaerobic cardiovascular fitness, you need to do those specific actions to achieve that specific outcome.
Speaker 1:So coming back to this whole thing, if I look at what I currently kind of define as high performance for me, it really kind of is like optimal mental and emotional health. And I use all of these kind of physiological tools, whether it's cold water therapy, my light exposure, my sleep, the manipulation of the food that I eat throughout the day, all to effectively put myself into the mental and emotional state that will almost kind of like allow me to perform whatever it is that I'm trying to perform at the best possible way. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2:Total sense. Talk to me about nutrition and how firstly it might impact sleep because we were talking about this earlier. Yeah. And so a protocol that I used to use was car backloading, which I think got your approval. And I kind of I don't know where I kind of stopped using it.
Speaker 2:I think I heard the term 'if you can't do it forever, don't do it for a day' and then I kind of questioned 'would I do that forever?' I don't know. I might revisit it because I don't remember it being overly challenging for the reasons that we discussed earlier, which for anyone listening who isn't kind of aware, first thing in the morning, you're heavy in proteins and fats. Last thing in the evening is when you kind of have your net carb sources for the day. And so I think it was the outside of intuitive eating, because that's pretty much all I do now, I think it was the only ever nutrition protocol that I stuck to for a prolonged period of time.
Speaker 1:Why do you think you stuck to it?
Speaker 2:It didn't feel like a challenge as in when I was because what I was doing, the recommendations were first thing in the morning, eat meat and nuts. And so I can actually go for quite a long period of time in the morning without actually eating anything, so I'm happy enough to do that. And this was basically, oh no, you can't eat, but just eat meat and nuts. And so what I found then was the satiety of the fat content and the protein content within the foods that I was consuming first thing. I wasn't getting blood sugar spikes, so I wasn't hungry.
Speaker 2:And so what would then happen is in afternoons I would have I would start to take on board some carbohydrates, but it wasn't like I wasn't taking on, you know, starchy carbohydrates. I wasn't taking on grains. It was just like salads and high protein sources. And so I think a combination of not being hungry, but also at the same time, I think due to my own personal, I would say, metabolism physique, whatever way you want to call it, if I didn't have some form of carbohydrates pre bed, I would get really fucking hungry. I get really hungry, so there would be a period of time throughout the day where I would be like, oh my god, I'm just starving now without having had some sort of carbs, and this protocol kind of allowed late in the evening to, have your carbohydrate sources, which for me was still intuitive, it wasn't like it was tracking.
Speaker 2:I was just like, 'Okay, this is my opportunity to get starchy carbohydrates in there, you know, rice, potatoes, whatever, and then fruit, and then I was like out cold. Yeah, yeah. And so, yeah, it just seemed like the easiest protocol to stick to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I think that's like that's the most important thing, to be honest. Yeah. Like I think from a nutritional point of view, the real secret is being consistent, but you have to be able to be consistent. And I think there's a couple of things.
Speaker 1:I think, first of all, you have to legitimately like what you're eating. But the problem is, and this is kind of my problem with a lot of PTs that I see kind of talking about from a nutritional point of view on social media. They're just talking about, oh, you know, eat whatever you want, like, you know, be consistent and everything. I'm like, that's really pretty shit advice because I think that in order to have anything kind of worthwhile, someone has to give. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I think that like it again, you know, I guess that like if you're looking at it mainly from just solely a weight loss perspective, then it kind of depends. But I think that if you're really kind of looking to perform at your highest level, like you have to be consistent with it and you do have to like it. But also I can eat foods that I like that don't give me my desired outcome. Like I like pizza, but it makes me feel like shit. It doesn't mean I should eat it all of the time.
Speaker 1:So I think you have to kind of find that sweet spot and that balance between, okay, it's something I legitimately enjoy and I can see myself being consistent with. It fits in with my lifestyle. I like it, but it also gives me the desired result. So again, like I think you have to do this dance between the two, because on the flip side, I've followed nutritional protocols that have definitely given me my desired outcome in terms of a result. But overall, in terms of my lifestyle, I was like, I probably don't want to do this for a long period of time.
Speaker 1:So it doesn't quite hit the sustainability button. But on the flip side, I'm like, I can eat pizza every day, but it's not going to give me my desired outcome. So you have to find that, like, that balance for you. And I think that's a process. I think that's a process that you go along.
Speaker 1:Like, I went through a period where I was ketogenic the majority of time. And I think this is one of my my bugbears with a ketogenic diet that people go on about how it's unsustainable. I'm like, well, I managed to sustain it really easily. And I actually just made it as enjoyable. I think any diet is as sustainable as you make it.
Speaker 1:Like, I made it really easy and really enjoyable. And I just figured out different ways. Like, I'm not being funny. Like, whenever I was having breakfast, I was having full fat Greek yogurt, nuts, dark chocolate, raspberries, blueberries, some peanut butter in there. I mean, that's hardly particularly challenging to it.
Speaker 1:Like, it's not. And it's I don't understand how that's unsustainable. That is usually, like, the highlight of my life.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Is it just like a lack of creativity sometimes?
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's the one. Because any diet you go on is going to be restricted. You've got to get rid of something. So that's if you go on a stereotypical sort of diet anyway.
Speaker 1:But I think kind of coming back to the performance side of things, again, I got very, very heavily invested in ketogenic diets and I still am, but I think my take on them has changed slightly as I think that using a ketogenic diet to optimize your mental performance, I think you have to determine what your mental performance is. And one thing I will say is that if you do ever go down the route of a ketogenic diet, for example, one thing you will really notice is seriously enhanced mental cognition. I just find like when I am ketogenic and I have been ketogenic for a while, ideas just come really easily. My ability to concentrate is seriously heightened.
Speaker 2:Why does that happen?
Speaker 1:Multiple sort of reasons. And actually, kind of comes into one thing that frustrates me is when people refer to a ketogenic diet as a fad, because the way I actually got into ketogenic diets was I just finished my master's degree in performance nutrition, and my mum's best friend, her husband, is basically like my uncle. You know the uncles who you're not actually kind of related to, but he's just my Yeah. So my uncle Sonny, he's one of the top neurologists in the world. So he was head of the epilepsy ward at Birmingham Children's Hospital.
Speaker 1:He's now head of neurology at a top hospital in Dubai. He said to me, he was like, have you looked at ketogenic diets?
Speaker 2:I was like, nah, they're
Speaker 1:a fad. Like, I'm going to do it. Like, he's always bollocks. And he goes, no, like, legit. Like, you should you should look into these things.
Speaker 1:Now, when he speaks, you listen. Because I'm like, you are literally top like, one of the top doctors in the world. And it was interesting because then what I was taught to do when I did my master's degree, I didn't get taught a lot of stuff in terms of I did a very special sort of like special, a different type of master's degree. Your standard one is something called an MSc. So it's basically here's a course, go and learn that stuff.
Speaker 1:Whereas I did something called an MRes, which is a master's of research, where the main thing I was taught to do wasn't necessarily here's a load of information. What I was actually taught was how to determine what is good research and bad research. So two papers could show one could be ketogenic diet screws up cognitive function. The other says ketogenic diet improves cognitive function. For me, what I was trained to do is determine which one actually, you know, pays the most to actually see whether we look into it or not.
Speaker 2:It was meta analysis? Yes.
Speaker 1:So whether it's like meta analysis or literature reviews, all of those sorts of things. I was taught to actually look into that and go, okay, that's good science or that's not good science.
Speaker 2:He What gave me were, sorry to barge in there, but like off the top of your head, when you say what's good science, like what was some of the defining characteristics of good research? First of the amount of people, the situation. Yeah,
Speaker 1:amount of people, if you're comparing the two groups, are they actually kind of matched? Because you can have like control. So let's say you have like placebo versus someone goes and takes this supplement. If your placebo group is full of 70 year old women and then your other group is full of 20 year old men. I know that's an extreme.
Speaker 1:How can you compare the two? So sometimes the groups aren't matched. Also, if you look at a lot of like low carb research around exercise performance, the majority of the time they define a low carb diet that they're using is like 30% carbs. And I'm like, is nowhere near low enough to come to the conclusion that that doesn't have an impact on exercise performance in terms of low carb. So looking at those specific things in terms of whether it was like the actual like number of people, then you're looking at like the length of protocol.
Speaker 1:So again, like with the ketogenic diet, you know, we briefly kind of spoke about it in terms of like ketogenic flu. The problem that most people experience is that they don't realize that when it comes to ketogenic diet, it's an adaptation process. So it legitimately kind of changes the way in which the body actually deals with fuel. It flicks over from running exclusively on carbohydrate to start being able to run well, not exclusively, but running predominantly on carbohydrate to being, you know, able to run pretty much almost exclusively on fat. So it legitimately changes the way in which the body actually works, and that takes time.
Speaker 1:So typically, you find that there is an adaptation period of two to three weeks. A lot of the papers that were looking at ketogenic diets were like four day ketogenic diets, seven day ketogenic diet. I'm like, well, no. Like, if you look at the what would happen if someone goes on a ketogenic diet for just seven days, like, it will show that they are basically like pretty unhealthy right now because the body is going through a metabolic change. So but kind of coming back to the purpose of, like, you know, ketogenic diet.
Speaker 1:So how I came into it was Sonny basically, he was saying, was like, look, with all of our children with epilepsy, we put them all on a ketogenic diet because it changes the way in which the brain functions. So we'd have children who'd be having like 50 to 60 seizures a day to having like one or two a week, which is mad. So it's a legitimate way of kind of changing brain chemistry. So what you find is that when people go ketogenic, what happens is that if you're a carb adapted individual, so let's say I'm eating carbs on a regular basis and it makes up kind of the majority of my diet, which is the majority of people, The rest of the body, so you've got to see it as the brain and the body are two separate things, okay? So you have a barrier effectively like below, like almost kind of like around your brain, which is called the blood brain barrier that basically kind of separates the brain from the body.
Speaker 1:Now, when I am carb adapted, the body will get the majority of its energy from carbs, but it can use fats. Okay? It can use fats as a source of fuel, so it can flip between the two. It will be prioritized in terms of carbs. But the brain, when in a carb adapted environment, the brain is the only organ in the body that gets 100% of its energy from carbohydrates and gets it from glucose.
Speaker 1:So, you know, there's a meme going around on Instagram at the moment. It's Ryan Gosling in a film going like, your brain needs glucose. Like, stop cutting out carbs. And I'm like, yeah, if you are a carb adapted individual. But what happens is that when you go ketogenic and you remove the carb source, the brain then goes, we can't be greedy anymore.
Speaker 1:Like, the rest of the body can effectively get pretty much 100% of its energy from fat. But now the brain can't be can't be hungry and go like, okay, we have to get 100% of our energy from glucose. It can start to get up to two thirds of its energy from fat, but specifically these things called ketones. So what happens is that the brain starts to kind of change in the way in which it functions. And specifically, think there's multiple kind of reasons why you get these sort of benefits from it.
Speaker 1:But I think that the first of all, you don't get these big kind of like increases and drops in blood glucose. So again, if you kind of look at your blood glucose, that's almost kind of the amount of fuel available to the brain. So if the amount of fuel available to the brain is going up and down throughout the day, you're going up and down throughout the day. So you look at what happens after around lunchtime, around one, two, 03:00 in the afternoon, people are genuinely like dribbling on themselves and they need to take because a the amount of fuel available to the brain has gone down. I haven't experienced that in probably about eight years because naturally what happens is that you have this almost kind of like stability in terms of fuel flow because the brain can effectively begin to fuel itself from the inside and start to run on the body fat that you have stored.
Speaker 1:It just converts it into ketones and uses it that way. So the first one is you have more stable fuel flow to the brain. The second one, which is what I was kind of looking at when I was studying at university doing a PhD, we were looking at almost kind of like how ketogenic diets can change brain chemistry. But specifically, is this compound called BDNF. So brain derived neurotropic factor.
Speaker 1:So, you know, when you go and do some cardio and like and afterwards, you kind of feel this like sense of mental clarity, you feel really good. There's multiple reasons for that, but one of them is this thing called BDNF. Now, what was really interesting when I was kind of looking at this and we were researching this stuff, I found that there were two primary things that drove up BDNF production. And effectively, this the two things were exercise and intermittent fasting. Now, both of those activities are also ketogenic activities.
Speaker 1:So, if you look at the word ketogenic, I think the big problem that people have with ketogenic is that and the mistake that they make is that they assume that a ketogenic diet is something that has to be sub 20 grams of carbs. So you have to be less than 20 grams of carbs a day versus I don't see it as a ketogenic diet. It should actually be more of a ketogenic lifestyle in terms of you are doing activities that generate ketones. So if you look at exercise, I could get Mo Farah, who's eating a thousand carbs a day, he goes and runs a marathon. Afterwards, he would actually be in a ketogenic state.
Speaker 1:So what's interesting is that
Speaker 2:Assuming that's just because his body's just absorbed so much glucose and then starts to rely on
Speaker 1:fat, insulin starts to go down. And because insulin goes down, the body produces ketones and you're in a ketogenic state. So the first one is exercise. But then secondly, intermittent fasting keeps your insulin low, naturally kind of burns through the glucose and your glycogen off the back of that produces ketones. So long story short, what was interesting was that these activities I found both increased this chemical called BDNF, which increases cognitive function.
Speaker 1:But what was also really interesting was that when the brain is using BDNF, it also increases its ability to use ketones. So when you're increasing the amount of ketones in the brain, that seems to increase BDNF. And when you increase BDNF, that increases the brain's ability to use ketones, which increases BDNF, and you have a really nice sort of cycle. But then the other one is around adrenaline. So if you kind of look at like intermittent fasting, for example, the amount of adrenaline that is in your blood, well, within your body effectively is directly correlated to the amount of glucose in your blood.
Speaker 1:So when your glucose, your blood glucose is low, adrenaline is high. And when your blood glucose is high, adrenaline is low. So again, you can start to kind of manipulate that. And we kind of briefly said this around lunch, where it was that I kind of have started to see nutrition more as not necessarily, you know, kind of performance nutrition, not necessarily food, but kind of compounds and chemicals that I'm almost kind of putting in my body. So specifically, we come back to like your meat and nuts diet.
Speaker 1:It makes a lot of sense because first of all, what happens is you're eating a high protein, low carb diet. Okay. So you're able to bring in nutrients, chemicals into the body without increasing glucose. Yeah. So that is keeping your blood glucose low.
Speaker 1:So when your blood glucose is low, you're increasing the amount of adrenaline. And we kind of got to get clear between the difference between there's two types of energy I see anyway. You have metabolic energy. So in terms of like glucose, fat, protein that we basically use as fuel to kind of burn. So imagine a car that that energy is basically the petrol in the tank.
Speaker 1:Okay, so I can put petrol in the tank. But if the battery is flat, then the car is not going to go anywhere. So we also have this neural energy, which is really kind of in the form of like adrenaline, dopamine. And specifically, if we can kind of understand how we can use the two, then we can basically kind of like provide ourselves with the nutrients that we want in order to give us our desired outcome. So for example, let's say during the day, I want to be alert.
Speaker 1:I want to be awake. I want to be aware. I want to make sure that I'm making good decisions, that I can be creative. I can come up with new ideas. I can focus.
Speaker 1:So how do I do that? I want a high amount of neural energy available to me. I want that adrenaline ready. So what I want to do when I want my adrenaline to be high, having that energy effectively for the brain to be high, I want to keep my carbs low. So what's interesting is that you'll find that, again, when you're really low carb throughout the day, my adrenaline is high and you don't get these sorts of crashes.
Speaker 1:So for me, whenever I'm speaking or whatever, like today, I've been very low throughout the whole day. When I spoke at the summit, I was low carb throughout the whole day because I wanted that adrenaline to be there to be able to actually have the energy to do it. But secondly, the other thing is you look at meat and nuts specifically. They contain an amino acid called L tyrosine. And L tyrosine creates dopamine.
Speaker 1:Now, if we look at dopamine specifically, what's interesting is I think people's kind of relationship with dopamine and how they see it is kind of like the wrong sort of way. They see that dopamine is the molecule of pleasure and it makes you feel good. Like, yeah, it does make you feel good, but dopamine is more of a molecule of motivation and to want to do more of something and to move forward with something. So again, if you look at dopamine, in order to move a muscle, so let's say if I move my bicep, for example, in order to do that, I require dopamine, which makes a lot of sense as to why it's the molecule of motivation. Because you think about motivation, it's moving towards something.
Speaker 1:So I'm moving towards something, I require that dopamine. But what's interesting is that adrenaline is made out of dopamine. So I kind of see it as almost kind of dopamine is the motivation to want to do a thing. And then adrenaline is the energy to go and execute that specific task. So again, if you want like heightened levels of motivation, focus and energy throughout the day, I want to have the presence of that adrenaline, that dopamine.
Speaker 1:So I consume foods or do activities that drive up that dopamine and drive up that adrenaline when I want it. So I look at cold water therapy, for example. Cold water therapy massively increases adrenaline. Cold water therapy massively increases dopamine. If I have some form of caffeine, for example, caffeine increases adrenaline.
Speaker 1:Caffeine increases dopamine. But remember, these things are when the body's in go mode, go mode, go mode, which can also tie into your timing of when you're doing these things, because I don't want to do that right before I want to go to bed. So I don't want to drive up my adrenaline. And that is one problem I found with the ketogenic diet and intermittent fasting.
Speaker 2:So people, is that to just backtrack slightly, so my when you were when you had mentioned that neural energy versus metabolic energy, assuming that there is a evolutionary reason for neural energy, as in, like, someone's hungry, pupils dilate, more Aware Aware, sensory systems drive up, everything drives up for periods of starvation. Bang on. And so with the ketogenic aspect to it, are you saying that that remains high throughout the day? Even before bedtime, even before
Speaker 1:Will that sunset? That's one problem that I've ran into when I've been Do you know what? It's not necessarily just ketogenic because when you're ketogenic, you can increase your consumption of vegetables and those vegetables contain carbs. So basically, if you kind of look at like how you kind of like mentioned it there, during the daytime, you're keeping low carb, you're consuming foods that have got L tyrosine in, which increase dopamine production. And I've got that neural energy high and I'm awake and I'm aware.
Speaker 1:But then you go and consume carbohydrates. Now that does multiple things. First of all, it increases blood glucose, which then decreases adrenaline. But secondly, carbohydrates normally contain another amino acid called L tryptophan, which gets converted into serotonin. So carbohydrates increase serotonin production.
Speaker 1:So if you look at kind of dopamine, dopamine is more, more, more move, move, move, go, go, go. Whereas serotonin is more be content. So if you look at like serotonin as well in terms of like exercise physiology, when people are doing like a cardiovascular session, when I'm running, when I'm doing some form of training, what happens is that you can run into something called central fatigue where the muscles don't give out, the nervous system does because there's an increase in presence of serotonin. That serotonin basically is saying, stay here, which is also why when you have high levels of serotonin, you can feel grateful, you can feel content, because I'm like, I'm good with what I've got right now, stay here. Whereas if you look at it from an entrepreneurial perspective, most of us don't have a high amount of serotonin in there.
Speaker 1:Have a lot of dopamine by going more, more, more, more, more, more, more, keep moving forward towards this specific thing versus serotonin of being, hey, be content with what you've currently got. So if you kind of look at it from a sleep perspective, then not only do the carbohydrates suppress adrenaline, but then secondly, it can increase production of serotonin. Serotonin makes you feel calmer. It keeps you content, but also that serotonin gets converted into melatonin and melatonin then starts to kind of flick off all of the switches and kind of chills you out and you're ready to go to sleep. So one challenge I find when I am going through periods of ketosis for a long period of time, something like, you know, between three and four weeks, there's a time and a place for it because, like, you know, if there's a period in my business where I'm like, you know what, I actually need to be on a real drive here.
Speaker 1:On a real drive, whether it's from a sales point of view, got a lot of speaking, doing this, this, this, and this, and I do want to be more in go mode, then I do kind of go into a ketogenic phase. But the problem comes with if I do some extended fasting, my adrenaline is just a bit too high for a bit too long. And then when it comes to getting to sleep, two things happen. Either one, I find it really challenging to get to sleep or I'll wake up in the middle of the night at like two, 03:00 in the morning, and then I'll struggle to get back to sleep. So you almost kind of can fall into this category of being tired but wired.
Speaker 1:So that's where I've kind of like shifted to a similar sort of way of eating that you spoke about of incorporating more kind of like starchier carbohydrates in the evening, but still coming from like high quality carbohydrate sources, really to kind of quash that adrenaline to increase production of serotonin. And also, again, like, you know, I've been ketogenic, you know, basically, like for said ketogenic very, very low carb for a long period of time. So it sounds a little bit sad, but to me, like, having a crusty, like, piece of sourdough is like a treat. Like, having some sweet potato is like a treat for me.
Speaker 2:You just reminded me of why I don't do chiropractic. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So, you know, so But I think there's an important lesson in there of all of these things are tools to achieve a specific thing at a specific time. So when you can like, when you can do this, you can go, Okay, actually, what am I trying to achieve here? So if I'm really trying to achieve almost kind of like focus, mental energy, mental clarity, then I will go down a lower carb route, potentially use intermittent fasting, you know, potentially incorporate foods that have got L tyrosine in it, have a higher protein content in there. And I'll do that throughout the day, but then in the evening, incorporate some lower, some more kind of like, carbier stuff. And I promise you, like three, four years ago, you would not have heard me talking about that.
Speaker 1:And I think that that's a really important thing of, and I think it's a problem that a lot of personal trainers face. They get very, very emotionally tied to their specific beliefs. Whereas I think that when it comes to all of this sort of stuff, you have to be flexible and go, for the moment, this is the strategy that I'm using right now. So again, for the strategy I'm using right now, I guarantee in two years' time it'll be different, but I'm open to new possibilities to improve it and to enhance on it. And I think that the problem is once you feel like you've got it figured out and you've cracked it, that's when you've got to get out of the game because that's where kind of hubris overtakes you.
Speaker 1:You can get arrogant and you can get complacent and you get sloppy. But also your motivation starts to decrease because there's no more room for growth.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I say to our guys, because I give my students a form of assessment and then I give them another form of assessment which is completely counterintuitive to the form of assessment that I gave to them previously, and I can always sense that there's a confused look on their face when I give them the counter argument, so the guy who introduced them to the first systematic way of thinking in the first place then comes back to them and says, Hey, see that first thing? Disregard that and just listen to this.' And then it's almost like a look of confusion and they're like, 'But what about the thing you said previously?' And normally I'm like, you know, fall in love with that concept but don't get married to it because it probably changed, I mean it changed in my mind from last week, you know, so it's like everything has a time and a place and if you're too rigid in your beliefs about that one thing I've just found too often throughout my career that when periods have came where I have found myself so rigid in a belief and I'm not willing to sway from it, I've always proved myself wrong in future because that's what research does.
Speaker 2:That's what research exists for. It exists to prove ourselves wrong. And so by, you know, being unwavering in your belief about this thing, basically what you're saying is, well, what you're saying is you're going to ignore future research and it doesn't matter because you could well get proved wrong in that period of time. Like how often in life have you seen experts who have come up with a theory And then later down the line said, Hey, do you know what? I was wrong about that thing.
Speaker 2:And they were like, that person was the person making the most noise about the thing. And then they've come out and said, Oh, sorry, look. What do call the guy? Mean, you're you're gonna know his name. He was, like, really and when we were talking talking about ketogenic diets, I think he had the term carbs are bullshit or something, and he would just say this at the start of every single video.
Speaker 1:Eddie Abu?
Speaker 2:No, no, not that guy.
Speaker 1:Paul Saladino.
Speaker 2:Paul Saladino. So am I right in saying this? Now again, I'm not heavily into the nutrition world, but am I right in saying that he has kind of swayed from his initial message of eat only, you know, stay away from grains, just eat this type of eggs, even stay away from some fruits and vegetables and everything else. So he actually had, like, a list of dos and a list of don'ts. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But now it's like, okay, just maybe I was wrong about this. And of all the people in the world that you would never suspect of having any kind of wavering thoughts about the message that he so loudly shouted about it was not him, but it turns out, no, he's kind of
Speaker 1:I think that kind of brings up an important concept of, with social media, what is the main reason why the majority of people are using social media as a media to market, whatever they're looking to sell. And at the end of the day, if you look at from a marketing point of view, a confused mind always says no. So I think the problem and the challenge that you face, especially in the fitness industry, is people almost kind of like are coming out being completely certain, like this is the way they're being polarizing solely from a marketing point of view. So it's like, for example, yeah. And again, like, and that's where I think that it can be not necessarily dangerous, but I think that in terms of the message that they're putting out there, how much can you look into it?
Speaker 1:Because, again, it's almost like, you know, I always had people say to me in terms of your business, be the ketogenic guy. Be the ketogenic guy because it's super clear that when people buy your product, for example, they're going be buying a ketogenic meal plan. It's super clear. It's polarizing from a marketing point of view, polarizing hits, and naturally, you'll make a ton of money. So how can you not fall into that category when you know something about it?
Speaker 1:So again, I think it then comes down to like what this whole thing really is kind of about for you. And I think that the problem was I definitely slipped into that. I wasn't particularly like immensely loud and vocal around going, everyone should be on a ketogenic diet because that's never been my full belief. But I think that the problem has been that, yes, okay, it could have helped in terms of my marketing message in the short term. But there then comes a point where I go, right, what game am I actually trying to play with my business here?
Speaker 2:Yeah. If you've got that internal conflict going on, that's going to play out in the real world.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But then also, I think more importantly, there's no room for growth. And I think that, again, with a business to I think, you know, because it's fucking hard. Like, it is so hard. And, you know, I remember my brother saying this.
Speaker 1:Me and my brother were talking about, like, the stats of, like, you know, within the first five years, X number of businesses closed down. And he was like, no, you can't like look into those stats. And I say, no, you have to look into those stats because the reason I believe that the majority of those well, if not all of those businesses closed down is because of the person, Because the person running that business, like, yeah, there are absolutely circumstances, but they chose to stop. They chose to stop. And it's hard.
Speaker 1:Like, it's so hard to do that. And I think that you have to have I know for me anyway, I'm saying you, but for me, I'm like, I feel that you have to have this unrelenting desire to consistently move forward and there has to be progression and there has to be a direction. And I learned this from Brendan Bouchard. He said that there has to be a meaningful pursuit that you're going on, that you're moving forward with things. Whereas if my message was solely everyone needs to be on a ketogenic diet, where can I move from that?
Speaker 1:The only way I can move from that is by going I'm no longer the keto guy, because then my marketing message starts to kind of change. So I think you have to get clear on what this whole thing actually is for you. And for me, like my business is a vehicle to really kind of expand my own personal growth, my own personal growth by acquiring new information from nutritional point of view, then a new information from an exercise point of view, new information from a business point of view, and being able to then relay that back and share that message on a regular basis. So I think that you have to get, you have to be careful with what people are kind of like seeing on social media solely because the main reason these guys are on social media is to get their message out there. Principle of marketing, number one.
Speaker 1:Confused mind always says no. Be absolutely clear cut in your message. Whereas if I'm kind of the guy who goes like, hey, do you know what? You could try this, but you could also try that and you could try that. It's vanilla.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Oh man, I've seen this girl, and I thought this trend had kind of died a fucking death. I was hoping that it had, but I've seen this girl just the other day, I don't even know how, I think it was a friend who's also another nutritionist, had shared something and this girl shared, Here's what I eat in a day. And there was a stack of raw meat on plates, right?
Speaker 2:So it was like raw bison and raw venison. And in the morning it was cubes of butter inside medjool dates with raw milk something and asked us like I looked at this girl and then I was like, Out of curiosity I want to see what the fuck is going on here. And so I clicked on her profile and she'd done a few videos like this and I was like, I want to see her eating the raw meat. So I was like, I'll, you know, go back a little bit more. No, she's she's displaying it and she's saying here's
Speaker 1:what I eat in a
Speaker 2:day but there's actually no videos of her eating the thing. You know, they're nicely pretty laid out on a plate shit and then I was like I thought that shit disappeared with Liver King, you know, when he was eating the fucking raw testicles and stuff. I was like, surely, you know, because this, you know, she's a pretty girl. She was in great shape. And I was like, I'm not going on.
Speaker 2:I mean, there's going to be women looking at this who are going to get all sorts of fucking viral sort of diseases going on because they're eating raw bison after this girl, you know, is saying, oh, here's what I eat in a day to stay in this type of shape.' Yeah.
Speaker 1:And also, though, I think that, yeah, you come back to, like, defining, like, high performance. Again, it's doing the things that for me, it's doing the things that I really want to do the best that I possibly can. So that doesn't just, like, apply to just business. It also kind of comes into, like, a life away from business. Now, do I want to be going out for dinner with my partner Alice on a weekend eating raw bison?
Speaker 1:No. I want to go
Speaker 2:It didn't tempt you at all? No?
Speaker 1:I mean, like, you know,
Speaker 2:I mean, like, look Raw testicle wrapped in butter.
Speaker 1:But I've watching on Celebrity recently. Know what I mean? So like, you know, like a goat's testicles looked quite nutritious just recently. But I think, like, you know, it kind of comes down to almost like what are you actually trying to achieve here in terms of your life? And, you know, I know for me, I'm like, if I'm going out for a Thai with with Alice, who both love Thai food, I can't go a Thai and not have I can't go for a Thai and not have noodles.
Speaker 1:I just can't do it because that's not how I want to kind of enjoy the overall sort of experience. So I think you have to get clear with everything and what you actually trying to achieve here. What is your nutritional strategy supposed to actually add to your life here? So again, like in terms of, you know, one of my favorite things, you know, to do is just to kind of fucking, you know, occasionally, like, you know, one Sunday afternoon, like, sit with my missus and just eat whatever we want to eat, like, because it's a nice kind of experience. But then again, I don't want to do that all of the time because it makes me feel physically shit.
Speaker 1:So I think one of the biggest shifts that's really kind of enhanced my own physical and mental performance has been getting away from almost kind of using exercise, nutrition, sleep as a way to change the way in which I look. Because again, like that you look at the positive feedback that you get from that. And again, you've got any coaches listening to this at the moment, one of the best bits of advice that I could pass on to them to pass to their clients is to get their clients away from focusing on the aesthetics and focusing on the feeling. Because the challenge you have is that let's say that I'm doing a cardiovascular exercise session. Now let's say I'm doing a cardio session, and my sole goal is to lose weight to fit into a suit.
Speaker 1:Yeah. The problem is if I go and do that cardio session immediately after, if I look at the feedback that I'm getting off the back of that effort, I've just like busted my gut. I then look at myself and I literally look no different. So in terms of almost like the goal that I'm trying to achieve that is solely around looking, I look no different. So then naturally, if I look at what my brain's going to do, it's going to go worked really hard, got no positive outcome.
Speaker 1:So eventually, like someone is going to kind of like, it's hard to consistently keep that, like, delayed gratification, delayed gratification with it. Whereas if you're focusing on how you feel, well, immediately after a cardiovascular session, like, I feel fucking differently. I feel mentally in a much better place. I feel healthier. I feel, fitter.
Speaker 1:Mentally, I feel clearer. That was positive. And off the back of that, because that was positive, that then causes me to want to do more of it. We come back to dopamine. If my expectation on what I'm trying to get out of that exercise session is I'm doing this exercise session to feel good, and then I feel better than I ever actually expected myself to feel off the back of that training session, the feedback that I get is I felt fucking brilliant from that.
Speaker 1:Let's do more of that. So for me, I want to do cardiovascular exercise. I want to do strength training, but not because it causes me to look better, because my desire to do cardio to look better is very, very low because I don't get that feedback. Whereas the feedback I get from doing cardiovascular exercise from a feeling point of view, like any form of anxiety that may present itself, any form of like low mood or whatever, it completely disappears off the back of moving. And again, that makes a lot of sense because in order to move, require dopamine, which then causes me to go, okay, right.
Speaker 1:I'm in more of a positive and almost kind of like, you know, moving forward sort of mindset. So I found for me that, again, like, you know, I'm one of my favorite books was Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich. Like, I have absolutely devoured that book. And it's interesting because every time I read that book, I learn something completely new.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's amazing. And it's nuts. But the thing that he kind of talks about is that, like, you know, make sure that you encourage the presence of more positive emotions as opposed to negative emotions. And the thing that I've kind of found is that, like, and this has been something that has really kind of allowed me to ensure that a bad moment does not become a bad day. Because throughout the whole time you're running a business, like bad shit happens.
Speaker 1:Like, shit stuff happens. You can make a sale. Someone's like, yeah, yeah, I'm all in. And then the next day they go, oh, you know, buy some more, so I'm not invested. That can be a real kick in the nuts.
Speaker 1:I know for myself previously, that used to compound. And what would happen would be that that bad moment became a bad day. So I remember like one of my best friends, a professional golfer, and I was really trying to like ramp up my golf. And I said to him, I was like, Lee, why am I so shit at the moment? And he says, it's not that you're shit.
Speaker 1:I said, well, I keep putting the ball in the trees. And he goes, the problem isn't that you keep putting the ball in the trees. The problem is that when you're in the trees, you then go and play another shot that keeps you in the trees. So your problem is you're compounding errors, you're allowing that one error to continue, and then it fucks everything up. So it's the same way from a business point of view, things are things aren't always going to way that you expect them go the way that you expect them to go.
Speaker 1:But the problem is that that can spiral and then cause you to go into a negative sort of state. Now you have all of these people in the self development world go, oh, turn your negative thoughts into positive thoughts. Yeah. I'm like, thank you so much. I've tried that a thousand times, it doesn't fucking work because I don't have the mindfulness skills of a Tibetan monk.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So naturally, that doesn't work for me. But one of the best things I learned, and I learned this from Andrew Huberman, he was he said that don't try and control the mind with the mind, control the mind with the body. So the way that I kind of see almost like, you know, when you kind of get into a bit of a negative headspace, like you get a little bit neggy, like, you know, maybe you're kind of seeing things through like a bit of a negative lens. The one thing that I find that I can't do is immediately just mentally turn that negative thought into a positive thought.
Speaker 1:Because again, like I said, I don't have the mindfulness capacity of a Tibetan monk. Yeah. But I kind of see it as almost like, you know, when you're putting an Instagram reel together. So you know when you put a reel together and you put some music onto the reel? So you get two volumes.
Speaker 1:So you have the volume of the music and then you have the volume of your voice. Yeah. Now what's really interesting I find, and this is something that's really, really helped me anyway, is that when I got that negative voice going, oh, you're shit. Oh, no one wants to buy your product. I'm going, I'm like, right now, I need to turn that volume down.
Speaker 1:Now the problem is that if I just focus solely on positive thinking, the problem is that right now, I've got the negative voice on a 100. If I just focus on positive thinking and put my voice that I actually want up to a 100, I can't hear anything. Yeah. So I've got the music, the negative stuff, and the positive stuff there together. What I actually need to do is reduce the fucking negative volume first and then increase the positive volume off the back of that.
Speaker 1:So I go, okay, right. So for example, when was it? It was about, yeah, about ten days ago, I was in a negative headspace. In a negative headspace, was like, right, okay, I need to change this. So first thing, I look at it and I go, right, in terms of the volume, it's at 100% in terms of the negative.
Speaker 1:I need to bring that down. I use some form of change in my physiology. So I went and trained and then I went and sat in the sauna. That automatically changes my physiological state. And what that does is it brings that negative voice down to here.
Speaker 1:I don't want to be operating here. I then want to put that positive spin up to there. So then what I do is I go and do some form of activity of gratitude. Now I think the problem I found with gratitude is that people say, you know, write down three things that you're grateful for. I'm like, okay, that's great.
Speaker 1:But it doesn't really kind of seem to be particularly powerful Yeah. For It is hard to think of that. Whereas for me, I go, right, instead of thinking about things to be grateful for, go and do something that actually makes you feel grateful. Okay. So for me, I go like, right.
Speaker 1:Okay. Actually, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go and spend some time with Alice and go and spend some time with my partner actually doing something enjoyable. Or something as simple. It's gonna sound really silly, but just recording my own podcast. Recording my own podcast always makes puts me in such a positive state because it reminds me of I get paid to do this thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Get a positive feedback loop. Yeah. Sometimes I would whenever I do get into that headspace, I'm like, bro, like, you're way fucking behind here. Like, you're know, you're you're slacking, like, you haven't done enough.
Speaker 2:Sometimes I actually go and watch old video testimonials that I've done with some of our past students and just some of the things that maybe people have said. And then it's like positive feedback loop, right? Okay, you you're doing okay here. It's like people are benefiting from what you're doing. Just keep on going.
Speaker 2:Ignore the noise.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think you have to have those triggers and those reminders to get you back into that positive headspace because that action drives your thinking. So again, it's actually doing positive acts, which then results in positive thoughts. So again, like you want to kind of change the landscape of your mindset. Like, that's where you use your body. And again, like that voice is much louder when I haven't slept very well.
Speaker 1:So that's why, again, I like prioritize and go right. Okay, is there at some point today that I can have a nap? I can squeeze a nap into my day. Is there a way that I could do some form of kind of like a yoga nidra, which is basically like a body scan that completely kind of chills your body out and that sort of sense? So, you know, for me, it almost kind of being that like, right, you want you need to, like, it's been so clear.
Speaker 1:You have to keep seeing a positive mindset. You have to keep that in there. But that's not just through, like, positive thinking bullshit by going, positive thoughts, positive thoughts, positive thoughts. It's not powerful enough. You have to kind of create that landscape to almost kind of ensure that the environment doesn't allow negative thoughts to thrive.
Speaker 1:So one of my favorite books, The Alchemist, there was a scene in there which there's a young boy and he goes into a crystal shop. And the crystal merchant who's running the shop, he goes, look, come on, we need to go and polish the crystal. And he goes, why? And he goes, because we need to cleanse our mind of negative thoughts. So it's almost like the thing that I found is that when you do some form of physical activity, and for me, the most powerful one has been going for a run-in nature.
Speaker 1:It almost for me kind of creates a mental environment where negative thoughts can't almost kind of live. And then naturally, like I'm outside, it drives the serotonin production. I'm having a good time from an exercise point of view. And you know the other thing as well, I realize how fucking insignificant I am. I go outside and I realize that I'm like, I'm so insignificant.
Speaker 1:And the other thing is that, like, I think the one thing that people kind of face when it comes to running a business scarcity. There's not enough to go around. Even the word scarcity. Yeah, it literally scares you into that there's not enough to go around. When you go out in nature, so again, it was like the other day, when was it?
Speaker 1:Yesterday. So we've got a beautiful field out the back of me. It's amazing. And I just see the incredible number of crops just in this one field. I'm like, there's more than enough to fucking go around.
Speaker 1:Like there's more than enough to go around. And like, if you kind of look at, and this always helped me whenever I was in that sort of mindset with my fitness business, helping people lose weight. What I would do is I would go into the town centre and I would look around at all of the people who are overweight and spending their money, and I realised there's more than enough to go around.
Speaker 2:Oh fuck yeah. Dude, I mean, last week, I So there's like a sort of commercial gym not too far from me, which is about five minutes drive, I would normally drop the kids off at football, they go and train, and within that hour I drive around to the commercial gym, go in, do a workout and then go back and collect them and then head back home. But I went down the other night and went to pay in and lo and behold they didn't have a card machine. So I walked in and I was like I can't pay by card and the guard was like No and I'm like Oh fuck's sake. So I left and then I went down to the local leisure centre and I tell people this all the time, I'm like Guys look, you know, if you get into the headspace where there's not enough people out there in the fitness industry and the fitness industry is saturated and whatever else, know, whatever false belief that people have, go to a local leisure center, Jim, and I promise every false belief you have about scarcity will be broken.
Speaker 2:I was watching these four kids, right, and so my workouts these days are pretty straightforward. I'm following an escalating density protocol, which is just basically six reps of this, six reps of this, rinse and repeat for ten minutes, don't stop until you're fucked. And I did two rounds of that, then I go, Workout all in, takes me around about thirty minutes because I'm really time poor at the minute, so I have to find time to make that happen, and I looked at these four young lads and they were at the cable machine and the four of them were lined up and they were doing rear delt flies, you know, with the cables. Yeah. But while one of them was doing this, the other four were then all starting talking shit to each other and so they basically all stood around the cable machine for the entirety of my twenty minute workout doing sets of rear delt flies with the cables in fours.
Speaker 2:So one would go, then the next would go, and I was like, Fucking hell, I said anyone, they're not one of these kids, they're in shape. And then they're going to get frustrated, and then they're going to say, Oh, exercise doesn't work, they might even resort to, Let me just speak to this big guy and see what he, you know, it's just like they're being set up for failure. And so, you know, just looking around at what people are doing and I'm like, oh my god, this place is packed. And if someone was to rock up in here or even rock up in front of these people and be like, here, listen, do you know you can optimize your training in a much shorter space of time and actually start educating these people? Well, then they may get a lot of value from it and then they go, you know what, I'm actually wasting my time here, I'd probably be better off investing in a coach, right?
Speaker 2:And so it almost just takes like that slight shift in environment, in perspective to where if you kind of have this belief about something Again, I'm going to use the example that's close to me, which is people say, Oh, the fitness industry is saturated. I'm like, Go to a fucking commercial gym, and, you know, there's going to be some dude in the corner of the gym shadowboxing with a set of dumbbells in his fucking hands, and he's never been in a fight in his life. Yeah. And it's clearly there to see, right? There's going be some other dude in the corner and he's going be swinging the fucking heaviest dumbbells trying to do front raises and it's like, 'Guys, come on, tell me these people don't need help.' Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean? Like it's it's in abundance. So, yeah, I get
Speaker 1:that totally. I think you have to, like I don't know. I think the thing for me as well has been you have to get yourself out there, and you have to change your environment on a regular basis and actually go and expose yourself to the world. Because I think the one thing I found with running an online business as well was, again, because all my business was in person before COVID, and then COVID caused me to have to go online. And I found that the one challenge with running an online business was that it caused me to almost kind of like go in and that all my marketing was online, which kind of like stopped me from almost kind of exposing myself to the world and actually seeing the abundance that there actually is around.
Speaker 1:Again, for me, I look at the primary people that I work with are personal trainers. So again, just by solely being online, I'm only seeing the personal trainers online versus actually going to a vast number of gyms and seeing the number of personal trainers that there are, you then start to kind of experience and see that there is so much to go around. But I think the other thing is kind of coming on to that, like, environment. I think I found that, for me anyway, that change in environment is huge. And not just the change in, like, physical scenery, but change in environment in terms of the people that you're around.
Speaker 1:Because, again, I've been fortunate to spend quite a lot of time with you recently, but that's been a complete environment shift that I've been spending time with a different individual, and I've seen the world from a different perspective from someone else. And then again, like, you know, I've been into that specific kind of world and seen the world from a different viewpoint from that person. So again, just because I see the world this way doesn't mean it's the only way that the world can kind of be seen. And again, like, you again, kind of come back to the whole thing from like a high performance point of view. I think we kind of like have to get clear on what I mean, again, of course, it depends on the service that you're delivering.
Speaker 1:But I look even my old man, for example, he runs a flooring business, but people aren't buying the flooring business. They're buying into him. So it's the same with me. There's tonnes of nutritionists out there. There are nutritionists who, you know, teach personal trainers to learn more nutritionally.
Speaker 1:Not particularly well, but anyway, we get past that. But people aren't buying into my nutrition course, they're buying into me. It's the same with they're not just buying into a personal training course, they're buying into you. So therefore, I am technically the product, which means that if I'm the product that they're purchasing, doesn't it make sense to make the product the best version that it can possibly be? And the way that I do that is through effectively being a walking advertisement for the result that this person can actually get, but more importantly, the person that they can become.
Speaker 1:And I look at when I invested in a mentor previously, it's because I looked at that mentor and go, that person has characteristics. They have qualities that I personally would also like to acquire. They also are doing things that I would love to do myself. So I was buying into them, not necessarily the mentorship process. So then I look at it and again, go, right, I see my exercise, my nutrition, my sleep, but also the way in which I'm doing it as a way to enhance the overall kind of quality of myself, which naturally as a business point of view, kind of like, you know, kind of brings more people in because you are someone who is energetic and magnetic and you're someone people want to actually be around.
Speaker 1:And I found that, again, like you look at from an exercise point of view, when I'm not training, I'm flat. But I don't have energy. It's, you know, again, it's pretty like strange that, you know, you have to exert energy to kind of get energy. But it's true that when I'm eating shit, it's why I don't drink alcohol. I very, very, very rarely drink alcohol because it just puts me in such a shit mental state.
Speaker 1:It makes me see the world through a very murky sort of lens, and it decreases my ability to enjoy this whole thing. So again, I kind of look back to what all my, you know, my physical training, my nutrition, you know, from a mindset perspective, all of these sorts of things. They allow me to do the thing that I love doing the most, which is my business, that my business is almost kind of like, yes, okay, it pays for my lifestyle, but it's also my biggest hobby. And I enjoy it the most. And it is so much more enjoyable to do when I'm fit physically and mentally.
Speaker 1:So I think that when you fully enjoy the business and you want to do the thing and you want to grow it and when you want to do more of it, that's when you then become more and more successful because you want to do more of this specific thing. You want to deliver more service. You want to deliver a higher quality of service. The way that I think that you need that you do that is by making sure that you're the best version of yourself to be able to do those things. Because if I can come up with better ideas, if I can execute tasks faster, more effectively, more efficiently, this thing moves along even further.
Speaker 1:I can do more of it at a higher level and I can enjoy it and I can expand it across more and more people. And then that, again, it becomes a no brainer as to why I don't train. Sorry, why I have to train.
Speaker 2:Nice. What is one question that I should have asked you but didn't?
Speaker 1:Who's my favourite superhero?
Speaker 2:And what does how does that superhero optimize for their performance?
Speaker 1:Oh. Oh, how does he optimize? Well, fortunately, it's interesting. I've actually got him next to me.
Speaker 2:There we go.
Speaker 1:So it's Spider Man. For those of you who can see this, Spider Man is the man. Do you know how Spider Man actually became more optimal? No. Joined the Avengers.
Speaker 1:-: Right. He changed his environment. Changed his environment, became part of the Avengers, got to learn from other people who actually believed in him. He went away from being a lone wolf, and he surrounded himself with other people who had other unique skill sets. You look at kind of the I'm a massive comic book nerd, huge comic book nerd.
Speaker 1:But you look at kind of the Avengers, each and every single one of them has a very unique, different skill set. So I'm going to send Spider Man to do one specific task, but I probably won't sell the Hulk to go and do that. Okay? Because the Hulk's going to just smash shit up, whereas Spider Man's going to tackle it a completely different way. Tony Stark, Iron Man's going to tackle it that way.
Speaker 1:So I think that, like, surrounding yourself with other individuals who have unique skill sets, who you can collaborate with and really enhance this overall experience, again, like, I think that's kind of your secret to nailing it, really.
Speaker 2:Beautiful. Thank you, brother. You're the man.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for having me, mate. Thank you.