Stop Sabotaging Your Habits: Spartan World Championship Exclusive

Hey, what's up? It's Ben Greenfield, and this is a bit out of the ordinary, but I happen to be sitting here with my trusty podcast sidekick, Brock. Jason Skywalker Armstrong. Brock, how you doing?

I'm doing well. Hello. Hello, everyone.

And you could get sick of that lulling Canadian accent over the next few days. Pshaw, pshaw. Because Brock and myself, to a certain extent, but Brock to a much greater extent, we are going to be bringing you some amazing interviews over the next several days because we are at Spartan World Championships. Spartan World Championship. So here's what to expect first, if you're not an obstacle course junkie or an athlete, don't worry. We are right now here surrounded by some of the top fitness, health, biohacking, nutrition, and even personal productivity and lifestyle minds on the face of the planet, who Spartan CEO Joe Disena has flown in to be here. And Brock and I have decided to get the microphone in front of them and take a deep dive with them into their top secrets that we can deliver to you. And we're also, of course, since we are surrounded by some of the fittest people on the face of the planet here, we're going to be interviewing some of the most hardcore men and women that exist when it comes to their insider training tactics, their nutrition secrets, their recovery hacks, and a whole lot more. So basically, you are going to be getting lots of podcasts over the next few days. Don't worry if you don't have time to listen to them. You can save them. And I believe these. There's even a handy save function in Apple podcasts.

You don't even.

Most podcasting apps save them for layers. Next time you're bored on a drive or you have a few extra gym sessions or you're out on a long hike, you can basically listen into a lot of these extra episodes we're gonna be pushing out over the next few days.

You can bathe in them even.

You can bathe in them.

Literally.

Like a float tank or Epsom salts. Yes. So we are, in addition to a bunch of podcasts, you're going to get right here on the podcast feed, doing a bunch of short videos, video and audio interviews over on the Facebook page. And if you don't know the Facebook page URL it is Brock, take it away.

Facebook.com BG Fitness so go to facebook.com.

BG Fitness if you want extra photos, amazing, entertaining and educational content for you in addition to what we're giving you right here on the podcast.

I call it Edutainment Edutainment.

Did you make that up?

No.

Okay. Now, we may not have our usual show notes. I'm gonna warn you.

Yeah.

But because I'm illiterate, Brock is illiterate and dyslexic and listen and Canadian. And frankly, we're going to be so busy interviewing people, we're probably not going to have a lot of time to sit down and make for you show notes. But we will make for you plenty of extremely helpful content and we promise mad value if you just listen in the next few days. Again, we're not going to bore you with the ho hum. I eat Red Bull and Snickers before the race and my top recovery tactic is compression socks.

Nor are we going to bore you with a long intro than we've already done.

No.

This is getting a little bit long in the tooth. So I will be racing. And I will be not only racing, but likely out there leading other racers through the course after I've done the race myself. So you're going to need to get used to Brock's Canadian voice and his beautiful shaven ballerina legs.

You betcha.

Which you actually can't see on an audio podcast, but I can vouch that they are quite beautiful. He'll be the voice you're listening to and seeing if you're on Facebook all weekend as we make you a part of what is widely considered to be the super bowl of obstacle course racing and is the crown race to discover who the fittest person on the face of the planet actually is. Spartan World Championships. Unless you're a CrossFitter, in which case it would be the CrossFit Games. So get ready of plenty of action. Get ready for plenty of action over the next few days. And if you want to have the most fun with this, stay tuned to all the live content and the conversations over at facebook.com bgfitness and keep a notepad or your own friggin noggin.

Make your own show notes.

That's right.

Come on, We've been holding your hand for too long. Now it's your turn.

Take notes on everything that we bring your way. We promise we're going to make this a lot of fun for you. So that being said, listen in because here we go.

He's an expert in human performance and.

Nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and.

One of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness.

His show provides you with everything you.

Need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield.

Power.

Speed, mobility, balance, whatever it is.

For you, that's a natural movement.

Get out there. When you look at all the studies done, studies that have shown the greatest efficacy.

All the information you need in one place right here, right now on.

The Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

Welcome back to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, everybody. I'm Brock Armstrong. As you can tell by my voice, I am not Ben. Otherwise I would have said, hey, folks.

That'S my Ben Greenfield impression for the day. We are recording here live at the Spartan Up Podfest in Lake Tahoe, which is part of the 2017 Spartan World Championships. And so far, the day is barely begun. It's not even 10am and I've talked to some amazing people, met some really cool people, and yesterday when I got off the plane, I talked to the fellow that you're going to be hearing from very shortly. We were sitting around in the airport waiting for our shuttle to take us to, to Lake Tahoe from Reno, which was a whole other weird experience in itself. Got off the plane and I don't know, it's gambling in the airport.

Hey, if that's your first impression of Reno, that's probably pretty accurate.

It's a. It just, they don't hold back. You're off the plane and look gambling. But anyway, I've got sitting across the table from me, Brent, and he's got some really cool ideas, some really cool software coming up. And yeah, let's. Instead of me stammering and stumbling through some kind of weird intro for you, I'll let you explain who you are and what you're up to.

Absolutely. Well, Brock, thank you for having me on the podcast today. I'm really, really excited to be here. Just overall, this event, the energy, you can just feel how quickly it's really starting to escalate with all the international athletes coming in. It's really, really powerful. So really, really excited to see what happens here. And so again, my name's Brent Toddy. I actually have a startup mobile app called Volv. And what about is helping people form healthy habits. And you know, that's around nutrition, that's around training, it's around lifestyle. And really what that's meant to do is to help people move them towards their intentions. It's the concept of people wanting to either have more energy every day or people wanting to compete in a Spartan race. Any of those types of intentions can be broken down into specific types of habits that people can start to form over time. The problem is that life gets in the way. So what we're really building is, you know, stupid Life. Yeah, stupid life getting in the way.

It's getting in the way of living life.

So what VOLV is, is a. It's a virtual personal assistant that's constantly taking a look at your surroundings. It's looking at your location, taking into consideration wearable data to know how much you've been moving that day. And then it's making recommendations on what you should be eating, how you should. How you should be recovering. Maybe you should add a little bit more movement to the day. So it's really taking more or less a nutritionist and a trainer and putting them on your shoulder, but using technology to harness that.

Okay, so that sounds. I mean, that could sound a little. Not Big Brother, but a little Skynetty. And I know it's not because we've talked about this before, but before we get into sort of how that stuff works. At the beginning you said that it's about building better habits or resetting your habits, but you also said that is about, like getting some more energy in your. In your life or better mindset stuff. So how do you see the habits that we formed, like the habits that we carry into our day, causing us to have less energy or less focus or whatever?

Define how that would happen in a day. How are we sabotaging ourselves with our habits?

I guess, absolutely. Well, so, I mean, case in point, myself, growing up, I grew up in a household that didn't necessarily highlight nutrition. They really were. It was like the Diet Cokes and the microwavable macaroni and cheeses and eating a Burger King all the time. And that was just. That was my mindset. And that's, you know, growing up, I wasn't necessarily in great shape. I was always athletic. But, you know, there definitely was a lot of room for improvement.

That's an important distinction to make. You can be athletic but still have unhealthy habits.

Absolutely. You've got.

Everyone's got room for improvement, especially when we're younger.

Yeah, totally. You've got a metabolism that can rev past anything that you're doing. But what ends up happening is that those types of negative habits that are formed from a very early age are subset into your body where, you know, it becomes like, you're almost like, look, we were talking about yesterday. It's like you wake up and it's like, all right, well, you just instantly walk over to the coffee and you're like, all right, well, I'm used to having caffeine first thing in the morning. I have to have it. Same thing with junk food where it's like, if that was what you grew up eating, the likelihood that you're associating that being okay with just normality is very, very likely. And so with.

I like how you actually chose coffee. I believe we were talking about beer. How did I get this beer in my hand?

That's right. Same concept. And so because these types of habits are formed over time, it's very, very difficult to break them. And, you know, with the age of social media, you see all sorts of people being able to achieve things that you wouldn't normally be able to see. And you see, you know, more or less what it is that they're doing to achieve those types of things. But the likelihood of seeing an intention and then seeing it through is very, very difficult. Because the steps, although they may be spoken about on, you know, in blogs or podcasts, like, you know, this one, it's very, very difficult to actually institute them into your life.

Yeah, I guess there's a. There's a huge step between either reading about something in a book or seeing something on somebody's Facebook page or reading a blog or listening to a podcast or whatever and actually making that happen. Like, I think a lot of us are wandering around with a brain full of great ideas, but we're not actually using them. We're not putting them into practice.

Yep. No, there's no question about that. And that transition between having inspiration from something, from a blog or, you know, seeing a video on YouTube or whatever it is, to actually putting it and incorporating into your life is incredibly difficult. And, you know, that's. That's really where a lot of habit formation really comes down to, is consistency. And so even if you do it for, you know, a day or two, and then most. Most of the time, people end up falling off. If you have the opportunity to understand which specific moments throughout your day, that habit is meant to be acted upon and that you're reminded to do so on a consistent manner, the likelihood that you're going to break the mold that you had before in the name of building something new is substantially higher. And that's really the thesis that I'm working on.

So it's not about giving up a habit, it's about changing a habit.

Yeah, And I'm saying, I think that when you're able to form a habit and you still have a negative habit, the likelihood that one is going to overtake the other, you have a much higher success rate if you go in with it with a negative mindset to tell people that the things that they're doing are absolutely wrong and that they have to make a complete 180. The likelihood that they're really, really going to make sustainable and consistent change in their life and they're actually going to, you know, build lifelong habits is much, much lower.

Now, is that because. Because of fear? Like we just, we want to stay in our safe place or a comfortable place? Or is it because we just, that's just how our mindset works, that we don't, we don't like the absence of something, we want to replace something.

I think it's. Yeah, I think a lot of it has to do with mindset where if you're trying to change because so much of nutrition and, and diet and exercise and everything is so psychological. So if you come to someone and tell them that they're wrong, they're instantly going to clam up if you give them the opportunity.

Even if they know they're wrong.

Exactly. And oftentimes they do. But if you come to them and say, look, we've got an opportunity here for you to add one thing and you should start doing this and just, you know, do it small segments at a time. It's all about incremental change. You don't just throw something on someone and have a completely different program. I mean, I think that that's a real fallacy with the way that, you know, standard training programs and standard nutrition programs happen to be created for people, is that it's not one size fits all. And on top of that, it's also, it's meant to be staged. If you don't stage it, then people are overwhelmed. And if they're overwhelmed, you only have so much bandwidth to make a good decision in a day. If you're overwhelmed, the likelihood that you're going to revert back is so much higher.

Well, it's sustainability, right. When it comes right down to it, and we've seen that so many times with these extreme diets and extreme exercise programs like the. Sure, you can lose two pounds a day or whatever for a certain amount of time, but that's not sustainable and it's not forming a better habit. It's just sort of willpower, really. So what you're talking about is like circumventing willpower and going straight for habit forming.

Right. And the technology that we're working on right now is really designed to stage it out so that you really can start to form small habits in an incremental manner. If, if you're not doing that and you really are trying to just. I mean, that's where a lot of turnover happens when people are starting a new program is that they'll try it for a little bit and then they drop right off.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so let's get back to the Skynet part of this. Yes. So you've got some habits that you want to. You want to shift or you want to give up, you want to improve.

How are the better habits chosen? Like, is there somebody who's sitting up there going, okay, well, everybody should really be doing X, Y and Z. Right. Or are you able to control this? Where are you getting the ideas from?

Absolutely. So it's actually kind of. It's interesting. The idea itself formed from my own personal experience of how it is that I formed my own, what I consider a performance lifestyle. And it came from digesting things like blogs and podcasts and YouTube videos. I was taking a look at how top performers like Ben or Dave Asprey or any athletes that I was looking up to or any nutrition me. Yeah, exactly. How are you performing?

But if you take a look at some of the content that they're producing, a lot of times there's takeaway, actionable items that are meant to be what a reader is supposed to walk away with.

Using that methodology, I think that each individual bit of content can be distilled down to an actionable habit. And those actionable habits should be packaged within an app where someone can go and subscribe and say, hey, that's something that might be interesting for me. Now, the way that we're deciding how we push things to certain individuals is based upon intention. So it goes back to, do you want to have more energy? Are you trying to compete in a Spartan race? Are you, you know, are you looking to, you know, maybe do a little bit of body recomposition? And I want to stress that we don't. It's not like all calorie counting and macronutrient breakdowns. And I mean, we will. We. If people want to go that route, like, they certainly can. But the idea really is building a gap between or building a connection between how people are consuming and moving and how they're actually feeling. And it really comes down to the mindfulness of what comes along with intention directly to how it is that they're executing on a daily basis.

Okay, so it sounds like there's some layers involved, so you need to choose what your ultimate goal is or your sort of overarching goal, and then you do some curating of what information is being fed to you.

And I like to consider them like 60 day sprints. So with. With any program. So I used to be a personal trainer and a nutritional consultant and a personal chef, so I kind of did it all.

Yeah, yeah.

So for a lot of the clients that I worked with, you know, I was cooking for them. I was also giving them advice. Like, they'd be texting me on a regular basis, and then I'd also be training them. So it really, It's. It's. It's incredibly important to be able to understand that it's, you know, a holistic. You have to be making strides in each individual subset. And if you're not doing all three and you're not focusing on nutrition and the way you move and the way that you're acting on a daily basis, you know, it's really that. That's what is more or less is driving the success.

Yeah. Cool. Okay, so you were talking about necessary or finding the. The sources of the information, and the podcasting being one, which is something that near and dear to my heart, obviously. But once you've sort of got the overarching goal in mind and. And you're curating the information, where are you getting the sources? Or how can. How can. Could somebody choose the sources that, I don't know, I guess inspire them to make those habit changes?

Absolutely. So we're in the process right now of building relationships with different fitness and nutrition influencers. And so when that happens, we're able to take a look at what their blog content is, and we're able to start. As people are consuming a podcast like this, there might be takeaway actions, and so there would be a capability for people to be able to take a look at. This podcast is being powered by Volv or is in partnership with Valve. And then you can go and directly look and say, hey, these are the four things that came away from this podcast that I might actually want to start trying. And so there's a direct correlation between people consuming content that they're already listening to and then being able to act directly upon them via the app.

So would that sort of be like the. What's that? The suggestions in Netflix?

Yeah, exactly. When I first started explaining this to people, it's almost like a Spotify of healthy habits and different tools.

If you like this and you'll probably.

Absolutely. And there's a recommendation engine that we're building out as well that really is meant to say, all right, well, these are the types of things that you have subscribed to. These are the things that you're acting on a consistent basis. And Then there's a feedback loop to understand efficacy of whether or not those specific habits are making you happy. And so that's how we're really understanding how users are interacting with specific types of habits so that we can make recommendations farther down the road.

So it's better than the Amazon recommended thing. Absolutely, because it's actually going like, did you actually enjoy that book or is it just that 1200 other people bought that book?

Exactly. And it's meant to become a custom tailored suit of healthy habits that you're able to create for yourself. And so without there being a feedback loop, there's no ability to be able to understand if it's working or if it's not working for you. Because at the end of the day, everyone's different. And we were talking about this yesterday of like, well, is low carb versus you know, moderate carb versus high carb? Like, is there one size that fits all? And the answer is no, because it really is.

Well, and what the heck do those even mean? Like, it's all relational.

Yeah. And there's, I mean, it's funny too, you know, I take a look at a lot of the different diet books that pop out and it's, I mean, everything is more or less speaking the same message. It's just grouped in slightly different manners.

Yeah, variations of Paleo.

Right, Exactly. And it's like, no, you can't. You taking out legumes here, you're, you know, you're removing this specific type of rice and it's this new diet and it's like, well, at the end of the day, if you start with non processed foods and then you start to include different types of other foods that, you know, may be inflammatory, like a, you know, like a legume or anything along those lines, you can figure out whether or not it's making you feel good through a feedback loop. And that's, that's the. Most of the time people don't have the mindfulness to be able to understand that the things that they're putting into their body actually have a direct effect, you know, an hour, two hours, three hours down the road in that specific day. And it's like if you eat something and it doesn't make you feel good, you need some sort of methodology to understand what that was.

Well, and that breaks like. I know there's a thing that's become a lot more prevalent these days because of, because of the political situation in a number of countries right now. We've noticed that the algorithms that are, that are fueling things Like Facebook and Twitter and stuff like that. It becomes the algorithm that is supposed to be giving us what we like, is actually creating a narrow minded approach to the world where we're only seeing the things that we already know exist. And it just becomes a self perpetuating loop because the algorithm is just going, hey, you like this, you'll probably like this. So we're getting a very more and more narrowed view of the world and politics is suffering because of it. But it sounds like you're breaking that algorithm by giving it that second layer or third layer or fourth layer or whatever it is that's saying, is this actually working for you? So it's not just continually spitting back the same variation on a theme.

Oh, absolutely. And I think that one of the most important parts of what it is that we're up to is that you really have to maintain authenticity and you really have to maintain a neutral stance. So if you start taking in a lot of ad dollars from a specific brand or whatever, it is the likelihood that their content is gonna pop up to the top. It creates a very volatile situation where it's like people, you're almost doing a disservice to the individuals that are working with your app because all of a sudden you're force feeding them stuff that might not necessarily pertain to their goals. And so it's an interesting dichotomy of what it is that we're trying to do in terms of monetization and understanding how we best serve our customers. Because that's priority number one.

Yeah, you're looking almost at Google AdWord kind of thing. Like we're gonna pay to have our link show up at the top of the page. And sure there's some weird little text below it that says that it was paid for, but it's still showing up at the top of the page.

Absolutely.

And that's when you're really trying to help people and really trying to build some new habits. That's, I mean, that really plays into what is Google's slogan of don't be evil?

Oh yeah.

I mean that really is evil at that point. Especially like if you're serving up ads, that's one thing. But if you're actually influencing people to make their decisions on what they're going to eat and how they're going to exercise, well, that is pure evil.

Oh yeah, yeah. And I mean, as someone that's in technology and you know, a lot of other people, I've read a few different books about this, but.

We have a duty to make sure. That the things that we create are not meant to do any harm. And because we have so many people like, you know, if we're coding an app and building something out, you've got a hundred developers that, with a combined brain power that are trying to influence a specific individual. You have, you know, you have a duty to make sure that the things you're creating are not supposed to be like, they just can't be pushing people to be making choices that are outside of things that should be designed for them. Yeah. And so.

To me, wrapping my head around that was one of the first real obstacles that I had to cross over was to make sure that I was doing those that were trusting me to create something that they're putting their trust in to change their own lives. That I was creating something that was good and that was whole and that wasn't something that was going to be.

Driven by.

Whether it's, you know.

You just don't want it, you don't want it driven by any sort of negative forces. You want to make sure that the customer is at the forefront.

It'd be easy to let finance influence it and then be able to take that step back and say, well, hide behind the data almost and be like, well, the data is what's giving us this. Like, I'm taking no responsibility for this. Like, you can hide behind the algorithm or hide behind the data set, but it's way too close to home to, to be able to do that. Like you're. Because again, because we're talking about like nutrition and exercise and people's well being.

Absolutely.

You can't hide behind that or you shouldn't. If you do, then you're.

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, it's not to say that we're not going to be working with brands farther down the road. It's just. And like you said, with the immense amount of data that we're going to be able to gather with the people that we're serving, I mean, not only do you have location preferences and what it is that they're interested in, but you're actually being able to understand how it is that they're consuming food and products and everything. You create a context where you're able to truly understand how you're best able to serve someone. And so if you're looking at it from a brand perspective, that type of information is incredibly valuable. And that's where I think there's a real differentiation, is because, you know, someone like Google or Google is taking a look at, you know, they're taking a look at location, and they're taking a look at preferences. They know pretty much everything you've ever searched. But in terms of actual activity, of what you've done that day, I think that adds a new layer on top of how it is you can serve someone a specific type of recommendation, because the way that we move is meant to specifically drive the things that, you know, we're consuming on a daily basis. And I think that that's something that I figured out very, very early on, is that if you're not eating in line with the way that you're moving, the likelihood that you're going to feel good on a regular basis is very, very low. And that's, you know, whether you want to call that carb cycling or macronutrient timing or whatever you want to call it, there's a real power behind that. And I think that that is ultimately going to drive a lot of the recommendations that we're making. When you walk into a restaurant, when you walk into, you know, a grocery store, it's like, hey, you know, if this is the. This is how much you've been moving today. This is a recipe that would be in line with what you've done. And this is. And who you are. You walk into a restaurant, it's like, all right, well, this is generally what type of restaurant it is. Maybe you should be making this type of choice. These are generally some of the things you should probably be moving away from. And by the way, you've had a relatively low activity day, so I would probably cut back a little bit on the carbs.

I like how you phrase that you're being lazy. Hey, lazy ass, don't eat all those carbs, man.

Well, we've certainly played with the idea of adding different personalities of how it is that the messages are going to be driven. So for some people that might want to have a little bit more of that callous and laughable personality, I think so, too. I think that the same way that Waze has, like, they're very funny, different little voices and characters that they have, I would love to build that out eventually, too, because I think that, you know, it doesn't have to be so nutrition and fitness and health doesn't have to be such a pain. It just. It really should be fun. And it's like, if that's how you interact with it, it's. That's ultimately what is going to make you successful.

It's true. You know, you said something about location a little while ago that is going to know your Location. I think that's fascinating because. Because of two things it made me think of, like, microbiome, for one thing. Like, we can almost like we've. And maybe this isn't so much microbiome as it is genetics and epigenetics. We know that certain areas of the world have different tolerances for. And I guess this is still cutting edge science, but we're starting to figure out that certain areas of the world, they have more tolerance for carbohydrate or maybe they have different tolerance for different types of fat. Like myself, I'm mostly Eastern European descent. I handle my carbs pretty well, but I'm really bad with saturated fat. Like, my saturated fat basically just turns directly into cholesterol. My cholesterol went through the roof. I tried a diet that had a lot of butter in it and my cholesterol was like. Even the functional medicine doctors were going, oh, dude, you gotta get that down. It wasn't just like the cardiologist at the doctor's office around the corner that was putting me on. It was like the functional guys. So the location could play into things like that. Making some recommendations, not necessarily maybe today, but down the road based on your, your location, sort of guessing what your genetics might be, but also the availability of food, the types of.

Like, I. We had another. I don't know if this podcast will come out before it or after it, but I spoke to an athlete who's here at the Spartan race from Belgrade, from Serbia, and another guy from Italy. Now, obviously those two have very different diets, different access to food. And then me from Canada, I've got another different sort of access to food. And I'm not just talking about like the availability of Chipotle, but our seasons are different and all of that. So that's a whole other layer of information that you can include into the algorithm.

Absolutely.

And is that something that you've got on. On the horizon or is it already in there?

Yeah. And so, you know, when we talk about location right now, it really talks about the pertinence of specific types of habits and recommendations that we're making. So it's like if you're, if you're subscribed to something like, you know, a paleo ish diet or whatever it may be, you're taking a look at what restaurants in the area might pertain to what it is that you've done that day.

Location on a more sort of micro level.

Right. And then when you start to go macro and go a little bit bigger, there's opportunities To, Yes. Take a look and see what that specific set of people and that traditional diet. Absolutely. And then you also have opportunities when you're taking a look at building an algorithm like this, interactions with companies that are doing DNA testing, and you're able to see where someone is from, and you're able to see what their heritage is, and the likelihood that you're able to make recommendations based upon that is just exponentially increased. And so that's, that's kind of where I see all this going right now, because we're in growth stage and we're really building out. We're building out the stuff that is tangible and that we're able to touch right now. But there's always opportunity to take in any other large set of data on, you know, an individual, any sort of blood testing that they may have, whether it's a Cyrex test or whatever it is, all those types of things can be brought in to make specific recommendations for that individual. And so we're building this platform that's meant to be a hub to take in whatever information, whether it's from wearable, whether it's from a blood test, whether it's from a DNA test, whatever it may be. And then you're able to custom tune and make recommendations, whether it's around food or whether it's around a specific type of exercise or lifestyle habits or. I see this growing in a way in terms of the content that's available in a very organic way, because very soon I'm going to want to start allowing our users to create their own habits. And so that's where it's really going to start to grow. You know, you create a finite set of things so that people can wrap their head around what it is that they're supposed to be doing. But then you open source it. And that's where the beauty of the growth really comes from. It comes from the flow of information of our users. And that's. I mean, it's the same way that Reddit has really grown the way that it has.

It's a decentralized. The data source, it grows exponentially.

Yeah. And if you give people the power to share their own story and to share the way that they were able to achieve a goal. All of a sudden you've got two people across the world with similar intentions. One has achieved them, the other one hasn't, and you're saying, okay, well, these are the things that you've done. I'm gonna subscribe to the 1, 2, and 4 of the different balls you may have that got you towards your goal, and then I'm gonna start acting on them, and then you can start interacting with those individual people. So it builds this community of interconnected people that are not only acting the same way, but they also have the same intentions. And there's real, real power behind that. And technology should be built in order to allow people to act on those in real life situations and interact. Because. Because at the end of the day, I think that, you know, with training and with nutrition, you can't just do. You can't have it just be AI. It can't. There always has to be a human touch to it and there's community around the way that people eat. And I think that that'll be another big driver for me or for Volv is to make sure that when we're making recommendations, the likelihood that you're able to go and say you should go and be able to have lunch with another person, whether they have a similar intention to you or not. The likelihood that you're gonna be able to find something at that one restaurant is still very high. But your ordering recommendations may be different. And it's meant to be so that it's not such a lonely endeavor. It's meant to be something to be shared. And because, you know, you're a sum of the five people that you spend the most time with.

Yeah.

And so if you're becoming more and more.

Not true, but more and more uncovered. Yeah, that is true.

It's a really, really big indicator of how successful you're gon. If you're surrounding yourself with people that are crushing ice cream at 10:30 at night, the likelihood that you're gonna crush some ice cream is pretty high. But if you have something that's saying you should probably go and eat at this specific place, and these are the different things you can do. You have a community of people that are acting upon the same general concept, and it's building a foundation for success for both you as well as the other people that you're connecting with.

Now, I'm gonna put you totally on the spot here because this sounds awesome and it's coming down the pipe and. And it's gonna be awesome. But right now, what would you say that people can actually start working on, like right now, before the app's developed and out and stuff, to start developing these better habits and breaking those mindsets?

Absolutely. So I have what I consider the Valve basics, which are just our general recommendations of how to start to structure your day. I think that you start to take a look at different types of training types. I think that you stay accountable and say that you. You have to get into the gym three times a week, and the other days of the week, you're making sure that you're moving at least 30 to 45 minutes a day at the bare minimum. I tend to use my wearable to take a look and see, all right, if I've got my Fitbit on as well. So for me, it's like, if I'm not going to hit the gym that day, I have to get to a certain set of steps. So it's like I have to hit 10,000. Not because I think that that number is particularly important. It's just an arbitrary number that I set to say, okay, this is what I would consider a relatively decent low, low intensity day. You're not sitting down all day, but you're still moving around. So in terms of training, it's just staying accountable and, you know, getting into the gym, doing the compound exercises, squats, deadlifts, that kind of stuff. But that's. That's also not to say, too, that if you're. If your intention is to do endurance training, that's totally fine. You just need to stay accountable on that as well. And so.

So it's really about accountability, social accountability.

And if you find someone, a lot of times, what I'll do especially. So I was recently training for a sprint triathlon, not an endurance guy, really. Or at least I wasn't. I'm starting to transition over to that. But what I did is I just posted on social all over the place, saying when I was gonna go and do stuff, so that if I didn't go and do it, people were like, people would know. And so I used that level of social accountability to make sure that I was doing the things even as uncomfortable as they were. As, you know, for me, it was like swimming in the ocean. Like, I live in Southern California. Summer was full of sharks. It was, oh, wow. There were. There was a day in San Clemente in southern Orange county, where there were 22 great whites seen in one day. And so that was right around the time when I was training. So it was like. So, yeah, so for me, I was like, all right. Like, you know, I grew up. I'm Cali born and raised, so I've been in the ocean my entire life. I still had to, like, get over that fear. But I posted about it, and that allowed me to just be like, all right, look, like I said I was gonna do it, I'm gonna Go do it. And I did. Did. In terms of building habits around food, I think you just start with the basics. Don't worry about the timing, don't worry about, oh, it's, I have to eat within this feeding window. And this, you know, intermittent fasting and carb cycling and macronutrient timing. Just focus on the 80, 20, 80, 20 rule. Really looking at eating non processed foods 80% of the time. And then once you've conquered that for two to three weeks, then, you know, maybe you start looking into some of the other more advanced tactics. And, and I think that that's. It comes down to those incremental changes again, where it's like, you know, how often can you stick to the plan that you set out to do?

I like this. This is the idea of not going extreme is something that I think is hard for people to wrap their heads around these days.

Absolutely.

We're so extreme. We've gotten to the point where like ketogenic diets are mainstream and there's nothing more, more extreme than that. I feel like there is. It's difficult for people to do moderation these days, but there's a need for that in our lives. Like we don't have to always be losing weight at a ridiculous rate or going to the gym super duper hard all the time. I heard the mind pump guys just over a little ways podcasting next to us, they were talking about exactly the same thing, like just trying to get their clients to go for a fricking walk.

Yeah, it's an ebb and a flow and it's, you know, it's, is life's not a sprint. And so if you're able to figure out, you know, and that's why I said, you know, 60 day sprints, if you have something that's coming up where, you know, you really want to get in shape, whether it's, you know, Spartan race or it's even something as simple as, like, you know, you've got a wedding coming up and it's like, okay, I really like want to like tighten up a little bit. It's like, okay, great. Like then you've got your, like you have your intention and you can go and you can be very strict in those specific situations, but the likelihood that you're going to sustain a. Yeah, that's.

Not setting the habit, that's just, just achieving a short term goal.

Right?

Yeah.

And so if you're able to chain those types of short term goals together with an overreaching intention, the likelihood that you're gonna continue to act on that habit far after you've crossed the finish line or far after you've gotten married is so much higher.

Yeah, that is a perfect place to wrap up. My phone is currently flashing at us which probably means we should wrap up. So I have one thing other than thanking you, Brent, for coming on the podcast. This has been awesome. I also wanna thank our race host Joe Decenta for having us here and also of course his, his podcast, the Spartan Up Podcast for setting up a great weekend here at the 2017 Spartan Race World Championships. I don't know why I have to read that off the piece of paper every single time. You think I'd have that memorized by now, but thank you.

Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

Yeah, it was, it was very cool. Kind of a last minute thing.

Yeah.

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