More Social and Less Media with Dallas Hartwig

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Hey, it's JJ Virgin. And welcome to the JJ Virgin Lifestyle show where we'll connect with some of the coolest people in the world. Welcome to Plus. I give you tips that you can put into fast action to uplevel your.

Health and your life.

Now, today's show is all about more.

Social and less media.

And I am talking with my new pal. Met him last year. He came over to a party at my house and was like, this has been a while of us trying to get it together here. Dallas Hartwig. And this is going to be a fun insider's peek into kind of a rock and roll conversation here and learning where he's going next. This is the guy who's behind the Whole30 diet, which is on the New York Times list for, it seems like forever. He's a functional medicine practitioner, behavioral change expert and health consultant. Lives up in Salt Lake City, Utah with his three and a half year old son. And he is in a major transition from, you know, obviously he's an author, speaker, entreprene and innovator. But now he's kind of coming back to where he started, which is in the behavioral change world. So that's what we're going to be talking about today. And we've got some pretty interesting perspectives about gurus and change and connectivity. So I'm excited to share that with you. So today's guest again is Dallas Hartwig.

So let's do it.

Dallas Hartwig, welcome to the show. I am so glad you're here with me today.

I'm so glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

All right. Now you are like in this really cool state. I've been watching you on social media. You're a hoot. I mean, it's super funny. Your posts are especially your posts when you're with your little boy. Yes. Now you Are of course known for the whole 30 and all the nutrition, all that stuff. But I know you're making this transition, so what are you up to?

Well, it's interesting, like, the transition is kind of like coming home and starting over, because we took a long foray into nutrition and created the Whole30 program and wrote a couple of best selling books. But now I'm kind of taking a step back from all that as a focus and going back into like, how do we live as good, sane, healthy, happy, balanced humans in the crazy modern world that's out there.

Did you figure that out?

No, actually I haven't. Which is part of the fun because, you know, I'm sort of experimenting and learning along the way and sharing what I learned. So it's kind of a very much learn as you go kind of thing.

I think that's what life is, isn't it?

Yeah. One of the key posts I have on my website is like, I am not a guru. Don't come to me expecting all the answers because I just don't have them. But I'll share the few things that I learned along the way, but I just don't know most of the answers.

Don't you think that's much more fun, though? I'm getting interviewed. John Asaroff said, I want to interview on life balance. I'm like, sure, there's no such thing.

It's like, that's the biggest myth, but it's way more fun. And honestly, I think it's a lot more honest because I think a lot of people who kind of operate in this space are like, I got the answers, I got the quick fix, I got the solution to all your problems. And I'm like, I find that so disingenuous because that's just not how it is. It's just not how it works.

Not even. Right. And so I'm doing one right now around what I learned from my son's brain injury because I launched my virgin diet book in the ICU next to my son in a coma. And so I'm doing this whole thing, teaching people mindset. And I went through this whole thing like you're going through. I'm like, like, who am I to do this stuff? And I go, that's the whole point. The whole point is like, this is what I learned. And now let's kind of dig in together and see what, what we can take from it and use.

Yes, totally.

But it does freak you out a bit because nutrition is much more frameworkable, you know.

Oh, yeah, nutrition like you can wrap your head, you wrap your hands around it and be like, okay, in this situation, this is what you do. And it's very tangible and in order to like share it with people, like people understand, like food really matters, to start making comments because I mean, I have a real focus now on kind of the way we live, the pace at which we live, the way we engage with technology, the way we create or ignore meaningful relationships in our life. That stuff's not on people's radar. The way food is, has such an impact on their kind of quality of life and you know, disease risk and all that kind of stuff. And like you're not going to get six pack abs by using your phone less, you know, so it's like, it's kind of a harder sell in the world that we live in. But I think it's a harder sell, but I think it's no less meaningful and no less important.

Yeah, we were talking a little offline until we decided we better stop talking offline because we were saying all the cool stuff. But you started to float something out that I want to address because what I'm seeing out there, that scares me the most and I'm seeing it with my own son with the brain injury is this lack of community, a lack of connection. And Lissa Rankin just did this TED talk on the biggest problem in medicine no one's talking about, which is isolation. So I know have this whole more social, less media thing. Like what is this?

So more social, less media is initially, is now kind of in its infancy as a program. It's a four week program designed to help people recalibrate their relationship with technology in order to powerfully reconnect with themselves and other people. It will be in the future. It will be a much more comprehensive behavior change model, sort of a course a system as a segue into a, I guess I call it a movement. It sounds a little self important but like I really, I really think that this piece is something that is, as you just mentioned, a massively under addressed part of kind of the way we have to live in this modern world. And it's a health risk, it's a, it erodes people's quality of life. Like it's a real issue and I'm happy to see more people talking about it, but we need like a hundred times more people talking about that. So.

Yeah, because it's creating a lot of detachment. You know, I was at an event Saturday night and I knew my girlfriend was gonna get engaged. I helped set the whole thing up. Right. So we're having, we're at a gala and then we're gonna have an after party in my room. And we've completely distracted her because we're also having another surprise birthday party before the surprise engagement at the after party. So we've like stacked this whole thing up so she won't suspect. And then I have my girlfriend who was Christine in Phantom of the opera for 10 years, who's gonna sing a love song to them after they get. I mean, the whole thing's like crazy amazing. Like, like amazing. But I. Because I was supposed to take the pictures, but somehow I'd gotten chocolate cake at the event. I didn't eat it. I got it into my phone camera and I couldn't under. I'm like, why is the camera not working? But I. So I just was like looking around. I went, oh, I don't need to take a picture. I can just totally be present and watch this whole thing. And I'm watching everybody because this is the most amazing thing happening in the entire room of people. There were probably 40 people at this after party, all had their phones up. And to me, I just want. It's like you just put a shield between you and the experience. Like, you go to a concert and you've got your phone up the whole time. How are you participating? And I also look at that and I go, when the hell are you gonna watch that again? Like, who's like, really? Are you really looking at all these videos? Like, what?

It's actually funny because I grew up in British Columbia. I grew up in like really amazing places. And we would get these, these buses of tourists often from. We get a lot from like Germany and France and a lot from Asia, particularly Japan. And you'd see these, like, busloads of people come off and they take pictures of everything. I was like, you just took like 8,000 pictures in your six day vacation to BC. Like, when are you ever gonna go back and look at these pictures and look at these things? And I think that we have this weird sort of belief or fear that like, if we don't record it, it never really happened to us. And unfortunately, I think that's actually the complete inverse of the way our brains work as far as being able to internalize and experience something is when we look through the lens of a camera, there's part of that that's lost. And I think that that happens when we digitize communications and I think that happens when we sort of get sidetracked with recording events too.

It's funny you just mentioned that because I lived in Japan, so I saw that happen all the time. But I was just in. I was in Santorini in the summer, and I mean, talk about, like, a place that looks fake. I was like, this can't possibly be real, what I'm standing in the middle of. And there was this Japanese dude trekking this tripod. Like, he had a tripod, a camera. I'm like, gosh, just kind of stand here and take it all in. Honey, you don't need the tripod. I'm like, when it comes down to you having to go on the hike with a tripod and you're not a professional photographer getting paid for it, something's super wrong.

It's funny because, like, I'm not a professional photographer. I do enjoy taking pictures. I'm really. I'm just really visual, and I really enjoy photography as sort of a hobby. And I kind of vacillate back and forth between really finding myself, like, photography very grounding and connecting, where I'm just paying so much more attention to, like, the beautiful light and the shapes and the colors and. But then sometimes it does get in the way, for sure. And so I kind of go back and forth, and sometimes I find that the most amazing, impactful, like, breathtaking places, the places I most want to put my camera away and just, like, not have that there and just take it all in. And I think that we should all be doing more of that. Just being aware of the way that devices get in the way, not just of, like, beautiful views and stuff, like, of people, like, of other human beings. And we do the same thing to them.

Yes. And I noticed, like, the things you seem to be moving into is, you know, how to live better, how to live differently. And, you know, what do you, like, what's the goal behind this? What's motivating you to do this? Because this. I mean, let's face it, this requires a way different level of vulnerability than telling people what they should be eating.

For sure.

Right. Because you're opening them up to what you're up to in your life.

Yeah, totally. Well, yeah, and that's. And that's one of the challenges is that. And it's kind of funny because I look back to the timeline with my food changes and kind of the way it impacted my life and how many years that took to really bring that out into the public in kind of a large way. And it's kind of the same path, really, the same kind of delayed echo with the personal growth stuff that, you know, I've gone through a bunch of really wild years these past few years with, you know, two bestselling books and media tour and divorce and moving and like a bunch of different, you know, my son's three and a half. And that of course changed my life in a really amazing way. So the last three or four years has been kind of a wild several years. And through that and catalyzed by that, there's been. I've done a lot of sort of soul searching and personal growth and that kind of stuff. And so now just like the delay that happened with Food, where I had some powerful personal experiences and I got around to talking to people about it, I'm kind of doing the same thing with this where I guess I'm just sort of publicly rambling about things that I found to be helpful and meaningful in my life. And that's really resonating with people.

So let's grab one out, like name something that you found because again, you talked about some big things like having a baby. And the New York Times bestsellers. My God, what week isn't the whole 30 on the darn list? I'm like, it's up there again.

It just really amazing.

Damn it.

For a long, long time. Marie Kondo's book.

Oh, I know, it's like really tidying up again.

Yeah, it was super funny because we would always grumb about that. So I guess that's kind of the same. We're doing that to you.

I suppose so. But you've had like, like these super amazing things and not so amazing things like divorce. I always say, like, you really. It's the best worst year thing. It's like the worst things that happen really make for the biggest personal growth.

Right.

Like, you know, you're not grown when things are awesome. So like, what's the big, like what's been a big catalyst and what have you learned from it?

And. Well, I think I'll go back to, well, two things. I mean, certainly the birth of my son just upended my whole world and I think that's a really common experience as parents. We were just like, oh, what do we now? What who am I? What do I do? What's actually important. And that was certainly a really big one for me. And then having left behind the Whole30 program, as I'm no longer involved in a sort of ownership, managerial role, I now have a clean slate where I get to figure out, literally start over, what do I have to say that I think is meaningful. What I have to share that I think is Meaningful, and then just to figure out, is that actually meaningful with people. That's been a fun and also trying time too, because Basically all of 2016 has been a whole series of false starts and sidesteps and putting things out that don't resonate and putting things out that I think are awesome, that nobody really seems to get and just a bunch of weird stuff. And it's.

You've been doing research.

Research. My research is that I need to continually refine what I have to say so that it actually lands with people. Because, you know, if someone's at a different place in their life or they're kind of a different kind of mindset, you have to find a way to speak to them, and you have to find a way to kind of like, lands with them. And that was one of the things that I think we did really well with the Whole30 program is like, we found a voice that really landed with people. And I'm now trying to figure out how to do that again, which is actually a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. Having done something that was on a really large scale once, this has been a lot harder.

This time around, it's different. I'm kind of in that same boat, and it's definitely challenging, Especially when you're so used to. I'm just used to what you need to do in the food side. To me, that's like, oh, just do that. It's like, oh, this is different. The first time I did a coaching call for in this new world, and someone came up on the phone and she was like, I just realized, jj, I can't do what I need to do in my life because I don't feel worthy. You know, it's interesting, Dallas, when we queried our entire community about, you know, people who were kind of a non starter in taking care of their health, the number one reason was they didn't feel worthy.

Yeah.

So I went, well, all right, so what we're gonna do then is you're gonna pull out your journal and you're gonna write down I am worthy. And you're gonna write that down every morning. She goes, but I can't. Cause I don't believe it. I'm like, all right, well, so, you know, and I'm like thinking, I'm so used to, well, just pull the gluten out, you know? So I said, well, so. So if you were worthy, what would you say about yourself? She goes, well, you know, I'm. I don't. People wouldn't really think so. But I am intelligent. Okay? So then we started building a case for why she was worthy. And I'm on our little Facebook community, and I'm putting this all down, and I'm writing her name, and I'm writing, I am worthy. And. And everybody on this Facebook community starts writing underneath it. You are worthy. You are worthy. You are worthy. And I gotta tell you, like, this has never happened in the pull out the bread thing, right? So I'm watching this. I'm like, oh, my gosh, this is way.

This is like.

This is big. My team's crying. I'm like, okay, I get it. But it is still uncharted. It's uncomfortable and vulnerable. And I think that actually that's the biggest part of the lesson. And, you know, you talked offline about these gurus. I mean, the bottom line is we're all. This is all a journey for all of us, and we're all figuring it out for sure, right?

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

For sure.

Now, your Living Experiment project that you're doing that podcast, because that sounds like. Okay, it's. We're all figuring it out, and it's a journey. Is that what's. What's that podcast about?

Yeah. So the Living Experiment is a podcast that I co host with Pilar Gerasimo. She's the founding editor of Experience Life magazine. Just a dear friend of mine, and just, I think, an amazingly talented, insightful, and actually frankly, underrated individual in kind of the health and wellness space. But. But we talk about ways to make your life better through healthy, happy choices. And we do it in a very sort of open and experimental way, which is really consistent with kind of what I do in my own kind of brand and message, which is, hey, here's some stuff like, if you don't love how things are, take a second, try something new. And we kind of break it up into different topics, and we talk about everything from fear and scarcity mentality to poop, to like, how. Like, what. Like, what is the difference between Paleo and primal? And, like, all kind of all over the place with topics, you know, the dangers of sitting and how to have a morning routine. And, like, we have lots of different topics, but it's all very conversational and very casual. But it's this, like. It's like the not sensationalized, not quick fix, no BS suggestion on how to learn what works for you in, like, this constantly evolving process that is life.

All right, I'm gonna throw a curve ball at you. Although I haven't been. You know, I always get questions from people and then I never go on like always all over the place. But here's the final question.

Cool.

And it's. There's one. You can't have more than one answer.

Okay.

What's the one thing that you do every day that makes the biggest difference in your life?

I get outside into the sunshine or like natural light even if it's not sunny, even if it's overcast. And that helps me in a few different ways. One, it helps me move because I don't really want to just go outside and just stand still. Two, it really helps with from a like circadian rhythm getting my sleep in order because getting that really good natural light early in the morning is super important for sleep. And three, I do it multiple times throughout the course of the day because it's good like ultra radiant rhythm breaks as a kind of break up my workday. So yeah, getting outside in the sunshine. And then of, of course there's the vitamin D, all that good stuff. Yeah.

We're actually supposed to be out there.

Yeah, right.

Isn't that amazing? It's so funny. If we just go back to where we were a thousand years ago, a lot of stuff goes away. We just got to combine the good stuff of now and the good stuff.

Of before for sure. It's a self leveling system.

Yes. I love that. All right, so if someone wants to get more and of course they do, where do they go?

Dallas.

DallasHartwig.com is my website. I'm also on Instagram, Alice Hartwig. And there's a few like Facebook and Twitter and whatever else. But Instagram and my website are the two primary places.

Okay. And I know you're giving away your program for free there now, which may not last forever. So you want to go to dallashartwig.com and grab it. And thank you so much for joining me today, Dallas. So fun.

Thank you so much for having me.

Yay.

Yes. Alice. After the break, I'm going to be.

Answering listeners questions, so stay with me.

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Welcome back. This is the time where I answer a listener's question. And today's question comes from Jane in Fairfield. And she says, jj, help. I am totally overwhelmed and trying to figure out how I can get some balance in my life. Between my kids, my job, my husband cooking, I can't seem to fit in. Eating healthy, exercise. Heck, I'm just trying to get enough sleep each night. How do you do it all? All right. I had to answer this question on this show because Dallas and I touched on a little bit about balance. And actually, I'm getting interviewed on this question. And the interview question was, how do you achieve life balance? And I honestly think life bal balance is kind of something that sets us up to feel bad about ourselves. Because first of all, when I start someone in any one of my programs, whether it's Miracle Mindset Academy or it's Virgin diet online program or Sugar Impact Diet online program, we start with one thing first. So we might start with swapping food. We might stop with just assessing mindset, but we start in one place. I don't say, okay, now you're here, so let's get you changing your food and exercising and let's get you sleeping and let's manage some stress. And, you know, I mean, that's crazy. That's going to put anyone into overwhelm. So what I like to tell people who are in overwhelm is the thing that saves you from overwhelm are habits. Habits can save you from overwhelm. And so what I want you to do is pick one at a time. And so if you look through in the grand scheme of things, all right, if you're working on your health, we know that you're going to need to dial in your eating. You're going to have to get yourself moving. You'll have to work on sleep. You know, there's this category, but let's pick one thing first and get that one dialed in. So, like, if we're looking at health, let's say the first thing we're going to do is just trade the dessert that you're having for breakfast, the muffin and the coffee, trade it on over for a shake. Start with one of my shakes and my shake recipes for breakfast. That's the simple one. Let's say that you've dialed that one in or your diet styled in, and you just need to move more. Okay. So. And you're going to start with tracking your steps, just wear a Fitbit, track how active you are, and then start adding in burst training. And if you've been around my community, you know, and on Facebook and on my website, I have all of these resources for how to burst, train, how to eat right, all of these things. But the big takeaway today is get yourself out of overwhelm by looking at one area you're going to work on. Work on that one first. And the thing that I think helps shape the whole thing the best and lock those habits in is getting up first thing in the morning, pulling out your journal, not getting into technology. And just focus on what you're grateful for and what you're going to be working on. So that if the thing right now you're working on is eating better, write those goals for the day. Every day, every day, every day. Once they're locked in, then you can go to the next one. But getting those habits in place means you'll avoid the overwhelm that happens when they're all out there and you're like, oh my gosh, how am I going.

To do it all?

You're not going to do it all. You know what, you're going to get one thing built in and then go to the next. And once that's just fitting into your schedule, you can put the next one in there. No feeling guilty on my watch. All right, if you'd like to submit a question, just head over to my Facebook page, JJVirginFanClub. And I also have a favorite ask. I would hugely appreciate it if you could jump on Stitcher or itunes and leave a review for me. It helps a bunch. And be sure to subscribe and share the show with your friends. This is JJ Virgin, signing off and reminding you to live courageously. Show up, step up. You are stronger than you think.

Foreigners. This is Anne Bogle, author, blogger, and creator of the podcast what Should I Read next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week, I check all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately. And I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course, recommending books that meet the moment, whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything. You'll learn something about yourself as a reader, and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read, with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for what Should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast and visit our website what Should I read next podcast.com to find out more.