32. Lee Holden: Why Slowing Down Could Change Your Life

What are some of the things that we're doing every day that are crushing our dopamine that cause us to stay and live in this loophole?

So dopamine is a neurochemical that's involved in refining a repetitive exercise in order to elicit success in living. So for example, at one time that might have been throwing a spear or hunting for berries or whatever. And so as you get good at that, you become more familiar with drive and pattern recognition and refinement of motor units that has been hijacked by the tech gods of Silicon Valley. And so they've taken a productive neurochemical pathway, laying in our neurophysiology and hijacked it by creating attention units that this is important. And you get a dopamine hit. You get a dopamine hit. So the reason you feel good when you get a comment on your Facebook post, the reason that you get a little rush, all of those things, a text message from a friend, a little link, all of the productive aspects of your dopamine has been hijacked for people to hook you into those worlds. Also, again, you're not rooted.

The following is an operation podcast production. Do you feel both captivated and exhausted by city life? Are the conveniences worth the chaos in this episode of the Rooted in Wellness podcast, Join me, Wade Lightheart and Matt Galan as we explore the challenges of maintaining balance in busy urb environments and the serene contrast of ashram life. We'll tackle the obesity epidemic, misleading health, food marketing, the benefits of GLP1 agonists, monitoring biomarkers, proper digestion, TRT for women, and so much more. Wade Leithheart is a three time natural bodybuilding champion and director of education at Bioptimizers Nutrition. Matt Gallant is a CEO and co founder of BiOptimizers with over 15 years of supplement formulation experience. Together they've authored the ultimate nutrition bible, an incredible science backed guide to mastering any diet. Amazing. So great to have you guys here. Matt and Wade, my gosh, I'm so excited about today's conversation. One because magnesium breakthrough is something that's completely changed my life. Thanks to my friend Drew Pruitt. Shout out to Drew, who got me hooked on you guys. But it's also a supplement that I ship to my mom. So my mom's 78 years old. She's been suffering with some major anxiety. She's been on it and it's been a game changer for her. So I'm grateful to dive in today. You know, we'll get started. I want to tell you a little bit about this podcast. We're talking a little bit before the show. This is really about, you know, getting rooted in wellness really means to me, getting rooted in your life, in your health, but also your inner wisdom to heal. And I'm curious for you guys, like, what does it mean to get rooted in your wellness? What does it mean to feel rooted for you?

It's a great question. We talked about it beforehand. What does rooted mean? Because I wanted to know your definition and I think that's best suited in a word or a phrase, which is I'm actively calm and calmly active. I'm the prince of peace, sitting on the throne of Poise, directing the kingdom of activity. So that's a moniker by one of my spiritual teachers, Paramahansa Yogananda. You were talking about our lives. We both spent time living in ashrams. And in India, when you go to an ashram, one of the most chaotic places you could ever imagine, like, it's. It's like if you haven't gone there, go. Because it'll just smash everything you believe about your existence. And then you step out of the chaos into an ashram past. Their gates are usually walled off.

Yeah.

And then you enter into this total serenity, peace, well manicured stuff. Various monks and devotees who are doing their spiritual practices and living, you know, a more naturally oriented life or a traditional style life. And there is a sense of a big oak tree with giant roots going into the ground. There's a feeling that is there. And I think the more people become unrooted or chasing social media or doing the information game and all that sort of stuff that we're all subjected to, you know, like the sheer amount of data and information we're trying to process now to compared to our ancestors is, is it's not even measurable. And that creates an unrooted feeling. Or I'm all over the place. Like I'm. You're like the leaves blowing in the wind and the whatever the currents are in your life is kind of blowing you all around. Your thoughts, your actions, your emotions, your feelings. And there's an innate voice deep down in the back your head saying, slow down. And it's a whisper and you get little wisps of it. You go to a park or you go to a beach and you catch it for a moment and then you get back into the hustle and bustle of life. But rooted to me means that I'm in that space. And even when the wind blows, I'm just enjoying the rough the ruffling of the leaves. But I'm not ruffled.

Beautiful. You can exist amongst it, right?

Correct.

Yeah.

And that's always a balancing act because, you know, you need a little bit of wind, but not too much.

Yeah.

A little bit of rain, but not too much. You need a little bit of sunshine, not too much. And so really, a lot of what we're doing is providing some guideposts for people to how to systematically find that center again.

Yeah. And do you notice yourself when you're straying off path?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I love that definition. What about you?

Yeah, first of all, I think I've been learning to be more grounded. It's not something that was intuitive, but a couple things that really worked for me. One is going to visit my parents. We're all from Canada, so try to go twice a year. And when I always talk about how grounding it is to go back to where you were born and raised and see all your old friends, and you can. You can see how much progress you've made in life, you know, so it's powerful. But the main thing is I just try to be spiritually grounded, like, you know, every day, you know, every decision, how I'm approaching life. Even business, you know, business is a spiritual path. So I feel like if I'm spiritually grounded, everything feels good, and then when I lose touch with that, then it's a dangerous place.

I couldn't agree with you more. Especially, like, the spiritual foundation, I would say, is the. The foundation of my healing. Like, everything kind of stemmed from that. And I have to say, we're going to dive into the ultimate nutrition bible, which you guys created. Never have I ever create. I've read a lot of nutrition textbooks. I literally was sitting with this at my pool this weekend going through it. And what I love so much about it is the amount of empathy that comes off from it. Like, I can tell you put a lot of care into that. I love that you speak about the spiritual aspect of healing and understanding people's backgrounds and where they come from and how we can all kind of step into optimal health from a very different perspective. So thank you for that foundation. And with that said, a lot of the people that I'm sure you guys have worked with, what helps you when you notice that you're getting unrooted? A lot of people now are treating their wellness checklist as a thing to do every single day, where they don't even notice that those are the things that are causing them to feel uprooted. Or more agitated in their health. So what are a few things that make you feel uprooted?

I mean, obviously, tracking technology for a lot of people becomes really stressful. Um, you know, they wake up, they look at their ordering stats, and they're like, oh, man, only got 60 minutes, deep sleep, set of 90, et cetera. Um, and I love technology and I love tracking, but it's like weighing yourself. You know, if you gain four pounds because you ate a little bit of food last night and you're, you know, holding on to water, you got intestinal bulk. Not being emotional about the data is really important. I think that's a. Something most people have never really learned. You know, they just react to, oh, I'm, you know, gain two pounds or my sleep is not a hundred score, whatever it is. But if you just start to see data as more of a, oh, that's interesting. You know, what can I learn from it? And, you know, how can I improve based on this information instead of getting stressed out about it? I think that's. That's a really big one for people in the health space.

Absolutely. There's so much data, and I'm a data person. Like, I love all the gadgets that I can wear, but there's a difference when you. You really let it define you versus simply using it as guidance. Right? Yeah. What about you?

For me, it's more about rituals and my observation of myself within those. So because health and vitality is really important to me, it's grounded in a series of rituals. And those rituals on the outside might seem kind of repetitive or boring, but they're benchmarks that I'm tuned into. So, for example, meditation. Where is my mind in my meditation? I can get an instant feedback and just. Even if only to get a few minutes in, you know, how hard is it for me to drop into that deep space? Where's my monkey mind going? All that sort of stuff. I get up in the morning. I, you know, you do my energization, my meditation practice. Did I get those in today? Well, if I'm not on point, generally, I'm putting too much effort into the world and not taking enough in my grounding space. The next thing, my daily workout routine. Yeah, right. Hit the gym early in the morning. So what's my energy level in the morning? Am I tired? Am I hungry? Is my brain foggy? What is the feedback when I show up to that workout? I also, first thing in the morning, I get up and get on the scale. So I use the scale as a measuring point. Inflammatory markers, you know, because I know that I didn't gain weight.

Yeah.

Overnight. But if I ate a bunch of food, that wasn't, you know, in alignment with the highest ideals of dietary practices.

Yeah.

You know, I had some fun with my friends. I went on a social occasion. It's a pizza or something, and I'm up two or three pounds in the morning. I go, oh, look at the inflammatory response that's happening here. So I don't see that as, oh, my God, it's the end of the world. But it's like, okay, I can monitor these things. The other part is how much time I'm able to take out of my life to think so in the afternoons, because I spend a lot of time working online with our company, and that's not really my strength. Like, I'm not an online guy. I'm not a tech guy, I'm not a data guy, I'm not a computer guy. None of those things. And so for me, it's always an extra effort to spend time in those mediums.

Yeah.

But in the afternoon, I, you know, I kind of have my peak hours, and I. I go for my walk down along the beach, kind of recharge my body, and then take another. Okay, where am I at? Am I stressed out? Am I a little stimulated? Am I overstimulated in my.

Bored.

Am I like, you know, what are. What are my feedback mechanisms? And then, same thing. I'll, you know, my evening ritual, where you kind of wind things down. You know, am I able to concentrate on a book? Am I sore and stiff? Right. Do I have aches and pains? Is my spine out of alignment? Is my musculature, you know, really sore and hurting? All of those little intuitive feedbacks. Also listening to my body and then once again, dropping into meditation for it.

Do it.

Do I. Do I take the time to get into meditation? Or I'm like, oh, I'm too tired to do that and spend that 10 extra minutes or 15 extra minutes. So those are good examples of how I would estimate how grounded I am. And then there's also feedback loops. That's the other piece. So having a group of people around you that can give you honest feedback. Like, so, for example, if I drink too much caffeine or something, and I'm on a business meeting with Matt, Matt's like, okay, what's your caffeine intake today?

How many milligrams are you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He's so he's.

He's gauging where I'm at. As milligrams. I like stimulants same, right? I'm a stimulant guy. And so that ride up might feel good, but I might be just screwing up everybody around me and wondering why they're idiots. And it's like, oh yeah, dude, you're the idiot.

I'm so good too, that. Yeah. I want to take a quick break from our episode to thank our sponsors. Paleo Valley. Paleo Valley is most known for their amazing grass fed beef sticks which I recommend to all of my clients as it's the perfect high protein, nutrient dense snack on the go. Plus, they are sourced from us family farmers that use rotational grazing practices and they're fermented for optimizing gut health. But what most people don't know is that Paleo Valley offers a wide range of nutrient dense products and supplements that you can use to supercharge your health. One of my favorites being their organic coffee. Yes, Paleo Valley sells my favorite coffee. Why? Conventional coffee plants are heavily sprayed with pesticides and herbicides and insecticides. Plus coffee beans can contain mycotoxins, which are mold toxins that can contaminate coffee beans during storage. So to avoid the chance of consuming these nasty toxins in my coffee beans, I opt for Paleo Valley's organic coffee instead. And the best part is that they load their coffee with mushrooms like turkey tail and Reishi to bolster your immune system. Cordyceps and shiitake to provide a natural energy boost supporting your active lifestyle. Chaga mushrooms to deliver an antioxidant punch protecting your body from environmental stressors. And chaga and reishi also to help your body handle stress effectively. To try out Paleo Valley's beef sticks and or organic coffee or any of their amazing nutrient dense products and supplements. Head over to paleovalley.com mona and use code MONA at checkout to save 50, 15% on your order. I love asking these questions because I think a lot of people were still stuck on looking for that perfect diet, the perfect pill, the perfect protocol. And so when I have these experts come in, it sounds like, you know, you've really taken ownership of your constitution and understanding what works for you and what doesn't. So I hope that just inspires people to take that away. And when we think about it globally, like, you know, talking about this access that we do have to wellness today, never has there ever been more access to wellness information and knowledge, what to do, people to follow, things to try. And yet we're getting sicker, right? Adults and children are getting Sicker. What would you say, like, what is the biggest health crisis in your mind after all the research that you guys put into this book?

Obesity.

Obesity, yeah, it's obesity.

And I'd like to maybe take a moment, talk about why that is. And we, we touch on it in the book, which is we have this ancient wiring which has one purpose. Survival. Yeah, right in. Back in the caveman, you know, caveman days, if you saw food, you would gorge on it. Why? Because who knows how long it's going to be before you find another fruit tree or another animal to eat. So that wiring is still with us, but now we have food scientists that create hyper palatable food, which means that you, you eat it, it tastes amazing. Your dopamine, serotonin explodes. You want more of it, easy to, easier to overeat. So it's engineered that way. Right. Satiety levels are really low with a lot of the snack foods and add convenience, you know, Uber eats, whatever, instacart, boom, pushing some buttons. You got food delivered whenever you want.

At any time of day, anytime.

You got the marketing and, you know, so when you put that together, it's the perfect storm for obesity. And the only way out that I see, and I think we're seeing some promising stuff with the GLP1 agonist is now we need, you know, drugs and molecules to kind of override that ancient wiring. And it's working. Yeah, right. Let's. By lowering these hunger hormones, we're seeing the most successful results we've ever seen. Now, the problem with the GLP1 is you need to stay on them. But yeah, I think for those of us that are not hyper disciplined, which the three of us probably are, we're consistent, we're committed. You know, if you look at the failure rate, which is 97%, I think too many people have been blaming them, like they're weak, they're not disciplined. I don't agree with that. I just look at them and say, you know, they've got ancient wiring. They just haven't been able to overcome that. And kind of looking at alcoholics or drug addicts, you know, they have that wiring as well. And, you know, do we blame them? I mean, yeah, they're, they're responsible, but I feel like we need to build better solutions. So it's tough. It's really tough.

I agree with you. You know, for a lot of the clients that I work with, I feel like it's not their fault. You know, they can stay on a program. They feel like they've detoxed a bit. And then the second there's an opportunity to go after those hyper palatable foods, it's like this incontrollable reaction, right, that in food marketing today, right, we're just sold these gluten free fake health food labeled keto products that we think are actually healthy for us, but they're not like they're fake food. It's dead boxed fake food.

Yeah. And I would say on that side of it, I'd go a little bit deeper than that. And that's the deference to authority and accountability. So it might not be someone's fault that they're fat, but it is their responsibility and their imperative to change the paradigm. And in that, essentially what has happened to the population is that they've been hoodwinked by their authorities. What I mean is we have this concept of health care and the authorities that represent that industry, which is essentially sick care, but somewhere along the line that got co opted by corporate interests that usurp the imperative of keeping that person healthy and keeping that person on the prescription medication program. So essentially when you go to your GP and he says everything's normal, you should say that as a wake up call. Because normal. According to Professor Oshansky, who wrote a paper in 2003 at the New England Journal of Medicine, the disability adjusted life's life expectancy was 60 years old. What that means is although life expectancy was around 80, you were going to spend the last 25% on your life in a debilitating condition that is compromising your life and the value that you're able to add your sense of happiness, your sense of, I don't know anybody that goes to the hospitals or is on prescription medications that's excited about these products and happy about it. Yeah, you know, and it keeps going and it's one thing after another and then, you know, side effect after side effect and another one. But anybody, I want to backtrack from that and recognize that that is the program that you're going into. They're not advising you on how you got there. They're not expecting you to change your lifestyle. They are there to mitigate the side effects of your daily decisions. And what happens is people kind of say, well my doctor says, and that deference to authority was learned in the Prussian education system, which was, we inherited as an education system which, which I'm sit at my desk, I listen to authorities, I operate under that system. This person tells me what to do, I have to pass the test, I have to fill out the forms I gotta put my name on it. And they give me some aspect of languaging that I don't comprehend. Have you ever heard a drug name that was easy to pronounce now? No.

And those commercials like as Canadians when he came down to the states seeing nonstop like whoa, side effects.

Yeah, right. And then if you look at our media outlets, okay, so if you look at your major news outlets that people are getting their tidbits of information, what is it? 80 to 85% of the advertisements are for pharmaceutical corporations. Well, if I'm going to be an elected official in Washington, I need funding. Who's going to fund it? The lobbyists from pharmaceutical situation. So is our government going to be able to regulate that? No. Is our media agencies going to be able to regulate it? Is our medical industry the best, the brightest, the smartest, the most motivated? They owe hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. Maybe they took over practice for a million dollars. They got a million dollar mortgage. Right. They're married to a lawyer who's also in the same thing practicing and articling. They spend 15, 12, 15 years to get to the, to the point where they're really doing well. But guess what? They're all debt slaves.

Yeah.

And they're associated with an industry who is compelling them to operate under a certain set of controls and they're hamstrung. So you have very smart, intelligent people with a tiny regulated toolbox that they can't do anything else. And if they step outside the lines, they get squashed by their industry, by their colleagues, by regulatory bodies, by the law. And so we have to have empathy and compassion for our professionals as well as taking responsibility and recognizing that they can serve you and giving you the information or the tests or the values, or they can be there in acute serious medical situation, which we're really good at on that side. But outside of that, most of those diseases and conditions can be avoided, recovered, or at least managed through a right that diet and lifestyle. But guess what? There's only one person that can do that and that's you and knowing yourself. And maybe you're not that disciplined or maybe you're not struggling. Well, you have to do a value equation and say, okay people go, well, I don't have time, or this seems too hard. Okay, great, well let's, let's take that attitude over the rest of your life. So if you're 35, 40 years old and your life expectancy is 80 and you're already compromised, now do the math. What's your life going to look like?

Yeah.

So I saw a stat the other day that said for every hour of exercise you do, you add three hours to your life.

Incredible.

So it's like an investment program. Every hour that you put into your health is an investment in your long term future. And Matt and I understood that equation really well as we were former personal trainers and we had the people that I had we call the golden handcuffs. They're in their early 50s, they're the top of the food chain in their professional career. That's the kind of people we coached ahead the time. And they were spending as much money as they could trying to recover something. And it was an uphill battle for those people. And these are high performers on every level. So ideally, don't get into that situation. And if you are in that situation, you got to start cutting some things that got you to the top and take time to be rooted, as you would say.

Absolutely. It's no secret, like if you do follow a lot of these big brands, it goes back to big food, which comes back to money. And we look at big food and big pharma like there's just a strong connection. And I hope that, you know, people continue to get educated on this. I'll always say to my clients, you know, when you go to your medical doctor, just ask the questions, why? And I don't want to hate on lot of these doctors because it's their training is all they know. To your point, they spent a lot of money getting educated in that field that got to think that they were wrong. Right. But I think that there's an openness, I would say, if anybody's ever told to go on a prescription medication or anything like that, simply ask why. Or if your doctor's not your partner in getting off of the medication, eventually, if it is something that's out of necessity, then find a different doctor who's your partner. Right.

Well, I think we have to look at our officials who are essentially controlling our life and we have to invert the equation. These people work for us. Yeah, right. It's like Matt and I, we're working for our customers. Like so the people who purchase our products, reader information, all of that information, I'm working for them. They're telling me what we need and we're here to serve them. Your doctor, your politician, the information that you're taking in, is that serving you or are you being entertained?

Absolutely.

And entertained is okay, but is that just a mere distraction to manage the things that you, you don't want to do? So if we look at television viewing and phone viewing and computer viewing. There's plenty of time inside of that for most people to invest in their health, and it doesn't have to be expensive. So, you know, I always talk about air, water and exercise. Those three things, deep breathing, proper hydration and daily exercise. You can go a long ways on those three.

You tie that into the ashram. That's literally the philosophy of the ashram that I grew up with. You brought up another point, though. You know, we think about aging. Would you say that one of your bigger drivers for health is your future and how you want to live?

Number one, right now.

Number one, right. For me, I've got a clear picture of how I want to be when I'm 100. I see myself climbing, hiking, hopefully with a grandkid on my back with all my mobility, with like visible muscle strength. With a lot of my clients, they're not even thinking about that. They're thinking about the here and the now, maybe the, the short term goals that they have. But I think the emphasis really has to shift now. Right. And that's probably a big driver, you tell me, with the people that you've worked with in terms of committing to their health goals long term.

Yeah, we talk about that in the book. You know, really creating those long term dopamine loops and kind of stacking different dopamine loops. But let's start with the longest one. So my goal is to live to 170.

170.

God knows if I'll get there. Right. But I, I am bullish on technology and help, help advancement. So I think it's, there's a good possibility it's going to be possible, but we'll find out.

I'll chase you.

So, yeah, but I think about that. I actually visualize, you know, the multi generational element and I get excited about it. Like I am excited about that vision. So that's, that's kind of like my foundational, you know, piece that drives me to want to do more and more anti aging things, continue investing in that, and then, you know, I'll pass it on to Wayne a second. But, you know, I think Wade's in a great job on the bodybuilding side, starting from a really big broad vision and then kind of breaking that down into smaller dopamine loops. And I just want to emphasize how powerful dopamine is because, you know, I think there's a lot more awareness of it. But without dopamine, nothing happens. You know, dopamine is necessary to propel yourself to do things if you don't have enough dopamine, you will be bored, you will be flat, you will not have the motivation to do anything. And the cool thing is you have a lot more control over your own dopamine production by simply choosing that something's important. It's like, step one is, okay, you know, living a long, healthy life is super important. Like, you have to feel that. And that creates kind of the. The architecture in your mind to generate dopamine. I'm going to pass it on to Wade because, you know, he's been incredibly successful in bodybuilding, and I think the way he broke that down is a great example of that.

And what would you say too, you know, in your answer, what are some of the things that we're doing every day that are crushing our dopamine that causes to stay and live in this loophole?

Yeah, just bones. Well, phone's a big one.

Technology, so.

So what is dopamine? So dopamine was. Is a neurochemical that's involved in refining a repetitive exercise in order to elicit success in living. So, for example, at one time, that might have been throwing a spear or hunting for berries or whatever. And so as you get good at that, you become more familiar with drive and pattern recognition and refinement of motor units that has been hijacked by the tech gods of Silicon Valley. And so they've taken a productive neurochemical pathway, laying in our neurophysiology, and hijacked it by creating attention units that, this is important. And you get a dopamine hit.

You get.

Get a dopamine hit. Dopamine. So the reason you feel good when you get a comment on your Facebook post, the reason that you get a little rush when a text message comes in saying, you know, will you donate to my political party? You know, like, it could be that silly, but you still get. But it's like, oh, you know, what's the president saying to me? You know, right, all of those things. A text message from a friend, a little link, all that, the. All of the productive aspects of your dopamine has been hijacked for people to hook you into those worlds. So we were just talking about this earlier. It's like, I now turn my phone upside down everywhere because I noticed I could be having a conversation with you, and one of those little flashing lights or a little notice comes in. And I checked out.

Yeah, you can't even be present with the person that you're with.

So now we have an attention span for your goal. So again, you're not rooted. Yeah, again, what is that? I'm blowing in the wind. I'm not down in the earth. And so that. That becomes that. So for me, I had a couple of unique experiences early on that allowed me to grasp this. When I was 15, my parents moved to a very rural place. It was five miles to my nearest neighbor, 35 miles to the nearest town, and 50 miles to the nearest city. And my sister was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease, which is a form of cancer of lymph nodes. I watched her go through the medical model for four years. It was horrible. Till she died at the age of 22. She was four years my senior. And she gave me a bodybuilding magazine at that same time. And I'll share with you how important a little tiny value can be to change your life in that horrific situation. Because I'm isolated from my friends, I'm isolated from my community. I'm living in the middle of the woods. My parents are obsessed with trying to save their daughter's life. And so life seemed very out of my control, really unfair. And I remember getting a bodybuilding magazine from my sister, had Troy Zuclotto on the COVID Mr. California, Pretty Girl, and all this stuff. Remember to this day. And I was like, wow, maybe if I had those muscles, I'd be fit and healthy and then I could get one of these pretty girls. 15 years old seemed like a good idea. So I built a gym in my barn, right, and started training kind of like Rocky did and, you know, the Drago Rocky movie. And I started reading Arnold Schwarzenegger books. And Arnold Schwarzenegger was a guy from a little village with a weird name living in Austria. And then he became champion of the world with Mr. Universes. And Mr. Olympia said, I'm going to do that. I'm going to go to. I'm going to win those championships. I'm going to train at Gold's Gym and I'm going to be next to Arnold and I'm going to have a nutrition company that delivers products all around the world. This is when I'm 15 years old. Because my situation was so difficult at that time, I had to create almost a fantasy world. That and. And Arnold at the time was. It was the 80s and he was the most, you know, the highest paid actor. He was everywhere. He was so cool. He was a physical specimen. I'm like, he's everything that I want to be. And he said three things.

His.

All his success was hard work, self discipline and a positive attitude. Well, everybody I Knew, worked hard, right? We were in like, these are people fishing, cutting down trees, working in the like, yeah, mechanics, heavy labor, like dangerous, heavy duty work. But nobody talked about self discipline and nobody talked about a positive attitude. Those were like, what are those things? So I became fascinated with it. And so I said, I'm going to go do that. But I realized, scrawny little 15 year old with, you know, a cement weight set that he picked up. How am I going to get there? Well, I went, okay, well, to win the. Compete at the Mr. Olympia or win the Mr. Universe, I need to win a national title. To win a national title, I need to win a provincial or state championship. To win that, I need me at a local show. To win a local show, I need some muscles. I better get some muscles. Now, the other side of that equation. So that was the exterior person. But part of my discovery in that was looking at those idols, if you will, those icons of something that was so much better than I was. The contrast was obvious. I thought that if I got muscles and was strong, I would be healthy. Because with my sister's illness and her death, I realized that your health isn't a guarantee and your life isn't a guarantee. So the flip side of the tragic event is I had to get really realistic about those two things. And most people don't discover that till middle age. A friend dies, you know, maybe a parent dies or someone close to them or gets really sick and goes through one of those tragic situations. That was front and center for me from 15. So that had an impact on me to understand the value. Now I made mistakes along the way because I had an external version of health and that later changed to an internal version of health. But from those little moments, I developed a philosophy that's served me. You know, I'm now in my 50s and my whole life has revolved around that decision as a teenager.

Right.

To put my health first.

You both have really great journeys and stories which we're going to dive into. You know, something I'm noticing, to your point, there's a lot of people who think that being at their optimal health has to look a certain way. Right. We're comparing ourselves still to people who are out there in the media and. And you know, based on a lot of the case studies that I've heard you guys talk about, we're looking at a lot of these biomarker testings and they look physically fit, maybe thin on the outside, but internally I have never. And again, these are people who are doing all the right Things on paper, right then internally you see that there's major like inflammation that's happening systemically. Issues with their gut, issues with digestion, which we know like all of those symptoms, if we're not dealing with long term, are going to be the things that lead to the imbalances, the diseases and stuff like that. And you both have shared your journey kind of along the same path. Very different backgrounds completely. Can you share more on that and like, why do you think that this is happening now?

Yeah, first of all, just to give everybody the picture, please, why we wrote the book and how it came about. I started doing ketogenic diets when I was 15. Came home from. 15, yeah, 15 years old. Came home from school. My uncle said it was. I was fat. Pissed me off. I'm like, okay, so read the Atkins book. Went from like 190 to 147. Doing that and jogging. Then I felt weak and scrawny and similar to Wade. I didn't see the magazine, but I went to the beach and I saw two jacked bodybuilders that became our friends a few years later. And I'm like, okay, I want to look like that. So got into bodybuilding, but yeah, always kind of on the ketogenic side. I was doing a cyclical ketogenic diet my teen years and it worked well. I became a ketogenic zealot as a trainer. So I would put like all my clients on it.

How'd that work out?

It worked for about half, maybe 60%. But I remember my first client that it definitely did not work for. His skin was gray, he looked worse. He had lost body fat, but he looked worse and he felt, he looked worse. Everybody felt worse. I thought so as well. Another guy too, I remember he lost a bunch of muscle mass. He was not a happy client. So those experiences and I didn't understand why. I just thought everybody should be keto and yeah, Wade. I used to argue for a long time, you know, ways, you know, maybe I'll just pass it on to Wade, talk about the. His plant based journey and then we can.

Yeah. So I grew up in a real place that was meat and potatoes every meal. And if you didn't have meat and potatoes, it was not a meal, it was a snack. And so I fell into the bodybuilding where protein is king. And there's a lot. If you look at just body fat, percentage, fitness, muscle mass. I don't know why bodybuilding gets such a bad rap. If you go to any fitness competition or bodybuilding contest at the local level, every single person has got a body fat lower than most people will ever have. They've got excellent levels of muscle mass, bone densities, which are big carriers for the longevity part. But ironically, bodybuilders don't live longer than the population. There's a reason for that. They've mastered diet. Okay, so when everybody says, I've tried everything and it doesn't work well, how is it that all these people with all these genetics, like the worst person in the bodybuilding show at the local level is better than most people will ever be in their entire life? So there's a set of principles that were developed in the bodybuilding and fitness community that absolutely work every time for everybody.

Right?

However, I got to a place in my career in 2001 and I had decided to step away from the, the bodybuilding where there were no drug tested competitions and the use of anabolics and hormones are very pervasive in a lot of bodybuilding stuff. And so, and I went on a spiritual journey. It's where I spent time in an ashram. And then I read a book called the Holy Science by Swami Sri Teswar, who was Yogananda's guru. And inside it they, he, he broke down the physiology of humanity. Our teeth, the digestive canal, our sensory responses to food. And I was like, this is a really compelling argument and why a plant based diet might be more suitable to your intuitive responses as a human. I'm like, all right, this is really in the face against a lot of things that I believe I'm going to put it to the test. So I tried it for two weeks, plant based diet. It didn't dry up and blow away. And then so, you know, there is a fear and that's another thing that people have to overcome of change there, there's a definite, you know, people don't want to go down those roads, they.

Want to change criticism too, I can.

Imagine, for you or my identity, et cetera. So then I went more weeks. I felt great. So I said, well, I'll run this another month. At the end of two months, I said, I guess I just won't eat any meat. So I'm not a vigilante vegan telling everybody what they got to do. I don't believe in that. I understand that plants have an energetic and emotional cycle as well. That was proven in, you know, early 1900s by J.C. bose on the crescent graph. So I, there's no moral grandstanding about it. I was like, let's do this now. Then came the question, well, you can't be a bodybuilding champion on a plant based diet. Where are you going to get your protein?

Yeah.

And I was like, especially then, well, yeah, there was no protein powders. Okay. I have to prove that this is. I have to be able to demonstrate that I could do a bodybuilding contest. And I started on that journey. Everybody told me I was crazy. Everybody told me it wasn't possible. And two years later, I was standing on stage representing the country at the Mr. Universe contest, which happened to be in India at the time. Wow. And from that. But I made some critical mistakes right after that. I gained 42 pounds of fat and water because I didn't understand what happens when you go on a restrictive diet for a long period of time. I had gone 11 months on a super restrictive bodybuilding, if it fits your macro style diet adapted for a vegetarian diet, which nobody had that experience. Even though I had a best coach, he was like, I don't know, like, this is the best that we're going to do. And inside of that, that screwed up my digestion. So I gained 42 pounds of fat and water in 11 weeks. Don't do that at home. And that led to the next breakthrough that Matt and I discovered, which that regardless of your diet, if you don't have an optimized digestive state, you are not going to absorb or utilize that food. And we believe that part of the reason, while people will go to one diet or another is genetics. The other part is digestive dysfunction. We got 12% of the emergency hospital visits right now are related to gastrointestinal diseases. This is like you're going into emergency. What, heart disease is 25% of emergency?

Yeah.

So it's half a heart disease. You got 100 million people in this country on any given day are suffering from some sort of digestive, you know, malady. And then you've got 25% of those that are on prescription and a whole bunch of people are using over the counter stuff in order to mask the symptoms, that their body's saying, hey, I can't digest this food. I can't break this down. I'm getting inflamed. This is messing up your brain. You're waking up with crusty eyes, bad breath and brain fog every day and thinking that's normal. It's not. But it is. If you are trapped in, you know, the food paradigm that we are living in and so reversing that, fixing your digestion, choosing a diet that's based on your genetics, your sustainability, your Lifestyle, what you can do. And that's what our book is all about. About what are the things you need to look for and how do you make this work for you, not just today, not just for 12 weeks, but for a life.

Gosh, you brought up a big point, which is yo yo dieting. Right. Do you ever try, did you ever try going vegetarian or vegan or anything? Did you see?

Yeah, I did raw food. So between Wade and I, there's not much we have not done. You know, raw food was a thing for a while. We had went a little longer than I did, but yeah, so I did that. It was interesting.

Yeah, whatever. I tell my clients to practice or try looking at their biomarkers or their genetics, I try first. So I feel the same. I feel like I've tried everything. And I'm convinced that every single diet can work for you part time, temporarily, until it doesn't. Right. In my world, for nutrition, going back to Ayurveda, the foundation of digestion is everything. If you do not have that, you do not have health, period. And you guys devote so much information to talking about that in this book. I'm so grateful for that. What are some of the detriments, though? You know, people are still looking for the perfect diet out there. They're going to try new things. Yo yo dieting, how is that fueling imbalance and disease?

First of all, if you look at the data, when people say lose body fat and regain some of it back, they're still further ahead, typically on a health marker side. So. But why are they yo yo wing back and forth? One of the big reasons is if you're in a diet for a long period of time, your metabolism gets slower and slower and slower. And as Wade's story illustrates, if you go back to just eating what you were eating before, there's a huge difference between the amount of energy you were burning before you started and now. And it makes it very easy to regain. And it goes back to what we were talking about earlier in the show, which is your body has one priority, survival. And that's why there's all these starvation survival mechanisms that kick in, especially if you die too hard, too fast, don't do diet breaks, you know, and you're not prepared for, you know, npy, which is a peptide in the brain going wild, which I experienced once I died. It too hard, too fast for my wedding. I was hungry for two years, like two years. And I regained, you know, about 80% of the weight I lost. It was, it was brutal. It Just didn't matter what I ate, how well I ate. It was just this incessant hunger. And a lot of fitness competitors call it the hunger.

Right.

Especially on the female side, it seems to happen more. So it's a real, it's real, you know, leptin, you know, ghrelin, npy. You know, your body was sort of sacrificing muscle mass. Your basal metabolic rate will lower. All of these things will occur if you die too hard, too fast. So, so how do you counter that? Well, doing diet breaks is a good strategy. So taking your time. I think, you know, one of the mistakes people make is this, you know, 12 weeks, let's lose £30, £40, whatever it is. Is that possible? Yes. But coming out of that, the likelihood that you won't regain it unless you're super sophisticated is really low. Reverse dieting was probably one of the biggest breakthroughs since, you know, we, we were training people, which means that you start slowly increasing your calories, maybe 100 calories a week for 8, 10, 12, 16 weeks, you know, so that you're, you're taking advantage of your body's drive for homeostasis, and you're kind of fooling it. You're increasing your metabolism, and it's not going to start regaining body fat. So that, that's a huge one, especially for people that have been dieting a very long time. And, you know, prioritizing protein, fiber is, is key because, you know, net calories is real. So, you know, there's calories and then there's net calories. What's the difference? Well, you know, protein, your body's going to burn 25 to 30% just processing those protein molecules, which are big, and it takes a lot of energy and fiber and weight is the fiber king. The fiber king. Your body's only going to absorb about 50% of those calories. And of course, protein and fiber gives you a lot of satiety. Like, if the only thing people did was increase their protein, increase their fiber high enough, it kind of regulates a lot of the other issues that people have around overeating.

So catching myself getting so excited as you're talking, because the great insight behind this, and you guys obviously have the data around this, this, this myth of a diminishing metabolism as we age, doesn't have to be true, right? And how can that also, you know, improve our hormonal function, our sleep? You guys talk about also the role of neurochemicals with food. You know, when we look at this as a system, how do you Direct your clients then, like, you know, if you have some people who do want to go keto versus those who want to go vegetarian or vegan, what are some key things that you're looking for to support them?

I think nutrigenomics is huge. So we're working on a test that people can do, and it'll help them either choose the right type of diet and also refine it further. And, you know, one key example for me, and this is a relatively new thing, I don't have good genetics for saturated fats. So I've been on a ketogenic diet, eating a ton of animal fat, which is saturated fat. And out of all the things I've struggled to improve, biomarker wise, it's been my lipids.

Wow.

Right.

So now since I've seen that or have that insight, lowering my saturated fat intake, increasing olive oil intake, so I'm modifying it in long term. That will probably have a very significant impact. And I'll pass it on to Wade because Wade's got some great examples as well.

On the genetic side, will you typically run these labs and genetic tests with people before you? Yeah.

Well, it's certainly an easier way to go. Like what took me 20 years to figure out, you can figure out. And it takes the, you know, 20 minutes with a. With a proper analysis that will shorten the directional motives that you're going or direct where you're going directionally. So for myself, I'll give you an example. If left by my own devices, I'll be 300 pounds easily. Why? Well, if we. And I. And I'll die of a heart disease in my 50s or 60s. Why is that? Well, if I look at my genetics, I have the gene that means my stomach doesn't tell my brain to stop eating, so I'll overeat easily. And that's a survival mechanism from my ancestors. They probably starved a lot. And the guys that could eat a lot at the table at the time, they live longer. Okay, that's that thing. I've got a double bad gene for cardiovascular health. Okay. And then I've got a poor gene for fat metabolism, and I got a poor gene for insulin management. So when I went to a bodybuilding diet, high protein, moderate carbohydrates, low fat, felt great, looked great. However, if I continued down that route, I would probably die of a heart disease in my 70s, not my 50s.

Right, right.

Okay. So it managed the bodybuilding diet, managed my insulin. I wasn't taking in a lot of fat, but I wasn't getting the benefits of essential fat. That's where Matt came in. Cause Matt started hammering me about essential fatty acids and I didn't process fats very well. Okay. So you know, you have these unique aspects that are very difficult to figure out on a cookie cutter routine. And I am going to overeat. So then when I went plant based, I'm like, okay, if I look at the cardiovascular outcomes for plant based diets, they're really good. I can probably add another 20, 30 years onto my life by doing that because of the plaquing and cardiovascular components from animal fat metabolism, because I don't metabolize fats, even though that diet's good for myself. But most plant based diets are low in protein and so they don't support my training. And the other thing is I'm probably going to eat all of these simple refined carbohydrates, which is very common amongst the vegans and vegetarians. So I said, okay, I need to offset that by supplementing my diet with protein. And then I created a bodybuilding style diet and used fiber to offset my protein requirements. So I had this long feeling satiety, because fiber is amazing for satiety, protein is amazing for satiety. And those two elements particularly is what allows you to adhere to a diet. You're not riding that blood sugar train of the simple carbohydrate program. And then I got an essential fatty acid thanks to the influence of Matt, that was based from an algae oil that I take every day to supply my body with the essential fatty acids that my plant based diet was not going in. And so now when I look at my biomarkers, you know, physiologically I'm someone in my 20s. Cardiovascular health, muscle mass, bone density. So all of those have played together from a performance diet from an athletic standpoint, moved into a performance diet from life, longevity. So there were some I could take away from that industry and then add to this to make a compelling future. So, you know, I want to make, you know, 100 the new 50. And we'll, when I get to 100, we'll, we'll see where I go after that. And the reason I can confidently state that if we look at the 1960s modern medical science, in 1967, when my dad in Canada start paying Canada pension and all those things, the life expectancy was 67 years old that you would draw your insurance for Canada pension for two years. My dad's age is they expect people to live about 80 in Canada. And largely I think most of those are acute interventions. Of the medical world. In other words, better surgeries, better outcomes from surgery, faster acute paramedical things, how they can save people in accidents and you know, acute diseases. And those advances have probably extended people's lives. And now for the last four or five years, that's on a steep decline. So that the very institutions that brought us that advancement are now contraindicative with, you know, depending on what research you look at, it's either the fourth or third leading cause of death is medical error. Now I'm not blaming doctors for that. They're doing the best that they can and have a very difficult position in life and death. I'm blaming that on the individual that got themselves in that situation, that we are responsible for a life nobody else. These people can serve us and help us, but they're not the ultimate of authority. So I believe reclaiming our authority with biohacking technology as it stands at this moment, that was a 20% increase back then. I think we can get another 20% increase. So if I look at my grandparents, they live to be 95 and 96, 80, that's about a 20%. You know, medical science helped them keep them going the last few years. So that's a 20%, you know, bonus. And I believe it's easily achievable using biohack hacking technology. Today we call it biological optimization. I have an issue with biohacking because a hack is something that you're jumping into a system and you're, you're just trying to get the outcome and not where of what the side effects are. And a lot of bodybuilders did that. Let's take steroids, let's take growth hormone, let's take insulin, let's take anti cortisol drugs, let's take painkillers. Because to become a professional competitive bodybuilder in an untested environment, you need all those things. Yeah, but you're not going to live long. So bodybuilders don't live long. Even though the principles of physical performance are on the high end, Health performance is suffering from those choices. So there's the great Thomas Sowell said there are no solutions in life, there are only trade offs. So what are you going to trade off in your life and how are you going to do that intelligently to live your best life? And that's what we outline in the book.

Okay, massive points here. So to get off this cycle of yo yo dieting, which could be a massive disservice for you and how you age, well, understanding your biology is everything. And your genetics could be like the biggest contributor to how you're making decisions in the future. You and I should talk because I'm the same. I'm terrible fast caffeine metabolizer. I don't do well with a high fat diet. Prone on both sides for genetic cholesterol, prone on both sides to having high cholesterol also. And now that I'm in my 40s, I'm seeing a lot of these issues start to manifest. So do you guys do your biomarkers throughout the year? How often are you checking?

Oh, yeah, twice a year. Unless I'm doing something radical.

Yeah.

Like a few years ago I got on trt. I've been off now for several years, but when I got on trt, I was doing my labs like every four to six weeks for a few months.

Wow.

Just because, you know things are going to change radically very quickly from, you know, your PSA to your liver enzymes. You want to make sure that everything's good. So. But that those are rare occurrences where I'm doing something that I know is going to change a lot of other things. But yeah, I think twice a year biomarkers, unless you're doing experiments. And we're starting to do more, we're working on anti aging systems, so testing that more frequently. We're working on hormonal products, testing that more frequently. So whatever we're testing or trying to build a product around, we'll ramp up the testing for that significantly.

Yeah. That's incredible. Yeah, I'm a big fan twice a year with my clients and looking at that, especially for women now, you know, for me, I'm just noticing a lot of bigger significant changes that are happening now. And I'm doing TRT also, which has been like life changing. Absolutely. But also I'm seeing a lot more variability. So I'm relearning how to use.

So question on that. Yeah, it seems like women on TRT is, is really taking off.

Yeah.

Yeah. So. So how many milligrams does a woman tend to use on TRT per week?

You know, so I'm doing pellet therapies, so I'm doing about one pellet compared to men, I think typically get like six or seven.

Okay.

The first time I had it done, it was like, wow. Like first of all, for men, what a great world to live in. My testosterone like went through the roof. It was just, it was crazy. But then again, now it's finding this sweet spot which is actually supportive for my system. But it's wild and I Think for women, again, that idea of getting used to symptoms that become them, like having brain fog and a low sex drive, not being able to put muscle mass on stuff. That's not normal. Right. But we've accepted them as being normal. And the problem with women is that we'll get together and be like, oh, you suffer from that too? Yeah, me too. Like, we just have this pity party around it, and, you know, and that's not the way. So I hope there's a lot more empowering conversation about that, which I think, you know, in understanding this and the fact that you guys talk so much, like, if you know about your genetics, if you're really trying to customize the perfect blueprint for a healing protocol, like, get the data, help someone, like, uncover what the data is about your physiology so that you know exactly what to do to. To thrive. And I think for women who have a lot more fluctuation their hormones throughout the month, just understanding that it could be ever changing for a little while until you kind of, you know, understand what makes you feel good. Right.

Yeah. F. Normal aging. I mean, what's normal aging? Right. People, you know, kind of peak in their twenties and then just. Just kind of like a rapid descent, as Wade Talked about last 15, 20 years of their life is completely compromised. And there's other options. Whether it's optimizing your brain, optimizing your body, your energy, there's no reason to go through normal aging. I have zero interest in that. And that drives a lot of our product development and some of the things we want to bring to the world.

Yeah. So I want to get to talking about some solutions. But before we do that, you guys have some incredible products around optimizing digestion.

Yeah.

So we mentioned digestion just being such a pillar when it comes to optimized health. You know, what are you recognizing in terms of symptoms for, you know, digestion that isn't optimal?

Well, maybe we can walk through kind of the five stages of digestion.

Yeah. So there's a common assumption that is made in the entire nutrition industry from most of the experts out there, that if you put food in your mouth, it gets in your body. It's a single canal called the elementary canal from your mouth to your bum. And that food is in that tube, but that's not in your body. In order to convert that food into energy units or building blocks, then you have a process. So there's the first stage. Taste, touch, smell, feel the food. Right. And if you look at finger food is actually the most popular food so we talk about in India, you touch your food. In the west, you don't. But if you look at the touching food, pizza, burgers, fries, chips, all of these things, there's a tactile aspect to the anticipatory response as well. The crunch, the taste, the flavors. You're a salt person, a sugar person, right? You know, you're more sweet oriented, you're more salt oriented, that there's an enzymatic response inside the body. There's a whole neurosystem neurological response in the system. As your body prepares to the digestive system to operate, you masticate the food. Most people don't chew their food. You know, they're gulping it down in front of the thing. They're trying to hurry through. It goes down the esophageal canal to the stomach and there's the upper cardiac portion of the stomach. Your food's gonna sit there for 30 to 60 minutes. This is where pre digestion occurs, which is supposed to be from the enzymes present in the food. All species on the planet eat their food in a raw, live state. Tigers eating zebras, horses eating grass. You know, they eat it live. And they not just get the nutrients. Protein, carbohydrates, fats, minerals, vitamins, all that sort of stuff, but they're getting the enzymes. And enzymes control everything from thinking to blinking. They're catalysts of change. And so virtually everybody that cooks their food buys their food in a grocery store because it's been irradiated, gets their food in a fridge or that's been pasteurized, has no enzymes present. So now your body has to start recognizing, I can't break this down. I got to start manufacturing enzymes, which has a metabolic cost. Next. After that, 30 to 60 minutes, hydrochloric acid comes in, which serves two purposes. Those two purposes are one, it disaffects your food. Bugs, parasites, bacteria, viruses, whatever. It's a highly acidic mix that kills that food. But on the way from a normal, you know, moderate ph level down to a highly acidic ph level, you have some enzymes which are deactivated and other enzymes are activated. We built, you know, full spectrum enzymes that work in all of the phs that digestion have. And that's one of the reasons why our digestive products are so powerful, because we understand that if you use an animal enzyme or just a plant enzyme, if it's not a cultured enzyme, it's not going to work in that full pia. So someone might have tried enzymes like, well, I didn't feel anything. Well, that's because it wasn't a properly done designed enzyme. So then you got enzymes and hydrochloric acid. This food is then once it travels out of the stomach, so you go through the digestion, a few hours of that, your body releases bicarbonate buffers, which is a fancy name for alkaline minerals.

Right.

And most people are deficient in minerals.

Absolutely.

So if you're deficient in minerals and highly acidic, that's where you get the duodenal ulcers as acid leaks into the intestines. And that's a problem, that's a serious medical condition that can kill you. Okay. But as that realkalized food goes back into the digestive system, you now enter into this topic that everybody's hearing about called the microbiome, which is the total amount of bacteria in your intestinal tract. Okay, so what does that mean? Well, I always say 10 good, 10 bad, 80% opportunists. We live in a symbiotic relationship with these organisms. If you do not have bacteria in your intestines, you will die. If you don't have the right bacteria in your intestines, you will not break down proteins to make the neurochemicals to make you feel happy, you will not be able to metabolize carbohydrates properly, you will not be able to break down protein, and you're going to suffer from bad bacteria. If you have bad bacteria in there and everybody has a certain percent that are going to produce all of these neurotoxins and chemicals that your body is going to recognize as invaders and have an immune response. In a perpetual immune response is all of these autoimmune diseases that are coming. Basically, you have overloaded your microbiome to such an extent from eating weird foods, don't have enough bacteria. You got wiped out by antibiotics. It's some point when your kid never grew them back. You're not having enough fibers and prebiotics. You're not reintroducing bacteria strains that are conducive with your diet. You're eating a food that doesn't support these bacteria because they need their own food, called prebiotics. What happens is now you have a dysbiosis. So every time you eat, you feel bloated, you feel tired, your skin breaks out, you have brain fog in the morning. You're. You don't have energy to do what you can't seem to feel good all the time. All of that as little messages because these bacteria are hooked into your nervous system and they're Controlling your brain, they're controlling your cravings, your desires, your motivation, all of it, because they are the factories that are providing your body with energy units and building blocks. The final stage is elimination. So if you're not hydrated properly and you're not eating foods that are correct for your diet, guess what? You either got diarrhea and constipation, which are two elements of the same thing. It is in diarrhea, oftentimes what happens, the colon is contracted, you only have a small piece going through, and you know it's only a loose stool goes through. And in constipation is you're so cemented up that you can't get anything out. And there's nothing worse than those two elements. You know, those are very. And people don't want to talk about them. It's embarrassing. And yet so many people suffer from this. And I read out the testimonials to our team, or actually one of our staff members reads them out every single week that we do our team meeting. And I love these testimonials. And you will not believe how many people like, I go to the bathroom regularly. I sleep so good. I'm not worried in social situations because of flatulence and gas, I can go to a social occasion. And I know I just bring my enzymes with me and I take those enzymes before that, and that gluten, that's not going to bother me anymore.

Right.

And so all of a sudden, there's a grace and ease which changes their emotional state. And hey, you know what? I can do this. And if there's anything that I could share with the population in general when they're reading any dietary book is if you haven't fixed your digestion.

Yeah.

You are not going to get the most out of your diet. And the right diet for you genetically may not work because you don't have the bacteria component. And that's a key element.

And you could be on, you know, the best diet, you could be taking high quality supplements, but it just doesn't matter. Right? Like, a lot of people aren't eliminating and they're calling it normal. I talk about poop every day with my clients. And what's fascinating too, so when my health was at its worst, I was on the Atkins diet. I was working out for two hours a day. When I went back to the ashram, all of a sudden we were eating 15, 20 different types of plant fiber every single day. And over time, I just noticed my elimination was back on track. My digestion slowly improved. The mental Fog lifted, the bloating was gone. It took a while to build that up a little bit. But having the patience to do that when you're shifting your diet could be the greatest game changer.

Yeah. There was a recent meta analysis done on fiber and the different types of fiber and their outcome for longevity. So it was a. About one and a half million, I think 1.3 or 1.4 million participants in 14 different studies. And they looked at the different fiber types and their impact on longevity. So the benefits were 12 to 35%, you know, and you're looking at plant fibers, like beans, fruit fibers, you know, there's several different types of fibers and type that. And I wrote an article on my page, you can go check it out, about how to get how much and what foods kind of work in that and. And give some suggestions around that. But the a 12 to 35 increase by adding a few things, and we're talking about, you know, doing a. A bowl of oats.

Yeah.

A half cup of strawberries, a few chickpeas.

Yeah.

On your salad. Right. And all. And. And. And, you know, all of a sudden.

Yeah.

You've just increased your longevity. Well, is it those fruits? No, it's that you're feeding these bacteria cultures which produce a vast array, like. Matt, maybe you want to talk about what we're discovering in the biology lab, about what bacteria does.

Yeah. So you talk a lot about gut health in this, too. And I know you talk about food sensitivities and leaky gut, which is becoming so. So relevant today. Let's talk about it.

Yeah. So we've had a lab in Bosnia. Why Bosnia? Because my. Our CTO was from there, and we have a partnership with a university, so we have, like, a whole wing. And the director of the Lab has a PhD in probiotics bacteria. So she's. I mean, we're amateurs compared to her.

She's one of your best friend.

Yeah, she actually helped write bacterial chapter. But so. So since we've started, we've done just on bacteria alone. Thousands and thousands of experiments. So Wade was talking about, like, bad bacteria. We. One of the things we do all the time is we create these battles. So we'll test. Well, you know, there's bad bacteria like E. Coli. We'll test P3OM. Can it kill it? And it does. And we knew that because it's been undefeated for food poisoning. So if you're traveling, make sure to bring P3OM. It's phenomenal for killing E. Coli. But there's other bad bacteria we have another product called Microbiome Breakthrough. So one of the things we test in the lab is will it kill bad bacteria? The other one is, does it build healthy biofilm? What's biofilm? It is that layer that covers your intestinal tract. And when you're biofilm dries up, you're going to have these, these, these junctions where food particles that should not be getting into your bloodstream will get in. And that's when you get these autoimmune reactions. That's what people call leaky gut. And that's a very dynamic situation. Now here's the good news. You can fix it really quickly. So Microbiome Breakthrough will, in my opinion, just in a few days, because your, your gut biome is super dynamic. 48 hours is the typical lifespan of a probiotic or some bacteria.

Right.

So within, let's say two, three, four days of, you know, consuming Microbiome Breakthrough, you'll see huge changes. And like last year I fasted a ton. I was doing a lot of five day fasts.

Okay.

And typically after a five day fast, if, even if you start eating fruits, you're gonna have turbulence.

Yeah.

Right. Because again, your, your intestinal tracts dried up. Right. This is really important to realize. So then I started taking, you know, the first thing I do now is just drink Microbiome Breakthrough. Two or three scoops. And I have had zero issues every single time since. So just solve the whole turbulence thing because I think it just goes and reseals and then I do.

No one talks about biofilm.

Yeah, but people talk about leaky gut, but they don't understand that, you know, the biofilm piece. And, and so in the lab, what we see is there's two, two reasons why bacteria will create biofilm. Either one, they're under attack. And they do that as like a self defense mechanism. It's kind of like, let's build this shell, the shield or the environment is so good. Yeah. And that's what we do with the Microbiome Breakthrough. So we have, you know, all kinds of ingredients that basically makes them feel really happy and secure and they just create this, this colony. Because, you know, when you take probiotics, they'll have a beneficial effects as they're going through your, your intestinal tract. But almost none of them create biofilm. And I know that because we've, we've just tested almost all of them in the lab.

Incredible.

Yeah.

Because so many people are spending so much money on probiotics that they might not even need.

True. Yeah. There's A lot of guessing going on.

There's a lot of guessing going on. That's fascinating. And I'm ordering these products tonight. This is incredible. Yeah. Because I think also, like one, it's our environment, you know, the foods that we're eating, the processed foods that we talked about, but also stress. Right.

Stress will wreck your gut.

You guys talk about stress a lot. And I think that we're living with levels of stress that we're just unaccustomed to. Leaky gut. I got a leaky gut. You know, people, I think, are accepting that it's something that they need to live with for a long time. Right.

Well, we're. We're. Where we're from, everybody thinks it's normal. Oh, my. My stomach is full. I couldn't finish the plate of food. You know, we talk about what people have normalized.

Yeah. The quality. The quality of the meal was based on whether I could finish the plate of french fries or not. You know, it's like, oh, boy, I could barely finish it. You know, that was a great deal because it's. We're from the unhealthiest, poorest, fattest province in Canada. Okay. We are number one in all of the wrong categories. So we have to remember that environment is stronger than will. It was a teaching that my spiritual teacher taught me, and I didn't fully grasp that. But what you consider is normal is a composite of your experiences. So whether those were traumatic experiences where they were dysfunctional, health related or emotional, or maybe that was a environment of excellence.

Yeah.

So if you talk to athletes, you talk to business people, you talk to people who are spiritual based people, they always talk about cultivating the right environment for success. So one has to take full accountability of their environment. Make the best that you can of it. For Matt and I, that was moving away. We had to move away. We didn't even know what we were moving away from. We just knew that where we were was not working. Now I can go back there now and manage the environment to a certain extent. It's suboptimal. That's why I don't live there.

Right.

Because again, those environmental pressures are too much to stay on my diet, stay on my program in that environment. You know, I'm. I'm ex. I would have to expend so much energy, and I did in the first part of my life, I had to spend so much energy of cultivating the right amount and resisting all of the social pressures that I was subjected to that you get labeled as unusual or weird or crazy. And I think most people that's gone down a health journey has experienced the othering of you because you're just, you're choosing to take ownership and responsibility for your life. And so if there's one thing that I, I keep going back to is take ownership of your health. And the experts, whether it's us writing a book or your doctor doing your panels, we're working for you, not the other way around. I'm not here to tell anybody what to do. I'm here to share with people some things they can look at to say, hey, this is the step that I want to go and to get the appropriate expert and authority in their field.

I love that. So cultivate the environment to heal. Something else about this book that I really love. It's not about starting at the beginning and finishing at the end. Like, you can really go to the chapter and break down to just see like, oh, gosh, I really need to know about this or the area that you need to optimize. I want to be mindful of your time also. So if you could say, like, out of all the things that we've talked about, if people really want to get rooted in their nutrition, what are your five, six greatest takeaways for people that they can take action on today?

First of all, I think stopping the question, what's the best diet?

Thank you.

And instead ask yourself, what's the best dietary process that's going to help me figure out what's good for me? And that's basically what this book is. But again, people like tips and tactics and things. I mean, we talked about protein and fiber. That's huge. I mean, I, I think if people just take their protein intake, add another 50 grams of protein, add another 10, 20, 30 grams of fiber a day, so many, it just changes everything. You're going to be less hungry, you're going to overeat less, eat less whatever, eat less sugar. So that's a really big one. Get a nutrigenomic test. That's another really big one. And I'm going to say, and I'm going to pass it on the way here, but get great sleep. You know, I'm a sleep diva. We didn't talk that much about sleep in this book. We have another book called From Sick to Superhuman. Whole chapter on sleep, I think, you know, using products like magnesium, Breakthrough sleep, Breakthrough Dream optimizer to really optimize the quality of your sleep. Because the next day you're not gonna have as many food cravings, you're gonna burn more Body fat from that growth, that natural growth hormone release. You got more testosterone during your REM sleep. So, you know, the better your sleep quality is, the better everything works, from cravings to just metabolism. So I'll pass it on to Wade for his tips. Yeah.

Build a compelling vision of your future that has an emotional reason why you need to do it. All of the information and data science in the world is not sufficient. So I have seen hundreds of cases of people that were hopelessly obese, you know, quintuple bypass, surgeries, gastrointestinals, or like, all of this sort of stuff. But something triggered them emotionally. Their grandkid get born, their child needed them and said, come on. You know, I've seen people overcome drugs, addictions, pharmaceuticals, surgeries, poor genetics, bad things. Was it the data that made them do it? No, it was an emotional reason why, and they created a compelling vision. Maybe that was to see their grandkids go to school. Maybe that was to see their daughter at her wedding day. Maybe it was so that it could be there for someone that you loved. That's a compelling reason. It doesn't have to be, you know, be a bodybuilding competitor or, you know, be a superstar business person, as long as there's an emotional reason. So I think do the emotional work to be able to drive that enthusiasm. That will help you push past whatever current limitations are because you're moving towards something. And then break down the big vision into an actionable component so that you can tie what you're doing today to that big vision. So the boring routine that you're following has an emotional reason why I'm eating this food, and I've got to win. I'm taking this walk. I've got to win. I'm doing this exercise. I got to win. I'm taking this supplement. I got to win. So what happens when Matt talked about the dopamine loop? You are reaffirming through these rituals and processes and saying, I'm a winner because I'm moving towards this. Where I am is where I am. That's okay, because I'm going here. And that builds excitement, enthusiasm. It builds new social groups. It builds new environmental relationships. And all of a sudden, there's this point that you get where you build when it's so hard at first, you build this unstoppable momentum, and. And the benefits start coming into your life. People start seeing you differently. You inspire relatives and friends to get on board with this. You are seen as an authority in these things. With people in your environment, people Start giving you compliments about how you look and how you feel. You start learning from new people. So there's activating a whole learning cycle. And you're listening to podcasts like this, and you're like, I want to try.

That, and I want to feel that way.

Yeah. You're going to the grocery store and you're reading the labels and saying, look at these guys, what they're doing, right? And, you know, you get a little soapbox for a little while, and all of a sudden, the inner relationship that you have as a health advocate for yourself starts to create this amazing momentum and a whole identity, and it gives juice to life. Right? Because now you are the change you want to see in yourself, and that change has a ripple effect. And Matt and I discovered a long time ago, as personal trainers, we fell in love with seeing people overcome things that bothered them their whole lives. These were the best, the brightest, the smartest, the most influential, the wealthiest people in the world. And they struggled with this one thing. And when we could help those people make the changes, there's no amount of money, there's no amount of accolades or titles or anything that can give you that juice. And so that's why we read the testimonials. That's why we're never going to stop with the business. We're going to keep growing and helping more and more people because we get to employ people that are passionate about it. We get all these testimonials with people. We get on podcasts and meet people like you. It's an amazing lifestyle that I'm excited about. The. I'm 52 in a couple of weeks, and I can't wait for the next 50 years. I'm super excited. I'm playing a game against myself, and it's the funnest game in the whole world. And why wouldn't you want to do that? I always used to tell people, if you spent a day in my body, you would understand why I'm so passionate about what I'm advocating, because it's so good. I just want everybody to have that feeling. And our. This book was a labor of love. Matt and I made all the mistakes you could make. We had all the arguments you could ever had. We, you know, climbed all over hell and high water to find out the truth. And what we realized is there is a truth, but that truth is relative to you. And it's grounded in principles and practices that you can do every day. And this will cut the learning curve from 20 years, but you can just pick what you need, what are you struggling with? That's the chapter I go to. And now you know exactly what direction to take. And so that's our gift to the world to, you know, help them make a difference and get to where they want to go faster.

It is a gift. I can tell you that. You know, although you call it a nutrition bible, it's just so tangible. And I can tell, like, there's just a lot of emotion that is behind it that makes you want to go back into reading it. And I'm getting a sense too, in that beautiful recap. Those are all easy, tangible things that we can all do. There's not a lot of rigidity to it. A practice that I have with my clients that I would say is like the game changer for helping someone step into optimized health is in the morning, like, just feeling into how you want to feel in your body. Like, we are hardwired to feel good and to love ourselves and all of those things, we get so disconnected from it. And I think the, the great takeaway about all of that, that I think we'll all agree on. When you step into feeling that way and acknowledging that feel good sensation based on the choices that you made in alignment with your higher self, healthy living just becomes you. It's not about the good and the bad food anymore. It's like, no, no, no. This is in alignment with who I want to be, how I want to feel, how I want to serve out in the world. And you guys clearly are role models for that. So I'm just so grateful that I met you and for this book and for your products. I cannot wait to dive into those. In closing, really quickly, we're just going to do a couple rapid fire questions. Is that okay?

Yeah, sure.

All right, we ask everybody this. So we what's one mistake that people are making to make health complicated?

Watching Instagram, nutritional influencers that are spouting out too many lies. That's a big one. There's so much fear mongering with food, which, you know, is rooted in these. These mechanistic things that may or may not be true, but then they're overblown. And then people start, you know, I can't eat oats, I can't eat kale, I can't eat this, I can't eat that. You know, it just becomes an incredibly stressful thing for people. And I feel like the stress is probably more damaging than whatever, you know, molecule they're panicking about.

Couldn't agree more. What's one of Your favorite ancient healing remedies, meditation period. If you had to pick something about modern medicine that excites you, what would it be?

Genetic engineering, genetic therapies. I think they're going to be huge. You know, I love thinking about what's going to be the biggest needle movers.

Could be that I'll give two V cells and. Peptides.

Peptides, yeah.

I think the benefit to side effect ratio is really good on the side.

Are they doing peptide studies on humans?

Well, we're under a huge regulatory pressure right now because once again we're disrupting the pharmacological model. You know, if I can take various peptides and accelerate healing and reverse degeneration of various body parts and tissues or get different benefits, that's in contrast to the current model we believe in. The Buckminster Fuller model is we're not in competition with the current health model. It has its purpose, it has its point. We're in the process and with our friends and colleagues of building a paradigm that's so much better. People will just automatically gravitate to it. So it's a long range mission. So 20 years from now, 30 years from now, all of these technologies will be readily available, accessible and usable by virtually everyone. Just like antibiotics get used.

Absolutely.

Where people die from infection for so long.

I'll have you back on to talk about that. If you could leave our listeners with just one takeaway that you're most passionate about right now.

Neurofeedback. You know, Wade and I've done a ton of it and again, full disclosure, you know, we invested in this company as a company called Sensei S E N S AI and yeah, their, their neurofeedback headset is a technology I've been waiting for for years. I mean I've got a medical grade system at home.

Wow.

But I think it's, it's the game changing technology for, for the masses to get into neural feedback. And you know, it's been probably the, the most powerful tool or technology I've used personally.

So yeah, I would echo that. But and to give you something else, I think mitochondrial training.

Yeah.

So understand like what is people looking for more energy. So the reason they're drinking coffee, the real thing, they're taking the energy drinks. The reason that they're taking the blast of whatever is because they want more energy and they're providing different fuels. But the mitochondria is a dynamic. It senses the environment, it responds to the environment, it responds to the food and it is the key to producing energy and I've worked a lot on that particular element in the last couple of years in my own life and I can absolutely attest to the benefits of that. And so when you combine that with brain training. Oh yeah, your brain's operating perfectly and you got tons of energy, so your productive capacity. So if you think of retiring at 50 because you're running out of gas or 60, that's the dream. I'm like, we're just getting started at 50. Like you just acquired a lifetime of, you know, acumen. Why lose it to cognitive decline? Or I don't have enough juice to get going in the day. We, we want to invert that paradigm. We've done it for ourselves and our close clients and we want to spread that around the world. Cause it's again, it serves that, that gift to the world thing that gets us jacked up every day.

It's such a good way to come full circle because isn't that something that our ancestors did also? Like they understood the energetic body. Right. The way that our nervous system operated in health and out of health. So you'll come back for a full episode on that. Let's tell our listeners where can they find you? Where can they follow your work? How are they? Can they get involved in what you're doing?

Yeah, go to bobtimizer.com I think we have a special promo for your clients as well. I didn't check the URL though.

Maybe we're going to put everything in the show notes.

Yeah. So check the URL. For those of you that have not tried one of our products, I would recommend start off with magnesium. Breakthrough is our best selling product. People really feel it. Take a couple capsules an hour before bed. You'll sleep better, feel less stressed out during the day. And then our second best selling product is Mazymes. And you know, people talk about protein all the time. What you want some amino acids and mass times going to get is going to give you a lot of amino acids from the food you eat. So those two products I think are great starting points.

Incredible. So great to meet you guys. I can't wait for many more conversations. Thank you so much. This was so insightful. So the ultimate nutrition bible. Here it is. I'll just hold it up. We'll click out to all the show notes and links.

And one quick comment too. Like, Wade and I went to the Hollywood Hills and we recorded a video version of the entire book. So if people prefer that, people prefer video. And the video editors just knocked out of the park. It looks amazing. So there's a video version of the content and there's an audiobook on Amazon is an ebook, so it's available everywhere. Again, check it out. And links are in the show notes.

I saw a quick clip. It's also gorgeous the way that you guys shot it. It wasn't in a. A school room. Traditional nutritional seminar, so. Right. Thank you, guys.

Thank you.