14 Solcast - Episode 14: Benefits of Physical Contact, Breakups and Consistent Diet Mindset

So all this negative news in the world has got me thinking, and one of the greatest things you can do to kind of bulwark your mind against all the constant negativity and all the other BS in the world at the moment is to kind of just consciously think about what you're grateful for. I'm grateful for my friends. I'm grateful that I have a roof over my head. I'm grateful that I get to choose what I want to eat every day. You know, all of these things are huge things we take for granted, and it's so important to realize that not everyone gets that. Most people in the first world countries do, but not everyone gets that. The vast majority of the world don't have a fridge. Vast majority of the world don't have the opportunity to utilize the internet to learn new things. All of these things that we take for granted, you could be positively, uh, happy to have them and show gratitude for them. And that alone, if— as long as you consciously do it more often, that alone can do wonders for your mindset and positivity and just general attitude in this day and age, because Lord knows we need it at the moment. So give that a go, just as often as possible. Show gratitude and feel gratitude and tell people that you appreciate them in your life. Because, you know, vocalizing compliments is another thing that I try and do. If I think something in my head about a friend or even a random person, to be honest, if I think that's a cool coat, you know, I really make it a point to go and say, hey man, I really like your coat, just whatever, you know. It's easy once you do it a few times, and it's also a bit of a challenge to kind of increase your social skills and just challenge yourself in a different way to just open up a conversation with a stranger. They're mostly people you'll see maybe in— they're in your community at least, you know, your hometown. And I think it's good to kind of develop those relationships with people. You never know who you're gonna talk to, and you never know what kind of friends you'll make, maybe from just the casual compliment that you kind of pops into your head. As if you see someone, you like their clothing, or you like their style, or whatever. Or even, fuck it, you don't even have to think that. You just maybe go out of your way to give a compliment to someone. You don't know, like, if a stranger comes up to you and says, hey man, your hair's looking really good today, and it just goes about their business, or whatever, you know. Tell me you don't think about that for days afterwards and how good it made you feel. You can do that to someone else. You know, people out and about, and just kind of make people feel a bit better in this time where there is so much negativity and BS flying around. Anyway, that's my spiel about gratitude. Really, uh, has helped my mindset a lot. And, you know, the things that go wrong in your life really aren't that bad. Compared to what could be going wrong and what could— what your experience in your life could be like compared to some of the lives that humans have had to live on this world. It's a very— it's, it's one of the best times to be alive. I know sometimes it feels like, oh, I wish we'd go back or whatever, but relatively in terms of the level of prosperity and lack of war kind of that we're exposed to really on a daily basis and the security that most people have in in the first world countries at least. That's pretty unprecedented and it all gets swept under the rug because people get worried about all these kind of minute details that you don't really need to get— you shouldn't be getting that upset about, you know. We should all be able to kind of work together and figure this out. But, you know, people get upset about silly things is my kind of point on that. There's a lot to be grateful for, there's a lot you can still do in life, and I think it's just good to be conscious of that fact every now and then. So I want to open the Soulcast episode— what are we, 11? Cool, double digits now. Um, a question that I've actually got, uh, a few times, um, in the recent weeks, so I thought maybe it's, it's current or at the moment, or relevant at least. Maybe some people have been— the question I got was, how do I get over a breakup? I feel like everyone has to go through it to really understand it. Once you go through it, um, you know, you have the kind of tools to, to deal with that. But when you're first going through it, it does suck, whether it's young love or just your first proper relationship and you had to break up. I went through it high school level, which, you know, whatever, that's like a teenage love, so it's kind of different to the real thing, I guess. But it does suck, breakups, and getting over a breakup is hard. So it also depends on— my advice would depend on how you broke up as well. Some breakups can be because you are moving to different areas, different colleges is one that I got, you know, with my girlfriend and I going to different colleges, uh, really sucks because we have a good relationship and we have to break up and you know, what do I do? And I don't think long distance relationships really are the move. If it's a short term and you can get through it and you're both committed, sure. You know, a few months, everyone could do that. But over 6 months to a year, I feel like, you know, it's just— unless you're married or whatever else, that's not, it's not really what I'm talking about. I'm talking about just the kind of casual— not casual, but younger girlfriends you may have. You're not serious, you're not going to get married. I think it's just better off to leave it where— if you are, come back to a time where you can hang out and date properly in the same city, then cool. But especially for your first girlfriends, chances are you're just going to have a better time if you kind of go your separate ways. But that's kind of beside the point. Not really what I was asked. How do you get over a breakup? Say you're breaking up with a girl, you have broken up and you feel like shit. Maybe you feel lonely. That's a big one is if you've gone for a long time with a girlfriend and spending time together at night and cuddling and all that, that gets, uh, literally and, and literally addictive in the terms of the dopamine levels you get used to. But that's kind of why you feel bad when you stop it, is because your brain isn't getting as much dopamine. So you're addicted to it in that sense, but also it's just nice to hang out with someone at night, whereas otherwise you might be by yourself. If you don't have a girlfriend, you're not getting any other real human contact, which is another kind of issue with Western society at the moment, because there's no physical affection shown between humans. You know, I hug my friends. I think it's important for you to hug your friends and just, you know, it doesn't mean anything other than I appreciate you and all that. And you're not going to cuddle your boys, you know. I'm not saying do that, but at least sometimes show, show your physical affection in a hug. But yeah, you lose that if, if, if you then go from cuddling a girl to no physical affection. No physical affection is, is bad for humans, full stop. Um, there are a lot of, you know, serotonin levels, oxytocin levels, they all kind of get boosted when you're cuddling another human. Your brain recognizes that as a good activity. So it can feel quite shitty when you come out of a, out of a breakup. And also if it was a bad breakup, you feel bad because maybe you hurt the other person or, or they've hurt you. But the initial stages of a breakup, it's usually caused by those, you know, those chemical feelings in your brain and it's just all going haywire. You feel lonely, you feel sad. So it could be a bit daunting, but it will fade. And the saying time heals all wounds, that's true for the most part. Day by day it just gets easier, and then you realize, okay, I'll be okay, you know, it sucks, but I'll be all right. Maybe you meet another person, uh, down the line. That sometimes helps when you you kind of eliminate the loneliness version. Maybe you just make a new friend or, or another person that you may be seeing romantically. That seems— and maybe, maybe you meet someone that's even better and you get along well with them to the point where you go, oh, maybe it's, you know, I was so involved with this previous relationship that I didn't consider the possibility that other relationships might be better or could be better. That's also a possibility. I'm not saying, you know, get with some random just to get over it, but more so conceptualizing the idea that there might be other people out there, you know, that the world's a big place and you might change as well. They might change. It's not the end of the world if you're going through a breakup. Um, if you find one girl that you, you like, you know, There'll be others. So as far as tools for managing the breakup, uh, you obviously, my advice would be to go to the gym. A lot of that negative emotional energy you can work out through physical exercise. You're not as doom and gloom and worried about it when you have those post-workout endorphins going through you. Uh, you could just exercise all that tension out really and utilize that physical energy that if you don't use it, then you start to get anxious even normally. And then, you know, you add a breakup on top of that, it's going to feel worse. So you can mitigate that kind of side of it by throwing yourself into working out. You'll feel better about yourself if the breakup has maybe taken hits to your self-confidence or your self-image. If you're working out a lot, you'll start to feel better and look better and be happy that you're doing something positive for yourself. So maybe self-esteem raises a a little bit. So that's a really important one that I would recommend for sure. Keeping busy is a big one, I think, in general. So you can spend more time working out or just being outside in general, but also trying to see your friends more. Sometimes if you've been in a relationship, you have neglected your, your other friend relationships. I don't recommend that. I think you should always try and invest in your friend relationships at all times, even if you do have a girlfriend or boyfriend. Girlfriend, of course. But some people, you know, you spend a lot of time with someone. I've done it in the past before. It's just kind of natural when you have those first girlfriends. But yeah, make it a point of, with your new free time, uh, seeing your boys more or, or seeing your family more, and maybe pursuing a hobby or an activity that your, your partner didn't necessarily want to do with you, but you were always interested in. Throwing yourself into a new hobby or activity will will give you the opportunity to kind of take your mind off it, um, and then just letting that kind of time spent doing other things help to, yeah, mitigate just kind of being lonely and wallowing in it. You meet new people doing the hobby. Yeah, overall, breakups suck. That's just the name of the game. It is what it is. There are things you can do to kind of take your mind off it, but overall time just kind of heals all wounds and it's not the end of the day, the breakup. You know, you'll be right. You'll live. I know it seems bad, but trust me, you'll look back and be like, ah, oh well. One day. So gyms are open again, which is— I can't even describe. How good it was to be back using proper equipment, getting out and about, just being social, people around working out, um, just being able to have heavy weights that I didn't have to balance or, or grip weirdly. I was using a stick in between two plastic buckets filled with sand for rows, you know. It's all— it's okay, um, and pull-ups on the, on the rings are okay, but it just doesn't compare to the, the heavy deadlifts. Or yesterday I did squats, uh, with a proper rack and proper barbell and decent weight. Just no— nothing better. And going back in there, I was quite smart. I did my— what kind of routine I was doing before still, but just with less volume. Not, not less volume, less weight than I would have before, because I know— I knew I wouldn't be as strong. It's just, you know, it's unavoidable. You haven't lifted those weights for so long, you're going to lose strength. It's fine. You know, it is what it is. So going back and just, just really easing up a little bit on the gas pedal, at least until your body is a bit more used to the extra weight and training with that, with that, uh, intensity again. Super important, because otherwise, yeah, you can be like, yeah, let's just fucking go, dude, uh, back in the gym, let's fucking kill it, bro, and, uh, just get a bit over the top. But why would you do that? Just be smart about it. You're gonna prevent injury, you know. Your joints as well will probably be a bit weaker because they haven't been uh, they haven't been forced to hold that load in a while. So yeah, I eased up. I did legs. It was a good time. Big pump. Sauna's open soon as well. That's been a big one that I've missed, is the sauna. So good for recovery. I do it after every workout, 20 minutes, uh, without fail. And then on my rest days as well, if I get to the gym, because there are so many different benefits. But I just feel better. Your skin looks better. Um, you're way more relaxed. When I come out of the sauna after a gym session, my mind is just blank. There's nothing. There's no annoying thoughts or worries or anything popping in my head. It's just pure kind of peace in a way, and it lasts for a while. So that's nice to have. It's a bit of a, you know, it's a bit of a, bit of a grind doing 20 minutes, but that's the point as well. It's almost like it is a mental exercise to just kind of boost your willpower in a way. If you're regularly forcing— it gets, it gets hot, you know, and you want to bitch out and you want to go out. Just go in there, just go in the cold shower, dude, like it's fine. And you go, nope, don't bitch out, and you stay the full time. I do— when you first get into it, 10 minutes break, then do 10 minutes. But 20 minutes straight is the goal, just for a solid sesh. And you can be happy that you that's a decent amount, and really going to get a lot of benefits from that. So if you're not saunering, come on, bro. So very happy they're opening up again as well. Definitely just feel better overall, less pain when you're in the sauna. Regular saunering, it helps, it helps get blood to all the kind of connective tissue and joints and cartilage because you get so hot, everything just gets flowing. Yeah, you're breathing it Uh, like your nasal passages and everything, they expand so you can breathe a lot better, kind of clears your nose so you can get some good quality breaths in. Um, opens up your sweat pores, obviously sweating out of every— all the surface of your skin, so you're clearing a lot of toxins and other things that, that gets excreted through your sweat. So really no negatives. I definitely want to have a sauna at my house. One day. That would be the perfect start to the day, is just kind of wake up, have some lemon water with salt, head to the sauna and just chill there for 20 minutes or so and kind of limber up and stretch for the day. I reckon that would just be awesome. And then you have a cold plunge pool, so that would be just like a meter squared thing you could jump into, even just an ice bath. I know you can get them so that they can just be on all the time, uh, well, sorry, cold all the time. Maybe it freezes a little bit overnight, so definitely want to get one of those as well. I think that into the sauna, into the cold plunge to start your day— nothing better. And then sauna obviously after the workout as well. All right, if you're listening to this still, then that means you have to do 40 push-ups as quick as you can. Really get those— get that pump on. Uh, we can have a little break, so go to the push-ups, come back, and I'll see you when you're a little bit pumped up. So we're coming into the second part of the Soulcast, Episode 14, uh, and we're going with a few different questions that people have submitted recently, or topics. First one, ways to start cleaning up a diet and follow something along the lines of yours. Okay, well, it's very simple. Don't eat anything processed, and that means anything processed. So whole foods, if you can look at it, it's one ingredient, you can chop it up into little bits, you know, cook it as is, that, that's usually a good sign. Anything that comes in a packet or a manufactured container, if it has packaging other than the natural skin or something, it's It's usually a bad move. But can I eat McDonald's? No. What do you think? Everyone knows the answers to these things. Everyone knows what food in general that they should be eating. It's just, you know, what tolerance you allow yourself. So first steps to cleaning out the diet, I guess, is to cut out processed foods. So I mean, the smartest way to do this, you know, I can say, you know, have 100% discipline all the time, but that's not realistic. That's not really what happens. So if you want to take your first steps to clean up your diet, the first one I would recommend, just for the first week, cut out any liquid sugars you're having. So whether that's a soft drink at night or an energy drink during the day, just those, those sugary drinks. If you're drinking a lot of juices Juices can be good if they're freshly made and, you know, it's, it's not like you're trying to put on weight or you're going to utilize the calories for weightlifting or something, but most people, that's not the case. So cut out your juices, cut out your soft drinks, and do that for a week. And then when you feel like you're used to that, you know, anyone can just swap over to soft drink to water fairly easily. That's one thing to think about. You know, the first step is you want to want it to be like a small change so that you can stick to it. And then I would look towards changing, like, if you're eating out more, obviously cooking for yourself. If you don't know how to cook, that's a vital life skill I would recommend. Obviously, I think developing a healthy passion for actually getting deep into cooking and having a few, you know, actually enjoying the process instead of just thinking, oh, I have to cook dinner tonight, you know, just really kind of get into the flow of it. Try and concentrate so you, you know, if you're chopping up stuff, you don't accidentally cut yourself. Being kind of that, bring that forced awareness and consciousness to the moment is really cool. And I think you can do that pretty well with cooking, you know, it's just kind of methodical. You've got to prepare the ingredients chop things up, um, you know, use the frying pan, whatever else. So it can kind of be like a meditative experience, and that's how I try and do it at least. And then you're also more focused, you're less likely to spill something, which I find is like a— anytime you like bang your leg on a coffee table or, you know, you spill some water or something, it's usually because your head is elsewhere and you're not thinking about what you're doing in the moment. Okay, Now I'm, you know, walking through this coffee table, uh, past this coffee table. I'm actively like being aware of where my body is in the moment and having control of the muscles while I'm walking and being focused on that. Uh, you know, you'd be thinking about work or something else and then you bang your knee and it fucking hurts. So it, uh, things like that are like little reminders to take our attention back to the present moment. Um, and it's painful, yes, but The pain is, uh, useful in that way. Same with if you're cutting and you're not thinking properly and then you nick your finger, it's like, ah shit, now, yeah, no shit, I wasn't, I wasn't thinking about the task, I was thinking about cutting, I was, my mind was elsewhere. So that's just like a little reminder to take you back. So I think there's, um, next time you hurt yourself or spill something, think about whether it was, you know, you're actively focused on the thing. It's usually not the case. But where was I? Yeah, cleaning up a diet, cooking, get into that. Even if you just learn how to, you know, what spices go with what meat, you know, rosemary with beef, mixed herbs, you know, you could just experiment and see what you prefer as well. I don't necessarily do extensive recipes all the time. Uh, just quality ingredients makes quality food. You know, you can't have really delicious food without quality ingredients that, you know, that are fresh. And you can make delicious meals simply with, you know, fresh delicious ingredients, high quality foods. You know, you don't have to do a 20-step Michelin star bloody meal. Every night. It's not realistic, and you know, you have a certain amount of the time in the day that you do need to allocate to cooking, especially if you want to put on weight. But, uh, you can keep it simple and delicious by learning those kind of basic skills of cooking, spice matchings, pairings, and just experimenting with it a little bit, playing with it a little bit. A good date idea is to cook something together, cook dinner together, save a bit of money from going out. And it's kind of a bit more interactive and a bit more fun that way. That's a good one to do, and then you can both learn together as well. So that was a cooking offshoot. So we're kind of talking about cleaning up the diet. Yeah, I mean, throw out everything processed, anything that comes in a packet. I only really eat stuff that can, you know, if it goes off in a few days, which is a good sign, you know, minus like rice or potatoes or, you know, those kind of longer term things. But fresh fruit that does decay after a while— if something can sit on the— I use this as like a rule of thumb, uh, for some foods. Like, is this healthy? Okay, would it be able to just stay on the shelf and be fine to eat for months? Uh, it's probably not the best thing for you because of all the preservatives and other fake food kind of mimicking ingredients that enable it to just sit on the shelf and not decay is, uh, not really natural and overall not really a good time. So that's another rule to use. Uh, interesting little experiment to go into your supermarket next time you're shopping and to look at the actual ingredients of most of the processed foods, whether they're chips or you know, those frozen pizzas and all the rest of that ready-made stuff is just look at the ingredients and look for vegetable oil or canola oil or vegetable shortenings. You know, these kind of industrial seed oils that they manage to slip in everything. It's really a bit absurd. Same with margarine. That's what they make margarine out of. I can't believe it's not butter. Yeah, because it's a toxic bloody plant abomination of butter. It's not really a good thing. Um, but yeah, cleaning out the diet just kind of depends how— if you can go to a farmer's market, that's really good. Uh, you know, local food's always better. They're usually organic, uh, which makes a difference as well. A bit more expensive, but not even really. Like, yeah, maybe $15, $20 difference, uh, compared to eating in the them, you know, the major supermarket foods. But it's worth it, and it's an investment in your health. Spending any kind of amount of money— not any amount of money, obviously be within reason— but spending a little bit extra to get some quality food is worth its weight in gold because you're gonna feel better, you're gonna just have a better quality of life, and that's gonna lead you to want to make more money as well. So that's how I see it. Tastes better. Your general just life is, is better when you're getting good quality foods that energize you and have the nutrition inside it. Otherwise you're just buying empty food and, you know, there's processed things which is just like a hit of calories and nothing else. So if you really want to clean up your diet, I think you have to learn to just, I guess, frame it as like I'm I'm gonna do what's best for my body. I'm gonna do what's best for how I feel, and I'm not gonna allow myself the weakness to just be like, "Oh yeah, go on then, I'll have 5 Tim Tams," chocolate biscuits, you know. It's, you eat it and then, okay, cool, now what? It's this weird toxic thing that's going through your body and wreaking havoc. And you know, was the 10 minutes of eating it worth it? Probably not. You know, you have a few bites and you taste, yeah, cool. It's much more satisfying to really respect your body and just, you know, only put in good quality food that mostly— that you mostly prepare yourself. Or if you're eating out, get something substantial, not deep-fried vegetable oil stuff, or just, you know, processed bread and cheese at a pizza or something. It's just Yeah, I mean, at a certain point you gotta grow up and be like, okay, am I gonna chase the, uh, the mouthfeel, the temporary mouthfeel of the taste, or am I just gonna go, okay, no, I want to make a change and not allow myself to go down that road anymore, and I'm gonna feel better for it, and it's gonna be good for the most part. You know, no one's gonna be 100%, but when you're cheating every second day, it's just like, oh, am I cheating, or is it like I just have a willpower problem or a discipline problem at that point. So let yourself get away with a little bit, but for the most part, when you're cleaning up your diet, you have to make some kind of grander life decisions and personality decisions, I guess, and your relationship with yourself and how much you respect your body and all the rest of it. Same with like I think it's partially just maturing in general, but you can mature at a young or early age, so it's not about age, but rather, you know, your emotional maturity and how you develop that way. If you can imagine your body as an engine, car engine, what's going to happen when you put the wrong fuel in? If anyone has done this and completely fucked their engine up, they'll attest to it. But you put the wrong fuel in something that's not made for it, and it's gonna stuff the engine up. Your body is no different. The human body is amazingly resilient, so much so that you can get away with eating garbage and putting the wrong fuel in your body, but only for a while. Uh, I mean, people can go years eating garbage, uh, and it will catch up to them, but the performance of the engine during that time would be diminished heavily. So the human body can handle running on empty fumes for a long time, but that's, that's, that's not saying that it's going to be performing optimally. And just because you can get by on eating junk food and occasionally eating good, but always cheating on your diet and all the rest of it, if you haven't really cracked the surface of how good it feels to be healthy entirely and not have those foods that are going to bring you down in your diet at all, That's the aim. If we could aim for 100%, uh, adherence to a quality diet, then you're gonna feel a million bucks. And it takes a while to kind of kick in, uh, obviously day to day you'll feel better, but consistently eating well over a period of months, you literally feel like a different person. And you will look like a different person as well. You'll gain muscle, you'll lose fat, you're— there's more energy in your eyes, your skin looks better. If you're eating things like carrots, then you get beta-carotene, you get a glow to your skin. You know, all the general fruits and veggies, meat, eggs, all those things which are gonna enable your body to produce collagen, which means your skin looks fuller and repairs better. All of these follow-on effects that happen from cleaning up your diet and being consistent with it. So once you learn the basics of eating, take charge and start to respect your body. It changes your perspective overall. If you can think to yourself, why do I, why do I think that it's okay for me to treat my body like shit by putting in these toxic processed foods that I personally don't even think taste good, but some people say, oh, it's so yummy. So they slog it down and, and they'll think that that's all right because, you know, treating it themselves or whatever. It goes back to that other idea that you shouldn't reward yourself with stuff that actively harms you. So fast food, if you, if you've hit the gym and be like, yes, now I've earned my fast food, you're just taking one step forward and one step back. So I would advise against doing that, but internalize the idea that you are deserving of quality food and you're going to treat your body like you would another person and be nice to it. And that relationship with the self was like, okay, I think that I deserve to spend a little bit more money on food, uh, and get the good quality stuff because that's gonna come back and multiply in terms of the benefit tenfold. I'm going to put the effort into preparing my own food. I'm not going to be lazy and buy takeaway. Whether that's, you know, that's going to harm you because either you're not getting enough calories, because takeaway I find is usually not enough calories to sustain what I would need to do in terms of my muscle building, what I need to eat, or it's just plain bad food for you if you're getting fried stuff, or even if it's like a healthy salad, it's It's lettuce, it's chicken, factory farm chicken. You got a mayonnaise sauce in there, dressing or whatever, which is made from seed oils. None of it is really nutritious in that sense. So even though you think you're eating healthy, the natural way of these fast food chains, even if they are the health food or whatever— Subway's, you know, garbage as well. Some people think it's a healthy alternative. No, it's not. Just stop. It's just a matter of what happens when a business gets so big that they scale and they mass-produce things. You're never going to get the quality that you would kind of shopping at farmers market and putting the time in yourself. So try and internalize that. Make sure that you feel like you truly should deserve not compromising on your diet, and overall that's going to be great for your mindset, your body, and your body composition and all the rest of it. So seafood as fuel for the nutritional quality within it. See processed stuff as poison, which it is. And once you can internalize that, no longer do you crave the junk food. So because why would you crave something that harms you? Look at it as poison. I liken this to seeing the Matrix code finally kind of come down over your eyes when you're looking at food. It's like, okay, what's in that? Is it protein, is it fat, carbohydrates, are the micronutrients going to be good? And also the kind of esoteric side of it, of, okay, was the animal humanely raised? Is it going to be good energy within that? Um, I think the best food you could possibly get— obviously not everyone can do this, I don't do it myself— but hunting, I think, you know, wild animals would just be the perfectly supercharged food out in the wild, no contaminants. Uh, I've heard people like Joe Rogan say that that kind of meat, that like elk meat is awesome and you feel a million bucks after eating that. So I— it's kind of the same principle. If you eat a mass-produced factory-farmed meat, which is horrible by the way, then it's not going to be as nutritional quality, even though it's technically still meat to meat. And the amount of meat to the amount of meat— there's micronutrients, there's how is the animal treated, there's how was the animal raised on seed, uh, feed rather than grass-fed. All those kinds of things going on behind the scenes to the quality of the meat, which you need to consider as well. So that matrix code, what's actually behind the food— let's not consider the taste factor for now. From now on, you're not someone who treats your body like an amusement park. You're no longer trading cheap temporary mouthfeel for the negative health benefits and dysfunction. Do you want to be around for your kids? Do you want to have the energy to play with your kids when they're older, or do you want to succumb to the modern miasma of horrific processed foods, no energy, artificial light, all of that concoction which just spits humans out at the other end as this malformed, diseased, lethargic creature which barely resembles the, the vitality that humans are capable of Um, so that's something to think about. Eat only whole foods prepared yourself, no processing, nothing packaged. Cut alcohol, seed oils. Making these changes alone will result in physique improvements. You're getting no toxic estrogenic byproducts and things, no empty calories, not giving your body what it needs. Emphasize high-quality fats to synthesize crucial hormones like testosterone, quality amino acids from free-range, grass-fed animal protein. To repair the muscles. Um, making sure that you're eating enough or not too much, uh, might seem daunting for some. Personally, I've never counted calories or macros. It's a tedious step, I would say not needed for most. Once you have a rough idea of the ballpark of what you should be eating, can't be off by hundreds of calories, but if you're within 100 calories, um, or so, I, I think if you're having a a hearty serving of protein, a lot of carbohydrates, and a few fats with your main meals, and then healthy snacks like fruit, protein shake here and there, raw eggs or cooked eggs in between with a bit of toast. That's like a basic framework for— you can stick with that and not have to get with the counting calories bit down the line until you're, you know, really want to dial it down. As long as you're in the ballpark of calories Um, you hit that for a while, you'll feel better. In general, if you make a diet change away from processed foods, you'll just naturally gain muscle and lose fat anyway, separately to just the calorie side of it. Um, usually if you're trying to put on weight, this means eating more. Uh, you don't have to count the calories as such. It's a good idea to get an idea of how much you should be eating, but if you're not putting on weight, just eat more. That's what I did. It's intuitive. It's like, okay, I want to put on weight. What have I been eating the last few weeks? It's not getting me where I want. Let's add a glass of milk. Let's add 4 raw eggs. Let's add a bit of toast and some fruit, roughly 400-500 calories extra, and see how that goes and stick with that. You don't want to blast off and expand your stomach to the nth degree straight away because that's unsustainable. So Just add little things like that. Lifting weights, of course, means extra calories will go to the good use, translate to lower body fat, improve mental faculties when your brain has all the micronutrients that it, that it needs to perform. Yeah, so where do you start if you don't know what to eat, if you have no clue? I do have a book out now, so you can discover how I eat the way I have to create my physique without the headaches of measuring food, without 20-step recipes that no one has time for, without compromising on taste. Food that I cook in 15 minutes, you know, food that you can be sure that I've used to support my bodybuilding goals and my health my health ideas throughout my life. Um, food that you can be sure is helping you get you where you need to be. Typical bro diet neglects micronutrients and taste, you know, the bland chicken breast, broccoli, rice, with no mention— there's no mention of probiotics or gut health, which are essential in terms of if you want to create the best mental performance as well. Uh, my diet framework contains essential digestive enzymes that help break down what you eat. Something like pineapple has bromelain in it, so the animal food that you are taking in is being supported to be broken down within the stomach so you can absorb more of it. Whole food probiotics like sauerkraut that promote, uh, and support neurotransmitter production and the gut microbiome— that's where all of the dopamine and things are created in the gut. So check out Cooking with Sol Brah. It's your complete guide to eating food that will take your physique to the next level. If you stick to the foods within this guide, guys, you'll, you'll really see improvement. And that's all the way I eat to get to where I've gotten. So if you don't know what to eat, you don't know what to avoid, uh, it's a simple step-by-step kind of thing that you can check out at my Gumroad. So above all, it's delicious. Uh, I really think you'll enjoy it. So check out the link. I'm going to put a link in the description of this podcast. So If that sounds like something you're interested in, then for sure check it out. So I've been getting a lot of messages asking me about my skin routine, I guess, and how I use coconut oil and no shampoo idea. So instead of replying to a thousand messages, I figured I would break it down a little bit here. So what I do for my skin now is fairly limited. I rinse with water, I wash with water, and I moisturize. And I use a Sukin facial moisturizer. It has, uh, it's a natural product that has, uh, not all of the parabens and SLS sulfates and all those, all the other garbage kind of things that you don't really need in a moisturizer. I'm sure you can find a natural product, uh, that's locally produced that's, that would be good for you as well. Just make sure it's non-comedogenic, which which means that the structure of the oils is gonna enable your facial oils to leave the skin rather than locking it in because that can clog pores and further on. But I find that my skin is the best the more time that I spend out in the sun and in salt water. So, I was recently on holiday and my skin hasn't really looked better than when I was out and about all day in the sun. My skin gets worse the more time I'm spending indoors and under fluorescent light and all the rest of it. Whether that's a result of the direct sunlight on the skin or just the general hormonal changes and anti-stress stuff that goes on behind the scenes, which then manifests as clearer skin, I don't know. You know, you can look into that yourself, but I think there are several triggers that some people find. For instance, dairy seems to blow some people's skin up. I don't think I have that issue due to my European heritage. I think I've evolved to deal with dairy products fairly well, so I don't find that much difference in my own skin when I cut out dairy, but that can be something for some people. Some people, processed sugars and fast foods seem to flare up their skin, and alcohol and It's all that. I go, well, of course you should have cut those things out of your diet anyway for the myriad of other health negatives that they bring. So that's kind of like, uh, well, yep, no wonder. Um, coconut oil is the only body moisturizer that I use, and I'll apply that all over my body after the shower. Uh, that seems to work wonders as, uh, to keeping the skin healthy and looking good. You get a nice little sheen. If I'm sunbathing, I'll make sure that I put that on to help moisturize the skin. I got pretty bad sunburn the day that I was out in the sun, in the Australian sun, all day. But I applied coconut oil literally every half hour, and the skin kind of seemed to drink it up. And then by the next day, I was just brown. So that's really good. Didn't have any peeling. So I think it's really important to keep your skin hydrated when you're out in the sun. Especially if you're not using sunscreen, and probably don't overdo it like I did, and make sure you have shade and everything once you've given your skin that hit, hit of the sun that it needs. Uh, no shampoo. So I haven't used shampoo in, I mean, well over a year now that I've fully cut it out. Um, I'll just rinse with water I'll comb it all the time and apply a little bit of coconut oil as a kind of conditioner, uh, once I'm out of the shower if it is feeling a bit dry, just to the ends of the coconut oil. So you're not swabbing the whole— your whole head in coconut oil because that can look a bit greasy. Um, but that's a really good one. Again, natural moisturizer, it's all you need. Once the scalp realizes that it's not being assaulted by these chemical shampoos that are stripping your scalp of the natural oils, then it rebalances and your hair gets a lot healthier, uh, has more volume to it. And the amount of people that have messaged me saying that this has changed their hair for the better is innumerable. So give it a try. Throw out the shampoo, it's a waste of money, you don't need it. Make sure that you're washing just with warm water, uh, and rinsing. If you're near a beach, go wild with that. Seawater is always good. Give it a good scrub, uh, but otherwise just let your hair do its thing. As for most of the skin, like facial skin, I used to have an elaborate facial skincare routine where I would use a cleanser and then an exfoliant and all the rest of it, but I haven't noticed it really doing much good, like noticeable good, in that I use the product and it's amazing and then it stops and then my skin goes bad. I haven't really noticed that. Um, I think the best, at least for me, has been to be outside a lot, rinse with water, and then moisturize, um, at night as well. But whenever you're kind of rinsing the oils off your skin, to moisturize and make sure that it's all protected. That seems to be the best way to improve your skin, as well as, uh, supplementing zinc is a huge one. So this— the zinc that you can take Uh, zinc orotate, I think, is the most absorbable form of zinc. There's also methylsulfurimethane, MSM. If you just Google MSM supplement, it'll come up. That helps within the production of collagen and supporting your hair, skin, and nails, uh, all the rest of it. And of course, eating collagenous materials in the form of animal products, so the joints joint material and like the bits in between the muscle meat on the steak, the fat, all of the bits up to the bone. I think if you're going to be eating animal products, then you should try and eat nose to tail. The nose to tail philosophy is the idea that, you know, over thousands of years, if we were to kill a deer in the wild, then we would not have wasted any part of it. We would have consumed the bone marrow, we would have consumed the brain, the eyes, the liver, rather than just the Western idea of eating muscle meat only. I think if you're doing carnivore, you're only eating steaks, you're going to be missing out on a lot of nutrition. I think you have to mix it up with consuming bone marrow, making bone broth, eating organ meats to, to really get all of the parts and nutrition that you need if you are only eating animal products. So that's that one. Eating a lot of carrots, you get better carotene, increase the tone of your skin. Sun, of course. And that's really it. It's pretty simple. Of course, otherwise healthy eating, loads and loads of water, 4 liters a day roughly. A gallon is a good ballpark. I think if you have a liter in the morning and You have a lot of fruit has water in it as well. It's fairly easy to get to, and if you have a hot sweating day, then you obviously gonna be drinking more. And if you're just chilling, not really exerting yourself, then you're not gonna be expending a lot of water either. So that's not a hard and fast rule with the 4 liters, but it's a good ballpark. And if you're smaller, you'll have a bit less. If you're bigger, you'll, you'll have a bit more. So there are a few skin tips for you. I'm gonna end the Soulcast with a poetry reading. This one is called "And Death Shall Have No Dominion" by Dylan Thomas. And death shall have no dominion. Dead man naked they shall be one with the man in the wind and the west moon. When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone, they shall have stars at elbow and foot. Though they go mad, they shall be sane. Though they sink through the sea, they shall rise again. Though lovers be lost, love shall not, and death shall have no dominion. And death shall have no dominion. Under the windings of the sea. They lying long shall not die windily. Twisting on racks when sinews give way, strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break. Faith in their hands shall snap in two, and the unicorn evils run them through. Split all ends up, they shan't crack, and death shall have no dominion. And death shall have no dominion. No more may gulls cry at their ears, or waves break loud on the seashores. Where blew a flower, may a flower no more lift its head to the blows of the rain. Though they be mad and dead as nails, heads of the characters hammer through daisies, break in the sun till the sun breaks down, and death shall have no dominion. So pretty intense one there, uh, I think a lot of beautiful imagery even if it is a bit macabre. So look that up if you're interested. Dylan Thomas and Death Shall Have No Dominion. A long time since the last Soulcast episode, and I apologize greatly for that. I've been busy, but I will be getting back into more frequent posting. Looking out for my Soulcast episode with Lobo. I know a lot of you are excited for that one, so go check him out at @elobosavage on Twitter. And also my friend Holistic Brah, uh, we're going to be having a joint podcast coming out soon, so keep your eyes peeled. Again, we're gonna get— gonna be getting these out more frequently. So thank you for your patience and thanks for listening to the Soulcast. We'll catch you next time.