3 Solcast - Episode Three: How to Tell a Friend Something Tough, Mastic Gum + Health Benefits of the Beach

Welcome to episode 3 of the Soulcast. I've been getting into a bit of a rhythm doing these, so I thought, why not, you know, strike while the iron is hot, so to say. I was reading something the other day where you have to be sure to take advantage of when things are going well, really step on the gas, so to speak. So if you have any success in your relationships or work in general, is to— if things, if times are good, make hay while the sun shines. That's the classic expression. So I'm continuing to do them. And topics of conversation for this podcast, yeah, I wanted to talk about in terms of convincing people that you interact with of the value of a purely healthy lifestyle. Because I think everyone runs into this when they first start working out and feeling so much better, cleaning up their diet and just having all this energy. All you want to do is tell other people, like, come on, like, please, just— I wish I could show you the feeling of it, of what being actually fit and healthy and eating good foods feels like. Just so that I can show you it's worth the effort that you put in, right? That's what you want to tell everyone because you've like, okay, I didn't realize it was possible to feel this good. But unfortunately, you can't really tell people. Like, you can— they'll always have excuses as to why they can't work out or why they have to eat the way they do. And if you're really close with them, I think you should be able to tell them straight up like, hey bro, like this is what you're doing, it's unhealthy. I love you, but you really should make some changes because I'm worried about your health. And I think any good relationship that you're close with someone, you should be able to say negative things, but in a— not negative things, but like, hey man, I'm your friend and I'm just gonna be honest and say that what I'm— what I think you're doing is gonna be bad for you in the long run and you should make a change and I'm worried about you. And as long as you're saying that from a place of love, It really, you know, if someone flips out like that, then maybe they shouldn't be as close to you as they are because any reasonable person would see that they're just trying to be your friend and, and help you out, basically. So you can show people, you can't tell them, but you can show them. And if they see you doing better, feeling better, having more energy, you're looking better, you're being more productive, you're overall your life's improving. As long as you're doing that, keeping routine, eating well, sleeping better, you become a role model. And if you're actually living what you're saying, you know, practicing what you preach, then you would hope that that, that's the best positive influence you can have on someone else. Like, that you, you can moralize it and talk about it till the cows come home, But at the end of the day, as long as you're doing it, you're showing people what's possible. That's the way to convince people to be healthier, I think, the most productive way. There's the other thing is that is I read about child rearing is that You can tell your kid the right things to do, and you can tell your kid to act a certain way, but kids are smarter than you realize, and all they pick up on is your behavior, what you're actually doing day to day. And that you can't tell them what to do, you have to show them. If they see you exercising, if they see you eating right, they're raising— they're being brought up in that environment. Of course they're gonna eat healthy and be healthy too. It's very simple. I got my, at least the germination of my healthy eating habits from my parents. They were always very like still relaxed, but also like, okay, the majority of the time you should be eating healthy is just a general rule, just for basic minimum performance, the baseline. So I had that from my parents. So that's like, it's the only real way that that at least I've read. Obviously I don't have kids, I'm not a parent, so I'm just theorizing here. But showing them what to do and how to do it and what's going to be best for you is the only way you can really do it. I thought a, a good thing to do would every now and then, if I think of something that I can recommend to you guys, is like a supplement to try or food or something to try, um, is— and I'll just do it as a little segment in between in the podcast. What I was thinking of recommending was mastic gum. That's M-A-S-T-I-C gum, G-U-M. And basically what it is is the resin of a bush that grows in Greece. It's a very traditional Greece, uh, delicacy— is that the right word? But it's used and has a history of use for digestion, anti-inflammatory, super good for your internal system. And you order this, this resin, it's like a white gum color, and you chew it and it's like it goes the consistency of a really thick gum. Like, it, it's quite tough to chew through compared to normal chewing gum, which is great. So there are numerous benefits because you, you're getting this jaw workout. Honestly, if you have a big gob of this stuff, you can chew it. It almost cleans your teeth while you're chewing as well. It's quite a nice feeling. But the benefits of that is that your masseter muscle, the jaw muscle, gets super strong. And I've noticed that eating food is easier now because I'm having to chomp through that thing. Chewing on that, you know, 20 minutes a day after meals. I do it, helps. Um, if you ever have a sore stomach, upset tummy, just chew a bit of this. You can swallow it, it's edible. Just like eat a little bit so that it goes further down into you, but then just keep chewing it. That'll settle your stomach in 15 minutes. It's really cool. The taste quite— it gets a bit piney. It's not sweet at all, uh, which is also nice having that chewing gum. Like, I like chewing gum, but I honestly, even the sugar-free mint ones which don't have sugar-free stuff. Xylitol, knock off of you, uh, the fake sweeteners. Just have sugar, it's not going to kill you. But yeah, the chewing— normal chewing gum is too sweet for me, so I like this as like a, yeah, a healthy chewing gum. That's what it is. Heaps of different benefits, you can Google that, read up on it yourself. But you have to order it from Greece, which obviously it's, it's a little bit expensive but worth it. I think you buy bulk Um, I wonder if someone could import some of that. Maybe I will. I'll look into that, sell it in Australia. So take a look at that if you want to get a jacked jaw. No affiliation with any mastic gum. I don't own mastic stock. I wish. If you'll excuse me, I'm gonna do a max set of push-ups. I recommend you do the same. Right now. Be right back. My chest was sore than I thought from the workout I had yesterday. Did some flies on the ground with dumbbells, just really controlled lowering, really winding your arms right down to the ground. So I'm kind of lying flat on the ground doing flies like that. You can do them on the floor, quite good. But yeah, I've been doing a lot of push-ups recently. As part of my out-of-gym routine. You can do them anywhere. They're a great upper body exercise. Relative body strength is something you should train as well. Bodyweight exercise and movement, it's going to give you more control of your body, uh, increased muscle definition. You'll feel better. It's like you're not just lifting weights, you're, you're moving your body through space, which is a good, a a good life skill to have. If you have strength in a range of motion, then there's gonna be a lot lower chance of you getting injured as well. Say if you slip and fall and you have the strength to catch yourself. That's another thing about stretching which is good, is that you're much less likely to pull something because your body has been at far stretched out before. And you also— something that's not talked about is, uh, end range flexibility. I learned this from a guy called Jack Horanhan, I think his name is, fitness on Instagram. He's a personal trainer in England, really knowledgeable guy, really, uh, spreads a lot of the same info that I preach in terms of exercise, or the ones that I believe. To be true, so go check him out. But basically, end range flexibility is the control you have at those extended stretch ranges. Like, it's all well and good to kind of just in that stretch position, but the conscious manipulation of the muscle and, and feeling that extra hamstring that you've kind of unlocked by stretching and really getting conscious control of that, and that's going to improve your flexibility a lot. And, uh, make you feel better, less stiff. So look into that, in-range flexibility. I hope everyone's stretching a lot in this time. It's one of the greatest things you can do for your body, especially inside. You've got nothing else to do. I highly recommend you do it before bed as kind of like a minimum, and also in the morning as like a warm-up to your day. Like, literally just take 5 minutes 5 minutes. You just have to kind of get on the ground, do some hamstring stretches. I do some light push-ups, some light air squats, sit in a deep squat as much as you can. And as long as you're doing that regularly, you're going to gain flexibility, you're going to warm up and get your joints ready for the day. Less chance to injure yourself doing random stuff around the house. And stretching Excuse me. Stretching before bed is so critical as well because you get all of that tension that you've kind of built up throughout the day, the stress of whatever, and you just, ugh, you let it go. Your muscles are tensed up and you just, you take a bit of time to go, okay, where am I feeling stiff? Why might that be? How can I try and rectify that? And just bring a bit of flexibility back into your body. So that— and it's just so relaxing before bed. So try stretching before bed. That's definitely going to result in better sleep. I religiously do half an hour of yoga before bed every night. Obviously there's some nights I don't, but I try to do it every night, and I'm the most flexible I've ever been from doing that. I feel the most mobile and strong in the end range, and it's a good feeling. It's not really stiff. So highly recommend stretching as a good activity to do while we're all stuck inside. Other high-value exercises that I'm doing in lockdown: pull-ups. Now, the pull-up is literally moving your body off the ground up another level. Imagine you're climbing something, right? That's what training pull-ups does, is it makes your ability to kind of pull yourself up something better. And that's such a good life skill to have I know you're not climbing up boulders and bridges and things every day of your life, but you never know when that might come in handy, being able to pull yourself up something. So I'm training pull-ups a lot. You just have to find some tree or girder. Hopefully some of you have pull-up bars at home. I unfortunately don't. But I've just been doing them on a tree. And the funny thing about this tree is there's no real branches around. That resemble a pull-up bar. They're a lot fatter, so I'm, I'm literally doing like a— almost like I'm palming the pull-up bar. My fingers kind of reach around a little bit at the top, but my hands have gotten so strong from doing pull-ups like that with not the traditional closed hand grip, but like almost like an open grip. And if you can find something like that and regularly doing as many pull-ups of that style as you can, my hands just feel so much stronger. My grip is super strong, I've noticed. So that can be a good one. As long as you just have a pull-up bar at home, it's good to do them as well. That's one of the things I would do kind of every hour to get, get body movement again if I've been sitting down for a while. It's just like I said, a 10, just, you know, feel what's going on in your body. Always good to do, check in on your body, how you're feeling throughout the day. And notice if you're feeling stretched in a particular area, tired or stiff, and, uh, trying to see if you can do something about that. It's going to make your move feel better. It's always worth putting in the time to help out your body through stretching and, and working out. It's because it's gonna treat you better back. That's the only body you're gonna get. So that's my rationale behind taking, you know, some would say obsessed approach to healthy living and improving my life, but I want to make my body feel as good as possible and work for as long as possible and have a good quality of life of movement for as long as possible. So whatever I can do to help that out, it's not a, it's not a chore for me. It's like what I enjoy to do. It's almost like a hobby in a way. I think, man, you definitely lose a lot more water when you're talking for so long. I'm drinking turmeric tea. I think it has ginger in it and it's absolutely delicious. Feel like you're getting a good dose of, uh, turmeric Goodness as well, of course, anti-inflammation. And, uh, that's a good one to have. Other teas I like: peppermint, chamomile. Chamomile before bed, peppermint if you've just had a big meal. I have turmeric throughout the day. One thing I, I wanted to bring up was this interesting story of a guy. I don't remember the guy, but I think I was listening to him on a podcast and he said He— yeah, so I wanted to bring something up. Was this idea of the 5-minute rule. The 5-minute rule is the amount of time that you give yourself to feel sad and down and sorry for yourself when things bad, quote unquote, happen in your life. Because there's no value in being sad for longer than that. You know, you give yourself 5 minutes and you go, okay, this sucks. It's shit situation, poor me, blah, blah, blah. And then you get that out of your system because staying in that mindset is not going to go any distance towards helping you to get out of that shitty situation or making it better or mitigating some of the circumstances. You're just gonna be like, oh, it sucks, man. And like, okay, cool, nice one. How does that help you exactly? What's the point? So the 5-minute rule is kind of saying, yeah, no matter what happens in your life, you know, excusing funerals, people always gonna be like, what about funerals? I can only be sad for 5 minutes. No. For daily circumstances which you might think, oh, this sucks, or whatever, it's like 5 minutes, okay, you're sad. All right, now get on with it and try and fix the problem. Try and make the situation better, or just let it go. Be happy. Because when you hold on to anger and sadness, you may think that you're like that somehow you deserve to feel that way, but it doesn't help anyone, let alone you. It's toxic for your body, you know, stress levels. You gotta really try and look at things in the best light possible because otherwise you just get stuck in your own head. No one is gonna help you. So the 5-minute rule is kind of how you can say, okay, have your sad bit, but then let's just, let's get on with our lives and look for other great things. I'm like might come. It's like the everything happens for a reason people. Probably not, probably not that everything happens for a reason. Some things just suck and it's random chance and probably not, there was, there's not a grand plan that you should have, you know, broken your leg or something. The people that think that and think that, okay, this happened in my life for some good reasons, some better reason, it's leading me to something or teach me a lesson. Those people are going to end up more successful in life than the people who just wallow and think, oh, this is horrible. Woe is me. Uh, this sucks because they're always going to be open to the possibility of positive potential and you have to be open in order to receive it. Like if you closed off and you're not even giving yourself a chance in something, then it's never going to happen. So it's, it's a silly 5-minute rule. Think about it. Just going to get another drink. Okay, so I have peppermint now. Peppermint and fennel. It's quite nice. Bit hot right now, we'll leave that. That's what you have to get excited about once you, uh, clean up your diet and stuff. Different types of teas. Thrilling. You might have seen me post a photo from the beach. The podcast cover art is the beach, and that was taken recently. The beach is super good for you for a few reasons. One, you're getting sun. Usually when you're at the beach, it's a sunny day. Uh, various benefits of sunlight: circadian rhythm benefits, testosterone boosting, tanning. It's good for your skin, vitamin D, a whole lot of benefits. Uh, the sand— you're usually barefoot, and being barefoot against the surface of the earth is really good for you. You're absorbing negative ions from that. The ocean itself is a great source of negative ions. There are benefits to wound healing, anti-inflammation as well, the negative ions. You can look those up. Maybe I'll— if I can figure out how to do show notes, I can link to those studies. But basically you're getting the triple dose of health from the beach, which is why it's such a great outing. To try and incorporate your life. If you're on the coast, take advantage of that. Or if you have, I guess, natural hot springs or stuff like that, just somewhere to get into the water in planet Earth. There are obviously the salts in the water and magnesium is in the water. All these minerals are going to be absorbed through the skin and you're usually going to be feeling a lot better. Magnesium, of course, good for relaxation. Always feel chilled out after the beach. It's partially the reason is because of the magnesium in the water, potassium, obviously sodium. Maybe not potassium, maybe I'm making that up. Fact-check me on that one. Otherwise, this will conclude the first part of the podcast. We'll come back once I figure out what questions I'm going to answer. Uh, see you in a little bit. A friend once said to me that he was annoyed that he was short, and I said, yeah, but you have better bodybuilding genetics. And he goes, what do you mean? Well, if people are short, it means the muscle that they do have is packed on a shorter frame, so they're going to look bigger. Also, the calories that are needed to build muscle on a smaller frame are lower, so it's a lot easier to get your— well, not a lot, you're still eating a shitload, but it's going to be easier for you to gain weight in terms of raw volume of food you have to eat for if you're shorter. So you're really doing yourself a disservice if you're not bodybuilding or at least weightlifting and being shorter. I recommend, like, I've seen my friends get jacked in, you know, a good solid 8 months of consistent lifting, and you can be jacked like a guy that are like sizable muscle mass if you haven't lifted before. It really can happen that quick if you're consistent and you're doing the right things. The important thing is doing consistency. Consistently. Another question from someone on Twitter was how to attract the best wife. Trad wife, he said, uh, traditional wife. I'm not really sure about the traditional bit, but I think my general advice is always it's less of a conscious— I'm going going to find a wife, but you look inwards, you better yourself, and try and act in a way that is going to naturally attract the type of girl that you want to attract, or type of person that you want. Which means holding yourself to a higher standard if you want a higher quality partner. That's just the way it works. And Yeah, when you're taking care of yourself, you really want a partner that does that as well. So that's, that's fair enough. You know, it's almost like a common interest. But in terms of finding a girl, if you're bettering yourself, you're always improving, you're being social, you're getting out and about, I believe that you put out the right energy that things will come back in some way to you. And you will meet someone. Obviously not if you're sitting in your room, not if you're not doing social things, but I do believe as long as you're acting in the right way that these things have a way of— you have a way of attracting the right people in your life once you raise your vibration, as they say. What that means is raising your level of awareness, your level of thinking. And it usually starts with becoming aware of your thoughts, becoming aware that your thoughts are thoughts that are just popping into your head, and you're this kind of thing that's separate from these thoughts. Once you realize that, it's, it's almost like an inevitable spiral in into reading philosophy and reading about consciousness and these things that you kind of have this new knowledge of. But that point before, you are not your thoughts, if you haven't heard of that, it's basically the idea that this thing that you are, this consciousness that we kind of think, oh, this is me, this is I, I am a thing, like that thing is different to your thoughts. Your thoughts are these ghost-like things that just pop into your head from where? Where does the thought come from? And then they try and sway you to get angry or they sway you to get upset, but you can see the thought come up as an angry thought and you feel that rush of anger and you can go, wait, where did that come from? Like, yes, something upsetting might have happened in, in real life, but you can take away the power of that instantly when you examine the thought and say, hang on, uh, what is this anger doing? I didn't consciously want to bring it up. And as soon as you kind of view it like that, you start to become conscious of how your thoughts can influence your life, your relationships, and your general mindset, and how you feel day to day. If you let things get— make you angry, It's, it's entirely your own doing. And as soon as you understand that, you get a lot higher peace of mind because you can let things go so much easily and so much easier. And it's not like overnight, of course. The benefits of these things take time, just like anything good and worthwhile. But that's an important concept that I think everyone should know about. It's this idea that what you are is this receiver of all these senses and feelings and thoughts. You're not— you are not the actual thought. You are separate from that. You are that which is experiencing the thought, experiencing the sensations, the senses that are coming into the brain or wherever. And once you realize that, you you kind of, you're a happier person, you have more positive energy, you don't let things bring you down, and that is infectious. And so in the sense that you're raising your vibration that little amount each day by practicing awareness, consciousness, trying not to get angry at things that don't matter, like getting cut off in traffic or those stupid things like people getting upset that the dishwasher wasn't turned on last night. Like, "Oh no, we forgot to turn the dishwasher on last night. Great." Like, it's— I always see behavior like that and go, "Okay, wait, why are you like— you're actually upset about this? Like, you're— you've let it affect your day." And I It's more so I look at that and go, that's stupid. It's a waste of energy. So raising your vibration is going to impact your behavior to the level that hopefully it spreads out to other people and they can analyze their actions and go, hey, look, look how this guy's so chill and, and he seems to be happier. Like he's not getting upset about things. You know, it spreads out, it leaks out. And the idea of raising people's consciousness with these ideas. The idea is to spread it to as many people as possible, raise their vibration, whatever you want to call it, their awareness level, to the level where it kind of stacks and we just have this society that's bouncing off each other's awareness, positivity, ba-ba-ba-ba-bum. And that's the idea anyway. It does work for sure. I've seen it happen. So try and be that source of energy in your community wherever you are, for your family. People appreciate it. People appreciate the guy that's, that's in the group or girl that's in the group and is going, oh, oh well, it doesn't matter. Let's, let's move on and we'll be better next time or, or try and fix it. You know, no one likes the guy that's always complaining and upset about situations. You're not, you're not helping. Like if complaining helps, yeah, go, complain, go for your life, but it doesn't. So yeah, stop, stop letting things affect you that don't matter is basically the summary of that. So finally, someone asked about twice a day workouts, um, for example, chest in the morning, legs in the evening. And I think twice a day workouts can work if the workouts themselves are like 45 minutes. You don't want to be doing much longer than that if you're doing twice a day, but you obviously have to be resting, sleeping, stretching, and eating to accommodate this— these twice a day workouts. Some bodybuilders train like that. They'll train in the morning, eat, and have a little nap in the afternoon. I recommend having a nap if you can, if you have the time, especially on the weekend, times like this. Get up a bit earlier, smash out work, use up your energy, have lunch, stay in the sun for a while, nap, back to another few hours of work. I think that's the best schedule. If I could pick my schedule, that's what I would do, is waking up decently early, 6 o'clock, working till like 10:30, 11. So like you're getting a solid 4 hours work there with your little breaks in between, whatever work you happen to be doing. And then to prepare lunch, chill out a bit, get out in the sun after lunch and just get a bit of nature time. Morning, obviously the sun before starting work is the best option as well. I forgot to mention that. So sun in the lunches as well, after lunch, uh, into a nap. So 45 minutes to an hour I think is, is decent if you can do it. Uh, it's really going to go a long way to giving you energy for the rest of the day, for your almost like a second work session before you enter your big phase of sleep. So you can work if you have a nap from 2 to 3, maybe it's the hottest part of the sun, you can get out of it for a bit, and then you're working again from 5 till maybe a bit earlier, like 4 till 7:30 or something. And then by then you want to kind of be setting up, having dinner. Getting into your pre-bed routine. I think that's the, the nicest thing to do. It's how I would set it up. Stretch before bed, of course, uh, half an hour of yoga before bed. If you can do morning yoga as well, I highly recommend that. So back to the twice a day workouts, I would not really recommend unless you have the time and resources to do that, to commit to taking the nap, which is gonna, you know, help with recovery so much. Stretching, eating— you have to eat a lot more because probably another 1,800 calories— not 1,800, maybe about 800 calories depending on how hard you're lifting, maybe a bit less— unless you have the time, resources to do so. Some top bodybuilders I know a lot of bodybuilders do this, but that's their full-time job. So yeah, that's my thoughts on twice a day workouts. My abs routine, a few ab exercises that I love to do. Weighted rope tuck. So I got this idea, I kind of did them before, but I never religiously did them until I read them in Dave Draper's book. Dave Draper was a bodybuilder I think in the '60s, Arnold era, golden era. He has one of my favorite physiques, so you can go have a look at him. Dave Draper, he's got some really great books, website with a lot of really interesting content that is super unique. He has a great writing voice, kind of feels like you're speaking to your dad or something like that. So he has great bodybuilding books. And articles as well. But he— yeah, the weighted rope tuck. So that's where you'll have the rope attached to the highest cable, you know, pin thing. You've got the rope that ends in two handles, two like balls on the end of the, of the rope, and you kind of put your hands to either side on your knees, and then you're crunching downwards, kind of curling up um, right down as far as you can go, and then the reverse coming back up, really keeping constant tension on the way back up. And you do that with decent weight. Like, I was doing 4 sets of 12 with the whole stack, 45 kilos or something. Like, your core gets really strong once you consistently train it. Like, you have to use it and train it with some decent weight. And that's when you're going to see the most muscle development in your core, is when you have and train it and develop it. Like, body weight gets you so far, and then you kind of need to expose it to a higher, higher load. Voice break there, very cool. So 4 times 12 of weighted rope tucks. I do at the start of every workout as a little bit of a warm-up, get the blood flowing a bit after 5 minutes of jogging. And then leg raises, always a good one. I do leg raises often as a superset in between whatever I'm doing at the time. If I just feel like it, I go, okay, bang, let's put some leg raises in between. Helps keep your heart rate up, more frequency on the abs is great. Leg raises if you can do them, hanging from, uh, like a pull-up bar or something. And the other one is weighted side bends. Weighted side bends is where you're holding a dumbbell in your right or left, one at a time, and you kind of let the weight pull your spine or pull your side down. Like, let the weight pull you down And whatever muscle you're relaxing to let the weight pull you down so that you're not standing up straight, that's the muscle that you contract on the way up. And that's your abdominals, um, stabilizing the spine, basically. The spine, the spine, basically. And that's a great core exercise because you're— the stabilization of the spine is really the role of the core, and training that with some decent weight is great for the abs. You'll feel the burn. See how you go. Start small, work up to it. But I can do that with like a, a 40-kilo dumbbell quite comfortably for a set of 8 or so. But it's tough going, like you really got to be conscious in it. You don't want to pull something in your back, so just make sure you're starting off with low, lower weights so you get used to that, both sides. Those and pullovers. Pullovers are really good for the— what's the word— serratus muscles. Those really good muscles kind of sitting down below your pectoral and your lat in between there on the side of your abs that look really nice when they're a bit developed. So try those out. And I think that'll do it for episode 3. Thanks for listening. If you're listening on Gumroad, thank you for subscribing. It's cool to see a few of you subscribing for that. Uh, you can contribute if you want, helps me out. Uh, the more of you to do that, the more time I can spend making this stuff if you're into it. So anything is appreciated. Otherwise, follow me on Twitter. Getting this out— we're on Spotify. If you're on Spotify, listen there. And thanks again, uh, it's a pleasure as always. See you next time.