019: What Is Model Health with Shawn Stevenson

Hi, I'm Natalie Jill, fat loss expert turned high performance coach. When odds are stacked against us, how do we shift and create everything from nothing? How do we level up when we aren't feeling it yet or we've had a big setback? On this podcast, I'll be talking to some of the most inspiring and courageous men and women on this planet who at their worst learned how to achieve success greater than they ever dreamed possible. Leveling up and creating everything from Nothing. A solid 32% candy and 17% Cheetos is how Shawn Stevenson describes his childhood. Growing up on microwave dinners, fast food and candy. Food was food to Shawn Stevenson. 16 year old Shawn was diagnosed with a brittle bone after breaking a hip and standard of care did not ask him about diet or lifestyle. He was taught that he wouldn't get better and he believed it. In a back brace, with a body that was breaking down and gaining weight, eating more Krispy Kreme doughnuts, swallowing pills and hanging out in bed. That became his routine. One evening, after a girlfriend made a comment about his body that he didn't like, he started to reflect over pill bottles and once again his bed. He reflected that doctors, they didn't care that he wouldn't get better. But you know what? Weren't thinking about him. He decided that he needed to think about him and he needed to help himself. Today, Sean Stevenson is the author of internationally bestselling book Sleep Smarter and he's a creator of the Model Health Show. He's featured as a number one health podcast on itunes. Sean has been featured in Entrepreneur magazine, Fast Company, Forbes, Men's Health Magazine, espn, CNN and many other major media outlets. Join me today as I learn from Sean how he leveled up and created everything from nothing.

Hey.

Hey. Today on leveling Up, I've got my good friend Shawn Stevenson who is the creator of the Model Health Show. Thanks you, Sean, for being here. I'm so excited to chat with you.

It's my pleasure, like I said, for, for Natalie, anything. So I'm super excited to be here.

I love it. So Sean, I don't even know if you know this, but when I first started listening to podcasts, I mean yours is the one that got me interested in podcast because I loved the information you were sharing and who you were interviewing and I wasn't. I knew of podcasts, but it was yours that got me hooked on them.

I hope so. But that's, you know, that's kind of like the formula and I've heard that from so many people that you Know, like, especially folks sharing podcasts with friends and family that don't listen to podcasts and them getting so drawn in. And that was my intention from the beginning, was to create something that was super engaging, but also just like, layered with education and takeaways. I'm very big on action steps and also, you know, just really embedding my person into it. You know, who I am. Because people don't connect with a podcast. They connect with people. And people don't buy a book. They're buying you. You're. They're buying you and your story and your information. So that just means everything to hear that from you.

So true. So true. And I love that. And whatso what people don't know about you, and maybe they do, but I certainly didn't know this about you, is that, you know, you've got this top podcast. You are known in the health and wellness space. Like, that's. You're known for that. And you represent the epitome of health now. But I know that that was not always who you were before, like, that. You are a different person years ago. And I am curious for you to tell us about that. Like, who were you before you were the model health show and this epitome of success and health.

Oh, my goodness. Natalie. When I was. When I was growing up, I was probably a solid 32% candy, and it's like 17% Cheetos. You know, I was just made of straight up. It's. It just, first of all, brings me to the realization of how resilient the human body is.

Yeah.

And how it can adapt in ways, but disease will manifest. And ultimately that's what happened for me and my body. Parents, oftentimes, especially when we were growing up, they didn't have the intention of messing us up. It was just the culture as a culture. As fast foods were beginning to boom, the culture of microwave dinners, the culture of, for me, having access to a corner store in the various neighborhoods we live in and having a dollar. You can get a hundred pieces of candy, penny candy. And so this is straight up. I mean, this is. These guys. This is like, legitimate. I've got a bag of drugs, right. I've got a bag of Mike and Ike's and, you know, sweet fish and all this stuff. And. And this was just a normal thing. This is a normal thing. From the conditions that I were, that I was in. For me, the earliest memories of. Of eating was with my grandmother when I. The first part of my life from my early years that my oldest memories from Kindergarten, basically preschool through second grade. I lived with my grandmother and it was a much more stable environment and it was full of love, it was full of, I mean, she, Some of my best memories are she makes such a big deal with holidays. I remember for Easter, like my first Easter that I can remember, she took, she had me through in our house a treasure hunt. And so I was just basically learning to read at the time. So I was getting a little bit of help in reading the notes that would take me to different parts of the house and outside. And you know, it's just she made such a big deal out of things and she made a big deal out of me. She really loved me and held me up. And so my earliest memories were sitting there. I had my own little table. I was the first grandchild, but I had like two cousins at the time, Scotty and Candy. Alright, shout out to them whatever they're doing right now. But I had my little table, my little red chairs. And I remember eating repeatedly the same foods. It would be fish sticks, it would be macaroni and cheese, it would be some form of a potato. Luckily, luckily I ate broccoli. That was probably the thing that saved my life for a time period. But my grandmother and my grandfather, he hunted. My grandmother had a garden. She's like, why wasn't I eating that stuff? Because I didn't want to. And it wasn't the culture early on because I was bouncing around from her house to my mother's house, eating fast food, eating, you know, here and there.

Okay.

And I, she, she did what many parents do, which is I just want my kid to eat something. Right. Especially if you're busy, you know, you got all this stuff going on. So she just wanted to make sure that I was getting food because for that culture, that generation, food is food. And that's what I grew up believing.

I got it. Yeah, yeah. It's just food.

It doesn't mean, it doesn't matter if it's like, you know, a fish stick or wild caught salmon. It's just all food. And so that's, it's a pervasive thing in our culture still today. There are many people that don't really know the difference. And so fast forward the story. I continue those eating habits throughout my childhood and into high school. And ultimately in high school is when things began to break down like severely. I broke my hip from running. I was just out running at track practice and I broke the iliac crest of my hip because my bones were so brittle. My bone density was so low.

So you weren't having pain or anything. You're just, you're running and this happens. Like what, what occurred to you about that?

I didn't have any warning sign. I was at track practice running a 200 meter sprint and my hip broke.

Wow.

And I went through what's called standard of care, which is, you know, given some NSAIDs, told to stay off the legs and crutches and that was that. But nobody stopped to ask, how did this 16 year old kid break his hip from running? That's.

Yeah. Like, no questions about your diet or what lifestyle or any of that?

Of course not. Oh, my goodness. Of course not. You know, and from there I had about a dozen more injuries that like, I, man, things were looking so good for me. I. And I don't know if you know about this stuff, Natalie, but like the NFL combine and these numbers and these people doing sprints and all this stuff. I legit had NFL level speed. I ran a 4, 5, 40 when I was 15 years old. And so, like everything was looking great for me. And then everything stopped. You know, the attention went away. And it wasn't until 20 years old, ultimately, finally, I get this diagnosis of degenerative spinal disease. I had two herniated discs and degenerative bone disease at 20 years old. Yes. Yes.

Wow.

My physician at the time, the first man that I saw, told me he put the scan up for me to see my mri because I'm just like, okay, so how do we fix this? I was used to working with coaches, sure. I was used to working with the, the physical therapist. I was like, okay, so how do we fix this? Right. He's just looking at me like this side with the side. I just like, I'm sorry, son, there's nothing you can do about this. This is incurable. And he told me that my spine, I had the spine of an 80 year old man.

Oh my gosh. What were you thinking when you hear this?

I was just straight up confused. I didn't understand. I didn't understand how that was possible. And I also didn't understand why he didn't tell me how to fix it. But because of him being an authority figure and I knew nothing about the body, nothing about my body that I lived in. I believed him. I believed that there was nothing I could do. And then once I really settled in, I went from kind of a nuisance of a pain to chronic, debilitating pain that lasted about two weeks.

Yeah, because someone's validating what you're doing, thinking. And now they're making it worse in doomsday.

Yeah, yeah. It's so it's really unfair that we have people in positions of power like that that are able to, or should I say, unable to communicate properly. You know, he had no right to tell me that there was nothing that I could do as a young man. You know, he really set the. And by the way, so this is called the nocebo effect. Many people have heard of a placebo, and a lot of people are surprised to hear this, that the gold standard of studies, like when you hear about a new drug or you hear about a supplement or whatever it is that I run through clinical trials, the gold standard is a double blind, placebo controlled study. You have to control for the placebo because placebos actually work now on average, in clinical trials, on average, placebos. So this is fake drugs, fake supplements, fake surgeries, fake treatments that people just believe they're getting a drug or a treatment that's supposed to lower their blood pressure or kill a tumor or get rid of migraines or eliminate their depression. On average, placebos are 33% effective. All right, 33% of the time somebody believes they're taking will just say lisinopril to lower their blood pressure and their blood pressure comes down. But they're taking a sugar pill. It's not even the real drug.

And why do you think that is?

It's the power of the human mind. The most powerful pharmacy in the world is in our brains. This is where we're creating all this stuff. And the power of our perception, this cannot be understated or overstated. Should I say enough in the conversation today? And even when you take a drug or you have a treatment done, your body still has to process and accept it. This is what's so beautiful. It's the interaction of your body with those chemicals. And so with that said, the nocebo effect, which is the opposite of a placebo, with placebo, you're generally getting something that you think is going to have a positive effect. Nocebo effect is telling somebody, right, you have two weeks to live or this is an incurable condition or you'll never walk again.

Yeah. So like all those. And I talk about self imposed stops, like these things that you start believing that are just really self imposed, or in this case, somebody's telling you, and now you, you've made them. Your own belief.

Exactly. And that is the most powerful force in the universe is your belief. You know, what you believe is true. Your perception is your reality. What you perceive to be reality is your reality. And with that said, you know, having that kind of power is, you know, of an authority figure giving out a nocebo effect. It set the template for me. And so two and a half years go by, I'm just in debilitating pain on all these different medications. I'm wearing a back brace. I've tried all these different treatments, but, you know, everybody's still telling me that I can't get better. I can just manage the pain. And I gained a lot of weight, too. So not doing anything and eating the diet that I was eating that I kind of described already. But now I upgrade a little bit. I'm grown now, so I can buy my own Krispy Kremes.

Oh, my gosh. And so no activity, and you're told that you're not getting better, so you just start eating more. So now you're gaining weight, which adds a whole nother set of issues.

And I don't know if anybody's really realized this, but it's so funny that one of the greatest conditions for us to eat more food is boredom. When you don't have anything to do, we tend to eat. Especially if you're connected to the food culture that we are. I've even seen it today. Like, on days that I'm not going to the gym or that, you know, I'm quote off, I tend to eat more, you know, just because I just have more time. Just kind of mental boredom will make a meal or get a snack. So, anyways, I don't want to take a detour with that, but to wrap this story up. So, and spoiler alert, everything's good now. But it took two and a half years before it just. It literally hit me like a ton of bricks. But oftentimes that ton of bricks hits you when you're already on the ground. Like, you're on rock bottom. And now you're going to get a house built on top of you, and you're straight up like wizard of Oz, like you got your feet dangling out, unless when these bricks start coming, one of them hits you and you get it right. And so for me, I realized that, wait, I was sitting on my bed, pill bottle in my hand because I had to take these drugs just to help me sleep at night because the pain would wake me up. And it just hit me. The doctors that were telling me that I can't get better were not thinking about me. I'm sitting here living this life in this prison in my own body, and they're living their Lives. They're not thinking about me at night. I'm thinking about them and why can't they help me? And so it just immediately switched in my mind. I have to help myself. I have to do something because they gave me permission to do nothing.

So this is a pretty big epiphany. So did this come from reading anything? Were you learning about mindset? Was somebody coaching on this? Or is this just. You just have this realization now.

You know, there was a series of events. I don't talk about this very often. And it usually is like this. It's not usually like this one moment. It's like several things will start to get you to kind of create these little chinks in your armor. And so one thing was, I had this. We'll call her semi girlfriend at the time. All right, well, even though I was in this condition, by the way, I was terrible. Let's just. I'm just gonna be real, all right? This. I'm. I'm. I'm in love right now. I'm married my wife for 15 years prior to meeting her. Full disclosure. All right, so it's not her. But at the time, I had basically, you know, two girlfriends. Like two full time, you know, one in the morning, it was.

Oh, my. Of course you did, Sean.

So sorry. So sorry. But just being honest. But my evening girlfriend, right, she made a comment about my body. She just. She said something about me that made me like. Cause I had this idea, this mental picture in my mind, like I'm the athlete, like I'm built, like, you know, I'm this guy. But when she said it, it made me reevaluate and see my life conditions were matching the blueprint of who I thought I was.

So wait a minute. So your mind is actually telling you two things right now. So you in this I'm an athlete mindset, so you still think you look a certain way because of your mind, but your mind is also telling you your body's breaking down because of what you're being told on the outside. Is this correct? So nobody's told you yet that your body has caught up with what the doctors are telling you?

Listen, it's in the movie the Matrix. You have a residual self image, right? Even though Neo's head was shaved, in the Matrix, he looked like how he thought he looked. Yeah. And so I was kind of like living in the Matrix. I. I didn't see what reality was. And this is. It's a negative thing in a sense, because just like, she gave me this little off. She was she didn't mean anything by it, but it struck me. And so that was one thing. The other thing was my relationships. You know, I just had for a couple of years. I was with my son's mother. You know, I have my older son Jordan, who's just incredible. But we had broken up a little bit before this. And I had this little boy now, and I had this because, you know, especially as a dad with a son, you want to be their role model, you want to be their hero. I want to teach them to play, you know, to throw the ball around and play a catch, you know. And I was just like, I have to. Nobody's going to give me permission to do this. I have to do it. Yeah. Motivation also for being a good father and a good model for him was burning in me at the time. And also I think the last thing was my grandmother and who this kind of brings for full circle, and I think this is so important for everybody is to bring that, especially in a time of struggle and when you're questioning things, somebody who's seen the best in you, somebody who's always encouraged you. And she would tell people how smart I was. She would tell people how I'm going to do great things. She instilled in me the importance of education. She was pestering me through this whole process. She would call me and then just because she knew something was wrong, but I just blow her off because, you know, it's just like, grandma, just leave me alone, you know? And it just hit me that I was not the person. I was not being the person that I was capable of being and the person who mattered most for me in my development, through her eyes, I was not being that person. And it was about time.

Gosh, it's like, it's super powerful. Like everything you're saying is just. It's how you form these beliefs, but it's coming from other people's validation of it, you know, so really a powerful connection about who you're surrounding yourself with and what they're telling you, what they're feeding you is what you start believing.

Exactly. Yes. Yes. It's. It's one of the most important tools because it's kind of common in personal development today. And talking about how, you know, there's even statements of Jim Rohn said, no one could do your push ups for you. All kind of development is a solo act in a sense.

Sure.

But the reality is we are intimately connected. And I truly believe this today, that our relationships are the most influential factor on our health on our happiness, on our success in life overall. It's our relationships. And I had no idea about that then. I was very much isolated. And on my lone wolf syndrome, I call it. And it took a process of several years before I really like even connecting with you, you know, and having you as a friend in my life and you. The same thing, you know, and opening ourselves up and really realizing how important our relationships are and how life is.

Magnified through connecting with, you know, it's actually interesting. And I feel you and I still evolve on this because when I first met you, I remember connecting over a conversation that we felt we were both introverts. But look, we're talking about connection. And who do you let in your life now?

Exactly. Look at that. We've grown. And so just to put the cherry on top of the story, it's not like. And this is the thing. You can be as passionate as you want about transformation, about changing your business, about changing your body. You can have all the passion in the world, but it doesn't matter unless you have a plan. All right? You have to have a plan. And so fortunately, the way that my mind has been wired is to be pretty analytical and to kind of have a structure for things. You know, I just was. I put it on the back burner. So I put a plan together, and that plan entailed three things. One of them was movement. Since I had been given permission to be on bed rest and not do anything, I didn't do anything. So everything else in my body, obviously, my other. Other muscles were atrophying. Not just my, you know, my bones. And so I began a movement practice, which just literally started off on a stationary bike because it was painful just walking around.

Yeah.

And so that evolved over time. The third. The second thing was my nutrition.

And how did you. Because you didn't even know what to do, like you said you didn't. Food was food to you.

Exactly. That's the thing. So straight up, Natalie, to be real, the first thing I tried, even with my plan, was slim fast.

Slim fast. I love it.

Because of the commercial, right? Oh, my gosh. One for breakfast, one for lunch, then a sensible dinner. I remember I punched myself in the face. At the end of the day, I just couldn't. I couldn't believe it. I lost a couple pounds, gained them back. Totally terrible. But because I was asking questions, and this was the most important one, this is the most important question I asked with my nutrition and ultimately with my recovery. So I have this degenerative condition with my Spine, my disc, in between my vertebrae and my back. I asked the question, okay, these things are breaking down. What are they actually made of? Right? If I'm losing something, how about I give it back? I put it back down?

That's a great question. I don't think most people ask that.

Like, it's like with your house. If you're, like, losing material from your home, what do you need to do to rebuild it? And so that question led me to start searching things out. And I found out, okay, with Bones, it's all marketing. We're marketed. Calcium is the big thing. We see the milk mustache, but that's not real. That's just something that was marketable that they latched onto. There's like 200 compounds that many of them are more important than calcium that I'm lacking. Like, I'm drinking Sunny Delight in, like, bologna sandwiches. Right. I'm not getting these nutrients in these magnesium and vitamin K2 and sulfur bearing amino acids. Acids and polysaccharides. And all of this stuff that I was finding out about, I was like, how do people not know this? It blew my mind.

Yeah.

Made me a little angry. And so I started to. First thing, first step was, Natalie, was I went from, okay, these nutrients. Let me take supplements. Okay, Problem. That's the problem. And then you go from taking pharmaceutical pills to being a natural pill popper, and you're missing the point. Right. So ultimately, eventually that evolved to what foods are these things in? And that's when everything changed for me big time.

Because you were asking the questions.

Exactly. So those two pieces, what things were you looking for?

What ingredients were you looking for to find in foods?

So just some of those things. I just mentioned calcium. Calcium, Silica. I found out how important this. So silica. So when we hear about calcium. And calcium is sort of like an end product through a process called biological transmutation. So if we're taking supplemental forms of calcium, by the way, and people can go to Dr. Google, anything that I talk about, you can go to, okay, Dr. Google.

I love it.

Dr. Go to Dr. Google. Type in calcium supplements, heart attacks. All right, Calcium supplements, heart disease. We see statistically about a 30% greater incidence of heart attacks for people taking calcium supplements.

That's craziness.

Right? Right. But people don't know this. And this is because this is an end. When we see somebody, you know, getting that. That plaque pulled out of the artery, they call it, quote, calcification. It's calcified. So this is a biological end product. It's Kind of like the end process of becoming bone. What's the things that are the precursors to making the calcium, allowing your body to process and create new tissues on its own. Not just calcium, but what we consider to be these end products like bone or some cellular tissue. So this would be silica is one of those super important also sulfur is super important. Vitamin C is incredibly important in building new tissues. Actually, vitamin C and sulfur, they go through that process of biological transmutation to create new tissues. They kind of work synergistically.

Okay.

So I would find pieces of these things along the way and I would implement what I found out. Okay, what foods are they in? And I get to these and this is like, what is this 17 years ago? And so now I'm going and I'm trying, I'm looking at these different rare foods like people didn't know about us finding on the Internet. This is before like goji berries are like in gas station, right? Ordering goji berries from the Tibetan school of medicine, paying all this money I didn't have, right? And just finding out what this stuff does and just continue to get closer and closer to health. And the third thing was so movement, nutrition. Third thing was my sleep. And I didn't know it at the time. If you're not sleeping, you're not healing. This is when we release the greatest amount of anabolic hormones, human growth hormone, reparative enzymes, things that actually heal your body and your brain. It happens while you're sleeping. Being awake is just catabolic, period. And so once I started sleeping better and I didn't do this on purpose, I simply because of things I was now doing during the day, I began to sleep better. And eventually that evolved to, okay, I'm a healthier person, let me get to bed, right? Let me get to bed so I can get up and live my life. Because I was now more excited about life, I was feeling better. Yeah, I lost almost 30 pounds in just about two months.

I have some questions about this though, with the sleep. Okay. And I know and by the way, Sean is an expert on sleep. He's got a best selling book on sleep. So perfect person to ask this question too. So sleep can be detrimental too. I know if, like, if you're using it as avoidance of your life or if you're getting way too much. So can you speak into that too? Because what's like, this is the right optimal amount for health versus like, okay, now you're using it as a crutch or you're avoiding or you're oversleeping.

That's such a great question. Do you know how many I've done? I don't even know. Hundreds of interviews. Nobody's asked me this.

Good. I'm original.

And so listen. And this is because. And let's just be really upfront about this. That is the least concern for our culture today. Most folks are on the other end of the spectrum of sleep deprivation because of fill in the blank.

I would say yes to that. But especially coming from a place of fat loss, so many people battling depression, a lot of them end up sleeping all the time. So I'm curious. That's why I'm so curious about this.

Oh, it's such a good question. Because there is a pretty sizable part of the population, however, that are on that other end of the spectrum where we are seeing them in the bed too much. And there's a couple of things here. So I think it's an important distinction that we have to have before we go into this conversation. There's a difference between getting good sleep and laziness because our culture is promoted to, you know, I sleep when I'm dead. Sleep is for suckers. You know, sleep is for the weak and all these different things. And so people will mistake the fact of getting good sleep that they're. That they're being maybe not doing something that fits into the realm of success. And I'll tell you this. I know these people. I know the people with the big brands, huge social media followings, making the, you know, nine figures. I know these guys. And guess what? They sleep. All right? And many of them, you know, let's. I'll throw a name out here. No, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. But one of the top people people are following on social media business guys tell everybody grind their.

I know exactly you're talking about. You don't have to say the name. I know exactly who you're talking about.

We had dinner and this was a couple years ago, and he shifted his model to play the long game. And so he hired a trainer to stay with him. He began focusing more on his sleep and on his nutrition. You know, he's definitely not, you know, he's not sleeping his life away, but he does understand the value and he's put. Because he wants to play the long game. He doesn't want to trash his health and then can't enjoy the wealth that he's accumulating. So we have that area and then we tiptoe into this idea of being lazy. But also there's a. Oh, my goodness. This was a big part of what my experience was. I was sleeping more during the day rather than living my life, when I was hurt, when I was depressed. And it is definitely a way to disconnect, to hide out from what's going on in our inner world, from our purpose. And it's a big issue. But the solution isn't trying to get people to sleep less. The solution is getting people in a different environment.

Okay, and what about. And speak into maybe circadian rhythm, because I know that's important to you too.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. We have to mind our own biological clock. And we can force our biological clocks to work abnormally, really easily, actually. And this is why it's often recommended that we have a consistent nighttime. I'm sorry, bedtime and wake time. Because all of life, everything about you and all of life on this planet is all about rhythms. There's all a gentle flow and rhythm to everything. What comes after winter, spring. What comes after spring? Not winter, summer, fall. Like, there's a. There's a sequence to it. The same thing with the moon cycle, right? The same thing with menstrual cycles. The same thing with. Guys have cycles as well, but we just don't acknowledge that we have hormonal cycles that are changing depending on the time of the day, the time of the month. There's a rhythm to all of it. But humans are different because we could say, screw the rhythm. Going to, you know, I'm going to go to the casino or whatever, Right?

Yeah.

So when these hormonal rhythms get off. And by the way, so one of those can be simply sleeping for a few extra hours when you don't really need to, just because, like, I'm going to sleep in, right? And then you sleep for 10, 11 hours, and then you wake up and you feel tired, right? You've thrown that rhythm off, and maybe that evening you're not going to be as sleepy. Right? So it's minding those rhythms and creating a rhythm. But it's very difficult to do that again, Natalie, until we change our environment. This doesn't have to be literally physically, like, I'm going and sleeping somewhere else. This is the messages we're attuning ourselves to, right? So maybe when we're in this depressed state and throwing off our rhythm and sleeping a lot, but we're watching like, Real Housewives of whatever, and it's just, like, depressing the shit out of us because our life isn't like that or whatever. It Is the drama. And instead, like, plugging into. Let me connect and listen to what Natalie Jill is putting out. Let me connect and listen to and get educated about my wellness or let me get educated or connected to something that uplifts my spirit. Right. It's changing that mental environment. It's not. This is not cookie cutter, like, oh, just cheer up. You really should get out of bed. People don't understand. Like, Natalie, I'm going to share this with you. My grandmother that I mentioned that I hold so high in my experience, and she gave me the template of love. She helped for me to come out of that darkness that I was in. She's actually. She actually took her own life from depression. And I know this. I know this story so intimately. So when people talk about this stuff, it's not just, oh, cheer up. It's so important to change the environment. All right? She felt disconnected, she felt alone because my grandfather passed away and her identity was tied to him. And she stuck around just long enough to see me get married. And then she left, you know, and she was isolated. She was out living in their house, three hours away from everybody. And, you know, it's so important to change the environment, to communicate, to continue to do the things that her genes, all of our genes, literally expect human connection. Our genes thrive. Connection. And so it's a part of how we've evolved as a part of a tribe today. And if you were banished from the tribe, that's death. Right? That was the ultimate punishment.

Yeah, but we tend to do that now. It's like isolate. Isolate and do that.

Exactly. And so just keeping this in context, that it's not airy fairy stuff I'm talking about. I'm not saying to just cheer up. One must, if they're in that state. Because here's the big problem in this conversation about depression. And I've talked to the top people in the world. All right.

Yeah, totally.

The brain is the only. And here's what's marketed on commercials. You know, you've got a chemical imbalance. You know, this is the only organ that physicians can prescribe drugs for that they don't even look at. They don't even look at the brain. But yet you got a chemical imbalance based on a conversation. Here's some drugs. Not so much.

They go right to drugs.

There's the black box warning. This may increase incidence of suicidal behaviors. And they're basically playing a game of darts, just seeing what's gonna stick with your health. Today we have the opportunity to get things like Spec scans. You know, Dr. Daniel Amen, who's a friend.

Yes, I've actually had that done.

And then we can actually look at the organ we treat. And now we can actually address what potentially could be going on with the brain.

Right, Totally.

And so all of these things come together to create a better approach, which is, number one, if we are concerned and we're in a space where we might be sleeping too much or depressed and disconnected and not really living our life and our purpose, just seek treatment. Like, let's find a way to get connected to the best treatment first. I think that there are steps that we could take, of course, for ourselves to change our environment. If you're in a place where it's difficult to even do that, then let's reach out and get some help, get a SPECT scan done and have a conversation with somebody who's actually doing work, looking at the organ they treat and having a comprehensive approach. And by the way, last thing with this, guess what Daniel Amen is recommending for a lot of his patients is optimizing their sleep, optimizing their nutrition.

Go figure.

Optimizing their relationships, you know, their spiritual health. And he's getting the best results of anybody in the world in that.

So why. So why is it. And I don't want to get too off track, but like, I want to speak into that for a minute because you'll have so many doctors and researchers say, oh, that doesn't work, that doesn't work. But then you see the results he's getting on our end. We know. I've been to him, I've been to his clinic, and it's huge. So why is it that, like, what is that about? About just traditional medicine being so against some of those environmental changes? What's your take on that?

Oh, Natalie, this is. I mean, it's so simple. Nobody likes to be wrong. You know, at the end of the day, nobody likes to be wrong. There are people right now, I mean, we've got tens of thousands of students, like in school at this moment, learning to do chemotherapy and radiation, even though it's very ineffective for long term survival rates. And it's just the way that the system is built currently. These aren't bad people. And here's the thing. And by the way, it is incredibly effective. I don't want to get into this whole conversation. Chemotherapy is incredibly effective at killing cancer cells. I mean, it's incredibly effective, but it's also incredibly effective at killing your immune cells, which are also rapidly developing and growing cells as well. And thus, without your immune system being present, guess what's scanning your environment constantly looking for abnormal cells and looking for abnormal cell replications is your immune system. And so if you don't have a properly working immune system, guess what? You're going to be more subject to more cancers showing up. And so anyways, but here's the thing. You take a really smart person, which we have, the best and brightest in the world who are in the game right now, the innovations, it's incredible. People are growing up like their mother had breast cancer or their father had prostate cancer. They're seeing something happen. They want to do something about it. I'm going to invent the cure for cancer, and they're going to school and they're getting into a system that's very good at teaching the wrong thing. And if you take a smart person and you teach them the wrong thing, they become world class at doing the wrong thing. Oh, yeah, that's really the issue. And again, nobody likes to be wrong. They don't. After 10, 20, 30 years in practice, they don't want to be told that the way that they're doing things is not right. And so, but here's the beautiful part. It's all currently in flux and changing. Right now we are seeing this boom in integrative medicine. By the way, chemotherapy is still an option for me. And when I was working with patients, working alongside their physicians, these are all options. Everything is an option. I'm not living in some kind of strange bubble where it's just like, here, take some dandelion. Right? Sure, everything is an option, but we need to address the root cause first. Address the root cause so that potentially your body can't have the opportunity. Your body has a really powerful innate intelligence, but also giving your body opportunity to do what it can do, but making sure that the issue doesn't come back again.

Because many people go ahead, I would imagine. Well, there's a combination too. So. And this is a whole other topic. But like, yeah, like everyone's own personal decision on what they do. But like those things that you said, moving your body, eating the right healthy, nutritious, unprocessed foods, and having more sleep. And so those are all like, those are. There's no negatives to those things. Right. So even if you choose alternative methods, but you add those things in, there's no negative, so it can't make it worse, you know?

Exactly, exactly. And it's. It's so simple. But the first question is, are people doing these things right? And so if we're not. If they're not doing these things and then we immediately have them go for radiation, but they're already not sleeping. And why does this matter? And I cited many of these studies in sleep Smarter. But one of the biggest, biggest, most well done health studies is the women's nurses study. And they found that women who are working the night shift, so they have abnormal hormonal rhythms because they're working overnight, have over 30% greater incidence of breast cancer. Nurses who are entrusted with taking care of the health of other people have been let down by a system that's just not functioning correctly. And I'm not saying we don't need people up doing the night shift. It's just there, there are better ways to go about it, you know, with maybe seasonal work and things of that nature. But anyways, so here's the thing, and this is because melatonin, people hear about for sleep, it isn't a sleep hormone. It just isn't. It's more of a circadian regulator and it's in alignment with a dark cycle. You produce more melatonin when it gets dark, and it does nudge certain systems to go into kind of sleep mode. But melatonin is also powerful fat burning hormone because it increases your body's production of something called brown adipose tissue that burns fat. It's the type of fat that burns fat. And it's also a very powerful anti cancer hormone. Melatonin helps to regulate the function of your white blood cells, macrophages, and things that take out abnormal cell production. Right. And I can go on and on and on. So if we're not addressing these things and yet we're jumping right to destructive treatments, what are we doing? So this is really basic stuff, but again, if you've got one tool as a healthcare practitioner and it's a hammer, everything looks like a nail, right? And so that's what we're working to do, is to give more tools so we have more options for people. Because every, every single cancer is different. Your case of cancer is not the same as this person. Your diabetes is not the same as this person. We're just using this overall diagnosis, right? Which is really a guess. It's an overall diagnosis to put somebody into this box where I can treat this symptom. And now giving them the label that they usually take ownership over, which is now, I'm a diabetic, I'm a diabetic. And for. If you're owning that, everything in your life becomes like, this is. This is my identity. You can't take my identity.

You know, I love that you just said that. Because the other thing is with environment and what we say and the power of suggestion, a lot of times you'll hear somebody say, I'm a cancer survivor, which I can't judge that. But. But just living in that mindset of survivor constantly puts you at risk. I would think so. You know, I'm always curious about that. Like, why not say I'm a cancer conqueror or I've. I'm a thriver or whatever it is. Because it really falls in that same line of the language that we're saying and what we're associating with.

That is such a powerful insight right there. Because also our brains operate on language, you know, the words that we use, and they're hyper. Again, your perception is your reality. And if life itself is about surviving, it's a very kind of primitive, scary world to be in.

Yeah.

And we don't want to negate the fact all of the incredible things that have. That have been done, but we need to evolve beyond that and we need to change the conversation. But I don't. It's basically when we talk about this, we also are looking at a situation where we have a medical system and somebody is trying to survive the cancer treatment and not the cancer. Right. I'm trying to just beat out the cancer because this treatment is basically. It's a race between us to see which one can last longer.

Totally.

That is a survivor. Right. And so changing the language around that and changing the approach in the first place is one of the most important things for us. To move beyond it so that people are not just surviving, but thriving. And so that was a great, great point, by the way. I got to throw this out here. Australian. No, no, no. Let me pull this study up for you guys. Listen to this. This is something simple. All right? This was published in the Journal of National Cancer Institute. Okay. They tracked nearly half a million men and women for an average of nine years. And they found that eating more vegetables was associated with a statistically significant reduction in cancer risk. The data found that every two servings of green vegetables a person eats reduces their risk of cancer by 4%. So if you eat 4 servings, 8% reduced risk of cancer. So again, if we're not talking about these things, I was. I barely had a vegetable sneak past my lips and wonder why I'm diagnosed with this incurable spinal condition, so called.

Yeah. So spider nutrients. Yep.

You got to do the basics. You know, we got to have these basics Covered. And we need to make them prevalent in our culture. So there's just a part. But kids are getting here, and if they're not, if they're already in the environment of sickness, they're just picking those behaviors right up. And it is difficult if the kid is getting fake processed food and oatmeal and all this stuff. You know, kids quote cereal, and they're not getting real food. It's setting their palate and their template. And it took a lot for my template to change, but it did, and now I'm living in a whole different reality than I was when I was growing up.

Okay, so you truly. You re. You changed your whole health because of these things, because of changing your mindset, changing your environment, changing what you're eating, your sleep, all that. So much so that you are now authority on. An authority on that. So how did that happen? I'm curious. Like, how did you go from, okay, I've changed my health and to, like, how did the show start? How did the model health show start? How did you start becoming this face of health?

It just started with one person. Every step of the way was just helping one person. And once I kind of transformed my own health, people saw I was still in college at the time, and people were, like, looking at me different, you know, and just looking back on how I was walking around with this back brace under my clothes and just very embarrassed. And I was just. It just looks like there was no life in my body, you know, so pale and just. I just looked a mess. And then I was so vibrant. Like, I just looked like. I didn't look like a person who lost weight. I looked like somebody who was really healthy. And so people would, like, ask me, like, what did you do? You know? And even my professors would ask me this. And so they ended up becoming my first clients eventually. But it was one person, and it was a friend of mine from high school, sister who went to my college, and she was like, I want to do what you did. Can you help me? And I was like, of course. Absolutely. And then she was like, how much should I pay you? And my brain stopped. Like, I had, like, a moment of pure silence in my mind. Like, the universe stopped. Because I'm just like, what? I'm gonna help this girl for free? Because I want her to feel like I do, and she wants to pay me for it. What do I say? And truth be told, I literally said $7. I was like, pay me $7 per session, and, you know, whatever. And that was the beginning. You Know, and kind of having the opportunity for somebody to give back to me for the value I was giving, but I was giving her far more value looking back on it. But that's really part of the process. And so it went from one person to 10 to 20, to hundreds and hundreds of people that I work with in a one on one context as a strength coach and a couple thousand people overall in my practice as a nutritionist and also strength and conditioning coach. And so with all of that experience, to be again, to be straight up with this, I got tired, Natalie. I got tired of telling people the same thing over and over again.

I cannot relate to that. I'm just kidding. Believe me, I get that. Yeah.

So somebody would come in, they'd be on my. On my couch, in the waiting room. They come in. I just worked with somebody before that, walking them through the process of how diabetes is basically created in the body. You know, walking them through. Okay, so here's what your pancreas and your beta cells, and this is what your cells are doing. And then, you know, they're going to lipogenesis. And I'm walking, but I see the. What I didn't get tired of was the light going off at the end.

Yeah.

Sparkle in the eyes. And people felt empowered. This was no longer some mysterious thing because that's what creates fear as well, is not knowing about it. The mystery around things and so demystifying it for them. But I was just like, at some point I was just like, I gotta write this down. Yeah, I gotta record this. So I just had this, and I haven't shared this with anybody, but my wife was with me. So we had a speaking event here in St. Louis and it was me and Eric Thomas and the rest of our team. And he's literally the number one speaker in the world. And we had this incredible event. And a chiropractor friend of mine and his wife is a dentist, and she was actually the head of the Women's Dental association, like for whatever. She was like the president. Right. They're on some boss level stuff. They're incredible.

Okay.

And so they came into town and they actually, they came at a time when we had the event. So they came, we all went out to dinner together. And I hadn't seen them in many years. Right. But they came to one of my earlier events when I was like teaching nutrition classes at my mother in law's house. They're both doctors. All right. They bought the first copy of my self printed book that I like put like, I went to Like Office Max, right? They bought it. They spent like, $20 on this rickety tickety book, right? Because I wrote it down. I wrote these ideas down. He ended up writing a book very similar to that book that I gave him. And after writing it down, then I found out I didn't really acknowledge I had this. I guess.

Your gift. Your gift. Explain it.

This gift and this proclivity towards speaking. And also my voice. I never recognized the way that my voice is. And I guess that people enjoyed listening to me. And so I went into the studio, I did some radio interviews, and they were kind of blowing up, and people were like, wanted me to come in regularly and whatever. And then I got invited to be the face of this other podcast. And this was back in, like, 2011. And so these. This couple came up to me and they were like. And so this is how I started. I was speaking at a TEDx event in Las Vegas, and I came on right after. It's Las Vegas, so it's gonna be some weird stuff too, by the way. So I spoke right after the mayor of Las Vegas, who supposedly worked for the mob. He was a lawyer, but, you know, that's probably not true anyways. And so he actually built in some kind of legislation in the city where if there was a movie filmed in Las Vegas, he had to be in it. So he's like, in Goodfellas and, like, Casino. Whatever. So anyways, I come up on stage, I do my talk, and afterwards, this couple comes up to me, and this is like, 2011. I just got online. I wrote a couple of articles. They're terrible. Please do not go look at these articles. And I was just on that mindset, like, if you build it, they will come, right? Because I want to reach more people. I'm not just doing the clinical work. I want to reach more people. And we're getting like, 10 visitors a day or something absurd, you know? And so they come up to me and they're like, you know, they host this. They have this website. They have like a million unique visitors a month, and da, da, da. And they want to start their starters podcast, and they think I'll be great to be the face of this podcast.

Okay?

So I'm like, yeah, let's do it. In the back of my mind, though, Nat, I'm like, what the hell is a podcast?

Yeah.

Yeah, I didn't even know what it was. And so I got this microphone I have right here, which I have a studio for my show, right? Like, we rock it out.

Yeah, you're Not. You're not all back end like me in my little office here. You got. You got the real deal happening, but.

That'S all you need, truth be told. And so I had that. I have my computer, and I did 99% of the work of building that podcast, and we ended up having a few hundred thousand downloads, which was huge back then. And. But the thing was, I was building their brand. Yeah, I was building their brand. And I would not have realized that for probably many years later if I didn't have this wonderful. My best friend, this wonderful woman in my life, who I'm married to, who is just. Who pointed it out one day like, no, you can't do this anymore, you know, because they were making all of this revenue, and I'm literally. I'm over struggling because I'm taking off time from seeing patients, and I'm putting so much into this online endeavor.

Yeah.

And so we amicably parted ways, and within a couple of months, I started the Model Health show. And here's the beautiful part about it. I just listened to my first episode, which we have over 300 episodes now, and I only do one show a week, and these are masterclasses. I listened to my first episode because I was doing a Reloaded episode on heart disease.

Okay.

And I listened to the episode, and you know how you go back and listen to your old stuff or you read an old book or something you wrote, and you're just like, what is wrong with me? Like, that was terrible. Right? I listened to this and I was so proud. I was. I could not. I don't even say that word for myself very often. I was so proud because I was me. I was fully authentically myself, and I agreed with myself.

Yeah. So, okay, what you just said is gold. And it's interesting we have this in the very last part of our interview because that when you are truly talking your vision and you're being authentic, that is the gold. That is the gold for everybody.

Yes, absolutely. That's the. It's not a secret, but it is the secret, which is what really made this possible was being fully and authentically myself. There are. There are some things. There's pretty much one thing that I don't bring into that platform that I do bring outside of the platform, you know, but other than that, like, I'm being myself. I'm kind of a nerd. I. I like superheroes. I love my kids, I love my wife. I care about people. And that's okay, because this is an abnormal thing for a guy coming from my culture to say those things and to say that I love people and to say how important kindness is and just how important it is to be an example and a role model for your kids and for your family and, you know, all these different principles that's imbued. It's imbued into the content itself. The words mean next to nothing. It's the energy behind it. And once that start, you know, so the show, we put it out, begin. You know, it was slow going in the beginning, obviously, but it went from, you know, a couple hundred downloads to a couple hundred a day to a few thousand to fifty thousand. A hundred thousand in a day, whatever. Like, it's gotten crazy. Now we've had over 30 million listener downloads, 5 million unique listeners, and wow, it's just been an incredible adventure. But the way that it happened was continuous dedication to improvement and learning and this passion for taking complex information and turning it into something that's so hyper palatable and understandable for folks. And they also feel like not only are they learning something incredible and empowering, but they're also connected to somebody who they can tell cares about them. And they're a cool person, right?

Yeah, you are a cool person. And what I love is that you truly lived your vision here because you still get to share and teach and simplify this complicated information to the masses. And you're not doing it over and over again because you get to have all these people downloading and listening. So you really lived out your vision with that.

And I'm so grateful. So grateful.

So, Sean, we're almost. Oh, my gosh. This hour went by super, super quick. I have some specific questions I want to ask you about you, because this is really, really critical. I want people to know this about you. Like, one, do you ever worry about what other people think?

I think that's human. I think that's human. I worry far less. And this is because of a really important tenet that I've subscribe to, which is I don't get drunk off of praise, you know, because it's. It's important to get feedback, you know, to listen. Because especially if you're doing something as an entrepreneur, you're pretty isolated. Like, I'm in the studio. I got my team there.

Yeah.

But I don't know who's on the other end in the impact, you know, and so that's why I love live events, because I get that. I get the hugs, I get that. But also, just when people are sharing their experience. And so there's gonna Be some negative ones in there. Because I'm telling you, like there are people, there's like kitten videos, like the sweetest little with the music and somebody's gonna dislike it.

Of course.

Serial killers that are like pushing dislike on a baby. Right. So you just gotta understand. And so I take it in and I process and I choose to accept what helps to make me better. Right. So I. But I don't get drunk off of the praise. Like, oh my God, like they've said, I've done this, I changed their life. I'm the best, I'm the greatest. I'm not walking around like that. I'm not getting drunk off of the praise. And I'm also not getting debilitated or drunk off of the criticism. I don't get debilitated.

Yeah, yeah, I love that.

Whatever.

And then. Okay, another question. When you, because you always sound so interested and I mean, I know you actually are interested, but are there ever days when you are not feeling it like that you're supposed to record and you're not feeling it or that you start having self doubt or you just don't feel like it. And if there are those days, how do you shift yourself out of that?

I can tell you I've never felt like that when recording on days that I'm recording my show because I'm so excited about it.

Okay.

Usually it's a lot of preparation that goes into it. You know, I just did an episode, like I said, I did the reboot on the Heart. It was like 15 hours of research and I already know 99% of this stuff. But just like looking for new stuff, looking for new ways of explaining something, looking for, you know, just so I've got 15 extra hours of research on it that I'm not packaging it up and synthesizing, you know, so it's just like I have that. But on the other side, there have been times where I was scheduled to record a show and life is happening. Right. There's all this stuff going on, I just got off this plane or this person's having this issue and this, those times have been like you. Yeah, I have had challenges with those times, but it's again, subscribing to a belief which is for me, everything is happening for a good reason. And usually when I have an extra challenge, something extra good is going to come from it. So that's kind of the approach that I would take into that.

Got it. Okay. And then what about with your food? Does that ever happen? Like do you ever just want a Big Mac or gummy bears or Cheetos. Does it ever happen?

Oh, my God. You know, there was a time, Natalie, like I literally. Because I go 120 into stuff. Yeah. And there was a time when I could not even conceive of eating cooked food. Right. Because I was doing raw food diet for a while. You know, I'm talking about a couple years and I live in Missouri. This was not pretty. But I've gone through all of those things and went and dived deep into it. And they've helped to create an experience in a personal culture that I have that cannot be replaced. I'm grateful I did it. I'd never do that kind of stuff again. But for me today, because my awareness has evolved so much and I've realized what I shared earlier, that everything is an option. Everything is an option. There is a perfect time for a Big Mac. It might be like, it might be a situation where you're the last man on earth or whatever, you know, or zombie apocalypse, whatever's going on. There's. There's an animal riot. All right, the animals run wild to the zoo. Humans are cut off. Like there's a scenario, everything is possible where a Big Mac at that moment might, might keep you alive. Right. And so, but with that said, because I value feeling good more than I do a Big Mac. That's not going to be on my radar right now. But with that said, a big thing that I've brought to the table, I feel that has made more people get into this is that we'll just upgrade it if you want a Big Mac. Like, let's actually upgrade that. Go get some grass fed beef, you know, get you some, some sprouted buns, and we'll, you know, toast it up. We'll put some grass fed butter on it, you know, get your condiments or whatever. We'll make you some fresh cut fries, you know, like, but you're gonna get, you're gonna have a nice salad with it, you know, like, you don't have to be deprived.

So you have it. You just find the better options because, you know.

Yes.

Got it. I love it. Okay, I have a final question for you, and then I'll stop using up all of your time because I could stay here talking to you all day and asking you a million questions. So if you guys are wanting more from him, you're going to have to check out his podcast because he's got everything I'm about to ask and I still want to ask. He's got on this amazing podcast the model health show. But this is what I want to know, Sean. If somebody is in a rock bottom spot right now, so maybe it's their health like you are. Like they just, they're being told that their health is bad, that it's not going to heal, they're feeling terrible with their pain and where they are, or maybe it's something, you know, else it's a financial setback or a failed business or whatever. If you were going to give them three pieces of advice, like they're starting at that rock bottom spot right now so they can level up and begin to shift and create everything from nothing, what would you tell them?

Oh, number one, this is so important. If you just do this, everything will change. The number one thing that you need to do is to change your environment. You have to change the information that you are around. It is the most important thing. And this isn't just again, airy fairy stuff like the human brain itself. We have parts of our brains like the reticular activating system, reticular cortex. This part of the brain is constantly scanning our environment, looking to affirm the things that we hold top of mind. So if you're constantly holding top of mind, you know, I'm overweight and I can't do anything about it. You're holding top of mind. How you're struggling so much financially, your brain is literally scanning for more evidence to affirm the thing that you're holding top of mind. You have to change what you're exposed to. And so you have to get yourself around different people, different ideas because what you've done thus far is not working. We also have to get to a place of honesty, right? So change your environment and you can begin to literally change your brain. And from there you begin to change your reality. So that's number one. Okay, Number two would be. Number two would be to practice radical self care. It's very difficult to make a good decision. It's very difficult to take action when you feel terrible. Right? We might know that there are things that we need to do or that we want to do and we can muster up and dig deep and all of those fancy things people talk about to get us to do it. But how about we make it easy to do it and it's exponentially easier when you feel good. People don't do well because they don't feel well. If we can get you to a place by practicing radical self care, drinking your water, getting hydrated, eating some good food, making sure you're getting your rest, doing some Movement practices. It's amazing how good people feel just by doing a little bit of movement. Going for a walk, right? Ideas start to come. New options like the cloud, the fog starts to lift. So practice radical self care. That would be number two, and number three would be. This is tough. There's so many things coming up. I would say number three would be to connect to your. Connect to a bigger reason.

For me, your why, your driving core motivator.

Absolutely. For me, it was my son. It was because I'm a father of a little boy. Right. It was being that model for him. For me, it was my grandmother. For me, it was living up to my potential. I'd worked so hard in my life to avoid so much and not get caught up in so many things that other people were around me. But now I'm just going to throw in the towel because somebody told me that I can't have my health and so connect to that thing for you. Why do you want to get better? Why do you want to get out of that financial hole that you're in? Why do you want to get the weight off? Why do you want to reverse the diabetes and get off the medication and be honest about it? If it is something that's superficial, you need to dig a little bit deeper. Maybe it's like, you know, I just want to look good, Whatever. Maybe it's. I want to have a good relationship. Right. I want a man or a woman who actually is embracing my full self, and I'm not trapped inside of all of this excess because of what I've been through in the past or whatever it might be. I don't know what it might be for you, but connect to something bigger than yourself and dig deep. We call it peeling the onion. Right? So peel the onion. You know, if you're saying, I want to lose weight so that I look good in my clothes. Why? So that I can go out with my friends. Why? So that I could meet somebody that, you know, that it's attracted to me. Why? So that I can have a family. Why? Because I've always wanted to have a family that I can raise kids and be a great parent that I didn't get.

I love that. Shawn, you said peel the onion, and I always say go 10 levels deep, so it's really the same thing. I love it. But just going deeper than the surface level.

Boom.

To figure out why. Sean, you're awesome. Other than the model health show, where can people find you?

The model health show is the best place. So whether listening to this incredible podcast. You could find me there on this platform as well. Also, my home online is themodelhealthshow.com all my social media is there. You mentioned Sleep Smarter is there as well.

Yep. The book Must get Sleep Smarter.

It's international bestseller. It's crazy. I think like maybe, I think 20 different languages now. It's nuts. And then social media is there as well. But you can find me Sean Model. I'm mostly hanging out on Instagram these days, so. Shawn, that's where all the cool kids hang out? I think so. I think so. That's where people can find me.

You're awesome Sean. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Natalie thanks for leveling up with us today. Please share this episode if you found it helpful so others can join in. And don't forget to hit that subscribe so you don't miss out on future shows. And if you would like, leave me a five star review. I appreciate those so much. I read all of them and it's how I know that I'm giving you information that you find valuable and come interact with me over on Instagram at Natalie Jill Fit I read all the direct messages and comments over there. Make it a great day. Creating everything from nothing.