155: Enhancing Your Energy to Improve your Health with Ari Whitten

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. I met Ari Whitten as a trainer at the gym years ago. Now, he wasn't just any trainer, he was my trainer and his knowledge was out of this world. Our sessions turned into me asking him literally a million questions and I learned so much from him and also I would start pushing him to get his message out to the world. I wanted the world to know what Ari knew. I knew he had something special about him and I knew his knowledge needed to be heard. I wanted the world to know him. Today, a decade later, Ari Whitten is a two time best selling author and founder of the Energy Blueprint System. He specializes and is a leader in the space of fatigue and optimizing human energy levels. And he takes an evidence based approach to energy enhancement. He's been studying and teaching nutrition, exercise science and health science for 22 years. Join in today and learn exactly how Ari Whitten leveled up and created everything from nothing. Today on Leveling Up, I can't wait and dive in and talk with my friend Ari Whitten who I've been by the way, side note, asking to interview for like the last. Since I started the podcast. I think Ari for the last at least a year I've been asking you when can I interview you? Ari is super unique and I really wanted to dive in today with him because I met him at the gym years ago. In fact, I hired him as a trainer to help me with some issues I was having. He was a really knowledgeable trainer and in my Natalie style I didn't know how to shut up and just train with him. I would talk, talk, talk, talk, talk and it was when I realized how knowledgeable he was. All I could think about was how does this guy get out to the world? Like more people need to know who he is and remember he was a trainer in the gym when I met him. He had no vision at the time of being online or being this huge success in the energy space. So Ari, thanks for being here today. I can't wait to dive in and chat with you.

Yeah, well thank you for the kind words, first of all. And I'm sure as we'll get into in the story, I owe a lot to you for that initial meeting and our relationship at the beginning there and your mentorship as far as helping me learn more about online business and obviously we work together even a little bit. You helped me get my start, so I'm very much indebted to you for all of that.

Well, thank you. I should collect royalties on all your products then.

Just kidding.

Really, though, Ari, you're really one of the few people I would say this about. I call Ari my guru. I mean, he really. I think I run everything by him, like supplements. Anything I'm going to do with my body movement, like, I'm always going to Ari and saying, is this true? Is this cutting edge? You were really my guru and I couldn't wait for the world to know you more, and I just couldn't be more proud to see that that's happened and that you really have made such a dent in this world, in the energy space.

Thank you. I really appreciate it. Yeah, it's. I feel very blessed to have done what I've done so far, and I also feel like I'm just scratching the surface of what's possible and how many people I can reach.

So take us back if you would, like. When you first. When I first met you, you were very much a trainer and you were really into body and fat loss and strength training. How did that come about? Like, is that something you want to do as a kid? And then what was that? The end stop? Was that what your plan always was? What changed?

Yeah, there's so much here. So I have been a health geek and a nerd of nutrition and health science and fitness science for, like, basically since I was a little kid, since I was 13, 14 years old.

Okay.

My older brother was a personal trainer at that time and sort of aspiring bodybuilder, being mentored by bodybuilders and. And I, like most kids, wanted to be just like my older brother. And so I kind of wanted to have muscles and abs and biceps. And so I became interested in this whole world of fitness, of muscle gain, of fat loss and bodybuilding and not that unusual for a teenage boy at that time. But I think what was unusual for me is one, I had a natural gift for science since I was very young. I mean, when I look back on my, like, early schooling years, it's funny, I looked back on, like, standardized testing, like national testing from junior high and high school, recently found all these old tests And I never was really like into school. I never studied hard, my parents never pushed me. So I was kind of like, ah, school, this is annoying. Why do I even have to go? Never was a great student. But on the national test scores I was like 98th, 99th percentile. Wow. Like, despite not even really studying. So I think I just had a natural gift there. I was not particularly gifted for like math or English or lots of other subjects, but science I was. And so that natural gift combined with an obsessive personality. So. So I'll give you a sort of modern day glimpse into my obsessive personality. Right now I'm interested in getting a dog. So I lost my dog a couple months ago and so I'm interested in getting another dog, actually a couple dogs. And so for like a month now, all I'm doing is like reading and watching videos obsessively about dogs, different dog breeds and what are the pros and cons of different dog breeds and the personality traits and you know, trying to figure out everything and is this the optimal dog breed for my two little kids? And what's the trade off of what kind of dog breed I like versus what's the best dog breed for Being around little kids and like trying to learn all these different details and my wife sitting here every day like laughing at me. That's funny that I can be as obsessive as I am. And that's the truth is that same trait has been there since I was 13 or 14 years old, applied to nutrition and fitness and it's been there for 22 years now.

So it's almost like you get obsessive on what you're interested in. But like you didn't force yourself to study or be that good student if you were not interested.

Exactly. Yeah. So with schooling, the way my brain worked was I could not like be forced to pay attention to subject matter that I wasn't interested in, but science stuff I was interested in.

I always wonder about that because I feel like that's how most kids are born and like they're hyper interested in some things and not others. And it's like, it's almost like the school system forces this grading system of we have to be excellent at everything. I feel like that's kind of normal.

I mean, I think it's, it's normal to an extent to say like people have more, are more interested in some things than others. So like you can say that as a universal thing. But there are some people who can be forced to study things that they don't necessarily like doing. And their brains can, you know, tolerate it and do it. My brain was like, if I didn't like it, my brain would just, like, turn off. Like, it was just like, it would not. My brain wouldn't work. It would not have the capacity operate that way.

Still, how my brain works, if I'm not interested, I'm not interested.

Yeah. But then on the flip side, like, when I was in a subject I was interested in, I always. I was, you know, at the top. So anyway, that's kind of like personality tendencies, but so fitness, fat loss, muscle gain was my world for many years. Did a bachelor, a bachelor's degree of in kinesiology and exercise science, biomechanics and exercise physiology and nutrition and all that good stuff was a part of that. Then I had a vision that I'm going to give you kind of my life story. I'm going to try and do it quickly, but I had a vision that I wanted to be a doctor. So I did all my pre med coursework, got into medical school, realized within the first two weeks of medical school that I absolutely hate it. And it was just. It was just awful to be in this environment, coming from over a decade at that point of studying nutrition and natural health, to be in an environment where there's all this talk of chronic disease and yet there's zero education and awareness around nutrition and exercise. All these things that I just spent the last decade studying, like, literally zero education, not a single nutrition class. And everybody, teachers, other students looked at me like I was crazy for suggesting, like, nutrition and exercise could play a role in things like diabetes and, you know, and neurodegenerative disease. Like, oh, yeah, none of that stuff matters. It's all about pharmaceuticals. That's the only thing that can possibly affect these people.

Wow.

And so, you know, every week I was on the phone with my parents, with my brother, you know, I hate it here. I want to come home. And my brother, who you know very well was like, it's only, you know, three and a half more years. It's only four years. You know, it's only. It's only two and a half more years. And so I was there for almost two years and really just hating it.

I never knew this about you, that you literally were in medical school for two. I didn't know that.

Yeah. So. Well, the truth is that I don't actually talk about it much because. Because I assume that a lot. A lot of people will think that since I left, which I did leave, I was Almost about two years in, and I made the decision to leave. It was a very, very hard decision to make. The hardest period of my life to make that decision. Because just remember, for several years prior to that, all I wanted to do was be a doctor. And I just done all my pre med stuff and I had already done a year and a half of medical school and was actually excelling in medical school. So I assume, like, people will think if they hear me say I left medical school, oh, he dropped out, he couldn't hack it, and stuff like that. The truth is, it just, it is torturesome to the soul when you are forced to spend every waking moment doing something. In this case, studying something that you know is just fundamentally misguided or inaccurate. So, like, especially in the second year as I'm in the hospital, I'll give you an example. I mean, I'm actually in the hospital environment, like working in the internal medicine ward, shadowing doctors, like doing exams on patients and things like that. And you see patients commonly who have heart disease or who are obese and have diabetes, who are literally on a dozen or 15 or 18 different prescription drugs, who are being taught nothing about nutrition and lifestyle. I'm like, folks, this is insanity. Like, you have people with diseases of nutrition and lifestyle who are just being prescribed drugs and being taught nothing about nutrition, lifestyle. On what planet does this make any sense at all? And yet I'm being looked at as the one who's crazy for suggesting that there's anything wrong here. So, you know, this crystallized in a moment. I had a conflict with another student in the program, a kid who was a year older than me, a kid who was very overweight, and he had a vision that he was going to do some research on diabetes. And I'm not exaggerating. This actually happened. He sent out an email saying that he's working in a lab, conducting some research for the purpose of helping people with diabetes. And he said, hey, can you guys. To the other students in the program, can you guys come by my lab and give me. I think he was trying to get saliva samples or something like that. Can you guys come by the lab and help me out, give a sample, and in return I'll give you a donut as a thank you.

That's so hysterical. A donut.

I'm like, am I the only one who thinks this is insanity? This is stupid, this is idiocy. When people are like, this is like the movie Idiocracy. It's like, we're gonna go study diabetes while causing Diabetes. And I actually, like, I actually emailed him. We got in a little back and forth over it, but literally, like, I think I was the only person in the entire program who could see that this was stupid. And like, nobody else just thought any. Anything was wrong with this picture of studying diabetes while handing out donuts.

It's so interesting, Ari, that you just said that, like, you battled with sharing the story before because people would assume, but like, really, it's a powerful story and it's super ethical and it really, really reflects your passion and purpose on the subjects that you, that you study and that you're excited about. Because most people would not do that. I mean, most people that ego would step up. Like, I want the doctor title. I want to say that, like, that that takes over, I think, for so many people. So I think it's a powerful story.

Yeah, well, yeah, it is. And I, and I have since learned that. I've shared it since then. But yeah, I mean, there's some different elements to it. So one is I've had conversations with a number of doctors who like, are into natural health, who went to medical school, got their MD and then only later discovered nutrition and lifestyle. And I've heard a number of people say things like, I could have never gone through medical school if I knew what I know now. It would have been torture some to know nutrition, to know the power of lifestyle, and then to go through this whole program that is really like just focused on pharmaceuticals, on pharmacology, and you learn nothing. You learn all about these chronic diseases. You learn how to perform exams and read lab data to detect and diagnose things like diabetes and things like high blood pressure and things like heart disease. But you don't learn anything about nutrition and lifestyle, which are the fundamental causes.

Totally.

So anyway, that was my, my foray in medical school. Very difficult decision to leave when I. Oh, one other thing I'll mention here is that part of the reason I decided to leave is when I discovered that it wasn't actually just like two more years, it was actually I would have to go really do a residency for four or five years after the medical school. And that was also going to be like 80 to 120 hour work weeks or, sorry, like 80 to 100 some somewhere in there, like really like crazy schedule of work weeks for, for four to five years. But. And that's one thing if you love what you're doing, but it's another thing if you're just going through the whole thing to get the letters after your Last name so that you can then go on to teach people about natural health, which was my vision, right? So like, if your vision is, you really believe in it and you want to be, you know, your dream is to be a cardiologist and you don't know anything about nutrition, lifestyle like I did, and you're just convinced this is the peak of what there is to know about a healthy heart, then you can go through with all that. But for me, when I realized that I was going to be put in situations where I was going to be dealing with people with these chronic diseases, heart disease, cancer, obesity, diabetes, and all these other diseases on all these prescription drugs, and if I said anything about nutrition and lifestyle and tried to teach them, that would be deviation from hospital protocol and grounds to kick me out of the residency. Unbelievable. When I realized that, I was just like, okay, this is just. I can't keep doing this for years and years and years. My health is deteriorating, my spirit is deteriorating from being in this environment. So I eventually left, then I came back and became a personal trainer for many years, which.

Talk about that for a minute because I would imagine that was a struggle with ego right there. Like here you are in medical school and I'm just stating the obvious, like a personal trainer and a doctor, totally different worlds, right? I mean, for the most part. So I'm. That must have been a struggle in that. How did you stand walk through that and what, were you defensive around things or what? Because that's a big decision and was that like your time, the vision, like, I'm going to be a personal trainer, I'm just going to blow this up, be amazing here or did you know that you were using that time to find something else?

No, I knew that was using the time to find something else. I knew that I was, you know, sort of in my mind, destined for something beyond just, just fitness and personal training. And actually, while I was a personal trainer, I was also putting myself through a PhD program. I decided to do a PhD program in clinical psychology. So I got accepted to that and I completed all my three years of coursework for my PhD in clinical psychology. After completing all the coursework, I realized I didn't really want to be a psychotherapist. And I would have had to go do something like three or four more years of like basically full time to complete my PhD. And at that point, I had already started my business. I was writing books, teaching people about health, and I didn't want to go, you know, do some $15 an hour, like internship Totally. And. And really, like, for what purpose? At that point, it was just to get the letters. I knew I didn't want to be a psychotherapist and do talk therapy with people and also to get the licensure. It's kind of a similar situation in the medical school thing to get licensure as a psychotherapist. If you start teaching people about nutrition or other lifestyle factors, that is actually considered practicing outside of the scope of what you're licensed for. And they can. The licensing bodies can say, hey, we're going to remove your license to be a psychotherapist because you're practicing outside of the scope of what you're licensed for. So it's. It's kind of interesting.

Really amazing. Yeah.

But you are. You are more free to teach people about nutrition and lifestyle if you're not licensed, if you don't come through all the hoops of getting this licensure than if you do. Really?

Yeah. Really Unbelievable when you think about it. That's just crazy.

Yeah. So part of that decision, and probably why. Part of why I decided not to pursue the psychotherapy is obviously, as we alluded to before I met you, during this time, I was a personal trainer and you started teaching me about, like, this whole world of online business. And. And we developed a product together.

Yeah, we did our first product with Super Shred 12 weeks. Super Shred?

The Super Shred. Yeah. So we developed that product and I was like, whoa. I created the content, the majority of the content. And then you were out there like, marketing and then selling it, and I was like, collecting, I think it was like 30% or something of the money that was generated. And here I was, this kid, like, making $35,000 a year as a trainer and, like, also going. Taking in student loans because I'm paying for a school that's $20,000 a year. So I'm like, living in a studio apartment for 1200amonth, $400 a month on food. Like, I'm probably living on like $1,800 a month and getting into debt to go to school at the same time and making 3000ish a month. 3500. And then all of a sudden I start, like, seeing a few thousand dollars coming into my bank account each month, like from this program that I created. And I was like, holy crap, this.

Is possible to back up on that. For those of you listening, this was not. It's interesting because some people will say I should be online marketing or I should be in real estate, or I Should be this, because they see dollar signs. That's never what I saw with Ari. Like, when I. What I saw with Ari was he had a gift of knowledge, really gifted at the knowledge, and I felt that nobody knew this from him. So it really. Yes, there was the money side of it, but really why I pushed you is I knew you had a message to share, and it's like, who's gonna see your message if you're just training, you know, a couple clients a day? Like, I wanted you out in the world. So really, it stemmed from your knowledge and really feeling and seeing your passion and how good you were at that. As to why I pushed, and I think I want people to hear that, because a lot of people think they should be doing something just because of the dollar, and that's really not it. It's about figuring out that passion, that thing that you thrive at, and then how do we monetize that or how do we get that out bigger?

Yeah. Yeah, 100%. I also think that process of working with you was instrumental in my confidence to realize that I could do something greater. So it's a scary thing to put your information out there in the public sphere where it can be analyzed and criticized by other people, and people can say, hey, you don't know crap. You don't know what you're talking about. You're an idiot. Why would you do this? Why would you say, this is wrong? That's wrong. So I think most people, including myself, there's a lot of trepidation, a lot of fear around putting new ideas out into the public sphere. And so working with you, doing the super shred, starting to put out content through you in that way, allowed me to do it in a way that minimized some of the fear that wasn't so scary that I wasn't gonna take on so much criticism if my ideas weren't accepted and things like that. And it allowed me to see that it was helping people and benefiting people, and people were loving it. And so that built my confidence to realize that, hey, like, I can put more content out into the public sphere in this way. I can. I can go write a book now. And that's seen by, you know, tens of thousands of people, and that's publicly on Amazon, where people can review it and hate it. And it takes. It takes a lot. I think most people who haven't written a book or haven't put out content don't fully understand how much courage it takes.

Yes.

To put something out into the public sphere, especially if you have novel ideas or ideas that go against the grain, where it can be criticized, where you're going to have permanently, you're going to have some one star review from some language, but some a hole who like never even read the book, who just made assumptions about what's in it and who's like saying all kinds of nasty things about you.

So true. A lot of courage. But I want to ask you about this because this I noticed changed with you over the years. So there was a time where I would get a comment or something not so nice, whether it. It was about something Ari had done with me or on my own. And I would put Ari, Ari on. It was like the ego thing, like, Ari, you got to go fight this person for me on social media. And you would do it. You would like go and fight at it, you know, until like, it's just so funny online to see people doing that. How did you get outside of that? Because you don't do that anymore. You don't engage with it anymore. Like it used to really trigger you. What did that take work? Was that just time? Like, how did you go from really getting consumed with that to really not caring?

Yeah, that's a great question. I think we've talked about like kind of our, you know, we've had some conversations and person where we've kind of talked about like our little personality quirks and you know, our, the chinks in our arm are the things that are our biggest pet peeves. And for me, it's like anybody who questions my knowledge or expertise on a subject, it's like, I'm just like, if you only knew how long I've been studying this. And it's like, I know you think that your layer of knowledge is like here and that I'm down here, but actually I'm like four layers above you. And like, not only do I understand your layer, but there's this, this, this and this that you don't even understand. And so for me, like, I had such a feeling inside, like, how dare you question my expertise and my knowledge. And I needed, if anybody ever did, I needed to, to prove, like to just bash over the head, like study after study, like just take their argument and make them look like a complete fool for daring to. And I guess I did enough of it to realize that, number one, it wastes a lot of time that could be used to create things that actually help people that are receptive to your message. And the truth is that even the Bible, even the greatest works of literature have some small Portion of, you know, 1%, 3% of people who are going to go write negative reviews on it and say why it's a horrible thing.

And oh, you're so right. I mean, that's the obvious one is religion. Look at that. I mean, there's people, there are 100% sure that they're right, and there's people that are 100% sure they're wrong. And it's a constant.

Yeah. So, I mean, everything has some portion of people, small. Some small portion of people that are going to be haters, they're going to call you names and say why you're an idiot and why you don't know what you're talking about. And part of it was just realizing that and realizing that 99.9% of the time those people are idiots and they don't deserve me to spend any of my valuable time even responding to them.

So evolved of you. So evolved.

So I got past my need, my egoic need to prove to anyone that would dare question me, quote unquote, that I actually am really knowledgeable. And I became so confident in my knowledge and in my expertise and in my command of the scientific literature on a particular subject that, like, it's just, it became silly for anybody to even argue with me. And granted, there are times where, like, you might engage in, like, logical speculation in a particular area. And usually I ground things and say, hey, you know, we don't have real good science to say, but I think, you know, based on this study and this study, it might turn out to be this, this and this kind of do some logical speculation, and it's okay to do that. And so someone else who's also legitimately an expert in that material, and maybe even someone who knows more on me about a particular subject. So let's say like a guy I interviewed recently on my podcast named Chris MasterJohn. He's a PhD in nutrition, and he's probably one of the world's top experts in nutritional biochemistry. Guaranteed, he knows a lot more than me about the nuances of nutritional biochemistry. And he's obsessive about vitamins and minerals and all the different biochemical pathways, he knows way more than I do about all the nuances of those things. If I say something about magnesium and he comes back to me and says, hey, you're wrong about magnesium, because actually, this, this, and this, I'm like, oh, thank you, Chris. I appreciate that. Thanks for correcting me. And I'm glad to learn that I said something wrong. So I have no fear of Being challenged anymore. Like either it's an idiot who doesn't know what he's talking about or someone I can learn from who is a genuine expert who is going to help me become even better.

So I do have one more question on that. Did you. So obviously confidence and time and all that plays a role in that, but did you any specific, like personal development work or any work yourself to like, to overcome that? Because I think that that need to have everyone like you or fear of judgment, that's something a lot of people struggle with. Like it's not an uncommon thing. And the bigger the platform, the more that comes out, right. You have a bigger audience, all of a sudden you have more hate. It's coming out more. Was it just the time and the experience that got you to not care so much or did you like, was there work that you did to break that?

I think honestly it was. Well, so part of it is the experience of going through it a bunch of times makes you more comfortable with the whole process. So like when I wrote my first book and I had my first few negative reviews on it, within hours of publishing the book, I had a three star review. And like someone was like, eh, it's okay, you know, I've read a lot of this before, whatever, like just it was like kind of a negative review. And I was like, oh no, like everybody's gonna think this book is terrible. They're gonna all write, you know, two star, three star negative reviews bashing. The book turned out to be a hugely successful book. And it's like 90%, five stars. Which is like as good as it gets. Yeah. You know, and went on to be like a bestseller for like years. And every time I got like a one star review from someone, even if it was like a totally baseless review from somebody who's obviously like either very low intelligence or didn't even read it beyond like the first three pages and like just substances. Substances, substance, less review. Yeah, I would lose like two nights of sleep over it. You know, it was like, it was this brutal, like heartbreaking thing like that someone could, could, could, you know, say negative things about this thing that I had spent so much time to, to produce. And then, you know, like I said, you realize there's a, there's just people out there who do that and. Yeah, and most, most people who are good people, who are intelligent, kind hearted people just wouldn't behave like that. That's like part of it is just like realizing like, do I ever behave like that to anybody else's Totally. Like, no, like, yeah. You know, and also going through my PhD program, I realized there's a large portion of people that are not mentally healthy and that are just, that are not kind hearted people, that are just nasty people that are mentally unstable people who might just, you know, I've had people just like read the back cover of my book, not even read it, and go on Amazon and like start insulting me and like saying I'm an idiot forever daring to write the book and they never even read a single page of it. So like you have those experiences, that matters. But I think in my case, honestly the biggest thing is this is just the way I'm built, personality wise. I don't say anything anymore. I don't express an opinion on a scientific matter unless I actually truly have studied that scientific literature to an extreme degree. Where I, I mean, in many cases this literally entails like every study that's ever been done on that particular topic, like knowing the literature inside and out. And all the caveats in this study, you know, had this result and this other. These other three studies had the opposite result. And this one from 1998 said this, this and this. But these are the problems with the methodology of that particular study. And so if I express an opinion on that particular subject, I'm so confident that I'm accurately portraying what that science says that I just, I already know that nobody's going to bring to the table any challenge. To me that is like a meaningful challenge.

Yeah, I love how you just shared that because I do believe when we have conviction, like when we know we know with certainty about something. I don't think other people's opinions bother us. I think it just as a general statement with everybody, I think that the problem gets. Until somebody watches a Netflix documentary and they form a strong opinion because of the Netflix they watched and now they post something on social media, someone else is fighting because they watched a different documentary and they're like basing it on really nothing and then it's the ego taking over. But I think when someone really is in conviction, like they know what they know, it doesn't phase them as much.

Yeah. So like if someone, I mean, part of it is people who don't realize the extent of what they don't know and what they haven't read and what they haven't learned about a particular subject. So if someone like their only knowledge of nutrition is they watch some health, some nutrition documentary on Netflix one time and now they formed some strong opinion, they're pretty much guaranteed to have Like a hundred layers deep of layers to the story of nutrition knowledge that they're entirely unaware of, and yet they've already formed a high degree of certainty. So that's a problem when you have certainty in people who have very limited amounts of knowledge of that particular thing. And that's really something that we want to, psychologically, we want to avoid getting to that place.

You just summed up Facebook, basically with politics and Netflix.

Yeah, I mean, even YouTube comments are way worse. But yeah, I mean, I think it's always good to stay in that state of beginner's mind and stay like basically in a position of curious. Yeah, curious. Like the way I like to phrase it is I'm just conveying, like, here's the current state of knowledge based on the science as of 2019, I don't have any dogs in this fight. I don't care which side things end up on. If there's an amazingly designed study that's super high quality evidence that comes out tomorrow that says a vegan diet is the best, most optimal diet for athletic performance and for longevity and so on, like, I'll be the first person to say, hey, a vegan diet is the best. There's this amazing new study that says it. And if there's a diet, a study that comes out saying the same thing about keto tomorrow, I'll be the first guy to convey that. Like, I don't, I don't care what it is. Like, I don't. There's so many people out there who like, have their biases and their agenda and their dogmas.

It's attachment to their beliefs. It's like they get super attached.

And so there's this game among health experts of cherry picking the scientific literature to support their particular agenda, their bias, their preconceived notion, their dogmas that they're trying to teach people. And they play this game of how can I ignore all the evidence that doesn't fit with my narrative and hide that stuff from people while only selectively plucking the few things that support my narrative and sharing that with people. And I don't play that game. I think that's a shitty, stupid game to play. I play the game of I'm here to convey the truth and I'm going to be the guy who does the most rigorous, honest, high integrity analysis of the available literature and just tell you what it says without my personal biases and agenda getting in the way of that.

Now you're so great at that. And you were crushing in that space of Fat loss, muscle building, weight loss, all those things. I mean, you're brilliant at it. So why, when you made the. Why did you make the pivot into energy? Because you really went to a whole blue ocean strategy with energy and really are the most knowledgeable person in that field now. But what brought you to pivot to that?

Yeah, good question. I like that you said blue ocean because that was actually part of. Part of the inspiration. So part of it was, you know, kind of a. Was influenced by a business, you know, positioning aspect of things. Part of it was a personal story and a personal interest and obsession. So in my mid-20s, I got. I got mononucleosis from Epstein Barr virus. And I was severely, chronically fatigued for about a year after that. And coming from my background, I was being an athlete, being a super fit, super healthy guy. It really rocked my world to experience life without energy. And I realized pretty quickly that when you don't have energy, everything in your life really suffers. Your ability to be, to work to your career, your relationships, personal family, relationships, friendships, your quality of life, your ability to go out and do the things you want to do, do the things you love, have rich experiences in life, everything suffers because you don't have the energy to do those things. You just want to lay on the couch.

Yeah.

And so that experience for me really allowed me to empathize with the suffering of so many people who have chronic fatigue. And it allowed me to feel that. That pain and that suffering. And it allowed me. It was the catalyst for me developing an interest in that subject. And so the. I'm going to get a little bit science. Yeah, just a second. As part of this story, but basically as part of my sort of interest in the science around energy levels, I really discovered there's kind of two sort of schools of thought around this. If one of them is not really a school of thought. But there's sort of the conventional medical thinking around chronic fatigue, and then there's the natural health, holistic health, functional medicine, thinking around fatigue and make a very. We could talk just about this topic for an hour. But conventional medicine is basically their attitude towards chronic fatigue is like, sort of like we don't really know what's causing this. Could be caused by a number of different things. We don't really have any good treatments for it. You know, maybe consider like resting more.

And sleeping more, or they give prescriptions for stimulants.

Yeah. Or. And not stressing as much, not working so hard. And they actually, to be specific, the four treatments that they actually have, you know, these are from their evidence based guidelines on treating people with fatigue. One is antidepressants, one is a recommendation to do 30 minutes of walking and stretching per day, and one is cognitive behavioral therapy and one is stimulants as needed. So that's like the four things that's the best of conventional medicine.

And wouldn't antidepressants even make you less.

Fatigued in some cases? Yeah, maybe. But part of the reason that they're, if you think about why they're giving them antidepressants is basically it's like saying we don't know what's causing your fatigue. It's probably just all in your head. Here's something to make you happier, you know, so your life can be maybe more enjoyable. Sure. Recognition and acknowledgement that they don't think fatigue is a real physical thing or know how to deal with it on a physical sort of biochemical way. So anyway, conventional medicine really just doesn't have much to offer people with chronic fatigue unless they can diagnose somebody with a specific disease that's the underlying cause of it. But let's say somebody's got anemia or hypothyroidism or something like that, then it could be useful or a more serious disease. But there's actually stats on that and it's less than 5% of people with fatigue have some diagnosable illness.

Before we keep going on this, can you define chronic fatigue? Because I know some people listening, they might just be tired because they're not sleeping. How do you know this is chronic fatigue? Or, or I just. My lifestyle is not good right now. What's the difference? How do you know?

Yeah, basically it's a spectrum. There's some specific criteria that you can invoke to sort of differentiate, but the easiest way to think about it is just a spectrum. On one end of the spectrum, you have extremely high energy, like a little kid who's just bouncing off the walls with tons of energy all day long. And on the other end of the spectrum, you have debilitating chronic fatigue syndrome where somebody is in bed most of the day and can barely like walk down the hallway without feeling fatigued from it.

Got it.

And then, you know, there's a million degrees of potential levels of energy or fatigue in between. So if somebody's like half, I would say a large portion of the population is like halfway in between those two streams. And then a lot of people with what I would call chronic fatigue, but not necessarily chronic fatigue syndrome are more severely fatigued on the Severely end of fatigue, end of the spectrum. And then to say you have chronic fatigue syndrome in particular means usually that the defining symptom there is, there's a few that typically co occur. So like, it's common to see brain fog there, it's common to see sleep problems there. So this combination of like being tired during the day but also struggling to sleep. Right. So normally if you're, for a healthy person, if you're tired a lot during the day, it means you're going to sleep really well at night. So there's a combination of a lot of fatigue, a lot of tiredness, plus poor sleep. But the real defining symptom, sort of from a diagnostic perspective, is something called post exertional malaise, which is basically like after physical exertion, you feel like wiped out from it, oftentimes for a full day or two or three. Some of these people, in the more severe cases, if they do like five minutes of exercise, they have to lay in bed for three days to recover from it. So that's how I would differentiate it. But to get back to this kind of these schools of thought, there's conventional medicine, there's alternative, there's natural health, holistic medicine, functional medicine. And that was really the camp that I was in, that I still am in for the most part. But on the subject of energy specifically, the thinking in that camp really became dominated by this idea of adrenal fatigue. And this is something that I believed in for many years. My mentors were all talking about this thing called adrenal fatigue. I assumed it was totally legitimate. And I won't go into all the details here, but basically I spent like a year of my life delving into the science around this, the link between the fatigue syndromes and cortisol levels and adrenal function. And basically. And I've published all this compilation of the research on my website, several different.

Pieces and on your podcast. He's got. You've got some great episodes around this.

Yes, thank you. So basically the literature just does not support the existence of adrenal fatigue as a real thing. It's not a real medical condition. And it is certainly not the case that most people's chronic fatigue is being caused by worn out adrenals. If anybody's listening to that and you're skeptical, please go see all of my content that I published on my site. You can review the literature yourself. You're going to come to the same conclusion. I'm going to leave out all the detailed explanation of the nuances of the science there for the purposes of this podcast. But that's what's out there. Conventional medicine, basically, we don't know what's causing fatigue. We don't know how to fix it. Alternative natural health, holistic health, functional medicine. They're like, oh, it's your adrenals, it's your cortisol. And that's not true. I looked at this whole landscape of basically there's an epidemic of millions of people suffering from fatigue, and there's nothing good. Nobody's really put together the science on fatigue and made sense of it and human energy optimization. I basically said, this is a personal interest of mine. I'm obsessed with this. I want to know the answers to this, but I also want to help all these millions of people suffering who are not getting good answers from anyone else. And I want to be the first guy to build out the real science of human energy enhancement. So that was part of that was the majority of it. But I'll tell you, there's one other piece of why I shifted into the energy niche and got out of the fat loss niche. And that is. Can I curse on your podcast?

Yeah, you can do whatever you want on it.

Okay. I was so sick of the bullshit and of the charlatans and the fat loss space. So sick of just all the nonsense that goes on in the online realm of fat loss of so many people. I mean, you literally have like an overweight marketer sitting behind a computer screen putting up a website with some, like, picture of a fitness model, like, saying, here's my secrets to lose weight fast and here's how to lose £20 in the first 15 days and dah, dah, dah, dah, and just throwing together a bunch of nonsense that is not supported by the evidence.

Yeah. And it makes it very hard, I'll tell you, for those of us that are ethical in that space, especially because even advertising or trying to reach more people, Facebook doesn't approve ads because of all the scams out there, because of all the ridiculous stuff. So I think it really does create a challenge for those that are super ethical in the space because they can't get their message out because of the flood of people that aren't.

Yeah, 100% right. And the truth is, all of the best people, the people that I know that are like real experts that are ethically teaching, like, fat loss science, in fact, a lot of them, like, don't make any money. You know, I mean, they're doing terribly, but I know a bunch of people who are like, just charlatans who are. Who don't know jack about fat loss science and nutrition, who have thrown up fat loss websites and are making a killing or making hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars selling people loss ebooks and programs and stuff like that. And I just, I mean, I just could not stand being in that space and combating these charlatans anymore.

So, Ari, was it scary, though? Because you really had built a name with that and it was going to be a pivot. Like, you were literally going to stop doing everything you had created and move on and close a chapter. Can you talk into that a little bit? Because I know there's people listening. They're in that spot. Maybe they're not as passionate anymore about the field that they're in or they're ready to make that pivot. But that's scary.

It is. You don't. I don't know.

I think, like, were you worried financially? Were you worried, like, okay, here I go again, I'm making a pivot. Am I going to, like, did that stuff start coming up for you?

Yeah, I hear you. There's an aspect of truth in that, but there's also an aspect of, like, I was just so excited to be building out, like, the new science of human energy optimization. Like, discover, like, there was nothing, no real solid scientific support for this whole adrenal fatigue thing. When I realized, like, the whole thing was a house of cards and that no one else had figured this out because no one else had spent, like, I did, like a year just exploring that literature and putting the pieces together. I was just so immersed and obsessed with, like, my new project of, like, what are the real factors that control human energy? That and like, building that project out and helping all these people suffering from fatigue. I was so excited and passionate about that that I, like, I don't think I really felt any fear of leaving the fat loss space. I was excited to, as you said, go into, like, a new blue ocean in terms of, like, the business thinking. But I was excited to, like, be helping people. I was excited for the opportunity to do something more than what I was doing with fat loss, which was really just like, communicating the best available evidence and like, sort of the consensus thinking among real experts in the fat loss arena. I was more just like, synthesizing ideas and just conveying here's kind of the thinking among real experts in this field and with energy. It was an opportunity for me to really be creative and put my brain to work, to put the pieces together to figure things out, because there's no real Body of energy experts who have some consensus where they've got everything figured out. Here's the story of why people there's an epidemic of chronic fatigue. Here's all the factors that control and affect human energy, and here's the path to optimize your energy levels. Nobody had put that together. I was super excited, and I still am, about putting all of those pieces together, creating something truly novel and new that helps people in profound ways that is beyond what anybody else is doing.

And guess what? For everybody listening, you fix your energy and guess what else gets fixed? Your fat loss, your health, all those things, too. So you're still, in a roundabout way, helping with that.

Yeah, absolutely. And you also improve brain function and your mood and your happiness and your experience of life. And by improving your brain function, you also optimize your ability to do whatever it is you're here to do. You optimize your efficiency in doing the creative work and creating things that serve. That serve the world. And that's certainly true in my case.

That's incredible. I'm going to make sure I put all links to your stuff because if you're not subscribed to Ari's podcast or have not followed him with what he shares and teaches with energy, it's really amazing. I want to shift a little bit, Ari, to how you live your life, because I believe a big reason that you're so successful in everything you touch and you're able to really, truly help people is because of some of your habits. So can we talk a little bit about that? I just want to. I want. I would love for you to just speak on. Ari is not somebody. I'm not even asking him. I'm pretty confident he probably doesn't even own a tv. Or if he does, he barely watches tv. I don't think he watches reality shows. I don't think he wastes his time in gossip or hate fights online. Can you talk a little bit about just how your habits. Because I really do believe that's a big reason you have been able to reach and help so many people. Because what you take Ed?

Yeah, I'm probably not as good as you might imagine, but I'm pretty good.

I know his weaknesses. I know he likes granola and you can't leave it at his house or he'll eat a lot of it. You know some of your weaknesses.

Yes, that's definitely true. It's true. I don't own a tv, so good guess on that. I don't watch much. Nonsense. I like to turn my Brain off a little bit with silly stuff, comedy movies in the evening. Because my brain's going so much during the day, sometimes I like to just watch something silly and funny at night to just shut down all of the, like thinking about like sciencey stuff and trying to figure things out. That's kind of my brain's default mode. So I need a little help turning it off sometimes. So.

I would say, do you read daily? Do you. Are you a big podcast listener? Do you. I mean, how do you. What are the things, like, for self care that you've taken? Like, how are you getting. Where does your information come from typically?

Yeah. So I like that you were. Used the word information just now. I saw a. I think it was a TED talk many years ago, some kind of lecture somewhere about like the information diet. I don't know if you've ever heard of that term, but it's basically the idea that everything that you put into your mind, into your brain each day, all the information that you consume, you can think of it in the same way that you think of nutrition and food. And it's like, okay, so my background, your background in nutrition, it's like, okay, well, here are the good foods, here are the not so good foods, here are the really terrible foods, right? And I want to focus really on just putting in super high quality, nutritious foods that nourish my body and support good health and good energy and fat loss and muscle gain and all of those things. I think the same is true of information. So I think especially in this information overload world that we live in now, it's really important to have discipline about what information you allow into your brain. So I'm very selective about what I let in and what I don't. I don't listen to or read or watch the news. I don't spend a lot of time browsing on social media and going through what everybody else is doing. I've trained my Facebook feed so that the only things that pop up are posts from Natalie.

I'm just kidding. Natalie. It's important. That's it.

That's right. It's just all Natalie. My whole Facebook feed, basically people who are publishing stuff on science, on nutrition, on, you know, things that educate and. And I listen to educational podcasts almost every day. I'm doing a master's program in human nutrition and functional medicine now just as a. Like, like, I don't have to do that. Like, I'm like the credential. Like, I'm already doing what I'm going to be doing after I get the degree. And I'm already doing it very successfully. So like, it's really just a thing for me of how can I keep learning? How can I keep putting in good for information in so I can keep getting better and better? And then other than that, other than putting really high quality information in, I really just spend time with my family and with my, you know, I work out, obviously, and take care of my body and spend a lot of time in the sun and those kinds of things, spend a lot of time in nature. But other than that, it's really like time with my family, time with my kids.

Yeah. Living. Truly living.

Yeah. Those are the experiences, like at the end of my life that I know I'm never gonna wish. Like, hey, I wish I spent a little bit more time browsing on social media. I wish I spent a little more time screwing around on YouTube or watching the news. Like at the end of my life, I'm not going to think any of those thoughts. The only thing I'm gonna think is I wish I just spent a little more time with my kids. And I think I'll think that no matter what, no matter how much time I actually spend with them, I could have done this a little bit better. I could have spent a little, I could have been there for them a little bit more in this way. So I'm just trying to do that as much as I possibly can.

You do it. Well, I do have one more question for you. I'm going to ask everybody this question. So I'm curious your spin on it. So a lot of people that listen to this podcast, they listen to it because we share so many stories of how people leveled up and created everything from nothing. And so many of the guests that I've had, they've had huge setbacks or failures or hardships. So I know a lot of people listening are in pivots in their life right now. So maybe they have their own. Maybe it's they're deciding not to go through medical school. Maybe it's a financial setback or a business setback or a relationship. 1. I'm curious from you, from the way that you live and from what you teach and from what you know, if you were talking to somebody right now who's in their own personal rock bottom or hardship and you were to give them some advice on how they can start shifting things and leveling up and creating everything for nothing, what would you tell them?

Ooh, that's such a juicy question. I think just be open to the possibility that your worst times in life, your rock bottom, might actually turn into the catalyst for finding your purpose and your destiny in life, doing the work that you're here to do. And then I might add one more layer to that, which is consider medical caveats aside and mental health issues aside, consider doing a journey with some plant medicine and discovering maybe some messages that might be present in that experience and that might speed. It might accelerate the curve of getting through that rock bottom and getting into the. More the climb to the top of the mountain.

Great, great advice there. I love that. Thank you. Where can people find you? Because I know you're not especially active on social media, so can you tell them where they can find your podcast? Where are the best places to learn more?

Yeah, so my podcast is. You can, you can find it on itunes. But the best place to learn more. I'm not really on social media to a significant degree. Best place is theenergyblueprint.com theenergyblueprint.com Yep. Yeah. And then, and then enter your name and email there. Sign up for our free webinars or masterclass and then you'll be on our email list. You'll get our podcast. You get all the articles and videos that I put out for free and all kinds of goodies.

Amazing. Thank you so much, Ari.

Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

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 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.