Decode Your Cravings With Kevin Geary

Wellness force radio episode 60 the more.

Willpower you use, the more likely you are to fail. Willpower is a behavior manipulator. It is a trigger for failure. And going back to the inner rebel is specifically why if you have to use willpower, you are inherently by definition doing something antagonistic that you don't want to be doing. If you wanted to be doing it, you would just be doing it and you wouldn't need willpower.

Welcome back to another episode. I am your host Josh Trent. Thanks my friend for stopping and sticking around here on your busy day for the podcast. This show is where we together find the most inspiring and passionate experts in behavior change and wellness technology. Every week you and I get to come together to learn from a world class leader who's dedicating their life to driving real transformation in our physical and emotional wellness. Today we're going deep to get knowledge and tools from holistic health coach, podcaster and founder of Decode youe Cravings, Kevin Geary. Kevin is coming on Wellness Force today to shine light on why willpower doesn't work and to share with us how to get a body to love through real food, functional movement and behavioral psychology. Today we're going to talk about his journey from being over 220 pounds, having high blood pressure and being pre diabetes to turning it all around, having normal metabolic function and sharing the psychology behind weight loss. This episode is brought to you by Perfect Supplements. I am honored to partner with a company who walks the talk with their values of pesticide free non GMO real food supplements to support all of us on the wellness journey. Hop on over to perfectsupplements.com wellnessforce and get 10% off using code wellnessforce for your entire order. I was checking out the iTunes rankings today and we are consistently placing Wellness Force together in the top 50 and 20 of of self help and health for fitness and Nutrition with over 310. 310. That's amazing reviews on itunes. I want to know through your voice what you like about the show and how we can make this better. Are there guests that you want to have on certain topics that you're interested in diving deeper into? Let me know. Hop to wellnessforce.com review. Let your voice be heard and I'll give you a shout out on the show. This review was left by Roger Decker. Oh Roger says I found Josh's podcast in search of help for my health journey. Josh interviews top notch guests as well as offering his own advice and real life experiences. His guidance goes well beyond the standard Health and wellness categories to include areas such as emotions and mindful eating. Josh's clear expertise and sincerity as one who's been there quickly connected with me. Definitely subscribed and a favorite. Roger, thanks so much for your review. You know, I depend on your energy and voice to get this message of empowering people's lives through technology out into the itunes world. Roger is a really powerful guy. He reached out to me and shared his journey about the Michael Thomas interview which inspired him to talk about his hundred plus pound weight loss of his own. Now, today's show. Let's get in here. I know you're waiting for Kevin and all the information a little bit more about the topics for today. We're going to talk about manipulators, the internal and external factors that drive us towards our goal or away from it. Blocks to progress what Kevin calls biopsychosocial manipulators, how to fulfill our unfulfilled core cravings, optimal foraging programming, stress tolerance threshold breach and triggered sub personalities. Unpacking a lot of deep levels around the psychology of how to let go of old weight. Let's jump into the powerful conversation with Kevin Geary. Kevin, welcome to the show.

Hey, thank you for having me. Glad to be here.

You know, we interviewed yesterday and I was excited because I really didn't know too much about you before I came across you on my radar. And the more I started looking into rebooted body and your story, the more excited I was to bring you on. You know, so many things we focus on for Wellness Force Radio are around behavior change and wellness technology. You know, the mindset and the psychology behind how do we become this amazing version of ourselves. And that is your story, man. So thanks for coming on the show.

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, I wanted to start with a little bit of the bread and butter of who you are. And by the way, I don't mean bread and butter like actually bread and butter. I know on this show we don't eat bread and butter. But in your life, I mean, you're a dad now. You're the founder of rebootedbody.com you help people get real bodies they love through what you explain as real food, functional movement and behavioral psychology. But your story started out way different than the leader you are now. You were actually sitting in a doctor's office in 2009. You were 220. Now you're five eight. But you were 220. And you had this physical results that came back. You were borderline diabetic. You had high blood Pressure. You were pre diabetic. You had been following this conventional wisdom of cutting calories and over exercising. What happened in 2009 at this moment for you sitting in that doctor's office?

Well, a couple things. First of all, I felt a bit hopeless because I didn't. It wasn't like I was sitting there coming from a place of not trying, not caring about my health or anything like that. I was a martial arts instructor at the time, and I also felt a bit like a fraud because I was telling my students, eat right, stay active. But here I was with these adverse health outcomes and being about 60 pounds overweight. So that was rough as well. And it was also starting to impact my martial arts performance, my teaching quality, things like that. So sitting there learning that I have high blood pressure, I'm borderline diabetic, and I'm really overweight, aside from having joint pain and all these other minor ailments, I just felt hopeless. And I said right then and there, all right, here's what I'm gonna do. I am going to go start researching in a very specific way, looking for people who are saying something totally different than I've heard before, because it would be insanity to just go back and try to apply all the stuff that I've been doing. It's going to lead to the same result. I came across, thankfully, the real food movement. And I started learning about different types of fitness, learning that, hey, you know, the running that I did in high school, just constant pounding the pavement, which left me inflamed and tired all the time, falling asleep midday, that kind of stuff, kind of destructive to the body. Like, I didn't realize, oh, there are healthier, more restorative forms of exercise. There's a way to get great results while spending less time doing exercise and having exercise. That translates to the real world versus what. Also, I learned in high school, what I thought exercise was was just basically changing how your body looks, right? And not really how it performs. So came across real food, came across functional movement. I started applying those principles to my life and found more success than I had ever found before in a shorter amount of time. So I dropped probably down to 185, 190 very quickly. Then I realized, okay, I'm starting to fail again. And why am I starting to fail this time? It wasn't to do with the information. I realized that I was turning back to things like sugar and sweets and just binging behavior because there was something going on in my head. Like, now I had the right information, but there Was still something blocking me from implementing that on a consistent basis. And that's when I really started looking into the psychology of why people succeed and why people fail, implementing health and fitness adv. So that's kind of the path that I went on. And, of course, once I started identifying the reasons I was struggling, I was able to break free from that. Got down to about 165, 170 pounds and maintain that for a while. Rebooted body came about because I was, like I said, teaching martial arts at the time. So all the parents who were bringing their kids in to classes kind of watched this transformation over the course of a year or so, and they started coming to me saying, hey, what are you doing? Can you help us out a little bit? And I started helping a few people here and there, a friend as well, a good friend, just giving him some tips on what I was doing. And all of those people got really great results. And I found that it was very, very exciting and powerful to watch their changes happen. And I decided I wanted to start investigating on how to do this, share this stuff with people on a wider scale.

The power of this for me is that it's bringing up a ton of mirrors in my life. You know, nobody knows this about me. I don't think I've talked about this on. But I have to share this because you brought it up. I was a martial arts instructor in 2011, so I taught kids for a year. I kind of flash back to the studio thinking about this right now, and the pressure that I felt then was what you and I touched on yesterday. I got the pleasure of being on your podcast, being interviewed by you yesterday, and what came up for me was this mindset piece. You had mentioned to me that your wife had some things happened in her life, and she was doing some proactive stuff, going to therapy, getting things taken care of for her mindset. You joined her in therapy. What happened in psychotherapy that kind of led you to break through this? What was holding you back? You know, you said something was blocking you. Can you share with us kind of what you learned from that therapy session? I think it really relates to people that are struggling out there.

Yeah. Well, and to be clear, you know, this was years of a process of therapy, and I think that's important for people to understand that it is a process, and you have to be invested in the long game. Right. But understanding some things about yourself, dealing all the way from childhood through public school environments or traditional schooling environments, things that happen to you via bullying or conditional love That's a big one as well. That can lead to basically personality changes like perfectionism and people pleasing. And so for me in my own life, my parents really, my mom mostly huge people pleaser, perfectionist, and I picked up a lot of those tendencies as well. People pleasing and perfectionism, by the way, don't mix very well with health and fitness. Totally. To have very black and white thinking you want to do everything perfect, and if you make a mistake, it starts a shame and a guilt cycle and that leads to more bingeing and the more stress that you're under in general, the more unfulfilled you are. And everybody has different triggers and circumstances for these things, but the more you kind of seek out medicating with food. And then on top of that, during childhood I was totally standard American diet. I did not. We didn't. We had no concept of health, right? So I didn't even know. I didn't have any of the habits. I didn't have any of the knowledge that, you know, some people may have regarding just being healthy and moving a lot. So I had to kind of relearn all that. And unfortunately, the first time I went through it, I learned the conventional model which set me astray. So kind of all of these factors combined is why I was failing. And the insight provided by psychotherapy and other methods is very critical because a lot of people, they'll say I'm under stress, or worst case scenario, they say I'm not really under much stress, right? Then there's the next level, which is, yeah, I'm under stress, but they don't really understand the specifics of the stress they're under. So they read blog articles about deep breathing or positive affirmations or all this other kind of superficial stuff, which I'm not completely discounting and writing off, but from what most of people are facing, that stuff's not even going to touch it, right? So there just has to be an insight, a deeper knowledge and level of understanding in order to really address the issues people are facing and free them from what I call manipulation of their behavior.

And I love that you say something on your site which really rang true for me. You said, well, people ask this simple question, why can't I consistently align my behavior with my good intentions? And I think the power of this is because everyone that's on the journey, you know, you and I have had very similar journeys, Kevin, where we had weight loss and then regain and then figuring out, okay, how do we sustainably do this? Not from a place of fear, and scarcity, but from a place of acceptance and abundance and love. And I think, really, this question of aligning our behaviors with good intentions, there is so many roadblocks that get in people's way. I mean, you work with people all over the country. When we look at this question of aligning our behavior with intentions, what are a handful of things that come up on a regular basis when you're working with your clients?

So some of the main areas that we focus on are adverse childhood experiences, which there's a wonderful. And that's not just a random term. There's a specific study that was done by Kaiser and the CDC related to actually obesity and an obesity clinic. So it's the adverse childhood experiences study. And they ask you about 10 questions based on experiences that you had during childhood. And they have found based on your score, the higher your score is for these adverse experiences, the more likely you are to suffer from obesity and then even very advanced diseases and, of course, addictions and many other things. So there is a direct correlation between what people experience throughout childhood and other, you know, highly traumatic experiences anytime in life, really, and adverse health outcomes. So that's one big area. We look at unfulfilled, what I call unfulfilled core cravings, which are very similar to, like, the hierarchy of needs, but I like to reframe. Everybody kind of looks at cravings in a negative light. They're like, I want to get rid of my cravings. I want to get in control of my cravings. And really, the cravings they're talking about, like cravings for ice cream and sweets and salty foods and snacks and comfort foods, things like that, That's a very superficial and myopic view of cravings, really. We have very, very deep cravings as human beings. The craving for relationships, right? A craving for purpose. And a lot of these cravings are going unfulfilled in people's lives. And that creates a massive amount of stress. And that massive amount of stress begs for many times coping mechanism. You know, food is one of the biggest coping mechanisms most widely used, especially in America. And that's one of the underlying causes. We also look at what I call biopsychosocial manipulators. And We've identified over 45 of these manipulators that act on people's behavior day in and day out that they may or may not be aware of. Even if they're aware of them, they may not even know what to do about them. So that's important to address as well. And then we Also have to look at things like just following antagonistic advice, you know, advice that works against your biological and psychological programming. So anybody who is counting calories or avoiding fat or following a lot of the conventional dieting model, that is all very antagonistic. And what happens when you follow antagonistic advice and of course doing exercise that you don't like to do, that you have to force yourself to do things like that, you know, needing willpower and this concept of discipline, all of that pisses off your inner rebel. So everybody has an inner rebel and that it is designed to protect you from oppression. And all of these conventional tactics are forms of oppression. Your inner rebel stands up and says, hey, this really sucks. You don't want to be doing any of this. And it starts this whole chain of negative self talk and it tries to convince you to do otherwise, which usually leads to binging and anything that brings enjoyment, the inner rebel really loves. And anything that's not tied to rules and restriction and things like that. So the antagonistic advice that people are following on top of all of these other things that I just mentioned, and then even going back to biological programming in terms of what's called optimal forgin theory, just the simple fact that the body is biologically programmed to eat as many calories as possible while expending the fewest amount of energy as possible, right? So that's just something we're dealing with, a fact. And you combine that with our modern environment, which is full of processed foods and convenience, just those two things alone don't really go together. So like you said, just to sum things up, there's a massive amount of obstacles between us and success.

And what's really unique in our society particularly is that we have the age of instant gratification at every freaking turn. I mean, no matter where we're going in life, whether it's in the car, walking around, you know, virtual reality is going to start stepping in here in the next five years really heavily. We're going to be even more saturated with instant gratification models. And it's interesting, I really loved that you brought up Maslow's hierarchy of needs just for people that aren't aware aware of this. I'm going to link this in the show notes today we can learn a lot more about Kevin and his programs and our interview details@wellnessforce.com rebooted. But with Maslow's hierarchy, you know, at the bottom of this pyramid, we have psychological needs, then we have safety, you know, procreation, the reptilian brain. So it's like shelter, food, and then procreation is last. So we only take care of the things that we can do once we've taken care of the things that we absolutely need. And then next is love and belonging, esteem. At the very top, you guys, of this pyramid is self actual. This is kind of like living to our highest potential. I think that's what we're all looking for when we're figuring out how do we align our behaviors with our intentions? That's self actualization. What do you think, Kevin, as far as the paradigm that has to shift? What is the paradigm that has to shift for people to climb this pyramid of needs?

Well, they have to be invested in the, the deep aspects of their humanity rather than the superficial stuff that the health and fitness industry begs them to constantly focus on. Things like weight and things like how we look in a bikini, for example. Like if you come to, if you say, all right, my health and fitness goals are to lose 30 pounds by the summer, right? And you start asking people, okay, why do you want to do that? And they say, well, I really want to look good or I want to just avoid looking bad. Like these ideas of health and fitness, which is probably what the majority of people have in their mind, is just those are not big enough whys to, number one. The transition to having a body and life you love is difficult and it takes a lot of time and there's a lot of challenges. Challenges that we just talked about, right. If my biggest why is looking good in a bikini, there's no way I'm going to make it through all those challenges. Like, there's no way. Like, you have to dig deep. You have to have much bigger whys, right? Yeah. So playing the long game is something I talk all about, but really deeply figuring out why you want to do this and making sure that that's a really important why. And a lot of times I use the example of somebody that has been diagnosed with cancer. Like if you look at the behavioral change, the lifestyle change in somebody with a diagnosis like that, usually those people are not falling off the wagon. Usually those people are not losing motivation. Right? Like they have a gigantic why behind the intention of what they're doing. So they stay focused and they make it through challenges and they overcome obstacles. They have a massive why. If you don't have a massive why. If you have a very superficial why, then you're just in the wrong mindset for this type of work, for real results that are going to last a lifetime.

Because this piece, when we look at Achieving a result. There's a lot of fatigue that's involved. I mean, decision fatigue, cravings. Willpower, by the way, which I know you've mentioned, lasts about three weeks to a month. Willpower is the worst kind of vehicle to drive a fitness or wellness program, in my opinion. Willpower is something that is completely finite. It has a definite ending. When you work with clients and they come across this piece for willpower, what do you see people give up on first if they're not connected to their why?

So with regards to using willpower, first of all, it's funny that you've said exactly that about willpower, because that's one of the biopsychosocial manipulators that we tell people about. People think, they come to me and they say, I need more willpower. And I say, no, no, no.

As if you could plug that in for them, Right? Yeah.

The more willpower you use, the more likely you are to fail. Willpower is a behavior manipulator. It is a trigger for failure. And going back to the inner rebe, specifically, why, if you have to use willpower, you are inherently, by definition, doing something antagonistic that you don't want to be doing. If you wanted to be doing it, you would just be doing it and you wouldn't need willpower. Right. So figuring out, like, why don't I want to. If this is a healthy habit, why don't I want to do it? And is this a really healthy habit? Getting to the bottom of that is far superior to just saying, I'm going to white knuckle it, and I'm going to. And I'm going to try to use willpower to get through this. Because once your inner rebel is triggered, all bets are off. The inner rebel always wins. It will always derail you from the oppressive stuff that you are doing. So if you think I need more willpower, that's just saying I'm going to fail, basically, is what's going to happen. But typically, you'll see the cycle start with the food piece. And this is a high percentage of people that I work with have black and white thinking. And the health and fitness industry has kind of programmed this into people, this idea that you have to be perfect to succeed. You know that trainers all the time, what are they doing? They're probably not on purpose, but they're shaming people for eating something that's not quote unquote, on plan. Right? So people start something and they ask for a meal plan. Why do they ask for a meal plan? Because they Want to be perfect. They want you to say, as a coach, all right, tell me everything I'm going to eat. And that way they can go the store, they can buy every single thing on the list, they can make it, and they can eat it, just like you said. Right. So that they don't make any mistakes. And again, going back to traditional schooling, this is it. Everybody wants 100. They want an A plus. They don't want to get a 90. 90 is not good enough. Their parents told them that many times. Right. And of course, I'm generalizing. Okay. But this is how the psychology, the mindset of this stuff is built. So you start a health and fitness plan. You're in the mindset of, I want to get 100. I want to do this quickly. I want to look good in a bikini. Like, none of this stuff actually matters. None of that. All of that stuff is a distraction. Right? So getting rid of all of that and diving into what really matters and what is really going to create changes is what's actually important.

Let's talk about cravings, too, because we've already unpacked a little bit about this mindset. What things pull us away from actually achieving goals. But when we look at a craving, I mean, how would you define a craving? We've had a lot of guests on the show that talk about cravings. But I'm curious for you. You have a unique background, Kevin. You work with a lot of people with cravings. How would you define a craving? And then what are the things that actually cravings do that keep people back from achieving goals?

So a craving, for me, in the sense of how I define it, is something that. It is a human need, like something that we absolutely, desperately need for happiness or for survival. Cravings superficially tend to be designed as or defined as just a strong desire for something. Like, if I have a craving for ice cream, I have a strong desire for it, and that strong desire tends to override. This is kind of the caricature example of cravings. Tends to override my intention to not eat ice cream, maybe, because I know that that is antithetical to my goals. So I try to get people, like I said, focus in a different direction on what cravings actually are. So I kind of define 10 of them. I'll just run down through them. Safety is a core human craving. Mobility. And that's mobility in terms of your body. Right. It's also going deeper, thinking about, like, economic mobility or global mobility. Do I have the freedom to travel different places? This is all core Human need, the ability to do this type of stuff. Then you have movement with your physical body. You have love and relationships. You have this core craving for social acceptance. You have a core craving to live a life of purpose. You have a core craving for health and vitality and for self actualization and for autonomy. So these are examples of the core human cravings that we really need to be focused on fulfilling. Because when these things go unfulfilled, then you see a massive rise in the superficial cravings that people normally talk about, like the cravings for hyper palatable food and sugar, which is basically just a craving for medication. It's a craving for coping with all of this other stress and all of the other ways that life isn't really going as planned, so to speak, for you.

I like how you reference when one stressor goes unfulfilled, like this craving for deep emotional connection or relationships. Then the superficial ones come up like, you know, craving smoothies with tons of sugar. I think there's a definite seesaw effect that I've experienced with my clients. You know, you sent me these really amazing diagrams for my cravings code. It's a new program you have coming out. One of the things that you mentioned though, is how our behavior is manipulated. And you talk about this a lot in your podcast. You know, this, this theory of manipulators, these are internal and external factors that either pull us away or bring us closer to where we want to be. Unpack this a little bit for us, Kevin.

Yeah, so there, there are many different. So basically the concept of manipulator, what is it, right? We have an intention, we go to try to execute on that intention, we end up not executing on it. We maybe even doing something antithetical to that. Why? It's because something manipulated our behavior, changed our behavior. Our authentic self was not in the driver's seat. We were actually in the passenger seat. There was something else in the driver's seat. And trying to unpack what causes this to happen is the goal of decode your cravings and the goal of a lot of the work that I've been doing lately. There are, and I call them biopsychosocial manipulators because some are biological, some are psychological, some are social. But a few that I mentioned, perfectionism, of course, there's shame, there's guilt, anxiety, grief, negative self talk. Then like on the physical side of things, poor sleep, right. Is a manipulator nutritional poverty, not giving your body what it needs in terms of micronutrition, having a cluttered environment is a manipulator. Peer pressure is a manipulator. Having disordered body image, having a chronic illness, having this idea that we are stuck in a comfort zone that we can't find a way out of. And I probably shouldn't go there. That's a very deep. That would require more time than we probably have. But that's another manipulator. But these are many different examples. And the reason that we kind of need to unpack this in the way that we've done in Decode youe Cravings is because every single human being walking this planet has different past experiences. They are manipulated by different things. And even though I can make a list of the general ones, we don't know which ones each individual person is influenced by. So we have to assess that. We have to figure out, okay, what's actually affecting this individual person. And that helps build the game plan for helping that individual person. And then of course, like going back to core cravings, as we said, those are actually manipulators when they are unfulfilled, when they're fulfilled, they don't manipulate your behavior. When they go unfulfilled, they do manipulate your behavior. Adverse childhood experiences are another type of manipulator. Those experiences absolutely change not just your psychological makeup, but a lot of times created biological changes in the brain. Those are manipulating your behavior. Right? So this is just a kind of a master list of all of these things that are potentially manipulating behavior that we have to assess.

The Tony Robbins movement, you know, there's this big personal development movement spearheaded by Tony. We had one of his coaches on the show last year, and he talked about this requirement for certainty, you know, certainty that some of these core cravings that you talked about will be fulfilled. And we're going to reach that certainty no matter if it's healthy or it's unhealthy. And I love the way that you painted this picture of the seesaw where when one is not fulfilled, the other one that's deleterious comes up. I'm curious, in your own life, have you ever felt like one of these core cravings wasn't fulfilled? How did circumvent that? And then how did you fix it so that you had sustainable change?

So the autonomy one, that's one of the core cravings. That's basically just the idea that we can do our own thing, right? That we can follow our interests, that we can follow our passions, that we can make decisions for ourselves was huge for me. Okay, so when I was a martial Arts instructor. I was married to a very specific schedule. I was married to a location. I was the only person, really, that was leading classes in that school. So if I wasn't there, nothing was getting done, no classes were getting led. And what I found that being in that environment year after year, on top of all the other stressors impacting my life, right. I found that there was just a severe deficit of autonomy. I felt trapped. And it really started to, like, just wear on me and really wear on my soul. And I started getting very angry kind of at the process or the kind of model that I was stuck in. My family wanted to go on vacations. I couldn't. I had nobody to cover the studio. Like, I was just totally trapped. And I found that I was doing tons of medicating simply because of that one, like, unfulfilled core craving for autonomy. That idea that I don't control anything really, about my day, my schedule, it was affecting my happiness. So of course I'm medicating with that now you talk about. All right, what do I do with that information? Well, for me, I realize I have to get out of this situation, right. So I started doing everything I could to transition out of that and into something else. And thankfully, I found it because I Transitioned into doing rebootedbody.com where I can work from home. I determine my own schedule, I can go on vacations whenever I want. So I totally started fulfilling that need for autonomy. And guess what? That accelerated greatly my ability to be consistent with my behaviors.

Man, we are brothers from a wellness mother. Because I can specifically remember coming home from the karate studio after training personal training clients in the morning, then going to the studio for six hours and training 30 kids, screaming, coming home and shotgunning a beer. And I am not an alcohol drinker. And I remember specifically there was a few nights where I was sitting on my counter looking at the moon, drinking a beer at like 12 midnight, thinking, I can't do this forever. This is not working for me in my life. And I'm having a lot of flashbacks in our interview today. Now, what's interesting, though, is you talked about this medication piece. You know, I. I brought up the fact that I might medicate in the evenings with beer. I think a lot of people are dealing with lifestyles and frameworks that they don't want to be in. But what's interesting is that we are the creator of our environment. I know it. Sometimes it seems like we're not because we might have external responsibilities like family or kids. You're a Father, though, and with the system you've created through going through these belief systems, going through these ways of medicating yourself, what would you say, looking back has been the most important piece for you to actually let go of the things that don't serve you and bring on the things that do?

Well, yeah, Changing outlook on things is very important. And we talk about this in the program in the fact that a lot of stress is perception. So many people, I think, make the mistake of labeling a circumstance as stressful. And I use the example of public speaking where somebody may be absolutely terrified of public speaking, and they go around saying public speaking is very stressful, and public speaking is actually not very stressful. It is stressful to that person based on their perception. But we know many, many people in the world who have no fear of public speaking, and it is not stressful for them. The difference is the perception of public speaking. If you go around saying public speaking is very stressful, you are disempowering yourself from finding out why that happens to be stressful for you, not for everybody, for you. Because that's really your thing. Like, that's your stuff to deal with. Right? So if you acknowledge that the act is not stressful, it is something about how I perceive it to be stressful, then you can actually start getting to work on healing that. So I talk a lot about, in terms of, like, making changes, the two main choices that we have when identifying these stressors is one, can we remove the stressor and that will lead us to success? Or two, is it possible that we are blowing this stressor out of proportion and we can change our perception, maybe bring some reason into why we perceive this as so stressful. And if we can change our perception, then that will, in effect, make the stressor go away. What I want to steer people away from is just trying to cover up the stressors, maybe with, like, healthier habits or something. I just want the stressor to be gone out of the person's life, if that's what we can do either through either of those tactics. But it tends to be, you know, oh, you're medicating at night. Let's try to switch that to maybe a healthier thing. Like, could you switch to eating dark chocolate instead of cookies? You know, and that's really not getting to the root of the issue, you know, so that's what I like to look at.

Making better choices and consistently aligning our behavior with our good intentions starts with us feeling satiated. It's hard to make great choices when we're walking around the day hungry. Over the past three months I've been adding perfect supplements hydrolyzed collagen to my diet and it's drastically improved my satiety. In just two servings of this cartilage rich digestive heat and integrity joint supporting grass fed collagen, I'm getting 20 grams of protein. The coolest thing is that this hydrolyzed grass fed collagen dissolves completely in water so you don't have to worry about any funky taste, just clean protein to help you feel full and more clear headed throughout the day because you're not walking around hungry. Hop on over to perfectsupplements.com wellnessforce and get 10% off your order using code wellnessforce course all over the site. Don't forget to pick up anything else you need including magnesium to help you sleep and all your vitamins and supplements for the wellness journey. Now let's jump back to the conversation with Kevin Geary. Now it's interesting because you know on your chart you talk about stress tolerance. I think of this as stress capacity. Some of the work I've done with the Czech Institute, they talk about stress is like a bathtub, you know, we can only hold so much. Every human being is born with a unique capacity for stress. How have you found when working with clients, I mean, is it right away you can recognize that, okay, this person has this wide angle of stress, this is their capacity, this other person has a lower capacity of stress. What dictates people's capacity to deal with stress?

Well, I think it has to do with the individual stressors that they're under and of course, like I said, their perception of it. But if you're dealing with somebody who is like me, who just had this lack of autonomy in their life and that was a stressor that was sending me overboard, it was breaching my stress tolerance threshold. And the reason it does that is I talk about PME resources which are psychological or physical, mental and emotional resources. So anything that drains your physical, mental and emotional resources is going to take a toll and bring you closer and closer and closer to that stress tolerance threshold. So someone like me where I was suffering from an autonomy deficit and it was driving me crazy. That's different from somebody who has say like 6 of the adverse childhood experiences and then on top of any of the other stressors that they're actually dealing with, if I look at my own life on the adverse childhood experiences and this is just an example, I score a two. Okay, so that's fairly low. If I was a seven. And then on top of that, I had this lack of autonomy and some other things going on. I mean, it would be very hard. Like, I would, of course, just be breaching that stress tolerance threshold all the time. So it depends on the actual stressors people are dealing with. Some stressors are minute, and some are very, very impactful and influential. So somebody may have two stressors, but they're major stressors. Somebody may have 10 stressors, but they're kind of like minute micro stressors. It's not the quantity of them, it's really the experience themselves.

Let's talk about blocks to progress. I mean, one of the things you mentioned with the Adverse Childhood experience study is that certain people are affected in different ways based on the trauma or the things they had to work through as a kid. Now, as an adult, you and I both know we've done a lot of different work in experiential trainings and personal development. One of the things we talk about on the show that blocks people's progress and their health goals are the things that occur when we're kids. Now, personally, I've gone through a program. It was called Mastering Transformational Training. Have you taken any programs that you'd like to mention that you think are powerful, that you've also worked into the psychology of your program as a coach, as a leader, but then also as a participant? I mean, what have you done that's really moved the needle for you, for your emotional intelligence and pushing through these blocks?

My experience is based on my, first of all, my experience in psychotherapy for many, many, many, many years and dealing with very advanced models of psychotherapy in terms of there's people out there. And this is, I think, why this model tends to get a bad rap a lot of times is somebody will understand that they have something going on in their life and they will seek help. And they'll come across just any old counselor, any old person calling themselves a psychotherapist. And it doesn't really work out like nothing. They don't really go deep. It's just not effective for them. And they leave that saying, that's just not a helpful model. Right? And the reason is they didn't have the right person. Right? And I am very confident that when we went through it, because with what my wife was dealing with, she had seen 10, 12, 15, I don't know how many counselors, and just was going through them like one after the other saying, this is not. This is not.

Why were they working?

They just. Because there's well, first of all, there's so many of them. They have different degrees of training. They. They have different. Just depths that they go to, different personalities. And some are effective, just like any profession. Some are effective and some are ineffective. And what we found, depending on what you're dealing with, by the way, it's hard to generalize this stuff, but for her and for us, most of them were ineffective. We finally came across one that was magnificently effective. And it's a night and day difference. I mean, when you're dealing with somebody that is truly, truly effective and tuned in to what's going on with you, massively different than somebody who's not. And I could see why people would start to kind of reject that model and stop seeking help in a way. But I'm confident that the one that we finally did have a lot of success with really opened our eyes to a lot of things. And then combining that with research that I've done independently, and then combine that with working with people, quote, unquote, in the trenches, helping them and seeing their progress and changes they're making, what's working with them and what's not working with them, all of that combined is really what I draw on.

I want to transition here in a moment just to living an active lifestyle. We'll talk about this guide you have for mindset and a little bit more about your programs. But something came up for me when you were explaining how you went through this process of going from therapist to therapist. It took me about six different people to find the one that I'm with now. And it's the EFT therapist. We do tapping. We do a lot of inner work. And I have had, I guess you could say, a fairly traumatic childhood. I mean, I love my parents. They did the best they possibly could. However, I am definitely in alignment with the psychology of knowing where I am now is a direct result of what I experienced as a kid. Now it actually makes me a better leader, it makes me a better coach because it drives empathy for my clients. You know, I attract the people that I think I can most serve, which is unique. And I'm curious for you, if you could just share one thing that came up in this psychotherapy that really moved the needle for you, specifically in regards to making you a better coach.

Yeah. So I think the main thing or the first thing that comes to mind would just be my relationship with my parents. I had this kind of program running in my mind that anytime this conversation would come up with people, I would repeat this belief that I had A great childhood, and my relationship with my parents is really great. And I found out through therapy that's not actually. It's not actually the case. Like, I was kind of telling myself a story for many, many, many years, and it's not. I did not have. And I think the reason for this is I did not have, like, a traumatic childhood. Right. But I did have a, like, severe lack of connection. And that can be very damaging. Right. So telling myself this fairy tale only to realize that that not. Not really. Right. Not really the case completely started to change my perspective on a lot of things. And like you said, that that makes you a better leader and it makes you a better coach.

So that was a core craving that was not fulfilled. So then do you feel like you can really help fulfill that in other people or at least shine light so that they can fulfill it themselves?

Yes. My. My whole goal, really 99%, is to shine lights. So I am pointing people to possibilities. And then if they want to really go deep into these areas, I'm suggesting and recommending that they find a good psychotherapist or a good workshop or a good something or other. Right. I'm not doing that work with them. I am educating on. Here's what I see. Here are all the possibilities. And I think we should take a really serious look at this and then decide and show them how. Of course, that's manipulating their behavior. Now, they can get a lot of success just making changes through the program and on their own. Right. But when I find somebody that's really struggling from some of these deeper issues, they're going off to a psychotherapist or a workshop or a program like that.

You know, I was listening to earlier this year, an interview on the Joe Rogan podcast. He had Mark Sisson on the show, and. And they were talking about these layers where once you start peeling back the onion, you might find things that you didn't even know were there. And it kind of sounds like that's what you experienced in psychotherapy. I'm curious, though, because when we look at this program, you're creating a program here, and it's decode your cravings. You talk about, you know, access to going to what's going on inside your body, but also inside your head so you can identify exactly what's manipulating your behavior and put yourself back in the driver's seat. What was the genesis of this program? Why'd you create this? Decode your cravings?

Through my own journey, just as I explained in the very beginning, I failed. Even though I had all the right information and I think that my, myself and my community, we are kind of done with this idea that health and fitness, getting a body and life you love, is about calories in, calories out, lots of exercise, quote unquote, eating healthy. All of these lines that we are constantly fed by the mainstream health and fitness industry are totally bogus. They have very, very little in the grand scheme of things to do with success. And I looked at the landscape of what's available to help people and I was not finding anything really relevant in terms of helping people with the psychology side of things, which is, I say, is 80% of people's success is the psychology side of things. So just a void, a gap. And I said, how can I step up to help fill this gap rather than waiting around for somebody else to do it? That was the entire cusp of getting this off the ground.

And when is the program launching? Is it live now?

We did a beta launch, we put 60 people into it. And then they helped me build it, actually. So I was building it alongside them, using it and going through it. And we've had discussions and a private Facebook group and all that sort of thing. So it's not just me building it, but it's me building it with many of these people who took the leap with me in the very beginning. But we should be finishing it up in June and then probably launching in July.

Awesome. Well, we will definitely link that in the show notes. One of the things I loved that we talked about today. We had so many great things in our interview, Kevin, but one of my favorites was where you talked about these biopsychosocial manipulators. Just so we can transition cleanly to the last part of our show. It's going to be seven fast questions for seven top of mind answers in a sentence or two. Just talk about biopsychosocial manipulators just so people can get a grasp on the key things that may be manipulating their behavior.

Yeah. So just in terms of day to day behavior, thinking about, and I talk about stress in terms of a statistic. So it is never one or two or three stressors that's causing you to be derailed with your behavior. It's usually many, many, many different stressors. And like I said, one stressor can be very minute, the other can be very magnificent. So addressing or assessing what's actually going on with us. But there are, like I said, 45 about that. We've identified biopsychosocial manipulators that are affecting people On a day to day basis. I listed some off a little bit ago and I would challenge people to come assess these because once you identify them, that is exactly how you game plan. Rather than just sitting around and saying either oh, I'm not under stress or I know I'm under stress. And just talking about stress in general, that's not going to help you getting to the specifics of which stressors are impacting you and why they are impacting you and how they are impacting you. You. That is the only way to game plan. That is the only way to make changes that are actually going to stick and actually going to get you to results.

Don't you think that at least this is my experience, don't you think that some people know exactly what those stressors are, but they're just really afraid to come out in the open and say, hey, I need to drastically change my life, I need to change my partner, I need to change my job. I have to change something about the way that I interact with my friends, something about my core identity in life. I mean, do you find that's the case where people kind of know, but maybe they need a professional to help them through the transition?

Yo, Absolutely. I know for a fact there are manipulators on my list that people know impact them. I also know for a fact there are manipulators on my list that they don't know are impacting them. And then we also talk about the role of subpersonalities in people's lives and how these sub personalities, like I said earlier when I talked about about being in the driver's seat or being in the passenger seat, you want your authentic self to be in the driver's seat. But a lot of times people are moving through life with their authentic self in the passenger seat and one of these like sub personalities in the driver's seat and knowing which sub personality is in the driver's seat and why they're there and what they have to say, that's very key to understanding a lot of this as well. But like I said, if I cannot help them, if the information alone can't help them and some of the actions that steps that I ask them to take and some of the exercises that I ask them to do, if those things aren't helping, it doesn't change the fact that it's there and that they're affected by this stuff. So yeah, we have to go to the next level, right? And I recommend, aside from just doing my program, I recommend that everybody as a blankets kind of rule does psychotherapy or is active in some sort of therapy.

And there's such a negative stigma in therapy. I mean, especially, man, you know, one of the questions I'm going to ask you, I don't want to give it away, but there is this positive psychology movement that I believe is awesome for everyone's growth. But in the fitness industry specifically, there's this kind of fake it till you make it mentality where it's like negative emotions aren't even given any airtime whatsoever. Just mash them down, keep going forward, you know, put a smile on your face, everything's gonna be okay. I feel like that doesn't give people the permission to actually go through these negative emotions. What is your take on that?

I think if you look at people who say that, that they're not actually saying that, they're repeating what was told to them as a child. I mean, that's most of what childhood is, is it's parents trying to avoid listening or having their child have emotions. Like, we're always trying to shut down tantrums. We're trying to stuff something in a kid's mouth if they're about to cry, right? Pacifiers. That's like a huge aspect of pacifiers, right? Is I don't want to hear a baby cry. Let's stuff this thing. Let's stuff this fake nipple. Really, like what they actually need. We're not gonna give them. Let's just stick a rubber nipple in their mouth and we'll pretend like they have what they need. That kind of thing. Like, it's just. It's very, very pervasive that. And in America especially, I haven't traveled the world. I don't know, I can't speak for other aspects of the world. I'm just gonna speak for America. But in America, I think like one of the number one aspects of social life is hydro emotional emotions. Right? And we've learned that from a very, very, very young age. And absolutely, that is destructive to health.

This is the last section of the show, and it's seven quick questions and just tell me whatever comes up. First question one. If there was one thing you could change about the fitness and wellness industry, what would it be and why?

To stop focusing on the superficial stuff and start focusing on things that actually matter.

Why is that?

Because that's the only way we're going to lead people to success. I'm tired of seeing a 95 failure rate in getting people a body and life they love. And, you know, we can blame it on the environment. We can say, oh, our environment's not set up to make us successful. And I think that's a cop out because I show people all the time. Even though of course the environment's not set up to be successful. That doesn't mean you can't learn to navigate the environment that you live in. If you're just going to blame it on the environment, you're resigning yourself to failure for the rest of your life. The environment's not going to change. I don't care like how much you get invested in politics and how much you lobby Monsanto and all this other stuff. Like it's not. Nothing's gonna change with the environment. The only thing that's gonna change is with you and your understanding of the world around you and your behavior.

What is your daily mindset and or meditation practice now as a father?

So I actually use an app headspace. I think I'm using between two of them right now. What's the other one called?

Called Calm.

I know you got calm. That's it. Because I know you guys are tech focused. Right. I wanted to give you the exact ones. Sure, yeah. Headspace and calm. And I just turn those on and usually it's, it's about 10 minutes.

What is one thing you would tell your 18 year old self? If you could potentially drop a note in the pocket of your 18 year old self, what would be written on that note?

Get out of your comfort zone. Because I spent the vast, I would say up until age like 28, I spent, spent managing risk and staying in my comfort zone and not taking any chances on anything. And it led to a very boring and unfulfilled life.

What is your biggest lesson you feel like you've learned about being healthy as.

A parent specifically to not be a quote unquote health Nazi. To not obsess, to not have that black and white thinking that I started with and realizing that, that you can be successful when you are not perfect.

When you're stressed or maybe you encounter a roadblock. Do you have a mantra or a message that you say to yourself to get you through life's difficulty?

I don't usually I would turn to journaling in that case and I would start taking everything that's going through my head and pouring it out on paper and starting to sort it out that way.

Do you have a certain type of journaling? Is it like a morning pages? Is it a certain modality of journaling or you just go for it?

Yeah, I just tend to journal in circumstances. So when I realize I'M in an adverse kind of circumstance or mindset. That's when I really turn to journaling rather than doing it as a daily practice.

What is your vision for rebootedbody.com, this community that you're building around this authentic being? What kind of legacy do you want to leave to this planet when you're gone?

We are trying to bring authenticity to health and fitness. And I think people are going to see that when they go to the site. They're not going to see really much of anything that is aligned with the conventional dieting model. We don't use before and after pictures. We don't use the sleazy marketing tactics, any of that stuff. All we want to communicate is authentic health principles and practices and how you can do that for the rest of your life and the stuff that really matters to people. That's our main goal. We want to change the landscape of human health by treating people as actual human beings and not pretending like they can't deal with or handle the truth about the circumstances that they face.

Kevin Gary, this has been one of my favorite conversations of 2016. Man. I have one last question for you. It's really specific. Every guest has a unique story. You have a very powerful one coming from you, healing yourself, and now you heal others. But with that mindset and with all you've been through, what is wellness to you? What is your personal definition of wellness?

My personal definition of wellness is health and movement without obsession. In other words, I don't want to go through every day obsessing over what I'm gonna eat or how I'm gonna move. I want it to be completely integrated to where I wake up, and it's just a part of me. And I think that's what a lot of people want. They don't want this, like, what am I gonna have for lunch? What am I gonna have for dinner? What am I gonna have for breakfast? Oh, my gosh. How many calories does I have? Oh, my gosh, this and that. All of these things that they're thinking, they don't want that stuff in their head anymore. They wanna be healthy. Healthy. They want to be free of manipulation of their behavior. They just want to enjoy life. Getting the most out of life, that's, I think, is the number one goal for most people. And all of this other stuff is just in their way. So for me, it's how do I get all that stuff out of. Out of my way so I can get maximum enjoyment out of life? And at the same time, how Can I help other people do that too?

Well, Kevin, I know you have a free guide around mindset for living an active life. Tell us a little bit about that and where people can download their guide.

Yeah. Rebootedbody.com Fitness Sanity. And it's completely based on my own personal movement practice. And that consists mainly of a concept called dwylt D W Y L T, which stands for do what you love today. And we talked in the beginning about antagonistic strategies versus amicable strategies, doing things that align with your biological and psychological programming. And in terms of fitness, what I have found is ditching the conventional exercise model was very, very important for taming my inner rebel and being consistent. So the core of my movement philosophy now is making a master list of physical activities that I love to do that inspire me and getting up each day and saying, which one of these calls to me most? That's what I'm going to do. And I'll go through phases where. Where like right now I'm very into tennis. I'll go through phases where I'm very into Brazilian Jiu jitsu. So that will be the core of my movement practice. But just as an example, using tennis, I go play for two hours and it's very fun. It's very exciting. I'm in the moment the entire time. I'm not thinking about anything else that's going on in my life. It fills my core craving for connection with other human beings. I work from home, right? So I'm fairly isolated. So that, like, that's a thing that I need to go do it. If I was working out, doing a P90X DVD, I would be forcing myself to do it. I would probably not be enjoying it very much. I would need willpower and discipline, right? So you can see, like, which, which one is going to go off the rails. Like, I'll. I don't foresee myself ever going, oh, man, you know, I just, I have to force myself to go to tennis. Why would I ever say that? If I don't want to go to tennis, then I'll do something else. I'll go rock climbing or do Brazilian jiu jitsu or something else. That's on my list. But that's the philosophy. Building your movement practices around things that don't require willpower and don't require discipline is a huge change for people in terms of what my community has told me. Once I first I wrote a blog article on this, and then I started to develop the guide, but just the article alone, when people shifted to that, they started writing me emails and saying thank you for permission to do this because, because they kind of intrinsically, I think knew that this should be the case. But again, what's the health and fitness industry telling them and what's CrossFit telling them? No, no, no, you have to come slave away. Like, if you're not really tearing yourself down, you're not getting in shape, you're not going to have that bikini body, right? It's all lies, right? So just permission to, hey, go have fun in your movement practice. Like do stuff you enjoy doing. Make that the core of your movement practice, practice. And you're going to find that, hey, I no longer have to force myself. I no longer need willpower. I no longer need discipline. Right? So that's a huge shift for people.

Kevin, Gary, thanks so much for coming on the show, sharing your knowledge, your wisdom, your tools and as you had said, giving people permission to do something different that will give them a sustainable result. So thanks for coming on the show, man.

Yeah, thank you for having me.

That is a wrap for episode six zero, the big 60. We are over halfway to the century mark. Thank you for sticking around to the end of the podcast. This is where we go over a little bit from the show and talk about the links. You can find everything@wellnessforce.com rebooted. Download Kevin's guide about decoding your cravings. Check out his new programs. There was a quote that I wanted to share here. We didn't get time on the show, so here it is. Kevin says success doesn't mean you'll never, never be able to eat ice cream or comfort foods ever again. There are no, quote, bad foods. We're not creating health Nazis here. The goal of decode your cravings is to develop a healthy relationship with food so that you can enjoy these types of foods on your own terms rather than being powerless in the presence of them. Next week on Wellness Force, episode 61, we're bringing on world class filmmaker and producer of that sugar film, one of the most popular documents documentaries ever on Netflix and Amazon, as well as the number one best grossing, best selling, best watch most viewed in Australia ever for documentary films. We're gonna unpack the policies that surround sugar. It's a very controversial episode. It's gonna piss off a few people. But that's okay. Sometimes we all get to draw a line in the sand and take a stand for what we believe in. That is exactly what we're going to talk about next week. If you, if you've had any struggles with letting go of sugar or breaking the addiction to cravings around sugar. This is your episode. I'll see you here next Tuesday, where we talk with Damon about how to break the sugar cycle and the policies you can learn that impact our country as a whole. All right, last thing. Now you get to go and have an amazing day out there with all the tools and inspiration from Kevin and every other guest that's been on the show. So until I see you again real soon, I'm wishing you love and wellness.