Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Today I'm joined by Dakota Lane, a professional bodybuilder. Talk about fitness, which has a lot more to do with your spiritual life than you realize. And at the end of the episode, we're going to go into some gym bro tips and secrets to help you get huge. But really, this is about coming to peace with your own body and progressing and thriving and overcoming those obstacles and self imposed boundaries and wounds that keep us from living as we know we're supposed to live when it comes to our bodily health. All that today and more on the Chris Stefanick Show.
Welcome to the Chris Stefanick Show. We are here every week to help you get spiritually buff, to help you live your everyday life with joy. Missionaries of Joy, thank you. Thanks for helping us. We can't do this work without you. If you want to become a missionary Joy, if this has blessed you in any way, shape or form, click below this video. Sign up to become a missionary of joy today. That's our monthly donors that make all this stuff happen. Not just this show, but our live events, our outreach to the poor, the core confirmation program. We're changing the world. Can't do it without you. Wouldn't want to change the world with us. Oh, and finally, sign up for our daily anchor. I want to breathe inspiration into you every single day, no strings attached. I promise you, you will love opening this email every day.
Let's jump in.
Dakota Lane, thanks for having me. I've been looking forward to this for a long time.
[00:01:31] Speaker B: Likewise. It's great to be here.
[00:01:33] Speaker A: Dakota is my personal trainer, which is obvious because I look pretty much exactly like you at this point.
Give me 15 years. By the time I'm 65. By the time I'm 65, that's how I'm gonna look. You're on track. Yeah, buddy.
[00:01:47] Speaker B: You're on phase. Yeah.
[00:01:49] Speaker A: Before we dive into fitness, the spiritual barriers that people have to owning that part of their lives and the wounds and into practicals, frankly, for how to get started and being fit and why it's so important for your spiritual life. And there's so much to talk about here.
First, I want to start with a slight disclaimer, right?
You spent some time in professional bodybuilding. Like, you know that scene, you know it well. And I know from you things that like, I never like, whoa.
I used to see picture professional bodybuilder or watch someone in a movie. Like the scene in I'll never forget, like Wolverine, you know, like dudes will see like this insane amount of like this ripped and then you Google. What's his workout like? Oh, if I just do this, I can look like that and you've enlightened me. Like when you get to that level and you're 3% body fat, that's no longer even fitness. That's an extreme sport.
[00:02:47] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely right.
[00:02:48] Speaker A: Which is not necessarily evil. I mean people lose. Losing is. I saw a hilarious meme with the Olympics with like the twin losing and it said I feel like this sport was born out of a lie that got out of control.
There's two dudes laying on a sled together.
[00:03:07] Speaker B: It's like a prank.
[00:03:08] Speaker A: Yeah, it's like 90 miles an hour, you know, but like there's, it's, it can be almost that dangerous.
[00:03:14] Speaker B: Sure. Yeah. It's not healthy.
[00:03:15] Speaker A: Yeah. Tell me about the, the, you know, how unhealthy it can be. What, what's it like, what's it, what's it required to look that way? That like the average dude watching, like. No, you're actually not gonna look that way. You're not.
[00:03:28] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, yeah, it's, it's intense and it's even more intense than I think I thought going into it. The amount of time obviously is there. The amount of like dedication, like measuring every single piece of food down to the gram is obviously there. But like the mental aspect I think is where is the differentiation, like what you have to put yourself through.
For example, like I was, you know, I was waking up 4:35, going to the gym, doing an hour of cardio, then go to cardio.
[00:03:55] Speaker A: This is during cutting. So you did bulk.
[00:03:58] Speaker B: The bulk itself was wild. I got to the point, this was like my glory story of bulking where I got to the point so desperate eating calories that I blended a chipotle bowl. I just threw it in a blender and blended an entire chipotle bowl. Because I was so over just chewing buckets of food. 6,000 calories of clean food. It's a lot of food.
[00:04:19] Speaker A: 6,000 calories of clean food.
[00:04:22] Speaker B: Yes. But even like just to highlight the unhealthiness, I would be out eat and like full time job. It would be so much I would throw up. Yeah, but it was, it was for a purpose. You know, I wanted to get to a point putting on, you know, as much weight as I could.
Got up to £215, which for my height was. That's the most I've ever been on stage. I was 156 pounds. So 60 pound difference.
[00:04:42] Speaker A: How long did you have to lose that?
[00:04:43] Speaker B: That was about three And a half months, if that. So.
[00:04:46] Speaker A: So you bulk up and then lose 60 pounds.
[00:04:49] Speaker B: Yeah, it was wild.
[00:04:50] Speaker A: How, how much of the 60 pounds was fat? I mean, you had to lose weight.
[00:04:54] Speaker B: No, yeah, it was definitely a decent amount of muscle or, you know, losing muscle too. Especially when you're trying to compete naturally.
If people are enhanced, obviously it's a different ballgame, but because I was competing naturally, you just have to be more extreme with the variables that you have to control. So yeah, the 6000 was crazy. But then the amount of cardio, the workouts, the regiment, man, I just remember so many times just on my floor, just crying out of. Just like your body just begins to break down. Some of the craziest things is when I was that low level of body fat, I would be make conversation and just completely go blank. I would just completely forget what I was talking about. I would sleep like two hours a night, wake up completely wired because my like I had zero liver glycogen.
I like didn't sweat anymore. I would do like an hour and a half of cardio, no sweat. It's just. Yeah, it's just not healthy. But. But it's really cool from the internal perspective. Yeah, 3%.
It was wild. Yeah. So it's not healthy, you know, and mentally it's.
It's a. It's a really tough, tough journey. But it's really cool to just put yourself in that uncomfortability, just to push yourself to the heights.
[00:05:58] Speaker A: And you're not even drinking water at that point?
[00:06:00] Speaker B: No, no, I was actually drinking a lot. Drinking 2 gallons of water a day.
[00:06:03] Speaker A: Oh, really?
[00:06:04] Speaker B: And then you taper it off when you get closer to competing. Yeah, no you didn't. You definitely need water.
[00:06:08] Speaker A: But right before though, I mean, right
[00:06:10] Speaker B: before the company, Right before you taper it off until just like sips and you're just like extremely dehydrated. You're like a piece of beef jerky
[00:06:16] Speaker A: up there because you got to get your skin sucking to your.
[00:06:20] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. It's interesting science. Yeah. You basically deplete yourself completely and then you do what's called carb loading, where you load a bunch of carbohydrates because carbs attach to water, carbohydrate, the glucose attaches to water, and so you get super depleted and then you eat a bunch of carbs and it pulls all the subcutaneous water from your skin into your muscles. So for what they would call a peak for a short period of time, which is what you see on magazines, you know, these people who look like this crazy condition, and you look extremely dry where you have, like, no body fat, but you're really filled out.
So. Yeah, even, like health magazines, it's just a huge illusion because they look like that for a few hours, but after that, you're, you know, it's called spilling over. It all starts to kind of flow out, and then you can't maintain that look per se.
[00:07:04] Speaker A: No, you would die.
[00:07:05] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:07:06] Speaker A: Like, when you're not thinking straight, like you're actively dying.
[00:07:10] Speaker B: Yeah, no, you pretty much. Yeah. You, like, get as close as you can to that point.
Yeah. Oh, man.
[00:07:17] Speaker A: Yeah, it's wild. So, yeah, when guys, you know, monitor your own self expectations, like, right. You see the rock and it's like, hardest worker in the gym disclaimer. You know, like, on the back of the shirt, it says, I have a team of doctors, a chef, someone making sure I don't, you know, have a heart attack in the midst of this process. And then before that scene where my shirt's off, I have to have a. You know, I have to be plugged into an IV right after because I'm completely out of hydration.
[00:07:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:48] Speaker A: Whoo. Man, that is intense.
Okay, so for the rest of us, like, general fitness, like this is pushing it again to the extreme, which, if God calls you to an extreme sport, whether it's luge or ski jump or that, like, it's not. It's not inherently evil. And people have sacrifice.
[00:08:02] Speaker B: You can glory through it.
[00:08:03] Speaker A: Yeah, you can. Which is kind of a wild thought.
[00:08:05] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:08:06] Speaker A: But most of us are not called to that place, but all of us are called to some level of fitness.
And some people think, like, okay, this is a. You know, you have your spiritual life and then you have fitness.
Right.
They're not so easily, you know, distinguished, really, in the mind of God, I think, you know, he created all things. You know, people think, you know, grace builds on nature and God's like, no, actually, nature and grace are both coming from me at every moment. You know, so it's all tied together. And St. Thomas Quantus talks about how we're body, soul, composite. We're not just angelic beings. These things are inherently married.
So talk about the connection of fitness with spiritual life, with virtue, with being able to pray well, with becoming a better man.
Why does it all matter?
[00:08:57] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it's inherent.
Not only is it not separated, but I honestly don't think you can be the best human without that component. Like you said, it's just so wrapped up into who we are.
The way that God made us, but also the way that God gives grace and the way that we transform. The life of virtue is primarily lived out through the natural order.
Yes, it's great to free from the sacraments, to pray, to do like, works of charity, all these things. But like the life of virtue is built upon natural order and reordering that dysfunction between our body and souls. Before the fall, we were. Our body was subordinate to our souls. What our souls desired, our body would follow. But.
And after, now we have that dysregulation. So our body wants to just constantly rebel. And we see that within our culture, everything to excess or to defect. And so there's so much dysregulation there.
Learning a life of health is about reordering your body and soul relationship. It's about bringing.
It's really incarnational grace. It's about bringing the love of God into the human reality.
Because the end all be all for me when it comes to health and what I think it should be for everybody is that the life of self mastery, when I'm practicing these things, you know, eating the things that I should be eating, pushing myself in the gym, it's all self mastery. I'm trying to master those appetites that I have. I'm trying to order the way that God created my body.
It's all ended towards love. That should be what it's all about.
A very easy example of that is I had a priest a couple weeks ago. He was on mission in Belize. He's had an incredible transformation. I've worked with over 100 priests, which is amazing. He's at this amazing transformation. He's in like the best shape of his life. And he's on the beach with these kids in Belize, I think orphans basically. And he texted me after that. He basically had a marathon of piggybacking. Like these kids. None of the other missionaries could do it really, because they just didn't have the strength. He was just giving piggyback after piggyback and. And they were just so, like, amazed. But just the joy that he was able to bring out from them, the love that he was able to give to them in that moment. Like, his whole process was kind of like highlighted in that moment that this life of self mastery, the fruition of it, was giving of himself. So self mastery should lead to self gift. That's the whole point. It's like, yes, it can obviously be used for myself, it can be used to use other people, but when it's properly ordered, that spiritual component, when I begin to choose the things that are good. For me, this is virtue. Right. The habitual disposition towards the good.
And we often think of that in kind of like these lofty terms, but just from a foundational level. There's foods that are going to be better for us than others. There's ways to treat our bodies that in longevity are going to be better for us to be a better human being and to live out the gift that God's given us in our life. So being a good steward of that gift that we've been given, yes, of course there's that line of vanity. But I think so many people throw the baby out with the bathwater where they are afraid of crossing that line and so they just never enter into it and they don't know how to merge it.
But again, like the beautiful thing of virtue is you have to find the means between the two extremes. Going to the.
[00:12:14] Speaker A: Find the middle ground.
[00:12:15] Speaker B: Yeah, going to the extreme on either end is going to be a disorder.
So, yeah, it's just been so foundational for me and I kind of started it, you know, when I was in seminary is when I really got into faith fitness, actually, funny enough, but that's where it started for me was I started to learn the school of virtue and the fact that I'm better able to love other people when I'm loving myself.
So, you know, I have to convince parents of this, my clients and priests, you know, oh, I'm too busy. Like, I have all these kids, I have all these parish activities I have to do. I get that. But you're the same thing with prayer. When you take that time away, you're so much better when you apply yourself because the person that you're applying is so much better.
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How do you avoid the extremes? People look at you and think, well, obviously you've gone to the extreme, you know, but you've gone there physically. I think you're talking about the interior state.
[00:14:30] Speaker B: 100%.
[00:14:31] Speaker A: Right.
So how do you avoid that? Especially when you're know, in a professional field where looking good will make you a living. Right, right. And when you're competing in that, in that space, how do you keep your heart pure?
[00:14:44] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I think it comes down to how you're integrating those extracurriculars, if you will, within it.
One very simple thing for me is like offering my workouts as a prayer before I work out or after I work out, offering it for somebody else, keeping an intention. You know, people, people write books, you know, for other people, or dedicate a movie, run a marathon for other people. It's the same thing. Like, I'm able to make it about more than just myself. But yeah, to avoid the extreme, it comes down to intention. Right. Like working out, eating healthy. Those are, you know, I would probably say objectively good, but maybe we could just say morally neutral things.
But what's going to change that is the intention.
Because the same thing can happen with, with prayer. You know, somebody could become very vain with a life of prayer. How often they're praying, how they're praying, the way they posture themselves. We hear about it in scripture, you know, doing it for other people. It's the same thing here. It comes down to intention. It comes down to the purpose. And so, yeah, two people could, could have the same out, you know, end where they both look really incredible, but they're doing it for completely different purposes. I think that's what it comes down to is your purpose. Why are you doing this?
And that's not to say that part of your purpose can't still be to look good. I think that it's okay to say, I want to look good.
Especially, you know, I work with a lot of engaged couples or like, people preparing for their wedding.
And, you know, there's again, that temptation of I don't want to be too vain. It's like, look, part of the gift that you're giving in your marriage is the gift of your body. Just like we want to be debt free, we want to not be, you know, filled with anxiety. Like, don't you also want to give the best gift of yourself in that way? So, yeah, I think it really comes down to intention to how you're doing it. And what I mean by extracurriculars is what are you weaving into it?
Are you still utilizing it for loving? You know, I can't tell you how many times I have had evangelization conversations within the gym. Not because I walked up to somebody and started to talk to them about Jesus, but because they walked up to me and asked me an exercise to grow their bicep or something like that.
[00:16:50] Speaker A: And you leverage that.
[00:16:51] Speaker B: Yeah. Just the other day, a guy who raised devout Mormon started talking to him a while ago, and literally just the other day, he just told me that he's entering OCIA and just asked me to be a sponsor.
[00:17:02] Speaker A: Get out of here. We met in the gym, James. God, that's so cool, man.
[00:17:05] Speaker B: So stuff like that, it's a beautiful opportunity when you utilize it the right way. And it looks different for everybody, like the application of health and fitness and what that looks like. We're with a lot of busy stay at home moms, but they'll all tell you that I'm a much better mom when I'm doing this for myself. So. Yeah. How do you avoid the extreme? It comes down to what's happening in your heart. Right. And that goes for anything for you. You know, building up a ministry around the world to people could very easily become elated and get in your head about, look at the stuff that I'm doing.
But it comes down to when I wake up, what's the first thought in my mind?
[00:17:42] Speaker A: I love it. Honing your own intentions.
I think we go wrong when we stop owning that. We stop even thinking about it.
I'm hearing so many things come out of you. It's like there's Aquinas, boom. There's Francis de Sales. Right. Like he talked about before I do this act, I'm gonna say, I'm gonna reorient and say, lord, I do this for you. And it changes the whole act.
[00:18:03] Speaker B: Yeah. I think intentional living, right?
[00:18:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:05] Speaker B: Like putting thought and purpose behind what you're doing.
Making it intentional.
[00:18:12] Speaker A: Yeah. And, you know, there's. And there is a thanks for calling this out too. There's part of looking good without going to the extreme. It's, it's, you know, it's the mean.
There's part of looking good that just makes you a good witness.
[00:18:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:24] Speaker A: Frankly, you know, like I. Well, especially in my particular role. I mean, one of the reasons I started training with you, I'm going to be filming this big confirmation program and I was 220 and my body fat was just getting like, I'm seeing, like seeing the chin starting to drop down and like, you know, you know. But the Lord's also said, you know, Chris, my bigger motive for you is that you stay around, you have a family heart history that's really bad.
Want you to play with the grandkids in 10, 15, 20 years and actually pick them up and not have a heart attack, you know, so, yeah, it all merges together. It's finding that Right. Motive. Beautiful, man.
What do you try to motivate people with when you talk to people in ministry or talk to people in. Well, you've talked to seminarians. Like, people like me will come to you. Hey, I need training. I found my motive.
Here's what it is. It's not gonna, you know, it's not gonna be vanity. It's not gonna be that I got a ministry motive here and family motive. But when you go to a group and there's a lot of demotivated people sitting there and the bishop is seeing, hey, this is a problem. I don't want. It's not good to have priests who can't move by the time they're 50.
[00:19:30] Speaker B: Yeah, right.
[00:19:32] Speaker A: Yeah. How do you infuse motive into people who just don't have it?
[00:19:35] Speaker B: Yeah. I think you have to find the thing that they are passionate about and show them that the thing that they're most passionate about is going to be more effective and more efficient when you layer these things in with it.
So it's not adding in a motive. It's not adding in something extra necessarily. It's taking what they already love to do for moms, that's taking care of their kids. That's just like being a good mom for priests, that's being able to be fruitful in their ministry. That's what they love to do. That's why they went through everything they did to get to that point is they want to bring people to Jesus. So whatever that is for those individuals, using their already motivated intention and showing them you can do this better when you start to order these other things.
And at first there might be that doubt of like, is that actually possible?
But that's the beautiful thing is It's a self rewarding process. When you, when you start to live this out, you see it happen and it's not always explicit. It's not like, okay, if I do this many number of miles in the gym or this many repetitions, I'm gonna be able to get this many people in my rc? No, of course not. But you're able to see in those little interactions, like you said, it's more subconscious, I think, the way that people view you. I mean, man, my priest growing up, God bless him, he was old and really overweight and he was smoking all the time. Like, like if I'm walking into a parish as a kid, that's not what I wanna be when I grow up. Because if that's the witness, you know, same thing with dads who are just, you know, on their phones all the time. I go to the park with my kids a lot and a lot of times there's dads just sitting on the side, just on their phone outta shape, you know, they're not able to play with their kids. So it's finding what's that passion they already have and infusing into them. You will be so much better at doing this and loving better, giving better. Even if you learn how to give of yourself a little bit more and take that self mastery. Because as the saying goes, you can't give what you don't have. You have to have yourself possess yourself to give of yourself.
[00:21:36] Speaker A: So if you can't muster to work out in the way you want to or get fit in the way, you know, you're supposed to dig deep and find the motive. Yeah, what's the higher motive?
You know, every time God's calling me next level in some way, I inevitably encounter my wounds, my self limiting self talk things that just aren't from the Lord.
[00:21:58] Speaker B: Oh, absolutely.
[00:21:59] Speaker A: You know, or my vices and all that. And fitness is no different. You know, whether it's God calling me to fundraise for a major project and then self doubt creeps in, like, who are you to do this project? Who are you to talk to this person? You know, or like when I started training with you, I couldn't believe how, how emotionally hard it was to track food I was eating.
You know, I'm thinking like, dude, my life's so busy, like I'm having to weigh what I eat, you know, like, are you kidding me? How can I possibly do this? And then it struck me that like, of course you gotta weigh what you eat. Like I'm not a caveman. I don't live in a hunter gatherer world. I live in a world where I have cupboards full of stuff.
And there's literally no way to get fit if you don't actually know what's going in your body and track it. And that's not obsessive compulsive.
That's how to achieve normal in a world where there's cupboards full of food.
But it struck me, it was so overwhelming, it was starting to give me anxiety. Like, I gotta track this.
I've come to a place where I've come out the other side. I'm relaxed. So thank you.
But dude, I think the thing I was bumping into was this is just Chris, this is a lack of self love.
Like, you know, the Lord tells a husband to love his wife as he loves his own body and cares for his body. I think I just shove things in my mouth. I'm not caring for my. He's presuming that you care for your own body when he says that.
So it was a lack of self love for me and lack of just taking time on myself when it comes to food and fitness and people getting on top of it. I mean, you work very intimately with people as a coach.
[00:23:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:42] Speaker A: And by the way, we'll put. Can we put your stuff below this video if people want to get you as a coach, I recommend him. He's awesome.
What are the.
What do you most frequently bump into or what are some of the things that people hit these walls? Not with their body, but it's inside of themselves. Maybe when they have the right motive.
But here's the wall. What is it? What do people have to break through so much?
[00:24:03] Speaker B: Yeah, that's probably been the biggest thing that I've seen with working with people is that like. Yes, obviously it is about the science, it is about the practicals, but it's so much more about the underlying current that's happening.
There is so much. I think the vast majority of people have this psychological component with food, with our bodies.
It's rare to ever meet somebody who wouldn't say that they've struggled with something with body image or with food.
The way that it plays out with trauma, it's one of the most frequent things that happen as a result from trauma is disordered relationships with food. It doesn't go away when as you age. Like I've worked with 75 year olds who are still dealing with that, that body image issue.
The vast majority of eating disorders that I see have a common root in childhood trauma or some relationship Trauma and food becomes that outlet of something stable that I can control.
When everything else in the world is uncontrollable, I can at least control this one thing.
So, yeah, I would almost say it's like an epidemic.
And you see it, it's a trillion dollar industry, the health and fitness industry, and they're constantly preying on people's insecurities, lack of self doubt and self love.
You know, the super bowl commercials, how many commercials were there for weight loss pills, pharmaceuticals? Like, it's just. It runs rampant and they just kind of prey on these people because it's so hard. It's not easy. This journey isn't easy. I would never tell somebody that. Yeah, you just like, hire a coach and it's just like, easy. But, yeah, so much of what I do is not just about telling people what to do, but it's about helping them to navigate those tumultuous waters. Like you said, as you go through it, so many of these wounds come up. Even for myself. I mean, I'll be honest and say that I think the reason why I started fitness was to make up for my own lack of self confidence, you know, from issues with my. With my dad growing up and wanting attention, wanting to walk into a room and just be noticed.
And so, yeah, a lot of years of therapy helped to, like, heal those things. But that's the beautiful thing is on the outside, obviously, we're bettering ourselves, but on the inside, we're also bettering ourselves. You wouldn't come across a lot of these wounds had it not been for me telling you how much chicken breasts to eat.
[00:26:22] Speaker A: You know, isn't that crazy? It was like. Honestly, it was kind of like a lent. Yeah, right. I mean, it's. There's something inherently unenjoyable about lots and lots of lean meat.
[00:26:32] Speaker B: It doesn't have to just be that way. But, yeah, no, it's true.
[00:26:34] Speaker A: Yeah, no, you can throw the burger in, but you're measuring that burger. This whole journey, it's really. It's a marathon, not a sprint, too. When someone starts to see, okay, I need to. I need to start taking ownership of this part of my life, you know, something that I've seen play out in people's lives.
If they mess up at all, they feel panic.
Especially people who are struggling with eating stuff.
It's funny, man. Like, I don't struggle with eating disorder stuff, but as I was trying to take this program on and the workouts on, I had this weird phase of, like, you know, of almost panic. Like, I'D be waking up and the cortisol was kicking in my body. It's like, wait, dude, it's 5:30 in the morning. I'm supposed to wake up at 7. I'm waking up thinking about lifting right now. Like, relax, dude. You know, and one of the greatest things that happened to me is I got a couple injuries. The Lord was like, dude, have fun, have fun with this, you know? Yeah. What do you say to someone who's turning the corner, starting to realize, okay, I really want to start getting fit.
But they deal with that panic obstacle. Like they start experiencing failures, they can't live up to the program that they want to do. Which again was why some injuries were great. Because I'm not always going to live up to it 100%.
[00:27:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:47] Speaker A: And it's kind of okay, you know, let's just chill out a little bit.
But yeah, how do you help people chill out, you know, and see this as like, you know, this is a 10 year journey to fitness. This is a 20. I mean, you've been doing this for how long?
[00:27:59] Speaker B: Yeah, like 15 years.
[00:28:01] Speaker A: Yeah. Like that doesn't happen overnight.
[00:28:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:28:04] Speaker A: That's a compound of 15 years of protein.
[00:28:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:28:07] Speaker A: And lifting.
[00:28:08] Speaker B: Yeah, I think so.
[00:28:09] Speaker A: Just think a word of encouragement to people who are wanting to start they're demotivated, thinking, I can't get there.
[00:28:15] Speaker B: Right.
[00:28:16] Speaker A: It's like, you can't get there from here. You can get anywhere from anywhere if you just start taking steps.
[00:28:20] Speaker B: But yeah, yeah, I think, I think that's, I see that a lot. Is that, that perfectionism? If I can't do it a hundred percent, then it's zero percent. There's nothing in between.
And I try to, I try to remind people that any movement is still positive, any movement is still progress.
So, yeah, I set the bar pretty high for my clients. But I do that understanding that even if we're not hitting it, we're still making massive strides. I think it's so important for people to strive for something, to set a high goal for themselves and like you said, to fail. I think it's so good for us to see our human limitations, to know, okay, where does my power end and where is God's power? Like, I'm very finite. I think it's so good for people to have that and it can be so crippling for people that I, you know, that I talk to that, that panic, like you said of I'm imperfect. I'm just like constantly obsessed with dang.
[00:29:10] Speaker A: And I had a cookie. I just blew the whole thing, 100%.
[00:29:13] Speaker B: And, you know, I see it play out. I had a cookie, so I'm just gonna throw the rest of the day away.
And it's this all or nothing mentality. And that's not the human experience. The human experience is that even as you grow, you're gonna. It's gonna be messy, you're gonna have failures, you're gonna have challenges, and that's part of the satisfaction of it. In my bodybuilding journey, getting the trophy at the end, which was really cool experience, to hear my name called out as the top person, that was cool. But I remember literally the next day I went to Cancun to celebrate, kind of, and I was crying on the beach.
I was like, literally having people ask to like, take a picture with me. And I'm just sitting here crying because that wasn't the end all be all for me. That's not going to bring you satisfaction. What I found the most joy and the most satisfaction in was those moments behind the scene where I battled with myself and I pushed those mental limits where I was making those decisions that were so hard to pass through.
So, yeah, for the people who are just like, you know, I'm never gonna get there. So I'm not even gonna start that comparison. It's so toxic. And honestly, if I started my journey now with the presence of social media, I think it would be so much more difficult because at the scroll of a finger, you see 20 people who look like the ideal. And all of these people have spent decades doing this. And you're just like, there's no way I can even start. Thankfully, I didn't have that when I was starting, but that day in and day out, just showing up, just making the next right decision. I talk about that a lot with clients, is just make the next right decision. Okay. The last week was an absolute bomb. And it was just like chaotic and binge whatever, doesn't matter.
It's a new day.
It's so parallel to the spiritual life, right? Like, we mess up, we fall, we make these mistakes over and over again.
But each day is a new day. His grace is a new waiting every single time. And in those natural moments, it's so important to love yourself again. It doesn't matter. I tell people, you might have tried a thousand times and failed, begin again. All it takes is one time. It takes just one decision to just change the complete trajectory of it.
I think the amount of information that's out there is so overwhelming of where to start, that people like you said, just Become paralyzed.
And that's the beautiful thing about having somebody walk the journey with you is there's that encouragement, but there's also that healthy expectation. I think so much of people's disappointment is unrealistic expectations.
They don't know what's realistic as far as, like, oh, how much weight should I be expecting to lose?
You might be setting yourself up for failure from the beginning because you don't know what's actually realistic and accomplishable.
So, yeah, just taking those.
Those steps each time to just continually renew yourself and know that, yeah, even if I'm not 100%, 30% is still better than where I was at 0%.
But, yeah, this whole stress component that you're kind of like, talking about, man, it's huge. It's everything.
The cortisol you're talking about, this is kind of a wild example. But the way that stress can impact us is all the way onto a cellular level to the point where, like you said, people just become paralyzed. I have a client recently with adrenal fatigue, which is, you know, our adrenals are what create stress hormones, basically to help us manage stress. So there's kind of four levels of adrenal fatigue. At first, your cortisol. Cortisol starts to elevate. DHA sulfate starts to elevate. Your body's like, all right, we got to get this under control.
Stage two, things kind of start to get out of balance. Stage three, things actually start to shut off.
And so I have a client recently who is in stage three, adrenal fatigue. So he's just, you know, waking up. And how did he get there?
Five kids, chronic stress, insane amounts of caffeine, and just, you know, unmitigated stress. Basically unmanaged and then took on the
[00:33:12] Speaker A: workout and didn't mentally.
[00:33:13] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, he's had an insane transformation. He's lost, like £100, something really crazy.
But got to this point where, you know, his body starts to kind of shut down to the point where he has no energy, you know, no motivational. He'll eat a meal and just fall asleep because he doesn't have that cortisol that's supposed to counter that insulin and help balance it.
[00:33:33] Speaker A: Cause he's burned through it all.
[00:33:34] Speaker B: Yeah. And so, so many people are kind of living like this, and they don't. They don't realize, like, even something like depression.
Depression, people think is like this anxiety state. No, if you ask somebody who's depressed, it's typically complete unmotivation. It's not like they're just sad and mopey, but. But so much of depression happens from an imbalance of cholesterol in our brains. So there's so many things that stress can kind of start to play into.
And not having that again, just a realistic expectation of how somebody can encourage you and help you to start this journey, can just leave you kind of just like spinning. I think it's so cool that you had that experience where you were kind of coming up against that and God was like, all right, here's an injury to kind of keep you. Because I've had similar things and I think it's so good to have those opportunities to just like reel ourselves back and remember, you're still gonna die someday. The end goal is not to make yourself invincible and immortal.
It's to learn how to be the best human you can be on your time here and be able to love the people the best that you can. So, yeah, the stress component, this anxiety component, the psychological component, you know, it's not just kind of something to deal with on the side with your therapist now. This is like, this is interwoven with all of it. And it's gonna come out if we don't. That's the beautiful opportunity is like, there's a lot of opportunity for healing again, just in the natural order. Like I said, virtue is lived out mostly in these little day to day decisions.
It's not these extreme things that happen where our lives blow up. It's just the day in and day out decisions that we get to make for ourselves to either love ourself the way that we're made to be in the way that our natural human nature is made to be lived out, or things that are opposed to that.
[00:35:14] Speaker A: It's amazing. You could literally be talking about any sin or any vice right now too.
[00:35:18] Speaker B: Yeah, it's the same language, right?
[00:35:19] Speaker A: It's the same thing. I mean, someone will have a cookie and be like, I'm blowing the whole day. Some guy will fall into pornography and be like, well, yeah, next confession is on Saturday. Might as well fall into it 150 times before Saturday. Like, no, no, no, that's not how this works.
[00:35:33] Speaker B: Right?
[00:35:34] Speaker A: It's that marathon, not the sprint. And it's like, I'm not my own savior. I have a savior.
You know, it's the Lord. It comes down to the primary fundamental lie of the devil.
If you have a father, turn the stone to bread. If you have a father, you know, if you're his son, like, no, no, I'm not on my own. I'm not abandoned, I'm not orphaned.
Which means I can have some peace as I work on myself with my father and savior working with me and body and soul, man, frankly, it just makes life fun.
[00:36:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:36:04] Speaker A: Because since the injury, like I'm starting to, I have fun working out now. You know, it became for a while like this, gotta do it now. It's like, cool.
[00:36:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:36:13] Speaker A: It's my sport.
[00:36:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:36:14] Speaker A: I could blow off some steam, you know, and people have to overcome this too, man.
That idea that it's selfish to go and take care of yourself, because when I don't, I just leave the people around me with the most burnt out version of dad.
How is that blessing anybody?
[00:36:29] Speaker B: Right?
[00:36:30] Speaker A: You know? Okay, so I read this one study that there was a motivational speaker who talked about the importance of working out and laid out all the science behind it, why it's good for you, why you need to do it. And something like 2% of people went and then worked out more.
Right.
Another guy did the same speech, it was a comparative test and he had people write down when and where they would do it.
And like 90% of the people went and worked out more. You know, there's very simple things people need to actually put into play to actually get started.
So let's say somebody's watching and they're not in a place where they work out at all. Or maybe they even have a lot of physical limitations. Right.
What would you say to that person? Or they can't afford a personal trainer, they can't afford gym membership. What do you do tomorrow morning or today? Write it down, three o', clock, whatever it is, you could offer it up in the hour of mercy. What do you do? How do you get started? What's some place to take a first step?
[00:37:33] Speaker B: Yeah, I think finding those areas where you feel out of order, where you feel there's that excess or that defect. And you know that we kind of know those things, we just want to face them.
One really simple thing going back to kind of the stress component is what does it look like before you go to bed and what does it look like after you wake up? So many people nowadays, the first thing they do when they wake up is they grab their phone and they just start scrolling or they check their emails or whatever and it just sets you up on the trajectory of anxiety. Our cortisols are the highest in the morning because they help us to wake up. Then you jump on your phone, you have a bunch of blue light and it's continuing that spiral. Wake up and go look at the sun.
Go drink some water before you go. Have some caffeine and you have your coffee. Have some water. It's amazing what can happen when you just start to take ownership of your day. When you're like, I'm not gonna let the day control me. I'm gonna take control of my day.
Getting outside and going for a walk, like one of the most calming things for our nervous system. When I'm working with people who are high stress, get outside and go walk. No phone, no headphones, podcast, Just go walk. Listen to the sounds outside. Like it's extremely calming for our central nervous system.
Drinking more water. Like, people chronically are dehydrated and I don't know how they survive. When they come to me and I ask how much water you typically drinking? Some people are like, maybe a cup. I'm like, I don't know how you survive. Our bodies are amazing. Is how well make up for it
[00:38:58] Speaker A: with a beer and out and coffee.
[00:38:59] Speaker B: There's water in there.
[00:39:00] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Somewhere.
[00:39:01] Speaker B: Drinking more water.
Yeah. Surrounding. Starting to focus your meals around protein. Especially as we age. Like each decade that we age, after 40, our body naturally loses a percentage of muscle and so starting to eat more protein. Especially for people who are aging, this is one of the most beneficial things you can do. People think that, oh, you become 70, you fall, you break a hip. That's just how it happens when you're 70 or 80 years old. Well, no, that's what happens after chronic undereating of protein, not strength training. So, yeah, for people who are just literally just starting, just find something that you can do to apply yourself, to love yourself better. What are those areas where you're finding that excess and that defects? Are you never taking time for yourself? Are you taking too much time for yourself? Maybe there's somebody who's way too obsessed and like, either waking up and they're constantly go serve.
When's the last time you went out and you just, like, served the poor? You volunteered a soup kitchen. It's so good to both obviously prioritize yourself, loving yourself, but also to give of yourself. It's in giving that we receive.
So, yeah, just little ways that can make such a huge difference, like not being on your phone an hour before bed or an hour after waking up. If you just do that, it's incredible. In the morning, taking five minutes to do intentional breathing. It's amazing what that does for our central nervous system throughout the day. If you sit there and you just actually breathe and focus on your breath. In holding it, your breath out holding it, that box, breathing.
It's crazy what that can do. People will literally just feel their anxiety levels just drop. Like you said, writing things down.
[00:40:32] Speaker A: I have this actually commit to these things.
[00:40:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:40:34] Speaker A: I'm going to go for a walk at 2 o'. Clock.
[00:40:35] Speaker B: 100%.
[00:40:36] Speaker A: I'm gonna do as many burpee push ups as I can.
At 4pm you don't have to have gym membership. You'll kill yourself with 100 burpee push ups.
Just try it.
[00:40:49] Speaker B: Yeah, no, but yeah, I do that a lot with clients. Is okay. What can we commit to right now?
Maybe the whole day was bad.
Can you commit to me right now that you're gonna do your workout for the day that you're gonna stop, you're gonna put the ice cream, you're gonna throw the ice cream away that's been plaguing you this entire week. This happened to a client last week. Like, it was just like it was in the freezer. Just like nagging at them. The ice cream, it's like, go throw it away. Take ownership, take the power and just chuck it. And it's like, wow, I feel amazing. Like, I feel so empowered by just these little actions. So, so many little things that we can do. Just making that small habitual thing. I think that's where the accountability is. So nice to have somebody to help you alongside of this. You know, sometimes I'll have clients who work out in the morning who just really struggle with waking up. And I'll tell them the night before, text somebody maybe you know who's struggling, hey, I'm just letting you know, tomorrow morning I'm gonna wake up and I'm gonna work out. I'm gonna offer it for you. Is there any special intention that you want me to keep in mind while I'm doing that? Now somebody's depending on you almost. You put it out there. That person is expecting you in the morning. You feel different when you wake up and you're like, oh, I'm tired for myself. It's so easy to let myself down. Oh, I'll do it later. But when I texted that other person I know is having a really hard time. Man, I pray that I have the strength to endure the things and do the things that I need to do so that they also have the strength to be able to endure the things that they're going through. Little things like that that just like start to again, make it incarnational. You're just like putting, you're just infusing your Reality, your human experience with these natural things that just make them so much more powerful.
When you're able to, you know, offer those things for other people, loving that self mastery for self gift, it just makes it so much more powerful. It makes it about not just yourself, you know, parents for their kids. Like, it's just, it just layers on itself in the positive.
So, yeah, those little ways just, just take a step, reach out to somebody that, that you know, who's, who's been struggling, that maybe they need it too. Hey, do you want to commit for the next, like 30 days that we're just like, each morning we're going to take a walk or we're going to commit to just like drinking a bottle of water before we have our coffee. Whatever it is, it's fun to have that kind of camaraderie.
[00:43:01] Speaker A: Dude, thank you for this. This is like, really, it's helpful for every area of life. I want to give a little time right now just for some straight up, like, gym bro talk. If that's not interesting to you, I hope the rest is blessed. You can tune out now. We'll see you next time. But, dude, I look at the workouts you've given me, the eating, the everything, and it's crazy. Like, I'm trying to make sense of, like, what's the science here? Why is this working? All I know is I'm 50 and I've never been this strong in my life.
I've never felt this fit, never been able to lift more, play with my kids harder, go to my reboot events like this. And again, this is one of the reasons it's really important to me. I preach hard, man. When I preach, I'm sweating for two and a half hours. I'm probably burning 1500 calories by the end of the event, and I'm still ready to go and stand and receive people for an hour in line afterwards. I can do that because.
[00:43:51] Speaker B: Because you bought the secret?
[00:43:52] Speaker A: Because I bought the secret, man.
[00:43:53] Speaker B: So you tell them the secret?
[00:43:55] Speaker A: No, but I think, gosh, I think of Jesus too.
You know, Jesus wasn't into fitness.
He worked with his hands, and Tecton was the word that described what he did. That actually probably wasn't carpentry. It was probably with stone.
So he would have grown up as a teenage boy lifting stone, carrying. There was a quarry near his town, so he would have to bring stuff.
He was probably pretty ripped by the time he started his public ministry. And there was no cars, so he walked hundreds of miles. Hundreds and hundreds of miles.
So yeah. When he was preaching to 5,000, he had it in him to keep going and then to keep going again and then to be healing people and then to stay up late and then to pray and to be focused when he got up in the morning. This is all tied into his physicality. Right.
But yeah, I'm seeing this in myself and my capacity for serving grow at the same time. So cool. But, yeah, I'm looking at the program and the, and the tons of super sets and the mix of push day, pull day, upper body day, leg day. Like, what. Why is it working so well?
Yeah, I think against most stuff I've ever done with working out.
[00:45:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:45:01] Speaker A: What's the secret? Sauce?
[00:45:03] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. The secret is, it's funny because, you know, people ask me, like, well, what's your, what's your approach? Like, you know, there's, there's Carnivore, there's fasting, there's people Paleo, there's CrossFit, blah, blah, blah. And I tell people my approach is the human approach. We've studied this for so long. There's plenty of research out there that's been dedicated to this. But the answer that people don't want to see is a well rounded, holistic and consistent based approach.
It's hard. It's so much easier when you go to the doctor and you have high blood pressure for them to say, all right, you go to Walgreens at 4:00 today, there will be a pill. You just take that, you're good to go. It's so much more difficult that whatever, 18 hours a day that you're awake, that you're making those intentional hours, that you're actually getting enough dietary fat to help support your brain, your hormones to fast without all that. Exactly. To get enough carbohydrates, our body's primary source of energy, there's this huge carbs. You're right, right. Dakota.
In the 80s, it became the carb insulin model of obesity. It was this huge push against carbohydrates and getting enough protein. Now you're seeing it everywhere. I've been posting some jokes on social media because I see these things like pop. They have Pop Tarts now that are protein Pop Tarts. And you look at it, it's like protein in big, bold letters. Because protein's the big thing now. And it's like 10 grams of protein and it's like 700 calories. It's like, it's really not a good proportion. But getting enough protein in your diet, having the right, intentional kind of way that you're programming your workouts for where you're at, for your goals, for your body.
It's the human approach. Like, there's. It's not subjective, which is why I love my job, is that I don't have to guess these things. The way I apply it takes, you know, strategy, and it takes experience. But the principles. God created our bodies to be designed a certain way. And so, like, these things are objective. So, yeah, having a holistic nutrition approach where you're not just pigeonholing yourself on cutting out all carbohydrates or doing intermittent fasting, like, all these things, like, they have a time and a place, but having a holistic, consistent approach.
I can't overemphasize consistency.
[00:47:11] Speaker A: How much protein do you eat a day?
[00:47:14] Speaker B: Probably I'm typically between, like, 200 to 250 grams.
[00:47:17] Speaker A: How much do you weigh?
[00:47:18] Speaker B: I'm 180 right now.
[00:47:19] Speaker A: So you're eating considerably more than you weigh?
[00:47:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:47:22] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:47:23] Speaker B: Yeah. But at a baseline, they. You know, recently they even increased their recommended daily amount of protein.
[00:47:28] Speaker A: That's work to get that much protein in your body in a day. It really is.
[00:47:31] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:47:31] Speaker A: You got to think about it. You got to measure things and make sure you're getting it. What percent of the whole fitness experiment has to do with eating versus throwing weights around?
[00:47:41] Speaker B: I would say 80%.
[00:47:43] Speaker A: 80% is eating. Eating right.
[00:47:45] Speaker B: You can have. And I see, you know, you see this in the gym. I see people year after year, and they, you know, they just look similar. They don't really change much, but they're in there every single day.
You know, it's the old adage, you can't outwork your fork. You can't outrun the fork.
You can do whatever you want in the gym, but if you're not giving yourself the right sustenance from a nutrient perspective, you're just gonna be spinning your wheels. On the flip side, when people do have injuries, when they are limited, you can still have massive improvements through lifestyle and through your body composition just from nutrition.
Whereas on the flip side, if your nutrition's completely out of sync, but you're still working out, you could still be very unhealthy. So, yeah, nutrition, it's just foundational because that's from a cellular level. Like, your body heals from the inside out. So, yeah, even people who, you know, I have some people who are severely overweight, where they are very limited. Physically, that's fine. Like, let's start with the nutrition. Just the healthy. The healthy components throughout the Day. So nutrition is everything. And people will feel that first. You know, they'll feel that right away when they start, they're like, whoa, this is maybe a lot of food or this is a lot of protein or whatever.
[00:48:56] Speaker A: It's work. It's work. Having six meals a day with you have me at what, 205 grams of protein or something like that?
[00:49:04] Speaker B: Yeah. So depending upon the person's goals, obviously it's going to change, but it's different for each individual. And the nutrition aspect, from a physiological standpoint, you're going to feel that so much. Just your energy levels, the way that it controls our blood glucose, blood sugars, our cortisol, like we've talked about, so many components fall down to the nutrition.
[00:49:27] Speaker A: It's amazing.
[00:49:28] Speaker B: Yeah, it's really everything.
[00:49:31] Speaker A: Really. It's crazy.
Yeah. I frankly probably wasn't grown as much before because I'm just not putting enough protein in my veins. Not enough fuel for the.
And carbs.
Gotta have enough carbs. Your approach is really different too, from like the old Arnold Schwarzenegger approach, where it's like you have day where you destroy your chest and you can't move it for a week. A day where you destroy your shoulders, you can't move those for a week. Like you have a whole lot of whole body system working together.
What's the logic science behind that?
[00:50:00] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it's kind of be different for each person. Like, for myself, I still do kind of like what you were talking about with Arnold, like more of a specific approach. But then for other people, it's really about meeting the person where they're at and seeing what their body's going to need from a exercise standpoint. But also what does it look like outside of that? Because your workout's only good insofar as you can recover properly from it.
People, I see this a lot where people will just kind of spin their wheels, because especially some of these workout classes, the orange theories, the F45s, you get a lot of these people, especially women who are hormonally a lot more sensitive to stress, who are doing these really high intense workouts, which I would call sensational fitness, where it feels like, oh, I'm just burning, I'm out of breath, my heart's going crazy, my muscles are on fire. And it's not doing a lot for you, actually, from a composition standpoint, other than completely just frying your central nervous system. And so your stress cycle is just. It's just compounding. So all these people who are doing these insane Classes, they'll come to me all, like, way taper their workouts down, and all of a sudden their body
[00:51:00] Speaker A: starts changing and they're like, wow, I'm getting in better shape, working out less, right?
[00:51:04] Speaker B: Yeah. So it's just about being intentional for the person that. So for someone like you, it's like you're on the road a lot, you're already stressed out a lot.
You know, having. Giving your body the ability to work in different mechanisms, pairing muscles together, you know, finding kind of ways to hack your fatigue where your muscle might fatigue at a certain level, but if you can do a different approach, then you can get more fatigue out of it. There's so many different components that you can utilize.
It's cool, but. Yeah, it's. Yeah, it is really cool. It's like a puzzle that you just get to put together for each individual person.
[00:51:34] Speaker A: Praise God, dude. Thank you. Thanks for. I mean, seriously, this has been. This has been awesome.
[00:51:39] Speaker B: Yeah, it's been great to be here.
[00:51:40] Speaker A: Seriously, thank you. Thanks for the witness, just of your discipline, of the way you have a healthy approach to this, you know, And I'm sure you've struggled with getting obsessed in vanity or tension like, you shared, right? But you've come to a place of, like, you're a great dad, great witness to the faith, great husband, and. Yeah, man, thanks. And thanks for the secrets, too.
[00:52:01] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's good to be here.
[00:52:02] Speaker A: Seriously, man.
[00:52:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:52:03] Speaker A: God love you, dude. Hey, I love you guys. Thanks so much for watching. Go crush it.
