Hacking Your Health
Hacking Your Health Podcast with Ben Canning and Dave Kennedy - Two guys setting out to hack body, mind, business and beyond. We are here to provide a single source, bullshit free guide to understanding your body and how you can live better, for longer.
Hacking Your Health
The secret to going from 320lbs to Six-Pack Abs
Ever wondered how people make dramatic body transformations that actually last? In this raw and honest episode, Dave Kennedy opens up about his five-year journey from 320 pounds to the best shape of his life at age 42.
"How do you do it?" Dave reveals it's not about quick fixes or miracle diets, but rather a "system of disciplines, a system of regiments, a system of consistency" built gradually over time. Both hosts break down the common misconceptions around fitness transformations, explaining why dramatic overnight changes rarely stick. Instead, they advocate for building small, sustainable habits that eventually become lifestyle changes.
The conversation tackles the hierarchy of importance in fitness: why food management trumps exercise when starting out, how to separate the roles of calorie management, cardio, and resistance training, and the vital importance of patience. Dave shares candid insights about formerly weighing 320 pounds and how tracking calories fundamentally changed his relationship with food, while Ben offers practical frameworks for approaching fitness as a long-term journey rather than a quick sprint.
They don't shy away from discussing controversial topics like GLP-1 agonists (Semaglutide, Tirzepatide), acknowledging their benefits while emphasizing they're not substitutes for building proper habits. Perhaps most powerfully, they explore how community support creates accountability and knowledge-sharing that dramatically increases success rates.
Whether you're just starting your fitness journey or trying to break through a plateau, this episode delivers actionable wisdom from two people who've both lived the transformation process. Subscribe, share with someone who needs to hear this message, and join us in building sustainable systems that change lives.
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okay, yo hey, what's up everybody. Welcome to hacking health podcast. I'm your host, ben connie, with dave kennedy. Yo, what is up everybody. Welcome back, dave. I will say I know that we were bullshitting before. I hit record there and I didn't want to say this until we were live. But you are at that stage of your cut where you can tell your leanness is actually in your face, like I can tell you're lean right now because of your face. It's the point in the cut where my mom was like you look unhealthy and I'm like okay, that means that we're on the right track that's right.
Speaker 2:That's right, it's. It's funny. Uh, this brightness is still kind of bright and then you think it looks a little bright on that screen.
Speaker 1:I'll get him to edit whatever fucking color you want to be.
Speaker 2:I'll get him to edit it, no problem, yeah I had me my teeth look like yellow because of the filter so I was like, okay, I gotta switch it out and I look too bright anyways. I apologize if I look too bright on the youtube podcast, but but no, I'll tell you the cut is is going really well. I did gain like five pounds over the weekend because I had a volleyball tournament.
Speaker 1:Okay, but hold on. You just said the club's going. Well, that's not that.
Speaker 2:In my eyes, gaining five pounds is not going well, Well, but here's the thing you know, when you gain five pounds over the weekend, you don't really gain five pounds over the weekend. You know there's a lot of like food buildup and water retention and things like that. I'm right back down the same way, Like I'm already back down to where I was and I'm actually 219. So I'm so close to that 215 mark right now, which is great, so, and I and I'm I'm going balls to the wall. So it's it's currently noon and all I've had was 90 grams of the hacking your health way isolate hydrolyzed protein that you can get from hackinghealthcom, um, and uh, one food tip.
Speaker 1:I'll give this as someone who is also in a severe deficit. The vanilla is 10 calories less per serving. I'm like every fucking calorie matters at the minute it does it does.
Speaker 2:It's funny, um, I would tell you. So it's funny. Uh, I had somebody try the protein. Uh, the other day, uh, one of my friends, I gave him a tub and uh I mean, and he's like how many scoops you put? I'm like six. He's like six. He's like isn't gonna be like chunky and thick? I'm like no, why don't you try once? You put six in, which is like 90 grams of protein, and it's so at what? One to 360 grams or 360 calories for 90 grams of protein. So there's one gram of fat, less than one gram of fat, less than gram of carbs, less than it's like 0.01 grams of sugar. And he's like dude, he's like I literally put it in a mixer. It mixed perfectly, it was the tastiest protein that I have and it's like it was like a game changer for him.
Speaker 1:So yeah, check us out at HackingHealthcom, because we sell protein supplements as well. We probably don't tell people enough about it.
Speaker 2:But yeah, check us out at hackinghealthcom, because we sell protein supplements as well. We probably don't tell people enough about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, hacking Health is awesome, so it's good Not biased, but we'd recommend Yep.
Speaker 2:The cut is going really good. So I mean, it's one of those things where I will say, like you know, this weekend obviously I had that issue with Because I was literally sedentary the entire time because I'm at a. Well, here's a funny story too. So I go to this big, huge facility in Cincinnati which is like a three and a half hour drive, and it's amazing. This place is like the coolest place ever. They have food everywhere, like the massive volleyball courts, and what I didn't realize is that they had like a massive gym there that you could literally pay 10 bucks for and go lift.
Speaker 2:And I had, like these periods of hours where my daughter's reffing or whatever. I could have easily gotten the lift in, but I didn't even know it was there until the very end. Where I had to go, someone had forgot their luggage from the hotel across the street, so I walked to a different direction. I see this massive gym there. I'm like are you kidding me? This is insane. So it's one of those things where you know this is insane. So I mean it's one of those things where, uh, you know, I, I was sitting down all day, I wasn't um, moving around a lot and you know I was eating nice and stuff like that and I was still trying to, you know, hit goals and calorie goals and stuff like that, but you know the fact that I wasn't lifting and being active and stuff like that. So anyways, I'm back down to the same weight, that everybody's noticing it. They're like dude, I can tell you're on a cut. I just got from a barber. Uh, I go to st barber all the time.
Speaker 1:He's like dude, you really thinned out, huh my barber is, uh, literally on the other side of the planet, and I haven't had my hair cut in eight weeks. That's why it's like poking out the bottom of my. I'm at that stage now where I either just shave all my hair off or I just commit to growing it until he gets back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you just cut it all off maybe I will, who knows, tune in next week to find out, but um my son wants to like do a buzz cut from the summer and his girlfriend's like listen, don't do that, please don't do that. Like you know, like don't do it. So I was like, okay, I'm not gonna do it, so but anyways but yes, so you're at that stage.
Speaker 1:I can definitely tell it in your face and obviously the photo that you shared the the other day. Um, you're at 215. I was at 21 this morning. This is probably the closest that we've been in weight in a very long time. Yeah, so we should probably have a fight.
Speaker 2:We should Fight to see who can get down the leanest. I got literally one month left, because in a month I'm going on vacation and I wanted to have the beach body for hitting on the beach and stuff like that, and I will say the energy levels. So I was expecting two big things to happen this time around. One, I thought my energy levels would be substantially lower and two, I thought my strength would have been substantially lower as well. And I've noticed this time around that my energy levels, while they're definitely not at the levels of eating 4,000 calories, they're still way up there and I'm having a great time in the gym still and my strength is still there. So you know my strength.
Speaker 2:You know this has been a pretty long cut. You know it wasn't a drastic cut. It wasn't one where, like, hey, we're going to try to drop, you know 10 pounds a week or something like that you know it was. You know one to two pounds a week, you know, consecutively, trying to get down to it, and I would say, like the first I don't know 15 pounds or so were really easy, like just super, super simple. And then it started to slow down a bit and so we had to take a little more drastic.
Speaker 2:You know calorie reduction, but I mean, overall it's been such a gradual decline. And here's the thing it's. You know, we have to realize that our body is an energy producing machine. So the more weight we have on, the more calories we need to to move that body. It's just, you know thermodynamics and how our body has to generate energy. We're one big salt battery. I've used that acronym before, you know. So the more weight we have, the more calories we need. So as you lower in calories, your body will fight you initially at that, but as you lower in weight, you need less, you need less calories. It doesn't mean that you don't necessarily want more calories, or you want more calories, as your body body does, but you don't need those calories. So once my body got adjusted to um, you know the calories, and just doing it slowly over time, um has really, um, I think, helped out a lot with this and really kept my energy levels pretty nominal throughout the entire thing.
Speaker 1:I think when you have done this a few times, you know what to expect and you know how to manage. You know how to manage your hungry cues, you know how to push back food. Like you, you have a better understanding of it. And I think that leads us perfectly into today's topic and question that you said you always get asked and absolutely my idea for the podcast today how do you do it?
Speaker 2:yeah, so. So today's podcast is how do you do this? Yeah, and, and I get, I get asked this, and I know ben gets asked this all the time, but you know people are blown away that I used to be 230 pounds, you know they can't fathom that you know, are you funny?
Speaker 1:don't be giving me 30 see, I got that.
Speaker 2:I got that in reverse, sorry. I jumped 230 pounds recently. A couple weeks ago, no, 320 pounds and people can't believe it because I'm in such great shape right now for being 42 years old. At 42 years old, I'm hands down best shape in my entire life, including from when I was in the Marines, including from when I was PTing every day. Hands down best shape of my life and I just got blood work done. Another whole funny story. They had to draw like like 25 vials of blood.
Speaker 1:That was the most vials of blood I've ever seen.
Speaker 2:So so, like, so, my, my, my doctor, you know. He's like hey, we got this new test for blood work. And I'm like, well, what other tests do you have? Like, well, we got this test and this test and this test. I'm like, let's do them all. And I'm like he's like, okay, so so I literally had like 20 vials of blood sitting there.
Speaker 2:The lady's like all right, listen, we're gonna butterfly you. I remember. She's like I hope you drink a lot of water because, like, this is gonna be a lot. So I mean, and she's like I'm not gonna say anything, but we're looking pretty good. We're like three-fourths of the away through. And as soon as she said something, I started slowing down and she's like damn it, I shouldn't have said anything and but I was able to get through all the vials with one poke, which was great out of one vein. Um and uh, and I didn't feel, feel fine. I felt fine, I went and played airsoft, uh, you know, a few hours later, uh, and and did, great, I got my 30th win in this one game, that I'm an undefeated champion, uh, the undisputed champion in this one game 30 wins in a row my question still stands does orange theory know that you're seeing airsoft so much?
Speaker 1:because, like, I think that that needs to be a conversation that we have she does actually.
Speaker 2:So. So stephanie the? Uh, the trainer there, uh, I saw aaron was there with me and we're getting a discussion about how I do airsoft as well and she's like, oh, that's awesome, she wants, she wants her kids to go there too, so she's gonna actually bring her kids to Airsoft. So they're okay, they're okay with me going to to, uh, to Airsoft, uh and uh. And it was actually interesting the uh, stephanie the um, the main trainer there that I that she's my kind of regular in the mornings now. So for like Mondays and Wednesdays when I go to Orange Theory she's the main trainer and uh, she came up to me. She's like yep, and Aaron's like see, I can tell, and she looked over at Aaron. She's like nice job, and so it was kind of a really cool compliment to notice it.
Speaker 2:But we get asked the question all the time of how do you do it? People can't believe I'm 320 pounds. And what I like to say now in my statement in this is that I have a system now, it's a system. My statement in this is that I have a system now. It's a system. It's a system of disciplines, a system of regiments, a system of consistency, a system of doing something that I've come accustomed to. That's normal. Every build really small habits that turn into lifestyle changes eventually that are now consistent with how you live your life and that's how you do what you do, and it's not immediate.
Speaker 2:You posted that picture yesterday of me when I was doing one of my first workouts right, it was one of the first selfies I had taken where I was confident in myself, and that was five years ago. Right, it's taken me five years to get to where this is now. It's a slow process. It's a frustrating process. You have setbacks and injuries. There are times where I remember when was it recently? I was sick recently when I got back from Vegas and I was so bummed that I couldn't work out and I felt like I was shriveling into this tiny little person that I didn't have any muscle mass anymore. I'd lost five years of training, right, like these mental mind Fs that go through your brain as you're going and doing this are things that you're going to have to really battle through.
Speaker 2:But the biggest thing here is the discipline to say I want to change and starting to implement those small changes, and we can go down to some of the core rules that I follow, that Ben has taught me and that I've learned working with Ben. But one of the biggest ones, the most crucial one, isn't weight training. The most crucial one isn't sleep. The most crucial one isn't supplements. The most crucial one is food. For me, food has always been my problem and it's funny because I hear people say like, oh man, I just want a piece of cake or I want this and I'll just eat the whole cake. Never been my problem personally, it's the portion sizes and the amount of food that I would eat, the snacking in between, um, you know, going and eating food and then, if there's a pizza there, I would eat half the pizza wheat, tins and peas, it's.
Speaker 1:I remember they haven't mentioned there was no.
Speaker 2:I'll get man out of your uh, out of the cupboard I I'm off of that kick man like every once in a while, like I'll have these new I'm into kind of a new kick now, but they're over every once in a while. They're pretzels that have peanut butter inside of them. I actually don't like peanut butter, but it's a salty Swedish type of thing. I'll have some of those every so often. I get really careful because peanut butter is really fattening.
Speaker 2:The biggest thing for me was finding a system that I think a lot of this comes to the discipline in the Marines where I can say, hey, if I set my mind to something, I can do it, no matter what that is. I, you know, I can overcome a hill, I can take it in battle. I can, you know, do something that that you know seems impossible. I can do it as long as I commit to it and I fully commit to it. Right, and you have to have that mindset going into this of listen, if, if I'm at 2,500 calories or I'm at 2,000 calories, that's it Like I can't go above that. I can go maybe below it a little bit, but not too much because I don't want to feel like crap and everything else, but I can't go above that. So if I eat 2,000 calories at breakfast, I'm done for the day. I am not eating anything more, I'm not going to be doing anything else, I'm not going to snack on anything else. I'm not going to be doing anything else. I'm not going to snack on anything else. I'm done Like I can't eat anymore.
Speaker 2:So for me, you know, it's one of those things where just having a guideline of principles of calories was one of the most fundamental game changing things for me. And they always say you know, I always get asked you know, oh man, your abs look great, you must train your abs. I don't ever train my abs. I'm going to be fairly honest with you. I never train my abs, like I never do ab workouts. I know that's not like people are, like what? Like I have shredded six pack of abs right now, you know, and and they look great, they look really well defined, they look big. I don't ever touch my fucking abs.
Speaker 1:Like I need to interject right now. Your video looks weird. I know I'm a little bit elongated, I don't really know why, but hopefully they'll have to fix it in some way. I don't know if I click the button, am I going to disappear? I'm back. I'll look the same whatever, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:I think the biggest thing that for both of us right now is time spent doing the thing. So that's the reason that I felt it was important to post that picture yesterday for context, because it's not an overnight thing. So five years, in 10, 12, maybe years for me you you earn the right to make the progress that you do because you've put the work in. So you now, versus you five years ago, are an entirely different person in terms of how your body processes and handle food. You, you have a completely different relationship, number one with yourself, but also number two, with food. On the whole, you have an understanding of what your body needs, whether that be in a surplus, a maintenance phase or in a deficit, and you know what needs done to execute to move towards that goal. That's not something that's learned overnight, and I think that that's often the biggest disconnect of like we can say all those words and that sounds great, but for people who are starting out in their first months it doesn't fucking make any sense. I think the overarching thing is the habits and the behaviors, and actually I honestly have been recording content and on calls and I have literally been talking about this all day. It comes down to the habits and the behaviors that you install in yourself with the system from the very start. It's a case of understanding the, the system and the mechanism, as you said. Understanding like where you're at as a start point, because everybody's going to be different. Some people sort of train and they're like casual trainers but they're not making progress. Some people have never been in the gym before and whatever.
Speaker 1:The best thing that I can say is pick a thing that you know you can do consistently every day without feel train your body to be consistent, because the reason I'm picking up on this is is because you mentioned the discipline that you had from the rings. Not everybody has that and not everybody's had to be disciplined before. So how do you, how do you teach that from scratch? And you literally have to pick the smallest, most minuscule thing that you know you can commit to doing every day and make the promise to yourself that you're going to do it. The more that you do that and the more that you check that box, the more that you reinforce that positive behavior in yourself, the more belief that you have in yourself to do the things that you said you're going to do, and then the more habits and behaviors you can start to build on that over time.
Speaker 1:Even the stuff that we do now. Like if I had, if if everything that you're doing right now was the very first thing that I started with you in September 2020, we would have failed right from the start because it would have been too much change, too soon. Whereas we built the habit of understanding nutrition, understanding your body's needs, built the habit of of training, getting that into your lifestyle and becoming a part of your life, building in the habit of doing cardio and understanding where all of these pieces fit, over time we looked at sleep, recovery and everything that came after that. But it has been five years of building these habits and these behaviors and giving you more of an understanding of yourself, your body, the process, but also, I think, the second time you go into a deficit. I remember having this conversation, so you do the deficit once. Then you go into the surplus and you're in this weird phase of like, oh my God, I've been trying to lose weight my entire life and now this guy from the fucking internet is trying to tell me to put on weight. You trust the process, you put on weight. You maybe put on 30, 40 pounds, whatever it is. The second time you go into the deficit and it works again. It reinforces those habits and behaviors and those decisions and you're like, oh fuck, right, okay, I understand this. The more that you do that, the more that you reinforce that behavior and that pattern and have the understanding of that works for you and the more it becomes almost autopilot. You have told stories before. I have told stories before.
Speaker 1:When the day on our comes that we move from a surplus the maintenance to deficit or vice versa, we just have that switch. It's like, okay, right, well, this is what I'm doing now and this is what my calories are up. It's easy for you to say now that if I have 2500 calories to the day, I only need 2500 calories today because you have trained that behavior for five years, essentially. But it takes time to learn that, to build evidence and the belief in yourself, because some people have never tracked food before. Some people don't understand macronutrients, protein. They don't understand, like, what they need to be doing in terms of their body. So they need to start at the absolute basic, bare minimum.
Speaker 1:And again, I've been recording content with dill all day and we've been back and forward all week trying to sort of like try and remember the things that I've almost forgotten, and the same with yourself Like there's so many parts of the process that we've forgotten. There's so many parts of the process that we just forget about or that we do on autopilot that people wouldn't even have a fucking clue about. So, taking it right back down to basics, understanding like, and it doesn't even need to be related to your nutrition or training, Like the best example I can give pick something you already do every day. I hope that you wake up in the morning, you brush your teeth. After you brush your teeth, do something else, build the habit off the back of that, usually drink a glass of water. Once you do that for a month, then add something else and go for a 10 minute walk, whatever it is. Then, once you know you can stick to those things over time, then you can start to add in training, tracking, food or whatever.
Speaker 1:The next move is over the space of six months, in a year, you have an entirely new daily routine, a new lifestyle, a new thought process, but you didn't do things at one time, so it's about starting small and understanding, like exactly where you're at. And that's the biggest challenge that I face with clients is like I need to meet them where they're at, because if I start them where you're at right now, it will fail, whereas if I go right, okay, like what is realistic for you right now, and again like when we started time-run wise, you know you can only commit to three sessions a week. If I told you now, on the other side of that, if I told you now you're only doing three sessions a week, you would tell me to get fucked and hang up on this podcast and I'd never hear from you again, but on the other side you would have been.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I think that that's an important point, because we have been both doing this for so long that we forget about the things that we have ever even need to know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and those starting points I want to emphasize. You know they start off small and you're like, well, you know I'm doing this small, this really isn't having an impact. No, it is having an impact. You're starting to change. You know your neural pathways in your brain to start to be consistent with things. You're building habits on top of habits and those start to improve you over time.
Speaker 2:Again, this is a it took you let's just say you're 35 years old, or you're 40 years old, or you're 50 years old and you've been overweight your entire life. It's taken your entire life to get to the point to where you're at today. In that state that you are today, it's going to take some time. It's not going to take 40 years to do this, but it's going to take some time for you to change what got you there in the first place and what might've worked for you in the twenties, you might, you might find it's not working for you in your thirties as your metabolism slows down, as your testosterone levels slow down, you know, as your hormones get differently balanced, or as as life changes. You know it's interesting. Um, I had this conversation with Aaron, um, about when we first had our kids and you know, like when you first have kids, everything goes into your kids right, like everything goes into making sure that their diapers are changed and they're you're what you're awake and, and you know your sleep goes to shit and you're eating goes to shit and at the same time you're trying to build. For me, specifically, I was trying to build companies at the same time, so my health was not even a thought pattern in there and I didn't realize how big I was actually getting during that period of time. You don't even notice it, because I went from not having kids to being fairly active here and there, to doing things out about, to. It's all about kids now.
Speaker 2:And all of a sudden, before I knew it, I had gained 60 pounds and then, before I knew it, I had gained 70 pounds. Before I knew it, I was extremely overweight. I didn't even realize it. I just hey, I'm just a big boy, I'm supposed to be big, and you look back at the pictures like I was fat. I was a fat boy, and so you have to look at, go through different cycles in your life, and what's interesting is I would say I'm trying to explain this in the best way I possibly can when I first got into this, I was extremely metic, did do something like I ate over my calories one day, or I didn't get a lift in that it was going to completely set me back back to my old self and I always had this fear that I was going to go back to myself myself again.
Speaker 2:But because I've built so many good habits around being active uh, eating the right foods, understanding what I'm eating, um, even when I was at that, that volleyball tournament, you know, you know, um, there was a lot of options. There was like pizza, hamburgers, you know. Uh, fried chicken, you know, I went right for the, for the uh, the uh, rice bowl. You know, the rice bowl was with extra protein. I went for the. I see a bowl, or however you spell, like a kxia sia, whatever the fuck it is I see a bowl, yeah, I see a bowl.
Speaker 2:I went, I went for that really bull yeah, yeah, exactly, with protein added to it, right? And so I'm always trying to figure out. My eating habits have completely changed, my lifestyle has completely changed, and I know that if I don't get a lift in because I'm so busy for that day, I'll rack my brain saying dude, you didn't get your lift in, that's stupid, why didn't you do that? But it's not going to be like hey, I set myself back five years or I'm going back to the same day. I have enough discipline in my behaviors Now again. Now, if that starts to change and like I miss two days or three days, now that's a problem, and I will immediately course correct that, and I will be right back at the gym, even if I don't feel like it, if I don't care. Like you know, hey, I'm starting to change my habit again. I need to move back to that, and luckily that hasn't happened. But I will be able to recognize that as I'm going through, because I've built so many things over time.
Speaker 2:When you're first starting off with this, though, you have to really solidify those habits, and when I hear people going to the gym and they're like hey, I'm going to the gym five days a week, I'm waking up at four o'clock in the morning, it sucks, yeah, is sucks, yeah, that sucks. Like you're going from not working at all at all at all to completely uplifting your life. Feeling like shit in the morning, going there, working five days a week, you're completely sore and torn. Your body's not used to that. You're probably not eating the right stuff. At the same time, you're probably like way less calories than you, you, you, you probably, your body actually probably needs. So you're even, you know, feeling even crappier. And and now you're even, you know, feeling even crappier. And now you're like, well, this sucks, I don't want to do this anymore. And your body's like, yeah, this sucks, I don't want to do it anymore. So then you're not successful.
Speaker 2:And you know, I'll bring up a story of somebody I had met recently and they were talking about how they've been gaining too much weight and they're on this keto diet. And I'm not knocking any diet. If you understand the nutrition your body needs and you have good discipline and keto works for you, amen, fantastic, use it, use that as a tool. But if you're using keto as a method to lose weight because you don't have enough discipline yourself to track those calories and to understand what you're putting into your body, it's not going to be successful. You might have short-term success and it's going to come right back again because they're not sustainable things.
Speaker 2:I did keto and I was like dude, this diet, like just eating meats and cheeses every day, this is going to be amazing and I hated life. Like I hated it. Like, after like two months of just eating meats and cheeses, I was so sick of eating meats and cheeses every single day Like I just I just dreaded keto, right, so it didn't work for me, um, not to say it can't work for somebody else. But uh, you know, listening to kind of the story and I'm like man, if I could just spend an hour with you in understanding, like, what you eat on a regular basis and kind of your activity level and I can teach you a little bit about calories and macros and like tracking apps and things like that, I think you would have much better success and and be much happier, by the way, um, with your long-term success than than what you're currently doing, because you're you're complaining about how much it sucks, how much, how you have no energy. You know how you feel like crap. You know how you're super tired and we're all out. You know doing these things and you know going off to a bar or whatever and you can't have anything you like. You're you know. So it's like people don't put the time in to understand, like, how our bodies work and to start to implement some of these small changes. They just see like, hey, there's this diet that somebody had a lot of success with before. You know this. This fitness influencer was able to drop 60 pounds in two months before this fitness influencer was able to drop 60 pounds in two months. And they're like, oh well, I want to lose 60 pounds, cool, so I need to do this.
Speaker 2:And I've gotten so many messages. I went to Gosh where was I at? I went to a conference in Colorado just a few weeks ago and folks that I didn't even I don't speak to very frequently on social media at all they came up to me and I'd recognize them from conferences before where I've met them before, and I'd see them. I'm like, dude, you look great, you've dropped like 100 pounds or something. And he's like, yeah, he's like I actually listened to your podcast and he's like I just started doing these things and it just started working.
Speaker 2:Then I have other people say, hey, I know you're looking at this fitness stuff, but I've been using GLP-1 agonists like terzapatide, majorno, wagobi what's the other one, the big one? Terzapatide and semaglutide and I'm like, dude, fantastic, good for you for taking a step to doing something that helps curb your appetite. I'm fully supportive of that. I look at semiglutide and triseptide as miracle drugs for people that need to lose weight loss, like, yes, you know, I think you need to incorporate other practices when you're leveraging GLP-1 agonists, like making sure you get adequate protein or you have muscle wasting.
Speaker 2:When you're leveraging GLP-1 agonists, like making sure you get adequate protein or you have muscle wasting but it's a miracle drug for us because our endocrine systems are getting so jacked up with, you know, all of these plastics and everything else. The signals between our stomachs and our brains are all messed up so we don't get that fullness signal, the peptide that actually gets sent from our stomach. It's a branch chain amino acid that gets sent from our stomach to our brain saying we're full because, you know, because all these signals are being wrecked by all the stuff that we're putting into our bodies. So it's a byproduct of all this processed foods and all of the calorie rich foods that don't satisfy us Cheap foods, things that are not farm raised, things that are full of chemicals, and so, you know, I look at things like GLP-1 agonists as amazing godsends for people that have struggled with weight loss their entire life.
Speaker 2:But here's the thing that I noticed with the people that are telling me about the GLP-1 agonists. So I started on the GLP-1 agonists and I listened to you guys about macros and I track all my macros. I get enough protein and I'm at the gym three times a week. I'm like, dude, perfect, that is perfect. You are in the one percentile of people that has been able to change their lives and be successful with it and using other tools like GLP-1 agonist. Good for you, taking a step to change your thing. He's like my blood work came back the best it's ever been my entire life. He's like my lipids just all like went back to normal. I'm back to having you know, loving life again and being active with my kids. And he's like it's all because of the podcast. Listening to the podcast, I'm like that's, that's amazing. And it wasn't just like one person, it was like eight people, ten people that came out to me, you know, and they looked completely different. One guy was bigger than me. Like jack, I'm like dude. What the?
Speaker 1:hell like you get back podcast yeah, I'm like, yeah, come on.
Speaker 2:Like what happened to you? Like seriously, like a bitch right now, like I'm gonna bust my ass here, and then all of a sudden you know you were this overweight guy and all of a sudden you're like jacked. I'm like, hey man, let's arm wrestle real quick.
Speaker 1:Uh, no, I just, but uh I need, I need to, I need to give my two cents on the jlp1 antagonist because, as a, I am a coach that has a system but respects other methods. And my immediate thought initially, when it all started coming out and I started hearing about people taking it, I was frustrated. And my frustration came from the, truthfully, the, the, the lack of one, information and two, support, because the, the way that I bundle all of these things together, whether it's keto or a fucking, some sort of juice cleanse or whatever they are a sticking plaster for a problem. They will get you from a to b in terms of lose weight, lose 60 pounds, whatever it might be. But what about B to C? Like a lot of people will go from A to B and then they will stop the thing, come off the thing, whatever it might be, and then go back to A. So what I try and teach is like how can we get from A to B, but then to C? I'm not against any of these things as long as you have the education, understanding of what it does to your body and how you can like start to to when you're in a better position with your body composition, your weight and your health to then start to, to install those habits because, yes, they will stop your hunger signals but once you remove that, you will get your hunger signals back and you haven't taught yourself about food, you haven't taught yourself how to control food. You just have removed that signal. So I think they need to come with education and they need to come with some sort of common sense off the back of them.
Speaker 1:I'm not against them by any stretch of imagination and I know, like, from a medical standpoint, like you said, absolutely a miracle drug, but having the understanding of, like, what is this actually doing to my body? But what else do I need to be doing with this? It's not the, it's not the fix, it's not the solution to your problem. Back to your point. Initially, if you're 35 or 40 years old, taking an injection once a week to curb your appetite isn't going to unfuck all your behaviors and habits that you've you've had for the past 40 years. And that's where habits and behaviors really really become vital in the long-term success.
Speaker 1:And I think one thing that I think that touch on specifically in this and we mentioned it a couple of times whenever we were in DC, because I get clients come to me that people ask them all the time and they want the secret sauce. They want, like, what drug are they taking, what diet are they doing, or whatever? And I'm like it's not a drug or a diet. We just track our food, manage our calories, have an understanding of what we need and just do that on repeat for an absolutely obnoxious amount of time. And that is a secret in itself and I think the reality of it is.
Speaker 1:It's hard. It's a hard thing to do. Unfucking your habits and behaviors that you had for your entire life is difficult. Separating yourself from social events and sometimes removing yourself from friendship circles because they don't fit or align with your goals All of these things are hard and it is a monumental change. So it's definitely not easy, but it is simple in terms of the system. It's literally just track your food, track your data in terms of how your body is changing, even outside of anything, not even talking about training or anything else literally how much food you consume and what response your body has. In that, if your goal is fat loss and you consume a certain amount of food for a two-week period and your weight increases, just eat less food for the next two weeks period. If your weight stays the same and your goal is fat loss, just eat slightly less food. If you have lost weight in that time, just stick to those calories that you have consumed.
Speaker 1:I went back with dylan and we're trying to sort of create um, like story timelines for clients that have been about for a while. You will be included in one. But, like I go back through everybody's check-in sheet and I'll use jen as an example because we were talking about her today. How I approached approached it with Jen Hadn't been in the gym before, had done lots of fad diets, didn't really have a clue what she was getting herself in for Week one. Just track your food. That is the only thing I want you to do Track your food.
Speaker 1:When she submitted her check-in on that first week, I looked at the data in terms of. This is how much food she had and this is what happened to her weight. I took the average of the food and I bought slightly less. So I think the average was like 1,850 calories. I brought it to 1,750. From week one to week 40, I did not adjust her calories whatsoever. There was no further change Once I set her calories at that. Sometimes you absolutely nail it. Sometimes you don't. It takes a couple of weeks to find out 1,750 calories for 40 weeks and she dropped 65 pounds in that 40 week period. We then got to the stage that she had different goals and she wanted to focus on strength and we actually started to bring her calories up and for the next 20 weeks she dropped down an additional I think an additional 20 pounds. A total weight loss of 80 pounds over six weeks.
Speaker 1:From having an understanding of what our body needs and in terms of her calories. That sounds so simple because it is. It's literally just track the data and then react to the information that you have in terms of feedback. It's not some sort of fucking miracle. It's not some sort of big show or fancy that.
Speaker 1:The real magic in this comes from the consistency of doing it time and time and time and time and time again. It's the absolute, like blind faith that this is going to work, and just showing up every day and doing your best and doing that on repeat with the hope that it will work, and then, over time, you start to see the change and you become a little bit more invested. You saw the strength increase. You're like maybe we could go to four days a week, can train seven days a week. Can I train 15 times a week this week and it goes and your, your interest will grow over time because you have evidence of the things work. So you will want more of the thing. It's not a secret sauce, it's not sexy by any stretch of imagination, it's boring and monotonous and it's like just tracking data and information and having that and being able to react to it. It is hard to do, it is a lot of things to unfuck habits and behaviors, but it is simple in terms of the process.
Speaker 2:Could have said it any better. So basics of this is start with basics and move on from there. Right, and it's the determination and people will be like. Well, if I'm currently sitting and I'm thinking of myself here, okay, so put myself in Dave's shoes five years ago. I thought I was eating healthy. I thought the diets that I was doing was working. I thought the workouts that I was doing was working, and it wasn't Because I was focusing on the wrong things. I thought the diets that I was doing was working. I thought the workouts that I was doing was working and it wasn't because I was focusing on the wrong things.
Speaker 2:I didn't know enough about my body. I didn't know enough about my daily routines, I didn't know enough about anything really, and I was just throwing stuff at a wall. So, instead of throwing stuff at a wall, start off with just some basic things, like one tracking your food for a few weeks just to see how many calories you're actually putting into your body, you know. And then from there, start to make some small adjustments to that saying well, if I'm eating 3000 calories a day, what happens if I eat 2,800 or 2,500, you stick to that for a few weeks and see if you have some results Right, and then maybe you start to incorporate some resistance training once or twice a week, maybe three times a week. You know, those types of things can make massive differences in what you're doing.
Speaker 2:I do want to emphasize that I don't recommend personally doing cardio, starting off with. I don't, and Ben, you may disagree with me on that or maybe some cardio, but it shouldn't be your main focus for losing weight. You may disagree with me on that, or maybe some cardio, but, but it shouldn't be your main focus for losing weight. If you don't have the discipline in food established first and you're doing cardio, you will eat more food and you will not get the results that you, you, you intend. That happens every single time.
Speaker 2:Everybody I talk to that says I can't lose weight. I'm doing a ton of cardio. It's because you're eating too much food. Um, you know, yes, if you work out, you're eating too much food. You know, yes, if you work out, you're burning more calories. That is 100% true. So if you're doing cardio work, you're burning more calories, but it's not as much as you think. Like you know, for me, doing Orange Theory, which is high intensity interval training, where I'm sprinting, I'm doing rows, I'm doing the gym. For an hour of work, I'm probably burning around four to 500 calories. That's it. It's not a thousand calories. I don't care what your tracker says. It's about 500 calories and I can prove it based on me tracking my calories.
Speaker 1:Brutal or it's not like the.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is intense as shit. I am dying. I literally come home and I'm like what the hell did I just do to myself? It is intense and I'm only burning about 400 to 500 calories. So if you think about that and if I'm only eating 2,500 calories a day and I do cardio and it puts me at a 2000 calorie a day because I burn an extra 500 calories, you will experience greater weight loss.
Speaker 2:But at the same time, if you're not feeding yourself appropriately, you're going to have very low energy and if you're not getting adequate protein, what's going to happen is your body's going to eat away at your muscle. So you're being counterproductive on all aspects. We need to be able to build muscle. We need to be able to lose fat to get the results that you want to. You can literally not do any cardio, not do any lifting and lose weight and you can get down to a very manageable weight by not doing anything. Active period Now, cardiovascular wise and overall body composition and health wise, you're probably not going to be the greatest right, but but I mean, if you're 300 pounds and you lose a hundred, you know a hundred pounds, that's less, you know impact to your lipids, that's less impact to your heart, your muscles that actually have to pull that around. So you will be in a much better position, but it's not gonna be where you want to be at. So we have to look at balancing building muscle and losing fat and you can do both of those things at the same time in moderation.
Speaker 2:Slight deficits, slight surpluses, but slight deficits, starting off with losing the weight over time. Again, one to two pounds a week or so. If you're really overweight, that could one to two pounds a week or so. If you're really overweight, that could be four to five pounds a week, manageably. But you want to make sure you're getting adequate amount of nutrients for your body, ie protein. So again, starting off really basic with understanding macros, so the carbohydrates, the fats and the proteins, understanding how that incorporates into calories. There's plenty of tracker apps out there there's Carbon, there's MyFitnessPal, there's the other one from Jeff Knipper and Dr Macrofactor. They're all great tracking programs and some of them have, like AI, built-in coaches or whatever that will automatically adjust your calories based on the results but requires you to actually input things into those things. You actually have to do that. It doesn't automatically do it. Ai doesn't solve that, unfortunately not yet.
Speaker 2:Not yet. So, um, you know, for me, if you're, if it's me looking at day five years ago, what Ben started me off with is weekly check-in photos, uh, tracking my calories and starting to incorporate steps and, uh, some and some lifting routines. Those were the basics of the program when we first started and from there we built up upon that. So then we started adding more resistance training in because I wanted it, because I could handle it, because my time was mismanaged, to be frank, and I did have more time to go lift and I started enjoying it and loving it. Right, I'd also recommend getting blood work done too, to see where your panels are at, so you can track how, how you're improving or if there's things that you can, you can correct. If you want to go on a glp1 agonist cool, that's awesome.
Speaker 1:But remember you need to have adequate protein and you have to do all the other stuff because what will happen is you will lose weight, but it will take it from wherever the fuck it wants in your body. Muscle wastage, like everything, will come off your body and then you'll be fucked the other side of it. Long story short, I think that the biggest reframe I can give in terms of calories, cardio and weight and resistance training how you separate the three. If you look at calories as your tool to lose weight, so managing your calories if it goes, fat loss. Managing your calories as your tool to lose weight.
Speaker 1:If you look at cardio as your tool to improve your cardiovascular health and if you look at weight and resistance training as your tool to get stronger, don't try and cross them over. If you separate the two, it takes the thought of I have to go to the gym to lose weight Because, like you said, in terms of the percentage of amount of calories that you burn in a day, it is minimal. You burn more calories just lying in bed being alive for a full day than you do in an hour in the gym. So separate your thought process to your calorie input is going to be your main driver for fat loss. Your cardio is going to be your main driver for your cardiovascular health and your weight and resistance training is going to be your main driver for strength increase over time.
Speaker 2:And let's be fully transparent here too the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn. So you will eventually like, for me, my deficit on losing weight is drastically different than it was five years ago because the amount of muscle mass I've been able to put on so I'm at 219, lean right now. You know when I was 227, I think when I started with you, I think my calorie intake was 2000,. Right, and that was my maintenance calories, right. So you know, if I stayed at 2000 calories I would basically stay the same weight. Now my calories, you know maintenance is more, around 2500 to 2800 to stay in that specific phase because the muscle mass that I put on. So I need to eat more, which is great, by the way, I love eating, I love food, yes, I love food. So so you should look at this as when I build more muscle mass, I can eat more food and I can get away with eating a cake or a skyline chili dog or whatever.
Speaker 1:That right I often try to. I want to say this in so many different areas, but I don't know if it'll land, probably, but I'll say it in this instance the best fat loss drug that you can have is building muscle. Yep, like, without a doubt it is, and it takes fucking time. It's not like, all right, I'll just build 50 pounds of muscle here this week, like. It does take time.
Speaker 1:But again back to my original point about where you are. Where you and I are at right now, we're in a much better position because we have more muscle mass. So we can quote unquote get away with eating more food and still progress towards your goal. And I imagine I know for a fact that there's people who need like oh my god, I wish I could eat 2800 calories and that'd be my maintenance. Or I wish I could eat 2500 calories and lose weight. That's cool, you can, but you just need to fucking put the work in and the time in to get you there yep, and, and it's the time that that people get pissed on because we're so used to getting things immediately from that is my main point.
Speaker 1:I think all of these things work right in some way, shape or form intermittent fasting, keto, whatever the fuck it is, it all works. It doesn't matter. The biggest thing that people lack is spending enough time doing the thing. Yep, I think that, like, what happens is they? They have this one fat diet because they're fucking auntie's doing keto and she's lost 60 pounds, so they write keto is the thing, and then you know, they lose a bit of weight and whatever, and it starts to stall. And then, oh, the guy that I work with my wife, she's doing intermittent fasting. Like, fuck, I'm gonna do intermittent fast now. So then they're over intermittent fast and they swap between so many different things. Whereas if, if you look at the amount of time you spent in your life you, specifically in your life, in your adult life how much time did you spend trying a fad, doing a fucking insanity program, whatever the fuck it is like chopping and changing between different things.
Speaker 2:If you just had that time spread out together doing the thing you're doing now, like you'd be so much more, like, beyond the progress you're at now just actually spend the time doing that one thing it's still weird because I look back at at doing the insanity program, for example, right, and I had no idea what I was doing, but I knew that I had to do it, but it was no structure or no program, and so I look back at that as, like what the hell was I doing? Like I look at that and I'm like I wouldn't even be able to do this today, like because there's no structure around it, right, you know, and I look at you, think you think about you.
Speaker 1:I think about you specifically in this. So you're talking about cardio right, I'm not doing cardio at the start. You're talking about high intensity training, right, you're a person that I know was a new father, so dealing with the fact of having kids, you just quit a decent job and we're building a business so stressed, I would imagine, in some way shape or form, hugely overweight, massively unhealthy, and you're gonna fucking stress yourself out by doing 45 minutes of high intensity cardio. That's not going to work.
Speaker 2:That's like every minute of it. Right. And here's the thing. Like now I have a structure, right, I know. You know, mondays I go to orange theory. I know Tuesdays I'm doing a lift. I know Wednesdays I'm going to orange theory. I know Thursday, friday, saturday I'm lifting. I know Sundays is my rest day. Like, I have a specific regimen that I just follow and I do, and we change it around every so often, like the lifts will change just to keep it entertaining. I can do the same list every single time and still get progress. We change it to make it fun, you know, just so it's not the same monotonous, boring thing every single time, but it's a, it's a structured program.
Speaker 2:When I wake up in the morning, I know pretty much what I'm either going to use a Tavala, you know that. It's a meal prep service that I, you know, put in the oven and I know the calorie count for that. I might have a protein shake. I know I might eat at PF Chang's and just get the, the rice with Magnolia and beef with extra beef. You know, like I know what my, my food is going to look like for the rest of the day. I know I have a plan going into it now, right the time where I'm like man, like a sweet little tiny pack of Skittles. It's going to be 36 grams of sugar at 110 calories. That's cool, I can do that, but I'm not eating a whole box of Skittles and I'm not doing it every day.
Speaker 2:But I have the flexibility but I have a system in place that I know is working, because in five years I'm in the best shape of my life.
Speaker 2:So if I keep doing what I'm doing today, with the minor modifications as I learn more and more, that system keeps working and I'm so comfortable with it Like it's, it's just natural every day, like oh, I got to get my lift in. I know that's part of my routine of doing every single day, it's second nature to me, it's part of my life, whereas I look back at like the insanity stuff and I'm like I hated it, I dreaded it, it wasn't part of my life, it wasn't sustainable long-term and it's. And I didn't have a program or system to be able to put myself into for that to be able to be sustainable long-term. So it's the difference of making it a system that works for you for the rest of your life and who knows, I mean maybe down the road, I you know, when I get to like my fifties and sixties, maybe I'll lift in three times a week. Okay, that's a that's a choice that I can make.
Speaker 1:Being back in to see whether that actually happens, because I don't.
Speaker 2:Probably not happening. Probably not happening. I'm going to still be dead left at 500, at uh, at 60, you know. But it's one of those things that I think you know what you're doing and how your body works, you will be successful at it, and you know we're. And I want to go back to um.
Speaker 2:I've talked about this before in prior podcasts, but we're very tribal creatures, right. Like that's how we've evolved through. You know the thousands of years of evolution, or whatever um is. You know we have tribes and towns and cities and each person provided a function. But we trust people that are in our tribes, right.
Speaker 2:So if we have friends of ours that have had success with keto, we trust their results because it's somebody that we directly know that had a specific result. So we're more inclined to say, well, if keto worked for somebody I trust, then it's got to work for me as well, right? And it's the same thing in like sales, right? You don't? You know salespeople that are cold calling. Why do they have a substantially less success rate than somebody that has already developed a relationship with somebody that they trust to do the services for them? There's a reason why we have these barriers put up around us to protect ourselves from snake oil and fake things and people that would want to do us harm or whatever. You don't just go up to somebody random on the street but like, hey, you're my best friend, can you give me some advice in life? You don't do that Like. It just doesn't work like that, right.
Speaker 2:So we're more inclined to believe people that are closer to us, and so the biggest thing for me is, you know, like, if you can find a community, a tribe, that that also is struggling with the same things, but it's also having people that have had success that can work you through. That. That's also a great thing, and that's really what I like about Ben's group is that it's people in variety of stages people that I started off with in my five years ago, to people that are just starting off now they're brand new at this to people that are in the middle of the stages, and then we're all going through the same things and we're all learning from each other. And it's funny because I'll see like somebody struggles. I'm like ah hi, I struggle with that too.
Speaker 2:You're at like a two year mark. I know exactly where you're at. You know like I know exactly where you're at right now. You're like you're going through your first surplus. Oh man, you're just starting to experience it, but it's going to get better, Trust me. You know, and so you know. That type of thing is, I think, really cool to see when you have people around you that have the same interest and success and same tribes. That also helps uplift you. You can absolutely do this by yourself, no question about it, but I think it's successful when you have people around you that support you and have gone through the same thing.
Speaker 1:I agree, and I'll finish on this point.
Speaker 1:I say this time and time again if I'm having an initial call with someone and I'm talking about the process and the logistics and all the other stuff, like I always emphasize the community, the group chat and the discord and the calls and I will die on this hill that the reason that the people that I work with have the success that they do is because of the other people that I work with.
Speaker 1:What they can provide in terms of their real world experience, where they're at right now, where they've been being able to share those stories and struggles with each other and support each other through it, is 100% the reason that they have the success that they do. I can give all the information and whatever else and give my perspective and the people that I've worked with and whatever, but being able to hear it from five people, 10 people, whatever it is like it goes way beyond what I can provide as one person. And I will say this I know that we get a rap and we're we're saying that. You know we can't call it a cult, but you can't have culture without cult.
Speaker 2:I like that. I like that statement. That's good.
Speaker 1:Right, we'll get to your other uh bits and pieces because we're way over time and we'll get the other bits and pieces in the next one. But thanks for listening and actually I want to say this to you specifically I was going to put it in that tweet yesterday, but I knew I'd be speaking today. I want to thank you on behalf of everybody else that made the change from you sharing your change because, number one, it takes balls to share that especially. It's the opposite of the person that you were. It's the opposite of the industry on the whole, and I've had conversations with people that they saw that initially and there was a bit of like well, what the fuck? We, we're hackers, we don't do that.
Speaker 1:But you and I will never know the amount of lives that have been impacted by you making the change and just sharing their journey. It's not that you're telling people to do it, you just have literally shared your journey and I respect everybody who tells me that they've read your medium post, because who the fuck wants to read a 45 minute long blog post? But whenever you're in a state that like change needs to happen, um, you will do whatever it takes and, like I said, I don't, regardless of its people that I work with directly, people that you hear from the people that then go around that circle and they go around that circle and the generational change that will come will never be able to fathom the change. So thank you for sharing that and I want to emphasize or remind everybody to also share their journey, because you don't know the people that would impact and the person that will maybe see you show up. Jeff is a fucking prime example for this. Be more, jeff. Every morning, like 5 am his time, I'm like what the fuck?
Speaker 1:every day, morning it was like four to five minutes and he's like I'm like you, bitch you never know that somebody at some point will be at that point where they've just had enough and the pain of staying the same is worse than the pain and the fear of failure. And they just say fuck it nice the time, so share your story.
Speaker 2:And they just say, fuck it Nice to time, so share your story because you don't know the impact it's going to have on the people around you. I just want to say one thing For me my businesses, everything else has never been about money. It has always been about helping other people, and my dad said that to me the other day. My dad just retired recently and we're talking about my companies and everything else, and I don't talk a lot about my personal life as far as investments and things like that. But there are times where I just help people out that are struggling in business and I don't expect anything in return. I don't even have them pay me back. I just help them out because it's the right thing to do and I'm in a better position at the time, or whatever. And there might be a time where I'm not in a good position. I need help, right. And you know, for me it's never been about money, it's never been about power, it's never been about anything like that. Like I consider myself a peer of every single person in my companies, like I respect every single one of them. The reason I'm successful is because of them and I treat them very much the same as me. If someone comes to me with a problem, I don't just brush it off and say, oh well, they're just an employee or whatever. I'm whatever. I listen to that, because if they're having a problem, then it's something I need to address and fix. And for me, sharing my experiences, I learned a lot coming from the cybersecurity industry, from what we used to call the hacking community. Now there's still a very strong hacking community, but a lot of it obviously has been commercialized. But the hacking community Now they're still a very strong hacking community, but a lot of it obviously has been commercialized. But the hacking community back before this was a multi-billion trillion-dollar industry. All they did was just share their shit because they thought it was cool as hell and it was cool as hell. They're ripping out exploits and doing shit that no one's ever done before and I'm like these guys are the coolest people ever. I'm going to model myself off of them. And I looked at them because they weren't doing it for profit, they weren't doing it for money, they were doing it because they were brilliant as hell and they did some really cool shit and they just want to share with people so that they can learn from it. And so my entire career when I released the Social Engineer Toolkit and Fast Track and Magic, unicorn and all the blog posts. Man, I spent thousands and thousands and thousands of hours on airplanes at two o'clock in the morning in my house just researching things and building code and releasing it out, and I remember I would do like an update to set and then the next day I do another update to set and the next day I do another update to set, and it was like new shit every single day that you were getting with and Justin Elsey, one of our guys here at TrustedSec he'd always complain that like I was breaking new stuff that would work and I was like but I'm making new cool stuff though, like it's new code that works better, even though it's broke right now. You know, I always just love sharing my experiences, my struggles, what I failed at and how I've learned from those, and I always get asked the question. Like you know, I got asked this question.
Speaker 2:I was speaking at our local school district. That was a whole. I had to give 8 presentations in 1 day, so it was like 30 minutes break, 10 minutes break, 30 minutes, 10 minutes break, 30 minutes, 10 minutes break. And it was nonstop over and over and over and over and over, and I was exhausted by the end of the day, but it was so cool to see the kids.
Speaker 2:One of the kids was like hey, you're obviously a very successful business person. You run multiple companies. You know you've done all of this. What's one thing that you would go? If you can go back in time, what's one thing you would change? And I love this question because it's actually a really easy answer for me.
Speaker 2:I thought about this a lot. Is there anything in my life that I would change? And the answer is I wouldn't change a thing. I wouldn't change one thing in my entire life because those failures, the things that I've struggled with, the risks that I've taken, things that have failed, that made me a much stronger person at the end of the day, and it is who I am today. If you take those away, I'm not the person I am today, so I wouldn't change any of those.
Speaker 2:So when I'm showing a picture of me in a cut, it's not to be like hey, this is Dave, I'm shredded. Look at me, I'm jacked. It's to say I have put so much work into my body and I used to be so obese. You can do this too. You know, you can do exactly what I've done here today. Hopefully this motivates you and that's my driver behind everything in life, whether it's you know who I hire from a business perspective, or you know if I'm looking to acquire a company. Is it the right culture, is the right people? Am I helping them? You know it's always about helping other people for me and you know I just want to you know when I, when I eventually die, because we're all going to die unless they cure you, know you know there's some facts that, like we might be in the generation that we might make it.
Speaker 2:It's coming close. Like I think my son, my sons and my daughters will definitely be in that generation where they probably cure death. I think we're getting close to there, especially with quantum computing. But that's a whole other digression. But the one thing I want to say is I hope when I die, you know, I made the world a better place than what it was from before.
Speaker 2:I got there Right, and that's my only mission. Like, like, take care of my kids, be there for my family, um, you know, be there for my wife, be there for my friends and just change the world for a better place, and that's always my mission through life. So you know, like, for, for, and I know it's yours as well, ben, you know, like we became extremely close best friends, you know, over these these past several years, and and over these these past several years, and and I don't do that with many people um, because you know that that person has to be the same type of person. I am right, you know, and it's funny because, like we went through the supplements thing, it wasn't, you know, like our discussion wasn't about roi and getting a ton of money back from the supplement stuff. It was like wouldn't be fucking cool if we had our own supplements.
Speaker 1:that was the only discussion we were in the house earlier and I made the I made myself a protein shake and he was like, so like, why did you decide to come up with protein? I was like I don't know, dave, and I just thought it'd be cool thing to do yeah, it doesn't do any money.
Speaker 2:It was just like like one we wanted to build like the best protein and the best pre-workouts because we wanted to use it. Yeah, it'd be fucking cool to have our own protein supplements, like that was it. That was like it wasn't like like like hey, we want to make a lot of money off of this. It was like this is awesome to quote, be really cool to do so, like that's our drivers and that's who we are as people, and so hopefully you can take that back of what we're saying.
Speaker 1:Isn't to get you off of right, so I'll leave on that, I mean I'll let you, that's.
Speaker 2:We'll finish there. Um same time, same place. See you next week. See you next week later on.