MATT HALPERN: Managing Anxiety, The Wim Hof Method, Building Mental Strength

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, and now your host, Eyal Levi. Welcome to the URM podcast. Thank you so much for being here. It's crazy to think that we're now on our fifth year, but it's true, and it's only because of you, the listeners. And if you'd like to see us stick around for another five years, there are a few simple things that you can do that would really, really help us out, and I would be endlessly appreciative. Number one, share our episodes with your friends. If you get something out of these episodes, I'm sure they will too. So please share us with your friends. Number two, post our episodes on your Facebook and Instagram and tag me and our guests too. My Instagram is at al Levi urm audio. And let me just let you know that we love seeing ourselves tagged in these posts.

(00:00:57):

Who knows, we might even respond. And number three, leave us reviews and five stars please anywhere you can. We especially love iTunes reviews. Once again, I want to thank you all for the years and years of loyalty. I just want you to know that we will never, ever charge you for this podcast, and I will always work as hard as possible to improve the episodes in every single way possible. All I ask in return is a share post and a tag. Now, let's get on with it. Hello everybody. I would like to welcome Matt Halpern back to the URM Podcast. If you like this episode, check out episode 1 44, which was his first time on. If you're not familiar with him, he's a drummer, studio musician, educator, podcast host, and business owner. His band periphery is widely considered to be one of the trailblazing acts in modern progressive music. And Matt himself quickly became a new standard for what excellent drumming sounds like. Basically, he's phenomenal. He's also known for his company Get Good Drums, his podcast, chocolate Croissants, and being an avid clinician, the dude is a machine, a beast. I love him. Enjoy the episode, Matt Halpern, and welcome back to the URM Podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:02:21):

Thank you very much. I feel like an alumni.

Speaker 1 (00:02:24):

You are. It's pretty rad. I don't know when the last time was. It's like two or three years

Speaker 2 (00:02:28):

Now. It's been longer than that actually. I think it was maybe 2016 or early 2017. Yeah, I think it could have been 2016 because I was at, I remember being at my mom's beach house when we did it with my ex, and if that were the case, it was 2016.

Speaker 1 (00:02:48):

I mean, that makes sense. I remember being in this apartment I used to live in, which was 2016.

Speaker 2 (00:02:54):

Yeah, so it's been a bit, well, hello. Yeah, man, good to see you.

Speaker 1 (00:02:57):

I wanted to bring you on because you seem to me like someone, and this is just an assumption, but it's a pretty safe assumption, someone who would be making the most out of this time period. And I'm seeing so many people not making the most of it, and I don't mean this in a judgmental way. People could do whatever the fuck they want, but I have this strong feeling that when the world opens back up, whether it's in two weeks or two months or six months, at some point it's going to open back up and the people who took the most advantage of this time period are the ones who are going to hit the ground running. I don't think it's going to just snap back to the way it was. It's going to be nuts out there and in ways that we can't predict, and I think that people who are making the best of it are going to have the advantage.

Speaker 2 (00:03:47):

Yeah, I agree to that. I'm not even really looking at the reopening as the point in time in which I will actually physically get out there and hit the ground running.

Speaker 1 (00:03:59):

Oh, me neither.

Speaker 2 (00:04:00):

I'm excited for that moment when things open back up because it's a point of progress. However, I'm still going to be watching from afar for a good bit to see what happens and how it unfolds, and if the precautions that people are taking are working and if everything actually does unfold successfully at the same time. It's interesting because the things that I'm doing now are not too different than what I was doing prior to this whole mess. However, the thing that I'm really hitting the ground running with, or I should say the routine that I've created is something that will enable me to weather this kind of thing indefinitely if necessary, which obviously it won't be what I've sort of done more so than plan. What I'm going to do after the fact when I get out there is I've figured out for myself, or I should say, I'm figuring out for myself how I can be really effective, productive, happy in this situation, if that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (00:05:03):

Yeah, likewise, actually, I think we share the same mo here. I also, I've told the company too that even if the world opens up, say June 1st, we're not going to travel till at least July 15th. We're going to wait and see if things go okay. And so you have to manage your life right now in a way that does exactly what you just said keeps you happy, healthy, productive, and working at as close to peak efficiency. I think as possible. What's interesting to me is that this is such an opportunity for people to examine parts of themselves that may have been shoved under the carpet or pushed to the background that they would drown out through social interactions or distractions, and now you're at home, you're stuck with your thoughts. I think a lot of people are having trouble with that, but I think this is an incredible time to finally get to the heart of why we do certain things that maybe we're not proud of or why there's certain behaviors that we feel like we need to fix or why we have wicked social anxiety or any of these things. This is the perfect time to be in your head and figure that out and establish some sort of a pattern or mental thought process that helps combat that. Or even just time to get online therapy and have it go uninterrupted for eight weeks.

Speaker 2 (00:06:39):

And I hope a lot of people are taking advantage of that kind of thing. I mean, now is the time, and especially with therapy, I think there's sort of, and again, I'm guessing maybe I'm wrong, but physically getting up and going to a therapy session, for some people who have never done it before or who maybe feel that it's a stigmatized kind of behavior or activity, they may not do it because they don't want to literally go out in public to go do that and be seen in that scenario.

Speaker 1 (00:07:09):

I think that's correct. You think you're right on,

Speaker 2 (00:07:12):

And again, I mean it's just an assumption or a sort of

Speaker 1 (00:07:16):

It's accurate

Speaker 2 (00:07:17):

Guess. Yeah, it may very well be, but now's the time where no one has to know. You can literally do it from your couch. You can do it from your bed, you can do it from your porch, and nobody has to see you getting in and out of your car or walking in and out of that office or having that weird interaction with the other person who's leaving your therapist office as you're going in, which is, and I've done that many

Speaker 1 (00:07:41):

Times in my life. It's like,

Speaker 2 (00:07:42):

Oh, hey, we're both fucked up.

Speaker 1 (00:07:44):

Yeah, the psychiatrist waiting room is always, I don't know, the looks tell it all. It's not like you're going to actually talk to the people there, but it's just this understanding we're all broken.

Speaker 2 (00:07:58):

Yeah, it is. And I've always thought to myself too, maybe you should make the door a little thicker because I can't ever, you can never hear the full conversation when I'm waiting there, I can hear certain words or the tone of the conversation, and I always feel really like I try to get into my phone or pay attention to the music or read something to really take my attention away from that thing that I should not be hearing. But yeah, I mean, I will say this about this situation. The things that we struggle with as individuals definitely are amplified right now because there's either a lot of time alone where you are in your head like you described, or there's a lot of time interacting with the people around you, and there's a lot of need for self-awareness, and there's also a lot of transparency through that where you start to see and feel what you could be doing better and how you affect those around you.

(00:09:04):

And conversely, how others affect you in ways that you may not have ever experienced or expected before because now you're hunkered down with people. You don't get to go out for even those little breaks to drive to the gym or to drive to the supermarket or go to these other places. I mean, I'm just speaking for myself. I mean, for me, a lot of the hours in my day, I guess when you add 'em up, the minutes, they equate it to hours of travel time, being in the car, listening to podcasts, sitting in traffic, going to this place, going to that place. I'm not doing that anymore. And a lot of that time is filled with productivity and like you said, taking advantage of this time. But a lot of that time too is filled with interactions with other people, and I'm in a unique situation right now just to sort of paint the picture. Not to go too far off track.

Speaker 1 (00:09:55):

No, it's okay.

Speaker 2 (00:09:55):

I think it's important to know. So my wife and I sold our house, and we are in the process of building a new house, and it's towards the tail end, which is great, but in the meantime, we are living with her parents.

Speaker 1 (00:10:10):

Dude, I'm in the same boat.

Speaker 2 (00:10:12):

Okay, right on. Let me clearly say, I mean, it's a very, really fortunate situation. They have a beautiful home. They have land for our dogs to run out back. There's plenty of space for me to come. I've taken over the basement, which you can see where I'm a pool table behind me, and this is my now domain. However, the challenging part, which is very real for me and everybody in the house right now, this is a very active conversation between me and my wife, is that we're all in the same boat, but we're all in our own little individual boat dealing with our own level of intensity of the currents of the water, so to speak, where my father-in-law is dealing with challenges that he's facing because of the business that he's in and this situation. And same with my mother-in-law and same with my wife. And I'm obviously focusing on adapting to this situation. So it's an interesting dynamic because we're all, everybody in the world right now is experiencing the same overall intensity and scenario. However, at the same time, although we're all in this together, it's a really strange time where we all feel alone at the same time.

Speaker 1 (00:11:29):

Let me give you an example. So I'm stuck at my mom's house right now actually. It's funny, I just did a podcast with Nali and the only other podcast this year where I've talked about my situation was that one

Speaker 2 (00:11:41):

Got

Speaker 1 (00:11:42):

It. Something about you guys brings it out. But anyway, so stuck at my mom's house due to my moving plans, got fucked up by the world events and I couldn't finish my move. Her boyfriend is an award-winning photographer, so much to your point of how everyone we're all in this together, but really we're all having different experiences of it, and they're not always relatable. So if we're having dinner, I feel strange talking about the fact that both my companies are growing pretty explosively when his whole life has been shattered. He can't be doing photo shoots. So it makes it strange to try to communicate about everything because I don't want to make people feel bad and I don't want to rub anything in anybody's face. And so there is an element of it to where, yeah, I'm just keeping it to myself. I don't want to make anybody feel worse about a situation that they already feel bad about.

(00:12:46):

So there is a lot of this where I'm just keeping my own experience to myself. And so I'm sure that that's true in any household where people are experiencing it in different ways. You can have a household where one person is thriving and then everybody else had their whole work situation fall apart. And what I think that we'll do is not create new tensions, but it'll help to bring certain tensions that were under the surface, it'll amplify them and it makes things real. Whatever problems were there before are going to get exacerbated. But at the same time, that's quite a great opportunity to finally get to the heart of the matter of whatever issues you have with the people around you or whatever issues you have with people in general. I actually think that people like me and you are already pre-trained for this in two ways.

(00:13:42):

Number one, we both toured a lot. I know that on tour you interact with lots of people, but you still do have, whether you're in a bus or a van, I know that people who have not toured in a bus think that it's this magical thing, but you're still cooped up in a college dorm with 16 people for a month. So you've gotten used to that even worse in a van. But then also you have done, I'm sure you spent a lot of time isolated while practicing, while learning how to do whatever it is that you do, whether it's the entrepreneurial stuff or the music stuff. I feel like people like us are uniquely trained for this. It makes it more possible for us to just naturally be like, this is how I'm going to approach it. Whereas I think a lot of people who don't have those types of experiences are going to have a much harder time. And actually my military friends are having the same kind of attitude that me and you have because they're used to being around the same group of people for extended periods of time with no contact with the outside world. So to them, this is like a luxury vacation.

Speaker 2 (00:14:53):

You hit the nail on the head. We are prepared for this. We are used to some degree of this. And I think of it, there's a couple different situations that I relate to with that. I mean, first off, I've been touring with the same band since 2009, and it's relatively the same core group of people. It wasn't easy, but over the years, we've learned very clearly how to communicate with one another, how to accept each other. We know each other inside and out. Quirks, positives, negatives. So when we tour together at this point, there is zero drama between us because we just all know each other. We all accept each other. We all know. We can literally see it on our faces, what kind of mood we're in, and know how to position yourself around those people. And that's great. And that's a very, very deliberate thing that we've gotten to that point because we as a group said, we need to stay together. We all want to do this. So how do we communicate to make sure that we can make this thing go on for the long haul?

Speaker 1 (00:15:55):

Yeah, that's not going to happen by accident.

Speaker 2 (00:15:57):

No, in that sense, although when we're together on tour and we are cooped up in the bus and we are having our own individual experiences, there's definitely a unspoken comradery and understanding of what's needed at different times. And you don't really have to apologize or feel awkward in any way or feel like this isn't your space as much as it's someone else's. There's another scenario where if I'm traveling for clinics, for example, I'm by myself, I'm experiencing most of it by myself. I may have a rep that I'm with or a person that I'm with in different cities. And in that situation, even when you are traveling with them, it's very temporary. The pleasantries sort of last the whole time. Everybody's on their best behavior. You kind of don't have to worry about having those deep conversations of how to interact because it's temporary and it's fine. The interesting, or I should say potentially messy version of that is when you sort of combine the two into the situation that we might be in right now that you described with your mom's boyfriend, husband,

Speaker 1 (00:17:02):

Yeah, boyfriend.

Speaker 2 (00:17:03):

I can relate to that. I mean, I'm in a very similar boat as you in terms of how things are progressing with business right now. It's good.

Speaker 1 (00:17:11):

I'm happy to hear that.

Speaker 2 (00:17:12):

Yeah, thank you. And we are experiencing a lot of the challenges that a lot of people are even in my immediate circle. But that being said, when you have a group of people that are put together in this unique situation where you are going to be together for a long time, but it's not really your place to open up that conversation that's required for the long haul so everybody understands each other, it makes it so that it's kind of like that temporary situation where it's filled with pleasantries.

Speaker 1 (00:17:43):

Yes, exactly right.

Speaker 2 (00:17:45):

Despite it really needing to be something that allows everyone not only to relax and put their guard down and accept each other and each other's positives and negatives, but to be sensitive and understanding to the vast differences from one person to the next, whether that be emotionally, physically, financially, it's a challenging thing. So to your point, the other day, I was talking about a good day that we had with business, and it happened to be the same day that somebody I'm living with got some shit news about their situation with work, and I didn't know that. So after I said it,

Speaker 1 (00:18:26):

And you're just happy sharing the good news, not trying to rub anything in anybody's face,

Speaker 2 (00:18:32):

And it wasn't taken that way, which is good, but after the fact, my wife's like, just so you know, this happened. And I'm like, because you don't want to feel like that. But if I can get personal for a second, I have anxiety and I've had anxiety my whole life. The anxiety that I have in this situation started initially with the onset of this pandemic, the uncertainty of the virus, of contracting it, of what that could mean for myself, for my family members. Is my health at risk? Am I at risk? Do I have underlying health conditions? All of these things going through my head to where the level anxiety that I can typically keep at a minimum really shoots up. And when that happens, I become very self-focused and I get into this self survival mode where I have to learn everything I can. I have to prepare myself every way I can. I have to come up with a game plan for battle of how I'm going to best position myself to be able to weather this for a long time. That is very much a selfish and solitary endeavor in a lot of ways,

Speaker 1 (00:19:36):

And taxing

Speaker 2 (00:19:37):

And taxing, and it is even more so amplified with all of those adjectives when nobody else in your immediate circle one has anxiety, two can really relate to those same worries because they're worried about other things. And three, you're having to go through those pleasantries. So that has been the challenge over the past six weeks or so. It's been one, get yourself two, figure out how to respect everyone else around you, and then three, figure out how to actually live in the moment with all of these things happening at once with everybody else's things happening at the same time. So hopefully that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (00:20:24):

It does. And I can completely relate to you on the anxiety. I almost died of a pandemic about 10, 11 years ago, H one N one, it came very, very close. And so when this happened, my PTSD from the experience, which is what it is, it was fucking traumatic.

Speaker 2 (00:20:43):

Did you actually contract that virus?

Speaker 1 (00:20:46):

Oh yeah. I got H one N one and was hospitalized on tubes for 10 days. Oh man. It was not

Speaker 2 (00:20:53):

Good. So you can really relate to this experience.

Speaker 1 (00:20:57):

Yes, A respiratory virus that kills you like that. I know how it feels. You'd never ever want to fuck with something like this. So when I saw that that was happening, my personal anxiety shot through the roof because it's like, what if I get this again? It's not even the same disease, but what if I get this? I already almost died of one of these. I don't ever want to go through that again. And it's just like mind starts spinning. So while, yeah, there's certain things business-wise going great, I've got this whole mental game that I had to keep under control that nobody else in my house, their work might've fallen apart, but they don't have this anxiety. They've never experienced what it's like to have one of these things. And so the first few weeks were me trying to get them to take it seriously.

Speaker 2 (00:21:48):

Oh yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:21:48):

That was causing a lot of friction, have people over and just think that I was being paranoid. I would keep saying, guys, the world is going to shut down in about two weeks. This is a serious, serious thing. You need to stop fucking around. And they just thought I was being paranoid.

Speaker 2 (00:22:09):

I'm only laughing because I was, it's funny, it's completely mirrored.

Speaker 1 (00:22:14):

So the pain,

Speaker 2 (00:22:16):

I had to get my wife on board and she's like, oh, it's not going to be a big deal. And then I had to, once I finally got my hooks in her, it was like, alright, now let's get your parents on board. And that's a whole nother thing. Literally, dude, not to deviate too much, but I had to call her dad and be like, Hey, Natalie told me you're thinking about having some friends over to watch shows. Is that really a good idea? I had to make that call and I succeeded in convincing. But it's like the same kind of thing. It's like, wait, you guys, you don't care about wearing gloves or masks? Are you kidding me? I bought into this dude. I bought into this weeks before it became a gigantic thing.

Speaker 1 (00:22:54):

Yeah, same here. Early Feb. I ordered my masks and gloves and hand sanitizer and all that. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:23:01):

Yeah. We were on tour in early February for the first two weeks. Funny enough. Started in San Francisco and ended in New York City. Oh yeah, dude. I was elbow bumping for that whole duration. We're on the same exact page with this because we're surrounded by people that just have different tendencies than we do and experiences. And that's the thing. I mean, I definitely have not had the experience you had. You don't want it. I don't want it. And I also, I don't even know why it's so scary to me, but I think because I'm very much an empath, and when I read stories or hear stories about people who have experienced this thing in the worst way, that freaks me the fuck out, I can put myself in those situations mentally. And you almost start to feel what it might be like, even though I probably have no real idea, but it's enough to fucking scare me into action. So anyway, sorry. Didn't mean to cut you off, but

Speaker 1 (00:23:55):

No, no, it's quite all right. So what's interesting to me about that whole scenario is what you start to have those kinds of, I would call them opposing worldviews locked up in the same place. The difference between the band scenario, and this is the band scenario, there might be opposing worldviews at times, but at the end of the day, you're all in it to win it. You can make it all work if you want to, like you said with your band, because there's a light at the end of that tunnel. There's a pot of gold at the end of that rainbow, basically. There's a really, really good reason that you can write down the exact reason. You can know what that reason is for fixing that relationship and making it work here is kind of open-ended. You've got your career, they've got their careers. This is going to last X amount of time, then it's going to go back to how it was. You're still going to be family. But yeah, we're in it together in a way, but we're not really in it together. And so that necessity for working things out isn't quite the same as if it is in an US versus the world scenario in a band or a military unit or something,

Speaker 2 (00:25:11):

Right? Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 (00:25:13):

Yes. So the people around you might not have, they might not even have that kind of experience to know what it takes to bring a bunch of people that are cooped up together to be on the same page, and they might not even understand that that's a thing that you can do.

Speaker 2 (00:25:34):

And the result of that, for me at least, and again, I can only speak to my own experience, is I have to really exercise. And we talk about those things that become very apparent to us during times like this of what we need to work on. I need to exercise patience. Patience is that thing for me because it's interesting. I've kind of come around. Whereas it started very, very intense for me and anxiety driven. It kicked that fight or flight thing on, and I figured out how to fight. So I rearranged my life and my schedule and my routine and filled it with a lot of things that are going to, again, set me up for battle from a very strong standpoint. And I'm the kind of person, as I'm sure you are, when you find something that works or that you believe in, you go full force. Oh, yes, obsessed. It is a have to in every way.

Speaker 1 (00:26:30):

Nothing will get in the way.

Speaker 2 (00:26:32):

Nothing gets in the way. And I've done that. I've figured out the things that I can do on a daily basis to make myself feel secure and strong and prepared. And it's of course, if I do have to handle groceries, being very careful with that. I wipe things down, all the things that you need to do, washing the hands, my hands are torn up as I'm sure yours are. It's just constant. But there's a lot of activities on a daily basis that I'm immersing myself in that have worked not only physically to where it helps me feel better and feel good. It's helped make the anxiety subside, but it's put me in a place now where I feel like I can manage this situation and I am able to weather it if need be for an indeterminable amount of time.

Speaker 1 (00:27:17):

Is it less flight or fighty and more just you figure it out and now it's maintaining while progressing kind of vibe?

Speaker 2 (00:27:25):

Yes. It's maintaining and it's getting to a point of mental strength, which is hard to do. It's a very hard thing to do to fight your own thoughts.

Speaker 1 (00:27:34):

I think that's the hardest battle on earth

Speaker 2 (00:27:37):

It is. And I'm not an expert at it by any means, but I'm getting better. And the things that I am doing in a day have really subconsciously and now consciously helped me to recognize and realize that I should stay doing those things. But that being said, because of that, now I feel good about things with myself. And now the big things left to work on are those interactions and the relationships. However, there's a lot of parameters to those. And it's also not my house, and it's also not my family immediately. It's my wife's family and they have their dynamic for their whole lives. And I'm new into this situation overall when you look at the years. So there's that self-awareness aspect that sort of combats the need for, or at least my personal yearning for very open communication. I'm not shy, and I'm fine with having intense, very forward, very direct conversations. However, I have to also, at the same time, like I said, respect the dynamic.

Speaker 1 (00:28:43):

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (00:28:43):

That has already been established. And so that's the challenge that I've sort of found myself.

Speaker 1 (00:28:49):

That's a good challenge though. I think that that's something that will also pay off once the world opens back up. I feel like communication is life really in anything that we do. The better we are communicating with whoever it is that we have to communicate with, the better everything will go. Everything our work worlds are. We're both involved with highly intelligent, highly skilled, highly driven people. I know who you're involved with, who I'm involved with. Everyone's fucking, they're all killers. And so working with those kinds of people, interacting with them on a daily basis, I'm used to just being a blunt motherfucker. And you can't just do that with everybody. And so I have to tone it down when it's in my character to just say things as they are. But the better I am at crafting that for the real world, the better my life ends up being. It's a very valuable thing, I think, to go through this and learn how to temper that because it will help. Not everybody that we're going to encounter in the world are going to be our business partners and stuff.

Speaker 2 (00:30:04):

Well, and that's exactly it. And that's why I say that the biggest challenge now is patience. Because I've accepted, or at least I'm coming to terms with the fact that I only have so many liberties. I can take so many opportunities that I have taken to communicate, which has been good overall. But at the same time, I can't control other people, and I love to be in control.

Speaker 1 (00:30:26):

Yeah, you definitely can't.

Speaker 2 (00:30:28):

No, and I love to be in control. I can't control other people. I am expecting others to accept my neuroses right now. It's unfair of me not to accept theirs. So I'm trying to exercise patience, really tap into empathy and stoicism in the sense of I can only control my actions and how I respond to things. And I'm realizing that it's much better to more quickly figure out the right response, if that makes sense. Absolutely. And sometimes that response is, alright, I'm tapped out. I'm going to remove myself. Sometimes the response is have a conversation. Sometimes the response is whether the conversation, meaning, stop what you're doing and think about what the other person might need. And although it's coming at you in a way that you might find annoying or you might find as a pain in the ass, maybe the reason that they're doing it, whatever that behavior is, as cryptic as I'm being, maybe that's the product of their own anxiety or the product of their own turmoil that they're facing. And I have an opportunity to help them get through it instead of be annoyed by it and get angry or frustrated

Speaker 1 (00:31:49):

And make it worse.

Speaker 2 (00:31:51):

And I say all this after coming off, probably one of the hardest conversations I've had in this whole experience last night with my wife about a lot of this stuff that I'm referencing right now. And I love her for many reasons, but because of her perspective and because she knows me and she also knows her family and how to explain certain things that I might not be seeing, and what I just described to you was sort of her perspective. It's like, well, maybe those things are happening because that's the result of the feelings that their experiencing that you can relate to from an anxiety driven standpoint. And that's just how,

Speaker 1 (00:32:33):

That's it materializes.

Speaker 2 (00:32:35):

Exactly. And when it's looked at like that, then I do really become sympathetic, and it makes me want to understand it more and be empathetic to it. So it just brings us back to that word of patience. And that's what I'm trying to really work on right now, because that's the biggest more immediate challenge to survival over the next three to four weeks that I'll continue to be here.

Speaker 1 (00:32:59):

Or longer.

Speaker 2 (00:33:00):

Or longer. Although the house is going to be ready hopefully in mid to end of May. It's funny, I went over maybe, yeah, we met with our builder the other day, and I was like, so are we on track for settlement? And he's like, yeah, yeah, we'll be right up to it. But you're living with your in-laws, so it's like a day or a week or two weeks, month late, you're fine. You're not paying rent

Speaker 1 (00:33:22):

For a month or two months.

Speaker 2 (00:33:24):

I'm like, yeah, it's fine. Let's get this going. But no, it is, and I'm very fortunate. I also have to remember that this situation and living here, this place has been the place that I've been able to develop a new routine, develop and sharpen the tools that I've needed to sharpen to face this better. I would be very much off base by saying it's been a bad situation because it's been a very good situation for me to develop these things.

Speaker 1 (00:33:57):

And you know what, man? I don't want to give you more anxiety, but there's a possibility that it could be like three more months.

Speaker 2 (00:34:04):

Totally.

Speaker 1 (00:34:04):

So that patience thing, I think that that is the best. So this is what I was talking about. You've identified something in yourself that you want to overcome, which is impatience, perfect scenario to do that. And that's something that will serve you your entire life

(00:34:22):

That will serve you very, very well moving forward. But now I'm curious. I want to know what some of these things are that are part of your routine. I want to kind of match them up against what I've been doing. Also, I've altered my routine. What's great about this scenario, the nail, the mix schedule that every single month we do these trips. For me, getting my health back on track is something that once I decided to do it two years ago, that part was taken care of, but the travel kept fucking it up. And so you'd have two good weeks and then travel, and then routine broken and then come back and then have to get into the new routine. And then two good weeks and then travel. And there's no end in sight. Now the mix is month after month after month after month after month.

(00:35:15):

It can't stop. And so it was starting to make me nuts. I need 90 days or 120 days on my own to just take care of this thing once and for all. How the fuck is that going to happen? And when this happened, I was like, whoa, this is now. And so I went nuts with my schedule and what I'm doing. So I kind of want to compare notes a little bit. I've been doing a lot of stuff that is making me feel stronger mentally. I've lost a ton of weight and I'm feeling physically stronger mentally. I'm doing very, very well. I've combated my anxiety mostly pretty effectively. Let's talk shot.

Speaker 2 (00:35:55):

Yeah. Well, yeah, I'd love to hear what you're doing as well. I can go first as far as just what a normal day entails. And I want to touch briefly on something that you mentioned, which is a routine is only as good as your ability to stick to it. And when we travel, that routine changes for short, especially when it's a short trip overall.

Speaker 1 (00:36:19):

Yes. Which is what we do a series, sometimes it'll be like three short trips in a month or something.

Speaker 2 (00:36:26):

Right. That's challenging. One of the things that I've allowed myself to do within my routine is be a little bit flexible with it because despite me being in one place, my schedule on a daily basis is very different day to day. Today specifically, I was up early for a phone call with somebody who was out of the country. So I was on a very specific time zone or I was commenting their time zone. And normally I wouldn't do that in the morning because I want to make time for my things. And then we obviously have this time set aside where I would normally be doing something different. So my point is I have to be kind to myself about being flexible and I have to be okay with shifting things around.

Speaker 1 (00:37:09):

Same here, absolutely,

Speaker 2 (00:37:11):

But still accommodating. That is one of those things that both of us are going to be able to apply even better the next time we do have to travel because we'll say, all right, change is happening, but these things need to happen today. It doesn't necessarily matter when they happen today, they just need to happen today.

Speaker 1 (00:37:29):

Well, once they're an ingrained habit, which is why I wanted the 90 to 120 days, was to turn it into lifestyle habit rather than attempting to turn it into lifestyle habit. I think once it's at that point, then the malleability of the schedule isn't such a big deal.

Speaker 2 (00:37:49):

Exactly. Because it just becomes brushing your teeth at night and taking a shower. When you take a shower. It's a habit. I think it's important for me to frame why I sought these things out in the first place during this time. So I've always exercised. I've always enjoyed working out mentally, physically. I feel better when I do. I've always done it. Being in the band that I'm in, being a drummer, I've wanted to stay in shape. It's been very important to me. Exercise has been that one thing that is not really new in this situation, but what is new are my eating habits and the other things that I'm doing physically and mentally on a daily basis that have become habits. So where did they come from? Well, as I mentioned, when this whole thing happened started to happen, I started to pay attention to what the high risk individuals, what that was.

(00:38:37):

And two of the things that stood out to me were high blood pressure and asthma. So a couple years back, I developed adult onset asthma. And I think it was because when I started dating my wife, she had two cats. I was allergic to cats. I was sleeping in bed with her in the room with the cats. I developed asthma because of it. Now I've since kicked it. I don't really, I'm not asthmatic at all on a daily basis by any means, and I can pick up the cats and put my face in their faces and I'm fine. But the idea of asthma gotten my head and then high blood pressure. So I suffer from white coat syndrome the minute I go into my doctor's office and they take my blood pressure, it's like through the roof.

Speaker 1 (00:39:22):

Yes, same here.

Speaker 2 (00:39:24):

And the argument was made to me one time when I was like, well, it's only because of white coat syndrome. They were like, yeah, but it doesn't change the fact that your blood pressure is high right now in this moment. It's still higher than it should be. So I thought about those things. Then I thought about my dad has type two diabetes and he had a heart attack at some point. So I'm just thinking to myself, well, fuck, I'm prone to a number of these potential high risk things, even though I might look like I'm in shape under the hood. What the hell is really going on? Do I really have high blood pressure? Do I have asthma? And will these things be exacerbated if I were to contract this virus and that scared the fuck and shit out of me, I started doing research into what can I do to lower my blood pressure? What can I do to help my lungs get stronger? What can I do to make sure that I'm not carrying around extra weight that could affect both things? And those were the catalysts. Those were the things that pushed me into the research that I started doing, and ultimately then finding the routines that I do now. So I really got engaged with the Wim Hof method, which a lot of people listening to this are probably familiar with. Wim Hof.

Speaker 1 (00:40:35):

Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (00:40:37):

Wim Hof, also known as the Ice Man.

Speaker 1 (00:40:39):

That dude's nuts.

Speaker 2 (00:40:40):

Yeah, he is. I don't think he's as nuts as I used to. Now that I'm doing it.

Speaker 1 (00:40:45):

No, I mean nuts in a superhuman sort of way.

Speaker 2 (00:40:48):

Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (00:40:49):

I don't mean in a crazy sort of way. What the fuck? How is that possible?

Speaker 2 (00:40:55):

I'm buying into it and I'm starting to see the possibilities of reaching those levels of nuts. Right? So why did I look into Wim Hof? Well, the two main things that he is known for is his breath work technique that he evangelizes and puts out there, and cold exposure. Those two things combined with exercise and eating right, meditation and some other things have endless health benefits. And if you look at, again, the two main things that I was concerned about, they're directly related to improvements in those areas. So the breath work aspect of it, doing the breathing methods on a daily basis have helped to expand my lung capacity, have helped to strengthen my lungs by getting more oxygen to your blood and within your body. It helps you to get rid of inflammation and helps you to get rid of toxins in your system by allowing more oxygen to flow through you, which therefore can really help to get rid of any bad shit in your body.

Speaker 1 (00:41:59):

Yeah, absolutely. So are you doing it in the cold showers like I am?

Speaker 2 (00:42:03):

Yes. Well, so I'm doing cold showers, and that's the next part I'm going to get to. So the breathing stuff I do, if I'm lucky, I'll do it twice a day. Here's the routine. I'll talk more about the cold stuff in a second, but I wake up right into the shower and I've built up to this. Let me be clear about this. I didn't start by taking full 10 to 15 minute freezing cold showers in the morning.

Speaker 1 (00:42:25):

You can't start that way. You start with like 30 seconds. 30 seconds.

Speaker 2 (00:42:29):

So I've built up to that. I wake up right into the shower, at least 10 to 15 minutes of a cold shower in the morning.

Speaker 1 (00:42:35):

Now when you say cold, you mean fucking cold

Speaker 2 (00:42:39):

All the way.

Speaker 1 (00:42:40):

Okay.

Speaker 2 (00:42:40):

We're on a well system here. So the water is as cold as the ground in the morning. It's in the forties here. So we're talking about between 40 and 50 degree water, which may not seem cold, but Oh dude, it's freezing.

Speaker 1 (00:42:52):

Since I do this stuff, I can tell anyone who's listening, it is fucking cold. And 10 or 15 minutes is like, it's hard. It's hard. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:43:01):

And it, it's a challenge. But while I'm taking the shower, I am focused on my breathing. I'm not anywhere near as intense with it as I would be if I was out of water or out of the shower, because there's obviously you don't want to pass out, which you can do if you're making yourself hyperventilate in a way, which we can talk about. But yeah, I do the shower, I focus on my breathing and my intention with the shower to stay in, to arm my body, to not feel the cold.

Speaker 1 (00:43:25):

Dude, I feel like the breathing is what helps me handle it.

Speaker 2 (00:43:28):

It does. Well, it's the control of the breathing that is what helps you handle

Speaker 1 (00:43:32):

It. Yeah, exactly. The control of the breathing controls my mind, and then my mind stops processing the terrible feeling of the cold. So I'm not sure that it's the breathing itself, but I think mean maybe it is. But I know that there's a mental component that because I get so focused on the breath, it takes the attention away from the insane bad feeling I'm feeling with that cold.

Speaker 2 (00:44:01):

Yeah. Well, it's meditation, right? It's bringing you very much to the present, but a different form of that present. You can't deny that you're feeling cold on your body, which is a very uncomfortable feeling.

Speaker 1 (00:44:12):

No, but you can accept it.

Speaker 2 (00:44:14):

You accept it, and then you focus that energy instead of on, oh my God, this is so cold, I'm freaking out onto, okay, relax, enjoy it. Breathe slowly, breathe calmly, realize that it's not going to harm you, that this is actually really beneficial. And also you start then to think about, okay, my hands are really cold. My extremities are cold because they've cut off blood circulation. And the reason that my hands have cut off blood circulation is because all the blood is rushing to protect my internal organs from the cold. And this is eventual stuff, but this is the kind of thing I'm working on in the cold showers right now. I'm working on putting my hands specifically, which don't have a lot of blood flow into the cold water and focusing on sending the blood in my body to the hands to help warm them up just as much as my core is being warmed up.

(00:45:03):

So not only does it start with accepting, focusing on breath, but eventually it goes to, huh, this part of my body feels more uncomfortable than the other. Let me see if I can focus on actually warming that part up. And that's what I'm working on now. And that's the crazy stuff. That's like when we say Wim Hof is a nut, that's what he's able to do. It will, and that's what I'm trying to develop, is the ability to channel what I'm feeling and create an actual chemical reaction or whatever you want to call it in my body that takes a thought and sends that literally into a part of my body that needs to warm up and then sends the blood there.

Speaker 1 (00:45:42):

What's interesting, I watched a doctor analyzing the medical studies about Wim Hof method, and as it turns out, I guess the most provable benefit of how this stuff works is mentally. So it's not, yes, there's benefit to the cold physiologically, but the big, big deal, the main thing he's doing is controlling his mind and his mind is then handling his body. But the cold does have physiological benefits, but the grand, grand benefit is the mental benefit, which then does affect your physiology. Let me just say, for people who are listening, if you want to do this, you got to start slow, take a shower, and then try 15 seconds of cold. That's it. And then the next day, try 30 seconds. You go little by little. Think of it like something that you're going to get down in a month or two or three.

Speaker 2 (00:46:45):

It takes a while.

Speaker 1 (00:46:46):

Yeah. This 15 minute cold shower thing is not going to happen right away unless you're a former Navy Seal or some shit.

Speaker 2 (00:46:55):

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you have to know what to expect, and you have to be ready for it. And the effects are predominantly, it's on your mind. It's on your ability to control your emotions, to control your fears, to face the discomfort in front of you and the challenge at hand, and do it with a clear head and a calm body and a calm mind. And that's what the cold helps you to do. Now, speaking of the physiological benefits to it or of it, when you are exposing your body to the cold, it forces the small muscles within your veins and your capillaries to contract because they're sending blood to different parts of your body at a very fast rate, and your whole body is trying to warm up. So all these little muscles that surround all of the veins in our body start getting stronger and stronger and stronger. The stronger they get, the more easy it is to circulate blood through our system. The stronger they get, the wider they get, the less blood pressure there is. Right? And it's effective at lowering blood pressure. That was another reason why I thought about I'm going to get into the cold train my body to be able to move blood through my system better and not be as tense at the same time. Because the tension, the anxiety, the toxicity that you create when your mind is freaked out, it creates acidity within yourself, which creates inflammation and

Speaker 1 (00:48:16):

Cortisol

Speaker 2 (00:48:17):

And cortisol killer. And so it's just all bad. So the combination of the physical benefits with knowing how to calm, knowing how to slow down your heart rate and think about how to do that, and again, going into the cold is a great way to try that. When you get into a cold shower, your heart rate goes, starts bumping because you're experiencing trauma in a way. If you can control your reaction to that trauma, slow down your breath, slow down your heart rate, that same exact mental state can be applied to anxiety.

Speaker 1 (00:48:50):

Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (00:48:52):

Or whatever negative situation you're facing. So that's how I start my day. I could be having a shitty morning, and I do that, and it puts me in a fantastic mood.

Speaker 1 (00:49:02):

Dude, you know what else is great about it? It is a great caffeine substitute.

Speaker 2 (00:49:08):

It is.

Speaker 1 (00:49:08):

I used to drink like six red bulls a day. Now I will have one, one and a green tea, which I'm telling you, I used to have six a day.

Speaker 2 (00:49:17):

That's a lot.

Speaker 1 (00:49:18):

Plus Adderall now it's like one or two servings of caffeine a day. These cold showers, they wake you the fuck up. And in a way that drugs never could because your whole body is awake. It's this natural energy that is far more powerful than drinking coffee. Not that there's anything wrong with drinking coffee, but if we're talking about lowering blood pressure, there's a way to get that energy without spiking your blood pressure too.

Speaker 2 (00:49:49):

Yeah. Because caffeine, it's a very well documented method of how to spike your blood pressure. So that being said, I do drink my coffee every day, but I'm not having anywhere near as much as I used to. Similar to you.

Speaker 1 (00:50:02):

Well, I've heard that because I'm trying to, I'm actively controlling my blood pressure too. 400 milligrams and under a day, and you're fine.

Speaker 2 (00:50:10):

Yep. It's funny, I haven't measured that for myself, but I'll do one pour over and that's it. A day now, as opposed to, I used to drink iced coffee all day, black iced coffee all day long morning, afternoon, night.

Speaker 1 (00:50:24):

Well over 400 milligrams.

Speaker 2 (00:50:26):

Exactly. So I've cut back a lot there, and I really honestly, man, I do it now because one, I truly enjoy coffee. I truly enjoy the challenge of making a really good pour over every day. That's another one of those challenges that I weave into my morning pretty much every day. I want to make myself a really good tasting cup of coffee. The other benefit to drinking hot coffee like that at the temperature at which I drink it, which is right around 1 95, 200 degrees Fahrenheit. The reason why I'm drinking that is because it's helping to warm up my lungs. I find that if I do the heavy breath work in the morning without hot coffee, my lungs are a lot more vulnerable to coughing or to getting congested or even to very light asthmatic response. Whereas the heat and breathing in the warmth, and it could be a cup of tea, it could be anything. It doesn't need to be coffee. I just like coffee, but I do the breath work after having a hot drink because it helps me have a better experience.

Speaker 1 (00:51:29):

Interesting. Okay. Let's talk about the breath work real quick. So the shower, you are doing some breath work in the shower, right?

Speaker 2 (00:51:36):

Yes, but I'm not doing it anywhere near the level of an intensity or duration that I do it when I am actually sitting down and doing meditative breath work.

Speaker 1 (00:51:47):

So in the shower it's more like tactical.

Speaker 2 (00:51:51):

It's tactical and it's slow, and it's very controlled. So when I'm doing the showers, it's

Speaker 1 (00:51:55):

Very relaxed and clear. The lungs out come completely.

Speaker 2 (00:51:59):

Right. Exactly. But that's the thing. I only do that really in the beginning of the cold shower because as my body's adjusting to it, once I feel good, I don't need to really focus on my breath and then I can enjoy the cold shower and let it actually have more physiological benefits. I like when my body gets red because it means that the blood is rushing to the surface and I'm activating all of those capillaries and veins that I want. That's the goal for me, is if I'm not turning red and getting flushed in that cold shower, I'm not doing it right. So that's part of the goal. The other thing I'm trying to do in the cold shower, and there's a lot of talk about this and different sides of it. I'm trying to focus on activating my bat, BAT, which is also as brown fat.

Speaker 1 (00:52:47):

Yes. Brown adipose tissue.

Speaker 2 (00:52:49):

Yes, exactly.

Speaker 1 (00:52:50):

You know what, man, I have, obviously, this is a near and dear subject to my heart. I have read the studies that go both ways, but I'll say this, even the studies that say that it's not such a big deal, they still acknowledge that it activates it and burns it. They just say it doesn't burn it as much as some other people say.

Speaker 2 (00:53:13):

Yeah. So for people listening that are curious as to what that is, so when we're born, when we're babies, we can't exercise. We can't really take showers. We can't necessarily eat all the food we should eat to fight off the bad stuff in our system. So we're exposed to cold, we're exposed to the elements. We're born with two types of fat, right? The white fat and the brown fat. The brown fat essentially is there to help create heat in the body. That's the simplest way to explain it. If we're talking very layman's terms, brown fat eats white fat, and the output of that is heat to help warm us up. So when we're babies, we have a lot of this, and then eventually we lose that baby fat. We start to wear clothing, be in warm houses, be in warm environments. We adapt to that, and our bodies say, oh, well, we don't need this thing called brown fat because we have comfort everywhere else, and we can now get rid of this and not have to focus energy on developing this.

(00:54:07):

So as we grow older and become adults, as you know, we lose a lot if not all of the brown fat that we were born with as babies. What's interesting, and I don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole, but there's a lot of cultures out there, indigenous cultures who are exposed to cold or who don't wear a lot of clothing, who in the studies have shown to have higher levels of brown fat, even as adults, and it's because they haven't had the comforts of warmth, and their bodies have had to maintain that brown fat in order to help keep them warm, which is why they can sustain and manage colder temperatures with less clothing. So the whole point is with these cold showers, we're making ourselves uncomfortable. We're exposing ourselves to the cold. The more you do it, the longer periods of time, the more you start to be able to withstand that cold. You're essentially forcing your body to adapt to an uncomfortable situation like that, which then causes, at least from what I'm feeling, the reproduction and the growth of brown fat, which is then used internally to warm you up,

Speaker 1 (00:55:14):

Which burns calories,

Speaker 2 (00:55:15):

Which burns calories, which is why they say when you take cold showers, it can help you lose weight. What's happening is you're activating brown fat, which eats white fatty cells, and therefore you're burning calories as you do it.

Speaker 1 (00:55:27):

There's been interesting studies about this with swimmers, for instance, why they need so many more calories than other types of athletes, even though they do a similar amount of work or similar amount of expenditure, but burn way more calories because of the cold exposure. That's why Michael Phelps, for instance, was taking in when he was competing about 10,000 calories a day. 10,000 calories a day is like what those strong man dudes have on their cheat days, and it's like a big deal when they hit that 10,000 mark. But apparently for Michael Phelps, that was a normal day, dude. He is a swimmer, not a strong man.

Speaker 2 (00:56:14):

And that's why I actually buy into this whole thing of the brown fat activation and the ability to regenerate, so to speak, or rebuild the amounts of it in your body through this cold exposure. And it's not to lose weight for me, it's more so

Speaker 1 (00:56:29):

It is for me,

Speaker 2 (00:56:30):

Sure. And a lot of people, and that is, it's an effective method for sure. If

Speaker 1 (00:56:34):

You're trying to lose weight with just this method, don't trick yourself. This is something that will only help it marginally. It's something that if diet, exercise, proper nutrition, all that stuff is far more important. But if you already have that stuff dialed in and then you add this, it's going to add a little bit of extra juice to your plans.

Speaker 2 (00:56:55):

Well said. And I'm also, I think we should both acknowledge that neither of us are medical professionals or doctors and we can't give medical advice. And this is all just based off of public research that's out there that anybody can go read about as well.

Speaker 1 (00:57:10):

Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (00:57:11):

Don't just do it because we say you should absolutely do your own research into this. If it sounds interesting to you,

Speaker 1 (00:57:18):

Man, it sounds to me like you have gone down the rabbit hole like I have with this stuff.

Speaker 2 (00:57:22):

Yeah, very much so. As I said, when I find something that I not only enjoy but I think can really benefit my life, I want to learn everything I possibly can about it because I want to understand what the potential is and what I can do with it. So when I am exposing myself to the cold, one of the other things I'm working on is trying to deliberately activate that brown fat. And I've read about methods where you can physically manipulate your body and focus on flexing certain muscles in your body that can actually activate that brown fat. It's hard to say whether the length of time that I'm in the shower activates it or whether the practice that I'm working on actually activates it. But when I do these methods or physical sort of flex sessions, as goofy as they may sound, I do feel effects of it. It's just hard to say whether or not that's what's happening because it's not like when you wiggle your fingers, you can see your fingers moving, but I'm practicing based on the methods that I've read about.

Speaker 1 (00:58:28):

What are they?

Speaker 2 (00:58:29):

Well, you essentially start at your toes and it's kind of like meditating because it's very hard to do this. But you start at your toes and you focus on flexing your toes and then flexing all the muscles in your feet and then your heels and then your ankles up to your legs, up your knees, up your body, and you slowly from the bottom up, flex all of your muscles in a line all the way up to behind your ears to, I think it's the pituitary gland, right? That is, I'm pretty sure I'm saying that right. Don't quote me, but it's behind your ears and by flexing essentially the muscles back of your neck, behind your ears after building up, that can actually activate the brow fat.

Speaker 1 (00:59:11):

So it's not, you're flexing your toes and then stopping and moving on. You're starting flex there, and then you maintain the flex all the way up.

Speaker 2 (00:59:20):

Yes, and it's very hard to do Standing up.

Speaker 1 (00:59:22):

Standing up. All right.

Speaker 2 (00:59:23):

So I'll lean against the wall in the shower when I do it, but this is something I want to be very careful to say. It's intense when you do this, and you should never do it in a hot environment because you will overheat yourself and you could pass out very easily. And even doing this now in a cold shower, you kind of get hot and you can see stars and you can feel lightheaded. So don't do this unless you are somewhere safe where you're sitting down or in a bed or in a cold environment in general. I'm just going to go ahead and say, don't do this unless you've really done your research and you are prepared and understand it.

Speaker 1 (01:00:00):

Absolutely. Because even just doing the cold showers alone, you can see stars.

Speaker 2 (01:00:05):

Yeah, you can. So this is like imagine holding your breath and trying to make your face red, but you're doing that for your whole body. That process can actually help to activate it in my experience and from the research and things that I've read. But again, I'm not a doctor and I don't want to be quoted on this as the way to do it.

Speaker 1 (01:00:26):

A hundred percent. If you're listening to this and any of this inspires, you read up on how to do it because if you just jump into this stuff, first of all, you're going to hate it. You can't just take a 15 minute shower without work. I mean, I guess you could technically, but you're going to hate it. I guarantee you that unless you're already a nutcase, you're not going to make it through. Go slow, do your research. I have gone down the rabbit hole with this research. This wasn't like watching what YouTube video once or something. I've studied up on this for several months and been practicing it for well over a year now, so it's not a casual thing. Okay. That's said. All right, so you do that. What's next?

Speaker 2 (01:01:12):

Yep. Then I'll typically have my coffee. I'll warm up my lungs, I'll breathe in the warmth, and then I give myself typically 30 minutes to an hour before I do my breath work. And that's a great time for me to respond to emails, do any kind of work I need to do for the morning for a good hour. I can schedule phone calls during that time. I can do whatever. But there's two reasons for why I wait to do the breath work after I have my coffee. One, it's really great to do breath work on a completely empty stomach. And two, it's even better to do it on an empty stomach and an empty bladder.

Speaker 1 (01:01:42):

I was about to say, yeah, I can imagine trying to meditate first thing in the morning right after coffee.

Speaker 2 (01:01:48):

Yeah, it's not going to last long. You're going to have to take good luck a trip. So that's the thing. I really do like to purge, for lack of a better word, my gut and my stomach, my bladder, everything before I'm able to then sit down and really take in the maximum amount of oxygen into my stomach, lungs, head, and that's the next step. So I actually enrolled in the Wim Hof 10 week course, so I'm knee deep in that now, and I'm a little bit flexible with it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:19):

Should I do it? Is it worth it?

Speaker 2 (01:02:21):

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 (01:02:22):

As someone who is already into this stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:02:24):

Yeah, totally. Because I mean, it involves breath work, but it also involves movement. It does push you into the cold showers. Some of the things that I'm doing now as part of my

Speaker 1 (01:02:33):

Writing it down so I don't forget.

Speaker 2 (01:02:35):

Yeah, it's 50% off right now too because of this whole thing. So if you go to wim hof method.com, you'll find it. We get to shout him out here a little bit.

(01:02:46):

Or I should say it's part of my wellness practice right now, if you want to call it that. I do my breathing. I do anywhere between four to seven rounds of the breathing method. Then I'll do stretching. I'll stretch my back, I'll stretch my legs. I am doing handstands, literally standing on my hands with my feet in the air, headstands, I should say, to send the blood flow the other way. And it's all just really good stuff to be doing. It's different. It's almost like variations of yoga practice or extreme stretching, things like that. But the whole point of these physical exercises involved with the breathing is to use the breathing method to be able to go deeper into the stretch, to go deeper into yourself and be able to hold positions longer so that you can actually feel the benefits of these physical movements.

(01:03:41):

And moving in general right now. I mean, it's great anytime, but just moving right now is so good for your body and so good for your mind. And when I finish a good hour long session of combined breathing, stretching, headstands, sometimes pushups that are involved with the breath work, you really feel good. So that's what I'm doing during that time. I'm yet to do it today because again, I've had to shift things around, but as soon as we're finished, I've scheduled some time at two o'clock eastern to spend an hour doing this stuff. It's become a huge part of my day. So then there's two more things that have tos in my day. One is exercise, and I pretty much am exercising seven days a week at this point.

Speaker 1 (01:04:24):

Same here.

Speaker 2 (01:04:25):

And I'm not killing myself every day. I mean,

Speaker 1 (01:04:27):

I am sometimes than doing P 90 X right now. It's hard. And then a cardio session too.

Speaker 2 (01:04:32):

So there you go. And and so some days I do go a lot harder. Yesterday I did 200 burpees.

Speaker 1 (01:04:39):

Jesus, dude.

Speaker 2 (01:04:40):

Yeah, that was good. Whoa. I did it for time too. I managed to do it in 22 minutes, was able to do 200 burpees, but my goal eventually with that is to be able to do a thousand burpees, which is very hard to do. But again, I'm setting these really intense goals for myself because why not? I have the time to do it. There's no downside. Right. It's very beneficial. But anyway, so I'll do my exercise and then right after exercise, I bought one of those little tent sauna boxes that you sit in. Your head is out of it, but your body is fully inside of it. It heats up to about 140 degrees with infrared heat. And I do a sauna session for anywhere between like 45 minutes to an hour.

Speaker 1 (01:05:23):

What's it called?

Speaker 2 (01:05:24):

I don't know. But this particular one I got for 200 bucks off Amazon. Just look up personal sauna and you'll see it looks like a box tent that you sit in. I can send you a link too to check it out.

Speaker 1 (01:05:34):

Yeah. Actually, I was wanting to buy one and I forgot, and now you're reminding me and I'm going to do it right after.

Speaker 2 (01:05:41):

Cool. Yeah, it's great because it kind of completes the cycle of all the positive things you can do in a day. And there are so many benefits to sauna use as well. As much as there's benefits to cold exposure, there's amazing benefits to exposing yourself to heat for extended periods of time.

Speaker 1 (01:06:00):

And both of these, if you're exercising hard, which I am right now, well, because weight loss is still part of what I'm actively focusing on, I'm going extra hard with really hard stuff. For me, recovery is more important than it's ever been of my age. It takes longer cold exposure and heat exposure are fantastic for recovery.

Speaker 2 (01:06:26):

A hundred percent. Yeah. I'm not sore today at all, and it's because of these practices and just for what it's worth, there's a lot of studies that have been done that have shown, I mean, endless health benefits to sauna exposure. It helps to get heavy metals out of your body that you don't even realize that you're consuming because you're sweating it out, which is great. It helps to purify your body just like the breathing does. But another big benefit, at least in one study that was proven was with consistent exposure to sauna use, it helps to lower the risk of pneumonia in about 40% of people who do it four to five days a week.

Speaker 1 (01:07:03):

Oh, I'm definitely getting this dude. What nearly killed me when I got H one N one was the pneumonia. I was at 30% lung capacity. It was brutal. I am definitely getting this,

Speaker 2 (01:07:17):

And I mean, again, you should do the research as well. A good reference

Speaker 1 (01:07:22):

Kind of already have.

Speaker 2 (01:07:23):

Yeah, a good reference is I follow Dr. Rhonda Patrick, who many people have probably heard of, but she recently in the past week or two has put out some information on sauna use in relation to lung health. So check out her website. It's found MyFitness.

Speaker 1 (01:07:39):

I will found MyFitness. She's great.

Speaker 2 (01:07:41):

Yeah, she's great and I've learned a ton from her. And part of the, it's funny, there's certain people out there that I look at as sort of the gatekeepers to whether or not I'm going to walk through a certain door and if I get a hankering for something, I usually go to those people to see first. And she has absolutely helped to solidify the go ahead for a lot of the practices that I'm doing now with her scientific based evidence and research behind it.

Speaker 1 (01:08:08):

Let me add this to Rhonda Patrick, if you want to know more about the cold exposure. She has a ton of great content on that as well. She really covers it and in pretty extensive detail.

Speaker 2 (01:08:22):

Oh yeah, you got to read her research papers or at least her summaries of those papers a couple times to make sure you get all the information, but it, it's well worth it.

Speaker 1 (01:08:33):

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:08:34):

And then the very, very last thing after that is because this little sauna thing, really, it's gross. Let me just say this. These little box saunas are disgusting sitting in them. You're pouring sweat into 'em. They're kind of hard to clean unless you purposefully go back and wipe 'em and spray 'em down. So if you get one of these saunas, don't invite anybody else to use it. It is your personal sweat box, and it's fucking gross.

Speaker 1 (01:09:01):

Thanks for saying that, because my brother and I, we built a little gym here. I bought an elliptical for it, and we just made a gym, and I was thinking right now, I'm going to put that in there. Now I'm thinking, Nope.

Speaker 2 (01:09:15):

Yeah, yeah. Don't do that unless you want to share it.

Speaker 1 (01:09:18):

No, buy your own fucking sauna.

Speaker 2 (01:09:20):

It's just gross. But it is a temporary solution for now. While I'm living here, I've actually, I don't really splurge on anything, but I splurged and in the new house I'm going to have a barrel sauna, a real wooden barrel sauna, heated by stones. Again, this is how serious I'm about this stuff. I splurged on that because the value I'm going to get out of it totally outweighs the expense for it.

Speaker 1 (01:09:48):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:09:48):

Totally. And the amount of time I'm going to use that thing on a daily basis for years is well worth the investment into it, and the health benefits are well worth the investment. So I can't wait till I can throw this thing away. Cool. But you can't reuse it, and it smells and it's gross, but it has its effect. So after I come out of that thing completely soaked, I go and I take my last shower of the day, and with that, I don't do 10 full minutes in cold, but what I do is because I'm so hot, I start it really cold, probably about one or two minutes. It feels great, and then I'll turn it on warm and I'll wash like a normal shower, and then sometimes I'll end it cold because now I'm finding myself really actually enjoying it. And the feeling you get after exiting a cold shower, the air feels warm, you get good chills from being out in the air, and that's it. And then I just couple that with eating healthy throughout the day, avoiding extra sugar, avoiding extra salt for blood pressure. I'm keeping my salt and intake below two grams a day.

Speaker 1 (01:10:51):

I'm doing under 1500 milligrams,

Speaker 2 (01:10:54):

So we're right in that range. Right. I'm just keeping conscious of all those things, getting good sleep. The only bad thing that I experienced in the day is the stuff we were talking about before, potential frustration, potential annoyance, potential stress or anxiety.

Speaker 1 (01:11:10):

Everything you're doing for sure is going to help with that.

Speaker 2 (01:11:13):

Exactly. To that point, everything that I'm working on allows me to understand a negative sensory experience, identify it faster, and then within that, figure out how to calm it down.

Speaker 1 (01:11:25):

Are you doing any mindfulness meditation?

Speaker 2 (01:11:27):

I was just going to say, so yes. When I finish my breath work and during the breath work, that's really when I'm doing that mindfulness meditation. Now, sometimes I only do it during my breath work, and I really try to just focus on the breathing, especially when I do long sessions, like seven to 10 rounds. But other times when I finish the rounds and I finish the stretching and the physical stuff, I'll sit for about 10 to 15 minutes. I actually am a member of the Sam Harris app.

Speaker 1 (01:11:56):

Oh, I have that one and the Dan Harris app.

Speaker 2 (01:11:58):

Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:11:59):

Do you know about Dan Harris?

Speaker 2 (01:12:00):

No. Uhuh.

Speaker 1 (01:12:01):

So Dan Harris has been on the Sam Harris podcast, or Dan and Sam Harris. Were both on Joe Rogan or something. Dan Harris is another meditation guru. At first, when I heard about Dan Harris, I was like, you mean Sam Harris? Nope. Dan Harris is, I would say about as respected of an expert on this as Sam Harris. So you may just want to look into his stuff as well. It's just as good, just different.

Speaker 2 (01:12:27):

Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:12:28):

It's just as good.

Speaker 2 (01:12:29):

Yeah, and I mean, man, I do it and I've gotten better at it for sure, but I find that I enjoy active meditation a lot more. I enjoy meditation during breathing, and I enjoy meditation during exercise, and that just seems to work better for me.

Speaker 1 (01:12:43):

Yeah, I will say this. Okay, so again, not a doctor, but I'll tell you what a doctor told me about this mindfulness meditation done at least 10 minutes a day. Over time builds the portion of your brain that controls your ability to feel happy. So it strengthens it the way that lifting weights strengthens muscles. Your brain will physically be able to make you feel happier. That's why the Dan Harris app is called 10% Happier.

Speaker 2 (01:13:19):

Interesting. Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:13:20):

It's based on that study. This doctor told me that this was proven through MRIs and all kinds of complex shit. I don't understand, but

(01:13:29):

That people who do this, they tested it on people who don't meditate, people who meditate casually like 10 minutes a day, and then Buddhist monks, Buddhist monks had that portion of their brain, like overdeveloped obviously, but just people who did it 10 minutes a day had that part of their brain significantly more developed than someone who doesn't do it. So as someone who has suffered from depression clinically over the course of my life, this is something that I can do every single day or most days that will physically make a big difference. And then also it helps when dealing with stress or anxiety to understand what my brain is doing and redirect it.

Speaker 2 (01:14:14):

That was what I was sort of alluding to with knowing what's happening when I'm dealing with a stressor, being able to be objective to it in a way, okay, my mind is thinking all these things, but I'm able to, while that's going on, take a step back and look at what's happening. Oh, huh. Yeah, I'm having these thoughts, but I'm on a different plane now. Looking at myself, having those thoughts, acknowledging that I'm having these thoughts, and I can decide whether they're productive or not, and if I decide they're productive, then it's a thought worth having, and that's a really beneficial tool for things like business or

Speaker 1 (01:14:47):

Oh yeah. Or

Speaker 2 (01:14:48):

Visionary stuff. Being creative, being able to have productive thinking ability and an active mind is a big gift if you use it. Right. But it's also a curse if you have anxiety because your mind is very active and it has the ability to create all sorts of twists and tunnels and puzzles for yourself. But if you can acknowledge that and realize that what's happening is out of your control in a way, all these thoughts that you're not actively having them, they're out of your control. You can't necessarily just shut 'em off, but you can redirect your focus onto something else.

Speaker 1 (01:15:18):

Absolutely. It's like it almost takes their power away. It has helped me with my insomnia. I had lifelong insomnia the past six months to a year. I've had the best sleep of my entire life. It coincides with having started mindfulness meditation. I mean, it don't work every night, but as opposed to having six week long stretches of only sleeping three hours a night because my brain is a hamster on a wheel, which is how things used to be. Now that only happens once or twice a month, and I'm able to fall asleep within 10 minutes, which is, I know that for a lot of people that's normal, but for me, that's been a huge, huge challenge. Also, speaking of patience and business dealings, not just as far as with creative ideas, but we work with some very strong people when it comes to how they approach things, and you're not always going to agree with people.

(01:16:22):

Also, we're in the music industry and outside of our own circles, we also have to deal with a lot of bullshit. There's a lot of BS in the music industry, and one of my drivers for starting URM and going on my own was to never have to answer to people that I thought were idiots or who didn't have my best interests at heart. That part of the music industry was driving me nuts, and it causes a physical reaction in me when I have to deal with that to where it's pure hate and being able to understand those feelings while they're happening and redirect them, man, it's done wonders for my work life when I'm working with somebody who does something I disagree with, or we're having a difference of opinion, or I just need to convince them of something that is going to be a huge money spend or something like that, I'm able to stay calm and focused way better than I was before. It's helping tremendously. I don't get triggered by things like I used to.

Speaker 2 (01:17:30):

Yeah. Well, you become hyper aware of the things that are happening around you, whether it be like you're talking about conversations or just data, you start to become aware of it, and you're able to sort of compartmentalize or file it into different parts of your response folders a lot faster.

Speaker 1 (01:17:49):

Good way to put it.

Speaker 2 (01:17:50):

Yeah. There's no downside to it, right?

Speaker 1 (01:17:52):

I can't think of one.

Speaker 2 (01:17:53):

Yeah, there's no downside to it, and it is hard to do it. I don't profess to, like I said, I'd much rather meditate while doing something as opposed to just sitting and being mindful. It's hard. Oh,

Speaker 1 (01:18:06):

It's

Speaker 2 (01:18:07):

Very

Speaker 1 (01:18:07):

Hard, dude. It's hard as fuck,

Speaker 2 (01:18:09):

But it's worth it. Okay, so I'm curious about what you're doing. I basically just gave you the rundown, or at least the minute to minute of my days. So I'm curious to hear how we differ or are alike.

Speaker 1 (01:18:21):

Okay. So I have this thing where when I wake up, the first thing I do is move before anything. Well, I'll have 12 ounces of water with a pinch of Himalayan salt and lemon. Then I will move. It won't be my workout, but it'll be just enough to start the body up. So because of my insomnia issues, I also had waking up issues all my life. So I decided to train myself to wake up and just go, which I know a lot of people that they're just good at that. For me, that was horrible. I couldn't do that. It's caused me a lot of problems in my life. It's one of the reasons that I did horribly in school when I was younger. It fucked up my ability to keep appointments. It has fucked up my life in many ways. So I decided to handle it, and so right away move from the get go.

(01:19:25):

Then that's when the cold exposure starts. So I'll do that for 20 minutes. Then I'll get in the shower and start doing the cold work. I'm not as advanced with it as you are, but I will do five to 10 minutes. Then I'll work out workout number one, and the workout number one is typically cardio, something cardio for about an hour. It could be biking, it could be elliptical, it could be walking outside. It doesn't matter. The fact is it's about an hour of cardio where I'm also listening to something that is going to get my brain engaged. And then from there I go straight to the mindfulness meditation. This stuff is a must. I also don't have the caffeine. I'm going to try it your way. Though I have been skipping the caffeine until after I'm done meditating, because that way when I have the caffeine, it activates me for work, and I find that the showers activate me for working out already.

(01:20:26):

So I used to need to pound a red bull and go work out. Now I take the shower and then I exercise. So this stuff is mandatory. Then later in the day, I will find a time to do P 90 x, but whatever it is that you do, I do something that's very intense that involves conditioning, but also strength training. I'm not saying that people need to do P 90 x. I'm doing it because the specific benefits that you get from it are what I'm going after. I want better balance. I want to be more functional. I want to lose more weight, and I want to be stronger. Last year I was doing a lot of heavy weightlifting and I'm the strongest I've ever been in my life, but I noticed that it wasn't necessarily helping with weight loss as much as I would've liked. And I know that people say exercise doesn't help with weight loss, but they're wrong. They're fucking wrong. As someone who's been dealing with this my entire life, you're wrong. What's true is that no workout is going to outrun a bad diet. That's very true.

Speaker 2 (01:21:34):

There you go.

Speaker 1 (01:21:34):

However, with the right diet, exercise will accelerate the fuck out of it. My aim is to burn 1500 calories per day from exercise, which is a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:21:45):

It's a lot. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (01:21:47):

It's a lot. But that's what I'm going for. Obviously I can't totally measure it, but I can approximate it. And then not just that, I also have this under desk bike and I don't know, it's like pedals basically, and when I'm doing my meetings and anything other than podcasting or recording a video, I'm on that thing. So getting 16 to 20,000 steps a day just sitting at my desk

(01:22:15):

Because I've read all those studies about how sitting kills us. If you sit too much, it greatly enhances your risk of an early death and just working out once a day apparently doesn't solve it. I don't know if you've seen those studies. I'm very much against dying early, so I kind of am just moving all day long. So yeah, so there's an intense cardio session in the morning. There's an intense workout later, and there's constant movement throughout the entire day. Plus the mindfulness meditation and the cold work and the breath work. That is all a must. And then food wise, I have been eating in a way that will, there's a few goals here, so I don't want to lose too much muscle while I'm losing weight, which is a real consideration, but that's why I'm making sure that I'm getting X amount of protein relative to my goals while still being in a significant calorie deficit.

(01:23:16):

So one thing that's interesting about weight loss is it's been proven. You can eat whatever you want and lose weight. The dude who did the twine diet proved it. I don't care what diet do, as long as you're in a deficit, you're going to lose weight. You could eat a thousand calories of Twinkies and you'll still lose weight if 1000 puts you in a deficit. So I am aiming for a certain deficit through diet and then adding 1500 to it based on my body weight, and I readjust it every single week because your basal metabolic rate changes depending on your weight. So the more you weigh, the more calories you burn, and as you lose weight, one of the main reasons people plateau is because their level of expenditure doesn't rise to meet their lower needs basically.

Speaker 2 (01:24:06):

Right.

Speaker 1 (01:24:07):

So I'm constantly calculating that and eating in a way that will retain my muscle, can be maximum nutrition, as well as keep blood pressure low. So no dairy, very low sodium and tons of anti-inflammatory foods. So lots of kale, lots of flax seed, things like that with lots of omega threes. And then I'm supplementing B vitamins. I don't eat meat. And just making sure that the happy vitamins are in high supply, like vitamin D for instance, and drinking about a gallon of water a day. It's pretty fucking strict. 1500 milligrams of sodium is pretty low. Unless you're eating only raw foods or something. It's very easy as you know to go over it because even if you don't add salt, there's so much sodium in the food that we buy. It's kind of forced me to really, really focus on it. And also not eating meat and not eating dairy. I'm not vegan. Lemme just say I'm just doing plant-based a hundred percent because I want to have low blood pressure and because like we were saying with COVID, one of the comorbidities is being overweight or having high blood pressure and the best blood pressure diet is plant-based. That's been proven, but because my goal also is to retain as much muscle as possible, have to really do this correctly, it can't just eat broccoli all day.

Speaker 2 (01:25:39):

Do you eat eggs?

Speaker 1 (01:25:40):

No. Okay. Zero animal products.

Speaker 2 (01:25:43):

Got it.

Speaker 1 (01:25:43):

I'm not against it. I just don't do it right now. I just posted an Instagram story that I want to go back to Italy. I will definitely eat cheese when I go back to Italy. So yeah, I'm not a vegan. I'm just doing plant-based for the health reasons, but it's been proven that vegans plant-based can be significantly more unhealthy than they think because of what they're missing. There's been a lot of studies that show this, so if you think you're doing plant-based just for your health, that is possible, but you have to do the research on how to do it correctly. So I had to go down that rabbit hole and I'm pretty fucking strict about it, and the mental clarity that I get as a result of eating this way is unbelievable. It helps so much. And the sustained energy I get all day long from eating like this at first, it sucks.

(01:26:42):

If you're used to some of the addictive foods in the American diet like salt, sugar, certain kinds of fat or those things put together, you can go through a withdrawal period. But once your body adjusts and your mind more importantly adjusts, first of all, your taste buds change. If you like desserts, I'm not big on desserts, but say you like desserts, you're used to ice cream and stuff like that, cookies, fruit is not going to be very appetizing because it's like a shitty version of that. But once you've done this long enough and your taste buds change, you'll appreciate things like fruit in a way that you never appreciated before. And I know that we're saying sugar is bad, but from everything I understand, fructose, it might be sugar, but the way that the body deals with it is very, very different than refined sugar. Plus the amounts are so low in fruits compared to a can of Coke, it's really not a big deal. You're not going to eat enough blueberries, like a thousand calories of blueberries. You know how many blueberries

Speaker 2 (01:27:53):

You got to eat a lot of blueberries,

Speaker 1 (01:27:54):

You have to eat a lot of blueberries.

Speaker 2 (01:27:58):

Those Driscoll raspberry cases that are like this big.

Speaker 1 (01:28:02):

Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:28:02):

So we'll buy 'em at the store and I'll eat it in one sitting. We'll have to buy four of 'em because I'll eat one a day and they're gone. It's good for you and it's one of the best things you can have. Blueberries, berries, we talk all day about that. But yeah, the taste bud thing, here's something just to add to that, I haven't eaten really shit at all in weeks and weeks and weeks. All my sugar intake has been either from, I'm a big dark chocolate fan, but I'm talking 85% and higher dark chocolate.

Speaker 1 (01:28:32):

The real thing.

Speaker 2 (01:28:33):

Real thing. Yeah. So that's probably my biggest daily sugar intake is I'll have a couple pieces of really dark chocolate, which is great for you too, but I eat a lot of fruit, apples, berries, mainly apples and raspberries and blueberries. The other day my wife made cookies, chocolate chip cookies, and she made the cookie dough and I fucking love chocolate chip cookies and chocolate chip cookie dough, and she made this great recipe. It was like brown butter and all this good stuff, and I just took my spoon and just fucking couldn't stop myself and dude within five minutes, horrendous headache.

Speaker 1 (01:29:14):

Oh yes.

Speaker 2 (01:29:16):

I mean, it was like a rush of a headache and I was like, oh my God, I haven't done this in a while. I can't believe I used to eat like this all the time.

Speaker 1 (01:29:25):

It's craziness.

Speaker 2 (01:29:26):

And then I think about it, I didn't feel good. I literally didn't feel good when I would eat like that. So it's funny, I did that and I just wanted it to go away more than anything. I couldn't eat any more of it. I just, I'm, ugh, I'm done.

Speaker 1 (01:29:38):

I have a similar story, by the way. I've never been a cigarette smoker, but I've tried them at different times and it always made me feel like shit. And I know smokers who try to quit and then they start again. Typically once they're with goes away, they actually feel like they poison themselves. So I've been eating super clean and I think my brother made some mashed potatoes with butter and cheese in them, and there were some beans and some cheese on them and I was like, fuck it. That looks good, man. What a mistake. After a month of eating completely clean, having that, I wanted to die. So first of all, I got the sweats, which sucked. Second of all, worst stomach ache, ever bloated, bloated third of all headache. It was terrible.

Speaker 2 (01:30:34):

Yeah, exactly. It's just such an indicator. It's like it tastes good and you love the instant sort of return on investment there, but you quickly realize how shitty of an investment it is when you start to feel the effects of that stuff digesting. Ah, man, it's horrible.

Speaker 1 (01:30:52):

Yeah. The thing is you develop a tolerance for it. If you've been eating that way all your life, you don't notice it, but the moment you stop and you go back to it, holy shit. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:31:04):

Yeah. Brutal.

Speaker 1 (01:31:05):

So the thing is for me, how to keep this up when travel resumes. So I'm already thinking about that because I'm not interested in eating great here and then going on the road and then having those side effects and being laid out for a day from just eating that crap.

Speaker 2 (01:31:26):

Yeah, it is a challenge. I mean, that's something that I've had to try to get really good at, but you can certainly, I mean, you know this, you can find something healthy pretty much anywhere you go,

Speaker 1 (01:31:37):

You can.

Speaker 2 (01:31:38):

And a lot of it is to planning the right way. I was going to ask you, when you were talking about the stuff you're eating, do you eat nuts?

Speaker 1 (01:31:45):

Yes. Pistachios and walnuts primarily.

Speaker 2 (01:31:49):

Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:31:50):

Unsalted

Speaker 2 (01:31:51):

Both. Very good for you specifically, the walnuts are great for lowering blood pressure as well

Speaker 1 (01:31:56):

And flaxseed, which counts.

Speaker 2 (01:31:58):

Yeah, it does. Yeah. Yeah. I recently gotten into Brazil nuts and peli nuts.

Speaker 1 (01:32:04):

Yes, Brazil nuts. I've heard that even having them once a month makes a difference.

Speaker 2 (01:32:11):

Yeah, they're great for you. They're really good sources of fat, and it's the type of fat that really is good for brain health. Our brains are made up of a lot of fat. If I am snacking or feel the craving to eat something, I've trained myself, rather than go to sweets or chips or crap, I'll grab a handful of nuts or a scoop of nut butter. I like almond butter. There's this company that does fat bomb butter that's really good for you. So it's high levels of fat, but it's good fat that you need within your day that's good for your brain and good for energy. So anyway, I was just curious if that's part of your intake.

Speaker 1 (01:32:53):

Yes, I definitely do include nuts in the diet for those reasons. And also because I'm trying to retrain myself for when I get the impulse to have something bad, I immediately do something good. Now, sometimes it's doing a set of pushups or something, get an impulse to order a pizza, which I'm not going to do, but the impulses still happen. My brain still wants that shit, and I'm not going to do it because of COVID and I'm not going to do it on this plan, but I don't want to be having those impulses anymore. I want to retrain myself completely. So whenever they happen, I immediately do something positive, have an apple, have some nuts, do some pushups, and theory being that anytime I get a bad impulse, I'll just be conditioned to do something positive and then having that makes it go away. I've noticed.

Speaker 2 (01:33:44):

Yeah, it does. I drink a lot of liquids during those moments. One because it can make you full. If you're feeling a craving or something, have a big glass of water, it'll fill you up. But two, with all the shit that we're both doing, it takes a lot of energy to digest, and our bodies process liquids so much faster and easier than they do solids. So if we can fill our bodies with liquid during those times and we don't actually need the sustenance of food, then we're going to feel lighter. We're going to be able to move better, we're going to have better results to all of these mental and physical practices as well.

Speaker 1 (01:34:19):

Absolutely. Also, I've noticed that food fucks with my ability to think, even if it's like a salad and half a cup of beans immediately afterwards, my brain has slowed down and now I am so keenly aware of that now that I try to save most solids for later when I don't have to use my brain. So the last element of all this, so I know you got to go soon and this should be covered, is I am doing an intermittent fasting regimen.

Speaker 2 (01:34:53):

Yeah, me too. I haven't eaten yet.

Speaker 1 (01:34:55):

Yeah, neither have I. How long do you do yours for?

Speaker 2 (01:34:59):

Depends on the day, but today it'll probably be between 17th to 18 hours.

Speaker 1 (01:35:04):

Nice. Very nice.

Speaker 2 (01:35:05):

I think I finished eating last night at like nine, maybe I had my last bite of something, so it'll be 18 today. I probably won't eat until three o'clock. So just about 18 hours or so.

Speaker 1 (01:35:16):

Do you find that working out interferes with that at all?

Speaker 2 (01:35:20):

No.

Speaker 1 (01:35:20):

Well, hunger wise or energy wise, it depends

Speaker 2 (01:35:23):

On the workout.

Speaker 1 (01:35:23):

Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:35:24):

Yeah, it depends on the workout. With my current schedule, I typically do my workouts later in the day after I've eaten something, so I'll eat at three. Let's say I'll do my workout around four or four 30.

Speaker 1 (01:35:36):

Same here. Exactly that. This is why I do the P 90 X at night.

Speaker 2 (01:35:40):

Yeah, you need the calories. You need the energy, unless you're going to do it right when you wake up, but that's

Speaker 1 (01:35:46):

No, but then I'll need to eat right after.

Speaker 2 (01:35:48):

Exactly. It's very hard to do that.

Speaker 1 (01:35:50):

Yeah, I can't do P 90 X and then go four hours without eating. That is not going to work. I can do an hour of cardio though and not eat.

Speaker 2 (01:35:59):

It's better to do the cardio on an empty stomach. If I'm going to do the bike or battle ropes or even 200 burpees, I'd prefer to do that fasted on an empty stomach.

Speaker 1 (01:36:11):

Same here.

Speaker 2 (01:36:11):

But yeah, if I'm going to do a heavy kettlebell routine or something like that, or lifting weights or anything where it's a serious expenditure of energy, I like to have good food in my stomach. So for example, when I do eat, I'll make a bowl with a little bit of brow rice at the bottom, avocado eggs, any vegetables that are leftover from dinner last night, I'll throw in there. The worst thing I'll put on it is some hot sauce and that's it.

Speaker 1 (01:36:38):

Oh man, risky. Really walking the line there.

Speaker 2 (01:36:42):

Nah, I ate a lot of pepper. I ate a lot of jalapenos. I ate a lot of really spicy stuff. I just enjoy it. And there's health benefits to that as well. That's what I'll break my fast with and I try not to overdo it. You don't want to feel like weighted down,

Speaker 1 (01:36:56):

Which will happen,

Speaker 2 (01:36:58):

But that'll be my biggest meal. And then for dinner it's something different, but we try to eat really healthy, normal dinner during this whole experience that my wife is a great cook. The other night she did a lean ground beef burger patty, like 90 10 in terms of the fat content. We'll do that. We'll put it over a little bit of brown rice with usually it's like a vegetable medley of cauliflower, onions, Brussels sprouts and maybe broccoli or something, right? Yeah. And that's it. And it's just all whole food. There's no refined carbohydrates, no refined sugar, no extra salt.

Speaker 1 (01:37:36):

That's great.

Speaker 2 (01:37:36):

No crap. The only bad stuff on any of this is if you put sauce on it and even sriracha. Sriracha is okay, it's not going to kill you, but it's still got extra sodium and it's still got

Speaker 1 (01:37:47):

Sugar. Dude, I have no salad dressing, no sauce, nothing. And at first it was really tough, but when I have a salad now,

Speaker 2 (01:37:55):

Oh, you get to taste it, right?

Speaker 1 (01:37:57):

Yeah. There's nothing on it. And then the beans or something sodium free, and at first I was like, holy shit, this sucks. I don't feel that way anymore. The intermittent fasting man, I know that it's a trendy thing, but anytime that I've been in the best shape of my life and have been successfully managing weight and feeling good, I have done that. It just wasn't a thing yet. And there's so much good that comes out of it now. I get it. If you're hypoglycemic or you're like, Finn, it won't work because like Finn or Joel, the moment that they don't eat, their brain starts malfunctioning. I'm not like that. My brain malfunctions when I eat. So the intermittent fasting works great, and I have heard now, I don't know this is true, that if you do extended fasts, it's not compatible with keeping your immune system strong in these times. So I'm not doing the 36 hour or the 58 hour fasts, but I was doing those last year and I love them. The thing that they say about your hunger going away is true once you get past those first 36 hours. I don't know how long you've done it for, but something happens where I don't know, your energy comes back and you don't need the food. It's craziness.

Speaker 2 (01:39:17):

Yeah, it's definitely not ideal during this time. To your point, it's not good for your immune system in a situation like this to be deprived of nutrients. It's just not good. So yeah, don't do that. But it's funny, I don't know if you follow this person, but I'm a fan of another doctor Peter Attia.

Speaker 1 (01:39:33):

Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:39:34):

I love him. He kind of brought back this whole thing from Sunday night to Monday night is the only major fast he does, aside from maybe 12 to 18 hours on a daily basis, but he'll finish dinner at six or 7:00 PM on Sunday and he will fast through Monday night or Monday dinner. That's the extent of his fast during this time. And this is a guy who, as you know, does seven day fasts normally, but again, if anybody listening, they want to go check it out. He's been very vocal about the importance of likely that it's better to not do extended fasts during this time because it could be a detriment to your immune system.

Speaker 1 (01:40:13):

I'll listen to him. I remember what he said was that the benefits from these extended fasts happen after. So those immune benefits, everybody just talking about happen after, but during the extended fast, you're susceptible. You do not want to be susceptible right now, so just don't do it. But 16 hours, 18 hours, no problem.

Speaker 2 (01:40:32):

Totally. We don't need to be eating all day for damn sure.

Speaker 1 (01:40:35):

Hydrating. That's a different story.

Speaker 2 (01:40:37):

Yeah, hydrating. Absolutely. Yeah. It's funny you mentioned the water thing. So first off, when I take my cold shower, one of the things I'm doing is literally just standing under the cold faucet and drinking the water. I drink a lot of cold water during,

Speaker 1 (01:40:50):

You must have clean water there.

Speaker 2 (01:40:52):

We do clean water here. So I drink the water here and then once I go downstairs while making my coffee, while the water's heating up, I'll have two big full glasses of water. And that's why I need a good hour to make sure I purge the system before I go do my breathing.

Speaker 1 (01:41:09):

Makes sense.

Speaker 2 (01:41:10):

It's a cool process, man. But all this stuff to kind of bring it back is this to me isn't just wartime material. This is stuff I'm going to do now as part of my routine on a daily basis no matter where I am and what's going on in the world.

Speaker 1 (01:41:26):

Same here.

Speaker 2 (01:41:27):

I've thought about how I can work this into my day on tour into a normal day and man, there's plenty of time for it.

Speaker 1 (01:41:34):

Totally, totally.

Speaker 2 (01:41:35):

And there's no shortage of cold showers on the road either. That's

Speaker 1 (01:41:38):

Another great point. Especially in Europe.

Speaker 2 (01:41:39):

Yeah. Oh yeah. Especially in Europe. But I mean, there's plenty of time to do this stuff, and maybe I'm not doing the full extent, but there's definitely time to do the minimal viable dose of all of these things.

Speaker 1 (01:41:51):

Yes, there's a maintenance level you can sustain. I've been thinking about this too, and it's like when I start thinking about how to sustain it on the road, I'm like, why didn't I just do this already? But I think it's because it had to be established as habit and lifestyle, and then once it is habit and lifestyle, then you just adopt it to whatever you're going through. But building it into lifestyle and habit is really hard when you're in constant flux.

Speaker 2 (01:42:17):

Funny enough, I don't even have a drum set set up where I'm living right now. So when people are like, oh, you're a drummer, it's like not for the past few weeks, I'm not.

Speaker 1 (01:42:26):

You'll be fine.

Speaker 2 (01:42:27):

I'm not worried about it, but I am excited for the new house. I'll have all my toys, I'll have the drums, I'll have the sauna. That is the one thing I wanted to tell you. The other thing that I ordered along with the barrel sauna is an ice barrel.

Speaker 1 (01:42:39):

Oh shit. Well, I got an ice shirt.

Speaker 2 (01:42:42):

So yeah, those things are cool too. And that's one other thing I've been doing is I've been doing ice baths.

Speaker 1 (01:42:48):

Okay, so you are well into this.

Speaker 2 (01:42:51):

I'm well into this to the point where it's funny, man. The other day I emptied out the freezer of all the ice we had and I put it in the bathtub, which was filled up with all the cold water, and I get in it and the ice starts to melt because of my body heat. And I'm sitting there and I time myself for 10 minutes to sit in this quote ice bath, and I was just like, man, this is not enough ice. This is nowhere near enough ice for what I now have graduated to. So I ordered the ice barrel, which is just literally a barrel that you fill with water and you fill with ice and it's insulated to stay cold and you just get it.

Speaker 1 (01:43:34):

Where'd you get the ice? It takes a lot of ice.

Speaker 2 (01:43:37):

Oh, so hold on. So here, this is the kicker. So I haven't ordered it yet and I haven't received the icebar yet. That's going to be for the new house, but I'm in the process of deciding which commercial ice machine I'm going to have in my new house. I'm going to literally, so I've looked on some sites of the top 10 home slash commercial ice machines that can produce enough ice, and I need 30 to 40 probably pounds of ice a day is what I've deduced. So I'm actually going to buy an ice machine that I can leave plugged in that every day I can scoop out, I can fill the ice barrel with and then I get it.

Speaker 1 (01:44:15):

Hotel style.

Speaker 2 (01:44:16):

Exactly. Yeah. It won't be that big, but yeah, so I'm going to have the sauna. I'm going to have the ice barrel, and I'm going to have the ice machine so that I can make sure that I'm into it. And the goal is to, rather than jump into the cold showers in the morning, I'm going to wake up, I'm going to go outside on the deck and I'm going to get in that ice barrel first day.

Speaker 1 (01:44:37):

Fuck. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:44:38):

That's the goal. So that's what I'm looking forward to. All my new fun toys. I don't give a shit about cars. I don't give a shit about video games. I just want to get in the ice and have a good time,

Speaker 1 (01:44:48):

Man, I don't care about that stuff either. This is the stuff I'm into right now. That's very cool. I've always had the dream of being able to be weathered enough to handle the ice bath situation. I'm not there yet.

Speaker 2 (01:45:01):

You will. You'll do it. I really challenge myself. Last thing I'll tell you last story is my wife and her family have a beach house in Ocean City, Maryland. We went down there just to kind of get away for about a week, about a week and a half ago. It was cold again in the forties, and the ocean definitely hasn't warmed up yet, but I thought to myself, you know what? Fuck it. Yeah. If I can't do this, then I'm just, I'll talk. And I was posting stories of it because my wife was filming me from the deck, terrified that I was going to get swept up or I was going to freeze up. But man, it was awesome. I did plunges into the ocean every day. The first day I was able to do two and a half minutes. Next day I was able to do five by the end. I was doing 10 minutes in the ocean each day. It was a good experience and talk about meditating and the focus it requires, it's freezing cold and you're in the ocean and you can't turn your back on it, and you got to be able to pay attention to the weight.

Speaker 1 (01:46:04):

Oh yeah. She could die.

Speaker 2 (01:46:06):

Yeah. It was a full on sensory, physical and mental experience. It just got me excited for the next step, which is the true on true full on ice baths.

Speaker 1 (01:46:16):

Have you ever read the book? Can't Hurt Me by David Goggins?

Speaker 2 (01:46:20):

No, I haven't read his book. There's a couple others I've read that are in that same vein, however, I haven't read his.

Speaker 1 (01:46:26):

Okay. I've read a bunch of these ex-Navy seal books. His is not like the others. I highly recommend it and I don't recommend many books. If you're into pushing yourself, I think you'll love this book. But there's a long section about the training that's described in a way that I've never heard. He is a savage beast, but what he was talking about was a lot of the surf torture where they would just sit there for 18 hours straight just in the surf, dealing with the cold and the waves, hitting them in the face for all night long. Holy shit.

Speaker 2 (01:47:08):

It's hard.

Speaker 1 (01:47:09):

You should read it. You want to see what people are capable of.

Speaker 2 (01:47:12):

Well, right, dude, I always think of him when I'm working out or in a situation like being in the water because I've listened to a lot of his podcasts. I follow him and I know what he's about, which is that we are way more capable than we think to accomplish crazy things, and we have to fight against the fight or flight conditioning and essentially create what they call the wedge between the conditioning and what you can cognitively and consciously say, I can do more. So you can do more reps, you can stay in for longer. Yeah, I'm way into that. So I'll check out that book.

Speaker 1 (01:47:53):

Trust me, I normally don't buy the books from these dudes I follow for some reason, but something about him and the name of the book can't hurt me. It's just like, it's beast, dude. I bet you there's something cool and I read it in one night. It's fucking awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:48:09):

I'll get it. I'll buy it right now. His marathon stories are insane.

Speaker 1 (01:48:13):

Actually get the audio book version because the audio book version has a commentary on it. So him and the writer, they'll read the chapter and then they'll talk about it like podcast style. So it's not like a normal audiobook, but it goes a lot deeper than if you just read it. I highly recommend it.

Speaker 2 (01:48:33):

Okay, cool. Yeah, I'll check it out. One that I just finished reading is called What Doesn't Kill Us? It has to do with these sort of extreme athletes or people like Wim Hoff, Laird Hamilton, a number of others that push themselves beyond that wedge. That is what it's about. So I'm inspired by it. It's like I want to know what I'm capable of in a safe way. I want to be able to stay in the ocean for 20 minutes next time. I want to be able to do it after that for 30 minutes after that.

Speaker 1 (01:49:03):

Maybe not 18 hours,

Speaker 2 (01:49:04):

But it's like my wife's tendency was, she was so worried that in two minutes I'm going to freeze up, my arms are going to freeze, I'm going to drown. It's like, no way. That's not going to happen. If anything, you're more turned on and more activated to be aware of what is going to happen to you and when that moment of fight or flight is going to kick in and whether or not you can stay longer or if it actually is time, which is again, goes back to mindfulness. Being aware of what's happening to you in a stressful state and being able to make a decision of, can I withstand this more or do I need to listen to my body at this point? And you get better and better at doing that over time. Absolutely. It's dumb to be irresponsible with it. That's not cool to be irresponsible, but if you can do it responsibly, it's a really great way to find immense personal achievement that lasts for a long time, inspires you for a long time. So

Speaker 1 (01:50:02):

I forget who said this, but I really, really do agree with it. Maybe it was Gary V, I'm not sure, but the meaning of life is progress. When I started thinking about it, I was like, I think he's right. Anytime I'm happy is when I have that feeling of not the actual achievement. I don't care about X amount of sales or something like that. I mean, I do, but I don't.

Speaker 2 (01:50:29):

It's fleeting. It's like, okay, you're onto the next thing.

Speaker 1 (01:50:32):

Yeah. When I got my nice car, it was like, cool, and then I didn't give a fuck five minutes later. It's the feeling of progress that's truly fulfilling.

Speaker 2 (01:50:43):

Yeah. I love my car and it's fun to do shit with. It's fun to mod certain aspects and take pictures and it's like a fun little toy, but the fulfillment that I get from that pales in comparison to being able to sit through 60 minutes in a hot sauna and actually push yourself to do that. When you want to get out at the 35 minute mark or 20 minute mark, it's the feeling of pushing yourself to stay in the shower for 11 minutes instead of 10.

Speaker 1 (01:51:16):

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:51:17):

It's those things that when I'm done, I'm like, oh yeah, I'll do a dance. I'm so happy that I accomplished that next level. So I don't know. What's cool is that all of these things can be done without any material possessions for the most part. Correct. And it might not be cold, it might not be sauna, but it could be pushups or it could be breath work or meditation, which all allow you to be able to accomplish or reach that same kind of feeling and result.

Speaker 1 (01:51:49):

Yeah. If you can't afford the personal sauna, don't worry. There's a variation of all this stuff that you can do. It's interesting. This type of fulfillment is not something you can buy your way into. It's all in your choices and what you dedicate yourself to. And the beauty of it is that you don't really need anything for it. Now is the perfect time to develop those habits just to bring this full circle.

Speaker 2 (01:52:17):

So just stay safe everybody, and wash your hands and be smart and just avoid the COVID.

Speaker 1 (01:52:24):

Yeah. You don't want that shit.

Speaker 2 (01:52:27):

No. And dude, I had no idea that you had had H one N one. I can't imagine. And really, I mean, what you went through is the same exact progression of symptoms and experiences that people with this disease are experiencing.

Speaker 1 (01:52:42):

Yeah, dude, I was in the hospital for like 11 days.

Speaker 2 (01:52:45):

Oh my God, man. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:52:46):

Quarantined where they were dealing with me with the hazmat suits. And

Speaker 2 (01:52:51):

Were you more overweight at that time?

Speaker 1 (01:52:53):

Less.

Speaker 2 (01:52:54):

Okay. Got it

Speaker 1 (01:52:55):

Mean. I've lost a ton now, but I was definitely in pretty good shape. I was on tour

Speaker 2 (01:53:02):

And stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:53:03):

I was 29. This sedentary lifestyle destroyed me. So I'm actually getting back to how I was. But at that point in time, I was maybe 20 pounds over weight or something. I was fine, and I was in good shape,

Speaker 2 (01:53:18):

And that could have been the thing that actually

Speaker 1 (01:53:20):

Saved me.

Speaker 2 (01:53:21):

Saved your life, right? Yes. Which is all the more reason why. It's another reason why to just focus on health and wellness, because, and this is what I thought about, right? This is another reason. If you need a reason why to do this shit every day, even outside of this scenario, you never know when the next pandemic's going to hit. And you don't want to be the person that's like, oh shit, I had all this time to get healthy and get my act together and get in shape, and

Speaker 1 (01:53:48):

Now I'm dead.

Speaker 2 (01:53:49):

I'm high risk.

(01:53:51):

And I say that because I let myself slip over the past, probably year or so to some degree, having no idea like everybody else, that this situation would occur. And I was kicking myself. I was like, dude, I should have eaten better before. I should have thought about my blood pressure more seriously before. I should have done all these things before and it would've lowered the level of anxiety that I faced. So it's good to do it no matter what, but if you need a reason, realize that a pandemic is very possible again at some point. And this thing isn't going to be over anytime soon.

Speaker 1 (01:54:23):

No. In fact, they predict the worst second wave later this year.

Speaker 2 (01:54:28):

Right, exactly. So in words, similar to David Goggins, this is fucking war. This is to get ready for battle motherfucker and go figure out what you can work into your routine that gives you that edge, because that is going to be the difference between somebody who approaches this situation better, smarter, stronger, and with less stress than others out there or prepared.

Speaker 1 (01:54:53):

I just want to reiterate, I realized some of the things that we've talked about require financial means, and we're in fortunate positions, but beachbody.com is $9 a month. Pushups are free. Cold showers, shit's free breathing, breathing meditation. Yeah. The core of this stuff, you can just do. You don't need to buy an elliptical like I did. All that matters is that you understand the importance and you do

Speaker 2 (01:55:23):

It. Yeah. Burpees are free.

Speaker 1 (01:55:24):

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:55:25):

And they're hard as

Speaker 1 (01:55:26):

Fuck, and they suck. Well, thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:55:29):

Thank you for having me on, man. I appreciate

Speaker 1 (01:55:30):

It, dude. It's been a pleasure as always. It was great to catch up with you too.

Speaker 2 (01:55:35):

Yeah, likewise. We should do it more often for sure,

Speaker 1 (01:55:37):

Man. That's the beautiful thing about podcasting. There's no other time that I get to catch up with friends I haven't talked to in ages and actually talk to them for two and a half hours or something.

Speaker 2 (01:55:47):

Who does that? Right?

Speaker 1 (01:55:48):

I don't, except for on podcasts. It's one of my ways of reconnecting with people. So in addition to helping the business.

Speaker 2 (01:55:57):

Yeah, absolutely. Cool, man.

Speaker 1 (01:55:58):

Awesome. Okay, then another URM podcast episode in the bag. Please remember to share our episodes with your friends, as well as post them to your Facebook, Instagram, or any social media you use. Please tag me at al Levi URM audio. And of course, please tag my guests as well. Till next time, happy mixing. You've been listening to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast. To ask us questions, make suggestions and interact, visit URM Academy and press the podcast link today.