Coach. Podcaster. COACHCASTER.

Mike Matthews is the Founder and CEO at Legion Athletics, Inc., a company which offers all-natural, science-based supplements, including pre-workout, post-workout, fat burners, protein powder, multivitamins, and more.

Mike is also the author of several bestselling health and fitness books, including Bigger Leaner Stronger: The Simple Science of Building the Ultimate Male Body and Thinner Leaner Stronger: The Simple Science of Building the Ultimate Female Body.

Chase and Mike do a deep dive into supplementation and how to navigate an industry that has unfortunately grown to be filled with misleading claims, half-truths, and outright lies that leave the average fitness guy or gal at a disadvantage when it comes to getting informed on what the right products for them are.

Listen in as Mike lists foundational supplements that nearly everyone would benefit from adding to their daily regimen. He shares common shady marketing tactics and gimmicks that many supplement companies use to promote subpar products.

Finally, Mike explains the secret to becoming the number one all-natural sports nutrition brand in the world and what sets Legion Athletics’ product line apart from all others.

Follow Mike @muscleforlifefitness

Follow Chase @chase_chewning

Key Highlights

• Since supplements are only supplementary to your nutrition, what should people really be focusing on to get the most ROI on their training when it comes to their nutrition?

• What supplements should be top priority for someone who is already following a healthy diet?

• How can you know for sure if you’re really getting what it says on the label?

• What should you be looking for in a protein powder?

• What does “naturally sweetened and flavored” actually mean?

• Mike explains what makes his superfood supplement, Genesis, different from all the rest.

Powerful Quotes by Mike Matthews

You don’t need supplements to do what you want to do; just so you know. Supplements are supplementary by definition. That is true of ours and anybody else’s; so, don’t believe that there is a magic pill, powder, or potion. It doesn’t exist.

If a company is using proprietary blends in any of their products, just move on. Find another company. Why use a proprietary blend? It’s just for bullshit. It’s to add a little bit of marketing pizzazz in the names.

If a company is selling a greens supplement as a replacement for, say, “22 servings of vegetables”, bullshit. Stay away from that company. They’re either ignorant, or they’re malevolent—they’re just lying.

I believe in treating people the way I want to be treated. I think that should apply in business as well, so, I try to treat consumers the way I want to be treated as a consumer.

Episode resources:

• Get Beyond Bigger Leaner Stronger 

• Get Bigger Leaner Stronger 

• Get Thinner Leaner Stronger

• Listen to Mike's podcast Muscle For Life 

• Listen to episode 292 with Mike, "Back to Training and Diet Basics" 

Ever Forward Radio is brought to you by Legion Athletics

Legion Athletics is the #1 brand of all-natural sports supplements in the world. We sell supplements based on sound science that are 100% transparent, 100% naturally sweetened and flavored, and contain no artificial food dyes or other unwanted chemicals.

Scientifically-Backed Doses and Ingredients

• Every ingredient in our supplements is backed by peer-reviewed scientific research and is included at clinically effective levels.

• That means the ingredients and doses in our supplements are based on published scientific research demonstrating real benefits, not the restrictions of razor-thin production budgets or gluttonous profit margins.

100% Formula Transparency

• All our supplements are 100% transparent, meaning you know exactly what you’re putting into your body.

• We disclose the exact amount and form of each ingredient in all our supplements and never use proprietary blends.

100% Money-Back Guarantee and Free Shipping

• Customers either love our stuff or they get their money back. Period. No forms to fill out or hoops to jump through. That’s just how confident we are in our products.

• Free shipping within the USA and free shipping internationally on orders over $99

Click here to save 20% off your first purchase with code EVERFORWARD!

Interview transcript:

Chase

Yeah, so it's pulling up, like I said, some extra tabs to, to reference items and I wanted to make sure I got the episode number right from the last one you were on man. Exactly one year ago today, really? March 9th 2020. Well, it came out. It's when the episode went live. But I was back in I was back in Virginia, I think was like February, late January, February of 2020. And we caught up there at the old HQ in Vienna. And yeah, exactly one year ago today went live Episode 292 Back to Basics, man, here we are. 

Mike

synchronicity. That's wild. And in fact, the talk now supplement basics.

Chase

 Yeah, yeah, that's what I was talking to the team over there at Legion I was, you know, here's some great topics. And some things we want to kind of go over last time Mike and I really dove deep into the training fundamentals and training basics. Because it was right on the cusp of when this guy was coming out, you know, beyond bigger, leaner, stronger. And I was like, Yeah, let's go. Let's go the other route. You know, what are the what's the other big training principle when it comes to making any kind of change? And it's, it's the nutrition, it's the supplementation, so I guess, happy podcast anniversary, first of all, man. 

Mike

Yeah, man. Thanks for having me back. Appreciate it. Looking forward to the reciprocation. You're going to come back on my show, too. 

Chase

Yeah, that's right. You guys, I love your show. You guys dive into like the thick of it for anybody that wants to nerd out but just also very, very easily applicable ways to move the needle in your in your weight loss journey, your fitness journey, whatever you're doing.

Mike

Thanks, man. Yeah, I appreciate it. That's, that's what I'm going for. I like to get into the details. But I also like to stick with, like, try to make it as simple and practical as possible, because that's just the kind of information that I personally look for. So it's simple self-serving, but at least there are people out there who like it, too.

Chase

If you make it for yourself, there's got to be enough people out there like you as well. 

Mike

Yeah. That's how a lot of these come about is things like I wonder about that. And then look into it, learn about it. And then sometimes I learned things I can incorporate into my own regimen. Sometimes I learned things that are not worth incorporating. But then I can just share that information. So there's some efficiency there, I guess

Chase

And speaking of not worth incorporating, that's kind of where I would really love to start, you know, this episode is going to really focus on supplementation, a lot of myths, half-truths, whole lies, you know, just ways for the consumer wave away for the fitness goer, to really look at something in their nutrition in their supplementation. So yes, I need this. No, I don't. What am I being sold? What am I not? What is actually in here? But before they even get to that point, supplements are made to supplement a diet of weight training of physical activity of exercise, and proper nutrition. So before we even talk about supplements, man, like, what should people really be focusing on to get the most ROI in their training when it comes to their nutrition? 

Mike

Well, I mean, you said it right supplements are supplementary, by definition they are something that you can add to an existing training and, and diet program that's working. But if you don't have a training or diet program that are working, then supplements aren't going to do much for you. And if we were to envision the most important aspects of nutrition as a pyramid, supplementation would be probably toward the top. I mean, you could you could maybe say nutrient timing is a bit less important than the because like we're building a pyramid. Alright, we started with foundation, we start with energy balance, and then we talk about macronutrient balance and then we talk about food choices and making sure that you're eating enough nutritious foods. And those are the most important aspects of nutrition, whether we're talking body composition, or just health and wellbeing. And if you stopped there, and you didn't bother with supplementation, you didn't bother with nutrient timing, you didn't bother with playing around with meal composition, or trying to even really micromanage the fruits and vegetables that you're eating, which that would come into the food choices kind of straight on, which would be alright, let's make sure that you are getting your one to two servings of fruit per day, three to five servings of vegetables per day, probably one serving of whole grains is smart to throw in there as well and if you just want some bonus points, throw in some leafy greens, otherwise, just you know, whatever you feel like eating day to day so long as it's a fruit, it's a vegetable, it's a whole grain you're going to do well with that right? And so if you just stopped there, you're going to do very well. You will be able to achieve your fitness goals. You will be able to achieve your health goals, you will reduce the risk of disease and dysfunction. You don't need really anything higher up on that pyramid, which, which would include supplementation. That said, I would say that if you have the budget, and you have the inclination, I do think there are some supplements that are worth considering. Because they either add convenience, like in the case of a protein powder, primarily, it just adds convenience. I personally would rather when it comes 3pm, I would rather mix up a couple scoops of protein powder and just drink it down then like eat another chicken breast. But, but that's me, some people, they don't mind it, and they actually maybe they wouldn't want to eat the third chicken breast of the day, but they're happy to have some, that just gets old and even someone like me with the palate of a Rottweiler eventually, you know, eventually all I could do without the, the chicken tender, the chicken tenderloin again, so, so there's convenience, there is in some cases performance like creatine and beta alanine and citrulline malate, not major players, they're not going to make a huge difference in your results. But individually, they can make a small difference. And if you can add up enough small differences, it can be a, I would call it slightly significant difference. Again, I don't want to oversell any of this, because that's just the reality. And then we move over into the realm of health, in which case, I would actually say that's where I think the stronger argument for supplementation is, as opposed to body composition. Body composition sells a lot. You can sell a lot of pre workout, you can sell a lot of muscle build 

Chase

They see the end result and they think this is actually what got them there. 

Mike

Yeah, yeah. And when I understand when you're wanting to gain muscle, when you're wanting to get stronger when you're wanting to lose fat those are very tangible goals. And you look in the mirror, and you can see whether you're making progress or not. And that is at least 50% of why any of us do any of this anyway. And I absolutely at least 50% of the reason I'm in the gym every day is to look a certain way. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. So you can sell a lot of that stuff. But if we if we get into I think more of the science of supplementation, I would say you can probably make a stronger argument for things that are great for your health that are difficult to get through your diet, or in some cases impossible, because you're just not going to eat the stuff. And we could start with something simple like, oh, an omega three fatty acid, like a fish oil supplement, unless you're eating several servings of fatty fish or a lot of ALA, which would be the plant based source of omega threes, and you have to eat a fair amount because of the absorption issues, you are probably not getting enough omega threes in your diet and if you bump those up, you can notice I mean it can benefit your physical and mental health and performance in different ways, it can impact muscle building, it can impact fat burning it can it can cause quite a few beneficial effects in the body.

Chase

So let's expand on that real quick before we kind of get into like the training supplement stuff. Supplements for first of all, great job we hit the head and hit the nail on the head on kind of just talking about why to supplement. Now that's keeping that kind of overall health and wellness person in mind of just I want to I want to feel good I want to just perform my best for daily living and you know, I'm generally active, certain things like a fish oil, certain things like focusing on micronutrients, focusing on your joint health, what things should someone be looking for and targeting first outside of their diet for that kind of general wellness blanket so to speak?

Mike

Yeah, so a fish oil. Certainly. Or you can go with a plant based omega three supplement, most people are fine with just taking a fish oil, I would say that is going to be the most efficient way to get the EPA and DHA molecules that we specifically want. And a multivitamin, I think it depends on the quality of the multivitamin and that can be all over the place, depending on the company and the formulation depending on how much money they're willing to spend on it. For example, Legions multivitamin is I actually have to we've been hammering our manufacturers to give us better prices, but I believe it's probably around $13 to $14 a bottle right now for us and then you have to add some extra expensive so it probably cost me $16 a bottle to send, to produce and get the multivitamin to a customer right. And to put that in perspective, a lot of the multivitamins that you see on the shelf at your local supplement store or on the virtual shelf over at Amazon they cost maybe about $6 a bottle on average. Half. And the reason is, is a lot of them, if you look at the formulations, they're just vitamins and minerals, and that it's either just that, or it's that plus of a couple of other cheap ingredients, maybe some amino acids and tiny amounts of a couple herbs and it's really just to pad the label and make it look like it's better than it is. 

Chase

You say that, in some of these products, such as a multivitamin. More is not always better, more could just be more for the sake of more. And when you throw a lot of sciency words on a label that could be misleading to the consumer of Oh, this is clearly the better choice. Right? 

Mike

Totally. And that that is a common ploy with many types of supplements is the kitchen sink approach, just make it make it a really long label list, and sometimes even includes some proprietary blends, which we can talk about that; more companies are moving away from that. So maybe they don't use the proprietary blend, and they have a transparent formulate? Well, I mean, it is I shouldn't put it in scare quotes. It's a transparent formulation. But the problem is, the ingredients either are just not good like there's no good scientific evidence that they do anything or the amounts are not good, the ingredients could be good, but maybe it has 1/5 or 1/10 of what you would need to actually get benefits. And so in the case of the multivitamin take Legions, one of the one of the ways that you can spot a potentially good multivitamin from one that is potentially not good it's just how many pills do you have to take per day? If you only have to take one a day? You can't fit that much stuff in one pill you like 

Chase

I’ve heard that name before one a day. 

Mike

The one pill a day approaches is convenient and maybe you can find some that are two a day and many consumers, I would say less informed consumers not stupid, just less informed. And I was once one of these less informed consumers myself. They like the convenience of that. And we do hear from customers who either asked, Why is triumph are Legion or multivitamin over at Legion why is it eight pills per day? And so what you do is you split it up four in the morning and then for dinner is actually the better way to do it. Just in general, even if we just look at the vitamins and minerals as opposed to taking the entire dose in one sitting, you'll get more absorption by splitting it up. But the reason why it's eight a day is because of all the extras I don't we just recently upgraded the formulation. So I'm going to say it's probably between 12 and 14 additional ingredients. I don't know off the top of my head because it used to be 14 I believe it we might have dropped one. I don't remember the exact number now but it's over 10 additional ingredients. And, and sure, I could go down to 6 a day or even 4 a day, but I'd have to start pulling stuff out. That's it that there's no other way to do it. And, and fortunately enough people, they understand what they're getting and they also are like, Yeah, I don't love taking the four pills twice a day. But I like what I'm getting for it. 

Chase

Do you think the argument could be made? I mean, because look at the end of the day, you me the work that we're in the content that we create, we are in the business of helping people establish healthy habits, keep healthy habits, I guess, to play devil's advocate a little bit could the argument be made for someone who is ready, there at that readiness to change level of the one a day pill of taking one thing a day to seemingly make their lives better and maybe that could be a catalyst to put them on the path to making better changes, more changes, versus maybe taking four to eight pills or something else could be a barrier? Like how would you kind of go around that? 

Mike

Yeah, I would say though, if we're talking about that's obviously the kind of the beginning stage of someone's journey or kind of the mini habit or the tiny habit phase? At that point, I would actually rather have that person focus that energy or that bandwidth, so to speak, on just eating a little bit better, or exercising a little bit more consistently. I would say let's just leave supplementation out. And, let's get so let's say you're at one serving of vegetables per day. Let's bump that up to two. And it might be in the beginning. Let's not even worry about calories or macros, right? Let's just let's just get some more nutritious food into your diet and let's improve your relationship with food a little bit. Let's get you used to enjoying these more nutritious food. And then maybe we'll start subtracting a little bit of, quote unquote junk food. Not that you can't have sugar and relatively non nutritious foods, of course you can Chase

The person probably wants less of it in their diet in their body.

Mike

Right. Right. So I would rather I would rather just hold off on supplementation and if somebody okay for at the point where we're going to incorporate supplements, and eight a day is just a no go, then I would find something that is decent than that is okay. What is four a day workable? Alright, I'm sure there's a four day out there that's, that's okay. I don't know exactly what it would be. But I'm sure I could find that. And, and to your point, then, okay, if they're going on the four a day, and then they're like, you know, what's another four? Who cares? Then it could be appropriate to upgrade them because they will get more out of mine than they're going to get out of the four day. But yeah, I mean, that's a perfectly valid point, I think. And back to your original question, then. So multivitamin, and I think a multivitamin is a good multivitamin is worth taking regardless of how well you eat. 

Chase

I'm so glad you said that, because that was going to be a follow up question I had, and you just brought it up, you know, I think bar none, no matter what anyone is going through in their health, fitness, wellness journey, a multivitamin, I would recommend that to everybody, before I even maybe had like a console or sit down with them. Because no matter what we're eating these days, it just, you just don't know the true level of nutrition and potency in your foods unless you're growing them 100% yourself. I think 

Mike

And again, micromanaging, I'll be talking about specific, it's hard to get vitamin K, for example, in forms k one and K two, and it's hard to get enough vitamin D unless you are conscientiously spending time in the sun. Really, that's you or you're eating a lot of fortified foods. But if you're eating well, chances are you're not eating a lot of fortified foods, because you're probably not drinking a ton of milk or eating breakfast cereals, we may be a little bit here and there but not enough to get, let's say a baseline of 2000 I use a day of vitamin D. Same thing goes for depending on dietary preferences, calcium, if somebody eats a lot of plant foods, for example, it can be it can be difficult to get enough calcium, zinc can be an issue and particularly with women who tend to eat less meat. Iron is also a common issue with women, you can benefit from a high dose if we're talking about comparing it to the RDI of vitamin B 12. And some people report more energy. Some people don't notice a difference, but some people respond well to a higher dose of B 12. But you're not going to get that through food. So yeah, there are I think it's just you can think of it maybe as almost like a little bit of an insurance policy. And a good multivitamin that you just add on top of a good diet, and I practice what I preach. I mean, I take of course I'm going to take my own, but I eat very well, by anyone's standards, I follow the advice I've shared so far. I also do kind of micromanage my food to make sure that I get in my dark leafy greens to make sure that I get in cruciferous vegetables. I mean, I'm traveling right now. So I'm actually staying with my parents, which is funny. I haven't slept in this house since I left 20 years, or 18 or whatever it's been. It's funny to me, like 

Chase

wait, I don't have to sneak out at night now. I could just come and go as I please.

Mike

I do not have to sneak my girlfriend. And so it's funny, but so here I eat what my mom cooks but yeah, she'll cook whatever kind of vegetables and it's not it's not how I normally go about it because I'm just kind of over the top normally again, I'm eating garlic every day and it's raw for example for the allicin and I and my wife doesn't particularly like that. I buy her horses so you know it balances out. And so despite that I still take I still take my multivitamin because of the there are some again some vitamins and minerals that I want to make sure I'm getting enough of and then there are the extras that I'm just not going to be getting. And so multivitamin important. I would say vitamin D I touched on that. It depends. You know, if you're if you were taking my multivitamin that has 2000 I use in it, that's a good baseline. You may need to take more but you probably need to get blood tested to really confirm that to check your d3 levels. Right. And then you could you could work with a doctor who could tell you like, Oh yeah, 2000s not enough for you so we need to bump that up to five that would be the case for some people. But 2000 IUs is that's generally accepted as like the baseline you want to be getting 2000 IUs for adults at least. And after that, I would say it's probably worth getting a couple of body comp things if you're into fitness right like a protein powder and probably creatine, if you are training your muscles just because it's inexpensive, and most people respond to it, it's natural. Some people just don't. It just doesn't help them. 

Chase

the most clinically studied. 

Mike

Yeah, it's just why not right? You take five grams a day or you or you take a good post workout that has five grams in it. 

Chase

I mean, it's just, I mean, look at the research, it's going back for decades and decades. .

Mike

Right, right. So yeah, I'd say that's, that's, that's a good, good place to start. And you had mentioned joints and, I mean, now we I do feel like we're getting a little bit into the peripheral, if we're talking joints, and then yeah, sure, there are other things that you can take as well. Again, more for health than then performance. But I would say, in my opinion, a joint supplement is probably on par with a pre workout supplement like do you need it? No. But if it's well formulated, it'll probably make a difference in your joints acutely and chronically. Like in the case of Legions, that's one of the reasons that I just really liked that product is it's not it's not just for people who have joint problems. It's also for people who have healthy joints and want to keep them healthy. And a good pre workout probably will make at least a slight difference in your training help you train a little bit harder, and over time, that can mean better progress. 

Chase

absolutely, man. And one last thing I'll say on the multivitamin thing before we shift gears when you brought up you know, I forget the exact word you just said but you're talking about the ingredients in the profile panel, when you kind of get into like what that really means. I before coming over to Legion I was taking the same multivitamin every day for about 14-15 years they changed the formula I think like twice over that times timespan, but I love the company I love the research they put into it and I could absolutely feel the difference over the years. Not every year. But you know, every couple years I would I would do kind of like a 30 day off cycle just like really test myself and absolutely was noticeable and just general vitality, general energy. I could see it in you know, in my urine I would even sometimes I remember one year I did a test right before a blood panel. I was going for going in for physical and like the years leading up to that it was you know, vitamin D looked great. All these things look great. I went off entirely in their life. Some things dropped here. And then so I would go back and cycle which I think is a very good point to make for somebody, you know, be an n equals one, you know, know your body, get some basic labs. But then you know, like know how know what your baseline is, basically, and then go in and test it out. But you know, try if that was the first thing in like 14-15 years, man to sway me over. So um, you guys definitely the proof is in the pudding there. 

Mike

And you have curiosity have you noticed any differences that in your blood work? Have you gotten blood work yet and then and then just subjectively. 

Chase

So I haven't gotten blood work yet. I'm a being a bad patient this year, actually was supposed to. Last week, I was supposed to have multiple doctor's appointments and ended up just having to reschedule everything. So I am very excited to see because at this point now it will be I think four months, okay, three months, three solid months on with triumph there. And, and again, it was right around the same time period where I was phasing out of that, that one bringing in you know, Legion, and it's just you know, wow, I'm back. Just honestly, when you know how good you feel at a baseline and that goes away. And then it comes back. You're like no, no, no, no, I don't need to cycle this off again. Like I like feeling good for damn sure.

Mike

Yeah, yeah. No, I totally agree with that. I think of how important sleep is in that regard. I've that's something I've come to appreciate more as I've gotten older and I'm, you know, I'm no longer invincible. And yeah, well

Chase

welcome to your 30s. Well, I think this is a perfect time to transition into a big area where we can add some value for the listener here in the consumer, the person out there looking to do the work in the gym, their physical activity, their nutrition, and they're ready to make that decision. Like I want to add in some supplements, but what are these ingredients? What's effective? What's ineffective? What are these proprietary blends we’re talking about, like, how can I actually look at a label, whether it's Legion or anybody else and know like, I'm actually getting what it says a good dose that's going to do me, you know, do my body right? 

Mike

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's a bit tricky, to be honest, because some of it comes down to trusting the company. And so that means there's some due diligence there, as we're starting to look into who's behind it. Is there anybody even behind it or is it just a faceless kind of Amazon brand for example, there is one brand in particular, just for example, it's quite big on Amazon, that they, the people behind it are just marketers like they're not fitness people. They're completely out of shape. And so they're some of their products are okay. 

Chase

Beware the rise of the Amazon drop shipper. I mean, it's no, they don’t own a small businessman but you know yeah to your point the person behind the person running that that wouldn't be the person that I would want, you know to have

Mike

Unless they have like, Oh, well hold on, let me explain why you should take my supplements, you know what I mean? But in the case of this brand, I'm thinking of No, it's just, it's just marketing. That's all it is. Right. But I think what we can first start with is proprietary blends, I would say if a company is using proprietary blends in any of their products, just move on. That really that is that is my best advice. Just find another company. There are many, many supplement companies out there. And the reason I say that is we should probably first explain a proprietary blend is a blend of ingredients that when you look on the label, it's given a name. So it'd be like the muscle pump max, you know, and then it'll have a weight. So it'll say, you know, 1200 milligrams next to the blend, name. And then it'll list everything that's in the blend, but it won't tell you how much of each thing is in the blend. It'll just give a list and labeling standards. And this is not to say that, that all companies follow them because they don't but technically, they're supposed to list it with the first ingredient would be the greatest or the largest amount listed in weight and then the second would be the second most, but let's say it's a 1200 milligram blend and the first ingredient is maltodextrin, which is a cheap carb for example. And then the next ingredient is creatine, good ingredient. And as a consumer, you might look at that and go I don't really know what maltodextrin is. Oh, but creatine is good, right? What you don't know though, is the amounts it could be 1100 milligrams of molto and, you know, 100 milligrams of creatine and that's it. Let's just say this blend had two ingredients, right? 

Chase 

It's a very cost effective blend. 

Mike

Exactly. It's a tasty it's a tasty blend, because molto is just sweet, right? And 100 milligrams of creatine though, and this gets to this point of clinically effective doses, meaning a dose that was proven effective in clinical research, that's about five grams, you take about 5000 milligrams of creatine per day on like that, that's just your standard dose to really reap the benefits that the marketers are probably going to be referring to in their, in the, in their marketing, right, the studies that show that creatine works. And so why so, to, to that point, then why use a proprietary blend, it's just for bullshit. That's really the reason to use it. It's, it's to add a little bit of marketing pizzazz in the names, the names are often, you know, kind of sensational over the top bodybuilding type, you know, get super swole super shredded type stuff, right? 

Chase

Drink minotaur

Mike

And then to hide the doses of the individual ingredients. Because if you the consumer, let's say often these blends have a lot of ingredients because it looks impressive, right? It has like 10 ingredients. And as a consumer, it's easy to assume Oh, well, I mean, shit has 10 ingredients, at least one or two of those have to be good, right? 

Chase

Getting my money, you know? 

Mike

Yeah, yeah, reasonable assumption, right? In many things in life more is just better, right? Not always, but sometimes it is. And so what consumers don't realize though, is of course, it's the amounts that matter, not just the ingredients themselves. But if they were to see amounts, then they might be a little bit suspicious here to see three milligrams of reishi mushroom or one of these other mushrooms that are popular, you might wonder like three milligrams, milligrams, that's all that's a very small amount. I'm not sure I'm not sure that's going to do much of anything, right. So you use the proprietary blend to hide that. So any company that is using a proprietary blend, there may be the I can't say they're all full of shit, but most of them are full of shit. And again, as a consumer, I don't think it's worth trying to go any further figuring out Wait, wait, is this one actually full of shit or not? 

Chase

Sorry, man. I got this random image in my head. Did you ever watch the show on History Channel Ancient Aliens I've seen some of it. Giorgio. Yeah, the hair guy. He's like, I'm not saying it's aliens, but it's alias. So basically, like you're saying that all proprietary blends are aliens. 

Mike

Correct. Correct. We are originally formulated by ancient astronauts. Yes, correct. So yeah, yeah, the first proprietary blend goes back to sumur 1000 BC, it was there at Stonehenge,

Chase

actually, this proprietary blend is the magic dust that enabled Stonehenge to assimilate you know, on its own.

Mike

Correct, correct this, this is the legendary Starfire nectar of the gods that they that they drank to live forever. Legionathletics.com use my use my coupon code. 

Chase

The thing is that there would be some guy or girl out there that would like, find that appealing. And they would want to just like grab ahold of the most secret of ancient sauces and blends and like, I don't need to know, I don't want to know, but just, you know, if it's attached to this, this, I want to believe I want to believe. That's a whole other concept of you know, how, as on the consumer and someone who's on a realistic health and fitness journey, like you have to kind of detach yourself from other people's and results, just because you got you know, Mr. Olympia on this cover label of a proprietary blend of a supplement. I mean, that's, I mean, it's sells, and maybe he does use it, but is that what he took when he was at your point in the journey? Maybe, maybe not. You know, this is the whole point of do your do your again do your due diligence.

Mike

Especially if we're talking about muscle building anything? Like, how much of that intro workout you know, cellular swelling supplement has to do with his 21 inch guns. Is it that or is it the 10 the 10 grams of dedication that he's on.

Chase

But to your point, building muscle. Another thing I love about Legion I love about your you know, your work and you know, kind of just unfolding a lot of the half-truths and whole lies in the supplements industry is when it comes to protein powder I think that is one of the most tried and true if, if people are thinking supplements in the fitness industry, they're probably thinking protein powder. And what I love about you guys, now I've been kind of on more of a plant based kick the last almost year. And so for personal reasons. And also, I just noticed a subtle difference in my digestion, bloating a little bit, you know, when I switched to a vegan protein powder, and you guys have both, but I noticed a big difference as well. Like the same benefits the same basically the things that I didn't feel when I was on the vegan protein powder with your whey plus protein powder. And when I was diving more into it, I was really amazed that you know, you guys have gone through a lot in terms of the protein isolate the grass fed aspect, even down to like a single source from where all this this whey comes from. So when it comes to protein powder when it comes to these proprietary blends and stuff, can you kind of walk us through like someone's looking at a protein blend, like what is actually good for them? What should we be looking for and supplementing our diet for protein and or looking for you know, muscle hypertrophy here? 

Mike

Yeah, yeah. So, a couple of important things with a protein powder is you’re going to want it's okay if there's a protein blend, that's not necessarily bad, like our, our vegan protein is it's a blend of rice protein and pea protein. And we combine those two intentionally because they have complimentary amino acid profiles. One is strong or the other is weak and when you combine them together, their amino acid profile looks similar to whey like that combination is often referred to as the vegans whey. And so we created that that blend now it's not a proprietary blend, we don't give it a fancy name it is just blended protein. It's just half. And that's, I believe it's half. It was some time ago and we put that together and we haven't changed it because that's just the way to go with it. But regardless of protein blend is not quite the same necessarily as a proprietary blend, but the first ingredient should be a higher quality protein. So let's say if they're trying if the marketing is leading you to believe that it is a whey isolate. So if it's straight up claiming it's a whey isolate or calling out whey isolate in some way, and whereas whey isolate is not the first ingredient, let's say it's a concentrate, whey concentrate is the first ingredient, then one red flag because it's just misleading. Like when if you are in emphasizing the whey isolate, then you're trying to get people usually what they're what the marketers doing, they're trying to get people to believe that it is a 100% whey isolate, when it may not be right. So if you're looking at the label, and the first ingredient is whey isolate, then that's a good sign. Now, if it's a blend, and it also has whey concentrate, or maybe a milk protein, source of milk protein, like it could be, it could be milk isolate or milk concentrate. Again, that's not necessarily a red flag, it depends how it's being presented. So if it's just being presented as a whey protein, then that's okay. I would say any one of those three as the first ingredient is, is acceptable, whey isolate would be the highest quality, it's at least 80% protein by weight, the lactose has been removed, you're going to most people, especially those who have, I wouldn't even say so sensitive stomachs but who are who have had stomach issues with whey proteins in the past are going to do better with an isolate simply because first and foremost, the lactose is removed. And then there also are some just other elements of the protein fractions themselves and the milk that the whey protein came from. And in the case of you abroad, you had mentioned this in the case of Legion, we are currently working with all of our of our protein comes from small dairy farms in Ireland. And we're actually vetting it's a very similar setup, but they are in the Netherlands. And it's, I would say it's the both of them are like top tier, basically whey isolates. And we're checking out this this Netherland product, because it may allow us to bring the prices down a little bit and not lose anything in the way of quality. And because there are there are some we're getting the Irish protein through Glanbia and because of like import export, there are a couple things that have nothing to do with the whey protein itself. It's just several dollars more expensive

Chase

 Other things that just get passed on to you 

Mike

Exactly and so we're checking, we're checking out something that is very comparable, but it's all the all the farms are in the Netherlands. But the point is the reason why I originally chose that Irish protein at the time, I was reading something from the US from Ireland and from New Zealand, I think were the those were like the three best way eye slits available basically at the time. And the Irish wound and what is currently what we're currently selling, it just really stood out to me the mouthfeel is very crisp, very creamy, despite having like no fat, you know, zero or maybe one gram per serving. And it tasted just noticeably better. And it wasn't it was the same flavor lab so that wasn't it, it just had a better taste. And it was just the clear winner to me. And since you know, we've been selling that 

Chase

that's the same thing with like, with meat when I eat grass fed steak versus anything else, which these days, I really make a conscious decision to only buy grass fed meat. It's so noticeable. I mean, I think that just speaks to the quality of life that the source is having the quality of light, the quality of activity, the quality of ingredients, and how they're just they are going about their natural lives and like the more natural everything along that journey can be I mean, any result any end result along that path, I think is going to be quality. 

Mike

And what's great about it is it doesn't really matter why all that matters is you notice a difference, really at the end. So why in the end, why? It's hard to say actually, nutritionally, like you know, there's some research that has looked into the nutritional differences. And there are some differences, I think it's fair to say the grass fed beef is a bit more nutritious, on average, but that wouldn't exactly explain why you just feel better. And is it is it subjective? Is there a psychological component? Maybe, but in again, it just, it doesn't really matter? Because you notice a difference. So that's it, you know what I mean.

Chase

That's a good point. I mean, that goes kind of goes into the whole aspect of, you know, placebo effect, I think, would agree. If I'm taking something that I maybe know nothing about how it was sourced how it was made. It could be a phenomenal product over here. But you know, product B is one that I know the company, I know somebody that works there, I know the land on which you know, it's grown or harvested and I just have some kind of association. I can tether myself to that more. I have It's almost like you develop more empathy for what you're putting into your body. And if you feel some kind of way, a positive way about just starting off with something, then you know, that definitely has to feed into the psychosomatic aspect of the results that is going to give you I mean, you can literally be given the same products as B, but if you just have a better association to B, then I think that could definitely play a role. 

Mike

Oh, for sure. I mean, there's a lot of research on of course, the placebo effect, but then step over into research, more related to marketing that shows that people's first impressions markedly influence how they end up liking the product or service. So when they land on a website, it actually starts right there. But it also could be when you receive something in the mail, how does it look, all of those things matter. And that's more, that'd be like getting off into a business discussion. But that's why it's smart to really pay attention to all the touch points that people have with your business and really work try to make all of them as good as possible, because the more you can create a good, especially first impression, the more likely they are in the case of supplements, the more likely they are to like my stuff. I mean, that's just that's just a fact. Like, if they hit my website, and they like it, and maybe they interact via our live chat with there's a little chat there that pops up and we have certified personal trainers that are live. Probably, I don't know if we've added the weekends yet, but certainly during the week, where people can just ask questions like you don't, it's not just a pitch, it's ask questions, and I'll help you out. And we have people that are personal trainer, certified trainers, not marketers like that, and they don't and, and I actually I don't, I don't have any financial incentive in place for them to sell things like I don't give them bonuses. And that's intentional, because I really just want them to be able to help not have that high pressure to like, okay, now you got to buy something. And we have on the website, we have probably over 2000 articles by now on all kinds of things. And I've recorded a lot of podcasts. So we have a lot of good resources too. Often people have questions, like if somebody hits the website, and they see the chat, and they're like, oh, how do I get rid of belly fat? What do I do? And instead of getting into a long chat discussion back and forth, in that case, what the trainer can do is shoot them a link right on our website

Chase

go to an article go to a podcast.

Mike

Here's an article on just that. And there's also a podcast, if you want to listen to me explain it. And you and then and then you can check that out, you know, and then often people will and then they'll have follow up questions and they're able to continue the discussion. So it's, it's pretty cool in that regard. But anyway, coming back to coming back to the protein powder, 

Chase

we'll save the business conversation for March 9 2022. We'll just keep things rolling next year. 

Mike

Yeah, man, maybe Rona will relented by then. And we'll have we'll have more people interested in that. But yeah, so So coming back coming back to protein, the blend or not or no blend is not necessarily a negative sign. However, in the case of whey, you do want to see as the first ingredient a form. If it says whey it should be a way it should be whey isolate whey concentrate, it should not be any sort of milk protein, not that milk protein is bad, per se, it's just the it's the cheapest form of protein powder really, you can buy and the quality can vary widely. So the quality can also vary widely in whey concentrate, for example, a low quality whey concentrate, which I get pitched on all the time from Chinese suppliers. It can be as low as probably 30 or 40% protein by weight, and the rest is just fat and carbs. And if I were really unscrupulous, I could get that stuff. And then I could amino spike it by I can throw in a cheap amino acid that's nitrogen rich. So it'll test out as having, you know, 20-25 grams of protein per serving because it will have the nitrogen that would be present in 20 to 25 grams of protein per serving, but it actually doesn't have it has maybe nine grams of rest. And the rest is glycine. Glycine is a good one for that because it's it tastes good. It's sweet, and it's nitrogen rich. And, and so whey concentrate can vary again, from 30 to 40%, up to 80%. If it goes above 80, then it's now a whey isolate. And so that's one of the nice things about a whey isolate for it to actually be a whey isolate it has to be at least 80% protein by weight. And so if you are choosing a whey isolate, then you are you're not necessarily again, I don't want to say like oh you're just getting a better protein and you're going to, you're going to build muscle faster with the whey isolate than the whey concentrate, or even the milk protein? No. But you can be a bit more confident that it is a high quality product. Whereas the concentrate, it really depends now, who are you getting it from? And do you trust that company? You can look around online to see if there have been any third party lab analyses. There are many that you can find like I've seen quite a few on Reddit over the years where people who work in labs just take it upon themselves to buy some proteins on the market and just run tests. And some companies just then just put the data out there and say, Hey, here's what we found. Just so you know, for example, I've seen Optimum Nutrition consistently test well, over the years that I've seen people do that and that's, that's no surprise. I mean, they are the 800 pound gorilla there, they probably do over a billion dollars a year. And even most of that is proteins. I mean Glanbia owns them, they're fully vertically integrated, it'd be really stupid for them to do what I just said to amino spike to get cheap protein and then try to cut corners and then get caught. That'd be really dumb. So I'm not surprised they don't do that. And then you should also look with a protein powder, you should look at the size of the serving. So let's say it's 28 grams, and you want you want the amount of protein to be, it's not going to be exactly 28 grams because even in the cleanest, simplest protein powder unless it has nothing but protein powder. And that's it no flavoring, no excipient like really nothing, then you know, then yeah, it could, it could more or less match. But if you want it to taste like chocolate, for example, even if it is completely natural ingredients, it's going to require ironically, even more sweetener in particular, and also flavoring but more so sweetener if you're using natural to get it to taste good. So you're if it's a 28 grams serving, for example, it only has 22 grams of protein per serving, or 23. That's not a red flag, you just want to know, Okay, what else is in there? And if you look at the other ingredients, you're like, Okay, so it has stevia, it has some natural cocoa, it has some salt, and it has a couple of other things. Cool, I get that. But if it were a 28 gram serving, supersize, and that's listed right in the nutrition facts label, and it only had 19 grams of protein per serving. What else is in there? And you might find like, oh, it has a bunch of carbs? Well, that's an that's a no, no, like adding a bunch of carbs to a protein powder is just inappropriate. It's just done. Again, it's usually something cheap, like dextrose maltodextrin. And it's done to make it taste good. And but it's at the expense of calories and macros that you're now wasting. We want to drink protein, we don't want to 

Chase

Unless you're in like the meal replacement shake kind of then you're more on target. 

Mike

Correct. And, and that's I mean, that's another issue that something I don't like about a lot of those products is how many of them are full of dextrose and multi, just really cheap ingredients. But yes, correct carbs, at least are they are appropriate in the case of a weight gain or a meal replacement, but not in the case of a protein supplement. And then you should also I would say take a look at the at the labels, the ingredients and if there are a lot of very multi syllabic fancy sounding words that you pronounce again, you might want to look elsewhere. I don't I don't want to say that, that all chemicals are bad, and you'd be afraid of chemicals. But it's just not a good sign. And I say that, you know, working in the industry and knowing what goes on behind the scenes and knowing that it's not necessary to have a bunch of chemical junk in your products. It's just not I also this is something that is it's not as it's not as important as some people would have you believe but I think it's important enough to make my line all natural, which costs me a lot of money. I mean, to give you an example, my pre workout Pulse, it costs on average, I want to say probably $3 to $4 just to flavor and sweeten it with natural ingredients. I could literally cut that down to 50 cents a bottle if I went away artificial. If I was sucralose it would cut down the amount of masking agents that we need. Sucralose is super sweet. It's super cheap sucralose is bullshit. It's just a what you can do with sucralose is 

Chase

So I mean I see that on Legions products and yeah I see that on a lot of other products really defined for so what does it mean naturally sweetened and flavored? Is that just clever marketing? Or what do you all actually putting in there rather not putting in there to maintain the integrity of naturally sweetened and flavored ingredients? 

Mike

Yeah, that's a good question. And it actually, it brings me to another common sleight of hand that supplement sellers will use because the natural space, the natural supplement space, the natural food space, I mean, really even the natural beauty product space, natural is growing more people are more and more consumers are gravitating toward products that are more natural, containing fewer ingredients containing fewer chemicals. And that trend, I think, I don't think that that wave has even begun to crest yet I think that trend is going to continue to grow indefinitely, probably certainly into the foreseeable future. And so what some supplement marketers will do is they'll it'll say, naturally sweetened, or it'll say naturally flavored on the bottle right now and like Okay, that sounds good. If it's natural must be good, which is actually kind of a fallacy. That's how a lot of people think, right? Like, like, for example, ascorbic acid is not it's not natural, vitamin C, it's not right but in the body is just as good as the natural vitamin C, like, in that in that case, you know, the cofactors that come with eating an orange if we're talking about vitamin C, it has the same effects in the body as ascorbic acid. But anyways, so if you if you then look though, on the nutrition facts panel, if you look at the ingredients, what you may see is like wait a minute, yeah, this has stevia, and it has a resveratrol, which is a sugar, alcohol natural and, and even research even shows they can have health benefits. So that's cool. But then it also has aspartame or sucralose, you're like, wait, what? Because they didn't say that it is 100% naturally sweetened, they just said, naturally sweetened, 

Chase

made with 

Mike

 Or they'll say naturally flavored, if they don't even have any natural sweetener in there. They just want to be able to put the word natural. And so again, as a consumer, when you see those things, I would I would implore you to not then just get into rationalizing there, lack of integrity for them, like oh, well, they probably didn't mean it. No, that's exactly what they meant. They meant for you to think that it is a natural product when it is not. And if they're willing to do that, what else are they willing to lie to you about? What else are they willing to try to fudge to make more money. And again, having been in the space now for seven years, in supplements, in particular, for seven years, I can say people are willing to do a lot of shady things for money. Unfortunately, that's kind of how the world works. And most of people's unethical behavior is just driven by greed. And it's unfortunate, but that's the human condition. I don't know what can I say? 

Chase

And look at even more in detail, you know, the consumer here, look at you know, how much of that natural word or sentence was in big print or glossy film? And then how much of everything else was tiny, tiny small print, 

Mike

Sometimes it's not even there's no, there is no tiny, it actually is just like, oh, naturally flavored or just naturally sweetened. And not the made with natural sweetness just straight up naturally sweet. So in the case of Legion stuff, it is truly 100% naturally sweetened and flavored. That means that there are no artificial sweeteners, there are no artificial food dyes, and no other artificial ingredients whatsoever. No chemical junk, except I would say, and this is this is, again, just me being very conscientious there is ascorbic acid in Triumph, for example. So that is you could say oh, well, that's not a that's not a 100% natural sport multivitamin and yeah, that's correct. But actually, that's why I actually don't say it is just and nobody would, it's me being like overly pedantic. It's not It's not even something that anybody would probably even bring up, right, because the vast majority of the ingredients, actually the natural sources are better. So we go with and in some cases, we choose very specific sources of ingredients that that have proven to be better absorbed. But there are a couple where it's like, there's just no reason to go ascorbic acid gets the job done. You're not gaining, you're not you're not getting anything, which you know, ironically, as I say that, I think that from a marketing perspective, it may be smarter actually, just to go with the flip the couple natural ones in there shortly because then it truly is like right now it's 97% or whatever. And actually, I'll make a mental note of that. But regardless. So why is this important? Why did I choose to go all natural is particularly with the natural sweeteners and you know, actually, I believe I actually just interjecting into my own mind here, I believe I believe I did actually pass that over to my CFO, like, why don't we just replace these couple with the natural so then, just from a marketing perspective, we can get a little bit of, of a boost from it. And then it's 100% honest, you know what I mean? But regardless why what why natural sweeteners, why natural flavoring and natural dyes as well that like come from fruits, for example, instead of chemical dyes? And I would say that none of those things are as bad as some of the alarmists would have you believe the what's the what was that girl? She's food, babe, like, Oh, she's probably still a thing and whatever, but like as the food babes of the world and have you believe? Yeah, the GMOs are not killing you. Just if you need to, if you can afford to get organic produce it, it may be worth it, you can get a bit more nutrition, maybe you'll get a bit less exposure to pesticides. Personally, I noticed a difference in taste. That's why I stick to organic produce, like it actually just tastes better to me. 

Chase

Real fruits and vegetables, yes

Mike

 It makes a difference. To me, at least I can taste the difference. You give me an organic banana versus a conventional and I could tell you which is which and organic strawberries

Chase

local farmers market Farmers Market organic stuff. It's just like, it's just next level think

Mike

yeah, you immediately bite into that strawberry and then you just get like a conventional strawberry Driscoll or whatever. And it makes the conventional almost tastes like nothing just like watered down sugar with a little bit of strawberry flavor palate and yeah

Chase

exactly your palate and then almost kind of differentiate the ingredients that make up this thing they are trying to sell you as a strawberry or whatever it is, versus all the other organic stuff. It's just like it's just like nectar of the gods that makes a difference. 

Mike

So with these artificial ingredients, it's not that artificial sweetener is poison, or that the food dyes are poison, and that you can't have any amount of them under any circumstances. No, not true. But what is true. And there's more and more research that is proving this out is that if having too much of those chemicals every day is probably not good for your long term health, it's probably not good for your gut health in particular. And chances are, you'll notice a difference just how you notice when you have one whey protein versus another chances are, dear listener, you will notice a difference between eight to 10 servings of sucralose Ace k aspartame and what is the couple of the blue and red and yellow food dyes that you'll find commonly in particularly in sports nutrition products. versus not like I noticed a difference and I tend to have a steel trap stomach it takes a lot to upset my stomach for me to notice anything. And for me, it's probably about four or five servings. So I have four or five servings of any these things I just mentioned I feel a little bit off like my stomach just feels it just doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel good. And in the case of sports, nutrition, people who are into this stuff they will have it can easily hit eight to 10 servings, depending on how sweet the product is. And so let's say let's start with it starts with the pre workout. And maybe they even you know, use one and a half servings. And again, it depends on how much is in a serving some pre workouts are sweeter than others. And then maybe they have a scoop of protein before they workout. a scoop of protein after they work out. They have a post workout supplement, maybe they have some BCAAs, which is a worthless supplement, but it's popular. Maybe they have some BCAAs or an intro workout, then they have some protein powder later. And then they maybe have the green supplement and you know it goes on then they are drinking more BCAAs and that's just that's just their sports nutrition. Maybe they also have an energy drink or two on top of that. So it can it can be pretty significant and doing that every day for weeks, months or years on end, is I do think it's fair to say that there is good scientific evidence that that is probably not ideal for your health. Now, if you were just to have a serving or two a day, for example, and maybe not even every day, I don't think it's fair to say that anything bad will likely happen you will almost certainly be totally fine. But again because of sports nutrition and because of how popular a lot of these products are and because of how into supplements a lot of gym goers are that's why I just thought that and this again is really was me scratching my own itch this was me creating the stuff that I wanted as well for myself but that's why I thought it was appropriate to go all natural and fortunately now again that trend is growing so we're able to legitimately claim that we are the number one biggest all natural sports nutrition brand in the world if you look at it just in terms of revenue really because there are companies that have natural like they'll do what I was talking about earlier they'll combine the yeah you know the natural with the unnatural but there aren't many brands out there that have fully committed to natural like we have.

Chase

Mike I love it man and getting kind of towards the end here I want to switch but

Mike

hold on one sec let me just shut this fucking window I thought it was a problem. I don't know what the fuck they're doing out there. Hold on one sec. All right. Sorry, fucking goddamn construction site out there. How are you guys running power machinery every day? 

Chase

Yeah, dude, it reminds me living back in DC. It's just I felt like every single day from 7am until like 6pm was how do you always have something to jackhammer? Like, you can't need to like fuck up that amount of like asphalt every day. I don't get it. Jesus, I want to go back and talk before we wrap up. I want to go back to one thing that I wish he would have slid in right when we're kind of talking about the like multivitamin stuff, but it's all good. We're going to talk about the green superfood. Because that's one big thing that I think besides a multivitamin, no matter what the journey someone is on again, you can have all the best eating habits in the world to a certain degree, I also make the argument that most people could benefit from a increase in their attention on micronutrients coming from a super greens powder. Yours Genesis. Again, love what's in it and love what is not, all these things we've been talking about no proprietary blends backed by science third party tested 100% naturally sweetened. But you guys actually, you have a couple of things in there that not a lot of other green superfoods have in particularly mushroom, reishi mushroom and spirulina at the doses that I see; five grams of spirulina three grams of Reishi. Can you touch on the importance first of micronutrients? Why micronutrients in in the form of like a green superfood powder can most likely benefit the general public? But also like, why spirulina? Why Reishi? And those doses? 

Mike

Yeah, yeah, the greens supplement is one of my favorite of ours, because saying these gradients, the ingredients are unique. Your average greens supplement is just mostly a blend of cheap blend of fruit and vegetable powders, which is okay, but I didn't do that because I would rather people and this is in the sales page. Like I would rather people just eat enough fruits and vegetables and, and more importantly, you really can't replace fruits and vegetables with powdered fruits and vegetables, you're losing fiber and you're losing other cofactors other elements that are in the food that you lose if you are taking a supplement. And that is how a lot of green supplements are sold. And that for example is one of these other red flags. If a company is selling a greens supplement as a replacement for or saying this is like getting 22 servings of vegetables in one scoop again, the pitch is like don't worry about eating fruits and vegetables just take this powder, bullshit. Stay away from that company because they're either ignorant or they are malevolent. They're just lying. It's one of the either they just don't know what they're talking about. And they think that that they're just marketers right and they haven't really looked into it. Or they know that's not true, but yeah it is music to some people's ears.

Chase

Exactly. Their spiel is like, hey, never have to touch a vegetable again in your life like that's not happening. 

Mike

Or maybe they're trying to be a little bit more coy about it. Okay, yeah, you should still eat some vegetables. But check this out. This has nine servings of blueberries. It has 22 servings of broccoli Like do you want the bucket of broccoli? Or do you want the little scooper? So ours is very different and the reason it's green for example is the spirulina actually. And spirulina will make anything green. So be careful with that 

Chase

Including your clothes, your sheets, your hands. 

Mike 

Correct, correct. And it is an algae and it is very nutritious. And there's quite a bit of research on it. And funny enough this is this is probably Kurtis His name's Kurtis. He is the co-founder and former lead researcher and writer of examined.com so anybody who's been to Examined most of that technical stuff was researched and written by Kurtis. He is probably the single most knowledgeable person that I'll ever meet when it comes to just biology and supplementation. He heads up Legions Scientific Advisory Board. So he really he has been the brains behind the formulations from the beginning. And so I take essentially no credit for our formulation sometimes I have some input that is no but usually not honestly because not only that we have other people other thought leaders in the evidence based fitness space on the board, Dr. Spencer Nadolsky, Menno Henselmans, James Krieger, Eric Helms and others. So between all of them, I usually don't have much useful input honestly, sometimes I'll find some research that Kurtis just hasn't found yet. Like he probably would as he does his rounds, but I'll send something his way occasionally where he is like oh that's interesting. I hadn't I didn't see that. I'll look into that. 

Chase

Mike's like I got one all right.

Mike

Yeah, I got it. I finally I finally contributed. But spirulina is Kurtis's one of his favorite molecules just because he loves he loves all the effects that it has. He loves how it works. He's just super into this stuff. Right? So he was super happy that you know, we have spirulina. And if you look at the research, in terms of benefits, it can improve cholesterol profile, it can increase strength, it can increase athletic performance. Another study came out on that just recently, which is something that I mean, we don't even really pitch that because the evidence wasn't good for it previously. But now another study came out, which is kind of cool. It can reduce muscle damage caused by exercise it can it can help mitigate or help lessen allergies. That's something that I appreciate, especially right now I'm in Florida and there's pollen everywhere. There's oak pollen in particular everywhere. And that stuff used to really mess me up when I was a teenager. I mean, my eyes would be I wouldn't even be able to do this interview right now. I'd be sneezing and my eyes would be just I just be itching my eyes and sneezing basically, that'd be the interview. And now it's now it's not anything like that. But I still will get a little bit of eye itching and a little bit of congestion from the oak pollen. But by taking spirulina every day, that brings it down to basically nothing and I actually just experienced it here because she said to walk out so I brought Yeah, I brought I brought my Genesis with me. And then I ran out of it because it wasn't I thought I had more in it than I did. And so I was without it for a few days. And I was starting to notice the oak pollen in my eyes a little bit. Not too bad. But just Yeah, a little a little like, you know, a shading of what it used to and then now I'm staying at my parents’ house visiting them. And they actually found some in their in their pantry and took some and immediately notice that that went away. So that's cool. I mean, spirulina can help lower blood pressure, it can help protect liver health improves insulin sensitivity, it does a lot of cool stuff in the body. And five grams a day. Yeah, that's, that's the clinically effective dose and that's what you'll find in Genesis. And so that's just one of those. I think, again, it's just a great ingredient. It's just a great molecule that can benefit your body in many different ways. 

Chase

Back in the day, I used to take it before I got into greens powders I used to take it just on its own I would get like powder from whole foods or something I would put it in you know my water or protein smoothie kind of thing. You know, and then I would then I went down the rabbit hole of blue spirulina and all these other all these other items. It's powerful stuff. It's one of the oldest known living substances ever on earth and it's like honestly, I may be getting this confused with carella so for some reason always matches up but I think it is like gram for gram or like entity by entity. It's one of the most like protein nutrient dense molecules like living is we've ever experienced. 

Mike

It's a very popular standalone ingredient. My wife takes it every day, she would take Genesis, but she doesn't do well with stevia, it actually like just, she can even get kind of nauseous from it, which is unfortunate. And that's just some people, they some people, for example, they get stomach aches with creatine, they just can't take any form, it doesn't matter, they just can't do it. So even natural ingredients, you know, some people just their bodies don't like them. But you can you can. You don't get much of that, like you can get more of that stuff, the more chemicals are in the products. 

Chase

the other item there, the reishi mushroom, I mean, this stuff, I've been using Reishi for probably six, seven years on a daily basis at this point. And I love how you guys have it in a greens powder. Because again, my belief is that all of us could focus on enhanced attention on micronutrients and something like Reishi and adaptogen of functional mushroom. Like this is something that like creatine to your point, like we know, is effective. Reishi is the most clinically studied and time after time proven, beneficial functional mushroom we've ever encountered. But also just anecdotally, like humans, the Chinese, the east, they've been using this stuff for 1000s and 1000s of years. 

Mike

Yep. Yep. And Western science has, has now discovered many of the reasons why like we know that Reishi can help with your sleep, it can help with your brain health, it can help with your cholesterol, it can help with your immune system, your kidney health, it is a multi-factorial winner, it's one of those ones that you just you just get a lot of bang for that buck. And that was also kind of the philosophy behind Genesis is, again, instead of making some cheap, lame fruit and vegetable powder product, let's just encourage people to eat fruits and vegetables and focus on things that they're not going to eat. They're just not going to get in their diet that can really provide benefits above and beyond the healthy dieting. And so that's why you have like maca for example. I mean, sure you can buy maca powder and you could put it in a smoothie if you want but still you're buying a supplement like you're not going to buy the root and cook it up and eat it. You are just not.

Chase

Maybe some people in LA or Venice maybe.

Mike

but yeah, so that's a product that again, I like a lot and it has a lot of for people who understand it and appreciate it. They really they really like it and make it one of their go twos.

Chase

Amazing, man. Well, Mike, I feel like I could keep picking your brain for forever, man. It's been so great having you back here on the show. I love how this conversation we've been really able to help the consumer, the listener, better understand nutrition better understand why they might want to consider supplements, what they should be looking for. You know, of course, I'm a raving fan and love, you know, using and working with partnering with Legion now here in 2021. It really was a lot of the stuff on the backside that that sold me the third party testing the scientific advisory board the level of ingredients that aren't in there a lot of times that's what I'm after. I'm after companies that want to just do the due diligence on their own because they care about their personal health and wellness. And they just happen to make a great product that helps me do the same thing. 

Mike

Yeah, I love it. And I appreciate that. I appreciate your support. And what we're doing tends to resonate best with people like you we have a lot of a lot of our customers are, are very educated for example a lot of people with and we know this from Quantcast data, we have a lot of people with advanced college degrees and a lot of people who work actually in related fields, who really understand when they see these ingredients, they're often surprised like, oh, wow, yeah, they put that in there. And they put it in the correct amount, which is something that we touched on a little bit that clinically effective dose. And so that that from the beginning was also kind of a I was looking at that through the through the lens of marketing, and I did it that way one because I just think it's the right thing to do, honestly, like, I believe in trying to treat people the way I want to be treated. And I think that that should apply in business as well. So I try to treat consumers the way I'd want to be treated as a consumer. But then there's also, I think, a good business case to be made for by doing it that way I've attracted a lot of people like you who have their own spheres of influence. So yeah, when I win someone over like you, I've not just one over one customer, but I have now won over a lot more people because you want to tell people about it. And even if you weren't doing the type of work that you're doing, that that's going to be the case, you know, if you are just take it let's say you had a had a PhD in something and you teach in a university, for example, okay, you're not doing podcasts and online influencing stuff like that, but you are a quote unquote influencer still. 

Chase

You know, before the show before this, you know, I day in day out, I would go and I would work with clients work with patients, I was a Clinical Health Coach. And we would we would talk about a lot of these things. And then because they're going to ask exactly many times, then it came down to Well, what do you take? What do you what do you use? What do you believe? And I would keep, you know, in my office for personal use, but also out there, I would say hey, here are the things that I use, here's what I take, and we would we would go down that rabbit hole of people. And yeah, sphere of influence is there especially you know, at that at that clinical level, so I was in the office years ago, and now it's just on a microphone and through the internet nowadays.

Mike

And it needs to be done right, though to really gain the wholehearted endorsement of someone like you, and people out there again, you have their own spheres of influence. And that was something else I wanted to like. That's why one of the reasons why we don't sell a BCAA supplement, we get asked for it all. Yeah, it's the number one requested supplement, and we don't sell BCAAs because they're useless. They're just useless.

Chase

I think it is just the water change up, you know, just something. 

Mike

And I that's exactly what people even say like, well, just all I've, I've explained it to customers, in our in our customer experience, people, I've explained it that we don't make them because there are maybe a couple fringe cases you could find were like, okay, you're training seven hours a day, and you just can't eat enough protein. And maybe, but for the rest of us no, there's just no good use. That's why we don't do it. And ironically, many customers have acknowledged that like, Okay, well, that's cool. And it's good to know, that's why you're not selling but, but if you made them just to make my water taste better, I'm just telling you, I buy them from you. And I'm still going to keep buying them with you, but if I were selling a BCAA, or if I were selling a hormone, testosterone booster, right, which, unfortunately, there's just nothing natural that you can take to really make a difference. DHEA is an exception if you are a guy and you're probably in your 40s or beyond. And so you've started to really experience a natural decline there is there is research show the DHEA can help. In that case, also women as well, actually, but we're talking about testosterone booster like bigger boners, bigger biceps, you know, alpha male supplements been off line, it's 

Chase

That is going to be my spinoff it will be boners and biceps for sure. 

Mike

You will make some sales, it will not be a complete flop. We're talking about that. There is no natural supplement to accomplish that. That requires the dedication period. Right that that's it got to get on the vitamin, the vitamin T for that. And so and so if though we were to sell one of those products, then it kind of muddies the water. Now, when you're looking over something like you're like, Okay, I like that. I like that. I like that. I really don't like that. And so then now why is this here? And what does that mean? And then And then again, rightfully so you start asking questions, what else could they be doing that I don't know about and that I can't verify that I would have a problem with like, like, for example, okay, they say these ingredients are in their products but how do I really know? now in our case, we provide certificates of analyses third party lab tastes like people can actually go and verify on the sales page. We were updating our sales pages, we've always had them and we've provided them upon request, but now we are putting them like on the sales page so people can see from the last batch. Oh, cool. Here's the lab test. Good. And so, you know, that's also something that that I've just been cognizant of, is that I want people like you to be able to just go all in and say, you know, maybe you'd say I don't take every single one of Legion supplements because I just don't need to but I take all of these ones and I stand behind everything that they do. And I stand behind their educational material. And so if anything makes sense to you over at Legion, just know you're in good hands. And so you know that's the experience that I'm trying to create. 

Chase

Absolutely, man. Well, it's the experience is there and being in good hands is what you know, the show is all about and you know, it's been a year since you asked the final question. But you know, all these conversations and in questions and inquiries we have in our health, fitness, wellness, nutrition mindset, it's so that we can keep moving forward in life man so that we can live a life ever forward. How do you do that? How does Legion help other people do that? 

Mike

I'll say, well, in a few different ways. I mean, one of the things that I particularly like about the companies that we are education first, we really are, we put a lot of time, I still spend time on the blog, I, of course, spend time on my podcast, I'm always working on the next book and I have now a team of people who also write with me on the blog, they write under their names. So anything that is published by me was written by me, I have a couple of people who may help with some drafting and putting together some initial outlining and stuff just to save me some time. But I still do that work. And we are very open about everything that we've talked about, particularly in the beginning of the podcast, like you don't need supplements to do what you want to do. Just so you know, like, if you can get into great shape, you can look good, you can feel good. supplements are supplementary, by definition that is true of ours and anybody else's. So don't believe that there is a magic pill powder potion, it doesn't exist, however, and then we go into, you know, the lot of the education that we've that we've shared on this podcast is just baked into the DNA of the company. And that's also why we offer a coaching service, it's sure it makes money, but in the scheme of things, it doesn't make nearly as much money as the revenue is kind of irrelevant. It's more just a service that some people want. And I know we can do a really good job with it. And we've now worked with 1000s of people ages and circumstances. And it's just great to see those success stories. And it also does make good business sense. Because a lot of those people are now they're customers for the long haul. Because again, we didn't just give them a pill or powder and say, yeah, thanks for your money, we really helped them get their body into a better place 

Chase

educated and empowered the individual.

Mike

Exactly, exactly. And so that's why I continue to spend a lot of my time and a lot of Legions resources on creating more content and getting our content that is created more out there into search engines. I mean, just even the investment into ongoing SEO is pretty significant. It just is if you I mean creating stuff is one thing but getting it getting it, getting it ranked in Google and getting it visible is another thing. And so that's, I would say that in a funny way, the supplements are maybe not second to the education. But I would say if we're putting them on both sides of a scale, it's pretty evenly balanced. It's certainly in terms of what I'm trying to accomplish. I'm not just trying to sell supplements and make money, even just sell good supplements that actually do help people. But I want to I want the whole 360 degree when you know I want them to have their supplementation, where it needs to be. But I also want to make sure that people know how to get their diet where it needs to be and their training where it needs to be in. And then I also venture off a little bit into lifestyle stuff. I focus mostly on just health and fitness. But talk a bit about maybe the inner game of not just getting fit but living a better life where you're always trying to strive for the next thing and improve yourself. And so, yeah, those are, those are the, my contributions to humanity as it stands right now. 

Chase

The core values how they blend with us over here, man. So, Mike, again, I'm going to have all your information down in the show notes for everybody to check out the muscle for life, podcast, Legion athletics, I'm going to make sure to put down you know all of my go to Legion supplements and not only what I take, but why you know why I gravitated towards you guys why I gravitated towards this product and how I integrate it into my daily living my nutrition. There's a lot of lot of a lot more that goes on here than just you know, popping a few pills or scooping a few powders. Totally love it, man. Beautiful brother. Well, I'll wrap the interview there. 

Mike

Hey, I'm Mike Matthews and I'm the CEO and founder of Legion, which is a sports nutrition company, we sell workout supplements and on this episode of Ever Forward Radio, I'm going to talk to you about why you don't need supplements. My supplements are anybody's supplements, why they are supplementary by definition. But if you have the budget and you have the inclination, why there are certain supplements you should consider adding to your regimen. And I'm going to explain which those are and why you should consider them and also I'm going to help you navigate the very turbulent seas of sports nutrition and find products that are likely to work and unfortunately many, many of them don't work. And if you don't know what to look for it can be very hard to know a good one from a bad one. 

Chris Bello is a Houston-based real estate agent and investor and the host of the Entrepreneur Motivation Podcast.

His journey from employee to entrepreneur is a familiar one to many who have been, or currently are, in his shoes. The Texas native followed his friends and family into the oil and gas industry right out of college for no other reason than that’s what everybody else in his circle did.

Right away, Chris realized that he was on the wrong path. He recalls asking himself, “What could there be for me outside of the cubicle?” He began reading books such as Rich Dad Poor Dad and The 4-Hour Workweek. Bit by bit, an inspiring new vision for the future was taking shape in his mind.

“I didn’t put all the pieces together,” Chris recalls of that time, “but the questions started being asked in my mind.”

Chris finally quit his job in 2018 to dive into the world of entrepreneurship and self-development, and hasn’t looked back since.

Listen in as Chris shares the practical steps he took to create freedom in his life, including how he set up systems and processes appropriate to his work and lifestyle, the value of the phrase “fail fast, fail often”, why you don’t have to have the “perfect” plan to start right now, and what it means to embrace your zone of genius while encouraging your team to embrace theirs.

Follow Chris @chrisbello_

Follow Chase @chase_chewning

Key Highlights

• Taking control of your life isn’t just a matter of vision and goal-setting. It’s also about setting up the right systems to make your lifestyle choices sustainable. Chris shares how he did all this for himself.

• Chris explains his process for evaluating failure to learn from mistakes and pivot when he needs to.

• How do you stop yourself from falling into the perfectionist mindset while being able to gauge whether you’re making progress?

• How do you make sure you have the right team in place and that you’re cultivating a supportive work environment?

Powerful Quotes by Chris Bello

Every entrepreneur is going through their own journey of mindset, from having a day job that they don’t like to reading their first few books on mindset that gives them that paradigm shift toward self-development.

I haven’t “made it”. I have way further that I want to go; but I feel so satisfied now. I’m waking up to my purpose every single day.

What you don’t do is as important as what you do do.

Systems become a byproduct of the clarity that you have for what you need to focus on.

Learning how to scale up and outsource a lot of the stuff that I didn’t like to do or that I didn’t want to do is what separated me, because I don’t feel like it has to be me doing everything.

Episode resources:

• Learn more at ChrisBello.com

• Save 60% on the Level 201 course from Operation Podcast with checkout code EVERFORWARD60 - learn how to successfully launch, grow, & monetize your podcast!

Dr. Casey Means, MD is the Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer at Levels, a metabolic health company that provides individuals “real-time continuous glucose biofeedback coupled with machine-learning driven insights to inform personalized diet and lifestyle choices.”

Glucose, unlike other biomarkers, provides us a closed biofeedback loop which if tracked helps us make better diet and lifestyle choices on the fly. Other biomarkers, such as genetics or cholesterol, do not provide that real-time information which means we cannot track changes around them based on our nutritional and lifestyle choices on a day-to-day basis.

“The beauty of glucose,” says Dr. Means, “is that there are tools, right now, that can measure our glucose levels in real-time, at home, with a wearable sensor. Unlike these other variables, we can actually see how this biomarker is changing based on choices that we made five minutes ago.”

For several years, glucose monitors have been available as a treatment tool for diabetes. What Levels has done is take this technology to the mass consumer market to be used as a precision nutrition tool.

Listen in as Dr. Means explains how Levels translates real-time insights around your blood glucose into actionable steps that you can use to improve your metabolic health today.

Follow Dr. Casey @drcaseyskitchen

Follow Levels @levels

Follow Chase @chase_chewning

Key Highlights

• Why did Dr. Means decide to focus on metabolic health specifically in helping people improve their diet and lifestyle choices?

• Why should someone who is not diabetic or prediabetic be concerned about monitoring their glucose?

• What are the “reps” we need to put into improving our metabolic fitness?

• What are the indicators of potential blood sugar problems?

Powerful Quotes by Dr. Casey Means

Our mission is to empower people with their personal health information to help them make better daily choices around diet and lifestyle so that they can live their best life right now and enhance performance every day, and ideally ward off chronic problems down the road related to diet and lifestyle.

We can use tools like continuous glucose monitors to actually see how different foods are affecting our glucose and make smarter choices about what foods we’re choosing or how we’re even pairing foods.

Cell biology is complex and it’s about more than just food. We also need to think about the other pillars which are how we sleep, how we stress, how we’re moving, the micronutrient composition of the food in our bodies, our microbiome health, and our exposure to pollutants. All of these things feed into how our metabolic processes work.

Ever Forward Radio is brought to you by LMNT

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When you’re physically active and sweat, replacing lost sodium is essential to feel and perform your best. But tons of folks forget about sodium and drink more water when they feel dehydrated - the more common problem here is drinking too much water, not too little. Overwatering dilutes blood sodium levels, causing a dangerous condition called hyponatremia - which can lead to headaches, muscle cramps, and fatigue.

The takeaway is this: drink to thirst - and don’t forget to replace electrolytes. It’s always one of the first things I stress to a new client. Not only will this help eliminate dehydration symptoms like headaches and muscle cramps, it’s essential for keeping our brain, muscles, and organs functioning properly.

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Interview transcript:

Chase  

All right, Casey, what's going on? Welcome to Ever Forward Radio. Thank you so much for being here.

Dr. Casey  

Thank you so much for having me, Chase, I'm thrilled to be here.

Chase  

I got to say, I feel like I missed the red memo mark, for the microphone, you're blending your shirt, your microphone, I got to get like some kind of color coordinated cap for my equipment over here.

Dr. Casey  

Yeah, you need my microphone; it matches your shirt

Chase  

I used to have that actually, I still have I'm looking below my monitor, I used to have that Blue Yeti, all the microphones that I've had, I keep as kind of like little memorabilia around my office and even like my OG, little $65 microphone I used four years ago, completely the wrong way, don't work anymore, I have it plugged into my desk down here. It's just, it's cool to see it, you know how far you've come the little tools that you've used along the way to get better at your craft. And which I think is a great segue into, you know, what we're gonna be talking about today, we have so many great tools for our health and our wellness, nowadays, hardware software, to help us become more empowered about what's going on in our bodies in our minds, and to really take charge. And that's really what you and everybody at Levels is all about.

Dr. Casey  

That's exactly what we're doing. Our mission is to empower people with their personal health information so they can make better daily choices around diet and lifestyle so that they can live their best life right now. And you know, really enhance performance every day currently, but then also, ideally ward off, you know, chronic problems down the road related to diet and lifestyle, which the majority of our chronic illnesses these days are related to that. So we're all about empowering people with the information to make those choices.

Chase  

So when it comes to curating information, or putting together a team to go find the information, there are a lot of different avenues I'm sure you all could have done or gone down when it comes to, you know, genetics when it comes to cholesterol, blood sugar, when it comes to cholesterol, sodium all these things? Why was the focus on blood sugar and glucose? And you know, what it can do for or against us?

Dr. Casey  

Yeah, that's a great question. And the key answer this is that it'll glucose provides us a closed loop, biofeedback sort of circle. So with all the other things you mentioned, like genetics, or even cholesterol, these are things that we cannot get information about in real time and we can't see a change in that variable with our behavior on a day to day basis, it's more of, you know, either a lagging indicator for the case of cholesterol or for genetics, it's something that we're not going to see necessarily change over time. The genetic polymorphisms that show up on our 23andme test are not changing. Now, genetics can change in the sense that we can change gene expression over time with our choices. But that's not a readout that we really have a lot of availability. There's no consumer product that really does that right now, the beauty of glucose is that there are tools right now that can measure our glucose levels, in real time at home with a wearable sensor. This is what a continuous glucose monitor can do. And so unlike these other variables, we can actually see how this biomarker is changing based on choices that we made five minutes ago. Whether it's what we chose to have for breakfast, or whether we sort of allowed ourselves to get stressed in response to an email we read, or whether we got a poor night's sleep, or if we did a high intensity workout versus a walk, all of these things are actually going to have an immediate impact on our glucose levels. And there's a technology now that picks that up that creates a closed loop with nutrition and lifestyle choices. And the crazy thing about nutrition is, we have never had a closed loop system on nutrition. We have had closed loop for fitness with fitness trackers and heart rate trackers, we've had closed loop for sleep with sleep trackers. I love it. So you can wake up and see exactly what happened with your sleep. We even have closely for stress now with HRV trackers and heart rate variability. But we've never known there's never been a tool where you put something in your mouth and you know exactly what's happening in your body. And that's what glucose can do for us. And it's right now the only biomarker that can do that for us. So this technology, continuous glucose monitors, it's been available as a treatment tool for diabetes for several years. But what Levels does is bring this to a more mass consumer market to be used as a precision nutrition tool. So that we have a sense of what's going on with this key fundamental metabolic biomarker in our body.

Chase  

No, you mentioned there predominantly this type of hardware this type of information was for people who already excuse me had a concern had an issue, the diabetics and pre diabetics. Why should someone who is not diabetic why should someone who's not pre diabetic be concerned about monitoring their glucose?

Dr. Casey  

Yeah, well, the interesting thing about pre diabetes and diabetes is that the vast majority of these conditions of this, those conditions is preventable. So right now we have 128 million Americans in the United States with pre diabetes or diabetes. That's like a huge chunk of our population.

Chase  

A lot of people,

Dr. Casey  

It’s a lot of people, it's an epidemic

Chase  

It’s probably, you know, one or one or two of the people who are probably staring at right now.

Dr. Casey  

Absolutely. If you walk down the street, it's close to 40% of people have either pre diabetes or diabetes. And with pre diabetes, which is 84 million people in the United States, 90% of those people do not know that they have a blood sugar problem. The CDC data 90% don't know. And what's so interesting about it is like, even if you've reached that pre diabetic threshold by diagnostic criteria, or the diabetic threshold by diagnostic criteria, that doesn't mean that if you're not in the pre diabetic threshold, that, you know, everything's perfect, because this is a spectrum. This is a spectrum illness, where over time, we move towards these conditions and metabolic dysfunction, and insulin resistance over time, until, you know, one day we go into the doctor's office, and we finally sort of met that criteria for diagnostic threshold. But that, you know, it's we’re marching along this spectrum throughout our lives and there's good evidence to support that 13 to 17 years before we actually reach those diagnostic thresholds where we're showing signs of early problems with our metabolism. 

Chase  

Over a decade before we possibly get a diagnosis, we are exhibiting signs of something that we can get ahead of?

Dr. Casey  

That's right. Yeah, that's so it's specifically and we kind of have to get into a little bit of physiology to understand this. But disorders of glucose, like diabetes, or pre diabetes one of the ways that these develop is that over time, as we, you know, eat diets that are predominantly composed of refined carbohydrates, which are Western American diets are predominantly composed of refined carbohydrates, these are digested, they turn to glucose in the bloodstream, so does refined sugar, of course and when that sugar elevates in the bloodstream, our body has a hormonal response, it releases insulin from the pancreas. And that insulin helps you take that, that sugar out of the bloodstream into the cells so that glucose can be converted into energy. And when there's excess, it's either stored as stored chains of glucose called glycogen, or it's turned into fat. And when this happens, sort of too much when we are getting really high glucose elevations in the blood, or we're just doing it many, many times per day, like let's say, we eat three high carb meals, plus three snacks, that's six spikes of glucose in our bloodstream, that's a lot of insulin the body has to produce to sort of manage that insulin in the bloodstream. And over time, the body gets tired, and it's actually become numb to that signal of insulin. And we develop what's called insulin resistance. And what the body does to respond to insulin resistance, it still has to get that glucose out of the bloodstream. And so the body produces more insulin and it overcompensates and a young healthy body can do that you just push out more insulin, and force that glucose into the cells. So what we can actually pick up on lab tests a lot earlier, is that elevated insulin and that insulin resistance that hyperinsulinemia, which is in this sort of compensatory period, where your glucose levels may not actually look problematic, because your body's working hard on the insulin side to compensate for it. So there are studies that suggest that, yeah, 13 years in one study, we're seeing signs of insulin resistance and elevated insulin before the actual diagnostic sort of test shows that there's a glucose problem. And you can imagine, over time, the body kind of just gets more and more tired, the insulin resistance gets worse and worse and then you start to see that glucose variability show up quite a bit more. So long winded way of saying that part of the reason the average person on the street should care about their glucose is because we're all on the metabolic sort of spectrum and we want to stay in that, you know, healthy insulin sensitive part of the spectrum for as long as we possibly can. And part of doing that is making sure that we're keeping our glucose levels stable throughout our lifetime. We're not getting exposure to these, you know, really high peaks and or really frequent peaks and kind of creating more rolling hills and our glucose levels in our blood with our diet. And we can use tools like continuous glucose monitors, to actually see how different foods are affecting our glucose and make smarter choices about what food foods we're choosing, or how we're even pairing foods. You know, when you add protein, fat or fiber to a carbohydrate, it tends to blunt the glucose response. When you walk after a meal it tends to blunt the glucose response. If you add vinegar or cinnamon to a meal, it tends to blunt the glucose response. There's innumerable strategies for minimizing the glycemic impact on our body and over time that can keep our bodies sharp to that signal of insulin. So that's sort of like the long term chronic disease part of things. But then there's also just like the current performance side of things, when our glucose, even if we're young and healthy, and our pancreas is working well, if it's going up, down, up, down, up, down, like peaks and valleys, valleys, that's going to have an experience of our, it's going to have an impact on our subjective experience of the day. When we go way up, like let's say, we have five cookies, and our glucose shoots up through the roof, the body is going to soak up, it's going to produce all this insulin and soak up all that glucose, and we may actually have a crash, a glucose crash, and that's sort of like that post meal slump that many of us have had before. And that can be a

Chase  

Food coma. 

Dr. Casey  

The food coma. And that can be associated with a little bit of jitters, anxiety, you know, some mood instability, maybe a little brain fog. So I like to say that a lot of variability in our glucose, even when we're otherwise healthy leads to variability in our day, whether it's mental sharpness, athletic performance, fatigue, or mood. So it's both; it's really sort of at the at the nexus of our current reality and our current performance. And then, of course, our long term disease risk.

Chase  

Insulin resistance, those, those are two words that I used to hear a lot when I was working in clinic, the doctor would come in, you know, the patient be ready to come see the health coach after they just had their physical labs. And the doctor would always say, oh, exhibiting signs of insulin resistance. And it was always my interpretation was that patient seems the person seems to be doing everything right. Air quote here, right. But they're having just that little bit of, you know, that that that little bit of that tummy, it's like that abdominal fat that just they just can't seem to get going away. And maybe the doctor would see some kind of numbers that look questionable, you know, over the months or years in terms of blood sugar, is insulin resistance is that is that the telltale sign that maybe we have that? Is that what's going on? Is that that that last few pounds that we just can't seem to get rid of that is that we're just likes to live? And could that be an initial sign?

Dr. Casey  

Yeah, it definitely can be associated with that. So the interesting thing about insulin as a hormone is that not only does it help us shuttle the glucose out of the bloodstream into our cells so that's a purpose of insulin it by instance, and receptors helps you move that glucose into the cells. But one of its other roles is that it's a blocker on fat oxidation. So it stops you from being able to burn fat for fuel. And glucose and fat are two main sources of energy in the body and you know, we only have about two to three hours worth of like stored glucose in the body if we're working out, you know more if we're just kind of at rest, and so the body is going to kind of use that first. And only when you run out of that, and insulin is in a low state, do you start flipping the switch to burn fat, and that's obviously going to be important for weight loss to be able to actually tap into fat burning. But for the average American who's eating multiple meals a day, lots of snacks, a high refined carbon sugar diet, it's very possible that we're never getting to a state we're in during the day where our insulin really comes down to baseline really, you know, is low and allows us to take that break off of fat burning. And this is why I think so many people are interested in like ketogenic diets for weight loss, but also fasting for weight loss, because both of those strategies keep the glucose exhausted as glucose from the diet, sort of lower the Keto diet through a low carb diet, fasting through just not eating at all. Those are times essentially or your insulin is low, and you're taking that break off fat burning, you can actually flip that metabolic switch from glucose burning to fat burning. And so yes, so people, who, you know, are dealing with that abdominal fat what's interesting about insulin is it preferentially stores your fat around your middle, it preferentially stores what we call visceral adiposity, which is the fat.

Chase  

Lucky for us, right?

Dr. Casey  

Lucky for us, yeah. But you know, you see a lot of people walking around with like, maybe relatively lean appendages, but like really a huge belly. And that's sort of a telltale sign of insulin resistance where that insulin is elevated; we're on that spectrum moving towards a problem. And that insulin is basically stopping us from being able to burn through that fat, but also telling the body to store any excess glucose as visceral fat around our organs and in our belly.

Chase  

When is the best time, the best place in that spectrum to actually take action? Because I can imagine someone who is maybe going to the doctor and the last two years or last five years, the doctors is your sugar's look a little high, but don't worry about it. It's nothing. You know, you're not pre diabetic, you're not diabetic, like, when is when should we actually step in and take note of, hey, there's something going on internally that I need to get ahead of, and how much time really do we have to get to it later, so to speak?

Dr. Casey  

Well, the beautiful thing about metabolic health and really the body in general is that so often, things are reversible, and we can move in the right direction. It's not a one way street with health. And so in so many ways, and there are certainly exceptions to that rule but with blood sugar and insulin sensitivity there, it's very much a two way street. I like to use the term metabolic fitness because we really need to oriented around this idea of like fitness as if we were going to go lift weights, like we the first time we lift weights, we're not expecting to be jacked, we need to do it day in and day out, in order to build the cellular adaptations, that leads to muscle growth. And the same is true of how we should think about improving our insulin sensitivity, improving our glucose, you have to put in the reps in order to achieve metal in order to achieve in metabolic flexibility, and metabolic health and metabolic fitness. And the reps in this case, our days of not spiking your glucose too high of keeping glucose lower and more stable. Those are the reps keeping your insulin down is a rep, which allows your cells to perk up and say, Oh, I need to be more insulin sensitive, because I'm not seeing a lot of it around, I need to perk up a little bit. These are adaptations we can make. So I think, you know, going back to I did a lot of wilderness leadership in my early 20s and one of my favorite lines is the best way to not get lost is to stay found. And so you know, you always want to know where you are in the middle of the wilderness. And that's kind of how I feel about glucose monitoring and knowing about orienting our diet and lifestyle through glucose, the best time to do it is you know, when we're very, very young, we, we want to look through that lens as we approach our diet and our lifestyle so that we can stay found, so to speak. But the hopeful thing is that even if you're well down the road, even in tight, full blown fulminant, type two diabetes, there is evidence that it is reversible. And there's a wonderful company is doing great research in this Virta health, which is diabetes reversal program that's done through a coaching and low carb diet. And they've put out research showing that in 10 weeks, with a dietary intervention, their participants can go from diabetes to a non-diabetic glucose level. And so not to say that this is the only program or a program that like is the end all be all, I actually think there's other strategies other than just super, super low carb to improve insulin sensitivity. But what it shows us is that there is a door towards reversing these even when you're sort of in a late stage. But with that said, starting early, I mean and just crafting a diet that works for you to keep glucose fairly low and stable that you still love and learning those tips and tricks to sort of modulate diet so that it doesn't have so much of a glycemic impact for your personal body I think that's the time to do it.

Chase  

I agree. Absolutely. And I would love to get there. But before we do before we get into kind of like what do we need to do to regulate or even reverse high blood sugar concerns? Can you walk us through and we touched a little bit on already of the food coma? The itis? Can you walk us through from just initial body scans biofeedback to harder telltale signs? How do we know when we have blood sugar concerns? What can we be looking for, to feel to note, brain fog, physically and then even other bigger manifestations?

Dr. Casey  

Yeah, so one thing that's really interesting about blood sugar problems is that it's sort of can masquerade as almost any symptom. And the reason for that comes down to fundamentally what is metabolism. So metabolism is a core pathway that takes place in every single cell in our body to generate energy for our cells and it's basically the process the set of chemical reactions, the body through which we convert food substrates to a currency of energy our body can use. And we have over 30 trillion cells in our body, every single one needs a well-functioning metabolism for our cells to work. And when cells start not functioning properly, when they don't get the energy they need, then we start getting tissue dysfunction, then we start getting symptoms, and then we start getting, you know, disease. So it, it all comes down to the cellular level of what's going on in the cells. And one of those core pathways is metabolism. So it can look like anything. For instance, if your metabolism is, you know, off kilter in your ovaries, it could look like polycystic ovarian syndrome, the leading cause of infertility in America, which is a metabolic condition. If it's happening in brain cells, it could look like Alzheimers dementia, which is being called type three diabetes now because it's so linked to Insulin resistance, but it could also look like depression, anxiety, chronic fatigue, or fibromyalgia, chronic pain. All of those conditions are associated with blood sugar. If it's happening to liver, it could look like chronic liver disease. If it's happening in the blood vessels it could look like any host of blood vessel endothelial problems, and we know that retinopathy, which is an issue with the blood vessels of the eyes is related to diabetes. We know that big vessel disease, like heart disease is associated is directly related to blood sugar problems. We also know that erectile dysfunction, which is a problem with blood getting to the penis, is very much even considered a heart like a warning sign for having blood sugar problems. Men in their 40s with erectile dysfunction, if that's a symptom that that comes up are at this point, you know, it's sort of you must get checked out for blood sugar problems, but it's a very free. So it's really this great masquerader based on where this core pathway is showing its signs in the skin, it can be acne, and we know that blood sugar is related to too much oil production in the skin. So I could just go on and on. But it's amazing, because it could kind of look like anything, it could also just kind of look like feeling crappy, like not like having a little you're in your 30s and you have like some brain flog or fog, you're often tired after a meal 

Chase  

You can’t put your finger on it and you're just like, something's off like, yeah,

Dr. Casey  

Yeah. And I mean, I kind of skipped over the biggest one, which is issues with losing weight, you know, 72% of our country right now is overweight or obese, what is being overweight or obese? It is excess fat storage. How does fat get stored? Through elevated insulin and by not ever having that break of insulin off so that you can actually burn through those energy stores being overweight is really just having too much energy stored as fat that we're not using. So, so there's not a specific sort of symptom that I would say is directly related to like, a one to one relationship. But any of these things that I just mentioned, you know, should be red flags to dig into this deeper, what often will happen is that you go to the doctor's office, and they'll check your finger stick glucose first thing in the morning, and they'll say, Oh, it's less than 100 milligrams per deciliter. So you're totally fine. I'm sure a lot of people would have that experience, someone out there might say, Oh, my gosh, I have polycystic ovarian syndrome, I'm gonna go to the doctor and ask for a finger stick glucose, and they're gonna go in, and maybe it's gonna be 95. And the doctors gonna say you have no problem, there's no, there's no issue here. I think a lot of doctors are starting to realize that we actually have to think deeper than that for a couple of reasons; One, because these diagnostic tests are just single time point measurements that don't tell us about what's happening actually, with the insulin. What if that person with sort of this high normal fasting glucose like 95, you know, maybe there's a person out there who's keeping that glucose at that level with a very low insulin, they're very insulin sensitive, and they're just putting out a little bit of insulin to keep the blood levels that way? Then there's another person out there whose insulin levels are 10 times higher to keep the blood sugar at that same range, they are going to be much farther on that spectrum than the person with the low insulin levels. So a lot of doctors are starting to order fasting insulin tests now, which is not standard of care. But there's many doctors who are sort of starting to incorporate that into their practice. There are other ratios that we can actually tell from our cholesterol tests, like our triglyceride to HDL ratio, total cholesterol to HDL ratio. So these are just from your standard cholesterol level tests and based on what those ratios look like, can actually be predictive of whether you are insulin resistant. And then there's another test you can do with a fasting glucose, and a fasting insulin test, that gives you what's called a Homa-IR score, which is a score of insulin resistance. So these are things that you can, you know, ask your doctor for potentially, to kind of get a sense of where you are in terms of insulin resistance. And then continuous glucose monitoring gives you know, while a fasting glucose test, the standard of care tells you just a snapshot of what's happening with your glucose but nothing about the context the insulin etc. continuous glucose monitoring can give you more of like a movie of what's going on with your glucose levels. 

Chase

And so more of during the events, you know, after the event, you know, it paints a fuller picture a much needed fuller picture. 

Dr. Casey 

Precisely. So an example of this, you know, let's say you have a glucose monitor on and you've eaten a full breakfast, and your glucose, it's going to, you're going to break down those carbohydrates that you ate, the glucose is going to go up in the bloodstream and it's going to come down and that should typically happen for a healthy person in about two hours. And you know, ideally, we don't go above about 140 when we eat that meal. But I would argue we want to not, not go that high, you know ever but just in terms of standard guidelines don't really want to go above 140 after a meal and want to come back down within about two hours. Well, let's say you put it on you, you're sitting there next to your friend, you both eat the same breakfast and one person, you know, goes up and comes down in two hours, the other person goes up and stays elevated for like three and a half hours and then comes down. Well, that's a lot of information that might be a sign, that person is actually more insulin resistant, their body is not responding that insulin well enough to get the glucose and it takes longer for them to clear it from their bloodstream, you're never gonna pick that up from a standard single time point measurement. But on a continuous glucose monitoring, you can. So that's kind of the lay of the land of some of the objective things you could potentially look at, and also some of the sort of more subjective symptomatic things you might see.

Chase  

So then, what can someone do with that information? What can someone do with seeing, oh, wow, this meal that, uh, you know, my whole family is eating or I've been used to eating my whole life, I'm actually learning it causes a longer insulin response, a longer blood sugar spike. Maybe I don't have any other signs or symptoms or concerns yet. But this is something that I'm aware of and I want to get ahead of what can I actually do about it?

Dr. Casey  

Yeah. So there are a couple lenses we can look through. One is food, which, which we should dive into. But then there's another of other a number of other factors that we know can improve our insulin sensitivity that I'll just touch on briefly. So with food, the key point is, is to regain our insulin sensitivity. And we can do that by stopping the constant stimulation of insulin in the body. And we do that by keeping our glucose more stable, essentially. And we can learn how to do that, by, you know, you can, there's lots of books out there about sort of like low carb, low glycemic Keto type diets, you can kind of read about what foods are the major offenders and what aren't. But you can also use biofeedback, like a continuous glucose monitor to actually test for yourself. And that's, that's what I personally recommend. Obviously, I'm biased; I started a company about this, because I'm so passionate about it. 

Chase

Shout out Levels. 

Dr. Casey

The interesting thing is that you and I could both eat a banana and we might have totally different glucose responses to that banana, I might go up from baseline of 70 milligrams per deciliter to 170 and go up 100 points, and you might go up 10 points. And that's what we've seen now in the research is that people respond very differently to the same carbohydrate source. And there was this amazing paper out of Israel five years ago is published in the journal cell that was called personalized nutrition by prediction of glycemic responses. And they gave people 800 healthy people standardized meals, things like bananas, or full meals or cookies, and saw this vast array of responses to those identical foods. And then they looked at what were the predictive factors of that. One of the big predictive factors was actually microbiome composition. So what's in our gut actually changes the way we respond to a carbohydrate, which is fascinating. So the idea of just following like a very restrictive blanket, low carb diet, to me seems less favorable than actually testing, like what works for your body and choosing the things that have less impact and then also using that tool to modulate foods to have least glycemic impact. So doing things like I talked about earlier, like food pairing, making sure that we're not eating carbohydrates alone and pairing them appropriately with fat protein fiber to minimize their impact to, you know, sequence meals appropriately. If we eat protein and fat and roughage before we eat our carbohydrates in a meal, we tend to have less of a glycemic response. If we eat earlier in the day, we tend to have a better response. So just like learning this metabolic toolbox of how to eat to minimize that glycemic impact, therefore minimize that insulin impact, and over time, perk up our, our insulin sensitivity. So that's kind of like big picture for food. It's really just keeping those keeping it more stable. But there's just to quickly touch on there's many other aspects I mean, cell biology is complex, and it's more than just food and there's no one like we've already talked about, there's no one food plan for everyone. It's, it's, it's your personal low glycemic food plan. But we also need to think about the other pillars, which are sleep, how we're sleeping, how we're stressing, how we're moving, the micro nutrient composition of our food in our bodies, our microbiome health, and then exposure to pollutants. So these are kind of like they're really the big factors with

Chase  

I am glad you bring this up. It's gonna be actually my next question was okay, besides taking care of our blood sugar if we have a, you know, concern around that why else should we care about monitoring our blood sugar, what are the other spillover effects, basically? 

Dr. Casey  

Yeah. So, you know, I mentioned those things because all of those things feed into how our cells process how our metabolic processes work. So stress is a really interesting one. When we stress we release stress hormones like catecholamines and cortisol. And these have a really big impact on our ability to metabolize things appropriately. Makes sense; a time of threat, you know, that has to put our body on a different pathway. It's not focused on, you know, optimal, nuanced pathways were in survival mode. 

Dr. Casey  

Yeah and what stress hormones do to our, our body is they actually go to our liver, and they tell the liver to dump out our stored glucose into the bloodstream because traditionally, our threats were going to be physical in nature, we were going to have to run from a lion or something like that, we need an easily accessible energy to run. Now, most of our stressors in our modern world, which is very physically safe, is they're psychological in nature, it's the text message. It's the email, it's the conversation with a coworker, it's the honking, it's these chronic all day, low grade stressors, and our body is still dumping sugar into the bloodstream and yet, we don't need it. So it's just it's sitting there causing, you know, problems. So, there has been research to show that if you can manage your stress response, and you can, you know, using diaphragmatic breathing and parasympathetic nervous system activation,

Chase  

Actually in James Nasser's book, I'm wrapping up now Breath, 

Dr. Casey

Best book ever 

Chase

Mind blowing. In the section now kind of, he's talking about like, the, like the metabolic spillover effect that getting better at breathing can have and talking about blood sugar management and disease management, it's unreal.

Dr. Casey  

It’s incredible. And when he was forced to do mouth breathing by plugging his nose in the Stanford experiment, like his blood, biomarkers, just like went totally out of whack. And it's, it's incredible, you know, our bodies are so finely tuned to help us self-manage our stress, but we've lost a lot of that traditional wisdom, which is so prevalent in so many other cultures, but we just we don't think about I don't think vagal nerve stimulation is something that children are taught in the US and yet it is it is our, our,

Chase  

I'm going to teach my kids dammit, I'm going to teach my kids about vagal nerve stimulation,

Dr. Casey  

I'm with you. I mean, this is about coping, this is about self-soothing, and, and that makes you know, your own life better, but also makes everyone around you their life better when you know how to manage your emotions. And we literally have built in hacks, like there are places we can touch on our body, you know, to actually activate some of the stuff that puts us that changes our stress hormones, and it's kind of amazing.

Chase  

With the listener right now, speaking of breath, to kind of couple what you're talking about here, the cycles that he talks about our nostrils going in in terms of left or night, left or right breathing. The left side is more directly tied to your sympathetic and right, tied to your parasympathetic. I'm pretty sure I got that right. I'll put that down. But just paying attention. Like this is a great biofeedback hack for someone right now is pay attention biofeedback, where which natural side are you predominantly breathing through? And that can be an indicator of, I'm actually stressed out. What am I on edge about? What am I nervous about? What am I worried about? What am I thinking? What am I doing? Who are the people I'm with just a small little thing of paying attention to which nostril you are breathing through can be like the precursor to managing your blood sugar.

Dr. Casey  

Yeah, totally. Totally. It's so yeah, major shout out for that book. It's amazing. I originally trained as an ear, nose and throat surgeon and I was so blown away by how much I did not know about the nose. I'm like, here I spent, you know, nine years between medical school and residency, obsessed with the nose operating on the nose. And in that book, I learned so much about like I'm sending this to every one of my family. So it's, it's a great, it's a great sort of just like, you know, just broad brushstrokes about some other ways we can be thinking about our lives. So, but stress is, yeah, it's huge for metabolic health. And it makes sense from that sort of evolutionary protective mechanism that sort of gone awry. And sleep really fits hand in hand with that we basically know I mean, it's this simple it's like if you sleep, not enough, you are at significantly higher risk for developing metabolic conditions ranging from being overweight, to having diabetes, to having heart disease, to the extent that these are now becoming like sleep is being asked as like standard questions when we're thinking about heart disease risk for people because it's, it's so strongly linked. So one really interesting experiment that was done was they looked at a group, large group of people and they categorize them by people who are short sleepers or long sleepers. Short sleepers were people who are getting 6.5 hours of sleep per night which is not even that does it for us doesn't seem that crazy and long sleepers for 7.5 to 8.5. And they gave each of these different groups or a glucose tolerance test, which is where you take a bunch of glucose, liquid glucose in, and then your you, we track your blood sugar for two to three hours after the test and see what happens and they each group had similar glucose responses. So it's like, oh, so they're the same, it doesn't actually matter. But when you looked at insulin, the short sleepers had to produce 50% more insulin to have the same glucose levels than the people who are long sleepers. So we know that even one night of sleep can make us acutely insulin resistant. There was another crazy study; this one's impacted me a lot where they had a group of healthy, very healthy young men and they subjected them to five nights of four hours of sleep per night, which is extreme, obviously, like that would that would throw us off

Chase  

Sounds like a lot of my time in the military, to be honest. Especially in boot camp.

Dr. Casey  

it sounds pretty crazy for like day to day, but I think back to my surgical residency when I was on call two to three nights a week and all-nighters and so it's not four hours of sleep at night, but on average, some weeks, it was four hours of night asleep. They basically took these healthy young men and in that intervention, converted them from normal to pre diabetic based on their lab studies. And then they gave them basically unlimited like 12 hours sleep a night for the next five nights and people it was reversible. But it's just you think about kids during college kids during like, finals week, how many of those kids are like I say, kids, like it's so long ago, but it was only like 15 years ago, but you know, they're probably flipping in and out of pre diabetes in college like not infrequently. And so best thing we can do, I think for our mental health is just like get a quality sleep and also for a metabolic health. Exercise, just I'll keep it short. Anytime we're moving our body, we're improving our metabolic health. And the reason for this is twofold. One is that muscles are one of our biggest glucose sinks in the body; they are this gigantic, full body place to that's using glucose. And so if you're moving a muscle, even if it means walking across your room, that's just every single one of those muscle fibers is having to take up glucose out of the bloodstream and keep it in more stable range. And the cool thing about muscle is that it's actually able to function in an insulin independent way muscle contraction in its own right allows glucose to be taken up, you don't need the insulin is a lock and key. So it's like a way to dispose of glucose without triggering the whole insulin physiology.

Chase  

So it's that dark knight working, working in the background for us. Amazing.

Dr. Casey  

It is it is and there's been some really interesting studies where basically you take people put them in different groups, one that walks for like 20 minutes, three times a day, before meals, one that walks for 20 minutes day after each of the three meals and then another end. So that's 60 minutes total for each group, or a group that walks two minutes every 30 minutes throughout the day. So each group totals 60 minutes of movement, but at different times, and the people who walk every 30 minutes actually have the best glucose control more than eating before after meals or in chunks. And I think the reason for that is because by moving every 30 minutes, even for just a couple minutes, you're activating the whole body of muscles, and you're keeping those pathways, you know, constituency activated, you're becoming a body that moves as opposed to a sedentary body that has little chunks of movement.

Chase  

So body in motion stays in motion. That's what they say, right?

Dr. Casey  

Yes. I love that.

Chase  

Well, your expertise is very apparent. It's been so great hearing some of these things are a reminder for me personally, but so many other nuances and new studies and new technologies that are coming out of the work that you're doing and the whole team at Levels is well, first of all, I'm thankful thank you so much for what you're doing. And for the education and empowerment you're passing on to the world. And you know, through the audience here on the podcast. And getting towards the end, I know that you all have now been able to not only educate, empower, but now pass off a tool to help somebody track it, become more in tune with their body, learn by feedback and just make a decision or make better decisions for their general wellness to get ahead of diabetes. Someone like myself who has it directly in his family I'm very mindful of carbohydrates and sugar and getting my an once every year but with Levels it has given me daily immediate continuous access to what is going on to some of my food choices to my physical activity choices. And in a lot of ways, it's been a great little just nudge of, hey Chase, you think you're doing the right thing well, maybe for you due to your bio individuality, you need to be doing something a little bit differently. And it's just been that great little nudge for me in maintenance and my wellness and so for that as a thank you but can you please give us the high level view of what is Levels and what is it doing for the person?

Dr. Casey  

Yeah, well, thank you for those kind words that I'm glad it was a positive experience. So Levels is doing exactly sort of what we've been talking about it's giving people this window into their metabolic health through providing access to continuous glucose monitoring technology and then pairing that with software that helps you understand what that data stream means and how to optimize it and improve your diet and lifestyle to keep glucose levels in ideally, a stable and healthy range. Because it is so personalized, each person is going to respond differently to carbohydrates, it allows people to really have that personalized closed loop lens on how these choices are actually specifically affecting your own body and to move towards what you know, more of an optimal state. So our program is a one month program, we call it a one month metabolic awareness journey. And during that one month, people get these wearable sensors that continuous glucose monitors which just stick on the back of your arm, and are super easy, super painless, they last on there for two weeks. So during the month, which is 28 days, you get two of these two weeks sensors. And it's just that it's like a little lab on your arm, it's like a little doing a little lab test on your arm 24 hours a day, it's crazy, like it's, it's like a like a Fitbit or an Apple Watch but it's actually testing something inside your body through this tiny little painless filament that goes under the skin and then it's transmitting that data to your smartphone, and our software interprets that data for you. So that's, that's what Levels does and ultimately, it's all about empowerment, helping people understand their bodies better and helping us make the consistent dietary and lifestyle choices that keep us healthy, both now and in the future.

Chase  

And that's what Ever Forward Radio is all about. That's the meaning behind the message is, you know, what are these things that we can continue to do? What can we learn more about to keep us moving forward? And so the last question, I'll ask you here, Casey, the question I ask everybody is, you know, what does that mean to you? How does your work? How does your mission? How can Levels and what you're doing in the world what does that mean to you to live a life ever forward? How can this help us at the same time?

Dr. Casey  

Hmm. To me, part of moving ever forward just has a lot to do with mindset. It means waking up every morning with a growth mindset and with optimism, and really knowing that the brain and the body are something that are modifiable and modulatable based on habit. And we you know, when we put in the consistent, you know, effort each day, whether it means focusing on a positive gratitude based mindset, or putting, you know, beautiful food into our body or moving our bodies that there is an amazing payoff there is plasticity in the body and we will move in the right direction. So it's just really about keeping that growth mindset and keeping an optimistic outlook on the mind and body because, you know, life comes I think in in waves and you know, there's generally a brighter side down the road, but we can help we can help, you know, make things brighter by the way we approach each day with our habits.

Chase  

I agree. Well, Dr. Casey Means, thank you so much. I don't think we've formally said that. So anybody curious as to what is this lady who what is she talking about? Who is she? Background for sure. I mean, again, your work at Levels is incredible. I've had a great experience so far. And it's great for my continued daily wellness, but also someone like myself who just, I'm unique. Like you're unique. We're all unique. We all have things that we want to achieve in life, in our body composition and our wellness, but also things that we should I think be mindful of because we didn't just pop out of nowhere, right. You know, we've got parents, we've got uncles, we've got family history. So do your due diligence, for sure. Casey, thank you so much. I'll have all your information down in the show notes for everybody. And we'll wrap it there.

Dr. Casey  

Thanks so much Chase.

William is the founder of Moore Momentum. His story of success started in 2007 during the real estate market crash. He created a company called Doorstep Delivery- a restaurant delivery service and became the largest food delivery service in the southeast and had 19 branches. A year and a half later, Doorstep Delivery was bought for its recognizable success.

From his experience, William decided to share his knowledge of success in unity and growth and built a new company called Moore Momentum, a professional training and coaching service to help you become the best version of yourself. 

Moore Momentum's mission is to "create a movement of change that shifts the mindset of the world toward unity and growth."

In this episode, William shares five core areas of life if done properly will completely level-up your success, increase productivity, regulate the flow of energy by combining the latest in science and technology, and universal principles to gamify your life!

Follow William @5corelife

Follow Chase @chase_chewning

Key Highlights

• Why are the 5 cores important?

• Why is connecting to your why more effective than for?

• Keep understanding, keep reading, and keep studying.

• The role of mindset, goal setting, and accountability.

• Why your morning routine matters.

Episode resources:

• Save 15% on grass fed beef sticks from Paleovalley with code EVERFORWARD

• Save 15% on all natural CBD products from Cured Nutrition with code EVERFORWARD

• How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

• Atomic Habits by James Clear

• 13 Virtues by Benjamin Franklin

• Hooked by Nir Eyal

Interview transcript

Chase [06:24]

All right, lights, camera, action there we go. Will Moore welcome to Ever Forward Radio man coming from one of my favorite places in the US, Chicago and we're having a very similar weather day so while we're in good company man. Welcome.

Will [06:35]

Thank you, great to be here.

Chase [06:37]

What’s is going on the most in your world? Maybe go back just two years to like this big transition you've had in your life. What were you doing? How did you find yourself up here? What are you doing today?

Will [07:01]

I spent the last 10 years or so building a business. My story of success started in 2007 during the real estate market crash. I saw the need of food delivery service since it the market was not saturated and many people needed it. I created a company called Doorstep Delivery- a restaurant delivery service and became the largest food delivery service in the southeast and had 19 branches. A year and a half later, Doorstep Delivery was bought for its recognizable success.

Chase [10:01]

So, what's it like standing at the bottom of this tower and staring at something that doesn't exist yet, but it's clear as day in your mind? 

Will [10:21]

If you can kind of step back and sort of say, okay, what does the world need, right? People always have ideas. It’s only a matter if they make their ideas come to life or give out excuses. Your success depends if you actually do it or doubt yourself

Chase [11:05]

Not an ounce of doubt. Absolutely.

Will: [11:08]

You'll never succeed because there's so many bitch slaps. People can try to steal your business too. In the first couple of years, we weren’t very profitable. I think it’s pretty typical for new businesses. Some businesses die but fortunately, we got some momentum.

We started partnering with some bigger restaurants, like, Chili’s. Initially, we were the one’s going to restaurants asking if they want to partner with us. They would always decline or if they do accept, it took a lot of convincing. But by the end, it was kind of neat they were all kind of begging us to be partnered with them, because they saw it as profit. They were making money.

And I was like, shit, I've been working on this thing for 25 years or so this this kind of book, this personal journey of all the things that I've learned along the way.

I was suicidal when I was in college. I had a bit of a religion. I straight up was your typical fixed victim and I serendipitously was introduced to this book by a professor who I really admired at the time and he just kind of casually mentioned it in one of his lectures, and I like wrote it down and went right to the library after and luckily, they had it had they not had it, I wonder how my life would have turned out.

Chase [13:14] 

What was the book?

Will [13:15]

Butterfly Effect, How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. This book made me realize that there's a different way to look at the universe to look at the world. There's these universal principles that I have not been taking advantage of. I am going to figure out all of them and I made it my life's mission to basically reinvent myself and figure out what it means to be happy. There is no short-cut elixir too.

Chase [13:48]

Three easy installments for sure. 

Will [13:49]

Right? It doesn't, it doesn't work that way. I started figuring things out over time using myself as a human science experiment- what worked, what didn't, what laws of the universe? 

I honed in on these main areas of life and these key principles. Develop habits to make me happy and get to where I wanted to be. And so, 25 years later, I did that with my career, my finances, I ended up dividing these into five different cores. That didn't come until way later I just knew like, my physical health is important. My relationships are important, my mind sets important, my emotional health is important. My career and finances are important.

And these are the five cores then I was kind of working on all of them. I got rid of my failure habits and replaced them with success habits; and so, I can keep building momentum to combine them all to form my overall happiness. 

Chase: [15:25]

Life is multifaceted. Our goals are multifaceted. Yes, when we focus on one thing, we can perform well, and we can get better at it, we can excel at it, but it is leaving a lot of other areas neglected, or it is leaving a lot of other room, leaving a lot on the table, basically a lot of room for improvement, all these other things when we become out of whack.

It all comes down to habits. Either we push ourselves closer towards the goal, or decide what is the goal that we want.  Sometimes, just to build positive momentum and figure things out along the way. 

So, when reading this book and applying some of these things, I'm curious, was it as straightforward for you as just instilling new habits? Were you realizing a lot of the habits that you had needed to go? Was it subtraction or addition? Or a little bit of the combination of both? 

Will [16:40]

It's a great question. Now, I like helping people shine a big spotlight on their lives. It wasn't until I read Atomic Habits, by James Clear that it really hit me like a ton of bricks and I'm like, wow, what I'm doing is the natural extension. 

Chase [17:24]

That one is great, I got about three copies up over here. Anytime anybody rolls through the office, they haven't read it, I give them one. It's amazing.

Will [17:30]

I mean, right? He talks about whether you're using this physical, relationships, emotional parts- how they work, connecting to your whys and why it’s important as human beings to understand that because it’s got to be a deep thing that syncs way all up in there in your body and your soul that goes.

Chase [18:29]

I always go back to the movie Inception; if anything is to stick and to be inherent to be worthwhile it has to be from our own design. 

Will [18:40]

That’s exactly right. Versus willpower, which is complete BS and doesn't work where you go- a superficial level. You haven't connected, like you said on that Inception level.

These different areas, these five cores, they cover everything. This is what life is about: these five cores, all combined to form your overall momentum, happiness, growing, and stopping your failure habits and replacing them with success habits to make sure you're becoming bigger, better, faster, stronger along the way.

It’s been a 25-year journey to figure it all out but, what I have realized is that it's these habits, but they've got to be based on these principles.

I've read 1000s of self-help books, been to seminars you name it, they all kind of have the same things in different ways and like I said, it's been my goal to use these principles. 

Will [20:52]

It fits perfectly. I need to use that same science and technology, what we know about habits, what we know about dopamine hits, why we do things, and use that to level up not just on a screen and get a shallow victory of a like or a, you know, you're playing a game and you get you know, gold coins but to level up in real life. That's what I've dedicated my life to.

Chase AD [21:18]

Hey, what's going on my friend, I want to take a quick second and pause from this interview with William Moore. First of all, just take a pause and just let it all sink in everything that Will has been talking about up to this point, just let it sink in for a second. I don't want this to be just another podcast that you listen to and have just running in the background and maybe you pick up a few things here and there but just really take a pause right now and reflect back on what you've heard so far, let it sink in.

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Alright, let's go and jump back into today's conversation with William Moore.

Chase [26:30]

I want to dive into these five core principles and there's one in particular, I want to kick off with relationships. I really think that is the most profound one. I think they're all important, right? All these other areas in our life are important, but relationships are instrumental. 

You had this kind of epiphany, right? This realization that your life needed to change. You said that you wanted to change. How did you know the next steps to take? Because that can be that can be crippling. 

Will [27:32]

I didn’t is the answer. But I made it my mission to use myself as a human science experiment and to test start testing all these things. All I knew is I needed to keep reading and I needed to keep studying, keep understanding, keep learning.

Chase [28:50]

Yeah, right. Absolutely. Man, I love your response to that well said for sure. So then let's dive into these five core areas and we've got mindset, career and finances, relationships. 

I would love to start off with first physical health and emotional health and giving back so please indulge me. Why did relationships make your top five and what do you mean by that? Why is it such a core area?

Will [29:14]

Before we get into relationships, I have to bring up mindset because mindset is the surface. Your mindset is the glue that holds the rest of the course together and getting your mind working for instead of against you, and it makes all the other cores incrementally easier to build momentum.

Chase [29:37]

So, you kind of have a hierarchy for these a little bit?

Will [29:40]

They're all equal but mindset is the one that you need to make sure. I've got strengths just like everybody else, I've got weaknesses. I'm going to figure out how to outsource and work around those weaknesses, I'm going to focus on my strengths, I'm gonna learn what I'm passionate about, I'm going to set goals and when I fail, I'm going to fail forward.

I'm going to figure out what it was that didn't work and how to pivot so that every step of the way, I'm becoming bigger, better, faster, stronger, and that ends up applying to all your areas, including relationships, because, if you can look start looking at life that way, and that doesn't happen overnight and there's techniques.

One of the habits is negative self-talk, as long as you do that continually, that's the main thing that you're filling your brain with, you're never gonna be able to get to what I just said.

And so, with relationships, it's the same thing in terms if you want to build momentum and create these relationships. It's in our nature to have these human connections and interactions and if you're not doing that, you're going to be F’d. 

In the relationship core, I actually break it into four different areas, I have your colleagues and acquaintances, people you may be just met, family, colleges and friends, and your significant other. Are you married or single? 

Chase [33:16]

I'm married. Yeah, we've been together almost eight years. 

Will [34:10]

For instance, my wife and I have these agreements, right? We come we're two different people, just like every couple is we come from different backgrounds. We're not the same. I am a man. She's a woman, we, you know, they're our brains do not work exactly the same. And we, we forget that sometimes. And we get frustrated with the other person and we make assumptions, like, why are they doing this? Why are they doing that? And that just starts to chip away at the fabric.

Whereas it's like, okay, look, here's where you're coming from. Let's make it clear. Here's where we tend to have issues, right? 

Raising our kids, we do have some disagreements but we compromise even though we don't see it exactly the same how do we meet in the middle and what's best for our sons? And that's how we're going to do it.

Chase [35:13]

Present this unified front for sure. So, mindset first, that's definitely the lens we want to look through when we're starting all of these core values, core beliefs, these pillars, if you will, for the work that you talk about.

And then kind of you started talking about the relationship aspect, whether it's a significant other family member, I would even say that, what about the one with ourselves? How do you go about working on the relationship with yourself? Because I think that's probably the most important one that takes the most amount of work. 

Will [36:02]

So that and that's that that's your mindset. I mean, it is the most important and that's why I have people start with your mindset. Your mindset is your relationship with yourself. It's how you view the world. It's your confidence, it's your attitude. It's your perspective, literally on how the world is, is those a world suck, and it's out to get you are you a fixed victim, or a growth owner?

And if you have a bad relationship with yourself, you're going to potentially build that negative momentum hurting yourself. Like you'll get overwhelmed like this is too hard, you got to do it very slowly and surely, which is what I help with.

Chase [37:11]

It is possible to become overwhelmed and even more stressed out. Our personal development, self-help and growth, as we open our minds up to the possibility of what we want and we realize that all of this is possible just takes incremental work and consistent work.

Will: [38:54]

When you start to get your mind working for you, instead of against you it reduces the friction. Maybe before you didn't have the confidence, you didn't have the foresight - but then once you start to improve your mindset it's like just like same with physical health and same with your emotional health like it's like all of a sudden, you will say: I can do that!

Here’s my goal. This is what I want to do. This is my purpose.

You can get your brains working for you, and create ways that you never saw before and how to get there right at the end. You got to set goals. I'm a huge, huge, huge goal guy.

In fact, that they don't teach that mainstream in schools is shame on you. I'm trying to I'm trying to fix the broken system and the education.

Will [40:43]

We’ve got to start teaching things like goals and emotional health and how to get along with others, and how to balance your checkbook in school.

These five core areas, these habits, so by the time you get to young adulthood, you're not suicidal.

Believe it or not, even with all this tech, and everything that's happened, we're becoming less happy as a society. The world of happiness has been on a downward trajectory. 

For many years, teen suicide, especially for girls is at an all-time high and it's gone up every single year. Social media comparing themselves so it's like, we got to use this stuff responsibly. And so that's my whole mission. That's my whole goal in life that keeps me going every single day, just like with doorstep delivery, where I said, I know this is it. This is this is this is where the world is heading. 

How do I use the same science and technology to get people addicted to leveling up? Not just on screen, but in real life.

Chase [41:49]

That’s such a great idea, man. How do we get how do we introduce that kind of gamification concept that we've seen work time and time again, for things like video games, cell phone games, social media platforms?

How do we kind of get people conditioned to want to show up and stay present the same way they do for these other things, but in a way that is going to be a positive feedback loop?

Something that is going to get them addicted to themselves really in a non-egotistical way?

Will [42:20] 

Gamifying it up. My app is going to be the first product and you're a rocket ship. And you've got these five core areas of your life are the thrusters of your engine, and to not fly off course and end up where you don't want or to crash land. You got to make sure that you're balancing these cores, you're continually building momentum in each to get off the ground, then to get to the moon then to the first planet and the next galaxy than the next solar system along the way. You're meeting aliens. You are navigating through asteroid field.

Chase [43:39]

Is this co developed with Neil deGrasse Tyson by chance?

Will [43:47]

The whole point is it's I've been working on this for the last three years this app.

I had this idea it started with I literally back when I was telling you in college when I was suicidal, one of the first books I read, talked about Benjamin Franklin's 13 virtues. 

I'm calling them habits, the things that you want to change in your life. I would write a list and forced myself writing it every day. What did I do today? Did I do this, this thing that I know that is good for me this habit that I'm working on? Or did I not? And I would put either a checkmark or an x.

Slowly but surely, that started shining this big spotlight and making me aware of the things that were really hurting me causing that negative momentum so to speak. I started becoming aware.

I've got my five cores, and within each core, I've got the habits that I'm working on and improve each day on them. 

Chase [46:14]

How much weight do you put on accountability for the ability for change to happen when it comes to our habits? 

Will [46:23]

Huge. To me, it's all about systems in life systems, systems. Like you read every success book I've ever read every successful person and I use success in quotes. By the way, because most people think success is just money and finances, power and fame; but to me, it's living a true success is live in the five-core systems of life.

These people, they've developed a system that works for them and I wanted to figure out was, how can I make kind of a universal system that works for anybody? 

Chase [48:07]

I want to dive into a couple of the key concepts you talked about here and that's emotional health and giving back. Why did you put those two together? And do you think they are kind of dependent on each other in order for us to have that that level completed here in these core values? 

Will [48:23]

The honest answer is I put those two together, they do tie together but it was more I wanted to have five cores instead of six. That is actually to be to be brutally honest five cores- to me it's simpler.

Emotional health is when you are you aware of the things that are hurting your mind every day in terms of like stress? Are you aware of the things that bring true joy and happiness to your life? Like what are your passions?

Being aware of these things and making sure that you're proactively incorporating them every single day into your life so that you're reducing the stress.

Chase [50:58]

What is maybe one habit you're working on right now that you're like, I'm making it better or maintaining it like what is one key habit you have in your level of awareness right now that is, like the one you're working on the most?

Will [51:13]

This is part of my morning routine, which by the way, morning routines are huge terms of like staying on track, things that are actually going to help burst you into the day and have you going in with a smile and that energy versus another day.

One example just of that, like I used to read the news, and I start getting sucked into politics. And I would literally I would soon as I would wake up, I would open it up. And I would be in a bad mood within two minutes. 

Chase [51:34]

You're bombarded with everybody else's stressors and worries. Might be some good news in there to but it's a wave of noise that, like you need to go into intentionally I believe, right? 

Will [51:57]

That’s exactly right. And so, I caught that. With all this awareness and holding myself accountable, I realize this news doesn't fit in with my happiness. And so, I replaced it with good, and positive news.

I have this app called Flipboard, you can even do it on your Apple news feed as well- I can select the types of articles and things that I want to see. So, wellness, personal development, video games, entertainment, like whatever you're interested in that is happy and uplifting, that's all I'll see, right?

I got 10 habits that I'm currently working on posture, one of them but the top one is shorten, simplify and make things more succinct. 

Chase [53:26]

Got to get that hook, right. Is that with a new book? Is it hooked? I forgot the guy's name. 

Will [53:30]

Hooked by Nir Eyal, great book. 

Chase [53:40]

Yeah, exactly.

Well, William, it's been great having you on the show here. I can't wait for my audience to continue to dive into what you're doing over there. The Moore Momentum, everything you're doing and the change in the impact and connecting the dots for other people so that they can find other ways other walks of life, to learn from to pull from and to instill these habits and create their own system for success.

Will [54:00]

Right on brother! I really appreciate you having me on. Thanks for letting me ramble. 

Chase [54:04] 

No worries, you're in good company. Podcasts are great for that, it’s a long format content for a reason. But I do you have one final question. I'm curious, what does that mean to you, William? How would you say you live a life ever forward? 

Will [54:04]

Well, I think our messages couldn't align better. I mean Moore Momentum. M-O-O-R-E is my last name, Momentum. That's my website. That's my brand. That’s everything I'm doing.

It's about building momentum. Every single day, like we talked earlier and your podcast about not getting complacent, not resting on your laurels, but instead saying this is where I want to be in each of my areas, taking little incremental steps every single day using what I call the equation of life, which is your belief system.

So as long as you start to change, my belief system ties to your mindset as you start to change that. And then you start to take different actions than you used to those actions, then aren't going to happen right away, but the time will do its thing. That's who you're going to become. And so, it's building a little bit of momentum every single day moving forward, as you would say, every single day. 

Chase [55:29]

I love it, man, there's never a right or wrong answer. There's just your answer. I appreciate your insight on that. 

Will [55:35]

Right on.

Chase [55:36]

If you could send somebody listening, watching right now, somewhere, where are they going? Where can they connect with you online? What's going on? 

Will [55:48]

So, mooremomentum.com. I have a life evaluator quiz where you can actually see where you stand in each of these five core areas of your life.

It's like you're saying being aware of figuring it out is the first step- the quiz will help you get there.

Then on our Instagram page @5corelife. We have all sorts of fun viral videos, positive news, fun stuff where humans are doing good things exemplifying the five-core life.

I also have my own podcast and I do little interviews and there's little snippets of that.

Chase [56:55]

Amazing man, it definitely great place to get lost scrolling for a little bit for sure.

William, thank you so much. Appreciate you. 

Will [57:03]

Appreciate it, brother. Thank you so much.

Adam Lowry is an entrepreneur and one of the four co-founders of Sugarbreak, launched last September 2, 2020 as the first all-natural, complete solution to help reduce sugar consumption and promote healthy blood sugar management. Sugarbreak, which raised $3 million in seed funding, offers pills and tongue strips to reduce sugar cravings. A suite of products backed by science was the goal. The brand itself was built on three pillars: all-natural, proven, and measurability.

Sugarbreak’s marquee product is Resist, a dissolvable minty breath strip that blocks your taste buds from tasting anything sweet for about 45 minutes, curbing sugar cravings on the spot. Its key ingredient is gymnema sylvestre which makes sugar taste like “sand on your tongue”. In other words, “it interrupts your ability to enjoy sweets” by “break[ing] that connection between your brain and the reward of sugar.”

Its other two products are Stabilize, a pre-meal capsule which helps block carbs and sugars and stabilizes post-meal sugar spikes and crashes, and Reduce, which supports consistently healthy A1c and blood glucose levels.

The company was founded to support diabetics and prediabetics through a clinically-tested supplement line that supports healthy blood sugar levels. However, for the consumer who has no medical need to reduce their sugar intake and simply wants to stay healthy, Sugarbreak’s products are “a convenient way of having on-demand willpower”.

Follow Sugarbreak @takeasugarbreak

Follow Chase @chase_chewning

Key Highlights

• What problem is Sugarbreak looking to solve, exactly?

• Adam explains how, aside from direct consumers, Sugarbreak is also looking to create products that primary care providers and other healthcare professionals can offer to their own patients.

• What’s on the horizon for Sugarbreak?

Powerful Quotes by Adam Lowry

Sugarbreak was founded to give people a convenient way of having on-demand willpower.

Part of what we’re doing with Sugarbreak is to try to create a relationship with consumers that is built around enablement and freedom and helps people live with whatever condition they’ve got in a way that’s more pleasant.

If we can create a little bit of freedom, whether it’s reducing sugar consumption on the front end or helping people maintain healthy blood sugar levels over time on the back end, then we’re doing something good.

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Sean Dollinger is the founder of Vancouver-based PlantX, an online one-stop shop for all things plant-based, including meal delivery. The ultimate goal of the platform “is to educate people on the benefits of a plant-based lifestyle, eliminating the barriers to entry for everyone.”

He has been involved in the ecommerce space for over two decades, and has a growing portfolio that includes more than 15 companies.

Having been overweight growing up, Sean discovered the power of eating a plant-based diet ten years prior, which helped him lose 60 pounds of bodyweight. It was a transformation that not only completely changed his body, but his mind as well. Sean was inspired to create a platform to share what he had learned over the past decade and it developed into what is today PlantX.

Sean goes on to share how he found success as a serial entrepreneur, from why he sleeps only four hours a night, to how he scaled PlantX from $6 million to $1.5 billion in a year-and-a-half, to how he spots opportunity in times of crisis.

Follow PlantX @goplantx

Follow Chase @chase_chewning

Key Highlights

• Why did Sean decide to start a business around plant-based products and services?

• Is a plant-based diet something that people can realistically integrate into their lifestyle?

• Why Sean feels best sleeping for only four hours a night.

• How do you find and capitalize on an opportunity amid crisis?

Powerful Quotes by Sean

At the end of the day, PlantX’s job is to give selection and choice. We’re not here to make that decision for individuals. We’re here to make sure everything fits into the plant-based lifestyle. We like to give people freedom of choice.

What I always remind people is to think back to why they started the business. Why did you think it was such a good idea? Why did you take that leap of faith? Why did you make that investment in yourself to do it? Then keep going. [...] At the end of the day, what you’ve taken a chance on could be exactly what you’re looking for.

I believe that if you put that positive energy out there, you work extremely hard, and your dedication is towards making the Earth a better place, I always believe that opportunities will present themselves.

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Eliot Marshall is a martial artist, business owner, podcaster, bestselling author, and a self-proclaimed “ex-UFC fighter turned motivational speaker”.

Eliot points to change as the defining characteristic of his life and career. He looks at each new day as an opportunity for growth, and believes fully that he is a better man today than he was at any other point, regardless of past successes. In fact, even with a prolific run in MMA behind him, Eliot admits that “my UFC career was literally just me trying to hide all these insecurities I have.”

Today, instead of running away from the coward within, Eliot embraces that side. He made it a point to learn all about his fear, and to coexist with that fear. He goes on to speak about how love from those he cared about the most yanked him out of the literal death spiral of negative self-talk that enslaved him early on.

Eliot explains how anybody can reverse engineer their ideal life in order to start taking steps toward it. This includes going through the three Is that you need to write down to start calibrating your mindset for growth: your I ams, your I cans, and your I wills.

Follow Eliot @firemarshall205

Follow Chase @chase_chewning

Key Highlights

• Eliot explains how and why he used his career as a professional fighter to hide the coward inside of him.

• How was Eliot able to surround himself with a great community of people that he could trust in his darkest hours?

• How good can our life become just by changing our mindset?

• Eliot may no longer be in the UFC, but he is clearly still a fighter. He shares what he is fighting for today.

Powerful Quotes by Eliot Marshall

As your coach, I don’t want to see “perfect”. I want to see the mess. I want to see you when it all falls apart. I want to see as ugly and as bad as it gets. Once I see that, we get to plug the holes. I need to see what you’re going to do when the shit really hits the fan because you can’t hide who you are when that cage door closes.

There’s a coward in all of us. If you won’t say hi to him, then he comes out during really inopportune times. He comes to say hello. But if I say hello to him every day, knowing that he’s part of me, then he can come hang out, but he doesn’t get to mess things up.

Living by your values is not easy. It’s not comfortable. It’s not fun. There’s no fun about it. But if you say who you say you are, then you do it.

I never want to equalize outcomes; but I want to equalize the opportunity for every single human being that walks on this Earth to be able to find, discover, and harness their power.

Episode resources:

• Eliot Marshall

• The Gospel of Fire Podcast

• The Gospel of Fire Book

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Ashley Stahl is a counterterrorism professional turned highly sought-after career coach, TEDx speaker, Forbes blogger, podcaster, and author. In January 2021, she published her first book, You Turn: Get Unstuck, Discover Your Direction, and Design Your Dream Career.

She illustrates her approach to getting “unstuck” as traveling from one lilypad to another. The first lilypad is where most people start out: They have a dream (or at least the outline of one) but are too afraid to take the next step thanks to the myriad of what-ifs plaguing their mind.

Getting over to the second lilypad is all about creating a “river channel” by figuring out your unique gift and learning how to harness your primary skillset. It’s about acknowledging that the key to getting unstuck in your career is to not do what you love, but to do what you are.

The third and final lilypad is “a level of dharma” achieved only after consistently putting that skillset into action. Ashley explains that “when you’re vibing in the current of your gifts, what happens is, on the periphery, people start noticing where you’re talented.” When you work only where you thrive, and you own your unique gift, opportunities naturally arise and your career creates itself.

Ashley goes on to share how to get clarity on your best career fit, uncovering your identity, nipping resentment at work in the bud and finding your purpose, and the biggest myths that keep you stuck in your career.

Follow Ashley @ashleystahl

Follow Chase @chase_chewning 

Key Highlights

• Ashley explains how to get unstuck in life by hopping from the first lilypad to the second and to the third. She addresses the many challenges that everyone will encounter on their personal journey along the way.

• What did Ashley carry over from her previous career in intelligence into her current work as a coach?

• Ashley gives her thoughts on identity and why the search for who you truly are can be freeing or limiting depending on how you approach it.

• How do you address burnout and regain a sense of purpose?

Powerful Quotes by Ashley

The ultimate message of my book is: Don’t do what you love. Do what you are.

Instead of hiring a bunch of life coaches, let life be your coach. [...] When you see your career as this vehicle of experimentation, as a vehicle of self-expression, what happens is you start saying “yes” to opportunities that are in the vein of where you’re gifted, and you start getting opportunities to really do something on a higher level.

Purpose moves. Who you are, moves. We’re not a static organism. I think it’s so important to give yourself permission to change. You’re allowed to change your mind. You’re allowed to like something different. People don’t give themselves that because there is such a strong egoic desire to maintain an identity.

Buying into identities can free you as much as it can limit you.

Resentment is a sign of burnout. [...] Anytime you have resentment, what you really have is poor boundaries. Resentment is just feedback that you’ve trespassed on your own boundaries.

A lot of people who are low energy are actually just low on purpose.

The pain of acceptance is never as bad as the slow-burn, gnawing pain of denial.

You really can’t move forward until you have awareness of what’s true.

Episode resources:

• Learn more about Ashley

• Get Ashley's book You Turn

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Dr. Anthony Balduzzi is a naturopathic doctor, national champion bodybuilder, and founder of the Fit Father Project and Fit Mother Project—online health and fitness communities aimed at empowering busy parents to get healthy, lose weight, and build muscle through practical nutrition and exercise plans.

Seeing his father suffer through sickness and pass away at the age of 42 imprinted in young Anthony’s mind that life is both finite and fragile. Being faced with mortality so early on, no less through a parent, catapulted him into the world of health and fitness. He realized, as he went down this path, that it all comes down to “how we manage our nutrition, our sleep, our movement, and our mindset.”

The tragic, early experience of losing his dad planted a seed within Anthony to help others like his father who were “just busy and caught in the throes of managing everything” at the expense of their healthy routines. “Health,” he continues, “is often put on the backburner when we have bills and responsibilities, and I saw that happening to so many people.”

To this end, Dr. Balduzzi created the Fit Father Project alongside the Fit Mother Project, programs that simplify—and make sustainable—exercise and nutrition for everyday busy parents.

Follow Dr. Balduzzi @fitfatherproject

Follow Chase @chase_chewning

Key Highlights

• Dr. Balduzzi’s father passed away at the young age of 42. He explains how this tragic period of his life served as the catalyst that began his journey into the world of health and wellness.

• In a nutshell, what do busy people need to know about taking care of themselves for the long haul?

• How do we ensure our children’s success through epigenetics?

• Community is immunity. When we have deep, meaningful connections with other human beings, how do those connections impact us, chemically and physiologically?

Powerful Quotes by Dr. Anthony Balduzzi

There are a lot of things in life that we can’t control. Yet at the same time it was a very empowering experience. After going through the grieving of losing my dad, I realized that I was the man of the house, and that I was able to make choices about how to move forward and how I was going to represent for my mom and my little brother.

This body of ours is intimately connected to the rhythms of the planet, through our circadian rhythm—and how that affects all of the cascades of hormones—and how these different cycles happen in the body.

When you look at longevity for the human mechanism, the longest-living people are not doing P90X workouts. They’re farming. They’re walking up mountains—doing low-intensity, joint-friendly ongoing activity. We are built to walk. Humans are built to walk.

Suffering is our natural, course-correcting mechanism. When something hurts, when something’s wrong, we have this experience of pain. When we feel out of alignment with our core values, we have these emotions of guilt or depression. These things, when viewed in the bigger picture, are opportunities for us to choose something different and move in a better direction.

I think one of the greatest qualities that anybody can embody is a self-reflective nature.

Episode resources:

• Fit Father Project

• Fit Mother Project

• Fit Father Project on YouTube

• Fit Mother Project on YouTube

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Shane Heath is the Founder and CEO of MUD\WTR, which offers a coffee alternative using the nine organic ingredients cacao, masala chai, turmeric, sea salt, cinnamon, chaga, cordyceps, reishi, and lion's mane. Mud gives you natural energy, focus, and immune support with only 1/7th the caffeine of coffee.

An artist and entrepreneur at heart, Shane had already founded three companies (if you don’t count the car wash business he started when he was 12) and had been a graphic designer for much of his career before taking on his most unique project yet. Using the Lean Startup approach, Shane initially put MUD out on the market to test its viability while he was still working full-time. This gave him the confidence he needed to go all-in on the business.

“I’m constantly thinking about finding my potential and moving forward,” says Shane, “whether through new experiences or unlearning old beliefs that no longer serve me.”

Listen in as Shane shares his affinity for creative and entrepreneurial pursuits, alongside his intensely spiritual yet grounded approach to caring for your body and mind and using adversity as fuel for growth in all aspects of your life.

Follow Shane @somanypossibilities

Follow MUD\WTR @drinkmudwtr

Follow Chase @chase_chewning

Key Highlights

• Why did Shane forge ahead with a product that has a lot of stigma tied to it to this day?

• How did Shane come to settle on the nine ingredients he currently uses for his coffee alternative?

• What does Shane do to manage stress and keep his creative juices flowing as an artist and entrepreneur?

• How has Shane’s life improved through taking risks and facing hardships without anyone watching?

• How have the events of 2020 shaped Shane’s mindset and hope for the future in 2021?

Powerful Quotes by Shane

If you’re drinking hundreds of milligrams of caffeine for years on end, you sort of lose track of what it feels like to be normal and what your baseline is. And when it hits you, it feels amazing. You’re like, “Oh, that’s what real sleep feels like! That’s what my natural energy feels like in the morning when I wake up letting my body do its thing!”

In the business world, you’re going to be presented with things that you didn’t see coming, that you couldn’t have prepared for. And this is how you prepare: You prepare by putting yourself through hardship all the time.

Going into anything that’s challenging, whether it’s a triathlon or working with a coach with a strong intention is almost equally as important as the thing you’re embarking on itself.

Episode resources:

• Learn more about MUD\WTR

   

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May joins Chase again to discuss ways to become more intentional with your time and find ways as a couple to stay on track with your physical health and wellness goals.

One of the many challenges 2020 presented was very limited access to gyms and other fitness resources, especially for folks based in Los Angeles like Chase and May. It was a huge hurdle that made it harder not only to get regular workouts in, but also to stay motivated to maintain healthy eating habits.

With their local F45 having opened back up recently, there’s finally been some semblance of normalcy in the couple’s routine. And while F45’s high-intensity, circuit-based workouts aren’t exactly Chase’s cup of tea, the two agreed to make it a part of his routine alongside hers while waiting for other gyms to reopen. This way, each partner became accountable to each other to keep up the new shared routine.

Another new relationship hack that they embraced is sharing their calendar. “It just helps so much with planning life,” says Chase. “You’re more mindful of your partner, too.” And, adds May, it incentivizes either partner to make their daily priorities work around pre-existing tasks for the day.

Chase and May address other common obstacles that get in the way of a couple’s health goals, especially amid lockdowns, including how to keep each other’s eating habits in check and how to incorporate fitness into a family activity. The common thread running through it all is intentionality, discipline, and making sure that both partners are on the same page as they find better ways to navigate the many challenges and uncertainties presented by the new normal.

Follow May @mayyazdi

Follow Chase @chase_chewning

Key Highlights

• The importance of setting a routine for your physical health now, even if conditions aren’t ideal

• How sharing a calendar with your partner makes daily life easier to navigate in every way

• What you can do if your partner isn’t into fitness

• How couples can keep each other’s eating habits in check

• Finding healthy substitutions for your guilty pleasures

• Taking intentional breaks

• How a time log will help you fill massive time sinks throughout your day

Powerful Quotes

• Especially this year, we’ve all realized how important our health, well-being, and physical activity is. What makes it a lot easier, fun, and habit-forming is if you have somebody with you like a significant other or just a friend or even a gym buddy that can help keep you accountable. ~May

• The act of getting ready to exercise sets the tone for your entire day. ~May

• Things so easily slip through the cracks simply because you don’t make the time for them. ~Chase

• The more we gain awareness of our time and our partner’s time, the more we find ways to strengthen our relationship. ~Chase

Episode resources:

• Save 15% on Paleovalley's grass fed beef sticks with code EVERFORWARD

• Listen to May's podcast May's Anatomy

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Liz Carlile is a TEDx speaker and host of the Top 50 Parenting and Spirituality podcast Motherhood Unstressed.

Liz highlights the importance and necessity of family, and how to grow and nurture your relationship with your partner and children. At the same time she gives advice on how not to overlook yourself when trying to be there for your loved ones.

The seed to her brand, Motherhood Unstressed, was planted right after her first son was born in 2012. In that particular moment for Liz, the beautiful promise of motherhood was overshadowed by the intense discomfort, the stress, and the feelings of doubt that plagued her throughout the process.

Liz recalls that “something was amiss” in that moment, and yet she decided she would not “stay in that spot”. She knew that it was no one else’s job—not even her husband’s—to lift her up. It was ultimately hers and hers alone. That was the catalyst behind her mission to promote self-love for mothers everywhere.

Listen in as Liz shares how it is possible for a mother to dedicate time to and nurture a deep relationship with their loved ones while chasing dreams outside of family. Along the way, she offers advice on combating stress and creating self-care rituals.

Follow Liz @motherhoodunstressed

Follow Chase @chase_chewning

Key Highlights

• How is Liz able to dedicate so much time being present as a mother while hosting a weekly podcast and managing her brand?

• What can you do to make sure you’re not upsetting the dynamic between yourself, your partner, and your kids—and making sure you yourself don’t stress out—while chasing dreams beyond family?

• Why self-care is not selfish.

• How do you gauge whether you’re having success with the amount of time you’ve been pouring into other people to build those relationships?

Powerful Quotes by Liz

It just hits you at some point in the process [of giving birth] where you ask yourself, “Who am I? What do I want? What am I doing?” Asking myself those questions early on—not really knowing what to do but just knowing that something was amiss and that I didn’t want to stay in that spot—that was the seed to Motherhood Unstressed and to the work I’m doing right now and to make self-care, self-love, and nurturing the mother my mission and my goal.

When you find something that really speaks to you and that stirs your soul, there’s nothing and no one that can stop you from pursuing it. The onus is on all of us to find out what that is.

Whether you know it or not, you’re either uplifting people or bringing people down. What’s the mark that you want to leave on the world? Because it matters.

Episode resources:

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